Mark of Eternity
by cherrypiex
The pony in the cloak stands afar, on the top of the tower near a window. The little opening, with all the sunshine streaming in, is all she needs. She peers out, surveying the grounds below and the vast masses of Ponyville, and she sees her target.
The Mayor. In the marketplace, she trots along, smiling and greeting her fellow subjects as she passes by, as if she were free from all the sins of Equestria, as if she had tons and tons of wonderful ideas in her little bag just for Ponyville.
But no. She has the most putrid and grotesque and outlandishly selfish ideas for her subjects.
The pony in the cloak feels fury sizzling at the back of her throat, burning her whole body from the tips of her ears to her hooves. With her unicorn’s magic, she summons her bow and arrow, which up till now are safely stashed away from sight behind a barrel and hay.
The Mayor approaches a cherry-selling store and starts asking about prices. She beams, each wrinkle of her smile emanating her youth and her beauty. It reflects only idiocy and ignorance that nopony else in Ponyville has ever questioned her age.
Today, once and for all, justice will be served.
The pony in the cloak positions her single arrow onto her bow. One arrow, one shot, zero mistakes. She can feel the string of her bow being pulled; she can feel the arrow leaving the bow and zipping right through the air. The arrow, the weapon, perfectly positioned at the Mayor’s temple and no place else, echoes her perfect precision and accurate eye.
She ducks under the window, away from sight. The reaction is better heard than seen –– she knows through the other assassinations she has committed. Screams ripple through the remaining shreds of the marketplace, and commotion breaks out like hives on skin.
The Mayor, though, is silent. The pony in the cloak peeks out from a tiny slit in the wall. The Mayor hardly struggles; she merely nods into the air, acquiescent to her fate. This makes the pony in the cloak ponder, if the Mayor had known in advance.
Manually, the pony breaks her bow into pieces and tosses some of them into the hay. It is a resilient, mighty bow, and it has served her well, but she can always make another one later. After which, she sprints off, away from her little cavern shielded from sight and civilization, off into the endless flight of steps, of things she needs to accomplish.
She knows what will happen. Another mayor –– most likely the second in command –– will be elected. Another pony will be exposed to the tendrils of eternity, of frolicking with the concept of time. Another pony will have access to the spell that binds a pony to forever.
But she cannot assassinate everypony who is the future Mayor. One day, after all of this, she will strive to wipe out the source of the filth, of the contamination.
In the streets below, only inches away from the crime scene, an orange-coated pony pulls the arrow out of the Mayor’s temple. On the fletching of the arrow, there is a bold, horizontal sign of 8 imprinted on it. The mark of infinity.
Mark of Eternity
by cherrypiex
//chapter1: Realizations
:: sixteen days ago
Twilight Sparkle could hardly contain herself.
It was the Mayor’s birthday, and as all birthdays of important figures were celebrated, Ponyville held a grand festival, with parties even Pinkie Pie could only dream of, with ponies wearing dresses Rarity could only yearn for, with buffets of spreads of food even Applejack could recall only from reveries.
The Mayor had invited her to help out with the organization of the overall preparations. Twilight would oversee all the proceedings to make sure everything ran smoothly. It was similar to many tasks of organization that she had performed for the Summer Sun Celebration and her brother’s wedding. She knew it would be no easy feat, but she enjoyed ordering people around and the pure satisfaction of having a perfect celebration.
On the Mayor's birthday, it was always a public holiday. Shops and businesses and schools were closed, and the only thing that ran as usual was the Ponyville Express. The headlines screamed, of course, the announcement of the public holiday, of the Mayor's birthday –– as if Ponyville had not already known. They ran a short biography of the Mayor.
It was the next page that caught Twilight's attention. A young mare had mysteriously vanished yesterday, leaving behind a worried family. Wind Chaser was hardly a successful Pegasus pony, a shameful owner of many failed businesses. She was bankrupt and nopony really liked her. However, it was startling that there were no leads as to Wind Chaser's whereabouts, or whether she was still alive.
Twilight sighed. This interesting case would have to wait until the preparations and celebrations ended.
