A loud roaring noise woke me from my heart rending memories. Why did I have to come back to this? Damn it, why?! Fuck this world and everything in it, they’d taken my Meadow from me…those…those bastards, those…

Where was I? Everything was moving and dark, rain, no…salt water, was splashing my face and my legs were bound. I managed to look down and saw that my hind legs were shackled to what looked like a length of chain and a cannonball. Luna fuck me, I knew what they had in store for me now, why couldn’t they have just killed me and had done with it.

“He’s coming to, boss” A black stallion next to me said flatly. Blaze walked over, she was wearing water proofs against the waves that the boat was ploughing through.

“Rough night eh, Captain?” she said grinning ominously.

“Yeah, depends whether you’re dragging a cannonball around with you or not though. Whats the plan Blaze, going to dump me overboard?”

For a moment, she looked unsure, sad, but then the tough expression was back.

“I’m sorry Captain Fairlight, it has to be like this. We can’t have you wandering around interfering in our business, you know too much”

Shit, this was going to be it then, a terrifying, drowning death in the black depths of the sea. I tried to reach down and find the power, but typically when I needed it the most, the bloody thing was like a scared cat hiding under the bed.

“I need to ask you though Captain, how did you catch on to me?”

I smiled despite myself, despite the cold and the spray hitting me, “It wasn’t too hard Blaze. You left a few breadcrumbs after all”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, the boxes, addressed to a house belonging to a dead pony. The house surrounded in watch pony crime scene tape? Had to be somepony who knew I wouldn’t be coming back. Kinda narrowed it down a touch”

“That could have been anypony in the watch though”

“True, but then who has control of the evidence in a case where a watch pony dies? The Watch Chief. The pony that came to collect the boxes used a key to get into the house.”

“Supposition, and not enough to get you hanged, Captain.”

“No, but someponies working on the inside, both at the watch and the agency. How else did you know it was me on the gantry?”

The big Pegasus mare laughed, “Yeah, that’s true, there’s always someone who’ll sell their soul for bits, or to ‘scratch an itch’. You have an uncanny knack of pissing ponies off Captain, and our client has asked for us to give you…’special treatment’”.

“And this is it?”

“I’m sorry, it’s just business, you understand?”

“Oh, I understand Blaze, you’ve sold out your friends and your soul for money. I thought more of you, I thought you thought more of yourself”

“You self righteous prick! Don’t you fucking dare try to lecture me!”

I could feel the strength inside just starting to free itself, I encouraged it forth, teased it out.

“Get him over the side and lets get back home”

“Oh Blaze?” I called as the brutish ponies grabbed at each end.

“What?” she said irritably.

“I’ll be seeing you…”

The world tipped upside down and I hit the water with a deafening splash. Gravity sucked on me and down I went, what little light there was vanishing quickly as I plunged into the inky black of the oceans depths. Memories of my near drowning as a foal came back and a surge of panic and fear squeezed my heart and strangely, a peculiar calm, maybe now I could be at peace…

My lungs filled with water, the last of my air bubbling back up to the surface. Struggling was pointless, but I did anyway. My body burned, my lungs were on fire despite the freezing sea water. Pain and panic began to ebb as my life faded away, it wouldn’t be long now, I kept saying to myself, not long.

“Are you just going to sit there and die?” the spirit asked, sitting there watching me with my own blue eyes, “Don’t you want the chance to live, to take revenge for what they’ve done to you?”

“What the point?”, I thought back at the thing, “It’s too much, everypony is pulling at one another, trying to grab what they can at the expense of their fellows. I don’t know who to trust anymore”

“What about the orange mare? You like her, don’t you?”

“No, she’s my friend…she cares for me”

The spirit laughed, its voice echoing and insubstantial, “Fool yourself all you want, I know your heart, pony, and I know you. I can feel the anger within you, hidden in
plain sight. You want to take revenge on the ponies who killed your wife, and your child”

“Shut up!”

“What about the thestral? She waits for you. If you are dead, how can you find her? This time, you may not stay in the Wither world, you may cross over completely and then who will save her?”

“Shut up damn you! Shut the fuck UP!”

The spirit chuckled, “I know who you really are pony, who you were, his blood runs in your veins. His strength is within you, if only you had the strength of heart to use it”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“There is another way….”

“What do you want from me?”

“You already know. We must become one, fully, you and I. You want this, as I do. Together, we can be strong and not divided as we are now. When the time is right, we will find a way to merge as we should have.”

“I don’t understand, who are you?”

It laughed, “Me? I am you. Listen! Can you hear them? Your people call out to you, will you ignore their call?”

