Curse of the Taverneigh Blue

Chapters

Part 1: Grand Opening
Part 2: Cursed
Part 3: The Empty Box
Part 4: Flames
Part 5: Security
Part 6: The Beast
Part 7: Predator
Part 8: Prey
Part 9: Victims
Chapter notes

Part 1: Grand Opening

In her career, Daring Do had faced hydras, manticores, cannibals, assassins, bearers of powerful magical artifacts, and worse.

Right now, she was more concerned with dying of boredom.

"—and we would also like to welcome Ms. A.K. Yearling!" the voice from the podium declared and she smiled and nodded, accepting the applause of the crowd around her, subconsciously adjusting the single strap of her "fashionable" crimson dress. The name that the world knew her as, the veneer that she hid behind to give herself some privacy and safety from the constant dangers of her lifestyle. The face that she presented to the world from behind large glasses and a reclusive personality. Sometimes she thought that her author personage was more likely to kill her than her archaeologist career, simply by grinding away at her soul, wearing her down with public appearances and grand openings.

"Ms. Yearling, a frequent patron of the museum and its many charities, is here for research and inspiration for her next Daring Do novel." The speaker was a tall, thin unicorn stallion with a constant five o'clock shadow, pale blue coat, ivory white hair, and black eyes. His cutie mark was a stone tablet. This pony was Dr. Stone Scribe, the curator of the Trottingham History Museum, addressing the crowd gathered in the main lobby for the event.

To this pony's left was another tuxedo-clad pony, this one a snow white unicorn with muddy brown hair and blue eyes, with the cutie mark of a bone and a notebook. Dr. Dry Bones, head researcher, smiled politely and applauded his companion's hammy speech. But the mare to the right, an amber unicorn with dusty brown hair and green eyes with the cutie mark of a book and quill, did nothing to hide her impatience. Dr. Main Exhibit, director of the museum, glared at Dr. Scribe through her thick glasses, adjusting the strap of her purple dress uncomfortably.

As if sensing their discomfort, Dr. Scribe decided to wrap up his speech. "Once again, the Trottingham History Museum would like to thank you all for visiting and for your charity. Your donations keep this museum on the ground and spreading knowledge throughout Equestria." He paused for dramatic effect and to allow for another round of applause, raising himself up to his full, proud height, then spoke once more. "And now, friends, the moment you've all been waiting for. It is my pleasure to officially open our newest exhibit: Secrets of Neigh Zealand!"

The doors behind the makeshift stand opened wide, to the applause of the attending crowd of sponsors, who proceeded to melt into the exhibit hall for their privileged first look at the latest treasures brought back from exotic lands. The title banner over the doors displayed a mountainous region, adorned with lush green forestry, with a foamy white waterfall in the center. Superimposed upon the background beneath the proud lettering was a small, round bird, a kiwi, its tiny eyes giving the visitors a look of polite curiosity over its long, pointed beak.

They make it seem so romantic, Daring thought, glancing up at the banner as she passed beneath it. Only because they're not the ones who had to go through a booby-trapped temple in the middle of a volcano.

The temple-like hall was filled with the many recovered treasures of the museum's expedition, placed beneath tempered glass and bright lights like trophies. The visitors walked amongst the aisles, examining the contents and accompanying tags. Here, a collection of carved pendants made of greenstone; there, a set of mannequins performing a war dance, squatting on their hind legs and sticking their tongues out with fierce expressions upon their painted faces.

"Yes, the Maorein culture is quite unique," Dr. Bones said to the drifting pack of press following him through the hall. "They're very isolated, and not friendly to visitors, so it was important that we had to approach them in a friendly manner and ensure that we treated them and their culture with utmost respect. Once they understood we were there on a learning expedition, they were very receptive."

"How many of the Maorein are left?" one of the reporters asked, taking notes on his notepad with his magic. "You've stated in the past that their tribe has been exploited because of the rich resources of their land."

"Sadly, yes," Dr. Bones replied. "Our most optimistic estimates are that there are less than 300 Maorein left, and their numbers are falling from imported diseases and exploitation of their lands resources. Funds from this exhibit will be going towards charity programs to help them."

"And I understand that you recovered a very valuable treasure from your expedition?" another reporter asked eagerly.

"You understood correctly," Dr. Scribe said with a proud grin. He gestured to the case next to him, the glass display placed at head height and cast under a direct light. "Ladies and gentleponies, the piece that you came here to see...the Taverneigh Blue!"

At his words, there was a collective gasp of astonishment as every eye turned upon the contents of the case. Beneath the tempered glass lay a large blue diamond, cut into numerous facets, set in a silver casing with a long silver chain. It twinkled beneath the light like an eye winking up at its astonished viewers.

"The Taverneigh Blue is millions of years old," Dr. Exhibit said, settling into her area of comfort. "The Maorein recovered it from the southern end of the island over 600 years ago. The pony who first cut it is unknown, but it is believed to have been made a gift to the island's queen. The diamond weighs 44 carats, making it one of the largest and most valuable diamonds in the world."

"How valuable is it?" the reporter asked, scribbling away at his notepad while his camerapony snapped picture after picture.

"At a guess," Dr. Scribe said with a grin, "At least 200 million bits. That's just enough to cover the cost of this expedition!" The joke brought a round of laughter from the attending reporters.

"Isn't there a curse upon the diamond?" another reporter asked.

"Isn't there always?" Dr. Exhibit sighed, shaking her head. "According to the Maorein legends, the diamond brings misfortune and death wherever it goes. That's why they hid it away: so that nopony else would be affected by the curse."

"Maybe we should ask Ms. Yearling what she thinks!" one of the attendees declared loudly. Instantly, the entire crowd of reporters turned eagerly towards the author. The flash of cameras momentarily blinded her, giving the crowd the opportunity they needed to close in like a pack of timberwolves.

"Ms. Yearling, will you be basing your next novel off of this exhibit?" the first reporter spoke, shoving his face directly into hers.

"Yes," she replied. "The next Daring Do novel will be featuring her hunting for the Taverneigh Blue in Neigh Zealand. It's my hope that this next book will bring attention to and inspire curiosity about the Maorein culture."

Internally, she rolled her eyes at her own speech. It had taken her a long time to learn the language required by her author personage, to kiss up and play the socially-minded writer, to say the things that the reporters wanted to hear while she faked a grin for the cameras. Was writing a book really that big a deal?

"What about the curse?" another reporter asked with a small smirk. "Will Daring Do have to deal with the Curse of the Taverneigh Blue?"

A.K. Yearling, author of fiction, and her fans could afford to be cavalier, but Daring Do had dealt with more than her fair share of cursed artifacts. You could never be sure if the warning legends they were real or just an attempt by the locals to keep their precious stones safe from beyond the grave.

"You'll just have to wait and read for yourself," A.K. said with a smile. In an attempt to avoid further conversation, she headed for the buffet table, settling into line at the punch bowl. To her relief, the reporters moved away, returning their attention to the diamond and Dr. Exhibit's lecturing.

But then she noticed a familiar face out of the corner of her eye. The figure looked unfamiliar in a black suit and tie, but she could have recognized him in anything, even if he hadn't committed the major fashion faux pas of wearing a hat indoors. A gray trilby, to be precise.

The other pony looked directly at her, then nodded and turned, leaving the room without a word. Daring glanced around to make sure that nopony was watching, then turned and followed him out, leaving the exhibit hall behind, their exit fortunately unnoticed. The pair onto the stone, temple-like steps of the museum's front. The brisk night air outside the museum embraced her as she left, and she breathed in the quiet with relief.

The pony in the gray trilby turned and faced her, standing in the shadow of one of the stone columns. "So how was Neigh Zealand?"

"Hot and muggy," Daring replied. "I got washed down a stream of rapids and fell off a waterfall. I had to go through a temple in an active volcano filled with traps. And the whole time, I had Ahuizotl and Doctor Caballeron breathing down my neck."

The stallion grinned. "Sounds like fun."

"It was awesome," Daring smiled.

The other pony approached, revealing his face. "It's good to see you, Daring," Phillip Finder said softly.

"You too," Daring replied, and meant it. The two walked around to the side of the museum, which housed a small empty park, a fenced-in patch of sweet-smelling grass and bamboo with a lit fountain in the center. They sat down on one of the benches on the far side of the park, in a path of darkness that the light from the moon and stars above did not quite pierce.

"I read your last book," Phillip said. "'Daring Do and the Cave of Mysteries: based on the discovery of the Cave of Leonardo da Whinny.'"

"Did you like it?"

Phillip let out a short, grunt-like laugh. "Yeah. I particularly enjoyed Brumby Cloverpatch. Ex-mercenary and royal pain in the arse, accompanied by his young pegasus protege and his marefriend."

"Yeah, I like him, too," Daring said with a chuckle. The two were silent for a moment longer, looking up at the clear night sky above them and listening to the chirping of the crickets frolicking among the grass.

"So what are you doing here?" Daring asked, finally confronting him for his presence. "You have a case or something that you need my help with?"

Phillip frowned a little, looking down at his hooves. "No," he spoke slowly, as though carefully picking his words out of the sky. "I just...I heard that A.K. Yearling was going to be attending the opening and...I wanted to see you again."

Daring paused, considering the other pony before her. The Phillip Finder that she used to know would never have said something like that. He would never have spoken in a tone that soft tone, quivering with uncertainty, unable to meet her gaze. And she should not find herself struck silent by simple words, and why did her face suddenly feel hot?

"Yeah, I...I wanted to see you again, too," she admitted. "I always meant to write, but I...just kept getting busy," she admitted.

"Yeah, me, too," Phillip replied, then took in a breath. "Well, now that we're both here, did you have any plans for tonight?"

Daring pursed her lips. "Well, I was thinking about just grabbing something to eat and crashing at a hotel for the night...but since you're here..." She leaned in close, her eyes lidded and a smirk playing about her lips as she removed her glasses to reveal the rosiness of her eyes, and whispered softly. "You, me and page 184 of the Llama Sutra."

"Doesn't that one involve tying me to the bed?" Phillip replied with a grin.

"You know me," Daring smirked, and leaned forward. Complying to the unspoken command, Phillip leaned forward as well and kissed her on the lips. She pressed up against him, as if trying to get as close to him as possible, remembering why she had missed him so much since that last night they had spent together.

"But how about dinner first?" Phil asked when they separated. "I know a great Ponytailian restaurant on that makes a great spinach lasagna."

"You're buying," Daring said.

"Why me?" Phil protested.

"Because you're the stallion."

Phillip opened his mouth, but he knew from experience that arguing with Daring Do was an exercise in futility. "Fine," he conceded. A victorious smirk crossed Daring's face, and she leaned up again to claim her tribute. He complied, and kissed her once more. His heart beat faster in his chest at the touch of her lips against his, and he was acutely aware of how warm and soft she was, and the scent of her mane...like a beach at sunset...

Suddenly, every muscle locked up and his head turned, looking towards the stone building behind them. A chill ran up and down his spine, and he shivered in spite of the relative warmth of the night.

"What is it?" Daring asked in concern, recognizing the crime sense warning for what it was.

At that moment, there was a piercing scream from inside the museum. Immediately, both ponies leapt off the bench and sprinted back into the museum, hurrying into the exhibit hall. As soon as they entered the room, they skidded to a halt, staring in horror.

Dozens of ponies were slowly dropping to the floor, clutching at their throats and gasping as the color faded from their eyes. Glasses and plates of hors d'oeuvres clattered to the floor, followed by their choking consumers. Several onlookers ran helplessly from victim to victim, shouting in panic and confusion. One of the reporters from earlier staggered towards the two ponies, foam spewing from his gaping mouth as he desperately struggled for air.

"Somepony call an ambulance!" Dr. Exhibit shouted, trying desperately to help a choking security guard, but her cry went unheard and unheeded amongst the panicked cries of the crowd.

The reporter stumbled and fell towards the pair. Daring caught him and lowered him to the ground, facing up. "Help me with him," she said to Phillip, desperately trying to wipe the foam out of his mouth so that he could breathe. The convulsing hooves desperately seized her like a drowning sailor grabs a lifeline. The victim's bulging eyes, shining in panic, locked onto hers.

"Just calm down," she shouted to him, as if she were trying to pull him out from the bottom of a well, continuing to try to clear the foam from his throat. "You're going to be all right."

But as soon as she said those words, the other pony's body gave a great shudder and a gurgling arose from deep within it's throat. The panicked eyes dimmed, and rolled back into his skull. His body became still, sinking into the ground. Daring stared at him for a moment, then grabbed his shoulders and shook him roughly. "Hey! Hey! Wake up!"

Slowly, Phillip placed his hoof on her shoulder and slowly shook his head, staring down at the victim's blank face, staring up at the sky. Reluctantly, she let him go.

One by one, the other victims collapsed to the ground, their final gasps and gurgles leaving their bodies. The panicked cries of the witnesses died away into helpless silence, everpony standing still in disbelief. More than a dozen ponies lay dead amongst Neigh Zealand's exhibits. The Taverneigh Blue stood centerpiece, glowing beneath the lamplight as it held dominion over all.

Author's Note

Let's try this again. After resetting the storyline, I'm ready for another go at this Daring/Phillip story. I think I've gotten a better plotline and planned the story out better.

Hopefully you'll all enjoy!

Part 2: Cursed

To their credit, the museum security guards, despite having never been trained to handle a mass death, reacted quickly. A guard was dispatched to call an ambulance and the Trottingham City Guard, and the others blocked the doors, refusing to allow anypony to leave. Two tense minutes of dead silence later, there was the comforting sound of a approaching sirens and rattling carriage wheels from outside. A group of paramedics entered the room, white coats and black saddlebags ready to mark the casualties. Right on their tails came the Trottingham City Guard, stomping through the main doors in their polished silver armor with blue trim and white diamond chest insignia, only to halt in the hallway door, staring at the dozens of bodies scattered amongst the artifacts in silent horror.

The squad leader, a steely-eyed unicorn corporal with the silver bars of a Royal Investigator on his shoulders, was the first to recover from the shock. Proceeding to the center of the crowd, he spoke in a loud, clear voice. "Ladies and gentlecolts, my name is Corporal Iron Shield. The Trottingham City Guard will be investigating this crime, and rest assured, we will find those responsible. I just ask that everypony please remain calm and cooperate fully. Thank you."

Regaining control of themselves and remembering their duty, the other Guards spread out to take statements from the witnesses. Corporal Shield walked over to the three directors, who were gathered near the head of the room. Unnoticed by the crowd, Phillip and Daring sidled closer so they could listen in.

"Doctors, what happened here?" the corporal asked, his eyes darting between each of the three scientists.

"We don't know," Dr. Dry Bones said, staring at the body of a young mare on the floor next to him, a shattered glass lying a pool of punch next to her hoof. "One minute, everything was fine, and the next, ponies starting choking and...well, dying."

"Have there been any threats made against the museum or its staff recently?" the corporal pressed, levitating a notebook and pen out of his saddlebag.

"No, none," Dr. Bones replied, shaking his head. "We—"

"It's the curse," Dr. Scribe said, his face pale and drawn. "The Maorein priests warned us...we shouldn't have brought the diamond here. It's cursed all of us."

The corporal stopped writing and raised an eyebrow at him. "That diamond didn't get out of its case and kill these ponies, did it?"

"Of course it didn't," Dr. Exhibit replied, giving her colleague an exasperated glance even as her tail continued to tremble in shock. "It's far more probable that this was the result of some kind of poisoning in the buffet food. I'd recommend that you test samples of the buffet for poison and question the catering staff."

Corporal Shield stared at her for a moment, then slowly nodded. "Er, right. I was just going to do that."

At those words, Daring glanced at Phillip, then at the food. A chilling realization came to her: she'd been about to sample the buffet herself before she saw Phillip. What if she had taken some of the poison? What if this had been meant for her? As the thought crossed her mind, she felt Phillip shift slightly closer to her, enough that she could feel the static electricity of his suit tingling against her wing, and she realized that the same thought must have crossed his mind as well.

"In any case, we should probably close up for the night," Dr. Bones sighed, signaling to a security guard. The guard, trembling down to the tip of his tail, stepped forward, carrying a fairly large wooden box, carved with Maorein reliefs, with a velvet interior and a silver lock. Extracting a set of keys from his pocket, he unlocked the glass case and carefully pulled the blue diamond of its stand. Bizarrely, every head turned to watch as the jewel was placed in the box, which was shut and locked tightly, then quickly whisked out of the room and down to the museum's vaults in the basement. Even Phillip and Daring, unable to resist the inexplicable attraction that the cursed artifact held, kept their eyes upon the box until it had disappeared around the corner.

"Excuse me," a rookie Guard interrupted, approaching them along with his partner. "We need to ask you two some questions."

"Yes, sir," A.K. Yearling replied, her shaken facade not entirely an act.

The Guards gave them the usual formulaic list of questions: where had they been, what had they seen and heard. They replied that they had been outside and had only rushed back inside when they had heard somepony scream. No, they hadn't had anything from the buffet, nor had they seen any shady characters hanging around the hors d'oeuvres. The Guards took down their answers and told them to contact the Guard if they thought of something else. Dismissed, the two ponies left the crime scene.

"Now what?" Daring asked quietly as they exited the main doors and descended the stone steps.

"Well, we obviously can't just leave town after this," Phillip replied. "But we don't have much reason to hang around here, not with the mates running around. We'll let them do the work here, then the two of us can make the proper inquiries in the morning. Where are you staying?"

"The same hotel I stayed at last time," Daring answered. She paused at the bottom of the stairs, the question hovering on her lips for a moment before she forced it out in a whisper. "You don't think that we were the targets, were we?"

Phillip, unable to meet her gaze, answered quickly. A bit too quickly. "I don't know yet. There's no evidence to suggest that."

The truthful but non-committal answer did nothing to assure either of them. Daring swallowed quietly, then turned and walked away without another word. Phillip walked in the opposite direction, fighting to resist the urge to turn and watch her go, having to assure himself that she was capable of handling herself on her own.

