Night slipped up next to the warehouse, where Gleaming’s Triad was hard at work. Unfortunately, Twilight wouldn’t be able to back him up on this one, but he couldn’t let Gleaming get away with having such a far-reaching smuggling route.
His options were limited. He couldn’t rush in for arrests, and without Twilight’s magical reserves and skills to back him up, he didn’t have much he could do beyond setting fire to the building.
He catapulted himself up onto the roof and moved across a concrete building, using his transposing spell to keep his Image out of sight as he approached the skylight.
He could steal the artifact, and while that would cripple the entire sting operation that Night had lined up with the Princess, he wasn’t sure the sting was happening at all by this point.
He glanced down through the frosted glass and could still see the nearly-glowing form of a golden and purple shield despite the fogged pane. Whatever that was, it had to be the artifact that Gleaming was counterfeiting. It was his target.
He mentally bemoaned that all the work Newsie did would go to waste before he checked the time. The sun was going to set any minute now, and the work in the warehouse would begin in earnest very shortly. He had until then before it would be nearly impossible for him to get the shield.
Night took a deep breath before he reached out with his magic, searching for some kind of latch or lever to begin opening the skylight. His search came up empty within a few seconds, though, and Night sighed as he was forced to pull out a glass cutter. He worked as quickly as he dared, using the diamond-tipped circular blade to cut a hole into the skylight.
With a length of tape he kept in his pouch, he pulled the small glass plug away and revealed the shield and the warehouse below him. The shield seemed oddly sharp to his eyes, as far away as he was, and he could see the exquisite detail etched into the gold, steel, and hepatizon.
That had to be the artifact, no question about it.
He glanced around at the warehouse and found that there had been no latch to the skylight, as he thought. The warehouse floor was empty as well, if only for now. He’d have to get down there as fast as he could if he wanted to get the shield before anypony noticed. Of course, he didn’t have a good way of getting in.
He’d have to drop down to the ground and try to enter from the main door.
He shook his head. One wrong move and he’d be caught in the middle of the warehouse with a small army bearing down on him.
Finally, a proper challenge for a Master Thief.
He catapulted himself down to the floor and landed as softly as he could on the stone that reached out from rail to shore. He moved quickly, pressing himself along the wall, and moving as carefully as possible to the nearest side door.
He peeked through the lock first, a large, old lock with large but intricate tumblers. He saw no one on the other side.
He used his magic to prod at the tumblers, feeling their crossed shapes and whorls that only the right key would open. Night pushed carefully with his magic, picking the lock the “hard” way according to Moon Light’s pack, but the door opened quickly, nearly without a sound.
He smirked and checked his surroundings once more before he slipped into a nearby shadow, an open crate filled with shields like the one on the pedestal. Though each of these lacked the incredible, preternatural clarity of the details engraved in them.
The one on the pedestal was definitely the real one, without a doubt.
He glanced back at the dais before he cast the Transposement spell, and he quickly made his way up to the shield, his Image hidden on the roof of the building. He glanced around carefully and saw a guard or two patrolling the warehouse.
He could grab the shield now and risk getting their attention when they noticed, but he might have an alternative here.
He waited for a second, licking his lips as he thought before he felt his magic snap back into his body.
Ponies suddenly appeared from around the warehouse, all armed with crossbows that they leveled at him. He spun, wondering how his Control Image failed him before he heard a voice that he would never be able to forget.
“Well, well, well! It is you!”
Night turned to see a pegasus approaching him, an open chest of lead held in one hoof, revealing the large shard of Thronestone inside.
“I was beginning to wonder if these ponies had any idea of what they were talking about,” the mare said with a vicious smirk.
“Gleaming…” Night said, swallowing. “It’s...it’s been a while.”
“Bygones are bygones, Night!” she said, smiling still as she set the chest with the Thronestone down. “Besides, I can’t stay mad at my Big Brother now, can I?”
Night looked at her. “It’s…” he began, his voice cracking a bit. “It’s great to see you, honestly. I...I thought you were dead for so long.”
“No, not dead,” Gleaming said. “After that pony beat me, he kept me in his basement for a few days.”
The thought hit Night like a punch to the gut. Memories of the nights after, of wondering if he should go back if only to find her body, rushed back to him.
He never returned to that house.
“But bygones are bygones like I said,” Gleaming said. “What I want to know is if what I’ve heard is true. Have you been working for the Princess these days?”
“Not long after I lost you,” Night said.
“Really? So long? The con you’re pulling has to be paying well.” She never moved away from the chest, and her smile, though it grew, was still cold.
“It’s not a con, Gleaming.”
“No? Then I can only assume that you started this because you shouldn’t do anything you do well for free, right?” she asked.
The ponies around them shuffled slightly, their crossbows still leveled.
