Every inch of my body was sore as I trudged through the castle from the workroom back to my bedroom. Longhorn hadn’t been lying the night before - it had been a long, LONG day. Glancing out of one of the many windows, I could see that the sun had already set behind the horizon, with only the faintest tinges of dark reds and violets revealing that it had set only recently. So it was official - I’d worked from dawn to dusk on this project for the Minotaurs.
They’d made some progress as well - not enough to get a cannon fully functioning, but enough to where They’d still consider the project feasible. I’d still been working with the idea of delaying their progress as much as possible without ousting myself, and so I had made a few… omissions when detailing the construction of the cannon and other equipment.
Unfortunately, some of those omissions had contributed to my soreness. I could still feel the spot of the bridge of my nose where I’d smashed it against the floor when Dusthorn had proportioned the first batch of gunpowder incorrectly and accidentally ignited too much of the sulfur at once. The mixture hadn't exploded, but instead had burned relatively slowly, creating a bright blue flame and a cloud of smoke. I remember hearing about how toxic smoke from burning sulfur was, and in my haste to retreat I'd tripped over a chair and slammed my nose into the ground. Thankfully, they'd been able to get a Unicorn in the room in time to prevent the smoke from spreading, and I didn't think I'd actually inhaled any, but that didn't help reduce the pain in my nose.
But that didn’t mean that every act of omission had cause me harm. One had actually proved quite successful in delaying their efforts. Our last test of the evening had been using an extremely crude cannon barrel - little more than a one-ended tube. By that time, Dusthorn had gotten the mixture mostly right, and we had a pretty close imitation of gunpowder. However, as I suspected, Steelskin had made the initial cast-iron barrel too thin and too weak to handle the blast, and it split open during the test. It was a relatively small setback - it wouldn’t take more than a few hours to recreate a new, thicker barrel - but the fact that it was at the end of the night, just before the forge was shut down, added to the delay just that little bit more. And even better, this particular failure hadn’t injured me!
No, the rest of my soreness and tiredness came from the work that I’d done. Most of it had been the simple stuff - lifting the ores and bars for Steelskin to use, as well as pumping the bellows of the furnace - and answering questions about proportions, weight, measurements, and so on. It was the bellows that had really worn me out - I’d spent a good chunk of my time that day pumping those up and down to keep the forge hot, and my arms and back were incredibly sore from the exertion. And it had been nearly non-stop all day too, with only two brief pauses for lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, I had no reason to believe that tomorrow would be any easier.
I stumbled slightly as I tripped over a rug I had failed to notice. Before I could fall over, however I felt a firm hand grasp my shoulder, holding me upright. I looked over and nodded my thanks to Thunderhoof, who nodded in reply. He’d been there nearly all day, only leaving after an hour for a few brief minutes before returning with a book. He still had that book tucked under his other arm, and he’d gotten through quite a bit of it today if the mark sticking out of the pages was an indication.
The walk from the workshop to my room didn’t seem to take nearly as long as the trip this morning had, Maybe it was to do with my tiredness, or maybe we took a shorter route - I noticed far fewer turns this time around. I made sure to take a few mental notes on our route - a picture of a sunset between two windows; three statues depicting a Pegasus archer, a Unicorn mage, and an Earth Pony warrior; the two gilded sets of armor that flanked the door to the workshop, as well as the windows just on the other side of the hall that showed how high up we were
The faint glow at the edge of the horizon had completely faded by the time we made it back to my room. The guards glanced over as we approached, and the one to the left of the door produced a key from a chain around his neck. The door was quickly unlocked, and I stepped through. I glanced over my shoulder as the door was shut behind me, and while it was only brief, I could see Thunderhoof giving me a thumbs-up as the door clicked closed. I could hear another, fainter click as the door was locked behind me.
The room was completely dark, save for the thin beams of light coming in through the window from the moon. Even that light was very faint - it had been a new moon on the eve of my approach to Everfree, so the waxing crescent was little more than a sliver against the night sky. I considered lighting the candle on my bedside table with one of my matches, but in the end decided against it - The moonlight was enough to see by, though only barely, and I needed to make these matches last until I was able to get back home.
