Hector Silvermane sped through the empty streets of Little Hoofington, four pairs of hoofbeats drumming in his wake. His life in the guard had instilled in him the altruistic concept that even one life saved was worth the risk, and though he obeyed that tenant now, it offered little comfort in the face of all the murders he had been unable to stop.

Not least of which the one he committed himself.

The flowerbox under the front window of the Sunshine Waffle Community Health Clinic still bore a colorful array of winter-blooming flowers. The lack of a green hoof to tend them had begun to show, for a few had already begun to close up and wilt. The red cross over the door ought to have been a comfort, But Hector could see in it nothing but the shimmer of pony blood, with visions of the entrails and offal that still inhabited his memories of the clinic lobby. Without breaking stride he spun on his heels and snapped his hind legs, battering the door with a violent kick that nearly cracked it straight off its hinges. Only when the entrance lay open did he hold up his hoof to signal a halt. Zit beat him to words.

“It’s...it’s so dark in there…”

“The colt cannot be present,” Cadabra reasoned. “He is nearly an adult in his own right, not a mere helpless yearling. Furthermore he is no bat pony and lacks the trained night-eye of a follower of our faith, so it is preposterous to assume he would not at least put out candles.”

“...unless he’s already dead…” Zit whimpered.

Silvermane shushed them both to silence and carefully plunged into the main room, the glow of his horn lighting his way. His unicorn troops fell in, taking comfort in their own personal nightlights, for the overcast sky did little to brighten the building through its windows. They made a point of moving quickly towards the back hallways, as none among them desired to witness the haunting glow their magic cast upon two old crime scenes in the same lobby.

They moved on, and in the antiseptic halls of the clinic their hooves produced an echoing cadence Silvermane could have done without. Levitation was among the first tasks an infantile unicorn learned to perform, but holding something as large as a pony in the air and moving it about for a significant time was a trick that posed trouble even for masters of the magical arts. Knowing they had already ruined any hope at element of surprise, he called out.

“Chocolate Waffle! Are you here?”

The only response was the ticking of a clock in one of the examination rooms, and the ominous, rhythmic drip of water from icicles that had formed over an open window. The building was cold, and Hector noted that not one of the boilers placed generously throughout the place to ensure maximum patient comfort had been stirred for some time.

“There is nopony here,” Cadabra repeated. “Or at least, no creature that we ought to run afoul of.”

Zit’s eyes were everywhere but straight ahead, and she bumped into Silvermane’s rump every time he paused. “I don’t like this...we should get out of here…”

Cadabra’s expression was hard, but her posture remained rigid with fear. “I concur. This is fruitless, we must be off.”

Silvermane had already begun to creak his way up the stairs to the second floor, into the private living area of the Waffle family. “We need to check everywhere. If he’s not here, we’ll abandon the search and go back to Kitty’s to regroup.”

The two mares accepted the compromise with a mutual nod. The trio moved single-file like a covert unit despite the betraying creaks of the clinic around them, Cadabra bringing up the rear. When they hit the landing, Silvermane employed his magic to close another window that the wind sang eerily through.

“Why would he leave that open?” Zit whispered. “And even if he doesn’t know how to light a stove, he must have seen his parents do it a thousand times. Why didn’t he try?”

“Were we a terrified foal all alone amid such horrors, we would not have kept as cool of a head,” Cadabra admitted. “We would be dead from exposure by now in the snowdrifts of the countryside following a desperate bid for freedom. Perhaps that was his fate as well.”

Silvermane dismissed Cadabra’s grim musings and moved down the narrow hall, past doors that lay open. A closet told no tales, nor did the master bedroom, which was as well-kept as Silvermane expected from such a proper mare as Buttermilk Waffle. The next door identified the room beyond as Strawberry’s, and upon it was scrawled a crude crayon image of the Waffle family, standing happily before their clinic on a warm summer’s day. The image was taped to the door and was yellowed with time, suggesting the filly had drawn it a more tender age. Within was the unremarkable dwelling of a teenage filly, with pop culture references that were expectedly out of date given the town’s geographic isolation.

