Case Seventeen, Chapter Three: Nightmares of the Survivor
Thirty-Nine Striga Lane proved to be a simple cottage of silvery stone that sat on the side of the road, separated from its neighbors by the generous size of its lawns and the giant hedges that marked its boundaries. The comfortable image was ruined by the bright yellow tape stretched across the doorway, black lettering reading “Scena Del Crimine: Non Attraversare” stamped on it. The front door, it turned out, was hanging ominously open, fragments of the frame and latch visible on the floor.
A Crystal gendarme stood post at the doorway, his light purple and white uniform pristine and his cap with the snowflake emblem pulled low to shade his eyes. He looked up as he saw the group approaching, quirking an eyebrow at the motley arrangement of four ponies and a small dragon riding atop the unicorn signora’s back.
“Mi dispiace, non puoi entrare,” he declared, holding up a hoof.
“He says we can’t come in,” Twilight translated. “Per favore, signore, questi sono gli investigatori Do e Finder e Sentry di Ponyville.”
“Siamo qui per aiutare,” Daring told him, thrusting Cadance’s scroll at him. “Per ordine dell'imperatrice.”
His eyes bulging as he recognized the detectives, the constable took the note and scanned it, then nodded mutely and handed it back. “Maresciallo!” he called into the open doorway.
A sunshine yellow crystal unicorn approached from within, brushing her pearl-colored mane back behind one ear and studying the visitors with her intelligent eyes the color of moonstone. She wore a gendarme’s uniform minus the cap with two silver bars on the sleeves and her cutie mark was a magnifying glass over a green gemstone.
“Detectives Finder and Do,” the mare nodded to them. “I am Marshal Facet. Can I help you?”
“We’re here to help you,” Phillip said. “The Empress wants this one solved right quick.”
“I see,” Marshal Facet nodded, studying the scroll with the wax seal. “Royal decree or not, we’d be honored to have you helping.”
“Didn’t find any hoofprints?” Phillip commented, studying the floor, bare save for the splinters that remained of the door.
“No,” Facet shook her head. “We did find an unusual substance on the floor, though.” She held up an evidence bottle filled with a dark blue powder.
“It was spread over the floor going from the study down the hall to the sidewalk,” she explained. “It has some latent magic in it, but we’re not sure what’s in it or what it’s for...other than it seems to have erased the intruder’s hoofprints.”
“I might be able to figure out what it is,” Twilight requested, taking the bottle and studying it with her own eyes.
“Thank you, signora,” Marshal Facet nodded, glancing at the group. “I’d invite you inside to take a closer look, but as my mother always said, too many cooks spoil the broth.”
“She has a point,” Phillip nodded. “Some of us should also be checking on Moon and the other ponies in the team.”
“Flash and I can handle that,” Daring nodded.
“Blue Moon is currently at our headquarters for questioning,” Marshal Facet stated. “It’s on Altair Boulevard, three miles northeast of here.”
“Yes, I remember seeing it on a map,” Daring nodded. “Flash, c’mon. We’ll see you guys later.”
Flash bid Twilight goodbye with a kiss on the cheek, then flapped off after Daring, heading northeast towards the midmorning sun.
“Right, let’s take a butcher’s here,” Phillip said, ducking beneath the tape blocking the door.
He briefly studied the fractured doorway, noting the scorch marks on the jamb. “Looks like magical force,” he commented.
“Definitely,” Twilight agreed. “The completely even burn indicates a kinetic spell designed to break open the door. Definitely a unicorn.”
“Hey, look,” Spike said from his position on Twilight’s back, pointing at the keypad on the wall next to the door. “Is that an alarm system?”
“Yes,” Facet confirmed. “It went off in response to the door being broken at 2247 last night. Gendarmes responded within six minutes, but the intruder was gone by then.”
“Alarm sign on the front window,” Phillip commented, noting the sticker in the pane. “Intruder would’ve known about it.”
“That probably means that they had planned on the response time,” Twilight noted.
“Might want to check if there was a false alarm in this area before the break-in,” Phillip suggested to Facet. "Could've used that for recon."
“Good idea,” the Marshal nodded. “Come, let’s see the study.”
