Okay, so while part one of our media promotion didn’t go as planned, albeit not poorly, the second part is sweeeet! For me, that is. Eight is snoring loudly inside a mine cart now pushed along by a dwarf, her legs dangling over the rim. If she wasn’t drooling from the corner of her wide open mouth, showing everyone her massive, sharp teeth, and her saliva wasn’t slowly corroding the metal cart, things would be perfect. This way, I have no doubt her photo will appear in tomorrow’s newspapers, and I will be the one to stop her from biting someone’s head off.
To explain, the second part is under Hard Hat, which means I’m with the miners. Granted, not with Six and Three in the emerald mine. Dwarves said that while it would be good in a way that I would spend time with miners of the lower status, I should also be shown mining some more useful resource. What the dwarves clearly didn’t expect was that I’m a drone, biaaaaatch! Well, I used to be.
Heheeee!
My hoof glows when I practically shear off a section of rock underneath, leaving the most experienced miners stunned when I reveal a cluster of gems of various sizes and kinds. Someone immediately comes to gather those, and I continue sniffing the air for ancient coal dust, tapping the floor and walls to understand their structure and reveal pockets of gems or nearby valuable seams. This has been going on for some two hours, and despite my heavy use of love, I haven’t felt relaxed like this in a loooooong time.
I should spend more time with Three and Six in the emerald mine. It’s super therapeutic.
The tremors under my next hoofsteps reveal something unusual.
“Hey, Hard Hat, we might be digging a bit too close to another tunnel,” I furrow my brows, “I can feel a wall that way,” I point straight at the wall.
The council miner studies his map closely, then shakes his head.
“That has to be a mistake. This is a fresh dig, that’s why we’re finding all sorts of gems and veins here. Once we summarize and sort the contents of this preliminary expedition, we’ll categorize this shaft. There are no other tunnels in a large radius from here.”
“Hmmm,” I tilt my head, scrunch my nose, and tap the wall in front of me again, “No… worked stone. Really dense and heavy,” raising my glowing hoof again, I start digging through the craggy but solid rock as if it was gravel, “Let’s see. This body seems to have retained my drone instincts. I wish I had Three here for a second opinion. He’s got the most digging experience out of anyone here.”
After few swings, my hoof scratches something hard, something that I can’t simply dissolve even with love.
“Ah hah!” I clean the rocks around, revealing hewn, purplish black, stone wall with large, angular blocks perfectly fitting one on another without any mortar or goop to keep them together, “There you go, Hard Hat. This doesn’t look like a natural formation, does it?”
The surprised miners swarm around the strange wall, touching, poking, and tapping against it. Their collective murmuring and talking grows louder, which wakes Eight up. She jumps out of the mine cart instantly, startling her dwarven keeper.
“What’s going on?” she yawns.
“I’m not sure,” Hard Hat studies his plans furiously, “According to the map, nothing should be here. This is masterwork that would make my grandpa hard, and he’s squished under tons of rock,” he raises his voice over the mumbling of others, “Alright, lads, quiet! We’re the inquisitive sort, so let’s set up rails and bring the big drill here. I’m not risking explosives.”
“You need to get through?” she taps the stones curiously, “This wall isn’t too thick.”
“That might be the case,” Hard Hat shakes his head, “but this is bedrock. Only the toughest diamond drills can hope to get through. Only few of our most expansive shafts end up so deep that we could mine it, but the effort is so high it’s not really worth it.”
“But… the goal still is to get through, right?” Eight asks again.
“Yes, queen,” Hard Hat nods, “This shouldn’t be here at all, so we’ll settle here for a while before we lay the rails and can bring the drill here-”
Eight cocks her hoof back which starts glowing.
“What are you-” Hard Hat’s jaw drops when with a deafening boom, Eight’s hoof impacts against the darkstone.
Again, again, and again.
Cracks spread through the supposedly immovable object, but an unstoppable force applied repeatedly seems to be winning, until…
...the wall breaks, dust and purple-black shards flying everywhere.
“Ouch,” Eight shakes her hoof, examining its cracked surface which seals up under her gaze, “You know, I’m starting to see why you see this as relaxing. Finally something that doesn’t break when I sneeze at it.”
In the originally dead silence of the shocked dwarves, I start to hear whispers.
“...I think I just peed a little...”
“...do you think I can ask her out for Beerfest…?”
“...you have no idea how hard I am right now...”
“...I’ve never been much for the good old death by snu snu, but daaaamn...”
