//------------------------------// // Case Nine, Chapter Three: Weaving Paths // Story: Ponyville Noire: Kriegspiel—Black, White, and Scarlet // by PonyJosiah13 //------------------------------// The first thing that Phillip noticed when he and Trace entered the inner offices of the precinct was a notice on the wall, pinned to a bulletin board: FROM: Chief Cold Case TO: All Officers From now on, all officers are to wear bulletproof vests and walkie-talkies while on duty. With the increase in gang violence and activity, we need to take every precaution for not just our own safety, but the safety of our colleagues and the civilians we protect. All officers must receive training on the use of a walkie-talkie. The memo was dated a full moon ago. “I hear a lot of officers complaining about the weight of the vests,” Trace commented as they walked down the hallway. “Most of ‘em just haven’t trained with one since boot. I say at least Cold cares enough about us to get everypony vests and radios.” “Plus, they keep you warm in the cold,” Phil pointed out, pushing open the door to the stairs. Trace let out a soft chuckle. “True.” They descended the stairs to the basement laboratory, following the sound of classical music. Doctor Suunkii and Twilight Sparkle were inside the lab. Twilight was currently sorting empty test tubes into a rack, placing them in and taking them out of the rack with a machine-like cycle of repetition. Suunkii was attempting to examine some traces underneath a comparison microscope, but he kept glancing up at Twilight with a small frown on his face. “G’day, Twi, Suun,” Phillip greeted them. “Hello, Phillip Finder, Detective Trace Evidence,” Suunkii nodded. “I assume that you are here to aid in the investigation of Stone Wall’s death. Doctor Mortis is currently examining the corpse in the morgue.” “We’ve got some traces from the body that we think might help,” Trace said, lifting the evidence bags from his pack. “I want you to take a look at these soil samples first; we found them under his hooves, they might be from where he was abducted.” “That is a fair assumption,” Suunkii nodded, taking the bag. He carefully scooped some of the sample onto a slide, placed a cover over it, and slid it into place beneath a microscope. “Twilight Sparkle, please retrieve the notebook on geological samples.” Twilight didn’t seem to hear him, because she kept sorting test tubes and replacing them in racks, muttering to herself about organization and patterns. “Twilight Sparkle,” Suunkii repeated, raising his voice. “Please retrieve the geology notebook.” “What?” Twilight jumped. “Oh! Oh, right. Sorry, doctor.” She retrieved the spiral-bound notebook from the shelf and levitated it over to Suunkii, who flipped it open and began to scan through it. “Twilight Sparkle, is there something that is diverting your attention?” he asked calmly. Twilight flattened her ears against her head. “Sorry, doctor, I…” she stammered. “I’m just worried about Fla—er, Officer Sentry. I heard he was sent home with a concussion.” “He’ll be fine,” Phillip reassured her. “Are you sure?” Twilight asked quietly. “He’s been upset for a while, ever since he met Star Cluster again.” She bit on her lip and fidgeted in place. “Being sent home will tear him up inside; he’ll feel like he’s a failure.” “Twilight,” Phillip cut in. “Worry about him later. He’ll be fine.” Twilight frowned at him but sighed and nodded. “Twilight,” Suunkii said to her. “Once we are done with our work here, I will permit you to go and see him.” Twilight brightened noticeably at the prospect. “Thank you, doctor,” she smiled and set back to work. “This is sediment from a forest,” Suunkii concluded, carefully prodding the soil sample with a scalpel. “I will know more in a few minutes. Phillip Finder, Detective Trace Evidence, perhaps your time would be better spent examining the body with Doctor Vitae Mortis.” “Good plan,” Trace nodded. He exited the laboratory; Phillip followed him, feeling Twilight’s gaze on him for every step until the door shut behind him. They proceeded down the hallway to the morgue and stepped inside. Vitae, who had donned a face mask and gloves, was currently bending over the body of Stone Wall, who laid on a stone slab, his chest already exposed via a Y-shaped incision. A tape recorder and a camera sat on a small table next to the slab. “Don’t worry, Warden,” Vitae said, patting the corpse’s cheek. “We’ll find the guys.” She looked up as the stallions entered. “Masks and gloves, please!” she chirped. “Yes, doctor,” Phillip said, retrieving some of said gear from the cardboard boxes next to the doorway and putting them on. As an extra thought, he also dabbed some peppermint-scented salve