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// Chapter 2: Heliodor 
// Story: Anemoia 
// by Starscribe 
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Bit might not have the Wizard with her to remind her of her duties, but that didn't matter. Her commitment to her responsibilities was fundamental. She could no more give them up than she could abandon her post.

Still, many days of reflection on her task led her to another powerful realization. She had been told to take from the supply shelves and clean, and not stop until the task was done. But the Wizard wouldn't care how she cleaned, would he? So long as the result was the same, she could achieve it some other way.

He would be more upset that I have failed than to see me using other tools. With that realization, Bit began to search for some other way to clean the windows, since that was the last job she had continued to do. 

It took some searching. The tower was old, and it wasn't just the supply cabinet that was in poor shape. Many rooms she visited were filled with rotting furniture, and cloth that had withered until there was only a few threads.

But on a shelf tucked away and sealed, she found soft cloth surviving despite all the years. With these she made a brush. Then she used the bits of brooms without bristles, and made herself a handle.

Bit reveled in her return to routine. She cleaned every window until it was crystal clear, and the arctic sun filled the tower with blue-white light. She cleaned until she could see Zircon outside, no matter the room she visited.

True, there wasn't much to see down there. The Wizard had once spoken to her of the many wonderful things in the city below, of its crystal berries and song-markets. But she could hear no music anymore. The ponies she did see walking down below did not dress in the colorful cloaks and fine crystal jewelry she remembered from the tower's ancient visitors. Instead they wore dark robes tight about their bodies, shuffling forward in tiny, huddled groups.

All of Zircon is like a tower that needs cleaning. Where are the ones who kept it nice? The thought struck her like a physical blow, and no sooner had it come then she found her understanding faded again. Bit had not been made to care for a city, she only had to worry about one tower.

Her newfound bravery at visiting the Wizard's quarters affected her work in other ways. Instead of moving her brush the same way each time, she brushed only where she saw dirt, and left windows in rooms that were kept shut to go far longer between cleanings.

Soon enough, she found she could easily finish her task before the tower got too dirty, despite its many floors. Long ago, before her tools had broken, she had other jobs too.

She scavenged and scoured through the old wastebins, and found the broken parts of old brooms. With time and patience, she crafted many broken tools into a few that worked—enough to return to her task.

Old work brought back old memories. As she swept the halls, she remembered their ancient occupants, the starsmiths of Zircon whose eyes had glittered behind spectacles. She swept at the places their pipe-smoke had once trailed onto the floor, and dodged around the workbenches where the Wizard's many apprentices had labored tirelessly to follow his commands.

We were alike. We all knew the Wizard was the greatest of us all, and we were eager to obey his instructions.

Except they weren't alike. The apprentices had changed over the years, male and female, winged and horned, young and old. Though they claimed to serve the Wizard, their dedication always failed in the end, and they left.

I shouldn't be alone in this tower. There were many others to help.

She found their quarters—the smaller rooms in the back, where other helpers had once stayed. They had uniforms like hers, though there was only dust left of those now. They had beds and chairs like the Wizard, though their rooms were barely closet-sized.

You abandoned us, leaving all the tasks for me to do alone. You should've had more dedication to our Wizard.

In her rage, Bit slammed their doors shut one by one, and resolved never to clean them again. The others had abandoned the tower, they could sleep in dirty rooms.

When she got no complaints, Bit began to try this daring experiment elsewhere. There were lots of old storage rooms in the tower, that no longer had anything inside them. A room without a purpose did not need to be kept clean, since nopony would visit it anyway. She abandoned them.

Suddenly Bit had even more time, and she began to take up other chores. It didn't matter quite where she got the supplies—she could scavenge from the tower's other resources, she could repurpose, and the Wizard never appeared to chastise her. 

Soon the ground wasn't just swept, but she saw her own reflection in the tiles. She ventured outside for the first time in forever, dragging the bins one at a time to the ancient sewage entrance. 

Instead of steam rising into her face and water flowing beneath, she looked down into the city's municipal garbage system and found only a stink of decay, and a layer of frozen green sludge taller than a pony. 

But that wasn't her problem: Bit dumped her bins, and returned to the tower. She straightened every photograph, dusted every screen, and lacquered over the ancient tapestries. 

But still there was something missing: her tower should not be dark.

The problem was not unique to the tower—all of Zircon was dark now, where once it lit up the arctic winters like a spotlight. She could look out across the nights and see the streetlights all rusting away, with many repurposed to hold up clotheslines or taken down for scrap. 

But those were not her problems. If the city wanted to be dark, the city could find somepony to clean it up. Bit needed to fix her tower.

