I plodded into the suite with heavy hooves and droopy wings. There was no sign of Diamond or a pitcher of water, meaning I had arrived before her. With no better ideas in mind, I decided to simply flop onto my bed.
Diamond showed up less than five minutes after I did. “Oh, you beat me.”
“Yeah, doesn’t feel like it,” I lazily responded. “Rainbow makes it look easy. It isn’t. Imagine holding your forelegs up for a few hours.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Diamond sit on the floor and do just that. She managed it for a little while before her forehooves went back to the ground. “Okay, not easy.”
“Now multiply that by, like, at least a hundred on your sides.”
“Ouch.” She looked around for a bit. “Do you want me to have dinner brought up here?”
I gave it some thought. “You know what, that sounds good. Just get me a good salad. I want extra pepper pieces for some reason. And that pitcher of water.”
After lunch the next day, I went back to the artificers. “Any progress on the alicorn sword?”
“We’ve got a possible schematic that shows promise,” Gearbox reported as he pointed to a diagram, one among many. “A power source and a logic command each for the horn, wing, and horseshoe. Activation transfers power and effects from the gems to the core of the blade, and pressing the trigger on the handle adds another burst of power before discharging it as an aura around the blade with a brief duration, probably no more than five seconds.”
“All theoretical, of course.” I looked over the design some more. “Do we have a prototype layout?”
“Just finishing it up!” Sapphire reported.
I went with Gearbox over to the layout. It was just conduits, gems, and buttons, but it lined up with the diagram perfectly. “May I?”
“You may, Princess,” Gearbox obliged. “These gems only have low level light enchantments in them, as this is just a proof of concept experiment.”
I pressed the button labeled ‘horn’ first, and saw the blade gem light up a bit. The one labeled ‘wing’ did the same and added more light. The horseshoe button did the same thing. Pressing the trigger made the blade gem give off a brighter glow around it for a few seconds before it dimmed. “Well, that’s promising. I wonder. . .” I rapidly hit the buttons and built up more light in the gem before discharging it. Holding down a button also added more power than just pressing it. “Okay, that all works. Can we transfer other effects?”
“I’ve got some sound gems,” one stallion said as he came up with three gems in his magic. I allowed him to swap out the gems and repeated the experiment.
The gems had the sounds of a spell blast, a wing flap, and a hard impact. The more the effects were stacked, the louder the sound was when discharged. “Alright, I’m liking this. This is good. Now we just need to get this setup in the sword and replace the effects with different combat ones.”
“We’ll have to reforge the hilt to make room for all of the new parts, but it can be done,” Gearbox assured.
“I’ll help.” With a goal in mind, I joined the artificers as we got to work.
“So, what do you have me out here for?” Diamond asked as we walked through a light forest just northeast of Canterlot Mountain. It was sometimes used as a training area for the royal guards, so getting access and permission was as easy as asking Aunt Celestia.
“Some tests,” I said before turning to the artificers behind us. “Gearbox, my sword, please.”
“Coming up!” Gearbox opened a case and levitated the alicorn sword over to me. It had been reworked with the new setup and given a shining finish. Through some spellcraft that was incredibly advanced, the gems had some of my own magic in them to further enhance the combat spells.
I took the gleaming blade and walked over to a tree. A few casual swings sliced through some of the thinner branches with ease. A spin of the horn, a pull of the wing, and a press of the horseshoe had the core of the blade glowing. The cutting and slashing power of the blade did not change. Pressing the trigger in the handle sent the glow to the edge of the blade, and for about five seconds, I was cutting thicker branches with ease.
With the initial success, I decided that the tree had not only become part of the Blueblood family, but had also insulted my mom, slapped my dad, tossed Skyla’s dinner on the floor, and kicked three puppies whose only crime was excessive cuteness, with the promise of going after the kitten accomplices next. For its imagined offenses, I double charged the sword and activated it. The glow around the blade was wider and longer, letting me slice the trunk with one slash.
In my fervor, I forgot about a little thing called gravity. The angle of the cut made the top part of the tree slowly start falling my way, and I was quick to run away with the sword. I felt the crash behind me, the top of the tree landing only inches from my tail. “Okay, that’s enough experimenting with the sword,” I decided as I caught my breath. “Gearbox, get the next thing out.”
Gearbox brought the gravity gauntlet, version 2E, over to me before taking the alicorn sword back. The second draft of the equine model consisted of two pieces. The right foreleg piece had the controls and all the fun stuff, with an extra secure locking mechanism on the bolt. The left foreleg piece was a fairly boring hunk of metal, but had the important roles of unlocking the bolt for mode changes and balancing out the inch of elevation that came with the gravity gauntlet.
Putting the new gravity gauntlets on was pretty easy, and getting used to walking with them on was slightly less easy, but still pretty easy. “I’ll test the pull function first,” I announced as I moved to the side of the felled tree, staying a distance away from it for the test. Adjusting the bolt was a bit awkward by hoof, but it did the job. I held out my right forehoof, activated the gauntlet, and the tree flew right at me.
It was then that I learned that the pull function had no limiter to stop incoming objects, and the tree smashed into me, sending me flying onto my back. “Pull needs fine user control or some way to stop things,” I said. “Addendum: Ow.”
“Noted, Princess,” Gearbox reported. “Do you require healing?”
“Maybe later.” I got back to my hooves and changed the gauntlet’s function to Lift. “I’m going to try lifting it and flying.”
