Chapter 27 - Stalking the Jackal
Sheerwater - The Safe House
Blade let out a sigh as the door to the safe house swung open before her, her shoulders sagging slightly as she stumbled into the dimly lit interior. I hate stakeouts, she told herself as she let the door swing shut behind her. I hate them. Long hours of holding a single position, moving as little as possible at all times, and for what? To watch some building; or in this case, an airship. To wait for those odd moments when something actually happened … If anything ever actually did. And when nothing did happen …
She let out as groan as she dropped onto one of the benches, tempted to just let herself fall asleep right then and there. It had to be done, she reminded herself. Someone had to keep watch, and you were the best choice. Frost is too iffy right now. Alchemy needed to do other things. Hain … well, if he got caught ... Besides, short of Hain, whose experience with the city was some thirty years out of date, she was the only member of the team who’d admitted to stakeout experience.
Still, it would have felt more worth it if she’d actually had anything to gain from it other than the few observations she’d gleaned. It was one thing to spend all night crammed atop a support beam, balancing yourself with a thin piece of rope and holding as still as possible in order to get some useful combat details. But to do that for hours on end and get as little as she had, most of which she’d already guessed, was a little disheartening.
“Tired?”
She tugged her head up, her cloak slipping back off of her head as she blinked at the blurry image at the base of the stairs. It was Hain, just arisen from what had probably been a good night’s sleep. How long had she been sitting there?
“Yeah,” she said, giving him a half-smile. “I hate stakeouts.”
“You should probably take a nap,” Hain said, moving past her into the kitchen. “Night stakeouts are tricky. They mess with the sleep cycle. Get a few hours and then wake up slightly late. Might help you get back on track. It’ll at least keep you awake for the rest of the day.”
She nodded. Her head felt fuzzy. Had she really drifted out of it sitting by the table?
I guess I did, she thought. Once the watch was over, I guess I didn’t feel much a reason to stay awake. “I think I’ll do that.”
“You will,” Hain said, trotting back out of the kitchen with what looked like a large mug of water clutched in his talons. “What?” he asked as he saw her eyes on it. “I spent the last thirty years living on the ice. It’s hot here. Even in the winter.”
She shrugged. “Not casting any judgement.”
“Well then,” Hain said, pausing to take a sip of his drink. “Before you do go get some rest, Blade, I want you to tell me what you found out.”
“What I found out?” She shook her head. “Pretty much nothing we couldn’t have guessed at.”
“Humor me. Summarize.”
“First of all, Anubis isn’t aboard the Superiority,” she said, giving her tail a little lash behind her as she spoke.
“You’re sure?” Hain asked, one eyebrow lifted.
“Definitely,” she said. “For one thing, there were dock workers on the deck when I arrived. Griffons. Regular guys. Laughing, joking, being a dock crew. There’s no way they’d be doing that if Anubis was on board. For one, I doubt he’d let anyone get that close to finding him.”
“He could hold back that fear effect of his maybe?”
She shook her head again. “No, that’s the other thing. There were a couple of unicorns aboard. Cult members. I saw them talking with the dock workers. But it was only a few. There are maybe three, four cult members on the whole ship. They made the rounds, checked the boat, did all the talking, everything. And they didn’t have that spooked look to them like the dockhooves reported in Spindle Rock. They looked relieved most of the time.”
Hain gave her a slow nod. “Fairly straightforward then. What about anyone coming on or off?”
“Just the dock workers. All night,” she said. Hain lifted an eyebrow. “By which I mean that the only ones who got on or off all night were the dock workers, but that stopped once they quit for the evening. After around eight or nine, nobody walked on or off that ship.”
“What about teleportation?”
“I didn’t see any sign of it,” she said. Her stomach let out a low growl, and she rose, taking advantage of the motion to shuck her cloak from her shoulders. Her feathers felt like they were sticking together. She needed sleep, a shower, and a good preening.
“It takes a lot of energy to teleport any substantial distance,” she said as she crossed into the kitchen. “I don’t know how powerful any of the unicorns in the Order are, but there’s a lot of wide, open space at the dock. It’s possible that someone could have been teleporting in or out, but I didn’t see any signs of it, so it’d have to be a pretty long-range teleport.”
“So it’s possible,” Hain said.
“Sure,” she said as she tugged the refrigerator door open and grabbed the first thing she could see—a turkey sandwich. Her stomach let out another short growl. “It’s possible that someone could have been teleporting in and out, there’s definitely space for it on the Superiority, but at the distance they’d have to be in order to keep it from being really obvious … why bother?”
“So you’re advocating that Anubis is somewhere in the city,” Hain said before taking another sip.
