I've Got Only My Bones

The next two weeks were spent learning the tools of the partisan trade. I wasn’t part of the inner circle, but I was much closer than the average member. Most of our allies were ponies who barely even took orders from the group. I collected dead drops of information from our observers on the streets, of money from our benefactors, and of material from some of our more specialist contractors. Once, I went out to hire one of those contractors for something. Under the changelings, the criminal underworld exploded, and we purchased weapons from gun-runners and drugs from suppliers, the latter for resale by other agents and the former for our own operations.

It was only natural. Plenty of evil mage cabals have existed behind gangs in order to draw in acolytes and cash, both for the benefit of the commanders. Well, as a political organization, we needed the bureaucracy to manage donations and labor from volunteers, and from there it wasn’t hard to engage in normal “unofficial entrepreneurship” alongside. So for most of the “insiders", the ones who went to the meetings and heard how the organization was going to be moving forwards, the majority of our time was spent keeping the cashflows open.

Hoof Prince was the local leader and the only pony who knew the full extent of our operations in this part of town. Only our part of town. Yet he still had the contact information for at least fifty of our comrades, who were managed by him and the five others in our cell. Prince himself was related to one of the region’s old noble families that still had much of their wealth, and supposedly a devout Solarist. There were two more unicorns, one here for revenge and the other for reasons he didn’t want to talk about. The pegasus was also here for “religious and patriotic reasons”, and the earth pony, well, she said she was a patriot, but she probably just liked hurting creatures and thought our group would let her get away with it. I wondered how she felt about the fact that, in a city which was more than 50% earth pony, most of our band were unicorns, but I didn’t ask.

Most of us had an anti-social streak. Of course we did. Most of our number survived the purges because we had been hiding our true character since before the changelings showed up. Plus, the defining trait of dark cabals is that most of the members are power-hungry above all else.

We knew little about the other cells, except that we sometimes interacted with them distantly. There was at least one cell which specialized in intimidation, and I was told that we called them to deal with especially sticky “outsiders”. Rumor was that there was another which specialized in assassination, and another which had infiltrated the Royal Army garrison. A few of the objects I acquired came from the towns around Tall Tale, so I supposed the Hellknights’ reach extended beyond just this one city.

Even as one of their front-line fighters, very little of my time was spent on their business. I did the same thing as I mostly did, except I occasionally swung by an address a bit out of my way to pick up a package that had been left for the group, or I went to the drug store that the pegasus owned and we all discussed political matters in the basement. That was our meeting place, and we were not to acknowledge that we all knew each other anywhere except in that building. We always acted alone unless given specific orders not to.

I’m guessing that only the bosses of the Hellknights (the “high priests” in the jargon) worked for the organizations full-time, if even them. It was only partly for lack of things to do. We are partisans, after all, not soldiers. We don’t get paid for what we do, we do it “because it’s right”, so we still have to go to work to pay our bills. Really, it would be rather suspicious if we suddenly quit our jobs and never got new ones because we were spending all of our time fighting the invaders behind the scenes. I don’t have a real job, and I’m not sure how you would describe what I do for a living, but it seems like it would be odd to ask for a day off from work so that you could go out with your friends to kill someone and mutilate their body.

Today, on my way to find new holes in the ground to play with, I’m stopping off at a boat enthusiast’s club on the riverside. I have to use the restroom, or so I will tell anyone who asks. Really, at the end of that hall where ponies rarely go, hidden on the underside of a stored chair, there’s a small box containing a list of patrol routes and schedules and whatever else the informant thought he saw.

No one even asks as I make my way to the back. Seeing all the model ships and paintings of sailboats makes me wish I could try a boat ride at some point. I would probably have to get better at swimming, though.

There’s someone waiting for me at the drop point, a well-dressed unicorn I’ve never seen before. “Ah, you must have been sent by our mutual friends, right?” He asks.

“Maybe I was.” I reply annoyedly. “What’s it to you?”

