//------------------------------// // The Wandering Workshop // Story: Clockwork Dreams // by Dark0592 //------------------------------// “What a wholly strange and unique contraption…” Twilight was startled out of her work that night. Looking up, she found someone she’d never met before standing and looking down at her small model of the arcane battery. She was beautiful, her blue mane seemed to twitch on winds that weren’t there. She was a good head or two taller than Twilight, though not quite where Celestia stood. Most importantly, though, was that she had both a horn and wings. “It’s uh… It’s an Arcane Engine, the next iteration in arcanotech after the Arcane Battery…” Twilight explained slowly,  not entirely sure what was going on. As if on cue, a little model of the battery appeared. “I see. May I?” The strange alicorn asked, nodding to the models. Twilight, still not entirely sure how to react to the situation, slowly nodded. The alicorn took the two models in her magic and they started functioning. The battery hummed softly with magical energy and the alicorn inspected it with great interest before it practically exploded, though every part was intact. She hummed to herself as she examined each individual piece before letting it come back together. When she looked at the more advanced model, however, she spent a lot of time turning it over and feeling around it with her magical senses. “I believe this one’s intent is to be self-sustainable, or at least reusable, correct?” She asked. Twilight nodded again. The alicorn hummed as the model slowly disassembled itself again. Twilight stood to walk over to the mare, but was somewhat startled as they were walking down the hallway in front of her study instead. “Ah, I see. This mechanism here is supposed to help keep the arcane forces in line so as to preserve the power source for recharging, and this glyph here is to draw in ambient energies to self-recharge. I can’t figure out what this section is for…” The alicorn hummed as they walked. “Oh, that’s a universal outlet junction. Anything equipped to work with a battery can use this instead, any machine or device.” Twilight answered before stopping. The alicorn stopped as well. They were both staring at the large doors leading into the throne room, the ones with the most showy forms of technology put into it. “Would you mind opening this up for me? I can’t seem to find the knob…” The alicorn grumbled. Twilight seemed confused as she watched the mare try to push the door open like a normal door. She stepped up next to the alicorn and, without even looking, threw the lever on the side of it. The one where normally a royal guard would stand to do so for a visitor. The alicorn watched with great interest as the hiss of steam from the underground boilers filled the piping. A few glyphs glowed softly and great gears started turning and whirring as the great metal doors groaned open to reveal… That wasn’t the throne room. “Oh dear, it would seem you’ve truly begun to question what’s going on. I was wondering how long it’d take.” The alicorn said with a smirk as she stepped into the night sky beyond. That’s all it was, the night sky. And this mare was walking on it. There was almost no distinction between it and her mane and tail. “Well, come on then. If you’re truly terrified of what lay beyond then you should probably wake up.” The alicorn said with a small frown as she stopped and turned to look back at Twilight. Twilight blinked. Wake up? This was a dream. She opened her eyes, staring at the ceiling of her bedroom. “Why am I having strange dreams about mares I’ve never seen before?!” Twilight groaned into her empty bedroom. She quickly looked down to find Spike’s preferred sleeping basket gone, that would have been awkward to explain. “What?!” She heard said dragon’s muffled call through the closed door. Oh, he was already up. That’s… weird. “I said I’m going to the workshop!” She called, opening the door. Spike, who was down the staircase into the study proper, just waved in acknowledgement and returned to where he was in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Twilight let out a little sigh, so she wasn’t awake at a later hour than usual. Spike just woke up on time for once. “That freaky book of yours was doing some weird stuff again by the way, could you take it with you?” Spike said as he ran out a few minutes later with a neat little packed breakfast and lunch for the mare. Twilight accepted it and looked at the thing sitting on her desk. “What was it doing?” She asked as she pulled it over in her magic to look it over. “I dunno, I just heard paper rustling around and when I woke up it was just sitting there. You and the Princess get anything useful out of those test results by the way?” The little dragon asked, shivering slightly before turning to her in full. “A bit yeah, the engine itself works and the technology itself is solid, but obviously we’re going to need to be able to turn it off easier. That’s why I’m heading to the workshop, I think she’s over near Ponyville at the moment.” The unicorn replied as she levitated the food and the book up as she stepped outside of her study. “I’ll man the fort over here in case any of the university ponies come around, or if the Princess has a