Villainy Abroad

by Impossible Numbers

A Diabolical Service

The two ponies on the corner lowered their sunglasses briefly, and then drew up the collars of their trench coats before returning to their books.

From their table on the café veranda, they got a good view of the marketplace. They saw a maze of flaking white stalls, tarpaulin covers, and creatures of all species packed so tightly that the sandy ground might as well have not been there. What wasn’t scorched white under the midday sun – exposed planks, bleached turbans, coats and robes that seemed coated with cracking layers of salt – looked blackened and charred, so that their black, wide-brimmed hats were as shrivelled and tight as rotten figs. Even their own mugs under the shadows seemed to shimmer, and the hot chocolate they’d ordered was evaporating millimetre by millimetre.

The unicorn lowered her sunglasses and glared at the lines before her.

“Stupid index,” she growled. “How many versions of ‘crystal’ can you not put in a book about ancient artefacts, for Pete’s sake?”

Despite the heat, her companion shivered. The thatched chair and one of her knees rattled against a table leg. When the shivering earth pony reached for her mug, her hoof drew back sharply.

“Still hot!” She stuck the offended hoof into her mouth and sucked until it popped out again. “I don’t believe it. I’ve never felt anything like it. The sheer heat of this place…”

“I don’t want a weather report, Vanilla. Found anything in your copy?”

Vanilla flapped her hoof until the red spot died back. “Oh? Oh, yes. Yes! Just spotted something. And I was just seconds from giving up too. I mean, what are the odds? Fate moves in mysterious ways, you know?”

The unicorn lowered her copy and, under her dagger-of-a-horn and plough-like forehead, almost gave her companion a long burst of flame from her eyes. With a quick lick of her hoof, she flicked the book back to its front page.

“They don’t tell us anything these days,” she murmured. “You’d swear they didn’t want us to do our freaking duty at all. So if it’s not clear yet, I’m not in the mood to sit through any of your ‘profound corner’ drivel. Again. Just get to the point.”

Vanilla nodded so hard she almost sent her sunglasses flying. They ducked behind the tome’s dusty cover, which was raised like a shield. At the same moment, a waiter ambled over to their table.

“I hope your drinks are satisfactory, madam and mademoiselle?” The notepad hovered beside his drooping eyelids, quill raised.

The unicorn flashed a smile stolen from a shark. Behind the sunglasses, two burning eyes narrowed into a sniper scope.

“Simply delicious,” she cooed. “Now, I think we’ll have the bill, please.”

A page from the notepad was slapped down onto the table. Vanilla lowered her tome and leaned forwards. A frown creased her brow.

“You’re charging us for the hay baguette?” she shrieked.

The drooping eyelids didn’t even flicker; evidently, he had been expecting this. “All orders on the bill are final, mademoiselle.”

“But it had mould on it! It was moving!”

“No, mademoiselle. It was the finest bread this side of the city. Finest quality local produce. All ingredients organic.”

“Finest quality my croup! There were civilizations springing up on that crust!”

“And we sent it back,” said the unicorn as though commenting on the sunny sky today. “You took it back when we asked politely. Surely, you don’t want us to take this all the way up to the manager, my young friend?”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot help you,” he said as though by rote. “I checked with my supervisor. We accept no refunds.”

Vanilla put her head in her hooves and groaned before rounding on him again. “Then we would like a replacement to go! I’m not paying for nothing!”

A wan smile oozed over the waiter’s granite face. “I’m sorry, mademoiselle. There is nothing I can do.”

“A pity,” said the unicorn with a sigh. For a moment, her horn flickered with sparks and a shimmering aura zipped along its length.

He bowed with a stiff neck and ambled away from them. A few seconds passed. The unicorn counted under her breath.

At once, the waiter yelped and leaped into the air. Several ponies spun round, knocking a couple of chairs down. A smirk played across the unicorn’s face, widening still when someone the next table over dropped their glass. Seconds later, the waiter had scurried back through the gaping hole of a front entrance and vanished with a second yelp.

The unicorn levitated her mug and took a sip without looking away from the entrance.

“Carmine!” whispered Vanilla across the table, drawing her companion’s gaze back. “What did you – Weapons? He had weapons? Secret gadgets? Was he a spy?”

