Lost In The Light Of Shadows

by Satsuma

Ongoing

Dusk sat on the edge of the cloud plateau that housed the Guild, looking over the vast expanse of beautiful untouched Equestrian landscape, which differentiated itself into grasslands, forests , marshes and so on with varied shades of green. Sometimes, there would be patches or swathes of discolouration where towns and railroads were located, or even the abrupt change in environment, such as the large snow-capped mountain in the centre of the picturesque view, out of the sides of which protruded the mountain-city of Canterlot.

Dusk would occasionally check his equipment and tighten the straps securing them to his person before continuing to gaze at the beautiful scenery below him, the seeming serenity of which beheld a seething, vibrant mass of life and activity. His attention once again faltered as Eye Spy rushed towards the edge of the plateau, skidded, and almost fell of the edge in his hastle. He would have gone plummeting down below if Dusk hadn’t reached out a hoof to catch him and shove him back to safety. The former let out a sigh of relief, then handed a few documents to Dusk.

‘Here’s the fake identity you requested. You are a researcher , studying biodiversity in the Everfree Forest. Here’s your fake Cutie Mark, personal details and documents and "research material".’

Eye Spy paused and put a hoof to his mouth, letting his voice drone in thought before he spoke again.

‘Now are you sure that you can handle this? It might be advisable to ask for a companion and share the loot. After all, there’s plenty for everypony…’

‘No.’

‘Oh. That’s…well…’ Eye Spy drew a sharp breath between his teeth to produce a sharp ‘sssshhhhhssk’. The theatrics were quite unnecessary, but they showed his unease nonetheless. In the end, he simply reached out a hoof, which Dusk shook in a somewhat awkward manner. ‘Good luck. You’ll need it.’

Dusk nodded, then launched himself off from his perch and angled his wings to veer sharply off the left, his flight path aligned with the Everfree Forest.

The cool breeze filtered through Dusk’s mane like a torrent of icy water, shaking it loose and flinging it about behind his head. The biting chill helped to soothe his slightly frayed nerves, and allowed his body to do the thinking for him while his mind wandered far and wide.

…This is the first time I’ve ever kidnapped anypony, isn’t it?

Dusk sighed and shook his head in disappointment. If he didn't have any idea of what depths he would sink to now, he really had no way of knowing what he might become in the future. His half-hearted loyalty to both his own dying sense of righteousness and to his new career was tearing him apart slowly but very potently. In an effort to stop himself from thinking too much, he tried to fill the time up with more contracts, worsening the problem, and sinking deeper into a moral cesspool. Yet again he tried to push the thoughts out of his mind, closing his eyes and shaking his head violently from side to side. He forced his mind to focus on the flying, to feel the wind in his mane again and be calm, but it no longer felt like the comfortingly familiar embrace that is was only a short while ago. In fact, it only served to more effectively chill him to the core.

---

After what seemed like an eternity of unhealthy and uncomfortable self-questioning, Dusk finally glimpse the Ponyville Municipal Complex (or simply ‘Town Hall’ to most) as a speck of light yellow topped with a maroon teardrop in the centre of a sea of concrete-and-wood houses on the horizon. Ponyville was in sight. Judging from his distance from the town and his current height, he should be able to land directly in the Everfree in a location of his choosing. Perfect.

However, he was laden with gear and his maneuverability was consequentially at a minimum, making a landing in heavily forested areas all but impossible. He’d also try to avoid water bodies as far as possible. He didn’t think that he could swim or navigate a bog when he couldn’t even fly. Scanning over the terrain, he spotted a small break in the dense dark green mass of foliage. From it protruded a few pieces of weathered slate-grey stone, rising in the form of broken pillars and semi-collapsed ceilings and floors, the renmants of some once-grand and majestic castle, now left abandoned and largely forgotten to the rest of the world.

Dusk circled a few times overhead, surveying the area. There was a central structure, surrounded by about four to five watchtowers in various stages of disrepair. The structure itself was about the size of a fairly large field, not including the towers. It consisted of a large courtyard, and a roofed chamber of about the same size. There looked like there was once more to it, but if there were any extensions to the structure in the past, they were now piles of indistinguishable rubble.

