//------------------------------//
// Dark Desires 
// Story: Darkest Shadows 
// by FireOfTheNorth 
//------------------------------//

Regal Script glanced anxiously at the clock in his office.  Even in the summer, the sun would have set by now; Canterlot had just experienced its first snow of the winter that morning, so it was definitely dark outside.  Today had also been his daughter’s birthday, and he desperately wanted to make it home before she was in bed.  The stallion breathed a sigh of relief as he filed away the last form, his work finally done for the day.  

As he left his office, Regal Script saw that the hallways and all the other offices were empty, typical for the time he usually got off work.  The gas lamps set into the walls flickered as he walked past, lending an eerie quality to the hallway.  They had recently been “upgraded,” but everypony at the Sunset Borough office of the Canterlot Police Department agreed that things had been better before.  Sure, these new gas lamps were brighter, but they were far less steady than the ones that had lit the building previously.  

At last, Regal Script had the office’s main entrance in sight.  Sure enough, darkness had fallen outside, but at least it wasn’t snowing.  There was even a taxi carriage waiting outside so that he wouldn’t have to walk all the way home.  Perhaps he’d even make it back in time to see his daughter off to bed.  All those thoughts were wiped away as he heard the sound of an opening door behind him.  

“Ah, Reggie, glad I caught you before you left,” a stallion said, causing Regal Script to halt just in front of the door.  Reluctantly, he turned around to face the peach-coated unicorn who’d just stepped out of the large corner office.  

“Major Belle,” Regal Script addressed his superior coldly.  

“I have a few documents I need you to file before you leave tonight,” Brass Belle said as he adjusted his overcoat, scarf, and hat to protect his copper mane and tail.  

“Sir, can’t it wait until morning?” Regal Script asked as Major Belle dropped the case of documents at his hooves, “Or couldn’t you file them yourself?  I need to get home.”  

“You know I would do it myself,” Brass said, causing Regal to roll his eyes, “But I have an appointment with the mayor for the Canterlot Opera, and I can’t cancel.  Remember to lock up before you leave.”  

Before he realized what was happening, Regal Script was standing in the office alone, Brass Belle out the door and climbing into the taxi carriage.  Angrily, he picked up the document case with his teeth and trudged back to his small, windowless office in the back of the station.  He slammed the door as he entered, but the lock didn’t engage and it swung open a crack.  Regal pulled the documents from the case and saw that they were not only not filled out—as usual—but they were also some of the most complex and confusing forms the CPD had.  

“Just kill me now,” he grumbled in complaint as he spread out the forms and Brass Belle’s hastily written notes, and attempted to reconcile them.  

Why did Brass Belle think he could get away with stuff like this?  Most likely it was because he knew that he could.  It wasn’t that Regal’s commander was an incompetent cop, but he wasn’t suited to head one of the CPD’s offices.  It was common knowledge that Brass Belle had only received this post because of the political clout of the Belle family (and being a unicorn hadn’t hurt either).  The noblestallion had respect for the field officers of the CPD (as he’d once been one himself, though the records Regal had seen didn’t indicate that he’d had many accomplishments), but he treated the other officers as you would expect a pony who’d been raised with a silver spoon in his mouth to treat those he considered his servants.  

Engrossed in trying to hurriedly scratch down something on the forms before filing them away, Regal didn’t hear the door behind him slowly creak open, before swinging shut all the way.  He squinted at Brass Belle’s messy notes, trying to decipher a word before giving up and reaching for the glasses in his desk.  It would be the last action he ever took.  He had no time to scream, but even if he had, the office was deserted and nopony would have heard him.  



Darkest Shadows
Part the Third: Dark Desires

***


“Disciplinary Hearing 1299-C538 will begin now,” Siren’s Song announced for the recorder’s sake, “Agent Fifth-Class Beryl Fields: please take your seat before the court.”  

Beryl did as she was told and trotted down from the mostly empty stands of the Ministry’s disciplinary courtroom.  A single seat waited directly facing the five elevated chairs of the disciplinary committee.  As she sat down, Beryl saw that two of the seats were empty.  On the far left sat Verdant Blades, the pegasus who was Chief of Operations.  The green-coated mare had a reputation of showing no mercy in disciplinary hearings, so Beryl was glad to see that she seemed more interested in the papers on her desk than in the pony staring up at her.  In the center, directly in front of Beryl, and on the highest perch, was Siren’s Song, who as Deputy Director was in charge of the disciplinary committee.  Seated directly to the right was Director Thistleback herself.  At the moment she was leaning back in her chair, but Beryl could see her eyes were as hard as flint.  Not once since that day a month earlier had the Director summoned her to her office, and that a formal hearing was being held for such a trivial breach of rules was a good indicator that the Director had a personal hoof in the matter.  

“The charges against the defendant are as follows,” Siren’s Song read, “Departure from area of operations without providing prior notice or adequate reason.  Travel of greater than ten leagues outside of area of operations without an approved transit request.  Failure to notify Ministry of adequate reason for transit request…  I move that the defendant be absolved of all charges.”  

The Deputy Director’s sudden and unexpected statement caused Thistleback to sit up quickly in her chair and Verdant Blades to turn and look at Siren’s Song.  

“Absolutely not,” Thistleback said indignantly, “We will continue the hearing.”  

“I know something like this must be unanimous to pass, but for what it’s worth, I second the motion,” Verdant Blades said evenly as she stared past Siren’s Song at Thistleback.  

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Director Thistleback asked the pegasus mare, “As Operations Chief, shouldn’t you be concerned when an agent disobeys orders?”  

“Director, may I be frank with you?” Verdant Blades said after clearing her throat, and she steepled her forelegs in front of her on the desk, “You are, perhaps, the most qualified director the Ministry has had since Starburst the Radiant, back when she and the other six Knights of Dawn first founded it.  However, the bureaucracy you inherited from Director Moonheart has only gotten worse during your time.”  

“Excuse me?” Thistleback said icily as she narrowed her eyes.  

“Your rules sometimes make it impossible for an agent to fulfill her job,” Verdant Blades went on, “Furthermore, this hearing is a waste of time.  So far as I can tell, no actions were taken by Agent Fields that could be construed as endangering the Ministry and its mission.”  

“I agree,” Siren’s Song spoke up, “This case centers around transit requests.  While in theory they may be a good idea that lets us keep tabs on our Agents’ whereabouts, the approval process is so lengthy and cumbersome that the value is lost.”  

“This hearing isn’t about the worth of existing rules, it’s about Agent Fields’s disregard of them,” Thistleback objected, “We will continue the hearing now, focusing on the facts of the case alone.”  

“Very well,” Siren’s Song said, and he turned to look directly at Beryl for the first time since the hearing had begun, “As the first two charges are related—some might say redundant—I will ask you about them together.  On the eighteenth day of Fading Light, did you travel greater than ten leagues outside of your area of operations without reason given before or after or with an approved transit request?”  

“I did not,” Beryl said, glad that Thistleback hadn’t (yet) managed to get approval to use truth spells in cases as low as this.  Still, she felt extraordinarily terrible about lying in court.  The alternative, however, was to reveal how she had returned so quickly from Hoofington, which would also reveal Shadowmere to the Ministry.  

“There is evidence to refute your claim,” Siren’s Song said as Thistleback stared at him, prompting him to bring up the evidence, “A ticket was purchased by you at Canterlot Grand Station at the date in question for a train traveling to Hoofington.  This ticket was punched at departure from the station.  Do you have a response?”  

“Yes, I did purchase a ticket for Hoofington with the intention of traveling there without an approved transit request,” Beryl said, being careful to stick with her well-rehearsed cover story, “However, I ditched the train before it left Canterlot, realizing that I had not covered every possibility here.”  

“It’s a good thing you did,” Siren’s Song said, “If you had traveled to Hoofington, you would have been unable to return in time to intervene at the Prestige estate that night.”  

Beryl wasn’t sure, but it seemed the Deputy Director was giving her a look that communicated more than simple agreement with what should have been obvious facts.  

“With this information in mind, I find the defendant innocent of the first two charges,” he continued, and went on before Director Thistleback could object, “On to the third accusation: failure to notify Ministry of adequate reason for transit request.  Chief Blades, what are your thoughts on this?”  

“As I see it, the definition of the charge is vague.  The meaning of ‘adequate reason’ depends both on the opinion of the reviewer and the context of the situation, which can conflict.  In sensitive or pressing investigations, it is prudent not to record the full details on a request shifted around past the eyes of many ponies.  Given the nature of Agent Fields’s case, I believe the information she provided was adequate.”  

Beryl looked up in amazement.  Fire burned in Director Thistleback’s eyes as she glared at Verdant Blades.  Everything was happening so perfectly to conspire against the Director that it couldn’t be coincidence.  The Ministry’s Chief of Operations had anticipated every move and countermove of Thistleback and Siren’s Song, and she was prepared to assist the latter.  Her apparent apathy at the beginning of the hearing had been merely an act; she had great interest in this case after all.  Beryl didn’t know whether to feel relieved or more worried.  

“I concur; the charge is struck down,” Siren’s Song said, “My verdict is this: Agent Fifth-Class Beryl Fields is found innocent of all charges against her.  As is standard practice in such a case, a charge of one-hundred twenty-five bits will be deducted from her next paycheck for this court’s time.”  

“This is unacceptable,” Thistleback said coldly as Siren’s Song rapped the gavel against his desk, though her eyes were still aflame.  

“Director Thistleback, I am head of this committee,” the stallion addressed his boss, “The rest of the committee’s job is to advise me on the best course of action, and I have taken your and Chief Blades’s council into account.  However, in the end it is the Deputy Director who decides how this committee will rule, and I have decided that Beryl Fields should not be punished, since she has done nothing to endanger the Ministry or its mission.  That is the function of disciplinary hearings, isn’t it?”  

“Of course,” Thistleback replied with steel in her voice.  What else could she say?  The Deputy Director had her trapped with the choice of yielding her point or claiming that disciplinary hearings were not for the Ministry’s benefit.  

“Court is adjourned,” Siren’s Song announced as he rapped the gavel again.  

The disciplinary committee disappeared from sight as they left.  A few of the ponies in the seats departed as well, but the majority stayed, waiting for their turn on the stand.  Beryl rose from the chair and trotted out of the courtroom, relieved that the ordeal was over.  Surprisingly, she hadn’t had to say much, and didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.  If she had been questioned thoroughly, she didn’t know how long she could’ve held up the act and kept Shadowmere’s part in the events from being made known.  That it had not occurred due to fighting between the high ranking officers in the Ministry worried her, though.  She had never tried to get involved in such matters, but it seemed that now she was in the center of them.  No; that wasn’t entirely true.  She was less the center of the power struggle and more a pawn in their games.  

She brushed this thought from her mind as she trotted down the hallway back to the atrium.  This was no business of hers (or so she tried to convince herself).  Maybe someday she would have aspirations to lead the Ministry, but for now she was content in her role as a field agent.  That didn’t mean she didn’t have any ambition to become a better agent; working with Shadowmere forwarded that goal.  Still, things weren’t back to the way they’d used to be.  

“Agent Beryl Fields,” Siren’s Song said as he strode purposefully down the hall toward her, breaking her train of thought.  

“Yes, Deputy Director Song?” she replied, standing to attention.  

“Good job in there,” he told her before moving in closer and speaking conspiratorially, “I’m curious.  How did you manage to get back from Hoofington so quickly?”  

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Beryl replied as evenly as possible.  

“Fine; keep your secrets… for now,” Siren’s Song said, “Let’s just make it clear that I know you were in Hoofington.  I refuse to believe that it was a coincidence that Shining Light was nowhere to be found when our Hoofington agents inspected her home.”  

