Tonight I fell in love with Goldridge Forest. It is nothing like the woods I grew up with at home. I’m used to pine trees that never reach more than twenty meters tall—that’s what the loggers plant, it’s the best for timber. But this place is the home of what they call the “greatwoods.” One of my squadmates mentioned that they lived for thousands of years and grew to heights of over 100 meters. I thought he was exaggerating until we reached the forest.

Then I saw it with my own eyes. We had been walking northwest all day, headed towards pegasus territory, when the tips of the trees began to rise in the distance. It took two hours to get from there to the edge of the forest, where we came upon the massive grey trunks, covered in bark thick as I am tall. My time with the guard is already taking me interesting places, after only a day.

Tonight, I write from deep in the forest, in my squad’s ramshackle “camp.” Like everywhere else in the forest, our surroundings are mostly clear. The greatwoods block out so much light that little grows down here besides shrubs and grass. If there are any dangerous animals in the forest, we haven’t seen them. I like this place. This trial has been pretty good so far.

The march here was easy. Couldn’t have been more than 25 miles—that was much better than that awful sprint. My squadmates handled it equally well. From what I can tell, they’re all well trained and well equipped, probably better so than me. All but one were older than me, and most were in better shape. There’s no telling who’s the strongest, but it’s probably not me.

There were two pegasi, one male, one female, both about a decade older than me. They each had brought along their own weapons, real weapons, not like my little silver dagger. One of them, a broad-chested stallion named Thane, passed his around, showing it off. According to him it cost three thousand cassings. I could believe it—it was a silver-gilt zwiehänder, complete with parierhaken and a waved edge. He let me wield it. It was heavy even for me.

Thane was loud and boastful, and for a while he annoyed me. But then he took up the zwiehänder from me, stepped back, and swung the blade at my neck with incredible speed. He stopped the blade in an instant with only the strength of his wrist, a half inch from my neck. If I had tried to save myself, I could have been killed, but he had moved so fast that I couldn’t respond. He earned my respect, then.

And the other pegasus’ hatred. She was a squat mare with a short, frizzy mane and a coat nearly as dark as mine, who introduced herself to the squad as ‘Bea’ and glared at Thane when he, as she put it, ‘pulled that stunt.’ She didn’t talk very much, piping up mostly to correct Thane in his endless ramblings, or the directions of whoever was trying to read the map. Most of the time she was right.

The rest of the conversation was dominated by an easy going stallion named Canto, a unicorn accompanied by a dog named, oddly, “Dog.” He was the oldest out of all of us, and said he had taken the entry exam four times now. When we reached the forest, we mostly followed his directions—we had been assigned to search the forest for an instructor called Tera, whom he and Dog had met in an exam three years ago. Apparently Dog still remembered her scent.

Until we reached the woods, though, we were mostly led by Vili, the only squadmember younger than I. In fact, he couldn’t have been older than twelve. He was a hyperactive little colt whose head barely reached my shoulder, with an earnest, endearing way of talking and good map-reading skills. He was the first to introduce himself to me, shaking my hoof eagerly and asking my name as soon as we were grouped together by Minos at the training field.

I told him, and later couldn’t help but ask how somepony so young was allowed to take the guard exam. That was when he asked me to arm wrestle him. We found a wooden box on the obstacle course and leveraged our elbows in it. His tiny hoof disappeared beneath mine when we locked wrists.

Not wanting to hurt him, I used only half my strength. His hoof didn’t move. He looked at me, grinning.

I tried harder. His brow furrowed as he actually began to struggle against me. Soon, I was applying my full might, desperate not to lose against somepony so little. Some of the other squad members started to watch us. My honor was on the line—I could feel them staring me, wondering how I could have come this far in the exam.

Then Vili looked up at me, winked, and smacked the back of my hoof against the block. I was shocked. Another unicorn, who introduced himself as Dante, Vili’s ‘adoptive older brother,’ laughed at me. He told me, very concisely, not to feel bad. Apparently, the boy had mastered strength augmentations to a degree that most adult unicorns never reached.

“I’ve seen him take a hammer to the forehead from a grown stallion and walk away without a scratch,” he told me.