“Absolutely.” She sat back down at the table and unwrapped her sandwich, the scent of slightly dry but still somewhat fresh turkey making her salivate. “Aren’t you?” she asked before taking a large bite.
“I agree that it was the most likely scenario, and your watching of ship seems to support that,” Hain said. “But it’s always safer to assume that the most likely theory is still just that: A theory. Our foe is not to be underestimated, and on the odd chance that he would do the opposite of what we would expect, it’s always best to acquire as much intelligence as possible before you make a move.”
“Mm-hm.” She took another bite of her sandwich.
“Which brings to mind an intriguing problem,” Hain said. “If Anubis is not on the ship, as your stakeout would suggest, then he’s somewhere in the city. This very large city. If we’re going to find him, we’re going to have to work for it.”
“He might not be here for much longer,” Blade said, crumbs spraying from her mouth as she spoke. “That was the other thing I noticed. They were restocking the ship with a lot of supplies. And I mean a lot. Crates worth of food.”
“Did you get a good count?” Hain asked. “And are you sure they were actually full of food?”
“Small crates,” she said, shaking her head. “At least three or four dozen. Standard issue long-lasting rations, similar to what you’d eat in the military wings these days. Unless he was smuggling something aboard and wanted it to look really legitimate …”
“Doesn’t seem like his style,” Hain said. “At least, not from what I could tell reading those history books. Or that I could assume based on his style. So, lots of food, then?”
“Lots,” she said, the last of her sandwich vanishing. “The rest of the ship was looking pretty trim as well. Fixed up. Lots of new wood paneling, glass. There no signs of any of the damage from the battle at the Vault either. I think whatever Anubis is looking for, he’s not planning on being here long after he does.”
“Well, I’ll admit that’s somewhat relieving,” Hain said. “The last thing I wanted to worry about was that he was going to do something we couldn’t counter, like raise an army and go after the King. Assassination is usually hard to prevent against a clever, prepared opponent.”
“Still, it raises new questions,” Blade said. “Do we let him find whatever it is we’re looking for and then just follow him? Or do we try to keep him from whatever ‘it’ is and focus our attention on stopping him here and now? We can’t sabotage the Superiority and do more than slow him down. He’d just commandeer another airship and be gone, or wait for the docks to fix it, and that’d put the city guard on our tails rather than his.”
“You’ve put some thought into this.”
She gave him a tired grin. “I had a lot of time to think.”
“What about your … ah, employers?”
She shook her head. “If I sent a message this morning, it would still take about a week by airship to travel across the eastern ocean and arrive in Equestria. And then any response would be a week again on top of that. Even if they sent their fastest ship, the Empire is a sovereign nation. There would be channels to go through, bureaucracy.”
“The downside of civilization,” Hain said. “It has rules you have to follow … even when they don’t suit you.”
“Exactly,” Blade said. “And while there are methods for stepping around those rules …” She let the sentence trail off, and Hain nodded.
“That method was supposed to be you,” he said. “And us, I suppose.”
“Yeah.” She glanced down at her empty talons, her stomach rumbling once more, as if it were asking for another sandwich. “At this point, the best I can do is send a report, but I’d rather wait until I actually have an idea of what’s going on before I do that. Wait until I can at least tell my employer where Anubis is heading or why … Something concrete he can use, rather than information that will be hopelessly out of date. At the very least, I’ll send word when we’re done here, so they know what’s happened, just in case they somehow don’t already—”
“They have that good an intelligence network?” Hain asked, interrupting her. “I’d never known that as, well, one of their strengths.”
“I think they’ve expanded a bit,” she said. “They certainly were better informed than my last employers expected them to be. Rumor had it that it might have had something to do with—” She stopped speaking as the spark of an idea flashed across her mind. “Hey …” she said. “That could work.”
“What could work?” Hain asked.
“The Violet Heart,” she said, her eyes widening. “Why didn’t I think of that earlier?”
“Who’s Violet Heart?”
“It’s The Violet Heart,” she said, her eyes darting back towards Hain. “And that’s the thing. No one knows. She, he, whatever. No one knows.”
“Never heard of them,” Hain grunted.
“That’s hardly surprising,” she said. “Though they might have heard of you. I’m not big on the whole cloak and dagger stuff, but The Violet Heart is the new player.”
“Espionage?”
“Information,” she said, her body almost quivering with excitement. “Expensive, insider information. Very quiet. Very vital.”
“They could get a message to Equestria?”
“No,” she shook her head. “But they could get us what we’re looking for about Anubis.”
