“Hello, my name is Elder Price,
And I would like to share with you
The most amazing book…”
‘The Book of Mormon’
Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Robert Lopez

“I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of suffers also…”
‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Robert Louis Stevenson

“I know you’re broken down by anger and by sadness
You feel I left you in a world that’s full of madness
Wish could talk to you if only for a minute
Make you understand the reasons why I did it…”
'RWBY: Red Like Roses Part II'
Jeff and Casey Lee Williams

IPSWICH STREET, BOSTON

OCTOBER 31st 2016
(fifteen months before the CERN accident)

The apartment door clicked softly, and then was pushed open from outside, letting in the glow of the corridor’s warm lights.

It also let in the sound of someone struggling not to sob, the shamed sniffles of someone who didn’t want to show their heart. They contrasted pitifully with the relentless patter of raindrops on the windows, an unceasing fall of tears.

Two figures stepped in, one leaning against the other for support. The weightbearer, the taller of the two, flipped the switch inside of the door, filling the cosy apartment with light. Posters and framed pieces of artwork were hung on every wall, including some classicalist imitations and abstract daubs...

And heroes. Superheroes and heroines, in flight and in battle, soaring and whirling and holding up shattered rubble to allow innocents to escape to safety. They shared the wallspace with giant robots and girls that roller-skated across galaxies...

They were framed comic-covers and splash-pages, each one lovingly inked and coloured. And each and every one of them bore the same signature…

Jazmin Carter eased her crying daughter onto the couch and touched a hand to her cheek.

“I’m going to call Dad. Is there anything you need, Verity?”

Verity Carter, seventeen years old and dressed to impress for her school’s twelfth-grade Halloween party, shook her head and bit one of her knuckles, breaths coming in wheezing gasps as she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Alright… I’m right here, okay Vee?”

Taking another tremble of Verity’s head as a ‘yes’, Jazmin stepped into the kitchenette and picked up the phone receiver. As she dialled, she saw her own clear-complexioned face reflected in the glass surface of the induction hob, and smiled wanly.

‘Never looks quite how I drew myself in my mind, even years on...’ she thought to herself, bringing one finger to the strong cleft in her jaw. ‘But my face never bothered my family, and for that I’ve been blessed...’

The phone continued to ring, and as it did she looked out towards Verity, who had now fallen silent, and was staring between her knees at the floor. Her daughter was dressed in a navy blue tunic and pants, paired with tanned-leather boots and a fake pelt-dress. Combined with Verity’s naturally browned skin and dark hair, it was a near perfect match for the character she’d gone out dressed as.

‘Verity… my girl, I wish you’d never have to know the same rejection I did...’

But now they had that in common. Mother and daughter alike.

“Hello…” came a sudden voice on the line. “Jaz, is that you? How’s Verity?”

“She’s fine Mike, she’s back home with me now…” Jazmin replied, having to raise her voice to make herself heard over the sound of jet engines and baggage trolleys on the opposite end of the call.

“What happened? Was what she tweeted true, did Astrid…”

“It’s true, Mike, and it was as hateful as you could ask for.”

“Well shit… how is she taking it?”

“Like anyone else would when their first love dumps them…”

“You mean utterly rejects them! How could Astrid have done it, to someone as brilliant as our girl!?”

“I know…” she replied, unable to hide her own misery. “I really thought Verity had found someone for her, especially seeing them posed together in costume last night… they were happy, Mike, they were so happy.”

“Mike!” called another voice from his end of the line. “Final crew call for our flight, we’ve gotta prep to board the passengers!”

“Coming!” he called out, before speaking back into his phone. “I’ll be back into Boston tomorrow evening on the Honolulu flight. It’s a red-eye for me, but come down to the airport with Verity and we’ll all go out for food somewhere. My treat.”

“Alright, Mike,” Jazmin smiled back. “Have a safe flight.”

“You bet, and tell Verity for me that Astrid never deserved a girl as amazing as her. Love you both, bye!”