Somewhere in the back of my mind I could hear voices, calling to me. Sirens singing me to the afterlife. Regardless of what the spirit said, the reality of the situation was at the bottom of the sea. I was dying and there was nothing I could do to save myself.

An unfamiliar voice rang through my tortured, fading self, “I believe I will take care of matters from here on in. You may wish to die, but more depends upon you than you could possibly know and now is not the time for selfish acts like dying.”

The voice was strong, powerful and full of magic, “Give your trust to me, release your self into my hooves. Yes…that’s right, good…now Fairlight, watch and learn my friend.”

My lungs, burning for air, suddenly filled with a new kind of magic…I could breath! Sweet goddesses, I couldn’t believe it…air. The magic of the spirit raged through me, freezing the water down to the chain binding my hind legs and splintered the metal like it was matchwood. Upward the energy coursed making my muscles bulge, straining my bindings until the ropes on my forelegs split apart.

The horn lock on my head which should have blocked my magic, exploded into fragments that floated away past my head in the swirling water. The voice spoke again, “Now, Fairlight, use your magic to take you up, up to the night sky. Think of the moon and how it glows, the stars sparkling like diamonds on black velvet, you can make it happen. Will it to be so and it will be.”

The will to live screamed though, lending me an ever increasing strength which I focussed like an arrow, concentrating on the surface, willing myself upward to reach it with outstretched hooves. Behind me, the water boiled and froze simultaneously, an impossible mix of magics bending reality and physics, forming a pillar of ice and boiling water which acted like a gigantic spring, rising upwards at a phenomenal rate. Atop that pillar, a pure white wendigo, eyes blazing bluer than the ocean around them. Whatever the voice was, whoever it was, had lit a fire within me, rocketing my body up to the surface like a shooting star. I bared my teeth and goddesses help anypony who got in my way.

The night sky was probably the most wonderful sight I had beheld in a very long time. Pure, clear and welcoming, it felt like…home. I stood there, atop a white and blue column of ice, coughing out the fluid in my lungs that had, goddess knows how, kept me alive. I shook out my wings, water sloughing off them and screeched my defiance out into the night. That bitch Blaze would pay for this, oh yes, she would soon find that nopony who dared to challenge the lord of the four winds would live to see another dawn.

Shaking my mane and coat, I took a grip of myself. When the hell had I started thinking of myself as the ‘lord of the four winds’? Was this something the spirit had put within me or was it some stupid idea Luna shoved in my head with all that lord and lady nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the sound of it, in fact I thought it was, well…quite cool I suppose. But Fairlight, the pony from the Manehattan watch was a far cry from any nobility and who the hell wanted to be the master of a pile of frozen ruins in the middle of nowhere? I sniggered to myself, bollocks to that one!

A few experimental shakes later and my wings were ready for flight. Ready for the big orange Pegasus coming right…at…me…

One bone jarring impact later, Tingles and I picked ourselves up from the home made ice berg. Her eyes brimmed with tears while she hung on to me like her life depended on it. I stood there for a while, feeling her warmth through my coat. I didn’t deserve a friend like her, I was a mess and things were complicated enough without…well, more complicated ‘stuff’. It didn’t mean I didn’t want to though.

Tingles hugged me until I thought something was going to break, “Tingles! For goodness sake, get off! You’re going to suffocate me!” I wheezed. Reluctantly, she let go and stood back, taking me in and glancing around at the solid ice with the waves lapping at its edges,

“Celestia’s grace, Fairlight, I thought you were…oh goddess, no, I didn’t believe you were, I…”

I held out a hoof, “Calm down! Please love, just…talk to me as we get out of here. I want to get to dry land and I don’t know where in Equestria we are.”

She shook herself and looked at me in a very peculiar way, opening her mouth to speak, closing it, then trying again. Finally, she actually said something, “We’re at the mouth of the bay, lands a few miles back that way. Come on, we can talk as we fly”

A light bound and we were flying back towards the lights of Manehattan.

“How did you know where I was?”, I asked, genuinely amazed at how she had located me literally miles from shore.

She laughed and looped effortlessly through the air around me, “When I dropped off the kid, I came looking for you. There was a pile of clothes, a sword and all your gear in a pile on the shoreline. Couple of the agency ponies came with me and thought you’d…you know…”

“Yeah, I get the picture”, I said levelly. They’d actually thought I’d done myself in had they? I couldn’t blame them really, I didn’t exactly inspire confidence with my scary eyes, scar and broken horn. They probably hoped I had gone off and drowned myself so they could have breakfast in peace without the weird pony next to them.