That would be Shadowmere’s handiwork, she knew.  When she’d attempted to visit him a few days after the incident at Prestige’s Estate, the caretakers had given her a letter from the immortal stallion.  It didn’t say much, except that Shadowmere was going to find a place where Shining Light would be safe and undisturbed.  

“Still, don’t think you’re out of the frying pan just yet,” Siren’s Song continued, “Director Thistleback was gunning for you back there, so I’d watch my back and stay out of her way in the near future if I were you.”  

“Why was she so adamant about punishing me?” Berry asked, hoping the Deputy Director could provide some insight as to why Thistleback had pushed so hard to get her to trial and find her guilty.  

“She’s taken your actions quite personally, I’m afraid,” Siren’s Song said as he rubbed his forehead with a hoof, “You disobeyed the rules so soon after she trusted you with access to the Deep Archives that she sees it as a betrayal.  But enough about that; I have a new assignment for you, something that should keep you below Thistleback’s notice until she simmers down.”  

A file floated in the air from Siren’s Song to Berry, and the color of the magic surrounding it shifted from ochre to purple as she accepted it.  

“A clerk in the CPD was found dead this morning, torn to pieces.  Head over to the Sunset Borough and track down what killed him.”  


***


When Siren’s Song had said the victim had been torn to pieces, he hadn’t been exaggerating.  Chunks of what had once been Regal Script were everywhere.  On her way to the crime scene—a small office in the very back of the station—the looks on the faces of the police officers who’d peered inside told her that it would be bad.  It took a lot to shake up the CPD so badly; thankfully, the Ministry was used to scenes far grislier than those the police were likely to encounter.  

Nopony disturbed Beryl as she examined the room, a thin layer of magical energy over the floor keeping her from stepping on the bloody tiles or altering the evidence.  As she circled around to stand beside the desk, she got a better view of what had happened.  Regal Script had been sitting in his desk chair when he’d died, as evidenced by the pieces of his lower body plastered to the seat and lodged under the desk.  Looking up, Beryl could see the marks and stains on the ceiling where parts of him had struck, many of which had later fallen back to the ground thanks to gravity.  After considering the layout of the room, Beryl had to conclude there could only be one cause for this death.  Something had managed to get inside of Regal Script and had torn him apart explosively.  

“Well, Berry, what are you thinking?” a gruff stallion’s voice asked from the doorway.  

“Grey Wind,” she greeted the investigator as she turned to face him, “I didn’t know you were here.”  

“I was busy questioning the station commander when you arrived,” he explained, “Apparently, he was the last pony to see our victim here alive.”  

“Brass Belle?” Berry asked as she looked at the bloodstained parchment on the nearby desk.  

“Indeed; he said that he left Regal Script alone here last night around the tenth bell.  Claims the clerk was filling out some late night forms for him.”  

Paperwork.  Bureaucracy, Berry thought, but didn’t say aloud.  She recognized the half-finished form on the desk; the Ministry had similar documents.  If it hadn’t been necessary, or the station commander had filled it out on his own, as he was supposed to, would Regal Script still be alive?  She frowned as she pushed the thought from her head; Ministry agents weren’t supposed to think like that.  

“So, any idea what killed him?” Grey Wind asked, seemingly oblivious to Beryl’s inner turmoil.  

“It could have been a number of things,” Beryl said as she tried to search all her knowledge and training, “A powerful spirit could have done this, but so could some of the more barbaric breeds of vampire, or even a pony under a particularly nasty curse.”  

“In other words, nothing that’s a walk in the park,” Grey Wind grunted.  

“I’ll have to follow the magical signature to be sure,” Berry said, “I picked one up as I neared this room, but I wanted to have an idea of what to look for before I started following it.”  

“Track it down; kill it,” Grey Wind said, echoing Siren’s Song’s words, “We can’t have any more cops dying inside their stations.”  

Berry nodded her agreement as she stepped past the stallion and followed the magical trail down the hall.  The magical residue was stronger than it rightfully should have been, but it was still faint, and Beryl had to lean down to get a better feel of it.  Surprisingly, the trail didn’t follow the hall at an expected height, but was low to the ground and hugged the walls, never passing by doorways that must have been opened the night before.  

Soon she was leaving the station, the officers at the front giving her odd looks as she followed the trail like a basset hound, except that she was sniffing it out with her horn instead of her nose.  The magical residue led away from the station and across the sidewalk to the street.  Any physical trail the monster might have left in the snow had been wiped out by the shuffling hooves of ponies on their ways to work and melted into slush by the sun.  The trail led out to the street, sticking close to the curb, until Beryl eventually found its end at the nearest storm sewer drain.  Whatever had escaped through it was definitely corporeal and larger than it thought it was, as the pavement was cracked.  Wedged in the cracks were shiny green scales.  

“A basilisk,” Berry said aloud as she made her conclusion.  

It looked to be a fairly good sized one as well.  It had to have been a member of a Zebrikaan breed; the Amarezonian and Coltsican breeds swallowed their prey whole.  Still, she had never heard of even the most vicious Zebrikaan basilisks tearing their prey apart quite so violently.  On top of that, she was almost certain that every piece of Regal Script was present in his office; why would the basilisk kill him and then leave without eating anything?  

Beryl located the nearest ponyhole and pried the cover off with her magic.  As she climbed down to investigate, she replaced the cover so that traffic could proceed unimpeded.  The shallow layer of water from the melted snow splashed around Berry’s hooves as she touched down.  She lit a light at the end of her horn and drew her crossbow before advancing down the sewer passage.  The bolt nocked and drawn in her weapon not only had a piercing tip that would tear through the basilisk’s scaly hide, it would inject a poison into its bloodstream that would neutralize its petrifying gaze in seconds.  Just to be safe though, she also put on her sunglasses, even though it made her feel a bit foolish to be wearing them in a dark passage underground.  

Beryl’s ears twitched and swiveled as she tried to differentiate between the sounds coming from the sewers and the sounds from the street above.  At least now the magical trail was strong enough that she no longer needed to dip her head down to the ground.  The magical signature was growing stronger with every second, and Beryl was prepared when she spotted movement ahead.  

The dark serpentine shape slithered its way through the sludge and runoff, darting back and forth from wall to wall.  When it was still a good thirty paces from Beryl, it rose and tilted its wedge-shaped head to stare directly at her.  It was a large basilisk, even larger than Beryl had expected it to be; squeezing through the storm drain had to have hurt it.  

Wasting no time, Berry fired her crossbow.  The bolt streaked through the air and struck the basilisk in the head.  It had shifted a moment after she’d pulled the trigger, however, and instead of tearing through its nose and impaling its brain, the crossbow bolt entered the basilisk’s eye and tore out the side of its face.  The monster hissed angrily and slithered as fast as it could toward Berry.  Another bolt was already prepped in her crossbow, and she lined up a shot that couldn’t miss.  

A whistling sound came from a side passage just as the basilisk moved in front of the opening.  A moment later, a lance struck the giant snake a third of the way down its body and pinned it to the sewer wall.  It tried to pull free, but the spear was made of silver and the barbed hooks halfway down the shaft kept the basilisk from sliding along its length.  Three more lances entered the tunnel as the basilisk tried desperately to pull free.  One struck it a hooflength ahead of the first, but it impaled it close to the skin and it easily pulled free, losing a good bit of scales and flesh in the process.  The second lance missed entirely, bouncing off the sewer wall to land in the water at Beryl’s hooves.  The third lance, however, struck the basilisk in the wound Beryl’s crossbow had made earlier.  It easily skewered the monster’s brain before breaking through the tough flesh on the other side of the head and anchoring itself in the wall.  The light in the basilisk’s eyes faded as its body grew limp.  

Cautiously, Beryl approached the beast and got a better look at it.  It was covered in the same shiny green scales she had seen up on the street, the scale type and pattern matching the norm for Zebrikaan basilisks exactly.  However, it’s snout was more pointed than a Zebrikaan basilisk’s usually was and the ridges over the eyes were distinctly Coltsican.  A cross-breed?  It would explain several oddities with the case.  Zebrikaan basilisks almost never actively hunted ponies, but members of the Coltsican breed were known to not only do just that, but to do it for sport if they were particularly nasty.  

“Looks like I just saved your flank, Berry,” a dull blue pegasus said as he trotted out of the side corridor, the remaining lances on his back clattering together as he did so.  

“Not hardly,” Beryl said, groaning inwardly as she recognized him, “And if you’re going to address me by name, it’s Senior Agent Beryl Fields.”  

“Right, right,” Roaring Thunder said, waving a wing dismissively, “So, Senior Agent Beryl Fields, what brings you down into the Canterlot sewers?”  

“I was following this basilisk’s trail,” Beryl replied coldly, having already checked to make sure the magical signatures matched, “Why are you here?”  

“Looks like the Ministry accidently put us on the same case,” Roaring Thunder answered, oblivious to or unconcerned with Beryl’s attitude toward him, as usual, “We can rest easy knowing this monster’s dead.  Did you see the victims?”  

“One from last night; it was pretty gruesome.  The body was all torn apart into little pieces, but the basilisk didn’t eat any.”  

“Weird; all mine had at least some of the pieces eaten,” Roaring Thunder said, scratching his head with a wing, “It did just chow down on somepony the night before last though, so it may have been a sport kill.”  

“Right,” Beryl said, trying to shake the feeling that she was missing something, before she turned away and headed back the way she’d come.  

“See you at the Ministry!” Roaring Thunder called after her, but Beryl didn’t even pause in her canter.  

A short time later she was back aboveground, trotting down the streets of Sunset Borough.  Could the case really have been that simple? she mused.  She’d nailed down all the details necessary to conclude that the hybrid basilisk had been behind the death of Regal Script; she even knew for a fact that it had been in his office the night before.  Why then did she still have a nagging feeling that something was missing?  

A startled scream was all that warned Beryl that something was amiss.  She whirled around in time to see a carriage flying through the air at her with a very shocked pony strapped to the front.  Berry ducked and slid across the sidewalk as the carriage flew overhead, landing on its wheels and coming to a stop as it collided with a lamppost.  Seeing that the carriage puller was dazed but unharmed, Beryl looked the opposite direction to determine what had caused the carriage to go flying through the air in the first place.  There was nothing; no nearby ponies, no cobbles out of place, no obstacles, no break in the curb; nothing.  Beryl’s feeling of unease only got worse.  


***


Berry hesitated before knocking on the door.  It had been a month since she’d last seen Shadowmere, and that had been when he’d slipped away after the incident at Prestige’s estate.  Beryl had shot an innocent pony that night.  No—she had killed a tantibus and corrected a mistake Shadowmere had made decades earlier.  No—she had killed a monster that would have caused untold suffering; that was what truly mattered.  Still, why had Shadowmere left the way he had and remained out of touch for weeks?  Beryl sensed that something had changed between them, but the last time she’d tried to speak to him, he’d been away.  Now she couldn’t even knock on the door.  

She sighed heavily and began to knock, but the moment her hoof touched the aged wood she heard the locks on the other side disengage.  With a nudge, the door swung open onto the small room outside of Shadowmere’s main apartments.  After Beryl stepped through and closed the door, the locks reengaged.  The mare took a halting step forward before opening the inner door, whose locks also released at her touch.  

Shadowmere was nowhere to be seen, but the lanterns on the walls were lit, so Beryl assumed he was somewhere nearby.  Stepping through the doors had surely triggered some kind of magical alarm, so Beryl decided that rather than trying to search for the mysterious stallion, she would wait for him in the main room.  As she waited, she trotted past the table with the model of Canterlot on it, admiring it with a new appreciation since it had proved so useful in the fight against the gargoyles.  She wondered if Shadowmere had models of other cities stowed about in case of emergency.  His ability to traverse Passages certainly made it seem likely that he acted on a national level.  

