*4*
It wasn't long before I found myself just a few yards away from the wooden front door of the Golden Oak Library.
Once there, I paused for a moment to think. Theoretically, I was free to enter the building as I pleased. It was mine and the protective spells to keep intruders out would not be beyond my abilities – by far. That is, of course, if I hadn't designed and conjured the wards and runes myself and hadn't forgotten to enroll myself in the magical network. Not like the last time I had done something like that and created the protection all around Equestria , I pondered with bitter mind. If my princess duties did give me the free time someday this month I for certain would solve said problem. Shouldn’t cost me more than the quarter of an hour to recreate the protection around my kingdom from scratch anyway.
However, simply stepping inside the library would be more than rude and frighten the poor mares out of their wits. For after all, once the library was closed, the door should only be able to be opened from the inside or the outside using the only existing key.
A key that none of the five would give away or carelessly leave under the library's foot scraper. It was also protected against being copied by my magic and well, nothing could beat alicorn-magic – especially not mine. So it should be impossible for someone to open the door from the outside and just walk into the library without said key.
Therefore I did what any normal pony without powers like mine would do.
I raised my hoof and knocked firmly against the door three times with my golden hoof-shoe. I then waited for some movement on the inside.
I must have knocked a little too hard, though, for I was wearing my full royal assessors and my enthusiasm was quite high. Instead of a gentle and friendly knock on the door, as I had intended, it sounded more like an entire herd of buffaloes had just crashed into the door of the library. In the back of my mind I mused that the door itself had only withstood it all because my magical protection was on it. Otherwise the door probably would be lying shattered behind the tree in the garden or even further away now.
Remember, Twilight - alicorn strength added to anticipation equals for a tricky combination when it comes to everyday objects and their destructibility.
I didn't have to wait long before I heard hoofbeats from inside. Curious and scientific as I tended to be, I tried to work out from the sound, speed and a few other details which of the girls was on her way to the door to welcome me. Well they obviously didn’t know it was me, but a knock usually meant someone wished to get inside, didn’t it?
Hm, the steps are flat and even, so a young pony with healthy legs – well that’s true for all five of them. Next! No much too faint and quiet to belong to a stocky earth pony, but that leaves us still with three possibilities. Even a unicorn, with its slimmer, daintier legs, doesn't fit. So its one of the two pegasi - but which one.
My one hoof began scratching the dirt below me in some upcoming nervousness as I thought about the only two left possibilities.
Oh, I hope not the shy yellow one. She's quite nice and far to kind for her own good, but I doubt she would survive my unexpected sight at this moment. Besides, I don't think she'd volunteer to open the door this late at night in the first place.
Furthermore, the cyan pegasus mare had caught my eye with her enormous ego and self-confidence rather fast the moment I had all five. I was therefore very confident that she would be the one to open the door for me.
And I was proven right with my assumption.
A second later, the unmistakable voice of the cyan pegasus sounded through the still closed door before me. What the mare precisely said, even I could not understand. I had added also a couple of vocal disorientation spells onto the building to mess up potential spying and to most extends these worked on alicorn's as well. But from what I could discern she must have wondered aloud who it could possibly be so late in the day. Just like probably the question of why the hell the knocking had sounded like half the world had just come undone.
As Rainbow Dash opened the door for me, the look on her face was beyond annoyed. Who the heck was trying to get something from the library this late anyway? Visiting hours were long over for today and by rights every pony should know so. Of course, it could always be a lonely wanderer who was still out and about at such a late hour, looking for shelter. But although the library upstairs had enough space for up to seven ponies without problems, Dash didn't really seem to be interested in inviting anyone into the tree today.
Without looking up from the doorstep, her response was less than friendly.
"WHAT?! Can't you see the library is shut for today? Be back tomorrow and good luck finding a place to stay this late at night." Her voice at the end sounded almost like a…laugh? Did she make fun of the fact a stranger would have trouble finding a resting place in Ponyville today and at that time? I knew the pegamare to be rather self-assured, straight-forward and blunt, but certainly not unfriendly.
