Wandering

Heist

Entry #14

3rd of July, 20:58

Location: Outskirts of Hornwall, Duchy of Aurochs, Equestria

110m ASL, Cloudy and heavy fog

Temperature 7º C, Wind Speed 5 m/s S

For all their skills as the premier infiltrators of this universe, Changelings were rather unaccustomed to making proper use of naturally occurring phenomena when performing their work. Like the cover of a cold, foggy night, for example. Why bother sneaking in and risk getting caught, when you could just walk through the front door wearing the skin of some random townsbloke?

Groups of changeling agents had run small operations throughout Equestria this way for centuries, relying only on their shapeshifting magic and their obscurity to stay hidden from the Equestrian Royal Guard. Phaetoles, the scout who had stayed behind with us, had apparently been in charge of a small spy ring in a southern farm town – operating under the guise of a newspaper – before being called in to Chrysalis' Swarm for the invasion of Canterlot. Andshe had sure never used this kind of “stupid, primitive” plan.

She had reiterated this point several times to me during the day; that the plan involving a classic night-time sneak-in I had proposed was completely doomed to failure, and that I really ought to reconsider it and think of something better. Something like her sneaking in alone, for example.

The strangest thing was the extremely civil attitude she did all this with. She didn't get me riled up once, despite her insistent bickering. In fact, she was rather talkative, and when she wasn't out making sure we didn't lose track of the small patrol of backpack-thieving ponies trudging through the hills in front of us – or worse, get spotted by them – I managed to get a good deal of information out of her. Foremost of it all was a good few talks about various parts of changeling culture, which was a subject I hadn't yet managed to get Elytra to open up too much about.

First was the part that she had given her name out so easily, introducing herself almost like a normal person would. I vividly remembered the fuss Elytra had made about giving up her name to me, and Chrysalis' reaction to that, so I had called her out on this rather immediately. Apparently she was something called an Anger – from what I could gather, basically the changeling variant of a civil servant – and as a part of the public establishment, her name was common knowledge the same way as Chrysalis' was. She was a part of the Ministry of Surveillance, one of the four big cogwheels in the changelings' administrative machine alongside the Ministries of Harvests, Population and Vassals. She didn't elaborate much, but she did give me a brief summary of how the changeling kingdom actually functions as a state.

“The moppies make sure there are enough of us to go around – ensuring reproduction rates are proper and that changelings are included into hives that need them. The Harvesters do what Harvesters do – take care of vassals and make sure they give enough energy for us all to keep going. The movvies keep the vassals in check, and make sure there's enough ofthem to go around – occasionally by raiding, but wild vassals tend to fight so much on their own accord that they mainly just need to go and fish up the losers from every battle, keeps them a lot more docile. Finally we mossies keep track of everything and everyone, and make sure everyone knows what they're supposed to so they don't screw things up – or break the law. Harvesters don't like us much for that last part,” she had finished before buzzing off to check on our prey once again.

I was quite thankful for the information given, of course, but my gratitude was not enough to give her back what she wanted. It was all and well that she was a changeling cop or whatever, but one thing was clear enough from her little resumé: she wasn't a very accomplished hunter.

So tonight, it was time to put the nickname I'd been given to test.

Fortunately enough, there wasn't a lot of conflict about my assumption of leadership. Both Elytra and Phaetoles acknowledged my right to decide in the matter, seeing as it was my possessions we were tracking; and I will admit I was not unhappy in the least about the way the Mercury Star was ascribed to me, as well. Phaetoles was mostly opposed to the method I proposed, and overcoming that was simply a matter of being insistent enough – that this was the way we were going to do things, and that was that – while Elytra had been strangely quiet ever since we first ran into this Princess Cadence that appeared to be leading the little convoy of ponies we'd been stuck tracking all day.

It was actually a pretty interesting encounter, incidents of theft aside. From the memories and archives shown to me by Elytra – and the Mercury Star, I suppose – the ponies led a society not all too different from its human counterpart instructure, but with culture gaps wider than the Ginungagap due to the prevalences of magic over technology and harmony over conflict. Being herbivores probably helped as well, now that I think about it. But aside from the remnants of the nobility of ancient Unicornia, thereal Equestrian royalty were those possessed of not onlyone of the racial traits – wings for pegasi, horns for unicorns, and hardiness for earth ponies – but all of them. Alicorns, as they were called. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, the seemingly immortal diarchs of the pony nation, were truly majestic in stature compared to their subjects, with appearances to match their surreally awesome powers.

