> Stay Golden
>  by Ice Star
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Act One: Monsters (May Not Be Found)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

[This poem was scrawled anonymously and submitted to the New Manehattan Times. Whether it was written by the Blood Mage of Manehattan is unknown. It is not known whether she was capable of composing poetry, as she never did ever confess to writing any. In the present day, it currently resides in the Canterlot Archives. For its vulgarity against Princess Celestia, it is illegal for any non-royalty to access or acknowledge its existence. Reprinting it and quoting it is strictly forbidden by Equestrian law.]



For heavens
hide all I do
in order to keep away from you
and this city hides all that is true

Sake catch me
if you really can put me away
never let my secrets see the light of day

Before I kill more
I will be out like a monster as you are all sleeping
and the Sun-Nag high upon her throne will be weeping

I cannot control myself
which is just as I desire
let Celestia herself light my funeral pyre


> Chapter 1: Charley Horse
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The gathered Royal Guard gaped down at the body of the stallion lying broken before them. The towering structures of Manehattan stretched around them at all sides, reaching up like teeth to hold the corpse so carelessly tossed into this alley. Really, ‘corpse’ was the only label fitting with what was left of the young stallion scattered so carelessly on the cobbles, his blood and entrails spiraling out in bits like the most heinous of mandalas from the elephant empire across the sea and little more than the shell of a soul’s home. 

“Oh gods,” whispered one of the guards. One of her senior offices cast her a look that read like an exclamation point to what a novice she was. “What a way to go!”

Another one of the gathered guards frowned at the newbie’s obviousness. Nopony should face such obvious vileness and not recognize the wrongness of this torture, but how did this one get through a military academy? Was she somehow conveniently sick every time it was brought up that the Royal Guard runs off honor, ability, justice, integrity, and intelligence — and that the sniveling sorts crying for empathy would find no place in the world as it was? 

Bodies were studied in military academies, taken straight from Equestria’s sole prison, where those who were given a life sentence were stripped of burial rights-and-rites when that judge’s gavel came down and spelled out all that they earned. Their bodies were often used in a Royal Guard’s education and had been for centuries. The sight was as normal as the equine-shaped targets to provide realism on the ranges and instruct on a mortal body’s weakness. Did such a filly of a soldier cower before those too, as if they could hurt her?

The thoughts of that armored mare, so sharp and observant of her cowardly co-worker were cut short by one of her comrades in golden armor. He had lit his horn with careful light, letting a variety of crooked shadows dance around them. With the soft light to aid the lantern held by another pony in armor, the guards gathered could see the stallion’s corpse all the more clearly.

He was a unicorn, with a brown mane matted with his own blood. His eyes were too foggy to discern if their color in life had been blue, green, or something similar to both. Where his coat was unmarred, a cheery light peach stood out. A myriad of tears and gashes too sloppy to have been made by even an earth pony wielding a knife led to the worst sight and where much of the blood stinking up the cobblestones came from.

The fine white shirt the stallion had been wearing was torn, and his cutie mark of an equine leg in a cast was almost unrecognizable beyond that. Nearly cleaving the dead stallion in two were crystals, richer than any red any of the guards had seen before and still glistening with blood. Unlike the workings of a geomancer, they weren’t growing from the ground; though this went unsaid, the peculiarity of it weighed upon everypony’s mind. The look of freshness that the crystals and blood had might just be a matter of magic, but it certainly was a sharp contrast to the corpse of the stallion, already rank in scent. Though, there was no analysis yet to tell why they appeared so.

From a shirt pocket spared of the slaughter, the unicorn guard stallion produced a folded faux-leather wallet. The jingle of bits sounded inside with his efforts to avoid stepping in stray intestines as he trotted closer to his squad. 

He wordlessly passed the wallet to his second-in-command, as the stallion in charge of the patrol had left to ensure the ponies in charge of recovering the corpse would be able to work their way through the mess of streets that led to this off-street location. Pegasi were few and far between in Manehattan, and those that weren’t caught up in construction businesses were usually just weather ponies. None would be free when a storm was scheduled for the night, and there was only so much good a grounded pony could do to find their way quickly in the dense, concrete labyrinth of this part of the city. 

Quick Spell, second-in-command and an unfortunate native of the urban space pulled out a few papers, unfolding a particularly thick piece of cardstock. 

“Charley Horse,” he read off, enlarging his werelight to increase readability. “A physician's apprentice. He lived in a good part of town.”

A parcel, tattered and torn spilled out from saddlebags discarded nearby. The brown paper wrapping went dutifully untouched by the guard, but all could see that it had been stomped upon in a careless, savage attempt to get open in a hurry — something characteristic only of earth ponies. Yet, the presence of such advanced magic was a clear sign that suggested no earth pony under Celestia’s sun could do such a thing. 

Brown sugar spilled out from its once neat packaging. One of the guard mares peered down at the label stamped there. “Jolly Holly’s? Why her store is only a quick trot away. My grandmother buys their sugar all the time!”

“Then it appears Mister Horse might have been doing some shopping before he was attacked,” piped up one of the younger stallions, Swift Blade. “Who would want to attack him over a grocer’s parcel?”

“I believe,” interjected the particularly astute Stoic Resolve, who spotted the cowardice of their greenhorn mare, “that whoever attacked Mister Horse might have believed he was in possession of something else.”

“Resolve does appear to speak the truth,” Quick Spell said hesitantly, turning the cardstock over to the rest of his patrol. A portrait of the apprentice as he had once appeared in life was clear on the identification sheet. “This stallion had proper clothes for his work, and we find him torn in such a ghastly fashion and left in scraps!”

Scraps indeed. The portrait of Charley had round, gold-rimmed spectacles perched on his muzzle along with evidence that he usually wore a silk top hat. A vest bearing golden buttons was visible under the long coat in the portrait. The stallion was an entirely respectable type as far as they could tell, and his name with any connection to Manehattan crimes had never reached their ears. There was no doubt he had come from his workplace and should have been clad in the full array of clothes pictured on his identification slip. Why else would he have it on his pony?

It was such a simple thing to find on a pony of the good standing Charley Horse was in. A slip of neat, elegant hornwriting listing off his mark, name, address, magic color, and other unchanging features. Multiple seals of legitimacy were stamped upon the cream-colored surface. Nothing would usually lend any special quality to a mere aspect of the protocol, and yet the entire patrol huddled in that cramped little side street felt the significance of the identification looming over them more than the wind carrying the weight of the coming rain of the emergency bells and sirens now blaring throughout the city. 

Of the six previous ponies murdered in an equally similar fashion, crimson crystals and all, Charley Horse was the only one that could be identified: thus providing the true start to investigating the serial murders weighing upon Manehattan.
> Chapter 2: Marigold Blueblood
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marigold Blueblood was a name that nopony wanted to remember, especially the House of Blueblood themselves. On their neat and prim family tree, this little flower was nothing but a weed from the start that had cost the brother of the then-current head his place in the household. Even though Marigold herself was a name that was meant to be forgotten to these nobles for more than just the scandal of her birth, soon Equestria itself would want to curse her name half the time and just beg that she be forgotten the remaining portion.

Marigold, like all foals, wasn't born with any proof of what she would grow up to be. Maybe somewhere in her mind was the latent shallowness that had been known to affect some members of the Blueblood house, or it could have been something all her own, which the staunchly moral Bluebloods wished had been the more popular rumor.

Rumors were how all of Canterlot came to know of Marigold Blueblood before she even entered the world and the first rays of light that she would ever see touched her wicked eyelids.

The two Blueblood Brothers — as they had been popularly known in their time before the younger's disinheriting. They were two of the stuffiest stallions in the century before the return of Princess Luna at the end of Celestia's Millennium. Palladium was the elder and heir to an ornamental house, only in succession because of an archaic tradition that few bothered to follow. He was average and unremarkable except for the wealth he was surrounded by from the first day of his life. Unlike his younger brother and baby sister, Platinum VII, he was groomed to sit on a large sum of money and whatever gossip passed for politics in Princess Celestia's social court that only acted as a foil to the crown jewel, Celestia, no matter how much ponies could forget that.

Platinum had yet to grow up and realize that she had been given a gods-awful repeat of a name that only her house would ever praise, as empty as those words would be and about as original as her parent's naming 'sensibilities'.

The middle brother to both and the younger to the heir Duke Pallas was Rhodium — or Dee for short. If there was anything Dee hated more than anything it was stopping to think about the decisions he made. He was the epitome of recklessness and rash decisions.

How he got through life was a joke among the high ponies of Canterlot and a problem in his family, who only hoped that all their efforts would pay off and he'd be responsible and mature at some point with his siblings' help.

With Pallas' help, Rhodium was able to convince a sensible and wealthy businessmare to marry him. For Pallas, Platinum, and the rest of the Bluebloods this was all they could hope for.

And then Rhodium met Petunia Petals, a young and equally reckless earth pony mare. She was a tourist from the fledgling village of Ponyville.

It wasn't long before all of northeast Equestria spat at their names and Rhodium Blueblood was only Rhodium, disgraced unicorn and there was nopony at his side now as news of the first affair in Equestria in centuries.

One year later, Petunia Petal gave birth to a little filly she named Marigold, the false addition of Blueblood hanging after the little filly who was hidden away in the Manehatten streets so nopony would recognize her and her mother, despite the name of that followed Marigold.

The forest of Equestria was about to meet the blight of the Bluebloods.

But first she had to grow up...
> Chapter 3: Trigger Happy
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The bell to Gerel’s shop chimed, and at the sound of it, his breath caught in his beak. Excitement filled his lungs. So rare was that melody during the rainy season when the Manehattan neighborhood of New Shirdal received fewer tourists. The artifacts of the griffon homeland always drew many a window shopper, when Gerel still bothered to tantalize them with the sight of his Shirdalian artifacts in the window that is. That was before he realized window shopping was too generous, too easily done for free, and that Manehattan was a city of good guards, bad thieves, and poor griffons like him who didn’t fully realize what they were getting into by leaving their island homeland. 

Maybe one day he would finally pack up his many treasures and see how gullible the griffons in the Griffonstone colony were, and if those who never knew the wind of an aerie under their wings or the sight of island coasts would be gullible and soft enough to hear his sales pitches galore.   

Gerel’s feathers ruffled with delight and he placed his large, curved talons atop the glass of his display case. He began to drum them upon the thick pane with practiced ease, waiting for the sound of hoofsteps to reveal their owner. 

Eventually, a little pony mare pushed her way past copper-headed spears, feather jewelry, baskets woven with gold patterns, and a variety of other gleaming wares. Across her cheeks and muzzle were painted freckles of gold and her mane and tail of orange-gold held a feathered fascinator while earrings like sundrops hung from her ears, multiple rings and clips crowding each one. 

Her eyes watched him, their color as brutal as sunfire. She smiled with a distant glee and curtsied with the elegance of a born paraplegic given motion for but a few seconds. Everything about her, from the yellow skirt that covered her mark to the gold-trimmed ruffles of her scarf, reeked of an imitation of wealth. Yes, she was more dolled-up than most ponies that came to his shop, but she was not the gleam and shine that griffon claws craved. He knew a good customer, as all griffons knew how to hunt something as gorgeous as wealth like they hunted goats. 

“Good day, Mister Griffon. I see that you sell artifacts of your homeland here?” Her accent was more nasal and horrid than most ponies of the city, riddled with the holes of quintessential urban ugliness. Her lips were contorted forward in a way a beaked creature like Gerel found even less natural than normal pony ways of speaking.

He was already filled with the flash-forwards of how she might slaughter the ‘r’ from the end of her words. “Good day, miss. You have seen true. Is there any piece I might interest you in?”

She said ‘griffon’ in the same manner the unarmored earth ponies such as herself told him to ‘go back to Griffonstone’. As if he could be from such a place! Still, few had the odd false glitter of a mare like her, with her voice too loud to offer any hope that she might have more than shabbiness under all the crisp gilded highlights pained in her mane and short-cut tail. 

“Why, I find this to be an intriguing trinket.” The way she pronounced the ‘t’ of every word made him consider pulling a few feathers out to stuff his ear-slits. Or, at the very least, close up shop and head to the pub early. 

Gerel’s only solace came from her accent not bearing the uneducated stench of Tartarus’ Kitchen, where the worst of any animal in this city lived. 

She pointed almost forcibly, gesturing to the case his talons rested on. Inside was a shining array of what ponies called Griffish dueling pistols. They were laid out to give full range to show off the enticing color of their metals: silver, bronze, gold, and more. The contraptions were all but useless to ponies except as mantelpieces and paltry equalizers in non-magical duels among unicorns. An earth pony like herself would only find mileage by purchasing such an exotic piece to start conversations. 

“I see,” he responded, lathering up his voice with false intrigue. Already, it sounded like he was applauding her for a purchase not yet made. 

Her eyes hungered for the gold-accented pistol before Gerel could flaunt his full selection of merchandise. “You would not happen to sell the other accessories for these contraptions, would you?”

There was a whisper of astonishment in her voice, like a mare with eyes that devoured like hers could not believe that he could carry the very ‘accessory’ — goodness, she really was a brain-dead sort — that made this more than a particularly tacky tool to bludgeon with. 

“No madam, Gerel’s Grand Griffish Goods does not stock ammunition of any variety. My shop is one meant to showcase many of the authentic crafts of Shirdalian Island to Equestrian ponies. If you want a dealer in weapons, I am not the griffon to seek.”

What was she? Certainly not a prostitute, they were an even lesser lot than she. This mare at least offered the impression that she might be literate, and she was willing to be seen in daylight. No prostitute would do such a thing, and their stench was notorious. This mare could bathe herself and had meat on her bones. Unless she was hiding scars and ribs under those fine clothes — too close to the garb of a proper mare of wealth than a pitiless whore — he could find little to suggest he grab the guards from the nearest street corner and have her infested flank hauled to a station under suspicion of such a nasty crime. 

“Ah,” said the mare, tilting her head so her eyes glittered all the more peculiarly, “I have no need for the other accessories. However, I am intrigued by this piece of yours.” 

She had approached his case and drew her forehoof upon the surface in relaxed circles, leaving smudges. With much of the distance between them closed, Gerel could see that she might not be a mare at all. Under all her gold trimmings she looked to be nearing marehood — not in it. Only her louder, deeper accent that added to her vulgarity helped create an illusion of age. 

“A weapons dealer I am not,” Gerel said, arching a feathered brow, “but do you have any proof of age to make such a purchase?”

She smiled kindly at him, batting her eyelashes so they framed her red-glowing irises just so. The mare tugged her elaborate gold-threaded shawl laden with noisy trinkets closer around her withers, so anything below her high-necked ruffles was hidden. The mare rested a hoof over her throat, where something might have lain under the fabric she bunched up and held with her hoof in the flawed imitation of sophistication. 

“I am a mare of bits and well past the age for such a thing, as you can see. Now, Mister Gerel, I do not know how you treat the hens of your island so far away. That concerns me not. What you must know is that in Equestria, a mare is not asked about her age! It is a big, big offense!” 

She uttered her last sentence with a girlish gasp that prompted Gerel to rub at his eyes and the ruby tint of his vision. How could such a mature mare hold such effortless expressions of youth?

“The pistol is one hundred and twenty bits. Everything about it is talon-crafted and not one bit less would be proper for a tool like it. Do you think I would sell gold leaf excuses? Madam, I am a griffon, and we resort to no such dishonor. Only real metals are dealt with in this establishment.”

While humming atrociously off-key, the mare withdrew the necessary sum of lovely gold bits from a tough, worn coin-purse so unlike the rest of her clothes with her ruby red magical aura. She laid each one out for Gerel to count gleefully. When all was said and done, the mare flashed him another flutter of her eyelashes, made all the more epileptic than seductive from the concrete layers of golden eyeshadow she caked on them. 

The bell to his shop rang again, signifying that his customer had left. Her magic had deposited her new purchase into her overly decorated mare’s saddlebags — something so horrendous that they had to be a custom order, as no respectable pony designer would have crafted something even he knew was a fashion abomination. 

Soon, the ruby light in Gerel’s amber eyes had dimmed. His recollection of the day’s transactions faded into the usual humdrum fog of shopkeeping. Why would it not?

All in all, nothing had been out of order. 
> Chapter 4: Gunpowder Gloom
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marigold Blueblood blinked her ruby-flooded gaze and smiled like a pumpkin damn near split open on Nightmare Night. 

“Oh my,” she cooed. “How lovely my new toy is!” 

The teenager itched with the urge to slip a frolic into her step, but the skirt she wore today was rather stiff, and she did not want to risk tearing another. Seamstresses were nothing but slavers with the rates they charged, entirely undeserving of what they charged on a service deserved by all. Many were also uppity unicorns or earth ponies managing ludicrously fancy sewing machines that they insisted needed this upkeep and that, daring to treat Marigold Blueblood as if she were not a fellow earth pony, but instead a mere customer. Those were traitors to the earth pony cause if there ever were any. Despite all the power she had received from her dear artifact, the delicacy needed for sewing was still something quite beyond her capabilities.

Marigold pawed at the hard lump under her shawl, letting the horn-less aura from it flare briefly and tugged at her stiff, hock-length skirt. The ruffled edge of the underskirt poking out looked too bright and starched in the coming dusk. Gaudiness attracted Marigold like a fly was drawn to sugar water, but tonight she wanted just a smidge of secrecy. 

Marigold’s brow furrowed as if in pain. She squeezed her eyes shut to hide the light and focus on the throbbing ache that drummed in her skull as she demanded magic do its work. A plain black rain cloak rested over her golden attire, half-translucent with the suddenness of the conjuration and never solidifying entirely due to Marigold’s weak newness to the art. By the gods so rotten, she was still such an amateur. No matter how fantastical her precious artifact was, she still was on shaky leaps and bounds. It still covered all of her perfect ensembles and gave her shaky telekinesis a place to conceal her weapon. The paleness she suffered from after her feat was well-hidden by the dark accessory, as was Marigold’s disgust when she felt the heel of her glamorous laced-up boot squelched into something dreadful. 

Hissing through gritted teeth, she jammed her pistol into her saddlebags harshly, her magic losing the peculiar sense of the inner mechanics of the strange contraption, fading from the bizarre way where they traced themselves under her skull. Lately, any time she grabbed at something with magic, the unthought-of complexities of the process produced such an effect and buzzed in her skull differently each time she gripped something. This caused some bizarre sixth sense, one adjacent to touch to create the queerest series of pressure, as though something was worming around in her brain. Was this how unicorn filth felt? Did they get the sensation that there was something picking at their brains and working with them to make their magic happen?

Lifting up her hoof, Marigold could see that what was stuck to the sole of her hoof might have excrement mixed in with it, at least judging by the foul order. Equine excrement. There was also the noxious scent of something that smelled suspiciously like what the older fillies who loitered too much in the bathroom liked to sip out of the stupidest looking jug when they thought Marigold had left. She couldn't hide her gag. 

What could she really expect in this part of town? There were efforts to keep all of Manehattan clean, from rottenness and rotten ponies alike, but parts of the city were not patrolled by Celestia’s gold-clad army as much as they should have been. Bad routes and other mortal failings gave way to pockets of corruption and isolation so perfect for one Miss Marigold Blueblood. 

Thick, dirty windows always had the curtains drawn in this part of town. Those who had such windows would place large furniture in front of them and stuff gaps with rags to block out the sound. Boards were often hammered carelessly to the interior sides as well, and it was always junk wood or some horribly smelly driftwood pulled from the bay harbor surrounding Manehattan Island — though, that was less common since the harbors were not crawling with any criminals except the odd smuggler. Marigold knew that the Royal Guard always patrolled the docks carefully and that the only kind of whores that lurked there were the ones that would be arrested quickly or the kind that their water-logged remains pulled out of the sea.

Trash was piled high and overflowing from the bins it was carelessly stuffed in, each barrel more terrible in its stench than the last. The shadow of the Liberty Mare was far from here, and rightfully so. No liberty dwelt here, only perversions and the ponies who fell to them. To Marigold Blueblood, it was exactly what she needed, and she happily quickened her step to a canter.  

These ugly streets with apartment blocks that bleed and lumped into one another instead of merely being a wall-to-wall sprawl held the perfect ponies for her plans. There were no scrubbed bricks, balconies, businesses, or neighbors here. Center Park was distant and unheard of among the small-minded, secluded residents. Those that snagged spaces in these half-abandoned flats were transient and without community. The nearest schools were beyond blocks away, but they had to be because Princess Celestia declared it so. When the sun peeked over this particular web of streets and alleys, they would be empty and the rich rolling hills of the Continent would go unseen; only the shadows of despairing apartment rises would be cast upon this space. 

Marigold approached one such building, marveling at the scent of wet plaster that spilled out. The building itself seemed to creak as she rapped her hoof on the door. 

No response. Marigold let out a hissing breath through her teeth. Impatience was making her blood run hot. 

She knocked again, and the sound of hooves stomping came from inside. Rusted chains rattled and the door was pulled, then slammed again. A wheezing voice cursed from inside. More chains rattled and the sound of fumbling hooves followed. Eventually, Marigold caught sight of a leg through a crack, and the door was pulled open.

The sight of a mare once-healthy greeted her. Purple eyeshadow was applied thicker than paste to blend in with recent bruising around her eyes. She made a face that Marigold learned was called a prostitute's smile: yellowed teeth, thin unnaturally black spots on the gums, a few brown molars peeking through, and the stench of gods-knew-what escaping her mouth like a miasma. 

Once, on a trip to a boardwalk with her mother, Marigold had found a dead fish that had been dropped by a gull or some other sea-bird. The heat had ensured the sun-bleached, half-rotted beast smelled as terrible as possible. That fish still wasn't nearly as awful as the odor of this mare. 

The sleeves of her dress were ragged and showed rings of rope burn around her legs, crusted over with dried blood. The bruises on her throat peeked out from the high collar of her dress. Once, its expensive and fashionable state would have been obvious. Now, it had fallen into a state of skimpy alterations and ruined from too much participation in her crimes, both of which made it unwearable in public.  

The mare angled herself so she blocked the door horizontally, and Marigold caught a purposeful flash of a bit too much from her butchered short almost-skirt. Weird blackish wounds stretched across her legs, clearly some kind of infection from the excessive chafing of her ridiculous fishnets.  Even though her cheeks were thin under the incorrectly colored makeup palette dumped on her scabby face, her hindquarters looked swollen with ugly red marks streaked with blood residue. They peeked out from beneath the crisscross of her cheap, ugly fishnets. But they weren’t from anything as distinct as the crops and other similar paraphernalia deemed horrid. All of those were made illegal to own in Equestria and other civilized, allied nations. 

Maybe she lets her hourly owners beat her with something else, Marigold thought, a fidgety feeling making her forehooves itch. 

All in all, she was fairly healthy as far as most mares and stallions in her criminal field. The distinct signs of other illnesses appeared to be absent from her. Usually, these dirty ponies had it wafting with every flick of their tails, clinging to them like bad perfume. This one had the sense to at least ensure her tail was made into a brick of products instead of letting it become a dried tangle, matted with fluids from Celestia-knew-where. 

Her dull, glassy eyes looked over Marigold, visibly confused. 

“'ow old ye?” she hissed, voice thin with what was left of the youth her appearance lacked. 

“Fourteen,” Marigold answered honestly, sweetly. “But that rarely matters to a whore like you, does it?”

The nameless mare narrowed her eyes. And really, they were all nameless. If the pony was not a lone participator in self-exploitation, as the law dubbed that branch of crimes, they would be nothing more than the nameless chattel under a pimp or madam running their own multi-pony criminal establishment. That was what all the library's criminal history books said, as well as the word on the street that Marigold had picked up. 

It was only those chattel sorts that might carry a name. But for a pony like this? A mare disconnected from any family for years, without a lover, who slaps a vulgar name on herself to make up for being a worthless grown blankflank and sells herself, desperate for any bits as and caught up in a horrible cycle of letting anypony who buys her do anything to her? She was utterly nameless. A cog in a pattern that only Marigold and any who committed the crime of purchasing a pony knew. Nopony had to know what she might have really been called, or the little innuendo she gave herself. They just had to pay her by the hour and take the risk she would not be as sick as another mare or stallion that might be in the same building, or caught up in the identical cycle of self-destruction. 

She would not do anything if her buyer beat her too bad, or had their vicious way with her, not as long as she had the bits in the end. Both of them were familiar with the sides of the crime they participated in. It was not like this mare could run to the Royal Guard without being held on charges of her own — that was a shred of leverage Marigold absolutely treasured. Yes, they would lock any buyers up if they were successfully caught and tried for such a thing. None of that changed that this whore-mare would have to pay in time with a side trial of her own, for there was no immunity from certain severe kinds of offense… and her regular, sexual offense aside, statutory rape cost any creature their head. Why did any of that matter? Because it gave Marigold her much-craved power; because the thought of mutual sabotage was just that tantalizing. 

“Ye bet'er 'ave bits!” demanded the mare with as much force as a whore like her could have. When what stood over Marigold looked like she was three steps away from being a skeleton, that wasn't much. 

“Oh, I do,” Marigold whispered, tugging her shawl under her cloak to ward off the night’s chill. “One might ask how old you are as well. Come on, tell me. Does anypony ever ask?”

“'ourse naw,” scoffed the mare, “they pay and be done. I ‘m nin’een, t'ough.” She was too dumb to lie, really, and the obviousness of that was painfully clear. Most were like that, or so Marigold had learned. Even at her ripe old age — if whores had a ripe old age — gathered a few years of experience. 

When Marigold slipped a hoof under her cloak, she flipped it over and showed off the coin purses spilling bits upon bits inside. “I think I have more than enough.”

When the whore caught a peek of the shine of bits in the dark, her expression went into a limp, drooling, sort of dullard's bliss. “Y-Ye d-o.”

Marigold wanted to smirk; this was always what got them. Bits overrode dignity, paving the path to whatever villainy Marigold wished. 

“How much for three hours?”

“Ye ken 'ave t'ree days wi' bits 'ike 'at.” Only the most psychotic of buyers would try to spend three days straight with their purchase — especially considering whatever they gave you to remain awake for so long would either cost extra or be some kind of trick. Even worse, it could be a toxic concoction when it was made by somepony as terrible as her kind. 

“No. Three hours.” Marigold fixed the whore with a cruel stare until the malnourished mare was quavering. “Nothing more. I am the buyer, am I not?”

“Ye be buyin’, missy,” whimpered the whore. “Bits get ye whae’er ye wan's.”

“Of course it does,” Marigold said breathily, her tone filled with the floaty, unaggressive girlishness nopony would ever think to question. After all, there was no such thing as one of these kinds with standards; they could not make money unless they let buyers do whatever they wanted.  Ponies wouldn't risk their dignity to be branded a sex offender by touching such filth as her unless there were an absolute condition to solidify their allure. “Now, I think it is best I actually get what I aim to pay for, yes?”

The prostitute lowered her ears in surrender, taking a hoof and patting her gelled-solid streaks that passed for an imitation of curls. The strands that strayed from that encasement were frizzy from telltale abuse of cheap dyes. Such was a habit rarely done by ponies outside of costumes and parties, but mares and stallions like the mare before Marigold would get cheap stuff for their manes and coats to hide their true identity. It was just another way to ruin themselves. All the packages said that drug store and over the sink dyes were harmful in excess... and to have ponies who were stupid enough to re-apply it weekly were going far, far beyond whatever the dye creators had in mind. 

Marigold followed her inside, paying half a mind to how the door was locked for when she alone would need it later. Her pistol was a pleasant weight in the saddlebag opposite of her coins. She watched the whore hobble up the stairs; the distinct quality to her limp only meant one thing: certain mares of her crime were known to acquire that gait when they fell to a certain condition — and were able to survive without dying from the final struggle with the ‘consequence’ alone, eleven months later. That was, of course, provided they had not managed a homemade attempt at termination — one that they also had to survive, of course. That came with its own complications too, and Marigold had saved the newspaper clippings that told of the horror stories: unsuspecting landlords and neighbors following a scent to its ghastly source.

Marigold could only give her sweetest smile, letting her roving eyes devour the sign of obvious weakness. Even if she was too good for these dusty, narrow hallways that tilted down at her with their narrowness, there was a chance that she might be rewarded doubly tonight. As they climbed floor after shabby floor, Marigold heard the usual array of sounds characteristic of the half-empty apartments frequented by her type. My, my, if the owners only knew the horrors that went on in the homes they struggled to keep well — the newspaper headlines only made it so much more obvious that the up and coming landlords who got stuck with these places had no idea that they rented to bottom of the barrel ponies. Those that did know would later have to face criminal charges for facilitating sexual offenders. 

