Libraries are weird. Terabytes of information locked away in ink and wood pulp requiring multiple processes to mine for data. Maybe it’s because I was born yesterday, but that struck me as highly inefficient. Twilight however clearly finds genuine enjoyment from the process of deciphering the data held in physical texts if the excited bobbing and weaving she does while reading is any indication. Unfortunately for me, she considers me her gopher for gathering ALL the books and articles that have been published since she was last in the city.
What’s worse, I actually didn’t have anything better to do. I’d already put in orders for my weapons, armor, and basic jumpship and now had nothing to do but wait.
“I’m so borrred." I lamented from my prone position on the bench that ran along the table Twilight was using to hold all her books while she read.
“Then read to me.”
I twitched in surprise as a slim hardcover slapped down inches from my muzzle. Propping myself up on one arm I turned to look at the speaker. A juvenile pony, a grey unicorn filly with her white mane held back by a ruby lace bow was watching me expectantly with milky white eyes.
“Yes, I’m blind. I’m using a special spell that creates an image in my head based on the magic around me. It only gives shapes, not color, so I can’t read. No, I don’t want new eyes, or mechanical ones.” The filly rattled off quickly before I could even ask.
“Well, that’s most of my questions.” I chuckled before counting off on my fingers, “What’s your name? What’s with the triangle with eye on your flank? And would you like a description of the pictures?”
“My name is Silver Lining, the all seeing eye is my cutiemark, and only bother to describe them if there isn’t enough context.” Silver Lining replied with a smile as she took a seat on the ground in front of me.
“Okay then.” I said as I turned the book over. “‘The Lonely Princess’ by Sunny Skies.”
~
Long, long ago, there was a kingdom of ponies ruled by a kind queen and her two daughters. Under their rule the kingdom was safe and prosperous.
The older daughter, whose beauty was like fields of barley under the noonday sun, cared for her ponies by making the ponies and crops grow strong and plentiful. Thanks to her, the little ponies bellies were never hungry and their bodies were strong. The younger sister was a mighty warrior whose armor shone like the sea under a brilliant moon. She defended her subjects, a stalwart shield against the monsters that roamed the darkness beyond the boundaries of the kingdom. And so it was that the kingdom was made safe and prosperous, but all was not well.
The ponies loved the older sister and sang her praises every day, because she was a princess of feasting and sunshine. The younger sister was ignored, because hers was a world of pain and bloodshed, and so she was alone.
One day, a traveler in the dark, a wicked and cunning centaur wizard, found the young princess crying in the night. Seeing an opportunity, the wizard approached the princess, “What troubles you, child? Why do you cry alone in this dark place?”
“My ponies do not love me like my sister, because I do not bring them gifts.” The princess replied with a sniffle. “And so I am alone.”
The wizard nodded in understanding and the centaur extended a hand as he offered, “Take my hand. Bind yourself to me and I will give you the power to make friends of your very own.”
The princess agreed and gave up her will for the trickster’s gift. With her new dark power the princess summoned an army of monsters to be her friends and she stood at the traveler’s side as he marched on her mother’s kingdom.
The dark princess’ army blazed a path of destruction across the lands she had defended for so long. She would have surely destroyed it all if her mother had not descended from her throne with fire and thunder. For all the power the princess had gained from the traveler, her mother was stronger still.
And so a mother struck down her daughter, her army, and the master she now served. Stripped of his power and gravely wounded the wizard fled, abandoning the princess before the wrath of the Queen. However the Queen could not bring herself to kill her daughter, no matter how thoroughly she had been twisted by the dark power she now held. So the princess also escaped, promising to return once she had recovered and rebuilt her army.
Thus the kingdom was saved, but the cost was too great: the queen was dead. Only the elder princess remained to rebuild and protect her little ponies, and so she did. All the while she kept her eyes on the horizon, waiting for the day when her sister would return to bring a night without a dawn.