Compared to them, Cadence appeared quite mundane. Sure, she was reasonably large for a mare, and stood taller than some of the Guard stallions accompanying her. Sure, her threefold gifts were obvious enough to any who took more than a passing glance at her. But other than that, she didn't seem very different from a regular pony at all. Granted, in present company her vibrant pink coat made her stand out from the uniformly white guardsponies like a flamingo around seagulls, but if there was any truth to the things I had seen in other memories she would fit right in with just about any other crowd.

The troublesome part in this case was that, despite having a changeling specialist on contemporary Equestria with me in Phaetoles, there still wasn't a whole lot known about her. By no means was she an immortal ancient like the other two Princesses; the first mention of her that the spy could recall was a brief notice in a magazine detailing her move to Canterlot “upon her ascension” at age twelve, dated eleven years ago. This term likely could mean either her being crowned, gaining her alicorn powers, or – assuming one followed the other, which wasn't very unlikely at all – both. By blood she was a commoner, and from what information Phaetoles had gathered for the invasion she had kept a very low profile in national politics throughout the years; until the hubbub about her marriage to the Captain of the Royal Guard, those who hadn't paid attention to her first wave of media coverage – the one following her ascension – had scarcely even known she existed at all.

Which presented us with a rather troublesome quandary: we did not know our enemy's weakness.

I watched the ponies descend the road into the fog-covered little town through a pair of stone binoculars. Changelings were familiar with looking glasses, and while I hadn't shown her the pair I'd brought with me – since they were stuck in the stolen backpack – Phaetoles was pretty talented at transmutation for a scout-caste, and fabricated the design from my description alone, though she had foregone the plastic for the locally available silicate substitute. Sure, they were a bit heavy, but I wasn't going to complain – the lenses in them were a huge improvement over what I was used to. As it was, I could clearly see Cadence speaking jovially to the helmetless guard beside her, despite being quite a fair distance away. Had there been unicorns with them before? The fog was starting to make things a bit hard to see; I'd soon have to start relying more on my radar-like changeling empathy sense to keep track of things, with visibility as bad as it was.

I frowned slightly, before turning the binoculars away from the princess, focusing on her escorts and the familiar load they were carrying. “So is there anything you can tell me about the rest of the enemy, then? What sort of force is the Guard, anyway?” I knew there wouldn't be much point in asking the science-minded Elytra on this – I had tried her on several pony-related points before, with very limited success. As such, I had decided to test my luck and turn to the scout once more.

“What about them, Hunter? They're a decent fighting force, I suppose,” she started off, with a hint of the twain-split voice that Chrysalis favored carrying her words. “They organize by rank and race, led by four Captains being the commanders of their respective forces. The Air Guard and the Land Guard's captains are subordinated the captain of the Royal Guard itself, but from what I can tell the Night Guard is mostly independent. The Air Guard is made up by pegasi and is mainly used for scouting and transport, and the Land Guard is dominated by earth ponies and primarily tasked with police duties. The Royal Guard is mostly unicorns, though with some elites of other races as well, and they focus on the defense of the realm and its rulers; their captain is a unicorn, Shining Armor, Cadence's husband. Oh, that's the fellow without a helmet who joined them a few hours back. He specializes in protection spells. We should make our way into town before he decides to set up a barrier like in Canterlot.”

I immediately felt very stupid for ignoring the appearance of an additional signature on my magical radar, which I at the time simply had written off as a scout returning to the pack. I wasn't entirely used to it yet, so seeing things properly came with some level of difficulty. Nevertheless, I lowered the binoculars and gave the scout a deadpan stare. “Her husband? The captain of the Guard ishere? You don't suppose you could've told me that sooner, like, when you saw him meet up with them or so?”

Phaetoles gave one of those weird-looking red-on-black blushes, clearly ashamed at her mistake. There wasn't much else to do about it, though, and she probably knew it as well. Heaving a sigh, I put the binoculars around my neck; it was a pretty heavy weight, but weight was about to become mostly irrelevant in a moment, and throwing them away felt like a waste despite the ease with which they had been created. “Whatever. Just means we'd better make haste and get ourselves into the den of these little cloppety thieves, before they weld the door shut on us.”

