*beep* *beep* *beep*
“Uhh... Really? Right now? Did I forget to turn my alarm off?” I mutter as I throw my hoof around trying to hit the damn thing. I never forget to set my alarm off, I mean today is my only day off and I need the sleep. I knock something off of my bedside table, of course it is the only breakable thing on there. I finally find my glasses and start to look for the infernal device.
*beep be...*
I smack the damn alarm and get up to check the damage and the time.
“Wonderful... just wonderful. My grandfather's vintage hour glass... and more rain outside. Its going to be one great day! A day that is starting at four twenty eight and twenty three seconds in the morning...”
I get to my hooves and meander over to my fridge to get something to drink. Milk, gemstone infused tea, green tea, black tea, oolong tea, white tea, herbal tea...
“Black tea,” I decide. I want a bit of caffeine to start the day. I wander over to the stove, turn on the burner and place my kettle on it. I look back to my room and sigh. Gramps gave that to me when I was really young, and I just broke it in half. 'Made out of timberwolf from the Everfree'. Not sure if I believed him, but I just let him spin his tales. Most ponies thought him mad, but I enjoyed his tales of his 'adventures in time'. As I walk over to the hour glass to see if I can fix it, I laugh to myself, thinking about the memories, and, with luck, it just seems to snap back into place...
“Ouch!”
Did my hour glass just bite me? Oh wait, yes... yes it did. Yup, that's blood... great. I start to bind my hoof with a wrap, wondering if this day could possibly get any better.
*Briinnngggg*
“Why do I think things like that? And Why are you talking to yourself Whooves? your starting to sound like Gramps.”
I walk over to my phone and look at the ID. Oh happy days, Sergeant Dawn...
“Detective Whooves here.”
“You sound awake Whooves, did you get your 'timely' sleep?”
Dawn trying to get me riled up over my OCD-like nature about time again, what else is new? Oh, and using my first name as a pun? Who would have thought?
“If you call two hours, twenty one minutes and twelve seconds of sleep good, then yes I did. What is it Dawn? Who died?”
I turn to my teapot, pour the hot water in and look for a good spot to sit down to hear the news.
“You're too good at this. You know that, right?”
Her sigh is loud and I hear her cover the mic on her phone to talk to someone on the other end. She says something about a spell or dragon... I can't hear it all.
My mind flashes. Spell, Changeling, unicorn, and then dragon. Dragon spells old, ancient, passed down, stolen during Solar Empire, seen freely for a brief time, destroyed or so thought. Rituals needed for ponies to cast dragon spells, not strictly legal. Normally needs a life to cast, or blood... or the promise of death. Most likely promise...
“Whooves! Did you hear me? We need you down here as soon as possible.”
Her voice stops my train of thought. I grab my travel cup and pour myself some of the hot liquid. She knows it's my day off and yet still calls me first out of all of the detectives. I guess the ones on call have no idea about how to solve a case...
“Where?” I sigh out of defeat.
“Thank you, Whooves. I think you’re the only one who can even solve this. You have a great mind when it comes to these puzzles. There should be an officer waiting outside.” She hangs up the phone and I continue to drink my tea.
Why did somepony use dragon magic? There are much simpler outlawed spells and enchantments that could do that job. Feeling a bit more awake, I walk over to my coat rack and grab my jacket and hat. I look at my hat, a simple pork pie that I have had forever, slightly warped from the rain. What is it with detectives and their material goods? Every detective I know has something that they can’t go out the door without.
I leave my apartment building, down and out on to the streets of harmony, where I breathe in the damp air and walk towards the police officer waiting for me.
“Morning, Hush. Nice day we are having, eh?”
Hush muffles a laugh. He is a unicorn of few words, but he likes me for even talking to the silent pony on the force. He is a bit of a funny pony, I'm never to sure what to make of him. He's smart, very smart. Doesn't like to boast about it though. It's a bit of a shame – we could use a pony like him with the deductive force.
