Act 3 Chapter 61: A Grand Trick
"It is not the histories that shape us; it is the stories. We tell one another stories to preserve ourselves down through the centuries. Truth exists, yes, but it is a fragile and changeable thing. A story survives where truth fades into the dark shroud of memory. Even my truth will one day disappear, but it is my hope that the story of me rings through the stories of ponies for as long as they have mouths, memories, and hope. I pray it is a tale with a better ending than its beginning."
-Princess Luna, "On Topics Of Philosophy, History, And The Proper Rearing Of Possums."
“A thousand years ago—give or take a few weeks and however much time was spent drunk and not keeping track of the calendar—a group of brave pioneers struck out into the wilds of what would eventually be Equestria. To be clear, this was not yet Equestria. We’re well before that.
This land was still mostly forest, but there was a single, solitary hill that came into sight as they crested some ancient horizon. It was near enough to a nice big bay and a valley with river access and it called out to their prospector hearts.
‘Here,’ they said, ‘Here will be our home.’
So, these poor saps—pardon, ‘brave proto-Equestrians’ —laid down roots at the foot of the hill. They started mining. Gold, jewels, diamonds...They hoped and they prayed and soon, they got lucky...or unlucky, depending on how you look at it. One of their number had a particular shaft dug nice and deep when he came across a key, of all things.
Now, it’s well known that there are older civilizations in Equestria than ponies, but these were not archeologists; these were miners. Their stock and trade was what could be refined for sale, not trinkets. Still, they kept the key. It became a good luck charm, of sorts. As the logic goes, nopony locks up things that aren't valuable. Since they found the key underground, beneath the hill, they figured whatever lock it fit must also be under there.
After a couple of decades, the head of the family kept it with him at all times. His name was ‘D.W’. That key had become the center of their worlds. It was their obsession.
Now, D.W. had a knack for mining. Maybe it was his talent, or maybe not, but he was luckier than anypony else in the valley. He’d mine and - just like that - he’d strike gold. Over time, it made him rich.
D.W. didn’t know it then, or maybe he did and didn’t care, but his prospect was always headed in one direction. One day, he and his family were digging at the farthest part of their shaft and they struck something that nopony had ever seen before.
It was a door, deep in the sediment, buried under dozens of feet of earth and stone. He didn’t really need to think about it. He’d found his lock and he had his key.
This door led inside a chamber where something was waiting with a kind of patience not seen in this world for a very long time; something...intelligent.
Now, what happened afterward is a bit of supposition, but I imagine there was something of a conversation that went on. The ‘something’...this prisoner in the earth...offered D.W. all of his dreams if he would but help it out.
‘How can I help?’ he asked.
‘Bring me souls,’ the prisoner replied.
He brought souls. He brought the old and sickly in his family. He brought the young and weak. He lashed them to an altar inside this chamber and left them there to slowly wither, though never to die. The prisoner made sure of that. Maybe his conscience pricked him, but he’d had this ‘something’ in his mind for a good long while and his conscience was only a whisper.
When he got old, rich, and fat, his surviving sons had grown strong. They, too, were raised with the voice of temptation and they knew the stallion must surely be eyeing them up to be future sacrifices. That or their children.
Together, they hatched a plan and dragged him to the altar, and struck their own deal with the prisoner of that chamber.
‘Preserve our family. Give us long, wealthy lives and we will get old, you’ll have our souls or those of the weak among us,’ they said.
It agreed.
They brought souls and more time passed.
Equestria was growing and, at long last, the prisoner saw a chance to be free. The newly minted Princess of the Night was a warrior suddenly forced into a life of royalty. Her sister, the politician, got all the credit for her expansion of their borders while Luna was ignored and her contributions devalued. Even her beloved race, the thestrals, were shunned and driven into the corners of Equestria.
The prisoner hatched a plan.
Now, I want to be clear, this next part is conjecture.
So, this prisoner’s mind was devious, cunning, and advanced. It understood technologies from a time so long ago that a hundred societies more developed than ours could have risen and fallen in that period. The prisoner knew how to tempt the vulnerable.
It designed a set of armor for the Princess of the Night. The family had kept the name ‘D.W.’ to memorialize their founder, and D.W. was sent to gift this armor to Luna. Inside the armor lived an intelligence...a tiny fragment of the prisoner’s being.
We all know the public version of what happened next.
Luna was corrupted by jealousy and envy, ultimately descending into madness and becoming Nightmare Moon.
A little piece of the story was missing, however, and it was an important piece: The Web of Dark Wishes. Nightmare Moon’s spellbook.
It was a book which allowed a pony to create an engine based on a shape that could grant wishes. It was controlled by the armor. Luna re-ordered the sky, but never had a chance to make the prisoner’s wish. She was jailed for a thousand years, the armor with her.
The prisoner had not predicted this, but it knew roughly when she might return. How, I couldn’t say; the outcome is what matters. The armor was shattered, becoming a curiosity stuck in a vault, but as Equestria grew, so too did the Family of D.W., twisted and corrupted by the monster that kept them fatted and ready for their eventual slaughter.
They grew, and eventually were able to enact the prisoner’s ‘back up’ plan.
They built a city. The city became the pattern of Dark Wishes. This city.
Our city.
----
“Detective, I knew this wasn’t going to be the sanest tale, but you’re telling me that the...what, the streets are laid out in some kind of giant spell?” Quickie asked.
“Not the streets, but...yes. The Shield is the spell. Our city was built around it.”
Swift’s mother breathed in sharply.
“Aye, Justice,” Grimble murmured. “This be beyond moi kin. Yer city is foine, but...a magic tha’ big is madness.”
“Madness is usually just a reasoning whose comprehension follows a structure we do not understand,” Slip Stitch chuckled, squishing a couple of crumbs that’d found their way onto his doctor’s coat. “In this case I think it’s not because it’s illogical, but because a very, very big mind is the only one who can hold all the bits and pieces at once.”
“Hardy, how did you put all of this together?” Tourniquet asked, her eyes dancing with glimmering lights.
“I followed a trail of extremely dangerous breadcrumbs. We’ll get to that next.”
----
Down through the centuries, the Family kept their promise to the prisoner and the prisoner kept his promise to the Family. Souls burned on an altar in the Wilds, until finally, they had the resources and the position to try the great work, again. The Nightmare’s Armor had returned and it was time.
They built Detrot, spreading their influence to keep the Princesses distracted from their eventual cause.
They even started a war.
----
“The Crusades,” Firebrand whispered, clenching a claw around her sword hilt. “Do you mean these beasts set Equine and Dragonkind at one another’s throats for the sake of a distraction?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I’ve had a few different indicators that say they had both resources and motive to start that fight,” I replied, shaking my head. “It certainly kept the Princesses from noticing various flavors of decay in Equestria that played right into the Family’s hooves.”
“They were busy rebuilding closer to Canterlot and Detrot is on the edge of their attention,” Limerence explained. “Given a few decades, they might make their way out here to impose order, again, but it hasn’t happened, yet. They move slowly and the Family used that to their advantage.”
“But to begin a war…” the dragoness murmured.
“If that were the worst of their crimes, we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
----
There was a thief in Canterlot.
To all intents and purposes, she was a nobody, but she had a talent for getting into places nopony else could. Unlike most thieves, she stole for the thrill of it. The money was nice, but it never stacked up against the joy of having her name in the newspaper. Notoriety was her game and, short of a dragon’s hoard, there was only one target that she’d never been able to crack.
When she was approached and asked—for a considerable fee—to sneak into the Canterlot Royal Vaults to do a snatch and dash, she couldn’t say ‘no’. It was a suicide mission, but that made it all the more delicious if she were to succeed. She crept into the vaults, but was only able to get the Helm of Nightmare Moon before an alarm was tripped.
In a panic, she ran from the vaults into the streets of Canterlot, vanishing among the alleyways.
When she’d found a moment to catch her breath, her curiosity got the better of her. After all, it was just an old helmet, right? Another antique curiosity for some old, wealthy idiot’s shelf.
She put the helmet on.
The intelligence inside the helm awoke and defended itself. Its last memory was of defeat and all before that was blurred into indistinct shadow. It seared the thief’s mind, snapping her psyche like a twig and leaving her scarred and broken.
The Family found the poor, mad pony and tucked her away, but wasting a resource was not their way. When the thief regained her mind, she’d taken on a new persona. No longer a thief, she believed she spoke with the voice of Nightmare Moon herself.