I felt a pulse of amusement from Elytra, and almost had to fight back a smile of my own. After all, it was a pretty strange situation when all things were said and done. Even after my experiences with the changelings, there was something special with chasing down a backpack stolen by talking horses – pegasi and unicorns, no less. All I needed now was a rainbow thrown in somewhere, and I'd be facing the real-life version of the stereotypical LSD trip.

There were no rainbows around, however – just a cold, heavy mist that would be digging through my jacket and seeping into my skin if I stood around here much longer, never mind whatever barrier the ponies put up. I shook my head and focused, letting the tugging smile be washed away by the one drug that was stronger than even endorphines: adrenaline. Slowly my mouth curved upward again, and I could feel a small measure of caution – or was it fear? – from both of my changeling companions as a predatory grin crawled onto my face.

The thrill of the hunt was beckoning, and its rapture burned inside me like a forge's fire, filling my magical reserves. A small part of my mind registered the slight feeling of breathlessness that indicated Elytra and Phaetoles taking their shares of the bounty as well, but I barely noticed it for the sheer amount of power coursing through me. Letting it loop around and multiply was a tempting prospect, but reminding myself of the Mercury Star swiftly replaced that looming temptation with a burning, hungry desire. Desire, and not a small measure of anger. The ponies had stolen from me – they dared take power that wasmine! – and for that, they would be visited by the hunter's wrath.

I seized the growing flow of magic, and shaped the ever familiar wings in an almost instinctive motion; and in a theatrical spur of the moment, I lit a sparking red flame to dance in my palm with a burst of rage. It lasted only for a second, but the sight of it boosted my confidence; it seemed I could do other things with magic than just fly, after all.

“Now we hunt,” I murmured, as much to the whispering wind as to my companions. Kicking off from the ground, I regulated my altitude more with magic than with my wings, to stay as quiet as possible. Behind me, green fire blazed briefly as Phaetoles morphed into the mirror image of a Royal Guard, before taking to the air on white pegasus wings.

This hunt was going to be a challenge, and I was damn well going to enjoy every last second of it.

-/-/-/

Hornwall, as the reasonably legible sign proclaimed its name was, was a fair-sized village and not much more by my standards. True enough, using the standards of the 21st century might not have been the most fair to the clearly less-advanced Equestrians. However, Sweden has quite a large amount of villages of its own, and her cities are not the sprawling metropoli I've seen down on the continent – to say nothing of USA, or even China – so despite my being a westerner, I am first and foremost a northerner. I am well aware of what happens when a sparsely populated nation has to cover a vast expanse of land.

In this case, it was the type of village I've passed through multiple times in the northeast, close to the mountains and the Norwegian border. A thoroughfare passed through the middle from west to east, most likely connecting to other villages along the border; along its path were a few stores, an inn, and a bakery. The only real mystery was, to me, why they had chosen to settle in a giant freezing pit; Hornwall was surrounded by slopes on all sides, and the terrain was a far cry from the mountains, despite them being only a few miles away. Metric, mind you, none of that imperial yahoo.

This bowl-like hollow was thus filled with every last bit of cold air the area could muster, and tonight's heavy fog likely would've stopped far short of the village had it been situated on a reasonably flat piece of land. As it was, the closer we came to the bottom of the hole, the more we were swimming in a wispy mesh of clouds. Soon I could barely see Phaetoles to the side, and the quiet glide of her new pegasus wings – as opposed to the buzzing of changeling flight – made it hard to locate her by ear as well. I flared my emotions, and Elytra gave a startled cry in surprise; aside from that echoing through my mind, though, it had the desired effect. Phaetoles pulled up beside me and I gestured downward, the two of us gently touching down on the rocky ground beside the road.

“I want you to look around town and keep track of the guards' movements. If you can, try to get some information on where they're holding the backpack. I'm going to see if I can get anything out of that princess – she's easy enough to make out from the rest, even for me. If you find the pack, signal with a slow emotional pulse; if you're in danger, a fast pulse.” I flared my emotions just to make sure she'd understood, and she repeated the signal and nodded.