“This … Violet Heart … would know?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “But if someone in their organization is inside the city—and you can bet they’d be here, of all places—then they’re bound to know something.”
“Can you find them?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’d have to start asking around. They’re highly compartmentalized. I’ve heard stories of a few groups that have gone after them, either government or other information networks who don’t like being muscled in on.”
“And?”
“Nothing,” she said with an amused laugh. “Compartmentalized individuals with no idea who’s above them or beneath them, passing notes so innocuous half of them didn’t even realize that they’re part of an information network. Some of them even think that they’re part of a different network, or that they’re working for someone else.”
“In other words, enough shadows and clouds that no one can fly straight,” Hain said.
“Bingo,” she said, snapping her talons. “But they’ve got a reputation for being solid with their information. If anyone knows anything about Anubis’s whereabouts in the city, it’d be The Violet Heart.”
“How do they distribute that information?” Hain asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. But they do. They’ve been making slow but steady waves for the past couple of years. They seem to know a lot of stuff.” She glanced down at her chest, checking her tan pelt for crumbs. “And that would give me something to do today that could net us exactly what we need while Alchemy and Frost go talk with that professor.”
“You think they’ll find anything?”
“I don’t know,” she said, a yawn forcing its way free of her beak on the tail end of her words. She could feel the sandwich sitting in her stomach like a warm brick. She wanted to curl up and take a nap. A nap would feel wonderful. “But anything they find is helpful. And the guy did write the article on Anubis. He’d probably know.”
“Right,” Hain said, slapping his talons down on the table with a sound that made her jerk awake. “Well then, you look like you could use a quick charge. Go get some sleep.”
“What about—?” she began.
“I’ll talk with Books,” Hain said. “And look over whatever he’s brought with him. I don’t have much else to do anyway. I technically can’t order you around, but … go get some sleep.”
“Right,” she rose, tucking her cloak behind her wings as she made her way over to the stairs. Hain was right. A little rest would do her good.
The rooms that Books had provided the safe house with were spacious, almost absurdly so, as if he’d purchased them under the impression that each one needed to have room for a fight, an interrogation, or maybe both at the same time. Still, each had come equipped with a small shower and wall mirror, so as odd and probably adventure-fiction inspired as it was, she wasn’t going to complain.
She stepped up to the mirror, eyeing her rust-red plumage as she unwrapped the dark cloth strips she’d placed on her forelimbs the night before. She didn’t look especially nice—feathers on her head were out of place, and a quick spread of her wings showed that there were a number of spots that needed attention, attention that she hadn’t been giving over the last few days.
There’s only so much time in the day, she thought as she finished unwrapping her legs, the long strips of dark grey cloth dropping to the floor. I need a break.
It only took the small shower a moment to get lukewarm, the cistern on the roof of the house still heated from the sun the day before, and she ducked her head under the stream, not even bothering to close the glass door and ignoring completely the water that splattered into the room. It would dry.
She stood for a moment on her hind legs, letting the water wash over her, giving her wings a few twists to make sure that both of them at least got slightly wet before reaching out and shutting the flow off. Her towel came next, followed by a careful, if quick, preening of both her wings. Several loose feathers found their way to the trashcan next to her bed.
Bed. The round, nested shape seemed to be calling to her now. She wanted sleep, and she wanted it badly. A bench would have done at the moment, a nest seemed like overkill. Still, the rounded beds had been what Books had stocked the home with, so …
She dropped down atop the cushy material, stretching her forelimbs out in front of her and then curling up in the bottom of the nest.
Work could wait a few hours. That was all she would need. Just a few … hours …
She drifted off to sleep.
* * *
“Good morning,” Hain said as Blade walked down the steps, his gruff voice echoing through the apartment. “I was thinking I’d come up on a little bit longer and wake you up if I didn’t see you soon.”
She nodded, her brain still slightly groggy despite the quick, cold spray she’d subjected it to after she’d woken up. At least her wings were now in better shape, following a second preening to take care of anything she’d missed earlier.
“How long was I asleep?” she asked as she sat down. “And what’s the news?”
“Just under four hours,” Hain said. “Alchemy and Frost already left, after the news that was in the paper this morning.”
“Which was?” she asked.
“Another crypt was broken into,” Hain said, pushing a paper across the table at her. “Ten points if you can guess which one.”
“I’m guessing one of the sealed, clanless tombs that Alchemy and Frost were looking into yesterday?”
“Got it,” Hain said as she glanced down at the paper. “The one that belonged to the Traveler clan.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Broken up during the Founding,” Hain said. “At least, according to the paper. They have a nice little summary of the clanless tombs and who owned them, since this is apparently a string of criminal activity.”