The sound of ponies in pain all accompanied by the occasional thud reached the filly’s ears. She suspected that a few of the higher sounds might be sobs, and there was a chance they could belong to somepony her age or younger. But Marigold's reading and dealings told her that was no surprise. What did spark her curiosity was that this apartment was probably a brothel-by-night and the first she had come across. Marigold knew what it sounded like to strike a pony as hard as possible through the thin walls of these places by now. She was not the kind of filly to cringe from the degrading language or sounds of violence she heard. In fact, it put a skip in her trot as she bounded up the stairs. 

Her imagination swirled with the thought of what this wretched building might pass as during the daytime. Was it just another dour low-rent bloc the Royal Guard had yet to haul evil out of? Or perhaps something more sinister? Was the landlord — or lady, Marigold suspected either worked — somepony who came by often or even endorsed the depravity that happened behind these doors as soon as the sun sank below the horizon? 

Eventually, Marigold and the whore came to a weathered wooden door that had known better days, but was otherwise quite sturdy once one saw past the weathered face. Two battered bronze numbers reading ‘75’ could no longer shine, even if all the drifting clouds of dust had let them. 

The whore was wheezing from the climb alone. Her thin hooves clumsily fumbled with her key a dozen times before she managed to use her disgusting mouth to twist the cold, heavy iron. Then she drove her wither hard into the wood to budge it open, wincing with pain from the impact. Marigold figured that she probably had at least some splinters stuck in her skin beneath the torn dress she wore.

Marigold made no effort to hide the noise she made or how she sucked in one big breath to prepare for the smell. Her cheeks pushed out, the sparkling freckles she painted on her face moved with her, like gaudy constellations. After making sure her boots would be safe from more damage, she stepped inside, following her whore. 

The first room was a mess of glass bottles, most broken and shoved aside. Marigold was definitely glad she had boots now. Unknown stains were the gallery upon the peeling, unpatterned wallpaper, though the creaky floors had their share too. Dirty shirts had not even bothered to be pulled over vomit stains. Many had not even been half-scrubbed away. Browned blood spatter decorated many sheets, spelling out the shame of the whore and splattering various other possessions she had.

Though, ‘possessions’ was a kind word for what was little more than coils of rope, a wooden chair, a tired-looking crate, and a sack of dried fruit. Marigold was rather impressed, as most ponies like her ate out of the dumpsters of diners and markets. Being able to afford a whole sack of dried fruit was a sign of popularity, even if half the fruit was likely withered rather than purposely dried. 

The only light in this room came from a herd of candles melting on a plate too tarnished for Marigold to tell what it might have been made of. The second room Marigold was led into was less of a room and more of a catch-all space for the whore to dine in and keep general wares. A cracked, stained mirror that was missing quite a few pieces from the flowery wooden frame stood in the corner. Perhaps she had been slammed into it too many times, as the speckles of blood found on it suggested.  

Marigold’s greed bubbled to light, and her gaze immediately found the collection of clothes scattered around the mirror room, a clear sign that this was where she primped and preened to the best of her ability. Various articles were spilled around, either piled up, draped over wooden chairs, or hanging from homemade laundry lines strung across the room. Numerous dresses were awaiting the slatternly homemade alterations that left them as parodies of anything that was once pretty, charming, flirtatious, or even tastefully attractive in any sense of the word. More hideously cheap fishnets and assorted scraps of gross lingerie in various states of disrepair were huddled with main pieces. 

A few plainer dresses with actual short skirts stuck out, partly because they had actual patterns — or because they simply weren’t lost to abuse yet. Marigold recognized them as having likely been made from feed sacks, and the thought that somepony like her was either dumpster diving for these things or that she had been able to budget for food staples at one point after rent, bribing cronies, and clothes hoarding was absolutely hilarious. There was even an assortment of bland thread colors and scissors — a clear attempt at the sewing kit needed for this fool to try and deter gazes from her hideousness through fancy clothes that were always in need of repair. Along with few the ugly shawls hanging nearby, these were the things Marigold knew the whore would wear when she might risk being seen in public during dusk. She could likely pass as an average grandmother from a distance. 

On a teetering stool was a collection of high-end perfumes threatening to fall off from where they were crowded. The bucket of water next to the stool told Marigold that she had to water down most of what she paid a hoof and ear for in order to conserve supplies before she dunked herself in it. Not too far away was a knee-high pile of various cosmetics. Many of the containers were not properly closed and the various powders and paints leaked across each other like they were desperate to escape a mare who would do nothing more than slather them carelessly on her grimy face. 

After passing that room, Marigold had the misfortune of getting a whiff of the small bathroom to the side. 

“Blegh!” Marigold gagged. 

Her whore’s reaction was to hunch her withers forwards in utter humiliation, saying nothing. Could she make it any more obvious she probably just kept buckets in there that she dumped gods knew where? 

At last, Marigold’s whore shoved open the last door. Marigold Blueblood stepped inside and beheld what was supposed to be a bedroom. The biggest shock was that this mare had so many pillows lumped around the bare, dirty mattress bleeding its stuffing out from multiple gaping holes. Yes, the pillows were torn and lumpy, but she was a whore that had managed to afford furnishings. That was mind-blowing in its own right.

Marigold plopped down on the mattress, side-stepping all the largest puddles of mixed mystery liquids tainting the floor and a few more coils of ropes and cord. There was a broken table leg a few feet away from her flecked with what Marigold couldn’t mistake for anything else: some clumps of skin and more than enough blood. She noted that over the absolutely nauseating stench — the fecal odor was among the most predominant in this room — that the few hairs distinguishable in that mess matched the whore’s current coat color.

A feeling of gooey warmth spread in Marigold’s chest. None of these sorts had anything in the way of a barrier you could not push except what it took to kill them, and while the table leg was far milder than most things Marigold had seen, it was still a good sign. She would be able to have more of her way before her finale. 

As Marigold’s hooves unfastened her cloak, she noticed how her whore bumbled over to an area close to where the lone table leg was. Arranged crookedly on one of the most disgusting towels Marigold Blueblood had seen were the missing pieces of the mirror in the vanity room, each jagged piece well-used and stained with enough beads of blood to discolor the once reflective pieces from a distance.

The cloak fell, and Marigold slipped off her saddlebags and laid them next to her. She fished out a few sacks of bits, eyeing her whore. 

“Two-fif'y,” the mare wheezed, “fif'y bits an hour.” 

Marigold smiled like her whore had said something clever. 

“Very well,” she said, hurriedly grabbing enough pouches and spillover and hoofing them over. 

Fifty bits an hour was rather cheap for a Manehattan whore. It was like the imbecile did not realize her prices were just below average. Farm fresh apple cider shipped from the hills was eight bits for six bottles. The law said buying a pony was cruel and a plethora of other ways to reiterate serious crime this and grave offense that. 

Marigold Blueblood just found it laughable that you could pay to beat, cut, or restrain a pony in whatever cruel fashion you pleased, if you were afflicted with such an unlawful want, and that it might only happen to cost you as much as enough fine cider for a large rooftop celebration or twenty-five nights at the average rural inn. Someponies, somewhere long ago had invented what was known as 'the world’s oldest crime' and decided a price could be placed upon a living, sapient creature. It was absolutely glorious to Marigold.

Her whore scuttled off for a few moments, thinking that she would be good about hiding her funds. Marigold had to stifle a snicker with a forehoof. Did her whore think that she had not seen her limp away into the bathroom? 

Marigold’s whore slammed the door behind her when she returned, and to the annoyance of the former and the mild astonishment of Marigold herself, a whine erupted from nearby. 

Before she could be stopped, Marigold dared to stick her boots into the fray of sheets filthier than wherever the souls of whores were kept in Tartarus. She hit something fleshy and the cry came back again, annoying Marigold too. From within the rat’s nest, she revealed a sight more wretched than the whore half-alive upon the mattress: the whore’s own foal.

The colt could not have been past two years old. His few teeth were gray and cracked. Unlike his dyed and poorly painted mother, the whimpering cause behind her limp was unclothed, except for the assorted filth, grime, and more caking his once spring green coat. His mother was obviously selling him as a bonus, as virtually every whore-mother did when they survived their home birth. It was practically synonymous with the mares selling themselves. If they didn’t, they would either be rid of the foal post-birth or take out whatever they pleased upon their spawn in less sexual ways. Marigold had stared at so many public records of the library of those kinds of cases that they all blended together.

Somepony — very likely the whore herself — had burned whatever wings might have adorned the little one’s back. What was left were permanently featherless stumps just enough to leave the back of the colt as a trauma-worthy sight all across his back, but not enough to kill him. No matter how indirect Marigold’s touch was, any contact she made that reached the colt was enough to make the little thing wheeze and whimper. She dug the edge of her forehoof into his skin, pinching it harshly to see if she could get him to shudder.

“Shut up!” screeched his whore-mother, completely unaware that her dental deformities made the ‘t’ in ‘shut’ sound like a ‘d’ instead of totally being cut out this time. Her face was rather monstrous in the room’s candlelight. 

Marigold tilted her head to the side, watching wide-eyed as the unregistered foal feebly moved as his mother dove at the mattress. She struck one of his legs once, and before any real noise could happen, she jammed one of her forelegs into his mouth enough that one tooth broke from his soft, pained gums. 

“Ugly shit’s al’ays s’eaming!" The slurred shouts of the mare would be enough to have neighbors sending out a cry for the guard in part of honorable society. Here, they fell upon deaf, unwilling ears. "Enough! Enough! Hate the little bastard!” 

Marigold blinked her golden eyes coolly. Her expression was airy and bored. 

“How much for the both of you? I think that it is quite obvious he is for sale too.”

The whore wrinkled her muzzle. 

“Ye seem a bi’ young te be foal fiddler,” was her garbled response, neither refusing Marigold nor sounding shocked. “His price is dou’le.”

Of course, ponies paid for it, at least those weird foal-fiddlers did. Not a single one would be able to get away with so much as looking at a known foal the wrong way. The crown was good about that, and Princess Celestia made sure the ones that had not acted were handled and segregated, while those that dared break their passivity and act on their perversion were met with justice and the ax at Princess Celestia’s hooves. Marigold had found out that from her library trips and newspaper reading too.

But an unregistered foal was a fiddler’s prize, and for the right amount of bits, somepony like Marigold’s whore would participate. Or they developed whatever the crown knew as an evil sickness but Marigold had little care for those silly semantics, especially when she couldn't understand what was so not-evil about a pony who heard voices, a pony who thought courting non-ponies was okay, and then one who wanted to touch foals. Besides that, if it was just another thing that enabled her to find mares and stallions to suit her own desires, what did it matter? She was no filly of the law herself, the complexities of the system to handle the rare monster that lusted for foals was not something that crossed her thoughts all that often. 

“Then double I shall pay,” Marigold said lightly, offering the whore more coin pouches.

They were accepted without any second thought, just like how the whore-mother had stricken her own foal with the same carelessness. It was fascinating for Marigold to see, really. As she took her second leave to stash the bits away, Marigold got to work struggling with her elaborate clothes. Next to her, the colt made a sound between dry heaving and a steady whine that Marigold herself was considering striking the little beast, who struggled so pathetically with the tight cuffs of twine cord keeping his frail legs together tight enough that the limbs looked funny. 

Marigold’s boots slipped off once she pulled the knots in the laces free, carefully to keep her muzzle away from anything she had stepped in. Slipping out of her ensemble was more work without giving away her magic, and the earth pony was left to the familiar struggle of undoing her outfit. Off came her skirt, blouse, coat, and stockings and the fashionable pieces fell to the edge of the bed. They would no doubt be ruined soon, or she would have to dispose of her glorious garments, as she regrettably did with all of the others from these outings.

When her whore returned, she stared at the heavy piece that remained around Marigold’s neck. The mare looked quite underweight without anything to hide her ugliness. After all, it was neither kept away like Marigold's earrings so neatly kept in the saddlebags that always survived these trips, nor was it close to the colors of her other clothes. 

“‘ou ‘onna git that off?” 

“This?” Marigold asked, feigning innocence and placing a forehoof upon the piece of red and dark hues. “This is the Alicorn Amulet, and it is my family heirloom. I never will part with it.”

Oh, the family part was a lie, but how was a mare of such ill repute to ever know such a thing? 

Her nameless one shrugged and trotted over to where Marigold had laid out a few items from the side of her saddlebags that had not contained bits. She regarded the foreboding cloth hoods without the sense of fear anypony with a mind worth a few bits would. She stared at the other rags laid out beside them with a dull expression. 

“Those belts?” she asked, jabbing a forehoof at the strips.

“They are dish rags,” whispered Marigold, pleased at how wise she was to always bring extras. “I like a pony quiet and hurting, and with your little brat that is a necessity.”

Her whore sat down with an unceremonious flopping motion when Marigold motioned for her to, allowing her owner of three hours to secure a dishrag as an impromptu muzzle. There were a variety of things she could command this pony to do that were illegal to solicit for bits from anypony: stripteases, illegal unregulated stud ventures, and other varieties of things that all fell under that vast tree of self-exploitation. 

Marigold liked saying that to them at times, to remind them of all the awful things they did, showing them how learned she could appear. Nopony else found her to be very bright, but when somepony was naught but a slut with a mare in gold who bought them, nothing could be questioned. It was a good way to watch anypony be so small and helpless before her, right before she got to do all that she deemed fun. After all, she was not supposed to be the one who was small without all her ornaments? 

At least, she did not feel small. 

Marigold had usually only sought to purchase a pony more generally selling themselves as a prostitute than anything else tonight, generally due to whore-mares being weaker than the studs and carrying more jewelry. In the few months, she had been doing this, she had gotten quite good at getting whatever she pleased — and keeping such mindless ponies oblivious to her intentions. Of all those who purchased such ponies, an underage buyer was not an intimidating one, if any other than her existed at all. 

With a smile on her face, Marigold pulled the gag on her whore tight enough to elicit a dry, sobbing sound. Had this one lost a tooth from the force too? On went the mare’s hood, with the drawstring pulled harshly enough to get a muffled gulp. She was given a well-deserved kick for her disobedience.

Managing the colt was easier. He was already near-dead, and his legs were already tied up. Blood dribbled from his mouth, no doubt dizzying him to the point where he could barely thrash. All this did was increase Marigold Blueblood’s desire to fit the gag right in that gap, where the exposed gum would be rubbed at. Over the sniveling brat’s head went his hood, pulled to the most restricting limit possible to account for size. 

Now that all eyes were obscured, Marigold let her magic flow. Luminous red washed over her world with no sound her captives could hear, and she selected a nearby mirror shard with an imitation of the pickiness of somepony sampling a variety of gourmet treats. 

Nopony knowing the power she held that little piece of glass in gave her shivers of delight, as did quietly withdrawing the pistol to lay it next to her. 

Maybe her whore thought she was jittery, though anypony would if they had no idea four other skeletons of ponies preceded them. Perhaps in her weak mind, the whore was thinking there was any sense of innocence left in Marigold, not knowing that she had purchased whores for their intended purpose before, if one could really say a pony had the same purpose objects could. It was all just to gossip at school that she had done oft-whispered of ‘it’. Marigold found the much-whispered of ‘it’ to only be of gain when it was twisted into a clear power dynamic — which fell so easily into her usual wants that she still indulged her teenage drive on occasion. It certainly let her mother speculate that she might have a special somepony instead of buying un-special noponies.  

Without any attempt at restraint, Marigold hooked an edge of the glass in with somewhat overcharged telekinesis. Welling blood dazzled her into letting out a gasp of exclamation at the sight that would be ghastly to anypony in their right mind. Crimson trickled down the back of the shivering whore, who let out a faint pained sound. Oh, now she probably thought Marigold to be the kind of buyer who preferred to enact the usual illegal monstrousness upon her kind without any conventional lustfulness that followed. 

A swift kick to the lower back quieted the whore, and Marigold giggled. 

“Oh, you bleed so nicely! Your blood just looks so clean! Has anypony ever told you that?”

“Mph hmmph mmph,” was the response Marigold received. 

Troubled by the inelegance, she gave her whore a swift kick in the tailbone, her spike of irritation triggering a flash of magic in her eyes. “Answer me! Answer me right when I speak to you! I bought you! I own you!”

The absence of the usual snotty edge Marigold had only produced an odd spasm in response — or perhaps it was because Marigold had sunk the glass into the web of scars on the whore’s back, aiming for flesh that might still be soft. That could also explain the reaction

As the fragment sank faster with the increase in blood flow and the spike in Marigold’s anger, the colt managed to let out a noise of fear. Annoyance twisted its way into Marigold; any brat with the history of usage from birth to now that the whore-son had was usually in a state of total surrender and feral resignation. 

Furrowing her brow, Marigold let her magic pulse more greatly. Her pistol rose shakily, grasped crooked, and encased in ruby light before slipping it close to where the whore-mother’s blood was pooling. Marigold lacked the ability to levitate the slippery blood itself, but with discretion, she was able to slip the end with the hole close to where just a little bit could be collected, all without pressing touching the surface to the whore’s flesh.

Enough fell in for Marigold to yank it away. Swallowing, she felt an ache center in her forehead and willed and twisted the blood inside. As with anything else she gripped in her amulet’s magic, the feeling of the object was mirrored palely and peculiarly in her mind. In regards to the blood, it was like something was dripping around in thoughts, sloshing around her own thoughts. 

And then…

...the breathtaking cold twist of crystallization, like a momentary frost over her own heart followed. 

Gripping the insides of the pistol that drew itself in the phantom image via telekinesis in her mind were now two blood-red crystals. 

Marigold lowered the hollow nozzle — she was a lady, and a lady had little need for vulgar vocabulary — right against the hood-bound head of the little colt. He barely squirmed, and as she inhaled deeply, gathering the concentration to conjure the needed spark to propel the crystal with more than just the Alicorn Amulet’s might. 

She had to do it this way, all sloppy and terrible, or there was no fun to be had. 

Marigold Blueblood fired her weapon for the first time that night. 

Her point-blank shot was dreadfully loud, the squeeze of the trigger usually grasped by a talon nowhere close to the thrill she imagined. The magic touch made it more personal, just not personal enough to live up to her expectations. The explosive sound tear from it coupled with the hot splatter hitting her was what sent her heart pounding. 

The first thing Marigold realized was that from now on, she could never tie anything without magic, or all her knots would be ineffective. The second thing was that her whore was absolutely howling. “YE DINNIT PAY ENOUGH TO SHOO’ ‘IT!”

“Quiet!” Marigold hissed harshly, snatching up the glass that slipped from her novice magic. Recoil could prove to be a bitch, regardless of her magic. 

Before she could receive any further protest, Marigold kicked the weak mare to the ground. With a hoof triumphantly upon the whore’s back, Marigold stomped the breath out of her before wrenching the glass in again. 

Then she lowered the nozzle of her pistol again, fiddling with it briefly before it was ready, then firing it a second time. When silence settled over the apartment, at last, Marigold wasted no time in gathering her things. Her head was dizzy with the fuzzy, hot rush of violence, but she knew that the guard could still come. Never tarry around a scene was more of an instinct than a lesson to be learned, and Marigold had a cloak to summon again, clothes to burn, rooms to plunder, and a refund to give herself.

Worst of all, it was still a school night!





[This edition of the Manehattan Times appeared in 8XX of the Solar Millenium, during the early murders of the Manehattan Blood Mage. It can be found at many locations including the Times archives, Manehattan public libraries, and the Canterlot Archives. The subject matter of sexual offenses and violence meant that this content could not make the front page. Princess Celestia had decreed during the dawn of newspapers that ponies were to be faced with the good news first and that displaying material that was disturbing, sexual, or violent in public was a crime almost as severe as knowingly giving a minor explicit content.]







BORDELLO BANISHED! GHASTLY DOUBLE MURDER UNCOVERED! FOALS RESCUED!


by Front Feature


Two days ago, a series of ghastly discoveries were made in an apartment bloc bordering Tartarus’ Kitchen and Fjordham. An anonymous mail-stallion was delivering packages in the neighborhood when he noticed a most horrendous smell coming from one of the seventh-story windows as he was dropping a package off at a fourth-story balcony. The window was reportedly open and he flew inside. The stallion told Times staff that he wished to ensure that the resident was safe from any noxious chemical spills that may have happened and that he had ‘never smelled anything so sun-forsaken before’ in my interview with him.

I had asked him what made him so eager to do such a thing. 

“Back in my hometown of [REDACTED],” he explained, “neighbors check up on each other. The community cares. It is just something you do. Goodness knows that it is something Princess Celestia would want us all to do too. I know that Fjordham has a problem with self-exploitation and it only felt right to make sure nopony had been hurt by some gods-forsaken whores.”

I nodded at the time, asking him to describe his findings as tactfully as possible. 

“Sweet Celestia, I have never seen anything so ghastly!” he told me, having wiped his eyes of tears again. “They were like rags and moldy food just left to rot! Birds and other critters had gotten in and done a number on them. Nopony forgets a sight like that! Oh, the blood! All the blood! I was ready to faint, for I saw they had no eyes! The birds took them!”

He explains to me between tears that he felt himself snap after the sight, flying around the neighborhood until he found a Royal Guard. The guard, whose identity shall not be disclosed, said the pegasus approaching them was ‘hysterical and terrified’ and went on to add ‘like all of Tartarus was after him’.

It does appear that Tartarus was closer than they thought. As soon as the Royal Guard arrived at the scene, the answer to why such heinous violence went unreported became obvious. The following apartment complex located at West Sunburst Way and Fifth-On-Sunrise. Royal Guard had to enter by force and determined that the bodies had been there for over forty-eight hours. When the guards knocked upon the doors of neighbors, they discovered a greater horror: the building was being abused as a brothel to facilitate self-exploitation. 

The information released so far has at least seventeen confirmed prostitutes that have now been brought under the Royal Guard’s custody for property crimes, health violations, illegal acquisition of rental services, self-exploitation, violating antisocial laws, and more. All of them are mares. According to the Times’ legal consultant, each prostitute is facing up to forty years in prison as a minimum, with all possible pleas and parole revoked due to the severity of self-exploitation. Those that have any potential to ever be released one day will have all their records made public and be forced to register as sex offenders, as well as the mandatory sterilization for such despicable criminals at the Gelding Grotto facilities in accordance with the Equestrian Law on the Regulation and Management with Sapient Monsters and international agreements on how to punish sexual offenders. A further article will be published when that step in the case is reached. 

During the bust, at least three foals were rescued. They are safe in Royal Guard custody, but far from healthy. Each is older than the estimated age of the deceased, unidentified foal found slain in the seventh-floor apartment. The oldest is estimated to be around four years old. I was unable to secure an interview directly with her. Instead, I was able to speak with a pediatrician who has been evaluating the filly and gave the following information:




She is an unregistered foal, born to one of the wicked mares captured in the bust.

She has yet to be able to eat solid foods. She is highly malnourished. 

Her speech capabilities are minimal and mostly manifest as crying, whimpering, or repeating the vulgarities she was addressed with by her excuse for a mother. 

The filly was indeed sold out by the mother.  

One of her legs will need to be amputated due to how she was kept.

Her eyesight is poor due to being found restrained in a closet. 

Her dental decay is pronounced. 

Among the few things she knows how to say is making a curious booming noise that is always followed by a shriek. 

She is reported to have had surgery to correct scars around her neck left by a pet collar. 

The respiratory issues from said collar could be corrected with further surgery as she gets older. 

The hope for her ever being able to read is slim. 




The filly currently resides in an unspecified foal’s hospital in the Bucklyn Bay Area. She is not receiving visitors that are not professionals. To find out how you can donate to this young filly and other foals in need of charity because of the horror of self-exploitation, please turn to page 14 in the third panel. 

One of the other foals rescued is an infant colt. There is evidence showing that he has severe cranial and brain damage from where the monstrous prostitute keeping him tried to damage his horn. The injury is consistent with if the baby was dropped many times or had his head slammed upon something. The doctors attending to him have pronounced it unlikely he will ever be able to even perform telekinesis due to his chipped, deformed horn. His dental records are consistent with a pony who has had access to dentistry and his physical condition is reportedly suggestive that he may have been foalnapped by the vicious pervert whose clutches he was found in. The Royal Guard will be accepting any and all tips related to missing and abducted foals. 

The last foal is another colt whose condition, while atrocious, is less severe than the other two. The wings of the young pegasus were tied together, permanently disfiguring them. This colt has been described as only a few weeks old and bears the same signs of malnutrition on the filly. While there is no evidence he was sold, there is extensive bruising across the body that indicate severe physical abuse and starvation were presented. The doctors responsible for this little one also confirmed that he is also unregistered and the monster who birthed him confessed to plans of future trafficking. 

If convicted, she and the others responsible for the torture and violation of these foals will be facing charges for foal abuse, neglect, foal trafficking, attempting to retain a minor as a sex offender, and enough to ensure that on top of self-exploitation they will find themselves in one place. That place is kneeling at the hooves of Her Royal Highness, the Morning Star, Princess Celestia with an execution hood on each of their heads. The Manehattan Times have already been flooded with many letters containing prayers for the death of these monsters and that justice is served for the damage they have done to Manehattan and their young victims. 

All the bits seized from the complex will be evaluated to see if any evidence can point the Royal Guard in the direction of the villains who purchased these ponies so that they may be brought into guard custody too. Once they have been sufficiently analyzed, the bits will be used to pay for the destruction of the apartment complex and fund rebuilding it. Please turn to page 15 to find out how you can donate to help rebuild this community into one safe from self-exploitation with homes for all Princess Celestia’s law-abiding subjects. The landlord is currently under investigation and the guard has currently not released word on whether they have played any part in the evil deeds done within the walls of their property. 

The only word that the Times has been able to learn about the double-slaying is that the adult murdered was involved in self-exploitation. The murdered colt was her offspring and victim. Royal Guards has currently released the statement that the scene was indicative of a brief struggle. Reddish crystals found at the scene suggest ties to other recent Manehattan slayings, though no confirmation exists yet. All bits exchanged were taken, and so far the Royal Guards are only willing to release that it is likely the slaying was motivated by perverse lusts and robbery. 

The Royal Guard has urged all law-abiding ponies of Manehattan to follow these cases as closely as possible. While the reports from the autopsy of the two slain are not yet finished, there is much a pony can do to halt the spread of self-exploitation. Please turn to page 16 to find out ways to identify a possible prostitute, where to donate, your local Mares Against Monsters chapters, and all the ways to turn in sexual offenders and prevent them from thriving within your community. Mayor-Stallion Fair Heart has decreed that the request for higher deployment from the most gracious Princess Celestia has been accepted. New troops will begin patrolling the streets of all neighborhoods that have been having higher rates of self-exploitation shortly. 


> Chapter 5: She's Spoiled Rotten
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was no enlightenment or insight brought by poverty. If there was anything it provided other than experience, it was only the most malignant of envy that festered in the mind, eating it away so it only saw falsehoods only Haves and Have-Nots. Though a grown pony consumed by such vileness might procure more sophisticated names for their made-up classes of villains and heroes, nothing would stop it from being as hollow as a thin layer of gold upon the poorest pewter in a clear imitation of intelligence and substance. Little Marigold Blueblood had yet to succumb in full to the nature of this foulness that rotted mares and movements alike, but she lived in the manure that made it most fertile. The seedlings of it were already strong in her, not because weeds of her soul were stubborn, but because she and her dam nurtured them endlessly.

The special variety of poverty faced by Petunia Petals was well-earned. Her name had trotted out from tabloids and into authentic newspapers about what she had done, and even those unaware of this still suffered from the nuisance that was Petunia Petals. No publisher alive nor in history had ever been legally allowed to publish anything on Princess Celestia without her approval, or the secondary agreements of the Celestial Moral Managers appointed to every news outlet, overseeing every story's reporting and even the date and time of publishing. The rotten mistress of a Blueblood careless and cruel enough to take one had no protections except the bustle of Manehattan as an attempt to make everypony forget her and indulge in her desired lifestyle among 'true earth ponies' in their urban trotting grounds. 

As with all Petunia’s woes, they were self-inflicted. All those years ago, she chose to consort with the now-disowned stallion who could only call himself ‘Rhodium’ as of late. She chose to insist that there was nothing wrong when her hoof in the betrayal of love was uncovered. Petunia also chose to subscribe to false ideals and was eagerly letting her daughter be tainted with baseless prejudice before she ever knew a nursery story. 

“Marigold, my little flower,” was how she usually began her thinly-veiled rants, “you must never forget you are an earth pony, unfavored by that sun goddess and doomed to oppression in this society of physical classes. You hear me? If Celestia loved earth ponies, we would not be living here.”

Marigold would stare up at her mother with the special, unblinking stare of a, particularly unremarkable foal. The little filly would always answer obediently: “I understand, mother.”

