//------------------------------// // 18| The Monster Below // Story: The Evil Paradox // by Alcatraz //------------------------------// Monday was a more than welcome fresh start to a new week. When I told Celestia what happened with Thermal in the City the previous day, her reaction was like she sat on something she wasn’t supposed to, and demanded life imprisonment for the stallion on four counts of attempted equicide. To say that she was angry was the grossest understatement of the century. I managed to stop Celestia’s guards dragging Thermal off by telling Celestia that I hadn’t integrated the City with Equestria, which meant the incident was within my jurisdiction and not Celestia’s. When it came to dealing with Thermal, he told me that his bung wing was caused by muscle atrophy from an injury which never properly healed, and given how much he began to eat since he was unable to fly, I thought it redundant to exile him from the City since he couldn’t get back. My initial sentence for Thermal was ten years in a cell with two hours a day allowed for supervised exercise (something he really needed), and if his behaviour was good enough, I was willing to let him out early and assign him community service until his ten years were served. Celestia wasn’t exactly happy, but then again, my decision, not hers. Boreas returned as expected on Tuesday evening, but what I didn’t anticipate, but rather should’ve, was the fifty or so mares and stallions that turned up with her. They all decided to make good on my offer to come to the Castle of the Two Sisters, and were largely mares who saw an opportunity to escape the City of Clouds after Belcusas’ downfall. A dozen stallions and their wives, all of whom did not share the same sentiment that most of the City’s Nobles and other stallions who took full advantage of Belcusas’ legislation. They all wanted to make a life of their own that didn’t revolve around a King that ruled using intimidation and fear. Some of them stayed overnight and paid for supplies before venturing out on their own, whereas others wanted to stick around and gain a sense of stability before deciding what to do. Those that had the relevant job history were employed at the Castle on a trial basis, which was a boon since we needed the extra staff to help cope with the new arrivals. There were plenty of rooms to go around, married couples got a room of their own, whereas those who wanted to could share. Expectedly, there were a few problems with all the new pegasi who had no idea how ground ponies worked. What I noticed quite quickly was that there were either pegasi who performed exceedingly well in their assigned jobs because it was something they were effectively forced into doing by Belcusas, the nobles, or husbands, then there were others who had never worked a day in their life and struggled to learn how to toast bread. There really wasn’t any inbetween. Wednesday and Thursday saw the arrival of roughly ninety more mares, much to the chagrin of Celestia and myself. I underestimated how many would take me up on my offer by a wide margin. Most of those mares were either escaping their arranged marriages and wanted to disappear from the City, and others were giving their spouses an ultimatum if they had the capacity to treat them with respect and dignity. If not, it was bye-bye. Between organising the City, my duties at the Castle, studying the relics I brought back with me, and keeping tabs on all the new arrivals, I was quickly becoming overburdened with the amount of work I had inadvertently signed up for. Not only that, but the amount of ponies actually began to put a strain on the Castle’s supplies. As a result, we had to keep transporting food and water to replenish the rapidly depleting resources from nearby farms on short notice and pay a premium, which also meant money was being siphoned faster than it was being made. We only had about a hundred and fifty spare rooms, excluding the suites reserved for foreign dignitaries when they visited, and they were being quickly snatched up. The maids and butlers responsible for the cleaning were being pushed to the limit; the chefs had to provide meals for an excess of four-hundred ponies, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and there wasn’t enough entertainment to go around to keep everyone occupied. I could understand the position the mares were being put in, but it was getting beyond the point of ridiculous. From the start of Monday until the Friday afternoon, we had burned through a months worth of supplies in two weeks, and we only had another two left. Not only that, but the staff physically could not keep up with the amount of work going on, and Celestia had begun to notice things going wrong. She had trusted that I