The biting wind of a late fall afternoon shuddered through the trees of the Whitetail Woods, tugging some more of the reddish-brown leaves from the barren branches. A murder of crows milled about the decaying leaves, picking at any morsels that they could find amongst the debris.
The roaring of an engine sent the birds into the air in a blur of black wings, screeching out their clarion alarm. A dark green Jeep rumbled down the uneven dirt road, headlights cutting through the ever-present shadows beneath the thick trees.
“¡La historia, mi amiga, la historia!” the driver declared as he wove the vehicle around the potholes that marred the road. “That monastery has played a small but dramatic role in local history. Whatever Las Hijas found in there could be the key to solving a mystery that has been left unanswered for centuries!”
“I’m not gonna pretend that I’m not interested, too,” his passenger remarked as she reclined in her seat, tilting her pith helmet back to roll her eyes at the driver. “But that’s what you said when you dragged me along to look for the Lost Village of the Aneighsazis in the Badlands.” She paused with a brief shudder. “All we found were some bronze tools, some bleached buffalo bones, and a bigass camel spider that chased me across half the desert.”
“Ay, por el amor de Luna…you know that camel spiders are not actually spiders, nor are they venomous,” the driver sighed. “And it wasn’t after you, it wanted to rest in your shadow.”
“They’re big and hairy and have eight legs and I don’t like them,” the pegasus groused. She paused for a beat, then forced a smirk on her face. “So what do you think we’re gonna find in there? Some kinda camel spider cult?”
Caballeron shot his colleague a brief scowl. “Mock me if you will, Daring Do,” he said, turning off onto a narrower road littered with years of potholes, overgrown grass and rotting leaves, the Jeep rattling from side to side as it maneuvered through the craters and tread marks dug into the road. “But tell me, what do you know of the Whitetail Monastery?”
“Not much; I only really did some reading on this place after we got that letter from the Subprioress yesterday,” Daring admitted, sitting up and bracing herself slightly against the shaking. “This monastery was set up by the Verdant Sisterhood of Deeds in 1715 as a charitable retreat; they made wooden goods and grew fruits and vegetables for donations, and sheltered creatures with mental illnesses. The only notable thing that happened to it was in the summer of 1743. No one saw anyone from the monastery for three days and when they finally checked the place, everyone was gone. Just poof, gone. No sign of anyone even leaving the premises, food rotting in the pantry. The place was abandoned until about a year ago when a small group of the Sisters of Clover started fixing the place up.”
“It makes no sense,” Caballeron declared. “What reason would these nuns, these ladies of Harmony, have to simply flee their place of worship? It occurs to me that the Temple of Precious Enlightenment cannot be the only hidden cult in Ponyville’s history. And what especially bothers me is that the Sisterhood’s Liber Bonorum Operum was never found.”
“And there we go,” Daring sighed with a weary smile. “You’re after the Sisterhood’s book.”
“Every Sisterhood of Deeds keeps a record of their actions and the revelations that they have learned doing them in a Book of Good Deeds,” Caballeron exposited. “A precious and lavishly decorated tome that is meant to be passed down to later followers of the Path of Harmony for them to learn from. The sisters would be hard-pressed to leave that behind, and yet it has not turned up in centuries. Where could it be, I ask? Perhaps there is a clue left in the monastery for us to find!”
“Cabbie, you know it’s unlikely for us to find anything after almost two hundred seventy years, right?” Daring Do asked.
“It is still worth a look, ¿sí?” Caballeron commented as he navigated a sweeping turn.
A gate appeared before them, incongruous with the natural setting of the woods. The chain-link barrier stretched across the path and into the trees on both sides, the gate secured by a chain and padlock and adorned with a rusty No Trespassing sign.
A pale blue unicorn with a close-cropped sunshine mane wearing a simple brown cloak with an icon of a three-leafed clover was waiting on the other side of the gate, magically unlocking the gate as they approached. “Doctor Caballeron and Doctor Do?” she asked as she approached the driver’s window.
