The sun was well below the horizon by the time Twilight came galloping into the square in front of Ponyville's town hall. By that point the weight of what I was about to do had begun to set in, if I got it wrong then I was dead in the water. If I got it right and went too far then...

“Jasper! I... huff huff... got Fluttershy's message a few... huff... minutes ago,” only as she started speaking did I realize how red in the face and short of breath she was.

“Twi', the Library is less than a mile from here, I thought you said you got fifth place in the running of the leaves one year!”

Her cheeks went a shade darker and she laughed guiltily. “Uhm, yeah... that was kind of the last time I did much in the way of strenuous exercise...”

“That was almost two years ago Twilight.”

“A-anyway! What's this big plan you've got for jogging your memory?”

“Classy segue, Twi',” I chuckled and tousled her hair again turning it into a slightly sweaty mop from underneath which she glowered menacingly. “The plan, as you said, is simple. Step one, we go to the nearest graveyard.”

“Oh, that's a good start actually,” the gears had begun visibly turning as the logic centers of her brain began to kick in. “After all, the whole deal with raiiii-... er... the spell is centered around the thaumatic energies of the deceased.”

I planted a hoof squarely onto my muzzle, “You almost blurted out a national secret about highly illegal magic in the literal middle of town didn't you?”

“Uhm... maybe?”

“No wonder you never got recruited into enya,” I muttered.

“For your information the 'E.N.I.A'” she painstakingly pronounced, “offered me a position as a lead researcher into magical phenomena,” Twilight remarked, putting on a haughty air with her nose raised high.

“And you turned it down because...?”

Her cheeks, which had begun to return to their normal lavender, flared red again.

“Because I didn't think I'd be able to keep all the secrets...”

“That's what I thought half-pint,” I laughed as I pulled her into a one-armed hug. She grumbled a little but I could tell by how she leaned into it that she wasn't harboring any harsh feelings.

“Right, so... you said the graveyard was step one? Well the local burial grounds are just on the outskirts of town, opposite end of your cottage though.”

“Perfect, let's go then,” I steeled myself for what I was about to do. It flew in the face of everything I stood for but it was necessary, Celestia needed to know and I... I had to know that I could do what was needed when the chips were down.

“If you don't mind me asking, uhm...” I knew the question was coming, and I didn't exactly relish telling her what I planned to do when I got there, fortunately she surprised me by asking something completely different. “What were you doing at Fluttershy's?”

“Huh?” the question had caught me off guard but, in hindsight it wasn't unfair, I hadn't even mentioned that I'd met her friend. “Well, I was out by the river that flows near the Everfree's border getting my thoughts together when she found me. Apparently I wasn't far from her home, and she invited me in for tea since she said that I 'looked upset'.”

Twilight let out a curious sigh but followed it up with a girlish giggle, “Yeah, that sounds like Fluttershy alright, she is the element of kindness after all.”

“I believe it... heh, wow...”

Twilight's brow furrowed at my response, “What? What's 'wow'?”

“Oh, nothing just... I knew you were going to go on to great things, even back in the Academy you know, but... The Elements of Harmony, you're a legend out of myth Twi', your name is going to be remembered for millennia. Foals are going to read about you and your friends in history books.” Twilight didn't respond for a while, her face had taken on an indefinable complexion. “Hey, you ok half-pint?”

“...yeah... I guess I just never really thought about it before,” Twilight's eyes grew distant as she looked in the direction of her home where, I assumed, her own element sat waiting. “The Elements of Harmony are a big deal, I know that, but, I guess it just seemed like a part of my life until you put it in that... perspective.”

“Oh, sorry... I guess only just realized it myself, besides, it's easier to see from the outside.”

She nodded vacantly, as though a sudden gulf had opened up between her thoughts and her body.

I coughed into my hoof, more to break the awkward silence that was growing than anything, and it brought Twilight's attention back to the present. “So, back to matter at hoof, talking to Fluttershy got me thinking; she said that I seemed like the kind of pony who would do anything, no matter the cost to myself, and it made me ask myself how far I'd go to get what we needed.”

“O-ok, so?” she looked almost unhappy but gestured for me to continue before I could comment on it.

“I realized I'd go as far as I had to...” I said sternly as we approached the clearly marked ironwork gate. The smell of turned earth and mist hung over the graveyard as I contemplated the gravity of my next actions. “So with that in mind, I'm going to try and raise the dead.”

Twilight's jaw fell open in disbelief.

“W-wait, you can't! That's an offense punishable by exile or life imprisonment!” Panic quickly replacing her originally eager demeanor.

