The trees of the Everfree were as tall and foreboding as ever, canopies cutting up the sunlight and throwing it to the leaf-blanketed ground in pieces like shards of broken glass. Here and there piles of the floral debris were disturbed, noticeable gaps in the rug of rusted leaves and occasional recently-broken tree branches. A bright red tuft of fur hung from a set of splinters.
She was on the right track and likely closing on her quarry. Manny had eluded her for the better part of two weeks but she was cautiously optimistic that perhaps the fickle winds of fortune had finally changed in her favor.
The press had named the rogue manticore ‘Manny’, an ironically tender title that wasn’t echoed by the personnel of Woodworth & Sons. It was hard not to see why; the beast had killed at least twenty ponies in the employ of the lumber company and showed no sign of slowing down. Fluttershy sympathized with the creature. W&S cared little about Everfree wildlife. They’d probably encroached on the manticore’s territory and were now paying the price. Woodworth didn’t see it this way, of course; a bounty of three thousand bitcreds now rested squarely on the beast’s head.
Fluttershy wasn’t terribly interested in money: no attainable amount would ever be enough, so why bother? But she knew that she couldn’t let the killing continue. Her ancestors would let the beast do as it pleased for this was, after all, the way of things. But somewhere along the path, things had changed, and as the days wore on Fluttershy became increasingly aware that life was precious.
The arctic hare bounded towards her from the undergrowth, gesturing with its forepaws. Clearing ahead. Fluttershy enjoyed an almost supernatural talent for communication with wildlife, but not all creatures chose to speak with her. Angel remained stubbornly silent throughout the years that she took care of him. She was a druid or mystic or shaman, or perhaps she’d been one in a past life. The continuing industrialization of equine society pushed her and her kind away, leaving them by the wayside.
And yet, seemingly in spite of the growing skyscrapers and cold gunmetal machinery, out here in the wild, mysticism thrived. Idol gods and pagan spirits reigned over the untamed forests, the backwater villages on the borders of nations, even in slums and shantytowns inside the gleaming cities themselves. The poor flocked to more grounded, relatable deities, spirits that could get things done.
The poor… and individuals like her. Ones who, having tried everything else, had nothing left to lose.
The glade opened up to swallow her whole, a vast field of dry, bonelike stumps and tall unruly grass that grabbed at her legs as she walked. Only one tree still stood. She took a closer look at the gnarled, twisting bark of the withered weeping willow. Staring at it for any significant period played tricks on the eyes, building grotesque shapes and grimacing faces from the texture and the way that light and shadows danced on the uneven surface.
These aren’t native here… Did somebody plant it?
Her internal compass told her that the closest known landmark was Zecora’s lab, but Fluttershy had difficulty picturing the zebra alchemist taking the time to plant and cultivate an ornamental sapling.
Angel tugged at what little of her tail protruded from the heavy bomber jacket. The brush on the edge of the glade was moving. She heard a growl that sounded like a crosscut on logs. Hunched shapes slowly emerged from the bushes, leering at her with glowing eyes of gold. A pack of vaguely canine constructs seemingly composed entirely of wood. Timber wolves.
She scooped up a clip of explosive flechettes from her pouch and fed it into her modified Guardian S013 crossbow.
“Prey…” growled the alpha male. Its voice was a barely-understandable rasp.
Fluttershy cleared her throat. The cheap mic built into her medical muzzlepiece came online with a harsh squeal of audio feedback.
“If you pounce, I’ll have to shoot you,” she said calmly. “If you overpower me and feed on my flesh, you’ll only grow sick and die. Where’s the gain?”
“The weak…” said the wolf, “pay tribute…! Flee… or die!”
Angel bunched up into a defensive crouch at her feet, chittering angrily.
Fluttershy could see the spittle dripping from their mouths as the wolves leapt toward her. She sidestepped as a rabid lupus flew past, clawing savagely at her. Splintery claws grasped for the flank of the bomber jacket, tearing it along with the yellow-coated skin beneath. Blood ran down her side, but she barely registered any pain.
