Starlight Over Detrot
Act 2, Chapter 35: Up in Holy Smoke
When other species first learn that nearly a third of the Equestrian populace is capable of using magic innately, some tend to envision powerful wizards tossing around massive fireballs, calling deadly lightning, and tearing the earth asunder with laser beams the width of Neighagra Falls. It then surprises them to learn how rare dedicated combat magic is in Equestria.
Not only is offensive magic disharmonious by nature, and thus politely discouraged, but it is unnecessary for most personal defense situations. Nearly all unicorns already have access to telekinesis, and telekinesis is one of the most versatile and useful personal defense spells around.
Consider how much energy would have to go towards creating a bolt of lightning from magic: A true tree-splitting bolt contains as many as 5 billion joules of power, which would be a monstrous amount of energy for even a competent caster to conjure. Now consider that even the unicorn next door can, by instinct, whack somepony over the head with any reasonably sized object in line of sight, and that a good swing with a baseball bat or a solid buck runs to about half a kilojoule, more if you're an earth pony. Either way, orders of magnitude more efficient.
Telekinesis is also exceedingly adaptable; with practice and exercise, a given unicorn could yank on sensitive anatomy with the force of a full-grown stallion, or lift her aggressor or aggressors harmlessly into the air like so many electrocuted marionettes. Even some of Equestria's best spellcasters tend to use kinetic force bolts as a workhorse spell for battlefield operations - and such bolts are really just telekinesis at high speed and without the object.
Of course, sometimes your opponents are too numerous, massive, or magically competent themselves to be deterred by hurled pointy objects, blunt instruments, or genital rearrangement, and not every caster is powerful enough to lift the motor vehicle that would be necessary to harm them in this manner. This is where other spells come into play.
But even when combat magic is the best tool for the job, most unicorns are limited to magic that reflects their Special Talents, and thus spells employed in conflict are often distractions, illusions, or just weaponized, overcharged versions of other day-to-day spells or tricks. During the Crusades, dragons had been brought down by entire tides of their own suddenly conjured facial hair, tangling their wings and causing them to plummet as giant fuzzy balls of moustache. A canyon approach was temporarily blocked by a colossal slammed wooden door, responsible for a few broken snouts. One largely male dragon squad was sent into retreat because they were forcibly equipped with cursed lingerie. Where the caster found the patterns for draconic lingerie is probably best left unknown - though the caster noted a spike in curious business propositions thereafter.
Only at the highest end of spellcasting, the level of archmages and alicorns, is the flashy, destructive arcanery of legend brought into the light of day.
--The Scholar
Having been shot dead before, I admit I expected something a little nastier than a breeze through my ear-fur. Sure, the last was a massive bullet, whereas the one more recently was a beam of magically charged light, but even with the huge round I’d needed a bit to die and a distant, fairly collected part of my brain was registering that I was in pain at the time.
My second experience was… surprisingly mellow.
The white light faded, and I let my hoof drop. I wasn’t in any discomfort, per se, aside a persistent pressure in my abdomen, but then if the moon gun had vaporized me and I was just a spirit I supposed that I’d gotten a pass on that.
Then, if the moon gun vaporized me, why do I still need to go to the bathroom? I asked myself.
That was a good question. A better one occurred to me a moment later.
Am… I going to need to pee forever?!
Nasty prospect, but I couldn’t see my surroundings just yet, so the act of taking stock of the afterlife was slower than I’d have liked.
My vision gradually cleared, and I found myself looking down at the body of the mare who’d shot me. She was laying on the carpeted floor, her head twisted at an unnatural angle and her face scorched beyond recognition. What was left of the moon gun lay beside it, shattered into shards like a piece of crystal hit with a hammer.
She was dead as a doornail.
Funny thing, that, I thought, absently. Maybe she hadn’t really shot me? No, of course not. I’d felt the rush of energy… Had the gun simply misfired?
I became slowly aware of several sets of eyes cautiously watching me. Swift and Limerence had regrouped up on the second floor, but were holding their fire as they peered over the side. Most of the rest of the cultists were huddled against the base of the statue of Nightmare Moon or clinging to the edges of the room.
I found myself, very suddenly, alone in the middle of an empty space. Aside from the whimpering of spaced out Beam-heads sprawled on the floor or hugging the walls, there was silence.
Patting my chest in a few places to check for holes, I peered up at Skylark who was still behind the altar with a puzzled expression on her face, then over at Taxi as she crouched behind a giant boiler. My driver scratched her head, then shrugged.
Why am I not dead? my body demanded.
Not a damn clue, my brain replied.
Errr...Can I have a tiny freak out now? my body asked.
I’d really appreciate if you didn’t, my brain answered.