Only one door remained. This one was closed, but it could only belong to the colt of the family. Silvermane coughed, for his snout picked up an odor of offal from beyond the door that lent itself to what he expected to see.

Zit caught the grotesque stench too and stepped back. “I...I don’t want to see this. I’ve seen enough of this, I can’t...do this again…”

Silvermane took a breath. “Stay here. I’m going in.”

Silvermane put his hoof on the unlocked door and pushed his way in. The single window was shut tight and masked by a thick blanket in lieu of drapes, that let in no light at all. It was by far the darkest room in the entire clinic, and even with his horn lit, the guard captain could only see a few paces in any direction. His hoof came down on something soft and yielding, and he started when a string of papers hanging across the room on a laundry line brushed his face in passing.

Whatever Hector had stepped in was moving with him and making a metal clanking noise, but there was no pain. Tired from days of puzzles and guesswork, he ensorcelled the blanket on the window and yanked it hard until it fell free and drifted to the floor.

The scene within was enough to elicit cries from all three investigators, for it tore through the iron of their nerves like so much wet spaghetti.

The walls of the room were papered by endless images of the killer Pinkamena. The images consisted primarily of newspaper clippings, but some were drawings or other artwork of her both before and after she had gone the way of her own broken mind. Every image had been carefully arrayed so that none overlapped, but so numerous were they that every inch of wall and ceiling space was covered. In lieu of additional space, the owner of the room had laced additional images on clotheslines, tracing them back and forth between the walls. Those images that did not depict Pinkamena directly showed the aftermath of her villainy - photographs of the bodies she had destroyed, and the heinous detail of her horrifying hoofwork.

The object stuck to Captain Silvermane’s hoof was a bucket, filled with gradually freezing pony innards. Disgusted beyond discipline, he rid himself of the morbid accessory by launching it across the room, where it landed with a wet thump atop another corpse that lay stretched out on a table. This one was still relatively whole, but the coat color was unfamiliar and the body bore no cutie mark. The remains had been preserved by the temperature, and the sickening dismemberment bore the M.O. of the killer whose face graced the room from every angle.

Silvermane stumbled backwards, tripped over another bucket of filth, and collided with a dresser. He landed on his rump, his eyes wide with shock as the answer struck him.

“...copycat...sweet merciful Celestia, a copycat…”

Zit had buried her face in Cadabra’s cape. The latter was not unaffected by the carnage, but she forced the bile down for the sake of the younger mare who sought refuge in her. “...what art thou saying…?”

Silvermane scrambled to his hooves, gore splashing over the life’s blood of Caveat and Dusky Rose that still marked him. His tone bordered on hysterics.

“Don’t you see!? Pinkamena never came to this tiny town - she was never here at all!” Silvermane’s chest heaved with his words. “That colt is a copycat killer!! We had him - we could have stopped him at any time! But he’s been trotting free!!”

Cadabra went pale. “...s-surely not--”

Silvermane tore several papers from the wall with his magic and scattered them in the face of the night cultist. “It’s the only answer! Look!!” He pointed, and Cadabra turned to take note of a large pile of fragrant flowers and store-bought deodorizers, all of which were unattended and had lost their potency.

“Whomever the changelings didn’t kill, all those deaths...they were all on him. He took whatever corpses he could make away with before they were discovered and ripped them apart, right here in this room, hiding it all behind pretty scents and teenage privacy! Right here in the Celestia-be-damned medical clinic!”

Cadabra faltered. “It...it is not conceivable to hide all of this for so long…”

“Pinkamena did,” Silvermane replied sharply. “From all her friends and her entire hometown, even the ponies she lived with. If that boy has learned how to defy logic like Pinkamena can...Celestia help us all…”

Zit was weeping, and the cultist covered the young mare’s head with a hoof. “What...what can we do?”

