//------------------------------//
// Chapter 24: Death and Riches 
// Story: Death, Sacrifice, and the man in blue 
// by MrTyrannousaurusX 
//------------------------------//

Levi Cronell had only known loss for so long. 

During his turbulent, anguished tenure in Alabama, all he was ever taught was methods of coping with his loss. Never any tangible means of gaining or accruing. That rule didn’t just apply to money, joy, or a sorry excuse for a cot to laze on. It went for everything. Family, friends, appreciation for what he had, a cordial cluster of neighbors. Nothing. 

Levi was the absolute furthest thing from a materialistic.

Before his tempestuous arrival into this alien world, he knew many people. The minority of whom he pridefully called his friends. The vast majority, however, were dealt nothing but scornful glowers and barbed stares. Out of the tens of faces he knew like the back of his own hand, a diminutive number that trotted closer to zero by the week weren’t met with animosity. Friends. Family. His brother. They were all familiarized entirely with those soft sheeny gems. A stark and frankly unwelcome contrast to jagged jades his…what could he call them? They weren’t technically enemies, nor were they adversaries no matter the interpretation. So what were they?

No word in Levi’s expansive vocabulary could cater him to the proper word. And in all honesty, scrounging and combing the tranquil terrain of his psyche was, in every way, an incineration of time. They were all dead now. It didn’t matter how fervently he chirped about them or how many gallons of disdain he funneled into his sentences. They were gone. All gone. Gone to a place where his woes and illimitable grief bore little importance. Seized and wheeled off to a realm, sealing the hankerings of his bereaved heart behind an air-tight bulwark. Forever dashing his yearning for a final goodbye. For one last solemn stare before the pearly behemoth gates of heaven penned them within. To him, he wasn’t asking for much. But apparently, in the grand scheme of the universe, his request was titanic. Too colossal for any omnipotent being to grant in a timely manner. 

After observing Levi tumble down the mighty hill of life, striking his hapless head on countless hardships and misfortune, God finally decided the up-and-coming Man in Blue had had enough. He plucked a miracle from his garden of lustrous wonders beyond human comprehension and sent it down. How it manifested during its turbulent jaunt through the stratosphere was anyone’s guess. The way it ultimately culminated, that radiant supernova that rammed him out of his universe, was God’s helping hand. At least, that’s the only logical reason that made even a sliver of sense in the brunete’s mind. How an explosion so mighty not only didn’t turn him into a meek handful of stygian ash, but hurled him into an alternate reality was puzzling. Levi had already spent countless nights lying awake in his personalized lush cyclone of blankets and pillows thinking. Pondering over the odds and the impossibly slender percent chance that he wound up here instead of joining his family and comrades. Devoting more time and energy into entertaining the prospect of it all during the waking hours was a waste. And one Levi couldn’t afford.

After all, when a man’s casualties and dissipations surpass the number countable with fingers, it would be foolish to not stop and appreciate what you’ve been given. To truly screech to a halt and gaze at the manifestations of luck around you. How years of supposedly insurmountable hardships and adversity didn’t always harrow you. A callous desertion at the coarse bottom of life’s most fathomless canyon wasn’t always in their future. Levi Cronell was a prime example of this. 

On a rainy day such as this one, Levi wouldn’t be doing anything else sans moldering on his spartan, moth-eaten couch. His feet lolling in a grim graveyard of rank beer bottles. Tree sap-colored glass jacketed with a royal blue sleeve peppering his dingy carpet. Heartlessly burying his deep-rooted flagrant grievances under oceans of fiery liquor. Wallowing in a murky quagmire of self-loathing and sorrow. A dark tunnel lined with viscous, inky tentacles of despair. Spreading their vile influence across every gritty inch like a colony of bacteria. The only sliver of light, both metaphorically and literally, that ever penetrated the endless dark was that skull-spliting explosion. Both a gift and a curse in many ways. 

One of the many positives of that earth-rocking fulmination was the illustrious, eminent scenery he was thoroughly blessed with. Out of the beautiful gilded bouquet of miracles wrapped snugly in a handbasket he received on that day, Ponyville and the residents within were the shining star. The golden child among the plethora of marvels practically dropped at his feet for his enjoyment. Even as the rain unleashed its limitless wrath upon the quiet ill-fated town, pelting him like a volley of keen ice arrows, there was far from a shortage of things to treasure and hail. 

The Man in Blue sauntered down the trodden roads of his beloved, glorious village with an unforeseen stride. A purpose seeping into the vandyke sludge acquiring more and more water by the second, adding distance to the inescapable mire seizing the town. The soles of his feet were caked, encrusted by a thin film of arid and wet silt. Every last ray of luster that once showered each individual house and business was a foreign memory. Suppressed and censored by the iron-fisted sooty stomach of this titanic expanse of clouds. The irate, vengeful thunderheads was molten steel poured on the ceiling of a mammoth glass cage he and all the others were hemmed in. On his left and right, cozy abodes bursting with golden gleam and vibrance stood stock-still. Their roofs shielding their guiltless inhabitants from the maelstrom of frigid darts. Slitted windows shut and latched. Wagons outside bearing the brunt of Mother Nature’s incurred fury were guarded by their knight in shining armor. An umbrella fastened to the wagon’s old, rickety frame. Some were red-and-white, others were black-and-yellow. One in particular was a bold, arresting pink, standing proudly amongst its striped brethren. Breaking the cycle and fully indulging in this life of deviancy. 

Amidst the myriad of protection from the environment’s titanic tantrum, the brunete was dealt the short end of every stick imaginable. His short sandy locks were plastered to his scalp. Bare forearms slicked with Adam’s ale. Denim jeans darkened a deep navy blue. Royal button-down glued to his flesh like a three-piece suit made entirely of frost. As if a demigod grabbed a thread of arctic wind from the sky and sewed it into a magnificent article of clothing. A brilliant idea on paper. Gorgeous execution. Practically, it was less than favorable. Dangling from his hip, the jumbo weight like a belt of stones, was his crystalline sword. Hell, if he could even call it “his” yet. It was still Platinum’s. It would always be Platinum’s from now until the end of time. No matter the throats he slashed or divorces he forced between head and neck, it would always be his. That was a title no mortal alive could ever usurp. Especially not the likes of him. An inexperienced swordsman who’d get bested by a sloth in a fencing competition. Practice makes perfect, he supposed. He wasn’t going to get to an apprentice level without any training or exercising of his abilities. If the stoneless cemetery of barbarically butchered training dummies in his backyard could speak, they’d echo that sentiment wholeheartedly. He didn’t know if talking is the first thing they’d do. All he could do was pray they weren’t sentient in any way shape or form. After all, this is Equestria. The bar was scraping the heavens. 

Levi had touched base back in Ponyville around an hour and a half ago. His visit to the Cloudsdale hospital was…an experience to say the absolute least. It wasn’t bedeviled with heart-grating sorrow that hurled his heart into a bereaved woodchipper. It was a cross between acceptable on many levels, but still unfavored in every way or interpretation. Walking through the glass double doors of the establishment was something he ne’er thought he’d do again. He was walloped by the comber of cleaning chemicals the same way. He was greeted by the receptionist in the same outfit, her toothpaste-colored hair tied in the same regal bun. The walk down those corridors that stretched endlessly was the same. Spitfire even looked the same. Some of her injuries were healed to the best of her robust body’s abilities. Her right eye was swollen closed like a bulging rotten grapefruit jammed in her eye socket. A small scar pockmarked her left temple. Scuffs and perpetual wounds desecrated a vast majority of her visage and neck. Her top tight canine was gone. Most likely deserted on that ichor-stained black-and-white tiled floor back at the academy. Her academy. A supposed sanctuary where no enemies could breach their titanium gates. At least, that’s how it was on paper. That was how it was supposed to go. But, in typical Equestria fashion, nothing ever went according to any blueprint of normalcy. 

Their talk was cordial and joyful. In spite of the dire, macabre state of affairs she found herself in the throes of, her personality was unharmed. Her flesh might be marred and her face irreparably sullied, but her heart remained the same. Lazing idly in its dormitory posterior to her distressed ribcage. Lolling in absolute unwavering ease and comfort. Levi flashed a sickly green from the envy besieging him at her nucleus. That was all he ever wanted in the end. Peace. Unrivaled, steadfast, inexorable tranquility where he could simply live and breathe bereft of a care in the colossal world. He wanted a fresh life, he received it. He wanted a family, he received it. He wanted serenity, he received it, only with a miniscule cost stapled and written in petite letters. In order to be permitted and maintain this blissful catharsis, he’d have to don the mantle of a warrior long-before him. Battle the unspeakable evils of this world who dared to consider burglarizing its prosperity and harmony. Locking horns with abominable evils hellbent on burning this mortal world down to its last morsel. Leaving a single soul alive to witness the boundless carnage and ruination before claiming their life as well. Their corpse a mere ant among the illimitable ocean of ones just as hapless as them.

Great. This was perfect. 

Platinum’s sword slapped his thigh with every stride. A sharp, fleeting sting, a stern reminder of his broader purpose. His role in this gargantuan opus painted with dark shoulder-crushing responsibilities and pastel laborious duties. 

Through the downpour of liquid iron blinding the male annexed by shivers, another sanctuary was in perfect view. A trifling ten minutes of braving the storm that rattled the fabric of reality later, and he finally arrived. The Golden Oak Library. Sitting smack-dab in the center of Ponyville. To him, the library was, without a hair of doubt, the town’s hammering heart. Working overdrive on gloomy, sullen days such as this to keep jovial delight rushing through the village’s veins. On any normal day of the week, however, the stand-in for the Tree of Life, much like the inhabitants within its treen cocoon, could relax. Liberate themselves from the strangling, throat-gripping binds of stress and unease. Laze in peerless quietude. The mystical, wizardly remedy for all of their flogging ailments.

