Ill news is an unwelcome guest. The bringer of bad tidings will always be unfairly blamed for the message they bear.

News of Haven Hay had gone on ahead of their return. How could it not? Emergency hospital staff and doctors needed to be waiting on the platform the moment the train arrived, so as to stabilise and rush off the injured ponies to hospital.

The news of what had happened to Haven Hay was being closely controlled, however, and those that knew of the incoming train and that which it bore were quiet. With utterances of "the train" and "its cargo", the briefed railway officials, Guards, and hospital staff discussed their jobs in hushed voices. As though it were bad luck to voice it.

The train was coming, but it was not coming with good news. It was not carrying anypony who wanted to be on it, nor arriving where anypony was looking forwards to receiving it. It was as unwelcome as a plague ship, and not too different.

It was for this reason, then, (as well as the practical one of reaching the closest acceptably large hospital first, as opposed to the best one) that the train pulled not into Canterlot, but into Manehattan.

It pulled into a carefully selected siding, away from the public or anypony who might notice. Here the train finally jerked to a halt, with deathly-quiet uniformed ponies standing ready.

From the moment the last echoing wheels finished screeching to a drawn-out halt, muffled sounds of misery could be heard coming from inside.

The train drivers did not exit, the whistle wasn't blown, porters did not jump off and open doors. They stayed firmly inside and out of the way, letting the assembled group of security and first responders step up and enter for themselves. They were train workers. It wasn't their job any longer to have to face the ponies that were bleeding, crying, and dying inside.

No, that cold and heavy responsibility was now somepony else's burden to shoulder. The lead medic swallowed, ears laid back against the sounds coming from inside, before reflexively gripping his emergency kit more tightly in his aura as he reached for the first carriage’s door.

The ticket pony on Platform Three unsuccessfully tried to ignore the blistering morning sun blinding him while he sat in his booth and sweated.

At this time every morning it seemed, for about an hour between nine and ten, the sun would always hit Platform Three's ticket booth head on, blinding you as it bounced off the glass and made you feel like a goldfish in a greenhouse.

He always dreaded getting saddled working the ticket booth on Platform Three. It was the worst.

And it was even worse today, because of whatever was happening over in the siding. Maggy, his line manager, had been very tight lipped- lightly trotting around the why, just dropping words like; "priority", "confidentiality", and "official", as if that alone were supposed to explain everything.

Whatever the reason was, it meant that platforms Two and Three had been temporarily closed for the day, so as to not risk any "complications" involving "the general public", and the incoming "unscheduled train'. Maggy's words, not his.

All the hoof traffic and passengers were going to be shunted into using Platform One. But because of the rush and the restrictive oversight of salaried office ponies who were all in a tizzy about their precious timetables, the other staff still had to report to their normal places of work.

Leaving him sitting here in a sweltering ticket booth, surveying an empty platform, doing absolutely nothing.

That rankled, because he knew for a fact there were more useful things he could be doing. He was a pony who took pride in his work, for Celestia's sake! If there were actually ponies coming to get tickets that would one thing, but sitting here slowly boiling with nopony in sight was frankly aggravating.

Wicket tugged at the collar of his uniform, stuck hot and bothered in this booth with the sun near blinding him through the glass. Grumpily, he pulled off his uniform's cap and tried ineffectually to fan himself.

The platform outside of the window was empty and quiet.

Wicket nearly jumped out of his sweaty fur when the pony on the other side of the glass coughed.

A tall, thin, red pegasus, with a tatty looking cloak draped over his back. His lanky mane could have done with a good cut, as it was far too long for a stallion, and he could probably do with a good bath too, and- …and Wicket realised there was something wrong with the pegasus.

The other stallion's yellow eyes were boring through the glass into his own with uncomfortable intensity. His ears and face were off, too. Wicket swallowed. Why was he suddenly nervous?

"Good morning, and how can I help you today, sir?"

On the other side of the glass, the red stallion's face disturbingly didn't shift. His strange tufted ears didn't react as they were supposed to, didn’t react at all even. And he kept staring so rudely.

"Two tickets on the first train to Canterlot."

Wicket didn't know why it affected him so much. He didn't know what it was about those perfectly flat words that changed the pegasus from being weird, rude, and unkempt, to somehow threatening.

Wicket didn't like that. He firmly reaffixed his peaked cap, "Two tickets? Are you sure?"

That was a mistake. Wicket didn't know how or why, but something buried deep in instinct just knew he'd made a mistake and he immediately regretted it. Because the other pony looked just as deep into him as that instinct were buried. Just looked. Notions Wicket had never even thought to entertain in his peaceful life before now were suddenly running through his mind.

The feeling that this, another fellow pony, might be about to do him harm. Dark, uncertain fears flashed through Wicket's imagination. Of a hoof being punched through the glass pane separating them, and spikes of glass being driven through his eyes. Of a knife being drawn, and stabbed into his face. Of the tall red stallion stomping on his head over and over until his skull cracked under their horseshoe.

There was no justifiable reason for him to suddenly think that. No excuse for him to suddenly fear something so unreasonable. He'd never had any reason to fear for his life before, but his hammering heart refused to listen to his rational mind.

With a bolt of sticky fear, Wicket realised he'd just missed whatever the pegasus' answer had been.

He worked his jaw, wetting his rapidly drying mouth. "I'm sorry sir, I missed that. Could you please repeat it?"

The red stallion did in the same dead, flat tone, except this time Wicket actually made himself pay attention to the words. "I said; yes, tickets for the both of us."

Both? Two? His eyes hurriedly scanned across the platform. But no, he hadn't been blinded by the sun and somehow missed somepony. There was nothing else on the platform.

But it wasn't any of his business. If the scary pegasus wanted to buy two tickets then who was he, a working stallion who sold them, to say no?

"Right away sir. Two tickets for the one-oh'-one. That's, that's the next train departing for Canterlot. From Platform One. Over that way. That's… that'll be twenty-four bits please. Unless you have a governmental business exemption card..." Wicket's voice trailed away into nothingness. The stallion was still staring at him. Into him.

Through him.

There was a muffled clink. Wicket risked a very quick glance down to the counter. On it was a small bag of bits. Where in Celestia's name had that come from? He hadn't seen the pegasus move!

Nervously, he retrieved the little bag with his magic and swiftly tallied up the coins. Twenty-four bits.

He rang them up and pulled the ticket lever, ripping two tickets off the roll. "Here you are sir." He swiftly pushed the tickets under the glass- using his magic, not his hoof. The unreasonable part of himself didn’t want him to risk it.

Mechanically, the yellow-eyed stallion swept the two tickets off the counter. His stare slid off Wicket as he finally turned away, and Wicket had to hold in the breath of relief that almost escaped on suddenly being freed from their gaze. That would almost have drawn back the stallion’s attention.

The pegasus' hooves didn't seem to make enough noise on the platform as he walked, no, limped away. Then Wicket did a double-take as he realised the red stallion had a little white foal with him.

He hadn't noticed, the filly had been below the countertop the whole time, and that... that wasn't a foal. It was a small sheep. The thought seemingly slid through his mind like smoke and oil, but his heightened state of alarm snapped his focus back onto it.

That was why the stallion had wanted two tickets. A siren started blaring in Wicket's head. By Celestia, what was that stallion doing with a young white foal that obviously wasn't his, that wasn't even a pony?

What should he do? He needed to tell somepony in charge, and quickly. That pegasus had messed up if he were trying to foalnap some lamb, because he'd just bought tickets and so Wicket knew when and where he would be going. He just needed to quickly leave the booth and find his boss or one of the deputy managers-

The little lamb twisted their head back and looked over their shoulder. A sky-blue silken ribbon snatched Wicket's gaze- first to the almost liquid length of smooth silk, and then to the matching blue eyes of its wearer.

There was none of the light of foalhood in there. Just like the red pegasus' stare had, the blue eyes went right through him.

Wicket slowly sunk back into his seat. His previous determination deserted him. The lamb and the limping stallion's faces had been the same. The idea that this was a foalnapping or something seemed suddenly foolish. Wicket shuddered, actually shuddered like a spider had crawled up his cheek.

There was no foalnapping here. Whatever was happening, or had happened, those two were in it together.

A tiny, un-Harmonic voice in the back of his head whispered, 'Good. Better the two scary weirdos only hurt each other, and not anypony else.'

A toddling foal who looks up at their father with guileless innocence and asks, "Papa, what does failure mean?" might receive an answer something to the effect of:

"You know how you don't like losing to your brother? Failure is like that. Like losing over and over again."

The concerned foal might then rather predictably declare; "I don't think I like failure then."

To which the pony father might smile indulgently to himself, chuckle, and say, "Daddy doesn't like it either. But don't worry. Whenever you fail, I'll be there to pick you back up. It's part of growing up."

Getting back up no matter how many times life knocks you down is something that's expected of you. It's what grownups did, right? That's what everyone expects of you.

You need to learn to not hold on, to let it go, and then get back up. Because as long as you can do that, you can turn any failure into a learning experience. What was that quaint saying, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger"?

The foal grows up, enters adulthood, follows their dad's example, takes their licks from life and always comes out standing. They can stand proud with a stiff upper lip. And maybe that's the end of it. Maybe they never learn the further lesson, one their dad neglected to mention.

Or, one day, they get hit so hard they can't get back up. They lie on the floor, gasping, broken and bleeding, and only then do they realise that before that point, life had never properly hit them even once.

All those licks they'd taken? Those weren’t attempts to break them or knock them down. Because life does not care. It's like mother nature. It doesn't see you standing in its way, it doesn't have it in for you, it isn't petty or vengeful.

It doesn't even see you, in the same way the avalanche doesn't see the ant in its path.

And as you lie there broken, you realise the truth. That life will always win and will take everything from everyone in the end. All except the alicorns.

Not all failures are the same. Not all are of the same scale. Some of them can't be fixed or recovered from.

"Papa, what does failure feel like?"

To run and never arrive in time. To slip off a path, and only as you fall realise that the path were over an abyss. To wake up and learn that you will never be allowed to sleep again.

"What does failure taste like?"

Like biting into fresh warm bread and tasting only cold, gritty ash. Like being forced to gnaw on animal bones when you're starving. Like being deathly thirsty and only having the salty ocean to drink.

"And what does failure sound like?"

Listen. Can you hear the bitterness in the heart, hear the unspoken words caught in the throat? It sounds like silence.

The train of wounded had stopped in Manehattan, its occupants then rushed off to hospital.

It had been left up to Prey and Crimson to make their way from there back to Canterlot. Perhaps it had just been an oversight, or Nighthawk trusted that they would figure it out. The captain had an entire destroyed town and the injured survivors to deal with, after all. He'd made the judgement call, deciding that it was better for Prey and Crimson to leave Haven Hay, even if it meant they had to make their own way back.

Right or wrong, it still meant that Prey and Crimson were left alone with only their own miserable company, the last two of the ISND, without support. Not physical support, although Crimson was indeed injured, rather they were left without anyone to support them. Just the two of them, alone, left to stew in the silence.

Nimbus Feather and his two surviving subordinates had disembarked somewhere back in the Manehattan train station. Somewhere. Neither of them cared in the slightest where the winged trio had gone, or if they never left Manehattan at all.

Slowly, the train chugged towards Canterlot, the mountain only gradually growing larger out the window as the track curved lazily towards it. The lamb and the red pegasus sat alone on a bench. Silence surrounded them. Ponies entered and exited the train at every stop, the volume of conversation ebbing and flowing but slowly increasing as the capital came closer.

Yet no one tried to claim the empty bench across from the pair. Instinctively, all the ponies shied away, avoided even looking at them, and pretended they didn't exist.

The train chuffed closer. Slowly. Oh so agonizingly slowly.

The two of them sat together. Dirty, unkempt, and silent. They didn't exchange a word. Why would they? Why would they talk about their failure? They'd failed. This silence was the consequence of their failure.

How were they going to tell Scenic, Lilly, Carton, Saffron, any of them? Would they even be able to say a word then, when they couldn't now?

They just couldn't... couldn't face even the thought of the confrontation to come. Not now. Hopefully, not ever. Lost in the silence, they sat there and tried not to think.

Ahead, out the window, the radiant golden city of Equestria inexorably drew closer.

Prey didn't know what awaited them when they arrived Canterlot. Had Nighthawk sent word ahead? Was the Palace expecting them to return at once? The details of the immediate future were hazy in Prey's view.

But he had his one certain goal for when the train pulled into the station.

Prey didn't care what was going to be expected of them, or if there would be droves of shallow liars trying to comfort them, he didn't care! He had one place, and one place only to be.

His lair under the mountain.

That was where he was heading. As surely as birds flew and water was wet, the quartz cavern was what lay in his future. Lieutenants wanting explanations, him needing food, or sleep, he didn't give a flying toss. He was bound for his lair, and the runic circles it housed.

In his head, he held the one, the one chance for Gloom. Gloom was dead, but maybe, just maybe.

His lair. The runes. The ingredients. That was where he was going, and nowhere else.

The tunnels, his lair, and Gloom's chance. Gloom's one chance. He, Prey, was Gloom's one chance.

Would the fragments of memory he'd managed to absorb be enough? Deep in his bitter heart, echoed the answer 'no'.

'I don't care. I will make it be enough.'

What came after, explaining to Crimson how Gloom was still here, explaining to Gloom, keeping it all secret, all that could wait. It would wait, because it was a future problem, a problem that was going to happen in the future, because this was going to work.

Prey was going straight down to his lair upon arrival. He couldn't afford to wait.

Memories did not stay untouched forever, even when someone like him, a seasoned mind leech with eidetic recollection, were so rigidly maintaining a mental wall to hold in the captured memories. Somehow, tiny bits would still fall away and be lost, or fall in and become. Transferring straight from one living mind to another was already incredibly difficult and dangerous.

And transferring second hoof, from incomplete, traumatized memories instead...

'I will make it work.'

So Prey was going straight. Down. To. His. Lair. Just as soon as they arrived back.

He kept repeating the plan of action in his head, as if he needed to make it any clearer when it was already burned into his brain.

'Arrive. Get off the train. Take the shortest route to Lower Canterlot. Take the overflow pipe into the sewers. Move into the tunnels. Get to the lair. Get to the runic circle, input the last necessary changes. And then transfer the memories into stasis.'

He could do that. If he could just do that, get them frozen, then he would have time to properly come up with a next step. But to have the chance of even taking a next step, he had to get to his lair and do that part first!

The rest could come later. He, he didn't know how he was going to make the fragment of Gloom 'live' again. But he'd find a way. Prey had already begun exploring the dark options before he even knew he'd need them for this.

Body snatching, by transferring a mind over to another. All he had right now was theory and planned experiments, but already he was almost certain if he tried to transfer his own consciousness right now, he'd fail. Or create another Lemon Pink, himself- but not himself, he, Prey, would still be part of this runt lamb body. But he'd been persisting in his research anyway. It was incredibly dangerous, and he'd been being so careful and taking it slow, but now, with Gloom's life on the line-!

