//------------------------------//
// Chapter 15 
// Story: A Shimmering Intellect 
// by DungeonMiner 
//------------------------------//

“What is the meaning of all of this?” the new voice called again, and Sunset watched as the golems all shifted in place, appearing far less threatening than they had a second ago.
A unicorn’s silhouette appeared in the opening to the next chamber, and a yellow light shone to spray across his face and light up the room.
He appeared older than Sunset assumed from his voice, but his brass-colored coat did little to hide the wrinkles in his face. A thin, red mane that stood only on the top of his head made her think that the stallion was somehow badling in reverse, and a lemon-green cutie mark of gear gave Sunset only the faintest idea of what he did.
“Ah! Guests!” the old stallion said with a smile.
Flash and Sunset looked at each other. 
“Excuse my manners!” the stallion said, holding out a hoof. “I’m Doctor Tinker Trot. I have PhDs in Arcanobiology, Arcane Sciences, and Mind Creation, and you are?”
“Um, Sunset Shimmer,” Sunset began. 
“Celestia’s old pupil?” The Doctor interrupted. “My, you don’t look a day over twenty-five! You may not have become a full Alicorn, but I can see your studies did you well!”
Sunset just smiled and nodded.
“And, uh,” Flash said, stepping forward and giving the golems a sidelong glance. “My name’s Flash Sentry. I’m here as a guard for Miss Shimmer.”
Sunset glanced at the golems herself, and they stood stock-still, like statues.
“Of course, of course!” the Doctor said. “We can’t have one of Celestia’s pupils alone in such a dangerous place. I can’t tell you how many wild animals my golems have had to ward off.”
“Your golems?” Sunset asked.
“Ward off?” Flash asked before shooting Sunset a look. She could tell by his face that he wasn’t sure ‘warding’ was what these golems were doing. The other thing Sunset clearly recognized in Flash’s eyes was that she was very interested in the fact that these golems seemed to belong to the Doctor. 
“Come, come in!” the Doctor said, waving them inside the next room. 
Sunset and Flash both glanced at the golem surrounding them before anyone moved. The golems stood still, doing nothing. After another second of stillness, Sunset and Flash finally moved. The Doctor smiled as he watched them and eventually turned his back to them.
And Sunset and Flash froze. 
The back of the Doctor’s head, where his mane ended, had a massive, hoof-sized, yellow gem embedded into his flesh.
Flash looked at her, eyes wide, asking without words if that gem was what he thought it was. She winced, letting him know that she really hoped it wasn’t.
They tried to follow, acting as though the unspoken communication didn’t happen, and they continued on after Doctor Trot as calmly and casually as they could manage.
But Sunset could feel the golems staring after her as she moved into the next room. 
“I hope the golems weren’t too rough with you,” the Doctor said, leading through the cave’s next chamber to one more beyond that. “I’ve had a few incursions of diamond dogs and other less-savory things try to make their way in. It got bad enough to set up a guard, and well, sometimes the term intruder is too broad for simple magic minds.”
Sunset glanced at Flash, who remained quiet, before speaking up. “Well, we’ve managed so far.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Doctor Trot said before leading them up to a stone door set flush in a smooth cave wall. “Come inside where it’s warm. I do apologize for the mess but try not to touch anything. It is my lab, after all.” 
The door opened, revealing a cozy home inside—a fireplace pulsed with heat made from a magical gem, warming the stone around them. Stone tables, either expertly or magically carved, dominated the middle of the first room and were covered in papers and magical apparatus for measuring magical output and testing the strength of spell matrices. Sunset could see two other rooms, each leading off in a different direction. 
“It is not much,” the Doctor said, “but it’s my home away from home until I crack this.”
“Crack what?” Sunset asked.
“The key to creating true magical sentience,” he said with a smile. “Have a seat, please. I’ll help fetch us some lunch. Prototype! Get me and two guests something to eat.”
The sound of stone grinding against stone sounded from one of the doorways. 