I turned to leave, but a feathered wing that wasn't my own poked me in the side, and I spun about; realizing only moments later that it was Phaetoles, not a bird or a pegasus who'd managed to spot me in the fog. The scout snickered a bit, before shaking her head. “You were right, Hunter. I was thinking they'd have a weather team on duty to clear this fog out, but I suppose a town like this is too small and remote to have one of its own.” She gave me a serious look, and raised a hoof. “Be careful. Cadence is most likely together with her husband, and he is a force to be reckoned with. Scholar, look out for him.” With that, she turned, and disappeared into the mist with a single wingbeat.

I stared for a moment at the wisps of cloudy white as they rushed to reclaim the empty space Phaetoles had left behind, before turning my attention inward.Just the two of us again, then, I sent to Elytra. I could feel her hesitation still, but she eventually materialized in her fairy-like form on my shoulder.

“I don't like this, Martin,” she said softly, eyes roaming about in the fog. “It feels like we're walking into a trap, and with this weather we won't be able to see anything at all.”

I could understand her sentiment. Certainly, in her seat I'd be liable to feel the same. Now, however, I was filled to the brim with power and my heartbeats were like drumbeats in my ears. There was no stopping the hunt, now. “Don't worry, Elytra. That's just the difference in our stress reactions showing. Your species doesn't spend much time tracking, trapping and killing others for food, to the best of my knowledge, so your adrenaline mainly calls on your instinct of flight, rather than fight. On the other hand, I am the apex predator.” I gave her a confident grin, and took a step forward. “There is no prey that humans cannot hunt.”

With my magic running, I could easier spot the way I had put the flight spell together. Thus it wasn't too difficult for me to figure out how to do what I wanted; namely strip off the wings and only leave the antigravity part. Flying with them was easy enough, but I hadn't quite confidence in my ability to dodge and duck around on the ground with them just yet. In this case it was better to simply enhance my human abilities with the gravity-defying speed and agility of that spell's other half.

The wings disappearing brought a small feeling of loss, and Elytra gave me a curious look; however, I still felt light as a feather, and confirmed it with a small hop that took us a few meters up in the air, and left us hanging for several seconds before we touched down again. Satisfied, I crouched down for a bit, before giving a hefty push with my legs, propelling us forward in a mad dash.

The mist swirled around me like a whirlwind of smoke, and I shot through almost halfway through the town on the arrow-straight thoroughfare before I could even react. I lessened the antigravity as much as I dared, and slowly started to fall down enough that I could manage to grab hold of the signpost of a store. The wooden structure creaked badly as I swung back and dropped down to the ground; I ground my teeth at the noise, but a moment of increased gravity hastened my fall significantly. Making sure to power the spell back up again to avoid breaking my legs as I touched the ground, I quickly dodged into the narrow alley between the store – possibly a bar of some kind, judging by the flagon-shaped design of the sign – and its neighboring building.

Sure enough, it didn't take many seconds before one of the white-coated guards opened the door to the establishment, trying to shake the fog away from his eyes as he peered into the night. “Who's there? Hello?” The stallion took a few steps out toward the street, flexing his wings tentatively. “Show yourself!”

I was extremely grateful for the fog, further obscuring me in the darkness; as it was, I could barely make out his features by eye, but my magical radar let me largely fill out the blanks. Considering the light shining from the door, he shouldn't even have had much in terms of night vision yet, and I was fairly certain the empathy sense was a changeling-only thing. Still, I couldn't just cower here all night, and if I let him report to someone else, they'd be more alert the next time something happened. I decided it would be rather advantageous to have him...disappear.

I increased the spell's power enough that I could simply walk up the wall of the second house, and slowly edged myself into position. I heard the guard mutter, “Damn rascals,” maybe as if he thought it was the work of mischievous locals making noise in the night; perhaps I should have let him retreat safely at that point, but the vision in my mind was simply too tempting to let the opportunity pass. I pushed off with my legs, and dive-bombed the unsuspecting pegasus from the side. I must've knocked the air out of him quite well, and for my purposes that was very much fine.

Still, I didn't want to give him time to scream; as soon as my feet found the ground, I dug my fingers into his fur-coated side, and enveloped him in my antigravity spell. Focusing briefly, I pushed almost all the power I had used on myself onto him. In an effortless yet mighty heave, I hoisted him onto my shoulder, andpushed. In a decent imitation of my own first takeoff, the pegasus vanished into the fog above at a frightening speed. With my radar, I could “see” him tumble and turn as he struggled hopelessly to regain control, beating with wings that took no air because of the bubble of distorted gravity around him. I held on to the spell until I was certain he'd reached a high enough altitude to ensure he'd be out of the game for a while, before letting go and dodging back into the alley.

