Archives of the Friendquisition

by Inquisipony Stallius


Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The four entered the town mid-morning, striding resolutely down the main street of Applemattox. This time, they didn’t even bother with disguising who they were, or what they were doing.

“It’s obvious that Tier allied himself with the gangs long before we arrived here,” Caballus had reasoned before they had set out, “and he was expecting us. So if we can’t use the element of surprise, we might as well try using intimidation.”

With that strategy in mind, Caballus led their formation wearing his rosette on the lapel of his greatcoat for all to see. Atop his head sat his favored capotain, stylized with the skull motif that the citizenry usually associated with the Friendquisition. Roughshod followed close behind him, the large stallion dressed in his full combat fatigues and flak armor, and making no effort to hide the arsenal of pastries on his person. On the Inquisipony’s other flank, Hairtrigger had his worn black, Arboates-issue carapace armor, but had also elected to wear a worn, leather duster over it. A bandolier of cupcakes and muffins was draped around him, and fastened to it was the golden badge of his station: the Marshall Star. However, despite this show of force and authority, the pony who seemed to be commanding the most fear from the townsfolk was Mystic. She had worn only her cloak, but with the hood down, leaving her horn on full display.

Most of the settler ponies gave the team a wide berth as they walked down the street. Those that stopped to stare were encouraged to move on by a stern glance from the Inquisipony or by Hairtrigger brandishing one of his slingshots. When those proved insufficient, as in the case of a small posse of thug-types they passed, some sparkles from Mystic’s horn were enough to convince them to stay out of the way. The horror stories told to them by their bandit friends the night before clearly preceded her.

“Our first stop will be the town hall,” Caballus told the others, “to see what sort of records we can find of Tier’s activities. Even if his business was off the books, his visits won’t be. Then we’ll go to the Sherriff’s office and gather any intel on the bandits that attacked us.”

Mentioning the town hall brought all-too-fresh memories of her dream from the night before to Mystic’s mind. “So, uh, Hairtrigger, do you know the Sherriff here?” she asked, to take her mind off them. “I mean, have you ever worked together at all?”

“Nope,” the pegaus shook his head. “Though if I happen to make his acquaintance, I might have to haul him off for incompetence, the way he’s letting the gangers have their run of the place around here. For all we know, he could be on the take.”

“Well, please be sure to do so only after we get a good picture of what we’re up against.” Caballus said.

“A’course,” Hairtrigger agreed. “Still, it just steams my saddle to think of those bandits that tangled with us last night. It’s like they think they’re beyond justice, just because they’re way out here in the sticks. Well, I tell you what: nopony’s above the law.”

“Actually,” Caballus said, “the Lex Equestrialis doesn’t apply to Inquisiponies and those acting on their behalf. So I am above the law.”

“Fine, but nopony else-“

“And technically,” Roughshod interrupted, “the Equestrian Guard fall under the jurisdiction of the Ponnissariat.”

Hairtrigger rolled his eyes with a sigh, and looked back at Mystic, waiting for her to chime in.

She just shrugged, and the four of them continued down the street. It was only a few minutes later that they arrived, and Caballus led the way into the town hall. Hairtrigger went in after him, and Roughshod was about to follow, but he paused. Looking back, he found Mystic standing stock still, staring at the door.

“Something wrong, Sweet Pea?” he asked.

“It’s… it’s not squeaky…” she said.

Roughshod cocked his eyebrow, and gave the simple swinging door an experimental push. It silently swung open and closed, obviously well oiled. “You feeling alright?” he asked, concern creeping into his voice.

“I… uh…” She shook her head. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, and pushed past the stallion through the door.

Inside, Caballus was staring down the clerk behind the desk. Before he had even said a word, the Admanestratum flunky was already shrinking away in fear.

“By the authority of the Goddess-Empress of Ponykind,” he declared loudly, slamming his rosette on the desk, “I hereby invoke the Friendquisitional Remit. As a loyal citizen of Equestria, you are compelled to my service, until such a time as it is no longer required. Should you be found wanting in your new duties, I will not hesitate to dispense the harshest punishments available.”

The clerk’s jaw dropped, and her eyes went wide. She hadn’t even had a chance to stammer incoherently before Caballus also dropped a notepad down in front of her.

