The Reanimaretor

Haybert North lifted the inanimate corpse of the rabbit in his magic and shook it gently. The body was limp, rigor mortis long past, but all that happened was a foul stench emanated from its open mouth. This one wouldn’t work at all. It was far too long dead.
He tossed it into the bin for disposal and sighed. He had been maligned for so long for his views on the body and the possibility of getting it to function beyond death: Removed from Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns. Driven out of Canterlot University. Then it was “suggested” that he leave Baltimare University. So here he was, stuck on the edge of the Hayseed Swamps, testing his revolutionary theories on deceased wildlife and farm animals.
He didn’t understand why there was such a taboo about the dead. Everypony was a mere machine of meat and bone, with only magic being the difference between living and not. Without that magical spark, the body ceased to move. It ceased to breathe, drive blood, and most importantly; think.
So why was it so dangerous to consider that there might be a spell that could continue to assist an otherwise dead creature in continuing. In the place of the innate magical spark, he could create one! He could make a spell that would be a crutch for the broken will of the dead pony! One that would assist it in its primary function of making the body work.
He had tried, time and again, to get the spell to work on dead animals, but they seemed to lack the same spark that ponies had. The spell should have worked, but it wasn’t. Every animal that he had tried it on did not even so much as twitch. He wanted to try it on a pony cadaver, but so far no school, family, or gravekeeper had allowed him to do so.

“It insults the sanctity of life,” Haybert muttered mockingly. “Well, if you’d rather live without your loved ones, then be my guest.”
He shoved his chair back from the table and hopped down. He meandered over to the freezer where he kept the rest of the dead animals he had so graciously been provided with. Dead ducks, chickens, rabbits. One snake that had been run over by a cart. And a single cat.
Even with all his magic, he had not been able to make a single one of them move. Not independently anyway. He could find the discrete parts of the body and force them to function. He was a skilled surgeon among other things. He knew how the body went together, and how each part functioned. Many an hour had gone into seeing how the machinery of life worked. Pulling on tendons, forcing muscles to flex, bending limbs and seeing how the bones interlocked. Pumping the heart to see how it forced blood to flow. It had been exhausting, time-consuming, and he had to admit, a little gross.
But it was all for a very good and glorious purpose! It was to bring life back to the unliving! Wasn’t that worth the time, effort, and anything else disgusting? Even if nopony else appreciated it, it would be the most amazing discovery of the millennium! If only he could get it to work!
If his latest theory was correct, and animals lacked the magical life-spark that kept ponies alive, then all these efforts were worthless. But the only way to test if his theory was correct, would be to acquire an actual pony cadaver and try the spell on that. The trouble was getting access to one. Baltimare had been informed by Canterlot University of his research, and they had swiftly denied him access to any medical cadavers whatsoever, throttling his research. He hadn’t stayed long.

After his dismissal from Baltimare, he’d attempted to find anypony else interested in his research, with no success. The mere mention of working with cadavers the way he wanted drove most of them off.
The moment he changed it to working with dead animals, the tune had shifted, and he’d found funding and a place to live out here near the swamp. He knew that even if it was unspoken, the caveat was that he work only with animals. He was certain they knew the tales maligning him that had filtered out of Baltimare, so he kept his desires a secret.
But it was swiftly becoming unacceptable to work this way. Animals just didn’t respond! This research was useless! Completely useless!
He needed a cadaver. One that hadn’t gone too far into the process of decay and that still had most of the required parts for a pony to function. The machine had to be nearly intact, even if the pony was dead. He could work with a pierced heart, or a broken spine. Magic could fix that easily enough. It would be like patching a tire or replacing a broken window. The parts would work together, even if they weren’t the original parts. Just a little bit of stitching and it would be good as new.
He had heard that one of the farmers had died a day ago out in the swamp. His body had been found with his neck torn out. Probably a cragadile. The loss of the esophagus was unfortunate, but he could work with it. Even if the cadaver only returned to life for a short while, he would know if his theory was correct.
He was just biding his time until the funeral was over and night fell on the swamps. Then he would have his corpse. A real pony cadaver, fresh unto death, would be available.

The cloak of twilight saw Haybert skulking about some distance from the graveyard. This being as backwater as it was, there was no embalming or other preparation of the corpse before it was stuffed in a box and dumped in a grave. However, this place being as backwater as all that meant the casket was likely not to survive the muddy ground for very long without collapsing or leaking. He couldn’t allow too much dirt to get in the wound if he wanted to be able to give it some form of repair before attempting his spell. Just more complications he would have to deal with.
Haybert crept around the back of the fence at the graveyard, searching for the loose bars he had found several days before. He was prepared for just such an eventuality as an unfortunate death. He had even considered causing one, but that was pushing it.
There would be no research done in jail, that he was certain of. They don’t let you use magic in there. He would be stripped of his purpose in life, and he would surely rot away from idleness. No surgical tools, no magic, no privacy. Complete madness.
No, he needed to remain free and clear, and that meant skulking about like a common thief in order to acquire the materials needed to perform his research. This was also complete madness.
Haybert found the plot where the poor sap had been buried, the soil still freshly turned. Now that he had found the spot, he turned off his horn light, digging only with the faint light of the stars and the moon. The soil was easy to follow, and he only needed to get a small portion of the casket uncovered, then he could nab the cadaver and escape this wretched, swampy graveyard.

Haybert continued to dig while resting next to the grave. His magic was more than enough for this exercise, and he wasn’t going to get filthy if he could avoid. Not with dirt, anyway. This was work. The part with the cadaver was not.
The way Haybert saw it, work was what you did to get to your destination. Play was what you did once you were there. Currently he could only get so far, so he had to ‘play’—as it were—with the cadavers, coaxing them here and there until they did what he wanted. This was not work, this was exercise until he finally got into the race. He was exercising his skills as both a magician and a doctor until he was ready to show everypony what he could do.
He heard his shovel hit something wooden, and lit up his horn again, aiming it down into the grave. He could see the wooden lid of the coffin the fellow had been placed in, already moist and warping from the wet and the soil.
He cast a quick muffling spell to silence his immediate area, and jammed the shovel under the lid. With a quick jerk of the handle, he ripped the nails sealing the coffin shut out of their holes. He did it again with the other side, then reefed on the whole lid with his magic. Nail after nail slowly pulled loose, the squeal of wood on iron hopefully only audible to himself. If anypony heard and came to investigate, he’d have to run.
Finally, he could see the head of his prize inside the coffin, mangled neck covered by a strategically placed cloth. With his magic holding the lid of the coffin up, he reached down with his hooves and gripped under the cadaver’s shoulders. He lifted him up and out of the coffin, then dropped the lid, scooped the dirt back in place, and disappeared out the back.

Haybert could have skipped all the way home if he weren’t holding a dead pony on his back. He took the back trails through the swamp to ensure he wasn’t discovered, the smell of death thick around him.
He couldn’t have cared less. This was the moment he had been hoping and praying for so long for! Finally, a cadaver, freshly dead, and mostly intact. He could work with this. He could see how it reacted to the spell, and if nothing came of it, he could modify it and tweak it.
Should he repair the throat, though? That might get in the way of the spell working.
Haybert thought about it, but ultimately decided not to. When ponies die from injury, they’re typically missing something anyway, or a part of them is ruptured or broken. If the spell couldn’t help them start functioning again, then what good is it? It’s not like ponies die of nothing, right?
He had to be able to animate dead, broken, or otherwise compromised tissue of all sorts. That included the throat, the limbs, and also the brain and heart. No matter what, if he could sustain reanimated life in a pony with just a complex enough spell, then that would mean he was successful. He shouldn’t have to repair it, or he’d just be creating a meat puppet with the semblance of proper pony function.
Haybert snuck into his house, shut and latched the door, shut and latched each window, and made sure there was no way anypony could peek in on what he was doing. He also cast a silence spell around the house to make sure that if the pony came back to life, he could escape or yell for help.
Haybert wasn’t foolish enough to assume coming back to life would be a pleasant process. In fact, he expected it to be a rather painful and shocking affair. Precautions were needed.

Once Haybert was certain the building was secured so nopony could come in or get out and the sound spell was in place, he laid the corpse across his kitchen table. It wasn’t fancy, but he had very limited supplies. The smell coming from it was rather bad: A mixture of mildew and decay. He looked over the corpse, checking its condition and looking for anything that would be an easy fix.
The throat was a wash. He wasn’t even going to try to repair that. The nose and mouth had been stuffed with cotton. He pulled those out. The eyes had been sewn shut, so he ripped the threads out to allow them to open again. The body was still a bit stiff, likely the end of rigor mortis, but it should still be intact enough for his purposes. All in all, the corpse was in good condition. A couple of days old, but not long enough to get very far in the decomposition process.
Haybert cleaned the dirt off the corpse’s clothes and lit his horn up. He scanned the body, getting a look at the inside. As he’d expected, the muscles had entered rigor mortis and were almost through the process. That may cause some damage once the body started to move again, but it wasn’t a large concern. He didn’t care what happened to the body, he just wanted to know it would move of its own volition.
He scanned up to the head and was dismayed to find that the brain had decayed significantly. This was the part that would be necessary for the higher functions of a pony. If the brain was gone, what was left? Would it be merely an animal? Violent and subject to instinct? This wasn’t promising, but even if it couldn’t think, it could at least move, right?