They saw an opportunity in the mad mare.
Soon, she’d built a following of demented creatures like her in Detrot. They were wealthy, and routinely engaged in ‘rituals’ that involved orgiastic violence. The Family still needed souls to give their master. What more cheerfully available soul than a religious fanatic who would go to the sacrificial altar with a big smile, believing they’re serving Luna herself?
The Family—to keep the newly minted Astral Skylark sweet—placed the Helm of Nightmare Moon in her care.
Unbeknownst to them, the helm’s guiding mind was still awake, still working to be free.
It whispered in the ears of the ponies at Skylark’s convent until it found one that was smart enough and broken enough to help.
----
Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out Ruby’s horn and set it on the conference table.
A series of gasps ran around the room as everyone realized what it was.
“What the frig, Hardy!? Why do you have a unicorn’s horn in your pocket?!” Taxi demanded.
“Plenty of reasons. Too many reasons to count, really, but I’m going to start with the simplest.”
----
A simple farm mare came to the city of Detrot with only a pocket full of her family’s bits and a dream. A gentle soul, but strong and smart.
She was a nobody.
She started a business doing honest work. She took an assistant and soon, a local gang took notice of her success. They tried to bully her into paying them protection money.
Most ponies would have paid the money, but she was a mare of the country. She knew how to defend herself. She sent them packing with a heap of bruises and broken bones.
Cowards and bullies, being the scheming creatures they are, came back and instead of taking another beating, they took her assistant. They tortured this poor pony before cutting off her wings and burning them, all to send a message.
The mare got the message.
She shut her business and her guilt drove her into the embrace of the one group in Detrot offering redemption: the Church of the Lunar Passage. While she was there, Astral Skylark saw her beauty and decided she would make an excellent sacrifice.
The mare was moved to this very building and the voice of Nightmare Moon began to whisper to her. It told her the truth about the Lunar Passage. It told her of their plans for her and offered escape if she would only take it along.
Smart mare that she was, she ran.
The whispering continued, until at last, she donned the Helm.
It showed her futures; hundreds of futures. It tried to drive her insane, like it had Skylark. It shrieked and wailed inside her head. It tried to break her.
She did not break.
Instead, she hid with it, stealing futures from the magical helmet, which she wrote down in her diary. She planned in secret, with only the knowledge of potential futures for company. She did what nopony, not even the great heroes of Equestria had managed; she outsmarted Nightmare Moon.
Nightmare had plans. She planned to capture the one pony who existed as a flaw in her eventual design to escape the Family and bend him to her will. She wanted freedom. She wanted power. Instead, this mare delivered the Nightmare into his hooves.
The Family had not stopped looking for the Helm and the mare knew it. She knew she’d be hunted, and her loved ones would be hunted, until she gave up or they found her. She contacted the Family and offered to meet.
They sent a bastard to meet her. A necromancer. A traitor and murderer.
She knew she wouldn’t leave that meeting, alive. The necromancer was going to steal her soul and she was at peace with that, because she knew what he would do. She’d seen the futures already. She drank his magical poison that locked her soul into her horn. She endured him slicing off her horn and had just enough of herself left when the job was done to run from him, up the stairs of the hotel they’d met in and out onto the rooftop.
She charged off that roof and died on impact, but she’d succeeded in her ultimate aims.
She got my attention.
----
I leaned forward over the conference table.
“Everyone...I want you to meet Ruby Blue.”
All eyes that’d been locked on the horn jerked up to my face.
Precious unzipped the top three inches of his jumpsuit, fanning himself with a hoof as he settled deeper into his chair. “Now, Ah cannot see what is sittin’ on the table there, but Miss Shine said ‘horn’ and since Ah doubt anyone here plays trumpet, can Ah assume ya somehow found Miss Blue’s missin’ piece?”
“It was on the corpse of the necromancer,” Limerence replied.
“Is this...necromancer still a threat?” Scootaloo asked, flexing her right prosthetic’s joint so it squeaked softly. “I haven’t crushed an undead in a long time. Don’t fancy facing an army of them on top of those P.A.C.T. buggers.”
“He will not be a danger,” Lim said, tugging his sword off his back and setting it on the table.
“Aye! Tha’ be a foine blade, says me!” Grimble said, with a grin. “May Oi?”
The librarian pushed the sword-staff across the table and the griffin war-master carefully picked it up, flicking the sheath up a few inches. His eyes almost popped out as he saw the shrieking face etched into the edge and he quickly slammed it shut.
“Ye hands me a curse’d cutter?! What’d Oi do to ye?”
“Not cursed,” Limerence corrected. “It is occupied, however. He’s proven quite useful. His soul serves the side of good, now, and will continue until such time as I see fit to release it.”
“That is the necromancer?” Derida inquired, tapping the sword’s edge between the eyes; the inlaid pupils turned to look at her claw with something like indignation.
“It is,” I answered. “Lim here caught him. I don’t necessarily like the idea of trapping someone’s soul and burning it to power magic spells, but...this prick? He had it coming.”
“And Miss Blue’s soul?” Tourniquet wanted to know, peering at the horn.
“Safe, for now,” Limerence assured her, pulling his sword back and setting it beside his seat, “We’re going to release it as soon as we can, but...the spells are complex and take more time than we have. Can you think of anywhere the mare who’d fought so hard to get Hard Boiled involved would rather be than literally on his person?”
“Now, that’s a thing I don’t understand,” Scootaloo interjected. “How do you know all of this?”
“Bread crumbs,” I explained. “I found Ruby’s diary. The Helm of Nightmare Moon grants a very particular brand of precognition. Not perfect, but better than anything we’ve come up with. The other two parts of the armor improve the ability until it is...well, until it was able to overwhelm Princess Celestia.”
“The shoes and chest plate,” Derida murmured. “I suppose that is why your princess gave the shoes to us.”
“And the chest plate was put on a regional tour, moved from secure location to secure location, transported by guards and kept in enchanted protection by masters of the art,” I explained, shaking my head. “Nopony counted on the Family stealing the soul of one of those masters to break his enchantments.”
“So. This...Family. We know any names?” Precious asked. “Ah feel as though Ah should have heard’o somepony stealin’ souls in mah city.”
“They were formerly the law firm of Umbra, Animus, and Armature,” Limerence said, reaching into the pocket of his vest and pulling out a tightly rolled scroll. He laid it out on the table and unfurled it into what looked like an ancient family tree, except that every branch along it was labeled ‘D.W’. Most branches looped back together and it was as tangled as a bramble bush. “Two brothers and a sister. Their father was the last D.W., but after him...they had two children. Maybe more, but only two survived.”
“Excuse me, but...the way you said that made it sound like the...the brothers and sister had two children, together,” Quickie murmured, one eyebrow twitching nervously.
“Yes. Incest was apparently their choice method for ensuring a pure family line.”
There was a distinctly uncomfortable shuffling of hooves, claws, and footpaws.
“That’s...going to mess with my appetite,” Scootaloo muttered.
“Indeed,” Firebrand added, flexing her wings, “Even the lowest born of dragons know not to seed with sisters or brothers. It leads to...slow fliers, if you know what I mean.”
“Well, this bunch found some way to beat genetics,” I said, repressing a shudder. “This current D.W. is smart as a whip. I’ve spoken to him through one of his puppets. He’s careful, coordinated, and dangerous enough to install his brother as the head of the PACT.”
Grimble Shanks clicked his beak, angrily. “Ye sayin’ Broadside be brudder to ‘D.W’.?”
“That’s right. The Family had influence everywhere in Detrot. They owned Chief Iris Jade. They owned the city government. They owned the Jewelers.”
Quickie put up a hoof and said, “Maybe...maybe you should tell us what their...goal here, is. Why did they do all of this? If they’re so powerful, why upend all of Equestria?”
I slowly sat down and breathed an irritable sigh. “You remember I said that the Web of Dark Wishes is an engine for wishes? Well, they have one. More particularly...I believe the prisoner has one. The Web is powered by chaos; negative equine emotion. Same as changelings feed on love, the Web feeds on insanity, violence, and suffering.”
“Wait a tick,” Scootaloo interected, “You’re telling me this prisoner creature is...what? In the city, now?!”