“I have just what you need,” he explains, flashing the box I’m looking for.

I scowl at him. “I wasn’t supposed to need your help finding it. You shouldn’t be here.”

He pulls a device from under his coat and a bolt of magic strikes me dead-center. I fall over, my muscles weakly flexing entirely out of my control. The unicorn quickly grabs me and pulls me into a nearby office with a friend I hadn’t seen. I cannot even move my eyes, and I can tell they are doing something to me while I’m incapacitated, but I can’t tell what. Just as I start being able to feel what’s going on again, I’m moving, and I finally get control of my body back when ice-cold water shocks it into action.

I’ve been thrown into the river.

My rear legs are cuffed together, and the chain between them has another chain attached to it with a rock at the other end. I am naked, but at least they didn’t put a magic restraining ring on. I softly land against the bottom of the river, freezing cold causing my blood to pump with enough force I can hear it over the rushing of the creek. Everything is in so much pain I can barely think, but my mind is still sprinting as fast as it can to find what ways there are to get out of this and whether or not I am actually capable of it.

If I had spent a lot more time underwater, I could probably, maybe, slip the rock from its chain before I ran out of air and drowned, and from there I could simply swim out, but I haven’t swam in years and I wasn’t great at it then either. That’s a no-go.

If I had enough magical power, I could teleport, but again, I couldn’t do that when I was at the height of my skill with light magic, I have fallen far since then, and this environment would especially challenging.

And I don’t have time to do a worthwhile dark magic ritual because those take tens of minutes and I have one.

...

I’m going to die. I should have figured this would happen, I really should have. I had it all, income, time, no cops trying to arrest me, a bed, and even hope that I could find a mentor to teach me to do what I had always wanted. Everything was going right for the first time in years. Now it’s all over.

Through the brown haze, a familiar figure steps as if unimpeded by the water or the sticky riverbed. Not you. Please, not you.

Come on, don’t think about things that way. Graham pleads disappointedly. I get the sense that he’s about my age, but he looks exactly like he did when we were together. That’s how this normally goes.

How I look at the present situation doesn’t really matter. Optimism won’t let me do things I normally couldn’t, and I must admit, the last decade has been a rather wretched existence.

It’s not that. It’s giving up so easily. You were stronger than you thought, even before you buried yourself in black magic. Fessy, I want to see you happy. I want to see you succeed. Please, for me, don’t just lay down and die. The apparition gets close to me and puts a hoof to my face tenderly. The creeping numbness is briefly pushed back by the warmth in that one spot.

I could never say no, could I? A brief shift in the underwater current runs over my fur, and the vision is gone. Once again, I am alone.

I haven’t done much experimenting with rapidly-cast dark magic. It seems like I would have to trade away a lot of bodily functions to get even a small effect on short notice. It would go easier if I had time, or material, or my equipment, or really anything besides myself. With just a few seconds and my own body, nothing will happen unless the dead body in question is very close.

…but there are a lot of corpses down here.

I start parceling out what I can use and what I can’t. My back legs are bound, so I don’t need those, and I trade away their use for the next few minutes for some magical energy. Same for my ears, one eye, my tongue, the muscles that control my tail, every emotion, anything else not immediately useful. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to MAYBE do something.

I release all of the power I can to raise the dead. Two zombies pull themselves from the muck and walk to me. Two. TWO. I decide to send a strongly-worded letter to whatever controls the fate of creatures like me once I meet them in the afterlife, which, thanks to them, will probably be around one minute from now. One stands on top of the other’s back and they pull me up on top of them. I curse my hasty decision, since this river is not terribly deep and I could get my head out of the water if only I stood on my hind legs, which are currently numb and lifeless because I thought I wouldn’t need them.

I’ve been here hardly a minute and my lungs are already burning, but now I’m standing on top of two zombies. I order them to jump, and catch a slight breath as I break the surface for a fraction of a second. The one on top of the other catches me as I sink back down. I have had an idea.