The single occupying feature of the courtyard was a lone purple pedestal. It was about three inches thick and circular at its base, adorned with angular lines of lighter-shaded lilac grooves. On the slab was a pyramidal structure, which was cut off where it would have tapered to a point to accommodate yet another another circular slab of the same size as the first. Next came a peculiar cylinder that branched out into six separate arms, all of which ended in bowl-like scoops meant to hold…something… The cylinder itself was adorned with a moss-covered stone ball.

By the time he had finished studying the object in detail, Dusk found that he was already in the courtyard, circling about three metres above the ground. Surprised by this, he landed, dropped his gear and set off to explore the rest of the ruins, choosing to ignore the creeping feeling of unease. The doorway at the end of the courtyard led into a slightly more enclosed room of about the same size, but longer in terms of dimensions, more distinctly rectangular. The door was on one of the shorter sides of the rectangle. It was enclosed on all sides by five metre walls. In addition, carved into the two walls adjacent to the entrance were several large, ornate arches that started about half a metre off the floor and curved gracefully to a peak at about the same distance from the ceiling. They lined the walls one after another and allowed the sunlight to shine in semi-ovular shapes that dispersed light all over the grey room, and served to give it a rather airy feel. At the extreme end was a circular area raised to about thirty centimetres off the rest of the ground. It was circumscribed by a few layers of long, flat stairs. The platform, if it could be referred to as such, had a circular groove carved into the centre. He exited the strange corridor of sorts and picked up his equipment from the courtyard, then walked outside. The ruins made him feel uneasy, in the sense that it created an eerie feeling that tugged his consciousness and brought his pulse rate up imperceptibly…besides, there was nowhere secure or stable, with all the suspended structures looking ready to give way, and it was far enough away from Ponyville to present an inconvenience anyway.

Dusk consulted the map that he had in the side pocket of his baggage, and decided to head along the path indicated and then into the forest when it curved right, such that he would be next to a river, the same one that ran along the edge of Ponyville and originated from the magical wellsprings underneath Canterlot. He decided that he would travel along it from there and see if there was anywhere suitable to set up his ‘base’.

---

The next few hours passed in a blur of wild greenery and the occasional glimpse of one of the Everfree’s inhabitants. The short walk had helped to clear his head, which was muddled by the morning’s events. The combination of the compost-tinged air and, which was complemented later on in his walk by the sound of the river gurgling happily over a shallow river bed or flowing by in tens of thousands of gallons in its wider portions.

Lost in his thoughts, he did not stop walking until he could see the telltale signs of civilization in the form of rough stone chimneys which released wispy trails of wood smoke into the air. Dusk surveyed his immediate surroundings, and found that if he had walked another two hundred metres or so, he would have been right across the river from Ponyville. He backtracked for about another half a kilometre and found a small hole in the thick growth of trees that would offer enough space to set up a small structure, yet would be able to conceal his hideout from any townsfolk which might come by this way.

It took about fourty-five more minutes to get set up, and it was about one to two in afternoon when Dusk forced himself to sit down and plan for what he would do next. He laid out all the facts in front of him. First of all, despite all the detailed town plans, he still needed to have a look for himself, and to track down the package’s location of residence. In that case, he would have to do a fly-by and maybe even sneak around on the streets peeking into random houses before he could start to plan for anything. A quick trip through the woods with a pair of high-powered binoculars was enough to confirm that there was no chance of doing that just yet. The townsfolk were still up and about in the skies or on the streets. He was just about to head back when…wait…isn’t that her?!

There was a unicorn chatting with an earth pony outside a small hut a short while away, but the latter wasn’t important right now. The unicorn herself was a young mare. Her coat was lavender and her darker violet mane was streaked with maroon and lilac, cut short and styled such that it was almost horizontal at the edge, much like her tail. On her…flank was a similarly maroon six-sided star, underlaid with a smaller white one that was rotated such that its point were between those of the first. This strange design was surrounded by five other smaller white ones, though lacking the addition of an underlaid shape.