While he trotted down the dark street, following the stalwart, silent line of streetlights, Phillip turned over the night's events in his mind. The face of the dying reporter hovered in front of his gaze, the horrified look in his eyes burning themselves into his memory. The curse of being able to remember everything was that...he remembered everything. Every wound, every bloodstain, every weeping victim, every mourning family, every corpse.

It felt like Death followed him, constantly hovering in his shadow like a plague, striking down ponies wherever he went while he could only watch and do nothing to save them. Everypony that came near him was put at risk: his mere presence brought the grim specter on his heels.

The same was true of Daring, he knew: her books were based on her adventures, but more often than not, she watered down the events to make them more "reader-friendly." But in real life, wherever she went, trouble and death were sure to follow. It was part of their lives, the disease that they were infected with because it was a necessity to their careers...

Stop that, the little voice in the back of his head snapped. He had noticed that the voice had recently started sounding like Twilight. You're not responsible for those deaths. You're not some kind of curse.

He threw off the feeling of unease, settling his emotions and allowing his rational mind to take the reins. He would let the competent stallions and mares of the City Guard examine the crime scene for evidence and beat the bushes for suspects. He and Daring would start fresh from there tomorrow. Right now, he needed some rest.

It took him about twenty minutes of wandering to get to the old, small hotel that Daring had been staying at under an alias during the case of the Mare Lisa. Slipping inside the hotel, he purchased a room from the sleepy clerk under a false name, collected his key and trotted down the hallway. But instead of entering the room that he had purchased, he paused at the door with the "Do Not Disturb" sign laying upside-down beneath the door: a prearranged signal from years ago. He knocked twice, then three times, then twice more. There was a pause, then two quick knocks from the other side and the door unlocked, opening just wide enough to allow him to enter the lamplit room. Daring Do had taken off her A.K. Yearling disguise, revealing her trademark green shirt and compass cutie mark, her true self.

"I picked up a couple of hayseed sandwiches on the way here," she said, gesturing to a couple of bags laying on the desk. "Didn't think you'd eaten yet."

"Thank you," he said, taking the wrapped sandwich out of the bag and tucking in, despite not feeling hungry. He barely noticed the taste, swallowing the mediocre meal as quickly as he could.

The two ate, then began to prepare for bed in silence: there was nothing to be said, nothing left to do but try to rest. Pulling his shirt up over his head and flinging it onto the ground, Phillip paused to look down at himself, pondering the blanket of scars that tattooed his torso. Turning, he looked at Daring as she removed her own shirt, revealing her own scarred body. Here, a red mark from a griffon's jezail bullet; there, scratch marks from one of Ahuizotl's pet cats; and there, the remnants of the stitches she'd gotten after pulling a tribal arrow from her shoulder. Souvenirs of past injuries and dangers, marking them as the exiled.

Wearily, Daring climbed into the bed, pulling the covers up over herself. Turning out the lamp, Phillip climbed into the bed with her, wrapping her tightly in his embrace. She pressed herself up against him, so that he could feel the gentle rise and fall of her breath. For a moment, the pair allowed themselves to relax, to think of nothing but the other and pretend that they actually deserved this.

The light of the moon through the window guided them both into the land of sleep, where unpleasant, unformed visions of death awaited them.

Morning rushed in far too quickly, and Daring was roused from semi-sleep by a beam of sunlight shining incessantly into her face. Cursing Celestia for her uncanny accuracy, she forced herself back into the waking world with a groan. Her eyes fell on the bedside table, upon which sat a combined clock-radio that displayed the time as 7:20, far later than she had intended. Time to get moving.

"Rise and shine, Phil," she said, trying to push his limbs off her.

He moaned and tightened his embrace on her slightly. "Five more minutes," he mumbled.

Rolling her eyes, Daring wriggled out of his grip and off the bed. "Come on, get up," she scolded, heading towards the bathroom. "We've still got a case."

Grumbling to himself, Phillip threw the covers off himself as though he had a grudge against them. "You owe me coffee for this," he called after her through a yawn.

Twenty minutes later, the pair of them, showered and clothed, descended to the streets of Trottingham in search of breakfast. "So what's the plan?" Daring asked, currently disguised in a blue high-collared coat and thick glasses.

"We visit the City Guard headquarters, find out where they are," Phillip replied. "If they lay out everything before us, we might be able to point them in the right direction."

Daring nodded in agreement, but suddenly stopped. They had just passed a newspaper stand, and the headline screaming at her from behind the clear plastic had seized her attention. Dropping a bit into the slot, she seized the paper and held it up for Phillip to see.

"DIAMOND MISSING FROM MUSEUM: Cursed relic disappears morning after multiple deaths."

"Breakfast is going to have to wait," she said wearily to Phillip, who only gave the paper a long look in response.

Author's Note

Took me a while, but I finally did manage to type this chapter out.

What do you guys think of this rebooted storyline? I honestly like it better than the first one: it gives me a chance to work on the dynamics of Phil and Daring's relationship.

Criticism and comments are always appreciated!

Part 3: The Empty Box

The Trottingham Museum still stood in the same place that it always had, the marble walls as white and strong as always. But today, something seemed to wrong about the building. The life that it usually held, the pride that seemed to shine outwards from the very walls, was gone. The only sign of life to be seen was the single City Guard standing post in front of the wide doors, which were cordoned off with bright yellow "CRIME SCENE: DO NOT ENTER" tape.

When Phillip and Daring climbed up the stairs towards him, the Guard held up a hoof to stop them. "The museum's closed off. You can't go in." His voice was confident, his posture unmoving, but his eyes betrayed the uncertainty of youth and inexperience.

"I'm Phillip Finder, private detective. I'm here to help," Phil told him, turning to the side a little to display his cutie mark and pulling a business card out of his vest. The rookie's stoic expression turned into surprise when he realized that he was facing the renowned detective.

"Er...I guess maybe I...who's this?" he asked, turning to Daring.

"Irene Alibi," Phillip replied, giving a false name that Daring had frequently used in the past. "She's a local PI that I've worked with in the past."

Daring gave the rookie a long look. "You a detective too?"

"Er, no, ma'am," he replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you seem very interested in my tail," Daring flatly stated. "My eyes are on the other end." The Guard jumped and forced his gaze back to her narrowed eyes.

"We're specialists, and we have an interest in this case," Phillip continued. "And you lot could probably use our help."

The Guard looked back and forth between the two of them for several moments, working his mouth as if trying to speak but unable to form the words, then turned and opened the door, sticking his head inside. He spoke to somepony inside for a few moments, then reluctantly opened the door wider for the two ponies to enter. "Corporal Shield will talk to you," he told them. "He'll meet you in the basement vault."

"Thanks," Phillip said, entering the museum. Proceeding through the lobby, which was populated only by City Guards whose heads turned to follow their path, the two walked through a door marked "Employees Only" and down a set of metal stairs into the dark basement vaults where the museums' most valuable prizes were stored when the museum was closed. Another Guard standing at the huge metal door greeted them with a nod as they crossed the threshold into the wide cavern, filled with crates from past expeditions and locked metal boxes that contained current treasures.

Near the center of the room were two ponies. One was the security guard that had taken the diamond away last night, standing with his head bowed in shame and confusion. The other was Corporal Iron Shield, who stared coldly at them as they approached.

"G'day, Corporal," Phillip said, striding forward and extending a hoof.

"Detective Finder," he greeted Phillip as he approached, ignoring the outstretched hoof that he offered. "You always do have a habit of showing up at convenient times."

"I wouldn't call it a habit," Phillip replied, lowering his hoof. More like a curse.

Iron Shield turned his attention to Daring. "And you're...Irene Alibi, I presume." Daring nodded briefly. Shield raised an eyebrow. "Odd how I've never heard of you before."

"It's fine. I've never heard of you before, either," Daring replied dryly. "What exactly happened here?"

"Well, we're not really sure," Corporal Shield answered, glancing sideways at the security guard. "Why don't we start with your account, Mr. Checklist."

The security guard, a unicorn stallion just shy of middle age with a clipboard cutie mark, swallowed and spoke. "I'm Double Checklist, current head of security. As I was just telling him, after the deaths last night, I took the diamond out of it's display case, put it into its box, and brought it down to the vaults. I ensured that the box was locked and locked the vault doors. When we finally closed up, I double-checked to make sure that all the security measures were in effect and did the roll call for the night shift, then locked up before leaving. This morning, I came back to prepare to open the museum. The night shift reported nothing, and I came down here to retrieve the diamond. But when I unlocked the box...well, here, look for yourself."

With his magic, he retrieved the carved wooden box from the floor. Taking the key from the ring attached to his belt, he inserted it into the lock, turned the key and opened up the box, revealing the velvet-lined interior.

The box was empty. There was no trace of the diamond within.

"There was no sign of any break-ins," Checklist continued, while Phillip bent in close to examine the box through his loupe glasses. "And only myself and the head doctors can open the vault, and only we have keys to this box."

"Why use this box?" Daring asked.

"From my understanding, it was given to the doctors by the Maorein," Checklist replied. "They insisted that they use it to store the diamond. As I said, only myself and the three head doctors—Dr. Exhibit, Dr. Scribe and Dr. Bones—have keys to this box. It's standard procedure for the most valuable exhibits."

Phillip frowned into the velvet interior for a few moments longer, then looked up at Corporal Shield. "What have you got about the mass poisoning last night?"

Shield sniffed and spoke quickly. "Cyanide capsules placed in the punch. We've already vetted the entire catering staff and the guards that were on duty, and we're looking for possible connections between the victims." He frowned and took a challenging step forward. "Now, you're going to answer my questions. What were you doing here last night at the reception?"

Phillip gave him a dry look from behind the multiple lenses of his loupe glasses. "I was there to see the opening."

"Really?" Shield said skeptically.

"No, he was there to water the flowers," Daring snapped back, rolling her eyes.

"And you, Ms. Alibi," the Corporal cut in, turning to her. "When did you get here? Why did Mr. Finder bring you here?"

"He sent a telegram to me last night and I met up with him this morning," Daring replied evenly. She had learned through hard experience that one of the keys to making up a cover story on the fly was to make it believable, but not try to justify it by giving too many details.

Iron Shield stared at her for several seconds before speaking again. "You have that telegram?"

"Do you habitually carry your telegrams around?" Daring snidely replied. Phillip had to stifle a frustrated groan.

Shield's steely eyes narrowed into an unamused expression. "The two of you show up just after a mass poisoning and the disappearance of a valuable diamond. That does not strike me as coincidence."

Phillip opened his mouth to protest, but Daring spoke first: "Are you accusing us of something?"

"I am. I'm accusing you both of wasting my time. The City Guard will handle this, without your help. Now get out of my crime scene."

Daring glared daggers at Corporal Shield; he replied with a statuesque icy stare, challenging her to give him the excuse he needed to arrest her. It was only when Phillip stepped forward and put a warning hoof on her shoulder that the standoff ended. The two detectives retreated hesitantly, watched all the time by the cold steely eyes.

"I hope you and Ms. Alibi aren't planning on leaving town, detective," Shield warned Phillip as he exited the vault. "We might have some questions for you later."

Without another word, the two detectives left the museum, feeling the distrustful stares of the Guards upon their backs as they exited. As soon as the great doors shut behind them, Phillip rounded on Daring. "You know, I'd forgotten just how good you were at pissing ponies off."

"It's a learned skill," Daring replied, snark dripping off her tongue. "Besides, don't blame me; blame that asshole!"

Phillip let out a huff through his nostrils, turning and walking away. "The Corporal might be a wanker, but he's doing his job."

Daring ran up to walk beside him. "And we are here to do ours."

Phillip took in a slow breath through his nostrils and let it out quickly through his mouth. "Agreed. Should we head to the City Guard headquarters and see what we can find out from there?"

Daring thought for a moment, then frowned and shook her head. "I don't think so; if that jerk's attitude is any indication, we probably won't get anything there. I think we should start questioning the head doctors and other employees," Daring suggested. She paused as the pair reached a crossroads. "You know what I think?"

"Charlie?"

"Charlie." Daring spat the word out, a bad taste lingering in her mouth. Charlie August Silvertongue, Trottingham's richest citizen, was well-known across the nation as an art collector and expert whose hobby had made him a multimillionaire. In reality, he ran a nation-wide ring of smuggling, thievery and blackmail, protected behind a small army of bodyguards and retained lawyers.

"You're not planning on going after him, are you?" Phillip asked with a note of wariness in his voice. "You know he's probably amped up the security after last time."

"Not yet," Daring answered. "But if I get even a hint that he's behind this..."

"Daring, you're not rushing into anything without a good reason to," Phillip cut in sternly.

"Since when do I not do things without a good reason?"

Phillip gave her a flat look out of the corner of his eye. "Not counting that time with the Bighoof expedition?"

"Are you going to keep bringing that up for the rest of my life?" Daring sighed, rolling her eyes in exasperation. "Come on, Dr. Scribe's place is closest."

"Lead the way," Phillip said, following behind as she trotted quickly down the street.

Doctor Stone Scribe lived at the end of an old dead-end road with missing, uneven cobbles and large, dead trees that creaked in greeting of the two ponies. The plain-looking cottage sat in the midst of a sea of dead grass. Most of the windows were dark, save one at the top floor that stared in judgement upon its visitors. A set of golden wind-chimes hanging from the porch ceiling tinkled quietly in the low breeze. The evil eye charm included with the chimes stared wickedly back at them.

"Cheery place," Phillip commented as they walked up the dirt path. "What's that?" He paused at a patch of upturned dirt with what looked like a cork peeking out like a submarine's periscope. Curious, he dug at the patch of dirt with his hoof, uncovering a buried wine bottle filled with a pale yellow liquid with what looked like hair, pins and needles floating within. Pulling the cork out with his teeth, Phillip took a sniff of the contents and gagged. "It's full of piss!"

"It's called a witch bottle," Daring told him from the creaking porch stair. "It's supposed to keep away witches."

"I think I can guess how it works," Phillip said, dropping the bottle back into the hole and reburying it.

"Yeah, I probably should have told you; Dr. Scribe's kind of superstitious." Daring rolled her eyes again. "Of course, it could be an act. You can never be sure with him." She walked up to the door, the porch creaking beneath her hooves and knocked. After a minute, there was the sound of a bolt sliding back and the door opened a crack to reveal a black eye peeking back out at them. "Dr. Scribe?" Daring asked, pitching her voice lower as a disguise.

"Yes? Who are you?" Dr. Scribe's voice was soft and quivering, not at all like the proud declarations he had affected the night before.

"Detectives Phillip Finder and Irene Alibi, sir," Phillip said, stepping into the witnesses' gaze. "We're here to ask a few questions."

Dr. Scribe stared for a few moments more, then stepped back and opened the door further, allowing them entry. With a gesture, he beckoned them up the darkened stairs and into his study. The wide room was like a small museum: the walls and shelves were covered with occult artifacts, everything from Equegyptian scarab necklaces to zodiac charts to zebra ritual masks. Books on the walls and scattered on the table contained tales of supernatural events, ancient rituals and superstitious practices.

"Sorry about the mess," Stone Scribe apologized, rubbing his jaw. His five o'clock shadow had evolved into an almost full beard. "I was just doing some research on the Taverneigh Blue." He gestured at the open book on his desk. The open pages depicted the missing diamond, worn around the neck of a haughty-looking mare wearing a long cloak decorated with feathers and colored stones. "I was hoping to find something useful in there."

"Useful?" Daring asked.

"We're cursed," Dr. Scribe said in a whisper. Not a dramatic stage whisper, like a poor actor upon stage, but a genuine frightened whisper. "We shouldn't have brought the diamond here, the Maorein warned us..." He swallowed, then looked up at his guests. The dim lighting from the window cast evil-looking shadows across his face.

"Do you know the story of the Taverneigh Blue?" he whispered again, a hint of his dramatic persona emerging.

Phillip and Daring looked at each other. Daring sighed. She had encountered many storytellers in her time, and she knew from experience that they would not rest until they had told their story. "Do enlighten us," she told Dr. Scribe.

Stone Scribe settled back into his chair, cleared his throat and began. "The Taverneigh Blue was recovered by the Maorein 600 years ago from the sourthern end of Neigh Zealand, it is true. But almost right away, it's power became apparent. Two competing tribes began to fight over it: a war was declared that decimated a large portion of the island, as well as both of the tribes. The diamond was lost during the battle, but later recovered by the main tribe. It was given to the tribe's queen, Te Kaimanawa." He tapped the picture of the mare in the book, giving it a dark look, then returning his gaze to his audience.

"She died less than a year after the diamond was given to her," he continued. "Of an unidentified disease." Lowering his gaze once more, he began to slowly, thoughtfully turn the pages of the book. "Everywhere the diamond turns up, death and disease are sure to follow. Stories tell of entire crops failing, unusual storms ravaging coasts, rulers committing suicide or dying mysteriously, regimes collapsing. Have you ever heard of Captain Juniper Cook?" His hoof paused over a portrait of a broad-shouldered pony dressed as a naval captain.

"He led the first major expedition to Neigh Zealand. It was he who named the diamond, after his best friend. His crew took the diamond by force and started to sail back to Equestria, but just minutes after embarking, there was a mutiny on board the ship. Somepony threw a lit match into the magazine, blowing up the entire ship and killing almost everypony aboard." He paused dramatically. "And guess what washed up on shore the day after?"

"The diamond," Daring stated. She knew how these stories ended.

"The Taverneigh Blue," Dr. Scribe nodded. "It was then that the Maorein finally came to understand the curse and buried it in the temple. They tried to warn us...if I had only known..." His voice trawled to a stop and he lowered his head onto his hooves, rocking back and forth like a frightened child. "Leave me alone."

Phillip looked at Daring, who shook her head and turned to leave. The ponies exited the room, walked back down the stairs, and exited out onto the creaking porch with the whispering wind chimes.

"Well, this was literally a dead end," Phillip grunted, shrugging his shoulders. "We should have gone to one of the other doctors."

"We can still do that," Daring said, grabbing him underneath the forelegs. "Come on, Dr. Bones lives nearby."

"Hey!" Phillip shouted in protest as Daring lifted up into the air, flying low over the rooftops of the town. After about three minutes of travel time, she dropped him off in front of a multi-story apartment building, earning a few curious looks from passerby. Adjusting his vest, he shot a glare at Daring.

