//------------------------------// // Case Twenty-Two, Chapter Seven: Necropolis // Story: Ponyville Noire: Rising Nightmares // by PonyJosiah13 //------------------------------// “What did we miss?” Flash grumbled, looking over the crime scene photographs for the hundredth time, cast in sharp relief by the office lights that battled against the darkness from the window. He stared at the dead body of Steel Bar as if he hoped he could somehow pry the answers from the corpse’s image. “And why?” he asked. “Why did they kill him?”  Across the desk from him, Red Herring sighed and rubbed his forehead. “You’re asking the wrong question, rookie. If we find out who, then we can figure out the why. Focusing too much on the motive can lead you down the wrong road way too easily.”  “You’re right, sorry,” Flash shook his head. “It’s just…” He sighed. “Feels like we’re chasing our own tails on this. And maybe we’re focusing too much on this. Iron Forge would be in charge of the gang now, right?”  “Far as we know, yes,” Red nodded. “And before you ask, we are keeping a closer eye on him. He’ll slip up sooner or later.”  He glanced at a report in his in-tray and sighed. “Still nothing on the Sealight Delight. Dammit,” he groused, tossing the report aside. “Flash, this is the most solid thread we have in our hooves right now. We gotta tug because it’s all we got.”  “I know, I know,” Flash sighed, holding his head in his hooves, rubbing his temples as he felt the distant pulsing of an incoming headache across his cranium. “I just we know that we’re missing--”  He froze, his eyes focusing on a closeup of the deceased mobster’s head laying on the desktop. He snatched the picture up, then looked at several other pictures of the desk.  “Missing,” he breathed, then hurried out the door.  “Hey, kid! Get back here!” Red called, hustling after him.  Flash proceeded down the stairs until he reached the locker rooms on the ground floor. It was shift change and the rooms were packed with officers coming in, coffee cups in hoof as they chatted with the off-coming officers.  “Excuse me, excuse me,” Flash said, pushing his way through some of the officers, head panning back and forth as he searched. Finally, he spotted the familiar blonde thestral sitting on a bench. “Hey, Prowl! Prowl!”  Prowl looked up from rubbing ointment into her wings. “What’s got your feathers in a bunch, Sentry?” she asked, stretching with a quiet groan.  “Do you remember Steel Bar’s office?” Flash asked breathlessly. “When you first walked in there?”  Prowl raised an eyebrow, though an amused glimmer danced around her yellow irides. “Pretty sure I was the one who taught you about observation, rookie,” she chuckled. “Yes, I remember.”  “Were there coffee cups on the desk when you went in?” Flash asked, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.  Prowl paused in thought for a moment, then a pensive frown crossed her face. “There weren’t,” she reported. “I’m sure of it.”  Flash let out a laugh. “Thanks, sarge!” he said, exiting in a blur, leaving behind a wake of bewildered stares.  Red Herring was waiting for him outside the lockers. “You know, you might be Finder’s kid, but that doesn’t mean you have to act like him,” he snorted.  Flash sputtered for a moment, his cheeks coloring in embarrassment, then shook his head with a glare. “I figured out what we were missing,” he declared, holding up the picture that had gotten his attention. “It’s literally missing from the table. The coffee cups!”  “What are you--?” Red peered closer, then his eyes widened. “Holy shit. Let’s go, kid.”  They raced out the door, both of them with determined grins on their faces as they sped for Red’s car. “Great. Because it wasn’t dark enough already,” Strider commented, looking up with a frown.  The other three looked up to behold a thick sheet of clouds slowly crawling across the sky, shielding the setting sun.  “Forget it,” Daring grunted, tightening the collar of her jacket. “The sooner we get to Maredale Green, the sooner we can find the gem and get back home.”  “Brrr…I’m all for that plan,” Autumn shivered from behind the group, clutching her own coat tighter about herself.  “You’re a kirin. You can do the fire thing, right?” Strider asked.  Autumn gave him a flat look. “I can’t go nirik at the drop of a hat,” she explained. “It’s a defense mechanism for when I get angry or scared.”  “Oh,” Strider nodded, looking rather abashed.  Phillip let out a long exhalation, his breath a mixture of cigarette smoke and condensation as he rolled his fag from one side of his mouth to the other. He scowled at the frost crunching beneath their hooves with every step, the white reflecting the glow of his electric headlamp. “Bloody snow.”  “Ah, don’t knock it!” Autumn chirped. “It may be cold and wet, but you can make snow angels, and snowponies, and snow forts, and snowballs, and--hey, look!”  Their headlamps picked up a sign blocking the path up ahead. As they approached, they paused to read the warning in its entirety.  DANGER! TURN BACK! By Order of the County Sheriff, the land beyond is CONDEMNED due to plague and other hazards. There is nothing past this sign worth dying for! GO NO FARTHER! “If we were smart, we’d listen to that sign,” Strider commented.  “Guess we’re not smart,” Daring Do replied, passing it with a shrug.  “Life’s too short to obey the signs!” Autumn said, calmly walking around the sign as well.  Phil took a final drag on his cigarette and dropped it on the ground next to the sign as he proceeded around it. Strider sighed and followed them.  “Hey, look!” Autumn said. She pointed to the left, directing her companions' attention to a circle of stones incongruously set in the midst of a frost and ice-coated peat bog. Shadows cast by the setting sun cast the carvings in the stone in strange relief.  “There’s Founder’s Bog,” Daring said, looking down at her map and compass. “So Maredale Green isn’t much farther.”  They proceeded in silence for a few minutes more on their trek on the path over the rolling fields, the only sound the crunching of the frost and snow and the distant calls of nocturnal birds and animals as they stirred from their perches on bare branches that creaked in the wind. The clouds continued to cover up the sky, churning gray and black blocking out any light from above.  They crested another low hill and paused to behold the land before them. Beneath the faint glow of starlight trickling in through the clouds, the village of Maredale Green stretched out before them, a loose cluster of rundown cottages and shops. Dust clung to peeling boards and the shattered remnants of windows; carriages and wagons sat abandoned in the streets, little remaining of their cargo save broken barrels and empty crates. A rotted stump was all that remained of a tree in between two forlornly leaning buildings. A musk of age-old rust and decay as thick as a wall hung in the air, one last obstacle to try to force them to turn back.  But most unnerving of all was the utter stillness. No boards or signs creaking and groaning in the wind. No calls of nocturnal beasts looking for a meal. Not even the buzz of insects that should have made their homes among the rot.  Absolute silence. The sound of death.  Strider swallowed. “Why’d we have to come here at night?” he groaned, keeping his voice low as though afraid to penetrate the thick silence. “This place would be creepy enough during the day.”  The four hesitated at the ridge for a long moment, then Daring stepped forward cautiously, as though walking blind through a minefield. She set her hoof down with a slow crackling of frost, then took another step forward.  Nothing.  “C’mon,” she grimaced, annoyed at her own trepidation. The others followed her into the town proper, their steps and breaths now slow and quiet.  They proceeded down the street, ears swiveling back and forth, eyes panning over every shadow. The stench that clung to every surface thickened as they proceeded into the village proper, embracing the interlopers tightly, as though it might never let them leave; their dry coughs were soon added to their hoofsteps, still the only sounds in that blighted place.  There were no street signs left in ruins, but their close examination of the maps and photographs from the library had given them a rough idea of where their target was. They passed one intersection, then another, flanked on either side by the ruined houses.  Finally, Daring pointed to the left, up another road. They advanced, headlamps leading the way.  Autumn let out a cry that shattered the stifling silence like a gunshot. Their lights had fallen upon a corpse that was sprawled face down in the street; a red and brown line led from the corpse up a set of porch stairs to a yawning door. Patches of the unicorn mare’s light yellow coat had been eaten away by rot to reveal yellowed bone, and the stomach had deflated like a balloon, her wet skin looking as though it might slide right off her bones if she was disturbed.  Phillip paused, crouching down next to the corpse as he swept his headlamp up and down it. He looked at Strider and Daring with a frown that they returned.  There were no insects hovering around the corpse, which itself looked like it was a few months old at best; after nearly 80 years, there should have been nothing but bones left behind by insects and scavengers.  “You okay, Autumn?” Phillip asked, rising to his full height.  Autumn swallowed. “Y-yeah, I’m good,” she said through a shaky laugh. “Just…first time I’ve ever seen a dead body. And it just so happens to be in the middle of a creepy, abandoned town.” She let out another nervous laugh, eyes darting around everywhere. “This is gonna make a great story when I write this up!”  The other three all glanced at each other. “Autumn, if you want to go back…” Daring started to say.  Autumn took a breath and shook her head. “No point. I’m here now. Might as well see this through.”  “If you’re sure,” Daring said through her teeth. “C’mon.”  They proceeded down the street of houses, which were becoming more and more deteriorated with every step. More bodies were strewn across the streets, ponies lying where they had dropped.  They took a right at the next intersection, continuing to penetrate further into the heart of Maredale Green. The miasma of rot grew worse with every step and many of the houses here were in complete ruins. Autumn paused next to a house, shining her light through a shattered window and shuddering at the sight of two ponies dangling from nooses within.  “Almost there,” Daring coughed, pointing to a shop that was leaning to one side as though in exhaustion up ahead.  She reached the door first and tried to turn the knob, but grunted when she found that the door refused to budge. She rammed her shoulder into the door, but it still remained adamantly shut.  “Locked,” she reported. She looked up to the side and spotted a window next to the door that had been smashed open, fibers and hair still clinging to the broken glass. “That’s a tight squeeze, but--”  “Move,” Phillip grunted, approaching. Daring moved out of the way as Phillip stepped up and turned around. He wound up, then bucked the door. The crashing of wood sounded like thunder, echoing down the streets of the dead; the door splintered and bent in the frame.  Phillip kicked the door again and it shattered into splinters, allowing them entry. “Let’s go,” he said, entering.  “You hear that?” Biff hissed, raising his hoof to call a halt as the sound of crashing wood echoed from the distance.  “Someone’s there,” Rogue growled, grabbing a set of binoculars from his saddlebags and raising them to his eyes.  Caballeron raised his own binoculars to his eyes, sweeping over the ruins of Maredale Green from their vantage point atop a hill. Movement drew his eyes and he scowled when his suspicions were confirmed.  “Mierda. They got here ahead of us,” he spat, watching as their four foes entered a wrecked house. “Not a problem,” Rogue grinned, drawing his knife from the holster on his fetlock. “Let’s just close in and--”  “And get our asses kicked again?” Withers cut him off. “What, you like being set on fire?”  “She caught me off-guard, that’s all!” Rogue snapped back. “This time--”  “This time, we will play it safe,” Caballeron replied, rummaging in Biff's saddlebags. “Ah, here they are.”  He pulled the two candlesticks out of the bag and set them on the ground.  “Doctor, you sure?” Biff asked, tilting his head slightly. “You’ve never been able to get that to work.”  “Today is different,” Caballeron replied with a small smirk, tapping the black amulet around his neck. “I have a greater power guiding my hooves.”  He pulled a packet of salt from his pack and used it to pour a circle around the two candlesticks, then lit them both, making bizarre intonations beneath his breath with a familiarity that displayed painstaking practice. A rune on one silver candlestick lit up orange, then its twin began to glow as well.  His companions watched in a mixture of fascination and trepidation as Caballeron slowly paced in a circle around the candlesticks, mixing his prayers with carefully choreographed gestures. Despite the solemn tone of his chant, delight flashed in his emerald eyes as more of the runes on the candlesticks began to glow like lights on a Hearth’s Warming tree, purple, green, white, and blue. The flames on the wicks began to dance and flicker in a bizarre synergy, swaying in unfelt breezes, their colors shifting to shades that none of the observers could adequately describe.  Caballeron sat down on his haunches and raised his eyes to the cloud-covered sky, lifting both of his forelegs out in a gesture of welcoming. “Ehi! Ehi! Ehi!” he called out in a whisper. “Nyaglath, ger’uh angfah!”  The flames on the candles flared like gas burners that had been turned all the way on, swirling in unnamable shades of almost orange, nearly blue, and something similar to white. For a moment, Biff, Rogue, and Withers thought they saw a crimson glare in Caballeron’s eyes that magnified his wide smile.  