Eight looks straight at the last whispering dwarf, and licks her lips, het long, green tongue carefully tracing her huge fangs. She blows him a kiss in the end before walking over to me and letting the dwarves through the hole with lights.
To my surprise, the ‘secret’ is revealed to be a single, domed room hiding a chunk of bedrock in the middle with a big sword sticking out of it. The sword doesn’t have a guard, and its handle is shaped like griffon talons grasping a ball representing the world. On the other end of the handle is a pommel shaped like small griffon head, its two eyes being tiny rubies.
“By Muradin’s istrium warhammer...” Hard Hat breathes out after examining the sword, then touching it with reverence, “I wish Granite was here right now. He would blow up in excitement.”
For me, it’s just a big sword. Pretty, but… you know, a sword. We changelings don’t use weapons much. We were made to be the physical perfection, so our bodies are our best weapons, which Eight so clearly demonstrated a moment ago.
Come to think about it…
*Vroom vrooooom!*
Huh, did someone bring a motorized minecart?
“Hey, Hard Hat,” I poke the sword. It doesn’t feel like it’s magical or anything, “This is too big for dwarves, isn’t it? Plus, I’ve never seen any of you use a sword anyway. It’s always been an axe or a hammer.”
The great foreman, or whatever Hard Hat’s title is, shakes his head.
“No, if I’m right then this was made by dwarves, but not for dwarves. You see, this looks like a sword from legends about our ancestors crafted ages ago with a prophecy that its wielder would unite the world. Its original owner was a griffon warlord who united the first griffon tribes and city-states into what became the Griffon Empire.”
*Vroom vroooom!*
Distant rumbling of motors draws closer. The dwarves must be laying the rails way faster than expected.
“There was some huge price for it, I’m sure Granite would tell you more. He knows ancient history, I just know the basic legends,” Hard Hat continues, scratching his head, “I think the griffons refused to pay it, so the ancestors dug a tunnel to the griffon Holy City-”
“That’s halfway across the world,” Eight interrupts him, blinking in surprise.
“It’s closer underground, given the curve of the planet,” Hard Hat shrugs as if this still wasn’t an undertaking of immeasurable scale, “Plus, our ancestors had technology that could bridge any distance or dig through any material including the bedrock. Unfortunately, we lost almost all of it when some cataclysmic event wiped them out several millennia ago. Dark priests have pieced together the most, but we still have only the tiniest fragments of tech the ancestors used daily.”
“Any idea about what the cataclysm was?” I ask.
Hard Hat shrugs.
“It’s where even our history starts. Dark priests have some records, mostly stored in the form of prophecies and strange, fragmented mentions hidden on technologically advanced devices we can barely understand. As I said, ask Granite. I think he tried to become a dark priest when he was younger, but failed. Anyway, to finish the part of the story I know off, we took the sword back from their most sacred vaults within the Holy City, right under the griffons’ beaks. The sword was supposed to be hidden somewhere with the prophecy that there would be no later payment for our services, but whoever pulls the sword out of the stone will fulfill the first Emperor’s wish to unite the world.”
*Vroom vroom* gets closer. I guess the dwarves here can’t hear it yet.
“Hey, lads!” Hard Hat raises his voice which echoes through the large room, “Since we’re here… if anypony pulls it out and becomes our rightful king, beer’s on us tonight.”
With a chuckle, he stands up on his hind legs, the only way he can barely reach the sword handle with his mouth, and tries to pull it out. The weapon doesn’t move, and same goes for all the other miners who give pulling it out a shot.
Hard Hat nudges me.
“How about you, king? Let’s see if you’re fated for more than just Brauheim.”
I snicker, but with a shrug, I grow talons on my forelegs to imitate a griffon, then stand up on my hind legs, grab the handle, and heave. After few attempts boosted by my flaring love, I give up. That damn thing is stuck fast.
“I guess… no world… domination… for changelings...” I manage to say while gasping for breath.
Eight examines the sword from all sides, one eyebrow raised.
“Boss, do you want the world?” she smirks at me.
“No, not really...” I shake my head.
“Too late!” she repeats exactly what I did, but the waves of love I feel reinforcing her body practically burn me, “Hnnnghh… RAAAAAAAAAAWR!”
Jaws drop, dwarves let go of their equipment, all thinking flatlines.
The sword doesn’t move.
The same can’t be said for the huge slab of bedrock it’s sticking out of.
Eight…
...is holding the sword by its handle above her head, the humongous rock still speared on its point like a makeshift hammer.