“Love you too…” Jazmin repeated back as the call ended, and held a deep breath. As someone who could not stand flying herself, it always brought on a little flush of fear to imagine her kind, loving, considerate husband directing cabin service at +60,000 foot altitudes. In truth, Mike himself sometimes confessed to finding the constant cycle of takeoffs and landings a stress, especially after news of some other ‘hull loss’ or catastrophic human error…

Hah, catastrophic human error. That nicely described the situation she now found herself in. Someone had made a cruel mistake and crashed her daughter’s self-esteem into a mountain.

‘Mike always says he looked to me for his courage...’ she thought to herself. ‘Now I’ve got to do the same for our kid...’

The problem was that Jazmin did not consider herself particularly brave, no matter what others told her when they heard her life story. Her one moment of courage was in defying her parents with nothing but truth and honesty, and for even that she had drawn strength from…

‘That’s it...’ she decided in a flash of realisation, and after a brief struggle to remember where the phone’s cradle was, she turned her mind towards her daughter.

“Verity?” she called softly, crossing back into the lounge. “I’d like to show you something in the study…could you join me, please?”

A pair of blue eyes, too blue to be natural, flashed up in curiosity. “Sure…”

Jazmin’s study was a strange demilitarised zone in the apartment. It was more accurately her studio, where she pencilled and inked for days at a time. It was governed under a simple law: If Mom is working on licensed properties, DO NOT come in…

It was how she upheld her NDAs, the Non-Disclosure-Agreements that bound her to secrecy on any projects she was engaged on for outside parties. She’d not gone so far as to fit the door with a lock, but both her husband and daughter had lived by that rule for years.

Jazmin held the door open for Verity, and could not hide a smile at the brief grin that flashed across her daughter’s face upon seeing the two framed pictures that held pride of place on the wall.

The first was Jazmin and Mike’s wedding photo, from the summer of 2004. That was the year in which they and countless others had gained the right to be legally married. Mike, black-skinned, tall and elegant, was resplendent in his tuxedo, and some very careful tailoring had made Jazmin every bit the radiant bride. Verity, not even five years old, was standing posed with her parents in an adorable little dress, overjoyed to be bridesmaid to her own mother.

The three of them formed a strange harmony. Mike with his African ancestry contrasting with Jazmin’s midwestern complexion and Verity’s Hispanic roots. And yet the love that bound them beyond measure seemed to radiate from the picture like light.

Beside it, hanging in equal measure, was the cover-art for an issue of IDW’s ‘Transformers’, depicting a human girl in red power-amour, a cocksure grin on her face and fire in her eyes. And an Autobrand - symbol of the ‘Heroic Autobots’ - emblazoned proudly on her chestplate.

“Verity Carlo…” Jazmin heard her own Verity murmur, and could not hide her own smile.

“I couldn’t believe it when Simon Furman chose an expy of you to be the main human focus for IDW’s comics. You really made an impression on him at the wedding reception…”

Unbidden, they both shared a sigh and a smile, and Jazmin reached over to cup her daughter’s chin. “I was so happy when I finally got a chance to draw her, and share my amazing girl with the world…”

More tears were pricking in Verity’s eyes, and Jazmin wiped them away with her fingers.

“And now, as mother to daughter, I want to share something with you.”

A few seconds of rummaging produced a stack of leather-bound books, each an inch thick. Then, with the two of them seated cross-legged on the studio’s throw-rug, lit by a pair of dancing lava-lamps, Jazmin opened the first volume, revealing a series of alternating handwritten and typeset texts.

“These pages are the originals…” Jazmin explained, pointing to the hand-written sheets, yellowed with time. “And the opposite pages are the same text, typed up by my great-grandmother sometime around the Great Depression, when she had the books properly bound.”

“What are they?” Verity asked.

“The journals of your own namesake…” Jazmin replied gently, taking Verity’s hands in her own. “My great grandmother’s great-grandmother, Verity Wilford.”

