The swarm was beginning to doubt its latest ‘perfect plan’. Morning had come, and the two oddly colored (and sized, and marked) creators had yet to leave the structure. How was the Swarm supposed to follow them to the follow them to information about its objective if they didn’t lead?
Maybe the swarm was wrong about this whole thing. Maybe the creators it had found didn’t belong to a larger society. Maybe the creators it had found don’t actually know anything about the swarm’s objective. Was it possible that the creators didn’t have conscious control of their exterior appearances, and are actually forced to look like that ALL THE TIME?!
‘Ok, that last one was a guess’, the Swarm admitted to itself.
Just as the Swarm was finally about to give up waiting and barge into the structure to demand answers, the door opened. It was but a moment before both of the creators had left the structure. The striped one did something to the door, before both of the creators walked down a path leading away from the structure.
The swarm followed at a respectable distance. Of course, this was only after taking a moment to ensure that the bottle the stripped creator had forgotten on the ground last night was secured in its internal compartment. After that, it was a simple matter of staying close enough to see them, but far enough away so it would not be seen.
‘The creators seem to have very poor eyesight’, the swarm noted. ‘This is the second time I’ve been able to observe them undetected.’
The path that the creators followed twisted and turned, winding its way through the forest. At one point, it did a graceful arc around a patch of blue flowers that the Swarm had never seen before. The Swarm made a note to investigate it later if it ever came by here again.
Eventually, the path led to the edge of the forest. A short distance from the forest, another structure could be seen. Even farther beyond that, was a large conglomeration of structures.
‘Finally’, the Swarm thought, ‘A settlement! Now, I just need to find where they keep their information. Then it’s a simple matter of finding my objective, and preforming my main purpose!’
The Swarm watched as the two creators continued down the path leading towards the settlement. The Swarm opted to stay at the edge of the forest, however, so as to stay out of sight. Once both of the creators could no longer see it, the Swarm finally departed the forest.
‘New environment, new disguise’, the Swarm thought to itself. ‘The locals of the forest were hostile to the creators, so a Timberwolf is obviously not the best choice to explore the settlement with. Fortunately, I already have a shape I can use…’
It was but a moment before the Swarm was in its new disguise. To any outside observer, it would appear to be a white unicorn mare, with green mane and tail, and a four-leaf clover cutie mark. The swarm’s new disguise still had its flaws, however, as the shiny coat and gray glow would give it away.
With the light available outside the forest, the Swarm was quick to begin solving these problems. A quick roll in the dirt made short work of the shiny luster of its white crystalline coat. However, the glow required a different approach.
Of course, the only reason the swarm knew it was glowing in the first place was the ease by which the creators it had encountered had followed it when it was initially trying to hide. Well, that and the fact that everything nearby tended to get a bit brighter when it was moving. It noticed the surrounding brightness first, though. Honest!
After some experimentation, the swarm figured out how to move without glowing. It just had to focus its levitation efforts on the center mass of crystals, rather than the grouping as a whole. Having enough mass to not need to make any internal spaces also helped (not counting the area it had to clear up to store the bottle it had found earlier). There was only one problem with this, though.
The Swarm fell apart.
Just holding onto the center bits caused the edges to want to fall off, until its mass had been reduced to just what it was holding. Everything the swarm did to correct this problem, caused it to visibly glow. Short of gluing the parts together, somehow, it was stuck with the glow.
Admitting defeat, the swarm decided to head towards the settlement in hopes that it wouldn’t make a difference. It was about mid-day by now, and most of the creators that inhabited the city were out and about. With the increased ambient light, maybe it could just pull this off without being noticed.
“AHHH! GHOST!”
The Swarm had just reached the edge of the settlement when one of the creators had started screaming. It wasn’t entirely sure what had scared her, but she seemed to be running away from something. It was only a second before another two creators that had been with the first, looked around in alarm, eventually looking in the direction of the Swarm.
“ITS COME TO CLAIM OUR SOULS! EVERYPONY RUN!”
“The Horror! THE HORROR!”
The Swarm re-evaluated its prior conclusion as the other two creators ran off after the first. It quickly checked its surroundings for this ‘ghost’ thing, trying to decide if it was something the Swarm would need to defend itself against. After a moment of finding nothing, however, the Swarm assumed the ‘ghost’ was gone, and continued its exploration of the town.
