Starlight Over Detrot
Act 2, Chapter 36: In the Dark of the Night
Ponies go long ways to solve trivial problems, and along the way make monumental discoveries. The creator of the rainbow vacuum was trying to retrieve her keys from underneath a sofa and wound up inadvertently sucking the color out of her pegasus-made furniture, and what became the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 1000 was initially a device intended to deal with lawn squirrels.
This lends credence to the historians' theory that the developer of the spell core did so basically while trying to create a machine that could defuse nutritional disputes by mathematically determining and magically highlighting the exact center of a pizza.
A spell core is an object in a cubic shape that is a sort of cross between a calculating machine and a power source; essentially a self-casting and highly specific spell engine. Arcanelectric devices turn raw magical power into physical outcomes, but spell cores turn raw magical power into one or a few pre-set spells.
Spell cores are composed of a sensitive combination of arcane materials, unicorn sigils and zebra runes, and are expensive and difficult to make. The advantages of spell cores over direct casting, however, are that 1) it is possible to piece the spell together gradually rather than all at once and 2) it is possible to use alternate power sources. This combination allows for much more complex and powerful, if much less flexible, spellcasting than a unicorn could do by horn.
While smaller spell cores about a foot on a side can act as driving forces for things like vehicles and air conditioning units, larger spell cores are capable of greater feats, like the system powering the Detrot water sanitation system. Of course, magic being magic, this means that when a major spell-core goes wrong, the reality warping that occurs is proportionally greater. See: the space-hopping comic book shop's reality-generating printing press, the ice-cream shop refrigeration unit that occasionally caused passers by to melt, and the restaurant that appears just long enough for everypony to say 'Hey, let's go check out that new restaurant!' only to disappear the instant they try to find it.
Of course, when the spell core is intended to create a catastrophe, then it'll likely succeed one way or another.
-The Scholar
Thrilling.
I remember, when I was a foal, I used to think the life of a police pony was going to be thrilling. My father’s life certainly wasn’t, but he managed to make it sound wild and interesting. Most of the time, he was just out there issuing parking tickets. Sure, towards the end, he’d managed to get some heavier cases, but he had a condition the former Chief of Police couldn’t stand; he was entirely too honest. In the end, it was what got him killed.
I learned from my old stallion.
I learned to lie.
I learned to cheat.
You fight when it’s time and you fight when there are no other options. You fight when you can win.
It’s not thrilling, though. It’s terrifying, and the terror can become its own addiction.
I sleep in fear and I wake to fresh death, every morning. That’s my job, after all. Homicide is not where ponies who’re afraid of being afraid tend to lay their hats. Every day, I will see a pony who has died, or who may soon die. Every day, I may also die myself. For a long time I think there was a part of me hoping that would be today.
I had ponies trying to keep me alive, but it was only when death came for me and my driver somehow managed to yank me back over the edge that I started to appreciate the thrill that was living.
It’s a thrill apart from the terror.
It’s knowing you’ve got to walk away from whatever is in front of you today, so you can find out what happens next.
****
"She’s an alicorn!"
That’s really not the sort of thing you want to hear in any tactical situation. Most of the time, you don’t want to hear something like that, period. It’s nothing good when winged unicorns are involved.
I had only a glimpse into the room behind the door before I threw myself backwards, tumbling over my own rear legs into Taxi who didn’t have the benefit of all four limbs. She staggered backwards, dropping the P.E.A.C.E. cannon to hang around her stomach.
“Detective!” Limerence shouted, cocking his crossbow. “What is it?”
“She’s a damned alicorn! We’ve got to get out of here!” I barked, grabbing my driver by the hoof and throwing her free leg over my shoulders, helping her down the hallway.
“Astral Skylark?!”
“Yes!”
I expected death by incineration, or possibly just vaporization. If I was lucky, I might make it a few more meters down the hall before it came.
In that room, I’d seen death.
Lesson zero, rule zero; Know when you’re outclassed.
Lesson zero, rule one; Never fight an alicorn.
I hauled Taxi along with me as we made our retreat. If my bladder control had been even a little less trained, I think I’d have lost it just then. After all, I’d seen her; Skylark, hanging over an altar built out of some kind of machinery. She hung there on great, feathered wings, her horn burning with mighty spell-fire. In such circumstances, panicked running is about the only response that might save your life.
It wasn’t until I’d gone a dozen steps that I realized I could only hear two sets of hoofsteps. Limerence wasn’t behind me.
I peered over my shoulder and saw him standing there, his head out in the doorway, bathed in the pearly glow of Skylark’s magic.
“Limerence! What are you doing?!” I snapped.
“Detective, you may wish to come see this,” he said, quietly.
A second voice rang down the hallway. “Survived, did you, Detective? I’m glad! Do as your little Archivist says! Come! Come and see! Come and witness!”
Skylark’s voice.
“Hardy…" Taxi whispered, nosing my neck. "If she’s an alicorn, then we should already be dead. We'd be piles of smoldering ash back in the ritual room. So... Why aren’t we?”
That was an awfully good question; one whose answer I felt certain I wouldn’t like.
I pulled Taxi around with me as I turned back towards the room. She was right. She was right, and though sanity dictated I grab Swift and Limerence then head for the exit, there were questions unanswered. The mare who could answer them was right there.
“Sweets... are you with me?” I said, softly.
“What do you mean? It’s not like I can run all that fast with a busted-”
“No, I need to know. Are you with me? If we go back there…”
“Hardy, I’m always with you. I might want to snap your neck now and then, but I’m here. Can we get this over with, so I can either go to a comfortable grave or get this bullet out of my leg?”
I gave her a crooked smile, then heaved her unhurt knee a bit higher on my shoulders and carried her towards destiny. Limerence was still waiting just outside the room, his horn glittering as the ambient magic made all of our ears hum. He glanced at me, then nodded towards the High Security room.
I gently set Taxi down and took a deep breath to steady my shaken nerves.
“Alright. I’m coming in!” I called out.
“Yes, Detective! Come and see the glory!” she replied, sounding far too pleased with herself for my taste.
It still took every ounce of gumption in my considerable reserves to step around that corner. Picking up my shotgun’s trigger, I held it for a moment, then let it drop. How much would that matter against an alicorn?