They looked down at the first pair of pages, which were dated 1831.

“The Wilfords were among the first Mormons, among the first to join Joseph Smith after he was visited by the Angel Moroni. These diaries cover Verity’s entire life-story from the age of fifteen, and through her eyes recount the entire Mormon journey across America from New York to Utah. Everything is here - the trials and tribulations of a new, young religion and its people –
everything they endured over thousands of miles. The murder of the prophet in Illinois, the founding of Salt Lake City, and the construction of the Great Temple, nothing is skipped over. Verity lived long enough to see the Temple’s completed, and saw-in the turn of the century… the last diary entry is by her own daughter, recording her death aged eighty-four.”

“That’s…” Verity swallowed, unable to process what she was holding. “That’s an amazing life… this, this is like a Great American Story.”

“It is, and all of it came from her heart, honest and true. Even when describing things which today we consider distasteful, like racism and polygamy, the honesty of her approach is all to her credit. The entire human condition -good and bad- lies in between these covers, seen through the eyes of a child as she grows into a woman, a mother, a grandmother…everything she ever experienced, felt and did. The promise, the perseverance, the pain, and the persecution…”

Verity looked up, and Jazmin saw her swallow. “Oh, Mom!”

“When I realised the truth about myself…” Jazmin continued, holding her daughter’s gaze. “...realised that the feelings in my heart were true and loving, sacred to me and a Heavenly Father, it was these diaries that inspired me to go through with the transformation of my life. The confrontation with my parents, their rejection of me, my excommunication from the Church, the surgery and recovery… I couldn’t have done any of it, without the strength and courage and faith bound within this book, passed down from mother to daughter through the entire history of our family… mother to daughter, from me to you.”

Verity bit back another sniff, and gingerly touched the edge of one page, as if afraid it would reject her. “But you and Dad adopted me, so she… Verity Wilford, she wasn’t really my ancestor.”

“Never think that, little Vee,” Jazmin soothed, as she brought their intertwined hands down onto the open pages. “Without these books, I would never have been able to fall in love with your father, and to experience the joy that comes from being your mother. All the love in my heart, all the love that I have ever given and received, flows from these words… and that makes you a truer heir to this legacy than my parents ever were.”

“How… how do you still have her journals, after they threw you out?”

Jazmin gave a little smirk. “I took the books back from them, obviously…”

“You mean you stole them?”

Verity sounded disbelieving, and Jazmin shook her head, that same little smirk smouldering like a coal in the corner of her mouth. “If my parents were too blind to see that they had become the persecutors, and I the honest pilgrim, then they obviously had never truly read these books, or disregarded them as nice little heirlooms, but I had. You cannot steal that which already belongs to you…”

She leaned forward and kissed Verity on the brow. “And nothing can ever steal away that loving heart of yours Verity, even when someone you’ve offered it to casts it on the ground.”

Verity’s arms came forward, and Jazmin found herself embraced in a fierce, powerful hug.

“I just wanted her to love me, Mom!” Verity cried out. “Like I did for her… wasn’t I good enough, was I wrong?”

“Never! Never!” Jazmin replied back, now holding onto the hug herself, clutching her daughter so tight that her chest burned. “You did nothing wrong Verity, nothing! And if there is any justice is in the world, then Verity Wilford is watching down upon us, a Queen of Heaven, and she will agree with me!”

Verity managed a laugh. “I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff any more…”

“I lost my Church, Verity,” Jazmin smiled. “I never lost my faith, and that faith tells me that you are going to do amazing things, in this world and the next. I know what happened to you tonight is painful, and cuts so deep that you can’t believe you’ve not died from it...”

So true, after all, she’d gone through the same rejection once.

“... but love is love, and that transcends gender, race, creed and sexuality. If Astrid couldn’t see that, then she’s the one who has lost out on something wonderful, not you, my blessing, my angel.”

