It was an extra-hot summer day in Ponyville. Cicadas were screaming in the trees, and any ponies who weren’t joyfully splashing around in the shallower parts of the nearby lake were either hurrying to their destinations on streets that shimmered with heat, or slumped on a couch in their living room with their preferred variety of cold drink. There wasn’t a wisp of cloud in the bright-blue sky - the only thing that came close to blocking the baking rays of the sun was the newly-repaired water tower. Even a few days ago, when the skies had been clouded with the smoke of a snoring dragon, Ponyville hadn’t felt nearly as clogged with heat.
In other words, it was one of the worst kinds of weather imaginable to be stuck up on somepony’s roof, painstakingly weaving clumps of thatch into the pegasus-shaped dent left by Rainbow Dash’s latest failed stunt. But Lapis Print had bills to pay, so there he was - sweat dripping off his open muzzle, panting for breath as the sun baked him in his fur, trying his best to remain lucid as he tied one more sheet of twine-bound straw onto the steep slope of the rooftop. This was his last request for the day, and also the only outdoor request he’d gotten all day, so he was hoping to get it done before noon - it wasn’t humid yet, but he’d heard that would change in the afternoon, and frankly Lapis didn’t feel like finding out whether Equestria’s apparent law of “no-serious-permanent-harm-ever” extended to protection from heatstroke.
Still, by the time he finished repairing the roof and climbed down from the ladder, Lapis had discovered something entirely new about being a pony - as he moved, his coat would rub against itself, the hairs sliding against each others’ length like the bristles of a brush. While this wasn’t normally a source of anything unexpected, when his coat was wet with something thicker than water - such as, say, sweat - and there was a large, flat object like the inside of his saddlebags pressing against his fur, the combination of frictions would end up working the liquid into a lather. For sweat, this turned out to vaguely resemble soap bubbles, with the key differences being a faint yellow tinge and a considerably worse smell. It was almost invisible on Lapis’ pale coat, but the smell certainly wasn’t, and the feeling of foam running down the outside of his barrel was jarring enough to spur Lapis on his way back to his house.
It wasn’t the first time that Lapis had been unsettled by some quirk of his new body. When he’d had his first big cleaning day, Lapis had initially been bewildered by the amount of short, coarse pet hair he kept finding on his bedsheets and in his dustpan. He’d been halfway considering the idea that there was a stowaway dog somewhere in his house, until he’d realized that the shed fur was the same color as his own coat. And even before that, there’d been the matter of using the bathroom - suffice to say, Lapis was glad to be a unicorn, because he did not want to find out how, or worse, if, ponies without horns used toilet paper.
When Lapis walked through his door, dreaming of a long, cold shower, his thoughts were instantly interrupted by the blast of cool air that greeted him as he passed the threshold. He shut the door behind him and took a few seconds to bask in the chill, lowering his head and raising his ears, a relieved grin spreading across his face. Ahh… oh, that’s so much better. Man, A/C is great…
…Wait. I don’t have A/C.
Lapis frowned, his brow furrowed, and then opened his eyes. What in the world…? He’d looked over the inside of his house the day he’d moved in, and had been disappointed not to find a single A/C vent inside. Lapis had assumed Equestria hadn’t invented air conditioning yet, and decided he would have to make do for the hotter and colder months of the year by opening his windows, or by using the wood-stoves in his bedroom and the kitchen - both were low-tech solutions, but both generally worked quite well. Not this well, though… What’s going on here?
One brief, cold shower and ten minutes later, Lapis had made his way into the closet behind the counter, and was staring warily at the hatch in the ceiling that presumably led to the attic. He’d checked and double-checked the rest of the house, basement workshop included, and hadn’t found any sign of whatever was keeping the place cool. He hadn’t been up in the attic yet, but now… well, it looked like it was time.
Lapis gripped the string with his magic - and flinched as a sharp tapping sound echoed through the building, releasing the string and glancing around. Not from up there… the window?
He left the closet, glancing around, and relaxed when he saw a familiar-looking pigeon staring through the window in his living room. Lapis opened the door, and Nikki flew inside at once, perching atop his head and wiping her brow with a wing.
“Hey, Nikki,” Lapis said. “Good timing - I was just about to check out my attic, and I could probably use an extra set of eyes. Care to help me look around?”
Nikki sighed and rolled her eyes, then nodded with a smirk. Lapis grinned, then returned to the closet, pulling down the hatch and unfolding the ladder. Then, after staring warily at the window into darkness that awaited him, he climbed into the attic.
The first thing that Lapis did, once he reached the top of the ladder, was take a deep breath and concentrate, quickly flicking through the sections he’d read of Magic 4 Dummies. Alright, let’s see… reach out like telekinesis, but without grasping anything. Then the incantation is… wait, what was it again? ‘In the darkness, grant me sight, call to me the gift of light?’
Lapis felt a faint tugging sensation within his chest, and a strain like great weight on his body as his telekinetic grip briefly latched onto something - then, color flared into existence on the other side of his eyelids. When he opened his eyes, a brown light was washing over his surroundings from his horn, dim but nonetheless bright enough to see by.
Lapis exhaled a relieved breath. Good, that worked. Magic, he’d learned, was a discipline with fuzzier boundaries than he was comfortable with - he still didn’t have a handle on the theory of what magic did, and he definitely wasn’t sure what made a spell more “advanced” in terms of how much of a unicorn’s magical reservoir it consumed.
The practice, however, was just within his reach: his ‘will’, the telekinetic fifth limb that was based in his horn, was something that had a finite strength and a point of exhaustion in much the same way his other four limbs did. But, along with a whole bunch of other differences that Lapis hadn’t bothered to memorize, his ‘will’ didn’t move in quite the same way as a leg - instead, it responded to his focus and intent. To touch something with his hoof, he had to reach out and touch it - to touch something with his magic, he had to think about touching it with magic, and mean to touch it with magic.
The trouble sat in thinking about things correctly, or rather, directing greater portions of the mind’s focus to think about processes with more numerous or complex steps than ‘pick up that pencil and write with it.’ This was where incantations came in: the words they used, or the languages they were in, weren’t strictly important. It was the concepts behind the words that mattered, the action that Spanish speakers meant when they thought “correr,” and that English speakers meant when they thought “run.” The point of incantations was to put the right concepts together in the right state of mind, and to demand as much of Lapis’ focus as possible when they were being thought or said: that way, by thinking through the incantation, he would end up guiding his ‘will’ in whatever directions he needed to in order to cast the spell.
