Code was expressionless as Amanita explained what she and Bitterroot had found about High Gloss, but the second the last words were out of her mouth, she leapt into action. “Ponies,” she said, “we need to move. We’ve got a possible kidnap victim and a possible focal ritual just a few blocks from here. The focal ritual is probably just as badly-made as the setup rituals, but we can’t be certain. For all we know, Gloss has unintentionally constructed something worse than a city buster. We’ll split into the usual sweeping groups. I’ll take point with Mason and Chalice and defuse the ritual if need be. Any objections?” Negatory responses. “Good. Staff Sergeant?”
Phalanx snapped to attention. “Yes, Colonel?”
“Stay here with Stratus, make sure he doesn’t cut and run. We’ll send you somepony to aid you within the hour.”
“Yes’m.”
“Amanita-”
“Can I come?” blurted Amanita suddenly.
Everyone looked at her, and Amanita realized just how stupid her request was. Yet she forged on. “I- They’re working with rituals,” she babbled, “and I know rituals, and- And I owe Bitterroot my life. I- I wouldn’t be here if not for her.”
Silence. Code tightened her jaw slightly. One of the guards walked up to her and not-exactly whispered, “She does have experience with rituals we don’t, she did neutralize two opponents who took her by surprise, and she’s the one who spotted the ritual to begin with. It’s not the worst idea. And, like you said, we don’t know the focus ritual is as badly-made as the rest.”
Code waved the guard away, still looking at Amanita. She sighed and said, “We don’t have time to be picky, so on two conditions. You stay close behind me and you do everything I say. I don’t want to be responsible for your death.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Amanita said. Why had she asked that? What was she thinking? Why wasn’t she changing her mind?
“Alright, ponies, let’s move out.”
Four weeks. For nearly four weeks, High Gloss had been overseeing the unfolding of this ritual. Carefully picking the right ponies for the job, both in each killing itself and the cleanup. Personally writing out the ritual itself based on what she knew. Casually deflecting any Court attention from herself or those working with her. Chatting up friends in the Guard to pass her information on the investigation (to help with her anxiety, of course). Even with the bodies left out to stain the land and heighten Canterlot’s fear, they’d escaped notice. Almost four weeks of nearly flawless work.
And in less than two days, it had already begun crashing down.
First, there was the murder of Cobalt Shine. Less than an hour before midnight, and her chosen killers had been forced to ditch some of their supplies in a sewer to avoid a guard patrol. Stupid curfews. With their ingredients spoiled, they’d needed to go down into the Roost and rob a storehouse, like common thieves. Spending twenty thousand bits in the process and also picking up a few bar tokens in their haste. Then, after killing Cobalt, they’d missed a token in their sweep for evidence. Or maybe it’d fallen out as they were leaving. For so long, they’d avoided leaving evidence, then there was that one single token. Found and picked up by the Guard, of course. Gloss would eat her tail off if it hadn’t led to her current situation somehow.
And at the same time, a necromancer came to Canterlot. A nervous, mousy little shrimp of one, but still a sunblasted necromancer! Somehow, she found it in herself to waltz right up to the castle and offer help to the Royal Guard. What sort of necromancer was this? And then the Guard had actually accepted her help that very same day and suddenly Cobalt was alive again. Nothing was officially announced, but even without her friends/unknowing informants, that was the sort of word that spread through the grapevine rapidly. To make matters worse, the necromancer and a bodyguard — a staff sergeant, as if they needed any more evidence she was important — they were then scheduled to go around and let the victims’ families say their goodbyes, which meant nasty things if any of the other victims had seen their attackers before their deaths. Gloss had panicked (not that she’d let it show) and dispatched some ponies to lure them both to a nearby house she owned and kill them: the necromancer for obvious reasons, the guard in case he’d heard anything. Desperate, but she wouldn’t be found out until after the ritual was complete.
Then there was this pegasus, sticking her snout into everything. Probably a bounty hunter. She’d seen too much and needed to die. A large part of Gloss was telling her to do it now and get it over with, but it was getting harder and harder to find ponies for the ritual, and here was one just dumped into her hooves. Keeping her alive until midnight solved a big problem. Both options were tempting and had their practicalities and downsides.
