Perquisition

by Diexna

Chapter 6

        “I can’t believe she made us go all the way back, after only two days,” the earth pony panted.

        The pegasus whined, making his way up the final step of the giant staircase. “I wanted to at least get my wing-harness fixed first.”

        “Well, we’re finally here again.” Sketch mumbled. “If we hurry, we can make it back to town in a few hours,” she said, walking up the final step after Kickbolt.

        The circular room looked the same as their first visit. It was smaller compared to the rest of the interior of the tower, with the only outstanding thing being the altar in the opposite side of the room.

        “Sooo... do you see anything?” Kickbolt asked, squinting his eyes, looking for any missed details. “Because I’m not seeing anything.”

        Sketch moved along the wall, gleaning for anything. “No. Let’s just give it a quick look and then get back,” she muttered.

        Kickbolt looked down at his hooves and shuffled them. “I thought you’d be... you know... happier.” He sighed lightly, staring into the wall in front of him. “We’ve been trying to get to this very spot for over two years, and now that we’re finally here, you don’t seem to care anymore.”

        Sketch stopped and looked up at the ceiling. “It’s not that I don’t care anymore.” She shook her head. “My interest has just... moved. I’ve been dying to find out whats at the top of this tower for years, and I don’t think anypony expected what we found,” she said quietly, slowly continuing down the wall. “I can feel that there’s nothing left here for us, the only reason we’re back is because we didn’t ‘thoroughly explore’ this room. What I’m interested in now is Crimson.”

        Kickbolt spurred up his eyes. “Interested?”

        Sketch rolled her eyes. “Oh you know what I mean. There’s just so many questions regarding him...” She reached the altar and examined it closer, where they had found Crimson. “We finally got to this room and suddenly he just appeared! If I’m not going to be able to figure out this tower, then I want to figure him out. Besides, Master is probably recruiting him right now to the guild, if she hasn’t already.”

        Kickbolt stopped searching at his side of the room and turned to look at the mare. “Wait, you mean he’ll be joining us as an apprentice?” he asked, a small glint in his eyes.

        Sketch nodded happily. “Yeah, we’ll become mentors,” she said with a smile, turning to face the eager pegasus looking at her. “Which is why I want to get back to town already!”

        Kickbolt started laughing loudly. “Yes! We’re finally achieving mentor rank!” he exclaimed. The pegasus turned to face Sketch, getting serious for a moment. “Are you sure he’s being recruited?”

        Sketch giggled. “Calm down. If I know Master, I’m certain he’s being recruited. She’d never let a chance like this get away. Not to mention, she’d want us to keep a close eye on him for various reasons.” She took out her book. The new frame she’d replaced it with while in town felt sturdier than the old one. She sat down at the altar and started writing something down, tapping one hoof against the floor. “So, did you find anything?”

        Kickbolt shook his head. “I don’t think we missed anything when we were here the first time. There’s just nothing here.” He squinted his eyes, examining the wall. “But... is it just me, or is it getting darker?”

        Sketch looked up from her book and stared at one of the emeralds embedded in the wall before her. “You’re right! They’re not giving off as much as light as they used to!” she noted, tapping the emerald with her hoof. It flickered slightly upon her touch. “Was it like this when we got here?” She continued poking the same emerald, checking for any further reaction other than the glow dissipating.

        Kickbolt scanned the rest of the room for any oddities. “I’m not sure, I think it’s been getting dimmer since we got here...” He trotted to the middle of the room, his hooves clopping loudly against the stone tiles. While on alert, he noticed something odd. In the corner of his eye, just for a moment, he thought he could see something at the stairs leading back down.

        Turning to see whatever it was, he crouched down and flared his wings. “Sketch. There’s someth-”

        The gemstones started flickering all at the same time, accompanied with the same noise that had begun the last time they were there - except it was worse, as if the gems were broken. One by one the stones started blowing up all around the room, scattering green dust across the entire room. Sketch and Kickbolt both clenched their ears in response to the unusual noise. The resonating sound that last time had caused them pain when Crimson first appeared was happening again, but as the gems were breaking, it sounded corrupt, damaged. After only a few moments they could tell that whatever the sound was, it wasn’t hurting their ears, it was hurting their minds. It didn’t take long before blood slowly started seeping out of their noses in response to their excruciating efforts to stay lucid from the pain.

The shaking from the gems became more and more violent as they started shattering with loud bangs. No, the gems weren’t shaking any longer, it was the room shaking.

