Painted Faces

Chapters

Prologue - The Fire's Gone
Chapter 1 - Black Smoke
Chapter 2 - Dark Side of the Moon
Chapter 3 - Living Behind My Own Illusions
Chapter 4 - Our Backs Are Now Against the Wall
Chapter 5 - One Day Here and the Next Day Gone
Chapter 6 - My Shadow’s The Only One That Walks Beside Me
Interlude 2 - My Head's Above the Rain, the Roses
Chapter 7 - My Dreams, They Aren’t As Empty As My Conscience
Chapter 8 - Bow My Head Keep My Heart Slow
Chapter 9 - I’ll Fail You Time And Again
Interlude 3 - Crashing Down the Ancient Roads
Chapter 10 - I Swear to You, I’ll Be There For You
Chapter 11 - Soldier Soldier, We Signed Our Lives Away
Interlude 1 - I'm Justifying Reprehensible Things

Prologue - The Fire's Gone

“Calling C-1 Overseer Cobalt to the front office! Again, C-1 Overseer Cobalt to front office!” the PA system crackled through the darkened control room in a harsh whisper.

“I will be back soon Doctor Subzero, it probably isn’t anything too important at this hour.”

“I’ll see you then Overseer, but I would hurry. Despite the hour, Bleeding Heart seems unusually distressed. My ears are still ringing,” the now Acting Overseer casually replied.

“You’d better. Wouldn’t want any marks against our practice,” Cobalt said as he walked out the door. Without stopping his march to the reception, he quickly swung the door closed with his tail. He nodded to the receptionist for the cryo department as he went by and took a left to the elevator up to the transport bank.

Two minutes later Cobalt found himself walking into the entry hall and waiting room at the main entrance to Fraqa General Hospital. The large decorative fireplace was burning off to the left, swirls of red-orange carpeting fanned outwards from it as if trying to spread the warmth just a little further. On the carpet were several faux-leather couches and armchairs, but he couldn’t see anyone over there from his position coming up behind the curved front desk.

“Administrative Assistant Heart, you called?”

“I did. There is a researcher here from some branch of the governmental services. Combat oriented. She wants to talk to you about a patient that came in yesterday. She’s waiting over on a couch over there.” Bleeding gestured towards the fireplace with a hoof.

“So what’s the rush then?”

“Supposedly, ‘Rapidity is of paramount importance.’”

“Like that?”

“Basically, now go. I’ve work to do and you aren’t helping.” The mare then turned away and ignored him as if he’d suddenly gone from being a person to being the world’s most uninteresting pile of sand.

“Okay. See you later!” Cobalt called back while making his way over to the now revealed thestral-unicorn. Doing a quick once-over, he saw that she was rather unremarkable. She wore a pristine white labcoat that covered a soft body of pale green scales which smelled like the thestral covered in them only ever washed herself in formaldehyde. Wrinkling his snout as he came near, Cobalt extended a talon to the seated thestral. “Hello miss, I am the Overseer for Cryo-one. You wished to speak with me about a patient that recently came into my care?”

“Oh! Yes, can we get going? We may converse on the way. Senior Laboratory Assistant Petri Plate by the way,” The mare said while accepting his greeting shake.

“We may. And thank you for your name Assistant Plate. Now which patient are you interested in? There’s only a few recent ones under my purview.” Cobalt pressed the elevator call button. “Also, what specifically are you interested in them for? Despite our continued efforts, there’s only so much that can be done to remedy the conditions of those in the vault.”

“Well, doctor,” Petri replied while rushing the first door to open, “I’ll answer your questions in order. We’re here looking for the survivor from last night’s fire in the third refinery district. Specifically though, the most badly burnt one.”

The assistant didn’t seem to mince her words much, which was great for Cobalt. It was reaching midday, and the only reason he was awake enough for this nonsense was the stash of stim juice hidden in the back of the control room’s mini fridge. He just needed to last two more hours and he could be done for the day. Instead of voicing his unprofessional thoughts, though, Cobalt replied with a measured, “The child?”

“Yes, that one. I’m told one of the first responders called her ‘living charcoal.’”

Charcoal was a bit of an overstatement of the child’s condition in his humble opinion, but it wasn’t too far off either. After all, most of the organs were still somewhat salvageable. Still, if the paramedics had arrived any later there wouldn’t have been much left of her skeleton to save, and restoring her body to any functional state would’ve been impossible even for the ritualists.

“What do you plan to do after seeing my patient? I can’t imagine there are many military applications for a permanently crippled foal.”

“Ah! You see, we intend to fix her. New body. Cut out the flesh and replace it with metal. Move the soul to a more stable vessel. She’ll be better than new if the procedure works out.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Cobalt replied with skepticism dripping from his snout. “What you’re suggesting sounds very experimental, dangerous. Have you even contacted the family about this yet?”

“There is only one member of the direct family with a claim to custody. They have renounced it because of what they called, ‘future health concerns,’” Petri snorted while stepping out of the elevator and down the hall, “Clearly they are afraid of a repeat performance. As for the procedure; It has been performed several times before to varying degrees of success. The only difference here is that the subject is far more damaged than usual and the equipment to be used is of a new model. She would be subject seventeen.”

“How many of the previous sixteen survived?”

“Over eighty percent.”

“Hmph, and you are not concerned about another thaumatic incident? Especially with this phylactery?

"Anyways, you have the paperwork for the transfer prepared, then? If you don't, I'm afraid you’ll only be able to see the patient and not… acquire her.” And that was the rub wasn’t it? Nobody wanted to keep the child around except some military research cabal because of the danger she posed.

As far as he could tell, the only reason the youngster wasn’t executed was because it wasn’t expressly her fault that the building burned down. And apparently there were interested parties involved. He’d be a little torn up if she died, but if the papers were good he’d wash his hands of it and move on.

“Indeed, I have the documents here,” The assistant said while handing over a data slate with a magical flourish from a concealed inner pocket of her labcoat.

Cobalt swiped the screen from her vibrant emerald aura to hide the half step he missed and scanned through the document for errors and unfilled spaces, absentmindedly checking them into the cryo wing. The only page of true interest to him was the special twenty-third page for beings adopted for business purposes. “Everything seems in order. If I may ask, It says here you’re a part of the Combat Enhancements Lab. What do you do there? It’s not everyday I meet people from the Complex.”

“Oh me? I oversee the junior researchers in the preservation department. I make sure that what’s alive stays that way and what’s dead is properly stored and disposed of. I also occasionally aid in various experiments with the specimens.”

“Well that would explain the smell at least.” An awkward pause ensued for a moment before he clarified, “you smell like carcinogens.”

“… Nobody has put it to me quite like that before, but it’s just about the only downside to working at the department. I thought it’d fade away since I’ve been working to prepare a new surgical theater for preserved persons, but alas. It seems I am forever cursed to get the side eye from concerned citizens.” The thestral dramatically held one of her forehooves to her barrel in jest to complete the act.

“I suppose that would spread pretty fast over the neuralweave if you got out often. Anyways, we’re here,” Cobalt said while opening the storage vault door. He desperately hoped that would diverge the conversation to somewhere less awkward. He wasn’t much of a thestrals thestral except around those he knew. Hopefully the darkened rows of stasis tubes would distract her.

“Doctor Subzero, please open the view shield on casket 3-16.” Turning to the mare he asked, “Are you prepared to move the casket?”

“Yes, we have transport waiting for the subject and I on the roof. Your foresight is commendable”

“and prepare it for transport.”

Seconds later they turned into the second walking path illuminated only by the light spread by monitor panels and the tanks themselves. Already the plate covering the eighth tank on the right was rising up, spilling red light across the floor and scattering through the fog rolling off the tank in waves. Inside a small silhouette could be seen only by the backlight, he thought he could see a flash of yellow on the unburned flank but not much else.

“Here we are, patient 4-12-0513. Will that be all?”

“Yes, thank you. Your expediency has been much appreciated.”

“And yours as well, Senior Assistant Plate. I must be off.” He made it halfway down the aisle before realizing he had just left the mare alone to move the cryo casket. While recent advancements in computing technology had lowered the weight by almost a quarter the bloody things still weighed almost nine tonnes a piece. Turning around to go help, he was met with the astonishing sight of the mare making a good attempt to lift the whole apparatus in her magical aura. The casket had closed since he’d turned away, but the yellow light cast by the mare’s telekinetic field was more than enough to cast sharp shadows across the mare’s already perspiring body.

“Assistant Plate? I believe you may find more success using the freight elevator at the back of the room than the halls we took. It’ll take you to the roof hangar with no delay.” After that his pace increased somewhat. He couldn’t be sure if it was because he wanted to get away from the thestral or because staring at instruments behind a blast shield sounded like a great way to spend the rest of the shift after that display of magical might. At this point he didn’t care, so long as he escaped fast enough to avoid a thaumatically induced headache. He didn’t even have a horn and he could feel one coming on!

Cobalt reached the control room door only to steal one last frightened look back towards Petri Plate before exiting the banks. “Make sure she has something of a family unit at the lab when you finish… Fixing her, she’s barely eight.”

“Don’t worry doctor, she’s in good hooves with us,” The Assistant panted as the elevator closed between them.

Chapter 1 - Black Smoke

Swift Wing woke to the sound of the compound PA system announcing a new slate of missions had been sent down from the thestrals on compilation duty and smiled. It may have been one of her few off days that month, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t claim her next mission a little early and start planning with the rest of the band.

She languidly rolled off her cot and turned the room’s light on with a mental command. One cursory inspection later she found nothing out of place, it looked like she drew the long straw on Dice’s jokes today. When she finished inspecting her desk for unwelcome surprises she spent the time to rearrange her bedsheets to regulation standard, not that the inspecting officer really cared, but precision was important in her line of work.

Before leaving for the mess hall she pulled on her undersuit and used the mirrored interior of her locker to brush her unruly grey and blue mane into some semblance of order. Waves and curls were straightened, and Swift double-checked that the illusion on her body was still working properly. She probably could’ve added her proper uniform to the ensemble, but for the relaxed morning she had planned she wouldn’t need the special clearance non-civvies would provide. Catching a glimpse of shifting red light out of the corner of her eye while closing the closet so Swift stopped and poked her head back in. “Just in case,” she sighed, pocketing the stone.

Walking out to the hallway Swift was met by the last trickles of the night shift returning to their quarters for their eight hour rest period. She passed a flagging minotaur-thestral coming from the darkroom while stepping into the mess hall for her midnight breakfast, the bags under his eyes were almost black. Swift liked the darkroom, not being one of its many detractors, if only because she actually found data aggregation and compilation to be interesting. Spying the rest of her band over at the mission board she picked up her pace and trotted over.

Tip-clawing the last few meters to her music group she snuck up beside Tong, their communications expert. “Boo,” Swift said in her best monotone, which managed to get a flinch out of the less observant group members, but neither Steel or Current seemed even slightly fazed.

“It seems we’re all accounted for now that the kid has arrived,” Garter said, beak quirking up at the last word into a small smirk. She didn’t like that nickname and he knew it, which was probably why he always brought it up in every conversation they shared. “Let’s go get our food before some other band takes all the good stuff. I can smell the bacon and I haven’t had first pick on those slices in forever.” That got some good chuckles all around, which was why, in her opinion, he got away with pushing everyone’s buttons.

Over at the line Swift picked up one of the pristine metal trays in her red aura and quietly began scrolling through the breakfast menu sent out for the night. By the time the others had finished getting their chow she knew exactly what she wanted, and placed her tray up and onto the counter. “Two berry pancakes, and one chocolate, four slices of bacon. Please.” Once she felt the weight on the tray stop changing, she brought it down to eye-level and made her way to their band’s second-floor table.

Swift unfurled her mechanical wings and fell in behind Current for the short hop up to their table. It might have been the standard table everybody else used, but it overlooked most of the first floor and shielded them from the majority of the noise from down there. Garter the griffin took his usual place at the head of the table, already tearing into his bacon with what could only be described as a reckless disregard for manners. She took the far end of the table from him, and the rest of the band spread out between them in a routine everyone had gotten used to over the last four months.

“Mastication, missions, then music?” Gust inquired.

“Sure, Mister Alliteration. It’s not like we’ll be getting any input from Garter any time soon anyways.”

The silence after that exchange lasted for almost a quarter hour before everyone had their fill and looked up. The hall had filled up in the meantime, lending some muffled background hubbub to their little meal.

“I see we’re all satisfied with the food. Should we move on to the next matter for consideration?” Tong took the initiative to begin their discussion. When Swift had first been assigned to the team she’d asked around about what the grey changeling’s actual name was, but nobody in the base actually knew. She’d not even found anything on him over the neuralweave, and everyone knew everything the Conglomerate knew was on there.

“Yes, please. I saw a few interesting things on the board tonight, and I heard that people without missions are going to be in the darkroom instead of the field until the backlog clears out.” Swift thought that would be the best way to get some focus going around the table. Most of the normal thestrals would be fine, if a bit irked, at having to do extra shifts looking at displays all night. However, everyone at the table with her was a combat cyborg, and that came with certain expectations from the rest of the agents in the department. Her point was only helped along by everyone in the band but Tong and her having a reputation for being awful at desk jobs. That wasn’t to say she was any good at them either, but she was better than bad, and that was something.

“That so? What’s on offer then? I won’t be caught dead again behind a computer screen. Tong, show us a holo of the assignment board. I know you have one.” The light purple hippogriff leaned over the table and lazily pointed to the changeling in question.

“As if you don’t know which one you want already, Current. You just like bossing Tong around.”

“Yes, but visual aids help with planning. Or so I’ve been told.” Tong for his part just sighed at his comrade’s admission and lit the holographic projector behind his right eye. Over the center of the table shone a replica of the mission board in all of its stainless steel and glass glory. It should’ve been a perfect copy, but nobody had figured out how to keep projections out of the uncanny valley.

“Surveillance… surveillance… surveillance… smash and grab,” Garter’s voice perked up at that one, “Surveillance… surveillance… sting operation! Hey! How does that sound to you lot?”

“Set someone up so they can jump off the cliff themselves and take a video for IntCom? That’s a bit outside of our wheelhouse. When do we get to smash some skulls in again?”

“I’m getting to that part, Steel. Please try to exercise patience with this old bird.” Swift had to resist rolling her eyes at that argument. It didn’t even make sense; agent Smith was at least 100 years older than the rest of them combined. She went back to looking for the mission she needed and tuned out the rest. “Anyways, once we have confirmation that the target has taken the bait, we get to move in and restrain everyone involved.”

“I’m still waiting for you to get to the point.” Swift could’ve sworn she’d seen it near the bottom of the list. Maybe in the last fifth of the registry?

“Yes, do get on with it. We are on the clock after all,” Current interrupted.

“Heavy resistance to the arrests is expected, and lethal force has been authorized. There. Happy?”

“Very.”

“Oh hello Lodestone! How nice of you to join in with us. Care to stick around?”

“…”

“May I handle the setup for the operation? It seems a sensitive matter that could easily be turned on us if we’re discovered early.”

“Where!? Where did that blasted posting go!? I swear it was here when we walked in!” Swift hadn’t even noticed she’d voiced her thought before the whole table turned towards her. Current even raised an eyebrow before asking the question that was on everyone else’s mind.

“Dahling… were you listening to any of what was just discussed? Because it sounds to me like you’re scheming out loud again.” The faux-elitist accent to the whole accusation only made it grate more on Swift’s already frayed nerves. She was right there! She could practically smell victory!

“WHAT?” She snapped. Lodestone was the only one not to flinch at the volume and anger of her exclamation. She could hear her breathing over the silence, it was a ragged and harsh sound, rasping in and out of her muzzle at a rate that was almost hyperventilation but not quite. The shock didn’t last very long though, and now they were squinting at her as if daring her to continue yelling at them. She wouldn’t, they were her friends and comrades in arms, but sometimes they could just be so annoying!

They were still looking, she could see their eyes weren’t even on her face but slightly lower. Swift couldn’t figure out what they were staring at until she looked down and noticed a mirage of heat and color creeping up her hooves from her shadow, slowly staining her illusory maroon coat in a wavy sheen of even less real blue-ish grey color. Her magic was heating the air around her to the point that the undercoat she wore was smoked and sparked as the electronics woven throughout melted.

Frantically Swift stuffed her claws into the quickly melting pockets of her clothes grabbing, searching for her fire ruby. She grabbed the stone like the lifeline it was and ripped it out of her now disintegrating clothes and focused inwards. Most thestrals with useful amounts of thaumatic energy were taught early how to control their magic. Most managed through use of dampener rings and little calming rituals, like what Gust did, but those methods didn’t work for her. Acting like she was breathing out all her feelings wasn’t enough, she needed to watch them burn to cinders before they went away.

Channeling her magic through the pain of the synthetic fabrics melting into her fur and the gaps in her scales a bright but unfocused column of fire shot up from the gem. She watched the light blue flame for a second or so before her breathing evened out and the fires of her irritation and panic were smothered by the conflagration surrounding them.

Looking up again to give a real answer to the rest of the band, Swift simply said: “No, I was trying to find a mission that caught my eye earlier. I should’ve set a subroutine to transcribe the conversation next to the list. I’ll do better hiding my distraction next time.” Swift tilted her head up and to the side in contrition.

“Swift, you do not need to bare your neck to us for some perceived tactlessness in your distraction. I didn’t notice you had left to do work on your own and I must commend your initiative,” Garter replied before continuing, “You’ll need that if you follow through with your plan. I also think that I speak for all of us when I say it’s good to see you coming out of your shell.”

“If this is going to happen every time, I’m not sure I can afford to come out all that often, or at least not that much in that way.”

“Emotions are important to maintaining mental wellbeing in the medium to long term for most species.” Tong chimed in.

“You’re the emotivore of the group, Tong. I’ll take your word for it, but they just don’t go away when they’re done being useful. They just build, and pile up, and cause problems,” Swift evenly replied.

“So much for ‘coming out of the shell,’” Steel heckled, “she practically is the shell with how much she lets out when she’s outside the recording booth.”

“If you don’t bring it up again, I might actually consider voting your song higher this round, Agent Smith.” There wasn’t much venom to her retort, she wouldn’t do another burn so soon after the first, but the promise did get a second glance from the thestral. “Besides, being bland and having you lot to talk to is so much better than being boisterous and avoided. To me anyways, that’s probably not how it works for most people now that I think about it,” Swift mused.

“You too know how hard,
Trying to hide yourself is,
To seem a normal.”

“So did you actually find what you were seeking? Because that would have been a whole lot of hot air for no real gain otherwise.”

“Yeah, gifts were given,” Swift opened the verse and looked up.

“And life was born again,” The rest followed.

“Anyways, here it is Tong. Display it would you?” On the table the holo switched from a roster planner for that sting mission they were talking about to an infoweb of the investigation and dissolution mission that Swift was after. The information was sobering, but nothing they hadn’t seen before. Some twenty adult thestrals had been abducted or had simply disappeared near the agricultural city of Everdark over the course of a month. The others had been called in to deal with similar cases before, and so jumped to the only logical conclusion.

“It’s either a cult, or a lich, or both. What was your thought with this one Swift?”

“Well, the doc wants a full combat test before he’ll agree to sign my transfer papers. Also, going over these logs of your conversation it seems some of you’ll be waiting for a few hours for Tong to social engineer someone into killing themselves. I wouldn’t mind some extra logistical support for when I raid their underground complex before you get busy with the second part of what you’re probably choosing as your assignment?” Swift was careful to leave that last statement off as a question instead of the cajoling that it actually was. They might recognise it as blatant coercion if she didn’t, now it was just coercion which was much more palatable.

