“Hit him again! Harder!” one of the watching mares cheered. Grinning, Star Cluster drew back his hoof and swung it around in a harsh haymaker towards his target’s jaw.

Flash Sentry cringed and forced himself not to close his eyes in anticipation. As the blow came, he clenched his jaw and turned into the punch, yielding to it. The strike was still powerful enough to send him rocking back, lifting up the front legs of the chair he was tied to with far too much rope; his head spun like a foal on the tilt-a-whirl at a carnival, and his neck muscles screamed in agony as they were stretched and pulled far beyond where they were supposed to, but thankfully, his jaw and teeth remained in their proper places. He sagged in his bonds, panting, blood dripping from his nose and lips.

“Is he crying yet?” one of the audience members sneered. “I wanna see the pig cry.”

Flash forced himself to breathe slowly, staring down at the floor. He tried to stem the tide of the memories, but they flooded forward, overwhelming him: the sight, the smell, the feeling of the fire against his skin…

“Scream for me, pig,” Tinderspark snarled, the lighter dancing across his chest. She giggled out of her horribly deformed mouth as he flinched away from the heat, chest heaving as he panted through his nostrils, mumbling in terror through the tape across his mouth.

Flash tried to pull away, but the ropes securing his hooves to the overhead plank refused to yield, creaking and groaning as he struggled. His wings strained against the ropes, desperate to give him escape but failing. Tinderspark laughed; the lighter flame cast her burns and melted skin into horrible light and shadow.

“Yeah, that’s it,” she grinned, licking her chops. “We’re gonna be having bacon and pork tonight.” And she thrust the lighter forward into his chest, right over his heart.

Pain radiated across his muscles and skin, burrowing down into the bone, tunneling to his frantically beating heart. He closed his eyes, a scream racing up from his lungs through his throat, and he let it out, hoping, begging that somepony would hear, would help him, but the tape muffled it. No one was coming. No one would come.

The lighter was removed, but the pain remained, as strong as before, and he sagged in the bonds, panting and gasping through his gag, fighting a desperate battle against tears.

“There it is,” Tinderspark giggled like a schoolfilly, circling around him. “It’s okay, pig, let it out…”

Star Cluster seized Flash by the mane and lifted his head up, sneering down at his former partner. “Take a good look around, Sentry,” he snarled. “What do you see?”

Flash looked around the back room of the abandoned warehouse, illuminated by a few hanging lamps that flickered and buzzed from above them. The room had once been an office, judging by the dusty shelves on the walls and the desk crammed into the corner.

Standing around them were, at a count, a dozen mooks, all of them armed: he identified shotguns, LMGs, even a Thrussian tripod-mounted machine gun with a pan magazine held by a bulky blue griffon. Makeshift grenades and Dragon’s cocktails hung from their belts, and bulletproof vests were strapped tightly to their bodies.

“I think,” Flash said, trying to force some courage into his raspy, pain-filled voice, “that you don’t have enough guns.”

Star Cluster scowled and he snorted. “You always were the smart one, Sentry,” he replied. “No, we don’t have enough guns. Not for your two friends, who will no doubt be on their way.”

There was the sound of hoofsteps. No, not hoofsteps. Flash recognized the soft padding of lionlike paws and the scrape of claws against concrete. Griffons.

And then he heard the rattling of swords in sheaths and felt his heart drop.

“Which is why I called for help,” Cluster grinned, looking up towards the door.

The door burst open and a black griffon with a green headband stormed through, glaring at Flash with shining yellow eyes.

“The fuck did you do, Shit Cluster?” Roaring snarled, striding up to the unicorn and seizing him by the neck with a claw, eliciting a startled sputter.

There came a chorus of clicking gun mechanisms as barrels were raised and triggers prepared. “Claws off the boss!” one of the watching Disciples, a tall pegasus wearing aviator sunglasses, barked, holding his Desert Griffon sideways at Roaring’s head.