        Sketch fell over, unresponsive to Kickbolt’s shouting. The blue stallion was still managing to maintain consciousness, the headache becoming more aggressive by the seconds. His wings reacted almost on instinct as he glided to Sketch’s side of the room in an instant. He was only barely able to maintain his balance with the earthquake, and the pain in his head wasn’t helping. The earth pony lying on the ground whimpered upon his touch. He managed to scoop her up on his back with the help of his wings.

        Rocks and pieces of the ceiling started coming down, so far only smaller pebbles were harassing his back, but the massive boulder the size of himself that landed only a few meters away wasn’t very reassuring. With heavy steps and a quivering awareness he headed for the stairs again, Sketch in tow. As he reached the stairs more and more boulders were slamming down behind him.

        Drops of sweat and blood rolling down his face, he clenched his teeth, looking down the narrow staircase, his legs almost wobbling from the extra weight of Sketch while already under the mental pressure from the burning sound drilling into his brain. He quickly hurried down, accompanied by rocks rolling down after him.

        “I’m sorry, Sketch...” he apologized through gritted teeth. He had only managed about halfway down when his mind finally gave in. He lost his balance which sent the two of them tumbling down the staircase exactly as Crimson had done earlier when they first passed through here.

        After falling down the stairs, again, Kickbolt snapped back into consciousness long enough to pull Sketch away from the entrance to the rumbling floor, getting her away from the stones falling from the upper floor.

        Then everything went black before his eyes, unable to stay awake any longer.

        The purple mare slammed her hooves on the table, sending the utensils scattered on it into the air. “Again!” she bellowed, sending the unicorn in the opposite seat into hiding underneath the table.

        Some light mumbling could be heard as an orange glow wrapped around a chandelier and lifted it into the air, shakily, but slowly going up.

        Pledgeword gave a smirk as she used her own magic to tug it back down. “Concentrate, keep applying focus to keep it mid-air, even with external forces tampering with it.” Her pink magic glow was battling the orange one for the chandelier, both auras shifting back and forth as neither had sole control of the object. “Try to take control of it completely,” she said.

        The red stallion crawled back out as if afraid of being yelled at again, his horn weakly glowing orange as he became more committed for the fight to control the chandelier. “I-I-I-I-If you s-s-say so...” he stammered, each stutter causing Pledgeword to wince as if in pain.

        She scowled. Staring at him while slowly mouthing, “Don’t. Speak.” Intensifying her own magic just to make a point, slamming the chandelier back into the table, quickly overpowering Crimson’s magic. He whimpered, nodding slowly while avoiding her look. The mare took a deep breath, and shouted at him again. “Now try again!”

        As Crimson yelped and covered his face, the chandelier flashed orange as it flew straight up with such force that it smashed to the ceiling, dropping down to the floor afterwards with a satisfying plink, where it was grabbed by Pledgeword’s magic once again and shoved into a pile of similar objects of varying size.

        She gave a small harrumph and lifted her head up as if looking at the ceiling, except her eyes were closed. “Enough telekinesis. Try applying the same rules I explained to you before, but instead of lifting an object with your mind, try to imagine a fire burning in front of you, spreading its light through the dark.” She used her own magic to dim the lighting in the room. No windows being available in the cellar room made it almost completely black. “You’ll be attempting a light spell now,” she said.

        Crimson nodded nervously, afraid to get yelled at again. He closed his eyes as he tried to replicate the very same spell he had tried to figure out alone a couple of days ago. Now with the extra practice and guiding, it felt a lot easier. After a few moments of concentrating he opened his eyes, only to have to cover his eyes with a hoof from the strong light. After some adjusting it became manageable. He smiled.

        Pledgeword snorted. “That was... satisfactory. You may leave now,” she said, as she returned the light to the room.

        Crimson quickly darted away from the table and towards the door, only to get tangled in his own legs and fall forward. After a nervous chuckle to himself he quickly proceeded out.

        As he was leaving the room, Pledgeword eyed his flank mischievously, muttering to herself. “Too bad he’s a blank flank and has that awful stutter...”

        Sketch slowly opened her eyes. Her head felt as if she’d been bludgeoned to submission with Kickbolt’s alarm clock. “Unnnhh... what happened?” she groaned, asking nopony in particular, rubbing the temples of her sore head. It didn’t take long before she realized nopony was answering. As she looked around, all she saw were boulders of different sizes lying spread out around her. The staircase behind her had completely collapsed.

        “Kickbolt? Come on, where are you?” she demanded, getting slightly nervous as she raised her voice.