Granted, she’d still fallen under the Shock Rocker. The weapons tester who designed those probably hadn’t had the Princesses in mind when he was determining how much damage they could do to a shield spell, but maybe we’d gotten lucky and she couldn’t simply fry us at her leisure.
Why, then, didn’t she just kill us all when it would have been convenient? I thought.
Curiosity killed the cat, they say. I find it more likely that curiosity will one day maim the stupid Detective, then leave him to suck his last few breaths through punctured lungs before dying un-mourned in a gutter somewhere.
Nothing for it.
I stepped out into the light coming through the doorway and stared up at a sight that left my bowels watery.
Astral Skylark, the Arroyo’s ‘Devil wid horn and wings’, floated behind a gently shimmering magical shield above a bank of switches, toggles, and controls. In front of it, a broad, flat transformer looked like it’d been converted into an altar of some kind. A huge web-work of wire spilled down the sides that seemed to have been torn from inside the guts of the mechanism. It was laid out on the floor in what appeared to be some kind of pattern, but I couldn’t make any sense of it.
A clinical analysis of the situation was only doing so much to quell my instinctive urge to run like my tail was on fire.
There’s something wired into the modern equine mind that thinks of alicorns with a sort of holy terror. Sure, the Princesses make regular television appearances, but there is a very real difference between knowing there are beings which can raise and lower stellar bodies, and being in the presence of one.
Still, once I was there, I couldn’t help gawking like a foal who has found himself in the lair of a dragon.
My eyes were drawn to Skylark’s wings, which were a strange, opalescent red that contrasted badly with her pelt, but they were gigantic and filled the little control room from wall to wall. Arcs of enchanted lightning leapt off the shield and I could feel all the fur on my body beginning to stand on end.
Her robe lay discarded on the floor beside the altar, which was covered in bits of paper, half-burnt candles, and what I took at first for miscellaneous religious garbage. Centered between them, directly below Skylark, there was a framed picture of a smiling Princess Luna. Below it, a cube of some kind of metallic looking rock was gently glowing with what appeared, on first examination, to be a star field of some kind. Several of the wires had been hooked up to it and at regular intervals it pulsed with barely restrained energies.
The high priestess herself wore one of those insufferably serene and altogether self-satisfied expressions I’ve come to hate. Taxi is very good at them when she’s miffed, and they tend to mean bad things are in my immediate future.
“Ahhh...welcome! Come in, now! All of you, my little ponies.” Skylark swept her hooves towards her chest, but there was something awkward about the motion. I couldn’t quite figure what it was.
Limerence filed in behind me, his crossbow resting against his side as Taxi came in after him and joined me. My driver had her cannon clutched in her injured leg, but she was doing her very best to walk normally. Her teeth were grinding together so hard they squeaked as she moved.
As she looked up at Skylark, I smelled a scent that was all too familiar to a pony who knows Taxi for any length of time; fury.
“My little ponies, I am so glad to finally meet you in my proper, unhidden form,” Skylark purred, swinging back and forth a little bit behind the shield.
The distantly analytical part of my mind that wasn’t occupied with thoughts of impending death finally realized just what was bothering me about her position. She wasn’t flapping her wings and her horn must have been channeling every ounce of magic into keeping that shield up.
So how is she floating? I thought, a frown tugging at the corners of my mouth. My animal hindbrain kept trying to drag me back towards ‘paralytic fear’, but the rational part of my mind was mulling over that question and didn’t have time for screaming and wetting itself.
“You have come at... an inconvenient time, but I was close to my ascension. So close! I can feel it now,” she chuckled. It grew into a hysterical giggle that turned, after a few seconds, into a shriek. Taxi and I took a couple of cautious steps back as a bolt of some form of energy coiled itself off the altar and jumped from the cables, exploding up her legs like a fast moving snake of light to her horn. It left a streak of bare, reddened flesh on her hide with its passing and the shield shrank an inch or two, then flashed back in place.
I could smell charred fur, but Skylark’s laughter seemed to redouble as she cackled at some joke the rest of us weren’t privy to.
“Everything... everything I was promised will come true! I will be beside my Princess... my queen!” Skylark was lost in her own little world, her eyes rolling back in her head as she jiggled about in the air.
I felt a warm body press against my side and turned, expecting to find Taxi there. Instead, Limerence was leaning close to my ear. He whispered, “Detective, look at her wing joints.”
Tilting my head back, I squinted at Skylark’s wings, tracing their length up to where they met her shoulders, then further on to where they flared open. I missed it on the first pass, but on the second, I saw what Limerence was talking about; she had a ring of some dull metal that was painted the same color as her red plumage sunk directly through the musculature of the wing itself. A thin cable of some kind ran from both wings up towards the ceiling, disappearing into the complex machinery that comprised the roof of the control room.
All at once, my fear vanished like somepony had thrown a bucket of cold water on it. She was tied up there. No magic. Just a simple, improvised flight rig and some masochistic tendencies.
The fury which I’d kept in check for the last hour mostly with the need to act was coming back. My jaw tightened.
“Lady, you are a whole heap of crazy…” I growled, taking a couple of steps forward, “...and I want some answers!”
“Oh, Detective... you think you know what is going on, don’t you? I was going to let those fools in the other room bear witness here in a matter of weeks, but this is so much better!” Skylark smiled, her horn flashing repeatedly as more of the power from the altar spiraled around her legs. This time she barely flinched as it struck her horn. “You will go forth from here, and tell of my glory! A pony who was once my enemy will tell the truth far more convincingly than a simpering sycophant.”
Crazy religious zealot she might be, but I had the feeling there were more than a few cards yet to be played. I really wanted to shoot her, but that damn shield looked awfully solid for a spell cast by somepony who’d been hit with a Shock Rocker not more than a half hour ago.
“There’s no way out of this room besides through us. We’ve got Tourniquet holding the door upstairs and Cerise had a little tantrum after you stuck her with that sword. Your followers are dead, restrained, or too spaced out to help you. Come on down and I promise you’ll live long enough to get to a prison cell.”
Skylark listened patiently until I was finished. Her nasty little smile never budged an inch.
“You have such a way with words, Detective,” she said, grinning condescendingly. “But... I’m afraid I must decline your generous offer. I am surprised the girl lived, but that was always a possible side effect. She’ll be dead soon anyway-”
“We brought a cure for your zebra poison, too,” Taxi snapped, angrily. “The girl you murdered a month ago was chock full of helpful information, by the way! Her and the Professor!”