“Odds on them guarding the rest of them now?”
“Pretty good,” Hain said. “Odds on them doing it successfully?”
“Without knowing what they’re up against? Iffy.” She shifted the paper, running her eyes over the writing as she sucked in any relevant details. “Same thing, huh? Graves disturbed, things smashed, bones missing.”
“Yep.”
“And it was sealed, so we don’t know if he found something inside of it or not.”
“Nope. Though if his airship disappears, I guess we’ll know.” His words sent a chill down her spine, and she shook her head.
“Then I guess I’ll have to make a quick stop and see if it’s still there when I go out,” she said, lowering the paper. “Not much new in here.”
“No,” Hain agreed. “But it does tell us that Anubis is definitely looking for something specific.”
“You think so?” she said.
The old griffon nodded, his grey feathers shifting as a grim smile moved across his face. “Of course,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and if he just wanted bones to make more of his skeleton things, he could get them almost anywhere. Tartarus, even if he just needed griffon bones specifically for some odd reason, there’s a lot of way he could get them legally. If he’s digging into sealed crypts, it’s because he wants something.”
“Something his old followers left?” she asked. It make sense. Why else come here? “Or maybe as a sign to any current followers?”
Hain shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you think he has current followers?”
“Anything’s possible,” she said, eyeing the paper once more. “Though it seems there would be better ways of announcing it. Him searching for something is better bet.”
“Maybe another one of those crystal pieces?” Hain offered. She shook her head.
“No, I don’t think so. The third is supposed to be in safe hooves ... But I seem to recall him saying something about that not being a problem.” She frowned. “Maybe another crystal key, though I can’t recall anything like that being in our history.”
“If it was sealed in a crypt as an heirloom, we wouldn’t,” Hain pointed out. “Still, that fits the theory that he’s hunting for something.”
She nodded, fanning her wings slightly as one of her wings itched. “I’ll agree on that. So then the question becomes ‘should we be worried about it?’”
“He’s an immortal,” Hain said. “We should be worried already. But in all seriousness ... “ He shook his head. “There’s no way to know. We can assume that because he’s looking for something it must be bad, but how bad is what we don’t know.”
“And if we do figure out what it is, how can we use that to our advantage?” Blade finished, pushing herself away from the table as she stood. “As usual, we need more information.”
“And you think this Violet Heart will know what he’s after?” Hain asked, a look of scepticism on his face.
“Maybe,” she said, shrugging as she clicked her talons together. She was hungry again, but she could get food on the way. She’d be taking most of their reeds with them anyway. “If half of what I’ve heard is true, they’d be able to tell us what he had for breakfast this morning. If nothing else, they’re bound to give us something. And regardless of what it is, if they have it, it’s important somehow.”
“Get back to me as soon as you can,” Hain said as she began gathering her things. “And not just because it’s boring being stuck in here with nothing to do. I’ll be honest, Blade, I don’t like this. The longer we wait, the longer he has.”
“I don’t like it either,” she said, tightening her bags over her shoulder and feeling the bands of reeds shift inside them. “But we can’t strike at something we can’t see. We need the whole picture.” She turned towards the door, running through the mental list of contacts she’d known years ago who might have the connections she needed.
“Until then, we stalk.”
* * *
Professor Stoneweather’s office wasn’t quite what Frost had expected. Though, at the same time, she couldn’t quite admit to having really been sure exactly what it was she had expected. She’d been aware that some of the books she’d read as a filly, with their depictions of stuffy, confined offices full of dark wood and tightly packed awards, had probably erred more on the side of dramatization than fact, at least when the heroine had been sent to deal with her professors—which seemed to happen almost every book, regardless of how many mysteries she solved. But in spite of that awareness, that knowledge of fiction, she’d still expected there to be some basis in reality.
Maybe that’s just what Equestrian schools look like, she thought as she looked around the room once more. It was wide, spacious, looking almost more like a workspace or a small-sized workshop than the oppressive dungeon her reading had waxed on about. There were some expected similarities, such as the hardwood desk that both she and Alchemy were seated in front of, and the small array of degrees and other awards hanging on the wall nearby, but everything else was different. Massive windows took up one wall, the sunlight adding to the already bright interior light. Row after row of shelving filled the others, and she could see several open workspaces covered in parchment, pottery fragments, and assorted other items similar to those on the shelves.
Even then, it wasn’t enough. Two portable chalkboards were sitting at angles opposite one another. One was covered with row after row of Griffon text, line after line of what looked like oddly organized scratches to her eyes. The other was dominated by a large map depicting what looked like the southern half of the Empire and the desert that seemed to separate it from the Plainslands. There were small notes annotated across the map. More griffon Scratch that she couldn’t read.