“I’m moving back!” Diamond called out before scurrying backwards, followed by all the artificers, who quickly put up a shield as well. “Go for it, Inova!”
I made sure to shake my left forehoof at everypony as I shouted “Cowards!” at them. They laughed and I chuckled as well.
When I approached the tree, I chose to insult it out loud. “Your mother was a gerbil and your father was raised by skunks!” I pointed my right forehoof at the tree and activated the gauntlet, picking it up with ease. While it was off the ground, I opened my wings and awkwardly took off backwards. The tree came with me, but as soon as my hooves left the ground, there was more force pulling on my right foreleg. It was enough to notice, feel, and throw me off enough to make me land. “Take two!” Knowing what to expect, I made another attempt and got into the air with the tree weighing me down by its size more than its weight. I started hovering, and after checking that the artificers and Diamond were watching, began slowly moving the tree around. It went smoothly, and I sped up my swings.
One swing had too much force in it, and I soon found myself screaming and spinning with the tree through the air for a few long seconds. The tree and my spinning came to a sudden halt, soon followed by my screaming. I was hanging from the tree by the gravity gauntlet. “Note to self: more flight lessons,” I woozily said as I tried to get undizzy.
“Are you okay, Princess?” One of the artificers called out. Every unicorn’s horn was lit up, the shield was gone, and the multicolor glow around the tree told me everything I needed to know.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” I looked down and saw the ground below me. “Did I spin upwards?”
“Yes! Probably because of your pegasus magic!”
While the explanation made almost no sense, it was the easiest one immediately available, so I simply accepted it. The fact that I spun upwards made even less sense.
Part of me wanted to cling to the tree for dear life, and it was difficult to fight it, but after a few seconds of internal conflict, I let go and spread my wings to glide down to everypony else. Once I was there, the tree was released. The crunching sound it made on impact with the ground was quite satisfactory.
“Can I try the bike?” Diamond eagerly asked.
Gearbox deferred to me. “Princess?”
I glanced at the modified bicycle that we’d brought along. We’d used bits and pieces from multiple schematics my classmates had let me have to make the prototype vehicle. “Give her a rundown on it.” As that was happening, I went over to the pulverized tree and set the gravity gauntlet to shockwave mode. Opting for the safe approach, I put up a shield between me and the tree. An upward test of the shockwave confirmed what I suspected: holding the activation mechanism did not release a constant or multiple shockwaves. One activation, one shockwave.
Before I could punch the tree, I heard the bike start up. I promptly leapt upwards and left the tree in place so I could keep an eye on Diamond. She started zipping around the area and I heard her laughing as she went around.
I landed back among the artificers. “You said it’s a three speed bike?”
“Low, medium, and high speed,” Gearbox reported. “She’s on low speed right now.”
“And it’s that fast? That’s faster than she can run already.”
“We never tested how fast it could actually go. We don’t have a way to measure that in the lab.”
I immediately started thinking of some way to do that. It would take a lot of math to figure out the gear ratios needed, but it could theoretically be done.
A yelp and a splash drew me out of my scheming. In the direction it came from, I saw the bike against a log, but no Diamond. I rushed over and saw Diamond, wet and muddy on one side, stepping out of a shallow creek. “You okay?”
“Fine, fine, I’m okay,” Diamond said. “I think I’m done testing things for the day.”
“That sounds good. Gearbox!”
“Yes, Princess Inova?” Gearbox asked.
“Please take the bike back with everypony else. I’ll take the sword and gauntlet and head back to the suite. And in case we don’t do anything else, it’s been fun working with you and your team.”
“Thank you, Princess. The pleasure was ours.” He levitated the sword in its case to me, and once I took it in my magic, he turned to his team to get to work on the bike.
While the artificers were doing their thing, I began the walk back with Diamond.
To our misfortune, we encountered one of the much less savory Canterlot nobles. “What is that filthy earth pony doing here in Canterlot Castle?”
I did my best, per Aunt Celestia’s request, to stay calm since there were two unicorn colts with her. “Diamond is a friend of mine, Priscilla. Any slights you level against her will also be a slight against me. Choose your words wisely.”
That got her to be quiet for a moment. “Well at least she could have cleaned up a bit better. I can see dirt in her coat, and she’s all wet. How in Celestia’s name could she have been allowed in like that?”
“I rinsed her off before we came in.”
Priscilla looked shocked, as did her colts. “A Princess washing a filthy earth pony? Truly, times must be terrible if you’ve fallen to such an act.”
I really wanted to tell her where she could shove her opinion for directly slighting both Diamond and me. I wanted to build something new just so she could be the one to test it out. The idea of paying Applejack to work her extra hard crossed my mind. Instead, I took a calming breath and reminded myself of just who outranked who. “Kindness is nothing to be ashamed of. Now, if you’ll pardon us, we have somewhere to be.”
Priscilla looked away and held her snout up in disgust as she walked away. Her colts did the same.
“Inova, why did it feel like she wanted me dead?” Diamond asked as we watched the trio turn a corner and go out of sight.
“Priscilla Blueblood, or just Prissy, is a raging unicorn supremacist, a lot like the rest of the Bluebloods,” I explained as we resumed our walk to the suite. “The rest of the nobility, aside from the few good ones, also tend to lean that way, but are much better about hiding it.”
“Why?”
“I wish I knew, Diamond.”