message for you.” Spike said. Twilight smiled and patted him on the head and gave him a little pouch. “Be good and there’ll be more where that came from young drake.” She said as she closed the door. “Oh wow, fresh cut Rubies!” She heard through the door before she twisted the handle a way only she and a few other living creatures knew how, which caused the engravings on the door to line up with the handle and flash golden for a moment. She then opened the door, stepped into the entirely different room and closed it. The golden light faded and any passing servants would find Spike rushing out of the door again to the chefs for them to make ruby rock candy. Twilight took a deep breath, reveling in the smell of her workshop. Ink, Paper, Oil, sulfur, lilacs, lavender, copper, it was an amalgamate of her scholarly pursuits all in one- with a hint of cleaning chemicals. Her magic immediately untied her waistcoat’s tie as she practically flew out of the thing and a much more open tunic with leather around the forelegs and a pair of leather trousers floated up to her in her magic. “Hells it’s hot in here. Philomena love, you aren’t moving. Could you please vent off a bit?” She called out as she changed. A high pitched craw from the furnace below rattled up the piping and a few metallic grinding noises signaled vents opening up. Immediately a nice breeze filled the workshop and she let out a nice sigh. “Better, have fun exploring?” She continued as she trotted down the stairs into the boiler room, which was still sweltering, but at least this room was supposed to be. A metallic sound, signaling the pulling of a lever, warned Twilight that the furnace was about to open so she formed a small heat shield in front of her to avoid singing her coat. Another craw signaled that the phoenix within was climbing out and was now perched on Twilight’s shoulders. The furnace automatically closed after a few seconds and Twilight lowered the shield. “I’ll take that as a yes. Go ahead outside and play, I’ve got some work to do.” Twilight said to the phoenix as she returned to the main room above. The bird nuzzled her cheek a moment before taking off out of one of the ventilation windows. Twilight smiled and watched before taking a sweeping gaze around the room. It was rather furnished for a workshop. When she had built the place she had entertained the odd notion of having guests, and so she had made enough room to comfortably house half a dozen or more ponies. Most of that furniture was covered in various prototypes or blueprints, however, but they were still kept in good position. The floors were wood while the wall, and a few support beams, were stone. The boiler room was all stone and some metal reinforcement under the wood of the ceiling in case a boiler decided it was having a bad day. It was heavy oak, from the depths of the Everfree, and reacted well to preservation spells. Through a heavy metal door with a mechanical lock like the ones in the palace was the massive workshop. Here, there were no aesthetic or cozy compromises with construction. This was a workshop, the walls and floors were metal or stone and reinforced. Pipes weren’t hidden and neither were their valves or various gauges. She set the book down on the cleanest workstation in the massive hangar-like room and did her routine inspection. The metal pipes were in good condition, not even too hot to the touch. Philomena has been much kinder to the architecture than before. The chunk of the floor that had been warped by the last prototype’s explosion was fixed now and she started checking the enchantments on the room. She’d have to replace the battery charging the reconstruction array, but the lights and their wiring seemed to be in good condition. “Better than I left it, I’ll have to get that bird a gift in thanks.” Twilight said to herself as she looked over the grounding structure similar to the one in the testing caverns below Canterlot. That wasn’t wired up to the reconstruction array so it was still in shambles from her last test. She groaned and tried to find a chair that wasn’t too cluttered with scrap and plans. She sat down at looked at the table in front of it. The book was there, right. This is the table she dropped it on ten minutes ago… Well it wouldn’t hurt to look at what’s actually inside of it right? She flipped past the incorrect statement in the inner cover and turned to the first page. “The stars will aid in her escape?” She said to herself, questioning the writing. She flipped the page. It said the same words. She flipped through every individual page before quickly flipping back through a few times. She was about to put some o the griffon curses Krahe taught her to use when a resounding knock was heard on the ‘front door’ in the other room. She looked in the direction through the open workshop door and shook her head, must be Philomena messing with her again. ‘Loyalty’ The page had changed. “Wha-” She started, but the knock was even louder this time. Definitely not Philomena. “Damn it, why now?” She grumbled as she glanced one last time at… the now empty pages of the book. She sighed in frustration out of her nose before trudging to the door. She heard a muffled voice on the other side of the heavy reinforced metal. She threw the lever