They jump again, and this time I’m facing in another direction. Once again, all I see is the steep retaining wall keeping the river from getting too close to the town. It’s not tall, but twenty centimeters above the water is a long distance to a pony that can barely reach two. The top zombie misses me as I float down through the current, and I have to wait for them to reach me and help pull me back up. My energy is disappearing into the near-frozen canal so quickly I can feel it. One more time, I briefly get above the waterline and see it – a small pier with a ramp for cases such as mine. I order the zombies to drag me in that direction, and they slowly march me through the ethereal clouds of silt that our steps kick up.

We reach the ramp and barely make it up against the rushing water. I drag myself with my front hooves fully out of the freezing liquid and back onto street-level. At this time of day, most ponies are at work, but I order my zombies to go back to being dead at the bottom of the river anyways just in case. A thousand icy daggers pierce my skin from every direction as I crawl along the ground, feeling the winter wind chilling the already-cold droplets against my body and leaving a trail of wetness across the street. Much more of this and my face will freeze off. I see something useful – a dumpster filled with cardboard just besides a shop. If I’m lucky, it’s flammables all the way down. I make my way to it and give up everything I have left that isn’t an internal organ or related to finding warmth, all to cast a heat spell that sets the contents of the metal box alight. I curl up besides it, having no perception of sound, nor of sight, nor of smell, nor of anything except warmth and cold, and let the waves of fire wash over me.

The first thing to come back is my emotions. As always happens when that damned hallucination intrudes on my fatalism, I am faced with waves upon waves of bitter memories about that golden time when we were together. If I could move, I would be writhing in agony as my brain plays a looping story about how I had it all and lost it. I wish I could end it, but it consumes every part of my mind. There is no escape. There is only waiting for the torture to end.

After a bit of time, my bodily functions start to return. I had no sight, but then I saw nothing but black, then a blurry impression of something that didn’t seem like it belonged back here. I can hear the fire dying down besides me, smell the ashes, feel the scratchiness of the jacket against myself, even against my hind legs.

The jacket? I am draped in a heavy black overcoat, but I’ve never owned such a thing. There is talking. A policemare is stooping in front of the wall I’ve been propped up against, and a working-class stallion stands besides here. Did they see anything? She looks into my eyes with deep concern. “Ma’am, are you okay?”

“I…” Looking around, it’s just these two. “I was so cold…”

“I imagine, you were shivering like mad when I found you, even under that jacket. You ought to thank Blur here, he probably saved your life.” She admitted. “You’re probably over the worst of it now, at least. Think you’re strong enough to explain what happened?”

My mind rushes to try and recall the past events without saying anything incriminating or bizarre. “I fell into the river. It was freezing. I managed to get myself out, but the only thing I could think of was warming up, so I guess I lit a fire and passed out.”

The policemare looks around cautiously. “I suppose that we can’t blame you for some light arson if you were worried you might die otherwise. You might have been right. Did you get rid of your clothes to keep from being weighed down or something? It’s too chilly out to go around naked, even without being sopping wet.”

“Maybe, I’m not quite sure what happened.” I partially lie. Even if the terror has indeed caused much of the details to smudge into each other, I know exactly what happened for that part.

“Hmm. And are you sure you fell into the river?” She asks. I realize that I’m probably still bound and weighted, and there’s no reason why they wouldn’t have noticed. Yup, I just moved my leg and heard the chain. Uh oh.

“...No.” I say.

It turns out that, if you were the intended victim of a murder case, the police really, really, really want to talk to you about it. They’re even willing to haul you down to the station and force you to give up what happened. It wasn’t an unpleasant experience, at least. They believed that whoever had done this to me hadn’t done it because I’d done something wrong, but rather, because I’d done something right. I tried to be polite and not seem like the kind of pony who deserved to be thrown in the river. I don’t believe that about myself, but it’s easy to make the wrong impression if you aren’t careful. In the end, they had a doctor look me over and make sure I was okay (I would make a full recovery quickly), gave me some spare clothes they had lying around, and then left me in a holding cell with some magazines.

