//------------------------------//
// Chapter 9 
// Story: A Shimmering Intellect 
// by DungeonMiner 
//------------------------------//

Sunset landed hard in the snow. Her entire world was white and cold. She instantly lost her sense of direction and tried to push the snow out of her face. The unicorn kicked at the snow, throwing it out of the way as she tried to find air. 
She wished she had fingers instead of magic for the first time ever. Being able to claw her way out instead of just pushing and scooping snow out of the way would be so much preferable. 
Using magic, Sunset formed a shell of energy along her front, pushing it away, making some space for her in the powder before snow collapsed from under her to fill the space. 
Did it fall from under her? Was that up? How did she get so turned around? 
Her magic pushed again, but the snow filled the space again, locking her in place. 
Panic began to set in as she realized she was having trouble breathing. If she couldn’t get some fresh air, it wouldn’t matter what magic she had. She’d pass out and suffocate before she could do anything.
Sunset tried to push the snow away from her mouth, but the snow’s texture of fresh powder flowed around the magical shove once more, giving her only a gasp before smothering her again. 
She was going to die. 
She was going to suffocate under who knows how much snow, and that would be—
Sunset gasped as air filled her lungs. She blinked away the snow and gasped as she looked around. Flash hovered above her, the rope that connected them holding her over the snow. 
“Sunset! Sunset, are you with me?”
“I’m here!” she cried.
“Okay, I’m looking for a place to land!”
Holding her over the sea of snow, Flash slowly maneuvered to a large rock, where he slowly set down. Flash landed next to her a moment later, slumping to the ground and laying spread eagle on the stone. “You alright?” he asked. “Any broken bones, bruises, or anything?”
She checked herself over. She was missing her saddlebag, and there was snow in her coat, but she didn’t feel any pain. Sunset shook her head. “No, no, I’m okay.”
“Great. Now, what was that?” Flash asked.
“What?” 
“That giant stone thing that just tossed us down the mountain. What was that?”
“It looked like a troll,” Sunset said, “but the face was all wrong. I think it might have been a golem of some description.”
“A what?” 
“A pony-made, magic robot,” she explained. 
“And why is there one on the mountain?” he asked.
Sunset didn’t have an answer, not one she liked. “Well, she said. Golems are hard to make. Most spells are temporary by nature. They require constant casting to keep going. There are ways around that, but they require gems with spell matrices that absorb magic from the world around them.”
“Okay,” Flash said.
“Creating any kind of AI with magic, no matter how simple or complex, requires a temporary spell. There are two ways to make this kind of thing permanent, but it requires a second spell to be cast, one where just learning the right Technique is controlled by the government. When that happens, it has to rewrite the initial Mind and make a new one completely. Only then will the first spell sustain itself.”
“How does that work?”
Sunset hesitated, getting caught in the middle of her explanation. “Um…well, we’re not sure,” she said. “We have theories. When I was in the academic scene here, I read, like, three different dissertations on it. Most of them boil down to the idea that the Transform Spell rewrites reality, which means it affects something that existed before, so it must exist afterward. Despite that, the theory has some problems with it, so we’re not sure that it’s actually—”
She glanced over at Flash and recognized the glazed look in his eye. 
“Anyway,” she said. “The second way to make an artificial intelligence permanent is to use gems; the more complex its functions, the more gems you need. Now, I must be clear: Each function requires a separate gem. Moving one arm is a gem, recognizing a friend from a foe requires a gem, and so on. Unless that golem was made of geodes, it didn’t have enough crystals to be as functional as it was.”
“So, what does that mean?” Flash said.
Sunset sighed. “I think the Intellect Crystal’s already been found, and the pony who found it is making golems.”
Flash sighed. “Great. So how do we take them down?”
Sunset glanced back at him. “What? You’re going to keep going?”
“I mean, aren’t we?” Flash said. “Twilight said that this would be pretty bad if she doesn’t get that thing.”
Sunset blinked. “I…I wasn’t expecting you to be willing to throw yourself at golems.”
“Well, what else am I going to do? Let a madman invade a country?” 
Sunset didn’t reply.
“The bigger problem,” Flash said, as though he didn’t notice her hesitance, “we’re going to have to head all the way back to the city to get new supplies.”
Sunset smiled. “No, no. I’ve got that.”
She sat down and began pulling magic to her horn. First, she used a Perceive Matter spell and imagined her saddlebags as the target. 
Her vision highlighted the bag under the snow, and then her Control Matter telekinesis spell lifted it to safety. “There. See? We can get them out, no problem.”
“How did you find that under the snow?”
“An item location spell,” she said. “It’s not hard, but it’s going to take time for me to find everything.”
“Then you should probably grab your goggles next.”
Sunset blinked and felt her face. She was missing her goggles, and she hadn’t even noticed. “Yeah, I guess I do. I don’t need to find snow blindness while I’m out here.” She cast her spell again and found them not far from where she landed. Pulling them from the snow, she shook the yellow plastic free of snow and put them back on. “Alright, can you fly up and try to find a way back to where we were?”
“I can try,” Flash said before untying the rope from his harness and taking off. 
Sunset watched him go for a moment before she went back to fishing for her equipment.


