//------------------------------// // Beware of Gryphons Bearing Gifts // Story: The Ninety-nine Nectars of Princess Luna; Or How Twilight Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Her Wings // by NoeCarrier //------------------------------// Chapter Nine “Beware of Gryphons Bearing Gifts” “I'm wildly intrigued,” said Truth, staring up at one of the storefronts of Port Dauphine's Dry Market. “Cuthbert and Tunt Sons, Yon Perverse Confectionaires To Herr Majeste Princess Celestia,” Emboss read, eyes scanning over the elegant red and gold script. “Since six sixty-seven, apparently.” “What in the wide, wide world of Equestria could they possibly mean by 'perverse confectioneries'?” “I really don't think we should go in, darling, who knows what dangers there might be? What if there are more changelings?” “What, so you can embarrass yourself in front of them again?” She nickered disapprovingly. “He was a perfectly lovely sort of person, and he didn't even charge us for breakfast, I thought that was very kind.” “We were his breakfast,” Emboss grumbled. “I could practically feel him sipping at your appreciation. It's like fine whiskey to those things.” “I'm going inside.” “Darling, look at the sign! It says 'absolutely no minors' in twelve different languages!” Emboss stamped at the ground with a hoof. “Twelve!” “I think that just goes to show how multicultural this city is,” she said, shooting him a wicked glance. Before Emboss could complain further, his wife had butted her head against the lock-plate and opened the door. A delicate little bell tingled. Biting his lip nervously, he followed her, if only to save her from the assured depredations lurking within. Varnished ponyoak counters and glass-fronted display cabinets ran around the edge of the broad space, lit by the fierce blue glow of gas lamps burning even during the day. The smell of burnt sugar, a complex symphony of different notes, hung in the air, filling Emboss' nose. Along with it came a whole host of other floral and fruity smells, many of which he didn't recognize. Anise, cinnamon and mango, along with the tart timpani-strikes of lemon and orange, all worked to produce an odd mixture of cleansing and cloying sensations. “Good afternoon,” someone said, in a perfect Canterlite accent, from behind the counter furthest from the door. “Welcome to Cuthbert and Tunt Sons, how may I help you today?” “Ah, yes, hello,” Truth said, coming to a halt. “We just wanted to see what you had, really, we've never been to a sweet shop quite like this...” A young, lithe zebra was folded up on a tall stool, body resting daintily on a nest of hooves and legs. At first it seemed as though she had on some kind of green and yellow stole, but then it moved, and Emboss saw that it was in fact the largest snake he'd ever laid eyes on. It was draped over her withers, and curled off in both directions to the point where he could not see the head nor tail. Something primal woke up in the back of Emboss' mind, a fragment of fragments mirrored in the minds of similar creatures across the gulf of time, space, dimension and rationality. “Snake...” he muttered, trying not to flee. “Looking to reawaken the djinn in your relationship?” the zebra said, smiling mysteriously. “I am iRen, and I'm sure we can find what you're looking for.” “iRen?” Emboss said, the instincts of a life-long registrar of births and deaths shining through. “That's a diamond dog name, isn't it? With all the funny grammar and fiddly orthography.” “Very observant of you, sir, very observant indeed,” iRen said, clicking her teeth and stepping down off the stool, her snake not so much as reacting but simply settling. “My dam was once a member of the retinue of a Lord of the Singing King, and as she took her letters from him, so did I.” “I'm terribly sorry, my husband rarely knows when to stop,” Truth sighed. “I'm sure he didn't mean to pry.” “It is a more common question, madam,” iRen nodded, then took a silver tray out from beneath the counter with her mouth. “How about we go over some samples?” “Is this hard confectionary?” Truth said, picking up one of the many multi-coloured and strangely-beveled sweets on offer and putting it in her mouth. “Ooh! Lemon!” “Indeed, madam, it is very hard, but that one in particular has a warm liquid centre, just keep sucking and it'll reveal itself,” iRen said, glancing briefly at Emboss. “That one in particular we call the stallione citrone; it's one of our best sellers.” *                                     The private realm of Princess Celestia was a monument as much as a demesne. At first, Base had thought it was merely a large white room, of the kind found in dairies or doctor's surgeries, but when her eyes adjusted to the infernal, sourceless glare, she saw that the floor curved not into ceilings, but away into the far distance, vanishing off to her north and south. There was no hint that they had just stepped through a