That was the most he said all day. Tall—nearly my height—and thin, with big, wide hooves and a long, dark mane, he spend most of the time on the march reading. His long legs eating up the ground, he stared impassively at a book labeled “Essays of G.H. Aulden,” speaking rarely, and always keeping one eye on Vili. Later, he let slip that Dante belonged to an estranged branch of the Magni family.

When I told him I didn’t know what that meant, he explained to me that the Magnis are a family of unnaturally talented magi. Apparently they’ve grown wealthy and powerful in Canterlot over the past hundred years as a result. I wouldn’t know. I only keep up with earth pony politics.

Dante doesn’t have access to any of that, though. Too bad. A powerful, well-connected comrade could have been useful... Not that he still couldn’t be. But for all I know, he’s not any more talented than the rest of us, even if he acts like it. He won’t talk to anypony but Vili.

Not that anypony had much to say to me. If it wasn’t for Vili and Dog, I would have been bored out of my mind on the trek across the Canterlot hills. By the third hour I was starting to ache a bit, and starting to lose focus, until Vili came over to make conversation.

I couldn’t think of anything to say to him. It didn’t matter. He chattered on and on about himself. Grew up in the Underbelly, the son of a dock worker, alone until he met Dante. At eight, he helped the older unicorn escape after a botched robbery of a butcher shop. “He didn’t steal any money, just a bunch of meat. I figured he was just hungry,” he told me.

In exchange, Dante had taught him magic over the course of a few weeks. When Vili started bringing loaves of bread to the lessons, weeks turned to months, turned to years. I can see how. I asked him why he had decided to try to join the Guard.

I envy their closeness. It wasn’t something I was accustomed to on the farm.

We reached the forest’s edge near sundown, and traveled deeper into the woods until it was so dark, we were forced to stop to make camp. None of us had brought much equipment, but we got a fire going, nonetheless. While Canto and Dog slipped off into the brush hunting for our dinner, I cleared a space for myself in the indentation of a greatwood trunk. I made a dry, soft pallet to sleep on out of layered, two meter long greatwood leaves.

XXI

“It, groaning thing,
Turned black and sank.
Then from the far caverns
Of dead sins
Came monsters, livid with desire.
They fought,
Wrangled over the world,
A morsel.”
-Stephen Crane, God Lay Dead In Heaven

Chief was getting old. He’d turned thirty-nine a month ago. Bits of his mane and coat were starting to turn grey. The stress of his work had left him with the health of a stallion decades older. Concussions, broken bones, ripped muscles, torn ligaments, ruptured lungs, he’d had them all, over and over again, since he joined the Guard at sixteen. Everything serious had been healed by magic; he didn’t have time for lengthy recuperations, and doctors hadn’t learned of the long-term effects of ley healing until the past few years.

These days, each morning began with a series of new aches and pains in his joints, his muscles, his limbs, and today was no exception. That he had just been beaten half to death by Star Gazer didn’t help; he had awoken with a swollen, throbbing head, and bruises across his ribcage and forelegs. The kid was getting better.

For a little while, Chief wouldn’t even open his eyes. He just lay there, waiting a moment for the throbbing to die down, thinking of nothing. Though he never realized it at the time, these few seconds were the best part of his day. It was the only time he wasn’t angry, stressed, or sad.

Then his brain shook itself awake, chugging back to life again, and he realized he had no idea where he was. His eyelids slid open, and in the half-light he saw nothing but a dingy grey wall a half-inch from his muzzle. Chief rolled over, muscles groaning in protest, and looked around, a hoof to his head.

He was laying on a long, thin mattress, in the corner of a tiny room, covered in a sheet that smelled of dirt and surrounded by piles of alchemy equipment. Shelves lined one wall, loaded with brown boxes coated in long, complex names of chemicals, some with ‘warnings’ painted across them. There was a desk against the other, covered in haphazardly stacked books, some open and showing yellowed, decaying pages, all surrounding one lonely desk-lamp.

Around the mattress were strewn countless beakers, flasks, boilers, evaporators, mortars, pestles, burners, goggles, faceguards, sublimators, respirators, stills, rune chalk, and boxes of strange plants he had never before laid eyes on. In one corner was a clear glass tub containing a liquid he couldn’t identify that looked suspiciously like blood. Above him, a window, partially boarded up with black-painted wooden slats, let in the dim light of the Underbelly.

