---Chapter 3: Aftermath---
My stomach lurches, the feeling of a body wanting to vomit. Her limbs are sprawled out wildly, with one leg even looking like it is bent backwards. I can only see her side from here, but that’s enough. I tear my gaze away, hardly able to stand looking at the body of a mare I spoke to only days earlier.
“C-Cornerstone….”
I spin around as soon as I hear the voice, recognizing it instantly. Crap, she lives down the street from here. Of course she’d pass this way!
“Lyra! W-what are you doing here!” I walk past her, bringing a hoof around her shoulder to usher her along. “Come on, w-we should head to town hall—”
“Why is everyone h-here, Cornerstone?” Her voice is quiet, and her body is trembling. “Why are they looking up towards… that roof?”
“Lyra… Don’t look, okay? You don’t want to look.” I have a hoof on each of her shoulders, trying to hold her back, but she simply pushes past me and continues forward.
She reaches the crowd and follows the few remaining gazes towards the roof. At first, I don’t think she believes it. She blinks, rubs her eyes, and looks up again. Then I slowly see it: her fear. Her eyes turn white, her body shrinks back, and then her shrill scream rips through the morning air. I may never forget that sound.
“BON BON!”
* * * 3/28 Thurs Evening * * *
I return home with the now setting sun. I sit down on my front step, gaze glued to the ground, not willing to pass through the doorway. It haunts me, as if everything that’s happened in the last few days would be set in stone as soon as I crossed through it. And there’s nothing in the last few days that I want finalized.
Winter Wrap Up was a disaster. Many ponies were too shaken by the murder to even leave their houses. Even Twilight was out of sorts, having troubles remembering which ponies were good at what. And the work itself took nearly two entire days, not starting until about noon yesterday, and just ending this evening. The rest of the country couldn’t wait, so we were behind by a day, apparently for the first time in years since Twilight has arrived. I don’t think she took it very well; when I called out to her after we finished, she completely ignored me and hurriedly returned home. She even shut the door on Spike, who took it as a sign to not bother her for a while. I figured he would know best, so I left her alone.
But the worst part wasn’t the town’s distress. No, it was Lyra: she broke down when she saw who died, not willing to talk with anypony except the police, not even me. Since they escorted her home, I haven’t seen her at all, nor heard word of her condition.
And that’s when the thoughts of self-doubt saturate my mind. How do I help somepony who’s probably-best-friend was just murdered? How long do I let them stew in their own feelings without contacting them? And the worst thought: could I have helped prevent any of this? I saw Bon Bon just a week ago… and she’s already gone.
The sound of hooves clattering on cement takes me out of my thoughts as I look up. I find a pony I don’t recognize at all. She’s a pegasus, with aqua fur and bright, violet mane and tail. I also notice her cutie mark as she approaches me, a snowflake with a musical note over it. She also appears to be holding something in her hoof, but it’s concealed by a tall paper bag. Though I don’t think anything of her upon first glance, by the time she reaches me, something about her seems odd.
We stare each other down for a few moments. I’m mostly confused, but her gaze is clearly disapproving of me.
“Hello?” I offer.
“Why are you moping around?” She speaks like a mother who has lost patience with her fuming child.
Her words catch me off guard. I almost instinctively rise up to meet her in anger. But I stop myself, taking a deep breath, and say, “Am I not allowed to be sad when somepony I know dies?”
She approaches me in a rush, grabs my mane and forces me to look up at her. “You barely knew her. She talked to you once. ONCE! And you have the gall to… be upset over this?!” She releases my head violently, spinning around to pace a few steps before looking back at me. Her pure white eyes look like they could magnify light into a laser beam.
I run my hoof through my mane, trying to smooth it out again. Despite her rough attitude, I’m not at all upset by her approach, as it’s clear to me that Bon Bon meant something to her. “So only friends of her are allowed to feel sad? Is that what you are saying?”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m saying that you’re lucky it wasn’t somepony you were close to.” Her expression softens immediately, and she turns her gaze away from me. “Because then you’d be tearing yourself up inside, wondering if you could have done something. Maybe spent a little bit longer with her, made sure she was really okay….”
Then I realize what’s odd about her. “I saw you in the crowd… where Bon Bon was found.”