“That’s us,” Caballeron nodded and smiled.
The nun bowed in greeting. “I am Subprioress Morning Creek, the acting head of this convent. Thank you for responding to my letter.”
“Not at all,” Caballeron said, reaching back and opening up the back door. “Your letter said that you’d discovered something you couldn’t explain in the monastery.”
“Yes,” Morning Creek replied, climbing into the backseat for the ride back. “We were resetting the flooring in the rooms that had once been the asylum and discovered a box beneath the floorboard. The iconography upon it was…” The holy sister shivered slightly. “Disturbing.”
“Sί, the photograph that you sent us was most informative,” Caballeron nodded. “Daring?”
Daring Do pulled a polaroid snapshot from one of the pockets of her cargo shirt and examined it. The picture displayed a sizable wooden box, about the size of a construction worker’s lunch pail. On the front of the box was a combination dial with notches numbered one through twenty. Elaborately carved upon the top were five symbols, seemingly innocuous to a common observer, but Daring recognized what they were with an involuntary chill.
A rainbow composed of varying shades of black. A curved silver bell. A hoofprint, paw print, and an eagle’s talon all in a circle. A crescent moon with an eye in the center. A lightning bolt striking the surface of the water.
Tirac. Grogar. Discord. Tantabus. The Storm King.
The five Abominations.
“I assume that you recognize those symbols,” Morning Creek stated, distaste and fear blending in her voice. She clasped her front hooves together, then touched her lips, forehead, and heart with her right hoof, performing the ritual sign of harmony. “When we discovered it, we decided to ask for outside analysis. We hope that you can explain why the Sisters would have such a…blasphemous object hidden in their monastery.”
“We shall do what we can to resolve this mystery,” Caballeron declared as they approached the crumbling ruins of the monastery reaching up towards the overcast sky, dusty stone and shattered windows looking down upon them as Caballeron steered the Jeep into a weed-strewn lot in front of the door.
A section of the lawn had been mowed down and was now housing several humble tents and mounted tarps where the Sisters of Clover were set up with their tools and equipment; more mares with close-cropped manes and hooded cloaks were milling about the area, many of them looking up expectantly as the vehicle parked.
Caballeron shut off his Jeep and exited, tightening his scarf as he did so. Daring Do stepped out as well, zipping up her jacket to ward off the chill of the aptly-named Moon of Cold. She studied the overgrown, dilapidated structure, wearied by years of disuse, vandalism, and erosion. There was no door in the leaning doorway, though Daring did note a small carving of an upside-down triangle in the lintel. Monastery of the Verdant Sisterhood of Revelation declared the barely legible words on the sign next to the entrance, the white paint long faded.
“Not where I’d want to stay,” she commented to the subprioress as she and Caballeron pulled their saddlebags filled with gear out of the back of the Jeep.
“This place was once a holy place, and it can be again,” Morning Creek replied placidly, looking up at the ruins with a fond expression. “It is the duty of the Brothers and Sisters of the Founders to restore and respect our history and seek knowledge wherever the Path of Harmony guides us.”
“All due respect, Subprioress, I have a hard time believing that the Path would lead us to whatever is behind that door,” another cloaked Sister replied dryly as she approached from the battered, doorless entry. The kirin was the color of cafe au lait, her scales a mossy green, and her frowning eyes a rusty reddish-brown.
Morning Creek let out a quiet sigh. “Doctors, this is Sister Fertile Ground. She is the one who discovered the box.”
“I found it beneath the floorboards in the asylum wing,” Fertile Ground commented as she led her guests inside, the floor creaking beneath their hooves. They passed through an entrance hallway and into what had once been a foyer, though all that remained was a long table with several missing legs, a few broken-down chairs, a shattered picture window, and a varnished icon nailed to one wall: three interlocking circles, painted purple, green, and blue, with a bright pink heart-shaped flame in the center. More doorways and a rot-eaten staircase led to other sections of the monastery.