Chief sat up slowly, kneading his forehead. Hena. He’d been drinking at the Redflank, drinking heavily, and by the time he got up to leave he was already gone. That was where his memory went fuzzy. After that, there was nothing. Almost nothing. A fragment of a memory floated to the surface of his mind.

He is laying on his back, looking up at a streetlamp. There is a hazy, glowing roof far above. Alver Street. It must be Alver Street. A figure is peering down at him, obscuring the lamp. Her face is silhouetted by the light, he can’t make it out, but it must be Hena. Or one of her associates.

That must have been it. She, or somepony working for her, must have come across him after he left the bar and taken him to the alchemy shop. He recognized this room as her old storage cabinet. He’d been in here once before, years ago. She’d had the same mattress then, too.

Besides Summer, Hena was the closest thing Chief had to a friend. She had earned that distinction by being the only pony, other than Summer, to remain on his side after his daughter’s death. Without her, Chief’s onslaught on the Church back in ‘96 would never have been possible. Her grassroots ‘intelligence network’ and alchemical skills gave him the steady stream of resources he needed to destroy the cult’s presence in Canterlot.

After the Guard caught up to him, they never got to Hena. Even now, she still worked on commission as a weapons designer for them, and, as a bonus, had intimate access to the inner workings of the Guard. And when they forced Chief into retirement, Hena kept working in his absence, keeping a watchful eye on Church activity.

Though she now couldn’t be seen with Chief, in order to avoid garnering the suspicions of the Guard, she’d promised when they cut ties to contact him if something big happened. She never had, until now. This could be big. He certainly hoped it was; the island trip had gotten his blood up. Chief hadn’t had that good a time in years. Whatever his next trip with Summer was, it didn’t promise that much excitement.

And besides, he wasn’t going around much longer. His stomach sank as he replayed the doctor’s words in his head for the thousandth time. Their body would rapidly deteriorate within a period of about a year...

He sat up, his entire frame aching. He rubbed at his left shoulder with one hoof. His body would have to hold out for a while longer. He needed to go out with a bang.

Especially given that it was impossible to get back to the island until next year, when the storms would end. He wasn’t going to last that long. And if he couldn’t see his daughter, what was left?

He stood up, a tremor rippling through him as his head swam. He looked around. Where were his things? His eyes wandered through the half light, catching sight of the his coinpurse sitting atop a stack of books on the desk, next to his pack.

Chief walked over, put one on his belt and slung the other over his shoulder, beneath the jacket he had found on the floor beside them. His shoes, Hena had left under the it, and after putting them on, he looked across the room. The door was at the far wall, across a minefield of delicate glass instruments scattered haphazardly around precarious piles of books.

He made his way carefully through them, a bull in a china shop. Just before he made it into the free space around the door, the side of his shoulder grazed the corner of a roll of parchment left on top of a stack of the brown boxes. He twisted in panic as it rolled off the stack at plummeted towards a group of beakers.

He caught it just before it hit the ground—then lost his footing. His leg moved instinctively to keep him from falling, and the sound of shattering glass filled the air. He froze, eyes wide. A moment passed, and then—

The door swung open, revealing a tiny, elderly mare, with wild eyes and a short silver mane. Hena. She was a half-Equestrian, her mother a unicorn, her father a wayward Zulian, from one of the nation-states in the southernmost region of the Sothenlands. As such, she had a jet-black coat, and when he had last seen her, she was blonde. Now, she was wrinkled, a few inches shorter—somehow—with a scowl fiercer than ever.

She pointed a twig-thin foreleg at him. “YOU!” she cried, glaring. “You lumbering oaf! What are you thinking? Why are you not looking where you are going?”

Had her accent somehow gotten thicker over the years? She couldn’t have spoken to a Zulian in years...

He pulled out his coinpurse. She waved her tiny hoof dismissively. “Not now, we are much too busy. Come! We have things to do. I have things to show you.” Reaching up, she grabbed the bottom of his shirt and yanked him towards the door.

“The Village, darling, passed out nearly in your own vomit. We are drinking again, hmm?” she asked as they passed into the front room of her shop.