Unicorns are what keep this city going – their magic operates every moving thing, be it auto-mobiles, phones, lights, you name it. After Apple industries made that discovery about sealing magic in temporary Cache Magic Containers – C.M.C. for short – magic became usable for almost all ponies. Well, the devices they power anyway. I still can’t use physics-defying levitation.
After the quiet ride I walk up the steps to the griffon embassy. As usual the architecture catches my eye. It seems to be a mix of Pegasus columns and natural earth elements – you can actually see veins of gold through some of the pillars. All of their art has this feature – they never cover anything natural. For the brutes that we, time and time again, paint them to be, they truly have old souls.
Lots of ponies here, and quite a few griffons... is that a changeling there too? What colour is his band? Gray... with yellow. No, it couldn't be... I walk up to the changeling in griffon form and quietly ask him.
“Nazir? Nazir Doo?”
The'griffon' looks to me and laughs. It is Nazir. No being can laugh like he can. It doesn't matter what form he takes – that laugh characterizes him to a T.
“Nazir, what are you doing here?”
Nazir is a very interesting character. Unlike most changelings, he dislikes his talent of being able to change. He once told me that changelings could be more susceptible to mental diseases than any other race if they continue to use their natural ability recklessly. This, of course, could be something to just try and throw me off. I heard a rumor about a Changeling that renounced his heritage and joined the griffon kingdom. Should have guessed it was him. You kind of grow to know someone after you have been chasing them for years.
“Well, I am a griffon, so there is a chance that I work here. I mean, slim as it maybe, I have been working a honest life. I take it you're here to look into the murder of Odysseus?”
Oh buck, Odysseus! Not the name I wanted to hear.
“Please tell me it's some random schmuck that works here and not the council member... Please Nazir. I don’t want to be wrapped up in a mess dealing with council members.”
Nazir shakes his head. He avoids eye contact with me before saying the unavoidable.
“Yes, Timely – it is Odysseus the council member. You had best get up there. I’m keeping the press and others busy so you ponies can get all of the info from the scene that you can.”
I nod and reply ever so thankfully. The last thing I want in my mane is the press. Especially if it involves one of the Six council members.
One of the officers calls me over to the stairs and informs me that the murder happened up the estate room. I rush into the room to find two ponies talking...
Dawn, the forensic team lead, and one of my best friends. She is a unicorn of the ex-solar empire with a white coat and a blazing red mane. Her cutie mark is like so many others – a setting sun, a sign that she is no longer under the empire that was not so long ago. Her size is always intimidating, as is that of most other solar ponies. They stand about a foot taller than any eclipse pony.
She's talking to Zak, a happy go lucky zebra. How being a cop is not getting him down, I have no idea. He has a striped mane and tail, standard stripes except the one that covers his left eye. Kind of gives him the look of always having a black eye. His cutie mark is an outlined badge.
“Morning, Whooves. Ready to get your hooves dirty?” Dawn asks as she passes me some hoof gloves.
I snap on the gloves and start looking around the room. I pretend that I didn’t hear anything that was said over the phone. I like hearing what happened again.
“So, what do you have for me Dawn?” I ask, looking around the body, checking for any damage to the feathers. Dawn grabs a notebook and starts to list everything that is known about the case...
Dragon spell due to aura. Instant death. No break in. Time of death'around' three twenty-five and thirteen seconds – again, Dawn's idea of messing with me, nice to know that she is taking this murder so seriously. Unknown if unicorn or dragon responsible.
Dragon spells normally touch or rune. Can’t see any obvious runes... so it had to be touch. Spells of this caliber can only be cast by adult dragons, or creatures with high attunement to magic - specifically, unicorns. This unicorn must have been a friend, because the room was immaculate. Nothing was broken, there was no fight, which is always unusual for a griffon murder. They are a race of warriors – even the weakest ones are a hassle to deal with.
His expression told it all. Pain. This is unlike any other kill spell I've ever seen. Most unicorn ones leave the victim with some kind of equinity. This spell just seem to... wait did its eyes just move?
“Am I the first pony to see this body?”
Dawn looks at me and walks over, levitating a clipboard with some info for me. I take the board and she says, in a quizzical voice, “No. I proclaimed him dead right after I called you, I haven’t had a chance to take a good look at the body yet. Why?”
