“Unacceptable!”
I maintained my best poker face as Dusthorn paced back and forth in front of me. Every now and then, he would stop and pull the lid off of one of the barrels, and then immediately slam it back shut. The source of his anger was clearly visible on the table in front of me - a chunk of what looked like black styrofoam. The gunpowder that he had produced the day before, now soaked in water and hardened to a cake-like consistency.
I was maintaining a healthy distance between me and the raging Minotaur, and I wasn’t the only one. Steelskin was standing right beside me, looking on with concern. Not far away, a group of a half-dozen guards had gathered as well. Dusthorn had demanded that Thunderhoof fetch them, but now that they were all there, none of them seemed to know what to do.
“How in Tartarus did this happen?!” Dusthorn snarled for what felt like the hundredth time. “All three barrels are soaked! SOAKED!”
To my right, I saw Steelskin shift slightly. “Perhaps there was a leak last night…”
“And yet you see no leak now!” Dusthorn interrupted. “It’s raining outside now, but there’s no water dripping into these barrels! Besides, they were sealed tightly! Someone, or something, poured water into these barrels!”
“Preposterous,” One of the gathered guards scoffed. “There were so many of us out on the grounds last night, not even a mouse could have snuck by without us noticing.”
Dusthorn’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Then that means it was someone… or somePONY… already inside,” he hissed. “And if you had so many guards outside last night, how come you couldn’t spare a couple to guard the door, hm?!”
“Wha…” the guard stammered for a brief moment, blinking. “But… we had two guards assigned to this room last night,” He finally finished. I felt my heart skip a beat as he continued. “You’re telling me they weren’t here?”
“Nay, they weren’t,” Steelskin shook his head.
“By the ancestors,” another guard shook his head, muttering just loudly enough for me to hear. “If Stonehoof slept through his shift again and let this happen…”
“I expect a full investigation!” Dusthorn spat angrily. He turned his back to the guards as he continued his pacing back and forth. “I want to know who did this, and how they did it, and what happened to those two idiots that were supposed to keep this room locked down!”
“Dust, calm down.” Steelskin took a step forward, trying to soothe his colleague. “It’s just a couple o’ barrels. It’s bad, yeah, but surely it can’t be that hard to make some more…”
“You have no idea, Steelskin,” Dusthorn retorted. He picked up the chunk of black cake powder and tore a bit off. “You see this? This stuff is ruined! It’ll take days of drying to fix, and it might not even work! And that was the last of the sulfur we have left in this entire bloody city! It’ll be at least a week before more can be brought from Minos, and that’s assuming there’s any left there, either! And if not, they’ll have to gather some from the Black Mountains, and that will take even longer!” Unable to contain his rage anymore, Dusthorn slammed the rest of the caked powder onto the table and slammed one fist into it. I stiffened as a sharp crack pierced the room, and while the table didn’t break under the force of the blow, the powder didn’t fare nearly as well. I could see that the entire chunk of cake that Dusthorn had been brandishing had been pulverized.
Silence. No one dared to speak as Dusthorn slowly removed his fist from the table. His eyes were closed, but they slowly opened to look down at the table. His breathing became calmer, and his expression changed from one of rage to curiosity. I could practically see the gears turning in his head as he knelt down next to the table, directing his gaze towards the powder he had just pounded.
The first guard to speak up cleared his throat. “We’ll… uh, we’ll begin a thorough investigation,” he announced. “We’ll make sure whoever did this is caught.”
“Hm? Oh, yes yes,” Dusthorn muttered, not bothering to look in the direction of the guards. “Go on, go search around or talk to Ponies or what have you. Just get out of my sight.” He took a small bit of the crushed substance between his fingers and rubbed them together, allowing the smashed cake-powder to fall away again.
“Perhaps… perhaps I can make some use of this after all…”
---
Did you know that gunpowder wasn’t really gunpowder until it had been wetted into cake and pulverized back down? Before that day, neither did I.
Needless to say, our sabotage the night before seemed to have backfired. Once a small portion of the cake had been ground down by a pestle and mortar and dried in the sun, the resulting powder was far finer than it had been before. A quick test with a new, thicker firing tube confirmed my fears - that Sombra and I had actually furthered the development of the gun more than I would have been able to with my own knowledge alone.
