I left A. K. Yearling, Corded Ware, and the other archaeologists to settle themselves into their quarters in the keep. The ancient interior had not escaped the renovation effort, and now served as a bustling records office for the Equestrian Army, ostensibly in support of all of the supply lines threading through the Badlands. However, though much of the old rooms and halls which had once housed long-dead ponies of worth aeons ago had been converted into offices, stationery store rooms, and the occasional barracks, a few were reserved for visiting guests, which our esteemed visitors now occupied, though they were unlikely to rank amongst the most luxurious hotels in Equestria. I myself had been granted the use of a tiny, square office to double as my quarters for the time there, just barely large enough to swing a dormouse, let alone a cat, while Cannon Fodder, in what I can only deduce was a deliberate joke, was assigned the much more spacious room adjacent to mine. However, though I could have ordered him to swap, he had already slept in it, and I was not willing the chance of picking up any one of his no doubt fascinating skin diseases.
That night, I invited A. K. Yearling to dinner in the officers’ mess and she accepted. I’d heard that the best way to ingratiate oneself with a writer is to feed them, rather like befriending dogs. However, either the archaeological team were under the mistaken impression that her invitation also extended to them or she had decided that dinner with just me was such a ghastly prospect that she invited them to join her and soften the experience, because after I’d spent about an hour changing into black tie, and fretting about whether or not it would be ostentatious of me to wear my medals (Drape Cut not being around to tell me what was correct made dressing myself rather more difficult), I popped down to the mess to find the staff grumbling about having to push some tables and chairs together because ‘that prince’ can’t count how many guests he’d invited.
Still, despite my manifest disappointment, I’d managed to secure a prime spot right next to the guest of honour, on her left, by staring down the spotty nerd who thought he’d grabbed the chair first. Corded Ware sat on her right side. I considered, perhaps, that it would not be so bad after all, and in the presence of her colleagues she would not feel quite so intimidated with the thought of sitting with a prince all evening. Still, I was rather surprised to find that they had blagged their way past the staff, who would otherwise have not normally allowed guests in such a state of undress through the velvet rope that separated that hallowed ground from the miserable world outside. I could only assume that they had given my name to the staff, who, and I like to think that I knew the keen and obsequious mind of the serving class quite well, would remember if these guests of mine misbehave and thus blame me.
Unfortunately for Yours Truly, all anypony else wanted to do was talk shop, and I soon gave up on attempting to follow the conversation. Archaeology, that is real archaeology, and not the fun adventures the very fictional Daring Do gets up to in her stories, is actually very boring. I only remember snippets of it, which were replete with confusing words and phrases that might as well have been in code for all I knew. After a while, I insisted on taking part, even if that meant making an idiot of myself, if out of spite at being ignored.
“According to Professor Pit Comb’s theories, the Crystal Empire’s outpost was built atop a more ancient Haygyptian necropolis, likely dating back to the reign of Pharaoh Hamon-Rei, that had been abandoned in the Late Pre-Classical Era,” said Corded Ware excitedly over a starter course of goat cheese tarts, spreading out an array of papers covered with diagrams and maps on the table to the consternation of the waiters. Our guests didn’t detect the slight raising of an eyebrow at that sight, but I certainly did. “Layers upon layers of civilisations, like a cake.”
“Pit Comb also suggested that the purpose of an outpost so far from the Crystal Empire was for trade with the pony tribes in the Badlands,” said A. K. Yearling. “But you think it must be something else?”
“Why would anypony build a trading post on top of a tomb?” he said with a shrug. “It just doesn’t make sense, but now the Crystal Empire is back we can finally have Crystal Ponies examining the site.”
“A necropolis?” I piped up, my interest finally piqued. “That sounds exciting. Is it cursed?”
“No, sir, curses aren’t real,” said Corded Ware, as one would to an annoying but well-meaning foal that one wasn’t allowed to slap into silence. Then, turning back to A. K. Yearling, he continued, “The length of time between its abandonment and its discovery by the Crystal Empire remains uncertain. It’s been difficult to estimate either from the written record alone, so it’s possible, but unlikely, that the Crystal Ponies didn’t know its purpose.”
“What about mummies?” I asked, quite innocently, I assure you.