Haybert created magic straps to hold the body down. If the pony became violent upon resurrection, it might attack him. He needed to be able to investigate the results without becoming endangered.
Once the straps were in place and he was confident they were strong enough, he went to get his notes. The notes held all the steps of the spell, which parts of the body they needed to target, and the final step to make it take effect.
Haybert mumbled to himself while he went over them, pacing back and forth next to the body.
“Place the major arcane lock in the brain…” he muttered, “…and lock the branches to the bones, muscles, and tendons.”
He put a hoof on the body, moving it up and down the limbs as he traced out the path for his spell. “When the spell is in place, the final lock will set the spell in motion, while propagating enough magic to keep the body active using nothing but arcane energy. Depending on the power of the caster, the spell will last for different lengths of time.”
“Perfect,” Haybert snapped the book shut. “I think we are ready.”
Haybert double-checked the straps, double-checked his spells, and double-checked the doors and windows. Everything needed to be perfect. He sat down next to the body and mentally prepared himself, flicking his horn on and off. He took several deep breaths, then began to cast.
His magic covered the entire body first, a light dusting of deep brown arcane light settling over the corpse and seeping into it, filling every pore and cavity with his magic. Once he was certain he was inside the body, he closed his eyes and focused his attention entirely on the magic itself, using it as a guide for what he was working on, and where his magic was going to travel.

He started with the brain. The arcane lock there was the basis for the entire spell, as the brain was the motor that sent messages to the rest of the body, telling them what to do. So, too, would the spell allow the brain to function through magic, and send messages to the rest of the body through the ley-lines that were going to branch through the veins and fibers of the nervous system. The arcane lock on the brain would hold the blueprint for the ley-lines, sending them automatically down the pipeline, as it were, suffusing the entire body with magic.
Haybert locked the spell in place in the brain, and watched as it sent out feelers, grasping and crawling down the body. The magic slogged through the congealed blood, forcing its way through the veins. It propped them open, allowing his arcane power to swim through them, making their way through the body to the heart.
As the spell reached the open would on his neck, Haybert opened his eyes to see what it would do upon encountering such damage, and almost squealed with glee as he watched it build around the wound, connecting veins, tendons, and nerve fibers purely with magic. It had built a new trachea and esophagus purely with the magic he was providing! This was better than he had hoped it would be!
Once the spell passed the wound, it sped up, quickly filling out the rest of the body, going down each limb, and connecting it all to the brain and the heart.
Once every limb had some magic in it, it all focused back to the heart, where the final pulse of magic would take place. Haybert steadied himself, ready for the draining part of the spell where it would pull as much magic as he was willing to let it have so as to keep the spell going.

Haybert felt the heart begin to move, his magic beginning the pulsing throb of forcing the organ to move. What little blood remained started moving sluggishly through the body. It didn’t turn back to lively red, but it moved, and that was something. He felt the spell reach a steady rhythm, and it began to pull magic from him, stealing it from his horn.
Haybert felt a little bit of panic rise, but forced it down. He knew it was going to do this, and he knew exactly how much he was going to let it have. This being the first try, he didn’t want to exhaust himself, so he waited until it had a fair amount, then cut off the spell.
The magic heart forcing the pony to function fluttered for a moment, then it went back to the steady rhythm, beating in the cadaver’s chest. He looked over the dead body, watching and waiting.
Nothing seemed to happen for a moment, but Haybert was confident he had done everything correctly, and he had allowed for a few minutes before the body got the message that it should be moving.
One minute passed.
Two minutes passed.
Three minutes.
Still nothing. The spell was running. He could see it, it was glowing in his throat, and a faint light shining through the sunken skin of the pony’s chest. The blood was pumping, the heart was beating. What was wrong?
Haybert lit up his horn and ran a check of the body. Everything was in place, the muscles had loosened up, and the lungs were functional. He was even breathing.
There was breath!
That was excellent! The brain was performing at least a few functions!
But nothing was moving. The eyes hadn’t even opened.
Haybert lifted a limb, then dropped it.
There was no response.

Was it truly the brain, then? That was his primary concern, and it seemed that was the problem he was running into. He had brought the shell back to life, but not the pony. What would have caused that? The time spent dead seemed the obvious reason, but Haybert needed to consider other possibilities.
He went through the functions of the corpse in front of him, looking at what was working and what was not.
The lungs were functional. So was the heart. He lifted an eyelid and shone his light into the pony’s eyes. They constricted, which meant the eyes were functional. There really wasn’t a way to check if the hearing was working without the pony being cognizant, but he clapped his hooves near an ear anyway. There was no response.
The senses seemed functional, but until he had an active specimen, he couldn’t know for certain on some of them.
He pricked the pony with a pin, but there was no muscular response. What was interesting was that instead of blood coming to clot the minor wound, the glow of his magic filled the spot, sealing it up.
“Curious response,” Haybert said.
This was an excellent test. He grinned at the functioning pony body on the table and rubbed his hooves together. The brain seemed to be the catch. Every other sense was working, but he had failed to capture the ‘essence’ of the pony, as it were. Whatever spark of life there was inside each and every pony had left this one before he had brought the body back.
However…
If it was truly magic that gave each pony their sapience, could he not manufacture something that would make them work as if they were a pony? Such a task seemed daunting and beyond reach. To create a functioning creature from scratch seemed mad! Where would he even begin?

Haybert paced back and forth, pondering the possibilities.
Something in the brain was missing. Some ‘spark of life’. The quandary then, was if that spark of life could be capture immediately upon death, or if there was some way to bring it back from death to the body. Reanimating it wasn’t enough, but he needed to isolate this ‘spark of life’ before he could begin working on pulling it back together into the body.
That meant he needed another corpse.
That meant it needed to be fresh.
VERY fresh.
Haybert nodded to himself and began planning his next search for a body. He recorded how long the pony he had reanimated remained flush with magic and noted in down in his records. With the amount he’d given it, it had lasted two hours before the magic dissipated. A good time, and a good thing to note. It was also important that he noted his spell only worked on ponies and not on animals. He did not know why, but he believed it had to do with this ‘spark of life’ that gave ponies and possibly other creatures their sapience above other animals.
He should try this with a griffon or a minotaur. He made a note of that.
Haybert returned the body to the grave. He no longer needed it, and it would only stink up the house until he could isolate the spark of life he wanted. Maybe after he found it he could try on a longer dead corpse, see if he could pull the spark back. That would be a test for later, however, as his main concern now was finding or making a fresh corpse. One that could be immediately enchanted so that he might isolate what makes a pony tick. This was going to be difficult.

Haybert had determined that the best way to get a fresh corpse would be to make one himself.
He had waited a few weeks, and made a few trips to Baltimare to get the latest news nearly every day in that time. The obituaries were always full, and he had even gone to watch the latest construction projects in the city to see if any accidents might happen. Unfortunately, safety measures had been increased in recent years so hardhats were mandatory, so was hoofwear, and if a pony other than a Pegasus had to work high up, there were safety lines.
Even past that, Haybert had no idea how he would get access to the body immediately upon death. Sure, he could claim he was a doctor, but casting that kind of spell in broad daylight with witnesses nearby? That was just asking for trouble. Nopony understood him in an academic setting, what was the likelihood of the unwashed masses understanding his lofty goals?
No, even if he could find an immediately deceased pony, he’d never be able to cast the spell on them to test his theory. He would have to make a corpse himself, then test his spell in private. It as distasteful, but he’d never isolate the spark of life without such measures. He would sacrifice his own morals to invest in the future where nopony would have to live without their loved ones if they did not wish to.
He already had the road he was going to use picked out, as well as the weapon. The road was a small, empty stretch among the trees in the Hayseed Swamps. It was a back road that was still used by some of the farmers and traders in the area because on clear days it was faster than the main road due to it not being as popular. Unfortunately, during rain it was a wet morass that made for a difficult slog for even the strongest earth ponies.

The weapon he was going to use was one born of his desire to cause as little damage as possible. An ice pick. He had heard stories of some of the more cruel ponies in the city gangs using ice picks as weapons. They could be disguised as tools, but were slim and pointy enough to be deadly in the right hooves. He wanted whoever he found dead, but not completely ruined, so an ice pick to the heart would shut down the body, and not ruin much of the flesh. It was the perfect tool for the job. He had the stretch of land chosen, and the weapon, and now it was just a matter of going there and waiting for a lone pony to come down the road.
He prepared a snack ahead of time, because he may end up waiting there for several hours, and he brought a sack large enough to house the body, as well as a cudgel and some chloroform. He hadn’t yet decided if he wanted to perform the spell in situ or not. There were risks involved in performing it there, but if things went downhill he was prepared to do the deed in the woods.
Haybert waiting until evening, prepared his saddlebags, and traveled out of town to the road. He found an inconspicuous spot just off the packed earth behind some trees and bushes that had a nice vantage point of both directions of the road, and settled in to wait.
He wanted to take the first pony that came along, but they had to be alone, with no other ponies in sight, otherwise he would have the guards on him faster than you could say “malpractice”. He didn’t know that he could handle two at once anyway, especially if one or both of them was a unicorn. He would need the element of surprise to win that kind of battle.

