Darkest Shadows

For one thousand years she had waited, biding her time imprisoned in the sun's softer celestial sister. She had loved the moon once, as her subjects never had, and while she still could not hate it as she despised the flaming sphere directed by her arrogant, treacherous sister, a millennium of imprisonment could not help but leave her with some resentment. Of course, the moon held no fault for her banishment here; that lay with Celestia, the pony she'd trusted the most. She'd reveled in the fawning praise and adoration of the ponies of Equestria, drawing them to her while snubbing her sister, encouraging them to embrace the day and shun the night… and shun the princess who ruled over it. Was it any wonder that Luna had sought out power in dark places when there was nowhere else she could go to escape the blinding, all-consuming light of a sister who claimed to love her, but had proved she loved only herself?

Nightmare Moon could not hate the moon, but she could hate the pony who had caused her to resent it so. Their confrontation would come soon, and she anticipated it as she sensed her loyal stars moving closer to aid in her escape, as she had bound them to long ago. The seals of her prison were broken one by one, and the long-confined alicorn steeled herself to once more face her sister, that accursed usurper. She had lost in their last duel, though only because Celestia had betrayed her by using the Elements of Harmony, weapons they'd once wielded together. In the past thousand years, surely the bond they had formed together with the Elements would be broken and Celestia would no longer be able to call upon them, but she would not put some other treachery beyond her untrustworthy sibling. The moment the seals were broken, the sun princess would strike.

As soon as she was free, Nightmare Moon cast up wards and prepared devilish traps to retaliate, but found to her shock that she was not under attack. Suspiciously, she reached out, searching for Celestia and found… nothing. Her sister was not coming to face her. How could this be? Using the dark powers at her disposal, she found that Celestia was gone, missing from the world. Had she perished in the intervening millennium? Surely not—even locked away, she would have sensed something like that—but then, where was she? What had become of her rival?

As Nightmare Moon pondered this, she felt a tickling in the back of her mind—a means of communication from long ago, used by a pony she'd once known. Though he was no alicorn, he was immortal, and had awaited this day as eagerly as she.

Welcome back, your Majesty. The usurper has been captured for you to deal with at your leisure. Praise be to Nighttime Eternal!

Nighttime Eternal. Nightmare Moon had promised to bring an end to the scorching tyranny of day and at last cloak the world in beautiful night. She had thought to accomplish such a feat, she would first need to defeat Celestia; but her followers had not been idle while she'd been imprisoned. Nightmare Moon cackled manically with none to hear her upon the abandoned, barren surface of her glorious moon. The sun would never rise on this, the longest day of the year, a day that would now never be. Down below, upon Equus, the ponies prepared to worship her sister; she could clearly feel the devotion directed toward the now-absent sun princess. This was particularly focused in one place, a seemingly insignificant town. Well, if that was where they wished to see Celestia, she would show them a true princess. It was time to have some fun. It was time they knew that everything had changed.

Darkest Shadows
Part the Ninth: Longest Night I

“What do you mean by that?” Beryl asked with concern.

Shadowmere had just dropped on her the revelation that, though their timepieces read that it was mid-morning, the sky clearly showed that it was night, and it was the sky that was in the wrong.

“If night remains even after the sun should have arisen, on today of all days, then it can only mean that Nightmare Moon has returned,” Shadowmere said as he continued to stare at the star-speckled heavens.

“Nightmare Moon?” Berry questioned. “I thought she was banished a thousand years ago.”

“On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape, and she will bring about Nighttime Eternal,” Shadowmere quoted before turning his gaze on the Ministry agent. “They don’t teach you about the prophecy in the Ministry anymore?”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Berry replied. It was one more thing on the list of things the Ministry had failed to prepare her for, but this one was surprising. “The Ministry was founded because of Nightmare Moon, but as far as we’re concerned, that was all in the past.”

“It is shocking what the Ministry has become and how much it has forgotten, but I cannot be too surprised that this was not a pressing concern. The only one who could deal with Nightmare Moon last time was Celestia. Which raises the question of why she hasn’t dealt with her again.”

“You think something has happened to Celestia?”

“I’m almost certain of it,” replied Shadowmere. “Our ‘friend’ here,” he said, tapping the trap containing Auzischell, “Was trying to tell us something. We began at the summer sun celebration, after all. The lor, like the other creatures and persons we’ve encountered, was being used by a third party, intended to draw us away while they completed whatever it was they were going to do with Celestia. We need to return to Canterlot.”

“The summer sun celebration is in Ponyville this year,” Berry offered. “That was one of the things that keyed me in to the fact that something was amiss.”

“There are things we will need from my chambers beneath Rosethorn Hall,” Shadowmere said as he tucked the sphere containing Auzischell away in his saddlebags. “Are you prepared?”

After Berry gave a nod, Shadowmere parted the air, opening a doorway to another realm. Cold wind with the slight scent of peppermint emerged from the passage and persisted as the two ponies stepped through. Berry had asked Shadowmere once if the passages had names, and his answer had been unenlightening. Of course they had names, or at least ponies had likely given them names; but considering how obscure knowledge of them was, there was no consensus among the small circle of those who used them. Shadowmere had his names for the passages he knew, but the names meant nothing to Beryl, so she had (without realizing it) started attributing her own names to each passage. The one they were entering now she thought of as the ‘stairs passage’ because it seemed to be completely composed of staircases going every which way without regard for gravity or basic architectural principles.