Carmine eased back in her thatched chair and swivelled her head from left to right. “Clean,” she murmured, and then added, “at first. Anyway, what were you saying?”

The hubbub of haggling shouts and hurried disputes and giggly gossip washed over them once more. Vanilla cocked her head at a jaunty angle and snorted in her effort to suppress a chuckle. Under her hooves, the pages of the tome spread out flat. Opposite her, Carmine eased herself forwards; they were almost touching horn to fringe.

“How much…” whispered Vanilla, but she bit her lip and her gaze darted to the nearest table before she started again. “How much do you know about the Discovery of Loyalty?”

Carmine cocked her ears forwards. “Go on.”

After glancing at an outburst of cheers from inside the café, Vanilla licked her upper lip. With her dry skin under her sweaty fur and impenetrable sunglasses, she looked like a gecko trying to moisten its staring eyes.

“Well,” she hissed, “the book goes on about the Ancient Pegasus Empire – you know, the history behind the story – but here’s the gist of it. The commander of the empire back then, Commander Strykem, was supposed to have mastered lightning power. And not just mastered it: he was so skilled with it, he could strike a pond of dead slime and mud, and living creatures would be born from it fresh.”

Carmine’s brow creased. “You sure you’re reading that right? I heard that ‘did-you-know’ titbit umpteen times. I could’ve sworn blind his power was to bring the dead back to life. That scared the other pegasi, he had a ‘spat’ with ‘em, they cast him into Tartarus. It’s just another preachy fable. You know, the usual stuff: ‘don’t do this thing everyone wants to do but no one can really do anyway, and would probably screw up in real life’.”

A passing donkey knocked their table and brayed in shock. Vanilla’s hoof darted out and scooped up her mug before it was knocked off the surface. Neither of them dropped their stares until the offending jack had vanished into the crowd.

“I dunno,” continued Vanilla. “All I can say is what’s in the book. It says here” – she tapped the footnotes on the page – “Commander Strykem went further than that. Much further.”

With a rubbing of her hooves, Carmine leaned back until the backrest creaked. Her mug rose up and hovered beside her grin. “I see.”

“When he created the animals from the swamp, he found that they simply dissolved back into mud and lightning. For seven weeks and seven hours, he gathered as much lightning and as much mud as he could, and he struck again and again, all kinds of mud and all kinds of lightning, trying to make his creatures last. In the end, he found that a vital ingredient was missing, something that would commit the elements to stay together no matter what happened to them after they were created.”

A low chuckle met these words. Carmine splayed her forelegs wide. “Let me guess: that vital ingredient was… wait for it… Loyalty. With a capital L.”

From within the café, shouts and arguments broke through the babble and tramping of hooves and feet. Sighing, Vanilla snapped the tome shut and ran a hoof through her fringe, almost knocking her wide-brimmed hat over an ear and off her head.

“We’re getting somewhere,” Carmine breathed. “It’s treating abstractions like they’re building materials. That’s the sort of reliable schlock you can navigate a ship by. What’s it say next?”

Vanilla waved a hoof until Carmine leaned forwards again. They nearly head-butted each other, and their forelocks briefly became entangled before they drew back slightly.

“He didn’t just discover Loyalty.” Vanilla fidgeted where she sat, while across the table Carmine was as mobile as a painting. “He captured it. And then he hid it.”

“You’re talking about the crystal.”

The nod was barely a tremble in the wind. Carmine’s grinning face almost bowed to it.

“Across the ocean itself. He stashed it in a secret cave on a golden island in a sea of blood. He travelled so far that even the map-makers of the age had no idea where he went. He only told one soul – a secret keeper – so if he ever died before his time, his successor could be told the secret. Then, in a more enlightened time, his masterwork could be completed.”

“Hm. And when was this, did you say?”

Only a few inches from her, Vanilla shrugged and flashed a smile. “Centuries before Equestria was even founded. Good old Equestria, eh?”

“Good old Equestria. Well, I think we’ve long since run into the territory of said enlightened time, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say we passed the border a few centuries back, yes.”

They leaned away from each other. Both of them exchanged winks, and smirked into their respective mugs. Even their gulps were unerringly in step. Someone deep in the market crowd burst into screeching sobs.