“Well,” Alchemy said, his head tilting in every which direction as he took in the office. “I certainly like it. Reminds me of the Plainslands.”
“How’s that?” she asked, staring at the map. There seemed to be a number of markers in the desert. A desert, she thought as she looked at the tan-colored symbols. I thought this was supposed to be a desert. What would an actual desert be like? She’d seen pictures, of course, but pictures couldn’t transmit heat.
“It’s open,” Alchemy said, still looking around. “In Equestria, personal offices tend to be a bit smaller—
Hah! So Fancy Drew hadn’t lied!
—and they tend to do more of their hooves-on stuff in shared spaces,” Alchemy continued, oblivious to her victory. “In the Plainslands the offices and workspace are often shared. They’ll all be under one roof, with smaller, paper walls you can move around to give yourself privacy when you need it. This is pretty nice, though,” he said as the door behind them opened. “Very open. Very airy.”
“Teşekkür ederim,” came a light-spirited, if gravelly, voice as a broad shouldered, long-beaked griffon walked past them and sat down behind the desk. “I am Professor Stoneweather. Am I to assume that you are Flask and Glimmer, the two ponies I’m supposed to be meeting with today?” There was a hard accent to his words, but the enunciation was flawless.
“We are,” Alchemy said, nodding. “We were wondering if you could help us with some research of ours.”
“That depends,” the professor said, cocking a dark-grey, feathered eyebrow. “What are you asking after? My specialty is ancient griffon culture and clans during the pre-founding period, right up to the founding, though I know quite a bit of history surrounding the period as well. The secretary didn’t specify what you’d asked.”
“It’s because it was from something you’d written for one of your books,” Frost said quickly. “Specifically, a segment you wrote for a book on the immortals.”
“Oh?” Stoneweather said. “What about it?”
She decided to go right to the core of the issue. “Anubis.” His eyes widened slightly at the name. “The book mentioned that after he fled the Jackal Kingdom, he went about starting up ‘death cults’ and might have started them in the Empire—”
“Pre-Empire, actually,” the professor said. “Had the Empire existed at that time, I doubt Anubis would have been allowed to walk so freely, but please, continue.”
She nodded. “Anyway, the book didn’t go into much detail, but it did say that rumors of such cults existed for hundred—” She caught herself. “Well, for a long, long time.” She could see Stoneweather’s eyes narrowing, a look of concentration on his face. “Also, there was something about them possibly being linked to the lost city of Turuncu? The book didn’t go into any further detail about it.”
“It wouldn’t,” Stoneweather said. “It’s not exactly something to be covered in a book on the immortals. Had you picked up a book discussing legends of the lost city, you might have found something.”
“What about the cults, then?” Alchemy said, leaning forward. “They did exist?”
“Well, yes,” the professor said. “And no. There still exists a large amount of debate on that subject, unfortunately. While we do know for certain that there were individuals who openly or in secret championed the cause of Anubis and heralded him as their ruler, whether or not those leanings extended towards their associated clans isn’t quite as clear.”
“Were any clans known for having an association with Anubis?” Frost asked.
“Not by clan, no,” Stoneweather said, his long beak clicking as he leaned back. “There are records that hint that there may have been large numbers of followers—death cults, if you will—and some evidence has suggested that small groups of such may have once existed, but concrete evidence of anything past that has been hard to come by. Basically, we have stories, but little hard evidence. So, if there were dedicated large groups of Anubis supporters before or during the founding of the Empire, they kept their intentions—and their signs—well hidden.”
“What about the stories?” Alchemy asked. “What did the stories say?”
“Secondclaw accounts, really,” came the reply. “Urban legends, the kind of tales that were passed down until they became kit’s bedtime stories. Offclaw accounts in ancient history texts, that kind of thing.”
“What did they say, though?” Frost said. “What was at the core?”
“Well …” Stoneweather seemed taken aback by the directness of her question, his eyes narrowing. “Usually it was along the lines of ‘Anubis is gone, but one day he will return.’ The sort of ‘faithful believers’ sort of mentality. Understand, this is all legend. Aside from a few historical artifacts and records from specific individuals, there isn’t very much evidence to indicate that they actually existed.”
“So what do those stories share with the lost city of Turuncu?” Alchemy asked. “I don’t see the connection there are all.”
Professor Stoneweather’s eyes narrowed further, and Frost had the distinct impression that he was analyzing them, as if trying to track back the origin of their questions. “Why do you ask?”
“Curiousity,” Frost said. “The book didn’t explain it very well, and since we were here—”
“No,” the professor said. “I mean why study it at all? Why come in and ask me directly?”