“Have you tried opening it?” Daring asked, noting an etching of a circle in the doorway that they were passing through.
“We’ve tried everything we can think of, short of just smashing the thing,” Fertile Ground admitted, guiding them through what Daring guessed had once been a visiting area for the families of inmates; the long, narrow room had the remnant of tables and chairs on both sides, the walls lined with faded paintings of calming nature landscapes. “We can’t figure out the combination, and unlocking spells aren’t working.” Fertile Ground frowned as they reached the solid, five-inch thick oak door at the end of the room. “If you ask me, we should just smash it. Some things shouldn’t be dug up.”
Caballeron raised an eyebrow. “You do know whom you are speaking to, ¿sí?” he asked, drawing a snicker from Daring.
Fertile Ground closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. “Well, do what you gotta do,” she said, pushing open the door with a heavy groan of rusty hinges.
Daring Do’s eyes widened as she examined the room that they were looking into. The long chamber, built of heavy stone with a darkly varnished wooden floor that had been partially torn up, was only dimly lit by the light that filtered in through the high, barred windows. Rusty beds lined the walls, the mattresses upon them eaten away by mold. Crude paintings, many of them at the level of hoof-painted stick figures, covered the wall, many of them overlapping each other. Higher up on the walls were faded, larger-than-life busts of the three Founders of Equestria, looking benevolently down upon the room. In the center of the room, a compass rose was etched into the stone.
“It was worse when we got in here,” Fertile Ground commented. “There was debris all over the floor: plates, food trays, utensils, chamber pots. Used ones, at that.” She grimaced. “We found the box over here and left it there.”
The box in question was sitting on the floor near the sections that had been removed. His chartreuse eyes shining, Caballeron eagerly picked it up and placed it on a table that had survived the ruin of the asylum. “Hmm, the making of the box is exquisite, clearly hoofmade,” he remarked, carefully studying the woodwork. “Is there a woodworking shop in the monastery?”
“There is,” Morning Creek confirmed. “Upstairs in the wing.”
“This wood is from the area,” Caballeron said, stepping back so that Daring could take photographs of the artifact. “I would suspect that the Sisterhood of Deeds made this here…but what for? And why did they hide it?”
Daring pulled out a piece of paper and a charcoal pencil and did a rubbing of the blasphemous symbols on the top of the box. “Was the box hidden by a door, or were the boards over it solid?” she asked.
“There was a door,” Fertile Ground responded. “But the hinges were well-hidden; I didn’t even notice that it was a door until I was prying it up.”
“And has this room always been an asylum?” Daring questioned.
“As far as we can tell, yes,” Morning Creek responded.
Daring pondered for a moment. “Do you still have the door?”
“Uh, hang on…” Fertile Ground dashed out of the room and returned a minute later holding a section of varnished wood with two small hinges on one side. “I threw it in the scrap pile,” she admitted, passing it over to Daring.
Daring and Caballeron both studied the false section of flooring. “The door is made from different wood than the rest of the floor,” Caballeron observed. “Notice the different thickness and width: similar enough to fool a casual observer, especially as they had painted it the same varnish as the rest of the floor. Let me test a theory…”
He pulled a small chisel out of his pack of tools and scraped a sample of varnish from the false door then took another scraping from a piece of the floor. Using a set of tweezers, he placed the samples on the table and examined them through a magnifying glass.
“Yes, I was right,” he declared, passing the lens to Daring. “Observe, the sample from the normal floor has multiple layers of paint and varnish. But the door…”
“Has only one,” Daring nodded, observing both of the paint samples through the lens. “That must mean that the door was placed a long time after the flooring and covered in the same varnish.”
“Precisely,” Caballeron noted. “Which leads to further questions.”
“They wouldn’t have put that in while there were patients here,” Daring said. “Too risky that they would’ve seen it and opened it. They must have put it in before they disappeared.”
