Effigy of Anarchy

by SaltyJustice

Rating: mature
Tags: Princess Celestia, Dark, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Flitter and Cloudchaser, Adventure
Length: 47771

Cloudchaser's sister has disappeared in Trottingham, and the Guard won't even lift a hoof to help her. Desperate, she calls upon an old acquaintance, and is pulled into something far larger than a simple disappearance.

In the dead of winter, Flitter fails to return from an evening out in Trottingham. Convinced that she's more than just 'lost' and without any clue what to do, Cloudchaser calls upon the only pony she knows who could possibly help: Her old friend, Silent Rivers.

It is not long before events spiral out of her control, and she questions the allegiances she thought were solid mere days before.

Cover art by noted maniac Chickenwhite.

Fair warning: Story contains quite a lot of violence and some mature themes. In case you couldn't guess that by the cover art...

Published 2014-09-16 02:00:06 UTC
Last updated 2014-10-03 01:52:16 UTC

Chapter 2

Cloudchaser waited as best she could, doing her best to think warm thoughts. Snow trickled down and the world alternated between dark and light as the dense clouds would periodically block the moonlight entirely. Cloudchaser had taken her weather-control classes, same as any other pegasus, and the lack of discipline here was stunning. Trottingham Weather Services must have been in a tough spot to resort to such strange snow patterns.

“Somepony’s coming,” Silent whispered. Cloudchaser leaned backwards to see, shifting ever so slightly on her branch and knocking a small tuft of snow off.

The darkened outline of a pony stopped as the snow impacted the ground, peering into the night. Cloudchaser held her breath, if only to keep the freezing mist from giving her and Silent away. Why Silent wanted to remain hidden was anypony’s guess, but she had much more experience at this sort of thing. This wasn’t exactly the right time to go second-guessing her.

After a few moments, the figure resumed trudging through the snow, now waist-deep. He was evidently an earth pony, and certainly not one accustomed to snowdrifts. His gait was uneven and delicate, as he was balancing something on his back as he walked.

As the figure passed under the lamp near the winery’s entrance, Silent could finally see the details. Fairly young colt, whitish-blue coat with a darker blue mane. If Cloudchaser recognised him, she didn’t give any audible reaction. Silent squinted in hopes of seeing what it was he was carrying. At this distance, all she could tell was that it was three white-and-red boxes about half an inch tall, stacked on one another.

The colt trudged his way over to the main entrance door of the winery, turning a corner as he did so. Silent quickly took to the air and darted for the roof above him, signalling quickly to Cloudchaser to make as little noise as possible. The two whirled and landed on the roof of the building across from the main entrance, and again crouched down to observe.

The entrance on this side was on a slightly elevated walkway, with a metal railing which held an eavestroughing. The colt was barely visible, as the only light here was leaking from within the building through frosted-over windows. He looked impatient as he watched his breath freeze and fall in front of him. He knocked on the door, then waited a few moments before knocking again. As he was about to knock a third time, the door clicked and another colt stuck his head outside. They exchanged a look, and both went inside.

“Now what?” Cloudchaser asked.

“Continue observing,” Silent replied, pointing to a skylight on the main building, “and that’s where we’re going to do it.”

The two rose again and landed softly next to the skylight. It was closed, but the ambient heat of the building had melted away most of the frost as it rose to escape. Cloudchaser looked at the base of the glass pane and, seeing a latch, made to open it. Silent stuck her hoof in the way before she could.

“But - “

“Not yet. They’ll notice if we let the cold air in. Wait a few seconds…” Silent said.

With that, she took off and disappeared from sight. A moment later, she reappeared and nodded, allowing Cloudchaser to open the pane. Now, they could hear voices emanating from below. Silent looked, but from this angle she was unable to put each voice to its speaker.

“You took your sweet time.”

“Shut up, I had to walk uphill in the snow.”

“You shoulda gone earlier then, I told you it was gonna snow tonight. You got the stuff?”

The pony from earlier slid the boxes off his back and placed them on a small table in the center of the winery. At this point, all the inhabitants gathered around the boxes, murmuring to themselves. Silent began making mental notes.

Six colts, no weapons. They were unaware of Silent and Cloudchaser’s presence, and Flitter was nowhere to be found. The room itself was high, with rafters cloaked in darkness. The only light sources were two lanterns placed on either end of the room, between rows of wine bottles stored on shelves. There was easily enough room to stand atop a shelf, and enough room to navigate between them.

In the center of the room was a small wooden table, around which the colts were presently occupied. Visible in the glow of the lantern was a door marked, in bold gothic letters, ‘Basement’. The door leading outside could not be seen in the darkness, though Silent could make out its outline from the moonlight beyond it.

“Damn it’s cold in here.”

“It’s winter.”

“No... hey! You left the door open! Now it’s gonna be frozen in here all night, nice work.”

“Hey, I closed it!”

One of the colts trotted off to shut the open door, making a point of slamming it. Cloudchaser looked at Silent’s face, but found her busily scanning the room.

“What the hay? Celery? Who puts celery on a pizza?”

The colts all began backing away, revealing that the contents of the boxes now on the table were three pizzas of varying descriptions.

“I do. I like celery.”

“On a pizza?”

“Yeah. What, you don’t?”

“I don’t like my pizza crunchy, that’s all.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing.”

The six started busying themselves with the pizza, munching on it for a while. Their eating habits were atrocious, and they made no attempt to close their mouths while they ate. At least they weren’t trying to talk, as ghastly as that would have been.

One of the colts finished faster than the others and decided to wash it down with a bit of wine. As he reached for one of the racks, another slapped his hoof.

“Hey!”

“Boss said no drinkin’ on the job. Not tonight. We gotta deal with the girl.”

“Aw c’mon! Just one?”

“No way, Ted.”

Silent allowed herself a momentary smirk. Cloudchaser snapped to attention, suddenly rapt in the conversation happening below.

“The girl!” she whispered.

“Could be Flitter,” Silent replied. “Keep listening.”

“Wasn’t she your marefriend or something, dude?” asked one of the colts from below.

“What? No, nothin’ like that,” replied ‘Ted’.

A low laughter circled the room.

“Blue-balled by the boss, again! That’s two now. You think he’s gonna do the same thing he did to the last one?”

Cloudchaser sucked in her breath.

“I dunno, did he tell you? All I heard was that we’re supposed to watch her. Seriously, I don’t want to have to go down there again.”

“What happened?”

All the colts gathered around the one who had been speaking, a chestnut stallion who had been helping himself to another slice of pizza before speaking out. He looked around nervously into the darkened room before speaking again.

“It’s really messed up. She’s like, a statue. Just stares straight at you, or past you, I dunno. Boss told me to give her something to drink, but she didn’t even do nothin’. Then the boss just started laughin’ and said ‘Why don’t you take a drink?’ and then she just snatched the bottle from me and gulped the whole thing down. Freaky.”

“I took a peek. I don’t think she’s even tied up down there.”

“What if she escapes?”

“Duh, that’s what we’re here for.”

Cloudchaser leaned back slightly, prompting Silent to relax a bit as well.

“Who do you think the ‘Boss’ is? They look really nervous whenever they talk about him.”

“I suspect they don’t even know themselves,” Silent said. Her eyes returned to the room, as a plan began to form. She knew how to solve this room.

“Chase,” she said, with her eyes now locked on the basement door, “Flitter is probably downstairs. Stay here, and when I give you the signal, fly in and get down there. Get Flitter and don’t come back out until you’re sure it’s clear.”

“What are you going to do?”

Silent didn’t answer, she instead focused on one of the colts. He was a brown unicorn, and currently had a very antsy look about him. It wouldn’t be much longer before -

“Hey guys, I gotta take a leak. Be right back.”

“Wait for my signal,” Silent said.

Silent perched herself directly atop the doorway, and after a few moments, the brown colt stepped outside and ambled along the walkway. Without warning, he stepped towards the railing and began relieving himself, humming softly as he did so. Silent saved the grimace for later, and began her ‘solution’.

She leaped off the roof and collided with the colt’s back, slamming his head sideways as hard as she could into the metal railing. A deafening clang echoed into the night, and Silent allowed him to slump down. She pushed him a bit further from the entrance to buy herself a little more time, then flew back up onto the roof and waited.

“Holy crap!” somepony yelled, “are you okay? Dude? Hey!”

Silent watched as four of the stallions from within came out to look at their fallen comrade. Silent frowned when the fifth did not emerge.

“A damn wildcard,” she muttered to herself as she quickly revised her plan.

Seeing that the goons were preoccupied, Silent slipped into the door they had carelessly left open. A shelf blocked immediate view of the rest of the room, and the sixth colt was unaccounted for. She jumped and flapped once, deftly climbing on top of one of the rows of wine bottles. She looked down at her hooves quickly to make sure there was ample shadow covering her, and, satisfied, glanced upwards to check Cloudchaser. She was looking towards the basement, and Silent followed her gaze to spot the sixth pony.

This was ‘Ted’, presumably the same one who had abducted Flitter in the first place. He was grinning to himself and clutching a bottle of wine, freshly opened. Silent padded quietly atop the wine shelves, hopping between them with as little air disturbance as possible. Ted was enjoying a full-throated drink, gulping loudly as he tried to empty the bottle in one pass. Silent approached the final wine shelf and positioned herself directly behind him, cloaked by the darkness.

She struck with incredible alacrity, leaping into the air and jamming both of her hind legs onto the back of the colt’s neck. As he snapped backwards, the wine bottle caught in his mouth, and Silent wrenched her forelegs over his nose to completely block the airflow. She dug her rear legs in harder, pointing all her force down atop one of the nerve clusters at the point where the spine met the shoulders. As his ability to move his limbs receded, Silent wrapped her other leg around his neck and squeezed shut the arteries, completing the sleeper hold.

Teddy fought for several seconds as his senses grew dull and his panic receded. Silent tightened her grip and yanked his head further back, until a gentle crackling noise indicated a mild dislocation. Teddy’s resistance faded along with his consciousness, and Silent dropped off quickly to support his weight as he slumped over. He was a little heavier than her, and she only had a few seconds left.

The door banged as the four colts dragged their friend back in. Silent dragged Teddy off and rose into the air, flapping with all her strength to get his body onto the wine shelf. The clamor made by the colts provided just enough noise to allow her to fly, but it was still less than she would have liked. Teddy’s leg got caught on the shelf as she ascended, and only with a bit of careful balancing was she able to extricate it and drag him onto the flattened top. The four colts were too busy worrying about their fallen comrade to notice.

“Hey, wake up! Wake up!”

“He’s out cold.”

“What happened? Did he slip?”

“Must have. Banged his head I think, he’s bleeding out his ear.”

“What do we do? Bandage it?”

“Don’t look at me, I’m no doctor.”

“I think we ought to call for help, or somethin’. Who wants to do it?”

Silent perched herself towards the edge of the shelf, with Teddy’s body just behind her. She looked up to see Cloudchaser focusing on her, and gave a brief nod. Hopefully, Chase would recognize what she meant when she had told her about the signal. All she needed was to wait for the right moment…

“Someone get me a cloth or something to clean him up.”

“Don’t you have to disinfect it first?”

“Yeah, with alcohol. Ted, open one of those bottles and help me out here, will ya?”

A pause.

“Ted?”

Another pause. Silent placed her hoof on Teddy’s chest and tensed up.

“Where’d he go? What’s goin’ on around here?”

Teddy’s unconscious body tumbled down from the shelf, landing square in the middle of the cluster of thugs. All four failed to notice Silent leaping from shelf to shelf, making her way towards the door. All four were too busy examining Teddy’s body to notice Silent quietly extract the fire extinguisher near the exit and position herself next to the shelf.

“What the hell!? Ted!? Wake up, dude!”

“Wait - Guys, I think there’s somethin’ in here. Did you hear something?”

“Like what? A creature? You think a wild animal got in?”

“I dunno dude, I didn’t see it. What kind of animal could do this?”

The four were now wildly looking up at the tops of the shelves, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever had discarded Ted’s body so casually. Silent waited, watching the shadows from the lanterns to plan out her next move. As one of the colts backed away from the shelf, she put the next piece into place.

Silent stepped out and swung the extinguisher at full strength right at the colt’s head. The powerful thud of metal against bone drew
the attention of the other three, but all they saw was a cloud of white foam blasting towards them as Silent emptied the extinguisher.

The body of her victim slumped to the ground before her as Silent dodged around the edges of the resulting foam cloud. Cries of anguish emanated from within, and Silent felt a presence swoop down from above. The basement door opened and closed quickly, unbeknownst to the three still standing and coughing in the cloud of gas.

Silent saw an opportunity and took it as one of the goons stumbled out of the cloud, trying to wipe foam away from his eyes. Silent darted around him, accidentally scuffing the edge of the table with a light clunk. The colt heard her and swung his foreleg wildly around, aiming in the general direction of the noise. Silent grabbed onto his leg and he let out a shout.

Silent wasted no time, as the cloud was beginning to disperse. She pulled herself towards the foreleg and slid her hind legs down, colliding with the other legs the colt was still balancing on. His body pitched over as Silent held onto his leg, forcing him to twist at an awkward angle. He grunted and wheezed in response, still blinded by foam he was now unable to remove from his eyes.

Silent pulled on his leg, using her full weight to wrench it in its socket. Feeling herself unable to get enough torque, she leaped nimbly over his prone form, without letting go of the leg. Now at a better angle, she drew the limb downwards and twisted. With a satisfying crack, the bone broke and the thug screamed. Silent finished the job by pouncing directly onto his face, bearing her whole weight downwards.

As the foam cloud cleared and the two standing colts cleaned their eyes, they gave a few more coughs before the weight of the situation hit them.

“What - oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. This isn’t happening.”

“Woah, Pete, Pete. Wake up!”

“It got him, dude. It got him, and it’s gonna get us!”

Silent surveyed the two from her perch atop one of the wine shelves, far from the fading light of the lamp. At this point, all she needed to do was wait for the right moment, and hope whatever the thugs had been talking about earlier wasn’t going to give Cloudchaser any problems.

One of the colts slapped the other. “Shut the hell up! Don’t panic, do not panic!”

“Screw you!”

Both of them were now wildly looking around the room, hoping to spot a glimpse of whatever had been doing this to them. As they spun and cowered, one backed into the other and both leaped into the air.

“Screw this! Screw this, it’s everypony for himself! I’m gettin’ the hell out of here!”

“Wait! Don’t split up!”

Silent allowed herself to grin again, as one of the colts peeled off from the other and dashed outside. She took off quietly and made for the open skylight.

The remaining colt ran to one of the windows and desperately scratched at it to remove the frost covering. He saw, barreling through the snow, the silhouette of his friend. It got stuck in a snowbank and tried to pry its leg free. His own hot breath fogged the window up again, and he quickly wiped the frosting away. By the time he had, all that remained was a hole in the snowbank where his friend’s leg had been.

The final stallion backed into the center of the room, tripping over the table and scattering the pizza everywhere. He lay there for a moment before rolling over and peeling a slice of spinach and feta off his face.

He looked wildly around, hoping to find something to defend himself with. Lacking anything else, he grabbed a loosened wine bottle and brandished it at the darkness. Again, he spun around, hoping to catch a glimpse of his attacker. As he backed up, dread welled up inside him when he felt himself bump into something. Something warm.

A pair of forelegs seized his throat and squeezed. He tried to fight back but the monster was strong, far stronger than a pony. He fought a losing fight to stay awake, and the wine bottle he had held clattered and rolled along the floor away from him as the blackness overtook him.

Silent allowed herself a third and final smirk as she surveyed the solved room. Six pieces, six solutions. Despite the wild card and the attempted escapee, none of them had posed a serious problem, and she could signal to Cloudchaser that the coast was clear.

Except, something was wrong. Ted’s body wasn’t where she had left it.

As soon as she noticed, a foreleg grabbed her and she felt a cold, sharp sensation on her throat. She immediately ceased her resistance as she realized it was a broken piece of glass resting delicately on her carotid artery. The leg tensed and she felt the glass begin to press slightly into her skin.

“You stupid bitch,” Teddy spat, “it was just a mare that did that? Just a damn mare?”

Silent gasped as the glass pressed gently into her skin. She felt a single drop of blood escape and clenched her teeth in the hopes that the tensed muscles would stem the bleeding.

“Well, the boss is gonna be real happy when I bring you in. I’ll get a big, fat reward for this. I don’t even care who you are, I’ll be a hero. And, I don’t think I need to tell you that it - “

Silent felt the colt’s grip slacken. The glass piece dropped and rolled away as a cool sensation splashed around her ears.

“I… just...” the colt mumbled as he untensed and fell over, landing in a heap.

Silent turned around to see Cloudchaser’s angry face, still holding the top of a broken wine bottle, fizz and foam covering her nose. She spat the glass and cork onto the ground. Wordlessly, she lunged forward and embraced Silent.

“Don’t ever do that again, you lunatic,” she whispered.

Chapter 3

Silent let her hold the hug for a moment, and, at the next opportune moment, pushed her away. Chase`s face betrayed every emotion in the rainbow, mixing grief with panic with pity with anger.

“Where’s Flitter?” Silent asked.

“That’s all you can say? You just beat up a bunch of guys and almost got killed and all you say is ‘Where’s Flitter’? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I told you,” Silent said pointedly, “not to worry about me. Now, where’s Flitter?”

Cloudchaser’s jaw dropped and she began shaking. An internal battle broke out about just how to go about berating Silent, with the eventual result of a stalemate forcing her to pick the most practical option: get far away from this place before the thugs woke up.

“She’s down there,” Cloudchaser said with a sigh, turning and pointing towards the basement door.

As she did so, the door opened and her little sister slowly walked out. Silent had only met Flitter on one occasion, but it was easy to see, all these years later, that it was the same pony. Flitter and Cloudchaser were identical twins, only distinguishable by their cutie marks and, if they chose to allow it, their mane-cuts.

Still, it didn’t take long to see that something was not quite right with Chase’s sister. She walked awkwardly, putting one leg in front of the other at an unnatural angle. Her hips jerked randomly while her eyes did not focus on anything at all. Even more curious was the choice of attire: a small black necklace with a yellow jewel on it. It drew Silent’s attention even more than Flitter’s strange movements.

Flitter walked towards the two, making it halfway towards them before she stopped dead and stood completely still. Silent tapped Cloudchaser on the shoulder as she leaned in close to her ears.

“Something’s up. Be careful,” she whispered. Cloudchaser nodded.

Silent split off from Cloudchaser and slowly paced in an arc around the now stationary filly. She kept two body lengths between them as she tried to note Flitter’s behavior, but nothing made sense. There were no twitches, no reactions. Flitter’s eyes did not follow her as she moved, and her muscles did not tense or relax. It even seemed her breathing had ceased, and where once had been a pony, now stood an elaborate carving.

“What happened down there?” Silent asked.

“She was just standing there, exactly like this. She didn’t listen to me when I told her we needed to get out of here.”

Flitter’s head snapped to face Silent in the blink of an eye, causing her hairs to stand on end. Cloudchaser yelped, and nearly took off into the air. As quickly as it had come, it went, and Flitter resumed her total immobility, except now transfixed on Silent’s position. Then, she, it, spoke.

“I would like to speak with you,” rumbled a deep baritone, the voice of somepony big and powerful. Silent glared in response, turning her head ever-so-slightly in hopes of spotting something, anything, which could explain this turn for the bizarre.

Without warning, Flitter spun in place and trotted towards the basement door. Cloudchaser moved to pursue, but was stopped by Silent suddenly extending a hoof. Silent merely shook her head slowly, and the two watched Flitter go.

Flitter reached the basement door, then spun in place at an exact right angle. She walked off into the darkness, and Silent waited before allowing herself to follow. She heard the sound of a door opening in the blackness. While Flitter could evidently see in the dark, she could not, and she detoured to pick up one of the lanterns to take with her.

Silent and Chase crept along where Flitter had trod, finding a half-open wooden door labelled ‘Manager’s Office’. The two exchanged a look, as the room beyond was completely dark, yet neither had heard a pony stumbling over anything. Gingerly, they stepped towards the door and pushed it open.

The lantern illuminated the room beyond, casting shadows towards its edges. The room was a mess. The two bookshelves had had their contents turned out and the desk completely ransacked. The hardwood floors were covered in assorted papers, while books and binders lay strewn everywhere except the desk, which had been overturned. A wastebasket in a corner sat surrounded by ashes, and the faint smell of smoke pervaded the room. Silent focused on the far corner of the room not lit by her lantern, and approached it.

Flitter was standing there, facing the wall, and only as Silent approached did she turn and speak. Again, the rumbling baritone replaced her light and chipper voice.

“I observed your performance outside,” Flitter said, “and I was quite impressed. Where did you learn to do that?”

Silent and Cloudchaser held their breath. As before, Flitter was not looking at either of them, or at anything in particular. Silent slowly paced around her again, noting that her eyes did not follow her movements.

Silent decided to try a different approach. “Who are you, and what have you done to Flitter?”

“Ah,” Flitter said, “So my voice is not adequately disguised. Thank you, future revisions will need to fix that.”

Silent and Cloudchaser exchanged another look. Cloudchaser’s confusion was tempered by Silent’s calm demeanor, and she held her tongue.

“You know, I intended to let you have the girl back. I’m surprised you came all the way out here to get her,” Flitter said.

“You didn’t answer my question. I said, what did you do to Flitter?”

Flitter cocked her head sideways at forty-five degrees, unnatural in every way. She clearly felt no discomfort.

“You are an interesting specimen. Focused to a laser point. I may decide I need to perform some further tests, and I’d be honored if you’d be my subject.”

Silent nodded slightly at Cloudchaser, who returned a confounded look. Silent inaudibly mouthed “the necklace”, causing Chase to nod and refocus. A yellow stone pendant with a black chain… she’d never seen Flitter wearing it before. Chase mouthed back to Silent, “not hers”. Silent nodded.

“It seems the game is up, then. If you would indulge me, I have one further test to conduct. I will be seeing you soon, I should hope. Farewell,” Flitter said.

All three stood stock still, as if daring each other to make the first move. Silent held her breath and tensed up, preparing for the worst. Flitter gave no indication she was going to do anything.

Before she could react, Flitter had shot forward and bucked Silent in the chin. The blow was incredible, the kind of kick delivered by a pony three times her size, and it sent Silent sprawling. The lantern flew out of her mouth and clattered as it rolled across the floor. Fortunately, the light within was not extinguished by the impact, and Silent hit the ground and attempted to roll into a stand. She slid and thumped against the wall, falling over as she tried to right herself.

Cloudchaser was barely able to utter a peep before Flitter had launched at her. She had exactly enough time to shut her eyes in terror before the impact…

The blow was not to come. As she chanced to open her eyes a moment later, she saw Flitter frozen in a striking pose mere inches from her nose. Flitter’s eyes were, this time, focusing on hers, and her head was shaking very slightly. She bared her teeth and snarled for a moment, then began rapidly opening and closing her eyes and Cloudchaser held perfectly still, terrified of what might happen if she moved.

The world held still as Silent froze and stared at Flitter. For ten very long seconds, nothing moved save for Flitter’s face, which trembled and shook randomly. Finally, Flitter spoke again.

“Fascinating,” she said.

“Chase!” Silent shouted.

Cloudchaser snapped out of her funk and quickly grabbed at the pendant. She pulled with all her strength and the wire snapped clean off of Flitter’s neck. Flitter held still another moment, then abruptly collapsed where she stood.

Silent busied herself sorting through the papers in the office as Cloudchaser stood over her fallen sister. She had not moved for ten minutes, merely lay where she was, scarcely breathing.

Silent dug through the stacks of strewn paper, but one thing kept calling back her attention: the wastebasket next to the desk. The smell of smoke and presence of ashes suggested something had been burned, and quite recently. She could only guess at when, but it would have been sometime tonight, possibly even after her own arrival.

The various papers and documents were nothing special, mostly detailing activities at the winery and account records. That nothing stood out did not surprise Silent in the slightest: somepony had been here, destroying records. What made her stop and gaze at the overturned chairs and scattered books that now littered the dim office was the pattern. Nothing fits, she thought, but it has to.

Flitter abruptly snapped awake, once again startling Chase to the point of panic. This time, Flitter looked around in fright before relaxing. She quickly stood up and spun in place a few times.

“Where am I?” she burst out, this time in her own, lighter voice.

“Flitter!” Cloudchaser shouted as she wrapped her forelegs around her sister’s neck. Flitter let the hug continue as she struggled desperately to comprehend her surroundings.

“Chase? What happened?”

“I’m not done being relieved yet, it’ll be a minute.”

Flitter now patiently waited for Chase to get it all out. As she continued to scan the room, she noticed Silent, now approaching from the edge of the lantern’s glow.

“Uh, who’s she? Do I know you?” Flitter asked.

“Silent Rivers,” came the reply, “but that’s not important. Do you remember how you got here?”

"Silent? From high school?" Flitter asked, still in a daze.

“Silent, give her a minute,” Cloudchaser snarled. Flitter tried to pry her off during the moment of respite, to no avail.

“I need to know,” Silent said, “do you know how you got here? Who brought you here?”

Flitter blinked. “What? This is the hotel, isn’t it?”

Silent waved her foreleg around, indicating the scattered papers and crude woodwork. Flitter frowned.

“What? It isn’t?”

“No,” Silent said, “it isn’t. You don’t remember?”

Flitter shook her head. “What time is it?”

“Flitter, stop worrying! You’re safe now, that’s what matters,” Chase said. Finally she relented and allowed her sister to step free.

“Safe from what?”

Silent stepped forward and produced a small black necklace with a shattered yellow jewel. In the lantern’s light, it gave off a faint glow from somewhere inside, dancing across Silent’s hoof.

“This.”

Flitter instinctively recoiled and backed up, bumping into the wall of the office. The impact shook loose a book from a nearby bookshelf, which plopped onto the ground with a soft thud. Flitter did not take her eyes from the jewel, until Silent tucked it under her wing.

Cloudchaser tried to comfort her sister, only to be pushed back. Flitter covered her face with a wing and stared at the ground.

“What happened?” Chase asked.

“I don’t know. Just - keep that thing away from me.”

“Interesting,” Silent said, “I’ll just hang onto it then.”

Silent and Cloudchaser conducted another brief search of the office as Flitter tried to compose herself. She refused to meet her sister’s gaze, covering herself with her wing whenever she looked. She just stood near the door and waited.

“Can we go home yet? I feel like I could sleep for days,” Flitter complained.

“Not yet,” Chase said. Silent said nothing.

“What are you looking for?”

Neither pony responded, they just turned over more of the endless tax receipts and shipping invoices. At last, Silent tapped Cloudchaser on the shoulder and pointed towards the door.

“We’re not going to find anything here. Somepony got here first and covered their tracks.”

“How do you know they didn’t miss something?” Chase argued.

“We don’t. But we also don’t know what we’re searching for, so we won’t know it when we find it. We have to assume everything that mattered is currently in that charred wastebasket.”

“So we’re just giving up? What if they come after Flitter again? We’ve gotta stop them!”

Silent shook her head. “We can’t.”

Cloudchaser made as if to pout, but Silent did not yield. Chase argued with herself before ultimately losing. She sagged her shoulders and made for the door, passing a very confused Flitter on the way out.

“What are you guys talking about? Are you ever going to fill me in?” Flitter asked.

“You were kidnapped and taken here, where somepony did experiments on you. At least, that’s what I’m guessing. It seems a side effect was a loss of memory, unfortunately.”

“Experiments?”

“That’s what it sounded like,” Silent said. She give a slight shrug and made for the door, only to find herself suddenly blocked as Flitter thrust herself forward.

“What did they do to me!?”

“I don’t know. Neither do you.”

“But they did things to me! Oh my gosh, I don’t even know who they is! Ugh, what if they… you know… touched me…”

“Calm down, getting upset isn’t going to help,” Silent growled.

“How can you be so damn placid!?”

Silent merely glared in response as Flitter returned the favour.

“Sweet Celestia!”

Silent and Flitter both bolted towards the sound of the scream. Cloudchaser stood just outside the office, staring at the pile of colts Silent had dealt with earlier.

“What happened?” Flitter asked as she ran up.

Cloudchaser merely pointed. As Flitter followed the line, she saw six colts all lying together, with the bodies piled next to one another. Her eyes began to widen as she realized that a red liquid was pooling up beneath them, and it certainly wasn’t wine.

“Oh my gosh… are they?”

Silent trotted forth and checked the bodies. Chase and Flitter held their breath as Silent circled the group a few times. She leaned in to take a pulse, and leaned back out a moment later.