I nodded. “I give high odds on it being here. It has to make its wish, after all. We need to find out where, though. It’s obviously vulnerable, or it wouldn’t have an army standing between us. Dragons? These converted ponies? That Shield? It’s planning on unleashing the lot within the next day and they’re all coming for us. This wish...whatever it is...is bad news.”
“Even our best efforts during the war with a ‘universal spell’ left the casters sucked right dry of magical energies for days. Those spell forms were the size of a warehouse,” Scootaloo mused, biting her wrinkled lip. “You make that spell the size of the whole city, you’d...oh…—”
“—you could rip the magic out of every living thing in Equestria!” Taxi finished, covering her muzzle with both front hooves. “My skies, this could kill thousands, and we don’t even know where they actually are!”
Limerence sat a little taller in his seat. “Actually, I do believe I might be able to help us with the where.”
I nodded at the map spread out on the table. “Lim? You got something for us?”
“It is...based on a certain set of assumptions, but—”
“I don’t need the disclaimer,” I said, cutting him short, “Nobody here has any better ideas, do they?”
Tourniquet shook her head. “I tried to scan the Shield around Uptown from here, but...it keeps changing. It’s in different places and seems to only stay roughly the shape of an egg. Some streets have more, then less. The reports were all inconsistent, and that storm forming over the center of town isn’t helping!”
Limerence plucked a piece of paper out of one of his pockets, pulled a pencil from behind his ear, then clambered up onto the table. Trotting to the middle of the giant map, he started making careful marks at specific places.
“Lim, we could have just put the damn map on the floor,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead.
“Yes, but I rather like the drama of getting on the table,” he mumbled around the pencil, carefully hatching a couple of lines in the center of the city, then checking his paper again.
“Some of those positions look familiar. Are those reports from the Stilettos?” Taxi asked.
“Some of them, yes,” Lim replied, quickly erasing a mark and moving it a street over, “Stella had them sent down upon my request. I also had time to question various persons while I was upstairs. Sykes helped me get information from the griffins’ scouting parties and the Morgue had a number of ponies positioned near enough to Uptown to be considered lookouts. Not as much as I’d like, but...enough.”
“Enough for what?” Tourniquet asked, studying the map.
“Probability exercise. This shield fluxuates because they move in and out of it, but no matter how powerful it is, it can’t entirely compensate for atomic passage through a thaumic medium. They don’t want to have a gate or arcane manifold as an entrance—”
“Limerence, you’ve lost ninety percent of the room,” I said, softly.
“Eh...right. Apologies. I’m drawing specific sightings within the city of the Shield with as much description as I could wring out of the scouts. Then…” Getting to his hooves, he began drawing long slashes across the map. After a few more, he stepped back. He’d drawn about thirty marks, each with a line leading to a mark on the opposite side of the map. They created a cross-cross of hatches which outlined a three block radius in the center of Uptown.
“Our ‘target’ lies somewhere within this area,” Lim said, tapping the small collection of buildings in the middle of Uptown, “The Shield Pylons may power the barrier, but they are not the source. The pylons are using a self-propagating—”
I put a hoof on his leg. “Lim, you’re about to use a bunch of big words. I can tell. Equestrian, if you please.”
“They use a spell that makes more of itself, up to a limit. Damage the shield around Uptown and it simply draws more power and reinforces the framework. We can’t get into the pylons outside the shield, because if we attack one, the shield around it is reinforced as well. With a whole city of suffering ponies...well, there is no entrance by force to one of those.”
“We know all of this!” Scootaloo snapped. “Iris Jade got close enough to pour a heap of firepower into that Shield and didn’t so much as dent it! What good does this do us?”
Limerence set his pencil back behind his ear. “This is a shield designed for flexibility and resilience...but therein lies the weakness. This barrier propagates...from a design.”
“And...that means what?” she asked, testily.
“It means that it is invincible...unless somepony happened to get access to one of the transmission nodes controlling the propagation and changes it.”
Tourniquet cocked her head at the map. “Transmission nodes? Do you mean the...what’d you call them? The pylons?”
“Exactly,” he replied.
“Bit of a catch twenty-two, then, isn’t it?” Quickie commented as Limerence hopped down and trotted back to his chair. “We can’t get inside the pylons while the shield is up and we can’t deactivate the shield from outside.”
I couldn’t quite bury my smirk as I held out a hoof to Swift. “Kid? You have...anything to add, perhaps?”
“Oh, I might, Sir,” she giggled, pulling the ancient ring of keys out of her pocket and setting it on the table. “Remember that key from the story? We found it. It opened the original pylon, and all the ones in the city are copies of that one. However the ponies inside are moving around, I’ll bet they never thought we’d get ahold of this.”
Lifting the ring, she held up the key so everyone could see the jeweled end.
“Do you know that key will open a pylon or do you just hope it will?” Scootaloo asked.
“What have we had besides hope?” Slip Stitch piped up, putting a hoof behind his neck as he spun around in his chair. “My people—much as I might have tried to keep them from going this route—have been calling themselves ‘Spares’. As in, ‘spare parts’. Slip Stitch’s spare parts. This odd little amalgam of beliefs has arisen, that they might somehow ‘live on’, should they die, so long as I’m allowed to pull their bodies apart for future use. Convenient for a creative sort like myself, but disturbing for a physician. Yet, for them...it’s hope. If Hard Boiled says this may work, I’ll accept his hope. I don’t want the world to be such a dark place that ponies start looking to me as their savior. I’m a mortician.”
Scootaloo scratched the joint where her metallic legs met the fleshy shoulder and sighed. “I guess we weren’t going to have time for backup plans, were we?”
“Not really, no,” I said, “They intend to cast the wish today. I’m betting the storm over Uptown is only going to get worse. At some point, they’ll unleash the dragons on us. I saw one when I was on the way here.”
“Aye, big red bugger?” Grimble Shanks asked, leaning over the map to tap a point not far from Supermax which was labeled with a gas canister. “Moi lads were trackin’ em. Loikes to nap on buildin’s.”
“That’ll be it, yeah. We know there aren’t more than 10 or 15 dragons at most, but...depending on size, that’s enough to make our lives pretty miserable. That is, unless they’re keeping some in reserve somewhere in the countryside.”
Firebrand idly toyed with the hilt of one of her swords. “My band and I have been out...scouting while you were away. We know of at least nine, though they did not engage us. All old dragons, with large hoards. I can kill one, perhaps, if I catch them alone, but Emberites do not value gem wealth, nor allow ourselves to be driven mad with greed. We grow slowly. Unfortunately, Carnath did send his eldest wife...Propana.”
“I feel like that would be a more ominous sign if I knew who that was,” Taxi commented, dryly.
Firebrand rolled her slitted eyes. “You would think you ponies would bother to keep up with the politics of your most dangerous neighbors.”
“We can barely keep up with our own politics, Ma’am,” Swift said, pulling a cord down from overhead and using a loop of it as a sort of swing, rocking back and forth with her hooves dangling under her.
“She is a rich, ancient white dragon. I believe the closest measurement we have in common would be ‘twenty spans’. Pegasi still use spans, yes?”
“Some older ponies do,” Swift replied, then turned to me. “It’s about the size of two city busses end to end, Sir.”
“Hrmph...My Aroyos have enough firepower to bring down a dragon that size,” Scootaloo said, narrowing her eyes at the map. “It’s the horde of smaller monsters that’re probably going to be following the dragons that will be a tactical nightmare. If we take out the lead dragon, the others will break and scatter, but if what I hear about the attack on the police department is true, those creatures won’t back off until they’re all dead.”
“Queenie kept some memories of the numbers it saw,” Tourniquet added, softly. “It’s not a precise count, but...say ‘ten thousand’ for a low ball. My mom never liked to have prisoners moving when guards could be overwhelmed by raw numbers and by my estimates, we’ve got about twenty-five thousand sapient creatures between here and the Vivarium, but a lot of those can’t fight. We only got most of them out because we had the Marked organizing things and everyone was ready to move.”
“This city has a quarter of a million ponies...where is everyone?” I asked.
“Hunkered down in other sections of the city,” Tourniquet explained, using the end of a power cable to tap points on the map. “We identified at least two other major camps, plus a large refugee train that’s stuck at the eastern edge of town. That’s on top of...a lot of deaths and however many are left in Uptown. The dragons are keeping the refugee train herded and won’t let them leave. They weren’t hit when we were a few hours ago, but...I’ll bet the P.A.C.T. is planning on hitting them tomorrow.”