Next to the chair Shadowmere commonly sat in, Beryl noticed an open book.  It looked very old and she was gentle as she picked it up in her magic.  She checked the title—A Complete History of the Ministry—before turning back to the page Shadowmere had left it on.  The left page was dominated by an exquisitely drawn picture of a unicorn mare with a coat the color of cream and a fiery red mane that whipped through the air with its own will.  She was dressed in full battle armor of silver-gold plate, a bright yellow seven-pointed star emblazoned on the front.  In her magic she held two items: to her right a bronze staff with light blazing from the end, and to her left a legendary sword with a core of iron and edge of steel that Beryl recognized immediately as Eviscerator.  On the right page, “Starburst the Radiant, Third Knight of Dawn and First Director of the Ministry” was boldly emblazoned in flowing and intricate script followed by her tale in much smaller writing.  

“Hello, Beryl,” Shadowmere’s voice yanked Berry’s nose up from between the pages, “Enjoying the book?”  

“A Complete History of the Ministry.  This book was written to commemorate the Ministry’s bicentennial, almost eight hundred years ago,” Beryl replied, “Only ten copies were ever made.  How did you manage to get ahold of one?”  

“I told you; I helped found the Ministry,” Shadowmere replied, his gaze never leaving Beryl for an instant, “It wasn’t hard to obtain a copy.”  

“Interesting subject,” Beryl said, looking back down at the book, “I thought you said the Knights of Dawn didn’t exist.  What’s your interest in Starburst the Radiant?”  

“A personal matter,” Shadowmere said simply, though Beryl almost thought she saw him wince slightly.  

“I’m surprised you’re here,” he said after a few seconds of silence passed between them, “After what happened with the tantibus, I hadn’t expected to see you again.”  

“Why would that be the case?” Berry asked, “It was regrettable that Amber Rain had to die, but it was the right decision, and—as you said—the right decision is rarely the easiest.  If I wasn’t ready to make tough decisions, I wouldn’t have agreed to have you teach me.”  

“That is… comforting to hear,” Shadowmere replied.  

A long silence passed between the two ponies, thoughtful looks on both of their faces as they reevaluated their relationship.  

“Speaking of teaching,” Beryl said, breaking the silence, “It’s been weeks since we met, and you’ve yet to formally teach me anything.”  

“Never was much good at formal teaching,” Shadowmere grunted, “Usually I left that to others.  Still, it couldn’t hurt to try to pass some of my knowledge on to you.  When should we meet?”  

“My last case was wrapped up much faster than I expected, and they’re not expecting me back at the Ministry until tonight, so I have some free time now,” Beryl said as she carefully put A Complete History of the Ministry back on the table next to Shadowmere’s chair.  

“Very well, I suppose we can begin,” the stallion said, “Any thoughts on what to study first?”  

“Well, we could start at the beginning: how the Ministry really was founded.”  

“Another time, perhaps, and that’s far from the beginning, in any case,” Shadowmere said, “I think it would be best to begin by reviewing the material weaknesses of the different monster classes, so I can see what the Ministry taught you and I can expand upon or correct it.”  

Was it Berry’s imagination, or had Shadowmere flinched again, even if just for a moment?  


***


It was a grisly scene that greeted Beryl the next morning.  Whatever had killed Regal Script had struck again, this time claiming two victims.  She was sure now that the basilisk hadn’t been to blame.  The couple who had lived in this apartment had had their bodies torn apart in the same way as the CPD officer and there was no trace of the basilisk’s magical aura.  A trace of some other presence was nearby, but Beryl couldn’t quite pin it down.  

It upset her that she had the same uneasy feeling she’d had the day before regarding this case, but there was nothing more she was going to get from the crime scene.  Leaving the bloodstains and scattered scraps of flesh to the agents in charge of documentation and cleanup, Beryl left the apartment.  Sitting outside in the hall was a silver-coated unicorn mare—the only witness to the scene inside.  She trembled as she leaned against the wall, her eyes staring blankly ahead with shock.  Her once-pristine purple mane was frazzled by the morning’s events, and tear-stains streaked her coat.  

“Shining Crescent,” Beryl addressed her, “Are you able to talk with me now?”  

“Y-yes, I think so,” the mare replied, her gaze swinging to meet Beryl’s.  

“Can you tell me what you saw?” Beryl asked as she pulled a quill and notepad from her saddlebag.  

“I was supposed to meet Dreamy Skies to go out for tea, like we do every week,” Shining Crescent told her story, “When I got here, the door was locked, and nopony answered when I knocked.  That’s not odd; Flicker and Dreamy tend to sleep in the morning after a party, and last night’s was-was a good one.  I have a key, so I let myself in, and-and-and… they were everywhere!”  

“Flicker Frost and Dreamy Skies,” Beryl elaborated.  

“It was awful!” Shining Crescent exclaimed, “Dreamy was my best friend, and now she’s-she’s-she’s…”  

Beryl waited for the sobbing fit to subside before asking her next question.  

“Did you notice anything suspicious or out of ordinary at the party last night?”  

“N-no… Basalt Grin—she lives next door and she doesn’t like it when Flicker and Dreamy throw parties—came over to complain, but Grace Belle told her to leave us be like she always does.  You don’t think Basalt could have killed them, do you?” Shining Crescent said in horror.    

“No; no pony could have done this,” Beryl said with a shake of her head, “Were there any flickering lights or cold spots?”  

“Well, both actually, but that’s only to be expected since they just updated the gas lines for this building.  The gas lamps flicker more than they ought to, but the building supervisor said that’s because they’re still tweaking the regulators.  It was cold over by the windows, but that’s probably because the heating is being updated too,” Shining Crescent said as she wiped her eyes, “Why?  Is that important?”  

“Could be,” Beryl said before flipping shut her notebook, “Thank you for helping.  You may go back home now.”  

Beryl returned to the apartment, starting to piece together a theory.  Flickering lights and cold spots were the common indicators of a powerful and malicious presence, but they could be easily explained away.  It was hard to tell what indicators were real and which were false, unless you knew how to look.  Stepping around the documentation crew, Beryl went to the large panoramic window that looked out to the west.  The sensation she felt as she stood before the glass set her teeth on edge immediately.  Without a doubt, something had been here the night before.  

A monster was prowling this area, killing its victims in the most terrible way imaginable.  This apartment building was on the edge of the Grey Warrens, right against the border with the Sunset Borough.  Past the ledge outside that the apartment’s pegasus residents had used to quickly leave and arrive, Beryl could see the CPD station just a few blocks away.  It was a straight shot there down the road that Beryl had been on the day before when the runaway carriage had nearly hit her.  

Suddenly, everything snapped into place in Beryl’s mind.  Whatever she was hunting had not only killed three innocent ponies, but it had tried to kill her in order to keep her from finding it.  Nopony had seen what had caused the carriage to jump through the air, leading to the conclusion that the monster both had immense strength and could turn invisible.  It couldn’t be a higher vampire; their magical signature would have been immediately apparent to Beryl.  That left only a specter, a ghost of terrible anger and terrible power.  The sensation Beryl felt while standing in this spot matched perfectly with the hole left by a ghost’s presence.  

It was thrilling to finally come to a conclusion, but that conclusion was also frightening.  Beryl knew that a powerful ghost was doing the killing, and she also knew that it was after her, intending to kill her before she could do the same to it.  The killings always happened in the middle of the night, so she concluded that it was most “present” during those hours, making her chances of finding it before it found her slim while the sun was still up.  She couldn’t stay here, but who knew how far this ghost could travel?  The only safe places for her until dusk were the Ministry or Shadowmere’s hideout beneath Rosethorn Hall.  


***


Berry pulled a heavy tome from her saddlebag as she sat down in the main room of Shadowmere’s apartments.  The book Shadowmere had given her the day before was old—over a millennium at least—and the thick, leather-bound cover was pitch black, the pages within yellowed by age.  Carved into the cover was the title: Munstra & Materia: A Studie of their Relaytionship.  The content was written in a very old dialect of Equestrian that made it difficult to read, but not impossible.  

“So, what did you think?” Shadowmere asked after he entered the room and set down a tray of tea and pastries of a kind Beryl was unfamiliar with.  

“Orion Chaser certainly had a lot to say,” she commented on the author as she flipped to the page she’d last been on and grabbed a cup of tea with her magic.  

“He certainly had some strange ideas as well, as you may have noticed,” Shadowmere said as he sat down, “It’s impossible to fully classify monsters based on the elements that do them harm—many have multiple weaknesses, and some elements overlap—but Orion Chaser sought to do it.  His theory that monsters were born from a corresponding set of ‘anti-elements’ is also no more than theory.  There’s nothing to suggest anything of the sort exists, and monsters are certainly not aligned to a particular power.”  

“There’s certainly a lot of useful stuff in here, though,” Beryl said.  

“Of course, otherwise I wouldn’t have kept the book,” Shadowmere snorted, “The weaknesses of monsters are all perfectly mapped, and this book contains information on four out of every five monsters in existence.”  

“I see now why you have so many different kinds of weapons,” Beryl said, gesturing to the display cases and racks all around the room, “I try to keep an assortment of crossbow bolts on hoof, but it seems I’ve been missing out on many combinations.  For example, I knew cockatrices were weak to silver, but I had no idea that pure iron plated in cobalt would have an even greater effect.”  

“Indeed,” Shadowmere said, “Remember though, that with so many different opportunities, there’s no way to prepare for every scenario.  A wise monster hunter picks the weapons she’ll have on hoof wisely.”  

“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” Berry said as she turned to a page with a faded drawing of an all-too-familiar monster, “Tantibae are usually solo creatures; their ravenous hunger for pony life means that too many in one area would soon pick the area clean and draw attention to them.  Assuming the tantibus at Prestige’s estate was working alone, why would it want to bring gargoyles back to this world?  Furthermore, it knew you lived in Canterlot, so why would it have the Nocte Corporation build Hierophant Tower here?”  

“I think we have to conclude that it wasn’t working alone,” Shadowmere said, shaking his head worriedly, “Some other power is involved here, but so far it’s eluded all my attempts to unmask it.”  

“So, this isn’t over yet,” Beryl stated.  

“No, I’m afraid not,” Shadowmere said, a frown creasing his brow, “The tantibus’s role is over though, and it seems whatever power it was working with is content with this state.  A friend of mine in Maretonia is looking after Shining Light.  He’s a mage at the duchess and duke’s court, so he would know if anything was still after her.”  

“I see,” Beryl said, comforted that Shining Light would be protected, but also uneasy that whatever had started this whole mess and led her to Shadowmere was still out there, “It looks like we’re out of leads again.”  

“Indeed,” Shadowmere replied, “I shall keep an eye out for any signs, and you should do the same.  You said that you solved a case yesterday; has the Ministry issued you a new one yet?”  

“No, I was wrong.  I mistakenly thought a basilisk was to blame, but it turns out that a specter was responsible,” Berry said, “It’s a powerful one too, to be able to travel as far as it has.  It knows I’m hunting it, too; yesterday, it sent a carriage careening out of control in an attempt to kill me.  I’ll head out tonight after sunset and track it down.”  

“It sounds like you’re dealing with a roamer, a powerful ghost not tied to a location or object like most are,” Shadowmere proclaimed, “Usually they still follow some pattern, thought.  Did any of the areas it attacked have anything in common?”  