Levi’s solemn emerald gaze stretched far beyond the torrential haze of liquified steel trouncing the town. It burrowed deep into the grandiose meaning behind everything. Looking past the belts of humble abodes lining the battered roads. Beyond the tranquility and beauty behind it all. Into the thin, delicate fabric of everything Equestria has to offer. Because at the end of the day, Levi was well-aware all of this happiness and galvanizing jubilation had to stem from something. A dainty disposition bedazzled with a tooth-rotting glaze of macarism didn’t sprout from the dirt. If it did, who knows the exponentially more positive fate that would’ve befallen the aggregate of Roseville. The brunete was chest-to-chest with the notion that this cordial nature wouldn’t last forever. If he was honest, a part of him believed this was all a ruse. No place inhabited by mortal beings with a beating heart and autonomous mind is this destitute of crime or hardship. Somewhere out there penned with Equus’ super colossus borders, a cancer doubtlessly blighted the picturesque reputation of Equestria. Whether it be poverty, a serial killer racking up corpses, or all-purpose discord annexing the general population. There had to be something…right? No place was this peaceful. Even during his parent’s time in that wretched town he somehow managed to call home for so long, it wasn’t always the hellscape that it was chiseled into. Roseville used to be decent. Something at some point in time erupted from the sin-stained soil and infected everything. 

To this day, Levi never received an answer as to what truly happened to that small ramshackle, sorry-excuse for a refugee center in Alabama. Perhaps Gary was erected from bones and gore for that sole, terrifyingly unique purpose. To spread the Devil’s influence beyond the charred demarcations of that sinner-infested pit he claimed dominion over. His imagination knew zero bounds when it came to fantasizing about the horrors that may lie past Ponyville’s margins. What potential demons in donning cloaks of flesh secreted their true power-gluttonous nature until now. Perhaps Levi and Alan’s arrival could’ve awakened some ancient primordial evil beyond mortal comprehension from a centuries-long slumber. 

Levi shook off the prospect. Literally. Whipping his head from left to right, his dampened bangs slinging pearls of moisture every which way. Dissipating into the repulsive quag at his feet like tears of a grieving mother in the ocean. 

A cacophonous, raucous roar strangled the calamity of the rain’s incessant assault. Burying the deafening whip cracks of thunder alive with its unchained ferocity. High above his drenched, frigid skull was a splendorous spectacle. One Levi had laid his eyes upon numerous times since his arrival back at Ponyville. Too many times, for that matter. The brunete flicked his vivid emerald globes to the quivering ashen ocean of titanium above. Lively irises badgered by the storm’s unrelenting assault.

Bounding faster than any spear of lightning could ever dream of, the sound like a cosmic train chugging across galaxies, was a gilded carriage. A mammoth aerial wagon bedazzled by sparkling gold and arresting royal blue. Two stark white soldiers piloted the noble convoy donning glimmering aurate cuirasses and vivid cobalt crests. Slender voracious spears resting soundly in holsters slung over their backs. The reverberant conflation was a flagrant blight among the endless churning sea of steel. As quickly as the avian platoon rocked the atmosphere to its core, the troopers vanished. Materialized into the limitless gallery of wrathful thunderheads.

Four. That was the amount of shipments carrying beyond vexed Royal Guardsmen thus far. Four wagon-fulls galloping across the ashen, melancholic atmosphere. Their blinding dudgeon sealing their heart in a flaming brazen bull like a deranged punishment by a Greek god. Rage and unpitying woe collided. Two colossal forces of nature striving for total and unflappable dominion over the pale gloom sprawling over the nation. No nook or cranny spared from its rampant, impregnable warpath of incomprehensible quantities. In spite of the frivolous war’s brunt blooming right before his water-bludgeoned globes, no winner was written in the stars. No victor was painted with steadfast clarity. The skirmish had zero boundaries, no laws or regulations. Attempting to chisel a blob of this insanity into a method to the mangy madness. 

Out of all the contenders in this vehement maelstrom of emotion, wrath and despair the spearheads of the feud, Levi’s heart was fixated by the exact opposite. Perplexity garnered a crown of supremacy. Nuggets of Adam’s ale commenced a marathon down his puzzled visage and furrowed brows, gazing with answerless disarray. 

Seeing anything bearing any remote semblances to the sovereign royalty cross Ponyville’s demarcations invoked the obverse of reverence. To the manifold of blissfully witless citizens forming the town’s populace, it was merely a visit. The ones who lazed blithely at the snowcapped crest of Equestria’s hierarchy. A more accurate term coined by the ones languishing miles below them being the “food chain”. Levi was an avid subscriber to that pioneered phrase. Being among the bottom, perhaps one rung above the rest, in Alabama was a heart-crushing sensation. One he wouldn’t wish on worst adversary, no matter the barbarity of their actions. Even with his prestigious title teeming with importance and radiating grandeur, the brunete didn’t consider himself above these sentient equines. If he was honest, he was even with them. A sword and a shirt crafted from the finest cobalt silk failed to make him any more lordly and god-like than the rest. After all, living with a unicorn and a dopey dragon he deemed as beneath him was a flawless recipe for ruination. 

If there was one thing he did have that trumped his cloven-hooved comrades and family, it was intuition. Intelligence and experience. Two things he garnered oceans of within the sin-stained, ghastly frames of Roseville. Where high-ranking enforcers, their neck jammed beneath the boot of Gary Demonio, were found, disaster would soon follow. And when that mangled, moldering corpse of a town was the subject of conversation, disaster bore no shortage of meanings. A comber of death. A tragedy of unspeakable proportions. Illimitable oppression and injustice, adding another tally to the list of crimes against these hapless husks of people. Bled to their bleached bones and discarded like the meaningless sacks of flesh they were labeled as. Telling Levi the tearful story of Platinum Wing held the crown for one of the most important events in his twenty-six years of living. If Equestrian royalty was involved in events bearing that level of significance, them flocking here in vexed droves had the furthest thing from a positive outcome. Whatever would come out of this abrupt, unforecasted invasion couldn’t be good. Not in the slightest.

Levi’s hand meandered to the slicked golden doorknob. The gargantuan, super colossus tree spoke to the Man in Blue. Its enchanting aura and undeniable offer of sanctity from the indignant squall brought a sparkle to his emerald irises. Whispers whistled through its sodden gyrating leaves and girthy branches. Voices beckoning the male into its treeny, archaic stomach. Unseen and unfelt by the naked eye of an average man, but far from unheard.

The knob clicked. Labyrinthine organs rotating and cooperating as one. Timber maw opening to implore the man into its cozy bowels, envelop him with its tendrils of serenity. Levi had dealt with a fair share of siren songs in his lifetime. Some more cruel and perilous than others. A stark contrast to how he’d handle these crises in the immoral world of human iniquity, Levi Cronell deviated. He surrendered to the temptress’ enticing tune, practically falling to his knees at the prospect of the upcoming repose.

Inside, in the safe haven shielded from Mother Nature’s frenzy upon the living, a being resided. Twilight Sparkle. Situated in the far-right corner of the living room and kitchen melded into a singular floor. At the head of the sprawling pale oak table sat the lavender, bubbly bookworm, her back mere inches from an all-encompassing wall of books. An ample dynamic panorama of spines, all differing in thickness and vibrance. The picturesque sight was a vivacious supernova of arresting colors and brazen hues. A fulmination of shades and tints reminiscent of the titanic burst of life that dawned the universe. Hasped by her unerring hooves was a rich stygian hardcover. Printed on the front in lurid gold writing was the title: “No Country For Old Ponies”. Resting side-by-side in the dead-center of the blanching wood was a stark white cardboard box topped by an aurate cover. Beside it was a smoking, sweltering kettle, slender strings of steam rising from its arched sylphlike nose. The contents within were nothing short of an enigma. Whatever ponies chugged in the late afternoon hours to pass the time were a mystery to the Man in Blue. A mystifying conundrum he never knew he bore any interest in solving until now. 

A pair of gem-like amethyst irises somehow managed to wrenched themselves from the book’s mesmerizing innards. 

“Hey, Levi,” The unicorn chirped, bringing her ever-so-merry fictional tenure to a cursory halt. “You were gone way longer than I hoped.”

“Tell me about it,” The brunete was fully submerged in the Library’s beguiling sanctuary, the downpour’s raucous roar forever smothered by the closed door. 

“I took a walk around before the rain.”

“Did you?”

Twilight shut the hypnotic novel, white bookmark jutting out from between the tanned pages. “What did you see?”

“Things I never thought ponies were capable of.”

Twilight grinned. “Like what? A bar fight? A real fight?”

“It wasn’t that interesting, Twi,”

Levi unbuckled his ramshackle, archaic scabbard from his pulsating waist. Allowing the drowned leather to wallow in solemn silence on a protruding coat rack. The lively, energetic crystals pined for a measly five minutes in the heat of the battle. Perhaps glorying in the divine discord of an arid warzone was in its future. 

Only time could tell. Slow, merciful, leisurely trekking time. 

“There’s plenty of interesting things in Ponyville.”

“Depends on how you define interesting.” Levi replied. “You probably wouldn’t blink twice at anything other than a book.”

The unicorn chuckled. 