She raised the leg-mounted crossbow and, hooking the trigger lever with her other forehoof, discharged. A loud pop split the air and her nostrils caught the stink of burning wood. Angel scampered onto one of the surrounding wolves and promptly dug his claws into its eyes. The hapless creature’s yelps drew another’s attention. The hare bounded off the first wolf as the second bit into its face.
The autoloader mechanism primed another flechette. She leveled the Guardian at a charging pack member but her throat filled with fluid before she could pull the trigger. She hacked, momentarily taking her eyes off of her assailant. The creature sank its teeth into her shoulder. Still coughing, she wound up with her crossbow-strapped foreleg and cracked the creature repeatedly with the sharp end of the instrument’s composite lath. The wolf’s grip on her loosed as a whine escaped its throat. She shoved the creature backwards, took aim and fired. It went up in flames, howling as the blaze reduced its body to cinders.
The pack parted again, surrounding her in a wide semicircle and watching her warily. She felt the gaze of the wolves shift to their leader expectantly. The alpha male growled and lunged, jiving from side to side, denying her a direct shot. Fluttershy readied her crossbow, and in one smooth motion caught the creature’s head inside the instrument’s bowstring. The dragon catgut polymer held firm as she twisted the wolf’s neck over the lathe and felt it give. A pitiful yelp sounded over the meadow and Fluttershy released the injured timber wolf. The effect was near-instantaneous. Keening softly, the alpha male and his flock ran for the safety of the trees, many of them limping.
Fluttershy sighed and unloaded the magazine of flechettes, counting how many still remained.
Nine.
She tried to make out the tracks of the manticore among the recent traces left by her adversaries. The hare tugged on her tail again, pointing at her injuries.
“I can’t stop now, Angel,” she whispered into the mic. “Not now that we’ve come so far. Now that we’re so close.”
He shook his head. He was right of course. Her hemophilia would bleed her dry if her wounds went on untreated. Although the medication administered by the muzzlepiece would hamper the blood loss from her ruined lungs, the same could not be said for external injuries. She had to fall back.
“So be it. I hope Snake Eyes isn’t unduly preoccupied.”
Her eyes ran over neon signs, dead in the harsh glare of the sun. Ponyville’s western wing looked slick and lubricious at night but the mask fell away in the light of midday, the flaws outlined like wrinkles and scars on a cheap face job; the sunlight threw the rusted shutters, trash-strewn streets and bleach-streaked windows of the urban sprawl into sharp focus.
She brushed past a figure draped in a dirty trench coat while her eyes were trained on the networks of pipes running from building to building high overhead.
“Oh, excuse me,” she said, glancing nervously at the stallion.
He turned to regard her through wax-encrusted eyes. A crude sign cut from a sheet of plywood hung suspended from his neck. Fluttershy squinted at the string of gibberish written out in a clumsy scrawl.
INT MAIN(){
COUT << “END DAYS ARE HERE.” << ENDL;
RETURN(0); //THE APOSTATE COMES.
}
“S-sorry… What does your sign mean?”
The stallion flexed his neck and the sign swayed slightly.
“From the lofty offices of Carousel Industries, Tyr-Tek Baal… fuckin’ ecksetera, ecksetera… to the homeless shelters beneath the ‘92 overpass. The city is Tartarus-bound as are all of us. Enjoy the time you have left, kid.” He looked at her blood-stained jacket. “You alright there?”
“I see,” she lied hastily. “Thank you for your time.”
The stallion grunted and resumed his trek along the cracked sidewalk.
Snake Eyes’ apartment was located near the gambling and pleasure district. Sensual vector holograms beckoned her to the garishly-decorated repurposed bunkers that now served as whorehouses and to the love hotels towering high overhead. Cheap neon shaped like card suits and dice flashed dimly over the mesh of wires and galvanized steel that constituted the casino.