doorway. Instead, they had been deposited as if through teleportation, or other like magic. Some distant wind howled and, all of a sudden, she and Luna were struck by it. The force was unlike anything Base had felt before. She'd done her mandatory high-altitude training of course, flying to heights of five or six kilometres, all wrapped up in thermals. The winds at that altitude were ferocious enough. What hit them now was a thousand times worse, a long, pummeling torrent of tortured air. Base pulled her leathery wings in close to her body and squeezed her eyes shut, an instinctual reaction. Warmth blossomed, and the wind cut out just as quickly as it had started. When she finally looked around again, Luna was smiling down at her, head framed by the wavering blue tendrils of a magical dome. “Be not afeared; these winds are products of a fearsome end-djinn of my sister's design,” the Princess cooed, stroking Base's head with the leading edges of her wing. “They will not hurt you now.” “Fearsome engine?” Base said, peering out through the blue and azure barrier, looking for some feature in the topography that might act as reference. “Like a steam engine?” “No, not some new-fangled piston-toy, my little nottlygna, but a bellowing creature of glass and magic, a djinn from the days before my banishment,” she said, licking her lips. “This demesne is unlike mine, which at least makes reference to the world to which it is attached. My sister is a cowed fanatic of the school of queer geometry, and so this space is as a torc, but hollowed out.” “Like a doughnut, Mother?” “Precisely so, but large, and larger still than all Equestria, and it had to be, for here are kept those things that even Cerberus refused to contain.” “I think I prefer the Hidden Delight, Mother,” Base said, suddenly afraid of what would be so awful as to make a three-headed dog larger than most houses balk. “The wet bar is superb.” “Quite,” the Princess said, nodding, before heading off in a northerly direction, into the wind, the corona of magic following with her. “Come along, and keep up.” Base began to trot. The sensation of the ground beneath her hooves was deeply disturbing, like walking on warm glass, but a glass that had just been fired and was still molten. She left hoofprints in it, which undulated disquietly before returning to their previous state. Further still, whenever the frog of her hoof happened to touch it, there was a feeling like that produced by the sound of a nail being dragged down a chalkboard. Everything about this place screamed hostility at her, as though the very fabric of reality was rejecting her presence. Presently, Base became aware of the space around them changing. Where there had previously been featureless, gently curving nothingness, hexagonal pillars of various sizes arose. They were in stark contrast to the glaring white, being made of some flat, black material, shiny like polished metal, completely devoid of any external features, or even scratches. Those closest were only as tall as her knees, but those further away kept on growing, reaching the size of a full grown oak tree in places. “There has been much conflict in our past,” Luna said, in answer to questions still only half-formed in Base's mind. “Many errant mages, made equus sacer, came back to trouble us later on, not least of which was the Brigand-King of the North, so aptly dealt with by the object of our current troubles in times more recent. Their personal effects and magic talismans are kept here, encased.” “Why not simply destroy them?” “Energy, once bound down and forced into shapes it could not otherwise attain, is vengeful to any who seek to unbind it.” “Surely there are safe places for big explosions to happen, Mother? The southern deserts and flats, or the northern tundra? And wouldn't any risk be worth it, to prevent these magics being used again?” “Sleeping gryphons are best left undisturbed,” the Princess said, fluttering her wings by way of a shrug. “At least, 'twas how it was explained to me. Much of this collection was made by my sister over the last thousand years, and so I had no hoof in it. There are no records, as some of these devices come to those who merely think or read of them, and certainly sister hasn't time to sit and tell me of each depredation.” They carried on, following an unmarked path that meandered like the course of an ancient river. Behind them, the black pillars were settling gently into the ground again, hiding themselves away. Base's imagination couldn't help but run wild, recalling all the awful legends of mad magicians and insane inventors that did the rounds in the barracks, thinking on what aspect of them might actually be true, and what fragments of evidence, the smoking cannons of the crimes of deranged pony minds, might be hidden away there. After what seemed like hours, where on several occasions Luna determined that they double back and take a different