'I'll find something, I'll make it work. Somehow. I'll find a way. Just as soon as I get to my lair.'

He would. He'd have to. He couldn't listen to the facts saying it was impossible.

One step at a time. Ignore the dreadful voice in his head listing all the points of failure. Ignore the fear that the truth was it was already far too late.

Get down there, get the memories into stasis.

'Just one step at a time. One step. I can take one step, and then one more.'

Breathe.

Canterlot. His lair. The runic circle. Those were the steps.

The train drew closer.

They sat in their silence.

The seats rocked slightly in time with the train.

Crimson never uttered a single groan at the discomfort it caused his wounds.

The silence pervaded.

Prey wished he was someone else. Someone better.

A better friend would have reached across and placed his hoof on Crimson's shoulder.

'And if wishes were oat cakes...'

But they weren't. And he wasn't. And he didn't. And he regretted it.

So they just sat there, just the two of them.

Their destination steadily grew closer.

Prey didn't make it down to his lair.

The train finally finished its looping run up Mount Canter, and pulled to a hissing halt into Canterlot's main station.

Prey and Crimson had already been standing at the door before it finished moving, and were out the moment it did. Out the carriage's rear door, that is.

It was evening, but the sun still beat down brilliantly. Prey's exhausted red eyes smarted as he squinted, the rush of steam and the train whistle deafening him for those first few seconds and he stumbled down onto the platform, almost missing the step.

He turned back, still half-blinded with the sun and thinking about a hundred other things, to double check Crimson had also managed to successfully dismount with his injuries.

For a moment, both of them were paralysed by the information assault on their desperately flagging bodies. The sudden rush of air down the platform after the stifling carriage, the bright sun in their eyes. The unyielding concrete underhoof. The previously muffled sounds of platform and train, and the smell of hot metal, steam, and a vendor's food stall blowing in their face.

So for just a moment, they were both blinded inside a little bubble of white noise until they could adjust.

A loud, authoritative call. It sounded like it might've been, "There!"

Prey was blinking rapidly to clear the glare from his gritty eyes. He heard the tromp of armoured hooves.

He looked up as the platform and everything else finally came back into reality. And for a moment, it all yet again didn't register. After everything else, Prey's head was just too full.

A semi-circle of Royal Guards in their bright, reflective golden plate had just finishing arranging themselves in formation around him and Crimson.

The train was at their backs. Prey didn't get it. He turned to quizzically look at it, checking no one else had exited through the rear door behind them, someone who the Royal Guards were here for. But there wasn't. They weren't here for anyone else.

'Because it's us they're here for.'

Prey didn't have it left in him to feel any proper emotional reaction to that. Just a sort of... stunted frustration.

'It doesn't matter. I don't have any time for this. I have to get down to my lair right now.'

Prey felt more than heard the moment when Crimson also finally noticed the Royal Guards through the haze of his own pain, exhaustion, and grief.

He and Prey were both beaten to the first word.

"Private Prey of the Night Guard, I hereby place you under arrest. Comply and lay on the ground."

"What?"

Did he say that? Had Crimson just heard the same nonsense he had-?

The unicorn Sargent, in her perfectly polished golden plates and enchantment-recoloured white fur, didn't even acknowledge a question had been asked. She just kept going, belting out her words in a parade ground shout:

"Non-compliance will be met with force. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to legal counsel. You have the right to appeal. You have the right to representation by an attorney."

The stunted frustration withered and died as it was consumed by a scorching fire of outrage.

This was the ISND's thanks? This is what they came back to? This arrogant Sargent with her aggressive stance and puffed out chest, she dared to block their way? After what they'd just come back from? And to ambush them when they were at their weakest, and with no other Night Guards around?

And they dared to block Prey's path to his lair.

Prey struggled to draw in his next breath, so tight was his chest. They were blocking his way!

He wanted to reach up for his ribbon, but he was surrounded and outnumbered eight to one by the semi-circle of Royal Guards, and Royal Guard unicorns. Two earth ponies, two pegasi, but four unicorns.

Four unicorns, who all had their horns pointed right at him. Prey swayed. He hadn't eaten, hadn't slept, barely drunk, and now the fear of their magic was pumping through his drained body.

"You are being serious. You are actually being serious here." Prey heard Crimson state, seemingly from very far away. His friend’s voice was ridged with something dark and unpleasant.

There was a sudden shift in the lowered postures and set faces of the Guards around the semi-circle. Prey didn't need to turn, he could barely focus on just staying on all four hooves. Besides, he knew that scraping metallic whisper so well. The sound of the blade affixed to Crimson's one functioning wing flicking out.

Why was this happening? What, precisely, was happening? How did they even know to ambush the two of them here the moment they arrived on the train?

Prey's mind was spinning like a wheel, but it was going nowhere. The changelings? But how would they even-? No, but if not, then how-? Who-? But why-?

"I said, on the ground! You too, pegasus. Remove that weapon at once, and place it on the ground. Private Prey of the Night Guard, this is your last warning before you are resisting your warrant of arrest!"

Warrant? What? Where did they get a warrant from?! Who had served them a warrant?!

This was more serious, someone had gone through the proper channels and gotten a warrant served and signed off. Someone who thought they were very smart, and now legally had sent Zoma'Grika unicorns to snatch him!

This wasn't just being arrested and taken into custody, with a warrant they already had charges against him.

Fury. Fear. He couldn't even separate the two. Not fear of breaking pathetic pony laws, fear of the magical power about to enforce those conniving laws.

'I was forced to go and save Haven Hay because of Nighthawk's orders, and the moment my back was turned, someone got the Royal Guard to set up this ambush.'

He had to do something, now! It was all about to spiral and tip over, and these filthy unicorns were going to use magic to paralyse him.

'I just wanted to go to my lair.'

'But if wishez' were fishez'...' He hadn't been expecting an ambush in the middle of Canterlot, and not by the law. Should he have? Could he have predicted this? Now he was trapped. Surrounded, helpless, and caught without a pre-prepared runic defence. No Lemon, no Gloom, and Crimson was injured. There were too many Royal Guards, too many witnesses, and Luna's hated alicorn bands were still locked around his forelegs even if he somehow got away.

'No escape.'

Prey hated them, then. He hated every pony in this city, and he would see them dead. After Clan Myrrdon, after the changelings, what were a hundred-thousand more graves?!

Graves would have to wait. It hurt, but Prey said it. "I'm complying, I'm complying!"

He stiffly lowered himself onto his belly on the hard concrete platform, "I'm not resisting arrest. I'm giving up!"

Pride is for the strong. The weak must bow their heads.

"Prey." Crimson hissed under his breath.

Prey shot him a look as he lay down, trying to apologise with just his eyes.

'We're outnumbered. You're injured. They planned this. They have unicorns. There's nothing I can do. I'm sorry.'

"Half Hoof, cuff him. The pegasus too, and take him to the station to process. We're taking the convict to the Guard cells."

"Don't fight. We can't win." Prey mouthed up at Crimson. He didn't look at the disgusting pony marching up, hoofcuffs dangling in their aura. He didn't let himself look. He just stared up at Crimson from the concrete, and silently begged him to do the smart thing.

Crimson's mental walls were trembling, on the brink of collapse.

A single word slipped through, '-...unfair...-'

The touch of the unicorn's magic was... awful. Prey hated it. So he didn't look. He barely managed to keep from panicking and pointlessly struggling. *click* *click*

A pair of cuffs, locked in to their smallest setting so as not to just slide off, rested above the pair of golden shackles that were already there.

'-bad foals get punished-', The Guard was thinking to himself with a satisfied nod, stepping away from his hoofwork.

These ponies... they were so dead. Just dead meat-bags walking.

*click* *click*

Crimson didn't struggle. Injured, exhausted, hungry, and weak with grief, he still could have sliced through the Guard's unarmoured throat before the unicorn could finish roughly pulling the weapon off Crimson's wing. So rough, that he took some feathers with it. The other was in the near empty saddlebag under the cloak. They took those off of him next.

He didn't stop looking at Prey, as the lamb was pulled to his hooves and dragged away. Two Guards began shoving Crimson in a different direction, "Move!"

"Just wait for me," His iron hard promise still reached Prey, "We'll be fine."

"Move!"

Prey tried to wrench himself free, to walk under his own power, "Don't touch me!"

The Royal Guards were crowding him, all looming over him, destroying any personal space. His heart was pounding.

"I said don't touch-!"

"Don't resist arrest. Be silent."

Their Sargent however was already impatient, '-enough wasting time-'

Horrible, vile magic unrelentingly shoved him, and kept pushing him forwards, his light weight nothing to the caster.

Prey recoiled, stumbling forwards as fast as he could to get away from the pushing magic, "Stoppit! Don't touch-! I can walk."

This all felt so familiar.

Prey twisted, trying to simultaneously trot as fast as he could without tripping because of the cuffs, and also glare behind him at the perpetrator.

His eyes widened, he couldn't help it. Coming up on the impatient Sargent's right side were a pair of fully clad, golden armoured, powerfully built stallions. They'd been waiting in the wings, hanging back just in case they were needed as reinforcements had something unexpected happened.

But now that he was being taken in they didn't need to wait any longer, and marched forwards.

The shine of their armour was above the lustre of that of the Royal Guards, and was proudly emblazoned with the symbol of the sun on the chestplate. Prey knew it well. Just like against all the odds, he also recognised the chiselled face under the golden helm.

Sunshine of the Solar Guard, along with a new partner.

Prey stared. Sunshine looked down at him with a mask of slight distaste as he was driven forwards.

Prey's stomach fell away. The light-headedness and dancing spots in his vision were back.

The Solar Guard was involved with this? And Sunshine, again? Had he somehow finally remembered who Prey was and what he'd done? Was this what this was all about? Did they know? Did they know?!

But the white stallion's face was a mask. Prey couldn't read anything deeper. He simply looked at Prey like nothing more than the next criminal on his path. And his thoughts were still as shielded as they'd ever been behind the mindlock enchantments of his Solar Guard helmet.

Was, was everything lost? Had he been found out? Captain Valour. Dreverton. The Solar Guard.

'I can't go back to Dreverton. I can't.'

His chest felt as tight as a stretched rawhide drum. Surely everyone could hear his heart thumping with each bite of the Jaw?

How was this happening? What was happening? What did they know? Did they know? Or how much?

Desperate questions, with no answers.

But Sunshine of the Solar Guard was here, had been specifically sent, as part of this arrest. Just being arrested by Royal Guards could mean many things. But getting arrested by the Royal Guard and the Solar Guard?

Prey blinked furiously, "Zoma'Grika." He whispered in a small voice.

"Move it."

Prey was frogmarched up through Canterlot's streets, stumbling, tripping, and shoved by magic when he was too slow.

No allowance was given for either his size or the hoofcuffs hobbling him.

Some ponies stared as he was rushed past, pushed to hurry even faster.

He hadn't eaten or slept in so long. He was panting heavily and sweating badly as the Guard Compound's gates finally came into sight.

"Faster. Move."

Royal Guards inside the compound or on duty saw him getting marched through. They stopped to watch, to point. Some of them recognised him as part of the ISND, and they grinned.

'They're laughing at me.'

"You were not told to stop."

The Sargent's magic shoved him from behind again. It was too much for his shaking legs, and he tripped forwards over the hoof-cuffs onto his face.

Before he could even spit out the dirt and outrage, her magic grabbed him by the scruff and yanked him back to his hooves in a moment. "Get up. I said up!"

Neither Sunshine nor the others even broke stride, just dragging him onwards.

Prey's head was spinning and his legs aching, so much so, that for a second he didn't realise he was being driven past the Guard Compound's cell block, and towards the Guard’s entrance into the Lower Palace instead.

He wasn't being taken to the cells? But then-No, he was being taken to the cells. The special, internal cells deep in the bowels of the Lower Palace. The much more magically secured cells, each separated not by bars, but solid walls of lead-lined stone.

It was happening again. It was all happening all over again! Wasn't this how it had all first begun with Luna? Was he living in reverse?

They were going to lock him away in a lead-lined coffin, where magic and runes were useless, and forget about him.

They didn't know, they couldn't know about his runes, it was just bad luck they'd decided to incarcerate him in this place. They didn't have reason to suspect he might know some forbidden magic. Surely. They were supposed to think he was just a lamb. Their choice of cell was just bad luck, right?

'Do they know?'

Not these Royal Guards, they didn't know. They marched around him with none of the caution that being told he had dark magics should've have caused them, and he heard nothing in their thoughts. But they were also just grunts. Maybe only their commanders knew the full details. Sunshine and his unreadable partner were here from the Solar Guard. And since two Solar Guards, unicorn elites, had been sent as backup for his arrest...

'They do know something.'

Prey panicked. He stopped moving, locking up.

His sudden immobility didn't matter. They weren't even slowed. They just pushed him along with a flat plane of magic behind him, his hooves scraping uselessly over the floor.

Down one Guard corridor he recognised, then the next. He'd been here, he'd walked through these corridors with Crimson and Gloom. Now he was driven down them.

There was a Royal Guard stationed at the entrance to the cells. He snapped to attention and saluted crisply. "Ma'am!"

"Prisoner here for one of the cells."

"Right away, ma'am."

The very first cell's door was pulled open, none of the row having been occupied.

"Search him first. Make sure he's got nothing on him." Sunshine instructed before Prey could be pushed into the cells.

"Don't touch-Stop touching me!"

No one listened. They didn't care about the protests of a runt criminal.

Magic and hooves ran roughshod over Prey, dragging at his wool and pulling him stumbling this way, and then that.

"What's this?" A tiny packet containing three small needles was waved under Prey's nose. He'd had them hidden in his wool.

"What is this?" The Guard demanded again.

'Poison darts.' Prey didn't say, staying silent. He shuddered and shivered in revulsion as he was magically searched. It was violating.

"Bag it as potential evidence," Sunshine ordered, "Remove the hoofcuffs too. Best to be safe."

'Zoma'Grika.' Prey attempted not to panic any more than he already was. He was about to be locked inside a lead cell which wouldn't hold any runes, and he could've at least used the hoofcuffs as a rough surface to work on. Another chance cruelly dangled then snatched away in front of him.

He had to do something, anything that would help. "Why're you doing this? What am I supposed to have done wrong?"

It was a leading question, one to try to trick answers out of these Guards’ forethoughts.

But he heard nothing useful. They didn't know the details, just that there was a warrant for his arrest.

'-must be for framing us after that lumber yard fire-', One Royal Guard snorted.

'-that old chestnut. Everypony tries that one to feign innocence-', Another thought.

The only ones who presumably knew, Sunshine and the other Solar, were both mentally shielded, hiding what Prey so desperately needed to know. And the Sargent, she was smugly standing too far back, letting her squad search him. She was making a point to stand by the two Solar Guards, obscenely proud to be in their presence.

None bothered to waste breath answering their prisoner’s question verbally, either. They were the law, they were justice! Their actions were always in the right. Why else would they be ordered to do them?

'-everypony gets what they deserve in the end!-'

Without any further ceremony, the Sargent's horn lit up and she magically pushed Prey through the cell's door.