As it explored, the Swarm saw many creators. They were of many different colors, sizes, and in some cases, shape. Some had wings, some had horns, and some had neither. Fortunately for the Swarm, it had decided that anything roughly creator shaped must be a creator, else this entire situation would have caused much confusion on its part.
Most of the creators ignored the Swarm. Some seemed to be cautious of it, some seemed curious, but most were indifferent and stayed out of its way.
‘The disguise must be working,’ the Swarm concluded. ‘Now, if only I could find a good source of infor-‘
“Greetings!”
-(◊)-
Mayor Mare had finally tracked down the strange pony that everypony was talking about. The strange glowing unicorn mare had walked into town an hour ago, causing the flower trio to go into their usual ‘panic and run’ routine. Fortunately, the glowing mare was anything but subtle. It had been easy to spot her in the middle of the marketplace. Everypony avoiding it also helped.
“Greetings!” the mayor called out as she approached.
The glowing mare turned its head to look at the mayor. This action alone allowed the Mayor could see why the flower trio had panicked. She was quite sure a neck wasn't supposed to bend that way.
“Is there something I can help you with?” the mayor asked, hoping to get the strange mare out of her city.
The glowing mare turned to face the mayor before she made an odd series of gestures with her forelimbs, before remaining still. The mayor tilted her head, attempting to derive sense out of it. After a moment, she took a guess at what she thought the mare was asking.
“I’m sorry, but pinkie isn’t around right now. She’s up in Canterlot helping with the wedding. Maybe you can ask her to play a game of charades later.”
The mare stared at the mayor for a few seconds, before holding up a foreleg. After a moment, a part of it seemed to break off and hover in the air just above it. The mayor stared at it a moment, before it started to emit sound.
Granted, the series of tones, warbles, growls and groans that the thing emitted did NOT help the mayor understand the mare’s intentions. It did, however, increase the trepidation the mayor felt about the mare, to say nothing of the gathering crowd. Fortunately, it seemed to sort the problem out as the sounds eventually gained some semblance of speech.
“In. For. May. Shun.” The thing croaked out.
“W-what?” the mayor said after a moment.
“In. For. May. Shun.”
“I’m not sure what you-“
“IN! FOR! MAY! SHUN!”
“Saying it louder isn’t going to-“
“IN-FOR-MAY-SHUN!”
“I-Information?”
The glowing mare finally stood silent.
“You want Information?”
The glowing mare continued to stare at the mayor with seemingly lifeless eyes. Besides the slow bobbing of the crystal that hovered above the mare’s foreleg, she stood totally still, as though carved from stone.
“Well,” the mayor finally replied, “We do have a library. That has all sorts of information stored in the form of books.”
After a moment of staring, the crystal gave out a reply to the mayor.
“Where?”
Just a single word. Nothing more, barely even a question! Just a simple statement, as if the mayor answering the improperly phrased question was an inevitable fact.
“W-well, it's in the tree in that direction, but- Hey wait!”
In one swift movement, the glowing mare had recollected the crystal into her foreleg, and started walking in the direction the mayor had indicated. The crowd, which had encircled the mare and mayor, quickly scattered as the duo moved in its direction.
“I said wait!” The mayor called out, but to no avail.
The glowing mare walked in quickly along, until coming to a stop before a building in her path. The mayor caught up to the glowing mare just in time to see her place a hoof on the building, as if questioning its existence.
“Just- *gasp* wait a moment!” said the mayor, as she tried to catch her breath. He had it suddenly taken away from her, again, when the glowing mare did something completely unexpected.
With little warning, the mare started to climb the wall, as if defying gravity was normal. The mayor could only stare, dumfounded, as the glowing mare walked up the wall, and quickly disappeared out of sight on top of the building. This was more like something she expected from a certain pink earth pony, not some random glowing visitor from outside of town.
After a moment of continuing to stare at where the glowing mare had disappeared, the mayor regained her senses. There was no way she was going to be able to follow it without pegisi assistance! Now if only she- Ah Ha!
“Thunderlane!” the mayor called out to a black pegasus sitting on a nearby cloud.