Skylark raised one eyebrow and smirked at my driver. “You’ve a little fire in you, haven’t you? I didn’t kill Sister Blue or the heretic at the Museum. Sister Blue stole from me, yes, but I wasn’t the one who pulled that particular trigger. Oh, I would have, don’t get me wrong. She was such a juicy little thing. Her horn would have gone beautifully towards the great work...but I never claimed it. She escaped from the preparation chamber, no less.”
“Wait, how... who killed her, then?! Are you saying she was going to be a sacrifice?!” Taxi sputtered.
“Honestly, I’ve no idea the identity of her actual killer. My patrons handled that, though they were... unable to recover my property. I am curious how she managed to steal from me and escape the arcane bonds, however,” Skylark said, running her tongue over her lips in a way that had me envisioning a tiger licking its chops. “I would also know where my property is now. I suppose I will have to rip how that from your minds, when my ascension is complete. You will make a good prophet to tell the ponies out there of my magnificence, Detective. Once I have broken your will, of course.”
I didn’t like she way she said that in an almost musing fashion, like it was simply on her ‘to-do’ list. My cutie-mark had started to ache, too, which wasn’t an especially good sign.
“I’ve no idea what your ‘property’ is, but you’re not getting out of this room except in cuffs,” I replied, snatching up my trigger.
Skylark snickered at that, covering her muzzle with one hoof. “Oh, Detective, I do like you. That trick at the museum was very clever, by the way. Not since my days in the Canterlot Thieves' Guild have I ever seen a more dogged pursuer than yourself. Not since the night I left that wretched city with my Lady’s voice burning in my mind. So many ponies have given themselves to my labors. So many lost souls, given purpose.”
Taxi snarled, suddenly, throwing herself forward and slamming her good hoof against the shield. It contracted slightly under the impact, but gave no sign it was going to fail. “Those ponies trusted you! You could have...you could have been a symbol for something better for this city!”
The priestess flashed a slightly pouty smile. “I do wish you could live to see what I will soon accomplish here. With my Queen by my side, there will be nothing ponykind cannot achieve. Celestia has held us back for far too long!”
I stepped up and grabbed my driver’s tail, tugging her backwards from the shield before one of those arcs of stray lightning could toast her alive.
“If I may, Miss Skylark... what purpose did these sacrifices serve?” Limerence waved his hoof at the altar, then at Skylark herself.
“Is it not obvious, librarian?” A soft glow suffused the joints of her wings, forcing them to flex against the cables and lifting her a little higher in the air.
Limerence’s jaw fell open and he glanced in my direction, though he was still speaking to Skylark. “You are… attempting to achieve Regis Filia Ascendere…”
“For those of us who don’t speak dead Equestrian languages?” I asked, batting Lim in the hip with my toe.
“Ascension. Ascension to Royalty,” he murmured. “She’s not an alicorn. She’s attempting to become one. Those wings must be... some... element of the transformation, but she has not reached it yet.”
Taxi drew back. “That’s...that’s impossible! Even the Princesses themselves don’t know for certain what causes ascension! If they did, they’d never tell the public!”
“Did you believe I was lying when I said Princess Luna spoke to me?” Skylark laughed. “I heard her voice! I heard the explosion of secrets all wrapped up inside it!” Her voice dropped low as she let the magic around her wings fade. “They do not speak like us, you know. They speak with ideas!”
I had to take a moment to processes that. Taxi was less restrained.
“You’re... you’re mad!” she exclaimed, stepping too hard on her damaged hoof. Her rear legs went out from under her and she fell onto her rump, but made no attempt to rise as she stared up at the creature hanging above us.
“At one time, yes,” the priestess agreed. “My patrons found me, crazed and broken by the power of my Lady’s voice in my mind. They gave me the insight to see those ideas for the voluminous wisdom they are! No more the weak, pitiful thief stealing for the rich! They gave me...purpose!”
Glancing around the room, I tried to get some idea of what the machinery might be doing. There were a number of dials along one wall, but every one of them that had a needle was buried in the red.
“Limerence,” I said very softly, hoping the distortion effect of the shield would keep her from being able to hear exactly what I said. “Can you hear me?”
He covered a nod with a not at all subtle scratch on the ear. .
“Start trying to figure out what she’s done to the machine. We’ll keep her talking.”
"Believe me, I'm already trying to figure that out." Limerence sat, pushing his glasses up his nose as he began scanning the bundles of wires and the read-outs along the nearest wall.
I raised my voice and addressed Skylark. “Who exactly are these ‘patrons’ of yours? If I’m supposed to be serving you here when you’re done cooking, it might be good for me to know.”
“Hah! I doubt they wish their names read in public! Thankfully, you have given me just the excuse I needed. I have no reason to wait on the beneficence of my patrons to allow me to take the final steps. I’ve had the power I needed for some weeks… but it will require, like so many things, a sacrifice!”
Limerence’s eyes widened as he poked at one of the dials near us. He spoke quickly, too excited to keep his voice low. “Detective, I believe I may have... some idea of what she’s done.”
“Oh, the librarian has figured it out! Excellent!” Skylark gestured for him to go on. “Please, do tell my prophet what I have done.”
Genuine fright wasn’t something I was used to seeing in the droll stallion’s eyes. He licked his suddenly very dry lips and turned to look at me.
“Detective, I could be wrong, but I believe... I believe Miss Skylark has somehow reversed the power matrix which typically absorbed power and channels it to Tourniquet. The energies are pumping here instead. Not only that, but she’s...exponentially multiplied the influx.”
“Equestrian, Lim!”
“She’s somehow removed part of the safety system and installed a spell core.”
“You mean like the one in my cab?” Taxi asked, looking a tad confused.
“Similar, yes, though I believe this to be a very... different... kind of spell. This is set to draw from all sources at maximum capacity. Once it reaches critical input, it will overwhelm the control circuits and... cast the spell.”
I couldn’t keep the nervousness out of my tone. “Which means?!”
“It means, if I read this correctly, that it will establish a direct conduit to anything that’s feeding magic... and empty all of those sources... here. Into that.” He pointed at the cube sitting on the altar.
Now and then, my brain actually manages to break through the haze of debilitating emotional issues and alcoholism onto a fresh plane of understanding. Unfortunately, this rarely happens when I’m in a place to celebrate.
