//------------------------------//
// Chapter Three-Four 
// Story: Lock of Shadows 
// by Xeroed_In 
//------------------------------//

Chapter Three:
Twilight slammed the library door shut with enough force to rattle the windows and shake the book cases loose. Having vented her frustration, she groaned at the compulsion to reshelve all the loose books. That would have to wait until morning.
"Spiiiiiiiiiiike!" she called, rubbing her hoarse throat afterwards and then watched as he came rolling down the staircase. Literally rolling, she watched as he lost his footing on the 5th step and landed face-first in front of her. She snuffed a laugh at his unintentional blunderings.
"Take a note?" he asked.
"Nope. Hot cocoa and a blanket: stat. Then bring up every book, omnibus or scroll we have on the Old Magic. It's going to be a long night." 

Moments later, Twilight was nestled under a fuzzy blanket with a steaming mug of cocoa next to her and surrounded by three or four piles of books. Spike had gone to bed just recently, and his snoring drifted softly down from the staircase. Her familiar owl, Owlowicious was perched on the stack directly in front of her, staring with huge brown eyes that bored into Twilight. She smirked, "Go do something else Owlowicious, I'll be up for hours."

Owlowicious hooted softly and then let his eyes close and his beak dropped into his chest. Twilight waited until his feathered breast was rising and falling in a steady rhythm and then levitated the first of the the heavy leather-bound books onto the floor in front of her. 
Cue dust.
A History of Magic. Nope.
Starswirl the Bearded: Rune Theory. Nope.
A Brief Summary of Magical Locks, Shocks and Rocks. Nuh-uh.
Supernaturals: Natural Remedies and Cure-Alls that are Simply Super. "How the buck did that get in there?" Twilight murmured to herself.
From Earth to Sky.
Before Time Began.
Spells from the Past.
A Celestial Guide to the Old Magic.
Nope, nope, nope and also nnnnope.

At least 60 different books and still nothing. It was as if the universe did not want Twilight to unravel it's secrets and solve the mystery. With a barely suppressed scream of rage, she blasted all the books back to their respective places and then stood to crack her back with a whip of her tail. Shaking the pins and needles from her legs, Twilight teleported over to the kitchen with nay but a twitch of her eye and then deposited her cup in the sink. Looking back at where she had been, she remembered back to her early days when teleportation had used to cause her great headaches. How far she'd come in that time.

She trotted out onto the suspended veranda and sat there watching Les Luna as it climbed to it's apex. With Princess Luna as a friend now, Twilight had come to appreciate the beauty of the night, just as intricate and complex as the day. But while the daytime was all revealing and illuminative, Twilight could see how the nighttime was secretive and shielding, deceptive almost, a time for everything to be unmasked and turn into something entirely different.
Owlowicious began to hoot softly behind her and as she turned to look at what had distracted him, he swooped over her shoulder in a flurry of feathers and up into the sky.
Twilight tracked his flight with dark purple eyes, watchful that he didn't fly off too far. Owlowicious swooped through the heavy night air with ease, loop-de-looping and pulling off barrel rolls with ease. He rose up to Les Luna, a tiny silhouette against a pale backdrop and that was when Twilight saw it. 

Another silhouette crossing the moon. 
Her initial reaction was for her brain to scream "Mare in the Moon!", but as she looked closer she became increasingly fascinated and disturbed by what she saw. It was the black shadow of a pegasus pony but something was....wrong about it. Angles that shouldn't be there, angles that couldn't be equestrian and with each wing beat Twilight could pick out another feature that made this mystery even more intriguing. This new comer had leather, bat like wings protruding from the shoulders. No pony, absolutely no pony had leather wings. Even Luna's personal guard's leather wings were but an enchantment designed to give the illusion. Leather wings were not natural.
Twilight watched, eyes narrowing with intent, as the shadow dropped out of the sky and and alighted onto a house further out near to the business district, and then onto the street below. Silence reigned for what seemed to be an eternity and then a scream split that night, a scream that chilled Twilight's blood. Lights flickered on frantically all over town.
"Oh my Celestia...." Twilight murmured and then was off, 'porting onto the street below and then galloping full tilt through the streets of what had quickly become a nightmare town.
And as always, Les Luna watched impassively from the sky.

Chapter Four:
Ponies of all colors and sizes were already to beginning to enter the streets when Applejack and Rarity plowed through the crowd, racing towards the source of the scream. They came stumbling around the corner of an alleyway and almost smashed into the blue coat of Rainbow Dash, who was flying at street level, weaving in and out of the multitude of ponies that were standing on the streets. 
"Hey watch were you're going!" She exclaimed then recovered quickly when she realized that it was in fact her best friends she was speaking to, "Oops, sorry guys. Anyone seen Pinkie Pie?" 
Rarity answered, "I doubt that I'd miss seeing Pinkie darling, where's Fluttershy?"
"Somewhere under her bed. Do you want me to go get her?"
"No time for that!" exclaimed Applejack, huffing and puffing, with sweat clearly standing out on her forehead. "There's Twilight! Let's find out just what in tarnation is goin' on!"