Then, she would usually return to ironing one of her pinafores, the ones that she wished belonged to one of the private, posh schools in the city that she and Petunia never had the bits for. After all, it was society’s fault that she could not go there and instead had to go to a boring school with no pretty uniform where ponies wanted to know why she got free lunches and second servings. Mother said so. That was why Petunia could not do the cleaning and cooking. Society made Petunia sick forever, and doing such ‘awful drudgery tasks’ would inflict ‘the collective trauma of my class upon an old mare like me’ every time Marigold asked about her duties at home. This was why at the ancient age of thirty-two, Petunia made Marigold do everything. Usually, she was only well enough to do the shopping, and on every trip, they had to stay in the boutiques and uptown shops her mother wanted to go to. Or she insisted on dragging her wheelchair around all the furniture shops in order to request entire catalogs of fainting couches, only to yell at employees about why their illustrations were not accurate to each custom-made product, utterly oblivious to the irony of her screeching demands. 

Petunia rarely thought about how Manehattan was an earth pony city and that of all celebrity and fictional heroes, only earth ponies were represented en masse and with great, unwavering positivity. Equestrian culture was based on slobbering upon the backside of earth ponies for a dozen reasons like that and more, all done with all the subtlety of inserting a cactus in the rectum. Only the unicorn-heavy Canterlot and Tall Tale, or the various cloud cities of the pegasi offered any taste of unicorn and pegasus culture as blatant, and yet so curiously non-oppressive. Every other settlement was up its own rump about being ‘earth pony strong, humble, and good’ or had no predominant influence from any race. Such was the Equestrian way. Only the most deluded of ponies were whispering about classes of this and that, and only the looniest of them all could insist that the ‘noble and superior but woefully downtrodden earth pony’ was under any kind of condemnation in Equestria, except maybe from the most definite opposer of all: doors that were pull instead of push. 

Seven-year-old Marigold knew this was why her mother took a carriage down to her terrible public school and screamed bloody murder at the principal when she found out Marigold had been cast as Princess Platinum in the Hearth’s Warming pageant. It was clearly a sign of the malicious cultural devaluation of earth ponies to have them be clothed as their ever-so-spoiled and definite oppressors. That was almost as bad as when Marigold had to bring reading homework home, and dear Petunia Petals had feigned a stroke to scare her daughter into throwing the book away because it was ‘inappropriate and evidence of vile indoctrination against lower classes’ due to the pictures of pegasus and earth pony foals playing together in a park, sharing snacks, and implementing all the basics of phonics her daughter had learned in the text narrating the park adventures. 

The only books that Petunia Petals harassed her child about reading were the ones the local librarians could never give her because Princess Celestia had banned them from Equestria's borders. On that day, Marigold had to make the long commute home again wondering if her mother would make her eat soap again for being the bearer of such obviously tragic news. That happened whenever Marigold said something dirty and bad, even though her mother never took up hooves against her in any other way. Petunia could go through phases like that, and Marigold was certain it was normal, just like when her mother had thrown out all the books in the house upon learning that not enough were written by earth ponies and that they were 'anti-working class instruments' because that was somehow a real form of prejudice that her mother never shut up about.

“My little flower,” Petunia said today, “I need another glass of lemonade. Go easy on the ice too, Marigold.” Petunia was ever-so-theatrical to put an extra air of desperation and woe-is-me in her tone, making it sound like she would faint in seconds without her precious beverage. 

Marigold scurried over with the silver platter gripped in her mouth, and then upon the glass pitcher’s handle because her mother was obviously too weak to pour it. She usually always was, just like how she was usually too weak to do anything that was not fanning herself or leafing through newspapers and magazines. The only thing she was never not once ever too weak for was doing her makeup, and Marigold was always scolded when she asked to help do her mother's pretty lipstick. 

“Thank you, little flower,” murmured Petunia. She feebly adjusted how she held her painted, feathered fan and tugged a hoof at the necklaces burdening her neck. It was like a terrible self-made collar, somewhere between an insult to zebra culture and a parody of a mare attempting to indulge in Canterlot fashions. 

“Mmmm,” responded Marigold. She often thought jewelry was bad for her mother because she knew her mother did not buy the nicer ones and instead insisted that she would maximize her purchase by using what would get her as much as possible. Petunia usually got horrible rashes from everything she wore and insisted that it was a curse placed upon good earth pony-made jewelry by evil unicorn jewelers who sold terribly pricey goods and charged nothing fair to a mare in need like Petunia. 

Petunia said that she needed all the jewelry and things she bought for the house — a variety of rugs, vases, silkscreens, and trendy trinkets — in order to compensate for coming from a ‘podunk town’ and that ‘acquiring deserved higher class goods transformed that class status’ in order to improve her life. Those were the kind of incomprehensible filibusters given to a young filly when she innocently asked her mother why they had a new end table with a gorgeous glass top and gold filigree designs, but not enough food in the pantry.  

To Marigold, rambling was usually better than ranting. Petunia was always prone to the most vicious rants at the drop of her silver inlaid mane-combs. Once, Marigold had been sent on one of her mother’s errands downtown in the jeweler's district so far away from their pitiful, over-stuffed apartment. She had gotten terribly lost in a rainstorm because little Marigold had never been given enough bits for a carriage (‘You do not need their labor like I do, Marigold!’). A guard found her crying and walked her home, threatening to contact foal welfare services if a filly not even old enough to go to school was found alone halfway across the city again. 

After that, Marigold had been forced to eat soap for calling the guard nice (except for his yelling at Petunia) and talking to him in the first place, even though he had approached her first to ask if she was lost. Her mother said never to talk to a pony in armor, denounced the stallion as a filthy featherbrain, and told Marigold that if she kept trying to think good of the guard they would rape a little earth pony of her class. Because Marigold had less idea than usual what her mother was going on about, she was given a lengthy and graphic explanation about what would happen to her and what her mother meant by that strange, new word. 

“Mother, do you require anything else?” whispered Marigold softly. She watched as her mother’s eyes cracked open more in order to squint at the filly standing in between the sunlight of her balcony. 

“Not right now, flower. Go back to your chores.” Petunia sank back into her Qilinese silk pillows and sighed. An identical stack propped up the mangled hind legs encased in their usual cloth wraps and bandages and barely peeking out from her mother’s petticoats. “Oh, and in ten minutes bring me a glass of iced tea.” 

Marigold bowed her head, the limp dark yellow of her mane falling in her golden eyes. “Yes, mother.” 

She tottered back to where a pile of her mother’s laundry still needed to be ironed. Marigold had no nice clothes because she went to public school, where there were no uniform traditions. Petunia reminded Marigold of this at least once a week, citing it as the chief reason why her daughter never got to have any of what her mother called 'retail therapy' or cute velvet bows like the other fillies at school. She only went to that school because Petunia Petals had gotten countless letters from the Crown refusing her requests to home-school Marigold and pull her from school. Petunia was always particularly upset by those, insisting that nothing she taught was inappropriate and that Marigold was being brainwashed against earth ponies and this mystical working-class her mother raved about every time another reply was sent regarding Petunia's latest resubmission. 

Most mail with the Royal Seal of Princess Celestia’s Eternal Crown only pleased Marigold’s mother. Without the monthly letters with those smile-inducing checks, Petunia Petals would be entirely without income, and Marigold Blueblood would never have anything to eat instead of having things to eat sort-of most of the time. Petunia did always remind Marigold that those checks were one of the few things that Princess Celestia did right, even though Marigold knew that was the kind of talk that sounded suspiciously like what her teachers called traitor-talk, which broke a lot of Princess Celestia’s laws. Every time one of those checks came, Petunia repeated her usual speech about how everypony was owed bits and that they should not have to be injured for life or needy like she was. 

Marigold never gave too much thought about giving ponies bits for just anything. She did love bits and their sweet golden looks. They felt better than the first snowflakes of winter on her tongue. Plus, Marigold resembled bits more than she did her mother, except for the fact that they were both earth ponies. If the world had listened to Marigold when it was made, she would replace Princess Celestia with a god of bits instead of having something silly, like the sun. To her, the idea of replacing all the gods with bits upon bits upon bits sounded even better. Except for some errands, she never got to touch any. It was why her school gave her lunches instead of her mother buying anything to pack them with. Petunia Petals was usually busy getting herself new things, which meant Marigold was left to look at everything in store windows and her mother’s apartment (her mother never stopped reminding Marigold that she was not the owner) and then why she had nothing.

Why did getting run over by a carriage get you everything? That was the million-bit question for Marigold Blueblood. When she was four, a carriage ran over her mother and she squawked and screamed for months, in court and out of court insisting that the cabby pony was a no-good, awful attempted murderer. Then that cabby pony lost their job and their ability to be hired as a cabby pony forever. After that, Marigold remembered what it was like to see her mother smile for the first time: the first time that check came in the mail. 

Marigold was just a little filly not yet fully aware of the extent of her mother’s awfulness or how close to squalor they really were because of her mother's budgeting ability. The bits received monthly were numerous enough that if Petunia were anything but the imbecile she was, her apartment could be quite high-end in a desirable neighborhood and her daughter would not have to muse on if getting run over by a carriage would enable her to get a winter coat or finally be able to have a toy to call her own. Instead, Petunia placed herself between poverty and pampering, losing herself all the more to the insistence of delusions that were more of her own making than anything she regurgitated from banned attempts at political and philosophical ravings.
> Chapter 6: The First Corpse
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tatters of a mare had been found in a brownstone building close to Balikun-Shetland. The discovery sites had been one of the more obvious initial surprises regarding the situation to coroner Ebony Henbane. First was the location: she had simply not expected such a terribly abused corpse to be found in one of Manehattan’s more average neighborhoods. Something as heinous as a murder troubled her. The idea of a mare being found such a short distance from a main street like Derby Avenue begged the question about how she could have gotten in her reputed state…

...At least, it was a question until Ebony finally got her hooves on the mare. There was a bit of insult in having one of the best embalmers at the Morgue of Manehattan and Fort Barnacle be given this particular kind of pony. She had drawn the sheet back with her magic only to find that there was nothing about these remains that could be preserved through such a method, even if the legal right to such funerary treatment was lawful for this foul sort. 

Ebony actually had preferences over the kinds of remains she preferred to deal with, and civilian ones were at the top of the list. She rarely ever had to deal with family — gods know she didn’t become a coroner to deal with ponies — and those that she did were always diverse in makeup and how they had cared for their family.

The only thing diverse about anypony in sex crimes was the way that they died. 

A brownstone was a relief compared to the places these kinds of remains were usually found because many residents usually had no idea they lived next to somepony so foul until guards showed up for any reason. Lawful residents meant the overall environments remains were found in were generally more hygienic than the few derelict places such sorts usually had taken up. Ebony recalled reading a case file from years ago regarding the butchered limbs of a few illegal 'models' — though, nothing they did could be considered  modeling  — recovered from a condemned building on the bay. The particularly sadistic Manehattanite killer had disposed of them in a remote Bucklyn cottage due to the freedom to do what they pleased there. The conditions that those bones had been concealed in! Gods, Ebony figured only Tartarus itself could be worse. 

She was left to analyze most of a torso and roughly half of the hindquarters of this mare. One hind leg was still intact, and that still looked like somepony had tried to dull a whole collection of knives when cutting up the thing. Upon closer inspection, it was not so far from the truth. The kinds of marks that Ebony had been able to accurately identify as knife’s cuts upon the mare had been from kitchen knives instead of the meat-cutting kind in New Shirdal’s carnivore shops. Their handling suggested a pony wielding the blades too, most likely a particularly spastic unicorn by the frenzy put into the strikes. 

The prostitute had been given those leg gashes while she was still alive. The mid-section of her body was what was desecrated postmortem. Most of the mare’s coat was cheaply dyed-over so many times. The original color and most of what remained, in general, was known only to the killer, who had taken such delight in paring off so much the whore’s epidermis. It was like they had wanted the first thing Ebony to see was how the results. Did the killer anticipate how the results would shock the coroner who finally got to see them — two days after the body had already been exposed enough to attract attention from assorted insects? 

Ebony’s mask only helped so much. Gods-dammit, if she did not get a request for a raise granted after this, there would have to be somepony else to pick through the dead, half-decayed, worthless whores of the city. Let the guards have all the half-decayed living ones. Gods knew this one was at one such criminal at one point. The severely malnourished state of the pony had made the bone breaks her buyers give her heal improperly at their best. No psychologist was needed to say this one was probably suffering from masochistic disorders in life if she was willing to stand what definitely weren’t foalhood injuries and letting her leg be shredded up. 

Despite all the crop marks (gods, why was she always stuck with the most depraved freaks) across her back and hindquarters, Ebony Henbane was able to conclude she had no cutie mark. Most participants in higher crimes never had any. Why that was, she had no exact explanation for. Ebony wasn’t a cutie mark expert, but she had personally known a stallion who had nothing to him but being an utter pervert in high school. At the twenty-year school reunion she attended, he was still a degenerate with his blank flank as the exclamation point to what a washed-out, literal basement-dwelling disappointment he was. However, he had never sunk as far as self-exploitation or participating in it. He was just a lecherous freak that Ebony Henbane wished could be locked up in the same way Princess Celestia knew to lock up whores and studs.  

Oh, that stallion had never killed anypony. He had had his name circulated, seeing how he was nothing more than a lecherous bum banned from a few general stores for harassment of employees, but nopony ever implicated him for any sexual or violent crimes. He was self-destructive in a withering kind of way, which was better than if anypony had the misfortune to try and get together with him at any point and been victimized as a result. 

It was almost karmic, to borrow an elephant concept, that perversions and violence got nopony anywhere in every possible sense. Cutie marks on the scum of Equestria, or any pony nation, were an exception rather than a rule, but even the most enigmatic of those marks were still nothing that could relate to sexuality or cruelty — or gods forbid the inevitably horrific results when both were erroneously combined. Every class on the arcane sciences from adolescence to the highest university classes always had some passing reference to the phenomenon: no cutie marks ever existed for violence, nor any kind of sexual reason, from either healthy sexuality or something maladaptive, like Ebony's old schoolmate or the dead whore spread before her. 

Even with the too-literal philosophy of talents pushed to the side — though, really how could things like brutality really be considered a talent — the mystery of cutie marks still made something clear. You had to make or have something going in your life to get to show your best self on your flank. Being a brute or a degenerate was as far from the best anypony could be. The only other exception Ebony recalled hearing anything about was from one of the psychology-of-this with magical-influences-of-that course from Tall Tale’s Starswirl College of the Mind and Body she had to take ages ago. It had been about how ponies suffering from severe intellectual and cognition impairment their whole lives often gained only the cutie marks of their simple joys — or nothing at all — and lived modest lives as somepony’s neighbor, waitress, grocery-bagger, or unskilled this-or-that. Which, of course, was as far removed from the awfulness of the ponies placed before Ebony.

Ebony had not attended a cutie mark class for a long time. She just cut open the ponies who could no longer be called late bloomers, but instead selfless in the most literal sense, and tried not to gag at their lingering stench. She was stuck in a hall of freezers with glorified trash stretched in front of her, a headache, and the part of her that knew better to just head home to Bretonlyn Heights, where her wife would be waiting for her. 

Instead, she was completing a file on a mare whose remains would never be claimed by anypony who knew her and could give her an identity. Nopony even had an idea to what her product name — really, Ebony had no better name for such ludicrous, self-imposed labels — for herself was. 

What was left of her teeth were a teaser of information: the mare was quite the old gray whore of twenty-two years old, showed signs of the distinct decay of a heavy bulimic, and frequently got herself slapped hard enough to have vertical denture fractures. What made No Name of Bali-Shet so difficult and traditional when it comes to ponies like her was that she still did not have enough teeth — at least not healthy ones — to make any identification.

Most likely, after she was cremated and stored away, this mare would be lucky to gather a posthumous nickname to be remembered by instead of her assigned number. The few cold cases Ebony Henbane was aware of usually had the plain pattern of Miss or Mister of Here or There. Even when a confession was gained or the killers were caught, the true identity of these ponies was still lost. Their murderers rarely knew them by anything but product names, appearances, locations, methods of doing the deed, or the identity they projected on the ponies they preyed upon. 

Solved cases happened more often than not, but solving the slaying of ponies who managed to 'murder' parts of a city and society at large in different ways was not a popular job. The guards knew what they were doing, unlike these ponies. Ebony could say this because she found far too many toothbrushes and items of a similar shape and length in the mare’s stomach, a sure sign that this mare followed the old adage of how stupidity was trying the same thing endlessly, even if it didn't work. A lesser coroner would think the pegasus had pica. 

The wings of this pegasus were ornamental at this point, and that was putting it kindly. This mare was an idiot in life or paid no attention to whatever hygiene and pegasus life education she had. The prostitute's whole physiology suffered from the mangled wings she bore. For Miss Bali-Shet, the disgusting state of the feathered limbs was the crown to how damaged they were. 

Wings were never meant to be restrained. Even the specially made prison bindings that incarcerated pegasi had to wear could do damage if never changed. If they were alternated and managed properly this was reduced drastically, despite a pegasus with a sentence of any length having to wear those bindings for any time to months to the rest of their life. Outside of imprisonment under law and arrests, to bind the wings of a sapient creature under any other circumstance in such a manner was as illegal as cutting off an earth pony's hooves or splitting open a unicorn's skull to rob them of their horn, brains, and the complex core connecting both. 

Tying up wings, pulling wings, binding wings, and any kind of treatment that didn’t leave them free was self-destructive to the highest degree. Pulling and plucking feathers was also terrible torture to inflict on any winged creature, and yet this mare had so much of just that disgusting treatment inflicted on her long before she died. To do so to a non-sapient animal was the fastest way to be imprisoned for abuse, and the punishments only stacked higher against doing the same to a sapient creature, under any circumstances. Civilians didn’t even have access to the kind of props that would be needed to inflict such abuse. Miss Bali-Shet should have just gone to a griffon shop and asked them to put her wings through a meat grinder while they were attached to her if she wanted to be tortured so badly. It would have been less than what she got, and the blood loss would have been enough to get rid of one more idiot in the world. 

Bald patches occurred where her feathers weren’t broken. She clearly never preened them in any way or abandoned any semblance of hygiene for a couple of years, minimum. Every feather was scraggly and decayed, bent, and greasy. The joints were effectively crippled from whatever terrible things she had been allowing wrapped around where they were conjoined with the rest of her body. The evidence of bad bone breakages on the ugly appendages did suggest she had been in contact with somepony who got a thrill over slamming them in doors repeatedly during her adolescence. The number of pegasus specialists Ebony had to contact to positively identify those breakage patterns nearly drove her up a wall. 

One wing was severely disfigured, but in life had some range of motion — an abnormal and painful one, certainly, but there likely had been reflex to it. The other was cramped up, the skin evidently black and limp some time before death, and entirely featherless. Old, untended, and thick burn scars from debilitating wounds gained at some point in her adulthood. Ebony Henbane cursed herself for being unable to tell just when those wounds had been gained. The pegasus was too badly decayed around the torso from the treatment to her front midsection, and the information from other examiners regarding possible facial restorations and her original colors for sketches hadn’t come back. There most likely would have to be multiple sets to show some of her injuries might have come from early life.

Her skull had to be kept elsewhere. Those teeth were the closest to any real identification and evidence other than a silver hoop earring found in one of the mare’s ears. Losing such precious artifacts to Miss Bali-Shet’s inevitable cremation would be terrible, as would the other customary last pieces: mane samples, tubes of blood, hoof clippings, and in this mare’s case, feathers. 

For a prostitute, this mare had died at an older age. Her teeth also weren’t terrible enough to suggest she had been able to fall beneath social services’ notice and live like that forever. Her family was still out there, anywhere in Equestria, or she had a friend who might recognize her as somepony from forever ago before any rot set in. As much as the family would be within their right mind to not want to claim this disaster, surely they retained some grasp of their civic duty? 

Unfortunately for this mare, there was far too much evidence on her muzzle of what Ebony couldn’t imagine had been anything close to a consensual encounter, given the circumstances and how quickly this mare had likely been attacked once bought… and that she had been bought at all. 

A mare had done this. That much was clear by what had been left. Ebony was not surprised, after all, what should make her feel so? Mares and stallions were equally capable of heinous deeds, and the usage of weapons and various objects to batter the slain victim before Ebony was more consistent with a female offender’s modus operandus in terms of violence. Had an average stallion attacked this mare, Ebony was a veteran of this morbid career long enough to know she would be expecting more bruising — perhaps evidence of strangulation by magical or non-magical means too.

Ebony Henbane’s notes on Miss Bali-Shet were required of everypony in the morgue. Upon a successful examination, official causes of death and facts of the corpse in life were to be scribbled down. But Equestrian law also dictated another section be added for more than professional observations and positive conclusions. In the case of a murder or other non-natural death, the investigating guards and coroners were given the heavy task of chronicling the might-have-been and first speculations. 

So far, Ebony had filled out close to a half-dozen papers of cramped hornwriting on the matter. The history of breakages indicated the mare was either pulled into the crime since she was a teenager, which would suggest she was either a runaway or her guardians sold her out to the offending stock who had no conscious about the wrongness of purchasing another pony, and a child at that. Had she been a runaway who managed to keep herself from falling into the usual period where the Royal Guard swiftly shut down anypony engaged in self-exploitation (anywhere from three months to two years) but the history of abuse would have remained unchanged in that theory. The abuse she suffered in the long term would only fall squarely upon the withers of her buyers. 

Affording a brownstone would mean she was able to hide much of her physical impairment and was likely very popular — an unfortunate case, as it meant there were now gods-knew-how-many ponies walking free for their half of the crime. If her landlord was not close to the center of the investigation now, they ought to be, just for being a distinct possibility. Even offering a fake name on papers could be a clue, if she had actually secured her residence upfront instead of trying to seek — or purchase — other loopholes. Ebony knew it wasn't uncommon for self-exploitation criminals to hire somepony who appears less damaged to pose as them when securing a residence to use for their heinous deeds.

The neighborhood she was in did not match one high in sexual offenses; no other forms of self-exploitation had ever been busted there and no sexually motivated murders had occurred within the neighborhood’s borders. Bali-Shet was also a pure neighborhood, making it illegal for any registered offenders like a non-acting pouláriphilic brute or an ex-participant in the crimes Miss Bali-Shet had lost her life doing. For her to dare set hoof in such a fine space and dirty it with her crimes would have bumped up her sentence considerably, had she ever lived to be brought to justice. 

A prostitute who was bad at being apprehended or suspected was usually one who was unlikely to have their case solved. From the start of their illegal endeavors, they had to be a pony without prior connections but willing to let themselves be known only in Equestria’s slim excuse for an underworld. Other criminals despised them for their unsanitary states, cruelty, foolishness, lack of skill, and horrible ability to succeed at evading law enforcement indefinitely. Their utterly unsophisticated existence and status as sex offenders meant that they lacked the interconnected network a hitpony and a mercenary might have that could produce information ponies and evidence beyond the crime they wasted their life engaging in. They were one of the few kinds of criminal that was often a victim of other unsavory sorts, due to the foul natures of their buyers. With no lives, jobs, little paper trails, health records, and status as close to a ghost as a living pony could have, the danger and disease they were to society were starkly apparent. 

If this mare had vanished from a decent home when she was, as an example, twelve then she was but a young, promising shoot instead of the weed she ended up dying as. That would be what she would have to be compared to, and what everypony would have to dig through memory for: a half-forgotten filly that no doubt aimed to be a flower of a mare and make her own hoofprint on the world, only to wind up destroyed by her own hooves and others. Murdering a pony like this was taking out somepony that nopony remembered. Physically, a twelve-year-old who managed to be so lost from years of memories would have so little resemblance to the corpse she was now. To solve the murder of a prostitute was ultimately to try and figure out the demise of a child nopony knew had died — or that they had suddenly reemerged into a life they had disappeared from. 

And Ebony Henbane had dealt with too many of these fools and children. Gods, too many of the mares would eventually have their own unregistered children, whose short lives would be poisoned and dark. Unless, they were lucky enough to be taken in by foal welfare services and adopted into a loving home while their mothers-in-name only were erased with years-to-life in a cell, never to see them again. In the case of studs, both parents would get that same sweet sentence: the mother for soliciting a sex offender, and in doing so becoming one herself, and the father for being one. 

The last thing Ebony Henbane had to add to her notes was the only real exceptional peculiarity upon the corpse. The cause of death was from numerous, tiny crimson deep ruby crystals in possession of an oddly damp quality that never went away, regardless of how they were prepared and quarantined. These crystals had pierced the soft flesh of the mare in so many crude tears and cruel punctures. In hindsight and on her notes, Ebony had been careful to add how the peeled skin made the attack on the mare like the steps to prepare meat. 

Glistening, mysterious crystals were never common, no matter the odd magics and mayhem that could go into a murder — whether it be in Manehattan or elsewhere in Equestria. Crystals so endlessly ruby-bright that turned out to be made of the victim’s own blood and unknown magic were one of a kind. The Equestrian Arcane Registry Base would need every sample of the substance possible to be able to identify the aura behind the caster of the crime. Every unicorn in Equestria was in that base, with the arcane processes, aural maps, and young magitech to link various unicorns to places by magical signature too.

Other creatures with magical auras could find their way into the EARB too, but aside from running through them, there was no other evidence that could positively be linked with a non-equine because the tech wasn't advanced enough to identify non-unicorn signatures yet. Unicorns were at the top of the list for this kind of magical offenses, and Ebony Henbane pitied whoever was tasked with sifting through the thousands of suspects that could exist in Manehattan alone. 

She looked over the notes and levitated at the mare missing more than just chunks of her putrid, crystal-embedded flesh and tried to keep her withers from shaking with distant sobs aching to be. The hardass mare of death in Manehattan-Barnacle was weary beyond belief. The city Ebony held as so beloved in her heart struggled more than most places in Equestria, but it was no hotbed of crime! Yes, every pony like Miss Bali-Shet, her equally disgusting buyers, and her unknown killer tainting her urban jewel broke her heart — and she was not alone in this — but the Big Apple was no bad one, and gods knew it was her home and the home of millions of other ponies! The mare who never cried over any dead brought before her was watching her city whisper of terrible things, not of one foul murder against the urban island sprawl that was dear Manehattan, but that murder so foul must have more to come.

And the worst part was that she knew this wouldn’t be the last time she saw such crystals. By the gods, she knew it couldn’t be.
> Chapter 7: Ruby Red / She Hangs Brightly
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marigold passed this street every day, and she had never seen this shop before. North Haflinger Street was a central Manehattan neighborhood with few shops, and here was one that had to be new. Yet, the gray cobble building was short, being only two stories tall, with a peaked roof and well-lit windows. A large lantern hung from a wrought-iron piece by the door, to be lit when Princess Celestia raised the moon over the world. Everything about its aesthetic and the building’s own obvious physical state was apparent: this was not a new establishment.

Admittedly, Marigold knew two things immediately. The first was that she would rather be over in the Broncos borough of Manehattan Island visiting Corona Park and spending her day along the shores of Buffalo Pond. Instead, she was made to run errands for her mother who was eager for new perfumes. 

This shop had a sign in the window, the neat ink letters with a faint flair to them. Perfumes were buy two, get the third free. The twittermite jars at each end, propping up the window display cast a luminous glow more eye-catching than the ordinary firefly lanterns used by most shops, but below the more varied werelight displays the filthy unicorns would put throughout their establishments as a show of how pretentious they were. 

Depending on the costs of the perfumes, Marigold could have enough bits left over to get something for herself. Three new perfumes would be enough to convince her mother that she spent all the bits she was allotted for this shopping trip on the old nag herself. It was not like she ever asked for the receipts when she had such an iron grip on all the bits in the household that Marigold couldn’t even manage to ‘save up’ more than three under her pillow before her mother would smell them out. 

Then Marigold would be yelled at and her mother would ‘forget’ to buy some groceries for Marigold when she got off her lazy ass and actually took a carriage to the nearest store for groceries that weekend. Marigold never worked on weekends either, so she was never missing from anywhere when her mother would lock her in the apartment with her hooves hog-tied from country pony skill and placed on her back, kept from calling out. 

Never touch mother’s money is what Marigold learned since the consequences were worse than having her mouth washed out with soap as a filly. Mother would make her do more cooking and cleaning out of spite after that, hobbling around the kitchen and looming over her daughter and watching her work the stove and prepare the food she would never get to taste, and her mother would keep Marigold from food knowing that her daughter might as well have been named Pansy Blueblood for how easy she could be starved into submission. So far, Marigold’s unfortunate record was three days. 

Most of the time, she tried not to think about the way things were. Instead, she rubbed one hoof at her neck with the itching awkwardness of the thoughts, thankful that in one way she was a coward from years of early foalhood having little to nothing to eat in the first place. Even if it left her somewhat scrawny, she was still nowhere near the emaciated state that would get her mistaken for something worse — why, there was a filly in her grade that apparently starved herself willingly (Marigold would trade places with her in an instant) and was already getting mistaken for a whore, half-starved and prematurely aged.