“We have to get back to Kitty’s and follow the original plan. We’ll barricade the door and all the windows, hold up in there, and pray the changelings take care of our new problem while we wait out the snow drifts. There’s some more equipment at the constabulary we can use, and plenty of spare wood and nails from the porch repairs they were doing before I arrived in town. We stop there first, then hold up at Kitty’s for good. Understood?”

“And if any of us are changelings ourselves?” Cadabra challenged.

“We’re going to have to take that risk. If this boy is even half what the original Pinkamena was, wandering blind around town trying to challenge him is a death sentence.”

Cadabra nodded and turned to go, but Zit finally spoke up.

“We’re not safe anywhere...I don’t want to go to the constabulary...they could be waiting for us there…”

Silvermane set a hoof upon Whatzit and helped Cadabra to ease her out into the hall. He replaced the door the same way he had found it, returning the grizzly scene to the bounds of imagination. He regretted his brashness, for he may have inadvertently scarred his young deputy’s nightmares.

“We’re going to stick together, Zit,” Silvermane assured. “We’ll get what we need and get back to safety fast. And we won’t venture out again until the storm lifts. Promise.”

“B-but…” Zit blubbered.

“We failed our dearest companion once,” Cadabra added. “We will not do so again. We cannot rest until The Night is serene again.” She looked away, “...especially given what we have already done to help make it that way.”

Zit swallowed. “...alright. If you’re all going with me.”

Silvermane wasted no time leading his party from the quiet clinic. It was another door in Little Hoofington he would never open again.

* * * * *

Everything in the Little Hoofington Constabulary was just as Silvermane had left it. The building had been his home for a short span of days, but bereft of Dusky Rose and Beat Trotter it felt little different from the dark windows of each lonely home he’d passed on the way to get there. There was even some ice-cold coffee still in the carafe. Everything was very much as it was supposed to be, but that only served to unnerve the guard captain even further.

With no mind to dally and no expectation of ever coming back, Silvermane set his party to hustling through the place at speed. Records and reports were thus thoroughly scattered, as the trio dug about for whatever tools they might have a use for and the packs to carry them. Zit complained thricely that they ought to depart, until Silvermane lost a measure of his patience and ordered the young mare onto the porch to inspect the wood for sturdy pieces.

Cadabra was stuffing a bag with canisters of nails and a pair of hammers. “She is young,” the cultist reprimanded. “Thou should’st not treat her after such a fashion. The unknown begets fear, but fear is a boon that helps keep us safe. This is why our kind are so misunderstood. We know that there is nothing to fear in the night but the inability to see as far as in the day.”

Silvermane was by the couch, rooting through a stack of paperwork for something to write with. He was still an investigator, and he still had a report to make to the princesses, whether or not he survived to turn it in. “I know,” he sighed. “I’ll apologize later, I’m just frustrated. I came here expecting to do my job and be home by Hearth’s Warming. Instead I’ve failed everypony, and I even...even killed a mare...”

Cadabra shook her head. “There is no time for that now. Fear is alive in us all right now, and thus none of us can trust our own judgement. We must finish our task and steal into the night towards our goal. We can meet with our personal demons and beg forgiveness of them when time allows.” She paused, her proud ears flattening. “...blood exists on our hooves, as well.”

Silvermane’s hoof impacted with a solid object, and he began to unearth it with his magic. Stuffed under the couch lay a book he had forgotten about. It was the volume that had been curiously shoved under his door one morning in the upstairs of this very building. The last time he had inspected it, he had come across a plethora of vital statistics concerning the citizens of Little Hoofington. Fanning it open now he found the same data, complete with the same birth and death dates, hoofprints, photographs, and so forth. As before, he puzzled over the fact that most of the recent data had been added with a scrawl of hoof writing, as opposed to a proper typeface.

Cadabra approached. “What hast thou discovered?”