“Okay Swift, I’m sure I’ll have a bit of time before our sting gets to the ‘the point’, I’ll tag along and help set this up, but only if you take a bet.” Swift had seen that one coming from a mile away, Garter always made at least one bet every mission. Sometimes two if he was feeling extra lucky that night.

“What would the bet be, then?” She wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. Everyone learned it at some point, but usually after unwittingly accepting their first impossible bet from the griffin everybody stopped blindly accepting offers.

“I’ll owe you a favor if you get all of the cultists in five minutes. And if you don’t succeed in that, you owe me a favor.”

“Alright, deal.” The wager was pretty tame, at least by their standards, but who knew? It might end up being more challenging than expected. The actual deed involved was still something of a touchy subject for her, but she was becoming inured to the murder, and if there was anyone who deserved death it’d be those freaks.

“Excellent. Now may we move on to less violent plans?” Current interjected.

“Of course, your highness. By all means, please do serenade us with your newest sound.” Swift couldn’t let Steel be the only one to get in a jab in tonight, and judging by the snickering from the rest it seemed she still had it.

Chapter 2 - Dark Side of the Moon

“So, Kid. Last chance. You sure you wanna do this?” Pestered the scarred griffin beside her.

“I’m not going to just fly us back now that we’re all the way out here Anvil. This is the last mission I need to complete before I can get commission for operations in Equestria. And if you’re going to use a nickname right now, use the one on my papers,” Swift snapped back.

“Well, I’ll stop asking then, Flare. Just… Stay in touch with us, yeah? From what I’ve read, it can get quite lonely out there,” Anvil replied, turning forwards as the heavily armed attack craft approached the insertion point, green treetops only just visible under the light of the moon speeding past beneath them.

Flare shot an empty glare at her copilot before looking at the drop hatch below her claws and stating, “We’ll talk about it later if you want, but I suppose we’ll see what comes with the kit,” before smacking the button to open the hatch. Whipping wind and the piercing whine of the engines tore through the cockpit as a fuselage panel pulled back to frame a hole below the drop harness.

“Don’t forget that if you kill all the baddies in five minutes then I’ll owe you a favor!” Anvil called over the neuralweave while Flare quickly clipped herself into the drop rig. The excitement she could feel through the link only added to her speed.

***

Flare stalked the undead mare in front of her down the narrow vaulted hallways of the cult’s hideout quietly. None of the other beings around had made a sound in the little time she had been infiltrated into the stone bunker. Not that the other twenty or so beings in the wheel-like space really could voice their opinions about their current situation, now being not much more than unliving bodies for whatever inscrutable purpose their new master was championing. A purpose that was becoming clearer as every body made its way to the building’s central chamber.

She let her mind wander a little while waiting for the corpse to bring them to their destination. Most documented liches preferred to keep their operations quiet in hopes that it would allow them to further their schemes before being caught. Thankfully, this one seemed more interested in gathering more people quickly as opposed to stealthily, allowing the Bureau of Intelligence Procurement to easily get a fix on what were typically drawn out cases.

The previous hour had gone by in a blur: everything was about avoiding detection, be that by magical or mundane means. Slipping inside was the easiest part. There was only a single guard for the entrance into the underground lair, although there was evidence of three others that had gone to investigate the dropship noise. All she had to do was draw the last one out from the opening and dash past after spending a few minutes to edit the warding scheme. Luckily, it was designed mostly to deflect scrying spells and only had a few low-power alarm clusters that seemed woven in as an afterthought.

Following her entrance Flare had jumped into a polished black alcove and deployed her reconnaissance drones to map the underground lair. The mare she was now tailing had walked through the antechamber twelve minutes later, apparently to buff out a dent in one of the already flawless black metal idols that occupied every dark corner and polished slate alcove. The chilling inky darkness cast from the sculptures’ presence sucked all light out of the air around them and obscured her comparatively small form from view. They seemed to act like conduits and anchors for some larger sorcerous work.

Swift only wished the statuettes she shared the indents with were less creepy. No alicorn she wanted to meet was depicted joyously chewing the heart of a pony they’d just ripped in half. Eating a heart was not something you were supposed to be so happy about. Somehow though, the eyes were worse; the eyes followed her every move despite being only small painted moonstones fixed into imperious scowls and predatory glee. Normally, depictions of alicorns were a good thing. Normal statues represented the two saviors, but these weren’t those. The freshly polished statuary Swift was now painstakingly avoiding while slinking about the halls were of someone else - the Nightmare.

Any further thought about what was stopped as suddenly as the thestral she was following arrived in the mysterious room at the building’s center. She had arrived as the third in line coming from a spoke of the eight pronged wheel the bunker resembled. Swift could see other lines of three coming in from the other halls into the utterly massive room that seemed to be almost completely covered in runes at first glance.

Just glancing at the spell weave made her want to retch her breakfast of all over the freshly burnished floor. Not because it was all evil or something, rather she felt her stomach rebelling at the sight of such a horribly inefficient and disjointed application of magical theories. It looked to her magesight like someone had started out using the ancient Cloverian method for this crime against mages, but then picked up a booklet on the basics of Thread’s Theory of thaumaturgy from a back alley brothel and decided to tack it on as an entirely new ritual.

“Agent Flare, this is Smith,” A staticy voice called over the silence of the niche she was sheltering in. “A sensor perimeter has been set up and a civvy skybike is waiting at the extraction point. May the stars watch over you, and happy hunting!”

Swift’s cybernetic ears were left ringing from the sudden noise, and she flicked a wing in annoyance. I’m trying to infiltrate this group because none of the other cyborgs can hope to achieve stealth, and I need them all to be in one place for the bet, but then Smith just goes and sends a direct transmission to me! After this stunt I am so voting for someone else’s song to be first. Hopefully he brought something other than the Honeda, because if he didn’t I am going to slap him so hard… She clenched and relaxed her foretalons, but refrained from lighting her fire ruby. As things stood she needed to keep quiet and out of sight, not immediately jump to setting the place on fire. Hopefully that interruption wouldn’t be enough of a distraction to make her sloppy, but now she had to be extra careful.

Despite her limitations on movement, what Swift could see was far more impressive than just the scraggly green tail and bare-bones flank down the hall from her. Her three stealth drones showed a room that had almost four times the floor space and nearly thrice the height of the rooms she’d previously traversed. The place was so massive that they were using columns to support the ceiling, and not just some pathetic show columns; the black limestone pillars spread to two meters wide at their bottoms and stretched a mighty fifteen meters into the ceiling. The perfect polish on the gold inlays only served to enhance the otherwise barren beauty of the grand hall. It was ridiculous; pillars for supporting ceilings had become obsolete, and out of style, well over 800 years ago. It was ridiculous, and she could use that to her advantage. Hopefully.

The eight trios of lost were set standing above a shallow drainage channel flowing down towards a large hole in the floor. If they want to fill that up they’re going to need a few more bodies. A few hundred more…, Swift caught herself mid-thought. I’m catching the black humor now. Great.

MOVEMENT! Finally! She thought as her retina display opened a window showing two things rising up through the hole at the very center of the room. One was a great circle with an upwards protrusion centered on a carved runic array, likely an altar of some shade. The other shape was clearly the lich. A well-tended dragoness wearing a white lace dress stood on the rising stone disc. Softly shining scales reflected the little moonlight that stole in through the only skylight Swift had seen across the walls in a soft pink color. She seemed far too young to have died of old age originally, and despite herself Swift couldn’t help but wonder what misfortune had befallen the lich before she became the thing she was now. Unfortunately, she was facing a dragon, and that would be a problem of rather significant proportions any way she sliced it. Her sword just wasn’t long enough to go through that much neck in one go.

As the platform rose, more things became obvious to the drones' visual spectrum cameras. Upon the newly risen stage rested a squat and circular stone altar, a small divot in the middle providing a receptacle for what could only be a blood sacrifice. Old runes of soul and starlight littered the area in what was now a very clear spiral leading to the altar itself, their swirling shapes and spearing beams connecting to the slab seamlessly and curving up the walls to the ceiling overhead from there. It was clearly an attempt at making a summoning ritual, but almost all of the energy was going to be wasted on theatrics instead of being used for the actual transportation magic. Still, what was obviously lacking in sophistication was more than made up for in raw soul energy and blood sacrifice.

So she’s planning to do something with the Solar Seal. What a shame. I thought everybody knew unauthorized tampering was strictly forbidden. Not that the examples ever seem to dissuade these zealots. The thought of such waste, the deaths of over twenty beings, for such a destructive goal hit Swift like a fist to the gut. If only we had- she let the thought trail off. What-if’s would be getting her nowhere. She needed a plan to neutralize both the pink dragoness and her unwilling followers, preferably sooner than later. She couldn’t save her friends from herself if she was still there to kill them.

Collapsing the roof was - unfortunately - not a feasible option. She didn’t have enough drones to destroy even one pillar, and flattening herself into a pile of bent metal, shattered bone fragments, and oozing meat slush was not quite on her to-do list. Yet. Setting the room on fire was also out, but for differing reasons. She’d survive the fire, even if her coat cooked off. Probably. Maybe. However, channeling enough magic to set the stone structure ablaze with TrussFlame would take too much time. Hopefully whoever-she-was couldn’t breathe fire, cast special magic, or fight. But hoping for all of that was laughable, and unlikely to get her anywhere.

Drip, drip. Drip, drip. Suddenly the dry, musty, smell that hung around the structure like the air in an old damp basement was replaced by a new smell, yet not an unfamiliar smell to the young thestral. Once she knew what it smelled like, it was impossible to forget the tangy, coppery, enticing, nauseating smell of spilt blood. Blood dripped from the sagging flesh of the body before her, a nice clean line down the middle of the stomach’s, splotchy, greying flesh burbled the red fluid into the channel below like a small brook. Somehow, the intestines weren’t spilling out onto the floor with it. A ritual cant emanated from the other side of the altar.

Anger quickly overpowered fascination in Swift’s mind. Here was something stealing the lives of others and using them for some petty, misguided, scheme, about to cause untold damage to Thestralia, to her home and friends. She would kill them for that as much as for what their ilk had done to her family. There was only so much time left for Swift to capture the losts’ soul scraps. If only she had more time, or there was less backlog, then maybe she could’ve saved all of the lost intact. Now though, killing all of them as well was her only remaining option. ‘Oh well. I’m a Monster for a reason, this needs to happen, even if that favor is looking to be even longer of a shot by the minute’.

***

Something was wrong. Crackle wasn’t exactly what was wrong, but all was certainly not as it should be. The shadows were all the same, her little lost were in their perfect positions. The full moon was overhead. Even the air smelled right, and yet she was missing something.

She was acutely aware of how overt she’d been while acquiring the souls for the summoning ritual. Even then, the idea that some government spook had infiltrated her secret bunker soon enough to stop her didn’t hold much water, it was probably just a bit of dust in the air. She felt as though she was being watched. Three weeks was all they would’ve had to notice the missing people and then track them to where she now stood, at the center of a hole now occupied solely by the undead.

How was it that she ended up here? It didn’t matter now. Once she finished, there wouldn’t be anything left to ponder. Slitted orange eyes closed, and bony wings flared out of her back. Crackle chanted, a slow, deliberate, and totally unnecessary dirge of supplication to the Unifier. The magic was gathering into the walls already, the blood opal spike was forming up out of the stone. All she had to do was hurry up and wait for the altar to fill.

Drip, drip, dribble. Something was wrong, something was horribly, dreadfully, wrong. Her voice was wrong. Intense confusion flashed through Crackle’s mind at first. Her lips turned down into a frown, and the superfluous singing stopped. Yet there was an echo, if only just for a moment, as if somebody had been singing along with her. It seemed someone else was here after all.

They had managed to sneak an infiltrator into the bunker to get her. Wonderful. This is the point in the novel where the heroes heroically save the day and apprehend the bad guy. Enough! The voice interrupted.

Ever since she’d come across mention of their glorious ruler while excavating knowledge of the old home she had been treated to visions. Glorious visions focused on the savior of all thestrals, and eventually the designs for an array to summon her from her imprisonment. Now she was within minutes of completing her quest, she just needed to focus and cast out the intrusive thoughts.

What to do? There can’t be too much time left before the altar is ready. All I have to do is stall them. Crackle opened her eyes and called out down the halls connecting to the outer wheel, “Come out now stranger! I know you are there! Let us parley!”. She waited, and waited, but there wasn’t any response. Let us try again, something to appeal to their morals perhaps, “If you come out now nobody has to die!”

Silence. Then, “Hrmph, we both know that isn’t true,” came a dry response from the third hall, “After all, I’m pretty sure all these lost are going to die no matter what happens. Plus, I’m here to kill you. And I hate hedge sorcerer scum”.

“Now there’s conviction,” Crackle growled to herself, “Why don’t you come on out of mistress’ shadows and show yourself to your host then? It would be rude to waste the time of the living after all,” She challenged the voice.

“Well, if it’s a fight you want, it’s a fight you’ll get!” Squeaked the diminutive filly of a thestral pony as she stepped out of the Eastern corridor and into the summoning room’s moonlit interior.

A child. They sent a child to stop me? “I would rather you stayed out of my affairs little one. I wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt, much less someone so obviously outmatched,” she boasted. If dragons could sweat then there would’ve been an aquifer where the room now was. She wasn’t any good at fighting, that wasn’t why she was one of the chosen.

“And these lost? Is them performing surgery on themselves not hurting them?” The little red thestral gestured to the line of unicorns she was trotting past while still walking closer. If I back up, will she take that as a sign of weakness and pounce? Is that just animals? Is she an animal? Is she part changeling? Is that why her voice has that buzz? Crackle took a deep breath in, nostrils flaring. All of this inaction was getting her nowhere but a shallow grave fast, no, now was the time for bold action! It wasn’t like she had to fight for long. just a minute at most, and against an opponent a tenth her size at that.

The agent was still approaching, now within only a clawful of meters. By now she had passed two of the three thestrals in the line. The dragoness steeled her nerves and lowered herself down onto all fours, wings spread wide. Drawing on what little she knew of fighting — mainly from subduing her little band of lost — she lunged for the wings.

The jump couldn’t be too fast, which was something of a problem, as the agent had already dived away from her grasping claws. The dragoness’ landing gauged the solid stone floor of the chamber, carving deep into the stone. Her head swung around to the left to snap at the cowering agent. Her teeth scraped something, or they should’ve, but the mystery filly came away from the exchange unscathed. Crackle quickly withdrew from her extended position only to find her opponent hovering just above the floor on the other side of a row of lost.

“Is that all you plan to do? Flee? Gallop about wasting my time? Delay our Great Leader’s coming by a paltry few seconds?” Crackle demanded. The only response she received was a grimace and a long, silvered, rune encrusted blade slithering out from between the agent’s right ring and foreclaws. Apart from the heavy enchanting of the blade, the only other thing that stood out to her was a rectangular grey stone inlaid through the blade near where it connected with the agent’s arm.

How is that possible? it wasn’t anybody that could just manifest a sword to claw like that, and this nuisance certainly wasn’t among those select few. It had to come from somewhere, but she didn’t feel any change in the ambient mana. Her thoughts were interrupted by a red and blue flash in the corner of her eye and the feeling of cold steel piercing deep into her neck. Without thinking, her tail whipped up to connect with the new assailant. Her tail swept back even as they went careening forward into her sight.

The second agent was identical to the one she’d been conversing with moments before. The new one flew back through her double. Their blade arm snapped out to slow the tumble, slicing the green unicorn thestral below her in two.

That wasn't good at all. If that blade could cut straight through both her scales and whatever bones were in that body then she couldn’t be taking many chances with close combat. With but a slight nudge of her will her ritual fuel suddenly went from just standing there to throwing themselves at the intruder. No matter how sharp the blade or skilled the thestral she would still have to spend some time and effort cutting through the other twenty-three thestrals in the room. Plus, she had one keep itself behind at the altar. Just in case.

Immediately, three of them were upon the agent, five more quickly following. The losts’ coordination was nothing to write home about, but nonetheless three blades converged on the agent. Two from the front and one from behind. The agent lunged forward and between her attackers, receiving small cuts. She threw the left one into the one still leaping at her rear and neatly bisected the other. Picking up the now ownerless blade in her right claw, the mare threw it at the eye of the second unicorn from the East door.

The sliver of metal had so much force behind it it came out the back of the skull. Disused grey matter and shattered bone segments splattered across the thestral behind that one. The agent followed up by stabbing into the ribcage of the already mending unicorn and retreated towards the entryway. That damage was fine with Crackle. If the interloper wanted to be surrounded in the corridors then she was all too happy to oblige them. The loss of two sacrifices would not slow the ritual by any. In fact, it would only hasten her master’s arrival.

She turned around to instruct the lost still behind her to attack the agent's rear through the halls only to find three whole rows of her ritual fodder had had their throats slit while she wasn’t looking. Irritating. Controlling the energy siphon will be far more strenuous now that the souls have been released in full. Although…. She ordered the seven unengaged lost to split into the North and South passages, when Crackle looked back she found that another three bodies had been lost to the agent’s sword. If she wanted the pest to still be in a usable position by the time the lost arrived to surround her she would once more need to intervene.

Getting closer, she could see that her assailant was bruised and bloodied where the hard scales of her tail had impacted the filly’s side earlier, but it had already healed. As she was almost upon the mare she heard the buzzing from the first one, the magical fake, coming up beside her face. Flicking her head to the side for a second she let out a small fireball that should have dispersed the illusion back to the manastreams. Instead though, a charred black ball of metal slammed against her neck wound and exploded into a small fireball.

The animated bomb took a chunk out of her neck but she kept moving forwards. The Great Gift of their savior would tear the metal slivers from her flesh and spine, it would erase the burns and make her whole again. The black ooze would fix the damage with contemptuous ease, making what should’ve been excruciating agony merely painful. She hadn’t even noticed any extra drain on her reserves from maintaining the soul funnel into the ritual despite all of the death around her. Truly, the rightful Queen of Night smiled upon her efforts.

The agent looked towards her as she decapitated the minotaur thestreal before her and her eyes widened. That’s right fly! Fear me! She again swiped at the insolent wretch before her. They tried to slip out of the way, but dodging two tons of angry dragon in a confined space was not a very easy task. Crackle’s second slash landed across the thestral’s back, pushing them into the ground. Blood painted her claws and she smiled at the victory. Her success soured as she realized that she was going too fast down the corridor. She looked up right as she bowled through her encircling force. Her massive body crushing a few and mangling the rest.

Crackle picked herself up with haste and turned back down the hall, facing the one who had attacked her temple. Looking beyond the agent, she could see that green unicorn number two hadn’t repaired themself yet, and the other lost that the agent had cut down weren’t getting up either. A few from the corridor were reassembling slowly, but the ones that had been pulverized into meat paste were never going to recover.

The cool numbness in her neck wasn’t receding, and it was taking far too long for that flesh to knit itself back together again. Already the adrenaline from the initial clash was catching up with her and a fresh wave of exhaustion crashed against her as the souls from the once-thestrals she had smeared across the walls were sucked into the ritual.

Lifting a claw up to the side of her neck the dragoness found the gaping hole in her innards to both still be there, and also leaking a large amount of blood onto the ground. “You’re no mere agent little worm.”

“All this action and you’re still calling me a worm? Could you at least upgrade me to wyrm?”

