Steel Rose—Golden Aster—whatever I was supposed to call her now, she’d gone to ground again. Puzzle was looking for leads on where she’d gone, but it would probably take a while for him to get anything. However, her apparent co-conspirator Solar Shimmer didn’t have a secret lair, just a hotel room. One I already knew how to find.
Strumming followed at my heels as I marched up to said room. “Uh, Bacon, not trying to tell you how to be a magus but I’m gonna tell you how to be a magus. Don’t you think you’re running about a million degrees too hot right now? I mean, nobody would blame you for being pissed, but mad ponies don’t make good decisions.”
Like I needed Strumming to tell me I was a barely contained bottle of incandescent rage. “Yeah, well I don’t exactly have a couple days to spare for calming meditation,” I snapped. I stopped, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. “If Solar has a functioning brain he’ll be going to ground soon, so if we don’t check the hotel room soon that’s it. Either he’s still here or he’s abandoned the place because he knows it’s compromised. If he ran out in a hurry or didn’t even risk coming back he might’ve left some evidence behind.”
“Makes sense.” Strumming frowned at me. “Still, I’d feel a lot better if you didn’t look like you were gonna rip his head off if you saw him. Or more importantly, rip mine off if I happen to get in your way. And that’s not even getting into how bad it would be to throw fire around in a hotel full of innocent bystanders.”
“I’m—” I was going to say I was fine or in control, but neither of those was all that accurate. How the buck would I be fine when I just caught Solar collaborating with a warlock? The whole noble hunt avenge his murdered friends and my godparents had been a massive lie, because not only was he working with the warlock he’d supposedly been hunting, but the warlock was my godmother! I’d have to be completely dead inside not to be a mess.
Still, Strumming had a point. Going into a warlock hunt emotionally compromised was a terrible idea. Too bad I didn’t have any other options. I took a deep breath. “I’ll do my best to keep a lid on it, but tell me if I start going too far.”
“Can do.” She gently nudged my side. “Just remember, we have no idea what the full story is right now. Could be Steel got into Dad’s head, or it could be that he’s the real baddie and she’s an innocent mare on the run and out to clear her name, or a dozen other things. Just saying, no fwooshing anyone until we’re sure they deserve to be fwooshed.” She held up a hoof. “Yeah, I know, last pony with room to talk about being too kill-happy when warlocks are involved. I just wanna be sure that whoever we get actually is a bad guy who deserves it.”
“Yeah, I get that.” I scowled and shook my head. “So the current plan is to arrest both of them, then figure this mess out. They want to tell me their side of the story, they can do it from a cell with their horns ringed and however many other wards it takes to lock them down.”
Strumming nodded, and that was the end of that talk. As we approached the entrance to Solar’s rooms, I could feel his wards humming. That level of activity would be odd for an empty room, especially in a public space like a hotel. The last thing he’d want to do is accidentally fry somepony who was just coming in to clean his bedsheets or whatever. Which almost certainly meant... “He’s in the room.”
“Goody gumdrops.” Strumming took a deep breath. “So what’s the game plan? We going to try and play this nice and diplomatic, or—”
I fired a concussive blast at the doorway, shattering it and setting off all his wards.
“—that,” Strumming finished.
Solar stared up at me in shock as I tore through what was left of his wards. Judging by the half-packed bags, he’d been trying to grab everything before relocating. “Sunset, wai—”
I didn’t want to hear it. “Solar Shimmer, you’re under arrest for collusion with a known warlock, obstruction of justice, and suspicion of involvement in the murder of Magus Gingersnap.”
Solar’s jaw dropped. “Sunset, please just let me explain!”
“You want to explain, you can do it during your interrogation,” I snarled. “Now are you going to come quietly, or do I have to subdue you?”
Solar groaned. “Sunset, you don’t understand what’s going on, and I don’t have time to get arrested. By the time we clear this up, her trail will have gone cold, or she’ll be completely out of Freeport. I promise I’ll explain everything later, but for now...”
He tried to step past me. Maybe he figured that for all my rage, I was still his daughter and wouldn’t actually try to stop him. Which I guess just goes to show that he hadn’t read the letters about what had happened in Northmarch very carefully. I sent a stunbolt his way. Not a very strong one, but I wasn’t trying to take him down yet. Just make a point. “I wasn’t asking you to drop by for tea when it’s convenient for you, Solar. What part of ‘You’re under arrest’ didn’t you understand?”