Scootaloo pointed at a sewer line running under that edge of the city. “The Aroyos can run this line. Can we get in touch with the refugees? Maybe invite them to help?”
“It’s worth a shot, but the other two camps are real heavily armed and have what seems like a ‘shoot on sight’ policy in effect,” Taxi replied, pulling a pen out of her checkered saddlebags and drawing two small circles. “This is the Publicans. Bunch of political extremists. We don’t know much about them. This other group seems to be ‘Celestials’. Celestia worshipers. They’re blaming Luna for the Eclipse and anyone who says different warrants a bullet. We don’t know who is leading them, but neither is playing well with the other side. When we could scout, they were raiding each other.”
“Alright, if we can get somepony to the refugees, start moving them to Supermax,” I ordered, then hesitated, “I’m afraid they’re a lower priority than dealing with Uptown, though. Do you think the Underdogs would be willing to make that run?”
Scootaloo wrinkled her nose. “I’ve heard some of the stories of that dog they call Dogenes. Even if we can’t, he’ll get someone out there to start evacuating them. Whether or not he can convince them to come with him is something else.”
“B-but Sir, what if the dragons go for them! They wouldn’t stay out in the open, would they?” Swift protested, putting her hooves up on the conference table.
“Ponies do crazy things when they’re scared, kid,” I said, then glanced over at Scootaloo who was studying the map with consternation. “Do we have the resources to take Uptown and protect a large group of non-combatants while being attacked by an army of mutations?”
The Ancestor lashed her tail against one metal flank. “Not a damn chance. There’s no amount of ‘organized’ we could be that would keep the lizards off them. The Vivarium is between the civvies and Uptown, but those dragons don’t need to ask permission to take out that caravan.”
Swift’s ears lay flat against her head as pulses of light flowed up the cables in her face. “W-we can’t just leave them, Sir!”
“No, we can’t,” I replied, “And we can’t predict that they’ll be rational enough to come with a group of gangers or an unknown diamond dog. It’d have to be me going—”
“Ah’ll do it,” Precious murmured, just loud enough to be heard.
I trailed off, turning to where the old stallion sat, staring off into the darkness.
“You sure, Precious?” I asked. “Those civilians might just gun down anyone they see.”
He let out a loud snort, drawing himself up as his presence seemed to spill out of him, filling me with a strange comfort and confidence. “Ah am not just anyone, colt! Mah city may burn, but Ah am still its Prince. Ah will not leave any innocent to die while Ah draw breath! But...well, if Ah am goin’, Ah would like if ya’d buy me time to talk’em into it.”
“Buying time means our attack on Uptown has to draw all of their forces,” I replied, then picked up Scootaloo’s pencil in my teeth and drew a cross on the map just outside the furthest point the shield had been sighted. “That means we have to hit them here.”
“The...wait...what is that?” Quickie blinked a couple of times and her eyes widened. “Are you drinking straight Beam, Detective? You want to attack P.A.C.T. headquarters?!”
“We do not have the units for that!” Taxi exclaimed.
“That’s why all I’m sending is a team,” I answered, nodding at the map. “We can’t beat them with sheer numbers, but...by focusing our firepower, we can force them to dilute their forces everywhere else. We’re bringing our high cards to that fight...which means I need somepony to lead it who has more firepower at her command than anyone else.”
I pointed across the table.
Swift looked over her shoulder, but there was nopony behind her. “Me, Sir?!”
“That is demented—” Quickie began, but Precious cut her off with a swipe of his hoof through the air.
“He’s right, Miss Cuddles,” the Prince said, sliding up in his seat and pulling his cane from a pocket, quickly unfolding it so he could trot around the table to where Quickie sat. She looked up at him with tears gathering in her eyes. “Ah may not be able ta see this map, but...Ah know a hopeless situation when Ah hear one. The only army we’ve got that stands a chance against those monsters is these ‘Marked’...and they follow the pony called ‘The Warden’. So far as Ah hear, that’s Officer Swift, here.”
“B-but, Sir...how can I attack the P.A.C.T. headquarters?! Even with a full army, I don’t have the weaponry, and the building is fortified to stop dragons!” Swift squeaked.
I winked at her. “It just so happens that I know where an entire cache of weapons that are charged by moonlight exists...and we are in a permanent eclipse.”
My partner looked briefly confused, then her eyes lit up. “T-the Moon guns? Do you think Stella will let us use them?”
“I think if I told him where you’re going, he’d pull my leg off if I didn’t,” I replied.
“What about this weapon that ignores armor?” Derida asked, poking at the map where the High Step hotel once existed. “They butchered the Nursemaid’s Guild with that foul magic.”
“So far as we can tell, there’s only the one,” Taxi said, reaching for her braid only to find it several inches shorter, since the Shine's last appearance had left her with a little trim. Frowning, she glanced at me and I tapped the side of my head, then pointed at her cutie-mark. She formed a little 'oh' shape with her mouth and turned back to Derida.
The griffon-ess watched our silent exchange for a moment, then shook her head, "One may be enough, if they surprise us. A weapon that can go through our armor is not the sort I want to engage directly.”
Swift raised her eye toward the roof of the chamber, and several tentacle-like cables dropped down, holding the Hailstorm between them. She laid it on the conference table. “Nothing can sneak up on me. Not while I’m wearing this.”
Scootaloo’s eyes lit up like she’d just seen a Hearth’s Warming present with her name on it. “Where’d you get that?!”
“My father...acquired the Hailstorm...after the war,” Limerence said, with an unsubtle pride in his voice.
“Stole!” Scootaloo barked, shooting him a furious expression. “Whoever he was, he stole it from a Crusader storehouse!”
“Oh, probably,” Lim replied, “But you weren’t able to operate it, were you? It was gathering dust.”
“That doesn’t matter! It wasn’t his! Besides, there’s not a pegasus in the whole of Equestria with the dyno-...dyno-thaum…”
“Dyno-thaumic?” Lim prompted.
“Yes, that! I swear, Apple Bloom and her stupid complicated jargon brain—” Scootaloo shook her head, violently, then managed to regain her steam. “There’s not a pegasus alive with the dyno-thaumic ratio to power that gun!”
Swift stuck her chin out and pulled herself to her full, not-at-all-impressive height.
“I made it work!” she declared.
Scootaloo blinked a few times as my partner slowly spread her massive wings to their maximum extension.
“Yeesh. Filly, was your daddy an alicorn?” the elderly mare murmured.
“He’s hung like one,” Quickie said without thinking, then slapped her hooves over her mouth. Simultaneously. Tourniquet and Swift let out soft squeaks as waves of crimson light flowed throughout the room, casting us all in different shades of pink.
There was a moment when it seemed like everypony might contain themselves, but it didn’t last.
I hadn’t expected Precious to be the first to break, but his great, throaty laughter was quickly joined by the entire room. It was what we’d all needed, truth be told. The planning session paused for a full five minutes while we all were reduced to tears, pounding on the table, or slapping each other on the back.
When we finally calmed down, even Quickie had a little grin on her face. While nobody in their right mind could have called the tension broken, it was improved considerably.
“Phew… Alright, enough of that,” Derida snickered, dabbing at her eyes with the hem of her dress before continuing, “The mare is right, though. Hitting the P.A.C.T. building is a suicide run, High Justice. Nopony who goes on that mission is coming back.”
“The weapons we have will alert us to incoming enemies and they cut right through anything up to and, to our knowledge, including dragonscale,” I said. “Just how good is your connection to the Marked, Tourniquet?”
“Depending on how quickly you want to burn them out, very,” she replied, her gemstone eyes glittering as she rocked back and forth on her pile of cords, making herself comfortable. “If I want them to, they can see through each other’s eyes, but...they will die in minutes with this interference field, particularly if I’m projecting enough energy to do it when they’re not beside a power line.”
“We should only need minutes. If they’re half as efficient in combat as they are at working together, they’ll be the hammer we need to punch through the P.A.C.T. defenses.”
“I...I think I see where you’re going with this,” Scootaloo mused, trotting around to the other side of the map. She picked up a spare pencil and pointed at Uptown. “You think we can break this shield, then penetrate Uptown to look for Nightmare’s Armor and this...this prisoner, but...can’t do it with all the monsters inside, so you’re going to try to get them to come out? What’s to stop them from ignoring a hit on P.A.C.T. headquarters? It’s not essential.”