Like most passages, this one was inhabited by all manner of horrific creatures, and it didn't take long for them to home in on the interlopers. They were only traversing their fourth flight of stairs when a massive centipede covered in silvery-blue scales wrapped itself around the stairs from below. Pincers with too many segments reached out to Shadowmere.

“Daybreak, to me!” he called, summoning his sword and slicing away the pincers before driving the blade through the centipede's head.

Clambering over the body as it slowly crystallized, they came face-to-face with a creature possessing the body of a pony and wings of a moth, but with a fox's head, the whole body covered in a fox's fur pattern. Beryl fired her crossbow into its face, the quarrel sprouting spikes as it went through. Its corpse fell upward as they passed and ducked through an archway. They next crossed to a stairway running horizontally, though this took them into an open space filled with more of the fox-moths. Shadowmere threw powder from a pouch on his bandolier and waited for it to expand out into the horde before lighting a flare and throwing it, igniting the cloud.

Down more stairs they went, coming to an incredibly long flight surrounded by concentric rings of staircases. Partway through, the stairs shifted from going down to going up, but they hardly noticed, given how busy they were fighting off the green-furred lemurs that flung themselves off the surrounding stairs. When the stairs finally came to an end, they ducked and wove around, running and jumping from one staircase to the next. Berry wasn’t sure how Shadowmere managed to navigate here—whether he had some way to sense the direction he wanted to go or had simply used the passage long enough that he remembered all of it—but she trusted him to inerrantly lead the way.

Beryl swung her magical sword through a ghostly miniature dragon, causing it to fade away completely, before coming to a halt. Shadowmere examined the stairs ahead of them, which quickly came to a drop, ending in crumbling stone. A low growl came from the distance ahead, causing the immortal to look up.

“Jump,” Shadowmere commanded before taking a step and leaping toward the stairs over their heads, which also terminated in a broken end.

Shadowmere’s hooves just caught the edge, and he dragged himself up (down). Beryl required a few more steps and made a running leap. Though her hooves caught the edge as well, stone crumbled off and she continued to fall (rise). Before she could go sailing off through the passage, Shadowmere grabbed her coat in his teeth and dragged her up. Together they stepped up a small hoofful of stairs, and Shadowmere opened the way out of the passage. Stealing a look back, Berry spotted the source of the growling: a massive whale-shaped blob of black goo that mostly oozed around the stairs as it passed, but caused some to break away. Quickly, she followed Shadowmere out and the passage closed behind them.

They had emerged in a dark space, and after the odd everywhere-and-nowhere illumination of the passage, it took a few moments for Berry’s eyes to adjust and register the minimal amount of light that existed. Shadowmere seemed to have no such hindrance and trotted up to the steps leading to a door tilted back at an angle. Whispering an incantation, the sound of chains releasing came from the other side, and Shadowmere pushed the cellar doors up and out. It was a back alley of Canterlot they stepped out into. Fortunately, there were no ponies around to witness them, but voices could be heard from the streets connected to the alley. When Berry and Shadowmere left the alley, no attention was paid to them. Everyone was too preoccupied standing around in the streets staring up at the night sky to remark on two strangely dressed ponies.

As quickly as they could, they made their way to Rosethorn Hall, still avoiding any crowds. Officers of the CPD were out trying to reassure the citizens, but looked mighty nervous themselves. Berry didn't spot any agents of the Ministry, but they were likely involved in other work, trying to address Nightmare Moon’s return directly. It was for the best that she didn’t run into any of them right now anyway, though they were probably calling all agents in. At Rosethorn Hall, the orphans were out on the lawn. Though they had anticipated watching the sunrise, they were now frightened by the darkness the longer it went on and needed comforting from their caregivers. The duo of monster hunters moved around silently to the entrance of Shadowmere’s hideout; the caregivers had things in hoof, and the best thing they could do to assuage the foals’ fears would be to find Celestia so she could restore the cycle of night and day.

Through both doors they went, Beryl mindful as she had been ever since her first time here to avoid disturbing the protective line of grit within the inner door. As the door swung shut behind her, lights suddenly winked into existence in the air all around, freezing her and Shadowmere in place. The lights erupted into violet flames that quickly expanded to fill the room. Thinking fast, Berry cast a shield over herself and Shadowmere, though they were forced closer together as the dome contracted, pressed by the magical flames. At points, the mystical fire spiked through the shield, and Shadowmere mumbled incantations, pressing his hoof against them wherever they threatened to break through. After what was only several seconds but felt far longer, the fire burned out and faded away, leaving the main sitting room completely charred apart from the small circle that Berry’s shield had protected. Not even a hint of the furniture was left, apart from slightly higher heaps of ash on the floor casting small shadows as Berry swept the light from her horn around, providing illumination now that the lamps on the walls had been likewise disintegrated.

“What happened?” Beryl asked once it seemed the fire had passed and wasn’t spreading or reigniting.

“A trap,” Shadowmere grumbled, his sunglasses having fallen away and his hellish eyes glowing fiercely in the darkened room. “Again, someone has managed to violate the sanctity of my home. This time they decided to do more than rob me of a creature they intend to release. It appears they no longer care if their interference is discovered.”

“The same one who led us away from Canterlot, then,” Beryl surmised, and Shadowmere nodded.

