Somma’s scrying was able to give a general direction of Wilkin’s ‘chosen one’ but getting exact coordinates would have required unicorn help. It took a few missed tries but after a week of trying Daring followed Somma into a remote mining town in Equestria’s northeast, certain the unicorn was around here somewhere.
It was a small enough town that everyone should know everyone else at least superficially. Somma wanted to pretend they had a magical artifact that needed the most powerful spellcaster in town to charge it for them. Daring suspected from Somma’s description of the chaos Wilkin generated that this unicorn might be in some kind of trouble and if she was hiding out in a place this remote, she was probably hiding her power. She’d fished out a couple fake sheriffs’ badges from one of her safety deposit boxes scattered around Equestria and had sketched out a rough likeness of the ‘suspect’ and was planning on discretely asking the general store owner if anyone new had been in town lately.
Both their efforts were unnecessary. As they entered the town’s main street they could hear a jukebox blaring from a local diner along with occasional tufts of smoke which had three of its four windows blown out from the inside. Daring watched one pony and then another go stop at the broken windows and look in, only to canter off with their tails between their legs.
Walking by on the far side of the street, Daring saw their teenaged unicorn mare huddled at a table strewn with empty sundae glasses and vodka bottles. In front of her was a tear-stained letter and a stack of pictures… the same picture it seemed of a guy who looked like he could have been Spitfire’s unicorn cousin standing with a mint green unicorn mare in a lyre. Welkin’s ‘chosen’ picked up one of the pictures and burnt it to ash, froze a second one into a hunk of ice and hurled it against a wall to shatter, dipped the third into what Daring had thought was vodka until it started bubbling and dissolving the third picture like acid.
The mare realized she was on her last picture so she took a stack of napkins from behind the counter placed the picture on top and concentrated. The light forced Daring to look away for a moment but she heard a sizzling pop and when she looked back there were a dozen new copies of the picture scattered across the diner. The mare gathered them all up without breaking her vacant staring contest with the wall, took a swig from the vodka bottle she’d dissolved the last picture in, gagged, and stuffed more icecream into her face as she shredded the first of her new pictures into a thousand pieces.
“I got this one.” Daring whispered to Somnambula, taking Welkin’s grimoire, “I’ve been there before.” She walked casually into the diner, past the owner who was cowering behind the counter, unwilling to leave his shop and too scared to try to kick the unicorn out. The mare spared one glance at Daring who had done a decent enough job to make herself look like law enforcement, coming towards her with a sword strapped to her side, and growled. One of the chairs rose to block her path, it’s steel legs tied themselves into a knot and then fell with a thud to one side. Daring stepped past the warning and casually sat down across from the grieving mare, “So what’s the plan to get him back?”
“I don’t want him back.” the unicorn mare spat, “He ditched me for his lyrist.”
“I didn’t mean ‘get him back beside you'. He doesn’t deserve that. I meant how do you get back at that gelding for making the biggest mistake of his life and one-up his betrayal so no one else ever messes with you again.” Drunk, mascaraed, tear-stained eyes glimmered at her curiously and Daring continued, “Oh you must know how it goes. He starts a rumor that gets you detention, you start a rumor that gets him arrested. He eggs your cart, you burn down his. He leaves you for his new marefriend... you reply back saying you’d already left him for your two new marefriends.”
The unicorn smiled for the first time, spraying Daring with ice cream and vodka as she snickered gleefully, “That’s gold.”
“Nah” shrugged Daring, “Bronze at best. Gold would be if you joined me and the inked up broad in the harem of our lord of shadows and help resurrect him to the mortal realm, building a family that will never leave you and always be by your side no matter what while forging an empire that will make the world tremble.”
Several glasses smashed to the ground as the unicorn reared, her arms skywards, “BUCK YESSS!!!”
“Great! All you need to do is break the seal on this grimoire of forbidden spells that Celestia doesn’t think you’re smart enough to use and then do whatever the voices inside your head tell you.”
The tome had been snatched away before she’d finished speaking. A beam of bright magic shot out from the unicorn and shattered the lock. The grimoire flew open and over the unicorn as if it was trying to eat her face, triggering a chorus of maniacal laughter, and when it pulled back her eyes had changed color to viridian green. Somnambula joined them to watch the transformation finish as Wilkin laughed until she gagged, falling over backward onto the bench, and broke out into unnatural muscle spasms.
“Wilkin… are you OK?”
Nothing but a repressed wheezing sound broke from Wilkin’s as her limbs and tail flailed wildly. Daring checked her airway but didn’t see any obstructions, and was about to turn her on her side when faint words squeaked out of blueing lips, “Arcane overload resulting in massive organ failure. Need immediate CPR… preferably to the crotch… you and Somnambula should take turns.”
“… Very funny.”
Somnambula walked forwards and punched Wilkin in the ribs, knocking out the lung full of air she’d been holding and drawing a very normal ‘urmph’ of pain, “Nice to see you again Somnambula” Wilkin said in a normal voice without looking at who’d hit her.
“And you Wilkin,” Somnambula answered.
“I’m not Wilkin anymore, my name is Starlight Gimmer or...” she looked at herself in a mirror and touching her mascara-laden face with black painted hooves and smiled, “Call me Starkin. Baddest bitch of the Empire” She turned to Somma with sudden urgency, “Do you have him!?”
Somma lifted the scarf around her neck to show Sombra underneath. Starkin reached for him but Somnambula dropped the scarf and raised her hoof to block her, “maybe if we went somewhere a little more private.”
“...Fine” sighed Starkin, pulling her saddlebags back onto her from a corner, “Come on, I think I live around here.”