Instead, I fumbled around in the dark and changed out of my dirty clothes - I made a note to myself to ask the Minotaurs about getting them washed - and into a fresh set. I wouldn’t be able to have a bath in the darkness, but I’d managed without a bath for longer than one day when I was in the resistance camp. I’d just have to make sure to have one the next night. No other tasks of immediate importance came to mind, and so I climbed into the bed and quickly fell asleep.
---
I awoke with a start as a loud creak echoed through my room. My eyes jumped open, and my head immediately swiveled towards the source of the sound - the window. I could see it partially ajar, even though I knew I hadn’t opened it earlier. For a brief moment, nothing happened. Then, I watched as the window opened outward even further, letting out a softer, but long and drawn out creak. As soon as it was fully open, I watched as a black shape pulled itself from the windowsill outside and hopped lightly down onto the floor.
By now, my heart was racing. I sat up in my bed and kept my eyes locked on the black shape, which was now concealed in the corner, hidden by the shadows. “Sombra?” I hissed, loud enough for the shape to hear but not for the guards outside to notice. “Is that you?”
“Damn that window,” I heard the figure swear as it stepped back out of shadows. As it stepped into the dim moonlight, the darkness that concealed it seemed to peel away like a black fog, revealing the grey Unicorn underneath. “I thought I’d be able to sneak in without you noticing,”
I shook my head and rubbed some of the sleep out of my eyes. “I’m a light sleeper,” I scoffed as I pushed myself out of the bed and onto my feet. “So, what’s the word?”
“No real news from camp.” Sombra’s eyes fell away from mine. “We lost two more today from their injuries, and Queen Amethyst is still unable to send troops to support Equestria. I doubt that she’ll risk such an engagement until the Minotaurs’ protection from magic has been removed. Speaking of which, how goes the effort? Any information you can pass on?”
“A little bit,” I nodded. “There are still Ponies here in the royal palace, though it seems their mostly servants and cooks. I didn’t see many patrols during what time I spent walking through the halls, but I’m sure there are plenty of guards waiting in reserve if anything happens. But there’s something else too that I think you all need to know about.”
“What’s that?’
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Okay. I was only able to gain entrance to the castle by promising the Minotaur king something in return. I don’t have wealth, or any real power to speak of. All I have is knowledge. And so I promised to help him and his forces develop a weapon that my people have used for centuries. A high-speed ballistics weapon, similar to a crossbow that I understand the Gryphons have developed, but far more powerful and far more deadly. The vast majority of my day today was spent helping their smith and alchemist produce a crude prototype, as well as a mixture of powders that, when ignited, create enough explosive force to propel the projectile.”
I could see Sombra’s eyes going wide as I continued my explanation. “I’m doing what I can to slow their progress, but with the idea now in their minds, it’s only a matter of time before they create a working model, with or without my help. A lot of my time is going to be devoted towards “helping” them. And if they develop this weapon and make it even remotely as effective as the guns back home, it’s game over for the resistance. If you’ve got any ideas on how we can slow them down even further, now would be the time to voice them.”
Sombra let out a deep breath and closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Damn the luck…” he hissed. He slowly opened his eyes and glance up at me. “I hope you realize the magnitude of what you’ve done. Even if we manage to defeat Adamant Will, any Minotaur who knows of this device will surely be working towards finishing it.”
“So that gives us a couple of more targets to eliminate,” I nodded. “Namely the blacksmith, Steelskin; and the Alchemist, Dusthorn. I know. It’s not ideal. But I had very, very little to work with. This was the quickest and most surefire way for me to get closer to Adamant Will.”
Sombra let out another sigh. “Alright. Alright. So, this… powder. You mentioned it had to be ignited for the device to work?”
“Yes. Once ignited, the powder explodes. This explosive force is what propels the bullet at high speeds towards that target.”
“So… what if it was wet? Could it still be ignited.”
“... No,” I replied, a small grin creeping onto my face. “No… no it couldn’t. At least while it was wet. And since it’s a combination of finely-ground powders, it would probably take a while to dry out as well.”
“Perfect,” Sombra nodded. “Then that’s our objective tonight.”
I blinked. “Wait, what? Our? Tonight? Dude, I’m exhausted!”