Marigold didn’t know that filly’s name, but she knew that she feared the school or foal services would notice. With how pale she was, it was only a matter of time. Marigold hated the thought of foal services and whatever the plethora of crown-made organizations was that were meant to pluck foals in situations like Marigold’s from her home; if they got their hooves on her everypony would know she wasn’t really a rich mare’s daughter. The family she would be placed with would not like her or give her what she wanted, especially since Equestria didn’t have orphanages and insisted ‘needy’ foals should be placed with families for their supposed health. 

How any family could see Marigold as healthy, or be tasked with maintaining their own well-being having to work to give her what she deserved was beyond her. The princess-goddess was corrupt, through and through, and Marigold knew that she could even be placed with a family of unicorns or pegasus idiots. All that could take her away from her city and the chance of bits one day. The mother of Equestria’s oft whispered of Blueblood Bastard couldn’t last forever. 

That was why Marigold did what she did; nopony could bring shame to her by suggesting she was breakable like the cripple that birthed her or that she was anything less than a superior earth pony and golden mare. There was no foal who ever felt what she did in the whole wide world, and nopony would understand why she did what she had to. She sighed tiredly, letting the muggy spring coldness chill her coat and stiffened her smile before approaching the shop. With the easiest of nudges, she pushed the door open. 

The shop’s interior was swathed in light and rich shadows as welcoming as the fine art prints of Equestrian hearths and lives hanging in Manehattan’s museums. Iridescent glass perfume bottles scattered throughout the many shelves throughout the store were not the only trinkets the unmarked shop had to offer. Various artifacts of all kinds from an array of lesser cultures cluttered the walls: buffalo dream catchers, enchanted Qilinese teapots, self-lighting Saddle Arabian lamps, the other Saddle Arabian lamps for weird ghosts, spellbooks, scrolls, and birdcages filled with mist that never left them. Entire racks of jingling necklaces and amulets — some of which glowed oh-so enticingly — beckoned Marigold with how they swayed.  

The scent of teas, incense, and the faint aroma of zebra alchemy reached Marigold’s muzzle. Behind whole towers of books written in languages and scripts Marigold could not name — she was a monolingual sort, so no blame could fall on her — and clothing racks overstuffed with robes, hats, and other garments of all kinds, there was a painting. Both the garb of civilians and sorcerers cluttered the view, the fashions ranging from something clearly ancient to the timeless wear of stuck-up unicorn wizards, and then the currently in vogue hobble skirts. 

Marigold was never a mare for art. Painting, sculpting, writing, and the like wasn’t unicorn-dominated or a trade overflowing with filthy featherbrains, but it was unfortunately diverse. It’s like they let just any creatures call themselves an artist. Art just never resonated with Marigold and she could not imagine wasting her life creating things that didn’t actually exist. 

The painting shouldn’t either. Paintings didn’t move. No images moved unless you flipped a comic book very fast. This sent Marigold’s heart skittering with how unnatural and bizarre it was, reeking of magic that even somepony like Marigold knew shouldn’t exist. The image in the lurid oils was shaded and swirled so expertly that the painting was just below being lifelike, and yet the artist’s surreal addition of certain patterns made the status as a painting all too obvious, something only emphasized by the unnatural array of colors that no painter alive could capture.

Three blank-flanked Alicorn foals were playing together, and Marigold only had a name for one of them. Two fillies laughed and smiled silently, and all three trotted dreamily across the canvas in wavering, slow speeds. The first filly was vaguely familiar, appearing to be a composite of general Canterlotian beauty standards and bore a vague resemblance to Princess Celestia from the colors of her eyes and white coat. Her tiny wings buzzed almost three-dimensionally, making Marigold dizzy with apprehension at the thought of stretching her hoof out. A soft pink mane spilled down to about her wither, one curl brushing from behind her ear and grazing her cheek.

The second filly, Marigold had no name for. Only the long, dark lashes really suggested that the foal was a filly. Other than that, there was more than enough androgyny in the other foal to give way to confusion from the looks alone. Turquoise eyes so enchanting and unlike any Marigold had seen before haunted her as she watched; this foal had a smile wider than any of the others. Of the three, she acted like she could see Marigold, or that she knew she was being watched. Her mane — or their mane, Marigold supposed — was cut short in a fashion befitting either sex and swishing past their jawline, just nowhere near as long as the other two foals. Their bangs fell forward in a mischievous curtain, bearing a distinct curl. 

They held up a frog for the white filly to laugh at, grasped in dazzling aquamarine magic. That made Marigold squeak slightly. First, because she knew that carrying living creatures in telekinesis and their handling was a careful act that was never something surging uneducated foals could be trusted with, and this foal too young to even look like either a filly or colt was cradling that frog perfectly! Second, the most animated of all the Alicorns in this picture was the strangest one to look at because Marigold knew from every storybook and history lesson in school about the gods that there was no blue Alicorn other than the older colt with both.

Princess Celestia was quick to include everything Aquastrian in Equestria since King Neptune of Aquastria, her once-lost cousin and only family had reconnected, giving Equestria another ally, storybooks more fantastical fodder, and the harbors of Manehattan too many filthy fish ponies on top of all the other immigrants invading Marigold’s city. She had grown up seeing the tales of the sea god and his illustrations — blue-eyed, long blue mane, fish swimming inside as an adult, the whole ugly sea god deal — in her foal’s books before her mother had thrown them out. 

The scowling, taller, colt captured in blues huffed at the other two behind a long blue mane. The sourness to his pale blue eyes was understandable.

Marigold could only gape at the sight, close to frightened, with her gangly adolescent legs shaking in the warmth of the shop. This was the closest she would ever be to one of the gods, and she hated every moment of it.

“Ah, that piece always attracts visitors,” said the voice of the stallion standing next to Marigold. “Did you know that it is thousands of years old? The artist’s signature on the back is one Terra Worldheart, and I have never found nor heard of another piece by them. Have you?”

“SWEET CELESTIA!” shrieked Marigold indignantly, jumping to the side as quickly as a cat dodging a bucket of water. “Where did you come from?!” 

Marigold’s demanding hiss was met with a head tilt from the stallion, who adjusted the round little glasses that perched on his muzzle, with nothing else to keep them there save balance itself. “I should be the one asking you that, madam. You are the one who entered my store only to shout, shriek, and scowl at my favorite artifact.” 

“I… I saw the perfume sale s-sign?” Marigold stammered, dragging a hoof on a Neighponese kirin rug underhoof. “Sir, it was lit up with twittermites and shining all around NoHa. I do not think I could have missed it.” 

“North Haflinger Street in Manehattan?” asked the stallion, toying with the starched white sleeves poking out from his Qilinese style robe. It was the style one never saw outside of Qilintown, and his accent was unplaceable, suggesting a once intelligent earth pony had the gall to marry a half-beast. Disgusting.

“Is there another I am unaware of?” Marigold Blueblood sneered, shifting her saddlebags boredly and blowing some of her boring dandelion colored locks out of her face.

The stallion paid her no mind. Instead, he ran a hoof along his queue — a silly fashion that was barely in fashion among the Qilinese immigrants anymore. Goodness, was he aiming to be a caricature straight from history texts? 

“Gods, Manehattan?” he muttered to himself. “Twice in one week!”

He turned to her, smiling in a way she could not decipher. His round brown eyes twinkled at her from behind his glasses, as if he were not a crazy old stallion who talked to himself in front of young ponies. “I am Chosen Curio, and young lady, you have taken a step into Uncle Curio’s shop of one-of-a-kind items!”

He kept smiling at her, while Marigold only returned by offering an apathetic teenage stare. 

“No refunds!” Curio added cheerfully. "However, there are gift-wrapping services with a large enough purchase!"

“How much are those?” Marigold asked flatly, pointing a hoof to the perfume displays in the window. “My mother would like some.”

Curio blinked. “You do not want to look around?”

“I…” Marigold grimaced, her gaze falling against her wishes. “I rarely shop for myself.”

“Rarely,” echoed Curio, clearly not believing her, his posture pin-straight. 

“Never,” Marigold corrected. “I never shop for myself. I am only on a quick errand.”

Curio was quiet, and Marigold watched him trot away from her. He quickly seated himself behind a polished wooden counter with a shelf of jarred poisons from around the world arranged neatly behind him. Perhaps he had been spying on her from there?

“Perfume,” he said, clearing his throat, “is twenty bits a bottle.”

Twenty bits? For good perfume, that was a bargain. Eager, Marigold trotted over to where the window displays and shelves were. Right below a hanging rack of swords was the sparkling row of prettily sculpted bottles. Most were shaped like flowers or fantastic creatures and the glass of each was a different color. Marigold happily selected two bottles, and then slipped the third one into her hoof. They were shaped like a griffon, tulip, and breezie. 

Marigold gave the necklace racks a brief look of longing, knowing that anything was more than she could ever afford, and brought her perfume bottles to the counter. 

Curio regarded her as strangely as she had when she squinted at Prancian on the bottles. Prance was always fashionable to imitate, and Marigold leafed through all her mother’s old magazines on Prance and fashion when her mother discarded them, trying to pick up a few words and phrases for the sake of pomp. While the alphabet on the bottles was mostly the same as what she could read, many of the words were spelled too differently from what Marigold was used to Prancian words looking like. 

“This is not an ugly provincial dialect, is it?” asked Marigold, watching her bottles being wrapped with hoof-tapping impatience. “The spelling for each name was queer if I must say so.” 

Curio paused, squinting at her. “You know Prancian?”

“A little. Prance is a nation of fashion and beauty, is it not?”

“These are vintage,” Curio said instead, returning to wrapping her parcel.

“Are you just saying that to mean old?”

“Vintage always suggests age, my dear.” The stallion did not look up at her when he said that.

“So they are so old all their spelling is bad? Is that what you mean?” Marigold demanded, her short-cut tail swishing testily. 

“Something like that,” said the stallion, smiling down at his work suddenly. Any hint of non-neutral emotions vanished when he looked at her again. “Is it your mother’s birthday?”

“No,” Marigold muttered, “it is mine. She just wants perfumes.”

“...To give you?” Curio asked, so confused his muzzle crinkled enough that Marigold thought his glasses would fall off. 

“No, nothing like that. Mother has never gotten me a birthday present before. She says that my present is being alive and getting to have a mother as wonderful as her. Oh, and then she asks how my rent is coming.”

“What in the gods’ names made your mother choose to do such a thing?” 

Why did this stallion care? Or believe her? “I know not, all I know is that I want to still have time to go to Corona Park today and that I have paid her enough rent. Nopony else my age pays the rent.” She gave him a pointed look. “And the park is a long walk.” 

She shoved her mother’s bits — because every bit was her mother’s bit — over the counter glumly. “I have one afternoon to be a fourteen-year-old filly, and I would appreciate oh-so-much if you would not squander my time.”

Curio’s lips drew into the thin line of a disappointed adult showing the universal frustration Marigold noticed everypony seemed to have for her. They exchanged bits for the parcel without any further discussion, and the emptiness of half of Marigold’s saddlebags pleased her. Anything would fall into that if the angle was just right. 

With a hop and a skip, she giddily began her trot to the door. And just as she knew she would, Marigold had to side-step a shield rack, only to knock it over and crash into the amulet display in a clumsy fall of flailing limbs and a filly’s shriek. Metal clattered over her and the sound of dozens of neckpieces falling on top of her rang out discordantly. 

“I apologize! I apologize!” Marigold Blueblood wailed, kicking out repeatedly from under the pile. Everything only scattered more as a result of her thrashing. 

With one blind lash, she was able to hook something with the motion of one of her forehooves. Her breathing came in shakily, and Marigold delighted at the metal running against her hooves. As of now, everything was just as she planned. All that she had to do was find…

Aha! A metallic piece, wide and cold, grazed Marigold’s hoof more sharply. Either this was some kind of strap for the necklace or an entirely ornamental feature… and soon it would be all hers.

Over the cacophony of clashing and noise she was making, Marigold caught the sound of hoofsteps. Curio was calling out in shock, and his worried trot managed to be distinct enough for her to pick out. When he reached Marigold, she had already secured her best fearful look, puppy eyes, and jittery shake. For how valuable his artifacts were, Curio’s main concern was pulling Marigold out from enchanted shields, other artifacts, and ensuring she would not slip on any of the countless stray necklaces that were currently impossible to keep track of. 

He lent her a hoof up, and she accepted, pocketing her prize with the other. 

Tsking, he muttered about the sudden clammy quality of it, and Marigold whimpered out a few more apologies, oozing timidity. Her discretion in motion and nature was well-practiced from swiping snacks on the schoolyard. This was no such thing, and if caught she could see herself shoved in a juvenile program for reforming delinquents and having to work off a fine.    

“By the gods, I had not meant to—”

“Please,” Curio said, brow creasing and frowning worriedly, “I have much to tidy up. Just go be a foal for a while. You have only one birthday left after this, yes?”

“Y-Yes, sir. Do you really not want…?” The weight of the jewelry in Marigold’s saddlebag made her want to sing instead of stammer. 

“Neptune’s waters and Elysium’s light!” groaned the stallion, bringing a hoof to his face. “I know what I said! Off with you! Get, get!” 

Marigold nodded shakily, turning around and cantering right out the door, letting it slam behind her. She leaped into the traffic, her heart pounding and dashed across the road at full gallop before she continued at full speed through the rest of the city, feigning that an angry cabby cart pony had spooked her.       

Once she made it to Corona Park and secured an empty boat to ride on the pond, Marigold finally unpacked her treasure. The piece was heavy and certainly an expensive one to have stolen, and unlike anything Marigold Blueblood had ever seen before. There was an unnatural warmth to the necklace as it rested in her hooves, and the darkly colored strap was the same shade of smokey black making up most of the trinket. The cuts were at an angle not carved by any magic Marigold knew of — the working was far too precise, and Marigold had handled some of the few magic-made pieces her mother had. This was nothing like them. The Alicorn figurehead spreading its wings over the center was menacing, minimal, and smooth to the touch. The dark red accents were so morbid paired with it, and Marigold was unable to guess what kind of stone they might be from. 

At the heart of the necklace was a single gemstone, cut to show off dazzling facets of juicy, ruby red. Sparkling up at her, it was nearly as big as her eye and undoubtedly, absolutely gorgeous. The warmth became a steady heat when Marigold smiled, hugging her new necklace to her chest as she felt the piece’s temperature rise. She would do anything in the world to hide something as amazing as her own necklace from her mother. 

This… well, what she had was hardly a necklace, was it? Perhaps a brooch? Or maybe…

Alicorn Amulet, chimed two words, lithe and sharp as they stabbed through whatever she was going to think. The tone of them was whispery, soundless, and without the inflection or distinctiveness, her own internal voice bore. 

...That, Marigold, would have to figure out later. Cautiously, she slipped her Alicorn Amulet (it did have a ring to it) back into her bags and tried to enjoy the rest of her day, knowing that returning home with three bottles of perfume and none of her change would put her in a world of trouble.


…


Two weeks later and many pounds lighter, Marigold Blueblood found herself on that same stretch of North Haflinger Street. Just as before, she was on another one of her mother’s pointless vanity quests. Only instead of attempting to locate a shop in that part of town, she had been returning from one of Manehattan’s other neighborhoods with the pulled-tight buckle of her saddlebags stabbing at her stomach. Twelve pairs of new earrings and a cumbersome amount of mare’s interest catalogs on home decorations weighed down her plodding steps. 

Marigold stared around the street, taking in the fresh spring day’s bustle with a hint of sullenness in her exasperated expression. On a nearby poster, a glamorous mare clutched Wonderbolt derby tickets in her hoof and smiled brightly. Spilling out from under her exquisitely elaborate hat were curls bearing lighter highlights in a shining new style that Marigold would have loved to try herself. 

Her mother had not found the necklace, which was stuffed deep into the inside of Marigold’s mattress. She had not bothered to give it a more careful examination since the name of the so-called Alicorn Amulet was revealed to her, as she would need time alone to figure out what to do with her not-so-mundane prize. Escaping to one of the local libraries under the excuse of studying for school had turned up no mention of a so-called ‘Alicorn Amulet’ in any of the books Marigold checked, and she was not about to put in a request for any that might exist. She would figure out just how the Alicorn Amulet worked on her own, as a strong earth pony who needed no silly texts by unicorns. After all, it only made sense that a unicorn author would not want their work on such a fantastic piece of jewelry to be found in an earth pony city. 

Every night, Marigold had stuffed her hoof into her mattress where the Alicorn Amulet was tucked away. She tapped at the bloody stone on it, rubbing it like it might give her luck and wishes and all the good things she deserved. It was the only thing she managed to keep from her bitch of a mother, and it filled her with a burning lightness unlike any other. 

With that, there was also the awe at the shopkeeper not noticing something as blatant as a missing piece known as the Alicorn Amulet! Such absurdity! Anything with so much as the whisper of the divine to it was coveted, and anything good slipped through Marigold’s hooves. For her to not have guards at her mother’s door and a blurb regarding her act of theft in the papers, her name only stripped away because she was a minor, and the rumors fanned throughout the city like flames was a miracle. 

Marigold Blueblood did not even believe in miracles. Or that a wish was a thing that came true. She did not look to any stars, though she knew that by their signs she would be an Aries in the hemming and hawing of ponies who cared for such things. Those things had no place in grown-up talk, Manehattan, or everything else with relevance to Marigold’s life and the real world. 

Swallowing, Marigold continued her casual trot down the wide boulevard, trying not to look conspicuous. That shopkeeper, Chosen Curio, was the kind who probably had a residence above where he sold his wares and the Royal Guard would know him. Other ponies out and about would no doubt recognize her as whoever Curio was so bitter at, for what shopkeeper did not want to warn other clientele about thieves? 

Marigold was within a block of Chosen Curio’s shop before a better idea occurred to her. As much as news could spread in Manehattan, the city took the sink or swim to finding things out. What was not learned and spread was buried in this city, and what transpired had not spread city-wide for the offense it was…

...so perhaps there were ponies who would not know of the theft, even in NoHa. Marigold trotted up to one pony and asked, batting her eyelashes and sweetening her tone with all the innocence to which she had little claim, and asked him if he knew of Chosen Curio’s…

...he told her that he knew of no such shop, and trotted away, calling her creepy as he did so.

Marigold stamped a hoof on the concrete and found another pony…

...who also said no…

...as did the next…

...and the pony after that…

...and the filthy zebra after that pony…

...the couple three ponies after the zebra denied knowing the shop…

...and the other twelve ponies she asked following the eight ponies after the couple…

...all while she was within one block of the store.

Confusion tugging at her incessantly like an unruly autumn wind, Marigold dashed to where she knew the shop was. Her breathing was thin with her mother’s punishment still in effect, and her ribs ached with every dizzying breath. 

Crossing the street in a mad blur, Marigold pushed past crowds of ponies shouting belligerently at her. She cared no more for subtlety and turned to where Chosen Curio’s shop should be positioned right across from her…

...Only to see nothing but an empty lot containing naught but overgrown dead grass, with no bench or stepping stones to attempt to refine it. Just a single completely abandoned, gods-forsaken place, all as if nothing had ever been.
 
Only the Alicorn Amulet was left buried in her mattress when she got home, heart still racing long after she had slowed. The fog of adrenaline only let the dawn of just what a puzzle she had worked her way into fall upon her, all while the bloody gem of the Alicorn Amulet winked up at Marigold Blueblood from where she held it in her forehooves.
> Chapter 8: Taste of Blood (Magic)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was one thing that was the heart of the Equestrian way, a single and constant truth that overflowed into every aspect of the nation Princess Celestia had built. One could observe its ripples upon every single one of her pony subjects and even see it within themselves, for it was inescapable in the magical land of Equestria. Something beyond ideals of kindness, generosity, obeying destiny, humility, and Harmony was in these ponies, from the highest Canterlotian to the lowest criminal, the latter being caught in their state of reduced citizenship. The greatest, still-beating ur-value of Equestria was thus: when you went against the herd, the herd went against you.

Marigold knew this very well. She lived under the vast light cast by the idea. In some ways, she was more aware of the way it manifested than most ponies. In other areas, she was more blissfully unaware. 

Before she had even been born, the herd was against her family. All her parents were no more than two ponies who savagely went against the inseparable good of love and fidelity that Equestria enshrined. When news broke of the abuse that their actions brought to a princess, a wife, and two families, they were only ever going to be cast out. For it, they faced various punishments, chief among them was the turning of the herd.

Setting hoof in kindergarten for the first time taught Marigold about the herd. She was just young enough to be as ingrained in it as any other Equestrian subject. When you were as tangled as a fly in a spiderweb within your society’s herd-mind, there was only further immersion, not escape. Only when Marigold began her first acts of bullying did the herd stir against her for the first time.

Many of the first stories that Marigold heard were a reflection of this duality of being within or against the herd. Petunia Petals had spent three years of her youth under punishment for various crimes she had been found guilty of—all of them being offenses covered by Equestria’s antisocial laws and acts forbidding the distribution, advocation, replication, and quotation of banned media. She thought that they were the ideal bedtime stories for young Marigold and never stopped painting the tales of her time as a young mare as anything but heroic efforts to help the earth ponies and underclasses she believed were being oppressed. For Petunia, an unremarkable foalhood had never prepared her for all the ways in which the herd of Equestria would cast her out.

Marigold was a fresh, relatively unassuming third-grader when she saw how the herd prosecuted somepony else in everyday life. It was only then that she started to have an inkling of what was going on. Despite her status as a bully being cemented among her classmates, she was more innocent in comparison to what she saw.

Rainbow streamers hung from every street corner. Hundreds of Equestrian flags cast shadows upon the cobblestone streets of Manehattan as they waved. Posters crowded the lower windows of shops with simple slogans calling for nationalism and harmony. Everypony who showed up in the street wearing more than a scarf had some kind of pin upon their clothes with calls to vote and the names of various candidates for mayor of the city and shire. The only thing that dwarfed all of these was not the confetti spillage, but the iconography of Princess Celestia. Floats of her were paraded around the streets. Her subjects brought out their beloved portraits of her and crowded them in windows and carried them about. The images of the princess topped every maypole and lurked in the background of every poster bearing somepony else, even if she was only a sun and shadow.

Whole roads were blocked off to make way for parades. The everyday ponies that the princess-goddess gilded with every way she spoke about them flooded the streets. Ponies in hard hats, patched jackets, and showing all the signs that they were the most common among commoners were trotting by in thunderous, uniform waves. Most were following the signs as a herd, hoping to cast ballots for the mayoral election, but many more were already finished and merely seeking their unearned fifteen minutes of fame. Their plainness made them appear as a sickly, industrial sort of river colored in all the shades of gunk. Every face was lost, and the crowd was muted by the will of the herd into a weak sight on par with a mud puddle. 

All of the rainbow streamers and goddess-faced pins in the world could not give them back the lies that they were sold. It was among this constant throng of erasure that Marigold could be found. She had been pulled away from mindlessly applauding the constant stream labor-ponies by a mare dressed like a teacher. This made immediate pleasure twist Marigold's young features into the sourest pout she could manage. She would have to write about what she did on Election Day in her Equestrian Moral and her Citizenship classes tomorrow. The last thing she wanted to see right now was a mare in gold-chain glasses and a matronly skirt-and-sweater combo. Though Marigold wasn't yet old enough to be able to understand the meaning behind the Mares Against Monsters pin that was being worn by the mare, she caught sight of the amulet around the mare's neck. It was carved prettily, and smack in the center was the image of an olive branch painted in gold. Marigold did understand that immediately—this mare was a particularly devout follower of the gods, and a follower of Elysium in particular. The Queen of Paradise had been brought up in one of Marigold's history and culture classes, and something about hearing how this Alicorn governed one of the dead worlds stirred a special sort of resentment in Marigold. 

She heard the mare tutting gently, and how Marigold knew that she was being admonished—no, humiliated--for trying to scramble onto the backs of strangers. Words asking where her school-buddies or teachers or royal guards were started flooding Marigold's young ears. What was it that drew such bothersome ponies to her? Why was it that nopony would let her have fun? Worse than all that, would this mare drag her back home? Now, that of all thoughts was enough to spur something in Marigold. She felt the hot rush of fear reach up into her chest and pull her heart until it was hammering louder than any second thought. Something in that kick was wound up faster than any doubt in the little blank-flanked filly's mind. Ignited was the sudden desire for one thing: run run run run run run run run.

Rearing and wriggling as much as she could, Marigold Blueblood kicked the kindly mare square in the chest with one buck. Then, she dashed off through the crowds of Manehattan. 


...


How rare it was for Marigold to be alone...

Silence hung as thick as a curtain through the apartment. The emptiness was incandescent, and Marigold felt that with even a breath the walls might fall over. One only had to breathe wrong in Petunia Petal's apartment to encounter something. Silkscreens folded out from where they could. Vases cluttered every surface they could. Pictures, framed coins, and beaded curtains found their way to the wall. The last one was because there were already too many beaded curtains being used as actual curtains. Pressed flowers in varying states of decay were frozen across the apartment, displayed like grotesque trinkets. Some of them were guided. Fans hung on the walls when not in use, unfolded like the wings of a pesky pegasus who knew only how to get in the way. Horseshoes were hung where they could be tacked, usually above the plentiful array of mirrors of all sizes in the home. 

Still, other sentimental bits of clutter could be found all across the apartment. Baubles littered every surface they could, just as much as horizontal space was taken up by rugs that found their way onto the walls. The bathroom was not spared this gaudy, materialistic fate. The privy stall was draped with beads. Bath towels were stored with ornamental tea trays shoved between them, only because there was no more room in the kitchen for them. Petunia thought they made fashionable dividers. The mirror itself framed everypony who looked in it with Petunia's endless array of creams, cosmetics, and powders in front of it. 

It was where Marigold now stood, gazing into the shiny surface. Her eyes were clouded with so much red light. Her head throbbed with a striking migraine focused into so much more, something unspoken in it begging and aching for fuel. It whispered through her bones with more magic than what flooded her eyes, and of all the things so great and devious that it would be able to do. 

She had bitten into her lip. Even as the blood trickled into the sink, she wasn't entirely sure why she did it. There was half a whisper of something in her mind about needing blood. Needing to see it, to taste it, to feel it. 

Blood meant something to the Alicorn Amulet, that much was clear. Marigold reached deep into her thoughts for the type of feelings that she felt would give the magic a push, to make more well up and dripped in the sink.

An incident of foalhood wrapped in frustration and spite reached out the way she dug her teeth into herself without any care about the pain. It was only a scratch she gave to herself, and scratches were no concern at all. 

Blood meant so much more when what fell as a prodigious drop of blood landed in the sink crystallized and shining, with only a swelling of light in the eyes and a pulse under Marigold's skull to do the trick. 

Oh, the things she would practice for...


...


She had headed into the shadowy teeth of the city's true jaws. Election Day was one of the few times when ponies were not all over the whole city. Once somepony headed away from the areas restricted to civic activities and dozens of parade streets, the fringes of the crowds could be found. Lurking there were other sorts of ponies—yes, everypony still thought of them as ponies even when this is when one started to find other creatures. It was very rare to see a qilin, minotaur, zebra, or other non-pony in any of the parades. Marigold knew she wasn't the only pony who felt uncomfortable at the sight of them. They were slightly more common in the voting lines that Marigold would see, but rarely were they in the same ones, and she was always glad to hear the whispers. The right kind of whispers, where her fellow earth ponies and even a few pegasi would discuss how even if more non-ponies could be found in those lines, they sure were less welcome. A couple of those earth pony comrades would speak so quietly, like whispering-to-breezies kind of quiet when they didn't realize foals like Marigold and other strangers might be able to eavesdrop just enough. They sounded like Petunia Petals in one of her better moods, discussing how they actually wanted to do something about the problems non-ponies had so long as they could say which pony got to be the mayor. 

Either way, there was no place to get lost quite like the quiet parts of town during Election Day. Even though Marigold had no idea what part of town this was now, she was certain that she had turned enough streets that nopony was following her anymore. She spied a hulking qilin stag with his horns light with magic. Their metallic bands glittered and the tines shone with the faint aura that qilin had. Marigold thought that even if his horns were as ugly as his lizard eyes and pin-straight mane, at least they looked like ugly jewelry. No unicorn had a pretty-looking horn, and theirs were still much more fitting for ordinary tasks. This qilin-stag acted like he had no idea he was using the magic in his horns to push a food-cart of all things. How ordinary was that? It was just so ridiculous that Marigold had to hold back her giggles and keep going. 

She scanned the rest of the square. The qilin was trying to attract some of the ponies milling about over to his food cart. His Qilinese lunch bags clearly weren't selling as well as his neighbor's fire-breath-roasted carrot dogs. The qilin with that particular food cart had her horns all lit up too, the bronze bands around her horns shining more brightly than the stag's jade ones. More than that, she lacked the usual scaly leonine that all the qilin in Marigold's schoolbooks had. Instead, her face was more doe-like and her tail was a fluffy stump. Other than the obvious freakishness that Marigold knew such extreme levels of mixed blood indicated (all her textbooks were adamant that most qilin were descended from dragon-equine hybrids) Marigold didn't dare to admit she was entranced. The qilin-doe had gold symbols painted on some of her scales that caught the eyes of ponies other than Marigold and got them whispering. 