Then the flames dimmed down to mere flickers and thick smoke began to pour from them, coalescing into two swirling shapes that hovered overhead. Limbs formed from the torsos, the smoke seeming to solidify into bladed appendages. The heads formed last, looking down upon Caballeron. “Whoa,” Biff exhaled, pushing his hat back to study the conjurations closer. “Holy shit, it worked.” Withers flinched and turned away, rubbing his eyes beneath the enchanted sunglasses. “What the fuck are those?”  “Que incredible,” Caballeron beamed at the two smokey figures. “Two visitors from beyond, summoned to our world.”  “Best we put ‘em to good use,” Rogue grinned.  “Quite right, mi amigo,” Caballeron nodded. He raised a hoof and pointed down towards the village, towards their foes, hissing out a command in that alien language.  The swirling, ever-changing heads seemed to grin. And then the conjured figures vanished.  Fred Facet’s workshop had two rows of dust-covered display cases, the glass smashed and the jewelry long gone. Grime covered the framed photographs on the walls. Daring stepped up to one and wiped some of the dust from a picture to reveal a photograph of the two brothers with an older couple that could only have been their parents.  She sighed and shook her head, panning her gaze over the shop as they proceeded forward. The boards creaked and groaned beneath every hoofstep, the noise like salvos of gunfire in the silence of the dead town.  “So, if I had a gem from a cursed amulet, where would I keep it?” Autumn asked, looking around and bending down under furniture as if she expected the ruby to be hidden beneath one of the counters.  “My guess?” Strider commented, looking towards the back of the room where a door stood ajar. “In the safe.”  “You should be a detective or something,” Daring commented, making her way over to the door.  The door led to a small office that contained a small desk, a rickety chair, and a sturdy iron safe with a combination lock. A lock that was currently sitting on the floor, having been knocked off with a prybar and hammer, judging by the tool marks on the open door. The safe itself was empty.  “So much for that theory,” Daring remarked.  “Check upstairs,” Phillip grunted, already heading up the stairs. Each step groaned in protest at his weight as he proceeded up to the second floor.  Another door at the top of the stairs barred their way, but this one was bashed down just as easily as the front door was. The miasma of copper and rot intensified as soon as the door splintered, causing the four investigators to stagger, coughing.  Phillip entered the doors and froze with a small gasp at the sight before him.  “What is it?” Daring asked from behind him through a cough.  “Bugger me,” Phillip said, stepping forward to allow them entry. “I’m not sure.”  Daring entered the room behind him and gasped. The second floor was indeed the living quarters of the shop owner’s family, a living center with a small attached kitchen. Doors led to a bathroom and two bedrooms. One had an adult-sized bed, the other had two foal-sized beds. Dust of years clung to wooden toys littering the floor and the beds. The windows were all boarded up from the inside; the only light was their own headlamps.  Placed upon the wall over the central table was a framed photograph showing Fred Facet with a unicorn mare, her smiling face framed by flowing locks. Two fillies, a unicorn and an earth pony with bows in their manes, posed in front of the pair.  The three mares were all sitting at the central table, slumped in their seats. A dark coppery liquid stained their slit throats and was painted across their slashed and battered faces, chests, and hooves; the skin beneath the blood was a horrible gray-green of decay, sagging off their bones. Three knives were placed upon the table, their blades stained to the hilts.  More of the coppery liquid was painted across the walls, the floors, the doorways. The same phrase, over and over again, in three different hooves.  “‘Return It To Me,’” Strider read aloud, shuddering as he stared at one large declaration on the wall over the table.  Autumn looked over Strider’s shoulder at the scene and retched, letting out a dismayed whimper in Kirean before staggering down the steps. She made it to the landing before vomiting.  “Same,” Daring said, gulping down some bile at the sight. She turned and trotted back down the stairs to comfort Autumn, gently draping a wing around the shivering mare and pulling her closer.  