"Admit it, you're jealous," she replied with a smirk, landing next to him and flaring her wings out in pride.

"Come on," he said, walking towards the front door. "Maybe we can get something useful here."

As soon as he spoke, there came a sound of a scream from high up above. Daring and Phillip looked up, then leapt out of the way. With a sickening wet splat, the body of a unicorn struck the sidewalk, coming to rest spread-eagled in a pool of blood. Daring's eyes immediately settled upon the body's flank, which bore a cutie mark of a bone and a notebook.

"I don't think so, somehow," she said softly, her voice carrying over the horrified cries of the surrounding pedestrians.

Author's Note

Much like me, our two heroes are getting nowhere fast.

But is there really a curse, or is there something far more insidious at work here? Stay tuned...

Part 4: Flames

"Everypony stay back!" Phillip ordered, pushing the gathering crowd away from the dead body. "Leave it alone, let the City Guard take care of it."

At his word, the surrounding ponies moved back, keeping a wary but curious distance from the victim. Somepony hurried off to a nearby callbox to call a City Guard carriage. Satisfied that nopony was going to interfere with the crime scene, Phillip approached the body. Daring was already bending over the thing that had once been Doctor Dry Bones. The etched middle-aged face stared unseeing up at the sky, the jaw hanging open in death. For a moment, he felt an uneasy twisting in his stomach at the realization that he felt nothing upon looking upon the body; no shock, no grief, no pity. This had been a pony with their own life, their own hopes and dreams and thoughts, who had laughed and cried and loved. Now he was meat on the sidewalk, another piece of evidence to be examined and documented; no better than a hoofprint.

"Hey, I think I found something," Daring whispered, bending closer to the body's collar. "Give me your tweezers."

Reaching into the appropriate pocket of his vest, Phillip pulled out his tweezers and handed them to Daring. Being careful not to step in the blood pool or to mess up anything else, Daring leaned over the body and plucked at the rumpled suit collar. "Looks like hair," she said, holding it up for Phillip to see. There were indeed a couple strands of gray-brown hair attached to the tweezers. They looked nothing like the short strands of muddy brown hair in Dr. Bones' mane.

"Good catch," he whispered, taking a plastic baggie out of his vest and opening it up for Daring to drop the evidence into. Just then, there was the sound of an approaching siren. A City Guard carriage, drawn by an armored pegasus and equipped with a siren and spinning red light to announce its presence, bustled up to the crime scene, sending the crowd scattering. A trio of City Guards leapt out of the carriage to take control of the situation while the pegasus unhitched himself. One of the Guards, a steely-eyed unicorn, glared at Daring and Phillip.

"What are you two doing here?" Corporal Shield growled.

"We came to see Dr. Bones," Phillip said, gesturing at the body on the sidewalk. "Somepony else might have seen him first, though."

"He fell just as we got here," Daring elaborated in response to the suspicious look on Corporal Shield's face. "We didn't have anything to do with it, in case you were wondering."

"If you didn't have anything to do with this, then you can get out of here, and stop wasting my time," the Corporal replied gruffly, turning away from them and redirecting his attention to the dead body of Dr. Dry Bones. Phillip and Daring looked at each other behind his back, then quietly walked off.

"Maybe I should have told him about the hairs," Phillip muttered thoughtfully.

"If that putz can't find them himself, too bad for him," Daring growled back. "Let's get back to the hotel and take a look at those."

Very gently, Phillip lowered the small gray hairs onto a plastic slide, dropped a plastic protector on top of them so that his breath would not disturb them, and placed them beneath the microscope that he'd purchased from the nearby crafts store, along with a collection of other chemicals. Turning on the battery-powered light, he pressed his eye to the scope, adjusting the focus knob until the strands were displayed in perfect microscopic detail. "Wish I could do this back in my lab," he muttered to himself, reaching for his notepad and pencil on the table next to him.

"You need any help?" Daring asked, sitting on the bed nearby, her back up against the wall.

"No," Phillip replied, starting to take notes. Daring settled back against the pillow to wait. It had struck her long ago, during the time that they had initially worked together, that the disciplines of archaeology and criminal investigation are very similar; both involved the careful examination of evidence, building theories with logical inductions and deductions, and reconstructing past events. And she knew that patience was a key virtue of both. So she waited in silence while Phillip worked, examining the hairs closely beneath the scope and running a gamut of chemical tests. The hours passed in silence, save for the scratching of Phillip's pencil against his notepad and an occasional noise of confusion or frustration.

Soon after the sun dipped beneath the horizon, Phillip finally raised his eyes from the scope and rubbed his face. "I have no idea what those hairs are, or where they came from," he admitted as though hesitant to admit defeat. "They're not from a pony; too wide, too short. I want to say they're from a dog, but the cuticle pattern is unfamiliar."

"Dr. Bones doesn't own a dog, last I knew of," Daring said, sitting up and cracking her back. "He could have gotten them from another dog that he met in the park or something."

"Yeah..." Phillip said, his tone indicating that he was not wholly convinced by this theory. He leaned back in his chair, pondering in silence for a few moments longer, then spoke again.

"You don't believe that the Taverneigh Blue is actually cursed, do you?" There was no trace of doubt or fear in his voice; he was merely asking as if out of curiosity.

"I know it didn't put cyanide capsules in the punch, and it didn't push Dr. Bones off his apartment balcony, and it probably didn't get out of its box and walk away," Daring replied. Phillip nodded.

"But still," Daring continued, "A mass poisoning on the grand opening, then one of the museum's heads dies in an apparent accident the same day that the diamond disappears from the vault. That's not a coincidence."

"Was it a coincidence that it happened the night we were both in town?" Phillip asked quietly.

Daring sighed. "Probably not," she admitted. She looked up with a rueful smile. "Why can't we just have a quiet time together?"

"I think we both gave up that right when we chose our careers," Phillip muttered. The two fell into silence, as if the heaviness of their situation had stifled all conversation.

"Well," Phillip finally said, speaking slowly and carefully as if walking on eggshells. "If we're going to be caught up in the middle of a murder investigation...I'm glad that...it's with you." He slowly looked up to see Daring turn and stare blankly at him. He cringed beneath her gaze. "I, I mean, uh..."

To his surprise, Daring snorted and started laughing quietly, her shoulders shaking up and down with amusement. "What? What'd I do?

"Nothing, it's just..." Daring shook her head, still chuckling. "That was kind of cheesy."

A nervous chuckle forced its way out of Phillip's throat, and his hoof reached up on his own and began to rub the back of his head, as if trying to cover the awkward moment. "Yeah, it was, wasn't it?"

Daring took a deep breath, regaining control of herself. "You don't normally talk like that."

"I know, I just..." Phillip lifted himself up off the chair and walked over to the bed, sitting down next to Daring. The mattress creaked beneath their combined weight. "I'm honestly really glad that you're here with me."

Daring reached over and placed her hoof over his, squeezing gently. "Me too." She leaned in and pecked him gently on the cheek, causing his face to glow in the dim light of the room. At that moment, both of their stomachs grumbled, reminding them that they had eaten little that day. Both of them laughed, as if instinctively seizing the opportunity to do so, dispelling the dark clouds filling the room.

"You know what?" Daring said, getting up and shutting off the microscope light. "Let's take a break, forget about this for a while. Somepony still owes me Ponytailian, after all."

"I'm still buying, aren't I?" Phillip said with a small half-smile.

"Oh, yeah," Daring smirked in reply, holding the door open for him. "Come on. Spinach lasagna sounds great right about now."

The two exited onto the streets of Trottingham, taking to the chill evening air that blew beneath the awakening stars. They walked side by side, matching each other's pace. For a few moments, they weren't two detectives in the midst of a murder investigation; they were just two ponies going out to dinner, content to allow the rest of the world to care for itself.

But as they passed a four-way, there came a siren from ahead. Pausing, they saw a fire carriage, its lights and sirens blaring, racing up towards them. Two firefighters, clad in turnout gear, were pulling the carriage while the rest of the company clung tightly onto the outside. The carriage turned sharply and raced around the corner, speeding down the other street.

"That road leads to Dr. Script's house," Phillip whispered. Like a starting gun had gone off, he began to sprint, chasing after the firefighters. Before he had taken three steps, Daring grabbed him underneath the forelegs and lifted him up off the ground, flying after their prey. The chill wind brought a horrible scent to their noses: thick, choking smoke.

Up ahead, the lone cottage lying in the sea of dead grass was aflame, the flames reaching up towards the sky as if trying to burn the sky itself, sending a thick column of black smoke up to the stars. The fire carriage had stopped in front of the house and the firefighters were busily trying to douse the fire with the attached hoses; neighbors and other pedestrians were gathered around the spectacle.

Phillip suddenly became dead weight in Daring's hooves, dragging her back down. As soon as his hooves touched the ground, he gripped the cobblestones as hard as he could, his chest heaving with panicked breath.

"I have to get in there, find Dr. Scribe!" Daring shouted, flying towards the building.

"Daring, no!" Phillip cried, trying to grab her, to pull her back to safety, but she disappeared into the inferno, ahead of the firefighters. He stared in horror, unable to move, not noticing the heat of the fire for the chill in his bones.

A blast of hot, choking air greeted Daring as she entered the burning cottage. Sprinting to the study, she shouldered the door open. "Scribe!" she called out. The only answer was the roaring crackle of the flames as Dr. Scribe's collection of mystic memorabilia was sacrificed to the flames. Turning, she ran back out of the room, ignoring the stinging, choking smoke assaulting her face. From room to room she hurried, continuing to call out and getting no reply in return. The flames raced after her as if trying to beat her to the prize.

Suddenly there came a creaking from up above. She reacted too late: a section of the ceiling gave way under its own weight and a beam fell, pinning her to the floor. She cried out in pain, the crackle of flames answering as through in triumph. With a growl, she tried to push the beam off her, but the heat burned her hooves, forcing her to let go.

Oh, buck, she thought, coughing on the smoke. Her vision began to blur and she felt a lightness rushing to her head. Closing her mouth to hold her breath, she set herself and tried to push against the beam pinning her down, trying to ignore the heat burning her hooves. Despite her every effort, the heavy wood refused to budge, as if determined to kill her.

Then, all of a sudden, the weight shifted off her. A unicorn firefighter, his face obscured by an oxygen mask, was lifting the beam off her with his magic. Grabbing her hoof, he lifted her up and began to bustle her out, hurrying down the back stairs and out the back doors. Coughing and choking and aching from the burns, Daring gratefully allowed the other firefighters to pull her away from the flames and led back to the fire carriage. The next moment, something flew at her and grabbed her in a tight embrace.

"You stubborn, stupid idiot! You scared the hell out of me!" Phillip's voice trembled with relief, like his body. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Daring said, hugging him back. "Just got burned a little. I'll be okay."

A medic bustled up. Reluctantly, Phillip released Daring and stepped back, surrendering her to medical attention. Suddenly exhausted, he leaned against the carriage for support. Behind him, the flames continued their assault upon the building, standing as though in defiance of every attempt to douse it.

The curse had claimed another victim. And almost taken another.

Author's Note

This took a while: I actually had to restart it a couple of times to get the tone that I wanted.

Our detectives may have found a new clue...but the death count keeps piling up. Who's behind this? More soon...

Part 5: Security

That night, Phillip dreamed that he was in the middle of an earthquake. He woke up to find that somepony was shaking his shoulder.

"Piss off, Daring. It's not morning yet," he muttered into the bedsheets.

"Tell that to the sun," Daring answered. Reluctantly opening his eyes, Phillip was displeased to see that the bloody sun was indeed fully above the horizon. With a groan and a stifled curse, he pulled himself up out of bed, his joints cracking.

"We'd better get moving if we're going to take a look at Dr. Scribe's house," Daring said, pulling the blue coat over her green shirt.

"Let's get breakfast first," Phillip grumbled, zipping his vest up and shrugging his shoulders.

"Sounds good," Daring nodded. She suddenly winced, reaching up to massage her bandaged shoulder. Phillip paused, noticing this.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she replied through her teeth. Phillip stared at her for a moment longer, his eyes wrinkled in concern. "Phil, really, I'm okay," Daring sighed. "I've been through worse."

"I know, it's just..." The words stewed in Phillip's mouth for a second, then he swallowed them back. "Nothing. Come on, I need a coffee and a toasted bagel."

Within thirty minutes, the pair were at the four-way, walking back to the scene of last night's fire. Even though the flames had been put out long ago, the scent of smoke clung to the still air like a bad houseguest who refused to leave. The odor caused Phillip's stomach to turn, his breakfast recoiling within him in fear and disgust. Unbidden, the memory of last night's fire flew to his mind, and he remembered how he could only stand outside, frozen in terror, while Daring Do charged into her death.

She had escaped...this time. But if it hadn't been for the aid of another, she might not be beside him now. What happened next time, when it was only him standing between her and the Reaper, and he was unable to act?

Concentrate, he ordered himself. You need to focus on the task at hoof. Worry about that later.

Taking a breath, he forced himself back to the moment. Turning the corner, the two ponies found themselves at the end of the short, dead-end street. The burned-out shell that had once been a house was still standing at the end of the cobblestones, faint whispers of smoke occasionally reaching up like spirits rising to heaven.

Unfortunately, standing in front of the building was a squad of City Guards, including a steely-eyed unicorn corporal, who was glaring at them.

"Oh, boy," Daring sighed in exasperation. The two detectives proceeded forward, stopping in front of Corporal Shield, who gave them both his iciest glare.

"I knew you two would show up sooner or later," he growled.

"You gonna tell us to piss off again?" Phillip asked wearily.

"Not at all," Shield replied, his voice suddenly calm once more. "I'm going to tell you that Dr. Scribe is dead. He was killed in the fire last night." He paused, observing his suspects' impassive faces. "That doesn't seem to surprise you."

"We were here," Daring admitted. "I tried to save him, but—"

"Really?" Shield interrupted. "Strange that you two should show up at that time, Ms. Alibi."

Daring took an aggressive step forward. "If there's something you'd like to say, why don't you go ahead and say it?" she dared.

"Fair enough," Shield replied coolly. "Phillip Finder and Irene Alibi, you both are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can—"

"Corporal!" a voice suddenly barked. Every head turned to face the broad-shouldered unicorn with a bushy brown mustache and squinting blue eyes walking out of the burned-out building. His City Guard armor was as polished as the sun itself, and a silver bar was clearly displayed upon his collar. "Is this them?" he asked Shield as he approached.

"Yes, lieutenant," Corporal Shield replied, drawing himself up. "I was just about to place these two 'detectives' under arrest."

The lieutenant turned his narrowed gaze upon Corporal Shield. "And why?"

"These two have shown up at every crime scene in the past two days, and interfered with our investigations," Corporal Shield replied. "I believe that Phillip Finder is a fraud who commits crimes so he can 'solve' them later with the aid of accomplices like Irene Alibi."

Phillip's jaw clenched and his eyes darkened, but before he could react, the lieutenant spoke up. "Interesting theory. Do you have any tangible evidence to back up your accusations?"

Iron Shield's only answer was a stewing silence and a furious glare at his superior officer. "Corporal, perhaps you should go down to the morgue and speak to the pathologist, see if they found anything useful," the lieutenant suggested in a tone that made it clear that it was not a suggestion. Scowling, Iron Shield shot off a brief salute and stalked away.

"You'll have to forgive him," the lieutenant sighed as soon as Shield was out of earshot. "He's got excellent instincts, but he doesn't like admitting when he's wrong." He extended his hoof towards Phillip. "Lieutenant Coonhound. Truth be told, I'm glad for any help; this is getting far out of hoof."

"We'll do what we can, lieutenant," Phillip promised, shaking his hoof. "Have you put security on Dr. Exhibit?"

"Considering that two of her colleagues have died in as many days, we found it prudent to put a squad at her place right away," Lieutenant Coonhound replied.

"Good. Let's take a look at this." Phillip walked up to the burnt house, with Daring and Coonhound following. The building still smelled of smoke, and the floorboards creaked and groaned beneath their hooves. As they passed the dining room, Phillip paused and looked inside. The small table was set for one, with the remains of a partially-eaten meal on the cracked plate. The chair was toppled over and lay on the floor about two feet away.

"We found Dr. Scribe's body in his bedroom," Coonhound explained, pointing up the stairs. "Watch your step going up." The trio trotted up onto the second floor and followed the lieutenant to the bedroom. In the hallway, a heavy grandfather clock was lying facedown across the floor. Phillip paused, crouching over the heavy clock, examining the scorch marks on the fine oak.

"Can you lift that up?" he asked. Lieutenant Coonhound lit up his horn and carefully raised the clock up off the floor with his magic, revealing the face, which was mostly undamaged. "That was already on the floor before the fire started." He signaled for the lieutenant to set the clock back down and they continued down the hallway.

The door to the bedroom had been knocked down by several ax strikes and was lying splintered before the threshold. A chair lay on its side next to it. The room itself and all the furniture therein was fully blackened with scorch marks and the only remnants of the mattress was a shriveled husk.

"The firefighters say that the chair was apparently barricading the door, so they had to break it down," Coonhound told them. "We found Dr. Scribe's body in the far corner. We think...well, hopefully, he suffocated before the flames got to him. The fire started here," he continued, pointing to the floor in front of the bedroom threshold. "We found part of what appears to be part of a flare, and from the shape of the burns, it looks like whoever started the fire poured out some combustible chemicals outside the door and dropped a flare on the pile."

"Scribe had barricaded the door shut and there was no other way in," Daring said. "So whoever it was decided to burn him out."

"Yeah," Phillip agreed. "Someone or something spooked him while he was eating dinner, and he ran up here, pushing the clock over to try to slow him down. When he got here, he barricaded the door and tried to wait for help, but our intruder was apparently determined to kill him." He pulled out his loupe glasses and leaned over the door, peering at the damage. "I see scratch marks...looks like the intruder tried to claw their way in." Pulling a small tape measure out of his vest pocket, he carefully measured the marks. "Hmmm...not a griffon, too thin. Some kind of dog, I think, but they're awful deep."