Marigold sure thought that it was a waste of such lovely, shimmering gold to make mere scribbles. But the way that the doe giggled and pranced about looked so pleasing. Even when she smiled, her teeth shining with the obvious light of a spell to hide her fangs, there was still something so fun to how she acted. Something that Marigold wanted for herself. 

"Do ya want somethin' to eat?" asked a voice from behind her. 

Marigold squeaked and jumped around, and was greeted by the sight of a smiling mare. 

"Yer ma or da around?" The pegasus mare gripped a rod for picking up trash in her one greasy wing. 

Marigold shook her head and shyly looked up at the mare. Under the patched trash-pony vest she wore, Marigold caught sight of two things—this mare had no cutie mark despite being around Petunia Petal's age, and her coat was filthy and hid her natural blueish color. Why was it that she didn't have the reflective badge and patch worn by most garbage ponies? 

"Oh hon," the mare said, her rough voice trying to be sweet, "I lost me badge earlier. Parades are like that, huh? What about ya? Ya lose yer folks? They anywhere nearby?" Suddenly wide-eyed, the mare looked all over the street and even behind her for Marigold's parents.

"No," Marigold said quickly, "I am a big filly an' came out here all by myself. My mother... well, she cannot walk, ma'am. She... My mom, that is, well... Mom had to stay back home."

"Poor, poor little dear. Ya may be the biggest and brightest filly I seen all day, yet yer a long way from home to be without any fillyfriends." This stranger had a way of looking at her, with something obviously piercing about her stare that made Marigold feel so seen. Nopony else had ever really treated Marigold like that before, not in a way that made her feel like she could be a star.

"Didja lose ya lunch bits?"

"Well..." Marigold kicked at the ground and looked at her schoolbags. "I, uh... My mom... She did not have..."

A sympathetic frown spread across the mare's face. Under all the grime streaked across her, Marigold thought she could see what were a few very animated freckles—or maybe they were just tricks of the light. "I'll ask ya 'gain, do ya want anythin' to eat? Don't need to pay me nothin' if ya don't have any bits yerself there, sweetie."

Marigold blinked. "...Are... Are you a lunch breezie?" she said breathlessly. 

Nopony had ever wanted to ever just give her bits before, and certainly not a grown-up. The way that everypony else talked, Marigold had thought that all grown-ups ever did was take money from others. Wouldn't her mom be so proud if she came home and had brought back bits? Depending on how many this mare gave her, Marigold might even have enough to slip into her pillowcase. 
 
The mayor laughed, and the sound was scratchy, like she didn't drink enough water. She wobbled on her tired, cracked hooves. "Nah! Nah! I be not any breezie. Just a good pony tryna help 'nother good little filly out, ya hear?"

"Ohmigods! Ohmigods! OHMIGODS!" squealed Marigold, her whole body wobbling with excitement. She tried not to jump around any more than she already was, since she knew that if she ended up falling flat on her face, she wouldn't look like a big filly any longer. "Y-you really have bits you can ju-jut give away?"

"Sure do! Why don' ya come an' follow me, little one? I live in a real nice flat not far from here, tha' I do. Baked some fresh cookies last night too. Bit better to chow down on than this qilin fare. Not enough butter and goodness in their meals, no siree."

There was something about the tone of the mare's tone that sounded rehearsed. Her syllables sounded slipperier than when she spoke for, dripping with a worry little Marigold could not place. She'd never heard an adult speak that way before. They always acted so primly around her, as perfect as freshly starched fabric from a real laundry, not one of the deer-owned places that littered the neighborhood of New Cervidaine. Those dumb deer always boasted of having the best laundries in the city, and all of Equestria, as if anything owned by deer could be worth a damn. (That was one of Petunia Petal's favorite words.)

Marigold could think of no other reason to linger in the square. An adult speaking to her like a playmate at school was more than enough of a reason to follow this mare. Something so unprecedented could only reap goodness. As long as Marigold was back before sunset, her mother didn't care what happened to her. An adult could help her fake the rest of her assignment, and she'd still probably get a good grade with somepony so old helping her. 

She pricked her ears forward and smiled. "'Course. Only ponies make good food. That's what my mommy says. She's always right about these things." 

Marigold gave a little leap forward and skipped along after the mare, who paused to wait for Marigold every single time. Nopony had ever done that before. What Marigold didn't understand was why the mare kept looking around so much. They weren't waiting for anypony else, and they were almost halfway out of the square. Why was she acting like somepony might follow her? 

"Missus, can't you go faster? You said you had cookies..." Marigold whined.

All further thoughts died as a sharp whistle pierced the air. It was louder than the one the gym teacher at Marigold's school had. What was worse was that it reminded Marigold of going to gym too, and she froze. She hated gym class because she was always getting in trouble for doing what she was told; it made all the other foals cry. 'Playing rough' wasn't allowed at recess so Marigold had to get it all out somehow. It wasn't her fault everypony cried so easily, and it wasn't just ponies either. Marigold had a front-row seat at how weak griffons were when she dropped a weight right onto the chick's talons. She even managed to play it off as an accident. 

"GUARDS! GUARDS!" came a sudden scream. Marigold felt giddy with the need to run hearing it, somepony calling the guards could mean anything. Even the mare leading Marigold suddenly looked scared—in fact, she looked far more scared than Marigold was like she might have seen a ghost.

"GUARDS!" came the scream again, and Marigold got the strange feeling she might have heard the voice before. "COME QUICKLY! PREDATOR! There is a damn pouláriphile trying to lure a filly in broad daylight!" 

The mare Marigold had been following looked genuinely terrified now; her whole body was seized with shakes and her eyes were darting around like a petrified cat. Her gaze finally fell to the edge of the crowd that naturally pooled where Marigold had entered this part of the square. A trampling of gold-clad guards had entered the square, their standard-issue enchantments making the false colors of their coats look as bright and clean as their armor. Somepony else was with them, talking to the qilin merchants who were pointing in Marigold's direction. 

"I'VE SEEN HER FACE IN THE IMPURE FILES AT THE LIBRARY!" The battle-ready caterwaul finally had a name. The mare from before, with the Elysium pin, was the one screaming and pointing. The guard standing next to her held a whistle in his magic and nodded to the stallions next to him.

Everything that followed was a blur of energy. Two strong forehooves scooped up Marigold and pressed her against cold armor as if her life depended on it. She didn't bite anypony because her mother told her biting the guards could get you fined. Instead, she wriggled, kicked, and screamed until a forehoof was placed firmly over her mouth. She was still able to breathe just fine, but her noise was muffled into a most futile protest of grumbling. She could only watch as the mare from before stepped closer, her expression contorted with worry and fury directed at the other mare.

The mare that had offered cookies to Marigold was tackled with the grace of a dog jumping for meat scraps. She hit the cobbles with a scream that was quickly silenced with a muzzle conjured by one of the unicorn guards. Hoofcuffs soon joined the device. From there, the guards were quick to stand and haul the mare up. Bruises were quickly blooming on her body, and Marigold found herself as captivated by the sight as she was by glitter-dusted pictures in breezie tale books. 

"I saw that mare..." said the would-be schoolmarm with a heaving breath and angry eyes. "She followed that little filly here. At first, I thought my eyes deceived me and that this was her mother. But by the Princess, I knew I had to be sure. I trusted my suspicions that her face was familiar and followed her here. What a sick, sick monster tries to lure a foal on so grand a holiday in this nation. Her head should lie in a basket at the hooves of the goddess!" 

Marigold didn't know what the word was that had been hollered like a curse towards the mare who trembled under the weight of her shackles. She had heard it said in her Health & Safety class before, as well as her Citizenship class. Yet, she had forgotten what they meant, and the easier words that the teacher had told her were related instead. Since it was supposed to come up on a unit test, Marigold felt there was no need to go back and study the work related to that lesson.
 
"If that's true," began one of the guards, "this beast has nothing but a life behind bars to look forward to." The pegasus folded his wings to his armored sides with a flourish, and Marigold couldn't think of anything other than a shiny beetle in need of squashing. 

"We'll need you to come to the station with us," chimed another guard. The white-coated, blue-maned earth pony was as much of a staple to the city as a lamp-post. He had spoken to the infuriatingly teacher-like mare that had alerted the armored menace to where Marigold was. 

"And I'll take Private Skyline Sight with me to get the little one home. She's had a rough day, and her folks are going to need to know what happened to her." The guard holding Marigold spoke with a deep voice that reverberated against Marigold's back. She could already feel his every breath, now she felt him nod to an armored mare standing nearby. "They'll need to ensure she doesn't get out unaccompanied in such a public area. Monsters aren't normal in Equestria, but godsdammit, the kid was nearly foalnapped where everypony could see. This might end up making the papers..."

Thugs, thugs, the whole lot of them!

That was what Marigold thought, and that wouldn't make the papers. Her mother was right about the guards being untrustworthy, armored thugs. They were the fleas of Princess Celestia, and the goddess saw fit to ensure they invaded and policed the lives of everypony. Marigold knew that they kept foals anonymous in the papers, but she wanted to kick the guard holding her with her bad luck. If she wanted to be in the papers, it would be of her own accord.
> Chapter 9: Regarding Disposable Ponies
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marigold had never been served by imagination. That never stopped her when she was on her trips; the tops of tall apartment buildings were as fair game as any in Manehattan. She would pull a rag from her saddlebag, spread it haphazardly and plop herself down. Her mind would dip between frustration and a dull haze. Her Alicorn Amulet would weigh coldly under her clothes and she would squint out at the inky slop of night that Princess Celestia brought forth every dusk.

She would see the thousand-plus lights of the island city below and the bay area so far away, utterly unknown to her. Sitting as tall as she could guess Canterlot would be far inland, Marigold would try and picture her world without light pollution. The numerous puffs of smoke from Manehattan’s numerous fires would mask her vision like a sooty veil and warm her face unpleasantly, causing sweat to bud under her stiff collar. The taste of ash lingered even as the sun went down, as Marigold’s years had taught her.  

Whimpering, Marigold coughed into a hoofkerchief, clutching it tightly and wheezing momentarily. Sniffling, she shoved it away again and wrinkled her muzzle, scowling with the small displeasure of a spoiled schoolfilly. The sky was still not dark enough and the sounds from the city below were her clock; they told her that the hour was still improper for her plans. 

A fussy sigh left her in a puff, and she passed what time she could by pulling a knife from where the hoofkerchief had disappeared. The kitchen would not miss it; her mother was a parlor-mare, not one who worked in the kitchen. The newspaper it was wrapped in crinkled, and Marigold felt the budding glee from knowing her debut made the front page. Utensils went unnoticed to her unless they were fine pearl-handled silverware or tea sets. No practical item Marigold was made to use in her labors matched such a worthy definition. 

There was a distant sneeze tickling somewhere in her throat, but she was not about to let it squeak out of her just yet. She was careful to balance the knife’s thick mouth grip idly on her foreleg first; the limb was carefully covered in shabby cloth booties too worn to leave a print and crusted with the remains of a fun night over in Balikun-Shetland and street-dust. The knife’s balance was becoming more practiced, but still showing the wrong motions could knock it over quite easily. 

Marigold nudged it with her other hoof, and the spinning began her wait. She was tired of pretending that one crumby apartment block could let her see the sky any more than slivers of a far bay and dark waters. 



…



The night was cloudy and the city’s air was heavier with smoke than usual. Still, Marigold was not so naive. She had no ability with the sky to know that she should get to work before the moon was high in the sky. Her earth pony superiority and the nights she was able to wriggle free from her mother’s attention played a role in that. Something more than milk went into that mare’s before-bed tea in the evenings when Marigold was deemed ‘too aggravating’ to handle. Whatever her mother saw fit to add in there was enough to make the old nag sleep like a stone. 

Her ears pricked to make sure that her shuffling had not been too great. Rusty metal offered a few plaintive groans. Wrinkling her muzzle, Marigold gave a small hissing breath and pawed at the old fire escape beneath her. A faint jingling from the overwrought, golden ensemble she had under her plain cloak was the only reply she got. 

“Hmph,” Marigold sniffed disdainfully. Under her cloak, her ears flopped down somewhat. 

She squeezed her eyes shut briefly, keeping them as tight as possible while alien pressure budded beneath the center of her skull and dazzling ruby light filtered from between her eyelashes. With nothing but twists of dark metal above her and shadowy walls of brick to barricade her, she would be too thoroughly concealed from any prying eyes. 

Rustling beneath her cloak was a papery sound. Upon opening her eyes, Marigold’s red-flooded gaze was greeted by the sight of a crumpled bit of newspaper. It had been dipped in vaguely tan paint and was cramped with sloppy mouthwriting. 

The shoddiness of it did not suggest the true nature of the card until Marigold squinted more carefully at the atrocious grammar and spelling so clumsily scrawled there. As far as she could tell, that was authentic. Her grades in spelling were poor and she still couldn’t manage the intentional awfulness these all appeared to have. Even the glow of the Alicorn Amulet’s magic made the fat squiggles look that much worse. 

Every single one of these slips had only the minimum level of legibility. Each hoof-made card was an illegal advertisement for equally forbidden actions. A false name, an address, general rates, and the vaguest implication of the exact nature of the sex crimes offered were scrawled down — usually by the offenders themselves. They were then distributed to accomplices who bribed with bits to pass the evidence into the hooves of the vile ponies who would share the perverse desire to be the second half of the crime.

Once again, Marigold’s age was of little concern when she finally found an alley-stallion with these under his jacket. He walked so ridiculously, with one hoof shoved under his coat in case he needed to get rid of the cards as quickly as possible, knowing that if caught with them the lightest punishment permissible that he would face would be years in prison and being registered alongside those who had hired him as an offender for the rest of his life. It was all so high-stakes to little Marigold.

She knew that most of the time the kinds of thugs that aided the self-exploitation practices would take a teenager like her and hoof her over to a prostitute eager to make her into an extra source of income — and perhaps somepony to vent onto — for as long they could keep her captive. Library records and newspapers she snuck spelled out the nature of these predators and the innocent Manehattan creatures they tormented from outside of their dreary, disgusting, and violent little worlds.    

Other accomplices to these dirty ponies would not be nearly as driven to abduct her. She was too young to be working for the Royal Guard and if Marigold was under the delusion of wanting to be violated — as the law would call her ‘affliction’ — by an older pony, then these forgotten types had no conscious to stop her. Especially if it meant their sunken eyes could see more ill-won bits eventually. 

The stallion who gave Marigold this particular card was not the second kind, but a third breed. She had no way of knowing if she had ever encountered the first, just that she might have pacified one such sort by offering bits for what was usually free. For ponies who willingly gave up all hope of financial security in order to fuel cycles of sex and violence, bits spoke a powerful language. 

Marigold was given a card to pocket as a result. Now she was slinking around a fire escape in the dark, prodding about the shadowy outline of a newspaper-stuffed window frame with her hooves. The floor listed was the eighth and she was careful to count her descent from the roof. She just needed to make sure she had the right window. Who else but a whore — and yes, she knew it was a whore-mare by the name chosen — would have such an ill-kept window? 

Eventually, her hooves patted down a gap in the newspaper and the glass panes rattled their protest. She felt a stale breeze pouring outward, bringing a rancid smell, and watched the reddish glow of her eyes’ reflection grow rounder upon the dirty glass at her success. The bad smell was the perfect sign that the resident was what she needed; it was too much to be explained by just another unfavorable tenet.

With her magic, she dropped a few stray bits through the hole, listening to them clatter down the other side of the glass. Seconds later, the window was rattling like something done by a boogeymare in a magazine horror tale and being clumsily yanked up from the other side.

Greeting Marigold were two bloodshot eyes in a sunken face. The thinness of her prey was so apparent that the mare’s teeth were forever bared, showing off how brown and mossy they were. Poking out from under her ragged shawl were frizzy bits of a thin mane that was mostly pulled away.

Marigold gave a forced smile and tried not to faint from the suddenness of this ugly face or the smell pouring out from her dank cave of an apartment. 

“Good evening,” she said thinly, offering a forced wave. Her drawn hood hid her lack of a horn, but her eyes still gleamed with the hidden magic of the Alicorn Amulet.

“Wha’ kinna unicorn be ya?” sputtered the mare, swiping in the air for more bits with one knobbly and twisted foreleg. 

Blinking, Marigold decided to resort to semi-practiced mouth breathing. Repulsion wouldn’t make these kinds drive anypony willing to pay away, but she at least had to keep up enough of a front to ease any nerve or second thoughts that could be lurking in this shriveled scrap of a mare. 

“One who can make magic glasses,” Marigold lied, using a swirl of telekinesis that produced a pattering sensation under her skull to twirl a lock of her mane and flash a stiff smile. 

Her heart ached desperately for her mane to be anything but the dull orangish dark blonde she had been allotted by fate. All the mane-dye bottles during her window shopping escapades proclaimed she had a shade between the ever-popular ‘Blueblood Blonde’ and ‘Antique Carrot’ — though that one was horribly unsold and unwanted. While she was never able to figure out what in Tartarus the latter was supposed to mean her mother would occasionally snidely remind her of the former. Oh, how she loathed that her mother had a fashionable, red bob while Marigold was left with her dreary mane-do. 

“Ya gon’ pay or si’ an’ gab?” spat the near-skeletal mare, what was left of any jowls flapping weakly as she fixed Marigold with a dullard’s squinty-eyed stare. Gorgeous, glittering eyeshadow was caked as thick as a layer of plaster over her eyelids, the whole application so grotesque in its unskilled quality.  

“Not at all,” giggled Marigold. She grinned and teasingly waggled one of her coin purses about with a pendulum sway of telekinesis. “I was only waiting until the lady of the house invited me in.”

The thin leftover of the mare’s upper lip curled upward even more, and the pained look of the gesture made Marigold shiver happily.

To dispel suspicions further, Marigold produced the cheap card with a flourish. It was already falling apart in the grip of Marigold’s magic and looked so unlike anything that could put a pony in prison for possessing it; the paint chipping around the edges did little to give it an intimidating edge or class. Marigold still pushed it forward like it was a golden Grand Galloping Gala ticket. 

Street-whispers she had eavesdropped on in preparation informed her that those who passed the forbidden card on were not always as quick to accept knock-and-enter buyers or those driven to them by word of mouth — and word that was often bought, too, for as mangy as Manehattan’s underbelly was, it was still small. Marigold knew she would not be turned away by the whore, that was for ponies with standards. She was in no mood to be met with any kind of hesitation, especially from somepony that she knew could never afford it.

For Marigold, hesitation meant she would have to force her way inside and start the struggle right on this fire escape. A location like this went against every shred of sense Marigold could claim; she would be facing a death sentence after only one dead mare to her name — that made the Alicorn Amulet under her cloak warm with her worry, as though they shared the emotion. 

For this whore, hesitating to accept any kind of coin — and the treatment that followed — would mean no rent, cosmetics, clothes, utilities, or distribution of her cards. If she was paying for groceries and anything else to be delivered to her by her goons, as many of her kind did, then they would have all the more reason to be angered over being money-starved…

...and Marigold had to suppress another delighted shiver at how they might ruin this whore in retaliation. That was what happened in their worlds, as Marigold could not think of any other term for the inner workings of self-exploitation.

She was oh-so-careful to pick only the choicest whispers on the streets of Manehattan as her ‘research’ into finding the best of the worst candidates to serve her.

She, the whore, was all too good at greedily swiping up the bits Marigold levitated over to her. As many purses as needed were floated over, and Marigold watched with wide, sparkling eyes as four hundred of her mother’s bits were surrendered to a mangy whore. Two hours for four hundred bits. That was a few bits too many to burden Marigold’s fine back, and this hag was going to pay for every single one. 

Oh, how her mother would be flailing her few good limbs in money-hunger if she knew the manner in which her bits were being wasted!

No matter how generous the sum the Crown sent to Marigold’s mother or the vast amount amassed within her room, Marigold’s mother was always prattling about how they never had enough. Not even the other monthly checks that Rhodium was commanded to send satisfied Petunia’s perverse petty lusts. Yet, she was the very same nag who had not yet noticed a sliver of funds taken here or there. Marigold had done her best to fill what she took from what she got from reselling her thrift hauls, replacing what she borrowed with even more bits, which her mother simply burned through. That was the only significant evidence beyond what she left of the prostitutes themselves when she was not able to snatch back every bit that she used as a prop in these blood games.     

“Twos hours,” slurred Marigold’s new whore, “no mores that.” 

Marigold smiled, cold and closed-lipped. This one would prove to be especially easy to brutalize. Her jerky leg movements and glazed eyes made everything about the whore clumsy and pathetic. When the whore went to put the coin purses she hugged within her forelegs inside, she simply dumped them all over her floor. 

For Marigold, the drum of all those bits was the song of the refund she would claim when her fun was done: teasing, bold, and beautiful. She pretended to pay them any mind and swung herself through the window after the foul mare the way she imagined elite Manehattan mares climbed into the sleekest carriages, their skirts lifted just so. 

Soon, all those bits would be hers once again, if only for a night. 



…



Marigold had always liked the feel of blood. However, every time she tried to think of why she only recalled a distant memory of her mother screaming. Briefly, she had considered that maybe she had never liked blood in certain ways before this part of her life, or that the Alicorn Amulet’s encouragement was what led her to crave it. While she always craved blood more with the Alicorn Amulet about her neck, it was not as though she never wanted to do vile, wicked things when the amulet was put away. All the Alicorn Amulet did was provide her with a thrum of mentorship. Every scrap of what she learned was called encouragement, something she can’t say she was ever offered before. Thus, whatever scrap of her knew that she enjoyed the feeling of blood was not the doing of the Alicorn Amulet.

The fabric of her dress slipped over the drying warmth of the streaks she had painted over her coat would have driven other ponies mad with the itchiness. She always dabbed streaks and splotches over some of the spots where normal mares would spritz their perfume or rub crushed flower petals, hoping their scent would stick. Those were the current trends, one horde of mares followed blindly in order to make sweet scents waft up from their dresses. To Marigold, the touches of blood were daring, a taunt to the gold-clad guard who would never see the dripping patches and a fashion choice all her own. Who would think to smell blood on her when everypony good and sweet was hiding away from the Mare in the Moon? 

There wasn’t a pony still up that would notice, and she slipped through the metal and brick jungle of Manehattan rooftops with only the sound of her own girlish snickers as company and a few stray swipes of a dead mare’s blood upon the parts of her coat that none could see. Her saddlebags were heavier with more bits than she had entered with and overflowing with all she had managed to salvage from the whore’s little cave. By the time anypony would find her corpse, Marigold would be long gone and that apartment building would reek. Or, that’s how she wished that things would go. No neighbors would find all the plentiful leftover blood she had poured down the drains, watching it tint the water. Whatever cronies of the whore’s that forced their way inside to demand their share of bits would only see what was left of her.

Teleporting meant that with every rooftop she disappeared from, there would be frequent intervals when her dingy urban surroundings faded away. Her world would be engulfed in crimson magic, and there she would get to play back what she had done over and over again.

There was the way that horror finally ravaged the expression of the mare when she realized that Marigold was one of those buyers…

...how the first slice into anypony always made her mind burn, knowing she was the one who controlled what came next…

...that she got to remind her carefully picked prey so many times of the simple fact that every one of them would never be anything but less than dead, not when they had nopony who cared about them, not when they were no-ponies too...

...and that nopony ever came to stop her.

The only regret Marigold ever had was how she could only wonder at what her nightly baths would look like if they were made red with all the blood she wished to harvest, and how in the end she would always have to scrub it away.



…



The next night she was able to slip out mirrored the first. The Mare in the Moon hung far above Manehattan Island, a pale-eyed sight that was one of the few magical things Marigold Blueblood had ever seen in her life. None of the dinginess of her mortal life or city had managed to touch the moon so high above, and no painting or print managed to wrangle even a fraction of its essence in the way the sun had been captured and caged by art so long ago. Everything was just a touch red, and she felt that she might burst from the familiar anticipation and magic thrumming against her skull. The usual sensation of her magic aside, her craving for violence was carving her out once again until Marigold could no longer subsist on reminders of what she was capable of that struck her in idle moments. Days would always pass, and Marigold would find that reliving everything in her recollections over household chores was never, ever enough — not when there were so many more ideas to swarm her mind, making her body agree.

Her skirt was less of a burden this time. The silky, shiny affair slunk with her as she crept along Manehattan streets, yet long enough to hide her hooves and flare out, a sheen golden mimicry of a nightgown. Marigold’s saddlebags were slung over the top of a formal blouse, the puffy sleeves stiffer than she had wanted them to be. Instead of the brooch favored by fillies her age trying to look like mares, Marigold had coils of scarves wound around her neck. They were neither too fashionable to keep her from standing out nor were they too shabby as much of Manehattan-style apparel was because she preferred to allow herself some taste.

The pounding of her heart was second to the pressure building at the center of her head. Every time the Alicorn Amulet was slipped on, Marigold noticed that the ache was growing more pronounced. Something about her skin had begun to feel different too, there was a variety of crawling, tingling sensations that never quite went away even when she took off the amulet.

None of these were bad, in fact, they even kept her more focused upon her dark desires. She figured that every unicorn felt these phantom sensations and that it was a part of their weakness she only had to learn to overcome. So, she let them weigh down upon her like the tart card in her front pocket, where it could be safe from the rain. 



…



The wooden stairs creaked each time she stepped on them, but Marigold still managed to slink her way up to the fourth floor. Never before had a prostitute been quite as careless as this one, who answered ponies right at her own door. She was no doubt an amateur, then, and how lucky she would be for Marigold to find her instead of the guard. They would have her name, her true name, branded on a sex offender list forever and she would never again be able to set hoof in any place deemed pure, public, or both. Marigold cared little about making sure ponies like her spent their time in prison; she would much rather immortalize them in her own special ways. 

Marigold rapped at the door eagerly after shoving the crumpled card under the door and trying not to breathe too heavily. Her vision swam with ruby light that made her have to close her eyes from the intensity.

Not now! She let her thoughts hiss in her head, directed at nopony. Immediately afterward, and much to her surprise, the magic dimmed. Marigold caught only the dim sizzle of something reddish deep in her gaze when she stared at her reflection in the doorknob.

That she could still see such beads of fire in a doorknob felt like a good omen. Today, Marigold wanted to play an earth pony instead of a disguised unicorn. She hated having to claim she was the enemy, even though it explained her new powers so much easier. Most of all, she knew that there would be such a look of betrayal if this mare shared her race. There was a dim paranoia that one always had around those terrible, tricksy unicorns, knowing that their magic gave them the potential for horrid things. Nopony ever felt that subtle brutalization around an earth pony, and anypony who did was a filthy rotten liar whose slander ought to be shamed. 

After some shuffling, a mare eventually opened the door. Marigold was immediately struck by the newness of the whore. Her skin was near civilian health, as long as one was willing to ignore the knotted, angry scarring as thick as snakes that wound across her. The way her dress fit unevenly around her back and the red stains that seeped through the fabric made Marigold’s heart beat faster with delight.

This mare was still so new to her abuse that she winced, and her eyes brightened with pain when she moved. There was no dead-eyed glaze that usually set in so quickly, and that had Marigold’s hooves just itching at the thought of all the things she could do to a mare so fresh and broken. 

“Mmm,” she hummed dully. “Yer a mare?” There was a pained exhale caught in all her words. “Nawt one of thems stallions that says he is?”

“Oh, I most certainly am a mare, you dull beast,” sniggered Marigold, smiling widely at the whore who hid behind long curls that looked like they were moldering from her lifestyle, though there was little to be called life in what she did. Goodness, the thought that she still had enough of a mane that could be used for real curls instead of resorting to wigs was just the cherry on top.

“I…” The whore paused, swaying a little and dabbing her sleeve at a bit of blood around her mouth. “I’ven’t a mare before.”

Marigold’s muzzle scrunched up, and not from the assorted telltale odors that this mare had. “Well, it’s not like you get much of a choice in the matter.”

The whore’s eyes fell, and she swayed again, her mane bobbing listlessly while her tail dragged lifelessly on the ground. 

“I have all the bits you could want,” sing-songed Marigold as her eyes roved the corset pulled too tight and carelessly over the mare’s visible ribs. Nopony in their right mind would wear such a thing in broad daylight, and the expensiveness of it was absolutely garish. “And you can never afford to choose.”

A heavy sigh came from the half-styled mess of curls and dreadlocks. Marigold’s heart soared at the look of utter resignation that came when her hoof fished out a bag of bits.  

“Now, how much must you have for three hours?” As Marigold looked at her, she was already calculating how much this one might be. She clearly subjected herself to absolute savagery and had enough rapid popularity to have her goons order expensive clothing from catalogs and run her advertisements through the city. 