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re referring to,” Sunset said. “Are you talking about forging new Intellect Crystals? The Princesses have known the methods of making those for Centuries. The information isn’t lost.”
Doctor Trot smiled wider as he pulled up some chairs. “No, no, no. I don’t want to make an Intellect Crystal. My research points to them being more useful as weapons of mass destruction or wellsprings of knowledge. No, I want to make life. Real life, something that grows and learns.”
Flash glanced over at her. His face said that he was trying to gauge how crazy that sounded.
“That’s…an interesting field of study,” Sunset said.
“It sounds insane,” Doctor Trot said, moving some items on the table. “I’m fully aware it sounds like an attempt to recreate Frankenhoof’s monster. You don’t need to hide that from me.”
“Then…why do it?” 
“Because having a workforce that can be created in months rather than years can revolutionize how Equestria does anything: Economy, Military, Law enforcement, everything. The Princess could use my new system for making golems even to fill out her Inquisition mandate and have the ponies she needs in half the time.”
“Sure, but isn’t that still slavery? And still illegal?”
“It can be if the wrong seed is planted in the wrong pot, but I can ensure that doesn’t happen,” the Doctor said. “But I’m sure once I’ve perfected the process, the Princess might change her mind. She’s a scholar, like us, after all.”
Sunset felt a ball of discomfort land in her stomach at the comparison, and Flash mirrored it, equally disturbed by the comment. 
“Couldn’t you…since you have one,” Sunset said, trying to move past the scholar remark, “re-discover how to make an Intellect Cyrstal? You could have just asked it. I’m not sure the grafting it would have been necessary.”
“So you noticed?” Tinker Trot said, smiling as though it weren’t obvious. “I could, but quite frankly, I don’t necessarily trust the Crystal to be truthful with me.”
“So you stuck it into your head? Because you didn’t trust it?” Flash asked, speaking up for the first time since they entered the lab.
“I grafted it so that I could access its information directly. I don’t need to ask the Crystal and determine what’s truth from lies. I can simply know.”
“At the cost of having to experiment,” Sunset noted. “Otherwise, you would have already figured out how to do what you need by now.”
“Exactly,” the Doctor said as he finished cleaning the space for them. “Sit, though, please. I’d hate to think my time here on the mountain has left me an insufficient host.”
Sunset sat, and Flash hesitantly followed after her, sitting in the third chair as the Doctor smiled at them both. 
“So, I have to ask, before curiosity burns me alive, what brings you two up here?” 
“We’re studying Leylines,” Sunset said. “Rather, I am. Flash is just my guardian while I’m here. It’s a shame Leylines aren’t closer to city centers, am I right?”
“There’s one in Canterlot,” the Doctor noted. 
“There is,” Sunset said, her brain already forming an excuse as soon as she heard it, “but…well…”
“Well?”
“How…familiar are you with my apprenticeship under Celestia?”
Tinker Trot hesitated for a second. “I know you didn’t finish.”
“I left Celestia on some fairly poor terms,” Sunset said. “It’s all my fault in retrospect, but I simply can’t work in that environment again without remembering what a brat I was.” Her brain added a tremble to her voice for a little extra effect. “Anyway, I still needed to look into Leylines, and I couldn’t study in Canterlot, so Princess Twilight offered to send some protection with me to Everhoof.”
“I see. It seems I hit a sensitive subject. I hope I didn’t cause any distress.”
“It’s fine,” Sunset said, waving the comment away before rubbing her eyes as though to dry tears away. “I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”
At that moment, a different kind of golem, built to be no larger than a colt or filly, approached with three bowls of warm stew. Barely reaching over the table, the golem served each of them before it retreated back into the kitchen.
“I have to wonder in return,” Sunset began, stirring the stew with the spoon that came with it. “What are you doing here? You could craft golems anywhere in Equestria, couldn’t you? Leylines don’t affect construct creation, as far as I know.”
