Shining Brightly

Bright lights, acrid smells, and a deep, hollow, silence echoed in the pre-dawn hour. The not-yet-morning sensations were deep, sharp, and seemed almost unreal in their intensity. Shadows were pitched to an inky blackness, moonlight shone in Twilight's eyes like a spotlight, police lights flashing blue and red creating an almost blinding strobe across the cottage in front of her. The smell of zinc accompanied the flashing of camera bulbs, taking photos with a rhythmic irregularity, reporters crowded as close as they could without trampling down the fence.

Across the wooden gate, a strip of almost-neon yellow tape read 'POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS'. It had been strung up in a hurry and sagged a bit, but despite the relative frailty of the tape's physical presence, it still created an invisible barrier that nopony would cross lightly, one that would hold no sway against a determined intruder but kept off the reporters and curious passersby. Even Twilight, who had been asked to come, shied away from crossing the thin plastic barrier. It just felt... wrong.

Standing in the cold wouldn't solve anypony's problems, though. She had to go in, to get this ordeal over with. Avoiding her problems wouldn't solve anything. Even so, she halted in front of the police tape, giving the gathered newsponies a chance to snap some photos of her. Buckling down and dealing with problems didn't bother Twilight, but this... This made her halt before going in.

Murder.

The town guard had told her that there had been a murder in Ponyville. Murder. A stallion who had been alive that morning wasn't anymore. Ponies just didn't-  Things like this simply didn't happen.

Of course there was crime, you'd get that anywhere that ponies started to congregate. Theft wasn't common, but it wasn't unheard of either. Usually, the victim and the accused could work it out, so a police force was barely needed in Ponyville, and even when somepony couldn't work something out themselves, usually Twilight or another good friend could talk some sense into everypony and resolve the issue.

There were other crimes, too. Vandalism. Assault, very rarely. The occasional case of plagiarism. Even a good, old-fashioned burglary happened at most once or twice a year. Usually, the little Ponyville Police Department could handle it.

But... Murder.

Ponies weren't exactly easy to hurt. Rainbow Dash was living proof of that: She'd crashed through more walls than the average wrecking ball, and even her worst injuries had only grounded her for a matter of weeks. Accidental deaths were rare, maybe one in a couple years. Ponyslaughter had happened only twice in the history of the town, and both had been under extremely extenuating circumstances. Ponies weren't liable to die without something really horrible happening. When Twilight shivered, it had nothing to do with the cool night's air.

Walking up to the gate, her hoofsteps felt almost dream-like, feeling slow and fast all at once. She couldn't seem to get her legs to respond how she wanted, walking briskly along, but at the same time her mind was screaming get out, get away, you don't want to be here.

Crossing under the plastic tape blocking the civilians from the crime scene, Twilight took slow steps forward, ears twitching at the occasional 'Click' of a camera from one of the half-dozen reporters behind her. Each click was accompanied by a flash, making her blink, making the dizzying, unreal sensations throw her off balance just a little more. Aside from the clicks, though, and the shuffle of her own footsteps, the night was dead silent.

Twilight was waved in at the door by Jam Sandwich, a Pegasus with a frazzled orange mane. Her blue uniform was tugged tight to shelter her from the chill wind, the cap she wore was askew, and despite her white coat her face somehow managed to look pale and a bit sickly. Even so, she maintained a tight, business-like expression as she waved Twilight through, gesturing towards the stairs without a word. Apparently she recognized that it would have been offensive, almost sacrilegious, to break the eerie silence.

Twilight nodded gratefully. If Jam Sandwich had spoken, Twilight would have been obliged to respond, and she wasn't sure if she could form words at the moment. A lump the size of an apple was growing in her throat, and as she walked up the stairs, wood creaking beneath her hooves, the tension in the air only seemed to grow.

She didn't want to think about what was at the end of the upstairs hall, the door marked with a big 'X' of police tape, making it impossible to miss. She looked to the side, glancing anywhere except the crime scene as she reached the top of the landing. That only landed her gaze on a row of picture frames, each contained some combination of a family trio. The father, a unicorn with thick glasses, brown fur, and bushy eyebrows, the Earth pony mother with an interminably huge smile in every picture, their daughter who had inherited her father's looks and horn but her mother's smile. She couldn't have been older than Scootaloo or Apple Bloom, and now her father was...

Shivering again, Twilight wrenched her gaze away from the pictures and continued her slow march to the door. She had to get it over with. It was her duty. Something was wrong in Ponyville, and she needed to fix it. Only a few steps away then, the door at the end of the hall where she'd find the scene of the crime.