“I know that Twi' but unfortunately I'm out of options, either I jog my memory by force or I call it quits here and now-”

“Then quit!” her voice echoed in the stillness of the dusk and a for a moment the silence was absolute.

“Quit?” the thought would be laughable if it didn't make me so angry. “How could I quit? After seeing what that power did to my... to Summer. How can I quit knowing what I must have done to countless ponies?” I turned back to face her, a nameless brick of emotion having taken up residence in my chest. “How could you even think I could quit and just let something like that go?”

She backed away and, only for a fraction of a second, a flicker of real fear crossed her familiar features.

Fear of me.

That brick of emotion turned to iron. She was afraid of me, even if it only showed on her face for an instant. Keeping my face completely neutral I turned away from her. “I see,” I said evenly, keeping my eyes forward, “it was a mistake to ask you here, Twilight, you should go home, I'll let you know how it went.”

“B-but Jasper, you can't do this, it's ille-”

I seized the iron gate of the boneyard and ripped it open, the sound of wrenching metal cutting her words off.

“No, Twilight, I've come too far to quit,” the words came out low and harsh. “So if you're not going to help, just go home.”

“Jas-”

“GO HOME!” I nearly roared, in the corner of my eye I saw her stagger back a few steps in shock, looking as if I'd physically struck her. The ghost of fear and betrayal lingered in her eyes.

Pain flickered in my chest at her reaction and I instantly regretted it, I turned to say so but as I did there was a dull popping sound and only a faint shimmer of lavender sparkles remained behind me.

“You're a tactless beast, Jasper Shale,” I muttered angrily and I shouldered past the ruined mess of iron and into the graveyard. “But you've come too far to stop now.”

The night, normally comforting in its stillness, was almost oppressive as I moved deeper and deeper into the graveyard. It was larger than one might reasonably expect for such a small town, especially since it wasn't settled too long ago by generational standards. The reason for that was simple: Ponyville was situated on the corpse of another town, one that had been swallowed by war a long time ago. The actual details of the war and even the enemy that was fought was lost to history, only the sisters likely remembered it now, but the dead remember everything. Mausoleums and crypts jutted out from the earth like aged monoliths of a forgotten eon, the names and dates long ago claimed by exposure to the elements. I passed through the most recent portion of the graveyard, unwilling to conduct my little experiment in a place where the dead still had family to remember them, the older parts were far more expansive anyway.

I chose a small burial plot with a little less than a dozen headstones, it was obvious that theu had once had been exquisitely carved but weather and the passage of time had worn them all down to misshapen stumps. I pulled the tool I'd taken from my cottage out from it's holding strap inside of my greatcoat, my scythe. The cold steel weapon shone in the cold moonlight, I fancied that I could still smell the blood of all the lives that had been extinguished on the edge of its blade.

With a heavy heart I hefted the weapon and regarded an engraving on the bar grip, something that I doubt even the Princesses had noticed when they returned my personal effects to me. At the base of the metal haft a series of letters were inscribed.

CDXXVII

To most it would be gibberish, but to an academic, or to somepony who had taken the Ancient Pony Cultures class, it might be recognizable as Roanan numerals. Not that knowing that would necessarily tell anypony anything important, but I knew what they signified. When I got it back the day I left the asylum I saw them and, for a very brief moment, I was consumed by despair.

It was my kill count.

Four hundred and twenty-seven souls had been reaped on the edge of this scythe, sent to the Black Stallion's doorstep ahead of schedule. I had never heard of anypony having such a high number of listed kills, but that wasn't what bothered me the most. What bothered me was that whoever I had been before my memory was erased had been so methodical that he not only recalled the exact number I had killed, but had bothered to keep a continuing record of them as a cold numerical count. Like it was some kind of competition.

That meant that, in total, I had personally killed almost an entire regiment worth of enemy combatants in bloody melee. Contrary to what the Princesses might have thought what I claimed my weapon and chose to keep it; it wasn't out of nostalgia. I kept the blasted thing out of respect for the lives it had taken, throwing it away would have felt like an affront to the dead and I felt that I had enough trouble with them already.

It was also the reason that I had bothered to retrieve it and bring it along tonight. Powerful magics usually required some kind of focus to channel the energy through, and if anything had a deep connection with death, it was this damned weapon.

I found a comfortable spot between some of the older headstones and sat down on the cold, hard dirt. I carefully measured my breathing, putting the episode with Twilight out of my mind with some difficulty. I would have to deal with the fallout of the eventually but right now I had more pressing concerns. I felt the pulse of the earth below me, an omnipresent background hum that no one else seemed to notice. When I asked my old professor, Iron Curtain, the only other earth attuned pony I'd ever known, he told me that unicorns like him and I could distantly feel the currents of magic that flowed through the earth; ley-lines he called them.