Roaring barely looked up, but his tail darted to one of his cutlasses. There was a blur of silvery motion, then the snick of a sword returning to its sheath. The pegasus in the sunglasses stumbled back.

A moment later, his glasses snapped in half and fell to the ground. The Disciple stared down in shock, his surprise increasing when he noticed a few drops of blood falling down atop his ruined accessory. Several of the surrounding thugs backed up like ripples in the pond.

Cluster swallowed. “Listen, this is how we’re gonna kill Finder and Do,” he explained. “We got the plan from Zugzwang and—”

“You got the plan from Zugzwang?!” Roaring bellowed, squeezing tighter. “Din jävla idiot!”

“It just appeared in front of me this morning!” Cluster cried. “I couldn’t resist, I just thought…” He swallowed. “Look, Finder and Do are gonna be on their way. When they get here, we need you and your guys to help us kill them! They—”

“You had to call us,” Roaring said slowly, undoing his grip. “To take care of two ponies. Because that Gerwhin horunge told you to kidnap that fittnylle.” He scowled around at all of them; every Disciple in the room stared silently back. “And you already have these morons with you.” He took in a breath.

“You’re scared of them,” he snorted. “You’re scared of two ponies who are older than most of you.”

“We’ve tried to kill them before. You’ve tried to kill them before,” Cluster snapped back, rubbing his neck. “And they always come out of it unscathed.”

“Because of dumb luck!” Roaring shouted, one claw going for the pistol on his holster. “Luck, that’s all it was!”

“So let’s make sure that we get lucky this time,” Star Cluster replied. “The more of us, the more likely that one of us gets ‘em.”

Roaring grunted and looked at Flash, who stared back at him in silence. “Why is he still alive?” he growled.

“Because there’s no use in a dead hostage,” Star Cluster snorted, as though explaining to somepony that the sky was blue. “Besides, I wanna make him suffer more.”

Roaring rolled his eyes and turned. “You lot will do what I tell you, and exactly what I tell you,” he announced to the room as he opened the door, revealing more griffons and ponies waiting outside the room, each with the silver claw burned into their neck. “Let’s get set up.”

With a great stamping of hooves, a rattling of weapons, and a cacophony of shouting voices letting out cheers, jeers, and taunts, the Disciples followed Roaring and his crew outside, spreading out across the warehouse. Left alone in the room, Flash sat still in the chair, breathing slowly to master the pain.

From beneath the din, a voice dug its way up into his ear through the partially open door. “You make sure that the security crew is watching her?” Roaring hissed to one of his companions.

“Yes, sir,” the other griffon replied. “That’s what the ring’s for: if they’re in trouble, they’ll activate theirs and it’ll start to get hot.”

Roaring let out a low rumble that...might’ve been a sigh? “We’re risking everything for this,” he said quietly, barely audible over the other noise. “Even if we kill Finder and Do, if I lose her…”

“We won’t, sir,” the other griffon replied. “They’ll keep her safe. She’s one of us, after all.”

“No, she’s not,” Roaring replied. “That was the whole point of sending her away.” The conversation was then ended by a great flapping of wings.

Filing that nugget away for later use, Flash closed his eyes and resumed his steady breathing. The same prayer that had carried him through his father’s death, through his mother struggling with her blindness after the accident, through the academy and his early months on the force, and through the abduction.

“Mother, you are my shepherd; I shall not want,” he whispered, blocking out everything but his words, but the light in his chest that he pictured growing with every word. “You lay me down in green pastures, and guide me to the still waters. You lead me down the path of Your righteousness and strength, and restore my soul. Though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death…”

“I shall fear no evil,” he whispered, the words muffled by the gag, weakened by the pain as he dangled in the ropes, but he kept the prayer going. “For You are with me; Your hoof in mine comforts me…”

“Praying?” Tinderspark snorted. “None of your gods can save you now, pig.”

She thrust the lighter into his back again, and once more pain raced across his nerves, skin and bones screaming in agony. He shuddered and shook in his bonds, breath catching, but kept the prayer going.