“-think we should move the ritual to someplace else,” Earl Paradise Paper was saying. “We know the design, it won’t take long to recreate-”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Gloss said through gritted teeth. “From the placement of the deaths, this is the only place the final ritual can happen at.”
“Well, that seems restrictive,” mused Paradise.
And just to top it off, the cherry on this falling-domino sundae, some of her “noble” “comrades” — the ones who’d done absolutely nothing for the cause so far except donate some marepower — were second-guessing her decisions. The decisions they’d signed off on. The decisions they didn’t know a thing about, in spite of what they claimed. Pfah. What kind of moron thought they could take up any skill and immediately be better at it than somepony who’d been working with it for far longer? “It’s the way rituals work,” growled Gloss.
Gloss was trying to work off some of her anger by pacing around her mansion. Two ponies of technically higher rank than her but less conspiratorial influence were tagging along, offering their worthless advice. Idiots.
“But can’t we transfer the energy?” Countess Emerald Eon asked. No, demanded, like reality should bend to her will because it was inconveniencing her. The stuck-up little… “The mechanics behind mana transfer are well-known, and if some- bounty hunter could uncover what we were doing here, surely the Royal Guard could-”
“Maybe they could!” yelled Gloss, whirling on him. “But that doesn’t matter, because it has to be done here. We based everything on it being done here. We can’t transfer this energy.”
“Maybe we can,” sniffed Eon.
“Then show me how.”
Silence. Eon folded her ears back and looked away.
“Didn’t think so.” And Gloss went back to her walking. This kind of anger wasn’t good for her makeup, she knew, but she had so much pent-up energy, if she didn’t release it somehow, she’d explode.
Okay. This wasn’t going so bad. It was under control for the moment. Maybe, if she got lucky.
Abruptly, Mountain Slope, one of the guards she’d left with the prisoner, burst from a door ahead of her. He trotted up to her and said quickly, “Milady, we’ve got a problem.”
“Unless it risks the entire operation,” Gloss said through gritted teeth, “it can wait-”
“The necromancer’s been living with the prisoner.”
Gloss forced herself to a stop. Sun blast it. Why was this happening so fast all of a sudden? What sick god had flipped which switch? She banged her head with a hoof as she tried thinking. What to do, what to do, what to-
“I say we move,” Eon interjected. “Perhaps we can do it again elsewhere. I proposed we do in my manor in-”
Gloss whirled around, backhoofing her across the face, and in spite of being an earth pony, Eon stumbled. “We. Do not. Move,” said Gloss. “We. Can’t. Move. And do you really want to wait a year to see what Twilight will do to the country? We have to do it tonight, or else it’ll be too late.”
Which gave her the answer to the prisoner problem. “Keep the prisoner restrained,” she said to Slope. “We don’t know how much the necromancer knows and Stratus is going after her. Either she finds us or she doesn’t, and killing the prisoner won’t change that. Stay on her.”
Slope looked a bit confused, but nodded. “I-if you say so, milady.” He trotted off, back to the prisoner’s quarters.
Okay. That was good. She could get through-
One of the exterior guards slammed into a wall on the far end of the hallway, quickly recovered, and galloped over to Gloss. Before she could reprimand him for scuffing the floor or damaging the paneling, he panted, “The High Ritualist is at the gates.”
Son.
Of.
A.
DOG.
Code and her ponies had come up to Gloss’s gates casually, regardless of their uniformed status. Code had politely asked one of the house guards if he would fetch the lady of the house, please. After some hesitation, he bolted off. Amanita felt very out-of-place, standing among a squad of armored ponies with nothing more than a temporary badge. But she didn’t want to leave. Bitterroot needed her help.
One of the pegasus ritualists dropped onto the ground next to Code. “The house isn’t as big as it seems, Colonel,” he said. “It surrounds a courtyard in the middle. Big enough to hold several magic circles, I saw them inscribed inside. I couldn’t see anything more, though, it was too small. I also didn’t see any pegasi that matched Bitterroot’s description.”