“You wrote the book,” Alchemy said. “Who better to ask about the lost city?”
“Especially,” Frost added, “when they don’t offer an explanation for the claim.”
Stoneweather nodded, his expression shifting somewhat. “Well, I suppose it can’t hurt to explain my reasoning. One of my old students had the same question, ended up doing quite a bit of research on her own into the subject. That was why I wrote about the connection in the book—perhaps you’ve heard of her? Stal?”
Should we have? Frost glanced at Alchemy before shrugging and offering the griffon a shake of her head.
“No?” he said. He nodded, and she noticed the feathers around his ruff lowering. Odd. When had they risen?
“Well, she was the one who got me thinking about that,” Stoneweather said, waving his talons like it was nothing. “In fact, I believe I added that line because of the points she made in her thesis. Are either of you familiar with the stories of the lost city?”
“I’m not quite as familiar with it as I could be,” Alchemy said.
“Ah, well,” the professor said, settling in his seat. “It’s very straightforward. So the story goes, around the time of the founding of the Empire, several clans did not wish to join together in under the first Emperor. Instead, they retreated out into the Turuncu desert and built a magnificent city. Now, the details vary as to location and purpose, but in the end, the story is always the same—cut off from the Empire, the city withered, and its inhabitants either slunk back or were buried beneath the sands, usually for some offence against the immortals or the Creator.”
“So what does that have to do with Anubis?” Frost asked.
“Well, very little … maybe.” Stoneweather shifted in his seat, his beak half open as if he was trying to decide what to say next. “However,” he said at last. “My student Stal was always fascinated by legends like these and took a new approach at it. She suggested that perhaps the story had existed in another form before the founding of the empire, that its origins lay elsewhere, and that the griffons following the Founding had adapted it to suit their own ideas. An interesting theory.”
“What’d she use to support it?” Alchemy asked.
“Oh … a variety of things?” the professor replied, and Frost didn’t miss the way his ruff rose slightly. Something about the question had made him uncomfortable. “She cross-examined a number of ancient writings and found evidence that perhaps the idea of a lost city had been told before.”
“By followers of Anubis?” Frost asked. There was no doubt in her mind now. Stoneweather looked nervous, though he was trying to hide it.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Although it was just a similarity, an association. An idea that could have been repeated and then exploded into the popular mind following the Founding.”
“What was the association?” she asked.
“You could read the paper,” he said. “It thoroughly outlines—”
“What was the association?” she asked again, her voice so cold she could feel it cut through the room.
Stoneweather’s face hardened. “Why should I tell you?”
“Why don’t you want to tell us?” Alchemy countered. “Especially if we could find it by looking for one of your student’s papers?”
“Because … Because …” his face darkened. “Because you two-faced con-artists have tried one too many times to steal my research, that’s why!” he shouted, his wings flaring out to their full extension.
“Your research—?” Alchemy began, but there was no stopping the professor. Not now.
“You go crawling back to those buzzards, those vultures, in the Clouddiver clan, and you tell them that they aren’t going to just waltz in here and get me to hand over more of our research—”
“Professor!” Alchemy said. The cry went ignored.
“Well you can just go back to those ‘Clod-divers,’ and you can tell them that I’m not going to play their game! They’re not—”
“Professor!” Alchemy shouted, rising from his seat. “We aren’t with the Clouddiver clan. I don’t even know who the Clouddiver clan is!” He sank back into his seat, shaking his head. “But if it’s going to be that much of a problem, we’ll go read your student’s paper, if you’ll tell us where it is.”
“Archeology wing,” the professor said, suspicion still on his face. “But you won’t find any details in there. You need to learn to do your own research, rather than stealing someone else’s! Lanetli hırsızlar!”
“And we would find this paper how?” Frost asked, keeping her voice level. The professor grabbed a quill from his desk and scrawled a quick note.
“Here,” he said, passing the note over to her. She floated it up in front of her, but she couldn’t read it. It was Griffon. “Take that to the secretary, and she’ll get the paper for you. But you won’t learn anything new from it.” He gave them a smirk. “Nor will your bosses.”
“I’m telling you—” Alchemy began, but Stoneweather cut him off with a wave of his wings.
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe that. Not now. If you are being truly genuine, then I apologize most profusely, and tell you that Stal’s paper will have the answers you seek. However, given the timing, I find that highly unlikely. Iyi günler, and good bye! Now please, leave my office!”
“Well,” Frost said as the door slammed shut behind them. They could see several eyes peering through windows, drawn by the shouting. “That could have gone better.”