underneath his nostrils to block out the scent of death that hung over the body. “What’d you find?” “Well, I can tell you this: Stone Wall did not go quietly,” Mortis said. “Look at all these defensive wounds.” Indeed, Stone Wall’s forelegs were covered in minor cuts and bruises, and there were even red marks on his hooves, indicating that he had fought back against his attackers. “He took quite a beating before he went down,” Mortis said. “The oldest wounds I noticed were these broken ribs.” She indicated some cracks amidst the exposed ribs in the body, spiraling from the fractured sternum and running underneath several other, larger cracks on the sides of his ribs. “These fractures, to me, look like a car crash; they’re from the steering wheel running into his chest.” “Sounds reasonable,” Trace nodded. “And there’s this,” Mortis added, pointing to a cut in between two ribs on the upper left chest. “It correlates to a stab wound on the chest. I’m willing to bet that was the finisher. “I also found GSR on his right hoof,” Mortis continued, lighting up her horn. A dark grainy substance began to glow faintly on Stone Wall’s right hoof. “Looks like he tried to open fire to defend himself. “Clearly, it didn’t work,” Trace commented dryly. He leaned in closer to the body’s mouth, his frown evident about his eyes. “Hang on, what’s that? There’s...blood on his teeth.” Mortis leaned in and gently pulled Stone Wall’s lips back with her magic. There was indeed blood on the stallion’s teeth, and bits of flesh clung to the gaps. “Looks like he bit somepony,” Mortis mused. “And he left behind some clues! Let’s get a sample.” She took a cotton swab, gently wet it, and used it to carefully dab up some of the blood, then extracted some of the flesh with a pair of tweezers and placed it in a paper bag. “Run those down to Doctor Suunkii, would you?” Mortis said, handing the samples to Trace. Trace nodded and exited the morgue. “There might be more in his stomach,” Mortis mused. She plucked out a scalpel and set her eyes upon the small pink-red sac beneath the rib cage, her eyes sparkling with excitement and anticipation. “I’m going to have to cut him open. Now comes the fun part!” Phillip took a step back and silently gave thanks that Daring wasn’t here. Mortis carefully cut the rib cage open with a set of bone pliers and removed the ribcage to expose more of the organs. Carefully, she extracted the lungs with her magic, examined them, and weighed them on a hanging scale, pausing to photograph each step. “Lungs have nothing of note,” Mortis stated into the microphone of the tape recorder. Carefully setting the lungs aside, she moved on to the heart. “There is a stab wound in the heart, in the left ventricle,” Mortis stated into the microphone, examining the ragged cut into the heart. “It correlates to a knife wound on the exterior and the rib cage. Examination of the ragged wound indicates that it was done while he was struggling and conscious. There are signs of internal bleeding; this wound would have been fatal, causing unconsciousness within moments and death within three to five minutes.” She frowned for a moment. “My initial hypothesis that the message in his chest was carved while he was alive and conscious may need to be reevaluated: it is possible that he was fatally stabbed during the initial struggle, and the message was carved into his chest while he was unconscious, but still alive, which caused the bleeding I noted.” “So somepony crashes his car, he puts up a fight and gets stabbed, and then the message is carved into his chest,” Phillip summarized. “That, for the record, is consultant Phillip Finder,” Mortis added into the recorder. “And yes, it appears that way.” The liver was then extracted and examined without comment, and then Mortis moved on to the stomach. “Now, let’s see what you’ve got in here,” she declared, taking out a scalpel. Carefully, she cut open the stomach; the stench of bile and partially digested meat filled the morgue, assaulting the noses of both observers. Phillip grunted, glad for the salve. “Oh, hello,” Mortis said, reaching into the stomach with a pair of tweezers. She extracted a mass of flesh, bile still clinging to the strange, partially digested shape. Two small golden hoops pierced the meat. “Is that...an ear?” Phillip asked, tilting his head to the side. “The stomach does indeed contain a left ear,” Mortis reported. “Purple coloration; ragged edge indicates that Stone Wall bit this off somepony, likely an attacker.” She placed the ear in a bag. “I will perform an examination of this, but I think it’s safe to say if we find a purple pony missing their left ear, they probably are worth questioning.” Trace leaned