~
I turned the page, hoping for some sort of resolution or happy ending, but all I found was blank pages. “Um, the end?”
“Really? That’s it?!”
Silver Lining and I looked up to find Twilight floating over my shoulder. When neither one of us answered she rolled her oculus and growled, “That was awful! Children’s books are supposed to inspire, edify, or teach. This did none of that!”
“Well, I liked it.” Silver Lining protested quietly as she took the book from my hand with her magic.
Twilight stared at the filly in a silence that felt like a mix of disbelief and judgment. The little spark could be hard to read sometimes. Finally I asked, “Really?”
Silver Lining nodded emphatically. “It was like one of Grim and Brim’s fairy tales. Though it did end kinda abruptly. Thank you for reading to me mister dracon.”
I watched as Silver Lining carried the book to the front counter and placed it in the reshelving station where it would await the attentions of one of the librarians who were already burdened with shelving the several piles of texts from Twilight’s data binge. As she trotted out of the library I tapped my chin. “I’ve got a lot of information about organics. Mostly regarding the sort of damage they can endure and where to aim if you are trying to induce critical system failures. You know, death. I know all about how to end living things, but nothing about how to make them or how they transition from early forms into adult stages. Twilight, how do I make a foal?”
After several long seconds I turned to look at Twilight who was staring at me through a half shuttered oculus. Her projections turned slowly as she stared as though she were thinking really hard about something. “Did you hear me? I asked, how are organics made?”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Um, no, I’m not.” I pointed at an earth pony stallion who was searching through a row of books about programmable matter. “I can tell you that he is walking on four toes right now, that he has at his disposal an array of strength boosting magic in addition to a high probability of agricultural and geological influence, he also has a seemingly extraneous appendage that is both highly vascular in nature and relatively exposed. What I can’t tell you about is his purpose, his forge of origin, or even how his parts were knit together when he was made.”
Twilight continued to stare at me with that squinty eyed look. “How can your info be that spotty?” I merely shrugged and Twilight rolled her oculus before sighing and saying, “You are aware that ponies are split into male and female, correct.”
I nodded slowly, there were a few structural differences between male and female, such as the appendage I had just mentioned, as well as a partial dichotomy of behavioral patterns that I had noticed, though the later seemed far from a hard and fast rule.
“Well, during coitus, the male donates sperm containing a portion of his genetic material to combine with the female’s egg…” Twilight trailed off as I stared at her, “What?”
“You lost me at coitus, and sperm, and the rest mostly went over my head as well.”
“The male and female share a physical interface during which the female downloads a portion of the hardware and software specs of the male to be combined with a portion of her own specs. These combined specs become a living thing that develops over the course of around eleven months in the female’s internal bioforge, and that is where foals come from!” Twilight finished with an exasperated hiss of static.
“Organics are weird.” I said as I tapped my chin thoughtfully before adding, “But the idea of a piece of you walking around out there in the world is pretty cool. We should try it sometime.”
“What?! No!” Twilight exclaimed and looked like she was about to burst into a tirade when she was interrupted by a voice over the intercom calling my name.
“Guardian Spike, please retrieve your gear from the armory and report to the Vanguard command chamber.”
“Finally!” I hissed as I leapt to my feet and piled Twilight’s texts in my arms. Dumping the material in the reshelving cart I practically ran out of the library. It looked like I was finally going to be doing guardian stuff!
~
As I walked through the halls towards my destination I casually practiced drawing and holstering my unloaded hand cannon while twirling it in my hand. The blocky weapon looked unwieldy; heck, it probably would make a decent club if I needed it to, but it promised to put down most foes at short range with one or two well placed shots. I was just starting to get the hang of drawing and holstering in style when I arrived at my destination.
The Vanguard command center was a large room with a long table that could have seated nearly a dozen ponies with ease. However right now there were only six ponies staring at a collection of projected images above the table. The three vanguards I recognized, but each Vanguard also had a guardian with them.