The Man in Blue coiled his fingers around the chair’s backrest. In a way, it felt erroneous using appliances fabricated from a tree’s long-dead corpse inside of a tree. The chair, table, bed, night stand. Just about everything they used on a daily basis could only have been achieved by the Library’s kin being culled. Slaughtered without a whiff of relent to be discerned from the mist of sawdust and chips. All in the name of…what? Money? The well-being of the citizens? 

That was another mystery to add to the ever-expanding list. 

Four rangy treen legs bruised the floor. Levi unlocked the shackles imprisoning his pent-up desires for relaxation. Bashed the bars to pieces that once penned his hankerings. His craving to collapse onto the doughy Ponyville quagmire and be ambushed by the ravenous jaws of slumber. Whether jeered by the barbaric thunderheads above or lulled by his blanket’s sweet nothings, sleep would arrive all the same. But now that he was here, finally here, sleep was alien. After traveling a combined untold number of miles down the rank hospital corridors and swampy Ponyville aisles, it was foreign. His calves ached ever-so-slightly. Thighs wracked by soft pangs. His mind, however…his mind absorbed the meat and potatoes of the universe’s fury upon him. Anger for what, exactly? Who knew? Perhaps it was his inexorable invasion of this world. Briskly becoming a blight among this sprawling hooved population was a cardinal sin. A crime far beyond the scope of forgiveness. As far as Mother Nature was concerned, at least. 

The man sat, his body all-but collapsing in reverence at the respite’s feet. Its birch extremities squeaked. 

“What did you do after you got here?”

Twilight’s horn ignited. At the opposite end of the table, two small ceramic lily-white cups resided. Resting side-by-side both exact in their appearance and function. A lavender aura of unadulterated magic consumed them. 

“Not anything too special, just visited a coffee shop. Met some new people.”

“New friends?”

“You could call it that.”

One of the colorless glasses landed inches from his hands, clasped together gently on the table.

“What’s her name?”

“Lyra,” The man replied, “Lyra Heartstrings.”

Twilight cocked a brow. His imagination wreaked endless havoc on his mind. 

“Heartstrings? Seriously?”

“Yeah,” It was Levi’s turn to arch an eyebrow. “Is that a bad thing?”

“No, no. She was one of my friends from Canterlot years ago.” 

The steaming kettle hung above her cup, sylphlike nose eager to disgorge its delectable innards. Its owner was trapped in deep thought. Gazing blankly at the ceiling for a handful of seconds.

“How long was it? Three, four years now? Something around that.”

“You used to live in Canterlot?”

“Of course I did,” Twilight chirped. “Why do you think Celestia sent you there?”

“I assumed you were just staying there. Now I realize living in a library is your dream.”

“You know me so well,”

A tranquil, steady waterfall of divine rich brown tea decanted into the livid cup. Ropes of soft pale steam climbed to the heavens above. 

Comfortable silence annexed the aggregate of the Golden Oak Library. No hair of anything bearing any semblances to a sound to desecrate the pristine gallery. The only remnants of din that violated it were the gentle jackhammers of rain against the ceiling and a snore. A placid rumble that breached the second floor, staining the serene air with its nigh-silent yet all-the-more obnoxious presence. How could he ever get to know his adolescent scaly roommate if he was better friends with the realm of sleep than the waking world? 

“How was it?”

“Canterlot?”

“Yeah. Was it as quiet as a library should be?”

“It was for the most part, but not always. Canterlot can get very loud very fast, surprisingly. I learned that the hard way.”

They shared a chuckle.

“I’d probably lose my mind living with you then.”

“How come?”

“Too much silence is a bad thing, you know? It’s peaceful in moderation. But every hour of the day? Too much for me.”

“We’ve been here for two weeks and the loudest thing I’ve heard is Pinkie Pie,” Twilight remarked. “Silence is the last thing you’re gonna get here.” 

A volley of factious memories fixated the Man in Blue. Impaling him with their whetted heads, infecting them with their fatal calamitous venom. When Levi was first granted the opportunity to call Ponyville his new home, he had heaven-scraping expectations. In every definition of the phrase, he anticipated a second chance at life. More specifically, and more preferred, a calm life. An existence governed exclusively by a monarchy of quietude and serenity. Not a worry blighting his mind of his waking up with the news of a fresh tragedy knocking him out cold. Everyday a new twisted variation of yesterday’s debacle. His friend or family member dead, shot and bled dry by Roseville. His friend or family member actively dying in Alabama’s finest hospital. With the inexorable stampede of bills and debt plaguing the horizon, death would be a vastly better option. 

In all honesty, Pinkie’s daily antics and shenanigans were greeted with a warm welcome by the male. As long as she didn’t embark on a blood-stained tenure anytime soon, all was well in Ponyville. Hearing her bound up and down the trodden roads with lethal levels of gung-ho verve frothing through her veins was a sight for sore eyes.

“You didn’t expect anywhere where Pinkie was to be dead-silent, did you?”

“I expected a little bit of peace and quiet. Especially for a town,” Twilight replied, “But this is better than the city.”

Levi snickered. The male brought the torrid mug to his eager lips. His tongue reveled in the bountiful discharge of heavenly, angelic tastes. The godly savour was akin to the Garden of Eden beaten and pulverized into liquid form. Every flower, herb, and aroma known to mankind melted into a singular glorious experience. Levi possessed zero rebuttals to the idea of this becoming a daily occurrence. 

Twilight’s movements ceased. Her apprehensive amethyst orbs magnetized to her rippling tea.

“Twi?”

The air lurched. Every last ounce of ease and light-heartedness was herded to pasture’s anew by a shepherd of pure, unfiltered dread. His twisted cane forged from the blackest of crystals from treacherous atrocious caves. An elephant planted its titanic plate-like feet into the scuffless floor. Standing there with unrivaled menace, stock-still in perpetual paralysis. Imprisoned by the unshakable binds of a witch’s curse. Forever trapped in this motionless, hellish damnation until its presence become known by all. Twilight gazed into the open air for a fleeting moment. Perhaps locking eyes with this unseen prisoner, crying out in muted howls. Panic met angst. 

“Yeah?” 

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” She kneaded her cup anxiously. “I’m worried about Spitfire.”

Levi’s mood was slain. In a matter of seconds, a colossal exodus of biblical proportions.  As a matter of fact, saying it merely perished and was laid to rest on a sun-baked patch of dirt would be an understatement. That pleasant, peerless joy was abducted in the dead of night. Subjected to senseless horrors beyond the scope of comprehension from a sound mind. Then, it was finally granted the gift of death in a wrapped gift basket. Topped with a royal blue bow. Afterwards, it was dropped in a miscellaneous meaningless death in the bowels of a barren desert. No life to be found for hundreds of miles in the rambling expanse of whistling sand and erect cacti. All except the echo of a life long-lost, the wide-eyed contorted corpse lying in a mess of gangly limbs imprisoned below the golden coarse ocean. 

Levi gazed with never-before-seen, unorthodox anguish. His reflection, painted by a shade of rich brown, gazed deep into the man’s aching soul. An unending gluttonous ouroboros of anguish colonized his solemn globes. Their parched veins strangled by unwarranted life, arteries rebooted by the excavated memory. His mind wasted no time in locking the gruesome image millions of miles beneath the lush grass of his psyche’s terrain. Trapped in a concrete prison of Homeric proportions, fatally stupefying to a sane human mind. A glimmering flake of joy grew treacherous to the oppressive grief. The textbook definition of a bona fide Judas. 

“Right…” Levi dragged his fingernail along the cup’s sleek face, dejection far from cessation. “Spitfire.”

“She’s…fine. I guess fine is the word. I don’t really know what ‘fine’ means anymore,” 

Twilight indulged himself in another swig. The quietest hint of sugar kissed her grateful tongue. 

“Honestly…I don’t even know what I should be feeling about this whole thing.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“I mean I…” Their eyes met once more. Ceaseless strife challenged unabated optimism. “It’s hard being put into this position, Twilight.”

“Well, yeah, I figured as much. I can’t even imagine having Equestria practically on your shoulders.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Levi replied. “Being the Man in Blue is the least of my worries. I have too much on my plate.”

“What position are you in right now?”

A swampy silence stabbed it's fluttering flag into the spotless Library floor. Iron-fisted reign of carnage sparking to flaring, luminous life. Unseen and invisible to his naked mournful irises, but certainly not unfelt. And not unheard bereft of a sliver of a doubt. 

“Did I ever tell you about that captain of the Golden Dashers? The game we saw a week or so ago?”

Twilight peered at the sprawling catalog of limitless knowledge behind him in fathomless thought. Amethyst gems trailing over the vibrant forest of spines both thick and thin, long and short. Teeming with words and long names of hooved authors, others destitute of more than a half-sentence. 

She greeted his emeralds.

“The one we met after the game, right? I read about her after we got home,” Twilight spoke. 

“She’s…unwell, to say the least. I don’t know what went wrong or when, but something definitely hurt her.”

Levi’s mind recoiled back, landing back-first in a sprawling expanse of soured memories. The jungly mass of rancid, putrefied recollections forever stained by haunting undertones was his terrifyingly personalized No Man’s Land. A moldering garden of rank thorny vines pumping unmerited nutrients into wretched rememberings. Strident echoes of times long-forsaken. Disparaged and left to rot in the boundless, rambling hellscape of his past. His longing to abandon that vile memory in his brain’s unplumbed recesses stretched far beyond the point of description.

“Yeah,” Levi hid his clenched fist beneath the table, fingernails fixating his palm. “Her.”