“I didn’t believe it, couldn’t, not you. You’ve too much life in you, so much to live for. So, I flew out and here you are!”, Tingles barrel rolled happily.

“Here I am…” I sighed, I didn’t know what to say. She’d believed in me, trusted me and flew out here in the dark and cold, miles from land and searched for what? Was she expecting to find me floating out here somewhere, having an evening swim? That was when I saw something I’d never really actively noticed before, Tingles’ cutie mark. Three ice cubes on her flank, cute really, maybe she had been destined to work in a cocktail bar, or a huge passenger liner like the Maretania. Whatever it was, fate had decided otherwise and lumbered the poor girl with me.

“Hey! Whatcha looking at back there?”, she jibed.

“Sorry, its your cutie mark, I’ve never really asked what the three ice cubes represented.”

“My special talent, didn’t you know?”

“I know that! Everypony does, I’m not that stupid.”

She giggled, flying upside down and waving her legs like she was walking – how did she do that?

Tingle explained, “Dad thought I was destined to be a cocktail girl”, ‘nailed it’ I thought to myself, “Or an ice sculptor”

“Must be a big call for that then”, I said sarcastically.

Shit, me and my big mouth. Tingles flew down and bopped me on the head with a hoof, “Don’t be cheeky!” she laughed and flew a loop around me again.

“Dad liked sculpting, he worked with stone and bronze mostly. Mums a teacher in Canterlot at the magic school. Me, well…fate brought me to a different vocation.”

I watched her barrel rolling beside me, she truly was in her element in the sky. I had been jealous of pegasi and here I was, with wings of my own, even if they were kind of ‘loaned’. Flying together was a strange experience, a sort of intimacy which I hadn’t really though of before.

“You like them?” she asked flying closer to me.

“The ice cubes? Your cutie mark? Yeah, its actually, kinda cute. Really goes with your colour, the orange and green.”

She blushed and suddenly shot straight up into the sky, damn it I said too much. Fuck me and my big bloody mouth. I didn’t know where my stuff was, and now Tingles had flown off somewhere, so all I could do was ‘follow my nose’.

I flew on for a few more minutes, the waves far below me, until in the distance I saw torches and lanterns moving this way and that on the shoreline. Something told me that was my reception committee, waiting, more likely, for Tingles. Only…she was already there, smirking at me as I landed.

“Took you long enough, get lost?”

Oooh! That bloody Pegasus! “Hey thanks for buggering off and leaving me, how do you know I wasn’t going to get lost out there?”

“Friend sense, all pegasi have it. I can home in on you from a mile away, several to be truthful. Works better when you’re not drowning though.”

I walked up to her and fixed her big green eyes with a hard stare before bursting out in laughter. That bloody Pegasus, that annoying, crazy, beautiful tangerine flying nuisance. Goddesses, I…

She bopped me on the forehead with a hoof, “Heads up ‘agent Nox’, the boss is here, act casual.”

I nearly burst out laughing again as the pony I first met in charge of Delta team at the post office approached me. I saluted him and he gave a nod, “Good to see you Nox, and you agent Tingles. Would you excuse us please?”

Tingles nodded and walked away to where the rest of the agents were running magical energy detectors over the foreshore and, by the looks of it, my gear. The slim pony turned to me, “I don’t think we’ve been formerly introduced”, he held out a hoof, which I shook, “Agent Brandy Wine, senior agent with Equus. I know who you are of course, Captain Fairlight, aka Agent Nox.”

I was a little surprised by this announcement but then probably a lot less than I would have been normally. Agent Brandy Wine had the look of a stallion who got things done.

“I suggest returning to your ‘normal’ state as soon as possible”, he said smiling wryly, “you look very ‘alicorny’ like that and its bad enough with all the rumours of alicorns in Manehattan, other than the princesses of course, without more of them appearing.”

Brandy Wine winked at me conspiratorially. I kinda liked this guy, I think he was going to be alright to deal with. I released the power and felt myself returning to normal, normal and cold. Bloody hell it was freezing out here! I shook my coat off and Brandy Wine called one of the agents over with my overcoat and other assorted accoutrements. Within no time, the comfortable and familiar feeling of my old clothes was bringing warmth back to my bones.

“Thanks, sir”, I said gratefully.

“Brandy will do, Nox. But please, remind Tingles not to keep calling you Cap, Captain or goddesses forgive me, ‘Fairlight’. If somepony hears, it could get very messy for all of us.

“I understand sir…Brandy…I’ll speak to her tonight.”