She knocked lightly on the door, several floors up on an aging fire escape. Angel’s ears twitched and he gestured urgently. Fighting the unease building in her chest, Fluttershy put her ear to the crack of the door. A strangled choking sounded inside. She mustered what little strength she had and bucked the door with her hind legs, hearing the cheap lock snap.
Snake Eyes was suspended from the rafters by a length of thick plastic cord fastened around his neck. He’d stepped off of his suede-cushioned stool, but had evidently misjudged his own height as he now stood on his tiptoes, desperately trying to maintain the slack that only barely allowed him to breathe.
“Oh dear. Hang in there a second…” She blinked. “Sorry, I mean, um, wait.”
As the choking continued, she took some seconds to load a single bladed bolt into her crossbow. She leveled the instrument on the cord, aiming slowly and deliberately with one eye shut.
“Hold still, please.”
The bowstring went taut, propelling the bolt through the cord and into the opposite wall, nearly impaling a vintage cuckoo clock. The stallion fell to the ground, coughing and gasping for breath.
Fluttershy knelt down.
“Are you okay? You want me to maybe get some water?”
“Not the best idea right now,” said Snake Eyes. The rasp in his voice reminded her of the alpha timber wolf. “Throat might be swollen. Don’t wanna drown myself, you dig?”
“Uh, sure. Sorry.”
Getting shakily back on his feet, the stallion dragged the stool behind his folder-littered desk and sat down, rubbing at the bruised imprint that the cord left around his neck.
“Got something you need from me, ‘Shy? Looks to me like you could use some medical attention yourself, yeah?”
She shot a quick glance at the bloody stains on her jacket as though they were a peripheral concern.
“I didn’t know you were depressed, Snake Eyes.”
He looked away, his hooded eyes looking oddly weary in the sparse sunlight coming from between the open shades covering his window. They were slightly heterochromatic, one iris an olive green, the other a shade lighter: the result of a botched black clinic neuro-optical interface installation. To this day he only had NOI function in his left eye.
“I ain’t depressed,” he said, leaning on the stool’s chrome back. “I’m tired. Air conditioning’s fucked during the summer, winter’s too damn cold and dark, I’m stuck in this shithole ‘hood, the teardrop’s about to crap out completely and servicing it’ll cost an arm anna leg, maybe for real, I’ve got mounting gambling debts, tax season’s coming up, now,” he pointed at the broken lock, “I gotta get that shit fixed and so on. An’ I just don’t want to deal with all that anymore, you know?”
She tried to keep her tone impartial.
“You… You know how that sounds to someone who is terminally ill, don’t you?”
Snake Eyes snorted.
“Lady, no offense, but you don’t look like you’re looking out for your sweet ass either. You gonna let me treat those bites or are you gonna go ahead and limp two miles to a legit white-collar phys?”
“Gosh, uhh…”
He held up a warning hoof.
“I don’t ask for much, seein’ that you can’t afford it. But in return, I’d appreciate if you don’t give me any shit, capisce?”
Fluttershy’s eyes gravitated instinctively toward the scuffed wooden floor. “Yeah. But maybe… you should talk to somebody.”
“Shhh, ch, ch, ch!” Snake Eyes levitated rolls of bandages and gauze, an aerosol can of medical spray, and several plastic-wrapped surgical sutures out of his drawers. He wasn’t, strictly speaking, a licensed practitioner, but he’d picked up a number of skills in his years as an off-the-grid utility man. “You just gonna stand there and bleed out? Jacket. Off. An’ keep your damn rabbit on a leash.”
Angel bore his teeth at the stallion.
“He’s a ha—”
“Yeah, yeah…” Snake Eyes applied the medical spray to her wounds. The solution tingled and foamed on her skin. “I dunno why you’re so determined to hunt. This one in p’rticular.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, fighting the urge to scratch at her wounds.