Those swirling cyclones of molten bronze. A polluted lake of copper befouled by veins of deceit and hankerings for chicanery. Those orbs… Oh, those fear-venerating orbs. The self same that rammed a frigid sword of unpitying dread into his unaware hapless heart. Not dread in the sense that his own life would soon be neck-deep in peril. But more dread for…someone. He didn’t know who yet, and he certainly didn’t know when. The titanic blinding takeaway from their interaction was the glaring prospect that somebody somewhere at a non-descript time would be marred. Whether it be physically, mentally, socially. Razing their career with boundless slander until its nothing but a mound of sooty pulverized dreams. He didn’t know it at the time, but if only his Man in Blue status granted him cosmic irises that tapped into the future. Maybe then he’d prevent one of the hopefully not many abominations Equestria brought to the table. After all, too much sickly-sweet sugar was bound to cause cavities. Only when they’d rear their atrocious head and how barbaric their entry would be was an entirely different ball park. And one Levi didn’t dare to stick his foot in.

“I don’t think you told me what happened. Well, I mean, you kind of did.”

“How much do you remember me telling you?”

“Not that much, just bits and pieces here and there. Nothing too groundbreaking.”

Levi nodded slowly. 

“Alright.” He breathed.

“What happened? How’d she get hurt like that?”

The male herded a mammoth ocean of oxygen into his lungs, fleeing into the darkness behind his eyelids for a fleeting second. Glorying in the cursory comfort of the tear-filmed tenebrosity. Levi greeted the chandelier’s reverence-worthy luster with his gaze once more, swiping a bare forearm across his optics. 

He paused. He stared at the inanimate table for a while.

“Silver did that.”

Twilight’s lids were caught between two worlds. The top one being reeled to the sky, the other being towards Silver’s eventual terminus. Hell. 

“She beat her nearly to death then just…left her there like garbage. I didn’t know anyone here even knew that kind of cruelty existed, let alone actually do it.” 

Speech was an alien concept in the Library now. As though any utterance even if only barely discernible was outlawed and abhorred. 

“I was the one who found her…” Levi spoke, bereaved. 

His face plummeted into his balmy hands, warmed by the tepid cup, massaging his forehead with his digits. Trying and brutally failing to baptize his mind. Cleanse his psyche of the heart-wrenching illustrations of pure, unadulterated barbarity. Cast the visions of that fateful afternoon where Silver and her band of goons rightfully belonged. Tartarus. The incomprehensible fathoms of the Lake of Fire. Doomed to drown in the never-ending canal of flame and brimstone until time marched to its coda. That was where Silver Spears’ turbulent tenure was destined to end. Her righteous, impossibly grim kismet. He knew it. He was almost certain Twilight knew it. And there wasn’t a doubt staining his mind that Silver was well-aware of it, too. Perhaps there was some secret grand meaning to this broad picture, spanning across several lives and altering them in countless ways. Maybe Levi was one of the vast array of vibrant colors in this macabre sprawling painting. 

Twilight couldn’t conjure a word to quell the male’s unending intramural turmoil. She just sat, rigid and straight as a soldier at ease. Hell, maybe more probably. Lazing was a foreign concept to the brilliant unicorn. Through it all, however, a kahuna of anguish drowned her features. Tugging her lavender orbs beneath its churning surface. 

“I had to get help to get her in, of course, but if it wasn’t for me, who knows what would’ve happened. I don’t even wanna think about it.”

“It’s been confusing me to no end recently,”

“Trust me, I’ve been just as confused as you lately. More probably.”

“Not like that. It’s hard to explain. I can’t fathom that something like this happened. That it could happen in the first place. Under my watch.” 

Something flickered in Twilight’s eyes. Sympathy? Most likely. But this was Equestria, after all. Nothing nowhere at any time was close to predictable here. Not now, and definitely not ever. 

A titanic billow of tears began to ruthlessly strangle his woebegone emeralds. That dastardly girthy cue ball spawning in his clenched throat. An unwelcome yet far from unknown stranger to Levi Cronell. 

“I just…can’t understand why. How did I let this happen? How? I can’t wrap my head around it.” His wistful cries were all but censored by his lush manuses, providing his visage a sanctuary granting him anonymity from the outside world. 

“This is all my fault. It’s all my damn fault.” Levi lamented. “I should’ve been there, I should’ve saved her. I was right above her. How did I not hear? How could I not have heard?”

“Levi, please-”

“First, Alan’s gone. Disappeared into thin air somewhere out there. Now Spitfire. Now one of the only people I can call my friend here is covered in scars and bruises because of me. Me!? No one else but me!”

Twilight relented to the Man in Blue’s sorrows. Attempting to console him and slice this interaction to ribbons was unfeasible. No set of words or pattern of syllables, no matter how fervent the comfort behind them was, could begin to comprehend calming this maelstrom. The might of pent-up emotion vomited into a singular whirlwind of incomprehensible fury was peerless. A degree of strength every god known to the mortal world combined couldn’t rally or rival. 

Levi freed his contorted, mangled visage of grief and wrath from his lush palms, kissed by the warm lather of tears. His orbs marred by brightened veins, the lake of white his iridescent emeralds floundered in was eliminated. Assuming its stead was a scarlet-tinted backdrop granting his optics with a sinister yet all-the-more bereaved undertone. 

“How could this happen, Twilight?” Levi inquired. “How? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I have no idea. This shouldn’t have happened nor should it ever be happening.”

“I just wanted a chance. An opportunity to be better, to make something of myself. No crimes, no needless deaths, no nothing. I hated being immoral to survive.”

“I know, Levi, I know.”

“I never chose that life. Sometimes it feels like it chose me more than anything. It made a choice I can’t escape from, even worlds apart. Universes apart. It’s still me.”

“But you can be better than what you were, Levi. How you were in your past doesn’t define you.”

Levi honed his bloodshot gaze like a shark locating his next hapless victim. Treading the sprawling swaths of crystalline water, blissfully unaware of the mortal danger that slinked in the inky shadows.

“No. No, you don’t understand.” 

“What do I not understand?”

“Horrible, terrible things. What I’ve done, the things I’ve seen…it’s too much for anyone to bear.” 

Levi rubbed his forehead. Wrinkles, granted unmerited life by mountainous stress and illimitable hardship, threatened to marr its smooth surface.

“I’m not sure I can stomach much more. These people don’t deserve this, especially not Spitfire.” Levi stared into an limitless oblivion for a fleeting second. “I have no idea how I should try handling this. That’s what’s been tearing me apart for days, Twi.”

Levi ran a hand through his sumptuous locks.

“Well, what are you considering? Is it anything drastic?”

“Depends on what drastic means to you,” He replied.

“Something that’s gonna cause heaps of trouble and problems. That’s how I define drastic.”

“Then, I guess drastic is the right way to put it.”

In every reality, referring to Levi’s heart’s grisly desire as merely drastic would be a herculean understatement. In full uncensored honesty, that would be viewed as a compliment to his yet to be implemented macabre plan. Contrived from the singed flaming depths of fury’s furnace, devouring and imprisoning his core within its adamantine maw. There were a lot of words in the colossal English language that could begin the laborious process of describing it. Simply using drastic as a summary to his vile hankerings wouldn’t cut it. Frankly, nothing would. 

Where the Man in Blue originated, if two men or women had a feud that needed to rest in peace perpetually, there were two clear solutions. Either you brawl and shoulder the brunt of the humiliation of falling short, or you die. There was never, and never was used very exclusively, an in-between or shortcut. You locked horns with your adversary, and whoever’s lungs continued the cycle of swelling and deflating was the victor. The peerless, unfaltering champion in the skirmish. It was either that or quietus. How you perished was an entirely different ball game, and one that provided more-than-enough outlets and methods. When Levi peered at the conundrum outside his third-story apartment window, he’d seen it all. Secreted knives torn from obscure scabbards. Hidden guns seeing the light of day. Foreheads blasted, throats slashed or shanked. Heads dashed against concrete. Men strangled, their meth-hooked irises widened by the primal fear of death being robbed of all vigor and life. All those sights and sounds in Alabama kept him awake some nights. Those who died polluting his psyche’s reign of tranquility. Their stony faces, the cries and caterwauls of their friends and family. Bystanding haplessly as the one they loved and cherished, even in spite of their addictions he played a hand in causing, departed from this Earth. Unable to assist in their survival in any feasible way shape or form.

It summoned the ire of an unintelligible, untethered maelstrom of thoughts and ideas, wrestling with feral fervor for supremacy over his mind. Levi Cronell was entangled in the thorny vines of a gore-stained war. Caught in the crossfire of two sects, each harboring their own laundry list of pros and cons. His spirit impotent, incapable of determining where he should firmly plant his roots. 

Two fiery factions in this paramount strife had been decided long ago. More accurately, his aching soul and heart was bisected. Good was sundered from evil. Nefarity departing from pure, unflappable honor. 

On one side was the man who was born and raised in Roseville, Alabama. His limitless colorful catalog of sins and mistakes he vowed to desert in that decrepit, rabid town. A place where he was once ensnared in the labyrinthine web of violence and unending cycles. Its haplessly addicted residents and iron-fisted sovereigns were caged in their own personalized chunk of the universe. A corner of creation untouched by the blessed hand of normalcy. Instead, they were given free reign to carve out their own destinies. Gouge whatever markings or scars they deemed appropriate into the land as it cried out for sweet, bountiful mercy. A bout of clemency that would never arrive. But, like all people when too much power was permitted over an ungoverned territory, it went mad. Hijacked by the never-ending fountain of lunacy showering the town’s blackened, writhing heart. The harbinger of all this doom clad in aquamarine with buzzed hair darker than any solar eclipse could ever dream of being. 

