Friday
Twilight Sparkle perked up from her breakfast the moment she heard heavy-hoofed knocking on the library's front door. "Spike?" she called as she flipped to the next page of the textbook open before her, careful not to dirty it with crumbs from her toast, "can you get that, please?"
"I'm on it!" Spike called. Almost immediately, Twilight's attention was pulled back to the book in front of her. Anima Thaumaturgia. Roughly translated: ‘soul magic.’
The field of study (if it could be thought of as one) was not unknown to Twilight. She had briefly been taught about it at the School for Gifted Unicorns by a rapidly-aging professor who frequently forgot to bring his materials bags to class. Only one day's time had been spent on the subject, and it was mainly to detail its brief history and explain how it was one of the extinct practices of magic.
Twilight took a bite of her breakfast as she examined the current page. It displayed a primitive, unbalanced-looking casting circle for a spell that was supposedly able to project one's soul out of one’s body. The problem, the book helpfully provided, was that the spell had no way to return the soul to the body, making the spell little more than a one-way ticket to an early grave.
"Twilight!" shouted Spike from the main room, "It's that stallion from the letter!" Twilight's ears perked up and she nearly fell out of her chair hurrying to the entrance.
The 'stallion from the letter' stood just past the front door, looking around at her library. His coat was a smooth newspaper white and contrasted cleanly with his deep black mane. Both came together to make his thoughtful golden eyes stand out in that eye-catching manner that had drawn so many hopeful mares back in school, and they lit up when they met her own.
"Twilight Sparkle! I knew I was coming to meet you, but my goodness, it's strange to see you again!"
Twilight smiled back. "I could say the same thing about you! It's been, what, how many years?"
He chuckled. "More than I care to count."
Spike stretched and made for the stairs. "I'm gonna go feed Peewee, Twilight. Holler if you need me."
"Thank you, Spike!" The librarian turned back to the new arrival. "Don't just stand there, come on in!" The stallion nodded his thanks when Twilight levitated his two conservatively-sized suitcases in, setting them beside the staircase. Custom-made, she noticed, embossed with his cutie mark: a magnifying glass over a closed book.
"So," she began, making her way towards the table, "I hear congratulations are in order, Investigator Looking Glass."
The stallion rubbed his cheek and produced a somewhat confident smile. "Oh, yes, the princess told you, I take it?"
"Of course! That's something to be proud of, isn't it?"
"Well, yes, definitely." His smile grew a little. "The status upgrade is a boon in Canterlot, you know how it is, and the pay doesn't hurt, either." Then it fell. "The title comes with a great deal of pressure, though, and with this new case, you can imagine the demand to provide results is, well..." Looking gulped. "I don't fancy my chances of remaining an investigator if I don't meet the challenge."
My goodness. Twilight cringed inwardly. She knew exactly what that kind of pressure was like. "Well, you're here now," she said with as reassuring a tone as she could, "and I know that you'll do your best. You weren't exactly one for half measures at school." Her smile grew a little more devious. "Remember that time in the gardens with that mare from transmutation class..."
The light-gray coat on his face grew a few shades redder. "N-now, I don't think we need to go over that particular event," he sputtered.
Twilight covered her giggle with a hoof. "So, what's your plan?"
He coughed and cleared his throat. "Yes. Um. Well..."
His horn glimmered and his saddlebags unlatched themselves, floating over the main room’s table and producing a small stack of mismatching papers. They shuffled as the investigator examined them with nearly-crossed eyes one by one before he plucked a piece from the pile, which set itself down on the floor. Then Looking Glass unfolded the paper with a bit of a flourish, revealing a map of Ponyville and the surrounding countryside.
"The Bureau's been in close contact with Princess Celestia on this one," he began, sounding far more professional. "After a lot of careful deliberation, our ponies determined the, um–" He bit his lip. "I know I probably don’t need to ask you of all ponies, but how well-read are you on soul magic?"
Twilight gestured to Anima Thaumaturgia. “I’ve been studying this since I got it a week or so ago. The princess sent some other materials, but they’re mostly just primary sources and codices. That text is pretty definitive.”
The stallion hummed. “Can you sum up a general understanding for me? I’m going to need to know if there are any gaps in your knowledge.”
“Of course.” Twilight pulled up a chair for Looking, and the two sat down. “The writing is pretty dry, but it starts with soul magic’s origins. We’ve known since antiquity that beings are made up of three distinct parts: mind, body, and soul.”
She flipped open the corresponding chapter and tapped an old-looking print of a unicorn with a hoof. “One of Starswirl's later students theorized that manipulation of the most interior, most delicate magic of a pony’s being could be a pathway to amazing powers, like immortality and truly bringing back the dead.”
“Mm-hmm.” Looking nodded. “If I recall, the rest of the historical section is a long list of the horrible things that happened to ponies that actually tried it, correct?”
Twilight grimaced. “Yes, it says that, if you were lucky, you got cursed with pallid, sickly bodies or dull, slow minds. The rest is mutations, corruptions, and horrors galore.” She shivered a little. “After reading the descriptions, I had to take a break and switch to another text for a while.”
The stallion chuckled a little. “Well, you wouldn’t be alone there. Golden Aura goes into frankly excruciating detail.”
“Yes, I thought that was a little overboard,” Twilight said with a weak smile of her own, “but what bothered me most was the entries about the ponies who initially appeared to be unscathed by the magic...” She trailed off.
Looking nodded again. “Only to commit unthinkably evil deeds or transform into something otherworldly because the thing that got returned to the body wasn’t the soul that left it.” His horn shimmered with golden light and the text flipped open to Twilight’s least favorite chapter and he spoke in a low voice. “Interlopers.”
Twilight frowned. “The illustrations are clearly a step too far.”
“You should see the unedited version we have at the Bureau,” Looking said with a grin.