“Yeah, I was there. ‘Cause that was my house that Bon Bon was found on.” She invites herself to sit down next to me. I scoot over a bit to give myself some more space. “You don’t know how much it hurts to have the police ask you about why your best friend is dead on your roof. You’ll never know what it’s like to hear them treat you like a suspect….” She sniffles, her mood falling even further.
I rub the back of my neck with a hoof, not sure how to talk with this mare. I don’t know her, and nopony’s ever really come to me for closure for something this serious. “I-I’m sorry for asking,” I say as I try to figure this out before it goes on any longer, “but wouldn’t you rather talk to somepony you know, rather than a stranger?”
“Lyra said you’d be a good pony to talk to. And by Celestia have I needed somepony to talk to.” She brings the bag up to her mouth, and I notice the lip of a bottle. She takes a swig out of it and a hint of the scent strikes my nose. Wine? Wait a second… Lyra told her about me?!
“Is Lyra okay?! I haven’t spoken to her all day. She won’t even answer my knocks!”
I realize after the fact that my voice was panicked, which causes the mare to chuckle. “She’s… I don’t know. She and I aren’t really friends, so I don’t know how she’d take this, but she seemed calm enough when she mentioned you.” She takes another swig. “Actually, she didn’t even give me a name. Just told me about this pony at the end of this block.” She extends a hoof. “Frigid Sonata. Musician.”
I give a firm shake. “Cornerstone. Architect.”
“I’m… I’m sorry about all of this. I already bawled my eyes out yesterday, heh. But if Lyra talks to ya, then you gotta be some mighty good conversationalist or something.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re kidding?” She takes a quick swig then says, “That girl hardly has any friends because she’s always so… pushy, and active. Sometimes she doesn’t know what personal space is. You met Pinkie, right?” I nod. “Pinkie is endearing most of the time. Lyra isn’t like that… it gets awkward. I don’t know how else to say it. I couldn’t spend more than ten minutes alone with her, to be completely honest.”
I think back on my time spent with Lyra for a second. She always seemed fairly normal except for her boundless energy. Nothing I can think of speaks to an issue with personal space or her being too forward. “Well, I’m just some stallion from Canterlot, so I’m not really sure what she means.”
She chuckles. “She probably didn’t have anyone to talk to on her trip, so she must think a bit higher of you since you talked with her on the train.”
“I thought she was visiting family. How would she not have anypony to talk to?”
“If even half of what Bon Bon told me about them was true….” She pauses, then takes a drink from her bottle, though this one takes a few moments and more than one gulp. Once finished, she wipes her mouth quickly and says, “They don’t think too highly of her. Her family is very traditional, and for generations every child in her family has become a royal guard, and I think she broke that tradition when she got a cutie mark in music.”
I gulp. Frigid raises an eyebrow, but I wave it off. “C-continue.”
“Well, that’s all there is to it really. Yeah, she’s her parents’ daughter, but… well, sadly, not every parent treats their kids the best.” She takes a quick swig then stands up. I wonder how much she’s had, but her speech and stature seem completely unaffected. “Heh, listen to us, going on about a mutual friend like they’re gone or something, when her best friend is the one that’s passed.” She opens one eye wide to look into the bottle. “I’m gonna head home to finish off this baby. Sorry for being angry earlier, but I hate when ponies get depressed for no reason, you know?”
I nod. My head is too far in my own thoughts to come up with something to say. This pony claims she isn’t even friends with Lyra, knows all this stuff about her, and even talked with her. And she won’t even see me at the door. So what does it mean that she’s able to restrain herself around me, but now she won’t even talk to me?
“Hey, uh, you okay?” Frigid pokes me on the horn, which brings me right back into the world.
“Sorry, I was just thinking. I understand that you aren’t truly upset with me, but it’s still tough for me to deal with.”
She chuckles and holds up her bottle. “A lot easier with something that hides the pain.” She waves and trots off.
Once she’s out of sight, I stand up and walk forward a few steps. I turn around and look at my entire home. At least my best friend isn’t dead on the roof, right?
Is that really the best thing I can think of after all of this?
I make my way through the front door, determined to wash down the day with a few glasses of wine myself.