Before a tremor could start in my back, I fought my muscles into a cooperative state and took a step in the direction of the altar. My forelegs were working, but my rear legs seemed to have had a bit of a disagreement, so my next step was a stumbling lurch in Skylark’s direction.
Her shimmering shield snapped into existence between us, but it was flickering weakly. I raised my shotgun and yanked on the trigger. I doubted my shotgun would actually penetrate the shield at that range, but it would bring it down so Limerence or Swift could put a nice, big compensatory hole in her. .
That was the plan.
My relationship with plans is well documented so, of course, nothing happened.
I tugged on the trigger again. My shotgun clicked, the hammer falling on empty chambers.
I’d forgotten to reload the damn thing.
I switched the grip in my teeth so it would pull on my revolver, but Skylark was already moving. A long knife, almost a sword, swung up in her telekinetic grasp from the tray of tools and sex toys beside the altar. I readied myself to play some ‘dodge’ with her, hoping she’d drop the shield long enough for one of my friends to blow her to kingdom come. Taxi was still reloading, but Shock Rockers Magic Depletion shells were the only thing in our arsenal that was likely to blow a hole in that barrier.
I expected Skylark to engage at range. Unicorns don’t do ‘close in’ and I was already ducking into a roll as she brought the blade down in a vicious sweep. A small, very peaceful smile graced her pinched lips as I realized her real target, and she realized I realized it, and I realized there was nothing I could do to stop the inevitable.
I watched, helpless, as the weapon slammed squarely into Cerise’s midsection. Whatever that blade was, it was sharp. It flashed in the light of the torches as it sank with a sickening thump into the girl’s belly and a spray of blood hit the inside of the shield.
Adrenaline surged through my veins, giving me a wonderfully protracted view as Astral Skylark stood over the girl who held the keys to my continued existence. She tore the blade from the body and flung it at the boiler where Taxi hid, sending my driver scrambling out of sight.
I could almost hear the clock my life was on ticking down.
There would be no escape from Jade.
There would be no escape from myself.
Cerise’s legs twitched as Skylark let her shield die and threw herself off the altar. One of Limerence’s crossbow bolts hit the ground directly behind her, but by the time he’d reloaded, she’d vanished into an alcove along the wall.
I couldn’t think to pursue her. What would have been the point?
My blood had turned to ice.
The world seemed muted; quieter and emptier.
My muzzle was dry as I limped a couple of steps closer to the altar.
The cultists surrounding the statue of Nightmare Moon were slowly gathering themselves into something resembling a protective formation. A stallion out front with an expensive mane-cut and frightened eyes sank down into a defensive posture, his horn sparking furtively.
Swift’s hooves thumped onto the carpet as she landed behind me, followed a moment later by Limerence, who stepped off the side of a boiler, keeping his crossbow leveled at the stallion out front.
Taxi stayed in her cover, but she had her cannon trained at the crowd. At that range, her terrible markspony-ship wouldn’t really matter much.
“C-clear off, cop,” the leading pony stammered, trying to re-gather his confidence. “You try to prosecute us, and this will all disappear. By tomorrow, nopony will know you were here.”
I wasn’t listening. One pompous prig with a puffed up sense of his own importance wasn’t worth my attention. His pupils were still unfocused and the drug was likely to make casting anything of substance very difficult.
My gaze was locked on Cerise.
I came to a stop, looking over the crowd at the girl’s corpse. That poor filly I’d never really known, killed for an escape plan by a psychopath. Well, Skylark might think escape was an option, but I was fairly confident that Queenie would know to tag her before she could get far.
That being the case, a tickle of fear had started just behind my left ear, then snuck down to my lower spine, before creeping right back up to my neck.
Cerise had a blade the size of my leg impaled through her guts. As a matter of fact, I could see some of her internal organs splayed out in the wound. It was a lethal strike on any mortal creature. My stomach churned, seeing her splayed out like that, but the fear of Iris Jade’s wrath was a distant thing.
A more immediate and altogether horrifying question had presented itself.
Is she… moving?
At first, I’d thought it was just my overactive, exhausted, and badly shocked imagination claiming her rear legs were twitching. I’d had enough hallucinations of late to think it was entirely possible my brain had finally cracked at the sight of another dead filly. No big deal, I thought. You can still function long enough to get to safety once you’ve lost your mind as long as you’re aware that’s what has happened.
Then the blood began to flow backwards.
The herd surrounding the statue was starting to twig to the fact that I wasn’t paying them any heed. A couple started to glance back towards the corpse on the altar and as they did, they started to back away, bumping into their slower compatriots towards the front.
I doubt anypony in their ranks would have slighted them the urge to retreat. Swift was already backing away. I bit down on my trigger until my teeth started to ache, forcing myself to take careful steps backward so I wouldn’t slip in the pools of blood soaking into the carpets. All the while, I kept my eyes locked on Cerise’s corpse.
