//------------------------------//
// 82.6 Forged in Rainbow Tinted Spell Fire 
// Story: Prey and a Lamb 
// by Lambs Prey 
//------------------------------//

It was early in the morning when the ISND were admitted into the parlour of Dunlop Scrims' house. Well, it was only midway through their shift, but for any sun loving and worshiping pony, it was Goddess forsakenly early.

The twenty-four hour butler had shown them into the parlour to wait, while he went to wake the sleeping steward of the Fell House. A twenty-four hour butler. Dunlop Scrims was so important that he had a servant awake at all times to answer the door, monitor his home, and ready to serve him if he woke up in the middle of the night, reached over to his nightstand, and rang the bell for some hot chocolate.

'Pony privilege at its finest.' Prey thought in disgust, examining the parlour they'd been told to wait in closer. Because although they were Night Guards, even Guards had to wait on the convenience of the noble class for some reason.

A parlour was literally just a room for visitors to wait in. But to the surprise of none of them, the room was of course still lavish. Did it need to be lavish? No. It was literally just a waiting room, it served no other dual purpose. Was it lavish anyway? Yes.

Further more, it wasn't the gaudy sort of over-the-top lavish, but rather that restrained, understated kind of taste which nevertheless somehow still managed to be even more expensive than if you'd had gold and gems. The dark wood of the floors and wall panelling was that iron hard kind which you only got from centuries of care and polishing by generations of servants.

What was more, they'd found out that this here was just one of Dunlop Scrim's houses, the one which he stayed in when he was here in Canterlot on business. He had more such properties in every big pony city. More properties in the Upper Class districts, more servants employed year round and maintaining houses he might end up only using for two or three weeks per year total. And the really crazy thing was; Dunlop Scrims was just a steward. 

Dunlop had all of this, and yet it was nothing to Lord Triton Fell's own. What was more, Dunlop wasn't even 'The' steward, but one of four stewards all serving Triton Fell.

So here the three of them were, in Dunlop's Canterlot house. Waiting.

Crimson idly shifted his wings, habitually testing his wingblades in their sheathes were ready to flick out with just a flex of his wings. Prey was completely used to the tiny metallic whispered scrape the blades caused that only he could just hear with his superior hearing. He was not in a positive mood.

Neither was Gloom. The armoured thestral seemed to be rigidly examining the large painting hanging from the wall, no doubt done by some famous artist. Really though, the Sargent was going over the events of earlier in his head, eyes not even seeing the painting of a wind swept plains. 

And Prey was anxiously trying to locate the source of the passive thrum of magic in the room that was painfully prickling his hooves. There was some enchantment somewhere in here, and no it wasn't from the glow crystal lights. Likely, it was either some kind of fire alarm or fire prevention, but not knowing was driving his paranoia levels up.

'Over here? No, not there. Back by the door frame? Not there either. Where? And what? Is Dunlop spying on us right now? Is it a giant trap that he can trigger if he feels threatened?' Prey flicked his eyes up and down the room, being as subtle about it as he could.

He could feel the stinging in his hooves, so familiar that he could literally differentiate between the subtlest tones in the pins and needles. Prey shifted from hoof to hoof, feeling when it intensified. 'Over towards that wall, something behind the wood panelling.'

What was it though? Whatever it was though, it was magic, and so Prey didn't like it.

Prey looked back at the other two out of the corner of his eye. Gloom was still thinking over the events of earlier. Crimson was obviously thinking about something too, although as always Prey couldn't tell what. Neither were paying more than passive attention to him.

Casually, Prey moved over and leaned against the wall, leaning on his left shoulder. The free end of his ribbon brushed up against the smooth wall, the blue silk sliding over the polished wood.

The prickling needles in his hooves faded, and then cut out entirely. Just as casually, Prey pushed himself off the wall, faking that he'd changed his mind and that the wall was actually uncomfortable, and trotted back over to stand by Gloom and Crimson. And there he waited, as outside the sun rose, and the stuffy butler went about rousing and getting his master presentable.

Dunlop sure took his sweet time, though. Or maybe it was just to pay them back for their bad manners in waking him? No doubt the steward was used to other people, no, other ponies, conforming to his schedule, and not the other way around. Yesterday's meeting at the Palace an immediate example of that.

'-serves him right for waking us up at four in the afternoon. I still haven't gotten my sleep back because of that-', Gloom thought. Petty, yes, but petty was also small and normal. Something mundane you could focus on instead of worrying.

Still they were left to wait.

Finally though, the hoof steps of the butler returned, and the door *clicked* open with an expensive sounding noise. The same snooty unicorn from earlier wearing the black and red colours of House Fell stood there, and gravely informed them; "Mister Scrims will see you now."

Gloom smiled politely, close lipped, even though smiling was the furthest thing from his mind, "That's very kind of him. Come, let's not keep the steward waiting."

Crimson rolled his shoulders back under his armour, resettling his wing muscles. Prey brushed the end of his ribbon back behind his ear. Together, the three of them followed the butler out for their second meeting with Dunlop within that many days.


---


They found the grey unicorn from yesterday waiting for them in his living room. 

The curtains were drawn back from the bay windows, allowing the bright morning sun to stream in over the long dining table. At the tables head, with a silver breakfast tray with all the trappings set before him, (egg, egg holder, butter, butter bowl, butter knife, strawberry jam, apricot jam, cherry jam, gooseberry jam, a different jam knife for every pot, toast, toast rack, toast place, tea pot, tea pot cosy, tea cup, tea spoon, tea saucer, sugar bowl, cream, knife, fork, spoon, white napkin, and ironed morning paper), was Dunlop.

A uniformed maid, who'd just finished pouring the master of the house's tea, was quietly taking her leave as Dunlop looked up in the ISND's direction. Behind them, the butler just as quietly closed the double doors, leaving the four of them undisturbed in the dining room.

The sight of the unicorn immedidetly irked Prey. Partly because he was a unicorn, partly because of all the wealth and position he was arrogantly flaunting, partly because of yesterday, and partly because of the stewards neatly groomed appearance.

'That's why you made us wait? So he could brush his fur and comb his mane?'

Dunlop's knife scraped on the toast as he buttered it, not even looking at them as he addressed them, "I hope you realise, that when I said you could get in contact with my secretary to arrange an appointment, that's what I expected you to do. Contact my secretary, and arrange an appointment."

Finished with one slice of toast, the unicorn switched to buttering the next:

"I am a busy pony, and I value my limited private time. For you to be here at this hour in the morning, some event must have occurred. Some event has occurred, yes?" Dunlop asked, finally looking up from his breakfast tray. The aristocratically judging look he was giving them was so perfect Prey wondered if he'd had to practise it in the mirror.

With great effort, Gloom refrained from sceptically raising an eyebrow back. '-don't like getting woken up early, huh? Horseshoe's on the other hoof now-'

Nevertheless, Gloom answered the steward concisely. The sooner they finished up here, the sooner they could get back to their other Night Guard duties. And there was a lot of those to be getting on with now.

Gloom reached in under his chest plate and pulled out the carved seal Dunlop had entrusted to them yesterday, "As you say, you're a busy pony. So we'll just return this to you and get out of your mane."

Dunlop blinked as Gloom placed the thick seal down at the end of the table the steward had left them standing at, rather than inviting them closer. "I... beg your pardon?"

Gloom smiled thinly, (no fangs), "The ISND is returning this, since we no longer need it. The investigation is over."

"Over? What are you talking about?" Dunlop asked in bafflement.

Gloom waved one wing each at Prey and Crimson waiting beside him; "We, as in the ISND, no longer need to carry out this investigation. Because Mister Dunlop Scrims, there is no investigation left. At all."

"You're not making this any clearer. Explain yourself properly." Dunlop demanded.

"You won't have heard yet, since it happened only just after midnight, and I see you're still reading the newspaper there," Gloom nodded his helmeted head at the freshly ironed paper set to Dunlop's left, "But in light of the events that happened, the investigation for the stolen orichalcum is over."

Dunlop didn't snatch, because snatching wasn't gentlecoltly, but he did hurriedly pick up and unfold the newspaper in his aura. The front page was an article about Griffonian trade embargos and sensationally wild theories about the why of it. At the use of magic, Prey's eyes latched onto the unicorn's horn and stayed there, closely watching him. Sure the steward was just using his aura to perform telekinesis, but if he had good control, the glow from using his telekinesis might easily be used to cover up the casting of another spell. It never hurt to be on guard.

Dunlop swiftly flicked through the pages, looking for something which could explain the ISND's sudden presence here this morning. After less than five seconds though, it obviously occurred to the stallion to give up and get the answers from the ISND in front of him. He tossed the newspaper back onto the table cloth.

"If you could kindly stop beating about the bush, and tell me straight, that would be appreciated."

Next to Prey, Crimson's wing gave that little curt flick of annoyance at the stallion's aggrieved tone. What did Dunlop have to be aggrieved about? He'd strong hoofed them into doing what was essentially a private investigation on behalf of the Fell House, dumped his job on them to do, and then waltzed off to go home to his nice house, gotten a good nights rest, and was now sitting here eating a wonderful breakfast. 

Meanwhile the ISND hadn't even had a chance for breakfast yet, and the way the day was going, it was still up in the air whether they'd even get any lunch today.

Gloom hummed and tilted his head slightly to the side, "Hmm. Well to summarize, it went something like this..."


---Earlier---


It was two-fifteen in the morning. Most of the pony inhabitants of Canterlot were asleep, nicely tucked away inside their homes from the cold night air. However, at one very specific point outside of Canterlot, not far down the side of Mount Canter, there was a spot where it wasn't so dark or so chilly.

