Night Owls

by Rambling Writer

4 - Criminally Slow Investigation

Chandra walked into the exhibit room and immediately realized she was out of her league a bit. She didn’t know what to look for, she didn’t know what to ignore, she didn’t really know anything.

But maybe she could fudge her way past that. It couldn’t be that hard, could it?

Inside, the exhibit hall was surprisingly empty. There were a few shelves for books here and there, probably in relation to whatever was being shown, and a large pedestal where the Elements had once been. It was normally covered by a glass case, but the case had been shattered, with shards of glass scattered around the room. The whole room was circular with a ceiling and no windows, although some paintings lined the walls. All in all, not too much to look over.

A dark khaki unicorn was just inside, crouching down and frowning at some of the glass. She looked up when she heard Chandra come in. “Canterlot specialist?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Chandra. “Name’s Chandra.” So is she curt because she doesn’t think much of me already or because she’s busy?

“Cobberfield,” said the unicorn. She looked back down at the glass. “Give me just one minute more.”

“Take your time,” muttered Chandra.

A few moments later, Cobberfield stood up. “Yeah, definitely blunt force,” she said to herself. She turned to Chandra. “Sorry about that. Just double-checking something.”

“Ah,” said Chandra. She glanced at the glass. “So how do you know that it’s blunt force?”

“Long story short, the way it falls,” said Cobberfield. She rubbed the back of her neck. “It’s complicated, but there are certain patterns in different ways of breaking stuff. Like, if it was done with magic, it’d be a lot more spread out-”

“Because the force would be more like a plane?” asked Chandra.

“Exactly,” said Cobberfield, nodding. “So. I haven’t done any examination of the magic in the room; I was waiting for you to show up first. Just to get two brains on the scene.”

“All right. Do you have a way you want to go over this?”

“The way I see it, there are several things we need to go over: the walls, the doors, and the glass.” Cobberfield glanced down at the glass surrounding her hooves. “Well, glass shards, anyway. All of those ought to have had enchantments placed on them to keep unwanted ponies out, so someone breaking in would’ve had to go through them.”

“Sounds good,” said Chandra. “Should we do it in that order?”

Cobberfield shrugged. “Don’t see why not.”

The two unicorns went to opposite sides of the room, so as not to disturb each other while they worked. Chandra closed her eyes, concentrating, and placed her horn on the wall, sending a probe of examination magic into it. She went slowly to be absolutely sure she didn’t miss anything. At first, there wasn’t much. Barely anything, actually, not even the remains of a destroyed spell. There was, however, a strange feeling Chandra hadn’t felt before, almost like heat from the sun. Maybe it’d make more sense if she went in a little bit furtholy crap.

Chandra had never, in all her years of work, felt something like the magic she was examining now. It was mind-bogglingly complex, intertwined with itself, layered over and under, and the patterns it made went in directions she hadn’t thought possible. It was like a loop; it felt like attempting to weaken one part of it would redirect the magic so that it was strengthened it elsewhere, and then react so that the excess would double back and give you a metaphysical smack on the head. It also cast a subtle charm throughout the room, barely noticeable even if you were looking for it: the entire room was teleport-proof. Attempting to teleport in or out of the room would simply dump you exactly where you had started, except now you were seeing lots and lots of stars.

Not only that, it was brimming, humming with energy. If Chandra had started dumping all the power she could into something, she might -- might -- be able to reach this level within several months. More if you took small things like “sleeping” and “recovering” into account. The “heat” Chandra had felt was raw power radiating out from the enchantment, something that could only happen if you were working with gargantuan amounts of magic. Like right here.

There was no question who had done it. The Princesses. No one else could have done it. No one else had the experience or the power.

Of course, the fact that she could feel it meant only one thing to Chandra: it wasn’t broken. If it had been broken, whoever stole the Elements could have broken into the room through the wall and repaired the hole afterwards. Probably. But with this enchantment still in place, you could take a diamond-tipped jackhammer made out of titanium to the building and the only thing you’d get out of that would be a broken jackhammer. Furthermore, as long as it was there, you couldn’t teleport into or out of the room.

On the other side of the room, Cobberfield whistled softly. “That’s… wow.”

“I know,” said Chandra, nodding. “But the thing is, it’s still there.”

Cobberfield sighed. “Yeah. We assumed there was something like this in place, but maybe it’d been broken. But with this…” She shook her head. “Yeah, with this, they’d’ve had to come in through the door.”