Professor Crystal Fossil’s study was a modest room, a great set of windows framing the hickory desk opposite the door; the cushioned chair was pushed back from the desk, and all the drawers and cabinets set into the wood remained open and empty. Twilight stared longingly at the great shelves stuffed full with books for a moment before returning her attention to the evidence, shuddering at the black stains of expirated blood on the crimson carpet, most of them surrounding the outline of a pony marked in tape on the floor.
“Whoa,” Spike breathed out, staring at the blood and tape, marking where a dead pony had once lain. “I’ve seen photos before, but this…”
“Easy, Spike,” Twilight reassured him. “If this is too much, you can leave.”
Spike swallowed, but shook his head to refocus. “No, no, I’m good,” he said.
Marshal Facet pulled some photographs out of her saddlebag and handed them to Phillip. “This is the body as we found it,” she reported.
Phillip frowned at the images of the dead Crystal Fossil sprawled across the floor, eyes forever closed. He noted the circular burns on the stallion’s gut and on his forehead.
“Castfire weapon,” he commented. “Fossil was sitting behind the desk when the intruder came in. Intruder ran straight to the study and shot Fossil in the gut to disable him: he fell down here.” He indicated where the black bloodstains lay on the carpet.
“Fossil lay there dying for a little bit; bet the intruder interrogated him here, then finished him with a shot to the head,” Phillip continued. “Intruder then rifled through his desk, and left.”
“Sounds right to me,” Marshal Facet nodded. “What concerns me is where he got a castfire weapon in the first place.”
“If it’s not from the black market, then he might be a military member, possibly special forces: those are the ones most likely to have castfire weapons,” Twilight suggested. “I might be able to pick up traces of the shot…”
Sticking out her tongue in concentration, Twilight lit up her horn and waves of lavender magic began to spread out across the room. Before long, faint red sparkles began to appear in the air, tracing faint lines to mark where the magical projectiles had been fired: one shot from the door passing horizontally across the air to where it had struck Fossil, and another from the middle of the room, angled downward to where it had struck the professor in the head, penetrating through flesh and bone to end his life.
“Che storia,” Marshal Facet breathed, eyes wide with amazement. “You must teach us this spell!”
“Oh, it’s nothing, really,” Twilight said modestly. “Castfire weapons leave behind a lot of excess plasma in the air from the reaction in the crystal. If you rework Clover the Clever’s minutiae seeker spell and get it to resonate at the right frequency--”
“Uh, Twilight?” Spike interrupted, tapping her on the head to get her attention.
“Right, sorry,” Twilight said, shaking her head to refocus.
“Too high to be a pistol,” Phillip commented, noting how the second shot had come from almost four feet off the ground. He stood up on his hind legs and mimed holding a rifle down towards where Fossil’s head had lain, noting that the red sparkles came up next to his cheek. “Somepony with a longarm, taller than me: about four foot two, I’d guess.”
“Agreed,” Facet and Twilight both nodded as Spike quickly scribbled down some notes in a notepad.
“G’day,” Phillip muttered, moving over to the desk and crouching down next to the drawers. Pulling out a set of tweezers, he plucked at a small white hair caught in one of the drawer jambs. “From a beard. Our wanker got clumsy.” He sniffed at the hair. “Mmm...chewing tobacco. Smells like Lumber Bear brand.”
“Good find, detective!” Marshal Facet declared, producing a plastic bag for Phillip to drop his prize into as Spike quickly jotted down more notes into his notepad.
Next, Phillip dove into the trash can next to the desk. Pulling out several crumpled-up pages, he unfurled them and frowned at the writing: lots of random jumbles of letters, scribbled out words, and grids of letters.
“What’s this?” Spike commented. “Was he doing a lot of crossword puzzles?”
“No,” Twilight said. “This looks like he was trying to decode something. He was having a lot of trouble with it, too.”
Phillip and Facet continued their examination of the study, giving an occasional comment on some find, all of which turned out to be insignificant. “Only one hair,” Facet finally said. “Our intruder is quite skilled.”
“We’ve still learned a lot,” Phillip said.
