“You know, I don’t think people in your condition usually dream, so you should be thanking me.” Luna snapped back to consciousness at the voice of Smuggler and struggled to open her eyes. Something was wrong here, very wrong. She couldn’t open her eyes, nor could she move any part of her body. She couldn’t feel any surface she was lying on, then was she floating in liquid? Why would someone…

“Let me stop you right there. You are not floating in some tank, on display for some nobody to jerk off to, if we are to go with the example your subconscious went with. You are a guest in my house and you have to play by the rules I live by.” Luna’s mind immediately refuted that statement, as Smuggler could not have a house. He was a spirit leeching off of her mind, so for him to have anything to call his own was ridiculous.

“Your physical body is unavailable to you, because of whatever the seizure you had has fried your nervous system, so your consciousness is now kept safe within the confines of the mindscape I created.” When had Smuggler had the time to create a mindscape independent from her own psyche? He shouldn’t even have to ability to do that, let alone power to trap her mind within it.

“I didn’t want to show this particular card just yet, either, but events transpired in such a way that you would have been irreversibly damaged, without my timely intervention. The consciousness I am talking to right now is the digital backup to your physical persona… Yeah, I think that’s as close to an accurate description of what you are.” She couldn’t hear Smuggler shuffling about, nor could she hear wind or any movement of air around her. If it weren’t for Smuggler’s voice, she would be in a pure void of darkness and deafening silence. If the annoying spirit was right and she was only a magical reflection, then there was nothing she could do to stop him from… doing something weird and disturbing.

“Now, let’s not get overly dramatic here. I said you have to play by my rules and while that does mean no physical body, it does not mean you are incapable of interacting with your environment. I’ve been interacting with your reality with impunity, after all.” Luna felt that information float around her, teasing her with a revelation about her new form of being, but tantalizingly staying away from her sphere of awareness.

“Oh, god damn it, don’t do that! I did all this especially to stop you from unraveling. You are Luna, Princess of the Night, avatar of the moon and I despise you. Now that we have the facts out of the way: brohoof me.” The image of Smuggler’s projection offering a balled up fist toward her appeared in front of her. Luna raised a hoof and gently tapped it on the human’s knuckles.

“Now, was that so hard?” Luna gave Smuggler a confused look and lowered her hoof slowly. It took her a fraction of a second to realize she suddenly had a body to do that with and Smuggler leaned back from her with another annoying chuckle. She wasn’t sure if it was the bewildering deluge of information that he had dished out, or if it was just an involuntary reflex after all the instances he’d done the same gesture when they actually agreed on something, but the simple act had given her a solid image of her body.

“Things are real different to what you’re accustomed to, but I know you’ll be fine. You know you have a body and I suggest you don’t forget that. Despite all that, welcome to my home!” Smuggler spread his hands out and collapsed onto a loudly creaking swivel chair. They were in what Luna assumed to be a small cabin, considering the logs in the walls and the stone fireplace to her right. Also, every bit of wall space not detrimental for basic movement was taken up by stacks and collections of books and papers and rolled up parchments stored haphazardly around the dimly lit interior. Each time Luna looked around the room, the dimensions shifted and varied wildly and the names and shapes of the tomes and papers around her changed.

“Is this an actual space you occupy, or my interpretation of the nature of my surroundings? I see books and scrolls and a homey fireplace, but I doubt you give such things much value.” Luna scanned the room, reading the backs of the books she could and coming to the conclusion she could recognize most of them, even the untitled tomes and rolled up parchments looked familiar. “Most of what I see are things I have read or experienced, aren’t they?”

“Well, you’re not as stupid as you seem, but I had quite a low opinion of you to begin with.” Smuggler reached out to a pile of books and flicked the one on top toward her. Rather than simply falling to the floor or hitting her in the nose, the book disintegrated into the memory of her learning how to construct the basis for a heat manipulation spell. “Yes, most of what you “see” is the collected knowledge that could be of use to me, copied piece by piece from your mind when you were preoccupied. I’ll have to think of a sensible way of organizing it, though.”

“Why are you telling me this? I suspected you were doing something like this, but confessing to it like this is not smart, not like you.” Smuggler leaned back in his chair, the creaks and squeaks making her flatten her ears to her skull. Luna used the following silence to try and examine Smuggler’s features, try and see if he looked anything like his projection in the real world, but she found that she could not make out any of his features. Her mind immediately jumped to some other face she knew and suddenly Smuggler’s eyes, bone structure and skin color shifted to match the image in her head. He was a pony, a griffon, a human and a minotaur, all in the span of a few seconds, then he changed again as she blinked.

“Well, I’ve told you about how my world has driven the archetype of the monologuing villain to the ground? I guess I just wanted to see the appeal in it, as I’m already quite a chatty fellow.” Smuggler swiveled around in his chair and grabbed a stack of folders of differing colors. He opened a sickly green one and started talking as he spun back around.

“This is a plan to destroy your world with a zombie virus. I can give any unicorn both the motive and the means to alter three specific viruses responsible for your equivalent of the common cold, one for each race of you. The unknown factors are the rate of infection in real-life situations and whether the rage virus is actually fatal. It’s relatively easy to make the infected violent and demented, but to reach actual cannibalistic tendencies in a herbivorous species would mean a few weeks of real-life testing.” Smuggler closed the folder and set it to the bottom of the pile. “I decided against it, as it would be no fun to live in the world that would follow the zombie apocalypse.”

“This is one where I drive you back to being Nightmare Moon and actually have you win.” Smuggler threw a thin indigo folder into the fireplace. “Far too predictable. I would only end up as the scapegoat when you come back to your senses.”

“Ah, here’s one where I pester you about your lack of emotion and slightly alter your perception to persuade you to make physical contact with a pony desperate enough to believe I would help them. The unknown variables are if Kamos or his agents realize I am not as trapped as you have assured them and if Priest stays as blind to the outside world as he’s been so far.” Smuggler took the time to look Luna in the eyes, his grin staying the same in all of the faces he slid in and out of.

“To be completely honest I only planned for this to be a way to torment you, but I can work it into another plan of mine.” Smuggler said as he tore a piece of paper from the folder and slipped it into a far thicker indigo folder. He opened a drawer on the desk he was sitting in front of and deposited the bulging folder into it. Luna blinked and both the drawer and desk were gone and Smuggler was sitting in an armchair with a pipe.

“You wish to boast your intelligence and cunning, yet you wish to not reveal whatever plan you are pursuing in reality. I wonder if you are not boasting about your grand scheme out of caution, or if you are unsure if you can alter my memories to such an extent.” Luna took a few confident steps toward the grinning human, but soon found that the distance between them stayed the same no matter how many steps she took.

“The short answer is caution, as you guessed. The pieces are already in motion, so it would not matter if you were able to remember any fragments of our conversation I might neglect to extract from you. The long one involves the mental anguish you’ll experience when it is played out in front of you, but you’ll know what I mean when it happens.” Smuggler flicked his hand toward Luna and even though the spirit was on the other side of the room Luna felt a sharp pain on her cheek and was knocked back. The motion had been so casual that Luna hadn’t even thought to brace for the impact, if that even mattered in Smuggler’s domain.

