Sweetie Belle coughed violently as she stared at the open window in her bedroom, hearing the noise of her sister working with her thread and cloth, weaving together a dress for her clients. Rarity needed to finish all the orders that she had before she could consider taking a break, so Sweetie was left alone for the most part, so she could nurse the burn on her front leg. She had no idea how she had gotten the burn, but she assumed it had been because of the Shadow that had possessed her earlier, which was the only thing that she remembered. It wasn't a friendly Shadow, that much she was sure of, but she knew that she needed Princess Nightfury's help to protect herself from another invasion.

Unfortunately, leaving herself in the position she was in, without any information on how to defend herself from the Shadows, gave them the perfect opportunity to do it again. Sweetie's eyes widened as she realized that there was a smoky mist filling the room, wrapping around the bed before surging towards her mouth. She knew what was coming, so she squirmed as the Shadow tried to enter her body, trying to make it so the creature would leave her alone, but there wasn't much she could do against it in her current state. Eventually the mist entered her body and she slipped into the darkness, allowing the vile Shadow to take over and do whatever dastardly deed that it had planned.

Glimmer moaned as she straightened the poor filly's body, hating that this was the only creature that she had access to for the moment and casting a look at her injured leg. Crimson had bested her earlier that day, stealing the Sigil of Fire for her again, but this time she wasn't going to deal with him and his plans just yet. Nightfury was out of the question, as she was surrounded by the other alicorn's at the moment, which meant that the Sigil of Air was out of her reach for the moment. That left just the Sigil's of Water and Earth, which she suspected Princess Celestia had locked away somewhere in her fortress, the place she called Canterlot.

She threw off the covers and touched the floor, where she started to make her way to the door before she had to stop, the pain in her leg making it harder to do anything and just reminded her of how close she had been.

This will not do, Glimmer thought, her magic igniting and wrapping around the burn so she could heal it, if I am to get anything done tonight I need this body to be at full power and not weighed down by an injury.

It took her about five minutes to deal with the burn, as the flames that Prince Crimson used tended to be more powerful than the normal fire most ponies were used to. All that meant was that it took her longer to heal any burn she received from her ancient foe, though she would rather stay away from him until she could figure out how to steal his Sigil. Once the burn was healed and her leg was back to normal, as normal as it could get with Glimmer possessing the filly, she opened the bedroom door and made her way into the hallway. For the second time since possessing the filly she had to remark that her older sister was still working, giving her the opportunity to leave without being seen.

Unlike the previous time she had left the boutique there was absolutely nopony around, so Glimmer grinned to herself and made her way to the train station. Her previous host had been a dragon, so she had the power to fly, but while she was trapped to use the filly she was possessing she'd have to resort to using her magic to aid her. The plan was simple, she'd get a ticket to Canterlot, board the train before the filly's sister noticed she was missing again, and get to Canterlot so she could begin her search.

She made it to the train station without much getting in her way, but the moment she arrived she was stopped by the owner of the building, a light brown earth pony that dressed like he was a train conductor.

"What are you doing all the way out here, little filly?" the earth pony asked, looking around for what Glimmer assumed were her parents, though she knew he wouldn't find them, "Where are your parents?"

"Oh, you don't need to worry about them," Glimmer said, staring into the elder pony's eyes, "All you need to worry about is getting me a ticket to Canterlot and making sure that I get underway as soon as possible."

"I don't underst..." the conductor started, but then stopped the moment that he saw that patches of black were seeping into the ground all around the filly, before they came racing towards him.

Glimmer smiled as the darkness wrapped around the earth pony without any form of resistance, giving her the perfect chance to try shifting out of her current body and into a new one. When she tried she found that she was unable to leave her current body, causing her to abandon the idea for the moment as she let the darkness cloud the pony's judgement. She could have always killed the pony and gotten the ticket herself, but leaving a body behind would have alerted others to a killer and the Princesses might have discovered her before she could get even one of the Prime Sigils. Better, she believed, to take the conductor's mind for the moment, get her ticket the easy way, and then make him forget everything that he had witnessed that night.