“After the last times, I set additional wards and marked the entrances, but they still managed to enter somehow. My mark here was still intact, so they didn’t enter through Rosethorn Hall, but we’ll need to check the other ways in and out to find how they breached my sanctum. Of course, there may be other traps lying in wait. We’ll have to clear out my lair.”

“Do we have time for that?” Beryl inquired, mindful of the chaos that was surely consuming Equestria in Celestia’s absence.

“We cannot risk not doing so,” Shadowmere said wearily. “Our enemies know this; not only do they threaten us with these traps, they delay us. Yet, there is no telling what they have lying in wait for us, so attempting to locate Celestia while leaving any trap intact could prove deadly.”

Despite the fact that Shadowmere was incapable of dying, at least permanently, Beryl saw his point. Death would still incapacitate and delay him, and Berry had no such immunity against fatal harm. This trap was limited to this room, but who could say if the others were the same? The unfortunate truth was that Shadowmere was right, and that if they were continue, they would need to make his home safe.

***

It was with mixed urgency and caution that they moved through the interconnected chambers and passages of Shadowmere’s hideout. Now that they knew there were traps in place, it was less often that they were taken unaware, the air filling with needles or everything crystalizing. Shadowmere or Beryl were able to defuse most of them before they went off. Through their scouring, Berry was also able to see more of the lair than she had before. Even with all the time she’d spent here, there was much she hadn’t seen until now, including Shadowmere’s incredibly spartan bedchamber. There were some places, however, that she still didn’t see, Shadowmere insisting on venturing in alone. Secrets.

“Tikrit,” the immortal whispered as they entered one of the final rooms, triggering the trap within.

Acid materialized above and cascaded down as a solid wave. Shimmering came from the cabinets that lined the walls and the shelves in between as wards previously placed by Shadowmere prevented the acid from affecting anything within the room. A shield projected by Berry protected the two living beings in the room, the acid flowing around them to sizzle on the floor with the rest. The floor of the room was left unevenly pitted and scorched as the acid did its work, but nothing else was damaged.

Once the danger had passed, Berry was able to take in the room. It was much longer than it was wide, the shelves and cabinets stretching off into the far distance and making it difficult to spy the opposite wall from the door. Each shelf and cabinet was filled with peculiar items, some clearly weapons and others appearing shockingly mundane. Many were caged or chained in place, indicating a threat they posed. Clearly this was where Shadowmere kept his relics, magical items gathered over millennia of life. Several of the windowed cabinet doors hung ajar, and Shadowmere looked at them and empty spots on the shelves with concern as he strode past. This concern was targeted on missing items, though he had exuded general concern since they had checked the last of the entrances into his hideout and found his seals there intact still. Just how had his sanctum been violated?

Contrary to appearance, the room did not go on forever, and there were doors both at the far end as well as set into the side walls, breaking up the lines of cabinets. Shadowmere chose one of these side doors and stepped through, Beryl following him into a rough-hewn chamber in the stone of Canterlot Mountain. At the center of the chamber stood a doorway, oddly tall and narrow and tipped slightly backwards. The two doors within the frame appeared to be metal, though they were paneled as though made of wood and painted a dark blue. Affixed over the doors’ surface were numerous wax seals holding ancient strips of parchment covered in words written in an indecipherable tongue. Many of the seals, even those that did not span both doors, appeared to have been broken down their centers.

Shadowmere strode up to the doors and, placing a hoof on each, thrust them open. Though they should have been swiftly halted by the floor of the chamber behind them, given the doorway’s angle, they instead swung open freely, looking out onto another world, one where dark ash fell like snow and covered the land in drifts. Shadowmere stepped through, looking at the opposite sides of the doors, before returning and pulling the doors shut before whatever it was emitting a keening howl on the other side could make itself seen.

“Is this how they got in?” Berry asked as Shadowmere’s face grew more perturbed, though the answer seemed apparent to her.

“It must be, though I can scarce believe it,” Shadowmere said as he stole a glance back at the doors. “Besides me, there is only one other who could have broken those seals. Malthus was once a … friend of mine. Though we have gone our separate ways, I never expected him to aid Nightmare Moon against Celestia.”

“Malthus?” Berry asked as she scoured her memory. “The same Malthus as Celestia’s chief advisor?”

“For the last two centuries, though I’ve known him far longer,” Shadowmere replied before returning to the main chamber.

Berry remained a bit with the mysterious doorway before following. By the time she emerged, Shadowmere had done a check of the other side chambers and was inspecting the shelves and cabinets from which relics had been stolen. For a while, he stood in front of a cabinet that held several small items, such as necklaces, earrings, and caps for unicorn horns. His fiery eyes were fixed on a tripod of thin metal rods holding up a small ring; judging from his expression, the tripod was not the relic supposed to be stored here, but meant to hold something missing.

“The Eye of Larghast is missing, as well as anything that would definitively allow us to locate Celestia,” Shadowmere announced as he finally turned away from the cabinet.

Despite that, Shadowmere grabbed a few items from the shelves on the way out, directing Beryl to grab some herself. With the main sitting room definitively torched, they took up position in the library. For most location spells, one would need something from the pony one was trying to locate. However, with somepony as prominent as Celestia, a centuries-old alicorn with the power to move the sun and moon, there were ways around that. Despite this, none of the methods they attempted were successful. Maps of Equestria or even the entirety of Equus were consumed wholly by magical flame, revealing nothing, pins fell helter-skelter, pointing in no direction, and an enchanted looking glass returned only a gray murk rather than an image of Celestia’s location. Even without relics, Shadowmere and Berry tried various spells, none of which gave any information on where Celestia was.

