“You let a civilian into our base?!” roared Flicker, leaning over her desk. “Without express permission?!”
The dragon glared daggers at Team Ruby, who sat across from her mahogany desk. Next to her nameplate were many scratch marks, old and new, from years of claws irritably scraping along it. Photos and certificates hung in frames on the wall behind her.
“It was an emergency situation,” Tarsis explained. “He was at the scene, and a DNA test proved that he is indeed related to the victim.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re risking by having him here?” Flicker growled. The signet ring on her finger looked ready to burst its band with how tight her fist was clenched. “The public isn’t supposed to know we exist! Or did you forget your first week of training already?”
“It may be a benefit, Director,” the Changeling tried. “With a familiar figure present, the victim might be more willing to cooperate.”
“And I’ll give ‘em both a flash on their way out the door,” Ruby added, tapping her horn. “Kid’ll be were-free, and they’ll be back to their normal lives like nothin’ happened.”
Flicker sighed and sat back in her chair, taking a sip of coffee from the “#1 Mom Boss” mug Ruby had gotten her a while ago. After a moment of tense silence, she finally shook her head.
“Fine, I’ll allow it,” she groaned, “but I want their memories wiped the second we’re done with them.”
Ruby nodded. “Rightyo.”
“In any case, well done on apprehending the weretimberwolf,” Flicker went on. “I’ve learned the overnight detoxification was a success, and the foal is awake and recovering well.”
“That is a relief,” Vanessa sighed.
“However, this raises an issue,” she continued. “Therianthropes don’t normally attack children.”
“You think this was a planned attack?” asked Graham, his front legs crossed as he sat back in his chair.
“It’s very plausible,” said Flicker. “And we still have to question Sealight. Originally, I was going to have Ruby and Tarsis do that, but we need to learn what happened to that foal. Tarsis, I want you to speak to her, and Ruby, you interrogate Sealight.”
Tarsis tilted her head. “Any reason for choosing us specifically?”
Flicker simply nodded toward Ruby.
“I have ways of making him talk…” the Unicorn snickered, rubbing her hooves together with a devious smirk.
“Point taken,” the Changeling said flatly.
“You can take one of your team with you,” Flicker said, “to assist you in some way.”
“I pick Vanessa!” Ruby grinned. “She can threaten to suck his blood if he doesn’t spill.”
The Batpony crossed her front legs and looked at the side. “Honestly, one time…”
“What?” Ruby tilted her head. “It might scare him.”
“As long as you don’t kill him,” Flicker interrupted, “I don’t care how you make him speak.”
“Shall we get started, then?” asked Tarsis, preparing to get off her seat.
Flicker lifted a pen and started focusing on a paper on her desk. “On your way.”
Team Ruby stood up and filed out of the office and into the hallway. The Eclipse Bureau HQ was built beneath the Harvest Moon Bookshop in Trottingham. A facility that stretched multiple floors below ground, each floor a labyrinth of hallways that was very easy to get lost in. In fact, the base was enchanted that way–anycreature without a pendant would be stuck in ever-changing blank corridors and no doubt left a quivering mess for an amused agent to come and rescue. Other creatures walked this way and that by them, all sporting the Eclipse sigil.
“Let’s get to work,” Ruby said. “C’mon, Van–we’ve got a cult leader to scare.”
“I’ve never seen you this eager for an assignment,” Tarsis pointed out. “What’s this about?”
“Remember that ring he tried to put on my horn?” asked Ruby in a hushed voice.
The Changeling blinked, then her eyes widened. “You want to know where he got it.”
“Exactamundo.”
“Question,” said Graham, raising a talon. “Why do I have to help question a kid?”
“You don’t have to,” Tarsis said, “but it couldn’t hurt.”
“Fillies like cute and fluffy things,” grinned Ruby.
Graham snapped his beak. “I am not cute and fluffy.”
“Make sure to be gentle when you give her a hug, won’t you?” Vanessa’s fangs bared in a smirk.
“Alright, alright,” Tarsis said before the Griffon could get a remark out. “Let’s get to work. We’ll meet up in the break room when we’re done.”
Ruby and Vanessa trotted out of the elevator onto floor B4, the second-lowest floor in the facility. Ahead of them was a burly Centaur sat behind a desk, guarding a pair of large indestructible doors. He looked up from his book as the two approached.
"How goes it, Sav?" greeted Ruby. "We're here to have a chat with Sealight."
"Least you're not being thrown in here for once, Ruby," Savvius remarked. "Yeah, boss told me you were on your way down. Just a second."