Reaching the door, she raised her hoof to knock, then faltered. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself. It'd be gruesome, but she knew the stallion was dead. There'd be blood, there'd be death, but she wouldn't have it jumped on her as a surprise. She could be prepared. How bad could it be? She'd read medical textbooks before, what new gore could shock her? She'd read mystery novels and crime dramas before, it's not like the mere idea of crime could shock her.

It would have broken the perfect silence to encourage herself out loud, but Twilight nevertheless thought to herself. It'll be okay. You can do this. For his family.

She knocked on the door, the sound of hoofbeats on wood echoing for a moment before it was opened from the far side. Detective Gumshoe, a big Earth pony with a green coat and black mane, answered it with a grim expression. He gestured with his head to the plastic sheet separating her and him from the body. She could smell it, though, blood and decay assaulting her nostrils with the extra intensity that the morning was affording. Books couldn't communicate smell, that was something she'd have to approach without the inoculation that knowledge could provide, but smell was fine. She could handle that. She took a shallow breath, made a choking noise, and turned to the plastic sheet before pulling it aside.

Blood was everywhere. Splattered on the walls, all over the floor, even some sprayed on the ceiling in a high arc. On the floor in a malformed lump was another plastic sheet, covering up the victim's body. Swallowing, her throat suddenly dry, Twilight tried to keep from getting blood on her hooves by staying behind the curtain and using her magic to slowly peel up the sheet covering the body.

A long beat passed. Twilight's eyes were already wide and dilated, but they grew even wider at the horrific scene in front of her, and she wrenched her head away and turned, throwing up last night's hay onto the wooden floor, adding the scent of vomit to the list of acrid odors filling the room.

It was worse than she had imagined. The stallion hadn't just been killed, he'd been slaughtered, blood oozing from his chest, neck, legs. She'd barely seen anything before her gag reflex had kicked in and pulled her away from the view, but it had been confirmation of how horrible the crime had been.

Breathing deeply, Twilight tried to calm down, but it was difficult. She wanted to take action, to do something, but she didn't know what she could do. She was a Princess, sure, a pony with great magical power and talent, with her friends at her side they had done great things together, but there were no monsters to do battle with here, no villains to banish, no sinister ponies to duel. There were no lessons in friendship to learn. The fate of Equestria wasn't at stake. This pony was dead, and no magic in Equestria would bring him back. Even if Twilight knew the right spells, even if she could pull it off properly, nopony in Equestria was meant to try and take control over life and death, not even a princess.

But somepony did, Twilight thought, anger bubbling through the feelings of nausea and repulsion. Somepony had decided that this stallion's life should end, and they'd taken that authority upon themselves. That was wrong. They would pay for what they had done, if she had to go to the ends of Equestria to track them down. They would never get a chance to do this to anypony, ever again, not if she had anything to say about it.

Swallowing and immediately regretting it, Twilight shook her head a couple times, wings bristling as she braced herself to turn and face the body again. She only realized then that Detective Gumshoe was standing behind her, silently holding out a plastic bottle of water to her.

Nodding in thanks, unable to smile but nonetheless feeling grateful, Twilight accepting the water and unscrewed the cap, downing half of it in a single drink. Feeling much better, she shuddered, steeled herself, and turned back to look at the body. She immediately felt the nausea rising back up in her throat, but fought it back down, telling herself that she had to do this.

It's not a pony, it's just a body, she told herself, taking deep breaths and keeping herself calm, not wanting to end up retching in the corner again. Looking at the body, she looked for information, but all she saw was mindless, pointless gore.

The stallion's corpse had a long cut along his neck and throat, with most of the blood pooling from where the cut was. A cluster of stab wounds were bunched around the center of his belly, though with relatively blood, and finally with bruised and broken ankles on his fore and hind legs.

Most shocking, though, was his horn. Or, rather, the lack of it. Where a mature, fully grown Unicorn's horn should have been, instead was a charred, blackened stump where it had been cut off. The horn itself was missing, perhaps taken by the murderer, but definitely not in the room anywhere.

Twilight managed to look at this for less than ten seconds before she had to look away again, averting her gaze. It was horrible, but it was necessary. She was going to find the pony that did this, and she was going to banish him, lock him up, and throw away the key.

"Your Highness," came a light voice from the doorway, shocking the room's otherwise utterly silent atmosphere. She looked up, seeing Jam Sandwich in the door, looking a little awkward and avoiding Twilight's gaze.

"Yes?" Twilight croaked, her voice feeling a little weak as she found a few words in response. The sun was starting to come up as Luna retired for the day, and the eerie quiet was beginning to abate. "What is it?"

"Well, it's just..." Jam faltered, still not looking at Twilight. "The investigator you called is here."

Raising her eyebrows, Twilight blinked a couple of times, and she asked the first question that came to mind.

"... Who?"