I swallowed, watching as the puddle of spilt intestines on the altar started to creep back into Cerise’s stomach. They slithered over one another, gathering themselves back into the proper order as a silvery light began to spill from the hole in her belly.
Her horn ignited explosively, and the air around her seemed to charge and crackle with powerful energies just waiting for a target. The girl who’d died not three minutes ago right in front of me tensed her stomach and slowly raised her head.
What cultists remained at the base of the statue were quickly getting the idea that being near her was probably going to be excellent for their next of kin, but a poor decision for themselves. They started to back away.
Then Cerise opened her eyes; burning white, pupil-less eyes.
The little freak-out my body had been reserving for a later date was happening, one way or the other. I stumbled, tripping over the body of a dead or unconscious stallion, which sent me sprawling head over hooves. My ego might have quailed at the metaphor, but I was feeling the sort of terror a mouse feels when confronted with a whole heap of cats. Cats with switchblades.
Cerise didn’t so much stand as her body lifted into the air, settling her hooves under her.
Her gaze swept the crowd, who were scrambling to get as far from her as they could.
She opened her mouth and white light poured from her throat, along with an unearthly scream that seemed to shatter everything.
****
My awareness was flickering in and out like a badly focused movie projector.
I was conscious of somepony pulling at my coat. My ears were ringing and my collar was being tugged on. I wrestled with my eyelids until they started to respond, but it was a good ten seconds before I could haul them open.
I glanced up to see Taxi and Swift with my coat in their teeth and Limerence covering us, his crossbow pointed over my head at something I couldn’t see.
There was shrieking. Lots of shrieking. It was the kind of tail-wetting caterwauling that sounded like foals in a haunted house, mixed with some wet splattering noises.
I struggled until I could get my head up and was greeted with a vision of devastation.
Cerise was standing amid a heap of downed cultists, her horn spraying great spikes of fire as she yanked them apart with powerful spurts of telekinesis. I watched as a fat mare wearing expensive earrings was torn from her stallion’s side, howling like a banshee as she flew straight up to the ceiling and hit with a sickening thump. The body crashed to earth a moment later as her companion was lifted and tossed like a ragdoll into one of the boilers. He didn’t have enough time to shout before Cerise wrapped his spine around the piping like a piece of wet spaghetti. Another, slightly luckier pony flipped end over end before hitting one of the tapestries and getting tangled in it, while two others were simply torn apart, limb from limb, by the arcane clutches of the magic-crazed unicorn.
Cerise’s empty eyes were still luminescent, but her face was spread into a huge, manic grin as she drifted down the aisles, tearing the pews out of the ground one at a time as she moved in our direction.
She was floating.
I blinked a couple of times to verify my eyes were actually working. Everything had a dreamlike quality to it, but she was definitely floating. Her hooves were an inch off the ground.
The air around her horn was warped by the raw energies being channeled, but as she bore down on us, I still couldn’t make my legs work and my chest hurt like the dickens.
I tried to call out to my friends to run away and leave me to play dead, in the hopes she might leave me alone. I managed a strangled groan, but nothing more.
Limerence, somewhere above us, fired a crossbow bolt at Cerise, only for it to be swatted away like a fly in mid-air by a snap of telekinesis. Taxi dropped my collar long enough to hoist up the P.E.A.C.E. cannon, only to have it ripped out of her hooves and flung into the darkness near one of the boilers.
A meter away, Cerise stopped.
My ears were still buzzing, but as sound started to return I could hear the agonized moans of injured or stoned ponies coming from all directions.
I felt a powerful pull on my lower legs that grew until it encompassed my whole body. Swift yelped as she was flicked off with a swat of magic, spiraling into mid-air until she could get some air under her wings.
Much against my will, I rose into the air. I’d been tossed around by a unicorn before and it’s never nice, but this felt different. The weight bearing down on my chest felt like a vice, and for a moment, I was afraid she meant to simply crush the life out of me.
I wanted to flail or scream, but nothing was working. I might have called out to her, begged her to let us help, but my throat wouldn’t form the words. All I could do was hang there as she drew me closer and closer until I dangled mere inches from her face. She was so much like her mother, but there was no consciousness there. No sympathy or emotion.
But then there was recognition.
Something hanging around my neck lifted a few inches and I had to roll my eyes down to see what it was.
My badge.
She was studying my badge. It was bloody and scratched, but the silver shield with Detrot Police Department scrawled around the edge was still perfectly clear.
Her lips parted.
“...Momma?” she whispered.
The glow in her eyes went out as though somepony had pulled the plug. She stared at my badge with big, scared brown eyes, then up at me. The fierce pressure on my chest vanished.