His core was still bound by those viscous baleful tendrils, even with a titanic universal bulwark between them. The murky blackness that sullied the walls of his heart screamed. Vibrating his trembling ribs with their strident siren’s song. Begging the Man in Blue to turn his back on the golden light of this beautiful, galvanizing world. To turn his back on everything. His new friends, his family, the unicorn that sat mere inches from him. Her curious gaze unceasing. Swivel his frame and trek back down that path paved by sin by hellfire, punctuated by brimstone hurled from the highest of Hell’s spires. 

That portion of him longed for the taste of Silver Spears’ ichor. For his hands to be crimsoned and marred by a whirlwind of assaults. Punch after punch, kicks one after another. Teeth scattered. Eyes rolled back, lolling in their sockets. Hair a mangled nest housing nothing but sweat and regret. And in the end, the demon prodding his heart wanted her head upon a pike impaling his front yard. A trophy for every inch of this tooth-rotting village to see. 

She knew what she was doing the moment she stepped foot into that byzantine compound. Silver was well-aware. There was no loaded shotgun poised to transform her rotten brain into a vision-robbing haze. Nor was there a spell tethering her soul to an unseen force of unsullied malevolence, fueling her ruinous decisions with duress. It was just her and only her. No outside hands throwing cards into this incomprehensibly grotesque game of crazy eights. It was just Silver Spears and her psyche guiding her. A messiah to a soul long-lost in the endless mist of villainy, inept in their abilities to send her careening off her path.

Silver deserved what needed to happen to her. She chose this. Levi knew it, and he knew it more than most likely anyone on Earth. Yet, for reasons he’ll never start to understand, his mind didn’t. The opposing, righteous side in this internal holy war refused to adhere to his heart’s miserable pining. 

Why couldn’t he just do it?

Why couldn’t he saunter to Silver’s office indifferent to any possible repercussions, enraged serpents of fire slithering down his bones. Wreathing and charring his skeleton bereft of a shaving of ruth. Then, when that golden doorknob twists and the divider is removed, Levi can fly into a fiery bout of warranted wrath. Swinging wildly with the ferocity and abandon of a neanderthal pouncing on an injured sabertooth. Why wouldn’t his heart grant him permission? Why couldn’t he do what needed to be done?

A thunderous string of mighty pounds upon his front door beckoned another outlet for his focus to be funneled to. The skull-splitting roar that followed moments after cemented the prospect that more important duties were on the horizon. Exponentially more significant ventures were at the forefront.

“Royal Guard!”

Levi scrambled from his pale seat, hands clammy and plagued by a quiver. The male ripped open the door.

Outside, his gleaming golden attire punctuated by a background of rainfall, a Guardsman stood, unphased by Mother Nature’s boundless fury berating him. His feet rigidly rooted into the newly formed quagmire devouring every last inch of Ponyville’s glorious soil. Chestplace glinting in the dying remnants of an Equestrian afternoon, censored brutally by the titanic ocean of seething silver above. Cobalt crest burglarized of all gusto, garnering a sodden appearance as though it was painted to the stallion’s helmet. In his left faded brown hoof, peppered by drops of Adam’s ale, a piece of paper the color of tanned hide was present. More precisely, it bore far more importance than just being measly paper. It was a wanted poster. 

Printed across the crown of the page in blocky stygian letters that couldn’t be any bolder, the words ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ screamed for every ounce of attention. Below that was a small square with a visage penned within its stingy demarcations. A face of the Grim Reaper donning a getup of human flesh. Raven hair blacker than any night. Aquamarine shirt as vivid as ever. Chiseled jaw painted by a small stubble. Amber orbs uncharacteristically deadpan and lifeless, as was the entirety of his features. Perpetually trapped in a snapshot of abnormal catharsis and tranquility foreign to Gary Demonio. If this was an arranged photo he had time to prepare for and not a masterful painting, that damned toothy smirk would most definitely accompany him. Just like it accompanied him everywhere before. No name or catalog of identifying features existed beneath the boxed-in illustration, but a reward and description of his crimes were.

‘Any price will be provided by the Royal Sisters for the capture or execution.’

‘Wanted for murder of multiple Royal Officials. Armed and extremely dangerous. Proceed with caution.’

Levi’s emeralds flicked from his worst possible nightmare in physical form to the hazelnut-colored mustang wielding it. A bereaved robust pony with a face blighted by a varnish of sorrow and grief. Despite the soldier’s laborious attempts at secreting it from the outside world, his anguish breached his self-erected dyke. Levi was always told the eyes were a gateway to the soul. A simple passage to his aching, throbbing spirit. Wallowing in a broad stagnant lake of sorrow for reasons Levi would be better off being left in the dark about. Now and very possibly forever. But he knew better than that. He was well-aware those rich brown optics, conduits to that paralyzed loch of emotion, weren’t there for no reason. 

“Princess Celestia needs to see you in her castle urgently,” The soldier spoke. His timbre was that of a grizzled mountain man one would expect to find hunting grizzlies in the bowels of Winter. Not here delivering world-altering news, both metaphorically and literally, to a duo of hapless beings. 

“We take it you know something about him that could be useful to us.”

His world collapsed around him like the legs of a dead spider, closing in to imprison him within their frigid confines. Levi would have predicted in a million years he’d hold the poster with a dead man’s likeness printed onto it. Especially his worst adversary forever bound to a world crawling with his kind. 

Levi gave the disgruntled paladin, the herald of an inexorable skirmish bound to incite endless catastrophe, a half-nod.

Levi yanked his sword from the coat hanger. 





‘SECOND HUMAN SPOTTED ATTACKS PONYVILLE! ROYAL GUARDS KILLED!’

Levi stared with a bustling mind and a heart seized by dread at the newspaper, clutched with undying disbelief. Homeric refusal to accept his current reality surging through his frothing veins. The omnibus of Ponyville’s domestic workings and affairs was crinkled at the edges. Garroted by hands fueled with a wrath unknown and unfelt by a vast majority of Equestria’s populace. An anger churning and writhing within the starved furnace of his core, impatiently slinking in and out of the shadows of secrecy. Waiting with bated breath and a teeming tank of patience for the moment to strike. Sink its whetted fangs into this peaceful world, infect it with blistering venom that was once bound to an alien realm. Incomprehensible wrath scorching his veins, charring every inch of the map of arteries keeping him alive. Life surging throughout his guilt-wracked frame, rivaled only by the acidic ocean of vexation annexing his jugular. 

Reading the aggregate of the reporter’s findings forever engraved into his mind with diminutive letters was nothing short of a daunting challenge. His attempts at thoroughly analyzing the ruination blanketing the lives of these innocent equines was rhythmically interrupted. Flashes of a vile brew between heart-palpitating indignation and bone-crushing remorse painted his vision an angry crimson. His hearing burglarized, an eternal drone impaling the male’s ears. Not much invaded the mammoth scope of his understanding. An impenetrable bulwark of raw, bewildering emotion fighting until its dying breath. Its refusal to bow or bend to any entity’s whims steadfast and unceasing. The only glaring takeaways his confounded, bemused mind could fathom were things not eye-catching to any normal being. But to him, it was the offspring between world-concluding and undeniably ruinous.

‘Suspect escaped and is still at large…’

‘Armed and extremely dangerous. The Guard suggests staying inside and locking your doors…’

‘Any law enforcement entity, exercise extreme caution…’

‘Leaving two dead in his wake…’

Asking how would be a bona fide waste of time. Hell, everyone in that room would be better off staring at moving clouds than to ponder that inquiry. But why? That was a question every soul in that room would kill to know. 

How? Simple. It was Gary adhering to the very same behaviors that razed his empire to worthless spates of rubble and bleached bones. Just mindless, senseless killings stemming from the repulsive bowels of a moldering heart. Its adoration for unremitting suffering and agony was boundless, yet its capabilities for mercy were arid. 

Why? Simple, yet again. It was Gary Demonio. They got in the way of his goal, a path to Levi Cronell gouged by death and ichor, and they paid the price. Any mortal being with a beating heart and a brain was no exception to his boundless brutality. As long as they formed a dyke between him and his desired endgame, clemency was alien. 

For the Man in Blue, the inquiry required little-to-no brain power to conjure an answer. It was absurdly facile, but impossibly grim all the same. Gary Demonio had an undying, incandescent hankering for Levi’s head screwed onto a pike. Anyone or anything that stood in his hellish warpath as he marched from the pits of Hell were… He tended not to think about how his victims were dispatched. The method in which they were punted from the mortal world and seized by the frigid grip of Death, hauled to places unknown. Possibly unfathomable to the minds of both humans and equines. Now, he had no choice but to ponder. The only option present in his hand being to wrestle with the prospect that he, the allegedly lionhearted paladin who vowed to provide salvation, failed.

Levi knew good and well why those harrowing events unfolded. 

Two extraordinarily bemused ponies, however, both prominent figures in the male’s newfound existence, didn’t know. More accurately, they couldn’t begin the laborious process of fathoming this tragedy. A travesty one would expect to find buried deep beneath the plentiful pages of a poorly constructed novel. An event that trekked far beyond the rigid borders of serenity Equestria fabricated so long ago. Hiking further and further past the adamantine margins of No Man’s Land, disappearing into its silky whispering sands. An abhorrent abomination of Homeric proportions, akin to defiling a beloved children’s book with a profane fulmination of carnage.

