//------------------------------// // Vault Dweller // Story: Coin's Face // by Silent Quill //------------------------------// It had been a long time coming - the ascension of Twilight Sparkle into an Alicorn; it was everything that Princess Celestia had been working towards with her young charge since the day she had picked her up as her personal pupil. The day she saw Twilight within the aether, her heart soared and she flew with all due haste to Ponyville to be there when she returned. Despite all the trials and tribulations, and of course the return of Discord, it had all been worth the effort. Though she was still regretting letting Discord return, her favourite lounge was still filled with his magic and thusly ignoring the laws of physics, most notably gravity. The magical shockwave of her ascension, the effects of which were felt across the whole of Equestria, set off wards within the Canterlot Castle that hadn’t been set off in decades - not since Cadance’s own ascension as a young filly. Her coronation as a princess had been somewhat muted due to her age and the circumstances of both her ascension and cutie mark. It had pained Celestia to see Cadance so distraught over what had happened to her parents, she didn’t really want to put Cadance through all the toil of a massive and public media frenzy which would most assuredly only damage her mentally. This day however was a time for great celebration and rejoice, and she would be damned before letting anything ruin it for her most prized pupil. And for once something grand that Celestia planned, the coronation celebration itself, went off without a hitch. Twilight had been an emotional wreck the next day and the solar Princess had discovered her shivering beneath her bed, but with a little coercion (read: magical marehandling) she had managed to get her out from beneath the bed and where she could comfort her. Stress had done its toll on the mare, but she’d eventually calmed down enough to get some sleep. Of course, a story couldn’t be written about events that went without some… additional circumstances. Even the assault on Canterlot by the Changelings had spread new stories across Equestria, namely discoveries of spouses or family secretly being a member of this elusive species. For this story, we dive deep within Canterlot Mountain, down within the very bowels of the castle where even the Guard rarely venture. This story begins down in the darkness of Canterlot Castle’s most secure passageways, within the Great Royal Vault in which the Diarchs housed not only their funds but their collection of rare and potentially dangerous magical artefacts. Naught but the Guard and Princesses are allowed down here, and the sphinx mates at the doors ensure the security of the vault by way of monthly passwords disguised as riddles. The walls and floors of these chambers are magically sealed. Made of a naturally solid marble, the vault itself had been carved out by Celestia with her own magic, and the stone walls, floors and ceilings were solid stone blocks enchanted with reinforcing spells to make them nigh impregnable. Here, within the vault’s near-impenetrable walls, we can see the array of curios on display; off to one side within a glass case is held the cursed skull of a Hollow One, a creature from the frozen north that drained the souls of ponies until Celestia had stepped in and put an end to its reign of terror. Nearby is a poleaxe, enchanted to be capable of cutting through magical barriers no matter how strong. It had been used by the dark king himself, King Sombra, against Princesses Celestia and Luna in his original struggle to fight off the powerful Alicorn sisters at the Crystal Empire. While something like that one would expect to be hidden away from the hooves of those who might abuse them, some things down here are hidden for a more… selective reason. Artefacts that the sisters wanted kept under lock and key to protect not only themselves, but Equestria as well from their potential uses. Near the back of this enormous vault, a series of artefacts identified only as ‘Remnants’ reside within glass display cases of their own. Few know they even exist – in fact, only Princess Celestia and Luna know of their current home within the vault. Even the sphinx guardians did not know they were here as they had all been brought in within a sealed case. Some are frankly mundane; a set of pearly white feathers within a large case, spread out in their place like they were still on their parent wings, alongside a case housing a set of dark blue feathers in the same fashion- the first moulted feathers of the diarchs. Others are a little more… exotic. Within a case nearby, what can only be described as a hooffull of metal scraps sat on a silken pillow. They are all that remains of the Nightmare. The Elements of Harmony, while a powerful magical phenomena in their own right and a powerful weapon for good, cannot be used to kill, no matter how harmonious it may seem