“But were they planning on coming back for it, or did they leave it behind for others to find?” Caballeron pondered.
“They left behind food, which argues against them coming back,” Daring commented.
“But they wouldn’t have left behind the patients,” Morning Creek protested. “Surely they would have taken them with them when they left.”
“But on the other hoof, no one ever saw or heard from any of the patients again,” Daring pointed out. She turned back to the box, turning it over carefully; whatever was inside rattled tantalizingly.
“Hang on…there’s something carved on the bottom here.” She took up the magnifying glass again and squinted at the little icons etched into the bottom of the mysterious box.
“A square, a triangle, and a circle…” she mused. Her head turned back towards the lintel of the door, her eyes going to a square and a circle carved into the doorway.
“Aha!” she declared, her face brightening. “The combination must be related to the number of shapes hidden around the monastery! I’ll be right back!”
She shot off in a greyscale rainbow, leaving a rush of wind in her wake that knocked the other three ponies off-balance. Caballeron chuckled, adjusting his ascot. “Yes, she’s like that,” he commented to the two gaping mares.
Daring Do returned a couple of minutes later, a grin on her face. “Six, seventeen, twelve!” she declared, grabbing the box. She pressed her ear to the dial and turned the dial clockwise to six. A soft click inside the box announced that she was on the right track. She twisted the dial to seventeen, then twelve. A sharp click brought a gasp to both the archaeologists.
“Now, let us see,” Caballeron said as Daring readied her camera. Meadow Creek and Fertile Ground glanced at each other and slowly backed up a few steps.
The box creaked as Caballeron opened the lid. Both ponies peered inside, and the excitement on their faces suddenly vanished.
There were only two objects inside the box. One was a small metal cylinder with a cap on one end meant for holding scrolls.
The other object was an idol of a quadrupedal beast with a dog-like head and a long tail wrapped around its paws. It leered up at its discoverers with beady eyes at the end of its long snout, sneering at them with intricately carved teeth.
Daring and Caballeron stared at the idol, then glanced at each other, the same expression on their faces.
“What…is that?” a pale Morning Creek breathed as she and Fertile Ground both performed the sign of harmony, their eyes wide.
“An ahuizotl,” Daring Do answered quietly, her stomach twisting inside her guts as the word fell from her tongue like venom. “So what the hell is it doing here?”
“Subprioress! Subprioress!” a unicorn Sister cried as she sprinted into the room, her eyes bulging.
“What is it, Sister?” Morning Creek asked, gripping her charge’s shoulders to try to calm her.
“Someone was watching us from one of the trees at the edge of the clearing!” the Sister explained in between pants. “I was gathering sticks for the tinder pile when I saw a gleam of light over my head. When I looked closer, I realized that it was a creature with wings wearing a camouflage outfit and a ski mask, watching the monastery through binoculars. I screamed and they flew away in a rush, but they dropped this.”
She held out a small clear plastic zipper-lock packet filled with a gritty bluish-purple powder. Daring plucked the packet with a pair of tweezers and held it up for examination.
“Did you see if it was a pegasus?” she asked the alarmed Sister. “A thestral? Griffon? Hippogriff?”
“I-I didn’t get a good look,” the Sister admitted. “But I’m almost certain it wasn’t a griffon. They didn’t have a lion-like tail and their wings were too small.”
“We should get the police,” Fertile Ground declared.
“I agree,” Morning Creek nodded. “Come, sisters.” She and the other two Sisters quickly and gladly departed the room.
Daring frowned at the mysterious packet for a few moments, then glanced around to make sure that she and Caballeron were alone. Holding the bag with a wing, she rummaged around in her saddlebags for a moment, then pulled out a small glass test tube.
“What are you doing?” Caballeron hissed as Daring Do unstoppered the tube and poured a few grains of the blue-purple powder into it.
Daring zipped the bag back up and placed it on the table, then replaced the tube in her saddlebag. “We should head back to the University,” she said. “I think that I know some ponies who might be interested in this.”