Verity gave a hug sob, but this time she didn’t try to hold back, and let the tears flow. “You’re the angels Mom, you and Dad. If you hadn’t taken me in, named and raised me… if you hadn’t come for me, I’d be someone completely different… and I don’t want to be anyone else but Verity Carter!”

“And you’ve no idea how much those words mean to me…”

They gently broke apart from the hug and sat back, still facing each other, cross-legged on the floor. Verity’s eyes were still wet, but there was a strangely serene smile on her face, the finishing touch to her costume.

“...my wise young Avatar.”

They spared a quick glance for another framed picture that hung opposite the desk, a trade-paperback cover depicting two figures holding one another as golden light swirled around them. Both were girls, and one was the spitting image of Verity in her costumed garb.

The Legend of Korra: The Truth, read the title. Seeing it, Verity’s smile grew, and Jazmin reached forward to brush a lock of hair behind her daughter’s ear..

“So, how do you want to spend the rest of Valentine’s Day, ‘Avatar’?”

She was surprised to see a flash of concern flicker across Verity’s face. “Mom, tonight is Halloween, not Valentines.”

“Sorry, got a little mixed up,” jazmin demurred, waving a hand dismissively. “Wanna power up the X-Box and pull out the horror games?”

“Actually, Mom…” Verity smiled, that moment of concern already fading as she looked down at the open books in her lap. “I’d like to do some reading…”

And with those words, Jazmin found the love she felt for her daughter could still grow further.

Later though, curled up with Verity on the couch, mugs in their hands and reading together, she found there were gaps in her memory, fragments of the story that had faded from all recognition, and that concerned her.

‘Good thing I’ve been illustrating these diaries for the best part of a decade...’ she thought to herself, smiling at the thought of the surprise Verity and Mike would have when she revealed the Magnum Opus she’d strived towards all her life.

‘Latter Day Saints’ she had named it. A semi-autobiographical graphic novel documenting the trials and tribulations of two generations of their family, drawing upon Jazmin’s life and Verity Wilford’s diaries. Nine years of work, secret even to Mike, and almost finished...

But sitting there, one arm across Verity’s shoulder, Jazmin decided there was still room for an Epilogue...

NOVEMBER 10th 2023

The apartment door clicked softly, and then was pushed open from outside, letting in the glow of a handheld torch that had been set down on the dusty, litter-strewn corridor’s torn carpet. A pair of hooves neatly clicked on the floor, and after returning a pair of lockpicks to her saddlebags, the small equine who had opened the door picked up the torch in her teeth and stepped into the darkened space.

And then, she glanced upwards, and the torchbeam shone on the apartment’s circuit-box, mounted high on the wall. Despite the mains power to the building having been cut, each of the breakers were shut, and the status light on each was softly illuminated.

Hesitant, almost disbelievingly, the youth reached towards the lightswitch, and tapped it with one hoof. The lights came on without hesitation, the AC began to whir, and nodding to herself, the teenaged mare turned off her torch and tossed it back to join the lockpicks in her bags.

“Yeah...this is it…”

Babs Seed flicked her unruly fringe back, eyes narrowed in suspicion as she explored the space. Before the war she guessed that this had been a nice enough place to rent; hardly upmarket, or even mid-market, but comfortable. There was a studio-style kitchenette and dining room that extended through into a TV nook, a decent-sized bedroom, two bedrooms, and a decent-sized study. Perfect place for a young couple or small family starting out in the world.

Or at least, that’s what it had been. Regardless of it’s pre-war disposition, now the apartment clearly served another purpose. The bedrooms and study had been stripped bare, restocked as laboratories, and the walls of the living space were covered in notes, diagrams, and advanced magical formulae. The closest thing to a bed was a meagre gathering of sheets on a cheap orange and green couch scavenged from somewhere, its upholstery so color-clashing that it would’ve had Rarity screaming murder, back before… well, the war.