Twilight turned a little green at the thought before shaking her head. “Moving right along, things like that are the reason soul magic is no longer practiced or even legally allowed. It’s so easy to bungle up, and the consequences are enormous, dangerous, and usually permanent.” She flipped a couple more pages. “Here’s the list of ponies whose souls were completely or partially repaired,” she said. It was five entries long.
“Yes, soul magic certainly has quite the track record.” Looking raised his eyes to meet hers. “However, that’s not the most important thing to remember. Do you know what is, Twilight?”
She blinked and an embarrassed heat immediately began to spread across her face. “Um, well, you see―I mean, it depends on how you look at it–”
“Hey, relax! Don’t worry!” Looking raised a calming hoof. “It wasn’t a quiz.” His horn glowed again as he flipped the text back to the theoretical section. “As Anima Thaumaturgia so carefully states, those theories of soul magic's potential benefits haven’t actually been disproven.”
Twilight nodded along as he spoke. That’s what makes it so tempting, she thought.
“They’re still theoretically possible,” Looking continued, “but even the most skilled, powerful ponies haven’t produced solely positive results. The most notable example is actually Princess Luna herself, you know. She used soul magic to successfully empower her own being, but gained a stowaway in the process.”
She chuckled awkwardly. “We all know how that one ended.”
Altogether, it painted a very concerning picture of what had happened in Canterlot.
“Yes, we certainly do.” Looking Glass nodded. “Well, it seems that your study habits haven’t changed a bit. Always the perfect student, eh?”
She blushed a little. “Well, I do try.”
“Just like old times,” he said with a small smile. “So, how much do you know about the incident?”
Twilight shook her head. "Just that there was one, and it involves soul magic."
"Hmm. I'll bring you up to speed, then." His mouth thinned into a line. "Last week, a currently unknown unicorn attempted to perform an unknown soul magic spell and failed spectacularly. Luckily, nopony we know of was hurt, and Canterlot got to experience a rather surprising light show early that morning."
The line drooped at its corners. "Unfortunately, the spell discharged several bound auras. Most of them were small and we were able to track them to sites in and around Canterlot, but the largest had a lot more power behind it and manifested all the way out in Ponyville."
"Wait," Twilight couldn't help but interrupt, "how do you know it was soul magic? Couldn't these auras be harmless?"
"If we knew that for sure, Sparkle, I wouldn't be here." He sighed. "The Royal Guard provided us with photographs of the site, and the circle matched the designs in many of the old texts. Here, take a look."
He levitated the picture out of his saddlebag, showing Twilight a casting circle that looked related to the one she had been examining in Anima Thaumaturgia not five minutes ago but far, far more complex. I guess 'extinct' is too strong a word.
“Wait,” Twilight said, examining the photograph, “are these… necromantic runes?”
“I’m afraid so.” Looking’s frown deepened. "As you likely know, the circle's base structure is unique to soul magic, but it contains runes from other schools, many of them similarly outlawed.”
Oh, good, Twilight thought, a smorgasbord of illegal magic. What the hay was the caster thinking?
“We've still got mages trying to decode the spell's exact purpose, but, well, without access to the caster or any additional knowledge, that may take a while, which brings me to my second point."
Looking Glass retrieved a pen and returned to the map. "After a lot of talking and not a lot of doing, the ponies at the Bureau determined that, based on the miasma it left behind, the aura probably landed in this area." He drew a generous oval on the outskirts of the town. "We think that the reason it had so much power behind it was that it was carrying a living thing. Probably the pony that cast the spell, or, in all liklihood, the creature that they became."
“So you think that area is the best place to look for clues?”
He nodded and tapped the circled area with a hoof. “Unfortunately, yes.”
Twilight stared at the map for a little while, her head filled with scenarios of an eldritch beast that used to be a unicorn stampeding out of the Everfree Forest towards Ponyville. She let out a long whistle. "That's... quite a bit to take in at once."
The investigator let out a sheepish chuckle. "I know that it's a lot. I had the same look on my face when they told me, and a considerably more terrified one, when they told me the Ponyville investigation was my responsibility. I nearly passed out when they said that I'd be joining forces with nopony less than the princess's personal student to do so."
He said it with a grin, and though she blushed, Twilight pushed past the compliment. "It's also quite a bit of ground to cover," Twilight said, tracing the area with a hoof, "and we're going to have to use some pretty sophisticated scanning spells. It's been a week, so any signatures the aura left behind will be badly faded."
"Well, then," he said, giving her a winning smile, "we had better get started.”
"Holy fffffrick, girls, this is ridiculously heavy. Are we gonna be building with cinder blocks?"
Sweetie Belle giggled from the back of the wagon. "We're pushin' as hard as we can! Come on, ya big, strong, stallion! You can do it!"
The groaning stopped and Gabe came trotting around to the rear a moment later, giving the other crusaders a raised eyebrow. "Yeah, looks like it's really takin' it out of ya."
"Doy," Scootaloo said, grinning, "why do you think we're up here?"
‘Bloom snorted. “Didn’t ya notice it’s stuck?”
The little green colt rolled his eyes and the fillies hopped out of the cart, the satisfaction of a prank well executed putting a little bounce in their step. Gabriel gave the other foals a sharp look before returning to the front of the cart to re-hitch himself, pausing below the shade of one of Sweet Apple Acres' many, many trees.
"Y'all ready to skedaddle?" came a call from the farmhouse.
"Yeah, come on!" Apple Bloom hollered. All three of her fellow crusaders slammed their hooves over their ears and winced at the shrill, piercing shriek.
"Jeez, 'Bloom." Scootaloo slowly removed her hooves from her ears. "Give us a warning next time, will ya?"
The filly blushed as her saddle-bagged older sister trotted out to join the three under the hot afternoon sun. The air felt pretty dry now that all the moisture was rolling around in the growing thunderstorm outside of town; the clouds looked fit to burst. "And yer sure you got everything?"