Someone like Celestia definitely would have herself carefully warded to protect her person, but even so, the methods they used should have bypassed anything she would be expected to have protecting her. Something else was hiding her, something powerful, if nothing they tried was successful. There were other methods that could find her, no matter what was obscuring her location from magical searches—but those would all require relics that had conveniently been removed from Shadowmere’s stores. They were successful in one instance in locating Nightmare Moon, though all the looking glass showed was that she was in the Everfree Forest, observing a random group of mares. Their intent was not to face her, however, but to find the missing monarch of Equestria, and Celestia remained beyond reach.

“What are we going to do now?” Beryl asked, frustrated and magically taxed by the rituals. “We need more information to act, clearly, unless we are to go after Nightmare Moon ourselves.”

“She is a foe Celestia must face,” Shadowmere said enigmatically, “And eliminating her would leave nopony controlling the sun and moon. No, we must try to get more information from Auzischell.”

“Will he be cooperative?” Beryl asked skeptically.

“Probably not, but it’s not as if we have other options,” Shadowmere admitted, and the Ministry agent nodded in response.

They had gone to a lot of trouble to reimprison the lor, and they weren’t about to release him again so soon. However, there was a way to let him out of his prison while keeping him tethered. The tools for this had fortunately not been stolen from Shadowmere’s home, and soon they had the temporary prison set up around Auzischell’s more permanent prison. A multicolored cord was wrapped around the lid of the sphere they had trapped him in, and a circle of black candles that smelled of rosemary burned around it. When Shadowmere was confident that Auzischell would not be able to escape, he opened the prison sphere.

The lor emerged from his prison, slowly expanding like an inflating balloon. His scaly equine form looked somewhat insubstantial and was only around forty percent of his true size, so the trap must have been successful in containing him. Tendrils of energy were wrapped around each of his ankles, leading back into the trap he had emerged from, and he shifted his hooves as he stood on nothing above his prison.

“Decided to let me go already, have you?” Auzischell asked snarkily, baring a grin filled with pointed teeth.

“There is no time for jokes, Auzischell, as you well know,” Shadowmere berated him, and the lor frowned with annoyance at the use of his name. “Someone freed you only to manipulate you into keeping us out of the picture. Tell us who so that we can deal with them.”

“There’s nothing I can say to you,” Auzischell replied, “You who manipulated me to trap me again.”

“Come now. You don’t want revenge on them? The labyrinths you trapped us in contained clues as to what was happening in the real world. Why else would you do something like that?”

“Perhaps I was simply using what I saw. Not even I could tell you why I would do such a thing,” Auzischell said, a frown still creasing his brow.

“Why protect them?” Shadowmere asked, his patience straining.

“This conversation is pointless,” the lor said with finality.

“Wait,” Beryl said. “Is it that you won’t tell us or can’t tell us?”

The lor said nothing, but directed a wide, unnerving smile at Berry.

“Why give us hints in the labyrinth, and then nothing now?” Berry asked as she directed her attention to Shadowmere. “Perhaps it’s because of a lor’s penchant for puzzles, or perhaps it’s because he’s prevented from sharing information with us. We know our foe, or foes, are crafty—they’ve managed to evade us all this time—so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility to think they would have covered their tracks and prevented Auzischell from sharing anything with us. But, they couldn’t completely stop him from incorporating obscure references in the labyrinth or control every word of his speech now.”

Shadowmere contemplated Beryl’s theory for a moment before leaning toward Auzischell and reaching out his hooves. When the lor shied away, Shadowmere sighed.

“Auzischell, may I inspect your mind for signs of interference?” the immortal asked.

Auzischell remained silent, but he closed his eyes and bowed his scaly head. Shadowmere hovered his hooves over the lor’s scalp, tracing patterns in the air as he closed his own eyes and concentrated. His face scrunched up in a visage of pain several times before he reopened his eyes and leaned back.

“There is a powerful enchantment over his mind,” Shadowmere reported. “However… I dare not remove it.”

“Why not?” Berry asked.

“It is beyond my ability to safely remove,” Shadowmere said. “The attempt would almost certainly destroy his mind.”

Auzischell hummed sadly, but didn’t seem surprised. “My crown is tighter than yours, after all,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Shadowmere inquired, but the lor shrugged.

“I can’t say.”

“Berry, may I?” Shadowmere asked as he rose from his seat and approached her.

“Inspect my mind?” she asked. When he nodded, she nodded in reply, giving her consent.

She wasn’t sure what she would feel as Shadowmere moved his hooves around her head. She’d never thought of her mind as having a physical form before, other than in training against psychic attacks, and she tried not to imagine it as a wall and so interfere with whatever Shadowmere was doing. She could feel something now, as if her mind had dimensions that she could barely quantify; it was being shifted around, moved, pushed, and reshaped as if it were a wineskin being inspected for leaks. Occasionally she would feel a twinge, as if a splinter were being pulled out, and with one final tug, she felt a spike of alarm.

Something had been interfering with her mind for some time now, clouding it, making things calm where they should have remained sharp. There was some danger she’d recognized in the moment, but never acted upon because it no longer seemed so important. Threats were never addressed, because they ceased to feel like threats. There was something missing, and she was beginning to remember. Wait, the lor is not the only lead we have for who might have taken Celestia!