Here, vial after vial of potions were scattered across the wooden shelves, some labeled, some not, next to piles of bat wings, death vine, and every other alchemical reagent under the sun. Secondhoof lab equipment and safety gear gathered dust in one corner, beside the crumbling front desk supporting a moldy, yellowed business ledger. Every bit the Guard paid her went either into more weapon designs or the pockets of her informants, and her shop averaged a customer a week. As a result, the storefront received little of her money or attention.

“What news?” she asked, leading him up the staircase to her massive alchemy lab.

“Ach,” she said, shaking her head. “Me too. Oh well. Lots to do before we go.”

He snorted. Of course. Hena didn’t give a damn about anything that wasn’t alchemy, weapons design, or the cult. Goddess forbid a little thing like death break her focus.

She pushed open the door at the top of the stairs, ushering him into the lab. She went to dart around one of her many rune tables, but he grabbed her foreleg. It felt brittle beneath his massive hoof, as though the slightest pressure would shatter it. “Like what?” he asked, eyeing her. “Why am I here?”

“I am getting to this!” she said, pulling out of his grasp. “Always so impatient! But first, you come here. I make a new weapon. Very exciting, darling, come and see!”

Scurrying over to a table in the corner, she grabbed something dark and shiny off its surface and gestured at him to join her. When he got closer, he saw that it was some sort of crossbow, a large tube mounted on the stock, with strips cut out of its sides for the bow strings. A cranequin rested behind it, its handle sticking out next to the grip.

She held up something that looked like a normal silver-tipped quarrel, but with a bulkier shaft. Chief took it from her and held it up to the light, inspecting it. It was lighter than he thought it would be.

A malicious grin spread across her face. “Full of explosives. My own, custom made explosives—nitroglycerine mixed with ultra-fine powdered sparkroot and doused in TXF elixir. Each reagent on its own is highly illegal. Mixed together, they are violating three separate international treaties. Twenty megajoules per kilogram!”

“You are not exciting?” she asked. He didn’t bother to correct her diction. “This will make you exciting. Look!” she said, pointing to the head of the bolt. “The arrowhead is mounted on a spring. The spring is held in place by a mechanism that is released when you are firing. After the spring is release, the arrowhead can press down on it when it meets the target. Pressing spring down activates detonator, detonator activates explosion. Boom! No more target.”

“Ach!” she waved a hoof. “No, this is just a prelude. Pay attention, you will be liking this.”

Hena held up the crossbow, gesturing to the prod. “Look! I make crossbow prod out of greatwood heart. Very magical, very hard to come by, also very illegal, but stores one-point-seven times as much energy as an ordinary prod of the same length. I was having to soak the whipcord in strength elixirs to stop it from snapping. I mixed expansion elixir in, too, and now the cord can stretch further and contract with much greater force than ordinary. Fires the bolt at four-hundred-forty-five feet per second. This is two-point-four times as fast as leading competitor using more aerodynamic bolts.”

Her beady eyes gleamed in the twilight of the lab. “I was thinking you would never ask. This, I make two years ago, and show to no one. Not the Guard, not the patent office. As soon as I release a new weapon, somepony else finds a way to defend against it. So this, I never release. I built it to kill magi, very powerful magi, members of the cult we could not kill any other way. I wait for my chance for seven-hundred-twenty-three days.”

“The cult is up to something, all of the sudden” she said, her voice dropping low. As if the cult could ever get ears into Hena’s lab. “Something big. Since last night, I am picking up lots of chatter in cult communication lines. They’re after something, some kind of object, and they want it bad. They talk of weapons purchases, mercenary payments, recruitment drives. They’re gearing up for something.”

Finally, she was speaking his language. “Then we have our work cut out for us. What’s on the agenda?”

“This morning they are making multiple payments to two different assassins in the Underbelly. Then my ears in the Guard came to me saying a tip has come in a few hours ago about a duel tonight, on Alver Street. I am thinking that these are related. Target must be a duelist—why else would they hire two assassins? I say we go and see. The identity of target tells us much about what the cult wants. If we capture one, or both of the assassins, we learn what the cult is after and put a hitch in their plans. We are killing two birds with one arrow.”

“Ridiculous. How are two birds dying from one stone? How is stone piercing all the way through one bird? Two birds, one arrow makes much more sense.”

She wagged a hoof at him. “This is problem with today’s youth. Always repeating, never stopping to think.”

