//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4: Treasure! 
// Story: In Equestria 
// by ARandomLonelyDude 
//------------------------------//

I woke up with a start, completely disoriented. I couldn't tell what the time was since the curtains to my room's window were drawn and I didn't have an alarm clock. The light in my room wasn't on either, leaving me in the dark. 

I tried getting off my bed to open the curtains but found that I was too comfortable to get up. Instead, I tried reaching out and moving the curtain to take a peek outside but didn't realise that it was out of my reach and instead of opening the curtain, I fell out of bed.

I lay on the floor, mostly awake now, thinking about how stupid I was before attempting to get up. Unfortunetly, I had stepped on my hair when I tried to stand up and consequently, pulled it real hard. I was fully awake now and trying not to cry from the pain of pulling off a bunch of hair off my head. I opened the curtain and saw that it was dark outside. 

I looked at my bed and thought about going back to sleep but decided that I would check the time first. I left my bedroom and went down to the hall where the clock was. It showed the time to be about 4:30 AM. I only had one thing to do today and that was helping out Rarity with decorations in the afternoon.

I could go back to sleep some more, which is exactly what I tried to do. 

I went back to my room and crawled into bed and closed my eyes. In a minute, I was almost asleep but then, I heard someone shout my name angrily. I jolted, going from lying down peacefully to sitting upright in just a moment. The resulting rush of blood to my head made me go back down though. I lay in bed, trying to figure out who called my name but then I remembered that I lived alone.

I was disappointed in myself for ruining my morning and sleep by imaging sounds, like who does that?

I got up, for real this time, and headed downstairs. It was now that I got the biggest shock of the day. My vision was blurry, as it usually is just after waking up, and because of that, I did not see that I missed a step on the stairs.

End result: I fell down the stairs.

Fortunately, I was close to the bottom so it wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, I still got hurt and was now in a bad mood. I continued with my morning routine of brushing my teeth, washing my face, brushing my hair, etc. after that. Nothing too out of the ordinary about me doing stuff while in a bad mood. Just another morning of highschool, except that I was free from that hell.

One all that was done, I had to deal with breakfast. I had noodles in the pantry and leftover chai from yesterday, wich would suffice for a meal. I quickly got to cooking and soon, I had a bowl of plain noodles and a cup of chai. I ate it at my pace, which was rather slow, and was done with it. The sun was still just rising over the horizon.

There was still so much time left to the afternoon or even the time of the morning when almost everyone was awake. I had a lot of free time. Free time that I was not used to in the slightest. Even though high school was hell, it atleast gave me something to occupy my time with. Besides that, the internet was always there for me, ready to show me what ever I wanted to see and help me waste my time. 

But now, I had none of that. I only had my thoughts now... Or did I? I remembered the books I had and how they could keep me distracted from my thoughts. With that, I went to the tune book I had left in the living room table. It was where I had left it, still opened and kept upside down to stay on the page I had left it at. I picked it up and began reading again; the descriptions of common runes a lot more appealing than doing nothing.

I read it all till I reached the pages that had example runes. From my experience with programming, which was very similar to these runes, I knew that the best way to learn, for me at least, was to learn all the important stuff like keywords and then just mess around with it. I looked out the living room window and saw that it was still pretty early, like around 6 or 7 AM. I could practice runes for an hour or more if I wanted to pass time.

There was a sight problem. I didn't have papers that I could use, or any other writing utensil other than a black ball point pen. All the excitement I had started to leave me.

 What should I do? I asked myself. Most of the stores wouldn't be open till 8 AM but by that time, I would have lost whatever motivation I had. What if I check the basement again to see if I missed something? Yes, I will do that.

I went down to the basement, hoping I'd find something to write with or some paper I could draw the runes on. It was the same as yesterday except that despite there being ventilation, the air felt stale. I guessed that the place needed a fan and made a point to get one to put in here. Besides that, the place was as I had left it and the rational part of me accepted that there was nothing I could do now. There was still an irrational part though, and it told me to check again. Maybe I had missed something when I opened the boxes and then cleaned the place, it suggested.

I checked around again. The boxes that I had folded and kept aside were still empty, there was nothing on the floor or in the corners. There was still the table which had the magazine stack by it and the locked box and tools on it. The table also had an oversized table cloth on it and that gave me the idea that maybe there was something underneath it.