“Wait,” Shadowmere commanded as Berry opened her mouth to speak her revelation.

Quickly and carefully, Shadowmere repeated what he’d done for the mare on himself, while he could still remember what he had found. He remained steady on his hooves, but didn’t hesitate to retake his seat the moment he’d completed removing the enchantment from his own mind.

“Malthus,” Berry said once he gestured for her to go on.

“Yes, it seems he has managed to make others discount him as a threat. It is likely that all of Canterlot is affected, to keep anyone from questioning his longevity and proximity to Celestia,” Shadowmere said. “Only he knew how to enter my chambers through the Perpendicularity Gate, he has long desired to reclaim the Eye of Larghast, and Celestia’s trust would allow him the opportunity to detain her, however he has done so.”

“When I first saw him in the Royal Court, I resolved to submit a report to the Ministry to investigate him, but now I realize I never did so,” Berry admitted, “And when I encountered his private chambers, I sensed a dark power coming from them, but once we’d dealt with the djinn, I again failed to act on my suspicions.”

“Was it Malthus who freed you to imprison us?” Shadowmere asked Auzischell.

“I cannot say,” the lor replied.

“Thank you, Auzischell. We will speak again,” Shadowmere said, and the lor’s expression softened slightly with a faint note of surprise, before Shadowmere tugged on the cord around the top of his trap and he was drawn back inside.

“Malthus’s chambers are in Canterlot Castle,” Beryl said once Auzischell was again contained.

“He is unlikely to be there,” Shadowmere said, “But there should be something that will allow us to find him, and with him, hopefully we will also find Celestia.”

***

Canterlot remained in confusion when Shadowmere and Beryl emerged from Rosethorn Hall, though there was less activity than when they’d arrived. The caretakers had managed to get the orphans back inside, so they were able to cross the lawn without interruption and return to the streets. Some ponies remained outside, gathered in groups or speaking to the CPD officers still trying to reassure the populace, but most had either retreated to their homes and drawn the shades, as if to block out the truth of the sky, or gone on to work to try to pretend that everything was normal.

The guards at Canterlot Castle were frantic, not surprising given the disappearance of the pony they were meant to be guarding. They didn’t do anything to halt Beryl from entering the castle once she flashed her Ministry badge, even if she wasn’t in uniform. Shadowmere found his own way to slip inside without being noticed, and soon they were at their destination. Malthus’s quarters were right where Berry (now) remembered them being. The door remained as she’d last encountered it, made of ancient wood and covered in wards exuding barely restrained fury.

“Malthus, what have you done?” Shadowmere asked as he examined the wards. “I won’t be able to enter, not without needing extensive time to dismantle some of these wards. Take this.”

Shadowmere produced a coin-sized dream catcher from his saddlebags, and Berry took it in her magic. The immortal then pulled a knife from his bandolier and used it to carefully scratch through several of the wards on the door, mindful not to nick any others that would react violently to such removal. Given the impression of these wards, Beryl wondered what could apply specifically to Shadowmere, though she still didn’t truly understand what he was. Pony? Monster? Something in between, or something else entirely? They were questions she’d managed to put off thinking about, but now that she knew Malthus had suppressed concern about him, she wondered if it had been entirely in her control to do so. It was something she would need to address, but right now there were more pressing matters to deal with.

Though it made her eyes water to do it so close to the overwhelming pressure of the remaining wards, Beryl cast a spell to disable the mundane locks on the door before pushing it open. The room beyond was abandoned, but Beryl remained on edge as she entered in case Malthus were to appear or had precautions aside from the excessive warding on the room’s entrance. The room itself appeared suspiciously normal, with nothing to suggest the pony who lived here had the means to place the wards on the door that led in. It was decorated plainly, like any functional room in the castle, with a small seating area off to one side and a coatrack next to the door. On the wall facing the door was a low dresser with several ordinary items on it, though the one that caught Beryl’s attention with a shock was a small looking glass. One might assume it was used purely for Malthus to check his mane and clothes before leaving, but Berry recalled another looking glass in Matriarch Tower used by the Yx cult that had looked out on this very scene. It all but proved that Malthus had been in league with the cultists who had attempted to summon the Old God to this world.

A door to the left led to Malthus’s bedroom, which contained more wards clustered around the dark four-poster bed, as well as his clothing (dark suits and ragged cloaks), but nothing too suspicious. Likewise, the bathroom off the entry was as normal as could be, as was the kitchen and dining area to the right. The back room wedged between kitchen and bathroom, however, was anything but normal. The door was securely locked, but Berry was able to undo these without too much arcane pressure on her as she cast the spell. Apparently these locks were more to keep out visitors that Malthus had already let in as opposed to interlopers stopped by the front-door wards. This room looked like a compressed version of Shadowmere’s hideout beneath Rosethorn Hall, with bizarre items, materials in jars, and many ancient-looking books. Beryl carefully paged through some of books left on a workbench, though many were in obscure languages she couldn’t read or made her eyes swim, as if the words were trying to pull themselves off the page. Those she could read were most alarming, as they almost universally dealt with how to bypass magical wards and overcome resistances, with the topic of how to kill immortals coming up consistently. Was Malthus searching for a way to kill Celestia, or was it Shadowmere he was concerned with? He’d broken into Rosethorn Hall repeatedly, after all, and must have expected he might run into the immortal monster slayer eventually.