“Not really,” Beryl said, scrunching up her nose, “The first attack was in a CPD branch office, the second on the top floor of an apartment building, and there was nothing special about the street where it threw the carriage at me.”  

“Hmm, there’s probably some unseen connection,” Shadowmere mused, “In any case, kill that roamer before it claims any more victims.  The way they kill—it’s gruesome.”  

“I’ll say,” Berry snorted. “A pony blown apart from the inside out is something I hope I never have to see again.”  

“Blown apart from the inside out, you say?  That’s not normal for a roamer,” Shadowmere said with a frown, “Usually they chop off their victim’s limbs, turn their head around backwards, and carve their names into the body.  Roamers’ weakness is their arrogance; by boasting they’ve returned from death, they make it easy to be tracked down.  I’ve never heard of a roamer doing anything else, but there hasn’t been a roamer in Canterlot in years—centuries actually.”  

“Just like gargoyles and tantibae,” Beryl said ominously.  

“Precisely.  It’s possible that whoever was behind those reappearances also had a hoof in this,” Shadowmere said, “Perhaps I should accompany you tonight and see if I can sense any linkage with the roamer.”  

“I would welcome the company,” Beryl said simply.  

“Good; it’s settled then,” Shadowmere said with finality, “Now, back to the lessons…”


***


Darkness gripped Canterlot as the two ponies made their way through the streets of the Grey Warrens.  Beryl was prepared for the roamer, silver and iron bolts in easy reach to load into her crossbow and a magical ward placed around her body to protect it from harm.  Shadowmere was dressed the same as she had first seen him all those weeks ago, his hood pulled lower over his face, hiding its features in shadow.  He had two additional items tonight, brought along specially for the purpose of killing a roamer.  On his back was sword in a sheath of dark black leather crosshatched with lines of silver.  The V-shaped guard sticking out from the top looked oddly familiar, but Beryl couldn’t place it.  The second item hung around the stallion’s neck.  At first glance, it appeared to be a medallion, but on a closer inspection it proved to be a golden coin with a hole punched through it.  Raised on one side was a unicorn stallion wearing a cloak with a fringe denoting royalty around his neck and full helmet on his head.  On the other side was the head of a unicorn mare with the same fringe but a crown upon her head instead of a helmet.  “Emperor Silver Cuirass and Queen Gilded Armor,” Shadowmere had said when Beryl asked who they were, but the names meant nothing to her.  The coin was apparently attuned to sense ghosts, and they used its vibrations to close in on the roamer.  

Beryl held up a hoof to alert Shadowmere that she sighted their quarry.  In tracking the roamer down, they had traveled out of Grey Warrens and back into Sunset Borough, and were now standing on an empty street lined by townhouses.  Parked outside one of them was a carriage with recent damage to the front end, the very same carriage that had nearly struck Beryl the day before.  Hovering next to it was their ghost.  

The specter floated at an odd angle, with her hindhooves just above the ground and her forelegs tucked close to her chest.  In life she had been a unicorn mare, and her mane and tail had once been styled exquisitely.  Now she was a translucent figure glowing a slight yellow, her mane and tail were disheveled, and her once-gorgeous dress was hanging in tatters around her.  Some of the ghostly strands of fabric floated around her and swayed in unseen winds, lightning dancing along their ends.  

“I recognize her,” Shadowmere growled.  

“So do I,” Beryl said breathlessly, not believing her eyes, “That’s Lady Pewter Belle.”  

Eight centuries earlier, Pewter Belle had been matron of the noble Belle family and a powerful member of the Royal Court.  She had been so influential, in fact, that during her time the Royal Court was actually able to overturn some of Celestia’s laws and overrule her vetoes.  Those who knew the truth about the noblemare often wondered if this was somehow linked to her other profession.  

In addition to Canterlot politics, Pewter Belle had dabbled in black magic.  Over a span of several decades, she’d overwhelmed the Ministry with monsters she summoned and enslaved.  By the time they found out that Pewter Belle was a witch and put an end to her reign of terror, the Ministry’s numbers had dwindled significantly.  The Ministry had arrested her, tried her, and ultimately executed her.  Under Ministry supervision, Lady Pewter Belle had been hanged from a spruce tree of the same age as her with an unused straw rope.  For good measure, a silver stake had been used to pierce her heart after she’d been hanged.  

The Ministry’s actions should have been enough to keep the evil mare from ever returning in any form, yet here she was.  Why, though, had it taken 800 years for her to manifest as a ghost?  Had the Ministry’s attempts to lay her to rest permanently merely bought them a lengthy respite, or was something else at work here?  Was this another act by whoever had unleased the gargoyles and the tantibus?  

“Those fools,” Shadowmere said through clenched teeth, “I told them hanging and impaling her wouldn’t be enough.  ‘No remains,’ I said, ‘The body must be burned with hemlock.’  They didn’t dare, though, not with the whole city aware that she was missing.  They had to let the family host an open-casket funeral for all of Canterlot to see, so burning the body was out of the question.”  

“You were there eight hundred years ago,” Beryl said, “You really were part of the Ministry way back then.”  

“I wasn’t part of the Ministry then; I’d already left,” Shadowmere said, “But there were some who knew me, and they asked me to place powerful binding seals on Pewter Belle’s casket.  Those seals must have broken somehow, for now Pewter Belle is a roamer, just as I feared she would be.”  

Beryl’s gaze swung back to where Pewter Belle hovered, staring straight at the carriage next to her, though her eyes seemed to be looking through it.  Taking a few steps forward, Beryl got a better view of the carriage and the lettering printed on the side.  “Belle Carriage Service,” it read boldly.  

“Shadowmere, what do you know about the current Belle family?” Berry asked as she started to put things together.  

“They’re a large family, even for nobility, with plenty of connections in court, industry, trade, and land across Equestria.  There are three members able to claim the family title, all children of Sunspot Belle, who represented the family in Royal Court until she died a few years ago.  Gale Belle is the head of the family now, and she’s the one who sits in Royal Court and handles all the trade and business deals.  I don’t know much about the other two, but they’re Gale’s younger brother and sister: Brass Belle and Grace Belle.”  

“We’ve got the pattern for our roamer, then,” Beryl said with assurance, “Brass Belle was the major of the police station where Regal Script was killed, and Grace Belle was at the party hosted by Dreamy Skies and Flicker Frost before they died.  That carriage there is the one that almost hit me, and it’s owned by the Belles.  Pewter Belle is sticking close to anything related to her family.”  

“Whatever she’s doing, we need to burn her bones with hemlock,” Shadowmere grunted, “We can’t leave her here though; we’ll have to banish her back to her grave.”  

Craning his head around, Shadowmere drew the sword on his back.  Berry couldn’t believe what she saw as it slid out of its sheath.  The blade was silver-edged with an iron core; she knew that guard looked familiar.  The resemblance to the sword she’d seen painted in a book just the day before was uncanny.  

“What are you doing with Eviscerator?” Beryl asked, eyes wide and mouth hanging open.  

“This is not Eviscerator; this is its twin, Revenant,” Shadowmere said firmly after he stabbed the point between the cobbles at their hooves so that he could speak more clearly, “The runes inscribed in the iron are in reverse.  Eviscerator was made to dispel, Revenant to bind.  One good connection with Pewter Belle, and she’ll be bound to her grave for the next few hours, more than long enough for us to burn her remains.”  

A high-pitched wailing drifted through the air, drawing Shadowmere and Beryl’s attention back to where Pewter Belle hovered.  The ghost had turned her attention from the carriage to the two ponies down the street.  Shadowmere threw Revenant up into his mouth and Beryl pointed her crossbow at the specter as she slowly hovered nearer.  

Berry recoiled in shock as the magical shield protecting her body shattered.  From where she’d rolled, she could see Pewter Belle hovering behind where she’d been standing a moment earlier.  As the ghost disintegrated, Beryl swung her head around to see that Pewter Belle was still advancing from the other direction.  She recast the protective spell and cried out in warning as Pewter shimmered into existence next to Shadowmere.  The ghost’s hoof struck his back, but instead of swinging through his body, it came to a stop and the specter recoiled.  Pewter disappeared as the stallion swung Revenant around at her.  

“She’s a duplicator as well,” Shadowmere warned with a deep frown, “We’re going to have to strike all of them.”  

“Got it,” Beryl said as she fired her crossbow at the advancing ghost.  

Pewter Belle collapsed into mist and the bolt passed her by harmlessly.  The mist streaked through the air before reforming into the ghost less than a hoof’s-width from Beryl.  The Ministry agent was already leaping backwards, another bolt loaded into her crossbow, which she quickly fired at the ghost.  The iron quarrel sliced through Pewter’s reaching foreleg, causing it to vanish and the specter to hiss in anger.  

Another Pewter Belle appeared behind Berry, but she was ready this time and spun around, not even bothering to load the next bolt as she jabbed it through the ghost’s eye.  As she spun back around to face the other Pewter Belle, whose foreleg had regenerated, she caught a glimpse of Shadowmere battling another two ghosts, another appearing whenever his sword managed to connect with one and cause it to shrink in on itself.  Can she produce copies forever? Beryl wondered.  If she could, it was going to be a long night.  

The Pewter that Beryl was facing lunged for her, but Beryl quickly conjured her sword of magic and sliced upward through the ghost, slicing her in two.  The two halves separated and drifted apart slightly, before each grew back into a full version of Pewter.  Beryl let her sword dissipate and grabbed at a pouch strapped to her uniform.  The air was filled with salt as she flung it at the ghosts, causing them to vanish and giving her a quick breather.  

As the ghosts reappeared on either side of her, Beryl grabbed at the falling salt with her magic and managed to compress it into a blade, before swinging it around and slicing both ghosts through their torsos.  This time the halves didn’t reform, and the pieces disintegrated.  The blade of salt disintegrated as well as Beryl released her magical hold on it, sweating from the effort it had taken to fashion and maintain it.  

Specters were swarming around Shadowmere so thickly that it didn’t matter how he swung Revenant, it was sure to connect.  Still, for every one he managed to strike, another just appeared to take its place.  Beryl pulled a special bolt from her ammunition belt and slotted it into place in her crossbow before lining up the shot at the mass of ghosts.  

“Shadowmere, get down!” she yelled before pulling the trigger.  

The bolt shot swiftly through the air, the bulbous tip causing it to wobble only slightly.  A blast of magic from Beryl’s horn struck it a second before it entered the crowd of Pewter Belles, and the bolt exploded.  Slivers of iron spread out in a deadly cloud and sliced the ghosts to bits.  The ghostly remains floated away into oblivion as Shadowmere pushed himself up from the ground, brushing the filings from his uniform.  

Pewter Belle reappeared a few paces away, and she raised her forehooves into the air as she let out a ghastly wail.  That wail quickly changed to an alarmed shriek of pain as the edges of her dress began to catch fire.  Soon the ghost’s entire body was up in flames, the spectral body twisting around as it tried desperately to keep from being consumed.  In a second it was over, and Pewter Belle no longer hovered before them.  

“Somepony else burned her,” Beryl said flatly.  

“Let’s hope they used hemlock and wolfsbane, otherwise it could prove very hard to kill her without being able to burn her remains again,” Shadowmere said as he sheathed Revenant.  

“You know where she’s buried, right?” Beryl asked as she turned to face the stallion, sheathing her own weapon at the same time.  

“The Belle mausoleum, where their mansion once stood in the Old Estate District,” he answered.  

“We need to get there before whoever burned her bones leaves,” Beryl announced as she took off to the east.  


***


Beryl took a deep breath before stepping out of the shadows and trotting up to the Belle mausoleum entrance.  Through the gate and past scattered tombstones, she approached an all-too-familiar pony.  

