//------------------------------// // 2 - Apex Predation // Story: Gloaming // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// When my alarm went off at 5:45, I was up in moments. Breakfast was a few slices of peanut-buttered bread stuffed into my mouth, clothes were just the olive-green shirt of my ranger uniform (plus a pair of saddlebags for moving my books into my office), and grooming was nil except for brushed teeth. I do my important work outside; so what if my mane was frizzy? The forest didn’t care. Levanta was still sleeping. Not wanting to wake her up, I scribbled out a note and taped it to the inside of her door. Levanta, At work. Spare key on the counter. Remember to lock up when you leave and have a good day at school! - Mom I really, really hoped it wasn’t patronizing, but Levanta needed to know that I was still around for her to talk to. She was sixteen; what was I supposed to say? Something as open as “feel free to talk to me” would only make her push me away to show she was Independent. Right? I’d been trying that for so long with no response. Not for the first time, not for the last, I wished Thunderhead was still alive. As it turned out, Delta didn’t exactly have a police station; its police and fire station had been combined into one. It made it a little easier to find, at least, since the building was so oddly-shaped. One side had the squatness of a police station, while the other had the wide garages necessary for the tender carriages. Luckily, it was only a few minutes’ walk from my house; I wondered if the Crown had done that on purpose. The station was neither busy nor large. A few ponies glanced up quizzically at me before going back to whatever work they’d been doing. I kept track of the names on the few offices as I passed — Homeguard, Clearwater, Swan Dive (mine), Weneighchee, and so on — so I’d know who I was working with. I was examining the names so intently that I walked right on by the one labelled Sheriff Cascadia before I remembered who I was supposed to report to and doubled back. The unicorn inside reminded me of a guard: stocky and no-frills. She even had the stereotypical dark steel coat and trimmed white-and-blue mane. Her eyes were the blue that could have the warmth of a summer sky or the chill of a frozen lake, depending on her mood. At the moment, they were in “chill” mode. She was scribbling something down, glaring at the paper like she wanted it to explode, and pressing the quill down so hard she was at risk of pushing it completely through. She didn’t seem to have noticed me entering her office. “Fur-ther-more,” she enunciated under her breath, “while we are here to serve and pro-tec-t, that does not mean you have the right to-” “E-excuse me,” I said, “but I-” She held out a hoof without looking up. “Hold on a sunblasted minute,” she growled. “Need to get this bullcrap out of my system. Sorry, but it’s better for both of us. Take a seat. Be done in a moment.” She gestured towards the empty chair in the room and went straight back to muttering almost-obscene nothings. I clenched my jaw, but sat down without saying anything. Hopefully, hopefully, I’d caught her at a bad time. Whatever her problem was, it seemed bad. She kept sounding like she was ready to snap and let loose an ungodly storm of military profanities, even though the words themselves would be nothing but polite, yet firm, when read aloud. “Sin-cer-e-ly,” the mare hissed, “Sheriff. Cas. Ca. Di. A.” She dotted her last i particularly fiercely and stuffed the paper into her desk with more force than was necessary. Groaning, she ruffled what little mane she had. “Sorry,” mumbled the mare. “Bad morning. Had to get up real early. Some stallion was complaining about- Frig, I barely remember. Something stupid. Going to leave him a friendly reminder to not do that.” She puffed herself up so quickly it was like somepony had stuck a pin in her rump. “Anyhoo! Sheriff Cascadia of Delta. You’re the Ranger?” “Yes’m.” I clapped a foreleg across my chest. “Ranger Swan Dive, reporting for duty, ma’am.” “Excellent,” Cascadia said with a nod. “And now that we’ve got the formalities out of the way, you can drop the ‘ma’am’ if you like. I’m not big on titles, ’specially not in a place this small.” She dug a thick folder out of her desk and dropped it between us. “So. To business. What’ve you heard about the situation here?” “Not much,” I