Next to McIntosh stood a young Olympian mare, barely an adult, with a tightly braided red mane that reached nearly to her knees. She waved me over with a smile, “Spike, right?”
A withering glance from Clover had me holstering my hand cannon sans flair, but I nodded. “I am. What’s going on?
“Today you will be travelling as a part of the Crusader’s fireteam during their scouting mission in the space port. I felt that it would be a powerful lesson in the effectiveness and necessity of teamwork in our line of work.” McIntosh said with just a hint of a smile as he glanced down at the Olympian standing next to him.
“Normally, guardians learn this during their requisite stint in Lady Zecora’s Crucible, but, seeing as Clover would have had an aneurysm if we had told you to shoot at other guardians, we have unanimously decided to waive the crucible requirement.” Flash said with a grin at Clover.
I looked over the images above the table, they all depicted a large and heavily armored Lost carrying a large plasma cannon that seemed to be hooked up to a generator on his back. One of the images was intimately familiar. I pointed to the image of the Lost climbing from a tunnel into the dry dock in the space port, “I remember that. How did you get a motion capture from my memory banks?”
“Speaker Celestia found it when she scanned you, and forwarded it to me.” McIntosh replied calmly, and then added, “We are not in the practice of violating the sanctity of an individual’s mind without express permission. The Speaker offers her apologies, but considering the circumstances a full scan and catalog was necessary.”
“It’s also the only picture in the bunch that wasn’t recovered from a dead guardian.” Clover said firmly. “This Vizier seems to only reveal itself when it knows it can win, and his presence in the space port may only be temporary. The Crusaders and yourself will be one of dozens of teams scouring the area for both his location and his hive of origin.”
“We have next to no information on this Vizier, but it appears that he is gathering the disenfranchised Lost in the space port into an actual army. If you find anything, signal for support and do not engage unless you absolutely have to.” McIntosh turned to give the Olympian at his side a look that made granite seem cushy by comparison, “That means no heroics and no last stands. Our family has had more than enough of that already. This mission does not require you to hold the line so if things get dicey you transmat out of there. Have I made myself clear, Apple Bloom?”
Apple Bloom rolled her eyes, but she nodded. Flash gave the golem next to him, a young looking pegasus model with an orange veneer and a short mane of purple ether, a gentle poke in the side of the head, “You hear that, Scoots? If things get hairy, you bounce. You’re one of the most promising Pathfinders to come along in a while, so don’t do anything too stupid on your first field mission.”
“Right.” The golem replied before giving me a smile.
The other two vanguards turned to look expectantly at Clover who shrugged and picked up a datapad in her magic. “Miss Belle, have you been listening?”
“The Arcane are always listening.” The perfectly groomed mare standing next to Clover replied with a carefully measured intensity. She turned her steady gaze to me and I wondered if the whole never smiling thing was actually not just Clover thing but rather an Arcane trait. Then she brushed her lavender bangs back behind her ears with a white hoof and winked at me. “Last one to the hangar’s a rotten egg!”
I barely had time to process the sudden shift in the Arcane’s demeanor before she and the other Crusaders were sprinting out of the room all cheers and giggles. Before I could run after them however, McIntosh placed a hoof on my arm. When he spoke, his voice was soft and had just a hint of an accent, “Spike, I know that you were built for things like this, so I’m only going to say this once: keep her safe for me.”
“I’d appreciate it if you made sure Scoots came back too.” Flash added with a chuckle, “I’ve grown quite invested in the little junker.”
I turned my eyes to Clover expectantly. She did not disappoint. “Come back with Miss Belle, or not at all.”
I looked at each of the vanguards who, with the natural exception of Clover, smiled at me before I finally nodded and sprinted out of the room. I had no idea why they thought I could contribute much, I was the greenhorn of the team, but I definitely felt their expectations settle firmly on my shoulders.
As I maneuvered through the halls I pinged Twilight’s array where she was familiarizing herself with my new armor. Hey Twi, what did he mean by ‘built for things like this’?