“Roaring Thunder, am I right in assuming you’ve just concluded burning the remains of Pewter Belle?”  

“That’s right,” the stallion said proudly, before his expression shifted to one of puzzlement, “Did they accidently give us the same job again?”  

“Looks that way,” Beryl said with a sigh, “Pewter Belle was a roamer and a duplicator.  Please tell me you burned her remains with both hemlock and wolfsbane?”  

“Hemlock, wolfsbane, horsedrake root, and holly too for good measure,” Roaring Thunder replied, “C’mon, when are you going to stop treating me like a rookie.”  

“When you manage to genuinely impress me.”  

“Pfft,” the pegasus snorted, “I know that’s a lie.  There’s no way you haven’t been impressed by me already.  Are you still sore about-”  

“Yes!” Beryl cut him off, “And like always, I don’t care to speak about it.  Now, if you would return to the Ministry, I have to check the grave.”  

“To make sure I didn’t foul anything up?” Roaring Thunder asked as he crossed his forelegs, using his wings to keep him upright as he did so, “I assure you everything’s been taken care of.”  

“That’s not it,” Beryl replied, though she wished that she really did have a legitimate reason to doubt he’d taken care of Pewter Belle’s remains properly, “I just need to check something.”  

“Suit yourself,” Roaring Thunder said, rolling his eyes as he trotted away, “See you back at the Ministry.”  

Beryl took a deep breath once the carefree agent had vanished.  It had been four years, and nothing had changed.  If anything, her disdain for the stallion had only gotten greater over time.  Roaring Thunder was technically the same rank as Beryl now, but she would always think of him as her junior agent unless something dramatic managed to change her opinion.  Fat chance of that, she snorted.  

“Who was the agent you were speaking to?” Shadowmere asked, causing Beryl to nearly jump out of her skin in surprise that the voice came from right next to her.  

“Where did you come from?” she asked.  

“You’ve been standing here for some time, unmoving since that stallion left,” Shadowmere said, “So, who was he?”  

“Roaring Thunder, another agent from the Ministry,” Berry said dismissively as she grabbed a torch and trotted down into the Belle family mausoleum.  

“I couldn’t help but notice that things seem pretty icy between the two of you,” Shadowmere commented as he followed, “Did something happen?” 

“Yes, but that’s all I’m willing to say,” Beryl said, trotting faster as she grew frustrated at the stallion’s questions.  

“Perhaps one day you’d be willing to tell me,” he replied.  

“Yes, and perhaps on that day you’ll also tell me how you founded the Ministry!” Beryl snapped as she spun around.  He’d definitely flinched that time.  

“I’m sorry; it’s a touchy subject for me,” Beryl apologized, “Let’s just examine Pewter Belle’s grave.”  

They passed in silence to the lower level of the crypt, where a statue of a smiling Pewter Belle looked down on her stone sarcophagus.  Roaring Thunder had replaced the lid, so they had to pry it off again to get a good look inside.  Soot coated the inside of the casket, but strange runes could still be seen carved and painted around the edges.  Each and every rune Beryl saw had been slashed through by a deep cut in the stone.  

“Somepony nullified all my protective barriers,” Shadowmere grumbled, “It looks like it was done about a month ago.”  

“When we were in Hoofington,” Beryl said.  

“Exactly.  I would have sensed the destruction of the sigils had I been in Canterlot at the time,” Shadowmere said, “I think we have a good idea who set Pewter Belle free.”  

“Gargoyles, a tantibus, and now this?” Beryl said, “How many more monsters are going to be unleashed until we finally know who’s responsible?”  

“I don’t know,” Shadowmere said, as he shook his head worriedly, “If there were any traces left by them when they destroyed the runes, they’re gone now, wiped out by the burning hemlock and wolfsbane.”  

“In other words, we’re back to having no leads,” Berry said and Shadowmere nodded slowly, “Well, at least Regal Script, Flicker Frost, and Dreamy Skies’s killer won’t kill anymore.”  


***


Pieces of the stallion were scattered and splattered all over the bedroom.  Beryl felt she was going to be sick, and not just from the incredibly gory scene before her.  For the second time she’d thought she’d solved the case, only to have to face another dead pony.  How could this be?  Was Pewter Belle not gone after all, or had she never been the creature responsible for these deaths?  If she’d followed two false trails already, what was the chance she would do the same this time?  These questions buzzed around inside Beryl’s head, irritating her.  

She stepped out of the room and averted her eyes as she took a sip of coffee.  Staying up so late was not being kind to her, and she already knew her sleep schedule for the next week was ruined.  After examining the crypt, she’d gone straight home, but caught only two hours of sleep before she’d been awakened by an urgent report from the Ministry telling her to get over here as soon as possible.  

The home the disaster had occurred in was quaint, and though a bit on the cheap side, was still nicer than the nearby tenements that dominated the eastern sections of Grey Warrens.  The wife of the victim sat in the house’s living area, a blanket provided by the CPD draped around her for comfort.  They had used a towel to wipe her husband’s blood off her as best they could, but Beryl couldn’t help noticing a few small pieces still stuck in her mane, though thankfully not where the mare could see them.  

“It’s all my fault!” the mare yelled through her tears at the officer sitting on the couch next to her, trying to comfort the hysterical pony.  

“No, you’re not responsible for this,” the officer told her firmly, though the widow shook her head in denial, “Listen, no pony could have done that to your husband.”  

“You don’t understand; I am responsible for this.  It’s my fault Sunny’s dead!” Crystal Well continued to sob as Berry took the officer’s place at the mare’s side.  

“No.  You didn’t kill him; it’s not your fault,” Beryl tried to get the point across, “I’m going to find what did, though, and I need your help.  I need you to tell me exactly what happened before Sunny Days’s death.”  

“It’s too horrible,” Crystal Well shook her head.  

“I need you to try to tell me anyway, so I can stop this thing before any more ponies get hurt.”  

“We… we were fighting, Sunny and I,” Crystal said, though it appeared to pain her greatly, “Fighting over something stupid.  I can’t even remember what.  Is that crazy?  I was angry, so very angry, and I said things I didn’t mean.  I… I even… I even said that I wished he was dead sometimes, even though I don’t!  And then… then… he… he… exploded!”  

“Did you notice anything else, anything out of the ordinary?” Beryl asked.  

“You mean besides my husband exploding!” Crystal yelled.  

“Yes, it could be important if I’m going to stop this from happening again,” Beryl tried to convey the importance, though the chances of logic getting through to a pony who’d just experienced what Crystal had were slim.  

“The lights flickered, I guess,” Crystal Well sniffled, “But that hasn’t been unusual these past few weeks.”  

“I promise I’ll get to the bottom of this,” Beryl vowed as she rose from the couch, “Nopony else is going to be killed.”  

In truth, Beryl didn’t know whether she’d be able to keep such a promise, though she was determined not to rest until she’d resolved this case.  The leads were as slim as ever, and she was worried she’d once again follow the wrong trail, so Beryl returned to the scene of Sunny Days’s death.  Something had been different this time.  There was a witness who thought she know how the victim had been killed, but were her words really responsible or was this just a grotesquely unfortunate coincidence?  The same sense of unease that had plagued Beryl at the other crime scenes was back again, but now without the false trails of a basilisk or a ghost present, it was easier for her to focus in on it.  She could sense something, or rather it was what she didn’t sense that gave it away.  An emptiness seemed to hang in the air as if some being had occupied the room before leaving and taking all trace with it.  The giveaway was that it had left nothing in its place but a magical vacuum.  Faint as it was, it was something.  Beryl decided to investigate Dreamy Skies and Flicker Frost’s apartment again to see if she could pick anything else up now that Pewter Belle’s essence was certain to have dissipated.  


***


Sure enough, the unnatural emptiness was present there as well.  Now that she knew what to search for, it was easy for Berry to track the lack of presence.  The emptiness was most potent against the eastern wall of the apartment, not five paces from where the two residents had met their untimely ends.  There was nothing remarkable about the wall; in fact, it was quite plain.  Maybe there was some clue on the other side.  

Beryl trotted out into the hallway and made her way over to the door of the neighboring apartment.  Giving a sharp rap on the door, she waited for the pony within to respond.  As she did, her mind began to wonder.  If Crystal Well’s word had in some bizarre way led to the death of her husband, then who had said the words that had gotten the two ponies here killed?  Had they also been in a fight and wished death on the other?  Not likely.  

Beryl knocked again and looked at the plaque outside the door.  The apartment was home to a Ms. Basalt Grin, whose name sounded familiar to Berry.  Shining Crescent had mentioned that Basalt Grin had come to the party the night before the attack to complain about the noise.  Could she have said something that would explain the deaths?  Beryl pulled the case file from the satchel at her side and flipped through it.  Judging by the records, Basalt Grin hadn’t been interviewed or even talked to by the Ministry agents when they were here, which was not too unusual since it was official practice to notify as few ponies of the Ministry’s existence as possible.  Still, they could have missed out on some important piece of information because of it.  

“Basalt Grin, this is Agent Beryl Fields!” Berry announced as she knocked on the door again, more forcefully this time, “I need to speak with you.  Please open the door!”  

Beryl thought she heard something from inside the apartment, but it certainly wasn’t the sound of a pony coming to open the door.  She conjured up her magic sword and sliced through the door’s lock before kicking it open.  Beryl lowered her crossbow as she spotted Basalt Grin cowering on the other side of the room.  The earth pony mare trying to become one with the wall had a gray coat befitting her name and a mane and tale colored a blue so dark it was nearly purple, both cropped short.  

“Oh Celestia, you’ve come to take me away,” Basalt Grin said softly but frantically as she stared at Beryl was an expression of fear on her face.  It occurred to Beryl as she looked at her that she may not have gotten any sleep the previous night either.  

“Calm down.  I’m not here to take you away.  I just want to talk,” Beryl said as she put her crossbow away.  It seemed safe enough to lower her guard; she was detecting nothing malicious coming from Basalt Grin or anywhere else in the apartment, though she did sense the emptiness emanating from the wall that bordered Dreamy Skies and Flicker Frost’s apartment.  


“Talk, huh?  And then what?” Basalt Grin asked as he eyes flicked around the room, always coming back to Beryl.  

“That depends how the talk goes,” Berry said as she slowly made her way across the room toward the mare.  

“Talk can be dangerous, don’t you know?” Basalt Grin said seriously, though she still seemed a bit jittery, “I didn’t; not until recently.”  

“How about you tell me what happened,” Beryl said.  

“Do you believe wishes can come true?” Basalt Grin asked, locking her gaze with Beryl’s.  

Oh no.  Beryl didn’t like the turn this conversation had taken.  That is to say, she was disturbed by what Basalt Grin had said, but that didn’t mean she didn’t experience the feeling of triumph at the same time.  There was a connection, perhaps one that could be key to this case.  Crystal Well and now Basalt Grin had both mentioned wishes, and Beryl was almost unable to contain her anticipation for what else Basalt could tell her.  

“What did you wish for?” Beryl asked.  

“My gran, she always told me ‘Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it,’” Basalt said, either ignoring the question or having not even heard it, “I always thought that was dumb.  Why should you fear getting what you wish, because who would ever not want something they wished for?  I understand now, though.”  

“What did you wish for?” Beryl asked again, this time more forcefully.  

“Does it really matter what I wished for?” Basalt Grin said, finally answering, “Because of it, two ponies are dead.  That’s what matters.”  

“You wished for Dreamy Skies and Flicker Frost to die,” Berry said, nodding her head to convey understanding.  