The rest of that day, and a good portion of the next week, was spent grinding down the rest of the cake in the barrels. It was a long, slow, tedious process, taking small chunks of the cake and slowly grinding it down by hand with a pestle and mortar. It wasn’t too physically exerting, but the constant, repeated motions certainly left my hand, wrist, and elbow sore after a while. Not to mention the constant running of powder outside to dry in the sun, and back inside to be used by Steelskin,
Speaking of Steelskin, he too was busy, and kept me just as busy. After the successful test with a thicker tube and the newly-ground gunpowder, he continued to develop tubes of various lengths, as well as different methods of igniting the gunpowder to produce the explosion. It was only two days before he had created a device large enough to fire a twenty-four pound shot - a true cannon. This initial cannon was fired via the ignition a thin strand of rope infused with small granules of the gunpowder, which created an extremely crude (and very slow-burning) fuse. From then on, he began experimenting with smaller shots and tubes, as well as a trigger to strike a piece of flint against a piece of steel - a flintlock weapon. And of course, I was still helping him by pumping bellows, hauling metal, and answering questions over whether something had been developed by Humans and been successful. Combined with the pulverizing of the caked powder, and every night I ended up going to be more tired than I had been the night before. The fact that my dreams were still haunted by the memory of me killing the guard certainly didn’t help in that regard.
Of course, Sombra’s nightly visits didn’t help the matter either.
Every night, I would wake to the sound of the window creaking open. And every night, I would watch as Sombra, under the guise of darkness, would jump into my room. And every night, he would bring the same news from the resistance camp- more deaths, more hunger, more misery, and more desperation. I had few things to offer in condolence - I neglected to mention how our sabotage had backfired - but still tried to help as best I could. I’d finally managed to map the route between my room and the workshop, as well as to numerous other points throughout the castle - not the least of which being the throne room. I’d also taken note of as many patrol routes and lookouts on the grounds as I could, and even stayed up one evening to determine the time at which the guard changed outside my room. It was small, but hopefully it would help in some way.
But we both knew time was quickly running out. I could see the bags under his eyes more and more noticeably every time he visited. The Minotaurs had tracked the resistance and now knew the general area where their camp was located, and as such all traffic in and out had been halted entirely. Sombra, with his skills at manipulating and hiding in the shadows, was the only one able to slip in and out of the camp unnoticed, and their only communication with the outside world. He looked thinner every time he visited as well, and he admitted that part of his duties while exchanging news with me now included scavenging as much food - any food - that he could. I left as much food every evening as I could, but we shared the unspoken understanding that it simply wasn’t enough.
The investigation into our midnight sabotage seemed to have faltered and died alongside Dusthorn’s rage. Security was increased, both inside and outside the palace, and the two guards remained undiscovered - missing and presumed dead, I heard - but my participation remained unknown. One unforeseen side-effect, though, was an increased interest in the project by Adamant Will. Once or twice a day he would send a guard by for a status report, and once - four days after the sabotage - he showed up personally to see our progress. He seemed satisfied, if the grins I saw when he thought we weren’t looking were anything to judge by.
In fact, he seemed so pleased that he invited me to dinner.
It was a week after Sombra and I had gone on our midnight excursion. The day had been proceeding as normal - I was mashing up another bowl full of powder with Dusthorn, while Steelskin was hammering away at his anvil. I could tell he was producing the narrowest tube that he’d created yet - narrow enough to be used in a fully-portable gun, about the size of a rifle. He’d been working on this particular tube for a couple of hours, and I was secretly thankful - that was a couple of hours in which I wasn’t hopping up and running to pump the bellows or fetch more iron or fuel for the forge.
“That next batch should be ready to come back in soon,” I heard Dusthorn mutter from my right - a phrase I’d heard him say many, many times over the past few days, and a couple of times already today. I knew exactly what that meant - another trip for me and Thunderhoof, along with a mound of gunpowder, downstairs to the garden, where we’d been leaving the gunpowder to dry, and then another trip with the dried powder from the last batch back upstairs for Steelskin to use in his testing. Thunderhoof had quickly picked up on his role of helping me carry the powder, and I glanced in his direction to make sure he’d heard Dusthorn.
Instead, I found that he was nowhere near me. Instead, he was standing next to the double doors leading out of the room, gesturing with his hands towards another Minotaur. I’d been picking up on a few of his hand signals - they were different from the ones used on Earth (Terra, I reminded myself again), and didn’t seem to be a true sign language as I understood - but it was still difficult to understand him from a distance. The other Minotaur, however, seemed to understand, for he gave a short nod. Both Minotaurs glanced briefly in my direction before the newcomer began speaking, too softly for me to hear. Longhorn nodded and gave another quick series of hand gestures. The newcomer saluted briefly - an action mirrored by Longhorn - before stepping out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Almost Immediately, Longhorn was hunched over the far end of our table, scribbling furiously onto a sheet of paper. I kept stealing glances down in his direction as I kept mashing down the chunks of gunpowder cake into a finer dust. As I dumped my current mortar full of powder onto the tray we were using to hold it, I glanced back down and noticed that Thunderhoof was headed this way.