Thunderlane, who had been watching the situation below with mild interest, frowned at having been spotted. This was suppose to be his day off, but some random glowing pony had caused the town below to panic. How's a guy suppose to take a nap with all this racket?
“Tunderlane,” the mayor said, “I need you to follow that glowing mare!”
“What?” Thunderlane replied in a flat tone.
“I need you to follow that glowing mare! I can't do it, but you can!”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Just do it!”
“Fine, Mom!” Thunderlane replied in a sarcastic manner as he stood up.
“Do you want me to tell her you talk to me like that? It has been a while since I've sent a letter to my sister, after all.”
“She would probably be too busy to read it!”
“Just go!”
With quite a bit of muttered curses under his breath, Thunderlane took off in the direction the glowing mare had left. This was definitely not how he planned on spending the day. If that glowing mare knew what was good for her, she would up and disappear!
-(◊)-
The swarm was FINALLY making some headway on its objective! And to think, all it had taken was asking directions from that strange flightless creator. If only the Timberwolves had- what did she call it? A library?
Asking the question in the first place had been a challenge, though. It should have known that the creators didn't use the Timberwolf language! The language of sound was a lot more tricky, but fortunately, the swarm actually understood it to begin with. Speaking it, however, was where it got tricky, as emitting sound wasn't something it had known how to do. Luckily it had such great control over its crystals that it was a simple matter to just vibrate them as needed to create the proper sounds. Long words and complex syllables were definitely going to be a problem though...
As the swarm finished climbing over yet another structure, a large tree came into view. Of course, most trees don't have doors and windows. If the directions the creator had given it were correct, that was likely the location of the information it sought!
It was but a moment before the Swarm was standing in front of the door to the library. It reached out, and pushed the door open with its foreleg. Or, it would have, if the door had been unlocked.
The Swarm stared at the door. Never before had it faced such a challenge. This door was the guardian of the library, a silent sentinel of knowledge, standing in the way of the Swarm from completing its righteous objectives! As the Swarm and the door stood still, facing off against each other, the tension in the air rose. This was the start of a conflict that would be retold through the ages, passed down from parent to child with reverence in their tones!
Or, at least, it would have, if the Swarm hadn't noticed the gap under the door. Not sensing anything nearby, the Swarm decided that it would be safe to shed its disguise, and just bypass the obstruction, to continue on its way. Besides, engaging a door in a staring contest was an inefficient use of its resources, not to mention a massive waste of time.
Once inside the library, the Swarm looked around at its surroundings. It appeared to be in a sparsely furnished room, with shelves covered in rectangular objects. The only thing to break up the monotony of the room was the stairwell on one side, and the occasional window.
Retaking its earlier disguise, the Swarm walked up to one of the shelves. With careful precision the Swarm proceeded to take down one of the strange rectangular objects, only to have it split apart on one side. With this, the Swarm was able to see that the rectangle was not just an individual shape, but one made up of many smaller rectangles all attached together on one side.
Aside from the differing colors and odd patterns on it, though, the Swarm was unable to make any sense of it. Why would anything keep these strange rectangles around, if they didn't hold some sort of importance? Why would anything keep so many of them? Did they somehow hold meaning? Were they expensive?
At a loss for answers, the Swarm took the only path left available to it.
It decided to wait for something else to come along, and see how they gained knowledge from the strange rectangles. First, though, it needed a new disguise. Something to fit in with this new environment for a long period of time. Something that wouldn’t be questioned. But what?
Looking around, the Swarm made a decision. It found a mostly empty shelf, and shaped itself as a line of the strange rectangles. Aside from the reflective sheen, it doubted it would be noticed. After all, the rectangles were weirder then anything the swarm knew how to turn into.
With a new disguise in place, and all of its mass stored away (Including the bottle that striped creator had dropped. The Swarm really needed to figure out what that was.), the Swarm settled in to wait out the duration, for however long it might be.
'This is my best plan yet! Its flawless!'
-(◊)-
Several Hours later...
Thunderlane was exhausted. He had been searching for that weird mare for hours now, and hadn't seen even so much as a hair from her.
With a sigh, he summed up his thoughts nicely with one sentence.
“When I said she should just disappear, I didn't mean it literally!”