“Yes. Tonight. The longer we wait, the closer they are to developing this weapon. This weapon that you showed them, I might add. So we’re working together to stop it. Understood?”
I hissed softly under my breath. A midnight excursion to commit an act of sabotage was not what I had in mind for tonight. “And how do you plan on getting out of here, hm? The door’s locked from the outside, and guarded.”
In response, Sombra jerked his thumb towards the still-open window. “Princess Luna gave you a slow-fall scroll, correct?” He asked. “We’ll use that to get out, and I’ll lift you back in once we’re done.”
I gulped slightly as I pictured myself leaping out of the fifth-story window with nothing but their magic stopping me from plummeting to my death. “Well… Well what if the guards check on me?” I asked. “I won’t be in here. And then it’ll be pretty obvious in the morning who was out last night pouring water on the gunpowder.”
“Easy.” Sombra’s horn lit up with a dark-grey aura, and a small pop filled the room. I turned towards the source of the sound to see a figure lying in my bed, where I had been lying just moments ago - an almost exact copy of me, from the clothes right down to the streak of soot on my left cheek from the day’s work. The sheets were pulled up over the copy, but as I tried to touch it, my hand passed right through it as if it weren’t even there.
“That’ll make them think you’re still in here, even if they come check on you.”
“And if they try to touch it?”
“They’d have tried that last night if they were going to do it at all,” Sombra replied. His lips curved upwards in a smirk. “And if you’re as light a sleeper as you claim, you would have noticed. Now, can we get going? Or are you gonna continue to try and worm your way out of this?”
“Hey now, excuse me if leaping out of the window and committing sabotage on my second night in this place doesn’t excite me, especially after busting my ass all day!” I hissed.
“Suck it up,” Sombra shot back. “We’re talking the fate of an entire kingdom here. If you’re serious about keeping them from developing this weapon, then get the lead out of your pants and get moving!”
“Alright alright, fine,” I threw up my hands in defeat. “Fine, let’s go.”
“Knew you’d be reasonable,” Sombra flashed me a quick grin. I merely grumbled under my breath as I snatched my knife, bow and quiver from my bedside table and strapped them into place, as well as grabbing my scroll pouch and tying it to my belt. I looked back up at Sombra, who merely gestured to the window. “After you.”
“Gee, thanks,” I snorted as I opened up the pouch and fished around inside. After pulling out a few scrolls, I finally retrieved one with the feather symbol upon it, and held it firmly in my hand as I clambered up onto the windowsill. I looked down and gulped again as I saw just how high of a drop it was. If the spell didn’t work, my fall would only be broken by a row of bushes at ground level.
Still, the spell to make me appear more powerful seemed to have worked against Adamant Will. Hopefully this one would now.
“Get on with it,” Sombra hissed behind me. I lifted my middle finger at him, and while I knew he didn’t know the exact meaning behind the gesture, the intent behind it was clear enough. I took a deep breath and place my thumb over the wax scroll. I felt the same mild flash of heat against my palm as the scroll disintegrated, and very quickly the same pins-and-needles feeling raced across my body. I closed my eyes…
And jumped.
For a brief couple of seconds, I didn’t dare to open my eyes. I braced myself for the leg-shattering, bone-breaking impact that my instincts told me was coming any second. But nothing happened. I cracked one eye open and glanced towards the ground. True, the ground was rising to meet me, but not nearly fast enough to be dangerous. My knees barely bent as I touched down lightly on the ground, right next to the bushes. As soon as my feet touched the ground, the pins-and-needles feeling faded away. It had worked.
A few seconds later, Sombra landed on the ground next to me, considerably faster than I had landed but still slowed by magic. Almost instantly, he grabbed my shoulder and dragged me into the shadow of a nearby tree. “You should have seen the look on your face,” Sombra hissed with barely-controlled laughter. He tensed his body up and tucked his arms in close to his body, scrunching his face up in a clear mockery of my fear. “Priceless.”
“Yeah yeah, laugh it up, hairball,” I muttered. “Let’s just get this over with. I’d like to get at least a little sleep tonight before I get back to work tomorrow.”
“As you wish,” Sombra replied, still chuckling. “Alright, back to business. You’ve got those scrolls to conceal you in the shadows, right?”
