//------------------------------// // Awkward Facts // Story: Princess Twilight and the Disastrously Daunting Delegates // by Ponibius //------------------------------// We rushed to the room where Kukri had stored her golems. Along the way I triggered a spell to summon Storm, and I told her what little I knew by the time we arrived. Besides a few suitcases and other items from Archon Sunset’s procession, there were only the five golems in the room, and two more empty spots in their lineup. I looked around to try and see what clues I could gather. The vaguely chicken-shaped golems were around the size of a pony, so there must have been some sort of explanation for what happened to them. Kukri frantically paced about the room as her horn glowed green. “Torch and Lance were right here!” She pointed to an empty spot at the end of the golem lineup. “They were right here when this one left them, and it could still sense them. But now this one can’t tell where they are!” Sunset frowned as her gaze swept the room. “So one second you can feel them, and the next they're cut off completely?” Kukri nodded. “Exactly! That's when this one knew something was wrong. It was just like—“ She made a cutting motion. “Thooomp! Nothing.” My mind whirled as I tried to figure out what happened. Golems normally have a bond with their creators as a means for control, which was pretty important when your average golem couldn't act on much beyond basic orders—though these golems seemed more advanced than any other I’d seen. Best to get my facts straight so I didn’t jump to the wrong conclusion. “Maybe the golems were damaged? If they suffered enough physical harm, especially in the right places, that would have broken your bond.” Sunset shook her head. “I doubt it. Everything here looks undisturbed, and if someone came in here and tried to damage them they would have defended themselves. There’s also the fact that Kukri’s bond to her golems was immediately cut. It would have taken a heavy duty spell or one doozy of a physical blow to knock one of our golems out in one shot like that.” “And like you said, there’s no sign of that here.” I scratched the side of my head. “So someone somehow managed to cut the bond pretty much instantly without any visible signs of a struggle? Archon Sunset, is it possible to break the bond or disable them without damaging them?” Sunset’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not information I’m just going to give out.” I grimaced. “Right, sorry.” “In any event, it was a very neatly done theft.” Sunset’s gaze turned to the door and she started scanning with her horn. “Wasn't this door supposed to be locked and secured?” Storm nodded. “Indeed. There were no signs of tampering on the lock.” I reached out with my magic to the wards placed around the door. “The door’s wards seem fine. It’s just your basic alarm spell, but it still should have gone off if anyone tampered with the door or forced an entry.” “And it was locked when this one got here, even though the golems were gone,” Kukri added. “This one checked before it came for all of you.” Sunset let out an annoyed huff. “Great. Classic locked room mystery, just what I needed.” “Shall I start interviewing staff and guests?” Storm asked. I sighed and nodded. “You better go ahead and do that. In fact, it might be best if we go ahead and lock down the castle to keep anyone from coming in or leaving without express permission. We might even want to consider shutting down the train station and monitoring traffic out of Ponyville until we’ve figured this out.” My stomach started twisting into knots over the burgeoning diplomatic incident on my hooves. “I will see to it, Highness.” Storm turned and started issuing orders to some guards just outside the room. Kukri’s eyes narrowed as she studied the ground where some claw prints were barely visible on the floor. “Shimmer-mare, take a look at this. There aren't any scuff marks.” Sunset followed her gaze. “That's unusual.” “Why's that?” I asked as I joined them. Kukri gestured at her remaining golems. “This one's golems aren't as big as the Shimmer-mare's, but they're still around a quarter-ton of solid metal. Anyone who tried to physically remove them would've left marks on the floor.” “If they were dragging them, yeah,” I confirmed. “You could perhaps carry them, but that would take an exceptionally strong individual or a group to pull off.” Sunset stroked her cheek. “And it’d be especially hard to do it quietly enough that nobody would notice, and they had to get out of here before Kukri showed up. The only way to make it happen would be...” “Magic,” Kukri finished. I crossed my arms over my chest as I consulted my considerable knowledge base of magic. “There are plenty of ways it could be done with the right forms of magic.” Kukri turned to face me, her brow furrowed. “Like