Prey turned as the heavy grey door swung shut in his face. The last he saw before the reinforced door thumped shut were the two Solar Guards and the Sargent mare looking down at him in satisfaction.

The door didn't slam, it was too thick and heavy on its reinforced hinges for that. Just a final heavy *Thump*, and then a muffled *clunk* as on the other side the lock was engaged.

The small cell was empty. No bed, table, toilet, or chair. Not even a bucket. Dust hung in the air from disuse. The walls, floor, and celling were all the same matte grey of a lead alloy. Even the inside face of the door was lead. The cell was dim, and chill. The only light was a blindingly powerful tiny crystal stud, too small to draw on and too high to reach even if he could, but one only large enough to dimly light up the place, no matter how intense it was.

There was no surface on which Prey could draw runes, not even one inch.

Prey sat down fast before his shaking, tired legs tipped him onto the metal floor of their own accord.

His only goal had been to go down to his lair. That was where he needed to go. The absorbed memory of Gloom would only continue to lose sharpness the longer he was kept away.

'Am I ever going to see my lair again?'

Prey shakily put his head down on his forehooves.

Everything had happened so quickly, as if the whirlwind storm which had destroyed Haven Hay had followed him. Now, he was back to worrying about never being free again.

Never being free. Being sent back to Dreverton. Back to a cell for another fifty-seven unending years. Or five hundred and seventy.

This, on top of everything, on top of the exhaustion, hunger, hurt, and loss of Gloom... it just wasn't fair.

He was scared. Alone in the silence of this cell, the cold feeling could finally settle onto him.

He was scared. The thought of the last desperate chance of saving Gloom slipping away, and of having to face Dreverton again...

'Please not that.'

And to add just that last little bit more on top of the seeping mound of rotting failure, one more little humiliating self-weakness... Prey's eyes stung and smarted, and he tried to blink to prevent the hot tears from dripping out.

Because of course his runt body would further let him down when he was already at his lowest. Why did everything always end in tears?

'Weak, pathetic, crybaby!'

Always, always always! It always ended like this!

He was so utterly tired and sick to the stomach of it. So bloody sick and tired of it. Just so sick and tired of it. So sick and tired... and tired... and tired.

Prey slumped in exhaustion, squeezing his eyes shut, "I. Hate. This. City."

Prey couldn't fight off sleep deprivation any longer.

The cold floor of lead was hard and unyielding. But it had been a day, followed by a full night, and another day of misery, discomfort, mounting exhaustion, and the ever-resounding absence of Gloom.

There was one thing they hadn't taken from him when throwing him in here, aside from Luna's golden shackles that is.

His ribbon. The Guards had seen it, but it hadn't registered in their minds, their eyes passing right over it. It was more than just a mental effect by now. So he still had his ribbon, for all the good it would do him in this lead coffin.

Prey clutched his ribbon, curled up as best he could on the floor, and finally fell into slumber.

But of course, Prey couldn't find any escape even in sleep.

Prey longed to sink down into the twilight depths of his inner mindscape, where true consciousness eluded him, but he couldn't quite seem to manage to tip himself over the edge.

Instead, he was left in half-waking, half-sleeping dread. Where he was in too deep to fight back the terrible shame of failure, but not deep enough to escape caring.

He twisted and rolled for indeterminate hours, remembering Gloom's glassy yellow orbs, forever dulled, as dark blood slowly ran over his bloodstained lips and teeth. Of his failure to do what needed to be done, of all the mistakes in that stinking, dirty train carriage, all the things which he could have done better.

In the background behind a veil of drifting ash, the villagers, the diamond dogs, and the changelings cackled and danced grotesquely over an island of dead thestrals, as twisted skittering shapes of his own making picked at their bones.

'...mimics got... got what they deserved. Wouldn't... leave me alone. Myrrdon. Good. They took... from me. An' Crimson asked... me to.'

But the jeering and twitching from the dead just got louder. They just kept shouting the truth from nonexistent, empty lungs all the louder.

All those mimics, murdered diamond dogs, and sacrificed villagers.

It was so much harder to lie to yourself when asleep. Deny, deny, and deny it again as hard as you want. The rot will still be festering away there no matter what pretty lies you tell yourself.

'A rose... by any other name... is still a rose.'

There really was no escape, and no respite.

Prey lay there, drifting. He almost waited too long to react when the taste of ice-flecked starlight were carried to him on a dreamt wind. He was just so tired of it all, that he almost just lay there in a numb stupor.

But then the fear for self-preservation jolted him to act. Above, up in the burnt forest of his outer mindscape, he felt the hoof of Luna questing about to find him, not yet breaching but soon to be inside.

Prey violently hurled himself back up into painful awareness, like a hooked fish breaching the surface.

Prey grabbed hold of an obscuring cloak of ash and drew it over his mindscape. He raced to settle and mould his mind into new shapes, creating a false dream to hide what was really underneath. He didn't want to find out what would happen if Luna suspected she wasn't viewing his real dream (as if she ever had any right to his private mind!), and brute forced her way through with her unstoppable alicorn magic.

A rocky hilltop. The impression of waves breaking nearby. Sharp jagged shapes of frozen lightning sticking out of the earth. It was all Prey had time to throw together. If Luna knew anything about what had taken place at Haven Hay, and she must by now, she would expect something like this from his dreaming mind.

Clinically, Prey could make that decision. But it still filled him with black hate at Luna, for forcing him to summon up a façade of a place he never wanted to see again, and all because she kept refusing to honour her promise to stay out of his dreams! Did she even remember the promise she'd made? Or did she just not care?

A sourceless feeling of moonlight arrived. Like the moon were peering down from on high at him crawling in the dirt, yet while hiding itself behind a bank of cloud.

But just like the face of the full moon, even when covered by clouds, it couldn't hide its pale light from still glowing through and giving away its position.

Prey was preparing to hold the false dream, but that was when Luna's voice shook it.

"Prey, come forth and stand before us!" It seemed there was no patience in Luna tonight.

Luna's shout echoed out in ripples over the dream, meant to give consciousness and form to the sleeping mind. Luna wanted to speak to him, and she wanted him fully cognisant.

"Prey, come forth at once!"

The order was a whip crack. Prey felt his dreamscape automatically move to respond to Luna's desire, convulsing to spit him out before her. Prey grabbed the dream with claws of barbs and hooks, and ripped it to his will. This was his! Not the pretender Luna's.

Only then did he let himself form in front of Luna's presence. She hadn't taken on a dream avatar, she was just a presence of power.

Prey refused to let himself be shoved into an avatar either. He only let his presence be felt by Luna, not seen, just as she was doing. Just much smaller, and endlessly less powerful in the face of the alicorn.

"Am I dreaming?" Prey asked, feigning surprise.

Luna's answer came in the form of her mentally seizing his presence and dragging it up in front of her. Beneath the fake layer of ash, Prey very nearly lost control as Luna roughly handled him.

She held him before the focus of her roiling presence, boring down on him like an eye behind a giant magnifying glass; "Listen well Prey of our Night Guard. You will remember this when thou awakens."

Held 'helpless' in her grip, and hating every vile second of it, Prey gave a token, symbolic struggle. He idly wondered what eyeless heads and endless maws would do to an alicorn so courteously placing their mind inside his, and therefore within reach. He then said, "What's going on? This is a dream, right? You're Princess Luna?"

Reasonable questions, and ones expected of a mostly sleeping mind. Luna had no patience for them today.

"Cease thy questions, they matter not, for there is little time. What we have to say is of the utmost importance to thy future."

That was an order and a threat if Prey had ever heard one. 'She's threatening me? For what?! All we've done and lost in her service and this is how she repays-? No, of course this is how she repays us. We're just mortal pawns. How disrespectful of me to dare to forget that.'

Prey seethed underneath. Above in the false dream however, he merely subsided and gave the impression of looking up at Luna's powerful presence, and waited.

“Thou art in serious trouble, Prey." Luna stated. The words were flat, but the dream carried a boiling undertone of tightly wound force.

"What for? What did I do wrong?" Prey immediately protested his innocence, grasping for information about what exactly he was being accused of, because he still didn't know!

You were supposed to be told what you stood accused of. No one had taken him for any kind of interrogation or statement, they'd just thrown him straight into this cell. But did Luna provide the answer? No. Of course not. That would mean she listened to his words over the sound of her own voice. In fact, she barely even paused in speaking:

"The time is far spent, and there has been precious little enough of it to begin with. Myrrdon, how could they? We recall their father’s fathers! For their foals to decline into depravity-! We cannot even ask the reason of them ourselves, locked away in that self-chosen prison. Oh that it come at a time like now, after the loss of our dear Sargent Dusky Gloom-!"

A wall suddenly slammed shut over Luna's presence like a guillotine. There was a long pause, and when Luna finally spoke again, the words were as frozen and deliberately controlled as those times when he had seen her in the flesh, when no one else had been able to notice her moments of unnatural stiltedness. Like she were still waiting in the void on the moon. A frozen rod of iron, one which could never bend. What lay dormant beneath, once more on display.

"We are most displeased."

It was all Prey could do to hold the covering of the false dreamscape in place, when he wanted to scream in Luna's face that it was her stubborn, pig-headed selfishness that had killed Gloom. Displeased. Displeased? Gloom was dead and she was only 'displeased'?

'You did this. You and Nighthawk's damned plans and plots. You kept kicking us back into the fire every time we crawled out. Every time we survived, you just took that as proof you could kick us all the harder next time!'

It made sense why Luna was here, she was angry, and because he was still alive, therefore Haven Hay's and Gloom's fates must be partly his fault. Because in the end, all he'd ever been was a pawn to her. As long as he'd been succeeding in her popularity game and bringing success, he'd been safe. But now, after a public failure of this magnitude? One where actual ponies had died, not just goats, cows, donkeys, and sheep?

'I see. I see how it is.'

Gloom was dead. The ISND was effectively no more. And Luna had no use for them any longer. So he was being sent back to where Luna had first pulled him from.

'That must be it. It makes too much sense. She's an alicorn. This is what they do. Play games with mortals.'

And whatever game Luna was playing on her golden gaming board, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. All the plans, runes, and traps he'd implemented to protect himself, and yet here he still lay in a cell, while she wielded immortal alicorn magic from her throne.

'I hate you Luna.'

The impenetrable wall was still locked down over Luna's presence. Prey wanted so badly to either attack or flee, not sit here pretending and listening to whatever lies next came out of her mouth.

"And what is more, thou hast found thyself in prison again," A long, painfully drawn out pause, and then in the same frozen tone of unbending iron:

"What hast thou to say for thyself?"

There were many things Prey wanted to say. But even now, even with everything falling down around him, things could still get so much worse. There were so many ways Luna could still hurt him if he gave her an excuse. Or permanently imprison. Or maim. Or kill.

"Your majesty, I don't even know why I've been arrested. In Haven Hay, we all tried-"

"Speak not of that town. When we are ready, we will ask of those events, and not before. Did we ask after Haven Hay? Nay. We did not. Not today. We must yet reconcile it with ourselves. So nay. Rather, we asked what thou hast to say for thy own self."

Reconcile? Reconcile what? That Clan Myrrdon had tried to run away forever rather than accept her offered collar of slavery? Did she really not care about the dead inhabitants of Haven Hay killed in their storm? Even though the slain had been ponies? Luna did not know Clan Myrrdon were all dead. Or did she? Even if she did, she had no way to know it was because of him.

Prey didn't know what Luna's real reason was, so it was best to say nothing at all or risk angering her even further.

"I apologise, but I don't know what to say, Princess Luna."

There was a long, long silence that followed. Luna's cold presence behind her barrier was scrutinizing him.

"We have heard thy answer. We see how it is, then. If this is to be the course set before us, then we shall have to tread it, won't we?"

What was any of that supposed to mean? Was she using the royal pretentious 'we', or did she mean to include him in there? Prey didn't like either implication.

"And you, Prey, of our Night Guard, who hast been in our service, who has... Oh, what matter it now? The dream is now lost. We saw, and have already seen." Luna's presence began to withdraw from the dream, pulling up and away into a vast night sky. But not before she had the last word:

"When thou stand before the court, keep thy council thy own. T'will make everything easier for us."

And then Luna was gone, leaving the illusionary dream echo of Haven Hay that she'd refused to even acknowledge. She left behind dread in her wake.

The fake dream began to shake, then rip and peel away like burnt paper. Underneath, the ashen grey forest lay bare. It was there, just like it had always been.

The terror was there, just like it always had been.

It had merely been waiting for Prey to realise it, to realise what Luna meant, to put two and two together, and finally work his way through to the final answer.

Luna had just told him not to even bother defending himself in court. To not make a fuss and to go quietly. 'It'll make this easier for me', that was literally what she had just said.

Fear, bitter and sour, began to worm its way up the back of Prey's throat. What court, what trial? He hadn't been told anything, nor what he'd been arrested for, or where the warrant had come from, or how it had been served so quickly. There had been no mention of a defence, or a lawyer.

The fear began to slowly choke him, clogging his throat as it worked its way higher. This was going to be a sham trial, a drama play. Luna didn't want the ISND anymore, so she was going to let this trial get rid of Prey for her without even having to lift one perfectly polished hoof.

Gloom was dead. The ISND were no more. 'The dream is now lost' she'd said.

Acrid and coppery, the taste of fear was now flooding his mouth. He was asleep, and yet he was panicking so hard his body could still taste it for him.

Luna hadn't painted a picture of the future. She'd told him his future. As an alicorn with all the power over him, she might as well have carved it ten hooves deep in stone.

Luna. She'd just taken his future. Take take take. It was always take. Take his freedom, take Gloom's life, take it all.

'She, she actually did it. She did this to me. Just took it. Just like that.'

This was happening. This was actually happening. It wasn't some horrible fever nightmare.

Just like that. With just a word. 'Just a touch.'

Just a single sentence spoken by Luna, and he was done for? No, that wasn't fair!

His outer mindscape was shaking, bulging and contracting. Ash and smoke. A swirling purple sky crashing with the force of a remembered storm. His last hope, his future, Luna had just burnt it away. As simple as that.

Panic. Sweat streaking down his forehead. Eyes and lungs burning. That was how Prey jolted awake in his cell.

The lead-lined walls were still there, the same rune proof ceiling and floor, the same locked door shut in his face.

And the same godless-damned bucking gold tracer bands still sitting smugly on his forelegs.

Prey screamed at the walls in Zebrican foul and dark enough to drive any zebra shaman to mute, wide-eyed silence. Not threats, but promises, of things he'd seen Snake do. Would see himself do.

"Mor blaka und Zoma'Grika! Kulu mund dine an' Vera'bo do to na halff'ta Grika! Fent! Fent und grixa mund du'! Zoma'Grika! Jeknana fel und' alma tagrash! Metetilo grot dol ketneff die! Mell tung und grol Zek'tu krut Zoma' fel und Grika!"

He kept screaming high-pitched obscenities at the empty walls until a hacking cough drove him into a wheezing fit on his knees. Then he just whispered them in a hoarse stream of vitriol instead.