Besides, killing a pony and making the body disappear would tax her host's body, which could potentially ruin her chances of finding her targets before the Princesses returned to Canterlot.

Once she had the conductor under her control, which wasn't at its best she had to admit, she got her ticket and directed him back to whatever he had been doing before she came along. The clock on the wall, she noted, was set to have the train arrive in a few minutes, so it gave her the chance to rest her body and get back a small amount of magic before she ventured into enemy territory. She didn't have to wait long, as the train came rolling into the station moments later, but she waited till it came to a complete halt and opened its doors before making her way inside. To Glimmer's delight there was nopony else in the train, save for the pony that made sure that the train went from one location to another without anything happening to it.

A minute or two later the doors closed and the train began its departure, where she finally let go of the elder pony's mind and let him go on with his life as if she had never been there to begin with.

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It took between ten to fifteen minutes for the train to reach Canterlot, giving Glimmer plenty of time to review everything that she knew about the city so she could plan out where she was going to search. The main part of the castle would be an obvious place to hide even one of the Sigils, but Glimmer knew that Princess Celestia was too smart to leave such a powerful artifact, much less two of them, where her throne rested. That left Glimmer with two options, she would either have to ransack the Royal Library for a Sigil or a piece of information or, a much more satisfying option, tear Princess Celestia's room apart till she found one.

Unfortunately, she knew that she would have to check the library for any information, so she would not be ripping the castle apart in her attempt to find the Sigils.

The moment the train reached the station Glimmer made for the doors and stepped out into the night, heading right towards the central park, where she could make sure she knew her route. The sights around her almost made her smile, there was almost nopony around that could get in her way, save for a couple of the royal guards that patrolled the city. Seeing how it was night time the guards were the bat ponies that followed Princess Luna during the night, but they might be able to see her thanks to their night vision. She stopped in front of the map and gazed up at it, finding where she was located, thanks to the bright yellow star saying 'You are HERE', and quickly traced her path to the castle, pleased to find that she wouldn't have to change anything.

"Hold there boys," she heard somepony behind her say, telling her that some of the guards had spotted her and she could hear one coming her way, "Come here little filly, so we can find your parents and make sure you get home safely."

Glimmer cast a small look behind her and counted three bat ponies standing behind her, wearing a full set of their gleaming armor and staring her way. She could not afford to be detained by any of the guards, but she couldn't just put them down without somepony finding out and ruining her chances at getting what she came for. Then there was always the chance that somepony might look out their window while she fought the guards, further raising the alarms and destroying her mission altogether. The moment that the guard cleared his throat she made up her mind, focusing on causing the least amount of damage in the shortest amount of time.

Maybe this will give the royal Princesses a chance to remember just how dangerous a Shadow can truly be, Glimmer thought, allowing the shadows to gather around her, as well as serving as the perfect chance to test my abilities again.

The guard reached out and touched her shoulder, but Glimmer grabbed it as hard as the shadows would allow her, hearing the sound of bones snapping, before she lifted the guard over her heard and crashed him into the map she had been looking at. The other two guards stared at her for a moment, as if they couldn't believe that a filly could lift a fully grown pony clear off the ground and then maneuver them like that. Glimmer used that opportunity to summon the shadows out of the ground and lifted the other two as well, slamming them into each other hard enough to knock them out.

Glimmer grinned and continued on her way, making sure that she was nowhere near them when they were discovered, though she was grinning ear to ear, knowing that the Princesses would be worried once they returned.

It took her a good half an hour to make her way through the city, which had been because she continued to come across more guards and had to restrain herself from attacking them. If she left a trail of wounded ponies in her wake somepony was bound to call on the Princesses to check things out and then everything would have been ruined. So she went out of her way to move in the alleyways and between the houses themselves, anything that would allow her to bypass any patrol that stood in her way. Eventually she reached the castle, but before she passed through the doors, which were also guarded, she hid in the nearby bush and studied the area around her.