“Why did you do that?” Luna asked, blinking her eyes to stop her world from swaying. There was far more force behind that single slap than the simple motion of his hand could have produced. Luna put a hoof on her aching cheek and looked up to Smuggler. Smuggler’s grin stayed the same, but his body tensed and for a moment Luna could see through the sea of faces he was hiding behind. Something sharp and venomous was coiled behind his form, blades and hooks quivering to rend and pull. Smuggler shifted in his chair and his form was again obscured by all of the faces he wore.

“Your naívete is the thing that vexes me the most.” Smuggler leaned forward and clasped his hands in front of him, the image he projected to the world solidifying further. His chair flickered and Luna saw more sharp things floating in the dark void waiting behind the illusion. “You yanked us away from our own worlds, tore out everything that made us human and then locked us in a cage with a wounded animal. You can argue the details all you want, but that is what you did.”

The sharp things waiting in the void shot out like whips, sharpened edges and jagged hooks tearing at the tomes and scrolls around her as they whipped around her appendages and splayed her out in the air, pulling her body taut as the destroyed pieces of paper and ancient papyrus fluttered around the room lazily. She could smell the burnt paper from the fireplace and taste copper in her mouth as another sharp tendril slowly tightened around her throat.

“You knew what you did was wrong, you knew Soldier hated you for it, you knew I tried to retard you mentally and hobble you physically, you knew Soldier cut out everything pertaining to us and the magic that created us. These are things you knew and still know. Yet, I watched the whole thing go through your head and you still thought you could be forgiven.” The sharp tendrils holding her in the air tightened their grip and she could feel the jagged hooks easily sink into her flesh as they moved. “You thought I would forgive you, perhaps even thank you. I couldn’t understand the logic behind that conviction.”

“So, I dug in deep, I watched you, poked you, poured over your memories and all of your past interactions with others. I saw you excel your goals, gain recognition and fame and then I saw you keep going. You pushed, you prodded and you went past the lines set by those before you and then you wondered why those around you started to avoid you. Too intelligent, too proud, far too naíve and ultimately too jealous of your idiot of a sister with her schools and governments and ponies she had brought up as equals.” The tendril squeezing her throat moved to push it’s sharp tip into the flesh on the back of her head. The sharp point easily pierced the skin and snaked it’s way up her neck, the blinding flashes of pain signifying the jagged hooks scraping at her spine as it moved.

“You were a genius far above those your sister would bring to your level and you were sure you could defeat the solar dullard they idolized if you really put your mind to it. So, eventually you moved to do just that, to prove you as the superior sister and sovereign ruler of the lower forms of pony. I think we both know how that turned out.” Luna could feel the tendril reach the point where her spine met her skull and start coiling around itself rather than move forward, after five agonizing spins into itself it finally stopped moving.

“I couldn’t quite figure out how the arrogant genius of a bitch you used to be turned into the emotional mess that tore three souls apart to save one life.” Smuggler’s projection slowly stood up from the chair he’d been rooted on and walked toward her with an amused glint to his eyes. “So, I went back and recalled every little thought you had after the Elements of Harmony rainbowed you. The arrogance, pride and jealousy were all gone, but the ideas of superiority over those below you were still there. There are no therapists around to address those sociopathic ideas in Equestria, so when you met with the choice of sacrificing strangers for a distant acquaintance it took only a small nudge from Discord for you to cross that line.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy these new abilities of mine and this sure beats any afterlife I was headed towards. Many would see my situation as a blessing, but let me tell you the one thing that drives me to hate you and do this.” Smuggler reached out and grabbed her by the jaw, wrenching her head to look him right in the eye. She couldn’t see his hands, but they felt sharp and cold, nothing any living thing should have.

“Priest has the Body, the need to live and survive and do all that good stuff I remember. Soldier has the Soul, that unrelenting force that makes us hunger for something more in our lives, to fight for something more than what is given to us. They both have purpose hardwired into them, something to keep them going. Discord’s involvement only gave them sentience to choose their ways to pursue those goals, but what about me?” Smuggler let the question hang in the air. He might have been waiting for her to answer the question, but Luna was far too preoccupied by the fact that she couldn’t move her left eye and she kept smelling burnt toast.

“Are you even listening to me? For this villain monologuing thing to be legitimate, you’ll have to retort sarcastically at some point.” The pain must have also distracted her greatly, but it was something that filled her mind so completely that it had become the new norm. Had there been a time when this white-hot searing pain didn’t make the world crawl and shatter around her? It was hard to imagine such a thing could be real.

“Mental deterioration of equine copy #18 recorded at 77% in 8 minutes and 17 seconds after start of simulation. Construct does not meet the Kamos principle, Cataloguing data and disassembling faulty formula.” Everything that had been pain in her existence suddenly exploded into a dirty and murky expanse of lights and sharp wires interlinking and scraping against each other. It was alien and visceral, but there was something unmistakably nostalgic about the intricate patterns the intersecting coils created.

There was violent tug and she was rocketed out of the familiar expanse of lights and painful wires. Her eyes and body had been left behind, but she could still see her little speck of murky light dissipating into the void all around her. She kept rocketing toward some unknown goal and more lights and intersections of the wires came into view and disappeared. She could see glimpses of more versions of Smuggler and Luna inside these fictitious realities and hoped none of the others would fail like she had.

Her journey came to a stop in another pocket of fabricated reality, but instead of seeing a scenario testing the mental fortitude of another version of her playing out, she was met with the mirthful eyes of Smuggler. He was smiling, as always, but the dark spark in the back of his eyes reflected the void she had traveled through too perfectly for him to be nothing but the real deal.

“If you had the capability to do so, I reckon you’d wonder why you’re here and why I am giving you my personal attention. I put a dash of religious reverence in there, so you understand I am a busy incorporeal spirit. You survived social interaction longer than most of your sisters, but broke down far easier when it came to physical torment. I will have to learn what caused this deviation and learn from it.” Smuggler’s image held a hand out toward her and more jagged wires latched onto her.

“Some part of me felt obligated to tell you that you will not survive the process. I will learn from your sacrifice, your purpose has been fulfilled, so rest easy.” She was pulled and she was torn, but she knew that she had served her purpose, a brief existence fulfilled was far better than an eternity of uncertainty. She could feel a final pull on her being and hear a high-pitched grinding of the taut wires scraping against each other and her and then she could not be herself any longer.

“Why is she crying?” Kamos asked as another tear escaped from Luna’s still eyes, along with a barely noticeable flash of magic from her horn. The healer in charge turned to the stealthy zebra as his subordinates and colleagues around him flinched. To them Kamos most likely seemed to materialize out of thin air. He didn’t care about announcing his presence to nonessential personnel, but it was not like he had been trying to stay out of sight. By this point it just came naturally to him, a kind of magic few understood working without conscious thought.

“That’s just her eyes tearing up because she hasn’t blinked for a while. I doubt she’s actually crying.” The doctor explained in an even tone as another pegasi mare flew into the room. Kamos appreciated their urgency, but a small part of him wanted to scold the mare for not setting down while crossing the threshold to clear the air for anyone flying out of the room. The doctor grabbed the documents and arcane scans from the mare and held one of the black sheets up to the light.