She was being taunted, and it rankled, but the indignity she faced would be worth the payoff. She pulled on the strings connecting to the hidden lost. It was a risky play, but it’d be worth it to see the arrogant smirk wiped off that little filly’s stupid muzzle. Slowly sauntering forwards to keep the agent’s attention she positioned herself to make a sprint into the mare’s guard once she was distracted. At about ten meters from her target she opened into a full charge even as the agent made a slight turn to her left and threw several blades disguised within her feathered wings at the equally small target sneaking up behind her.

The lich only got a small bit of satisfaction as she watched the agent’s eyes widen just a little before she lowered her head and threw the little, but surprisingly heavy, thing off her claws and straight across the room to the North hall. It was as if the thestral was a solid brick of cast iron. Striding past the small thestral corpse now stuck to the ground and otherwise perforated by far more blades than it reasonably should have survived, Crackle went to inspect where the agent ended up.

The now stitched together bodies of her four remaining usable lost emerged from the darkness of the Eastern hall to fall in at her flanks like some little macabre honor guard. Looking ahead, she could see the agent hovering in the air recovering from her most recent attack. She was looking slightly worse for wear. She was bleeding from a few more places, some of which looked like stab wounds. Stopping from that speed couldn’t have been very pleasant either.

“I’m sorry for this.” All this fighting and suddenly the agent was going to spout apologetics now that they were losing? Crackle didn’t buy it. Especially since the side of the agent’s body was now opening up like some sideways door. “But what's left of you all is hardly coherent, much less intact. Keeping you out of the shard will be a mercy.”

Crackle sneered at the being before her even as she reached past the steel doors bisecting her barrel and pulled out… something. It was long and boxy, like a club, but there was a long hole going through it and a crossbow trigger near the handle it was gripping. It was clearly some artifice, although the choice of steel over a wood was perplexing. It would be far more difficult to properly balance and wield crossbows made out of metal. The wires leading back into the mare were also an interesting choice, one she could understand but two? “Your pathetic bow will not stop us! Your bag of tricks has run dry and you are outnumbered.”

She paused a little for dramatic emphasis before daintily pointing one of her claws forwards. Her guards took off towards the filly. The weapon was turned on her vanguard’s advance, blasting their torsos into chunky paste. The spray flew back and onto the now red dress the dragoness wore, taking the spine out of her sails even as the wind weapon was stowed away again.

Looking around she picked up a bastard sword and the half thestral it was attached to and lobbed it at the agent before her. Her vision was temporarily obscured as the organs spewed out and the pooled blood went flying between them. Crackle leapt through the cloud of viscera only to find the agent Had ducked below the corpse and was now coming up beneath her. Crackle spun to her right, desperately trying to avoid the slash before she lost a limb. Her roar of agony shook the underground as her failure became apparent. Tarnished and black blood sprayed out at short intervals, splashing across everything around her even as the now free wing spasmed wildly in the puddle around it. The yell was quickly replaced by a single audible crunch as her armored hide smashed into a pillar, crushing one of her feet into a tenderized meaty clump.

And this is why I stuck to the archives. There's no fighting involved in reading! Crackle wearily stood up on three legs now, her mobility greatly diminished, and growled. Smoke poured out of her nostrils as she glared at the agent before her. She hated to admit it, but this diminutive little irritant was proving to be a serious threat to the plan. As her pulped foot and missing wing would attest, her adversary was canny too.

Crackle stood and started to circle the agent, hoping to make a break for the dais. While the current situation was rapidly deteriorating, the necromantic energies animating her body had almost fixed her claw and the blood opal had already formed to its fullest extent. All she needed to do was die again.

The agent wasn't circling with her anymore. Why was she being allowed to get in line with the altar? The filly’s holey horn wasn’t glowing, so she probably wasn't levitating a weapon behind her. And she was almost on the threshold of the East hall, so what was her game?

***

Swift was screwed. If the lich realized that asphyxiation was a cause of death then there wasn’t any way that dragon fire didn’t engulf the chamber in seconds. What was worse, her blood was now mixed in with the rest in the ritual, and if it went to completion she was probably dead. The drain on her power reserves from the repeated use of her railgun was also going to limit the power she could put into the next few attacks. Still, for as intimidating as the dragoness now angling to make a break for the stage might’ve looked, she clearly had little in the way of either combat training or experience and minimal situational awareness. So Swift retracted her main armament into her arm and made for a direct approach. She only had thirty seconds left; she needed to make this quick.

She bounded into the air and swung around a now cracked pillar to attack the lich’s side. As soon as she was hidden behind the pillar Swift began casting. She drew power into her horn and formed a small portion of that into a simple wall of force. Now about a quarter of the way around, Swift poured the rest of her attention and magic into casting a quick transformation spell. There was a red flash, and when she passed back into view two thestrals emerged from the other side.

The dragoness was hobbling as fast as she could to the altar. The Swifts swept in on the lich’s right side and tackled the lumbering mass of flesh and bone to the ground just before the blood-soaked basin. Immediately, massive claws slashed through where Swift’s double was, shattering the flimsy apparition into a cloud of illusory fire and smoke.

Using her double’s death as cover, Flare slipped behind her adversary’s back. She stabbed deep into her opponent’s lower spine before the lich could regain their footing. Her sword speared through tough scales and silky dress, severing the nerves in the lich’s lower back. If the dragoness hadn’t already been reanimated they would’ve been properly immobilized by that strike, instead, she gripped the stem of the basin and attempted to pull herself towards her goal. “With this much persistence you might’ve made it past basic,” Swift joked, “though you probably shouldn’t have skipped arm day.” The fight was over and she had the proverbial tiger by the quite literal tail.

Seeing as their goal was clearly to impale themself upon the bloodspattered spike in the center of the ritual circle, Swift decided to give them a faster death. Tugging with all of her mechanically enhanced might, she slowly carved a line up through the lich’s waist, she sped up past the barrel and was almost to a light trot before she reached the thing’s skull.

As her soulstone finished absorbing the remains of the lich’s soul she turned and walked over to face the still struggling lost. It was thoroughly stuck to the ground, but its muscles still bulged and pulled beneath shallow skin as it struggled to attack her. Looking up to the full moon through the skylight Swift sighed before looking back down at the child before her. “I’ll remember you,” she said as she reached up to the girl’s neck, “you won’t come back again, but you will live on. That much I promise.”

In one fluid motion Swift stabbed her sword deep into the chest of the thestral before her and lowered the now motionless body to the ground on its side. She barely felt a thing from the actual killing. It was just like she learned in training: the act got easier every time. That, Swift thought, was what got to her — death was supposed to be a tragedy, not a trifle.

She retracted half the blade back into her mechanical arm and used the bared half as a carving knife. She cut apart the ribcage to gain access to the organs protected within and gingerly lifted the small heart out of its enclosure. She took one bite after another, until nothing was left on her bloodstained claws.

She always thought she would do that when her mum kicked the bucket. That never happened, but she could do it for this thestral. Someone she didn’t know and who wasn’t even known to be missing. The others would be brought back to the tables of their families, but the one before her wouldn’t even get that. Her body would be rendered down to meat for the market and a skeleton for the mines.

Swift stared at the body before her for a few more minutes before turning and walking for the entrance. Her gait uneven and her gaze downturned and unfocused as she plodded back out the way she came. Through the same grey tunnels and past the same silent statuettes staring at her with their glowing blue eyes.

Chapter 3 - Living Behind My Own Illusions

“This is Flare. Mission has been accomplished and the site is secure. The cleaning crews can move in,” Swift said in as flat a tone as possible. It wasn’t very convincing, but she didn’t think anyone would blame her once they saw the lair.

Looking up at where she was going, Swift could only see more trees in the unhealthily dense forest ahead. Her satellite connection - low bandwidth as it was - assured her that the skybIke was in a clearing not more than half a kilometer away. She had left the ritual site well over an hour ago, and had spent most of the time during the trek animal spotting. She hadn’t seen much of anything though, that was fine.

Swift pushed past one small sapling and into a clearing so covered barely any moonlight showed through the holes in the canopy. Near the center of the space was a sleek black bike resting upon a bed of broken twigs. Stalking up to the machine and taking a small lap around it to inspect, Swift’s small frown changed into a wry smirk. “He must have something he really doesn’t want to wait for if he’s willing to do this,” she said as ran the backs of her claws gently over the leather seat and up to the ignition.

Lowering the relative force production of her metal limbs back to their normal single-digit numbers, Swift heaved herself over and onto the bike. As she twisted the archaic keys, Swift listened to the soft hum of the bike starting up beneath her. She guided it up past the hole in the canopy and once she was clear of any obstructions she gunned the throttle back toward base.

Flying along in the late Spring night, Swift had an exceptional view across the breadth of Thestralia. She could see from the hill towns and defense stations of the outer wall all the way to the massive space elevator that stood in the center of the country. She studied every detail that she could and committed them to memory; after all, this was probably the last time she would ever see her home from this good of a vantage point.

***

Long after the moon had gone down and the sun had come up, Swift landed the Dewcati on the landing pad in Eyton. Dismounting, she walked over to the elevator bank and pressed the call button, but her claw didn’t lower until the safety doors opened.

Trudging in, Swift tapped the button for the living level and leaned back against a wall. Looking over into the mirrored steel surface, she studied herself. The cuts in her skin had fused shut hours ago, leaving behind only a few tender and fading scars. The bags under her eyes had deepened over the morning into an ugly black color that stood out from even the dark red of her blood-matted coat. Her hair had been whipped into knots by the wind.

Arriving at her floor, she found a small group headed up to the pad. She stepped out of their way off to the side of the hall. The leading thestral winced and looked away quickly on his way past.

She looked over at their shuffling forms and pressed herself against the wall, breaking off a small cloud of dried blood flakes. They all kept walking. She didn’t see anyone else on her way back to her room.

Closing her door on the hallway, Swift collapsed back onto the same bed she’d left yesterday, instantly staining the sheets. She’d left victorious and come back defeated — too drained to appreciate another piece in her plan falling into place. Idly she wondered what the rest were doing even as she fell into an uneasy sleep.

***

The following morning Swift sent the combat data to the Doctor, but it wasn’t until two weeks later that she finally received summons to the extranational operations room. Swift walked into the small room after scanning her newly-upgraded security clearance at the door.

The room was dark but not dingy; lit by the crisp blues of computer monitors and an impressively sized multi-color projection of the world sat in the center. Off to her left, a few thestrals were combing through reports on foreign affairs in their cubicles while straight ahead an almost skeletally thin earth pony waved her over to the holotable.

“Agent. Thank you for deciding to join our esteemed department. You may call me Plausible Deniability. I will be overseeing your operations overseas for the foreseeable future,” he said.

“Can I just call you Ability? Your full alias is rather lengthy,” Swift asked as she ran her claws over the edge of the angled table. She looked over to meet her handler’s gaze. They seemed to be an actual pony going by the fact that Ability was only just a few centimeters taller than her, instead of towering by a head or even a meter. His light grey coat gave him the impression of a specter in the poor illumination of the room, the other tell as to his undead nature was his slitted pupils.

It made sense that a pony would be running surveillance on other ponies she supposed, but it was rather rare for ponies of all species to find their way to Thestralia.

“My name is not an alias Swift, but you may call me Ability I suppose. It is not like there will be anyone else you will be contacting when you call me,” he replied. Slipping off of his seat, he motioned her over to one of the side rooms with a wave of a hoof. Swift followed a few steps behind, her claws clicking across the steel floor to the bridge rhythm of Steel’s latest composition.

In the same vein as the dark office building appearance of the main data center, the briefing room looked like a hospital MRI room. Admittedly, there was plenty of metal on the inside of the room in the form of cables, chairs, and controls, but apart from the presence of metal the room was bare white to the point of featurelessness. A sadly familiar long and tubular machine took up the length of the room.

Swift started to climb into the linking device, only for a hoof on her shoulder to stop her from going any further up the small inbuilt ladder. “Have some patience and get back down here would you?” Ability chastised, “you may be used to learning from those things, but there is not much to go over and I have the full case here on paper. It is much better for your young brain”.

Swift hopped down to the floor and turned to look at him, eyebrow raised. “That’s fine, I just haven’t used paper for much since I left school,” Swift said, pointedly ignoring the dent in the ladder where she had pushed off. Her strength settings would need some recalibration before she deployed. The ponies might notice if she could outperform an earth pony in strength, especially if she wasn’t going to be disguised as one.

“Well you had better get used to using paper again quickly then. The only information you are going to find in Equestria, that is not provided by or sent to us in IntCom, is going to be entirely analog. Or magical I suppose, but that is rare and not generally applicable,” Ability said. “Here is the case file, read it here and dispose of it when you finish absorbing the material. Meet me in the armory after you are finished eating. You will be leaving for Manehattan shortly thereafter”.

“Understood.” Swift saluted. They moved past each other then - Swift to the cushioned control chair and Ability to the door. Swift only opened the folder after the lock clicked into place.

It was plain, without any markings and beige, by any metric it was a typical Manila folder. Upon cracking the seal she was met with three profiles. One for their agent, and two for their family.

The missing agent lived in Cloudsdale as some sort of minor government functionary in the mail office. He had a stay-at-home wife and a daughter about Swift's age that was going to flight camp.

The rest was more minutiae about his life and job: income, coworkers, address, but most importantly for Swift was the false backstory he’d been planted with. He supposedly had a pegasus friend in some coastal city from college that she would be posing as. Looking closer at the descriptions she frowned. There’s no substance to this friend. I suppose they didn’t know if they’d be able to send a shifter after them, but this vagueness is liable to get me found out.

Swift snorted, “Doesn’t matter. Anywhere’s better than here”.

Author's Note

Sorry about the chapters coming out today and not at the start of the month. Also the USAFA-WP game took me away from my PC and sucked the wind out of my sails.

P.S. The interlude for the next set of four chapters is almost done.

Chapter 4 - Our Backs Are Now Against the Wall

When Swift was told how she would be making her way into Equestria, her first guess as to the method was decidedly not getting launched out of a submarine while inside a torpedo. She had thought she might be jumping from a plane, or taking an easily sunk boat to a remote part of the Equestrian coastline, or even anything just slightly less insane than what was happening at the moment. It could’ve been worse, if only a little, she supposed. They could’ve sent her in a missile.

She couldn’t see out of the repurposed explosive at all, but the techs had promised her that she’d get onto the pier. She just had to trust that they’d done their job well enough to get her there in one piece. The fact that they’d measured just about everything about her before the modifications was not helping her doubt in the slightest. They were probably just doing that so they could get away with making the fewest changes possible. It's not like they even pretended to install a safety harness or anything.

The seams were welded back together over her prone form when they had reached final approach on the harbor. Evidently, she would be cutting her own way out of the capsule. The only other thing in the compartment was an oxygen mask helpfully provided so she wouldn’t asphyxiate halfway to shore.

After a few more minutes with just the soft hum of the electric motor for company, the torpedo tilted up sharply. Swift was thrown against the back of the cramped compartment as ballast was expelled and buoyancy soared. Suddenly, the acceleration stopped and Swift’s stomach dropped out from under her.

The landing left much to be desired. The metal hull crashed against the concrete of the docks, and released a terrible screeching as the two ground each other down and mashed her face into the bottom of the compartment.

As soon as the rumbling stopped, Swift started cutting her way out. While it was true that most ponies would be hiding away right now she needed to move fast before either the city guard or some other nosy pony found her. She kicked the small cutout up and away and tossed her briefcase out of the hole before jumping out herself. Her ears were greeted by the loud droning of a watch siren blaring out across Manehattan Bay.

She couldn’t see anybody in the vicinity, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a force about to appear from behind the brick storehouses blocking her sight lines.

There were many small chunks of metal and concrete scattered everywhere on the pier around and behind the torpedo. Fortunately for her, the area was only lit by a dim yellow glow coming from a few intermittently placed lamps and the few bright stars that could be seen in the moonless night sky. She’d be able to see anyone coming close before they saw her. Further out on the water a few boats were starting to burn as whichever boarding parties were successful destroyed the opposing vessels.

Looks like the griffins have the upper cla-hoof in this engagement. Hopefully they aren’t here to raid though. I don’t need more people chasing me through the streets.

Swift ran around to the front of the torpedo and began pushing it into the shallow waters of the dock, where it would wait for her signal to detonate the sensitive materials onboard the techs didn’t rip out when they converted it. Although the rut it had formed wasn’t too deep, it had exposed a rougher surface that Swift was now struggling to push against. The friction wore on the already abused metal, but thankfully the weapon was both built sturdy and a little bit quieter going back across the concrete than it had been coming in.

When the vessel started to tip backwards into the water, Swift gave it one final push and looked down. She saw the splash when the torpedo sank was surprisingly small, but Swift didn’t want to linger. The longer she stayed in one place the higher the chances were that she was found. She could also definitely make out a light and voices getting closer from the far end of the docks.

Swift galloped over into the shadows between the dockside warehouses, briefcase in tow. Looking over her shoulder she could see the squad completely now. There were two pegasi with spears and a unicorn following her not twenty meters back. They were gaining on her, but slowly.

“Halt! Stop resisting and-“

“Save your breath Spring, they’re not giving up".

“Don’t worry cap! I’ve got this!” Yelled pegasus two.

Seconds later a bright flash backlit the entire scene around her, and Swift dived to the left. In her peripheral she saw a pale blue light smash into the cart beside her. The air around her cooled rapidly, and ice erupted from the cart in all directions sending her sliding into a wall.

Swift stumbled forward despite the impact, but the loss of control had cost her the lead she had over the pegasi.

She ran through the wide but clogged passages between the storage buildings. At the next intersection she darted left and then right again when she got the opportunity. The rune lights of the ponies above her illuminated the way, but only barely. Everywhere tools, crates, and carts were strewn all over the ground, straining her ability to maintain her pace and dodge around all of the obstacles.

She jumped over a crate in front of her and ducked low as she saw a grey spell bolt fly over her head and fly off into the night sky. Right. I’m in Equestria; the Land of Magic. Of course some stupid port guard can cast two combat spells and keep chasing me. Why would I ever think otherwise?

Soon she would reach the housing district outside the docks. She could actually see the divide just a little bit ahead. At some predetermined line the brick buildings rose up to three stories and their walls became strapped with small, dirty, windows and rusted fire escapes. The side streets bloomed all along the main avenue and instead of being filled with crates and tools were instead covered in graffiti and broken glass.

With one last look back, Swift didn’t see the unicorn or his light anywhere in the shadows behind her. Hmph. Maybe he couldn’t keep pace after that second spell after all. She kept running anyways.

Swift heard the whooshing of air over wings and whipped her head forward to face the noise. She had only barely enough time to deflect the spear point up and away from her throat with her metal case, but not enough to dodge the pony wielding it.

The impact sent the both of them sprawling backwards across the street. She tried to flare out her wings to gain some control over her landing, but her current disguise didn’t have any. The guard landed on top of her barrel and wasted no time taking advantage of his position to rain blows down on her face. The cobbles dug into her back worse than any flat surface ever could, and far worse than the hard mats she’d had in the gym.

“Give up! You can’t get away now!”. It was the confident one from earlier who only ever seemed to yell. Maybe he can’t hear very well. I’m right here and he’s still screaming. Still, Swift wasn’t going to break out any retorts. She was going to have to discard the disguise once she reached the safe house and she’d rather not discard the voice along with it.

Off to the sides of where she was, Swift could barely see the spear and her case through her raised hooves and the sweat slipping down into her eyes. If I can get him off me and get—In one movement the guard surged through her hooves and clamped down on her throat.