But for all his hate and hissed promises no one but him could understand, he couldn't see a way out of this.

Lemon Pink was stealthily on her way back from Haven Hay, but even if she got here in time, so what? She could find him just like he could find her, but even if she somehow broke into the Palace, past all the Guards, and freed him, what of it?

The two golden tracer bands still sat on his forelegs, and there was no mad god of chaos to remove them this time.

Prey's stream of whispered hate turned into a stream of whimpered hate and self-pitying tears. Just like it always did. All his ventures seemed to end in tears.

'Why, why, why did I ever choose to come back? I was away, home and free. Why did I choose to come back knowing this is what might happen?' Prey wept bitterly.

Now, as the cost of his stupidity, he was going back to Dreverton. Or worse.

Forever.

His tears finally ran out, too tired to cry anymore, leaving behind just snotty hiccups and sniffles.

He was done. This was it. His time had run out. The sand in the glass had stilled and the gears had made their final tick.

There wasn't going to be another second chance.

All his plans, all his runic testing circles and experimentation. He'd taken too long.

Too slow. The rope had finally run out. All that was left was a free fall.

He had no wings. He was just a runt lamb. He couldn't catch himself and fly.

Flying wouldn't work anyway, not when it was Luna who'd cut the rope. He was going to hit the ground no matter what.

This, all this, whatever this trial and court was, that was just what happened while watching the ground enlarge on the way down.

Prey hiccupped painfully some more, 'If time is up, if I'm already falling, if there's no saving myself...'

It was a revelation. Like an epiphany. He'd always been so selfish. Now his preparations didn't matter any longer.

'And if nothing matters any longer...'

Then there was no need to be cautious anymore. He'd run out of time. All his carefully laid emergency plans and timelines, they were almost all lost. Almost all of them.

There was one plan though, that wasn't immaterial just yet. He hadn't put it into action only because he'd been trying to figure out how to escape the repercussions afterwards. But since the fallout no longer mattered, what was the point in caution?

No, it wasn't the plan of mutually assured destruction promised by the hungry things, Prey didn't reach for that.

Something else. An actual plan, one where he'd actually been sane and not under duress while planning it. But it was only a one-in-a-hundred chance. Prey wasn't giving up on escaping, because there was already no hope for him, but there was hope for one last thing.

'Gloom. There's still one hope left for Gloom. First Gloom, and then...'

First Gloom. And then...

And then what?

If he could get out of here, he already would have. And even if he did, Luna would still catch him. If he could get out, and mind altered all the guards, he'd only have a few hours, maybe as many as five, possibly even six, before she noticed and used the tracer bands to hunt him down.

Six hours. Would that be enough? 'It doesn't matter if it’s enough. It's all I'll get.'

But first, first, before all else, he had to get out of this lead cell. And he couldn't.

'All is lost.'

And then an idiot came along.

In some ways, Prey was the one at fault for not having foreseen that outcome. All of this, getting thrown in an anti-magic cell when no one could have known about his runes, getting picked up immediately at the train station, the Solar Guard getting involved with their specially enchanted armour which guarded against mind reading, it was all so very far removed from the usual level of incompetence Prey had witnessed over his many months of unwilling service in the Guard.

So perhaps he could have foreseen and planned around some of that all-round ineptitude finally coming into play. These were soft pony Royal Guards. It was near guaranteed their professionalism would eventually run out.

So when Prey had cast about his cell for a way out, he'd despaired. Because there was no way for him to break out. There were no internal factors he could leverage or abuse. He had nothing.

Prey couldn't be blamed for never considering that his captors would be stupid enough to come along as an external factor.

*ka-clunk*

What? That was the door. They were opening the door and giving him a way out?

Prey tried to surge to his hooves, going to charge the door the moment it opened. It didn't matter who was on the other side, this was his one chance at surprise and he had to at least try.

Unfortunately his sore, stiff, hungry, and uncooperative body managed a clumsy stumble instead.

'I HATE being a runt!'

The heavy door swung outwards on external hinges while Prey was still trying to get his legs to work.

'Too slow.' He bitterly cursed. He'd already missed the opportune moment for a surprise attack.

His cell had been dim. Not dark, but still dim enough that the much brighter lit room and corridor outside managed to blind his grainy, red-rimmed eyes for a second.

Prey squinted at who it was, already knowing it was too late to rush them before they could react. He saw the outline of a horn on their head. 'Much too late.'

Prey saw the threat and their species first, them and the second unicorn standing behind them, then he saw who they were.

The first shock was that he knew them, and that it wasn't just another one of the Royal Guard. The second shock was that on a list of people Prey knew, she was right at the bottom of who he could ever have predicted.

'What?'

"Woah Prey. You look kinda' terrible." Taffy said, smile brittle.

"What?"

The Royal Guard in his gold armour grumpily cleared his throat at Taffy, and scowled at Prey.

"If we could speed this up, ma'am?" And then back to scowling at Prey, his horn half lowered; "No funny business. Don't even try. The cell block's locked, and there's checkpoints, but you'll never ever get past me in the first place."

The stallion was trying to look intimidating. Indeed, he already was, because he was a unicorn, in armour, and much bigger and stronger than Prey. But he was only as intimidating as the threat he posed, not because of any additional amateurish posturing on his part.

Prey was looking past him, through Taffy's legs, eyes darting around as he frantically tried to take in every detail of the room for anything that might've changed since getting dragged in here. He was searching for anything which might provide him with information to take advantage of. He saw there was a third Royal Guard too, standing watch over by the barred door gate into the cell block. Not the same one Prey had seen when they'd come in, this one here was only a pegasus, so the shift must have changed. Three ponies, against him. But they didn't see any of that.

All they saw was him standing stunned and mute for a few seconds, a downcast and very young prisoner who'd just been locked away for hours in solitary confinement. Not a threat, not someone ready to seize upon any opportunity.

Actually, maybe it was conceivable that was the reason he'd been locked in the high security cell all along. To intimidate and frighten him, as a psychological tactic.

Taffy adjusted her cap over her frizzy orange curls. Her gaze was flickering all over Prey, but she was studiously avoiding actual eye contact, "I'm really sorry about all this. About you and, and, *Ehem* things are going to work out okay, okay?"

Prey shuffled a few steps closer towards the open cell door, making sure to move extra slowly. It meant they came into his mental perception range.

'-don't mention Gloom, don't mention Gloom. I can't believe he's actually gone, oh Celestia I am not the right pony for this! I don't want to be here. But then who else will?-'

'-just had to come and interrupt, didn't she? He was stewing nicely and almost ready to 'fess up within another hour or two. I already heard him shouting nonsense-'

Prey coughed, his throat painfully dry, "...What?"

"What's what?" Taffy purposefully stalled.

"What's... this? What's going on? What are you doing here?" Prey elaborated hoarsely.

Prey read the answer as much in her thoughts as the hesitation before she carefully spoke, still avoiding his eyes. Not an easy task when she had to look down at him looking up, so she settled for staring just over his head instead.

'-is a massive disaster. Poor Prey, poor Crimson, poor Gloom. How could anypony let a storm get so big and dangerous?-'

"Wellllll," Taffy drew the word out, trying to buy time to figure out how to best say what she was supposed to, "The thing is, I'm here in an official capacity. Sorry. See, Captain Nighthawk's not back, and everypony else with the judicial qualifications in the Night Guard is also gone, and there's the rules about seniority, and being impartial, meaning they're arguing it can't be a Night Guard because you're a Night Guard, so... so I got asked to take up the role."

'-I should stop talking now-'

That told Prey a few things immediately. The general Royal Guard populace didn't yet know about Clan Myrrdon's part in what had happened. Second, Nighthawk was still snowed under in Haven Hay with trying to contain the disaster, and couldn't return any time soon. Whoever had gotten him arrested was abusing Nighthawk's absence to their advantage.

And yet Prey still didn't feel like he understood. Everything was switching so rapidly, that he was having trouble knowing where to turn.

"You. Out." The stallion barked.

Prey slowly blinked red-rimmed eyes at him, "Out? To where?"

"To the table!" He snapped, as if it was obvious.

There was a medium sized table over to the side of the room. Prey craned his neck to see. On it had been tossed a closed file. 'So this is to be an interrogation of a sort, then.'

Prey shuffled out of the lead-lined cell. His gaze stealthily flicked to the pegasus on the other side of the locked gate. Neither Taffy nor the unicorn Guard were close enough for him to touch, or even lunge at, but it was the pegasus outside the gate who really sealed the deal. Even if he could get both Taffy and this other idiot, it wouldn't be before the pegasus could run off and raise the alarm. Or even just shout for help.

The pegasus Royal Guard, who glared boredly when he saw Prey even glance in his direction, was Prey's biggest obstacle right now.

Not problem, 'obstacle'. Prey's problem was that he was going to be imprisoned forever. Prey's problem was the shaking in his legs, the trembling in his chest, the fear in his gut. Prey's problem was that he had no solution to his problem. His problem was that he was out of time.

But the pegasus Guard was not big enough to be a problem. He was an obstacle.

'You think you're safe outside here?' Prey thought as he half-walked, half-limped on sore hooves over to the table, 'I think you're just my next tally mark.'

He should have been viciously angry when thinking that. He wasn't. He was afraid. And tired. He wasn't mentally promising death to the pegasus out of revenge. More like it was simply a thankless task he had to perform.

Prey didn't need to ask which side of the table he was supposed to sit at as the Guard growled at him to move faster. Obviously it was the one with his back squashed against the wall, on the stool as opposed to the actual padded chair, and where he'd be looking right into the lantern over the seated interrogator's shoulder.

So Prey made straight for the padded chair.

"Hey! Get your flank on the other side of the table!"

Prey cringed at the volume, but more as magic flared orange and yanked the chair away, "Okay I'm sorry, I didn't realise."

Of course the unicorn would use magic, not step in close and pull the chair away like Prey had been angling for, because why would he? He'd been born blessed with magic, so of course he would use it for every single thing. Of course.

Prey had still tried, because he had to try everything right now. He had no option but to take every option.

His time was up. This was free fall. And if he was going to hit the ground anyway, he had one thing left to do.

And yet... and yet...

'I hate hope. It's the hardest of drugs. Hope always makes it all so much worse in the end.'

And yet... he was still drawing breath, wasn't he?

With effort, Prey climbed up onto the stool, and tiredly rested his chin on the too-high table. Then he shifted, pulling a drooping ear out from under his chin. Then he just stared at Taffy and the other unicorn Guard.

Taffy still wasn't meeting Prey's eyes. The angry Royal Guard snorted loudly as he stomped up next to the table, looking down on Prey without any such issues. He didn't seem to have any problems with his prisoner being a child. In fact, it just angered him even more.

'-if a foal gets locked away in one of these cells to get scared straight, then you must be a truly despicable brat. Did you get somepony killed by not thinking, brat? I know what you ISND ponies have done-'

Misinformed, but obviously, the rumours the Royal Guard had been passing around about the ISND ever since the salt trade and lumber yard incident wouldn't have been accurate. Rumours never were.

'I don't have time for your wounded pride. I don't have any time at all.'

"What are you here for, Taffy?" Prey asked tiredly, not raising his chin off the table top. He didn't add her title. No point.

Taffy took a deep, fortifying breath, the very ends of her frizzy mane trembling so deep was it. She held it for a count of eight, then let it all out. Taffy spun the file around on the table to face Prey and flipped it open, and used her magic to push it across the table to him.

"In my capacity as a neutral party in Their Dual Majesties’ Guard as part of an internal legal prosecution, and replacing a representative of the Night Guard at this time, I am here to demand that you confess and sign, here and before two witnesses." Taffy recited, looking at a point over Prey's head. Her ears were lowered.

Prey still didn't raise his head off the table, "Confess to what, exactly?"

This was information he wanted. What had he been arrested for? What did they know? Or what did they suspect?

Taffy's face scrunched up as the standing Guard made a noise next to her, "I'm not at liberty to discuss that information."

"Come again?"

"You heard her perfectly fine the first time!" The stallion barked.

Taffy's ears went back another notch, "Because it relates to an ongoing and active case, I cannot give out details." She answered Prey.

"I am the ongoing 'case'."

"I'm not at liberty to discuss that information." Taffy repeated.

'-this is so borderline legally illegal. They're just using rules to contradict the rules they don't like to force this. It's so underhoof against Captain Nighthawk-'

Prey tiredly shut his eyes, "I'm not asking for the moon and sun on a platter, I'm asking to know what exactly I'm being bullied into confessing."

"...I'm not at liberty to discuss it."

Prey reopened his grainy eyes with effort. Nearly everything felt grainy, the dirt on his wool had worked its way in down to his very skin.

"So just confess, and then they'll slap whatever charges they want on and I'll have 'confessed' to whatever they feel like. You don't even know what they're pretending I've done wrong, do you Taffy? They just sent you in here to tick a box so they can say, 'Oh he had his chance'. Or maybe they were hoping to get lucky, and that I'd be scared enough to actually sign. Have I got all that right?"

He scanned quickly over the written confession in the document. It didn't have any charges listed, it was instead written that by signing, he was confessing to everything being discussed. A circular loop, or rather, loophole. Taffy's forethoughts weren't giving him the answer either, despite him asking leading questions. She really didn't know the charges either, she was just repeating what she'd been ordered to; "I'm not at liberty to say".

Another smattering of sparks struck off the flint and steel of hope, an instant of light before they too snuffed out. Maybe they didn't actually know anything...? No, all this was too big and serious to be over nothing.

"Gloom is dead." Prey stated flatly.

Both the Royal Guard and Taffy reacted. He in surprise, she in hunching her shoulders further. "It's obvious that none of you have any clue about what happened in Haven Hay. If you did, you wouldn't be bothering with this farce."

"And, and what happened in Haven Hay?" Taffy licked dry lips.

Prey rolled his head to the side on the table, now looking at them sideways, "I'm not at liberty to discuss that information."

An indrawn breath of anger, the stallion opening his mouth to bellow. Prey went on just in time.

"But, actually, shouldn't you already know that, Taffy?" Prey furrowed his face in mild confusion, rolling his head back to being level again.

"I-no? If it is classified information then it isn't to be distributed to-"

"No, I mean it is classified. So surely you already know it, right?"

Taffy leaned back on the chair, habitually tugging her peaked cap down on her fraying mane, "Look, you've kinda' lost me. What are you trying to say?"

"Huh. That's really odd. I was sure you would be taking sides."

Taffy stopped tugging at her cap and finally made eye contact. It only lasted for a moment though, then she guiltily fixed on a point above his head again, "That's completely wrong. I was ordered to come here specifically as a neutral department in this."

"Not that. Sides. As in, 'sides'." Prey pressed.

The corners of Taffy's mouth turned down minutely in distress, "You're really not making any sense."

'-there's no way. I would have been told if they were in the know. It's just coincidence-'

Prey wanted to leap across the table and rip what he wanted from Taffy's stubborn head, not play out this role, his last precious hours were being wasted on this. But he stuck with it.