They weren’t happy about my unwillingness to give details, but for the first time, I got to use some knowledge of dealing with police bureaucracy and asked for a lawyer. He was confused by my request, but he did do it. Until this all sorted itself out, I was stuck in that cell. I used the time to go over my theories as to what happened. My guess was that I got attacked by changeling infiltrators. That would explain why they needed my clothes. Every other theory couldn’t fit in that little detail. It also explained how they got a stunner like that that I’d never heard of before, and why they had to throw me in the river. If they didn’t care whether others knew I was dead or not, they could have just slit my throat and ran. But they didn’t.

The problem was that I was carrying a reasonable amount of things which would only make sense for a dark magician to carry. Changelings and dark magic are like seahorses and sloths, so if I was lucky they wouldn’t guess the dead rat and the wand of “summon heart attack” were evil artifacts. After a year in Tall Tale, the fact that I couldn’t touch those damn bugs with any of my spells was finally working for me rather than against me.

It’s ironic. Surrounded by creatures who were armed and immune to my tricks and had license to kill for any infraction (real or imagined), I still felt safer than I did in Baltimare. Hell, I felt safer in both places than I did now. In the last two weeks, I’ve been assaulted three times by three different groups. That’s a personal record.

The moral of the story is that Baltimare sucks and living there should be a substitute for prison time.

Early the next day, Mr. Hay explained to the nice policemares and stallions that the case was out of their hooves and apologized for the inconvenience, but assured them that they had done the right thing and helped Equestria. They thought it was neat how they had gotten involved in some secret-squirrel business. I was taken back to my room, and Mr. Hay purchased some new clothes and a new bicycle. Both were better than what I had had before, and more expensive, but I didn’t mention that. I explained to him what really happened and what my theories were.

He agreed with my interpretation. Apparently the changelings had left behind a few presents for us. Not every one that was still in the city was “missing in action”. He, of course, had no idea how many there were or what their end goal was. Then he left me. I took the rest of that day off, resting in bed and thinking about my notes as the last of the hypothermia left my body.

The next day, I went to the drug store for the meeting. I’d been given a small revolver to defend myself. I knew I was going to use it when I tied up my new bicycle right next to my old one. I levitated it in front of me in the way I’d seen Equestrian soldiers do it, but I didn’t actually know how to aim, all I understood was that I could pull the trigger and if that didn’t work I could cock the hammer and pull it again.

I made my way in and crept down the stairs, thinking about possible ways to deal with the situation. I heard Prince giving a speech about Equestria’s proudest moments. As I lowered myself into the rank basement, I came up behind a duplicate of myself, dressed how I had been two days ago when I got jumped. Prince caught sight of me and stopped talking, and the rest of the cell turned to look at me. Well, I couldn’t look weak in front of my fellow acolytes. I looked behind myself and caught sight of me, and I put my gun to my head and pulled the trigger. The duplicate fell out of the chair with a dull thud, the blood turning from red to green as the disguise burned away to reveal a changeling.

Once I had explained what happened, the others congratulated my survival and my kill, they each shared their thoughts on the matter, and then the meeting adjourned for the day. I hope they didn’t notice my shaking. It might seem strange with my life story, but I’d never been so close to a gunshot. I didn’t expect how aggressive the gun’s kick would be, or how strong the gunpowder would smell, or how loud the sound was. What’s more, I’d never killed someone like that. The first time I killed in self-defense, I was shaking then, too, but that was mostly stress. Emotionally, I had been fine with it since I was alive and they weren’t and that was the important part. Now, I was constantly having to force back the thoughts of how I could have avoided it, how I could have made it so that no one had to die. Even understanding that the changeling would have tried to kill me again if he/she knew I was still alive, my spirit was bound to the sense that I had just committed a murder.