He nodded, “Come on, we’ll get a hot cuppa and have a chat about what happened out here tonight.”

The two of us spoke at length about what had happened that night, Brandy taking it all in and making notes. He was an insightful unicorn, his black and silver dappled coat was quite striking and his maroon eyes were hard to look away from. They had a strange way of looking right into you, like he was assessing your honesty.

Finally, Brandy spoke, “Unlike your last team leader, you’ll find I’m a lot more flexible. The Mistress asked me specifically to give you more free reign and I’m going to do it now, Nox”

I cocked my head to one side quizzically, “Last team leader, you mean Warlock?”

He nodded, “Yes, the mistress has re-assigned him to…other duties. You are with me now, and before you ask, Tingles is too. I have been told that you two come as a package.”

He gave me that wry smile again and I couldn’t help but feel a little intimidated by him for some reason. He knew things, this pony, and I would do well to keep him on side.

He downed a mouthful of the hot tea and stretched, “So then, Nox, whats your next move.”

“I…”, I hadn’t really thought about it, other than smashing my way into the watch house and taking Blaze down, but caution was the order of the day here.

“I want to speak to the foal, sir”

“The foal…the one Tingles brought in earlier?”

“Yes sir”.

“Why? You think he knows something?”

“I do, he mentioned his mother and sister were ‘taken’. I want to know what he knows, there could be more to this business than just a crooked cop.”

Brandy nodded and looked towards the other agents who were sat about chatting in the lamplight, “It is more than just a crooked cop Nox, and you know it too, don’t you?”

I nodded, “The commissioner”.

He grinned humourlessly, “The commissioner. Bent as a rubber bit”. He took out a cigarette and fished for a light before I held up a hoof, stopping him, and lit it with a spark of magic from my horn. He raised his eyebrows and took a draw, “Cigarette?”

“No thanks”, I replied, “they’re bad for your health”.

“So is drowning” He had me there.

“The commissioner is somehow connected to this mess.”, Brandy explained, “The Mistress tells me that she had you suspended from work and that she was implicated somehow with the firebombing of several ponies homes who had been involved in counter-smuggling ops.”

I nodded, I knew all about that and I was damned glad he did too. There was always the chance nopony would believe me and this was like a weight lifting off my shoulders.

“The problem is, she has friends…powerful friends, with links to Celestia herself”.

“Shit”, I spat.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. The bitch is almost untouchable…almost. Why do you think the Mistress wanted your particular skills?”

“I’m not an assassin Brandy, you want to start murdering ponies, you can do it without my help.”

He held up a hoof, shaking his head, “Nopony said you were an assassin Nox, but there may come a time when evil is knocking at your door and hiding under the bed wont make it go away. I pray that time never comes, but if we don’t act soon, there may be no more Equestria worth saving.”

“Are things that bad?” I asked in surprise.

He shook his head slowly, “There’s a problem with ponies, Nox. You know it, I know it, its in all of us. As a race, we’re trusting and open, some would even say gullible. Its been a thousand years of peace and tranquillity that’s lead us to this point, to become a perfect target for those seeking to exploit us. All it takes is one pony to say, ‘hey, wanna try something new?’ and ‘boom’, you’ve got a new Ryetalin or Breeze head running around. We have to stop this at source, take the fight to them and I need you Nox, I need your strength to help us.”

“Then theres one thing I want Brandy” I said quietly.

He gave a short nod, his eyes focussed on the other agents, “Sure, what is it?”

“Let me deal with Blaze in my own way.”

He turned to me and stared for several seconds, weighing me up. I could sense him considering his options and come to a conclusion, “Okay, sure. But Nox, try to keep the body count under control?”

I grinned, “Yes sir, you know me”.

He gave me a sidelong glance, finishing off his tea, “Yes Nox, I suppose I know enough to know that I trust you. I may not approve of your methods particularly, they’re unorthodox, but I like a pony who gets results. You, get results. Grab your gear, arrange what you need and get to it. Keep me updated is all I ask.”

“One other thing Brandy”, I asked.

“What?”

“When I go after Blaze, find another task for Tingles that night. I don’t want anypony getting hurt.”

He nodded, “Okay, if that’s what you want. She won’t like it you know”

He was right of course, Tingles would flay me alive for it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of her getting hurt as much as I knew how effective an agent she was. I trusted her, but…I don’t know, I just work better alone sometimes. At least, that’s how I could justify it to myself. I’d get the job done, then the anger of the tangerine Pegasus would be like the wrath of the goddesses. Only worse…a lot worse.