“Yeah, but they fade away if I step into the moonlight.”
“Then I’d suggest not doing that,” he smirked. His horn lit up with that same grey aura, and the shadows surrounding us began to race up his legs, cloaking them in darkness. Soon, they had enveloped him entirely, rendering him invisible. “Alright, your turn.”
I opened up the scroll pouch once more and fumbled around inside. Eventually, I managed to find one with the Yin symbol, and stowed the rest away in my pouch. Again my thumb pressed against the stamp, and again the scroll disintegrated into ash. This time, however, there was no pins-and-needles feeling. Instead, I felt a wave of cold wash over me, starting from my legs and racing up my spine. Looking down, I could see the shadows following the same effect as I had seen on Sombra. Soon, they had covered me completely.
“Good, good,” Sombra whispered. I glanced over towards his voice and blinked. Where before I had been unable to see him, I could now see a black silhouette of his shape, surrounded by a white outline. “Are you ready, Chris?”
“I can see you,” I said bluntly.
“Yes, those who walk in the shadows can see others who walk in the shadows,” Sombra nodded. “But we’ll be safe in the cover of darkness - the Minotaurs have very few magical adepts in their ranks, and fewer still who can walk in the shadows as we can. And I guarantee those few are among Adamant Will’s elite personal guard. Now, we’ll still have to be careful. I know they’ve scheduled a rain shower for Everfree tomorrow, and that means the night-shift will be moving clouds around that we can use for cover, but -”
“Wait wait, scheduled a rain shower?” I asked. “What do… wait… you mean Luna was serious about you all controlling the weather?” I remembered her mentioning this to me at one point during our archery sessions, but she’d said it so flippantly and off-handedly that I’d assumed she was just joking.
“Yes, of course, how else would it work?” Sombra hissed. I could see him glancing in either direction. “Look, now is neither the place nor the time for this talk. Ask about it after we’ve saved Equestria, alright?”
“Alright,” I sighed. At this point I’d given up on trying to argue the impossibility of most of the things Ponies claimed they were able to do - most of the time I ended up being wrong, anyway. “But you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
“Okay. Now with the Pegasi moving the clouds, we’ll have brief opportunities to move from cover to cover, but there will also be more Minotaurs out and about keeping an eye on them,” Sombra explained. “Hopefully that won’t be too big of an issue though. One of our stallions on the inside has been leaving a window unlocked on the west side of the palace for us to get back in through. Once inside, we’ll make our way to where this gunpowder is, wet it, see what else we can do, and then clear out before we’re caught.” Even though his eyes were not visible on his silhouette, I could feel him looking right at me. “You do know where the powder is being stored, right?”
“Uh… Well, if I see the place I’ll know it,” I admitted. “Third floor. It felt like it was on the west side of the castle. I know it was on one of the exterior walls, because right across from the door were a set of windows looking out.”
“Well, it’s a start,” Sombra sighed. “Hopefuly it’ll be good enough. Any questions?”
“Yeah, actually. How are we going to get the water to dump on the powder?”
“Simple. Magic.”
“Oh right…”
“Anything else?” I remained silent. “Alright good. Let’s wait for the next cloud to be pushed in front of the moon and we’ll head to that tree over there,” Sombra explained as he pointed down the path towards another tree.
For a brief moment, we remained still and silent. Looking up at the night sky, sure enough, I could see the dark shapes of clouds silhouetted against the brilliant glow of the stars in the night sky. These clouds were moving this way and that, at random speeds and in random directions, with other, smaller shapes moving between them. So it seemed that Sombra and Luna were telling the truth… Pegasi actually did control the weather here.
The light shining over the grounds dimmed slightly, and Sombra nudged me. “Now’s our chance. Move!” he hissed. The two of us took off over the grass towards the tree, and as I looked up, i saw that one of the clouds had indeed been pushed to block out the moon. It didn’t last long, though. Seconds after we had reached the safety of the tree’s shadow, the cloud was moved again, and the slight glow of the moon covered the grounds once more.