“You lay...for me...a table in...the presence...of my enemies,” he gasped out, slamming his eyes shut to block the tears.

“Scream, dammit!” Tinderspark snarled, pressing the lighter against his back.

The pain intensified and his muscles shook and convulsed in a desperate bid to escape the fires, and he gasped out the rest of the prayer even as the agony tore at his consciousness. “You...crown...my head...with...oil...my...cup...runneth...over…”

“Ugh, you’re no fun,” Tinderspark snarled, throwing the lighter down like a child flinging down a broken toy. She stormed off down the dark hallway, grumbling to herself.

The pain continued to radiate across his body, but Flash forced himself to breathe slowly, steadily. Inhale slow, pray on the exhale. “Surely mercy and goodness...shall flow over me...all the days of my life...and I shall dwell...with my Mother...forever and ever…”

“Amen,” Flash whispered, taking a deep breath. He looked up at the door, watching the shadows of the figures moving outside, heard the voices from outside as they prepared their attack.

“Phil and Daring are coming,” he whispered to himself, trying to force himself to believe it. “You’re not going to die today. Not today.”

It took Daring twenty minutes to find Flash’s motorcycle, parked by the side of a bend in Blacktail Street. It sat in the shade of a copse of oak trees, bags of groceries still sitting untouched in the sidecar, the helmet hanging from the handlebars.

Phillip reached into the helmet with a set of tweezers and extracted a tuft of bright blue mane, clutching it tightly in his hoof. “Is that enough?” he asked Twilight.

“Yes, yes, bring it here!” Twilight cried, drawing a circle of salt across the map that she had laid out on the side of the street. Daring, Trace, and Red stood beside her.

Phillip walked over to the group as a passing car slowly traveled by, its driver staring at the scene in bemusement as it cruised past the hastily erected traffic cone barricade. Cruisers stood at either end of the bend, lights spinning; two officers stood beside their vehicles, directing traffic around the investigation.

Phillip carefully placed the hairs in the center of the salt circle as Twilight added runic symbols around the circle. The container trembled in her magical grasp as she added the details.

“Twilight, need you to focus,” Phillip scolded.

“I am focused,” Twilight replied tersely.

Twilight closed her eyes and took in a slow breath, her horn pulsing rhythmically as she cast the tracking spell. The salt began to glow with the same purple light and slowly lifted off the map of Ponyville.

“Quearite. Sequor. Indago,” Twilight chanted, a tremble in her voice. “Quearite. Sequor. Indago.”

The salt glowed brighter, hovering over the map...then suddenly, the light dimmed. Twilight’s face creased in concern, in denial. “Quearite, sequor, indago!” she cried. “Quearite, sequor—no! No, no, no, no!” she pleaded as her spell faded entirely. She let out a desperate cry, horn sparking as she tried to force more magic into the dying invocation.

“What happened?” Daring asked.

“It...it didn’t work!” Twilight cried. “I couldn’t pick up on his thaumaturgic energies! I...the spell couldn’t locate him!”

“Means he’s behind some kind of magic circle,” Phillip grunted.

“Or he’s dead!” Twilight cried. “He’s probably dead by now! They wouldn’t have much use for him other than bait! He’s probably at the bottom of the Maresippi by now, with concrete blocks tied—”

Twilight’s rant was interrupted by a sudden downpour of rain that drenched only her. She sputtered in shock, shaking her sopping mane out of her eyes and glaring up at the pegasus sitting atop the small rogue rain cloud hanging over her head.

“Are we calm now?” Daring asked.

“We’ll have to find him the old-fashioned way,” Phillip grunted, striding back to the motorcycle. Trace and Red were standing next to the bike, crouching down and holding a tracking wand over the ground. Tracks shone in a golden glow on the asphalt, several different tire marks overlapping with one another.