"Are you sure? What kind of dog could set a fire?" Coonhound asked doubtfully, chewing his mustache in thought.

"A smart dog, or somepony with the dog," Phillip answered, standing back up and exiting the room, instead examining the floor around the source of the fire. For the next half hour, the trio conducted a careful examination of the house and the grounds outside, but found nothing: any further clues had either been destroyed in the fire or trampled by responders. Finally, Phillip returned his loupe glasses to their carrying case with a sigh.

"What do you think, Phil?" Daring asked.

"What I know is that somepony is killing ponies that are related to the Taverneigh Blue, and there's only one left." He turned and faced Coonhound. "Lieutenant, with your permission, Irene and I would like to help with the security for Dr. Exhibit."

Coonhound squinted at them both for several seconds of silence. "You two are private operators, not City Guards. How do I know I can trust you to work with us?"

"Lieutenant, I understand," Daring cut in, removing her glasses so that Coonhound could see her eyes. "Ponies in your city are dying, and you're trying to do everything you can to keep them safe. And you need as much help as you can get." She stepped forward, her stature proud but her eyes humble. "We're here to help. That's all we want. You work with us, we'll work with you. We'll do what you tell us, cooperate fully, if it means keeping Dr. Exhibit safe."

Coonhound chewed on his mustache for a few moments more, considering his options. Finally, he nodded, pulling a pen and a sheaf of paper from his saddlebags with his magic and writing down a brief note. Exiting the building, he signaled a pegasus Guard over and gave him the note. "Escort Mr. Finder and Ms. Alibi to Dr. Exhibit's house," he ordered.

"Thank you, lieutenant," Phillip said, raising his hoof in salute. "We'll do everything we can."

"I'm counting on it," Coonhound replied softly, watching the two detectives follow the Guard back up the street.

Dr. Main Exhibit lived in a stone cottage in a patch of trees just past Century Park. The fields of trees cast the building and grounds in shadows that seemed to reach out towards the house.

"That's two doctors living in two creepy houses," Daring commented as they walked up the pathway to the door. Two City Guards clad in armor stood outside the door. Their escort handed Lieutenant Coonhound's note to one of the Guards, who read the note, then turned away to speak into his radio. After a minute of quiet conversation, he nodded and opened the door.

"Sergeant Bronze Leaf is with Dr. Exhibit, in her study. He'll give you your instructions."

"Thank you," Phillip said, entering the front hall. They proceeded up the stairs to the second floor and down the hallway to the oak door with another Guard standing post outside. Upon seeing them, the Guard knocked at the door. "Come in!" a voice called from inside as the door magically opened, permitting them entry.

Dr. Exhibit's study was lined almost wall-to-wall with books, neatly stacked up like soldiers upon their shelves. A framed diploma from Pranceton University was proudly displayed on the wall behind the desk at which Dr. Exhibit was sitting, her expression strained and a pair of glasses placed upon her snout, scribbling at a long scroll of paper with a quill. A unicorn Guard with an autumnal bronze coat and dark brown hair and eyes was sitting in front of her. Phillip's eyes gravitated to the sergeant's pin on his collar.

"Detectives, I'm Sergeant Bronze Leaf," the Guard greeted them with a respectful nod. "I believe you both have met Dr. Exhibit already." Dr. Exhibit made no sign of acknowledging their presence.

"If the Lieutenant's reaching out to private operators, he must be desperate," Bronze Leaf continued. "But, my orders are to include you as part of the security team, so that's what I'm going to do. First thing you need to know: I'm in charge. You do what I tell you and only what I tell you to do. Clear?"

"Clear, Sergeant," Phillip replied. Daring didn't answer, instead choosing to give him a stony look.

"Good. Second thing: I want you two with me at all times. That means for now, I want you here in this room with me."

"Fine with me," Phillip shrugged, sensing the distrust in the Guard's voice. He trotted over to the window and looked out into the backyard, speaking quietly with the Sergeant about the details of the security arrangements. Bronze Leaf's answers were short and delivered at the wall rather than at Phillip.

Dr. Exhibit continued to work diligently away, as if determined to ignore her new houseguests. Noticing her tension, Daring walked over to the desk. "Dr. Exhibit?" she asked. The museum director did not react to her voice, instead choosing to violently stab her quill into her ink pot before continuing to write. "Hey, are you all right?"

"Please don't try to reassure me," Dr. Exhibit snapped, refusing to look up. Her voice quivered, sounding as strained as a rubber band being stretched to the breaking point. "I am fully aware that dozens of ponies, including two of my closest colleagues and friends, have been assassinated in the past couple of days and I appear to be next, and focusing on my work is my way of dealing with the fear, so please just leave me alone. This translation of Maorein scripture needs to get done regardless." And with that, she pressed her glasses up against her red-streaked eyes and pressed her nose up against the scroll.

Frowning in thought, Daring turned and began to peruse the books on the shelves. One volume caught her eye: a wide, battered paperback sitting off on it's own. Taking it from the shelf, Daring examined the title: The Complete Jules Vanner Collection.

"I loved Jules Vanner," Daring said enthusiastically. Dr. Exhibit looked up, looking at the book with a long expression, as if she had forgotten that it was there. "Around the World in Ninety Days is probably my favorite story in the world; I've always wanted to travel the world like Foggy Path did."

Exhibit blinked, still staring at the book. "I didn't really like that story," she finally said slowly. "Foggy barely spent any time in any place he stopped. He didn't take the time to appreciate where he was, or the historical significance of any of the sights he visited."

Daring let out a small, ironic laugh. "Yeah, I know what you mean." She sat down on the floor next to the desk. "Sometimes it's like we're always running around, trying to figure out where we're going to go or what to do, and we never take the time to just stop and see where we are. And we don't realize that all around us, there are these...stories, just waiting to be told, all these secrets to be uncovered, adventures to go on...and we're just to self-absorbed to notice." She paused, giving Main Exhibit a small smile. "You ever feel like that?"

Slowly, Dr. Exhibit smiled. "Yes. It's why I became a historian. To uncover some of their stories." She set her quill down, her posture visibly relaxing. Opening up a drawer, she extracted a photograph and showed it to Daring. The picture showed the three museum heads—Main Exhibit, Stone Scribe and Dry Bones—standing in the middle of a village of huts, holding a familiar blue diamond and an intricately carved box. All three ponies had large smiles on their faces. "Like with the Taverneigh Blue," Dr. Exhibit whispered, her voice heavy. She stared at the photo for several long seconds before returning it to the drawer.

"I actually preferred Thirty Thousand Leagues Under the Ocean," she changed the subject. "When I first read it as a child, I wanted to go on a submarine voyage myself!"

The two mares began an excited conversation discussing the exploits of Vanner, smiles across both of their faces. Sergeant Leaf watched them with a surprised expression, then turned to Phillip, who was careful to smile only with the side of his face that Leaf couldn't see.

The night came on far too quickly, the sun setting beneath the horizon to bring on the darkness, enveloping the woods and cottage. The forest became malevolent in the dark, the wind sending threatening whispers through the leaves, accompanied by the gentle chorus of night animals.

Dr. Exhibit retired to her bed at nine. Two hours later, Bronze Leaf, Phillip and Daring were still standing in the hallway outside her bedroom. Sergeant Leaf was leaning against the wall next to her door, his eyes shut and breathing slow in the semi-sleep of one waiting for danger. Phillip and Daring stood sentinel on the wall opposite. A draft passed through the hallway and a shiver traveled up and down Phillip's body.

"You cold?" Daring asked, shifting her weight from hoof to hoof.

"I'm fine," he mumbled, shrugging his shoulders and pulling his vest up. A moment later, he felt a wing being draped over his body, pulling him in close. "Daring, not in front of—"

"Forget about him." Daring nestled him against her chest. "I can't have you getting hypothermia, now can I?" She smiled. "Besides, it's not the first time we've curled up to keep warm."

Phillip managed to smile in return, relaxing into Daring's embrace. "Remember that snowstorm in the Macintosh Hills? When we had to stay in that cabin for three days?"

"Three days in a cabin in the snow, just you and me around the fireplace." Daring chuckled once, very softly. "It would have been romantic if you hadn't almost frozen to death."

"I never did thank you properly for saving me," Phillip admitted.

Daring glanced up to make sure that Bronze Leaf's eyes were still closed, then kissed Phillip on the top of his head. "What're friends for?"

Something fluttered in Phillip's chest: something held back, some word that couldn't be said. He looked up at those rosy eyes, so bright in the dim hallway, and found himself being drawn in close...

"Sniper three has movement," a voice came over the Sergeant's radio. Instantly, Bronze Leaf snapped awake, cradling the radio in his hoof. At the same moment, Phillip and Daring pulled away from each other, pulling themselves to their hooves as they awaited the inevitable confirmation through the radio.

"Never mind. Just a deer," the voice declared a second later. Everypony slowly relaxed.

The next moment, there came a piercing scream from inside the bedroom. Bronze Leaf kicked the door open and the trio burst inside. The light from Leaf's horn revealed that Dr. Exhibit had fallen out of her bed and was huddled in the corner away from a dark, four-legged shape clad in dark robes in the center of the room. A tile was missing from the ceiling, providing a clue as to the burglar's entry method.

The intruder reacted immediately to their presence, snapping a limb out towards the trio of ponies. Daring grabbed her two companions and pulled them down just in time for them to dodge three throwing knives launched at their heads. With a furious yell, Sergeant Leaf launched himself at the intruder, bringing them both to the ground. A set of claw-like blades extended from the killer's sleeve and buried themselves into Leaf's unarmored stomach, ripping into the flesh like paper. The killer kicked Leaf off of him and into Phillip and Daring, knocking them all over, then leapt back up and dove through the window. Agilely rolling when it hit the ground, the figure began to race towards the line of trees before any of the Guards could react.

Leaf groaned, clutching his bleeding stomach. "I'm fine!" he growled through gritted teeth. "Get after him!"

Spreading her wings, Daring flew out the window after their quarry. Phillip jumped out, tucking and rolling when he hit the ground and immediately sprinting after her into the woods. A squad of Guards came right on his tail, their flashlights struggling to pierce the dark.

"Where'd he go?" somepony shouted.

"Everypony fan out!" a dark blue unicorn corporal ordered, sweeping the trees with her flashlight. "Search every inch of these woods and—"

Her orders were interrupted by a sound, a sound unlike any night creature: a strange, whooping giggling that rose with the wind, echoing through the darkness.

"Oh, no," Daring whispered, slowly turning in midair as she searched for the source of the insane laughter. The giggles became louder, coming from the shadows surrounding them, echoing in everypony's head.

"Everypony stay together!" Daring exclaimed, landing next to Phillip.

"What the hell is that?" he hissed, drawing his baton.

Daring swallowed, her eyes struggling to pierce the enveloping darkness. "It's a hyena."

Author's Note

Things are going from bad to worse...and the bodies haven't stopped falling yet.

How are we doing? Comments, likes and faves are always appreciated!

Part 6: The Beast

The horrific giggling continued, echoing through the dark trees, its origin impossible to determine. The Guards spread out in a search pattern, desperately sweeping through the shadows with their lights in search of their quarry.

"What the hell is a hyena?" Phillip hissed, pulling his flashlight out and attaching it to his shoulder.

"A predator," Daring explained, standing back to back against him. "The apex predators."

Abruptly, the giggling stopped. The dead silence, the vacuum of sound that followed was terrifying. "We're in trouble, aren't we?" Phillip muttered.

There was a rustling from a bush behind one of the Guards. He turned too late: a dark shape rushed out, dashed past him and disappeared into the leaves before anypony could react. The Guard's body hit the ground a moment later, his head rolling away into the bushes, an expression of shock forever frozen on his face.

"We're in very big trouble," Daring whispered.

"Spread out! Find them!" the corporal ordered, drawing her blade in her magic.

"No, stay together!" Daring shouted back. "If we spread out, it'll just pick us off one at a time!"

As if to prove her point, one of the Guards suddenly cried out in shock, his voice turning into a horrid gurgling as he collapsed to the ground, clutching his throat. "Redcoat!" his companion shouted in anguish, rushing over to his friend. Before he had taken three steps, a blade flew out of nowhere and imbedded itself in his forehead, dropping him like a stone. Another Guard with a repeating crossbow panicked and started firing wildly into the shadows around him. His terrified howls were cut short by another throwing knife striking him in the throat.

The surviving ponies could only stare in horrified disbelief. The terrible giggling started again, as if mocking their disability, mocking their dead. "No! Bastard!" the corporal screamed into the darkness, her voice a mixture of anger and fear. Her reply was a delighted whooping, carried to her ears by the chill wind.

"We need to get back inside!" Daring warned, already turning to leave. Phillip turned and ran after her, immediately followed by the other Guards. The corporal hesitated for a moment, then turned and raced after the others.

A second later, there was a snapping sound and a cable wrapped itself around her hind legs, causing her to stumble. The cable tightened, dragging her into the bushes. "Help!" she shrieked, scrabbling against the dirt for a hold. Two of the Guards grabbed her forelegs and pulled back, engaging in a deadly game of tug-of-war.

Suddenly, two throwing knives flashed out of the bush. The Guards ducked, but the blades struck them both in the shoulder, causing them to lose their grip on the corporal. She screamed in desperate fear as the rope dragged her into the darkness like a fish for gutting.

Diving forward, Daring grabbed her forelegs and pulled as hard as she could, flapping her wings for extra strength. "Cut her loose!" she shouted. One of the Guards rushed forward and cut the cable with his sword, freeing her.

"Go, go! Back to the house!" Phillip called, helping the wounded Guards back to their hooves. The entire team ran back to the mansion, back to the hope of safety promised by the light. Shoving the door open with his shoulder, Phillip waved the others back into the main hall. As soon as Daring crossed the threshold with the corporal, he slammed the door shut, locking away the night and the killer it concealed.

Attracted by the noise, Bronze Leaf stumbled down the stairs, holding his sword in his magical aura, a set of bandages around his stomach. His eyes widened when he saw his panting, trembling, exhausted squad stumbling into the kitchen, two of them clutching the blades in their shoulders. "What happened?" he asked.

"It killed them, sergeant," the corporal whimpered, covering her face with a shaking hoof. "It killed Redcoat, Bluebell, White Pawn and Cirrus; killed them all."

"What did?" the sergeant demanded. "What the hell was that thing?!"

"A hyena," Daring said, already bandaging one of the wounded Guards. "They're a different species, from the far south. They're assassins, trained from childhood to hunt and kill for sport."

"I've never heard of them," Bronze Leaf grunted, tending to the other wounded Guard.

"You're about to," Daring replied, pulling her bandages taut. "Phil, go up to Dr. Exhibit's study and get the H encyclopedia."

Phillip bounded for the stairs, but paused part of the way up. "Where's Dr. Exhibit? Is she all right?" he asked.

"She's fine," Sergeant Leaf replied. "We've moved her to the guest bedroom in the basement, and I have two Guards on her at all times. Lieutenant Coonhound is sending an armored carriage to take her to a safe house in the morning."

"Good." Phillip dashed up the stairs, returning a few moments later with a thick book tucked under his foreleg like a hoofball. He carried it to the table, opened it up, and started flipping through the pages. "Found it: 'hyena,'" he announced after a few seconds of searching. Clearing his throat, he began to read aloud:

"'Hyenas are an intelligent predatory species, native to the far Mysterious South, described as dog-like animals slightly smaller than the average pony, with spotted brown and gray fur and black manes. Little is known about the hyenas or their culture; what is known about them comes from zebras and other natives of the Mysterious South, who are frequent prey of hyenas in their native lands, and from accounts from survivors.

"'The hyena culture is heavily revolved around hunting for both sustenance (the corporal shivered and flattened her ears against her head) and sport, with members of hyena tribes gaining power and prestige by killing dangerous creatures, including ponies, whom they regard as worthy adversaries because of their intelligence, magic and technological advancement. From childhood, hyenas are trained in silent movement, infiltration, combat, weaponry, poisons, and all method of assassination and killing. In a rite of passage, grown hyenas must engage in a solo hunt against a chosen group of prey and bring back trophies, usually the head or skin of their victims, as proof of a kill.'" Out of the corner of his eye, Phillip saw Daring shift slightly in discomfort, clutching her wings to her sides. He paused for a moment, then continued reading:

"'Despite their small size, hyenas are extremely fast and surprisingly strong. The hyena language consists primarily of barks and growls and is very difficult to replicate: however, they are capable of learning and speaking other languages, including Standard Equestrian, and it is rumored that they are also able to mimic the voices of their prey. However, the distinctive sound of the hyena is its "laugh," a rapid, high-pitched giggling sound that is used as a war cry of sorts to rally teammates or frighten prey.'"

Almost the entire room shivered at once, as if in testament to the truth of this statement.

"'It is rumored that rogue hyenas who have left or been kicked out of a tribe hire themselves out as mercenaries and assassins,'" Phillip concluded the entry. "'Some who study hyenas have attributed over a hundred unsolved murders and accidental deaths to the work of hyena assassins.'"

"That's what we're dealing with," Daring told Sergeant Leaf, her voice taut beneath the weight of the lives taken by their foe. "A thrill killer who's been literally trained from birth to kill you, eat you, and turn your skull into a trophy."

"It's a living, breathing thing," Sergeant Leaf growled back. "And that means it can be stopped." He stamped his hoof down onto the floor. Instantly, every Guard in the room snapped to attention. "Listen up, everypony. Four of our own have been murdered in action: they will not go unavenged! This freak made a huge mistake the day it tried to take on the City Guard! If it wants to kill this innocent mare, it's going to have to go through all of us; and while it's hunting her, we'll be hunting it! We will search everywhere, turn over every rock, until it's got nowhere to hide, and then we will put it down like the sick dog it is! Right?!"

"Right!" the company shouted back as one, their vigor renewed by the promise of vengeance. Leaf grinned viciously, the smile of a hunter with the scent of blood on their nostrils. Daring and Phillip watched in silence.