“Hmm.” Although Code didn’t seem too upset. “No ponies in there?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Alright, we’ll stick with the lure. Maybe we’ll get lucky and nab Gloss before we storm the place.”
“Yes’m.”
Amanita was pacing on the spot to get her tension out. She wanted to move. The guards, oddly enough, seemed almost relaxed. They weren’t smiling, but their postures were loose and their movements were easy.
After a few minutes, a regal-looking unicorn strode out of the house and straight to the gate, four guards in tow. As if in contrast to the guards, she was grinning, yet her pace was oh-so-slightly jerky, like an automaton that needed some polish. Code bowed her head slightly. “Viscountess.”
The unicorn — probably High Gloss — said in a just-barely-too-high voice, “High Ritualist Code. To what do I owe-”
“We’re looking,” Code interrupted, “for a pony who might know something about the Mearhwolf case. She’s a pegasus, orange coat, purple mane. You wouldn’t happen to have seen anyone matching this description, have you?”
The house guards shuffled slightly. Gloss’s laugh was tense. “Oh, what do you think a bounty hunter would be lurking around here for? None of the murders have happened here.”
“Can’t say,” Code said with a shrug. “I’m just telling you what I heard. Pegasus, orange coat, purple mane. Have you seen her?”
Gloss’s eyes flicked over the ritualists. Her ears twitched when she settled on Amanita, but that was all, and she didn’t linger. Then she said to Code, “I’m sorry, I haven’t seen any pony like that.” She looked over her shoulder at her guards. “Have any of you?” Various mutters that amounted to “no”. Gloss turned back to Code, smiling apologetically. “No one’s seen anyone like that.”
Code flicked her tail. “I see,” she said. “That’s unfortunate.” She bowed her head again. “I’m sorry for wasting your time.” Then, to Amanita’s surprise, she turned around. Gloss visibly released a breath and scurried away from the gate, tailed by her guards.
But before she took a single step forward, Code said, “Oh, uh, just one more thing.”
Gloss and her guards froze. She didn’t even dare to look over her shoulder at Code.
“I never said we were looking for a bounty hunter.” And Code bucked the gate.
The second her hooves made contact, Amanita felt a buzz of magic. Green light flared around Code’s boots and the lock shattered with a metallic groan, blowing the gate wide open. Gloss scrambled for her house as her guards fell into a defensive position to cover her retreat.
Code and the ritualists bolted on some invisible signal, so potent even Amanita felt it. She found herself running with the pack, right behind Code. Code and two other ponies, a unicorn and a pegasus, jinked to one side, going around Gloss’s guards entirely while the rest of the ritualists crashed into them. None of them looked back, not even Amanita. Code kept running and plowed through Gloss’s front door like it wasn’t even there. Amanita followed, only to lose her grip and skid through the shattered remains of the door across the foyer’s highly-polished floors. Gloss was screaming something, but Amanita couldn’t tell what.
As Amanita managed to come to a stop, two guards brandishing halberds stampeded down the foyer staircase. One of them, a unicorn, made for Amanita, murder in his eyes. Amanita yelped and tried to scoot back. Why had she wanted to do this? The unicorn swung; Amanita dropped to her stomach and awkwardly grabbed the halberd in her magic.
It wasn’t a strong grip, but it slowed the weapon enough that the unicorn stumbled. Just as Amanita was wondering what in the hay she should do next, the pegasus ritualist dove across the floor like a slide-tackling hoofball player, smashing into the unicorn’s hooves. What little balance he had was gone, and in a few fluid movements, the pegasus slapped a suppressor ring on his horn and a set of fetters on his front legs. Amanita reflexively grabbed the unicorn’s rear hooves in her telekinesis, restraining them just enough for the pegasus to affix the rear manacles there. The pegasus gave Amanita a quick nod, then jerked her gaze up and flared her wings. Amanita rolled over so she could look in the same direction.
