//------------------------------//
// Anthracite 
// Story: Crystalforged 
// by SilverNotes 
//------------------------------//

The architecture had changed again. The organic shapes were gone, and the angular ones had returned. The difference here, however, was that the light-crystals seemed to have burnt out; no flickering of activation started up as they walked, and so Rutile and Tundra were primarily finding their way around via their own magical glow.

Tundra was still hanging onto the pistol, and it surprised Rutile a bit how at home it already looked in her grasp. Tundra was full of surprises, really, the way she would snap from trembling in fear to focused and determined when the circumstances were right, and right now, while fear was still present, she mostly just seemed ready to shoot the next thing that tried to jump out and try to take a chunk out of them. 

Maybe she'd even let her keep the gun, when the expedition was over, since Rutile herself had a new best friend strapped to her leg. A friend who'd given her some nasty burns, but hey, when you were a unicorn, making accidentally getting lit on fire a dealbreaker for a friendship was a way to not have many friends.

It was getting cold again. No sense of warping, but still a deep, unnatural cold, and Rutile felt something brushing against her legs in the dark, like smoke or mist. She stopped, and so did Tundra, with horn and antlers both lighting up brighter to try to pierce through the gloom.

The darkness didn't seem to like that much at all, and the cold grew thicker as the smoke surged in front of them, starting to form vaguely pony-like shapes.

"Just like clockwork." Rutile sighed and raised her cannon. "Alright, everypony get in line so I can blast you in an orderly fashion."



Spaceflight involved a lot of waiting.

Faster-than-light travel had been mastered millennia ago, but that incredible feat was still slow compared to the unfathomable distance between stars. It meant that a journey from one sector to another had a lot of downtime involved, and a creature needed to find ways to pass the time. Sleeper ships were a thing of the past, and besides, being on ice meant that, if something went wrong, there may not be time to wake up and fix it.

They'd jumped their way between a few inhabited planets and space stations--only one of them had been welcoming enough for them to come and go without being actively shot at--but now the path to the sector on Tundra's ancient star map involved a lot of empty space. Having needed to patch up the artificial gravity generator once on this journey already, that's where she was when Tundra found her, looking over the mechanisms in the hope her hasty patch job would hold.

Old technology and data could be worth a lot. Maybe after she paid the bribes necessary to get the bounty off her head, there'd be enough to fix up her starship. Replacing it was out of the question, not when the old filly of a ship had saved her neck countless times.

She was aware of the doe before she spoke. Even if Rutile hadn't already been able to sense her via magical means, the distinct 'click click' of reindeer hooves would have given her away. But even though she knew her temporary crewmate was there, she didn't expect Tundra to stare at her like that and offer only a single word. "Why?"

Rutile didn't look away from her hovering tools. "Why what?"

"Everything."

"You're still going to need to be more specific."

Tundra let out a sigh of frustration. "I put out a commission for someone who could protect me on his expedition, and I got somepony who seems to be even more determined to open the vault than I am." More clicking brought Tundra into Rutile's field of vision. "You want to find the resting place of the Crystal Empress, to the point that you'll make a vow, chase me through life-threatening circumstances, and get yourself branded a heretic, for even a chance that this is her tomb." The next repetition came with more force in her voice than she'd thought Tundra capable of. "Why?"

Rutile was silent for a while, as she put away her tools one-by-one. Then she turned to face Tundra properly. "You're a historian. So, do me a favour and tell me what you know about the Crystal Empire."

Irritation rolled off Tundra, and she gave another sigh that was almost a growl, but then she took a breath, and Rutile listened to her voice take on the quality of lecturer. "The Crystal Empire was one of the pre-Exodus powers. They're known as the original homeland of the crystal genetic variant of pony, who were superficially similar to earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns but had their own magic, primarily circling around emotional detection and manipulation."

Rutile silently noted the use of past tense, and said nothing.

"Most of the inhabitants of the Empire were ponies, crystal and otherwise, but by the time of the Cataclysm, they also had significant populations of changelings, yaks, yeti, penguins... and reindeer." Tundra's ears twitched uneasily, but it didn't stop her for long. "Their heraldry is dominated by an icon referred to as the Crystal Heart, which is believed to have been a symbol of their loving and welcoming ideals.