“I assume the gendarmerie headquarters has a laboratory?” Twilight asked, holding up the vial of blue powder. “I want to try to analyze this.”
“Yes. Come, let us go,” Facet offered, beckoning them out of the house.
The gendarmerie was headquartered in a multistory blue building that sat on its own boulevard, towering over the neighborhood. Centered over the door was a large golden sign in the shape of the gendarmerie’s badge: a quartered shield with a snowflake in the center. The top left and bottom right quarters had a hoof crushing a serpent, while the other two quarters had a torch. Beneath was a scroll with the motto Nei Secole Fidele, “Loyal through the centuries.”
Daring and Flash passed through the revolving door and entered the large lobby, proceeding to the desk sergeant. Daring spoke briefly with the goldenrod mare, showing her Cadance’s scroll. The mare spoke with a commanding officer on the phone briefly, then nodded and told them to wait.
“So what do you think?” Flash asked as they strolled over to a small waiting area with cushioned chairs and a table with coffee and water dispensers.
“I’m wondering how many snakes live in a region where it’s snowy most of the year,” Daring said, scowling at a shield on the wall and trying not to think that the snakes being crushed were glaring at her.
“Not that,” Flash sighed.
“I’m trying not to come up with any theories until we know more,” Daring replied. “But what worries me is how that weapon ties into this. And that’s if it’s still at that temple like Blue Moon thinks it is.”
A pearl-colored unicorn with a lime-colored mustache that looked like it was trimmed with a slide rule and the cutie mark of a telescope approached them, the three silver bars on his sleeves polished to gleaming. “Captain Marshal Orrizonte,” he greeted the detectives. “How can I help you?”
“We need to speak with Blue Moon,” Daring said.
“Certainly,” the captain said, guiding them through a set of double doors into the interior of the headquarters. They proceeded up a flight of stairs and to a set of interrogation rooms. “He’s in there,” Orrizonte said, pointing. “We brought him in last night when we found Professor Fossil dead, and have been questioning him since this morning.”
Through the two-way mirror, the two detectives saw the midnight blue stallion sitting at the table, staring down at his hooves. His silvery mane hung down over his face, casting his scowling visage into shadow.
“Has he told you anything?” Flash asked.
“We’ve been asking him if he knows any former associates who might’ve wanted to attack him or Fossil,” Orrizonte said. “Unfortunately, all of the ponies he listed off are dead or in prison.”
“Maybe we’ll have better luck,” Daring said, heading for the door into the room.
Blue Moon looked up as the two detectives entered, his eyes widening in shock as he recognized Daring Do. He gulped as they sat down opposite him. “Cosa vuoi?” he asked.
“Parli Equestre?” Daring asked. Blue Moon shook his head no. “Okay, I’ll have to translate,” Daring said to Flash.
“We’re Detectives Daring Do and Flash Sentry,” Flash greeted him, with Daring relaying the message to Blue Moon. “The Empress has asked us to look into Professor Fossil’s murder.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” Blue Moon immediately protested.
“We’re not saying you did,” Flash reassured him. “But do you have any ideas as to who might’ve done it?”
“No, none,” Blue Moon replied, shaking his head and staring at the table, running a hoof through his tangled mane.
“What about Professor Fossil’s research team?” Flash pressed. “The ones who were helping you find the temple.”
“I didn’t meet any of them,” Blue Moon replied. “The only pony I talked to about this was Professor Fossil himself. I was helping him with my journal.”
“What journal?” Daring asked.
Blue Moon swallowed, remaining silent for several seconds before finally sighing. “When I worked for...Sombra,” he mumbled, speaking to the table rather than to the other ponies, “I kept a journal of certain information, including the location of the temples where we worked on our weapons. It was all in a Vigenere cipher.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, I didn’t remember the keywords for the cipher entries that he was working on. We were just working on figuring out where the temple was specifically.”
“What’s a Vigenere cipher?” Flash asked.
“I’ll show you later,” Daring replied.
“Where did Professor Fossil keep your journal?” Flash asked Blue Moon, Daring translating for him.