Dr. Trot nodded. “You are correct there,” he said. “However, with the exceptions of a few Rock farms out on the outskirts of Equestria, Everhoof has the highest concentration of geodes and lacks the kind of ponies that would see my work as heretical or something equally trivial. For my safety and theirs, isolation is preferred. The cold, however, I could do without.” He smiled at his joke, and Sunset smiled back.
“Couldn’t we all?”
“So what is your Leyline study about?” the Doctor asked. 
“Unfortunately, I can’t say. It would make both Princess Twilight and Princess Cadence very upset with me if I broke confidentiality.” 
“Work for Equestria and the Crystal Empire?”
“I probably shouldn’t have said that much,” Sunset said, scooping up a spoonful of stew, “but I feel like I can trust a fellow scholar to keep some secrets.”
The Doctor smiled. “Well, perhaps. We are also known to hate mysteries.”
Sunset nodded her agreement and continued to eat her stew.


---♦---


Flash watched as a switch flipped in Sunset’s head. When they both met Dr. Trot, they’d been on the back foot, doing their best to gauge where exactly they stood with the strange man—or stallion, whatever—and hoping that he wouldn’t kill them. 
And then, Old Sunset came back. The one that could lie as naturally as she breathed and could pull the right strings in the right places, and Flash had never been happier to see her. 
Right now, they needed that manipulative little bitch, and she didn’t disappoint. When she finished talking, the Doctor looked apologetic for prying and went to his stew quietly. She did a fantastic job, and Flash hated that it was Old Sunset that did it.
“Well, I would hate to interrupt your research,” the Doctor said, “but I would also hate to have you all kicked back out in the cold. If you give me a few minutes, I’ll carve a guest bedroom for you to stay the night.”
Flash did not like that idea.
“Oh, we wouldn’t want to impose.” 
“Nonsense,” Doctor Trot replied. “I couldn’t throw you into the wilderness like that. Please, stay.”
Flash looked over at Sunset, telegraphing on his face that he didn’t want to stay. She only gave him a pained look in return, one that said she didn’t want to either, but they had to.
“If you insist,” Sunset said, and the Doctor nodded before he spoke up. “Prototype! Start clearing space for a new room.”
The small golem returned from the kitchen and began to work quickly, moving a table on the fireplace side of the room out of the way. 
Flash moved up to Sunset’s side and frowned at her.
She gave him a soft nudge in response as she turned to face Tinker. “Actually, Doctor, could we head into the kitchen while you work?”
“Oh, of course,” the Doctor said. “Go ahead, by all means.”
Sunset nodded and slipped to the kitchen, and Flash followed close behind. Once they were far enough inside, Flash turned on her. “What are you doing taking the invitation?” he hissed. “That guy is going to kill us in our sleep.”
“If I don’t, it will be rude and suspicious,” Sunset whispered back. “Then he’ll kill us while we’re awake!” 
“How is it rude?” Flash asked.
“Hospitality rules. We’re his guests. He’ll take care of us, and we must be thankful and polite.”
“So it’s an excuse to get us murdered?”
“If everything works out, and he follows the rules like we do, he won’t kill us while we’re asleep because we’re his guests. This is a deep part of Equestrian culture. He should follow it.”
“Sure, because the guy talking about playing god is super concerned about societal norms!” Flash said before catching himself and hoping he wasn’t talking loudly.
“Yeah, so being rude to him is the wrong move,” Sunset said. “We’re not in a good spot here. If we turn him down, he won’t take it well. If we accept his offer, there’s a better chance of us leaving here alive. We’ll just have to take watches.”
Flash wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose. Of course, he no longer had fingers to pinch with, and the bridge of his nose took up most of his face. So, instead, he draped his hoof over his snout. 
“I don’t like it either,” she said. “I’m just trying to make sure we both get out of here alive.”
Flash sighed. “Alright. Alright. So we’ll set up a watch. He probably can’t fit the bigger golems in here anyway. So we’ll just have to worry about him and the small one he keeps around.”