Most ponies would’ve panicked in this position — actually almost all prey species did. When she went through training there was an actual week in the real world where everyone had taken turns getting pinned and choked and otherwise restrained by the instructors just to wean them off the instinct. The instructors had called it ‘Actionable Instruction for Duress Situations’, everyone else just called it AIDS. Nonetheless, the experience was, if not appreciated, useful here.

The guard wasn’t even putting that much effort into choking her, but that was probably mostly perspective. The pressure that would be required to crush a regular trachea would be far less than the metal replacement she had.

Swift barely noticed the force pushing down on her lessen as the guard reached back with a wing and started fumbling around with one of his saddlebags. Inside she could hear the clacking of wingbinding clips and the clinking of hoofcuffs as his primaries struggled with the brass buckle keeping them closed.

Convinced that she was more than a little preoccupied with not being able to breathe, the guard looked back at the latch for just a second. In the moment he looked away, Swift released her grip on the guard’s left leg and punched up into the side of his neck, shaking his grip on her. The guard wobbled for a moment before she twisted her hips beneath him and rolled away.

Immediately she jumped to her hooves and made a beeline for her case. Just behind her she could hear heavy breathing and the clinking of mail and metal on stone. Suddenly the racket was replaced by the flapping of wings. Swift redoubled her efforts herself ahead of the pegasus. If she could end the fight quickly she might be able to flee the area before any more guards found her.

Swift bit down on the case’s handle and felt her flat teeth gouge into the well sanded wood of the bite guard. Immediately she planted her forehooves and kicked back behind her before momentum carried her forward into a summersault. Her hooves landed squarely on her opponent’s jaw with a crack, and sent her sprawling onto her back.

Letting go of the case, Swift rolled up into a low crouch and looked at her opponent. The sight brought Swift both elation and dread, but she quickly smothered the emotions behind a mask of calm professionalism. The good part was that the guard had fallen unconscious, which wasn’t very surprising given how hard the blow was. She also saw his barrel rise and fall as he breathed, which was great. The concerning part was the amount of blood coming out of the crater in his jaw.

She trotted over to the one saddlebag she could get to without moving the pony’s back and pulled out everything inside. She’d found herself with a small first aid bag, a couple of different colored flares with a launcher, and an apple.

First she pried his lips apart and pulled the jaw into some semblance of a normal shape from the inside. Then, from the bag she took a wad of gauze and wrapped the apple in it and stuffed the whole thing into the guard’s face.

Swift stood up and grabbed the red flare. After a few seconds of waiting she didn’t see or hear any of the other guards. She looked down again at the flare gun then up to the injured pony in front of her and sighed at her hesitation. “You came here to protect your friends, to be a better person, and look! You’ve already mauled somepony bleeding into unconsciousness,” she paused, “No. Don’t look at this like that — he’s alive and you’re free. That’s the best you could’ve hoped for out of this”. I’m still a monster though. Always and forever, her thoughts whispered.

Swift lifted the barrel skyward and pulled the trigger. She didn’t wait to see what happened next. She ran off into the alleys and side streets of Manehattan’s dockside district, and she kept running long after the red light in the sky had burnt itself out.

***

“Captian Boulder, are you okay? I saw you fall down there after the slowing spell.” Everyone in the force knew he shouldn’t have been doing this anymore. Really none of them should’ve, most of them hadn’t even finished training yet and were doing quasi-apprenticeships with ponies with experience.

“It’s — I’m fine Spring,” he panted, “just exhausted. I don’t, ah, have the stamina I used to.” He wouldn’t have blamed Boulder if he stopped there and took a break, yet he kept walking. Spring liked that about the light blue unicorn; it made working under him a lot more pleasant than some of the more surly officers.

“I saw Spark fly off to the right before I dropped down. I’ll go give backup if he needs it. This spy seems to be more prepared than what the Griffins usually send.”

“No, stick with me. Like you said, the pony we’re chasing is better than most that the department has caught recently. If we move in one by one we’re putting ourselves in greater danger than if we go —” Boulder cut himself off as a red flare lit up the sky just a street or two away. “— together.” He finished.

They bolted towards the street under the light with nothing but the knowledge that whatever had happened, it probably wasn’t good.

Author's Note

Have a good night and a happy New Year!

Chapter 5 - One Day Here and the Next Day Gone

Swift woke up long before her alarm ever sounded, she often did, but tonight she was having difficulty getting back to sleep. She pulled the heavy comforter up and turned over in the bed several times before laying still on her side. The analog clock on the bedside table read 2:37.

After about five more hours of not-sleep later Swift found herself faced with her first great decision of the day: smash the alarm clock or don’t. The upsides to destroying the clock were obvious: it would stop ringing, the raging downside was that she’d have to pay for its replacement.

Ultimately, she decided to spend the energy to get out of bed and turn the stupid alarm off the normal way. It wasn’t like she had enough bits to waste them on every stupid whim she had — no matter how annoying the ringing was. Swift glared down at the clock. Well, I’m up now. No better time to get my day started.

Swift shook her head and snorted in muted amusement at that thought before she walked over to the washroom and turned the shower on to get the water warming up. She was able to hide the evidence of her activities the previous evening from the receptionist because of the dimness of the hotel lobby, but she knew that nopony would be fooled when she was walking around in daylight. Besides, Swift liked to keep clean — grime dulled any tool.

She looked into the mirror and tried smiling at herself like a pony might smile at any other, but stopped after a few moments. She’d pulled her mouth and eyes too wide and what had resulted from the attempt was more of a creepy serial killer smile than a friendly hi-nice-to-meet-you smile. A few attempts later she stopped practicing her smile and stopped wasting the hot water.

***

After she had cleaned herself and the room, she left the cramped space and made her way to the receptionist’s desk. She set her briefcase down and looked over the marble counter at the unicorn engrossed in a copy of the Manehattan Times.

“Is there anything interesting in that?” Swift asked in a dull monotone. She hadn’t meant to startle the pony, but he jumped a little bit in his seat before putting down the newspaper and looking back at her anyways.

“In the paper? Well,” he paused, worrying the paper a bit, “apparently the griffons raided the port and damaged some of the new ships they were building there. They also sent one of the city guardsponies to the ER. Oh! And apparently the local hoofball club is going up to Vanhoover for the championship game against the Phillydelphia Flyers!”

“That’s nice. I guess. I don’t really follow sportsball.” The desk pony’s eyebrows rose and his eyes widened with a small gasp at her nonchalant pronouncement. Did I say something wrong? Surely not following big huffball teams isn’t that controversial?

“You don’t like hoofball?” The clerk’s obvious discomfort melted away as he focused on a topic he liked as opposed to the strange mare in front of him. “That’s a travesty! The Flyers have been having an amazing season, especially since they’re all pegasi playing an earth pony sport.” The clerk leaned in. “Though if I had to bet on a team I’m going to stick to my roots you know? The Flyers might be cool and all, but we need this win if we want a chance to get to the big league!”

Swift waited for him to pull back across the desk and into his chair before she continued speaking. “you have fun with your betting then. I have a train I need to get to.” She then ducked her head down to grab the case and escape the conversation.

“You’re going to the station? I know where that is! It’s really simple. You just take a left out the door and follow Main Street down to where it ends in the giant brick train station. It’s impossible to miss!” He exclaimed.

With her teeth now firmly clamped around the case’s carry handle she merely made a somewhat positive sounding grunt of affirmation before she walked out of the building and went left. Does he speak so much all the time? Surely that has to get exhausting at some point.

Like the talkative clerk pony had said, finding the main thoroughfare was as simple as heading left out of the building, but that didn’t mean she would lower her guard. She was alone here, far from home, and far from help if anything turned sour on her.

As soon as she stepped into the loose crowd on the sidewalk before her, Swift became nigh indistinguishable from any other pegasi headed towards the station. It was a Sunday, so the sidewalks weren’t as packed as they might’ve been at this hour on most days. Many ponies were either off of school or had a later start to work than the usual 9:00 that had become standard over the last hundred years. She stayed near the edges of the walk facing the street and began pony watching on her way north.

Down on the street Swift saw solo and teams of earth ponies pulling expensive carriages and flat transport carts full of goods to destinations unknown. Several unicorns and pegasi were cleaning the massive glass windows of several skyscrapers. Tourists of all races walked into the city’s interior from the direction she was headed, probably after having arrived on an overnight or early morning train. She even caught a few pegasi glancing at her, confused as to why she wasn’t flying to her destination.

About a half hour of walking later Swift found herself looking at a squat steel-walled building with an impressive glass semicircle ceiling. A large set of wide stone steps led up to a set of massively oversized brass plated doors that led to the interior of the station.

Swift glanced to either side of the intersection before she crossed the street — as any normal pony should — made her way up the stairs, and stepped through the impractically sized threshold. The inside wasn’t grand necessarily, the space was mostly taken up by overhead bridges that led to the various play and a few small waiting benches. The platforms had safety rails with gaps only where the passenger cars would open, and access to them was regulated by a ticketing counter off to the left of the doors.

Swift walked over to the line for an elderly mare with bifocals perched at the end of her muzzle. After only a few minutes of waiting it was Swift’s turn to purchase tickets.

“Next,” the mare said. Swift walked forward to the low counter and put down her case. “Destination, name, departure timeframe, and number of luggage items.”

“Whichever station is closest to Cloudsdale at the moment, Swift Wing, as soon as possible, one.” Swift replied. She appreciated the directness of the question, there wasn’t any subtleties that she could miss or convey wrong.

“Purpose for visit?”

Swift blinked and paused for a moment at the request. “I… am going there to look for an old friend of mine that I lost contact with.”

“A personal matter then. Let me take a look at the scheduled departures for something that might work for you dear.” The mare opened a large binder full of train schedules and riffled through to an earlier section. “There’s a train leaving in two hours for Canterlot. From there you can make a switch to reach Ponyville station. Cloudsdale should be fairly nearby; just ask the weather team or the mayor about it, they should know the way. Does that work for you?”

It’s less direct than I would’ve liked, but it gets me to Cloudsdale and that’s what matters. “It will suffice.”

“Okay… your total for the two tickets is one hundred and twenty seven bits.”

Swift grimaced momentarily before she smoothed out her features and reached back into her saddlebags to grab the requisite bits. I’ll probably have to rebalance my saddlebags later if I want to fly at all well after this. That’s half of the crystal bits I have to live on until I can get a job. At least I still have the gold ones. “…here you go.”

“Alright, step on through.”

Swift left quickly for the platform indicated on her ticket, more than happy to stop talking with ponies for a while. Once she got to her platform she put down her case and sat down on one of the benches to wait for her train to arrive.

Swift sat there, alone, for almost an hour without interruption, until her small island of isolation was popped by two stallions coming to sit on either side of her at the bench. “Hello there stranger! Could we interest you in our new product?”

Sweet Saviors no. Please no.

Author's Note

Have a good Night!

Chapter 6 - My Shadow’s The Only One That Walks Beside Me

Humoring Flum and Flom while waiting for the train was almost physically painful for Swift. She couldn’t brush them off by claiming to be busy, as she clearly hadn’t been before they showed up, she couldn’t walk away, as there wasn’t much of anywhere to go, and she wasn’t successful in ignoring them either, because they were far too persistent for a duo of wandering salespoies. With all of her usual tactics for avoiding conversation defenestrated, Swift went along with their nonsense about their garbage product.

After enduring about eighty minutes of what amounted to an interactive infomercial for literal snake oil, the train arrived. The train had fourteen cars following the engines, each painted a different yet equally vibrant color except for the last three, which were painted in mottled browns and forest greens. The engine itself was black with white detailing, which made the smoke stack look like it was actually a cloud of smoke itself despite its long and tubular design. The mechanical eyesore would be visible for miles away if some saboteur or spy so much as glanced in its direction.

Smoke and steam quickly filled up the upper reaches of the station as passengers started to get off onto the platform on the other side of the train. It took only a few minutes for everypony to disembark into the now quite warm station and for the doors on her side to open. Swift looked back at the two stallions packing up their display, her mild irritation showing in the few creases along her muzzle. “If you want to make a sale, I’d recommend starting with a product that isn’t such an obvious scam,” Swift paused, “you should probably also change your names while you’re at it.”

Her admonishment completed, Swift looked through the slowly dispersing cloud of steam to the now accessible car before her and stepped aboard. She immediately went through the passage to the car on the left, headed someplace further back on the train. It may not be private, but she could probably get at least half of a booth to herself.

A few cars later Swift slumped into a thinly padded bench and started rotating the number lock on her briefcase.

“Howdy there, mind if I sit here?” Said some yellowish earth pony.

“No.” Why is it that these ponies can’t keep well enough alone? Can’t he see that I’m not sat here working to start a conversation, that this car has so many other open seats? Whatever, maybe if I say nothing he won't either.

***

Bright Mac sat down across from the young mare fiddling with her briefcase and pulled a leftover apple out of his saddlebags to munch on. It was going to be a long ride, and he wasn’t going to let good apples go to waste.

As he ate his apple the mare pulled out some fancy looking machine and inserted several sheets of paper into it. A few more ponies tried to join them in the booth, but whenever they got close the mare would lean closer to the machine before they saw and they would shuffle off to somewhere else in the car. By the work she was doing she seemed to him like the type of pony he saw during his yearly visits to Ponyville’s town hall to pay taxes. The problem with that was that she had the physique of somepony who regularly did hard labor, or at the very least worked out quite often but not quite as often as that one crazy pegasus in town.

Now that he thought about it, there were several things off with the mare if she was a paper pusher.
From the title bit he’d seen of her she seemed to be in an eternally foul mood, but all the ponies he’d seen working desk jobs seemed to be radiant at all hours of the day, including anytime before the afternoon. Periodically she would glance up and about the cabin at the other ponies before the speed that the clacking happened at would increase for a short time. She seemed to be almost as twitchy and paranoid as the few ponies from the scout company attached to his unit in the reserves just a few years ago.

The most confounding feature of the mare though, was her cutie mark. He’d gotten a glimpse of it when he had walked over to where he was sitting now. It showed a pair of white wings but with the feathers replaced with fire. The real question he supposed, was why a pegasus with a cutie mark relating to flight was riding in the second to last passenger car of a slow train headed to Canterlot.

Canterlot, capital of Equestria, home of the Princess and the nobility, and also where he was reporting to because of the recent mobilization of the reserves. He was supposed to get three months of intensive training at the base of the castle while the commanders were brought up to speed on modern tactics in the castle. Because of course us normal folk have to live in a makeshift camp away from view while the colts of the nobility sit around in classrooms in the castle.

Bright wished he could get his mind off of his imminent separation from his family for a little while with a book or a conversation. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any real entertainment for the journey, and none seemed to be forthcoming from anypony nearby. His saddlebags had only had room for samples from the orchard and all of the quadruplicate forms that the businesses out in Manehattan wanted back from him when he was packing. So Bright got to guessing what the mare across from him really did for a living.

Could she be a farm owner, or perhaps sompepony who who works as a manager? I suppose she could also do that work in one of those new factories Manehattan is known for. That would explain the money. Maybe she owns one of those gym places. Perhaps a small but popular bakery, like Sugarcube Corner? Probably not, the Cakes are good hardworking folk but they don’t have the kind of money to go buying fancy magic bags…

Eventually Bright got bored of just guessing what the mare’s occupation was and decided to get an answer straight from the pony’s mouth. “Say, what’re ya working on? I don’t see fancy stuff like what you’ve got there all too often.”

“A report.”

“What about? You one of them university students tryin’ to become a doctor? Doctoring is good work.”

“No, I’m not writing a doctoral dissertation. The report is to my boss, about my recent work for them.”

“So what d' you do that you’d be writing a report on that fancy machine there while on this train?”

“I’m an… accountant. I hold others to their accounts”

“So you’re a banker?”

“No. I’m an accountant.”

“Well if you ‘account’ for ponies in Manehattan, what’re you doing on a train to Canterlot?”

“Visiting someo-pony I care about.”

“Where’re you goin’, then?”

“Canterlot, Ponyville, Cloudsdale.”

“You’re goin’ to Ponyville? Have you ever been before?”

“Just passing through, and no”

“Tha’s a shame, Ponyville’s a great place full of great ponies. While you’re there you should go to the local sweets shop. It’s impossible to miss.”

“I’ll consider it.”

Neither of them spoke up much for the rest of the ride up to Canterlot, and every time that they did have a conversation it would always go in the same way. Bright would ask a question of the mare, who he eventually learned was named Swift Wing, and she would respond in unsociably short sentences.

***

Hours later, and well past the moonrise, Swift stepped off the train into Canterlot station to wait for the line that her ticket called “The Friendship Express”. When the train did arrive Swift learned it was somehow even more conspicuous than the previous train she had been on. "Somehow, I'm not even surprised" Swift sighed.

Author's Note

The scope of this set of chapters changed significantly after the interlude was finished, but I am confident in the content of the next three.

Anyways, as always, have a good Night!

Interlude 2 - My Head's Above the Rain, the Roses

It was a day like any other in Canterlot castle: carpets were being cleaned, Celestia’s midday cake was being prepared, and Cadence had just finished wrangling her hair into her preferred style. Just in time, Celestia should be headed to the private dining hall about now. If I leave now I might even be able to get there before her for once.

Cadence set her hairbrush down on her small vanity and stepped out into the hall of private rooms. There weren’t any guards around in the private hall, and even as Cadence walked through the castle she only saw a few guards posted around the most important doors. It was the quiet hour before the main parts of the palace became a public space filled with tours and petitioners, but it was still possible for her to come across some other important pony.

While Cadence didn’t inherently dislike all of the nobility in Canterlot, the vast majority of the nobles she had met had done nothing to dispense with her preconceptions about them. The high nobles flaunted their wealth and prestige before the masses with their ostentatious mansions and ornamental clothing. Their backgrounds varied, but were mostly filled with rich and famous ancestors closely tied to Equestria’s founding.

The common nobles were far more numerous than their counterparts and had far more variety in where they came from. Some were wealthy business owners, others were branch families kept by other nobles to keep their bloodlines ‘pure’, and yet others were led by successful generals and other ponies from the EDF. In any other city they would have made up the middle class, but because it was Canterlot, home of the monarchy, they were called nobles. Still, even if she was fond of some of the ponies she could run into, Cadence didn’t want to meet somepony like Blueblood and spoil her mood before breakfast.

Cadence slipped through an unlocked door and into her favorite side hall. To either side of her were paintings of ponies’ heads expanded to nearly four times the size they must have been in life and rendered in exquisite detail. This hall and the one across from it were full of similar portraits, and from what Celestia told her, some of the paintings on display were made before even the formation of Equestria.

While she was no art expert, she could appreciate the skill and care put into the pieces hung in the halls. If she focused she could sense some of the emotional energy that the artists had poured into their works. While she knew most of the portraits didn’t radiate any energy, the few that did told a story all their own that only she could see.

Perhaps sometime I should go through all of these and describe what they feel like. It would certainly be a more interesting project for my free time than studying Minotaurian etiquette and politics.

As she continued to walk down the hall, she came to a corner and stopped abruptly. Down near the end of the magically extended path, Cadence saw Celestia standing before the most recent addition to the collection. With a concerned frown now adorning her face, Cadence walked over to her teacher and guardian’s side and sat down.

She watched as the ethereal ball within Celestia’s chest swirled with greys, blues, and faint traces of green. The core wasn’t the only thing she saw either; several long spikes extended outward toward other ponies on Celestia’s mind. There were four prominent spikes that she could see right now: the usual spike that pointed to somewhere traversing the sky, one pointing to the now forbidden storage room, one pointed to her, while the final one pointed straight toward Griffonstone.