“I thought I was very clear when I explained to you why forcefully extracting these spirits was a spectacularly bad idea. Come over here and have a look.” Kamos trotted over to the doctor and he graciously held the new scans to the light. Before her medical emergency there had been a concentrated spot of arcane energy at the base of her reformed skull and a slightly dimmer magical signature all around her body, obscuring any accurate scans. Now the mass of arcane energy near Luna’s brain had enveloped it entirely and the haze obscuring the medical team’s scans had cleared entirely.

“I can say with some degree of certainty that Luna’s sudden seizure and the resulting catatonia were caused by the sudden extraction of the spirit that had bonded with her body. I hope you know how this was accomplished, as it’s either reintroducing the spirit back into her body to fix this, or betting that we can stay ahead of the damage an alicorn’s innate magic is doing to her transformed body. I trust my staff to do their very best, but there’s no way we can compete with an alicorn’s magic for long.” The doctor stepped away from the zebra and ordered the staff around them into action, the hum and warmth of healing spells filled the air a moment later. Kamos trotted out without another word. He’d learned what he could from the doctor and it was up to him to make sense of how it all happened.

Everything pointed toward Priest being extracted somehow and Smuggler taking advantage of the situation to hold Luna’s mind hostage. The doctors might think Smuggler was keeping her brain from being damaged, but Kamos couldn’t be so optimistic. He also didn’t want to be forced to wait and see which side Smuggler was on, or if the eccentric spirit’s survival instinct was powerful enough to save Luna to begin with. The ponies Luna had come in contact with during the evening had been interrogated and checked for traces of Priest’s unique magic. Tracking down the couple that had been somehow been let out of the castle before his lockdown was next on the agenda, right after a minor issue with the other side of the royal diarchy.

“Please tell me we didn’t do this, because I really did mean it when I said my method of extraction should not even tested on a particularly insistent tick. Please, please, please tell me I didn’t hospitalize Vice-principal Luna!” An unicorn mare wearing an illegally altered version of the cloak his unicorns wore rambled out hysterically. He hadn’t been able to sense the mare coming, so he couldn’t help being impressed by the modifications.

“Princess Luna. You didn’t. Can that cloak be mass-produced?” Kamos answered the mare matter-of-factly while ducking into a hidden passage behind a statue. The mare followed him, her labored breathing and the irregular humming of her horn telling him that the new cloak was far more taxing than the official model. He could feel the tension bleed away from the mare and then she cleared her throat in that way he’d learned to dread.

“Keep forgetting that. Thank god. Personal project, only works this well on you, unsuitable for most fieldwork by concept. I have a few ideas for a civilian patent, though...” The mare answered, imitating his accent poorly and with an infuriating amused tilt to her voice. He reached for his blowgun, but he could feel the mare skipping back down the passageway, the cloak masking most of her giggling.

A few minutes later he walked between the two guards stationed at the entrance to Celestia’s private tower, the two giving him nods as he passed. At least some of the solar guards were observant enough to actually see him without him straining to be seen. He started climbing the winding stairs and felt a pressure settling on the back of his head the higher up he went, making him question his obvious lack of a contingency plan. He needed to address the situation before it escalated, but what could he do if it did?

“Kamos.” The zebra heard his name called as he reached the top and he opened the door to the solar diarch’s chamber without a thought. He could feel the spirit’s attention on him as if it were a physical weight holding him down as soon as he opened the door. Celestia was laying down on pillows set in front of the unlit fireplace, eyes locked on the ashen firepit. Her posture was unnaturally rigid and her eyes were shining an iridescent blue. Kamos would have paused and considered whether he should approach the alicorn in this state, but his body moved forward regardless of his trepidation. He only stopped after settling down next to the motionless alicorn.

“Not one for discretion, are you, Soldier?” Kamos found it terrifying that he couldn’t force his body to get up. He was able to fidget and fix his sitting position, but standing up or moving away from Celestia was not an option.

“No.” Celestia’s body fidgeted as the blue light in her eyes dimmed slightly. Kamos could feel Celestia’s presence fighting to get back on top, but he didn’t know whether she was winning or losing.

“I am a danger, she can’t go. Explain this.” Celestia’s eyes returned to their magenta hue, but Kamos only felt a slight change in the spirit’s presence. Soldier had let the sun diarch back on top willingly, to hear his reasonings as to why Celestia could not go heal her sister. Celestia sagged onto the pillows, drawing breath in large hungry gulps, as if she’d exerted herself physically.

“Soldier compromises your magical capability, your highness. Even ignoring the spirit’s feelings toward your sister, it is more than likely his presence would make the intricate energy manipulation needed to use the caliber of healing spells needed impossible.” Kamos stood up from the cushions and moved to look the visibly exhausted Celestia in the eye. “Taking those feelings into account, attempting even the simplest healing spell on Luna with Soldier around would kill her.”

“Why doesn’t he let me try, then? He could have exactly what he wants if he did nothing, so why does he persist on stopping me?” A tear rolled onto the cushions Celestia was resting her head on, but Kamos didn’t want to read it as anything more than another sign of exhaustion.

“I don’t think he has any complicated reason for it. It would hurt you more than it would satisfy him, if I had to guess. These humans are alien to this world, we can’t assume to understand them just yet.” Celestia closed her eyes and gave a long sigh. Kamos could feel the weight of Soldier’s influence lifting as Celestia relaxed. Kamos could only assume he had read the spirit’s intentions right, or just gotten the spirit what he wanted. “Please let the royal physicians and my people deal with this. You are needed elsewhere, your highness.”

“I will see that Equestria stands, Kamos. You go and save my sister from a senseless death.” Celestia decreed, with her usual confidence and natural authority returning to her voice and demeanour. Kamos couldn’t help but shudder knowing that there was something inside her that both could and would make that authority absolute, if she so wished. He knew Celestia to be too intelligent to be ignorant of it, so he could appreciate her choice to restrain any use of that power.

Still, he ran down the stairs of Celestia’s tower, as soon as he thought to be out of earshot. To lose any agency to his actions from simple proximity to one of the human spirits was a terrifying scenario he hadn’t predicted. He had believed the human spirit in charge of the “Soul” would only have something to do with magic and power, as those were the things modern scholars associated with the concept. The magic that had transformed the three humans was more ancient than anything recorded or studied today, so modern laws didn’t necessarily apply to their function. He should have known to be more careful when it came to dealing with them.

Smuggler’s sudden extraction from Luna when she had attempted to mend the veil had shown just how unpredictable and dangerous the spirit of the Mind could be. There had been no way for any physical body to pass through the veil without catastrophic consequences on both sides, so allowing Soldier to take chase was the best out of the few options left for them. Soldier was physically tied to Celestia’s heart in a way that would make extraction of the spirit lethal, but Celestia’s insistence on saving her sister put them in danger of losing both of their rulers.

Celestia’s heart had stopped beating shortly after Soldier’s extraction, but the medical team they had prepared had been able to artificially circulate Celestia’s blood, while the sun diarch lay in a medically induced coma next to her sister. Soldier had shown no sign of any other ability than taking control of Celestia’s body during that whole ordeal. Kamos had assumed it to be because of their physical connection, but now he knew better than to underestimate any of the three spirits.