could handle it, so I didn’t fully keep her in the loop about the entirety of what was going on. Celestia knocking on my door that Friday afternoon was the last straw for her. “Come in,” I answered. Celestia let herself in, wearing a worn and stressed-out expression. “Luna, we need to talk about the situation at hand,” Celestia said. “We can’t keep this up. We officially have no more rooms left, and barely two weeks worth of supplies to keep everypony sustained. As much as I hate to say it, you either need to send them home, or on their way.” It was unfortunate that I found myself in that position. If I’d just sent them on their way, it’d look like I didn’t care enough to help. If I let them stay, the Castle would run out of supplies sooner or later, which would be unfair on everyone who lived and worked there. I chewed the inside of my cheek for a moment, and an idea came to mind. “If it’s a money issue, we still do have the means to reproduce Lumen’s gold processing plant and use it in a mining operation, as I’ve said before. Now would be a good time to put it to use.” I could almost see the gears turning in Celestia’s head. I just had to play my hand right. “I’m not saying that’s a bad idea,” she sighed, “but we’re burning through supplies faster than we have the means to afford them. If we dip into the Castle’s funds, we’ll have a week or two of money left at best, though a bit more if we use our personal allowances.” I had no idea I’d put us in that difficult of a position. “As much as I hate to admit it, yeah, you’re right. I’ll give the newcomers until Monday to get their affairs together. Does three days sound fair?” “That’s not to say we can’t keep the pegasi that have been performing well in their new positions. I think it was Pyrrah, whose candle making skills have been quite useful. She’s made a number of new samples and scents that are to die for!” Celestia’s gleeful expression betrayed her seriousness, and it was as cute as it was funny. “You can put Pyrrah on your payroll, if you’d like,” I smirked, “as well as anypony else that’s been performing well. The best I can do is refer the remaining pegasi to other towns and villages that best suit their endeavours.” “Agreed,” Celestia said, pleased. “I’m glad we sorted that out. As for your plan regarding the gold, I think it’s time we took advantage of the situation.” “I’ve been trying to get you to see it like that for weeks,” I said with a mockingly exasperated roll of my eyes. I pulled out all the copied notes (so the originals weren’t the only ones available) I’d accrued on Lumen, Wintergreen, Lamplight, and Compass, detailing their diagrams and blueprints for the machine, as well as the plot of land they were planning to operate on. “This is everything I have on what they were up to. You can pay the metalsmiths at Aes for the components, like Lumen did, but have them brought to the Castle, I’ll take Atlas and a couple guards to go survey the canyon Lumen was going to set up shop. That cool with you?” Celestia quirked an eyebrow. “‘Cool’... with me?” Seemed she wasn’t on terms with Earth lingo, but I couldn’t really blame her. “Yes,” I replied tersely, but with a hint of mirth. She chuckled to herself and grinned. “Yes, that is ‘cool’ with me.” Celestia levitated the scrolls and parchment from me to look them over, and took the ones she needed before putting the rest back from where she saw me retrieve them. “Hopefully we can use the money we’d otherwise use to accommodate the pegasi, to operate the mine.” “I’ll see you at dinner?” I said by way of goodbye. “I hear the chefs are preparing your favourite, Luna,” Celestia knowingly intoned as she left. I had no idea that Luna had a favourite meal, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t looking forward to it. On Saturday, I got up early instead of sleeping in so I could prepare myself for a long day of flying and surveying instead. With me I had Atlas, Veloce, Ares, and Boreas. Boreas insisted on coming along even though she wasn’t working, claiming that she wanted to go shopping in Mercy. I also brought along my scanner matrix and respective jewel, plus a few extras that I planned to use to scan the area in the same way I used it to fully map the Castle. It was like I had my own version of the Marauders Map from Harry Potter. It would be immensely useful in mapping where all the gold deposits where so we could minimise the effort required in looking for them in the future. We had a twenty minute layover in Mercy to recuperate after the two hour flight to hydrate and snack before Boreas went to do her own thing, at which point the rest of us flew another hour and a half to the crevasse on the other side of the south-east mountain range. Because Midnight was still recovering, all