Chief was about to tell her that he hardly qualified as a “youth,” when Hena once more seized him by the shirt. “Come!” she said. “I have something to make you really exciting.”

She led him across the lab and up another set of stairs, then through a door and into her bedroom. A tiny, dingy mattress lay in one corner, sandwiched between massive bookcases crammed full of texts. Apparently, the bookcases weren’t enough, as more books were scattered across the floor and stacked in piles around the bed, oil lamps resting precariously upon them. Against the far wall was a huge black wardrobe, which Hena waltzed over to.

She pulled open the bottom drawer, exposing stacks of grey shirts identical to the one she was currently wearing. Hena scooped them all up and tossed them in a heap on the floor beside the wardrobe. There was a tiny latch in the corner, and she flipped it sideways, then pulled, revealing the drawer’s false bottom. Hidden beneath were a ringmail vest, a dark grey cloak, gloves, and a black mask, featureless save for a telltale bloodstain on its left side.

She lifted the garments out of the drawer and handed them to him. As he took them, the cloak slipped sideways, exposing a long, wicked blade and a small, silvered dagger, both in their sheaths. His gear...

Years and years ago, when he had terrorized the Canterlot populace as a faux-serial killer, he had worn these for every kill. The ringmail was carefully woven so as to prevent the rings from clinking against each other, the sword made of a silver alloy, the dagger, the very first weapon he had ever owned.

The mask and cloak had originally belonged to an earth pony cultist. Decades ago, they had been standard issue for high-ranking cult members. Now, they struck fear into the hearts of cultist and Equestrian civilian alike. Though he had not laid a hoof on an innocent—at least, not during his Canterlot killing spree—the cultists he had tracked came from every race, and every background. To the Guard—and more importantly, the media, the killings had looked random. At the time, he was dubbed BMK. The "black mask killer."

It was a trite name. Journalists were idiots. But he appreciated having the mask back, nonetheless. He put on the ringmail, then strapped the sword to his side and the dagger to his lower back. The mask went in his pack, and the cloak over his shoulders, its flowing, shapeless form concealing his weapons and armor. He looked over at Hena.

“The target is supposed to be somewhere in the vicinity of Founder’s Lodge. I expect the assassins won’t be far away.”

“Damn it,” he cursed as he headed out the door. “No time to prepare, then. You should’ve woken me up.”

“Eh,” she said as they walked down the stairs. “Why bother? Preparation takes all the fun out of it.”

Hena led him back through the lab to the other staircase, grabbing her pack and crossbow as she went. “We are blowing people up with explosives, darling. If we are not having fun something has gone wrong.”

“The Guard isn’t going to send anypony on a tip about the Underbelly. Not unless it affects the rest of Canterlot.”

“And yet they are,” Hena said, stepping out of the alchemy shop and into the street. “This is why I’m sure the duel and the assassination are the same. Somepony at Headquarters knows this is important.”

“One of your old friends. Captain Minos, and a squad of Excelsior trainees.”

“Must not think it’s too important, or they would’ve sent a real squad.”

“Minos is a squad all on his own. The rest are probably just tagging along to watch.”

“And the Guard is filled with cult infiltrators. Whoever is sending Minos probably couldn’t do any more without arousing their suspicions. Sending anypony into Underbelly seems strange enough as it is—this is why trainees are involved. Somepony is wanting it framed as a training exercise. If they were pushing for a full Spec Ops team, they would be ‘disappeared’ by tomorrow morning,” Hena shrugged, stepping out of the way of an oncoming buggy and into a pool of unidentifiable bodily fluids. She wrinkled her nose. “Ach! Thank God for boots.”

She stopped to wipe off her shoes on the pavement. Chief ignored her and kept walking toward Alver Street. When she had caught up with him, he opened his mouth again. “Wait,” he asked. “Did you find out who the assassins were?”

“Some of the best. If they’re working together, Minos doesn’t stand a chance.”

Hena’s wispy eyebrows furrowed. She scratched her head as she walked. “If somepony at the Guard has enough ties to know this duel is a cult assassination, they’re better in know than me. They have to know Minos is outmatched.”

Chief’s eyes narrowed. “In that case they’d be better off sending no one at all. They’ve signed the whole squad’s death warrant. Why?”

Chief shook his head. “Know what happens to people who fail the cult without a fight?”