Vanilla slammed her mug – and the hoof bearing it – onto the table. Opposite, Carmine lowered her own mug with a slight tap. Chairs scraped against the blanched planks, scattering flakes of papery bark under their legs.

“Golden island…” Vanilla reached down and dumped her saddlebag onto the table. “Bet that’d be a great resort. Take your kids to uncharted country! Adventure and terror for all the family! Exotic diseases come free!”

“What are you going to do with your bonus this year?” Carmine levitated her satchel, and her copy of the tome sank beneath the raised flap, which snapped into place. “I could do with a trip to Manehattan.”

Vanilla opened her mouth to reply, but jumped forwards. Her tome slipped and slammed onto the floorboards, knocking the cover off. The true cover flashed before it landed against her leg. A golden face, embossed on the thick card of the true cover, grinned up at them.

“You idiot!” Carmine hissed at her. “Quick!”

With a squeal, she shot down and slammed the false cover over the golden face. A few stares picked them out; Carmine stepped in their way at once and glanced down, sunglasses askew. Within seconds, Vanilla held the tome aloft, false cover now slotted into place, and her head darted back and forth, picking out stares from the veranda around her.

The tome glowed and was snatched out of her grip. She stumbled and found herself eye-to-eye with Carmine’s fiery pupils. The sunglasses had been lifted up to frame her arrow-like eyebrows. Saddlebag and tome floated beneath their chins, the former sheathing the latter before it was dumped – with a grunt – onto Vanilla’s sweat-sodden back. Both of their shoulders rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell.

Both glanced around the market crowd. Figures drifted to and fro in tunics and blindingly white cloth, but they could see shadows. There: a silhouette standing still behind a stall. There: some hulking biped shifting under the tarpaulin. There: a hay-chewing zebra, leaning against one of the veranda posts and giving them a sidelong stare.

When Carmine spoke, her lips barely moved and her teeth remained clenched.

“Take the back ah-wey,” was what Vanilla heard. “Do’ shtop uh-til I shay sho.”

While the spices stung their nostrils and the jabber numbed their ears, they slipped into the crowd. Bodies crushed them. Not once did their eyes stop swivelling in their sockets, checking each face as they passed by.

Behind them, the zebra threw her hay to the sand and slunk along the queues nearby.

---

“You stupid foal,” hissed Carmine under her breath. “Why didn’t you just wave it about while you were at it?”

“I only dropped it,” Vanilla hissed back. “Heaven forbid a mare could ever drop a book!”

“Well, you sure picked the right book to drop!”

“Look, it’s not my fault! It’s not my fault! You were supposed to glue the fake cover on, remember?”

“Don’t you start pinning this on me!”

“I’m not pinning this on you, Carmine. I’m pointing out it wasn’t just my fault.”

“It would have been fine if you hadn’t dropped it.”

They carried on like this up the steps and past the columns. Up ahead, the library loomed with the stately ornamentation of a temple. Carvings of ancient wise mares crowded around the swirls and concentric rings of the tympanum. Yet, behind them the river of real ponies, minotaurs, griffons, diamond dogs, donkeys, zebras, cattle, and sheep barely lapped the shore of the limestone steps, and from the marble columns to the granite portal there were no other creatures besides the two.

“You always pick on me,” hissed Vanilla. “No no, seriously; not one job has gone past without you having a go at me at some point.”

“I’m trying, Vanilla,” Carmine spat. “Strike me down dead if I’m not trying.”

“I mean, it’s not like this kind of work is a trip to the apple stall for a couple of braeburns, you know. I bet you stumbled a lot when you were starting out.”

They both stopped before the portal, the towering granite blocks carved with two guardian griffons glaring down at them. Carmine placed one hoof on a curved beak.

“Maybe,” she said with a slight nod. “Maybe I did.”

“Well then.”

“But I don’t anymore. That’s the point. Vermilion straightened my haunches out sharpish, I can tell you. Still got the scars to prove it.”

Vanilla’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Then buck up and straighten your act out.” Carmine made to push the door aside, but then raised the other hoof and let the portal slam back. “Don’t think I enjoy doing this, Vanilla, ‘cause I don’t. But it’s my job, and I will if I have to. Got it?”

The unicorn entered. Vanilla mouthed her words back at her with a sneer, and then followed.