to be to do so at times. These shards contain all that remains of the once powerful and hateful alter-ego of Princess Luna’s darkest past. They hold little more than presence and potential, magic stripped away from the powerful Alicorn witch along with her control over the fair Princess’ mind and body. No memories remain within the shards; no mind within the artefacts to hold onto the past that haunts Princess Luna on cold and lonely nights. The powerful magic contained still held some fragment of understanding though, knowledge about the world around them such as language, mathematics, and time. They had sat here, unmoved and uncared for, for almost three years and the presence within had long since lost all but the faintest semblance of self. A light coat of dust upon the top of the glass case attested to their neglect. The pulse of magic that exploded from Ponyville stormed through Canterlot Castle like a white-hot knife through already soft butter, ignoring walls and doors and reaching down into the depths of the castle’s deepest, darkest dungeon. Surging through the vaulted room, the magic slammed into the assorted fragments of armour and collected. The shards evaporated into a fine mist, swirling within the display case as more and more magic, later to be positively identified as the same magic of harmony that the Elements of Harmony control, collected. Denser and denser, pushing together into a glowing sphere, the magic continued to concentrate for almost ten whole minutes until, with a magical shockwave of its own and an audible peal of thunder in the air, the magic halted and ceased to glow. Within the case, a figure stirred. It struggled to sit up, wings shifting upon its back as it fought for balance. A pair of teal eyes with dragon-like dagger shaped pupils opened and looked out beyond the glass in which it was entombed, confusedly taking in the world around it. It shifted its weight in an attempt to get more comfortable, only for the pedestal and case to overbalance and topple –to the surprise of the pony within- and smash upon the floor, covering the dusty royal red carpet and pony in shattered glass. She shifted her legs, managing to rise to her hooves and shake the glass shards from her coat. With a hiss she leaned her head down and grasped a shard which had buried into her right foreleg with her teeth, pulling it out and spitting it onto the floor where it fractured further but otherwise found home amongst its brethren. She looked about the cavernous room, looking for some sign of life; surely somepony, anypony would be here somewhere…? When her search turned up fruitless, she sighed and began to hobble around, trying to get her bearings on where she was. The room was large; the only soft objects around her were the royal red carpet on the flagstone floor and the banners hanging from the walls which portrayed a crest she didn’t recognize. Being less than an hour old, she honestly couldn’t recognize anything around her beyond what they were. Weapons here, a couple of cases of feathers there… none of it was familiar. She found a reflective platinum platter in one corner hidden behind a display pedestal, and after she dragged it out and leaned it against a wall she looked distantly at the mare which only looked back at her. Her coat was a solid and shiny midnight blue, as were the feathers on her wings and the velvet on her horn. Her mane and tail were a blue that matched her coat with a thick white strip on her right side which luminesced faintly. Her right hoof lifted and pressed against the platinum face. “Who… are you..?” * “Who… are you…?” I asked my own reflection, staring at the pony I honestly didn’t know within the platinum. My mind, even though only a few minutes old, raced through questions I held no answers for. ‘Who am I?’ ‘Where am I?’ ‘Why am I here?’ were but a few of the questions that I was asking myself. With no answers to my questions, I sighed and let my hoof fall limply to the floor. No point in attempting to force an answer from my own reflection, after all; what could it possibly say? ‘Hi, I’m you and I love you!’ Oh I hope I’m not talking to myself; I’ve only been alive a few minutes and already I don’t want to go nuttier than a candy bar. My eyes fixed on the red oozing hoof-print upon the metal. My breathing stuck as I came to the realization of what this was exactly, and I looked about the room worriedly before I hurriedly hobbled over to a banner hanging from the wall nearby, one of many such banners lining the walls. It seemed a shame to have to do this to something which looked so pretty, but I sort of didn’t want to bleed to death. I grabbed it with my teeth and jerked it down from the wall. Once I had it on the ground, I pressed my good hoof against it and used my teeth to tear it into a wide strip. I sat back a little bit from the ruined banner and haphazardly wrapped the strip of fabric I had around the wound on my leg where I had pulled the shard of glass out. By