“No, but...if somepony starts messing with their shield and they don’t know how, they’ve got to assume we know something about our targets that they don’t,” I replied, “Besides, it’s where the P.A.C.T. first created those monsters. I’m betting they don’t want us nosing around that. Once we start screwing with the shield, they’re going to be coming for us anyway.”
“Mister Limerence, do ya think ya have some idea how these...eh...pylons, work?” Precious asked, using his cane to gesture in the librarian’s direction. “Ah mean, gonna look a mite silly if ya get inside and end up sittin’ pretty while the city burns around ya.”
“With respect, my father was a very capable thief of more than just weapons,” Limerence answered, pulling a sheet of folded paper from his pocket and smoothing it out on the table. It looked like a series of magical diagrams. “He was able to acquire a certain quantity of information down through the years about the interior of the Shield Pylons. They operate off a ‘focus’, which is a modified spell core. All spell cores and all shield magics have certain rules regarding their construction and my entire life has been spent pulling apart magical artifacts. There is no one alive more qualified. If I cannot shut the shield down, I am confident I can at least alter the spell in a fashion that will allow us ingress.”
“Carnath would have given both wings for these diagrams twenty years ago…” Firebrand whispered, running her tongue over her fangs.
“Considering he’s on the payroll of our enemies, I doubt he’s much concerned by them,” I said, shaking my head. “We need to hit Uptown from as many directions as we can, so we can buy time to search for the armor.”
“Attacking the P.A.C.T. headquarters and a Shield Pylon should do that, but...if I had a bunch of griffin warriors, some dragon commandos, and the police department’s mages to throw around, I could make one heck of a distraction,” Taxi put in, grabbing Lim’s pencil and drawing several arrows on the map.
“Oi can think o’ a few griffs moight be sittin’ pretty,“ Grimble Shanked said cooly.
I pulled the badge Telly had made me out of the front of my coat, letting it dangle. “Last I checked, I’m still Chief of Police. Iris might hate it, but to save her daughter, she’ll follow my orders.”
Firebrand didn’t bother responding, other than a slow trickle of smoke from her nose.
Taxi leant over the map again. “Once the dragons are engaged, we can start hit and run tactics, drawing them into the city center where they’ll be blinded by the storm. We tangle with the P.A.C.T. as close in as we can, making sure the dragons don’t know who is friendly and who isn’t.”
“That will work,” Scootaloo agreed. “We used similar tactics in the war, but you’re going to need some high powered communications for that to happen. Different squads will have to be ready to take heat from one another.”
“Then you will have it!”
A poof of mist exploded out of the center of the conference table, quickly coalescing into an amorphous but roughly equine shape.
I slumped in my seat as the sounds of unsheathing weapons and charging spells momentarily echoed around the chamber. It was obnoxious, but I couldn’t have expected any less from our friendly neighborhood extra-dimensional ghost.
Drawing a breath, I pulled myself together and looked up at the tableau of frozen persons all standing around with shocked expressions. The only ones who weren’t surprised, of course, were Tourniquet and Swift, but I sort of wondered if it was even right to call them separate people by then.
Derida and Grimble Shanks stood, side by side, the hen with her book of blood-magic in one claw and the cock with his axe ready to defend her. Taxi was in one of those freaky zebra combat poses, while Quickie held some dangerous spell in her brightly glowing horn. Firebrand and Limerence both had their blades out and ready. Stitch had a pie cocked back to throw. Strangely, Scootaloo was just sitting there staring at her with wide eyes.
Precious sipped his tea.
“Right. Ah would much appreciate if somepony would tell me what just happened?” the Prince said, picking up his cane and waving it in the air over the table, incidentally through Gypsy.
“Everyone...calm...calm down,” I muttered, waving a hoof at the foggy figure standing on the table. “This is...Celestia preserve, this living fart who loves her entrances is Gypsy, the radio pony.”
Gypsy swung around to face me and if she’d had a face, I imagine she’d have been giving me the stink-eye. “Living fart?! After I saved you from the Castle?!”
“I know you could have just pretended to call us over the public address system,” I grunted. “You just wanted to make an impression.”
“W-why does she look like that?!” Quickie squeaked.
“Because I am the spirit of Detrot! I am the voice upon the winds! I am Queen of the Signal!” Gypsy declared, thrusting a leg in the air and taking what I’m sure she thought was a heroic pose.
I opened my mouth to deliver my opinion, but Scootaloo cut me off.
“Glamour,” Scootaloo whispered.
Gypsy hesitated, then dropped her grey hoof and seemed to shrink slightly. “That...that word that was running around and around in my head when I woke up the first time inside the cloud…”
“Glamour is your name,” the elderly Crusader muttered, scratching at her thin mane. “It took me a second to recognize your voice. Oh, Luna’s tail, Sweetie Belle is going to explode...”
“Could someone explain to me why we are not all screaming and using our weapons?!” Quickie demanded.
“Could someone describe what’s going on, period?” Precious barked, rapping the top of the table with his cane.
“Justice, why didn’t you tell us—”
“Hardy, who—”
“Sir, there’s something going on—”
“Can you eat pie with no mouth—”
Like a hammer blow, silence suddenly descended over the room. Stunned faces, suddenly finding their lips moving and no words coming out, all turned in my direction. I looked over at Limerence, who was sitting with his horn gently glowing and a look of intense concentration on his face. I mouthed the words ‘Thank you’ at him and he gave me a quick nod, then released his spell.
“Now, then,” I said, trying to channel my mother’s no-nonsense tone when somepony had royally pissed her off and she was contemplating how many centuries to send them to their room for, “We will have time for complete personal histories later on, I’m sure. I will buy the first round of whatever anyone wants to drink once we have figured out exactly where we are going to be hunting the armor of Nightmare Moon. Four city blocks is too much to search. Gypsy...you can provide communications for the combat teams?”
The ghost gave a little dip of the part of her shaped like a head. “Yes, sir, Police Chief, sir! I had the Aroyos break into an electronics store and get us all the radios they could! I’ve been working on a modification to punch through the interference. If we keep the messages short, they shouldn’t burn out too quickly.”
Scootaloo crinkled her upper lip. “Your cutie-mark was in mechanical engineering…”
Gypsy gave her a wary glance. “I’m sorry, I’ve been wondering who I am for more than thirty years. Are...are you telling me—”
“You were a...a very good soldier who died serving Equestria,” the Crusader murmured, “We put you into that magical cloud with the intention of...getting you out one day, but...your body was gone when we tried.”
“Later, dammit!” I snapped. “We have hours to figure out what we’re going to do and where the armor of Nightmare Moon is likely to be!”
“B-but this is my whole life—” Gypsy stammered.
I poked the center of the map where Limerence’s crossed lines met. “This is the lives of everyone on the planet, right here. Talk when this is over. Right now, I need you focused.”
There was a long silence that seemed like it wasn’t planning on ending anytime soon, so I continued.
“There are four blocks in Limerence’s little projection. Can we eliminate any of them?” I asked.
Taxi swallowed whatever admonishment was on her lips and looked down at the map. “Well, it’s...city center. One of those blocks contains city hall and the Shield corporation headquarters.”
“I don’t believe we can rule that out, in the slightest,” Slip Stitch murmured, pulling himself a touch closer to the table. “Then this is the central Bank of Detrot. Must check on my investments if we happen to drop by. I’m sure Streamers Inc. is doing poorly, so might be a good time to buy...” He trailed off into seemingly distracted thought, before snapping back to the moment as though someone had clapped him on the tail with a ruler. “Then, we have the Weather Office. Considering that storm—”
“Right, so we can’t rule those out. What about this?” I asked, pointing to an unmarked section of the map.
Swift shook her head. “That’s just a construction site, Sir. It’s not even wired for electricity, yet.” Her brow furrowed and she looked toward the ceiling of the chamber. “Sir, something...mmm...Maybe it’s…huh.”
“What is it, kid?”
“I don’t know, Sir. I think Tourniquet’s tracking system is having some issues with the interference field. It’s probably nothing. Could you give me a second? I need to make sure I can find everypony.”
“Uh...Sure, go ahead.” Pulling my chair back, I exhaled as my partner seemed to zone out. “Alright. Pros and cons, people? We’ve got four possibilities and will probably only have time to hit two.”