For several tense minutes this process repeated itself. We’d wait for a cloud to be moved, and then rush for the next shadow. Looking around, I could see numerous Minotaur guards patrolling the paths all around the palace grounds. I gulped as I imagined what would happen if I happened to be caught out in the open when the moon was uncovered, and what would happen when I was revealed…
It didn’t happen though. Soon, we had made our way to the corner of the palace, and kept along in a thin strip of shadow that the palace produced along its west wing. This leg of the journey took far less time without us stopping to wait for the moon to be hidden. It was only a couple of brief moments before Sombra came to a stop. “Here,” he hissed softly, making his way towards one of the windows. He reached out and grabbed it, and slowly pulled it open. Thankfully, it seemed that this window was better-oiled than the one in my bedroom, for it made no noise as it opened. We both scrambled inside and closed the window behind us.
Looking around, I found that we’d climbed into one of the palace’s many hallways. Numerous large windows ran up and down the hallway, but the way the moon was shining meant that none of the direct moonlight entered through them. Fortunately, it seemed that the hallway was deserted - no patrols had noticed our entrance.
“Alright, we’re in,” Sombra murmured. “Any idea how to get to the gunpowder from here?”
“Uh…” I glanced around the hallway, looking for any indication of which way to go. It was rather unimpressive, at least compared to the rest of the castle. In fact, the only features besides the large windows and the red velvet rug that stood out to me were the set of wooden double doors halfway down the hall, the chair next to them, and the painting next to the chair.
The painting…
I gestured with one hand to Sombra and moved down towards the painting. Sure enough, it was the same painting I remember from breakfast this morning - the three Ponies, one of each race, sitting around a table. “This is the door to the kitchens” I muttered. I closed my eyes, attempting to retrace my steps from this morning. “So I think… this way.”
I could hear my own breath as we crept down the hallway, back towards the south end of the castle. Sure enough, at the end of the hallway was a gentle spiral staircase leading upwards. Two rotations took us up one floor, and two more took us to the third floor, where I was certain the workshop was. Now we just needed to take the third left, and then the second left and the second right, and we’d be there. I motioned for Sombra to follow me as I crept down the hallway. I rounded the corner…
And nearly bumped straight into the chest of a Minotaur.
I barely suppressed a yelp, reducing instead to a quickly-stifled intake of breath. I threw out one arm to catch Sombra and quickly stepped backwards, plastering my back against the wall. I felt myself tense up as the Minotaur closest to me stiffened and came to a stop. “You hear that?” he muttered to his companion, moving one hand to the sword sheathed at his side.
The second Minotaur froze as well. I could hear my own heart hammering away in my chest as he cupped one hand to his ear. For a few agonizing moment, everything was silent. I didn’t dare to move, barely dared to breathe, lest my position be revealed.
Finally, the second guard lowered his hand and shook his head. “Nothing,” he replied. “The extra hours are getting to you. You’re hearing things. Quit your jumping. Nothing’s getting in here with all the patrols out on the grounds tonight.”
The first guard had to stifle a yawn as the second finished. “True,” he muttered as he and his companion continued on their patrol. “I’ll be glad when this shift’s over and I can finally get some sleep.”
I watched as the two Minotaurs continued down the hallway, but didn’t dare to move until they had turned a corner. I peeled myself off the wall and bent over, breathing heavily. “That was too close,” I heard Sombra mutter from my right, and I nodded in agreement. “Alright. Let’s get moving before we bump into another patrol.”
It was only another minute or so before we turned the final corner. Sure enough, there in front of me was the wooden double doors, flanked by two suits of gilded armor…
And two more Minotaurs.
“Damn,” I hissed softly, ducking back around the corner. “Two guards,” I muttered as Sombra drew up beside me. “Right in front of the workshop door. And they’re not moving.”
“Right. We’ll have to dispatch them,” he replied softly. I glanced over to see his arm reaching down towards his side. An instant later, I saw the glint of cold steel as he drew a dagger from its sheathe.
“Wait, what?” I hissed. “C’mon, we can get away with a lot tonight, but that is gonna draw attention.”