unseen route through the expanse, they finally stopped. Base had learned that here looks could be deceiving, so she wasn't surprised at the fact that the space in front of them, which Luna was now examining carefully, looked like everything else, simply the void of the road ahead. Base knew that without the Princess to guide her, she would have quickly gotten completely disoriented and lost within this place, and so waited patiently. There was a soft thrum of magical energies being applied and immediately patterns erupted in the air that Luna had been studying. Though they were alien to her, she knew they were a script. Characters repeated themselves, and here and there scant traces of familiarity popped out. It was like the language was an antique precursor of Equuish, but one from so long ago that only the smallest hints of relation were present. Suddenly, there was a thunderclap, like a great door being slammed shut in the depths of the world. Her bones shuddered in sympathy, and Base's teeth rattled around in her skull. She threw herself to the ground, her hindbrain convinced that the world was ending, forelegs desperately covering her head. “Calm, little one, 'tis but the span of ages reconciling with the now,” Luna said. Base looked up. Another door had appeared, standing in the free air, but this one was a far different affair compared to the one in Celestia's study. It was a disc, spanning five metres, cut out of a simple, uncomplicated granite completely free of inclusions. A careful hoof had engraved a square series of dots, lines and wedge shaped glyphs into the middle of it, above which was a large stylized image of the sun, about the size of Base's hoof, radiating light. Below the square was a far smaller sphere, the detailing of which bore striking resemblance to the war maps of Equestria Base had trained with. To the right of it was the crescent of the moon, which had no detailing, save for a wedge-glyph. “She kept the whole room,” Luna said, wistfully. “Sometimes, I like to think there is a fragment of that old, sentimental creature still alive beneath the pitiless sun that is Celestia.” She placed a hoof against the disc and pushed against it. The hinges complained loudly, and little streamers of implausible dust fell from the face of the door. “Though perhaps it is the case that she has merely forgotten it is here.” *                                     In the middle of the Dry Market, past the aisles and ranks of the less permanent stalls, was a great fountain. As it was just after lunch, and the sun was still at its daily zenith, casting down a stifling heat, the denizens of Port Dauphine were taking a break to refresh themselves in the water. Adults of many races sat or lay on the lip of the fountain, dipping their heads into, or lapping at, the gently ebbing pool. Their cubs and foals danced and splashed through it, diving through the tumbling blue curtains that fell from the top of the simple, columnar centrepiece with merry abandon, whooping and hollering. Truth and Emboss had left the sweetshop with quite a bit of loot. At first shocked and taken aback by the brazenness of it, Emboss had really gotten into the swing of it. Little paper bags of melone cunares and simnel surprixes filled his panniers, saved for later on, whereas Emboss had already gotten through forty bit's worth of stallione citrones, two whole boxes. They'd stopped at the fountain to acclimate themselves, and Emboss took a moment to rearrange his luggage so as to better fit their confectionary haul. Truth had simply thrown her head into the fountain, apparently quite dehydrated. “Darling,” Emboss said, holding up one of the empty boxes of stallione citrones and examining it carefully. “I may not be the most knowledgeable when it comes to these sorts of things, but is it usual for confectionary to have a maximum permitted dose?” “What?” sputtered Truth, looking up, her face drenched, auburn mane quite soaked. “Yes, look here, 'For oral use, one to three lozenges every four hours, no more than six lozenges per day'.” “Maybe they're concerned about our sugar intake,” Truth said, drinking thirstily. “I can't help but feel a little concerned. 'If swelling persists for more than four hours, contact a doctor immediately',” he read, squinting slightly. “Swelling? What in Equestria can they mean by that?” “I don't feel very well.” “I'm sure it'll pass, probably just a little of the old traveller's tummy.” “Traveller's tummy? Where do you even get phrases like that?” “It was in the Foal's Guide, thank you very much.” “Your mare's lookin' a bit green around the gills there, laddy,” a voice suddenly said. “Mayhap a spell out of the afternoon sun'll be good for her.” Emboss turned to see a large, muscle-bound figure, sat some way around the fountain, who had edged a little closer to them. His goat-like yellow eyes paid little attention to the object he was holding in his forepaws, which