“Nothing, just...this is a book that Zit gave me a few days ago. Records of the victims. Probably for the investigation. Except…”

“Except?”

As with many Equestrians, Silvermane was used to referring to ‘hoofwriting’ as anything produced manually by use of a quill pen or pencil, be it in the mouth of an Earth pony or by the magic of a unicorn. He couldn’t have realized it before, but by now he was familiar with Whatzit’s particular style. The writing before him did not match it.

“This...this isn’t Zit’s hoofwriting,” Silvermane explained. “She said she gave it to me, and with the way she keeps records I assumed she’d written it…”

Cadabra said nothing. The silence hung in the air long enough to give Silvermane pause, and when he looked up, he noted the shock on his companion’s face.

“What’s wrong?”

He followed Cadabra’s eyes to a particular page. There lay a particular record, and he read the name aloud.

“...Autumn Dew Drop Jelly Passion Rainbow,” Silvermane read. Beside the name were records and photos that made the identity unmistakable. “This...this date of death...it was almost a month ago…”

Cadabra responded with a screech. Her body flew directly overtop of Silvermane’s, to come crashing down in a heap against the far wall. Silvermane whirled, his horn alight, but a blast of magic that was faster than he superheated his helmet nearly to its boiling point. He screamed and fought to remove it, hurling the accessory aside to the sound of smug laughter.

There in the doorway stood Whatzit - or at least, the thing they all had thought was she. In form she was as her usual self - a diminutive mare, lime green in coat, with a scruffy mauve mane and a cutie mark depicting a magnifying glass. Her glasses were gone however, and the sclera of her eyes glowed a putrid green. Upon her neck was the pink scarf that an unwitting guard captain had given her in trust.

“Ah, I’m so forgetful,” Zit chortled. “I had planned to burn that thing before you saw it again. You were stupid enough to just hoof it over though, and apparently not thorough enough to bother reading it. Tsk tsk, Captain. Some investigator you turned out to be.”

Silvermane dropped into a crouch intending to pounce, but another sizzle of baleful green energy singed his mane and set the couch on fire.

“Ah ah ah,” Zit chuckled. She revealed her true horn - a twisted, black, ichorous affair atop her head. “Do you know what I had to go through to get that mute little bitch out into the open?”

Silvermane glanced at the book. “...Lora wrote this?”

“Mmhmm, and I’ll give her credit. Somehow she was able to stuff it under your door without my noticing, and I didn’t even know that book existed before you brought it down and gave it to me. Meticulous, wasn’t she? Who knows what information she would have fed to you next had she gotten the chance. Good thing that whole vow of hers kept her from speaking to you directly. Or maybe she really did cut out her own tongue. I guess we’ll never know. You really should have listened to Stringbean, though.”

Cadabra was upside down against the wall. She righted herself and came up with eyes wide. “...then...that miscreant we destroyed was--”

“Completely innocent, yes,” Zit confirmed. “He was out of his tiny little gourd by then though, of course. You ponies break so easily. I slaughtered Lora right before his eyes, and just as I predicted, not a soul among you took his word over mine. He was even right about my poor dead drone. The most perceptive one among you, and you killed him for it. How does it feel for both of you to have innocent blood on your hooves?”

Hector’s attention was firmly on the changeling queen, though he could find no opportunity to summon an offensive spell before her already glowing horn could burn him down. He resolved to keep her talking as he looked for an opening.

“This can’t have gone off without a hitch for you. We killed off most of your horde already.”

The queen laughed. “Oh Captain, trying to bait me into revealing how many of us there are via correcting you? Clever, but I don’t think so. I will admit that not every part of this has gone the way I had hoped. I miss my departed broodmates, but what’s worse, you damn ponies keep murdering one another before we can harvest your love. Once we’re done here we’ll have to lie low for awhile and conserve the strength we were hoping to have, but my queen will be here before your princess knows what’s happened, and we’ll be firmly entrenched on your territory by then. The mines around here are a fantastic defensive point.”