“The source would be... wait. You mean everypony in the whole city wearing one of those robes-” I began.
“Yes, Detective,” Limerence said, glancing at Skylark for confirmation. “She’s going to tear every scrap of magic out of the entire Lunar Passage. Minds. Bodies. Souls. Anything that contains even one iota of magic.”
“Is... is that possible?” Taxi stammered.
The Archivist waved a hoof at the control room dubbed ‘High Security’. “This construct is designed to steal magic from dragons. I am not even prepared to comment on what is possible with it.” He frowned and turned back to the priestess. “I am curious, though. Even a spell core requires a buffer of some kind; a place to put all of that magic while it’s fed through an enchantment. What, exactly, are you using to keep this all from simply exploding?”
“A sacrifice,” Skylark replied with a dismissive shrug. I winced as a bit of blood began to leak from around the rings holding her wings in place, although she didn’t seem to notice. “My patrons asked only that I provide them with occasional sacrifices. The rest are mine. I will pay my debts once my ascension is complete. In the meantime...they serve.”
If I’d thought, for a moment, my brain was incapable of absorbing worse horrors without simply shutting off, Astral Skylark was about to prove me wrong. Her horn squirted a stream of lightning onto the back of the shield, illuminating the rear wall of the control room.
“Oh... my... Celestia…”
I’m not sure which of us said that. To this day, I don’t know.
I felt my knees turn immediately to jelly and my heart, to ice. Worst of all, the pain in my cutie-mark vanished almost entirely.
****
In all my years of working a beat in the Detrot Police Department, I’d been unlucky enough to stumble into more than a few truly bad places. Juniper and I had certainly found our fair share of dark things. That guy who’d eaten his next door neighbor’s marefriend. The Whistling Death. The Pastry Cannibal Killer.
There’s always a low level buzz. You know the injustice is there. At least, I do. I know it’s out there and my back-end knows it’s there. Some people call it police work by the seat of your flank. It’s that, with a dash of good old-fashioned non-specific magic thrown in.
My cutie-mark knows when true evil is just around the corner, and it knows when there’s blood on somepony’s hooves, so when I’m in Detrot it perpetually hums, keeping me awake nights until I resort to drink or sleeping pills. It hurts like a sunburn, or a raging fire, or a fresh slap, until that moment when all is revealed. In Detrot, the pain is never completely gone. I usually just tune it out.
I suppose some bit of me has always chased the crime foul enough to shut it up entirely, once I managed to solve it.
The smarter parts my damaged psyche hoped I’d never find it.
****
Bones.
Dozens upon dozens of bones.
Some were wing bones. Others were hooves. There were plenty of horns interspersed with them. Each bone was wound with silver electrical wire and affixed to the wall at regular intervals in some very precise pattern whose purpose I couldn’t quite divine. It looked vaguely like an eye.
The number of dead there, assuming each bone represented a single pony, must have been huge. I tried sixty, and that number tasted low. I tried a hundred and that was, perhaps, too high. Once a tragedy reaches numbers like that, it’s impossible to really count them with any individual attachment. They are just ‘the dead’. You tally them up and those who live get to make judgements about how many more to add to that number before the world is clean again.
The wall was covered in bones and I felt a shiver of certainty starting to crawl about in my stomach.
It was a killing shiver. The kind you feel when the cold of the night creeps in and there is no hope to warm you. Dozens had died for the madness of Astral Skylark.
“You... lied... to everypony,” Taxi said, softly. I glanced at her and saw hot tears coursing down her face. Her jaw was shaking with inner tension. “You could have been what helped rebuild this city.”
Skylark sighed, indulgently. “I will still rebuild it. There is a fire coming and it was a lie to save hundreds of thousands. Celestia has been on the throne long enough. She can’t protect us anymore. The Crusades showed that.”
“So, what? You butcher hundreds and then think the ponies of this country will forgive you?” my driver snarled.
“They will never know the sacrifice of their brethren. Celestia wanted peace with the dragons from the start, and how many died for her peace? A new leader is needed. With Luna beside me, even the dragons will bow! And who knows?” She waved a hoof over her shoulder at the rows of body-parts nailed to the wall. “With the power of an alicorn, I might even be able restore these ponies to life. Celestia never ages. She keeps the secrets of long life from us. She kept her sister imprisoned for a thousand years for the simple crime of wanting appreciation. There was never any proof of the so-called ‘Nightmare Moon’. Just the story. Just Celestia’s story.”
“Your slaughter is ending here! You’ve killed enough ponies,” Taxi declared, fiercely.
“You’re one to talk, Officer Sweet Shine,” Skylark chuckled.
My driver fell back a step.
“Oh, yes! I know who you are. Did you know, the Jewelers still tell the story of how you lost your cutie-marks?” the dangling mare crowed. “They tell it with respect!”
I gave Taxi a confused look and she shook her head, then turned back to Astral. Skylark caught that little exchange and snickered like a hyena who’d heard a good joke. “Oh? Did you never tell your friends what you did? You never told them what you did to your partner?”
“S-shut up!” my driver snapped. The tears on her face were dripping off her chin as she stared up at the high priestess.
For an instant, I saw that filly almost thirty years ago, her sides covered in blood, and her father’s hoof slowly crushing her skull as she flailed against inexorable and oncoming death. She was, in that moment, helpless.
I took a deep breath, looking up at the mare behind the shield; the crazy, awful bitch who’d murdered pony after pony, and for what? Something impossible.
“You’ve got one chance, lady. Lower the shield and everypony walks out of here alive tonight,” I growled, leaning down to pick my trigger up again.
“Detective... Only one of us has time for idle threats,” Skylark replied, glancing sideways at a control panel on which a red light was flashing. “You’ve got minutes. I’ve got millenia.”
Limerence sucked a breath as he looked over the read-outs. More red lights had come on, along with a wide selection of other colors, all of which suggested extreme danger. “She’s at least partly right. The system is almost at critical. I'm not used to having to alter my judgement to compensate for mortal terror, Detective, so forgive that this will not be my most precise analysis, but I believe that the best case and most likely scenario is that this haphazard collection of pony parts and power detonates and kills everyone in the building, us and Skylark included.”
"...That's the best case scenario?! What's the worst?!"