Prey, Gloom, Crimson, and the rest of the Night Guard who'd been called were getting to enjoy the benefits of a fire. That was an optimistic way to look at it. However, the pessimistic viewer wouldn't have been hard pressed to point out the negatives in the situation.

The fire wasn't a nice cozy campfire glow. It was a blazing wreck of a train carriage. 

The heat was hot enough that no one could get closer than at minimum fifteen hooves. It was also blocking the train track, the wreckage of the carriage and metal wheels cluttered everywhere. The train engine itself had been spared, and had safely detached and pulled off down the mountain, as it had literally been the last train carriage which'd exploded.

But the last and most glaringly obvious point that caught all who saw its attention, was the fire itself.

A normal fire is made up from shades of orange, red, yellow, white, and very occasionally blue.

This fire here busily consuming the wreckage was blazing away merrily as a rainbow kaleidoscope. The flames were burning every different bright hue; oranges, purple, greens, indigos, blues, yellows, reds, and all the other shades of colour in-between. The way that each flame seemed to flow into the next, nearly liquid almost, was hypnotic to watch.

While the twenty or so Night Guards were keeping a safe distance, Prey stood even farther back and upwind from the train tracks, by an out crop of rocky mountain wall. Close enough that if anything unexpectedly exploded, he could dive behind the rock for shelter. He was showing a healthy respect for the magical fire. Why? The reason was very simple. Because it was spell fire.

And not the very carefully stabilised kind you found in the very expensive message-in-a-bottle either.

"You are being very cautious." Crimson stated, coming up to stand along side Prey, joining him in eyeing the multi-coloured flames. He'd approached far quieter than you would expect for someone in armour.

"Of course I am. That's spell fire." Prey stated bluntly.

Crimson blinked, then narrowed his eyes at the blaze, "Spell fire? As in, the kind which can..."

"The kind which is unpredictable, which can burn through solid rock like wood, or might randomly leave it untouched instead. The kind which turns living flesh to mush and ash, and that if you try to use magic on it, it'll simply grow larger and more unstable? Yes. That kind of spell fire."

Crimson's frown deepened a tad, "I thought it was only magical fire. I mean, obviously, because of its colour and shape, and obviously it's very dangerous, but I didn't realise this was spell fire. It looks nothing like that from those message-in-a-bottles'."

"That was stabilized spell fire. This isn't. Just like that stuck up Fell steward said yesterday. Raw orichalcum is dangerously volatile precisely because of how unpredictable it is. And orichalcum fuelled spell fire? Multiply that by ten."

The raw orichalcum. Blazing away in front of them. The cause of the massive explosion shortly after midnight. 

"Everyone else, they're aware of the danger, right?" Crimson checked, glancing quickly to the other Night Guards. Gloom was over by Lieutenant Vivid Edge and Screech, and also Future Spark. Since Taffy's cousin was one of the unicorn's on call by the Guard for his scientific expertise, he'd been roused from his house and brought out here.

Prey had trekked down the train line in the same little group as the unicorn, actually. Perhaps the one, only, and lone similarity between a unicorn and a sheep was that they both had no wings. They had to rely on their own four hooves. Well that, and Future Spark while a scholar of magic, wasn't more than about a level two unicorn himself in terms of actual magical ability, and so therefore wasn't capable of teleporting.

Because of Dunlop Scrims warning about how the stolen raw orichalcum's potential for detonation if not handled right, the Night Guard had been on high alert for any hint of the magical metal. Just as concerning had been the threat of what a competent warlock might do with the orichalcum if they got their hooves on it. 

'Well, I doubt they're worried about that any longer.' Prey thought as the flames danced. Which was exactly why he and Lemon Pink had loaded half of their pillaged orichalcum onto the train, and sent it off to explode.

The Vanhoover train had been returning to its couplings during the quiet hours of the night, so as to be ready in time for the Vanhoover morning passengers, when the raw orichalcum had utterly annihilated the last car of the train in an explosion that brought rocks tumbling down the mountainside.

Standing here on the mountain side looking at his own hoofwork, while next to him Crimson didn't know he was right beside the very culprit, was tugging on Prey's withered but still just alive sense of guilt. He didn't let it show, though. He'd destroyed a train carriage, wrecked the track, delayed all train travel into Canterlot until they could fix it, which wasn't something they could even attempt until the spell fire finally burnt itself out. His actions here will have cost businesses many thousands of bits when added up. Perhaps the night security guards for the train station would lose their jobs, too.

Prey only felt very marginally guilty on the scale for that, though. He was feeling much more guilty about deceiving Crimson like this. 

No one had been murdered in the course of his distraction. No innocent passers by, no train workers, and no random strangers. They might have only been arrogant, soft, privileged, racist ponies, but that didn't mean they deserved death. Prey was trying not to be that person anymore. Despite his backwards slip for that period after Luna's selfishness, he'd recovered, and he was going to make the effort to keep to the goal he'd set before. To improve as a person.

But that just meant not murdering innocents. Who cared how many thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of gold bits were lost? A single life was priceless by comparison. Unfortunately, he'd had to fake it for tonight, and if he'd estimated right, they'd be finding the explosions 'fatality' soon.

Prey and Crimson stood quietly watching the fire. There wasn't anything for anyone to do, but stand there and keep an eye on the fire until it went out. Traces of the Lieutenants words reached Prey's ears as they received reports and stood there discussing:

"No trace of any bodies yet... all workers accounted for... thank Luna, but it doesn't look like anypony was lost in this."

"Not even the thief himself? Or herself?... if they were in that, I doubt we'd find anything."

'Or it's possible my estimate was wrong, and they won't find the fake remains at all.' Prey thought. No one could fully predict uncontrolled spell fire, after all.

Prey kept one eye on the flames, and the other one on Future Spark who was consulting something in a notebook, and waving around a metal device of some kind in his magic. It looked like some sort of half cog wheel merged with an alarm clock. 

Whatever the device was, it obvious told the ditzy scientist something, because after going back to his note book, scribbling out some calculations, double checking his device again, his device, then notebook, device, notebook, device, notebook, device, the rock on the ground for some reason, and finally notebook, he snapped it shut.

"Yep! Looking at the load out... circumference and overcharged ambient saturation... estimating the burn duration... and the math checks out if you apply it to Grants rules of mana overcharge..."

Screech very obviously interrupted Future Spark and told him to get to the point.

"Oh right! I was trying to say... like ninety-nine percent certain that for a detonation this size, all eight boxes of raw orichalcum would've gone up."

Vivid Edge's one-eyed face bathed in all the colours of the rainbow somehow still perfectly expressed her's and Screech's doubt without saying a word.

"What? It would've." Future Spark defended his hypothesis.

"...was lead to believe the explosion would've been larger than this." Was the snatch of words Prey overheard Screech saying.

"Oh yes, without a doubt! ....but that's assuming it all went up together. It's a compounding effect, but if it was only a chain reaction... raw orichalcum is kept in separate lead lined strong boxes precisely for this reason."

"Then how do you know it was all of them?" Vivid asked, gesturing with a wing at the merry blaze.

Future Spark excitedly waved the odd device in their faces. Prey tried to listen harder, "... ambient mana is too overcharged for only one strong box to have gone critical. See, it's all to do with the saturation levels when you compare it to the background..."

He went on for a while in that vein. Eventually Screech abandoned Vivid Edge, leaving her to continue enduring the excited unicorn's ramblings, and went off to get on with doing his job.

Towering flames continued to flicker as the Night Guards carefully swept the surrounding area.

A thestral with a message swooped out of the night, alighting by Lieutenant Screech, telling him something, then taking off back up to the Palace.

The fire crackled and danced, steadily melting and destroying more of the wreckage, rails, and stone itself.

Then someone on the far side of the blaze seemed to find something, and a couple other Night Guards were called over to see what it was. They clustered there for about five minutes, before they broke up. Some began spreading out and searching the ground in the shadows. Others went to inform the Lieutenants about what ever it was.

Prey and Crimson watched them reporting, but couldn't hear the muffled words. The fire danced and blazed on, flames as tall as houses muting the stars above in the night. 

Gloom finished up whatever the two Lieutenants on the scene had called him over for, and trotted back over to Prey and Crimson. 

"You guys heard that?" Gloom asked as he approached. He took his place alongside them in intently watching the colourful fire.

"Most of what Future was saying, yes." Prey nodded, but not looking away from the flames.

"Enough of it." Crimson nodded shallowly, "Things are never this easy for us. It feels weird. I mean, where's the monsters? Where are the spies? Where's the hidden disaster?"

"Is that a complaint I hear? If that raw orichalcum had gotten into a warlock's grasp..." Prey didn't need to finish that.

They had all been there in Mayflower. They'd seen the reaper king, and they remembered what Hard Baked had done.

Gloom winced. '-ah, so they didn't actually hear everything. Moon blight. Now I've got to explain this. I hate it-'

"Actually..." Gloom began slowly, "It wasn't that easy. They just found, well... Tisk was flying around the mountain side, looking for any dangerous debris you know, and he found the remains of, of somepony. A mostly melted horseshoe and some of the leg. It was... badly burnt."

'Good, they found it. I'd worried that it would've burned to ashes instead of getting thrown out of the carriage, even though I set it right at the edge.' Prey thought. Outwardly though, he played his part. He let his face sink into smoothness.

"Ah."

"Oh." Crimson echoed.

There was a silence. What could you say to the apparent death of someone, even though Prey knew it was fake?

Gloom and Crimson hadn't known the supposed 'dead' pony. They didn't even know what colour, race, or gender they'd been. They'd been a criminal, a thief.

And now they were 'dead'.

Crimson shifted, his wings tightening against his armour.