I could do with the disguise he gave me was get Celestia to rewrite the matrix so I was a pegasus instead of a unicorn. I still had a white coat and rainbow mane, though. The giant crevasse had split the mangrove swamp which we landed in, in two, and stretched beyond the horizon to the north. The cliffs on both sides descended into nothing but an ominous black abyss. When I looked across the way, I couldn’t help but imagine how big of a bridge would need to be built to reach the other side, especially how wide it got the further up you went. I was surprised that Mercy wasn’t completely levelled during the immense seismic activity that would’ve created the chasm. Waterfalls had been created when the ground split, deep enough that the water disappeared into a mist while the trees and their gnarly root systems hung over the cliffs for a few hundred feet, all entangled with one another. Not only that, but they’d actually taken root on the cliff face as well. Oddly beautiful as it was scary to look into. “How was Lumen supposed to mine in the swamps?” Ares asked, peering over the cliff and into the void below. “This place is completely waterlogged.” “Not all of it is,” Atlas said. “We’re at the southern end of the crevasse. There’s a basin further up which has been drained of water, causing some of the trees do die out. It would be the perfect place to set up a mine.” “Then what are we doing this far south? Aren’t we supposed to be looking for gold deposits in that area?” Ares continued. “You are absolutely correct,” I said in response to Ares’ oh so studious observation. “Our goal is to find out how much gold is in the area. We start south and move north until we get to that basin at noon. Then we start there and continue north, noting what we find.” I levitated him a stick with a piece of charcoal glued to the end of it–an improvised pencil–and a blank scroll. “Which will be your task for today.” Keeping a straight face despite my sarcasm, Ares tucked both items in his bags for the moment. The idea was to render as much of the crevasse as possible, then mark where on the 3D model of the area the gold deposits were. It was also a chance to test how much land mass, tunnels and such the matrix could render. “What would you have me do, Princess?” Veloce asked. Along with the parchment which I gave to Veloce and Atlas with another makeshift pencil, I picked out three jewels from my bag. I fed them magic the same way I used to map the castle along with some additional spells, then tossed them into the crevasse. Thankfully I brought spares in case one got broken, or we needed the extra jewels for such a giant crack. “You and Atlas will fly ahead to meet Ares and I at the basin Atlas mentioned. When you get there, wait for us and use the time to make note of anything unusual that appears on the parchment, or worth mentioning when we arrive.” “Will do, Princess,” Atlas said as he and Veloce flew off. I dove into the chasm and asked Ares to at least try and find the bottom of the chasm. I needed to find out how deep it went and what else could be down there. Gold deposits - called lodes or veins - can be formed when heated liquid picks up gold-bearing rock and deposits it in new locations. I had no idea now long ago the volcano became extinct, but considering that the swamps had formed at the base of the outer caldera, I theorised that the waters which created the swamp had come from the volcano, making the area around the chasm an ideal location to mine for gold. Even dredging the swamp could’ve proven to be worthwhile. The jewels I tossed earlier were magically tethered to float and follow after me. As long as I kept flying, they’d do their job. I flew roughly a hundred metres or so below the surface, or where the mangroves and tree roots hadn’t quite managed to penetrate. I took my time too, so I didn’t accidentally pass anything I shouldn’t have. I kept an eye out for the basin Atlas mentioned by paying attention to landmarks above ground to see how far along I was and how much further I had to go before ducking back below ground. About an hour of steady flying, I spied something that seemed out of place. The cliff face was mostly granite and basalt, but there was what looked like a pane of dirtied and crystallised frosted glass which stuck out like a sore thumb. I ripped a heavy branch from a nearby tree, and tossed it through the rock. It shattered like glass, a curtain of roots and shrubbery slumping over the created hole as I heard the branch clatter down the hole endlessly. Beyond was a tunnel leading deep underground. As much as I wanted to go explore, nobody knew where I was, nor was anyone around to accompany me, and I hadn’t seen much point to learn any light spells so I could investigate. All