My knees wouldn’t hold me, so I curled them under myself and sank to the carpet. Every inch of me was soaked in somebody’s vital fluids. I’d lost track of exactly whose, but I was quickly becoming convinced that no shower I could ever take would make me feel really clean again.
Cerise watched me for a few seconds before her eyes rolled up in her head and she slumped onto her side in an unconscious heap. Her legs twitched once, then she lay still. I worried she might actually be dead this time, until I saw the gentle rise and fall of her breast.
Oh, how I wanted to go ahead and pass out. Passing out would have been brilliant just then. As it was, my head bobbed as I tried to get back to my hooves. My knees were still malfunctioning, but they were moving and that was a definite improvement. I still felt weak as a kitten.
Thankfully, the cultists were too shell-shocked to consider escape, much less attempting to mount an attack. Most of them had found corners or holes to hide in, though a couple just stood there, glaze-eyed and gormless.
At the sound of hoofsteps nearby, I tried to muster the strength to pick up my trigger, but all I managed was to lay my head on the carpet. Then I felt a tiny nose pushing against my chest.
“S-sir. Sir, are you okay? Please be okay! Sir!” Swift whimpered, pressing her muzzle against my side.
I shook my head a little. Being a wreck would have to wait.
“I’m... I’m alright, kid,” I croaked, heaving my back legs into the air via whatever reserves I could muster. I couldn’t get the front ones up just yet, but Swift shoved her face under my barrel and helped pull me upright. Taxi stepped in and leant her shoulder so I didn’t pitch over. “Ugh... whew. What hit me?”
“Extremely powerful magical fields disrupted your prosthetic and probably significant parts of your nervous system,” Limerence explained, trotting out from behind me and over toward Cerise. He put his hoof on her neck, then her cheek before lowering his horn to hers. A single spark jumped between them and he sighed, then reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a small leather pouch. Unzipping it, he pulled out a needle and clear glass bottle with a sealed stopper.
“Whazzat?” I winced at the sound of my own voice and tried to clear my throat.
“Chlorpromazine hydrochloride with some antivenin, lithium, and an extract of poison joke,” he replied, pulling the cap off the needle and jamming it into the bottle. “I thought our targets might be using the zebra magics as a weapon of some sort and if one of us were to become impregnated with the compound, I considered it was best we had an option against it. A prepared pony is a pony who gets to live another day.”
Filling the syringe, he stuck it into Cerise’s side and depressed the plunger.
Her eyes shot open and she let out a pitiful little yelp, then her tongue lolled out and she fainted again.
“There we are.” He patted her on the head, gently. “Poor child. Every leyline in her body is burnt out.”
“Is that... permanent?” Taxi asked, worriedly.
“I am no doctor, but... hopefully not permanent,” He replied. “She’ll be unconscious for several hours, however, and unable to use magic for at least a few days or weeks, but she will be alive.”
“Good,” I grunted, trying to make myself move. That required more effort than I was capable of just then. “Ow... ugh. What about the spell?”
“Incomplete and broken, so far as I can tell. All of the magic she ingested has been expended on…” He glanced around at the corpses of the cultists littering the floor and trailed off, before adding quietly, “...so much death in one place…”
Shaking himself, he tried to regain his usual stoicism and find a fresh train of thought. “Detective, many zebra spells require words to be spoken. Pardon me for asking, but how did you know to interrupt the vocal component?”
“I didn’t,” I answered, picking up my badge off the carpet beside Cerise and slinging it around my neck. “I figured it might discombobulate her enough that she might stop, though.”
“A worthwhile tactic, I suppose... oh... oh my. ” He hesitated as his eyes found the body of a stallion with his face crushed by a pipe. He put a hoof to his muzzle, quickly, trotting into the darkness behind a boiler. I heard some painful gagging, followed by a splash. He returned a moment later with Taxi’s cannon levitating alongside him, wiping his muzzle with his kerchief. “Many pardons. I found this.”
Taxi pulled the cannon to herself, sinking onto her backside and hugging it with both forelegs. She just sat there for a few seconds, then took a deep breath and pulled the strap around her neck. “I was worried I’d lost it.”
“What? I’m dragged in front of a psycho unicorn who did all this and I don’t get a hug?” I quipped, though my heart wasn’t really in it.
Rolling her eyes, she ruffled my mane, then glanced at the blood on it before self-consciously wiping it on the carpet. “I’ll hug you later, okay? Once the job is done and I’m not...I’m not feeling like I’ll never be clean again as long as I live.”
I felt Swift’s wing extend over my shoulders and turned to look at my partner. Her eyes were streaked with tears and every couple of seconds she swallowed what might have been a sob or possibly a mouth full of bile.
