After her colossal screwup, Starlight had gone to Sweets for the Sweet to try and brighten up her day.
“I’m dead,” she said to the table whose top her face was currently attempting to hug. “I am so so, so so, so dead.”
It wasn’t working out.
“How dead are you?” asked Rainbow Dash, sitting down opposite her and dropping a tray of candies between the two.
“So dead. Totally dead. Positively absolutely dead. Completely dead, not mostly dead. Deader than dead. Dead dead dead dead dead.”
“You’re looking pretty peachy for a dead mare.”
Starlight lifted her head enough to glare at Rainbow Dash. “Rainbow, do you even know what I’m talking about?”
“Nope!” Rainbow Dash said with a grin as she popped a few of Bon Bon’s bon bons into her mouth. “I haff vo ivea!”
“I lost the Alicorn Amulet.”
Rainbow Dash stopped chewing and looked like she wasn’t sure whether to go for the “choking, coughing fit” surprised reaction or the “spit take” one. When she eventually managed to swallow the bon bons, she simply said, “Yep, you’re totally dead, alright.”
“Told you,” muttered Starlight, and attempted to merge her face with the tabletop again.
Dead. She was deeeaaad. How could she have done that? It was obvious in hindsight, but so blisteringly, astoundingly, mind-numbingly obvious that she still should’ve seen it. She should’ve been able to see it from the other side of Equestria. Of course, it was easy to say that now, but one of the problems with mental manipulation magic was that its very nature made you ignore it when it was happe-
“So how’d you do it?”
Starlight scowled up at Rainbow Dash. “I’m unambiguously, utterly dead because of it, and you’re asking me how I did it?”
Rainbow Dash shrugged as she chewed on a mouthful of bon bons. “It’s gonna come out eventually. Might as well do it now, am I right?”
With a groan, Starlight glued her face to the table once more. “Can’t you let me wallow in my misery in peace?!”
“Not really.” Chew chew. “…So?”
“Ufff. Fine.” Starlight sat up and rubbed her nose. “It was just this morning…”
So a few days ago, Twilight and Spike had left for the zebra homelands to initiate diplomacy for the first time, and that meant they’d be gone for possibly moons (a few weeks at least), and that meant Starlight had the entire Castle of Friendship all to herself for possibly moons (a few weeks at least). Twilight had left her a stupidly-long list of friendship lessons to work on, so it wasn’t like she had nothing to do (not to mention basic upkeep), but Starlight found the cavernous halls in the castle being not just empty, but completely devoid of sound except her own echoes, to be incredibly intimidating, like she was trespassing on something. When she was working, she mostly stayed in the throne room; with the Map, it felt a bit less empty than everything else. Hopefully, if the Map called somepony, it wouldn’t be Twilight.
It was about a week after departure. Starlight scowled down at the paper she was reading. “Socioeconomic paradoxes of friendship? What damp, encrusted space did you pull that from, Twilight?” She sighed, and tried to flick her quill across the room. Air resistance caught it and it fluttered down to the table right in front of her.
Starlight sighed again and slouched in her chair. She’d been at this fruitlessly for a while (a whole fourteen minutes), and she wanted to do something else, but she needed to work on this, since she’d been skimping on her work for the past few days. Actually, no, what she needed was a good excuse to jump away and do something else.
The doorbell rang. Convenient. Not one to pass up a sign from above like that, Starlight hustled to the door.
She didn’t recognize the three ponies on the doorstep. Two of them, big burly earth ponies with suits and serious sunglasses, were obviously bodyguards. Their charge was a suit-coat-wearing unicorn mare, the slender kind with killer cheekbones (which should’ve been a great big warning sign, in hindsight). Her mane (dark blue) was pulled up into a tight bun and her tail was braided. Her coat was a sort of glossy off-white, clearly well-groomed. Violet eyes looked out from behind rimless glasses. Three neat stacks of bits decorated her flank. Her expression was pinched, as if she had something incredibly smelly right beneath her muzzle. She didn’t say anything, just looked at Starlight.
Subsequent several silent seconds, Starlight surmised she should say something. “Um. Hello?” she said. “Can I help you?”
The mare blinked slowly and looked around the foyer. “This is the castle of Princess Twilight Sparkle, is it not?” Her voice was the hoarse, quiet type that you had to listen to.
“Uh, yeah?” Starlight laughed nervously. “I’m Starlight Glimmer. I’m… kind of her protege.” She had to restrain herself from asking, Who are you and what are you doing here?
“Hmm. I had hoped to meet her before she left for the zebras, but… ah, no matter.” The mare looked Starlight intently in the eye. “I need to see the Alicorn Amulet.”
