1 Crystal Wildlife
As the Crystal Empire had been gone for hundreds of years, there were gaps in its long and affluent history. So members of the Royal Family and their partners were taking it in turns to study various areas of its culture and geography. Each pony studied things that were in his or her area or expertise. For example, Applejack spent two days in the crystal cornfields and crystalberry patches helping the local farmers with their harvests. And Pinkie Pie had made excellent use of the collected crops with some of the best baked goods the crystal ponies ever had. The two Ponyvillians had learned a lot and Princess Cadance was happy with their contribution to the morale of her subjects. She told them that the Crystal Heart had picked up speed after their visit, which meant the love and hope in the community had never wavered since the announcement about the Equestria Games.
Weeks after that fruitful visit, Rarity and Rainbow Dash arrived for their “field trip”, as Spike had put it. They were greeted at the station by Princess Cadance.
“How are things, Princess?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“Well,” said Cadance, “nothing bad has happened, but I’ve noticed that lately, the Crystal Heart has been spinning a bit… this may sound strange coming from a princess, but it’s been spinning a bit… jerkily.”
Rarity was bemused. “Applejack and Pinkie Pie told us that it had been perfect since their visit. Whatever could the matter be?”
“I don’t know,” replied Cadance. “None of the crystal ponies seem disturbed or anything.”
“It could be one or two crystal ponies having trouble with something,” suggested Rainbow Dash. “That shouldn’t cause the Crystal Heart to stop, should it? I mean, as long as the majority of them are happy…”
“You could be right,” said Cadance. “But if either of you see a sign of trouble, please let me know. Shining Armour and I will be on the lookout as well.”
Rainbow Dash was to be working in the sky above the empire setting up rainclouds for the berry patches. Crystalberries do not require nearly as much water as ordinary berry plants or fruit plants in general, so Rainbow Dash was going to be working on the only downpour scheduled for that month. Meanwhile, Rarity was going to see if she could find some jewels, as crystals evidently didn’t qualify. If they had, Rarity’s horn would have gone amok every time she went there.
Rarity’s gem-finding spell took her nearly everywhere in the Crystal Empire over the next two days. Gradually, the cart she was towing behind her got heavier and heavier as she loaded it with diamonds, rubies and emeralds. Near the end of the second day, her magic had led her to the hills outside the empire close to the snowy northern territory. As she made her way up the slope following her horn to some more jewels, she saw something drift down towards the rocks. Suddenly, her horn made her change course so sharply that she broke her harness.
“Oh, what could this be?!” she exclaimed, following her horn’s influence.
She quickly found out that the thing that had drifted down from the sky was a cloud. And her horn seemed to be leading her there. As she approached the cloud sitting on the ground, Rainbow Dash flew down looking hot and bothered.
“The clouds are way heavier here,” she panted. “I’ll bet anypony can walk on them. Go on. Give it a try. I’ll bet you.”
Rarity wasn’t the only who thought so. “I think I detect some gems in that cloud.”
She walked up to the cloud and jumped on it. Her hooves hit something hard.
“Eureka!”
Rarity reached into the cloud and pulled out a small pile of rubies.
“I think I know what’s been weighing this cloud down,” she smiled.
She began digging into the cloud like a dog uncovering more rubies.
Then Rainbow Dash jumped up. “Hey, your wagon’s rolling away!”
Rarity looked back at the hill. There in the distance was her cart rolling backwards towards the city. Rainbow Dash flew after it, but lost sight of it when it entered the public roads. Then when she caught up to it, she found it was empty. She looked around. There were some puzzled crystal ponies looking at her and the cart.
“Did anyone see somepony run off with a bunch of jewels?!” asked Rainbow Dash.
No one did. Rainbow Dash started flying around looking for a possible thief. None of the crystal ponies appeared to be carrying hundreds of gems or acting suspicious in any way, but Rainbow Dash noticed that the Crystal Heart was spinning faster and smoother than it had been the last time she saw it that morning.
“I think there’s one or more thieves here,” Rainbow Dash told Cadance and Shining Armour that evening. “Stealing all of Rarity’s jewels would have made them happy enough to feed the Crystal Heart.”
“Hmm,” pondered Shining Armour. “I did worry about some of the crystal ponies abusing the system. Give them an inch, they’ll want to whole foot.”
But Cadance had her doubts. “They couldn’t have gotten away with all those jewels without being seen.”
“Pardon me, but our train is leaving in a few minutes,” Rarity interrupted. “May we be excused?”
“Yes, you can leave,” said Cadance. “Shining Armour and I will investigate this tomorrow morning.”