“Sir... sir... was all this…necessary?” she asked, softly. “I tried not to kill anypony, but I didn’t see where all my bullets went. How do I know-”
I nodded towards Cerise. “She’ll think it was necessary when she’s sane enough to be in control of herself. Every pony who isn’t dead just so these perverts-” I snarled that word, and a mare who’d dragged herself from behind a leaking boiler where she’d been hidden slunk back out of sight. “-could get their rocks off… they will think it was necessary.”
My partner’s lip quivered, but she shut her eyes and leaned against me. Best thing a pony can do, really. You lean on your partner in dark times. You might be a coward, or weak, or frightened, but when the chips are down and you have to make the call, you can be strong for your partner.
“Why didn’t she just… die? Or burn or whatever? And how did it heal that wound?” Taxi asked, curiously, touching Cerise’s stomach. There wasn’t even a scar where the killing blow had landed..
Limerence clicked his tongue, looking contemplative. “Magic is the power of life, according to certain theoreticians. That may have made killing somepony so rife with it very difficult. Nopony is meant to contain that much, but Iris Jade is well known to be a powerful spellcaster. An extremely high tolerance may run in the family. It might also be some artifact of the chemical in her body, or possibly the protection spells she was casting earlier.”
“You know, you can just say ‘I don’t know’,” my driver grumbled.
“I'm… uncertain, but that doesn't mean I'm bereft of educated guesses!"
My breaths hurt, but not in a way that suggested broken bones. It was just exhaustion. Good, old fashioned tiredness.
Pulling open my coat, I pointed at my heart socket. “Is this thing blinking?”
Swift pulled her head back and looked at my chest. “Um...yes…”
“Limerence, can you give me a recharge?” I asked.
“I’m barely in command of my own levitation at the moment, I’m afraid,” he murmured.
“Then we need to handle Skylark quickly. Queenie, has she left the building?” I asked, tilting my head back.
One buzz came from my mane.
“Have we had any movement upstairs to suggest they know what’s happened?”
Two more buzzes.
“Good. Keep monitoring. If Skylark leaves, somehow, I want to know.”
I started limping towards the statue at the front of the room. Swift -- gutsy as any comic book character you care to name -- stayed beside me, letting me use her tiny frame as a crutch. We skirted another body, but couldn’t avoid the bloody smear where somepony had ended a short flight across the room.
Limerence kept his crossbow out, pointing it at any cultist who looked like they might decide to get brave. Most of the few who still alive were trying valiantly to climb under one another in different corners of the room.
“Sir, we... we can wait, right?” Swift asked. “I mean, she’ll have to come out eventually.”
“Skylark didn’t look like she was heading someplace to hide,” I replied.
Movement to one side of the statue brought my gaze up and I almost reached for my trigger before I realized who it was.
Geranium was nursing one foreleg, stumbling towards us on the other three from the far corner of the room. Her ears were pinned back as she surveyed the dead. Enough death in one place has a tendency to numb the mind a bit, since insanity is the only other healthy response. It’s probably a survival mechanism.
“D-detective?” she stammered, stepping over an unconscious mare whose forelegs were swelling in a frightening fashion. “Is... is it over?”
“I wish I could say it was, sweetheart. Skylark’s still here somewhere. What’s back there?” I pointed at the alcove I thought I’d seen the priestess vanish into.
“I... I don’t know. There’s a latch, but she never let me back there. That or... that or I don’t remember her letting me back there. It’s whatever they used to call ‘High Security’.”
Taxi scratched at her mane. “High Security is through the Mechanical Room?”
“It’s... yeah. I mean, I guess? I don’t know. Can I just... can I just leave now?” Geranium asked, plaintively.
“You leave now, and I can’t guarantee your safety. Besides, this floor is locked down,” I answered.
“Oh... Celestia save me…” she moaned. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I think you might want to have considered what Celestia thought before you got involved with a bunch of Nightmare Moon worshippers,” Taxi sniffed. Geranium scowled at her, but had no ready reply.
“We’re heading into High Security, either way. You can follow us and maybe help, or you can start tying up the Beam-heads,” I said as my driver dug a police issue box of restrictor rings and plastic hobbles out of her saddle-bag, tossing both at the lawyer’s hooves. I didn’t care to ask where Taxi had gotten actual police restrictors; those are tracked pretty tightly, despite being standard kit for somepony expecting to face unicorns.
“Y-you can’t seriously... expect me to do that-” she sputtered.
“What I expect is that our ‘friends’ here will start coming down from their highs here in the next hour, and they’re going to want to know why you had such a friendly conversation with us.” I stared meaningfully in the direction of a couple of still-very-whacked-out cultists who were watching us from behind a stack of broken pews. “It’s your choice whether or not they’re restrained when you try to explain yourself. Incidentally, same rules apply. Try to screw us or try to leave and our friend upstairs shuts you down.”