Prey pretended he was trying to avoid both of their gazes, acting like he was feeling guilty that he wasn't feeling worse about the news.

'-we didn't know him. Or her. We didn't know them-', Gloom repeated himself, thinking much along the same lines as Prey had just been.

Because of the fire, there wouldn't be a body to find. That shouldn't have made a difference. A person had died, but there wasn't a body. Perversely that somehow made it not feel as bad. No grisly scene like down in the cellar, no tortured villager trapped inside a kindersnatch. 

From Gloom and Crimson's point of view, this hadn't been murder, just an accident.

That shouldn't make it any better, but it did. At least a little bit.

Crimson shifted again. "Is there any way to tell who they are? I mean, who they were?"

Gloom shook his head, the multicolour fire light glinting dully on his helmet as he moved, "No. There isn't enough left to, to piece together anything. Luna, that sounded wrong."

"Is there a way to be definitely sure it's the same person who stole the orichalcum in the first place?" Prey asked, leading them to the next logical conclusion. He felt really guilty about doing this to Crimson, but he told himself he hadn't actually lied yet, and he needed the raw orichalcum for a cause. Not a good cause, though. Just a cause.

"Almost certain. We asked the train station already, before we even knew sompony had died. They're not missing anypony. And since that train carriage was recorded as being empty, but somehow had the raw orichalcum in it..."

"It couldn't have been anybody else." Crimson finished, glancing up the dark mountainside to the golden city above them. Even in the dark of night, you could still see it was definitely 'golden'.

"Anypony." Gloom idly corrected Crimson without really thinking.

'-Luna, I really hope it was quick. They hadn't hurt anypony yet, just stolen. They didn't deserve this-'

The silence was settling back in, the bad kind, like a smothering fog.

Prey thought it best if he tried to say something sage to move this on, "The sun rises, the sun sets, but we all have to cross the river someday. There's nothing we can do to change anything now."

Again, rather harsh, but as far as anyone but him knew, it was the truth. The 'thief' was dead, and it was too late to do anything now. Gloom and Crimson might disprove of him seemingly moving on so quickly, but Prey knew they were each privately feeling the same way too.

It was still cruel though, because Prey knew that the both of them secretly feared they too were slowly becoming desensitised to this, to death and body parts. Look at the cellar, and how awful that had been. But now, because there was hardly any body left, and no blood, they weren't traumatised. There was nothing wrong with building up some resistance, but both Crimson and Gloom felt the opposite was true.

'Really, you're both worrying about nothing,' Prey thought, 'You're not psychopaths. You've nothing in common with Garrow, or Ruin, or Stinger. Or Snake, or Torment, or Razor. You're both good people. You're better than me.'

'-this can be dealt with later, if it needs to be dealt with at all. Do our duty first, then we can see to ourselves-', Gloom decided, pulling his thoughts together.

"So. That's that. At least the stolen orichalcum is no longer a threat anymore. I won't say this was the best outcome, but... at least there's one positive to this whole mess." Gloom said, trying to find the silver lining. His attempt fell rather flat.

'-what would it have been like to be in there at the exact moment? Future Spark said nopony would've had a chance to feel anything, but would he or she still have...?-'

Listening in to that, Prey's guilt mounted a bit. Not enough that he wouldn't do the exact same thing again without a moments hesitation, but still, he felt bad. 

'But hey, nobody really died, that was just one of the legs I stole from the city morgue. Really, they could've had it worse. Like, I could've used a whole body, instead of just a foreleg for them to find.'

Gloom's mouth was set in a line, dancing fire light reflecting in his yellow eyes, "I wonder what they were going to do with it?  The raw orichalcum. If it hadn't exploded on them." He murmured.

Prey shrugged his thin shoulders, "We can make guesses, but we'll probably never know for certain. Plus, all the evidence just got blown up." He observed, speaking the truth, or one version of it at least.

Never could be too careful with Gloom's special talent.

The blaze continued to rage in an inferno of colours, the heat basking their faces. The other Night Guards had already set up a perimeter, and were now flying up and down the mountain side for anything they might've missed, keeping well away from the airspace even close to the fire. Vivid Edge and Screech had completely zoned out of Future Spark's explanation, which was still ongoing, and were discussing how to proceed. The unicorn didn't even seem to notice their lack of attention, and was happily explaining away to nobody.

Gloom let out a weary exhale, "I just can't keep wondering though... how did all of this happen?"

'Welllllll.......'


---Even Earlier---


The sun had been approaching the horizon as the station watch stallion fussed with getting his hat to sit right. He'd clocked in only twenty minutes ago, and already he could tell it was going to be a long, boring night. 

Somepony cleared their throat politely beside him.

'-what?! I didn't notice anypony-', He jumped. An utterly plain mare wearing an utterly normal hat stood there-
-There was no pony there.

He blinked and rubbed his eyes. His head ached for some reason, but there was nothing there. He blinked heavily, frowning. Then he looked at the big station clock visible from all the train platforms.

"What? I'm behind already? Buck!" Where had ten minutes gone? He hurried off, supposed to have locked the side gates by now already.

The stallion never realised he'd been without his keys for ten minutes.

Or that someone, two someone's actually, had let themselves into the 'staff only' part of the station.

Or that his memories had been used to find a suitable train and carriage. 

Who knows? Maybe if he'd known, he might even have been grateful, as miniscule as the likelihood of that was, because it'd been the pink mare who'd gone through his head with her sharp, numbing precision, and not the lamb instead. If he'd known that is, which he didn't. And never would.

Later that night, the last train engine from Manehattan would pull in. Then, even later, after all its returning passengers had disembarked and the train drivers had switched out, it would hitch up with this extra car to take back out.

The ten minutes the watch stallion missed was plenty of time to unload the four boxes of raw orichalcum, and all the attached blocks of connecting metal layered with invisible runes.

Prey had positioned the neatly preserved foreleg at the end of the carriage, and set the runes to go off some time when the train was going down the mountainside, where it wouldn't harm anyone. The train schedule would put the time at about two in the morning, halfway through the ISND's shift. A nice little bonus, so that they could be done and dusted with all the resulting work this would cause by the time their shift finished. Hopefully, Prey would actually be able to get some well earned sleep tonight.

Prey had chosen only to sacrifice exactly half the raw orichalcum. Half, and make up for the rest with runes to compensate for the missing magical charge.

Four boxes, or roughly four kilograms of the metal. With that much, Prey could've made an explosion that would have consumed the entire train and eaten a chunk out of the mountainside, turning solid stone to melted sand.

The destruction he could've wrought if properly utilized... but that wasn't the objective. He'd wanted it to look like an accident, not like someone had purposefully charged the orichalcum beforehoof.

Like Dunlop had said, the raw orichalcum itself was only as dangerous as it was volatile. When charged, it became stable, but when charged, that was when it also had the potential for the most destruction.

It was like a lump or rock. It could fall and kill someone in the right circumstances. But if a blacksmith was to hammer it out, extract the metal, and forge it into a sword, then you'd have a weapon which could kill again, and again, and again. It all depended on how proficient the user was.

So he'd sacrificed half the raw orichalcum, set the runes, slid shut the train car door, left Lemon Pink to give the keys back to the stupefied watchpony, and left to meet up with Crimson and Gloom to start their shift.

At the end of the day, he still had half the raw orichalcum left.

Four boxes. More than enough for what he was going to do with it.


---Now---


"So we're returning your seal, and informing you that the investigation is over more or less before it began. I'm sorry for the loss of the orichalcum, but at least it isn't in the hooves of somepony... regrettable any longer." Gloom summed up tiredly.

Dunlop Scrim's seemed momentarily speechless, just blinking at the three of them over his rapidly cooling toast, separated by the mahogany table.

Prey still kept a watchful eye on the unicorn's horn. Next to him, he listened in on Gloom's thoughts as the thestral tried to remain positive, '-it could have been worse. There could've been a train worker in the carriage at the time too. Or it could've exploded at any point during the day while the thief was still in the station, surrounded by innocents-'

The Fell steward finally came to himself, "That cannot be it, surely." He stated flatly.

Gloom paused, "I'm sorry? Could you please explain what you mean. The orichalcum is gone, and there's nothing left to reclaim. And the thief has-"

Dunlop spoke over him, "This is not finished until the transgressors have been caught."

Gloom's face twitched, the rest of his armoured body going still. At his side, Crimson's wings were bristling even if his face was blank. Prey noticed it all, and felt bad for having tricked them, but once again for his part Dunlop missed the signs completely, so that was all on him.

The grey stallion made a curt slash of his hoof, "What was once stolen can be stolen again. What is to stop these vandals once again stealing more dangerous magical metals? And this time, much more cautiously and circumspectly? The danger of misuse has not passed, it is just as serious as before, and I expect everypony to behave as such."

Gloom waited for a long moment, making sure the steward was done before he finished what he'd been about to say, "The thief is gone. Dead. They died in the explosion. I've been assured it would've been quick, at least. A second at most."

For a moment, just one, Gloom's words invoked enough imagination in Dunlop to break the stallion's upper class veneer. But then he whipped it back up and straightened.

"That is a tragedy, and I won't make light of anypony's death, even this thief's. But I must still insist, this investigation isn't over yet. One thief is not all of the thieves. Corruption begets corruption. Where there was one, there is almost certainly a group, and this pony could not have been working alone. I want the rest of them caught and stopped before they can try again."

Completely disregarding the mood, the steward annoyingly had a point. Or would have had a point. But Prey had dealt with the possibility of someone raising this concern already. Now, Gloom stiffly repeated back the theory Prey had raised earlier; "There were no accomplices. Or rather, we have good reason to believe the pony was working alone."