Haybert waited for what he estimated to be an hour or so before he saw his first pony. It was a simple earth pony, which would be easy to make a hit on. This pony had no magic which meant he had the advantage, as well as the element of surprise. It shouldn’t be too hard to take him out before he was any wiser.
Haybert lit his horn and peered out from the bush, the chloroform and cudgel at the ready. The pony was right in front of him when he lifted his weapons above the bush. He saw movement far away out of the corner of his eye and pulled back, ducking down lower. His heart pounded in his chest as he looked in the direction of the motion, only to find out that it was a bird.
A Celestiadamned bird.
Haybert chided himself for panicking, but now the pony was too far away, and chasing after him would cause him to run and then he might get away. He would just have to wait for the next pony.
Haybert hunkered down in his spot and prepared to wait. It had taken an hour for the first pony to show up, so he expected at least another full hour. The road was quick, sure, but it wasn’t safe. Hence why he was using it.
He chuckled morbidly at himself. He was the danger on the empty road, about to prove them right. How delightfully macabre.
Thankfully, the next pony only took about fourty minutes to show. A unicorn mare came trotting gaily down the beaten path, moving at a rather quick clip. Haybert lit his horn and readied himself. He wasn’t going to let this one get away. Twilight was swiftly approaching the point where it would be too dark for anypony to see, so he had to get this one or wait until another day.

Haybert waited until the mare was just in front, then he swiftly floated the cloth—soaked in chloroform—and the cudgel up behind her. He brought the cloth down and around her muzzle, covering her nose and mouth tightly, then with a WHACK! brought the cudgel down on the back of her skull. Not too hard, but not gentle. The mare gave a muffled cry of surprise as the cloth covered her face, but went down soon after the impact to her head.
Haybert leaped out of the bushes, hooves tapping in excitement. He looked both ways down the road and saw nopony coming, but he wasted no time in tying up her legs and stuffing her in his burlap sack. As soon as the drawstring was tightened, he hefted her onto his back and took off, galloping into the woods.
His path would take him through the trees behind the cemetery where he had hidden the other night to dig up the body. There had been minor hubbub about the messed-up earth, but nopony had bothered to dig it up. They just assumed it was a wild animal and left him well enough alone. There wouldn’t be anypony back there, so he could wait until night had properly fallen to get inside his house.
Things were going well, but as he was passing behind the cemetery, he felt movement coming from the sack.
“Celestiadamnit, why? I’m almost home,” Haybert narrowed his brows in frustration.
He dropped the sack to the ground and pulled it open. The mare was confused and twitching weakly. Her limbs weren’t fully able to move yet, and she was clutching her head in pain, but he knew he didn’t have long.
Haybert tried to put the cloth against her muzzle again, but she was aware enough to know that was bad, and she blocked it with her own magic, even as she winced in pain.

Haybert frowned and reached into the bag to try to interrupt her spell, but she had now gathered enough strength back to push his hooves away. She started crying and screaming.
“What do you want? Leave me alone! Get away!” She cried.
Haybert glanced around quickly before focusing back on her. He had to do something and quick, or he’d be found out! Nopony had heard her, but it was only a matter of time. Haybert clucked his tongue in frustration and floated the ice pick outside the sack where the mare couldn’t see.
“You’ve ruined how convenient this would have been. I’m sorry, my dear,” driving the pick into her back.
She gasped, grimaced, and squeaked quietly as her heart slowly stopped beating and life left her.
While she was dying, haybert pulled the pick out of her, and tugged her out of the sack and further into the forest, away from the cemetery. Now that he’d been forced to kill her early, he was going to have to perform the spell as soon as her life left, so he was going to begin immediately.
Her bound limbs kicked weakly as blood leaked out of her heart in the small hole he had punched in it, and Haybert examined her all over.
Healthy, good musculature, and in excellent shape. She would make a perfect specimen. He actually felt slightly bad for killing her. She was really quite beautiful. But, if all went well, she wouldn’t be dead for very long.
Haybert lit up his horn and prepared the spell, getting the arcane lock ready to place over her brain. He kept a hoof on her pulse, waiting for the very moment it stopped. While he was waiting, her diverted a small amount of magic to a further examination to make sure the spark of life he was searching for didn’t escape without him being aware. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he had to watch.

The life in her eyes faded, and her pulse finally stopped, and Haybert all but slammed the arcande lock into place. It solidified into place, and while it worked he immediately began searching for something, anything, that might be the spark of life.
His spell flowed down her veins, reigniting the suffocating blood cells that had been starved for air inside her, and it easily filled the hole in her heart, forcing it back into motion, a steady and unnatural rhythm picking up inside her chest. Her limbs twitched as it moved, and Haybert jumped back.
She was moving already! The previous corpse hadn’t moved at all, and it certainly didn’t pick up this quickly! She still had it! He had captured it!
“I’ve done it,” said Haybert, “I caught it before it could escape! I did it!”
Haybert pranced in a circle, crowing into the night sky.
“I have brought the dead back to life!” He bucked happily, exhulting in his victory.
“But I didn’t isolate the spark,” Haybert sobered up.
He turned back to the pony on the ground, who was breathing, twitching and moaning in what was probably pain. He hadn’t expected it to be an easy or painless spell, so this was expected.
He didn’t know exactly what it was that he had captured in a pony just recently dead. He needed to find it.
He knelt back down next to her as she writhed and squirmed, groans coming from her lips as the spell made its way down the rest of her body. He was just waiting for it to steal his magic, so he had to move quickly. He started at her torso, looking to see if anything was different about her than about the previous cadaver, but he found nothing. He wasn’t expecting it to be in the limbs, so he moved immediately up to her brain.

Haybert looked for something, anything, that might be the spark of life he so desperately wanted to identify. The mare’s brain was afire with activity, and he zoomed in on it, hunting for the difference between it, and the brain of the pony he had exhumed several weeks before.
Despite his efforts, however, he was unable to find the source. The magic—his magic—that was animating her, confounded any effort he was putting forth to identify the spark that allowed her to think and move.
Haybert’s efforts were interrupted when the spell began to actively pull magic from him to sustain itself. It was uncomfortable, but this was his first great success, so he allowed it to take more than what he had given to the cadaver from earlier.
While it pulled everything together, the mare’s eyes focused on him, now seemingly able to focus on what was happening.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh! What have you done to me?” screamed the mare, looking directly into his eyes. “What mockery have you made of me?”
“You speak? You can speak!” shouted Haybert. “Oh, this is better than I could have hoped for! It works perfectly! Haaaahahahahaha!” Haybert cackled, dancing in a small circle.
“What have you done to me!” the mare said again, struggling to get up with her limbs tied.
Haybert turned back to her and crouched down again, “Hush, my dear,” said Haybert. “I have perfected giving life to the lifeless. I have made animate what once was mere flesh, and made autonomous the dead machinery of biology. How are you feeling?”
“Like death,” said the mare, unamused. “You’ve brought me back after murdering me. Why not dig up a corpse instead?”
“Ahhh, the heart of the question I was trying to discover. I did, you see, but it was not ‘alive’. It functioned, but there was nothing there. No pony, no questions, no voice, no movement, no response at all,” said Haybert. “I needed to capture the ‘spark of life’ that allows a pony to think, you see.”

The mare looked at him and smiled a dangerous smile. “The spark of life, you say. I can tell you what it is, you know.”
Haybert looked at her in confusion. “Why would you be able to answer the questions I have been working my whole life to answer?”
“Because unlike you, I’ve been dead,” said the mare.
Haybert looked at her askance, but nodded and prepared to cut off the spell, having fed her more than enough to last for several days. “Alright, tell me then. What does being dead teach you?”
“That dying hurts!” The mare’s horn lit up with an angry red glow and she latched her magic onto his, preventing him from stopping the spell.
Haybert tried to scramble away, but she sliced her bindings with a spell and followed him.
“My body is now frozen in time, and you want me to teach you? The sheer audacity!” the mare shouted. “My wound lies closed but perpetual in my back, piercing into my heart constantly, never going to seal shut! The pain is constant, filling my head and my being with agony!” She stopped and clutched her head with her hooves. “That and having known what my existence ends in and having that torn away from me, you want me to be glad for what you’ve done?”
Haybert felt his magic seeping away from him, disappearing into the spell animating the mare. He suddenly greatly regretted casting his spell on a unicorn. It would take him a long time to recover if she took everything he had, and he would be exhausted for days.
“Stop! Please stop!” Haybert pleaded.
“You didn’t listen to me when I asked, so let me return the favour,” she said.
As the last bit of his magic disappeared into the spell animating her, he could see a sinister glow illuminating her chest where the spell remained. Her eyes glowed with magic, and she stood imperiously over him.

“I… I feel a hunger unlike anything I’ve ever known. This spell you’ve cast. It will run out of magic, yes?” she asked as she looked around the forest, focusing eventually on the cemetery nearby.
Drained, Haybert could do nothing but lay there and watch helplessly. “Yes, the magic will eventually run out and you will die fully unless somepony feeds it more magic.”
“The spark of life you’re looking for can be found most concentrated in the brain where the thoughts, dreams, and ‘magic’ of a pony reside. It’s amazing what insight death can give you,” said the mare, “but the brain doesn’t need to be there for it to work. You just need to know what you’re looking for, and you can…” she started casting a spell, and assembled what looked like his spell in the air before her, only with something different about it. “…create something to pull the spark of life back. Your spell will self-propagate, given the right conditions.”
“But, how?” asked Haybert.
“It already did, you just didn’t add in a way for it to work without the brain. You couldn’t, without knowing what you were looking for,” she said, grinning at him. “Let’s see how grateful somepony else is to be brought back to life. Get a second opinion.”
She seized Haybert in her magic and dragged him to the cemetery, the spell, which he fully understood with a mixture of horror and fascination, floated in the air nearby, as of yet unused. The mare pulled him over to the grave that had not fully had grass grow over it, and she ripped the earth up, exposing the rotting, worm-eaten cadaver below.
“Surely that won’t work. I tried. He’s been dead far too long,” Haybert protested.
The mare clucked her tongue at him. “You don’t know what it’s like to be dead. Just watch, and you’ll learn soon enough.”