Twilight took her trusty notebook and trusty assistant, Spike, with her. Firstly, Twilight went to check on the decorations. With her unicorn’s magic, Rarity was hanging regal ribbons on the pillars inside the town hall. Rarity had generously donated her thick red fabric to be made into the carpet on the floor. The whole interior of the town hall radiated a luxurious air.
Rarity could see her friend smiling with approval. She made her way outside the town hall and, with her telekinesis, hung a banner with fanciful words that screamed “Happy 70th Birthday, Mare Mayo!” Apparently the banner was too short to include all the characters. Twilight laughed.
“Whoa, I never knew the Mayor was that old,” Twilight uttered while scribbling in her notebook. Seventy years old? If a pony could even reach half of that age, he would be considered to have lived to a ripe old age already.
Rarity smiled. “People who do good are evidently bound to live a far longer and more fulfilling life than others. I’m sure that, Twilight, you’ll live to witness your seventieth birthday, too.”
Twilight then proceeded to the other stations. Pinkie Pie was hosting the after-party, while Rainbow Dash and her Pegasi friends were clearing the clouds and rehearsing for their Sonic Rainbooms. Rainbow Dash was an excellent coach and she had successfully trained four other Pegasi of the Wonderbolts to perform the maneuver. Although her stunt had lost the title of being her signature move, Rainbow was now titled as the only successful coach of the Sonic Rainboom. Fluttershy was training her feathered friends to perform a choir.
Finally, Twilight went to Mr. and Mrs. Cake’s shop to check on the food catering. She had saved this for the last, because after trotting from place to place, she was bound to be dying of hunger. Besides, the best for the last, no?
Mrs. Cake had baked trays and trays of cupcakes. Each cupcake had a ton of cream with the Mayor’s face dumped on them. Twilight envied Mrs. Cake’s unwavering precision, and how she could bring out the Mayor’s features –– her bright sapphire eyes, her grin of mischief, her tan skin and graying hair, with the freckles she had grown in the past few years, and few wrinkles donned her forehead.
“The Mayor sure looks real young in these cupcakes,” Twilight jokingly remarked. Mrs. Cake smiled and slipped her specimen photograph into Twilight’s hooves. It looked exactly the same as the face on the cupcakes, except that around the Mayor's neck was a necklace with the pendant being a stunningly realistic replica of a snail's shell.
“No offence to the Mayor, but was this picture taken a long while ago?”
“Hardly, Twilight. We had the photograph taken merely last week.”
Last week? The Mayor was seventy years old, yet she still looked so flawless, like a mare reaching her youth. Perhaps another version of Rarity’s words were true, that the more good you did, the more attractive you appeared. But seventy years! The Mayor was so utterly, surprisingly old! If a thirty-year-old mare appeared to be half her age, that was still rather believable after a little choking and coughing. But seventy years!
“Please don’t tell anyone I told you that,” Mrs. Cake pleaded in a whisper. Mr. and Mrs. Cake were fair people who avoided the slightest wisps of trouble. Twilight smiled nervously in response.
A while later, Applejack appeared with mugs of cider. She greeted her friend and gave Twilight a mug herself. Twilight sipped the cider while still deep in thought.
:: mayor's speech
Finally, the celebrations came.
Ponies, ponies and ponies –– multitudes of ponies –– streamed into the town hall, which was lavishly decked out in the best of Rarity's decorations. Their hooves sank into the soft red carpet. Ribbons adorned the sides of windows and pillars, while streamers swayed about.
The guests were attended to by waiters and waitresses who provided them with the taste of Mrs. Cake's Mayor Cupcakes. It was a delightful experience –– the cream covering the cupcake was thick and foamy, and tasted of bliss mixed with a tinge of sweet, while as ponies sank their teeth into the inners of the cupcake, fluffy whipped Chantilly cream poured out. The lovely cupcakes were usually coupled with mugs of the Apple family's admired cider.
Amongst the commotion, Twilight found an empty space near the front of the stage. With her faithful assistant, Spike, they stood waiting for the Mayor's appearance. Everyone around her was grinning and chattering away, except for a pair of ponies, who were glumly sulking but they smiled in fakery whenever somepony approached them. Twilight guessed they must be Wind Chaser's parents.