“Dead,” she said.

“But - but - but,“ Flitter stammered.

“Throats slit by a glass shard, all six of them.”

“Did you do this?”

Chase spun and quickly whacked her sister. “Don’t talk like that! Silent would never hurt somepony!”

“Hurt, yes. Kill... ,” Silent said as she kept her eyes focused on the bodies. She ran over the possible scenarios in her head, pacing around as she did so.

“Uh, yeah,” Chase said, “That’s what I meant to say.”

Silent suddenly snapped her eyes to look right at Chase, who returned the surprise. “We need to leave, now.”

“No argument here,” said Flitter, who betrayed a slight quiver of fear in her voice, “I can’t wait to go home. Chase, I never want to go to Trottingham ever again.”

“But, why?” Chase asked, “Shouldn’t we call the Guard? Maybe an ambulance?”

“Because,” Silent said, “we have six corpses in a room with clear signs of struggle and our hoofprints all over them, with more than enough murder weapons and evidence to put us away.”

“But we didn’t - “

“Listen to me, Chase, and listen carefully,” Silent snapped. Cloudchaser quieted in an instant.

“While we were in there searching, somepony was out here tying up loose ends. This is a set up, and I’d be willing to bet the Guard is already on their way. We can’t be here when they arrive. Now, let’s go. Follow - “

A sudden clank from outside caused Chase and Flitter to nearly bolt in fright. All three ponies focused on the source of the sound, coming from somewhere near the entrance to the winery. Flitter instinctively grabbed at Chase as they held still. Silent calmly trotted over to one of the windows and scratched at it to remove the frost.

“Are they here? Are we gonna go to jail?” Flitter asked.

Silent trotted to the door and disappeared outside into the blowing darkness. Cloudchaser and Flitter exchanged a look before following.

They found Silent at the mailbox next to the winery’s gate. Its metal lid and frame would be of the right size to clank when a mailpony dropped off a letter. Silent had busied herself reading it as the twins approached.

“Silent, we gotta get outta here!” Chase pleaded.

“Yes we do, and I know exactly where we need to go,” Silent said.

“What, you found something?”

“Yeah, a name.”

Silent pointed to the letterhead. The letter read:

From the desk of Mrs. Rook

Messerschmitt, I’ve been very patient with you, but I won’t stand for this any longer. I don’t care what it is you’re doing up there, I’m losing money every day I can’t get my stock in or out. Whatever your plan it is, you’ve got two days to wrap it up before I’m resuming operations. If you can’t sort it out in that time, you’ll have to move it someplace else. The elders will back me on this.

-J. Rook

“So? We already knew Rook was involved, she owns the place. It’s called Rook`s winery,” Chase said.

“Correct, but this guy’s name wasn’t in any of those documents,” Silent said, pointing at the letter.

“Who’s Messerschmitt?” Flitter asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Silent said, passing the letter to Chase, “but finding out is what I do.”

Chapter 4

“Yes, yes. That’s all it’ll take. Just one more cut.”

A knife clattered against the floor of the kitchen. The magic was at its most powerful just after the stroke of midnight, and the house at its most still. With this, the physical component could be discarded.

The loss of blood had been great. A weaker pony would have died, yet he had not. It was all worth it.

As he fumbled through the gloom towards the brightened outline of the doorway, he felt a spell of dizziness pass over him. He put too much strength behind his push, and threw the door to the side with a clatter.

Still, it had worked. Even as he fell over from his own weakness, he could feel the weight gradually lifting. There was no need for further concern, and that fact became clearer as the moments passed.

Another pony was running down the hallway towards him now, there was shouting. Screaming. Terrified at his wounds? No, not that, there were no cries for help, only to flee. Something had gone wrong.

He fought the blackness clawing at the edge of his vision as long as he could, trying to form words in his throat. Commands, instructions, a plea, whatever it would take. After some amount of time he was no longer able to determine, he felt his stomach being dragged along the rough hardwood floors by somepony out of his sight, and the darkness claimed him at last.

Silent kept peering through the binoculars, not wanting to take her eyes off the scene far below for even a moment.

“Chase. Everything went well with Flitter, I hope.”

It was not a question.

“Yeah,” Cloudchaser said, “... but she was a little rattled. I don’t think she remembers getting kidnapped at all.”

“I see,” Silent said. She lowered the binoculars for a moment and let Chase take in the deep amber of her eyes. Red veins ran from edge to pupil, and there were bags beneath.

“Uh, you okay?” Cloudchaser asked.

“Just fine. He hasn’t shown up yet. What have you been doing for the past two days?”

“Laying low, just like you said.”

“You left the hotel without checking out?”

Cloudchaser nodded. “Why?”

Silent shifted in place and produced a pair of saddlebags, previously hidden beneath her body against the concrete and snow of the building’s roof. She gently shook them to dust off the dirt which had found its way on top of them, and opened it. Silent pushed some things around inside and produced a slip of paper.

Cloudchaser took the paper and held it close to better read it in the moonlight. It was a newspaper clipping from the day after their run-in at the winery. The big font suggested a front-page affair. Squinting, Cloudchaser instead held it up into the air to better see through the moon’s backlighting.

‘WINERY RUNS RED. SUSPECTS WANTED FOR QUESTIONING.’

Cloudchaser swallowed hard as she slowly decoded the dim text. What was not difficult to see were the three pictures accompanying the article. They were an artist’s rendering of her face, Flitter’s, and Silent’s.

“Suspects?” she asked, “we didn’t do anything!”

“We’re public enemy number one right now, but that’s not the problem. That was printed the day of the incident.”

Cloudchaser raised an eyebrow. “How? How could they get an article printed so fast?”

“The presses were running before we got there. It was a set-up.”

“Eep,” Chase said. She read more of the article, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t already seen.

“We’re dealing with a very well-connected pony. For obvious reasons, we need to keep out of sight,” Silent said.

“Well, the good news is they don’t know our names.”

“They do, but they didn’t print them.”

“Huh?” Chase asked.

“I don’t know why, but I know that Messerschmitt knows who were are. He must not have told the papers, or they’d surely have printed them.”

Cloudchaser’s eyes suddenly popped open. “Flitter! She - “

“She’ll be safe. Nopony knows where you’re from. If you lay low until the heat’s off, you’ll be fine.”

Chase grimaced. “Silent, are you trying to talk me out of this?”

Silent raised her binoculars again and looked into the distance.

Cloudchaser just stood in the snow, waiting for Silent to give an indication that would never come. Each time Silent stiffed her like this, it was not forgotten, just ignored.

A snarl caught in Chase’s throat as the memories returned to her; this was exactly what it had been like in school. She would never associate with anypony and never reveal what she was thinking. She would keep her head down until the bell rang, then vanish in the confusion. Her demeanor was the same now, save that the ringing of a bell had been replaced with the kidnapping of a sister.

Had anything changed?

At least Silent was talking to her, or at her. Even then, only when it suited her.

Better than nothing.

“Listen, I’m not backing out,” Chase said at last.

“Good.”

“Good? You’re not going to try to stop me?“

“If you’re going to help, you’re going to help. If I try to stop you, you’ll help anyway. I’ve seen it before and I’m well aware of the alternatives.”

Silent dropped the binoculars and swivelled her head to look straight into Chase’s eyes. Chase wilted slightly at the glare.

“But,” Silent said, “You need to do exactly what I say, exactly when I say to do it. If you want to help, you need to trust me.”

Trust, the basis of friendship. Had it finally happened? Had those fragile seeds of friendship sown years ago finally blossomed, or was there something else to it?

Chase had not promised payment, and Silent had not mentioned it thus far. The initial crisis had passed, and Silent had every reason to abandon her. She had not.

A very small voice in the back of Cloudchaser’s mind cast doubt with just one word: yet. Chase swallowed hard.

“Fine,” Cloudchaser said, gritting her teeth.

Without so much as a nod, Silent turned and resumed observing through the binoculars.

A chill began to set into Chase’s bones as they sat and waited for something to happen. She began to pace in place, and soon found herself walking in circles across the top of the roof.

For all the world, Silent was a particularly ornate statue mounted atop a building; a gargoyle, were she not attractive. While her face and hair were relatively plain and unremarkable, the colts at school had often whispered about her. Something about the mystery and distance was exciting, while simultaneously impossible for the other girls to replicate. Flitter had tried. Chase was a little ashamed to admit she had tried as well.

Chase ceased her pacing and turned to Silent, now with a soft snow covering on her mane. In truth, there was something profoundly pathetic about her. Cloudchaser wasn’t sure what, exactly, that could be. It was entirely possible that Silent had her own life, far away, with friends and colleagues, and had taken time out of that to help an old acquaintance, but all that seemed too much to believe. Which was more likely: that Silent was great and famous and popular someplace else? Or… or that there was no place else?

“Silent, I want to know…”

“There,” Silent said, tightening her grip on the binoculars.

Cloudchaser followed her sight but only saw small blobs of color at this distance. A moment passed in the usual silence before Chase rolled her eyes.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What am I looking at?”

“Sorry,” Silent said, holding the binoculars up for Chase to take a look.

Cloudchaser sat near the edge of the building and took a look at the scene unfolding a few blocks away. Well-dressed ponies, adorned with tuxedos, gowns, and dresses, shifted uncomfortably in the freezing air. A sense of relief visibly passed over the crowd as the bouncers stepped aside to allow the crowd inside the hall.

“Who am I looking for?” Chase asked.

“The colt surrounded by bodyguards in blue.”

In the shifting sea of black tuxedos, one stood apart from the rest. Guards, of course, encircled this pony. Rich ponies usually felt the need to have security for some reason. Most of them, however, did not have their security dressed in matching blue vests.

“That’s him?”

“Messerschmitt,” Silent whispered.

“Why all the security?”

Chase lowered the binoculars and turned to Silent, who was now organizing her saddlebag. Silent looked up and stared for a few moments as Cloudchaser slowly realized she wanted her binoculars back.

“Where are we going now? Aren’t we gonna spy on that guy?”

“No, I just needed to see who he was with.”

Silent replaced the binoculars, sealed the bag, and flared her wings for takeoff. She had already leaped into the darkness by the time Chase figure out what was going on. In a half-panic, Cloudchaser likewise ran to the building’s edge.

Seeing only the dim glow of the distant street lamps below, she gathered her courage and cast herself into the night.

“I’ve been doing a bit of digging into this Messerschmitt guy,” Silent said, keeping her voice as low as possible while still being heard over the air currents.

“And?”

“Nothing.”

Again, Cloudchaser waited for Silent to continue. Again, she did not.

“Nothing - what? Like, he doesn’t exist? I’m pretty sure I just saw him.”

“He’s a nopony, a non-entity. He’s not from Trottingham and the city directory didn’t list him until just under a year ago. He had no friends, no contacts, and no job. I haven’t pulled his tax records yet, but I’m not expecting anything incredible.”

“Tax rec - Silent, how did you find all this out?”

Silent shrugged. “I have my ways. You’d be amazed what records they keep at City Hall.”

“And the guards didn’t arrest you?”

“Who says they saw me?”

Cloudchaser sucked in her breath. Uncomfortable memories of the winery had resurfaced, and she was suddenly no longer interested in this conversation.

The pair soared over the snowy rooftops of downtown Trottingham. As they began to reach its edge, the great James River rolled into view past the receding highrises and towers. Even the mighty James had frozen over in the frigid climate, and the mark of hoofprints and skate lines could be seen criss-crossing its surface.

Now the two were approaching the suburbs which comprised most of Trottingham proper. The downtown, while a modern miracle, was still only a small blip on the city’s landscape. Far out into the distance, extending to the base of the mountains, lay thousands of houses and small business in a chaotic, jumbled grid. Nearly every house was darkened, and the night around them was quiet.

“So, this guy. Mister Something,” Chase began.

“His first name is Roger,” Silent said.

“Right, Roger. If he’s a nopony, how’d he get so well connected? How can he afford all those guards?”

“We’re answering that question tonight.”

“Okay,” Chase said, trailing off before adding a hasty, “How?”

“We’re breaking into his house.”

Cloudchaser’s wing missed a stroke and she lost a bit of altitude. Silent didn’t seem to notice her quickly flapping to catch up.

“Seriously? Silent, have you gone nuts? What if we get caught?” Chase demanded.

“We won’t. His goons are protecting him tonight. He has twelve, and there were ten at the show tonight.”

“Huh,” Chase said, “I saw eight.”

“There were two more running interference ahead of him. That means that Lily and Alabaster are guarding his house tonight.”

“You know their names? How?”

Silent shrugged again. “I have my ways.”

Cloudchaser was about to protest when Silent decided to elaborate.

“I heard them taking roll-call last night. Are you happy now?”

“Yes. Wait - how did you know I was going to ask you?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” Silent replied, “and you don’t make a secret out of what you’re feeling.”

Cloudchaser sighed.

Below them now, they passed a cut in the grid of Trottingham. Once a great stone wall in the time when the city was little more than a fort guarding the trading routes of the James river, it had now weathered into a string of rounded boulders that nopony could be troubled enough to haul away. Beyond lay the homes of the rich and the secretive.

Messerschmitt’s mansion, though no larger than its immediate peers, nonetheless seemed so much the greater for its position. The grounds around it were the size of a hoofball field, complete with a tall metal fence and ringed with evergreen trees. In the midst of that stood the grand house: cold, dark, and isolated.

Silent and Chase, as usual, perched themselves some distance away from their target. Chase did it herself this time, without needing any prompting from Silent. Before she could feel any pride at the display, a passing snowflake tickled her nose just enough to set off a sneeze. Chase fought hard to keep the sudden burst at bay, presumably looking like a fool in the process. Fortunately, Silent had not been looking, and had ignored the wheezing coming from her friend; her eyes and ears were trained on the looming building across the hedge.

“What are we waiting for?” Chase whispered.

“There are no lights on in the house. I want to know where the two guards are.”

As Chase waited next to Silent for something to move, her thoughts drifted back to a time when she had been much younger. Strangely enough, it had been Flitter that had dragged her into that mess, too.

Flitter had become enamored with firebugs, an insect much like the ladybug which would glow on certain nights in the spring. They would cluster together during some arcane mating ritual and create a ballet of lights that lasted the whole night, if you stayed awake long enough to watch. Of course, the display could only be seen if you were quiet and still, otherwise you’d scare the firebugs off. So, they’d hold their breath and wait, until they’d see the faint outlines in the dark behind the schoolhouse.

Thinking of those days brought Silent back to the front of her thoughts. Was she reminiscing as well? If she was, there was no sign of it, merely an unending stare at the house across the way. Perhaps that focus was her special talent.

Silent’s cutie-mark was a scroll. Many ponies had the same mark, of course, usually authors or accountants. Silent fit neither description, yet the mark was there for all to see. What did it mean? How had she gotten it? Chase had never asked, and she wasn’t certain that Silent would have told her.

Cloudchaser hung her head. It kept coming back to this, every time her thoughts went one way they cycled right back. She had agreed to help Silent, to put her trust in a pony who really was a stranger, and she still had no idea why Silent was helping her.

“Silent?”

“Hush!” Silent said. Her eyes were still locked on the house across the street.

“Why did you come when I sent that letter?”

Silent let out a low hiss and said, “Somepony’s coming.”

Two figures had departed the mansion and were making their way down the partially snowed-over walkway. Chase tried to see who it was, but the moonlight was nearly totally obscured from the cloud cover, and the hedges guarded the figures from the light of the street lamps.

The grinding of metal on stone signalled the aged gate’s permission of the ponies. They were talking to one another, and quite loudly, considering the late hour.

“... what place is going to be open at this time of night?” asked the female, presumably, ‘Lily’.

“I know the owner. He’s in the shop, cleaning up, right now,” replied Alabaster.

“He’s gonna be mad if you ask for food after hours.”

“Nah, I help him do the dishes afterwards. It’s cool, I’ve done this before.”

The voices continued as they made their way down the darkened street, leaving behind a trail of two narrow sets of hoofprints. Silent remained motionless until they were well out of both sight and earshot.

“Are they just leaving the place unguarded?” Chase asked.

Silent flared her wings and leaped into the air, clearing the trees around the lot before dipping to skim the snowy earth. Chase shook her head and followed shortly after, feeling her courage falter as each beat of her wings brought her closer to the building.

Her nerves intensified as the mansion loomed. Sudden visions of a throng of guardsponies bearing down on them the moment they kicked in a window or picked a lock danced in front of her eyes. It was all she could do to keep from screaming as she landed behind Silent in front of the main entrance.

Silent was examining the door, giving Chase enough time to calm herself down. She thought that being rational would keep the fear away. Nopony knew they were there. The nearest guard station must be a twenty-minute flight away. The guards weren’t going to come back early. Everything would be fine.

“We’re going in through the front door?” Cloudchaser asked. She felt her heart slow and her chest relax when she distracted herself
with talking.

“Keeps the suspicion off.”

“Huh?”

Silent did not take her eyes from the door’s lock, and kept her voice in a measured monotone.

“Anypony can use the door, only a pegasus can use the windows. The more suspects Messerschmitt has when he finds out we were here, the better.”

“But he knows it’s us, right?”

Silent shook her head. “Can’t rise as high as he has without making a lot of enemies.”

Silent pushed the door and it opened effortlessly. Either it hadn’t been locked, or Silent had picked it with that impenetrable stare of hers. Either way, the way forward was clear.

“At least it’ll be warm. I’m freezing out here,” Cloudchaser said.

Chapter 5

The foyer of Messerschmitts grand mansion was every bit as freezing as the outside. Cloudchaser felt herself shiver subconsciously; the expectation of warmth, now dashed, froze more than any amount of snow or ice.

Silent, now a ghost’s shadow in the blackness within, stopped and began fumbling. A moment leader, a light burst forth to illuminate the room ahead. She produced another flashlight from her saddlebag and passed it to Cloudchaser, who mutely accepted it. Now that she saw what was ahead, she felt herself struck dumb.

The architecture and construction of the house had been top-notch, at least when it had been purchased. Black and white tiling made of authentic marble lined the floors, meeting great pillars stretching up to the ceiling. Wholly unnecessary for support, it gave them room an ancient feel of strength and intimidation.

As if to spite the mood of the ponies of yore, a couch had been planted firmly in the middle of the room; next to it, a barrel, the top sawn off, and the lingering smell of smoke. Food packaging and miscellaneous garbage littered the floor, along with ashes and bits of paint that had peeled off the walls. Nopony had cleaned the place in some time.

“Well,” Chase remarked as she took it in, “I certainly wasn’t expecting this.”

“Interesting,” Silent said.

Beyond the makeshift campsite in the middle of the room lay two grand oaken doors, complete with brass handles the size of a pony’s head. Their mute counterpoint to the garbage and filth that had accumulated in the surprisingly sparse, chilled room. Even though a layer of dust had caked over them, they still glinted in the light of Chase and Silent’s tools.

Across the handles of both sets of doors were wooden boards, barring them from the outside. Silent paid little attention to the curious furniture arrangement that presented in front of her, and instead took to studying the portals.

“I’m serious, Silent. I was expecting - well, someplace livable,” Chase said.

“Forget that, focus on what’s important. These doors are coated in dust.”

“You know they’re barred too? Don’t tell me you didn’t see that.”

“Yes,” Silent said, “and they’re coated in dust. They’ve been barred for a long time. Why?”

“This just keeps getting worse,” Cloudchaser said.

Silent prepared to heft the board out from one of the doors as Cloudchaser gasped.

“Wait! Don’t - ”

As if suddenly realizing she was in the midst of breaking and entering, she held her hooves up to her mouth. Her flashlight arced up to the ceiling, leaving only a view of Silent as she struggled to detach the board for a moment. As it slid free, she discarded it and let it clatter against the ground.

An echo bounced through the room and into the house. Nothing stirred within.

“Uh, Silent?” Cloudchaser said, trying to keep back the quiver in her voice, “Don’t you want to, uh, maybe investigate a bit here first?”

“No.”

“You sure? This is plenty weird. We could spend all night figuring out why the guards set up camp in here. Right?”

“Chase, this is no time for fear. Focus.”

Cloudchaser swallowed loudly as Silent pushed on the door. She kept her own flashlight pointed at the ground in front of her, letting Silent’s illuminate the room beyond.

Still frozen, still quiet, and every bit as dusty as the brass finish had been, the room beyond at least had soft carpets. Silent wasted no time entering as Chase argued with herself yet again. Finding yourself alone in a creepy mansion, being worse than being further in said mansion, pushed her to follow just after Silent.

The room was a two-story affair, with a grand staircase leading up and ornate railings along the balcony above. Images of griffons had been carved onto the bannisters at certain intervals, and tapestries worth thousands of bits hung over the walls. Much of the imagery was of griffons, very few of ponies, and all of them in triumphant poses. Scenes of battles from the past or of armies marching with heads held high dominated the room as Silent and Cloudchaser swept their lights over it.

Silent kept the pace up, stepping in and looking for - well, whatever it was she was looking for. Cloudchaser idly followed along behind her, forgetting her nervousness in favour of curiosity for the sublime interior decorations. Silent stopped abruptly, turned around, and trod back to the door. She shut it quietly and shot a look at Cloudchaser, who returned a sheepish grin.

“When possible,” Silent said, “leave things as you found them. We’ll need to replace that board on the way out.”

“Okay,” Chase said. Silent wordlessly went back towards the stairwell.

There were dozens of rooms on this floor, matched by dozens more on the next. A hallway ran further off into the darkness, so long that Chase’s light could not see the end. A curious feeling overtook her, that of hopelessness. She didn’t even know what they were looking for, and now she felt they’d never find it.

“Silent?” she asked.

“Hm.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Evidence,” Silent said.

“Of what?”

“I want to know what he did to Flitter, how he did it, who helped him, and why. We find that, then we can leave. Understand?”

Cloudchaser nodded. Silent had already started towards one of the doorways at the rear of the room, just under the stairs. She pushed it open, letting loose a cloud of freezing dust as she did so.

Beyond was a room that had been stripped bare, except the carpet. Just beyond the windows lay the endless blackness of the night outside. Within the room, everything was gone. Paint peeled from the walls and some assorted papers and trash remained, but no furniture. An emptied out closet promised no clues, and Silent shut the door without entering.

“What happened here?” Cloudchaser asked.

Silent approached the next door, and found it in somewhat better condition. It had been opened recently: a contradiction that was not lost on her. Whatever was inside would yield some insight.

This room was in the same layout as the other: small, square, and with windows in roughly the same positions. It was properly furnished; those furnishings, however, were all overturned.

Cloudchaser let out a gasp when she saw the state of the place, and Silent wondered just how often a pony could be surprised in one night. She shook her head and stepped within. This time, Cloudchaser closed the door as she followed.

This place had, at one point, been a study. The walls had bookshelves on them, though at least one-third of the books had been unceremoniously shunted onto the floor, with the rest laying at random angles over each other on the shelves. There had been a reading desk in a position that could clearly be seen by its indentations on the carpet, but that desk had been catapulted across the room and now slumped against the far wall. The chair or sitting pillow which may have matched it was nowhere to be found.

“You think maybe somepony robbed the place?” Cloudchaser asked.

“No broken windows, no signs of forced entry, and it doesn’t begin to explain that campsite outside. No, this wasn’t a robbery. Plus, robbers are usually after valuables, not smashing up rooms.”

“Then what?” Chase asked.

“Vandals are unlikely, particularly given Messerschmitts status and the neighborhood,” Silent said. She held a hoof up to her mouth and said nothing further.

Cloudchaser idly wandered into the room, checking the bookshelves. She was no forensics expert, though, and had no idea what to make of anything. She picked up one of the books and opened it, without checking the title, to a random page.

‘Let me out. It’s in here with me let me out. I don’t want to be in here. It’s too tight. Why won’t you just let me out? I’m scared. It’s cold. Let me out, please?’

Cloudchaser wondered what kind of book she had just picked up. A murder mystery? A psychological thriller? The rest of the page was just the same thing: a protagonist wanting to be let out of something. The previous page was just more of that, too, and the page previous that. She flipped through the other pages, all the way back to the beginning of the book, and found that they were all like that.

Confused, she shut the book and looked at the title. ‘I don’t want to be in here please let’ was the heading, with no author listed. The title ran off the right edge and had been drawn on with pencil.

“Silent?” Cloudchaser asked, holding up the book. She saw that Silent was reading another one which had the same sort of scrawled authorship.

“Seems like a paranoid's journal,” Silent muttered as she looked up, “constant referral to being trapped, being held down, and being punished. Given the state of the writing, I’d say somepony wrote it on top of a blank journal book.”

“This one’s the same story,” Cloudchaser said as she passed her book to Silent. Silent gave it a brief look before nodding. Cloudchaser let herself smile, but it faded after Silent either failed to get the joke, or didn’t care enough to dignify it.

From somewhere deep within the mansion, a loud crash caused Chase’s hair to stand up on end. She nearly screamed but caught herself at the last moment. Silent merely turned in the direction of the noise.

“What was that?” Cloudchaser asked, nearly dropping her flashlight. Her legs were shaking hard, and she sat down to try to calm herself.

“Don’t know. Let’s go find out,” Silent said.

“What?”

“I don’t have time for nerves, Chase.”

“But - “

“I also don’t have time to argue,” Silent said, and she started for the door.

Cloudchaser ran to catch up, nearly running into Silent’s flank just outside the study’s door. Silent was looking up towards the second floor.

“I’m not sure if it came from up there or from below. We should split up,” Silent said.

“No!”

“Hm,” Silent said, “You’re probably right. We’ll cover less ground, but it’ll be easier to subdue an attacker if there’s two of us.”

“That is not what I meant!”

“I know,” Silent said. Without waiting, she sauntered off towards the source of the noise, somewhere down the hallway on the other side of the building. Once again, Cloudchaser took a deep breath and followed.

Silent’s light danced across door after door as she went further into the hallway. Paintings of famous or important ponies and griffons lined the edges, along with what looked like framed newspaper articles. Without time to stop and examine them, Silent merely took note of the overall themes. She couldn’t recognize any of the names she happened to glance at, only that they were wearing clothes and hairstyles that were long outdated.

The door at the far end of the hall was double wide and contained metal buffers to be pressed against. To the left, the hallway continued further, and the sound had been coming from somewhere along. Silent was not certain exactly where it come from now, but it’d have to be within a short distance of where they were now. She pressed herself against the double doors and waited.
This time, Silent signalled for Chase to halt as she stood there, listening. She paused briefly to confirm that there was no sound coming from beyond the doors before she dared to open them.

The smell of an abandoned kitchen assaulted her nose as she proceeded. Curiously, it was not the stench of rotten food but of decaying cleaning supplies. The distinct aroma of expired bleaches which had eaten into their containers and spilled onto the floor was overwhelming, and it was not long before she saw the stains leaking out from the cupboards that ran around the edges of the room.

Even stranger still was the state of the place. While it had been ransacked to some degree, food containers were still in the shelves and cupboards, just every single cupboard had been opened. Some had had their wood panelling torn off and thrown aside, others lay ajar without any notable sign of damage.

Silent’s eyes locked on the fridge and the cabinet immediately adjacent to it. She trotted over and saw that her suspicions were correct: everything in these cabinets was non-perishable. This particular one had salted peanuts in an air-tight container and canned carrots, while the others had all sorts of jams and hermetically sealed dried fruits.

“Chase,” Silent said, “I know you’re not going to like this, but you need to go on ahead.”

“Silent, I - “

“I’ll be right behind you. I need you to find whatever caused that noise before it gets away, but I also need to check this room in greater detail.”

Cloudchaser grimaced and growled.

“Don’t engage it,” Silent said, “Just find out where it is and stay quiet. I’ll only be a minute.”

“Fine,” Cloudchaser said with a bitter note. She found it surprisingly difficult to leave the kitchen, but Silent was not in the mood to argue and had already busied herself checking through the cabinets.

Silent did a quick check at the door as Cloudchaser left. Not seeing her light beyond it any more, she grabbed the jar of peanuts and wrenched the top open.

She poured the peanuts into her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and repeated. She gasped for air in between gulps, before sending more nuts down. Once the peanuts were exhausted, she tore open a can of dried peaches, then one of apricots, then a jar of raspberry jelly. She devoured every one completely and as fast as she could.

Satisfied, she opened the fridge and tore into it. Most of its contents were expired, but somepony had left several bottles of water and soda which were still good. Strangely, there were also six cans of opened paint in the fridge, lending it a metallic smell. Silent made note of that as she guzzled through the water bottles.