Maybe she had a bad day? – Probably!
It was also untrue that one wouldn’t find a place to stay tonight here in Ponyville. It wasn’t that late already and in the worst case one could always seek shelter in the guard posts distributed all around Equestria. It was a basic right of every Equestrian citizen and duty of the guards to grant shelter in their quarters and protect said if needed.
I wouldn’t say I was mad or anything the like, but a tiny fraction disappointed of Dash. Therefore it came, that the calm, regal, kind voice, and one so familiar to her, made the mare's ears perk up in fright in an instant. At the same moment, her head jerked up to full height.
"Hmmmm! Is that the way you welcome a supposed stranger wandering aimlessly around searching for shelter? I would have expected a little more hospitality, after all, that's what Ponyville is known for and I know your not usually like this Miss Dash." My voice had lapsed into a monotonous, expressionless tone, but I had meant it more as a joke than as genuine annoyance. Yet just hearing my voice, especially in that pitch, triggered things in some ponies that I didn’t intend. It was something I unfortunately had to come to terms with all the time, whether I liked it or not. It was the burden I had to carry as an alicorn, princess and a being that was seen as a goddess by many of my subjects.
With Dash's gaze focused on me, her eyes grew wider than they anatomically were allowed to be and she took a few slow strides back. Her ears now tipped back in panic and her eyes aimlessly wandering.
Before I could say anything else to defuse the situation Dash cry-stumbled - crybled? several things at once in a volume I had not been expecting from someone so relatively small.
I was fairly certain that she would have woken up at least half of Ponyville with the volume her voice had alone. Fortunately for all the sleeping inhabitants of Ponyville, my body - or rather horn - still worked its silence magic and the outcry of the cyan pegasus remained only between ourselves.
How that worked without my horn glowing in the process? Well alicorn magic, just like my body didn't like to stick to what was generally considered a possibility. Having cast a spell, it remained active and independent of my native mana until I deactivated it again. Saying that it came invisibly from my horn was simply the easiest way to keep curious minds from asking further, even if that was in theory wrong. Unfortunately, I had no alternative idea how to explain it so far any better to mortals. How could I, if the concept of alicorn-magic – and most of my abilities too – far surpassed the comprehension of mortal minds in at least one way. Even after hundreds of years, the scientists who studied magic did not want to admit that alicorn spells could last indefinitely and without additional energy fulling them. Well that was their misfortune and not mine then.
"P- Pr- Princess. Oh no no no! I - I- I'm so sorry, I...ahhh! Oh god, what have I done.
Well, she at least made the effort to find words, so credit to her for that. I just couldn't figure out why the pegamare seemed so frightened. Yeah my statement was made without emotion and I was an alicorn princess, one of their highly respected godly rulers. But then, my sight wasn't THAT scary or...Ohhhh! – Shit!!!
I'd completely forgotten after my encounter with Quick Pick that I still wore my armor, which I'd used to scare his former-thieve ass. And that meant, Rainbow Dash was now facing me – an expressionless alicorn in her full battle armor whose height alone was almost three times her own.
Not to speak of the stories that were spun about our abilities and powers. Most of them were accurate, even quite detailed, but some of them were also completely misguided and not even close to the truth. Like we temporarily ate very misbehaving little ponies to become stronger and punish them for their crimes. I didn't know where that idea sparked from but it was one thing I was still trying hard to spread and prevent.
Let me explain. Apart from my general stature as an alicorn and all that it means to be one or was said about me and my impressive abilities. As well as the fact that I was one of the three immortal regents of a kingdom of millions of ponies and thus also possessed a gigantic bureaucratic power in addition to my alicorn powers. Divine abilities that no one on Equus could compete with should I ever use them against them, though I would never consider it, there was now also the matter of my battle gear.
