//------------------------------// // Case Nineteen, Prologue: Death Shall Come on Swift Wings // Story: Ponyville Noire: Rising Nightmares // by PonyJosiah13 //------------------------------// Most of the city of Ponyville was asleep at two in the morning, her streets quiet and her windows dimmed. But the Dockside District never really slept.  The waters of the Maresippi lapped at the docks, the dark waves seemingly trying to climb up the wooden and concrete pillars. Boats tied to the piers bobbed up and down in the waves, their creaking and thumping carrying across the still, humid night air, mixing with the many hoofsteps and voices of stevedores, the thumping of crates and squeaking of cart wheels and the rattling of cargo cranes lifting nets of cargo into and out of the bowels of ships. A mid-sized cargo ship was secured to a pier a ways off from the others, its formerly white hull scuffed with rust and dings; the name Sealight Delight was only barely visible on the hull, the pale purple paint scratched and faded. Workers moved back and forth between it and the nearest warehouse, placing the crates upon conveyor belts that carried them into the receiving area like a tongue guiding morsels of food into a great mouth.  A rust-colored griffon pushed a cart loaded with boxes to the conveyor belt, pausing for a moment to wipe his sweaty forehead. “What the heck is in all this stuff?” he mused out loud as he bent down and started to heave it up onto the belt.  “Cans, tools, reams of paper,” a scruffy red hippogriff replied, helping his younger companion with his load. “Little of this, little of that.”  The griffon hefted another box onto the belt, watching as it traveled down the belt and through the plastic sheet covering the portal inside. “No, I mean--”  His question was interrupted by the hippogriff smacking him on the back of the head. “We carry legitimate, boring, normal cargo,” the elder snarled. “That’s all we need to know. You’re not paid to ask questions, Simon. Sooner you learn that, the better.”  The griffon gulped and nodded, helping his senior heave another crate up onto the conveyor belt. The belt hummed and groaned as it carried the crate into the warehouse, through the plastic sheet, and down a long hallway into the heart of the receiving area.  A yellow unicorn mare scanned each box with her horn as it rattled past her on the belt. Two boxes passed by her without comment and were carefully placed in the growing stack of crates at the end of the belt, but when she swept the magical orange beam over the third one, a small red X on the corner glowed in response.  “This one, too,” she reported, lifting the box with her magic and placing it on a cart behind her that was already groaning beneath the weight of several boxes loaded on top of it.   The orange earth pony in the light raincoat tilted his Ponyville Manticores cap back to examine his clipboard. “Yup, that’s all of them,” he nodded, tossing the clipboard on top of the stack of boxes. “Thanks, Glitter.”  “No prob,” Glitter replied, turning back to the conveyor belts and removing the incoming boxes to stack them.  The capped earth pony grabbed the handles of the cart and started to push it with a grunt. The wheels rumbled, squeaked, and groaned in protest as he drove it across the concrete floor of the receiving area.  “You need help with that, Curveball?” Glitter called.  “Nah, but could you get the door?” the capped pony huffed back.  In response, the door glowed orange and swung open. “Thanks!” Curveball smiled as he pushed the cart through. He carried it down the hallway, past empty offices and file rooms and conference areas, and then through another set of doors.  The other room of stacked crates was dimly lit by only a few low-hanging lamps, the better to not get undue attention; the shadows around them gave one the impression of a campfire at night, barely staving off the darkness. A single battered pickup truck was parked outside, the bed protruding into the front area through the opened doors, the tailgate open and ready to receive their cargo. Four other ponies stood around the lot. Three of them, each wearing a light jacket, were passing a bottle of bourbon around and smoking reeking cigarettes; the fourth stood by himself in the shadows, reading a book.  “About time,” the tall blue-gray earth pony grunted, tossing his cigar aside and striding forward, accompanied by his two companions. “C’mon, we gotta get this shit into the truck and out there.”  He and Curveball hauled the cart over to the truck and the four ponies hauled the first crate off. The earth pony fumbled for a moment, then managed to unlatch a hidden compartment in the bottom and pulled the drawer open to reveal its contents: several red crystals carefully carved into prisms and glowing faintly with power, each set carefully into foam packaging.  “Castfire crystals,” the white pegasus mare grinned, gently extracting the packages from the compartment. “That’s gonna make some ponies real happy.”  “And more importantly, make us a lot of money,” the large earth pony replied, opening up the false bottom in the bed of the truck for his partner to place their booty inside. This done, he sealed the hidden compartment on the crate, pushed it aside, and turned to the next one.  One by one, each of the crates surrendered their hidden contents: packages of drugs, silencers, armor-piercing bullets, counterfeit bits, and more. Finally, they got to the last box, a small, tightly sealed metal container marked with refrigeration wards.   When they opened this one, all four of the smugglers paused to stare at their prize. Lined up in a row like little soldiers inside the box were fifteen test tubes, all tightly sealed and placed in styrofoam, each filled near to the brim with a pale yellow liquid.  “What’s this?” Curveball asked aloud, taking one of the tubes and shaking it, causing the thick liquid inside to slosh.  “I dunno,” the blue-gray pony replied, squinting at the tube. “Doesn’t look like any drug I’ve ever seen.”  "That's for our...special client," the large earth pony commented, glancing at the stallion with the beard, who was still deeply invested in his book. "We're getting paid a lot to bring that in for him." The white pegasus snatched the tube up with a wing. “Maybe I should take a whiff,” she grinned, trying to unscrew the top.  “Cirrus, you know what they say about dealers who sample their own product?” the earth pony asked, quirking an eyebrow.  “Ahh, live a little, Granite,” Cirrus smirked, undoing the top with a pop.  “I really wouldn’t do that,” another voice interrupted.  The stallion who had been reading a book was strolling up to them. In the light of the lamp, his full face was revealed: the brown earth pony had a black mane streaked with gray and salt-and-pepper stubble around his smiling mouth. His gray-green eyes glinted with humor in the low light, and he wore a gray shirt and a red-spotted ascot. His cutie mark was a golden skull with red and green gems set into the eyes; the jewels seemed to glow like living eyes as he moved.  “So you finally got your nose out of that book, egghead?” the tangerine-colored griffon sneered, strolling over to the book that their guest had left. “The hell is this, anyway? ‘Cultures of the Mexicolt Valleys?’” He scoffed and tossed the book into a corner. “Geek.”  The stallion frowned at him for a moment, his gray-green eyes flickering like a blade catching the light, then turned back to the other three.  “What is it, Doc?” Granite scowled at the tubes.  “That,” the doctor replied. “Is not your concern. You are paid to smuggle the materials that we request into Ponyville. That is all.”  “So,” Cirrus said, stoppering the tube again and placing it back in the compartment. “If it ain’t drugs, then what is it? Some kinda weapon? Gonna poison the reservoir?”  “Guys, maybe we should just give him his stuff and move on?” Curveball asked nervously.  “You should listen to your amigo,” the scruffy stallion nodded, casually dusting off his ascot.  “The thing is, the last few months have seen some really weird shit going on around town,” Granite said, taking a step forward. “Gang war, monsters, and a fucking zombie apocalypse running around the town. And when you refuse to tell us what this shit is for, that worries us. Especially since I know that you've been bringing a lot of this stuff in over the last few moons.” He took a step forward, looming over the elder stallion.  “So what the fuck have you got us involved in?” he growled.  “If the Industry Kings are not satisfied with the deal, we can make one with somepony else,” the pony with the ascot replied coolly, looking around and letting out a soft whistle like a distant bird call. “Somepony else who could benefit from what you are being paid, who might benefit from your...removal from power after the police received several tips about your operation.”  Granite’s gray eyes blazed with rage. “Are you threatening me, doc?” he snarled, his voice like stones grinding together.  “So you’re not a complete idiota,” the stallion replied with a smile.  “That’s it!” Granite snapped, his hoof whipping beneath his jacket. The .45 hoofgun let out a sharp click as it emerged and pressed itself against the doctor’s forehead as Curveball and Cirrus both drew their own guns.  “You’re gonna tell us exactly what the fuck this stuff is and what you’re planning with it,” Granite snarled. “And then you’re gonna call your boss down here and--”  “Say,” the doctor interrupted, his smile never faltering as he glanced over his shoulder. “Where’s your amigo?”  The three smugglers looked up at where the griffon had been standing and gaped. There was no sign of the griffon, just the book laying facedown on the floor.  “Rich?” Cirrus called, looking around.  Her call was answered by a sudden flutter of wings, then the lightbulb burst with a loud pop and a burst of light like lightning before plunging the entire room into darkness.  “What the fuck?!” Granite shouted, fumbling for a flashlight in his pocket and clicking it on. The little beam seemed pitiful in the crushing darkness as he swept it over the lamp, revealing that the lightbulb had shattered, leaving shards of glass on the floor.  “Que sorprendente,” the doctor chuckled in the darkness.  “Rich!” Cirrus called, hustling over to where the griffon had been standing, flicking open a little cigarette lighter. The tiny flame illuminated her face, allowing Curveball and Cirrus to see the concern slowly creeping across her countenance as she looked around.  “Where’d he go?” Curveball asked, unable to keep the nervousness out of his voice as Granite continued to scan the stacks of boxes with his flashlight.  Something shifted in the darkness beyond. Holding the lighter up high and aiming her pistol before her, Cirrus stepped forward.  A blur of shadowy movement rushed past her silently. Cirrus let out a gurgling cry, her gun and lighter clattering to the ground, the flame extinguishing in a moment. Granite whirled the flashlight back onto her to see the mare staggering towards them, her eyes wide with terror, both hooves clutching her throat. Blood, colored black in the darkness, gushed out from beneath her hooves.  “Cirrus!” Curveball cried, rushing over to her. She tumbled into his arms, letting out a choked, bubbling sob, then went still. Curveball lowered her to the floor, shaking her and calling her name even though he knew that she wouldn’t respond.  Another shadow whooshed through the dark with a flapping of wings and pain seared across Curveball’s foreleg. “Ow!” he cried out in a mixture of pain and shock, dropping his gun and clutching his forelimb. Blood ran down his limb from the multiple cuts that had been dragged across his flesh by invisible talons. “The hell?!” he cried, searching with his uninjured foreleg for his gun. He felt the cold metal of the handle, but something blurred before his eyes with another flap of wings, the wind of its passage so close that he instinctively flinched. When he went out to search again, he gasped as he realized that the gun had vanished.  Granite grunted and seized the doctor, holding his pistol to the smaller stallion’s head with one hoof and sweeping his flashlight through the room with his other as he backed them up against a wall.  “I got your friend here!” he shouted, his voice a grating mixture of fury and terror. “I got your friend! You come out right now or I’ll--”  His taunt was cut off by a scream when the ascot-wearing stallion whipped a small knife out of his tail and sunk it into Granite’s leg. The pain made him loosen his grip on his hostage and the stallion dropped to the ground and rolled away.  There was a sound like a muffled cough and Granite grunted in pain. His hoof darted to his neck like he was slapping a mosquito.  The dart that had struck him tumbled out of his neck and clattered to the floor, unnoticed.  “Get back here, you little--!” Granite started to snarl, sweeping his flashlight across the ground in search of his hostage, but then he heard something in the distance.  A low shuffling of hooves. A soft moaning.  “No…” he whispered, backing up and stabbing the flashlight into the dark. “No…”  They came from the shadows like ghosts, blank eyes staring, rotten lungs letting out low moans, decaying limbs reaching out for him.  Granite screamed, dropping his flashlight and scrabbling back up against the wall, stumbling on his wounded leg. “Get back!” he shrieked, seizing his pistol in both trembling hooves and opening fire. Each gunshot echoed like a giant was striking the warehouse with a great hammer, each flash of light piercing the darkness in a blinding flash. He struck home with each shot, but the monsters still came, their groaning burrowing into his ears.  “Get away from me!” he screamed, firing again and again as more and more of the dead ponies emerged, growling for his blood.  Curveball dove to the ground as gunshots whistled over his head, covering himself with his forelegs. “Granite, what the fuck?!” he cried as a bullet ricocheted off the wall over his head, staring at his companion, who was screaming and firing at empty air.  “What’s going on?!” Glitter shouted, bursting into the room and immediately ducking as another bullet whistled over her head.  “Get help!” Curveball shouted, scrambling back against a crate for cover. “We’re under att--!”  Another swoosh of wings, this time accompanied by a throaty cry. Glitter screamed and Curveball looked up to see that she was clutching her face, blood dripping onto the floor. Grunting and swearing, she turned back towards the door, blindly fumbling for the handle.  