said. “Animals getting killed — big ones, too, like bears — and nopony seems to know what’s going on. There aren’t any monsters in the area that could do that sort of damage. But whatever’s doing it, it hasn’t hurt any ponies yet.” “Mostly right,” Cascadia replied, “but technically, there is a chimera about a hundred miles north. She just wasn’t down here when the attacks happened.” I didn’t probe. Chimeras were easy to track; if she said the chimera had stayed put, the chimera had stayed put. “Now, I heard you prefer to work alone, yeah?” “Yes’m, although I might want a pony or two to help once I’ve got a solid view of the situation.” “Right. Don’t spring it on me at the last second, and we shouldn’t have a problem.” Cascadia tapped the folder. “All autopsy reports in there, statements from the ponies who found the bodies, maps of where they were found, the works. Let me know if I missed something.” “Will do, and thank you.” I took the folder and started looking through it. I only saw a little, but my instincts felt good about it. “And your office-” “Saw it. Down the hall on my left.” “Perfect. Any other questions?” “Nope.” “Then dismissed, Swan. Make me proud.” I saluted at Cascadia — it seemed the right thing to do — and left her office. Outside, I dug out one of the less-detailed maps that showed where each body was found, draped it over one of my front legs, and hobbled three-legged towards my office as I examined it. An earth stallion backed out of an office right in front of me; I barely managed to pull myself to a stop before hitting him. “-and would you like me to stop by Windfall’s?” he was saying. “She wanted to double-check that her additions were still up to code.” I wanted to edge around him, but the hall was narrow and didn’t give me the room. I cleared my throat. “Excuse me?” The stallion yelped, jumped about a foot in the air, and snapped to face me so fast it was like there wasn’t any in-between state. His breath seemed caught in his throat and his pupils were dilated to a strange degree. “Um, sorry,” I said nervously, “but you’re kinda-” “Sorry,” he said quickly. “Just- shocked. Is all.” He blinked and gave me a strange look, but scooted to one side to let me pass. He turned back to the office. “I-I am sorry, what was that?” I mentally catalogued him: earth stallion, pale-gray coat, bronzed mane and tail, golden eyes. And I mean golden eyes, not just yellow; they had an almost metallic quality to them. I’d have to ask if he was always that wound-up. I slid past him. My office had everything I needed, and a few things I didn’t but really liked, primarily a big posterboard and pins. I quickly pinned up the map I was looking at, as well as what other maps I could. Then I leafed through the autopsy reports, found the first one, and began reading. Delta’s problem was a simple one: the predators were being preyed upon, and no one knew by what. It’d started several moons ago, when a mare who’d been searching for truffles had stumbled upon a dead mountain lion. Oddly, the only external wound was a mangling on one of its hind legs, near the femoral artery. Otherwise, it had suffered severe blunt force trauma, with two broken legs, several broken ribs, a snapped neck, and possibly a concussion. At the time, it had just been a creepy one-off, with nothing saying ponies should be worried. Then a bear turned up dead with similar injuries, less than two weeks later. Another week later, a splintercat. After one and a half weeks, a wolf. In spite of its isolation, Delta didn’t have a dedicated ranger or even an animal control department. It’d never needed one; as in many small towns, problems with the animals tended to be small and were usually handled by the police, which meant officers got on-the-job training, and for free to boot. But when faced with something like this, they had nothing. Which was where I, as a ranger, came in. I leafed through the autopsy reports, looking for commonalities. They weren’t hard to find. The most obvious was that every animal was a large predator. I’d almost written “apex predator” in my notes, but the dead splintercat messed that up. In spite of their size, splintercats were mesopredators, occasionally preyed upon by wolves and cougars. I never saw any herbivores or (thank goodness) sapient species among the dead. All the victims were also fleshy, with no arcanoanimals like timberwolves (a tidbit