//------------------------------//
// Diamonds Are a Thief's Best Friend 
// Story: Harmony's Thieves 
// by 4428Gamer 
//------------------------------//


 Morgue’s POV
Outer Ponyville
20 Minutes After the Mansion




…
    After getting through the mansion’s gate, I rushed down the hill with my eyes peeled for literally anything. At each chance I got I ran underneath any shade I could find for good measure.

    By about the ten minute mark of running from tree to tree, I finally hit the town proper. The only thing that changed was instead of hiding under trees, now I was hiding against the buildings.

    When I was several streets into town and the manor was far out of sight from me, I stopped to size up the town around me. When I woke up I was near storefronts and restaurants; the business side of town. But this side of town looked like some sort of industry area.

Most of these buildings had small signs that had the name of the business and nothing else. What stood out the most were the large, warehouse-sized, structures as well as exposed kilns and large ovens that were left inactive.

The smaller bland buildings were what made up most of this place. I was interested to check inside but the street signs told me I was probably looking at workshops or offices rather than anyone’s house.

Then again, these are supposed to be hyper-intelligent horse people, I thought. I don’t know their lives. Maybe they live at their jobs. What if they’re complete workaholics?

Deciding that I wanted an answer, I reached over for the window beside me and tried to open the shutters. To my shock, and relief if I’m being honest, the shutters were pulled taut.

I gave my full attention to see why they were stuck. Apparently, the shutters had a thin metal latch that kept them from being opened from outside.

I frowned. No. That’s too much credit, I figured, pulling out my knife to flick the latch open. That latch is probably there to stop the wind.

When I got the shutters open, I reached forward and slid the glass window up without complaint.

Yep. I sighed, bored from the lack of challenge. No locks on the actual window. I could rob this town blind without breaking a sweat if I wanted to. Where’s the excitement?!

With the window open, I climbed inside then closed the shutters and window all over again before looking inside. The room was this stuffy office with a handful of filing cabinets.

I scoped the room for the usual big ticket items for a quick minute. There weren’t any safes or hidden spaces within the desk. Meanwhile, the filing cabinets had nothing but contracts and designs for jewelry.

“Joyas?!” I asked aloud. “...Un momento.”

I tossed the file onto the desk and marched towards the door of the office. As I threw it open, again, no lock, I spotted several workbenches each with tools specifically for jewelry making.

My eyes then settled upon the dozens of gems and jewels of all kinds, cuts, and clarities. On one table alone I counted four— no, five diamonds!

I bit into my fist, nearly eating it whole as I stared at the temptation. There were no flaws in sight and two of them looked as big as the fist I was eating.

I feel like I could cry right now, I shouted in my head. Those diamonds have to be worth over 300 grand at least!

Before I could realize where my head was, I was already standing over the desk with my eyes glued on the giant rocks. It would have been so easy to take them. No one would have known.

That is, until I brought them to Joe to figure out how to sell these things right. Then I’d have to go over how and where I got them and then admit I broke one of our own rules: No stealing from people who are not snobs. No exceptions.

Groaning, I finally closed my jaw and glared in no real direction. Stupid rule. Why’d I make it up anyways?

So, rather than take the diamond, I found a loose pencil on the desk and wrote on an empty piece of paper.



Hey,
I technically broke into your place. Had to hide from possible shapeshifting dragons. You know how it is. I didn’t steal anything. I promise. You should probably get some locks if you're just gonna leave big hunganormous diamonds sitting out though.

P.S. In case this is some kinda gem-fencing ring, are you hiring? I’d leave a resume but, again, shapeshifting dragons.

Wish you all the best,

-Morgue, Honorable Thief


.
I put the note in the middle of that office desk and put the file back in its cabinet before finding a different window to jump out of before closing it behind me.

There was a perfectly good back door, but nah. Jumping out the window sounded more like what an Honorable Thief would do.

Plus how often does someone get to jump out of a window? I bet you haven’t.

Wait, what? My head felt like it cramped for a second as I started to look around. I had this feeling that I was being watched.

That feeling didn’t last for too long though. The same moment I had that feeling was the same moment where it vanished. In fact, it seemed as if my head was trying to force myself to forget I ever had that feeling at all.