With a hissing of metal, a chain whipped out of the darkness and wrapped around Glitter’s hind leg, yanking her hoof out from beneath her with a grunt of pain. She screamed as she was dragged into the shadows, her hoof scraping against the concrete.  “Glitter!” Curveball cried, rising to go help her, only to be forced back down as another bullet screamed past his ear.  Beneath the tinnitus, he heard Glitter’s screams cut off by the unmistakable sound of flesh torn by a blade and blood spurting onto the stone. “Glitter?!” he cried again, knowing that she wouldn’t answer.  Granite’s cries had turned to faint whimpers. Curveball slowly peeked around, squinting past the light of the cracked flashlight to see the large stallion cowering against the wall, staring around with his eyes wide and his mouth gaping, his gun trembling in his hoof.  His desperate eyes turned on the gun, staring at it with an expression like a pony standing on the edge of a diving board.  “No!” Curveball cried, but all he could do was watch as Granite shoved the gun into his mouth and closed his eyes.  There was a final thunderclap and Granite slumped to the ground, painting the wall behind him with his blood and brain matter.  Curveball sat still in the darkness for several long moments, the only sound his soft, gasping breaths. The blood running down his foreleg was horribly warm and sticky against his cold body, the coppery scent invading his nostrils, and he abruptly realized that tears were running down his face.  Another flashlight clicked on, the light as blinding as the sun. The ascot-wearing stallion was casually striding out of the darkness, a smirk fixed on his face. Ignoring Curveball, he stepped over Cirrus’ body and walked over to where his book lay on the ground. His smirk turned into a scowl when he noticed the bloodstains on the cover.  “Ay, malparido…” he grumbled, picking it up and wiping it off with a hoofkerchief.  “Y-you…” Curveball stammered, trying and failing to force himself to stand up. “Y-y-you killed them…”  “No, I didn’t,” the stallion replied, turning around and nodding past the trembling smuggler. “He did.”  Curveball turned around and felt his heart drop into his stomach. The stallion emerging from the shadows like a vengeful wraith was clad entirely in dark blue, save for his pale yellow wings. Around his body was some kind of armored vest, with a bandolier of darts and syringes strapped across his chest; the pale yellow liquid in each of them was horribly familiar. Secured to his belt was a coiled chain with a curved sickle-like blade attached to one end. A raven with a small red mark on its chest like a bloodstain sat on the intruder’s back, glaring at Curveball with beady black eyes that seemed carved from the night itself.  A hood was drawn over the pony’s head, and upon his face, he wore a mask: a healer’s mask, black, shaped like a crow’s head with a long, pointed beak. Behind the lenses was a pair of eyes as red as burning coals, glaring down at him with unbridled hate. His breath came through the filters of his mask in a low, venomous hiss like a nest of angered serpents.  “Oh, no,” Curveball whimpered, crawling away. “Oh, no. I didn’t know it was you! I didn’t know it was you!”  He thumped into a pair of legs and looked up to see the ascot-wearing stallion smirking down at him.  “Well, now you do know,” he smirked. “Now, I imagine that your amigos outside might have heard some of those gunshots, but mi compadre has ensured that we’ll be alone for a little longer, so escuchame; I have a message for tu jefes.”  He leaned down so that those gray-green eyes filled Curveball’s vision. “What we are planning is none of your business,” he hissed. “You’re involved whether you want to be or not. Just do what we pay you for and keep your mouths shut, lest you require another appointment with the doctor. Comprende?”  Curveball gulped and nodded, feeling warm liquid trickling down his hind legs.  “Bien,” the stallion beamed at him. “Shall we go, doctor?”  Curveball watched as the masked stallion retrieved the carefully wrapped test tubes, inspecting them for a moment before tucking them into a pocket. He turned and followed his companion towards a side door. The entire time, the raven upon his back glared at Curveball like he was a bug that was just waiting to be eaten.  “Buenas noches,” the doctor waved to Curveball as he held the door open for his companion, who paused briefly to remove the healer’s mask from his head and strap it to his belt before stepping outside. The earth stallion exited after him, the sound of the door slamming like a great thunderclap.  Only when they were gone did Curveball allow himself to exhale, a breath that quickly turned into sobs and whimpers as he curled up on the ground, laying down next to Cirrus’ body, the reek of her blood invading his nostrils.