There was a mini-fridge which Babs opened, curiously. All she could see were a few cheap, unremarkable vegetarian dinners, though most of the fridge appeared turned over to the storage of small pebbles and several softly glowing crystals. She suspected a few of them were worth miniature fortunes, and probably ranked somewhere high on the requisition list the PHL had discreetly traded with various cells of the Equestrian Resistance.

“How’d these get here?” she half-whispered, voicing her thoughts aloud. Despite her curiosity, she dared not touch the gems, especially the ones lit with their own internal light. Who knew what they could do?

Closing the fridge door, she looked up. The notes on the walls, swaying gently as the AC circulated the stale air, were incomprehensible, crowded into every inch of space, spreading onto the floors and even across parts of the ceiling.

Involuntarily, she found herself recalling something, a quote from a novel that Kraber had loaned her...

“There was nothing of him,” said Doul, “in the Wordhoard. “His berth down in the hold, it was clean and dry. His walls were covered with notes, pinned everywhere....”

Babs had never given much thought to reading, until one soldier, the same man who had loaned her the book in question, showed he had a soft spot for foals and children by reading to them of evenings. Now, those same books were a welcome release for Babs, an escape-route back to simpler, kinder days, when adventure and thrilling horror was something from a story, and not a daily reality...

”...but nothing of him. He’s like an empty doll. Those notes everywhere, like posters, and a little hand printing press, and ink and grease. His clothes in a trunk, his notebook in his bag—that’s all there was of him. It was pathetic… you could examine that room for hours, and you’d still have no idea what Silas Fennec was like. He’s nothing but an empty skin stuffed with schemes.”

An empty skin stuffed with schemes... though the author had likely never expected their words to be applied to a situation like the Conversion War, those words were certainly apt.

But unlike Fennec’s wall of notes, there was a point of sanity amidst all this scribbled chaos, one single thing that seemed fixed and singular…

“Hey there, Pinkie,” Babs sighed as she approached it, smiling sadly.

‘It’ was a photo, a framed likeness of Pinkie Pie - and unlike the rest of the room’s clutter, it appeared to have been treated with respect and love. The glass and frame gleamed, and the only thing that could outshine their brightness was the sheer joy and vivacity in the party pony’s eyes. It was an old photo, from before the war; another memory of peaceful times.

Sighing, Babs tipped the photo a salute and turned back to resume her search.

Whoever used this space had been very busy, and from the way some of the supplies had been ransacked, very recently. There was even a hint of fresh ozone in the air, a sign of magical experimentation that Babs had grown very familiar with in her service with the Ponies for Human Life.

And yet, there had been surprisingly few signs of entry into the apartment, forced or otherwise. The door had been locked, but the piles of trash and litter in the corridor had seemed almost entirely undisturbed. In fact, there had only been a single trail of hoofprints imprinted in the filth and clutter, and they had led out of the building...

Babs already had a theory to explain that, but just to be sure she checked all the windows, and found to her satisfaction that not only had they all been blacked out, but nailed shut.

“Called it! Howz’at for a lil’ filly?”

Suddenly galvanised, she began to root through the rooms, until at last she found what she was looking for. Hidden down the back of a work-desk was a floor-to-ceiling mirror set in a plain frame, turned on its side. Reversing it however revealed dozens of softly glowing glyphs cut into the rear of the facade, all linked through to a single node.

Without hesitation, the filly dragged the mirror out, tipped it up against an open patch of wall, tapped the node, and stepped back as the hum of magic filled the air. Inside the frame, her reflection in the glass became distorted, swirling away down a developing crack in reality, allowing something else to take its place in the glass...

Babs failed to suppress a smirk as she found herself staring through the mirror, straight into the jade eyes of a surprised zebra mare.

“Little seed, do my eyes lie?” the shaman mureed, holding one delicately tapered hoof to her brow. “Or have you discovered the who, where and why?”

The PHL’s highest-ranking representative to the Apple clan nodded her head eagerly, and stepped through the frame, and out into the research laboratories of the PHL’s Boston Headquarters. It was no different from crossing an open threshold, with nothing but the faintest tang of magic to suggest anything had happened. Now surrounded by humming equipment and the bustle of many voices, Babs strutted straight up into the striped mare’s face.