The mare lifted the cadaver out of the broken casket Haybert had returned him to, and brought him up to lay on the ground. She lowered her arcane lock through his skull and placed it over the remains of his brain. It immediately took hold, working faster than Haybert’s had. The red glow of her twisted magic rebuilt his throat, replaced his missing eyes, and set the withered remains of his heart in motion. Once life returned to him, he was a misshapen mess of magic and meat.
“AHHHHHHH! AAARRRRRGH!” the pony screamed as air was drawn into his animated lungs.
He twisted on the ground in what looked to Haybert like incredible pain. His limbs contorted in unnatural ways, and he just kept screaming. His glowing red eyes focused on the mare standing above him, then shifted to Haybert. He stopped screaming and awkwardly pulled himself to his feet, then he opened his mouth and ran at Haybert with an angry snarl.
The mare stopped him with magic, his teeth clicking shut just outside the range of Haybert’s muzzle. When his mouth didn’t end up on meat, he got angrier, snarling and gnashing his jaws, hooves digging in the dirt in a frenzy as he tried to pull away from the mare’s spell.
The mare stepped closer and brought her face down near his. He ignored her and kept biting in Haybert’s direction. Haybert just stared in fear, trying to pull backward but unable to, also due to the mare’s spell.
“Not him, dear. Not yet. I know what you want, but you’ll not get it from him until I’m done with him. However, there is a town not too far away. You used to live there, I assume,” she said. “I don’t think they’d be averse to a visit from you. According to this grave, you died not too long ago and I’m sure your loved ones would be beside themselves to see you again.”

The pony kept his teeth bared, but settled down a little. His face slowly went from angry, to confused.
“Yes. Yes you’re right,” the pony muttered in a gravelly voice, “they probably miss me a lot. I’m sure they also… have… brains.” The last word was uttered in a voice much deeper and more primal than the rest.
Haybert watched the stallion turn away, his putrid flesh dropping gobbets off as he walked through the cemetery toward the city proper.
Haybert couldn’t use any magic at the moment due to the exhaustion of being completely drained, but had he been able, he would be checking what she had done to animate his corpse. Instead, he had to resort to asking. “He should be long past the point where it could return life to him. What did you do, and how?”
“Oh, that’s right. I took all your magic so you can’t check. Silly me,” laughed the mare. “Let me just give you a little bit back.”
Leaning in, she touched her horn to Haybert’s, and he felt the tiniest trickle of magic return to him. He was still exhausted, but he could at least see what she’d done. She released him from her spell and Haybert got to his hooves and followed slowly after the pony, wary of him turning around and attacking again. He lit his horn and examined the magic she’d placed inside the stallion. It looked exactly like his, but there were a few key differences. One difference was a weave of magic on the arcane lock that was intended to pull magic from… somewhere, and the other was a small message that was implanted subliminally in the brain.
“I don’t know where that’s pulling from, and what does that message say? I can’t figure it out,” Haybert said under his breath.

“You’ve never been there, so you wouldn’t know, and you never would have figured it out,” said the mare, appearing suddenly beside him. “It’s where a pony’s magic goes when they die. You caught mine before it could pass on, but his was long gone. I had to forcefully yank it back. Very unpleasant. He’s still dazed and confused at the moment, but the message will help him along. As for what it says, well… let’s just say it’s instinctual. It’s to keep the spell going without input. I gave him very little, you see. He has maybe half an hour, so he had better hurry.”
“Instinctual? What? What does it do? How does it help the spell perpetuate itself?” Haybert asked.
“Shhhh,” the mare shushed him, “he’s about to meet other ponies.”
Haybert turned to look at the stallion as he stumbled through town. He tottered past several buildings, then turned around and walked back to one of them, as if he suddenly remembered it. The stallion whimpered quietly as Haybert and the mare watched from a several meters away, but he eventually pushed on one of the doors. It opened and he walked inside.
Immediately there was screaming as ponies panicked. His appearance was likely enough, but then it was immediately followed by an angry snarling and harder screaming. Several thumps happened, then two ponies and a foal came galloping out the front door. They ran down the street in the opposite direction calling for help, as the stallion stepped back out the door, with some dark liquid dripping off his muzzle.
Haybert looked at the pony next to him, and she was grinning like a madmare, eyes fixed on the stallion and the open door he had come out of. She was waiting for something, and Haybert could not fathom what, but he was certain it had to do with the extra parts she had added to the spell.

Haybert waited, unsure of what was going on but unwilling to say anything until he saw what she was trying to show him. He didn’t have long to wait, as a scream of pain issued from inside the house the stallion had attacked, and soon after, a pony shambled out, a yellow glow coming from a hole in its skull.
“What on Equestria? What did you do? HOW did you do it? What madness is this?” Haybert reached out a hoof to the mare next to him.
She swatted his hoof away and grabbed him with her magic, tugging him closer to snarl in his face. “I added what you saw and nothing more. Your spell propagates itself. It sees injury, it replaces it, even from pony to pony. As for how I know…” her magic tightened around his neck and she shook him roughly. “I DIED, Haybert. Yes, I know your name. I hear the whispers of the dead and they tell me things. Secret things. They call for me to join them and I can’t, because of your stupid spell.”
“I *gak* just wanted to… defeat death,” said Haybert, choking in her grip.
“A noble goal. But bringing the dead back to misery and madness is hardly the best way to do it,” said the mare.
Haybert looked over at the two violent ponies rampaging through the village. They were angry and violent, kicking at doors, trying to get to the ponies inside the houses. They seemed animalistic, but the stallion the mare had raised had spoken, and he had understood that he had a family and friends before he died. Now he had gone home and had attacked them, even going so far as to eat the brains of one. Why? Why were they reacting this way when the mare hadn’t?

“Why are you so well-spoken while they are barely above animals? I mean, the stallion spoke of his family, so he clearly knows who he is. Or who he was,” Haybert said.
The cream-coloured mare yanked Haybert to his feet with her magic, pulling him along as she walked closer to the carnage. She took him in front of the first house the stallion had attacked, and looked inside. There was blood on the floor and pieces of skull. Haybert retched at the sight. He had seen plenty of injuries, and his fair share of blood and gore, but always in a medical science setting. This was violence, pure and simple.
“What do you imagine dying to be like, Haybert?” the mare asked. “Do you imagine it to be like a machine shutting down, that once you start it up again everything will be fine? That it will remember where it was and will continue as though no time had passed?”
“I… I don’t know! How could I know?” Haybert yelled.
“Having been dead, I can tell you. In the short glimpse I had, there was magic, everywhere. I was part of it, covered by it, and swept away by it. I would have become part of it, and forgotten myself, but you pulled me back before that could happen.” She gave him a manic look, her glowing brown eyes boring into his skull. “Now I don’t know whether to hate you or thank you. I hear friends, family, and ponies I don’t know shouting in one ear, and your annoying, simpering voice in the other asking me questions!”
She grabbed his head in her magic and yanked it closer to her, her mouth opened the barest bit, and she breathed heavily in his face as she stared at his head. She brushed a hoof through his black mane and he shivered in fear.

“I need… to feed,” she muttered quietly, “but not on you. You get to watch.”
The mare tossed him roughly away, then walked over toward one of the houses that had yet to be assaulted by the steadily growing population of reanimated ponies. Haybert shuffled after her for a moment, then pulled back, afraid of getting too close.
“Wait! Why are all these other freshly dead ponies acting so violently if they were brought back immediately like you?” Haybert shouted at her.
She turned her head sideways and glared daggers at him. “Because as I told you; It hurts to be dead.”
The mare lit her horn and shattered the door open in a shower of splintering wood. She marched inside, several of the other corpses, all with different colours of magic glowing in strange patches on their bodies, swarmed in the now open door. Screams came from inside, and a Pegasus tried to fly out the door above them, but the mare’s red magic snatched the poor pony out of the sky, dragging it down into the slavering horde.
Haybert watched in horror at the mess he had wrought, unsure what to do. He couldn’t help because he still needed to recharge. He had about enough magic to levitate a pencil. He certainly couldn’t triage any injuries or drag anypony to safety.
His question of what to do was answered for him, as without the mare’s protection, a couple of the shambling ponies caught wind of him and were now racing toward him. Haybert yelped and leapt to his hooves, running for his own hopefully empty home. He had reinforced it in case of any difficulties with them, so hopefully what he had was enough if he could make it. He was exhausted, and these corpses were much less hindered by physical limits than he was.

Haybert ran as fast as he could manage, the two ponies chasing him for all they were worth. Thankfully the imminent fear of death was good enough encouragement, and he dipped into reserves of energy he didn’t know he had. He dashed inside his house, slammed the door, and dropped the bar just as the two ponies chasing him crashed into it. They slammed into it a few more times before shuffling about outside the windows, looking for an easy opening.
“Come on out Hayberrrrt. Remember me? Ol’ Reedy Whistle? We drank together at the bar one night. You told me how you got kicked out of every institution you attended and ended up in this ‘backwater mud-pit’,” one of them said.
The windows rattled as the two checked them for weaknesses. The door got slammed into again, and one of them broke one of the windows to stick his hoof inside, groping for the latch. Haybert grabbed a knife from the kitchen and slashed at the hoof, cutting deep gashes in the limb as it flailed about. Dark blood oozed out of the wounds, having not received proper oxygen since the pony’s demise. The pony attached to the hoof either didn’t care, or didn’t notice, as he kept grabbing at the latch, trying to twist it open.
Haybert watched in horrible fascination as the magical glow keeping the pony animated, blue for this one, poured into the gouges Haybert had slashed into him, filling them with that awful glow and sealing the wound shut. He felt a mixture of terror and pride at how effective the spell was.
“C’mon, be a pal. I only want to get inside that thick skull of yours. I bet your brains will keep me running for a loooong time. Full of all that medical quackery,” said Reedy Whistle, one eye pressed up against the glass of the window.