Solar sighed and shook his head. “Sunset, I promise I’ll explain everything once this is over, but for now I need you to trust me and—”
“Trust you?!” I repeated incredulously. “You want me to trust you after you’ve spent the last thirteen years lying to me about why you abandoned your family and what happened to Golden and Ginger?! You must be crazy if you think I’ll go along with that.” I planted my hooves and got another spell ready. “Last chance. We can make this a nice, quiet, dignified arrest, or we can do it the hard way.”
I probably should’ve been a bit more careful about picking a fight with Solar, considering how well my fight against Scarlett had gone a few months ago. Of course, a lot had happened since then. I’d gotten a lot more experience at magical combat, mostly from the school of hard knocks. I’d beaten Blackfyre. And most importantly, I’d gotten a huge boost to my raw magical potential thanks to whatever it was that happened after I’d bonded to Chainbreaker and connected with the spirits of Ushabti and Torch.
Besides, Strumming was using the fact that Solar was completely focused on me to sneak around behind him in case the hopefully hypothetical magical slugout went wrong. While I wouldn’t deny that my ego wanted me to win the fight solo, not to mention letting it would let me vent some anger, I was fine with her dropping him with a sneak attack if it turned into a serious fight.
Solar let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. “Sunset, if I let you lock me up, there’s no telling how much damage Steel could do. I’m sorry, but I can’t let that happen.”
His horn lit up, and I saw golden chains of light spring into the air around me. I had some less than fond memories of that spell. Celestia used it on me in the middle of my breakdown while I was leaving Canterlot. At the time, it had pretty thoroughly disabled me.
But that had been over four years ago, and I’d grown a lot since then. I could’ve tried a counterspell and turned it into a proper magic duel, but I had a much better solution. Not to mention one that was positively poetic.
As the chains started closing in on me I held out a hoof sent out a little pulse of willpower. A second later I felt Chainbreaker’s hilt. I slashed the blade in a wide swing to intercept all the incoming chains of light, and Chainbreaker lived up to its name.
Solar blinked in shock and took half a step back. I guess he hadn’t expected me to pull Chainbreaker out of thin air. I wasn’t going to give him a chance to recover. I channeled anima and blightfire into my horn, then fired a low-level annihilation blast at him. I didn’t want to hurt him or blast a hole in the hotel, after all.
Solar threw up a shield of solid light, but didn’t pour enough power into it. When the two conflicting energies met on his shield and annihilated each other, the explosion tore straight through the shield and sent him flying into the back wall of his room. The blast also shattered most of the windows and wrecked some very expensive furniture.
To his credit, Solar was back on his hooves with a much stronger shield up before I could do anything to exploit the hit. Plus, now that he had his back to a wall, it would be a lot harder for Strumming to pull of whatever sneak attack she’d been planning. However, that’s when he did something I wasn’t expecting.
He dropped the shield and held up his hooves. “Okay Sunset, you win.” He sighed and shook his head. “I surrender. I don’t want to fight my own daughter. Stupid of me to think I could hold you down with a single spell, but I guess that’s what happens when I haven’t been much of a father to you since you were nine.” He groaned and rolled his shoulder, where he’d hit the outer wall of his room. “I suppose I should be proud of how far you’ve come. If that spell was anything to judge by, you’re a fine magus.”
I couldn’t resist just a tiny bit of gloating. “Actually, I was holding back so I wouldn’t hurt you or wreck the hotel.”
Solar’s blinked in shock, then stared at me for a long moment. “Oh.”
Strumming snickered as she slipped a suppression ring onto his horn. “So that’s what it looks like when a dad realizes that his own daughter can kick his plot in a fight.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Solar muttered under his breath. He sighed and looked around the room. “Though I suppose I have bigger things to worry about than wounded pride. Although ... would you believe me if I said it’s actually kind of a relief to finally get caught? At least now I can finally tell you the truth about everything.”
I glowered at him. “After you spent more than half my life lying to me, I’m not sure you know how to tell me the truth about anything. But if you’re in the mood for a confession, we’ll take it down for evidence while we set up the extradition to Equestria.”
