Octaves - The Chronicles of

by Victoria_the_dragoness

The First Chronicle - Chapter 5

The First Chronicle

Chapter 5

It was twenty past eight when Dash left Fluttershy’s cottage. The two pegasi spent the last two hours discussing what they’d done over the three months Dash had been away in Manehattan, long into the night.

Fluttershy had been quite busy with her animals over that period; many sick or injured creatures which she had put herself in charge of nursing back to health. Dash always marvelled over the fact that Fluttershy would care for so many animals even though she was so timid, but still she took very good care of all of them. She admired her for that at times; how she could be so patient when Dash herself always had to be on the move. Dash supposed that was why she found it so easy to talk to the shy pony; she trusted her to listen and to help her with anything she might be having trouble with.

While the yellow pegasus was happy to talk about her multitude of animals, for the most part she just listened quietly to Dash reminisce about her graduation into the EBI. She spoke of being the top of her class in all aspects of the training and how even her superior, Chief Whitecoat, mentioned her prowess; to which Fluttershy grinned vibrantly and congratulated Dash for her achievement.

Dash also went into detail about how she caught a criminal in a hostage situation in Manehattan while she was still only a rookie. She had taken the initiative on the case and organized – a little bit hastily and on the spot – a team to capture the unicorn with no casualties on her record. The pony in charge of the robbery, who had been injured during the crime, commended Dash’s quick thinking and spoke to the Chief of his interest in her continued service. Fluttershy listened to it all and ‘ooh’d and ‘ahh’d at all the right places, while she made some tea and cookies for their chat.

And while Fluttershy talked about how Angel, her pet bunny companion, had come down with a cold from being outside in the snow too long, Dash munched away on the delectable treats. She tried the tea, which she sort of enjoyed, but decided to stick with apple cider and cookies. Fluttershy told her that the poor rabbit had refused to come inside until he received the meal he demanded of her; to which Dash replied that it was his fault for being stubborn.

The timid pegasus chuckled lightly and dismissed the allegation. As the conversation died down at last, and as the sun fell behind the mountains, Dash realised how late it must be getting. The cerulean mare got up and stretched, saying that she should be flying on home. Fluttershy nodded her understanding and the two friends said their good-byes.

It was eight thirty in the evening when Dash arrived at her cloud home. She entered through her front door, peering once more out at the mountains and the sky that she loved before flying up to her room. The day had been long and arduous, and the only thing on Rainbow Dash’s mind was a good night’s sleep.

She slipped her uniform and coat off and hung it up on a hanger. She took off her holster and lay it on her bedside table for the next day of duty. Then she slunk lazily into her nimbus cloud bed and was soon fast asleep.

*****

Dash tossed and turned in her sleep as thoughts of who could be foalnapping ponies ran through her head. The pegasus woke at a quarter past ten at night, requiring a quick drink of water. Dash wandered down to the bathroom and took a much needed drink from the cloud tap before turning back to her room and strolling into it, crawling back into her bed.

At eleven o’ clock, the pegasus woke from a dream about being captured and tortured by the criminal, but the face of the pony was hidden behind shadow. When Dash tried to remove the haze covering their face, she opened her eyes to see an outstretched hoof in the air. She sighed and turned on her side, pulling the white cloud sheet tightly over her.

It was half past twelve when she awoke again, to a cold chill running down her spine and a whistling noise approaching from outside. It was more like a howling sound to Dash’s half-awake ears. The pegasus lay in her bed listening to the eerie sound until her mind was focused. Dash scolded herself for being startled by such a din and closed her eyes, falling at last into a deep disturbed sleep.

A thick black haze greeted her when she opened her eyes once more. It almost suffocated the pegasus to breathe in the fumes surrounding her. When she looked down to see if she were still in her cloud home – only to find that it was pitch black all around – Dash saw that she had her uniform and gear on. The cerulean mare drew out her pistol from her holster, feeling more comfortable with exploring the expanse of dark mist. Even walking through it felt strange; the fog almost solid against her coat, the pegasi’s fur stood on end with the chill that now pervaded the area. For the longest time Dash walked in silence. It was a troublingly eerie environment to be in and not only that, Dash was quickly coming to suspect somepony or something was following her. As she crept along an unseen path cautiously, she was wondering what would happen if she did speak; and who might answer her in the dark.

So for a while the pegasus wandered around in the blackness, catching small glimpses of tall, broken and horribly twisted trees and wide ugly overgrown shrubs through the haze. Dash could see lights flickering in the distance, but when she raced after them thinking they would lead to a way out of this bone chilling place, the light faded and Dash was once again left in the darkness. It felt like hours had passed by and still the cerulean pony could only search the seemingly endless mist for an exit. She had no idea whether she’d been walking in circles the entire time, but Dash could feel her patience running thin. She was beginning to wonder why she hadn’t been calling out for help this whole time.