“Zecora, I dun called it!” she trilled, lightly bobbing the zebra in question on the muzzle. “I found Maud’s lair!”

By the time High Command’s representatives arrived, what remained of the Boston PD had barricaded off Ipswich Street, and troops had established a cordon around the entire apartment building. There weren’t exactly many people to barricade off – the city was emptying by the second, trains packed with passenger numbers far above safety limits streamed out, and Lieutenant Django Miller and his men from the precinct were having a devil of a time trying to manage the evacuation.

Still, you never knew who might come in.

“So, Maud lived here for a while?” Marcus Renee asked as he crossed through the teleportal that linked the apartment and his organisation’s local HQ. He staggered for a second, and breathed, allowing his stomach to settle from the unfamiliar nausea of magical transportation, and hoping that the burning tingle in his arms would reduce.

“She sure did!” Babs crowed, her chest pushed out so far it seemed as if she was trying to fire her heart upon a cannon. “From the look of it, she’s been occupying this place for at least a year…”

Marcus sighed and shook his head. “Maud a traitor? Guess we were right to send our troublemaking ‘V for Vendetta’ after her…”

“Verity…” Babs muttered, before looking around and stomping a hoof on the ground. “We shoulda seen this coming. Maud’s been tight with the Empire long time afore the war started… moved into Boston only two months after CERN, claimin’ to establish a joint research project wid’ da university. In truth, she was attached to the local consulate’s staff...”

“We knew all that…she told us about her government business when she defected to us,” Marcus grunted. “And until now we had no reason to disbelieve her… speaking of which, how’d you find this place.”

“This apartment belonged to Ve - to a small family. A married couple and their daughter. Turns out, the Mom was the first Bostonian to take the potion, on accounta Alzheimers. Was told it’d fix her head up, for the trade-off of becoming a pony. Maud and her sis were both present at Massachusetts General Hospital, representing Equestria. Things went south pretty much straight after the Newfoal came a’ trottin out… the husband attacked Pinkie, and Maud got hurt bad trying to intervene… three weeks after she was healed up, she writes to Lyra saying something’s sinizter with the potion...”

“So Maud made herself a nest in the home of the first human family she hurt…” Marcus hummed. Had Maud felt guilty, or ashamed? Or was her choice of hideout just some dark humor, a bit of poetic irony.

“It’s quite a narrative, Babs. How’d you put all of that together?”

“With lotsa’ hard work. News atta’ time hushed it all up for confidentiality, and cause of Reitman and the consulate leaning on all parties to keep shtum. But Lieutenant Miller helped me get access to what’s left of da’ police archives, and wid’ that, Lyra’s journals, some HLF propaganda and an ol’ copy of da’ telephone directory, I put it all together. Then, I just had to chase down my hunch, and look where it broughtz me!”

Babs’ prideful declamation was halted when Marcus abruptly squatted down before her and stared into her eyes. She swallowed for a second and came to attention, struggling to avoid his flinty gaze.

And then the weathered soldier chuckled, and tousled her mane roughly.

“You do good work kid. I knew I chose my adjutant well. Right on.”

Suddenly he winced, and staggered again. The earth pony teen caught him with both hooves, and her own expression turned hard.

“Yer’ tats giving youze grief again? By the Golden Lyre, I toldya that Sparkler couldn’t be trusted wid’ a needle…”

“It’s fine, honestly Babs… just still getting used to having magical runes branded into my skin. Getting regular tattoos hurts just as bad, only now I have to get use to the new weight.”

“C’mon Big Em, I’ll helpya through to Zecora. She and Sparkler are turning the whole damn place inside out.”

Sure enough, the former apartment was a blur of shifting paper and artifacts as the two mares in question darted from place to place. Zecora would point, and Sparkler’s amethyst aura would immediately levitate the object of her attention into one of several growing piles. Forensics experts huddled against the walls for safety, expressions aghast as a potential crime-scene was robbed of sterility.