With a growl, she smashes the slab against the floor.
Once.
Twice.
On the third slam, the bedrock block shatters, leaving the strangely undamaged sword in the claws of Eight’s foreleg.
Sweat is dripping from her forehead, green blood seeping through the seams of her chitin bulging with muscles, and she’s gasping for breath, but she raises the sword above her head in one foreleg.
“Does… haaah… this… huff… count…?”
In the silence, there’s only one dwarf whisper which I think summarizes everyone’s feelings:
“...I thought I was hard before, but now I could drill through diamonds...”
*VROOM VROOOOM!*
“O-Okay,” the loud roaring of motors breaks the dwarves’ trance, and Hard Hat looks around, “HEY, WE DON’T NEED THE DRILL ANYMORE!” he yells into the hole in the wall.
Wait.
Waaaaait.
Wait wait wait wait…
“Hard Hat, did you say the griffon became the FIRST Emperor?” I ask, not believing the idea being born inside my head myself.
The dwarf nods. A little stab of shock from Eight’s link precedes her turning towards me, jaw dropped.
“No… just no… that can’t be it...” she breathes out, her ears twitching in tune with the rapidly approaching rumbling of a motor.
“I thought One sent him to the Dragon Lands,” I facehoof.
A wild smile grows on Eight’s muzzle, then she cracks her neck.
“I guess I’m lucky, I could use a new set of armor and a chainsaw.”
“What are you two talking about?” asks Hard Hat.
With a rumble, something positively massive barrels through the hole, scattering surprised dwarves around like bowling pins. They’re all wearing their full plate mails, but in contrast with the mass of the huge incoming figure, they’re tiny.
It’s a griffon, which can be identified only from a bird head sticking out of a huge-ass metal armor decorated with gold. In one foreleg, he’s holding not a chainsaw this time, but a roaring sword covered in spinning teeth.
“Do you think he recognizes us?” I back off from the visage of brutal, armored madness.
“YYYYYOOOOOOUUUUU!” roars the griffon, rearing on his hind legs while pointing his free foreleg at Eight.
“You know, I’m still not sure. Can I hive call a friend?” she flourishes the sword.
“HARD HAT, EVERYONE, GET OUT!” I yell, still backing away from the stomping griffon.
Thankfully, the griffon Imperial Guard seems to have his eyes only for Eight holding the sword.
”I’ve got a revolutionary idea, Eight. How about we DO give him the sword?”
”Over my chopped body!”
”Eight?”
”You saw what this thing survived.”
”The sword or the damn guard?!” at this point, I feel like I need a clarification.
”Sword, dummy. An unbreakable weapon must be useful.”
With a wide, slow, sweeping swing the griffon guard attacks Eight who experimentally blocks his chain sword with the Blade of the First Emperor. Sparks fly, and the guard backs off. Whatever Eight’s blade is made of, it doesn’t even look scratched afterwards.
The guard darts forward as fast as is possible in his insanely big and heavy armor, but slows his swing down when Eight tries to block his chain sword.
”He doesn’t want to break it!” Eight comes to an important conclusion while I’m helping dwarves get up, and ushering them out.
”We can use that, right? I don’t know, threaten to throw it into magma?”
”I doubt that. This guy spent years trying to find it, and after One’s stunt, it had to be through dragons. Literally. I’m pretty sure. Plus, I can see it in him. After last time, it’s personal.”
After a quick dodge to the side, Eight swings the sword and scores a direct hit against the griffon’s armor with zero result.
”Okay, tough sword doesn’t mean it can cut through everything,” Eight leads the griffon away from me, ”Alright, boss. Time to get out. As much as I’d love to fight this guy on my own, I don’t have the love after tonight and the enhancements I had to do to get this damn weapon.”
I help the final dwarf inside get out, and leave Eight alone with the griffon.
”Everyone, I need you at the exit of new mine 97-F. We’ve got a hostile we can’t take on with Eight and dwarves. I’ll inform you about everything you need to know. Don’t waste time with questions.”
Through Eight’s eyes, I see her attack the chain sword directly, making the griffon back off. That’s all she needs to dart past him and into the mine tunnel. Dwarves and I are some way ahead, and Eight doesn’t want to leave the griffon out of sight.
”Can we just flee?” I ask.
”And leave the birdbrain rampaging through the city? While it would be fun to watch, I want to keep the sword, so no.”