Silent shook her head a few times and wiped her mouth off. A quick search of the rest of the kitchen yielded nothing of particular note that she had not already seen, save one: the stench of cleaning supplies had been caused by somepony mixing the chemicals together and storing them in plastic vessels, including emptied soda bottles. She added it to the long list of clues and quickly departed after Cloudchaser.

Cloudchaser had made it halfway down the hallway before she had stopped. She waited patiently when she heard Silent approaching and bobbed her head up and down slowly.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“Clues. You?”

Cloudchaser’s hoof was shaking, causing her light to flicker wildly across the wall. She merely shook her head.

“You’re doing great, Chase. You’ve been very brave so far,” Silent said, though her face did not brighten and her voice remained low.

“I just keep telling myself that there’s nothing in here. I mean, the sound was probably just the house settling, right?”

“Probably,” Silent said.

“Yeah,” Cloudchaser said, smiling weakly.

Silent abruptly grabbed Cloudchaser and threw her backwards. Chase went limp and thudded against the floor. Her eyes closed, she threw her forelegs over her head and lay prone as Silent stood over her.

A long minute passed as Chase refused to breathe. She could feel the air disturbance of Silent standing over her, watching for something.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“Something moved,” Silent whispered back. Cloudchaser felt her shaking resume and made no effort to stop it.

Eventually, the tension in the air passed and Silent relaxed. She prodded Cloudchaser, waiting for her to stand up again. Chase, however, was not moving. She leaned up against the wall and kept shaking.

“Oh no, oh no ohnohonohono,” she muttered.

“Chase, we need to keep moving. I can see an office just over there and I want to check it.”

“There’s something in here and it’s gonna get us. They boarded the place up to keep it in here, and now we’re in here with it.”

“Cloudchaser, I need you to focus,” Silent growled.

“I want to get out of here.”

“Me too, but I can feel we’re close to something big. Now get up.”

Silent quickly shined her light down both paths in the hall, hoping to surprise whatever shape she had seen in the darkness. Her light caught nothing save the peeling paint of the disused corridor, and the partially opened door that was marked ‘Office’.

Cloudchaser did not move. Instead, she let out a low whimper.

Silent raised a hoof and brought it hard across Chase’s face. A single tear leaked from Chase’s eye and she stood up wordlessly.

The two slowly made their way down the hall, with Cloudchaser taking one step at a time and nervously looking over her shoulder every few seconds. Silent stayed in the lead, likewise looking for any errant shadows. She hadn’t seen exactly what was in the darkness, or what it could have been, but she had seen it in the middle of the hallway before it moved. It hadn’t gone into a room, or further away. It had just been there, and then not.

It took several minutes to make it to the office door, during which there were no signs of trouble. Silent waited at the door for Chase to shamble in, then, with one last look at the corridor, entered and shut the door behind her. She grabbed a nearby chair and propped it against the doorknob, for all the good that would do.

The door had a glass window on top where a name had once been written in ink. The office had presumably been in use at some point, as the name slot had been filled in with a piece of paper which was now somewhere along the assorted trash filling the room.

Like most of the rest of the building, the furniture in here was in varying states of decay and destruction. Papers were scattered all over the floor, books and binders had been tossed from their filing cabinets, and then the cabinets themselves were turned over and left.

Now, Silent was hyper-alert. She scanned every corner of the room for signs of another presence and found none. She waited for a moment and heard only the sound of Chase’s quietly rattling against a wall, and of the wind blowing against the window on the far side of the room.

Cloudchaser let out a gasp as the wind picked up suddenly. The blowing against the glass had made a howling noise, which died a moment later as the wind slackened. Cloudchaser had begun shivering and her teeth chattering. She seemed to be trying to speak, but nothing coherent came out. Silent pushed her until she stood again, taking her further away from the door. Silent left her propped against one of the cabinets while she searched.

Finally, this room gave some real evidence she could use. Everything was dated from January of that year or earlier, putting a solid abandonment time of eight months. Most of the papers here were of various business records, but it was nothing surprising to Silent. Messerschmitt had purchased a controlling interest in the Equestrian Aeronautics Corporation around that time, and most of the documents were records of his various hirings, firings, and dealings.

Putting aside the conventional documents, Silent turned to one of the binders littering the floor. This one was full of tax records concerning Messerschmitts purchasing of the house they were currently in, plus several other properties around Trottingham he had bought. Silent pulled a few choice papers out and stuffed them in her saddlebag.

Cloudchaser seemed to be calming down now, but she still hadn’t moved and she hadn’t taken her flashlight off the door since Silent had set her down. Suddenly, she clicked the light off and held her head in her hooves. Silent briefly checked to make sure she was okay, and found that Chase merely wanted to leave.

“Please hurry up,” she said. Silent nodded and resumed searching.

A few more uninteresting finds later, and Silent finally got what she had been searching for. A huge dumping of funds, stock options, and EAC shares into Messerschmitts name by a group called the Sons of Equestria. The bank record for it stood out among the other assorted papers as it was printed on a light-blue parchment instead of conventional white copy paper. This was everything she needed to really get to the bottom of this case, and she turned to Chase, ready to tell her the good news.

Cloudchaser’s eyes were focused on the doorway. Her mouth was agape, and she could not even muster the courage to turn her flashlight on. As Silent looked at her, she said one thing.

“It’s watching us.”

Silent swung her flashlight to the door, exposing a pony-esque silhouette just beyond it. At that exact moment, as the light stung its eyes, it struck the door.

The wooden chair buckled and creaked, but did not give way quite yet. A crack propagated along one of the legs and Silent ran a quick calculation. She darted towards Cloudchaser and pulled her up.

Another strike came against the door as Silent dragged Cloudchaser towards the far end of the room. Cloudchaser did not move or resist, she merely kept her eyes trained on the door. As Silent reached the far end of the room, she heard another strike and felt a blast of wooden splinters as the chair gave way.

Silent hefted Cloudchaser in one motion and threw her at the window, sending Chase careening through and scattering hundreds of glass shards everywhere. The dozens of small cuts she suffered snapped her out of her funk, and she bolted upright before taking to the air. Silent did not even cast a look back as she leaped out the window afterwards, soaring into the sky as well.

Now a hundred yards up, she chanced to look back at the broken window to get a glimpse of their pursuer. However, there was nopony at the window, and no tracks in the snow outside. Cloudchaser had flown halfway across the yard now and was probably not going to come back at any cost, so Silent drifted down slowly and landed in the snow across from the window.
She daintily approached the open portal, peering in to try to see what was inside. Nothing moved, nothing attacked. As she got closer she stepped over the shards of glass that had been scattered everywhere and could see the whole of the office before her. Nothing stirred.

Silent shook her head and took off, heading around the front of the house. When she arrived at the guards camp, she wasted no time replacing the board that they had dislodged on their way in, and then leaving immediately.

She had what she needed, and had a new lead. Whatever had been in Messerschmitt’s house could stay there, for all she cared. It was his bodyguards’ problem now.

“And?”

His muted guest stood in the corner of his hotel room. No further words needed be spoken here, the mere presence of his visitor told him all he needed to know.

It would work out better than expected. Indeed, this candidate would be the best of all the ones he had found so far. Indeed, perhaps too good. So good that his gift would only dampen the reality. This one was something he could not improve. It needed to be caught, held, and preserved.

“Seal the breach,” he said.

At that, his guest bowed and exited the room, heading downstairs to fulfill his orders.

He allowed himself to smile, a broad glistening grin that stretched from ear to ear. Everything had gone his way now, there was no way he could lose or even be slowed. It was so wonderful, that he wondered why he had not done this sooner.

Chapter 6

Winter had now reached Ponyville, a part of Equestria that couldn’t be further from civilization. As Silent soared over the fields that gleamed white and rolled to the horizon, she ran over the expected conversation with Cloudchaser again and again.

It had been a week since they had fled from Messerschmitt’s mansion. Silent had caught up with her and summarily sent her home, stating that they would need time for more research. That time had passed, and Silent had what she thought she would need. What she did not have was any assurance that Chase would be keen to resume the case.

Ponyville appeared as Silent crested the last hill. The thatched-roof houses of this part of the world still showed some of their characteristic bright yellow straw sticking out past the icicles clinging to their edges. It was quiet, too; country towns always were.

Cloudchaser’s house was a one-story building towards the north end of the village, which she shared with Flitter and their roommate. Though Silent had never actually visited Ponyville, she had instead cross-referenced a map with the city directory on record in Canterlot.

Silent landed, she paid no attention to the various ponies in the town, going about their days. A few smiled. One waved. Silent did not return the favour. Ponyville was not a large town, and finding Cloudchaser’s residence took only a few minutes.

She could not decide which approach to take, though begging or pleading were stricken from the list immediately. Perhaps it didn’t matter. Standing around was not going to help. Silent pushed on the door and went in.

The front door led directly to the living room. Silent’s entry surprised Flitter, who had been reclining on the couch when she entered. She leaped to attention as Silent strode in, stunned for just long enough for Silent to make her way into the kitchen.

Cloudchaser was within, sitting at the table with a plate of mashed potatoes. Silent took note of the generally clean state of the kitchen compared to the filthy state of the table, as well as a total dearth of cutlery.

“Silent! I - you didn’t knock, did you? Most ponies knock,” Chase said.

“I need to talk to you.”

Cloudchaser arched both eyebrows and looked down at her food. She looked back up abruptly and cocked her head from side to side as the characters in her imaginary play spoke.

“Let’s try this again. Ahem - Hello Silent, how are you? Oh I’m fine. Got in a bit late, sorry to interrupt your dinner. Oh that’s okay, I love having friends over!”

Silent waited for Chase to continue. Chase bent down and took a bite of the potatoes. She frowned as she did so, and put more salt on them, but did not speak.

“Are you done?” Silent asked.

“No, I just started. Sit down, would you like some? I made extra.”

“I wanted to know if you’re willing to help continue the investigation.”

Cloudchaser stood up and walked over to one of the cupboards near her fridge. She opened it and produced a paper towel, which she used to quite deliberately wipe her mouth off. She strode back to the table, sat down, and placed the towel next to her plate. She squared herself to the table, positioning herself just so, and cocked her head at Silent.

“You look hungry. Please, sit.”

Silent kept her face flat and maneuvered to the table.

“Oh Flitter,” Chase said patronizingly, “would you be a dear and get our guest some tea?”

Silent turned to see Flitter’s head stick around the corner from the living room. She made no secret of her displeasure, but her face flashed a brief image of gratitude once her eyes met Silent’s.

“Sure thing, sis. What kind does she like? We have green tea, lemon, and get it yourself,” Flitter said as she disappeared behind the corner again.

“Nice girl,” said Chase, “always such a treat to know her.”

“Chase, I -” Silent said, but Cloudchaser cut her off.

“Oh what a bother! I’ve gone and forgotten to set a place for you. Give me a moment, would you? How inconsiderate.”

Silent stood and marched to the living room. Chase stood and ran after her, tipping her chair as she did so.

“Wait, hey! I was just messing with you!” Chase shouted.

Flitter had resumed her position on the couch, but was now staring with confusion as Silent bore down on her. Chase paused in the threshold to the living room and watched the proceedings.

Silent approached from the side, and Flitter instinctively began to recoil. She shifted her body to sit on the opposite end of the couch to get away. Reaching the edge, Flitter jumped off and backed towards the far wall. When her flank bumped it and Silent showed no signs of stopping, her eyes opened wide.

“What the hay? What’s gotten into you?” Flitter demanded.

With that, Chase finally intervened and pushed Silent aside. She took up the ground between them and cast an accusing glare at Silent. Silent returned it, but seeing that Chase was not backing down, reached into her saddlebag and produced a familiar yellow gem. The moment she saw it, Chase understood, and allowed Silent to proceed.

Flitter’s eyes widened and her face twisted itself into a silent scream. She could not take her eyes off the gem, no matter how much she wanted to. To briefly test this response, Silent moved the gem to one side and watched as Flitter’s eyes followed it exactly. She observed dispassionately as each of Flitter’s legs independently tried to push her away, and that each one stopped before it could make any real impact.

Satisfied, Silent pressed the gem into Flitter’s chest. Flitter’s body relaxed, causing her head to sag to one side and her back to arch.

“Hold this to your chest,” Silent said.

Flitter held up a hoof to hold the gem. Silent withdrew.

“Sit down,” Silent said.

Flitter sat down.

“Stand.”

Flitter stood up.

“Run.”

Flitter bolted forward, going as fast she could running awkwardly on three legs.

“Stop.”

Flitter stopped cold.

Each instruction bit into Chase’s psyche harder than the last. She had tried to ignore it, tried to forget, tried to tell herself it was a dream. She had done everything she could to not think about the winery and what must have transpired before she had found Flitter. Every one of those repressed thoughts came roaring back as Flitter mechanically obeyed every command put to her.

“Silent,” Chase said at last, “That’s enough. Make her stop.”

“Drop the gem,” Silent said.

Flitter dropped the gem and her body immediately tensed up. She recoiled and backed away from the gem’s resting place, slamming into the wall opposite from Silent.

Silent trotted over to the gem and returned it to her saddlebag. Flitter finally relaxed, slumping against the wall. She was dazed but otherwise unharmed. Silent now turned to Cloudchaser.

“We don’t have time for self doubt. You said you wanted to help, and I need your help. Are you going to see this through to the end?”

“What did you do? How? Did you figure out how that thing works?”

“Not quite.”

Silent suddenly reached into the saddlebag again and pulled the gem out. She looked at it, then up at Chase. Without warning, she thrust it at Chase’s chest. Cloudchaser could not get out of the way at the time, and she winced in preparation.

Chase’s chest tightened as she prepared for whatever awful magic coursed through the gem to do to her what it had done to Flitter. She made every imagined effort she could to prepare, vowing herself to not fall victim to the gem’s enchantments.

Yet, nothing happened. She felt the same as ever, except now with a cool, smoothed stone pressed against her fur coat. She nervously looked down at the gem, then back up at Silent.

“Sit down,” Silent said.

Cloudchaser did not sit, she just looked back down at the gem.

“Well, I thought that would work,” Chase said.

“It’s not the gem, it’s the pony,” Silent said. Now she turned to Flitter, who had recovered and was very much enraged.

“You! You - “ Flitter said, stumbling over her own words, “What is wrong with you? You knew that’d happen! I told you I hated that thing! Keep it away from me!”

“This?” Silent asked, holding up the gem. Flitter bent her head back and her eyes lit up with fear.

Flitter only nodded, suddenly unable to speak.

Silent idly tossed the gem into the air. It landed softly on the floor, and she smashed it with her shoe. Flitter and Chase both let out a gasp.

Flitter need a moment to process what had happened. The relief came first, but anger followed soon after, directed more at the shards of crystal than at Silent. “Good riddance!”.

Chase, however, found herself unable to take her eyes off the pieces. “Should you really have smashed that?”

Silent frowned. “I got everything I needed out of it. It was just a piece of polished glass.”

“Glass? Really?” Chase asked incredulously.

“Yes, just glass, with dye in it to appear yellow. That’s not what was important. What’s important is where he got it, or how he made it. Those are what I don’t know yet.”

“Well,” Chase said, “how are you going to find that out?”

“We.”

Cloudchaser frowned as she met Silent’s stony gaze. Her face was eternally flat and relentless in its dishumour, shed only in final grip of victory over a foe. Hearing her say ‘We’ caused Chase to wilt.

Silent took a step towards Chase. “I need your help.”

“What? Why?”

“You wouldn’t understand even if I explained it to you. All I can tell you is that I need you for this, and you know I’m not lying.”

“Are you lonely?”

Silent scowled. “Never.”

“Then why?” Chase demanded, hysteria rising in her voice, “Why me? I can’t fight. I’m not some super-detective. I got scared by a shadow. What the hay do you need me for?”

“You can do things I can’t,” Silent replied.

“Like what? What can I do that you can’t? What makes me so special?”

Silent sighed. “I told you, it’s no use to explain it. I’ve tried it before. You just need to trust me, trust in me.”

Chase turned to Flitter, who was gingerly making her way towards the shards of glass on the carpet. Seeing her seize up, dancing like a puppet on invisible strings, kindled a fire deep within Cloudchaser.

Messerschmitt. He was rich, powerful, connected. He was using his power to hurt ponies and who was going to stand up to him? Who was going to stop him from doing what he did to Flitter to somepony else? Could she really run and hide in Ponyville and just let him get away with that?

The fire within burned and brightened, consuming the fear that had wrapped around her that night in the frozen mansion. Even if her courage failed her when faced with something she couldn’t understand, her desire for justice would not.

Maybe that’s what she wants, Chase thought. Maybe that’s what she sees in me. It could have been many things. Silent could simply be lonely and be after somepony to share the burden with, even if she’d never admit it. It could be some promise made long ago or some other purpose. None of that mattered anymore. No more getting scared. No more running. Messerschmitt would be stopped, and Cloudchaser was going to be there when it happened.

“I’m in.”

“Magic?” Flitter asked.

The three had seated themselves around the kitchen table. Chase merely stared at her leftover potatoes, too excited to finish them.

Outside, the sun glowed red and gold as it slid towards the horizon. Night would be here soon, which seemed to have Silent anxious to leave.

“Magic is the only candidate I have left,” Silent said.

“Couldn’t you get the gem checked for that?” Cloudchaser asked.

“I did. I went to three different sorcerers and they all told me the thing was worthless. Not a drop of magic in it.”

“But how?”

Flitter perked up. “It’s something worse than magic.”

Both Silent and Chase turned to look at her, causing her to wilt under their combined glare. She just shook her head slowly. It was something she knew by instinct, burnt into her in a way she’d rather not discuss. Her eyes told the story better than words could.

“Could it be something that a sorcerer wouldn’t be able to detect?” Chase asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know much about magic, but my contacts certainly did. What could be both undetectable and still make Flitter act like a trained dog?”

Flitter raised her head for a moment. Even if she was powerless, she still felt ashamed.

“Great,” Chase said, “So we’ve got a whole lot of nothing.”

“Not quite,” Silent said.

Cloudchaser arched one of her eyebrows. “I’m listening.”

“I’ve been looking into some of the leads I got from the documents at his house. I checked out the previous owner, a griffon who went insane and had Messerschmitt listed as the manager of his estate.”

“Huh,” Chase said, “just like that?”

“Thing is, he had never met Messerschmitt before that, and never showed signs of mental instability. Everything I pulled up on him said that he was a kindhearted, well-to-do fellow who liked his privacy.”

“And now?”

“He’s in a padded cell in Witchbane Mental Hospital outside of Trottingham. Jibbers to himself a lot, and bangs his head on the walls for hours at a time.”

“Ugh,” Cloudchaser said.

“He’s not the only one to have a sudden change of heart. Have you ever heard of the Sons of Equestria?”

“Hey!” Flitter said, causing Chase and Silent to both take note. “Those were the guys we saw in the hotel lobby! Remember, sis?”

“Oh yeah, they gave us a flyer,” Cloudchaser said, “Which seems kinda weird. We told them we were just visiting.”

Silent held a hoof to her mouth and focused for a moment. “Given their M.O. it makes sense. They’re a political organization, and they’re looking to expand. You don’t still have the flyer, do you?”

“No,” Chase said, “I threw it out.”

“I’m wondering why they gave it to you in the first place. Seems kind of odd to give it to a mare like you.”

Chase frowned angrily. “What the hay is that supposed to mean? I am perfectly political! I know all about politics!”

Flitter just shook her head. Cloudchaser made a pouting face.

“That’s not what I meant,” Silent said, “They don’t think very highly of ladies. One of their key platforms is traditional gender-roles.”

Chase and Flitter exchanged a surprised look.

“Traditional? What does that mean?” Chase asked.

“Beats me,” Silent said, “Equestria is a matriarchy. It always has been. However, the Sons seem to believe a mare’s proper place is at home caring for foals. Their membership is composed entirely of colts and the occasional, presumably unwilling, wife. Unless…”

Silent turned to Flitter. “Unless they were casing you.”

“Huh?” Flitter asked. She exchanged a worried look with her sister.

“Something that you did marked you as a target. I don’t know what, but what if the whole point of passing out flyers to tourists was to find ponies they could experiment on? If we find some canvassers, we can find some answers.”

“Woah woah woah,” Flitter said, preparing to back up. Before she could get further away, Chase wrapped a foreleg around her and drew her closer. Flitter pushed for a second, then let herself be held. After a brief hesitation, she turned and buried her face in her sister’s coat.

“I don’t think she’s going back to Trottingham,” Chase said.

“That’s fine,” Silent said, “You’ve done enough. I just have one last question.”

“Anything,” Flitter said, revealing her face from Chase’s fur, “Ask away. If it helps take down these sick freaks, I’ll tell you anything.”

“When I told you to stand and sit and run,” Silent began, and Flitter pressed further into her sister’s coat. “Did you remember it?”

“Yeah… why?”

“You didn’t last time.”

“Maybe,” Chase said, “She was told to forget?”

Chapter 7

Whatever the faults of their Trottingham counterparts, Ponyville’s weather services were competent in every way. As Silent and Chase arrived at the train station, the two found it to be immaculately cleaned, and the tracks free of snow. Cloudchaser felt a tiny amount of pride in the presentation, quickly dashed by Silent’s ever dour demeanor.

“Hey,” Chase chanced to ask, “Why do you want to take the train all of the sudden?”

“I’d rather not discuss business in the air if I can avoid it.”

“Business?”

Silent glowered at Cloudchaser, prompting her to recoil. “Yes, business.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The seven o’clock to northern Equestria rumbled into the station, and soon two dozen ponies disembarked to the narrow platform. Every one of them was bleary-eyed and wandered away without so much as a peep. The only sounds they made were the scraping of their luggage on the wooden platform and the occasional groan.

As Chase boarded, she was taken aback by the wall-to-wall bodies occupying the train. The first car they approached was packed full of ponies of every size, shape, and color. Finding herself unable to find a seat, she led Silent to the next car forward, which was likewise packed.

“Doesn’t matter,” Silent grumbled, “let’s go to the back.”

“You mean the caboose?”

Silent had already turned and left, leaving Chase hurrying to catch up. She had to push and fight her way through the ponies who had decided to stand up to stretch their legs while the train had stopped. Silent remained several steps ahead of her all the way to the rear of the train, and only allowed Chase to catch up right before they were to cross to the caboose.

“Now, I’m not an engineer,” Chase said to a thoroughly uninterested Silent, “but don’t the rail workers hang out in the back?”

“No. It’s used for luggage. You’re thinking of EqRail lines. Friendship Express has a car second from the front for rail workers.”

“Oh good. I was hoping we’d get to sit in a dingy luggage compartment for four hours.”

Silent slid the door open and hopped across the connector to the caboose. The train gave its whistle and the engine began to come to life. This sent a jolt through the whole train, causing Chase to stumble and lose her balance as Silent fiddled with the door.

The door clicked and Silent pushed it open, disappearing inside as Cloudchaser made her way forward. It nearly swung into her flank as the train’s momentum pushed it closed, prompting a sour look in the general direction Silent had vanished in. A stack of suitcases were the only victims of her displeasure.

“Silent?” Chase called into the dark.

“Hurry up and get out of sight.”

Chase pushed through the cramped compartment, jumping and tripping over various bags and containers, none of which were properly secured. The random jostling combined with uneven terrain slowed Chase’s progress, requiring several minutes to travel only a few meters. Finally, Cloudchaser found Silent at the very back of the train, looking out the small glass window slotted into the door.

“Okay,” Cloudchaser said, “What do we need to talk about?”

“Not quite yet,” Silent replied.

She pushed a few of the darkened luggage containers around until she had assembled something halfway approaching a seat. Planting herself on it, Silent laid down and shut her eyes. Chase had expected Silent to say something. It slowly dawned on her that Silent was fast asleep.

“Uh, hello?”

“Silent?” she asked again.

“Rude, much? You drag me all the way back here and then just fall asleep?”

Silent’s prone form did not respond. Cloudchaser sighed. With any other pony, this would prompt more outrage. As it was, Silent’s mannerisms only aroused pity.

She was a pony who was willing to break windows and bones because a letter had come asking for help, but who couldn’t follow a simple courtesy of explaining herself to what was probably her only friend. Cloudchaser found herself unable to muster any anger over the many slights Silent had visited upon her. Instead, it produced apathy and boredom.

She sat in the freezing compartment, watching Ponyville recede into the distance, until the train took a corner, and the town was lost behind a wall of whitened trees. Lacking any interesting scenery, Cloudchaser turned her attention to the interior.

Bags. That was it, bags. She didn’t feel tired, but she had also neglected to bring something to read, or a coat. Very briefly, the idea of stealing a coat from the baggage around her came and went from her head. Despicable, that.

Silent would have done it in a heartbeat. Cloudchaser suddenly became worried that perhaps something was rubbing off on her.
Fighting with the random jostling of the train and the unstable luggage mountain, Cloudchaser made her way back towards the front. When she got there, the door had frozen shut, and required several agonizing minutes of discomfort to dislodge. Once the door had opened, a blast of chilled winter air hit her face and assailed her eyes. Blinded, Cloudchaser stumbled across the link and opened the next car’s entrance.

A wave of warm air passed over her, along with the awful scent of many unwashed ponies. Though there was precious little seating available, simply being warm again was enough, and Chase breathed a sigh of relief - through her mouth.

She searched for a few minutes before finding a seat. Before she could sit, another pony warded her off.

“My husband is in the washroom,” a kindly old mare explained.

“Oh, my mistake,” Chase said.

“Travelling alone?” the mare asked.

Chase gave a pained expression. “Not quite.”

“It’s all right dearie, you can have my seat. We’re getting off at the next station.”

“Oh,” Chase said, finding herself unable to contain a smile. “Thank you very much!”

“Don’t worry about it.”

The mare stood, gave another smile, and ambled her way out to the aisle. She waved down another old stallion and the two departed towards the front of the train without a look back.

Chase sat down in the spot and considered, for a moment, going to get Silent. She scratched that idea when she thought somepony might take her seat. Doubly unfortunate would be Silent’s reaction if she were woken unexpectedly. Instead, Cloudchaser reclined slightly and unfurled her wings. With a spare seat, she had enough space to check over her feather alignment.

That kept her attention for only a few moments before the boredom threatened to return. Normally, she’d ride the train with friends or Flitter, and spend the time talking to them. Even if Silent were here, she probably wouldn’t want to talk. Instead, she decided to listen in on the other conversations going on around her.

Chase let her ears glide over the various ponies, isolating threads among the background noise. Laughing, talking, a few hushed discussions coming from behind her. Nothing of note crossed her ears, until…

“Are we gonna make the big meeting tonight?”

“Yeah, the train will arrive at eleven.”

Cloudchaser snapped her head to zero in on the source of the sound. It was coming from somewhere ahead of her. She could not see the two colts who were talking, but she was intrigued nonetheless - the train reached Trottingham at eleven.

“So where are you from?”

“Trottingham, I was just visiting my brother in Los Pegasus.”

“Oh. I’m from Fillydelphia.”

“How’d a Fillydelphian come to join the Sons?”

Chase’s eyes widened. She had just thought it’d been a coincidence, but now she was alarmed.

Unfortunately, she lost the next part of the conversation as a foal somewhere in the car started crying. Chase stood up and strained her neck, trying to spot the two colts who had been speaking. She saw a sea of ponies, and sat back down in frustration.

Chase patiently waited for the crying to abate, yet the foal had far more stamina than most any other child she’d ever dealt with. Even when it stopped, she couldn’t recover the thread she had heard before and had to wait until the stop in Whinnychester, which was an hour away from Trottingham.

Chase finally spied her two targets as several ponies got up to leave the train. While the two were unassuming colts about her age, they both had baby-blue bands wrapped around their upper forelegs. They were obliviously chatting to one another while ponies pushed past them. Chase smirked to herself as a plan formed.

A few minutes later, the train lurched forward again. One of the colts had decided to look out the window while the other stared at his watch. Chase surveyed the scene and quickly hopped over the seat in front of her into an empty spot, closing the distance.

As she prepared to vault another seat to get even closer, she suddenly remembered that she and Silent were wanted mares. Being spotted by two members of the Sons of Equestria would sound a death knell.

Cloudchaser scanned the area for something she could use to hide, and found it in a discarded fashion magazine somepony had left when they got off the train. After a quick look to make sure nopony was paying attention, Chase scooted over and snatched the magazine.

Now with a clever disguise, she repositioned herself directly behind the colts and held the magazine up. The only thing better than eavesdropping on these colts was how awesome it was going to be to tell Silent what she had done!