The mare winced as she limped forward to look down at the coin purse in Marigold’s hoof. 

“One hun’red bits,” came the muffled reply. The prostitute managed to pin her ears down even further. The bruise as purple as plum kept one of her eyes swollen shut; the freshness of it was absolutely fetching to Marigold. She only wished that the popular fillies in her classes would one day have the popularity of ponies like this: as infamous slags.

Marigold could only smile wider; this one absolutely warmed her cockles. She wasn’t the epitome of decay that the average was, but she was getting to that point when she would need to trim herself with every jewel and poorly repurposed articles of clothing to make her a scrap basket advertisement for a mare that had long since rotted away and existed only for carnal purchases. 

Not all the stars in the sky could contain Marigold’s wish that there would always be more of these ponies for her to go through. 

With the proper bits hastily exchanged, the two retreated behind the door.



…



New to her crimes or not, Marigold knew immediately that the prostitute’s waterlogged corpse drifting under the Bucklyn Bridge would be more fragrant than the faint rotting scent the filly detected when she stepped inside. It certainly wasn’t the scent of flesh, but it made her wish that she was far across Bucklyn Channel to the pure village of the fair name. There the rot-odor wouldn’t reach her. It was just inevitable that this lot of pony smelled like they scrubbed a few layers of their own skin off with sewage instead of taking proper baths. Marigold was beyond guessing the exact causes behind the offending odor too, but goodness did she know it when it hit her.

Why, it was something of a grand entrance effect. There was little else that was close to being described as noteworthy in the flat other than Marigold’s clothes. The flat would have been decent at some point, but self-exploitation brought a dinginess to everything, however distant.

In her reading classes, Marigold had been forced to sit through a variety of boring stories, one of which had made her very angry. A minotaur king named Midas had gotten the best gift in the world from one of the gods and transformed everything and every-creature in his life to cold, gleaming gold. However, his cowardice made him beg for normal touch and the restoration of his worthless friends and family. Marigold despised that ending, knowing that if she had that power, she would never give it up. Tartarus knew that to transform any in such a way would excite her. Her beloved city would be much better with more gold and fewer greedy griffons dirtying the streets, for example.

She was struck so often by that story because when she was around such filthy ponies, it was impossible not to be reminded of how a so-called slut had the opposite influence Midas had, and they brought nothing but ruin, even if Marigold enjoyed the rot. It was that contrast that Marigold adored; she cared nothing for any kind of moral nonsense about supporting bounty-catching and community clean-up and chase-out efforts against the scummy prostitutes who thought they could share her city. All she wanted were some disposable ponies whom she could delight in ruining. Was that not a simple dream for a simple young lady?

Really, the only thing simpler was the sense of design that her latest victim had. The wallpaper had just started to acquire its first layers of filth and the floors were chipped, scuffed, and dirtied. Rags were discarded everywhere, as were the remnants of a sewing kit and various laundry supplies. Some scattered needles bore traces of dried blood, while others were bent at angles suggesting the whore had stepped on them in acts of clumsiness. 

Marigold’s mother had purchased the clunky, primitive machine that was a staple for any earth pony seeking to sew. For this earth pony whore to have none and resort to just gripping the needles in her teeth meant she was beyond desperate, and likely even swallowed many more needles than she stepped on.

Frankly, Marigold was just itching to open her up and see how many were inside. She even had to press her lips together — not a full-on lip-bite, but something closer to what a displeased teacher did — in order to keep from breaking out into the silliest of grins. 

Marigold made no effort to hide the spring in her step and caught sight of a few discarded coils of rope and an assortment of clothespins lying in the grime on the floor. Those could be useful. Other than all the mail-order garments and their respective catalogs lying on the ground, in various states of disrepair, there was little sign of anything else among the flat’s filth. The closest indicator Marigold had that this mare ate at all was that there was a dusty, stained burlap sack, which some fat black flies buzzed around. It was entirely understandable; this mare wouldn’t be able to go outside on her own. Not with the obviousness of her crimes, untreated chaffing, and carelessness in showing her natural coat color. 

Dust and filth floating about settled on Marigold’s muzzle, making her give a high, powerful sneeze. As that happened, she misstepped and nearly tripped over a stray can of mane gel, whose hollow, near-empty sound protested her weight. 

Hissing, Marigold pushed herself up and wrapped her hoof around the can before hurling it as hard as she could in the whore’s direction. To her satisfaction, it caught the whore just under her eye, giving rise to a nasty mark immediately. 

The following whimper was just what Marigold wanted to hear.

“You stupid, filthy bitch!” Marigold snarled. “How can you just let others wallow in your own filth?” 

“I… I’unno!” stammered the whore, rubbing her freckled face numbly. Her eyes were blank and pale while her other forehoof reached for the filthy sheets piled high upon the saggy, frameless mattress in the middle of her flat. 

A cascade of bits was spilled across the floor, an arc of gold against the hideous grime. The hotness of anger grabbed at Marigold’s chest from within. With a great huff, she cantered over them and pushed the whore down. She fell onto the bed as though she were already dead. Her eyes were already glazed and far away. 

Even as Marigold lept atop her, the mare had the limpness of a ragdoll. She squinted into the near-dead eyes of the prostitute, trying to find something other than vacancy and the dull reflection of candlelight. 

Under the corset that dug into the mare’s exposed ribs, Marigold caught sight of how heavily her prey’s pinched breathing was, and let a slow smile spread across her face. 

If her toy was already half-alive, there was no point in keeping up her act as just another violent buyer. At least not for too long. She put a forehoof down hard on the mare’s throat, pressing until she got a strangled gasp. Her whore was too weak to put up a proper resistance, and the recognition dimly shining in her eyes told Marigold that this had been done to her countless times before.

Her gasps became faint wheezes, and the slightest twitch came in her limbs, stirring a cruel satisfaction in Marigold. With the mare lost in a dopey, painful haze, Marigold shut her eyes until her vision swam with red and her mind met the Alicorn Amulet’s power. She envisioned the crisp, clean anatomy books in the public library so far away from the world of this dingy whore-flat.

At the same time, there were all things much sicker and oh-so-vivid swimming in her head.

As choked mewls reached her ears and the flailing became less intense, Marigold let her magic slither around to where the lumbar vertebrae would be found on a pony. The beautiful word she had learned just for the purpose of this trip danced in her head with the weight of a favorite song: hemi-corp-orec-tomy. 

After making sure the whore was still alive, Marigold put all the force she could into her magic and began to pull. Hot blood started pooling at her hooves, teasing that there was more to come and drive her excited mind wild. Meanwhile, she savored the look of agonized shock on the prostitute’s face, for it was only there for a moment.



…



Marigold had never been good at math. She knew enough just for shopping and paying bills. Oh, and she could split a mare in half while simultaneously stealing her breath. That had to count for something. None of her classmates got to do that. In fact, they were all squeamish at the very mention of high-level magi-biology where students were expected to be able to dissect a jackalope — or make a proper presentation about the process if they lacked the magic to do so themselves. 

Those pests weren’t even endangered. Marigold had heard from one of her schoolmates who heard it from her cousin that if you go just past Bucklyn village’s borders, a pony can find them everywhere, in places with rolling hills of abundant green that Manehattanites stopped seeing once they set away picture books. Marigold was mostly frustrated at the idea of how pitiful a jackalope was in comparison to a pony. 

There was just so much more to ponies once you pulled them apart. Nopony lost themselves in what they did with a jackalope in the same way that nopony was ever going to gorge themselves on a single pea. Jackalopes were a teaser, a measly reminder of everything she could do to a pony. Imagining a jackalope with everything spilling out and on display confused her terribly. Wasn’t that the way she was supposed to feel about ponies?

Marigold would sit over her school lunches, shoving apple slices and mashed potatoes around while her mind slipped off into the fog of elsewhere. That elsewhere was imagining last week. If her toy had been a jackalope instead of a whore-pony, she would have had little to distribute and examine. Her eye was not a critical one, but there wasn’t a doubt in Marigold’s mind that she had left quite the scene.

All the blood poured down the drain of a rarely-used bathtub…

...two dull eyes nailed to the wall above her mattress with spikes from her blood magic…

...an array of teeth scattered across the floor like jacks…

...and a garland of her innards strung from wall to wall.

In the end, she always got her bits back and she got to have her fun. Nothing else mattered. 

Marigold swallowed, her ears swiveling backward as soon as she heard the whispering. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Knight Watch tug at the hoof of another filly who had wandered in Marigold’s direction.

“Stay away from her,” Knight hissed, just loud enough for Marigold to hear. 

“Why?” whispered the unicorn filly innocently, clutching her tray tighter in her magic. “She sits all alone, every single day. Surely somepony ought to talk to her?”

“Blueblood is a creep,” insisted Knight. 

Marigold bit the inside of her cheek. All the other foals in school called her ‘Blueblood’, which not even the teachers said to Marigold’s face. Her mother fought in court to give her the name of a stallion whom Marigold had never met or acknowledged, and all her classmates refused to call her anything else. They refused her everything: sleepovers, mark mitzvahs, cute-ceañeras, and birthdays. 

She had told herself constantly that she never wanted to associate with these ponies anyway. Knight Watch was a hall monitor who got anypony trying to skip class in trouble. His father was in the guard, which made him a complacent horseshoe-kisser to the goddess-princess. In ten years, Marigold was sure he would still be oppressing ponies like her, she just knew it. After all, he was a traitorous pegasus to be willing to think that unicorns and the gods weren’t all awful. Everypony even knew he had a crush on the deer exchange student too, and nopony but Marigold seemed to take up their duty to speak out against species-mixing. 

“C’mon, Knight. Calling somepony such a thing is just uncouth. She probably just needs a friend.”

“No!” Knight insisted, his voice a little louder. He tugged again at the filly’s fetlock. “Blueblood is not noble or good like her name. She is nothing more than a bad seed who hates anypony who is not an earth pony or just as mean as her.”

“Oh,” murmured the filly, finally giving in to his tugging. “May I sit with you, then?”

“Of course,” Knight said, abandoning his whisper. “I always have room for more friends. What is your name?”

“Sea Salt!” chimed the unicorn filly. “My family just moved here from Ghastly-Upon-Copse so I can join the naval fort one day. Is it true that Coney Bay has the best magic shows?”

“Yep! My family goes there every summer…”

Marigold huffed and stuck her muzzle into her juice carton until it bulged out, letting her mane cascade around her face in order to shut out the cafeteria lights. 

She hated ponies with the kind of unacceptable attitude Knight Watch had. Otherwise, she would have gotten to skip the rest of the lunch period and ended up in the headmistress's office for ‘bullying’ another student, as if anything there was anything wrong about reminding a horrid horn-head where they belonged. 

Marigold had made the last pony who dared sit with her flee the cafeteria in tears, and all because Marigold knew that no earth pony who married a unicorn deserved to be able to carry their foal to term, and that filly shouldn’t have told any school-mates she was ‘feeling down’ over what was no great loss, and certainly not the loss of a sibling. If that filly had realized it, she would reject her unicorn blood and disowned the horned beast that sired her. Instead, Marigold got another suspension and none of her schoolmates even acknowledged her, even when she had to read the disciplinary essay ‘Why Miscarriages are Horrible for Everypony Involved’ to her homeroom class.

Marigold bit at the cardboard of her juice carton and tried to imagine if anypony would treat her the same if they knew all the pony she was when Princess Celestia lowered the sun.



…



Marigold Blueblood thinking of herself as an adult was inevitable. Or, at least her idea of adulthood, which was interwoven with concepts of drudgery, authority, and the oft-whispered-about forbidden, risque side of it that she craved. Her classmates may be a few years shy of graduating — and with it, adulthood — but Marigold had much more experience with the things in life she had always been told really mattered: blood and coin.

While fillies her age were still vying for hoof-holding and stolen kisses in courtship, Marigold had to hide just how much she wanted to boast of her deeds. To Tartarus with all the talk about commitment, communication, and romantic fidelity that ruled Equestrian culture. Everything was too tied up in meaningless concepts like consent or compassion that took place in some breezie tale land of ‘intimacy’ — whatever in Tartarus that was supposed to mean — that made Marigold sick to think about. Awkwardness and affection were better replaced with the things she liked, the things that lofty gods, stuffy academics, and know-it-all psycho-somethings would say made Marigold ‘objectively ill’ or whatever their latest tree-killing psycho-babble was about how ‘case studies’ and ‘sample groups’ like her were so ‘perverse’ and all the ways they were therapized or locked away.

Marigold Blueblood was undeniably an adult, after all, she had s-e-x! That’s right, the very thing that all her peers still took to whispering about the way that they used to chatter about cooties! She knew she was the first in her whole year to do so too! Goodness, it filled her with such a sense of accomplishment — one that all the dull adult-reading during her library trips said was a sign of ‘irresponsibility’ and ‘poor impulse control’ that would ‘require consistent counseling in order to instill healthy adolescent concepts of reality and empathy in relation to sexuality without harm’ or some other slop.

Wasn’t that just the dreariest thing? Who cares if whispers started up about somepony being the town carriage? To Marigold, a strumpet was better than a scholar any day, and she couldn’t imagine what in Tartarus’ name could truly be so bad that she could get sick from doing something that was such an indulgence. She was always in control of the little perverts she purchased anyway; nothing could get past that. What did it matter that her first time was with a dead mare? 

All that meant was that Marigold got to have her merry way and do everything she wanted, both before and afterward. It was convenient, and how could it be any different than how she was told to shelve groceries at work? Everything was about convenience, and Marigold couldn’t bear to have tonight be any more wrong. 

She skipped along, kicking up an arc of water from a puddle. The muddy filth barely gleamed at all during the night; such was the nature of Manehattan water. Marigold’s thick, dark boots were sturdily made by magic and their look was pulled straight from one of her mother’s designer magazines. Shiny buckles were barely dulled by Manehattan grime and the look was perfect imitation leather to mimic what ponies called ‘grotesque abominations’ but was legal in nations like the Shirdal Island, Colthuacan, the Dragonlands, and a slim amount of other nations. 

Marigold’s dress was not so extravagant this time, being a simple gold-colored affair suitable for a filly her age. She skipped along, humming in the night and keeping her plain cloak held fast. Her saddlebags were weighed down with bits and instruments of butchery she had /conned/ a griffon out of. 

Her song died in her throat when the scent of salt became too overpowering. Manehattan Island was a long and wide one. The shores were spacious enough that plenty of territories existed to build houses, and the particular address Marigold’s card led her to a stretch of row houses not far from some docks. The cramped cobbled streets were dusted with sand, and though they were no pinnacle of poverty like the whore-mares Marigold visited, it was obvious that nopony of great means lived so close to the sea.  

Marigold’s lips curled into a smile when she saw the windows; most were beyond dim in the night or had painted newspapers pasted against the inside instead of the luxury of curtains. For anypony familiar with self-exploitation, this was a mansion. 

Greasy food wrappers squelched with saltwater as Marigold wove her way past banisters and worn, rusty mailboxes. When she came to the right door, she seized the knocker in her hoof and slammed it down four times. Loudly. 

The stallion who opened the door had seen better days. Though his condition was nowhere near the mares she had seen, his shabbiness would be notable on any street corner. His eyes looked too large for his face, a sign of hunger’s effects on him. In general, he looked too lean, and the clothes he wore to attempt to look even a touch more presentable hung off his frame in places where they should have been snug. His suit was missing many pieces, reduced mostly to pants, a jacket, and a tie. His shirt was lacking more than a few buttons. She supposed that this is what happens when you wore clothes not conjured to be grand enough for any occasion. His mane and tail spoke of a water bill that could only be partially paid; they were caked with enough products and slicked back in the proper places to make it look like he could afford it regularly. 

“What do you want?” His words had a meanness to them but no energy as he looked her over tiredly. The way he stood in the doorway showed he was plainly making an effort to block the interior from her view. His gait made it clear he was missing a horseshoe. 

Marigold feigned sniffing the air haughtily, only to produce a snort of whiny snort. She was careful only to withdraw a few bags of bits from her saddlebags, keeping her magic dimmed. This did not stop its antsy prodding in her skull, like it was swelling under right where a horn would be. One toss had them spilling on the ground, the display of gold coins bouncing off of his hooves intentional with how they had been so loosely tied. 

“That should be enough of an answer,” she said to the stud, her tone annoyed and cool. She disliked the name for stallions of this crime, though she had no idea how it arose. For Marigold, a stud was something to wear in one’s ears, not a word to associate with licentious stallions who sold themselves. All the fillies at school had the babyish little treasures, while Marigold had been left to seethe at being one of the few fillies in her grade who did not have a touch of gold, silver, or sterling in her ears. 

He grunted and swished his tail. Marigold peered at him. She loved watching how the glittering waves of gold brought out the worst widening light in any creature’s eyes. It made her that much more eager to reach for one of the new tools in her bag. Perhaps the meat cleaver would do. After hurriedly kicking the coins into the depths of the house — somepony clearly accepted any bits thrown his way — he hurriedly beckoned her inside. If he had guessed at Marigold’s age, he hadn’t mentioned it.

The interior was the nicest that Marigold had ever seen owned by such a criminal — which meant it was still dreadfully impoverished by the standards of anypony decent. A few scraps of laundry hung to drip-dry on lines that were strung on the walls, a clear indication that the offender had to minimize time outside. However, the fabric was frayed, patched, and stained beyond what any cleaning could do. For the home of a sex offender, these were quite the luxury. The only silverware was a pewter pitcher and bowl dented from use. They were kept on a wooden stool by a sad table with a basket of bruised fruit on it. A lit and occupied candle holder was nearby. Two hay bales were stacked in the corner of the flat; each looked lumpy from their place under the stairs, which were planks with the nails still visible. 

Uglier planks had been fashioned to the wall in crude shelves. A half-dozen beer bottles sat next to a lonely cloth bag of lemon cough drops, which a few moths had flocked to. Spare candles were gathering dust. A few battered tankards overflowed with bits. Next to those was a bundle of disused quills and a rusted letter opener. One hammer and a dirty glass jar of nails were positioned nearby. Marigold guessed that those would be to fix the horseshoe he lost. To be a farrier for oneself was not for the unskilled. Too many mistakes could be made. 

“Upstairs,” grumbled a tired voice. It was as though it had been punctured and all personality bled out from the pony who spoke those words. “Now,” said the stud, complaint and command competing in his tone.

“I’m the one paying,” Marigold hissed back. She could not see why so many fillies in her class liked stallions; there wasn’t a single attractive one in the whole world. “And I have to use the water closet.”

“Fine.” He swayed on his hooves, and she could see he’d give into what she wanted but would be annoyed the whole time. “Just be damn quick about it,” he grumbled again.

She scuttled off into the room on the opposite side of the stairs and shut the door. Her cloak and skirts swished to a stop as she pressed her back against the door. She heard him limping up the shoddy stairs. Marigold tried to focus on her saddlebag and the contents within, and their dim jingle. She tried to focus on her surroundings and imagine the dripping song of his blood falling through the upstairs floorboards when she was done with him. 

The water closet was small. One dim lantern hung from the ceiling with multiple wraps of twine. It was the perfect safety hazard for wooden row houses. The mirror had seen better days; multiple cracks ran through it and the edges were chipped. Marigold wouldn’t be able to paw at any of the grime with her boots on. Instead, she gazed at the only clean things in the room: the stacks of mane gels and grease in front of the mirror. The toilet area was putrid and the shower tiles looked to be in dire need of replacement: they too were chipped and grimy. Marigold swore that he was actually using the shower stall as a toilet if the overflowing mess was anything to go by — the shower was obviously disused for anything else. The drain cover had been removed, and yet, there was nothing to wash anything down with — he might just be polluting the streets.

Marigold wrinkled her muzzle and busily turned to the mirror. She let her headache flower and forced her withers to relax. Magic flooded her vision and a compact floated in front of her, accompanied by its brush and the little pencil she used to add extra freckles to her face — golden ones. 

“Hurry up in there!” screamed a male voice. Her prey.

“In a minute!” Marigold shrieked back, her telekinesis flinging gold powder across the already-filthy mirror in an arc. “I pay, you obey!”

Speckles of her shiny sorrel eyeshadow strayed from their mark and dusted the lace of her collar.

She wanted to hide how sick it felt. The smell was repulsive, but to Marigold, stallions were even more so. Tonight, she wanted somepony to kill — the way that some ponies just needed to eat junk foods from the boardwalk instead of nothing at all. She couldn’t stomach having sex with one, which almost made her not want to murder one — and how could that make sense? She had to just apply eyeshadow until the confusion passed; sex was just part of murder but she could skip it just this once. The need for blood was greater than secondary lusts. Marigold could just imagine she had killed a mare instead. 

When she was satisfied with her work, Marigold dimmed her magic. Though she may be the one who owned the situation (and the stud) the least she could do was hurry just enough that her skirts didn’t get caught on the stairs. Studs were like that. Marigold found herself wondering if mares only bought them because they couldn’t afford proper, legal surrogate stallions for foals — and yet, most mares convicted of activity with a stud reported that they didn’t care if they got pregnant or weren’t looking to. Even though she knew that stallions were bought for different reasons than mares were, and had differing mobility, it didn’t make any damn sense to her. She simply could not imagine that anypony would buy a stallion because they enjoyed them the way that mares could be enjoyed.

What could a mare ever see in a stallion that she couldn’t find in another mare?

That was what Marigold thought as she reached the top of the stairs, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the stallion who had slipped out of his poorly fitting suit. All she let herself see was the expected: that he had no cutie mark to conceal. The sleeping loft held only a sagging, dirty bed and a wooden nightstand that was so crooked the firefly lantern atop it was a skew. Heavens help her, she had no idea that this stallion could actually afford something like a firefly lantern. Since she stared at the floor, she could see that numerous cardboard boxes, pouches, and a few wooden trays had been repurposed to overflow with bits. Even a patched-up mess of saddle-bags was shoved under there and bulging with coin.

The stallion’s ears flicked with agitation. She shuddered faintly in response, hoping he’d mistake it for anticipation instead.

Let’s get this over with.



…



His mistake was letting her gag him and tie him up. That’s what his eyes said, with their wavering, desperate light. His body was shaking weakly and his greasy mane was now a sweat-soaked mess. Marigold hadn’t bedded him; she’d done something better. She sat at the corner of the bed, in her dress, with her forehooves held neatly close to her — at least for now. She’d bunched up her cloak and thrown it off so that her mane could spill out, and yet that didn’t stop him from seeing her eyes.

They were flooded with red light despite her lack of a horn, and he couldn’t look away from her. Not even when she’d conjured a ball and chain to keep him in place after hog-tying his legs for good measure. She cultivated the irresistibility of fear in him, and Marigold devoured every second of it.

Marigold flashed him a cruel smile as she let the chain fall from her aura. “Do you know what I have next, honey?”

The response she got was a pathetic attempt at thrashing from her stallion — and yet, no tears. Was he always so aware that he was going to die?

Marigold’s magic rustled into her saddlebags and withdrew a serrated knife. She gave it a twirl in her aura as soon as it was properly withdrawn. “You sicken me, you know that? All your maleness… it just dulls my appetite” She plunged the blade into his wither where she knew it would give way without ceremony. “I think I’ll still be able to have a bit of fun.”

Withdrawing the knife and seeing the first blood of the night sent Marigold’s heart skipping and she couldn’t help but whimper.

“You bleed, honey,” she said, voice breathy and distant as she stared at the dripping blood. “That’s good enough for me.” 

Marigold plunged the knife into her stallion’s belly and moved to spill out all he had the way griffons butchered pigs. She watched the softness give way and was delighted to stick her forehooves in the pooling blood. She’d slipped out of her boots for this very purpose, and now she smeared her face with the hot blood with frenzied motions.

She’d find a way to make tonight last.



…



Marigold thought of two things: replaying the duration of the torture she’d just given the stallion and the stickiness of the blood behind her. Her mane was spread out behind her, barely avoiding the pool of blood on the floor. She could feel the hardness of the boards under her back, and the way the now-cool blood soaked into her dress and matted her coat. Marigold knew that she would magic it all away — she definitely wasn’t going to risk lingering long enough to use the water closet downstairs — but that was a distant thought to her. She was averse to introspection in the afterglow of her events — only mentally reliving the act or thinking about what she would have done differently felt proper to permit in such a sacred headspace.

The torn-up form of a stallion lay still in the bed. She’d tried skinning him out of boredom, but gave up halfway through the process and just threw everything with the sheets. Those had stopped their slow-drip of blood and other fluids some time ago, leaving Marigold to listen to the distant patter of blood against the floor below the loft. Just like she’d planned. 

She had been the perfect destroyer. She took away those who would never be remembered. She exposed how not every community could feasibly have neighbors. Through the breakage of her toys, Marigold managed to hurt ponies she would never touch.

Only the violence itself made her happier. 
> Chapter 10: Now Hiring
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Molasses Syrup whistled contentedly which filled his store with the sound of a jolly tune. Sparkling glass jars full of a rainbow of candies were stored behind them. The cheeriness of the pieces brought a smile to everypony who entered — even Mo himself — and were as pretty as wildflowers in Center Park on a spring day. A maze of shelves bursting with other goods boasted all the everyday treasures to be found in the aisles. Cooking supplies, All-Equestrian snacks, rolls of cloth, and any and all practical goods were stocked by the merry stallion. Word of mouth was his catalog, and he took great pride in knowing his establishment had more loyal family shopping here than at Jolly Holly’s place right across the street. 

The chime of a bell followed by the sound of wood against a familiar frame caused the stallion to perk up his ears. His eyes widened with interest behind his round glasses, and the earth pony stallion set his polish and cloth under the tall, gleaming wooden counter.

He rarely had any customers around one o’clock, since most foals were still in school. Usually, those that did stop by were parents out for afternoon shopping or a lone pony wanting something to brighten a lunch break. Even griffons from New Shirdal and qilin from Qilintown found their way in, as did ponies from Manehattan’s La piccola Istalia. Every kind of creature was welcome in his store — even the weirdest creature of all: tourists. 

Mo did not expect to see a little school-filly standing in the shadow of his counter at this time. Her golden eyes were another surprise, brighter than her gap-tooth grin.

“Good afternoon!” she squeaked. Why, that couldn’t be right. All the little ones were always crying ‘hello’ and everything else under the sun that gave away their youth. Here was this little filly, so oddly professional with her greeting. “Are you Grandsire Mo?”

“Absolutely, little miss! I am Molasses Syrup, and this is my general goods shop. Is there something I can do for you? Do you need help finding something?”

“Yes, yes!” she cheered. 

The little earth filly’s saddlebags were not unusual; everypony had those. Perhaps their larger size was the intention of a thrifty parent wanting her to grow into them. She probably wanted a bow for her bags or for her mane. Maybe something in school colors? Celestia’s All-Fillies Academy for Astute Learners was just down the street. She probably went there and just slipped out of her uniform. 

“Would you like some candy to go with your lunch? A dozen pieces are only a bit!”

The filly tilted her head to the side, letting her unruly spikes of a gold mane fall with the motion. “I wanted the sign! The one outside!”

“...My ‘now hiring’ sign?”

“That one!” the filly cheered, “Yes, that one!”

“Little one, my sign is not for sale.”

“I needa job!” 

Mo scratched his chin, his white mustache drooping with his thoughtful frown. “You want a job as a clerk in the store, hm?”

“Yes! Mother comes here all the time. She says it is a good earth pony store. That means it's proper to apply here.”

“Any creature can come to my story, little miss.” Why an ‘earth pony store’? Very few earth ponies in Manehattan’s community would call his store that, and Mo always kept them as reluctant customers until they caused trouble. None of them were pleasant types either. Thinking they could have a foal was such a shame. 

“My mother is Miss Petunia Godsdamned Petals!” cried the little filly, bouncing up and down, entirely innocent to the fact that her mother had no middle name! “Everypony calls me Marigold, but I've got 'nother name too!”

“Oh my Celestia!” breathed Mo. “Mind your words, dear. That is not something to go shouting around, and it's certainly not right coming from a little filly like you.”

“I am ten years old!” Marigold insisted, wrinkling her muzzle up in the mirror image of her mother. “That makes me an adult.”

Molasses Syrup paused, thinking about how the ways this situation could go. No daughter of Petunia Petals should be judged for her mother’s sins — why else did she say everypony only called her Marigold? It had to be for the same reason behind the surname that was forced upon her. The court fight to cement the 'Blueblood' as an addition to the little bastard's name had made the papers years ago. Petunia had no family name herself, but 'Marigold Petals' would have been a much more scandal-free name than trying to add in her lover's legacy to her daughter's name. 

Petunia Petals also lived in Tartarus’ Kitchen, which meant this little one came far enough, assuming she had not taken a cab. Though it was hard to imagine Petunia was equally stingy with bits when it came to her own foal's welfare. What mother would be?

“Ten years old is enough for a first job. Do you know how to be a clerk? Is this alright with your mother?”