“Whatever his intent, he hasn’t killed her yet or we’d know it,” Shadowmere said after Beryl completed her inspection and shared her concerns. “Now, however, we should have the means to track him.”

Taking the dreamcatcher from Berry, Shadowmere sought out a public washroom. Judging from how directly he went, he must have spent some of the time while the Ministry agent was investigating Malthus’s quarters locating it. That, or he was more familiar with the layout of Canterlot Castle than he let on. The washroom was small, with barely enough room for the two ponies to fit in between the toilet, sink, and cupboard for toiletries and linens. Immediately Shadowmere turned on the faucet and started plugging every drain in the room, including shoving towels into gaps between the door and doorframe.

“What are we doing?” Beryl asked as water began to pool around her hooves.

“Malthus could be anywhere and can move around incredibly quickly, more quickly even than we can follow by passage,” Shadowmere explained as the room slowly filled with water and he sorted through the contents of various pouches draped about his person. “We can also get much closer to where he is if we follow the last path he took, but to determine that, we’ll need to go to the Nexus. The totem you took into his quarters should be well-infused with his aura and will let us track him there. There are less … unpleasant ways to enter the Nexus, but they would require preparation that we don’t have time for. This is the ‘quick and dirty’ way to enter it.”

As the water continued to rise, Shadowmere ducked under the surface briefly to scratch a runic circle into the floor, whose lines burned even underwater. Berry was forced to paddle as the room filled in order to keep her head above the rising level of water. Shadowmere presently joined her after finishing his inscription.

“After I open the third vial,” he said, gesturing with a trio of glass tubes filled with dubious powders, “Count to three and then breathe in the water. Your lungs need to be filled.”

Beryl obviously had concerns but no time to voice them as the water completed filling the room and she and Shadowmere were both submerged. She kept her eyes on the stallion as he undid the three vials and allowed the powders to disperse into the water. After the three seconds had passed, Shadowmere opened his mouth to breathe in, and for a moment Beryl had a pang of fear. He was unable to die, but would she also survive this experience? How far was she willing to trust him? In the end, she followed his lead and breathed in the water, overriding her body and her instincts. It hurt fiercely, but she forced herself to fill her lungs with water.

Her vision tunneled as her body dealt with the lack of oxygen, and she thought that perhaps she’d made a terrible mistake. Everything seemed distant, as if she was swimming in an ocean of water rather than just a small room’s worth, though she could blurrily make out the walls of the washroom in the distance, distorted and stretched. Suddenly, she felt herself falling, pulled along by the water around her. A crash of noise coincided with the water impacting something solid, and Beryl’s body hit that same something soon after. Desperately, she tried to expel the water from her lungs and gasped for air as the water dispersed around her. After a few seconds of forcing her lungs to work properly, she realized the water was floating away as mist, and tendrils also ran from her mouth and nostrils, whatever remained in her lungs clearing itself away.

Once she confirmed that she wasn’t going to die, Beryl was able to collect herself and see just where she was now. Clearly, they were no longer in a washroom in Canterlot Castle. The surface beneath Beryl’s hooves, she was now able to perceive, was not one solid substance, but was composed of numerous glowing purple threads running in parallel. Looking around, everything was composed of the same threads, an innumerable number of them forming a structure around her that resembled Manehattan’s Grand Central Station, if it was expanded several hundred times. Where she could see outside the station, there was only a void, pitch black without even stars to light it.

“It’s a train station,” Beryl commented.

“If that is how you perceive it,” Shadowmere said as he finished straightening himself out.

“Malthus comes here?” Berry asked.

“Not exactly,” Shadowmere explained as he started walking. “The way Malthus travels, he steps through one door and emerges from another somewhere else as soon as he steps through. The experience is instantaneous, but in truth, his soul travels along these threads from door to door. We’re in the interstice, the space between spaces, and these connecting threads form the Nexus. His passage causes the thread he travels along to vibrate, and with this, we can match the resonance of his aura to find which thread he last traveled along.”

As Shadowmere produced the miniature dreamcatcher, Beryl could hear a faint chiming sound coming from it now, echoed from multiple places around them.

“Malthus has been traveling a lot in the past few hours,” Shadowmere observed as he looked around, his ears twitching and swiveling, trying to latch onto the most intense reply from the threads.

The two of them traveled through the Nexus, seeking out which thread resonated the loudest. The journey took them through multiple disembarking halls and across several platforms, at least from Beryl’s perspective. She had no idea how Shadowmere perceived the Nexus, but given his reaction and the fact that he’d been born long before trains had been conceived of, she had to assume it was something far different. At the moment, she didn’t want to interrupt him to ask, especially given that she was also carefully listening for the proper thread. When they located it, Shadowmere paused before snapping the dreamcatcher in half.

“Keep your hoof on the thread,” he commanded, doing so himself. “Malthus used this one not long ago. Be ready for anything.”

After Berry nodded, Shadowmere dragged the broken edge of the dreamcatcher across the thread they had identified. There was a sudden twanging sound, like the breaking of a guitar’s string, and Beryl found herself yanked off of her hooves. Her sense of self was muddled as she was dragged along at incredible speed. Her vision was a blur of purple as she was drawn through and out of the Nexus until the only thing in her sight was a single purple line twisting and winding through infinite darkness. Before she could even fully register it, a wooden door appeared ahead of her, suspended in the darkness, and she and Shadowmere both slammed into it. Hinges squealed as they were pulled out of their mountings and a crunch sounded as the lock splintered the nonexistent frame. A bright light flashed for an instant before resolving into a darkened but not lightless scene.