There were five major elements to my armor, seamlessly blending into one another, just as it did for my guards. The headgear, breastplate, waist protection, leg guards and wing stabilizers. Whereby my armor, unlike that of my guards, did not extend over my entire body covering every millimeter of my coat.
In the end, as an alicorn, I didn't really need the entire piece of armor. After all, as mentioned, there was no weapon that could injure an alicorn's physical body. All that aside, the material of my gear was also quite different. It was pure infused alicornite, the same material from which our crowns and other royal accessories were made. It was also found in minimal quantities in all our cells; blood and bones, giving the material its name and us our impressive survivability.
My friend Warlord had even taken the trouble to finish my armor in a light and dark grey shade with a special varnish as he made it. The coloring ensured that the different parts of my armor were highlighted even further, giving me an all the more imposing appearance.
Warlord had done quite a job on that one and was likely the only one that could successfully use alicornite to create objects besides an alicorn. I personally had never tried to use alicornite directly to craft something for me, but I was sure I would manage.
To use alicornite successfully, one only had about ten minutes after heating to create something from the liquid metal before it had cooled too much. For once cooled, the bonded carbon was separated out and the raw alicornite converted to its flawless, or better known as infused form, thus making it absolutely indestructible.
And by indestructible I really meant impossible to destroy, for that was also the secret behind an alicorn's incredible resistance to any kind of damage. The tiny fraction of a percent of infused alicornite in our bodies was sufficient to give us the ascribed invulnerability. It was also an incredibly potent super-conductor for magic and enhanced our abilities many times over.
Conveniently, alicornite could also be only converted into its perfect form with the help of our magic. Not only due to the fact, that alicornite in order to become a liquid had to reach over one and a half million degrees. But even if one would ever manage to melt alicornite, using it was still a terrible idea. In its pure form, it was highly toxic to any organism into which one tried to integrate it, but it could still be touched by them without any problems. The same valid for it´s molten form but then lethal even by merely coming in contact. Like us alicorns, alicornite apparently had no interest in sense or consequential possibility and was in fact, given by its name an alicorn only thing.
That thought made me smile for a moment, I really liked our humanoid friend. He could be a quite fun guy one could mess around with if he wanted to, but also he was a skillful and efficient wielder of every imaginary weapon. Then I focused and continued to think about my armored appearance.
My helmet went over my entire head with only two openings for my ears and eyes to stick out. Further on it expanded down the bridge of my muzzle up to the tip of my nose and then along my neck and chin, enclosing almost my entire face in infused alicornite.
Where my helmet ended, my chestplate began, expanding with many elements of reinforced shade as a second highlighting. Also an element that was very sturdy and expansive, but still nowhere near as infused alicornite.
All along my chest plate there were also many skillful carved engravings, which were my personal design towards Warlord. They helped me channel my magic through my armor much more effectively. According to own calculations by a factor of about ¼, an extreme plus with me being the alicorn of magic.
Directly in the center of my chest was a large pink gem in the shape of the inner star of my cutiemark. Most of my engravings ran to it and it was also the heart of my armor. Not only by design or magic channeling, it literally was the space my armor was stored if it was not in use. If I worked my magic, it glowed with it’s power and amplified my magical strength by another 10% or so on top of what I had already achieved before by also using to connection to my stars. Yet even without the armor, I was already far unbeaten in my magical abilities, even in contrast to my two sisters.
Celestia, however, was a much better prankster and Luna the better strategist.
My chestplate went behind to my spine, just like the ones of our guards. There it joined the third part of my armor, the torso guard. It ran all the way down my spine, along my flanks, over my thighs to my cutie mark and ended around the base of my tail. A standard overall armor of my back basically. Lots of engravings were also there, most of them arcing down the middle of my flanks to my wing attachments. Only a few went to my hips and ended at my cutie mark or curved downwards and merged into the second to last part of the armor I was wearing.
A pony's cutiemark was an important part of its body and even if it did not store the magic of the pony – it was still essential for the successful casting of magic as it represented the special talent of each creature.