Over the next two weeks, Cadance and Shining Armour had a hard job of finding out what happened to the missing jewels without letting the crystal ponies know that there may be thieves in the empire. If they thought any one of them might be up to something criminal, their morale would sink and the Crystal Heart would lose power. However, it became clear that this was happening anyway. The steadiness of the spinning relic began to diminish again and neither Cadance nor Shining Armour knew why.
Soon, it was time for Twilight and Fluttershy’s two day visit. Once again, Cadance met the taskforce members at the station. As always, Twilight was delighted to see Cadance. They began their reminiscent routine at once.
“♪Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake! Clap your hooves and do a little shake!♫”
As soon as they finished, Twilight turned bright red. She hadn’t noticed Flash Sentry standing next to Cadance on the platform.
“Um, it’s just… something we used to do when I was young,” she said sheepishly.
Flash grinned, doing his best not to chuckle at a pair of princesses.
He cleared his throat. “Princess Cadance wants me to work with you today.”
“Yes,” Cadance nodded. “I’d like you two to continue Rainbow Dash’s study of the clouds in the Crystal Empire. I’m sure she and Rarity told you about their discovery, and I’ve heard you know Rarity’s gem finding spell.”
“That’s right,” said Twilight.
“But I also want you to keep a lookout for suspicious activity in the city,” Cadance added. “We still haven’t found out what happened to those missing jewels.”
Twilight and Flash nodded.
Cadance turned to Fluttershy. “You can stick with studying the crystal wildlife, but if you happen to see something, please let us know.”
“I will, your highness.”
Fluttershy had been looking forward to this for a while. She hadn’t had a chance to spend time with any of the animals in the Crystal Empire since their first Crystal Fair in a thousand years. She spent the morning learning how to shear the crystal ewes. Like the clouds, the wool was a lot heavier than she was used to. But her ability to communicate with animals made the job a million times easier and the crystal ewes adored her. The same went for the crystal squirrels she met that afternoon. It was great fun watching them scurry up and down the trees outside of town collecting crystal acorns of all colours. Some of the squirrels offered Fluttershy some acorns, but one of them walked up to her and presented a diamond.
“Where did you get this?” she asked, hoping the answer wasn’t what she thought it was.
She noticed that this squirrel looked strangely ruffled. It pointed to the rocks close to the boarder.
“Could that be where the thief hid Rarity’s gems?” Fluttershy asked herself.
She decided to investigate the rocks. She didn’t see the squirrel that brought her the diamond shake with fright as she walked up the hill.
When Fluttershy got to the top of the slope, there was no sign of stolen gems. She began to circle the cluster of rocks looking for something like a cave or a pit. It wasn’t long before she found one, but that wasn’t all she found. She froze in place when she realised there was a pair of shiny violet eyes gazing at her from the cave entrance. The outline of a dragon was dimly lit by the sunshine outside. Fluttershy watched, unable to move, as the creature stepped slowly out into the open. She was expecting this dragon to be huge, but it turned out to be only a few inches taller than her. And it didn’t look like it would attack at all. Fluttershy’s fear ebbed away when she saw that the dragon had a distressed looking face.
“H-hello,” Fluttershy said softly.
“Hello,” the dragon replied. “Are you friends with those squirrels over there?”
Fluttershy looked back at the bottom of the hill where the squirrels were. She could see they were watching her with fearful expressions.
She turned back to the dragon. “Yes, I am.”
“So… you’re good at talking to other creatures?” asked the dragon.
“Yes,” Fluttershy was still nervous.
The dragon appeared to be trying to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Maybe you can help me. My name is Impulsoria and I’m a crystal dragon.”
She stepped further out of the cave. Fluttershy was stunned to see she was sparkling. She’d never heard of a crystal dragon before.
“My, um…” Fluttershy shuffled her hooves. “My name is… Fluttershy.”
“Fluttershy, is it?” asked Impulsoria.
Fluttershy nodded.
Impulsoria cleared her throat. “I think one of those squirrels stole a diamond from me.”
Fluttershy remembered the jewel she had tucked under her wing. She took out it and showed it to Impulsoria. “Is this it?”
Impulsoria’s face glowed. “That’s the one!”
Fluttershy flinched when Impulsoria began to walk towards her out of the cave, but almost at once, the dragon receded back into the cave looking just as nervous as Fluttershy.
“Could I have it back please?” asked Impulsoria. “I don’t want any of the crystal ponies to see me. I don’t think they’d be too happy if they knew I was here.”