The other hostile guard, an earth pony, had Code in a halberd-assisted headlock and was trying to wrestle her to the ground. Code was small for an earth pony and the guard was big; it seemed like Code wasn’t going to be able to escape. But before Amanita could move, Code wormed a hoof into one of her bags and pulled out-
-an egg.
Time seemed to slow as Amanita blinked and stared. Yes, Code had pulled an ordinary egg from her gear like it was a grenade. Huh.
Code crushed the egg against the pony’s face, roaring, “Egg!” The pony instinctively reached up to wipe the yolk away; Code twisted out of the headlock and threw him back, over towards the entry door.
The other ritualists charged in from outside, apparently having subdued the guards outside. Code immediately yelled, “Usual sweep! Usual sweep!” As one of the ritualists grappled with Code’s discarded opponent, Code herself charged for a door on the left side of the room. The two guards that had entered with her followed and Amanita hurried after them.
The door opened up into a long, narrow hallway, beautifully trimmed, doorways going off on each side. Gloss was nowhere to be seen; Code came to a halt and said something uncouth. “Search the rooms on that side,” she said quickly, pointing at the right wall. “Look for an entrance to the-”
A unicorn guard with a spear burst out of a room some ways ahead of them. Without an instant’s hesitation, she levelled her spear and charged. Code didn’t flinch; almost as soon as she saw the unicorn, she pulled another egg from her bag. The unicorn’s charge faltered a little when she saw what Code was holding, but she didn’t stop.
“Egg!” bellowed Code. Her hoof whipped around as she slung the egg at the unicorn. Fragile as it was, the egg still smashed into the unicorn’s face hard enough to stop her charge. Before she could recover, Code got up close and bucked her down the hall. But instead of following her, Code ducked into the room she’d come from. A second later, Code popped back out. “Window to courtyard,” she said. “Come on.”
The two ponies followed Code into that room, and Amanita followed them. She entered just in time to see Code leap through a window into a courtyard. Again, the ritualists followed, jumping smoothly through the gap. Amanita awkwardly clambered through after them.
Code was running around a series of magic circles carved into the dirt, done up with a lot of impressive-looking but worthless sigils, pseudorunic gibberish, and a black candle, of all things. It looked like a load of newbie crock to Amanita. She glanced at the other guards; they were looking at each other with disgusted expressions. Hopefully it was bad-skill disgusted and not morally-reprehensible disgusted.
Code slowed to a walk to a stop. She tilted her head, then shrieked, “What in the COCKAMAMIE amateur hour night soil is this? Manticore venom is not manticore claw but more, the chords have no proportion to each other, there’s only the most basic cardinal orientation in anything, the circles have probably been broken twenty times over-”
One of the ritualists roughly clouted her on the back of the head. She stopped, blinked, then turned to him and said casually, “Thank you.” The look she shot the circles was downright livid. “Neophytes,” she said, spitting the word out like a slur. “Absolute sunblasted neophytes.”
Amanita opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, she heard a twang overhead. She instinctively ducked; an arrow grazed the top of her head and stuck in the dirt. At the same time, every other pony looked up. Amanita raised her head just in time to see Code hurl an egg upward, screaming, “Egg!” Something crunched and a pony above them grunted.
The pegasus ritualist promptly spread her wings and leaped upward. She descended wrestling with a pegasus strapped into a repeating crossbow harness and with raw egg smeared across his forehead and mane. Code and the other ritualist pounced, Code snapping the harness, the ritualist slapping a set of fetters on the attacker. “Anyone else up there, Chalice?” Code said.
“No, ma’am,” said the pegasus ritualist. “Just the one.”
“Good. Notify the RRU that we need assistance at Viscountess High Gloss’s mansion ASAP. Unknown number of hostiles inside. And have them send a few ponies to retrieve Staff Sergeant Phalanx while you’re at it.” Chalice saluted and rocketed away.
“Mason,” Code continued, “stay here with Amanita. Keep watch over the perp and see if you can figure out what that gibberish-” She waved a hoof at the circles. “-is supposed to do. I’ll help secure the mansion.”