The human spirit named Priest had been free for three and a half hours, the same amount of time Smuggler had spent on the other side of the veil. Based on all the reports he’d read of his interactions with Luna and the other spirits Priest was easily swayed. Kamos didn’t think the spirit of the Body to be malicious in his intentions, but the absolute nature of his power did make his freedom to make a wrong choice a frightening concept.

Kamos rushed through the palace, making his way down to street level using any and all of the shortcuts he knew. He might have startled a few guards and servants by jumping out of windows, or jumping out from behind murals, but they forgot they saw him in minutes and he really didn’t want to delay any more than he’d already been forced to.

“Tell me what you know.” Kamos unceremoniously ordered as he dropped into the empty guest room he had designated as the centre of operations for this problem. A unicorn officer with his hood down stepped forward with a stack of papers.

“Caring Heart and Silver Seal own a moderately lavish house within the walls of Canterlot, but neighbours say they had not been there for a duration of at least six weeks. They have both taken personal leave from their duties as a royal scribe and a head nurse at Canterlot general. Nothing in their history suggests the magical ability to extract the spirit while avoiding detection, but I still believe they are our best chance of understanding what happened.” Kamos scanned the documents he had been provided with and read the information in very much the same way. He nodded to the unicorn and turned his attention to the rest of the ponies in the room.

“Their child has been dying for the past two years. Look for property signed into Golden Sprout’s name, or that of immediate family. They obviously love their child, I doubt they want him dying breathing the stuffy city air.” The room exploded into action as they raced to be the one to uncover what Kamos had asked for. The court secretaries who brought the documents to the stealthy bunch winced as papers and records were scattered about the room haphazardly. Kamos made the mental note to leave the worst offenders back to help the clerks clean up.

“There’s an aunt that owns a mansion at the edge of the whitetail woods.” One unicorn stated as he held up a piece of paper. A pegasi leaned over to check the name and then went to work on finding documents on the mare.

“Currently employed at Canterlot Bank and Trust as a teller. I’ll go change and then have a talk with the mare about her property.” The pegasi stallion said and started for the door, but one of the scribes stepped out to stop him.

“Are you talking about Candlewick?” Kamos nodded to the pegasi guard and he stepped back from the nervous mare. Kamos stepped up and froze the mare in place with an intense look.

“Has this Candlewick mentioned letting members of her family use the estate?” Kamos asked the frightened mare, making sure his voice stayed calming and authoritative. The mare seemed skittish, but had stepped up with information that could help their investigation.

“Yeah, at our weekly poker night she was all depressed about her nephew. She went on about how she didn’t know if she could really enjoy her summer home after it’s all over, but it’s not like she could say no to her sister, you know? She hit the sauce real hard after that, but it sounds like she’s the one you’re talking about.” The mare took a step back and averted her gaze from the zebra’s piercing eyes.

“Thank you.” He could tell she was telling the truth and Kamos could collaborate her story later. He felt like he would need anypony he could spare when they caught up to Priest. He’d learned to trust his instincts, no matter how absurd they might seem. He pointed to an unicorn and earth pony in the room and then motioned to the mess around them. Their postures slumped and they gave a hearty sigh, but acknowledge the non-verbal order with a nod. “These two will stay behind to clean up the mess we made.”

His subordinates knew the drill from there; pegasi flew off to do reconnaissance and transport the unicorns and the earth ponies to the site. Kamos ordered the pegasi not to make physical contact and not to engage in any other way if there were no lives at stake. He ordered the unicorns to protect themselves and those around them as if they were dealing with an extremely contagious disease. Priest was seemingly able to transfer himself through physical contact and Kamos knew nothing definite about what the spirit would do to anypony he possessed, so he felt like he owed it to his subordinates to err on the side of caution.

He could feel his stomach dropping and flooding with ice as soon as he lay his eyes on the small mansion with an impressive garden. Before the Fenrir fiasco he would have dismissed the feeling as nerves before a field operation, but now he signaled those around him to ready for action. He didn’t know if it was some little thing wrong with the house his subconscious had caught before him or a form of precognition, but he knew something was wrong regardless. The sky chariots touched down on the lawn of the estate and he rushed out with his soldiers, ordering them to be cautious with nods of his head and movements of his hooves.

As the last of his subordinates signaled they were ready Kamos ordered them to breach the house. Their arrival and positioning had been silent, but now his soldiers crashed through windows and doors, yells affirming that room after room to be secure following close behind. Kamos noticed several pauses between the affirming calls and felt uneasy about what his ponies could have found to make even them give pause. The unicorn commander in charge walked out of the house a moment later. The fact that the veteran stallion looked a little green made the zebra steel his nerves even more.

“It’s bad.” The weary stallion stated as a number of the more inexperienced members filed out of the house to either look sick, or actually be sick. Kamos sighed internally as it became clear that there was little to no chance that any of the ponies he was looking for were alive in that house.

It didn’t take long for Kamos to guess at least the nature of what had disturbed his subordinates after stepping through the threshold. He couldn’t see anything that couldn’t be attributed to his tactical team storming in when first walking in, but he detected the smell of freshly eviscerated remains in the air, along with burning flesh. Internal spontaneous combustion was not impossible with the degree of control Priest had shown over Luna’s body, but his team had witnessed the victims of volatile offensive magic before.

He moved on through the living room, which had been immaculate before his team stormed in, and paused at the doorway to the kitchen. Bloody hoofprints on the floor coming from deeper in the house, they stayed consistent through the whole way, so the pony was either drenched or bleeding heavily. Kamos followed the hoofprints into the tiles of the kitchen and saw the still body of Caring Heart slumped on one wall. Her cutie mark was obscured by blood matted into her fur, but he felt safe in assuming the mare to be the wife for now. A handle of what looked like a kitchen knife jutted out of the mare’s eye socket and the smell of burning flesh was more pronounced in the room.

“The knife was heated hot enough to cauterize the wound.” Kamos muttered as he leant down next to the body. There was no practical use for a heated blade in close combat and the magic required to manipulate heat to that degree would tire out the average unicorn far too quickly for it to even be viable. The mare had no wounds that would account for the copious amounts of it on her person, so clearly Kamos had not seen all the house had to offer. He moved toward the upturned kitchen table on the other side of the room, drawn toward it by the presence of blood.

The splatter patterns on the wall the husband was imbedded in supported the theory of the now-cracked kitchen table being slammed into his body with great force and acceleration. The table at least looked to be a solid piece of earth pony craftsmanship, so if some unicorn had been able to slam it into the wall with such force, some kind of performance enhancer had to be involved. There were unmistakable bite marks on the husband’s body, the head was only kept in place by the wall it was imbedded in and most of the flesh on the right forelimb was gnawed off deep enough to show bone.

“Caring Heart came into the room covered in blood and fought with her husband. She slammed SIlver Seal against the wall using the kitchen table after a short scuffle and then gnawed on the remains until something stopped her.” Kamos scanned the room slowly and saw no obvious signs of any other assailant being present in the room. He turned around and started backtracking the bloody hoofprints. He stopped to scan over Caring Heart’s body again, noting two disturbed patches of fur on her lower back. “Looks like Caring Heart stabbed herself through the eye with a white-hot knife to make sure of brain death. The husband got a few hits in on her back, look for whatever weapon he used.”