teleportation?” I frowned as I thought the option over. “Right, with teleportation it might be possible. Though you can't teleport into or out of the castle—I've set up wards against that. Captain Storm insisted as a security measure. Besides, teleportation is a pretty rare spell for anyone to master.” Storm nodded. “It seemed only pertinent for your safety, Highness.” “Yeah, I noticed the dimensional anchors.” Sunset cast a quick cantrip to study them. “I was thinking about asking how to get past them.” A slightly teasing smirk slowly spread on her lips. “Or if I should just find a way to beat them. I haven't done it yet, so they're pretty good.” Kukri’s eyes narrowed as she focused her gaze on me. “So you're the only one who can control teleportation magic in this castle then, Sparkle-mare?” I nodded. “That’s right.” She grunted. “So, can you account for where you were earlier, going back about three hours?” I blinked in surprise at the sudden accusation. Did she really think that I stole her golems? I would never do something like that—but just because I knew that didn’t mean everyone else did, and I had the opportunity to pull it off. And if I was going to be honest, I could have pulled off the theft if I’d really wanted to. I could think of several ways, in fact. Between teleportation, pocket planes, and dimensional shifts, there were plenty of ways to get into the room, and—while it would be extremely tricky—ways to disable the golems to make off with them. Those methods were something only a high-tier spellcaster could possibly pull off, and there weren’t many of those just lying around the castle. And now everyone was staring at me, especially Sunset, whose body tensed as she frowned deeply. Storm’s wings flicked. “You are speaking to a princess.” “She’s still a suspect,” Kukri said obstinately. “Can you account for where you were, Your Highness?” My ear twitched, but I thought it best to cooperate. “I was with Sunset when you found us, and before that I was at dinner with the ambassadors. The only time I wasn't with anyone was in between those two things.” “And how long was that, and what were you doing?” the changeling pressed. “About an hour ago,” I told her. “Well before you came bursting into the Archon's room. There was only about fifteen minutes between me leaving the ambassadors and going to see Sunset.” “That's quite a lot of time.” Kukri’s eyes settled on me in an almost predatory manner. “And you were very interested in our golems when we got here. This one saw how you kept looking at them.” “She was asking a lot of questions about them just a little bit ago,” Sunset commented, her ears flicking. Storm brought herself to her full height as she faced Kukri. “The princess would not steal from one of her guests. Why would she do something like that?” Kukri shrugged. “The why doesn't really matter when the how cuts out a lot of other options. Torch and Lance weren't moved; fifteen minutes is more than enough time to set up a magical dead zone to contain them, especially if she did some prep work ahead of time; and there's only one pony who can teleport in this castle...” “But I wouldn't do something like that!” I insisted. “That would cause a major diplomatic incident!” Kukri snorted. “Like Equestria’s shy of them. It’s felt free to cause plenty of them whenever it suited itself before.” Sunset placed a hoof on Kukri’s shoulder, though whether it was to comfort her or to hold her back I couldn’t tell. “I'm sure Princess Sparkle has a very good explanation for this.” My teeth clenched. I didn’t like being accused of stealing, but I had to try and push those negative feelings down if I was going to think logically and get this investigation moving in a positive direction. “Don’t you think it would be extremely stupid of me to steal from someone under my own roof? Especially in a way that only implicates me?” “Just because something is stupid doesn’t mean someone wouldn’t do it,” Kukri countered. “Plenty of thieves get caught in stupid ways, or because they overlooked something.” “Besides, the timing for me stealing the golems is off,” I pointed out. “I was with the Archon when your bond with the golems was cut. If I had to guess how your golems work, they would have signaled to you if anything was going wrong here in this room.” Sunset frowned thoughtfully, but Kukri wasn’t willing to give it up there. “You’re still an alicorn and student of the White Pony. You could have set up some sort of delayed magical spell or ritual. It could have been set on some sort of timer or been triggered from a distance. That would have been handy since that would have given you the Shimmer-mare as an alibi for where you were. Not to mention you’re not alone in this castle.” She glanced in Storm’s direction. Sunset spoke up in a firm and decisive tone. “Considering the facts, I think we’ll be