Yet there was no way around it, was there? If I had forced the changeling to leave, then he/she would have tried to kill me later, if the Hellknights didn’t think of me as some sort of sympathizer and get me first. If I just got the changeling to surrender, the Hellknights would have killed it instead, and they would not have been so painless as a bullet to the head. If I had simply ran away, the changeling would have reported on the activity of the Hellknights until either getting them all killed or being found out and once again being tortured to death for it. No matter how I thought of to avoid the issue, a serious look at my idea showed there was no way out of it. My brain showed me, in gory, excruciating detail, every drop of blood and fragment of chitin that had come from the hole in the changeling’s head, every curve in the pool of ichor that formed around it, and I could only try and convince myself that I had had no choice, and that it wasn’t really my fault, I was just the one pulling the trigger. If I was going to believe things that weren’t true, couldn’t they at least be comforting lies?

Prince found me around the back of the store, curled into my retrieved clothes as the green blood froze in the fabric, staring at the grass as it browned in the winter cold. “First time?” He asked. I nodded. “It’s disappointing, but even if many of our comrades have no compunctions about violence, I would rather we err on the side of caution.” He sat down besides me. “Even if they’re as different from us as ants are from mice, how we feel about inflicting suffering on the changelings often reflects how we would feel about inflicting suffering on ponies. Right now, monsters and heroes are only separated by a laurel wreath. Don’t feel guilty about still having your soul.”

I forced a smile. “I’m surprised to hear that from you.”

He smiled back. “It’s a real concern. It gets to the heart of our organization, and the fundamental contradiction that the common pony will hopefully one day grasp. Poison…” He asked, looking at me. “What is Equestria to you?”

“Well, it’s this country, isn’t it?”

“No.” He nodded. “If you have a borough of Griffonians in Canterlot and they follow Griffonian laws and don’t work with the Equestrian authorities, are they still part of Equestria? If you have a borough of Equestrians in Griffenheim doing the same thing in reverse, are they part of Equestria? Is Princess Celestia Equestria? Is it her will? If she starts hanging anyone who believes in the magic of friendship, sells the government to the changelings, molests Princess Flurry Heart, is she still Equestria? This is a serious question.”

“Well… I don’t really know.” I admit. In my current state, I’m not in the mood for this question, which eluded a simple answer and might elude a complex one as well.

He pats me on the shoulder. “How about you figure it out? I’ll give you a hint. There are right answers and wrong answers, but there is no right answer. Many creatures have tried to find what nationhood means, because it’s clearly a real thing, but it’s up to us as individuals to know what our nation means to us specifically. I have something to do tomorrow that I would like some help on, if you’re available. I’ll explain why this is especially important for creatures like you and me.”

“I was getting worried.” The waiter admitted. “Maybe I still am. You’ve ordered something specific.”

“I am not in the mood for experimenting today. Sorry.” I say, poking at my food. I’m also not as engrossed as usual. To him, that’s probably the more noticeable part and he’s just being polite. “I was in jail yesterday. A simple misunderstanding, but still no fun.”

“It must have been quite a stressful experience.”

I tried to smile. “Yeah. Have you ever felt like you made a big mistake, but no matter how you try, you can’t think of how you could have avoided it? Like, a massive mistake. The kind that, in better days, would come with years in prison.”

“I am afraid not, madam. I have not lived an exciting life, and I’ve always tried to keep my head down.” The waiter admits. “Most ponies I’ve seen who had more ambition wound up like you, and what else they got was never worth it.”

“I wish I lived a dull life.” I admitted.

He bowed and stepped away. “These days, most Equestrians do.”

As I look out the window of the sedan, I wonder if riding in a car is like sailing on a boat. I’ve ridden in a car before. Not often, it’s something of a luxury experience and I try to enjoy it, but this isn’t my first time. Outside, buildings with walls pockmarked with bullet holes fill the view, and windowmakers march through the streets with smiles on their faces. The debris of burnt vehicles and shattered bricks are mostly cleared up by now, and the city seems tangibly healthier for it.