“So let’s check that.”

The door was more of the same: stupidly complex and powerful protective spells everywhere. However, beneath them, Chandra felt something else. It looked like it was a bit more… “pliable” than the normal protection, but when Chandra tried working it, she didn’t feel anything moving. It was like it was only meant to open for specific ponies. Like…

Chandra’s eyes snapped open. “How’s this door locked?” she asked Cobberfield.

Cobberfield didn’t open her eyes, still focused mostly on probing the door, but she began “um”ing. “Hmm… I… can’t remember exactly how, but someone had gotten the design for the lock yesterday or something. Go ask outside and you should get it.”

One trip out of and back into the room later, Chandra was examining some notes scribbled down by a pony with utterly horrendous penmareship. Chandra took a while to decipher it, but eventually managed to figure out what it said. “Okay,” she said to Cobberfield, “it’s locked with an enchantment that only opens for either the Princesses or the current librarian.”

“So that’s what this is.”

“Yeah. Apparently, it’s the most sophisticated locking enchantment of its kind, which I can totally see. Oh, and…” Chandra squinted at the last few lines. “…it can be unlocked by anypony from the inside. They didn’t want to get somepony stuck in there for the night by accident.”

“Makes sen-” Cobberfield cut herself off and her eyes snapped open. “So…” she said slowly, “maybe whoever stole them hid in the room somehow after closing. Then they just opened the door for the others.” She glanced around the fairly bare room. “Granted, that seems incredibly unlikely, but at this point, it’s all we’ve got. The lock feels undamaged to me.”

“Same here,” sighed Chandra. “You know, I was thinking we’d get a bit more out of this.”

“Me, too. This isn’t that surprising, given how they’ve covered their tracks, but it is disappointing.” Cobberfield turned to the glass shards. “So we’ll get to this, and th-”

“What about the doorframe?”

Cobberfield cocked her head at Chandra. “Huh?”

“The doorframe,” repeated Chandra, pointing at it. “How do we know that hasn’t been damaged in some way? I once saw a movie where the bad guy was hiding in a safe room behind an unbreakable door, so the hero just destroyed the frame.”

Cobberfield frowned and scratched her head. “You know, I… don’t think the idea occurred to us. But it makes sense.” She glanced at the glass, then turned back to Chandra. “Tell you what. You’re the specialist, so why don’t you examine the frame? Anything in there’s going to be just as complex as in the door itself, so you’ll understand it better. I’ll look at the glass, and then we can be done, unless we get another brainwave.”

“Fine,” said Chandra. As Cobberfield bent over the shards, Chandra began probing the doorframe. It was more of the same of the actual door: strong, complex, and in perfectly good condition. It was bonded to the walls quite well, and Chandra idly wondered why they didn’t just make the walls and frame the same enchantment.

Then she hit something.

Compared to everything else, it was weak, although that wasn’t saying a whole lot. However, it was weak enough that it was almost smothered by the rest of the magic. Chandra wasn’t completely sure she’d felt it the first few times, and she kept “missing” it even as she examined it, it was so faint. But it wasn’t the remnants of some outside source of magic; it was woven in with the rest of the magic.

However, that wasn’t the interesting bit. It felt… off. Chandra couldn’t say why, but there was just something wrong about it. Slimy, cold, slippery. Shivers ran down her spine every time she tried prodding it. She’d never heard of anything quite like it. Well, except for dark mag-

“Chandra?”

Chandra flinched; she’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed Cobberfield finishing up. “Oh,” she said, “um… hang on a bit.” She put her horn against the frame again. What the hay IS that?

Cobberfield slowly tilted her head. “Are… you feeling okay?”

Maybe she knows. “Probe that,” said Chandra, stepping away from the door.

“Huh?”

“Look, just… do me a favor and probe the frame, will you, please? I’m suspicious about something.”

Cobberfield looked at the door, at Chandra, then shrugged. “All right.” She stepped forward and placed her horn on the frame. After a few moments, Chandra’s heart sank when Cobberfield said, “Am I supposed to be looking for something?”

“You don’t feel it?”

“Well, obviously not. What’s ‘it’?”

“It’s… Well, I don’t know what it is, that’s the thing. It’s faint, but…” Chandra waved her hooves about for a second in frustration. “…it feels like dark magic.”

“Dark magic,” said Cobberfield flatly.

“Well, that’s the only thing I can think of.”

“Chandra, dark magic’s been outlawed for Celestia-knows-how-long.”