Haybert grabbed the hoof as gingerly as he could while still trying his best to be forceful, and he tried to shove it back out the window. He would be using his magic, but he was tired beyond belief, and wouldn’t be able to muster the magic to ponyhandle anypony.
“I don’t want to have my brains eaten, thank you. I didn’t want any of this. I just wanted to bring back lost loved ones!” Haybert shouted at him.
More hooves began to pound on the door, causing the wood to begin splintering. They’d be on him shortly, and there was nothing he could do to defend himself. He had no magic, he had no friends, and that mare had abandoned him to the ‘tender mercies’ of the rest of her awful creations. Haybert huddled down in a corner and awaited the end, his hooves over his head.
The pounding on the door continued, the groaning of the wood getting louder and more strained, but just when he thought it would finally give, it stopped. He heard some commotion outside, and even Reedy Whistle left the window he had failed to open. Haybert lifted his head, curious what had happened to make them leave. Did some other pony arrive and they went to eat easier prey? He jumped as a knock came at the door.
“They’re gone Haybert, open the door,” the familiar voice of the mare said.
“Why should I believe you?” Haybert said through the barrier.
The wood creaked and groaned and Haybert covered his head again just as the door shattered inward. Splinters showered over him as the remains of his door clattered to the floor.
“Because you don’t have a choice.” The mare stepped over the broken portal, coming over next to Haybert and roughly yanking him to his hooves with her magic.

Haybert noticed she had something that was likely blood covering her muzzle. In the dim light of the moon he couldn’t tell, and he decided not to ask. He tried to keep his hoofing as she pulled him out the door of his house and down into the town proper.
“If you’re not going to eat me yourself, why are you so intent on keeping me alive and safe from the rest of them?” asked Haybert.
“Because I loathe you and the very idea of your existence. But it’s not enough to kill you or turn you into one of us, no. I want you to be the one surviving remnant of this whole miserable debacle,” said the mare. “That way, when it’s all over, you’ll have no desperate craving for brains or the constant throbbing pain of your ugly existence to pave over the knowledge of what you did here today. You’ll have nothing more than yourself, and your memories of this. If you kill yourself afterward, that’s fine, but you won’t be given such a mercy from me. Now watch.”
The mare pulled Haybert through the town he had be relegated to by his peers, which was now filled with screaming, wailing, and the disgusting sound of wet chewing interspersed by the occasional sound of bones cracking. Every meaty instance of it Haybert heard made him wince. He was reminded of the time in medical class when the professor had shown them exactly how much pressure was required to break a pony femur. He had been amazed at how high the weight had gotten before it had splintered with a horrifying cracking sound. That had made the severity of such injuries quite apparent.
Now he had to listen and see the sounds of ponies breaking, snapping, shattering, and chewing other ponies all around him. Some of them looked hungrily in his direction, but they were warned off by the mare every time. She wanted him alive and well.

“Look around you Haybert,” the mare told him, “at the half-life you’ve created. Life with a countdown. An obvious timer, coupled with constant agonizing pain, and only one way to alleviate it, which also extends your painful life and then passes on the curse. Are you proud? Indefinite life IF… you’re willing to kill for it.”
Haybert plodded along next to her, tugged insistently by her magic any time his tired body lagged behind. “I wasn’t trying to make them monsters. I only wanted to bring back loved ones. How many times do I have to say it?”
A hoof struck the back of his head, knocking him to the ground. Once his vision stopped spinning he saw bits of flesh strewn about, along with small chunks of bone. He quickly pulled himself back to standing, wiping a hoof across his cheek to remove something wet that was stuck there. As soon as he was standing again, the mare was in his face, eyes blazing with anger.
“If you had a choice between constant pain and waiting to die, or the promise of the pain going away immediately, and extending your life, which would you choose?” the mare asked.
“I would choose to wait to die. Why extend the misery?” Haybert said.
The mare looked at him with a flat, disgusted look. Then her horn blazed and suddenly Haybert was in agonizing, excruciating pain from head to hoof. It burned along his limbs, up his spine and into his head, filling it with bright, firey agony. He barely registered that he was screaming in pain, and almost didn’t hear the mare talking to him.
“What do you want now?” she yelled.
“Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop it!” he cried in pain.
Instantly, it stopped.
He lifted his head, panting. His limbs were quivering, and he stumbled as she once more yanked him to his hooves without letting him rest. She looked at him with that same flat, disgusted look, then turned and marched down the street, dragging him past the carnage.

“I get it. It’s too much for any normal pony to bear,” said Haybert.
“I imagine for most ponies it feels much worse than that, and what I feel. Thankfully, you ‘only’ stabbed me through the heart. Most of these had their skulls ripped open, like so,” the mare said, pointing.
Ahead of them, further down the street, two ponies crashed through a window into the street. They were soon followed by a swarm of revenants yelling incoherently. The glowing corpses surrounded the two, and reached out, grasping for them. One of the two victims, a Pegasus, grabbed the other and tried to fly away, but the horde latched on to the dangling earth pony’s legs, pulling him back down. Unable to hold on, the Pegasus sobbed and let go, then bolted away into the sky.
“Why can the Pegasus revenants not fly? You can use magic,” said Haybert curiously.
“Revenants? Is that what we are? And how telling it is that you wondered about the function of the different ponies instead of expressing concern for the poor ponies.” said the mare, amused.
Haybert was taken aback at that. He thought about what had just happened and how he felt. He no longer felt disgust, revulsion, or even sadness. Somepony had lost a loved one right in front of him, and he was more interested in the functional abilities of the revenants.
“Oh…” he managed to mutter, “I’m a monster.”
“To answer your question, yes, they can fly. It’s just most of them aren’t thinking about it or can’t think about it due to the pain and hunger,” the mare said. “Observe.”
The mare looked about at the crowd of revenants galloping about, and nabbed one with her magic. The pony she grabbed snarled and snapped until she drew it close to her face and looked it in it’s one remaining eye.

“I want you to fly for me, and chase that pony, got it?” She pointed at the retreating figure in the night sky. “If she gets away, come back and tell me, but don’t let her get away. Got it?”
The Pegasus nodded, prompting The Mare to let go of her. The Pegasus looked confused for a moment, then spread her wings and took to the sky. She smiled and almost seemed happy, but it was gone in a moment as she focused on the Pegasus gaining distance away from the village, headed in the direction of Canterlot. She flapped her wings and was gone with unnatural speed. Haybert didn’t like the pegasus’ chances of escape.
After the Pegasus took off, The Mare looked about at the idle and confused masses of ponies. There were a lot of them simply crouched in the street, chewing on those few ponies who had yet to fully reanimate. One group consisted of a full family Haybert recognized as having welcomed him to town with a bowl of neighbourly jello.
He felt nothing at all upon seeing them dead, and he was increasingly concerned about that. It was one thing to want to defeat death, and be willing to kill for it, but it was another to realize that you did not actually possess any of the emotions that were expected of a normal pony. To introspectively think about it and realize that it was missing from himself was… disturbing, to say the least.
He didn’t get to think for long, as the crowd of revenants around him had grown large. He must be the only truly living pony remaining in this Podunk backwater mud-pit. He could only hope The Mare truly wanted him alive, or he wasn’t going to be able to escape this.

The Mare’s horn flared and a bolt of force struck the revenant closest to Haybert. Most of the revenants pulled away, but one dove at Haybert despite the risk, and was forced to the ground by an invisible hoof. The giant hoof twisted, and the revenant’s back popped and bent as it was ground into the dirt.
“I want him alive, you idiots. He needs to watch all of this for what he’s done, and then he needs to think on it,” said The Mare. “Think on it for however long he wishes to live afterward.”
One of the revenants who had backed away clacked her jaw together in a torrent of awful and rapid chattering as she stared with a desperate gaze at Haybert’s skull. “A-a-a-a-a-after wha-a-a-a-a-at?”
“After we make our way to Baltimare,” said The Mare. “That Pegasus pony may escape her pursuer, and if she does, we need to be far away from here. Far enough away that Celestia must hunt for us. She will not suffer us to live for long.”
Muttering erupted in the mingled crowd. Even the pony who had been flattened into the ground joined in, unconcerned about his broken back. Rightly so, it seemed, as that horrible magic glow seeped through his skin as it forced the shattered spine to function. He pulled himself to his hooves, his body now twisted in a disturbing z-shape.
“Celestia? Coming here? She could fix this!” said the z-stallion.
The Mare struck him across the face, and Haybert could hear the stallion’s jaw pop.
“She won’t ‘fix’ anything, you moron. She can’t. You’re dead. She’ll vaporize us and be done with it,” said The Mare. “Now if you want to wait to be vaporized and lose yourself among the dead, be my guest, but I have to make somepony suffer. Everypony who wants to go to Baltimare, pick up your hooves. With me!”