“I can cook and clean!” yipped Marigold, her mane bouncing with her. “I take out the trash! I mailed a postcard once!”

What a good little filly, Mo thought, being so responsible.

“And your mother is okay with you being outside of the house for so long?”

With Petunia Petal’s condition, she barely made trips to Mo’s store without having her legs bundled up and strapped into the typical cart-like wheelchair used by those with her affliction. Manehattan cabs just were not equipped for such a thing, so with that and Petunia’s obvious love of luxurious mare’s fashion, it was not difficult to understand why she rarely came by. Other stores likely had this little messenger sent to them. 

“Mother wants me to get a job!”

The poor filly was probably used to shopping closer to home, or at least one could hope she would. Getting the word out about his shop was one thing, but if it made a filly come this far across the island, he knew her safety came into question too. There were discount passes, pay-in-advance passes, and a few others that came to Mo’s mind — but maybe there was something that this filly would be able to get through a help office because of her mother’s status. 

“Can you get a cab pass? Have you tried talking to the office downtown that helps ponies like your mother?”

Marigold nodded, shuffling her hooves. 

“Taking a boat around the island might be good too.”

“Yes sir.”

“Most creatures just call me ‘Grandsire Mo’.”

Marigold looked at him, her golden eyes blank.

“Your mother is from Ponyville; do they call grandsires different names there? Grandfather? Grandad?” 

Marigold’s stare was still as blank of understanding as blind sunshine on the sea. “Sir, I was born in Canterlot.”

Molasses chuckled, only for the filly to keep stonewalling him. A no-nonsense kind like her might be good to have around, and with any luck, she would cheer right up talking to others her age some more. “Consider yourself hired, little miss. Now, let me show you around the store, where you'll find what ya need to stock, and the papers I'll need you to bring home to your mother.”
> Chapter 11: Jane Doe
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Excerpts seen here come from the early morning issue of The Manehattan Times during the discovery of the remains of the Original Jane Doe.]





As the city slept, another senseless attack happened. This is the eighth murder in the recent chain of attacks on this city. Small signs of a scuffle were heard shortly after midnight in the southernmost point of the Balikun-Shetland neighborhood, which alerted residents to investigate the source of the noise. Those that reportedly left their buildings to investigate found no sign of violence. When morning came, residents were not so lucky. Their investigations may have been insufficient if any had been done at all. The remains of a young doe were found not far from the area that was impacted by the reported disturbance last night, which residents say sounded much like somepony slipping on ice, so they did not have extreme urgency in locating the source.

Those who discovered the scene were quick to summon the EUP who quickly secured the scene. From the reports of media pegasi, the remains are a mess of butchery intersected with a most peculiar red crystal. The whole body was not observed to be intact, and one anonymous passerby wished to comment that the torso was "in ribbons" to one of the press-ponies flittering around the edges of the scene. The area is popular for transients to cross and the neighborhood not having a pure status means that crimes involving sex offenders are not unheard of. No further identification has been released, and the features and props located at the scene are currently being withheld from the public. 






[The following notes are from one of the top coroners working in Fort Barnacle at the time. These were her first impressions of the victim that became the Original Jane Doe.]





From the desk of Ebony Henbane, Head Coroner at Manehattan-Barnacle:

The victim is a doe no older than twenty-five years. One of her knees was dislocated prior to the attack upon her, and there are signs of an old break that meant she would have walked with a limp. Her purse matches an item reported stolen from a Bucklyn-import store a few months ago, though no identification was found within or from that report. A few cosmetics, stray bits, and fragments of tart cards were found within. All of the whores listed in those tart carts have been in contact with the EUP for their arrests or their bodies have been through Fort Barnacle for the usual: accident of drunkenness, starvation, cardiac arrest, suicide, deadly tonic, undetected cancers, falling into a sewer, abortion gone wrong, etc. 

Isotope spell-scans show that she was an immigrant and was originally from an area near the Capreolia-Ibexia border. The specifics are being withheld with the hopes that an Equestrian diplomatic team will be able to bring untarnished information to the officials of the area in hopes of making a positive identification. As I had nothing to do with this process, I can only sign my agreement with the foreign-reach-out attempt on the required forms. One must note the horrifying rarity that is an immigrant in the self-exploitation scene. This creature would not have spoken the first language of those in it, and the scene is one overflowing with sadists and species discrimination. There is a reason dead whores are almost always ponies. Dragon attacks might as well be more likely than non-pony sex offenders. Over ninety percent of those found to solicit sex offenders have been shown to have violent levels of hatred for non-pony races. Earth pony separatists are not entirely uncommon among the ranks of those convicted for such an offense. 

The creature has since become known as Jane Doe in her death. The public sees fit to apply a pony name to her, and without any other name by which we can refer to the deceased, I see no problem with applying a pony name to her. Perhaps something can come from this, a system of decent placeholders in a city that desperately needs them.

The cause of death from the mare (as I will henceforth be referring to her) is a mix of exsanguination and shock. The latter would have come from the pure force of the crystals tearing up the poor thing from the inside. Most of the garish things that were done to this poor pony were done postmortem, but her death was undoubtedly a nasty one. I can find little in the way of any marks on her remains suggesting she fought back against her attacker. It is almost certain that they were a customer, one who was brutal enough to be able to drag her away. With the stomach and ribcage destroyed, I cannot say what she might have last eaten. 

Her species was mixed between fallow deer and reindeer. This is something that would possibly increase the likelihood of her death being a hate crime, something I feel the EUP should waste no time investigating. With the blessings of Princess Celestia, we will likely be able to find her residence before she is 'evicted' in her absence alone by impatient landlords instead of being declared missing. This is no uncommon event, for the deaths of whores to bring illegal landlords to such a level of behavior. The seediest areas of the city might as well be turned inside out to look for where she lived. I did not find enough traces of anything to suggest she was living in sewers, only traveling through them occasionally. 

Any clues to be found could be the first thing to link these murders other than these damned blood crystals. There has yet to be any luck at all in providing the identity of such a fiend. 

Sincerely,

Ebony Henbane 






[The following text is an excerpt from the evening issue of The Manehattan Times in the week following the murder of the Original Jane Doe. What can be noted in the article are the journalistic biases that were a key identifier of pieces written during the Solar Millenium.]






In the aftermath of the recent doe murder near Bali-Shet, Manehattan is awash in outrage! Immigrant communities of deer have been protesting alleged discrimination at the hooves of ponies in squares across the city. These picketers claim that without protests, their fallen sister will not be identified. Many deer carry signs showing that they are not content in Equestrian land, and that they feel this is the mark of an uptick in violence towards their species. Many cite the failure of the peaceful protest for mixed-species accommodations in school at the City Square last month as an example of how they feel ponies have been mistreating them. There, non-violent protestors from an array of oddball species many Manehattenites had only heard of demanded things like usable desks, writing utensils, and species-inclusive health textbooks. All of these are radical departures from the Equestrian way, and the silent majority of Manehattan showed that they weren't the only ones to think so. Earth pony separatists showed up last month wielding bottles, stones, lanterns and similar objects to holler against the school protests.

Now, we see the so-called 'bigotry' has reversed. New Shirdal has completely closed its borders to all members of ponykind. The griffins have armed themselves with their peculiar, hostile brand of weapons that they call firearms. Guard patrols are being refused entry unless they're with anti-self-exploitation protests that have erupted all over the city. For those who pass the whims of the griffin brutes, they learn why New Shirdal is adamant about staying self-operating until further notice. Various griffins interviewed at the border say they'll tolerate no more crime, and that they will fight back against whores and murderers themselves. Until then, they wish to tolerate no outsiders. 

Mares Against Monsters, the radical social group, has taken the opportunity to be found within the chaos. They have made firm alliances with the griffins, lending them educational material, schoolbooks for their young, and care packages during this shutdown of the neighborhood. Various chapters of the organization have taken a stand all over the city. When asked why she participated in the protests, one mare replied: “If you would not let your neighbor set themselves on fire in their flat while they and everypony else are in the building, why in Princess Celestia’s name would you let them sell themselves and make the whole community suffer for it?”

This attitude is one that is prominent among all members of the organization, but also among the other communities that feel impacted by this murder. The zebra community in the city has withdrawn to have many meetings among themselves; these are broken only to send somepony out to any who is with the press to deliver art and letters to communicate alienation, grief, and supposed injustice being done to non-ponies. The deer community has voiced that they may start charging extra for ponies at their laundries until the murder is solved. Should this be put in motion, there is cause to believe the courts of the shire would see a non-discrimination case. 






[Two days later, The Manehattan Times had one of the decade's most iconic headlines drop.]






BREAKING NEWS: Princess Celestia Doubles Minimum Sentence for Self-Exploitation 


by Extra-Extra


This just in, Princess Celestia has offered an unprecedented edit to the laws of the nation. In response to the recent string of murders in Manehattan, she has doubled the minimum sentence for self-exploitation to fifty years. This means that Equestria will now be sentencing its offenders for such a crime in a similar manner to Germaneigh, Trotsia, and most other nations in the United Council of Civilized Kingdoms. The Princess has stated she is taking time to consider whether it will be applied retroactively to those who are already imprisoned or have recently been convicted of the crime. She also is considering rewards in instances of citizen's arrests against those caught doing self-exploitation[...]


> Act Two: From Tartarus (Without Love)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

[This letter was scrawled anonymously and left on the doorstep of the then-mayor of Manehattan's home overnight. Whether it was written by the Blood Mage of Manehattan is unknown. Nothing indicates the author of the letter beyond the paper's poor quality and that it did indeed come with an equine kidney. The Blood Mage did admit to writing letters to taunt those who worked toward her capture, but it is unknown which ones are the authentic pieces. She was known to tease in her interrogations. In the present day, it currently resides in the Canterlot Archives. For its vulgarity against Princess Celestia, it is illegal for any non-royalty to access or acknowledge its existence. Reprinting it and quoting it is strictly forbidden by Equestrian law.]



From Tartarus. 

Mayor-Stallion,

Sir

I send you half kidney I took from one whore. I preserved it for you. I licked the blood and bile from the other piece and threw it into the sea. I might send you the bloody knife and crystals that took it out if you wait a while longer.

Signed, 

Have your city catch me when they can, Mayor-Stallion. Spit on the goddess that allows you such power. 




[Various speculation at the time of the investigation suggests it is highly likely the letter is authentic. The syntax is equal to what the Blood Mage was capable and many of the later victims were missing even more organs. The murderer also confessed to various illegal cannibalistic crimes against the later ones that would have been slain around the time the letter was deposited.]
> Chapter 12: Grumbling Guard
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gold Shield was named for the badge her family wanted her to have tucked in her armor and over her heart. ‘Gold Shield’ was merely the translation of her name from her native Trotsian tongue to Equestrian. Her badge, while still gold, was not the kind to be tucked into the breast pocket of the same uniformed officers who patrolled her mountainous home nation. The small one pressed between many other nations to the south, chiefly Prance and Germaneigh. There, cobbled streets were clean, and the backdrop for the glorious Winter Dancing School in the capital city. Her white coat was traditional for many dancers and natives to her homeland. 

Here in Equestria, the spells on her armor washed her coat white anyway. Her mane was left in a standard blue variant, not unlike the one that could be found on Equestria’s flag. Gold was told many things about Equestria during her young life. That they loved and cared for immigrants was what lured her to its borders in the first place. Though she had not realized that the royal guard of Equestria was an armored legion of ponies-only, though the latter was an unspoken rule, as was the rest of the unconscious bias of the nation. 

That bias was not something she had expected to see in a nation so large, but it was not inherently malicious. Not in many of the places Gold had seen, and she was a simple mare from a much smaller city surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Other than the occasional goat or cow, Trotsia had no non-pony citizens. Bias was an understatement in Trotsia, Gold had always been aware she lived in what bordered on an unintended ethnostate. She moved away because she could not bear the sameness of it all, and knowing that those who wished to intentionally make it such a state. It was lamented by the king that had been wrongly dethroned in the last war; he wrote and spoke out against it as much as he was allowed. Gold’s family had not been the only one she had known who spoke in hushed whispers, urging her to get away, nor was she the only one in her community to leave. She was just the only one who traded one ailing nation, a republic groaning under the weight of prejudice, for another with the same ailments.

Sometimes, she found herself awake at night and tracing the pattern on her ceiling using only her tired eyes. Then, she would wonder if she should have skipped out on Equestria and stayed surrounded by everypony she knew in Trotsia. Gold would have never come if she had known that the equality of Equestria was but a more quietly humiliating and thicker slice of the sameness that she had endured back home. There was no casualness to it in Equestria. At least, none that she could feel. It all felt as mandatory as rainbows, blinding sunshine, and false smiles.

Mortal-led nations like Trotsia kept their armies in an age of bright button-up coats and bayonets for the most part. There were a few exceptions: exotic Saddle Arabia with its scimitar-wielding horse warriors and Mustainia’s multi-species siege camps. She had heard Prance and Germaneigh all had their own knightly troops on par with the solar goddess-princess and her armored legions. But did they feel the same erasure that came from being just another soldier instead of somepony’s comrade and sibling-in-arms, an esteemed officer of the law? 

Gold Shield honed her flare spells to perfection in the only magic academy Trotsia had. It was there that she heard ‘Goldener Schild’ said to her for the last time. She longed for it as much as she wished to see the vast landscapes of Equestria unfolding beneath an airship again. That was how she came to this country, and she did not expect to be in a city where there were no airships or even any real green spaces for her to treasure. Even the grass in the one great park in this city had never tasted fresh.

She thought back to the academy again, and how they had tried to spur her into a future in a nation that wasn’t crippled. 

Go to Equestria, they had urged her upon graduation. They have magic like there is air.

Gold Shield did not have the heart to write home and tell her family that she didn’t mind hearing her name in her new country’s tongue. It was the least of her ills. She also did not have the heart to tell them that just because magic was prevalent here did not mean it was applied well. They were unicorns like her living in the mountains generations of Schilds had called home, yet were ruled and outvoted by pegasus ponies in the lowlands that did not care for them. Yes, Gold Shield was a soldier under the command of divinity, but she could not bear writing that the work she did was peacetime police work. That was such a small thing and her parents expected her to be the golden foal, or else they would not have named her so. 

There was no disgrace in that; all nations required there to be numerous armed forces within one’s borders. What Gold Shield knew there was a disgrace in was that unicorn soldiers were treated like defective earth ponies, save for the higher unicorn officers. She was not permitted to utilize her special talents and she was outfitted identically to an earth pony’s measurements and expected to fight, act, and work in the exact same way as those who were inherently different in their capability from her. All the advanced techniques she had learned were water down the drain in this land. 

The only disgrace lay in those that Gold Shield had to be exposed to. Equestria was a generally progressive, diplomatic nation, especially in the southern continent where old military attitudes flourished like butterflies in spring gardens. They welcomed newcomers like Gold Shield, and major cities had diverse neighborhoods. She had expected to end up in a small town like Cape Clydesdale or a southern frontier outpost like Ponyville. Instead, Gold Shield was stationed in the Big Apple and made to clean up the degenerates that brought so much rottenness.

The city had been good, or so Gold was told. Once, long ago, before all the whores came. They are the bait for far more rotten things.

And it was those whores and perverts that Gold Shield had to clean up. Somepony had to, as the United Council of Civilized Kingdoms was clear in its treaty, and Equestria had made the heinous act of self-exploitation illegal long before any other known nation. There would be no monsters walking the streets, whether they were that common sort or they clung to the gilded lie of ‘courtesan’ and ‘call-pony’ in an attempt to hide their vileness. The degenerates who bought such evil were hunted down in slightly different ways. In the end, all who violated principles of dignity and Harmony found themselves under the golden horseshoes of Equestria’s EUP, which Gold now counted herself among. 

(Or, at least most of them did.)

That was why it was so surprising that one day, Gold Shield’s superior officer summoned her to see the leader of all Manehattan’s guards. He was an earth pony; of course the vast majority were all earth ponies, especially the superior officers. Gold Shield remembered reading that less than half a dozen cities in Equestria big enough to have superior officers stationed there had any that weren’t earth ponies — and that was counting Cloudsdale, which had to have a non-earth pony anyway. 

What was more of a surprise was that when she arrived at the spacious meeting room, the vast majority of ponies gathered around the commander were unicorns. She had always known that some of her coworkers were unicorns, but certainly not this many. As quickly as she could, Gold Shield slipped into the crowd and tried to blend in. There might be trouble at hoof. On went her helmet, and her mane of delicate pale gold with shining streaks disappeared. 


…


City Commander Valiant Heart breathed a sigh of relief as Gold Shield was ushered inside and found her place in the crowd. Once she had stepped into the room, her magic shut the door behind her. He took notice of her blinking and watched as the private slipped her helmet on, quickly blending in with the rest of the camouflaged unicorn guards. 

Valiant stood up a little straighter, his armor still cold against his coat. Comrade or not, he always felt that unicorns were best kept at a distance. Most of the time that was easy; they rarely filled the higher ranks of the guard that he spent the majority of his time among when he was on duty. Occasionally, one would find that the latest Captain of all guards was a unicorn, but that was a rarity. One couldn’t help but feel uneasy around them, knowing that with just a few simple flashes of light, your day could be ruined and the unnatural could be made into the norm. Who could be blamed for feeling wary of unicorns, knowing how tricky their magic hoodoo was? 

He cleared his throat deeply, letting his thoughts stray to the goddess of Canterlot. Princess Celestia was capable of summoning a booming Royal Canterlot Voice that enthralled all her subjects. If he could open with even half the power of his princess, this would all go smoothly.

“I know that every one of you can see what’s going on in this room. This is not a normal meeting and you all are not normal ponies. All your winged comrades are gone, and your regular ones are too. You have only me, and I expect nothing but the highest respect from all of you during this meeting. Our goddess herself is greatly distraught at the tragic violence that has broken out in our city. Any mere mortal would be at the point of tears, but in her perfection, she presses on. All of you who went to school here had classes in Equestrian morality. I know every single one of you remembers the Celestian Principles of Obedience, Kindness, Generosity, Optimism, Humility, Destiny, and Submission. I expect every one of you to exemplify them not just in how you treat me, or how you keep our goddess in mind, but in how you will conduct yourself as royal guards.”

“SIR! YES, SIR!” a room full of unicorns chanted back to him,

Valiant Heart nodded in approval, then sat himself at the desk waiting for him. He slipped his hooves out of the special armor of City Commanders and brought one forehoof to the other, cracking them. “Now, this is what I’m here to start with.”

There were multiple thick file folders on the desk. He scooped up one of them and flipped it open, grabbed a few papers, then stood up. The blackboard behind him was pristinely cleaned by the staff who kept every room of Fort Barnacle in top shape. It was wide and curved like the bottom of a horseshoe so that all who stood in the room could glimpse it. Valiant reached into a bin stuck to the blackboard where horseshoe magnets were waiting. With his mouth, he carefully affixed the papers to the board, then reached into another bin for a piece of red chalk. Every single guard immediately knew that it was time for connections to be made and watched as he drew circles around some papers and lines between the others before returning it.

“What we have here is a case like no other. In our age of modern marvels, every single one of you unicorns can no longer use your magic to escape identification. No longer are those without magic oppressed and able to only guess if a unicorn is behind the crime. No longer is our citizenry able to be victimized with only dependence on powerful unicorns’ limited insight into reading a crime scene to know if anything was done by magic. Generations of work have made us systems that can read into your kind more than hoofprints and teeth can be read. We have heaps of magical evidence from the scenes of these crimes. A unicorn lady by the name of Ebony Henbane is the Head Coroner at this establishment and she is baffled. Why is that?”

Every single unicorn in the room was silent. A few exchanged helpless looks with each other. More than a few were confused and pawing at the ground. Gold Shield had scrunched up her muzzle. 

“Sir, permission to speak?” Gold Shield asked.

Valiant Heart looked at her with vague disdain and ran a hoof over his buzzcut. “Permission granted.”

“Have we got any witness sightings yet?”

“No, ma’am. That we do not have. The closest we have to a sighting is this.” He tapped one of the papers with a forehoof. “Notes from Ebony Henbane about the scene of the sole stallion victim showed disturbed blood. Our killer was lying in it.”

“On their back or on their stomach?” somepony asked.

Valiant glared at the crowd. “On their back,” he clarified. “That was when they were getting the bits under the bed, we think. 

Gold Shield stared thoughtfully at the floor. “Permission to speak again, sir?”

“Granted,” grumbled Valiant, standing a little straighter. He rolled his withers and his armor rolled with him, catching the light. 

“Lying on the back would make it very difficult to get the bits, especially if there were saddlebags to levitate them into. The bits were likely grabbed at some other point. Lying on the stomach would possibly allow us to get an impression of a limb or something that might possibly hint at the physiology of our killer. The back conceals this. We might have a sign of ritualistic behavior here.”

“You are leaping to many conclusions there, Corporal.” Impatience that was hardly ever given to earth ponies and pegasi had crept into his tone. 

“Commander,” Gold Shield said quickly, squeezing into the front of the line, “I do not think our killer would have physically been able to cram bits into upside-down saddlebags. They must have gathered the bit some other way. If there was time to lie down, the killer maybe wasn’t in a hurry to leave, sir. Doesn’t anypony else agree?”

There were hesitant nods and murmurs from the other unicorns. 

“Corporal, this isn’t the most important detail in the whole damn—”

“Permission to speak again, sir?” Gold Shield replied, her gaze nervously flicking from the commander to the blackboard, then to her comrades. 

“This is the last time I’m letting you derail things,” Valiant said, giving a heavy sigh and tapping his hoof impatiently. He wasn’t even looking at Gold Shield. Instead, his hard gaze was trained and squinting at the files on the board.

“The file with the diagram of the approximate position of the killer lying down shows a way that would have been impossible for an adult unicorn. Just look at—”

“Hay biscuits and homefries! Sweet Celestia, what do you mean? The killer is a unicorn. That is unicorn-level complexities in magic. Ain’t no damn way a unicorn isn’t galloping about, creating all these crystals, and killing all these ponies.”

“—the way that the head is positioned,” Gold Shield finished meekly, dropping her gaze to the floor. Two unicorns on her left took steps away from the shorter mare as if they sensed the shame rolling off her.

The commander’s gaze was shaper than a knife and as trained on Gold Shield as the scope of a griffin’s hunting gun. “What about it?” His voice was low and angry. “I’m here to let you lot know you ought to be better at finding clues in these damn murders. We have a record number of unicorns here in this department compared to previous years. And yet, none of you can solve anything? It’s like I ought to pour the details down all your throats, and yet y’all’re supposed to know magic! Tell me, Gold, what’s so special about the head arrangement? How does that matter more than any of the important details that I have yet to get to due to your insubordination?”

Gold Shield’s expression was a mask of false calm as she stared quietly at the floor. 

“Go on,” came the bitter mocking tone of Valiant Heart.  “Speak, girl.”

“Sir…” Gold Shield began weakly, “the killer’s head is far too close to the bed. A full-grown unicorn would get stuck. D-Developmental surveys show that unicorns have specially evolved to find comfort in an array of unusual sitting positions as well as almost being universally prone to stillness in sleep. Even unicorns with ADHD are shown to have remarkably low rates of hyperactivity. We are inclined to any movement that would not hurt our horns. To lie on one’s back and use that position to look under the bed — or to tilt back the head at all — would have gotten her horn stuck. The way the illustration is suggesting that the head was held — sort of pushed back against the ground and upside down — would have gotten the horn stuck in the bed or the ground. How is this unicorn behavior?”

“How does that overrule any of the magic?” snapped Valiant Heart. “You can’t blame any other race for things like this.” 

“What do we know about the magical signature?” piped somepony else. 

“The spell-makeups are completely unlike anything from any creature the analysts have seen, but the signature is a pony and not qilin or any other damn creature,” came the almost rehearsed sound of Valiant Heart’s gruff voice. 

“That doesn’t really sound like a pony…” somepony muttered, “...our spell-makeups are essential to identifying magical illnesses, disabilities, and tying in species identification.”

The voice had been decidedly foreign enough that Valiant Heart snapped his attention to the disguised unicorn guards. “Which one of you said that?”

“It was I,” said a voice. “Staff Sergent Ziel Erfasst, sir. Germaneigh was not long to make something like your Equestrian Arcane Registry Base when your country traded with my homeland the workings of such complex systems. We found many secrets to reading spell-structures and what they can tell us about the magical arts.”

“I’m sure that many ponies would simply applaud that as a power of Germane engineering,” Commander Valiant Heart said tiredly, with an irritable hint to his tone. “But I’m not one to dish out praises so easily. When Equestria discovers those things, that’s when they’ll be damn relevant. Germaneigh and their tentative new ideas are wonderful, probably — but they have nothing to do with the crimes that I’ve been assigned. Now, if anypony will let me speak, I’ll get to the important details Princess Celestia herself wanted me to give to you lot of unicorns about solving this crime better—”

“Sir! Sir!” chirped one unicorn mare, who jumped up and down from her place in the back rows. “If the killer is a unicorn skilled in some genuinely prodigious magics, why does their tool-work and other basic acts come across so sloppy?” 

Valiant Heart’s face was close to purple with his newfound anger.

“Magical disability?” somepony suggested. 

Another unicorn chimed in: “This would be a severe one, and somehow it’s not documented—” 

“And disabilities in magic are registered with the ARB and other services,” replied another unicorn guard, nodding sagely.

“ENOUGH FROM ALL OF YOU! EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU NEEDS TO SHUT UP AND SHOW SOME OF THE PRINCIPLES HERE! OBEDIENCE, WHICH YOU ALL ARE SHIRKING! SUBMISSION, WHICH I DO NOT SEE HAPPENING! HUMILITY, WHICH NONE OF YOUR KIND KNOW HOW TO SHOW!” The nostrils of Valiant Sky were flared, and his booming voice sent every unicorn back into perfect dour obedience. It would not be the last time that racism worked its way into their orders or treatment.  “Conformity is a virtue. Our goddess has always said so. Now, you lot are going to listen to me review everything about the cases with you and the profile that is currently in place. Then, you are going to apply those to your guard work and labor even half as hard as the pegasi and earth pony troops of this city do in solving the case. I will leave you the contact information of Ebony Henbane if any of you want to flood that poor mare’s mail with your crazy theories. Got it? GOT IT?”

“Sir! Yes, sir!” chanted all of the unicorns, each wholly drained of enthusiasm for the progress they thought they were making. 

“Good,” hissed Valiant. “Now, as I was saying, the offender profile is that of a unicorn, but what we really need to review to see that is all the scenes…”


…




Dear Ebony Henbane,

May the gods find you well. I left off the title of ‘doctor’ because I admittedly do not know if coroners are doctors. I am writing to you after the City Commander Valiant Heart ordered all unicorns in the Manehattan EUP to listen to a meeting. Apparently, many in the city blame us for not doing enough with the crime-solving. Even civilians who have eagerly kept track of the papers and the evidence found are often blaming us and insisting we are not doing enough work. This city is not my home; I am from a little village in the Trotsian mountains that you would not know, so there is no sense in boring you with the name. I say this so that I might apologize in advance if my Equestrian is not very good.

There were some discoveries I felt were greatly overlooked at the meeting. All of them surrounded the idea that the attacker is a unicorn. I know that you are probably skeptical of any revision of this since you have done so much work in creating the profiles and reports we have to work with. I ask that you please read this letter all the way through, though. We may have discovered something important. It has to do with small discrepancies that I am not sure anypony would have noticed and do not blame you for looking over either. 

First and foremost: the diagram of the scene with the murdered stallion is what I wish to draw your attention to. Look at the positioning of the head. See how close it is to the bed?  The angle of the head to get that impression would have also involved leaning the head in a way that is sort of pushed back against the ground and upside-down. An adult unicorn would have gotten their horn stuck due to both the proximity and the position. Also, this puts the saddlebags upside-down too. Levitating bits into saddlebags in this position does not work; you end up having to levitate any bits put into the saddlebag in place so they do not spill out. It also does not create a very big space to efficiently levitate those bits into the bag, to begin with. This is all because we have clear evidence that the killer was on their back. 

Now, I am a unicorn. I know that if you work as a coroner, you must be a fellow unicorn. How hard we are to find in this city! I would like to point out that even if you are not familiar with it, unicorns are not likely to lie down this way. There is a lot of research, both foreign and domestic, that shows unicorns are innately prone to arrange themselves in ways that preserve their horn. This extends to both sitting and sleeping positions, as well as the drastically diminished rate of conventional (physical) hyperactivity and ability to sleep without moving that unicorns have. We do not have any reason to believe that the killer has shown this in some of the scenes discussed. 