“I mean,” he said, driving a needle and thread through the lip of the largest of her gashes, “Woodworth could stand to get taken down a peg or two.”
She sat there silently, waiting for him to finish with the suture.
“Take that zebra for example, squatting out there in the Everfree and peddling her shit to fucking anyone, right under Woodworth’s nose. Take that mare, found a month ago, tied to a tree, just three kilos off their sawmill. Sedated, mauled by a cragadile.”
Fluttershy felt a pull as the stallion tightened his stitching a little overzealously.
“You know why?” he continued. “The Everfree’s outside Ponyville city limits, obviously. The entire forest along with a good chunk of the outskirts functions as an independent, corporate-owned state. So the PD can’t launch an investigation unless Woodworth & Sons makes a formal commission.”
“You’re saying I shouldn’t go after Manny because Lodestar will handle it?” she asked hesitantly.
“You ain’t listening.” Snake Eyes tied the end of the thread and cut it with a pair of old-fashioned barber’s scissors. “Lodestar can’t do shit about anything that happens in the Everfree because the entire Ponyville underworld and their nanas pay Woodworth to look the other way. That’s why the bastards deserve to lose every bitcred that manticore costs them. In a perfect world, the company’ll end up more than just morally bankrupt.”
“But it’s not the people in charge that are getting hurt,” Fluttershy protested. “It’s the workers on the bottom. They’re not at fault, they’re just trying to make ends meet.”
“Yeah, but all the smart wage-slaves are leaving! It won’t be long before—” Snake Eye’s head jerked up. “Hey wait a tick, you hear… Oh fuck, right, you’re not equipped.”
He grabbed a wire from the cluttered desktop and plugged one end into the neural jack on the base of his neck.
“This is the Lodestar channel,” he said, attaching the other end to a cassette adaptor and feeding it into his player. Fluttershy heard a gruff voice over the static as the adaptor started to turn.
“…repeat, a 10-6 on 511 Hooke Street, outer ring. All local units respond.”
Fluttershy shot him an inquisitive look. “10-6?”
“Police code for ‘animal attack’. Might not be Manny, but I’m pretty sure that Hooke on the outer ring is the part of suburb closest to where the last attack—hold it, at least let me apply the spray, for fuck’s sake.”
Fluttershy restrained herself while Snake Eyes rushed to finish soaking her wounds in ethanol and liquid bandage.
“This job’s gonna kill you, ‘Shy.”
“I’m going to die anyway. Is your teardrop good for another drive?”
He shrugged. “We gotta go slow.”
Crowds and buildings blurred past, mingling into a mess of pastels and gray. The teardrop’s engine ticked ominously as the machine hovered at a cautious two meters above the cracked asphalt.
The outer ring of the city was coming up fast, a circlet of underdeveloped suburb dotted with scrap yards and the abandoned factories of long-bankrupt companies. Still the pipes twisted about overhead, tangling with landlines.
“What’s with all them doomsayers out on the street nowadays?” asked Snake Eyes as he passed another cardboard-draped stallion sitting on the curb. “Some of ‘em are well-equipped too. I saw a mare with a holo-projector preaching outside my apartment this morning.”
Fluttershy shrugged. Her muzzlepiece hissed as it pumped another dose of targeted antibiotic into her lungs. “Something’s in the air,” she said quietly.
“Yeah, that’s what the thing’s for, ‘Shy.”
“I mean,” she made a fruitless attempt to read another sign as they passed, “I mean, out there. Something foreboding. The wind is harsher, the stars look dimmer, people are saying the moon might be losing spots…”
“Nothing that can’t be explained by climate change and light pollution.”
She sighed and the mic boomed harshly.
“If you say so.”
Voices filtered in through the open window as the teardrop slowed to a stop and touched down. A group had gathered in the open street, and a couple of enterprising young stallions obstructed the road to keep land vehicles at a reasonable speed and distance from the scene.
Sirens howled in the distance, common enough in districts like this, but getting closer.