And not a moment too soon. “Alright,” I heard Dusthorn sigh from my right again. “Chris, go take this tray downstairs and bring the last batch back… up… yes, Thunderhoof?” I heard Dusthorn ask as Thunderhoof walked past me to stand directly next to him. Thunderhoof said nothing, but instead handed the sheet of paper to Dusthorn. The alchemist’s eyes quickly flashed back and forth across the paper, and I could see a frown forming on his face as he looked back up. “Seriously? Right now?” Longhorn nodded, merely adding to Dusthorn’s scowl. “And how am I going to get all that powder moved around?”
“Maybe ye can go and move it yerself, hm?” I heard Steelskin call from across the room. All heads turned in his direction as he continued, speaking between each swing of his hammer. “He’s just a wee lad, mate. Ye’ve been running him and his bodyguard ragged all week, sending them up and down and all around messing with that powder o’ yers.”
“As if you haven’t been making use of him yourself,” Dusthorn shot back.
“Aye, I have,” Steelskin nodded, not looking up from the tube he was hammering away at. “He’s been doing stuff that needs a second set o’ hands, stuff I can’t do alone. Ye’ve just been using them to do stuff ye can’t be bothered with. So I say it again - Whatever that Royal Guard came here for, it’s probably more important than having Chris here running around being your errand calf.”
Dusthorn snorted, but offered no rebuttal - not that he could make a satisfactory rebuttal, anyway. “Fine,” he finally sighed. He glanced back down at the pile of powder that he now had to take outside and flicked his wrist away. “Go on, go do… whatever it is you need to do.”
Thunderhoof gave my shoulder a light pat, and I stood up from the chair I’d been sitting in for the past few hours. I stretched, grunting as my arm popped loudly, and followed Thunderhoof as he led me down the table and out the doors. A moment later, we were walking down the hall back towards my room.
“So… what’s going on?” I asked. Thunderhoof made a few signals with his hands, including miming the act of eating and drawing a circle above his head. “Eating… the king… Dinner with the king?” I asked, to which Thunderhoof nodded. “Oh boy…”
Thunderhoof let out a small snort and patted my shoulder. “I’m just wondering why,” I replied to his unspoken question. “I mean, I think we’ve been making good progress… and if he wanted us to do better, why ask me…” I found myself cut off as Thunderhoof shook his head back and forth. “Not that?” another shake of his head. “Then what?”
To that, Thunderhoof merely shrugged. He made a few gestures with his hands, the meaning of which were lost on me. He must have noticed my confusion, for he hesitated for a moment before miming the act of writing, and then pointing at me. “Writing about me?” Longhorn balanced his hand in the air in a clear sign of “kind of” before jerking his thumb over his shoulder and making the same writing motion. “History? Like my past?” Longhorn nodded again. “Maybe, but why pull me away from the project just for that?” Another shrug from Thunderhoof, after which we both fell into silence.
It wasn’t until we reached my room that either of us spoke again. As the door was pushed in, Thunderhorn tapped me on the shoulder. I turned my head towards him to see that he was pointing into the room. More specifically, he was pointing at the door on the far side of the room, leading into the bathroom. Sure enough, his next gesture was him miming scrubbing his arms. “Yeah, like I’m gonna show up to meet the king smelling like a hot forge,” I chuckled, earning me one of Thunderhoof’s rare grins, albeit a very small one. “But what about clothes? I can’t exactly show up to dinner in… this…” to make my point, I spread my arms apart before pointing at the various soot stains across my shirt and pants.
Thunderhoof shook his head in agreement and rubbed his chin. After a moment he nodded and pointed at himself. “You’ll take care of it?” I asked, to which he nodded again. “Alright. I’ll trust that you’ll be able to find something that will at least vaguely fit me. You all are a lot bigger than me, after all.” Thunderhoof gave me a firm pat on the back and flashed me a thumbs-up. “Alright. How long do I have to get ready?” There it was again, that same balancing-hand motion from before. “A little while, but not too long. Got it. I’ll try and make this quick then.” Another thumbs-up, and Thunderhoof turned his back towards me. A moment later, the door was shut behind me, leaving me alone in my room.
I wandered into the bathroom to find the normally-dark room was already prepared for me. A half-dozen lamps had been lit and hung from the hall, flooding the room with light. The tub in the corner had been filled with water, and I could see the steam rising from it. I wasted no time in disrobing and hopping into the water, sighing as I sank into the bath. I could feel the heat relaxing the muscles in my back and my arm. It was very soothing, and I was half-tempted to doze off in the water.
But my mind wasn’t about to let me rest so easily. As soon as I had begun to relax, my mind drifted once again towards the potential reasons that Adamant Will had called me to dinner. It had been nearly a week since Sombra and I had been on our midnight excursion. Had I been found out? Had they figured out who had been responsible for the disappearance of those two guards and the attempted sabotage of the gunpowder? Or maybe they’d found out that I was an agent for Equestria.