He got up from his desk and walked to the left door, his large hooves thumping on the tile floor. He took his sigil from his belt and held it up to a panel. A small light scanned the sigil, and the door's tumblers and locks clicked and whirred before it slowly split apart.
"We've certainly come a long way from simple keys, yes?" Vanessa commented as the two followed Savvius through.
"Ah, it's all still magic at the end of the day," said Ruby. "Princess Twilight just dolled it up a bit."
Inside was a large block of prison cells, the doors all armed to the teeth with magical locks and protective charms. Behind each one was someone, or something that once caused havoc around the Griffish Isles. The left hallway housed the sentient creatures, the right having the animalistic ones, all waiting to be thrown into some kind of dungeon. Usually Tartarus.
While following Savvius along hallways and up some flights of stairs, Vanessa couldn’t help but look over the rails with wonder. “How does this even work? Wouldn’t they breach the upper floors?”
“Must be spacial magic,” Ruby guessed. “Messing about with dimensions and shite like that. I heard the scientists got it off the phonebox downstairs.”
“In here,” said Savvius, holding his sigil up to another panel by a door. The aetherial chains crossing on the door retracted with an echoing clicking sound. “Let me know when you’re done and I’ll come get you.”
“Cheers, big lad.” Ruby entered the door, Vanessa skittering in as the door closed behind her.
“Oh, brilliant,” they heard a familiar voice groan. Sealight was laying across the cell’s cot, wearing a magic-blocking cone on his horn and a face like a slapped arse. “I heard I was getting a visitor, but it just had to be you.”
“Aww, I thought we were mates,” smirked Ruby. “Nice hornwear, by the way. Lot nicer than the one you tried to slap on me.”
“Did you come here to interrogate me or make fun of me?”
“Yes.”
The stallion sat up and crossed his front legs. “Take your time, then. I’m not exactly going anywhere.”
“Except for the dungeons,” Vanessa pointed out. Sealight snarled. “Sorry for feeding on you. If it helps, your blood was quite nice. Unicorn blood always has this tang to it.”
Sealight blinked. “Um… thanks?”
“Alrighty, to business.” Ruby’s horn glowed, and with a flash, a table and two chairs popped out of thin air. She and Vanessa took a seat across from Sealight, who stayed on his cot. “So, the cult thing. What was all that about?”
“So I could finally feel powerful,” Sealight answered flatly. “I thought the vocal confession made that clear.”
“See, that’s the problem,” Ruby said, leaning her hooves on the table. “I don’t buy the ‘inferiority complex’ story–bit of a stretch to start ripping out cutie marks just because you don’t feel special.”
“Well, that’s how it is,” Sealight said with a shrug.
“And also,” she went on, “only one Unicorn has publicly used Unmarking, and hasn’t disclosed the spell to anypony else. So how’d you figure out how to use it?”
Sealight put on the smallest smirk. “How do you know she didn’t show me how? Princess Twilight’s little success story may not be as grand as she says.”
“I know she didn’t because she developed the Cutie Seal charm, smartarse,” Ruby shot back.
“And we know who she keeps in contact with,” added Vanessa. “A cashier from Buckney wasn’t on the list.”
Sealight huffed through his nostrils. “Fine, you saw through my bluff.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ruby chirped. “Though, you do have some fascination with Starlight, don’t you? Right down to studying her combinations of spells. What’s that all about?”
“Something wrong with admiring a talented spellcaster?”
“To the point you turn into a copycat cultist? Aye, that’s gonna raise some eyebrows.”
Sealight glared silently at her.
“Alright, let’s try something else.” Ruby reached into her coat and pulled out the black ring. Sealight tensed. She smirked. “Oh yeah, I’ve held onto it. And you know exactly what it is, don’t you?”
Sealight swallowed. “Um…”
“And you know that the only creatures capable of creating it are long gone, don’t you?”
A bead of sweat trickled down Sealight’s face. “Wait–”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Please, you don’t understand,” muttered Sealight. “If I talk, he’ll come for me…!”
“I think he’d have quite a time getting in here,” Vanessa commented. “Who is he, anyway?”
The stallion shook his head. “I-I can’t…!”
“Last chance, mate,” Ruby warned him.
“You may wish to talk now,” the Batpony added, her fangs gleaming. “She is losing her good mood.”
Sealight pursed his lips.
The mare shrugged and pocketed the ring. “Hard way it is. Hold him for a bit, would ya, Van?”