Corded Ware leaned over and peered at me past A. K. Yearling, who was rolling her eyes and drinking with enthusiasm from her glass of white wine. “Yes, sir, there will likely be mummies in a Haygyptian necropolis,” he said. Before I could ask another daft question, he added, “No, they will not attack us, they have been dead for thousands of years.”
“Well, it happened in Daring Do and the Thousand Year Door.”
A. K. Yearling shot me a queer, rather intense look. “That’s fictional, sir,” she said. Her tail flicked, and I took that to be mere irritation or embarrassment.
They carried on with their dull chatter, and sometimes one of the other archaeologists would pipe up with a comment about something or other, interspersed with strange and arcane words like ‘amphora’, ‘seriation’, and ‘coprolite’. The main course, mushroom risotto again, came and went, and the wine I’d ordered went down all too agreeably, and by the time a fine dessert of creme brulee made an appearance I’d already polished off much of the bottle myself and was certainly feeling its effects. Clearly excluded from the conversation, either by choice as an outsider or simply because I was too uneducated and stupid to follow, I had allowed my mind to wander.
I hadn’t visited the keep’s dungeons since the battle, not having much opportunity or desire to even if they weren’t sealed by stone, but I certainly recalled vividly the memory of Twilight Sparkle discovering the chamber filled with those maddeningly chaotic pictograms. For once, Princess Celestia’s Most Faithful Student going off on a Twilecture was not the most immediately disturbing thing in the room, and though much of it could be attributed to my own battered mental state at the time, which hasn’t seen much in the way of improvement over the years, I still could not discount the eerie and unpleasant feeling I felt down there. I liked to think that I could shrug off such things, after all, at least two of my homes are purportedly the most haunted buildings in Equestria along with the Castle of the Two Sisters and the lavatories of my prep school if one believes in those old superstitions, but it was difficult to fully discount the distinctly unpleasant sensation I felt down there as being entirely in my own head.
This particular site had seen a great many civilisations occupying it over the long millennia, as I recalled, and Equestria was merely the latest in that long line; the Haygyptians were first to build what Twilight Sparkle had called a ‘temple-tomb complex’, whatever that meant, then the Crystal Empire moved in for whatever reason, then a tribe of ponies built a fort atop what was a convenient spot near a strategically vital area, and after a period of absence a pack of Diamond Dogs had turned the place into their den and were subsequently exterminated by the Changelings. A cake of civilisations, as Corded Ware put it. As I mulled this over in my head, and pretended to listen to what Corded Ware was droning on about something called hieratic script, something had occurred to me in such a striking manner that I could not help but blurt it out as though I’d made a fascinating discovery.
“Weren’t you there?” I asked, silencing their no-doubt fascinating discussion about ponies long dead. “Corded Ware, I mean,” I carried on, as everypony stared at me with perplexed expressions. “For the rest of the world, it has been thousands of years, but for the Crystal Ponies it’s only… what, when did the Empire return? A couple of years ago? Don’t you remember what this outpost was for?”
Corded Ware exchanged a few blank looks with his fellow archaeologists and A. K. Yearling, who was by now trying to shrink into her seat and hide behind her voluminous hat. “Sir, the Crystal Ponies were enslaved by King Sombra, if you recall. There’s very little of that time that we would want to remember.”
I’d well and truly stuck my hoof in it yet again, and then proceeded to smear it all over the walls and draw rude pictures. That, however, still just did not add up in my mind; they were clearly very clever ponies, and I assumed that one did not join an archaeological society on merely a good word and a recommendation from a friend. It would be safe to assume that even though they had been enslaved by Sombra’s evil regime, they were at least high-ranking serviles who presumably worked in some sort of civil service, rather like those clerks I’d encountered working for the Changelings in the fortress keep of Virion Hive, as opposed to the ones who mined crystals all day. However, this was supposed to be a polite dinner, not an inquisition, so I ignored the impulse to carry on questioning until I teased the truth, whatever that was, out of them. One could not be expected to recall the exact purpose of each and every single little outpost of what had been a vast and sprawling empire, I supposed.
