The Secret Guard

“Here you go darlins!” The waitress said as she deposited their plates of food onto the table. “You need anything else just go on and holler ok?”

“Thank you!” Tree Hugger thanked with a smile and waited until the waitress had departed before joining her friends in eating. “What about her?” She asked and Dusty Tome looked up from his hayburger and examined the waitress before his horn glowed and a notepad and quill levitated out of his saddlebag from under the table.

“No way.” Key Lock said as he examined the waitress as she shouted orders to the cook in the diners’ kitchen. “She’s way to old, probably married once at least.”

“You have no way of knowing that.” Tree Hugger sneered and Dusty Tome tore off the piece of paper he had been writing on and handed it to her. She read it before showing it to Key Lock triumphantly. “Ha! We don’t need a virgin.”

“We only need one virgin.” He reminded as he chewed his salad. “You want to try kidnapping more than one pony?” Tree Hugger held her glare with him before sighing and looking around the diner.

“How about one of them?” She asked gesturing over her shoulder to a giggling pair of teenagers, a stallion and mare who kept whispering something into the others’ ear that would send them blushing and laughing.

“If they haven’t done the deed yet and we can get one away from the other.” He suggested before he settled on a pony sitting alone in the corner and smiled. “How about her? She looks like she’ll give up her blood if we tell her what we’re planning.” Dusty Tome and Tree Hugger turned around in their seats and saw the young mare sitting alone, her mane, most likely dyed, a jet black that was accompanied by black eyeliner and lipstick. Her bright blue coat sort of ruined the dark gothic image she was going for though. Tree Hugger chuckled as she turned back to her meal and Dusty Tome wrote down another note and levitated it to Key Lock. “Blood given is not the same as blood taken.” He read out loud. “Alright then who do you suggest mister blood expert?”

Dusty Tome was silent for a moment before he closed his eyes and became still. Tree Hugger and Key Lock silently ate their food and waited for their companion to decide or just do something. They watched curiously as his horn glowed again and a knife levitated out of his saddle bag and quickly dashed across his fore leg, drawing a thin cut of blood. Before Key Lock or Tree Hugger could stop him or even give hushed reprimands the blood dripped onto the table and darted across, leaving no trail as it quickly climbed the wall to get to the window. Tree Hugger quickly slapped a napkin on the drop of blood, the cheap paper absorbing the animated life essence fast enough that her and Key Lock’s quick check around the diner confirmed nopony saw.

“Dude what the fuck?!” She whispered harshly in his ear as he reopened his eyes and set the knife down which Key Lock quickly set about cleaning of any blood. The cut on Dusty Tome’s foreleg burned a dull red and closed as blood seeped out of and hardened into flesh, his bright grey coat hiding any sign that he had been wounded. “I don’t care if they won’t be around long enough to question it we can’t blow our cover!” Dusty Tome turned to the window and pointed a hoof across the street where a young earth pony stallion was chatting with an elderly couple.

“What? He’s a virgin?” Key Lock asked examining their new target, Dusty simply nodding in confirmation. “Does it matter if it’s a stallion instead of a mare?” Dusty shook his head. “Oh. Cool.” Key Lock said as he settled back into his seat. “That’s good because I kinda would have felt like an asshole if we had to use a mare.”

“Why?” Tree Hugger asked. “Don’t think it’s right to hurt the weak and innocent marefolk?” She asked with a batting of her eyes and he smiled and laughed.

“I was more worried about it being cliché.” Key Lock answered taking a drink. “We might as well be wearing robes and sacrificing him on a stone slab to dark gods. That and anypony who see’s us kidnapping a mare will assume we’re gonna rape her.”

“What?!” Tree Hugger shrieked and drew everypony in the diner’s attention. She coughed and shrunk into her seat as Dusty Tome wrote down another note. “Why in Tartarus would anypony think that when I’m a part of it?”

“You could be one of those pyscho lesbian’s.” He stated simply. “I mean with a name like Tree Hugger all we need to do is dress you like a hippie and send you to kill logging executives or something and we’ll have the perfect crazy eco-terrorist thing going on.” Dusty Tome tore off the page he had been writing on and levitated it to Tree Hugger.

“Can we wear robes?” She read before Key Lock and her gave him a disbelieving look. “Seriously? You want them in blood red or black?” She asked and quickly swatted the notepad out of the air when he began to write his response.

“Uh guys?” Key Lock said when he looked out the window. “Where’d he go?” Dusty Tome and Tree Hugger gazed across the street and found their target gone.

“Well… shit.” Tree Hugger said and put a hoof on Dusty Tome’s shoulder. “You can find him again rig- hey wait a minute!” She suddenly realized. “If you could have found a virgin at any point then why did you drag us all over this town guessing at random ponies?” Dusty Tome merely smiled and went back to eating his hayburger.