My mind was steady as a rock, my body as still as a mountain, and with a deep breath I reached out with my magic. I felt the familiar, dull, ruddy red glow suffused my horn and filtered deep into the earth. The hum of the earth entered my bones, every place I had felt the world's pulse at was different, here it was like an ethereal and wordless song. Deep thrums of memory pounded like a headache, the age of this place was mighty indeed. I let the first breath out through my mouth, and took a second, deeper one, and pressed further, I felt the mouldering bodies beneath me. Countless dead from countless generations, writhing with the etheric song of the earth as worms and grubs squirmed within their rotting rib-cages and collapsing skulls.

But where to begin?

Why is it impossible?

That voice... it was familiar, resonant and firm, the taste of academia colored the vowels. Why is 'what' impossible though.

Deeper. I need to go deeper.

Static began to fill my ears as the power of the earth felt my intrusion, the graveyard mist closed around my body like a cold and stifling cloak.

Because we are starting at the finish line and sprinting towards the start.

That voice again, it's... it's His, I know it is. I can't remember his face or his form but I know that voice. Even though it shouldn't be familiar to me it is and it fills me with rage. What does he mean though? 'Sprinting towards the start?' what does that...

I'm reaching for the bodies, I thought impassively as I threaded my mind through the damp earth, so that means I need to reach... where? The animating spirit first? But what...

And the body is tailored to the soul.

“No...” the word escaped my lips in a deathly whisper, his voice was like a hammer in my mind, they kept coming and I couldn't stop the knowledge from flooding in.

To try and animate a body without a governing soul, or to try and call up an elemental spirit to puppet such a solitary machine!

“Nonononononono,” the words were leaving my mouth in a stream, my connection broke with a jarring Snap! in my mind, but I barely noticed the migraine-like throb of pain that accompanied such a crude breach.

“Only the true soul of the body... can govern its movements.” I muttered, “I have to call back the soul of the dead to occupy their own rotting flesh? Oh Goddesses... Twist, you sick son of a bitch... what have you done?”

“Only what had to be done, Number One-Oh-Nine,” the voice was rich and cultured, the voice I had heard in my head.

“Twist...” I whipped around my horn glowing effusively, straining for a target.

From behind one of the mausoleums the Doctor stepped out into the wan light of the moon. I staggered as the memories unlocked by the Princess earlier came crashing violently into my mind, I heaved my dinner onto the ground my body recalled the sheer bloody anguish of his 'process'. Doctor Silvious H. Twist was just as I remembered him though, tall and austere, his spotless lab coat fluttering around him in the light twilit breeze, with his mane of braided starlight still pinned pack and burnished gray coat as immaculately kept as ever.

“I. Am going. To kill you!” I roared, all semblance of control gone as I my horn lit with radiant crimson power.

“No.”

My body fell slack, my horn's light winking out like a star cast from the heavens.

“W-what?” I mumbled helplessly from the rot-strewn dirt of the graveyard.

“I said, 'No',” he enunciated, as if to a particularly thick foal, “you will not kill me, in fact, you will not lay a hoof, horn, nay even a single hair of your tail upon my illustrious form.”

“W-what?” my brain was staggering drunkenly in my own skull, my body wouldn't obey its owner, I could feel my hooves but they defied my commands to move. My magic had never felt further away.

His voice dropped an octave, taking on a strange tonal quality and as he moved closer his eyes flickered inequinely. “You know, you were my finest experiment, my magnum opus,” he looked almost... sad, he trotted over to where I lay prone and brushed several strands of my mane from my eyes. “Really, you were the only one my process ever succeeded on, I have never felt such joy as when you awoke, whole and undamaged, from the transition. So much of my life came to fruition at that moment, why, it was almost as though I had gained a son.” I worked my mouth, trying to respond, there were no words in Equuish to convey how sick that idea made me.

“Truly, I am a scientist at heart, logic prevails of emotion in all things, but when I lost you, Number One-Oh-Nine, I felt true despair, and true hatred for she who took you from me.”

“H-ha...te... you...” I spat from between motionless lips, his only response was to smile warmly.

“You see? Such strength, tempered and forged in the fires of war, even disabled entirely you are able to spit defiance, futile though it may be of course,” he cracked his neck viciously and for a moment one of his eyes swam with darkness so absolute it was like looking into the abyss. “I am so proud of you my boy.”