“Hey,” one of the colts said. Cloudchaser calmed herself down and tried to block out the sound of her own heart rapidly beating.

“Yeah?”

“Did the elder ask you to bring your marefriend to the meeting tonight?”

“No, we went last week.”

“Oh. I’ve heard some things.”

Cloudchaser flipped a page. She wasn’t at all interested in the kind of garbage that she was looking at - though the spring lineup from J.C. Bit would look great on Flitter - but she had to do something to keep from arousing suspicion.

“Yeah, like what?”

“Like, do they start to act different?”

“How do you mean?”

Chase’s throat clenched. She felt her blood boil and used as much concentration as she could to keep from blowing her cover.

“Like, they… uh…”

“What?”

“... what’s your marefriend’s name?”

“Jenny.”

“Did Jenny used to wait on you? Like, make you sandwiches and stuff?”

“No, she was always busy. Used to work at the greenhouse.”

“Was?”

“Yeah! After we visited the elder, she totally changed. It’s awesome.”

“So it was true. That’s what the guys were saying happened to their girls. And sisters, too.”

“Once you hear the truth, you never go back. That’s why the Sons are the future.”

“Yeah I guess. I hope Lilac doesn’t give the elder any trouble.”

Cloudchaser had to measure her breathing carefully and concentrate hard to keep her hooves from shaking the magazine. It was all she could do to gently slide down the seats towards the aisle without screaming at the two colts.

They didn’t know what they were doing. That was the only explanation that Chase could tell herself as she made her way back to the caboose. That somepony would want to do that to a lover or even a sister was disgusting. If she had not left then, she was not certain what she would have done to them.

Give them a stern lecture, at worst.

She hoped Silent wouldn’t be so forgiving.

Silent had risen at some point after the last stop, and Cloudchaser found her looking idly out the window at the rear of the caboose. The rattling of the luggage disguised Chase’s inept bumbling and tripping as she approached, and Silent said nothing even as Chase sat down next to her.

Chase gave an idle smile. Silent, as usual, was not interested in talking.

“I have some news,” Cloudchaser offered.

Silent grunted.

“Uh, I overheard some guys talking. There’s a big meeting tonight.”

“Eleven thirty, in the Archaeology building at the University of Trottingham,” Silent said, once again without taking her eyes off the scenery.

Cloudchaser let her jaw hang open for a few seconds. When she realized what she was doing, she held it shut with a hoof.

Silent turned to look at her. The brief nap had not done much for her appearance. Even in the low light, Chase could see the red veins running across her eyes.

“There’s one tomorrow night, too, for anypony who missed the first one. No doubt there’ll be a lot of targets for interrogation there,” Silent said.

Cloudchaser had a bit of the wind knocked out of her, but the pride returned a moment later.

“Well I still eavesdropped on them,” she said, puffing out her chest slightly.

Silent turned back to the window. Chase sagged and frowned.

“Wait!” Cloudchaser said suddenly, prompting Silent to arch an eyebrow.

“They’re gonna do that thing again! We’ve gotta stop them!”

“Thing?” Silent asked.

“Yeah! Whatever they did to Flitter!”

Silent now turned her whole body to face Cloudchaser.

“When?”

“I don’t know!”

“How?”

“Don’t know that either.”

Silent pressed closer to Cloudchaser. Chase instinctively backed up.

“Who?”

“The two guys in the compartment up ahead!”

Silent jerked backwards suddenly, resuming her previous pose of an ornate carving looking out the window. Cloudchaser shook herself to make sure she was still awake.

“Good. Excellent,” Silent said flatly.

“I guess that’s one way of putting it…” Cloudchaser said, letting herself trail off.

No sooner had Chase said that than she noticed a change in the reflection of Silent’s face in the window pane of the caboose. It was not quite curiosity that etched itself there, but it was definitely earnest and certainly different than the usual brooding look.
Silent did not turn as she spoke, or provide any gesture. Silent merely said, “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Chase said, “I mean, it’s good for us. But it’s bad ‘cause, uh, Flitter was messed up, and… Why am I explaining this to you?”

“We’re going to stop them, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, of course!” Cloudchaser said. It did not upset her as much as it had before. Something about Silent’s confidence dispelled the anger. Chase even caught herself smiling slightly: Silent had said we!

As quickly as this had come, it had gone, and Silent’s face returned to its ever-dour glare.

Silent gripped the window’s latch and pulled it open, blasting a fresh gust of freezing air into the compartment.

“What the hay?“ Cloudchaser protested.

“Come on, we need to be in the air before we get to Trottingham. I don’t want to be seen getting off the train.”

Silent vaulted through the narrow window with an agility Chase had not seen before. It looked so effortless that Cloudchaser backed up towards the luggage and squared herself before the window.

She hopped forward and immediately caught one of her legs on the window frame. She fell halfway over outside the caboose, with wind blowing hard in her face as the train kicked up a gust in its wake. When she managed to pull her leg free, she tumbled over again and landed on the narrow metal step, bracing herself against the railings to keep from falling off the train entirely.

Sheepishly, she righted herself before jumping off and taking flight. Silent swooped by a few moments later and pointed towards the horizon, where the lights of Trottingham reflected off the clouds covering the sky.

Cloudchaser has insisted on tailing the two colts she had overheard when they got off the train, though that plan was thrown out as soon as the two tried to implement it. Chase was barely able to recognize the colts from the air, and the shifting sea of faces coming and going on the platform made it all but impossible to spot the blue bands the two had worn.

Instead, Chase followed Silent towards the University of Trottingham, whose many dilapidated brick buildings sat in a campus on the northern edge of the city. Though it was late at night, many of the buildings still had lights escaping their windows, and students could be seen walking on the lit pathways leading away from the campus tavern.

Silent evidently already knew where the Archaeology building was located, and Chase followed her lead as she swooped lower. One of the structures, larger than the rest, had lights pouring from its foyer, and Silent guided Chase to land on its roof.

“All right, what’s the plan?” Cloudchaser asked. Some of Silent’s courage, she reasoned, had spilled over into her. No doubt this was going to be dangerous, but she was ready.

“Go inside, find out what they’re up to, and stop it,” Silent replied.

“That’s it?”

Silent failed to answer, instead reaching under her wing briefly. She pulled out a small red sphere and passed it to Chase.

“Take it. It’s a smoke bomb. Throw it hard at the ground to activate it.”

“A smoke bomb?” Chase asked, gently taking the sphere. After a brief examination, she tucked it under her own wing.

“I’m not as prepared as usual, I haven’t had time to visit my supplier. We’ll have to make do with just this.”

“Wait, what other supplies do you usually have?”

Silent cocked her head slightly. “Stink bombs, lockpicks, magnesium grenades, snap-flashes, chloroform, rope…”

“Sorry I asked,” Chase muttered.

Silent trotted towards the building’s edge and looked down. Chase followed, likewise surveying the scene.

“Front is too dangerous. There’s a connection with the Geology building that should still be open. Are you sure you don’t know where those colts will be?”

Chase shook her head.

“The meeting will probably be in the main lecture hall. If we poke around the classrooms, we’ll probably find your colts.”

Silent hopped onto the building’s ledge, causing a clump of snow to roll off and fall to the pavement below. There were no ponies on this part of campus to notice. None outside, anyway.

The two flew towards the ground, skimming over it as Silent led Chase around the side of the building. In the darkened alley, an unlit connecting hall led between two of the buildings. In the middle was a double-door, barely lit by the reflection of the moon.

As Silent landed, she held up a hoof to signal for quiet. Chase landed as softly as she could and waited as Silent examined the doorway. A quick pull indicated it was locked, but that did not deter them for long.

Silent motioned to Chase to pull on the door. Chase did so, and Silent gripped the frame with her forelegs. She braced herself on the ground and pushed. For a few seconds the two quietly put their strength into the wood and heard a very slow creaking sound announce their progress. Then, suddenly, a snap came from the lock and Chase abruptly pulled the door back.

Silent padded in and waited for Chase to follow. As Cloudchaser passed, she noted that the aged wood around the lock had given way, making the metal bolt useless. Where Silent had learned such a trick she did not know, but it would require the strength of a second pony to execute. It made Chase wonder whether or not Silent had had another partner at some point in the past.

Chapter 8

Laid out like a hexagon with two lecture halls at the center and ringed by classrooms, the Archaeology building made a search simple to perform. As the two crept out from the connection’s broken door, a faint reflection of light from the front entrance was accompanied by a low grumble of muffled speech. Presumably the lecture hall had some sort of magical microphone in it, though what was being said was impossible to discern.

Silent motioned to Chase for quiet and drew closer to the light. The two crossed the darkened hallway and stopped at the corner while Silent peered around it.

“Well?” Chase whispered.

Silent backed around the corner again and shook her head. “Nopony is out there. They’re all in the meeting. Let’s get searching.”

“No splitting up!” Chase hissed.

“Fine.”

The layout of the building meant there was only one way to go, and it was not long before the two found evidence of their target. One of the classrooms behind the lecture hall had a faint glow coming from within, visible under the door. Silent and Chase sidled up to the door and Silent held up a hoof for quiet.

Gently, she reached towards the door’s latch. She very slowly and delicately lifted it and pulled it back, then opened the door slightly. She made not a sound, and anypony inside the room would no doubt write the door off as having been improperly closed. Now, whoever was inside could be heard, and Chase held her ear close to the door to listen in.

“... so I understand you two have been discussing marriage?” said a male pony. By the wheezing as he spoke, Chase judged he could be as old as her grandfather.

“Well…” said a male.

Chase pulled back and looked at Silent, whose outline was barely visible in the darkness.

“That’s him!” Chase whispered.

“Good, let’s go.”

“No, wait!” Cloudchaser said, “Maybe we can figure out how they do it!”

Silent relaxed and held still as Chase put her ear back to the gap.

“We’ve been talking about it,” answered a female, presumably Lilac.

“And?” asked the old pony.

“We haven’t decided yet. It’s such a big step.”

“I see,” the old pony said. There was a pause as Chase heard some soft clanking sounds.

“What are you doing?” Lilac asked.

“This is part of the ritual.”

Cloudchaser felt her body tense up, and instinctively held her breath.

“Ritual?” the colt asked.

“Yes. On behalf of the Sons of Equestria, I would like to formally bless your union.”

A muffled laugh came from the two younger ponies.

“We haven’t decided yet!”

“But you two do love one another, don’t you?”

“Yes!” the colt answered.

“Of course!” Lilac said, followed by another pause.

“Then please accept,” came the old pony, “It’s the least we can do for those tasked with bringing about the next generation.”

Now came a muttering sound, too low for Cloudchaser to understand. The muttering continue for a moment before Lilac spoke up. “All right, we’ll do it. What do we have to do?”

“Ah, excellent,” the old pony crowed, “This will be very simple. First, I need you to step outside, mister Brick.”

“Uh, why?” the colt asked.

“Don’t worry, it will be not even five minutes. It is part of the ritual that each receives their blessing in turn. I will send Lilac to get you when we’re done.”

Chase pulled her ear from the door and turned quickly to Silent. “He’s coming!”

Silent began backing down the corridor, motioning for Chase to follow. She turned a corner and pulled Cloudchaser the rest of the way as the door opened and shut behind them.

Silent pressed herself against the corner as she gently pushed Chase further down the hallway. She turned briefly to see Chase’s silhouette.

“Ready?” she whispered.

“For what?”

Silent stuck her nose around the corner, just enough to see with the edge of her eye. The colt was standing in front of the door with a dim candle barely illuminating him. His face betrayed his boredom until he spotted the edge of Silent’s face from the corner of his eye.

“Mortar?” he asked. Silent immediately backed up.

“Chase, grab the candle when he comes,” she hissed.

“Mortar, I told you it’s not cool to listen in on me. This is a big step for us and - “

The colt trailed off when he turned the corner to see Silent already lunging at his throat.

The surprise was total and the colt did not even have time to react before his face met the cold floor. Silent pressed one hoof into his neck while the other held shut his mouth. She pulled and thrust him to the floor, keeping the hold in check without creating any more noise than necessary. After a brief moment of struggle, the colt’s body thudded against the floor.

Cloudchaser mutely stepped forward and extracted the candle from the terrified colt’s hoof. It had slipped but not fallen over, such was the control exercised by her friend. As she leaned down to pick it up, the colt caught an eyeful of her face, and immediately stopped his struggle.

Laying there, immobile on the floor, he waited until Silent leaned down and placed her mouth next to his ear.

“Listen to me. I am going to take my hoof off your mouth. When I do, if you scream or call for help, I will snap your neck. Do you understand?”

A muffled agreement prompted Silent to withdraw her hoof, keeping the other on his neck.

“P-p-p-please,” he cried softly.

“Quiet,” Silent said.

“You’re the mares from the newspaper. Please don’t kill me. I won’t tell anypony I saw you.”

Cloudchaser snapped to attention. She had moved just behind Silent’s body to keep the glow of the candle away from the corner where it might be seen, but now stepped back into view.

“I said,” Silent snapped, pressing her hoof hard on his neck, “to be quiet. Speak only when spoken to.”

“He thinks we’re gonna kill him,” Chase said nervously.

“We’re not,” Silent replied.

“But - “

“We’re not. If we don’t have to...”

Silent’s assurance did little for the colt’s demeanor, but he kept his tongue in check. He waited until Silent returned her attention to him.

“What’s this ritual they’re doing to your marefriend?” Silent asked.

“Th-they’re gonna bless us. We’re going to get married soon!” he said, speaking a little too loudly. Silent pressed his neck again, causing him to quiet down.

“That’s it? Just a blessing?”

“Y-yes. I promise, just a blessing.”

Silent thought for a moment, then asked her next question. “What is the purpose of tonight’s meeting?”

The colt held still and did not answer. Silent gently tugged on the side of his head, causing his muscles to tense.

“New recruiting procedure! That’s it, I don’t know what it is because I haven’t been yet. I had to go to this ritual instead.”

“Recruiting? Why don’t you tell me about your procedure.”

“I-I just… I just told you! I don’t know!”

“Your old procedure. Passing out flyers. I’m rather curious,” Silent said.

“We just pass out flyers, really, that’s it,” he said.

Silent let a moment pass before she continued. “Oh, do go on.”

“That’s it!”

Silent leaned in close, letting the colt see the full measure of her amber eyes reflecting Chase’s flickering candle. “I don’t feel like asking again.”

Cloudchaser stepped forward and put a hoof on Silent’s shoulder, prompting her to withdraw.

“Listen,” she said, “just give us something we can use, and we’ll let you go. Any little thing will help.”

“Uh,” the colt said, thinking quickly, “sometimes my supervisor comes by and asks if anypony took a flyer.”

“What happens then?”

“He goes and rummages around in the garbage cans, I think. I’m not supposed to notice, but he does it right in front of me! He says I’m not supposed to tell anypony.”

“Garbage cans, huh? Any ideas, Silent?”

Silent kept her eyes locked on the panicked colt.

“Something to do with the flyers, maybe after they’ve been touched. Finding one might help.”

The colt tried to sit up, but Silent maintained the pressure on his neck. His panic rising, he gave a raspy plea, “I left a bundle in the classroom. If I could just go get them…”

“That’s quite alright,” Silent said.

Silent gripped the colt’s neck and began squeezing. He struggled for a few seconds, but his prone position left him little recourse. Soon, his struggle ceased and he lay still.

“What did you just do?” Chase asked, her voice rising in fear. At the last moment, she caught herself, lest she let anypony hear her.

“It’s a choke hold that knocks a pony out. He’ll wake up in a few minutes,” Silent replied.

“So you didn’t just strangle him?”

“Yes, but a very particular kind of strangle. Now, help me carry him into one of these classrooms so nopony finds him.”

Silent hefted the colt’s head and looked expectantly at Cloudchaser, who shook her head briefly before picking up his hind legs. Working together, they slid his body across the floor as Chase illuminated the hallway with the candle clutched in her mouth. Silent pushed open a door and they deposited the sleeping colt safely out of sight.

As they left, Cloudchaser kept staring at Silent, who noticed but said nothing. They waited in the hallway for a few moments before Chase could no longer keep her curiosity in check.

“Silent?”

She did not answer immediately, instead craning her neck to hear down the hallway. Satisfied that nopony was coming, she turned to Chase. “Yes?”

“Have you ever killed a pony?”

Silent looked straight at Cloudchaser’s eyes. Not a flinch, not a tic, not a twitch. Her face was as flat as it always was. “Yes.”

Cloudchaser, though certainly not surprised, still choke as she spoke. “Who?”

“A dockworker and a baker, on different occasions. They saw something they weren't supposed to and tried to blackmail me. The threat of jail time couldn't be allowed to stand."

“Did you… kill them because they would turn you in?”

“Yes. There was no other way. What I do is often frowned upon by the law, even if the Guard are the ones who hired me. They can't officially know what or how I do what I do."

“But - but - you…” Chase sputtered. She shook her head, trying to make sense of it.

“You knew the answer, but you still asked anyway. Why?”

Chase just hung her head and said nothing. Silent shrugged and resumed listening in the hallway.

Too long had passed, and there had been no activity from the doorway. Chase had remained quiet the whole time, which Silent did not object to. A mere tap on Chase’s shoulder, and the two made their way wordlessly to the classroom.

Silent stopped outside the door which the colt had come from, now closed from his exit. Once again, she turned the knob without making any noise and held the door open just enough to hear through it.

The old pony was still talking, but too low to hear what he was saying. Something was amiss, but Silent was not sure what. However, there would be no finding out what by staying outside. Silent pushed into the room and left Chase in the hall.

The room smelled vaguely sweet, like cheap perfume. Despite her entrance, neither pony had noticed her as she padded her way along the back of the room. Both Lilac and the old pony were facing the chalkboard at one end of the room, furthest from where Silent had entered. The old pony had scribbled all sorts of diagrams and gibberish on the chalkboard while Lilac had remained rapt.

“As you can see,” the elder said as he turned around, with one hoof still to the chalkboard, “the sanctity of a union and the total commitment behind it is vital. You must understand that total loyalty is the backbone of any marriage.”

“Yes,” Lilac said.

Silent kept low and in the shadows. The elder’s vision was presumably far gone, as she should have been visible in this light, yet he had said nothing. She froze where she was, lest her movement give her away.

“Now, if you would, please take the eagle feather.”

Lilac reached forward and gripped the feather in her mouth. As she held it, her body remained completely still, and Silent held her breath.

“Dip it in the perfume, and - oh mister Brick, it is not time yet. We are almost finished!”

Silent chanced to turn her head around, to see the glow of Chase’s candle at the doorway. To her credit, Cloudchaser closed the door again and hid the glow. The elder turned his attention back to Lilac.

“My apologies, madam. Now, repeat after me. I swear to uphold the sanctity of my love to my husband.”

“I swear to uphold the sanctity of my love to my husband,” Lilac said in a flat monotone. Silent instinctively tensed up, cursing at her own foolishness. Solving this quietly was no longer an option, and she crept closer to the head of the room.

“The Sons of Equestria, and their charter, shall be my guide,” the elder said.

“The Sons of Equestria, and their charter, shall be my guide,” Lilac stated.

Silent now reached the edge of the glow of the desk lamp, the sole source of light in the room. As she did, she was amazed that the elder could not see her. The presence of a thick pair of glasses resting on the table answered any questions she may have had, and she quickened her pace.

“In true obedience before their Truth, I shall know peace,” the elder said.

Silent reached forward and grabbed Lilac from behind, throwing her to the ground. As she did, Lilac continued to repeat after the elder, wholly uninterested in Silent, or anything else. Hearing the commotion, Cloudchaser burst into the room and ran to the front.

“What is the meaning of this?” the elder shouted, as Silent searched Lilac’s body. There was no necklace, nor was there any other yellow jewel, yet her eyes were unfocused and her form remained limp.

“Damn it,” Silent hissed in frustration.

“Who - who - “ the elder stammered, putting on his glasses. His cleared vision met Silent as she looked up at him with a glower, and the elder shrunk away.

“Somepony!” he shouted, “help!”

Silent felt a hoof seize her leg and pull her downwards as Lilac used the counterweight to stand. Though she was a fairly average looking mare, her strength was incredible, and Silent tumbled and rolled away quickly. Even as she did, Lilac was bearing down on her and kicked her in the back when she stood.

Thrown forward from the impact, Silent whirled and faced her attacker. The eerie sensation she had gotten when facing down Flitter returned, as Lilac’s eyes were unfocused, and she did not follow Silent’s movements. She merely faced her, remaining still, then suddenly lunged forward.

This time, Silent was ready for the attack, and stepped to the side to allow Lilac past. As she did, she reared up and brought her forelegs down on Lilac’s back, sending her to the ground. Almost immediately after her body landed, she had sprung up again and whirled around. This time she was too fast, and Silent caught a forehoof to the chin.

Silent staggered backwards, almost bumping into Chase. The glow of her candle gave her position away, and Silent took the momentary pause in Lilac’s assault to consider her option.

“No necklace!” Chase whispered.

“I saw. No jewelry anywhere. Ideas?”

“Uh, I dunno!”

Chase let out a shriek and ran as Lilac charged again. Silent blocked the blow with her forelegs and quickly countered with a swing to Lilac’s chin. Her hoof landed squarely and Lilac took the full force of the hit, but barely even flinched before throwing another swing.

Chase looked around, trying to spot anything she could use to help Silent. Other than chairs, chalk, and some flimsy looking model dinosaurs arranged on the shelves behind her, the classroom was bare of weaponry. When her eyes traced across the cowering form of the elder, she realized she didn’t need a weapon.

Chase ran towards him, then stopped halfway. She shook her head, then puffed out her chest to try to make herself look bigger, more menacing. When she spoke, she lowered her voice, and said, “Hey, you! Uh, come here!”

The elder merely put his forelegs over his head and whimpered, so Chase stomped towards him and put on her meanest face.

“Please, don’t hurt me!” the elder cried.

“Whatever you did to her, stop it!” Chase shouted.

“Leave me alone!”

Now standing over the frail elder, Chase fought with herself over what to do next. The sound of a pony slamming into a table behind her spurred her forward, and she tried to find a spot to grab the elder without accidentally breaking a bone.

As soon as she seized his shaking foreleg, he cried out again, “Stop! Stop! I’ll do anything!”

And with that, the sounds of battle behind her died off. When she turned to look, she saw Silent with a bleeding nose standing opposite the still form of Lilac. Silent faked a strike, and Lilac made no attempt to avoid it, not even flinching as Silent’s hoof grazed her face.

Furious, Chase turned back to the terrified elder and pulled him to a stand. There was no need to fake it now, she let her anger pour out as she tightened her grip.

“What did you do to her?” Chase shouted, causing the elder to wince.

“N-nothing! We just did the ritual!”

“Don’t lie to me! If you don’t stop it right now, so help me I’ll - I don’t know what, but it’ll be bad!”

Silent, still wary of Lilac, softly intoned, “Tell her to remove the stone.”

Chase shook the elder. “Say it!”

“Lilac, do what they said!” he cried.

Lilac opened her mouth to reveal a tongue stud with a small yellow bead atop it. She pulled it out and dropped it to the floor. No sooner had the stone been removed than her legs buckled and she collapsed in a heap. Silent wasted no time smashing the stud.

Chase, still with the elder in her grip, did not relent. “How did you do that? Why does she do whatever you tell her to?”

“I - I don’t know! I’ve performed the ritual a hundred times, but never have I seen something like that!”

“You weaselly, oily little - “ Chase growled between gritted teeth. The gentle tap of a hoof on her shoulder brought the world back into focus, and she released her grip. The elder slumped over and whimpered again.

“That’s enough,” Silent said, letting Chase back off.

The elder looked up and made a move to crawl away, but Silent stepped to block him.

“You’re not going anywhere. I want to know about this ritual of yours. Start talking.”

“It’s just a little ceremony! I swear, I’ve never seen anything like that before. Please, don’t hurt me…”

Silent looked over at the items arranged on the desk. An eagle feather dipped in perfume and a silver letter opener, presumably likewise once the colt did his half.

“What about those things? Why the perfume and the letter opener?”

“They symbolise femininity and masculinity,” the elder answered, holding a hoof to his chest to slow his breathing. He was wheezing each time he spoke, and sweating profusely.

Silent trotted over to the desk and picked up the perfume, quickly scanning the label. It was cheap mall perfume, probably two or three bits for the whole bottle. The letter opener was a bit more expensive, but could easily be reused in multiple ceremonies. The feather was likewise nothing special, if a little bit worn and giving off a nauseating stink.

“Did we miss it?” Cloudchaser asked.

“Must have, and I don’t think he’s dumb enough to lie to us,” Silent replied.

“I swear it’s the truth,” the elder pleaded.

“Well then,” Silent said, walking back towards the elder, “I’ve got another question. Where’s Messerschmitt?”

“Roger? What do you want with him?”

“None of your business. Where is he?”

The elder looked around nervously before he answered. “Canterlot, he’s supposed to be in Canterlot tonight, that’s why I’m doing the ceremony.”

Silent smirked. “So he normally does it? Since when?”

“Since he became an elder. I did it before him, but he abrogated that duty. Tonight was a special night,” the elder said. He had calmed down somewhat, but was still glancing periodically at the door.

“Special because he’s out of town. What’s he doing in Canterlot?”

“I’m not sure, but he said he was going to show somepony something. A private showing.”

“A private showing? Of what?”

“That’s enough, Harold,” a came a voice from the doorway. All three ponies turned to see the silhouette of a pony standing in the opened doorway. Even in the dark, the white flash of a grin could still be seen.

Silent narrowed her eyes. “Roger Messerschmitt.”

He laughed softly, and said, “The one and only.”

Chapter 9

In the darkness, the glint of the lantern caught Messerschmitt’s teeth, giving his grin all the more menace as Silent and Cloudchaser stared at the interloper. He took several slow, deliberate steps into the room, then stopped.

“What, nothing to say?” he asked.

Silent evaluated the distance, but gauged he’d be able to run before she could vault the desks and grab him. Instead, she held her position near the front of the room.

“No?” Messerschmitt asked again. He took another slow step forward, prompting Silent to back up and seize the head of the elder behind her.

“That’s close enough. One more step and I snap the old guy’s neck,” she said, clenching his neck with one hoof and his cheek with the other. She heard Cloudchaser suck in her breath, but was more interested in Messerschmitt’s reaction.

“Go ahead. Saves me the trouble of having to clean up this mess. Another murder to add to the pile, right?”

“Roger!” the elder protested, squirming in Silent’s grip, “how dare you! After all we’ve done for you!”

“All you’ve done? My dear Harold, all you’ve done seems to involve telling these two everything about me. Was it pain? Are you afraid of the pain? I can cause you more pain than any other, and still you betray me?”

“You have got some nerve,” the old colt said, suddenly unafraid of Silent’s grip. His strength was puny compared to Silent’s and his struggles were in vain, but he did not stop trying to free himself.

“That’s enough. If you’re not going to kill him, Silent Rivers, I will,” Messerschmitt said.

Now, Cloudchaser could take no more. She marched straight towards Messerschmitt, unafraid of the threats he leveled at the elder.

“Who do you think you are?” she demanded, “What gives you the right?”

Messerschmitt did not even flinch as Chase stormed up to him, and merely continued to smile as she planted herself in front of him.

“I have many ponies who work for me. Some don’t mind killing, and it’s easy enough to make it look like an accident. He’s old, maybe he slipped. Who knows?”

Cloudchaser’s eyes widened and she scowled. “It doesn’t matter if you can get away with it, it’s still wrong! Don’t you feel even a hint of guilt for what you’ve done?”

“Me? I didn’t kill six ponies, you did. That’s what everypony believes, so that’s the reality. Simple as that,” Messerschmitt said, giving a little laugh at the end to punctuate.

Chase wound up and slapped him across the face. His smile didn’t fade even for a moment as he recoiled from the blow.

“Yowch, feisty little pony aren’t you?”

“Silent, are you going to help me here or what?”

“No,” Silent said. She released the grip on the elder and straightened herself. “He’s got a backup plan, look at that grin. That, or he enjoys being slapped.”

“Quite right. The first guess, anyway,” Messerschmitt said, suddenly shoving Chase back. The push caught her off guard, and she tumbled into a desk behind her.

Messerschmitt turned to the side, now facing nothing in particular. His smile vanished in an instant, and he spoke to the wall. “The door will be barred. I will return when you’re done, make no attempt to escape. Kill those three, but leave the black-haired one alive.”