“Code,” protested Amanita, “I-”
“You’re staying here,” Code said. It wasn’t an argument, it was a statement of fact.
“Yes’m,” Amanita said quickly. Code nodded to her and jumped back through the broken window.
Amanita and the ritualist, another unicorn, looked at each other. The ritualist coughed. “Mason Chain,” he said, “Royal Guard Ritualist.”
“Amanita. Um. Necromancer.”
“I… saw.” Pause. Sounds of fighting inside were muffled. Mason tried to not look Amanita in the eye as he said, “Good, good job on that.”
“Um. Thanks.” Amanita blinked and took a look at the mess pretending to be a ritual. “So, uh, when I talked with Bitterroot this morning, I was thinking the ritual might be…”
When one of the guards left to get Gloss, Bitterroot resigned herself to just sitting around, waiting for something to happen. Her other guards, though? Not so much. The unicorn had taken to pacing and the earth mare kept trying to straighten out her mane.
“What d’you think she’ll do to us?” whispered the earth mare. “Kill us?”
The unicorn shook his head. “She won’t stop there. She’ll enslave our souls, turn us into her slaves, worse, I don’t know.”
Bitterroot rolled her eyes. If only they knew…
The earth mare shuddered. “Ponyfeathers ponyfeathers ponyfeathers…”
The earth stallion chose that moment to return. He looked more together than the other two, but that was a low bar to clear. “Gloss…” He swallowed. “Gloss is sticking to the plan.”
“What?” The earth mare jumped from her chair, shaking, eyes huge. “She’s not doing anything?”
“She says Stratus-”
“And what if Stratus fails?” the mare screamed. “We’ll have a vengeful sunblasted necromancer after us!”
(They weren’t worried, Bitterroot idly noted, about having a vengeful alicorn after them — either Twilight or Celestia, depending which way the ritual fell. Maybe because they were bound by the law. Ostensibly.)
“Gloss wants us to-”
“That roadapple-eating stot doesn’t know what she’s asking! The necromancer will find us! We- We can’t-”
A metallic CLANG rang throughout the house, piercing their eardrums, rattling the roots of their teeth. The guards all snapped to look at the door. “Oh, stars above,” whispered the earth mare. “She’s here.”
The unicorn swallowed. “What should we-”
“Guards!” screamed Gloss from somewhere else in the house. “The Ritual Division is here! Attend!”
The earth mare froze, then collapsed in laughter, going so limp even her ears went down. “It’s not her,” she mumbled between weak giggle fits. “It’s not her.”
“Might be her,” cut in Bitterroot. “She’s got the Royal Guard on her side, remember?”
The earth mare gave Bitterroot one terrified look, then said, “Screw this. I quit.” She strode out of the room and yelled, “Excuse me! E- Excuse me! Goldcoats, wherever you are! I surrender! I surrender!”
The two stallions looked at each other. “Efh,” said the earth stallion. “We never had a chance.” He followed the earth mare out of the room as well. A second later, so did the unicorn. Bitterroot grinned behind her mask.
Then she remembered she was still chained up.
“Whoa, hey!” she yelled. She awkwardly pushed herself to her hooves. “Guys! Hey! Can’t you at least-” But they were already gone. Groaning, Bitterroot wiggled over to the loop in the wall. They couldn’t have had a link for a chain sitting there all this time, could they?
Apparently not. The wall ring looked new, the wall it was embedded in freshly damaged. Maybe it’d been screwed in just for her. How flattering. She instinctively reached forward to grab the ring with her mouth, only for it to bump against her mask. Right. Her front legs still had a decent amount of give, though, so she shuffled into a position where she could grasp the ring between her hooves and twist.
Yes, the ring was definitely new. With a little bit of wiggling, Bitterroot was able to get it turning. Working awkwardly against the fetters, Bitterroot kept twisting and-
The sounds of physical impacts, spells, and yelling came from outside, like the mansion was being stormed. Hopefully. “Hey!” Bitterroot hollered, still spinning the ring. “I’m in here! Prisoner in here!”