When the waitress came around to clean their table after they had finished she found some scrawled symbols on the receipt when collecting the tip. A deep instinctual part of her buried somewhere in her mind recognized them and screamed in terror, flooding every part of her body with the urge to run. Instead she simply smiled and continued her work as something oily from the symbols silenced the screaming voice.

Princess Celestia sighed as she sank into her seat, taking a smooth sip of tea as she enjoyed the day looking out at a Canterlot from her balcony. Her sun was shining high in the sky with no clouds in the sky with a cool breeze to counter any summer heat, no doubt because the weather brigade had been informed today was a personal day for their esteemed Princess. Her nation’s capital was bustling with activity as her ponies continued to celebrate their own Summer Sun Celebration, extended with her safe return and the appointment of The Elements of Harmony. She hadn’t felt this relaxed in years and with current events it wasn’t hard to see why.

Twilight had solved the puzzle she had given her, figured out a way to restore Luna from whatever curse had befallen her, fixed The Elements of Harmony, and made some friends. She couldn’t be prouder of her student although it was much quitter around the castle with her and Spike gone, no mishaps in her experiments to liven up the castle. Now all that was left was to determine if Twilight could handle anymore secrets of the world heaped onto her plate. With her new friends she could probably handle them much better, not that she’d be able to tell them of course, but they would be shocking at the least and on average very maddening. But she was The Element of Magic and that meant she out of anypony would be able to handle the secret magic’s of the wor-BOOM!

The castle quaked and Celestia nearly spilt her tea as the wall beneath her exploded out into the garden, sending stones and dust flying. “EMERGE OUR FRIEND! TASTE THE WARMTH OF THE SUN!” A familiar voice boomed below her. Celestia sighed, set her tea down, and leapt off the side of her balcony as the guards burst through her quarters to secure her. She fell several stories before landing behind her sister as she beckoned to the new hole in the side of their castle.

“Luna what are you doing?!” She demanded as she walked up to her sister. “You blew a hole in the side of our castle!”

“Well we had to get Leo out somehow.” Luna answered as if her action was totally rational. “You built a pony sized door for him! He’s much too big to use it!” To support her reasoning “Leo” emerged from the shadows, a mass of muscled flesh standing twenty feet tall in the vague shape of a pony, the ground shaking with every step “he” took. “Leo!” Luna cheered as she jumped into the air and flew up to hug its “face”, really just the blank mound of flesh that was supposed to be its head.

“The door was small because it’s a War Golem Luna! It’s not supposed to be active unless we’re under a catastrophic attack!” Celestia could hear the guards stomping towards them, organizing into teams to tackle whatever threat awaited them. “Enough. FEEL THE SHADOW OF THE MOON!” Her voice boomed with the command and the War Golem retreated back into the shadows as Luna disengaged and landed in front of her sister with a huff.

“Why would you do that?! We haven’t seen Leo in a thousand years!” She complained. “You haven’t even let him out in all these years have you!” She accused with a pointed hoof as the Royal Guard finally charged in from all directions, intent on defeating whatever they found. With a sigh Celestia’s horn glowed and all of the guards froze in place after charging a few steps before collapsing to the ground in heaps. Except for the pegasi who just floated in midair, limps dangling towards the ground. “What are you doing?” Luna asked confused, moving to one of the guards and prodding him with her hoof.

“Making sure they don’t see the golem.” Celestia answered.

“Leo.” Luna insisted upon the name. “And we understand knocking out the regular guards but the Secret ones as well? Surely they’ve seen a golem before.”

“There are no more Secret Guards Luna.” Celestia answered as she started examining the hole in the castle. She was going to have to hire a special team to rebuild it around the golem… or just a regular one who could be coerced into silence and then have their memories erased after they finished. That’d be cheaper.

“What?!” Luna cried and rushed to her sister. “Then whose protecting Equestria from the secret world?! From the monstrosities that lurk in the shadows?!”

“The societies.” Celestia answered plainly and sent her sister into a sputtering angered mess.

“Y-you c-can’t be serious! You let those groups of rabble decide how to handle our occult problems?” Luna stomped her hoof to the ground. “Our glorious Secret Guard kept the darkness from harming our ponies for countless millennium, from even before this age!” She reminded with a puffed up chest of pride.

“We had the highest fatality rates.” Celestia reminded. “The average life expectancy of our operatives was seven months. The Illuminati have better rates and they kill their agents for slacking off!”

“We held powerful artifacts that could shake the core of the world!” Luna shot back.

“We had a statue that brought dead animals back to life.” Celestia brought up. “You lost it when you threw it into a taxidermists’ office.”

“That was a Dragon plot!” Luna quickly defended. “How else could have we been walking past such a tempting target that day?”