“Right.” He sighed and ran a hoof through his mane. “I suppose there’s no point in asking you to free me until we have Steel in custody.”
“For all I know, you’re the bad guy and Golden’s been on the run from you for the last decade.” I started marching him out of the hotel room. “I’m just going to lock you both up, gather evidence and take statements, then ship you both back to Equestria and let them figure it out.”
Marching Solar back to my tower was just a little awkward. Too bad it was also the only real solution. I certainly wasn’t going to toss him into a normal Freeport jail. Sure, he had a horn ring on, but I’d busted one of those back when I was nineteen and made short work of Starlight and Blackfyre’s attempt to put a ring on me. Any archmage worth the name would be able to figure out a way to break one eventually. Fortunately, after my run-ins with the likes of Starlight Glimmer, I’d made my own little holding cell for powerful and extremely dangerous spellcasters. Kind of a necessity for a magus.
Once we got my tower, I found another problem waiting for me. Namely, my apprentice. I was sure I’d let her know I’d have to cancel her lessons once I decided to take on the Steel Rose case, but considering how crazy the last few days had, been it must’ve slipped my mind. “Sorry Kukri, you’ll have to head home. Got one or possibly more warlocks to deal with. I’ll let you know when we can do more lessons.”
“This one isn’t here for a lesson, Shimmer-mare. You already canceled them.” Kukri took a deep breath. “This one knows it’s only an apprentice, but it wants to help. This one isn’t a grub anymore, it’s thirteen years old and—”
I sighed and shook my head. “No, Kukri. Your parents have only just started to forgive me for getting you dragged into that mess in Northmarch, and I promised them I wouldn’t take you into any dangerous situations.” I’d probably come closer than I cared to think about to losing Kukri as an apprentice entirely. Not that I could entirely blame Knives and Codex for being upset when what I’d promised them would be a perfectly safe little field trip turned into me dragging their daughter through a warzone and having several uncomfortably close brushes with death.
Kukri stubbornly planted her hooves. “This one can still help! It knows it can’t go out and start fighting warlocks or anything, but surely there’s something it can do.” She looked up at me with huge, pleading eyes.
I groaned and shook my head. “I said no, Kukri.”
There was a flash of green fire, and now my apprentice was a small, floppy-eared puppy staring up at me with even wider, sadder, and more hopeful eyes.
“Oh for the love of Celestia...” I broke eye contact and did everything I could to resist her. Then she let out a tiny little sad puppy whimper. I knew she was playing me, but still... “Fine! Send the Council a message to let them know I have Chainbreaker before they start getting worried. Once that’s done, go pull my books and look for whatever we have on the Warpsmith Foundry and Kare Demir.” A harmless little research project would at least keep her busy, and if I was going to be going up against someone who used both of those, it made sense to brush up on them.
Kukri shifted back to her normal form of a miniature version of me. “This one doesn’t want to send messages or pull out a bunch of dusty book! It wants to do something to really help you stop the warlock you’re going after.”
“You are helping,” I assured her. “You’re supporting me and taking care of things so I don’t have to worry about them. That’s what apprentices do.”
“That’s what little kid apprentices do,” Kukri shot back. “This one isn’t a grub anymore, it’s thirteen! It can do more than just kid stuff!”
Oh joy. I could feel a bit of a headache growing. “I said no, Kukri. Just get everything I asked you to do taken care of, and then maybe I’ll see about finding something else for you.” Something far safer than what she wanted, because despite what she thought, she was far too young for any of the danger I threw myself into.
“Ugh, fiiine!” Kukri stomped off in a huff, heading back into my library.
“Hoo boy.” Strumming chuckled and shook her head. “Yup, Facon’s turning into a teenager. Hope you’re ready for this, Bacon. At least it shouldn’t be quite as bad for the hero/role model/surrogate big sister as it’s gonna be for her parents.”
Solar chuckled as he watched my apprentice go. “I have a few stories I could tell about teenage apprentices. Although...” He trailed off, shooting an awkward, guilty look my way. Probably thinking about the fact that he’d pretty much completely missed my teenage years. Judging by the change of subject, he preferred not to dwell on that. “You know, I’m pretty sure you’re the first magus to take a changeling on as an apprentice.” He paused for a moment, then amended, “Well, the first to knowingly and openly do so. I’d imagine we’ve had a few changelings who snuck their way in during the Corps’ history.”