* * * 3/29 Fri Morning * * *
I emerge from my home with a slight headache, shielding my eyes from the sunlight. I’m a bit late, given that I only now walked outside at nine, when I was supposed to be on-site at nine. I curse myself; how in Equestria did I forget to drink water last night? I always avoid hangovers….
I make my way down the street and turn towards the construction site. If everything is going according to schedule, we’ll be ready to start laying foundations in less than two weeks. I’ve rarely had any project of mine go exactly as planned, but I’m not too worried; Ponyville seems like a strong city. We even managed to finish Winter Wrap Up, despite the tragedy. I still wish I could help out more; digging isn’t something I can really do without a tool, given that dirt is often just lots of small particles when it’s being taken out of the ground. Maybe they’ll need help moving some construction equipment around….
Once I reach the corner and turn towards Ponyville’s town square, I immediately realize something: there are hardly any ponies wandering the streets. I stop and swivel my head around, taking in my surroundings. I recognize a couple stallions and mares that live on this block, and as I continue down this path, the contrast only becomes stronger. There are barely a dozen ponies wandering through town this morning, on their way to work.
Then it strikes me. Murders have never happened in Ponyville before, which means that nopony in Ponyville has ever been a murderer before. Of course they’re going to stick to their homes, to their families. Somepony in Ponyville could be a murderer… no, somepony in Ponyville is, not only a murderer, but a serial killer.
It could even be a close friend.
“Cornerstone!”
I turn towards the voice and see Twilight Sparkle approaching me with a tired look about her. Her movements are slightly sluggish, and before she even reaches me, I can make out the circles under her eyes. “Yes, Twilight?”
“Are you heading to the construction site?”
I blink. “Uhm, yes? Is there some reason I wouldn’t be?”
She chuckles awkwardly and pauses, as if expecting some kind of response from me. I just tilt my head. She sighs and says, “Well, you can go home now. You should probably work on some house designs, actually….”
“I thought the mayor wanted me on-site for most of construction.”
“There is no work today. Most businesses aren’t even open, ” Twilight states. “Surely you’ve noticed.”
“I’ve, uh, noticed fewer ponies around town?” I offer.
“And to go along with that, only two ponies were at the construction site,” she explains with a huff. “It seems that once everypony finished Winter Wrap Up, their fear of the murderer turned stronger than ever. Ponies are just barring themselves in their homes…” she sighs, then glances up to me. Her look startles me, and after a moment she says, “but it can’t be helped for now. I’m sure they’ll realize how silly they’re being in due time. They’ll realize that it’s better to keep life going, than worry all this time about something they can’t change.”
I nod, and gulp. Her eyes… it was only a glance, but I could see the tremble in them, and the words she said afterwards only confirmed the suspicions in the back of my mind: she still blamed herself for what was happening to Ponyville.
Including Bon Bon’s death.
Unable to voice my concern, I stay quiet as she continues, “Well, uh, I’ll be on my way then. It was… good to see you? I’ll tell you if I get any more news about the construction.”
She walks past me, and after a moment, I turn and call out, “Wait, Twilight!”
She’s only a few yards from me, so she turns her head to look to me.
“Bon Bon… that wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?”
Her expression is unchanging for a few seconds, then she smiles. “I’m glad to hear somepony say it at least.” She turns and continues on her way home.
I reach out with a hoof to call out to her again, but decide against it. Once again, I find myself thinking that if she needs help, she’ll seek it. I curse myself, wishing I was able to quell her feelings more effectively. Not having any other ideas or plans, I decide to head home, hoping to preoccupy my mind with some work. I wonder if the mayor wants modern designs, or something reminiscent of Canterlot….
* * * 4/2 Tues Afternoon * * *
The weekend passed uncomfortably at best. I only left my home a few times: to treat myself once I finished a few ideas that I was confident with, to get groceries, to check on Twilight and if construction would start anytime soon, and finally to check on Lyra. While she did answer the door, she would then brush me off, saying she was busy composing or something, not willing to hear anything I had to say. The rest of the time I spent in my home either working on home designs—which I guess is actual work—and reading several novels to pass the time.