“The- the what?”
“The Alicorn. Amulet,” the mare said testily. “An artifact of immense power-”
“I know what it is,” said Starlight, “but who are you?”
The mare frowned in annoyance. “I am Goumada. I am an analyst of relics such as this and only heard about the Amulet recently. I am aware that it is currently well-contained and buried, but I wish to ensure that it is not having any adverse effects on the surrounding regions. As such, I will need to see it personally. I was hoping to meet the princess about it, but with her current obligations-”
As Goumada kept talking, the alarm bells started ringing in Starlight’s head. Looking for the Alicorn Amulet and just happening to arrive shortly after Twilight had left Equestria? To call this “suspicious” would imply there was an option where Goumada didn’t have some ulterior motive. Starlight didn’t know what, exactly, Goumada wanted with it, but, well. Evil magical power-boosting thingy. It couldn’t possibly be good. Time for some dissuasion. “Listen,” Starlight said as uncondescending a voice as she could manage, “I appreciate the concern, but as it’s been years since the Amulet was last out and we’ve had no problems since then, I-”
“‘No problems since then’?” asked Goumada snippily. “I beg your pardon? Ponyville has more monster attacks per capita per annum than the next town by an entire order of magnitude. Something is responsible for such a state, and that something is-”
“-the Everfree Forest,” Starlight interrupted. “You know, that scary place right outside the town border where magic doesn’t work right? Riiiight over there?” She pointed at the scary place in question. Goumada barely glanced at it; she huffed, but Starlight cut her off before she could continue. “Besides, those statistics-” -which may or may not have been minotaur crap, but Starlight was leaning towards them being “true”- “-have been there ever since the Nightmare Moon Incident. Maybe even before, I don’t know. I’m… still kinda new here.”
Goumada’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps,” she said, “but nevertheless, any possible arcane emanations from the Amulet-”
“I appreciate the concern,” Starlight said again, “but I don’t think you need to be worried about that. You know the Elements of Harmony, right? Twilight was the Element of Magic before she became a princess, her skill and power have only increased since then, and she doesn’t think there’s any problem with it.” In actuality, Starlight didn’t know how Twilight felt about it, but she doubted Twilight was worried. “Where did you say you were from again?”
Silence. Goumada’s mouth pinched into a line. Her horn glowed briefly, and suddenly Starlight felt absolutely splendiferous. What was she doing, not helping this nice pony? She needed to fix that with a quickness.
Goumada cleared her throat. “I would like to see the Alicorn Amulet,” she said curtly.
“Ooo, yeah, great idea,” said Starlight dreamily. “Like, want me to show you where it is? C’mon, it’ll be fun!”
“That would be nice, yes,” said Goumada. She was smiling, now. Or was it smirking? Nah, it was just smiling. Smirking would be totally evil, and Starlight knew that there was no way Goumada could evil, because of… Reasons. Most righteous Reasons.
“Coooooool,” said Starlight. “Now I totally don’t know where it, like, specifically is, but I can find out, so don’t go all outta whack on me if it, like, takes a while, m’kay? Yeeeaaah.”
“That will suffice,” said Goumada. “Lead on.”
Finding the Amulet was, like, super easy. Use a spell to detect the right vibes of the enchantments, point it at the Everfree, follow the arrow, brah. Twilight had said she’d given it to Zecora, and Zecora had, like, been totally smart enough to not hide it in her hut. Eventually, the spell led Starlight, Goumada, and the bodyguards to an apparently bogus patch of forest where they found a gnarly box buried under a set of gnarled tree roots.
Goumada flicked the box open and levitated the Amulet out. Starlight had never seen it before, not even in pictures, but the design struck her as kind of whack, all red and black and evil all over. It was like they were trying to advertise it as an Artifact of Doom™. Not that Goumada cared. Her eyes were glittering with something that totally wasn’t untempered avarice. Nope. That would be all evil and stuff. “I…” she whispered, “I can feel its power. A well-made fake, this is not.” She tugged at the clasp and frowned. “Has it been glued shut?”
“Yeeeaaah, sorry,” said Starlight, “but there’s this, y’know, it’s kinda like a spell to keep the doohickey closed, so, like, you can’t have a pony just put it on if they, like, found it. I mean, it’s, like, you miiiiight be able to get through it eventually, but I dunno, y’know? No?”
“Hmm. Unfortunate, but understandable.” Goumada shut the box and passed it off to one of her bodyguards, who promptly shut it up in another box. Recursion. Radical. “In any case, I thank you for your cooperation.”
Starlight nodded vigorously. This was an excellent thing. She’d done a most excellent thing.