Messerschmitt turned and made for the exit as Cloudchaser swung to a stand. Silent broke off and charged at him as he did so, but as soon as he left, the door slammed shut.

Silent skidded across the floor and bumped into the door to find that it was being held from the other side, despite opening inwards. Before she had time to wonder why, she heard hammers pounding boards over the exit.

“Damn it,” she hissed.

“What? What’s that banging?” Chase asked.

“Boards. It’s a trap, and this door is being boarded up to keep us in it. He set these meetings at night and knew we’d come. We walked right into it.”

“Why can’t we just take the hinges off?” Chase asked.

Silent looked at the door, then at Chase. Her mind was working furiously to process this strange turn of events.

“I’m more worried about whoever it was he was talking to.”

Silent shrugged at Chase and went about examining the door. A few kicks determined that it was solid, with nails securing it to the wall on either side. They’d need time to pull the hinges off to rip it out, and there was no telling if Messerschmitt’s stallions would simply reinforce it as they did.

Chase went over to the fallen Lilac. With a few taps on the cheek and a bit of shaking, she slowly came to. As soon as she opened her eyes, she bolted upright and looked around in terror.

“What happened? Why did I - “ she said, stopping as soon as she saw Silent, who was slowly trying to pry off the hinges of the door.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Chase said, though she could do little to calm her down.

“That was real? This isn’t the ritual, is it?” Lilac asked.

“I don’t know what it was, but it’s over and you’re safe. Sort of.”

The elder was slowly walking towards Chase, still with his head to the ground. He shook it slowly while muttering to himself, too low to hear. The word ‘sorry’ was the only thing Chase could make out.

“Did you save me?” Lilac asked.

A warm feeling overtook Chase and she smiled without even realizing it. “Yeah, I kinda did.”

“We’re not out of this yet, I bet Messerschmitt’s thugs are going to be waiting for us when I get this open, if not the Royal Guard,” Silent said. As she turned back to see Chase, she stopped trying to open the door.

Chase looked over to see something standing between them. She likewise froze where she was.

It was a pony, of sorts, except the lighting on it was wrong. It was a pure, solid orange color, bright as the day even standing in shadow as it was. The glow of the candle on the desk did nothing to illuminate it, and its edges did not darken as a real object would. If anything, it looked like a projection in a movie, except somehow standing in the middle of the room.

Its head was facing Cloudchaser, though it was impossible to say if it was looking at her or not.

Cloudchaser whispered, as if somehow speaking too loudly might upset the creature. “What is that?”

“Don’t know,” Silent said.

“How’d it get in here?”

“Don’t know.”

“Is it gonna hurt us?”

“Probably.”

Chase gingerly moved towards the desk and picked up the letter opener, figuring it was better than nothing. The orange creature’s head followed her actions as she did so, but did not make a move.

Silent quietly resumed trying to remove the hinges, tugging at the bolts on either side as slowly as was necessary. Only little creaks could be heard as she awkwardly tried to pull them off with just her hooves.

Chase saw Silent’s efforts and had an idea. Aligning herself with a gap in the assembled desks, she kicked the letter opener across the room, letting it slide along the floor. Now with a tool, Silent could get better leverage on the screws and more efficiently wrench them off. Soon, the first of the three hinges was removed.

Cloudchaser blinked, and the creature somehow was now standing right in front of her. She hadn’t seen it move, she hadn’t heard anything either. Silent hadn’t even noticed, but Lilac screamed as soon as she saw it.

The scream triggered something in the creature and it shoved Cloudchaser back, lifting her clean off the ground and sending her into the chalkboard. She slammed into it with her back and the board broke in two, sending both tumbling to the ground. Chase cried out in pain, while Silent redoubled her efforts on the door’s second hinge.

“What’s happening? Who are you?” Lilac shouted, causing the orange creature to now face her. Lilac froze in place.

Chase groaned as she pulled herself up, testing her back gingerly. She had probably sprained something, but the injury wasn’t critical. As soon as she groaned, the orange thing focused on her again.

She shook her head, trying to dispel a soft ringing in her ears. “Oh no, leave me alone,” she muttered at the orange thing.

Silent dropped the letter opener near the door, causing the orange thing to turn to her. She stood up and walked towards it, keeping her eyes trained on it. On the way over, she shoved aside a desk. The rubber grips made a screech as they slid across the floor.

No sooner had the desk let out a sound than the creature shot towards her, too quickly to react. Its body slammed into hers, knocking her down and forcing her to roll into another desk behind her.

Lilac screamed and the creature once again turned to face her. When it did, she stopped, and both she and the elder froze as it glared at them.

Silent stood up, moving her foreleg around to work the pain out of it. A dribbling sensation in her mouth caused her to spit out blood, as she realized her nose had begun bleeding again. A slight cracking noise from her cartilage realigning once again caused the creature to turn towards her. She stopped dead.

“Nopony move,” she said. Chase stayed where she was, and Lilac quietly gripped the elder and held him to her. She did not take her eyes off the creature.

Silent gently pushed the desk nearest her, but this time it didn’t make a sound. The orange creature did not react. Now, she quietly walked towards the various displays on the shelves at the edge of the room.

Most of them were models of trinkets like pots and furniture, no doubt of use to an archaeology student. She searched through a few before finding one of the plastic displays with a small metal faceplate on it. The plate came off without much effort.

Silent now turned to face the creature, which was still looking idly at her. She held up the plate and tossed it towards the door. The creature turned to face the sound of it clattering on the floor as it bounced and rolled.

“Chase, listen to me. Get that bottle of perfume and the candle. Try not to make any sound.”

“Silent, are - “ Chase sputtered.

“Do it.”

As Cloudchaser stalked towards the trinkets on the desk, Silent made her way over to the orange creature. She held a hoof up, just in front of it, yet the creature did not react. It kept its head focused on the door where the metal had landed, oblivious to Silent.

As Chase took the bottle of perfume off the table, she saw Silent reaching up to touch the thing and gasped. At the sound, the creature spun to see her, knocking Silent backwards.

Silent recovered without falling over. She turned to Chase and shook her head. The message was clear: no loud sounds.

The weight of the creature had been incredible. Even without trying to hit her, it had knocked her over. Chase very carefully made her way over and passed the perfume to Silent, before returning to the desk to retrieve the candle.

Silent softly uncorked the perfume and held it up in front of the beast. It took no note of her, still focusing on Cloudchaser as she gingerly fetched the candle.

Silent poured the perfume on its back and spread it along its body. The liquid vaporized on contact, spreading to every inch of the creature’s orange-tinged flesh. Silent finished off the perfume atop the creature’s head, and it gave her no hint that it had noticed.

As Cloudchaser walked over with the candle, she didn’t need any prompting. She took a look at Silent, who nodded, and then held the candle up to the creature’s face.

It caught fire and the flame quickly spread all over its body, running along the rivulets of rapidly vaporizing perfume. Silent and Chase took a step back as the heat began to increase and the light of the burning creature lit up the room in glorious yellow and orange. Even as it was engulfed in flame, the beast did not move from its spot.

Silent sidled up to Chase and kept her voice low to avoid enraging the creature. “The door.”

“Right,” Chase said, and the two slowly went to the door.

Silent pried off the remains of the second hinge as the flames from the creature burned brighter. She did not know if that would kill it, disable it, or merely lend flame to its blows, but she hoped that the ignition would at least keep it from hearing them. Still, she made as little sound as possible.

The hinge came free after a little more effort, and threatened to slip out of her hooves from the remnants of the slick perfume on them. She brought both hooves together to keep it stable, avoiding any noise it would make if it were dropped on the floor.

“Let me stand on your back for the last one,” Silent said.

“Give me the letter opener, I’ll get it off.”

Silent passed the letter opener over and let Chase do it. She was surprisingly nimble, hovering in place to remove the last hinge without letting her wings graze the walls as she did so. Silent turned her attention back towards the burning beast as Lilac and the elder were making their way towards them. Silent merely held up a hoof, and the two nodded in understanding. Quiet was key.

As Chase pulled off the last hinge, she deftly caught the metal and placed it safely on a nearby desk. Now, all that needed to be done was the removal of the door itself, which was held in place by nails on the opposite side.

Chase started pulling on the knob, and Silent joined in a moment later. With their combined strength, the satisfying groan of the nails giving way on the other side could be heard. The wood around the nails began to deform and the resistance decreased.

Then, without time to prepare, the nails gave and the door flew back, revealing a row of crudely hammered boards blocking their path. The door proved too unwieldy for Chase to secure, and she lost her grip, letting it clatter to the ground.

All four ponies spun towards the orange creature. It had turned and looked as if it was about to run, but as it did its legs gave way and it collapsed. The creature fell to the ground, its body turning to liquid from the heat, and splashed orange flame along the wooden desks. Over a dozen fires had started in the span of a few seconds.

“The boards!” Silent shouted.

Cloudchaser and Silent both began bucking at the boards with all their strength, working together to smash an escape route. As the first one buckled, a commotion could be heard on the other side. Lilac stepped in and helped as they kicked out the second board, and the third board broke within seconds from the combined assault.

Silent burst through the door first, with smoke beginning to leak out above her. Six unicorn colts were all standing wide-eyed on the other side. All six were levitating some sort of stick in front of them which hummed softly in the night.

“Woah,” one said.

“She made it out,” another said.

“What do we do?”

“Get her!”

Somehow, all six of the unicorns failed to move, each one looking nervously at the others. Chase now stepped through and sized up the ponies.

“Yeah!” Chase shouted, “You should be scared! Run, or we’ll take you down too!”

One of the colts gave a half-hearted retort. “H-hey! There’s six of us!”

Silent took a step forward, and the colts backed up, forming a semi-circle around the door. She took another step towards the colt located closest to the wall on her right, causing the others to back up again.

“Help!” he shouted. Silent charged.

He swung his stick with his telekinesis as Silent bore down on him. She easily sidestepped it in mid-stride and sidled up next to him, positioning herself for a buck into the back of his head. The blow knocked his head forward and he lost control of his stick, which landed on the ground next to him.

Without missing a beat, Silent picked up the stick and jammed the glowing end into his back. As she expected, a powerful electric current discharged into his spine, causing him to scream in jitters as thousands of volts coursed through his body.

Once the stick ran out of power, the hum died off and Silent discarded it. She looked flatly at the awestruck colts, and said, “It doesn’t matter how many of you there are.”

“A-A-Attack together!” one of the colts shouted, and all five of the colts ran towards Silent. Before she could prepare a counter attack, the colts broke off as Cloudchaser’s smoke bomb exploded before her.

The smoke expanded, mixing with the smoke pouring out of the classroom and covering the entire hallway in seconds. From out of the smoke, Cloudchaser shouted, “Run!”

Lilac burst through the fumes past Silent, followed by Cloudchaser. Everypony was now coughing and Chase’s eyes were watering from the fumes, but her body language announced she was not ready to leave.

“Come on!” Silent shouted.

“What about the elder?” Chase shouted back.

“Leave him, Messerschmitt will take care of him.”

Even with her eyes half opened and watering in the smoke, Chase’s scowl was unmistakable. She turned and disappeared into the cloud.

Silent waited for only a few seconds before she turned and likewise ran, stopping at the corner near the door they had broken open. The fire alarm had sounded now, and no doubt the authorities were bearing down on the building. She’d easily be able to escape by herself, but still she waited for Chase.

One of the colts, now without his shock-stick, barreled out of the smoke. Upon seeing her, he spun around and ran back in, only to be shoved aside as Cloudchaser came out. On her back was the unconscious elder, slowing her down with his weight. Silent darted forward and lifted his legs to help reduce the load, and the two limped towards the exit.

Lilac was nowhere to be seen, but her safety was no longer their concern. Silent kicked the door they had entered from, swinging it open and sending a blast of freezing air into their faces. With a bit of effort, Chase managed to fly despite the extra load of the elder, and they slowly ascended into the night sky as fireponies and guards arrived in the front of the building. In the shouting and confusion, Silent and Chase easily slipped into the dark night.

An hour later, Silent and Cloudchaser perched themselves on the roof of a squat furniture store opposite the Trottingham train station. Elder Harold remained unconscious for twenty minutes after landing, and once he woke, found two mares standing over him. Neither had spoken a word, they had just sat and waited.

Chase sat on one corner of the snowy rooftop, ignoring the chill of the air. There was something far colder on the roof, as far as she was concerned. She glared at Silent, who returned the look.

The elder, now shivering, finally broke the silence. “If you don’t mind, can I go yet?”

Chase shot him a sidelong glance. “You got kids somewhere?”

“Yes, my son lives in Hoofington.”

“Good, I’ll buy you a ticket in a bit.”

Silent shook her head. “Waste of time.”

This prompted Chase to angrily march over to Silent. “Why? You were just gonna leave him, why do you care if I make sure he doesn’t wind up another one of Messerschmitt’s victims?”

“He’s one of them. The bad guys. He got sold out, but he’s still a bad guy.”

Chase thrust her head mere inches from Silent’s muzzle. That damned stony glare was all that was returned, she did not flinch. “Bad guy? Are you kidding me? You’re one to talk!”

“What’s this about?”

“You’re a murderer! You admitted it!”

Silent cocked her head sideways. “And?”

Cloudchaser stomped a hoof, struggling to keep herself from shouting and alerting somepony below. Instead, she hissed out her reply, “And I didn’t know that when I started this!”

“Does it matter? We’re doing good right now, why does it matter what I did in the past? Focus on the present.”

“But you were going to let them kill him!”

“Not really. I just wasn’t going back for him.”

“Same thing!”

“Excuse me,” the elder said.

“Shut up!” Chase snarled. Elder Harold recoiled at the sudden outburst.

“Chase, calm yourself. Let’s finish up with the elder before we get into a shouting match.”

Cloudchaser bit down and let the rage cool off a bit, as Silent did her usual flat expression to match. “Damn it, stop being right. This isn’t over.”

“Of course not,” Silent said, “You. Harold. What do you know about Messerschmitt that you’ve not told us yet.”

Harold straightened his glasses and mumbled something. Silent trotted over to him, at which point he snapped to attention.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “It’s been a long night. It’s not every day you watch your life’s work crumble around you. I just can’t believe Roger would do that.”

“Believe it,” Silent said, thrusting a hoof at the elder, “I’ve got a good reason to believe you’re not the first bump he’s flattened.”

“I suppose it’s not hard to believe anyway,” Harold said. He dropped his head again. “Slide went the same way, but at least he got to retire.”

“Slide?”

“Another one of the elders, Roger took his place. He was getting on in years, but it was Roger who started the motion of no-confidence.”

Cloudchaser took her turn to ask questions. “What’s that mean?”

“No-confidence means that if enough ponies vote one way, an elder is fired, or at least steps down. Slide wasn’t too popular either, but I had no idea so many felt he should go.”

“And then,” Chase said, “I assume Messerschmitt was elected to take his place?”

“Yes, but the elders selected him. I voted for him myself, I thought he was a good candidate.”

“Why?”

“Connections, money. He brought in a lot of money and new members. He was our ticket to the big time.”

“Where’d he get the money?” Silent asked.

Harold shook his head. “I knew better than to ask.”

“A whole lot of nothing, then. Guy comes on the scene rich, gets some power, and nopony knows who he is a minute before that.”

The elder looked up as Silent finished her sentence. “Well that’s not true. At least, I think it isn’t.”

Silent leaned in closer. “Yes?”

“It’s just a rumour, you know how the young colts get. They get ideas in their heads and then you can’t get them out again.”

Cloudchaser put her hoof on the elder’s shoulder. “Come on, tell us. Rumours are all we have right now.”

“Well, the rumour was he used to be an academic. Professor of something, but I don’t know what or where.”

“Archaeology,” Silent said.

Chase shot her a look. “Really? Just because he used their building?”

“That might be a coincidence, or not. But there’s two ways to use magic. One is with unicorns. The other one is with artifacts.”

Chase smiled. “Hey, you’re right! I’ve heard about that! You think that’s how he did all this weird stuff?”

Silent shrugged. “I’ve never heard of an artifact that lets you summon orange ponies that follow high-pitched sounds, but it’s better than nothing. I’ll look into it.”

“No, we will look into it. You’re not leaving me out of this.”

“Suit yourself.”

Chase almost let her exuberance get ahead of her, before she remembered her quarrel with Silent. Still, she’d finish this job and then be done with it. Silent may be a jerk, but Messerschmitt was a bigger jerk, and needed to be stopped.

“Can I go now? It’s freezing up here,” Harold asked.

“Sure sure. I’ll get you a ticket. Your son will let you stay with him, right?”

“Yes, of course. I’d hate to impose, but I don’t think the alternative is any better. What are you going to do?”

“Stop Messerschmitt,” Silent replied. “It’s best if you lay low until then.”

“Thank you,” Harold said, “I wish you the best of luck. I hope you can undo all the damage he’s done to the Sons.”

“Hey!” Chase interjected, “You’re not getting off that easily! I’ve got a few bones to pick with your agenda! What’s this about traditional values, huh? Are mares somehow inferior? Where do you get off - “

“Inferior?” Harold asked, rubbing his ears. “Where did you get that idea?”

“Frankly, it’s hard not to get that idea,” Silent said.

“What rubbish! What poppycock! This is exactly the kind of filth that those whippersnappers Roger brought in would spout! The Sons of Equestria demand devotion from both mares and colts, not subservience!”

“Huh,” Chase spat, “That’s awful convenient.”

“This is my fault, I admit,” Harold said apologetically, “Roger said it would be good for recruitment, and he was right. But I always preached that love and union were the most important, regardless of gender. I just… didn’t have the courage to stop him. I didn’t want to lose all we had gained.”

“Seems you gained something you weren’t expecting,” Silent said.

Harold nodded, but could not find the words to reply.

With Harold on a late train to Hoofington, Silent and Cloudchaser rested atop another roof some ways away, wary in case somepony had recognized them at the train station. Whether or not Messerschmitt would try to pin the fire on them was anypony’s guess, but it did not matter now. They had a lead, a good one, and that was what they needed.

In spite of any progress they had made that night, Chase could not shake the revulsion she had for Silent. In school, the disinterested attitude had made her a fascinating pony, albeit a distant one. Chase had never managed to follow her home, and had barely ever struck up a conversation, but she had still considered her a friend. When she needed a group for a group assignment, Chase had always volunteered Flitter and herself, even when nopony else had. When she needed somepony to hold the rings during flight practice, Chase would be the first one to suggest it.

But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that it was entirely one-sided. It had never been Silent who asked, she merely accepted. If there was a way to do it alone, she did it alone.

“Silent, we’re having this out, right now,” she said.

Silent blinked once. “There’s not much to discuss. What happened, happened.”

“No, no. That’s not how this works,” Cloudchaser said, looking down at the snow on the roof. “I looked up to you. I kinda even wanted to be like you, except a little more polite.”

“Is that what this is about? Was I a role model?”

Chase shook her head. “Not like that, I just wanted to be better than I was. Now I see the price is too high.”

“There is no price involved. I kill when I have to, and not otherwise.”

“Damn it!” Chase shouted, stamping her hoof to emphasize, “You still don’t get it! It doesn’t matter what you did or why you did it, what matters is that you hate it and hate yourself for doing it! I’ve heard excuses and admissions from you, but nothing that tells me that you’re anything but hollow on the inside.”

Silent cocked her head again, prompting Chase to hold her tongue. Silent was looking at her in the same way she had before on the train. That same earnest curiosity that only appeared when Chase spoke about emotion. In that moment, Chase realized why.

“Oh, oh no,” she muttered.

“You have come to a realization. I told you it was pointless to explain, you would not have believed me.”

“But - no. You’re really like that?”

“Cloudchaser, you are not the first pony to struggle with this, and that is something I find tiring.”

Chase had to fight her instinct to snap at Silent. She felt her neck jerk, preparing for another tirade, but it would be a waste of breath, knowing what she knew now.

“Fine,” Chase said, “but answer me a few questions. How did it happen? Don’t you feel a shred of guilt? And - am I your friend? Is anypony?”

Silent assumed her old stony glare, and Cloudchaser realized she had broken some inscrutable rule that Silent never bothered to tell her.

“I was born this way, at least to my knowledge. My parents showed the same level of disbelief you do, and to this day remain adamant that their daughter is not like they know her to be. Fortunately, I am long rid of them.”

“I suppose that answers the first two questions.”

Silent frowned. “Then no, you are not my friend. If you were to die tomorrow, it would not perturb me, except that I would need to replace you with somepony else. Ideally, one who spoke considerably less.”

To her surprise, the sting of finally hearing these words was far milder than Chase had expected. Perhaps, deep down, some part of her had already come to this conclusion. Though painful, it was at least enlightening.

“But then, why did you come when I wrote to you? If I’m not your friend, then what is it? Money?”

“I don’t need your money,” Silent said.

“Then what?”

“I had no other cases open, and thought it might be a challenge. This case has been fairly interesting so far, and if my suspicions are correct, it will become more interesting soon.”

“So, then, why did you want me to help you? You said you needed me when clearly you don’t, by your own admission. Why me, if I’m not a friend?”

“Now that you know - only because I have flat out told you - you are not capable of coming to that conclusion? What do you possess that I do not? Or are you just thick-headed?”

Chase scowled. “I’m not thick!”

“Then think, for once.”

Cloudchaser knew already, and as before, had simply refused to believe the answer. Money would have been simpler and easier, and it meant she could bid Silent farewell and never look back. The other possibilities, if remote, had likewise similar outcomes. The outcome she dreaded most, however, was the one that was now a certainty.

“I’m not broken like you are.”

Cloudchaser had hoped her terminology might incite something in Silent. She was disappointed.

“Quite.”

“But everypony is like that, so that doesn’t really answer my question.”

“You’re replaceable, so it does. You’ve proven yourself useful on occasion, and you can advise me on right from wrong. That’s why you’re here.”

“Wait,” Chase said, suddenly confused, “Advise you?”

“That is what I said.”

“I thought you said you didn’t care.”

“I don’t. As I said, I had no other cases and wanted a challenge. I intend to win, even if you are not around to see it.”

“Morality is not something you win at, Silent.”

Silent grunted. “We’ll see.”

“Princess Celestia, are you there?”

Twilight crept into her teacher’s private quarters, quietly, in case her mentor was asleep. It was not strictly forbidden, not for one such as her, though it was still frowned upon. The Princess had always insisted upon such times of isolation, and had refused to discuss them any further.

She kept her head down and her steps silent as she trod closer to the bed dominating the center of the room. It was a grand brass bed with finely appointed mauve sheets, surrounded by elaborate drapes sewn centuries ago by the most talented of artisans. Yet, it soon became clear that there was nopony within the bed, and Twilight’s attention instead wandered to the balcony across the way.

A breeze had entered the room, chilling it to subzero temperatures, through the opened portal. Beyond it, through the curtains flapping in the wind, Twilight could now make out the silhouette of Princess Celestia.

Even though she had seen her thousands of times over the course of her studies, spent countless hours talking and joking with her, and more than a little time arguing and resenting her, Twilight had never seen her quite like this.

Her body was at a peace that was never present during the day, not even when she would rest on a body pillow to give Twilight lectures. Here, she sat on a tuft of snow and gazed upwards at the full moon above her.

The stare remained unbroken for as long as Twilight cared to look. While she had come to deliver a message whose urgency had been impressed upon her, to disturb the stillness of the scene suddenly took the greater priority. Only Celestia’s mane dared to be animated, pulsating in time to the curtains behind her.

But, as with anything, it had to end. Twilight could not stand here for eternity, and the cold air was quickly wearing at her resolve. She stepped forward now, purposefully letting her hoofstep make a clattering.

Celestia spun and looked in alarm at the interruption, but relaxed when the familiar form of her most faithful student could be seen against the dim light.

“Twilight? Is something the matter?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, Princess. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No no, not at all. Please, come here,” Celestia said, beckoning Twilight forth.

Twilight obediently took her place at Celestia’s side, and automatically felt her eyes drawn upwards. The moon, a great silver saucer in the night sky, shone down upon the whitened landscape before them in far greater a splendor than the sun could on any day.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Celestia asked.

Twilight, though she wanted to answer, felt that no words could do it justice.

“Tell me, Twilight, for I tend to forget things in my age. When is your birthday?”

“December third.”

“Ah, yes. How could I forget, given it’s so close to the solstice? And, what age will you be this December?”

“Seventeen.”

“Of course,” Celestia said, making it quite clear that she had not forgotten her student’s age.

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m just reminding myself of something. It feels good to talk to somepony else about it. This may surprise you, Twilight, but I don’t have that many friends.”

Twilight cocked her head. “You don’t?”

“Yes, I have many acquaintances, but there are few I would truly confide in.”

A sudden swell of pride overtook Twilight’s chest, but she fought back the feeling as best she could. Theirs was merely a professional relationship, and it had grown to a friendly one over time.

“What does my birthday matter? It’s just a day, like any other.”

Celestia chuckled to herself. “Other than getting presents?”

Twilight felt herself chuckle as well. “Yes, but presents are for fillies. I’m going to be seventeen!”

“You’re not grown yet. But, that’s a conversation for another time. I have an assignment for you, if you’re up to it.”

“Oh? Do tell!” Twilight asked eagerly. Nothing made her heart jump quite like the promise of a new task.

“I’d like you to research this for me,” Celestia said, waving her hoof into the air.

“Uh, what, specifically?”

“Do you see those black markings on the moon’s surface, the craters that run all along it? They have a long history, many legends and stories surround them. I’d like you to prepare a report on ‘The Mare in the Moon’ for me. Everything, from antiquity to present, is fair game.”

“Certainly!” Twilight gasped out. Even questioning this sudden choice of topic never passed the front of her mind for a moment, such was the exuberance at the opportunity to make a study list and pore over dusty volumes in the palace library.

“Now, before I admonish you, I take it you’re in my room at this hour for a reason?”

“Oh!” Twilight shouted, “I almost forgot! That stallion from Trottingham is here!”

“Ah, good,” Celestia said, “I was hoping he would make it tonight. Please go tell him I’ll be right with him.”

“Right away, Princess.”

Twilight gave her obligatory bow and trotted off to go find their visitor. Each step she took was lightened by the joy of a fresh, new assignment, far better than any birthday gift could hope to be.

Celestia, for a few moments more, continued to rest her gaze on the moon. Once she was certain her student had gone from sight, she allowed a single tear to roll down her cheek, and wiped it away lest it freeze.

Chapter 10

“Canterlot?” Chase asked. Silent, as usual, had already begun preparing for a flight, despite the injuries and fatigue.

“Yes.”

“How do you know Messerschmitt was a professor there? That’s a stretch, even by your standards.”

“I don’t,” Silent said flatly. She flared her wings.

“Hey!”

Cloudchaser charged over and grabbed onto Silent’s wing with a hoof. Silent obliged, and straightened her feathers as soon as Chase released her. “Yes?”

“We’re in this together, and you had better start acting like it!”

“I have a pony I consult with on academic matters. I’ve worked with her on previous cases, and she’s likely to know who can point us to our next clue. Also, I need to consult with my notes. Now, if you’re done, we can get flying.”

“After all that? I’m exhausted!”

Silent narrowed her eyes, turned, and leaped off the edge of the building. Chase ran to the edge as the figure of Silent rose into the air and glided across the darkened rooftops of snowy Trottingham.

“Just five minutes…” Chase said to herself, coaxing her aching muscles to action once more.

Dawn broke on the flight to Canterlot, bringing stinging light to Chase’s bleary eyes. Skipping one night’s sleep was doable, but most ponies weren’t expected to fly, run, and fight while doing it. Right now, the only thing she wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for a day.

Silent hadn’t spoken a word during the flight, and was keeping at a constant distance. Despite their new found understanding, Chase felt no less revolted than before. She had suppressed it as any good pony does in a dangerous situation, but now it seeped into every thought.

A cold-blooded murderer, that was what her companion was now. Then again, this was the same pony as before, and it was her own blindness that had led her to this. She should never have asked for Silent’s help in the first place. Trying to find Flitter on her own would have been much smarter, in retrospect, than calling upon that empty shell which talked like a pony.

Harsh, too harsh. She was tired, and it clouded her judgement. It wasn’t Silent’s fault, and she was doing what little she could to fix herself. Wasn’t that all that could be asked?

Canterlot’s city limits were coming under them now, but Chase’s vision had blurred and she needed to shake her head to keep from falling asleep mid-flap. All the myriad roads and buildings beneath her became as one confusing mass, and all her attention went to following Silent’s lead towards a tan building someplace mid downtown.