I’m carrying my gun, but I also have my black artifacts back. The changeling who was in my clothes didn’t know what to make of them and didn’t touch them. He even left Deadmouse in its pouch.

My black artifacts are mostly unimpressive as far as such things go. A wand that causes one heart attack and then has to be recharged (I only think it works since I’ve never tried it against a sapient creature), plus a few reagents and materials for useful rituals. I could make terrifying magical devices that summon armies, except that requires a level of power that can only be attained by consuming souls. Time, energy, temporary disuse of my body parts, even permanent disuse of my body parts, all of that paled in comparison to wielding even a single soul. Since I don’t have other people’s souls to spare, I’m stuck making low-energy objects that are still useful.

“What happened to your eye?” Prince asks from the driver’s seat. It’s his car, and I don’t have a driver’s license anyways. He’s referring to the strip of cloth I’m wearing as an eyepatch.

“Turns out banana peels really are that slippery.” I reply as casually as possible. Once again, I gave up use of one of my eyes, this time so that I wouldn’t be caught unawares by a changeling again.

Prince opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but decides not to. In his mind, he switches gears. “Did you think about what I asked yesterday?”

I did. “To me, Equestria is an idea, a dream. It’s a place where, if everypony only knew the real me, they would know there’s no reason I should be living on the streets. In other countries, they decide what kinds of creature should be excluded from society and either dispose of them or force them to get in line, but Equestria is the only country that tries to find a place for everyone. Being too rich or too poor or too furry or too feathered or too apolitical or too radical, these things would get you banned from other lands, but not here. Here, anyone who needs help can find it.”

“A noble goal.” Prince commented. “The others would take issue with some parts of that, but that’s besides the point. If that is Equestria to you, do you still love it?”

“I do.”

“Enough to die for it?”

“Yes.”

“Enough to kill for it?”

I hesitate, but I’ve already shown my answer through my actions. “...Yes.”

Prince’s voice becomes absolutely solemn. “Do you love Equestria enough to lock yourself outside of it, watching everyone else bask in the utopia that you helped create but can never enjoy?”

“In a sense, I already have.” I sadly mutter.

“And most importantly, do you love Equestria enough that, to advance the Equestrian dream, you would be bigoted, and intolerant, and ruthless, and hypocritical, and cruel, and manipulative, and every other sin you know of? Would you do everything you hate, become everything you hate, for Equestria?”

I pause. I turn the words over in my head. “I don’t know.” I honestly answer.

In front of us, a long column of heavy tanks is driving slowly down the road, stopping us in our tracks. Dozens of Equestrian soldiers sit on the back of each as they trundle along. Prince uses the opportunity to take his eyes off the road to look at me. “Figure it out.” He turns the car onto a side road. “You are about to cross a precipice. Until now, you have been doing basic actions. Our enemies already know how we operate on that level. You can leave the Hellknights. If you want to stay, though, you must accept that your will no longer factors into your life. Anything you have, you will be expected to give up if Equestria demands it. Every member of our organization is faced with a choice between our nation’s future and our selves, but know this; NO ONE CAN SERVE TWO MASTERS. Not me, not you, not even the Princesses. You must, I repeat, must commit to either living a happy life or to the cause. You must know which you would choose and, if it ever comes to it, make that choice decisively and without hesitation. Otherwise, we, and your happiness, will both have no use for you.”

The car pulls into the parking lot of a church. It’s on the outskirts of town, a respectable building yet more function than form, likely having been built when Tall Tale was far smaller and simply being maintained until this very day. Icons of the sun and moon sit above the doors, and simple patters of stained glass adorn the otherwise drab walls. The area is silent, save for the rustling of the wind, and the ever-so-faint rumble of distant artillery.

“Well?” He asks as he walks to the church’s front door. “What will it be?”

“To me, happiness is mostly a hypothetical. It’s not much of a choice when you put it that way.”