I was no stranger to the social faux pas, and had some experience in smoothing them over. “Ah, sorry,” I said. “I’m merely eager to find out what’s down there. My family has a few ancient Crystal Empire artefacts in the vaults in the Sanguine Palace, ones that escaped the Empire’s disappearance and might pre-date the reign of Sombra himself. Artefacts of great artistry that hint at a fascinating culture before the rise of the tyrant. Perhaps, once this war is over, you might like to take a look at them? They’re merely gathering dust down there.”
That seemed to smooth things over somewhat, and the researchers carried on with their no-doubt fascinating discussion, leaving me to stew in mild embarrassment and wine. However, the mention of my family’s secret vault seemed to attract A. K. Yearling’s interest at last, and she finally deigned to speak with me.
“I’ve heard of the House of Blood’s vault,” she said. “You have the surviving cultural history of entire tribes and nations long vanished hidden under your palace.”
At first I thought she was speaking to somepony else, so she gave me a little nudge with her hoof to prompt me to answer. “As I said, gathering dust. A great many of my ancestors were inveterate hoarders, picking up whatever trinkets they could from wherever they travelled.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “They belong in a museum,” she said.
That old song and dance again; when somepony decides that I haven’t suffered enough minor irritations for one day they would make a noise about how I ought to return some of those items in the vault to whatever obscure tribe my ancestors had pilfered it from, and, frankly, I’m not terribly fussed about the contents of a part of the Sanguine Palace I’ve stepped inside perhaps twice in my entire life. The trouble, however, is that while I would be perfectly happy for them to take whatever it is that’s so valuable to them, and thus free up some extra space for one more wine cellar or what ponies these days call a ‘stallion cave’, another, more traditionally-minded member of my extended family would talk about how Great-Great-Great Uncle So-And-So had stolen it fair and square and that our family locking it away where no one can see and appreciate said artefact is actually preserving it. The two sides would argue for a bit, drawing in academics and the like to support their cases and perhaps somepony might threaten to sue or a duel might be fought, but ultimately nothing would happen at all and the status quo would continue until such a time somepony else decided to have a go.
“Yes, I agree,” I said, which seemed to surprise her a little. “At least some of the things down there ought not to belong to the family. We’ve yet to do a proper inventory of the vault, as the war’s getting in the way, and I’d imagine a few of the heirloom pieces down there might be quite dangerous. Who knows what enchantments Prince Coldblood’s codpiece might possess.”
A.K. Yearling paused, squinting at me, as if to try and figure out if I was joking about that or not (I wasn’t). “Are there any items that belonged to Princess Hotblood in there?”
“I have a few of her things down there,” I said. “I don’t recall what, exactly. Some letters, I believe, a few of her minor personal effects - I think one of them is a comb - and some bits of ceremonial armour, among other items that I can hardly remember.”
She stared at me, eyes wide in fascination as she listened to me list off the various bits and pieces that remained of one of Equestria’s ancient heroines as though they were merely collectibles that I had lying around the place. “Very little of the material culture around the Nightmare Heresy has survived,” she said. “Even less of the other alicorn princesses. To find anything that existed in that time that might shed light on what really happened back then is already an incredible achievement.”
“There are my aunts, of course,” I said, wondering why historians simply don’t go and ask either of the two immortal beings who were present for many of the key parts of Equestrian history. “I’m sure if you ask nicely, they’d be happy to acquiesce to a little chat about the ancient past.”
“Obtaining an interview with either princess is impossible,” she said, with the air of a pony who has tried repeatedly and failed. I would assume that even Auntie Celestia might be reluctant to speak of the most traumatic events of her life over and over again, as despite such things as being forced to banish her sister to the moon having occurred countless mortal lifetimes ago, alicorns have long memories to go with their long lifetimes. That, and considering that she had a country to run and a large celestial body that all life on Equus is dependent upon to look after, she might have just been too busy to answer such endless questions. [The other reason that I rarely give interviews is that I have already said as much as I can possibly remember about those historical events over the past centuries. However, I welcome those who might provide a unique perspective on a particular topic, and they should use the proper channels by writing a letter. Please do not attempt to do things like break into my bathroom to ask me questions about the Unicornian Reformation or the Fourth Pegasopolis Civil War while I’m bathing, as has happened in the past.]