“No!” Basalt Grin retorted, “I didn’t want them to die.  All I asked was that I could have some peace and quiet, that there’d be no more parties.”  

Beryl took a moment to get her thoughts together.  These wishes, if they truly were involved in causing the death of ponies, which seemed more and more likely all the time, seemed to have few limits.  Crystal Well had said precisely that she wished her husband would die, but Basalt Grin had said nothing about her neighbors’ deaths in her wish.  Then again, Beryl now remembered that Crystal Well had only said she ‘sometimes wished’ which technically was not even a proper wish.  It appeared these wishes had been pretty loosely interpreted to lead to killing ponies.  What of Regal Script?  Nopony had been nearby when he’d been killed, so had he uttered his own death wish?  Not all that unlikely, come to think of it, considering that he’d just been saddled with a load of taxing paperwork.  He’d probably just wanted to let out some steam and had instead signed his own death warrant.  

If this truly was what was going on, it had frightening consequences.  Were there any limits to these wishes besides that they could in some way be translated into a wish for death?  All manner of curses or off-hoof comments could quickly become deadly, and all of Canterlot seemed to be under threat.  It couldn’t be as expansive as that though, Beryl concluded, for there was some physical component to it as well.  The empty magical signatures she had found were proof enough that the wish wouldn’t be carried out unless whatever had left them was present, and it couldn’t be everywhere at once.  

“I got my wish though, didn’t I?” Basalt Grin asked as she hid her face behind her hooves, “But, by Celestia, the cost.  Be careful what you wish for…”  


***


After piecing things together, Beryl had decided that she would get nothing more from Basalt Grin’s apartment.  Still, the mare was in no state to be left alone.  She needed some serious therapy, and Beryl had taken her to the nearest CPD station, where she’d be safe until a Ministry representative came to retrieve her.  Three ponies were dead, and three more were broken because of this monster.  This had to stop immediately.  

Obvious that whatever she was facing was too powerful or rare to be in the Ministry’s bestiary, Beryl headed directly to the Deep Archives where Boris once more ushered her into the retired documents section.  She had very little to go on this time; not even names, so finding any information on this monster seemed next to impossible.  To start, Berry headed to the records section and grabbed as many reports on attacks as she could carry, before sifting through them to find unusual and fantastical deaths.  It was a mind-numbing task, but it had to be done, and it finally did bear some fruit.  

Only in the oldest records, their yellowed pages five centuries or more old, was there any mention of ponies spontaneously exploding.  The reports were brief, only a single line, and the cause listed was usually only one or two words.  It wasn’t much, but eventually Beryl had it narrowed down to a list of causes.  Five possibilities awaited Berry’s investigation: lupinworms, wxii, Namibian vampires, genies, and thought-forms.  There were several other causes that had been blacked out, but Beryl didn’t know what to do if they were the true cause.  She certainly couldn’t go asking Director Thistleback for level-2 access right now, so she desperately hoped the answer was already available to her.  

One by one, Beryl researched the monsters in the short list she had found, and one by one eliminated them, drawing closer to a solution.  There were a few books on lupinworms, though it took Beryl awhile to find them since they were filed in the werewolf section.  Lupinworms, as she soon learned, were a bizarre species of parasite somehow related to lycanthropes.  They would infest a host pony, eating them from the inside out and multiplying before bursting forth.  Once they’d fed off a pony, they would then grow into werewolf-esque creatures whose skin would become infested with new lupinworms at the end of their life cycles that would then each seek out a new host.  The fact that lupinworms in their larval state left no magical signature caught Beryl’s attention, but there were too many other inconsistencies for her to consider them a serious possibility.  For example, though a full-grown lupinworm in its werewolf form could probably throw a carriage, it couldn’t under any circumstance turn invisible.  Putting back the books, she moved on to the next possibility.  

Wxii stumped her for a while, until she realized that it wasn’t a monster, but rather an abbreviation because of the limited space.  It was hard to tell since everything for a few pages had been printed in all capital letters, but wxii was actually WXII, short for Witchcraft – Tier 12.  Doing a little digging, Beryl found that witchcraft was simply the term for dark magic used at the time.  Strangely, the rating system for whatever ponies had chosen to call it had not changed over time.  To Beryl’s knowledge, there were only eight tiers of dark magic, but there were no records on tiers nine through eleven in the library, leading her to conclude that they had not been retired, but classified.  Still, of all the tiers that Beryl knew, there was not one that didn’t leave an extremely potent magical trail, as well as a signature at the site the magic was targeting.  She doubted things would change much as one moved up in that respect, so she placed that possibility to the side but kept it in mind just in case nothing else fit.  

Namibian vampires were a frightening breed of the beasts Beryl had never heard of, and probably never would have had she not met Shadowmere or been granted access to the Deep Archives.  Thankfully, only a Namibian vampire could infect a pony with the strain, and this sub breed was few and far between, hunted to extinction as far as the Ministry’s records were concerned.  Once a pony was infected, instead of their body transforming into a vampiric one, the vampire grew within them before finally explosively bursting the flesh.  Like dark magic, this transformation would leave a powerful magical trail, though, and those around the pony transforming would without a doubt notice signs months in advance.  Crystal Well had also not mentioned anything bursting free of her husband when he exploded, so Beryl ruled out Namibian vampires and moved on.  

On genies there was next to nothing in the Deep Archives.  By a stroke of luck, she stumbled upon books describing djinn, an alternate name for the creatures.  As she paged through the meager stack of books she’d compiled, she was filled with a sense of dread.  Genies were creatures of nearly unlimited power that nopony seemed to truly understand.  Contrary to tales, they were less likely to grant wishes and more likely to explode the pony who’d summoned them.  That threw a stick in the spoke of Beryl’s mental wheels, but she kept reading to see what else she could find.  It was difficult, since much of the information was either contradictory, mere speculation, or censored.  She did learn that their preferred method of killing ponies was to tear them apart explosively, which was a count in favor of this theory.  They couldn’t turn invisible, but their power was rumored to have an impressive reach, which could explain the carriage thrown at Beryl two days earlier.  Where could a genie have been hiding though?  

Like a flash of lighting, the answer struck Berry.  Genies were said to be gaseous creatures, and what better place for such a creature than the new gas pipe system being put in throughout Canterlot.  If she remembered correctly, every place that a pony had been killed had just recently had new gas pipes put in, including the street the carriage had been trundling down.  It was beginning to look like she might have a winner, but the break from the pattern regarding wishes still bothered her.  Beryl put the idea aside with dark magic in case she needed to come back to it later.  

It didn’t take long for her to rule out thought-forms.  There was only one entry in the records about an exploding pony due to a thought-form, and it was a very specific case.  Thought-forms were a strange ethereal creature that was not quite a ghost, since it had never been a living pony.  They drifted aimlessly, stealing thoughts from ponies’ minds and turning them into a reality.  The only time a thought-form had caused a pony to explode was due to a nearby pony with a grudge and a very sadistic imagination.  The literature was very clear: thought-forms could only create exactly what a pony had in their mind, and Beryl was sure none of the ponies who’d uttered wishes had literally meant what had come from their wishes.  

After a whole day’s research, Beryl had narrowed down the possibilities from five to two, with different levels of doubt attached to each of them.  She wasn’t really fully pleased with either of them, and there was also the issue that the true answer could be classified beyond her reach.  She decided the best course of action now would be to take what she’d come up with to Shadowmere and see if he had any other suggestions.  Perhaps in his library (which she had yet to see), there were even books that would clear up some of the difficulties with the remaining possibilities.  

It was the middle of the night, or perhaps even a few hours past it, when Beryl trotted down the streets of Canterlot.  She bemoaned not taking any coffee with her from the Ministry, for she desperately needed it now that a whole day had passed her by without rest.  After a few raps with the knocker on the door to Rosethorn Hall, a caretaker in a nightgown opened it up for her.  She frowned at Beryl as she trotted in, no doubt trying to convey her annoyance that Berry had woken her up at such a late hour, and perhaps had woken up some of the orphans as well with her knocking.  

Beryl made her way down to Shadowmere’s quarters, whose doors once more opened easily before her.  The immortal stallion was in the main room when she entered, sharpening and oiling Revenant.  He sheathed the blade as she approached and told him what she had discovered.  As he heard what she had to say, his expression grew more and more concerned.  

“So, what do you think?” Beryl asked when she’d finished summarizing, “My best guess is a genie, but it doesn’t explain everything.”  

“No, you’re right, but what you said reveals why you don’t believe so,” Shadowmere said, “The proper name for the creature you’re looking for is a djinn.  What you’ve told me matches those desert spirits exactly, and the part about it using the gas pipes to get around was a spot-on deduction.”  

“It’s the wishes that threw me off,” Beryl explained, “Djinn don’t really grant them, do they?”  

“In a perverse way, yes.  After all, those tales all came from somewhere,” Shadowmere replied, “A djinn is a creature of unimaginable power, able to realign reality itself.  Some would even put them as equals to Draconequi, though such ponies are blissfully unaware just how much capacity for power a Draconequus truly has.  For all their power, djinn have a weakness, a binding on their abilities that nopony knows the origin of.  While in its weakest state, a djinn cannot directly kill a pony without the command of another pony.  They take a very liberal view of exactly what constitutes a command, which is why you’ve seen the djinn killing only in response to some pony’s stated desire for something.”  

“And the carriage that was thrown at me,” Beryl said, gaining a clearer picture of the past as Shadowmere explained, “The djinn wanted to stop my investigation, but couldn’t harm me directly, so it arranged an accident that could have killed me.”  

“Just so,” Shadowmere said with a sharp nod.  

“All right.  How do we kill this djinn?”  

“It’s impossible to kill a djinn,” Shadowmere said with a shake of his head as he rose from his chair, hanging Revenant over its back, “We can only hope to contain it.”  

“So, what?  We need a golden lamp?” Beryl asked, not entirely in jest.  

“No, that’s something the tales got wrong.  We need a pot made from the clay of the beast’s homeland imbued with spells while baked in a special kiln.  I believe I still have a few around, though I hoped I’d never have to use them again,” Shadowmere said, “It’s a good thing you found it when you did, still in its weakened state.  We still have a chance of capturing it without destroying the entire city in the process.  Still, some urgency is required.  Once a djinn kills nine ponies on command, the bindings are removed, and with a fast method of getting around, it might not take it long to reach that point.”  


***


Beryl awoke to a gentle prodding of her shoulder by a hoof.  

“The ritual’s nearly complete,” Shadowmere announced as he backed away.  

After Beryl and Shadowmere had resolved to go after and capture the djinn, Shadowmere had begun preparations for a ritual that would lead them to the monster.  It was complex and would take a long time to bear fruit, and though Beryl had wanted to see it through, she drifted off to sleep before it could be completed.  Now, as she sat up on the couch in Shadowmere’s apartments, she got a good look at what the immortal stallion had built.  

On a low table was a large and incredibly detailed map of Canterlot.  Pins made of a strange reddish-gold metal were stuck in the map at the four points they knew for certain the djinn had been at.  A hair from Shadowmere’s own tail was wrapped around the ends of each of these pins, forming a zig-zagging line that traced the djinn’s path.  A circle was drawn in purple powder over the entire map, bizarre symbols traced with the same substance within it.  At six equidistant points along the edge of the circle stood burning candles, the blue thread connecting them now covered in melted wax.  Shadowmere had been busy while she’d been asleep.  

“Ready?” Shadowmere asked.  