It was Silvermane’s turn to grin. “You’d be done by now...if not for Pinkamena.”

Zit scoffed. “Finding out that he is not even the famous pony psychopath that would give even our kind pause is embarrassing. I wouldn’t have lost half my brood if I had known to get him out of the clinic before he framed my drone.”

“Then the colt is more efficient than any of us can imagine,” quipped Cadabra, “for two of thy brood were stationed there, and yet he continued on right under their muzzles.”

“Half, huh?” Silvermane spat. “So you’re a minor queen after all, just like Rose thought.”

“Not so ‘minor’ for you Captain, and every other worthless pony in this poor little village. I have succeeded, and you put the last piece of the puzzle in place for me by identifying the killer among you - not that you aren’t all killers, now. The colt may be tricky, but one cannot hide from a changeling forever. We will find him, and when we’ve sucked him dry of whatever perverse love still sticks to the gooey walls of his corpse, I shall wait out this storm, send for my sovereign, and be well rewarded for my good service.”

Silvermane’s mind was furiously locking puzzle pieces together. “Kitty’s been trying to get me to relax every time I’m near her. And she made a point of taking attention off of you. You wanted to go to the church so you could get rid of Lora, you tried to divert suspicion to Cadabra, and the both of you wanted us to stay at Kitty’s not an hour ago.”

“Very good Captain, and that was one fortuitous decision on your part. Had you gone back into the building, we would have ended the both of you then and there. You’re right about one thing - we changelings don’t attack until we’re certain of success. But then the only two actual warriors among you killed each other, and the time became right. After all, I already I had your trust.” Zit flaunted the scarf Silvermane had given her. “You would both have died in seconds, but instead I had to continue playing your game. Then you found that damned book and forced my hoof.”

“The ‘only warriors’? ‘Died in seconds’?” Cadabra huffed. “We are not chopped oats! Thinkest thou that because we are not duly appointed law enforcement that we cannot be dangerous!?”

Cadabra lit her horn, but another blast from the queen sent her hurtling back into the wall. Blood dripped from a gash in her shoulder, mixing with her sangria coloring as she rolled upon the ground in pain. Silvermane moved, but the queen leveled her horn upon him again with unmatchable speed.

“You’re a killer in your heart, Captain,” the queen accused. “Not to mention unfaithful. You’d have jumped in bed with me in an instant had I given you the chance. Sleeping with the enemy--” for a moment the queen’s voice became Zit’s “--and barely legal, to boot. Does it bother you that the pretty little filly you’ve been using to make yourself look like a cool, hardboiled detective all over town never even met you? She was dead weeks before you even got here. I don’t know what sort of maker you ponies answer to in the afterlife, but you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do, in about ten seconds.”

The fire of the queen’s horn reached a crescendo. Behind Silvermane, the fire spread from the couch to the walls via stacks of dry reports.

“Goodbye, Hector Silvermane. It’s a shame I’ll never know what your love tastes like, though I’m sure you were eager to taste mine.”

The queen opened fire, and Silvermane dove for the coffee counter. The bolt tore along his flank and sent spirals of pain through his mind, while the counter came crashing down, dumping the pot of old tar all over his head. Adrenaline carried the stallion to his goal, and he hurled the glass pot with all his might straight at the queen’s muzzle. Unprotected by Zit’s glasses, the pot shattered and sent her into spasms of pain as broken glass embedded itself into her face.

Hampered by his injury and mindful of his only remaining friend, Silvermane loped past the spreading fire towards the back wall, where he unceremoneously yanked Cadabra to her hooves. The mare howled with pain, but the guard ignored it as he draped her injured foreleg over his knee and edged towards the rear hall, firing bolts of energy at the ceiling as he went. Cadabra thought him mad as the building supports began to quake, but when she realized what he was up to, she bowed her head and let out a chain of blasts to grow the blaze into an inferno. Together they used their magic to shove the burning couch in the direction of the changeling queen.