“I might be able to put in a good word for you,” I said. “What is your interest in my long-dead ancestor, anyway? Looking for more material for a new book?”
“I’m always looking for more material,” she said, then hastened to add, “but not for a Daring Do story, this time.” She gave me another scrutinising look, and said in as polite a tone she can muster for such words: “It might not be for you.”
“Give me some credit, Miss Yearling, I can read other things too.” I smiled to show that I was only partially joking about that. “I’m well aware that you’re a real archaeologist, too, and I’d be quite interested to hear what you find out about my more famous ancestors.”
“I received a grant to write a paper on ancient alicorns, to sort the facts from the myths. An audience with the only two ponies who were alive at the time of the Nightmare Heresy would be very helpful, but not as helpful as examining the real material artefacts. And to think, it’s been sitting in your vault this entire time.”
[Part of the vault is now open to the general public, on days that the Sanguine Palace is open to visitors. There one can view not only ancient artefacts related to Blueblood’s ancestors, but items that belonged to Prince Blueblood himself, including his star spider silk vest, his collection of swords which includes his trusty sabre, and Slab.]
“I’ve had other priorities on my mind,” I said. “Fighting a war, for one, but I’m sure victory would bring many opportunities for such talented researchers such as yourself and your colleagues to take a look around the contents of the vault.” Few things helped boost a royal’s standing in the eyes of the public, aside from a particularly saucy scandal where one comes out on top or, as I’ve demonstrated, being seen as a war hero, like patronising academics. I suppose it helps one make up for one’s own lack of intelligence and education to invest in that of others, while reaping some measure of the praise without having to do much more than write a cheque and make occasional inquiries to ensure it’s not being spent on more personally edifying things like drinking.
The prospect of poking around in a large, sprawling, underground dungeon filled to the brim with all manner of very old things seemed to get A. K. Yearling to finally warm up to me. We carried on chatting, even as the nerds around the table realised it was past their bedtimes and slinked off one by one, about the sorts of things that I have squirrelled away in the family vaults. At least, I spoke of the things that I could remember were down there, like Coldblood’s favourite scalpel and his collection of as-yet-unopened poisons. Some things I might have embellished a little, but I trusted that whatever else she found down there would surpass her expectations. I understood, at last, that perhaps she was rather tired of everypony asking about her Daring Do books, rather like me with my military service albeit much less traumatic and nightmare-inducing for her, and for once wished that ponies would speak to her about her true passion: archaeology and things belonging to ponies who have been dead for thousands of years (and the two ponies who have been alive for thousands of years, of course). I like to think that I was far from the most annoying fan she’s ever met, because I’ve met a few myself whom I’ve considered having locked up for the crime of correcting a prince on matters of Daring Do lore, at least until my drinking that night inevitably brought me across that threshold again. The wine was finished, and we’d moved onto the port and cigars - well, I smoked, and Miss Yearling declined on that account.
We stayed quite late, and the mess had cleared of all except those most dedicated to the Bacchanalian pursuits and those who had fallen asleep at their tables, and I did what I always do in the company of an attractive mare and invited her up to my quarters to continue the discussion. Now, keep in mind that by that point I was quite drunk, and she was, at most, a little tipsy; I could approximate walking in a straight line and speak in what I thought at the time were coherent sentences, but as ever, I thought it best to keep going and hope that I wouldn’t disgrace myself too much.
Though it was very dark by the time A. K. Yearling and I emerged from the officers' mess, the frantic activity in Fort Nowhere had scarcely quietened down. The monumental effort to build up the necessary supplies for Market Garden’s next Big Push could not wait for such things as darkness and normal sleeping patterns, and ponies on the night shift continued to labour loading and unloading those supplies. Night and day the interminable toil proceeded, only lessening somewhat with the setting of the sun; at least the noise of the trains coming and going gave me an excuse for the lack of sleep, besides the habitual nightmares of all that I have endured in this war thus far.