“Then you still have to keep it in mind, because it might not stay as it is.” He motions towards the inside, and I enter as he opens the doors for me. I suppose that I was making my choice. The church’s main room is also the front, and we pass empty rows of benches for the congregants to sit in.

The environment makes me mildly uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the holy atmosphere being rejected by the darkness in my heart. Maybe it’s just that I’ve never been one for religion, and the new setting has me unbalanced. I was always scared that a priest would be more likely to run me through with a stake than simply kick me out if they found out about my secret, and normal ponies would let me into their house often enough that I never had to risk it. “Do you really mean that?” I ask Prince.

He looks around the building with something I’ve never seen on another pony’s face. Is it reverence, or is he just trying to suppress the same hesitation that is washing over me? “Poison, I don’t know enough about you to say, but you don’t seem bad. I’m sure you could find something that makes you happy, truly happy, if you just knew where to look.”

“But where to look is the question.” I admit.

He doesn’t respond. “Hey! Priest! We’re here to discuss the terms of our contract!” He yells. His voice echoes against the vaulted ceiling. I see the imprint of a living soul through one of the walls in the back where the more administrative and mundane rooms must be. I point to them. “We know you’re in there!” Prince yells, louder and angrier. I would join in, but there’s something else I see back there, something I haven’t seen since Canterlot.

An old yellow unicorn comes out, walking slowly with the aid of a cane, head held low. “Yes, what can I do for you?” He asks coldly.

Prince stands tall, looking down his nose at the elder. “You agreed to help our group by spreading the message of our revolution and by giving a portion of your tithes to us. For the past few weeks, you have done neither. How do you explain that?”

“Tall Tale is liberated. We are free once more. Now that the changelings are gone, why are you and your band still fighting?” The priest asks.

“Because they will return, and in force, and they will continue to win battles until Equestria is destroyed. Our mission is not done yet.” Prince explains calmly.

“Do you know that for sure?” The priest questions rhetorically. “The Princesses have devoted their full attention to the issue. It must be resolved soon.”

“I do know it for sure, and I do know that it will take the strength of our whole nation to win. That includes you. Do you think that sitting here, playing as a cheerleader is the most you can do?” Prince hits the priest in the chest with his hoof. I stand to the side, doing my best to be intimidating rather than simply awkward. The fact that I still look kind of homeless probably isn’t helping unless this old stallion is scared of the poor, which… well, it’s not common, but I’ve seen it before.

As the priest continues to try and convince my comrade to let up and my comrade stalwartly refuses, I decide to satisfy my curiosity while they’re distracted. Creeping into the backrooms, far less decorative and imposing than the main chapel, my unease becomes ever stronger. There was a box in the main office, the center of the discomforting force. I opened it up hesitantly. Inside was just a piece of cloth, radiating disdain for my existence.

I press against the assault of malice and touch it.

The smell of ash wrapped her into its grating embrace. The summer sun touched the tips of the strands of her mane and her fur, leaving it black. Burning flesh permeated the air so thickly that she felt as if she could touch it. There was no noise but for the rushing of wind feeding the flames, barely audible over the inequine screams from a thousand thousand throats. Her eyes only showed her a scorching white. In all this, she felt like she was on a pleasant walk in the park.

Something brushed against her hoof. A black creature was boiling beneath her white body. It was reaching for her, its skin bubbling and its eyes melting from its skull as a horrible shriek came from its mouth. She suddenly realized that the strange, monstrous thing was begging for mercy.

The sun flared one last time before it shrank back and the delightfully cool winds returned. She was surrounded by piles of strange, dark goo. There was nothing else as far as she could see, except for rolling black hills that had once been green, and a banner held high in one of her hooves.

Her stomach churned as the sense of pride in her gambit was ablated away by the reality of what she had done.

In front of me, I’m holding an orange banner, that kind of rectangular-pentagon shape that probably has some five-syllable name, emblazoned with a red and yellow sun and a red border. It still radiates disdain for me, and in my hooves I feel as if it’s heavy in a way that a scale can’t measure, but now I know what it is. The entirety of the Canterlot Castle is made of the same stuff.