"Yep!" Sweetie pointed to the bed of the medium-sized cart. The four foals had haphazardly stacked a multitude of wood, nails, screwdrivers, rope, and a bunch of other building supplies she didn't know the names for but Apple Bloom and Scootaloo had insisted were important. Gabe had nodded along without saying anything.
"Alright," Applejack said, nodding at the road. "Let's get goin' then."
A grunt came from the front of the cart and it acquiesced with a groan, beginning to roll its way down the road. "Wow," said a sarcastic voice, "it’s not stuck anymore. How very strange."
Sweetie Belle snickered to herself, then followed her friends up to trot along beside Gabriel, leaving Applejack to trail along behind, much to Apple Bloom's annoyance. After the property damage incident last time, she had promised to bring along adult supervision because it had been the only way to wiggle out of a grounding of epic proportions.
Sweetie gave Gabriel a sidelong glance as the party left the farm. After he and Diamond returned to school, things had been more than a little awkward, but lo and behold, the incident seemed to have knocked some sense into that green head of his.
Gabe didn't ask or answer as many questions as possible in class and he actually came out to recess with them, telling them about what had happened. Even better, he helped them all with their math, which was great because he was an honest-to-Celestia genius at it.
Of course, things had been tense. Most of the other foals gave him a wide berth and whispered to each other when they thought he wasn't looking. Even though it didn’t seem to bother him, once Sweetie convinced Scootaloo and Apple Bloom to give him another chance, he seemed… well, not ecstatic, but happier, as far as she could tell.
Being around him had been scary at first—Sweetie kept remembering the face he had made after he got hit—but it turned out that he was actually pretty friendly when he wanted to be. It wasn't so hard to think of the pony who had broken Diamond's leg without a second’s hesitation and the colt who made toilet jokes because he knew they got on Ms. Cheerilee's nerves as two entirely different beings, and that was enough for her.
"I still think we shoulda made him pull us," Scootaloo murmured into Sweetie's ear. Despite Gabe actually trying to be their friend, Scootaloo still hadn't come around.
“Nngh.” The colt muttered as he pulled. “Being tiny fucking sucks.”
Sweetie huffed and muttered her response. "Scoots, we're walking to the other side of town. That'd stop being funny and start being mean before we passed Sugarcube Corner."
"Pfft, whatever." Scootaloo looked ahead when she saw Applejack appear on Gabriel's other side.
"Howdy, Gabe," she said.
"Howdy," he grunted back.
"You sure ya don't want any help pullin' that thing?" She made a little smile. "I saw those fillies piled on quite a bit 'a cargo."
"Mnnh, nope!" he replied, giving her a strained grin. "Got it. Thanks."
Applejack 'hmm'd, but didn't say anything more about it. "So, Gabe," she said, "it's good to see ya out of all those bandages."
"Yup. Now I get to show off this gnarly scar." Sweetie didn't know exactly what gnarly meant, but she could sure as heck guess. The first day he had come to school bandage-less the fillies (and much of the rest of the class) had all stared the moment he looked away.
The furless knot of previously-sutured tissue running down the length of his side was pretty darn nasty to look at, and Apple Bloom had only managed it for a few seconds. From then on, ‘Bloom made sure to carefully avert her eyes whenever his side was facing her.
Applejack only laughed, though, not bothered at all by the sight. "Well, enjoy the surprised looks while ya can, once yer coat regrows it'll look good as new." Sweetie Belle doubted that.
"Only if I decide not to shave it off. Gotta let everyone know how bad this pony is," Gabe said, throwing a little strut into his step. Apple Bloom groaned, looking a little green around the gills, and Sweetie couldn't help but giggle.
The five walked across town, passing through the markets and into the park, which had been chosen as a crusading location because it offered plentiful free space for activities and not a lot of possible casualties. By the time they reached the tree shaped like a three-armed slingshot, Gabe was sweating and panting. Applejack unharnessed him with a raised eyebrow.
"That was some real haulin', sugar cube," she said with a bit of a smile.
"Aint—huh—nothing I haven't managed before." The way he flopped on the grass implied that his statement may not have been entirely truthful. AJ raised an eyebrow.
"Well, if'n yer ever lookin' for a few extra bits, Sweet Apple Acres would be happy to put those skills to good use."
"Wow. I'll keep that in mind." It sounded like he wouldn't.
Applejack's smile vanished. "Just so you know, most folks 'round here don't take kindly to smart-alecks."
He didn't respond.
While Applejack retrieved the daily paper from her saddlebags and made herself comfortable next to Gabe, the fillies began to drag their construction materials out from the cart. An excited Scootaloo unrolled their blueprints for the device that would carry them through their next crusade and they all gathered around to admire the brilliant plan.
"Cutie Mark Crusaders Long-Range Projectile Marksponies Yay!"
Applejack shot them a suspicious look. "I better not be seeing any fillies get launched, 'Bloom."
"Don't worry, sis, we–"
"I better not be seeing any colts get launched, neither."
"We're not launching ourselves, Applejack," Scootaloo said, backing up her frustrated friend. "We're just launchin' rocks and stuff into the old field.”
Applejack opened her mouth.
“And nopony’s over there."
She closed it again. "Mmm."
The skeptical mare returned her attention to the agriculture section and the foals got busy. Scootaloo shimmied up the tree and looped the rope around one of the branches, pulling it down to ground level and tying it down. Apple Bloom and Sweetie were up next, constructing a cup at the end of their impromptu spring.
"Oh, dude," giggled the pegasus filly as she dragged a hoof through her purple mane, "this is gonna be so awesome." That was about the time when Gabriel decided he wasn't that tired.