Cadence had only had her alicorn powers for a short time but already she could guess what some of them were telling her. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the source of Celestia’s concern, “It’s the Griffons, isn’t it, auntie?” She knew that the emperor had been building up his forces and trying the borders for a while now, but what made her certain was how her adoptive aunt was acting. She had never seen Celestia so pensive and distant when she was in private with her.

Celestia looked down at her with a whisper of a smile, “You are correct my dearest Cadence.” The smile melted off Celestia’s face as quickly as it had appeared and settled down into an even more neutral visage. It was the face she used when mediating disputes in court, or when hearing out the petitions of the high nobles in court. It was unnerving to be on the wrong end of the princess’s indifference, but before she could comment, Celestia continued, “but it is more than just a simple provocation on the borders of our allies this time. Emperor Grover has committed to an invasion.”

Cadence gulped, her mouth suddenly dry. Celestia had just left unsaid who the young emperor had declared war on. She just told me that Grover was invading some of the Zebrican polities, but we both know that there’s still a significant portion of his army on this continent. He has his own distinct civilian policing force. He probably doesn’t need that many soldiers to staff the empire’s border fortresses, but that would mean— “we’re at war. Aren’t we.”

Celestia let her statement linger for a moment before she responded. “Yes, Equestria is once more at war.”

Cadence silently looked back up to Celestia and then over to the portrait before them. “There is going to be a meeting of the general staff of the army shortly after our morning meal. I would like for you to be there with me,” Celestia said.

It was thoughtful of her to let Cadence not show up to the meeting; she knew that Cadence didn’t like to be involved with even the idea of war. On the other hoof though, she didn’t like the idea of spending even less time with her aunt than she already was. After Sunset was dragged through the mirror, Cadence could only watch as Celestia buried herself in work to paper over her feelings. If Cadence wasn’t there to talk or spend time with her, she worried that Celestia would only pull further into herself.

“I’ll stay with you after breakfast, auntie. Ever since my primary studies finished I haven’t been able to be with you outside of the important meetings with the Boredom Brigade.”

Celestia smiled at Cadence’s jest and draped a wing over her barrel. “You’re as lively as ever my dear Cadence. Come, let’s get food into you before our meetings today. It’s never good to do important work while hungry.”

As they stepped out, Cadence took one last glance at Sunset’s face on the wall. Stay safe bacon hair, wherever you are.

***

Luna glanced at the new paper as it appeared in a golden flash atop her travel desk. Perhaps now we will receive some reinforcements Luna thought as she swiped up the scroll with a wing. She had sent a letter to her sister almost the week before asking for her help in getting ponies into the EDF, but she had heard nothing back. She had expected that letter to show up days ago.

As soon as she had learned of the griffin raids into their territory she had charged off to lead the Equestrian Defense Force in battle. She didn’t trust the noble brats to lead Equestria's armies, not when the houses were already as powerful as they otherwise were. If she wasn’t there to oversee them they would probably have already been threatening each other as opposed to the enemy. Unfortunately, the nobility composed the entirety of the officers, because they were literate. She’d have to work on changing that issue soon, as soon as this border war ended she’d use the current budget surplus to fund a few new programs.

It seemed to her as if Tia had started to pretend that she didn’t even exist some of the time, and her lapses only seemed to grow longer. Luna had even, to some extent, hoped that she would fade into the background of Equestrian life as their nation developed. She didn’t feel comfortable around other ponies. She’d once heard somepony call it paranoia, but was it paranoia if there were actually people that were out to get her? The only ponies she wasn’t concerned about were her family, and Tia was the only one that she was certain was still alive.

It had only been just over one hundred years since they had founded Equestria on the figurative ashes that Discord had left behind from his rule, and already Celestia had started to forget her. What dose that say about us — about me?

Luna turned to look down at her shadow flickering in the dim torchlight, “What do you think Moonie? Should we talk to Tia about it, or do we wait?” Her shadow didn’t answer that night, or any other night during thecampaign. Only a few short decades later, though, that would no longer be true.

***

Emperor Grover unrolled the scroll that had just been brought in and frowned. The campaign was… proceeding. They were able to maintain their talonhold on the new acquisitions on the continent and had begun to dig in. His attache to the yaks had reported that they had begun their march South and that they hadn’t encountered any resistance yet.

All of that was good news, but the collators had saved the best for last. Which, he admitted to himself, was probably just their own version of a memento mori. Although for them it is probably more a reminder that there is always a second side to the coin than a, “remember death” message.

Unfortunately, the report continued, they were losing too many ships to gain an overwhelming advantage over the Equestrians. Their shipyards had more capacity than their Equestrian competitors, but it seemed that some third party was sinking their ships with some unknown explosive magic. On top of their maritime troubles, his disgraced escapee brother had started a rebellion in the lowlands. It wasn’t a major concern at present — they hadn’t even sent a single assassin yet — but he would divert one of the new armies to the region from the frontlines nonetheless.

Grover re-rolled the scroll and steepled his talons underneath his beak. It wasn’t a disaster by any means, but it seemed that he’d be doing a little more work than he had hoped to be doing by this point. He stepped off of his throne with ease and walked over to his study, an aura of confidence radiating from him as he saluted his guards.

The slow pace of the yaks was irritating, and Glade’s popularity with the farmers was concerning, but this new enemy had caught his interest. It wasn’t just anyone who would dare to start hostilities with him.

Author's Note

Have a great Night!
No fools from me. This time.

Chapter 7 - My Dreams, They Aren’t As Empty As My Conscience

“The Friendship Express? Is that supposed to be a joke? Even if I wanted to make friends here — and I don’t — this car is deserted.” Swift mumbled before slouching further back into the plush upholstery.

Except for those two noisome imbeciles snogging in the back. Her traitorous mind whispered.

That was the worst truth of Equestria, she’d found: the only way to ever truly be alone was to seek out a dark, windowless, room and lock yourself inside it. Even then she didn’t trust some rapacious pony-meeter not to suddenly teleport into her little pocket of sanity and color it in headache-inducing pastel colors. It hadn’t happened yet, but she’d already put a copper on it happening to her eventually. Practically, that copper would go nowhere because she could only bet with herself, but it was the principle that mattered.

“They could’ve called this the Iron Po-“ Swift cut herself off to cover her ears as the screeching of the brakes overwhelmed her senses. I’ve made it to another stop on my grand tour of Equestria’s railway systems. Woo. Swift thought from her new position underneath the table.

Swift couldn’t have cared less about the town. Nothing in Ponyville reminded her of home like the little skyscrapers of Manehattan, and there wasn’t any ancient historical architecture like in Canterlot that gave it any cultural or historical value. The place was just some random farm town that sprung up along a railway leading somewhere actually important. None of the streets were paved, not even with cobblestones. The only things that redeemed it in her eyes were that it was easy to get to, near to both Canterlot and supposedly Cloudsdale, had a post office, and a small inn.

That was if the map she had acquired while waiting for the train was to be believed. Which it apparently wasn’t, considering the windows into the supposed inn were all boarded up and a cheery sign nailed to the door proclaimed that the property had been sold to somepony over a month ago. Swift had stopped reading after it became clear business there was on indefinite hold. It’s too early for this nonsense. I can’t even sleep on a cloud because this bloody briefcase doesn’t have the right enchantments.

What is even the point of having this enchanted if I can’t even take it places without sculpted clouds? More things to report back tomorrow I suppose. Swift slowly swept her gaze across the small plaza and started walking down one of the narrower, less tread, paths. There weren’t any other establishments where she could stay the night, at least according to the map, and she didn’t want to rely on it any more than she already had.

There were many houses on the street lined up in little rows. They were painted in bright and often clashing colors that probably looked decent during the day, but just made the atmosphere depressing and bleak at night. It was an aesthetic that only really worked when there were other creatures around to liven up the scene. She noticed that there was a bit of space between the dwellings and stopped at the entrance of one of the not-quite alleyways. Swift poked her head into the gap and looked around a little. She took a few guesses regarding the dimensions of the space and figured the fit would be a little tight, but that that meant she wouldn’t have to worry about getting dirtied by the ground while she slept.

She peered around before she headed toward the gap with the most roof overhanging it. A small single-story house took up one side and an even smaller dark purple house the other. Neither had any windows nearby so she slowly backed herself into the alley. Swift decided to set her alarm early — it wouldn’t be good for her if somepony found her wedged in between the houses and decided to do something about it.

***

Swift woke to the sound of rain and the sight of a young stallion hitched to a cart and panting as puddles slowly formed in the street. A young stallion that was looking at her. Why didn’t you wake me before that pony saw me?

Wake-up parameters were for time designated “moonset” reminder – call sunrise – not for when another organic is detected in the vicinity.

Well then update the bloody parameters! Swift was definitely going to send those insipid Culombian coders back home a letter explaining that their "AI" was behaving like a brain dead literalist. Swift rolled her eyes and picked up her case and made to bargain with the red earth pony.

They, however, seemed to have different plans, as with a muttered “eyynope” he began pulling his cart again toward Ponyville’s central square. It took her only a few more moments to extricate herself from the walls but by the time she was out, the pony was already halfway up the road. Swift didn’t have any difficulty catching up to the stallion and pondered her options. He didn’t even so much as look over at her as they walked on through the rain that was getting the rest of her as wet as her left side was when she woke up.

When they made it to the market, Swift’s eyebrow lifted by a barely perceptible amount as she took in the scene before her. At least twelve small stalls were in various stages of being set up around the circle despite it being only a little before six in the morning. There were stalls for produce and products, with more coming in, although everything being sold here seemed to be things that wouldn’t be sold in a store or didn’t have a store to sell them, like all of the produce she saw around. Clearly either the misinformation is strong in Canterlot, or whoever made that railway travel guide was very biased, because I could call these ponies many things, but I don’t think “lazy” would be one of them.

Swift looked at the pony she’d been following and saw a couple of the others either nodding to him or looking away at the ground. Odd, but unimportant. Either he’s a polarizing figure or something happened. Probably the latter. She could see that all he was selling were apples, but monocropping didn’t seem like something Equestria had fazed out yet based on the other presumed farmers around. There were different varieties to choose from though, so they probably weren’t going to collapse the local soil ecosystem entirely. Then again, magic. Magic everywhere…

Swift tossed a silver bit at the apple farmer, more than enough to buy a couple of the sparking apples, but she oonly grabbed the largest fruit she could see. She winked exaggeratedly at the pony and walked off into the weak morning light. She had a few hours to burn before the town hall opened.

***

The Ponyville clerk was late by half an hour, which left Swift in an awkward position sat at the front of a nonexistent line waiting for service. Because what would a society like this be without lazy bureaucrats. A glare flashed across Swift’s face while she did her best to stamp out the irritation. Eventually though, somepony wearing glasses frames stepped behind the counter and waved her over.

“My deepest apologies, A staff meeting went quite a bit longer than anticipated. Please call me Mrs. Papyrus. How may I help you?” The dark orange earth pony greeted her. Mrs. Papyrus had a small, almost knowing, smile on her muzzle.

Swift resisted the urge to wipe the smile off the mare’s face just as she had done so, so many times before with so many other ponies. “I’m looking to get to Cloudsdale, and was told that Ponyville was the closest town to it at the moment,” Swift paused for a moment as the mare nodded, “Could you provide me directions to get there?”

“Hrm, well. I don’t have that information, but the weather ponies definitely would. And the mailmare… might.” The mare said somewhat unconfidently.

“Where can I find those ponies?”

“The weather team is out clearing up the rain clouds that came in from the Everfree overnight. Or at least they should be. I don’t bother with keeping them all in line, that’s not my job. They probably won’t be back for around a few hours. Ditzy should be doing the rounds about now too.”

Swift groaned internally at the inconvenience Ponyville had already made for her. First it was the inn, then the market stallion, and now this. “Is there any chance that you could provide me the usual route that Ditzy takes while delivering parcels?”

“Sure… but be warned, she doesn’t have an official route, and anything you hear from me is more compiled from reports than any knowledge of her whereabouts on my part.”

Reports?

***

It would be sufficient for her logs to say that Ditzy Doo proved incapable of providing accurate directions. Swift had flown for long enough to reach the outer edges of the morning's storm clouds before she randomly came across one of the weather ponies she had heard about half heartedly bucking a grey rain cloud into nonexistence.

“Stupid Everfree, with its stupid uncontrolled weather, and stupid mayor making us dregs work overtime to clean this mess up.” The pegasus mumbled as Swift closed with him from behind. “At least we’re getting paid this time.”

Swift switched the hoof she carried the case in and coughed into her now free hoof to get the other pony’s attention. “Could you point me in the direction of Cloudsdale? I appear to be rather lost,” Swift said. The proclamation tinged with the same affected matter-of-fact tone she would have used if she had said the sky was blue or that swords could cut pens.

***

Several hours later, at least a quarter of which she spent backtracking to Ponyville, Swift finally flew into Cloudsdale. Surely there’s somewhere in this Saviors blasted city that I can rent a room. Surely. There has to be. I refuse to sleep below this city like some unintelligent vagrant.

Swift didn’t have to search too long before she found a place renting rooms. The only downside was that it was on the bad side of town. At least as much as anything could be on a side of town in a place where the city was constantly shifting in all three dimensions. And as much as a bad side of town could exist in a place where the undesirables were offboarded to the less prestigious flying cities with clockwork regularity.

It was a wonder to Swift how anything got done in Cloudsdale when the positions of every single location except the few buildings in the center were in constant flux. Yet somehow, commerce seemed nigh unimpeded. “One small room for the night? That’ll be twelve silvers.” Except for all of the prices being down because of the war. Cloudsdale seemed to have been hit harder by the call up that farmer on the train mentioned than the other places she had visited so far. Swift couldn’t complain when she nodded and hoofed over the bits though, she had limited currency to spend before she would be forced to get a proper job and blend in with society.

“If you break anything in the room you will be paying for it. Plus interest. Understand?”

“Yes,” Swift acknowledged before she continued in plain disregard for the stern tone the stallion used, “and before I go, which direction is 273 Snowflake Lane? I’m looking for Bow Hothoof.”

Author's Note

Have a good Night!

Chapter 8 - Bow My Head Keep My Heart Slow

The desk jockey had thrown her out before she could even ask for a refund. The only upside was that they had shoved a paper into her hooves as they forced her back onto the street. “Touchy subject much?” Swift groused. She looked down at what she found to be the day’s newspaper and began walking deeper into the city.

I suppose there isn’t much question about what happened to them around here, Swift thought to herself after reading the title of the front page. Another Family Torched by the Blackflame Butcher - Fourth in Two Months! There was a helpful notice directing her deeper into its papery folds if she wanted more information than just a sensationalized headline.

She tucked the paper beneath her wing and picked up her pace. She’d have plenty of time to do some light bedtime reading once she had a place to stay the night — someplace slightly safer than an alley in a city apparently housing a fire-happy murderer.

Luckily for her, Swift didn’t have to go much further into the ringed districts of the city to find another inn. This time, she avoided mentioning who she was looking for before she got her room key and locked herself into the relative safety of her small room.

It was a small space, not much larger than her room back in Thestralia, with a small bed of clouds tucked against the far wall for a bed and a much more solid desk beside it. Swift ran a hoof over the desk and pressed down slightly before nodding to herself. Moments later she laid her case on the table and flopped onto the cloud bed to start informing herself about the local situation.

***

Gust fidgeted at his desk in the Westerly Inn. Business had been incredibly slow over the last few months. Now that the rates for the trains had been up for a while as well, he hadn’t seen many ponies who needed an inn to stay in. When boss finds out what happened last night I’m going to be fired, and if that mare presses charges for me stiffing her refund he’s not going to stick up for me! “I’ll be paying out of hoof for all of it! I don’t have that kind of money! I need to find her!”

He rushed out onto the street and looked both ways before darting off in the direction he’d seen the mare go the night before. He twitched at the slightest sounds in the early morning light, anypony would, he rationalized.

As the shadows shortened he only felt more exposed, as if he were stepping into a chimera’s den, but there was nowhere for him to hide in the wide streets and empty space between buildings. He wasn’t doing anything illegal or that could suggest he had any knowledge of anything to do with the case on everypony’s minds. If anything, his nervous behavior was far more suspicious than he thought it was, or so the guardsponies that apprehended him believed.

***

Swift was sat at a small table in a tea shop and brooded. She didn’t sulk, because sulking was for people who’d given up on improving their situation, and she hadn’t quite given up yet. She’d only mostly given up.

She’d been asking ponies from almost noon to dusk about the whereabouts of the missing agent’s house to little avail. All she had been able to find was which quarter of the city the street was supposed to be in and nopony had bothered to be more specific about where it was before bolting off.

Swift frowned down into her now cold tea while she mulled over her options for moving forward. She’d exhausted essentially all of the asocial options available to her well before she’d ordered some tea at The Pond, and most of the social ones too, if she was being honest with herself. Whoever the killer was had apparently made it known that ponies connected to the agent and his family were next on the hit list. Which was inconvenient for her in a multitude of ways — mainly that nopony wanted anything to do with either her or the guard and that there was now more than likely a target on her back.

“Hmm. Maybe I can use that,” swift said to herself.

“Use what?” Asked an elderly-sounding pony from behind her. She’d had her scanners turned off or down to the levels of the average pony, content that the wouldn’t be assaulted in a brightly lit square with numerous witnesses. She now came to assess that that was a poor decision and one that should not be repeated anytime soon.

“A drink.”

“You’ve had a drink. For quite a while too I might add.”

“It doesn’t taste that good. Barely worth the coppers.”

“It can’t be that bad, surely.” He said as he slipped into the seat across from her. “A sip, if I may?”

“I won’t stop you.”

“That’s not a yes.” He said, in a mildly disapproving tone.

“Yes, then. You may drink the remains of my tea.”

He moved his hoof across the table and peered down into her cup. “Nevermind. You’ve the right of it. The black tea here isn’t nearly as good as their other offerings.” Swift watched as he drank the liquid anyway before he looked back at her. “So why’d you choose it?”

“The tea? Is it supposed to be common knowledge?”

“I’ve been all over Equestria in my life and not once have I found a shop that sells good black tea. But it’s a well-worn joke here that the Pond intentionally gets the worst product available.” He glanced down at the cup and then back to her. “You’re not from around here, but you look like you can handle yourself.”

Swift didn’t like what her newest acquaintance was saying nor how he was saying it. He’d pegged her as an outsider just by her drink. What was worse was that he was clearly building up to something more important based on his latter statement. Silence was Swift’s answer to the stallion’s statement.

“I’ve heard you’re looking for whistles’ house. 273 Snowflake Lane. I can give you directions.” He whispered.

The offer was everything she wanted. Despite what she would lead him to believe even just poking around for a couple of minutes would give her enough for a detailed report — probably. The only issue was the highly suspicious nature of the offer. Sure, he’d leaned in and whispered, but that was nothing compared to what he knew he was offering.

Ever since she had made it to Cloudsdale she had made it clear to everypony around her that she was very interested in

Was the old stallion in front of her the arsonist? Probably not, she reasoned, but she’d been wrong before. “And in return?”

“Once you’re done you leave Cloudsdale by sunrise tomorrow.”

“That’s not much time.”

“You won’t need much, just a glance at it should be enough to give you everything you want.”

“Well, if you say so,” she lied — fully intending to stay as long as she pleased, “you’re the local expert.”