---♦---


Flash followed a path up the mountain, looking for easy paths up from the air. He followed what he hoped was a good path back to the ledge, but it was hard to see if that snow drift covered a cliff edge or if that gentle depression was a hole that descended into the depths of the earth.
He hoped the path was as trustworthy as he thought and continued to fly until the ledge appeared.
The golem was still there. 
Its massive, burning eye locked onto him, reaching for a rock beside it. Its arm locked behind it with machine-like precision before launching the boulder at him. Flash watched the massive stone fly at him in a perfect arc. He almost watched it fly through the air without getting out of the way but managed to dodge despite the perfection of the throw.
He turned back to the golem, who threw another boulder at him. Again, he flew out of the way, but the golem was reaching for new boulders, even as Flash was getting out of the course of the last one. He began backing off, and the golem answered with more stones, thrown further away. 
As Flash disengaged, even more stones flew through the air, threatening to squish him flat if one hit. 
He flew up to get more height before a thought crossed his mind. Another boulder shot up at him, flying up to match his altitude, but Flash continued to climb upward, getting higher than the stone. Once he was sure he was out of range, he waited momentarily to see if the golem would throw another rock. 
Sure enough, the golem tossed another, and Flash watched as it got closer before reaching the apex of the throw and tumbling back down to the snow below.
Flash smiled. 
Once he had the height, he began to fly closer to the golem, maintaining his elevation. More boulders flew up to meet him, getting close enough to touch before falling back down. And then Flash parked himself right over the golem. 
The golem tossed another stone. It flew straight up, hung in the air for a weightless second just an inch under Flash’s hooves, and then rocketed down at high speeds. It smashed into the golem, splitting the head apart. It slumped, and the burning yellow eye went dark.
The stone body fell apart, whatever force connected the pieces breaking. In seconds, the monstrosity went from a vaguely humanoid shape to a pile of rubble.
Flash smirked. Artificial intelligence, despite everything, was still kind of dumb.
With the golem taken care of, Flash landed and began walking back along the path he found, hoping it was safe enough for both he and Sunset to use. 


---♦---


“Did you find a decent path?” Sunset asked.
“Yeah,” Flash replied. “There are some low points where the snow gets a little too high and a short cliff that we’re going to need to climb, but we should be good.”
“Alright,” Sunset said, “and was there any sign of the golem?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but he’s not going to be an issue.”
“What makes you say that?” 
“Well, I crushed him.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was trying to throw rocks at me, so I made it hit itself with a rock. It smashed itself and broke it to pieces. I crushed it.”
“With only some exaggeration even. I’m impressed Flash.”
“You make it sound like I’d be helpless otherwise.”
“I might have some money on it.”
Flash rolled his eyes. “So what now?”
“Now we should make our way back, shouldn’t we?”
“Not now,” Flash said. “We only have—” he held his hoof up to the horizon and then looked at the limb with incredible disappointment written on his face. “We don’t have a lot of time before the sun sets. We can move a bit, but I don’t want to keep climbing when the shadows get long.” 
“Well, we can’t waste time, can we?” Sunset said before her magic pulled his saddlebags onto his back. 
Flash sighed. “Alright, let’s go. We need to be on the lookout for a good place to camp.”