that had been necessary to note more often than one might think). Injuries were also similar. Most of the damage was blunt force: broken bones, often brain injuries, some abrasions. However, there would always be an open wound of some kind, typically not too far from a major blood vessel. The edges of these wounds were ragged, as if they’d been forcibly ripped open rather than cut open with claws or teeth. Autopsy notes also frequently noted that the poor animals had been exsanguinated to some degree, but the coroner couldn’t tell if they’d bled to death or if the blood had been lost postmortem. When I was done with the autopsies, I had to admit to myself that species was one of the few things between the deaths that wasn’t common across incidents. It was hard to build a predation profile when almost everything was the same from attack to attack. I pushed away from my desk and looked up, cataloguing the information and trying to filter out possible suspects. The typical predators were right out, since they were the ones being preyed upon. The typical pony might then jump to dragons, but they ate gems and occasionally rock. (Besides, there weren’t any this far out anyway; being reptiles, they didn’t like the cold, even if their inner fire meant they were technically endothermic.) It could’ve been a teenage dragon trying to assert their dominance, but there’d been no burn marks anywhere. The only chimera was too far away. If it’d been a manticore, it could’ve stung the animals and all the bludgeoning wouldn’t have been necessary. Cockatrices were too small to do that kind of damage, even assuming they didn’t petrify their prey. Windigoes did- Hold up. It might’ve been a windigo. They couldn’t do direct physical damage, but they fed on negative emotions, and no one knew how an animal’s emotions factored into that. A windigo desperate for food might be getting some by throwing animals around and into trees to generate a few drops of fear. It was a long shot, but I scribbled windigo on a piece of scratch paper (red ink, to show it was unlikely). I looked back up at the ceiling and resumed thinking. By the time I’d gotten through all the animals and monsters I could think of, the list of possible suspects was small and disappointingly scattershot. All but two of the names were in red ink, and those two were in yellow; there was no green. And even the yellows, I’d been stretching a bit, desperate to push them out of the red. The biggest sticking point was the wound where the flesh had been ripped away on each animal. The injuries were far too consistent to be the product of chance; something deliberately made them. It was blunt force trauma, so that threw out it being made by sharp teeth. But the only kinds of creatures that would attack these animals were the ones with sharp teeth. I’d done my best to ignore that issue when shortlisting, saying I’d do some more filtering later. That wasn’t looking promising. The next problem was the complete lack of other injuries. The animals been thrown around, bitten, and… not much else. It was like whatever was killing them was doing so for the sake of killing them. Why? Some kind of sadistic pleasure, maybe? But that implied sapience, and none of the creatures on my list were sapient (except windigoes, maybe). For all I knew, it could’ve been a pissed-off pony taking out their frustrations on the first big animal they found. Which suddenly made a whole lot of sense- Except for the arterial wound. Dangit. That meant something, I knew it. I tapped my pencil on my desk a few times and glanced at the clock. 11:49. Close enough to lunch. I grabbed my bag and headed to the clean, but cramped, room masquerading as a cafeteria. Only a few other ponies were around, generally eating alone. I picked one at random, a pegasus digging into some ravioli, and sat down across from her. “Hey,” I said, extracting my sandwich from its plastic bag. “I’m new.” The pegasus looked up. Her eyes were green- No, they were more vivid than that. They were viridian, optimistic and inquisitive, but a few wrinkles and various scars — a mild one on her leg, several thin ones on her right wing, etc. — told me she wasn’t naïve. She looked me up and down for a second. “Yep,” she said. “If you weren’t, I’d recognize you.” “Ranger Swan Dive.” I shoveled part of my sandwich into my mouth. “Deputy Clearwater.” She extended her hoof and we