the air I breathe did it hurt… With a final painful tug, I tightened the fabric on my leg and groaned. I looked down at my hoofwork, figuring that the makeshift bandage would have to do. I placed my hoof back against the banner I had taken down and tugged another strip free and used it to clean the platinum platter to the best of my ability, leaving it faintly blood-streaked. I just didn’t feel right leaving it with a large splotch in the corner, but now it looked like I’d dragged it through the blood on my leg. After leaving the rag I used to clean the platter on the floor next to the otherwise priceless article, I returned to exploring the halls around me. In my exploration I found numerous objects, some of which I recoiled from. Something about them just felt… wrong; as if they were a spot of mould in the bowl of fresh fruit that was the world around me. After what must have been an hour, I discovered and considered the enormous mound of coins I found within a room of their own. ‘Bits…’ a small voice in my head informed me in but a whisper. Is that what these are? Bits? Currency? There were thousands of them, mostly gold ones though there were many silver-looking coins as well. Somewhere in the back of my head I registered that the silvery Bits, made of purest platinum, were worth a thousand of the golden ones. Also scattered about the pile were gemstones, some of which were as large as my own head. ‘Where in the world am I?’ Was the general thought running through my mind. I sighed and turned back to the main room and gave a cursory glance at the room around me, primarily at the… furniture that I would be sharing the floor space with. Pedestals with glass cases, in which I’d seen a whole array of things -some of which made my skin crawl; they were scattered about the room higgledy-piggledy, most of them close to a strange object covering one wall which I somehow recognized as the inside of a vault door. It was as if whoever had brought these objects in had wanted to get them into the room and leave in as little time and with as little care as to where they were put as possible. This had made it hard for me to move around the room, as the haphazard placing of everything had made the vault maze-like in floor layout. I’d stopped to catch one or two things before they had toppled during my initial exploration even. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘if this is where I am to stay, I suppose I might as well make it more… tidy.’ With a determined pace, I set about moving the pedestals about the room, stopping only when I became too tired to stay awake and returning to the platter to sleep upon what remained of the banner I had torn down, folding it up to make the stone floor beneath myself a little more comfortable. Upon waking some hours later, I returned to what I had been doing, totally unaware of the time of day or events beyond the walls of my home. Eventually I discovered a room in which I could find water and a functioning toilet – possibly installed into the vault just in case anypony did happen to get locked in, and I became quite thankful for both. Moving all of these things about was heavy and thirsty work, and I did find use for the toilet as my body demanded… things of me. One demand from my body, however, went without cure; hunger. Still, after my third sleep, I managed to finish moving everything about and I looked proudly at the neat room around me. There had been room for everything to be neatly placed against the walls – though the objects that made me feel really uncomfortable being placed as far away from where I would sleep as possible. The shards of glass and broken pedestal from where I had first… emerged had been sorted away into the room where the toilet and faucet were. Now the pedestal held up the platter I was using as a mirror so I could look at myself, though for what purpose I was unsure. It had just… felt right. With little else to do, I moved my attention to the room full of Bits and eyed the veritable mountain of coinage with a wary eye before sitting and beginning to count them, stacking the coins neatly in a corner. When a stack became too tall for me to reach the top, I would begin a new one alongside it. I wasn’t sure how long I had been down here, but I grew weaker with each sleep cycle I went through and my right leg, once only painful to use, was now torture to me even when I awoke and did nothing with it. My wings, after I’d learned how to use them, now carried me to and from the great hall of Bits that kept me both sane and busy. I was almost finished sorting them, down to what appeared to be the last hundred thousand, and I wanted oh so eagerly to finish my task; something I could be proud of. Gems were sorted along a wall opposite the Bits, by both colour and size, and one gemstone had taken up a grand place in the centre of the room, a ruby that was as large as my whole body! It had been a struggle, but I had managed to get the massive, heavy