"Not as awesome as it could be," he said from his spot on the grass with a downright villainous twinkle in his eye. "What you all need is a counterweight."
The fillies all squinted and tilted their heads. "A what now?"
"A counterweight," the little green foal repeated, getting up off the grass, "It's just physics. If we add some leverage and put a weight on the other end, it's gonna throw stuff way further, and I mean way further."
Apple Bloom smiled right alongside Sweetie Belle. "That sounds terrific. Let's do it!"
"Wait, hold on!" An annoyed-looking Scootaloo turned to look at the other fillies. "Girls! We designed this together! Come on!"
"I dunno, Scoots. Gabe seems like he knows what he's talkin' about."
"B-but... but!" Scootaloo's face got a little redder. "But it was my idea!"
"He's just trying to give us a hoof," Sweetie said, trying to be helpful and regretting it the moment Scootaloo whirled around to face her.
"Shut up! He isn't trying to help, he's just trying to make it his!" She hissed in her face. Sweetie Belle might have said something she would have regretted if Gabe hadn't stepped in.
"Uh, Scootaloo?"
The filly whirled around to face him. "What." He didn't flinch.
"Um, I wasn't trying to cause an issue. What's goin' on? Something wrong?"
"What's wrong is that you're trying to steal the show!"
His eyebrows drew together and his muzzle scrunched. "I was trying to help."
"Yeah, well, the girls and I designed the tree catapult. You can't just come up and, and..." she snorted, stomping in a little circle. Her eyes looked wet. "And come around and replace us!" The way she said it made it sound more like 'replace me'.
The colt bit his lip and looked Scootaloo in the eye for a long moment before speaking. "...I'm sorry, then. I'm not trying to replace anypony. If it's that important to you, we can do it your way. I don't mind."
Scootaloo blinked. "...really?" she said, somewhere between hesitant and suspicious.
"Yeah. It clearly means way more to you than it does to me, and I wouldn't be much of a crusader if I knew that and I still got in a fight with you over it, would I?"
He got an owlish stare in response. After a second, the pegasus filly sniffed and dragged a foreleg across her eyes. "T-thanks," she managed, "that's really cool of you."
"Don't mention it." He gave her a big, honest smile and held up a hoof. She looked at it for a second, then returned it with a bump and a little smile of her own.
"And hey, Scoots," he said, "I wouldn't worry too much about taking Rainbow away from ya. I'm only supposed to stay with her for a few weeks."
Sweetie Belle's eyes shot open. He's known the whole time?!
The pegasus filly nearly choked on her own tongue. "W-what?" she chuckled awkwardly. "Uh, I-I don't know what–"
"Oh, come on, I'm not blind," Gabe said with a good-natured grin. "There's only one reason you'd be jealous of me, and it's not because I'm good at math."
Sweetie caught a bit of movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head to see Applejack standing a little ways away with a satisfied smile on her face. She nodded at Sweetie and turned around, trotting back over to her newspaper.
Oh, wow, Sweetie Belle thought, it's a good thing Applejack didn't have to get involved... That could have been too awkward to handle.
Scootaloo opened her mouth, closed it again, then looked back at the tree, then at the plans, then at Apple Bloom and Sweetie, then looked back to Gabriel. "Well, I guess we can use a counter-thingy if it really is gonna make it that much more awesome..."
Gabe's smile became a great deal more mischievous. "That's the spirit."
"Twilight!" The stallion's voice came drifting over the next hill. "I think I found something!"
Twilight straightened her neck, bringing her head up to look around for a moment. Not that she could see all that much; she'd been investigating a patch of muddy ground in the ditch between two of the field's rolling hills. She'd been sure the whisper of remnant magic had come from somewhere over here, and judging by the excitement in Looking Glass's voice, she'd been right.
"I'm coming! One second!" Her hooves complained as she worked her way up the hill. The grass here grew unmaintained and unchecked, and its rough, scratchy tips reached up to the fur on Twilight's belly. Needless to say, the midday heat and hours of searching had left her feeling very itchy and hot.
I'm going to be brushing out burrs for an hour tonight, she thought to herself with a groan, glancing up at the cloudless blue sky.
"Here! Over here!" The black and white stallion danced on his hooftips in excitement when he saw Twilight crest the hill. "Take a look at this!"
He pointed his hoof at the spot he had been skirting, and Twilight trotted into the gently-sloped saddle-shaped divet in the hill. The not-yet-yellow grass obscured her view until the moment she was upon it, so much so that she nearly stepped in a spot of cracked, reddish earth.
"What?" Twilight stopped, inspecting the spot, then at what Looking was so focused on.
It wasn't much more than a disturbance in the grass. A circle no wider than two ponies end-to-end had been flattened some time ago. In the center, more grass had been crushed, and something had discolored the stalks there, creating a strange scratchwork of brown and green. The earth below it had been similarly discolored in strange spots, making a nonsense outline.
"What is it, Looking?" Twilight said, tilting her head.
"Don't you recognize it?" Looking crouched down in a way that reminded Twilight of Opalescence. "It's dried blood, and it’s been here a while."
Blood! Twilight's heart seized and she took a step back, a little unnerved. Now it made sense. Something had collapsed here and crushed the grass, and it had been injured.
"H-hold on," she said, trying to keep her voice steady and professional, "I'll do a scan."
She closed her eyes and lowered her head, reaching out and searching for the telltale unbalanced whisper of an aura that signified soul magic. At this point, she'd performed the spell so many times she didn't have to focus particularly hard to weave it, and each and every time, it had returned exactly zero response, so Twilight nearly jumped out of her own hooves when it went ping! "Oh!"
"What? What'd you find?" Looking raised his head, his eyes wide.
"It was here," Twilight said, not quite believing it herself. "It's a soul magic aura, just like you said. Weak and nearly faded, but here." Then she furrowed her brow and walked around the site, positioning herself up next to the bloody spot and looking out into the world. In the distance, Canterlot's magnificent spires and extravagant buildings gleamed. "Whatever the spell created," she said, "it landed here."