investigating on our own.” I bit my lip. “It'd be best if we worked together on this.” Kukri scoffed. “You're suggesting you help investigate a theft where you're the prime suspect?” I took a moment to think the matter over carefully. Admittedly, things did look really bad for me. I had the motive, the means, and the opportunity to steal those golems. If I looked too desperate it would only make things look worse. Not seeing an alternative, I sighed. “Maybe it wouldn't hurt to have two separate investigations.” Sunset nodded. “Right. If nothing else, it'll be good to rule out any possibility you were involved.” I took a deep breath. “Right, so let's get to work and see what we can find out.” I wasn’t making any progress. After parting company with Sunset we’d gone over the entire room for additional evidence, but came across nothing that gave us a glimpse into who might have stolen the golems. No footprints, hairs, dropped items, or anything else that might be useful. In the end I’d sent Storm off to start interviewing everyone, search the castle, and make arrangements to make sure no one was going to try and sneak off with a pair of pony-sized golems. I attempted to find a magical solution to the problem. But despite trying a range of clairvoyance and divination spells, I wasn’t any closer to finding the golems. I could only conclude that they were somehow being shielded from magical detection. That didn’t particularly surprise me, but I had to try anyways. It was either that or frantically worry about how I was going to be blamed for an international incident. Wars had been started for less than a princess stealing valuable wartech from another visiting head of state. I was in the middle of getting nowhere with a long-ranged detection spell when someone knocked on the lab door. I canceled out the gathered magics and stepped out of the magic circle engraved into the floor. No sense risking getting distracted during a complicated spell and having its energies backfire on me. “Come in!” Storm entered the lab and closed the door behind her. Given her stoic expression stern, it didn’t look like she had good news for me. “Highness. I hope you have had good fortune.” I groaned and rubbed the sides of my head. “Afraid not. All I can tell you is a lot of what I don't know. Either the golems aren’t within a couple hundred miles of Ponyville, or they’re being hidden from detection somehow. And there’s all sorts of ways to block the type of spells I’m using, like a protective magic circle. The golem could be in the castle itself, but if the thief knows what they’re doing I wouldn’t be able to detect it. It wouldn’t necessarily be easy given all the magic I’m throwing around, especially when I can probably spot a powerful anti-detection spell, but it could be done.” Storm sighed and her wings slumped just a bit. “That is similar to my own experience then. Nobody saw anything useful, either in or outside of the castle. We’ve searched the castle and the immediate premises, but we didn’t find anything that looked like a clue.” I picked up my mug of coffee and found to my disappointment that it was cold. The night started to turn into morning, and I desperately needed some caffeine to keep my brain working. “I was hoping someone would have seen something.” “Well, naturally the Gryphonian Ambassador saw nothing but suspects the Westmarch Ambassador, and vice-versa.” I sighed and got to work making another pot of coffee. “So nothing helpful then.” Storm grunted in confirmation. “I'm going to go over the interviews again to make sure we didn't miss anything, but...” “Don't count on anything coming out of it, right.” I took a deep breath as I rubbed my face. “We’d better start thinking about what else we can do that might help us recover those golems, because if we don't...” We didn’t know how the bond was broken, we didn’t know how the golems were stolen, and we didn’t know where they were. We didn’t even know for certain why the golems had been stolen. Not a great start to the investigation. The thief had done a very good job of covering their tracks, so either we were dealing with a professional or someone who had put a whole lot of thought into how to pull this off. “Maybe we should look at this from another angle?” My ears twitched. “Like who else has a motive.” Storm nodded. “That is one of the starting principles of investigation. So who would want to steal the Archon's golems?” I finished prepping the coffee pot as I organized my thoughts. I decided to focus on who was under my roof at the time of the theft. There were wards over the castle to keep just anyone from entering the castle, so it was unlikely anyone managed to bypass them to commit the crime. “I can think of a few suspects: there are the ambassadors—Westmarch and Freeport haven't had the friendliest relations, seeing that they’re always having