"The Crystal Empire was the last faction to be under alicorn rule, after the elder generation of alicorns died off and only Empress Flurry Heart remained." Ears twitched again, then drooped. "From there... records are fuzzy. The Empire was at war with several other factions, continued to lose territory and... eventually collapsed.

"Only the vaults remain, but most of them are corrupted. Our best guess for why is that the decaying magic in the archo-technology draws in chaospawn, and they keep ripping up the integrity of the surrounding reality until it's untraversable. Of course, the Order of the Two Sisters just likes to use it as evidence that the Imperial family were heretical, nevermind that Equestrian vaults have had the same problem and that most agree that the Equestrian and Imperial alicorns were friends and allies."

Tundra huffed. "There, your ancient history lesson. Now why did you have me recite all that?"

Rutile, who'd been motionless as she listened, rotated her body slightly. "Look at my flank."

"Excuse me?"

"My mark. What is it of?"

Tundra seemed to be on her last nerve--it was news to Rutile that she had nerves to be on her last of--but she still humoured her, peering at the mark. "Well, it looks like a chunk of your namesake, rutile quartz. Black rutile quartz, to be exact. White crystal with several black incisions running through it."

"And what is it in the shape of?"

Realization dawned. "...A heart." Tundra suddenly glared. "Are you really going to boil this down to 'my magic tattoo says so?'"

"Not quite." Rutile started to move away from the mechanism and back toward what passed for living quarters in the cramped ship. "You listed off reindeer back there. Let me guess, you can trace your ancestry back to the Empire?"

Tundra shook her head a bit. "No one can definitively trace themselves back that far." She sought out the chair in the small sitting room that, in the time they'd been travelling together, seemed to have unofficially become hers. "But I'm relatively certain." She went about arranging herself on the chair in a rough approximation of a loaf, her longer legs unable to fully tuck beneath her body like a pony's. "That's what you're doing too, then? Chasing your heritage?"

Rutile nodded as she hopped up onto the old couch and settled in. "And some answers about it." She glanced at her mark herself, briefly. "Ones that maybe this old vault can answer."

"It's still a lot of trouble to go to for just answers."

Rutile snorted. "I don't see you bailing out, either. You're technically a heretic, too, now. They just got generous with my bounty after I kicked that bishop."

"...I see your point." Tundra managed a weak smile. "I hope we both get everything we're looking for out of this. If we're going to end up in the history books ourselves, I'd rather it be for the right reasons."

Rutile smiled back. "Me too."



The pistol had been abandoned quickly, and Tundra was pressed to Rutile's flank as both of them fired off blasts of magic. The incorporeal creatures didn't burn in response to the fire that Rutile was slinging at them, but the light of the flames seemed to be enough to send them recoiling, hissing and shrieking. It was the same with the thaum-cannon, the raw force of the magic not seeming to do as much harm as the bright light its beams gave off.

"A shame that so many of my children have fallen... but then, if mere wisps could stop you, you wouldn't be worth my time..."

The whisper was nearly lost in the roar of the cannon, and even as she focused on driving back the shadowy creatures, Rutile subconsciously flicked her ears, trying to find where it had come from and better make out the words.

When the final wisps faded and the oppressive supernatural cold lifted, Rutile snorted and shook, as if trying to remove the last of the unwanted presence with the motion. Tundra made her way over to one of the security terminals, and she, meanwhile, scanned her surroundings, looking for anything that was still amiss.

Slowly walking over to where the shadows had been clustered caused a sudden hiss, and she watched as a panel in the wall slid open. She then found herself staring into glass, and at the crystal visible through it.

"Yes, that's it, little pony... Come closer..."

It looked like her cutie mark. Pale quartz in the rough shape of a heart, with lines of black running through it. Ancient text she couldn't read was below it, and as she stared, a light seemed to pulse in the depths of the crystal's structures.

"A layer of glass is nothing that you can't break through, my champion. Come and claim what's yours..."

Her burned leg raised, hoof coming to rest on the glass. A chill seemed to be spreading along her hips, and she didn't notice her mark starting to shine with its own inner light.

"Root!"

Rutile jerked back away from the glass as if she'd been struck, and turned to look at where Tundra was peering at her, radiating concern. "Huh?"

"I said I've got it." She angled her head, gesturing at the computer screen with her antlers. "The same bypass commands worked as the last time."

"Oh." Rutile looked at the quartz one last time, then shook her head a bit and headed for the now-open doors at a trot. "Good work."