        “Here.” Could be heard from behind one of the larger boulders with a tired rasp. Kickbolt stepped out from behind it. “I’m fine, only a bit beaten up,” he coughed lightly. “What about you?”

 “I’m fine, thanks,” she quietly said after rubbing her head again. “What... what happened? The last thing I remember was being up in that room again, and everything just... went dark.”

Kickbolt slowly walked over the rocks littering the floor while wiping away some of the dried blood from his face. “The room started acting up again like last time we were here and found Crimson, except it was as if it was... broken,” he explained, pointing to the staircase with his wing. “I had to carry you out of there before the entire room collapsed on us both, but right before it actually happened... I... I think I saw something following us,” he said with a low voice, trying to be covert.

The green mare gave him an odd stare. “What, like a goblin?”

He quickly shook his head. “No, I don’t know what it was! It looked like... well... a shadow.”

A pregnant silence quickly filled the room, as the two of them anxiously kept looking around them as if being stared at by invisible creatures. A rock falling from the ceiling, making clicking sounds as it crumbled and hit the ground, breaking the tension.

“W-W-What do you mean a shadow?!” Sketch asked with a panicky voice as she stepped closer to her companion. “There’s no such thing as shadows moving around by themselves, it would have been documented a long time ago... right?”

        He used his wings to wipe of the blood from Sketch’s face, grimacing at the sight of his bloodstained feather tips. “I’m not so sure about that. We only have documents at most a hundred years old. Things could easily be missed.”

        Sketch shot him a confused glare. “How do you know that? You don’t know anything!”

        For the first time in a while, Kickbolt beamed. “There’s a few things I know about, one of them being creatures in this world.” His face quickly became one of worry again. “With that said, I still have no idea what that thing was.”

        After a quick check to see that her book was still all right, Sketch went back to nervously looking at their surroundings. “Well... there’s not much we can do here now,” she said, glancing towards the rubble blocking the stairs up to the room. “I think it’s best if we just get back to town before anything else happens.”

        Kickbolt jumped up in realization. “Oh! I found something, actually! Just where I woke up, over here!” he divulged, going back to behind the boulder where he had been lying just minutes ago. Before Sketch had been able to follow him around it, he pulled out a heavy and unusual stone.

        “Is that... a chest?” Sketch quietly asked.

        “I think so. It was just lying next to me when I woke up,” he explained, nuzzling it, trying to get it open. “But it doesn’t seem to open. There’s no handle or keyhole or anything, but the top is clearly meant to come off!”

        “Buck it.”

        “What? Why? Don’t you want to know what’s inside?” he asked in confusion.

        Sketch facehoofed. “Of course I do, I meant you should just try bucking the lid off of it,” she explained in a stale tone.

        Kickbolt blushed. “Oh. Heh...” He turned around and kicked with such speed that his hindlegs became a dark blue blur. His hooves connected perfectly with just the top of the chest, which shot the lid flying into the wall with a loud crack as the actual chest just tipped over, spilling the contents over the ground.

        Sketch’s eyes almost glittered when she saw the small perfectly round stones rolling over the floor. “Magic stones!” she exclaimed loudly, jumping to the ground to try and grab as many as possible before rolling down the large sets of stairs beneath them leading back down out of the tower. She giggled with glee as she scooped up most of them into her saddlebag. “There must be dozens of them!”

        As she grabbed the final stones, Sketch composed herself with a flick of her ponytail mane. “Right. It might be time for us to leave now, don’t you think?”

        The stallion nodded eagerly and started walking back down the stairs with Sketch close after. “I’m not sure how long we were knocked out, but hopefully it wont be too late,” he said.

        “We’ll see if the sun is still up by the time we get out of the tower,” Sketch replied.

        Upon seeing the red unicorn trudge into the room, the creamy old mare was quick to exclaim, “Pledgy told me already!”

        Crimson winced. Pledgy? Really? What did she tell her? he thought. Before he got a chance to ask, Master was already rambling on about it.

        “She said that you had a curious magical talent, at first at least. As if you knew what you were supposed to do, and once you got pointed in the right direction you figured it out by yourself! Although she did mention that you quickly seemed to reach a limit very quickly, which is odd. Either way, she was pleased with you!” Master rambled, oblivious to the fact that Crimson was almost shaking upon being reminded of Pledgeword.

        Crimson blinked. “She s-said I was... good?” he asked curiously. “She w-w-was horrifying!” he exclaimed with a dreaded expression on his face. “She y-y-yelled at me all t-the time for t-the smallest error... or e-even for talking...”