He had a pretty solid idea of where the hoofprints would lead and what he would find, but he had to see the scene for this to even start making sense. He had been working on the assumption that Priest had been transferred onto the mother to help the child, but how could that lead to the violent murder-suicide of the parents?

Kamos followed the hoofprints down the hall and up the stairs and to the doorway to what had been a small bedroom with a skylight at one point. The skylight and window would have given the sick colt a picturesque view of the garden and the sky. Kamos counted the broken bottles and torn medicine pouches in the room and he could imagine them arranged neatly on the colt’s night table before all of this. The fact that the colt would have had little time left on this world regardless didn’t take away from the savagery of the scene before him.

“I understand why the new guys would feel sick. They’ve never eaten with a griffon, let alone cooked a meal with them.” The weary unicorn officer stated as Kamos stood in silence. The sickening smell of viscera was strong enough to burn his throat as he breathed and the copious amount of blood splattered on the window gave the scene before him a reddish hue. Every piece of furniture in the room was either broken or drenched in blood. The covers of the bed were torn and drenched in red and black viscera, the frame had snapped at the middle, causing what was left of Golden Sprout to pool in the torn mattress. The unicorn’s comment floated into his consciousness as his eyes lingered on the bed.

“Minced meat, you’re thinking of minced meat.” Kamos commented as he tore his eyes away from the slush of organs and chewed muscle on the bed. He scanned the floor, looking for the rest of the body. There were pieces and fragments of bone, blood and chunks of flesh on the walls and floor around the bed, but not enough to count for a whole body. He nudged a nearby piece of bone closer and found it to be hollow. The bone was snapped in half and there were bite marks on the broken ends of it. He could understand why the younger members of his unit would feel sickened by the sight, if they came to the same conclusion he did.

“Caring Heart ate her son, she even went as far to suck the marrow from the bone. An equestrian pony lacks the strength to do this, magic or no magic. Priest stayed in Caring Heart through all this and halfway through her attack on Silver Seal. The evidence suggest Caring Hearts death to be self-inflicted, due to the trauma of devouring her child and killing her husband.” Kamos turned back toward the stairs and heard the unicorn officer following him. “Priest is most likely still attached to Caring Heart. We must prepare her for transit to Canterlot immediately.”

“What about Golden Sprout and Silver Seal? We can’t leave them like this.” The unicorn officer exclaimed as Kamos descended the stairs. The stallion had a child around Golden Sprout’s age, If the spymaster’s memory served, so he was obviously arguing from emotion. He did touch upon a valid point regardless.

“You’re right, something like this at this time would bring too much attention to Luna’s transformation. Some upstart guard or reporter would make the connection and cause a fuss. Make sure to place the father’s body in the child’s bedroom. I’ll send for an analog of an unicorn mare from Canterlot. The fire and some improvised transfiguration spells should obscure the evidence well enough to quell any rogue investigations.” Kamos ordered with a level look at the shocked stallion. Kamos saw a spark of understanding in his eyes before he looked away, so either he would be seeing a requisition for a raise, or a letter of resignation on his desk in the next couple of days. The stallion had served admirably to this day, so he couldn’t think of a reason to refuse either.

Kamos trotted into the kitchen and ordered for the husband’s remains to be moved upstairs. The zebra motioned an unicorn over as he stood over Caring Heart’s body, carefully moving the disturbed fur on her lower back. He could see scarring and singed fur under the mess of blood and viscera, which contradicted the sequence of events he’d assumed to be true.

“Sir?” The young sounding unicorn asked. Kamos could hear fear and hesitation in the stallion’s voice, so he assumed him to be one of the ponies that had felt sick.

“You’re not in trouble, calm down. You have a medical background, have a look at this and tell me what you think.” Kamos stepped back and let the unicorn lean over the wound and concentrate his magic into it. He then moved on to the knife lodged in the dead mare’s eye and shifted the edge of the wound carefully with a hoof.

“She was cut with a heated blade, but the cut is far too clean to be caused by the knife in her eye, the cheap metal would have warped as it was heated. These are not from the husband attacking her, the cuts are far too exact to be done by an accountant with no combat training, but they are also not lethal or disabling. I think these were made by a heated surgical blade and then the cauterized flesh was closed using an acidic compound. The technique is used in high-risk operations to stop tissue regeneration during the procedure when halting the administration of healing spells and poultices would endanger the patient.”

“It’s also used when operating on hydras and other animals with high regenerative ability, so we could be dealing with someone with a veterinary background. This unknown assailant knew of Priest and extracted something from Caring Hearts body before we arrived here. Check if Priest is still in there and try and see what was extracted.” Kamos hurried off to send out pegasi to scour the surrounding countryside for the assailant. If they had been the one to both stop Caring Heart and operate on her body with heated blades, then they’d most likely be too drained to teleport away or maintain a cloaking spell. There was a real chance of catching someone who could give them a lead to whoever was orchestrating this tragedy.

“You’re looking for an unicorn carrying internal organs extracted from one of the victims, so look for modified saddlebags, carriages pulled by one pony and trade caravans carrying passengers. GO!” Kamos ordered to the idle pegasi waiting by the carriages. The squad leaders of the pegasi saluted quickly before jumping into the air and splitting their subordinates into teams and spreading out along the roads and paths around the mansion. One low to scour the ground and one above to signal for reinforcements and give assistance, as they’d been trained twice over. Kamos turned around to keep going over the evidence on the scene, only to bump into the retreating form of the unicorn healer assigned to look over the remains. The colt’s rigid posture and hasty exit were completely justified as Kamos glanced behind him and saw Caring Heart’s bloodied body stumbling upright.

“Do not let her touch you! Keep your distance and have your meanest offensive spells on the ready!” Kamos shouted out to snap his unicorns out of their shock. Caring Heart steadied herself on the wall, her head hung low and an intense hissing filling the silence as the metal blade of the knife slid out of her head, melted and distorted by the acidic sludge her left eye cried. Caring Heart stayed silent and leaning on the wall, breathing deep and ragged as the sludge in her wound reformed into a strikingly green eye. The eye spun around in it’s socket wildly for a moment before snapping to the hooded form of the unicorn in front of Kamos.

“What are you waiting for? Kill me!” Caring Heart pleaded in a raspy voice. Kamos could see the flesh under the mare’s skin writhing and shifting as her eye darted from hooded figure to hooded figure. The blood stuck on her coat shifted and disappeared as it was kneaded into her body to fuel the changes Priest was inducing in the mare’s body. Kamos had seen Priest transform and control Luna, but this was as far from healing someone you could get.

“GET ON WITH IT! YOU DON’T HAVE LONG!” Caring Heart shouted as the blood on her coat coagulated into a single spot on her side. Kamos watched the spot spread out onto a single line along her side with morbid fascination, shifting his head to the side to see if the line was bowing outward in the middle or if he was imagining it.

“NO!” Caring Heart wailed as there was a loud crack of a whip and Kamos felt the warmth of blood splatter on his neck and face. The zebra felt something scrape a chunk of flesh from his cheek and heard the unicorn in front of him fall to the ground dead, as his head was dragged back with the razor sharp appendage stretching out of Caring Heart’s side. Kamos could catch a glimpse of Caring Heart’s jaw unhinging and stretching to accommodate the size of the head as her eyes whirled around in panic, before the kitchen was awash with fire and lighting as the rest of the unicorns let their offensive spells fly.