“I know. You don’t need to tell me that.”

“I’m not sure anyone really knows how to do it.”

“I know.”

“And if they did, the Princesses would jump on them like-”

Chandra gritted her teeth. “I know! Why are you telling me this?”

“Because, to put it mildly, the probability of it being dark magic is reaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllly tiny. Besides, why would dark magic be used in the construction of the frame, anyway?”

“Look, I… I just don’t know.” Chandra rubbed her head and groaned. “So you really didn’t feel anything?”

“Nope,” said Cobberfield, shaking her head. “You said it was faint? How faint?”

“Really faint. I could barely sense it.”

Cobberfield hmmed. “Maybe you’re right and you’re just more sensitive than me.”

“So… what’re we gonna do about it?”

“Dunno.” Cobberfield rubbed the back of her neck. “I’ll, um, tell Dupinto about it. He’ll know what to do better.”

“Fine,” muttered Chandra. You’re not going to tell him, are you? You think we’re just grasping at straws. But she didn’t say anything. Too accusatory. “Find anything in the glass?”

“No,” said Cobberfield. “Nothing I didn’t expect, anyway. She sighed. “Guess we’re done here, then.” She left the exhibition hall.

To say Chandra was disappointed as she followed Cobberfield out was an understatement. She wasn’t quite crushed, but it was close. She’d hardly expected to solve the case on her own, but she’d figured she’d at least find something. There was that dark magic, but that just raised further questions, no answers. And aside from that, what did they have?

Nothing.

---

Phalanx hung back with Kalahari as Chandra entered the exhibit hall; he didn’t think he needed to follow her absolutely everywhere. But now he was stuck here with nothing to do.

“By the Sisters,” muttered Dupinto, “I really hope they find something. So far the biggest leads we have are hoofprints, and those’ve been damaged by the weather.” He sighed. “This is just…”

“Is it really that bad?” asked Phalanx. Some part of him kept thinking that, come on, there had to be some stuff left behind.

Dupinto gave him a Look. “Really that- Listen. I’ve been doing doing this for almost a decade. I’ve seen crimes solved from gum picked off the undersides of desks and from misplaced coffee cups. Believe me when I say that if there was anything here that might be evidence, I’d know it.” He leaned in close to Phalanx. “So, yes, it really is that bad.” His voice was low; he was reaching the end of his rope.

Phalanx didn’t flinch at Dupinto’s closeness. “Well, wasn’t there a witness? I heard something about that.”

Dupinto took a step back. “Well…” he muttered, “technically, yes, but all we’ve got is a rough sketch of her. The morning after the Elements were stolen, but before anything was reported, she told the mayor that she’d seen somepony break into here. She left almost immediately after that, saying she needed to get back to the Crystal Empire for her job or something. She didn’t even leave her name, and the mayor said she looked like she was nervous.”

“So we do have a witness.”

“Yes. A witness whose name and location we don’t know. It’ll be a wild goose chase. And we don’t even know how much she knows.”

“So you’re saying you’re not even going to look for her?” asked Phalanx.

Dupinto blinked, then gave a short, cynical laugh. “I’m saying it’s too much work for too little gain. Just drop it, okay? You can go looking for her if you want, but I’m not sending my people halfway across the country for this.” Not wanting to talk anymore, he stalked off.

Phalanx shook his head. “Yeesh,” he said to Kalahari. “What’s his problem?”

“He’s been working himself to the bone almost nonstop for the past two days,” said Kalahari, “only to turn up nothing regarding the theft of some of the most valuable objects in history, even though that’s his whole job, and now he has a Royal Guard asking him questions about things that were resolved yesterday and really ought to be obvious if you think about it.”

“…Ah. I should… probably apologize, then.”

“That might be wise, yes.”

Phalanx was about to leave when he paused. “Although… You wouldn’t happen to know who’s got that sketch, would you?”

Kalahari blinked. “What? You’re actually thinking of going there?”

“If Chandra’s fine with it. I know somepony here who sometimes travels to the Crystal Empire, so there’s a chance that she might recognize whoever it was, or at least help us find her.” Phalanx shrugged. “It’s not much, I’ll admit, but it’s better than nothing.”

“I don’t know who’s got it,” said Kalahari, “but Dupinto ought to know. Why don’t I come with y-”

“Nah,” said Phalanx, heading off, “I got this.” He headed off after Dupinto.