and eyed a large hydraulic crossbow leaning against the wall just in hoof’s reach. She made sure it was loaded but didn’t draw it. Bandits weren’t uncommon this far away from Canterlot, but they were usually scared of the ‘wandering workshop’ as many had started calling it. Especially since it looked like a great metal beast meandering around the countryside whenever Philomena was ‘driving’ it. It could be a lost traveler, or an uninformed guard patrol wondering what the hell this thing was. She was not expecting a cyan pegasus with a rainbow mane and tail to be standing there with Philomena standing on her head. “Uh, hey, is this monster yours?” The pegasus asked. Philomena squawked and seemed to almost smirk as a little trail of smoke came from under her talons. “HEY HEY WHOA WHOA NO, NEVER THE MANE!” The pegasus yelled and swiped at the phoenix on her head. Philomena squawked teasingly and shot off  into the air. “You little!” The pegasus started and shot off after her. Twilight was honestly impressed as the pegasus caught up to the phoenix almost instantly. They scrabbled around in the air a bit, a few singed feathers falling in their wake, before they were finally back in the same position they started in. The pegasus blew a singed feather out of her face. “Sorry, is this Phoenix yours? Happy?” She grumbled. Twilight stood there for a few seconds, her mind processing exactly what just happened. She snorted. Her snort made the pegasus snort in response. Then they both simultaneously broke out into laughter. “Philomena, when I said go play I didn’t mean go torment some crazy Pegasus! Which, speaking of, what are you doing all the way out here?” Twilight finally said. The pegasus recovered quickly after her and looked confused. “What do you mean all the way out here? Ponyville is right there, and look up!” The pegasus pointed off to where you could indeed see the small village of ponyville not even on the horizon. She then looked up and saw a little cloud home floating almost directly above the wandering workshop. “Oh, do you live there?” Twilight asked. The pegasus nodded. “Do you live here? Seems pretty big to be living by yourself in a moving castle. Though I guess if you have a moving castle it wouldn’t really matter if you lived alone since you could just hang out in Manehattan or something. OH, do you have a fire spirit powering your moving castle? Or a magic door that leads to all the major cities?!” The excitable pegasus started rambling. Twilight’s eyes flashed at the questions and she stepped aside a bit. “Why don’t you come inside for coffee? I can see you’ve read the book this place was obviously inspired by. No, I don’t have a fire spirit. The equivalent is sitting on your head right now. This place uses a combination of steam boilers, arcane arrays and batteries, and quite a bit of hydraulics to run. Philomena chooses where it goes when she’s in the furnace. And while I do have a magic door, it only leads back to my study in Canterlot.” Twilight explained as the pegasus happily stepped inside to look around. “Oh wow! It’s even furnished like a cozy little house! This place is awesome!” She exclaimed, practically spinning in place to see the simple little room in its entirety. “I was infatuated with the story when I was little, and I’ve always been good at building things. Do you want cream or sugar?” Twilight asked as the coffee machine in the workshop started up and she quickly levitated a small tray with two large mugs and a chipped cup of cream and a few sugar cubes with it. “Oh hell, looks like I bumped it again…” Twilight grumbled as the porcelain quickly mended itself with a slightly stronger flash of the unicorn’s horn. “Wow, fancy with magic and with building. I’m surprised the university hasn’t snatched you up or something like that. And I take my coffee black, strong and bitter!” The pegasus replied with a smirk as she accepted the cup with a wing. Twilight smiled, a mare after her own heart it would seem. Well, at least when it came to her tastes in heated bean beverages. “They tried, turns out I was a little too smart for them. My name is Twilight Sparkle, by the way.” Twilight retorted with a little smirk hidden behind her cup. While she normally didn’t care for how the nobility always tried to get on her good side after hearing her name, she was interested to see this mare’s response to it. “What? Really, you mean Celestia’s trophy student? Wait, no, yeah your coat does look purple under that soot. I thought you were just grey… Shit, I’ll be damned. My name is Rainbow Dash, I’ve been trying to get onto Princess Celestia’s special forces team for so long. It’s an honor to meet you, I think?” The now named Rainbow Dash started almost rambling out. She stopped, made some noises accentuated with ‘words words words’ for a moment before taking a breath. “Ok, rewind. It’s nice to meet you, Twilight. I’m Major Dash of the Canterlot Reserve, currently working on the weather team here in ponyville to recover from an injury sustained during a training session four years ago.” The pegasus said much more professionally. Twilight raised an eyebrow. “An injury? Four years is usually enough to recover from an injury… when are you slated to return?” Twilight asked, curious. Dash rubbed