shook. “One quarter of Delta’s permanent police force.” “A quarter?” That wasn’t uncommon in towns this small, but- “I passed a lot more offices than that.” “Most of them’re fireponies.” Clearwater flitted a wing dismissively. “Since we’re both so small, keeping the fire and police departments under one roof saves money, and the fire department’s larger.” (Of course it would be. This place ran on lumber.) “Nine times out of ten, the door you pass is for a firemare. Heck, some of them work in both places, depending on what’s needed. Me, I’m just a cop.” “Right. Got it.” Clearwater licked some sauce off of her fork. “Found anything yet about our animal problem?” she said, half-jokingly. “Not really,” I admitted. “The injuries are… I don’t know, they’re too…” I clicked my tongue as I searched for the right word. “…contradictory. Like, why would something kill those animals at all if it wasn’t going to do anything with the bodies?” “Hnng. Bummer. I was kinda hoping…” “If it was easy, I wouldn’t be here.” “True. True.” We ate in silence, that line of conversation exhausted. After a while, Clearwater cleared her throat. “So. Not-current-work iktus. Where-” “‘Iktus’?” “You know, stuff. Where were you before now?” “Fawkes.” Clearwater looked up and stared. “Fawkes? What do they need rangers for in Fawkes? It’s a city and in the middle of the sunblasted desert!” “Which is why they need somepony to, among other things, shoo the terrashots away.” “Uh… terrashots?” “They live in the mountains until they get a desire to migrate. Then they walk into the desert and the heat makes them explode. Messy.” “…You’re kidding.” Luckily, I had my shortlist hoofbook on fearsome critters with me in my bag under the chair. I pulled it out, found the right page, and pushed it to Clearwater. Her eyes were almost a blur as they jumped back and forth across the paper. “They’re… They’re coffin-shaped?” “And that’s not getting into stuff like augerinos burrowing into leaky pipes. Yes, even places like Fawkes can use rangers in the right circumstances.” “But nothing major, right? Nothing like this?” “I first got stationed there because of an issue with a roaming Mogollon Monster, but…” I waved a hoof dismissively. “That’s really rare. Terrashots and augerinos and the like are easy-peasy.” I dropped my voice to a stage whisper. “I think they volunteered me for this job because I was overpaid, overqualified, and underworked.” “Sounds like it,” Clearwater said, nodding. “What was that last thing you mentioned? Burrows into pipes?” “An augerino. First four letters A-U-G-E.” “Augerino,” whispered Clearwater. She flipped through the book. I could tell when she was on the right page because she blinked and tilted her head. “And that’s its head? Weird.” I chuckled. “You ain’t seen the half of it,” I said. “You can borrow that book if you want. I’ve got it pretty much memorized.” Clearwater nodded slowly. “Thanks,” she said. She flipped to the next page. “I think I’ll- Why does that dog have a head shaped like an axe?” “Because it’s an axehandle hound.” An idea flitted into my mind and I changed the subject. “Say, uh, do you know the name of a light gray earth stallion? Golden eyes, kinda high-strung? I think he’s in the fire department.” Clearwater broke off staring at axehandle hounds to stare at me. “Sleek mane and tail, both bronzed?” “Yeah.” “That’s Homeguard, but he’s not high-strung at all. He’s normally… really smooth.” “Really? I got caught behind him, asked him to move, and he jumped like I’d stabbed him beneath the tail with a branding iron.” “Huh.” Clearwater frowned; one of her ears drooped. “That’s not like him at all. It’s practically impossible to catch him unawares. And I’ve been trying for almost a decade.” “It wasn’t like that then.” I looked around the room. Homeguard wasn’t here. “Do you know when he takes his lunch?” “He eats in his office,” said Clearwater. “Says he doesn’t like people watching him eat.” She shrugged and went back to leafing through the book. Look for him after work, I told myself. See if you can talk to him a little. I’d never had a first impression quite like that, and my instincts told me it was a poor one. It was easy: find him, apologize for sneaking up on him (I hadn’t even tried!), get to know him a little. I was going to be here a while; I couldn’t let something like that ruin my- “Oh, Celestia. I would not want to run into a dingmaul.”