Haybert followed The Mare as she left the village with about half of the revenants. Half stayed behind at first, restless as they watched The Mare’s group leave the village. They only made it a short distance before every single one that had stayed behind galloped to join them, their jaws hanging open as they chewed on imagined skulls. The pain proved too much to bear, and the only immediate relief waited for them in Baltimare.
Haybert was dragged along, trying to keep up with the marching horde. His hooves ached, and he found himself struggling with the inexorable march of revenants. The Mare kept him on a tight leash and protected him from the rest of the revenants as she had promised, even as some of them snapped at him. She was intent on seeing him survive this.
As the march continued into the night, Haybert looked at The Mare as she stared ahead into the darkness. He had not thrust her into this role as leader of an army of the dead, but she had taken to it with disturbing ease. He found himself not wondering what was going to happen when they reached Baltimare, but what kind of pony she had been before he had killed her.
The fate of Baltimare was easy to imagine. They would reach the city at sunup, and ponies would trickle into the streets in time to meet the approaching revenants. Sure, there was only a small village worth of the dead ponies, but they couldn’t be killed by conventional means, and every victim they caught joined their ranks to spread Haybert’s spell.
If Baltimare had some sort of advance warning, maybe they could defend themselves until help arrived, but the problem of the revenants being effectively immortal still arose. How do you kill dead things?

Haybert’s mind wandered as he walked, and he began wondering to what extent the revenants could be broken before or even if the spell stopped working. If you were to somehow separate a revenant into two roughly equal pieces, which one would the spell choose to animate?
Would it assemble a fully functional back end and front end and create two separate ponies?
Does it prioritize the brain?
It filled in the missing sections of the brain that were eaten by the revenants, so would it do that for the hind end?
Haybert found himself searching for a pen and paper before he remembered he was marching with a squad of risen corpses to attack a city. He felt disappointed with himself, but he still noticed he was more annoyed at missing a pen and paper to theorize about the dead than he was concerned about the upcoming attack.
The Mare noticed his distracted behavior and forced him closer to speak over the chattering and moaning surrounding them.
“Are you concerned about the city, Haybert? Do you worry about the ponies that are going to lose their lives? You should be glad. They will not be gone long. It was your dream after all. You made this all possible,” said The Mare.
Haybert debated telling her the truth about his thoughts, but settled on doing so, because he was at her mercy, and lying would get him no new information. “I was actually wondering how the spell would animate a pony that was separated into two almost equal halves. Would it prioritize the brain, or would it create two copies of the same pony; one with the front half and one with the back half.”
The Mare’s teeth clenched and she struck him across the face with her magic, horn aglow with angry red light. “A city is about to die and you, you unrepentant monster, are concerned with the mechanics of your spell?”


Haybert didn’t have a response to that, so he merely shrugged.
The Mare, angry at his flippant response, turned away to look at her tiny army. There were maybe twenty or thirty members of their little band, enough to do some damage, but not enough to take over the city if it got organized. She had wanted to show Haybert the carnage and damage his inexcusable abuse of magic could wreak before they were all killed.
Now, with Haybert so calm and uncaring about the fate of the ponies they would eat, she was angry. If that wasn’t the way to punish him, she didn’t… she couldn’t… the pain was too much.
The Mare screamed.
It was an angry, inarticulate screech of rage and frustration. The surrounding revenants answered her with similar yells that voiced nothing more than the pain of their existence. Guttural, animalistic, and with no attempt to make coherent sounds. They yelled as long as their animated lungs would allow them to.
After The Mare ran out of air, she roughly lifted Haybert above her to float, cloaked in magic, and she ran. The revenants followed suit, and the army of the dead descended upon Baltimare just before dawn.
If anypony had heard their screaming before, they hadn’t prepared for it. On the outskirts of Baltimare, they encountered some houses, and despite The Mare’s calls to ignore them and get into the city proper, they lost a few of the revenants to their hunger. Screams came from inside the houses, and there were flashes of light as the residents attempted to fight back.
That got Haybert wondering how well a revenant unicorn besides The Mare would handle themselves in a magic duel.
The Mare didn’t wonder anything beyond if she should eat a unicorn or Pegasus pony first. The village they came from had been mainly earth ponies, and she had eaten one of the few pegasi as her first meal.

Her question was answered for her as the crowd barreled down the back streets and alleys of Baltimare in a bid to get as deep as possible into the city. The crowd of revenants following The Mare dissipated little by little as each revenant got distracted by one tasty morsel or another. Eventually it was just Haybert and The Mare, with the distant screams of ponies falling behind them, and The Mare came face to face with an elderly unicorn stallion on an empty back street.
The stallion looked at The Mare dragging along Haybert and pushed his glasses up his nose as he squinted at the unusual pair. “Good morning young lady. Courtship among the young certainly has changed. It used to be the stallion doing the carrying. Your makeup is also highly unusual, how much did those lenses cost?”
The Mare lifted her head higher and stared down her nose at the stallion. “What was that question you had about your spell, Haybert? Oh yes, let’s find out.”
The Mare dropped Haybert to the street and fell upon the unsuspecting stallion. Haybert watched in fascination as her cruel teeth ripped into the stallion’s scalp, tearing it off the bone. The older pony struggled, but his attempts to light up his horn were foiled easily, and his skull creaked and splintered before he stopped moving altogether, The Mare chewing on the sweet matter that hid inside.
Haybert grimaced and looked away.
“Oh now don’t turn away yet Haybert, we need to figure out how the spell reacts to being separated from the core. Come watch,” The Mare said.
Haybert was dragged over next to the corpse as The Mare dropped it to the street. They watched as the magic reassembled the stallion’s brain and worked its way down his body. Once the glow—which was green for this pony—reached the lower half of his body, The Mare sliced the stallion in half, spilling his guts onto the street.

Haybert was no stranger to the pony body, but the nonchalance with which The Mare sliced this stallion in half gave him a shiver. He wasn’t ever concerned about slicing into ponies himself. In fact, he was guilty of cracking jokes while he did, but the fact that it was a dead pony was always present. The Mare treated it like she was slicing a piece of cheese.
The Mare finished cutting it in two and pulled the pieces apart. There was a scream off to the side, and the two of them looked to see a mare dashing around a corner screaming about murder.
“Well, that doesn’t give us much time, but we’ll just have to hope the others are working hard,” The Mare said. “Now here’s your answer, look at it and tell me if you’re satisfied.”
Haybert watched, his eyes focused on the stallion’s body as the magic filled it. The magic that had filled the lower half stuck itself out of the veins and organs that were disconnected and sent out tendrils, questing for the parts that should be there.
“Oh, that’s interesting. They appear to be trying to find the rest to reattach to it,” Haybert said. “I really wish I had my notebook.”
The questing magic tendrils on the lower side of the stallion’s body started moving slower as they were unable to find anything to attach to. On the other side with the heart and arcane lock, the tendrils started building the missing portion of the stallion from nothing, assembling magic replacements for the missing half of his stomach, liver, and skin.
“Oh! It’s really going to build him a new lower half! This is incredible!” Haybert said.
As they watched, the magic in the lower half disappeared entirely, returning to the aether, while on the upper half, the magic did likewise, albeit much later. The light behind the dead stallion’s eyes went out as all the magic dissipated, leaving a cold, lifeless, brainless corpse.

“There. You have your answer,” said The Mare. “There is a limit to how much your spell can do to rebuild a pony’s body.”
Haybert poked at the body with a hoof. Blood soaked the road, and he could hear shouting in the distance. In every direction, different sounds assailed his ears: Screaming, crying, fighting, growling.
The city was alive. The irony was not lost on Haybert, as most of the life was going to be snuffed out unless they could mount some form of defense against the invincible horde he had created.
The Mare did not let Haybert sit for very long. She yanked him to his hooves and began trotting down the street away from where the voices were shouting from. Haybert stumbled after her, the image of the spell failing foremost in his mind. He did not react to their situation beyond a dim realization that he was in trouble and he should be moving. The Mare was doing most of the work, Haybert was just being pulled along.
“Where are we going?” Haybert asked. “We’re in the city, isn’t this what you wanted? What was your goal once here? Just to eat ponies and turn them into revenants like yourselves?”
“Yes, that was the only goal. I just wanted you to see how bad things could get, but you don’t even care,” The Mare said.
“I…” Haybert stopped and thought about how he had been acting, “I don’t care, you’re right.”
The moment he said it, Haybert felt a sense of freedom he hadn’t felt in years. It was like he had returned to his first year of medical school and there was an endless stretch of discovery and experiment were laid out in a buffet before him.
He didn’t care.
“So you finally admit it,” The Mare said. “Your only goal was to see what you could do, with no regard for the safety or well-being of anypony around you. You just wanted to try because you could.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” said Haybert. “I knew I had the ability, but I was never allowed to put it to use. I was strangled by my academic surroundings and ponies who never wanted to try.”
The Mare was silent, but pulled him along down several streets until they found one where the dominant attitude was concern, but hadn’t yet descended into an all-out panic. The ponies saw them, and Haybert knew he looked a sight, but they didn’t panic. The Mare walked with a confident stride which drew puzzled looks, but no extra concern.
Haybert thought that was weird, because her muzzle was covered in blood.
“What are we looking for?” Haybert asked.
“The pony in charge of this little neck of the woods,” said The Mare. “I don’t get inside the city much.”
A pony nearby heard her and came over. “Oh, you’re looking for someone who knows what’s going on? A lot of folks are. You’ll want Top Hat. He’s answering questions at city hall,” said the pony. “Some say we’re being attacked, and others are saying it’s a wild animal. I saw a pony with a bite in their leg, so I think it’s wild animals.”
“Ah, well thank you,” said The Mare. “Which direction is city hall from here?
“Not too far, just up that block, then straight on, maybe four or five at the end of the road. Can’t miss it.” The pony pointed with a hoof, turning it with his directions.
“Well thank you again. You’re too kind,” said The Mare.
“Oh yeah, no problem,” said the pony. “By the way, are you alright? You got a little something…” he motioned to his muzzle.
“Oh I’m fine. It’s not my blood,” The Mare pulled Haybert along, leaving the confused pony behind.
“What will you do at city hall?” Haybert asked as they trotted.
“I think you know exactly what I am going to do,” said The Mare.