Yes, that’s her all right…

Dusk peered intently through his binoculars.

---

‘…so you should just tell her if you don’t want to, Fluttershy!’

‘Oh, I don’t know, it’s just…’

Twilight’s gaze was set intently on Fluttershy, when she noticed two bright pinpricks in the distance glimmering in the sun. She paid less attention to her friend as her eyes narrowed in concentration as she strained to ascertain the accuracy of her observation. Indeed, across the small creek and somewhere in the mass of vegetation that was the Everfree, there were a pair of small, glinting lights that were hard to notice but stood out starkly from their dimly lit surroundings. ‘Wait, Fluttershy, do you see that?’ She directed her friend’s curious gaze to the spot where she was staring.

‘Um, what are we looking at?’

‘There! In the forest, to the right of that willow…’ The lights suddenly winked out of existence.

‘I’m sorry, Twilight, I can’t really see anything…’

‘Yeah, never mind. It’s probably just a trick of the light,’ she replied, not sounding fully convinced by her own words.

Dusk heaved a sigh of relief before he stifled the noise abruptly.

---

He had been watching the mare and her friend when the package had started to stare at him. She had seemed to motion for her companion to look. Dusk had been slightly confused at first, and peered at them over the edge of his binoculars. That was when he noticed that the lenses were throwing little disks of light into the bush directly in front of him. He swore loudly, and thrust his hooves, together with their lethally reflective contents down into the underbrush. He held his breath and his heart pounded and he held his breath until he was sure that the two mares had lost interest in him. That was a very close call. He would have to be more careful from now on.

It was because of that which Dusk later decided that he would do a detailed scan of his immediate surroundings in order to make sure that he was truly alone. His camp was more or less deserted for about a kilometre around, being rivers or undeveloped grassy slopes, or the Everfree itself. The sole exception was a mysterious hut occupied by a lone zebra on the outskirts of the radius surrounding his camp. He was reaffirmed that it was probably secure enough for his needs, but threw an extra layer of camouflage netting over his tent just to be sure.

Back to the drawing board. It was already clear from his short encounter that whatever he was going to do would have to take place in the dead of night and away from watchful eyes. He would probably need to keep his false identity close at hand just in case. Well, nothing to do now but wait till night fell. Dusk sat back and watched the river flowing along from Ponyville.

---

Ever so slowly, the bright afternoon sunlight seemed to decrease in intensity, then completely give way to the burning shades of sepia that accompanied sundown. Pretty soon, though, even that gave way to the cool serenity of the night. Its soothing, lulling touch reached out to the townsfolk from the silver moonlight and gentle evening breeze. The town slowly drifted off into sleep. It was about the middle of the night when Dusk finally made his move.

He was garbed in full black coverings to blend in with the starry night sky, and carried almost nothing but his weapons in his wings. He took off from the river banks, and felt the freedom of flight fill him with elation. The day’s stress ebbed slowly out of his mind as he felt the rush of the wind on his face. He did a few loops and other tricks to ease off a bit of the tension, enjoying the empty darkness, which seemed to be all his for now. Then he plotted a course for Ponyville.

He decided to fly high to avoid unwanted attention, and got a pretty good view of the town. It seemed that a few new buildings had been added to the outskirts of the settlement, but it was otherwise much like the layouts had indicated. Now where would they house a student of the princess herself? Probably somewhere in the town hall, the most important building in the town...A cursory inspection revealed that it was only a large hall, and housed only a few small and currently deserted offices. Well bummer.

He was out of ideas as to where the princess’ student could possibly be. The options were too numerous, and it was not going to be possible to search every single house…wait…why in the world would someone be up at this ungodly hour?

Light, in stark contrast to the deep shadows cast by the other structures, was emanating from one of the windows of the tree-building that served as a library to the town. Dusk decided that since his task was going to be impossibly long anyway, it wouldn't hurt to take a look inside, just out of interest.