It took a few moments of looking, but Phalanx tracked down Dupinto near the entrance, looking out a window. He tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey.”

When Dupinto saw Phalanx, he muttered, “Hey,” and went back to looking out the window.

“Listen,” said Phalanx, “I… I’m sorry I was so ignorant earlier.”

Dupinto blinked and turned to face Phalanx more fully.

“I’m a soldier, not a detective,” continued Phalanx, “so it didn’t really occur to me that you’d’ve gone through pretty much everything. I…” He swallowed. “I was an idiot.”

Dupinto was silent for a moment. Then he grinned. He still looked tired, but it did a lot for his disposition. “Thanks,” he said. “And for me, well… It’s the inaction that really gets you down, here. There’s only so much you can do before run out of things to investigate and start getting cabin fever.”

“Oh, no, I understand totally,” said Phalanx, waving a hoof. “Anyway, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Shoot.”

“Who’s got that sketch of the witness?”

Dupinto paused, opened his mouth, and paused again as he switched topics. “Well, if you’re going to actually try to find them, I won’t stop you. Anyway, check outside.” He jerked his head towards the door. “There ought to be a pale red pegasus out there, Steadyhoof. She’ll have your sketch.”

“Thanks,” said Phalanx, nodding. “And sorry. Again.”

“Eh, don’t mention it,” replied Dupinto, waving a hoof. “I hope you turn up something with your search.”

Phalanx nodded again and left, heading outside.

As luck would have it, said pale red pegasus was sitting right outside the door; she was one of the two donut ponies they had passed on the way in, the other being an Earth pony. They were out of donuts now and just sort of lazing around on their backs in the sun. It was a bit warm for the season.

Phalanx stood -- no, loomed -- over Steadyhoof and looked down at her. “Lazy day, isn’t it?” he asked. It wasn’t accusing, just a question of fact.

Steadyhoof yawned. “Well,” she mumbled, “if there was anything to do, we’d do it.” She rolled over on her back and yelled to the Earth pony, “Right?”

“Right!” the Earth pony shouted back. “Don’t know what about, but right!”

“So there’s that,” said Steadyhoof, rolling back to look up at Phalanx. “Unless you’ve got something you want.”

“That sketch of the witness. Dupinto said you had one.”

Steadyhoof blinked a few times and rolled onto her hooves. “You actually doing something about that?” she asked. She walked over to some bags lying near the entrance to the library and began stuffing her muzzle in them as she searched.

Phalanx flapped his wings once and shrugged. “Maybe. Depends how things turn out. I may or may not know a mare who knows a mare.”

“Uh-huh.” Steadyhoof plucked a scroll from a bag and rolled it out. “Here we go.”

It was an uncolored sketch of a mare. At first Phalanx thought she was an Earth pony, but then he noticed a note in the top corner: Crystal Pony. And, well, why wouldn’t that be the case? She was in the Crystal Empire, after all. She looked pretty normal, maybe a bit tall. A few lines crisscrossed the image, connecting areas with coat or mane colors.

“Remember,” said Steadyhoof, “this is from someone else’s memory, so no promises that any of it’s accurate.”

“Good enough,” said Phalanx, rolling up the scroll with the nudge of a hoof. “Thanks.” He tucked the scroll under a wing.

“Anytime,” nodded Steadyhoof. She walked back into the grass and flopped down again.

Phalanx bit the inside of his cheek as he thought. Bet I could get them moving. Start screaming at them in my Instructor Voice. Be nice to see them jump. He’d have nothing on a drill sergeant, obviously, but he’d come close enough for a civilian.

…Nah. For all he knew, they were just as beat as Dupinto and merely taking it better because they weren’t in charge of the whole thing. Probably not, but best not to risk someone snapping.

Sketch in hoof, Phalanx headed back inside to wait for Chandra to finish up.

---

And once Phalanx left, Kalahari had nothing to do. She hadn’t asked to come with Phalanx because she thought he needed the help; she just wanted to do something else.

Well, hey. We’re in a library. Why not look for some books?

And hey. Why not ones about the Elements of Harmony? We might as well learn some more about them.

Now the problem was finding such a book. For starters, what subject would they be under? Magic, probably. Which would make their Hoofy Decimal Number… 504.something, if Kalahari was remembering the system right. Or was it 540.something? Well, 500s were sciences, so it’d probably be somewhere in there.

The 500s were upstairs. The steps were a little shallower than what Kalahari was used to, but that was fine. Probably easier to get down when you were carrying lots of books.