his head into the doorway. “Phil, Daring and Red are on the phone, and Suunkii’s finished up his examination of the soil.” “Good,” Phillip nodded. “Keep working, doc.” “Will do!” Mortis chirped as Phillip exited. When Phillip returned to the lab, he found Twilight and Suunkii both still working at a microscope and Trace holding up a phone on the wall; as he approached, Trace held the phone out so that they could both hear and speak into the device. “Where are you guys?” Trace asked. “An empty gas station in the Industrial District,” Red reported. “You know the one near the Burger Princess?” “Yeah,” Trace nodded. “Well, we talked to Boltstrike up at Frostback, and he said that Bright Sparks set up an emergency cache. It’s not far from Frostback; maybe they figured on getting caught one day and planned for it.” “It’s exactly the kind of thing Sparks would’ve planned for,” Daring’s voice added. “You just went there with no backup?” Trace asked, quirking an eyebrow. “If Little Miss Explorer had her way, we would’ve,” Red grunted. “I had to tell her that if she wanted to get her head blown off in an ambush, she could do that when she wasn’t racking up a consultant fee.” There was a quiet rustling of feathers in the background that sounded suspiciously like a certain pony giving another pony the Flying Feather. “It didn’t even matter; there was nopony here,” Daring added gruffly. “What did you find out at Frostback?” Phillip asked. Daring gave them a brief overview of how Bright Sparks’ associates had escaped. “Pretty sure that the stuff that they used came from that PO box,” she said. “We’ve already asked an officer to check out the post office.” “We’ll dig up what we can from here,” Red said. “Once we get back, we’ll see if we can put together that puzzle Daring found.” “Aces,” Phillip said. “We’ll keep looking into Stone Wall’s murder; he might’ve left something to identify one of his attackers. An ear he bit off and swallowed.” “Yummy,” Daring said dryly. “All right, we’ll keep looking here. Good luck on your end.” “You too,” Phillip nodded. Trace hung up the phone and they turned back to Suunkii and Twilight. “What’d you find?” “We have examined the content of this soil sample, and we have concluded, based on the presence of certain sediment and pebbles, fragments of birch bark, and deer droppings, that it comes from the White Tail Woods,” Suunkii explained. Twilight held up a map of Ponyville. She had circled Stone Wall’s home in the northwestern borders of the city. The White Tail Woods was represented by a patch of green coloring that ran through the northern part of the city, crossing through the Financial and Everfree Districts. “Personally, I’d check the western area. That’s where most of the deer population lives.” Phillip took the map and carefully traced a pencil over a pathway to City Hall, a mostly straight line that passed through a wide throughway that went around the woods. “He must’ve been diverted somewhere,” he muttered. “But where?” “Wait a minute,” Suunkii frowned. “I recall hearing some other officers complaining that there was construction on that road that morning. Here, I believe.” He pointed to a branching intersection, one road continuing towards the center of the city, the other heading into the woods proper. “Hmm,” Phillip grunted. “Can you see if there’s any surveillance crystal footage of the construction?” “I can speak to Stellar Lights,” Twilight nodded, exiting the lab. “Trace, you’ve been saying you needed more exercise,” Phillip commented. “How about a nature walk? Could grab some tucker and check the post office on the way.” “Can’t be worse than the gym,” Trace sighed. “Yeah, let’s go.” “Phil, a moment,” Suunkii said. Phillip studied Suunkii’s expression for a moment, then turned back to Trace. “This won’t take long.” Trace shrugged and exited the lab. “You should also check on Flash Sentry,” Suunkii stated. “He’ll be fine,” Phillip stated. “He may be physically fine, but his mind and spirit might require more assistance,” Suunkii said sternly. “He would benefit greatly from a heart-to-heart from you.” Phillip blinked. “You sure?” Suunkii sighed and shook his head. “I have always said this, Phil: for a pony of great intelligence, you can be incredibly dense at times. The boy looks up to you,” he stated. “It has been blatantly obvious to me, based on how he speaks to and of you. Twilight Sparkle is an excellent friend, and her visiting him would be of benefit to them both, but she is not an officer like you are. She has not seen or experienced many of the same things that you and Flash Sentry have, nor can she understand the perspective you have.” He laid a hoof on Phillip’s shoulder. “You, however, do