Flash story that has problems · 8:10pm Mar 13th, 2019

Throughout my studies as a geologist in Ponyville, I've read many books in my free time to decide what the next major object of my research would be. While a job may never truely be finished, I knew that I had to find something, some breakthrough I could call mine.

Then one day, I decided. Sanguinem lapis. That would prove I don't just look at shiny gems. That would show the world I can do something special.

There's many different types of stones, gems, and crystals in Equestria, but the bloodstone was widely regarded as a myth. The rumor was that it was a stone created by Discord, likely on accident, during his battles with the two Princesses. After all, a stone whose density was as solid as diamond, but could be squeezed like a sponge? And squeeze out blood? What better legacy for Maud Pie? A fulfilled dream of not just intertwining my life with rocks, but to become a part of rock culture itself.

I couldn't imagine a greater honor.

I sat at my work table in my work cave. The light glitters on the crystals that surround the cave, bouncing wave upon wave of rainbow light through the cavern. I examine the map of tunnels that weave their way through the landscape around me, and stare at the ever widening tunnels that go beneath the streets of Ponyville. Discord had fought the Elements of Harmony in Ponyville, and revisited several times. Perhaps, this was the best place to finally gain a sample of this mythic stone.

I pick up my bag of supplies, and set myself off to another day of work.

The dirt and stone crunches gently under my hooves, my eyes tracing the walls whose light grows dimmer and dimmer. I stop, and take an unlit torch from a perch on the wall. Taking off my bag, I take my matches and a jar of oil. A dip, a quick strike of a match and a warm, orange glow fills the tunnel.

Good. Time to move forward.

I reholster my bag and continue forward. My mind begins to wander through my research. One of the struggles of discovering bloodstone would be that it seems nearly indistinguishable from most sedimentary rocks. The idea would be that as the elements compact around a single stone, a sedimentary stone grows larger and larger around what could have started as a simple piece of sand, if only it were of a strong enough cement.

That's where the bloodstone becomes special, and where Starswirl the Bearded's research came into play.

I blink to myself, remembering how Twilight wouldn't ever stop talking about Starswirl. Oh well.

What Starswirl found during his research of how such a stone could be created is that Blood is, well, a liquid. Not a solid stone. While it's easy to create sedimentary fossils of almost everything, fossilized blood is much harder, let alone preserving it.

But he found something. A bloodstone could be artificially created by a pony by using their own blood, magic, and force of will. One of his students, before he excommunicated him for blood magic, had artificially created one to try and impress him. After a cursory examination, he destroyed the stone, for fear of the implications such an object could create in the wrong hands.

I take a left, and then a right.

Today, my goal is to examine the area beneath the Ponyville Cemetary.

I take another left, then holster the torch. Three steps forward, and I've reached my dead end. Humorous. The dead end under the cemetary. I'll have to share that one with Pinkie later.

Setting my mind to my work, the pickaxe swings hard and quickly. I pull stones from the wall, examine, and then toss them aside.

I decided to choose the Cemetary to examine if the remnants of will that reside within a pony is reabsorbed naturally into the dirt we are buried within. Those feelings and desires could flow from our natural forms, and return the dust we come from. And such, should there be a pony, or ponies....

My pickaxe strikes something hard and firm.

I blink, and swing again. The pickaxe bounces back. My teeth grit. My eyes focus. I begin to dig around the surface by hoof, and there in front of me is a rock. A normal looking sedimentary rock. The stone become more and more exposed, and then, seems like it should break free. But when I grab it with my hooves, and pull, it does not yield.

I take my axe, my temper and breath heated, and strike it once more.

A shifting of the ground above me.

I panic, and jump.

An avalance of dirt closes my return path. I calm my breath. I blink. Then I look down to the stone which now lays on the ground.

Now I've done it. I've buried myself in. I know Starlight will be looking for me at lunch, but I'm still stuck. Until then... Did I... just find it?

I pick the stone into my hooves. And I squeeze.

It does not yield.

Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

I squeeze again.

Starlight gallops down the tunnels of Maud's geology site. Her ears are flat. Her horn is aglow with magic energy.

"Maud! Maud!!" she calls out. "Where are you?! I think... this tunnel?"

She looks down to the hoof prints in the ground and follows them as closely as she can, until it hits a wall. Starlight gasps. A magical beam shoots from her horn and pushes through the dirt, compacting it from the center out to the unstable walls around her.

Then, a beam of warm, red light peeks through.

"Maud?" Starlight calls, pushing to look through the hole she had made. "Maud!"

Maud looks up to Starlight, a smile on her face.

"Starlight, look. I've finally did it."

She holds her hooves up showing a stone emmiting a deep crimson light., blood dripping to the ground beneath her, cuts covering the soles of her hooves, bleeding onto the rock.

"I've found a blood stone. I've done it," Maud says. "It took hours. But I figured out how to do it.

"Oh Maud," Starlight whispers fearfully. "What have you done..."

"There's so much I can learn," Maud says. "Who knows what sort of powers this can hold? The whole world could change for the better."

"Maud... that's blood magic."

"How can it be magic is an Earth Pony can do it?" she snapped. And with a wave of her hoof, the passage back to the light was closed once more, leaving Starlight alone, her magic illuminating the dead end of the mining site.

Starlight dug and dug, but even as she dug deep into the earth and the night, she couldn't find her friend.

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