The Shadow of Mortals

by Silverlinings

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

---

Twilight was concentrating as hard as she could, Her powerful magic scanning everything around her. She had learned from the documents gathered by Diamond Jubilee the homes of the missing ponies. She decided investigating every house was the best way to find a lead.

After visiting a grieving mother Twilight turned to Rarity, who was holding the list and asked, "Who's next?"

"Hmm," The unicorn skimmed the list, "a little filly went missing by the name of Marigold Mist, and Twilight, not that you aren't doing a marvelous job, but you do seem rather tired."

"Ok?" Twilight's mane had several hairs out of place and she had bags under her eyes. "I am a little, but I don't see what you're getting at."

"Well," Rarity and the other mares looked a little worried, "maybe if you taught me the spells you're using, I could help ease the burden of this arduous task."

Twilight thought for a minute, "Do you really think you can manage? This is a very complicated spell."

"Dear," Rarity smiled, "have you seen my pick stitches? Those aren't exactly your basic hemstitches. I think I can manage."

---

Rarity, Applejack and Pinkie Pie approached the white house with blue trim. The six had split up into two groups, to cut the time this would take in half. Applejack knocked on the front door, and waited for a response. A brown earth mare answered the door and looked at the three ponies on her front porch.

"Can I help you?" She slowly asked.

"Howdy," Applejack responded, "Name's Applejack, and this is Rarity and Pinkie Pie. We're just here to ask you a few questions and take a couple tests."

"Questions and tests?" The earth pony looked skeptical. "About what?"

"The string of disappearances," Rarity answered. "We understand that a couple of ponies, a mare and a stallion, have disappeared from here?"

The brown mare grimaced. "Well then, I suppose you should come inside." She moved out of the way, allowing her three guests to shuffle inside. As she rejoined them in the living room, she introduced herself. "I'm Cornucopia. My brother should be getting home soon."

"We won't take too long, dear." Rarity assured, looking around. Her horn began to glow as she examined the furniture.

"Now then," Pinkie grabbed Cornucopia and slammed her onto the coach. The lights seemed to automatically dim, as Pinkie pointed a very high power spot light right into Cornucopia's face. "Tell us everything!" Pinkie shrieked.

"Pinkie!" cried Applejack, knocking away the light, returning everything to it's proper ambiance. "That ain't how we're gonna ask these questions." She cleared her throat, smiled, and asked in a polite and calm voice, "Now then, who is it that went missing? What were they to you?"

Cornucopia blinked. It took her a moment to get caught up on what exactly just happened. After a second, she replied, "My mom and dad."

"Uh huh," Applejack continued, "and where'n the house did they go missing?"

"Upstairs, in their bedroom, while they were sleeping," Cornucopia pointed to a flight of stairs. "Last door on the left. Follow me."

She led the three other mares up the stairs and down the hall, to the final door on the left hoof side. Cornucopia blew dust off the knob before gripping it. "Sorry," She said, "forgive the dust. No pony's gone in here for years."

"Understandable," nodded Rarity.

Cornucopia slowly opened the door to reveal a bedroom with a large queen-sized bed, a couple dressers, and a nightstand on either side of the bed. Everything had a thick layer of dust, with several cob webs spotting the room.

"This is where they were the night 'it' happened," Cornucopia side stepped to allow the three ponies entrance. "Feel free to look around. All the drawers and stuff are empty." She walked back down the hall and down the stairs, out of sight.

Applejack and Pinkie began carefully examining every inch of the dressers and nightstands, while Rarity cast a spell around the bed. After awhile, AJ asked, "Anythin' Rare?"

"Not yet." Her eyes were clenched shut, and she was using all of her focus. She could now see why Twilight was exhausted, and she had done several houses, while Rarity had only done one.

"Hey guys?" Pinkie was looking in the nightstand farthest from the door, closer to a window. "If Cornucopia said all the drawers were empty... then this Pinkie Me shouldn't be here, right?"

The other two gave puzzled looks to each other, before AJ went to investigate. She peered in the drawer, and saw a mirror. It was a nice, dark oak colored mirror, with an embroidered handle. The reflection was of Pinkie Pie, but while the pink mare next to Applejack was making silly faces at the mirror, her reflection was expressionless, unmoving, and almost creepy. Her hair was straight and fell over part of her face. She had bags under the only eye that was visible, but the eye itself is what made it unsettling. It was just her pupil. No iris, just a small, beady, blood shot pupil. It was also angry. No, not just angry, this Pinkie reflection was furious. It's visage held a look of hatred: pure, unrelenting hatred.

"Uh... Pinkie," Applejack slowly reached in and grabbed the mirror, "let me see that for a second." AJ looked directly into the mirror, and came face to face with herself... and it scared her. The Applejack she saw had an unkempt mane, the same vicious eyes Pinkie's reflection had had, only AJ's was smirking, as though she were far superior to any other pony, and knew it. Applejack gasped and dropped the mirror.

Rarity glanced down at the mirror, "Oh come now, what could possibly be so bad?" She released her grip on the bed, and focused her magic on the mirror. When she tried to lift it to her, it didn't budge, even for a second. "Huh?" Rarity tried again and again, but to no avail. She walked over to the mirror and looked down inside it. She saw herself, like the others did: strangely distorted. The reflection had a frizzled, and horrifying mane, with eyes full of paranoia. They were beady like the others, but they peered around, as if in fear of anyone that would dare get to close to her. Rarity gasped at the sight, and pushed the mirror away. Applejack picked it up and quickly put it into her saddlebag.

The three mares looked from one to another, just with simple looks. They knew to keep this quiet until a certain lavender unicorn could examine further.