Eventually I accepted that I couldn’t spot any living being around me. Not even a bird or bug or something..

Actually. I began to notice. I haven’t seen a single animal either times I’ve been in this town. If we’re not counting those shapeshifters, the only living things I’ve seen the whole time was Princy and Querubín.

I started walking away from the jeweler’s in a brisk walk, still moving from cover to cover as I did. But this time I felt a lot more awkward as I passed by the abandoned buildings.









...
    Some time passed as I continued on through the town. After about a half hour of traveling I eased up on how careful I was being, whether I meant to or not.

I still wasn’t ballsy enough to walk down the middle of the street. I kept moving from shadow to shadow. However, I did feel brave enough surveying whatever crossroads I stopped at for any signs of life.

The buildings I passed by were all still void of life, but it didn’t look like there was any drama behind why. Doors were still closed, windows unsmashed, and no mail or newspapers had been piled up outside anyone’s door. If I ever imagined ‘abandoned town’ I would expect to see...I don’t know, total anarchy?

There were one or two business signs that had fallen off of their posts or a small garden out front that had a rotting vegetable or two sitting out but that was as extreme as it got. I would have felt more let down than worried if it wasn’t for the situation.

As a matter of fact, scratch that. I was starting to feel a little bored. Shapeshifting demon bug-horses could find me at any second and here I was, getting lazy in how I moved and forcing myself not to hum the first song that popped into my head.

When I walked out into a crossroads, I turned towards the other side of ‘Ponyville’. The entire town was built kind of in a valley with hills in all directions. Outside the purple barrier was a giant mountain with what I swore was some sort of castle. And in a different direction, mostly in the barrier, was a smaller mountain.

But then, probably a five minute walk from me was that same carnival. That horrific pink Ferris Wheel, that still looked like it hadn't moved an inch, was at the center of it all. Except, unlike last time, I could hear music coming from there. Music and maybe even the smallest hint of happy shouting.

I stopped walking for a second and let myself listen to whatever I could hear. Those demon horses didn’t exactly look like the poster children of ‘having a good time’. And Princy did say that those things apparently feed off of love.

Whether I was supposed to believe that or not I couldn’t say, but I do know what I saw. Would it really be bizarre to think love bugs disguised themselves as carnies to make people have fun and...consume said fun? Like, could those things eat any kind of love or positive stuff or were we talking relationship kind of love?

Does different love have different flavors?

I forced myself to ignore that question. But if I end up having to face off with a Changeling, I don’t think anyone would blame me for being curious.

I hurried across the crossroads, leaning up against another wall before checking my surroundings. For the umptenth time now, still nothing. Not even a bird.

Then again, that one demon was a bird so that’s probably a good thing.

When I proved the coast was clear I checked my watch: 7:01 PM. I left Princy and Querubín at 6:35-ish. Plenty of time.

I glanced back at that carnival again. It looked like it spread out pretty far and by this point I was starting to skirt the edge of it. And as I looked ahead to where I was going, I could see a small stone bridge that crossed over into a space without buildings. A park, more than likely.

Even with the trees and small hills that made up the space, I could see colorful tents and structures that looked temporary. The carnival probably spilled out into some of the park.

Why only some of it? I began skulking over in that direction. Taking only part of the town doesn’t sound too weird but that bridge is going over a small river. If the park’s already separated, why not take the whole space?

It definitely wasn’t to keep some of the park quiet. The music was loud even from here and that gaudy Wheel and those crazy colored tents told me it was a party meant for the loud.

My kinda party. I smiled for a moment, deciding to break from the shadows and beeline it straight for that bridge.

Nothing, that I could spot, had noticed me and as I cleared the space and made it to the top of this small arching bridge, I got a good view of the empty half of the park.

And the carnage that was left of it.

Peppered across the ground were patches of grass where something had gone wrong. Some grass was burnt away leaving charred earth while other spaces were perfect circles of dirt with no grass to speak of. If that wasn’t eye-catching enough, other areas of the park had the ground done up in random colors that each seemed to have its own problems.

To my left about twenty feet away, all the grass glowed with a bright hot pink color and flashed in brightness as if it were all made out of neon. Then, a distance away, spread out around a tree that might have been struck by lightning, the grass stood like hundreds of needles made out of pearl and silver with the sun reflecting off of each of them.