Sunset nodded, and they both took a second to glance back out the kitchen door, where the Doctor worked, casting spells as the gem in the back of his head glowed like a light bulb. 
The look on Sunset’s face was the only thing he needed to see to know that was concerning. 
“You know,” Flash said, breaking the silence between them. “I don’t know if we would have made it through the conversation if Old Sunset weren’t a bitch.”
“Thanks, but you didn’t need to bring that up.”
“Silver lining.”
“Sure.”
A few minutes later, the Doctor emerged from a newly carved hole in the wall with a smile. “There you go. I hope you don’t mind it’s only sparsely furnished. I still don’t quite have a hang on the Transform technique. I can see, however, why Celestia had the Destroy one controlled so tightly.”
Sunset nodded. “Trust me, it can be infuriating how right she can be.”
Trot nodded and motioned them inside.
The room had a door, which Flash was thankful for, and a pair of beds that he hoped would be comfortable enough to sleep but not too comfortable that they’d both drop into unconsciousness lying there. A washbasin had been set up for them as well, though there didn’t seem to be a toilet. 
“The washbasin is connected to my simple plumbing setup. Snow from the surface is heated over the fireplace and then stored in a nearby cistern that keeps it liquid until it needs to be used,” the Doctor explained before he pointed all the way over to the last remaining doorway. “The bathroom, unfortunately, is through my own bedroom, so I’ll ask that you do your best to be quiet if something happens late at night.”
“Of course,” Sunset said. 
The Doctor nodded. “I hope you’ll excuse me for now, but I do need to return to my work. We’ll have dinner at six.”
“That sounds more than acceptable.”
With that, Doctor Trot nodded and returned to his table and notes.
Flash glanced at Sunset again, but she simply shrugged, set down her saddlebag, and unpacked her supplies. 
Flash looked around himself one more time as though hoping something would get him out of this situation. 
Nothing presented itself.
He sighed and began unpacking.


---♦---


Dinner was honey-braised turnips, and Sunset couldn’t believe it had been so long since she had some good turnips. Though, that was probably her pony body talking. As the evening went on, the Doctor spent less and less time with his guests and more time hunched over his formula and spell matrix diagrams. 
If Sunset were honest with herself, the fact that the Doctor wasn’t talking to her gave her a strange sense of relief. When she spoke to the Doctor the first time, her mind didn’t even register that Old Sunset had bubbled up to the surface. It wasn’t until Flash said it that Sunset even thought to look back at the conversation and the manipulation that she fell back on like an old favorite chair. 
Now that it had been brought to her attention, she felt disgusted with herself that it had been so easy. 
The only thing that offered any kind of comfort to Sunset despite her backsliding was Flash’s comment that they’d probably be dead if it weren’t for it. Telling herself that survival was an acceptable excuse this time helped her, but the knot in her stomach hadn’t untied itself completely. 
Sunset looked over at Flash as he sat on his bed. The metal frame had simple springs that could be Transformed from stone, but cloth and feathers were made from organic materials, and Transform couldn’t make that change. Instead, the springs were covered in multiple layers of extra blankets that the Doctor offered instead of a mattress. 
Flash frowned as he sat on the bed. “Well, it’s not memory foam, that’s for sure.”
“Not by a long shot,” Sunset agreed. 
Flash jumped off the bed and reached for his pack, where he unrolled his bedroll and laid it out on the bed. “I think this is just barely better than the floor.”
“Just barely,” Sunset agreed. 
“At least we won’t have to worry about the wind tonight,” Flash said before closing the distance between them. “Who’s taking the first watch?”
“I will,” she said. “Of course, I’ve also just realized there’s no light in here. Once the door closes, it will be pitch black in here.”
“We’ll do what we have to,” Flash said. “I think I have a piece of wood in my pack that could become a decent torch.”
“Have it ready,” she said, “and get some sleep.”
Flash nodded and slipped into the bedroll. Meanwhile, Sunset closed the door, plunging the room into darkness.