From within my armor’s systems I felt Twilight refocus her attentions. After a moment’s pause she said, He was probably referring to the fact that you are clearly a military Golem, a war machine.
Aren’t all golems war machines? And what do you mean by clearly? I shot back as I vaulted over a pony that had darted in front of me from around a corner.
With the exception of yourself and a minotaur golem by the name of Stalwart Steel, all known golems are from the early Golden Age and are designed to emulate life in all aspects. Eating, growing, sleeping, and even dreaming, though it seems they never found a way for golems to reproduce like organics. You on the other hoof are more of an aesthetically pleasing mobile weapons platform. Your systems are designed with shielding from exotically induced energy fields built in and your programming already has protocols for processing weapon and external armor sensory bundles.
I thought about that as I ran into the hangar where the other three were waiting impatiently with their ships hovering outside the hangar. “So how do golems reproduce?”
They don’t. Those that aren’t guardians are found in the wilds, usually dead. We bring them back to the city and use the power of the matter forges to restart their systems.
“Who are you talking to?” Scoots asked as she trotted over to me. I held out my hand and Twilight materialized there.
“Hello, Scootalo-Ø. I am Twilight Sparkle, Spike’s Spark. We were just discussing some of the qualities that separate Spike from most other golems.” Twilight said politely before floating out of my palm and adding, “I’ll get our ship from the Hangar Master.”
As Twilight flew off I turned back to the others, “Clover wasn’t done making death threats.”
Belle rolled her eyes, “Yeah, she’s kind of hoping you’ll manage to get permakilled out there.”
Bloom gave me a reassuring smile as she trotted over. “Which only happens if they catch or fry your ghost. Don’t worry, we won’t let that happen.”
“Is that you’re jumpship?” Scoots asked, pointing at a ship that was rising from the storage chambers below the hangar. It looked like a warty green brick sandwiched between two brown drive tubes with stubby airfoils at the front, except the warts were all thrusters.
“That’s one ugly ship.” Belle commented as the ship lifted off the hangar floor. The three ponies shielded their faces from the ship’s wash.
“It’s really just a cockpit slapped onto a thruster set.” Twilight said over the ship’s speakers with a touch of amusement, “And it feels like it probably handles about as well as it looks. Let’s fly!”
For a brief moment my vision swam and I felt tendrils of energy wrapping around me before the world abruptly changed and I was seated in a custom built cockpit designed to hold my relatively unique body comfortably. The screens around me lit up to reveal the hangar and the three ships outside. The Crusaders were already in their ships and the three turned and flew off. I stared at the controls in front of me, a whole rainbow of switches, dials, and displays glowed on the lower panel. Two sliding joysticks rested on the long armrests I carefully took hold of the joysticks, careful not to change their position. “Talk to me, Twi.”
The Spark’s voice filled the cabin as she replied through the cockpit’s tinny speakers. “Those joysticks are the thrust control, and the only thing you need to worry about. I’ll handle systems management. Tilting the sticks manipulates the two hemispheres of maneuvering thrusters while sliding them forwards and back adjusts the thrust from each drive. So, make it a gradual exit please. Larson is still pissed about how we arrived yesterday.”
I nodded and gently eased the sticks forward. The drives rumbled to life and we slid from the hangar into the airspace around the tower. I couldn’t quite keep my eyes from darting to the AA emplacements scattered through the city below us and all along the walls.
“Are you coming or not, Spike?” Scoots barked over the comms. I laughed and clumsily angled my ship towards the trio of ships circling at the edge of the city, each highlighted on my display in neon green and displaying their faces next to them. With a grin I forced the sticks to their full extension, cackling as the drives thundered to full power and I was pressed deep into my contoured seat by the acceleration.
As our ships sped away from the city with the Crusaders, I knew we were heading out to face a world where everything wanted to kill us, but I was made for handling that sort of thing and I was not going to be alone this time.
The Lost didn’t stand a chance.