“’Ey, listen, I’m not on good terms with the starlets,” said Snake Eyes. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m gonna peace out.”
“Please, Snake, I won’t be long. Stay and keep the engine running, okay? Angel doesn’t do well with crowds either, so I’ll leave him with you.”
Snake Eyes clicked his tongue.
“Yeah. Okay I’ll hang, but if they want to ‘detain you for questioning’ or some bullshit, you’re on your own.”
She nodded and, smiling uneasily at the expressionless sentries, dove into the shifting mob.
A near-unrecognizable dead husk of a mare lay in the middle, protruding ribs, innards spilling, steaming on the warm asphalt. Another girl, similarly wounded but only barely alive, sat rasping as an altruistic youth tried to keep her conscious. The surrounding ponies exchanged glances but did not interfere as the muzzled, bloodied jacket-clad mare knelt beside the corpse.
Fluttershy positioned her head over that of the corpse and looked into those blank, still-open eyes.
The crowd seemed to melt away around her and the buildings decayed into skeletal frames, looking like nothing so much as a trite, overused time-lapse effect in a cheap or fashionably avant-garde holofilm. The crimson sun hung directly overhead, a bloody eye in the center of a featureless blue-gray sky.
A slip of half-decayed fax flew by, but the air was still. There was a far-off rumble and a synthetic-sounding suggestion of a voice boomed over the desolate landscape, startling her.
“Traveler who yet lives. What business have you in my Duchy of Crossroads?”
She drew a breath. “It’s Fluttershy. You called me the ‘butterfly-branded one’? The shaman?”
A chill in the air, like razors on her skin.
“And I am Shusteht the Duke of Dust, child,” the voice said dispassionately. “I hold neither favor nor memory for you or your ilk.”
“I wish to speak with her.” Fluttershy’s tone didn’t waver. “With the mare that perished here.”
“Child of the Sun,” the phrase pronounced slowly, deliberately, “why should I oblige your request?”
“Because we have a contract.”
“Do we? You will have to remind me of the terms.”
“The terms…” her voice caught in her throat. She coughed once. “…are standard.”
Silence. The fax caught on her shoulder, came loose and flew skyward. In the distance, the skeletal buildings shimmered like a desert mirage.
“Very well. I will deign to allow you to meet with the departed. But you’ll recall that the price is steep, and I expect to be compensated upon the appointed hour. That hour draws ever closer.”
Over the next few moments, the vague sensation of being encompassed by an incorporeal entity waned and finally dissipated.
“H-hello.”
Fluttershy turned to see a mare standing behind her. She’d been young, attractive, in life. Her pale yellow coat, no longer slick with blood, shone brilliantly beneath the rays of the red sun. A trio of carrots was branded across her rear. Fluttershy reached to remove her muzzlepiece but it was already gone, along with her coat and crossbow. She licked her lips nervously and addressed the mare.
“Hello. My name is Fluttershy. What’s yours?”
“It was all so fast…” The mare shuddered in recollection. “One moment I’m walking Cherry back to her flat, the n-next I’m… laying…”
“Rest easy,” said Fluttershy. “It’s over now.”
“What about Cherry?” asked the mare, stepping closer. “How is she? Is she…?”
“She looks pretty bad. But she’s alive, for the time being.” Realizing this didn’t sound reassuring, Fluttershy appended it with “I think she’ll pull through.”
“By the Sun,” the mare sniffed, “she didn’t deserve this. I don’t know if I…”
“Death is only a fact of life,” said Fluttershy gently. “You shouldn’t take it personally.”
The mare shut her eyes and nodded, sobbing.
“What’s your name?” Fluttershy asked again.
“I’m Golden Harvest,” she forced out.
“Good.” Fluttershy smiled and put a reassuring hoof around Harvest’s shoulder. “Try to remember that. It will serve you in the time yet to come. Can you… Can you tell me anything about the beast that attacked you, Golden Harvest?”