Her nose scrunched up and she, again, adopted that expression of a pony looking for any escape, any out, or any leverage they might use to save themselves, but finding nothing besides obedience to the cool logical genius that is Detective Hard Boiled. It’s a cute look on a mare, especially if she’s made my life complicated.
Geranium harumphed and snatched up the restrictor rings and hobbles with her horn. “You better hope I have enough, or I swear the next pony I tie up is you... and I will take great pleasure in taking you to the firm on that leash we discussed earlier!”
“I look forward to seeing you try. Now get to it. We’ll be back as soon as we have Skylark,” I said, then turned to Swift. “Kid, can you stay out here and help her?”
Swift reluctantly pulled away from my side and followed Geranium in the direction of a group of cultists who yelped and tried to hide under several objects much too small for them.
“Be careful, sir.”
“I’ll do my best,” I replied, cracking open my shotgun and ejecting the spent shells.
****
It turned out that ‘latch’ meant ‘complex magical lock’. Limerence took one look at the door tucked into the alcove behind the statue and shook his head.
Thankfully, ‘door’ just meant ‘door’, not ‘ridiculously over-engineered vault portal’ like it had upstairs. While the door itself did say ‘High Security’, it was another of those understated little plaques that tends to indicate something is simply hoping not to be noticed and the construction was just painted aluminum over wood. That might confound a pegasus or a unicorn, but it’s no match for a few solid blows with an earth pony’s rear hooves.
It still took Taxi and I five good strikes each to knock the damn thing off the hinges, but my driver’s back hooves finally sent it crashing into the hall behind. The lock spat sparks at us, then the gems inside it flickered out.
My driver and I stacked up on either side of the door, her with her cannon and me with the shotgun at the ready.
Limerence, standing to one side, rolled his eyes. “Detective, you’ve never had the pleasure of working with a unicorn before, have you?”
“Can’t say as I have, at least in tactical situations. It’s generally best not to let your opponents know who just knocked their door down, though,” I grumbled.
“Ahhh, well, we can be certain she knows now then, I suppose. Tactical situation aside, if you’ll allow me?”
His horn lit up and a tiny ball of light grew on the tip, then shot off down the hallway.
He hummed to himself for a minute, then nodded. “Excellent. This space is empty.”
“Wait...you had a surveillance spell this whole time?!” I snapped, testily.
“Errr...no, not really. It’s a rather complex sounding spell, for determining depths. It has the added benefit of highlighting most kinds of enchanted trap, but it does not lend itself to ‘steering’. Straight lines only, I’m afraid. Skylark is likely to have trapped her retreat, after all.”
Taxi poked her head down the unlit hall, then stepped out with her cannon upraised. Letting herself drop back to all fours, she took a couple of cautious steps in, then bent forward onto her stomach.
“Magical traps?” she called back.
“Yes, indeed,” Limerence said, with a certain amount of smugness.
“Would it detect a piece of razor-wire at neck height?”
“Erm…”
Taxi pulled a pair of robust looking scissors out of her pack and carefully snipped the wire. “Come on in. Move slowly along the walls and keep your heads low. If she’s set this up like most professional thieves, this was the trap for us to find. There will be at least two others.”
Limerence and I wedged ourselves in behind Taxi, moving at her back. Lim’s horn lit the hall a few meters ahead of us, but everything else was shrouded in darkness.
“Wait! Stop!” the librarian snapped.
My driver froze in her tracks.
“Look down. Nice and slow,” he murmured.
My driver’s eyes tilted down and she winced as she caught sight of the trip-wire snagged across the tip of her toe. She started to pull her hoof back, but Limerence barked, “No! Don’t move!”
“Why am I not moving?” she growled, under her breath.
“It’s wound spider-web. Very sticky. I haven’t seen such a thing in years, but...it’s attached to your hoof,” he explained, quietly getting down on his knees and tracing the glinting light of the string along the wall. “Favored trap of a group of Canterloatian artifact thieves. They were very good, back in the day. Very dead, now, but very good.”
Limerence licked his lips and made a soft ‘ah’ sound. His horn lit up and he carefully tugged the web off of Taxi’s hoof. “When the tension comes off, it will spring the trap. Back away...slowly.”
My driver took several very cautious steps away and let out a sigh of relief.
The the glow around Limerence’s horn vanished, leaving us in absolute darkness. A dozen somethings whistled by my nose, followed by a ‘twang’ as each one hit the wall and something else sprayed against my cheeks.
A torch flicked on and Taxi shone it around the walls, coming to a stop on a set of arrows buried in the wall where she’d been just moments before.
“Oooh, yikes," said Taxi. "That would have hurt. I was looking for arrow holes. Where’d they come from?”
Limerence pointed to the wall opposite. There were several tiny holes torn in the sheetrock. “I believe this hallway used to be a little bit bigger. Skylark installed drywall on either side and hid the launchers behind it. We’ll have to look for triggers, not for traps.”