The news finally came on the first of April: most of Ponyville was indeed returning to normal life, and this included the construction crew. My glee was palpable; even Twilight noticed my beaming face. According to her, our schedule was to remain unchanged; I would be on-site to monitor construction, but had the option to take days off whenever I needed, though I insisted I wouldn’t use that option very often. Then, when we reached later stages of development, she says that we’ll look at how involved I need to be before what to do. I shrugged, not that concerned with something that far in the future.
Of course, that came with some other news which I found both liberating and disconcerting at the sasme time: Twilight finally convinced the police to let her become a sort of… “consulting detective,” which is apparently a title Twilight thought up herself. My first thought was that I hope Twilight can relieve some of her guilt by working to solve the case but then other thoughts wore at my mind. Wouldn’t Twilight’s prowess in magic be a huge boon? Why would it take them so long to agree to let her work with them? Another striking thing was how Twilight told me: when she relayed the news, she wasn’t excited or happy, but rather, she was distracted and almost looked depressed.
Her words rise up again in my mind. “I’m glad to hear somepony say it at least,” I echo as I walk through Ponyville. Something about those words and her attitude… all they make me think is that somepony had to have gotten angry at her, or blamed her for this. Somepony put the idea in her head that she’s the reason these attacks are happening.
For Twilight’s sake, as well as anypony else hurt by this tragedy, I’m going to find this murderer. I won’t let another home of mine be ruined by the ponies around me… even if I don’t know who this pony is.
It’s time I put an end to all these negative thoughts.
I knock on the door to the library. “Twilight!”
“Cornerstone!” Twilight says, clearly surprised. “What are you doing here? The construction starts—”
I brush past her, more determined than ever before. I not going to sit idly by while Ponyville is slowly taken from under my hooves. I will find this murderer, even if it kills me.
She brushes herself off and closes the door behind me before coming up and asking, “Is, uh, something the matter?”
“Twilight, I have to ask you a favor.”
“Uhm, sure?”
“I’d like to know more about the investigation.”
“Oh… I see.” She trots past me and takes a seat at her table, taking a sip from the tea that she already had out. “I’m sorry, but they made me promise not to tell anypony that wasn’t in the police. Since Ponyville is such a small community, they don’t want the killer to find out something by accident. They aren’t even going to interview the suspects until they have definite proof that they did something.”
“So you have suspects?” I ask.
“There are obviously suspects, but I can’t tell you—”
“Twilight,” I say as I approach her and put a hoof on her shoulder, “I wasn’t even in town for the first murder. And I’m a good friend of Lyra. I just want to help. Besides, I was also there when they discovered… Bon Bon’s body. Maybe there’s something I could tell you.”
She sighs. “I really, really shouldn’t tell you. I know you’re concerned but the police are working around the clock to get this done.”
“So what have they found after a month?”
She slaps my hoof away from her. “Stop asking me questions! Why are you so insistent anyway?!”
“Because I don’t want to see Ponyville fall apart like this!” I yell. She shrinks back in her chair, almost falling out of it. “I moved to Ponyville because…” I gulp. “It’s where I’ve always wanted to live. I was sure that I would even move here permanently after I was finished working, but… if the town is going to keep going like this, what is the point?” I fall on my rump, and let out a frustrated sigh. “I just… I want to help. I want to keep Ponyville safe. That’s all.”
Once I finish my speech, she looks down in thought, her wide eyes now returned to normal and staring at the floor. After several moments, with my heart racing in my chest, she finally breaks the silence. “I really shouldn’t. I know you’re not the killer, but everypony put their trust in me to not say anything… but I will.” I start to grin, but she throws up a hoof as if to stop me. “But you can’t tell anypony about this! If you did, they’d probably kick me out of the investigation, and—”
“Please trust me, Twilight. I have no reason to tell anypony about this.”
She nods. “All right, then let’s go up to my room. Spike’s out at the moment, but I’m not sure when he could get back.”
The two of us head up the stairs at the far side of the room and sit down at a small table. The room is identical to the main hall downstairs except with a bed and vanity in one corner.
She levitates a box over to the table and takes out a manila folder, and begins looking through the papers inside of it. Something related to the crimes, I guess. “I just hope you can help, because I’m at my wits end.”
I tilt my head. “What’s the problem?”