“Recent teenagerhood aside, she’s been a good apprentice.” I smiled fondly at her retreating form. Once she was out of earshot, I turned on him. “But don’t think praising her is going to get you in my good books and make me forget about everything you’ve done.”
Solar flinched. “I wasn’t trying to—” He sighed, shaking his head as his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Oh, never mind. It’s not like you’d believe anything I’d say at this point.” He scoffed and let out a bitter snort. “Not like I’d believe me in your position.”
“Funny how a decade-plus of lies will destroy trust,” Strumming chimed in. “I mean, I’m a bit of a pathological liar with severe issues, and even I think that’s cold.” She turned to me. “Doesn’t look like bug boy’s back from digging up info on Golden Steel, or whatever we’re supposed to call her. Wanna wait for him, or should we do the interrogation right now? Not like he can’t ask any questions of his own later.”
“You can’t afford any delays in dealing with Steel Rose,” Solar cut in. “The sooner you know the truth, the sooner you can—”
Strumming put a hoof over his mouth. “Preeetty sure the prisoner doesn’t have any say in when he gets interrogated.”
“He doesn’t,” I agreed. “But I’m fine with getting answers out of him sooner than later, even if I won’t trust anything he says.”
Solar flinched and got Strumming’s hoof off his mouth. “Sunset, I know I made some mistakes, but that doesn’t mean—”
“No,” I cut him off. “What you did is a long way past a mistake. Putting whites and reds together in the laundry is a mistake. Not returning a library book on time is a mistake. This kind of long-running deception is an outright betrayal.”
“Okay.” Solar trudged over to one of the sofas I kept for clients while they waited for me, then flopped down on it. “You’re right. I betrayed you and your mother, and I let both of your down along with the entire Magus Corps. I’m a prisoner, and I’m ready to confess my crimes. Is that enough for you?”
“No.” I took a seat across from him. “But it’s a starting point.” I summoned up a couple quills and a lot of parchment, passing one to Strumming keeping the other for myself. Two full transcripts of the interrogation should be pretty thorough. Getting a professional to write it up would’ve been better, but I didn’t know where to get one of those on short notice, especially for material this sensitive. “So ... to get the official business out of the way: I am Freeport Magus Sunset Shimmer, taking dictation alongside Strumming Heartstrings, Special Assistant to the Freeport Magus Corps. This is the first interrogation of Equestrian Archmagus of the Eastern March Solar Shimmer regarding the Steel Rose/Golden Aster case.” Writing it all down as I talked was a bit tricky, but I was managing. Certainly better than Strumming would, since she didn’t have any magic.
Solar sighed and cleared his throat. “Alright, where did you want me to start?”
“The beginning’s usually a good place,” Strumming mumbled around the quill in her mouth.
“Right, establishing all the facts for the record.” Solar scoffed and shook his head. “I knew that. Just—well I’m used to conducting these from the other side. Suppose I ought to be asking for a lawyer before I say another word, but...” His eyes cut to me. “It’s not like it would do me much good anyway.”
He took a deep breath, then launched into the story. “So, Golden Aster and Gingersnap were my two best friends from college. We trained together, studied together, and once we graduated, we joined the Magus Corps together. Not only were we all best friends, but we made a good team, too. Top of our year in school, and still just as good working together in the field. I was the best combat mage, Golden was a brilliant researcher, and Ginger was great with support and utility spells.” He leaned back against the couch, a wistful smile tugging at his lips. “Those were ... the best years of my life.”
He sat back for several more seconds, lost in his memories. “I suppose nothing perfect can last forever, but we had a pretty good run. Fifteen years. I’d met your mother, had you, and gotten so many accolades and decorations that I was a shoo-in for the next Archmagus slot. I suppose everyone always gave me a little more credit than Ginger and Golden, or assumed I was the leader since I was the one who did the most fighting, not to mention I had the best family name. I just needed one last achievement to seal the deal.” He let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sure you know what happened next.”
“Talonrend,” I filled in. “Your duel with him was one of the ones Celestia made me cover when we were going over dueling theory. Apparently it’s a great case study for how to battle against someone who uses a wildly contrasting style.”