And that, sadly, was just the tip of the iceberg. Brains, as it turned out, weren’t very good at keeping their processes in separate boxes, and magic was excessively effective at demonstrating this problem - if Lapis thought about picking up a glass with telekinesis, and while he was holding the glass, he thought ‘boy, I sure hope I don’t break this,’ then there would suddenly be a fair chance that he’d end up breaking that glass. On top of that, the strength of the spell and the chance his stray thoughts would interfere would be greater or worse depending on what emotion he was feeling at the time of casting, and the degree of both the emotion’s effect and the stray thoughts’ interference would be greater or worse depending on what type or school of magic he was casting.
There were multiple spreadsheets in the book, but the gist of it, so far as Lapis could tell, was this: for magic more advanced than telekinesis, a distracted, conflicted, and distressed unicorn would cast faultier, weaker magic than a focused, certain, and comfortable unicorn. Light magic, which included both the simple Hornlight spell and the more complex invisibility spells, was one of the stabler schools of magic in terms of standing up to stray thoughts; but, it was also a lot more affected by fear than a lot of other schools. So, if Lapis wanted to try escaping Pinkie or another protagonist via turning invisible, he’d almost certainly need to take a deep breath or two first.
Turning on a light in the dark, though, was easy, and Lapis didn’t need to devote any more thought to it than he already had as he started looking around his attic space. He’d known for a while now that his roof was made of treated copper plates, but whoever had painted the outside of the roof to look like ceramic shingles had, for some reason, done the same for the inside. As such, much of the light from Lapis’ horn was reflected back with a terracotta-orange tinge, and he had a hard time telling what color anything in the attic space actually was.
He could, however, still see, and that gave him ample reason to cock an eyebrow as he spotted the wooden slats forming a wide, solid box around one of his chimney-pipes. …Weird. There’s only two chimney-pipes up here - is that what those slats are for, to cover up the spot where the forge’s chimney connects to this one?
Nikki took flight and landed atop one of the slats, while Lapis levitated a crowbar up from the tool rack in the closet, and shortly managed to remove one of the box’s sides. It turned out, he was partially right - the forge’s chimney-pipe was, in fact, connected to this one. But on top of that…
“Well, what do we have here,” Lapis muttered, staring at the whirring tangle of rods, chains, and machinery that enclosed his chimney-pipe. Just about all of it connected to the copper panels of the roof, either via wooden braces that were bolted on, or else directly via what looked some kind of dark solder that glittered in Lapis’ Hornlight. More concerning, though, was the fact that - instead of connecting to anything that Lapis could see - most of the machinery instead vanished into a pit in the floor, deeper than the light of Lapis’ horn could penetrate.
Lapis briefly glanced at Nikki. If I asked her to fly down there and check it out, would it be safe? Would she even be able to tell me what it connected to? Maybe if I could get a lantern small enough for her to carry -
Nikki cocked an eyebrow at him. Then she scowled, and cuffed his ear with her wing.
“Ow,” Lapis muttered. “Okay, my bad. I’ll figure it out myself.” He headed back down the ladder and into the basement, grabbing the second of his two new books off the workbench: the apparently unnamed introduction to artifice. He climbed back up the basement stairs, but paused in the closet. …Is it just me, or is it a little quiet for this time of day?
Frowning, Lapis shut the false wall that led to the stairs, then exited the closet and looked around from inside his house. The streets of Ponyville looked about the same as they usually did, aside from the heat - the thing is, they were also empty.
Lapis grabbed his mask out of his saddlebag, then carefully stuck his head out the front door and looked up and down the street. To the left, there wasn’t a single pony in sight - to the right, however, Lapis spotted a tall pony in a brown cloak and hood walking down the road toward him. What little of the pony’s coat Lapis could see looked white with gray bands, and they wore a series of golden bracelets on their front-right leg. It was hard to explain exactly why, but beneath the cloak, this pony looked… sharper, somehow. More angular. It was difficult to explain, but something about the hard creases formed by this pony’s cloak gave Lapis the impression that, whoever they were, they weren’t nearly as soft and rounded as the average pony.
The cloaked figure turned to look at Lapis, and he realized with a shock that this pony’s eyes were solid, faintly-glowing pools of yellow light - it was almost like looking at a Jawa from Star Wars. Then, the strange pony blinked, and their gaze lost its glow, revealing a perfectly normal - if angular - pair of aquamarine-colored eyes.
Now, where have I seen her before, Lapis thought, trying to place the strange pony’s face in his head. …Oh, wait a second, it’s the zebra lady! Now I remember, this is the episode about not racially profiling people. Right. Cool, I shouldn’t need to worry about the protagonists today. Lapis gave the zebra a quick wave, which she returned after a moment’s hesitation, then he ducked back inside, tucking his mask back onto its hook in his saddlebag and grabbing one of the spare magic lanterns off his wall. Then, he brought the lantern up into the attic alongside his book.
“Hey, Nikki,” he said, quickly opening up the book on artifice and setting the lantern down by the arrangement of mechanisms. “Could I ask you to help me look for weird symbols on any of the copper parts? I get the feeling they’re there, but they’ll definitely be a little small for me to spot on my own.”
Nikki nodded, then flew up onto one of the machine’s brackets, taking care not to catch her wings in any of the moving parts. Lapis, meanwhile, was busy looking the machine over with more than a little interest. He’d been hoping that artifice would be a bigger help to him, but it turned out, he needed a lot of metal to make anything - sure, there was a whole forge in his basement, but he didn’t have the raw material to make any parts, to the best he could do for now was find other machinery and see if he could cobble something together from spare parts. And that meant first, he had to figure out what parts counted as “spare.”
The big thing that grabbed his attention was a copper rod almost like a pipe, that was soldered directly to the roof, but then ran directly into the depths of the pit. The part of the rod nearest the ceiling was enclosed between a whirring set of silvery semicircles on bicycle chains: the bicycle chains were rotating in synchrony, in such a way that the semicircles came together near the top of the pole to form complete hoops that traveled about two feet down the copper rod before separating, then heading back up the outsides of the chains.