"It tears reality open like a cheap tissue and destroys Detrot entirely. Or it works as intended. I am in a somewhat poor state to make a comparative value judgement on the two just now."
I was about to reply, when my driver spoke.
Her voice was soft. Dangerously soft.
Soft like a blade between ribs. Soft like the touch of the bullet that passed through my chest. Soft like a final breath.
“I’m sorry, Miss Skylark,” she whispered.
“Pardon me, girl? I didn’t catch that.” Skylark cupped a hoof around her ear.
“I wish I could be... kinder,” she replied, wiping at her nose with the back of one fetlock. “I guess... I guess I really am just Daddy’s little girl.”
“Oh?” The priestess tilted her head, looking slightly uncertain for the first time since we’d entered the room.
“Sweets… what're you talking about?” I asked, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.
Taxi looked over at me and smiled. “Hardy, I promise, one of these days, I’ll tell you... Right now, when I say, you shoot that shield, okay?”
She hefted her cannon, feeding a shell into the slot on the underside.
Limerence gave me a slight nudge, then pointed at the floor at Skylark’s hooves. An irregular, boxy shape lay there.underneath the edge of her robe. It was just inside the perimeter of the shield and a thin cord ran out of the back of it.
I chewed uncertainly on my bit, then braced myself.
Skylark rolled her eyes as glittering energies chased their way around her ankles, spreading out between the feathers of her wings. “You’re just going to deafen yourselves, you know. My powers are growing, second by second! Soon, my transformation will be finished and this country... this world... will have a new Princess!”
Taxi took careful aim at Skylark’s face.
“Hardy! Now!”
I swept my coat back from my shotgun and hauled hard on the trigger. My already aching eardrums felt like they’d been poked with hot needles, and I thought briefly that I’d just rendered myself permanently deaf as the shockwave bounced around inside the tiny room. A half second later, the P.E.A.C.E. cannon fired, and my head began to ring like a fire alarm with a hangover.
My buckshot exploded against the shield, spitting molten lead in all directions as the fat slug from Taxi’s kinetic round hit it and cracks formed around the edges. The blasted shield simply contracted, shrinking several inches until the damage vanished.
Skylark’s smile widened.
I had time to think we’d failed.
I had time to think we were all going to die screaming as a crazy alicorn or a magical fire scoured the flesh off of our bones.
I had the time, and I’m thankful my driver was using it to some more intelligent enterprise.
Taxi threw herself face first on the carpet, sliding forward until she was underneath the priestess, on top of the suddenly unprotected blue robe. Tearing back the cloth, she snatched up the boxy object with the cord attached in both hooves. It had three buttons on it; one red, one green, one blue. Down, Up, and Stop.
The priestess’s eyes bugged out and she swung her rear hooves, trying to kick my driver. “No...no, wait! What are you doing? Stop it!”
Slamming her toe down on the green button, Taxi shut her eyes and hugged the box to herself as tight as she could. Somewhere above us, machinery started to grind against itself. Skylark’s horn fired a little more brightly, and my driver was enveloped with a brilliant glow, forcing her forelegs open a couple of inches.
Then the light died.
Astral Skylark began to shriek.
Mortal agony sounds very particular. I’m thankful I’d only heard such a noise once before in my life. It’s a flavor of pain a person never forgets the sound of.
Her voice rose and rose, until her vocal chords tore, and still she screamed as the metal cables attached to her wings drew taut. They lifted her higher still, and I could hear the sound of bones beginning to creak against one another. The wires holding her up pulled at the iron rings with all the inexorable stupidity of an automated mechanism.
Her shield exploded into fragments of light that vanished almost immediately.
Limerence hefted his crossbow, readying a bolt to make sure she couldn’t cast again.
“Taxi!” I shouted, trying to be heard over the machine and Skylark’s cries of torment. “The shield is down! Turn it off!”
My driver didn’t move.
She didn’t even acknowledge she’d heard me. Her eyes were still tightly closed.
Her legs clutched more tightly around the control box.
“D-Detective! S-stop her! Pleee-!” The priestess’s plea devolved into another shrill, tortured squeal as she pawed at the air with all four legs, unable even to bounce to relieve the pressure.
I shut my eyes.
Call me a coward, but I didn’t need that image burned into my mind for all of time. My imagination has enough awful things to haunt me with in the wee hours of the morning. I didn’t need to see another pony torn limb from limb in my life. The screams, the sounds of shattering bone, and the ripping of flesh were definitely plenty.
A hot rain soaked my face, followed by the stomach churning stink of freshly spilt blood. Bits of solid matter hit a second later, and I swallowed, quietly, holding my breath against the smell.
The machinery was still humming and the intense magical fields sent pulses of color flickering behind my eyelids, but for several long seconds, there was a deathly silence in the tiny control room.
I let my eyes slide open and took in the scene. I expected a bit of nausea, or maybe some anger. Possibly even a little bit of disgust or revulsion.
It was strange. I felt nothing. I couldn’t conjure one single emotion that felt right.
Taxi still lay on the floor, but she’d gone almost entirely limp and was just sprawled there with one hoof gently resting on the control box’s ‘stop’ button. Viscera was spread liberally across her body, making her yellow fur a burnt orange. Her mane had things best not thought about in it, but her expression was quietly peaceful.
She released the control box, and one eye rolled back to find my face. A tiny, distressing smile perked at the sides of her mouth.
I found myself unable to look at her, instead glancing about until I found the body of Astral Skylark.
She was hung against one wall by the remaining iron rings and a few tendrils of muscle. Part of her was, anyway. Her other wing had torn free, taking a considerable portion of her spine and ribcage with it, while its twin was still loosely attached to her remains. Whatever machinery she’d been using to keep herself aloft wasn’t built with lots of care and attention to user safety.
I began unconsciously wiping at my chest, trying to get some of the sticky entrails off, then stopped and looked at my hoof when I realized just how pointless that was.
Still, I felt nothing.
“Detective!”
A voice spoke far off. My ears were still not operating properly after the dual gunshots in the little room.
“Yes, Lim?” I asked, glancing over at the frantic librarian as he pulled at my coat with his horn. His face was bloody, but it didn’t seem to be his.
“Detective, rouse yourself! We must turn this system off! It is overloading!”
The fear in his thin face brought me largely back to reality. I shook my head, then put a hoof to my temple. The migraine waiting to pounce finally decided the time was right and landed squarely between my eyes.