Again she was struck with a problem she couldn't solve. The tower's electrical systems did not respond, the switches were all useless. The emergency generator down in the basement had withered away, and the switch she could still find on one side had no visible effect.

So she returned to her wizard's chambers. She'd been back more than once over the time since she first entered, to clean inside as she thought was proper. Now instead of dust and corrosion, the Wizard's foremost chamber had clear windows. His screens were dark and useless, but he had a photograph on his wall, almost to scale with real ponies.

Now that she'd cleaned the dust and lacquered its surface, the ponies within seemed to be looking back at her, judging her work.

There were two, one with a horn and one without. She didn't recognize the one without. But the Wizard's face was familiar. It didn't matter that his mane was still blue in this picture, instead of streaked with white. It didn't matter that he still had the muscles of a soldier, instead of a frame lean with study. This was Bit's Wizard, as surely as anything.

"Prince Crimson Zircon and—" read a gold plaque just below the painting, polished to a shine. Not Wizard at all, as it should. Prince Crimson Zircon."

That's my Wizard's name. Crimson Zircon." Prince was another word, she was pretty sure it meant something like 'Wizard' did. But Crimson, that was something else. 

"You don't need to call me master," her master said, levitating his hammer down onto the desk beside the nails. "The apprentices call me that because they're here to learn from me. But that isn't why you're here."

"Why am I here?" she asked, following him to the storage cabinet. The doors had been broken and shattered, and most of the tools inside were gone.

He set the hammer down, and it vanished with everything else. "You teach me, Bit."

Even now, his response didn't make sense. The memory was nonsense—she'd never taught him anything, and obviously never would. But she had learned from him in that moment, learned that sometimes even the Wizard could make mistakes.

"I need to get the electricity back on," she said. "But I don't know how. What should I do?" 

She stared up at the portrait, searching it for answers. The ponies depicted here were young, standing so close together. The apprentices didn't like it when she got so close, and neither did the Wizard. Apparently this other pony hadn't learned about personal space yet.

But she hurt to look at, so Bit focused on Crimson. Wizard Crimson Zircon was obviously the one who would answer her question. "I went through the whole tower using your manual, Master. The wiring is undamaged, and the lighting crystals are intact. The problem is the source."

She stared at the portrait for a long time, searching for some sign from her master. The Wizard was very wise, and could easily have left a message behind for her. Maybe he would know she would violate the injunction and climb into his quarters?

But she saw nothing, just the two ponies looking at each other. The longer she stared, the more her chest started to ache—which didn't make sense. There was no heart to beat, no organs to sicken. She looked somewhere else, out to the nearby window. 

That made her feel better—she'd cleaned it perfectly, so she could see Zircon below as the sun rose. Well, rose higher—at their latitude, the sun wouldn't set until winter, when it would remain dark for just as long. As it rose, she looked over the city below.

There were patterns down there, patterns she'd never seen before. The city was arranged in clusters, with the largest group of buildings around the Zircon Spire. She could see their little wooden roofs, and even some smoke rising from them. 

The smaller clusters were iced over, and shone bright white back towards her. The circles of buildings pointed at their own zircons, why weren't they getting warmth?

It's all connected. The Zircon Spire is still working, but everything else needs to be cleaned.

If Bit wanted to get the Wizard's tower working again, she would have to light the whole city first.

"That's right, Master!" She turned, bounding back over to the portrait. "I won't fail you, Master! I cleaned the tower, next I will make all your machines work again. The lights will glow, the water will flow, and you will come back."

She could imagine the moment, just as she remembered so many times before. "Great job, Bit," he would say, stumbling into his workshop one morning with breakfast levitating beside him and heavy books trailing through the air in his magic. "This is perfect. Were you up all night?"

"I am always up," she answered, following behind him like one of his many levitated tools. Though of course, he didn't use any magic to make her do it. "Are you sure it is perfect? There are three spots on the floor I could not clean. I think the tile is chipped, and my scrubbing made it worse."

"We'll get new tiles." Crimson touched her on the shoulder with one soft, warm leg. "Don't stress, Bit. You don't even have to do this. We have servants for a reason."

"I want to be useful," Bit declared. The workshop was empty around her, the chairs broken and the machines silent. There were no apprentices laboring near the walls, and the white surfaces usually covered with diagrams were wiped blank. There were no new markers to make new patterns.

She touched Crimson's desk with the same hoof he had touched. There were many papers here, made of the strange material that did not rot and blow away. There was probably incredible wisdom still resting on this desk, waiting for the Wizard to return and unlock it.

Once I get the lights on, Crimson will be back, she thought. I can do this.