“You know, I used to try writing my own Daring Do stories,” I said, as I invited her into my quarters. Even though I was quite drunk, it was not lost on me that she did not look particularly comfortable and I wondered if I’d overstepped the mark considerably. In truth, I don’t entirely recall my intentions that night; I might have thought to seduce her but decided against it, or perhaps I merely wanted to continue our interesting discussion without the mess staff glaring at us and tapping their watches. In an odd way, I suppose, fans come to think of themselves as knowing the creators of their favourite works, to form something of a twisted, one-sided ‘friendship’ of sorts with them.
As I lit a few candles to bring a little light into the rather gloomy chamber that I called my mercifully temporary home, I saw the same expression on her that one sees on Rainbow Dash just as she discovers that the cider has run out. She collected herself quickly. “Fanfiction?” she asked.
“I suppose one could call it that,” I said. “Foalhood scribblings, really. Daring Do whisks a young prince away from a life of royal drudgery for fun adventures. Hardly high literature, but it kept my spirits up when my parents confiscated my book collection after they decided it was beneath our noble rank. I don’t think any of them survived after they found out about it, but I have a few that I can still remember, more or less.”
“It’s not a good idea for authors to read fanfiction,” she said, her voice quite stilted and awkward. “Or hear about it. It leads to all sorts of legal problems that I’d rather not get into.”
“Oh, come now, I wouldn't dream of suing you.” Or anypony, for that matter; such problems were best sorted out on the field of honour than in court. Still, I could tell that I was making her more uncomfortable, though, my instincts, clouded by drink though they might have been, told me that there was something else occupying her mind. I put it down to the no doubt difficult task of researching and writing her next book, and while I have only written one book in my life, a gentlecolt’s guide to the best brothels and bordello that Prance has to offer the young stag on the Grand Tour, besides these lengthy ramblings here, I could imagine that there was quite a bit of work involved in writing real literature. “What I mean is that your stories provided a measure of… escape for a certain young colt trapped in a world of rigid royal expectations.”
She gave me that odd look again. I had overstepped the mark, so I tried to ease the situation a little by opening up my fully-stocked drinks cabinet and offering her a nightcap.
“No, thank you, I’ve had quite enough,” she said, though I was uncertain whether she meant of the drink or of me. However, that she hadn’t run off already implied it was more the former, and I decided that I’d probably had enough too and shut the cabinet. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought that she was trying to tell me something rather important, to her at least, but hadn’t quite summoned the necessary courage or found the correct words to do so, which must have been quite worrying for a writer.
“Blueblood.” A. K. Yearling still stood at the threshold of my door, with only the tip of her snout crossing it, apparently struggling to make up her mind about whether or not to commit to entering. To say that her behaviour was peculiar would be to undersell it, and at first I simply put it down to the reclusive writer possessing the social skills of a baked potato, but even through my drunken haze I could understand that there was something else at the root of this. So peculiar, in fact, that her omission of my royal title barely offended my regal temperament.
In the end, however, she gave up on it. “Good night,” she said, with a slight bow of her head, “we’ll start the preparations for the excavation tomorrow. I look forward to working with you.”
***
I was determined to put the strange incident out of mind, and in the morning, after another night of restless sleep and while nursing a particularly unpleasant hangover, I had more immediate problems to contend with. Nothing life-threatening, at least not yet, but irritating nonetheless. A. K. Yearling and Corded Ware were up early and busied themselves organising the excavation; I found them in one of the smaller conference rooms in the keep, pouring over maps and diagrams and chatting excitedly about what they hoped to find down there. I stayed a short while, just long enough to remind myself that archaeology was a little more involved than merely digging a big hole and seeing what things you can find down there, and I left them to get on with it. If Miss Yearling seemed at all perturbed by the little social disaster that took place the night before, she made no sign, aside from being about as distant as she was when I first met her.
However, as I made my rounds that morning with Cannon Fodder, reminding everypony that I still exist and pretending that I have a real job to do, what should have been a routine stroll around the camp before retreating back into my room for a well-deserved nap was rudely interrupted by one of the archaeologists having an altercation with that irritating bureaucrat Pencil Pusher. I could already hear raised voices in the corridor, and I knew that this morning’s walk was not going to be as dull, tedious, and uneventful as I’d hoped. Perhaps I could have pretended that I never heard it, however, I recognised Pencil Pusher’s clipped, insufferably smug tone, which had become a little high and squeaky being raised, quickly followed by the more nasal tone of one of the archaeologists, and I knew that I had to put an end to whatever mess he was in the process of making before it would develop into a more severe problem. I trotted onwards, Cannon Fodder behind me and making an awful racket with his armour as he followed, before this could develop into a larger problem that would require even more of my incredibly valuable time and effort to deal with.