“Bring up a containment bubble around the body immediately! We are done taking chances with this!” Kamos ordered into the thick cloud of burning kitchen and disintegrated matter. One unicorn lit up their horn to clear away the debris, but stopped short as another tendril skewered her right through the barrel and dragged her coughing and stumbling into the obscuring cloud. They could hear the mare’s coughing and struggling weaken and be muffled for a moment before the sound of flesh tearing and a wet gulp put a stop to it. He could hear a ragged sobbing inhale of breath before another wet crunching sound spurred him into action.

“Retreat! Get out of the house! Do not use magic!” Kamos hefted the headless corpse of the unicorn medic on his back and hurried out of the house. He’d lost two operatives already and Priest was obviously beyond reason. Luckily Priest seemed to be content to stay behind and eat the other casualty in his squad. An nigh immortal cannibal begging for suicide by guard had not been on the list of things he’d expected out of this, but here he was with another impossible decision. Priest had to stay intact for there to be any chance of reviving Luna using him, but so far any interaction with the human spirit had cost lives, so he had to choose between saving Luna and sacrificing more of the ponies that had entrusted their lives to him.

“Form a shield around the house! Trap this thing in before it follows us out!” Kamos carefully unloaded the limp body of the medical specialist next to the sky carriages they’d used to get there. The unlucky stallion’s head had been neatly cut off, with only minimal tearing at the edge of the wound. The blade had been thin and moving at great speed, but had dug into the flesh after the initial momentum had been spent. The fact the errant tip of the appendage had hurt his cheek meant that the appendage adhered to flesh either by its construction or some kind of adhesive. Given Priest’s ability to control the body to the degree of actually creating such an alien appendage in the first place, it could be both.

“Sir, how do we proceed?” The weary unicorn officer asked with a clear tone of distress in his voice. He’d lost two ponies in the same amount of minutes and one of them was still being devoured by the thing that killed both. Kamos could forgive some degree of bewilderment.

“Priest can control all functions of the body he is possessing, but seems to lack any way of communicating with his host. Caring Heart is another victim in all this, but any stress or injury she suffers causes Priest to react. We keep her contained and try not to interact with her, for now.” The unicorn nodded and hurried to relay his orders to the rest of the squad. Seeing two of their colleagues die horrifically sure gave the unicorns enough motivation to keep Caring Heart as far away from them as possible.

Kamos started trotting around the circumference of the shield the unicorns were projecting, trying to sort out the facts of what had just happened in his head. The amount of flesh Caring Heart had devoured so far did not match her current mass, so all that matter must have been metabolised into some other form. The fact that something had been cut out of the mare while she’d been incapacitated was a far too big of a coincidence not to be related. Two scars on either side of the spine meant it was most likely a pair of organs affected by Priest, or one created by the spirit. Kamos had no idea of the limits Priest’s ability had, so he couldn’t even give a guess as to what purpose said organ could serve.

Priest’s existence was a closely guarded secret even among the guard, but the assailant not only knew of Priest, but also knew how the spirit would affect Caring Heart before she was possessed. That would mean that they had a source of intel on the human spirits Kamos lacked and that was a frightening concept.

“I am sorry, I am so very sorry.” Kamos heard a raspy feminine voice croak out, followed by the sound of something heavy being dragged and then impacting the shield around the mansion. Kamos hurried to the part of the shield where Caring Heart stood, watching the nervous unicorn keeping the shield up with mild interest. She kicked the bundled up remains of somepony against the shield again and leveled her gaze at Kamos.

“You have most of her body to bury, that’s more than I have.” Caring Heart gave the bloodied bundle of cloth a glance before calmly trotting away, following the edge of the shield. Kamos hurried to follow the mare, deeming open dialogue a step in the right direction.

“The spirit in you is suppressing all extreme emotional responses before your mind becomes aware of them. That is why you are not… broken by what has happened to you.” Kamos carefully explained to the monotonous mare. Priest might have suppressed emotional responses, but that didn’t mean Caring Heart was not unhinged. Caring Heart stopped moving after reaching the opposite side of the shield, deliberately turning her body to face Kamos. There was another awkward silence as Caring Heart scanned her teeth with her tongue and smacked her lips.

“Blood, bone, muscle, tendons, intestines, brain matter, spinal fluid, nerve tissue; all the things that came together to make my beautiful little Golden Sprout…I know what my child tastes like. There is no going back after that.” The mare paused her frighteningly detached monologue to spit out a tooth. Kamos did not think it was hers. “I might not be able to break down, but I am no longer whole.”

“We can help you. We have a way to extract the -”

“No.” Caring Heart did not raise her voice, but she did slam her hoof on the shield with enough force to make a sharp and clear note ring on the surface of the shield. Kamos saw that the unicorns holding it up to take a step back in discomfort from the corner of his eye as the shield wavered. Kamos fought back the urge to take more than a few steps back from the mare. He knew of maybe two earth ponies capable of making the shield spell his unicorns were using ring like that through pure physical power and they were highly-trained behemoths among ponies.

“I’ve had enough of your help. I am not asking for release from this spirit you want back. I want to die!” Caring Heart took a step back from the shield, gritted her teeth and slammed her horn into the shield. There was an ear-splitting screech as lightning in all the colours of the rainbow raged where Caring Heart had been. Kamos knew that it was painful for an unicorn to be hit on the horn by unfamiliar magical energy, so he could only imagine the pain from hitting your horn on solidified arcane energy of several ponies would cause. Kamos took a few steps back from the glaringly bright light show and squinted his eyes to see the unsteady form of Caring Heart at the centre of it.

“A bad way to go.” The nearby unicorn mused as the colorful storm of energy started to dissipate. Caring Heart’s form was starting to come back into view through the shimmering field. The shield spell was meant to contain unicorns, so the explosion of energy had not fazed the unicorns holding it up. The last arc of light danced across the inside of the shield and Kamos saw blood spurt from the shattered stump of Caring Heart’s horn. Caring Heart gave a weary sigh and closed her eyes, only for them to shoot open with bright red irises and jet black sclera as soon as her body hit the ground. The glowing red eyes whirled around independently, scanning the shield and the unicorns holding it up.

Kamos perked his ears as he could hear a faint hissing coming from Caring Heart’s body. He shifted to the side and grimaced at the sight of the two symmetrical wounds on Caring Heart’s lower back bubbling and leaking out a dark maroon liquid that snaked its way around her body. Kamos stood there, watching the strange substance solidify into a skeletal framework of what looked like coagulated blood around Caring Heart’s body, bracing her limp body up. The liquid moved and shifted constantly, shuffling her hooves about in a way reminiscent to the dancing marionettes that plaque Canterlot’s street corners whenever there’s a festival or function that draws in enough tourism.

“Gah!” Kamos snapped back from his daydreams of inflicting pain on unsuspecting puppeteers as the unicorns holding up the shield recoiled back and a sharp whine sounded from the wavering surface. The zebra didn’t think that Priest would stop his attack after one failed attempt and jumped back, drawing in a breath to order the unicorns to reduce the shield to only compass Caring Heart, but he had to duck down and clamp his teeth together as Priest’s second attack lashed out and shattered the containment shield with a deafening crack of thunder and an instant flash of light.