He silently glided down onto a nearby roof so that he was almost level with the window, then he raised his binoculars to his eyes and tried to see inside. The light flickered constantly, as if pushing and shoving against the darkness of the night. Indeed, the warm yellow light was being thrown against the inside of the structure by a small wax candle. Unfortunately, the light was not strong enough for Dusk to see what was going on inside the building. He couldn't get any closer without the risk of being spotted, unless…

He flew back up into the air, and landed next to the tree, being careful to avoid the windows and other openings of the living structure. Then, slowly, painstakingly, he crept up to the window from which light the light was shining the strongest. He might not be able to take a look, but he might be able to hear something. Dusk pricked up his ears and tried his best to listen for any sound.

What’s that noise? Words? ‘…take a…Celestia…’—wait what? He tried to edge a little closer to the window, climbing partially into a small bush right outside it. ‘…today I learned that…shouldn’t…against their will…’ All this didn’t make any sense to Dusk, so he ignored it. The next line, however, did. ‘…faithful student, Twi…t sp…kle.’ He had to resist the urge to stick his head up and look through the window. He couldn’t believe his luck.

Dusk and sat huddled in the pathetically small bush, lost in his thoughts. It was only when the lights went out that he was brought back into the world. There were still murmurings of voices from the library, but they ceased soon enough. Dusk finally thought it safe, and allowed a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, then flew up to one of the second-story windows and looked through, hoping that he wasn’t tempting fate with a reckless decision. It paid off in the end. There, nestled in a bed behind the window pane, less than half a metre from him, was Twilight Sparkle, the Element of Harmony, and personal student to Princess Celestia.

YYYEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS!

Dusk sped back off to the Everfree, ignoring his fatigue and fuelled by his ecstasy. He would have a good nights’ rest to celebrate his good fortune before waking early the next morning to continue work. There was still a lot to do, after all.

---

He woke up the next morning to the chirping of birds in the trees overhead. Dusk was up within seconds, and stuck his head cautiously out of his temporary shelter. On ascertaining that there was nopony around, he snuck up to the river and stuck his head in, drank deeply with his eyes closed for several seconds, then retreated back into the brush to plan again.

Now that he finally thought about it, he really had no idea as to how he had intended to capture his target. He had thought that when it came down to it, it was just a simple two-second task of slapping that magical compound on her horn and a chloroform-soaked handkerchief over her mouth, then…somehow move her to a safe area sometime during the dead of night. Now that he had actually gotten back into the field and in touch with reality, he realized that she was surrounded by a constant net of other ponies, which in their own way were as effective a deterrent as any guard.

Furthermore, he had no way of monitoring her daily activities, and thus had no way of knowing when she was going to be vulnerable or alone…more surveillance needed to be done. There was no way but to risk it with the townsfolk out and about during the day. He would stick to the forest as much as possible, but suburban reconnaissance would be a possible option too. He would probably try to plant a few microphones in the town, and try to take a look at some documents, maybe a calendar or a personal planner or something, if just to get an inkling of her idle moments.

He would spend most of the nights doing surveillance and most of the days planning and skimming through audio recordings, making plans. Those were his intentions for now, and they would change according to necessity. But for today, at least, his day was empty. Dusk shrugged, grabbed his binoculars and camouflage and headed for the woods around Ponyville. Not an idle moment for him.

Dusk was hidden about halfway up a tree, prostrate on one of its branches and covered in drooping camouflage netting, looking like just another large clump of moss on the thick vegetation that lined the river bank. He was peering through the high-powered binoculars and plugged in to the long-range microphone, both of which he had become so well-acquainted with during the past few days. He watched as Twilight Sparkle stopped to talk to…somepony who was out of sight due to a grey-and-yellow blur that ended in an overturned vendor’s cart and a very confused Pegasus. Idiot.

That one had been botching up his operations for the past few days. She was always swirling around in his line of sight, causing him to misidentify those crucial ponies that Twilight Sparkle met often. She had also sabotaged a fair number of the audio recordings that he had collected by causing loud crashing noises or inciting angry shouts of ‘Derpy!’, and making any conversation cease abruptly or become drowned in the cacophany. In the end, he had to resort to observing day and night to obtain enough information.

