Redistributing the food supplies for a celebration had not been that hard; it took a little while, since she was slightly reluctant to part with food they could very well need later, but - numerically - it worked out perfectly.
It was habit. Sure, while Sombra was in charge the storage of food for everypony else was... lacking, but it was a problem that could be solved.
There truly was food enough for a Fair... Trixie's reluctance came from harsh past memories.
Memories of being chained to a wall in a dank dungeon cell... curiously enough, it was relatively easy to ignore them; the merger had been done slowly through the day, not all at once, so it wasn't overwhelming. That, and the managing of food for the settlements and bases had developed into a small habit of being careful around large, sudden drains in the stores.
No, if there was a problem, it was because of the older memories, before everything had gone... goodness, it had all been wrong since a long time ago.
Were she not doing her mental exercises, she might have cried. She had been alone, she had been shunned, she had been hungry... but, above all, she had been angry. She had been angry; at Ponyville, at the world, at Twilight. She had not wished them ill-fortune only because she was too self-centered to allow fate and fortune to get in her way, although that was eventually turned into a virtue, with determination taking the place of egoistic self-obsession.
She had wanted to take revenge; perhaps it was not the exact word that would describe it, but she had definitely wanted to prove herself better than any of them, no matter the cost. She thought it to be the lowest point in her life, even below her imprisonment. At the least, even in a dungeon she felt less filth inside of her than when she was plotting a way to humiliate Twilight Sparkle.
Even in the dungeon, Trixie had found hope.
Twilight Sparkle had been that powerful, she had been that inspiring.
That was, after all, the job of the Element of Magic. They fight for hope, to reach for it and never give up until they find it, and, if necessary, create it altogether. Magic is friendship and hope and love.
Trixie paused for a moment, wiping the tears out of her eyes with a hoof, trying - and failing - to keep her sobbing in check.
That job had fallen on her, and, even though she was... not quite optimal, she had- she was giving it her all.
It just was that things were getting worse too fast for them to wait until she got better. Oh, she was good, and the operation to implant the Element of Magic into her body gave her the chance to become better... but they didn't have time for her to get healthy.
She might not have the Element, being in the past, but she had the Crystal Heart, and the support of the citizens - given her ability level and restored health, it was virtually the same difference. (As in, she was not that good, so, even if relying on the Heart was not as fast, not having to sustain her own body made it easier). The Element, for its part, was undoubtedly where it belonged. With Twili-
Oh, boy... Trixie's eyes snapped open, and she gasped as chills coursed through her body.
The Element was in a vault. Where it was completely useless. Twilight did not have the ability to summon it to her!
She took deep breaths, closing her eyes and rhythmically gesturing in and out with her hooves.
Everything was going to be fine. Sombra was gone. Everything was going to be just fine. Being tactically retarded was not as much of a concern at the moment.
The conditions were different. While the stupid vault was still more of a liability than a safeguard, there was still plenty of time to correct that mistake.
There was no Sombra to damage the gates of Tartarus, nor would he be able to encase the building in dark crystals...
Granted, that meant that there were very few lilins around, and being a lilin or a changeling would get you banished or arrested, then likely thrown out of the country, respectively. Nothing like a desperate struggle against a tyrant to... well, Celestia didn't take it well, and Twilight's death did not help; it fell to Luna to accept their assistance, and see them for what they truly were.
Yes there were some that joined Sombra, yes some were bad, and yes, some to the point that they actually deserved to be in there, but even Queen Chrysalis had recognized that Sombra had to be stopped!
Changelings could get sick, maybe even die, when exposed to his kind of magic, after all.
It was enough moping for a day, though. There was a celebration to attend, and it would not do for her to deprive her loving audience of the magnificence of the Great and Powerful Trixie.
...
Hoof, meet face. She was doing it again. Bah, she could entertain the foals or something.
*****
Nothing.
Like, literally nothing.
There were no signs of ponies having set hoof inside the rooms, much less having a patient inside for any length of time.
Even the smell was gone, all the way through to the laundry assigned to the patients.
Somepony had been ludicrously thorough in eliminating all traces of the patients, then themselves. If they had used magic, it must have been something else, since there were no traces of that, either.
The officer in charge knew, from experience, that magical trace was as good as any nose, hoof, or lip print in identifying somepony, but they faded with time. Nowhere anywhere that fast, however.
He knew, also from experience, that different kinds of ponies had different kinds of traces. Of course, trying to guess the type from the residue alone was not always accurate... the one semi-consistent thing was that earth pony traces could easily blend into the surroundings when on the ground, and could seem to fade into nothing much more quickly than normal, but detailed examinations usually got something.
However, it was quite blatantly spellwork.
The locks did not have any signs of forced entry; the only wear was consistent with that of the keys. Either they had the keys, or some sort of lock-picking spell that could work despite the high security level of the whole place.
Given the level of the scrubbing the place had gotten, he wasn't discarding the latter so easily. Although getting the keys, using them, then returning them before anypony noticed they were gone would have been a walk in the park for such an intruder.
Somepony had gotten in, taken the patients, their personal effects, all traces of their stay, and all traces of the invaders.