seemed as though it might've been a distant pony ancestor before it was deep fried and served with peanut sauce, instead playing all over Emboss and Truth with the sort of look usually reserved for particularly delicious tufts of grass. “Oh, yes, as I was just saying, I'm sure she'll be fine.” “New to the city, are you?” the minotaur said, his strange mix of sharp and flat teeth making easy work of the red-stained meat as he spoke. “Got a place to stay?” “Not yet, actually,” Emboss said, gulping down his ancient prey instincts for the sake of transcultural relations. “I suppose you know somewhere?” “All the hotels and inns and whatnot are down in'Cockwobblers.” “I'm sorry, drowning in what?” “Down in Cockwobblers, I said, next to the harbour.” “Oh, I see, it's a district.” “Yes, what else?” “Nevermind,” Emboss said, stroking the back of Truth's head. “Any particular place?” “Aye, but if 'Cockwobblers' gave you pause, you'll not like it...” *                                     By now, Base had stopped questioning the peculiar shifts in dimension, perspective and apparently also place. As she had lived in Canterlot her entire life, she'd become used to magical weirdness popping up occasionally and altering the laws of physics, or turning everyone into meerkats, or whatever bizarre thing was on the agenda that day. She was, therefore, quite unsurprised when they stepped through the disc-door into another room entirely. “Keepsakes, keepsakes,” Luna mumbled, peering into the gloom. “Ah.” The lights came on, hard and unyielding, casting downwards from the low ceiling. At first, the room reminded Base of the very oldest sort of tombs that could be found beneath Canterlot Castle, those dusty and forgotten mausoleums that held culture heroes from eras in time nobody had bothered to record. Then, as she looked around, she realized it was something more. The walls were chiseled out of flint, knapped markings flowing to the floor, which was tiled with some kind of primitive attempt at paving, each of the flat, glassy plates a different shape, held together with rough grout and a type of highly granulated cement. At the far end of the room were signs of habitation. Books, socks and quills spilled out across the floor, bridging the divide between a pair of rather voluminous beds. One was pink and made of simple cloths, with gaudy little imprints of the sun and moon on it. The other was a dusty blue, with asterisms embroidered into it. Base trotted inward, rather intrigued. The iconography and colour scheme were immediately obvious as to what they implied. The room was big enough for three or four ponies, and Luna drifted in behind her. As the door shut, Base became aware of something starting back up again, like the actors in the background of a scene in a theatre production taking their places as the action begins. The feeling nudged the back of her mind, refusing to go away. “Here is where we, at the founding of this nation, hid ourselves, for we were only foals, of mortal span, not yet come into our divine natures,” Luna said, suddenly very grim, as though attending a funeral. “Later on, we cleft this place apart from Equestria, and hid it away, for it would have great power over us if it were to fall into the wrong hooves. We used it as a keepsake-box. It is here we'll find Mythraegg.” “I can't imagine you or your sister as foals,” Base said, peering up at the stern-yet-motherly face of the Selenite Princess, with her strange, lonely eyes and wispy indigo mane, flowing in a gentle, phantom breeze. “You seem so eternal.” “I do not remember it and, in truth, when we came to divinity, that which we once were died, and something new emerged,” Luna said, sidling up the end of the blue bed and peering underneath. “But that is a story for another time entirely.” “School was never very clear on the topic, Mother. I'd like to hear that story one day.” “Maybe you will,” Luna said, the tip of her horn glowing blue, followed by the sound of something terribly heavy scraping across the tiles. “Here...” The long, black trunk that Luna produced from beneath the bed was somewhat anti-climatic. It reminded Base of her own mementos and personal effects box. She'd been expecting some grandiose, ultra-magical container, perhaps drenched in rare, thaumic crystals, studded with diamonds, encased in rubies and sapphires, held shut with complex, zebra puzzle locks. Instead, Luna merely popped open a simple brass catch, one which could have come from any locksmith in Canterlot, and swung up the wooden lid on copper hinges. The box's innards rather reminded Base of the contents of a doctor's desk. Lots of tiny scrolls in neat bundles sat piled atop stacks of paper, which were all covered in messy hoof writing scrawls, though all in languages she didn't understand and which seemed to be written in two directions simultaneously. Besides that, the only other thing inside was an apple sized model of the