“Hm. Yes. And they would have to know, too. There’s no way that squad survives this. Well, not without our help, anyway.”

“If you were planning on helping, you wouldn’t have brought the crossbow.”

Hena grinned. “Maybe you are not a shithead after all. We need the assassins. And there is no way Minos is letting us walk away with valuable suspect while he is still breathing. One way or another, he’s got to go.” She glanced at him suspiciously. “You okay with this? I know he was mentoring you once.”

Was she kidding? Hena must have been getting senile to forget how he worked. He would kill Minos without batting an eye if it meant hurting the cult, and he told her so.

“Good,” she replied. “I was afraid your years as mapmaker might have made you sentimental.”

Chief didn’t respond. He was thinking about other things. He was developing a hunch that whoever sent Minos knew the target personally. Yes. That had to be it. That pony must have been hedging on the squad’s presence as enough to disrupt the assassination. There was no way Minos could stop the assassins, but he might delay them long enough for them to miss their opportunity. And if he was willing to let an entire squad die just to prolong the life of the target...

Either he was a ruthless bastard who knew the target, or he had an unjustified amount of faith in this year’s training squads. He was about to let Hena know when they stepped out onto Alver Street and she cut him off.

“Alright,” she said, pointing to the Lodge, which was now only a block away. “There is Lodge. We need somewhere we can see everything.”

Chief glanced around. Across the street from the lodge, there were two neighboring buildings that looked suitable—one, large, multi-storey tenement house, the other a brothel. The brothel was a half-storey shorter than its neighbor, but closer, and probably with easier roof access. He pointed it out. The pair crossed the street and entered the building.

A blonde, monkey-faced pegasus approached him as he stepped through the door. “Hey there big boy, can I help—” her eyes fell to Hena, who stood beside him and took his foreleg. “Oh,” she said. “Just looking for a room?”

“I can’t really let you go up there, but we have many luxurious rooms for—”

He dug into his coinpurse and slapped a stack of bits into the mare’s hoof. She glanced around, eyeing her coworkers. “The stairs are down the hall to the left. There’s a door all the way at the top that says it’s rigged to an alarm. It hasn’t worked in years,” she whispered, leaning close to him. She wrapped her forelegs around him, and he felt her drop a key into his coat pocket. “Be gone in thirty minutes,” she said as she drew away.

Breezing past her, Chief glanced around at the other patrons as he made his way through the foyer. To his left, a slack-jawed earth pony offered a pipe that gave off bright blue smoke to his escort. Next to him, a squat, squinting unicorn was arguing with two of the mares. On Chief’s other side, a pegasus with a huge muzzle was apparently trying to pay the clerk in liquor.

Turning the corner, the pair trekked down the hallway, doing their best to ignore the cacophony of exaggerated moans and shrieks resonating through the corridor. It reminded Chief of the times he had visited the Guard torture chamber. Not that the Guard would ever call it that. Formally, it was just an “augmented interrogation” chamber, reserved only for the most heinous of rapists, murderers, and terrorists. And, of course, political prisoners.

At the end of the hall, they found the staircase, and climbed to the top floor. Neither said a word; there was an apprehension building in the air Chief didn’t want disturbed. He could feel his heart rate mounting with every step. Oh, the feeling of impending bloodshed. No matter how long he worked, the thrills never stopped running through him. Age-old threats of the Guard be damned—this was how he would live out the remainder of his life. Only by bringing death could he forget he was dying.

Chief swung open the door at the top of the stairs and stepped out into the cool night air. He looked out over Alver Street, taking in the calls of the merchants, the shouts of the drunks, the screams of the mugged and the damned. He saw nothing. Nothing important, at least. A few street rats were stealing some mare’s purse, but there were no signs of assassins or duels. Looked like they had a few minutes to spare.

Chief sniffed the air. “Smoke potion,” he said. Shouting echoed from the roof of the building beside them, and a burst of wind ruffled Chief’s mane. He looked up to see wisps of grey fog dissipating in the in air above him. He and Hena exchanged glances.

Reaching into his pack, he slid his mask over his face and turned to the building beside them. The gap between the buildings wasn’t more than a foot wide, and just below the parapets of the other roof was an indentation for a windowsill. With a running start, Chief cleared the gap and reach up to grab the parapets, his rear legs catching the ledge below. Pushing off of the windowsill, he pulled himself up onto the roof, crouching on the parapet like a gargoyle as he surveyed the situation.