While Chase had been to Canterlot before, she’d never spent much time there. Only when the train stopped there on its way to her cousin’s farm in Dusty Dries had she had any contact with it. Even through her sagging eyelids she could see the orderly beauty of the city’s layout. Streets formed lovely geometric patterns of squares that wrapped around tetrads of buildings that gleamed the morning sunlight. Few others were in the air at this hour, not even postal workers, and it gave the impression to her beleaguered mind of a great portrait laid out on the ceiling above her bed.

Her warm, comfy bed. She could see the city on the roof as she lay down and closed her eyes…

Once again, Chase shook her head to wake herself up. Silent had landed now, and was waiting next to an unadorned doorway leading around back of what looked like a bowling alley. As Chase landed, Silent disappeared without waiting.

Following her, she pushed the door open and was greeted by a long, dull brown hallway made of stucco. A warm breeze floated past her, escaping into the icy streets. For a moment she merely waited and let the feeling of warmth flow over her, until she mentally prompted her body to keep moving. She could take a nap wherever they wound up. Silent wouldn’t mind.

Silent had vanished yet again, so Chase trod along the hallway. Every ten paces, a black doorway stood closed with a bronze nameplate adorning it, listing the name of some business or individual. The fifth door down read ‘Silent Rivers’ and nothing more. Chase rested her head against it, and it slid open easily.

Beyond was a room with no windows and a solitary electrical bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was too large for a broom closet, but gave every indication of being one otherwise. There were two post boards along one wall, supporting a hundred tiny notes written on yellow paper and stuck on with tacks. Chase could read some of the words as she strode into the room proper, and quickly recognized names like ‘Flitter’, ‘Messerschmitt’, and ‘Alabaster’. Her curiosity piqued, she searched for her own name, but did not find it amidst the sprawl.

Silent had a simple wooden desk in the middle of the room, with no sitting pillows or chairs anywhere to be found. A few newspapers sat on the desk, and Silent had busied herself with them. Other than that, there was a wastebasket with a dozen broken quills and scraps of paper within. The office was otherwise completely empty.

“Is this where you work?” Chase asked idly.

“Yes,” Silent replied.

Silent looked up from the newspapers and glanced at Chase. “You need some coffee?”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” Cloudchaser replied with a weak smile.

“We’ll get something on the way to the University. I don’t keep any here.”

Chase frowned and wondered how, even for a brief moment, she had expected otherwise.

Silent spent the next few minutes reading through the newspapers on her desk. Chase merely leaned her head against a wall and tried to relax, but that dreaded feeling - of being tired but unable to sleep - had overcome her. There was nothing she could do, and she groaned in exasperation.

“You need something to do?” Silent asked.

“Yeah, can I help?”

A newspaper smacked against the wall next to her. “Read that.”

Chase shook her head a few times to clear out the blur, and glanced at the newspaper which had landed next to her. Picking it up, she read that it was the Canterlot Post-Gazette dated the day previous. This was a paper they didn’t have in Ponyville, but many of the headlines were the same as the Ponyville Daily News.

“The newspaper? Why?” Chase asked without considering the question.

“Papers are good sources. Keep your eyes out for anything that could relate to the case. Kidnappings, extortion, anything going on in Trottingham.”

“This is how you knew about the meeting? What about - “

“How Messerschmitt got his house? Yes. It was on the socialite gossip page. E4.”

Chase frowned as she glanced over the headlines.

“Is something wrong?”

As Cloudchaser looked up, she found Silent had not deviated her eyes from the paper in front of her. As she spoke, she did not look up.

“I just thought it’d be something… uh… more interesting. Than that.”

“Papers are a good starting point. I connect the dots that others miss. Police blotters are good too, but the Royal Guard doesn’t let those out unless you’ve got a permit. Or you’ve got an arrangement.”

Chase squinted to try to bring the paper back into focus, giving her head another shake as she did. It helped slightly, and her fuzzy brain spent its limited resources on parsing the wall of text before her.

“What do you mean ‘arrangement’? Is it blackmail?”

“No.”

This time, Chase only had to stomp one of her hooves to prompt Silent. It was becoming a routine.

“I take excess cases off the Guard here, and consult on cases they can’t solve. That, or won’t solve.”

“Won’t?”

“What I do isn’t always legal. I told you the Guard doesn’t necessarily like me, but they know not to ask questions when they want something done.”

Chase merely shook her head at that. While she would have pressed more, she did see something she thought might warrant further investigation. However, the article ran over the front page, and was continued within. She flipped through to find the continuation.

Silent opened one of the desk drawers and extracted a small scalpel, which she used to slice out one of the articles in the paper she had. Then, she took the paper over to her note board and tacked it in a corner. She stood for a moment, staring at it rather intently, before trotting back to her desk and resuming her study.

Chase found the rest of the article she had seen on the front page. It mentioned that a pony from Trottingham had traveled to Canterlot to give a private showing to Princess Celestia. However, that wasn’t the sort of thing Silent would care about. The mention of Trottingham had caught her eye, yes, but there was no way it could have been Messerschmitt. He was definitely in Trottingham the night previous. Chase shrugged and went back to the front page, intently scanning it for any other link.

At last, Silent shoved aside her paper and strode to her note board. There she stood scanning it again as Chase finished up her paper. Figuring there would be little else to gain, Chase discarded hers and went to the board with Silent.

Hundreds of notes about the case lay sprawled all over the board. It hadn’t occurred to Chase initially, but the entire board was dedicated to the Trottingham case. She could even trace the series of events from the left side of the board to the right. Silent had noted every single occurrence, and was now in the process of scribbling down the events of the night previous. Even little details, like Flitter’s reactions to the stone that Chase had barely noticed, had their own notes and arrows connecting them to other parts of the board.

“Wow,” Cloudchaser muttered.

Silent shot her a look, but her mouth was busy running a quill over another note to soon be attached to the board.

“Do you do this for every case?” Chase asked.

Silent placed the note on the board and attached it with a tack. She wordlessly trotted over to her desk and waited. Chase rolled her eyes and followed.

Beneath the desk was a series of narrow folders attached to a small metal bin. Every few folders, a divider had been placed with a month and year marked in black ink on the side. Chase could see the edges of a few notes sticking out of the folders, but nowhere near as many as were currently on the note board.

“Left to right in chronological order, cases go back two years. After that, I send them to my archive across the city.”

“That’s nice, but why are you telling me this?”

“It may become necessary for you to use my filing system at some point in the future. If you do, I’d prefer it if you didn’t ruin it.”

Chase frowned. “What am I, your secretary?”

“No. You’re an adviser.”

Suddenly Chase had an urge to crack open one of the folders and read about Silent’s exploits in the field. No doubt there were plenty of dangerous situations and exciting hoof-fights she had won in order to take down murderous criminals. There were about three or four folders for each month in the storage bin, which worked out to about one case a week, give or take. Chase wondered if she could keep up with Silent’s breakneck pace of action and globetrotting.

She peered towards one of the newer folders, before suddenly recoiling. What if Silent didn’t want her going through her old notes?

That question was answered, as Silent had already left and returned to her note board to write more and shift the papers around. She clearly wouldn’t mind.

The folder slid out and Chase carefully opened it to avoid letting it spill. Inside were about a dozen notes and a few pieces of formal-looking papers with the Royal Guard’s seal atop them. On one was a particularly large black-and-white photo of a young mare with a scowl on her face. The caption beneath read: ‘Suspect should be considered extremely dangerous. Approach with caution.’

Intrigued, Chase tried to organize the various notes into something resembling a narrative.

‘Suspect: 22-year-old female Earth Pony. Blue hair, grey eyes. Wanted due to petty vandalism, assault, forgery. Turbulent background, multiple previous offenses. Guard stretched thin, unable to devote resources to apprehend.’

‘Suspect’s parent’s address is fake, points to an empty lot. No friends or known associates. Suspect has returned to her registered apartment at 1712 Flax Street sometime within the past four days, based on accumulated volume of unsolicited mail.’

‘No money located in apartment, four out-of-place travel brochures found in suspect’s unkempt bed. Considering suspect’s background in forgery, it is extremely likely the suspect has fled the Guard’s jurisdiction.’

‘No observation of activity at suspect’s apartment for two weeks. Case referred to Guard as unlikely to be resolved due to suspect escaping the country. Case closed.’

Most of the other notes in the folder were on descriptions of things Silent had found in the pony’s apartment, but she had evidently concluded there wasn’t enough to try to guess a location and track the pony down.

That was it. That was Silent’s previous adventure. Chase put the folder back in its place and resumed keeping her eyes open long enough for Silent to finish her ruminations.

Chapter 11

It was not long before Chase was woken by a poke on the shoulder. Shaking her head once again, Cloudchaser stood up and let Silent guide her out of the room. While it had seemed an eternity when she was asleep, in reality only about five minutes had passed. It left a horrible groggy feeling in her stomach and a curious sensation overlaying the world in front of her eyes, like she could still very well be dreaming as she walked.

Silent led her by ground down the street. They were in the middle of downtown Canterlot now, and the streets had begun filling up with the ponies who rose with the sun. Many passersby gave them a polite nod or at least made eye contact as they made their way to a cafe located on the corner a mere block from Silent’s office.

It was at this point, despite her mental state, that Chase suddenly realized that she hadn’t been in a crowded place during the day with Silent. In Trottingham, they had always worked at night, for good reasons, and had been alone while trespassing. Even the train ride the night previous, Silent had hidden herself away in the caboose.

Was this, perhaps, deliberate? There was a crucial difference between antisocial behavior and whatever Silent’s condition was. Perhaps she didn’t care about anypony because she merely could not empathize with them?

Cloudchaser could barely contain her glow. There might well be a cure! All Silent needed was a friend, somepony who could fight through the layers of indifference and become close to her, and she’d realize that she wasn’t so empty on the inside!

“Hey,” Silent said, poking her.

“Huh?”

“They want to know what kind of coffee you want. Tell them.”

Cloudchaser had been so lost in her own world that she hadn’t realized they had already reached the coffee shop and stood in line for several minutes. She couldn’t even remember how far they had walked to get here.

“Triple Mocha Latte with a bit of cinnamon,” Chase answered.

“Make it two,” Silent said.

A warm feeling emerged in Chase’s stomach, and not just due to anticipation of actually having something within it. ‘Make it two’ was the kind of thing a friend would say! Perhaps it was working faster than expected!

“You’re going to need more caffeine,” Silent said.

“What?”

“I’ll pay for the second one if you can’t afford it. Drink them both.”

The warm feeling vanished in an instant.

The coffee shop had a small collection of outdoor tables on the street, complete with sitting pillows for thirsty guests. Silent had waited outside at one while Chase got the drinks and brought them out. Unsurprisingly, none of the other tables were occupied, but Silent seemed to ignore the cold and Chase had become used to it by now.

As she emerged, the sun stung her eyes and her only thoughts were of sleep. Four gulps into her latte, though, and that soon receded. A new energy surged through Cloudchaser, spurring her onwards to down the rest of the drink and start on the next one. Silent, as ever, was brooding, or thinking. Or planning.

“I can hardly even taste the cinnamon,” Chase said.

Silent muttered a response too low to hear.

“You think they maybe skimped on it? Like, didn’t put any in? Do you think they forgot?”

Silent seemed to look grumpier than usual all of the sudden.

“What?”

“Don’t look around. Keep your eyes on me or the drink, act natural. I think we’re being followed.”

“Excuse me?”

“We’re being followed. That colt behind you and to the left - don’t look - was on the street when we went into my office, and followed us to the cafe.”

Cloudchaser consciously fought off the urge to look at the colt, instead keeping her eyes trained on her drink. The feelings of safety and surety dissolved, and were replaced by the cold winter air swirling around her.

“Here? How? You think he had somepony tail us?”

“Possible. He’s not from the Guard, or they’d have arranged a meeting through my usual contact.”

“Maybe Messerschmitt knows about your office, and had somepony watch it?”

“Also possible,” Silent muttered, albeit unhappily. “My information is unlisted, the only thing identifying the office is the name plate. It’s quite a bit of investigative work to find me.”

“Does that mean I should be scared?”

“Only if he brought backup. I have a plan. Follow my lead.”

Silent waited a few more moments as Chase suddenly realized she wasn’t going to get to enjoy the rest of her drink. In desperation, she gulped the rest of it down, giving a mild singe to her tongue as she did so.

Silent cast a look at her as she stood up, and began trotting at a brisk pace in no particular direction. Cloudchaser kept up, not fully aware of where Canterlot University was, nor what Silent’s plan could be. She was soon lost among the myriad shops and high rises of downtown Canterlot, following Silent down streets and through alleys, pushing their way past crowds of ponies.

In an opening on the street where the crowd thinned out, Silent motioned for Chase to slow down. As she did so, she swept her head to the side and let her peripheral vision scan just behind them.

“Chase, make it look like you’re guiding me. Point someplace to my right,” Silent said.

“Uh, sure,” Chase said as she pointed, “Is he still following us?”

Silent swung her head around to follow Chase’s direction. “Yes, he is.”

The two resumed trotting along, with a cold chill now climbing up Chase’s neck. She had had a chance to scan the crowd when they had stopped, but everypony seemed exactly as disinterested in them as every other. Who could it be? Did she need to be afraid of every living soul she met now?

“Silent?”

“What is it?” came a hurried reply. Silent began to increase her pace infinitesimally, exactly enough that her stride appeared unchanged to an observer, but she became that much harder to keep pace with.

“Do you have a lot of enemies?”

“Some.”

“How many is ‘some’?”

“Most of the ponies that don’t like me don’t have any idea who I am or how to find me. Focus on the task in front of us.”

“But - “

“Not the time!” Silent snapped.

Silent stopped dead and glared angrily at Chase, causing her to recoil suddenly. There was real anger writ on her face, a snarl that was all the more terrifying considering how different it was from the usual flat look.

“You’ve got us lost! I’m better off on my own!” Silent shouted, making a big display of her displeasure. Several of the ponies around them slowed and gave concerned looks. All at once, all the chatting on the street ceased and a clear circle formed around them in the crowd.

“W-What?”

“That’s it! I’m out of here!” Silent shouted.

Silent turned and ran down an alley behind her. Chase, awestruck, stood with her mouth open for several seconds until she put the pieces together. She shook her head in displeasure and swore under her breath.

“Hey! Wait!” she shouted, charging into the alley after Silent.

She ran down the alley, quickly finding the snow under her hooves increasing in depth as she did. The alley was less trodden and maintained than the street, and her pace quickly slowed. That didn’t matter, though, for as she passed a dumpster behind what looked like a Nipponese restaurant, she saw Silent crouched in anticipation just beyond.

“Keep going,” she whispered.

Chase made it look like she was deciding which way to go, just in case her pursuer had seen her stop. After a brief pause, she turned down another, smaller path that led to a barred door. Finding herself with no place to go, she stopped and turned to watch Silent’s trap be sprung.

She hadn’t even made it back to the corner before she heard the sounds of an extremely brief scuffle. A muffled yell was met with the dull thud of a body colliding with the brick wall opposite the dumpster. Cloudchaser turned the corner to see Silent gripping a black pony by the neck, pressing his face into the wall. Her eyes widened in alarm.

“Who are you? Who do you work for?” Silent demanded.

“Silent, wait!”

Chase burst forth and pulled her partner off the confused colt, who slumped to the ground. Silent relented only as Chase refused to stop pulling her hoof back, though it became clear to Cloudchaser that it was not without reluctance.

“Thunderlane! I’m so sorry, are you okay?” Cloudchaser asked the slumped over colt.

“Owww,” he muttered. As he stood, he was rubbing the back of his head, presumably where it had impacted the wall.

“You know this guy?” Silent asked.

“Yeah! He’s a friend of mine, from Ponyville. Oh my gosh Thunderlane, I am so sorry. Please don’t be mad!”

“Cripes Chase,” Thunderlane grumbled, “warn me next time you’re hanging out with a psycho.”

“She’s not - she was worried you were following us. I didn’t know it was you. What are you doing here?”

“I’m visiting my sister. I thought I saw you on the street and wanted to know what you were doing here.”

Thunderlane shot an angry look at Silent. “I was going to ask if you wanted to hang out, but maybe I’ll take a raincheck on that.”

“Why were you following us?” Silent asked pointedly.

“Well, I didn’t want to just shout at you in a crowd, in case it wasn’t Cloudchaser. That’d be super-awkward.”

“I’ll make it up to you sometime, I promise,” Chase pleaded.

“It’s okay, really,” Thunderland said, though he had not stopped rubbing his head. “It’s my bad, I shouldn’t have been all creepy-stalker on you. But, uh, what are you doing in Canterlot? If you were going, you could have let me know.”

“Well, I’m hanging out with my friend, Silent. Old pal, from high school.”

Silent stuck out her hoof, causing Thunderlane to recoil. “Charmed,” she said, with a stony expression.

“Funny running into you. Small world, and all that,” Thunderlane said, without taking his eyes off of Silent. She let her hoof drop a few moments later.

“I’m really, really sorry, Thunder. We gotta get going, but I owe you a hay-burger back home. Okay?” Chase asked.

“Sure, sure. You - you take it easy, Chase,” Thunderlane said.

As Silent and Cloudchaser turned to leave, making their way out of the alley, Cloudchaser cast a few looks over her shoulder. Thunderlane did not move until he was certain he was a safe distance away from Silent, and even then, only reluctantly.

The University of Canterlot stood apart from the great Palace of The Sun in the shadow of Mount Canterlot, on a rise that gave it prime position to oversee the city. The great spires still fell into shadow as the sun could not rise high enough during this time of year to overcome the heights adjacent to them, and the whole district of the city took the air of a curious twilight.

Silent and Chase had encountered no problems on their way here, now that the phantom threat had been dealt with. Though no danger had truly existed, the fright had been quite real for Cloudchaser. Not the fright of a dangerous situation, for she was now becoming accustomed to such things, but the fright of realizing that she was becoming more like Silent.

Not long ago, having that thought in her head had brought a sort of pride, albeit a misplaced one. It was a temporary thing. Once they had finished the case, she had reasoned, the influence would fade and become another story she would tell her friends and acquaintances. To bring it into her life was like a much more real version of a horror film - only scary so long as it was safe and temporary.

All attempts to discuss this with Silent fell on deaf ears, and each prompt was rebutted with a curt request to ‘Focus’.

Unlike the plain and very earthen appearances of Trottingham, Canterlot’s architects had decided their buildings needed spires and towers. There were three buildings in the center of the campus, arranged in a triangle, gleaming white from both snow and paint. Surrounding them were a dozen towers of various constructions, with no clear architectural similarity between them. A single long hallway bridged the three buildings and led towards the palace, and this was where Silent was now guiding Cloudchaser.

As they made to enter the long hallway, Chase found herself instinctively watching the students coming and going. Without even realizing it, she had cataloged which ones had noticed her and which had carried on their own blithe conversations. Normally, when she walked, she would daydream or perhaps talk to her companion. Perhaps it was the caffeine, or Silent’s characteristically untalkative nature, but since neither of those were possible she could not stop cataloging.

Fortunately, Silent’s guidance soon led her to a bland series of classrooms within one of the main buildings. During the night, such a place took on a sinister atmosphere. During the day, it was as a bleached one, sterile and devoid of distractions. It brought a grounding to Chase, reminding her of the waxed and barren world of the flight school she had once attended.

Silent finally stopped them in front of a door, open just a crack, in an otherwise nondescript hallway. As there were few students passing by and the assorted announcement boards were pasted with indecipherable academic nonsense, she guessed this was where the professors kept their offices.

“Let me do the talking,” Silent said. Without waiting for a reply, she knocked on the door.

A muffled reply came, prompting Silent to enter.

Behind an ancient desk sat an even more ancient pony, with grayed hair and the sagging nose that afflicted all elderly mares. Her unkempt mane was sagging in front of her eyes, and as she looked up she made no attempt to clear them. Chase could only catch a hint of a deep maroon pair of eyes beyond, though she seemed to have no problem identifying her guests.

“Silent Rivers! You’re much earlier than I expected,” the professor said, and no sooner had she than her eyes locked on Cloudchaser. “And you brought a guest, most unusual. Your name, young lady?”

As Chase prepared to speak, she found herself struck dumb. From the corner of her eye, she saw something which so shocked her sensibilities as to leave her unable to even process the possibility of it. Her mind reeled, the impossible became possible, and for a billionth of a second, she could have sworn she could see the mysteries of creation unravel before her as a scroll is unfurled.

Silent was smiling.

Not a small smile, but a wide one from ear to ear, warping in alien geometries that curled around and into themselves, occupying no volume and all volume simultaneously. The laws of nature had been repealed, and now there were no rules.

“This is Cloudchaser, an old friend of mine,” Silent said with an almost giddy tone.

“Cloudchaser, hmm? I must apologize for my generation, we never were that original with names.”

Silent laughed. Chase fought the unleashed evils that now sought to cause her brain to melt.

“I’m sorry professor,” Silent said, forcing herself to calm down, “but we’re on urgent business. I assume you received my letter?”

“Oh yes dear, I’m sorry. One moment.”

The aged pony rose and turned towards the window on the far side of the room. Along both walls sat bookcases loaded down with books of every color of the rainbow, their middles sagging from the weight. Thousands of pages of arcane mysteries, with a hundred small bookmarks sticking out of each of the books Chase could see, no doubt read a dozen times.

The pony was fumbling with something hidden behind the desk. Chase would have repositioned herself to better observe, but since the laws of gravity and electromagnetism had switched, moving was literally impossible. She could still see Silent’s face, though, and she suddenly felt cold on the inside.

“Here it is, the Intricate Render of Ardre. Unfortunately, it’s not really my field, but I’m pretty sure Professor Stone could help you further. He’s five doors down, on your left.”

Silent strode forward and accepted the piece of paper from the professor behind the desk, still cheery as a carnation as she did so.

“Thanks a million, Doric. I think this might be a big break in the case.”

“Oh, don’t mention it,” the professor said, returning Silent’s smile, “I’m just glad I can help. Wish I had the energy like you young’uns do.”

At this point, the two were still talking, but the speed of sound had become near-zero due to irreparable changes in conductivity between substances, and Cloudchaser could no longer hear what was being said. It didn’t matter, of course, because she was clearly hallucinating this whole encounter, and would probably wake up in a few hours with her head in a snowbank somewhere.

The door shut behind them and suddenly, the world came back into focus. Cloudchaser was once again standing in the bleached and bland hallways of the University of Canterlot, standing next to Silent, whose face was where emotion went to die.

“What just happened?” Chase chanced to ask, testing that the laws of physics had resumed their usual course.

“That was one of my contacts. I usually talk to her to get advice on forensics, since there’s two disciplines of it and the Royal Guard only practice one.”

“What?” Chase asked, “No no. I mean, what just happened? Why were you so - “

“Happy?”

“Yes!”

Silent frowned, then suddenly switched her expression to one of unbridled joy. As soon as it had come, she replaced it with a deep mourning, the sort of look a pony gets when their best friend dies. In the next instant, she was curious, then angry, then back to the glare of stone she normally wore.

Cloudchaser’s eyes widened, but she said nothing.

“I do whatever it takes to get what I want.”

Silent turned and proceeded down the hallway as a calm depression settled over Chase’s mind. For one brief shining moment, she had been transported to another world, and the brief taste left her yearning for more.

“Please hold the door,” came from a wizened only pony as Chase entered the office behind Silent. He held a withered cane as ancient as his face, running with wrinkles and cracks. Despite that, he smiled broadly at the two mares who had come to visit.

“We need some information,” Silent said.

“Yes yes, Doric already told me you’d be coming by. If you’ll excuse my pace, I’d like to show you something.”

Professor Stone was slow on the move, and the gradually increasing traffic of students weaved around them as they made their way towards the common area in the center of the building.

“So,” Cloudchaser said, to lift the pall that had settled over her, “What was that Render thing Doric mentioned?”

“It’s an artifact from the centuries just before The Fall,” Professor Stone said, grunting slightly with each move of his cane forward. “Seventh millenium, if you go by the old dating standards. No carbon on the blade, so we have to go by historical estimates.”

“It’s a knife?” Cloudchaser asked, though not quite sure what had triggered that assumption. She had remembered something about a knife fairly recently, but could not recall where she had seen it.

“Well, not much of one. It’s dull, and was probably forged dull based on the cooling techniques evident in the crystal structure. Then again, that’s the whole point of the legend surrounding it.”

Silent, who had until now been uninterested, now finally showed some sign of curiosity. “What legend?”

Professor Stone let out a chuckle. “Now, don’t go believing everything you hear. Not all legends are true. In fact, it’s my job to prove beyond doubt that none of them are.”

Presumably that was some archaeological joke, as Professor Stone let out a guffaw which slowed his pace even further. After a brief recovery period, he resumed his glacial speed.

“I’d still like to hear it,” Silent said.

“Yes, well, so would I. There’s a few versions, depending on where you’re from, but they all have a few common characteristics. Essentially, the story goes that there was a blacksmith named Ardre, or Argre if you take the old Trottingham version of the tale.”

“In all the versions, Ardre has a happy life with a satisfying job, but he’s got his eye on a mare who works as a glassblower down the road from him. Every time he works up the courage to talk to her, he scares himself for fear of rejection and returns back to his forge to work out his frustrations on another set of horseshoes. One day, he decides he’s had it, and makes a wild plea to the heavens to help him.”

“What, he just shouts at the sky?” Cloudchaser asked.

“Well, you’ve got to remember, these stories tend to get embellished, since they usually aren’t written down until decades after the original events, if there even were any. There’s quite a few stories of heroes and villains simply cursing at the gods or the elements or what-have-you.”

“Ah, I see,” Chase muttered.

“Where was I? Oh, yes. He makes the plea, and then something answers. The northern dialects say he gets the answer immediately, but the western recordings say he gets the answer in the form of a cloud of steam rising inexplicably off his forge. In fact, if I recall correctly, one of our graduate students last year wrote her thesis on the possible connection between Ardre’s tale and that of another one from the Ellenian tribes because they all used steam coming off a forge for divine communication. Hard to prove, of course.”

“Professor…” Silent said.

“Oh yes, excuse me,” Stone said, giving a slight cough. “Ardre gets his reply, and the gods have told him to forge a blade using a special technique that they explain to him using a series of cryptic hints. Ardre makes the knife but finds that it’s been cast dull, even though the cast he used was for a sharp edge. The gods tell him to use the knife anyway, except he’s to use it on himself.”

“As opposed to?” Chase asked.

“Not sure, the translation doesn’t really imply what he was intending to do with it. Regardless, he does what the gods say, and the knife is too dull to leave any impact on him, not even capable of cutting the hair on his head.”

“Thinking that the gods have just played with him, he goes to the girl he had longed after to comfort himself. Suddenly, he finds himself at ease with her, and finally asks her to join his house.”

“Huh?” Chase asked.

“It’s the equivalent of a date, missy,” Stone said with a chuckle.

“I figured.”

“So things are good now and Ardre is happy, but then he finds himself acting more and more recklessly as time goes on. He gets into a fight with an ogre - or a hydra, or an ettin - and vanquishes it, but he’s alarmed by the sudden changes. When he asks a mystic if he has a disease, the mystic tells him that he’s become completely bereft of fear, as though it had been magically cut from his soul.”

Silent and Chase shared a look with one another, but neither said anything.

“So what happens then?” Chase asked.

“He’s married the girl by now, who is named Netta, by the way, and she finds out about this as well. She tries to counsel him, but he has no idea how he can undo what he’s done. After some hemming and hawing, Netta tells him to surrender his judgement to her. She tells him she’ll be his guide, and that she’ll fear for the both of them, and then they live happily ever after.”

Chase tried to cast another look at Silent, but found her unwilling to meet her gaze this time. Her stare was distant, deep in thought.

“So, that’s it? What’s the moral of the story?” Chase asked.

“No moral, those old stories are just stories. Some ponies would make their whole careers out of reciting them as entertainment.”

“I see.”

“Professor,” Silent asked, “What became of the knife?”

“See for yourself,” Stone replied.

As they had walked, they had entered the main artery of the building, transporting students from one end to the other. All along the sides of this wider hallway were exhibits behind small glass displays. The one they had stopped in front of, unknown to Silent and Cloudchaser, was labelled “Ardre’s Intricate Knife”.

It was little more than a slab of metal, with neither side anything even approaching an edge, sitting on a red pillow behind a display case. It had clearly been well-preserved, but was nothing like intimidating.

“Well then, so we’ve come to the end of the story,” Stone said. “Did you have any other questions for me? This has taken longer than I had expected, I have a class to teach in a few minutes.”