---♦---


Ardent Rush stood at the Manehatten train station right beside his boss, Night Silk. “Alright, Ardent,” Night said, “I hope you’re ready for some hoofs-on-training?”
“As I’ll ever be, sir,” Ardent responded, nuzzling into his scarf. The fall weather gave Ardent the perfect excuse to wear the warm piece of cloth, even if “warm” was the only positive adjective Ardent could attribute to it. In fact, if Ardent had to describe the scarf around his neck, he’d start with “about as colorful as a seasick clown” and work from there. He’d also say it was ancient. The edges were so frayed that Ardent could tell if the years hadn’t been kind or if they were designed that way.
Night hadn’t said anything about it, much to Ardent’s annoyance. He just took the hideous thing in stride as though it wouldn’t draw attention to them.  
“You ever been to the City that Never Sleeps before, Ardent?” Night asked as he stepped off the station platform.
“Once, sir,” Ardent said. “A long time ago.”
“And what did you learn?” Night asked.
Ardent blinked at the question. What he learned? What kind of question was that? Was he looking for some personal anecdote or a witty remark that only a spy would know? He decided that he’d go with his tried and true joke answer. If Night disapproved, he could play it like a little jab. 
“I learned that my aunt has some ridiculously high rent to pay,” Ardent said, preparing his best smug smirk.
Night didn’t even turn to look at him. “That is absolutely true,” Night said. “I learned, however, that Manehatten, despite its title, isn’t all that special. No city ever sleeps. They’re always awake.”
Ardent raised an eyebrow, but Night didn’t offer any response. The Spymaster didn’t even turn around to look at him. He just kept walking forward, down into the city.
“A city always has something going on, and knowing the basics will give us what we need to navigate it. Once you know something is happening, you can watch it. Once you watch it, you can figure out if it’s dangerous. If you know it’s dangerous, you can deal with it, and that is our job above everything else.” 
Night continued leading him into the streets, where the ponies walked past without hinting of recognition. “Sometimes,” Night said as they turned a corner, “that means calling in the guard. Sometimes, you’ll have to deal with it yourself. This is going to be one of those instances.”
“Can I ask why, sir?” Ardent asked. 
“Of course,” Night replied.
When no answer came, Ardent went ahead to ask. “Then why, sir? Why are we dealing with this ourselves?” 
“Because we don’t need to bring down the whole guard. We only need a gentle push to send everything here off balance.” 
Night didn’t say much else as he led Ardent behind him. The unicorn led him down several streets until they approached an apartment building. Night walked into the building without slowing down and began marching up the stairs with familiarity and purpose. 
They climbed to the highest level and a door opening to an apartment that Ardent found criminally small. However, the place was well cared for despite the size. The floor was covered in steel panels, and the windows had magical gems installed into the frames. A slide projector sat on a table, and a self-erasing blackboard—also recognizable by the magical gems—sat on the wall behind it. 
“So what do you think?” Night asked, with all the pride of a dad talking about a freshly-cleaned garage. “It’s a miracle what the Royal Architects can do, isn’t it?”
“It’s a little cramped,” Ardent noted.
Night sighed. “Yeah, it’s how I bought this place, to begin with,” he said. “But it does look much better than it had eight months ago. Anyway, the bathroom’s through there, and the bunks are through there. It’s not much for privacy, but it’s what we got.”
“And what are we doing now that we’re here, sir?” Ardent asked as he removed his scarf. 
“We’re going to be looking out for the Scarlet Hoof. Gleaming had some influence in this area, and so the Hoof is bound to have some here. We will disrupt them so that even if they set themselves up properly, they’ll be ineffective and easily dealt with.”
“And how are we going to do that, sir?”
Night sat down at a table and reached into his saddlebags. “Are you a big reader?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ve got this nice treatise by Commander Hurricane about logistics and how they are the key to any battle. Whether you’re destroying, planning, or setting up new ones, they are the most important thing. If you ask me, though, even when I was on the streets, I could have told you that thieves don’t like not being paid. In fact, everyone I know doesn’t like being paid, but thieves are especially so. They turned to crime for more of it, after all.”
“So we’re going to mess with their pay, sir?”
“Of course,” Night said. “If they’re going be broke as criminals, then they might start looking for less dangerous jobs. We have to make going to prison not worth it.”
“And how are we doing that, sir?”
“It’s a simple four-step system, Ardent. Step one, we find the hideout. Step two, we find out how they make money and where they store it. Step three, we make it very difficult to make that money, and finally, step four, we rob them blind.”
“Simple, you say?” Ardent asked incredulously.
“Not quite like taking candy from a baby,” Night replied. “More like taking money from a bunch of thugs. The good news is that the Scarlet Hoof has no single, tragically ambitious pony at the top. They’re a bunch of vultures trying to get enough scraps from the corpse before whatever’s left gets burned away. We’re not dealing with masterminds, just opportunists. They would have tried her scheme independently if they were as cunning as Gleaming. Instead, they saw what she did and are trying to play catch up. That means we’re dealing with half-rate thugs who saw somepony make something great and are now trying to act like it was their idea. In other words, idiots.”
“As you say, sir,” Ardent replied, though he wasn’t sure he believed it.
“I do say. Now, before we get to business, we’ll need two more things.”
“What?” 
“First: disguises,” Night said. “While your scarf does excellently at making ponies want to avoid looking at you—”
Ardent blinked.
“—we’re going to have to do some long-term reconnaissance. We’re talking day-long stakeouts, and a scarf like that might make someone remember you more than anything. We’ll need some beggar’s clothes, or something similar. Enough that we can walk on the street without anyone paying attention.”
“And the second thing?” 
“Dinner. Do you like Chineighs?”
Ardent blinked again. “I… don’t have anything against it? Sir.”
“Excellent. I’ll go speak to my contact and get some info. First lesson, by the way. Make contacts. Talk to ponies, and let them know you’re discreet and here to help. Make sure you can trust them, and make sure they trust you. Once you have those, they’re the first ones you go to every time.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Unfortunately, it is part of the job that every inquisitor will have to do on their own,” Night said, “but they’re invaluable.”
Ardent nodded, and Night stepped out of the small apartment, leaving the earth pony to wonder what he had gotten himself into.