“King, we can drop a tunnel on that griffon if we get ahead enough,” Hard Hat raises his voice, running by my side, “That should buy us some time.”
“No, Eight wants that armor. She lost the last one when we were attacked by the paladins. It was pretty heavy, but she liked it.”
“Heavy? Imperial power armors have their own energy source to allow for the quick movement. WAIT, are you trying to tell me that she used to JUST WEAR IT?!”
“Uhh, yeah?”
“I don’t even...” Hard Hat shakes his head.
As we reach the mine exit, and darkness of the powerless city envelops us, I feel my changelings approaching.
“Alright, Hard Hat. You keep running, we try to fight. Tell Granite what’s going on.”
“On it, king!” he changes course, running down the nearest street, “LADS, YOU HEARD THE KING, FOLLOW ME!”
Distractions sorted out, I stop to take a breath.
”Eight, I’ve got an idea. You occupy his attention, I stab him from the back. Love weapons seemed to be good even against armor this morning.”
”No can do, boss!” she’s backing out of the tunnel, defending against wide and neverending swings, ”He’s really good! The armor isn’t limiting him as much as I thought. He can easily slice you in half if you’re not careful.”
”I called everyone here to fight him. He can shred them as well.”
”Boss, we’ve been over this. THEY are disposable, YOU aren’t!”
”Agreed,” I hear Five’s calm voice, as the warrior arrives first, jumping over me and circling around the griffon to attack him from behind.
”If I’m to be logical about this, I have to agree, although I’d prefer not eating whatever that freaking weapon is to the face,” with a pop, Seven appears next to me, his horn glowing green and purple.
”Yeah...” Six arrives, slowing down when faced with the humongous griffon, ”Though I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do here.”
”We’re on the way!” from Two’s eyes, I see here flying down a street, holding Three in her legs.
Five pounces at the griffon from behind, her claws burning with green flames. He swats her away at the same time while forcing Eight to block a heavy slash which makes a shower of sparks light the vicinity.
A green, burning projectile explodes against the armor, making the griffon stumble a little.
”Was that a fire CUBE, Seven?”
”Way more dangerous than balls, boss!” he shakes his head, realizing his magic did absolute squat, ”Although I don’t think he knows that.”
Two flies past, dropping Three.
-Freeze!-
The griffon doesn’t even flinch as his overhead swing pushes Eight’s block downwards, then he thrusts his sword, the spinning blades of which bite into Eight’s shoulder.
“Arrgh, fuuuuu-” she burns love to push him away and heal herself, but I can feel she’s reaching exhaustion.
I have to do something. With Five and Eight still occupying the griffon’s attention, I approach from his blind angle, and…
...get kicked away with strength rivaling Eight’s.
However, my love slash seems to have cut through the leg armor of the griffon, as he stumbles, forced back on all fours temporarily.
“Boss!” Three jumps under me, trying to keep me steady. That warm aura of love is quite soothing, even in this situation.
So, fighting is possible, but with Eight this low on energy it’s way too risky. The griffon will now know I am the threat and won’t let me approach unnoticed again. We can either wait for reinforcements, or…
...no, if he starts rampaging, he’ll wound or possibly kill too many ponies.
The griffon apparently feels threatened now, grabs a strange device attached to a lock on his chest, quickly aims it at Eight. A burst of noise cuts through the air, and Eight flies off, her neck speared with a thick metal bolt dragging her along.
She can’t get up anymore, blood pouring from her torn throat.
”Damn it, boss!” she says mentally, because obviously she can’t speak anymore, ”Get the hole out! I don’t think I can hold him anymore. Kinda trying not to die here.”
Six, however, is quick on his hooves, and grabs the sword which fell from Eight’s claws. The griffon aims his ranged weapon again, but Six is ready. Forcing all his love into his backside, the bolt that hits him straight on bounces off while propelling the drone way ahead with the handle of the sword still in his mouth.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!”
“Go Six, drone power!” Three cheers.
Okay, Eight’s in no position to fight anymore, and so that option is gone. Remind me to send everyone to basic training with Granite next time.
”Five, speed boost. Grab the sword, and flee there! Don’t let the griffon lose you!” I ping a certain familiar place on the map of Brauheim. Thankfully, we’re fairly close.
With Five rushing off, the griffon ignores everyone else, shrugs off another offensive cube from Seven, and follows her.
So, I’ve found the right place to fight. Now I need to figure out how to. Step by step.