As soon as morning came, a gray armored carriage arrived at the mansion, escorted by five Guards. Dr. Exhibit, pale-faced and shaking, her eyes dark from lack of sleep, slowly shuffled into the dark interior of the carriage. The door slammed shut and was locked behind her and the carriage trundled back down the path and away, carrying its precious cargo somewhere unknown. Sergeant Leaf, Daring, and Phillip watched her disappear in silence.

Another one of the City Guards marched up to the Sergeant and saluted. "Sir, we've searched everywhere, but we can't find any trace of the...hyena. And...there's another thing," he added hesitantly.

"What other thing?" Leaf asked, his tone clearly indicating that he did not wish to know the answer to his question.

"It's...it's Cirrus' head," the Guard admitted, bowing his head in grief. "We can't find it."

Leaf sighed heavily and lowered his head onto his hoof. "How am I gonna tell his wife?" he muttered to himself. After a few seconds, he raised his head once more. "All right. Just...just keep looking. There's got to be something somewhere. I'm going back to headquarters to make my report."

"Sir," the Guard saluted and walked off to return to the search for evidence.

"You two are free to help with the search," Sergeant Leaf told Phillip and Daring without looking up at them. "I want this animal found and put down, understand?"

"Just as much as we do, sarge," Daring answered. Phillip did not reply; he had not spoken a word since last night. With a nod, Sergeant Leaf trotted quickly away.

"So what now?" Daring asked Phillip, who turned to face her, his expression unreadable.

"You've encountered hyenas before, haven't you." It was a statement, not a question. Slightly taken aback, Daring did not answer for a moment. Eventually, she swallowed and began her confession.

"It was one of my first trips, early in my career. I was traveling with a group into the Undiscovered West, along with a friend of mine, Professor Jackal. On the fifth night, we discovered a tomb from an ancient tribe. I got overexcited and started exploring it on my own while the others started setting up camp.

"I didn't find anything notable in the tomb, so after a few hours of searching and mapping, I went back to the surface. But when I got close, I heard the others...they were screaming. I ran outside, but I was too late." She took a shallow breath, remembering how she had burst out into the cold jungle night, feeling the bloodstained sand beneath her hooves, the distinctive, coppery scent at her nostrils, and continued:

"They were dead. All of them. Professor Jackal was hanging upside down from a tree limb, his head gone. And while I was standing there, I heard it...it was laughing."

Daring breathed heavily through her teeth, clenching her hoof as if imagining it wrapped around somepony's throat. Phillip started to reach up a hoof to place on her shoulder, but quickly thought the better of it.

"You saw what those things are like last night," Daring hissed, glaring up at Phillip. "If that hyena snuck in so easily, it could have snuck back out. But it didn't. It killed four ponies, because it wanted to. We have to stop it." She turned and started walking towards a group of Guards milling at the edge of the woods, where their comrades had fallen last night. "Are you going to help, or what?"

Phillip started to say something, but bit it back and followed with a quiet sigh.

The search for evidence went for the rest of the day. Aided by the rest of the Guards, Phillip and Daring carefully examined the assassin's entry and exit points, bent over every track, scoured the forest and grounds, peered at the discarded throwing knives, and looked over the four corpses for any clue, any sign. But all for naught: there was no trace of where the hyena had come from or where he had gone.

"Maybe the crime lab will find something," Phillip mumbled, returning his loupe glasses to their carrying case as he exited the mansion.

Daring stared at him. Phillip never mumbled. "So what do we do now?"

"We get dinner," Phillip answered, turning down the dark street, following the lamplights back to the city.

They found a suitable meal at a corner deli. Several times through their dinner, Daring tried to probe Phillip as to whatever theory he was holding in his mind, but he didn't say a word. He hardly even looked at her.

Afterwards, they decided to walk back to the hotel. Neither spoke until they had reached their room and shut the door behind them.

"You've given up, haven't you?" Daring snarled contemptuously at her partner, watching him doff his hat and vest, tossing them carelessly into the corner.

"What do you want me to do?" Phillip rounded on her. "This city has almost 12,000 citizens. Do you honestly think that we can search for the hyena by ourselves without some kind of clue?"

Daring glared at him. "Fine. So what's our play?"

"We work the other end," Phillip said. "Find the one who hired the hyena. And we start in the morning."

Daring gritted her teeth, unable to explain her anger and frustration but unwilling to let go of it. "Yeah. Fine."

With a nod, Phillip walked over to the bed and flopped down onto the mattress, lying on his side with his back to Daring. She reluctantly removed her own disguise and went over to the other bed, lying with her back to him. It took a long time for either of them to get to sleep.

He had no idea where he was. The dark forest seemed to press in from all directions, the black trees looming over him. The leaves shuddered as an icy wind blew, chilling him to the bone. He stepped back and stepped on something hard; looking down, he saw the Taverneigh Blue lying in the dirt beneath his hoof.

Suddenly, there was a great roar of thunder and flash of lightning. He looked up at the sound and froze in horror. Hanging from the branches of every tree around him were dozens of bodies. The security guard from the museum, foam still about his lips. Dry Bones, his skull drenched in his own blood. Stone Scribe, his burnt corpse barely recognizable. Private Cirrus, a bloody stump all that remained of his head. Redcoat, Bluebell, White Pawn, their armor stained in their own blood. And directly in front of him, Daring Do, impaled on a branch and her throat torn open by the teeth of an animal. He froze up at the sight, his heart leaping to his throat.

And then he heard a noise behind him: a high-pitched giggling. He turned just in time to see a set of yellow teeth bared in a vicious grin and a set of metal claws, so sharp they seemed to cut the air, rushing right at his neck...

With a gasp, Phillip woke up, sitting bolt upright in bed. Instantly, Daring was also awake, reaching for the whip beneath her pillow. "What's going on?!"

Phillip gulped down air, wiping cold sweat from his brow. "It's nothing. Just a bad dream." Getting out of bed, he trotted over to the bathroom to splash some cold water on his face, shutting the door behind him.

Filling the sink up with water, he cleaned his face off, then gripped the sink with his hooves, summoning the strength he needed to banish the tumultuous emotions from his head.

Twenty dead in less than a week. All of them right in front of him, within his reach, but beyond his saving. How many more would fall? And what if he wound up added to that list? What if Daring was next?

Stop it, he ordered himself. Ponies are dying, and more ponies are going to die if you don't get your bloody head on straight and concentrate. And don't worry about Daring; she can handle herself.

Phillip took a long breath, expelling his fears and set himself back down on the floor. He now regretted not bringing some sleeping medication from home: a double dosage of Lunastar would be just what he needed—

He froze. Something niggled at the back of his mind, a vague animalistic warning of danger. He looked back into the bathroom, and then he noticed two things. One was a strand of gray-brown hair next to the sink. The other was that the shower curtain was closed...even though it hadn't been earlier.

He ducked almost too late. Like the introduction of a dramatic setting on a stage, the curtains were tossed violently aside and a dark figure clad in black clothing and hood jumped out. Metal claws slashed through the air just over Phillip's head. Reacting instantly, Phillip grabbed the bony, furry leg, compressed it in a lock, and slammed the hyena's cloaked head into the sink. "Daring, help!" he shouted.

The hyena counterattacked, kicking Phillip in the knee and slashing at his face with its other foreleg, forcing him to let go and roll out of the way. At the same moment, the bathroom door crashed in and Daring burst into the room, her whip clutched in her teeth. With a jerk of her head, she snapped the weapon out, entangling the hyena's hind legs and pulling. The hyena leapt backwards, using its claws to cut through the whip and free itself. It growled at its two prey, its yellow eyes shining through its hood, then jumped back, crashing through the window.

"Let's go!" Daring shouted to Phillip, tossing him his vest and flying out after their attacker, pulling her own vest on as she flew. Phillip leapt out of the window in pursuit, swinging his vest onto his body as he ran.

The hyena already had a head start, and it was running faster than even Daring could fly, agilely leaping over roofs, vaulting obstacles and jumping across alleyways. Daring put on speed, flapping as hard as she could, while Phillip sprinted after them both.

"It's headed for that construction site!" Daring shouted, pointing at a skeletal steel and drywall edifice in the distance, lit up by generator-powered lamps. The hyena leapt off a roof, tumbling through the air and grabbing onto a girder, pulling itself inside the construction site. Daring paused in midair, waiting for Phillip to catch up. Confidently, he sprinted off the rooftop and leapt. She grabbed his forelegs and swung him into the building, flying in to land beside him.

"Where'd it go?" Daring called out, looking around the "hallway" of hanging plastic sheets.

"We'll find it," Phillip said, starting forward. No sooner had he taken his first step then every light on the site suddenly went out, plunging them into darkness. The sound of the humming generators was replaced by another noise: a distant, insane giggling.

"Oh, buck," Daring whispered as both of them pulled flashlights out of their pockets and attached them to their shoulders. "This is an ambush, and we walked right into it."

"We've walked into traps before, and we've walked back out again," Phillip replied. "We'll stick together and—" His sentence was cut off by a startled cry when something crashed through the floor at his hooves and seized his legs. With a sudden jerk, he was pulled down through the floor.

"Phillip!" Daring cried, leaping down after him, only to find herself tangled in a net. She flailed in startled surprise and fury, only to get herself trapped even worse. In the light of her flash, she saw Phillip tumbling away from her. He got back to his hooves hurriedly, drawing his baton with a flick of his hoof, clutching a bleeding wound in his shoulder.

A shadow passed in front of Daring. The hyena, its killing stroke thwarted, stood up between the two of them. The beast's hood had fallen off, revealing its face. It looked like a nightmarish dog, with a long snout equipped with yellow teeth, a matted black mane, and vicious yellow eyes. The hyena glanced at Daring, then glared at Phillip. With a snarl, it spread its forelegs wide, issuing a challenge.

"Daring, concentrate on getting yourself out," Phillip said, his voice measured calm. "I can handle this."

"Be careful," Daring warned, struggling to get to the knife in her pocket.

The hyena growled once, then leapt at Phillip, slashing through the air with both sets of claws. Phillip did a dive roll out of the way, snatching up a discarded length of steel rebar as he rolled. Popping back to his hooves, he parried a blow with his baton and struck back with the rebar. The hyena blocked the blow, but received a headbutt to the face in response. Growling through a now-broken nose, it launched a furious blur of attacks. Phillip blocked each one and kicked the hyena away, regaining a safe distance. Meanwhile, Daring finally managed to get the pocketknife out of her pocket and pulled the blade open, beginning to cut herself free.

The fighters circled each other for a few moments, then the hyena leapt in, cutting down at Phillip's head. He moved to counterstrike with the rebar, but the hyena readjusted the attack, cutting Phillip's leg and forcing him to drop the weapon. With a grunt of pain, Phillip drew his injured leg back out of danger, turning the motion into a baton strike to the head. He struck the hyena again, ducked beneath a spinning kick, and bucked the hyena in the gut, sending it flying back into a steel beam and crashing to the ground. "You got it!" Daring cheered. Phillip moved forward to finish his opponent off.

Suddenly, as he got close, the hyena leapt back up, pulling something out from beneath the black cloak: a flare. It snapped the flare on and thrusted the flaming, sparkling end at Phillip. Phillip froze, his eyes widening at the sight of the flame. Dropping his baton, Phillip backed away from the flare, breathing rapidly through his nostrils. The hyena looked at Phillip, then at the flare, then grinned. It began to stalk forward, thrusting the flare at Phillip, who backpedaled rapidly.

"Look out!" Daring warned, but it was too late: in his panic, Phillip had failed to notice he was backing up towards the edge of the roof. With a scream, he fell off the side of the building, tumbling three stories down onto the hard ground. The hyena looked over the edge at its fallen prey, then turned, noticing a wheelbarrow loaded with bricks nearby. With a grunt, it pushed the wheelbarrow over the edge, where it tumbled down onto Phillip's prone body with a tremendous crash.

"No!" Daring shouted. With a final, furious slash, she cut herself free of the net and tumbled out, flying right at the hyena with the intent of pushing it over the edge. The beast ducked beneath her attack, allowing her to fly back out into the night sky. By the time, she turned around, the assassin was already gone.

Panting, Daring looked down to see a pile of bricks on the ground several feet beneath her. A single brown hoof protruded from the pile. She dived down and started flinging bricks off the pile, eventually exposing Phillip's head. He wasn't moving. Several trails of blood streamed from his head.

"Phillip? Phillip, can you hear me?" Daring shouted, shaking him. No response. She reached down and pressed a hoof against his neck. She felt a pulse, but it was weak and slow. Looking around the site, Daring saw a red box mounted on the wall nearby. Dashing over, she pulled down the lever, turning on the fire alarm. The alarm bell began clanging incessantly, sending its cry out into city, but Daring hardly heard it. All she knew was the feeble pulse beneath her hoof and a faint giggle that echoed in the back of her mind.

Author's Note

Wow, this chapter turned out a lot longer than I thought it would, but there's really nowhere in the chapter that offers itself up as a good stopping point.

A lot of things happened in here. The hyena is an adversary that is to be feared, and he may have added one more name to his list of prey. More coming...

Part 7: Predator

Daring Do had long ago decided that if there was a Hell, it had to resemble a hospital.

It wasn't the cramped, impossibly clean rooms with their plain white walls that disturbed her, nor the vague scent of chlorine in the air that refused to go away and the constant drones of heartbeat monitors and other machinery in the background; not even the doctors and nurses with their whispering voices and tones of concern, as if they were afraid that their patients would shatter if they spoke too loudly.

It was the long periods of silence and helplessness, of doing nothing but lying in your bed...or sitting beside your friend's bed, wishing that it was you lying on the too-clean white sheets and not them.

Phillip was lying unconscious on the hospital bed before her, his head and chest bandaged and his right foreleg in a sling, hooked up to an array of tubes and monitors. His chest rose and fell in time with the regular beeping of the EKG beside her.

"He has multiple fractures and is bleeding internally. He's also probably got a concussion, and there may be other issues that we're not aware of," the head doctor had told her in that whispering tone that made her skin crawl. "I'm truly sorry, Ms. Alibi, but there's only so much that our healing magic can do until he wakes up."

The implied "if" at the end of that sentence had hung in the air like the scent of nicotine on the wallpaper of her grandmother's home, refusing to leave even hours later. But she forced herself to ignore it: Phillip would wake up. He had to.

"Ms. Alibi?"

It took Daring a couple seconds to remember that she had to respond; she briefly reflected that one day, she was going to meet a contact for Daring Do while posing as A.K. Yearling or one of her other identities, and forget who she was supposed to be. Looking up, she saw Lieutenant Coonhound walking into the room, removing his helmet with his magic to hold it to his chest. Iron Shield stood at the doorway, looking unsure if he was supposed to be there.

"Irene, we are truly sorry this happened," Coonhound started to say.

"Don't apologize," Daring interrupted, speaking through her teeth and refusing to look up at him. She couldn't take any more sympathy acts today; and even though the logical part of her knew none of this was his fault, she really, really wanted to be mad at him and his Guards, if for no other reason than to give her an outlet for all the rage and grief that was burning her up from the inside out.

Coonhound sighed. "No, I really am. I shouldn't have..." He paused, staring at Phillip with a distant expression. "We've lost a lot of good ponies this week," he whispered.

Daring felt a wave of nausea rush through her, cooling the red-hot coals of fury inside her for a moment. "I know," she muttered. "And I'm sorry for that, too."

Coonhound trotted up and placed a hoof on her shoulder. She did not react to the sudden weight of his touch. "You saved some of them. That counts for something." He patted her on the back. "Listen. My Guards are still combing for any sign of the hyena. As soon as we find it, we'll let you know."

"Don't underestimate it again," Daring warned him, not raising her gaze from the prone body on the bed before her. "That's what almost got us both killed."

"Don't worry, we won't," Lieutenant Coonhound assured her, standing back up. "Also, for safety's sake, I'm going to have a Guard posted outside this room at all times, just in case the hyena comes back to try to finish the job." Daring nodded numbly. "If there's anything else you need, just say so."

Daring looked up at her two visitors and an idea came to her. "Actually, there is something that you can do for me." She stood up and pointed at Iron Shield. "You. Come here."

Blinking in confusion, Corporal Shield walked forward. "What is it?"

The next moment, a solid right hook to the jaw sent him crashing to the floor, knocked out cold. Daring scowled down at him, feeing a little better. Coonhound stared at her for several seconds in surprise before lifting his subordinate up onto his back and carrying him out of the room. He paused at the doorway, glancing back at her.

"I hope he gets better," he said.

Daring gave him a look. "You don't have to hope," she told him, sitting down next to Phillip. "He will get better."

Coonhound left to return to his work. Daring barely noticed him leave, returning her attention to Phillip's still form and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.

For the next three days, Daring refused to leave Phillip's side. True to Coonhound's word, a Guard remained outside the door to his room all day and all night, switching off every six or eight hours, but Daring did not speak to any of them. In fact, she hardly spoke a word to anypony.

By afternoon on the fourth day, Phillip still had not woken up. "He's stable," the doctors told her, reassuring her with taut mask-like faces that they would know more when he woke up; then in the same breath, they told her to go home and get some rest, not to worry.

She always refused. Even though she knew that there was nothing she could do here but stare in silence, listening to the ever-present beeping of the heart monitor while waiting for her partner to open his eyes, she honestly did not know what else she was supposed to do.

Slowly, she reached out and took Phillip's cold hoof. He did not react, made no sign of being alive.

"Come on, Phil," Daring growled through her teeth, her eyes burning with unshed tears. "You've never let me down before. You're really just going to give up like this now?"

He did not respond. With a stifled moan, Daring lowered her head and wiped at her eyes. She heard a shuffling noise from the door and looked up to see a Guard, a young, light brown pegasus with sandy yellow hair named Dusty Winds looking into the room.

"What're you looking at?!" she snapped, glaring at the intruder. Dusty started violently and immediately retreated back behind the door.

At that moment, there was a very quiet groan. "Bloody hell, my head..." Slowly, Phillip opened his eyes, which sought out Daring. "Daring? What happened?"

"Hey! Get a doctor!" Daring shouted out the door. Dusty glanced back in and, seeing that their patient was awake at last, rushed off to get a doctor. Phillip tried to sit up, but immediately collapsed back down with stifled cry of pain.

"How are you feeling?" Daring asked, leaning over him.