“Yes, my battle with the infamous feral warlock of the deep woods.” Solar slumped back into the couch, staring down at the table between us. “With the benefits of hindsight and knowing all the consequences of that battle, there are times I wish we’d left well enough alone. Talonrend was mad and dangerous, but he hadn’t bothered any ponies for over a decade. Just vanished into the deep forest, living like a wild animal. All the locals knew to give his woods a wide berth. Then some idiot noble who’s getting on in years and wants one last big adventure and thought he could make a name for himself taking Talonrend down, and...”
Strumming scoffed and shook her head. “A pony’s who has gone as looney as Talonrend did kinda need to get stopped. I mean, the guy ripped another pony to shreds and ate him. When you have to make excuses for the guy like ‘Well that duke should’ve known that he’d get killed for walking in Talonrend’s forest’ it’s just accepting something we shouldn’t accept. Just saying, if it hadn’t been him, it would’ve been some kids playing in the spooky woods, or a farmer looking for some lost sheep, or...”
“Yes, yes, he needed to be stopped,” Solar agreed. There was a sort of weariness in his voice, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. He’d probably had the same conversation with himself dozens of times. “And we did stop him, but it came at a heavy price. Talonrend was as vicious as a cornered beast, and he’d twisted several of the forest’s animals into service. All of us left that fight in pretty bad shape, but Golden got the worst of it.”
I had a few vague memories of that. Considering I’d been eight at the time, it was all pretty blurry and mostly focused on my own thoughts and feelings. I remembered Solar coming back really bandaged up, and a visit to the hospital to check on how Golden was doing. Her face had been really bandaged up, including...
Something clicked into place. “That metal eye she had when I took out her mask ... she lost the original one in that fight, didn’t she?”
Solar grimaced and nodded. “Yeah, she did. I was supposed to keep Talonrend locked down, but he managed to slip my chains and got to her.” A tremble shot down his spine. “It’s ... the crazy bastard was fast, but that’s no excuse for letting him get away from me.” He slowly ran a hoof through his mane, and his eyes flicked down to my leg. “It’s ... well you probably know better than me how hard it is to deal with a crippling injury like that.”
“Yeah,” I grunted out, self-consciously flexing my prosthetic. Most of the time, it was as good as having a real limb. I could even make a case for it being better than my old leg when it came to stuff like smacking street thugs in the face. Maybe if I kept telling myself that, I would eventually stop missing my old leg. As it was, every time I took it off before going to bed or when I woke up in the morning minus a leg was a reminder of the fact that I wasn’t a normal pony anymore. It ... hadn’t been easy. Still wasn’t, really. Just ... well after a couple months of being crippled, I was kind of getting used to it.
Considering I’d had a relatively easy path to getting one of the highest-quality prosthetics ever, I also knew I was probably one of the best-off amputees around. Certainly a big step up from what Golden would’ve had to put up with. I hadn’t heard of any artificial eyes that worked almost as good as the real thing. Sure, she could get a glass eye, and there were plenty of spells to compensate or even enhance the senses, but that wasn’t the same thing.
Solar was staring at me, and I realized I probably looked as quiet and troubled as I felt. “You’re holding up, right Sunset? Is there anything I can—”
“I’m fine.” And even if I wasn’t, Solar was pretty much the last pony I’d turn to for help. Kukri, Puzzle, Strumming, Celestia ... I had a lot of better options. “Let’s get back on topic.”
“Right.” Solar sighed and shook his head. “I guess it all worked out for me, at least. After we beat Talonrend, the next conclave confirmed me as an Archmagus. Golden went on long-term leave to recover. I tried to check in on her as much as I could, but Archmagi don’t have a lot of free time. Not to mention there were other things I needed to do when I wasn’t at work.”
“Scarlett and I didn’t see much of you,” I agreed.
“Yeah.” He bit his lip, his eyes drifting down to the floor. “What wound up causing the next problem. Scarlett ... basically told me I had to spend less time with Golden and more with the two of you.” A bitter, humorless chuckle left his lips. “Scarlett never really cared for Golden. I suppose that shouldn’t be a shock. The other mare in my life, and the one I’d known for longer than my own wife. Not that I ever ... Golden and I were strictly platonic friends. Still, there was always a bit of underlying tension between Scarlett and Golden, and once Scarlett started feeling like I was neglecting my family to spend time with her...”