Gloom took a breath, telling himself to calm down, '-don't let him rile you. He's probably never faced death before. He's a rich noble, and at an age fortyish, his parents must still be alive too-'

"Only eight boxes of raw orichalcum were stolen. That's about the size and weight limit that one normal unicorn could carry, even with their magic. Those boxes were lead lined and heavy. From your explanation, there were more than eight boxes of orichalcum in storage, not to mention plenty of other valuable magical regents and stuff. If there was more than one thief, they would've stolen a lot more." Gloom finished explaining.

All true. Prey had been completely honest when he laid out that theory. Lemon Pink was not a magical powerhouse. Carrying out about eight of those boxes was over her comfort limit, actually. And while Lemon could've done more than one stealing run, Prey had not wanted to get greedy.

Dunlop wasn't swayed, "One thing does not equate to the other. While only one pony might've broken into the store house, and only the remains of one might've been found in the wreckage, that does not mean there are not others out there waiting to strike."

The steward was more right than he knew, especially since one of those 'others' was standing in this very room, who'd already taken all those points to heart long before the snobbish stallion had voiced them. What the severe, grey furred unicorn didn't have a point about was thinking that he could order the ISND around.

Dunlop Scrims was missing one blindingly obvious point here.

The ISND were Night Guards, under Captain Nighthawk, and in the service of Luna. Not House Fell. Which should've been the end of it, but unfortunately, it was also Luna who'd directed Dunlop in their direction with her tacit approval, or implied approval at the very least to use them.

That complicated matters immensely. While Dunlop was technically a civilian, and so should have no say in how a Night Guard investigation was conducted, Luna approving Triton Fell's request to assist in solving this crime for some reason gave the Lord's steward and appointed voice in this matter the power to give them orders. To simply say in the face of their objections; "No, you're not done yet, that's not good enough for me".

What had happened to this being a favour from Luna to one of her loyal lords, Triton Fell? Funny how quickly Dunlop had shifted to applying pressure and making demands.

Prey could almost feel Gloom and Crimson's frustration radiating off of them.

Gloom took a deep breath and tried to remain civil, "Mister Dunlop, there is very little we can reasonably do to achieve that. We are a Guard Force. There is no way for us to beyond a doubt ever prevent sompony from trying to steal again, that's just not possible."

"I would've thought the Night Guard would be more than capable of that themselves," The steward shot back, "Crime prevention is your entire job remit. And I still require measures implemented to prevent any further would-be thieves."

Prey made a motion with his hoof, indicating he had something to say. Gloom turned aside from going to retort to Dunlop and looked at the smaller lamb instead.

"You have an idea, Prey?" Gloom asked, purposefully ignoring Dunlop's sharp look for daring to speak to a child over him.

"I do." Prey nodded.

'-finally. Something to shut this stallion up. Just get us out of here Prey-', Gloom thought in relief.

He motioned Prey to continue; "Go ahead then, share with us."

"Yes, do share." Dunlop added with a hidden note of scathing disbelief. Prey blithely smiled back at the unicorn, as if he was completely oblivious.

Prey began innocently twirling the end of his ribbon as he spoke:

"It sounds like the issue is preventing this from happening again, right? If so, you'd be better served by hiring a security specialist to improve your security at your Mage towers. Maybe get some more watchpony's to patrol. Or hire a private detective." He added, internally a bit amused at the idea of that.

'Wouldn't it be ironic if they went and hired Strange Happenstance?' Prey went on as the stewards eyes couldn't help but watch the blue silk of the ribbon lazily spinning in the air.

"Think about it. The Night Guard have a lot of areas to cover, and aren't really specialized for any one thing. More jack-of-all-trades. However there are ponies out there who's whole career is literally security. They'll know all the best warding enchantments, the latest risks to watch out for, and the best way to combat them. So wouldn't it make more sense to hire the best unicorn security specialist gold can buy? I'm sure they'd fight over each other to take a contract, even indirectly, for House Fell."

Prey was certain he hit pretty much all the buzz words there for the steward. Gold, unicorns, expert, House Fell, all the while with a subtle helping hoof from his ribbon.

Dunlop seemed to ponder over that for an overly long moment. He magically half raised his cooling teacup, then put it back down again in indecision.

'-Prey raised some good points. But will he listen?-', Gloom thought, mentally crossing his wing claws. He wasn't in the mood to put any hope into it though.

Something was visibly troubling the steward, going over some nagging thought in his head. His brows were creased in internal contemplation. He almost lifted the teacup again, but just ended up lowering it once more.

Prey's smile didn't change even one tiny bit, it was already a perfect forgery, but just then it became real.

'Got him.'

Dunlop blinked, and then looked sharply up. His horn lit up and he scooped the carved Fell seal off the end of the dining table and floated it over to his side. He absently folded the attached tassel around the thick seal as he addressed them, tone back to being curt and all business:

"You might've unintentionally lost the raw orichalcum, but you have still raised a valid point. House Fell would be better served by hiring private experts who can be expected to fully devote their time to performing their job to the highest degree."

Prey caught the wing twitch of Crimson's surprise. He, like Gloom, had been listening to everything Dunlop was saying before and had been envisioning the ISND being forced to waste the next however long being the personal investigation squad of the Fell steward.

'-that actually worked. Logic actually work for us for once-', Gloom thought, '-better act quick, before he changes his mind-'

"In that case we'll take our leave. Our Captain needs us back at the Palace to do our part sorting all this mess out." Gloom swiftly said, already making a motion with a wing towards the door for Prey and Crimson. Prey dropped the end of his ribbon and moved to follow Crimson as the pegasus went.

Dunlop sniffed in irritation at the rudeness of the abrupt departure, looking down at them even though he was the one seated. He didn't stop them though, instead shaking out his forelegs and turning back to his silver breakfast tray.

"The servants will see you out. Don't dally." Dunlop called out as levitating up a slice of perfectly toasted bread, already dismissing the three of them from his attention.

The same butler from before opened the double doors right before they could get to them. Crimson blinked slowly down at the uniformed servant, who blinked back up at him, a bit wide eyed at coming so suddenly face to face with an armoured Guard.

Prey slipped under the butler's sight and out the doors while the stallion was still backing up from Crimson, and Gloom who was coming up behind him. Seriously, had the guy been waiting outside listening just to open the double doors before them? And who needed double doors inside a house anyway, especially for a room where the sole activity performed in there was to eat breakfast?

'I guess they needed double doors to fit that massively oversized table through. The decor's got to match the size of Dunlop's ego after all.'

If Prey never saw another representative of House Fell or Triton Fell again, it would be too soon. Although in the future, if he ever needed to steal something like this again, he'd have to make extra sure it wasn't from someone affiliated with House Fell first.

"Wait-No, leave it. I'll get it." The servant was saying, trying to get back to the front door ahead of the ISND. 

"There is no need." Crimson blankly tried telling him.

"No, I insist. Just let me-"

"It is fine. Really." Gloom said, not slowing their pace down in the slightest.

"No, I really do insist." The servant may have been a unicorn, but apparently he didn't know how to teleport, because he had to break into a very undignified canter to get there first in time to do his job. Either way, it did a good job of distracting him from Prey quietly following along in their wake. So much so that when the ISND finally exited out the grand door into the morning sun, the servant had to stop and double check.

'-one, two, that's both of them. Wait, I'm forgetting somepony, where'd that silly filly disappear to? If she breaks a vase then I swear to Celestia!-'

The stallion spun back around to check the hallway, and then did a double take when he spotted Prey already standing behind Gloom and Crimson. Prey smiled innocently, blue eyes big and sparkling, and waved a hoof at the butler.

With a petulant huff, the unicorn shut the door on them with a heavy *Thud* of expensive wood.


---


Despite the meeting the ISND had just come out of, their shift wasn't over yet. Gloom had told Dunlop Scrims the truth; Nighthawk was waiting for them at the Palace. Although, with Dunlop's house of course being in the upper Upper Class district of Canterlot, they really didn't have far to go to get back to the Palace.

But as Prey hurried along in the rear, as always struggling to keep up with the other two's much longer legs, it at least gave him some time to consider, and to quietly prepare himself for the next step.

It was also time to think and reminisce over what he'd done here today.

It was a really basic thought exercise when you broke it down.

It was simple. An ordinary person does not suddenly choose to become a criminal. Not once has that ever happened. No one has ever out of the blue suddenly stolen their neighbours property. It doesn't work like that. An ordinary person does not go from good to bad on a coin flip. Outwardly it doesn't show, but internally, it was because they'd been thinking about stealing before.

They must have considered stealing many times previously, planned it all out in their head, lingered on how much they wanted what their neighbour had, but in the end always dismissing the idea. Because they'd get caught, because they liked their neighbour, because it was wrong. But each consecutive time they dismissed the temptation, they didn't do so as firmly as they had before. A small piece of the temptation lingered each and every time.

And all those lingering traces eventually add up. Because they still wanted it, deep down, and the more they revisited the thought, the more persistent it grew, and therefore, the more they revisited it in a self perpetuating spiral.

Until finally one day, that ordinary person seemingly out of the blue, society sees them 'snap' and become a criminal.

However that final outcome is without any outside influences on a person, only internal ones. Desperation, hunger, external threats to a lifestyle, mental instability, unresolved enmity between two people, any and all of those can help drive a person to steal.

For example, Prey. 

He had stolen the raw orichalcum. He had considered it, planned it, and then done it. He wasn't some civilian who'd finally given in to greed, no not at all, because he'd already been a thief way before this orichalcum business. Rather, he was a long time repeat offender.

But he was a murderer long before he was a thief. 

Prey had not wanted to be a murderer. He hadn't considered or lingered on it in his heart before. He wasn't a bright eyed monster who loved the thrill of it like Garrow. No, it was entirely an outside influence that had driven him to do it.