It was bright upstairs, even with all the bookcases in the way. From what Kalahari could see, there were a lot of large windows on this floor on all four walls, always letting the sun in no matter what time of day. It gave the room a nice, warm feeling. In particular, there was one area not too far from the stairs where you could read any books you had picked out where the windows seemed particularly big and sun-friendly; the reading area felt rather restful.

But she needed a book before she could stop there. Kalahari flitted down the aisles and between shelves, looking for the… There they were, the 500s. Deciding to start from the beginning, Kalahari glanced over the titles. Maybe seeing clusters of subjects in an area would jog her mind as to what went where.

Or maybe not. She might’ve skipped over a few, but by the time she was in the 580s and the books were about plants, Kalahari was sure that there weren’t any books on the Elements where she was looking. She doubled back, went over everything a few more times, but still nothing. There were books on magic, sure, but those were more magical theory rather than any specific application.

So would they be under magitech, then? Kalahari didn’t know much about them, but she knew they weren’t pony-made, so probably not. But where, then?

And, Kalahari realized, that was assuming they had a book on the Elements. The Elements were a rather specialized topic, especially since they had only eight known users in all of history. For all she knew, they’d be buried in a footnote in some random textbook behind a bunch of obtuse, opaque terms.

Although if anyone knew whether or not they had such a book, it’d be the librarian. Kalahari trotted back down the stairs and up to the front desk.

The unicorn at the desk looked a bit young for the job, but he seemed to be working hard enough, sorting books on a cart. When he saw Kalahari, he stopped for a moment. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, I was wondering,” said Kalahari. “Do you have any books specifically on the Elements of Harmony? I can’t seem to find any.”

The librarian frowned. “We should, but I can’t remember where they’d be. Those things’re a real gelding when it comes to sorting. Hang on a sec.” He levitated a book about as large as either of their heads out from behind the desk and began flipping through the pages. From what Kalahari could see, it was some sort of Hoofy Decimal lookup book, with a bunch of specific subjects numbered by where they went.

“And it’s fine if they’re a subtopic in a book,” added Kalahari. “I just w-”

“No,” cut in the librarian, waving a hoof, “I know we’ve got at least one book that’s only about them, but I-” He stopped flipping, paused, and tapped his chin. “…actually…” He put the lookup book away again and pulled out a much smaller one, the library’s ledger. Flipping to the last few pages, he ran a hoof down the lines. “…aaaand… there. Gimme a minute.” He turned back to the cart. A few moments later, he turned back, levitating a book behind him. “Here we go.” He dropped it on the counter. “Just got returned. The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide.”

That was easier than I thought it’d be. In spite of everything Kalahari knew about books and covers, it looked impressive enough; a simple but striking design of six jewels surrounding a coat of arms. Then she noticed the authors. There was Princess Twilight herself, and… “Isaac Neighton?” she asked, looking up. “I thought he died over four hundred years ago.”

“It’s up-to-date, if that’s what you’re worried about,” said the librarian. “Second edition.” He poked at some much-too-small type in the lower right corner. “Twilight rewrote parts of it in her later years. It hadn’t need changing before then since nothing new had been found out yet.”

“Ah. Great.” Kalahari turned to the table of contents. There was a pretty wide range of topics there. “You seem to know an awful lot about this book,” she said as she skimmed the list. “Read it before?”

“Oh, yeah,” said the librarian, nodding. “It’s great. It’s perfectly accessible to the laymare and really interesting.”

“Then I’ll take it,” said Kalahari, closing the book up. She signed her name in the ledger. Taking a firm grip on the book, Kalahari carried it to a reading area not too far from the crime scene. If she was needed (yeah, right), it was good to be close by.

Before Kalahari opened the book, however, a thought stole into her mind. So where would a book like this go? She stole a glance at the Hoofy Decimal Number.

…602? What the hay is that? The 600s are technology, aren’t they? But the Elements aren’t technology… right?

Putting the question to the back of her mind, Kalahari cracked open the book. She started at the beginning, but flipped to the origins of the Elements after a few seconds, just to satisfy her curios-

…

Part of her wanted to scream. The Elements WEREN’T TECHNOLOGY. They were the natural result of- the see- the product of- Not even Twilight had known what, exactly, the Elements were, but they definitely weren’t technology.

Oh, well. So some cataloguers were morons. It wasn’t the end of the world. Kalahari went back to the beginning of the book and started reading.