Twilight Sparkle stood on a balcony overlooking the Royal Gardens, Princess Luna to her left and Princess Celestia to her right. Below, the Guard continued to swarm the lawns, carefully picking apart every square inch of the area, dutifully trampling every blade of grass into a meaningless pulp.
If she were in charge of the investigation, she would have levitated the whole lot of them back into Royal Guard Kindergarten.
She blinked at that thought. Was there even a Royal Guard Kindergarten? Definitely something to ask Shining the next time he visited.
Beside her, Princess Luna continued her assessment of the crime while a parchment and quill furiously took notes. Celestia was relatively quiet, choosing to supply the investigators with a glowing ball of light bright enough to simulate the sun at the reported time of the crime.
Overhead, a formation of Nightguards took turns with the Nightwatch as the batponies of both groups surveyed the area, searching for anything that might have been missed by their diurnal brethren. Beyond the sparse clouds, the moon shown with a silvery white light while the stars glistened, although perhaps a tiny bit less brilliantly for lack of Luna's full attention.
There was very little in the way of progress even with all the extra eyes, Twilight mused. It was almost as if the plot had been waiting for the perfect moment to disgorge its recipient rather than somepony getting a lucky break on a grave robbery.
It just didn't make sense though. No matter how she looked at it, the crime didn't make sense. There was no evidence of a perpetrator, no telltale tool marks save those from the brief conflict (which she had her own suspicions about), and no motive that she could see beyond humiliating the Guard or a personal attack on Celestia, Luna, or herself.
And yet, the more she thought them over, even those seemed shaky at best. For one, the Guard were ever present... it was a well established fact that if something is everywhere, exceptions and interactions would be common. The Guard had had their fair share of failures and upsets, not the least of which was the recent Changeling invasion. It didn't make sense to stage such an elaborate crime, put so much effort into the execution, and then not 'enlighten' the populace to the Guard's shortcomings. It would make much more sense to have a newspaper article anonymously slipped into the Canterlot Times or a rumor started that would eventually require a public statement. It would make sense to sabotage a garrison or even just pull a few nasty pranks on the local branches as a way to send a wake-up call. It didn't make sense to compromise a target of such importance... not without a very good reason to risk oneself in such a blatant way.
Likewise, while the crime was certainly distressing, very few ponies actually knew the particulars of the 'hero' they had lain to rest. It was true that the act could have been entirely random, or even just the result of a poorly timed prank, but it seemed far too clean for those scenarios to be likely.
If, on the other hoof, the Guard really had slipped so much as to miss a blatant intruder carrying specialized tools and exhuming a corpse within feet of one of their own... well, changes would most certainly have to be made.
Twilight's considerations were brought to an unexpected halt when the jingling pop of a scroll materializing drew her attention to where princess Celestia stood. The scroll, a tightly wound thing with a strip of dark blue ribbon sealing it, uncoiled in the Princess' golden aura and, after a few moments, rerolled itself.
Celestia looked up, casting an unreadable gaze over the gardens and horizon for a moment before turning and quietly walking back into the castle. Were it not for her longstanding relationship, Twilight would never have followed were she not invited.
As it were, Twilight's curiosity mixed with her almost familial relationship with Equestria's ruling bodies overrode any sense of decorum resulting in the young alicorn slipping into step beside the much taller Princess.
"Pri... Celestia, is everything alright?"
Silently, the balcony doors swung open in a shimmering golden aura a moment before the two reached them, the faint sound of servants tending to tasks innumerabe within causing Twilight's ears to pivot as she kept in stride beside Celestia. Almost as if sensing the moment, the elderly gray unicorn, Kibitz, stepped out from a small alcove with a slight bow as he, too, fell in step beside the two princesses.
Without preamble, Celestia flicked her horn towards a set of doors, causing the heavy wood to spring open, much to the surprise of the collection of guards within. Stepping to the doorway, watching as the stallions and mares scrambled to assemble, Celestia looked amongst their number before leaning down to whisper something to her assistant before turning and gently guiding Twilight with a downy wing away from the room.