Cadabra fought through the pain and glanced desperately around the room. “Tell us thou hast a rear exit, for if the monster does not destroy us, the razing shall!”

Silvermane yanked Cadabra through the hall to the back of the constabulary. Behind them they heard the crashing of furniture and a raging sound from some great beast the queen had turned herself into. With no time to spare for the back door, Silvermane blasted it off its hinges and dove through the portal with his charge, both of them crying out with pain from their aggravated injuries as the conflagration that was once the Little Hoofington constabulary caved in upon itself.

In the snow, the two ponies wasted no time on rest, for the sounds of the whatever raging beast the queen had become didn’t dissipate. From the desolation emerged a pair of ghastly green eyes, followed by the humming wings of a tall changeling queen in all her blackened glory.

“Go…” Silvermane shouted, “GO!”

Hector wrenched a panting Cadabra up again and thrust her towards the streets, praying that her faith blessed her with a high threshold for pain. They galloped like mad into town, fighting through the pain as bolt after bolt of changeling energy destroyed parts of Little Hoofington in their wake. Were it not for the smoke and the screen of snow Silvermane was purposefully kicking up with every bound, he felt for certain they’d both be writhing in agony on the ground already - waiting for the changeling queen to turn them both into loveless husks in the dirt.

“You’re only prolonging the inevitable!” The queen cried. “The only way you can thwart me now is to kill yourselves before I do it for you!!”

Cadabra’s brow was drenched in sweat, and her gait was uncertain. Through ragged breaths she managed words.

“...i-it is hopeless...we are lame and cannot escape...we must make peace with The Night, for we go to her embrace this day…”

Silvermane kept pace with her, encouraging her to get lost amid the winding side streets. “Is that all you night cultists are worth!?” He encouraged. “I thought you were made of stronger stuff!”

Cadabra shook her head and winced. “...th-thou art trying to encourage us through defamation...we are grateful but w-we cannot endure…”

“She murdered Lora!” Silvermane shouted, “and then tricked you into killing an innocent stallion for it! Are you going to let her get away with that!?”

Cadabra said nothing, but her brow darkened satisfactorily and her pace decayed no further. Silvermane pointed out a sturdy oaken door, and the two of them hurled their bodies into it at speed, breaking it open and diving inside just to put any barrier between themselves and their pursuer.

The structure was little more than a market stand - open air on all sides save for a low stonewall perimeter and some supports. Ducking behind the wall, they came up with horns blazing, ready to battle to the last.

“W-we can go no farther,” Cadabra insisted.

“Me either,” Silvermane hissed, his flank alive with pain.

“We...we shall make our stand here.”

Silvermane nodded with pride. “I’ll never think ill of a Church of the Night parishioner again, if ever I live that long.”

“...s-see that thou dost not, nngh…”

Silvermane considered his companion. Cadabra was still bleeding freely from a gash in her shoulder. She was bruised from the escape and wincing against pain in her back from being hurled twice into the wall of the obliterated jailhouse. Silvermane himself was coated in blood from untold amounts of ponies, with coffee stains and a jagged bald streak along his flank where a bolt of magic had singed away his coat. His head was pounding, and he thought that if he was nearing the end of the stamina set aside to cast spells, Cadabra couldn’t be far behind.

“...are you ready for this…?”

Cadabra nearly swooned, but she bit her lip on purpose until she drew blood, the new pain keeping her on her hooves. “...nngh...w-we...we damn this monster to Tartarus...a-and we will sent it there, so help us!!”

So great was the queen’s magical aura that Silvermane could feel it drawing near. He braced himself, but when no fireball enveloped them, he ventured to peek over the stone barricade.