Levi rested in perpetual, ceaseless unease, his bones mulled and imprisoned within coarse blocks of regret and sorrow. An ouroboros of dejection languished in both of his irises trekking back and forth across the caramel-tinted swath of paper. The expanse and titanic array of stories at his disposal was ample. His curiosity and drive to indulge in those tales, however, was an entirely different story. 

The Man in Blue, his distraught friend, and the Princess of Equestria with a lust for answers all sat at the same table. A broad, lengthy sheet of brilliant ultramarine crystal, mined from the deepest cavities of the Earth. Scourged from depressions that stretched miles into the terra firma’s bowels, reaping absolutely gorgeous treasures from its serpentine innards. Levi and Celestia sat at both heads of the table with enough space to house and feed an entire famished colony, both of them shifting warily in their crystal chairs. Wallowing in the throat-gripping tension strong-arming the air to a simmering boil. At his left was Twilight, sitting at the spearhead of a countless row of seats identical to Levi’s. Only bereft of the imposing size and myriad of attention-robbing features. 

A titanic ceiling crafted from the finest blanket of polished marble reached easily twenty-five feet above the brooding trio. The vanguard shielding them from the ruthless, famished bite of the softly whispering air. Autumn’s wrath was marching ever-so-closer to Equestria by the day, and it was only a matter of time, a week or two at best, before they were walloped by it. The difference between life and death for the brunete was a batch of warm clothes and a machine-knitted jacket dropped at his doorstep on a silver platter. The floor was a sprawling array of spotless lily-white ceramic, adorned with thin lines of unadulterated gold filling the cracks between. Glistening and basking in the moribund shafts of luster cascading through the rangy stained-glass windows. The storm’s boundless and indiscriminate fury was subsiding. Its sweltering rage, hot enough to bathe the aggregate of Tartarus in vibrant orange flames, had cooled. It too a victim of Fall’s frigid tendrils slowly but surely coiling around the blissfully unaware nation. 

A trio of five-foot tall windows were at the prodigious table’s left, each one a different accosting color. The first was a graphic scarlet, as though a lake of blood had crystalized and been jostled into its frame. The second was a glorious blue. A beautiful cobalt, nearly identical to the silky button-down sleeving his condition-wracked chassis. Last but most certainly not least was a ravishing emerald green. Each and every one bereft of exceptions were embellished with the same picturesque design. An inexhaustible, byzantine labyrinth of what Levi could only discern to be cracks in the vivacious glass. The sprawling network of lines all tethering and conjoining as one gargantuan picture was gorgeous, like the ink of a squid blighting the limpid ocean blue. Its jet-black tassels and sylphlike form floundering in the limitless expanse of Adam’s ale, crawling up and down the water like gleaming veins on a frozen corpse. 

Levi steered every ounce and drop of indivisible attention back to the indescribable calamity. The chief task at hand that trumped all else his psyche dared to distract him with thundered. Bellowing with the might of a thousand gods with all the air in its massive lungs, imploring for the lion’s share of Levi’s aid and focus. 

Levi flicked his wrist, releasing the swathe of stories and tales of Ponyville’s everyday life from his bone-crushing grip. The drove of paper slid a few inches across the pristine, spotless ultramarine table, seized by an unshakable twirl. It was a super colossus of furniture. A mammoth diving board forged from the finest of gemstones, given life and purpose by a quad of thick legs beneath it. Firmly rooting it to the castle’s equally illustrious flooring. For the most part, its edges were smooth. However, akin to the demon in fleshy form they were meager seconds from discussing, there were always deviations. An entity or thing that refused to bow to whatever will or command was imposed upon them, whether inherently awful or not. A slim handful of bumps marred the flawless sides. 

The Man in Blue stole one more glance at the bulk of paper. Bereaved emeralds raked across the title. It was only then when Levi learned the true nature of this incomprehensible cataclysm. Gary Demonio’s vile magnum opus was published in the national paper. The ‘Equestria Daily’ to be exact. Every citizen from every walk of life in this expansive new world was aware of the inbound torrential disaster. There was nothing bearing any semblance to doubt in his mind about that prospect. Ruination was coming, and it was coming at lightning speed. A swiftness so brisk and nimble, Zeus would lead a centuries-long crusade in an attempt to harness its vigor. Next to the newspaper was that wanted poster. A more appropriate term for it would be the catalyst of Levi’s foiled chances at a new existence. One deprived of the endless carnage and merciless savagery that reigned supreme back in his hometown.

His imagination recognized no bounds when it came to pondering how he’d handle the noirette. 

Levi leaned back in his marvelous seat, folding his bare forearms over his heaving chest. The air was stagnant for a time no one could keep track of. Stale yet blistering, like a dead river conquered by bacteria and invasive fauna baked by the raging passion of summer. Every sound known to the entirety of humanity cowered in unintelligible fright, impaled by a gelid sword of dread at the silence’s unyielding might. Shivering in terror while bathed in the gloomy shadow of its towering stature. One wrong move of its gargantuan crown would send the golden empire of heaven hurtling towards the Earth. 

The threesome’s current state of deathly quietude wasn’t always this way. In fact, less than a half-minute bid farewell to the brooding trio since anything resembling a sound had been uttered. All it took was one suggestion for the monstrous massacre of noise to unravel. One witless, seemingly comedic proposition from the so-called “brilliant” ruler of all of Equestria. 

Two words. It was a measly duo of words that slaughtered any fragmented sentence he slogged to conjure. 

“What was that?” Levi uttered, unfathomable perplexity bleeding into the torpid atmosphere. 

The oppressive, paramount quietude reigning supreme over the juggernaut guildhall was uprooted. Heartlessly wrenched from its unwarranted throne, deposed from the leviathan spire of power it rested on. Cast into the murky unplumbed chasm of irrelevance. Returning back to the boundless gloomy wasteland it somehow managed to call home. 

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but did I hear you say bounty hunters?” 

“You heard me right, Levi.” Princess Celestia, one of Equestria’s lionhearted figureheads, spoke, her intelligence and wisdom allegedly limitless. Her supposedly all-encompassing knowledge blanketing the full expanse of her vivacious mind.

“Bounty hunters? Bounty?”

“Levi, you have my word that these are some of the most skilled ponies I could’ve possibly implored to fulfill this. They’re the best in their field, without a shadow of a doubt.”

“Bounty hunting isn’t a ‘field’.” Levi fired, a vile brew of heart-grinding anxiety and craggy disbelief stained his tongue. “A field means there’s skill, right? What skill is there in bounty hunting?”

“It takes a lot to master the profession. A lot more work and effort is put in than you might think.”

“Profession?” Levi lobbed across the pristine ultramarine table. “I wish you’d choose your words a lot better, Princess. There’s nothing professional about a bounty hunter. All they ever care about is the money.”

“Not always,”

“I know people, and people are greedy. Where there’s a price tag, they’ll swarm it like the vultures they are, no matter the size of it.” Levi sneered. 

The Man in Blue folded his arms over his constricted chest, blighted by an empty-bellied ouroboros of barbed sorrow wreathing his heart. Glorying in the sanctuary behind his adamantine rib cage. 

“What’s your reasoning that these ones are gonna be any different?” The male inquired.

“Since you desire, they have dedicated their lives to serving Appleooza.”

Levi cocked a brow. “What do you mean by serving?”

“They’re a unit of law enforcement, Levi. Where the Sheriff and the other officers fail, they’re available to clean up whatever mess is made. No matter the cost or means.”

“I don’t want to belittle you, and don’t think that I am, but do you truly understand our situation? Every aspect of it?”

Celestia paused. A bristled cord of hesitation was wound around her tongue, strangled with the might of a legion of furious gods. 

“I am…” She stared blankly for a few moments. “I am a princess, so I will not lie to you. Not now or ever in the future. If I’m honest…I’m not sure I have fully come to terms with….”

She flicked her forlorn gaze to the bundle of agonies plaguing the table’s immaculate, unbreakable surface. 

“With this. I don’t know what exactly I can refer to this as.” Celestia spoke.

“I have an idea,” Levi chimed. “A massacre is what this is. Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t have a clue on what kind of authority I have here, but we need to find him.”

“We will.”

“No, we are. Today. Now.” Levi stabbed his fingertip into the table’s unsullied skin. “I refuse to put this amount of trust into a bunch of damned bounty hunters. I won’t do it.”

“You’re going to have to, Levi. This is too perilous of a mission for you to do it on your own.”

“Do you think I can’t handle myself?”

“Not at-” Celestia severed her words in two. Her brilliant lavender orbs shut, a sharp arrow of wind magnetized into her lungs. “Not at all, Levi.”

Twilight sat rigidly, paralyzed by the unwavering, blistering tension throttling the soupy air. 

Levi paused, shifting in his crystalline seat. Gaze unfaltering. He leaned forward.

“You don’t understand what he’s capable of, Princess.” He growled. “He’s murdered so many. My friends, my family, these innocent pe-” He caught himself. “Ponies, I mean. Give me your best soldiers. Not many, just a few. All I need is a few. I’ll go out there and I will find him. I promise you that.”

“Those were my best soldiers,” Celestia quipped. “They…were…”

Were. 

The word trapped her heart in a byzantine labyrinth of whetted spikes and barbs.  