“Did you read any articles about the murders at all? The first one or the second one?”
“Not exactly, no. Why?”
“There was a piece of information released about the first body that was also true of the second one.” She lets out a frustrated grunt. “The victims bodies don’t have a clear sign of death except for the fact that their heart stopped.”
“What?” I ask, not remotely understanding. “If they died, then something had to happen to them.”
Twilight shakes her head. “The most we can figure out is that they had sudden heart failure as the cause of death. The medical examiner couldn’t find any physical wounds on their bodies. And after some healthy research, I found a spell that can sort of ‘scan’ a body for magical or toxic signs of death—which is how I finally convinced the police to let me help—but I can’t find anything either. From what I can tell, unicorn magic didn’t cause their death, and they didn’t die from physical trauma.”
“Checked on them with your own magic?” I ask. “You have spells that are able to… assess the status of a dead body?”
She nods. “Yup.” She levitates a book over and shows it to me. The binding is featureless; it’s just brown with no words on it. When I open it up, the smell of the aged paper hits my nose, immediately telling me that this book is probably ancient. I glance through it and the few pages I read tell me about how to cast a kind of scanning spell, though I’m not sure I could do this if I studied the book for several days.
“It’s about how to use magic with forensic science,” Twilight explains. “Very basic forensic ideas, but the spell itself was hard to learn. It can find traces of any auras or charms or anything of the sort that were cast onto a pony. I can also use it to check for more toxic substances, like poisons, or even diseases. But…” she sighs again. “The spell didn’t reveal anything. It seems that… both ponies died for no reason.”
I nod and gulp; something about this sends chills up my spine. Why does the idea of not having a cause of death frighten me? I push the thoughts out of my mind to try and focus on the information she’s giving me. “Okay. So we don’t know why they died. But you said earlier that there were suspects?”
“Oh, right.” She nods, and using her levitation, she gives me the box from which she lifted a folder out of earlier. “You’ll find the list of suspects is quite large though.”
I open the box and sift through the folders and immediately realize that every folder with a name is a suspect… and that nearly every folder in here is a folder with a name. “There have to be at least forty or fifty names in here, Twilight.”
“Fifty two, to be exact.”
I give her a perplexed look. “Surely these can’t all be suspects?”
“They’re not all equally suspected, but they are all suspects,” she states. “We haven’t been able to find any kind of motive at all to hurt either of the two victims, and since we don’t know how they died, we can’t really rule out anything. So we’re basically just looking at all the ponies that don’t have alibis for that night.”
I nodded. My name is probably on this list then, as I had a small, two or three question chat with an investigator and did not have an alibi, given I was home alone that night. “Is there… somepony on the list that is more suspicious?”
“There’s a name that sticks out to me, but nopony else seems to care.” She, despite not being able to see it amidst all the folders, lifts out a specific one. “They’ve actually already interviewed her and decided she wasn’t worth further investigation right now.”
“A mare, then?” I ask.
She nods. “Yeah. She was very close to the victim, actually, which may be why the police wrote her off.”
A thought awakes in my mind, but I try to keep it down. “So… who is she?
“Her name is Frigid Sonata.”
If I wasn’t in my chair, I probably would have fallen to the ground. “She’s….”
“Her actions are far more suspicious than anypony else. Bon Bon met her on the day she was last seen alive, and she claimed that she walked Bon Bon to the station that night to see her off. But witnesses claim that Bon Bon went to the station alone, and there are a dozen ponies that were out that night. That isn’t to mention that her body was found on Sonata’s roof.” Twilight sighs again, a sound I feel like I’m very used to right now. “Unfortunately, that isn’t a whole lot to go on, but it’s all we have.”
I nod slowly, not sure how to take in the information. She came to me for closure, for no reason… how could a pony like that be the killer? Was she just trying to drum up sympathy? Or maybe she just wanted me to see her sad. Somepony to tell the police that she was broken up about it.
Or maybe she didn’t do it.
I hold my head with both hooves, my mind reeling at this information. No, don’t make any assumptions now. You haven’t heard anything else except… that she lied about being with Bon Bon on the last day she was seen alive. Okay. That could be pretty bad. But if she really did it, why would she lie about that?