the back of her head and looked at the ground. “My leave of absence is indefinite, I’m afraid. I can’t keep in the air too long or it really starts to hurt again. My rank and position have been set in stone unless they figure out a way to fix it so that’s nice, but my progress trying to become a stunt flier during my off duty time is almost nonexistent. I can handle the performances just fine, but the practice is what kills me.” The mare answered and continued. Twilight seemed a little confused, but then she noticed the wing not holding the mug of coffee. The feathers seemed to be just a little off-color, and a little less lively. As if she were reading Twilight’s mind, or just following her eyes, she spread the wing out and Twilight couldn’t hold in the little gasp. Dash’s left wing had a nasty scar along nearly the entirety of the wing arm, it seemed liked feathers wouldn’t grow properly on it either. Whoever had done the feather graft was a master of their craft for sure, the fact that she could still fly like she was a moment ago was a testament to that. “I’m so sorry…” Twilight started, but Dash quickly folded it back up and shook her head. “Nuh-uh, The first year back was long enough with the pity party thing. My liver is still recovering from all the booze. I messed it up not pasting myself against the ground. See, my best friend fell out of Cloudsdale. She wasn’t a super strong flyer, and some ass hole pushed her off. It shocked her so much her wings snapped shut and she couldn’t for the life of her get them to open. So I went after her, and I pushed myself as hard as I could. Turns out, I can break the sound barrier. I didn’t know that at the time, and I flew right past her and my bank to not splat against the ground caught my wing in the worst way and I tumbled down. Luckily, my friend hit a few clouds on the way down and bounced on the treetops. She found me unconscious on the ground and I woke up a week later with someone else’s feathers on my wing and a whole lot of pain, she’s a damn good medic I’ll give her that much.” Dash explained. Twilight listened intently, she had heard about that ‘sonic rainboom’ as it came to be known. “That’s… so much wingpower, you broke the sound barrier?” Twilight asked. Dash downed half of her coffee and nodded. “Hoo mama, this is good shit! A couple mugs of these and I might just do it on accident! But yeah, I can. I can still do it, though it rips the graft out and I managed to spiral into a controlled crash landing instead of killing myself.” Dash replied. Twilight just nodded. She really didn’t know how to respond to that. They both looked over as the door opened to see Spike partially hanging off of the handle with a note in his hand. “Hey Twi! Letter from the Pri- Oh, hello. Twi! Letter from the Princess!” He said, not noticing the pegasus in the room until he was halfway to Twilight. “Thank you Spike. Rainbow, this is Spike. Spike, this is Rainbow. Philomena was picking on her so I decided to let her in for coffee.” Twilight said. Well, summarized. She was far more interested in the letter now floating in front of her face. It was a quick one, Twilight recognized the tone and hastened hoofwriting as what Celestia usually writes when she’s still on the front lines. The simple letter stated that she wasn’t to send her any letter via dragonfire unless she was sent one first giving her permission to do so. Twilight understood that receiving a letter in that way in the middle of a fight was detrimental to one’s health. Or, in Twilight’s case, one’s dentistry. That tooth still didn’t feel quite right after she had regrown it magically. Shining had apologized for it afterwards, but now she was getting off track again. She refocused just in time to catch the end of some conversation the two in the room were having about how he was a dragon. “Spike, if you intend to stay would you please get the door? The less people know about it the better.” Twilight finally said. Spike nearly jumped at her voice and quickly dash over to shut the door. Dash was looking over his shoulder, though, and managed to catch a glimpse of the palace hallways. “Whoa, magic door! You DO have one!” Dash exclaimed as she opened the door again to see ponyville once more. “I did say that didn’t I? Well, Dash, it was certainly nice to meet you. However, unless you find the discussion of arcanotechnology and how to get this damn prototype to work interesting I’m afraid you’ll be rather bored if you stick around here. Philomena, would you please go get the boilers fired up? We’ll be needing a lot of juice for this one” Twilight explained. “A lot of Juice, you mean power right?” Dash asked as Philomena squawked and flew down the stairs to her furnace. A light rumbling from beneath signaled she had entered her furnace and was indeed starting up the various power sources down there. “Yeah, we need to fill up some batteries for the workshop itself- but it’ll take two days to fill up the engine enough for what I need.” Twilight replied as she and Spike ducked into the workshop. Dash looked through and her jaw dropped at all the stuff in here. “Whoa! Is that a tank?!” Dash exclaimed, winging over to where the treaded vehicle lay in pieces in the corner. “The prototype I’m slowly dismantling for