“Huh,” Lapis muttered. “Well, the copper parts are obviously copper, and I think these silver-looking hoops are actually… aluminum?” He paused, then briefly looked over the relevant section in the book. “Yep, the big three metals for artifice are copper, aluminum, and iron. Runed copper conducts magic, runed aluminum pushes magic away, and runed iron sucks it in… any iron in here?”
Lapis briefly looked around the attic space, and grinned as he saw a narrow series of iron rods running up and down the length of the roof, almost like support beams. Closer inspection of the rods revealed that each was inscribed with a pair of runes, which some quick referencing in the book identified as an activation primary rune, offset by a diminishing modifier rune. “So, the iron rods are runed, and they’re trying to pull in any magic that gets too near to them, but this diminishing rune is weakening that pull by…” Lapis quickly checked over the spreadsheet of runes. “…just about enough that they can’t pull magic out of a pony, or out of the copper sheets.”
Nikki touched down on Lapis’ head, then pecked at an angular depression in one of the copper sheets - upon closer inspection, Lapis found the depression to be another activation rune, but painted over with the ceramic-like paint that covered the rest of the shingles’ surface. “…These copper sheets are runed too, meaning that they’re acting as magical conductors. The iron rods act like magnets, pulling any free-flowing mana into the copper of the roof… and from there…”
Lapis returned to the copper rod at the center of the room, and this time, he didn’t need Nikki’s help to spot the activation rune indented into the rod’s surface. “From there, the magic is distributed along all the pieces of copper that are touching, including this rod, as evenly as possible. Like air in a balloon… except these aluminum hoops repel magic. They close around the rod, then travel down, repelling any magic that gets near them…”
The penny dropped, and Lapis grinned again. “They’re pushing the magic down the rod, like squeezing yogurt out of a tube - this rod, these hoops, they’re like a pump! This entire section, plus the roof, is designed to gather magic from the surrounding area without harvesting it from any ponies, then to pump it down this rod and into…”
Lapis blinked, then frowned. “Into… what?” He looked again at the copper shingles of his roof, and suddenly felt a chill as he realized he had no idea why the pony who built this house wanted to accumulate magic desperately enough to automate the process. What he did know, though, unsettled him even further - between the wooden covering for the machines, the ceramic-colored paint on the copper roofing, and the hidden forge in this building’s basement, Lapis suspected that the builder of this house had done everything in their power to hide the fact that they were accumulating ambient magic. It could be that every house in Ponyville had similar mechanisms, and that was how all their stoves worked, but…
Slowly, carefully, Lapis levitated the lantern off the floor, then began to lower it down the pit in the attic floor. Nikki peered over his shoulder as Lapis followed the gleaming copper rod down, down, and further down, until -
Someone knocked on Lapis’ door, and he flinched, dropping the lantern in surprise. It only fell a few inches before clattering to a stop, and a quick glance down the pit confirmed that it had hit the bottom - the copper rod, however, turned at a ninety-degree angle and continued out of sight. Lapis sighed, half relieved and half annoyed - he’d been expecting the copper rod to just keep going down into some cave system he didn’t know existed, but it looked like it didn’t go any deeper than his basement. Still, he’d have to come back and follow up later.
Right now, some pony was knocking on his door. “C’mon, Nikki,” Lapis said, heading for the ladder.
“Lyra?” Lapis asked, opening up his front door. “What’re you doing here- oomf!”
“Quiet down!” Lyra hissed, having tackled Lapis to the ground. “She might hear you! I saw she was headed this way - did you see her?”
“See who…” Lapis began, and then it registered. “Oh, wait. You mean the zebra?”
Lyra’s ears folded back. She stood upright, stepping off of Lapis and glancing around as if the cloaked stranger might be somewhere in the room - then she nodded.
“Yeah, I saw the zebra,” Lapis said, getting to his hooves. “I waved at her…”
Lyra’s eyes widened, her ears tucking back.
“…She waved back,” Lapis continued. “And then nothing else happened. What’re you panicking about?”
“Um, well…” Lyra started. “Her! The zebra…” Lyra glanced around again, then lowered her voice. “Zecora! She’s weird, and she has stripes painted on her fur, and her eyes glow! She’s gotta be up to no good!”
Lapis raised a hoof to count off his counter-arguments, then remembered he no longer had fingers to count them off with. “How so, zebras are born with stripes, and… well, yeah, but she can turn that on and off, and she’s got perfectly normal eyes underneath. No Nightmare-Moon slit-pupils or anything.”
“…Okay, but both of those things are weird, and besides, she lives in the Everfree Forest!” Lyra protested, then she yelped as Lapis’ front door opened again.
“See, Lyra?” Bon Bon said, shooting her friend an annoyed look as she stepped into Lapis’ shop. “Zecora didn’t curse him, or do anything else. He’s fine.” Bon Bon turned to Lapis. “Afternoon.”
“Afternoon,” Lapis replied. “Lyra drag you over here?”
“Not intentionally,” Bon Bon replied. “Listen, Lyra. Zebras are just as much ponies as we are, they’re just from a different part of the world. That zebra might look a little strange even for a zebra, but if she is what I think she is, that just makes her a shaman.”
“Oh,” Lapis said. “Well, that explains the glowing eyes.”
“Exactly,” Bon Bon replied.
“W-wait, what’s a shaman?” Lyra asked, her eyes widening as her ears flopped back on her head.
Bon Bon huffed. “Lyra, shamans aren’t something to be scared about. A shaman is somepony who learns to use magic in ways that don’t need a horn. Most of them are zebras, some of them are diplomats, and all of them are experts with herbal remedies, medicines, and even magic potions. And even then, the potions are more like a side job - she’s more likely to come into town looking for tea herbs than for brewing ingredients.”
“Okay,” Lyra said, but she still looked worried. “But… why live in the Everfree, then?”
“I’m… not sure, but I’d bet she has good reason,” Bon Bon replied.
Lapis jumped in. “The Everfree’s got a lot of weird plants in it, right? Maybe that includes a lot of special herbs.”
“…Hey, yeah!” Lyra said, her ears perking up. “Didn’t Granny Smith say she found the first Zap-Apples in the Everfree?”
“You know, I think she did,” Bon Bon replied. “Anyway, Lapis, how’ve you been?”
