I sighed, going over the emails one last time. There was no sign that anything was amiss, no secret plans to run off into the night with friends, no sign of having made any enemies, nothing. The leading theory so far was that the neighbor had snapped and taken off with all nine of ‘em, but there simply was no evidence to support it. As far as the investigators had been able to tell, they had all up and disappeared without a trace.
I sighed, running my hand over my eyes. I glanced over at the list of names set beside my computer. Nine youths and one 30+ year-old man, missing after getting together for a six-day blizzard. No sign of foul play. No sign the older one, Luke, had even been in the same building as the youths. The department had asked me to go through their phones and computers, but so far I was turning up nothing. All I’d found so far was a corrupt video file that I’d been having no luck cleaning up. Just a white screen and static.
“My first real investigation and I’m already completely stumped,” I grumbled, resting my head on my desk. “Why couldn’t I have gotten something easier, like a drug ring?”
Truth was, this wasn’t my first time in the realm of digital justice. Before I’d been recruited, I had been a somewhat proficient scripter and penetration tester, eeking out a living by turning in bug-bounties for big tech companies, while in my evenings I trolled the deep web for underground markets, traffickers, and other horribly illegal things, gathering evidence to anonymously send the police before raining digital hellfire on their operations. It was a bit of a power trip, honestly. Though I fooled myself into believing I did it for the sake of others; really, I was just bored.
Now, though, when I finally get a chance to work with the police department directly, they set me on some impossible case simply because I “might be able to find something”. Sure, I’d found missing people before, but that was because the idiots who kidnapped them decided to advertise their service on a private website with opsec so terrible my grandma could’ve deduced their location. This, though? This was a whole different beast.
I shook off those thoughts and was about to go back to staring cluelessly at my laptop screen when I heard a loud pop as the power went out, plunging the room into darkness.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath, blinking as I tried to get my eyes to adjust to the dark. “Hey, sarge? Captain Murphy? Anyone there? The power blew out!”
I stumbled blindly out of the room, my eyes adjusting painfully slowly. Strangely enough, no one else seemed to be around. I made my way through the precinct, calling out for the officers that I knew were supposed to be on shift right now, but heard nothing.
“Dammit, guys!” I cursed, grabbing my laptop and making my way to the back. “Hell of a time to step out for a smoke…”
I set my laptop down on a nearby bench and turned it towards the back of the room, turning up the brightness, and lighting up the back wall with the screen. It illuminated the breaker box, which I pulled open, squinting at the switches within. It seemed as though whatever hit the place, it had tripped almost every single fuse in the building. Muttering curses over the building’s no-doubt century old wiring problems, I set to work flipping all the switches. Only once everything else was set did I go back to the master, flipping it with a loud click!
Before my hand had even left the breaker, a loud pop sounded again, much closer this time. Lightbulbs flared, sparks flew, and before I knew it, a powerful, burning pain shot through my arm and into the rest of my body, forcing me into spasms. I screamed, trying to let go of the breaker, but my muscles refused to obey my commands, holding the switch with an iron grip. It felt like fire shooting through every muscle in my body, squeezing all the air from my lungs. Behind me, my laptop screen grew insanely bright, the white screen of the corrupted video suddenly forming into strange colors and patterns that did nothing to alleviate the pain of being the station’s only functional grounding rod. The static grew deafening, resolving into strange patterns of squeals and whines, like interference in a satellite signal. Before I knew it, the screen exploded with a snap, and everything went white.
🗲🗲🗲
The ritual was almost complete, or so she assumed. There wasn’t anything else on the page, so that had to be it.
“Right,” The pony muttered to herself. “I can do this. I don’t need a stupid horn to do this! The book said any race can do it! I just have to…”
The pony took a deep breath, calming herself down. This was an ancient ritual, one meant to summon creatures of immense strength from the great beyond, and bind them to her will. This was her last shot at gaining any sort of power in this world, she couldn’t afford anxiety.
“Less talking, more summoning,” She muttered to herself, then got to work.
🗲🗲🗲
You should not be here…
I felt myself tearing apart. Lightning shot through my veins, and colors flashed across my vision. I felt like I was falling, but I couldn’t tell where. I smashed through things that felt like branches made of pure agony, felt my flesh being carved apart and put back together, and felt pain in places I was pretty sure I didn’t have. I tried to scream, but I had no voice. Everything was noise, color, pain!
I felt myself being jerked towards something, ripping me through space faster than I could think. It drew me in, resonating with some part of me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I reached for it, guiding myself towards it as best I could to escape the chaos around me. I felt myself break free of something, and with a flash, I passed out.
🗲🗲🗲
It took a few tries, and a couple false-starts, but eventually the mare managed to make it most of the way through the chant. She felt a slight heat on her head from the direction of the circle, but dutifully kept her eyes shut, continuing her chant. She didn’t know what would happen if she messed up now, but she was determined to see it through. She was almost finished when a bright light pierced her eyelids, and a powerful shockwave sent her sliding away from the circle, interrupting her ritual, and sending reagents scattering anywhere. There was a loud CRACK in front of her, and she dared open her eyes for just a moment.
In the middle of the circle, hovering a few feet above the floor, a jagged hole had opened in reality itself, spilling light and color into the space. The mare couldn’t help but stare as the rift crackled with energy for a moment, before exploding with light and sound, forcing her to close her eyes again. When the light died out, she hesitantly opened them, staring at the large white creature that lay in her circle.
It looked tall. The mare estimated that at full standing height, it’d be nearly twice her own, and she was already considered tall for a pony. It looked like an Abyssinian, with thick, white fur covering a majority of its body. It had a pair of thick, jagged, yellow whiskers on its face, as well as a strange yellow protrusion on its forehead, like a bird’s crest, or some sort of demented cowlick. Its torso was an off-blue, with much shorter fur all around its barrel before returning to the thicker, white fur at its waist. It had a long, jagged tail that protruded from way too high on its back, making it seem just that much more alien.
As the mare stared, the creature groaned, slowly sitting up with a paw pressed to its head. It blinked its yellow eyes open slowly and stared at her.
“Zer… ra…” It hissed, its voice low and growly. “Ora zer, zeraora.”