Fluttershy gulped, and tiptoed cautiously towards the dragon holding out the diamond. Impulsoria’s smile when she took the jewel from Fluttershy was enormous.
“Thanks, Fluttershy,” she said. “I’ve been deprived of gems for a while. I haven’t gotten new ones in weeks.”
Fluttershy now knew that it had been this dragon who took Rarity’s gems. Suddenly, Impulsoria backed further into her cave. She was looking past Fluttershy towards the sky. The nervous pegasus looked back and saw a streak of purple and yellow heading down from the sky towards the center of town. She knew it was Twilight and Flash Sentry.
“Um, Fluttershy,” said Impulsoria in a whisper, “Do you think you could bring me some more gems? I’d really appreciate it.”
Fluttershy gulped again. “I’ll… I’ll see what I can do.”
Impulsoria smiled faintly. “Thanks a lot.”
Fluttershy made her way to the center of the Crystal Empire where she’d seen Twilight and Flash. She found them standing beside the Crystal Heart, which was noticeably healthier than it had been that morning. It dawned on Fluttershy that Impulsoria’s deprivation of jewels might have been what was causing the Heart to lag.
Twilight spotted Fluttershy and beckoned her towards her and Flash Sentry.
“We tried to find out if there was a thief here by dropping a ruby from the sky,” she told her. “But the crystal pony who found it looked up and waved to us. She wanted to return it.”
“She seemed awfully upset when she found out we thought she might try to steal it,” said Flash. “Do you know what she said? She said only a dragon would steal jewels.”
Fluttershy shuddered.
“Uh, Flash,” said Twilight, “try not to mention dragons in front of Fluttershy. She’s really scared of them.”
Flash snorted. “No one here wants her hear about dragons. That book you showed me said that whenever anything went missing in the Crystal Empire, the crystal ponies always blamed those monsters… even though none have ever lived here.”
“But surely they’ve softened on dragons after Spike brought them the Crystal Heart,” insisted Twilight.
“Hmm, well I have heard a rumour about plans to erect a statue to him,” Flash replied.
Fluttershy looked around. There were crystal ponies all around and now that the Crystal Heart was gaining health, she didn’t want to cause panic by telling them that there was a dragon in their homeland. That was a sure-fire way to shatter their morale and cripple the Heart.
Fluttershy woke up very early the following morning. She looked out of her window and spotted the Crystal Heart spinning jerkily again.
“Impulsoria’s getting upset again,” she grimaced. “Maybe I should bring her some more gems.”
So she left her accommodation and when Flash Sentry saw her and asked what she was doing, she said she wanted to study the crystal owls before they went to sleep for the day.
“Alright, go ahead,” said Flash. “And just to fill you in, Princess Twilight and I are gonna try and lure out the thief again. We’ll be by the library if you need us. Twilight tells me you’re the world champion at being quiet. Try not to draw attention to us if you come by.”
“I will, sir,” said Fluttershy.
“Please, call me Flash,” smiled the guard.
Fluttershy left the castle and inspected the Crystal Heart. It looked like a spinning top that was about to overbalance. She flew up to the sky and started tapping the light pink clouds feeling for gems. Before long, some emeralds had dropped out of one and she’d scooped them up.
“This should be enough for her,” she said to herself.
She heard a high screech which startled her causing her to almost drop the emeralds. She turned around and saw a crystal screech owl flying nearby.
“Oh, hello,” smiled Fluttershy. “Can you help me with something?”
Minutes later, Fluttershy found herself in front of Impulsoria’s cave again. The crystal dragon was nowhere in sight, and Fluttershy had to shout (if you can call it shouting) seven times before there was any sign of movement.
“Fluttershy?” came the voice.
“Yes, it’s me,” said Fluttershy softly. “I had some emeralds for you.”
Fluttershy was almost knocked to the ground as Impulsoria stormed out of the cave and snatched up the bright green jewels.
“They’re wonderful!” beamed the dragon.
Fluttershy looked back at the Crystal Empire and strained her ears. After a few seconds, she heard the screech of the crystal owl she’d met in the sky. She had asked him to fly down to the Crystal Heart and screech to her if it started to spin faster.
So Impulsoria DOES have an effect on the Heart, she thought.
All of a sudden, she found herself in the tightest hugging grip she’d ever been in.
“Thank you so much, Fluttershy,” said Impulsoria.
Being hugged by a dragon was enough to make Fluttershy utterly uncomfortable, but the very tense pegasus noticed that Impulsoria was at least three feet taller now.
Oh, no, thought Fluttershy, remembering what happened to Spike once. She’s maturing.
Now Fluttershy was worried sick.