“The Dragon wouldn’t be so obvious.” Celestia countered and began moving from guard to guard, her horn glowing as she erased and rewrote memories.

“Well despite all of that we still managed to fight the darkness that threatened our ponies.” Luna settled on, assured that despite all their failures The Secret Guard had accomplished this at least.

“No that was The Templars and occasionally The Illuminati if there was anything to be gained from it… and maybe The Dragon.” She added after a moment of thought. It was hard to get any evidence of Dragon involvement let alone any kind of plan. “We handled clean up and anything they felt too insignificant to even send one agent to deal with. Are you starting to see why I disbanded it now?”

“…A lot’s changed since I’ve been gone.” Luna said to herself and Celestia jolted at her tone. She swung her head back to look at her sister gazing at the hole she had created with a frown.

“Luna I’m sorry but The Secret Guard was costing us too many ponies and bits to maintain. It just wasn’t effective.” She argued, trying to make her sister see that her decision hadn’t been made with any intention of hurting her.

“You have the day and I the night.” She merely stated. “The Secret World rules the night and my only interaction with it was through my Secret Guard. It’s not like anypony else cared about my nights.” Celestia cringed inside as her sister brought up what had led to her descent into Nightmare Moon and quickly moved to her sisters’ side.

“Things have changed sister. Our ponies now live, work, and enjoy all hours of the day and night.” She pulled her little sister into a comforting hug. “These are peaceful times Luna. There hasn’t been a major occult incident, let alone a disaster in Equestria in over a century. Let us enjoy it.” Luna remained silent for a moment before returning her sisters hug. They remained that way for a sparse few moments before they went to work rewriting the minds of those who swore to protect them.

River Bed groaned as he awoke on his back against a hard surface with a splitting headache, the taste of blood on his tongue. He tried to move a fore hoof to cradle his aching head only to find it tethered to something. Snapping his eyes open he found himself roped to a large table in the middle of what looked like a motel room, the double bed pushed up against the window to block out the light and give enough room for the table. “What the fuck?” He asked himself as he struggled against the ropes. “What the fuck!?”

“Oh somepony’s awake!” A voice announced and a stallions’ face appeared from somewhere behind him. “How you feelin’ kid? The shovel didn’t raddle your brains too much did it?” Well that explained the headache.

“Let me go you assholes!” River Bed demanded as he continued to struggle as two more ponies emerged behind him, one a unicorn stallion who silently carried a saddle bag and stopped at the end of the table and stared at him while the other was a mare who hummed as she worked painting lines across the table and on his coat. “What are you doing?!”

“Shh!” She shushed him as if he was in the wrong for trying to get some answers or escape captivity. “This is delicate work.” She explained as she connected lines, forming circles and triangles, and something traveled through the lines and sent a shiver through River Bed’s body. She eyed him for a moment and smiled. “Felt that didn’t you?”

“What the fuck is going on? Who are you ponies? Why did you kidnap me?!” River Bed demanded to know as the ponies ignored him and continued their work and the unicorn stared at him. Suddenly as soon as the mare finished her painting and the stallion moved to the side the unicorns’ horn glowed and a knife levitated out his saddle bag, settling at River Bed's side. He tried to edge away from the blade but found himself unable to escape as it cut its way across his skin. He cried out as it suddenly plunged into his side and savagely tore across his stomach, his blood flowing out onto the table. Screaming like an animal from the pain he didn’t notice as the blood flowed along the path of the painted lines, thinning so no blood remained outside the symbols.

“Dorw ftrk curtyq.” The unicorn spoke, his tongue splitting in different directions as he had cut it so he could properly speak the words. The shadows of the room deepened as the blood began to glow and River Bed's screams intensified. “Axmw rutyo gjty.” The blood began to flow up into the air and collect into a ball and River Bed finally pushed through the pain to notice what was happening. “Plhg bnwt yug!” The unicorn finished as the blood stretched and thinned into a floating circle as wide as the ritual circle drawn on River Bed and table and razor thin. As more of his blood fell up out his body into it River Bed watched as the blood parted and a claw of cracking black stone came through towards him. It hovered over him as he gasped for air, his vision swimming as his bled out, fist opening and closing for a few seconds before it suddenly darted forward and punched through his chest, the rips breaking like twigs. All feeling left River Bed as he watched his heart pulled from his body and taken into blood circle, his life clinging to him when it should have mercifully departed. The blood circle expanded as it consumed his heart and something emerged out of the top away from River Bed's view, a dark shadow growing along the walls around him. But a quick glance to his three captors showed them smiling at what they saw.

“Good evening gentlecolts and miss.” A deep voice spoke that set upon River Bed's brain like a razor as the shadows around the room moved. “How can I be of assistance?”