“I think he had it in his office at the university,” Blue Moon shrugged. “From what he told me, he and I were the only ones besides the Emperor and Empress who knew what we were really looking for; the other members of the team thought they were just excavating a temple.”
“Where exactly is the temple?” Daring asked.
Blue Moon shivered and winced. “The Bone Temple where the Mirror was built and where it’s kept…” He gulped. “The entrance is concealed in the Valley of Statues. Unfortunately, most of the statues were destroyed after the war, and I don’t remember specifically where the entrance was.”
“Why not?” Daring asked. "You worked there, didn't you?"
“You don’t know what it was like!” Blue Moon suddenly cried, slamming his hoof against the table as he glared at Daring. “Working on those abominable, disgusting creations night and day, worried that Sombra would punish you or your loved ones if you failed him! The obscene rituals I had to go through! The nightmares! The screaming, every day! I spent years trying to push all of that out of my mind, to forget all of it!”
“Sorry, sorry,” Daring said, raising a hoof placatingly. “I know this must be hard for you, but it’s important that we find the temple. It might be the key to figuring out who killed Professor Fossil.”
Blue Moon took a few slow breaths to calm down, then sighed, sniffling and blinking back tears. “You’re right, I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I hoped that I could make up for what I did by helping to find and destroy the artifacts, including Tirek’s Mirror. But I only went to the temples themselves a few times, and I barely remember where they were: the last time I did was in 1944, when I helped to conceal the entrances, which were already hidden. My journal has notes about where they are and what traps are in them.”
“Did he say traps?” Flash asked, then groaned and rolled his eyes. “Not again.”
“Hey, what’s life without a few dangerous expeditions?” Daring teased.
Flash sighed. “So you’re saying that the only ponies who knew what Professor Fossil was doing were you, himself, and maybe the members of his research team?”
“And the Emperor and Empress,” Blue Moon added.
“It can’t be them!” Flash cried.
“How certain can you be about that?” Blue Moon grunted, glaring at them. “We all thought Sombra was a just and honorable pony when he was merely the Prime Minister.”
Daring and Flash glanced at each other, then slowly stood and exited the room, closing the door behind them. Blue Moon placed his face back in his hooves, his body shaking as he took in slow breaths.
"How did you know about the temple?" Captain Orrizonte asked them as they closed the door behind them.
“The Emperor and Empress have asked us to look into that specifically," Daring Do replied.
The marshal scowled at them, indignation flashing in his sky blue eyes. “So the Emperor and Empress, in their infinite wisdom, have entrusted important, classified information to two outsiders?” he asked.
Outsiders?! Indignation bubbled in Daring’s gut and before she could stop it, the heat rushed up her veins down her right foreleg to the brand, which began to burn in response to her humiliation, her anger, her pain. She quickly turned away, hissing in breaths.
“What’s wrong?” Orrizonte asked.
“Can you give us a moment?” Flash asked, gently placing a wing around Daring’s withers and guiding her away. He pulled her away into an empty office, closing the door behind them.
“Okay, let it out,” he said.
“I’m fine,” Daring snarled, rubbing her foreleg and trying to banish the pain, which bubbled and seethed like lava in her marrow. Fuck him! Fuck this brand! Fuck it, fuck it! she growled to herself as she paced in a circle, trying to wrangle her heavy breathing back under control.
Flash just quirked an eyebrow at her. Daring sighed in disgust, turning away from him. “You sure you’re not Phil’s son?” she grunted. “You’ve even mastered the look.”
Flash sighed. “I get it,” he said. “You’re close to finally getting rid of that thing, and it hurts more because you’re scared it won’t work.”
“It didn’t work,” Daring grumbled, trying to ignore the way her stomach was twisting like she was on a rollercoaster.
“Once,” Flash said. “It didn’t work once. Twilight, Shining, and Cadance have all forgotten more about magic than either of us will ever know.” He smiled at her and patted her on the back. “They’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.”
Daring stared at him for a beat, then sighed and lowered her head, relaxing as the pain slowly ebbed away. “Thanks, kid,” she managed through a feeble smile.
“No worries,” Flash smiled back, then chuckled. “Oh, gosh, I really do sound like him.” He cleared his throat. “Okay, we should get back to work.”