What little he was able to do during the day was to observe and train himself to identify some of the townsfolk whom she seemed to associate with often. So far, other than the other five Elements, he had only been able to identify a young purple dragon and a silver-gray maned sand-coloured earth pony who looked like she was well along in terms of years and experience. From what skills he had in reading lips, he could glean that she was the mayor. Another pony was a middle-aged mare whose coat was a deep purple-red like wine, and a mane with various shades of pink.

Over the course of the past few nights, he had also resorted to sneaking into the Element of Magic’s place of residence. There he had quietly and systematically turned any and all of her documents inside out, trying to find some schedule or timetable that would allow him to monitor her movements and plan for a moment to nab her. At first he had found something labeled as a ‘Default Schedule’, which provided a rough estimate of timings, activities, locations and even margins of error. He had tried to rely on this schedule, but apparently Ms Sparkle was very accurate in labeling it a default schedule, and often made changes on the fly to adapt to her daily activity.

He had started to look for more sources, such as her calendar, and combined the results with varying, but only marginally better success. He was just about to start learning from his quarry and planning on the go, when he uncovered her personal diary. At first, he was a little hesitant. It felt to him like something shameful, a further and greater violation into sacred ground, above and beyond what he had thus far attempted. It felt to him like planting cameras in the mares’ room… But eventually, like everything else so far, he got over it. It would be just another small detail in a whole list of crimes for survival. Failure was, after all, not an option. Somepony else’s privacy was less important to him than it was to them.

Still, it had improved the situation drastically. Over a surprisingly short period of time, Dusk found that he was able to identify key figures which interacted with Twilight Sparkle often, and even predict, with a reasonable accuracy, when Twilight would meet them based on the events in her daily life and those recorded in her diary. Soon, he was testing himself and his newfound ability, performing test in his ability to predict Twilight’s upcoming day. The span of time that could be predicted grew from hours to days to a full week or so. But Twilight Sparkle was always busy.

Thus far, no opportunity had yet arisen for him to make his move, and so he waited and watched patiently, learning more. He also took the opportunity to satisfy some minor curiosity about a certain cerulean blue speedster in charge of the weather in Ponyville. It didn’t take very long for him to ascertain that cousin Rainbow was holding out fine, with many friends, a stable job and a decent place to live. A small concern satisfied in a world full of endless problems was a greater consolation than Dusk had realized it would be.

Grimacing with no small measure of frustration, he continued to watch Twilight while balancing his gun-microphone. He was so lost in though that he failed to notice the grey-blonde blur corkscrewing into the sky, only to nosedive sharply and ram his tree with a solid ‘whump’. The impact threw Dusk up into the air as the shock whipped his branch upwards, leaving him suspended for a moment above the river. Oh no…

Dusk fought the twin reflexes to spread his wings and save himself from a watery plummet and to swear at the top of his voice, as he and his gear (thankfully made for rough and tough) plummeted into the river below. He was still wrapped in his camouflage netting, and was fairly sure that nopony other than that cross-eyed Pegasus could have seen him. Even if he wasn’t covered in netting, there was still his uniform and body paint to see through, and Derpy wasn’t exactly the smartest pony around. He barely managed to catch a breath before entering the shockingly cold river. Thankfully, it was still deep enough such that his fall didn’t hurt, and there was a good half metre or so of water to hide him. He unhurriedly grabbed a few stalks of hollow-stemmed water spinach and stuck one end in his mouth while using his hoof to support the other end and raise it above the water. Then he made sure that he was still wrapped in his netting and let the river’s reasonably strong current carry him downstream and safely towards his camp.

Screw you, Derpy...The river soon got deeper and the current stronger, so much so that it necessitated Dusk's action of climbing onto the nearby bank to prevent himself from being swept farther along and perhaps being pulled under. It seems, thought Dusk as he pulled his soggy, wet form out of the river, that there is still a lot to learn and do.