“So wifey laid down the law,” Strumming concluded. “And I’m guessing that meant less time and support for the other mare?”
“Exactly,” Solar confirmed. “Ginger promised he’d still check in on her, but he was almost as busy as I was since he was my right-hoof stallion. Plus ... well, it wasn’t the same sort of friendship. Golden I were practically siblings, while Ginger and her had always been ... they were good friends, but the sort of good friends who argued a lot but always made up the next day. I spent a lot of time balancing the two of them out, but now I wasn’t there. So ... that’s when things started going wrong.
“Golden had been doing research into solutions for her eye ever since she got hurt. At first it seemed like a good way to keep her mind occupied while she was on leave, and honestly she was so brilliant I wasn’t going to rule out her finding a way to restore it. Then...” Solar’s shoulders slumped and a guilty twinge shot through his face. “When she didn’t find the answers she wanted in any of the books on conventional magic, she started looking elsewhere. I didn’t even think about checking when she asked for access to restricted materials. I was just glad she had something to fill her time, and I trusted her completely. If I’d paid more attention instead of just signing off on whatever she wanted with no questions asked...”
He scrubbed at his eyes, with his leg coming away damp. “Ginger tried to warn me about what was going on with her, but I didn’t take it seriously enough. Like I said, he and Golden were always butting heads. It wasn’t the first time he’d complained about her doing too much research or getting into something a bit weird. When he told me he planned on having an intervention with her, I expected I’d just have to be there to play peacemaker between the two of them.
“Instead, when I get there the house is on fire, and Ginger’s dead. Golden ... I caught her at the scene. She said Ginger was insisting she commit herself before she sank any deeper into dark magic. They argued, then it turned into a fight, and then...” He let out a loud sniff and wiped at his eyes again. “She didn’t mean to kill him. It’s just ... well when two high-level magi are throwing spells at each other, sometimes things go wrong.”
“Okay, with you so far,” Strumming commented. “So how come you didn’t have her locked up for an investigation and trial? ‘Cause that seems like the logical next move to make.”
“Because I’m an idiot.” Solar buried his face in his hooves. “She promised to come back in two hours to turn herself in, she just wanted to hire a lawyer and settle one or two things first. I ... sweet Celestia, she had Ginger’s blood on her hooves and I still trusted her to do the right thing. I guess I was probably still in shock from it all. It’s not every day you go to visit your two best friends only to find out one of them killed the other.”
It wasn’t hard to guess what happened from there. “Instead of turning herself in, she just got a two-hour head start on you?”
Solar nodded mutely. It took him a while to continue. “Closer to four, actually. I didn’t want to believe she’d run out on me. Once I finally stopped waiting for her to come back, I went to her place to check up on her. I get there, find it completely ransacked and showing all the signs of someone who quickly packed up before fleeing the city. At that point, I had to stop lying to myself, at least for a bit.”
“And then you chased her,” I concluded.
“Yes, I did.” Solar slumped down even further. He looked ... old. Worn down. That probably shouldn’t be a surprise, considering all the messy history he was digging into. Telling the whole thing was clearly taking a toll on him. He’d probably never confessed it all to anyone before. “At first I thought she’d just panicked once the shock wore off. You’d think she would know better than to do that, but accidentally killing your best friend can make anyone irrational. It took me a month and a half to find her, and by then ... well she’d fallen pretty far. She’d taken to using the mask because she’d thought I would report her and get the whole corps hunting her.”
“But you didn’t report her,” I pointed out.
“Which she didn’t know.” Solar slowly rubbed at his forehead, like he was fighting off a headache. “I should’ve. Giving her an hour to hire a good lawyer before turning herself in was the sort of mistake the Corps could’ve forgiven. Not reporting her after she ran...” He groaned. “I thought she’d just gotten scared and done something stupid—that I could find her, talk to her, and convince her to turn herself in. If I’d reported her as a fugitive who murdered a fellow magus, the Corps would’ve been out for blood.”
“And at that point you still believed what she did to Gingersnap was nothing but a tragic accident,” Strumming filled in.