Both Silent and Chase stared hard at the metal sitting on the other side of the glass case. For some reason, Chase thought it looked awfully familiar, but couldn’t quite place where she had seen it before.

Of course, Silent wouldn’t be marveling at the blade. Her brain was probably working overtime trying to figure out what this meant in connection to the case, so Chase tried to redirect her tired mind to focus.

Obviously the knife was still here. There was a thin coating of dust on the case, and the seals around the base where it met the stone podium it rested on had been set for some time. If the knife had ever been removed, it hadn’t been recently.

“Uh, I have a question,” Chase said. Silent paid her no mind, her eyes remained locked on the dull knife.

“Yes?”

“When was this thing discovered?”

Stone held a hoof to his chin for a few moments before answering, “Right around the time this university was founded, so about nine centuries ago.”

That took the wind out of Cloudchaser faster than a kick to the chest. If the knife had been a recent recovery, that would be significant. Being that it had been found for so long, it begged the question why nopony had tried anything with it before.

“Professor,” Silent said, “Do you know of anypony who has done any recent work on this knife or the legend surrounding it?”

“Oh yes, that one’s obvious,” Stone replied, not needing to pause for thought. “Roger Martinside’s been churning out papers on this thing at a steady clip for years now. Frankly I just skip them, I don’t know how that idiot gets published.”

Professor Stone frowned. “Obviously, you shouldn’t tell him I said that, or anypony. Professional courtesy.”

“Yeah, sure,” Chase said, “Roger Martinside?”

“Used to be associate dean down at UofH until he quit about a year back. I’ve heard him speak at conferences, but I don’t know him personally. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d hate to be late to teach a bunch of freshponies. It gives them the wrong idea, you know.”

Without waiting, Stone turned and began hobbling off towards one of the rooms along the sides of the hallway. Chase started to follow, but Silent blocked her off.

“Leave him, we’ve gotten what we need.”

“I don’t see how,” Chase muttered, “It’s a nice story and a nice piece of metal, but it’s sitting in that display case and has been for some time. Look, can’t you see the dust on it?”

Silent nodded.

“So, what, you think maybe it’s a fake?” Chase asked.

“No.”

“So what? Did we just waste half a day?”

“No. I think I have a method, and maybe a motive, now all I need is to figure out where Martinside is and we can put a stop to this,” Silent said.

Chase shook her head. “That’s what we’ve been trying to do this whole time! How has this changed anything?”

“We can nail him for falsifying government records.”

Cloudchaser had to shake her head again a few more times to clear out the cobwebs.

“What?”

“If we can get a photo of Martinside and compare it to Messerschmitt, we can get the Royal Guard to put out a warrant for his arrest, because he didn’t legally get his name changed. That’d be enough to put him behind bars, since felony fraud doesn’t allow bail in Canterlot district.”

Chase sighed. “That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s how real cases work. I’d still like to get my hooves on him first, because I have a few questions of my own,” Silent said, and for once, she let a hint of anger escape from her face as she said it.

Seeing that awoke a new fear in Chase’s heart. She’d never actually seen Silent truly angry, not even when arguing or fighting. Not for a moment had Silent ever seemed to be unrestrained, and that one split second had shown Chase something she wasn’t meant to see.

“Is something wrong?” Silent asked.

“No, nothing,” Chase lied, “But, uh, why haven’t you just grabbed him yet? I mean, we know where he lives. Couldn’t we just ambush him when he’s there?”

While Cloudchaser was only slightly surprised to find herself directly advocating breaking and entering coupled with assault, it was the fact that she had had the thoughts at all that alarmed her. Before all this, reporting Messerschmitt to the Royal Guard would have been the end of it.

“He doesn’t sleep in his home, and he’s surrounded by bodyguards when he’s in public. You know this.”

“Well, then, we just follow him around until he lets his guard down! It can’t be that hard!”

“I’ve tried it,” Silent said, “It’s not possible. Even bribing service ponies to tail him has failed. He’s a ghost. The only way I know where he’s going to be is when he announces it ahead of time.”

“Pah,” Chase spat, “No way. He can’t just vanish like he wasn’t even there.”

As soon as Chase had said the words, her eyes widened as she realized the full depth of what she had implied. Silent gave a disappointed look.

“You came to a conclusion,” Silent accused, “What was it?”

“He wasn’t really there, he was here,” Chase muttered.

Silent pressed herself closer to Chase, almost in a threatening pose. She gritted her teeth and spoke in a low tone. “Explain yourself, stop wasting time.”

“Uh, well, see… I saw an article this morning, but I didn’t think it was important.”

Silent glared.

“Well,” Chase said somewhat sheepishly, “It said that a guy from Trottingham was visiting the Princess last night, but it couldn’t be related because…”

“Quite a thing, to be in two places at once,” Silent muttered, suddenly withdrawing and staring into the distance.

“And I was figuring, what with all we’ve seen so far, that maybe…” Chase said, trailing off.

“He, or at least part of him, might still be there,” Silent said.

“Yeah, that.”

Chase felt stupid for even suggesting it, but this sort of thing was well beyond her range of understanding, and evidently Silent’s too. She had been alternating between distant and intense, something that Chase hadn’t witnessed yet. Perhaps this was the closest thing to frustration she was going to be privy to.

Chapter 12

It was quite fortunate that the University of Canterlot was an adjunct wing to the palace itself. Long considered the font of modern learning, the great Princess Celestia had, so the legends went, founded the first University to better study the stars eons ago. Presumably it wasn’t the one in Canterlot, though, as the city was fairly modern compared to some of Equestria’s more ancient settlements.

Having recalled the full extent of what her History classes had managed to teach her, Chase put the pieces into place, attempting to keep herself alert in the face of the fatigue she was fighting.

Messerschmitt, or perhaps Roger Martinside, had been a professor, that much was probably true. He had been researching that knife they had just seen, and found something which apparently every other pony had overlooked. When he used it, he could… do something. It didn’t even require him to be in the same room, but he could do it. At first it had seemed as though he could bend another pony to his will, but now he was unleashing bizarre monsters in an attempt to stop them. Monsters which…
“He can’t control them!” Chase burst out.

Silent merely continued trotting ahead. As they had made their way towards the connection to the palace, few, if any, of the students passing them even noticed her outburst.

“Yes, and?” Silent asked quietly.

“The creatures! He can’t fully control them! Oh it makes sense now,” Chase said proudly.

“Just figuring that out, are you?” Silent said, though not with any sarcasm. Somehow the monotone bit all the harder.

“But that explains why he had those guys waiting to ambush us when we - “

“Yes, I know. What I want to know is why,” Silent replied flatly.

“Well I thought I was pretty clever,” Chase muttered to herself.

“Now listen to me, Chase,” Silent said, pulling her off to one side as they approached the adjunct which would lead them into the palace proper. “This is important. If you find him first, do not engage him. We don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“Find him first?” Chase repeated. Then, it dawned on her. “Hey! No splitting up!”

“We have two targets right now. Messerschmitt, and Princess Celestia,” Silent said.

Chase’s eyes widened. “You don’t think she - “

“We have to assume as much. You know what to do if that’s the case, but try to be discreet. She’s got enough magic to shame a thousand unicorns, and that’s not to mention what the Royal Guard will do if she orders them to.”

“And if I find Messerschmitt first?”

Silent hesitated for a moment. “Don’t engage him, not by yourself.”

Chase nodded as they passed the doors leading outside. The palace loomed large above them now, glistening white in the winter sun.

The entrance hall to the palace was every bit as beautiful on the outside as it had been on the outside, as long as one kept their gaze high. Great stained glass windows ran up inside the grand hall on every wall, casting reds, greens, and golds down on the muddied floor as hundreds of ponies ran to and fro carrying all sorts of equipment, tools, and construction materials.

There was quite a din as the ponies went about, all shouting instructions and questions back in forth in a cacophony of chaos. Talking to Silent would be impossible, but a quick bump and a point, and Chase managed to convey her message anyway. There was a front desk beyond the many ponies, where a harried receptionist was doing her best to be the loudest of the loud.

“All construction materials head to the south wing except the paints! No! South wings, that way!” she shouted, though at whom, it was difficult to say. Chase and Silent approached the desk and waited for the clerk to notice them.

“May I help you?” the clerk shouted at Chase’s face from close range, invading her personal space just to get a point across.

“Yeah, we’re looking for somepony,” Chase shouted back.

“Good luck!” the clerk said sarcastically, making it fairly clear that she’d be no more likely to be able to help them than a random search would.

“Maybe you’ve seen him?” Chase asked.

“Nope! I’m seriously crazy busy here. If you’re making a delivery or something, sign the guest book!”

The clerk looked alarmed and abruptly dashed off, shouting at some workponies hauling what looked like bags of charcoals. Presumably, they were going the wrong direction.

“What the hay is going on?” Chase asked to Silent as she finagled a pencil and wrote her name on the open guestbook’s page. She noticed there were hundreds of signatures still outstanding today.

“Hearth’s Warming Eve is next week,” Silent shouted back, “Probably something big for the banquet and the play.”

Silent had turned to leave and pursue her quarry when Chase grabbed her and pulled her back. Intrigued, Silent watched patiently as Cloudchaser flipped backwards through the guestbook, passing hundreds of signatures of the many ponies who were in the palace at the moment.

With another flip, Chase reached the point where the workponies had stopped signing in, that being six a.m. that morning. She smirked to herself as she traced backwards to see the previous night’s visitors.

“Gotcha,” she said with a smile.

She pointed, and Silent followed to see Messerschmitt’s signature on the page. He had been there just before midnight the night previous, and he had also not signed out.

Silent met Chase’s gaze for the first time in recent memory, and an unspoken conversation passed between them. Chase, at first smiling, soon realized that this was it. Her smile began to fade as Silent turned and made her way through the throng of ponies towards the guest quarters on the far side of the palace.

“Wait!” she shouted. No sooner had the words left her lips than the crowd closed.

That was it. Silent was gone.

Even surrounded by a hundred ponies, she had never felt more alone.

The ebb and flow of ponies around the castle quickly began to subside as Chase left the more traveled corridors and made her way past the areas where the public was ostensibly to tread. Security was necessarily lax, considering the sheer volume of workers and servers running about, and Chase blended into the crowd easily.

Still, it wore upon her. A constant din of chatter surrounded her and tread upon her tired mind. It was all she could do to keep moving forward, aimlessly, for she had no inkling of where her target might be.

“Hey - hey have you seen - hello - anypony seen - Princess Celestia? Anypony?”

She may as well have been talking to a wall, for all the good it would do. Even when a pony would care to listen to her finish the question, the only answer she could get was a shrug or a vague wave in the direction of the rest of the palace. Perhaps nopony knew. Maybe she wasn’t even here.

The drudgery of wandering in the halls caused Chase to lose track of the time, and more than once she had an inkling she was walking in circles. A particular rose-painted wooden door looked unique enough from the others that she noted herself passing it - three times.

Frustration and fatigue united to press against her now, and she wearily pushed the door open if only to find a respite from the heated air and endless noise that had burrowed into her ear drums.

Within she found a muted library, or rather, a room that probably wasn’t a library but somepony had stocked full of books. Indeed, it looked more like a reading room owned by a tenant who had little need to return anything once it had been completed, instead opting to cast it onto the floor.

Said tenant was now sitting in the middle of the room at a table, likewise overflowing with books. She was a young thing, maybe a few years younger than Chase, and very intently focusing on the pages opened in front of her.

Chase held her breath. She hadn’t realized that this might be a private room, and quickly made to leave until it became quite apparent that the occupant had not noticed her. At all. She hadn’t even looked up.

Warily, Cloudchaser took a few steps into the room, treading lightly around the unstable piles of books. If there was any order to the madness, it could not be discerned by her right now, though she did note that many of the covers, if they had any pictures on them at all, favoured a full or crescent moon.

Chase had now reached the opposite side of the table the mare was reading at, and could see her closely. From a distance, she looked as any other purple pony her age, with a black mane featuring an interesting stripe in it. From up close, the small details were no longer to her favour. Her hair was unwashed and the edges of her eyes were red from fatigue.

Really, she looked no worse than Chase did right now. She still had not noticed her guest, though.

“Excuse me?” Chase offered.

She received no answer.

“I’m looking for somepony, and it’s a zoo outside.”

Nothing. This mare was perhaps an acquaintance of Silent’s.

“Have you seen the Princess anywhere?” Chased asked, trying to disguise the desperation in her voice.

As soon as the word ‘Princess’ left her lips, the mare’s head snapped upwards and focused on Chase with bewilderment.

“Who are you? What do you want?” the mare barked.

“Just, uh, do you know where Princess Celestia is? I have - “ Chase said, suddenly recalling that she had not come up with a cover story yet.

“You have? Something? A message?”

“Yes! A message!” Chase lied.

The mare pointed at the door. “Take that door, three doors down on your left. She’s reviewing correspondence in the banquet hall. Knock three times before you enter.”

Her eyes returned to the book and nothing Chase could do could rouse her attention again, not for lack of trying. Why did she have to knock three times? Was it a secret code? The mare wasn’t answering, and seemed to have forgotten she existed at all.

Cloudchaser still had one important question. Has the Princess been acting strangely at all lately? It didn’t seem to matter, as the book had absorbed all of the pony’s focus and Chase meekly acquiesced, quietly shutting the door behind her and returning to the cacophony of the workponies in the hallway.

The banquet hall entrance stood before her, Chase had made her way here with little difficulty. Yet, as she raised a hoof to knock, she suddenly froze. Perhaps she should locate Silent? Find some help? Do anything other than this?

It had become quite difficult indeed to knock on the door. This was her last chance to back away, and every possible reason to do so now flashed through her mind. She could always come back later, or at least wait a few minutes to let her brain rest. In fact, there was probably nothing wrong at all, and no need to investigate! She could just go home.

Each excuse was more pathetic than the last, and Chase silently berated herself. This was shameful conduct, there was no other way to describe it. Every second she delayed put Equestria in deeper danger, and here she was trying to tell herself that everything would be okay. She steeled herself for what was to come, and rapped on the door three times.

There was no response from beyond. She waited a few seconds, then knocked again three times. Once again, she received no response, and nudged the door open to see if there was anypony inside at all.

Before her lay the banquet hall, a room that was at least two stories high, perhaps higher, with a great glass skylight casting down upon a grand royal red carpet running the length of the room. Two long tables covered in a white cloth were flanked by rows of high windows, and between each window a tapestry hung from the ceiling to the floor. Abreast each tapestry stood one member of the Royal Guard, ten in total, five along each side. None of them even turned their heads to acknowledge her presence.

Chase gingerly entered the room, but a gust of wind slammed the door behind her with a great bang.

“Yes, may I help you?”

At the far end of the hall, on a raised section flanked by staircases along either side of the room, sat Princess Celestia, grand and ancient leader of Equestria, on a sitting pillow with a scroll floating in front of her face. She had not looked up from the scroll even as she spoke, and despite the great distance between them, her voice rang clear in the hallway.

Cloudchaser looked for someplace to hide, but the only spot of any significance would be beneath one of the tables. There was no food on them at this hour, merely many silver trays and utensils for the myriad guests that would soon be dining there. On one of the tables sat a grand bowl of punch with a ladle hanging idly on the side, but that was the extent of the food available.

“Uhhh,” Chase stammered.

Not coming up with a cover story was really starting to drag her down, she noted, but it was far too late to do anything about it.

Chase shook her head to knock the cobwebs out. Focus! she told herself, and immediately set to work.

Princess Celestia wore many gems at this moment, including her crown, shoes, and the great chestguard she always wore. This would be difficult, as the gem could be hidden anywhere, and attempting a search in public would be a bad move. Instead, Chase merely began slowly making her way towards the dais.

“Well, I was wondering - “ Chase said.

Celestia turned her eyes towards Chase for the first time, and then lowered the scroll before her. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were a messenger. If that’s not the case, do you have some business with me?”

Chase’s heart skipped a beat. Celestia’s eyes were focused and she was talking like an ordinary pony! Definitely a good sign.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Chase said, “I’m not too late!”

Celestia raised one eyebrow. “I should hope not, the banquet is not for a few hours.”

“Banquet? No, I mean, uh - “

“Not here for that either? Perhaps I should guess, if you’ve no interest in telling me.”

Suddenly a whole world had opened up before her. Why, Cloudchaser could just tell the Princess what that thug, Messerschmitt, was up to! She’d believe her, and have him arrested, and this would all blow over and she could finally go home.

“I’ve come with a warning!”

Celestia sat up. Chase had now covered half of the room, and the guardsponies hadn’t even reacted as she drew closer. Now she was walking on instinct, yet her eyes were still tracing over Celestia’s form, looking for something she might have missed.

“Go on,” Celestia said.

“There’s this guy, from Trottingham, and - “

“Oh, yes, Roger. The gentlecolt from last night, and what a tardy one he was. How disrespectful,” Celestia mused.

Chase slowed her pace for a half step.

“Yeah, him. He’s - “

“Silence!” Celestia snapped.

Cloudchaser froze. A chill ran up her spine, and her earlier confidence evaporated away.

“Do all the ponies around me think me so foolish that they can manipulate me? The lies are reason enough to discipline you, I can tell you’re hiding something and not very well, I might add,” Celestia said, snarling her lips in anger. Chase tried to contain her alarm, and failed.

“But this,” Celestia continued, “is sheer disrespect for a superior. You have not bowed once since you arrived, you’ve used low dialect with me, and now you bring up that amateur Messerschmitt as if you’re being coy? Do all ponies of your generation believe I am a charlatan, or is this a string of bad luck?”

“I - “

“Silence!” Celestia snapped again, “That question was rhetorical.”

Chase had seen the Princess once, when she was a filly. Her parents had taken her, along with Flitter, to the Summer Sun Festival being held in Fillydelphia one year. She had seen the Princess raise the sun, to the wonderment of all. Every bit of information she had picked up over the years about Celestia gave the impression of a kind, wise ruler.

Either all of that was garbage, or something was very wrong with this scene. Or both. None of the options were good.

As Chase felt a drop of sweat make its way down her brow, she noticed that it was extremely hot in the room right now. And why not, she thought, since the sun was directly overhead, shining down through the glass skylight right on top of her.

It quickly dawned on her that the sun should not be doing that during winter at this hour, and that running was probably the best move at this point.

“The sheer arrogance on display here is more than I can bear. Perhaps if I make an example out of you, the ponies of this country will show deference to their ruler, hm? I tried it with those miserable guardsponies you see around you, but I see it was no deterrent for this sort of degenerate behavior.”

Chase turned her head enough to see one of the guardsponies, still standing at attention beneath a tapestry not far from her. She hadn’t realized it until now, so focused was she on Celestia, that his face was twisted into agony. He was not breathing, blinking, or moving in any way at all. Another drop of sweat dripped from Cloudchaser’s head.

“Do you think you can manipulate me?” Celestia asked, and now Cloudchaser had truly no idea what she was on about. “Is that what you insolent whelps believe? I am a goddess, I will not be controlled by a lesser being for any reason, is that understood?”

Chase automatically nodded. The scowl on Celestia’s face only deepened, prompting Chase to take a step back.

“Listen, please - “ Chase begged.

“Silence!” Celestia shouted again. “You have trespassed enough. Meet your punishment with dignity, and I may yet spare you.”

It was now that Cloudchaser realized why it was so hot in the room, whatever role the sun may have played. Celestia’s anger had somehow translated into literal heat, as her whole body had begun to sweat.

That mattered little to her now, though, as Celestia’s idea of punishment began to manifest itself. Where before her mane and tail had been a flowing prism of teal and pink, a subtle change towards red and gold had begun. As Chase instinctively took another step back, the mane began to twist and billow until it had literally ignited, and a wreath of flame overtook Celestia’s body.

Her body had already begun to flee before her mind had caught up. The door wasn’t far, and she would be able to blend into the crowd to make her escape. The castle had a hundred corridors that could hide her until the chase had ended.

All those hopes were dashed as she approached the door and a great blast of flame erupted from it. Celestia had flung a ball of pure fire from her horn and the door was consumed in an instant in a cascade of orange flames reaching to the ceiling.

Chase whirled to see Celestia now descending from the pulpit, surrounded by a veil of living flame that grew higher with every second. She fought the urge to panic with every fiber of her being, and tried to think of something, anything, she could use to escape.

Chase bolted towards the punch bowl. It was stupid, but she had only one way out - through the glass windows on either side of the room. Smashing them down with her body would only cause her to bleed to death on the snow outside, but hurling something through them might give her a chance - that way Celestia would merely run her down and incinerate her as she flew away.

Still, it was worth a try. Maybe a miracle would happen.

As she dashed towards the punch bowl, another blast of flame struck just behind her, causing the carpet to ignite and melting the marble flooring beneath it.

“Stay still, accept your discipline!” Celestia roared.

Chase leaped the table in one bound and used it as a sort of cover as she closed the rest of the distance to the punch bowl. Yet another lash of flame struck behind her as she ran, flying high and hitting the wall tapestry. Still the guardsponies did not move, even as a sickening burning smell assailed Chase’s nostrils.

Finally at the punch bowl, Chase quickly found she could not lift it by herself. The liquid within made it too heavy, and as she strained to lift it, she could see Celestia bearing down upon her.

Chase had a stupid idea, just then.

She leaped into the air and beat her wings just enough to lift her over the table, then slammed down on the far side of the punch bowl. She quickly threw herself out of the way of the launched liquid, which flew as a great mass towards the Princess. No doubt that would snuff her fire!

A great wall of water vapour burst forth as the punch boiled away in an instant. Chase, now scarcely a tail-length from the Princess, looked up with dread to see that the only thing that had accomplished was to intensify her rage. She couldn’t be sure of it, but now fire seemed to emanate from the monarch’s eyes as well.

“I am the sun, mortal. You would not douse the sun with a hundred oceans, much less one bowl of sugar-water.”

She reared up to deliver another burst of flame, and Chase instinctively tried to block it with the only thing at hoof: the punch bowl, freshly emptied. Tongues of orange and red burst around the edges, searing her exposed ears. She quickly dropped the bowl as it heated up, only to have it shatter as the bottom had become molten glass. Still, it had saved her life for a few seconds more.

She scrambled along the slicked floor to stand and throw herself further away from the raging deity behind her. Surprisingly, Celestia did not strike again, and instead let her run for a few moments. She was now going the wrong way, towards the podium and not the doorway, but it didn’t matter. The whole room was now alight and even were it not for a murderous Princess, she didn’t have much chance of escape.

As she reached the stairway, a wall of flames burst from the floor ahead of her, blocking off the stairs. Celestia, now some distance behind her, laughed at the futility of her plight. It echoed all around the room and through Chase’s ears, deep into her mind. The ringing laugh of a bully, a pony with too much power who delighted in watching those around her suffer.

Now it was Chase’s turn to get angry. She could not hope to face down Celestia, but she could at least make sure she didn’t enjoy this. Chase flared her wings and blew three strong gusts at the blaze before her, cutting them down to size and allowing her to quickly leap over them. No sooner had she passed than the flames redoubled themselves, narrowly catching her tail and blackening it with the passage.

Chase now noticed she was covered with ash and probably minor burns. Her hooves stung with pain and her legs had been scorched badly at some point doing the skirmish. The adrenaline was keeping her from truly feeling the damage but she couldn’t take much more.

At that moment, that miracle she had been waiting for had arrived. There was a door at the far end of the room, behind where Celestia had been sitting, and it now opened to allow a brigade of fireponies in. Each was dressed in heavy, fireproof coats and each bore a segment of a hose to douse the flames.

It was not long before the miracle proved inadequate, for as Chase ran towards the door past the fireponies, Celestia demonstrated she would not give up the pursuit.

“Begone, peons!” Celestia bellowed, launched a burst of flame directly at the fireponies. They scattered and dropped the hose.

“Run! She’s gone mad!” Chase shouted as she made it to the doorway. The fireponies, perhaps not hearing her, attempted to reform and recover the hose, only to be driven back again by another volley.

Still, they provided a brief distraction and allowed Cloudchaser to slip out the door into the hall beyond. She could hear the fire alarm blaring now, and the hallways had emptied out. Chase wasn’t sure what to do now, so she just ran.

She picked a corner and turned it, then ran down the hall before turning again. Seconds later she could hear the horrifying sound of Celestia’s roars behind her, tracking her somehow.

“Peasant! Serf! You dare to flee from me? I guarantee you will suffer for this insult!”

Now Cloudchaser realized she was going away from the palace entrance, seeing the grand mountain that Canterlot stood in the shadow of looming before her. At first she wanted to change directions, perhaps lose Celestia in the twisting hallways, until she realized that, covered in soot, she was leaving a trail for her to follow.

Instead, she continued running, hoping that she was moving towards an evacuated area of the palace. At least, this way, no more innocents would get caught up in a firestorm. As for what she was going to do, a desperate plan was beginning to form. Whether or not it would work was anypony’s guess, but she had to try.

Chase barreled through the halls until she spotted her opening. A courtyard, one of the many in the palace, would be the place of her last stand. Hearing that the Princess was gaining on her, she threw the last of her strength into her legs to make it to the door with as many seconds to spare as possible. Throwing it aside, she ran a few steps forward and flared her wings.

Unfortunately, she was far too late. As she began her take-off, a burst of flame soared over her head and forced her to land again. Celestia stood at the door, pausing before the inevitable end.

“What was your plan, foal? Did you think you could run forever?”

Chase felt the last of her strength leave her. She couldn’t pull off her plan, she couldn’t run anymore, and nopony was coming to save her.

“No,” Chase answered.

“But you are a brave one in the end, I see. Will you face your fate with dignity?”

Cloudchaser stood and squared herself away before Celestia. She held up her weary head and puffed out her chest.

“Do your worst.”

Celestia, now seemingly more flame than pony, gathered up her magic once more for the final blast. Cloudchaser had a lot of regrets, but pushed them aside for now. She had failed, but she had done the best she could have. Hopefully, Silent had done better. Maybe she would be able to stop him in the end, and Chase had bought valuable time. It was foolish to try to take on Princess Celestia by herself, knowing that he had done something to her, but what else could Chase do? Sit by and let him win?

In her final moments, she let a smile come to her face.

Behind Celestia, a terrible crack echoed through the sky as a mass slammed into the roof behind her. Celestia turned in an instant to see this new interloper, but found nothing behind her save for the rumbling of a hundred tons of snow.

The roof of the palace had been Chase’s plan, too. She was going to lure Celestia outside, then find a way to dump the snow on her, but had run out of time. Somepony else had done it instead, and Chase had positioned the Princess perfectly.

The sloped roof of the palace had been loaded with snow and never cleaned off. It was a prime candidate for an avalanche, and the mounds of glistening white snow shifted and flowed all as one once the impact registered.

It started small, of course, as all such things do. The furthest roof up, four stories above them where the impact had started, pushed the snow down to the second roof. It then cascaded, picking up momentum and pouring down to the next and the next. Soon it was a torrent of white that poured over the form of Celestia. Cloudchaser threw herself away and found herself only partially covered, while before her a wall of white had completely blocked out the palace behind it.

Chase sat there for a moment, somewhat content to rest briefly, until it suddenly occurred to her that there was one thing left to do. Now she pushed beyond the edge of her endurance to dig into the snow mound, casting as much aside as quickly as she could, until she found Celestia buried within.

The snow had melted around her, but her mane was no longer alight, and she appeared to be unconscious. Chase could only see her head and was far too tired to dig the rest out, but this was enough. Concealed on her crown, hidden from sight just behind the purple gem, was a small yellow stone resting on her head.

Chase pulled it out and smashed it, then collapsed onto the pile of snow and finally rested.

She didn’t know how long it took for the Princess to wake up, but when she did, no words passed between them. Her magic easily lifted away the snow and she stood up before Cloudchaser’s prone form. Chase smiled weakly, but could not bring herself to say anything.

“Thank you, citizen,” Celestia said at last. “I do not know what came over me.”

Chase nodded and leaned back again. The snow felt good against her burns for the time being, and she was loathe to get up right now.

“But,” Celestia said, “What was it that set off that avalanche? Was it you?”

What had it been? It hadn’t even occurred to Cloudchaser to even ask, and it didn’t matter to her. It could have been a passing carrier pigeon for all she cared, but the question remained.

Chase sat up and looked up at the roof. Celestia’s gaze had already drifted upwards as well, and they both locked on something sitting on the edge of the second floor’s terrace. A pony, laying perfectly still in a pose that clearly indicated a broken neck. The malicious grin written onto his face brought up one name in Chase’s mind: Messerschmitt.

