//------------------------------// // Case Seventeen, Chapter Five: The Bone Temple // Story: Ponyville Noire: Misty Streets of Equestria // by PonyJosiah13 //------------------------------// “The Valley of Statues was first built in the late eighteenth century on the outskirts of Cuore,” Daring read from the history book propped in front of her. “It was intended to memorialize ponies who had had a great impact on the Empire’s history. Unfortunately, it was devastated by an earthquake in 1855 and largely forgotten.”  “Wonder when Sombra had that temple constructed,” Flash mused, passing through the purple dome of magic surrounding them with another stack of books balanced on his back. “Twi, you sure you didn’t miss something?” he asked dryly as he paused in front of another table, upon which was a pillar of tomes that was nearly as tall as a pony.  “No, I think that’ll be it, thank you,” Twilight said from behind the stack, picking up the books he was carrying in her magic and carrying them over.  “Are you sure?” Spike asked from next to her, rolling his eyes at the others. “I’m sure there are at least a few other books in this library.” He gestured around to the massive library that they were currently sitting in. Sunlight streamed down from the blue skylight in the ceiling, illuminating the rows and rows of aquamarine shelves with the books neatly sorted upon them. Balconies on the second and third floors looked down upon the central reading area where they sat, ponies, griffons, and other creatures slowly walking in and out of the maze of shelves as they searched for the books that they desired; a few gave the small group tucked inside the magical bubble odd looks as they passed. The only sounds were whispered conversations and the flipping of pages, muffled by Twilight’s Silence Spell.  “Oh, don’t be silly,” Twilight said, not taking her nose out of Landmarks of the Crystal Empire. “We could never look through all the books in this library. And besides, it’s not like we’d find anything useful in fiction.”  Flash trotted over to Phillip’s side and gazed over his shoulder at the journal and sketches scattered before him. “There anything else about the temple in there?” he asked.  “Not that I can find,” Phillip frowned, checking a notebook full of translations. “The other pages use different keywords and I’m having some trouble figuring it out,” he admitted.  “Least we have these maps and stuff,” Flash said, looking over the looseleaf pages. He winced at a close-up illustration of what looked like a pendulum, but with spikes around the edge. “Who the fuck puts this shit in a temple?”  “Insane ponies worshipping a god of pain, war, and death,” Daring replied. “I’ve been in temples that had some basic booby traps before, but never more complicated than falling rocks or false walls that would start a flood. Not counting the Nightmare Moon Temple in the Everfree Forest." Flash sighed. “I just signed up to be a police officer,” he mumbled, shaking his head.  Daring returned to her book. “Mmm...there’s a short list of ponies that were included in the valley. Let’s see...da Whinny, Amble Volta, Martingale Polo, Gallopleo…”  She paused, her eyebrows rising up into her forehead. “Phil, that journal entry said that the temple entrance is near the ‘light-bringer’s statue,’ right?”  Phillip checked a paper to his right with a fresh translation on it. “Yes,” he nodded.  “Amble Volta invented the electric battery and helped develop the lightbulb,” Daring declared with a grin. “I bet anything that she’s the light-bringer.”  “Makes sense,” Phillip nodded.  “Now we just need to find them,” Flash said, looking over the photographs of the valley, frowning at the faded, crumbling statues standing vigil over the weed-strewn land and comparing them to the more recent photographs. “Boy. Moon and his crew did a great job,” he mumbled.  “They had to have left something behind,” Spike pointed out. “If they were planning on going back, they’d have to have left some clues so they could find it.”  “Spike’s right,” Daring agreed. “We’ll figure it out.”  “So who’s the intemperate mare?” Flash asked.  “Working on it,” Daring muttered, running a hoof down the page she was studying. “Okay...Twi, gonna need your help here.”  “Let me take a look,” Twilight said, trotting over and looking over her shoulder. “Spike, jot these down: Marcanter Aurelius, Minorian, Vino Veritas, Rosewhinny…”  After Twilight finished reciting the list of names from the book, she and the others promptly dove into the books of biographies that Flash had brought over, cross-checking names and histories. “Marcanter is a stallion, pretty sure it’s not him,” Spike said, tossing aside a book on nomadic ponies.  “And there’s nothing about Rosewhinny being intemperate,” Flash said, tossing aside the poet’s biography.  “Wait a minute,” Twilight declared, squinting at her own book. “Vino Veritas was famous for founding the Verito Vineyards and new brands of liqueur.”  “But he’s also a stallion,” Flash pointed out.  “But his daughter, Vino Frizzante, took over the vineyards when he died,” Twilight added, reading on. “And she was infamous for being a drunkard.”  “She’s not on the list of statues, though,” Spike frowned, pointing at the list he’d written.  “Uh, hold on,” Daring said, looking back over the book on the Valley of Statues. “It does mention that Vino Veritas funded the statues...maybe he had a statue of his daughter made.”  “I don’t see how it could be anypony else on that list,” Phillip shrugged, running his hoof over several pages spread out before him.  “Of course, we gotta figure out which one of those statues it is,” Flash stated, scowling at the photographs of the valley.  Twilight flipped open two pages. One showed Amble Volta, a bright blue unicorn with spiky yellow hair and green eyes, her cutie mark a diamond-shaped cloud with a lightning bolt coming out of it. The other was Vino Frizzante, a grinning earth brown earth pony with a long purple mane, blue eyes, and a basket of grapes as her cutie mark. “Shouldn’t be too hard,” she smiled.  For the next half-hour, they pored over the photographs, comparing the statues to photographs and paintings in the texts, then trying to compare the more recent photographs of the ruins to the original layout. Sketches and maps were made, corrected, discarded, and restarted until a small pile of crumpled-up paper surrounded the table where they were working.  “You think that’s it?” Flash finally said, rubbing his eyes as they looked over the final version.  “That’s the best we can do,” Phillip grunted, staring down at the sketch that they’d constructed, a rough approximation of the statues’ locations relative to one another, with the faces of the historical figures placed next to their names, their locations marked by an interconnected web of lines. Several statues were marked only with a question mark next to the rough sketches of their faces, a few with some notes next to it.  “Nice drawing, by the way, Spike,” Flash said, nodding over the detailed sketches.  “Thanks!” Spike chirped.  “Well, we at least figured out which one was Volta,” Twilight nodded, pointing to a single circled statue with a sketch of the inventor’s face next to it. “But that leaves three statues that could be Vino Frizzante.” She pointed to three other circled statues that had question marks next to them.  “We’ll have to figure it out on-site,” Phillip shrugged.  “Okay, we need a silver knife,” Daring said, standing up and stretching. “And we’ll need some other spelunking equipment. C’mon, guys, we’re losing daylight.”  Flash sighed as the magical bubble burst with a small pop. “I suppose this is going into the next Compass Rose book?” he sighed.  “Possibly,” Daring grinned.  A rented white truck rumbled up a street leading north out of Cuore, passing from the interior of the city to the suburbs on the northern outskirts, past lovingly maintained crystal cottages that were nearly as old as the Empire itself.  “So what happens if we get there and Frostbite got there ahead of us?” Spike asked nervously from the backseat.  “We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” Daring said from the passenger seat, studying a street map. “You told Shining Armor where we were going, right, Twilight?”  “Yes,” Twilight nodded from the backseat. “He said that he would’ve accompanied us, but he and Cadance have to make a statement about this and help the gendarme search for Frostbite.”  “I think we’ll be fine,” Daring nodded. “Phil, take the left up here.”  “Right,” Phillip nodded, slowing down at the stop sign and signaling for a left turn.  Flash fidgeted in his seat next to Twilight. “Twilight, you said that Shining Armor and Cadance found a way to counter the Mirror, right?” he asked.  Twilight blinked, then grimaced. “Oh, no! I forgot to ask them about that!”  “Hopefully, it won’t come to that,” Daring said. “Just focus on getting there.”  “Spike, notebook!” Twilight cried.  “Here, Twilight,” Spike said with a roll of his eyes, handing her a notebook that she started scribbling notes in, muttering theories and conjectures to herself.  Flash took to staring out the window at the creatures outside, trying to focus on the passing houses and pedestrians rather than the swirling, taunting whispers that were running through his head. He blinked at the sight of a massive, hairy creature with two horns trotting down the street, speaking to a griffon that was flapping over his head. “Is that a yak?” he asked.  “It is,” Daring confirmed. “They’ve been allies with the Crystal Empire for years, but few of them come to Equestria.”  “I didn’t think they were that big,” Flash said, watching the yak ambling down the street, turning up a pathway to meet with another yak with long, braided hair.  Daring started to turn towards him with a cheeky grin spreading across her face. “Too easy, Daring,” Phillip said as they drove on. Daring stuck her tongue out at him.  As they proceeded northward along the smooth crystalline road, the properties began to grow larger and sparser, and patches of snow appeared on the rolling green hills. The hills began to grow larger, turning into snow-capped mountains that glistened beneath the afternoon sun, the peaks occasionally decorated by small villages. They wound around the bases of the mountains, leaving the city of Cuore far behind them. “Yeah, turn right here,” Daring said, pointing at a rough dirt road that split off from the paved road that they were driving down. A weathered, barely legible sign stood next to the road, a single remnant of when the Valley was revered.  Phillip turned down the road and started down a long-neglected road flanked by two high mountains. The dirt crunched beneath their tires and the truck gently rocked like a boat as they trundled along.  “The Valley should be just ahead,” Daring grinned in excitement, pointing.  “Only you would be happy about going into an underground temple in search of a weapon of mass destruction,” Flash grumbled, running a hoof along one wing.  The road twisted and turned, but after climbing a short incline, they beheld their target: a great valley in a bowl-shaped depression amidst the mountains. The trees that lined the mountains around them swayed in the breeze, whispers of leaves adding to the distant noises of chirping birds. In the center of the valley was a square shallow hole nearly fifteen yards across by thirty yards long, crisscrossed with yellow ropes that made the dig site resemble a chessboard; beneath the ropes, broken fragments of stone and cracked remnants of bases lay amidst the dirt. Tables loaded with notebooks, cameras, shovels, picks, brushes, and other archaeological equipment were placed around the perimeter of the site, abandoned by their workers.  Phillip pulled the van to one side and parked it, his eyes sweeping the area. “Looks like we’re the first ones here,” he commented.  “Good,” Daring said, climbing out. She took out the sketch that they’d made and proceeded forward, circling the dig site. The others disembarked and followed her, Twilight reluctantly dropping her pages of chicken scratch notes.  “I think that’s da Whinny,” Daring said, pointing to a cracked platform with three hooves still standing atop it.  Twilight squinted at the remnants of the plaque, using her magic to wipe aside the dirt. “‘Artist, inventor, visionary…’ Yup, that’s him.” She lit up her horn and purple letters appeared over the broken stand, reading Leonardo da Whinny. “Great!” Daring said, turning the map. “So if he’s there, then that must be Minorian…”  They slowly navigated their way across the dig site, with Twilight marking each statue’s location. “Here’s Volta,” Daring finally declared, pointing at one cracked base. “The door has to be somewhere in front of her.”  Twilight checked the map, then marked three other locations with question marks. “If we’re right, one of those should be Vino Frizzante,” she said.  Daring zipped off to one of the tables and came back with an armful of trowels, brushes, and similar tools. “Let’s get to work,” she declared, tossing some tools to the others.  The group proceeded to the first area where the door might lie and started carefully digging, scraping away dirt and rocks. “Why haven’t they found it already?” Flash pondered around as he worked the trowel.  “Professor Fossil probably only recently figured out which passage was the one he was looking for and managed to translate it,” Daring replied. “Plus, they've only been here for a couple weeks at most, digging up artifacts and remnants instead of looking for a doorway. Hey, I think I hit something.”  Everypony watched as Daring brushed aside some dirt with the brush in her mouth, squinting at the hard surface that she’d struck. The soil slowly retreated to reveal the object of her interest.  “Ah, just a rock,” Daring grumbled, scowling at the slab that had fooled her.  