Throwing the door to the small store room open with excessive force had the desired effect of silencing the argument. Pencil Pusher nearly jumped out of his neatly-pressed service uniform in shock. There were a few crates in this windowless store room, which was inadequately lit by a small lamp hanging from the ceiling. The esteemed quartermaster was accompanied and dwarfed by two burly stallions who worked in the regimental stores, who I presume he’d brought along for muscle, in case the thin, reedy fellow from the Crystal Pony archaeology group took all leave of his senses and decided to resort to violence. Still, having been subjected to the quartermaster’s single-minded dedication to the rules at the exclusion of all sense and logic, I could very well understand if this researcher responded to whatever questioning being inflicted upon him with brutal violence. It would be funny to watch, I considered as I surveyed the scene.
“Ah, Commissar!” exclaimed Pencil Pusher, his voice rather squeaky as he tried to collect himself. “I was about to send somepony to fetch you! I simply cannot work under these conditions.”
“What is it this time?” I snapped; it was best to cut to the heart of the matter with these sorts of things.
Pencil Pusher cleared his throat noisily and smoothed down the front of his already-pristine uniform. I noticed that he was brandishing a crowbar, which floated awkwardly besides his head in his grey aura. “This civilian is refusing to allow us to check the contents of these boxes!” he said, his voice petulant like that of a foal complaining his friend refuses to share. “Regulations state that all shipping must be examined by approved personnel before they can be stored on a military site.”
As much as it pained me to admit it, Pencil Pusher was in the right on this matter; letting anypony store whatever they wanted in a military supply depot was just asking for all sorts of trouble, and, now that it had been pointed out to me, I was very curious to know what was inside the box that the archaeologists didn’t want us seeing. “What’s in the box?” I asked.
“No idea,” said Pencil Pusher.
“Not you.” I approached the archaeologist, who flinched from me as though I was menacing him with a large sledgehammer. “What’s in the box?” I repeated.
“Archaeological equipment!” he said, a little too quickly for my liking. Granted, he could just have been nervous, and indeed he certainly looked it, but whether he was nervous purely because of the tall, scary commissar-prince with skulls on his uniform or because he had something to hide remained to be seen.
“Then you won’t mind us taking a look?” I said.
“I-” He looked left and right, as though trying to find a way to dart around me and escape out through the door. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Why not? Is it dangerous?”
“No, sir!”
“Then surely if it’s only ‘archaeological equipment’, whatever that might be, then there’s no harm in letting Pencil Pusher here do his job?”
“Well, no, I guess not, sir.” The archaeologist chap pawed at the ground and lowered his head, but his ears were still pricked up with worry. “But this is highly sensitive archaeological equipment. You might break it.”
Pencil Pusher scoffed, apparently insulted. “I deal with equipment that our soldiers depend on with their lives every single day. I think I can handle a few… what’s in there anyway, spades for digging?”
“No, no, it’s much more complicated than that. It’s, uh, magic.”
One did not need to be a master detective to know that he was hiding something in those boxes, and for once I was in the rare situation of siding with Pencil Pusher here. My interest piqued, I wanted more than anything to find out what was inside that box and why this bespectacled little nerd was so adamant that I should not know its contents. More than that, I was also a little insulted that he thought he could get past me with such a blatant lie, and if me being ostensibly an adult and the social mores that came with it forbade me from grabbing him by his hindlegs and shaking him upside down until he caved in, then I would have to satiate my bullying urges through merely embarrassing him.
“Open it,” I ordered.
“But-”
“This is a military site,” I said, “and we are at war. Everything that comes here must be inspected for contraband. We’re opening the box, and if, as you say, everything inside is perfectly safe and harmless, then you have nothing to fear from a little inspection. Unless, you are trying to hide something?”
Trapped by my unassailable logic, the archaeologist could only say, “We have nothing to hide, sir!”
“Then you won’t mind us having a look inside.”