moon, highly detailed, with the various seas and craters marked in plain Equuish. “Beg your pardon, Mother, but aren't we looking for a weapon?” Base said, her muzzle taking on a bemused expression. “This thing is barely big enough.” “'Tis an abstraction,” Luna said, nodding her head. “Look again.” In the minute fraction of a second in which she'd taken her eyes off the box, the contents had shifted. Now it was a collection of clinking, dusty bottles, each stoppered with ivory and glued shut with some rubbery material. The glass was too thick to see inside, but the sounds alone, like the intestinal distress of a curry-eating whale, made her uneager to find out. Suddenly, Base sneezed, some bizarre combination of ancient dust and an horrific, aggressive smell rising up off the bottles the culprit. Her eyes snapped shut reflexively, and when they opened again-- “Here we are, penknives, misericords, letter-openers and royal weapons.” Luna giggled, as though she'd made a terribly funny joke. “Weapons! The royal weapons. I wonder if they have, perhaps, scabbards?” “I dare say they do,” Base said, gulping, glancing at the alarming mishmash of different pointed ends and hoofloops that now jutted out of the chest. “That is the normal way. You wouldn't want anypony getting hurt accidentally.” “Hah! No, no you wouldn't,” Luna said, the periwinkle glow of her magic filling the space once again. “Mythraegg will be under here somewhere...” the Princess bit her lip and adopted the dazed, middle-distance stare of somepony grappling with thaumokinetic feedback. There was a sound like the eons-long movements of mountains sped up to mortal hearing, and from beneath the jagged piles of daggers, sharpened staves and iron-tipped stakes came a thing which was quite at odds with the rest of the stabby horde. It was indeed a quarterstaff, but only in that it was shaped roughly like one. Mythraegg had, instead of a cylindrical shaft, two long, wickedly sharp edges, which were so finely honed that Base could barely see them. Ten centuries of sleep seemed not to have dulled it one bit. The air sung as Luna deftly extracted the glassy black fang, turning it over and over. Base had seen the weapons of mages before. Those who chose to impart magic onto the world though physical means often adopted materials like star-metal or volcanic rock, and they would always be covered in hundreds of complex runes, weaving a phrase of anger and destruction onto the fabric of the mundane with beams of searing horn fire. Luna's weapon was a step up. The shapes of power that ran up and down it had been picked out in silver alloy, with inclusions of a green and blue metal that might well have been beyond mortal knowledge, for though Base's understanding of metallurgy was limited to blades, it was comprehensive in that field, and she did not recognise it. “Can I be honest, Mother?” Base said, exhaling a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. “Please.” “I don't think it sends the right sort of message.” “What do you mean?” “It looks very... nightmarey.” “Nightmarey?!” Luna swung Mythraegg about indignantly, which caused it to make a sound Base couldn't help but place as a chorus of shrieking foals. “Hmph!” “Mother, I meant no offence.” “Pah.” “Perhaps we shall not need it?” “I sincerely hope not, my little nottlygna,” Luna said, the glow of magic fading as she stowed the fearsome quarterstaff away. “Come, we've dallied long enough.” * “That can't be what it's actually called,” Truth groaned, as they rounded the corner of one of Cockwobbler's packed, narrow avenues. “I'm sure you just heard him wrong.” “You'd have heard it the same as I did if you hadn't been trying to drink that entire fountain.” “I'm hot! It's practically Hadean in this city, sweet foals above, are they trying to boil us alive?” Truth was rather red-faced, and covered in sweat. “Perhaps it's a preliminary step, before they ram sticks up our backsides and drown us in peanut sauce,” she rambled, struggling to keep up with Emboss. “Yes, that makes sense, slow cook the meat, nice and juicy, practically melts in your mouth--” “We mustn't lose our heads, dear,” Emboss said. “Once we find our hooves I'm sure you'll feel better.” “At this obscenely named... tavern? Guesthouse?” “I think he called it a hotel, actually.” “Your new minotaur friend certainly had a mouth on him!” “Come now, he was just a person we met; what happened to being open minded, eh?” “Great fanged creatures, what next, bat ponies? Cave dwelling lichen that's grown wanderlust and left its subterranean climes, seeking prey?” “What are you babbling about?” Emboss stopped and turned to her. “Just keep it together!” “I very much fear there was something in those sweets,” Truth said, gazing at him in an unfocused way, pupils wider than they should have been. “It's like I'm drunk.” “That's what you get for talking to strangers!” “The sign! The sign was so enticing! How could