“This is the information I need. Bring me any and all records with these criteria immediately, and you may return to your duties unhindered. If I suspect any records to be missing, omitted, incomplete or tampered with, your innocence or guilt in the matter will be determined by a full data-audit. Posthumously.”

By then, the clerk had turned almost completely pale and was cowering beneath the verbal assault. As soon as Caballus was done, the hapless file-jockey scampered off to the file room to fulfill his request.

Once he was gone, Roughshod burst out laughing. “That’s my favorite part of the job, right there. Poor sap nearly pissed herself!”

Caballus couldn’t help but giggle a little himself. “It does cut through the red tape, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll say,” added Hairtrigger with an impressed smile. “Even with the proper warrants, it woulda taken me hours to get them authenticated, and maybe days to search the archives myself, even in this little backwater. Boy howdy, I got into the wrong business.”

As they laughed together, Caballus noticed that somepony hadn’t joined in.

“Mystic?” he asked, watching her look around with a perplexed look on her face. “Everything alright?”

“Oh… yeah,” she replied absentmindedly. “Say, does this place look… cleaner than you would have expected?”

Caballus surveyed the main hall, noting the carefully organized front desk, the uniform stacks of filing cabinets along the walls, and the podium at the far end for giving the occasional speech to the townsfolk. “About as clean as most Admanestratum offices, I suppose. That clerk did seem like she might have been the fussy type.”

“Downright persnickety, if you ask me,” Hairtrigger added, walking around the desk and flicking the writing quill off of it, just because. “All them bean-countin’ scribes are like that, no matter where you roam. Everything’s gotta be just so for them.”

Mystic couldn’t argue that the interior, despite the dusty climate and general shortage of modern amenities, was in near-pristine order. Perhaps she was worrying about nothing. Maybe it was just a silly dream. Sure, the room was like what she had seen last night, but it wasn’t the dark, dirty death-trap from her nightmare.

“Say, Sweet Pea,” Roughshod said, bringing her out of her thoughts, “what are you casting?”

“Huh?”

“Your horn. It’s glowing. Are you casting a spell?”

She looked up, and saw that the protrusion on her head was, in fact, giving off its tell-tale light. “I… Uh… I’m not… I mean, I didn’t think I was… W-woah!” Mystic dug her hooves in and braced herself as the invisible force of magic pulled at her horn.

The appendage lurched violently around the room, back and forth, dragging the hapless unicorn attached to it along for the ride. She zigzagged around the main hall, plowing through the tables and sending them tumbling. At her horn’s whim, Mystic was swung wide around into the filing cabinets. She tried to grab one after another as an anchor, but succeeded only in capsizing each one she passed. All the others could do was stand back and let it, not willing to risk injuring Mystic by trying to get her under control.

With one final zip across the room, a baffled Mystic finally came to a halt. The unicorn looked behind her, seeing the mess her unexpected spin around the room had made. Now the place looked like it had in her dream, missing only the dust. This, however, was a less disturbing revelation than what she realized she was standing in front of.

It was the door. The one she’d taken refuge behind when she was attacked in her nightmare. The one that led to the walls covered in writing. And the darkness.

The three stallions rushed over to her. All at once, they assailed her with questions about her well-being and what she had done.

“I’m fine everypony,” she reassured them, cautiously trying to edge away from the door. “My horn just… went off for some reason, but it stopped now. I think it’s over.”

“But why did it do that in the first place?” Roughshod wondered.

She glanced nervously at the door again. “I don’t know. I guess sometimes magic can be just… well… chaotic.”

Hairtrigger seemed skeptical. “I don’t know, little missy. It almost looked like that horn’a yours was… searching for something.”

“Or leading us somewhere,” Roughshod added.

The green pony didn’t even want to think about what might happen if they were right. “What? No. That’s not it. My magic just got out of control and took me on a joy ride. There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it at all.”

“Unicorn magic doesn’t happen without a reason, Mystic,” Caballus said. “Not like that. I think it was leading us to this door.”

Mystic’s blood chilled. “Th-this door? No, no I don’t think so. There’s nothing special about it.”

“Well there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” Caballus said, putting his hoof on the knob. Mystic cringed and looked away as he turned it, unwilling to look inside.

“Huh,” she head Roughshod say after a moment, “I guess you were right Sweet Pea. Just a janitor’s closet.”