“Oog...yeah, yeah. Sorry.” I blinked a few times, trying to clear the fog that’d settled over my thoughts. I became aware of more alarming beeps, boops, and hisses coming from the surrounding machinery. “Right, just...just give me a minute here. What do we need to do?”
“Start by decreasing internal pressures!” he shouted, taking the wall with Skylark attached to it. His horn glowed as he began yanking lever.
I juddered into motion, then looked at the rows of levers along the wall. “Uh...right. First things first, a degree in magical engineering,” I mumbled, then called out, “What internal pressures?!”
“Anything that says ‘pressure’ on it!”
“That’s not a technical solution, Lim!”
“I’m out of technical solutions. We’re minutes from a total overload!”
“Alright, give me a second before we blow ourselves to kingdom come.” I poked at my mane until the ladybug hidden there zipped out and twirled around in front of me. “Queenie, I need you to talk to Tourniquet. Give her eyes on what we’re doing and try to keep the corpse out of sight. Same as before. One buzz for yes, two for no.”
I scanned the dials until I found one that said ‘Arcane Feedback Flow Regulator Pressure’ That needle was so far in the ‘danger’ side that it was almost off the readout. Grabbing the associated lever in my teeth, I waited. One solid buzz. I pulled the lever until the buzzing stopped, then moved on to the next one. ‘Compressed Non-Causality Control Pressure Switch’, Switch to off. ‘Safety Control For Secondary Shunt’, switch from off to on.
So it went, me reading out the dials I didn’t know the purpose of and the ladybug quickly relaying the information back and forth between Tourniquet, Limerence, and I. I wondered just how much of what we were doing Tourniquet actually understood, particularly when a bolt popped out of a pipe at high speed and nearly took Lim’s head off. We worked back and forth across the systems for what felt like a very long time, but gradually, the alarms and sounds of mechanical pain and distress started to fade.
Taxi still hadn’t moved from her place on the floor, but she’d managed to push herself into a sitting position. The bandage on her shoulder was soaked in blood, and she looked a bit woozy, but that slightly creepy smile was still on her face.
With one final twist of a wheel, I slumped over the controls, panting heavily. “There...ugh. Please...please tell me that’s the last... one.”
The ladybug danced a little mid-air jig and let out one gloriously affirmative buzz. I laughed, then I coughed, then I decided moving was a bit too ambitious, and just lay there for several seconds, trying to breathe.
My chest hurt. I was exhausted. My left foreleg was tingling slightly. Right, nothing good there.
You need power, dimwit, a quiet voice whispered in my head.
First and foremost, however, I needed to go see if my driver was insane or if I was going to need to call another cab.
“Taxi... Taxi, are you alright?” I asked, heaving myself back to my hooves and stumbling towards her. My back right leg wasn’t working properly and the knee refused to hold my weight. The edges of my vision started to blur a little, but I could still make out a yellow shape just a meter or two in front of me. I just needed to keep moving.
A firm foreleg slid across my chest and I collapsed against it, letting it lower me to the floor.
Okay, so moving was probably still a bit ambitious.
‘Celestia, my head feels... heavy,’ I thought. Thinking itself was starting to become a real problem.
“I’m... I’m here, Hardy,” a voice said from somewhere above me. It was an awfully nice voice.
The sounds faded for a few seconds. I only picked up bits and pieces, as soft, friendly darkness began to creep inside my head. It was lovely, really.
“Here, lemme see if…”
“Oh goodness, I do believe it’s still operating-”
“The spell core is drawing power towards critic-”
“-we don’t shut it down, it’ll kill him and everypony on this floor-”
“What if we-”
“Limerence! Drag that extension cord over-!”
“Officer Cuddles, hold him!”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my surprisingly long life, it’s that nothing nice lasts terribly long. I caught that last bit an instant before my eyes flew open and I felt like ice cold knives were being shoved into my hooves.
“Uncle! Uncle!” I gasped, jerking upright. “Mercy! Mercy, dammit! I give! I surrender! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!”
It was not the most dignified re-awakening, but then, I’d never been good at waking up with dignity. Slumped in a pool of vomit, I can do. I’m still working up to ‘dignity’.
Limerence’s thin face, complete with curious expression, greeted my eyes as I found him standing above me. How had he gotten up there? I wasn’t sure.
The librarian’s vest was open down the front, and he wore a stethoscope with two funny prongs on the end that were attached to his horn rather than into his ears; they reminded me strangely of voltage testers. The very chilly business end was running over my chest.
“Ah... hmmm... I’m surprised that worked. I half expected his heart to ignite…” he commented, then pulled the stethoscope away and spoke to somepony out of my range of vision. I realized I was laying on my back. When had that happened? “Changelings are such durable creatures. I should like the opportunity one day to dissect one. Officer Cuddles, you can disconnect him now. I believe the spell core has stabilized somewhat, although we will still need to dispose of it.”
Something went ‘pop’ and I felt my chest pouch zipped closed, then Swift appeared. I had to resist the urge to hug the life out of her. She looked terrified, but determined as she coiled my heart-plug cord around her hoof.
“Sir?”
I blinked a couple of times, then heaved over onto my side. I was still in the ‘High Security’ control room. Drying blood still soaked the floor and walls. Skylark’s corpse was gone, but a white sheet covered an indistinct mass which was laying on the altar.
“What got me this time?” I asked, trying to scrape a bit of something I didn’t want to identify off the edge of my coat.
“Skylark’s spell core,” Limerence replied cooly, gesturing at the lump of glowing metal sitting on the altar. “My fault, I suppose. With the drain from all other sources shutting down, Miss Skylark’s spell core attempted to find a fresh source of power. You were the... how shall we say... juiciest morsel in the room.”
“But I thought it could only steal magic from ponies with those robes on,” Swift said.
“I would have said something similar, but it nearly sucked the life out of him earlier from but a moment’s contact with one catalyst. Spell cores frequently have a taste for a particular flavor of energy. This one-” He flicked the side of the cube and it let out a discordant clang. “-seems to like the magic of life itself, which the Detective’s heart is chock full of. Intent being what it is where ponies modifying arcanotechnology is concerned, I’m certain the original designers of Miss Taxi’s cab didn’t intend that core to blast lightning every time she taps the accelerator, either.”
“Yeah, but... what is the spell core? I mean, what’s it supposed to do?”