A few minutes later, the lights dimmed. The only beam of light shone on the stage. The curtains parted, revealing a smartly dressed mare with chestnut skin.
The Mayor appeared drastically different from the photograph that Mrs. Cake had shown her. In one mere week, her freckles had faded, along with the few wrinkles on her forehead. Her hair was tied in a loose ponytail, so the tightness of her hairdo certainly didn't attribute to the disappearance of her wrinkles. Her smile was wide, and her teeth were glaringly bright. She was decked out in a sparkling baby blue dress, which faded in comparison with the glossiness of her face.
The Mayor made her birthday speech, which Twilight paid little attention to. Her eyes were on the Mayor's face and her cheeks and how perfectly sleek they were.
After the speech, ponies dispersed amongst the town hall. Twilight hardly took any notice of praise from other ponies. When ponies approached her with comments like, "This party was very well-planned!" and "You're a really great organizer, you know?", she merely nodded in recognition. Her mind was set on one goal: To find her friends and tell them about the offish Mayor.
At the after-party, she found the five of her friends near the fruit punch dispenser.
"There's something positively off about the Mayor," Twilight spoke solemnly.
"Pch, Twilight! You're hilarious. It's her birthday. Of course she'll be acting super-crazy," Rainbow offered. Everyone stared at Rainbow. "...I'll just shut up and listen to you guys while sulking in a corner."
"It's probably the dress I've designed for her," Rarity piped up. "I'm very good at these, you know."
"No! I mean her face," Twilight said. "Do you remember her face that looked old and cranky? And now she looks so perfect! Like some, I don't know, twenty-year-old mare."
Pinkie Pie gasped. "You just called the Mayor old! That's horrible! She's certainly not old! She's only seventy years old! That's not old! Cranky Doodle is cranky! And old! And this balloon I'm eating is far older than that and nobody calls it old! I –– " Applejack grabbed an apple pie from the table and stuffed it into Pinkie's mouth to make her shut up.
"But Rainbow's right," Fluttershy timidly suggested. "It's her birthday, so she has to look perfect!"
"But Twilight's instincts had been right so many times before. Remember Shining Armor's wedding? And the Summer Sun Celebration?" Applejack admonished the rest of her friends while shaking her head. "She had been right. And nobody listened, so we all suffered. You ponies should trust her more."
"Well, we'd listen if she even made sense in the first place," Rainbow mocked.
"I do!"
Twilight debated whether to tell them about Mrs. Cake's photograph. She could vaguely envision Pinkie Pie's horridly contorted face, with her whisper of 'Forever', and how breaking a promise would cause her to lose a friend for eternity. E-t-e-r-n-i-t-y.
Something about that word caused Twilight to jolt. It suckered in all of her attention.
"Sorry, gotta go," Twilight muttered to her friends. "Save some cake for me alright?" After which, she put Spike on her back and galloped away from the town hall, back to her library and residence.
:: books,banners&decisions
"Eternity, eternity..." Twilight murmured while she searched through the thousands and thousands of books in her library. "Eternity, eternity spell of youth... Come on, I know you're in here somewhere!"
Spike held up a thick hardcover book to Twilight's face. He then blew the layers of dust off and flipped to page 78. Twilight snatched the book away and read the page aloud.
"'The Spell of Eternal Youth'," Twilight read. She sent Spike out of the room. This was extremely private, and the more ponies who knew about it, the more dangerous it would be for her. Skimming through the words, she absorbed every inch of information the text provided. Ingredients –– a phoenix's feather, a tuft of grass and crushed glass pieces –– were harvested, boiled and then pounded to form a powder, which was subsequently poured into a snail shell. The shell would be strung by a string. The snail shell necklace was to be worn at all times until the wielder died.
"By stealing the last breath of the victimized pony, the wielder of this spell will be able to gain the remaining number of years that the victim had to live." Twilight gasped. Apparently, the years gained by the wielder were stored in the snail shell. They would remain with the wielder until the necklace broke or was removed, or –– most impossibly –– somepony else stole the wielder's breath.
All these allowed the wielder to retain eternal youth in not only their appearance, but it also added a spring to their steps. As long as the wielder consumed one or two ponies' breaths each year, they would be safe under the spell. Wind Chaser –– the girl in the news who had disappeared –– must have been killed by the Mayor for her breath.