Were. Flash Sentry was the pinnacle of chivalry and valiant combat. Flash Sentry was the antithesis of their most vile adversaries and foes. Clashing tooth and nail for the sake of his beloved, beyond cherished home. Flash Sentry was alive. Now, he was not. Callously slain by a singular bullet to his windpipe, strings of ichor jetting from his grievous, irreversible affliction. Forever marring the hapless walls of that equally hapless building, inhabited by hapless ponies entangled in the thorny vines of this limitless carnage. Savagery spurted from the blackened maw of an unfathomable monster. 

A golden sabaton rapped upon the titanic golden double doors. Towering kahunas of roaring tumult came crashing down on the melancholic trio, marauding them with their cacophonous wrath. One half of the bisected entryway divorced its regal, bedazzled frame. A miniscule crack was born between the door and its aurate brethren, filling every inch of the blank space was the stony, stoic visage of a peach-colored mustang. It was a Royal Guardsman, flaunting his impossibly straight posture and calculating bronze irises, the color akin to a pot of melted pennies. Those irises… A blitzkrieg of harrowing memories, some long past and others yet to materialize, flogged his psyche. His jawline was a sculptor’s magnum opus, sharp and chiseled to the absolute utmost. A twain of pearlescent rows of veneers resided within his maw. 

“Your Majesty,” An unplumbed voice boomed from the bowels of his veiny throat like the crash of cymbals. Not as gritty or coarse as Levi expected, yet fathomless and baffling all the same. “They’ve arrived.”

“Perfect!” The Princess chirped. “Bring them in.”

The warrior swiveled his massive head with the precision of a turret shifting to a new target. He glanced behind him for a fleeting moment, dealing the beings at his rear a short nod and an unintelligible mumble. The ironclad paladin retreated into the inner byzantine workings of the castle corridor. Swiftly dissolving in the sprawling networks of bejeweled halls and silky curtains. The left door fully opened. Centuries-old hinges groaned like a horde of drunken sailors. Dainty maw of gold wider than ever akin to a gilded yawning whale shark. 

Levi rotated in his resplendent chair. Bony elbow reposing on the chair’s arm, chin lazing in his clammy palm. Fingertips brushing the cactus ends of his faded sideburns. His frame faced the entryway.

In Levi’s tempestuous maelstrom of vexation, known simply as his mind, his expectations were all but buried in the chilled Equestrian dirt. Entombed under a dense mantle of lifeless soil, drowning in silt miles beneath the Earth. When it came to measuring his shoddy outlook on this supposed solution in physical form, a meager three levels were at his disposal. High, medium, and last but not least, low. The lowest low. Deep in the unplumbed fathoms below his firmly rooted feet. Housed by the begrimed, archaic catacombs in Equestria’s bowels, abandoned by the cruel council of time. 

How would a pair of pot-bellied bounty hunters with spacious stomachs teeming with an indigestible lust for wealth solve his problem? On that note, what was their definition of solve? Solving meant what to these ponies? A job well done meant…what exactly? A burlap moth-eaten sack of gold or clods of cash? Or perhaps it was another notch on their engraved belts. Yet another kill. Another bullet breaching a skull or a rib cage shattered with a brisk round. More lives being lost to Gary’s boundless bloodlust? When would this carnage conclude? Was there even an end to sight? A roaring, angry furnace of torrid questions swallowed the Man in Blue’s skull. One singular, isolated method of snuffing the extravagant fountain of fire was a being. Whatever earth pony, unicorn, or pegasus happened across this pristine guildhall. 

A foreboding band of equines sauntered into the prodigious hall. Menace rippled every which way from the raucous amalgamation of hoofsteps and talons scraping the pristine floor. Reverberating endlessly off the mesmerizing walls. Its eminent shimmering flesh towering above the lawless troupe, their efforts to bewitch the diverse array of vigilantes were vehemently denied. 

An elderly Griffon was the prideful spearhead of his quintet of unrelenting pursuers. The archaic creature was a husky geezer, blessed with the utterly flawless combination of strength and wisdom. On the outside was a frail, nigh-worthless rat with wings, no better than a scouring pigeon blighting the sky. On the inside, however, was an entirely different story. One scratched across paper by a feather dipped in a vial of iridescent blood. Beneath the veneer of pale salmon-pink flesh, akin to that of a naked chicken, lathered with a thick layer of ashen smoky feathers, was a warrior. Far behind his mangy sky blue irises was an omnibus of harrowing, bone-chilling tales. A boundless library teeming with an unending catalog of macabre memories. Stories plumbing the fathomless depths of callous violence. Most of the recountings were warnings. An unflagging horde of shepherds trying in vain to steer any soul they can away from the life he and his cronies lived. And from the looks of it, a life of misery they continued to live. 

A charcoal-black sports coat veiled his average build. Above his buttoned outer breast pockets, etched into the sable fabric with golden thread, were a twain of Victorian-era flowers. Their heads flamboyant and arresting, flaunting their blemishless appearance as though tomorrow wasn’t assured. Judging by the motivation behind their arrival, it would be a safe bet to assume it wasn’t. The jacket’s interior was a gorgeous scarlet punctuated by a diamond stitch pattern adorned with two inner pockets. His navy blue button-down was fully conjoined sans the top two buttons. A chest-full of feathers the color of cast raw steel burst out of the canyon in his shirt. The waistline of his faded weather-beaten pants consumed the bottom of his shirt, sealed inside by a war-torn brown belt.

His stony visage, clenched by the unyielding forces of indifference, was wrinkled. His pale flesh crawled down his face like rolling magma down a hill. A cracked tallow-colored beak was perched above his marred chin, forever disfigured by a hideous laceration. Battle scars from a frivolous skirmish. A result of his unflagging pursuit of his heart’s materialistic desire. His sunken sockets were like the gaping mouth of a titanic cavern, his azure globes, plagued by the memories of his sins, lazed blissfully within. His attention-robbing posse assumed their places in the row of chairs on Levi’s right. Slender crystal legs glided across the picturesque marble floor. The remainder of his cohort were seemingly ranked by mere surface-level importance and cleanliness. Whether the arrangement was purposeful or was a mammoth mishap was a question for another day.

Beside the Griffon was who Levi could only assume to be the elder’s right-hand unicorn. Age-wise, the discrepancy was vast. With the Griffon being neck-deep in his seventies at the absolute bare minimum, his comrade was at the very least in his forties. A stark white stallion destitute of a flowing mane sprouting from his broad neck, mapped by bulging veins. His irises were a bygone prospector’s dream, two orbs of molten gold floating in ponds of white within his sockets. The mustang’s outfit on the other hand was exponentially lacking in comparison to the head honcho. A simple combination of a tattered, dirt-streaked khaki button-down with rolled up sleeves and frayed blue jeans. Ominous fissures were present in the denim. His pants torn and mangled from one of the countless futile battles he found he found himself ensnared in. Clashing tooth-and-nail for a frivolous cause, beaten half-to-death for an equally frivolous purpose. After all, a mortal can’t turn their back on Mother Nature’s commandments without bearing grizzly consequences. Levi knew far too well. Both personal experience and eye-witnesses. 

The Griffon’s front talons were folded over one another atop the crystal table. It was only then when a myriad of miniscule, diminutive features stumbled into Levi’s sight. A golden ring annexed by rust hugging his ring finger. A silver necklace wreathing his feathery neck, slithering down into his shirt. He wore a white pork pie hat, crafted from the silkiest fabric his blood money could possibly purchase. A black feather was tucked into the hat’s ribbon tied around its crown. 

Levi’s gaze metamorphosed into a needlelike, acute glare impaling the Griffon’s nettled irises. It wasn't fury or disgust that chiseled his stare into an adolescent glower. It was difficult to describe, the more the brunete internally sparred with it. He wanted to tack the blame on disappointment. Waste no time in pointing an accusatory finger at the brutal murder of his expectations. After all, what did Levi truly and undoubtedly expect to see stroll into the royal hall? A different mythological beast? Perhaps an axe-wielding Minotaur hellbent on dishing out heaps of righteous justice. Or a Centaur with fire clasping his bones and a heart trapped in a furnace of wrath. He didn’t know to a pinpoint certainty what exactly he wanted to be spat out of those doors. And, if he was thoroughly honest, this was inarguably the best hand he could’ve ever received. 

The Griffon challenged his grimace with his own monstrous, grievous version of it. It was a perfect blend of bitterness and annoyance, as though he’d been practicing since the day he dawned into this world. Judging by the work he came here to pursue, that was doubtlessly the case. 

“Thank you for coming today, Mister Surly,” Celestia spoke, razing the silence to a mound of nothingness. Levi and the Griffon concluded their staredown in a hard-fought tie. “It truly is a pleasure.”

“I hope it is,” The Griffon, Mister Surly, finally spoke. His voice was like the crushing of a thousand logs, each of them pulverized into a heap of splinters and kindling. One after another, operating in perfect synchronized consecutiveness. 

The Man in Blue refused to pat himself on the back for his correct prediction. It seemed…rude to him? Rude. That was a funny word during his particular state of affairs. Mister Surly and his band of lawless renegades were here to turn a hopeful death from a pipe dream into a preordained execution. To say anything was considered rude or impolite seemed otherworldly now. 

Mister Surly swiveled his craggy optics. Frigid blue met anxious emerald. 

“Is this the human I’ve heard so much about?” Mister Surly questioned. 

Something was braided with his words. An obscure, concealed emotion that Levi struggled to pin an appropriate name onto, yet it resided upon the tip of his tongue. What was it? The only semi-likely guess his scragged mind could conjure was that the Griffon harbored his own sense of disappointment. What the male felt towards the old geezer was sourly reciprocated. 

Levi merely nodded. 