“I had to,” Solar confessed. “The alternative was to accept that one of my best friends had killed the other and turned into a full-blown warlock. It wasn’t until I tracked her down in Manehatten that I finally faced the truth. She was running around in full costume by that point, albeit not as fancy as the one she has now, and associating the sort of scum we would’ve been arresting back when we worked together. They turned on her once I outed her identity, and it turned into a fight. Naturally I teamed up with her, and ... well let’s just say seeing her in battle made me realize she wasn’t just a scared magus; she was a warlock.”
“Hold up a second...” Strumming counted off on her wingtips. “If I got the timeline right, was that the Manehattan Warlock Massacre?”
“That’s what they wound up calling it.” Solar sighed and shook his head. “I was doing my best to disable them for capture, but Golden just finished them off after I dropped them. She didn’t want anyone who’d seen her face alive.”
“Huh.” Strumming went really quiet, her face unreadably blank. It took me a couple seconds to connect the dots. The warlock who’d attacked her father had been one of the ones killed in that massacre. That was ... probably a complication.
Since Strumming was being unusually silent, I filled in the empty space. “Okay, so after she was involved in a massacre, how come you didn’t arrest her, or at least report the whole thing?”
“For the first question, I couldn’t.” Solar rubbed his side. “I was fighting to disable, and not wearing nearly as much armor as she was. Archmagus or no, we were outnumbered pretty badly, and I took some hits. The aftermath of it all is pretty fuzzy, but from what I’ve been able to piece together, she patched me up and got me to a hospital before she vanished. The fact that she took such a big chance to help me ... well, I suppose it gave me some doubts about whether or not she really had gone bad. Besides, I owed her one.”
I scowled and crossed my forelegs over my chest as I figured it out. “Oh Celestia, you haven’t been trying to catch her at all. You’re trying to save her!”
“She’s my friend.” Solar closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I know she’s gotten mixed up in some bad things and made some horrible decisions, but deep down she’s still the same mare who fought alongside me for years, the one who was always there for me, whether it was a life and death battle or just a homework assignment I was having trouble with. I’m not giving up on her. Ever.”
“So you kept lying to the Corps because if they knew the truth they’d pull you off the case in a heartbeat.” I sighed and buried my face in my hooves. “You know, because they have rules about not taking cases you’re too close to. Letting you go after Gingersnap’s killer is already bending the rules a lot, but if they found out it was Golden who did the deed, there’s no way you could pull enough strings to stay on the case. Archmagi have a lot of leeway, but not that much.”
“And whoever they replaced me with would treat Golden as just another warlock,” Solar answered. “They’d lock her up and throw away the key, assuming she isn’t just killed while resisting arrest. I can’t let that happen. She’s my friend, I owe it to her to try everything I can to bring her back.”
“‘Bring her back,’” I repeated incredulously. “What, do you really think you could waltz back into Canterlot after a decade and tell everyone ‘Oh yeah, it turns out my friend Golden was alive the whole time?!’ That everything could just go back to normal like none of this ever happened? It wouldn’t take long for someone to figure out what you did.”
“Probably not,” Solar agreed. “But after everything Golden’s done for me and how badly I let her down, having to resign in disgrace isn’t ... well saving her matters more to me than my career. She never would have fallen in the first place if I’d stopped Talonrend in time ... or been there for her when she needed me. I could’ve paid more attention to the books she was borrowing and nipped the problem in the bud, or taken Ginger more seriously when he tried to warn me that she was slipping. Or ... Celestia, there were so many things I should’ve done differently.”
“So you blame yourself for it,” I concluded. “Wow. How full of yourself can you get?”
That got Solar’s attention. His head snapped up and her glared at me. “Sunset!”
I didn’t back down. “Oh, please. Did it ever occur to you that maybe Golden’s responsible for her own decisions? Maybe, just maybe, her fall wasn’t all about you?”
Solar tried to cut in. “But if I’d—”
“If you’d what?” I snapped. “If you’d completely neglected your family and job to spend every waking hour with her, maybe she wouldn’t have turned? Maybe. Or maybe she would’ve gone bad just as fast, and killed you along with Ginger.” I tapped my prosthetic. “I’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple months playing the ‘What if?’ game. What if I’d kept my head down and let Blackfyre gloat instead of stabbing him with Chainbreaker? What if I’d used a less flashy spell so he didn’t find me? What if I’d gone along with Scarlett’s plan to ship me back to Equestria for years of recovery and therapy instead of just losing the leg? Maybe it could’ve been better, or maybe it would’ve been a lot worse. All I know is, there’s no point beating yourself up over what if’s, especially when you’re doing that instead of focusing on making things better in the here and now.”