I raised the table cloth and found that there was indeed something underneath the table. Two things actually. The two things were two identical looking metal chests that were locked. The chests looked old and when I pulled them out from under the table, I found that they were heavy as well.

Now, I had three locked boxes in my house and zero keys. I tried looking for a key under the table but found none. 

However, there was one key on the table and it was shaped like a hammer, had the same make as a hammer, and had the power of a hammer as well, because it was a hammer. I could try using the back end of the hammer to force open the small, weak looking lock on the smaller wooden box but the locks on the metal chests looked a lot more tough. I looked for some other weakness for a minute and realised that the latches on the chests were attached to the chests with screws and I had screwdrivers with me.

Now, I had all three keys with me. I started with the small wooden box, using the hammer to force the lock open. The lock broke as expected and I took it off. I opened the lid and was met with the sight of gems. A lot of gems. I picked up a orange one and inspected it in the light. I didn't know if it was real since I hadn't ever interacted with precious stones but my feelings told me one thing: I'm rich.

I spent the next few minutes laying out all the contents of the the treasure box onto the table and identifying what I had. I had rubies, emeralds, sapphires, amethyst, orange thingies, two diamonds, a large white crystal, and a 100g bar of silver. 

It's clear that I'm rich. Or was I? Someone might come here someday and ask for their box full of treasure that they left behind. I couldn't be sure that it was mine, meaning that I wasn't rich. I was still happy though.

I moved onto one of the metal chest, using the flathead screwdriver to remove the screws on the  latch. It sounds a lot easier than it was since the screw was in really tight. With quite a lot of effort, I unscrewed the two screws holding the latch to the lid. I opened the box and found a lot of old yellow papers. I picked one up and found it blank. I moved aside the papers to see what else was there in the chest that gave it is weight and found a cardboard box beneath the papers. I picked it up and found it to be heavy. I opened it quickly, finding crumpled newspaper. I moved the crumpled papers aside and found a large piece of glass. I pulled it out and realised that it was not glass at all. It was a fucking huge diamond! I was even more excited now even though this treasure trove was probably someone else's.

Besides the huge diamond, there were a lot of old yellow papers in the chest, which I stacked on the table, and an actual key. I tried the key on the lock of the second chest since it fit and surprisingly, it unlocked.

I opened the second chest with enthusiasm and found... dumbbells. There were two labelled five kilograms and another that was ten kilograms. Nothing else was in the chest. The third chest was a lot less cooler than what I expected.

I remembered my original purpose for coming down in the basement and picked up one of the yellow papers, leaving everything else behind back in the boxes, and went back upstairs.

Once upstairs, I got my pen and a paper and sat down at the living room table. I decided that a light emitting rune would be a good start and got to work drawing. 

First, I had to make an enclosed boundary that would contain the rune. I drew a circle, which was the most efficient shape for a rune's boundary since it allows magic to flow through it the easiest. I drew a smaller circle within the larger one, close to the top, and connected both using a line. Within the smaller circle, I drew an 'I' that represented the part of the rune that absorbed ambient magic to power the rune. After that, I drew a second circle on the opposite side of the first. Within that circle, I drew another circle that had a thick outline and a 'L' in it that showed that the output was light. 

As soon as I finished, the rune started glowing a dull white. It s brightness depended on the material the rune was drawn on and the thing used to draw it. Pen and paper were obviously not great choices but they worked. The rune would keep glowing until the ink or the paper degraded or the rune's outer circle is broken. Since the ink and paper were actively interacting with magic, they would degrade a lot faster, probably in a day or two.

I left it at the table, pleased with myself, and moved on to making a different rune.





The time was around 10 AM.

A dozen papers with runes lay on the table. Some were torn since I hadn't made switch elements and had only one way to turn them off which was breaking the rune boundary. There were also a dozen more papers on the floor, all of which were covered in failed runes, and had to be thrown away.

My takeaway from my experiments was that sharp turns were not as good at conducting magic as gentle turns, that runes were pretty useful, and that I should get a new pen since the one I had had ran out of ink.

I didn't have much to do now and decided that I'd go and get some shopping done since I needed to get a lightbulb, pens, and maybe a fan as well along with other stuff. With that decided, I got my money bag and left my house to get the stuff.