“Got it,” she spat under her breath.

Their hoofsteps echoed around the four slab-like walls of smooth marble. Behind them, the portal slammed shut, and its echo slammed over and over. The smell of formaldehyde stung and burned their nostrils, but the air was so still and stuffy that each breath soon became a long, straining gasp. There was no one about.

Fireflies buzzed about in jars along the central table, casting dots across the surface, aglow like drifting embers. Throne-like seats lined the long table as guards of ebony honour. Wave after wave of bookcases towered almost to the rooftop on either side, their pigeonholes crammed and overflowing with scrolls, tomes, and booklets.

Carmine glanced to her right, but the reception desk was empty. She was nudged, and when she turned back, Vanilla was pointing ahead.

On the far side, behind the largest and blackest of the thrones, was a wall of pigeonholes. A ladder wheeled into view and slowed to a squeaky stop. The pegasus atop it was balancing scrolls on one hoof and stuffing a copy into a pigeonhole with the other. Both her wings were bandaged to her midriff.

With a smirk, Carmine swept a hoof over to her and raised her sunglasses.

“I’m feeling generous,” she whispered to Vanilla. “Now’s your chance to redeem yourself. Until it’s complete, I give you full reign of this particular task.”

Vanilla sighed and hung her head, not daring to look up. Carmine’s hoof, initially pointing at the pegasus, then lowered itself and swept up and pointed again. This time, it was more emphatic.

A moment later, the pegasus was about to kick herself along the shelf when the ladder swung out from under her. Scrolls rained down; the ladder clattered to the floor. Her forelimbs became a blur as she flapped them hard to stay up, and then gravity snatched her and threw her onto the rungs with a bounce that landed her face-first on the hard tiles.

“Hey!” she yelled, pushing herself up. “What’s the big i… dea…”

“Hey there, Folio. Remember us?” Vanilla removed her hoof from the ladder and sauntered over.

Squeaking, the pegasus shot to her feet and began backing away. Carmine waited until the mare bumped into her chest, and then flashed a smile when the pegasus rounded on her.

“Ah!” Folio twitched and snapped her whole body around from face to face, trying to keep them both ahead of her at once. “What are you doing? What do you want? What’s wrong now?”

“Where’s the cave, Folio?”

Folio spun round one last time to focus on Vanilla, who was now almost nose-to-nose. The chest of the pegasus heaved with the strain of each breath.

“Cave? What cave? I don’t know anything about no cave. Why are you going on about caves? You said you just wanted that book. I’m a librarian, you know, not a closet cave… exploring… guy.”

“Caver,” supplied Carmine. At Vanilla’s glare, she added, “Sorry, sorry. It’s your show. Ignore me.”

“You wanna know about caves? Ask one of the explorers! Local guides. Uh, carto… thingy.”

Carmine opened her mouth to correct her, but at Vanilla’s glance shut it again.

“Ask anyone but me! I only fill in pigeonholes! That’s as close as I get to any caves!”

Vanilla raised the book in front of the quivering librarian’s face. With a flick of her wrist, the false cover slid off and smacked against the foreleg of the pegasus, who drew back and whimpered.

“Commander Strykem only told one pony where the secret cave was.” Vanilla flapped the book as she spoke, batting the pegasus on the nose. “The secret keeper. Don’t act like you weren’t expecting us to come back. You gave us the book, for crying out loud.”

At this, the book was drawn back and Vanilla carefully crafted a knowing smirk onto her features. The wind vanished from Folio’s body. She slumped, staring at the floor with pain crushing her face.

“Don’t do this to me,” she said. “I didn’t ask to get mixed up in this. I’m just a librarian, for Pete’s sake. I only wanted some work experience.”

“On the golden island?”

“There was a foreign exchange program. I liked this place. I thought it’d make a nice getaway.”

Vanilla chuckled softly. “You mean a more exciting getaway? It’s got to be a lot more exciting than a cloud cauliflower farm, eh?”

Carmine spun round and stared at the doorway far behind them. Whether alerted by some minor disturbance or whether a suspicious thought had just struck her, she crouched and narrowed her eyes to slits.

“Trust me,” Vanilla continued, “I’ve been there, done that, and written the memoir. Why do you think I’m stuck in this job right now?”