Pencil Pusher grinned with such a smug little smile at his minor victory that I briefly considered withdrawing that order, but it was best to let him have his little moment of glory. The archaeologist started to protest with incoherent mutterings about just how delicate the contents of the box were, but I silenced him with the number four stern look, and he wisely shut up and stepped back, head bowed, as the regimental quartermaster raised his crowbar and thrust the pointy end into the thin gap between the lid and the box itself.
“I assure you, the soldiers of the Night Guards are consummate professionals,” I said, in what was probably the greatest lie that I had ever uttered in my entire career. “If there is any damage to the equipment inside, we will compensate you and your team.” Out of Pencil Pusher’s wages, I mentally added.
The cheap wood made an ominous creaking noise as Pencil Pusher applied pressure to the crowbar, and the lid began to lift free from the box with loud snaps of breaking nails that reminded me of distant musket volleys. Before the lid was off, I could see the malignant green glow of whatever was inside, and it poured out into the room like a miasma. With a final burst of effort, the top was torn clean off, revealing the contents that our nerd friend here had thought he could get away with smuggling inside our camp.
“What the bloody hell?” exclaimed Pencil Pusher, as he handed his prized crowbar to one of his very bored-looking underlings. He peered down into the open crate with an expression that was equal parts curiosity, confusion, and wariness at its contents.
“I can explain,” said the archaeologist, but rather than follow through with that assertion, he merely let it hang in the air like Cannon Fodder’s odour after consuming a large bowl of baked beans.
Gripped by that same curiosity, I stepped closer to peer inside the crate. There, piled up in a rather haphazard way, either through the carelessness of the pony who packed it or that of the ponies who transported it here, were glowing crystals, each roughly the size of my hoof. They were approximately spherical, but certainly not uniform in exact shape or size, with several appearing to be shaped rather more like eggs or melons. Each, however, glowed from within with a peculiar green light, and with the lid off I could feel the magic radiating off of it. This being another time where I wished I’d paid more attention in magic class instead of drawing pictures of genitals in the air with magic to upset Twilight Sparkle, I couldn’t place it, but nevertheless it felt strange and unnatural, unlike any magic that I’d felt before. It set my teeth on edge, and I could feel something tingling just on the end of my horn, just barely at the crest of perception.
“Strange-looking shovels,” I said. Against my better judgement, I reached inside with my hoof to touch one of them.
“Please don’t touch them, sir,” said the archaeologist, twitching with anxiety. “They’re fragile.”
I withdrew my hoof. “Fine,” I snapped, “but I demand the truth. What are they?”
“Like I said, sir, archaeological equipment,” he said, and when I gradually raised my eyebrow in growing disbelief at his brazenness of maintaining the obvious lie, he launched into a panicked explanation that came out as a stream of words. “They, uh, detect concentrations of ancient Crystal Empire magic! They’re very rare and very old, predating King Sombra’s reign, which is why you mustn’t touch them as the slightest misalignment could break them irreparably! They’re completely harmless, I assure you!”
Now, call me suspicious if you will, and I’ve been called far worse before, but I didn’t quite believe him. However, I didn’t have much in the way of real evidence to call his claims into question, besides a general feeling that this didn’t really add up, and I was willing to give the poor chap a little bit of leeway on that account. He certainly seemed agitated, but that could just as readily be explained by Yours Truly in a scary uniform interrogating him in a darkened room. The previous night’s discussion had already made me feel a little on the stupid side, and I didn’t fancy making myself look even more of an idiot in the eyes of our learned guests yet again.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” insisted Pencil Pusher. “In accordance with the regulations, I shall be impounding these… whatever they are. They will be returned to you once I am satisfied that they are ‘completely harmless’.”
In truth, I was about to let it slide. After all, this had wasted enough of my valuable time, which I might have otherwise spent brushing up on Crystal Empire history so as not to embarrass myself in front of its esteemed researchers again, and I was quite willing to let the Crystal Ponies have their weird magic things, even if I didn’t entirely trust them. However, this particular nerd’s subsequent response to Pencil Pusher’s rather harsh but understandable ruling was what tipped my compass from just letting it go to realising that there was far more to these strange little spheroids than he said.