The Batpony swooped over the table and Sealight yelped as she grabbed him by the upper forelegs. “Hey! What’re you doing?!”
Ruby glowered at him, the stallion gasping at how all humour evaporated from her face. Her horn became coated in a purple smoke, the same that flowed from the ends of her eyes. Her pupils vanished and her sclera was a sickly green.
“Time for bad cop,” she said as the smoke struck the struggling Sealight.
Ruby could see a turquoise light filling a narrow rocky passage. She heard distant drips of condensation, and the echoing clops of hooves from below. She felt the rhythmic ache of a panicked heartbeat. But it wasn’t her heart.
“This doesn’t feel right at all,” she heard Sealight whisper. “I shouldn’t have come here. But if I back out, it might get even worse.”
Sealight entered a passageway into a large space. Ruby couldn’t see a thing past the glow of his horn, but she was certain it was some kind of cavern atrium.
“Uhh, hello?” Sealight called. His voice echoed. “I’m here…?”
“Come closer,” a voice said within the dark. A voice that didn’t sound like it belonged in this realm. She could feel Sealight’s fur bristling and the skin beneath it crawling. His urge to turn tail and bolt back the way he came. But he slowly walked forward.
“I got your letter,” Sealight said. “And thanks for the ferry money, but… what am I doing here?”
“You have dreams, do you not?” asked the voice. Sealight yelped as he saw a pair of eyes in the darkness, level with his own. Their white sclera were like lanterns, but they sported no pupils. “Dreams of power and respect. Dreams to rise above your station and show your worth to the world.”
Sealight swallowed. Ruby felt sweat trickle down his forehead. “W-what’re you…?”
“You have the knowledge and the will, but not the strength. I can give that to you. Your peers will bow at your hooves.”
Sealight’s heart swelled, but his breathing was still quick. He could feel that whoever this was, they could indeed give him the power they promised.
“What power is that?” he asked.
“You know there is a way to remove cutie marks from Ponies,” said the voice. “I will bestow that knowledge onto you. You need only combine this with your own abilities to bring Ponies to heel before you.”
“W-what’s the catch?” He wanted to look away from those ghostly eyes, but it was like they were watching him no matter where he turned his head. “This probably isn’t out of generosity.”
“Their cutie marks will be reserved for me to absorb their magical power.” The voice added an icy hiss that made Sealight back away a few steps. “You will bring them to me when your mission in converting the Griffish Isles is complete. The husks are yours to do with as you wish, but their cutie marks are mine.”
Ruby felt Sealight’s hooves itch, every bone in his body beg him to turn and run. Removing every single cutie mark from every single Pony in the Griffish Isles for… whatever this thing was? It was ridiculous! He couldn’t! He shouldn’t! But he stayed where he stood. The fear of facing a gruesome end before he even saw sunlight again kept him rooted to the ground. And, Celestia forgive him, the promise of all that power was just too tempting.
“Alright,” he finally said. “I’ll do it.”
“Excellent.” Without warning, a beam of pure darkness struck Sealight’s horn, evaporating the light. Ruby felt a sudden migraine, his head pulsing like it would explode any moment. She heard his screams echo through the cave, and she could tell he was in too deep for anypony to hear him. And then, the pain was gone as quickly as it arrived. His body was flushed and sweating, and his breaths were heavy.
“I… I know now,” he murmured. He stood up tall. “How to remove cutie marks…I can do it now…”
“This will also assist you.” He watched as a trail of darkness appeared before him, and circled around itself. It hardened into the black ring, that landed on Sealight’s hoof. He blasted it with some magic, which did nothing at all.
“This is… you’re…!” he breathed, and he looked at the eyes. He was resolute. He understood everything. “My master, I will carry out your will.”
Ruby was back in the cell. Her eyes and horn had returned to normal. Vanessa let go of Sealight, who was breathing heavily.
“Cheers, Sea,” she grinned. Her horn glowed, and the table and chairs vanished. “Got everything we need.”
“What did you…?” he whimpered. “What have you done?! He’s coming for me now! You have to protect me!”
“You’re plenty protected in here, mate,” said Ruby, and called for Savvius. After some minutes of Sealight’s unintelligible blubbering, the cell door opened and she and Vanessa trotted out. “I’ll come visit sometime!”
His panicked scream was cut off by the door slamming behind them, followed by the sound of ethereal chains.
“Let’s head to the break room,” sighed Ruby. “I really need a coffee.”
“Did you get what you needed?” asked the Batpony.
“I got my suspicions confirmed, and I hate it.”