When Carmine looked back, Vanilla was patting the quivering pegasus on the shoulder. Irritably, Carmine rubbed her own face with both hooves.

“For the love of Celestia,” Carmine groaned. “What are you doing?”

To her shock, Vanilla shot another laser glare in her direction. She almost took a step back.

“Make yourself useful, Carmine, and check around for any eavesdroppers, would you? Thattagirl.”

The unicorn’s horn glowed, and she lowered her sunglasses and peered over the rim. “What?”

“Now now, no questions. This is my show, remember?”

At the broad grin this was accompanied by, Carmine returned a withering smirk that didn’t extend to her flaming eyes. Nevertheless, she slouched away from the pair and trudged to the next row of shelves, beginning her trek back to the portal. There would be words about this later, and her mouth worked silently to find the right ones.

Under Vanilla’s patting hoof, the quivering pegasus tried to break away, but a firm press held her down and her head darted to and fro, looking for any kind of escape.

“Look, it’s not like I don’t want to help,” she lied. “Goodness knows I’d love to. But I don’t know what cave you’re on about, and I don’t know where the heck you got that idea from.”

“The secret keeper, Folio,” Vanilla whispered. “There’s always only one secret keeper. Trust me; I’ve been around the block a few times. I know how a legend works. Even you could guess what I’m driving at.”

“Ridiculous! Preposterous! Absolutely absurd! This is real life! That was thousands and thousands of years ago. The secret keeper’s dead. If he ever existed, I mean.”

“The secret keeper wasn’t one pony. It was a role. Roles can be passed on. Instructions written down. Hidden in plain sight.”

“Listen, it sounds good, but think about it! It’d be like a game of Whispers. The secret would warp beyond recognition after a few centuries. Someone in the chain would betray it. The secret, the cave, the crystal inside it, all of it would be lost!”

Beyond them, Carmine was leaping from aisle to aisle, trying to catch out any hidden spies. Vanilla sat down and reached across to the scattered scrolls, scooping them up. The librarian began pacing back and forth, chewing her lip and occasionally a hoof.

“It’s a good story, though.” Vanilla did not look up from her handiwork. “Isn’t it?”

“Myths are great stories! I love myths. I was brought up on myths. I remember my old mother – may she rest in peace, the heavens bless her soul – read me all kinds of bedtime stories when I was a foal. You know, I got full marks in my Literature Studies at Skyclad University before coming here. Full marks! Why, I could quote The Chronicles of Commander Hurricane in my sleep. Oh yeah, good stories. Great stories. I love ‘em. Love ‘em all.”

Carmine’s hoofsteps echoed around the library as she approached the portal, horn aglow. Behind her, Vanilla tutted under her breath and patted the pile of scrolls into a pyramid.

“Some would say,” she said, “that they are more than just stories. You can see something in that, right? You know what I mean; hidden messages, literary realism, allegory… Makes them more valuable than boring old fiction, eh?”

The librarian scoffed. “Ooh, don’t get me started on that philistine claptrap. That’s not literature studies; that’s conspiracy theory nutjobs, that’s sad little babies who never grow up, that’s quack philosophical types who couldn’t tell prattle from profundity if you labelled them. Literature” – and here, she spun round and stamped a hoof, her quivering vanishing in a flash – “is transcendent. You can’t reduce it to some join-the-dots cipher. You can’t reduce it to a grubby alter ego of grubby real life. You don’t need to believe language makes reality, or nonsense like that.”

“Yes, but –”

“No one knows what makes great literature great. That’s part of what makes it great to begin with. You don’t try and get meaning out of sunlight. The sun isn’t there to code for something else. You bask in it. You live for it.”

One portal door swung forwards, clanking against the other where they caught for a moment. Both Vanilla and Folio glanced over; Carmine was glaring down at a foal coming up the steps. They heard her shout something like “Library closed for lunch,” and then the slam echoed around them.

Vanilla beamed at the librarian and licked her lips. “You ever studied Crosswinds the Chatterbox? You must’ve done. That sun stuff sounded like the Celestial Soliloquy –”

“The Celestial Soliloquy?” Folio peered at her, a twitch catching at her nostrils. “You’ve read the classics?”