One assassin, Charon, was on the ground, gripping an injured wing. The other, Nephis, stood between him and the cadre of trainees headed by his old mentor. Behind the mask, Chief raised his eyebrows. The assassin was younger than he expected. The boy had first appeared on his radar three years prior, but now he couldn’t have been older than fifteen.

Colt got started early. Good for him. What a shame he might have to end such a promising career.

“Bastard,” Minos shouted at him. “What the hell are you doing here? You weren’t supposed to come back, you swore!”

It was true. Chief had sworn. That and the word of the Archon were the only things that had kept him out of the gallows. But a stallion with a month to live doesn’t have much of an incentive to keep promises.

Chief wondered if Minos realized what his presence here meant. Obviously he hadn’t realized he was dealing with cultists before; otherwise he shouldn’t have been surprised Chief showed up. But could he put two and two together, now that the truth was staring him in the face?

“Orion, Rose, take the rest of the squad and follow that unicorn. I’ll handle the situation here. This one’s a guard-killer.”

Apparently not. He watched the trainees dash off the rooftop after Nephis and sighed inwardly. Minos was either overconfident in his recruits or an idiot—anypony hired by the Church would eat those greenhorns alive. He should have just told them to let Nephis go. He might have had a chance to survive, then. But as it stood now, he had condemned himself and his squad to death.

Poor Captain Minos. He had never been very bright. Powerful, yes, talented, certainly, but never smart enough to move beyond his position as an instructor. Even now, he was so focused on Chief that he didn’t notice the little black hooves inching around the parapets where Hena, no doubt assisted by some potion or another, was dangling off the side of the roof, circling around behind him.

Chief said nothing. Minos was afraid, he could tell. Minos would want to speak with him face to face, so that he had the best chance of getting an empathetic reaction out of him.

“Respect my intelligence, will you? There aren’t many ponies your size in Canterlot, and there’s only one that would come calling right after we get a tip about cult activity.”

Chief nearly let loose a chuckle. The tip never mentioned anything about cult activity. It was about time Minos realized what was going on here.

“Come on, Chief, why even bother to leave us that tip if you’re not gonna talk to me when I show up?”

Oh? That was interesting. Minos was clutching at straws now. Hoping Chief had put in the tip just so the two could talk. Well, Chief couldn’t let him die deluded.

Minos’ voice was nearly quavering now. The Captain was close to breaking. The hatred would come next, if he knew Minos.

“Like hell you are. She’s coming with me, to Headquarters. I’m not going to stand around and let you start another spree.” He glared at Chief. “You’re lucky I wasn’t on that committee, Chief. You would have hanged.”

Chief said nothing. The two stared at each other. Minos’ forelegs were shaking.

“Well? Say something! Talk to me, you bastard, you never did last time!” He stamped a hoof on the ground. “You killed guards—my friends! Your friends! And you never had the goddamn decency to tell me why!”

A deep golden glow was forming around Minos’ horn. Good. Now Chief was getting somewhere. Minos’ full focus had to be on him, otherwise me might sense the arrow coming. Chief glanced down at the unconscious pegasus before him. She was little more than eight feet away. He had to make sure she didn’t die in the blast. He took a step forward.

“Answer me, dammit! Why?!” All around Minos, rocks the size of golf balls began to spring into existence, orbiting in slow arcs around his body. His face contorted with fury. “Say something! I’ll kill you!” he screamed.

Chief could see pure, unadulterated hatred in his expression. Good for Minos. Everypony needed something to hate. Something to hold on to. Somepony to fight. Chief hated the cult. Summer hated weakness. Roads hated himself. They had to hate to go on living. Whenever they hurt, ponies needed someone to blame.

Chief stared at Minos as the stones circling his body grew in size and speed. “Feels good, doesn’t it?” he murmured.

Glancing past the guard, he saw that Hena had stood up on the parapet, and was taking aim with her crossbow. She met his eye, her horn lit, and a glowing number three popped into the air beside her. Three seconds. He needed to get closer to the pegasus.

Chief dove forwards, covering the pegasus with his body. Hena fired the crossbow.

Stories of a Warden

by Rosencranz

XXI