Due to this, I propose that something entirely different was going on. I propose that the killer lying down wasn’t to obtain the bits and that they grabbed all of the ones they could at an unknown time after getting up. I believe that the behavior we witnessed was a ritualistic one, and in my best guess, it means that the killer was in no hurry to leave. They did not manage to take all of the bits and they even left some tools. Makeup that possibly belonged to them was found in the bathroom, and generally, if most unicorns know the spell, they cast a quick clean-up spell that makes things like that disappear — but traces of magic would then be visible. Maybe the killer was disturbed and fled sometime after they engaged in this ritual. 

However, this is not the only evidence that leads me or my fellow unicorn guards to believe we are dealing with something not added to the data we were all presented with. The inability to identify the species components in any of the individual spell’s makeup but the magical signature including pony components stands out as an unusual problem, especially because they were said to rule out other creatures. The tool-work is remarkably amateurish but we have no proof of a magical disability, which would, of course, lead to a known magical signature. 

There have been no witness sightings. Nopony reports anypony covered in blood — yes, I know it is likely being magicked away. No racially-motivated reports about unicorns in non-unicorn areas of the city are being invoked despite what the profile says. The killer operates in areas that are working to middle class and filled with mostly earth ponies, pegasi, or low-income immigrants who do not live in the main neighborhoods their kind are often forced into. The stores in this area receive many foreign goods and have access to many other parts of the city, including waterway travel, quite easily. This pony was able to look like they belonged at wharves, near row houses, by apartments, and even among non-pony immigrants. 

We know that they are deeply mentally disturbed as an individual. However, they manage not to operate in the daytime. Their life is probably a secret, either intentionally or because others have not realized what they are doing. There are many reasons that they likely operate at night, and I would like to propose one more: they are hiding something, not just that they are a killer, but something they are wearing. The blood imprints show they wear a cloak, one that is either layered or over layers of something else. Traveling cloaks like that are normally worn by outsiders to the city, after all, Manehattan wear is some of the most distinct in the world. I would expect the normal traveler's cloak to be swapped out at one of the thatched-roof inns of Bucklyn. Yet, we know that our killer is intimately familiar with this city — I suggest that they are even a native of it. 

Why would they wear something that could make them look out of place? Quite simply, I think it is because it serves a function for them. Why do they appear to go out of the way to dirty their clothes or possibly not take them off at times when it would suit them? I think it is either utility or fetishistic reasons. How hasn’t anypony reported them as abnormal? I think this is because they are in the early years of the onset of their sickness and manage to pass as normal very well. More than that, I think that despite how evil they must be, they have something that is helping them during the day, or something that prevents them from attacking. You noted in your reports that they act in a way that suggests physical confrontation does not really work for them, especially with the stallion. I noticed that in your final report. 

I think what you are dealing with is somepony who isn’t a unicorn and who has an artifact. This is why there is an abnormality in the magical makeup and why their aura is unknown. Their artifact helps them with a wide range of things, yet magic that is more natural for unicorns remains quite difficult for them. 

We have no positive evidence that the killer is a unicorn and some negative evidence that makes it fairly unlikely that they are. I think that this investigation has limited itself to racial stereotyping based on assumptions of how things usually are. Yes, most ponies who use magic in this way are unicorns. Yes, we have part of the magical results confirming that the killer is a pony. However, we do not have the elements that would confirm they are a unicorn. We have no single witness sighting or piece of bodily evidence other than the sexual traces that they have left on all of the female victims. I believe that this could explain the magical crystals found in all of the blood too. They might be the discharge or waste products from the artifact. 

In Equestrian history, I have found stories about a mare named Hydia Invidia. She was a unicorn in the earlier centuries of Equestria’s rule who found an artifact that looked as though ponies of any race could use it. From there, she was able to have her corruption and depravity made manifest. However, the artifact also helped her hide her corruption so that she appeared normal, until Princess Celestia defeated her. 

I do not know what the artifact would do. I technically do not know if the Blood Mage has one, but I would say that it is likely that they do, and that ‘Mage’ is a very inappropriate title indeed if they are not a unicorn. Without anypony having seen who the murderer is, we can have no way of guessing its limits or what specifically it helps the killer with. I do think that bringing more magical investigation into the case would help my superior officers. I know not the origin of any artifact, but I do wonder where it is that the killer gets the things used for their attacks. We assume that they have always been a murderer, when they may have started small, as many criminals do. Perhaps they have been a thief of objects before they were a thief of lives.

Sincerely,

Corporal Goldener Schild of the Manehattan EUP


> Chapter 13: Pretty Pattern's Predicament
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pretty Pattern had a fierce stomachache and a freshly sharpened axe leaning beside her night-side table. Only one of those things was good, and she still wasn’t sure if it was good enough. It was not that she was unable to afford a proper weapon, but even a simple sword was expensive. None of her kitchen knives were anything close to menacing, nor would they do her any good in a fight against a living, breathing monster. So, she had bought an ax. One that was weighty in her telekinesis and horribly sharp, like something both a lumberjack and a mercenary could use with ease. She had practiced swinging with it properly.

She had to, of course. Manehatten had become the capital of nightmares, for Patti could not recall the last time she opened the paper and saw something other than the dangers posed by murderers and whores. The years when she had moved here had faded, back when she was daisy fresh for her first year of university and still believed earth pony charm was real. Now the neighbors had plastic smiles and whispered about her being a ‘tricky stickhead’, ‘frou-frou magic fool’, and other far more awful things when they thought she couldn’t hear. 

Never in her life would Pretty Pattern have come to believe that ponies could say such things, and certainly not try to hide those kinds of words with smiles. She was taught that earth ponies were the industrious blessings of Equestria, whose character was vital, humble, and kind. To believe that they would hiss about her as ‘bit-hoarding waste’ or insist that she was espousing ‘typical unicorn demands’ and controlling the banks earth ponies claimed were robbing them would have gotten Patti branded as a racist in any other city. In Manehatten, Patti had come to know that this was what the sun-faring earth ponies of the concrete jungles thought about her race. 

All because she was a unicorn, too. It broke her heart that the city she was forced to call home had tried to make her feel inferior because of that which could not be altered. Gods knew that she would move if she could, especially with the rise of these bloody murders. The was a mare that she had fallen in love with — an earth pony, no less — that had long since dumped Patti and left her to mind her sewing shop on her own. Now her life’s ambitions weren’t to marry the sweetheart she had since her university days but to scrape together enough bits to leave the city that had brought the two mares together. Pretty Pattern no longer wanted the urban bustle she thought would invigorate her, for Manehatten was devoid of the chicness she had wanted, and it had taken years to realize that. Being a student had hidden so much from her. 

In the meantime, she had bought herself the axe. She bought it because while she knew she could always trust the Royal Guard, she could not trust them to be fast enough to save her from a monster. After much hemming and hawing, Pretty had invested in the only self-defense within her budget. Having it nearby had eased the paralyzing fear that had been transforming her weeks into never-ending dives into the fount of constant anxiety. With it, she knew that it was now quite possible she could render any who might wish to harm her naught but dragon-chow upon the floor.

The truth was, Patti hadn’t bought the axe out of fear of being slain by the Blood Mage. Not really. She knew full well to keep her muzzle in the papers, the Royal Guard releases, and in the wealth of research that the libraries had. The killer worked by night and targeted sex offenders in self-exploitation, with the occasional wayward soul. Pretty Pattern was no ghastly whore. She did not resemble one in the slightest, in looks or in manner. She was educated, without a cruel bone in her body, and free of perversions. None of her flaws were so great that they consumed her. She was quiet, gods-fearing, strove for kindness, employed, and was not out past dusk. She lived far enough away from the neighborhoods where these horrors were playing out. Her greatest wish was that there would be a sewing club in Manehatten that accepted unicorns instead of refusing them with those Celestia-mimicking smiles and honeyed words about why unicorns couldn’t join woven in every way that managed to avoid direct racism.

Pretty Pattern knew she had a likely chance of avoiding being butchered though, not because she was cocky but because she fell so far outside of the target victim of the Blood Mage.  She was sure to educate herself on that; it was how she had come to know there were more types of monsters than blood-crazed sadists cantering about the night. In doing all her research, her true fear had become all the more realized with every flip of a page. What she should fear most was not the diabolical butcher stalking the streets, but the desperate fiends of self-exploitation. 

That knowledge had chilled her to the bone, sitting in the pit of her stomach colder than iron could have been. Every branch of the libraries of Manehatten was stocked with resources informing ponies on all the ruin brought by self-exploitation, with hundreds of headlines, studies, and so much more cramming the shelves and archives. Mares Against Monsters chapters supplied large donations of information and the sapient monster division of S.M.I.L.E that focused on capturing criminals published weighty intelligence papers on the matter.

Patti was a mare close to thirty who was a teacup next to a well when it came to how she felt about her height. She still had all the fragile delicacy of a filly in slenderness and stature. She had never dabbled much with makeup, lending to an unshakeable look of girlishness. Her clothes were always bright, lovely things a mother would secure for a daughter’s birthday. Every bit of her looked like a teen filly. Her whisper of a voice even made her sound like one. She had librarians ask her for identification on every visit when she requested material deemed adult, as though one day she might suddenly be lying.

All of this made her the perfect potential victim for a prostitute.

It was Patti’s research that had damn near slammed this burden into her skull. When a pony was deluded into thinking self-exploitation was desirable, there was so much greed to account for. The number one culprits behind vanishing minors across the nation were not disgruntled family members, but the cruel hooves of streetwalkers snatching up foals to traffic for pocket bits. This was how they expanded their income and ‘selected’ their ‘successors’ for their awful crimes. That young victim would then be forced out when they were deemed too much of a nuisance.

After that, the research spoke where Pretty Pattern never could. Two paths emerged: the victim could go to the Royal Guard and see their abuser hunted down and done away with, or they could do the unthinkable: start up the cycle again.

Suffice it to say, there were enough former victims who engaged in the sadism of their once-captors and kept that cycle alive enough for it to find its way into scholarly studies. 

Poor Pretty Pattern was well-aware that despite the national rarity of these vanishings, she was the perfect victim for potential equine trafficking. There was little to stop a whore so desperate for a ‘successor’ once they got it in their head to get one. Somepony so unhinged would do anything they could to snatch her up if they really want to, long past all the moral restraints a civilized pony would have. If a slut wanted to slide into Pretty Pattern’s apartment and sabotage her, the only thing stopping them was windows, shutters, locks, and a door. 

All the ponies in the newspaper stories and survivor tales had no means to defend themselves except hooves and feathers. Unicorns with limited or weak magic like Patti had a hard time charging up teleportation and other spells if they were being assaulted, slipped a potion, or robbed of focus.

None of them had ever had an axe.

Now Pretty Pattern did, and she would be ready to take back the night, one swing at a time if any prostitute dares breach her home. She would not show mercy to the merciless, and any invaders would be disposed of properly. Her axe was for her friends, her neighbors, her city, and her nation as much as it was for herself.
> Chapter 14: Bloodhail
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Whenever the headlines were grim and boasting of Marigold's gruesome secrets, she would have to watch her mother frown and tut over her morning tea. Petunia Petals would hiss about the unfairness of the world, the supposed prejudice of the newspapers, and the abhorrent violence against what she called the proletariat and working ponies. Marigold’s mother and her weird friends always called them 'working' mares and stallions, but what prostitutes could be working on... well, that was what stumped Marigold. None of them ever had any jobs or secret art projects lying around whenever she poked through their dingy flats. Nopony was gathering them into a group to help depose the princess. But she could not tell her mother that the ponies she deemed to work were those that did none. 

At school, Marigold was taught that these kinds of ponies were a branch on the tree of something dark, unknown, and uncommon: the tree of sex offender types. That kind of offense was something her library books traditionally elaborated more on, and from the kind of perspective not aimed at a safety class for adolescents. This was back before Marigold took part in such things herself, when her school’s citizenship classes taught her about safety and what kind of ponies to avoid and the way they behaved. Most importantly, they were taught about how those things marked them apart from the herd, as antisocial and unethical. (Now there was a word Marigold Blueblood had little care for.) 

The princess-goddess thought that by talking about these things when ponies were an appropriate age, they could prevent themselves from being victims of unusual and tragic crimes. Luring was one such crime, where Marigold’s innocent peers would be tricked into going to awful places where horrid things would happen to them by ponies who pretended to be as sweet as the sun goddess herself. There was a wicked irony to that, for telling foals not to be kind to strangers in a country that thrives on being blindly kind to strangers made trying to drown fish look effective. It all made Marigold think: was kindness no different than a snail asking a starved crow if she needed food? 

Nopony had to guess what crows did to snails, or what kindness could do to ponies. 

Marigold certainly never did.


...


Long before Petunia Petals ever caught her, Marigold used to pray to the very sun goddess her mother taught her to despise. She had yet to feel fully wrenched from the herd, and ponies everywhere knew that praying to their Sweet Celestia was normal. Marigold might have been normal then. She would rise early every morning and slip under the heavy, sequin-embroidered damask curtains her mother demanded to be cleaned with nearly rabid ferocity. Then, she would watch the sunrise after rubbing the thick layer of dust from the single pane window in her room. 

Marigold imagined Canterlot as a city drenched with gold and other riches, upon which Princess Celestia danced and frolicked endlessly with the ponies that her mother called the downtrodden, the good earth ponies, the proletariat. She had yet to know what that last word meant, except that her mother sneered and spat it in the happiest way that one could spit Prancian words. It was one of the few words that made Petunia happy, and Marigold thought that made it good enough.

There were no pictures of Princess Celestia in Petunia's apartment, which was barren of all other representations of the goddess. That was more unusual than a hydra starring in a Bridleway play. Marigold already had picked up on that oddity, and thus she had no idea of what the goddess looked like aside from rain-drenched newspapers she liked to pick up off the street when her mother's eyes were not upon her. 

Princess Celestia always had the face of Petunia Petals and the eyes of Marigold herself when she spoke her prayers. 

Marigold would ask that there be no light brought to their enemies because she had yet to know all their names. Petunia had told Marigold that the unicorns were their enemy, the pegasus ponies were crooked, and many more names that were still nothing more than floods of syllables to the little one. She had yet to enter school, and her highest experience of language was her muttered prayers and attempting to pronounce the phrase 'bourgeois scum' that her mother hissed so often. 

More often than not, Marigold would pray for food in their cupboards between calls for Princess Celestia to burn the eyes out of anypony whoever looked upon bits with glee. Her mother brought everything but food back to their humble abode, the one from before Tartarus' Kitchen where the mists of memory would allow Marigold to recall how Petunia cursed the name Rhodium. These curses were shouted each time Petunia came cantering unsteadily through the doorway with moth-eaten gowns and once-fine hats still sticky with rubbage over her back. 

According to Petunia, those terrible rich ponies threw away the darndest things. Stiff, yellow lace petticoats nearly torn in two were as 'good as new' to Petunia, who had flaunted the finds around their cramped quarters in the days when she could still stand. 

Marigold wasn't old enough to hate the garbage her mother dragged home, or wise enough to know it had no value at all. She would happily join her mother, skipping around the pitiful excuse for a living room and trying not to faint from lightheadedness that came from no food. She cursed the mysterious rich ponies too, knowing that if her mother said they were the cause of all woes, that it was so. 

Her mother had no idea that she prayed to the same goddess that Petunia cursed, hailing images of Canterlot that would have made the mare of the house screech at her. Princess Celestia was a name meant for cursing, just like the Rhodium who was beyond Marigold's knowing. To Marigold, Rhodium was a thing said with the force of a breaking vase hurled against the wall by Petunia. All its sharper sounds were a shatter, everything edged with poison and anger. It was the same anger that drove Petunia to gallop to their mail slot every month, damn near foaming at the mouth as she ripped open the rumpled envelopes containing checks. Marigold learned later that these particular checks, the ones that came long before her mother’s eventful accident, also had Rhodium’s name upon them. Their arrival was the prime reason that Marigold’s mother kept her, for whoever had Marigold would receive those bits.

Those were the checks that Petunia used to bring home enough vases to fill every square inch of their flat. They were made for Marigold to clean, as the little filly soon learned, or to be subjected to Petunia's moods. The latter was so much more fragile than the ornaments. There were other things that Petunia brought home, little things like doilies and the unseen rent.

Rarely was it ever food. 

One day, Marigold did not join her mother in this hop-and-skip ritual as soon as Petunia would have liked. Her head was dizzy from no dinner the night before, from having to smell the broth of the soup that Petunia had slurped down, and Marigold's prayer's had been oh-so-fervent that morning. They were the kind that Marigold had been sure that Princess Celestia just had to hear. 

Instead, she found Petunia taking up the doorway, hulking over the child in the way a parent only could. Her face was as twisted as the lines of gold in the Neighponese kintsukuroi pottery that she always spoke of as 'inferior kirin trash' and held none of the light. 

One time in a market, Marigold had been drawn to the shine of kintsukuroi pottery before she learned those dirty foreigners had made it. Petunia had given the shop-keeper a vile look for daring to show such things to a filly Marigold's age. 

This look was worse than that. Petunia had certainly heard the name of Princess Celestia upon her daughter's tongue. 

The intensity of the disgust and betrayal in Petunia's eyes was enough that Marigold didn't even have to be struck to know what was wrong. (Not that Petunia had ever hit Marigold; it was just something Petunia said should happen to unicorn foals.) 

The shatter of a vase next to Marigold's head had been louder than any strike. 


...


Marigold found the mare trying to let her bleeding muzzle spill into a puddle. She was some haggard, whimpering thing whose eye shadow was as heavy as bruises under and around each eye. That told Marigold she was either a whore or didn't have the sense to not look like one before she even got to see the rest of the mare. This mare's dress was like a sack slung over bones; that was the state of her. There was a sharp welt upon her cheek that looked like it had been sliced open by somepony, and its ugly contents were dripping onto the cobblestones.

They could be seen in the moonlight long before what little light was still left in her eyes. Marigold's heart was skipping, but she refused to let herself linger so suspiciously and admire the sight. 

"Miss?" she called out, her voice a half-whisper oozing with faux concern that rivaled the real blood she saw. 

The mare, the prey, froze and coughed, a few extra fat drops sliding into that stagnant street-puddle with her new agitated. 

"Oh, Miss Street-Walker, do you need somepony to help you? Some coin to calm you?" Marigold cooed, knowing that mares like these responded to no ordinary citizens. She had done this enough.

When the night was through, she would have enough, at least until she found her next mare.

"Street-Walker, fear me not, I am only a mare who can pay more than all that blood is worth." Marigold's eyes struggled to contain their glow, and the metal under the winding layers of her scarf was growing hot enough to scald. It knew the same anger that came from concealment and containment that plagued its user. 

The mare stopped and listened, her shivering easing as the feel of the cold slipped from her mind. 

Just listen to me like you have a choice.

Marigold stepped under the dim light of the street-lamp, letting her conjured cloth-of-gold peasant's dress catch the oily sheen. "I can keep you from any guard that might want to see you behind bars. What trouble is one more welt?" Marigold snorted airly, tapping a forehoof to the net of pearls keeping the bun her mane was pulled into intact. 

Marigold hummed a few breathy notes as she fished around into her sleek pair of magic-made saddlebags, and from their pearl-white depths, she fished out a coin-purse ready to burst with very real bits. Why, the gold sheen of the coins was nearly ready to shine through the thin, worn fabric.  

The Alicorn Amulet wasn't needed to make the mare nod; she let Marigold approach her like a puppy permits anypony to give it a bone, unaware that not all ponies were offering pats and care. 

All Marigold could do was offer her sweetest, most Celestial smile as the wavering street-light lit her up like the goddess she wasn't. Then, she took one step closer to the call of decadence that sent her gliding with every step. She focused on the pulse that hammered at the center of her skull, where she could feel the Alicorn Amulet's power flowing throughout her body and let it obey the pull of her desires. It was like magic, unicorn magic, so thick in the air. Everything buzzed with something neither Marigold nor anypony else could see or know that helped her hold that mare at the other side of the street, keeping her so completely and utterly enthralled...

...and it was because her prey wanted to be; bits just had that effect. It was not that Marigold needed to resort to such tricks this time, not if it were just a normal approach. She just didn't want to be normal this night, not when the glow of her eyes was not worth corking and she had one last bit of flair to add. Around her leg was a thin sheen of ruby light that fell away to show a gentlemare's evening glove crawling high up her leg, all pulled from nothing. 

In order to touch that which was so below her, she could at least try and keep clean.

Marigold gripped the mare's frail forehoof in her own, clutching it with all the tightness her magic could let her. "This won't be so bad, will it?"

Her attempt at a coy whisper fell on deaf ears and glazed eyes as she pressed the coin-purse right into the other, near-limp forehoof of the mare. The mare smiled, and the gesture revealed teeth that would have been lucky to be yellow. Her eyes were lit with a soft, dim ruby to mirror Marigold's own rich light.

Now that they were so close, Marigold could see her prey's lank, greasy mane hanging in sloppily chopped chunks around her face. Her muzzle was indeed scraped and ugly, as ugly as the horn poking through the rat's nest of mane and standing out against the dull plastering of makeup. Eventually, one's eyes had to straw from the ugly sight, and Marigold's gaze turned to the equally dull apartment block behind them. It stood low and squat in the inky night, all the taller buildings casting their shadows upon the inferior building. This was a new place, for Marigold never went to the same place twice, but it barely looked different from the other places Marigold had haunted with her lovely, bloody works. 

Perhaps I ought to do something new, Marigold thought, letting the unfinished hook tantalize her.

She gave each end of the streets a coy look, knowing they would be empty, and centered her stare back on the magic-dumbed mare's horn. Her own smiler, so much wider and whiter was not enough to brighten the night, but she let it grow anyway. 

Yes, tonight would be a fun night.


...


The exact moment young Marigold Blueblood let the last word of her prayer leave her lips, Princess Celestia smiled brightly. The first warm touch of her morning tea met her lips and the fatty butter-soaked flavor of a fluffy breakfast roll followed. A stack of cushions propped up her prodigiously fat rump, and she basked cheerily in her own light, with her pale pretty mane as bright and pretty as the glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice that had been prepared for her. The balcony was alive with the beauty of all the flowers that she had cultivated that spring and in their fragrant scents brought flocks of butterflies to her divine presence. 

Sitting next to her in a much more diminutive chair of elegantly curled metal was a far plainer stallion. The unicorn had yet to don his customary spectacles and ruff. Still, he was already scribbling away while the princess next to him twittered of all he half-listened to — and, oh, how he always nodded and did so — while she continued to indulge in her sumptuous breakfast. When she had finished, he pretended he had been aware of her every move, and had mastered a look and laugh to accompany these pre-coffee chats. After all, he would never get his hoof on the first few gallons. Such was the appetite of the princess goddess; everything was as big and portly as her figure would suggest. She was no morning pony, and thus all this chit-chat needed to be fueled by enough coffee to nearly overflow a drinking trough. His share would come later.

The exact tone of Princess Celestia suggested that she had finished recounting something she found funny, and the flutter of her forehooves told him he thought true. Inkwell Inquiry could only chuckle before tilting his muzzle upward to receive his lover's kiss, savoring the affection of the goddess who could have had any stallion in the castle to be her next mortal indulgence. 

She chose him, and he continued to do all he could to please her, just as every stallion before him had. 

In far-off Manehattan, a vase was hurled at a wall with enough force to force a filly into frozen fear far beyond tears. 

Princess Celestia, the great and everlasting sun goddess, had heard nothing at all.


...


The foulest squelch did not leave the boundaries of the alley. Dawn was still hours away, and midnight had been laid to rest. Marigold Blueblood had left the dim halls of another dreary apartment building like her hoof steps were lifted by breezies. Now, she lugged around blood-drenched saddlebags that were loaded with as much of a mare that she couldn't hold within her magic or under the dark fabric of her cloak. Eventually, the dark grip of the city spilled out and Marigold had to gasp for breath. The world was open, but the hour obscured that. Instead, the sudden chilly wind from the tar-black night struck Marigold's face, grabbing at her hood and rustling a few locks of her mane. 

She let out a quiet hum; her hooves dug into the comparable softness of wood underhoof. Concrete was more common to trot on than anything else in Manehattan. The gritty texture of sand upon the wood was nearly numb to Marigold, for she had grown used to dead cobbles and blander things. Petunia insisted that true earth ponies didn't need to get horseshoes, and while it was somewhat true that the hooves of earth ponies were the most resilient, the distant aches gave her enough of a message. Marigold would be lucky to be walking right by the time her mane started to go gray, and jumping pole-fences in gym class hurt each time her hooves touched down. 

But tonight she didn't have to worry anymore. There was so much more she could wash away. 

There was a giddiness to Marigold's gait as she trotted down the boardwalk. She sighed in relief as she scrambled over the sagging, broken boards that marked off the edge, keeping the position of her cloak purposeful and careful. There were enough deserted beaches around the shores of Manehattan Island to make a pony's heart sing sometimes, and Marigold looked up at the sky, wondering what it would look like if she could see the stars. All the ponies in the storybooks she used to have could see them, but they were as real to Marigold as the thought of Princess Celestia coming over for tea. 

No words came to Marigold's mind; she had no songs to sing because there were none to know. She loathed the Equestrian anthem and cheers in schools for holidays, history, and the birthdays of peers. Her mother only knew poorly translated Sibearian propaganda songs that had been butchered by too many earth pony separatists to be anything more than gibberish just coherent enough to end up on the Solar Index. 

The dampness growing under Marigold's aching hooves was not the wetness of blood. The overpowering smell of salt was not needed to tell her that.

Sighing, Marigold let her magic well up again. Her eyes could flood with all the red she needed now that she was alone. Her off-key humming sprang to life again as she pulled a single leg from under her coat. The muscles attaching the skinny limb to the torso had been hacked away with purposeful recklessness to give the flesh a ragged, rough-hewn look that was inevitable from slicing things with blood crystals. The mess of it was a cornucopia of exposed bone and still-damp flesh, so hypnotizing and beyond the appearance of mere meat, like what one would find if they were unfortunate enough to trot by a greasy griffon's shop. 

It was no surprise that she reached out to touch it, smoothing her hoof across the torn muscle and wet, fatty feel of blood-drenched flesh. Really, 'skin' was so tame a word without the macabre charge that came with flesh. The sensation sent pleased shivers down Marigold's spine, and her tired posture stiffened with enthrallment.

"Oh, you'll just be delighted with what we're going to do," she murmured. There were not even any seagulls to offer their replies, and this part of the islands was too lonely and cold for any lighthouses to be present. 

Marigold was left to keep herself busy, and she finally let every gruesome stowaway leave the folds of her cloak. Out fell two more legs. Tumbling onto the sand were half-a-dozen hacked-up joints and other bits, all leaving their dark red touch upon the obscured parts of Marigold. It was what she wanted to happen after smuggling remains so close to her own skin so that she could be thrilled by the way she grew hotter in their presence. Or, more likely, the street-mare's body was just becoming so cold. 

Her hooves were bloody when she threw the leg to the sand, and only then did Marigold dump out the contents of her saddlebags. The rest of the mare tumbled onto the beach roughly, the sand already red and damp from the intermingling of water and blood. The treatment of the parts themselves was deliberately barbaric, all done with a nastier spirit than a foal slamming blocks together. 

Only one thing — because yes, the mare was now a thing — remained in those ruined saddlebags. Marigold let the light of her magic cloud her sight and gritted her teeth. The force needed to concentrate without the sense she relied upon most — her precious sight — made acts that those pompous, privileged unicorns took for granted that much harder. 

In the end, she still managed to pull the head out from the cloth confines. It had not even been wrapped up in rags. All the teeth had been kicked out carelessly with a few bucks and the majority of blood in Marigold's saddlebags had come from the ugly sight. Tangled locks of mane had been cut off crookedly postmortem. Being held aloft in Marigold's magic meant that the stub of bone where the spine had been so cruelly pulverized was easily seen. 

"Now, if only there were somewhere to keep you..." Marigold's words trailed off in a short, breathy gasp when she caught the solid, upward shadow of the broken fence she had crossed. That could only mean one thing. 

Without any further attempt at care, Marigold forced her magic to be the strongest surge she could manage. The aura was irregular in how the strength of it pulsed with varying intensity. She forced the matted, severed head on a lone fencepost, twisting the nasty piece on with all the force she could manage until she knew it was stuck fast.

The rest she left scattered for the sea to claim.


...


When Princess Celestia brought morning to the world, it was a matter of simple routine for her. Magic unfathomable to mortals was made for art on a cosmic scale, but she kept things to motions as though they were merely routine. After the sun was high, she could turn away from the sky and head back into the castle from her balcony upon Mount Canterhorn. A smile graced her features, still a pale shade of her grace in a properly caffeinated state. She did not think of a filly who had once prayed to her because she had never known that this filly prayed to her, and the last time she had seen Marigold was when the filly was a babe in her mother's hooves. 

It would be hours before the sun goddess would be informed that there was another murder in Manehattan and that the head of the latest victim was fast on a pike in a most ghastly display. 

And the remnants of the face had been angled perfectly to view her dawn.