He heaved a flat sigh, so very clearly not fooled by her act, "Sides. Secrets and sides. Sides."

More specifically, SIDES. Secret Internal Division of the Equestrian Services.

It was all in the name, a secret government division, one set up within the Guard, originally just the Royal Guard, to covertly monitor it. It wasn't some kind of secret agent programme, it was merely made up of a small group of discreet individuals already working in or with the Guard. They were simply to look out for and report signs of potential corruption or abuse of power, and they had lease to access virtually any information they needed to prove or disprove it. More or less, they were designated whistleblowers.

Simply normal ponies, but with an extra job. Albeit one they had to sign a non-disclosure agreement for.

Nor was it some huge conspiracy or illegal. It was government approved, evidenced by the fact that in all the times Prey had been around Taffy, she'd never had any guilty thoughts relating to it. Why would Taffy feel guilty over performing her job? One she'd been hoofpicked for? Indeed, she was proud of her own integrity, evidenced by how SIDES had hired her. However, SIDES was definitely supposed to be secret from the ISND. If the wider Guard knew of it, any who abused their positions would simply hide their activities better.

Prey had known something was up the moment they'd come back to all those files Taffy didn’t want the Royal Inspectors to know she had, having been 'hidden' in their office. So he'd looked into it when the opportunity presented itself, while doing some other work with the Night Guard down in the Records Department. He'd only needed to listen in on the thoughts of a total of exactly three minds, and found out about SIDES. You couldn't keep secrets for long from a mind leech.

Unless you were a Solar Guard in armour. Or a changeling. Or alicorn.

Compared to all the vile, horrifying, and dangerous secrets Prey knew, Taffy's was small. But it wasn't small to Taffy. Thoughts of disciplinary punishments, censure, and the shame of failure rushed through Taffy's mind.

'-oh sugar! How did I mess up? What did I do wrong? Sugar, sugar, sugar!-'

The Guard unicorn was lost, oblivious to what was being said. He was just angry that Prey was spouting nonsense.

"Enough stalling. Sign or you're going straight back into your cell."

Prey flicked his eyes to the stallion, then to Taffy. He frowned, "Oh yes, it's a secr-... Hm. Then how am I supposed to-It's important. But if I can't say, then how?"

Taffy's furtive eyes darted sideways to the stallion and for a moment she considered asking him to leave, but that was dumb, there was no way he'd leave his post and break all the rules. So instead, she hurriedly stood up and pushed her way around the table to Prey's side.

She bent in close, into Prey's personal space. Close enough to touch, "How do you guys even know about that?" She whispered.

Prey lifted his head off the table and leant in even closer to the side of Taffy's head. He brought his mouth close, and reached up with his small hoof to cup Taffy's ear.

"I have no time left for these games."

The Royal Guard, who was already composing how he was going to formally put down in writing about the liaison officer breaking protocol, only saw Taffy stiffen up at whatever the precocious brat was whispering in her ear. And kept whispering. He couldn't hear the low words, but whatever the lamb was whispering about, it was quite lengthy.

Taffy wasn't even saying anything back, just standing rigidly frozen in the same posture. Was she even blinking?

He snorted impatiently. How much could one dirty lamb say? They still weren't done, he just kept whispering away.

Why, the foal could be repeating the same thing over and over, so monotonous was the drone of his voice, but since Taffy was still listening without interjecting, it was obviously a long story.

And still ongoing.

'-this is getting ridiculous. Hurry it up, or else-'

With no warning, Taffy stiffly straightened back up, and then suddenly struck the lamb.

"Ahh!" Prey was knocked backwards as the stool fell, getting trapped in the corner between the wall and table. A tiny spot of blood coloured Prey’s fur.

For a moment the Guard dithered, wondering what the prisoner could have said that was so offensive as to deserve getting hit, but he was still going to have to write this up now-And Taffy wasn't stopping in her attack. She was trying to stamp on the downed prisoner.

The lamb was trapped in the corner, the fallen stool tangled up, and Taffy was stomping down hard, trying to trample the squirming lamb.

"Hey! Enough!"

Taffy didn't listen.

"I said enough! Halt at once!" His training finally jolted him forwards.

Taffy still didn't turn or stop. It was then that he realised she wasn't going to.

"What the buck? Enough! Enough!" He lunged forwards, grabbing at her with both magic and his hooves.

She threw back a rear leg and kicked him off, not stopping, still just trying and failing to crush the lamb, who was shouting shrilly for help.

"Stop, Stop!"

He grappled with her, not attacking her, just trying to drag her away. He wasn't in any real danger, he was a stallion, taller, stronger, and wearing armour unlike her. But she was thrashing about wildly, hard enough to jerk herself free. She was actually struggling, not letting herself get dragged away after trying to get a few cheap shots in.

"Hey, stoppit! Taffy, what do you-? Ow! Cut it out!"

He heard the clank of the gate being opened behind him, as the pegasus Guard finally stopped watching and came in to help subdue Taffy.

"Has she gone mad!?"

"What the buck are you doing Taffy!?"

Together, they dragged Taffy back, one on each shoulder. The lamb was still cowering in the corner-No he wasn't. He'd crawled under the table to hide instead, down by all their hooves.

The lamb suddenly darted out from under the table into the tangle of their legs. "W-? You tryin' to get trampled-?!"

Prey threw his ribbon in the unicorn Guard’s face and grabbed the passing leg of the pegasus, around the unprotected fur above the shin-guard.

The ribbon stuck to the one's face, and Prey touched the other.

'Idiots.'

Stupid, blind, self-important, stubborn idiots who thought they knew best. Idiots always messed up even the best laid plans. In this case, the idiots had messed up on the Royal Guard’s side.

Taffy was stupid enough not only to let Prey, a prisoner who had every incentive to trick her, get under her skin, but then willingly move close enough for the same prisoner to touch. She might not know about his touch-based mind magic, but what if he'd bitten her? Or stabbed her in the eye?

The unicorn stallion had been stupid enough to fall for the act when Taffy suddenly broke character, stopped responding, and began attacking their prisoner without reason, all without noticing that she actually missed every attempted kick and stomp. Besides the first.

The pegasus Guard had been stupid enough to abandon his post to help out his friend with a sudden emergency situation, thinking it would only take a moment. Without flying away to get help.

It was because Taffy was one of them, a fellow Guard, so it hadn't occurred to them to raise the alarm, but instinctively move to fix the problem themselves first. If it had obviously been Prey, like if he'd been trying to run or attack, their reactions would have been very different, but he was getting beaten into a corner, not the instigator, so in the heat of the moment they'd dismissed him.

Prey'd had long enough when pretending to whisper in Taffy's ear to work his way past her mental defences, break down her will, and implant his own simple commands. There'd been no time to read her memories, even at the speed of thought, he'd only had time to take very crude control. He could have killed her with a touch, but a bag of meat without a mind couldn't follow orders. He could have driven her mad, but that would have had issues of its own.

After a tense four minutes, Prey opened his eyes and removed his hoof from the glassy eyed pegasus, who slowly turned and began marching back to his post outside the barred gate. Taffy had stopped doing anything at all, and was just standing there, staring at nothing, chest slowly rising and falling. Only then did Prey turn his attention to the last Royal Guard.

The unicorn's whole body was locked up. Tremors and shivers were wracking his frame. The ribbon was coiled around his far-too-pale face and horn, and in his bulging eyes tiny blood vessels were starting to pop.

"Idiot." Prey tiredly repeated, placing his hoof on the stallion's leg.

'Oh what wonders you will see, when you cease to run from me~'

'Where is Crimson?'

Taffy's mind provided the answer.

Crimson had already actually been released. Prey was the only one with a warrant, and after officially confirming his identity and right to carry a wingblade, they were all out of excuses to hold him. So after being detained in the Guard Compound cells for four hours, and also being checked over by a Guard doctor, he'd been released. And then escorted out when he refused to leave. But he was out.

Good. That was good, Prey told himself. Good. As if anything could be referred to as 'good' anymore. But if the word could be stretched that far, it was at least good that Crimson wasn't being imprisoned overnight.

Prey so desperately wanted to go to Crimson. But he was out of time. This last plan was for Crimson, too.

'How are the Solar Guard involved?' He asked next.

None of the three ponies knew the reason for the Solar Guard’s presence, or at least no more than he'd already worked out for himself. But no, they didn't know the exact reason, only Captain Shining Armour plus the Solar Guards themselves did. Prey left that question and moved on. He had not the time to waste.

'When will your shifts end?' Prey checked with the two Royal Guards.

Soonish, in a little under an hour and a half.

'When is someone going to actually check on me in the cell?'

They didn't know. Taffy had been sent to do just that, and once she reported back that he hadn't signed the confession, who knew? But probably, he'd be left to stew in the gloomy cell. So at least not for three hours, maybe longer.

'What is Luna doing?'

As expected, they didn't know. An alicorn’s schedule was all their own. Even if no one else could, Luna was going to be the one to catch him in the end. Not because of skill, intelligence, or strategy. Simply because she had all the magical might of an alicorn to brute force any problem that frustrated her. Unfair.

'When is Captain Nighthawk returning to Canterlot?'

Again, they didn't know, but since they weren't Night Guards, it had been unlikely they would've in the first place, but Prey checked anyway. However, he did get the impression Nighthawk didn't have a scheduled return yet. The disaster in Haven Hay would take weeks, even months to sort out, and he was going to be needed twenty-four-seven for at least the first little while. So there was no possible reprieve or assistance for Prey coming from him.

'When is my trial supposed to be?'

The answer was rather shocking. Tomorrow morning. They weren't even being subtle about rushing this through and skipping the lesser legal delays where they could get away with it. It was just more proof this was going to be a sham trial. Prey wanted to close his eyes and bury his head, he was just so weary of it all. But he didn't, because he had no time.

This was all still so fast, so unreal. The strange sensation of not having any more time... it would almost have been liberating, if it weren't so irreversibly damning. He would have time to cry again, later, once he'd executed this plan. He'd have all the time in the world inside a cell in Dreverton to cry.

His own reaction caught him off guard as he thought the prison's name. Prey staggered on his hooves, a wave of nausea going through him like putrid sea water. 'Dreverton. I'm going back to Dreverton.'

No. There was no time. There was only a single one-in-a-hundred chance left. Not for him, but-

'No time for weeping.' Prey bent his mind away from spiralling down that black sinkhole with bars of iron. He mentally seized hold of Taffy's mind. Her fragile mindscape trembled and nearly cracked at his caustic touch.

'Where are the Elements of Harmony?'

Prey had not forgotten.

He had never forgotten, no, not even for a minute.

When he woke up, when he was in the shower, when he was struggling over difficult paperwork, when huffing up a steep flight of stairs, when yawning from overwork, snidely joking with Gloom, talking to Crimson, trudging down the dark sewer tunnels, dissecting changeling corpses, drawing runes, riding on the train, fitfully sleeping, and especially not while cowering inside a flooded, slowly collapsing train carriage beneath the wrath of a giant storm. At no point along the line had Prey forgotten.

How could you forget witnessing an impossible miracle, the resurrection of a dead person?

How could you forget being denied access to the same miracle?

How could you forgive that?

Prey hadn't. Prey couldn’t. Prey wouldn’t.

He'd been denied, Luna telling him to leave it alone, that the magic of Harmony was beyond his reach.

She had no idea, absolutely no idea of the sheer lengths Prey would go to in order to survive. But even survival was only number two on The List.

Number one, the impossible dream. Bring back Fleece and his mother. And since he was willing to do whatever it took to survive...

Forget the most important goal of them all? Give up like Luna told him to?

Impossible.

Prey had never forgotten the Elements of Harmony. He'd never put them from his mind.

The mystic gemstones could bring back the dead. He'd seen it. He'd been there that night. That meant the impossible was possible. And it had changed everything.

All he had to figure out was how to replicate the miracle. It was possible. It could be done.

That was what Prey had been slowly building towards ever since then. Once he knew it was possible, all his long term goals had shifted to devising a way to force the Elements of Harmony into bringing back the two most important people to have ever lived.

Prey was no fool, he knew he'd at best only ever get one shot at it. Luna, or worse, her sister the Sun Wolf, would certainly catch him soon after he stole the Elements. Not immediately, but definitely soon after.

He'd only have a narrow window to try to use them. So he had to be absolutely certain his attempt was going to work, and that he could get both Fleece and his mother safely out once it was done.

He could face alicorn wrath and die afterwards if absolutely necessary, if it meant they had been safely smuggled out of Equestria. That was fine. His own life was only number two on The List.

So that was why Prey had been waiting. Once he was absolutely confident in his preparations, then he would have enacted the plan, briefly stolen the Elements, possibly their Bearers too if need be. But he hadn't gotten as far as the first step yet; having a foolproof method. But he would have gone through with it without even one second's further delay once he was absolutely confident.

And Haven Hay, the storm, Gloom's death, the Solar Guard, and Luna had all gotten in the way.

There had still been so much left to do, to prepare, to test first. His family would need money once they returned, food, protection, a safe place to flee to, all that and more, because they deserved only the best once they came back to life. He had meant to set all that up beforehoof. There was no time for any of that now.

Prey had never forgotten. But now there was no time left.

His preparations weren't anywhere close to being done, his theory only still at the basic stage. It was all he had now, though. A one in a hundred, no, one in a million longshot.

Just as there was no time, there was no choice. He'd have to take it.

For Fleece. For his mother. And now, for Gloom too.

The Elements of Harmony could only be activated by their Bearers? They were for ponies only? They belonged to Equestria? They protected the world? Wrong. Prey was prepared to make that into dead wrong if necessary.

The strong take, and the weak suffer? Always take, take, take, yez'?

Well tonight Prey was finally the one who'd be taking everything.

A pegasus Royal Guard and his partner, a unicorn stallion, stood outside the barred gate to the high security cells inside the Palace. They both had splitting headaches. Both also remembered drinking together the night before, and naturally attributed it to that. Both were none the wiser.

A liaison officer by the name of Taffy Hopes stumbled back into her office, wearing a heavy looking backpack for some reason. Ten minutes later, she wandered into her SIDES superior's office, Cordial Greeting, and said she needed to show him something important. Back in her office. Alone. He marched after her, and even shut the door for privacy himself.

Cordial left ten minutes later in a hurry to go file some very important paperwork that needed to be back-dated. No one was there to check when he slipped it into a different mail basket with an 'Urgent: Level 5' seal on it. Then one at a time, he requested to speak in private to two different Royal Guards who were on duty that evening, and who had shifts patrolling the Inner Palace tonight. Alpha Level and Blue Blaze.

Shortly after, Alpha and Blaze marched up to the door of the Lieutenant on duty's office, and said they had an urgent matter they wanted to bring to his attention. When asked if it could wait, Alpha said no, sorry sir, it can't. Blue Blaze was carrying a large cardboard box on his back, balanced with his wings. Concerned, Lieutenant Twining Ivy ushered them in and shut the door with an order to; "Not disturb".