I could do was cover up the hole by pulling even more roots and shrubs to hide the entrance, mark it on my map, and continue on, but not before tossing a jewel inside. Hopefully that would shed some light on what was down there. Metaphorically speaking, of course. The opposite side of the cliff was a similar story, but it had appeared that the mineral sheet had torn away and reformed thanks to mineral deposits from rain and the swamp running over the cliff face. I ripped another branch, and began using it as a club to break and chip away at the brittle substance. Pieces fell into the crevasse, enough so that my eyes widened in shock and disbelief when I saw what was embedded the behind the rock. I used magic to rip my unexpected find loose to put it and a few smaller samples into my bag. Mapping the crevasse could wait, I had to hurry and meet the others. Twenty minutes later, I had spied the basin with Veloce and Atlas sitting on a log and looking at the map of the crevasse as it rendered in real-time while Atlas was scribbling away on some parchment. My shadow must’ve alerted them, because Veloce looked up and gestured with a hoof at me, causing Atlas to look up too. “Hello, Princess,” Atlas pleasantly greeted when I landed, but his smile was quickly erased from his face when he saw my serious expression. If only he knew what it was about. “I uh… How goes your search?” I avoided the question. “Has Ares returned yet?” “I haven’t seen him since we left you two a couple hours ago,” Veloce said. “Is everything alright? Did something happen to him?” I decided to play along. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from or seen him. I had him try and locate the bottom of the chasm if at all possible.” “Should we inform Celestia and organise a search party?” Atlas offered. “If he’s been trapped, then you would need the extra help.” “No,” I said with a shake of my head. “He’s stronger than you realise. If he doesn’t turn up in thirty minutes, then I’ll go get a few other guards and we’ll begin looking for him.” Fortunately I didn’t need to drag the ruse on for longer than needed, because Ares turned up another ten minutes later, completely soaking wet. Veloce, Atlas, and I were giving him peculiar looks. “How did you get so wet? What took you so long?” Veloce probed. Ares shook himself of as much water as he could like a dog would, depositing the ruined parchment, makeshift pencil, and drenched saddlebags on the ground. “Princess Luna tasked me with locating the bottom of the chasm,” he stated bemusedly. “Unfortunately, I did. Several years worth of rain and water funneling into the crevasse has turned the bottom into an underground river. I had to dry my wings before I could regroup with the rest of you.” “Luna said that something happened to you,” Veloce said, which earned me a less than pleased glare from the jet-black stallion. “No I didn’t,” I said defensively. “I arrived before he did and said I hadn’t seen him.” Ares shot me a glare. “In any case, I found a tunnel with something a little ways into it.” He upturned his bags, letting his water bottle, ruined lunch, and a three silver somethings the size of my hoof fell out. Curious, I picked them up and turned them over in my magic. “What are these?” Curved like the bowl of a spoon and easily fitting inside the shoe of my hoof, they were a metallic silver in colour, curved at one end, and pointed at the other. “If I may, Princess?” Ares said. I levitated two back to him and continued to inspect the third. “The tunnel inside which I found these is bigger than the throne room doors, completely smooth, round, and carved out of granite of all things, except there were no tool marks that I was familiar with.” He tapped one of the silvery things against one of his curved horns, where it made a distinct metallic clink. “They’re steel,” he added. “What the…” I tapped it against my horn to corroborate Ares’ story. He was indeed correct, but there was one thing that bothered me about them. “Steel is an alloy, isn’t it?” “Yes… Yes it is,” Atlas said, intrigued. He got up off his stoop and came over to closely inspect the pieces of steel closer. “Which means it shouldn’t occur naturally.” It was all kinds of confusing. We had something that shouldn’t occur in nature, yet its presence proved otherwise. “Princess?” Veloce said. “I think I have a theory, but I don’t want to speculate until we get back to the castle.” “That’s alright. In the meantime, I have something to show you all, too.” I reached into my bags and pulled out the rock I found, tossing it at Ares’ feet. “Where in the name of all things holy did you find that?!” the stallion balked. “That ruby is the size of my hoof!” Veloce exclaimed. “By the gods above!” Atlas looked like he was