We continued making our way carefully along the walls, inch by inch, with Taxi leading the way, shining her light on every surface. The end of the hallway was in sight when my driver turned the torch in that direction and there was a door off to one side, but a good fifteen meters of potentially trap-laden corridor stood between us and it.
It’s always the way with such things that you think you’re safe just as the final trap springs, so it was that we were less than a meter from the door when I heard a faint ‘click’.
I didn’t think. Thinking would have killed the lot of us.
I threw one leg around Limerence and grabbed Taxi’s tail in my teeth, yanking both of them backwards into a heap on the tiled floor.
The walls ahead and on both sides exploded inwards with an ear-shattering report as the drywall was destroyed by what felt like a grenade. Something grazed my neck and I heard Taxi let out a muffled yelp. Our flashlight flew out of her muzzle and the bulb popped as it hit the wall, leaving us once again in all-encompassing shadow.
Shadow and silence.
Then the cussing began.
“Arg, dammit, awful stupid stupid ahhh... ouch! Ouch! Ger’off me!”
Three hooves were planted firmly in my side and I flopped over, then scrambled backwards. “Sweets! Sweets, are you hurt?”
“Yes! Yes, I’m hurt, dammit! Ouch... ugh... I think... I think I’ve been shot,” she grunted, sounding more angry than pained.
Limerence’s horn flared and my eyes widened at the blood splashed across the tile. I followed the spray pattern up to my driver’s shoulder as she leaned against the wall, clutching one leg with the other.
Swift stuck her head into the hallway from the other end. “Sir! Sir, what was that?!”
“Taxi’s hurt, kid! Get me some bandages!” I shouted, crouching at my friend’s side and pressing one hoof to her shoulder, trying to stem the flow of blood.
“Oh shut up, Hardy,” she groaned, pushing me back. “It’s about half as bad as it looks. My fault. I stepped on a damn pressure plate. Ouch that smarts...”
My partner vanished for a minute, then returned with a whole roll of sterile gauze in her muzzle. She trotted into the hallway and dropped them into my waiting hooves, giving Taxi a worried look. I tore open the package with my teeth and reached for my driver’s foreleg.
She tugged it away and tried to stand, almost pitching onto her side again. Dropping back against the wall, she took a few deep breaths, then heaved herself up. “Oof... see? Not so bad.”
I responded by poking her in the knee, then throwing one foreleg under her chest as she predictably fell against me. “Yeah, not so bad. Sweets... we’re either doing this or you’re sidelined and you can go help Swift. No being Miss-Big-Britches.”
Taxi looked, for a moment, like she was going to fight me on the matter, then Limerence used his horn to pull the bandages away from me. “Magic is better suited to wrapping wounds. Allow me.”
Having never much cared for being fussed over, my driver was never going to take the treatment with good grace. She thrust her leg out and turned to face the wall.
Unrolling the bandage, the librarian hummed a jaunty tune as he examined the wound. “Buckshot. Lovely. We will need to take this to a professional healer, but it does look largely like a flesh wound. The shot is still inside, but we can remove that later. Detective, could you go make sure there aren’t any more surprises down there?”
“I want to see exactly what almost took our heads off, yeah,” I replied, then turned to my driver. “Sweets, I promise, if you’re a good patient I’ll buy you any sugary thing you want when we get out of here.”
Her eyes brightened a little. “Tiramisu from that place on Market Street with two scoops of chocolate cheesecake ice-cream covered in Mama Z’s Double-Death Super Fire hot-sauce?”
“You’re insane, but... yes.”
At that, my driver relaxed and raised her foreleg a little higher so Limerence could bandage it properly.
I realized Swift was still standing there behind me.
“Kid? What’s up?”
“Um... sorry, sir. Are you sure you-”
“Yes, kid. I promise, I’m fine.”
“Y-you’ve got some blood on your neck, sir. Miss Taxi didn’t bleed there…”
I put my hoof to my throat and felt the spot of dampness, but no wound. Not even a scratch.
“Probably a bullet grazed me. I’m okay. I promise.” I ruffled her hair with one hoof, then pointed back down the hall. “Go help the lawyer. Don’t kill her if you can avoid it.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“Oh, and check on Cerise. Do not forget to slap a restrictor ring on her, too.”
“But Lim said-”
“After what she did to those cultists, do you want to find out he was wrong?”
“No, sir,” she sighed, turning back to the temple.
“Hey, kid?” I said.
“Yes, sir?”
“I know things went bad. We had no way of knowing just how bad they were going to go,” I said, reaching out and putting my hoof on her shoulder. “You did beautifully... and we’re all alive, including Cerise.”