Shortly thereafter, Twining Ivy called a sudden change in shift rotation for the coming night, citing a "Surprise inspection". Unusual, but such inspections sometimes happened. Such interruptions gave Twinging Ivy a headache, but it was important to keep everypony on their hooftips occasionally. It was good practice.

Before clocking out for the evening, Captain Shining Armour noticed the sudden schedule change, as he had an excellent memory when it came to his Guards, and knew they were not the same ones as on the assigned rota. However, when he heard the reason, Shining Armour was fine with it. He had a policy not to micromanage his trusted subordinates.

In the shuffle of the surprise inspection, a couple of posts were left unfilled. When Blaze respectfully voiced his concerns in the presence of another squad to Twining Ivy, the Lieutenant thanked him for volunteering, and promptly assigned him and his partner Alpha to cover the gap. Twining Ivy further cited that this was precisely the reason why they did these surprise inspections, so as to help spot potential overlooked problems before they became real issues.

The Royal Vaults were closely guarded at all times of the day and night. There were four vaults, purposefully separated and individually monitored to prevent a complete loss if one should ever actually be breached. But for all the regulations and enchantments surrounding each Royal Vault, guarding them was considered one of the most boring duties in the Palace Guard. You never went inside the vaults, all you did was stand outside a massive sealed metal door for six hours, and that was it.

Even on the vanishingly rare occasions you got to open the vault for somepony, (and there was a long, long list of forms, procedures, approvals, and permissions that needed to be completed in advance for that to happen), you still weren't allowed into the vault yourself, even as an escort. Thus, why it was one of the most boring posts.

At quarter past eight in the evening, fifteen minutes before the four bored Royal Guards at Vault One were set to rotate out, their replacements were only just arriving at the Palace to clock in. The four Vaults’ shift changes were staggered, so as to never have a moment when all who would be guarding were distracted. As they clocked in, putting on their armour in a locker room, a harried Staff Sargent told them about the surprise inspection and reshuffle.

They were still on Vault duty of course, because of regulations that was one of the postings that couldn't be changed last minute, inspection or no inspection, but it did mean they were going to be ten minutes late in starting. That was fine, these things happened, and besides, they weren't the poor schmucks having to spend even ten more boring minutes standing outside Vault One.

Five minutes later, outside of Vault One, Lieutenant Twining Ivy arrived to inspect the current Guards posted there. He then said they were going to run through the drill of opening the vault. As it was obviously (to them) part of a test, the sentries recited the rule about not opening the vault without the correct prior signed and verified documentation. To which the Lieutenant congratulated them on their commitment to duty even in the face of a superior, smiled, and asked them to check the log.

When they did, they found to their surprise that there was indeed a backdated, vetted, and approved form, which'd apparently been missed having only been filed today. Not to actually enter the vault, merely open it as part of this surprise inspection, which it seemed to them the Lieutenant had actually been planning some weeks in advance. Test openings were covered under protocol, so long as nopony actually entered the vault. Since it checked out, the two key holders put in this weeks’ magical code, inserted their keys and turned them at the same time-

What seemed like only a minute later, with the drill over, the Guards closed and relocked Vault One, and the Lieutenant went on his way. And again, what seemed like only a few minutes later, their replacements arrived for the night to relieve them. They didn't realise that their replacements were actually ten minutes late, not precisely on time, until they saw the real time when clocking off.

But oh well, these things happened. It hadn't felt like it, but they just mustn't have realised the inspection took that long. But the vault had definitely only been open for a minute, and nopony had gone inside. That they were sure of, and that was the only bit which truly mattered. Now they could focus on sleeping off their headache.

Contrary to the stories and rumours propagating about the public, the Royal Vaults were not actually filled with magical wonders. In fact, they almost exclusively contained the country's mundane treasury. Gold, silver, different stockpiled currencies, deeds, bills of sale and copies of the documentation for loans, diamonds and gems, valuable jewellery, historical art pieces and delicate, (or perhaps controversial) sculptures, documents, magical ores and metals, and finally, yes, a few artefacts. But only a few.

You didn't typically store magical artefacts in the Royal Vaults. Rather, such artefacts were usually individually secured elsewhere, as each required different and specialized containment measures. Also, Equestria did not store any dark magic artefacts they came across if they could help it. If possible, it was the princesses' ironclad policy to always destroy them instead.

So there were no dark artefacts in Vault One, and very, very few normal ones. Less than ten, actually. Nine to be precise. At the time the replacement Guards started their shift at two-oh-four-one hours in the evening, there were only three left.

On their new assignment, Blue Blaze and Alpha Level went and replaced their two fellow Royal Guards standing watch over the high security cells holding their total of one overnight prisoner. If anypony was to come by and ask anything about the lamb, the two Guards would swear by Celestia they'd checked through the peep hatch at the start of their shift, as per protocol, and yes, the lamb was sitting quietly inside and definitely hadn't escaped.

Taffy left via the Guard Compound gate late that evening, carrying a rather large backpack. Her leaving late wasn't unusual, the few ponies who noticed or exchanged goodbyes with her knew she often did overtime. The backpack she carried was a little unusual, but only a little. It was after all, Taffy.

Cordial Greeting, who had left fifteen minutes earlier, met Taffy three streets away from the Palace. Blank eyed, he passed her a parcel wrapped in brown scrap paper, and left without even a word. Incidentally, and completely unrelated, Cordial Greeting as her superior in SIDES, just happened to be one of the ponies in the Records Department who could look at Royal Vault storage lists, and see what was stored where. He wasn't supposed to, but he could. Not that he would, obviously.

Nopony was observing her, but if any had been this late as night fell, to their view Taffy took an abrupt turn, then another, not heading back to her home. She stepped behind a row of dustbins for a minute, outside the pools of streetlight. A minute later, now with a limp and an empty backpack, Taffy left and this time finally did return to her house. Much like the rest, she had no inclination anything were wrong.

Only a blasted headache.

It should not have been that simple. But with mind magic, planning, and lack of care for future consequences, it was. Like a domino effect.

One fell and affected the next, mind controlling one person leading into another, and when all the dominos finished toppling, Prey was left holding the six precious Elements of Harmony, wrapped up in brown scrap paper.

The obscenely gilt and bedecked jewelled case the six artefacts had rested in on sculpted padding had been left behind in Vault One. No doubt it had passive tracking spells or the like placed upon it. It probably would have sounded the alarm the moment the lid was lifted too, if not for the silk ribbon which had been draped across it beforehoof, and only removed once it was shut.

Inside those brown paper wrappings, the Elements of Harmony now likewise nestled in a tangle with the same ribbon. Just in case.

Prey was ninety-nine percent certain the six gems were so overwhelmingly magical, that they couldn't have any further spells or enchantments laid on them, so any such tracking spell would've had to have been in the carrying case.

Much like water droplets sizzling off a hot skillet, any other magic you tried to lay onto the six Elements would've simply burned right away. Prey had seen the all-powerful, living magic of Harmony with his own eyes. It was so far beyond unicorn magic he couldn't even begin to define the metric of distance. Maybe even alicorn magic, although in those unknown waters, he was as good as guessing in the dark.

But none of that mattered now. It wasn't important. He had them now.

With minimal preparation, and very little time, Prey had stolen the Elements of Harmony.

One would have thought Equestria had learnt their lesson the first time, what with the incident with the griffins. Well, they had been locked away inside the Palace Vaults this time, but still.

'I don't care. Even if this is all an elaborate trap, I don't have any time to worry about future consequences. With no time left, there is no future.'

Prey delved into the sewers. The wickerwatch and its hex greeted him. He slipped into the darkness of the pipes, and soon after, climbed into the rocky tunnels of the cavern.

Prey didn't almost cry when he finally limped on shaking, aching hooves into his lair. He did cry, as he passed the barrier of runic defences and set hoof into safety.

His lair, his wonderful, hidden, safe lair.

The million tiny fragments of shattered quartz, mixed into the gravel of the cavern's floor, glittered like his very own sea of tiny stars as he lit the crystal lanterns one by one. This right here, this cavern, with the scoured rock walls, the makeshift plank walkways, the crates of supplies and provisions, and layer upon layer upon layer of invisible runes, this cavern right here was the pinnacle of all his accomplishments. In here, he was at his safest.

Safe from all but an alicorn, that is. In the bottom of his heart, Prey somehow knew that the Sun and Moon Wolves would still be able to find and get him, even hiding in here. Nothing else in the world could threaten him in here. Nothing but them.

It wasn't fair. Why did they get to be alicorns? Why did they get the right to abuse their alicorn magic just for virtue of breathing, when after countless hours and sacrifices, his very best efforts might only just slow them down?

'Here is where I will make my final stand,' Prey placed the brown paper bundle down, 'Succeed or fail, I will keep trying over and over until Luna drags me from this lair herself.'

Prey was hungry. He was thirsty. He was exhausted, cried out, and grief numbed.

But there was no time for his weaknesses.

Prey drained a waterskin and threw it aside, shoved as many hoofuls of dried oats into his mouth from a barrel as he could in ten seconds, recklessly threw back a dried karris seed from his potion supplies for the boost of false energy it gave, and then rushed to begin.

But first-

-But first, Prey took out the last memories taken from Gloom. He ever so carefully transferred them into the shining bone of a cleaned pony's skull, dipped in fresh blood, and fixed it all inside a runic circle he'd created months ago and corrected minutes ago.

And then-

-And then, the Elements of Harmony.

Six brilliant, glittering, almost glowing multifaceted ignius gems. A red bolt-shaped ruby, a teardrop aquamarine, an ice diamond, an orange sphere of citrine, a rose-pink opal, and a six-pointed amethyst star.

At a stumbling run, Prey carried the open paper bundle over to his largest magical scanning array, one able to uncover a multitude of different things, from the variations of all types of known magical signatures from second to second to spectrums of light invisible to Prey's naked eye. Prey placed the six Elements right in the very middle. He took a deep breath, braced himself, and whipped away his ribbon.

No burning living light smote him. But neither did anything else happen. Taking his ribbon with him, Prey exited the runic circle and got to work.

The time he already didn't have was running out.

'A stitch in time, running through the hangmare's twine~'

One night he was sure he would be alive. One night to truly live. One night left. Just him, all alone inside a lair buried under the mountain.

'Let it please be enough.'

Word had come down from the top, the very top. From Princess Luna. Clan Myrrdon's central role in causing the massacre was to be kept silent. Nopony yet alive from Haven Hay knew the storm’s true origins. And now none would. Those who had contact with the rogue thestrals had died in the storm. Only the Night Guard and three Royal Guards knew, and they would be ordered to secrecy.

Supposedly it was for the good of the two thestral clans who still had to live in Equestria, and who had remained loyal. If not, they would be reviled, blamed, and hated for the traitorous actions of Myrrdon. More than they already were reviled, blamed, and hated for everything else.

This order was to protect the loyal thestrals. The blame would instead be laid at the hooves of the Heights family. A lie, and a miscarriage of justice, but one that would be allowed. Because the Heights family were dead. They had not outflown the storm, and their shattered bodies had been found on the hillside as consequence of their pathological need to fly. Their hubris drew them unto the vengeful sky, and mother nature answered their call. As such, they were no longer alive to contradict any story, and in a twisted way, safe from any vengeful retaliation. Wasn't it better to protect thestrals who were still alive? At least that was the logic laid out, no matter how unpalatable it was to swallow. The thestrals had no faith that pegasi would now feel anywhere near the same weight of prejudice that would have been heaped upon them.

The Night Guard would simply not correct the witness statements of all the surviving Haven Hay ponies, who were blaming the weather tower ponies for everything.

In his office inside the Night Guard section of the Palace, Screech was sitting slumped at his overflowing desk. Outside, the half-moon looked down on the dark world through its lidded gaze.

Screech held his head in the crook of his wings. With Captain Nighthawk left behind, and the time it had taken making his way to Haven Hay and back, he was far behind on his workload. The Night Guard were back down to operating on a near skeleton staff, yet again. The stacks of papers, scrolls, and files on his desk were evidence of that. He only had to open his eyes to be reminded.

Screech didn't open his eyes, nor return to his work. He just sat there.

The malady wasn't the overwork. It had never been about the work. Heavier than all his duties, was the weight of only one life. And it had been so much more than one.

Haven Hay. Each and every member of the ISND and the fates they now faced. Clan Myrrdon. The traitors’ final escape. The gag order. What was happening now, and what had happened before. The closed-door trial for Prey in the morning.

For the first time since that glorious moment, when the clans had first learnt of Luna's return and gladly seized upon her offered hoof to re-join Equestria, Screech thought:

'Maybe I can't do this. Maybe I'm not strong enough.'

Trying with all the Elements inside a runic circle.

Trying them individually one at a time.

Trying in different combinations. One and five. Two and four. Three and three. Two, two, and two. One, two, and three.

Trying them with the gems touching, and not touching.

Trying to use an array to push magic through them.

Trying the same while placing them in combination again.

Trying using a different array to attempt to pull magic out of the Elements.

Trying the same in the various potential combinations.

Trying with a drop of his own blood, as a link to Fleece and their mother.

Trying using a pony body taken from the city morgue, kept fresh inside a runic array.

Trying with both his blood and the body together.

Trying the Elements in their combinations, both touching and not touching the dead body.

Trying voicing what he wanted to happen out loud.

Trying asking nicely, or ordering, or begging the gems, individually and together.

Trying the same again in Zebrican, the deer tongue, Griffonian, and even singing his wishes in verse.

Trying to invoke them by listing out each corresponding Element's virtue while holding them.

Trying to invoke them while not holding them.

Trying under various light levels, and seeing if fire had any visible effect.

Trying to extend his mind magic into the inanimate gemstones.

Trying while polishing them, like in stories of genies in lamps.

Trying while wearing the too-big tiara, and the other five strung around his neck.

Trying with his precious ribbon both on, and off.

Prey tried everything he could conceive of that he thought might work. And also things he didn't think would work. And also things he knew wouldn’t work, but had to tick off anyway.

And at the end of it all, the six gemstones of Harmony sat in a small pile on the stone stump of a shattered stalagmite. In the crystal lanternlight, they glittered faintly in all the rich colours of the rainbow.

None of it worked. Inert. Nothing. No reaction.

The false, jittery energy of the karris seed was still running through Prey's system. He made himself stand still. He breathed in. Held it. Breathed out.

'Don't give up.' He couldn't afford to give up. Everything he had tried had been for naught.

'That just tells me one thing beyond a doubt.' Prey squared his thin shoulders and turned in the direction of the lairs' entrance.

These Elements were more or less just highly specialised and magical keys. Keys are made for locks, or doors.

'Without their Bearer, these are just pieces of tasteless jewellery. I can work with that. I can fix that.'

The Elements were just keys. The Element Bearers were the locked doors, somehow opening up to the power of Harmony on the other side. Usually, that is. It made sense in Prey's head that was how they were supposed to be used. As keys to a mystical lock.

Except, Prey knew that wasn't the entire case. They could be used in the right circumstances without their specific Bearer. He'd seen Luna do it that night, when Harmony had stepped in to resurrect the dead Bearer of Laughter. So, a key, but one where if push came to shove, it could bypass the lock entirely.