Far above, she saw an outline of a pony looking down on them. From atop a tower thirty stories above, she could see the glint of two amber eyes locked on her. No sooner had she seen them than the pony flared its wings and dove out of sight, heading off to the city.

Chase shook her head slightly, too tired to even think of pursuing, and let herself drift off to sleep.

Chapter 13

Though the room had been sealed and locked, a chill pervaded nonetheless. Messerschmitt, reclining in his private room atop the great spire overlooking the palace, shivered beneath his blankets. He sat next to the fire, yet the chill had taken root in the room and would not be dispelled.

He made to poke at the fire, hoping to stir the wood to further ignition, but his grip was weak and he could not make to stand in any case. Age had taken its toll on the greying old pony. He felt tired even after waking now, the inevitable consequence of time.

A knock came at the door which led down the tower. He cleared his throat to answer.

“Yes?”

“Boss?” came a faint reply.

“You may come in,” Messerschmitt said.

“The door’s locked, boss.”

Messerschmitt summoned his strength now. He could not show his weakness in front of his underlings, that much was certain. It took but a moment to grip his cane, and leaning on it, he brought himself to his legs with great difficulty. He hobbled to the door and threw the latch.

The door shot inward and smashed into his mouth, easily knocking him down. From beyond, Silent thrust herself into the room, dragging behind her a bound thug in Messerschmitt’s employ. Before he could utter another word, she replaced the gag that hung from his face and shut the door, re-locking it for good measure.

"Now you’ll be quiet,” Silent whispered to the colt, “or you’ll have my full attention for a very brief period. You don’t want that. Understood?”

The colt nodded. Silent dragged him across the floor to the closet, opened it, threw aside the worn and forgotten coats within, and deposited the helpless colt inside. She shut the door and turned her attention to Messerschmitt.

He was still struggling to stand, unable to reach his cane or even right himself. He looked nothing like the pony she had encountered before, nothing like the one she had been tailing, but whether that colt even existed was no longer certain.

Before he could make any progress, Silent strode to him and placed her leg firmly down on his head, pressing it into the floor.

“Don’t get up,” she said.

Messerschmitt stopped moving. His eye focused on Silent’s face. “We meet again.”

“Shut up,” Silent said, pressuring his temple into the ground. “I ask, you answer.”

“Come now, there’s no need - “

Silent raised her hoof and brought it down on Messerschmitt’s skull. He remained quiet.

“What’s the overall goal of the Sons of Equestria? What’s your end game?”

Messerschmitt chuckled. “That’s very direct.”

“Answer the question.”

“I think you already know, even if you don’t want to admit it. Come now, that fine mind of yours couldn’t be fooled for long.”

“I said,” Silent said, twisting her hoof to grind Messerschmitt into the ground, “to answer the question.”

Messerschmitt, despite the pain he was in, scarcely reacted at all. If anything, he was more upset by the questions than the brutality.

“We intend to take over the world and bring about an age of darkness. There, is that the trite answer you were looking for? Are we done here?”

“Don’t play games with me.”

“I’ve no need to answer you, I do so because I choose to. Pain is not something which you can use to intimidate me, unlike my lesser followers.”

“Really? Let us test that theory.”

Silent withdrew from Messerschmitt’s face and instead held his hind leg down with one hoof. She raised the other just long enough for him to see what she was doing, then brought it down hard on his thigh muscles. The impact was just enough not to break the bone, but more than enough to damage the muscle. Silent had held back, and made it quite plain that she had done so.

“Are you quite finished?” Messerschmitt asked, sounding bored. A lesser pony would have doubled over and writhed in agony, but not he.

“Push me again, and I snap the leg,” Silent said.

“That’d made standing a bother. Honestly, I had expected more from you than this. You’ve made your point, now might we speak as civilized ponies?”

Silent narrowed her eyes. Were this a trick or an ambush, there was no reason to believe he’d need to be standing to do it. He’d have tried it already, and could doubtless be subdued in any case. Silent withdrew and kicked Messerschmitt’s cane towards his prone form.

It took him a moment to reach it and stand. He was no physical threat, yet Silent reminded herself to remain aware. She was still not certain of what extent his powers were, or what they looked like when used.

As he struggled to right himself, Messerschmitt eventually settled for a sitting position favouring his uninjured leg.

“Now,” he said, “we may speak properly. Go on, ask away. I’ve nothing to hide.”

Silent sized the situation up. She was pressed for time, and Messerschmitt may well be stalling. She needed to keep him on track.

“What method do you use to control ponies as you have? How do you do it?”

“Ah! A good question, as expected. You know most of it, of course, as I’ve been informed you’ve been speaking to some of my former peers. Suffice is to say, the physical artifact is a mere catalyst. I require no further material components.”

“How did you learn to do it? Who taught you?”

Messerschmitt smiled. It was the same grin Silent had seen each time she had confronted him, wide from ear to ear. “Why, planning to take it up yourself?”

“Answer me.”

“No, I think not. It’s a secret I’ll take to my grave.”

Silent once again was left to consider her options. Messerschmitt seemed unfazed by pain and was difficult to threaten directly. He had very little otherwise he would care to lose. No living family, no friends or connections, and his property was a mess. Silent could not coerce answers from him.

That made this a challenge. Silent smirked to herself, and no sooner had she done so than Messerschmitt smiled again.

“So you’ve gotten to Celestia by now,” Silent said.

“Indeed.”

“Was that the end game? Take control of Equestria that way? It still doesn’t give me the end game, what’s the point of taking control? You can get as much wealth and power as you like, why do you need Celestia?”

“Oh my dear Silent,” Messerschmitt said, keeping his wide grin, “you have me completely wrong. Of course, it must be a difficult thing to admit for one such as you. Either you still don’t understand, or you’re unable to admit what is plainly before you. So which is it?”

“Celestia’s not the end, then.”

“Of course not. Do you have any idea how hard it is to control the mind of a demigod such as her? It’s far beyond me or anything I could muster. No, I have merely freed her, if you will.”

“Freed?”

“If I cannot control her, then nopony will. Least of all her.”

Silent grimaced, a rare break from her stony gaze. Subduing Celestia would be nigh impossible, and definitely beyond the capabilities of Cloudchaser. Silent would need to search for yet another assistant.

“But why?” Silent asked. “Why set her loose upon the world? She’d destroy you as soon as anypony else.”

“That’s the idea of it! It will be a grand game, won’t it? Image it Silent, imagine a world where every day is a cruel battle for survival, where the mundanity of everyday life becomes something magnificent. Where the strong and the wise rise to the top of the heap, only to be stabbed in the back by the next pony with the ambition to do it. An endless battle, and infinite challenges.”

Once the final word breeze past her ears, Silent came to the conclusion she had been dreading and fascinated by since she had begun this case.

“Celestia,” Messerschmitt continued, “binds together this country. She keeps its government running, and guards its secrets. Even if I were to have her wrapped around my hoof, that stability would still persist. But should madness claim the crown, then the country will dissolve. To each pony, even the oldest among us, this government is the only one we have ever known. Centuries of legal tradition thrown to chaos as she contravenes laws and brings ruin to any who speak out of turn. Factions will spring up to resist her, then fight amongst themselves, then factions in factions will emerge.”

“And this is what you want?”

Messerschmitt smiled again, that same vicious smile as before. “I want to win. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” Silent said.

“This is why I’ve stayed here and waited for you, Silent. I know you’re like me. I could have absconded back to Trottingham by now, or some other place you could never find me unless I wanted. But that’s not what I want. I want you to know that I’ve won. I want to look at you and see that I bested you.”

“You haven’t.”

“Oh? I’ve done what I set out to do and you’ve only now come to stop me. I take it that your follower is desperately seeking Celestia out right now, not knowing it will result in her fiery oblivion. You know perfectly well that not even a miracle could save you now, and that I will have everything I wanted.”

“I can end you,” Silent said, knowing the threat was hollow.

“And that will do what, exactly? Is brute force some sort of triumph for you? Beating an aged pony to death, what sort of victory is that?”

“It’s a victory. And then I’ll have your new world to myself.”

“Don’t be a sore loser,” Messerschmitt taunted, enjoying his moment. He was basking in it now, letting his evil smile creep wider and wider until his face threatened to rip apart.

Silent was not used to defeat, even momentary ones. Setbacks, sure, but defeats? This was a personal insult. Insults needed to be dealt with.

Silent stepped forward and punched Messerschmitt as hard as she could with her foreleg, right in his toothy grin. Unsurprisingly, this did not stop his smile. If anything, it made his gloating accelerate.

“Now now,” he said with a laugh, “I told you that doesn’t work. I took care of that long ago.”

“Took care of it?” Silent asked.

“Of course. I did not enjoy feeling pain or fear, so I simply cut them out. The psyche is a surprisingly malleable object.”

“You cut them out? You did it to yourself?”

“Yes, and why not? I was my second patient. I felt quite guilty after what I did to that griffon, after all. What better way to fix myself than by using what I learned when experimenting with him?”

“Your guilt,” Silent said.

“Yes. Cut it from my head in my kitchen. Who’d have thought it’d get bigger over time?”

Silent felt something that she had never felt before, welling up within her. It was a new kind of anger far exceeding the other emotions she so carefully guarded. It boiled within her and overran any self-control she had once possessed. Even if she could stop herself, she no longer wanted to.

Silent kicked away Messerschmitt’s cane. He toppled over, but Silent would not allow his head to fall unaided. She punched his chest back to knock him over and threw herself on top of him.

She let blow after blow fly into his face, yet that smile did not waver even as she knocked the teeth from his head.

“You had it, and you cut it out. Your whole life you saw it as a burden?”

Messerschmitt could not respond anymore, his wrinkled face now covered with blood. Silent continued the assault, hurling curses at him as she did.

“Did you not realize it was a gift? You worthless cur! You were never like me! Just a snivelling coward unworthy to even call yourself a pony!”

She continued to smash at his face as orange flames glowed just outside the window of the room.

It was some time before her rage abated. Messerschmitt was still alive despite the pounding, probably relating to his blackened soul and the tatters of his mind. Though he felt no pain, he could barely speak now even as Silent let the blood and teeth drain from his battered head.

“I - still - win,” Messerschmitt taunted.

Even now, beaten to within an inch of his life, his words still burned at Silent. He had violated her in many ways she had not expected. With all her strength and cunning, this sack of filth had outsmarted her and outplayed her. He cared not for his gifts and threw them away like a spoiled child. Silent’s gnawing emptiness saw that as a starving orphan sees rotted food in a dumpster. The anger still burned within her.

It burned all the brighter at the humiliation of her defeat.

“Look there,” Messerschmitt whispered between gasps, “the new - world. It - comes.”

Flames were lighting the palace below them, casting orange and yellow glows on the windows. Silent left the beaten stallion and moved to the window. Far below her, the palace was ablaze. The banquet hall had been lit first and burned highest, but a trail of smoking windows led towards the tower she observed from.

Following the trail, Silent spied the end of the trail. It led to a courtyard, where a distant purple pony burst through a door to lay still on the snow. Cloudchaser had tried, but evidently failed, as Celestia appeared and bore down on her.

Messerschmitt could not be allowed to win. Cloudchaser’s life was of no moment, and never had been, but here she was, acting as bait. A plan instantly formed in Silent’s mind as the flames that wreathed the distant princess’ form contrasted with the endless mounds of white snow piled on the roofs.

Seizing Messerschmitt by the neck, she hefted his sputtering form and carried it to the window. She held him close as she lifted off, locating the ideal spot. Far below her, Cloudchaser had faced the enraged alicorn, and made no move to run.

“It makes - no - difference,” Messerschmitt spat, “Drop me. Do it! I - win!”

“No, you don’t. Look down,” Silent said.

She helpfully rotated his head. Through his swelling eyes he could see the distant roofs piled with snow, and could see his downward flight trajectory. He could see where it all ended. As he saw that, he began to laugh and cough, spitting blood as he did.

He turned his head back to Silent. He smiled again, as wide as he could.

“Well played.”

Silent released him and let his body fall to earth. He made not a sound as he plummeted towards the roof, until his body plunged through the snow and crunched against the shingling beneath. The shock-wave sent a cascade of snow down, pushed each bank against the next one until the weight could sustain itself.

Silent waited only long enough to see that Messerschmitt’s corpse had hit as expected. Cloudchaser, evidently still alive, was digging through the snow now to find the fallen Celestia, and could handle the rest.

She was not sure why she lingered. Silent perched herself atop the tower she had dragged Messerschmitt from and waited. It was only upon seeing Chase looking up to see her, to know what she had done, that Silent finally allowed herself to fly away.

Chapter 1

“ARTIFACTS OF AGES: Come and see what Equestria’s history has to offer!”

So went the tag line of a faded poster, long since ripped and torn, adorning the brick wall of the building two blocks down from the Trottingham International Hotel. Wind and weather had taken their toll on the poor thing, decaying it to the point of near illegibility, yet it clung with tenacity nonetheless. Nopony could say just how long it had been on that wall, as the only things which remained as its scraps and pieces flapped in the wind was its title and a photo of an ancient knife.

Flitter looked over her shoulder as she passed, interested very slightly in the display. Such things had no particular appeal to her, she was more interested in urban decay. Lights that had burnt out, graffiti from a street artist, collapsed and abandoned buildings, these brought her senses alive.

That was why she was here, walking down this freezing street in the middle of winter. Her new friend had promised to show her something really special. Why not go with him? Normally she’d say no, but this was a vacation in historic Trottingham!

That, and Flitter had had a few drinks.

“We can cut through the alleyway,” he offered, pointing down the blackened passage before them.

A cloud of steam escaping a sewage grate scattered what little light pierced the place. Flitter gave a weak smile.

“Are you sure?”

“It’s perfectly safe,” he said.

“Wasn’t worried ‘bout it bein’ safe,” Flitter muttered. She took a step and felt her balance shift too far forward.

She stopped, held her breath and concentrated. Putting one hoof in front of the other, she marched into the darkness. She could hear her new friend pacing alongside her, carefully checking to make sure she didn’t stumble on anything. As soon as she felt her balance tip, he would be there to catch her and guide her forward.

The two passed a dumpster which held bags of frozen trash, giving off no stench in the dead of winter. Flitter shivered, though not due to the cold. In fact, though she wore no coat, she was feeling warmer than usual. Something else made her shiver. Something unearthly.

There was somepony standing there, in the dark behind the dumpster. He had been watching her, probably for a while. How long had he been there?

“Theodore,” the figure said. Not as a question, but a statement.

“Boss? Is that you? Whaddya doin’ here?” Flitter’s friend asked.

“This one is compatible.”

Flitter smiled idly. She knew what the each word meant, but the sentence made no sense. Compatible with what? This Boss guy was funny!

“Really?” Theodore asked.

“Hush. Waste no time. Up on the hill. Go.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Flitter wasn’t quite sure what happened, but a moment later the pony was gone. He had been there and then, not. Quite a trick to pull on somepony late at night.

So busy was she, pondering the disappearing act, that she did not notice her friend slip behind her. She did hear the vague sound of something metallic clanking, perhaps he had picked something up? She was about to ask him when -

Pain, all through her head. A ringing in her ears. She slumped over and saw her ‘friend’ bearing down on her. Another strike came.

Everything went black.

Dear Silent

I don’t know who else to turn to. Flitter’s been missing for two days and nopony will even listen to me. You’re the only one I know who can help. Please?

-Cloudchaser

That had been the content of the letter she had received that morning. Cloudchaser? That filly she had been to school with all those years ago? Why even bother with her?

Silent Rivers had flown to Trottingham as night fell. Cloudchaser had failed to provide her hotel room number, and only by checking the letterhead had Silent been able to find out where she was staying. Asking the desk clerk would be suspicious, and there were other ways.

Silent made a pass around the building. It was longer than it was wide, presumably with rooms on either side, facing out towards the street. She’d need a place to land where she’d be able to see the hotel’s many rooms, and found one in the form of a squat building across the street. While the Trottingham International was a good twenty stories and made of concrete and glass, it’s counterpoints were the many smaller, more traditional structures that surrounded it. One such structure was Geno’s Pizza, with an enormous sign shaped like a pizza slice jutting into the air. Silent wheeled and slowed to perch herself right on top of its crust.

Twelve years ago, Trottingham’s city council had decided that it was through with the city’s reputation as a sleepy little burg. The population had been in a great upswing, finance and industry had found the city’s lax laws to be attractive, and the public didn’t ask too many questions. The council had undertaken a big redevelopment project, and Trottingham International was one of its many victims. It took the look of a giant towering above so many lilliputians, dominating Trottingham’s skyline with gray and white.

Across the street, however, were the old-world buildings who had not been blessed by the extended hoof of the well-intentioned developers. Some still had thatched roofs, while others had the sheer gall of having ponies undertake their decoration. Attitudes amongst the population had begun reflecting the curious duality represented in the architecture.

All this was merely a prelude, part of basic research. Silent was not from Trottingham, and had few contacts here. Her office was based in Canterlot, though that city meant nothing to her; any centralized location would have served equally as well. Even the office itself was little more than a place to put her current casefile papers. A janitor’s closet would have done just as well were it not for the obvious security issues.

As Silent perched on the restaurant’s sign, a fleck of snow made its way from the sky and nestled on her nose. She brushed it off, unhappy at the glint of white interrupting her otherwise camouflaged form. Her mane was black and held in a simple ponytail. Her coat was a light tan, which blended well into woodwork but was a liability in winter. Her amber eyes offered no physical advantages, but she contented herself with the knowledge that most wouldn’t remember seeing them.

Silent waited there for an hour, and watched as the artificial lights inside the hotel began to blink out. At ten o'clock, most of the lights had extinguished themselves, as it was a weeknight and most of the denizens were no doubt business-ponies. A few lights remained on, narrowing the search down. Silent took wing and began inspecting the rooms from a closer vantage point.

After spotting a besuited pony and an empty room, the third search turned up as expected. Cloudchaser sat on the base of the hotel bed, staring down at the floor. She did not take note as Silent perched herself on the railing just outside the window. Only when the sliding glass door moved did Cloudchaser look up. First, confusion, then, relief.

“Silent! I didn’t think you’d come!”

Silent stepped in and shut the glass door behind her. Two suitcases, sloppily packed, littered the floor. No food remains, no plates, and no smells of anything edible. A quick glance at the trash can confirmed Silent’s initial suspicions, and cleared Cloudchaser of any doubt.

“Flitter’s gone missing. Why didn’t you file a missing-ponies report?” Silent asked.

“Straight to business, as always?” Cloudchaser asked. She managed a weak smile, but any attempt to reassure was dashed by the clear indication of tears staining her face.

Silent merely stared in response.

“Well,” Cloudchaser said, dropping the attempted smile, “I tried, but the guardsponies just laughed at me. They said tourists sometimes get ‘lost’.”

“She’s not lost, is she?” Silent asked.

“No, we’re supposed to go back home tomorrow morning. She’s never gone out like this, ever! If she’s staying out late, she always leaves me a message or something, she doesn’t just disappear.”

“Where did you last see her?”

“The bar downstairs,” Cloudchaser answered.

Silent took one look outside, noting that the snow was increasing in volume. She turned back to Cloudchaser. “Grab a coat.”

“Uh, okay, sure.”

Cloudchaser kicked her luggage bag over, scattering the contents on the floor. A brief search yielded a thin red fleece coat. The sudden realization that she had company caused Cloudchaser to lower her head as she looked sheepishly at Silent.

“What?” she asked.

Silent stared at her. Any disapproval, it seemed, was well hidden. Cloudchaser zipped up the fleece coat and cast a sidelong look at Silent.

“What about you?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about me.”

Silent walked past the beds and pushed the door open, leading to the garishly lit hotel hallway beyond. Cloudchaser trotted to catch up as Silent turned and wordlessly followed the sign pointing to the stairs.

“Hey,” Cloudchaser asked, “how come you didn’t come in the front way?”

“I have my reasons,” Silent replied.

All further attempts to start a conversation were likewise dashed as the two made their way downstairs.

Trottingham International Hotel’s local restaurant and bar. Fairly high number of patrons, for a weekday. Most of them were still wearing business suits and drinking alone. Almost all of the patrons were male, with two females lurking in a booth far from the entrance. They kept their eyes down and focused on their drinks. Silent led Cloudchaser straight to the bar and motioned to sit down.

The bartender met her eyes but made no move to come closer. He was a middle-aged fellow, good: he’d remember a pony like Flitter. He was currently serving something black to two colts wearing matching suits, both with little blue insignias on them. Silent couldn’t make out the details other than that some text was inscribed thereupon. Were it not for that, the two would have blended right into the background, become invisible in a crowded place. Silent filed away that knowledge for later.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asked as he finally made his way over to them.

Silent stared right into the bartender’s eyes and took note of all his facial twitches. She said nothing, she simply stared and waited. After a few seconds, his eyes wandered over to Cloudchaser. At that exact moment, Silent spoke.

“Sparkling water. With an olive in it.”

The bartender nodded and turned, heading to the opposite end of the bar where the olives were stored. Cloudchaser looked at her quizzically.

“Why didn’t you ask him - “

“Patience,” Silent replied.

The two colts down the bar were both looking at Cloudchaser now, though Silent watched only with her peripheral vision. She was more interested in getting the bartender to talk, ideally without him wanting anything in return.

“There you are,” the bartender said, sliding a small martini glass with bubbling carbon-laced water towards Silent. A toothpick with a single olive on it lounged to one side. Silent regarded it neutrally.

“And for your friend?”

“She’s not having anything,” Silent answered, keeping her eyes locked on the olive. She looked up, noting that the bartender’s eyes were still focused on Cloudchaser.

“Oh?” he asked.

“She’s already had too many for this trip. Was she here two nights ago?”

The bartender raised an eyebrow and turned to look at Silent. Cloudchaser was just plain confused.

“Now that I think of it, yes she was. Was she not supposed to be?”

“No, but thank you for your honesty. I assume she didn’t pay?”

The bartender frowned. “No, she didn’t. But her boyfriend offered to cover her tab. Ain’t seen him in here since then. You gonna cover her?”

Silent shot a look at Cloudchaser, who was wide eyed and clearly lost.

“I’m sorry about this,” Silent said, “she’s got some bad habits. Flitter, please pay your tab.”

Cloudchaser closed her eyes for a second, then nodded. “How much is it?”

“Fifteen bits.”

Money clanked on the bar and the bartender smiled broadly as he scooped up the change. More curiously, Silent could see the two business ponies now taking a great interest in the proceedings. One of them was salivating slightly, the other trying, and failing, to divert his gaze. Silent refocused on the task at hoof.

“I need to speak with her ‘boyfriend’ as well. Think you can help me find him?”

The bartender’s smile fell off his face the moment Silent sarcastically enunciated the words. His face betrayed concern, and more importantly, honesty. Easy reads made cases go much smoother.

“He’s not gonna be in tonight, it’s a work night.”

“Where does he work?” Silent asked.

“Dunno.”

“But you do know he won’t be in here? How?”

“He said so, uh, earlier. Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but he’s not in trouble is he?”

Silent waited a moment, narrowing her eyes ever so slightly. The bartender’s concern and knowledge coincided here. With a little pressing…

“He took something that was not his,” she answered.

The bartender stamped a hoof and clenched his jaw. He shook his head for a second before refocusing on Cloudchaser.

“I’m really sorry, miss. Teddy’s a good guy, but he’s had a hard life. Please don’t press charges!”

“We’re not going to press charges if we get it back,” Silent said. She leaned over the bar and whispered, just loud enough that only the bartender would hear it. “There’s no need to escalate this. Just tell us where he is and we’ll be on our way.”

The bartender fought with himself for a moment as Silent leaned back. As she did, she noticed the two business ponies had left the bar. Their little blue insignias were nowhere to be seen, even as Silent quickly scanned the room.

“Rook’s Winery, up on the hill. Don’t tell the guards, he’s got two strikes already. Just - just get your thing back, okay? Don’t tell him I told you, either.”

Silent indulged in a single sip of the sparkling water, and nodded at Cloudchaser. The two prepared to leave, though not before Silent deposited a bit next to the glass.

“Thank you,” she said to the bartender, still keeping her face as flat and emotionless as possible, “you’ve been very helpful.”

“Wow Silent, that was amazing!” Cloudchaser said as the two trod along the darkened streets of Trottingham. The fresh-fallen snow piled atop older droves, slowly filling in the tracks other ponies had made before them. Silent walked ahead of Cloudchaser, who constantly pushed herself to walk faster.

“Uh,” Cloudchaser said, “how did you - well, everything? How’d you know the bartender knew Flitter? All that stuff?”

“I didn’t,” Silent replied, keeping her eyes forward. “He was eager to tell me, all he needed was a reason. He likes playing the good guy, so all I had to do was make it look like he was enabling somepony to hurt others. Simple stuff. Good thing you look so much like Flitter, or that might have gotten expensive.”

“Expensive?”

“Bribes are the fallback case. Everypony talks if the price is right.”

Having left Trottingham’s downtown, the rows and rows of houses began to blend together. All told, it wasn’t that small of a city, but the old design of the lanes and gulleys gave it the impression of a small town. Most houses had been brightly painted when they were first built, but now that had run and faded. The buildings surrounding Silent and Cloudchaser now took on a weathered look, at least on the fronts. Mounds of snow hid the ravages of time behind soft, white, featureless perfection.

As the two travelled, signs began to appear on each street corner directing them to the famous historic site known as Rook’s Winery. Silent took a moment to examine one, as each gave a succinct history of the place.

It was old, very old, and had been owned by the same family since before Trottingham had even been incorporated. The signs boasted of secret doors and hidden chambers: ginned up lies designed to hook tourists. Presumably, the gift shop selling fine spirits had as much to do with the appeal to visitors as did ghosts of long-dead relatives.

The street ended a block ahead of them, and thick forest beyond that. Next to the line of whited trees was another sign advertising the winery, larger but with the same general information. Another, smaller, and definitely more recent sign adorned this one, attached by length of string. ‘CLOSED FOR SEASON’.

“Hold up,” Silent said, moving herself to block Cloudchaser, “we fly from here.”

“Huh? Why?”

Before snow had come, there had been a trail here. Trails of hoofprints could be seen leading out into the trees, all of which had been partialled infilled by the evening’s snowstorm. All, except one.

Silent took off and flew above the forest canopy, and Cloudchaser quickly flew to catch up. After several minutes of flight, Silent descended towards an opening in the white-covered trees. Instead of landing on the ground, she angled towards a tree branch and perched herself on it, shaking the snow off. Cloudchaser hovered awkwardly to her side, wondering what she was looking at.

“See the tracks?” Silent said without pointing. Cloudchaser followed her gaze.

The opening in the trees allowed the moonlight to reflect off the snow, showing many tracks. As before, one set was more recent than the others.

“So?” Cloudchaser asked.

“That set was made recently. What sort of work is there to do at a winery during the winter?”

“I don’t know,” Cloudchaser said, “maybe they’re trying to get their inventory finished? It’s a really early snowfall this year, because of the fire.”

“Fire?” Silent asked.

“Yeah, couple weeks ago. Big fire, sucked up a ton of water. Weather service had to completely redo their plans and start winter early.”

“I see,” Silent said, “better be careful regardless. Something is fishy.”

Without another word, Silent took off again and the two continued on towards the winery, now visible as two glowing yellow lights obscured by the muted white forest.

As Silent ascended and crested the last row of trees, the winery’s buildings came into view. Dimly lit by the pale glow of the moonlight, there were two lanterns hanging adjacent to the main entryway, itself little more than a wooden signpost weathered beyond legibility. The fence here was not as well maintained as the one at Trottingham, somewhat deliberately so. The entire complex gave off a rustic atmosphere, presumably to make tourists more open to spending bits.

The winery itself was two tall, wooden buildings that stretched out into the darkness. Across from them, the vineyard’s hundreds of plants had been covered in sheets to keep the snow from settling on them. What snow that had tried had fallen into the gullies between the rows to be shovelled out into mounds at the edge of the tree line.

Silent again perched herself on a branch as Cloudchaser hesitantly followed suit, clumsily shaking the branch and producing much excess noise. While the trail had led here, the tracks had not.

“Are we - “ Cloudchaser began, to be immediately shushed by Silent.

“Shh. Look,” Silent said, holding up a hoof.

Cloudchaser followed the path down into the forest with her eyes, confirming that whoever had started up the path had not completed their trek yet.

“You think he got lost?”

“More like stuck,” Silent said, “so we wait.”