“Okay, here we go,” Trace said, pointing to a set of motorcycle tracks leading up the road then pulling over to the side. “Flash is coming up the road and pulls over to the side for some reason.” He indicated some hoofprints walking off the bike towards another set of hoofprints that stood next to a pair of tire tracks parked along the side of the road.

“Looks like he was tricked into pulling over by somepony feigning car trouble,” Trace stated. “Judging by the way he starts stumbling around after this, I’m guessing that they stuck him with a drug and pulled him inside the car before taking off.”

“The kid always had a bigger heart than a brain,” Red commented quietly, shaking his head.

Phillip crouched down next to the tracks, observing the hoofprints of the pony who had taken Flash, the scum who had—he shook his head. Had to be impersonal, no matter how hard it hurt. It was just another case.

“Close to three-foot eleven, judging by gait,” he grunted. “Good track here: missing nail on front left horseshoe, looks like...Steelair brand. Judging by the calluses on these hooves and the flattening of the nails here, looks like some blue-collar worker.”

He then turned his attention to the tire tracks. “Greasedust brand tires. Going by the wheelbase, turning diameter…”

“Skymouth D7, I’d guess,” Trace replied. “And look at that.” His horn lit up and a small puddle of light gray oil in between the two tires glowed faintly. “Leaking brake fluid. I can try to track it through that.”

“Good,” Phillip nodded, following the tracks further up the road. The tracks indicated that the car had swerved hard, possibly to avoid another car, and then bumped into a metal reflector pole against the road. Phillip bent down and studied the pole, pointing to a small discoloration on the steel surface. “There. Light green paint.”

“A light green Skymouth D7 leaking brake fluid, driven by a three-foot eleven blue-collar worker wearing Steelair brand horseshoes, missing a nail on the front left horseshoe,” Trace nodded. “That’s a good start. I’ll call it in.”

“I’ll head up the road,” Red said, spreading his wings. “There’s a gas station a little further up the road; I’ll ask if anypony saw anything. Don’t bother crossing your hooves for me.” He flew north in a blur of feathers.

Trace trotted back to his waiting Commander and grasped the radio in his hoof, providing a description of the vehicle to the other officers. Phillip walked over to Twilight, who was now huddling by the side of the road, staring at the street map in silence. Daring hovered beside her, frowning in uncertainty.

He placed a hoof on her shoulder; she looked up at him, eyes wet with tears.

“We’re going to find him,” he reassured her, then walked back to the tracks to search for more clues, already knowing that there wouldn’t be many: roadside crime scenes were hell on trace evidence.

It took a few moments of silence save for the crackling of the radios in the cruisers and the grumbling of tires passing by, then Red returned in a blur of color.

“What do you know, the station attendant saw something,” he commented; Phillip could hear the relief beneath the bitterness, but he didn’t think anypony else could. “The Skymouth came up that way a little less than an hour ago and turned onto Foxtail.”

“Come on, let’s go!” Twilight shouted, scrambling into the passenger seat of Red’s Diplomat. The others followed into their vehicles and Trace took the lead, steering carefully around the scene, lights spinning. Daring followed from the air.

When they reached the corner of Blacktail and Foxtail, Trace’s radio crackled to life. “Bishop Nine, this is Stellar Lights. Got the suspect vehicle eastbound on Foxtail. It turned south onto Iron Wool.”

“Ten-four,” Trace commented, turning up the road, ignoring the blaring of horns and screeching tires. The gangly teenaged stallion manning the gas station on the corner gawked as they sped past.

“Hey, Phil,” Trace commented as they continued down the street. “That stuff that Zugzwang said...you don’t think any of it could be true, could you?”

“It’s all bulldust,” Phillip grunted, eyes panning the road. “Dead ponies don’t come back, you can’t change your cutie mark, and there are no dark gods or rituals.”

“You know, you’ve been wrong before,” Trace commented. “And there have been cults for years; they might be onto something. And besides, the Kyaltratek—”

“Is a hyped-up spellbook full of superstition and dummy spells used by idiots and charlatans, like Daring said,” Phillip snarled. “Focus on Flash.”