No response. Bitterroot bit her tongue and kept twisting, giving the occasional yell, and receiving no answer back. Finally, the ring fell from the wall. It didn’t release her fetters, but now she could at least leave the room. She ungracefully wiggled to her feet.
But just as she did so, the door was slammed open. Gloss was standing in the doorway, severely unkempt and a long knife in her magic, staring down at Bitterroot with eyes somewhere between wild, angry, and desperate. “They came for you,” Gloss growled. “Maybe they’ll leave for you.” Taking a hunk of mane in her magic, she wrenched Bitterroot to her hind legs and pressed the knife to her throat. Then she turned to the door and screamed, “I have the prisoner! Let me go or I WILL kill her!”
Bitterroot squirmed, but Gloss jerked hard on her mane. “Don’t move,” Gloss snapped. She pushed the knife harder against her neck, drawing a drop of blood. Rearing onto her hind legs and using Bitterroot as an equine shield, she pulled them both out into the hallway.
Two ritualists were at one end of the hallway, manacling several downed ponies, and looked up when they heard Gloss exit the room. Gloss drew another bead of blood from Bitterroot’s neck and growled, “Take one step closer and the prisoner’s dead.”
One of the ritualists glanced at the other. “Think we should tell her?”
“Tell me what?” yelled Gloss. “Tell me what?”
“Well,” coughed Bitterroot, “y’see, there’s-”
“Keep your mouth shut!”
“Viscountess.”
Gloss whirled around, wrenching Bitterroot with her. The other side of the hallway was blocked off by two more ritualists, the shorter earth pony standing some distance in front of the taller pegasus. Gloss bared her teeth. “Step aside,” she snarled, “or this pony dies.”
“And then what?” the earth ritualist asked blandly.
Bitterroot got it immediately, but it was several whole seconds before she felt Gloss react. Stupid or unwilling to admit she’d been backed into a corner? Maybe both.
“You’re surrounded and your only bargaining chip is one you have to destroy for it to be effective,” the ritualist said. “The second you play your hoof, you lose. At this point, the only thing worse for you than letting her go would be to kill her.” Then she looked Bitterroot in the eye and added, “No offense, Ms…?”
“Bitterroot,” Bitterroot choked. “None taken, Dame-”
“Colonel Code.”
“Colonel Code, sorry.”
“Shut it!” yelled Gloss, pressing the blade harder against Bitterroot’s throat, hard enough to draw forth a drop of blood. But Bitterroot heard a waver in her voice, even more uncertainty than before. “I am- I can still-”
“Look,” said Code. “You’re coming out of here in fetters either way. The only difference is whether or not you have an extra murder charge on top of that.”
Gloss didn’t say anything. She breathed deeply, chest heaving across Bitterroot’s back, her breath hot and damp on Bitterroot’s neck. The knife wavered her magic, slacking off slightly. Bitterroot could picture her chewing her lip in anxiety. Code stood by, stonefaced.
And then Bitterroot was done waiting. “You know what,” she snapped, “if you’re too much of a wuss to kill me, I’ll do it myself.” She lunged forward and brought her neck down hard on the blade, deeply slicing open her throat.
Gloss yelped and released her, but blood was already spewing from Bitterroot’s severed arteries. Bitterroot collapsed forward onto her legs, weakness inching into her body by the second. Several ponies brushed past her and tackled Gloss to the floor.
Blood dripped from her mouth as Bitterroot coughed wetly. The liquid trickling into her lungs felt unnatural. Suddenly, Code was at her side, trying to compress the wound. It didn’t do much; Bitterroot kept losing blood. She tried to wave Code away, let herself bleed out, but she was too weak.
She raised her head; Gloss was being fitted with fetters, but she still stared at Bitterroot with big eyes, dumbstruck. “You’re… You’re psychotic,” she gasped.
Gurgling wetly, blood dripping from her neck, barely audible above her own death rattle, Bitterroot grinned and singsonged, “Wuuuuuussieeeeee…”