“Oh. Uh, pretty decent, actually,” Lapis replied. “I had it rough a couple of days ago - first I slipped and bruised my hip, then I caught a cold, but both of those have just about sorted themselves out. Oh, and I managed to get my hooves on a copy of Magic 4 Dummies, so next time we end up stuck in a dark alley, you’ll only need to grab a lantern for yourself. How about you?”
“Whoa, wait, you learned the Hornlight spell?” Lyra asked. “C’mon, you can’t just say that and not show us!”
“Alright, hang on,” Lapis said, rolling his eyes and grinning, then he shut his eyes and quickly thought through the incantation. The strange weight-and-tug sensation came again, and a moment later, a glowing coat of Lapis’ brown-tinted magic wrapped around his horn. Lapis maintained the spell for a second or two, then dropped it. “It’s not super-bright, but it works - I used it to check out my attic a little earlier.”
“Not bad,” Bon Bon said, nodding. “It probably only seems dim because of the color - you know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a unicorn with brown magic before. Does it run in your family?”
“…Well, I can’t say for sure, but I know brown eyes do,” Lapis replied. “Maybe it’s related. But anyway, how have the two of you been?”
“Well, I’ve managed to land a concert inside the Town Hall, so I’ve been practicing a lot for that,” Lyra said. “And Bon Bon has been-”
“Trying to work out a good recipe for lemon meringue cookies,” Bon Bon finished, shooting Lyra a smirk. “I think I managed to work one out, but we’ll have to see how they sell. …Hey, Lyra, you think I could pass out a plate or two at the concert, see how well they go over?”
“Ooh! That’d be perfect!” Lyra replied, clapping her hooves together. “We’ll need to talk to the organizer, but I can’t think of a reason they’d say no!”
“Well, I’d bring a second dessert option too, in case some pony is allergic to lemons or something,” Lapis said. “Still, when’s the concert happening?”
“It’s four days from today,” Lyra replied. “The Mayor wanted to try having a music festival, so she’s hosting a scaled-down version first. All the musician-ponies in town will be taking a turn to perform, starting at noon. I’ve got the three-thirty slot, which is two songs before the end… hey, you wanna come hear us play?”
“I think I might, yeah,” Lapis said, nodding. “Noon to… let’s say, four-ish? I’ll have to see what my workload looks like that day, but if it’s clear, then sure!”
“Great!” Bon Bon said, grinning. “It’s nice to see you’re finally settling in a little.”
“Whoa, what do you mean?” Lapis asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Bon Bon, I’ve been living here for almost a month now.” …Wait, I have?
Oh. Wow. That went fast.
“Yeah, and during that time, we’ve hardly ever seen you sitting down for longer than a meal,” Bon Bon replied, Lyra nodding from beside her. “You’re almost always either working, hiding from Pinkie, or in here getting some sleep, and ponies need more than a job and rest to be happy. It’s good that you’re getting out a little.”
“…Well, I guess I can’t really stay cooped up forever,” Lapis muttered. …I kinda haven’t been having a life, have I?
No, I haven’t. My life is on Earth. Equestria isn’t my life, it’s just where I’m living.
A sudden, trilling coo came out of the closet, and all three of the ponies in Lapis’ living room looked over.
“And speaking of cooped up,” Lapis said, quickly levitating the closet door open. Nikki flew out, landed atop Lapis’ head just long enough to cuff him in the ear with a wing, then took off again and settled atop one of the lantern hooks.
Lyra giggled, and Lapis grinned. “Yeah, she was helping me look over some stuff in my attic when Lyra showed up. I guess I kinda got distracted. Sorry, Nikki.”
Nikki glared at him.
“What’s up there, anyway?” Bon Bon asked. “This house have a charging array, or something?”
“A what-now?” Lapis asked, then it clicked. “Oh, you mean like a bundle of magic machines or something?”
“Exactly!” Lyra said. “Pulls spare magic out of the air, uses it to heat your stove, keep the lights on, cool your house, that stuff.”
“Oh, so that’s what it connects to,” Lapis muttered. “Yeah, I didn’t realize I had one until about fifteen minutes ago, and I’ve kinda been up there trying to figure it all out for a while.”
“Wait, you actually have one?” Bon Bon asked, her eyebrows rising. “I thought they were… well, not for private use.”
“I guess it came with the house,” Lapis said. “Why aren’t they cheap? It’s just copper, iron, and aluminum, right?”
Lyra and Bon Bon exchanged a look, then Bon Bon chuckled, and Lyra giggled again.
“What is it?”
“Lapis,” Bon Bon said. “Wherever you grew up, was copper easy to get your hooves on?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘easy,’ but it sure wasn’t hard,” Lapis replied, cocking an eyebrow.
“Yeah. Well, here in Ponyville, the nearest source of copper is a three-day trot to the south,” Bon Bon said. “It’s this little mining town called Amberhoof, right on the edge of the Badlands.”
“Normally, charging arrays are a one-to-a-town thing,” Lyra added. “Most ponies’ houses have a big ol’ iron barrel-doohickey full of magic, that can be lugged back to the town charging station and hooked up to a faucet-thingamajig whenever it runs out of juice.”
“Not the words I would’ve used, but yes, that’s the short version. And that’s without even mentioning aluminum,” Bon Bon said. “Apparently the process of making the stuff is tricky business - last I heard, Equestria was getting most of its aluminum out of a trade deal with the Griffon Kingdoms.”
“Huh,” Lapis replied. Guess whatever pony built this house must’ve been a bit on the rich side, then… and between the giant window and the hidden basement, I guess this place does seem like the sort of building a rich eccentric would commission.
“Hey,” Lapis found himself asking, “just out of curiosity, do either of you know who lived in this house before I did? Or maybe who built it in the first place?”
Lyra cocked her head, considering. “About… half a dozen repair-ponies over the last ten years, I think. None of them really stayed for long, though. I guess the going got tough, so they got going.”
Bon Bon nodded. “And I’m not really sure who built this house, either… it’s been just the way it is now ever since I moved into Ponyville. I’d be willing to bet Town Hall’s got the original builder-ponies on record, though.”
“Huh. I guess I’ll have to check it out, the next time the Mayor gives me an official errand,” Lapis said.
Bon Bon blinked, cocking an eyebrow. “When was the last time?”