Beryl nodded in reply, and Shadowmere plucked at the thread connecting the candles.  The candles wobbled for a moment before falling inward as one and igniting the map.  As the powder ignited, the flames burned a sorcerous blue and consumed the map unevenly.  The regions the djinn had never been in were quickly burned up until the edge of the flame reached Sunset Borough’s CPD station.  The pin there ignited, startling Beryl as it sent up a cloud of sparks.  The end of the hair pulled free and drifted with the flames without catching on fire.  Flames blazed till the pin where the carriage had nearly hit Beryl ignited, then the one at Dreamy Skies and Flicker Frost’s apartment, and finally Crystal Well and Sunny Days’s home.  The map continued to burn in a southeastern direction, carrying the hair with it until only a small scrap remained unburnt and the flames died out.  Shadowmere’s tail hair stretched out across the tabletop, tracing the djinn’s path from its last known location to its current one.  

Both ponies leaned in close to get a better look at the scrap of map left, though it was unnecessary.  The structure drawn on the parchment was recognizable to every pony in the city, but it seemed required of them to make sure they were not mistaken.  It was impossible to claim they were after they’d read the text printed beneath the building’s outline: CANTERLOT CASTLE.  


***


“Agent Beryl Fields; I need to enter the castle on Ministry business,” Beryl announced herself as she flashed her badge to the soldier posted next to the gleaming golden gate guarding the main entryway to Canterlot Castle.  

It turned out that there had not been much night left when Beryl had arrived at Shadowmere’s, and after her rest and the ritual, it was now mid-morning.  She hadn’t received any word from the Ministry alerting her of more deaths, so she was grateful for that.  Still, the djinn could strike at any moment in the castle and kill any number of servants or nobles that happened to be around.  

“Of course, agent,” the soldier said, standing rigidly at attention, “You’ll need to enter through the back way, though.  I’ve orders not to let anypony through the front gate today for any reason.”  

“Why is that?” Beryl asked.  The Ministry was supposed to have unlimited access and power, but Princess Celestia was the technical head of the organization, which meant she alone could set a rule that barred the Ministry from doing something.  She had rarely done so though, and never without a good reason.  

“The League of Nations is gathered today in the castle,” the guard replied, and Beryl noticed for the first time all the strange carriages parked within the grounds leading up to the palace, armed guards patrolling around them, “Celestia does not wish to raise alarm among our international cohorts.”  

“Thank you; you’ve been most helpful,” Beryl addressed the guard, “If it’s no trouble, I have one more question for you.”  

“What is it, Agent Fields?” the guard asked, still standing at full attention.  

“The gas system being added to the castle; do you know how much has progressed?”  

“Only in the West Wing, ma’am.  Celestia wanted it completed before the League’s visit so as not to seem out of date,” the guard answered, “Is the gas system somehow important?”  

“Best you forget about it,” Beryl cautioned him before trotting away.  

The League of Nations was an organization Celestia had put together just a few years earlier in the hope that all countries on Equus could meet to overcome their problems through diplomacy rather than war.  All pony nations had signed the charter, though many had no love for Equestria and had joined simply to be able to sit at a table with Celestia wielding theoretically equal power.  While the League was in session, the most powerful ponies in the world were gathered together and tension filled the air.  If the djinn were to strike now, it could have disastrous consequences for Equus as a whole.  

After flashing her badge to the guard at the back gate, Beryl was let through into the castle grounds.  Before she left him, she asked the guard for directions to his commanding officer.  It turned out that Captain Ironsides of the Royal Guard was not present on the castle grounds today, but he had left his lieutenant in charge.  Beryl galloped as quickly as she could through the royal gardens and into the castle proper, searching for the officer.  

She spotted the pony pacing outside of the large, locked doors to the room where the League of Nations was meeting.  Beryl wasn’t as intimately familiar with the Royal Guard’s command structure as she was with that of the Ministry, but she was certain that he was young for a lieutenant, only a few years out of officer training at the most.  His blue dress uniform accented with silver nicely complimented his snow-white coat and striped blue mane not cut to regulation length.  

“Lieutenant Shining Armor,” Beryl addressed the young officer, “I need to speak with you alone.”  

Shining Armor glanced at the two other Royal Guards standing at their posts to either side of the doors before trotting up to Berry.  He looked nervous, clearly uncomfortable being in command.  Was this the first time the captain had left him in charge of the Royal Guard?  This piece of information could either make Beryl’s job much easier or much harder, depending on whether Shining Armor’s jitters drove him to stubbornness or submissiveness.  

“I’m Agent Beryl Fields of the Ministry,” Beryl introduced herself once they were out of earshot of the guards at the door, “Are you familiar with the Ministry?”  

“Yes.  That is to say, I know who you are and what you do,” Shining Armor answered, his speech conveying uncertainty, “If you’re here, that can’t mean anything good, can it?”  

“I’m afraid not,” Beryl said, shaking her head, “The West Wing needs to be evacuated immediately.  Everypony here is in grave danger.”  

“The League of Nations is meeting.  I can’t just order them to all leave,” Shining Armor protested as the blood drained from his face, “I could cause an international incident.”  

“It could cause a worse incident if one of the diplomats dies,” Beryl said tonelessly.  

“Of course.  Right,” Shining Armor said, his eyes widening, “I-I’ll let Celestia know personally.”  

As the stallion took off toward a side door, to enter the League of Nations without causing an uproar, Beryl slipped off into an alcove.  A few minutes later, the doors at the end of the hall swung slowly open and ponies trotted out in a procession.  They came in small groups, their appearances setting them apart as coming from different nations.  With each group trotted a standard-bearer, holding the nation’s flag high.  

“Quite a procession,” Shadowmere commented from next to Beryl.  

“Where did you come from?” Beryl asked in surprise.  The last time she’d seen him was when she had approached the guard at the front gate.  She assumed he’d found his own way into the castle, but wasn’t sure how, or how he had snuck up on her where she was.  

“I was with you the whole time,” the stallion said as he watched the annoyed diplomats filing past, “Before we reached the castle, I cast a spell that would make anypony who saw me forget as soon as they looked away.”  

Together Shadowmere and Beryl watched the procession, the gears in Beryl’s mind turning all the while.  

“Shadowmere, djinn are native to Saddle Arabia, right?” she asked.  

“Correct.”  

“And to your knowledge, up until now, there were no djinn left in Equestria.”  

“Also correct.”  

“So, is it possible the Saddle Arabians brought it with them?” Beryl asked as she watched the Saddle Arabian delegation pass by.  They seemed to all be wearing a permanent sneer on their muzzles, and kept looking with contempt at the delegates from Roan ahead of them.  

“Possible, yes, but a connection like that’s not enough to convict, much less suspect,” Shadowmere said.  

“An interesting possibility, though, isn’t it?” Beryl said, “The Saddle Arabians are itching for war, looking for any excuse.  A death at the League of Nations would only prove it to be a trap engineered by Celestia, as they’ve cautioned ever since its inception.  The djinn arriving here happens to suit their agenda perfectly.”  

“I wouldn’t accuse the Saddle Arabians until we hear a confession from the djinn’s own mouth,” Shadowmere said with iron in his voice, “Come, now that everypony’s left, we should begin our search.”  

They investigated the League of Nations meeting room first, but could find no trace of the djinn.  They couldn’t, of course, track it by a magical signature, but Shadowmere had at some point in his extremely long life acquired a bell that would chime when a djinn was near.  The bell was silent as they searched the room and remained silent as they trotted through the empty West Wing.  Beryl was beginning to think that the djinn wasn’t in the castle anymore.  

“An el nomine ai mi maestro Sithis, Ei provi de, djinn!” Shadowmere called out without warning.  

No more than a few seconds later, the bell chimed for the first time.  It began to ring more urgently as the gas lamps on the walls started to flicker.  A table slid unexpectedly from the wall toward Berry.  She jumped out of its way, landing as it smashed against the opposite wall of the hallway.  She moved aside again as ceremonial swords hanging on the wall slipped free of their racks and plummeted toward her.  

Before anything else could be thrown at her, Beryl cast a protective spell encasing her body to serve as a safety net.  Next, she pulled a piece of chalk from her uniform pocket and swiftly drew a rune on the tiles of the floor as Shadowmere had taught her.  Quickly, she drew two similar runes on either side of it, creating a supernatural barrier in the hallway that the djinn couldn’t cross.  

As Shadowmere dodged the flying furniture now streaking down the hall with alarming frequency, he burned a set of runes into the wall before striking them with his hoof.  Flames burst from the gas lamps up and down the hall from him as sorcerous fire spread through the gas pipes.  A high-pitched warbling Beryl could only guess was a djinn’s scream cut through the air as the flames reached the wall where the hall split.  From it a painting of Celestia in a heroic pose flew toward Beryl and Shadowmere, the edge of the elaborate golden frame nearly slicing their heads off.  

They both rose from the floor as the djinn showed itself.  A cloud of roiling bluish-gray smoke billowed from the gas lamp next to where Celestia’s portrait had once hung as the djinn tried to escape the fire.  Bits of flame trailed here and there from its gaseous body, but any damage was quickly repaired by flashes of reddish-purple lightning from within.  No truly distinguishing features could be identified on the djinn, though at times the cloud seemed inclined to form a hoof or a claw only to return to a chaotic state.  Three bright yellow lights shone from deep within, and they swung to focus on Berry and Shadowmere before the djinn turned and fled down the hall to the left.  

“Split up and make more barriers!” Shadowmere yelled before he took off after the djinn, vaulting over the ruined furniture and wall hangings lining the corridor.  

Beryl took off after him, but dodged the opposite way when the passage split.  Mentally, she tried to picture the layout of the West Wing and followed a path that would allow her to cut the djinn off from the rest of the castle.  Every so far she would pause to trace another runic barrier on the floor.  At times, she would hear clashes coming from elsewhere in the building as Shadowmere and the djinn met.  So far, he had managed to turn it back from escaping every time, but that was about all that was accomplished.  

Confident that she had placed enough barriers to keep the djinn from escaping the West Wing, Beryl began to slowly advance inward, seeking the monster out.  Her crossbow remained strapped on her back; no quarrel would do much good against a djinn.  A bandolier wrapped around her held four magicaelcum grenades, and she kept her magic ready to grab one and pull the pin in case the djinn came in sight.  

It was only because she was using her magic that she felt an overwhelming pressure suddenly assailing her.  Attuning her magic to make it bearable to track the origin of the pressure, she was led to a door just up the hall.  From all outward appearances, the door was nothing special, except that the wood it was made of looked to have been there for an eternity.   Further magical inspection (that caused Beryl’s eyes to water) revealed that the door was covered in magical wards of a type Berry had only seen in one other place.  The wards were just as powerful and extensive, if not more so, as those guarding Shadowmere’s chambers.  These felt distinctly different, though.  While Shadowmere’s wards exuded coolness and dormant threat, the wards here seemed malicious, as if the power within them was champing at the bit to be freed and destroy.  

What was something like this doing in Canterlot Castle?  Every door in the castle had a plaque hanging above it to assist with navigation, and Beryl checked this door’s to see what it might say.  “Private rooms of Malthus, Advisor Imperium” the plaque read.  She remembered seeing Malthus in the Royal Court, and something had definitely seemed “off” about him.  Did Celestia know what her closest advisor was involved in?  Just how had a pony like this manage to slip beneath the Ministry’s notice?  Then again, Shadowmere had managed to do the same thing for centuries, so perhaps it wasn’t that uncommon of an occurrence.  What a frightening thought!  