stone into position before retiring one… hour. I had also claimed a name to call myself after a strange picture appeared on my flanks, a trio of coin stacks atop a book. I had taken to calling myself Coin Counter, though usually just referred to myself as ‘Coin’ whenever I mumbled to myself as I counted. I had found a book deep within the pile of coins which was titled ‘ledger’. Figuring that this was where the amount of coins within this room was recorded, I found a blank page and began to record the amounts I counted each day. Once I was done, I figured I could add them all together and find out what was here. An hour later and with a satisfied grin, I had finally finished sorting the Bits into piles; Golden Bits were stacked one-thousand tall, and the platinum ‘Centurions’ as I was calling them were stacked only one-hundred high. Still, with over five million Bits in total worth counted, stacked, and recorded, I felt that I had done something worth a damn; something that I doubt many others would even consider doing. I flew tiredly to the room in which the toilet and faucet were situated, landing heavily and weakly on my three good hooves and turned the faucet on, moving my face in to take a good, long drink- Clunk! I hesitated; I’d never heard that sound before and having spent all this time down here in this… place, I was certain I’d heard all of the odd thuds and clicks that the room would offer. I shrugged and returned to my drink, figuring it to simply be the stone from which my tomb was hewn shifting. That certainly wasn’t enough to stop me from drinking enough cool and crystal clear water to fill my painfully empty tummy. This had worked a couple of times to quiet the groans that would make my stomach hurt as it demanded something more. Then, to my ears came the click-clicking of hoof steps against the stone floors and a pair of voices… “… I’m surprised you waited this long to ask, Rarity; I would have thought that you would have wanted to make gowns for Princesses Celestia and Luna years ago.” One said with a touch of amusement to her tone. “I have, darling; I’ve always dreamed of designing something for them but, well… One does not simply up and ask for a Princesses’ dress size. With the Gala coming up, I just assumed that they might like something new and fabulous to wear to it.” She seemed to pause, possibly to beam with glee at her companion. “It’s a designer’s dream to-“ She was cut off by the other mare hissing a quick shush. The sound of their hooves against the stone stopped, and I strained to listen. “Do you hear that?” The first mare asked, “It sounds like running water?” I jolted and quickly turned the faucet off and closed the door, hoping to be quiet so that these strangers would leave me be. Unfortunately, the faucet made a rather loud squeak as it was turned, and I worriedly held my breath. ‘Oh please don’t have-‘ “I know I heard that! Come on, Rarity, let’s see what that was.” The other mare, evidently called Rarity, protested with a whiny tone. “But Twilight~ what about-“ “That can wait, come on; if there’s an intruder in the Royal Vault then we need to find them!” The first mare, seemingly called Twilight, said firmly. “Mind you, it’s certainly neater in here than I’ve ever seen; I wonder if the Princesses had somepony rearrange everything?” “Twilight look, one of the banners is down.” The voice of ‘Rarity’ said. “There’s a shred of it over here covered in, ugh, dry blood.” It was at this point that she could be heard sniffing the air. “It certainly smells like somepony has been living here, ugh!” I cursed my lack of foresight into using the faucet to attempt to clean myself; the water could at least be used with the aforementioned bloodied rag, after vigorously cleaning it out of course, to clean the sweat and dust from my coat. Of course my scent and body odours would have lingered. What, was I thinking that I was the only pony in the world? “I think I’ve found the rest of the banner over here, Rarity.” ‘Twilight’ said, startlingly close to the little room in which I was currently shivering with fright, huddled near the door. “It looks like somepony has been sleeping on it.” The sound of the hooves belonging to the second mare moved towards the door behind which I was hiding. “I wonder, what’s in here…?” As soon as the door opened, I leapt into the air and bolted past the stunned mare, trying desperately to get away. I didn’t get far, however, as the other mare leapt upon me and tackled me to the stone ground, holding my forelegs down and with me on my back with my wings splayed. Not that I took much note of this, mind; something far more important was on my mind. “Gotcha! Who-“ I didn’t hear the rest of this purple pony talk over my own scream of pain; this crazy yet impressively strong mare had slammed me onto my back and forced her own hooves onto my forelegs with impressive speed and force, and currently the one holding my right foreleg was pressing down on my wound. I struggled