“Oh, she sent me up to take a look at the water tower after the whole giant star-bear thing,” Lapis said. “I ended up climbing down at about the same time the rain started, and I slipped on the last rung of the ladder. That's how I bruised my hip.”
Lyra winced. “Before the ground got muddy enough to be soft, even? Oof.”
“You didn’t notice anything… strange, while you were over there, did you?” Bon Bon asked, leaning forward. “Anything dangerous, or magical?”
Uh-oh. “Nothing more harmful than some potential splinters,” Lapis said, doing his best to look innocently confused. “Why, what happened?”
“Well, Derpy was talking with me the other day, and she said the cows heard some funny business going down by the water tower,” Bon Bon said, keeping her voice low. “A pair of unicorns got up to some shenanigans, and one of them got stuck on top of the tower without any magic. Derpy looked the place over, but she didn’t find any stuck ponies - just some muddy hoofprints. Probably just some teenagers getting themselves into trouble, but still.”
“…Sounds like a good reason to put a cage around the bottom six feet of the ladder,” Lapis said. “And a lock. And maybe bolt it to the side of the tower, just in case.”
Bon Bon snorted. “Oh, I wish. From what the Mayor’s been saying, getting the smith-ponies to replace the water tower was already a big bite out of the town budget. Safety measures will have to be next quarter, I’ll bet.” She glanced at the door. “And speaking of big bites, I’d better start working on that extra dessert as a backup for the meringue cookies. I’m thinking… pecan bars?”
“Ooh, with brown sugar!” Lyra said, then she glanced nervously at the window. “Do you think she’s gone yet?”
“Long gone,” Bon Bon confirmed, rolling her eyes and starting for the door. “And even if she weren’t, she’s not somepony- uh, somezebra? - to be worried about. Anyway, it’s been nice chatting, Lapis.”
“Nice to see you too, both of you,” Lapis said, as Lyra followed Bon Bon out of the door. “See you at the concert!”
“See you there!” Lyra chimed, and then she shut the door behind herself.
Two days later, Lapis wrapped up all his jobs as quickly as possible, then headed straight for the Town Hall. It probably would’ve been smarter to wait until the Mayor gave him another reason to visit besides just looking up records, but Lapis was through with not knowing who’d put together the secret forge in his hidden basement. There’s already way too much I don’t know about my current situation - the least I can do is make sure I’m not sitting on top of some dark wizard’s former evil lair.
When Lapis reached Town Hall, he found the building practically deserted. Mayor Mare was sitting at a desk to one side, her brow furrowed in concentration as she scribbled away at some parchment in front of her. It was odd to see a sentient creature using their mouth to hold a quill - I mean, she doesn’t have a horn, so of course she’s gotta write somehow, but still.
The Mayor looked up as he approached, gently dropping her quill atop the parchment. “Good morning, Lapis! What can I do for you today?”
“Well, I was looking for the records about the house I’m living in,” Lapis said. “Who’s lived there, who built it, that sort of thing. …What’re you doing out here, anyway? Where’s the rest of the ponies who work here?”
Mayor Mare winced, sucking a breath through her teeth. “It’s refiling day today, so most of them are in the archives downstairs. I’m sorry, Lapis - it pains me to say it, but today’s about the worst day you could have picked to go looking for paperwork. You don’t need those records too urgently, do you?”
“Well, not urgently, no,” Lapis said, frowning. “It’s just… well, I’ve been finding some quirks in the way my house was built, and I wanted to find out which ponies were responsible, or why.”
Mayor Mare cocked her head, considering. “Well, my grandmare told me that house was built when she was still a filly, so I suppose it could just be a product of antique craftsmareship. Why, what sort of things have you been finding?”
Do I tell her about the charging array? Probably not - that might lead to her sending some ponies over, and then there’s a chance they’d find the workshop. “Nothing major, just a couple of… odd design priorities. Honestly, I’m in here out of curiosity more than actual worry, it’s no trouble at all to come back some other time.”
“Ah. Well, whenever you do drop in, try not to do it the day after tomorrow,” Mayor Mare replied. “That’ll be another busy one, I’m afraid.”
“I heard. The concert thing, right?”
Mayor Mare blinked, then smiled. “Yes, that’s right! Did somepony already tell you?”
“Lyra did. Invited me, too - I haven’t made sure my schedule’s clear yet, but I think I can make it work,” Lapis said.
“Well, that was very nice of Ms. Heartstrings,” Mayor Mare replied. “Of course, you didn’t need her invitation to attend, but it’s good to hear you’re settling in.”
There’s those words again. ‘Settling in.’ Lapis wasn’t sure how he really felt about them, but he put on his best smile and turned for the door. “Well, you know what they say about all work and no play, Ms. May- uh, Mare. Guess I’ll be seeing you in two days, then!”
“I’ll see you then!” Mayor Mare called back. “Assuming I can finish signing all these before then, anyway,” Lapis heard her mutter, in the moment before the door closed behind him.
As soon as Lapis was ten steps out from the door to the town hall, he heaved an irritated sigh, then made a beeline back toward his workshop. Alright, forget checking the records, I’m going to do some more digging myself. There’s gotta be some clues that the builders left behind. Besides, who knows? Maybe I’ll learn a thing or two about carpentry-
“…anypony who wears brown rain-cloaks, like this one?”
“…Hmm… Nope!”
Pinkie. Lapis stepped into an alleyway, then took a few deep breaths. Alright. Guess it’s time to try out that invisibility spell. Here goes…
Lapis shut his eyes, focused, and reached out with his will. And the incantation was… wait, shit, what was the incantation?!
“Nopony? Nopony in Ponyville, at all?” Twilight’s voice asked, from closer by this time. Lapis’ panic immediately doubled.
“Nopey-dopey-lopey!” Pinkie said. “Ooh! My sister, Maud Pie, used to wear one like it, though! It was a brown one, like a really light pale-geode grayish-reddish-brownish, but she took it rock farming so often that it eventually got all dark and dusty-browny-brown. It had a hood too, but she never used it, she said she didn’t like the way it tugged on her ears when she smiled. But she doesn’t wear it anymore, and she definitely doesn’t live in Ponyville, either, so it can’t be hers.”
“Oh.” Twilight sounded disappointed, and for a second Lapis relaxed. “Well, thanks anyway, Pinkie.” Incantation, focus, c’mon… “Let light around me pass me by, no eardrum feel my breath or sigh…” then what?!
