A deer and two ponies walk through town getting some shopping done, all while having a little tour of Ponyville.
Meanwhile...
***
It’s been several months since the collapse of the clockwork army, the clockwork god was defeated by the United Front. It took us 20 something years of fighting to finally rid our realm of his evil presence. Now we can finally integrate some of the old clockwork droids into our workforce without worry of evil corruption and influence from that dastardly entity, of course we still took precaution to ward off any external attempts of control to our own clockwork drones by placing them under the state's control.
However, now I’m told by my court magicians that there's a report of a magical anomaly at one of their old forts and upon closer inspection the inner part of the fort seems to have been magically ripped from our realm to another, leaving behind an unstable rift connection. Could the clockwork god have escaped using a rift? But how could he have been hidden until now? Hopefully it wasn’t that damned clockwork entity but if it was, we would need to hunt the remnants down and rid them of his connection and destroy any nodes and hopefully prevent the next realm from being ruled by brass toys. I really don’t want a repeat of the Brass War.
I put down the report into a stack of other reports on my desk. I push myself away from the desk and stand up to stretch a bit. Oh it’s going to be one of those long weeks isn’t it? I’ll have to gather my advisors and such to start a plan on how we're going to deal with this possible mess, if anything we’ll probably need to make a gate to stabilize what remains of the rift and immediately send an expedition across. I’ll put aside some funds and manpower, they’ll need every coin and body if they’re to figure this situation out. Then of course I’ll have to deal with questions from our allied nations and they’ll probably want to go through as well, not to mention the possibility of other sentient species on the other side, but as I’ve always said one small problem at a time.
I look around my room, I almost forgot how empty it looks. I haven’t really decorated since the beginning of the war to cut down on costs, nor have I really spent money on clothes haven’t I? I’m still in my royal military uniform and I haven’t really worn much of anything else since the beginning of the war. Shopping later maybe, for now I have a major operation to organize. I am the king ain’t I?
Looking at the simple stand mirror next to the door I straighten my uniform out and prepare myself for the long day ahead.
***
You know after walking around ponyville a bit, it isn’t too bad. It’s a nice place for a small town. However, the look some of the ponies give me are strange but I am a new visitor to town, I’m sure it will go away with time.
Oh that reminds me, we went to some place called Sugarcube Corner, oh deer were those some of the best sweets I’ve had in… well probably forever considering the amount of holes in my memory. Also the currency here is called Bits or something, they’re gold coins of sorts. I feel as if I’ve seen better looking gold coins in my past. But anyway we did some light shopping for basics cause I guess I’m hanging with Caramel for awhile, apparently I have to stop by the Mayor’s office later for citizenship papers or something. Then I’ll probably need to get a basic job so I don’t have to rely on Caramel for everything despite her insisting it’s fine, I won’t be some freeloader.
And now I’m back on the couch, Caramel and Star apparently wanted to talk about something in private. Now I’m just here, I can be patient.
That’s when the world went black...
...
From the darkness a familiar deep voice,“Prepare yourself for your previous realm is connecting and others are coming.”
“Who are you?” I called out.
“You must prepare yourself, Miss Stonia. You must show them you aren’t corrupt…” The voice trailed off.
…
I was jolted awake, looking up I saw Caramel standing in front of me. I hope this isn’t going to be a common occurrence, at least I was laying down this time.
“Jeez, were you that tired from earlier?” She said with a half smile.
“I am a bit, but I will be fine. Just thinking about the future and such.” I don’t think I should tell her about this ominous message just yet.
“Just know I’m here for talking if y’know you think too much.”
I nodded as she turned away and then turned back.
“Say what if we went back into the ruins, I could grab Blue and we could inspect it a bit more.” She said, looking at me with an excited look.
“I mean we could, I am curious about it myself. And maybe a nice walk would help anyway.”
“Right then let’s get ready.” She said, grabbing her explorer uniform and heading upstairs to talk to Star.
It might not be such a bad idea to revisit the ruins I once slept in, maybe I could answer some of my own questions and fill in some memory gaps.
***
My name is Johnathan Young, a human and a royal explorer hired by His Majesty King Samuel Adams of Stonia. Today, His Majesty got a council together to discuss the proceedings of the newly constructed gate to stabilize the rift. Apparently we’ll be well funded and backed up with soldiers armed with the new Bolt-Action Sampston Rifles. I was also told I would be the first to travel through with my team.
My team consisted of other explorers, hired adventurers, and a couple researchers. All of whom are a mix of human and beastkin. Specifically adventuring Wolvekin as they have better scouting abilities compared to humans and other beastkin. Anyway, our basic mission is to confirm if the clockwork god has a presence here or not and to investigate the remains of the fort and catalogue anything that came with it. Apparently a secondary team would be used to contact any form of local government after we stabilize our end of the rift and give the all clear.
Which, seeing as I’m among the first to arrive here, it is working as planned with one way trips at least. Though our rift opened up in the middle of some dark and spooky forest at night, leaving us with just the blue light from the opened rift illuminating our surroundings until we could get our lanterns on. After some fiddling around with material sacks, we got to work in stabilizing the rift by building a stone structure around it with some magical runes, thereby allowing us to go back and report the all clear. Now we could do two way trips and get to exploring while more teams come in to secure the rift area and do other objectives.
I can’t wait to explore another clockwork ruin, they’re usually pretty interesting and filled with fun contraptions. Of course we have to find it first, and to do so a researcher brought along some device that almost looks like a stick. Apparently he can use it to specifically sense clockwork signatures and the like, which means he’ll be navigating us. Eventually we ended up in a cave system that was almost maze-like, but as we walked closer to the source of the signature we heard talking. We shut off our lanterns and used some night vision spells to see, as we turned a corner we could see three quadrupeds standing next to a lantern pointing at a large brass door. One seemingly had a horn, a unicorn? Here? The other was wearing some uniform with a pith helmet and the other looked almost like a deer, the researcher looked back at me and pointed at the deer.
“That deer has very faint clockwork signatures.” He whispered to me.
I nodded then I motioned for the adventures to spread out, they took positions in the dark, some of them aiming their rifles up others with their hands on their sword’s hilts. Now it’s a question of striking first or maybe talking first? I mean talking ponies shouldn’t be a surprise considering Centaurs. But we shouldn’t be too hostile at first, what’s the worst that can happen? Screw it, I motioned to the adventures to stay still as I got up and walked over to the three.