“I…” Harvest swallowed. “I barely saw it. Hit us fast, like a… like a bullet. I caught a glimpse of red fur, two-inch fangs, a dull glimmer of something like brass or copper…”
Fluttershy frowned.
Metal?
“Did you see where he… where it went?” she asked.
“I was losing consciousness when it left us, but I think it was headed deeper into the city.”
Fluttershy felt her heart skip a beat as the blood in her veins became suddenly, inexplicably icy.
“Where?”
Golden Harvest opened her mouth to speak but, by that point, Fluttershy was already
somewhere else.
The Lodestar officer pulled her roughly away from Golden Harvest’s body.
“The fuck are you doing?”
“The manticore,” she gasped, struggling through a bout of instashift shock. “The creature that did this is inside city limits! The public is in danger!”
“I think you’d better come with me, miss,” said the officer, squinting at her over his sunglasses.
She struggled and pulled away from the stallion.
“Let me go! I have to—”
He pulled his stun baton from its holster.
Lodestar officers are equipped with expensive counter-ballistic body armor woven from strands of magically-charged byronium oxide alloy, marketed to the masses under the brand name ‘Antimag’. Diamagnetic materials such as the lead cores inside bullets are physically repelled by the armor, minimizing penetration. Bypassing it requires the use of abnormal ammunition or beam weapons (outlawed, except when in possession of a specialty hunter’s license) or aiming above the collar when the target isn’t wearing a helmet.
The officer fell over as the trank flechette bit into the base of his neck. Hooves bounding unsteadily over the asphalt, she barged through the crowd. Another uniformed stallion, presumably the partner of the officer Fluttershy had just tranquilized, swung at her as she brushed past; the electrified stun baton glanced off the side of her muzzlepiece. A slight hiss told her that some of the tubing had been compromised.
Snake Eyes opened the door on the passenger side of the teardrop as she raced toward it. She threw herself into the seat and felt the car shudder and take off.
“Shit. You’ve really done it now, ‘Shy.”
Fluttershy looked over at her companion to see that he was shaking. He toggled the built-in police scanner, probably for her benefit. She remembered that he had a cranial radio receptor installed.
“…officer down on 511 Hooke Street. All units be advised, suspect is armed and dangerous, and is being transported by a beige 2002 Tsubasa teardrop. Last known location is Lovelace Avenue in the western wing…”
He rubbed his eyes.
“Shit, shit…”
Angel scampered onto the shoulder of her seat and twitched his nose conspiratorially at her.
“…8-14 taking place at 642 Elara Avenue, local units respond…”
Snake Eyes reached for the toggle again, shaking his head.
“…All units be advised, the Street Eye system has identified what appears to be a three-hundred pound adult manticore within city limits…”
His hoof stopped an inch from the dial. He looked at the scanner, running through an emotional gamut ranging from tired, stunned and bewildered.
“…The creature is headed northeast along route ’95. It has presently injured at least fifteen individuals and shows no sign of stopping…”
He looked wearily at her.
“You sure you don’t wanna just let the starlets handle this? They’re better equipped than you.”
“No,” she said resolutely. “I want to know why. Why all this is happening. Maybe Manny will have some answers for me.”
Snake Eyes brushed a stray forelock of moss-green hair from his eyes and pushed down on the gas pedal, turning into a side alley. They were soaring over the streets now. Traffic tended to get lighter the higher you flew, but the ticking of the engine had grown more insistent as the vehicle rose and Fluttershy had to wonder if she was going to have to use her atrophied wings before the day was out.
He tilted his head as he drove.
“What’s that hissing? Hold on is that… is your mask leaking?”
She didn’t answer.
“Fucking Tartarus, man, we need to get you to a hospital. Your lungs are gonna flood if that shit runs out.”
She shook her head.
“Later. Manny gets priority.”
He took a breath through clenched teeth. “Well okay, ‘s your funeral.”