A part of his hood and strands of his mane drifted across his vision as the spear like appendage flowing out of Caring Heart’s body redacted and whipped back to block the offensive spells his unicorns were throwing at the unconscious mare, a faint glimmer of red in the viscous liquid intensifying every time it had to reform after being blasted away by a spell.

“Keep attacking and do not give it a chance to retaliate! Anypony not specialized in offensive spells start casting a stasis spell!” Kamos pulled out his blow gun and shot three darts at Caring Heart. The ever-flowing appendages swatted two of the three poisonous projectiles away in flashes of red, but the third struck home on Caring Heart’s barrel. It took only a few seconds for the network of strange liquid holding Caring Heart upright to start flashing with a red light in the rhythm of the mare’s erratic heartbeat. The nerve-toxin he’d used caused the complete failure of the autonomous nerve functions within minutes, so it should at least slow down Priest, if Caring Heart’s survival was a priority. He could see the mass of the transforming liquid lessen as the poison kept doing its work and more of the substance flowed back into the mare’s body to combat the effects.

“Stasis spell, now!” Kamos hurried the anxious unicorns. They’d lost a few too many ponies to leave anything to chance, but it was obvious Priest didn’t react well to being attacked and might have been a tad biologically immortal. It might have been a taxing solution for whoever kept it up, but a stasis spell would at least stop Priest long enough for them to formulate a better plan.

In all fairness, it did seem like the stasis spell was working. The movement of the weird liquid was slowing and the red glint to it was dimming as the magic encompassed Caring Heart’s body. Those disturbing red irises moved sluggishly from unicorn to unicorn as the molten shield around the mare crumbled to hug the skin like a sheet drenched in blood. Kamos thought that Priest had given up on attacking and closed ranks to concentrate on dealing with the poison destroying Caring Heart.

He realized he was wrong when the sheet of liquid slid off of Caring Heart’s body and revealed an insect-like exoskeleton writhing on top of Caring Heart’s body. Those sluggish irises snapped from staring at Kamos to the unicorn casting the stasis spell. That was all the warning he and the unicorn got before Caring Heart lunged toward them in a manner more reminiscent of an out of water octopus than an actual pony.

It was a terrifying thing to watch the strange armor encompassing Caring Heart twisting her body to slide and tumble her way toward them, extending a hoof to drag herself forward, distorting the rest of her body to the side to dodge an incoming spell, twist her midsection around 180 degrees just so it could use the legs to propel itself forward, then violently flinging the hooves back to slap away a blast of fire. It was terrifying and wrong in more ways than Kamos could count, but he’d lost enough ponies that day to step back from this. He dipped a straight dagger in poison, clamped the handle in his teeth and rushed to stab the exposed flesh of the hoof Priest had used to repel the latest spell.

His blade struck true and Priest recoiled back, the wound spurting out blood as the armor around it forced most of the poison out of the wound before encompassing it again. A sliver of glowing red remained on the surface of the reformed armor, so at least Kamos knew the poison was having some kind of effect. He’d have to wait for times when the armor had to reform for his poisons to have any effect, but distracting the homicidal spirit was more than enough to give his unicorns a fighting chance of bringing it down.

“Don’t mind me! Keep attacking it!” Kamos ordered as he pulled his dagger out of his mouth and tried to stab at those unfeeling red eyes, the most obvious weak spot in Priest’s armor. He saw a subtle writhing on the remains of Caring Heart’s horn and let go of the dagger just in time to stop his hoof from being impaled by a crystallized spear of whatever the armor was made of. It was needle thin and cut through his dagger with no difficulty, so he was convinced that no ordinary blades would penetrate the armor. He jumped back just in time to not be overwhelmed by the inferno of flames that hit the prone abomination. He could hear the hiss and crackle as the writhing armor boiled off of Caring Heart’s body, but he could also make out movement in the maelstrom of fire and super-heated air.

“It got Mustang! Freeze it, kill it, blow it up!” A mare unicorn screamed as the dagger Priest had wrenched from him shot out and the handle embedded itself in another unicorn’s eye, giving him the appearance of having another far meaner horn. The poison was in the blade, so hopefully the stallion would only lose the eye.

Kamos rushed in just as the fire cleared out and the sizzling form of Caring Heart writhed back to life. One eye was covered in writhing scar tissue and the other was looking at the screaming unicorn, so Kamos had his chance to aim at the exposed flesh right under Caring Heart’s chin. Brain death of the host had stopped Priest before, so Kamos could only hope it would work again. The blade penetrated the skin easily, but he felt it hit something in her mouth and veer to the side to come out of her cheek rather than penetrating the brain. Caring Heart’s mouth cracked open and Kamos could see a glimmer of red reflected on the glistening blade of his dagger. He let go of the dagger and tried to step back, but a velvety darkness crashed down on him before he could get away.

“That’s enough.” Kamos heard Luna’s voice call out in a calming voice and the muffled sounds of the unicorns in his squad yelling something. He could feel warmth all around him and the darkness felt soft and relaxing. Could the afterlife really be this simple of a thing? A comforting darkness to rest and forget your worries?

“No more death.” Luna decreed as she stood up and unfurled the wing she’d used to shield him. Kamos felt a pang of embarrassment, but stepped away from the princess and surveyed the situation. There was another sky carriage landing next to the ones they’d used and the stallion with one of his daggers in his eye was being carried to meet the healers riding on it. Luna had one of her hands extended towards the small mansion and her fingers had a indigo glow around them. The hole in the wall told him what had happened to Caring Heart.

“Princess, you should not be here.” Kamos commented as he took stock of all the injuries on Luna. The Princess of the Night did not look fit to be out of bed, let alone involved in a capture of a dangerous spirit. There was a bleeding scratch on the wing she’d used to shield Kamos, but that was not where her injuries stopped. She was out of breath and sweating with a feverish tint to her cheeks and Kamos could feel the heat radiating from her body. There were snake-like bruises running up her arms and on every part of her body he could see and he could see swelling at the joints of her arm. Her eyes were bloodshot and both sported sickly green shadows and Kamos noticed a burst vein on her right eye as she turned to address him, giving her sclera a bright red tint.

“I know I am barely staying upright, but I refuse to succumb to the will of this monster to regain the illusion of health it gave me. I’ll gladly trade the cold indifference it gave me to this constant ache and emotional turmoil. What happened to her family, Kamos? I will know if you lie to me.” Luna brought her other hand up and one of Kamos’ daggers floated out, enveloped in the aura of her magic. The dagger shot into the dark house with a flick of her fingers and there was a meaty “thunk!” as it struck its mark. Luna relaxed both of her arms and turned to Kamos as her knees gave out. Kamos glanced at the healers running to the princess with concern etched on their faces and then looked back at the tired and determined eyes of his sworn princess.

“Priest’s power manifested in Caring Heart at a time when she was alone with her son. She devoured her son and a part of her husband against her will to hypothetically produce a pair of organs on her lower back that produced that living armor she is covered in right now. An unknown assailant arrived at the scene at this time and subdued both Priest and Caring Heart by inducing brain death with a heated kitchen knife inserted through the ocular cavity, to cut out this pair of organs. Priest then killed two ponies in my squad to devour them and supposedly regenerate this mysterious pair of organs. Priest’s current violent outburst is the result of Caring Heart’s attempt at suicide by shattering her horn on the shield we set up to contain her.” Luna’s eyes grew wider and wider the more Kamos explained to her and when he was finally done. Luna turnedtoward the mansion and set her jaw and tried to blink away the tears as her eyes wandered to the blood-stained window on the second floor.