The griffon is now slower due to the leg wound I inflicted, but all that means is that he’s using his bolt weapon to corral Five and slow her down. Luckily for her, because she doesn’t need her love to outrun the griffon anymore, she can use everything to enhance her senses and agility. Come to think about it, she’s completely full, and same goes for Two. The problem is that even if they both poured everything into Eight, it would take time and achieve too little with the heavy wound she would have to heal quickly.
We’ve successfully left Eight behind, out of danger. The neck hole which would have killed pretty much any other species aside from a dragon will take a while to heal, but I know she won’t die.
Several minutes of careful chase later, we’ve overtaken Five and the griffon, and we’re hovering just under the grand bridge. Five is still okay, as it seems the griffon is out of ammo for his weapon now, and she’s managed to weather the storm with only scratches. Scratches that are still heavily bleeding, gaping tears in her chitin and flesh, but considering what the bolt weapon can do are still just scratches.
First, I need to limit the enemy’s ability to fight. Without a moment of surprise that won’t be possible. As the griffon reaches the spot of the bridge where we’re hiding, I fly upwards, still hidden from sight by the huge pillars holding the gargantuan structure.
I aim, the griffon passes by…
...and I lob Three right at him.
A metal helmet forms around the griffon’s head, pieces sliding out of the armor’s backplate, which Three hits with a harmless ‘thunk!’.
He crawls on the see-through front of the unexpected piece of headgear.
“FACEHUGGER THREE!”
The griffon slows down further, now plodding on three legs as he grabs Three and tries to pry him off.
“I AM THE BEST HUGGER, YOU CAN’T GET ME OFF!” the drone screams, high-pitched and mostly trying to give himself courage when faced with the griffon’s already crazy strength enhanced by the Imperial power armor.
Realizing that getting rid of Three would likely involve blowing his own head off, the griffon wraps his talons around the small drone’s entire barrel…
...and spins him around on the smooth surface of his helmet, his vision now obstructed only by Three’s forelegs instead of his whole body.
“NECKHUGGER THREE!”
Crap, that bought us way less time than I hoped. Alright, backup backup backup plan… do we give him the sword? No, that would lose us our only leverage in case he wanted to kills us afterwards.
What would One do? Nevermind, she wasn’t able to seduce him, so I doubt anything else of that kind we can do will work.
Two? She’s currently screaming mental commands interwoven with obscenities at the griffon. Sadly, while the commands are good, the griffon simply doesn’t care.
Eight? Last time she got him through his sheer stupidity, but…
Now we have a proof he’s not a mindless killing machine hanging around his neck.
”Five, stop near the edge,” I say when I recall something important Hard Hat said. I thought about things in the wrong way, ”You’ll know what to do.”
”Do I throw the sword down?” she asks.
”Nope.”
Eight’s gonna get a present to show how happy I am to have her back, it just won’t be everything she hoped for. I’ll have to make it up to her later.
Five is standing firm as the griffon rushes towards her. Now I understand why Six admires her dedication to duty.
”Three, brick mode! LEFT.”
”Whuh?” the drone catches on quickly, swings around the griffon’s neck, pours all his love into hard and heavy chitin, and drops straight under his left foreleg.
The griffon stumbles as he punts Three into the darkness. However, his left hind leg that I slashed can’t bear his weight, and Five jumps to the side, giving the griffon one final kick which sends him over the edge of the bridge into the endless depth. I hear a panicked eagle’s screech followed by completely ineffective flapping of the griffon’s wings.
As Hard Hat said, those armors are very, very heavy. I was just hoping they couldn’t fly on their own. Plus, from Three’s exploration of this area, I know there’s a vast river of magma down in the darkness.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” a second, higher-pitched voice is almost drowned out by the griffon’s screaming.
”Three, you can fly.”
”Oh, right!” he stops eee-ing, changes his chitin’s weight, and in few moments he’s buzzing around me again as we all gather on the bridge, Eight limping to us as well. Five gives me the Blade of the First Emperor, which I present to Eight.
“Well, Eight, you’re not getting all your toys, but you’ve sure earned this one,” I say. She grabs it, and gives it a practice swing, “And no chain sword or power armor until you’re older,” I chuckle.
She lets the sword hover next to her not to hinder her walking.
“Looks like I’m your sword in more ways than one now, boss,” she licks her lips, “And I’m gonna UNITE the first dark priest I see so hard...” she coughs out blood, “Damn… Three hop on my back, will you?”
“Yay, I’m a bandaid!”
“Indeed, Three. You’re a drone of many talents,” Eight smiles.