The scattered pieces of the puzzle had always been there –– right before Twilight's eyes –– but she had never noticed. Never cared enough to stop and think about it. Never put two and two together.
Did this mean the Mayor killed innocent young ponies just for their lives?
Twilight glanced out of her window. Dusk had befallen, but the after-party lived on. She could see the banner hanging right above the town hall's entrance, "Happy 70th Birthday, Mare Mayo!" She could see ponies laughing, talking, frolicking in the town governed by a ruthless killer, and she knew what she had to do.
Mark of Eternity
by cherrypiex
//chapter2: Work
:: thirteen days ago
Reading was what Twilight did best, and reading was what she was doing now.
She had to find out everything about the spell. The snail shell necklace. Where it came from. Who came up with this horrid spell –– and whether he or she was still alive to this day. How to undo its effects.
Those words were burning at the back of her mind, a sentence that gripped her with conviction: "The spell can only be undone by the wielder's death." But Twilight was certain –– she was utterly and confidently convinced –– there was another way. Death was never a solution, was it?
Although Spike was her faithful assistant, he knew nothing about the spell. Twilight felt that the less ponies who knew, the less dangerous her knowledge of it would become. By letting somepony else into the game, the danger of this news reaching the Mayor's ears would just be snowballed.
Twice she had snuck into the Mayor's residence to find out more about the spell. Two days ago, the Mayor had been out for afternoon tea with her friend Rarity. She had gained access to the mansion by lying to the guards that she had wanted to search for a long overdue book in the Mayor's study. She had been appalled at the guards' naiveness. During that journey, she had found nothing, except a nameless list with random names of famous pop stars. Princess Celestia's name was glaringly present at the bottom of the list. She memorized all of the names, since the list seemed suspicious.
Only yesterday, when Twilight's curiosity peaked at an alarming level, she had snuck into the Mayor's mansion once more. She couldn't think of any plausible excuses for entering the Mayor's house yet again , so she put on her cloak of invisibility (it was basically a cloak shrouded by an invisibility spell) and charged into the house once the front door was open. This trip round, she found a guidebook to spells, which contained the guide the Mayor used for her spell of eternal youth. Being merely a presence neither seen nor heard in the Mayor's study allowed her to eavesdrop on the Mayor and her assistant. For the record, this was how their conversation went:
"I don't want to do this anymore," the unicorn, Cherry Twinkle, pleaded. Twilight noticed that she, too, had the snail shell.
"But you must," the Mayor replied. She's not only evil, she's forceful! Twilight screamed internally. "It benefits not only myself, but you too! We'll live forever. We'll look young and pretty forever."
"Yes, but taking the lives of innocent young mares with their whole lives laid out in front of them –– it's just too horrid for me to continue doing it." Cherry Twinkle glanced at the necklace. "I can't, Mayor."
"You've started, and you've got to end it," the Mayor retorted. "If you stop halfway, you'll die."
"I know, Mayor. But I'd rather die than have fifty other mares die in my place."
The Mayor pondered over Cherry's words for a while. Then, she relented. "Fine; I will ask for another gathering with Cream Puff and Polkadot and the rest and we'll make the decision then." Twilight recognized the two names from the list she had memorized. "By the way, you're lucky they hadn't held the inquest of Wind Chaser's death."
Cherry hung her head in shame. "I know."
"Hopefully Princess Celestia will go easier on you."
Twilight was stunned that they would speak of the spell in broad daylight, in voices so loud they could be overheard by any passersby. But the mansion was empty except for the Mayor's family in the lower stories, and guards patrolled the neighboring garden to prevent trespassers.
This was major information that she had just gained. These Cream Puff and Polkadot personalities were famous pop stars hailing from Canterlot. They were well-known for going under the knife countless times. Did this mean they were involved in the spell too? And her mentor, Princess Celestia? 'Go easier on you'?
...and the list. The list. Was it a list of names, of ponies involved in the spell too? Did they have some sort of committee governing the spell? Twilight bet it was. There were no other possible explanations, were there?
Twilight donned her detective's hat, returned home and studied her books.