Swift stared at me for a long moment, then covered my hoof with hers. “I... I was really scared you’d died again. It’s going to take more than a pat on the back to make that okay, Sir.”
“Believe me, if I ever sleep again, I expect it will be with lots of nightmares. I intend to live long enough to have them, though. Stella will pick up our bar tab and probably pay for a therapist, too. Now, go on and lets do what we have to do to get out of here alive so we can have those nightmares.”
My partner wiped her eyes with the back of her hoof and gave me a weak nod. “I hate that you’re right, Sir.”
“That makes two of us.”
****
The trap was a simple, but pretty effective; Three shotguns were wired up behind the drywall, locked in place with frames and attached to a pressure plate which had replaced one of the floor tiles. They’d left enormous holes and bits of sheetrock all over the corridor. Six inches closer and we’d have been turned into pony-frappe.
It seemed very Daring Do, but really just the sort of thing that any idiot with a bit of nasty imagination could come up with. It was also slightly out of character for a unicorn, which was probably why it had almost worked.
Magical traps are relatively easy to construct and can be tuned not to go off on their owners. They can also be laid out reasonably quickly. They are the choice of most spell slingers when you back them into a corner.
Well planned mechanical traps require more time and effort, as well as some knowledge of your retreat path. That Skylark had chosen this particular direction to retreat in -- which appeared to be a dead-end -- did not bode well. She’d thought she might be attacked one day, and built herself an escape route.
As I stood there examining the holes with one of our extra flashlights, I became aware of a very faint sensation like the one I’d felt upstairs when Tourniquet was still juicing up Cerise; a tiny buzz right around the front of my brain.
I played the light over the door at the end of the hall on the left side. It looked like solid metal, but there was no lock or handle I could see. There was just a little sign: ‘High Security, Authorized Personnel Only’.
A unicorn door, then. Knowing Skylark and Sausurrea’s distaste for other species, that wasn’t especially surprising.
Transferring my torch to the crook of my hoof, I shouted, “Limerence! I need the pointy bit of your head!”
Taxi was back on her hooves with Limerence helping her along. Walking on three legs is harder than it sounds, but I’ll take that any day over what minotaurs have to put up with when they lose the use of one of their limbs.
“Detective, my horn is a noble symbol of a long, proud line of unicorns dating back to the pre-Classical-”
“Yeah, yeah, get over here and unlock this thing for the dumpy, not-at-all noble earth pony so I can do the actual work.” I nickered at him and poked at the door.
Turning his nose up, Limerence propped my limping driver up as they made their way down the hall. Taxi’s yellow fur was a streaky mess around the bandage wrapped around her foreleg, but the gauze was white and the bleeding seemed under control.
She glanced contemptuously at the remains of Skylark’s trap, then shook her head. “I can’t believe the bitch almost got me with that…”
“It could happen to anypony, Sweets. Are you good to fight if we have to?”
“Skylark tried to hold a shield spell under the effects of a Shock Rocker. I don’t think this will be too awful much of a fight with her horn exhausted. I’m going to stay back, but no way I’m letting you two walk in there by yourselves,” she replied, gritting her teeth and putting her weight on the injured limb. After a moment, she reared back and hefted her cannon so the strap hung on her uninjured shoulder, grabbing the string in her teeth and propping herself against the wall next to the door.
“You just remember you said that when it comes to counting eggs and chickens,” I murmured, joining her on the other side with my shotgun at the ready.
Limerence examined the door, then his horn’s magic played over the wall beside it. “This door is insulated against the arcane, but there is a weight and a counterweight behind this wall. A light tug on the counterweight and the door will slide open. I do not...detect a locking mechanism -- hence, I imagine, all those traps.”
“Then the door is trapped, or she’s got no reason to trap it. Damn.” I glared at the door, then backed up a couple of steps. “Alright, when this opens, I’m going in shotgun first. I’m not waiting on ‘surrender’. We’re only taking prisoners if I get a clean shot on her horn or legs. Sweets, be ready to hit any shield Skylark brings up with a kinetic round.”
“Already loaded!” she replied, patting her cannon.
“Detective, if Skylark knows combat magic adequate to bring up a shield, may I recommend...well, we should be ready if she happens to also know how create fireballs or something similar,” Limerence added.
“If you see a fireball coming, give it a good smack with your telekinesis. Might work.”
“That is not a tactical response, Detective!”
I shrugged and jerked my chin at the closed door. “Sure it is. You respond fast enough and we don’t catch fire. Now, are you ready?”
“Sadly, I cannot say I am anything but.” Limerence put a hoof over his eyes, then lifted his crossbow. “Please tell my father I held him in the highest regard even in death, and that I pray my brother makes a good leader for the Archivists, and that his tea tastes like the backside of a pig.”
“Will do. On my mark. Three... two... one!”