one trade dispute or another and they’re hoping that they can steal Freeport’s latest invention. Then there’s the fact that Westmarch has long enjoyed a special relationship with Equestria, and they don’t want to share that with Freeport. The lack of trade barriers between us and Westmarch is a big economic advantage for them.” “Just so.” “Then the Zebrican Empire and Freeport have gone to war multiple times throughout history,” I continued. “They have a few territorial disputes in addition to some bad blood over some things that happened in the past, like when Zebrica conquered Freeport way back when. Though I thought the Sultan and Sunset got along.” Storm pulled out a couple of mugs. “True. But just because they get along doesn't mean their nations do. Besides, the Sultan did just recently finish a civil war.” “And the Sultan might have his own objectives at the end of the day.” I scowled as I poured fresh coffee into the mugs. “Not to mention it would be very convenient for him if I got framed for the theft. That could push Freeport right to him.” And there was the fact that Sunset had mentioned the Sultan was one of the people she was considering marrying. That could be a big alliance for him to make, and much easier to make happen if he poisoned the well between me and the Archon. “They are a possibility,” Storm agreed as she drank some coffee. “And then there's Gryphonia’s ambassador.” I added some cream to my own coffee as I waited for it to cool. “Even if they don't have as big a beef with Freeport.” “Indeed not, but they do not want to see Freeport and Equestria being friendly with one another,” Storm pointed out. “And they don't need a grudge to have an interest in acquiring a new piece of technology.” I sighed. “That is true—for all of them, honestly. All of them would benefit from stealing the golems and worsening relations between us. And if the golems are advanced as I think they are...” Storm frowned for a moment before she asked, “How much do you know about them, Highness?” “Not as much as I'd like.” I swirled my mug. “I'm pretty sure they're more intelligent than normal golems, in addition to some other new abilities. But I can’t be sure without studying them properly.” Storm voice showed reluctance as she spoke. “It might be wise to show less open interest.” I grimaced as I realized how my words could sound to the wrong person. “I just want to know for academic reasons!” Storm held up a hoof to forestall further protests. “I know, Highness. But clearly some have misinterpreted your interest.” I groaned and rubbed my face. “I know, I know. And now someone's taking advantage of that.” Another unpleasant possibility sparked in the paranoid part of my brain. “You don't think they would fake their golems disappearing, do you? If they spun things right then they could get some significant concessions at the diplomacy table to sweep this under the rug.” “I doubt it,” Storm said. “From what you've said, the Archon seems genuine in her wishes. And if she were caught it would badly damage her relationship with Princess Celestia.” She frowned. “Though perhaps her magus could have an agenda. She is from the Doo Clan, and they might not want friendly relations with Equestria.” I ran a hoof through my mane as I felt my frustration grow. “I can't help but think we have a few too many suspects.” Storm did her best to maintain a stoic demeanor, but I could still detect the depression in her tone. “Indeed so. Perhaps we should—“ A knock on the lab door interrupted her. I let out a long sigh, and fervently hoped it wasn’t some fresh disaster. “Come in!” To my mild surprise, Strumming Heartstrings stepped through the doorway with a casual “Yo.” It was always a bit weird to see Lyra’s cousin; the two looked so much alike except for the fact Strumming had wings instead of a horn. Lyra had told me a good bit about her spy cousin, but I wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. “Hello. Did you need something?” I asked. “Just here with some unofficial word from her High Archon-ness.” Stunning frowned as she scratched the corner of her mouth. “Really need to work on that nickname. ‘Archon-ness’ just doesn’t roll off the tongue right.” “Uh-huh. What type of word did she want you to give us?” I asked to try and steer the conversation back on point. It was curious how this was apparently unofficial, which made me wonder all the more what she came here to say. Strumming momentarily dropped the more flippant attitude she normally seemed to have to give me a serious stare. “Well, we don't think you did it, but it'd be great if you could prove that.” “That's quite the vote of confidence right there,” I groused. “I was pretty sure those two things were true myself.” Strumming shrugged. “It's the truth. Sunset thinks you're innocent, but you've been super-nosey about our tech, and then