At some point Elytra had disappeared from her perch on my shoulder; radar aside, I felt the same strange tugging I had during my little predawn stroll, indicating we were far enough apart for it to be a strain on “the bonds between our soul and the separate bodies anchoring them”, as she had explained it when I'd asked her earlier during the day. With my adrenaline starting to ebb away a bit, she sensed the confrontation was past, and sent a few choice words to me.I've found the princess.

I'm sure I could've found her myself if Elytra hadn't, but it did save me the time looking for things in the dark; as handy as it was, the radar didn't help much with seeing inanimate objects. It would hardly do if I just blindly walked in the direction the radar told me Cadence was, and marched right into her window. Following Elytra's little trail of images, I navigated the narrow alleys behind the bar; before long I found her hovering just outside the lamplight of a two-story building that looked a few degrees classier than the rest I'd seen throughout the town.

She gave me a nod as I approached, but wisely kept our conversation mental.It's only the two of them – Cadence and Armor – inside, but they're both awake. I'm unsure of how strong their magic is, but you shouldn't underestimate it. They did repel the entire swarm on their own. Keep that in mind before you try to fight them.

I nodded bak at her, and smiled briefly.Don't worry. I fully intend to use every last dirty trick in my book, before fighting either of them. Watch the entrance for me. She nodded again, and I slid the door open – thankfully the hinges were well-oiled, so there wasn't any noise there – and snuck in on light feet before nudging it shut behind me.

My eyes took a few moments to adjust to the light, and I didn't want to be off balance for any potential confrontation. From where I stood I could hear the two occupants of the room talking in a more or less serious tone; for which I was thankful, being that they were husband and wife. I'm not entirely sure what I'd have done if I had walked in on two alien horses having sex, but I'm fairly certain it wouldn't have helped further my interests a whole lot. Then again, that sort of thing would quite definitely have given a response on my radar, what with the immense outburst of love energy generated. Sure, it was a rather mundane ability on its own, but the power to avoid awkward situations like that was definitely something I'd be cherishing once I returned to the human world.

Assuming I could keep it, that was.

I contemplated for a second to stay a while and listen, and see if I could gather anything from the pair's conversation. It didn't take me long to decide against it, though – it was hard to hear through the thick walls anyway, and I'd be wasting valuable time that Phaetoles was trying to use to find my stuff. My path decided, I powered up my spell enough that I could just float through the air on a single hop, reaching the door to their room without a sound. Preparing my magic, I drew a quiet breath, and kicked in the door.

Luck was, for once, on my side. Cadence was splayed out on the enormous bed, wrapped up in her bedsheets and staring at me with an absolutely dumbfounded look; I assume her lack of military training and combat experience made her too shocked and surprised to react. More importantly however, Shining Armor had his back turned to me, and was in the middle of removing his gilt-laden uniform; from the looks of it he was using his magic for it, too, assuming that a shining horn meant the same for unicorns as it did for changelings.

I didn't have all that much time, though, and I wasn't exactly much of a mage yet in terms of skill. Using physical means to confront these two was definitely not a prospect I was all too keen on, either. Thus, I resorted to the one tool I'd managed to gain some degree of mastery over so far: gravity.

In a strangepulling motion, I intensified the gravity around Shining Armor many times over; the floor groaned under his new massive weight, and the half-dressed unicorn let out a strangled sound as his legs let out and he collapsed onto the ground. I raised a hand before Cadence could get as much as a word out, and gave her the fiercest stare I could manage. “No sudden moves, screaming or magic, or the unicorn dies.” The fact that I managed to deliver a line so cliché without so much as missing a beat was I think, a wonder in and of itself.

Sadly, it appeared Equestrian royalty weren't familiar with hollywood one-liners the way humans generally are. Seeing her husband with a magical noose around his neck was quite apparently too much for her, and tears welled up in her vibrant eyes as she stammered incoherently, only just managing to keep herself from crying out and earning Shining Armor an early grave.