Haybert could see city hall long before they arrived, and there was already a large crowd. He had spied pegasi flying overhead, so he knew the city was entering a state of emergency. He hadn’t yet heard announcements being broadcast by any unicorns, and the pegasi he saw looked to be fireponies and policeponies, so they hadn’t yet realized the sheer severity of the situation. It was only a matter of time.
As they approached, Haybert could see the crowd was restless. The general feeling he got from their body-language was ‘worried and looking for answers’. There was no yelling from the crowd, just silence. Pegasi hovered overhead, and Top Hat, who was easy to spy with his namesake plain on his head, was up on stage and flanked by earth pony bodyguards. Police wagons were set up on the outskirts of the assemblage, directing newcomers to the area to gather in front of city hall, and on side roads Haybert could see ambulances and fire wagons traveling to and fro.
Things were heating up.
The Mare didn’t seem worried about any of it, however. She walked boldly up to the crowd, her glowing eyes and the hole in her withers seeming so obvious to Haybert, but nopony around her questioned it. She pushed through the crowd, Haybert at her fetlocks, and made for the steps.
Top Hat was babbling about how they had the situation under control, and everypony was being taken care of, and how they didn’t need to send for the Wonderbolts or Royal Guard, they had the whole thing under control.
Haybert doubted that.
As soon as The Mare reached the cordon, she yelled up at Top Hat. “I have the pony who is responsible for all of this.”
There was silence as Top Hat processed what she had said.
“Ah… may I help you?” Top Hat said.
“I said, I have the pony who is responsible for all of this,” she said again.

“Who, then? This stallion with you?” Top hat asked.
The Mare shoved Haybert up the stairs, following close behind him. “Yes. This stallion is the one behind it all, and he’ll tell you all about it.”
Haybert balked at her pushing, and cringed under the glare of Top Hat’s bodyguards. He was confused what her plan might be for doing something like this, or if she really was just hoofing him over to the city for punishment. She had wanted him punished for what he did, maybe this was the final step she was going to take?
“Well, we can certainly question him. Ah, by the way miss, are you alright? You look injured,” said Top Hat.
“Thank you for your concern sir, but it’s not my blood,” said The Mare.
A murmur went through the crowd, but nopony reacted more than that. Haybert didn’t understand. Was that normal?
Top Hat stepped down from his lectern and approached Haybert. “Now, as for you. Is this true what she said? We have ponies attacking other ponies in the city. They will be dealt with, but did you incite them to riot, and if so, why?”
Haybert looked at Top Hat, then turned and looked at The Mare. She smiled a small and cocksure smile. Haybert sighed and turned back to Top Hat. A thousand thoughts went through his head at once. He could deny it, and they would never be able to prove otherwise. He could say it was The Mare instead and try to expose her as a revenant. How could he prove that, though? He could also just admit to it and accept the punishment. It’s not like they could do anything worse to him than The Mare could.
Haybert sighed again. “I did not incite them to riot. I am, however, the reason for their current state of mind.”

“So you do admit guilt in this,” Top Hat said.
“I do. I think it important to explain as well that they are not rioting, they are eating,” Haybert said.
“Eating?” Top Hat asked.
Haybert nodded. “They’re eating the brains of ponies they come across to alleviate the constant agony of a pained existence. They’re dead, you see.”
Those ponies in the crowd within earshot gasped, and then immediately erupted into shouting, inciting the rest of the crowd to murmur amongst themselves and start shouting. Some voices were shouting their disbelief, others were shouting questions. Top Hat maintained his calm demeanor, and walked back to his lectern to motion for silence. After the crowd settled down.
“Now, now. We have but one pony’s word on this. Whatever you heard, we do not yet have verification that this is the truth,” Top Hat said. After he said that, one of his guards walked closer to whisper in his ear. Top Hat paled and looked at the guard in confusion, then horror.
The crowd started shouting again, demanding to know what was going on. Top Hat tried to motion for quiet again, but they weren’t having it this time. The crowd pushed forward, shoving police aside to move further up the stairs.
Once Top Hat’s personal guards moved to push back the crowd, The Mare took her opportunity and moved closer to Top Hat as they went by. Getting close had been her goal, and with the guards occupied, she seized Top Hat’s head in her hooves and bit down with her powerful undead teeth. Top Hat’s skull splintered and she spat out shards of bone as he wailed and kicked in her grip. By the time the guards had noticed something wrong, fresh blood stained her muzzle, and Top Hat’s brains were in her jaws.

The screaming started soon after, and the crowd that had once surged toward the steps, turned and struggled to go in the opposite direction. Fighting broke out in the crowd as ponies that had been working together fractured into groups or individuals.
“They can look and act normal! Trust nopony!” a voice yelled.
Haybert understood her goal, now. She was the only revenant that looked even close to normal, and was confident enough to act like nothing was wrong despite the constant nagging at the back of her mind to feed. She had taken out the pony in charge, and simultaneously fractured the trust among friends and neighbors with her act and appearance. Baltimare was in trouble.
Once the crowd pulled away, the guards turned on The Mare, who seemed occupied with her meal. The first earth pony to attack her tried to grapple her from behind. She slammed the back of her head into his chin, shattering teeth, and threw him over her much smaller frame into two more earth pony guards. A unicorn fired a blast of magic, which pierced directly through The Mare’s neck. It was instantly sealed by the arcane reservoir in her chest, flush with fresh magic. She fired back her own spell, which the unicorn deflected. It flashed into the crowd, striking and killing a civilian. The unicorn glanced over at the collateral damage he had caused with dismay. The Mare saw her opportunity and took it, rushing him and biting his horn clean off. She set into his skull and devoured a small portion of his brains before she was beset upon by the earth ponies again.
Haybert watched some of this with fascination, but turned and looked at Top Hat, left on the ground. He really should be trying to get to safety. When Top Hat got up, he wouldn’t know The Mare wanted Haybert alive. But Haybert had a thought he wanted to test, and curiousity killed the cat, as they say. He was willing to take that chance.

Haybert watched as the arcane lock built up in Top Hat’s exposed brain, putting the mess The Mare had made of it back together by filling in the space with magic. Haybert still didn’t know why it spread like it did. He supposed it had to do with the drive the spell had to repair broken ponies, but he would test that later. Right now, he wanted to test something he had thought of when The Mare had sliced that stallion in half earlier.
Haybert remembered that the spell had attempted to rebuild the pony, but had run out of magic. The spell had been pulling magic from the rest of itself to fill in the holes the pony had in him, but because it had only a minor amount of magic, it had died. So where was the main portion it had been pulling magic from? Haybert’s first thought was the reservoir in the heart, so he intended to test that.
Haybert ignored the violence going on around him, and with the little magic he had, he carefully sliced open Top Hat’s chest. He waited until the spell had infiltrated the heart, creating the reservoir, then pried open the ribcage with his hooves, and removed Top Hat’s heart from its cavity.
Top Hat gasped on the ground, lurching at Haybert. Haybert fell backward onto his flank, clutching the bloody heart to his shirt, blood staining it. Top hat tried to pull himself to his hooves, but after three pained moans, he fell back to the floor, the magic fading from his eyes.
Haybert looked to the organ in his hooves, and watched wide-eyed as the reservoir in the heart started trying to build a new pony. Orange light spilled from the ventricles of the heart, pulsing in time with it as it beat in his hooves.

The glow coming from the heart dimmed steadily as it attempted to build Top Hat anew with what little magic it had. It managed to make a good portion of the nervous system before it ran out and the magic faded. Haybert sat grinning even as the heart stopped completely, pleased with the results he had observed. This meant that the heart, even while being the second portion of the spell that was created, was what kept it going after the initial surge of the spell. The reservoir kept it going just as intended, and if there was any further injury or damage to the pony, the reservoir was where the magic was pulled from.
Haybert’s mind blazed with possibility: Could it rebuild an entire pony if given enough magic? The possibilities. The sheer possibilities! Would it be as painful an existence as having a damaged pony? Would it be like have an injury on your entire body? Haybert sat, in the middle of all the carnage, considering what ways he might improve his spell.
Haybert’s thoughts were interrupted when The Mare rampaged back to him and lifted him off the ground. Her eyes were furnaces, the dark glow of magic inside them almost palpable in their heat. Haybert could see the light of magic seeping through her flesh from her reservoir. Her face was covered in blood, gore, and flecks of bone, but she grinned a rictus grin.
She hadn’t gone through the fight unscathed, one of her ears was missing, replaced by magic, and her left front leg was bent at an angle that wasn’t natural. She had several swaths of flesh missing from her torso, and she now had half a Glasgow smile from a tear up her cheek. She didn’t seem to care, and it wasn’t going to hinder her, not with everything replaced or forced to function with magic.