Or maybe it was both of those things, or neither. I honestly didn’t know, and the more I thought about it, the more potential reasons popped up. I’d barely spoken to the king since I’d arrived - maybe he just wanted to speak? But why pull me away from the project he was so desperate to finish just for conversation? And if I had been found out, why take me to dinner rather than just kill me outright? Around and around in my head these thoughts spun, with no clear answer available.
Well, worrying wasn’t going to give me an answer. Besides, I’d already been soaking in the tub for too long. Time to get ready. After all, the only way I’d really find out Adamant Will’s motives for this dinner was to actually show up.
I reached for the soap that had been left for me and began to scrub myself down. It was a good while before I was satisfied that I was clean enough to be presentable to the king, at which point I hopped out of the tub. A quick towel-dry later, and I was walking out of the bathroom with the towel around my waist.
True to his word, it seemed that Thunderhoof had managed to come through for me. A set of what appeared to be formalwear had been laid across the bed. It seemed simple enough - similar to a tuxedo back home in essence, but the jacket and shirt were highly decorated in regal maroons, blues, and yellows. In addition, amongst the usual pieces I expected was a maroon cloth with gold trim, which was attached to what looked suspiciously like a leather shoulderpad. As I threw the clothes on, I kept an eye on that particular piece, and sure enough, when I tried to put it on, it clasped into place perfectly, with the cape flowing down my right side to cover my right arm. I also noted that Thunderhoof had indeed been good to his word - while not a perfect fit, the clothes were close enough of a match to my size that I wouldn’t look ridiculous.
I had just finished adjusting the tie around my neck when I heard three sharp raps at the door. “Coming!” I called out as I slipped into a pair of black leather shoes that had been left for me as well. I strolled over to the door and pulled it open. Sure enough, Thunderhoof was waiting for me on the other side, standing between the two guards that were flanking the door. “So, do I look presentable enough?” I asked. Thunderhoof eyed me up and down for a moment before nodding. He pressed his index finger and thumb close together, then spread his arms away from his sides a bit. “Yeah, it’s a little big, but it’s honestly a better fit than I expected.” That seemed to satisfy Thunderhoof, for he nodded again and made a gesture to follow him before turning and walking away.
The two of us wandered through the hallways for a while. Occasionally, I was able to glance down a corridor and catch a glimpse of a window. Based on the color of the horizon, it had to be sunset - the vibrant reds and oranges were clear indicators of that. On the way, as I always did whenever travelling through the castle, I tried to keep track of our route. But, as always happened during my first trek to a new place in the castle, I quickly lost track of the turns.
Based on the number of flights of stairs we had gone down, I was pretty certain we were on the ground floor by the time we finally stopped. To my left was a large, wooden double door, flanked by three armed guards on each side. The one closest to the door to my right glanced in my direction and raised an eyebrow. “You’re the Human, hm?” he muttered. “Alright, in you go. The King’s waiting on you.”
I glanced back towards Thunderhoof who nodded. I felt him give me a solid pat on the back, and he flashed me a quick thumbs up. I nodded and turned to see that the large door in front of me had been pushed open. I hesitated for a moment before taking a few steps forward, into the room beyond.
As I had expected, it was a large dining hall. Clearly situated towards the center of the castle, both walls were nevertheless lined with large windows that stretched upwards to the ceiling, revealing twin courtyards on either side. A number of Minotaurs and Ponies stood at attention along the walls as well - waiters or guards, I assumed. The ceiling itself was high above us - easily stretching two or three stories high - and painted in shades of sky-blue with white clouds. A large, crystalline chandelier dangled from the ceiling, hovering a dozen feet off of the ground. Ornate marble pillars rose from the ground to the ceiling in each corner, creating a feel very similar to that of ancient roman architecture.
The center of the room was taken up by a long banquet table. The table itself seemed to be wooden, though it was difficult to tell underneath the white tablecloth that was draped over it and fell to the floor. Numerous lidded silver platters lay upon the table, as well as three lit candelabras. Half a dozen chairs lined each side of the table, with one more at either end.
And the one at the far end was already occupied.
Adamant Will was already looking directly at me as my eyes met his. He was dressed far more formally than the first time I had met him - The style and color scheme of his attire was very similar to mine, albeit far more elaborate. Against the vibrant colors of his shirt and jacket, the cold grey of the amulet would have seemed almost out of place were it not for the glowing red eyes.
“Chris Powell,” Adamant Will purred, his voice silky smooth. “Come, have a seat. I would dine with you, and speak.”
“We have much to discuss, you and I.”