"Hello again, Mister Scope."
"Oh. You again. Here to take my maps again?"
"Well, maybe - and only if you agree. I know that you were unhappy with me the last time we met. I haven't been able to figure out why - but your reasons are your reasons, and you don't owe me any explanations. So, right now, I'm here to ask you if there's anything that I might be able to do for you."
Copper snorted. "I severely doubt it. You may have gotten a royal sinecure - but you're still just a cow. While I'm an archaeologist, plumbing the depths of the past using the latest technologies of the present, to help create a better future."
"Very poetic. But I'd still like to try to help, if I can."
"Waste of my time, and yours."
"I have all day, if need be. And I have... several unique sources of information, and influence. Even if I were to agree with your characterization of my job, royal sinecures do come with a few advantages - the very fact that I got one should imply that I'm not an average bovine. I would dearly like to ask for your help with something - but with the way things stand between us, it seems unlikely you'd be willing. So, I ask again - is there anything I can do for you? Would a letter of introduction to a noble house ease access to a potential dig site? Are you short of sheer funding? Is there some puzzle that could be solved if you just had the right data?"
"You think you can solve a puzzle I can't?"
"I don't know - I've solved a few nopony else could."
"Alright. Just to get you out of my mane, here." He rummaged through his desk, eventually pulling out a good-sized piece of paper. "Here's a rubbing of a tablet. I had to sell the original to a private collector - but I kept this to work on. It's in a dead language that nopony alive speaks. I've tried translating these ideographs using Horsapollo's Hieroglyphica, but only get pseudo-mystical garbage."
I stepped closer to take a look at it - it appeared to be classical Egyptian hieroglyphs, though, of course, it might be something else entirely. I had been a while since I'd even glanced at a list of Egyptian unilateral signs, let alone the bilaterals, trilaterals, logograms, or determinatives, or looked at an actual dictionary of the transliterated terms. I ran my gaze along the columns, for anything familiar... and there, there was something.
"How far have you gotten in transliterating it?" I politely inquired.
"What do you mean, transliterated? This isn't an alphabet!"
"Well, no," I agreed, "but assuming that this language is the same one I'm thinking of, most of these symbols are phonetic. The cartouches surround names, which can serve as a decent place to start, if you have any bilingual texts. But this here," I tapped a hoof at one spot, "is the one word that I definitely remember. 'Neter', meaning 'god'. The horizontal wavy line that looks like water is the 'n', the hemisphere that looks like a flatbread is the 't', and the lens similar to an open mouth is 'r'. Most words in the tongue I'm thinking of are based on a stem of three consonants, with the vowels changing to change the sort of word. Oh, yes - and instead of having two sorts of nouns, singular and plural, they had feminine and masculine, and singular, dual, and plural, indicated by suffices. 'Neter', god; 'neteret', goddess; 'netery', that last sound represented with a feather, 'two gods'; 'netertiy', 'two goddesses'; 'neteruw', with a bird... what was it... long-legs and small body... some sort of chick?... 'gods'; and 'neteruwt', 'goddesses'. A lot of words are followed by a logogram to indicate the meaning, or at least the general classification, so a 'neter' word is usually followed by a small representation of a god. Oh, yes - the text can flow in almost any direction, but in any given row or column, anything with a face generally looks toward the beginning."
"That goes against every single thing every single archaeologist and historian knows about these texts!"
"I thought you said that everything you knew about it resulted in gibberish."
"Who told you all that, anyway? You're just reciting something somepony told you, aren't you?"
"Even if I am - does it matter?"
"I don't believe a word of it."
"That's entirely your call. And if I'm wrong - it should be easy to prove me wrong, shouldn't it? A single bilingual text containing names should do. I've described, what, half a dozen letters?"
"Five."
"Fine - five letters. Find the names, compare the cartouches. If the letter-signs I describe match the sounds in the other text, that should be evidence I have at least some idea what I'm talking about. If they don't - then they don't, and as much as I want your help, I'll be willing to get out of your mane."
"I don't even know if I have a text like that handy. It's a waste of my valuable time, anyway."
"I'm kind of curious myself, now - and I have enough discretion in my budget to hire you for long enough to look into it, with an appropriate consulting fee for however many hours it takes."
"Keep your damned bits. I'll dig up something just for the pleasure of proving you wrong."
"It looks like that lion is in about the right spot for the 'l' sound in all three, and the square for a 'p', and that looped-rope for an 'o', in those two..."
"Shut up."
"There's no need to be hostile. You've learned something new - isn't that what you wanted?"
"What would you know? You're just a milker!"
"I know at least a couple more things about the language that I've just remembered - would you like to hear them?"
"Get out."
"Sure thing. Just remember, if you ever publish anything at all based on this, to give credit to the one who told you about it all. Even if I am a milker, I'm one who won a court case with Royal Justice, and one with the ear of both Princesses. If I leave, I think I'll write them a letter, with everything I know about this language, to be sure I'll be able to claim academic priority for the decipherment. But the thing is - I don't particularly care about being acknowledged as an ancient linguist. I've got much more important problems to deal with - problems that could save or kill thousands of ponies - problems which you can help me tilt toward the 'save' side."