going to have a heart attack. “We don’t have anything that size in the castle’s main vault. It’s big enough that we could afford supplies for everypony at the castle for another week at the absolute least.” Which was exactly what I intended on doing with it: Give it to Celestia to tide us over so we had more time to find a permanent solution to our problem. “Where did it even come from?” Atlas said, still bug-eyed at the sight of the ruby. “I found it on the cliff face, opposite a hole that had been covered by some kind of a brittle rock,” I replied. “I tossed a jewel down there too.” Atlas picked up the map and looked it over, enlarging the area I indicated I found it at. Portions of the chasm hadn’t been fully mapped since I had underestimated how many jewels I needed, which I wanted to rectify later. “Doesn’t look like anything out of the ordinary. Possibly just an underground cave system that was an old lava tube.” “That has rubies inside it?” Veloce said pointedly. The cave that I found differed from the one Ares found in that mine was a natural formation as opposed to something that looked like it was drilled out. In hindsight, I probably should’ve given Ares a jewel too. If his cave was artificial, I wanted to find out where it would lead to. “Would you mind if I took the map back to the castle with me to study?” Atlas asked. “Sure, just don’t lose it. Right now it’s the only one we have,” I said. “Why don’t you and Veloce meet us in Mercy while Ares and I continue up north? When we catch up, I’ll teleport us back to the castle.” I didn’t expect it’d take longer than three or four hours for me and Ares to finish flying to the northern end of the crevasse, but I did underestimate how much of a literal and metaphorical rabbit hole it was. When we were done with that, I used all the jewels I brought with me in an attempt to autonomously chart the canyon like I did with the castle so they could fill in all the gaps where the initial scan failed. If there were any more holes that I had somehow missed, there was enough means for the jewels to chart them for me, provided the holes weren’t covered. When Boreas met up with the four of us, her bags were overstuffed with goods, half of which I couldn’t recognise. “How did your little research party go?” she asked “I found a gigantic ruby,” I said with a smirk. With news like that, Boreas couldn’t take me seriously. “And I am Princess Celestia.” “Then go finish your work instead of gallivanting around town you slackoff!” I playfully returned. “Ok but seriously, what did you get up to?” Boreas asked again. “I found a giant ruby,” I repeated. “No you didn–” “She really did,” Ares interrupted. “I’m sure she’ll show it to you when we get back to the castle instead of in the middle of a town full with other ponies.” Little did they know I had plucked a few smaller pieces of ruby that were next to the larger chunk, roughly a quarter the size of a golf ball. As much as I wanted to give them to someone else, I couldn’t decide who, yet at the same time I thought it was selfish to keep all of them. Of course I wanted to keep at least one or two, to put into the keepsake box I had started to make that chronicled my experience in horseyland. And so I didn’t think I was insane when I woke up the next day to the inevitable realisation that it was all a dream and that I was going insane for having memories I couldn’t explain. Existential musings aside, I thought it reasonable to give one to Ares as a bonus since I let Boreas keep the gold she found, and later used as a means to gamble and win more off of me, the cheeky lil’ bugger. I also wondered what I’d give my other guards when they tag along for weird and exploratory adventures. Diamonds? An entire town? The ruby, and weird pieces of metal Ares found inside an unnaturally present hole proved that there was more of a story to the crevasse than I initially thought. Lumen and Compass had no idea what they were in for, and I was relieved that I found out about their scheme when I did before they came across the ruby before I did. I probably stopped the creation of an underground criminal organisation financed by precious gems and metals without realising it, but, I digress. When we got back to the castle, the first thing I did was put one of the rubies inside my keepsake box, give one to Ares, and put the other three in a secure location that amounted to under my mattress. (And speaking of, I had rewritten the spell Luna hid under there so I couldn’t forget about changing back at the end of the agreed amount of time.) As for the ruby Veloce exclaimed was the size of her hoof, I had her send for Celestia so the two of us could decide what to do with it. “Veloce said you had something to show me, Luna,” Celestia said when