“It’s all here, Marcus!” Sparkler gushed as soon as he questioned the method to their madness. “Everything that Maud ever researched into runes and geomancy, every project we ever tasked her with, a heck loada stuff she discovered on her own and kept for herself. Everything’s here!”

“Why…” he muttered, stunned. “Why would she do this?”

"Actually," Babs interrupted, pointing at the photo of Pinkie Pie – not quite a forbidden artifact of Equestria, but certainly not the most well-regarded. "I think it's obvious. She did it for family..."

“Less talk, more walk!” Zecora grunted as she trotted past, hooking Marcus by the arm. “Commander, I would have your ear. Please help Sparkler, Babs my dear.”

The only place devoid of techno-magic paraphernalia was the bathroom. Locking the door behind them Zecora perched herself on the lip of the tub as Marcus sat himself down on the room’s throne.

“Tell me what you’ve found, Zee.”

“Riddles within lies, betrayal and disguise!” she answered, rapping a frustrated hoof against the porcelain.

“So Maud has sold us out?”

The zebra mare made sound of disgust and struck the wall with enough force to shatter a few tiles.

“Sold down the very river, yes. A viper we held to our breast!”

“To who? Who was she bartering with.”

“Any enemy you can name, Maud has played in this foul game. To the Empire she did secrets tell, while trading HLF and PHL! Told and tattled as she did please, from Celestia, to that rancid Cheese.”

It was a stunning revelation. Marcus was left counting on his fingers, trying to work it out.

“That would make her a triple...no, a quadruple agent! And what’s that about Cheese Sandwich? Why would Maud be trying to get in tight with the Equestrian Resistance?”

“We know alike, you and I… the who and how, and here’s the why…” Zecora sighed, taking a calming breath. Then, she held out a small rock.

“Boulder…” Marcus whispered, recognising Maud’s precious pet rock. “She left him behind?”

“First of all, please understand – this discovery is all as Maud had planned. In the event she did take flight, she left the means to set things right.”

“She recorded a message on him?” he asked in disbelief, seeing a complicated glowing sigil cut into the tiny stone’s surface.

“A confession of sorts, I do believe. For this deceit, Maud claims to grieve. She speaks of love, and dearest kin. And she bequeaths to us this trove we are in.”

Uncertain, but needing to know more, Marcus reached out and touched his finger to the sigil carved into Boulder.

“By the time you hear this, I’ll have fled…” began the recording, playing out in Maud’s dry, dusty tones.

“...You’ll say it’s impossible. I’m sorry, but I have to try. Even if it kills me. Thank you. Goodbye.”

Marcus turned Boulder over again and again in his palm as the recording finished playing itself. It was around fifteen minutes long, and he’d listened to it three times by now, pausing at periods.

In that time, Zecora and Sparkler had closed up shop and left with the better part of Maud’s research documents. Lab equipment and other miscellania were now being carted back through the mirror into the Boston HQ for closer study – and, if possible, being utilized in the coming battle. It was a fool’s errand, trying to make weaponry like that on the spur of the moment, but every bit counted.

Even now, people in basements were struggling to scratch out new weaponry, flash-enchanting everything from modern assault rifles to ancient designs that dated back to not long after the decline of percussion-cap weaponry, while others ‘piecemealed’ PHL guns, dismantling them and sharing out the improved and enhanced components among off the shelf weaponry...

It may not have meant much in the final weighing, but every little bit counted, after all.

In the here-and-now, that left only the task of stripping down the apartment to try and establish any further details into who else Maud might have entertained here. It hardly seemed necessary, given how she had apparently recorded every meeting and conversation held within these walls with a fervour that would have given Richard Nixon pause. An entire closet was filled with neatly labelled rocks and pebbles, each holding within chiselled runic memory hour after hour of secret meetings and private thoughts.