Twilight glanced back, only briefly, before falling into step with the elder Ruler, though her ears picked up the distinctive voice of Kibitz as he said "Inspector Duty, you are hereby relieved of duty, to be held for a period of not more than 4 days as an inquiry into..." before the assistant's voice was cut off by the softly closing doors.
"Princess?" Twilight's voice echoed her confusion as she looked up to her mentor.
For some seconds, Celestia remained silent as the pair walked, face unreadable as she strode purposefully through the hall before slowing and closing her eyes.
"Twilight. Do you remember what I said to you when you told me that Cadance was an imposter?"
Blinking briefly at the unexpected topic, Twilight nodded slowly. "I do."
"And do you remember what Luna and I have been telling you every time you've asked if we have done something wrong since we attempted to save the creature?"
"I... I do Princess."
"Then let me share one other lesson with you." With a soft sigh, Celestia lowered herself slowly until she found a comfortable position laying beside her student on the marble floor of one of the numerous halls of Canterlot Castle.
"Sometimes, no matter what you do or plan for, even with the best of intentions, something will go wrong. It is a sad fact of life that such things are destined to fill every crack or gap in plans and stymie every act of good." Celestia shifted herself slightly, turning to look upon a nearby window which cast beams of muted light upon the two alicorns below. "Sometimes it is coincidence or accident. Sometimes it is destiny or fate that something fails. And then.... sometimes it is through the best of intentions that the greatest harm is done."
Twilight stood, listening to her mentor and friend as the events of the past month played out again in her head. "Sometimes...."
"But Twilight, you must remember that such things are the way of the world and that even when somepony causes such trouble, they are never doing so because they think they are wrong. They simply do not understand what you might.... or you, them."
Twilight tilted her head to look up at the window, the wild splashes of color and absurd image of a mismatched creature with what appeared to be a long sandwich, greeting her eyes. Discord... in all his bizarre glory - one of the few windows that had survived Tirek's occupation of the Castle.
"Princess... what was on the scroll?"
For a moment, Celestia remained motionless. Under the soft colors of the window, she looked almost like a statue herself, if not for her slowly shifting mane.
"The... missive... was from one of the minor offices, alerting us that the corpse has been located and that the intruder had engaged in combat with one of the Guard, an Earthpony stallion, named Silent Sentinel."
Twilight puzzled over the response for a few moments before asking what seemed like the obvious question: "And this relates to your lesson I assume?"
Celestia turned to face her student with a look that spoke of her care for her student, but disappointment with the situation. "Indeed. The reason I bring it up is that this letter has only now reached us. Inspector Duty did not feel it important enough to warrant our attention."
"So we've been wasting our time since this all happened?"
Celestia nodded her head slowly. "But there is more... as part of protocol, any Guard engaged in combat, outside of active encounters..." Celestia trailed off, prompting the young princess to deduce her own answer.
Twilight squinted in thought, running through list upon list of protocols she was only marginally familiar with. "... must...... make a report?"
"Indeed."
"Which is bad for some reason?"
Celestia nodded again before pulling herself to stand once more and resume walking through the hall towards a service hallway Twilight was almost positive would force the taller alicorn to duck to walk through.
"It is bad, Twilight, because as part of protocol, such combat must be reported to the highest authority for a proper debriefing at first chance."
"And with Duty intercepting the missive?"
"With Duty intercepting, Twilight, our Silent Sentinel is most likely still waiting at attention."
-~oOo~-
Waking up, once again, in a dark place hadn't been entirely unexpected, but waking up in a dark place feeling cramped and uncomfortably bent had been far less than ideal.
When she had opened her eyes again, it was to see the near blackness of a sealed box of some sort. She was once more thought dead, though it seemed this time they had placed her within a coffin of some sort. Worse, from the thin sliver of light she could see, she likely hadn't been buried yet, making her eventual escape much more prone to discovery.
When she carefully tried to move, she found her fingers tangled in something, and when she shifted slightly, she could feel the tug and pull of tattered bits of skin caught in the grain of the box.
She would have sighed if it would have been even remotely helpful.
Instead, she began the slow process of working her fingers free of their tangle, careful not to scrape against the wood of her enclosure.
One could never guess who might be listening.