The access points were numerous, the possible extraction ones... not so numerous.
The doctors and nurses were very helpful, giving them a wealth of information on all of the missing ponies.
All of the patients were in for chronic mental distortion. All of them had been in a relationship with a changeling, or even a lilin, involved. All of them believed that they loved the other, despite so many attempts to remove magical influences over them; the effect was ultimately ruled permanent by the doctors and the princesses, since trying to fight fire with fire was not only highly unethical, but liable to cause much more harm.
Besides... writing down their statements... made him doubt; the doctors and nurses themselves had doubts, after all. They interacted with them often, and were not so sure about it all. All of the patients fit the profile for a pony in love, and the reasons they had not turned in their companions were perfectly logical (on top of the list being that they would be forcibly separated, and then sent to a mental ward for saying that they honestly loved each other); they were rational, free-thinking beings in a relationship like any other, with fights and disagreements included. Mental alterations would have to be hellishly subtle to not alert the victim of the clear point in which their mindset was shifted, and subtler still to avoid changing the basic personality outside of whatever effects the relationship itself (in this case, love) would.
Thus, to have an enthralled pony in a discussion with their supposed brainwasher would have to be shadowy down to the instinctual level, since the other pony also conceded at points.
It couldn't be just for the sake of appearances, either, since topics could be mundane and personal...
The doctors had told him everything they could without violating confidentiality, although nonetheless it had been a substantial amount of information.
Although one of the nurses let slip that the affected were of the opinion that having them for coltfriends or fillyfriends was an 'amazing' experience. They knew 'tricks'.
He was smart. He knew that affection and intimacy could be used to bargain and manipulate. It rarely happened in ponies, or at least, with any severity worthy of note, but he knew of things that happened outside of Equestria's borders - what some griffins were willing to do to one another, of how toxic relationships could be, even if they were mere 'friendships'. Ponies were less confrontational, and broke off long before that level was reached.
And any of that was absent from the mess.
Both Princess Celestia and Princess Cadence had warned him of the dangers of lilins and changelings several times before, and what they had done to the 'poor' patients... but he just couldn't see it.
Equestria was founded on trust, and changelings and lilins were antonymous to trust, thus they had no place in Equestria. That was the simplified version, anyways.
And he couldn't see it.
There was the potential for that, yes, but mental magic was hard. The most widespread was a basic relaxation spell, with anything higher than a basic sleep aid being beyond the reach of most, because it meant having to fight against both the pony's natural resistance, active mental efforts, and their magic, not to mention having to take care while 'navigating' the mind.
Presumably, changelings and lilins were no different. Maybe even worse, if their average was lower than the pony average.
Yes, they could be ingenious spies, thieves, and virtually anything they ever desired. Yes, he had apprehended some. Still, he had looked over the profiles of the assumed identities... and nothing. The records were clean. False, if that may be the case, but clean. No stolen property in any home, no suspicious documents, no nothing.
For all intents and purposes, they had been living like any given pony. He would have to look into it much more closely.
Then there was the escape of some changelings. Some of which were on the list.
Uuuugh. He had to report that the break out was a dead end, and then he would have to go all over Equestria to look things into more detail.
*****
"Princess Luna!" The librarian hastily bowed, smacking her forehead into the desk, the brief, sharp pain startling her into throwing herself back and toppling her chair.
She never reached the floor, however, as the princess had carefully blanketed her magic around the mare and her chair.
"Please, do not be alarmed." The princess spoke formally, yet the librarian still felt a warm undercurrent beneath the careful tone.
It could have been the magic, though. One could learn a lot about a pony's disposition by the feeling of the magic - it was almost like physical contact, in a sense. She was placed back behind her desk, seated, and her glasses straightened.
It was mildly embarrassing, but it told her that the princess cared for her. She blushed.
"Are you well? That impact was quite loud." Luna asked, to which the mare quickly nodded, trying to make herself smaller and sink behind the desk. "I have need of a book on arcane medical procedures, miss..."
"Ah! L-Library Mouse, your highness." She answered the unvoiced question, bowing (slightly), then returning her attention to the lunar princess. "Is there anything specific that might narrow down your search?"
"Anything on 'Arcane Biological Degradation'." She answered, to which the librarian (a cream-coated earth pony, with dark coffee-colored mane and an open book cutie mark) helpfully accompanied her to the section with the medical magic books.
She had an inkling of an idea, which was ultimately proven correct. The term was relatively recent, the medical boards having decided upon it slightly before her return. It encompassed a number of older terms, one of which she actually knew well - mage-rot. The new term was made more for formality's sake, and each variant or cause had its own descriptor.
That meant that the procedure could not have been performed more than two years ago, unless the one (or multiple ones) that designed the procedure knew of the term before it was decided, but she had serious doubts about it.
Still, it was a start.
"Miss Mouse." She called - softly, naturally - for the librarian.
"Yes, princess?" She said with a bow, but smiling warmly and with more than a little awe. "What else can I help you with?"
"I require information on golems, and anything on artificers, their craft, and similar."
She needed to find this 'Lula', and the procedure might gleam some answers.