understand. And understanding is what he needs.” Phillip studied the floor for a few moments, then sighed. “You’ve got a point,” he acknowledged. “Maybe afterward. When I have time. Thanks, Suun.” He exited the lab and climbed up the stairs. Never before had each step felt so heavy. Daring looked around the empty garage that she and Red had found. The gas station had been abandoned for years, allowed to fall into decay: the two pumps outside had had their hoses removed long ago and were currently covered in graffiti, while the windows of the nearby convenience store had been smashed and the empty interior littered with cigarette butts, empty beer bottles, and other litter left behind by vagrants. The attached garage, however, was free of this same litter. The open padlock and chain on the ground next to the opened door provided a clue as to how it had remained clean and unmolested. There were only a few items in the small room, dimly lit by a hanging lamp. A few barrels of oil with several sticks of dynamite attached to them stood along the back wall: a booby trap that had been thankfully disarmed when they arrived. A few wooden crates were stacked against one side; two were still secured with chains and combination locks, but the rest were open. Red was currently bending over one crate, examining what few contents were left inside. “Phony passports and IDs,” Red listed off. “Boxes of .30-06 ammo, most of them empty. Gun oil and other gun kit tools. Dragon’s Breath cocktails—I see they used the cheapest beer they could find.” He grunted and stood up fully. “None of that bodes well.” Daring stared at the ground, tilting her head to the side. Amidst the dusty gray of the concrete were some faint dried droplets of dark green paint, most of them forming a perimeter around a large invisible rectangle in the ground. "Looks like they spray-painted it green," she stated, bending down lower and studying the thin layer of dust on the ground. “Red, did you bring a track wand?” Red walked over to the crime scene kit that they’d set up at the entrance to the garage. Reaching far deeper into the small black box than should have been seemingly possible, he extracted a tape measure, a camera, and a wand that shone with faint purple energy. He bent down and slowly passed it over the ground. Faint tire tracks began to glow with the lavender light. “Here, hold this,” Red instructed, passing her the wand. Daring held the wand up, tilting it to capture as much detail as possible for both the tracks. Red laid the tape measure out in between the tracks, then took some photographs of them both, providing wide, medium, and close-up shots. “Okay, let’s see where they lead,” Red said, standing up. Daring followed him outside the garage, shining the wand at the ground. Hoofprints revealed themselves in a purple glow amidst the tire tracks, but all of them were in a tangled mess, indistinguishable from one another. The tire tracks led to the asphalt outside the garage, where two police officers, a light tan jenny with a curly brown bob cut and an emerald green unicorn stallion, stood post to deter any onlookers. Cars rumbled up and down the street not far from them, some of them detouring into the Burger Princess mere yards away: the faint scent of melting cheese atop cooking hayburgers made Daring’s mouth water, reminding her how close it was to lunchtime, but she forced herself to stay focused. The tire tracks were abruptly cut off near the road; the wand displayed a large patch of glowing light that looked rather like somepony had spilled a bucket of purple paint. “They must’ve used some kinda spell to disrupt the tracks,” Daring concluded, turning the wand towards the street. The illumination revealed hundreds of tire tracks all overlapping one another, spread across the street to form a purple mass. Cars passing on the street braked suddenly, their drivers distracted by the strange glow. The result was a chorus of screeching brakes, honking horns and shouted curses and threats as traffic piled up. “Whoops,” Daring muttered, quickly tucking the wand behind her back. Shaking their heads, the two police officers stepped forward to start directing traffic forward again. “If nothing else, we can at least try to figure out what model of car they were using,” Red sighed. “Maybe we can ask Trace’s friend Lug Wrench; he’s forgotten more about cars than either of us will ever know.” Daring let out a short laugh. “Probably take less time than asking Rubber—” The rumble of an engine and the sound of tires on concrete made her look up, and she was treated to the sight of a blue pickup charging right at her, the headlights like the glowing eyes of a growling beast. “Holy shit!” she