Solar clenched his teeth, but after several seconds let out a breath and slowly nodded. “Alright then. Fine. You’re right, dwelling on the past doesn’t change anything. But that’s why I’m trying to fix things now.”
“You’ve been trying to do that for over a decade,” I countered. “I know I’m the last person to tell anyone they should know when to quit, but I think you’ve done just about everything you can. You’ve had more than enough time to try everything you can to make her change her mind and drop the whole the warlock thing, and despite all that, she’s still going strong. She even had her own creepy little cult that was planning on using blood sacrifices. I can’t imagine you’ve got anything new to say to her she hasn’t already heard a dozen times.”
Strumming inserted herself into the conversation again. “Do you know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result every time. Which ... well I guess that means you’ve gone pretty crazy since you started chasing Golden.”
“Is it insane to want to save a friend?” Solar shot back. He looked like had a bit more to say on the subject, but a knock at the front door of my tower cut him off.
I was about to go get the door when Kukri scampered past us to answer it. I guess she’d been listening in on the talk after she’d wrapped up the chores I’d asked her to do. Or instead of them. Hopefully she at least got a message off to the Council before she decided to spy on us. I had to wonder why she’d given herself away, but I suppose she was just so used to answering my door that it was instinct for her at this point.
She came back with Puzzle. He took one look at Solar, slightly disheveled and with a horn ring on, and raised an eyebrow. “It seems this one missed quite a few interesting events while it was out.” His eyes flicked down at the transcripts Strumming and I had been taking. “Thought at least you’ve taken good notes for this one to get back up to speed. In any case, this one has good news. It’s found where the Aster-mare has gone to ground. Nothing terribly impressive, just a modest tavern near the docks. It suspects she’s trying to arrange passage out of Freeport. Small surprise, given how events have played out. Doubtless she’d prefer to relocate to somewhere she won’t be actively hunted.”
Solar immediately stood up. “Then we have to hurry and catch her before she’s gone. Speaking from experience, once she’s on a ship, it’s far too easy to lose her trail. The last time she gave me the slip at the docks and I didn’t know which ship she took, it was almost a year before I could find her again.”
My eyes narrowed. “We aren’t going to be doing anything. My team and I will go have a word with Golden and then bring her into custody to sort all this out. You are going to be staying right here, in a specially prepared holding cell.”
Solar flinched. “But ... but I told you the truth, Sunset.”
I scoffed. “Considering how long you’ve been lying to me, your word doesn’t carry much weight.”
Strumming shot a curious look my way. “So does that mean we aren’t going to pick a fight with Golden Steel, or whatever we’re supposed to call her now?”
I shrugged. “We’ll see what happens. We certainly want to be ready for a fight, but right now the whole situation is weird enough that I’m not assuming anything. I at least want to give her a chance to tell her side of the story.”
Strumming didn’t like that answer. “We found her in a foundry with a bunch of hired goon minions who were getting ready to do a blood sacrifice. That’s usually not the mark of an innocent victim.”
“Usually,” I agreed. “But nothing about this whole situation has been usual. For all we know, since Solar was there too he could’ve been the one who hired them to set Golden up. I’m not saying she’s innocent—just that so far everything we’ve heard from Solar and everything he’s reported to Equestria has been a lie. Maybe the new story’s the truth, but I’m not assuming that. If Golden wants to sit down and have a peaceful, diplomatic talk where she tells her story in a calm, collected manner, I’ll hear her out.”
“Guess that’s fair,” Strumming grunted.
“Whether it’s a fight or a talk, this one suggests we hurry,” Puzzle cut in. “It hardly matters what we want to do if she gets passage off Freeport before we catch up to her. This one managed to stop the ship she booked passage on, but once she finds out about that, she’ll doubtless start looking for another.”
“Right.” I took a moment to pull my cloak back on and make sure Chainbreaker was securely sheathed. “Let’s not waste any time, then.”