But as they exited the room, Daring glanced over into a mirror. Reflected back at her was not the older mare in the pith helmet, the one that ponies thought was a hero, the one that Phillip loved.
Once again, she was staring at her younger self, the brand fresher on her skin. She glared at her elder self from the other side of the glass, blood on her face, mixed fear and anger in her eyes.
I will always be with you. You cannot banish me. You cannot erase the blood on your hooves.
Daring paused, then closed her eyes with a slow sigh. I know, she admitted, and followed Flash outside.
“Just needed to take a moment to think,” Flash reassured the captain, who was frowning at them in obvious suspicion. “The fact of the matter is, the Emperor and Empress entrusted us with this information, and I’m sure that if you contact them, they’d be willing to explain everything to you.”
“I certainly will,” Orrizonte grunted.
“Detectives Sentry and Do?” a younger gendarme called, rushing up to them. “Your friends got back. They waiting for you in lab. Please follow.”
“Grazie,” Daring nodded, already turning and heading after the younger pony with Flash in tow. She felt Orrizonte’s eyes burning into the back of their heads with every step until they finally turned the corner.
The marshal escorted them down the stairs to a pristine white hallway. “Lab down there,” he reported.
“Grazie,” Daring nodded, proceeding down the hall. “Damn, this is a hell of a lot better than the lab in Ponyville.”
Flash glanced back at the stairs. “What do you think about the captain?” he asked Daring sotto voce.
“On the one hoof, I understand him being pissed,” Daring replied. “On the other…”
“Yeah,” Flash nodded. “Let’s just be careful, right?”
“I’m always careful,” Daring replied.
Flash smirked at her. “Shut up,” Daring preemptively cut him off.
“Hey, Flash, Daring,” Spike called through a door on their left. “In here.”
The laboratory inside was nearly thrice the size of the basement laboratory of the Ponyville Police Department. Dozens of worktables were manned by crystal ponies in lab coats, studying hoofprints, placing their eyes to microscope lenses, and squinting at test tubes.
Twilight was currently studying a pale blue powder at one work table, with another scientist watching, the two conversing rapidly in Crystalline. Twilight levitated over an eyedropper of purple liquid and dropped it onto the slide. The sample of powder immediately flashed a light green color, which was apparently what the two scientists were looking for, judging by their serious nods.
“Professor Fossil’s intruder used this powder to hide their hoofprints from detection,” Twilight explained to Daring and Flash. “It’s made primarily of firidium and pulverized shade root.”
“Which means…?” Daring prompted.
“It’s specifically designed to eliminate trace evidence, including hoofprints, by bonding with and vanishing sweat or similar traces,” Twilight said, moving over to another table. She placed her hoof in an ink pad, then stamped her hoofprint onto a piece of paper. Then she took a hoofful of the blue powder and tossed it over the hoofprint. The powder glowed blue and then both it and the hoofprint faded away to invisibility.
“See?” Twilight asked, magically washing off the ink on her hoof.
“I’m guessing that this isn’t something that any pony could’ve come up with,” Flash commented.
“No, this is a precise measurement, and both items are pretty rare and tricky to mix together correctly,” Twilight said.
“Scusi,” the ruby red scientist interjected. “I worked with the military before the war. I’ve seen something similar to this being designed for special forces to hide their tracks. They weren’t able to figure it out while I was there, but they did use the pulverized shade root.”
“Thanks, Ruby Lens,” Twilight nodded.
“So our guy may be military special forces,” Flash mused. “Can this get any worse?” He paused, then his eyes widened. “I didn’t mean it! Forget I said that!” he cried, looking up towards the ceiling.
“Too late,” Daring replied.
“If you want to look at what Professor Fossil was carrying when he died, they’re on a table over here,” Ruby Lens said, pointing.
Spread out on the table were the few items that had been found in the pockets of Crystal Fossil’s bloodstained suit: a gold pocketwatch, still ticking away, a notepad, a few fountain pens, and a wallet with a few coins and an ID card scattered across the table.
“We didn’t expect to find much,” Ruby admitted. “There’s no trace evidence of the killer in there.”