“…Listen, this is going to sound strange,” Twilight said, “but I need your help looking for somepony. I owe them an apology, but I don’t know how to find them.”
“Ooh! I was actually thinking about asking you for the same thing!” Pinkie replied, and Lapis felt his blood freeze. “There’s been this new pony in town, just for a little longer than you have, but I’ve only ever seen him for a second or two at once. He’s really fast, and super-duper sneaky!”
“Really fast, huh…?” Twilight muttered. “What did he look like?”
“Hmm… I think he was a unicorn, but I’m not sure. He might be an Earth-pony, but I’ve never seen him flying, so if he’s a pegasus, he’s a super-duper-looper sneaky pegasus.” Pinkie gasped. “What if he’s a ninja pegasus?!”
Oh, I wish. Incantation, come on, two more lines…
“…The pony I was looking for definitely wasn’t a ninja,” Twilight said. “And he wasn’t a pegasus, either. He was a unicorn, but I didn’t see much of what he looked like - it was back during that big rainstorm, so he got covered in mud before I even saw him.”
“Hmm…” Pinkie mused. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this pony covered in mud. When he’s galloping, he almost just looks like one big baby-bluey blur, but if he holds still he’s got a sort of whitey-yellowy coat, with a blueberry-colored mane!” Pinkie paused. “Mmm… blueberries. Hey, if I made two dozen blueberry muffins, would you help me eat them?”
…Got the incantation! Lapis thought, a thrill of triumph running through him as the last two lines fell into place. 'Let light around me pass me by, no eardrum feel my breath or sigh, no pony view my bags or face, and my steps pass without a trace!'
The effect was immediate - the same tug-and-weight sensation as before rocked Lapis, but much stronger, like more of a yank-and-crush. He felt his knees go wobbly at once, and it took him a second to steady them - but, when he looked down, he couldn’t see his own hooves, or even his saddlebags. It worked… it worked! Perfect!
Slowly, carefully, Lapis stepped toward the exit of the alley, and glanced around to see where Pinkie and Twilight were. It looked like he’d gotten his spell off in just the nick of time - the two ponies were all set to pass right by the alley where he’d been taking refuge. Twilight, Lapis saw, had the rain-cloak he’d bought earlier slung over her back, now washed and free of mud, while Pinkie was bouncing along as carefree as ever.
“…Maybe not a whole two dozen,” Twilight was saying, smirking. “Blue mane, white coat… that almost sounds like my brother, Shining Armor, but I don’t think he’s ever been fast enough to blur. Not unless he’s gone through a lot more training, anyway.”
Brother? Lapis thought, carefully stepping around the two ponies as they passed him by. Oh, yeah, right. He was in the wedding episode, with the succubus-bug things. Good thing that happens in Canterlot; with any luck, I won’t be- nope, don’t think that, you’ll jinx it. He took three careful, quiet steps down the street…
There was a brief wobbling noise, something like a laminate sheet being shaken, and then the sound of Pinkie’s bouncing hooves began to slow. Lapis paused, looking over his shoulder, and frowned - Pinkie had come to a stop, and was glancing around herself as if looking for something.
“…Pinkie?” Twilight asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Huh? Oh, nothing’s wrong, Twilight! I just feel like I walked past somepony, and I’m trying to figure out where they are,” Pinkie said, continuing to look around, slowly turning toward where Lapis stood, invisible. “Huh. I think they’re…”
Oh, you're kidding me, Lapis thought, his eyes widening. That’s just not…
…Hang on.
Lapis reached into his invisible saddlebags, grabbing the flat, rounded object he knew was his mask, and quickly slid it onto his face. For a second, nothing changed - Pinkie kept staring at the spot where he was standing. She blinked, pulling her head slightly backward, then she smiled. “Oh. Whoopsie!”
Then, to his relief, she turned back around, and started trotting ahead of Twilight, who was cocking an eyebrow at her friend. “What was that about?” Twilight asked.
“Nothing to worry about, Twilight!” Pinkie chimed. “Just an invisible barrel! C’mon, there’s blueberry muffins to bake!”
Seriously? You’re serious about this? Even through invisibility?! That’s… what?!
You know what? Fine. Sure. Why not.
“…I do not get you, Pinkie Pie,” Twilight sighed, but she trotted on after her, away from Lapis.
Lapis waited until the pair of ponies were out of sight, then pulled off the mask and dismissed his invisibility spell. At once, he stumbled as his leg jittered, and he blinked as his vision briefly blurred. Whoa. Guess invisibility’s got more of a bite to it, huh?
He shook his head clear, then started back toward his shop, but found to his annoyance that his knees still trembled a little with every step. More than that, he was feeling almost out of breath, like he’d just finished a long run. …Exactly the same as a long run, minus the sweat… oh, wait, there it is. Wow. Okay.
Magic’s no joke, huh?
By the time Lapis got back to his shop, he was all he could do to stop himself from huffing and puffing. Again, he headed straight to the shower, which only helped his fatigue a little - it cleared a little of the fog from his head, and gave him a chance to catch his breath, but his knees were still shaky as he ascended the attic ladder with a lantern, and maybe a little shakier as he descended into the basement sans-lantern.
Settling in, Lapis thought, as he started systematically removing the lanterns from the basement. Am I settling in? I mean, sure, I’m learning a lot more about Equestria than I thought I would, but does that really count? Or am I just keeping informed about my situation?
…I guess I can’t really count ‘going to a concert’ as something done for educational purposes, though. Now that Lapis thought about it, going to Lyra’s concert in three days would be a personal milestone: it would be the very first time, in Equestria at least, that he’d be doing something bigger than a breakfast for his own leisure.
I guess I could think of it as just helping to build myself a safety net. Making some connections, so that I can draw on them in case something goes wrong… no, this isn’t just a networking thing. Lapis sighed, pulling the last lantern in the basement off its hook on the wall and staring into the light behind its amber-hued glass. They saved my life. We threw a monster out a window together. We’re friends.
Bon Bon and Lyra… they’ll miss me, when I leave.
And I think I’ll miss them, too.
“Dammit,” Lapis muttered, the start of a throbbing headache beginning to pulse between his temples as he took the lantern up into the closet. “Son of a bitch.”