In the street, a headless changeling stood. The power around it rapidly dissipated, as from its neck it began to spurt green bile all over the snow around it. It fell over, still stiffened by shock, never to rise again. Standing behind it was a dark pony in a cloak of patchwork flesh, each section bearing the cutie mark of another hapless citizen of Little Hoofington. The sections were stretched together crudely, but they had been dried and tanned like leather, so the horrifying garment could be worn and preserved. His face was covered by a mask that looked like something a foal could have cut out from a coloring book - it was the face of Pinkie Pie, in the time before she had become the killer Pinkamena. She was grinning merrily, the product of a promotional book somewhere depicting the keepers of the Elements of Harmony. Her eyes had been cut out, and behind them were the bloodshot orbs of the killer that had eluded both law and changeling for so long.

Anger took the captain, and he scrambled atop the stonewall to hurl abuse at the upstart boy. He barely got two words out before a flat object sailed through the air faster than a bolt of magic. It would have taken his head off, had Cadabra not dragged him back.

“Art thou daft!?” The cultist complained. “Look there--”

The pair watched as the object spun in the air like a boomerang and came perfectly back to ‘Pinkamena’, who caught in on his hoof to reveal its true nature. It resembled a propeller, with each blade serrated on one side and sharpened to a keen edge on the other. It was honed down and sanded, flat and deadly; perfectly balanced for whatever skill the Waffle boy had in his fetlocks for throwing it.

For a moment there was silence, in stark contrast to the destructive noises and magical blasts perpetuated by the felled changeling queen. The remaining ponies huddled behind their barricade, eye to eye with the scribbled visage of Pinkie Pie and the broken eyes behind her face. They braced for attack, but Chocolate Waffle surprised them both by turning instead to the latest corpse he had created. He produced a second propeller-blade from his cloak, and with this one went about the task of hacking limbs off of the still-convulsing body, rending pointless gashes and mutilation into it after the fact.

Cadabra turned away and instantly wretched in the snow. Silvermane summoned his magic, but the pain and exhaustion were too much, and he found he could do nothing beyond a tiny spark like flint upon steel. He thought to leap over the barricade and tackle the boy, but he was injured, and there was too much open ground separating them. Pinkamena’s greatest danger was in her ability to break all the rules, and the Waffle boy was whipping around those heavy, awkward blades with impossible ease. Silvermane’s heart sank, as he considered the possibility that whatever genetic mutation caused those abilities in Pinkie Pie, might just be present in Chocolate Waffle as well.

Hector grabbed at Cadabra, who was still coughing up some remnant of stomach acid.

“Can you cast?”

Cadabra shook her head raggedly.

“Then we need to get out of here and find a place to hide. Look-”

He pointed up. It was night, but the sky was finally showing signs of clearing. A pegasus might have been able to quit the town entirely, but the prospect of sunshine on the morrow, or two days worth, might just be enough for anypony with a desperate enough need.

“We can still make it out of this,” Silvermane said hopefully.

Cadabra shook her head again and croaked out words. “...thou art without thy sanity...we are both lame...we cannot play hide and seek with a killer for the time it would take to melt the drifts…”

“It’s either that, or he kills us here. Now.”

Cadabra wiped her mouth with the back of her hoof and glanced at the offered hoof of her companion. Disheveled and weak, she blew her lilac curls out of her face and placed her hoof in his.

“We...choose to die on our hooves.”

Together, supported by each other, the single stallion and mare fled at a handicapped pace. It was indeed a game of hide and seek, and the seconds were counting down until their pursuer came after them.

Author's Note

Whatzit has died. Whatzit was the Changeling Queen.

Captain Hector Silvermane
Constable Dusky Rose (Veteran)
Deputy Beat Trotter (Jailer)
Whatzit (Changeling Queen)
Cadabra Smile
Lora Lore (Gumshoe)
Stringbean (Mule)
Kitty Contessa
Whim (Partypony)
Maple Waffle (Changeling Drone)
Buttermilk Waffle (Nurse)
Chocolate Waffle
Strawberry Waffle (Changeling Forger)
Scoops (Reporter)
Specs (Watchpony)
Caveat (Bodyguard)
Beanie