“Right,” Trace nodded, letting out a sputtering breath.

The dispatcher led them through the suspect car’s trail as best as they could, weaving further south towards the border of the Everfree and Dockside districts until finally losing them at the corner of South Manticore and Yellowjacket. Daring immediately began to fly in widening circles, searching for any sign of a light green four-door as the others spread out on hoof.

Daring found it within minutes, signaling the others with light reflected by a mirror. When the others raced to her position, they found her hovering over a green Skymouth D7, parked in an empty lot set behind an abandoned warehouse, the paint peeling from the wooden walls and the darkened windows staring down at them like so many eyes. An overhanging billboard claimed that the lot would soon be host to a grocery store; said billboard was splattered with overlapping graffiti that, from a glance, was at least two years old. The team stopped at the side of the road and approached on hoof.

“Car’s already empty,” Daring reported as the other investigators approached.

Twilight had jumped out of the car almost before Red had stopped and rushed over to the Skymouth, horn already glowing. A trail of hoofprints appeared around the car, leading from the driver’s seat to the back, then towards the warehouse doors.

“He’s in there, come on!” she cried, rushing towards the warehouse with Daring right on her tail.

But both were immediately stopped by a golden magical aura seizing their tails and yanking them back. “Slow down. Think,” Trace scolded them. “They could be waiting inside there.”

“Obviously!” Daring snarled. “But a few thugs don’t scare—”

Phillip noticed a faint yellow glow in a second-floor window. A similar light suddenly leaked out from beneath the Skymouth’s trunk door and he heard a sound from within; a pair of clicks followed by a couple of thumps from within. A pair of very distinct clicks.

“Grenades!” he yelled, seizing Trace and Red and throwing them to the ground before diving on top of them. Daring grabbed Twilight and zipped around a corner in a blur of colors.

A moment later, the grenades detonated with a thunderous explosion that rocked the sky; the impact rippled up Phillip’s body like a wave racing through water. His ears popped and started ringing, his skull rattled and shook like somepony was using the interior for a drum, and he knew that if he hadn’t kept his mouth open, the pressure wave would’ve caused his lungs to burst like a pair of balloons.

And then he noticed the dirt flying up around him and quickly rolled out of the way, leaping to his hooves and sprinting for the cover of the nearest building, where Twilight desperately beckoned to him. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Red dragging Trace to his hooves, the blonde unicorn throwing up a hasty magical shield to deflect the bullets. Rapid flashes were spitting out of the upper window, vaguely visible through the smoke lifting from the flaming wreckage, silent beneath the ringing in his ears.

Something grabbed his foreleg and he was yanked forward: Daring had flown in and grabbed him and was pulling him towards cover, shouting inaudibly. Bullets chased after them as they dove behind the corner of the brick building.

Daring seized Phillip’s shoulders and shook him, wide eyes panning up and down his body. Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear the words.

“Hang on,” he felt himself say, shaking his head. Slowly, the ringing faded away.

“Are you okay?” Daring repeated.

His head still felt like he’d been hit with a bowling ball, but he didn’t feel any punctures. “I’m okay.”

“I’m gonna call for backup!” Trace called, racing towards his car.

“What do we do?” Twilight asked, trembling in shock, burns in her mane and tail.

“Hey Finder!” a magically enchanted voice that everypony recognized as Star Cluster’s bellowed from the warehouse. “I’ve got your boy here! Come and get him!”

“Cordon off the area,” Phillip stated, peering around the corner. The warehouse had gone silent, though he could still see the tripod-mounted gun in the window. “And try to wait them out.”

“But Flash is in there!” Twilight protested.

“I know,” Phillip said tersely as the sound of approaching sirens filled the air.

Translations from Griffonese/Swedish:
"Din jävla idiot!:" You damn idiot!
"horunge:" son of a whore
"fittnylle:" cuntface.

What hope do our heroes have? Find out next week!