“…And then, a few hours later, the spell wore off,” said Starlight, staring at the tabletop, “and I came here to reflect on comprehensively dead I am.”
Rainbow Dash nodded slowly. “Yuff,” she said around a mouthful of bon bons. “Da’s weawwy dehd.” She swallowed. “And I know this is a bad time, but see how creepy mind control spells are?”
“Do not remind me of that,” growled Starlight, resuming relations between the table and her face. “I don’t know where to begin on fixing this, and-”
“What was the name of the mare, again?” asked Bon Bon.
“Goumada,” said Starlight, sitting up. “I asked her at least twhen did you get here?!”
For Starlight had just noticed that Bon Bon was sitting right next to her and Rainbow, staring at her with an unusually intense stare. She’d snuck in so completely silently that Starlight had no idea as to how long she’d been sitting there. Even Rainbow Dash twitched in surprise.
“Right at the end,” said Bon Bon. Her voice was surprisingly serious. “You’re positive it was Goumada? She had glasses? Whitish coat? Three stacks of bits for a cutie mark?”
“Definitely,” Starlight replied, nodding. “Why?”
“Because…” Bon Bon paused. “Because Goumada has connections to artifact smuggling and the illegal antiquities trade.”
“Really?” asked Rainbow Dash, who seemed way too happy for that revelation. “Like the Golden Exchange? That underground ring of black markets?”
“She- How’d you know about that?”
“It was in Daring Do and the Iron Phoenix. Yearling really, uh, did her homework on that bit.”
“Well, Goumada’s a small part of that. She’s…” Bon Bon bit her lip. “Short version, she’s kind of a link between various pony artifact collectors and various griffon artifact collectors. Sells one group’s artifacts to the other and vice versa. She’s got basically a base in the northwest, at a trade city between Griffonstone and Equestria. Called, uh, Trotter Gorge. She runs a casino — built on dirty money, obviously — and it’s pretty much its own black market, running relics between ponies and griffons, but there’s never been quite enough evidence to convict her.”
“Heh,” said Starlight. “Great.”
“And if she’s at all smart,” continued Bon Bon, “— which she is — she won’t hesitate to sell a power-boosting artifact like the Amulet on the black market to the highest bidder ASAP and rid herself of all evidence that she was attached to it.” She glowered at Starlight.
“…Is it possible to die twice?” Starlight reinitiated muzzle-table coitus. “ ’Cause I’m coming pretty close.”
“But she can’t sell it immediately, right?” asked Rainbow Dash. “I mean, she just got it today.”
“I guess not,” said Bon Bon. “She’s got to send word out, get customers. But she’d still get it out in a few weeks.”
“And she’d keep it in her base. In that casino.” A grin was clawing its way onto Rainbow Dash’s face.
“I…” Bon Bon frowned. “Probably, I guess, but I don’t see why that matters. You’re not planning on taking this to Celestia, are you? If Goumada sees a single sparkle off a guard’s armor, she’ll move the Amulet faster than you can say ‘hide the evidence’.”
“Nope. Got a way better idea than that.”
“Rainbow,” Starlight asked, sitting up, “just what are you getting at?”
Rainbow Dash smirked and rubbed her front hooves together. “I have a cunning plan.” She zipped out of the building and was away.
“You don’t have any idea what she was talking about, do you?” asked Bon Bon.
“Nope,” said Starlight. “But it’s still infinitely more plans than I have.”
“You’re going to try to come up with one, right?”
“I kinda have to, don’t I?” Starlight asked. She stared at the table. “I mean, it is my fault.”
“Well, yeah.”
Starlight bit back her reply and thought. She’d made complicated plans before, right? She could do this.
And pretty much every one of those had backfired on her. Her village had kicked her out. Equestria had been destroyed several times over because of her petty use of time travel. And that time she used magic to do several friendship lessons at once was… Yeah. She couldn’t do this.
“Listen, it’s been not so nice talking, but I’ve got customers I need to attend to,” said Bon Bon, and left the table.
“Yeah. Whatever,” Starlight said to the air. Maybe, if she started walking, she could come up with an idea. She stood up and slowly loped out of the shop. What a way to spend the rest of the day, stewing about dangerous artifacts she’d lost and the artifact smuggler she’d lost it t-
Hang on… Starlight wheeled around and re-entered the candy shop. “Hey! Bon Bon! How’d you know she had connections to the black market if the Guard can’t pin it on her?”
“Can’t talk right now!” yelled Bon Bon. “Real busy! Lots of customers!” She pointed at all two ponies waiting in line.
Starlight snorted, flicked her ears, and left Sweets for the Sweet. Let Bon Bon keep her secrets. She had being dead to stew over.