“Yes,” Alchemy said. “It could have. He thought we wanted to steal his research?”
“That’s what it sounded like,” she said, eyeing the slip of paper. “I can’t say that I’m that surprised.”
“Wait, how?”Alchemy asked as she began moving down the hall towards the front entrance. “Why?”
“Because ... “ She shook her head. Because that’s what would have happened in a Fancy Drew book. “Never mind, it was a silly reason, and it had nothing to do with anything that happened in there.”
She passed the note to the secretary, who glared at them and then told them to take a seat before darting off. I guess something about that note mentioned the professor’s suspicions, she thought. That or his yelling was audible all the way down here.
They sat in silence until the secretary returned, though on Alchemy’s part she wasn’t sure if the silence was because he was thinking about the conversation with the professor or just because he didn’t have anything to say. In either case, the secretary passed her the paper, she took it in her magic, looked at it and—”
“We can’t read it,” she said, looking up at the griffon. “By chance is there a copy in Equestrian?”
“Still going with the ruse, huh?” came the reply. Well, at least that answered the question of whether or not the secretary had an opinion on matters. “Very well.” They took the paper and vanished once more. At least the griffon was determined to do their job.
“Here,” the secretary said, passing her the paper a few minutes later. She motioned to Alchemy as they both hunched over it.
“Links Between Anubian Cults and Post-Foundation Folklore,” Frost read, her eyebrows lifting in surprise. “On the Similarities and Underpinnings of Ancient Anubite Beliefs with Post-Foundation Tales and Stories? Is that actually the title?”
“It is,” Alchemy said, nodding. “You should see some of the papers I wrote when I was in the Plainslands. They have one there dating from several hundred years ago, written by a famous monk, that is quite famous.” He smiled. “The title is actually longer than the rest of the work.”
“That’s very strange,” Frost said, turning her eyes back towards the paper. “I really hope this doesn’t turn out to all be written like that.” She glanced down at the name. Stal Freefeather. Catchy.
“Well?” Alchemy said. “Turn the page.” She complied, flipping to the first page and starting at the first line.
“Nothing,” she said after a moment of skimming, and flipped the page. Alchemy started to protest, but she shook her head. “We’re looking for one thing, and one thing only,” she said, flipping the page again. More long swaths of text, still talking about post-formation folklore. Skip.
She flipped the pages again. And again. And—Stop!
“One moment,” she said, eyeing the chunk of block text. “What this?”
“It looks like a poem,” Alchemy said, leaning forward slightly. She scanned over the lines. It was a poem … or at least had been before the translation had gone to work on it.
“This text was purported to be an ancient chant or rhyme among the followers of Anubis,” she read aloud, scrolling her eyes across the paragraph above the quote. “A mantra that was passed from follower to follower within the cult as an affirmation to their devotion. To date, only one surviving copy of this mantra can be found, engraved on a stone tablet dating from just before the founding. However, the carving was damaged, and is only a partial record of the complete mantra. Even so, the elements of what remain and the tales of the lost city that date from this period share many similarities.”
She paused, her eyes flickering down to the “start” of the poem as beside her, Alchemy let out a quiet whistle.
“So?” he asked. “Are you going to read it?”
“Yeah,” she said, running her eyes over the first line. “It kind of picks up partway through though.”
“It’s fine.”
She nodded and began. “Something, then ‘we suffered anew,’” she read. “‘Toil and work. Life and death in the service of the ruler. The foundation of the entrusted goal,’ or plan, according to a subnote.” She glanced at Alchemy, but his attentive look told her everything she wanted to know. He was just as alert as she was.
“‘Built by blood, born with bone, the city swept beneath the sand,’” she continued. “‘Buried, lost, its walls a tomb, the throne of the Lord of Bones abandoned.’” A shiver rolled down the space between her shoulderblades as she saw the final line, and she looked up, her eyes meeting Alchemy’s. “‘Buried, lost, the ancient city, we celebrate its name.” For a moment the front office was quiet, the final word hanging on the tip of her tongue.
“Necropolis.”
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A veritable army, waiting for a use. Its a shame more places dont incinerate the dead. That way you cut down on so many freaking nercomancers. Seriously.. No body, no minion for most.
Oh boy, seems like they're getting ready to ship off. Also think that a lot of the crates are full of bones.
The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to be inclined to think that Violet Heart network is Cadance's group running black ops completely separate from the other Guards.
And watch as Fancy Drew is a real person, just like that other adventurer that Dash likes so much.
Also, just watched Griffinstone, and was thoroughly disappointed in the worldbuilding there.
"... the similarities between what remain and the tales of the lost city that date from this period share many similarities.”