I opened the door to let her in. I levitated the big ruby from under the temporary, yet equally secure vault that was my pillow, and let it drop onto the mattress with a whump. Celestia’s jaw was moving, but struggled to say anything as she gazed upon the uncut gem with utter disbelief. “I, uh... Where… Just, where?” “Found it in the canyon. Thought I’d give it to you so you can put it to good use,” I said. “Could just give it to the metalsmiths in Aes as payment. Would you say no to something like that?” “That is all kinds of convincing,” Celestia chuckled. “On another note, I went to speak with the metalsmiths. They would be happy to help us out, but were none too happy about remaking all the parts for the second time, and on such short notice.” “Heh, I wouldn’t be either. Anyway, if we’re that short on money, we could always send a party to the crevasse to search for gold and other gems to tide us over,” I said. “Once we get the mine up and running, we should be set for a long time coming.” And then the extra rubies came to mind. I levitated out the two remaining gems from my desk drawer, and gave one to Celestia. “I also found a few smaller samples, so here’s one for you, and I’ll keep the third.” One ruby I planned on selling when I got back to Earth, and the other one I wanted to get made into jewellery, so that accounted for all five pieces. “Where did the other one go?” Celestia asked, believing I had found three. “I gave it to Ares as a bonus.” “Are you sure that was a good idea? A ruby that size is worth roughly a months worth of pay at his rank.” “I let Boreas keep the gold she found as a bonus after she put in the effort to find it, so I don’t think it unfair that I gave Ares a gem after the effort he put in helping me at the chasm,” I replied. “Hm, I suppose–” Knock knock knock, went the bedroom door. It was at that point I realised I needed to get an office; I didn’t want my bedroom to start turning into a parlour, considering I had started to accrue sensitive information and valuable artefacts. “Ah, that must be Veloce,” Celestia chimed. “I wasn’t expecting her until later,” I said. “True, but she mentioned that she had something to show the both of us.” Celestia let Veloce in, who I couldn’t help notice was looking a bit skittish and shifty-eyed. Cinched closed with string that had what looked like two sharp and pointed teeth on each end, Velo held a small pouch in her mouth. “What do you have there?” I asked. Veloce walked between Celestia and I to deposit the small pouch on my desk, where she opened it and upended the contents. I had no idea what any of that stuff was, but there were a few smaller items that seemed familiar, one of which was one of the pieces of metal Ares found that she wanted for some reason. “I think I may know what made those metal scales,” Veloce said. “Scales?” Celestia intoned, picking up the metal to scrutinise. In response, Veloce nosed forward a few of the smaller, what I assumed to also be scales by their similarity in shape to the metal one, though those ones were blue and white. “Before I was born, my father and a few warriors were tasked with hunting down a dragon that was–” My attention span stalled out at that word. “Woah woah woah, did you just say dragon?!” “That’s what worries me, Princess. The scale that Ares found is huge, as big as your hoof, where as the scales my father took off the juvenile dragon after it was killed are no bigger than a small strawberry.” Celestia was giving Veloce and I confused looks. “Luna… What aren’t you telling me?” “I didn’t want to say anything until I had my facts straight,” I said. “But based off what Veloce is saying, I’m having a hard time believing that a dragon somehow made a tunnel in which Ares found these supposed scales.” I was also having a hard time believing that dragons even existed. Period. When the Chinese first found dinosaur bones, they thought those bones belonged to the dragons from their mythos, so I was hoping there was another explanation to what Veloce was telling me. Then again, I was in a land full of talking creatures, so I wasn’t really in a position to doubt anything. “So let me get this straight,” Celestia said, rubbing her brow with a hoof. “Ares located a tunnel, and inside he found this? And you, Veloce, are claiming that this, a steel scale, belongs to a dragon of all creatures, when you and I both know that dragons are extremely territorial beings who will likely kill anypony that tries taking something from their horde?” All eyes suddenly turned to the ruby I gave Celestia, and I felt the mood shift immediately, with the mental image of everyone playing Hot Potato with the ruby so nobody had to deal with the dragon who it likely belonged to. “What’s more,” Celestia continued, “the