Mystic peeked with one eye, and saw that he was right. It was just an ordinary janitor’s closet. There were shelves full of cleaning supplies, brooms and mops along the walls and other tools and equipment needed for the building’s upkeep. She finally let out the breath that she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Yeah,” the unicorn laughed with relief, “See, I told you it was-”

“Wait a second,” Caballus interrupted. If her blood had been chilled before, the way he had said that made it freeze in Mystic’s veins. “There’s something else here.”

All eyes were on him a he kicked aside a pile of rolled up carpets in the middle of the floor. “It looks like some sort of… trap door. Hmmm, not original,” he said as he examined it, “it was installed sometime after the structure was built.”

“Looks an awful lot like somepony’s trying to hide something in here,” said Hairtrigger, putting his hoof on the latch. “I say we take a look-”

“WAIT!”

Everypony looked at Mystic. She hadn’t meant to say anything, but it had just burst out. “I mean… it’s just that…” she stammered, struggling to come up with a reason for them not to open it. “What if there’s something dangerous down there?”

The three seemed unimpressed, and unsympathetic. “That’s our job, Sweet Pea,” Roughshod said plainly. “We can handle it.”

Mystic gulped down as much of her terror as she could, hoping he was right. It was quickly becoming clear to her that there was no way she could avoid it. All she could do now was try to muster up enough courage to go through with it.

“Here, I’ll do it,” Roughshod said. Hairtrigger and Caballus stepped back, one aiming a slingshot, and the other a pie. Mystic tilted her head and readied a spell.

With a nod from the Inquisipony, Roughshod flung open the hatch. Beneath, there was a long, dark staircase leading deep underground. Even without knowing what to expect, that wasn’t entirely unexpected. Caballus slowly, cautiously started down the stairs. “Mystic. Behind me. I’ll need the light.”

The unicorn hurriedly caught up to Caballus, holding onto her spell, keeping it primed and ready in case of an ambush. It also doubled as the only illumination in the stairway, pushing the gloom back with each step. After a minute or so, the wooden planks lining the walls gave way to solid rock. Every sound was lent an echo by stone: the soft clops of their hooves, the hum of Mystic’s magic and the laborious whirring of Hairtrigger’s eye.

“I’ve got nothing showing up on the ole peeper yet,” he said. “Having a helluva time with some sort of… interference, though. Gonna give me a headache somethin’ fierce if I can’t get it to focus soon.”

Caballus glanced back over his shoulder and shrugged. “Could be any number of underground phenomena. I can have Fyzzix take a look at it for you when we see him.”

“That’d be awful kind of—hey! What was that?” the Arbitrotter exclaimed. Everypony’s attention snapped forward again, down the dark incline.

“What? What did you see?” whispered Mystic nervously.

“Not sure… mighta just been the interference. Infrared picked up a big, fuzzy… shadow, I guess. Probably nothing.”

“Let’s keep moving,” said Caballus. “If there is something, I’d rather go find it than let it find us.” He paused a moment, peering forward. “I think I see a light down there at the bottom.”

Sure enough, after another minute’s slow descent, they reached the bottom of the stairs. It widened into a large rectangular room, carved from the very bedrock. Even though it was empty, there were several torches lighting the room. All along the walls, there were other entrances, each leading to a stairway just like the one they had come down.

“What do you reckon this place is?” Hairtrigger asked.

Caballus frowned. “I don’t know, but it looks like there are tunnels leading to places all over Applemattox.” He trotted over to the one stretch of wall in the room that lacked a doorway. “Here. There’s something written here.”

The others sidled up to him. Roughshod brought over a torch in his teeth. When the flickering light brought the carvings into clarity, everypony but Caballus immediately recoiled.

“I was afraid of this,” he mumbled.

Mystic knew the symbols. Many she had seen on a different wall the night before. Apparently, Hairtrigger and Roughshod were having a reaction similar to hers.

“Jeez, Cab. I’ll never understand how you can just look at it like that,” Roughshod said, averting his own eyes.

“Years of practice, my friend. Inquisiponies-in-training are required to study the Malign Text so that we can ignore the… ‘side effects’ when we see it in the field.”

“What… what does it say?” Mystic asked, not sure if she really wanted to know.

Caballus scrutinized the symbols. He read them slowly. “‘Here shall the Children find refuge…’”

“And all others shall find only death,” a voice behind them finished.