parts, yes. I helped design them. You mentioned power like you had something to add, if not then I’m afraid I will have to ask you to leave. This is intricate work and I’d rather it not be widely known until it’s functional.” Twilight replied, turning to the pegasus. Dash snorted. “Pegasus, remember? I’m like a walking source of power. Plenty of room in here to condense a storm cloud, definitely enough moisture with the boiler vents, and I’ve never missed unless it was intentional.” The pegasus stated proudly. Twilight and Spike looked at each other. “We don’t have Electricity generators setup unfortunately, we’re running on steam and phoenix power at the moment.” Twilight said. “Hey wait, if we’re charging up the gems in the engine, couldn’t she just do it directly?” Spike asked. Dash nodded enthusiastically. Twilight hummed and rubbed her chin with a hoof. “I suppose if you really are confident in your aim. Are you prepared to pay for about five thousand bits worth of damages if you miss?” The unicorn countered. “I don’t miss.” Rainbow challenged back.  Twilight hummed and pulled her goggles on. “Alright, go ahead and start making the cloud then. I’ll show you where to shoot it. If you do well enough I might even pay you.” She said with a little smirk as she pulled the bottom half of a welding mask on under her goggles and wrenched the sphere on the trashed grounding structure open by hoof. She levitated out the large chunk of ruby, still pulsing slightly, and handed it off to Spike. Spike proceeded carry it carefully to a wall of bins and put it into one. Out of another he pulled a mass of golden gemstone. “Whoa, you were using rubies that big as power? The hell is this thing?” Dash asked, a witty retort to Twilight’s pay comment forgotten. “Think of an Arcane battery, but way more powerful and way more efficient. Rechargeable, self- charging even. You sure you wanna use the Topaz?” Spike answered before handing the large mass of stone off to Twilight. “Well the only pieces big enough to test it again properly that I have here are the Ruby, the Topaz, and the Lapis. Lapis just isn’t powerful enough and I don’t want to blow up my workshop again with the Ruby.” Twilight explained. She turned to Dash and raised an eyebrow. Getting the hint, the pegasus saluted and started doing circles in the air. Her wings condensed the moisture in the somewhat humid air and started forming a fluffy grey cloud. She spun around it a few odd ways and it slowly turned nearly black. “Ok, we got about a minute until it starts raining, I’d rather do this before then because boiler rain usually isn’t too good for the feathers. Or fur.” Dash said, standing on top of it and looking over the side. Twilight nodded and slotted the chunk of Topaz back into the sphere. She double checked the wiring and machinery inside of the sphere and found it to be mercifully intact. The grounding structure had taken all the damage. “Just put as much of it as you can into the Topaz Dash!” Twilight called out as the cloud rumbled with thunder. Twilight stepped aside and waited, her horn glowing around the sphere. She was ready for it this time. Dash rose in the air and then practically body slammed the cloud. A massive bolt of lightning struck the topaz dead center, charging it and what would have normally been the entire room with a potentially lethal electric charge. It was insulated by Twilight’s magic, however, and the cloud dissipated away after expending its energy. “Whoa, that’s cool.” Dash said as she landed beside Spike. “Spike, I’m gonna need my tools and the first prototype from the corner. It’s maintaining a steady charge, and without being hooked up to anything it won’t expend that charge and overheat. I’ve found the faulty gearwork that caused the initial shutdown procedure to fail, and that first prototype has the dissipation glyphs already done so I’ll just transpose them.” Twilight explained as various bits of junk and paper started floating around. The paper turned into notes and pieces of blueprint while parts on the device and the junk traded places or combined to reinforce or repair unseen damages as the thing was lifted out of the lumpy grounding sphere. Spike saluted dutifully and rushed to quickly do as he was told. “Uh, Dash? She doesn’t know you exist anymore so it might be best if you leave. If we’re still around you should come back so she can thank you properly for your help today, otherwise I’ll make sure to remind her.” Spike said to Dash after delivering the requested items. “Huh? Oh, yeah I guess. How does she do that with magic? The best I’ve ever seen was a friend of mine able to levitate all these light fabrics around like crazy. This is like… mesmerizing.” Dash said as she continued watching Twilight work. “Yeah, took a while to get used to. But really you should go before you get hit in the head by something. She’s used to keeping things above my height but not yours.” Spike said with a little laugh. Dash just nodded and headed out of the door. “Thanks Spike, I won’t forget about a fr-... Wait, is she a friend?” Twilight asked. Spike shrugged. “I dunno, I’ve never made friends before.” The little dragon replied. Everything in the room stopped for a moment as Twilight rubbed the back of her head. “Neither have I…”