"Oh." Looking's voice caught Twilight's attention. "Twilight, look at this."
He held, in his magic, a small, crusty clump of grass. No, Twilight corrected herself upon closer inspection. A feather.
It had been soaked in blood and had long since dried, leaving its bristles crusted and bent and nearly coloring the whole thing a dull, muddy brown, save for one spot right at the very tip. There, the feather's original forest green color still shone true.
Gabe's addition to the weaponized tree required them to add a good deal of wood along the length of the bent branch. The resulting extension stuck out into the air opposite the cup, pointing out into the sky.
Sweetie Belle had watched as the others hung a basket from the end with a length of rope and began to stack old bricks in it. Scootaloo got pretty excited when she had to nail in the spike keeping the branch bent even harder.
"Now we're talkin'," Scoots had muttered to herself as she stomped the stake into the ground.
They’d stopped once the wood began to groan angrily, and now they stood together near the cup at the end of the branch. She watched as Gabe passed a hefty yet hoof-sized rock to Scootaloo. "The honor's all yours, Scoots," he said.
She eagerly (but gently) loaded the treeapult, giggling all the while.
The four walked back to what Gabe said was ‘probably a safe distance, don’t worry about it’ and Scootaloo picked up her lengthy poking stick. Sweetie's ears twitched as she heard Applejack trot up behind them and stare at the groaning, bent-over tree.
"Hey now, before ya–"
"No-no-wait, hold on. Watch this." Scootaloo held out the stick and, ever so gently, nudged the stake with its tip.
The tree, now with the freedom to do so, expressed its displeasure with lightning speed and the mightiest THWAP Sweetie had ever had the pleasure of hearing with her own two ears. The onlookers were treated to a blast of leaf-strewn wind and a lesson on why they had kept their distance: the stake whipped around on the rope fast enough to embed itself into the tree's trunk. Meanwhile, the little rock transformed into a blur via sheer force and rocketed out over the park, over the field past the park, and into the Everfree Forest.
Scootaloo whooped and hollered and jumped in the air. Apple Bloom widened her eyes and rubbed her head. Applejack got a heavily concerned look on her face, and Gabe pumped his hoof in a way that was definitely not cute and muttered "Aw, fuck yeah," which Sweetie guessed she wasn't supposed to hear. Then he looked right at her.
The little unicorn's eyebrows shot up and she tore her eyes away from his as fast as she could, cursing her white coat and praying that her blush would go away before Scootaloo noticed.
Of course, because the universe hated her, Scootaloo did look back, but a voice interrupted the snarky remark that Sweetie could see forming behind those devious purple eyes.
"Hey, kids did you just now see an... Um, is that what I think it is?"
"Oh, uh—hey, Twi," Applejack said, giving her a quick nod before looking back at the treebuchet, still a little dumbfounded. Twilight paid her very little mind, trotting up towards the tree as she wiped the sweat from her brow. The duo had been combing the fields all day.
It was the work of a madpony—a tree that had been fitted with structural supports and a counterweight, all held together by at-best questionable carpentry and a heavy helping of nails and ropes. An arboreal siege weapon.
"Holy Celestia," Looking Glass said from beside her.
The unicorn mare huffed. No kidding.
"Twilight! Did ya see? Did ya like it? Huh?" Apple Bloom rushed up to the purple unicorn, her eyes wide and sparkling. Scootaloo was not far behind.
"Oh, Twilight, you shoulda seen it! It was amazing, it musta thrown that rock across the Everfree! Woo!" She buzzed off, too full of excited energy. "Let's do it again!"
"Wait, hold on now sugar cube–"
"And you all designed this?" Twilight boggled.
"Yeah!" said Sweetie Belle, puffing out her chest. Then her eyes widened and she quickly checked her flank. "Aw..."
"My goodness, is that a counterweight?" Looking Glass said.
"Yeah! It was Gabe's idea!" Sweetie pointed a hoof at the little green colt, who gave Twilight a wave. She offered a confused, hesitant wave back. Then Sweetie Belle looked back to Looking. "Also, who the heck are you?"
"Sweetie Belle!" AJ said, apparently summoned from her stupor by bad manners, "that is not how we greet new ponies!"
"Sorry," the filly muttered.
"Oh, it's quite alright. I'm from Canterlot, and I'm just visiting for some business with Ms. Sparkle here. My name is Looking Glass."
"Oh, that's pretty cool, I guess."
Ah, the tact of young foals.
Gabe trotted up to the two and stuck out his hoof. As he walked, Twilight happily noted his lack of bandages. "Nice to meet'cha, Mr. Glass. I'm Gabriel."
"And you as well," the black-and-white pony responded, bumping the offered hoof. "That's quite an exotic name."
"I'm not from around here," Gabe smiled.
Twilight's breath caught.
"Ah. Well, I trust you're enjoying Ponyville?"
That couldn't be right.
"Oh, yeah, especially when I get to build medieval weaponry out of a tree."
That absolutely, positively couldn't be right.
"Yes, I can... see that. Clever use of leverage."
Twilight saw, in his gaze, a sharp, gruesome pain. His eyes spoke not just of terrible hurt and bitter, lonesome grief, but also deep, vengeful wrath. It felt like a tendril made of something very cold and very dark wrapped around her heart.
"Thanks! It took a lot of fiddling to get the weight-to-length ratio right."
A strange arrival a week ago. Mysterious, unknown. Odd name, weird habits, similar to those of a normal foal's, but not quite... and a forest-green coat. It too lined up far perfectly. Twilight Sparkle, star pupil of Princess Celestia, valiantly battled losing her lunch right there on the grassy hill.