"Like a ton of bricks landed on me," Phillip muttered.

"It was just a wheelbarrow, you pansy," Daring replied with a smirk. "You're going to be all right."

"Have you been here the whole time?" Phillip asked.

"I..." Daring suddenly felt ashamed and embarrassed without quite knowing why. "I was..." Scared you weren't going to wake up. "Keeping an eye on you to make sure that the hyena didn't come back."

A frown briefly crossed Phillip's face. A moment later, Dusty ran back in with a doctor in tow.

"Mr. Finder, glad to see you're awake," the doctor smiled. "Your friend here was really starting to get worried about you."

Daring raised an eyebrow at the doctor's back while he busied himself with his patient, examining his bandages and injuries. "Well, the good news is, you should be all right. But you're in for a rough healing, my friend; you still have a lot of broken bones to mend. We're going to have to keep you in bed for a couple more weeks at least."

"You know what's best," Phillip responded with a grateful nod. "Could you leave us for a moment?"

"Of course. I'll have a morphine drip brought in here in a few minutes. Just call if you need anything else." With a rather knowing smile and respectful nod to Phillip and Daring, the doctor exited the room. The Guard returned to her post.

As soon as they'd both left, Phillip returned to seriousness. "What's happened while I was out?" he asked Daring.

"Nothing," Daring replied. "The City Guards turned that construction site inside out and are searching the entire city for any sign of the hyena. So far, nothing."

"Which is what you were doing," Phillip added rather coldly.

"I thought you were going to die!" Daring protested. "I couldn't just..." She glared in fury, both unable and unwilling to justify her actions to him. She didn't even notice that she was still holding his hoof.

The two glared at each other for a moment more before Phillip finally sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. "I know." He gently squeezed her hoof back. "And I'm grateful." He smiled. "Thanks for saving my life again, by the way."

"Some help I am," Daring muttered. "I fell right into that trap like a rookie."

Instantly, the smile disappeared from Phillip's face. The same realization struck them both like an icy north wind.

"That hyena came after us," Phillip said. "It followed us from the crime scene to our room, then led us into a trap."

"The ponies at the museum, Bones, Script, Exhibit...none of them were the targets," Daring spoke the words, hardly daring to believe them. "They were just bait to draw us out into the open. We were the targets the whole time." Her hoof disappeared into her coat, gripping her repaired whip.

"I'm staying here with you," she growled through her teeth. "It'll be coming back for us, and when it does, I'll be ready."

The night came far too soon. Every light in the hospital remained on, as if determined to hold the line against the oncoming dark.

Phillip was lying in the bed with his eyes shut and a morphine drip in his foreleg, but Daring knew that he wasn't asleep, merely pretending to be. She sat in one corner of the room, her hoof still on her whip inside her coat. The hallway outside seemed too quiet to her, as if somepony had pressed the mute button on the world, but she did not move from her position.

To say that Daring Do was completely fearless would be a fallacy. Fear, she had learned through hard experience, made a useful ally once it was tamed. Fear kept her alive and focused, reminded her to be cautious, gave her that extra burst of energy that she needed to fight or to flee.

The real enemy was doubt; a second's uncertainty could cost her her life. Or worse, somepony else's life.

She had to be absolutely sure that she was up to this. She had faced many enemies before; some just as deadly as the hyena, a few just as cruel. And she'd beaten them all before.

But...

She emerged from the tomb and stopped short. The sand beneath her hooves, which had been dry only hours earlier, was now slick with blood. The corpse of a zebra that she recognized as being one of the group's guides lay in front of her, torn open from the neck to the pelvis. Daring staggered away in horror, stumbling over the body of the navigator, lying facedown with a throwing knife the back of his leg and his neck. With a cry, she leapt away, only to back into a tree. Turing around at the sudden, unexpected touch, she was horrified to see her old friend and mentor, Professor Jackal, dangling upside down from a tree branch like a prize fish...his head severed at the neck.

While she stared in terror, a sound came to her ears, carried by the jungle wind...a distant, high-pitched whooping giggle...

Daring snapped herself back to the present, and hot anger surged through her blood. Not again, she vowed. Never again.

Suddenly, the lights flickered and went out. There was a half-second of silence, followed by cries of confusion, fear and annoyance from outside.

Dusty Winds looked into the room, his flashlight piercing the darkness. "Are you both all right?" he asked, his voice carrying the distinct twang of a Dodge City inhabitant.

"We're fine," Daring replied, standing up, half-drawing her weapon. Phillip gave a quiet grunt in response.

"The backup generator should be coming on any second now," Dusty said, more to reassure himself than his charges.

"It would've already," Phillip answered, reaching into his vest on the table next to him and pulling out his own flashlight, switching it on to lantern mode. The room was cast in a hazy half-light, the shadows lurking outside the flashlight's range.

"It's here," Daring breathed. "Eyes and ears open, mouths shut."

The trio fell into silence, Dusty and Daring placing themselves on either side of Phillip, weapons drawn and ready. The silence stretched into seconds, then minutes of tension. None of the ponies dared move: they felt as though the slightest twitch, a single sudden movement, could attract the predator's attention. A bead of sweat slowly traveled down a strand of Dusty's mane, dripping down onto the tile floor.

Suddenly, there was a noise from the darkness: the sound of claws scratching against tile floors. Dusty gave an indistinct shout and whirled, pointing his blade towards the source of the sound.

"Stay where you are," Daring ordered him tersely. "Don't let it separate us—"

Before she could finish her sentence, a small black sphere flew out of the shadows and landed at the foot of Phillip's bed. The smoke bomb detonated as soon as it struck the floor, filling the room with thick, choking smoke. Daring held her forelegs up in front of her, closing her mouth and holding her breath. She could hear her two companions coughing heavily, but the stinging smoke prevented her from seeing clearly.

She felt a sudden push of energy, as if an invisible hoof had shoved her down. She ducked, and felt a set of claws slice through the air where her throat was a second earlier. She twisted, unleashing a powerful kick to her attacker's side and was rewarded with the very satisfying sensation of breaking ribs. The hyena rolled as it hit the ground and was back on its paws almost immediately, snarling in frustration as the smoke cleared away. It glared at its targets, drool cascading from its bared teeth.

"Sweet Celestia's sun," Dust breathed, staring at the assassin in disbelief. "I didn't think they looked like that!"

The hyena shifted its weight slightly, then let out a loud growl and charged again, heading right at the Guard, who yelped in fright and held his sword up in a guarding position. Daring moved to intercept, snapping her whip out and ensnaring the hyena around the neck, pulling it towards her. The hyena stumbled and fell, but quickly rolled back up and counterattacked, swiping at Daring's legs. She vaulted over the attack, allowing the hyena to crash into the wall, then tugged it back towards her, causing it to sprawl onto the floor. Recovering his courage, Dusty leapt forward, stabbing his blade downward to finish the beast off.

But as the blade came down, the hyena clapped its front paws together, catching the blade between them. It twisted and kicked out, disarming the astonished Dusty and kicking him away before flipping back upright, severing Daring's whip and almost taking her head right off her shoulders as she leapt out of the way. Taking the sword in both paws, the hyena grinned at Daring, letting out its trademark giggle.

"What's so funny? You see your face in the mirror?" Daring replied, throwing her whip down and raising her guard.

"Careful!" Phillip warned her. The hyena barked something in its native tongue in reply, slowly circling its prey. Daring attacked first, faking a head thrust then kicking at the hyena's legs. It blocked her strike, then slashed at her head with the sword, the blade passing inches above her head as she ducked. She spun and kicked backwards, hitting nothing but air. The combatants whirled into each other in a deadly dance, limbs moving in a blur, the blade whistling as it cut through the air. Neither held anything back; the first to make a mistake would be the one to die.

Daring sidestepped a downward cut at her head, countering with a roundhouse kick to the stomach. She tried to follow up with a one-two punch, but the hyena ducked out of the way, responding with a spinning horizontal cut to her waist. Daring jammed the attack with her forelegs, knocking the sword to the floor, but the hyena tackled her, knocking her to the ground and biting down onto her shoulder. The bones crackled beneath the pressure of the biting jaws. Daring howled in mingled pain and fury, trying to shove the predator off her. The beast reared back, her blood dripping from its grinning mouth as it held her down. Its eyes focused on her exposed throat, and it surged forward again for the killing strike—

"Get the bloody hell off her!"

With a whirring sound, Phillip's boomerang sailed through the air and struck the hyena in the back of the head with enough force to knock it off-balance with a yelp of pain. Wriggling out from beneath the hyena, Daring brought her knees to her chest and kicked out, striking the assassin in the chest and sending it flying back into the wall. Daring flipped back to her hooves, clutching her shoulder in pain. The hyena got back up just as quickly, letting out a wheezing growl of pain and glaring at its uncooperative prey. A throwing knife appeared in its paw. Daring hesitated, her eyes instinctively going towards the weapon. The beast grinned, and with a sudden motion, threw the knife...but not at her.

"No!" Daring screamed as the blade flew right at Phillip, who could only watch, unable to avoid his death.

From out of nowhere, Dusty Winds leapt in, diving in front of the deadly weapon. It stuck deep into his abdomen and he tumbled out of the sky with a grunt of pain. Fury flashed through Daring and she turned back to the hyena, only to find that it had vanished while she was distracted.

A moment later, the repaired lights came back on with a hum. Blinking in the sudden light, Daring saw a ventilation shaft cover lying on the floor in front of her. The empty shaft was above her head; there was no sign of the canine killer.

"Medic! We need a doctor in here!" Phillip shouted out the door, looking at Dusty Wind, who was leaning against the wall, clutching his stomach in pain. Slowly lowering her guard, Daring trotted over to the others. The adrenaline faded from her system, quickly replaced by the pain of her injuries and the fatigue of her battle.

"Keep still. You'll be all right." she told Dusty. "And thank you," she added a moment later. Dusty nodded, managing a small smile even as he gritted his teeth in pain. Slowly, Daring lowered herself onto the bed, and felt Phillip wrap his good foreleg around her waist, gently squeezing her close in relief. She took his hoof in hers, not even caring if anypony saw.

Author's Note

I'm getting pretty good at releasing these weekly.

That was a close one, though. How are we going to stop this freak?

Part 8: Prey

"I do not appreciate having secrets being kept from me, Lieutenant," the head doctor complained to Lieutenant Coonhound as he used his magic to bind and heal Daring's shoulder. "Especially secrets involving assassins who might threaten my patients!"

"I would have told you if I could," Coonhound answered testily, the lateness of the hour and his frustration at the fruitless search evident in his tone.

The head doctor grunted in annoyance and tightened the bandages on Daring's shoulder, causing her to involuntarily yelp in pain. "Oh, sorry," he apologized, loosening the gauze a little. "All right, you need to keep that on for at least a day, and no heavy exertion for a couple of days at least. In the meantime, plenty of rest and aspirin."

"Thank you," Daring said, shrugging her shoulder.

"What about Dusty?" Phillip asked from the bed.

"He'll be fine. It was just a minor laceration," the doctor reassured him with a smile.

"And I can promise you, he'll be receiving a commendation for his actions tonight," Coonhound added.

"Good," Phillip replied.

"We need to find that hyena and stop it before somepony else dies," Coonhound said. "But I've had my Guards combing the city for days, and nothing."

"Maybe you've been looking in the wrong place," Phillip replied. "Have you checked the Whitestone River?"

"That was one of the first places we looked," Lieutenant Coonhound answered, rubbing his eyes. But Daring recognized the keen look in Phillip's eyes, the blazing eyes of a hunter who knows he's on a good trail.

"I was watching the hyena during the attack, and it displayed some interesting clues," Phillip explained. "You must have noticed them, Irene; excessive salivation and sweating, shifting as though its feet itched, clumsiness and lack of coordination."

Daring went over the fight in her mind, the memory still fresh. "You're right," she agreed.

"All of which are symptoms of acute mercury poisoning," Phillip continued. "That, combined with the distinct odor of its breath, likely means it's been eating a lot of fish recently. And that means it's been near the river; it's the only place in town where it could get a lot of fish."

Coonhound frowned. "Are you sure about this? I don't want to waste my Guard's time on guesses."

Phillip frowned at him. "I don't make guesses, Lieutenant. It's a bad habit. I make deductions."

Lieutenant Coonhound frowned in thought for a few moments more, then nodded. "I'll have three squads performing a sweep of the river and every boat on it by morning, to take advantage of the light."

"Good idea," Daring said, standing up.

"No, you're not joining us," Coonhound told her sternly. "I'm putting you in protective custody until this is over. Let the trained professionals deal with this."

"Like hell," Daring snarled, limping as she approached him. "I held that thing off on my own; I can take care of myself!"

"Irene."

The word was softly spoken, but the ill-concealed concern caused her to turn around and face Phillip, who seemed so pathetic in his bandages and cot, speaking to her in that gentle tone. "Don't get yourself killed because you made this personal," he whispered.

Daring gritted her teeth and fumed silently, but her anger defused itself when she found that she could not form a coherent argument. Slowly, she nodded in submission. A pair of stony-faced gray unicorn City Guards that appeared to be twin brothers strode forward and escorted her out of the hospital. She followed with all the willingness of a puppet on a string, feeling as though she were leaving her heart behind at the foot of Phillip's bed.

The Guards led Daring to an armored carriage waiting outside, a steel behemoth with inch-thick walls, slot-like windows with bars, and a single door that could only be unlocked from the outside. "Trottingham City Guard" was painted in white block letters on both sides. One of the Guards opened up the door for her and beckoned her into the dark interior, furnished with a metal bench on both sides. Daring stepped forward but stumbled, falling forward and catching herself on the door frame.

"Are you all right?" the Guard asked, helping her back up.

"I'm fine," Daring replied, lifting herself up into the carriage. The Guard shut the door behind her and locked it, and the twins hitched themselves up to the carriage front and hurried away, dragging the heavy carriage behind them.

"Say, Smoke," one of them asked his brother. "That mare look kind of familiar to you?"

Smoke frowned in thought for a moment. "Kind of," he admitted. "You think maybe we saw her in a movie, Mist?"

"Nah, not a movie," Mist replied. "I think maybe a comic book or a magazine or something. You sure you've never heard of Irene Alibi before?"

"Pretty sure," Smoke replied, turning around a corner of the deserted and darkened streets. "And have you noticed that she always wears that coat that covers up her cutie mark?"

Mist shrugged. "Maybe she just likes the coat."

"In any case, it's our job to keep her safe," Smoke said. "So we'd better hurry up and get to the precinct."

The two quickened their pace, hurrying down the empty roads, the carriage rattling behind them. Minutes later, they pulled into the lot in front of the closest City Guard precinct, a three-story white building, it's windows all brightly lit, with a set of marble stairs leading up to the main door, flanked by a pair of round lamps marked "City Guard." The lights stood sentinel against the darkness, providing a beacon to the wronged and a warning to the unjust. All was quiet and still...unnaturally so, even at this hour of the night.

"Let's get her inside," Mist said as the brothers hurried to unhitch themselves. Bustling around to the back of the carriage, they unlocked the door, opened it wide and stared in shock.

The interior of the carriage was completely empty. There was no trace at all of their charge. Turning to the lock, Smoke extracted something from inside: a pebble scooped up from the ground outside the hospital, small enough to fit in the lock but big enough to ensure that the door couldn't close properly.

Slowly, Mist turned to his brother. "Hey, I think I know why she looked so familiar."

Miles away, Daring Do flew high above the rooftops, making a beeline eastward for the Whitestone River. Her shoulder still throbbed with pain, but she ignored it; she had a trail to follow.

Deep inside her, a voice whispered that she was being foolish, that she ought to wait for morning so she would have the assistance of the Guard and the daylight. To go off on her own was suicidal; dying for the sake of vengeance would accomplish nothing.

She never listened to that voice.

She slowed to a stop, having reached her destination. Before her, the Whitestone River stretched across the horizon, the water smokey gray in the hazy pre-dawn light. The River provided a primary source of industry for the city, a useful source of power for mills and electricity and a consistent supply of fresh water, as well as a connection to nearby towns. The water ran from north to south, lazily lapping at the banks and at the sides of the boats docked at the various piers. Somewhere along its seven-mile length was her quarry.

Easy.

Swooping down, Daring began to fly low over the western bank, passing low over the ground. Pausing for a moment, she plucked a city map that she had picked up two days earlier from her coat pocket and unfolded it to ensure that she was in the right place. She knew that searching the entirety of the river would be an exercise in futility, but she did have an idea of where to look.

She had smelled more than the fish on the hyena's breath earlier. She had also detected the less-than-subtle odor of sewage, which gave rise to a theory on how the hyena was able to traverse the city without being seen: it used the sewer tunnels, the labyrinthine underground system of pipes, filters and treatment deposits. Therefore, she needed to concentrate on the sewer pipes where the cleansed and treated water was returned to the river.

Ensuring that she was near one of the marked positions, Daring returned the map to her pocket and took flight once more. She reached the tunnel, a large pipe that jutted out like an open mouth over the river, returning the clean water to the river from where it came. Swooping down, Daring began slowly panning across the bank, looking for some clue, some trace. But there was nothing here. Frowning, Daring consulted her map and flew off to the next scene.

Her second sweep proved fruitless, as did the third. All the while, the sky slowly brightened, reminding her of the irreconcilable passage of time, of things lost and never to be returned. She was aware of just how achingly tired she was, but she forced herself to keep going. There was vermin to be exterminated.

When she reached the fourth scene, her patience was finally rewarded. Hidden amongst the tall grass next to the pipe was a thick stick, to which was tied a rope made of tied grass that led into the river. There were a number of distinct pawprints in the muddy bank around the anchor, all of them leading from and to the pipe, which was missing the normal wire mesh on the end. Tugging up the rope, Daring Do discovered a funnel fish trap made of woven reeds. A few silvery-blue fish flopped within the trap's interior, struggling for air. Daring dumped them back into the water, then replaced the trap with a triumphant grin. "Got you, you bastard," she hissed.

Flapping up to the pipe, she peered into the dark interior. It was not, she decided, entirely unlike many of the tombs and caverns that she'd traversed in her past: dark, cramped, cold, damp, uninviting, and filled with danger. This called for the proper attire.