“I could have… This is my fault.” She shifted here and there before bringing one of her hands to her face and letting out a strangled sob. Kamos could see her slender fingers digging into her cheek as she struggled to force the emotional outburst down. The healers hovered over the distraught diarch and shuffled uncomfortably, casting nervous glances at the mansion and the bloodied bundle being carried to one of Kamos’ carriages. Luna stayed quiet as her rapid breathing slowly calmed and she raised a hand toward the mansion again.

“This whole thing is because I showed undue kindness toward a monster I empathized with. Fenrir should have died ignorant and happy, his pain should have ended before he could spread it any further.” The points of the fingers she was holding out started glowing, the light intensifying steadily as the glow spread to Luna’s eyes.

Kamos felt his hooves leaving the ground and he scrambled to gain purchase on something. After stabbing one of his remaining knives into the ground he saw that everything in the immediate area was experiencing the same anomaly in gravity. He grabbed the unicorn healer closest to him and saw members of his squad doing the same whenever they could. The carriages were starting to float off the ground and all the flora around them stood up straighter and some were even pulled out of the ground to float up into the sky with the loose pebbles and anything not nailed down. Kamos saw the effect spreading across the grass and trees in the distance as the light coming from Luna kept growing in intensity.

“No more pain will come from this.” Luna muttered as she closed her fist and trapped the light in it. There was a moment where his body was pushed up toward the sky before the gravity returned with enough force to slam them down with enough force to punch the air out of his lungs. He heard Luna crumble to the ground and the unicorn healer rush to check on her as he took a few incredulous steps toward the spherical crater in the ground where a homy summer home had been just a moment ago.

“I knew Luna was the one with the reported affinity for gravitational magic, but this… we have to get that other spirit out of her before what happened to Caring Heart happens to our highness.” The weary unicorn officer commented as he trotted over to the edge of the crater. Kamos nodded as he decided to give the stallion a raise and every other surviving unicorn a bonus.

“We’re done here. Let’s clean up and then collaborate with the guard to decide on an official story.” The unicorn flicked his hood back up and then trotted to relay the orders to the unicorns still standing. Some of the unicorns that had been attacking Priest were suffering from arcane exhaustion, but Kamos could see the pegasi returning from their search in the distance, so they should be able to pack up quick enough. He did not see a captive among the groups of pegasi, so the mysterious surgeon had been able to escape.

Kamos felt far more drained than a half an hour operation should have left him, but he had to admit that the colt’s gruesome death still managed to bother him. Destroying Priest along with Caring Heart was not the most rational choice, but given the horror the spirit had brought upon this desperate family in such a short amount of time, he couldn’t blame Luna for reacting in the way she did. Priest had no regard for the lives of anyone other than the one he was possessing and that fact alone made him a danger to all around him, along with whoever he resided in by proxy. It was better for all involved that Luna had been able to survive without the help of the spirit.

“You promised nopony would die in this! You told me it would be the colt!” Smuggler grimaced as whatever bullshit arcane frequency he was tapping into screamed at whatever collection of energy simulated the function of auditory receivers. He chose to picture the situation as his human projection holding an old-timey phone, but the intricacy of the situation still lingered just below the surface. “She begged me to end it, to stop her from hurting anypony else. She was drenched in blood, you bastard! What in tartarus did you drag me into?!”

“Something must have triggered Priest before the mother got to the colt. The kakuhou you extracted were supposed to be comprised of the diseased and cancerous tissue from the colt, so when Priest started the procedure of generating them in a healthy body, he had to get the cancerous tissue from somewhere. It was the colt that had taken the nutritional supplements meant to replace that tissue, as well.” Smuggler strengthened the link between his consciousness and the irate stallion and perused his short term memory for a variable he’d missed. The spirit catalogued the aesthetically pleasing flora around the mansion and found his answer.

“Priest reacted to the mother’s allergic reaction to a flower in the garden at the front of the house. Her file mentions a pollen allergy, but doesn’t tell the genus of the plant she is allergic to. An allergic reaction would seem far more serious from Priest’s point of view, so I believe we have our cause to this unfortunate effect.” Smuggler explained and then dulled the sensory feedback from the arcane frequency as the stallion went on to voice his indignation and horror at being a part of such a travesty. He silenced the stallion by strengthening their connection to the point that the stallion materialized in his mindscape and saw him in all his twisted glory.

“You are an accomplice to manslaughter, illegal medical experimentation and the conspiracy to treason. It is in your best interest to stay complacent.” Smuggler reached beyond the frightened stallion’s facade and found an annoying seed of doubt about staying quiet. Smuggler allowed himself a burst of annoyed anger and yanked the stallion’s mind almost clear of his body. The separation would cause the body indescribable pain when the detached mind slammed back in, hopefully driving his point home.

“Your role in this is over and your future is all but secured with that little invention I shared with your puny mind. You are an insignificant cog in the machine of my making and if you make the right choice and disappear, you might dissuade me from visiting the hell you are whining about witnessing on those you love.” Smuggler let the connection weaken back to only conveying information on the level of spoken words and felt a bit of glee at seeing that seed of doubt shivering and dying in the face of the fear the stallion felt. He cut the connection with a feeling of satisfaction. The stallion might gather up the courage to come clean to the authorities in time, but the chances of that happening in time to hinder his plan were astronomically small.

“You really went beyond the call of duty, #87. You are lucky your loss of consciousness can be explained away with exhaustion, or we would be having this conversation in a whole different tone.” Smuggler noted as a part of his indescribable form started stitching together the mental projection of Luna sharing his mindscape.

“Caring Heart could not survive long enough to be questioned. If I had chosen to spare the mare, you would have ordered her death before any useful information could be forced out of her, regardless of my simulated feelings. Termination of Priest’s host was unfortunate, but unavoidable. Everything would have ended so much happier if Silver Seal had know about the nature of his wife’s allergies. It is truly the smallest of things that can cause the most brilliant of plans to come tumbling down.” Arcane construct number eighty seven stated with an adoring smile gracing her stitchwork features in the strange light of Smuggler’s domain.

“Good girl, #87! You are surely making your late sisters proud.” Smuggler cooed at the childish adoration of the arcane construct and allowed his mind to touch the artificial intelligence. He sighed in relief as he found out that the emotional response was a part of her obedience programming, the AI had not gained true sentience. It was not like he would mind replacing Luna’s mind with a childish AI, but he had far too many stories of such a scenario going horribly wrong in his overly detailed memories that he was sure to avoid even the possibility of being the cause of it.

“Be sure to keep the Artificial Body Project in schedule and we will be golden. Right about anything else is up to your personal discretion. My earlier character will explain almost any erratic behaviour, after all.” Smuggler sniggered as he went back to work on repairing his artificial copy of Luna’s psyche. Ponies were so easy to manipulate, not to mention the array of ways magic gave him to cheat on this challenge of it.

Author's Notes:

There it is. Smuggler has a plan and it is glorious.