Quickie bit her lip, then lit her horn and a tiny light appeared above the Shield Headquarters. “If they intend to use the Shield to cast this...this wish, wouldn’t the controls be here?” She raised her head and her eyes lit on Gypsy, Tourniquet, and her daughter who was staring at the roof. She quickly covered her face with her forelegs. “Oh, please let reality reassert itself sometime soon. I did not sign up for a planning session this strange.”
Grimble Shanks put a gentle talon on her shoulder. “Nay, none did, lass. Oi loike moi allies simple. Knowin’ the Hoigh Justice, if the smoke pony is oddest we meet, Oi’ll say ‘lucky day’.”
Reaching back, she touched his claw for a second, shooting him a grateful look. “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or not, but...thank you.”
“Mmm...Ah gotta ask. What is that there construction site constructin’?” Precious asked, cocking his head. “Center city work is right expensive and Ah don’t remember anythin’ fresh going up near there.”
“This map was from storage,” Tourniquet explained, apologetically. “It’s one the Lunar Passage left here...years ago. I don’t think it’s changed that much, but they don’t usually mark construction sites, do they?”
Taxi chewed her lip, thoughtfully. “Give me a second to think. Uptown, just off Main and Center Street…”
“I do believe that is where they’ve been building that silly crystal skyscraper for all these years,” Slip Stitch interjected with a disdainful sniff. “That building is hideously tacky.”
Taxi’s ears stood up straight. “You live in a giant scoop of super fortified ice-cream!”
“Irrelevant! We must all have standards!”
“Well, at least we can eliminate that,” Quickie said, levitating the pencil and drawing a large ‘X’ over the construction site. “What about City Hall?”
My cutie-mark tingled and Taxi looked up at me, sharply. Our eyes met. She tilted her head to one side with a questioning look. I gave her a quick nod.
In the back of my head, the Nightmare’s voice whispered, ‘Something is not right, here.’
“Wait a second. Why are we counting out the construction site?” I asked.
“I mean, it’s obviously not there,” Derida said, brushing her clawtips through her feathers. “It’s an unoccupied building, yes?”
“It’s been there since before I came back from the war. Nopony would put anything important there,” Scootaloo answered, eyeing the map. “The Weather Office gets my vote.”
Gypsy swished her head back and forth. “Eh, maybe? It’s not very well protected. The Shield Corporation building is real heavily—”
The tingle became a burn.
“Hold up. Why are we discounting the construction site?” I demanded.
“Because it’s empty!”
“Detective, it’s been under construction forever!”
“It is ludicrously tacky!”
“Aye, Justice...Oi think nuthin’ is there—”
Silence fell like an anvil dropped out of a tenth story apartment, though it wasn’t Limerence’s spell; it was unsettling realization. The gathered beings looked around at one another in confusion. I slowly got out of my chair.
“Grimble Shanks,” I said, “How do you know...nothing is there?”
“Obvious, innit? Nuthin’ could be,” Grimble replied, then squinted as he realized what he’d said.
“Derida. Tell me about this building.”
“It’s empty. Worthless. Nothing important at—” She stopped and her breath seemed to catch in her throat.
“Sweets?”
Taxi me gave a helpless shrug. “It’s a silly construction site that no one in their right mind would hide anything inside of. Totally harmless.”
The burn in my cutie-mark started to become painful; it felt like the skin was peeling right off my flank. I willed the discomfort into the back of my thoughts.
Nightmare’s voice rattled around my mind.
‘Something is not right.’
‘Something is not right.’
‘Something is not right.’
Everyone was looking at the blank spot on the map with a sort of nervous trepidation, but none seemed willing to speak. It was left to me.
“There has been a construction site...an unoccupied building...in the middle of Detrot since before most of us were born,” I stated, slowly and carefully. The words felt strangely slippery on my tongue. “This building...has existed...for forty years...uncompleted...and none of us thought anything of it.”
“W-why would s-somepony think anything of it?” Tourniquet stuttered, her eyes glittering with fear. “I-it’s harmless. N-nothing is there.”
Before I could figure out what a person is meant to say given the circumstances, Swift jerked up like somepony had yanked her strings, and her wings flared.
“Oh! There he is!” she exclaimed.
“There who is, kid?” I asked.
“Sorry. I lost track of Goldenrod for a few minutes. I put him with the other prisoners in a closet upstairs, but...he must have followed you. Probably looking for orders.”
“Wait...followed me?”
She nodded toward the door. “He’s in the hall, outside. He’s just standing there, butting his head against the wall repeating ‘orders’ over and over. I’ll have somepony come get him.”
I held up a hoof, then pointed at the map. “Kid...what is this construction site?”
“Sir?”
“It was a simple question. One sentence. Don’t think about it. What’s this construction site?”
“In the middle of the city? It’s...where they’re going to be putting Starlight Tower, isn’t it?”
I slid down from my chair and walked around to stand in front of her. But for the tentacular wiring in her face throbbing beneath the skin, she might still have been the pony I’d met two months ago in Iris Jade’s office. Still innocent. Still kind. Still untainted by violence.
“Swift, I want you to listen very carefully. Somepony started building Starlight Tower forty years ago,” I said, speaking slowly as though to a foal. “It’s been under construction for that entire period of time. Even assuming construction slowdowns, it has never taken more than six years to build a single building in modern Equestria.”
Her pupils dilated and she shook her head. “Impossible, Sir. Th-that building is harmless. Nothing is there. We should just ig-ig-ig...” Her face went slack and she turned to Tourniquet who was shivering slightly.
Swinging back to the group I snarled, “Who owns that building?!”
Gypsy rubbed at her chin with one protrusion of fog that was almost a leg. “Don’t you know? That’s Voluntas. The land baron. Major player in Detrot economics. Philanthropist, but never spends his money on anything that might threaten the powers that be. You know the shtick.”
I nodded, thinking back to where I’d last heard that name. “I met him, briefly, before the Darkening at one of those police charity events. He seemed...a little grandiose, but nothing too outlandish. Bought me a drink.”
With a little puff of smoke, Firebrand clicked her talons on the conference table. “Voluntas?” she mused. “I suppose using Ancient Equestrian to name foals was in vogue when he was born.”
“You tell me,” I replied. “Is that important?”
Firebrand flicked her tongue out to taste the air, then folded her wings against her sides. “Most likely just a curious coincidence.”
“I’m beginning to think coincidences don’t exist,” I grumbled.
From the other end of the table, Limerence piped up. “His first name means ‘Diamond’. I believe Voluntas means something like ‘Will’, though my Ancient Equestrian is a tad rusty.”
“Ahem...I had to study Ancient Equestrian for my dissertation on historical burial systems,” Slip Stitch put in. “I do believe Voluntas was also commonly used to refer to ‘Wishes’.”
My mind went blank for several seconds as all those fragments of grand design sank neatly into their places.
“Diamond Wishes? His name is Diamond Wishes?!”
“Sir—”
I wheeled on her, almost shouting at the top of my lungs, “Kid, we just found out who D.W. is! What—”
Swift shrank back from me, her eyes a little frightened.
“Sir...Goldenrod is...is asking for you,” she said, softly.
I stared at her for a long moment. “I...thought those three had the memories of a goldfish.”
She pointed toward the chamber door. “H-he’s asking for you, Sir.”
I swallowed my excitement, fighting my thoughts back into something resembling a rational shape. My cutie-mark felt like a set of knives digging into both hips. How had I ignored that?
‘Something is not right, here.’
Puzzles. Wheels. A great trick had been played.
A trick was still being played.
“Tourniquet,” I said, and the mechanical mare stood a little taller, “I want you to lock down the outer door of this chamber. Let me out into the antechamber. As soon as I’m out, you close this chamber and do not open it until I tell you to, alright?”
“O-okay. What’s...what’s going on?” she asked.
“Just follow my orders. Clear this floor. I want all of your people away from here. Leave Goldenrod where he is.”
Firebrand loosened one of her swords in its sheath. “Should we be preparing for a fight?”
“No. No, not yet,” I said, marching over to the hydraulic door.
“But what—”
“No more questions. Stay here. If I am not back in fifteen minutes, start getting everyone inside and get ready for an attack. Tourniquet? Let me out.”
I expected some objections, but no one seemed ready to make the first one.