'Yes. I can work with that.'

The six Element Bearers all lived in the small town of Ponyville for some reason. That was within Prey's reach tonight, if he hurried. He could take the greenstone tunnel down to the mountain's base again, and follow the train tracks right into the heart of the sleeping pony town, exactly like he and Lemon had done that one night before.

Six ponies, only two of them unicorns. Prey knew who they were, where they were supposed to live, their families, appearances, and public history. Because of course after learning they were in fact real, he and Lemon had gathered information on them.

That was all Prey needed. Tonight, he would get all six of them. He would force the Elements of Harmony to activate.

'Break their minds. Take their memories. Puppet their bodies and force them to use the Elements. Maybe the magical binding to use the Elements is their blood? Or maybe their soul?'

Blood magic. Black magic. Voodoo magic. Prey knew many ways to afflict and twist even the immaterial soul, even if he didn't understand the how or why of souls.

'And if they still refuse to activate, I know killing the Bearers will definitely make them react. I'll feed them one by one into a grindstone until they activate. Or until there's no one left.'

The six famous and adorned national heroes, the Elements of Harmony. They'd defeated Nightmare Moon and Discord through the living power of Harmony. Head on, standing together, with the power of Harmony, it didn't seem like there was any single monster they couldn't overpower.

Prey wasn't big, or loud, or powerful. He had no pride. He wasn't going to fight them. He was going to murder them in their sleep. And it was going to be easy.

Prey wasn't going to overpower or best them in a fight. They weren't even going to see him coming. He was simply going to walk in while they slept, and poke them. Just one touch.

Prey paused mid-step on the walkway. There was a silent ringing going off in the back of his head. And it was only now that Prey realised he'd been hearing it for a while. It was coming from the runic arrays outside of his lair.

The air turned to ice in Prey's lungs. He choked, gagged. Luna. She'd finally come.

He'd failed, he'd run out of time, he wasn't going to have a chance to go down to Ponyville. It was too late! His runic defences could stop anything, anything that is but an alicorn.

Runic illusion arrays, memory alteration, attention deflection, compulsion, notice-me-not, and camouflage runes hid not just the lair's entrance, but the very tunnels themselves. And those arrays were merely the least harmful of the defences Prey had built up over many months of tireless effort.

To walk into the tunnels, to willingly try and reach the crystal lair... it was death. Burned, melted, bisected, shattered, electrocuted, frozen, crushed, displaced, inverted, snapped, poisoned, suffocated, drowned, mind-killed, and a hundred and one other ways to die.

There were protections against everything Prey could think of. Arrays against heat in all forms he could conceive, against gases, poisons, smoke, against magic, teleportation, against transmuting the stone, to deflect velocity, to repel metals, energies, water, ice, extreme temperature fluctuations, animals, hexes, black magic, scrying, scanning, voodoo doll magic, everything he could manage.

But Luna... Luna was an alicorn.

She had alicorn magic. She was immortal.

'She's coming! It's finally happening. She's on her way through the tunnels right now! It's too late, my time is up, it's, it's-!'

Prey stopped. It was the wrong kind of alarm.

It wasn't the array to signal a magical assault. The feedback runes were pinging, but not screaming at him. It was a different sort of alarm.

Like a rusty cog, Prey's mind struggled to grind into place.

'It's... it's not an attack?'

Like being stuck at the bottom of a snowed-under mountain pass, waiting for inevitable avalanche to obliterate everything, he'd been so tense that he'd immediately jumped to the assumption that- but no. It wasn't Luna.

'But, if not her, then what...?'

Prey blinked exhausted eyes, adrenaline still flooding his body, and tried to hammer his tired mind into working. So it wasn't Luna, it wasn't an attempted attack, the defence arrays weren't attacking back, the runes were letting them past without issue.

'Lemon Pink's arrived back in Canterlot already?'

No. Not Lemon Pink. Rather, the only other person in the whole world who had been keyed into bypassing his arrays without coming to harm.

It was shameful, how long it took to connect the dots. 'Oh? Ohhhhh. Oh.'

'Oh Zoma'Grika.'

Prey wildly cast about him. He snatched up the Elements of Harmony, hesitated, doubled back and threw them into an empty cloth bag, then rushed down the boardwalk for the entrance, leaving the crystal lanterns lit and everything behind.

He tried to run out of the lair. The absolute fastest his body could manage was instead a limping stagger.

He met Crimson around the first turn in the tunnel, coming the other way.

Prey stumbled to a stop breathing heavily, the drawstring bag slung over his chest.

"Oh."

Crimson lowered the cheap, bad lantern he was holding up. It flickered wildly with every uncertain motion of Crimson's good wing.

"Prey."

Crimson slowly put the lantern down onto the rough stone of the floor. Outside of its pool of flickering illumination, the solid black shadows pressed close in the cramped tunnels, far deeper and more menacingly than they should. The hex reached even as far as here.

"I, I wasn't sure. I thought I was imagining it. But I smelled, I thought it couldn't be, I mean my talent... I thought I was crazy, hallucinating the scent of your blood out on the streets above." He cast about the low tunnel, "Am I hallucinating? Is this real?"

Prey sagged against the cold stone of the tunnel’s curved wall. He felt so tired, despite the false energy of the karris seed swirling in his blood.

"No, you're not hallucinating. This is real. Hello by the way, Crimson."

Bad luck. The worst of luck. Pure dumb chance striking again. How else could Crimson's special talent let him come across the one trail in the whole of Canterlot to follow? And also track it unerringly all the way back down to here?

He saw that Crimson had cleaned himself up a bit at least. Wiped off the blood and dirt, tied his mane back out of his eyes, and changed the bandages on his wing and hind leg. He still looked completely awful.

Crimson's feathers and fur hadn't been tended to at all. His face was pale, and there was a sheen of sweat caught in the flickering light, brought on by the pain of moving, despite whatever medication he'd been given. But it was the grief that was crushing Crimson's posture, dulling his eyes, and bowing his head.

"You should not have come down here. Not at all. Do you even know how lucky you are that I-? If it had been anyone else to follow me-", Prey bit off the rest.

"How could I not, when I suddenly stumbled across your scent?" Crimson asked blankly. Then almost as an afterthought, "You're supposed to be in prison."

"Yes. I was. I escaped. I'm out of time. There was something I have to do first, though."

"Out of time? What does that mean?"

"Out of time. End of the line. Out of rope. No more stairs. I'm, I'm sorry Crimson. There was so much more I still wanted-! Wanted to show you so much more. I'm sorry."

Crimson's dull eyes sharpened in alarm, "W-wha-! You, I, you can't be dying? How? Poison? You can't be sick!"

"No. I might as well be. Luna, LuNa, she's going to throw me away. Throw us away." Prey held up one forehoof, snarling down at the golden tracer band, "I HATE her."

"That's wrong. That has to be wrong. That's not what she said to me at all."

"What? She, Luna? Luna said?"

"She didn't say that. I mean, what she said was that she would deal with this. Your arrest, I mean. She... didn't want to talk about Haven Hay, not yet. Or about G-Gloom." Crimson's voice broke down at the end.

"What are you talking about?"

"Luna said…" Prey noticed Crimson hadn't added her title. Maybe he finally no longer saw her as his rightful ruler. “…I went and told her everything, and she said she was going to take care of it."

"Yes, 'take care of it', as in, get rid of me. Of us. Because that's what she said to me." Prey spat.

"No. No no. You must have misunderstood her. She promised, she promised me that at least this one thing was going to turn out fine." Crimson's disagreement held all the tones of desperation.

"Just like she's kept the rest of her promises? Copper Pot had a promise from the Night Guard, and therefore Luna. Much good it did him. I had a promise from Luna. Much good it did me." Prey was tired. He limply waved his forehoof, showing off the tracer band again, "We're prisoners, Crimson. That's never changed. She's a princess, an alicorn. Immortal. We're nothing to her."

"You're not listening." Crimson's teeth ground together, "Or you're not hearing. We're not getting thrown away. Luna promised that you're going to be fine. Why can you only imagine the worst? Why are you giving up on me?!"

"I'm not giving up, but my time is up-"

"No, you're just giving up! Because of Gloom, because it's all gone, you just, you're just giving up! And you're going to leave me behind."

Prey's mouth twisted, "I, I don't want, it's not like I want to go. I'm not choosing this, it's Luna. Crimson, she's an alicorn! She has all the power. I'm not choosing this, she's making it happen."

Crimson's hoof ground into the gritty stone, "You're not getting taken away. Luna promised. She said she'd fix your trial. You, you need to go back." He said in realization.

"Go back?" Prey echoed dumbly.

"Go back to the Palace. They can't know you tried to escape or- Do they know? Were you seen? Oh. Oh no. Did you kill anyone to escape?" Crimson groaned miserably, for a moment swaying on his hooves dangerously.

"No, no I didn't. And nobody saw me. I... do, do you need to sit down?" Prey pushed himself off from resting against the tunnel’s wall in concern.

"Thank the moon for that." A harsh exhale of air sprang from Crimson. It took a moment before Prey realised it was a bark of unhappy laughter.

"It, it will still be fine then. You can go back, nobody will be any the wiser."

"What? No. No I'm not going back." Prey shook his head emphatically.

"Prey, please. You need to. It's the best chance of getting out of this. What, were you going to try running?" Crimson looked at him intently.

"Run? From Luna? With these still on? No point, but time's up and before then I must-"

"See? You said it yourself, running won't work. So you have to go back. You can't make this any worse. Please. I can't lose you too." Crimson begged.

Prey hated that. Crimson should not beg. They shouldn't have to beg because of Luna. Prey steeled himself.

"I'm sorry Crimson. If I could do anything to stop this... but the world isn't fair, and it's no longer up to me-"

"It is! It is up to you. You just need to go back and not tell anyone about escaping."

Prey waited to make sure Crimson was finished, bouncing his leg with nervous energy. "It's no longer up to me. And even if any of what you hope were true turned out to be so, which it won't, it doesn't matter anymore anyway."

Crimson opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, and then cut off in distraction; "Prey... are you, are you on something?"

"What? Oh, right. Yes, karris seeds. You remember them, the same ones back from Mayflower? Anyway, yes, I ate one of those."

Crimson looked like he desperately wanted to ask something else more important but had to know this first, "Why?"

Prey kept bouncing his hoof, "I needed the energy. I'm just so, so tired. Just like you are, I imagine. But I have work to do before tonight ends."

It must have been because Crimson knew Prey better than anyone else now alive, aside from Lemon Pink, because he slowly asked, yellow eyes fixed on Prey's face:

"What work?"

For a fraction of a second, Prey hesitated, but what did it matter? Crimson couldn't be accused of being guilty for Prey's actions here. Prey pulled the cloth bag around on the loop over his chest, so he could open it.

"This. This is why even if any of what Luna promised you were true then, it isn't going to matter now. Because I stole these for my work. Work I need to hurry up and complete before the sun rises."

Even in the cheap lantern's weak flickering light, the six large faceted gems inside the bag caught the light in all the way only precious stones could.

Crimson blinked once. Twice. "Am I supposed to know what those are? Beyond being jewellery, I mean?"

"Ah. I forgot you wouldn't know. These here are the six Elements of Harmony."

It took a second for it to click. Crimson was not an Equestrian, he had not grown up surrounded by ponies espousing the virtues of Harmony his whole life. But after Nightmare Moon and Discord, there was nobody who couldn’t know about the Elements of Harmony.

They were the superweapon which had twice saved the world. Crimson's eyes widened, and he stepped forwards, not away, in alarm. He had never been the sort to step away from what was wrong.

"Are those really-? You can't just take, I mean, the world needs those, like with Discord. How did you even-?" He spluttered.

Prey opened his mouth to explain, but there was too much, so many parts of the tale, and he had no time. So instead, he lead with the only information which mattered.

"They can bring a person back to life. Maybe only a pony. But they can resurrect the dead."

Crimson stopped breathing. His wings were trembling at his side.

"Prey..." He started tremulously, "...You, you're not, not just saying that, are you? Please, do you really mean it? Can it really be the truth?"

"Yes. It's the truth." Prey tipped the Elements back into the bottom of the bag, and pulled the drawstring tight.

Crimson trembled all the harder, "... How?" He whispered.

"I don't know. But I saw it with my own eyes. Luna was there. There was, there was this pink idiot who got herself killed and-Then Luna used these to bring her back to life. She swore me to secrecy. Ha! Screw her. She doesn't get to hoard resurrection for her favourites only."

"H-how... how does it work? Prey, there's always a price, so how... to bring back, the price, it must be. So how?" Crimson croaked. Prey could see he so desperately didn't want to believe it, didn't want to let hope deceive him and then hurt him all the worse. You can't help but clutch at the burning flame of hope when you're lost in the dark, even as it slowly sears you to the core.

Hope really was the cruellest, because it always cut the deepest in the end.

Prey had no time for hope. Only action. He was kicking to keep his head above the sea of panic in his heart, because the moment he stopped fighting he'd sink. There was no time left.

"Crimson, I need to go. We need to go, because you need to get out of these tunnels and never come back down here. Do you understand? I need to go, and you can never, ever, ever risk coming back down here."

"I can't just sit back and let you do this by yourself. It's Gloom." Crimson protested.

"You will, because I'm not getting out of this. To activate the Elements, I'm going to be killing the Bearers until the Elements bring them back to life. Over and over again until I can figure out how to replicate the effect." Prey said, without a trace of remorse or hesitation. He would do it.

Crimson knew he would, too. And it wasn't just a question of being willing to, but also being able to. Crimson knew he was capable. Bone Rot mines in Mayflower, a mysterious metal feather, the proposed dark magic attempt back in the train carriage to name but a few.

"Those are the Elements of Harmony. We, the world needs those. Them, and the Bearers. They cleansed Luna once already, what if they're needed again?" Crimson stressed.

Of course. The loyal thestral clans’ self-imposed deathwatch. Until their deaths, that were. This time around, they'd make sure their dark alicorn goddess did not slip and fall ever again. And that meant the possibility of having the Elements of Harmony cleanse her of Nightmare Moon once again. It was a duty which shouldn't be needed, because why should mortals have to dedicate their entire lives to pandering to the whims of an immortal, making sure she didn't go mad and try to kill the world again?

Prey answered in all truth, "Crimson, I honestly don't care about hypotheticals in the future. This is now. Besides, the Elements will still be left. Only these Bearers will, might, be gone. And they can be replaced anyway."

The Bearers weren't important or special. If the stories were true about how they'd been chosen, the six could be easily replaced with six random ponies snagged off the street. Because apparently, the Elements of Harmony had bonded to the first six ponies they'd come into contact with. It wasn't about being the greatest representative of their Element in the whole world, there were a thousand others out there who were kinder, more generous, more loyal, loving, and worthy. Prey had one right here.

So yes, Prey bet the Bearers could easily be replaced. Just not the Elements themselves, and it was the Elements which had resurrected the pink earth pony Bearer, not the other way around.

"But you're going to kill them." Crimson stated. It wasn't a question.