Night didn’t know what to say. Usually, he might try to talk his way out of this, but he kept looking into Gleaming’s eyes and faltering. Her face was different, he realized, her muzzle just slightly crooked from what he remembered, and small cowlicks in her coat revealed long-healed scars.
“I...I just wanted to do the right thing.”
Gleaming blinked and raised an eyebrow, smirking the entire time. “Really? That’s what you want to go with? Forgive me if I doubt that.” She looked Night up and down. “Well, it looks like the money you’ve been earning has filled you out at least, so I imagine that the pay doesn’t hurt, right?”
Night didn’t respond.
“Truth be told, I probably can’t compete with the Royal budget, but I’m sure you won’t complain with what I have to offer you,” Gleaming said.
“What?” he asked.
“I need a real thief,” she said, glancing across the room as she listed what she had. “Not like Blackjack’s thugs. They work with intimidating ponies into giving them what they want. Boot Legger’s crew are smugglers. They haven’t stolen anything in their lives. The best ones are Moon Light’s pack, but they’ve been going too small for too long. They don’t know how to steal real treasure.”
Gleaming smiled as her eyes refocused on Night. “Not like you. They’re nothing like you. You know exactly how to sneak in and take what you want when you want, and very little can stop you. If they don’t know you’re coming, of course.” She said the last bit with a broad, vicious smirk.
“You want my help?” Night asked.
“Of course,” Gleaming said. “It’ll be just like how it used to be, the pair of us taking everything we want when we want. Of course, this time, we’ll be making millions instead. Can you imagine that? Millions of bits for a job, with ponies finally working for us? We’re going to be the greatest thieves in the world, Night. We’ll rule the real Equestria, not the one the Princess thinks she rules, the real kingdom made of darkness and criminals. We’ll make those who’ve suffered at the hooves of ‘normal’ ponies kings and queens, while the idiots who drink their lives away and beat on those weaker than them will finally have their turn at the bottom.”
Night said nothing.
“We’ll rule together, Night, and nothing will be able to stop us,” she said. “It’s everything we ever wanted.”
“And why do you want me?” Night asked. “I’m skilled, sure but—”
“Because we’re family, Night,” Gleaming said, her voice softening while her smirk remained just as cold. “You were the only real family I had, and family sticks together, right?”
Night took the less-than-subtle stab but remained silent.
“What? You’re not going to say anything? Night, this is what we’ve always wanted, the entire world at our hooves, and nopony to tell us otherwise.”
Night shook his head. “It’s what you wanted, Gleaming. I just wanted to keep you alive.”
“And you did such an excellent job at that, didn’t you?” Gleaming asked.
Night took the accusation but stood his ground.
“Well, are you going to join me or not?” she asked.
More ponies began to file in when she said that. Blackjack, Boot Legger, and Moon Light all came through the doors, followed by thugs, smugglers, and thieves. They stared at him, Blackjack with a thick, deep scowl; Boot Legger with a victorious smirk; and Moon Light, who looked at him with haunted eyes.
“Well?” Gleaming asked again.
Night glanced up at her. “Don’t make me do this,” he whispered.
If she heard him, she didn’t act like it. “What’s your choice, Night? Are you with me or against me?”
Night shook his head. “I can’t join you, Gleaming. I’m not trying to hurt ponies.”
No one spoke for a long second, and Night could hear the groaning sinew of the crossbow strings. Hooves softly clicked against the metal triggers, waiting for the word.
“I see,” Gleaming said, her voice as harsh as winter.
In a swift, singular movement, she spun, grabbed one of the crossbows from a nearby pony, and shot Night in the leg. The caught thief cried as his muscles spasmed around the bolt and tumbled to the ground.
“It doesn’t matter to me either way,” Gleaming growled, still smiling. “It just means I get to repay the beating I owe you.” She turned, leaving the chest open behind her to face the gathered horde of ponies. “Do what you want to him, but keep him alive.”
The thugs laughed and began to pile in, followed by the rougher smugglers as they started their work. Gleaming turned to leave before Boot Legger walked up next to her. “That was your plan? To recruit him? I could have told you that he wasn’t going to take the deal.”
Gleaming shrugged. “I figured that he wouldn’t,” she said. “Still, it would have been nice.”
“It would have been. Instead, now we’ve got the best smuggling route in the city, and everypony’s attention.”
Gleaming shot him a glare.
“Unless I’m missing something,” Boot Legger added.
“We have what we need,” she said. “But we need to pack up and move out. We’ll head through the jungle, as we discussed, and head for the Whitetail hideout.”
“If you say so,” Boot Legger said, before bowing. “I just hope we can recover the Crystal Empire market.”
Gleaming glared at him again, and Boot decided now would be a good time to leave the matter rest for a few minutes. He nodded and began to direct his smugglers to pack everything up to start the move. They wouldn’t have much time now that the Princess might be onto them.