Gossamer had gone away when his brother Fleece had died, and Prey had taken his place. And Prey had murdered because if he hadn't, Snake would have killed him on the spot.

Prey hadn't chosen to become a killer, but he had chosen not to die. There is a price for everything.


---


"Hey, stop here quickly. Two minutes, if that. Got to be quick." Gloom said, swiftly pulling them aside and towards a side street.

"What? Why?" Prey asked, snapped out of his thoughts. Were they being followed, this close to the Palace? Oh bugger bugger bugger! He hadn't noticed anything.

"Because we're getting baked croissants from in there." Gloom pointed down the side street to a colourful shop front decorated to look the walls were giant waffles.

"What? Why?" Prey repeated, stunned. That was not in keeping with the dark mood at all!

"Sir?" Crimson echoed, just as thrown.

"Because I'm hungry. Because we haven't eaten. Because that smell is delicious." Gloom answered, not slowing.

"But, Captain Nighthawk..." Crimson trailed off.

"Is waiting for us, I know, I know. But we haven't eaten anything. And I really want one of those right now."

"But, now? Right now, after what's happened?" Prey asked, not contradicting Gloom, but still very surprised as he hurried along after.

"I know. I know that after that... but I want something hot and sweet. Just something. I don't know, you know, like... I just want to enjoy it. For just a minute, and then we will have to go back, but just for a minute..."

Gloom didn't finish, but Prey understood what the Sargent was trying to say. It was ridiculous, sweets couldn't help fix anything. But a chocolate croissant, with roasted nuts and glazed in sugar, maybe some berries or maple syrup, just maybe? Yes, maybe.

"Okay." Crimson blankly agreed.

Prey nodded enthusiastically, "Okay."

It actually took three and a half minutes, a guilty waste of Night Guard time, something that Gloom was very aware of and wouldn't have ever condoned in any other circumstance, but those croissants really did smell delicious. There was no line, they were the first customers of the morning, and the baker gave them the fastest service possible just to get them out of the shop faster.

'Hmm, chocolate croissant, with roasted nuts, and glazed in sugar. Just as advertised for once.'

The confectionary was hot, but they didn't stop or slow, and had to wolf them down as they hurried back towards the Guard Compound.

'But chocolate croissant, with roasted nuts and glazed in sugar...'

Utterly delicious and worth every coin, well, Gloom's coins. Prey brushed copious traces of sugar off the corner of his mouth and hid a sigh. It was part amused frustration, part mild regret. 

'Now I really do feel bad about tricking him and Gloom like that. They think someone died and it was just me playing pretend. But at least I got a great substitute breakfast out of it. Chocolate croissants, I'll have to remember that one.'


------


After arriving back at the Palace, things went almost exactly how Prey expected them to. Which was that the rest of the morning and up until afternoon was absorbed by cleaning up the mess Prey had created. 

Which included but was not limited to; placing a rota of Guard on the burnt train tracks to stop any curious pegasi from flying down to see what was happening, filling in the Royal Guard Captain, distributing Future Spark's official report, getting access for the work crews from the train line coming to fix the damage, and all the other little things that really shouldn't have been the Night Guards problem, and therefore the ISND's problem, to sort out.

Prey didn't have a leg to stand on when it came to complaining however. He was the one who'd decided to blow up a train car and melt the railway, after all.

It was hard work. Prey was running around everywhere to keep up with Gloom and Crimson, plus the two Lieutenants who were working overtime and staying late into the day, (for them), to try and get all of this sorted.

'-of course the one, the one night Captain Nighthawk finally takes off, and this happens-', Gloom had thought, rather more bitterly than normal. It was the feeling of frustration and helplessness at once again being too late to save a life.

It wasn't Nighthawk's fault, how could he have predicted that his first night off in who knew how long this would happen? Nearly everyone got the feeling that somehow the Captain had been jinxed.

Prey knew better. Luck had nothing to do with it. He'd chosen last night to set up his distraction based on more than one factor, and the Captain's absence had been one of them.

Once again, he silently apologised to both Gloom and Crimson inside his head.

Finally though, their work had to stop. The sun was high in the midday sky, and there was only so much they could fix in the short term. Patience would be required to fix the rest. For example, the railroad was already on top of the task of getting in powerful unicorns from the mage towers to try and get rid of the burning spell fire, understandably anxious to get their source of revenue opened again. Already they were having to refund a fortune in tickets to not just all the impatient Canterlot citizens who had places to be, but also to all those people out there in the other pony cities who had wanted to come in.

The newspapers were also still running with the story and milking it for all they were worth, alternating between blaming the rail road, the Night Guard, the mage towers, and teenage hooligans. Sometimes all at once within the same article.

But the higher the noon-day sun rose, the more Prey's attention kept drifting further and further away from the tasks the Night Guard were rushing to complete.

He couldn't help it. Not when the next and most important step of his plan was coming up. That was far more important than cleaning up his mess. 

Far, far, far more important.

While Prey was seemingly paying attention to the work and people around him, he was really focused inwards thinking about his plans, and not outwards. So it was somewhat of a startling reminder when he was jolted into looking outwards again as he was reminded that everyone else was living their own lives. When events happen, people react. That is how life works.

Prey rubbed his face to try and get some life back into it. The midday-sun shining through the stained glass windows really wasn't agreeing with his desire to sleep. 

'But we're finally done. At least for today.' He thought, already looking forwards to getting back to the flat and his bed. He definitely needed some sleep before it was time to initiate the next phase of his plan.

That's what the lamb was thinking about as he plodded down the corridor towards the Palace's exit, a group of dead eyed thestrals shuffling ahead of them in the same direction, all of them making for the Guard Compound's gate. Then Prey became aware Crimson was not ahead of him already. 

Prey looked back, but the pegasus was not just behind him either like he'd been a moment ago.

"Crimson?" 

Crimson was walking back towards the corridor junction, instead of heading out towards the compound. He looked back over his shoulder, and tilted his ears forwards towards the tunnel, grimacing slightly in apology. Obviously, Crimson had something else on his mind rather than following Prey and Gloom out.

Prey turned back around, dodging a tired thestral mare who was busy trying to walk and also adjust her helmet strap at the same time. However when Crimson's slight grimace didn't change however, Prey stopped.

'Oh. He wants some privacy.'

Prey raised a hoof and backed up, sending the silent message; 'Alright, I'll be back at my flat then.'

Crimson instinctively half made to unfurl his wing to make a halting motion at Prey, but caught himself, unsure.

Prey paused, hoof still in the air, 'Ooorrr maybe he does want some company after all?'

Prey tiled his head in silent question in the face of Crimson's indecision, very obviously asking, 'Am I supposed to be staying or going?'

Crimson looked down the corridor intersection, then back at Prey, and uncomfortably shrugged. It was a very eloquently shrug. It almost perfectly conveyed the silent words; 'You can come along too if you want I guess. It's up to you.'

Meanwhile Gloom, in his sleep deprived funk and mind still jammed full of work and worry, hadn't noticed and was still going on ahead. Prey caught the exhausted stallion glance back to the two of them, but not really register, like he thought one of them had merely forgotten something back at the office.

Prey let Gloom go on, and started trotting after Crimson, back into the Night Guard section of the Lower Palace.

After two turns, Prey knew where they were going by process of elimination. However he didn't quite understand the 'why' of their destination. 


---


The private Night Guard memorial. An out of the way and hushed spot, set in the privacy of a tiny paved courtyard. It was surrounded on all sides by four of the Palace's various wings, and was only accessible either from the sky, or the one door, which you had to pass through the Night Guard section to reach. 

It was towards that door Crimson was heading.

Prey frowned, an edge of concern touching him, but held his peace.

Crimson pushed down the bar lock on the door and stepped out. Prey caught the door before it could close and also slipped through, letting it quietly shut behind him.

The small, enclosed courtyard was very quiet and chilly in the late autumn air. The various greys of stone cast in constant shadow everywhere didn't help with retaining any warmth.

This tiny, nearly forgotten area reminded Prey very heavily of that little cut off alcove where he'd first seen Saffron Swirl sitting in, back when she was contemplating ending her own life.

The 'nearly forgotten' part really fitted as a description. Almost no one outside of the Night Guard knew this was here, and of those who did, likely even fewer cared. Much the same as the thestral clans had been, and still were.

And the memorial itself was a polished chunk of smooth obsidian, cut into a wall. Or the writing face was smooth, the rest was left uncut. If you looked closer, carved into a corner of the obsidian was a compact list of names. 

Against the shiny black of the obsidian, the carved names were difficult to read unless you got close enough. Prey knew he'd only recognise the one name up there if he were to get close enough to squint up at them. Sharp Tang, the one murdered by the mimics when they imitated him and took his place.

The rest of the names though, those came from Luna, back from her time. A thousand years too late, but what was time to an alicorn? Prey darkly wondered if she'd flipped out back then too at someone daring to break her pawns?

Or had she been the one to break them herself, as Nightmare Moon? Not that Prey was suicidal enough to ask. All Prey wished though was that their deaths had hurt Luna, even if only in some tiny fashion.

'Outrage at someone breaking her toy soldiers indeed.'

But that had nothing to do with why Crimson was here now. Prey noted evidence of the memorial and the single step leading up to it having been washed recently, as Crimson quietly approached.

Prey hung back, just watching to see why Crimson was here. While it was obvious, it also wasn't. Who was Crimson here to pay respects to? Sharp Tang? He was the only active Night Guard who'd been killed in the line of duty so far. There'd been far off many times the ISND came too close to adding to that list.

Crimson stopped before the monument and bowed his head in silence for a minute. The obsidian was higher than he was tall.