And sure enough Twilight was there, a full pony and a half ahead of them, running at a speed that betrayed her bookish demeanor. They slowly caught up with her, vaulting over shop booths and dodging decorative fountains as they ran silently side by side. Rainbow Dash ascended a few feet and skimmed over the rooftops with ease, head shaking from side to side as she desperately searched for the source of the scream.
"Yo! Over here you guys!" she yelled, pointing frantically at the ground a few houses away.
Twilight and her friends upped the pace, other ponies blurring into inperception as they skidded around another corner and almost fell into a jumbled heap. 

Applejack was the first to recognize where they were, "We're outside Sugarcube Corner!" Rarity and Rainbow Dash dropped low to the ground and spread out, creating a perimeter while Twilight stepped over to the pony that lay on the cold stone pavement, deathly pale and still. She recognized this victim as Chessy Cat, a local cat-obsessed  unicorn, now lying spread eagle on the ground, tongue lolling out and her eyes rolled up into her head, showing only the whites. But she was still breathing and Twilight pounced with her magic, spreading a nearby blanket over Chessy's fragile form and crying out, "Someone get help! Nurse Redheart!". The nurse herself came bursting through the crowd and skidded to a halt next to Chessy, immediately checking her pulse and temperature. While the nurse worked, Twilight slowly walked around the body examining it from every angle, much like what she did with Zero Gee, looking for any clue, any imperfection anything out of the ordinary. 
And there it was. Chessy's purple and white horn was gone. Missing. Non-existent.

"How is this possible?" thought Twilight. What was it that Rainbow Dash had said? '....tied directly  to the nervous system....'. Same with a unicorn horn.
With a nod to Twilight that said, 'saved' Nurse Redheart called her assistants, Twitcha Twitch and Color Scheme, and with their help she lifted Chessy away on a stretcher and back into the crowd which began to disperse.
Twilight should have relaxed then, she should have exhaled and hung her head and turned home to her bed, but something seemed wrong tonight and she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, a shiver down her spine like somepony was watching them. Her friends trotted in slowly and Applejack reached out to rub Twilight's back, the rest of them looking around nervously in the dark.
"Such a dreadful shame for another one to be lost," said Rarity, "Chessy Cat was a good friend"
"Really? I just thought she was a bit weird." Rainbow Dash blurted.
"Dashie! Don't be mean. Shame on you" Rarity admonished.
"Sorry 'princess', but I get stingy when I'm nervous."
Twilight interrupted, "Calm down girls, just go back home and get a good nights rest."

Her friends nodded in agreement and turned to leave for their respective homes. Twilight also flicked her tail and turned south to face the path towards the library, looking forward to a  good nights rest, but then her breath caught in her chest and the air chilled around her as she saw something staring down at her from the roof of a house some 12 metres away. The silhouette from the moon before was now perched on the slatted wood roof, the same grotesque angles, the same unnatural leathery wings and now a ghastly pair of red eyes held her locked in an embrace of fear. Twilight looked at the silhouette closer, she could have sworn that the shadow that passed the moon was a pegasus, but this was undoubtedly an alicorn. A male alicorn as well, a race that Twilight had been led to believe had died out centuries earlier. She held the stare, liquid red to a soft purple, a stare that was different somehow, almost....mesmerizing....

Then Twilight blinked and the shadow was gone in a flicker of hoofbeats and a displaced cloud of the hay that covered the rooftops. Her instinctive curiosity took over, "The culprit?" and she shot off in pursuit, having to crane her neck in order to catch but a glimpse of the shadow as it bounded across the rooftops at astonishing speed. She could hear her friends shouting behind her, "Twilight! Where are you going?!" but she ignored them, instead concentrating on not losing the mysterious alicorn that was like smoke slipping through her hooves. The strange chase continued through the darkened streets, dodging signs and powering around corners, criss-crossing paths and looping over again until finally Twilight took a wrong turn and found herself facing the mocking brick of a dead end alley. The silhouette swept off into the night with barely a whisper.

"rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" Twilight half-screamed, half-growled in frustration and beat at the walls with her hooves. Her friends came running up to her, concern etched on each of their faces.
"Twilight? What in the hay is goin' on?" asked Applejack, "You cain't jus' run off into the night like that, not with everything that's been happening lately."
"Sorry girls," whispered Twilight and sat down dejectedly, "I can't explain what I saw, it's just been such a frustrating few nights."
"But doesn't this stuff happen all the time?" asked Rainbow Dash from where she was hovering above their heads.
"It's true that ponies die every day, Rainbow Dash." said Twilight, "But this is the first murder in some 200 years, the absolute first. That's a big deal."
"Back up there, sugarcube. Yall say that someponies doing this?" Applejack began to nervously trot from hoof to hoof.
Twilight looked up at them, "I don't know what I've seen. All I know is that it's imperative I see Princess Celestia right away."
"Good Twilight," said Celestia, descending silently behind the group. "I've anxiously been waiting for your report."