Shadowmere and Berry’s weight continued to propel the door as it was torn from its hinges, and it skidded off a rough wooden porch and stairs before impacting sand-covered ground and sending the two ponies flying. As Berry rose, shaking sand from her mane, tail, and clothing, she took in the beach they had landed on. Beneath the moonlight, the sand stretched out to where waves lapped lazily, rolling with foam further out in the ocean. A line of tropical trees stood opposite the water, and between them a line of vacation beach homes in a rustic style. The door they had torn free of its mounting had once been the front entrance of one of these homes. Now a damaged doorway looked in on the dark and abandoned interior.

She couldn’t spend too long staring at the scenery, however. Malthus could be anywhere around here, and perhaps Celestia would be as well. If not, they would need to obtain that information from him, and it was unlikely that he would offer it up willingly. After ensuring that her weapons and gear had survived the journey first through water and then through the tumble in the sand, she rejoined Shadowmere, who was making checks of his own.

They set off down the beach in search of Malthus. Shadowmere seemed to have a sense of where the traitor was located now that they were in close proximity, and it didn’t take them long to find him. Malthus advanced along the beach toward them, as though he could also sense their presence, a shadowy figure whose ragged cloak billowed around him in the ocean breeze. Locks of his blood-red mane flicked in and out of the hood he had pulled up over his head, providing the only flicker of color on his person.

“So, you’ve come for me?!” Malthus called out once they were within shouting distance, and his steps came to a stop.

“Did you believe I wouldn’t?!” Shadowmere called back as he and Beryl followed suit and temporarily ceased their advance.

“No, I should have known there was no escaping you, even after twelve centuries!” Malthus replied. “I should have known!”

“You know how this will end!”

“Do I?!” Malthus challenged him. “How it will go may be certain, but how it will end is not yet written!” Malthus turned his attention toward Beryl. “And who are you that Shadowmere has ensnared in his net?”

“Agent Beryl Fields of the Ministry!” Beryl called back, seeing no reason to withhold the information now.

“Of course!” Malthus replied with a harsh laugh. “Graveshard, heed my call!”

A teal crystalline sword materialized in the air in front of Malthus, and he seized it in his magic.

“Daybreak, to me!” Shadowmere called, summoning his own sword as Malthus charged at him, and he galloped across the sand to meet him.

The two ancient stallions met, their blades striking against each other and ringing out above the crashing waves. Their swords spun, thrusting, wheeling, striking, and pulling back as they tried to hit each other, sand thrown around by their hooves as they danced across the beach. Beryl advanced, but kept her distance to avoid being diced apart by the blades. She attempted to ensnare Malthus’s limbs with a spell, but her magic slipped away, repelled by wards he’d placed on his clothes or his body. Drawing her crossbow, she fired an explosive bolt behind him, throwing the unicorn off balance. He directed his attention temporarily toward the Ministry agent, and the sand around her rose up into a prison, solidifying into glass. Beryl easily smashed herself free with a spell, and Malthus’s distraction saw Shadowmere’s sword clip through his cloak’s hood, exposing his head as the cloth fell back to either side.

Beryl rolled through the sand as Malthus spoke arcane words and a sphere of pulsing purple energy appeared above his head and sent scattered blasts her way, scorching the sand wherever they struck. Berry conjured up a shield to block the blasts as she fired her crossbow through it, carefully aiming her shots and using her magic to guide the quarrels after they’d been launched into Malthus’s body. He stumbled with several embedded in his legs, and Shadowmere swung heavily for him. Malthus brought up his sword to block anyway, but it shattered as Shadowmere’s struck it. Graveshard reformed, however, and it was whole again by the time Malthus plunged it into Shadowmere’s chest. In the same instant, Daybreak swept through Malthus’s neck, separating his head from his body.

As both ponies collapsed, Berry ran up to Shadowmere. The sword had impaled his heart, and would have killed any other pony, but of course he was still alive. It must not have been a pleasant experience, though, as the stallion gritted his teeth. Beryl assisted in pulling Graveshard from his heart so that he could heal. No sooner had she removed the blade, however, than Shadowmere shoved her aside. Quickly regaining her hooves, she spotted a magical sword embedded in the sand where she had just been. Nearby, his horn glowing, stood Malthus, his head reattached to his body, the wound across his neck slowly knitting itself back together as tendrils of blood hovered around it. He was also unkillable?

“How will it end, Shadowmere?” Malthus taunted. “Will it end at all?”

Reattaching the hoof that Malthus’s magical blade had succeeded in shearing off, Shadowmere charged again at him. Malthus dodged back now, trying to stay out of range of his opponent’s blade. Shadowmere threw bombs to attempt to pin him in, and a glow matching that of his horn wrapped around his entire body and he lifted himself into the air to escape. Berry summoned a storm of blades around Malthus, surrounding him in whirling edges that sliced at his cloak and flesh.

“Graveshard, heed my call!” Malthus called, and the crystalline blade soared up from where it had been discarded in the sand.

Shadowmere sidestepped the sword as it flew past him up to the hovering Malthus. As Malthus used Graveshard to deflect and dispel the whirling blades around him, Shadowmere ran under him and quickly drew his hooves through the sand, drawing a magic circle. Beryl opened a portal above Malthus, and seawater cascaded over him, disorienting him. He plummeted like a stone as Shadowmere finished his magic circle and gravity increased dramatically in the cylinder the unicorn was hovering in.