"If you know so much, what do you need me for?"
"I know some things you don't know. You know some things I don't. Is it really so difficult to make a trade?"
"Of course it is! You're a cow!"
"... And?"
"And that should be enough! You should be... chewing cud and making ice cream, not," he waved a hoof vaguely, "all of this!"
"Whatever I 'should' be doing - this is what I am doing. If you don't want to work with me - that's fine. I wanted to try helping you, as a favor to your niece; but if you really and truly don't want to deal with me, I can go find myself another archaeologist."
"What do you want with an archaeologist, anyway?"
"Mm... Immortality, power, and travel to the stars. But those are more of a long-term thing. Right now - secrets. Lost things, found. The unexpected. More specifically - to know more about the Star Objects, what they can do, where they might be, and why nopony happens to be using any given one at the moment. Any other lost magical objects waiting to be found. Legendary sites of power. Inscriptions describing spells of untold power. The usual."
"Uh-huh. And why, exactly, do you want to know any of that?"
"Certain nobles have decided that they object to my presence at court so much, they're willing to put the lives of many thousands of ponies at risk just to remove me. Being an extraordinarily intelligent cow can only take me so far - when they're willing to use simple, raw force, regardless of the Princess's disapproval, then I need some way to be able to counter that - and, of course, all the obvious ways to counter are already well-known and will have been anticipated. So I'm looking for the unanticipatable."
"What, so you can blast back?"
"I'd prefer something more defensive. But if a unicorn is willing to shoot down a dozen innocent ponies standing next to me, just to get to me; and if the only way to stop them is to blast them first; then yes, I'm entirely willing to attack them."
"Sounds like what you want is the Scutum."
"The Star Shield?" I responded, recalling what Star Chaser had mentioned. "If possible - certainly."
"Good luck with that. It's supposed to be the perfect defense - but it can't protect a whole nation. Hasn't been seen in centuries... since the Griffins lost their government. Some of 'em who didn't like Celestia's announcement upped and left, sailing north. Never heard from 'em again, so it's probably at the bottom of the ocean somewhere."
"I have some... acquaintances with access to unusual spells, some of which might be useful in locating such an artifact. Would you be able to narrow down the general area some - where the griffons with it launched from, what sorts of vessels they had, whether the current and wind patterns were any different then than now, that sort of thing?"
"You're not serious."
"Has anything I've said to you given you any hint that I'm not serious?"
"... You'll never find it. You're not even the first to go looking for it. But if you want to waste your time searching - I can get you the references. You'll have to pay for copies, of course."
"Of course. So - that's one target. What else have you got?"
"Raw power, you say?"
"In a nutshell."
"I'm sure you know all about nuts. Still - the biggest collection of raw power I can think of, that nopony's using, is probably the Great Battlefield. All the leftovers from the Great War, a few dozen thousand years ago, depending on which chronology reference you accept, and supposed to still be active."
"If they're that old - why hasn't anypony already taken advantage of them, and used them?"
"Like I said - they're still active. They've blasted more than one would-be treasure hunter over the millennia."
"So - there'd be nopony alive, living nearby, then?"
"Not within fifty miles or so, as I recall. And even that's just the town of Oasis - I'd hardly call being stuck there 'living'."
"I haven't got a map handy - where is it?"
"Halfway across Equestria - the far side of the Everfree Forest."
"Hm... I just might have a trick up my sleeve that's worth trying. If I can get there in a reasonable time - I'm really starting to get annoyed with how slow the trains are."
"You think the trains are slow? Compared to what?"
"Airships, the pegasus express, the optical telegraph - what, you think the trains are fast?"
"I think... you'd better tell me the rest of what you know about that language before I buck you out of here."
"Ah - so I've been upgraded to actually knowing something? That's an improvement, I guess."
"Keep pushing it, and I just might buck you out of here anyway."
"Fine, fine. Word order is generally verb-subject-object. The older dialects didn't have articles corresponding to 'the', 'a', or 'an', but the later ones did - 'pe', 'te', and 'ne', masculine, feminine, and plural. Numerals were base ten, but simply stacked together for multiples..."
Once I left Copper's place, I did end up writing that letter to Luna. The term 'milker' seemed to be cognate to... a rather unpleasant Earthly insult, at least in connotation; and I never did tell Copper that I wouldn't write such a thing; and, after all, I didn't write down anything but the absolute truth in it. Besides - it seemed all too likely that some other members of the Court would get a hold of it, which would result in it being passed along to the ponies who were coming after me; and, like the clues I'd left about the Element, it was an entirely plausible but entirely irrelevant hint about what my planned activities might be. Any resources and effort they spent chasing down those leads were resources and effort that couldn't be applied against me, which I was entirely willing to count as a win.