“Follow me, then.” He took off immediately and barely waited for her before making off toward the outer reaches of Cloudsdale. As she followed, she couldn't shake a mild undercurrent of guilt -- she was supposed to be starting fresh on a new, better, life and not recreating her old self with an Equestrian coat of paint.

The city was massive. Not quite on the scale of Manehattan, but close, it also grew far denser the closer to the center of the city one got. The stallion, who she hadn’t bothered to learn the name of, stopped suddenly in the air and turned back to her. Swift tensed for a fight but kept her preparations hidden while he talked.

“Alright. Here’s where I’m leaving you. If you follow this row of houses down two intersections and take a right, the place you’re looking for will be the third house on the right side of the road. It’s impossible to miss.” He said, pointing in the direction of the house with his hoof.

Swift kept track of him as she passed in front of his stationary form and noticed his eyes following her from within the craggy confines of his wrinkled face. As soon as she was past him, they quickly parted ways with him moving toward the city center and her to what she could only now describe as a hole and not a home.

There was still a mailbox outside and a front path leading from the street, but they no longer had anything to attach to. The entire scene was cordoned off with marking streamers that did little to hinder her from getting a closer look at what had happened to the home. The paint on the mailbox was faded and peeling from exposure without regular maintenance, and the color had dropped out of the paving clouds. Of what had once been a house, there was no trace.

She’d had photographs of the home from the outside and the only trace that it had ever been where she stood — besides the city infrastructure — was the perfect circle in the clouds where it should’ve been. No fluffiness existed along the edge, making the hole look closer to a marble carving than anything else. When she stepped in for a closer look she found the circle's edge cracked and crumbled under her weight. The part near her hoof smudged on in a thin white smear like chalk, or soot, she thought.

The paper had talked at length about the arsonist but not what they had been burning. Swift had suspected that it was just the ponies that were being burned because clouds couldn’t be burned. Evidently, though, whatever the arsonist was using for their attacks was quite capable of combusting with magically condensed clouds. Nothing she knew of was capable of such a feat, not anything Thestralia had produced and certainly nothing that they had caught wind of either.

If some nobod-pony, it’s always pony around here, has the skill and equipment to make something this dangerous, I should think they would’ve been found by now; unless the guards are incompetent. That’s always a possibility. She thought while gazing at what was more than likely the final resting place of the pony she was looking for.

***

In the time it took for dusk to become night proper Swift had searched around for anything more of substance for her report, yet she had not found more than extra samples of the burned clouds. She only retreated from the scene when she had noticed herself becoming drowsy and bleary.

Despite her time at the agent’s home, and now quite blatant connection, Swift wasn’t attacked. No matter how many dubious unwatched corridors she went down as a means to return to her hotel room there was not a sign of anypony following her. Nopony tried to drag her into the darkness, and by the time she slid the deadbolt on her door into place the world around her had lapsed into silence.

The thin walls of the inn’s rooms weren’t made to keep sound from permeating through them, yet still she heard nothing. She decided that her current privacy was enough to send out a preliminary report and got to writing.

Not a quarter hour later, Swift heard two sets of hooves moving up the hallway toward her. She paused and slowly hid her transmitter disguised as a typewriter behind her opened case on the desk while hoping whoever it was couldn’t hear her. Her report was in the middle of being sent via satellite connection, and she wouldn’t have another opportunity for another month if she shut it down now.

The hoofsteps moved down the corridor, slowing at each door before moving closer. Swift climbed into the bed and rested her head on the pillow covering her typewriter. 63%

“Room 112. This is the one,” Came a voice from the other side. Not a second later the door shuddered as a hoof knocked twice.

With fake grogginess, Swift got up and pulled the door wide open. They were guards, or they looked like guards anyway. “Miss Swift Wing? We need you to come with us. It’s for your protection,” said the second guard.

Swift sat down and rubbed her eyes with her hoof, the other still hidden behind the door and prepared to strike. “Why d’you want me, and where’d we be going?” She asked. 70%

“We want to bring you in because you’ve put yourself at risk of being targeted by the group attacking ponies with connections to the Whistles household. If you allow us, we’ll take you to the station for an interview.”

Group. If the guard found me, likely, they have too. I knew I was being visible before, but this level of exposure is untenable. “And when are we leaving?”

“Now. Preferably. The night is the safest time to move for all of us. Less chance they see you, and us two with you.” Said the first guard.

“Well,” she paused 83%, “if you give me a minute to pack my bags I’ll be right out,” Swift said before she closed the door.

“She changed tune pretty quickly. Think we’ll get anything out of her?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. She’s smarter than the last two though. She’s coming with us.”

Author's Note

Apologies that this is later than my more recent posts. I was out with family on a trip and away from my computers.

It's 1:01 AM where I am after final editing.
z z Z
(-_-)---<

Chapter 9 - I’ll Fail You Time And Again

She hadn’t had time to finish the upload. It was a bare thing, only a few percent hadn’t been sent. It was enough that Ability probably wouldn’t get annoyed at her but still not the full report, which could reflect poorly on her depending on what happened next and what wasn’t sent.

No matter what went on back home with what she’d sent she was still going to follow the two guards. They were her last realistic potential source of information about the missing spy, Skylark, without finding his actual body. So, despite initially wanting to stay well away from the spotlight, Swift found herself trailing the two stallions deeper into the heart of the city.

The further in that they took her the more obvious it became that the city was old. Where the wide outer rings had been filled with vast sprawling suburbs and the center had been turned into a vast verticalized urban industry and shopping center, the innermost ring of the city was a proper fortress of antiquity. The entire area was surrounded by a curtain wall made from cloud bricks, and on the inside were many buildings built in much the same way spaced out along wide avenues. Many of the buildings were held together by columns, one of the staples of pegasi architecture from before the Hearthswarming event.

What the grand wall had been built to defend against originally was anypony’s guess, but whatever it had been was long gone and now it was merely a prestigious artifact of a bygone age. Their records showed that everything outside of it was built after the founding of Equestria proper, but she was getting ahead of herself — they’d arrived. The two had led her to a small building near the wall that looked to be unused.

“This doesn’t look like a guardhouse, sirs,” Swift said. She knew where the main guard post was from all of the ponies that had given her directions earlier, and the small shed she was looking at was not it.

“I’d be ashamed to live in Cloudsdale if it was,” he joked, “but if you would please step into the building, there are a few things we need to deal with here before proceeding to base.” The guard looked serious, trustable, and as far as she could tell he wasn’t lying, but all of those could be faked.

“After you.” Swift invited. The first stepped inside, and the second guard frowned but didn’t say anything as she followed the first in. The inside of the room was as bare as the outside. Inside was only a small table with a quill in a pot of ink and two floor mats, though they were thankfully of a color other than cloudstone grey.

“Please, sit. I was being a bit vague with the truth before and I apologize for that, but there is much to discuss before we go anywhere.” The stallion said after sitting down. He continued only after she followed the instructions with a politely confused look. “You have been looking around for one Bow Hothoof since last night. You said he was a friend, correct?”

“Um… yes?”

The guard pulled out a small notebook notebook after she answered the first question. That their conversation was going to be recorded wasn’t very surprising to Swift. However, she did find it interesting that the interview wasn’t being conducted at their headquarters.

“Good, good. Now, how did you meet Mr. Hothoof?”

“Oh! We met in school in Manehattan. He was looking to go into medicine while I was going for maths and business.” She replied.

“And you kept in contact…” he gestured for her to elaborate.

“Using the mail. He was always the more social of the two of us, so he’d send the first letter and then I’d send one back and everything took months to arrive.”

“Alright, and did he ever share with you anything that might lead you to believe that he had any enemies? Somepony that might wish him harm?”

Well, at least it’s now a safe assumption that he’s dead.. “There was this group of jocks that bullied us in school, but that stopped after graduation…” she trailed off.

“Anything else? Did he mention any strange behavior or occurrences? Anything at all?”

“Well, now that you mention it. He said that that giant burst of rainbow light was his kid! Isn’t that cool? But he also said that after that he saw some mystery ponies looking about for a few weeks after when he picked his kid up. Say, do you know where she is? I haven’t seen her since she was a foal.” Swift was panicking but she didn’t — couldn’t —let it show. All she had to work with was the last two years' worth of reports from Skylark and her fake but supported background alongside incomplete knowledge of the situation. There was a group of crazies trotting around and setting associates of Bow Hothoof on fire, what seemed like a rather serious quiet investigation into the matter, and massive paranoia from apparently everyone involved.

She was pretty sure she knew the who and the how of the matter, but not the why. And now she was stuck being interrogated by somepony who may or may not have had truth-telling equipment with them.

“Did he describe any of those ponies that he saw?”

“No, not as far as I remember at least.”

“Do you still have the letters that he sent you?”

“Unfortunately, I do not.”

“Alright,” he sighed, “one last question: would you be willing to appear in a court of law to confirm for a jury what you’ve told me?”

“I, um… Maybe? When would that be?”

“We don’t have a firm date, but sometime in the next five years is realistic if the current pace of this investigation keeps up.” He replied with a wry smile.

“I don’t see any reason not to, then. All of my present and future ventures should be well wrapped up by then!”

“Thank you, there’s not many ponies around here that are willing to do the same. Now take this“ —he said while passing her a small steel circlet— “I’ll explain what it is later, but for now you need to keep it somewhere out of sight. I’d suggest that spacial bag you have”

“Can’t I just put it on?”

“No, I’ll explain later. Now follow me, we should be going to headquarters now.”

He didn’t answer my questions. Did he not hear them or does he know something?

In the time it had taken Swift to pack the magical accessory into her briefcase, the first guard, who still hadn’t given her his name yet, had been waiting outside for a while as she worked the locks. As soon as she stepped out he looked at her questioningly to which she just shook her head and sighed. Immediately after, they all took off toward the city center and the guard station within.

***

If she had expected the city guard’s main base of operations in the city to be in any way stylistically distinguishable from the nearby buildings she would’ve been disappointed. The only thing that stood out in the old city district was the governor’s palace which was placed on a layer of clouds above the rest and had clearly sucked out the inspiration from all of the Pegasi architects of the time.

Before she entered the guard center she saw a gleaming bastion of white cloudstone, its pristine exterior maintained not by paint but by the incredible purity of the clouds used in its construction. Massive rows of columns supported four ascending layers of rooms on their scroll-like toppings that eventually gave way to an extensive series of domes and towers. She had only seen a single side of the monumental structure, but it was more than enough to impress her.

Once inside, their little group approached the noticeably long help desk where Swift saw the first guard hoof over his notebook. “Make sure this gets to Bright quietly.” He whispered as they passed. “Con, I’m sure you have more important work to do. Don’t let me keep you from it.”

“Thank you, sir. It was my pleasure to help.” The other guard saluted. “Yeah, more important work—like sleep.”

The first guard chuckled at his colleague’s response while he turned back to Swift. “Please miss, follow me.”

Swift tilted her neck at all the peculiar choices being made but followed anyway. She had already accepted their deals and gone along with them so far, if she backed out now that they were entering the guard post proper it would be highly suspicious, and potentially reason to see her as some sort of collaborator with the arsonists.

They passed through a lightly stained wooden doorway into a hallway leading back past several other rooms with various markings. Some were meeting rooms, others mere office spaces for the various sections. The few rooms she could see into were nothing special, just some desks with a few small trinkets scattered about.

Soon she followed him all the way into the processing room. “Isn’t processing only for criminals? Are you arresting me?”

“Yes and no. We’re only here to keep the facade propped up that you’re actually being arrested in connection with a different case.”

Swift paused for a moment, “And I suppose that’s why we’re in here alone?”

“A good supposition there. I need a few more questions answered before I put you into witness protection and we officially ignore that this ever happened.”

“So you’re going to disappear me?” Swift took a deep breath and let out a long sigh, “okay then. Ask away.”

“Special talent?”

“Stunt flying. Especially where speed and fire are involved.”

“Occupation?”

“Accounting.” The guard looked up and squinted at her. As if he couldn’t quite believe that the bashful young mare in front of him worked a job so far removed from her talent.

“Are you sure about that? You could’ve fooled me.”

“Quite positive”

“Hobbies, and whether anypony knows about them.”

“Music, no. Learning, yes. Magic, no.”

“Magic? Interesting choice of pastime for a pegasus. Anyway, I need to know about your connections, creatures who know you and may be expecting to be able to contact or meet you.”

“None that I’m aware of now that Bow’s… not going to be sending any more letters.”

“None?”

“My family’s all dead, I never made too many friends, and the only one I kept up with is…” she sniffed, “dead. He’s dead too. He’s dead. He died in a fire.” While she had intended to only give up that half-truth and move on she had leaned into the emotional outburst. Sadness and bad memories were running rampant by the time she finished speaking.

“They died in a fire… She died in a fire…” She mumbled, oblivious to the guard attempting to calm her.

“I. I, I. I’m fine. Everything is fine. It's not real.” Swift rasped, more trying to convince herself than the pony in the room.

“Are you… better?” he asked after a moment.

“Yes. Just, give me a second?” She choked out.

“Certainly, take as long as you need. I’ll go bring us some water.” Swift didn’t pay any attention to him. It had been weeks since she had seen anything that wasn’t real. Yet the phantoms of her past, of that moment, kept coming back to her. Whenever an emotion breached the surface there was always a chance that she’d see something — and for a moment she’d be back there.

The people back home had tried to help her, but nobody knew what was wrong. The only thing that they’d settled upon was trying not to provoke the flashes by not bringing up anything related to the fire — of which she was a constant reminder. The hope was that by ignoring her and not triggering the flashes that she might get over whatever the issue was. It hadn’t worked yet.

Before the guard returned, Swift managed to get over the worst of the disorientation but the feelings lingered. “Here, take a glass. You look like you need it.” He had arrived with a small tray carrying two water glasses and a very heavy-looking storm cloud alongside four thin folders.

“It’s very appreciated, good sir.”

“Mind telling me what that was about?”

Swift shuddered. “I’d rather not. I don’t want to think about it.”

“On behalf of Cloudsdale and the ponies investigating the attacks you have my thanks for being truthful throughout this expedited questioning. Please, take out the band I gave you earlier. We have one last thing to finalize.”

The way this works is pretty simple. I’m going to give you a couple of options.” The stallion continued while Swift worked to open her luggage.

“Options?”

“Yes, options. Why is everypony always so surprised about there being options?” He groused. “You get to choose between being a barmare in Las Pegasus, a blacksmith’s apprentice in Vanhoover, or being a weather pony in Appleoosa.” On the table he spread out three file folders and kept one for himself.

Swift quickly browsed the file folders one at a time and then leaned back with a contemplative look. “And the band is going to change me to match with whichever one of these that I choose?”

“That’s correct.”

There’s not much in here that I can use after this situation blows over. Being a barmare would allow her to get some gossip, and being a blacksmith would be a potential in on the Equestrian rearmament effort. But gossip wasn’t what either Ability or the higher-ups sent her here to get, and there were no real prospects for moving up in the world in either of those positions. Becoming a weather pony might allow her to eventually move up the rungs of the civil service, but there was only so high she could go as a foreigner in a backward town in the middle of nowhere like Appleoosa.

She paused while she contemplated her complete lack of experience in any of the offered jobs. Nobody would know anything and doubtless Ability would ask her to do something even slightly less useless with herself. “What’s in the fourth folder?” she asked. She shook her head slightly to refocus and shove the emotions out of her thoughts.

“It’s your final option, but it comes with some… prerequisites.”

“Go on.”

“You’re going to have to have three things. Proof of Equestrian birth and citizenship, a good-looking photograph, and a sword.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.” He replied, as his tone almost turned the statement into a question.

“What would I be doing?”

“You’d be applying to be an officer in the EDF.”

“I take it this isn’t a typical offering for witness protection.”

“It isn’t, but we’re down on the number of ponies we’re supposed to send to officer training and there are precious few ponies who meet the requirements. All of the elites here have already sent a child and they’re only obligated to send one. Normally we’d see a few more average local recruits, but with the arsonists terrorizing the city nopony wants to leave their families.”

I can admire their dedication to their families, but it puts us on the governmental side of things in a hard spot.”

“Well… I suppose if we need ponies that badly I can lend a helping hoof.”

“How thoughtful of you.” He deadpanned. “Do you have the required items in the bag as well?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. Bring them over and then I can send you on your way.”

The next half hour was spent going over paperwork and getting the circlet enchantment working properly. It was a finicky little thing to set up but it apparently had a perfect record. If they trusted it not to get her killed she supposed she could put some faith in the device. She’d still be keeping a blade with her wherever she went though.

***

“Alright everypony. Before we go in, I’ve been compelled to ask: do any of you have any questions about this operation?”

“Eh? Nope, grandma.” came the only response.

“Is anypony not ready?” She asked. Nopony responded that time, but only because somepony stepped on the previous talker’s hoof. None of them were quite ready yet, but they were workable.

Alright. You twelve, search past the offices near the interrogation rooms. If she’s not there, break into groups of three and spread out. They should still be in there and if they aren’t they won’t have gone far. The rest of you are with me. We’re going to records. This is supposed to be quiet. If there’s only one guard subdue them, but if there’s more or they call for help you retreat. When they wake up the barracks this is done and you scatter. We regroup at the base in three hours. Now move out!” she concluded in a loud stage whisper.

Any bystander would’ve seen the eighteen ponies walk out of the sidestreet and toward the side wall of the guardhouse, but there were no bystanders to see them. The curfew had been in place for over a month, and while it was effective in its purpose, it would not help the guard that night.

***

The mare looked up from her book as several ponies entered the room. They closed the door quickly and made their way to the common room, minimizing the view out onto the shops outside. The few with filled saddlebags made their way into the back while the rest spread out over the room. They may have been fresh recruits, but that didn’t mean that they were dumb enough to be followed back to base.

“I see two fewer ponies here than when we started. What happened?”

As she listened to her subordinates’ retelling of events, she pondered what would come of tonight. They’d successfully stormed the guard headquarters, understaffed and late as it was, with minimal casualties and achieved most of their secondary objectives. Yet they had failed to capture the pony they were after for the second time that night and she was sure that now that they had had ample time to run a search would be no more fruitful.

Their leader was bound to be displeased by their failure, but this setback was a mere annoyance — not something that would derail their plans. A notice would be put out to their contacts elsewhere and they’d find the featherless freak eventually.

Wherever and however they hid.

Author's Note

I ran out of time to write a proper fight scene, so you get the before and after instead. Sorry.

Interlude 3 - Crashing Down the Ancient Roads

She stared up at the small window of her study to the empty candleholder on the sill; it was faintly backlit by the faintest first rays of the sunrise. The way the light shone through the dust in the air and diffused through the room reminded her of the home she’d left in Seaddle. The walls were painted an inoffensive white, the wood floors mostly covered by a rug, and a single window to peer out of took up the far wall. Here though, the chalky paint was yellowed and peeling, the hardwood that wasn’t covered was scratched from too much use and not enough care and the rug was threadbare.

Absently, she peeled a paper off her muzzle and put it back on the folding table before groggily twisting to get the kinks out of her neck and back. After a few stretches, she came back to the desk and looked at what she’d written before succumbing to sleep the previous night.

“Hmm. Why would I make a list of these? Whatever, I need to get going. Adventure waits for no mare!” She exclaimed. “And deadlines even less.” She mumbled immediately afterward while she stuffed everything into her saddlebags.

She picked a dry biscuit out of her bags and nibbled on it as she made her way out of town. There wasn’t much there besides a train station; it was only one of dozens of small towns that had sprung up in the early days of the rail boom and developed into a farming commune. It also happened to be the closest town to the part of the Smokey Mountains she was interested in.