As I'm reading the clipboard, I scratch out the phrase 'kill spell' and start to write my own idea in. Dawn takes a closer look into the eyes of the griffon and screams.
“He is alive! But I checked! He had no pulse! Nothing!”
“No, not really,” I reply in a calm voice. I give her back the clipboard and go back to examining the body. “Yes, technically he is alive, but only one part of him is here. Now the question is 'who took his soul and why?'”
Soulless bodies are very interesting. For the most part, they are dead – they look the part and sometimes they actually are dead – so it doesn't surprise me that they missed it. This is the first time I've seen a real soulless body, I've heard of weird cult cases before, but this...
I walk over to Zak and tell him to get the med unit in here asap. Zak runs out the door and we can hear the surprise. This gives myself and Dawn sometime alone with body before the medics get here and mess everything up. Hopefully giving us enough time to find out who's behind this...
Going back to the body, I start to go over it and get Dawn to help me. Dawn finds what we are looking for, and I pray to Luna it’s not what I think it is. A sun ruin, carved into his flesh below a thick clump of feathers.
It can really only mean one thing. The Solar Empire...
Damn it.
Dawn starts shaking. Tears start to form in her eyes. I rush over to her and try to calm her down, without much luck.
“Dawn this isn’t you. This isn't any of you with the Setting Sun. This is only a few of the crazies out there!”
She wasn't hearing me. I hear the radio blaring, the medics are on their way. I grab a glass and some water from the sink near by and throw it in her face. She yells and starts to look around.
“Timely, what... what happened?”
I sigh and reply, “You saw the symbol of the Solar Empire and collapsed. I can understand why, though. I thought that was all behind us to. Some ponies just live in the past and forget that the future is still ahead of us.”
She turns to the body – the symbol – and shakes her head. She looks back at the chart beside her and starts to change the info on it. Still a bit shaken she looks to me and starts to throw out theories. That's something that always amazed me about her – she didn't stop. Whenever something got her down she just got straight back up, no matter what.
“So we now have evidence that the Solar Empire is linked to this or is being framed. But why would whoever did this want a soul?” Dawn asked.
She has a very good point, why take a soul? The very essence of a pony – or griffon, in this case.
My mind flashes... Soul. Essence. Solar Empire. Cult. Sacrifice. Griffon. High profile. No fighting. Expected. Boom...
Wait... boom?
“What was that?” I look back to Dawn. She is looking out the window towards the griffon kingdom. A rainbow? Oh no...
“Is that a rainbow? Moving across the sky?”
She cocks her head and watches the rainbow moving incredibly quickly across the blue and gray sky. All of a sudden, it seems to explode in another wave of rainbows and sound.
“It's a sonic rainboom!”
I yell. The sound of it is ear-splitting. Myself and Dawn hit the ground as Zak comes running in with a pair of medics.
“What was that!? It sounded as if the sky just exploded!” Zak yells. He looks to see if we are okay, first helping Dawn up to her hooves and then myself. We both shake off the shock and I start to towards out the door.
“That was a Sonic Rainboom! The element of the griffon kingdom is here! Get Odysseus stable! She is not going to be a happy pony!” I quickly shout as I run to the staircase.
I look out to the street just to see it explode into a fury of dust and stone. The whole building shakes as dust and rubble fills the entrance. The guards at the front of the building open the whole double door as if expecting a manticore to walk in.
“Nazir! How did word already get to her!? I thought you said that we had some more time!” I yelled down to him. Nazir was paste white and looked back to me with shock and fear in his face. He tried to get sound out but couldn't.
“You have no clue how she found out, do you?”
Nazir shook his head and turned to the now settling dust and debris. He started to bow as soon as we saw the rainbow feather tips of Rainbow Dash the Loyal. Rainbow Dash of the Elements. Rainbow Dash the Hippogriff. Each step caused all around to bow deeper. Not only was this an Element of Harmony – it was an angry one.
“You have ten seconds to tell me what happened...”
Its five twelve exactly in the morning...