//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 // Story: Eclipse // by Hiver //------------------------------// The sound of my hooves sounded a bit hollow against the half finished walls as I looked around. Things were proceeding nicely. “And here are your private baths going to be,” Solid Slab said as he guided me through a missing side door into a half finished chamber. The floor was mostly made of wood, but the bath, or maybe I should call it a pool itself, was in a half finished state and seemed made from polished dark stone. Local stone. We’re not about to import stone. Even if some ponies, like the one giving me the tour, had wanted to import Canterlotian marble for my pool. I nixed that so hard. We don’t need to go get stone, we have stone at home. In fact, I didn’t see a need for private baths either in what’s meant to be a public bathhouse, but they put it into the plans anyway, without request. Or asking about it. They were so happy when showing us the plans. …And Celestia had taught me one of the more difficult lessons for me. Let ponies do things for you, even if it makes you uncomfortable. It makes them happy. So I let them build the sodding bath. “It looks very nice,” I said, shifting my wings, running my hoof on the polished wood. No windows in here, as a rule anything we built on the ground had very thick walls and no windows. The extra big bitey things may be held back by the shield and the walls held back the smaller bitey things. But nopony wanted to take the chance in case one of them figured out how to climb the walls while dodging the guards. “We should be finished with construction in three to four months,” Solid said, brushing his brown mane back with a hoof almost twice the size of mine. Solid Slab was huge. Seriously, the only other pony I’ve seen larger than him was Sunshine, he was as tall as Luna and likely outmassed her by three times and every bit of it seemed to be muscle. “You and your crew do very good work,” I said as I walked to the edge of the pool, feeling the polished gray stone before I stood up and turned to smile at him, “What’s more, I understand that you’re within budget, which is impressive.” He shrugged and grinned, “We’re doing our best, your highness,” before he shrugged, “And I believe we will be able to meet the finish time, assuming we can keep sourcing materials.” I nodded. We had stone. We had wood. Basically everything else had to be imported. Everything from fittings to nails. Technically nails could be manufactured locally, but we still needed to import the metal. Which means via train. “If you’d follow me, sir?” Slab said and motioned towards the door. I followed towards the main bath area with Shade Leaf and Leaf Shade silently following along behind me, their hoof steps barely audible against the wooden floor. Slab pushed a door open and stepped to the side, allowing me past and out into an area open to the sky. There was a large pool surrounded by smaller separate pools, the smaller ones covered by canopies. While the area was open to the skies, it was surrounded by thick and heavy walls, the entire area lit by torches and sconces of burning wood. Slowly approaching the main pool, I looked around before stopping at the edge before I turned back to Slab, “Main pool heated?” He shook his head, “No. Just clean moving water. Magic filtering down below. The smaller ones are heated.” I nodded and glanced up towards the cloudy and pitch black skies above. Rain soon. We were in one of those rare breaks in the rainstorm. Any moment now it could start up again. They lit the fires just for the inspection. “This will be very nice,” I said with a small smile as I looked around, flicking one ear, “Very very nice.” Now if we could just avoid following the Romans with their wall decorations. No need to copy things quite that far. The bath was also pretty big. Made scaled for a population three times that of Nocturnis. If we were building it in the first place, might as well futureproof it a bit. Even if it highly strained the budget. Turning back, I gave him a nod, “Thank you for the tour, Solid. But you and your crew has better things to do than to foalsit me so I’ll get out of your way.” “It’s no trouble, your highness,” he said with a smile, giving a small bow, “In fact, I had thought to invite you to tour the facilities and see if you had any thoughts of changes to the decorations. This would be the time to start implementing them.” I shook my head, “No, I have seen the plans. Everything is looking good. Keep up the good work.” He nodded, ears happily raised, “We’ll do our best, your highness.” “I don’t doubt it,” I said and glanced at my shadows, “Let’s go.”’ With that, we took to the dark skies, the twins following me on silent wings. Which was one of the reasons Moon Glow has assigned them to be my personal guards/shadows whenever away from the palace. They were among the best fliers in the guard. At least among the thestrals which were generally slower than pegasi. Shade and Leaf were almost as fast as a pegasus while also having no problems following me through the tree trunks and branches in the middle of the pitch dark night. In fact, they were both faster fliers than I was which left very little chance to slip away. Actually, it was completely pitch black with the clouds this thick in a night with a new moon. There were some lights from the village below, but not enough for even us to see by. So we flew by sonar. Chirps and echos, the world was pitch black and returns. It actually took quite a bit of practice to do and I had to slow down a lot more than usual. Sonar needed to be practiced to be used, at least at flight speed. Something both Shade and Leaf had more than me as well, letting them easily keep pace. I closed my eyes. They had more practice than me. Let’s see how much more. Chirping away, I changed course, banking in among the trees as I sped up, followed by chirps and my two guards.