Autumn coughed and spat out bile. “Does…does it get easier?” she asked Daring quietly, wiping tears and spittle from her face.  “Not that much,” Daring admitted. “And it’s worse knowing that you can’t do anything for them.”  Autumn swallowed. “Just some kids,” she whispered.  Daring sighed and put a foreleg around Autumn, stroking her back. It was all that she could think to do.  “Fred’s body isn’t here,” Strider reported after scanning the other rooms. He looked back at the messages painted across the walls. “Why would they do this?” he asked aloud, trying to keep his eyes on everything except the corpses. “Return the gem? Return it to who?”  “The champion,” Phillip said. “They buried the champion’s body ‘beneath the stones.’ Guess she wanted the gem back.”  “The stones,” Daring pondered aloud from downstairs. “You think they meant Founder’s Circle?”  “Far from the village,” Phillip said. “And they believed that the stones had power. Makes sense.”  “Great,” Strider sighed. “We passed them on the way here, and now we need to turn around and go back.”  Autumn shook herself out of her reverie and stood up. “Okay. Okay,” she said, forcing a smile on her face. “Let’s go to Founder’s Rock, then. If we can get it before--whoa! What the fuck is that?!”  Daring whirled around and gasped at the thing that had slithered through the broken door and was frozen in her and Autumn’s lights, staring back at them across the room.  It looked vaguely quadrupedal, but its front limbs were double-jointed and bladed, like a praying mantis. It seemed to be made of smoke, its body swirling and shifting constantly.  The head…the head was wrong, the shape incomprehensible, the features indescribable. Daring looked at the staring mouths and a stabbing pain suddenly pierced her head between her eyes, like a drill being shoved through her cranium. She had to look away, cringing; the pain only diminished when the beast was out of her sight. “What’s going on?” Phillip called, trying to push downstairs.  “There’s something in--”  "Daring!" Autumn screamed, leaping away. The smokey monster was slithering across the floor, its hoofsteps horrifically silent. Its head was thrust forward, its...jaws or its eyes wide open...or perhaps closed, stretched in an impossible angle that Daring could vaguely imagine was a smile. Daring pushed Autumn behind her, wincing at the stabbing pain in her head as her right hoof instinctively went for the whip at her side. She seized the leather handle and drew the weapon, pulling it back with a swoop. She pushed the shock and fear into her gut, stoking the fuel for the fires of her will; light began to dance along the cord of the whip in response to her magic. A snap of her wrist sent the whip uncoiling forward, the lightning woven into the rope sending light and shadows dancing across the walls. The whip struck the beast with an earsplitting crack, cleaving its head into a puff of smoke. The thing paused for a moment, staggering as though stunned...but before the mares' eyes, smoke began to swirl around the stumpy neck, the abominable head reforming. What might have been holes, might have been mouths, and might have been eyes burrowed into Daring's gaze, sending renewed waves of pain through her head. "Uh-oh," she muttered. "Autumn, get back upstairs!" The two mares retreated up the steps, slamming the door behind them. "Okay, we gotta get outta here--" Daring froze, her eyes widening. Strider and Phillip were standing in the center of a chalk circle that Phillip had drawn on the floor, a dark red blot marking where he had closed it with his own blood. Another smoke monster was stalking around the circle, bladed arms slashing ineffectively at the invisible wall that blocked it. "Daring, circle!" Phillip barked. Too late. The monster had turned and noticed Daring and Autumn. It paused, cocking its head to one side, then scuttled towards them in horrific silence. "No!" Strider shouted, opening fire with the Model Navy .44. The bullets just streaked through the monster like it wasn't there. "Fuck!" Daring gasped, pulling a piece of chalk out of her pocket and bending to try to mark a circle on the ground. The bladed arm came down and struck Daring on the foreleg. A cold sensation ran up her limb and she dropped the chalk, stumbling back with a cry as pins and needles danced beneath her skin. Another bladed arm came down like an ax blow. Daring rolled aside to avoid the blow, pushing herself away with a flap of her wings and stumbling into the children's bedroom. One sight of the ineffable face sent fresh waves of agony through her head and she had to turn away to seek some relief. "Behind you!" she heard Strider