Bile and rage burned hot in my veins, every molecule of my body ached to fight, I had never felt so powerless, not even when I was strapped to that table in Twist's operating room. I was unbound, unfettered, and yet I could do nothing.

“So very proud, you know, I never considered myself one to wax paternal,” he lifted me, almost tenderly, into the air on a cushion of telekinetic force, “I suppose it's true then, what they say, you never stop learning.”

“S-Summ...er,” I choked out he raised an eyebrow and rolled his eyes slowly, as if trying to recall where he'd heard the name.

“Ah Summer!” he exclaimed, brightening considerably as he began to move my prone form alongside himself as he cantered towards the graveyard exit. “Yes, Miss Withers, your luscious little filly, did you like her? I brought her back just for you, you know.”

The thought chilled me to the core, she had endured being torn from her eternal rest simply because she had loved me? No, because I had loved her.

“It was quite a bit of work, the process of resurrection is so damnably slow and, if I am being honest, imperfect, without you around, my boy,” the doctor lamented plaintively. “Fortunately your brothers and sisters are still around, they miss you so, Number One-Oh-Nine, after all you were the eldest, they look up to you.”

Brothers and sisters? The thought made me want to vomit, Does that mean I'm the one who... Oh Goddesses...

“...and of course there's the matter of your relationship with Miss Withers, not that she isn't lovely but... an earth pony? Really?” I had drifted away from the madpony's blathering until he mentioned Summer again, I noticed we had actually turned away from the graveyard gate and were moving into a different section of it. “I mean, I truly admire their work ethic and knack for,” he grimaced as he spat the word “non-magical innovation, but, in the end, it's all just to make up for their unfortunately deficiencies isn't it? They crudely ape what we unicorns can do by will alone. I've observed your interaction with that lovely lavender filly, don't you think she would make a much better mate? I mean, what if your foals were born hornless? The scandal...” tears of shame and rage had actually begun to leak out of my eyes at this point, I was so utterly helpless that I couldn't even shake with anger.

“W-w...hy?” the fight leaked from my limbs, there was no point anymore.

“Hmm? Well her magical power is obvious, and she clearly has-”

“N-no... w...hy... c-ca...n't I...” every syllable was a monumental effort, I watched, repulsed by the sick parody of paternal pride that the bastard almost glowed with.

“Why can't you move?” Doctor Twist filled in pleasantly as we came to a stop in front of a massive stone doorway to a particularly large mausoleum. He nickered playfully, “Truly your strength of will never ceases to impress. Well my boy, I think I'll let you figure that one out. Sufficed to say, you cannot disobey me, nor can you harm me.”

“STOP!” the last voice in the world I wanted to hear cut through the still air as Twilight galloped into view wearing an ornate tiara bearing the her cutie mark.

“Tw...i...light... damn...it” I croaked out, I wanted to kick and scream, to tell her to run, to leave me and go alert Celestia. Not that she would even if I was able, I wouldn't either.

“Oh?” If anything Twist sounded more curious than worried, a mistake that gave me a little hope, more than one had underestimated the raw power that filly commanded to their own peril. “Is that the Element of Magic herself I see?” he drew back and made an exaggerated bow, “I'm honored.”

“Let him go Doctor Twist, and give yourself up,” even had I been able to move I couldn't have face-hoofed hard enough. Did she actually think that would work?

He hummed for a moment before say, “Ah, no, I don't think I will,” without warning a strobing crackle of lightning leapt from his horn. It was a sign of true mastery, for not even a a moment of physical preparation to be needed to cast such a powerful offensive spell.

Twilight was no push-over either though, at the speed of thought she caught the dancing energy in the tines of her crown, and sent it hurtling back.

Right into me.

Ow.

Twilight gasped, horrified, and I realized I'd been an idiot to hold out any hope. Twilight might have more power but Twist was a genius, an intellectual prodigy of the highest order, he knew she wouldn't be caught off guard by his spell, but he also knew that he didn't need to strike her with lightning to hurt her. So he tossed her the bolt and then caught it on the rebound by interposing my prone form between him and it.

For kicks.

“Oh... Oh Goddess, Jasper I'm so sorry, I should've...” her eyes began to shine white as she turned her gaze back to Twist, “You will pay for that, Doctor.” This time she spat the title like an invective. Whatever respect she had possessed for his work or hope she'd had of a peaceful resolution had clearly evaporated. I honestly wasn't sure how well that boded for me.

“Child, I've had longer than you can imagine to perfect my talents,” Twist rudely tossed me aside and began circling Twilight like a hungry timberwolf. “I am a finely honed machine whereas you are, not to be dismissive of your considerable talent, more like a malfunctioning cannon.”