When Lapis got down into the basement, he was both annoyed and relieved to see exactly what he’d been hoping to see: a few slivers of light poking through the floorboards of his workshop, leading from the center of one wall all the way to the forge at the center of the room.
What Lapis had done earlier, when he went up into the attic, was to take one of the lanterns and lower it down into the pit with the copper rod. And now that he’d taken all the other lanterns out of the basement, he could see - at least in part - where the space for that copper rod was. From that, he could guess where the spare mana collected by the charging array was going, and then he’d be able to sleep in peace, knowing that his home wasn’t secretly a disguise slapped together atop some ancient doomsday machine.
The relief was at the fact that his idea had worked. Lapis was still annoyed, however, because now he had to take a crowbar and pull up his floorboards. He levitated the crowbar off the rack in his closet, then set to work.
I’m getting way too used to being a unicorn, he thought, as he pulled up the first nail. I wonder how long it’ll take me to get used to being a human again, once I get back? I’ll probably end up getting annoyed that my morning cup of coffee isn’t just floating next to my head on its own every morning. …No, worse than that, I won’t be able to fix stuff with magic anymore. I’ll just end up holding everything together with duct-tape again. And the longer I stay here, the longer it’s going to take for me to adjust…
…And the more reasons Lyra, Bon Bon, and I will end up having to miss each other, Lapis finished, carefully lifting the first board out of the floor. But I don’t even know where to start looking for a way back - wait, are those… what?!
Lapis’ jaw dropped, and the board clattered to the floor at his side, forgotten. Through the gap where it had been, there was a concrete-lined trench, the sort of opening that Lapis would’ve called a crawl space if not for the fact that it was big enough for him to stand in. The copper rod was there, making a beeline from the pit in the attic directly to the bottom of the forge, multiple offshoots disappearing into the gray concrete to either side of the pit - but below that…
Slowly, gingerly, Lapis levitated one of the glinting, boxy objects off the first of the four stacks tucked beneath the conducting rod. As it entered the light, any doubt Lapis had vanished - stamped into the surface of the gleaming orange ingot were the words 92% COPPER - 20 LBS - AMBERHOOF, the outlines of the letters glimmering just enough to read in the faint lamplight.
Not long after, Lapis had another ingot from each of the other three stacks on the floor beside him. Stack number two was also copper ingots, but stacks three and four were iron and aluminum respectively - the former stamped with the logo of some forge in Baltimare, and the latter simply labeled Pure Griffon Aluminum. Each stack had at least a dozen or two ingots, and even the aluminum ingot had been heavy enough to dent the wooden floorboards when Lapis dropped it - though, the aluminum was soft enough to be dented by the impact as much as the floor had. Even more unsettling, however, was the fifth pile tucked away just beneath the forge: a decent-sized, glittering stack of scratched, clear gemstones, in every color of the rainbow and then some. It was, in short, everything a prospecting artificier needed to practice their craft, and Lapis couldn’t have been more aggravated to find it.
Between the headache, re-filing day, Pinkie’s apparent ability to see through magic, and now this latest mystery, Lapis suddenly couldn’t take it any more. He sat back on his rump with a thump, his lips moving soundlessly as he tried, and failed, to process the events of the day.
“Who lived here?!” he eventually muttered, staring down at the ingots in disbelief. “How much money did they have? Why be a repair-pony at all, if you could afford all this?! Why hide it under the floor?! I just… I… what?!”
Lapis groaned, then rubbed his forehead with a hoof. Damn, this headache sucks… alright. Deep breaths. Freaking out isn’t going to help with anything. Yes, there’s weird stuff in my basement, but at least it’s not a doomsday machine. What does all this spare metal mean for me?
I need to get back home. That’s the goal. Before, I thought magic was going to be the biggest thing to help me out, but right now… Lapis’ horn stung as his head gave a particularly nasty throb, and he winced. …Right now, if this is what’s going to happen every time I turn invisible for a few seconds, then magic’s looking like a big fat no.
Lapis sighed, then looked down at the mysterious piles of spare metal. I hadn’t thought artifice was an option, just because I didn’t think I had the spare parts… but now, it just might be. Assuming I can figure out how to work metal without setting myself on fire, anyway.
Lapis levitated the manual on artifice up from his workbench, and after a moment’s hesitation, flipped through to one of the first designs that had seriously caught his interest. It was the first design mentioned in the book, and was described as one of the easier mechanisms to make: a fixed-rate mana siphon. In concept, it wasn’t much different from the collector array on Lapis’ roof - it extracted magic from a source, and funneled it into a copper rod so that it could be put to use. The difference, though, was the source: the roof was designed not to take magic from ponies, while the mana siphon had been built to draw off the reserves of anything that touched the runed iron rod at its center, even if it was a unicorn grabbing it via telekinesis.
Gotta figure out how to do this somehow, Lapis thought, picking up the iron ingot in a magical field and advancing toward the forge. Here goes nothing.
Some people got headaches when they thought too hard. Others got headaches when they worked too hard, or when they did either for too long.
Lapis had gotten headaches in all those ways and then some, but sometimes it was just the opposite - most days, the most surefire way to get himself a headache was to sit around doing nothing for a while. As soon as he got busy, though, either planning some project or carrying it out, it was like his brain… relaxed, somehow. As if it had been cramping up, and the effort was forcing it to stretch back into working condition.
Lapis hadn’t been expecting working at a forge for the first time to get rid of his headache. He’d thought the heat of the coals, combined with the deafening, repeated clang of hammer striking hot iron on an anvil, would work to give him the worst headache he’d ever had. And to be fair, the noise had sucked, until Lapis thought to take a spare towel from his closet and wrap it around his head like a turban (sometimes, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to have ears on top of his head instead of on the side).
The heat, though, he’d found he could almost shrug off, as long as he stayed hydrated. And the hammer was still loud even through the blanket, but watching the iron, copper and aluminum deform under every strike, watching the molten-metal putty shape itself into something that looked more and more like the parts of an actual machine, made it worth all the racket.
It had been slow going - multiple times, a clumsy blow had caused a piece to split in two, but Lapis’ apparent proficiency for Mend-All spells meant that was only a momentary inconvenience. It was a lucky thing he could pick up glowing hot metal via magic without feeling any of the heat - still, his telekinetic grip wasn’t strong enough to actually mold anything but the aluminum with, so he stuck with using the hammer most of the time. (He did, however, spend several unnecessary minutes molding and squeezing the ball of hot aluminum with his magic, not even with a purpose in mind - it was almost like playing with Play-Doh, except you had to stand two feet away from the play-surface at all times or risk setting yourself on fire.)