. . .
"... the similarities . . . share many similarities.”
Yeah, they do that.
That was deliciously meta.
I really hope Stal doesn't turn out to be a death cultist. I'm looking forward to her and the team meeting.
I'm kinda surprised that Anubis didn't immediately have his followers run a search on his name as soon as they arrived. He seems like the type to me.
Wowzers, did that mantra send shivers down my spine! Things are really unfolding. I hope Blade sends info to Hunter about Necropolis so he can meet them there with the rest of the Dusk Guard :/ Intensity is increasing!
6381544
That's a good suggestion for a magical world...
So far though, if anything the sisters have been thorough for ensuring most of his base they can get to has been taken offline. The one thing i can at least be thankful for in a way. Honestly competent immortals. Thank you for writing them as that.
6381899 Hard learned d&d experience. Dear heck, acid and fire solve 99% of your villain problems, everything else takes a hammer and ice magic, then fire and acid.
6381628 Griffonstone was smaller-scale than most people probably wanted, but it made the griffons interesting and was consistent with their prior characterization without them just being generic jerks.
It had the kind of worldbuilding that made you want to know and/or write fanfic about what happened next. I mean, clearly Gilda is going to become the next queen of the griffons and conquer Equestria with her superior pastries, but the details are all up in the air.
6381945
I don't think that the problem was that Griffonstone wasn't interesting, it was that it was really inconsistent with everything else in the series so far and didn't really make much sense in the broader scope of things ... unless you subscribe to some things that kind of change the whole tone of the show, like Equestria being xenophobic to the degree that they don't even bother to keep an eye on international politics ... something which, historically, is suicide for a nation.
Edit: Comparing Griffonstone and the Griffon Empire to the Equestria we know in the show, one of them makes a lot more sense than the other.
5th season has really dropped the ball with their worldbuilding (retconning the world map and changing the locations of whole cities already established by the prior world map and episodes is just one example of some grievous changes).
6381963 Having Equestria *not* be that isolationist is pretty inconsistent with the series so far. Or at least, having the publically available information be that out of date. They don't know about dragons, they don't know about zebras, they don't know about changelings, they know griffons are 'very rare'. They have a jungle nextdoor (to the north?) full of sentient cats and tribal ponies and dozens of lost temples that most ponies think is fictional.
A high-tech, militarized griffon empire (like shows up in every story) doesn't really fit with the almost completely disarmed Equestria that you get from the show. I don't fault people for pumping griffons up into a real rival, but it's something entirely invented for the purposes of fanfic.
Which city was moved?
I was annoyed when they put the crystal empire on the map *south* of the mountains.
6382048
And all of that stuff makes the show weaker, because it doesn't follow logical conventions of existence at all. Equestria's knowledge of outside elements isn't just not knowing what Canadian culture is, it's tantamount to not knowing that Canada even exists. Which makes no sense whatsoever. Even historically, nations are aware and educated about one another. The current route the show has been taking is not only lazy, it also quite literally could not function. Even the mystical jungle you pointed out is another example of the show's current lack of consistency: while the episode shows it to the north, the official maps show it to the south, and then in the remade map, to the west ... where an ocean used to be.
Additionally, a militarized griffon nation is used so often precisely because it does make sense if you know your history. There are clearly a wide array of threats in Equestria's world, and unless griffons have something like the Elements of Harmony or a being that literally controls the sun and moon (which is pure superpower level weaponry), they'll need a standing army. Rise made the point that by the rest of the world's standards, Celestia and Luna are superweapons, and having an army on top of that is aggressive posturing to a high degree.
Economically, things don't make sense either with Equestria. They seem pretty prosperous. It's odd that in the show they have zero trade relations (or even contact) with outside nations. If the show is taken straight, they're selfish hoarders, which doesn't match up with the show's message and theme. Equestria having plentiful trade with other nations is the realistic approach.
That said, in history there have been nations that acted like Equestria taken straight from the show seems to act (and how many fans argue they act). These nations usually collapse in under a century, as the rest of the world leaves them behind.
I would hate for the knowledge and Stal's research to be lost, so torching all copies of her thesis paper would be bad, but letting Anubis get his paws on the information? Arguably worse... So, torch 'em? "Confiscate" them all and hide/ship them out with ponies who don't know what they have so they can't accidentally leak information?
6381544
6381899
Or, you get a allied necromancer to steal all the bones first.
6384902 That's a feat reserved for epic adventure! Seriously hahaha.
6384902 also depends on the setting, Sometimes a necromancer can use the ashes to summon a different, often more powerful kind of undead. Something like a ghast or a spectre.