“So, she wanted us to find this…” Babs asked. “She set this place up as a private hideaway, and from here she’s been secretly working miracles and playin’ all comers for her own ends.”

“Looks like that…” Marcus nodded.

Babs’ words were not ill-chosen. From what he could tell, Maud had taken her knowledge of geomancy and combined it with her studies beneath Zecora and Sparkler to accomplish more than a few impossibilities.

The mirror was one of them, a bonafide teleporter connecting two points. Then there was the gemstone wired into the circuit panel, generating free electricity for the apartment out of the magical ether. Pebbles that functioned as grenades, and powdered rubble into which complex spells had been woven. The raw science alone was apparently enough to qualify Maud for a few awards, and the treachery of it enough to land her three or four decades behind bars.

All of it documented and detailed, every scheme and plan noted down on paper and stone. All left behind. It seemed almost as if Maud had been building herself a magical arsenal, and then fled armed only with the knowledge bound up in the cavernous depths of her mind.

And then there were the recordings… so many recordings. Many of the labels were obtuse, including an conspicuously-empty rack labelled marked ‘Meetings with Celly’s Ward.’

Others were more detailed. Cheese Sandwich had an entire shelf to his name. Marcus scowled at the thought of the yellow stallion, an ember of frustration smouldering in his breast.

‘The fucking Equestrian Resistance… always our ally, never our friend…’

The Equestrian Resistance was living proof that the old saying ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ was bullshit – (‘them and the HLF’, he snorted to himself) - they had a few agreements and a little common ground, nothing more.

And then, letting his eyes drift to the end of the rack, Marcus read several labelled rocks and found himself suppressing a low groan.

“Babs, you didn’t tell me the name of the family of lived here, did you?”

He did not need to see the small filly’s reaction: he could hear her swallow.

“No… no I didn’t Commander. Wasn’t sure how to break it, wanted you to come in with a clear head afore’ I dropped that on you.”

Ah Babs, ever the good subordinate. Like all adjutants and sergeants throughout history, she’d picked up that the key task of an assistant is to manage their superiors. Marcus had fully adopted that philosophy when he was an Non-Commissioned Officer. He’d just never expected to be on the receiving end of such treatment.

“Well, I know now…” Marcus said, as he reached out and picked up a pair of small rocks, no larger than a golfball. One came from a shelf marked ‘confessions’, and the from a section designated as ‘HLF’.

“Jazmin, Mike, and New Bloom...” he read aloud from the first, below holding up the second. “HLF: Meeting with Captain Verit...”

Oh shit...

‘They knew each other…’ he mentally stuttered. ‘I knew Maud and V disliked each other, knew there was a grudge of some kind, but I had no idea… was it all an act between them? Were they both in on this?’

“What is it, Big Em?” Babs pressed, stepping closer.

Marcus struggled to speak the words, and instead held the label out for her to read.

“Oh, fucking fuckity fuck-fuck me,” she hissed. “They were in contact with each other!? Before they were both on our side!?”

“Yeah…” Marcus answered. “And now Maud is free, and I’ve turned Vee loose with orders to hunt them down…”

He hoped to God, or whatever was listening, that the various troops he had stationed up in the Maritimes and New England crossed paths with those two mares before they themselves did. But it was never that easy, was it? The war had taught him that things like miracles, or even simple good luck were in too short supply to be ever expected.

“Doesn’t it feel?” he said aloud. “That every day, we’re just playing into somebody else’s plan? That everything we do is directed by some fucking Destiny...”

“Sure…” Babs laughed cynically, before turning to present her flank to him. “Welcome to the fucking world of the cutie-mark...”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Notes:

Well, after three months, here comes the next block of chapters, divvied up into three nice parts.

Many thanks to Doctor Fluffy, Jeff, Vox, Kizuna, Redskin12004 and everyone else who had a hand in this.

And of course, amazing thanks to Kare-Valgon of Deviantart for the amazing cover-art!