For actually storing magic, the magic core within the chest of each pony was responsible. It could be described as an orange sized ball of brightly glowing light the color of ones own magic. If damaged or destroyed it rendered the being it belonged to unable to use partly or all of it’s magic – forever. Well at least as long as the magic core remained in its broken state. If the complete destruction of a magic core would also kill the pony even I didn’t know for sure, but it would be terribly agonizing for certain. So far I never heard such a thing had actually happened and repairing the cores of our subjects was no biggy for me. I had done so hundreds of thousands times – usually even without them noticing as they requested an audience at our consils.
Mostly it was just a tiny crack or the like as wasn’t exactly uncommon to happen. There were many cases you could slightly damage your core throughout your life without even knowing you did. Straining your native magic for to long or hard was, however, the most common reason and happened almost equal between all three pony races. Actually serve cases were a case along thousand and that also never remained unnoticed as the consequences were vast and plainly visible. Of course…that was all different for me as an alicorn, as was only to be expected.
An alicorn had no such thing like a magic core, its entire body was a single gigantic "battery" for storing our magic. The entire concentrated magical power of my alicorn self surged directly beneath my coat. A pool of untold size and depth, best described as the raw power of an entire galaxy squeezed into a tiny pony-shaped speck.
It seemed like it was brutal and uncontrolled how it always surges like a great maelstrom inside of me but an alicorn’s body was probably one of the most controlled collection of magical energies that existed. I could either concentrate my entire alicorn power onto a pin needle sized point and do likewise extreme results or cover the entirety of Equus with it to do something big. As well as everything in between of course, my grasp onto magic was and would be remaining unbeaten, even if my sister’s also did great things with their powers in the past.
With the focus point of a pony’s magical capabilities toyed around enough inside my mind I disregarded the thought and moved my concentration to something else. Following the lines down, they soon passed over onto my leg protection and ended no sooner than at the sole of my fetlocked hooves. That was exactly where the protection of my personal armor also ended.
Unlike our guards, my armor had no protection for the underside of my hooves. However, I did not need them either.
Out of all the parts, the leg protection was in fact the least important; it was…well nothing more than a protection for all four legs. While important for standing and getting around, damage to the legs – or it’s sole for that matter, was in comparison to all the other vital parts of the body a relatively minor issue.
Oh yes, I had almost forgotten about that. Inside all of the armors parts lay an exoskeleton that could amplify my already immense power as an alicorn many times over. Physically and without strengthening spells, my strength was thus about ten to fifteen times its normal value. For our guards the technic wasn’t as advanced as it simply was to great of a deal to forge hundreds if not thousands of such advanced exotec. Lighter variants, however, weren’t a deal and granted our soldiers still about 2-2,5 times their basic physical strength.
That sounded like a crazy lot, because it also was and not an unimportant fact why Equestria was considered such a mighty kingdom with an entire army that used such technic. Nevertheless, even my augmented strength remained still far below the default of Warlord, who naturally also had such an advanced exoskeleton integrated into his armor.
It all led to the final and, for me, coolest part of my armor - the wing stabilizers. They extended obviously from my shoulders in multiple connected elements, along the bony structure at the front of my wings, to the tips of them. My feathers itself had no protection of their own, it would only prevent me from flying or even allow me to take off in the first place. It wouldn't give me any additional advantage either - feathers were naturally part of the body and that made them just as resistant as the rest of my alicorn me.
At each transition of one element into the next on the wing stabilizers, there were small spherical joints that made the movement of the individual parts to each other possible to begin with. They were also the focus points through which I could concentrate and use my pegasus magic more strongly. When I did, they glowed in the characteristic color of my native magic and sparked with calm lighting.
The wing stabilization yet had still another use. Not only did they protect the structure of the wings from being injured or broken, but they could also be utilized for attacking. As an aside, it was a feature that our personal guards and the rest of Equestria's royal guards also possessed. At least as long as they themselves had wings at their sides obviously.