Prey still couldn't work it out, though. He waited patiently though, not sure if he should approach or not, but jerk in shock when Crimson unsheathed one wing blade with a smooth flick so fast and yet casual that Crimson had already pricked his fetlock before Prey even caught on.

"Hey-!" Prey started in alarm.

Crimson flexed his ankle inwards, the flicked the few drops of blood the motion had squeezed from the tiny cut onto the base of the monument.

"What are you doing?" Prey demanded, hurrying up.

"It is, I mean it was, no, I suppose it actually still is how you pay respect to the fallen in Clan Myrrdon." Crimson explained. The three or four drops of red blood blended with the shiny black of the obsidian, almost vanishing.

"But why? And for who?" Prey demanded.

"For the person who died last night. I know they were a criminal, but they didn't deserve to die." Crimson answered, shifting his foreleg away from Prey when he tried to peer closer at the tiny cut.

"And the why?" Prey asked again.

The feathers along Crimson's wings rippled, "Because..." Crimson finally answered.

Prey waited.

"Because I wanted to see if I still cared. As much as I should, I mean. I'm worried that I'm becoming hardened. Desensitised. A person died, and I thought... what I mean is, because I didn't get to see the body, and because I wasn't there when they died, do you know what I thought Prey? I was relieved. I thought 'Oh good, it wasn't so bad this time'. And that's wrong."

Guilt squirmed in Prey's stomach, "I don't think that's fair. So what if you felt like that? We weren't there when it happened, and there's nothing you could've done about it. So it really wasn't as bad. You shouldn't feel guilty for being glad it was nothing as awful as the kindersnatches were."

Prey couldn't stop himself from glancing swiftly at where the small collection of scars rested on the inner part of Crimson's forleg, beneath the armour. The self-inflicted tally marks.

Crimson of course caught his guilty glance, and instinctively moved as if to hide the spot, before realising that was pointless, and that the lines were covered by his leg armour anyway.

"I, no, it's not like that. It's not like that Prey. I'm not, I mean... I don't feel responsible for his death, or maybe her death I suppose. It's not like that. I mean, of course I wish they hadn't died, but it's not like..." Crimson searched for the words.

"It's fine. I get what you mean."

Crimson let his ramblings searching for the correct sentence go. He didn't have to try and explain anything further. Prey was like him, Prey understood what he couldn't articulate.

Crimson turned his eyes forward to the monument again, "I just don't want to become hardened to death and suffering. Being ice cold isn't a strength."

Prey understood that too. He knew it wasn't a strength, but a perverse depravity. He also knew it was too late for him. He'd tried, he was trying, to come back from that, to value other's lives properly, but... but it hadn't worked. 'I hate you Luna.' He'd improved, but improving was not the same as being better.

It didn't matter if the ground was a stinking bog, or a blooming marsh. Both were still rotten ground that could swallow you if you were careless. One just looked prettier than the other on the surface.

'And considering what I'm planning, how can I even claim to be trying afterwards?' Prey asked himself.

He looked up at the smooth, black face if the obsidian set before him. There was still so much space for names to be added. But only your name, and nothing further. How did that make it right? That if you fought and died on the orders of Luna, all you got in thanks was your name carved in small letters (which were hard to read), on this lonely hunk of stone in this nearly forgotten courtyard? 

What right did an alicorn have to ask you to give your life when they themselves were immortal?

Prey hesitated before he spoke, but it was Crimson, and even though the chance of it going wrong was small, he owed Crimson the warning. He owed Crimson.

There was a large risk he would give himself away, but he couldn't not do it. It was against his instincts of secrecy, but it was Crimson.

"You might want to get out of the city instead of going back to the flat. I know you're also tired, but. Can you just... go for a flight? Or rent out a room in an inn somewhere in Upper Canterlot?"

"Why?"

Prey squirmed, "Because there's a chance part of it may end up burning down by tonight."

Crimson's yellow eyes widened, and he asked, "......


---


---


-–-


Things can change in a heart beat. Or the lack of a heart beat.

From one moment to the next, your whole life can shatter into broken, crude, splintered shards.

But just as often, change doesn't come as dramatically as all that. Things can also change slowly, gradually, gently building up to the final outcome. An oak tree grows slowly, but it will eventually crown itself king of the forest. Gradual change lets you acclimatise, to look ahead, and to know what event is eventually going to occur. With that knowledge, you can make your plan and prepare yourself.

A plan is a great thing, it can give you security and peace of mind.

Look to the future. Make your plan. Lock your plan in. Then follow your plan.

You know what a plan can also do for you? It can destroy your peace of mind.

Knowing what's coming, knowing full well in perfect clarity what you're going to do, with no excuses and all the time in the world for the guilt to set in...

The oak tree grows slowly. But so does the rot in its heart.

But Prey was used it. He made plans, terrible, awful, horrific plans all the time. It was why he was still alive.

Sitting in Dreverton, locked away down in that unchanging cell and forgotten by the world, Prey'd had nothing but time.

Time to agonise of his failures, to revisit everything he should've done differently, and to plot how he could've changed it all.

Fifty-seven years Prey had lost down there in his cell. He never forgot. Not a single day went by when he didn't remember Dreverton.

How few people can really understand how long fifty-seven years is?

Crimson was his friend, the ISND claimed his time, Canterlot bustled in the background, winter was approaching, days and nights passed, he watered his pot plants, he saw Gloom and Scenic, listened to Lilly and Saffron, he did all of that.

Yet every single day, Prey still silently recalled his cell. He might've changed, but his past never would.

Fifty-seven years.

Fifty-seven years of nothing. Of a cell. Of Memories. Of madness. 

Prey had made many potential plans in those years. He'd had fifty-seven years to fester and to rot, to grow even worse than he had been there at the end in the Deeper Green.

Somedays, somehow, Prey could almost forget. He could see Crimson, breathe the air, taste the sweetness of sugary candy, feel the warm sun on his wool, walk without tripping over any chains, and he could just...

Just be. Almost. 

Almost he could. In those moments, those few precious moments, it was so almost.

Fifty-seven years. That's how long Prey had known what he was capable of one day committing.

And he'd do it with a smile on his face, rotten slime in his heart, black ice in his veins, and his ribbon behind his ear.

He'd do it, and go to bed and get a full nights rest afterwards, because to live, to survive, number two on The List while number one was impossible, Prey would follow through on any of his terrible plans. 

And one he would enact tonight.


---


---


---


'A stitch in time, running through the hangmare's twine.' 

Prey was repeating that to himself in the grey, 'A stitch in time, running through the hangmare's twine.'

'A stitch in time...' Prey broke off as he became aware of himself. Of his surroundings. Of not knowing how he'd gotten here.

He was in the hallway between their two flats, his and Crimson's. He was facing Crimson's closed door. Crimson was somewhere inside, he knew that because of the electrite feather was in there.

Why was he standing here again?

Prey's eyes felt hot, his body tried. There was that old, sore stiffness in his back across the whip scars. A cramp attack? And something else, too. He felt drained, drawn out, emotionally wasted.

No, why was he standing here again?

Prey's heart began to pound as he cast about himself. Nothing, no enemies. Just the short, dim hallway. There was no one else close, his outlying runic arrays were around him.

'What's happened!?'

His eyes were grainy and sore too, his cheeks raw. He stopped and rubbed at the scar flesh under one eye, and was startled to find it hot and damp.

'Crybaby.' 

Wait wait wait! He'd been repeating the answer to himself all along. 'A stitch in time, running through the hangmare's twine.'

That was the code, the signal to himself from himself. He knew it. No one else did, aside from Lemon Pink.

A signal to himself that all was not as it seemed, but only because he himself was the cause of it.

Prey froze, 'I erased my own memory? Did I really? Or did someone else invade my mind and is only making me think that?'

Desperately, Prey left the outside world beind and dived down into his outer mindscape, and there he found-

-A memory packet. From himself.

Prey mentally seized it, raking it over with frenzied suspicion, looking for any sign that it was a false plant.

There was no way. Surely he wouldn't have done this to himself. Unless-Wait, the last thing he recalled was he'd been at the obsidian Night Guard memorial with Crimson. What had happened? Why? He'd given a warning to Crimson and then-

The memory packet opened up.

It was short. It was a snippet of thought, his own, cloned and left for himself. It felt ragged in his head, like the ends each side of the start and the end of the memory had been ripped off. But it was his. Prey knew his own work, and his own mental touch.

'Like rusty thorns and hooks indeed.'

That was what the memory packet said. His message to himself. The confirming words, and the ragged feel of the edges of the memory to prove further those words. That, the hidden impression hidden underneath those six words that Prey was listening for.

The memory could've been faked, he could even have been forced into creating it, but while rotting in Dreverton, he'd come up with a method to embed a wordless warning underneath for a scenario just like this.

But the warning wasn't in there. 

'It must've been me. It's genuine. Or if it isn't, I've already lost so completely and utterly that there's nothing I can do about it.'

Still, Prey was certain it was he who'd done this.

'But that leaves the question, why did I do it?'

He thought back over what he'd been doing with Crimson, and where he was currently standing, with Crimson inside his own flat.

'Ah.'

The answer came to Prey easily. He turned his attention to the space in his memories, reaching out into his mindscape to find-

The memories were still there. They weren't gone, just suppressed beneath a thin barrier of grey.

A wonderful spark of relief washed through Prey. That proved it almost beyond a doubt, he'd done this willingly to himself, not the mimics or someone else.

The memories were still there, and if he wanted to, all he had to do was tear through the obscuring skin of grey and then the memories would flow back into him.

Disjointed, out of place, and painfully jagged, but he'd still get them back.