From what she’d read about the range it was the oldest and highest set of peaks in Equestria, and that they were so high that most of the time their peaks were occluded by clouds. There were numerous myths, rumors, and superstitions about the place, but she was here for something else.

Almost 1000 years ago, a fourth race of ponies had swept down from the mountains and invaded Equestria alongside Nightmare Moon. According to records from the time in the Canterlot Museum of History’s collection, they had done so with large armies that were peer to their Equestrian counterparts of the time.

Surprisingly, they had managed to acquire the writings of a few town officials from the areas under occupation, which had led the museum's historians to an interesting conclusion. Somewhere within the poorly explored mountain range were the ruins of a large and developed civilization, with all of the dangers and possibilities that entailed. The hard part would be finding the place, as although the EDF had chased the bat ponies off the continent through the mountains, they had failed in that exact feat. They, and several follow-up expeditions, had searched the forest basin thoroughly and made aerial passes of the peaks on numerous occasions.

So, it was in spite of all the literature and maps of the area showing the hoofhills to be little more than expansive scree fields that Daring Do now found herself flying just there in the Smoky Mountains. She wasn’t a psychologist — she’d barely finished her mandatory schooling before taking off on her first adventure — but she had found out that most ponies rarely looked deeper than the surface. It was a trait that had helped her escape several goon squads, and seen her rise to prominence within the field of freelance archeology.

So when every report about the area labeled the hoofhills of the inner valley as some form of, “obviously devoid of civilization” or the even more plain “empty” she decided to start there. The problem with that, she now grasped, was the expanse she had to search before her foodstuffs ran out. The reports she’d read had generally had barely a hoofnote’s worth of information about the place, and she hadn’t gotten much out of them besides that it was big and empty. Between the forest of towering trees in the basin and the peaks that loomed overhead was a stretch of sloped skree field that extended for over a kilometer out from the jungle before pitching up sharply into snowy areas.

She estimated a point near the middle of the way between the slopes and the forest she set off and quickly assembled a minimal basecamp. “I’m going to skip this part in the book. It doesn’t need to be realistic, it’s going to be labeled as fiction anyway. Nopony reads about the exploits of Daring Do! for the months of research and pleading for funds it takes to even start looking for these places.” She quietly joked to herself.

She slipped on her illusion-revealing goggles and struck a pose, “Hidden city here I come!” She exclaimed.

In the distance, two silhouettes slipped back into the obscuring needles of the forest’s foliage as the grey streak behind the Pegasus faded. “How much would you bet on her finding the ruins, Bramble?”

“If she finds it? Hmm… what’s something so fantastically unlikely that it would never happen without me? Hmm…” she said slyly and looked over at him. “Oh! I know! I’ll set you up with Winter Cascade.”

“You what? You’d do that for me? You’re the best friend ever!”

“Of course I am Moondrop, I’m me.” She said while smiling over at the beaming thestral before her. “Now let’s get back to the village before somebody realizes we left without permission again. I’ll race you!”

***

Zecora looked at her stock of potions with a critical eye and found nothing of note. Every stopper was sealed, none of the potions had started to discolor even slightly, and - most importantly - every vial was labeled and in its place. She had no doubt in her mind as to her abilities with the cauldron, but she always preferred to check them regularly for fouling.

“Where is that forest mare? I hope she is not lost out there.” She said before climbing out of her root cellar. The clearing her house tree resided in was clean and tidy, not showing any evidence of anything passing through. She wasn’t very surprised about the lack of activity though, her cottage wasn’t too far into the forest - relatively speaking - and her wards kept away the stronger monsters. They shouldn’t have had any effect on her newly acquired apprentice though.

“Hmm, I suppose it could not hurt to look for her, and I have been meaning to gather some thistlepop burrs.” She said to herself as she locked the cellar and walked inside. She sauntered to the opposite end of her home and reached behind one of her masks for her gathering bags.

After she confirmed that she had restocked the potions and empty jars she typically carried out for her gathering trips, she stepped out onto one of the paths that led deeper into the forest. While she walked, she listened to the sounds of the forest around her for anything unusual.

The Everfree Forest was a place Zecora had spent many years getting to know, and she knew almost everything about her little territory in the forest. So when the rustling of the underbrush critters faded out near the far reaches of her wards, she took more active account of her surroundings. She didn’t see any raptors under the dense canopy or the distinct flash of white-on-green of a Cockatrice, which meant it was probably something larger. Her magics were designed to disperse attention and interest from her area, but sometimes a few timberwolves or even a manticore found their way in while chasing some larger prey.

She hadn’t reached the area where the thistles grew — a small hill of rubble and rocky debris that started a short way from the furthest edge of her wards — but now she had to reevaluate her situation. There was something dangerous nearby, and while she wouldn’t usually continue if she was just on a gathering trip she was also looking for somepony. Mostly looking for somepony, honesty compelled her to admit, she wasn’t that low on thistlepop anyway. Further along her path she slunk, her steps became silent and measured. Her head rocked from side to side, searching, always searching, until she saw something up ahead.

Just slightly off her trail and obscured by the neck-high foliage was a patch of light aquamarine fur that she recognized instantly. As she approached Morning Dew she noticed the blood smeared on some of the leaves leading to her, but no prints or scratches anywhere else that warned of something scared off. It was a given, then, that her student would be alive, but she still inhaled sharply when she saw what had happened.

Immediately she pulled out a potion of healing and drizzled a small amount into the — thankfully mostly clean — wounds on her flank and tipped the rest down her throat. The five ragged gashes on her flank were long but not very deep, she figured something dull had done the cutting, and wouldn’t be life-threatening if Dew received further treatment.

Already she could see the flesh knitting itself back together within the gashes, she knew the skin would follow shortly. Dew’s face transformed from a grimace into a look of confusion and surprise just as quickly as she began healing. Zecora frowned even as she helped Dew to her hooves. I should address this when we return lest she attempt to reach for a health potion at every turn.

“Oh Zecora, my thanks for your aid! Of my ability to reach your abode I was quite afraid.” Dew whispered as the potion worked its magic on her injuries.

“While you flatter me with your imitation, only the few magically gifted speak this way in our nation. Should you try speaking in rhyme in pony society, I suspect you would gain much unwanted notoriety.” Zecora replied pleasantly yet just as quietly.

A short jaunt back down the overgrown path Zecora looked back to her limping helper. “I do believe that it is time we broach the notion, of my teaching you about the health potion.” She probed.

“You… You’d share that with ME!? But you BARELY know me! Even the alchemist back home wouldn’t let me help him with those. Please yeah me. Please!” She shrieked, incredulous that the eccentric zebra she’d met a mere few months ago would share much beyond the basics with her. It was well-known among her people that masters of their craft rarely shared their secrets, let alone with outsiders.

“Quieter, Morning Dew. We may be beyond the barrier, but they can still hear you.” Zecora reminded her protege. As if to accentuate her warning growls emanated from behind them, growls that grew louder as the pack descended the rubble heap.

***

For the first time in four hundred years, the voice stopped speaking. Nightmare also stopped. Why had it stopped?

Nothing had stopped it before. Talking back only made it louder and vindictive, doing nothing just stopped her from obscuring the noise with her thoughts, and tonics and spells did not affect it whatsoever. The only thing that helped was keeping busy in thought and body, and even then she could hear whispers in the shadows. So why was everything so quiet?

Why could she remember any of that? She blinked her slitted eyes and looked down in thought. She hadn’t looked back in… years. Many years, she realized.

Nightmare started, realizing that she’d forgotten she could remember. The voice had been there ever since she had — had what? The voice must have been with her forever.

No. She knew that was wrong. Other ponies didn’t have voices in their heads. She knew that like she knew her coat was black or that she was the oldest alicorn alive. It was a fact. It had to be true. It had to be.

In time, she remembered other things too. She saw herself with a silver-grey coat talking with somepony else, looking up to them. Who were they, and why was she someone else? When was the last time she talked to somepony else?

Yesterday? It must have been yesterday, she thought, but that didn’t make any sense. She had talked to the grey pony but they had said nothing back. That wasn’t a conversation, and why were they so grey? Normal ponies weren’t one color.

Did she win? Was that why everything seemed so dead? She hadn’t wanted that. The spell was supposed to provide for life during Nightmare’s reign. Endless fields of grey stretched toward the horizon in every direction broken only by craters dotted irregularly about.

The white one had called her something. Once. Lu-something. There was something after that, but as the sun came and went she lost interest. Why should she bother worrying about what the white one called her if she, Nightmare, couldn’t remember her name? She clearly wasn't anyone important.

This wasn’t Equestria, it was too small, and if here wasn’t Equestria then maybe it was somewhere on the other planet in the sky. She kept running though. Perhaps if she searched everywhere she could find a way over there.

She had run about the entire surface for months, but she had found nothing but deeper craters and more choking dust. Now she was tired. So very, very, tired. Weakness the voice murmured. It had come back at some point during her search but was still quiet most of the time. It let her think.

The Nightmare prowled the surface as the blue sphere passed overhead. It was always there, like the voice, unlike the sun. It was torment. Something had brought her there, and she had seen for a moment more than green or blue. There were many colors and many bodies. She woke up though, she wanted that back.

How was she going to paint with only grey rocks? She was a painter more artist protector creator. The voice didn’t disagree, that was progress. She was a creator, and so she would create. Maybe then she would remember something more.

Clarity, suddenly, rocked her. She was sculpting stacked rocks in a field, and she was talking to them. She was talking to rocks in a vacuum on the moon, and sometimes they talked back. Immediately she gathered magic to her horn and vaporized the abomination before her. Oh dear Luna what happened? What have I done? What happened? I need to get out of here. she thought, but as she looked around all she saw were more sculptures. Some peeked over the lips of the crater she was in, others slunk through the dust and shadows forever frozen leering at her in the center of the crater. Moonie took that in, and instead of running away... she collapsed.

As the mare on the moon stumbled over what had been, the ponies below moved on from her. All but one. Because she knew the Nightmare would return someday. And where decades ago she had failed, then, she would succeed.

Then, she would save her little sister.

Author's Note

As always, thoughts and pointers are appreciated. Have a great night!

Chapter 10 - I Swear to You, I’ll Be There For You

Shining Armor looked out across Canterlot to the castle and swallowed, today was the day. Today he and dozens of other ponies from across Equestria would start training to be the next batch of officers to lead the EDF. He would help the brave ponies of the EDF fend off the aggressive attacks of the Griffons and bring justice for their crimes, but before all of that, he needed some food.

First, though, he took a deep breath, and let it out. He’d seen Cadence doing the same breathwork ritual with Twilight to help her with her episodes and found it also worked for him. He didn’t do it often, but he liked to keep his head on straight when he was around Twilight. She was his little sister, and if he couldn’t be strong for her he wouldn’t be the best big brother best friend forever he could be.

After a few more breaths he started downstairs to the kitchen, where he could already hear the sizzling of hay bacon on the stove and the words of quiet conversation. Once he reached the living room he saw what was going on. Twilight was sitting with their dad at the table while Twilight Velvet made some floppy hay bacon.

“There you are, Shining dear! I was wondering if I’d have to go up there and get you out of bed myself once I was done with these.” She said while jostling the pan lightly. “Anyway, come sit down! Eat! We’ve been waiting and I don’t think I can keep Twily from raiding the pancakes much longer.”

“You waited on me? You know you didn’t have to.” He said rather bashfully, rubbing the back of his neck. “I just slept in a bit. Enjoy the last bits of free time I’ll have in a while, you know?”

“Thank you Shiny!” Twilight squealed upon hearing his first statement. She then yanked the top three pancakes in the pile and began consuming them ravenously.

“Trust me, I know.” Night Light chuckled while sharing a look with Velvet. “And Twilight, please chew your food before swallowing, we wouldn’t want to choke on our food. Would we?” He led even while he brought a large piece to his mouth.

Shining didn’t know what the look was about, but he pulled out a chair and sat down at the table next to a Twilight who was now demolishing her food slightly slower. He took a few bites of what he’d dragged onto his plate and smiled at the still-bendy hay bacon, here was one way he liked his done, and it was floppy. He knew that they preferred theirs crispy. “So Twily, why weren’t you chewing your food? I know you like pancakes.”

“I was reading this book from the archive about food. And it said that for some ponies if they don’t chew their food and just swallow they won’t taste anything. Isn’t that interesting?”

“Very, Twily.” He replied. I might have to try that sometime, depending on how the rations are.

“Did you discover anything then, Twilight?” Velvet asked.

“Well… no. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t stop testing! It just means I need a bigger sample size. That’s what the books say.” She responded enthusiastically.

“That’s my budding little scientist!” Night Light smiled. He then leaned across the table and tapped Twilight’s horn with his hoof playfully which got her to sit back down after her outburst.

“Manners Nighty, manners. But while we’re on the subject of future endeavors, how are you feeling about today Shining? Nervous? Excited?”

“Oh, me? Well, I’m feeling fine; a little excited, but I’m ready. I know what to expect during training.” He stuttered out, caught unprepared for the question.

“That’s good sweetie. If you didn’t feel anything about this I would be concerned. Joining the EDF is a big event in anypony’s life, especially since you’re trying to join the royal guard. I’m glad to hear you’re looking forward to it.

“Just remember to make some friends,” Velvet continued, “connections are incredibly important, especially in the government.”

“You’d make your grandpa proud of you with all of this you’re doing. Even if we aren’t being given much of a choice.” Night Light beamed.

“Right, yeah…” Shining replied. The conversation petered out after that, with the quiet stretching out until there was no food left on anypony’s plate.

“Now that we’re all done eating you should go up to your room and grab your things, Shining. We’re going to be leaving as soon as the dishes are clean and Twilight gets a bath.” She said while sending a pointed look in Night Light’s direction.

***

It took them another hour to leave the house. Not for a lack of trying, but now they were leaving at noon instead of just after brunch. Shining found that he was fine with that when he thought about it though. After he went through the gates and onto castle grounds he wouldn’t be seeing anypony he knew until he graduated. He’d make friends, he was sure, but with how many nobles were there it would be a fraught process. He’d dealt with enough entitled nuisances in upper school to know.

Now though, they were walking through the shopping district toward the Sun Plaza, which held one of the larger side gates into the palace. It was there that the letters had said to go to in order to be registered and let into the castle. Far from coincidentally it was also the gate closest to the barracks that they’d be staying in while they were on castle grounds.

It was quite quiet in the normally bustling plaza. A sign that even Canterlot was feeling some of the strain of the war despite assurances from the nobility that everything was fine within the grand city. Of course, there were still several ponies scattered about the area admiring the statue in the center of the square or moving between the stores, but there were far fewer than he remembered being here when he took Twilight to the library there. They were the only ponies moving toward the small cubicle set up outside the gate.

When they reached the statue his parents circled to a part where there weren’t any tourists and stopped. “Alright Shining, you go in there and do us proud.”

“And be safe while you’re at it,” Velvet added.

“Yeah, of course,” he replied. “And you!” he playfully said as he lowered Twilight’s book, “you take care of yourself and have fun in the lower school. I’m sure that they have plenty of books you haven’t read in the library”

“You’re just saying that because you’ve never been in there!”

“Uh… I should get going.”

“Alright, but don’t forget to send letters. Love you.”

“I love you too Mom. Dad. Twilight.” he said while giving each of them a hug.

With his goodbyes complete, Shining turned back to the gate and started walking, He was still rather surprised he was the only pony going to the gate at the moment. This is the last day of check-in, shouldn’t there be more ponies here? Shining thought to himself as he walked ever closer to the guardspony behind the desk.

“Hello? Name and papers please.”

“Ah, here. Shining Armor”

“Here on the officer track?” the stallion asked.

“Yes sir.”

“That’s good. You seem like a nice kid so I’ll give you some advice: take the self-defense classes. I can’t tell you why you’ll want them, but from what I’ve heard from the ponies that have come back through here you’ll want them. Anyways, before you learn how to use it, show me your sword and any other weapons you have on you.”

Shining pulled an arming sword from his saddlebags and showed it to the stallion without comment. It was on the shorter side for those types of swords and completely unornamented, but it was still sharp and easily cut through the piece of wood he held up to test it.

“Alright, kid. That sword looks like the real deal. Just head on through this gate and I’ll get to the pony behind you.” the guard said.

He put his blade away and made his way past the guardspony. He hadn’t heard anypony walk up behind him, but maybe they were just the quiet type. Maybe they could enter together and get to know each other on the way. He looked back then, and beheld a pegasus mare piling all manner of swords, knives, and other blades onto the guard’s table with a smile showing some rather impressive fangs.

He turned away and followed the guide to the barracks. He didn’t want to be rude or anything, but anypony who could pull dozens of knives out of their saddlebags without batting an eye was probably somepony who wouldn’t want to talk to him anyway. Yet he was hopeful, so when she trotted up next to them he tried his best to be optimistic.

Maybe… maybe they’re nicer than they seem?

Author's Note

Sorry for the shorter chapter today. I got caught up in the first two weeks of college and everything after the first scene break was written today. Fear not though! I do intend to keep updating this story.

Anyways… Have a good night!

Chapter 11 - Soldier Soldier, We Signed Our Lives Away

At first, he’d thought that he would be separated from the mare he’d come in with, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Apparently everypony else had already shown up by the time they had arrived, leaving them to bunk together in the farthest room from the main door.

“These are your temporary lodgings. One of us will come to grab you when orientation starts. In the meantime, I suggest you read your hoofbook. It will have everything you need to know, so don’t ask us any questions.” With that, the guardspony closed the door in his face.

Just sharing a room would’ve been fine, he’d thought, but where they had been led could barely be called a room at all. There was a bunk set into the wall and a desk closer to the door in a small alcove, but that was it. Just standing in the open space the two of them could barely turn around.

How long are we going to be staying here again? He thought as he stared into the darkened interior of the room. The blinds were shut, he noticed. If he let some light in maybe it would start to look more like a place two ponies could live and not like his mom’s walk-in closet.

“Charming. Mind if I take the top bunk?” His roommate asked. The sudden question broke the silence and started him out of his thoughts.

“Uh, um… yeah?” He said, still slightly dazed.

“Alright, though I don’t see a ladder around here for you to get up there.”

“Oh. No, I didn’t mean that. You can have the top bunk. If, uh, you want it.” Shining rushed out before she took her saddlebags off all the way.

“Hmm. Well, if you insist.”

“If, um, you don’t mind… could you, maybe open the window? It’s kinda dark in here.”

“Huh. I didn’t notice.” She said. As if it wasn’t unnatural that she could supposedly see perfectly fine in the darkened room when he could barely tell that his mane was blue.

She opened the shades and leapt up to the top bunk with a single flap of her wings while he climbed into his bunk. He stuffed his saddlebags into the small alcove in the wall and grabbed the small booklet he’d received on his arrival. As he brought the book up to his muzzle his eyes adjusted slowly to the lit room.

***

If anypony asked him what he had been reading for the last hour he wouldn’t have been able to give them a straight answer. He’d thought that he would at least make it through the first chapter, but whoever had written this booklet seemed to have no organizational skill and even less in writing. The booklet was even less engaging than that time Twilight had insisted he read her Peace and Peace as a bedtime story, and he was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep before she had.

What had been even less helpful for his literary endeavor was that his new roommate had been shuffling around above him and making the bunk creak the entire time. He wasn’t even sure how that was possible; the beds weren’t that uncomfortable.

He was going to ask her about it, he decided, just as soon as he figured out her name. In the meantime, though, he’d settle on the book.