When Lapis was finally done, the result was a simple rod encased in aluminum, with a lumpy copper cap at one end and a nub of black iron on the other. Lapis levitated it before his eyes, careful not to telekinetically grasp the iron portion as he looked it over.
The lumps on the copper cap were the product of his own clumsy craftsmanship - the aluminum had been soft enough that he’d been able to smooth out the bumps, but the copper held no such tolerance for fine-tuning, let alone the iron. Still, it was done. Lapis had learned how to use the first few bits of equipment in this forge, and now, he had something to show for it.
The first thing Lapis did was flip to the next page in the book, re-reading the instructions there. Whatever pony had written it, they’d clearly meant it as something more like a lab manual than a textbook - they’d said that, to get any use out of the device, it was best to affix a gemstone onto the copper rod before grasping the iron portion of the siphon; however, they’d left it up to the reader to find out what each different type of gemstone did, advising only that he “save quartz for last.” So, Lapis selected one gem of every color of the rainbow - plus a clear diamond, and a significantly less-clear quartz crystal - and set them atop the workbench. He also grabbed a pencil and opened the empty notebook on the workbench to the first page, ready to write down the results of each gemstone.
One at a time, he touched the rod to each gemstone, then grabbed onto the iron portion of the siphon. The first thing he noticed was that he could feel his magical reservoir being depleted, unlike with most telekinesis - it was the same tugging sensation that happened when he cast the Hornlight spell and invisibility, but much less potent.
The ruby was the first gem he funneled some mana into, and it started to faintly glow as he grasped the iron nub of the siphon. At first, nothing seemed to happen - then the wood underneath the gem began smoking. One frantic bout of slapping the workbench with his towel later, Lapis picked up the pencil and wrote, Ruby: Heat.
Next was a small, round drop of amber. It was the only one that Lapis had found in the pile, so he guessed that orange gems were tough to come by. He waited for several seconds, and the amber glowed like it was doing something with the magic he was feeding it, but eventually Lapis ended up pulling the siphon away. Amber: ???
Next was a topaz gem. When Lapis initially touched the siphon to the gem, he felt the drain again, and the glow of magic built up much more quickly than with the other gems. Then, suddenly, the light flared, and Lapis yelped in surprise as he shielded his eyes with a hoof, withdrawing the siphon at once. It took three seconds for the afterimage to fade from his eyes, and two more before the gem stopped glowing. Topaz: light.
Then came an emerald. Still paranoid thanks to the topaz’ effects, Lapis stood well away from his workbench as he touched the siphon to the gem. It turned out, he needn’t have worried - the emerald drained a lot of his magic as it lit up, but seemed to do little else besides glow. Emerald: ???
The sapphire didn’t seem to do much at first, until Lapis looked closer and saw tiny drops of water collecting on its surface. Sapphire: makes water? Condenses it? Unclear.
The amethyst lit up a deeper hue of purple than he’d expected, and caused a drop of water that had fallen from the sapphire to roll back across the workbench - then, somehow, fall up onto a facet of the amethyst, where it spread into a sheet. After sprinkling a pinch of coal dust in the vicinity of the crystal, then watching as it was slowly pulled onto the amethyst’s surface, Lapis sighed. “Okay. That’s probably horrifying if I do the math, but whatever.” Amethyst: Gravity.
The diamond seemed, at least initially, to do nothing, draining almost no magic from Lapis’ reserves as it emitted a faint, starlight-like glow. Then, the edges of the room began to blur, and Lapis grew dizzy enough that he dropped the siphon - and all at once, everything snapped back to normal. Diamond: acid trip? Brain magic?
Last was the quartz crystal. It was easily the largest of the crystals from the pile, and between that and the textbook’s warning, Lapis couldn’t help but feel apprehensive as he lowered the copper cap of the siphon onto its cloudy-white bulk. After a second or two, the quartz crystal lit up - but not in the same way as the other gems. Instead of glowing from within, it became wrapped in a coat of brown magic, as if Lapis were telekinetically grabbing it.
Then, as Lapis felt the quartz continue to pull on his magic, the glow around the crystal grew brighter, more vivid, transitioning from the familiar chocolate hue of his own magic to a warm, creamy yellow, bright and gentle as candlelight. The glow grew around the quartz as the rock slowly levitated off the workbench, Lapis blinking in surprise as the glowing stuff pushed against the mana siphon with considerable force, shifting and churning as it washed out from the crystal’s facets, waving in slow, lazy ribbons…
“It’s beautiful,” Lapis muttered. “Like Aurora Borealis…” And like the princess’ mane. Is this raw magic? Slowly, carefully, he reached out to touch it with a hoof, but found that it pushed back against his weight - the closest he could get to touching the quartz was about an inch, before the force of the magic’s flow pushed his hooves away.
Not just raw magic, he realized, as he felt himself slowly growing fatigued. This is my raw magic. He relinquished his grip on the mana siphon, and sure enough, the glow of the quartz crystal faded back to his own brown before disappearing entirely, the crystal settling atop the workbench with a gentle, solid thunk.
Lapis heaved a slow, satisfied sigh, a faint smile spreading across his face. That was me… I did that. All of it - the siphon, the smithing, the magic, everything. Speaking of magic… didn’t that reference guide to the Elements of Harmony say something about magical foci?
Lapis’ eyes widened as the page suddenly came to mind, the words returning to his mind with a jolt that felt like lighting. “…What other uses,” he muttered, “besides the protection of Equestria, such a powerful set of magical foci as the Elements could provide. If their use could send a mare to the moon… that’s it!”
It was a long shot for sure, but if quartz crystals took magic and spat them out raw, the first thing he could think of to try was to see what happened if he focused a bunch of magic into one place. If that’s what the Elements did, then maybe the same thing could be done mechanically!
Lapis grinned. It’s crazy. It’ll never work. But it’s a start. He thought for a second, then raised the pencil to the paper.
Quartz: he wrote. Raw magic, kinetic force…
He paused briefly, then snorted, rolling his eyes. "...I guess it's not wrong."
Lowering the pencil to paper again, he wrote, Hope.