Gleaming, meanwhile, retreated to the office.
She walked up, into the warehouse’s only air-conditioned room, and sat at the large wooden desk. She pulled out a sheet of parchment and a quill and began to write the letter.
If she couldn’t have the tool she needed to steal the world, then she’d get the money she’d need to do it.
“Dear Princess Twilight,
“I understand that you and I have a mutual acquaintance. I’ve reached out to him in the hopes that we can, perhaps, speak plainly. Night Silk has unfortunately suffered an injury, and I have taken it upon myself, as his gracious host, to keep him until he is well enough to leave. Unfortunately, the costs of medical treatments are expensive, and I cannot deal with the whole bill myself. So I ask you, honorable Princess of Friendship, if you’d be so kind as to help me heal our friend’s wounds? A mere three million bits would be enough to get Night back on his hooves and on his way. I’m sure you can cover that.
“Bring them to my contact on the fringes of the Whitetail woods, just on the outskirts of a no-name town called Ponyville. Once my contact has the money, we’ll make sure Night is released in…
“Reasonable condition.
“Yours Sincerely,
Gleaming Coin.”
---$---
Twilight crumpled the letter as she finished reading it before it began to burst into flame, lit by her pure, unfiltered magic as her rage began to build.
This wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Night was supposed to come with her, with her guard. They were supposed to take the warehouse together and take Gleaming and her Triad unaware. How did things go so wrong?
The letter was turning to ash in her telekinetic grip, and a low growl was beginning to escape her throat.
“Lieutenant!” she cried, and the pony rushed up beside her in a salute.
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“Have the guard search everywhere. I want to know where the thieves went before they even knew themselves. Am I understood?”
“As you will, Your Highness,” the Lieutenant said, before he began barking orders at the ponies around him.
“Think you can outplay me, huh?” Twilight muttered. “Well, I bet you haven’t thought of all the magic I can bring to bear.”
She cast her scrying spell, throwing her vision to the far reaches of the earth to find Night. She’d see him now if only to...to…
The spell came up empty.
It didn’t connect, as though there was no target to find.
Twilight blinked, with her now-sightless eyes, before she cast again.
Still, the darkness of nothing.
She cast again. “Come on.”
Again, nothing.
Panic was starting to rise in the back of her mind. Scrying only failed for two reasons, and Twilight was sure that Gleaming couldn’t take Night to another plane of existence. Twilight cast again and still found nothing.
He...he couldn’t be dead. If Gleaming killed them, then she couldn’t get the money back and—
Reasonable condition.
He...he was dead. She killed—
No, no! There had to be another explanation. There had to be…
An idea struck Twilight, and she cast her spell again, changing the target to Night’s hook. She’d seen the old rebar grappling hook before. She could lock onto it quickly enough, then all she had to do was.
It didn’t appear before her.
Relief flooded Twilight’s mind. He wasn’t dead, probably. He might be in a pocket dimension, or hidden by Thronestone or something similar. If Night still had his hook, then it wouldn’t appear either.
Of course, now it meant that Gleaming had outplayed her again. She blocked her spellcraft, somehow, and kept her position hidden. She could not be spied on.
Twilight sighed before she cursed. Things went south far too fast.
Silently, she hoped Night would be alright long enough for her to save him.
---$---
Night groaned before he tried to open his eyes.
A brilliant, thin line of light appeared across his vision, and he tried to open his eyes wider. Then he realized that his eyes were as open as they could be with the growing pain spreading across his entire body.
His entire body felt like it was on fire. His muscles burned and wouldn’t move. His body ached, and his left leg was definitely broken.
“And there he is,” Gleaming’s voice said. “Finally awake. I was almost afraid that you weren’t going to make it.”
Night tried to talk, but he felt his lungs burn and throat ache as soon as he began to speak.
“Not much to say?” Gleaming asked. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of that. We have one healer that will get you back up and running in no time.”
Night’s eyes widened.
Everypony knew what “healing magic” really was. Create Body could knit flesh back together, but Create spells only lasted as long as the mage could keep supplying it with energy. The moment they stopped, the wound would re-open. The only way to make the spell effective was to start with some kind of living matter, like plants or wood, and then transform it into flesh.
In short, both were torture, with only the most powerful of mages, and even then only the ones with access to Transform, able to heal even the most simple of wounds.
Luckily, most of his wounds were bruises, and those could be tended to. At least, he hoped most of his injuries were bruises. If it turned out that he had more broken bones than he thought, then every single one of them would be agony.
Night tried to see Gleaming through his swollen eyes, but only her cruel laughter met his ears. “Oh, don’t you worry, Night,” Gleaming said. “It’ll be nothing like the time you left me. Just think of it as paying you back, with interest.”
Night shook his head and wished he could speak enough to tell her he was sorry.