"Erm, Twilight? You good?" The unicorn blinked herself back to the present. The colt was standing right in front of her, giving her a concerned look. "You look like you're about to puke."
She gulped and let out a nervous chuckle. "Ah, why wouldn't I be? I mean, why would I be? I'm fine! Completely fine!" She pointedly ignored Applejack's judgmental look. "Um, well, we better get going, right Looking? We've got a lot of ground to cover, right?"
The other unicorn's eyes darted around. "Um, yes, I suppose we do?"
"Well then come on, slowpoke!" Twilight motioned with wide eyes. "We'd better get moving."
"...alright?"
"Welp, you heard the stallion! Bye, Applejack! Bye, kids!" She waved like she was trying to smack a fly out of the air and hooked a foreleg around Looking Glass's neck.
"Urk! Erm, bye! Nice meeting you!" The stallion waved to the group of confused foals and a very overwhelmed mare.
Once they were for sure out of earshot, Twilight stopped dragging the Canterlot unicorn, much to his relief.
"Oof," he said rubbing his neck with a hoof. "Alright, Sparkle. What's going on."
"I think it's the colt."
He tilted his head, flopping his jet black mane to the side and locking that golden stare on her. "You think what's the colt?"
"The aura. The subject of the soul spell. I think it's that colt, Gabriel."
Looking's eyebrows met and he frowned. "Twilight, I appreciate your eagerness to help me solve my case, but I don't think a unique name is grounds to–"
"He showed up last week," she interrupted, "out of nowhere. He has no known family. He wasn't in the ministry's registers. It's like the universe just plopped him there on the edge of Ponyville. That's not even mentioning the feather. You saw his coat color."
"B-but, the caster had to have been a unicorn."
"Yes," Twilight said, "but the subject of the spell could have been anypony."
His eyes went wide. "You don't mean–"
"I think somepony may have tried to use a foal to do soul magic, and this is the result."
The stallion's jaw fell open and he held his head with a hoof. "How could somepony do such a thing? This is... It's..."
Twilight swallowed. "Unspeakably, awfully, deeply evil. Somepony could have ripped out a little colt's soul."
"But, if that's the case," Looking Glass met her equally terrified gaze, "then what's in that colt right now?"
Twilight tried to think of some theory, some explanation to quell the maelstrom of thoughts and worries bogging down her mind as she looked up at the brilliant blue sky.
She failed.
"...what do we do?"
"And what're you all craving on this hot, dry day?"
"I'll have a vanilla," Sweetie Belle smiled her cutest smile up at the ice cream mare. She nodded and glanced at the other foals.
"Chocolate!" Scootaloo hopped from hoof to hoof with a big smile on her face.
"Peanut butter," Apple Bloom said thoughtfully.
"You guys have cookie dough?" asked Gabe.
Scootaloo wrinkled her muzzle. "What the hay are you talking about, ya weirdo?"
"Yeah, Why would I have any cookie dough?" The ice cream mare nodded as she adjusted her cart's umbrella, reminding Sweetie exactly why the fillies had begged Applejack to get them ice cream. This dry heat is killin' me.
"You've never heard of cookie dough ice cream?" the colt asked, looking incredulous.
"No," the mare frowned. Her horn lit up and an ice cream scooper hovered its way off the brightly-colored ice cream cart, disappearing behind its countertop. "Is that some kinda fancy-schmancy new flavor from Canterlot?"
"Lady, I've never even been to Canterlot." Gabe shook his head. "It's where you put little bits of cookie dough in with the ice cream and you get to run into these little sugary treasures as you go. It's awesome."
The mare raised an eyebrow and put a hoof to her chin. "Now there's an idea..."
"Anyway, I guess I'll just take a vanilla one, thanks." He glanced over his shoulder. "Applejack?"
"No, thanks," the farmer said, shooting a disapproving look Apple Bloom's way, "we're gonna be havin' supper in an hour." Her sister examined the underside of the ice cream cart's colorful umbrella with a remarkable intensity.
"Suit yourself. Thanks for the ice cream, by the way."
Sweetie's head jumped up with a blush. "Oh, yeah, thanks Applejack!" The other fillies echoed her. Wow, it sure is a good thing Rarity isn't here. She'd have had my hide for forgetting to say ‘thank you.’ She shivered as she imagined the scale of the talking-to she had evaded by sheer luck.
The ice cream was a perfect idea—thanks, Scoots—and the five made their way to one of the market street tables to relax and enjoy their sweet, satisfying treat. Sweetie hummed as she began to work on her cone. How does anypony ever get anything but vanilla? It's just so good!
Scootaloo buzzed and bumped around in her seat, taking bites out of her own ice cream. "That was so freakin' cool!" she said through a chocolatey grin, "I bet we sent that rock past the castle!"
Apple Bloom giggled. "We built that launcher so well it's downright scary."
"Nah," Gabe hummed, "ridiculously awesome, definitely, but not scary. What's terrifying about throwing rocks?"
"Well fer' one, y'all could have put a hole in somepony's home," Applejack rebuked with a raised eyebrow and half-lidded eyes, "or somepony."
"Okay, granted, I don't wanna hurt anypony, but that's why we shot it at the forest."
"Oh yeah?" Scootaloo leaned onto the table with a chocolate-stained hoof, "what if it hit Zecora's house?"
"What, the zebra?" Gabe shrugged. "I'd have to go and apologize, I guess."
"You know she lives in the Everfree Forest, right?" Sweetie Belle said with a healthy dose of skepticism.
"And?" Gabe smirked and raised an eyebrow.
"And you'd have to walk through the Everfree Forest to get to a spooky shaman's tree hut!"
Apple Bloom snorted. "She's not that scary."
"I'm missing your point, here." Gabe chomped at his ice cream and promptly widened his eyes. "Ooh! Now this really takes me back."