I slowly stepped off the bridge and in that moment, every root surrounding a different tree five feet away from me came to life. Each of them gave out tiny screams as they flailed around the dirt like crazed worms before striking the ground all in unison.

The tree that those roots were a part of suddenly ripped itself free from the ground and, like a spider, skittered away from me with rhythmic tapping with its twenty plus ‘legs’.

I kept watching like a hawk until the tree was more than a hundred feet away from me before it squirmed back into the ground like someone sinking into their covers.

I took a deep breath and turned to look at the rest of the crazy battlefield.

I dared look at another tree as I passed by and saw a tall lamp post with its glass lantern embedded in the side of its trunk. But to add onto the moment, the lamppost had grown arms out the side of it and at the end of them were bright red boxing gloves that hung lifelessly.

After so much hesitation, I gave one of the gloves a light kick and that sent the lamppost into a frenzy. With the top of it not only stuck but actually fused to the tree, the post itself couldn’t move anywhere but that didn’t stop the arms from swinging blindly.

When it realized that it had no chance of hitting me, especially since I backed well away, the lamppost instead started punching the tree rapidly to try breaking out. Only after another minute of desperation did the lamppost’s punches start losing their fury and it eventually gave up and let its red gloves hang again.

Finally, as I started picking up my pace to walk past dozens of other unexplainable problems, I saw the biggest horror yet. Ahead of me, probably hundreds of yards away, was the largest hill in the park.

Breaching out from the side of that hill was a mound of earth in the shape of a giant leopard’s head. Its mouth had been left opened wide like something out of the movie Aladdin as it was angled up at the sky.

Despite defying every law of geography and gravity, none of it was about to fall apart. It did, however, have a massive crater in the center of its forehead.

Additionally, that wasn’t the only crater. Not far from the giant leopard was another crater in the ground. And another about twenty more feet away.

Craters branched out in a line and away from the carnival’s side of the park. Some of them had grass or weeds growing inside them. I knew none of this was recent.

Without too much else to go on, I followed the craters. Every time I walked past I would glance down only to see an empty hole that was either shallow or deep as a pit.

It didn’t take long until I was finally at the last crater in the line. It was only a couple of feet deep but unlike most of the smaller craters there were two things at the bottom of it.

The first was a silver necklace. It had a small chain for the string that was hard to spot thanks to the dirt. However, the necklace had this angry, Chinese dragon-looking charm on the front of it.

The second object looked much more regal. It was a crown. Well, maybe it was more like a headdress or a tiara but I guess that wasn’t the important part. What was important was that the headgear was certainly regal with it made out of gold with small oval diamonds set into the band of it.

Then, set into the center was the biggest gem of all. It was made into a six-pointed star at perfectly sharp angles. Although, something about it felt...off.

I made my way into the crater and crouched down to look at it a little better. That star gem didn’t look like anything I had ever seen before and it was hard to figure out what kind of gem it was.

Even as the light hit it, it gave off no shine whatsoever. The gem was stuck as this permanent cloudy gray color. Not to mention the more I stared at it, the more I felt this feeling in the pit of my stomach that something wasn’t right.

Silently regretting it, I picked up the two pieces of jewelry. The necklace with the Chinese dragon felt abnormally heavy but only for an instant before it became as weightless as I thought it would. The crown on the other hand kept its weight as it started glowing.

With a scream I flung it away from me out of the crater but even as it clattered away from me it kept glowing; the light changing from one color to the next before the light started slithering off of it like rays.

I shoved the necklace deep into my pocket and started running in the opposite direction but it didn’t matter. The lights grew brighter and the colors became more vibrant. Eventually, those rays of light turned and sailed after me.

I ran faster, ducking past giant kernels of popcorn and jumping over a tiny pond that was full of chocolate milk rather than water. But the lights kept getting faster.

And then it hit me.

Out of nowhere, one of the sticks on the ground turned into a rake, angled at just the right spot to—

WHAM!

I clutched my nose and fell to my knees only to watch as the rake sprouting fins and swam away.

I tried to ignore my probably bleeding nose and stand up only for my vision to be barraged by every color possible and this warm feeling covering my entire head.

Then. Whiteness.