“I thought you woulda been taller. A bit bigger, too. But whatever.” 

His assumption was confirmed. 

“Thank you for coming today, Mister Surly.” Celestia chirped.

“Get rid of all this ‘mister’ shit,” The Griffon barked. “I loathe manners, always have and always will. But I guess I can make an exception for the Princess. Name’s Mortimer.”

Mortimer motioned his head toward his confidant at his side. “This right here is Dread Shot. Got the finest aim in all of Equestria.”

The Griffon pointed a yellowed claw at the grizzled earth pony beside Dread. His coat the somber color of a charred log, while the stallion’s irises was the stark opposite. Vivid brown, the shade of an oak tree’s rugged bark, occupied his dog-tired sockets. His bushy jet-black goatee was polluted with bright veins of silver. Fatigued visage aimed at the table, his haggard expression mirrored in its gleaming surface. The equine’s outfit didn’t venture into uncharted territory by any means. An impossibly simple brown short-sleeve button-down paired with a black Stetson hat, a stampede string fastened beneath his chin. A small golden string was tied around the hat’s grooved crown. 

“That right there is Taciturn, but he lets his friends call him Taci.” Mortimer exclaimed, zero regard for his volume being present. “He doesn’t talk much. It’s somethin’ y’all gonna have to get used to.”

Beside Taciturn was another unicorn, a female this time. Her platinum blonde hair tied back in a Viking-style braid. Seafoam green skin faded from a myriad of things, stress and endless pointless battles the likely prominent cause. Contrary to her rugged, husky comrades, the mare was the most innocent seeming of the brash bunch. A wrinkled black jacket, designed to outlast its user in the cruelest conditions, was complimented by a spotless white tee, her labyrinthine braid snaking beneath her folded collar. Two rows of gleaming pearlescent teeth punctuated her intoxicating smile. A singular solid bronze canine added ravishing pizzazz to her already enchanting smirk. The doelike grin, akin to a Cheschire cat, seemed more like a brainwashing technique than a simple mesmer. Perhaps too long of a gawk would rewire his mind into a thoughtless invalid, programmed with the solitary purpose of serving…what was her name?

“That’s Clear Sky there. The nicest of my band of fuck-ups.” Mortimer chimed. “And that at the end there is my son, Mortimer Junior.”

At the end of the row, seemingly ranked last in terms of significance, was a smaller Griffon. The colors of his all-encompassing feathers were nigh-identical to his archaic father. In the stead of his guardian’s foreboding, smoky hue was a pale silver. His beak was a light amber color, bereft of the defining grievous cracks and crannies his father wore. The young Griffon, who couldn’t have been older than seventeen, was clad in a yellow-and-blue checkered flannel with rolled-up sleeves. A pair of tattered black peg-leg jeans were filled by his slender claws with the flaps of his untucked shirt secreting his waistline. The small patch of skin above his left eyebrow was marred by a puny laceration, one of his bone-tired azure orbs resting beneath it. Jumbo eye bags were hooked onto his bottom eyelids. A jet-black bowler hat with a purple ribbon once lazed atop his naked scalp. Now, it was held within his whetted claws, clutched by the curved brim. 

“Hey.” Mortimer Junior’s diminutive voice uttered, giving the Man in Blue a half-assed wave. His eyes met Levi’s for a fleeting moment before being magnetized back to his headwear. The object of his unending anxious fidgeting. 

“That’s outta the way now,” Mortimer warbled. “Let’s get down to business, gentlecolts.”

“‘Business.’” Levi’s mumble was suffocated by his breath. 

Under any ordinary circumstances, an action of that variety was vehemently abhorred by the brunete. His disdain knew zero bounds to that degree of disrespect no matter who the target happened to be. But if this arrogant, crass beast from Greek mythology possessed little regard for his etiquette, what reason did Levi have to care for his?

“Who is this ‘Gary Demonio’ I’ve been getting my ears talked off about?” 

“This ‘Gary Demonio’ is a human like I am, just a lot bigger and taller. I’d say about five-foot-eleven, maybe six-foot. Huge arms, really wide. He’s impossible to miss.” 

“What makes him so damn special?” Mortimer asked. “If he’s just like you with a couple more inches, why is he so important?” 

“Have you been reading the papers, Mortimer?”

“It’s Mister Surly to you.” The Griffon snapped.

“Fine then. Have you been caught up, Mister Surly?”

“I can’t say that I am. I haven’t touched a newspaper in fifteen years.” 

“Figures,” Levi grumbled. “This is the most important bounty of your entire life, the biggest payout too, and you insist on arguing about it. Why?”

“Who’s arguin’?” Mortimer flared. “I’m just not a fan of your attitude, Mister whatever your damn name is.”

“I don’t like yours much either, Mister Surly.”

Mortimer nodded slowly. “Then why on Celestia’s green Earth should I waste my time helpin’ you then?”

“You aren’t helping me, you’re helping the entire country. You’re helping your people, too.”

“How?”

“Twi, can you?.” Levi motioned his hand to the duo of papers atop the table. 

“Oh! Of course.” Twilight replied, abducted from her bout of daydreaming and tossed into reality. 

She briskly nodded, her horn flaring. The newspaper and discomforting wanted poster were garnished by an arresting, bold lavender aura. Both articles of paper glided across the table both halting mere inches from the Griffon’s sullied talons. Mortimer seized the recounting of Gary’s injustices, while Dread Shot analyzed his illustrated visage. The artistry failed to capture his unnervingly unique amber irises, teeming with a bloodlust no mortal being could comprehend. His giant calloused hands varnished by glimmering crimson. 

“He killed two Royal Guards, Mister Surly. Two.” Levi explained. 

The Griffon’s ancient optics soared left and right across the page. Attempting to decipher what was surging through his feeble yet acute mind was a nigh-impractical task. And judging by what he bore witness to thus far, it was all too possible he refused to allow any sort of emotion to conquer his features. 

Those eyes… 

The eyes, the gaping uncensored gateways to the soul, always followed one universal rule, destitute of exceptions. To always display what resided in the heart for all to see, no matter how vile or honorable it was. They swore an oath to always bring the inside to the outside. Mortimer Surly had zero hand in that matter.

“One was shot in the throat, the other in the head. Both bullseyes. No other bullet casings were-” 

“I can fuckin’ read!” Mortimer spat.

“Let me see it, Dad.” His son spoke.

“Why? You can’t read, Morty. Did you forget?” His father chided.

Mortimer Junior pointed his face to the table. His ceaseless fidgeting was persistent.

“I saw the pistol he had. It’s high power,” Levi scratched his cheek. “Strong enough to kill twenty of you before you could even blink. I don’t need any more dead ponies on my conscience, Mister Surly.”

“You won’t get any,” Dread interjected. “We’re a lot of things, but dead ain’t one of ‘em. You can rest easy.”

“Lemme take a look!” Mortimer robbed the poster from his comrade’s hands. Irritation reigned supreme upon his craggy features.

Mortimer paused, glancing over the hastily scratched words.

“Dangerous?” The Griffon scoffed. “I’ve seen enough dangerous to know this isn’t anythin’ new.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet.” Levi refuted. “Take what you know and double it. I’m willing to bet it still won’t hold a candle.”



“Y’know what?” Mortimer hissed. “What makes you so fuckin’ educated, Mister? Why do you think you know better than me? My whole damn life has been dangerous, I know it better than you know yourself!”

“Because my brother killed him.” 

The entirety of the Surly Gang was flabbergasted, dunked into a soupy lake of heart-gripping shock.

“Say again?” Dread inquired with brows raised to the heavens.

“My brother, Alan, I’m sure you’ve heard of him, he shot Demonio years ago. Not here, but in a world far away from here called Tuscaloosa. That’s where we’re both from.” 

“Sounds a lot like Appleooza.” Dread commented.

“Sounds a lot like a plate of bullshit to me,” Mortimer sneered. His talons were folded over his chest, leaning back into his chair. “If he’s been dead in another world for who knows how long, how on Earth did he end up here?”

Levi rubbed his eyes in unalderated annoyance. 

“Better yet, how are you here?” He continued.

“Mister Surly, I believe you’re missing the point of this visit.” Celestia piped up. “Demonio is a threat to the general safety of Equestria. If he’s capable of defeating one of our best commanders with ease, the potential outcomes are endless.”

“Oh, I’m sure they are.” 

“Please. The fate and safety of countless citizens is in jeopardy, Mister Surly.” Celestia pleaded. “You and your gang are the only ponies I believe are skilled enough to see this through.”

Dread Shot swiveled his head. He and his ill-tempered superior exchanged glances. One was the offspring of hope about this exhilarating prospect and trepidation over their target. The Griffon, however, couldn’t decide which factions of his heart were more important. His pride, or his bare-bones money chest buried beneath his floorboards back home. 

“Any price,” Levi commented. “Think of it. Anything you could ever dream of just from one man. One bullet to his head and it’s all yours. I’d give you this whole castle for his head.”

“Any amount of money for one last bounty, Mort. Do you know how fortunate we are for this?”

“I got ears, Dread!”

“I know but…think of others. Don’t just think of us.”

Mortimer stared at Levi for a long while, his focus shifting between his only two options. Illimitable riches and the opportunity to forge a new life, free from the adamantine chains of sin. Or he could leave. Depart from this bougie crystalline place and take the next train back to this endless cycle of pursuing frivolous dollars. 

“Any price?”

Levi nodded.

“Fine.” Mortimer grumbled, leaning forward in his chair. “Tell me more about this ‘Gary Demonio.’”