"Are you seriously saying you'd walk through the Everfree without a second thought?" Scootaloo tapped her hoof against her head. "You really are crazy."
The colt grinned. "Is that a dare?"
"Nopony is going in the Everfree," groaned Applejack, a hoof over her muzzle.
"Whatever. Everfree isn't scary anyways."
Scootaloo snorted. "Okay, tough guy. If the Everfree Forest isn't scary, then what is."
"Nothing around here, that's for sure."
"Oh yeah?" Sweetie saw a glint behind the pegasus filly's eyes.
"Oh yeah.”
Scootaloo straightened up with a victorious smirk on her face and jabbed a hoof at the market. "If you're really not scared of anything in Ponyville, then you'll go ask one of the spa ponies on a date." Then she shoved the remains of her ice cream cone into her mouth.
Apple Bloom began to giggle furiously behind her ice cream and Sweetie couldn't help but drop her jaw. The two notoriously beautiful mares stood in front of Carrot Cake's stand, haggling from the looks of it. Gabe, amazingly, seemed to hesitate just the tiniest bit. He has to turn this one down, right?
"Oh, yeah, Aloe and what’s-her-face. What do I get if I win?"
"Mmphrgh?"
"Scootaloo, swallow!" Applejack was starting to sound really tired.
She produced an audible gulp and wrinkled her muzzle. "Umm..." the orange filly looked around, then looked down at her less-than-unstained hoof. "...a friendly hoof bump?" she said as she rubbed the worst of the chocolate off on her chest.
Applejack groaned.
"Well, it had better be the friendliest hoof bump I'll ever get." And just like that, he passed an incredulous AJ his ice cream and hopped out of his chair.
"Oh, no way..." Scootaloo muttered.
The fillies huddled together and watched as the colt strode right up to the spa ponies. The Friday afternoon bustle claimed their words but they saw the mares talk to Gabe for much, much longer than it took to turn down a colt, at least according to Rarity. He motioned with a hoof, they pointed at his side, he struck a pose and grinned as Lotus looked a little sick. Then the three even began to laugh! What was he saying?
Sweetie felt her face grow a little hotter and her heart beat a little faster. They'd never go on a date with a little colt like him... would they?
After what seemed like a million years, Gabe smiled and gave them a big wave, which they returned, and trotted back to the table, a pleased grin plastered across his stupid face.
"So," he said, hopping back up onto his chair, "this had better be a really good hoof bump."
"What?!" Scootaloo dragged her hooves through her mane and streaked it with chocolate and dirt. "What'd they say?"
"Yeah, spill it!" Apple Bloom and Applejack spoke at the exact same time, then stared at each other. The former stuck out her tongue.
"Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to go on that date with Lotus tomorrow. Now, about your end of the deal–"
"What?!" Sweetie Belle shrieked the moment her brain confirmed that, yes, she had heard him correctly. "Are you kidding me?!" There were so many emotions swirling around inside her that she didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or spontaneously combust.
Gabe burst out laughing and shaking his head. "Holy hell, I really had you all going, huh? Hah!" He wiped the tears from his eyes. "No, I'm just messin' with ya. They said to come back and ask again in six years, but until then, I was welcome at the spa anytime. I'll take that back, now, Applejack."
Sweetie crossed her forelegs and channeled Rarity as hard as she could, fixing the most venomous stare at the giggling colt. "Ha. Ha. Very funny."
"Thank you! I certainly do try my very hardest."
He chuckled as Sweetie harrumphed and slumped even further into her chair. Then the colt slurped the last of his ice cream out the bottom of its cone, which he shoved directly into his mouth à la Scootaloo. Crunch crunch crunch.
"Now, then, Scoots," he said after swallowing, fixing his eye on the still-gaping filly, "where's my prize? I had better be impressed."
"Oh, you'll be impressed," Scootaloo replied, replacing her open mouth with a devious grin. "You're not gonna be ready for the pure friendship this hoof bump is gonna contain."
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, I don't know if you can handle it," she added, "maybe you should back off."
"I'll die before I turn down something that friendly!"
Scootaloo's grin only widened as she rolled her shoulder, stretching out her foreleg. "Well, don't say I didn't warn ya."
The colt slapped his hooves together. "Bring it on,"
Applejack groaned and tugged her hat down over her face.
Rainbow Dash's wings ached as she came in for a shivery landing beneath the Sweet Apple Acres front gate. The thunderstorm was behind schedule, and, well, sometimes her reputation as Ponyville's best flier wasn't all fans and camera flashes. Her coat was wetter than it was when she got out of the bath, and her mane was even worse. The pegasus ran a hoof through it and shook herself as best as her tired muscles would allow, trying her damndest to get the water out of her coat.
"Figures they always give me thunderhead duty," she grumbled.
"Geez, Rainbow, what happened to you?" a high voice said with a sigh. "Looks like you got put through a dishwasher."
Rainbow blinked and looked at the greenish lump on the shaded grass beneath an apple tree a little ways away. Between the grass matching his coat near-perfectly and the sun-broken shadow moving over them both, she had to strain her eyes to pick out the colt.
Wow, when he closes his eyes he blends the heck in, she thought, Celestia, he can be sneaky when he wants to.
"Oh, hey, kiddo," Rainbow said, exhaustion dripping from her voice almost as much as water dripped off her coat. "Sorry I'm late."
"Ah, you're good. I was just–" He produced a massive yawn, his mouth a pink island in a sea of green. "...I was just chillin'. No biggie."
"Good to hear."
He looked so darned comfortable lying there on the grass that she couldn't help but want to join him. Rainbow's urge to be responsible and bring her foster son home put up a valiant but brief fight against her crushing lethargy. Her tired legs were carrying the pegasus over to a particularly enticing sunny patch of grass before she knew it.
