//------------------------------// // chapter 1 (revised) // Story: Life In Lace // by Harasha the Gryphon //------------------------------// “Go through the chimney,” the unicorn sarcastically remarked to himself as he looked around his near black confinements. “Great idea Amethyst. Why didn’t I just try and find a window to get in?” The unicorn named Amethyst slowly rose to his hooves. Centuries of soot covered his body from head to hoof. Briskly he shook himself. Most of the soot was gone when he’d finished shaking, save for a few black splotches against his dark purple fur. Looking up the chimney, he wagered the fall had taken him half a story inside the ruins. The thought excited the young explorer. Carefully, he crawled his way out of the castle’s ruined hearth. Before him lay two halves of a cobblestone hallway. One end seemed to stretch further into the ruins then his field of vision would allow. The other was closer, but led to a dead end with a beautiful stain glass window of a white unicorn. “Oh, forgot my saddlebag,” Amethyst remarked. His horn glowed with a flash of pink light- the same color as his cutie mark. A few seconds later, the saddlebags he had left on the roof levitated down the chimney and once again rested on his back. With a deep breath, Amethyst began walking down the hallway, away from the window. As he walked, he made a point to take note of the various rooms he passed by. Every few feet he would stop, take out a notepad, and expand on a map of the ruins. It was miraculous that Amethyst even found the castle at all. It had been a prime topic in the rumors of the ponies who lived in Maple Mountain for years. Everypony feared the old cursed castle of King Clovis, but not Amethyst. He’d been exploring these old ruins for a year, and had come out unscaved, save for the ocassional scrape or cut. If the rumors were true, old King Clovis had some long lost magical treasures hidden away, and Amethyst was more than willing to cut through superstition to do it. He continued through the hallway until he came to a corridor. It was larger than the one he had just come down- a dusty red carpet lay across it. A little bit of the dust got into Amethyst’s nose and he sneezed. “This castle is always dusty,” Amethyst remarked to himself. He drew in his notepad again before turning down the left pathway, which lead him to a large oak door. On it were the carved designs of unicorns coated in paint long worn away. Below them were a pair of brass door handles. Amethyst used his magic to tug the door open. He walked into the room, looking around at the objects inside: a two-pony bed with an overhang, several old portraits, an oak vanity with an assortment bobbles on it, and several dresses of varying design. “This must have been princess Mineral’s room,” he remarked before walking over to a pink dress with a few moth holes in it. Carefully, he ran his hooves across it. “Feels like silk. This princess certainly had good taste.” Amethyst looked over at the vanity and his horn began to glow slightly. With an observant hum, Amethyst walked over and inspected the objects on it. There wasn’t anything special, just a few bits of ancient beauty products and a hairbrush, worn with time. That is until his eyes spotted a small statuette about, three inches high, and made of gold colored stone. “Oh, now look at you,” Amethyst grinned. “You’re something special aren’t ya?” Without a moment’s hesitation, Amethyst levitated the statuette into his saddlebag. Once it was inside, he brought forth a golden pocket watch and rested it in his hooves before opening it. "Crud," he said, looking at the watch, "I'd better head back, it'll be dark soon." Amethyst bolted out of the room, and ran back the way he came. When he got to the chimney, he simply teleported himself back up to the roof he’d been on earlier. He sped across the roof until he reached a ladder at the edge of the roof. The ledge he found himself on was several stories above ground level. From here, he could see the dirt road leading to town. In a flash, he teleported down to the ground below, and ran down the dirt road. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An hour or two later Amethyst had left the forest, his short black and pink mane glistened in the setting sun. He stood in front of a wooden archway with the words ‘Welcome to Maple Mountain’ written on it. He walked through the gate and continued down the road he was running on. His pace slowed to a canter; the road had switched from being made of dirt to being made of red bricks. his moderately long tail swished back and forth as he walked. Amethyst glanced at the log cabins around him. Most of them appeared to be empty; however, he saw one with a buggy parked in front of it. Amethyst walked on, until he had arrived at a four way crossroads with a large fountain in front of it. Around the fountain, Amethyst could see several wagons belonging to various traveling merchants. Street lamps and benches also lined the plaza. With the sun just beginning to set, the streetlamps were beginning to flicker on. He headed eastward from the plaza down a large street. Various businesses lined the streets around him, mostly fashion stores, cafes, and winter sporting goods stores. Amethyst came to a side street and he turned and walked down it. The side street had other businesses of minor note, such as souvenir stores. He came to a stop three stores into the side street and turned to face the store on his left. The store Amethyst was facing was a two-story building. Right in front of him was a door with a yellow handle; above the door was a sign that read, “Amethyst’s Magical Devices and Books”. Below that sign was an arrow shaped sign, that led to the upper part of the building. That sign read, “Orchid’s Perfect Flowers.” Amethyst used his magic to levitate out several keys on a key ring and he used one of them to unlock the door. He went into the door and flipped a light switch and several lights turned on. The room that Amethyst was in had several shelves and tables strewn around it. Junk of all descriptions littered the tables; all of them had a price tag tied to them. Several bookshelves lined the walls, filled with books on various subjects, though the majority were spell books. In the far right corner was a desk with a cash register on it, and behind that desk was another door. Amethyst walked toward that door and unlocked it with another key on his key ring. He went through the door into another room. This room had two sections: a kitchen area behind a stub wall, and a living area. The kitchen consisted of a small stove, a fridge, some counters, overhead cupboards and a two-sided sink. The living area had a small table, a bookshelf, a lamp, a clock hanging on the wall, and a pull out couch bed. On the far side of the room -across from Amethyst- were two doors, one without a handle and another with a brass