I look up across the table, trying to take myself out of my thoughts. Twilight is reading through a file, oblivious to my distraught mind. After a few moments of holding my gaze, she looks up and asks, “It’s pointless, isn’t it?”
Her question catches me off guard. “What?”
“This whole thing. This investigation.”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
She sighs, this time more frustrated. “We don’t know how they die, so we don’t know how the murderer is killing them. However they’re doing it, there’s no evidence left behind, so we can’t get any additional information from the crime scenes. The only way to stop this murderer is…” she takes a deep breath and says, “… is to find them in the act.”
I nod, my mind frozen. What was I thinking, anyway? Twilight’s one of the smartest ponies around. I mean, she even became a princess through sheer talent. Why… why did I think I could offer anything to the investigation? I slump in my chair, feeling useless.
She looks over to me. “Any ideas?”
“No.”
She nods. “Me either.”
I get up from my chair. “I think I’ll head home now. I have a lot to think about.”
“We’ll see each other tomorrow,” she offers.
“Yeah.”
I head straight home, wanting to forget the day.
* * * 4/8 Monday Late Evening * * *
On this night, the first day I take off of work, I find myself sitting on a bench just outside of the construction site. It’s nearly midnight, and with nopony outside, the air is tranquil, cool, and—most of all—quiet. This late at night most ponies are locked up in their homes, no doubt out of fear of the murderer striking again, but I find myself oddly indifferent. A night to walk through town to clear my head seems worth the risk, at least in my mind.
As I look out at the construction site, my thoughts roam through the past week. It only took a few days for life in Ponyville to return to normal again, and with it came most of the work force. Construction proceeded right on schedule as well, which had me excited since I could finally start to lend some of my magic to help out. Sure, the designs and blueprints are already finished, and that might be where a lot of architect work ends, but I still get a true feeling of satisfaction if I help with the actual construction process. Perhaps that’s why my magic works the way it does.
One thing still hasn’t changed, despite my attempts to remedy the situation: Lyra still won’t talk to me. I’ve seen her a couple times around town, and seen her conversing with other ponies, but every time I approached her, she would either vanish somehow, or give me a “hello,” before hurrying off somewhere. I’ve asked various ponies if they knew what was wrong, and none could provide an answer. While I’m worried about her unexplained change in demeanor, I’m glad that she is at least normal to everypony else. As long as she isn’t missing or in danger, I can deal with her ignoring me.
A cool breeze takes me out of my thoughts, and I find myself closing my eyes and letting the still cold air brush over my fur without resistance. After a few moments, it stops, but something else is off as well. I can’t hear the rustling of leaves, nor the few insects that make up the nights ambience. I stand up from the bench and look around.
Everything stopped. Plantlife is completely still, but that isn’t all; the night is darker than it was, and there’s a pale, blue glow covering anything that is lit up. I look up to the moon, and even its surface seems to be tinted blue. I look down the road towards the street lights, and while I find them, their light has turned into a similar, azure glow, instead of their usual white light.
“What… what is this?!” I say out loud. I spin around to look up at the clock tower, one of the few places in Ponyville that’s always lit up, and notice something startling: there’s a new number. At the very top, where the “XII” usually is, there’s a “XIII” where it usually is, the XII pushed to the left a bit. “What… that… that wasn’t there earlier. What’s going on?!”
A fear creeps into my mind as I realize the impossible has happened. I run over to a nearby bush, and try to move it, brushing its leaves with my hoof. It moves as I would expect to move, but there’s something unnatural about it; as soon as I’m no longer touching it, it stops, not even if I bend the branch all the way down. Instead of swinging up, it simply stops.
Time has stopped; that’s the only possibility I can see. This shouldn’t be possible, it is impossible. Just slow down, and think. I whip my head around, looking for anypony, but there’s nopony in sight.
A thought occurs. Wait, time stopping… and it is late, right? It has to be close to midnight. Is this that special hour? What did Rarity call it… a dark hour?
Before I can wade through my torrent of thoughts, I feel something grab my shoulder, and a second later, I collapse to the ground. My limbs feel numb, and my eyelids are falling, and the world starts to turn black. Just before I lose all of my senses, one sound reaches my ears: the singular cackle of another pony.