The long blue coat was removed, laid irreverently on the ground, and Irene Alibi completely disappeared, replaced by Daring Do in her trademark green shirt and folding pith helmet. Placing the helmet on her head, Daring felt courage fill her core. "Another day, another sewer," she said, shutting her eyes tight and rubbing the lids to help activate her natural night vision.

With a final breath, she entered the tunnel, flapping through the darkness just above the water, which trickled and gurgled beneath her, echoing against the walls. Before long, she reached the cavernous main sewer tunnel deep beneath the city surface. Taking out her flashlight, Daring clipped it to her shoulder and turned it on to its lowest setting, allowing a sliver of light through. She could see the deep river of water, already treated at the sewage plant, running beneath her, carried by both gravity and pumps. Alighting on the wet stone of the maintenance pathway, Daring turned from left to right, trying to determine which way to go.

"Daring!"

The distant voice, weak and desperate, echoed off the cavernous walls to her right and made Daring's heart leap to her throat. "Phillip?!" she called back.

"Help me!"

Panicked, Daring took flight again, chasing after the distant echoes of her friend's cries. She shouldn't have left him alone! For a brief moment, she was standing back in that jungle, the headless corpse hanging from the tree branches before her. With an extra burst of speed, she pushed through the memory and hurried forward, pursuing the distant feeble cries of pain.

"I'm coming, Phillip!" she shouted, rounding a corner and hurrying down another, thinner tunnel. The voice suddenly became quiet. Descending back down to the walkway, Daring began walking quickly down the tunnel, her hoofsteps echoing against the tightening walls. "Phillip?" she called out, to no response. A sudden chill went down Daring's spine and turned her flashlight on brighter to provide more illumination. What she saw made her freeze in shock.

She was staring right at the moss-covered brick wall of a dead end section. There was no sign of Phillip anywhere.

Suddenly, Daring remembered the encyclopedia entry: "...it is rumored that they are also able to mimic the voices of their prey..."

She leapt out of the way just in time. The hyena, clad in its black hooded cloak, leapt from the darkness behind her, its pounce missing by inches. Daring took to the air, flapping up above the dark water. Turning to the mouth of the tunnel, Daring saw that her only exit was now covered by a thick net, with thorns woven into it. No way out.

Slowly, she turned back to the hyena, who glared at her, its yellow eyes flashing and a grin spread across its teeth.

"Ask yourself," she asked it. "Is trapping yourself in here with me what you really wanted?" The canine replied by letting out a short giggle and raising a set of metal claws at her.

"That's what I'd hoped you say," Daring grinned, tilting her neck to the side and loosening the joints with a crack. "Let's go."

Like a bullet from a gun, she burst into motion, flying straight down at the hyena with a kick aimed at its face. The assassin sidestepped, slashing at her leg, but she dodged it, spinning into a backhoof strike to the head, but was forced to parry a counterattack. Back and forth the two dueled in the darkness, every blow deflected, every cut evaded, every grab knocked aside.

The hyena closed in and began swiping rapidly with its claws, aiming at Daring's left side, forcing her to use primarily her left foreleg to defend herself. Pain spread across Daring's recently-healed shoulder, fatigue slowing her reflexes.

Ducking beneath a double swipe at her head, Daring dodged around the hyena and seized it in a reverse bear hug, pinning its forelegs to its sides. With a flap of her wings, she flew up into the air, flipping around to drive the struggling canine headfirst back into the concrete with a very satisfying WHAM. Rolling away, Daring took the opportunity to catch her breath, massaging feeling back into her shoulder. Dazed by the suplex, the hyena got up, shaking its head and growling in pain. Daring leapt at it, but it jumped sideways, leaping into the water and disappearing beneath the darkness.

"If you think I'm going in after you, you're wrong," Daring said, flying up above the water. The ripples across the river's surface slowly dissipated, and the water became still again. Daring held her position, hovering above the surface. "You can't stay down there forever," she taunted.

The hyena didn't intend to. The surface of the water suddenly exploded outward. A pair of throwing knives flew right at Daring, forcing her to dodge to the side. The assassin leapt at the far wall, quickly climbed up it, and leapt off, seizing Daring in a bear hug and slamming her to the ground hard enough to stun her. Crushing her wings beneath its hind legs, it thrusted its head forward, aiming to tear her throat out. Daring pressed her forelegs against the hyena's neck, barely holding it off as it snapped furiously, sweat and drool flying everywhere. Its hot, stinking breath overwhelmed her senses as it slowly leaned closer and closer, its sharp teeth coming within inches of her neck...

Suddenly, the hyena leapt off her with a sudden yelp, rolling over to clutch a crossbow bolt in its side. Looking up, Daring saw a unicorn with steely gray eyes wearing silver and blue armor standing outside the net, holding a crossbow.

"You are one ugly motherbucker," Corporal Iron Shield growled at the hyena, firing off another shot. The hyena's reply was to catch the bolt out of the air and reply with a throwing knife, striking the Corporal in his chest armor hard enough to knock him down.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Daring twisted around, entangling the hyena's hind legs with her own and scissoring them together, smashing it facefirst into the wall. Flipping back to her hooves, Daring followed up by using her wing to splash some of the sewer water into the hyena's face, causing it to instinctively flinch, stumbling back. Seizing one of its forelegs, Daring wrapped her own leg around it and twisted powerfully. With a sound like a dead tree branch snapping, the hyena's shoulder and elbow broke. Its howl of agony echoed through the tunnel. Daring followed up by grabbing one of the hyena's hind legs, lifting it up and smashing its knee beneath her elbow. The hyena fell to the ground, yelling in pain, two of its limbs disabled. It glared up at Daring in hatred.

Spotting one of the discarded throwing knives nearby, Daring trotted over and picked it up in her hooves. The weapon was simple, but perfectly balanced for both holding and throwing. The silver blade was so sharp it seemed to cut the air as it passed through it. Taking the weapon tightly by the hilt, Daring felt the dark power of the bloodlust that forged this weapon fill her. The tables had fully turned from predator to prey.

Turning back to the hyena, the beast of her nightmares, she stepped forward, briefly considering her choice. Heart? Throat? Into the eye? Up underneath the jaw? Which one would be enough to make it pay?

She took a step forward and the hyena raised its good foreleg, pointing the metal claws right at her and clenching its paw. The spring-loaded blades flew right at Daring, who had no time to dodge. The blades sunk deep into her foreleg, causing her to collapse to the ground with a cry, dropping the knife into the water.

Grinning, the hyena reached underneath its cloak and pulled out a small round jar with a pin attached to the top. With its teeth, the hyena yanked the pin out. The fuse attached to the crude grenade began to hiss and spark, illuminating the hyena's face with an unearthly, flickering glow. Locking its eyes onto Daring's gaze, the hyena began to giggle, its shoulders shaking with hysterical laughter that echoed endlessly, the chorus of Daring Do's death. With a grunt, Daring tried to get back up, but her wounded leg refused to take her weight. Panting, she tried to crawl away from the laughing hunter, knowing she had just seconds left.

Then, impossibly, she felt herself being lifted up into the air. A moment later, she was placed down on somepony's back and hurried away. Corporal Shield raced through the hole he'd cut in the net and turned the corner, carrying Daring Do across his shoulders. The hyena's insane laughter chased after them for a brief moment, then...

BOOM!

The explosion sent shudders through the entire tunnel, knocking both ponies back to the ground, where they lay panting as concrete dust fell on them.

Finally, Daring caught her breath amidst the pain of her battle. "Thanks, Corporal," she said, turning to her rescuer.

Iron Shield managed a small smile as he slowly sat up against the wall. "Never expected to be the one to save Daring Do," he panted.

"You got here awful fast," Daring commented, pulling a roll of gauze from her shirt and winding it around her leg.

"Smart of you to leave your coat at the entrance to that tunnel," Shield replied. "We figured you were headed to the river as soon as we found your little disappearing act, and found it right away." Turning away from her for a moment, Shield reached up to his radio. "This is Corporal Shield. I need a medic to my location ASAP."

Daring sat up enough to look back towards the smoking tunnel that was now her hunter's grave, and was surprised to find that she felt nothing. She might have claimed to herself it was the exhaustion numbing her emotions, but deep down, she knew that it was because there was nothing to feel. They had fought, and she had won: there was no great victory, no triumphant returns. That only happened in storybooks.

"Now that," she finally muttered, for no other reason than she felt she had to say something to provide some finality. "Was a bad dog."

Author's Note

After battling schoolwork, schedules, the Internet and writer's block, I finally manage to write out the final battle between hunter and hunted.

One more chapter, and we'll be able to wrap this story up. The curse of the Taverneigh Blue has claimed it's last victims.

Part 9: Victims

"If you were one of my Guards, I'd have you behind a desk for three years for the stunt you just pulled!" Lieutenant Coonhound shouted, his mustache bristling as he spoke. "You recklessly endangered yourself and the other Guards, and nearly got yourself killed!"

"And I've learned my lesson, Lieutenant," Daring Do replied dryly, sitting across from him in his office at the City Guard headquarters, her foreleg and shoulder newly bandaged.

"I certainly hope you have!" Coonhound barked, sitting back down forcefully. He glared at her for a few seconds more, then finally let out a low sigh.

"Right. Now that I've officially reprimanded you, I'd now like to commend you for your bravery." A smile crossed his face. "You did well, Daring Do."

"It's what I do best," Daring grinned back momentarily before returning to seriousness. "There's one other thing, though."

"I know. Rest assured, your secret will be safe with us. As far as anypony else knows, the City Guard of Trottingham was aided by civilian specialists Irene Alibi and Phillip Finder."

"Good," Daring nodded in thanks.

Coonhound sighed, brushing aside some papers on his desk. "Now that our killer has been taken care of, maybe we should refocus on the theft of the Taverneigh Blue."

"I know who we should start with," Daring said. "The obvious suspect."

Double Checklist lived in an apartment building a few blocks south of the Museum. Clad once more in the dark blue coat and dark glasses, Daring Do accompanied Corporal Shield up three flights of stairs and down a carpeted hallway towards room number 38.

"I should have focused on him from the start," Shield muttered to himself as they approached. "He even admitted that he was the only one besides the doctors that had a key to that box."

"We both had other priorities at the time," Daring replied, knocking at the door. "Mr. Checklist?"

There was no reply from inside. Daring knocked harder. "Mr. Checklist!" Again, nothing.

"I'd say that's probable cause," Corporal Shield grunted. Turning about, he wound up and bucked the door open with a loud crash. "Ladies first," Shield said, gesturing for Daring to go first.

Daring walked into the apartment, passing through the front hall and into the den, which was furnished with a couple of sofas, a bookcase and an oak coffee table. Daring ran her hoof over the coffee table, marking the thin layer of dust atop it. There was no sign of Checklist anywhere.

"You think he ran?" Corporal Shield asked.

"I'm not—" Daring started to say, then stopped and sniffed, suddenly aware of a pungent odor at her nostrils. "Do you smell that?"

Shield sniffed at the air, following the scent to the bedroom. The door was slightly open, as if in hesitant invitation. Slowly, as if he didn't really want to see the hidden secret for himself, Shield pushed the door open. The sight inside made him groan quietly. "Oh, no."

Double Checklist was hanging from a rafter at the foot of his bed, his noose constructed from his own bedsheets. An overturned chair was at his hooves, next to an empty bottle of cider. The body was purple and green with lividity and rot, and the bloated eyes and tongue protruded from its face, making him look simultaneously horrific and pitiful; he had been dead for a couple of days at least.

There was a neatly folded note lying on the top of the dresser. Daring entered the room, ignoring the scent of decay that stung at her eyes and nose, opened up the suicide note and read:

To Whom It May Concern,

This is my confession. My one last, pathetic attempt to set right what I have done.

I stole the Taverneigh Blue. It wasn't the only thing I stole. For years, almost from the day I'd started working as the head of security at the History Museum, I've been stealing artifacts and other valuables from them. Pretty much every time that some valuable coins or priceless historical icon went "missing," that was me. I even helped one of his henchponies break in to steal the Mare Lisa. But I didn't steal them for myself.

I stole them for Charlie August Silvertongue. You know him, the art collector with the bodyguards. He blackmailed me into doing what he wanted; I have a lot of skeletons in my closet from my youth—drugs and gangs—that he threatened to pull out and show off to everypony if I didn't play along.

So when he contacted me and told me to steal the Taverneigh Blue, it was just another job. He even told me how to do it. He had a friend of his construct a box that looked the same as the one that the Maorein used, only it had a special fake bottom on a hinge. When the diamond was put into the box and the key was inserted and turned a certain way—that was my job, as the head of security—the fake bottom would snap down and cover the diamond. When the box was opened again, it would look like it was empty when the diamond was still inside, hidden beneath the fake bottom. Later, I would sneak into the vault, turn the key a special way to open the false bottom again, take the diamond out, and drop it off in exchange for my payment. Just another job.

At least, that's what I thought it was going to be. And then ponies started dying. Innocent ponies were murdered over this.

I'm not stupid. I knew Charlie had something to do with it, but he never said anything about it to me. Believe me, if I had known, I would never had gone along with it. I may have lied to and stolen from them, but Stone Scribe, Dry Bones and Main Exhibit were my friends; they gave me a second chance when I had nowhere else to go. When they were killed, I knew that this was it; I had to get out.

But I can't go up against Charlie. His lawyers would have any case I brought up against him thrown out of court, and I'd end up in a cell for my crimes...if I was lucky. Unlucky meant sleeping with the fishes in Whitestone River. And if I run, he'll just hunt me down and put me in the ground. Either way, I'm screwed. As long as I'm still breathing, Charlie owns me, body, mind and soul.

So I'm getting out my own way. The only way I know how.

I'm truly sorry for everything that I've done, and everything that I've been a part of. Maybe God will have mercy on me. Whatever He gives me, it's more than I deserve.

Double Checklist.

Daring stared at the suicide note for several seconds of silence, a feeling of constriction pressing against her chest. One more. The curse of the Taverneigh Blue, the curse of greed, had claimed one more.

He had to be the last one. Wordlessly, she passed the note to Corporal Shield, a feeling like fire spreading through her constricted chest. "We need to get a warrant."

Two hours later, Daring Do led a squadron of City Guards up a hill, armored hooves clacking against the pavement. Up at the top of a hill was a sprawling white mansion, blocked off by a high iron gate set in a brick wall.

Reaching the gate, Daring rang the doorbell, triggering a loud clanging of brass bells from somewhere within the interior of the grounds. A moment later, a dark blue pegasus dressed in a dark suit and tie flapped down and landed on the other side of the gates, glaring at them in suspicion. There was the distinctive bulge of a holster beneath the suit.

"Open this gate!" Corporal Shield ordered, holding up the signed warrant for the bodyguard to see. Scowling, the bodyguard turned away for a moment and spoke quietly into the walkie-talkie. An indistinct answer came a moment later. The guard paused, glancing up at Daring, then muttering back in reply. After a moment of brief indecision, he walked back to the gate and pulled a lever on his side, causing the gates to swing open.

"Mr. Silvertongue will speak with you," the pegasus grunted. "Please follow me." He led them up the pathway towards the mansion, flanked on both sides by trimmed bushes. Stepping up to the wide oak doors, the bodyguard knocked at the golden knockers. A moment later, the doors opened wide to reveal a middle-aged unicorn with a brown coat, red hair with a full beard, and silvery-blue eyes dressed in a pale silver suit with a blue tie. His cutie mark was a silver statue of a pony rearing up on its hind legs.

"Good morning, gentleponies, lady," Charlie August Silvertongue greeted them. "I'm sorry to tell you that you have wasted your time coming here."

"This signed warrant says otherwise," Iron Shield said, thrusting the paper into the art collector's face.

Silvertongue looked at the warrant for a long moment, then smirked. "I believe my lawyer would say otherwise."

A skinny, white-maned unicorn wearing a gray suit and tie and wearing a thick pair of glasses appeared at Silvertongue's side. "This warrant is null and void," he declared, stealing the warrant from Shield's grasp and tearing it in half with his magic.

"What?! How can you say that?" Shield demanded. "I took me almost an hour to get Judge Gavel to sign that!"

"Judge Gavel made a serious error in judgement," the lawyer replied flatly. "The only basis you have for this warrant is a suicide note from a confessed thief, accusing my client of being involved in a theft. This is hearsay evidence; my client has the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. As you have only the word of a dead pony, who may have been attempting to deflect suspicion away from himself by accusing another, you have no probable cause to use against my client. This warrant is useless, and if you attempt to act in any way against my client, your department will face lawsuit for false arrest and harassment."

"Which means you can get off of my property and stop wasting my time," Silvertongue said, glaring directly at Daring Do. Daring held his gaze steadily.

The Guards muttered amongst themselves for a few seconds, then slowly disbanded, hesitantly walking back down the pathway. Shield glowered at the lawyer, then followed his squad, grumbling. Daring followed reluctantly.

"One moment, please, ma'am," Silvertongue called after her. Daring paused and looked back to see the art-collector beckoning her back towards him. She slowly walked back up the steps to face him. Behind her, Corporal Shield paused and watched silently in confusion.

"What do you want?" she asked curtly.

Silvertongue gestured for the lawyer to leave them. The pegasus bodyguard remained, standing at his master's side. As soon as the attorney was out of earshot, Silvertongue spoke quietly. "Let's not stand on pretense here, Daring Do."

Daring scowled. "I know it was you," she accused him. "You hired that hyena. Checklist was your lackey; he wouldn't have had the contacts to hire an assassin. But you would.

"And you told that freak to kill those innocent ponies, and to keep killing them until it drew me and Phillip out into the open; you knew we wouldn't be able to resist a case like this." She rose up right into Charlie's face. The bodyguard started forward to push her away, but his boss stopped him. "You're responsible for the deaths of almost twenty ponies. You almost killed my friend."

"Really," Charlie smirked, eerily calm in the face of her fury. "Why don't you prove it?"

Daring clenched her jaw in anger, but was unable to answer. She could only glare at the murderer, stewing in her helpless hatred, boiling over underneath his superior gaze.