handle. The couch bed was fully out and had a blanket on it. Under the blanket were two ponies, a mare and a stallion. The mare had dark green fur, an orange mane and purple eyes, the stallion had blue fur, a green and orange mane, and dark blue eyes. A bulge around the shoulders indicated the stallion was a pegasus. The stallion and mare were sharing a passionate kiss when Amethyst walked into the room. Not wanting to disturb them, Amethyst tiptoed across the room to the adjacent door. He wasn’t quite quiet enough, however, as the two ponies broke from their kiss and looked at him. “Misty, who’s this?” The mare asked in confusion. “Don’t mind him dear,” the stallion replied. “He’s just my roomie.” Amethyst just shrugged at them and continued walking toward the door without a handle. By the time he had gotten to the door, the mare and stallion had resumed kissing each other. Good old Misty, Amethyst thought to himself. He lowered his horn to where the doorknob would normally be and closed his eyes. Within moments the door had opened. Amethyst walked into the room and, with a thought, the door swung shut behind him. The room Amethyst was in had a desk, a trunk with several carved channels in it and a one-pony bed. Amethyst walked over to the desk and opened up his saddlebag. He proceeded to place several objects, including the statuette from earlier on the desk. With a yawn, Amethyst went to bed and promptly fell asleep. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next morning, Amethyst awoke with a yawn. He heard the sound of something cooking and got out of bed. He went over to the door he had entered from last night and used his horn to open said door again. The fold up couch from last night had been folded up, and Misty was in the kitchen baking hay. The pegasus’s full body was visible and so was his cutie mark depicting three rainclouds. “Good morning, Misty,” Amethyst said to the pegasus. “Mornin, Shard,” Misty replied. “You’re up early.” “Had to get up early, got that big mountain climate summit in Manehatten. If I’m gonna make it, I have to be on the 9 am train,” Amethyst glanced over at the clock on the wall. “Its 8:40 and you’re honestly expecting to have some fried hay and still make it.” At that, Misty looked at Amethyst, dumbfounded by his friend’s words. “8:40? But my watch says it‘s only 7:15,” “Misty, remember how you told me your watch is broken?” Amethyst said in a somewhat annoyed tone. Misty stood there for a few minutes, staring off into space. His eyes went wide and his wings flared outward. “Horse feathers, I’m late!” Panic was evident in Misty’s voice. Without another word, he bolted over to a suitcase he’d left next to the front door. Misty grabbed the suitcase and without a goodbye rushed out the door. Amethyst chuckled to himself. “He’d lose his own wings if they weren’t attached. At least I get the house to myself for a few days.” Amethyst heard somepony singing upstairs. The voice of the singer was Orchid seed, a mare that lived on the floor above theirs. He listened to her for a while, smiling. The singing reminded him of his sister, who also used to sing in the shower. Sweet Celestia, did she have a beautiful voice. At that thought, Orchid botched one of the notes in her song, which caused Amethyst to cringe. “At least my sister wasn’t tone deaf,” he muttered to himself. Amethyst went back into the room he had slept in the previous night and walked over to the desk. “Ok, time to get to work” He said, before stopping in his tracks. “Oops, nearly forgot to open the shop.” He walked back out of his office, grabbed an open sign from a counter in the room with the cash register and hung it up on the front door. Satisfied, he walked back to the desk he had been at previously. Amethyst began to look over the things on the desk. He prodded them with his horn, ran tests on them, and documented the findings. He did this for several hours, he only stopped when customers came into the store. When noon rolled around, Amethyst went into the kitchen to get lunch. He made himself a daisy sandwich and started to nibble on it. He brought it back to the room with the desk and picked up the mare statuette with his magic. Biting into his sandwich, he turned the statuette around in a levitation field. Quizzically, he picked up a sheet of paper in his magic and wrote on it with a quill and ink. “Artifact B56: this artifact is a three inch high figurine made of yellow stone.” he said aloud as he wrote. “It has been carved into the shape of a female unicorn. The eyes are painted green, and the carving isn’t that well done. There are no discernable features on its face or any part of its body. It’s radiating a slight magical field I do not recognize, I believe this statue will cast an effect I haven’t encountered befo-” As Amethyst was writing out that last sentence, the artifact began to glow with an eerie pink light. Amethyst froze as the glow began to grow brighter and larger. He set the statuette on the desk and began to slowly back away from it. He only back stepped three paces before the glow formed into a bolt and hit him square in the chest. Amethyst cringed in discomfort as his body glowed with the same pink color the bolt had been. A few seconds passed before the glow vanished. “Wow… that was weird,” Amethyst remarked. He turned around and started to walk in the opposite direction when a sharp pain overcame him. The pain caused him to stop in his tracks and groan. He could feel his insides churning as if some force was reshaping his entire being. A spike of pain shot through him, forcing him to his knees. Before his eyes, his mane grew longer until it reached all the way down to the base of his neck. His muzzle collapsed in on itself. It folded and down his face, stopping a third of its former length, and settled on a rounded tip. He cringed hard as he felt his entire body shrink, and much of his stallion-esk bulk vanish; his barrel also shrunk. He fell over on his side and stared out at his forelegs just in time to see them shrink and slenderize. He felt his rump expand like a balloon, becoming rounder and fuller in shape. Amethyst felt intense tingling in the nether areas of his body. Looking down that way, he saw his nethers retreat between his legs at an alarmingly quick rate. Then, to his horror, he felt something split open. After that, the pain began to subside. Amethyst lay on the ground, panting for few seconds before regaining his composure. He stood up, slowly, and wobbled in place. “Wow that was fun.” He muttered sarcastically. His mind stopped at hearing his own voice, no longer was it the low-pitched voice he was accustomed to hearing. His voice had raised several octaves during the change and the new voice caught him off guard. Amethyst looked at his front hooves and saw their much smaller form. He also crossed his eyes to get a look at his snout. “What the hay happened to me?!”