“Hello?” Dash shouted into the haze of shadow, breaking the hour long silence hanging about her. But silence was the only thing that answered. No response came to her ears, but after she spoke, the mare felt a breeze catch her mane. The haze lifted above her and revealed to Dash a deeply wooded area. She was standing on the edge of a snow covered clearing. It was snowing, but Dash couldn’t feel the snowflakes on her face or the snow between her hooves as she stood. Something caught her attention as she thought about this odd place and turned her gaze towards the object.

It was poking out from a snow back; just barely visible over the falling white crystals, so carefully placed but easily missed in such a dreary place. A bloody hoof lay on the snow; so obviously yet so mysteriously. Dash couldn’t tell if the rest of the pony was there as well, but as she yelled out to make certain, the mare sat up sweating in her cloud bed. She was panting and glancing around in a panic as the morning light crept steadily into her room.

Her wings felt tense against her sides; when she attempted to unfurl them, a shot of pain ran through her wings and into her stomach. Dash relaxed her muscles and sat up carefully on her cloud bed. She massaged her sore spots and managed to stretch with a bearable difficulty. That dream must have been more unnerving than I thought. After a few more minutes she figured her wings had had enough rest, so Dash flapped her wings, rising up to the ceiling of her room, and cruised into her downstairs kitchen. She rustled through her pantry for something to eat as she thought about what her dream could have meant. She’d had these experiences before, but never quite knew how to deal with them.

Where have I seen that clearing before? Why was there a dismembered leg lying in the snow? Finding no answers to those questions in her fridge, Dash decided on a bowl of yogurt with oats and raisins, and apple juice for breakfast. She sat herself down at her table and continued contemplating her bizarre early morning alarm. Rainbow Dash knew it had to do with her investigation, but she couldn’t remember where she’d been besides Ponyville. She tapped her spoon against her chin a few times, thinking. It happened yesterday, She thought. Yesterday afternoon, when I’d gone to see Fluttershy. The Everfree Forest. I tracked Fluttershy’s chicken there and felt a chill about the clearing. Creepy or not now, Dash had to investigate this further. She raced through her breakfast and pulled her uniform and gear on. Dash holstered her gun at her hip and flew out of the front door of her cloud home, heading rapidly to the spot she’d seen in her dream.

It was a quarter past ten when she disembarked from her house. Ponies were already out and about at work or school or going about their daily routine as usual, but Dash had no time to stop and greet them. She sped past them all in such a hurry that not only did they not see her to say hello, they hardly even saw a blue streak fly past them and felt a sudden breeze kick up in the blur’s wake. A few ponies looked back behind them, trying to figure out what had just occurred before continuing on with their daily business.

Normally, Rainbow Dash wouldn’t have been so inconsiderate of her friends and would have at least wished them a good morning, but this was too important to her to be distracted by formality. After all, she’d never been one for being formal anyway; this just gave her an excuse. She needed to fly to the Everfree and see if her hunch was right; if her dream was giving her any viable evidence or clues to this case. Even if it was a dead end, Dash had learned over her three months at the academy that all ends must be investigated to their respective ends. She couldn’t leave any details missing from her reports, and the dream place seemed so familiar to her. It was always a possibility.

So making swiftly for the forest, Dash landed at the treeline at a quarter past ten. There was a nip in the air just on the border of the Everfree, making the cerulean mare’s fur stand on end. Dash shivered by the abrupt change in wind direction, but shook her sudden anxiety about this idea off, wrapped her coat around her more tightly and proceeded into the dark wood. Even in the light of day Dash had to admit there was something unsettling about the trees and the shrubs that appeared to close in around her the deeper she chose to venture inside. This was only the second time the pegasus wandered into this forest alone. The other times had either been with her friends or when she soared over it, clearing the skies overhead effortlessly. Now that she was actually in the Everfree all by herself, Dash couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable. The air was thick around her, as if the environment itself was alive and unwelcoming of strangers; there was a fog also present – low to the ground – and Dash felt many pairs of eyes on her from the deeper mists. She was much more nervous now than she had been in her dream, but still the stubborn pony had to press on; now that she had found the place the dream showed her. Creatures stirred and noises funneled into Dash’s perked ears as she made her way – almost instinctually – to the clearing.