This was honestly a bit too much for me to handle – I suppose I should've thought of the wholeherbivore civilization thing a bit before issuing death threats willy-nilly – and I let out a loud groan. “Oh for fuck's sake, woman. Do you not know what the wordhostage means, or what?” She blinked several times, apparently trying to get the tears out of her eyes without so much as even moving her hooves an inch, before nodding weakly. I rolled my eyes, and eased up the spell holding Shining just a bit. “Look, if I actually wanted to kill Shinebutt here I would have done so the moment I came into this room, or just brought the house down upon you both. That is not the case, but I'm going to spell it out for you in case you're too much in shock to grasp basic logic. I'm holding this fellow down to make sure he doesn't try anything funny, and threatening him in order to make sureyou don't try anything funny. The reason I'm doing this instead of just smiting you both is becauseyou, princess, have taken something that ismine, and I need to know where it is. So start talking!”

Criminal masterminds of the world, you have my condolences. It must be a terribly frustrating line of work sometimes.

Cadence was clearly not entirely sure about the situation yet, as her first words were stammering and hesitant, with her directing worried looks toward her husband every other second. “What... I, I don't...what are you talking about? Taken? Do you mean the saddlebag we found?”

Figures they wouldn't know a backpack when they saw one, either. Well, at least the word 'bag' was in there somewhere, so at least I knew what she was talking about. “Yes, that. You stole it from my hoard, and I am going to take it back. Where is it?”

She frowned a bit, and shook her head. “It should be with the guardsponies – they were at, um, they, they were-” I cut her off, since from the way she hesitated and shifted her eyes she was clearly trying to make something up to try and fool me; I scarcely needed the lie detector inside my head to see through a tell that obvious. I had very little desire to be forced to actually kill the unicorn or lose the fear I had instilled in her by allowing her to think me duped, so I simply cut that variable from the equation entirely. “At the bar. I am aware.” Her eyes widened in surprise, and I sighed, annoyed. Of course I had bloody walked right past them, too.

But at least I had gained one important piece of information: princess Cadence was a terrible, terrible liar. Which made the next piece of this interrogation more possible to succeed – the reason I had proposed this idea at all in the first place, rather than just a simple “rush in, grab the bag and leg it” variant. “Stand up. Now.” The mark on her side was hidden under the covers, and I wanted to get a good look at it to make sure my theory was correct.

Fear spiked in the princess' mind, obviously afraid I was going to, oh, I don't know, mutilate her or something. I gave her an exasperated look, and she finally started unshuffling herself from the covers. I sensed wariness from Shining as well, and made sure to give him a hard look; it was hard for him to show much, I suppose, but the fuming, barely restrained anger I could feel burning in his mind was quite enough. He wouldn't try anything stupid – for now.

Fear and hesitation burned bright in Cadence's mind as she stood up – somewhat swayingly, but having wings and being a quadruped probably helped in resisting the bed's effort to topple her over – but she gave me her best defiant look nonetheless. Elytra's advice echoed in my mind; thiswas a mare who had managed to serve an astounding defeat to Chrysalis, after all. Still, I didn't have much time for that at the moment, so I simply circled around the bed and crouched down to inspect the image – images, even, since there was one on each side – of the Venus Star painted on her side.

Slowly, her fear turned to confusion, and when I put my hand on the mark to try and puzzle out how it had gotten there – from what I could tell it seemed almost like a part of her natural coloring – embarrassment flared like a beacon inside her. So much for avoiding awkward situations, I guess, but there was no time for small things. “This mark,” I began, trying to completely ignore the massive blush sprouting on Cadence's already bright pink face, and the ever-growing humiliation and rage seething from the magically restrained unicorn on the floor. “Where did you get it? How? When? Do you understand what this image means?” I traced the edge of the mark once, and drew my hand back. There wasn't much point to embarrassing her any further just for the sake of it, after all.

Confusion was back in force in the pink alicorn's mind, and this time it showed clearly on her face as well – accompanied by a fair bit of irritation. “What are you talking about? I got my cutie mark when I was a filly, just like everyone else does, and it shows what my special talent is, just like everyone else's cutie marks do! Sure, you don't normally grow a horn when it appears, and I guesslove as a special talent is a bit cheesy, but what sort of question is that supposed to be?”

Cutie marks. For real, fuckingcutie marks. And she thought she had a right to callanything cheesy!

Two things were clear enough, however. For one, Cadence knew nothing of the Venus Star; she thought the Crystal Heart on her flank was just another heart symbol, and never mind that hers was bright blue rather than the usual red. I suppose there was the possibility of that being another weird aside of pony culture – or perhaps ponies actuallyhad blue blood or something – but my instincts told me that wasn't the case. Which in turn meant that the ponies knew just as little about the Elements of Magic as the changelings did, or possibly even less.