"You can't, can you?" Charlie hissed, his snake-like smirk growing wider. "And it infuriates you, doesn't it?" His smile slowly disappeared. "I think you've wasted enough of my time. Either do what you came to do or leave me in peace."

All of a sudden, time seemed to stop around Daring Do. Everything disappeared, everything except for the killer, herself, and the burning, itching sensation in her hooves. The blood in her veins, the blood spilled over the past two weeks, seemed to scream within her, cry out for vengeance. She must forgo the consequences of her actions; she must put her hooves around Charlie Silvertongue's neck and squeeze, crush his throat in her grip.

She must avenge his victims, collect the repayment that was due: eye for an eye, life for a life.

She must. Her hooves lifted off the ground. Her breath burned in her chest, her heart racing.

She must!

She couldn't. She couldn't be like him.

Slowly, she backed away, continuing to glower at him, determined not to show any sign of defeat. Her hooves felt like they were on fire. "You're a rat, Charlie," she spat. "A thief and a murderer. But one day, you'll slip up. And when you do, I'll be there!" And with that, she turned on her heels and trotted quickly back down the path, disappearing from sight.

With a quiet sigh, Charlie retreated back into his mansion, the doors slamming shut behind him. Trotting down the hallway past his precious paintings and sculptures, he reached his study. The bodyguard outside opened the door for him and he entered his vast study. Instantly, his nostrils were assaulted with the scent of Saddle Arabian tobacco, wafting from the goldleaf cigarette held in a golden magical aura.

"I hope I'm not intruding," said the unicorn stallion sitting in the chair in front of the desk, casually smoothing out his suit.

Charlie scowled. "Of course not." He slowly trotted around to the cabinet behind the desk and extracted a bottle of Prench champagne. "May I offer you a glass?"

"Nein, danke," Zugzwang replied, puffing on his cigarette. "I prefer Beerenauslese; the best wine from the best grapes."

With a quiet grunt of acknowledgement, Silvertongue filled a glass with the sparkling, honey-colored liquid and took a long sip, resisting the urge to guzzle the whole thing down right away. "I'm a busy pony, Zugzwang, and I know you did not come to discuss wines."

Zugzwang stared silently at him for several seconds, his expression unreadable behind the smoke of his cigarette.

"First of all, I wished to congratulate you," he finally said. "Your theft of the Taverneigh Blue was an exceptional piece of work; I could hardly have done better."

"Thank you," Silvertongue replied, unable to tear his gaze away from the empty black abysses of Zugzwang's eyes. The darkness that seemed to stretch on forever stared back at him, cold and unfeeling.

"Secondly, I would also like you to know how fortunate you are," Zugzwang continued.

Charlie blinked. "Fortunate? In what way?"

"That Phillip Finder and Daring Do are still alive," Zugzwang answered. The tone of his voice had not changed at all, but a sudden chill entered the room as he spoke, the lights seeming to dim.

Scowling, Silvertongue set his glass down on the desk. "Both of those ponies have proven a great annoyance to the both of us, repeatedly: they have damaged our operations and inconvenienced us dozens of times! You should be thanking me for attempting to solve our mutual problem!"

Zugzwang slowly set his still-smoking cigarette down onto the desk, his eyes never leaving Silvertongue's. "First of all, you made a very common and very idiotic mistake: you tried to kill them. Both of our friends are very, very good at staying alive, so trying to kill them only makes them angry.

"Secondly, whatever injuries they have rendered unto you, they have harmed me a dozen times more. They are my concern, Mr. Silvertongue."

"Do you honestly expect me to—" Charlie started to say, but Zugzwang cut him off.

"Vengeance is mine, Mr. Silvertongue; I will repay."

It was quite clear from the thunderous tone that no argument would be accepted. Silvertongue slowly lowered himself into his seat, staring into his honored guests's eyes. "What do you want?" he asked, struggling to keep his voice even.

"You may continue to pursue your business ventures, but remember this: Phillip Finder and those close to him are my responsibility. They are not to be harmed. Not yet." Zugzwang retrieved his cigarette and closed his eyes to take a puff, apparently enjoying the taste of the scented tobacco.

"What do you have in mind?" Silvertongue asked.

A smile crossed Zugzwang's face, but the abyssal black eyes did not change. "Trust me, mein freund," he said quietly. "You don't want to know."

Once more, Daring Do trotted through the too-clean hallways of the Trottingham Hospital, ascending the stairways up to the fourth floor. Every step was slow, as if she was deliberately trying to delay the inevitable.

While the warrant was being prepared earlier, for the first time in a long time, she had had some time to think; about herself, about Phillip, and about their relationship. And everything pointed to just one conclusion; there was only one path of action that made any sense.

She stopped outside Phillip's room. It was time for her to do what she needed...and yet, she felt like she would infinitely prefer going into one of Ahuizotl's deathtrap-filled temples than having to face the pony inside that hospital room.

With a final breath, she walked into the door and found herself face-to-face with Phillip. He was looking better: some of his bandages had been removed and he was able to fully sit up in bed now, which enabled him to glare at her with a look of deep disapproval.

"I know what you're going to say, and I already heard it from Coonhound," she cut him off, entering and closing the door behind them. "I know, I know, I made a stupid and reckless decision going after it by myself. But be honest—you'd have done the same thing."

Phillip looked like he was going to argue, but apparently couldn't think of anything to say and instead opted to continue glaring at her for a moment before sighing. "I'm just glad you're okay," he said quietly with the faintest of smiles.

"I always make it back okay," Daring replied with a small smirk. A flicker of warmth spread through her core for the briefest of moments, but then she remembered why she was there and what she had to say. The smile disappeared from her face, and she took a short breath.

"Phil..." She almost choked on the words, but forced herself to keep going. "We can't do this anymore. We can't be together."

"What? Why not?" Phil asked, a look of surprise and pain crossing his face.

"Because you almost died! Because I wasn't there for you when you needed me!" Daring burst out. Her frustration boiled over; she should have known he'd react like this, should have known he wouldn't understand, and now everything was going wrong as always.

"When we worked together, we both almost died dozens of times," Phillip protested. "I can't count the number of times—"

"Things have changed! We're not getting any younger, Phil. What happens the next time? What if I'm too slow, or I get distracted? What if you..." She hissed in a breath of pain and let it out slowly, allowing her gaze to drop.

"We're not going to stop doing what we do; it's what we're best at. But I can't lose you like that. And that's why we can't be together." Daring Do slowly got up and turned, starting to walk away, her head hung low.

"Daring Do, don't you dare take another step."

The order froze Daring right in her tracks and she slowly turned around to look at Phillip, whose gaze was like an endless gray horizon. His voice as he spoke was quiet, but came with the force of an oncoming storm front.

"If you think I'm just going to lie here and let you walk away from me, you don't know me at all," he said. "We both lead very dangerous lives; we both have to deal with death a lot; and yes, we both have made a lot of mistakes. Mistakes that we'd give anything to take back.

"But you know the biggest mistake that I've ever made in my life?" He paused for a moment, then answered himself: "Trying to go it alone. It's only recently that I found out that I couldn't do it. Nopony can. We all fall down from time to time...which is why we all need somepony to help us get back up."

Phillip sat up and reached out with his good hoof. Slowly, despite the protests of her intellect, Daring Do turned and walked back to him, taking his hoof in her own. The warmth of his touch felt better than any cold stone artifact.

"Some things have changed," he said gently, holding her gaze as his eyes, usually so dark and cold, shone like the rising sun. "But I'm still me, and you are still you. And you always were and still are one of the few good things in my life. Which is why no matter what happens—come hell or high water—I will stick with you." He gently pulled Daring in close and raised his hoof to stroke her cheek.

"I love you, Daring Do."

Daring's eyes watered with emotion, but a trace of fear remained; she felt as though she was standing on a precipice of a cliff, rocks falling into the treacherous unknown.

But she was Daring Do. Adventure was in her blood and soul, and she did not allow fear to tame her. So, like always, she jumped right in. With a wavering smile, she leaned in close and kissed Phillip on the lips.

"I love you too, you stupid idiot," she admitted, wiping at her face. She sat back down next to him, both of them content for a few moments with nothing more than each other.

"You know, somepony still owes me Ponytailian," Daring said after a minute.

Phillip chuckled once. "It might have to wait a while. I don't think they'll let me leave yet."

"Well, hell, I don't have anyplace I really need to go for a while," Daring said.

"You sure you don't have an ancient treasure to go find?"

"They've waited a few hundred years. They can wait a little longer." Daring kissed Phillip on the forehead. "This is more important."

Smiling happily, Phillip hugged her tight with his good foreleg and nuzzled into her neck, breathing deep the perfume of her mane. She pressed her head against him, comforted by the rise and fall of his chest. For once, there were no scars, no pain, no curses or death.

This treasure they had was better than any she had found before.

Author's Note

And that closes the book on this chapter. Not really sure about this ending—romance was never one of my favorite categories—but I hope that you all enjoyed reading The Curse of the Taverneigh Blue!

I'll have the next story up soon. Stay awesome, mates!

Chapter notes

Part 1
—This story was partially inspired by the Tintin comic The Seven Crystal Balls and the Batman comic arc Ten Nights of the Beast.
—Character note: my headcanon for Daring Do is that she's rather catty: sarcastic, irreverent, would prefer to be alone than with a large group of strangers. She only puts up with the public appearances because it's expected of her as an author.
—Some of you might remember Dr. Main Exhibit from previous story Secret of the Mare Lisa.
—Neigh Zealand: parody of New Zealand.
—Maorein: play on Maori, the native people of New Zealand.
—The Taverneigh Blue is a play on the Tavernier Blue, another name for the Hope Diamond, one of the world's largest and most famous diamonds. There is a rumor that the Hope Diamond is cursed, but this is mostly based off of unfounded claims made by the press. (I wanted to do a parody of the Blue Carbuncle from the Sherlock Holmes story, but couldn't think of a pun)
—Brumby Cloverpatch is an actual character from the Daring Do books by G.M. Berrow, specifically Daring Do and the Forbidden City of Clouds. He speaks with an Australian accent, but is an explorer, not a mercenary. Brumby is the name of a breed of feral Australian horse.
—Llama Sutra: play on the Kama Sutra, an ancient Hindu text on love that includes a section on sex.
—"Doesn't that one involve tying me to the bed?": who says that older couples can't be kinky? (They take turns, in case you were wondering)
—Ponytailian: play on Italian.

Part 2
—a griffon's jezail bullet: a jezail is a muzzle-loading musket made and used in British Asia, Central India and parts of the Middle East during the late 19th century, most notably during the Anglo-Afghan Wars. Sherlock Holmes' companion, Dr. Watson, was wounded by a jezail bullet during his time in the Army.
—Daring is a morning pony, used to rising before dawn. Phillip is not: if he had his way, he'd stay up past midnight and sleep until noon everyday.

Part 3
—Irene Alibi: play on Irene Adler, the cunning opera singer who outsmarted Sherlock Holmes in A Scandal in Bohemia.
—Charlie August Silvertongue last appeared in Secret of the Mare Lisa. For those who have forgotten, he is a rich art collector who also runs a ring of blackmailers and smugglers.
—Witch bottles are an actual thing, often used in England and the eastern United States.
—Equegyptian scarab necklaces: play on Egyptian. The ancient Egyptians considered the scarab beetle to be sacred, and it is a common symbol in Egyptian tombs.
—Kaimanawa: kaimanawa are feral horses in New Zealand, descended from European breeds brought over by settlers.
—Captain Juniper Cook: play on Captain James Cook, who first explored Australia and New Zealand.

Part 4
—"putz": a stupid or worthless person. Yiddish origin.
—Cuticles are hard, dead cells that hair and nails are composed of.
—Remember from previous stories, such as The Face in the Darkness, that Phillip is very pyrophobic.

Part 5
—While they are in the minority, there are ponies who know of Phillip and believe that he is a fraud like Iron Shield.
—Deleted lines: originally, the conversation between Phillip, Daring, Shield and Coonhound would include this Ghostbusters reference:
"And that's when dickless here tried to arrest us," Daring grunted, gesturing at Shield with her head.
The lieutenant turned to Phillip. "Is this true?"
"Yes, sir, it's true," Phillip replied, maintaining eye contact with Iron Shield. "This wanker has no dick."
Unfortunately, I couldn't fit that in.
—A coonhound is a hunting dog, bred and trained to use their scent to aid hunters.
—Jules Vanner: play on science fiction write Jules Verne. A vanner is a breed of horse that is often used for pulling carriages. The stories mentioned are parodies of two of Jules Verne's most famous stories, Around the World in Eighty Days, the main character of which is named Phileas Fogg, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

The hyena
—I'm not really sure where I got the idea to use a hyena as a villain, although The Lion King may have had something to do with it. The inspiration for the hyena character themselves came from the Predators from the film series, as well as from my knowledge of ninja (I'm a martial arts buff, and ninja are one of my favorite subjects). At one point, I even considered giving the hyena magical abilities to simulate the Predator's technology, such as an invisibility cloak.
—For the hyena's design, I took inspiration from the spotted hyena, the most well-known species. Of the hyena species, only the spotted hyena is carnivorous; it's cousins, the brown and striped hyena, are scavengers. The spotted hyena is also the most vocal, and the one known for the distinctive hyena laugh.
—Despite what cartoons would have you believe, a hyena's laughter is a sign of aggression ("Hey, stay away from my food!"), not amusement. It's use as an intimidation tactic is my invention (but be honest: if you were out on your own at night and heard this coming from the shadows, I'd think you'd be a little freaked out).
—You'll also notice that the characters always refer to the hyena as an "it," never "he/she," to emphasize the fact that the ponies view the hyena as a monster, not another creature.
—In real life, hyenas eat wildebeests, zebras, giraffes, gazelles, fish, and even humans. Their bite is strong enough to crush bones, and it can digest bones as well. In African folklore, hyenas are viewed with fear and suspicion. Legends tell of hyenas robbing graves and stealing livestock and children.

Part 6
—Redcoat's name is kind of a mean joke: it's a play on "redshirt," a name taken from Star Trek for a character that is killed off soon after being introduced.
—Repeating crossbows, which are designed to be loaded, primed and fired in one movement, date back to ancient China. Some designs could fire as many as 10 bolts before needing to be reloaded.
—It might seem a little odd for the monster to be introduced through an encyclopedia entry, but to be fair, Sherlock had to refer to his encyclopedias a number of times in his career.
—"It's a living, breathing thing...": I almost had Bronze Leaf say, "If it bleeds, we can kill it," in a reference to the first Predator movie.
—The "Mysterious South" and "Unexplored West" are regions of Equestria, according to the latest version of the official map of Equestria.
—Think about it: that disastrous jungle trip may be the reason why Daring prefers to work alone.
—Lunastar: play on Lunesta brand sleep medication.
—If you're wondering why the hyena chose to run when Daring attacked, two reasons: one, she needs to stay alive for purposes of the plot. Two, the hyena is a hunter, an assassin, not a fighter. It had lost the advantage of surprise, and Daring is a trained and experienced fighter who, unlike hyenas, can fly, and she was pissed off. The hyena decided that it was better to retreat and live to hunt another day than try pressing a bad situation.

Part 7
—And that makes three stories in a row where Phillip has wound up in the hospital. He's really not having a good run, is he?
—...if there was a Hell...: my headcanon is that Daring Do is an atheist, or at least strongly agnostic.
—It is also my headcanon that Daring is the kind of person who lashes out at others when she's really upset.
—Once again, the hyena displays it's skill in stealth and combat, as well as it's genre savviness when it decides to cut and run when the odds shift against it.

Part 8
—"I don't make guesses, Lieutenant. It's a bad habit.": paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four: "I never guess. It is a shocking habit—destructive to the logical faculty."
—The conversation between Smoke and Mist lampshades the unrealism of Daring Do being able to conceal her secret identity from the world if her adventures are real.
—It's well-established that Daring Do is an expert at escapology.
—Character note: in many ways, Daring Do is very emotional, and can be very irrational when she's angered or upset. She's also even more into revenge than Phillip is.
—"Is trapping yourself in here with me what you really wanted?": I originally was going to have her quote Rorschach's famous boast from Watchmen: "I'm not trapped in here with you. You're trapped in here with me." I felt like the line didn't work the way I wanted it to, though.
—"You are one ugly motherbucker": parodying Arnold Schwarznegger's famous line from the first Predator film.
—The hyena choosing to commit suicide via blowing itself up parodies the ending of the first Predator film.

Part 9
—The method used to steal the Taverneigh Blue, of using a box with a false bottom, was inspired by the short story The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds by Guy Boothby.
—Charlie August Silvertongue has some of the best lawyers in Equestria under his employ: it's how he's been able to keep out of prison for so long.
—For those who haven't studied law: put very simply, hearsay evidence is testimony about what someone else allegedly said or did: for example, saying that your neighbor told you that they saw the defendant breaking into someone's house would be hearsay evidence. It cannot be used in court against a defendant except in rare circumstances, because it would violate the defendant's right to be confronted with witnesses against them.
—Despite the lawyer's claims, the warrant was actually valid, if based on admittedly shaky evidence: however, the threat of a lawsuit from a rich and politically well-connected individual was enough to force the City Guard to back off.
—Charlie has seen Daring Do enough times to recognize her in costume: however, he wasn't stupid enough to try something while there were still Guards nearby.
—Again, Daring Do is a believer in revenge, even more so than Phillip: however, while she has killed before, she's not a cold-blooded murderer: like Phillip, she will only kill to defend herself or another.
—Beerenauslese is a variety of German late harvest wine made from individually picked grapes.
—"Vengeance is mine...I will repay.": quoting the Bible, Deuteronomy 32:35. Another indication of Zugzwang's god complex.
—Whatever Zugzwang has planned, it's not good.
—"But be honest—you'd have done the same thing.": he would. That's why he doesn't argue with her.
—One of my goals for this story was to show that Phillip and Daring's relationship is not purely physical: both of them really do care about each other, even with all the dangers of their lifestyles. The development of their relationship in this story is also an important part of their characters.

Author's Note

Chapter notes from the story.