        Master smiled. “Don’t worry dearie, I know Pledgy might be a bit harsh, but she’s effective nonetheless! As long as you’re being watched over by Sketchy and Bolty, you have my approval to explore along with them as an apprentice,” she educated him, laying a hoof on his shoulder. “Now let me explain to you the basics of guild ranks works around here. See, you’ll be starting out as an apprentice, as already mentioned, which is the first rank out of four. In order, they’re Apprentice, Explorer, Mentor and Master. Mentor is just short for Explorer-Mentor.”

        Crimson nodded slowly, following in Master as he was being led to a storage room.

        “Sketchy and Bolty have been in the Explorer rank for years now, since they were pretty young if I recall correctly. Explorer rank lets you team up with other explorers - or higher ranking ponies - to do exploring, simple enough. But now I’m bumping them up to Mentor rank! Which will also give them the right to take in an apprentice to their group, if they so want, and that’s gonna be you!” she said with a giddy voice, poking Crimson in the chest with a hoof.

        “A-Are you c-certain they’ll be willing t-to take in me?” Crimson asked nervously, shuffling his hooves.

        Master suddenly stopped dead in her tracks and turned around to stare the stallion dead in his eyes. “If they know what’s good for them, they will,” she said in a dark voice. On a moment’s notice she turned back to her bubbly self again. “Then finally there’s the Master rank, yours truly. Not many ponies make it to that, but those that do either gets special missions directly from HQ in Ever City, or will be the one to take over an outpost guild in a town, like me. Any questions, Crimsy my dear?” The nickname still didn’t feel right. Crimson reacted accordingly.

        Crimson just continued to nod as his head was buzzing with new information, trying to sort everything out in his brain as he stoically forced a smile. “No! I-I think I got it.”

        The elderly mare shrugged. “Well, it’s not like it’s really important anyway. See, what I wanted to show you is here!” She opened the storage room door and pulled out a small bag labeled ‘Water’, placing it on the floor and rummaging with her nuzzle inside of it until she pulled up a single light blue orb. “This here is called a magic stone, and this type specifically is a water stone,” she said, pointing another hoof at the obvious label. “There are two types main of magic stones, single-use ones, and charged ones.” She pulled out another bag labeled ‘Illumination’. “There’s no way to tell them apart really, besides from the color they gain when first imbued with magic,” she educated him, pulling out a white illumination stone as well.

        “And I t-take it charged ones can b-b-be used continuously u-until they run out of power, but single-use ones c-can only be used once?” Crimson asked, glancing into the storage room to see dozens of other bags placed neatly on shelves.

        With a giggle comparable to a school filly’s, Master snickered. “Oh you are a clever one!” Calming herself, she placed the white illumination stone back into the bag and kicked said bag back into the room, knocking a few other bags over on the way in. “Single-use stones are just that, you activate them and poof, they’re done. Usually the effect from them are significantly stronger and more immediate. Charged stones on the other hoof can be used as many times you want, until they run out of power.” She demonstrated this by concentrating on the light blue water stone while looking at a pot nearby, the pot slowly started filling up with clear water, up to halfway before she stopped. “See, I just used the stone, but I can keep using it if I want to, up until it runs out of power.” She spat out the stone out of mouth to the floor in between them. “You can tell how much power left a charged stone has from the color. The closer to gray, the less power.” She leaned in closer to Crimson, speaking so low as if she was almost whispering, “What do you think happens when they run out of power?”

        Crimson scratched his head, trying to make heads or tails out of all the information. “Uhh... they become useless?” he asked, forcing a grin.

        “Right! Once a magic stone loses it’s imbued power, they lose their color and crack. However, charged stones can be charged back up by a unicorn to regain their power - up to a certain limit - so they can continue to be used over and over.” She pointed to the blue-gray stone lying in front of Crimson. “I want you to try and recharge that stone now. Mind you, water stones are supposedly easy to recharge. Other ones can require some very precise magic for it to work. Just... imagine your magic getting absorbed into it... or something.” She shrugged.

        Crimson changed between staring at Master and the pebble, upon deciding the small stone required more attention right now. “O-Okay...” he quietly mouthed. Staring intently at the magic stone lying in front of him, his horn started glowing orange, along with the stone itself. After a few moments the orange aura started changing color to light blue, which then settled itself into the stone, giving it a nice clear color.

        Crimson wiped some sweat off his brow, surprised upon needing to do so. “It’s easier to recharge certain stones, but it was never easy in the first place,” Master said with a smile. “I hoped you’d be able to do that. This means that out of the three of you, you will be the one in charge of magic stones from now on! At the very least, the chargeable ones.”