“That will require some examination, I’m afraid. Examination we have little time for. I need to begin the procedure of reconnecting the safety mechanisms and see if I can restore the construct’s control systems. The damage does not look extensive."
“But wait... how’d you save me, then?” I asked, looking around for the wall plug they’d used to keep my heart going.
“Ah... well, we simply connected you to the spell core,” he answered, levitating up one end of a cable that had my heart plug spliced onto the end of it. The cord led up onto the altar itself and disappeared into the back of the cube of rune-covered metal. “We needed some means of shorting it out. A feedback loop using your body was our best option, considering it was draining from you, specifically. We simply allowed it to charge your heart, and the remaining energy was fed into the...mmm-” He paused and cocked his chin in the direction of the wall of bones. “-buffers. After a few minutes, the spell core hadn’t enough power to continue casting its own power draining spell. It was just an unorthodox application of the first law of conservation of magic. I am most pleased it worked.”
“My... body was the... best option?!” I growled, menacingly, taking a step towards the librarian.
Limerence was completely unfazed. “You were either going to be dead and save the lives of everypony on this floor, or there was a chance it might charge your heart and save everypony on this floor, yourself included. Or you’d have been dead along with everypony else. Find me a scenario worse than the original.”
I admit, he had me there, but I was gradually developing something of a complex regarding ponies experimenting with anything that could cause my heart to burst. That several had done so within the month was probably a fine testament to just how deep in the horse-apples I was.
I felt a prickle of worry as I realized something was wrong, aside the willingness of my companions to channel unknown voltages through my cardiological system. .
“Hey... wait a second.” I quickly counted the ponies in the room. In my advanced state of exhaustion, it took more than one attempt. “Where’s Taxi?”
“Um… she… errr...” Swift paused, her wings tucking a little tighter to her sides.
“Kid, I doubt there is anything my driver can do right now that’s going to make me any angrier than I already am with her,” I said, nodding in the general direction of the body of Astral Skylark. “Now, where is she?”
“T-trust me, Sir, if I was just scared about you being angry at her, I would totally tell you.”
“Thanks for that. Speak. Where has she gone off to?”
“S-she... she went back to the temple a couple of minutes ago saying something about...about getting a...a fire-axe...”
I groaned and started for the door. “Was she looking ‘serene’ or ‘pissed’?”
“Um... she looked really, really angry,” Swift replied.
My shoulders relaxed. “Ahhh, alright then. No problem. If you ever see her get all peaceful, you make for damn sure you shoot her. Leg or knee, preferably, but anywhere that’ll put her down without killing her. Otherwise, she’ll probably just take it out on an inanimate object, a whiskey bottle, or me.”
“Y-yes, Sir,” she answered, her eyes darting over towards Skylark’s corpse as it lay on the altar beside the spell core. “Did... did she do... that?”
Something in the way she said that brought me to a quick halt. Was it her tone of voice? Maybe the stammer? I’m not certain.
I turned and examined my tiny partner. Her apple-red mane was a mussed, wild mess and she wasn’t hiding the tired sag in her shoulders all that well. When she noticed I’d seen it, she straightened, but couldn’t keep the quiver out of her lower lip. Despite all the blood in the other room, she’d managed to walk away without any on her. The worst of it was a bit of dust in her feathers and a mild, ongoing scent of sewage from our entrance.
I, on the other hoof, looked like I’d just been for a run through a full griffin meat locker at top speed. There was barely a clean inch from ear-tips to toes.
“Yeah, she did. I will handle Taxi. She’s my responsibility. You’re going to have this weekend off, you hear?” I tried to smile. It wasn’t much of a smile, even for something I was trying to fake.
Swift shook her head. “I... I can’t... I can’t leave you to do this on your own, Sir. Not until this is done, okay? Besides, I’m f-fine.” She started to turn and tripped over her own back hooves. I caught her before she could fall, letting her lay her head on my shoulder. We stood there until I lost track of the time. Her tiny heart felt fit to burst as it thumped against my leg.
Then she was crying. I’d expected it, but it was still a surprise, like the toaster popping even though you know it’s going to.
Why, oh why, sweet Celestia, had so many innocents chosen my shoulder to cry on lately? It seemed to be an ongoing theme and I’m not an especially absorbent pony, so why me?
These weren’t the angry tears that Taxi tends to cry; they were the great wracking sobs of a young filly who had seen way too many horrible things in one short night. She crushed her muzzle against my mane, her hot breath on my shoulder as she twisted her hooves in my trenchcoat and held on tightly. Her sharp teeth bit into my pelt a little as she pushed her face against me so hard it must have hurt, but there’s a place beyond which the pain inside a pony can overshadow any physical discomforts, and Swift was there.
I sat and held her, wishing I could take her upstairs and give her to Tourniquet. I felt a little bit dirty. Somepony like her should have a pony with a cleaner conscience for a comforter. She tried to pull herself together a couple of times, then the tears would start again and she’d press close, wrapping one of her wings around me like she was scared I would vanish on her. Knowing me, she should probably have been more worried I’d get her killed, but I wasn’t about to say that.
It might have been a minute later, or it might have been ten, but when the tears and hiccups had finally subsided, she stepped away, still sniffling, but looking noticeably relieved. “Phew...sorry, Sir.” She shot a self-conscious glance over her shoulder at Limerence, who was very carefully minding his own business as he examined Skylark, the machine, the spell core, and just about anything that didn’t require him to look in our direction.
“Any time, kid. That’s what partners are for. Speaking of ponies who need me, I should go find out what Taxi is doing. I hope to Celestia it’s not burying that axe in Geranium’s head…”
“You... you don’t think she’d really-”
“Right now? No, probably not. When Taxi’s genuinely angry with the world, she hides it until she explodes. This sounds more like pissed off. The two are easily confused. Just help Lim and leave it to me. I’ll be back soon and I want at least some idea of what Skylark was attempting here. Then we’ll see if we can make it up to Tourniquet’s room, and then get out of here.”
“Sir, if the top floors are covered in guards, we can’t just walk out with Miss Cerise, and we can’t leave that lawyer pony here. We have to do something with these criminals! They were going to kill the police chief’s daughter!”
I couldn’t disguise a hint of irritation in my voice, since I was bordering on panic myself. “I’m...aware, and I’m still working on that. We didn’t expect to walk in on a ritualistic orgy with some of the highest ranking ponies of Detrot trying to murder an innocent girl.”