The Mare laughed and dragged Haybert up the stairs and into city hall. She slammed the door and blocked it with several nearby desks and chairs. Haybert noticed she was panting, which he thought odd given her physical state.
“Why are you out of breath?” Haybert asked.
“Even dead tissue needs a rest every now and again. My mind is clear, but my body is in constant pain, and the injuries just add to it,” said The Mare.
Haybert thought for a moment. “So it’s more a mental reflex than anything else?”
“I… suppose,” said The Mare. She saw the heart he still held in his hooves and snorted. “What about you? Stopping in the middle of a panicked riot to perform research, I take it?”
Haybert brightened up at her asking about his research. “Oh! Yes, actually. I found out that the heart is the source of body repairs. It takes the magic that’s been stored up, from eating and unicorns providing it I assume, and works from the heart to rebuild everything missing from the pony. So despite the brain being—“ He stopped when The Mare turned away and walked further into the building ”—you don’t actually care do you?”
“Not at all,” said The Mare. “But you don’t have anypony to talk to about it, do you?”
“I suppose not,” said Haybert, “so what will you do once Baltimare is taken?”
The Mare scoffed. “We won’t get past this place. One of the guards got away from me. A Pegasus. If the first pony didn’t make it to Canterlot, that one will. I would estimate we have an hour at most before the entire Canterlot guard, led by the Princess of the sun herself bear down on us with all the fury of righteous fire. That will be a sight.”

“So why are you holing up in here? Shouldn’t you be trying to escape?” Haybert asked.
The Mare stopped, turned around, and stomped up to Haybert. “And go where, hmm? With my body in pieces” —she waved her broken leg for emphasis— “and the pain growing with each injury, where would I go? Spread death across Equestria? I’m barely holding my sanity together as it is. Sure I speak well, but every time I look at you I get this incredible urge to just—“ The Mare clacked her teeth together “—crack your skull wide open.”
Haybert took a step back. “Okay, point taken. So what is the plan, then?”
“I am going to watch, and wait. I will make sure everypony knows who is responsible for it, and leave your fate to the princess. Maybe they will let me speak before they put me out of your misery,” said The Mare.
“Don’t you mean ‘my’ misery?” Haybert asked.
“Yes, yours,” The Mare said. “I’m not hiding in here for my safety. I’m effectively immortal. I could go on eating, devouring, spawning new revenants, but no, again Haybert, this is all about you and making sure that you get your just desserts. I don’t want you becoming an animal like the rest of those ponies outside. I want you aware of what you’ve done, whether you feel remorse or not.”
Haybert walked over to the window and stared outside, looking down at the crowd in the streets next to city hall. Ponies were fighting each other, panicked from the thought that a revenant might speak as clearly as their friends and neighbors. Only some of the ponies fighting outside were revenants, but their numbers were growing. Every brain-consuming kill by a revenant resulted in a fresh one rising soon after, causing their numbers to grow with each passing minute.

Haybert tried to do some quick math in his head to calculate exactly how many revenants there might be, but that lead him to another thought: How would one kill a revenant?
He looked at the heart he was still holding in his magic. Removing it had stolen most of the magic from the spell, and it didn’t have enough to rebuild the reservoir before expiring because Top Hat was a fresh revenant. If a revenant had enough magic, or consumed a brain after losing the heart, would it gain enough to continue living? If removing the magic from the reservoir was necessary to kill the revenant, severing body parts or causing enough injury should do it. It all depends on the reservoir.
More questions, and not enough tools to test them. Haybert sighed and watched the ponies fight outside. A mare carrying her foal on her back tried to dash through the crowd toward a ring of police ponies. She was clubbed by one of the police and fell to the ground. Her foal disappeared under the hooves of the combined revenants and ponies fighting.
Haybert didn’t feel a thing.
“Why did you do it?” Haybert asked.
The Mare was sitting in the center of the room, staring at her broken leg. “Do what?”
“Trick Top Hat into letting you get close, then eating him. I don’t quite see how that punishes me,” said Haybert.
“Because a village is small. A city is large. Isn’t that how science does it? You need a larger sample size?” The mare said. “You didn’t think. I’m showing you large-scale results. Sorry you don’t have your notes.”
“Well, I guess that’s true. This has helped me think of more questions and tests I could do,” Haybert said.
“Euuuugh!” The Mare said. “That’s the problem with you. Not caring who any of your work hurts, just so long as you get answers. You’re not a pony!”

“What? Of course I am,” Haybert said.
The Mare lifted her broken leg, her horn glowed red and she sliced it off just above the break. *THUD* The limb fell to the floor and the magic remaining inside it began questing outward looking for the limb to reattach itself, but it quickly died. The stump that remained sent out similar tendrils. Unable to find the limb, it started rebuilding it entirely out of magic, replacing the missing appendage with a glowing brown substitute. This one wasn’t broken.
“Did you see that, Haybert?” said The Mare. “A new leg.” She bent and flexed it a few times. “Fully functional. Almost instant. You could do so much good with the spell if you changed it, but all you want to do is reanimate corpses. I’m an abomination, but you, you’re a monster.”
“I am not!” Haybert said.
The Mare walked over to Haybert, grabbed his head and slammed it into the glass of the window. It cracked, but held. “Look outside! Ponies dying left and right, and you still don’t care about anypony but yourself! Every lesson I have tried to teach has fallen on deaf ears because you’re too stubbornly locked in your own Celestiadamned world!”
Haybert didn’t fight back, he just let her yell. It hurt, but he was well aware she wouldn’t kill him at this point.
“Hang on, I’ve never teleported before, but let me figure this out,” The Mare said.
Her eyes went distant and her lips moved. Haybert guess she was ‘talking to the dead’ like she had mentioned before.
“Okay, let’s try this,” The Mare closed her eyes, lit up her horn, and grabbed hold of Haybert. There was a flash of light, and Haybert found himself falling through the air. He yelped in surprise, but landed on hard tile soon after.

Haybert felt himself begin to slide, and his hooves scrabbled on the tiled roof for a moment before he had solid hoofing. He looked about and saw that The Mare had teleported them on top of city hall. He looked around at the buildings on Main street, and at the panicked ponies rushing about.
Pegasi flew by, paying the two of them no mind, far more interested in escaping the carnage below. The crowd on the streets below still looked to be a mess of the dead and dying, the police having been overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of ponies, and the ferocity of the revenants. In the buildings nearby, Haybert could see the occasional pony leaping from a window, followed soon after by a second pony, the tell-tale glow of magic betraying them as a revenant intent on their meal. Only one of those would survive the drop. Magic could be heard all over. The poof of teleportation, the POW of a beam, or the hum of telekinesis. Ponies fought, buildings burned, and chaos reigned.
“Do you like it?” The Mare whispered in his ear. “This is all yours. You made it possible. Congratulations.
Haybert didn’t respond. He didn’t really have anything to say. He just wanted to do research. Baltimare was a mess, and she blamed him for it. There really wasn’t anything he could say in response. She was responsible for some of it, but he was responsible for her, so it all did come back to him.
Haybert’s thoughts were interrupted when the sky started turning purple, a sheet of violet magic rising into the air on all sides, sliding up to meet in the air above them.
“Ah, the princess is here,” The Mare said.
Haybert looked up and saw a speck of white flying overhead, flanked by a platoon of ponies decked in gold. This was the first time he had ever seen the princess with his own eyes, but instead of being excited, he had this overwhelming sense of dread.

“What is she doing?” Haybert asked.
“What I would do in this situation: Preventing further outbreak,” The Mare said.
“What? What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like.”
“Which is?”
“Haybert, if you were going to kill me as I am now, how would you do it?”
“Well, the heart is the reservoir of magic, and it will continue to rebuild the body as long as magic is available, so I would remove the heart. But then there’s no guarantee the heart won’t manage to create an entirely new pony if it had enough magic, so—“
“Haybert, shut up,” The Mare said. “Without the knowledge of the spell that you have, how would you do it to guarantee the body parts won’t get up and move again? Guaranteed.”
“Well… burn it. That way every part that would have had… oh.”
The Mare nodded and looked up. Haybert joined her.
The guards on Celestia’s flanks had flown away, and Celestia had begun to glow, slowly building into a second sun directly over Baltimare. Haybert felt the temperature begin to rise, and wondered if there was anywhere he could go to hide. He scrapped that idea as soon as he thought of it. Nowhere inside this bubble was going to be safe.
“Well, I guess this is goodbye, uh…” Haybert said, “you know, I don’t think I know your name.”
The Mare stared up at Celestia, enraptured by the light. “You never asked, and I never gave it. But it’s Sweet Sunrise.”
“Well, goodbye Sweet Sunrise. See you after death, I suppose.”
“Oh no, death is still too good for you, but your punishment is now yours to decide,” Sweet Sunrise said.
Haybert had a brief glimpse of her red magic, before there was a flash of red, followed by yellow, and he felt searing heat on his flank.

Once Haybert’s vision cleared, he found himself in the woods, behind the graveyard in his old town in the Hayseed Swamp. There was a distant flash of light, followed several seconds later by a gust of wind. Celestia had solved Baltimare’s problem, at least.
Haybert felt something move in his hoof and he looked down. He was holding a fresh and beating heart, flush with magic. As he watched, it sent out seeking tendrils the glowing brown of his aura, trying to find something to attach to.
“Ah. I understand what you mean. You were paying attention to what I said after all,” said Haybert.
He looked at the heart in his hooves, as it worked its very best to find something. When it failed, it started rebuilding the missing pieces, one ventricle at a time.
“Do I end you here, or do I wait to see if my theory is correct? Could my spell rebuild a pony if it were provided enough magic? Am I such a monster that I would prolong my own pain and risk the lives of others just to see a theory through to the end?” Haybert stared down at the heart in his hooves, then laid it down on the ground, stepped back, and sat to wait. “We both knew the answer to that question before you even asked.”

The End.