Book 3 The Shadows: obscured by the shadows

The minipones stopped some distance away while Edgy and Tempest found a hiding spot to group up and plan.

The structure ahead of them looked like some sort of factory building, but it was hollowed out and left to rot. However, it was clearly not empty now.

It looked two stories high, made out of white concrete on the first floor and red brick on the top. There was a flimsy metal layering on part of the walls outside and a few windows, but Edgy and Tempest couldn’t see Starry inside them from this distance, if she was even in there.

There were guards hanging around the building. Each of them wore a cloak, and Tempest finally got a look at one as a guard turned around during their patrol.

“I knew it.”

“What was it?,” Edgy asked, barely turning away from the windows.

“A blood moon,” she grimly said, “They are part of the Blood Moon.”

“That annoying cult? What are they doing here?”

“Apparently,” Tempest said, peering at them one more time, “they’ve finally decided to turn to picking on ponies now that they can no longer be a thorn in the Storm King’s side.”

As they peered around the area, they could see outside of the building was the biggest hedgehog they had ever seen. Along with him were four other strange animals in the same black cloaks with the blood stained crescent moon symbol on their backs. The hedgehog was giving orders to someone else, who had come from the inside with a slip of paper and retreated back inside.

“If I take out the big guy, you and the shadows can circle around and take out the other four.”

“Sounds like a plan. I get four, you get one,” Edgy said sarcastically.

“It's you three. You want the big guy then?” Tempest snapped, but Edgy was already on his way toward the building, blending in with the shadows with the help of his minipones surrounding him.

No one noticed as he made his way to a far corner where a solitary guard was looking the other direction.

Edgy let one minipone fly out and grab the guard’s face, muffling any sort of noise or scream he would have made and smothering him until he passed out. Edgy and the two minipones carefully carried the limp body away before the others could notice, being careful not to let the body drag on the ground.

However, one of the other guards caught him in the corner of her eye, and she pulled out some sort of device to aim at the retreating figure.

That’s when the three let the body drop with a thud onto the ground and launched themselves at their would be attacker. The minipones went after her shoulders, pulling her up into the air before Edgy bucked her into the distance where she lay on the ground in a crumpled heap.

The last two and the hedgehog were armed and ready and began firing their devices at Edgy, sending out energy beams into the night when Tempest flung herself out of seemingly nowhere and landed in the midst of them, finding the strength within her and the speed to knock both of them off their feet and slam the hedgehog onto the ground with such force onto the other two that they were not going to be a problem anymore.

Guess I got more after all, Tempest thought to herself as she looked around at the ground where the guard’s devices were strewn around. She carefully picked two of them up to observe curiously before slipping them into her pockets.

She signaled to Edgy with a wave of a hoof that they were going to check inside the windows and the doorway before entering the building itself. There was no sense in getting ambushed. He nodded his agreement and checked from the left side of the door while she checked the right, and then he still sent in his minipones through first, with strict instructions to find Starry first and make sure she was okay.

Tempest hung around outside the door while Edgy did one last perimeter check to look out for other openings on the ground floor of the building.

The minipones split up once they got inside.

The building had a large open shop floor with a railed stairway on the left side leading to an office. It was a huge warehouse. On the other side, the shadows could see a familiar purple pony held in a wooden cage. Lucky for her captors that they knew she could handle metal with ease.

One of the shadows crept closer to her. It was easy along the sides of the walls, far away from the few candles the guards had lit to illuminate the vast area.

She looked like she wasn’t doing much. She was laying down on one side of the cage, looking for all the world like she was moping. But, she held a hoof above her head, holding her hair around her horn. One would need to look extra close to see it glowing.

The minipone’s features were as muffled as usual, but its dark, cool eyes were lit up with a new fire.

The guards must have taken her mercury vial, but the minipone could see she had found a small rusty nail and reshaped it into a small knife to carefully saw away at her prison.

In front of her unknown observer, she was about halfway through on one cut, but it would take forever to cut through enough bars. There weren’t any hinges on the cage. That would have been too easy. Instead, the cage was a heavy wooden one with an open bottom that she was thrown under. It would take several of the cloaked figures to lift, but the minipone figured that Edgy and Tempest could take care of it once the enemy was out of the way.

The other minipone was slinking its way up the railing toward where the main office was.

It was a nightmare.

The whole area had clearly been rusting and breaking apart, and the new occupants did nothing but throw some of their belongings on an old table and some chairs and leave the rest of the ruins alone.

The minipone had perfect vision in the darkness, but, even so, it had a hard time noticing the two forms of prisoners tied up in the corner of the room.

Squeezing itself under the door, the minipone began to creep up toward them when it was suddenly no more.

Edgy felt his minipone come back to his hoof unbidden as he was creeping around the back, and his stomach turned. But he finished what he was doing and crawled back to Tempest at the front door.

“There is one door in the back but it’s jammed shut, and the windows are small and broken.”

“See anything else through the windows?”

“Nope, but I’ll have to ask my little friends.”

The minipone that had spied on Starry dutifully came back to its master. It relayed the information to Edgy who called it back into his hoof for the time being.

“Where’s the other one?” Tempest asked.

“That’s the main problem. Someone, somehow, managed to send him back to me. They must already know we’re here.”

“Seems like we don’t have much of a choice now, then.”

“Right.”

“Alright, we go in at three, two, one...”

The two rushed through the door.