The EBI agent had her pistol drawn as she approached the snow covered field. It was snowing over the clearing, but a lull hung around it as well in the chilling atmosphere of the Everfree. That in itself felt wrong to Rainbow Dash; like something was inviting her in to find something she didn’t actually want to uncover. It only served to put the pegasus on high alert as she patrolled the perimeter, looking for what she’d seen last night. A decapitated leg, Dash thought as she held her pistol close. She was no stranger to dead bodies. Rainbow Dash had seen many during her training and rookie examinations; she was quite comfortable with being assigned to murder investigations. Not many actually came up as such a category, which disappointed the cerulean mare at first when she was given a routine mission. But soon in quite a few cases it became apparent that her investigation was more than what her superior had let on. This made things much more interesting for the agent in training. Now was different though. This case was odd, and Rainbow Dash loved it.

Her hoofprints dotted the snow covered clearing as she made her rounds of the tree line. Her hooves were beginning to freeze, but Dash was too concentrated on finding what she saw lying here in her dream to notice. The search of the perimeter came up with nothing. It shouldn’t have discouraged the pegasus so much, given that this was all started because of a lucid dream she’d had, but something told her she would find that body here. She just didn’t know where it was, how it got here or why it was here at all.

“Maybe it was just a pointless dream,” Dash considered briefly. The cerulean mare stood more or less at the center of the clearing now, with a hoof placed under her chin in thought. She tilted her head back and stared at the flickering snow falling above her. There’s no way it’s been like that any other time. Come on, think Dash. What’s here now that was in my dream? Trees, shrubs, a clearing…this clearing.

Snow blanketed the clearing with yet more fresh snow as Dash’s mind raced for a reason she’d come here. It was in the winter, a body found…behind a snow bank. Her head shot up and twisted around at that realisation, trying to spot the hill of snow. On the outskirts of the field lay a lump of snow, large enough to hide the limb and body of a diseased pony.

For some reason now, Dash stood still, not knowing how to proceed. She had never had any trouble with dead bodies before, so she didn’t really understand what was keeping her; Dash’s legs just didn’t move. She looked up at the snow and the clouds above, trying to obtain what she needed to lift her hooves. A snow flake landed on the tip of her nose and Dash blinked, shaking her head. She rubbed her snout and brushed the quickly melting ice crystal off of it.

With a stern look ahead, Rainbow Dash took a step forward, “Come on Dash, you’ve gotta stay focused. This is your first real case. On your own. You have to give it all you’ve got.” She sauntered over, up to the snow pile, and lifted a hoof. I know what’s going on, She thought suddenly. I’ve never had to deal with a pony I knew in life before…this pony…could be any of the victims, and I saw them almost every day. But those feelings must be left behind for now. If I want answers, I have to disconnect myself from that life and become a stranger.
Dash took a deep breath and brushed a hoof over the snow bank, revealing a hoof turned white from the cold. Wrapping her hoof around the dead pony’s, the cyan mare pulled whoever it was out from under the snow. She recognised the pony as Lyra Heartstrings.

The pegasus sat back, startled by what she had discovered. She pondered what this find meant for the case. No bodies were said to have been found, according to the file. Of course the cyan mare was not inclined to believe that all of the information in that file was truthful. If she were to say at least some of the details weren’t sound, this meant a huge boost to her evidence.

These killings had gone on for months and not one body or even pieces of them had been found. Now Rainbow Dash had discovered this on her second day of investigating the case. But why would the killer leave some evidence so obviously? Was it the killer’s mistake to dump the body here? Dash didn’t think so. The killer would never try something like this when their original method left no body. Was it planned? And if so, for whom? A challenge to me perhaps, saying, ‘Just try and catch me’? If that was the case, am I being followed? Nopony really knows I’m investigating these crimes, except Chief Whitecoat.
Whatever the possibilities, Dash smirked. She almost hoped it was a direct challenge to her abilities. Rainbow Dash was never one to back down from a competition. But this wasn’t the time for that. Dash had to understand this new turn of events more clearly, and to do that she needed an autopsy done on the body. For that she needed to contact her superior.

She took out her mobile and dialed EBI headquarters. “Hello? Chief Whitecoat, I need you to get a team down here to Ponyville immediately. I’ll be in the Everfree Forest. It’s a big clearing, you can’t miss it. I’ve found a body.” Dash hung up, having told him the details and her whereabouts, and looked down at the body again. “Lyra, huh? I’m sorry to see you this way, but you might be what gets me inside this killer’s head.”

Author's Note:

Hi everyone! Sorry to be gone for such a long time, I kind of lost interest in this story for a while. Anyways, I'm back and will be posting chapters at a more regular basis hopefully.

This is where shit gets real. No going back for Rainbow Dash now.

Enjoy! ^^

Comments

[Crimson Dawn]

You have an interesting story going on here. Hopefully you will continue to update so we can see where you are going with it.