But Prey stopped. He'd done this to himself for a reason. He'd created that barrier of grey ash. He didn't know why he'd done it, but he'd done it purposefully. 

He'd been at the monument with Crimson. Now he was here. And the memories of intervening time were gone.

'So it was a memory that had to be erased. Except I wouldn't have only done this to myself if Crimson was going to be remembering it too. So I've been in Crimson's head and gotten rid of his memories of whatever happened too.' Prey realized.

But... why? What had happened?

'I wouldn't have don't his, unless, unless...' Unless Crimson had asked to forget something. Unless Prey had exposed his secret of being a mind leech to Crimson. Unless they'd somehow spiralled down to that level of conversation. Unless it was something he'd agreed to.

What had Crimson said? What dark secrets or traumas had he exposed or shared with Prey? And what had driven Prey to revealing himself to even make the offer of erasing the memory?

Prey burned to know what the hidden memory was, but that went against the entire point of why he'd done it. But still his curiosity was killing him, he wanted to know, he hated not knowing. But there must have been a damned good reason why not.

'But I can't help it. What could have happened?'

Prey's eyes still stung from dried tears, and his back still ached from cramp. Whatever it had been, it had been no small thing. And the memory of what Crimson had asked him to erase were right there, floating in that memory packet, if he wanted to find out.

'In there must be what I saw in Crimson's own memories. His most private secrets...'

Prey stopped. He mentally withdrew, moving away from the hidden memories. He left them there,  untouched and unopened.

'No I can't do that. I hid them from myself for a reason. Because I owe Crimson. Because he must've asked me to make myself forget whatever was said along with him. He must have asked, and I must have said yes.'

If Prey had given the promise to Crimson, then he didn't want to go back on it. Not couldn't, just didn't want to. Prey knew himself. By leaving the option there, to know that he could, that would be enough to make him choose not to. Because he had the option, because he had control over the choice. 

'Because I have the choice, I choose not to.' That was what made all the difference. 

'If I knew the memory was lost forever, and that I could never know what'd happened, I'd be forever frantically worrying.' Prey admitted to himself. 

Prey was a liar. A deceiver, a coward, a fraud, an oath breaker, a cheat, a killer, a thief, a murderer, and more. He lied all the time, took and stole from others, and then lied to their faces. He'd done worse than break a promise to a friend before, so much worse.

And yet still, he didn't want to break this one small promise to Crimson. Not this time.

'I don't know what was said. I don't know what we discussed. I don't know what in the course of one evening led to me to go this far, and to reveal that much, but...'

Prey shook his head, scarcely able to believe that apparently something had pushed him this far. He felt exhausted, like he'd been forced to run a mile. He scrubbed at his eyes again, the raw flesh there under his still damp fur letting him know that he'd done that a lot. 

'There must have been a damned good reason for all of this.'

Actually, there was the trace of a foul, acidic taste still lingering in the back of his throat too. Had he been sick? Huh.

But all the time he was thinking this, the temptation to tear through the grey covering and look to see what it had been was eating at Prey.

'Damn. This is going to bug me forever now.' Prey thought wearily. But he could deal with it. He'd have to add it to the list of unspoken things he had to always avoid thinking about. And this one was tame compared to those other things. Some of those must-not-think-about things weren't safe.

Plus, he knew it was there, and that he could look at any time if he ever gave in. Knowing that, and knowing he could change his mind at any time, helped immensely. 

Prey tentatively raised his forehoof, that hated golden band still sitting there, and quickly before he could lose his nerve, rapped on Crimson's flat door.

He waited, but nothing happened. Had he put Crimson to sleep afterwards? Prey winced, knowing that his mental touch wasn't gentle, and imagining the state Crimson was probably in on the other side of the door.

'Yeah, I probably left Crimson to sleep off as much of the coming migraine as possible.' Prey deduced. What excuse would he have implanted in Crimson's subconscious for that? Prey was ninety-nine percent certain he would've just left Crimson with false memories of slowly starting to feel sick over the course of the day, a building headache from overwork.

But Crimson was still going to have a throbbing head when he awoke. 'And that's going to be my fault too.'

Guilt, not just for that, but for everything else which must've been involved. But what was guilt, but an old, well worn coat to Prey? He knew how best to carry its cold weight.

If any outsider, who was purely unbiased and only objective in all their judgements were to somehow pull aside the curtain of this moment, and to look and see, and if they could understand the guilt that Prey was feeling right now, they'd have been disgusted. Why? Because this, giving his one friend a headache, was causing Prey more guilt than the orichalcum he'd stolen, the dead body he'd desecrated, the damage to the train line he'd caused, and arguably even most worse, what he was planning to do with the rest of the remaining raw orichalcum.

But that was guilt for you, wasn't it? It wasn't always rational. It wasn't what other people thought you be torn up over that really chewed you up from the inside.

Garrow had not regretted terrorizing, torturing, and in the end outright murdering the ponies in his salt dealer gang. In fact, the griffin had thoroughly enjoyed it.

Snake hadn't been sorry in the slightest for all the people, both ally and enemy, he'd dissected for parts and study on his bone saw table. It was just part of his profession as a voodoo witch.

And Prey? He hated unicorns, he'd killed them in the Border Guard, melted them in bone rot and asphyxiated them with poisoned water to name just a few. He'd sacrificed the villagers of Alfalfa dale, executed Hard Baked, destroyed the diamond dogs, mind broken Captain Valour, and more. He felt guilt about that, he did, to varying degrees between each. But the runt lamb wasn't sorry in the slightest for sacrificing them all as the price of his own continued survival.

Now, next on The List, were the mimics.


------


Prey stood in the cave tunnel under the mountain. Not in the sewers, he had his wickerwatch, the wicker shamblers, and the hex working to secure that front. But for all he had secured them to the best of his ability with the time and resources he'd had, the Sewers' Heart had always been the lesser of the two places of power he'd captured.

The maze of dark caverns under Canterlot was far more valuable to him. The naturally occurring crystals disrupted magic, blocked scanning, and unlike the sewers which had been built by pony hoof, the deepest innards of Mount Canter were still completely unmapped and unknown. No pony water or sewerage workers ever ventured down into the caves, now did they? Even the geologists and cavers never came in any deeper than the pretty caves near the surface, all marked out and partitioned off with guide ropes and safety barriers.

But the deeper caverns, those hidden caves which had never seen the light of day, were open for contest. For supremacy of those caves, it was Prey against the mimics.

The mimics had been winning so far. Bloody victories bought in death and sacrifice, but still victories. They were prepared to sacrifice themselves to take the caves, and there were so many of them. They could push and probe from every direction, night and day, rotating in and out without ever having to rest. 

Prey was only one person. He had to rest and sleep, all while keeping up with his Night Guard job. His captured safe tunnels protected with runes were so few in the grand scheme of the mountain. It took far too long to make even the basic arrays needed to defend a tunnel. Nor could he be in two places at once. Lemon Pink's strength wasn't in rune work, so she couldn't even help him, and even if she could, they would still be massively out numbered.

That had been the story. Him slowly losing the contest through attrition. 

Now Prey stood down here, the crystal lantern let on the stone floor behind him and to the side, rather than in front of him where it would blind him. It cast its light forwards past him, his own distorted shadow splashing across the uneven stone.

It was cold down here, more than cold enough to see the breath from your lungs in the dry cave air.

It wasn't visible to the naked eye, but right here where Prey was standing was they very edge of one of his safe zones. Invisible runic arrays were layered into the walls here, both defensive and sensory, to let him know to not come down here if there was any danger. And, if somehow the mimics still sprung an ambush which slipped passed his sensory arrays, to protect him while he ran away. As long as the attack wasn't something completely exotic that circumvented his runes, he should be able to flee.

But he was alone down here for now. No mimics.

It didn't matter. Even if they had been, this specific area right here was actually inlaid with runic arrays a fair bit more 'specialized' than those laid on his other small collection of safe zones and tunnel choke points. A bit more robust, further reaching, stronger, with air filtering, and unusually heavily geared to ward against one very specific type of magical effect.

Prey stopped brushing his hoof down the silk end of his dangling ribbon, 'Enough of this stalling and planning. No more. No more threats, no more stalling, and no more mimics under the mountain.'

He could continue to hesitate, to stand here and second guess what he was about to do, but what would be the point? Prey knew he wasn't sincerely hesitating, so why even pretend? The mimics weren't the splinter pack of diamond dogs. They didn't deserve his pity. There was no one else down here to judge him, no one he had to lie to and deceive. Just him, and the silent dark of the mountain. So why continue pretending to hesitate? 

Prey honestly considered the question for a moment. Then shrugged to no one, smiling. 'Ah well.'

It was just an ordinary, small, everyday smile. Like one you'd see on a baker's face as he took his bread out of the oven, or on a gardener's face as she pruned off the dead heads on her rose bush. The type of small, unconscious smile the owner was barely even aware of. A plain, but innocently distracted smile. Not the smile of the guilty.

Prey wasn't fooling himself by pretending to hesitate. He wasn't about to suddenly be overpowered by an onset of conscience and stop.

Prey turned to his other side, the opposite side to the shining lantern. Stacked carelessly, the discarded and empty lead lined strong boxes sat, but those weren't what Prey wanted.

Instead, it was the thing that looked something like a twisted sea urchin. Sharp, wicker spikes sticking out crazily from the sides, and bunched thickly at the top. The solid core at the middle of the thing was about the size of a watermelon, obscured beneath all the sticking out wicker. But between the gaps, if you looked carefully, you could still catch the glint of the rainbow coloured metal.

Perhaps not a mutated sea urchin, something Garrow had seen on the coast, once. No, perhaps it appeared more like a foul flower. All the bunched up wicker spines at the top were like closed flower petals, like the whole thing could open up to expose its center.