“So,” he spoke at the bottom of her bunk, “find anything interesting in there?” Instantly the shuffling stopped, and with it gone, the room lapsed into silence for a moment.

“In where?” Came the reply from above.

“In y’know. The booklet?”

“All eighteen pages worth?” She paused. “I suppose the only real thing of note was that there’s an entire section devoted to duels. Why do you ask?” She said frostily.

“Oh, I’ve been going through it and it all seems rather… I dunno. Basic?”

“That’s because they’re not going to bother teaching that junk to you. They just expect you to deal with it on your own, like your physical training.”

“Just like my what? They expect us to do all of those exercises in our free time, on this schedule? Are you serious?”

“Yes. Did you even read the bloody disclaimers in the fine print of our sign-up papers? They explicitly stated that because of the need for ‘qualified officers’ they’d be teaching only leadership and management classes. They’re leaving everything else up to us.”

Shining’s head swum as he processed what he had just heard. They were going to cut every corner they could get away with just so they could get more ponies on the frontline. There were thousands — tens of thousands — of ponies in the EDF all across Equestria and yet they were still rushing the training. What did that say about his odds, their odds?

“What are we going to do?”

“Wait. Probably. They’ll probably come back in a few more hours. Wake me when they knock, yeah.” She said back, completely disregarding his distressed tone.

“How can you be so relaxed about this? We’re practically going to be training ourselves! How can you be so calm? How?”

“Because I haven’t slept in over a day! And if I have to deal with guard shenanigans I’m doing it after I take a nap! Now leave me alone!” She whisper yelled. Moments later he heard a whoosh of air as her head hit the pillow.

Shining deflated at her outburst. He didn’t want to be a bother, so he went back to reading the manual while he waited for the guard to return. Eventually though, now that the mare had stopped being so disruptive, he made it through the whole manual. Again. “Hmph, If all of those additions were only in the sign-on sheet maybe I should look there for what this year is going to look like.” Maybe if he went and found a copy of the enlistment papers he could figure out just how much had changed from what he had always been told boot camp would be, he reasoned.

His course of action set, he hopped out of his bunk and walked over to their door. “I wouldn’t recommend doing that. Leaving that is, not whatever you’re planning to do.” Shining whirled around to face the mare who now stared down at him from the edge of her bed. He hadn’t heard her move at all, which had him at something of a loss considering just how noisy she had been while he was trying to read. “Actually, now that I think about it, what do you want to do that’s so important that you’d leave the room against orders? ”

“How long have you been sitting there? I thought you were asleep.” He queried, completely at a loss as to when she had turned around to look at him. Had she done that just to surprise him, he wondered, or was he so focused on leaving the room that he forgot she was even there? He was too used to only being accosted at school, as nopony really bothered him away from there, but now that he couldn’t expect even a moment of privacy where he slept he would have to readjust his life all over again.

“Don’t redirect the conversation. I asked you first,” she paused, “but because we’re probably going to be doing a lot more together whether we like it or not: I’ve been seeing how long it would take you to try leaving ever since our last conversation. I just started paying more attention when you put that book down.”

Stick to the truth. That’s what Cadence said to do when talking to mares. She’d know. She could practically read his mind even when she’d just been taking care of Twilight for a few days, and he wasn’t about to doubt her. “I wanted to find a copy of the sign-up papers so I could find what else they’d changed about our schedule.”

“Look, if you’re that desperate I have a copy of my papers if you want to go over them. Not the magically binding ones we turned in at the gate, but the words are all the same.”

“Uh, no thanks. Those are your papers, with your personal information on them. I couldn’t go looking through that! That’d be… I can’t!”

“Okay? It’s not like it’s illegal for you to read these papers,” she said quizically while waving a small ream of paper about, “but if you have such strong moral issues with it that’s not my problem.”

“What, no. That’s not the problem, it’s just weird for me to go and read everything about you that the sign-up asks for. That’s like… bank details and house location and names. You know?”

“I really don’t, but if you’ve got problems with it I’m sure you’ll be able to find those papers somewhere else. They might also just explain that at muster tonight, I can never tell with those strict teaching types. They either tell you everything or nothing with no in-between. It’s annoying”

“Yeah, I suppose they might.” he said as he walked back to his bunk and hopped in. “so what are we going to do now?” He asked, already starting to resign himself to his new, unglamorous life in the EDF.

“Now? We wait.”

Author's Note

I’m really going to have to stop doing all this writing last minute. It can’t be good for me.

I had a club meeting and dinner that prevented me from publishing on time, sorry!

Anyway, comments and suggestions are always appreciated, and I hope y’all have a great Night!

Interlude 1 - I'm Justifying Reprehensible Things

Prince Grover gazed over the edge of his stone balcony. From where he leaned he could see across all of Griffonstone, from the pristine grounds of the royal palace to the cramped wooden alleys of the lowest districts. The sun was slipping towards the horizon, casting everywhere but the uppermost levels of the palace in the chilling shadow of the mountains around them. In the distance pairs of watchgriffs circled the peaks, and on the other side of the palace his little brother was likely writing a letter to some small town in the south if his informants in Glade‘s staff were reliable. He knew and saw all of those things, yet none of them were truly crossing his mind.

A missive had just been received stating that Equestria’s ruler, Princess Celestia, sought audience with the emperor.

It was, he knew, a shrewd game Celestia was playing. Her sword was the quill, and with it she had long ago begun the process of cutting away every tie the Griffonians had to other nations. She had waited for his father to shrivel up and grow weak with the malaise of time. And now she was coming to put the final nail in the empire’s coffin.

Grover wasn’t entirely sure of what the pony princess had planned for the discussions, but it was most certainly nothing they would benefit from as a whole. She would almost certainly dangle the fish of renewed trade with the continent — a great new age of prosperity for all! — and in exchange all they would have to make was a few minor concessions.

And wouldn’t that be something? he bitterly thought. The empire disassembled, broader availability of amenities, and some puppet would succeed the current emperor. And it might even work. For a while anyways. Then reality would set in and the nobles would sort themselves out. The weak and the competition would be killed, and the empire would be reestablished with some new griffin on the throne. Then the cycle would repeat again and again until there was no nation left to save or sunder.

He could only admire how well she played the great game of nations, but he would not let her successes blind him. Her schemes could fail. Would fail, if he had any say about it.

He was already the power behind the throne, his dear father’s most trusted advisor, but he could not force the emperor into making good decisions, especially when there were others in the room. No, if the right paths were to be taken he had to be the power on the throne, not behind it. He would have to secure the support of the gentry soon and disperse anyone who might disrupt his rule.

Grover pushed himself off of the railing and back onto all fours, the sun having long set below the horizon. Walking into his chambers and over to his writing desk he pulled out several scrolls. After laying them carefully on the small but ornate elm desk he stepped over to the door.

“Would one of you two find Gatekeeper and inform him that his presence is requested by myself?” he said, leaning his head out the door.

“As you wish, your highness,” the pair said. They saluted and he closed the door again to wait. In the meantime he would write his response to the princess. He would present it to his father privately later to get it signed.

About a half hour later Grover could hear the clanking of plate armor coming down the hallway from the stairwell. The noise stopped just outside his door and soon after somegriff knocked on the heavily warded door. Gatekeeper stepped in past the guards, the purple tinge of his facial plumage contrasting well with his brown staff uniform and showing his relation to the rest of the ruling family.

“My presence was requested?”

“Indeed, please deliver these letters to the parties we discussed,” he said as he passed the two scrolls over.

“Preparations are to begin then?”

“Yes”.

“How soon will we act? I was under the impression that the second scroll was not the original plan”.

“There will be a banquet in three months to celebrate the safe arrival of foreign dignitaries in Griffonstone. I suspect that all of the noble houses will wish to be there to celebrate that momentous occasion…

“You are correct on your second question as well, Gate. We’re now going to be moving ahead with Plan A. I’ve suddenly come to the realization that the emperor is capable of leading our nation to greatness no further,” Grover replied.

“Your sister will not be there for that event”.

“I don’t see why she should be”.

“And the dignitaries? Are they to be invited?”

“No, they are to be kept away from the proceedings that night”.

“You’ll be burning bridges”.

“What bridges do we have left to burn? No, we will be building bridges. We will start the most ambitious modernization of the nation since the Unification War in times long past. We will have to, if we are to be a part of the coming world order”.

***

The bar was always light on company these days. It used to be situated within the old weather factory and still bore the marks of that place. The ceiling was a perpetual thunderhead, the flash of lightning illuminated the places where the natural light from the segmented windows just didn’t reach. Along the walls plush booths in sky blue and ice white offered a comfortable place to lounge with friends while breaking for lunch. Up at the bar there were only a few drinks on tap that mostly consisted of the favored drink of middle class workers everywhere: cheap swill. Most interestingly, the place had no doors whatsoever.

But the old factory had long been recycled, and now The Cloudhopper Bar floated between houses and a school in some residential neighborhood in a more well-to-do part of town. It was sad, really, that such a historic place would be going out of business. The new laws were constricting the few bars that still existed out of the younger audience - shunting them off into juice bars and other non-alcoholic stores. Now it was just old bats like him, and the Bats, that still drank openly.

Tin Hat suspected that at this point his patronage was the only reason the place was still in business. He looked down the shining bartop to the mare behind the counter and gestured for another hard cider. She barely paused in her polishing of his first glass to pour his third. One of her wings swiped the empty mug out of his hooves and pressed the new one into the void it left.

Tin stared into the clear amber liquid in front of him and wondered why the barmare continued to humor him. They both knew that they wouldn’t get anything out of this little routine they’d started a while ago, but they both still clung to it. He looked back over to the mare at the end of the bar and sighed. He would probably never see her again after the place closed, and neither of them knew the other’s names.

Looking forward again he took a long pull from the pint glass and sighed. He got up from his stool and started walking to the barmare. Before he could strike up a conversation, bright multicolored light flew through the windows from the school. Less than a second later, a deep rumbling BOOM broke through the silence in the room.

The aftershocks from the explosion shook the bar wildly, throwing both the barmare and him to the ground along with quite a bit of glassware and liquid. “What was that?” The mare asked, pushing herself off of the now discolored clouds making up the floor.

“I’m not sure,” he replied, “I’m not sure…”

His friends would want to know about this. One of the featherless freaks must’ve caused that explosion. Nopony else would so brazenly launch an attack on foals.

He left enough bits on the counter to pay for his drinks and flew off. His initial reason for getting up was left behind, still polishing glasses in the same silence she’d started the day in.

***

The situation had rapidly deteriorated when Princess Luna started living in the dungeon of the Everfree Castle. She had kept up the barest illusion of normalcy around herself whenever anypony cared to look, but there were precious few who showed up to Night Court these nights, and much fewer who knew her personally. Silver was pretty sure she was the only pony in existence that even saw her almost every cycle anymore, including her own sister.

That made sense, given the situation, but it still saddened Silver to no end that her friend was withdrawing so far into herself.

She stood on the wall of the city facing the distant Dragon’s Teeth mountains and shivered. The whistling wind of the coming storms had brought with them the first frost of winter; its icy tendrils bit through her metal hoof coverings and hammers of air blasted through her close-shorn coat. But she endured. She wouldn’t let Luna’s return home pass without somepony being there to greet her, or worse, somepony ‘Tia sent.

She could feel Luna getting closer through their souls' intangible connection. Peering into the night from the high walls she could just barely make out a small silhouette in the distance. Soon, the shape resolved into that of a large pony barded in a heavy traveling cloak with worn saddlebags at their sides. “Luna? Is that you?” She yelled down.

The pony below pulled their hood back enough to reveal their navy blue fur, a mane flowing independent of the biting wind, and a horn ending in a sharpened point. It was clearly her Lulu, but she hadn’t even tried to give a verbal response. Maybe she didn’t hear me over the wind? Climbing down from the top of the wall down to the gatehouse courtyard, Silver got a much better view of her friend’s condition.

Lulu had always been the thinner of the sisters, lacking much of the mass that came from eating more desserts than proper meals. Now though, instead of sculpted muscles and a beautiful severity, Luna’s ribs were showing through her musculature so prominently that she looked like a backwater peasant that had barely eaten anything in weeks. The bags under her eyes that naturally looked almost like eyeshadow had become lakes of darkness, and even her usually energetic mane was flagging low onto her face.

From where she was Silver could hear the heated exchange of words between the guardspony and Princess Luna. “As a Princess of Equestria We request entry, armspony. There is urgent business for us to attend to at the castle”.

“Your request is denied, beast!

“Your claims are blatantly false. You are not the princess, and the Duke passed down instructions to turn away creatures like you. You have no shadow, and there have been reports of attacks in several villages along the Rind by villains matching your description”.

“I care not for the Duke of Prance’s illegal actions and misdirection. You will open the gate before me immediately or you will find yourself the target of my ire”.

Silver wouldn’t let the argument escalate any further. She couldn’t, really, if she wanted the poor pony in the noble’s retinue to finish his shift. It was unlike Luna to be so aggressive with her negotiations, but nobody was acting as the intermediary she usually had. Her policy success and knowledge of the grievances of the common pony, as well as her tactical proficiency, had come at the expense of the extreme atrophy of her interpersonal skills.

She glanced across the distance to the still distracted earth pony guard and the glowing runes for a quick sleeping spell lit around her horn. He turned around at the light and started when he saw her galloping at him. He opened his mouth to call for help, so she cut out the accumulation node and just blasted power through the array. Racing past the now singed — but definitely asleep — guard, Silver burst into the gatehouse with her horn lit again and lifted the iron reinforced portcullis. She would sort out the damages later.

“Luna! I’m so sorry you had to deal with that. They should’ve been informed about you. What happened out there? I haven’t heard from you in months! Did your scrying bowl break?”

“I’m going to my chambers. Save your questions for when we arrive,”. She icily replied.

Sweat started to mat Silver’s chest from the exertion of holding the gate crank, cooling her further than the wind had already that night. Truth be told, the cold barely bothered her anymore. Ever since she’d gained enough power to manifest her own body, she’d been able to control everything about it. She could never figure out how to totally block out her nerves though. “At least she’s safe,” she mumbled to herself as Luna strode past.

After lowering the gate back into place and adjusting the position of the sleeping guard so he wouldn’t cramp too badly, she fell into step just behind her princess. Luna used to let Silver walk by her side in public, but that was a time long past. Now she had to project the air of nobility to fend off the nigh-constant attacks on her character by the power bloc calling themselves the Solar Shield.

She hoped that maybe some of the organizers on patrol might recognize her from her position at the castle, but that was very unlikely to be the case. It was a rare sight these days to see a member of the royal guard patrolling in a major city outside of the most important government buildings.

Luna scowled the whole way into her chambers. She marched the whole way there without stopping for anything: for direction, for doors, or for the various guards patrolling the city that Silver ended up having to talk out of detaining them more often than not. She didn’t make jest or even a sound as they passed through the empty streets and darkened homes of Radiance.

The heavy presence of wards pushed down on them when they entered the palace, and a layer further as soon as she locked Luna’s door behind them. She’d done her best to keep the room tidy while Luna was away, but her work for Celestia had kept her from seeing to the room for many weeks at a time. Dust had started to settle on the sheets of Luna’s too-small bed and across the many paintings depicting ages past. More importantly though, the roughly made ebony writing desk and the terribly drawn family portrait were untouched.

The smell of the room was overwhelming every time she came in. She would just stand there and experience her life over again for a moment. Laughing over a game of chess while drinking cheap moonshine - stargazing on the balcony under the harvest moon - mixing the paint that now hung along the walls. The memories were different every time, but it was always them in the room. Only them.

Silver turned around and faced Luna’s still standing form. She still had the cloak on, but she could see that Luna was shivering. Silver moved to drape a small quilt from the bed over Luna’s exposed withers. “Alright Lulu. What happened during your visit to the thestrals? Why didn’t you scry me while you were there or on your way back? Why are you so… so… why?”

Luna rounded on her in an instant, blue eyes bloodshot and glaring with the weight of hundreds of years. A hoof pressed into Silver’s chest and she slid back without resistance, terrified by the hate she saw within her friend. “You want the answers I never promised! You want to know what happened!” She screamed, tears beading in her eyes. The hoof kept coming down again, and again, and again. “They died! All of them! Over a thousand years of civilization, gone!

“All my friends! Irreversibly changed! They’re now all thinking! Feeling! Flesh puppets! In an instant I brought them all back! Since the founding of this nation I’ve tried to fix our world through steel and stylus and gotten nowhere! I realized what I’ve been ignoring my entire life!” Luna continued, picking up speed as she went.

“No power of friendship helped them! No elements of harmony saved them! An entire civilization was wiped out by plague because ‘sister dearest’ threw their letter in a fire! The nobility obstructs every measure to help the common pony! They have poisoned my sister against me with words I cannot cure! They have bound and blinded this country into a pathetic mockery of what it should be! They killed my daughter and faced no repercussions!

“I will not stand for this system any longer if none of it stands for me! I will not stand for this nation that ignores its citizens when they need help! I will not stand for this world because there was never anything to stand for! It’s time for it all to stop! Forever!”

Her chest ached where Luna had kept pounding it. Sharp shards of the stone walls were digging into her back from her repeated impacts. Looking dazedly upwards, Silver spotted Luna opening the door and stepping away. The only thought running through her head at that instant was so alien to her she almost thought she was dreaming. I have to stop her. I have to stop Luna over and over again. She had to stop Luna before she burned what shambles were left of the bridges binding her to everypony.

She pivoted towards the door, her physical form fading to a distorted black reflection of Luna before she reached forward. The shift in the magical currents had alerted her to Silver’s approach.

In her true form Moonie couldn’t tell much about her surroundings, but even just seeing the world through mana concentration she could tell Luna was staring at her. What was usually a reservoir that shined like a star had been taxed and drained so low it barely registered to her predatory senses, but it was still more than enough to stop her in such a vulnerable state.

Instantly she realized that she was moving too slow, but instead of striking, Luna hesitated. The time for her to act was gone, and when she reached Luna she hauled her shadows up Luna’s legs with the fervor of a drowning mare. her body sunk deep into the flesh and took control from the struggling alicorn. “Not you too,” Luna gasped, “Not again”. But Silver had already wrapped up to her barrel, trapping her in place. Moonie could feel her heartbeat racing even as she puppeteered their body back through the door and into the room.

By the time the door closed, her shadows had reached up to their neck, darkening the fur to an almost black color. Maintaining the possession would be doable, but if she was forced to keep it going over the long term she’d be running the distinct risk of contracting whatever madness had claimed Luna.

Drawing in the last gasps of her mana Luna tried to stop the advancing tide of darkness, but she couldn't concentrate past the feeling of numbness crawling up her spine. Nonetheless, her work was partially successful, and the pace of her subsumption slowed to a crawl. She tried screaming for help, but the door was already closed.

Silver saw the moment Lulu realized nobody would hear her. The real tragedy of the situation was that even if they did hear her, would they even care? She screamed until she couldn't scream any longer, and it was no longer her looking out of her once more crying eyes.

“I’m sorry Lulu,” she rasped through Luna’s raw throat, “I’ll fix this. I’ll fix all of this. No matter what happens, know that”.

Traitor! What happened to you? What did the Princess offer?

“Nothing Lulu. She offered me nothing. She didn’t have to. She’ll get a second chance, they all will”.

You will see the truth of them soon enough.

Author's Note

Sorry for only having one chapter this month. I'm having some difficulty with organizing the next chapter's sequence of events. Suffice to say chase scenes are hard to write for me (or at least this one was). If you have questions or suggestions (for improvements/corrections) please let me know.