warn and instinctively turned to see nothing but the wall. Strider hadn't been talking to her. Autumn yelped in pain and shock and Daring turned to see the kirin falling to the ground, her limbs as stiff as a corpse in rigor mortis. The smokey beast from downstairs had appeared behind her, though the door remained closed. And the second one was now coming through the wall before her, bladed arms reaching out for her. Phillip burst out of the circle and lunged for the one attacking Daring, snarling as his waddy sliced through the air. Smoke was ripped from the monster with each attack, but it merely turned and slashed at Phil with one of its appendages. Phil dodged the attack, wincing as molten pain erupted behind his eyes at the sight of the thing's face. He instinctively turned away with a gasp of agony. Then a terrible numbness spread across his hind legs and he fell, dropping his weapon. He tried to roll away from the other attacker, only for another blow to strike him across the chest. He felt it like a slicing, frosty wind that slammed against his torso, accompanied by a chilling cold emanating from his vest; those two blows had been enough to drain the protective wards. "Fall back!" he managed to order before another strike of the bladed arms spread that icy numbness across his entire body. His muscles contracted painfully, no longer responding to his commands. Daring seized Phillip by the back of his vest and flew for the boarded-up window, lowering her shoulder to crash through. She made it only halfway across the room before another strike of the smokey arms sent her crashing to the ground. "Daring, Phil!" Strider called, pulling the paralyzed Autumn away. "Go, go! Get yourselves out!" Daring urged before the paralysis sealed her jaw. She could only stare as Strider hesitated, then lunged for a boarded-up window, smashing through into the cold, dead air. The smokey monsters stared after Strider for a moment, then loomed over their prizes, pleasure glittering across their horrid faces. Strider landed on the street outside, panting and gasping. He bent down over Autumn, pressing a hoof against her icy neck. A thready pulse knocked against his hoof and Autumn's terrified eyes twitched. Strider sighed in relief. Autumn's eyes went to the sky above. Strider looked up to see two columns of smoke racing through the sky above, Phillip and Daring clutched in their swirling tendrils. The smokey tunnels flew over Maredale Green and towards the east. Caballeron and his companions watched as their beasts flew through the air towards them, dropping their paralyzed prizes on the snow before them before reforming into their quadrupedal forms. They seemed to beam up at Caballeron as though in pride. "They're still alive?" Rogue snarled, glaring at Daring Do, who was trying to move her forelegs. She glared defiantly back at him. Caballeron frowned at the monsters, then at the runes on the candles. "Ah, of course," he nodded. "The Uhluhtcs made this. They preferred to make live sacrifices to Discord." "Would make sense that they make beasts that would retrieve live captives," Biff nodded. "And here I thought they were like cats, bringing back prizes," Withers commented, still refusing to look at the monsters. "Let's change that," Rogue grinned, drawing a knife. "No, Rogue," Caballeron cut him off. "Our client told us to take them alive if we have the chance. I don't think you'd want to displease them." Rogue growled. "You remember what happened last time, right?" "Painfully," Caballeron frowned, touching the bandages on his face. "But nothing was ever gained without some pain. Bind and gag them both, quickly." "And this is why you always carry duct tape," Biff smirked, pulling two rolls out of his saddlebags and tossing one to Withers. Caballeron held up the dowsing necklace, which was swinging towards the south. "Hmm...it appears that the gem isn't here." "Their two friends are still here, though," Withers pointed out as he finished winding tape around Daring's wings and added a strip around her mouth, earning a glare. He disarmed her of her pistol, then quickly ran a hoof through her tail and removed the razor blade and hoofcuff key that she kept concealed in her tail, pocketing them with a smirk. "Which is why we need some...leverage," Caballeron declared. He cleared his throat and sat down, cupping his hooves around his mouth. "Special Agent Flame Strider! Autumn Blaze!" he shouted, his voice echoing over the still village. "We have your companions! Come out and surrender or we will kill them, and then you!" Strider swallowed and slowly exhaled, his breath coalescing before him. "Now what?"