A center of charged orichalcum, a shell of wicker, and the unseen bindings of layer upon layers of runes.

You could achieve all kinds of magical things with orichalcum if you used it right. Dunlop Scrim had expanded those dangers to the ISND for precisely that reason so they'd take the threat seriously. He needn't have worried. Prey had thought of his own uses for raw orichalcum long before the Fell steward had come along.

Making a big bang with raw orichalcum was among the least of its uses. It was when you got the orichalcum charged up that the possibilities really opened up. As Dunlop Scrim's had said; performing a ritual, enhancing leylines, building an artifact, invisibility cloaks, and way-beacons, but those were amongst the most harmless options.

Gloom and Crimson had been permitted to see a small piece of it, the raging spell fire on the mountainside, burning metal rails and solid stone like it was wood.

Prey trotted over to the spikey wicker bundle, and without any further prelude, simply gave it a shove. It was heavy, and solid, but it was enough to roll it over the invisible line of runes that divided the tunnel; the safe from the unsafe.

And then for some strange reason, the uneven ball, with all its protrusions of wicker which should've stopped it dead, it kept rolling. Not fast, nor straight either, but just steadily trundling off down the tunnel, leaving the lantern light and slowly into the shadows.

It would be a while before it was in deep enough to unfold and activate. And then-

-And then this wouldn't be a victory for Prey. A win, but not a victory. You had to be realistic about these things.

He was one runt lamb. The mimics, whatever they truly were, were still legion. But if he couldn't claim anymore of the crystal caverns of the mountain, well, then no one else could have them either. 

Scorched earth. Sowing salt. Nopony's land.

Prey watched his terrible weapon slowly and unevenly roll out of sight. It wasn't a veropede, but while a juggernaut, a veropede was still only one, a creature, like the baloth and reaper king had both been. Nigh unstoppable, but something that you could run from and hide from.

'Oh but you must travel through the woods again and again, and you must be very lucky to avoid the wolf every time. But the wolf... the wolf only needs enough luck to find you once.'


------


Up above, on the surface of the mountain, up high in the city of Canterlot where the sun shone and the clouds drifted, not a single sign of what happened registered. It was just like before, when the thieves from the Brotherhoof of Sol had detonated the Cataract of the Sun inside of Prey's crystal lair.

There was no rumble, no shaking, no distant explosion transmitted through the floor.

It was easy to forget, but back then, at the time of the thieves, the mimics had already been there. Hidden within the shadows, circling like piranhas in the murk, but they'd still been there all the same. They'd come before the thieves, they'd been in Alfalfa Dale and Mayflower for some unknown reason. Prey had found their traces in the sewers, in the caves, in their attempts to claim his section of the mountain. Never seen them, only ever the signs of their presence.

They'd been there, even back then.

Now, in the darkness, deep down in the winding tunnels, black plated heads turned upwards. Blue faceted insectile eyes caught and focused the faint, dim green glow.

It was doubtful, how much those first mimics ever saw. Or even if they'd turned their heads in time, sensing something amiss in those moments before. Who would ever know? 

When the silent fire came flooding down the tunnels, those first few at the forefront would not have survived to tell anybody. And, well, if any of those mimics further back managed to flee in time, and also managed to run faster than an earth pony could sprint in a straight line over open ground, instead of in the winding cramped tunnels, and if they somehow managed to escape the hungry flames in time... if, if, if, if. 

If any did, the mimics certainly weren't telling anyone. 

Fire, and flame. It always came back to fire in the end. 

Fire. It was a power. An old force. The primal spark of life and yet also destruction.

Fire was how Gossamer's life had crumbled. Fire was how Prey had first come to know what hate was. Fire was how the Resistance's aspirations had burned on the hill.

It was all very poignant and dramatic if you looked at it like that, but the truth was, it was so much simpler than that. And so much more terrible.

Fire, and flame.

Fire is straight forward, it doesn't bargain, it doesn't know mercy, empathy, or sorrow. All it does if given even the smallest chance, is burn, consume, and grow.

Fire. It's a hunger. Not quite the primal hunger, but it was oh-so terribly close, that what difference did it make? When the fire roars and the world burns, when the flames blot out the sky and the air ignites in your chest, the difference is oh-so small.

All fire, every fire, wants to burn and burn and burn. Everything is just food to its hunger.

You can cage fire, use it to cook, warm your house, light a candle, but what nearly everyone overlooks is that first part. That fire is not tame, never tame, only caged.

And when it breaks that cage and slips its leash, it ravenously tears through everything, consuming all before it without ever being satisfied. Prey had seen fire racing through the treetops. You would not believe how fast fire can move, how far it can reach out with a flame and grab ahold.

And so the fire Prey ignited went spilling down the tunnels. Spreading, growing, down every turn, squirming into every crack, and racing as fast as the air could combust.

But there was nothing to see. No burning light, for the flames were nigh invisible. Just a distorted heat ripple in the air. And if you were close enough to see that, it was too late.

For a distance, the racing fire was soft, quiet. No roaring blaze, no cracking embers or explosions. Just the sound of an inhalation, that quiet *wumf* of a flame catching. A lie. It was that the air was being sucked backwards into the heart of the fire. In the heart of the racing fire, it shrieked with the rage of a whirlwind.

It was magical fire, and it sought out other magic. The ambient magic in the air, that was what it fed on, what it gulped greedily down and kept reaching for more. It was a flash fire, searing hot enough to ignite the air it sucked in to fill the empty vacuum it left behind it. 

It travelled dizzyingly fast; one moment unmoving tunnel air, then the ambient traces of magic in the air burnt hotter than a furnace for the barest millisecond, and then empty burnt-out air, the fire already passed.

To anyone the fire raced over, here and gone in a second, they would go from nothing to second or even third degree burns across nearly one hundred percent of their body. They'd die almost immediately from shock. Shock would be the kinder way to go at least.

If they survived that first flash, they'd still be dead within a minute, but what an indescribable minute it would be.

Their eyes would have flash fried, their mane and fur burnt to embers in an instant, the oxygen sucked from their lungs, and skin peeling off like cobwebs. Dehydration as all the moisture in their skin boiled away was certain death, but if they somehow dived into a cave pool in the nick of time as the fire raced past them, or more likely if they had some form of magical protection, they would still die. 

Asphyxiation would take them long before they reached any cave exit. There would be nothing left to breathe in the narrow winding tunnels of the mountain, with no vents to suck in fresh air, all that would be left in the air was the carbon dioxide.

It had been good enough to bring down the magically superior and artifact wielding thieves, despite all their power. Because every non-immortal in this world needs to breathe. 

That was how the mimics died. Or probably died. It's not like Prey went down afterwards to check. There was always the chance that, despite everything, somehow, someway, there could still be a few mimics left. That was the first rule of magic. Never assume you know everything. Or perhaps the mimics had fully sealed caves, where the fire wouldn't touch, and the lucky ones inside would be spared the flash fire.

It was even possible mimics were extra resilient to fire, although the torn-off leg he'd tested hadn't been. The chitinous shell had held up well on the outside, but like a bug on the inside, the flesh had still cooked.


---


The unseen fire raced through the mountain, fed by ambient magic for just long enough to race onwards, directed by chasing the unconsumed oxygen left in the air to the caves it hadn't yet touched, and sustained by runes converting the orichalcum nestled in the fireproof wicker flower's center.

The orichalcum wouldn't last forever, in fact, even with the runic arrays carefully prepared to prevent any slippage or waste, there was only enough of the magical metal to sustain a little more than thirteen minutes. Perhaps a minute more, perhaps a minute less, depending on environmental factors. Also, it was likely Prey had overestimated and the flames would finally splutter out before reaching the caves and tunnels near the very base of the mountain. 

The flames would not live long enough to escape the mountain into the world above the ground, and even if the orichalcum did sustain it for that long, with no stones tunnels and funnelling and compressing the flames, the fire would rush upwards and also outwards in a cone. The runic fire would spread itself too thin, lose concentration and heat, and die.

Fire is short lived by nature. It can't be anything else, what with its need to consume constantly to live, and the bigger it grows, the more fiercely it needs. But for that short period of time when it rages... for the fire and everything it touches, that is all the time that exists in the world.


------


And so, the mimics died in the first purging of Mount Canter. The last purging came at the time of Princess Cadance's Royal wedding. And one in-between.


[[[---IIIOIII---]]]


A decade later, after the changeling reformations and introduction into society, a retelling of the events would only ever be given by a few of the changeling infiltrators who survived, and even then, only verbally, not purposefully recounting it for  historical recording. 

The drones from before the all-important reformation didn't have the capacity to recall, not with how little love they'd been birthed with, resulting in a near total reliance on the hive mind to function every single day. A pitiable situation to move even the stoniest pony heart. But of the higher functioning infiltrators capable of independent thought, less than half-a-dozen reformed individuals survived the event and the years which followed, to recall the event in question when asked.

Comparatively speaking, more changelings from near the fringes of the tunnels survived than was first apparent. 

The natural armour of these scarred survivors allowed perhaps one-in-twenty to weather the flash fire long enough to survive and crawl out to fresh air. But that was only comparatively speaking. Because in reality, it was only one-in-twenty. What a horrifyingly small percentage.

And of the retellings, out of the few that were ever captured and are now recorded in the history books in the restricted section of the Royal Canterlot archives, even less of the tales ventured to give an account of the first purge. And even fewer of the second. The last purge, yes, comparatively it is well documented, but few retellings of the first, and only in brief detail.

"There was fire. You weren't there. I don't have the words for you to properly understand. But there was fire. And it burned."





Prey did not forget. Nor did he forgive.