The second was just how much I'd been missing, relying on my knowledge of the changelings to decipher pony culture. Now that I thought about it, I had seen these kinds of marks on most ponies I'd seen in the memories Elytra had shown me. Shining had some sort of shield-like thing on his flank, as well, which matched what Phaetoles had told me about his specializing in protection spells. The guards' marks were hidden by their armor, of course; but Celestia had her suns, Luna had her moons, and Starswirl had...

Starswirl hadn't had any mark. Come to think of it, neither had King Platinum, Mercuria or any of the others I'd seen in those ancient memories. Something was wrong here, and once again I was missing it entirely.

Before I could take that train of thought any further, though, I felt a disturbance on my radar; focusing briefly, I filtered out a vibrating pulse of fear coming from the direction of the bar. Apparently so did Elytra, judging by the panicked jumble of words she sent me; and judging by the fear from Phaetoles' signal, she needed my help post haste. I muttered a curse before backing out of the room, staring acidly at the two ponies before spinning about and running out the front door.

Elytra took up her perch even as I was flying down the stairs to the wooden building, and I reluctantly released the gravity well holding Shining Armor before shooting into the sky with a powerful jump. The signal was gone already, but it was fairly obvious that the scout had fallen afoul of the guards at the bar; and finding that building, with the small swarm of soldiers milling about inside, was simple enough with just the radar.

I touched down on the dirt road with another expertly gauged gravity shift, and looked around for the entrance in the swirling fog. The next moment, however, I felt and heard someone touch down behind me, and that sound was followed by a heavy thud. “Hunter,” a bright male voice called, and the next second a pegasus guard appeared from the covers of the mist.

It took me a moment to realize that this was Phaetoles, who apparently had taken the appearance of one of the other guards – all stallions – to blend in, and from my experience with Freja-Chrysalis I knew changelings were more than capable of completely changing their voices as well. More importantly, however, she was lugging my backpack with one of her wings; a more than welcome sight, as judging by the frenetic activity inside the bar we were about to run very much out of time. “Good timing, Phaetoles,” I said while bending down to hoist the backpack up. “Come on, let's go. Don't fall behind.”

I fastened the straps as quickly as I could, but I hadn't managed to get my wings out when the door slammed open behind me and a mass of angry voices streamed out. Grabbing hold of Phaetoles and enveloping her in a high-powered antigravity field, I launched us off the ground with a massive push of my legs, and we shot into the obscuring sky as one.

I could sense panic inside her for a moment, but it quickly subsided when I released the magic around her and she regained control of her own flight. A welcome tingle spread through my body as I shifted my spell, and my wings finally returned. I smiled briefly, before scanning my surroundings with the radar to see if anyone was pursuing us; nobody was, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I allowed myself to relax a bit again.

It took us several seconds before we finally came out of the massive cloud of fog covering the little village. While waiting for Phaetoles I oriented myself with the help of the mountains to the north, and set myself on a southward course; a short while later the temporary white pegasus exited the fog as well, and made a quick roundabout before falling in by my side. A brief flash of green light lit me up as Elytra, who had dematerialized during the launch, once again returned to her perch on my shoulder. Together our mismatched little trio speared through the night at a fearsome speed, and I felt a small hope – whether it was mine or Elytra's, I truly cannot say – that we might be able to catch up to Chrysalis again before too long.

Barring any more freak incidents, that actually wasn't too much of a long shot at the speed we were making; and surely even Murphy must've been tired of me after hanging around me for this long. Not even the omnipresent god of misfortune can stand being alone with a cynical viking too much, after all – or at least, that was what I very sincerely hoped as we began our night flight. Hell knows, the entire journey had made me very cross with old miser myself; and being rid of him once and for all was one of the most tantalizing prospects I could imagine at the time.

Thinking back on my confrontation with Cadence, however, the unthreatened top entry of that list reminded me of its presence. From what she had said, she had turned into an alicorn when she gained the mark of the Venus Star; and from what I knew of that royal race of ponies, one thing stood out far from the others.

Immortality beckoned; and my thoughts circled between its irresistible light and the Mercury Star in my backpack, while a pale silvery moon rose over the starry Equestrian sky.