yelped, diving to the side and landing on her hooves. The metal beast rumbled past her, close enough that she felt the heat. The brakes screeched as the car halted and both the doors opened. Ambush! An electric tingle ran up Daring’s spine and her hoof jerked towards the shoulder holster, sliding into the hoof strap and grasping the cold wooden grip of her revolver. Where’s Red? She glanced around and spotted him diving behind one of the gas pumps, his pistol already in hoof. With a flap of her wings, she huddled up against another pump, peering around the corner. Out of the drivers’ side tumbled a snowy blue-white griffon, his eyes wide and his beak open as he panted. The Thrussian assault rifle in his claws chattered to life as soon as he hit the ground, sprinting towards the two police officers. The jenny dived behind a car while the unicorn instinctively threw a magical shield in front of him; the few bullets that struck the shield sang musically as the green field rippled. Ponies screamed as they abandoned their vehicles and fled in a terrified drove. But the truck’s passenger calmly disembarked from the vehicle. This was a black griffon, his body adorned with scars, wearing a green headband. Three cutlasses rattled at his hip. His gaze locked onto Daring like a hawk’s and a grin crossed his beak. “Oh, fuck,” Red breathed, terror in every letter. “It’s Roaring!” The griffon’s claws went to the cutlasses, drawing a sword in each claw. He tossed one cutlass into the air: Daring watched the blade spinning upwards, the blade briefly catching the sunlight before he snatched it with his tail. With his free claw, he drew a boxy Griffonese pistol from a holster. All this was done in the time it took Red to pop out from behind cover and fire a single shot with his sidearm. He missed. The griffon didn’t. The bark of the pirate’s pistol mixed with Red’s grunt of shock. Daring felt her heart suddenly leap into her throat as Red stumbled, his pistol tumbling from his hooves, then collapsed facedown, mouth open and eyes wide in horror. Blood ran from his chest and onto the concrete. “No!” Daring screamed, standing up and opening fire. She felt every kick of the revolver rush down her foreleg and into her chest. Cackling, Roaring fired back at her as he charged in her direction; she barely noticed the hot kisses of the bullets sailing past as she zigzagged away. Click. Cursing beneath her breath, Daring fumbled for a speedloader as she opened the chamber of her gun, shaking the empty cartridges out. Roaring flung the pistol at her face. She ducked and lunged forward, tilting the revolver back on the strap and drawing her kusarifundo with a snap. “Come on, motherfucker!” she roared. Roaring let out a screech in response as the cutlass arced down towards her head. With a twitch of her wing, she dodged to her left, thrusting both her hooves up to meet the attack, her kusarifundo taut between her hooves. She caught his foreleg in the cord and corkscrewed it downwards, trapping his elbow against her chest. Textbook disarm and takedo— Something flashed in the corner of her eye. Oh, fuck, the other sword! She lurched away as the second sword, held in Roaring’s tail, stabbed at her. It missed by inches: the thick blade passed by so closely that she could see in detail the snaking runes and the twin black suns inscribed onto it. A bell rang faintly in the back of her mind, but the fact that this pirate was actively trying to kill her muted it. Roaring tilted the blade with his tail and slashed it towards her neck. Releasing the kusarifundo, Daring threw herself backward, spreading her wings to catch the air. Roaring's claw snapped at her, but he only managed to seize the revolver; thinking quickly, Daring undid the hoof strap, freeing her from his grasp. With a flap, she flew away, the concrete scraping against her back. The chattering of the other griffon’s assault rifle echoed faintly in her ears. With a hyena-like cackle, Roaring drew his third cutlass in his free claw and lunged at her, Daring’s kusarifundo flying off his wrist. Righting herself in midair with a twist, Daring spotted an abandoned crowbar laying on the ground. She dove for it, grasping the cold metal in her hoof, then spun around and swung it at her pursuer. The crowbar whistled through the air, a clean miss, and the blades of two cutlasses flashed towards her. With a grunt, Daring spun away, narrowly evading the two blades. The third sword stabbed at her like the stinger of a scorpion, but she ducked beneath it, her hat tumbling from her head. Desperately, she seized Roaring’s tail and yanked back, trying to tug him off-balance. Then a kick with the force of a sledgehammer rammed into her