“Not if we do it together. You’ve got a knife right?” I nodded and drew my own knife, but Sombra seemed to already know the answer - he didn’t look, but instead glanced around the corner, and quickly pulled his head back. “You take the one closer to us, I’ll take the one further away. Get behind them, and when I give the signal, put your hand over their mouth and hold it shut as you shove the knife into their neck. Aim for the front half, that’ll cut the flow of blood to the brain. Three seconds, and they’ll be dead. Do it right, and their death cries will be muffled so no one else will hear. It’ll be bloody, but magic can clean that up pretty quickly. Drag the bodies into the workshop.”
“Uh… alright…” I muttered. I tried to sound confident, but I knew that I had failed miserably. Already my knees were shaking, and I could feel my stomach doing flips. Yeah, I’d killed a Minotaur before, in the caverns underneath Everfree, but this felt… different. That Minotaur had been clearly threatening three Ponies who were running for their lives. These two… they were just guards, man! Minotaur guards, yes, enemy guards, but still… They were just doing what they were paid to do, and because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time they were going to die…
Sombra must have sensed my hesitancy, for he placed one hand on my shoulder. “If we’re going to get in there and back out without raising the alarm, we have to get rid of them,” he muttered. “Distracting them will raise suspicion, and they might be back by the time we’re ready to leave. This is the only sure way. Two lives, or the freedom of an entire species. Your choice.”
I gulped again, feeling my stomach do another flip. “Okay…” I nodded. “Okay. Let’s… let’s get this over with.” I let Sombra move past me and fell in behind him as we rounded the corner.
Slowly, silently, we crept down the hallway. Each footstep was precise, every thought turned towards making my steps as quiet as possible as they touched the velvet carpet. Each passing second felt like an eternity, and I felt my heart leap each time one of the guards so much as twitched. Carefully, ever so carefully, I eased my way between the guard closest to me and the door behind him. To my right, I could see Sombra moving into position as well.
Time slowed to a crawl as Sombra turned his head towards me. His was held tightly at the ready in his right hand. He held out one hand towards me. Three fingers were extended. He put one down. Two fingers were up.
One.
We struck.
It was fast, and yet at the same time agonizingly slow. My left hand reached out and clamped itself over the Minotaur’s snout, holding his powerful jaws shut. Just beside me, I sensed more than saw that Sombra was doing the same. An instant later, both of our knives bit to the handle into our targets’ throats, each one piercing out the other side. I could feel the guard struggling underneath my grasp, trying to scream despite his severed windpipe. Though my knife remained buried deep in his throat, I could feel blood gushing out of the wound over my hand, past my wrist down onto the floor. His struggles became weaker, his knees collapsed, the horrible hissing sound from his attempts to scream faded away. His body went limp. He was dead.
Three seconds.
“Inside, quick!” Sombra hissed, breaking me out of my stupor. His left hand reached out grabbed the knob, turning it and flinging it open. Just as quickly, he was dragging his victim inside, leaving a trail of blood droplets behind. I hesitated for only a moment before following behind, depositing the second dead guard on top of the first. Sombra poked his head back out of the door, and his horn lit up for a brief moment. The blood that had been spilled onto the ground flew up and gathered into a floating ball, which vanished with a soft pop. With that, Sombra ducked back into the workshop and shut the door closed behind him.
The entire process, from the time we struck to the time the door closed, took less than thirty seconds.
“Well done,” I heard Sombra praised me. I barely acknowledge it. My knees were shaking violently, as were my hands. I vaguely remember the knife clattering to the floor as it fell from my grasp. Nausea welled up within me, and I very nearly threw up right then and there.
Sombra must have sensed my distress, for he knelt down next to me. “Easy there,” he muttered. “Deep breaths. Deep breaths.” I gulped and nodded, taking a few deep gasps for air. “That’s it. More, more. You’re alright.”
Honestly, I was almost as shocked at my own horror as I was at what I had done. After all, that wasn’t my first kill. It’s just that the first one… again, it had been different. There had been a clear threat, a clear “Him-or-them” choice to be made quickly. And it had been with a rock, not a knife. More brutal and in-the moment, not brutally efficient and calculated. This one had been so much more personal. I’d felt that guard die underneath me, felt as he desperately tried to gulp air down his ruined throat, felt as his life slipped away...
It was several minutes before I had regained any semblance of composure. “Fucking shit…” I swore, fighting as another wave of nausea washed over me. “That… that was horrible…”
“I’d be lying if I said killing got any easier…” Sombra muttered. “Especially one like that. But you have to realize that their deaths serve a higher purpose - saving Equestria. That’s the only way most of us deal with it.”