scales you’re showing us are usually composed of keratinized epidermis that forms the scales like other reptiles, not steel.” “No disrespect, Princess Celestia, but I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just can’t explain why is all,” Veloce said. “Did Ares mention how big the hole was?” Celestia said, turning to me. “As round as the throne room doors are tall, completely smooth as if carved by experts, but not with tools that he recognised,” I said, adding in a bit of creative interpretation. “And how big was this juvenile that your father slayed, Veloce?” Celestia asked. “Assuming it was on all fours, twice as tall as you are, but three times as long including her tail.” As much as I wanted to know how it was discovered the dragon was female, I decided against it. “If the size of Ares’ scale is anything to go by, that would make the source an Elder Dragon, something which you simply do not see outside of the dragon lands,” Celestia replied. I sincerely doubted that a dragon of all things was capable of somehow boring a hole that size, so I was on board with Celestia. It was easier to say that there was a magic which could easily cut through something as hard as granite. However, when I looked at Veloce, her downtrodden expression and flat ears, she seemed almost disheartened that Celestia and I didn’t believe her. Maybe there was more to the story of her father and the dragon which explained her conviction. “Veloce, if you believe that there is a threat to our safety in that area, then you have my word that I will see this matter through to the end.” I looked at her with all deserved sincerity. There was no point having guards if you didn’t trust what they had to say. “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s the full story with your father and the dragon?” I continued. “There was a dragon living in a cave that would regularly steal our sheep, and other supplies.” The start to Veloce’s story seemed oddly familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. “The village elder sent some warriors to kill it, one of whom was my father. Afterwards, they were allowed to take scales, claws and teeth as a sort of trophy. In my village, something like this is seen as a sort of protective, or good luck charm.” Veloce perked up since I took the time to hear what she had to say, even if I was still sceptical of her story. It did explain a lot, though; she didn’t want anyone in the kingdom to be at risk in the same way that her village was. “Thank you for sharing, Velo,” I smiled. “As a thought, why don’t you take the scale to the metalsmith to see what he can tell you about it? If scales grow with age, maybe he can tell us the dragon’s age, you think?” “Yeah… Yeah! That’s a good idea!” She was quick to put everything back into the pouch, but shrank down and sheepishly looked up to me. “Say, you wouldn’t mind if I kept the scale, do you?” I shrugged. “You’ll have to ask Ares. He’s the one who found them.” “Alright then,” Veloce happily said as she trotted out the door. Celestia shut the door behind Velo, and was quick to shoot me a disapproving glare. “Just what was that? Don’t tell me you actually believe that there’s a dragon running about!?” “I believe that Veloce believes that there is a threat to the ponies of this kingdom, whatever it may be,” I simply said. “So you’re going to waste time and resources looking into it?” Celestia seethed. “No, I’m going to spend time and resources to ensure that the mining site is safe, and that there’s no creatures that would do harm to any of the ponies that trust us to keep them safe,” I replied as evenly as possible, trying to keep my cool. I didn’t understand why Celestia would still want to establish a mine, and staff it with workers and guards if something as big as an elder dragon could swoop in and eat everything and leave nothing behind. That is to say there was a dragon in the first place. “If you don’t mind,” I continued, “I’d like to continue studying Dingir’s sword. If I find out something, I’ll be sure to let you know.” “Very well then,” Celestia said with a huff, leaving without another word. It was honestly amazing how stubborn and narrow-minded people could get, especially when presented with something that they don’t necessarily agree with. I didn’t believe that there was a dragon as much as an unknown threat For all I know those scales could have been there for years, even longer. Veloce made me realise that I should put more thought into inspecting the area for threats as well as what I originally went to the crevasse for. Besides, if Ares’ discovery was partially corroborated by Veloce’s story and the scales she showed me, then it was definitely worth looking into. I just hoped I didn’t get swallowed alive.