After a few seconds of silence, the heavy door let out a hiss and began to lift. I ducked under it before it was quite open and darted through into the Aroyo’s little hang-out space. The nondescript maintenance door at the far end was still shut. Behind me, the second one slammed closed just as somepony - it sounded like it might have been Taxi - started to say something, cutting her off mid-word.
‘What are you doing? Allow me a moment to plan!’ Nightmare yowled in my mind.
‘We don’t have a moment!’ I snapped. ‘If this goes sideways, get my body away from here before it dies.’
‘How am I meant to do that, you fool?!’
‘You and Gale did it before! Work it out!’
Quickly flicking my revolver’s breach open, I pulled the crystal Crusader bullets out of my pocket and slammed the cartridges home. Twitching my leg, I snapped the gun shut and pulled back the hammer, pausing with my toe over the mode switch. If I turned on the berserker mode, I’d probably be dead in minutes, but it didn’t need minutes to work.
Deep breath.
“Tourniquet? Outer door.”
The construct’s voice sounded in my right ear. “Are you sure about this, Hardy?”
“Open it.”
I picked up my trigger bit.
The control chamber’s portal clunked, then slammed open like it was on a spring.
Outside, the hallway was empty, though I could hear a curious *thunk-thunk* noise coming from somewhere nearby. Cautiously creeping over to the door, careful to step over a bong somepony had left on the carpet, I peered out into the corridor.
Goldenrod sat a few meters away. The yellow stallion’s handsome face was streaked with blood from a small wound on his forehead as he pulled his head back, then banged it firmly on the wall. Without his armor, he almost looked like an ordinary pony, but for the strange muscles which didn’t quite look properly equine lining his back and the slight bowing of his front knees which seemed unnaturally distended.
“O-orders...orders…” he mumbled, again and again, punctuating each word with a soft *thunk*. He didn’t seem to have noticed me.
I straightened and let my trigger drop.
“You don’t need to keep this charade going...” I said. He seemed still to ignore me, so I added, “I know you’re here, Diamond.”
Goldenrod paused in his self abuse, then raised his bloodied head, turning to look at me. Gradually, a black liquid seemed to fill his eye sockets, leaving his eyes matching empty holes. Turning from the wall, he smoothed his mane back, using the blood to slick it in place.
Getting up, he strolled over in front of me and sat himself down again, leaning this way and that as though I were some obscure, academic curiosity he’d managed to pin under a magnifying glass.
“It has been so very long since I heard my name,” the stallion said, with an expression that might almost be called grateful. He held out of his hoof in a cordial and nonthreatening fashion, somewhat undermined by the circumstances. “Diamond Wishes, at your service, Detective. I am glad to end the act. Truly, I am.”
I took his hoof and gave it a light shake. “Diamante Voluntas. The ancient Equestrian was a nice touch.”
“Do you think so?” he asked, though it wasn’t really a question. “I’ve had to answer to that pseudonym for more than forty years. I am pleased to abandon it, here, at the end. It is the end, after all.”
I looked at the ceiling, then back at him. “You bought me a drink. That buys you five minutes’ conversation.”
“Five minutes, you say? So sad. I did enjoy our conversation at the Police Ball and I think you are a pony I would delight in spending years getting to know, if years were still an option.”
“Don’t count us out, yet,” I replied. “You’ve seen what we can bring to bear.”
“Why do you think I took this body?” He laughed, a rich and practiced chuckle that seemed entirely unforced while still giving the impression that he’d spent a few thousand hours in front of a mirror getting it right. “Penetrating the defenses of the Police Department was simplicity itself, but this prison? No, I needed an invitation, a reason to have one of my creations on the inside.”
“I won’t apologize for compassion. If you think a little kindness makes what you’re doing right—”
He interrupted with a wave of his leg. “Compassion has nothing to do with it. If it matters, I admire your willingness to give even your most dangerous foes a chance to surrender. You are both the most and least predictable pony I’ve ever met or heard of, Detective. If ponykind were to continue beyond tomorrow, I would hold you up as the paragon and nadir of the species, simultaneously.”
“So, that’s it, then? You’re going to ‘wish’ us out of existence?” I asked. “Or are you gunning for a Princess-hood?”
He shook his head, a bit tiredly, sinking down onto on the concrete floor and tucking his front legs under his chest. “If all I desired were extinction, I have already handled Celestia and Luna. I’d need only wait a few months for that eventuality. Death and horror are tools. I’m sure you’ve discovered what a magnificent energy source they are, as well.”
“I have. So, what was the deal?”
His eyebrows, caked with Goldenrod’s blood, drew tightly together. “The deal, Detective?”
“I was in your house, remember? Your family has been ‘Diamond Wishes’ for a thousand years. Right up till Umbra, Animus, and Armature. They struck a deal.”
“Oh, do go on!” he exclaimed. “I must hear your suppositions. It is so rare to meet keen minds I can speak to frankly. What did you find in the house?”
“The pictures—” I began.
“Did you like the pictures on the walls?” he interjected. “I was raised with those pictures looking down at me.”
“I know what they are. What they were. What your family did.”
“I’m sure you believe you know,” Diamond Wishes replied, wistfully. “It was ever so much more vicious than that. Do you know, I remember my sister’s twisted little face when her picture was hung beside my bed. She’d found some tiny fragment of strength to rise from her sickbed and try to escape before my fathers came for her. Of course, they caught her and tore her eyes out. I remember, each night as I went to bed, praying I’d have the strength when the time came to tear out my parents’ eyes...” He wore a fond smile, now, but it quickly faded. “Ah well. As you can see, I did. Continue, please. What else did you find?”
“We found the pylon. We opened it,” I said, trying to remain calm. “It was empty. So...what was the deal?”
Sitting up, he clapped his hooves excitedly, eyes wide with interest. “Oh very good! Very good! You are worth every inch of fear and awe you instill in those poor, doomed souls upstairs. Such a worthy question requires a worthy answer, and...I must say, I don’t know what the original ‘deal’ was. It isn’t relevant. The ponies who made that deal are a thousand years dead.”
“Then what’s your deal? You can’t mean to let Equestria somehow recover from what you’ve done. You’re not looking to make us better or make some new species of pony to survive the apocalypse.”
“Ha! You have been exploring my lieutenants!”
I shifted from one hoof to the other. “Skylark wanted to become an alicorn. Zefu wanted to live beyond death. And Broadside—”
“Believes his mutations worthy enough that they might survive the coming end,” Diamond Wishes sighed, plucking at his host’s sharp teeth with the tip of one hoof. “I hadn’t the heart to tell him the truth, and it does keep him loyal. A loyal brother, in my family, is a rare and valuable resource.”
“I can imagine.”
“Why, almost as valuable as a partner! Or a ward. Or a young stallion in need of guidance. Or even a best friend. Do they know they are doomed, as well?”
“Everyone dies, someday,” I shot back.
“Do they really? You seem immune. Perhaps even immune enough to still stand after what will come,” he mused, nodding to himself before bringing his empty eyes back around to meet my gaze. “But that is neither here, nor there. You asked what my deal was? Some things are beyond valuation. I valued my sister, and she died. I valued my parents, and I killed them in the most brutal fashion one can. I valued my money, and spent every cent of it to bring about this circumstance. I valued power, and knew from the moment I was born that no amount of power would ever come close to that wielded by my benefactor.”
“Then why, dammit?! Why?! Why not walk away? Do you even want this?!”
Diamond Wishes smiled a rictus smile and licked blood from one of his lips. “Do you know, I was the first of my line to touch it? The very first. No other laid their hoof upon it. They cowered, they whimpered, they sobbed, and they cringed, but I alone...touched.” His gaze seemed to drift into the distance before snapping back to mine. “It has offered me everything, and more besides...but it didn’t have to. That single instant of perfect majesty was all I needed. All I wanted. You don’t need to comprehend.”
“We’re coming to kill you,” I said, quietly. “You know that.”
“Certainly. I would expect nothing less...and so I will make you a deal. A deal is a pony thing and while we are still ponies, I want to know if my divine is as true as I believe it is. It has told me where you will die. I assume you know where to find me?”
I clicked my tongue and nodded. “Starlight Tower.”
One side of his lips quirked again, but there was no humor in it. “Excellent. If you, Detective, can make it to the tower...none will stop you. You alone. All others will die before they reach me, but if you make it inside the tower...If you find me there and if your destiny is manifest...you will die the final death.”
“Not much of a deal,” I said.