I just trot past it?” At this moment, Emboss and Truth came to the end of the avenue, where it broke out into a plaza, which was really little more than a space between the larger blocks of red brick buildings. In Canterlot, it would undoubtedly have been blessed with a statue of some description, steeped in jewels and with a funny name. Here, however, things were far more functional, and in the centre was merely a water pump, cast out of varnished iron and in busy use by residents and passersby. Taking up one entire side of the square, behind the pump, was the hotel he and Truth were after. It followed the dominant scheme of orderly red bricks, with three whole floors of them run through with wooden framing, which seemed to be older as the timbers had gone jet black. Outside the hotel, a number of suspect characters were laid out on a hotchpotch collection of trestle tables, benches and other furniture, all chattering merrily away in a range of dialects and that were almost as varied as the clades, species and possibly even phylae they represented. Minotaurs, more completely dressed than the one who'd directed Truth and Emboss here in the first place, sat drinking tea and reading newspapers. Several diminutive zebras, who seemed so small and ferret-like in the open air, exchanged gossip with silver-and white-furred Diamond Dogs, who were wrapped up in what appeared to be loose bedsheets. None paid them any mind, except a very muscular looking alce gryphon, who cast a predator's eyes over Truth's flank that, in any equine culture, would have been considered seriously bad manners, but here seemed to simply be a perusal of the lunch menu. Before the sensible part of his brain could conjure up some perfectly good rationalizations for why that couldn't possibly happen here, in Equestria, even on the edge of the nation, his hindbrain had propelled him and his wife through the open front doors of the hotel and into the bar. “Welcome to the Winking Gusset!” somepony shouted, before Emboss' eyes could adapt to the light. “Celestia, preserve us,” he said, as Truth winced. “Y'what, mate?” the same pony said. Behind the bar, which was in the shape of a horse-shoe and snugly fitted against the interior brick and stone work, a burly, chestnut-maned earth pony with a collection of towels and other accoutrements of his trade laid over his back was giving him a funny glance. “Terribly sorry, my wife, she's not used to that sort of language--” “You must be from Canterlot,” the earth pony said, grinning, as though it were the absolute most amusing thing on the planet at that given moment. “It's a bird, lad.” “Excuse me? What's a bird?” “The gusset,” he said, pointing a hoof up above the bar, where there was affixed a large lithograph of what appeared to be a caricature of a brown bird, standing on a mudflat, winking cheekily at the viewer. “It's a small wading bird, native to the coast here. It eats small worms, crabs and occasionally other sorts of crustaceans. And it is winking at you.” “I... see.” “Don't worry about it, happens to everyone,” he said, still grinning. “Room for two?” “Yes, please,” Truth interjected. “I'm feeling awfully funny, I think I've been out in the sun for--” “You've not been at the special confectionary have you?” “How did you know?” “You've got a bit on your chin there, love,” he said, tapping his own to point it out. “But where are my manners? I'm Dee Novo, proprietor.” “It's good to meet you, Novo, I'm Double Emboss, and this is my wife.” “So, that's Mr and Mrs Emboss, yes?” he said, pulling out a ledger from underneath the bar, along with a little punnet that contained inks, quills and several kinds of pencil. “Skies, no, why on Equestria would it be that?” “You're married, aren't you?” “I'm Absolute Truth,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Darling, some mares take the names of their husbands. I'd have thought you of all ponies would know that.” “I'm from the Avalon school of births, deaths and marriages!” Emboss protested at her. “We're a very specialist group of civil servants.” “Will that be a double room, then?” “Yes, absolutely,” Truth nodded. “Just with the one double bed.” “Aye aye,” Novo smiled conspiratorially then, after scribbling in the book with a short, stubby pencil, turned the book around for Emboss and Truth to sign. “I'll just fetch your key.” “Taking the name of your husband, what a load of piffle,” Emboss muttered once Novo had trotted off. “Backwards, that's what it is.” “Just sign the book,” Truth said, picking up one of the quills in the tangerine aura of her magic and doing exactly that. “Oh, right away, Mrs Emboss,” he said, sardonically, then did the same. “Perhaps I'll start calling myself that, just to spite you,” Truth said, then, after a moment of pretending to be offended, began to laugh uncontrollably, which continued until Novo came back, keys folded in a little napkin which he carried in his mouth.