From what she could gather she could tell that there were at least six guards walking around the area, with another two that came out of some part of the castle just to be sure that everything was okay. The best thing she noticed was that there was a sign attached to one of the doors, one that informed her that the door the guards glanced at was the library. She had to thank Princess Celestia for being so foolish to leave something like that out in the open, because the enemies that knew her well enough would know where to look for the dangerous artifacts. She just needed to time her jump correctly and she was sure that she could enter the doorway before any of the guards noticed that she was inside the bushes.

"Did you hear?" one of the guards asked another one, "Something attacked one of our patrols near the train station. We're not completely sure what caused the attack, but it is advised to keep an eye out for anything, or anypony, that's not where they are supposed to be tonight. One of the guards managed to tell us that the attacker was small, almost like a filly, but be careful in case there's something much more dangerous out there."

"Like a changeling sir?" the second guard asked, his facial expressions never changing, even when he was basically told that the enemy could be a filly.

"Especially like a changeling," the first replied, getting ready to move onto the next guard so he could repeat what he had just said, "Keep your eyes open and weapons at the ready, something's coming our way and we need to be prepared for it."

As the first guard made his way around to the other guards, to tell them the same thing he had told the second guard, Glimmer noticed that the second guard was staring right at her bush. Not staring at the bush in general, but staring at it enough as if he could see through it and was gazing upon her while she crouched in the shadows. She could not afford to be found out by one guard, but she knew that if she felled the one guard then the others were going to find out that that she was here. If it came to ruining her cover then she was going to have to fight, which made her reach for her magic and let the shadows gather near her hooves, forming a weapon she had no reason to use for the last thousand years.

I have had no reason to loose this weapon in the last thousand years, Glimmer thought, as the shadows formed a bow with an arrow nocked, ready to be loosed at the guard that was staring at her, but I might have to use it if I want to get the Sigils.

"Over here!" the guard shouted, pulling on his lance and pointing it towards the bush she was in, "I've got something lurking in this bush over here!"

That was when Glimmer decided to screw the consequences of her next action and loosed the arrow she had prepared, letting it fly right into the guard's shoulder and knocking him clean into the wall. As she leapt out of the bush she let the shadows surround her, giving her a layer of living armor that would protect her in case she let the other guards get too close. A guard came at her before she could nock another arrow, throwing his lance into her armor and lifting her off the ground, but she would not be defeated so easily. The moment she was above the guard's head she sent the shadows down the weapon and into his body, tainting his mind enough to shut down his body for the next few hours.

She hit the ground running and drew the second arrow, loosing it with a glance back and pinned the third guard to the ground, hard enough to put him out of commission for the moment. Another arrow was drawn out and she made sure to get another guard in the shoulder, knocking their numbers down to two as she approached the door that lead to the library. She sighed and came to a stop before the door, turning around and pulling out two more arrows from the shadows that supplied her with her ammo. She quickly took aim and loosed them on the guards, nearly smiling when the closest one was pinned to the ground, but the feeling vanished when the second arrow missed completely.

"I've got you," the last guard said, lifting her into the air and slamming her against the wall, "Now, tell me who sent you to attack Canterlot and maybe I'll tell the Princesses that you cooperated enough to earn a reduced sentence in the prisons."

That was when Glimmer sent the shadows into the guard's mind, showing him the terrors of her world, terrors that would frighten him to his very core. The last thing she knew the guard would see would be the vision of her master, a creature so terrible that not even she, her master's second, could utter her name without being in the presence of her master. The sight would ruin the guard's mind and likely put him in a coma that could last for days, weeks, or, if she was lucky, a few months before he managed to break free. Once the guard's hold on her vanished and the guard hit the ground Glimmer brushed the dust off her coat and made her way into the library, eager to find a Sigil.

Now, if I were a powerful alicorn, where would I hide one of the Prime Sigils? Glimmer asked herself, stopping by the hourglass as she looked around the area she was standing in, I wouldn't dare to hide it in plain sight, least one of my enemies sneak into the castle and find out where I put one.

She spent a good five minutes wandering around the library, moving as fast as the filly's body would allow her, before she eventually returned to the hourglass. The entire night had been one piece of bad news after another, but now, with her prime area to search eliminated, she had no idea where one of the Sigils could be resting. As she made her way towards the door she glanced back at the hourglass, just in time for her to see something shimmer inside the glass, something that she would be able to recognize almost immediately.