---

Twilight Sparkle rang the door bell on the small, two story cottage and she waited for a response, along with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. The sun was getting lower in the sky, so she knew this would have to be quick. After a few minutes, a clatter was heard on the other side of the door. A white stallion answered with a curious, "Hello?"

"Oh!" Twilight said in surprise, "Hello, Silverlinings."

"Oh, hey Twilight," Silverlinings stepped out onto the front stoop. "Hey Flutter, hey... Rainie," Silverlinings began looking somewhat uncomfortable at the sight of the cyan mare.

Rainbow Dash smirked, proud that she could provoke such a reaction to a usually level-headed pony, "Hey Sil."

Silverlinings cleared his throat, and asked, "What's up, Twilight?"

Twilight dropped the smile she had on and her face grew sadder, "We were wondering if we could ask you a couple questions about.. Marigold?"

Silverlinings looked shocked at this. "Um... uh... yeah..." He began looking unfocused. "Come on in," He opened the door and walked back into the cottage, and into the front room, closely followed by the mares. "Can I get any of you anything? Are you hungry? Thirsty?"

"Oh no, I'm fine," Twilight politely declined, as the three of them took their seats in chairs around a coffee table.

"No, thank you," Fluttershy respectively turned down the offer.

"Nah," was simply all that Dash said.

"Alright, then," Silverlinings sighed, "Then I guess we should get down to brass tacks. What do you want to know?" He sat in a chair across from Twilight, with Rainbow to his left and Flutter to his right. They each sat along their respective table side.

Twilight, seeing that this was a sore subject for the captain, decided he was right and got right down to the questions, "What was Marigold to you? What was your relationship to her?"

"She was only my niece, whom I had legal custody over, but I loved her like she was my own daughter." Silverlinings lower lip trembled slightly.

"And how did she fall into your custody?" Twilight continued.

"After her father died, my brother, she came to live with me." Silverlinings answered.

"How long ago was that?" Twilight was taking small notes on the conversation.

"About..." Silverlinings thought, "four years ago. But she disappeared a little under a year ago."

"That was my next question," Twilight scribbled some more notes, "and where was she last?"

"I don't know," Silverlinings' breathing was uneasy, "The last I saw her, she was heading for school. I never saw her again."

"So she vanished outside of this house?"

"Yeah. The school teacher, Miss Appleworm, claims she was at school that day, too." A tear trickled down Silverlinings' cheek, "I have no idea where she went. No pony does."

"Don't worry," Fluttershy set a hoof on his shoulder, "We'll find her, along with all the other missing ponies."

"Thank you..." Silverlinings closed his eyes, causing a couple more tears to fall. He gave a long sigh, and seemed calmer. He looked up at Twilight, "Anything else?"

"Yes, actually," Twilight answered, "do you think we can have a look in Marigold's room?"

"Sure," Silverlinings got up and walked over to the stairs. "Just up here."

There were only two rooms on the top floor, and only three ponies could fit, comfortably, in the room that had once housed Marigold. Rainbow Dash sat, bored, outside in the hall. She glanced over at the other door, and decided to take a peek. Why not? What would be the harm? So she slowly cracked the door open and looked around. As she had expected, it was Silverlinings' bedroom. Nothing of interest here. She was about to close the door, when something on the nightstand caught her eye. Something she hadn't seen in years.

Twilight, Fluttershy and Silverlinings stood in the front foyer, the two mares were ready to leave. "Rainbow Dash!" Called Twilight. "I wonder where she went."

"She's around," Silverlinings assured.

"Well the sun's already set, and I wanted to visit one more house, before returning to the castle." Twilight explained. "Come on, Rainbow Dash! Where'd you go?"

Rainbow called from the next room, "Go on without me. I'll catch up later."

"But why?" Twilight called back.

"Just wanna ask Sil a couple more questions." replied Rainbow Dash.

"Uh, ok," Twilight shrugged and turned to Silverlinings. "Thank you so much. You've been very helpful."

"No, thank you for stopping by," Silverlinings said. "It's been some time since I had company." With that, the two mares left. Silverlinings returned to the front room. He was met with Rainbow Dash, who was holding a framed picture. The picture was of Rainbow and Silverlinings. In it, Rainbow was giving a very startled looking Silverlinings a large kiss on the cheek. Silverlinings remembered that Rainbow had done this right before the photo was taken. It was their first picture together, and he had cherished it since.

"What was this doing on your nightstand?" Rainbow Dash immediately asked.

Author's Note:

Ta da! Chapter Five. This one was easier to write than the last one, but it still felt... i don't know... off. Might just be me. As the author, I always feel my writing isn't good enough. Also, I want your opinions on how the next chapter should start: do you want to hear the full conversation between RD and Silverlinings? Or do you want to skip that, and continue with the main story? The conversation wouldn't take a whole chapter, but at least a decent chunk. (Note: This is not a clop fic, so don't expect any of that to happen.)
Anyway, thanks once again to Shardz for the editorial stuff, and thanks to Kidak for giving such great feedback. I love both of you *heart sign*

Comments

[kidak]

First off, great chapter! I would personally love to see the full conversation between silver and rainbow. It would add to the character development.

this chapter felt short for some reason, but that may have been just me.

I was kinda sad there was no Kali in this chapter since she is one of my favorites, but I will live.

[Silverlinings]

4941114 Sorry it felt short, but it just felt like a good place to leave off. As for Kali, I'm glad you like her as a character, but for the time being, I'm going to be focusing on the disappearances, and Kali actually hasn't been affected by this. None of her family members have gone missing.

[kidak]

4941630 I didn't really mean the short comment as a bad thing. now that i look back on it, the reason i think it felt short is because it had really good flow.