Gabe made an indignant noise as she shook her mane and flopped down, sticking his head up. "Gah! Wet!"
Rainbow chuckled. "Yup." Oh, Celestia, it felt good to finally lie down and take a load off. "Hope you don't mind if I lay here for a bit..."
"Mmgh." He lay his head back down on the grass. "Fine with me."
"So," she said, getting comfortable, "how was your little hangout with the fillies?"
"It was pretty good. My hoof fuckin’ kills though."
Rainbow grinned. Foals always hurt themselves screwing around. "What happened to it?"
"A friendly hoof bump," he said as if that was a perfectly reasonable explanation. The deadpan absurdity was too much and Rainbow let out a laugh.
"Happens to the best of us, kid. Remind me to tell you the story about my alley race sometime."
Rainbow let the sunlight gradually warm her up and listened to the gentle rustling of the trees. The day was the perfect temperature to warm up a cold, wet pegasus, and, pleasantly coincidentally, the perfect day for a nap.
Wait, she thought, opening her eyes and wrinkling her muzzle, there was something I wanted to tell him. It took real strength to muster the energy to talk.
"Hey, Gabe," she mumbled.
"Yeah?" he murmured.
"I've got tomorrow off," Rainbow said, closing her eyes again, "and I thought that maybe, um, we could, uh, go to the park for a little flight lesson or somethin' after you meet with Sandy. Whaddaya think?
She heard the colt sigh long and deep. "No flight lesson, not yet," he said, his voice low. Rainbow's spirits sank a little bit. "But, um, I'd still like to hang out with you. Do you think it'd be okay if we, like, went to the park and just... relaxed?"
Relax... Relaxing sounds nice... "Sure, kid. That sounds perfect."
Birdsong echoed across the wind from some far-off place. The orchard rustled around them. All felt right with the world.
Rainbow was asleep in moments.
A hoof fumbled at a doorknob and key. An unoiled bolt groaned and slid into place. A tan and brown pegasus let out a long, drawn-out sigh around the package in her mouth, staring vacantly with bleary eyes at her office door for a long while. Then she turned and began to plod down the hallway.
As she walked, a well-loved but quickly-donned pair of saddlebags chafed against her coat, rubbing its fur the wrong way with every step. She ignored it and made her way down the stairs, past an abandoned break room and the darkened foal therapy room, and into the lobby.
Once again, she found herself standing and staring at the wall. With a groan and a shake of her head, she forced her legs to move. A single, buzzing lightbulb cast fuzzy light and long shadows across the room and up the walls, staining the drawn curtains with wobbly shadows. The air was oppressively quiet, and the pegasus only had her hoofsteps and her tired breathing for company.
She hobbled to the front desk and stuck out her neck, dropping the package in a sad-looking wire basket sloppily labeled "outgoing mail" with construction paper and marker, and the last element on today's mental to-do list finally got crossed off. The mare gave her package's postage last look, just to make sure. Yes, the address was correct. 'Equestria Ministry of Public Health and Family Services—Canterlot Office'.
The report had taken hours to write because its subject was not an easily described pony. The mare had made sure to make the situation absolutely clear and to make her requests for additional support and a royal investigation into the possible trafficking operation in the north even more so. To be perfectly honest, she was having a harder and harder time believing the theory, but if there was even a chance other foals were in the same situation, she had an obligation to do something about it. Besides, she didn't have a better explanation.
With any luck, she'd hear back from them within a month. With a great deal more, they might even believe her. Whoof, she thought as she rubbed the side of her head, I'll get to those foster request letters tomorrow.
Sandy Hills pushed open the front door and walked out into the cool night air, taking a deep breath through her nose and blowing it out in a long, drawn-out whistle. Nearly all of her worry and stress melted off of her, and she began the walk home.
The streets were empty. The windows were darkened. Luna's night sky was out in all its brilliance. The quiet journey home was the perfect opportunity for the last remaining worry, the last remaining doubt of the day to worm its way out of the back of her skull and fill her mind, reminding her that, after an exhaustive registry search, a frustrating discussion with a coworker, and a visit to the local cartographer, she had learned a rather worrisome fact, one that threatened to cast into doubt everything that a certain little colt had told her.
There was no known town named Westfield.
The scroll flexed once before neatly unrolling itself. Princess Celestia’s aching eyes flicked over its surface as her eyebrows drew together. Then it followed her out of her bedroom, down the stairs, and to her chambers’ doors, floating beside her head as she ordered a guard to fetch her sister as quickly as possible.
Luna arrived later than she expected. Must be a busy night court. Her face was worn and gaunt with concern but focused as she closed the massive chamber doors right behind her glimmering starlit tail. It’s floating even lower. A very busy night court, then.
“What is it, sister? Another request for me to mingle with our little ponies?”
“News,” Celestia stated. She floated the letter to her sister, and she read it in a moment. Her eyes grew wide.
“They found the interloper?”
She nodded. “She is brief, but it would appear that way. A pony, no doubt. Twilight seems unsure of her next step.”
Luna sighed. “We must apprehend it, right away. There isn't much time to waste.” She stopped, breathing deeply, then turned a quizzical eye on her sister. “The Guard, then?”
Celestia pursed her lips, rereading the letter. “I am… hesitant. I would be confident in Twilight and her friends, they have faced monsters before, but this? They may not be prepared to take it head-on, and I fear a platoon would only hasten the issue.” She rubbed her chin. “Perhaps if we… Sister?”
Luna stared at the floor with a lowered head, her hooves a step further apart than they should have been. She breathed deeply as if she had just landed from a vigorous flight.
Their eyes met. “Worry not, sister, I am quite alright, I,” she paused again to breathe. “These bouts are merely… I do not…” Her eyes grew wide and her gasps deepened. “I—”
Celestia could only stare as her sister took another toiled breath and dropped to the ground, struggling for air.