"Well I'll be damned," Glimmer said to herself, staring at the hourglass as she realized what was in there, "She went through the effort to find one of the Sigils and then went the extra mile to change its form. I wonder if Princess Celestia came up with this idea herself, or stole it from her son the moment he told them what he wanted to do with them."

The shadows seeped out of the ground and wrapped around her front right hoof, which she had pressed against the glass of the hourglass after she raised herself to the same height as the glass itself. The shadows gathered the sand up, breaking through the glass and scattering the shards around the base, but she didn't let that bother her at all. The sands struggled against the shadows, as if the Sigil was resisting her because she wasn't the one who had made it into it's current shape, but she pressed on and pushed the grains of sand together.

Eventually the sand ignited and fused together, creating a burst of energy that knocked the books off the nearest shelves to where she was floating, but when it was all said and done Glimmer grinned; floating in front of her was an emerald the size of the gem she tried to steal from Crimson. It was the Sigil of Earth, complete at long last. Her master had given her a special chest that would carry the Prime Sigils that she found without allowing them to be taken from her, so Glimmer called upon the shadows and pulled the chest out. She gently opened the lid and pulled the Sigil of Earth over to the spot she had chosen for it a long time ago, the northern part, and left three spots empty. Once the Sigil was safe she closed the lid and dispelled the chest, hoping that she could find the other Sigil, the Sigil of Water, without needing the one she had just found.

"Stop right there Criminal Scum!" a guard shouted, his weapon drawn as he came to a stop behind her, "You have committed crimes against Equestria, Princesses Celestia and Luna, and their beloved ponies. What say you in your defense?!"

Glimmer sighed and spun around, an arrow nocked in her bow and loosed into the guard's shoulder before he had a chance to even move from the doorway. She hit him hard enough to pin him to the wall that stood behind him, so she didn't have to worry about him getting in her way as she made her escape from the library. The time for stealth was long over, as she had to loose more arrows at the guards that came running after her, though she had to wonder how they had all found out about her so quickly. She didn't have a clear escape path in mind, but there was a tug of magic that she could only describe as the magic of the Sigil's, which only wanted to lead her deeper into the castle.

Eventually she made a turn that lead her down a dark hallway, leading her away from the perusing guards, who had continued down the hallway she had been in as if they hadn't seen the one she had went down. She continued to follow the pull of the Sigil, for that was the only thing that could be pulling her deeper and deeper into the mountain, to the vault that she suspected that Princess Celestia had constructed. After a few minutes she passed through an opening that dropped her out by a large body of water, one that she had assumed was being used for some purpose by the Princesses.

As she stood at the edge of the water she could feel the pull of the Sigil of Water, which she was beginning to see as the water began to shimmer and glow. She had to give Princess Celestia credit for hiding a Sigil where almost nopony would be able to find it, but then again, Glimmer was not like most ponies, so she could look where others wouldn't dare to look. Unlike her encounter with the Sigil of Earth she called upon a vast amount of shadows and forced the water to pool in the middle of the area, where she knew she could control everything. The water reacted violently to her touch, something that she had expected from the Sigil of Earth, but she knew that she could outdo whatever game the water wanted to play.

As she whirled all the water together she could feel the actual Sigil taking shape, which eventually came into focus with a floating sapphire the size of the Sigils she had already seen. She pulled the chest back out of her storage space and opened it up, pulling the second Sigil over to her before placing it inside the slot she had ready, which was on the western direction. As she clicked the chest shut and returned it to the shadows she couldn't help but wonder if there had been a security measure in place that she could have missed. After taking the first Sigil she expected to be stopped by either Princess Luna or Princess Celestia, but neither one of them had shown up and it made her worry that it had been too easy.

Eventually she let the shadows wrap around her so she could take the filly back to her house, confidant that her victory over the two Princesses would go unnoticed for some time. She had finally beaten them and she knew that her master would be pleased that she was halfway done with her mission. Now she had to plan on finding Crimson Flare and Nightfury so she could steal their Sigil's, though she knew she'd be saving Crimson and his Sigil for last.