I run back into the main room. Prince had taken the priest’s collar in his magic and is shaking him vigorously. “Sir! Can we keep this thing? Please, sir? Please?” I ask excitedly as I hold up the tattered, ancient banner. Holy artifacts are powerful for reasons both magical and moral to normal ponies, and to desecrate them, to liquidate them into dark energy, is one of the most potent things a dark magician can do that doesn’t involve killing.

The priest’s eyes boggle, and Prince sees the reaction. “Care to explain what that is, you doddering fool?”

“Thats- you can’t have that! That belongs to Tall Tale! Princess Celestia herself gave it to this town!” The priest sputters.

“Then I’m sure they will be happy to get it back once the crisis has passed.” Prince lets go of the old stallion with such force that he falls hard to the ground. My instinct is to help him up, but I’m not here for his benefit. I’m here for ours. I force back the pity as I wrap up the ancient banner, easily 900 years old and still kept intact by the power vested in it, and put it in my coat. Prince glares down at the elder. “And if our allies do not meet their obligations, I am also sure that Tall Tale would be very disappointed to lose it permanently.”

“You… you call yourself Solarists!?” The priest screams as he tries to pick himself up from the floor.

“Yeah.” Prince nods as we leave. “Do you?”

We start the car and start cruising away. I stare at the powerful cloth, even as it starts to singe my hooves to hold it. The pain is nothing compared to the power this will give us.

Prince looks at it once we’re on the road. “So what is that?”

“It’s a banner once taken to war by Princess Celestia herself. Sixth Northern Crusade, if I’m not mistaken.” I guess from the vision. I feel like it was from around the area then known as Coldfront and now known as Vraks. Of the many Northern Crusades fought before the army started taking the Northwestern Line instead, the first two weren’t against changelings, the Third Crusade didn’t have Princess Celestia there in the flesh, and winning a battle certainly doesn’t seem like an event from the Forth or Fifth Crusades.

“Damn… Just.. Damn. I thought the changelings had taken it.” Prince admits. “It went missing not long after they stormed the town.”

“...And it seems that our friend there thought that the situation was too unstable for it to be brought out again.” I finish. “Wonder if he was hiding it from us.”

Prince sighs, still astonished by our good fortune. “It’s very possible. We’ve got to report that to the higher-ups. It might make some other things click into place. And Mrs. Poison… Thanks for choosing our side. It warms my heart whenever someone joins us for the right reasons.”

“You what?” Mr. Hay asks, his jaw dropping in disbelief.

I repeat myself. My story pins the idea to steal the banner on Prince. Everyone knows that holy artifacts are valuable for different reasons to different ponies... specifically, that black magic doesn’t need the artifact to be lawfully obtained and other magic does, so the theft of such items is always heavily scrutinized. “So while we were at the church, I found a banner blessed-”

He waves his hoof. “Yes, I heard you the first time. I’m just shocked that they would be so brazen as to actually do it. We’ve got a real band of winners on our hooves. I admire that you can talk to them without wanting to jump out of your skin and flee.”

“Oh, they’re not so bad,” I reply as I start eating a bag of peanuts I took from one of his desk drawers while he wasn’t looking. They are so salty I almost regret the free food… almost. “At least, some of them aren’t.”

“It’s not just you. They’re active all over town, and beyond it too. The boogerheads at the agency can’t make manes or tails of their end goal. Be honest, Poison. Are they dark magicians, or not?”

“I’m not convinced,” I lie. “They haven’t tried to attract me with promises of power or influence, which is how those groups normally work. But I must admit the evidence is compelling.” It is, in fact, a poor lie. There is virtually no reason for Solarists to steal a Solarist artifact to keep it locked away for themselves.

“I’m not either, but both options concern me.” He admits as he looks out the window at the town. “I think I’m going to have to call in the big guns to clean up this mess.”