some of it turns up missing. It looks bad.” Storm glowered at the spy. “Her Highness would never—“ Strumming cut her off. “I'm not the one you need to convince. And even if you don’t technically need to prove it to Sunset, some of the folks back home are going to be livid about the golems being stolen. Plenty will blame you based on coincidence, and plenty more will blame you for not figuring out who stole them in your own castle. Either way, relations are gonna sour between Equestria and Freeport, and her grand Archonyness doesn’t want that.” I groaned as I rubbed my face. “The trick is figuring out who did it, and returning your golems. And thus far we haven’t found anything concrete to discover the culprit.” The corner of Strumming’s mouth smirked. “Yup. We're poking around, and so're you. Now, obviously we have to do separate investigations since you're kinda a suspect, but if clumsy old me just so happened to accidentally lose some of the information we have and you just so happen to stumble across it, well that's just dandy.” She let out an exaggerated yawn and stretched out her wings. When she did so a folder fell onto the table next to the coffee pot. “Oops. Silly me. Where'd I leave that report? Eh, doesn't matter. I'm snacky, gonna go snag some crisps.” At that she wandered out of the lab, leaving me just a bit confused. Still, it at least sounded like Sunset still wanted to work with me. “Well that was a bit weird,” I said as I picked up the folder and started looking through the papers inside. “We might as well read what she’s given us,” Storm said as she looked over my shoulder. After reading what the Freeporters had ‘accidentally’ given to us, I made my own report about what we had and arranged for it to find its way to Sunset. It wasn’t hard to justify Spike going to the Archon to deliver some food and use his magic to drop a scroll right in front of her for another incident of unofficial information sharing. We continued to see if we could find out anything else useful, but it was a bust. An hour later I received a message from Archon Sunset that she wanted to see me in the library. With Storm at my side, I headed right there to see what she had for me. A small crowd had gathered in the library, including the foreign ambassadors. As soon as I entered the room, Sunset cast a glare in my direction. Kukri paced back and forth as though she was determined to create a furrow in the floor, while Strumming was sitting at a table with a bored expression as she casually worked her way through a bag of chips. I frowned as I approached them. “Hey, I got your message. What’s this about?” Sunset’s peeled back in a snarl as she snapped at me. “You know exactly why we’re here.” I blinked. “Excuse me?” The ambassador’s attention was now firmly on us. Sunset jabbed a hoof into my chest. “Don’t play stupid with me, Princess.” She nodded to Kukri. “Show her what we found during our investigation.” Kukri’s mouth spread in a nasty smile. “Gladly.” She stepped over to the library’s supply closet and swung the door open with a dramatic flair. On the floor was one of Kukri’s golems. The construct lay inert, being partially disassembled with several tools lying on the ground—my tools, I noticed half a second later. “Isn’t that one of the stolen golems?” ask Baron Goldpeak? Gerda frowned. “It would seem so. I doubt Her Highness would just have a replica of one of Freeport’s golems lying around.” Before I could react, Sunset shot me a scathing glare and gave me a violent push that sent me stumbling back a couple of steps. “You stole our golem! Did you think you could just get away with that?!” Storm stepped forward to defend me. “Her Highness would never do such a thing.” “I-I-I didn’t!” My gaze shifted back and forth between the golem and Sunset. “I have no idea how that got there!” Kukri snorted. “Suuure you didn’t. Who else would keep my golem lying around like this, huh?” “I don’t—” Sunset cut me off before I could reply. “Enough! I’m done with you! You can bet I’m going to issue an official complaint about this theft. Now give me the other golem so we can pack up and return home.” My ears wilted. “I don’t know where the other golem is! I didn’t steal it! I don’t even know how that golem got there! Listen to me!” “This one’s not interested in your lies,” Kukri scoffed. “It knew we couldn’t trust the Equestrians.” “I’ve heard all I need to hear.” Sunset stepped up so that we were nearly muzzle to muzzle as she stared right into my eyes. “Give me my golem, or I’m going to demand satisfaction.” “But I don’t have it!” I tried to insist again. “However it got there, I wasn’t involved!” Sunset’s nostrils flared and she turned her back to me. “Either I get my golem back, or I’m going to want a duel. Got it? This can be between you and me, or this can be an international incident. Your choice, Princess.”