        Crimson nodded nervously, again, unsure what to say regarding his sudden new responsibility. “A-Are you su-”

        The door in front of the guild could be heard opening, shortly thereafter the call of a stallion could be heard.

        “Hellooo? We’re back!” Kickbolt shouted throughout the guild, scanning for anypony near the entrance as he glided in. “Master? Crimson?”

        Master quickly grabbed the water stone, put it in the appropriate bag and left that in the storage room before trotting over to greet Kickbolt. “Bolty! Glad to see you again, dearie! We just finished up here. Now, where’s Sketchy?” she asked, turning her head left and right while trying to locate the small mare.

The blue pegasus landed softly near the elderly mare as Crimson walked in behind her. “I flew ahead a couple of minutes, she’ll be here any moment,” Kickbolt said, taking off his saddlebag and placing it in front of him. “We found magic stones!” he exclaimed, taking out a few stones from the bag to show.

Master greedily collected all the stones into a bag. “See Crimsy? These are natural magic stones, without any infused magic! It requires specialized unicorn magic to be able to get them to do anything, but they could be turned into any type of stone!” She looked at Crimson with a hard glare. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that you shouldn’t try to imbue stones yourself just yet.” This warranted a nervous chuckle from Crimson.

Sketch trotted in, hauling another bulging saddlebag with her, along with her book in tow. “Master! We found magic stones!” she happily repeated what Kickbolt had said a few moments ago. “Oh, and here’s the finalized report for the top floor of the tower, it’s not much... but it does explain the state of the other towers, sort of...” she said as she ripped out a paper from her book and hoofed it over to Master. “The top floor collapsed while we were there, we barely made it away alive! If it weren’t for Kickbolt I probably wouldn’t be here.” Flapping her eyelashes, trying to mimic a damsel in distress being rescued, she turned towards Kickbolt to thank him properly.

He'd pulled a magic stone out of the bag, and was busy entertaining himself by balancing it across his muzzle.

Sketch snorted in anger, blowing steam in her oblivious partner’s direction.

The red unicorn chuckled at the motion along with the elderly mare until Kickbolt dropped the stone back into the bag, eyes almost bugging out of his head as he recalled something of importance. “I saw something! I mean, somepony! I mean, some... thing. A shadow,” he blurted out. “All I could see was a dark shape, only for a moment. That’s when the floor started falling apart.”

        Sketch pointed at the paper that Master was holding. “It’s in the report, but I suppose hearing from the actual eye witness is a good thing, too.”

        Crimson spoke up, pale as if he’d just seen a ghost. “T-That... I think I s-saw one too. I s-seem to have forgotten a-about it, I’m sorry, b-but the night when we first got here... before I f-fainted, I saw one too!”

        Sketch shot him a doubting glance. “Are you sure? It was dark already, you could have just imagined it. Not that I don’t believe you, especially considering that Kickbolt’s seen it too...”

        Master cleared her throat. “Sorry dearies, but I’m not sure what it could have been either. I’ll send a message to HQ in Ever City regarding this, see if they can scrounge anything up!” she reassured them.

“Anyway, now that you’re all here, I might as well mention that Crimsy will be your apprentice from now on!” Master cheerfully said, tugging on Crimson’s shoulder to pull him to the front. “I even scrounged up some magic tutoring, in which he’s now qualified to go exploring with from now on, assuming he’s with you two.” Crimson demonstrated this by picking up a few magic stones from the bag, too embarrassed to speak up.

Sketch smiled first at Crimson, and then at Kickbolt. “Told you we’d become mentors.”

Master giggled lightheartedly. “I suspected that you knew what I was planing. Oh! I should mention I’ve arranged for your first trip together in a couple of days, so go ahead and rest up for now!” She ushered them all out of the guild.

As the newly formed team walked away from the guild hall towards Kickbolt’s house - where she’d overheard Crimson would be staying - the elderly mare gave a content sigh and smiled.

“I’ll expect big things in their future...”

(Author’s note: I’d like to thank ARBPW and LysanderasD for helping me with editing and making my story readable. If you liked it, please leave a comment, they’re probably the biggest source of encouragement I’ve yet to encounter. Don’t forget to rate! I mean, seriously, if you’re still reading this fiction, the best way to promote it to others is to rate and comment! People look at those things. If a fiction has a lot of rates and comments it means it’s popular! So if you want others to look into this story, please do those things... please? :3)