Bolts of pure white force leapt from Twilight's horn, dozens of them, and hurtled towards Twist only to be caught and redirected lazily into the ground around him, tearing up the earth without so much as dirtying his jacket. Overglow wrapped around her horn as arcs of light followed them, but he caught each one on his horn and set them lazily into the sky. Another force missile, this one humming audibly with the contained energy, flew at him and I actually saw him grimace slightly as he was forced to handle the massive quantity of power. I realized even he couldn't redirect or control that, what he could do however, and what he did, was transmute the sound to light, releasing a massive photon flash that would have blinded me if I hadn't seen it coming. When the light faded yet another layer of overglow had wrapped itself around Twilight's horn and she screamed in frustration as a massive arc of unfettered lighting tore the air between the her and the Doctor, with a grunt of real effort he caught it on his horn, dissipating the energies but visibly straining against the onslaught of power.

After almost full minute Twilight sagged, the arc vanished with a whisper, “Well, my dear, I must say, I underestimated you, you're sheer power is truly remarkable, too bad your tactics aren't as... developed,” Twist grinned, a sheen of sweat showing on a face full of victory.

I think Twist and I both noticed it at the same time. Twilight hadn't cast a spell in almost a minute but...

The overglow was still shining around her horn.

She grinned, exhausted and wordless, then dropped the two-ton cenotaph she had ripped out of the ground then levitated behind and over the Doctor, straight onto his head with a wet Crunch.

I stared, stunned beyond words as Twilight dropped to the ground, the glow fading into a dull aura as she gasped for breath.

She had actually done it though. Clearly the Doctor wasn't the only one who had underestimated the lavender mare, and in that moment I had no question whatsoever as to why she was Celestia's chosen protege.

“Twilight!” voices, a few of which I recognized called out from somewhere behind us. Out of the mist came running all five of Twilight's friends, each of them wearing a bejeweled necklace.

A orange-cream mare I hadn't met but whom I recognized from the photo of her younger self cantered up to Twilight and leaned down to help her to her hooves.

“Are ya a'right sugarcube? Ya had us worried sick what with all tha' lightnin' ya'll were tossin' about.”

“I'm fine Applejack, just winded, I haven't had to expend that much power all at once since I left Canterlot,” Twilight answered wryly as she got to her hooves, her knees still shaking a little.

“Well you could've at least left something for us!” a cyan pegasus with a prismatic mane flew up looking miffed, “how you could you keep all the fun for yourself egghead?”

“You're right rainbow, I'm sorry, the next time a psychotic war criminal unicorn is trying to kidnap one of my friends I'll make sure to wait til you get here,” the pair laughed as Rarity approached along with Pinkie and Fluttershy.

“I, for one, am more concerned that you could have gotten hurt darling, really,” Rarity admonished a bashful looking Twilight, “what would you have done if he had wised up to your little floating rock trick before you had the angle right?

“Oh c'mon Rarity! Nopony is smarter than Twilight!” Pinkie danced up on to two hooves, throwing mock punches, “She had'im on the ropes the whole time!”

“I-I'm just glad everypony is safe...” Fluttershy had made her way over to me and drawn out a small travel medical kit, “are you alright Jasper?”

The entire time they had been congratulating Twilight I'd been vainly trying to get their attention, of course that was limited to wide eyes and inaudible gasps which prevented me from delivering my warning.

I was still paralyzed.

Fluttershy squeaked and staggered back as the cenotaph rumbled and began to slowly rise from where it had fallen on, and crushed, the Doctor.

“No... that's not possible,” I heard Twilight whisper to herself, Twist, it seemed, disagreed.

The sounds of viscous snaps and cracks, like joints popping back into place, came from beneath the massive stone monument as a cold and hate-filled voice echoed from the shadows.

“What... a clever... girl...” two utterly inequine eyes peered out eyes peered out, on the right was an orb molten gold flecked with sapphire and split like the eye of a serpent, while the other was a bright, pupilless vermillion.

“Quick, girls! The Elements!” Twilight shouted, the six bearers immediately gathered together and were wrapped in a false dawn of light. Each one rose in turn as their necklaces shone with inner power, culminating in the tiara crowning Twilight's brow as her eyes shot open, light from within by a solar flare.

Light erupted from their combined powers in a stream of multi-hued light. The unfiltered power of harmony made visible, it was everything that ponykind had been taught to aspire to and was exemplified by the mares before me. By my friends. It was the closest to divine that mortal ponies could touch.

So why?

Why was it so painful?