gut and all the breath was thrust from her lungs. Gasping, head spinning from shock, she barely noticed the blades slicing at her head again in time to duck. Again a cutlass came down. Sucking in a gasp, Daring started to maneuver to the side, raising the crowbar to parry the blow. The blade met the metal; then a thrill of horror ran down Daring’s spine as she witnessed the sword cleave the crowbar in half like it was made of paper! Daring threw herself to the side, but was too slow: the tip of the blade pierced her skin and carved a path down her body all the way to her pelvis. The cold raced down her body as though she’d been dunked in ice water, quickly replaced by the horrible warmth of her blood running from the wound: the shock of the injury seemed to momentarily sever the connection between her brain and her body and she tumbled to the ground, the impact knocking her scream out of her lungs. She looked at the two halves of the crowbar on the ground next to her, severed cleanly in half, and suddenly remembered where she’d read about the three swords with the twin black suns carved into them. “Asocrac,” she gasped out. Roaring’s figure cast her in shadow; she looked up to see him grinning down at her. “Aye, indeed,” Roaring hissed, drawing the cutlass in his right claw back to thrust into her heart. She tried to move, but the pain radiated from her chest to her forelegs, and they wouldn't move fast eno— A crack of thunder pierced the air and Roaring stumbled with a grunt as a plume of red liquid suddenly erupted from his side. Turning, Daring saw that Red was standing up, clutching his bloody chest with one hoof and holding his Filly 1912 with the other shaking hoof. Roaring looked up to see that the jenny officer was aiming her sidearm at him; the griffon who had driven the truck was now laying in the street in a pool of his own blood. “Drop the swords!” the officer barked, voice high-pitched with stress. Daring drew a knee to her chest and kicked Roaring in the groin, crushing his family jewels beneath her hooves. The wheeze he let out and the slack-jawed look of pain on his face made her grin, despite everything. With a grunt, Roaring took off into the sky, quickly turning into a fading black dot in the sky, dodging the officer's fire. Daring picked herself up off the ground, grunting as every movement sent shockwaves of pain up her spine; in the back of her mind, she was vaguely aware of the jenny, her voice trembling with shock, calling for an ambulance over the radio. Glancing up, she saw that the unicorn officer was lying in the street, staring sightlessly at the sky. Standing slowly, gasping as every movement sent shockwaves of agony down her entire body, Daring forced herself over to Red, who had dropped his pistol and collapsed again. His chest was entirely painted with blood, and he gasped and wheezed with every breath. “Red?” she said, leaning down over him. With a chill that felt like swallowing a gallon of ice water, she realized she could see right through his chest. Doffing her shirt, already red with her own blood, she pressed it against the bullet hole; her shirt quickly became entirely soaked. “Red, look at me. You’re gonna be okay," she panted. “Holy shit, I’m tired,” Red mumbled. “Red, keep your eyes open,” Daring urged, her throat going dry. She slapped his face lightly to try to keep him awake. “Come on, stay with us.” Red’s eyes flickered. “Nah, I’m...I’m just gonna close my eyes for a minute…” “No, Red, stay awake! Red! RED!” “Sing us a song, you’re the piano mare,” Trace sang quietly as he drove through the Whitetail Woods. “Sing us a song—” “Trace, there,” Phillip pointed out the window. A disused pathway branched off the side of the road: even beneath the shade of the trees, the marks of recent tire tracks were clear on top of the heavy grass. Trace pulled over and stopped, switching the engine off. Both stallions exited the car. A cool wind blew through the maple trees, making the few budding leaves on the tree shiver as though in excitement. The wind was accompanied by the melodies of songbirds. The sun shone down through gaps in the trees, providing strangely beautiful contrasts of shadow and light. A few stubborn patches of snow and ice clung to the ground. Trace retrieved a tracking wand from the trunk of his car and handed it to Phillip. He bent down over the disused pathway and held up the wand. The glowing purple light revealed a set of small tire tracks. “Hayson Wasp,” Trace observed. “I’d know that tread anywhere. It’s the same type of car Stone Wall drove.” Phillip walked along the road, following the tracks. Before they reached the pathway, the Wasp tires jerked violently to the side, forced down