to free the limb, or to at least get her to shift her weight down below the injury on my forearm. After a moment or so, the white unicorn by the door moved over and hurriedly pushed her companion from atop me. Now that I could move, I curled up and cried, holding my battered foreleg protectively as I wept out of both fear and pain. “Twilight,” the white unicorn hissed, “get some guards and a doctor, this is most assuredly not normal.” She looked down at my huddled body, shuddering at what she saw for reasons beyond my current level of understanding or care and adding, “Get a brush too.” The purple mare, evidently Twilight, nodded and hurried off out of the vault while the white mare who I could only guess was Rarity eyed me curiously. Not that I could really see her; I was far too busy crying in agony to notice much other than their voices and names. I couldn’t remember it hurting this much when I first got the injury… ‘Oh dear…’ Soon enough Twilight returned with a group of guards and two ponies in white clothes, probably medical ponies. The guards stood back, forming a circle around me while the doctors nudged me to uncurl. I was unsure why four guards would be required to secure a single, unarmed, and all but incapacitated mare, but other matters were keeping me from voicing my question. One of the doctors, a male, spoke reassuringly. “Miss, I am Doctor Steady, I’m going to need you to lie back for me; can you do that? I can’t help unless I know what’s wrong.” Reluctantly I complied, uncurling from the foetal position and laying back with tears streaming down my cheeks and my wings splayed out beneath me. The second pony in white, a mare with silver fur and a pale blue mane and tail motioned to the fabric wrapped around my arm, something that I had all but forgotten about. “I’m going to remove this, alright?” “Get some solution ready in case it’s been sealed to her.” Doctor Steady said, to which the mare nodded and took a large container of water, putting it beside me. I could feel the warmth of the fluid bleeding through the air and my fur into my face faintly. The horn atop the mare’s head glittered, and the fabric that was wrapped around my wound began to unwind itself. It stopped, however, when it was down to the last layer and something tugged, causing me to gasp in pain when it found resistance. Oh gods it hurt, what in the name of currency was she doing to me? The mare’s magic uncapped the container of water and gently tipped some onto the wrapping. I was surprised at how warm it was, but I only just barely registered that it was warm through the pain that I still felt. For a moment, the glitter of the mare’s magic seemed to do nothing, focusing only on the fabric around my leg, just where my own attention happened to be. “Is anypony here weak of stomach or of a nervous disposition?” She asked loudly. The room chorused no except for the mare that seemed to be called Rarity, who nodded. “Then I suggest you leave; this will probably not be pretty to see, nor smell.” Rarity complied, and the mare gently removed the remainder of my makeshift bandage. Doctor Steady took a look at the wound, and so did I. It was not pretty. What had started out as a deep cut was, well, going a rather unappealing mix of black, purple, white, yellow, and red. Lots of red, and oh god did it smell weird. It smelled like nuts and rot. What the hay had I done to myself!? “We’re going to need to move her; Princess Sparkle, we need to get her to the infirmary, I cannot treat this here, and we’ll need to take a blood sample.” Doctor Steady said. Behind his voice I could hear the nurse mumble to herself, “I treated the guard after the invasion, nothing was like this.” “Of course;” the purple pony that I was guessing was Twilight replied before turning to the guards, “you can meet us there, someone inform Princesses Celestia and Luna. I want four guards at the door to the vault; if Princesses Celestia or Luna arrives to investigate, let them in provided that Clue and Query pass them; that will be all.” With that her horn shone brightly the world around me warped, stretching to an impossible horizon before snapping back into focus in a new location. Now we were in what I could only identify as a medical ward, and I was marehandled up onto a reasonably soft surface before another mare held her horn over my face. “Don’t be afraid miss, we’ve got to put you under for a little while but you’ll be okay; I’ll be right here with you, I promise. What’s your name?” Even through my pain I somehow managed to reply, though I recall gritting my teeth and growling my name back at her. “C-Coin Counter.” “Alright, Miss Coin, you’ll be alright, I promise I’ll be by your side the whole time in case you wake up during the procedures, okay? Now, just relax.” I nodded dumbly as the magic from her horn flickered around me, and soon my eyes drifted shut listening to the medical personnel talking about something called amputation. It sounded terrifying.