The seawater was flash-boiled into a cloud of steam that puffed out from where Malthus had fallen, followed by a disc of energy at knee-level. So close, Shadowmere lost all his limbs, but Berry was far enough away to put a shield in place to block it in time. Shifting her portal so that the one in the sea was now in front of her, she threw a bomb down at Malthus. The explosion went off, too late as Malthus appeared outside of the cloud of steam, having teleported away.

A bolt of lightning shot from the traitorous unicorn’s horn, and Beryl struggled to deflect it up and away with her magic. Shadowmere managed to put himself back together and rushed Malthus, forcing him to cease his lightning. A flurry of sword swipes surrounded the two again, until Shadowmere managed to get through Malthus’s defense, his sword cleaving the stallion in two. His halves spun away from each other before teleporting away in twin flashes of light.

While he was in the midst of putting himself back together further down the beach, Beryl threw another bomb from her saddlebags. This one didn’t deal damage when it exploded over him, however, but it did rain slivers of metal down onto him. Instantly, Malthus’s magic ceased, though his unnatural healing didn’t, meaning that it must have been intrinsic to him, like with Shadowmere. Graveshard, which had come with him in his teleportation, ceased levitating, and he quickly grabbed it in his mouth as Shadowmere arrived.

Another swordfight commenced, this time with both ponies gripping their weapons between their teeth. Malthus shifted as they fought, bringing them closer to the shore, though it cost him several gashes and quarrel impacts to do so. As Shadowmere swung his sword down at Malthus, the unicorn threw out his cloak, entangling Shadowmere’s blade, before pulling himself free of the tattered cloth. His body clad only now in his armor, he threw himself into the water, rolling through the waves and damp sand in an attempt to wash off the remnants of Beryl’s bomb blocking his magic. Shadowmere flung away the cloak from his sword and swung Daybreak toward Malthus, who managed to meet the swing with Graveshard again levitated.

“Enjoying the darkness, Shadowmere?” Malthus taunted, as their duel continued, managing to parry Shadowmere’s strikes even with his wet hair hanging in strands in front of his singular eye. “Darkness was always your ally, wasn’t it?”

“I won’t hear talk of allies from a traitor,” Shadowmere grumbled through Daybreak’s hilt.

“And you who has nothing to betray!” Malthus cried. “Loyal only to yourself! Not a care for those around you except as useful tools!”

Berry was finding it increasingly difficult to keep track of the two immortals, as they fought through the surf, and find ways that she could strike at Malthus without also striking Shadowmere. Her crossbow remained an effective tool, though her quarrels were beginning to run low, as she’d not managed to recover all those that Malthus had pulled from his flesh and scattered across the beach. As she fired at an opportune moment, her quarrel managed to strike Malthus in the head, piercing his eyepatch and sinking into his skull. The unicorn gritted his teeth, and Shadowmere paused for a moment before resuming his assault.

“Like her! How long have you two been in league?! How long until it is too late for her?” Malthus shouted. “Death would be a mercy! I know full well there is no killing you, but there are other ways to make you pay for what you did to Celestia!”

“What he did to Celestia?” Beryl questioned, though she didn’t cease to let quarrels loose, one striking Malthus’s horn.

“And you!” Malthus yelled as he continued to swing his sword in a flurry. “You and your Ministry who was supposed to protect Equestria from the darkness, not betray the monarch who had charged you with this duty and plunge the world into Nighttime Eternal!”

“Where is the Eye of Larghast?” Shadowmere asked as he backed off from his assault, but still held Daybreak ready to fend off attack.

“How should I know?” Malthus growled as his eye narrowed. “It wasn’t something I could be trusted with, now was it?”

“And the Perpendicularity Gate?”

“I haven’t been to the Perpendicularity since we sealed it,” Malthus said warily, ceasing his attacks and glaring at Shadowmere suspiciously. “I’m no fool, Shadowmere.”

“Where is Celestia?” was his next question.

“Wherever you have taken her!” Malthus said, enraged. “If I cannot save her, then I will avenge her!”

“Malthus!” Berry cried before he could begin swinging at Shadowmere again, “Are you a loyal servant of Celestia?”

“Of course, traitor,” Malthus snarled.

“I believe we’ve all been deceived,” Berry postulated, coming to the same deduction as Shadowmere. “We were searching for you because everything pointed to you being the one to orchestrate Celestia’s disappearance. I would wager it was the same for you.”

“Only he could have imprisoned me during Nightmare Moon’s return,” Malthus said, his eye flicking toward Shadowmere.

“Only you could have entered my hideout through the Perpendicularity Gate, and the Eye of Larghast was missing,” Shadowmere countered.

“If I knew where your hideout was, do you think I would have spent every moment since I broke free searching for you?” Malthus asked.

“Someone pointed us at each other,” Berry continued, allowing her crossbow to fully drop now that it seemed violence was no longer imminent. “Who?”

“I thought you knew, though it seems the rot may not go as deep as I feared,” Malthus replied.

“What is that supposed to mean,” Beryl asked, growing slightly on edge again.

“There are two ponies who could convince Celestia to let her guard down enough to imprison her definitively. I am one,” Malthus said. “The other is Director Thistleback.”

To be continued…