"If that'll make these do what I want, then yes. So what?"

So what? The both of them had been prepared to sacrifice a member of Nimbus Feather's squad to try to save Gloom. It was just that they hadn't been fast enough. Neither of them were pretending to be good people. They'd done things they could never take back or atone for. Both of them knew what it was like trapped under the black ice. So what was another six sins on the teetering mountain?

Crimson thought on that. He swallowed, "I don't understand how, but, killing them... will it work? Will it bring back Gloom to us?"

Prey wanted to answer yes. He wanted to say yes so much. But he answered with honesty instead, "I don't know. Maybe. No. Yes? But I have to try."

"No you don't," Crimson looked him dead in the eye, "Don't pretend to be like them. Don't lie and say you have no choice. You don't have to do anything."

"I, okay. I'm choosing to do this. But I'm still going to do it."

"You're still going to do it." Crimson echoed in neutral agreement. He nodded slowly, heavily.

"Prey, I, I don't... I can't believe this is going to work. It just can't. I don't understand magic, but it will fail. Life can't come from death. You can't wash away blood with more blood."

Prey drew in a slow, ragged breath. It hurt his chest, because Crimson's words rang as truth in his ears. He knew it. It was law. Immutable. No matter how many Border Guards he'd killed, it had never brought back the brother he’d lost.

But he'd also seen with his own eyes that it could become true. Under the right circumstances.

Trying to force the Elements of Harmony was not, could not, be the right circumstances. How could he honestly hope to trick the living power of Harmony?

Prey had to admit it. He couldn't lie, not now, "You're probably right. You feel right. It just wouldn't fit with Harmony if someone like me could- it burned last time- But none of that matters. I'm still going to try."

Crimson drew in a slow breath so deep that it almost appeared as if that was what was causing the lantern's wild flickering.

"Haaaaaa...." He let it all out. Prey waited, twitching. But Crimson wasn't saying anything further, the karris seed’s energy boost wasn't going to last forever, and Prey was already sacrificing time he didn't have just standing here.

"Look, I need to go. There's no time, and you mustn't ever come back to these tunnels-"

"Can you please not do it Prey? I'm asking you, just, please don't."

Prey opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He closed it, and then tried again.

"Why? Why would you ask that? You know what it's like, you understand. You know why I'm doing this."

Crimson's shoulders slumped even lower, "I do. I really do Prey. I've sunk so low. But I'm asking you not to."

"Wha-? But you just admitted it! You do know! So how can you ask me not to?" Prey accused.

"Because it won't work. I don't believe it will work."

"It might work." Prey defended.

"You don't believe that any more than I do." Crimson sighed.

"It might."

"It won't. It just won't. I don't understand magic and all those things like you do, but I do know this; it just won't work. Life can't come from murder."

"But it might!" Prey repeated, pitch rising, "It might. It might bring back Gloom. Isn't even that tiny chance worth taking?"

"It's not about what I want-"

"Yes it damn well is! You want him back, just like I do. So why shouldn't I, shouldn't we, try this?"

"It's not about what I want," It came out as a fierce, broken hiss of desperate longing, "I want Gloom back. I want it. I want it. I want it so badly. But-"

But. It looked like the word wouldn’t have been easier to pry out of Crimson's mouth with red hot pliers, "-But it's not about what I want. It's about what Gloom would want."

"Gloom's dead. He can't want anything ever again. Unless we bring him back."

"He would never forgive us. Not for this."

"But he would be alive to not forgive us. I could live with that. Besides, we don't ever have to admit how we brought him back in the first place."

"Prey-"

"And, and! And if it works for Gloom, then maybe..." Prey's jaw worked, and his throat closed up. He couldn't name them, so he said other words instead, "If, if it can work on a pony, then, then maybe it just might work on non-ponies. But if I can't even get it to work for Gloom-"

Prey broke off there. He couldn't finish that sentence. Deep down he knew all of this already. It wasn't going to work, because it wasn't. It just wasn't. Something so righteous and exclusive as Harmony would never lower itself to doing what he wanted, nor allow itself to be so obviously manipulated.

But he still had to try, didn't he?

The stone of the mountain pressed ever closer in the dark. They were alone down here. It was just the two of them, arguing over the death of the Element Bearers, with no one else ever to bear witness.

'I don't have time for this.'

"Are you going to try to stop me?" Prey asked abruptly.

Crimson nodded shallowly, "Yes."

Prey'd asked, already knowing, but the answer still surprised him. Because he'd thought that Crimson for once would be selfish, and not care about the cost to others for once. To take back for once. "What, really? You'll stop me?"

"If I have to."

The cold, queasy feeling in Prey's stomach was seeping into his chest, "And how, exactly, will you stop me?"

"I'll stand in your way." Crimson said simply.

"What, that's it? Just stand in my way? Not call the Guards, or grab me?" Prey checked.

Crimson's eyes tightened with pain, "That hurt. I am your friend. Do you truly think so little of me?"

"Sorry, sorry! I didn't mean it like that. But just, you'll just stand in my way? That's it? That won't stop me and you know it."

"Probably not." Crimson shrugged his one good wing, "I don't know how, but I'm sure you could easily get past me. But you'll have to walk past knowing I asked you not to."

Prey went quiet. Then he tapped a blank section of the rough stone. Crimson stopped moving.

Prey limped forwards and picked up the bad lantern by its handle. Then he squeezed past Crimson without touching him and walked a few paced up the low tunnel. He put the flickering light back down and then tapped another section.

Crimson jolted in place, finding the tunnel suddenly dark and empty in front of him, and the only light source coming from behind him. He hopped around on three legs, his bad one held just off the stone.

He looked at Prey now with the lantern. Prey looked back, smothering the guilt.

"Yeah, get past me just like that." Crimson sighed.

Prey adjusted the cloth bag still slung across his chest. He glanced away, uncomfortable, "Yeah. Something like that. Come on."

"Come on? Come on where?"

"Me, down to Ponyville. You, away from here. You can't ever come back down here Crimson. I'm serious. It is not safe. Please don't try to." Prey said, hastily turning to face ahead. He couldn't even countenance meeting Crimson's eyes, not knowing what would hurt worse to see there. Anger or betrayal.

"No, Prey, don't. Don't do it, because it won't work. It'll fail, and then you'll be a murderer-"

"I already am."

"You think I care?! We're both killers!" Crimson suddenly snarled, angry at Prey, angry at himself, hating all of it. "But you'll be a murderer in their eyes. They'll know. You'll be caught. And then, and then, you'll be locked away forever. That's what I care about!"

Oh. So that was what it was all about in the end. Not about the right or the wrong of it at all. It was much simpler and more selfish than that.

'Don't leave me alone too.' Don't do this, don't get arrested, don't get taken away and leave me all alone like Gloom.

Prey frantically searched for an answer to that, but no reasoning he could come up with was sufficient to answer that plea. It was what Gossamer had cried with outstretched hooves that no one had ever reached back to take, 'Don't leave me all alone!'

Prey hunched up further over the cheap lantern, not turning to meet Crimson's accusing eyes, "It's, it's too late Crimson. My time is up. I said it already. Luna, she, she's going to throw me away. There's nothing left to lose."

There was no tell-tale sound of Crimson's hooves on stone. He wasn't moving towards Prey and the light. Like he was saying that if Prey left, he was going to have to leave him behind all alone, lost in the pitch darkness too.

"No, it isn't too late, you're just misunderstanding. The Princess promised me it was going to be fine. It isn't all lost. Yet. As long as you don't do this, and go back to the cells before anyone notices. Please."

Just as in the end it was all about that, it also all came back to this.

Prey thought it was too late.

Crimson thought it wasn't.

Which of them was right?

Prey... finally faltered. He didn't believe Luna, he hated her. But he trusted Crimson, and loved him.

Tick, tock. Between the 'tick' and the 'tock'. The moment in between that which happened and that which will happen, all still in flux. And suddenly the world was that little bit different. Like everything had shifted one inch to the left, and yet Prey was still standing in the exact same place, now off balance in everything.

A shift of viewpoint, of understanding, it can change so much, and yet so little.

Prey craned his neck back until he was staring straight up at the rock, until his neck hurt, "Why can't we laugh anymore? Where'd it go? Who took it? Why does this...? Why does everything have to be this? It's always this, just this. I'm sick of having to see these things over and over. Why can't we be happy? Eat sweets, laze in bed, tend to your blood fern, my potted plants. Leave Canterlot forever. I'd like that."

“I’d like that…” He waved a limp hoof without turning, but so Crimson would see the gesture, "I'm not really asking, I know what the answer is; because life isn't fair. I was just... asking no one, I guess."

The rough damp stone above his head didn't answer him. To his shock though, Crimson did.

"This is difficult for me to say right, but... please stop being so arrogant in thinking that Luna is better than you are."

Prey jerked, almost sitting down in shock.

"She makes mistakes too. Has made huge mistakes. Stop assuming she's perfect. And stop thinking I trust her over you. Because I don't. I trust you more than Luna, Prey." Crimson's voice shook with all the conviction he poured into it.

"I trust you more. So can you trust me more than her? I mean, can you trust me that I want this for your sake, not for Luna's?"

Another time between one moment and the next, another abrupt shift of the world under Prey's hooves leaving him unsteady.

Words instead of action. Crimson was trying to persuade him by reasoning alone, refusing to ever resort to force as others would have in his place. In fact, in these rune-inscribed tunnels, it was Prey who had force on his side.

Prey lifted a hoof to the drawstring, feeling the hard tangled shapes of the Elements inside. Return them and give up on his one chance to do this? To walk himself back into his cell after going to all this effort to escape?

What sort of insane logic was that to follow? Prey didn't even want to try.

But he wanted to trust Crimson.

So he stopped and thought on that for a second.

If, if, if! If what Crimson said somehow was the truth, then right now, maybe, this wasn't actually his last chance to use the Elements of Harmony.

But only if. And yet... and yet if all that was the truth, then his hourglass wasn't actually empty, and his sand hadn't all run through.

And if his time wasn't up, then that meant his 'do or die' rushed attempt to force the Elements wasn't actually necessary.

If all of that were true, then he could stop. He could go back to researching and building a foolproof plan for activating the Elements when he chose to do it for real. For when he would be ready.

He'd stolen the Elements once, with actually very little effort. He could return them, leave no one any the wiser, and then when he was ready, steal them again.

He could also observe the Element Bearers first, along with Lemon's assistance once she returned, and organise a plan to have all six mares captured when he tried this again.

If he chose to believe Crimson, that is.

If. Maybe. Possibly. Potentially. All words to trick yourself into having hope when you already knew better.

'I hate hope.'

It didn't matter if you already knew that the hope was empty. Just like an addict who kept swearing to themselves they finally quit for the last time, you still kept coming back for just one more taste of hope. 'The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak'.

Crimson was still waiting, standing somewhere behind Prey. His wing, side, and rear leg must have been paining him immensely, but he barely moved as he waited for Prey's answer. Prey was confident he wouldn't have been able to hold up nearly so well with those wounds in Crimson's place, and the electrite feather could only do so much.

"Let me see if I have got this all straight. You want me to walk myself back into my cell, with no idea how this trial is going to turn out, knowing that it's almost certainly a sham, where Luna has already told me to stay silent and not even bother defending myself, and trust in her mercy? Did I get all of it?" Prey asked, staring straight ahead into the dark tunnel.

"No. I want you to also return the Elements."

"Right, also return the Elements of Harmony without getting caught. Now have I gotten everything right?"

"No."

"What else have I missed?"

"I don't want you to trust Luna's word. I want you to trust me instead."

Prey looked down at his forehooves on the stone, seeing the golden tracer bands. Looking down also brought the trailing end of his ribbon into the corner of his view. "You don't ask for the easy things, do you?"

"No. You're my friend. Why would I be asking if they were easy?"

Prey had always said that there were only two things he wouldn't do for Crimson if the pegasus asked. And if he could believe that sneaking back into his cell and standing trial wasn't a risk to his life, then...

"Khe-heh. Congratulations. You're now a national hero Crimson. And nobody will ever know. Because you just saved all six of the Element Bearers in one night."

"That is not funny Prey. Not funny at all." Crimson said solemnly. He sounded sad.

"Not to anypony else, I'm sure. To me? It's kind of funny right now."

"No, I meant, I'm not saving their lives. If I could believe their end would bring back Gloom, I'd hold them down myself while you cut their throats. I'm not saving their lives. I'm saving yours for myself. Because I can't keep going alone."

"Ahh." Prey winced, another knife of guilt stabbed into his belly. That was why Crimson sounded so sad, because he desperately wished what Prey had said about their deaths bringing back Gloom could have been true.

"No, you're right. That's not funny at all."

Above the ground and cold stone, the dark, quiet night was draped over the world. Distant stars watched with cold disinterest.

"I will see you soon. When you get out."

"... I hope so. And I really hate hope."

"Then, then we... Prey, we have to go tell Gloom's grandfather. In person. At clan Cilldara."

"Have to?"

"Should, then. Captain Nighthawk is going to write the letter, but..."

"I... yes. Yes we should do that. It's only right."

Near silent, but not quite, limping hoofsteps over cobblestones. The Palace lay ahead, glowing bright and golden even in the night.

"I'm scared."

"I'm scared too, Prey."

Physically, breaking out the high-security cell and escaping the Palace had been hard.

Comparatively, sneaking back in was easy when there were already mentally compromised Royal Guards on the inside, who wouldn't notice a runt lamb shuffling past under their noses, and wouldn’t remember to care even if they did.

Willingly leaving Crimson behind, standing at a servant’s entrance, and returning himself to imprisonment, no one else would ever know how hard it was for Prey.

With the sign-off of Cordial Greeting, the Elements were put inside a nondescript deposit bag for Vault One, with the correctly stamped paperwork, and seemingly all the correct paper-trails for the vault worker to unquestioningly open the Vault, temporarily deactivate any security, put them back where they came from, and then lock up and leave. With a little mental nudge to reinforce the 'unquestioningly' aspect.

It should not have been this easy. But it was.

Sitting in the silence of a lead-lined cell again, all alone, waiting for the dawn to come.

"I chose to come back. I made the choice. Just after Discord, I came back. This is all on me. I always knew there was going to be a price."

So slowly, and then so fast, the last hours of pre-dawn morning disappeared. Tomorrow was here.

Prey heard the muffled clank on the other side of the door. Light streamed in. Sunshine in his Solar Guard armour stood looking impassively down at him, horn aglow, levitating the hoofcuffs. There were more Guards in the room behind him.

Tomorrow was today, and the hushed trial was suddenly here.

'I don't even get a last breakfast.'

Prey hadn't forgotten, and he wouldn't forget either. But, for now, he'd chosen not to act on it.

So, really long chapter here. (Actually just checked, this is the longest chapter yet) Lots happened too. And things continue to pile on. Mounting pressure. Dead line crunch. And a hearty helping of more grim-ole-despair. It just never ends, does it?

The editor and corrector of this loooong chapter was: Panem et Circenses Thankyou!

Also, greenface made this Here