the disused path by a second pair of larger tires. This larger set of tires trailed back to the side of the road. “This is where it went down,” Phillip stated as Trace began taking photographs of the tracks. “He was driving up here; bogans were waiting in another car on the side of the road. When Stone Wall passed, they shoved him off the road; he went down the pathway.” He looked up at a tree next to the tracks. "Paint mark," he reported, leaning closer and peering through a magnifying glass. "Pale blue." He scraped some of the paint off into a plastic bag. “Let’s see where that trail leads,” Trace commented. They both walked up the dirt pathway, trotting alongside it to avoid stepping on the tracks. The birdsong continued but in a quieter tone. Something shifted in the maple trees beyond, prompting Phillip to look up. “What was that?” “Probably a deer,” Trace muttered, not even bothering to look up. “Hey, there it is.” A dark-gray Hayson Wasp was wrapped around a great oak tree. Phillip tilted the wand up to examine the ground. The pursuing truck stopped a few feet behind the car and three sets of hoofprints leaped from the vehicle, charging towards the car. Next to the wreckage was a mass of hoofprints amidst a pool of dried blood. Laying next to the scene were a few bullet cartridges. “This is where it went down; they crashed his car, yanked him out, and stabbed him in the scuffle,” Phillip observed, bending down over the bloodstains. “Hell of a blue here. Think this is our bloke getting his ear bitten off.” He pointed to a conical spray of dark red blood on the ground. “Trace, get plenty of samples of that. Might get something out of it.” “Right,” Trace nodded, taking several test tubes out of his saddlebags and bending down. Phillip turned and noticed a trail of dark red droplets leading away from the site of the scuffle and back up the trail. “That's the one who got his ear bitten off," he mused, bending down to examine them. "Tall, about four foot. Around one-eighty, one-ninety pounds, judging by the depth of the impression. Looks like...yes, got a scar on his front left hoof. Knife wound? No, too ragged. Looks like a saw blade wound. Maybe construction..." Another rustle in the trees made him pause. He looked up, scanning in between the trees, through the shadows and leaves. “Just a deer,” Trace repeated, bending over the trail. “Way too loud for a deer,” Phillip growled, one hoof going for his shoulder holster. The wind shifted, and he smelled them: mushrooms, rum, and too much gun oil. And then he heard the clicks. “Shield!” he barked, diving behind the wrecked car. Trace’s eyes widened, but he conjured up the shield just as the first volley came from the trees, rattling out of the assault rifles. The bullets pinged off of Trace’s shield but failed to penetrate. Trace and Phillip both returned fire, aiming for the dark shapes behind the flashes of muzzle fire. The griffons, their bodies adorned in camo fatigues, sprinted away, continuing to fire at them. “Move up!” Trace shouted to Phillip, advancing behind his shield. Something shifted behind Phillip. He turned around, but it was too late: claws dug into him and the ground was yanked away from his hooves. The air rushed past his ears, his heart rate accelerating as he watched the treetops spiraling away from him. “Let go!” he shouted, instinctively flailing within the claws that had seized his shoulders. He felt blood running down his shoulders. Dozens of feet above the ground, high enough that the cold air was biting into his skin, the griffon who had grabbed him spun around to face him, pulling his gun from his foreleg and flinging it to the ground before seizing his throat. He found himself looking into two yellow eyes that burned with hatred; the left one was adorned with a vicious red scar. “Whitestone,” he choked out. The pirate captain clenched her claw into a fist and drove it into Phillip’s gut like a pile driver. The pain of broken ribs flared across his chest and he doubled over, gasping, looking down at the ground so far beneath him. “That was for Borea!” Whitestone snarled. “My crewmate that your whore shot in the throat!” She drew her fist back and punched him again. “That’s for Grease Monkey, who died in prison because of you!” She bellowed and pumped her fist into his gut three more times. “And that’s for Satsuma! My bosun! My friend! Zugzwang slashed her throat and scooped her eyes out all for you!” Coughing and wheezing, his chest on fire and his head spinning from the lack of air, Phillip looked up at Whitestone, who sneered. “And this is for me. Adjö, Finder." She let go, and gravity seized Phillip in its merciless grasp, pulling him down to where death awaited.