“I don’t have many things to offer, besides a chance. One, single chance, to be right or wrong. If there is will in the world to change the outcome, then that is what I give you. My benefactor tells me the dice are already cast. If it is so, then nothing...no one...can upset this design. Not even you, Detective Hard Boiled.”
The scent of searing flesh suddenly filled my nose. A billow of smoke boiled out of Goldenrod’s mouth, followed by a gout of blue flame from his nostrils and ears. Fire erupted from the flesh around his neck, but those eyes didn’t leave mine as the vessel burned until the stallion’s skull caved in on itself.
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Er. Chessie, we used that title already; Act 3, Chapter 16. :D
Jesus, what a way to leave a conversation.
I like the innocuous glamour of the construction site/Starlight tower making everycreature dismiss it.
Wait! STARLIGHT OVER DETROT!!!
9610773 Heh...That was mentioned in the first chapter. No really. Go back and read the radio broadcast section of Chapter 1.
-Chessie
I friggin' knew that guy was the big bad guy (well apart from the prisoner). I thought 'no, that'd be too cliche' but a part of me friggin' knew it!
I remember catching on to D.V. and D.W. when we first learned D.W.'s initials but I don't know why it never occurred to be that Voluntas could be another language, it even translates to Will when you Google translate it. Dammit past me.
Plans within plans within plans. Does this mean that even if Hardy takes a Crusader TAC with him into the tower, that has been designed for as a variation and would be the energy used as the best spark to trigger the final Event? Or is it or varient one way of doing like The Office?
If Hardy is going to walk inprepared to die, is he going to make like the Golden Goose, and lay one heck of an egg?
Thats almost a Someone Elses Problem Field?
9610854 Heh, you guys are gonna love what finally happened. I've been planning it for over a year.
Also, yeah, it's a SEPF, but kinda nastier and less passive.
9610828 Yep! But have you figured out what else is going on?
-Chessie
9610855 I'm frequently worried I don't include enough 'action' in my scenes, but...honestly, action is miles harder to write than dialogue. Most of the time, when I'm writing dialogue, all I have to do is keep a set of character traits in mind and then use those to convey information to the readers. That keeps exposition from ending up horribly dull.
The characters tend to exist as just a set of traits and relationships. Breaking them down...I guess the most obvious and easiest one is 'Precious'.
His traits:
- Everyone offers him respect, even the villains.
- He is the elder statesman in every circumstance, despite being a plumber.
- He's old and worn out and wishes people would stop hurting each other.
- His blindness is an inconvenience, but he's not bothered by it unless he's being left out of something because of it.
- He speaks with a modified version of Elvis Presley's Mississippi/Tennessee accent.
It's just a collection of character traits but they mean that under all circumstances, if you have him in a room and need to convey information to a reader, he has a relationship and style which can play off of whoever else is around him.
Action requires this horrible planning session where you've got to put all these characters in a sort of 'shot', then have them move passed one another at high speed, switching the reader's focus to whatever is most interesting at any given moment. It can get a little frenetic. Watch an anime fight scene, then try to describe each shot, word for word, while still making what is going on interesting. It's not fun.
-Chessie
Aww, poor Goldenrod didn't deserve that. But I doubt no one in Detrot ever really deserves what they got. Not even D.W., unless you can throw in some satisfying Dishonored level cruel mercy ending.
You said it's the last of the preparations before the ending, frankly everyone splitting off to do their own thing isn't anything I didn't expect. But you got me curious how DW is leaving the door open for Hardy and only him. Looks like he has aspirations for godhood, if by virtue of being 'touched' by the 'prisoner' is any indication. Hardy should be able to easily figure that it's not really D.W. even if it wears his name. Assuming he's telling the truth, is there really any difference between that eldritch force and DW in the end?
But I'm sure Hardy has a pair of aces up his sleeve. In his heart and mind, to be specific. There's a bit of a loose thread with how everyone seems to have this mnemonic compulsion pushing them away from Starlight tower (I mean of course you'd name it that). That's a quite the pickle, it implies that DW can affect everyone else, even in there. Probably part of the scry that spiked everyone's drinking water, but it could mean more.
I just hope Hardy gets the formality of thinking back to every happy moment and loved one he's ever had as he walks to the final room.
Does anyone recall the movie The Shadow? There was an empty lot in the downtown; Lamont Cranston finally twigged to it and dispelled the glamour hiding it from everyone.
Well done, Chessie. We now have enough pieces for the final act.
9610932 Heh, you think I'm going to be that gentle with him?
This is Detrot. I have deeper Hells waiting
-Chessie
You brought this together in such a nice, cohesive chapter. I'm excited to ride through the rest of this story!
9610798
In fact most of the story so far seems to be summed up in that one radio broadcast.
9611090 Yep! I mean, that was the purpose of the broadcast.
Upon second reading, Starlight Over Detrot has continous clues as to the final mystery. They're in every chapter, sometimes several times over.
-Chessie
9610828
I figured it out a long, LONG while ago.
Granted, had to re-read the police ball chapter after the first mention of "D.W." to confirm it, and even had the 'Diamond Will'/'Diamond Wish' translation conversation with Chessie over it a long while back, but it was still nice to have figured it out. :D
9611257 Now...do you know why? Because there are still mysteries to be solved, here.
-Chessie
9611266
Sadly I don't think I am THAT clever, but we shall see. ;)
Until next chapter though, have a good one!
9611232
That's how good you are
Well, this just took a sharp left turn.
Well... shit...
That's... imperfect logic.
I don't know why that's hard to believe. Just control a few ponies in the city planning office, and have the wealth to control what gets built where, and you could probably build a dozen rune spells into the city streets. Even more into the below ground infrastructure.
Well where else do you expect him to carry it?
On the side of good, whether Good likes it or not!
Pretty sure that imprisoned Nightmare had something to do with that.
Hmm, I wonder who Lim wanted to get up and shake his tail for?
So ... it's conveniently disturbing?
I'm wondering when exactly Quickie found out what kind of equipment an Alicorn is packing ... also which one of them it was.
I thought it was *mite silly, but I'm not sure where to even check that.
If there's a will, I think Hardy has it.
9610798
...Wow. I just reread the radio broadcast. Forementioned a lot. Been a long while since I read that chapter. Maybe I should do a reread. Freshen the memory. Good work!
9612559
That's just the way some folks think... others think "If it's locked up, it's locked up for a reason and it should stay there!" Neither are perfect.
The sane ones keep them under their hat. Of course, that's why Hardy did not.
Or disturbingly convenient.
It is 'a mite silly'. Some say the usage of mite comes from the very small insect of that name, so it implies that it is a very small example of whatever you are saying.
9610862
In reality we spend far more time thinking or talking about things than actually doing them.
This means that any story that is trying to immerse the reader in
a) a complete world building experience combined with
b) an all-encompassing and overarching narrative and which
c) contains characters that people will empathise with or remember long after reading the story,
these stories will inherently have far more exposition and conversation than actual action.
Any story that is almost pure action is also a story that will often seem rushed, leave much unanswered/unexplained and will many times be forgotten quickly by the reader.
Sort of obvious which way you have gone, eh?
Haha! Finally I read a chapter when it is released. A good one too, gotta love that series namedrop. The "council" gathering is what makes me feel like we're in the last few chapters here. I know you've been saying we are, but it didn't really feel like it until just now. I also really appreciate having all the puzzle pieces put together. With a story this long I'm bound to forget a lot of details, especially with my bad memory. Now it's time to see how the endgame plays out.
If we pulled up the plans for Starlight Tower, (assuming any were ever filed where members of the public could look at them), I wonder if we'd see one Ivo Shandor listed as the lead architect.
9616049 Yes.
-Chessie
Shine bright like a diamond huh.
Holy snot rocket, I can’t believe I guessed who the main villain was..... shtako.
The Shine cut that off when she borrowed Lim's knives.
9763086
Fixed.
-Chessie
9610773
Fuck
derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/4/25/1139998.png
9900619
Yeah, exactly.
-Chessie
🎵Something is not right,
Something is quite wrong.
Something is not right,
And so
I sing this song🎵
*smile*
Oh my god that had me rolling for a minute.
Swift is once again, the most adorable pony in this story.
I knew it! Ever since Starlight Industries or whatever they're called was mentioned way back when, I just knew they would somehow play into this story given the title.
Smug Limerence best Limerence tbh