In order to do so, each stabilizer at the front sharply converged and formed a blade at the foremost edge that ran along their entire length. As Warlord called it, a 'nano-blade' composed of shade-alicornite alloy even on all the guards.
As its name implied, it was only as thick as a nanometer and forged from shade with tiny specs of alicornite molded into for incredible toughness. Nevertheless, in spite of its thickness, it was incredibly sharp and could cut through any material except itself, while also remaining constantly in top condition. A nano-blade was always inherently double-edged and self-sharpening. It therefore always remained just as effective as it was manufactured.
My armor, however, went one better, for the infused alicornite in my equipment meant that it did not wear out at all and remained indestructible like all the other parts. A significant role, however, the more stable material of my armor didn't play. Even with constant daily use, a single blade of our guards would last for at least a century and remained in perfect condition until then.
Given the frequency with which they were actually brought into use, though, they almost certainly never needed to be replaced, even until our sun had burnt out.
The latter, incidentally, a fact we had never had to worry about anyway. Celestia, just as I did with my stars, supplied all our suns with enough energy to keep the reaction going for all eternity. In comparison to our level of alicorn magic even an entire star was like a drop into the ocean. We were primordial, immortal, godly beings with an entire dimension of constantly refreshing alicorn-power to back us up after all. Of course, that went against every law of physics and logic I knew and I remembered them all.
But let's face it! Even as well-read and scientific a mare as I was, that didn't bother me at all. Even I didn't complain about things that my powers could solve with the flick of a hoof - after all, why should I? It just didn´t make any sense. I had the power for doing it and that was all that should ever matter.
Having lost myself almost in my own memories and thoughts I refocused and regarded the pegamare in front of me with another glance. To sum it up briefly in a single sentence. For the smaller pegasus mare, the sight of me was probably the most frightening thing she had ever seen in her life. Understandably, seeing an alicorn standing in front of ones door in all its battle gear didn't exactly give the impression that it just wanted to talk.
Granted, that was what I intended after I had so coincidentally bumped into the five mares, for that was the sole reason I had even come to see them. Rainbow Dash, however, certainly wouldn't be able to read my lips and so didn´t know she had no need to be frightened.
The fact that my wings were also extended far out to my sides to stretch them through properly while I waited didn't help the situation much either. As each of my wings was as long as my body was high to the tip of my horn, the wingspan I had in no way made me seem less imposing. The wing blades that adorned the same on the front of each of the stabilizers glinted in the light of my sister's moon, further adding to my intimidating appearance. I could relate to Dash in a way.... alicorn ruler.... 9 feet tall... 19 feet of wingspan...immortal and insanely powerful…regarded by most as a goddess - yes, I looked pretty impressive, to say the least.
So I changed my gaze to a friendlier one to avoid appearing even more unintentionally threatening to her and folded both wings neatly back to my sides. With a relaxed posture and greeting on my tongue, I took a bold step forward.
That had been a great mistake... Under a truly deafening scream, Dash zipped away from me and deeper into the library. So fast, in fact, that even the light was puzzled by the pegasus fast retreat. It needed a second before it realized that the pegasus was no longer in front of me and it no longer had to cast the shadow of Rainbow upon me.
I thought about it for a moment - ah, that's where the community room of the library was. A room with several cushions and two couches on which one could make oneself comfortable and read in peace. Or just to relax, but what could possibly be more relaxing than reading a book?
Until a moment ago, faint voices had been heard from there, but with Dash's panicked behavior they suddenly had ceased.
Before I took another step into the library, I returned my armor to my peytral. Having scared the hell out of two ponies with it had been quite enough for me for the time being.
Trotting through the door, I closed it carefully behind me, heaved a light sigh and began to mentally prepare myself for what would happen in the next few minutes. I just hoped that everything would go smoothly.
* End of Chapter Four *