Flash panned his eyes over the assorted materials, taking in each one in silence. Ruby was right: there was nothing there of intere--
“What’s that?” he mused out loud, pawing at the wallet. A small, loose red thread was sticking out of the interior of the bag.
“It’s just a loose thread,” Ruby said.
“Yeah, but there are stitches here and here,” Flash said, pointing at the fresh repairs along the exterior of the pleather wallet. “He kept this well-maintained: those repairs probably cost more than the wallet.”
“And yet that thread has nearly unraveled,” Twilight pointed out, picking up on Flash’s train of thought. “It’s old.”
“Any thread is worth tugging on,” Daring added with a nod.
Flash took the thread in his teeth and gently pulled. An interior pocket opened up in the wallet and a single item fell out: a blank sheet of notepaper.
“Why would he keep a blank sheet of paper hidden in his wallet?” Flash asked out loud, studying the paper.
“Maybe it’s not blank,” Twilight suggested. “Let me see…” She snatched up a nearby ultraviolet light and shone it onto the paper.
Writing, glowing bluish-green beneath the light, appeared on the paper. “Pagina 58, Tirek,” Daring read out loud. “Maybe that’s the page on the journal he was up to.”
“Let’s go see Phil and Marshal Facet,” Twilight suggested.
The other two detectives were waiting in an adjoining office, both of them studying lists of emergency calls from the previous day. “How about this one?” Marshal Facet asked, lifting up one report. “Anonymous individual called in a suspicious individual around Professor Fossil’s neighborhood. There was no sign of anypony suspicious, but one neighbor told a gendarme that they had seen an unfamiliar car nearby. They described it as a dark blue two-door Alfalfa Poneo.”
Phillip frowned at the report. “Car was noticed driving past Fossil’s home a few times. Phone call came from a public gamewell. Possibly.” He grunted. “Kinda wish you had surveillance crystals.”
“The Emperor and Empress are not comfortable with them, and neither are the citizens of our nation,” Facet stated in a rather cold tone.
Phillip just shrugged. “Okay, whoever killed Fossil is a four-foot unicorn male with a white beard, chews tobacco,” he reported as Twilight, Flash, Daring, and Spike entered. “They’re smart: surveilled the area and accounted for gendarme’s response time.”
“Possibly ex-military, maybe even special forces,” Twilight added.
“And they know who Blue Moon is and what he was involved in,” Daring cut in. “I’m betting Shining Armor might have an idea who they are.”
“And let’s not forget Professor Fossil’s journal,” Flash added. “Assuming that the killer doesn’t have it already, there might be some clues in his office at the university.”
“Right,” Phillip nodded. “Twilight and Spike, I want you to speak to Shining and see if this description rings a bell while you process the rest of the evidence. The rest of us will go to the university to check Professor Fossil’s office.”
“You got it,” Twilight nodded, pausing to allow Flash to kiss her goodbye.
The two pegasi and the earth pony ascended the stairs to the ground floor and exited to the clear air of the city.
“The University is about five miles southeast of here, if I remember the map correctly,” Daring said, pointing. “Think you can make it that far, Sentry?”
“What?” Phillip asked in alarm. “Oh, no. No, no, no. I am taking a taxi like a normal bloody pony.”
Flash glanced at Phillip, then turned to Daring with a smirk. “It’ll be a cinch, especially with an old lady like you carrying him,” he grinned.
“Old lady?” Daring said in mock anger as Phillip started to run away. “Oh, I’ll show you, boy!”
“On three?” Flash asked, spreading his wings.
“Readysetgo!” Daring shouted and a gray rainbow streaked through the air, snatching Phillip up off the ground. His cry of shock and protest mixed with the two pegasi’s laughter.
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I checked Google translate and thus far only one of your Crystallian phrases didn't quite match up, the police station's "motto". Still, pretty clever to really extrapolate from what I am pretty sure was just another one-off joke from canon.
Oho, now you're talking my language.
Was Sombra a stand in for Mussolini or the other guy?
11231911
He has strains of Mussolini and a bit of Hitler in there, yes.
Even the narrator is becoming Italian!