“‘Dabbled’ is more like it.” A weak chuckle escaped her lips. “I give it a go from time to time. When I’m not out on a job, I mean.”

The librarian giggled as though being strangled. “Ah. I, uh, didn’t think your type were into, er…”

“Oh come on! Ponies are more complicated than ‘types’. You should know that. It’s what you literature types love to go on about.”

Folio shuddered, her eyes darting in a vain attempt to snatch a glance at a possible escape. When she spotted Carmine checking the aisles on her trek back to them, she whimpered. Her hooves drummed against the floor.

“What is this leading to?” she said in a rush. “You’re not going to butter me up, you know. I can’t tell you where that cave is. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is, and I don’t like it any more than you do. So whatever you’re going to do to me, just get it over with.”

Vanilla winced. The mare stank of fear and confusion. She was bluffing. Her entire body vibrated like an elastic band stretched taut. It would be all too easy to break someone that fragile.

With her head down, Vanilla ignored the chill under her skin and lifted the pyramid of scrolls up with her front hooves. A sigh made her slump her shoulders.

“Don’t think I don’t understand.” She offered the scrolls, which the librarian snatched back. “In fact, if I knew a way to satisfy both of us, I’d gladly spare you the pain.”

And with that, she marched over to the shelf next to them and stood to attention.

“Carmine!” she yelled. “Over here!”

“Hope you two had a nice chat?” Carmine stomped over to her side and stood to attention. With a nudge of hindquarters, Vanilla got her to step aside a smidgen. There was a conspicuous pony-wide gap between the two.

“On three,” said Vanilla, “kick back with your left. One.”

“Wait!” Folio staggered in her haste to stop the scrolls collapsing. “What are you doing?”

“Two.”

“No! Don’t! Stop!” The librarian struggled to shift scrolls to just one foreleg, and jerked forwards to stop the pile collapsing.

“Three.”

Their legs shuddered with the impact. Carmine actually stumbled forwards with the force.

Behind them, the entire shelf had jumped backwards, deep into the wall and slightly into the darkness beyond it. While the librarian gasped, Vanilla rotated on the spot and reached forwards. She was barely suppressing a grin when she slid the shelf aside.

It clicked into place. Both of them stared down into the gaping darkness. Just within the firefly lighting of the library, the grey creases and cracks of the cave wall stopped short of the block of granite. They could see the grazed and scraped sides of the shelves on either side of the entrance.

Knees and cannons hit the ground behind them. Carmine caught Vanilla’s frown and shook her head warningly.

“How…” Folio’s voice was barely a whisper. “How did you… How could you possibly have…”

“Look at it this way.” Vanilla’s voice came back to her from the depths of the cave. “You didn’t tell us where the cave was, and we found what we were looking for. Both of us get what we want.”

Carmine levitated a jar of fireflies from the table and placed it on Vanilla's back. They both nodded to each other.

As they left the librarian sobbing behind them, Carmine lit her horn up to expose a ring of green-tinged rock face ahead of them. She glanced sideways at her companion, who was smirking to herself.

“So,” she whispered, and even her whisper echoed back at her, “exactly how did you figure it out?”

“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know?” Vanilla began humming a jaunty tune to herself.

Carmine growled at her. “All right, you’ve had your fun. Now I’m in charge again. So how did you figure out where the cave was?”

The smirk never left Vanilla’s face. Instead, she stopped, reached up, and tapped both her eyes with one hoof before continuing to walk.

“Poor girl wouldn’t stop fretting over it,” she said. “You’d be amazed what a pony’s body language can tell you.”

Carmine watched her in stony silence. Then, a slight guffaw escaped her mouth and she shook her head at the cave walls around her. Both removed their sun-dried hats and stashed them into their trench coats. Red and pale hair flowed down their collars.

“Shopping time,” said Carmine. “Let me know if you see anything you like.”

---

Comments

[EverfreePony]

Interesting beginning. You play very well with words in the descriptions and the whole story is rather dynamic. Also, Carmine and Vanilla seem like an interesting and funny, yet dangerous duo so far. I hope to read the next chapters soon!

[Impossible Numbers]

8531187

Hello again. It's a pleasant surprise to receive a comment for an old story. Glad to see you're enjoying it so far; this was one of my favourite ones to write last year!