Doors burst open down the corridor, and the djinn billowed out and toward Berry.  She reached for a grenade only to be pummeled by the nearby wards, and she galloped toward the djinn, away from Malthus’s quarters, before launching the bomb at the monster.  Tendrils of lightning reached from the djinn as the grenade neared, and it exploded.  Shards of dull blue metal and slivers of bright blue crystal hit the djinn in a deadly cloud.  Shreds of gas were torn from the djinn, and a blinding wave of lightning pulsated over its body as it screamed and fled down the corridor in the opposite direction.  

Shadowmere dropped to the ground as the djinn flew over him, angling Daybreak so that it sliced through the monster’s underside.  Surprisingly, the blade had a purple blood-like substance on it after the djinn had passed.  Beryl noted this as she joined Shadowmere in galloping after the djinn, filing away everything she saw.  The djinn’s path twisted and turned through the halls of the West Wing as it was forced to turn aside upon reaching the barriers the ponies had left.  Beryl’s spirits rose as she realized where the djinn was headed.  

As they turned one last corner, she hurried to scratch a barrier on the floor at their hooves.  The djinn was now trapped; the corridor it had gone down ended in a dead end where a large painting of the charge of the Royal Greys in Equestria’s war on the Neighpoleonic Empire was mounted.  In front of the painting, the djinn roiled, turning this way and that as it searched for a way out.  At last it stopped, and turned slowly to face Beryl and Shadowmere where they stood less than twenty paces away.  The yellow lights within the djinn shone brighter as they moved out from the center, and became eyes in the monstrous face congealing on the surface.  The djinn’s head looked a bit like that of a bulldog from the Grittish Isles, but with the scaly flaps of ears belonging to a dragon.  As it opened its mouth slightly, Beryl could see that it had two rows of teeth, the outer set that of a pony and the inner set a row of needles.  The tongue was triangular, and the end was split like a snake’s, both halves moving separately as it stuck the tongue slightly out of its mouth.  

Beryl pulled the pin of another magical grenade and threw it at the djiin.  In such close quarters, it was impossible for it to dodge, and the splinters of metal and crystal sliced through its gaseous body.  As lightning crackled over it, a many-jointed arm ending in a six-fingered hand sprouted from the djinn’s sides and reached up.  Cracks spread through the plaster of the ceiling and the decorative chandeliers shook alarmingly.  One crashed to the floor, sending metal and glass everywhere, landing where Beryl had been standing a moment earlier.  She was now ten paces from the djinn, frantically scrawling runes on the floor as Shadowmere shielded her from the showering plaster with his duster.  

“Daybreak, to me!” Shadowmere yelled as the djinn ceased its shaking of the hall momentarily.  

The blade burst back into being from thin air, and Shadowmere caught it with his forehooves instead of his mouth.  He swung the greatsword up and rested it on his shoulder as he trotted forward, over the barrier Berry had just finished forming.  He set down the pack he’d been carrying on his back gently next to Beryl before trotting on and coming to a stop halfway between her and the djinn.  He looked with concern at the cracks in the windows to either side of the djinn before looking the monster’s eyes.  

“An el nomine ai mi maestro Sithis, Ei provi de, djinn!” Shadowmere announced again before swinging Daybreak’s handle into his mouth.  

“What are you doing?” Beryl asked.  

“Challenging it to a duel,” the stallion replied swiftly, not taking his eyes from the djinn, “Continue with the plan.”  

The immortal pony and immortal spirit remained still for what seemed like an eternity, staring into each other’s eyes, sizing each other up.  When they finally moved, it was so swift that no pony’s eye could have hoped to comprehend it.  Daybreak flashed and lighting crackled as Shadowmere and the djinn spun around each other, swinging, parrying, dodging, and counterattacking.  The gas pipes in the walls were torn free, a hail of plaster striking Shadowmere’s back and warning him of the oncoming metal.  He mumbled incantations and swung his hooves to make symbols in the air, heating the pipes with sorcerous fire before thrusting them into the djinn.  The djinn replied by snapping the pipes into pieces and shooting them back at Shadowmere.  His hood had flown back and away from his head during the fight, and one of the pipe fragments managed to catch his mane on fire.  Daybreak left his mouth and danced around his forelegs as he directed it in a spinning arc around his head, cutting the flaming hair free.  So that the djinn could not take advantage of his distraction, he pulled a magicaelcum grenade from his bandolier and tossed it at the monster.  

The djinn reeled and soared up as high as possible before plummeting down at Shadowmere.  As he jumped to the side, he left a second grenade on the floor for the djinn to find.  The bomb tore the djinn to pieces, but it swiftly reformed in a storm of crackling lightning and launched itself at Shadowmere, six arms protruding from its gaseous body.  He jumped away at the last moment, as a claw scratched against the edge of his duster but found no purchase.  The djinn crashed into the corner Shadowmere had been standing in, and was engulfed in a wall of green energy as it touched the rune-bearing cards Shadowmere had pinned to the wall.  Billowing up and letting out howls of anger that caused the cracks in the windows, walls, and ceiling to become more alarming, the djinn spun on Shadowmere and flew in a rage at him, its mouth fully open and its eyes blazing like bonfires.  

“Now, Berry!” Shadowmere yelled as he jumped aside and rolled into a ball.  

With a spare bolt, Berry scratched a groove in the floor across the runes she’d made a few minutes earlier.  The magical barrier ceased to exist and the djinn sailed across it after Shadowmere.  Its gaseous body suddenly met an invisible wall on all sides and billowed upward.  The windows shattered as it wailed in realization of what had befallen it.  On the floor beneath it, Berry had drawn a magic binding circle in chalk while Shadowmere had fought the djinn.  At a nod from Shadowmere, she opened the pack next to her and placed the antique pot within in the center of the circle.  

Shadowmere began to recite words in a language Beryl had no knowledge of.  As he did so, the djinn struggled to break free, wailing as the effort proved futile.  A yellow light began to shine from the small opening of the pot, and ethereal chains snaked out and upward from it.  The circle of ceiling above the djinn crashed in, but the chains knocked the falling beams and floorboards aside, protecting the pot.  The djinn tried to flee upwards, but the chains sunk deep into its body and latched onto something, dragging it down writhing and screaming.  Once the djinn’s body touched the pot, it was only a moment before it was entirely contained within.  Heating some wax with magic, Shadowmere placed a seal over the opening and carved a rune into it with one of his throwing blades.  

“So, what now?” Beryl asked, looking at the ruined corridor around them.  

“I’ll take the djinn back to Rosethorn Hall, where it can be safely contained,” Shadowmere said as he carefully placed the pot back in the pack it had come from, “Once it’s been weakened enough, I’ll ask it some questions, but it will likely be months before that’s possible.”  

“What can I do?”  

“For now?  I’m afraid the Black Briar can’t be seen,” Shadowmere said as he looked at the devastation around them, before turning to look Berry in the eye, “So I guess it’s up to you to explain this mess to Celestia.”  

His words had been stated so tonelessly, but Berry swore she saw a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth at the end.  


***


“A phantom?” Siren’s Song asked as he glanced at the report on his desk.  

“That’s right,” Beryl answered, standing at attention before the Deputy Director, “I suspect it to have once been a necromancer of the Tail’renn Cabal, one of the ones we were never able to identify.”  

“The Ministry’s raid on the Tail’renn Cabal was nine hundred years ago,” Siren’s Song said as he looked up from the report, “Why would one of their phantoms choose to appear now?”  

“It may be linked to Pewter Belle’s reawakening,” Beryl replied, and Siren’s Song arched an eyebrow, “The Tail’renn Cabal was ultimately tracked down and eliminated thanks to their betrayal at the hooves of Ludovic Belle, a member of their circle who came to Celestia with inside information.  Pewter Belle was his descendent, and her black magic knowledge all came from books looted by Ludovic in his betrayal.”  

“Well, I see you’ve done your research,” Siren’s Song said as he crossed his hooves over her report, “Do you think Pewter Belle’s reawakening could trigger the rise of other members of the Cabal?”  

“It’s a possibility I wouldn’t discount,” Beryl stated.  

“Good work,” the Deputy Director commended her, “I apologize for giving you a case that turned out to be more high-profile than we’d thought, but you proved yourself splendidly.  I’ll try to make sure you get some cases that really will keep Director Thistelback’s attention off of you in the near future.”  

“Thank you, sir,” Beryl said as she gave a slight bow, “But, may I be allowed a question?”  

“Fire away.”  

“Ponies exploding, that’s only happened in extreme cases in the past, and very rarely,” Beryl said, “You knew it wasn’t going to be an ordinary, low-profile case, didn’t you?”  

“That’ll be all for today, Beryl.  Go home; get some sleep.  You earned it,” Siren’s Song said as he smiled sideways at her.  


***


“A promotion?!” the lieutenant asked incredulously.  

“That’s right,” Celestia said, “So, what do you say?”  

Shining Armor looked around Canterlot Castle’s throne room nervously.  As a colt, he’d always dreamed about this day, but now that it was staring him in the muzzle, he wasn’t ready.  Or, maybe he just thought he wasn’t ready.  After all, his trainers in officer school had praised him for his skills, and not just because he was the brother of Celestia’s protégé (if anything, they had tempered their praise because of it).  He’d also shot through the officer ranks of the Royal Guard and made lieutenant in under two years, a feat few before him had accomplished.  Still, he was younger than every other officer in the Guard.  It was just too soon!  

“It’s so sudden,” Shining Armor said, stalling for time, “Why now?”  

“Well, two reasons really,” the Princess said, tilting her head to the side as she did so, “Captain Ironsides, though a good officer, is getting a bit old for his post, and his tactics are a bit… oh… old-fashioned.  It’s time for somepony new to take his place.”  

“And you think that somepony ought to be me?” Shining Armor asked.  

“Well, I wasn’t certain until earlier at the League of Nations summit,” Celestia admitted, “Your decisive action and cool-headedness under pressure certainly kept things in order, and quite possibly saved the lives of many diplomats, not to mention the threat of an international incident.  I said there was a second reason, didn’t I?  It’s that you convinced me on that day that you were ready for command.”  

“I don’t know what to say,” Shining Armor admitted, though the more he thought about it, the more he felt that he was ready for the position.  

“If it makes you feel that you’re pushing Captain Ironsides out, we’ll wait until the new year to announce your promotion.  Ironsides will be celebrating his twentieth year as Captain of the Royal Guard, so it will be the perfect opportunity to push for his retirement,” Celestia explained.  

“Yes.  That is, I accept,” Shining Armor said, trying to remain eloquent as he bowed before the Princess, “Thank you, your Grace.”  Just wait until Twily and Cadence hear the news!  


***


Shadowmere closely examined the ornate djinn-containing pot sitting on the shelf before him.  He touched his hooves to the service and opened up his abilities, but felt nothing in response.  With a swipe, he threw the pot to the ground and it shattered into shards of pottery.  Absolutely nothing was within it.  

Djinn were creatures whose being was difficult to understand for most ponies, but Shadowmere wasn’t like most ponies.  He could tell that each djinn was unique, and though their forms tended to shift erratically, they always had some unique feature one could use to identify them.  The djinn that had been killing Canterlot citizens for the last few days was the very same one he’d captured seven and a half centuries earlier outside the trading post that would later become Griffonstone.  This revelation was deeply disturbing; it meant that somepony had managed to infiltrate his hideout without his knowledge, most likely taking advantage of the time he was in Hoofington.  

This knowledge just raised questions.  How had somepony managed to get past his wards and locks?  Were they connected to the gargoyles, the tantibus, and Pewter Belle’s ghost?  Perhaps, most importantly, was the djinn the only thing they had taken or disturbed?  

Shadowmere looked around at the shelves stretching in every direction piled high with magical lockboxes, globes, jars, pots, and other supernatural prisons containing beasts even more fearsome that the djinn.  It was going to be a long night.