Spike plucked the reddish rock out of the ground and took a bite out of it, his teeth crunching. “Mmm, feldspar,” he grinned, licking his lips.  A few more minutes of digging produced nothing but soil and rocks. “Don’t think it’s here,” Phillip said, standing and stretching out his joints. “Let’s try the next one.”  “Watch where you step,” Daring chided as they proceeded across the dig site, carefully stepping over the ropes. “There’s probably some valuable stuff left behind. Try not to step on any rocks or something.”  They paused at the second possible dig site and bent down to start working. The only sounds aside from their digging were the wind blowing through the surrounding trees and the singing of birds.  Flash stood up and paused, looking around as he stretched with a frown. Nothing. No sign of anypony nearby. He let out a breath, trying to ignore a cold tingling crawling down his spine.  “Too quiet,” Phillip agreed, keeping his eyes on his work.  “Spike, you can send letters to Shining and Cadance, right?” Flash asked, his wing twitching.  “Yeah,” Spike nodded, carefully working his trowel into the dirt.  “Try not to stress out, Flash,” Twilight soothed him. “If you think too much about what might go wrong, your mind will start running away and you’ll waste energy panicking over things that never happen.”  “And I’m sure you know a lot about that,” Spike told her with a smirk.  “Oh, ha ha ha,” Twilight deadpanned as the others snickered.  “Nothing here, either,” Daring finally said, shaking her head. “Last one.”  They proceeded to the third and final dig site and set to work, slowly excavating dirt away from the ground. They worked in silence, ears perked for the sound of a trowel clunking against something solid.  Clunk. “What’s that?” Flash cried, pausing.  “Move, move,” Daring said excitedly, brushing aside dirt with the edge of her tool and her brush. Everyone stared as she excavated the item that her tool had struck.  A silver metal hatchway sat in the dirt, the rusty surface unmarked.  “Find the edges, quick!” Daring cried, returning to her work.  The others dove in and started digging, excitedly excavating the door. Before long, they had fully revealed the four-foot square doorway. There was no sign of a handle.  As they stared down at their prize, a sudden realization struck Flash. The valley had gone completely silent. All of the birds had ceased their chirping and even the wind seemed to have gone still, as if in terrified anticipation. He gulped as another cold shiver slowly ran down his spine.  “I’ll do it,” Daring said, kneeling in front of the hatch. From her pocket she extracted an athame, the runes etched into the silver blade glinting in the afternoon sun. She placed the blade at her hoof and took a breath.  “Img-yaah, ghu-eog vet an’gyaari,” she whispered, the unnatural words scratching at her throat as she spoke them. She slid the blade across her hoof, hissing softly at the pain. Dark red blood dripped from the wound onto the metal entryway.  The wind ran down from the north, the chilly embrace seizing the crouched figures and making them shiver. A cacophony of alarmed chirps sounded as the birds watching from the surrounding trees flung themselves into the air, flapping away in a hurry. The wind pushed down at their backs: for a moment, Flash felt like something was standing behind him, breathing down his neck.  Then the door cracked and swung open with a creak, tilting down on a hinge to reveal a small shaft. Daring’s flashlight revealed a six-foot drop onto a tiled floor, with a ladder along one wall.  “Okay, Twilight, Spike, you two stay out here,” Daring instructed. “The rest of us are going to go in and check. If we’re not out in a half-hour, get help.”  “Got it,” Spike nodded, staring nervously into the pit beneath them.  “Be careful,” Twilight urged them, squeezing Flash’s hoof.  “We will,” Flash said, forcing a smile onto his face but only managing a feeble grimace.  Daring jumped down and landed on the floor beneath with a grunt, panning her flashlight back and forth. “I just see a tunnel,” she called up. “Looks just like the map in Blue Moon’s journal. C’mon, boys.”  She moved aside so Phillip could jump down, then Flash. They found themselves facing the mouth of a tunnel, the walls and ceiling reinforced with wooden beams. Flash glanced to the side and gasped: a skull was set into the wall next to him, eyeless sockets staring balefully at him. The lower jaw was missing and strange runes were carved into the pale surface. More bones--jaws, ribs, hooves, vertebrae, and skulls--were set into the walls around them, all of them intricately and carefully placed in bizarre patterns and shapes and with strange runes and markings etched into them, an art display dedicated to the worship of death. “I guess we know why it’s called the Bone Temple,” Flash said with a nervous laugh.  “They’re just bones,” Daring told him, continuing on. “That’s not helpful,” Phillip replied.  “Eh, point,” Daring conceded. “Let’s just get this done right quick and get out of here.”  With a gulp, Flash looked up and saw Twilight and Spike staring down at him worriedly: backlit by the pale blue sky up above, they seemed so distant, like angels looking down into Hell. He waved at them and trotted after Phillip, who slowed to allow Flash to walk beside him. They proceeded forward down the tunnel, trying their best to ignore the carved skulls staring at them as they trotted forward, carefully skirting the red tiles on the floor. The only sound was the echoes of their hoofsteps across the tunnel that slowly sloped down, deeper and deeper into the cold earth.  Finally, they reached a wider room, the walls now made of dark stone. In the center of the room stood three pedestals, all of them with a skeleton placed upon them: an earth pony, a pegasus, and a unicorn, all of them posed in expressions of horror and pain, flinching away from some unseen threat, jaws hanging open in eternal, silent screams.  “Guess this is the skeleton chamber he mentioned on the map,” Daring said, wincing as she studied the statues, casting her flashlight over the faded emblems painted onto the stone and tile walls. “This place goes back way farther than the Crystal War, it must’ve been around for maybe a century or more.” She looked back down at the map. “Okay...he mentioned a key in the west corridor. That’ll be this way.”  Daring turned and faced a narrow tunnel, with more carved bones lining the walls, and froze. For a moment, she was standing on a narrow bridge over a deep chasm, the darkness around her so thick she almost had to push through it. She and Rainbow were leaning over the edge, watching the shadows shifting beneath them as the hot wind rumbled from down beneath. And then a massive green eye, the slit-like pupil three times her body length, opened up from the depths and stared directly at her as the wind growled in the cadance of language… Daring shook herself out of the memory, her breath coming fast and hard, her heart pounding against her ribs.  “You okay?” Phillip asked, taking her hoof.  “Yeah,” Daring nodded, giving him a weak smile. “I’m okay. Just a bad memory.”  “I want this place to be a bad memory,” Flash shuddered. “What do you think they even did down here?” Phillip glanced down at some indistinct dark brown patches on the tiled floor and grimaced. “Things that I don’t think are worth dwelling on.” He patted Flash on the back. “Let’s just keep moving.”  They proceeded down the tunnels, with Daring in the lead, constantly checking the map. They passed small rooms, many of them with altars and strange, gruesome devices. Flash shuddered when he saw one chamber that was filled with what looked like spiked cages, all surrounding a huge, revolving wheel with an assortment of blades and spikes attached to it. For a moment, he could almost hear the echoes of screams racing through the walls.  “We’re here,” Daring finally declared, looking up.  A great corridor stretched out before them, almost large enough to drive a subway car through. Statues of Tirek, each one three times their size, lined both walls, every image of the four-armed centaur brandishing his weapons, his mouths open in howls of rage. The carved eyes glared down at the intruders as they encroached upon his territory as if considering whether to slay them with ax, sword, javelin, or flail.  “Okay,” Daring said with a nervous swallow. “Blue Moon’s journal said that the key was in the ‘false idol’s mouth.’ Maybe...maybe one of these is an incorrect detail somehow.”  They slowly wandered down the hall, sweeping their flashlights back and forth, studying the enormous statues for any discrepancy, any mistake. There were more than a dozen replicas of Tirek for them to examine in the heavy quiet that was broken only by their hoofsteps. The light from their flashlights cast shadows of the dark god that loomed menacingly over them; wind from the distant doorway whispered down the hall, at times rumbling like distant growls that made the trio repress shudders and fight to block dark thoughts from their minds.  “Hang on,” Phillip said, studying the fifth statue on the corridor’s left. This version of Tirek had his weapons lowered slightly and was sneering down Phillip, as if amused by his defiance. Phillip cast his flashlight beam over the ropy red arms, each one as wide as a train track.  “In all of the other statues, Tirek is carrying his javelin and ax in his left arms, and the sword and flail in his right,” Phillip noted.  “Yeah,” Daring nodded. “I think I remember reading about how each weapon and which hand he was carrying them in symbolized some extent of his power.”  “But here,” Phillip pointed. “He’s got the javelin in his right hand and the flail in his left.”  The two pegasi quickly checked the other statues. “You’re right,” Flash confirmed. “That’s the only one that’s different.”  “This must be it!” Daring cried, flying up to Tirek’s horned head. She squinted into the carved, sneering face, so detailed that she almost imagined that she could feel the wicked deity’s stinking breath on her face. She leaned down close to the sneering mouth.  “Can’t see a way to get in there,” she said, flapping around to the other face, this one regarding her with teeth-clenched hatred. “Nope,” she reported, maneuvering around to the third face. “Aha!” she declared upon finding that this one’s mouth was open slightly in what appeared to be a laugh. She carefully inserted her hoof into the mouth, feeling around the cold stone.  “I got something!” she declared a moment later as her hoof gripped something cold and metallic. She carefully drew it out to find that she had grabbed a silver key, the handle shaped like a skull and the grooves shaped like teeth.  “Yes! Now to the mirror chamber!" she declared, flying down to show her prize to her companions.  They followed the map down the tunnel, past more chambers with grotesque machinery and blasphemous icons on the walls, until they reached the southernmost halls. The south wall was lined with more skulls and bones, but there was no sign of a door.  Daring frowned at the map. “If the mirror chamber is about one-third of the way down from the east side…” She panned her flashlight back and forth. “We should be standing right in front of it. X marks the spot.”  The three stared at the wall in front of them. Another pair of crossed thigh bones were embossed into the wall: in a circle around it were square stone icons, some of them depicting angular hoofprints with spider-like lines emanating from the edges, teeth, weapons, or swirling lines, some of them depicting ghostly horses with three eyes and smokey wings that brought snow in their wake: windigoes, the cold-bringing heralds of Tirek who fed off of hatred and discord.  “So where’s the keyhole?” Daring asked.  “Uh, hang on,” Flash said, rummaging through the sketches that they’d brought. “I think there’s something...yeah, here!” He showed Daring a drawing that Moon had made of a set of bones crossed in an X. An arrow marked “9” pointed down from the juncture of the bones, then turned and went to the left for “3.5.” The arrow landed on a square with a pair of hoofprints. Another sketch showed a square, with an arrow pointing in a clockwise upwards arc.  “Okay, since the Empire uses metric instead of imperial…”  Daring slowly traced a hoof down, then to the left, pausing at a square icon of two windigo hoofprints. She carefully nudged it and found that the top was on a hinge that allowed it to swing. Slowly, she moved it upwards in a clockwise manner, exposing a keyhole. “Nice find, kid,” she grinned to Flash, inserting the key.  The heavy click resounded from behind the stone wall, thumping through it. A sudden rush of wind rolled down the hall, sounding like the groan of something very big and very old stirring from slumber.  “Now the faces,” Daring said, crouching down. She pressed the face of a windigo at the bottom of the circle of squares, then started working her way up clockwise, touching each snarling face in turn. She pressed one final face, and then the wall rumbled and cracked, dust tumbling from the edges of a door. With a groan, the door slowly slid down into the floor, allowing them access.  The chamber within was small, barely the size of a living room. The rough walls were bare, and the only feature in the room was a single table. Sitting on top of the table was the all-too-familiar statuette.  “Tirek’s Mirror,” Daring breathed, striding forward cautiously to study their prize. Her reflection stared back at her in the bone-frame mirror, eyes wide with a mixture of awe and trepidation; for a moment, she thought she saw flickers of strange colors at the edges of the mirror.  For a moment, the face that stared back at her was her younger bloodstained self, glaring, silently accusing her with angry, hooded eyes.  “For fuck’s sake,” Daring grunted, turning away and shaking her head.  “What’s wrong?” Phillip called from outside.  “I’m fine,” Daring called back, glaring at the mirror. To her relief, her reflection was now her normal self. She hesitated for a few moments, then carefully approached, ears alert for any sign of a trap. Thankfully, there were none. She reached the altar, reached out, and grasped the mirror by the radius that formed its handle. Finding it surprisingly light, she lifted it off the table. “Got it,” she declared, turning about with a grin and immediately freezing.  “Grazie,” said the green unicorn approaching with an assault rifle leveled at her head. In the dark of the chamber, the faint red glow of the charging crystal inside the barrel burned like an eye.  “Colonel Frostbite, I presume,” Daring growled.  “Daring Do,” Frostbite grunted. “Skyline, you got ‘em?”  “Got ‘em, sir,” the blue pegasus called back, aiming his pistol down at Phillip, Flash, Twilight, and Spike, who were all sitting down on the floor, bound back to back with ropes of blue magic. Phillip and Daring both glanced at each other over Frostbite’s shoulder. Daring started to open her mouth to speak, but Phillip shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re messing with, Colonel,” Daring said, taking a step back.  “No, you don’t know what you’re in, detective,” Frostbite replied, his horn lighting up. A blue aura pulsed around Tirek’s Mirror, but Daring held onto it. “Whoever you think you’re working for, they just want this Mirror for their own purposes. You think Blue Moon can be trusted? That traitor sold out his country, and then sold out his king just to save his own skin!”  “And what are you going to do with it?” Daring replied, keeping a tight hold on the artifact.  “Destroy it,” Frostbite replied. “After I find Blue Moon and make him tell me who else is involved. I’m only trying to protect the Empire.” He thrust the weapon into her face. “Drop the artifact. Now.”  “Is this how you did it in the war?” Daring growled, taking a step closer even as she held tight to the Mirror. “Threaten civilians?”  “We do what is necessary,” Skyline sharply retorted, keeping his eyes and weapon on the bound hostages.  Daring remained silent, challenging Frostbite with her eyes. He growled at her, still futilely trying to tug the artifact from her iron grasp. “Give it to me!” he barked, taking one more step forward.  Fast as a blink, Daring swung the Mirror up like a bat, aiming for Frostbite’s chin. He ducked out of the way just in time, but the impact still knocked the weapon from his grasp.  “Colonel!” Skyline shouted as the stallion barreled into Daring like a torpedo, knocking them both back into the table. The Mirror flew from Daring’s grasp as they crashed to the floor, clattering loudly as it hit the stone.  And then the mirror began to glow, colors that had no name--something close to sickly pea green, something not quite magenta-orange, and a different shade that was almost brownish-blue--dancing around the edges of the glass.  “Look out!” Twilight shouted. Frostbite glanced up, then rolled off Daring, who scrambled after him with a snarl.   A rainbow of anomalous color exploded out of the artifact with a sound like distant, echoing screams, washing over the room in waves of ice-cold wind. Everypony immediately turned away, slamming their eyes shut to protect themselves from the dark magic.  The light and noise faded after a moment, but the ponies and dragon all kept their eyes shut for a few terrified heartbeats more before tentatively peeking out. “Is everypony okay?” Twilight asked, turning her head back and forth.  “I think so,” Flash said, his heart pattering against his chest as he looked around, the only light coming from the pale blue glow of the ropes that bound the four of them together. “Shit, where’s Frostbite? And the Mirror?!" “He’s gone,” Phillip grunted, making another effort to break their bonds. “Daring, you--Daring?”  Every head turned to stare at Daring Do, who was staring at where the Mirror had lain, her jaw agape and her eyes as wide as saucers. Eyes that were now glowing with nameless colors.  Daring slowly backed up, shaking her head and closing her eyes. Her chest started to heave as her breath started to come heavy and fast. The exhalations turned to pants, then low growls as her jaw tightened.  “Daring!” Phillip called, his heart dropping into his stomach.  She whirled her head around and glared back at him, hatred in her eyes; her sclera were now glowing those same swirling, nameless colors that had emanated from the Mirror. She crouched low to the ground and began to stalk towards them like a predatory animal that has spotted suitable prey, growls rumbling out of her throat, drool running from her clenched teeth.  “Uh-oh,” Spike mumbled.