I shook my head as I shakily pushed myself upright - I couldn’t remember when I’d fallen to my knees. “Just… Just p-please, never again,” I stammered. “So… so what are we going to do with the… with the b-bodies?”
“I’ll teleport them back to the camp and they’ll be burned.”
“Seriously?” I hissed angrily. “It’s not enough we kill them, but we burn their bodies?”
“What in tartarus are we going to do otherwise?” Sombra snapped back. “Bury them outside? With Minotaurs roaming the forest and swarming all over the palace grounds like locust? Leave them here to rot overnight and be found tomorrow? Burn them in the forge and alert the whole damn castle that we’re in here? This is war! We have to be efficient and mindful of what we do and the repercussions they can have. Even if we don’t like it! Now stand back.”
Much as my conscious screamed at me that there had to be something else that could be done, deep down I knew Sombra was right. We couldn’t deal with the bodies here without alerting the palace to our efforts, and leaving them alone here would be far too incriminating of a clue - especially if someone decided to test one of the cuts against my knife. So i took a few hesitant steps backwards as Sombra pulled a scroll from his pocket. He pressed the seal with his thumb, and a surge of midnight-blue energy raced up his arms and towards his horn. He pointed with one finger, and a bolt of blue lightning raced out of his horn, surrounding the two corpses with a blue energy field.
And with a soft pop, they were gone.
As soon as the corpses were gone, Sombras horn lit up once more, this time with his own grey aura. The blood that had pooled where the bodies had been lying flew upwards and formed into a floating sphere, joined by blood from my knife, hands, arms, and shirt. Sombra's attire and weapon, likewise, was purged of the red liquid. As soon as the last drops had flown into the sphere, it too vanished with the third soft pop of the evening.
“Alright. Now that that… unpleasantness is done…” Sombra began, turning his back to me, “I’m guessing this is the room where you were working today?”
I nodded, clearing my throat in an attempt to rid it of the lump that had formed there. “Y-yeah,” I replied. “The powder is over in those barrels,” I pointed towards a set of three barrels, where I had seen Dusthorn storing his raw mixtures of the ingredients.
Sombra nodded and strolled over towards the trio of barrels. As he approached each one, his horn lit up, and a globe of water formed to hover in the air beside him. He pulled the lid off of each barrel in turn and allowed the water orb to drip into the barrel, soaking the powder. He repeated this process with multiple orbs of water for each barrel, and each time he was finished he sealed the barrels tightly.
It was only a few minutes before Sombra strolled back towards me. “Done,” he nodded. “Let’s get out of here.”
“That’s it?” I asked. “Like… you’re not gonna sabotage anything else?”
“If I do too much damage, we risk them calling off the project entirely,” Sombra explained. “And if that happens, what reason have they to keep you around? No, we’ll keep our sabotage light for now, enough to set them back, perhaps just enough for them to play off as an accident. We don’t want them getting suspicious of you, after all.”
“Point taken,” I conceded. “Alright… let’s go.”
The journey away from the workshop was far less eventful than the journey to the workshop had been. We encountered no patrols, no guards, no resistance of any kind. The Pegasi outside were still moving clouds around, so we were able to make our way back to my window with no more difficulty than before. True to his word, Sombra helped lift me back up to my window, which I was then able to open and scramble into. He did not follow me up, but I didn’t blame him - we’d already messed around enough that night. I’m sure he was just as eager to get to sleep as I was. I made sure to expose myself to direct moonlight to rid myself of the effects of the shadow-walking spell before crawling into bed. As I took my place on the bed, the image that had been holding my place faded away, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
Sleep did not come easily. The kill kept replaying in my head, over and over again, each revisitation more sickening than the last. I swore that I could still feel the stickiness of his blood on my fingers, even though multiple examinations with my flashlight proved otherwise. Eventually, I did fall asleep, but even this slumber was fitful, plagued by nightmares of flashing steel and red rivers. But this only further solidified one fact in my mind.
This war had to end. Quickly, before I had to take another life like that. Otherwise, I was going to lose my damn mind.