“Oh... Oh Sun and Moon, Sir. We killed some of those-”
Before the reality could wind its way in too deeply, I put my hoof over her muzzle. “Kid, deep breath. We can crap ourselves later, but right now... take care of Limerence. Guard him. Can you do that?”
“Yes…”
“Good. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
****
I heard the dull crunch and the low murmur of scared voices halfway down the hall. There weren’t any screams, though, and that was good.
My headache was mostly gone, and the pain had fled my limbs, but while a solid charge might have chased away the physical maladies, my emotional state still screamed for sleep and time to process. You’d think watching that much violence should reduce a pony to catatonia -- and sometime later on I was expecting to sit in the bathtub howling like a yearling -- but while the adrenaline is still hot, your mind still works.
I strolled leisurely down the hall, stopping at the entrance to the temple to pick something out of my mane that’d been tickling me. It was a feather. I turned it over in my hooves, peering at the soft, red plume; one of Skylark’s feathers. Shuddering, I flicked it away.
You’re getting all the bad dreams in the universe for this one... my subconscious was grumbling.
There was another crash of metal on something that didn’t sound like metal, but at least wasn’t squishy, and more voices crying out in protest.
Geranium was standing, watching something going on up on the altar. She’d abandoned her Lunar Passage robe and had been wearing a simple business suit underneath. I didn’t have a good angle on what she was staring at; the statue was in the way. She caught my eye as I moved into the temple and frantically jerked her head in the direction of whatever was going on.
“Sweets?” I called out, edging around the statue.
“Imh fnne, Hardy,” a muffled voice replied. There was another thud, followed by what sounded like pebbles hitting the carpet. “ftrefh relief,” she added.
Walking out into the middle of the temple, I found my driver standing on the altar to Nightmare Moon, a red painted axe held between her teeth. Most of Nightmare Moon’s left wing was gone, along with a nice section of her head, horn, and front hoof. The broken bits lay shattered around the monster’s hooves.
The surviving two dozen or so members of the Cult were sitting on the carpet at the back of the room, their robes in a heaped up pile and police-hobbled front and back. Most had been naked underneath, although a few wore bits of fetish-wear. The unicorns all wore restrictor rings. For the work of just two ponies, it was a fine piece of crowd control, even if the crowd was too high to cast anything more complicated than simple levitation.
Geranium or Swift must have organized some kind of quick policing for the corpses; the bodies had been dragged to one side and robes thrown over their faces. It was more respect than I figured most of them deserved for what they’d been about to participate in, but I admit, it made me feel a bit better not to have to look into those rows of dead eyes. There were about fifteen bodies there, give or take.
Taxi herself looked a right terror.
Her saddlebags lay beside her and the scars on her flanks were covered in dried blood, making the wounds seem fresh and deep. The bandage around her shoulder was soaked through, though I couldn’t tell if she was the one still bleeding or if it’d been Skylark.
Hauling the axe back, she bit down hard and slammed it into the side of Nightmare’s rear leg, taking a nice chunk out of it. The statue wobbled on its base and cracks spread up the hip. The cultists at the back of the room let out incoherent fear sounds, like a flock of surprised turkeys.
“Sweets, is this strictly necessary? I’d like to leave as soon as possible.”
“Juff giff me a minnap!” she tried to shout around the axe’s haft. Turning around, she planted her good front hoof and gave the statue a solid apple-buck with both rear legs. I saw the fall coming before it happened and took a few quick steps forward, but I couldn’t get there in time.
With only one functioning leg, she lost her balance, pitching forward onto her chin. The axe slipped out of her teeth and dropped onto the carpet.
Climbing up onto the altar, I couldn’t suppress a sigh as I pushed my muzzle under my driver’s chest, hauling her back to her hooves.
“I suppose I’m not going to convince you to let this go, am I?” I asked, shooting a glance at the cultists towards the back of the room. Without their robes, I’d started to recognize a few faces; Counselor Grey Mane had survived and was gently chewing on the tail of a reporter for the Detrot Post while she stared blankly at her own hooves, turning them over as though uncertain how they’d gotten on the end of her legs.
Taxi dusted herself off and began hobbling towards where her axe had fallen. Gingerly picking it up, she propped it in the crook of of her wounded fetlock and began a three-legged limp back towards the statue.
Her eyes might have been determined, but her body was verging on shut down, either from blood loss or weariness. As she went in for one more swing, her busted leg gave out. The axe clattered on the stone altar and Taxi collapsed onto her stomach, breathing raggedly through clenched teeth.
I looked down at her, sadly, then reached out and tenderly touched her braid, flicking a piece of dark red matter out of it. She didn’t lift her head, whether because she was too tired or because she just didn’t want to look me in the eye. Her muscles tensed, but there wasn’t enough strength left to get her off the floor.
Turning my head, I examined the statue looming over us. Nightmare Moon had seen better days.
It was a pitiful thing, once you got right to the heart of what we’d walked into; worshipping a child’s fear for the sake of sex, psychedelic thrills, and a night of feeling like you’re privy to something strange and secret. Those stoned idiots might or might not even have known they were party to murder, but they certainly knew what they were doing in every other step of the process.
Taxi was still struggling to rise, but couldn’t coordinate her front and back legs at the same time. I watched her trying to get back to her hooves, pushing herself towards the statue like she might break it down with fury alone. ‘Stress relief’ she’d called it.
“You better remember this the next time you’re going to kick me,” I said, then turned and planted both rear hooves on the statue, bracing myself against the altar.
My driver lifted her head and peered up at me Her eyebrows furrowed, questioningly, then she realized what I was doing. I might have been imagining things, but I thought for just a second that she smirked at me.
Taking a breath right down into my stomach, I grunted and pushed every ounce of strength I had left through my rear hooves.
At first, nothing happened. The statue was massive, after all, and it occurred to me that I might be about to embarrass myself. There’s nothing worse than getting a sprained ankle from a religious icon.
Then I heard a sweet, sweet sound: shifting stone.
A couple of cultists cried out as the statue shifted on its base, sliding backwards. My rear hooves dropped and hit the floor as, with a resounding impact that shook the pipes and rattled the fittings, Nightmare Moon and the Church of the Lunar Passage came crashing down.