“No!” he exclaimed, lunging forward to position himself in between his prized glowing spheres and Pencil Pusher, who still brandished his crowbar in what he probably thought was a menacing pose. “You can’t!”
“Why not?” I asked. “If they are completely harmless, as you say, then you have nothing to fear and nothing to hide. Unless, there is something you’re hiding?”
My irresistible logic had once again pinned him into a metaphorical corner, and he stood there, jaw flapping wordlessly and uselessly as he tried to come up with some sort of counter that would make all of this unpleasantness disappear. I have to admit that the bully within me enjoyed watching him squirm. However, it was as he began to stammer out an excuse of sorts that Cannon Fodder, who had merely been hovering silently in his usual position just behind me and to the left, was finally taken by that same sense of curiosity about what all the fuss was about. My magically-inert aide approached the crate full of these glowing orbs, and as he stepped closer, the eldritch green luminescence within each flickered, sputtered, and then died, to leave a crate full of inert, dull crystal globes.
A plaintive ‘Oh no’ was all that the archaeologist could muster.
***
“Sir, this is completely unacceptable!” snapped Corded Ware. He had evidently found out about what had happened with his ‘archaeological equipment’, and I assumed that his embarrassed and distraught colleague had told him. He found me in my office, where I had spent the afternoon sleeping off a rather heavy and boozy lunch with Captain Fine Vintage. “Those orbs were extremely valuable, and your soldiers, who obviously have no respect for the past and clearly cannot read signs, opened them.”
“I’ll ignore your disrespectful tone for now,” I said, thoroughly annoyed at having been woken from my nap. I’d managed to convince the other archaeologist that the contents of the crate must have been damaged when Pencil Pusher opened the box with his crowbar, and that clearly Cannon Fodder had nothing to do with it. Though his unique ‘gift’ was gradually becoming common knowledge, I still made an effort to keep his rare condition as much a secret as I possibly still could. “Perhaps it has escaped your notice that we are at war right now, and you and your team are here only on the sufferance of Their Royal Highnesses’ Equestrian Army. It can be very easily taken away. I have but to give one order and you will all be sent back to the Crystal Empire with nothing to show for it.”
“This expedition is funded by the Crystal Princess,” he sneered. “What will I say when I tell her you are obstructing our work here?”
“You might know her as Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, but I know her as my cousin Cadance,” I retorted; it was always silly when ponies tried to name-drop other members of royalty with me, as if I wasn’t related to most of them. “While you are here you are subject to military law, and I’ll not have members of your team interfering with their work. Pencil Pusher was correct, and perhaps if your colleague had shown due deference to his authority we might have avoided the damage. All goods, whatever they are, brought into this fortress must be checked thoroughly, or have you forgotten that we fight an enemy that changes its form at will?”
Corded Ware snorted; he was clearly angry, but even considering the loss of those apparently irreplaceable orbs, his anger seemed disproportionate. Granted, that might have been due to Yours Truly not particularly caring about the field of archaeology, or that he was clearly in the wrong here and had, as many rather prideful ponies including me do, decided that rather than surrendering to common sense he would instead commit more fully into his wrong-headed argument. “We are on the very cusp of discovering something spectacular, sir, and your soldiers are getting in the way of that.”
“And whatever it is you hope to find down there will still be there after this war is over,” I said. “What’s so important in that crypt that it can’t wait until after Queen Chrysalis has been vanquished?”
“Our history, sir.” Corded Ware’s voice took on a more pleading tone, clearing hoping that if logic wouldn’t sway me, then attempting to evoke sympathy would. “So much of our past has been lost over the millennia. We Crystal Ponies find ourselves in a new, strange world we no longer recognise or feel a part of. Finding what our ancestors did before King Sombra may help us reconnect with the world, and why we should bother fighting for it.”
I could have sent him and his fellow nerds home, and I was very tempted; they were becoming more than a mere nuisance, and that incident had set the paranoid part of my mind into a veritable flurry of frantic conjecture on just what they were up to. However, that would also have upset A. K. Yearling, and that was what nudged me into relenting. “Very well,” I said. “But you must cooperate with the authorities here, or you’ll be on the first train home. Is that clear?”
“Crystal.”