//------------------------------//
// Chapter 9 - Modern day fiends 
// Story: Celestia Trigger 
// by Thadius0 
//------------------------------//

	Anima's forge was something to behold, all right.  In the sense that it seemed to use magic for a good bit of its functions.  For everything from getting and keeping metal hot to determining how much coal to add to the fires.  The magic seemed to flow along specific channels engraved into the metal, and I recognized a few symbols from my time with Ancient Lore's books.  The really weird thing, beyond it glowing the same shade of green as the cubes that the robots from 2299 ran on, was the fact that there was one small area set away from the others.  I raised an eyebrow as I looked it over, and Anima briefly turned to see what I was looking at before chuckling.

"Ah, I have that station set aside for when I want to get my hooves dirty doing all the work myself.  My forge is good for smithing a wide variety of metals into so many shapes, true.  Especially the ones that are downright dangerous to even try to do with your bare hooves!  But sometimes..."  Here he drew closer to the forge and laid a hoof down on top of it.  "Sometimes you just can't beat doing things yourself."

I nodded at that; I knew the feeling.  Sometimes you could take a shortcut, get something already done far easier, but sometimes, you just had to do it yourself.  It felt better that way.  "So," I said.  "Think you could help us?"

The crystal stallion turned and nodded at us.  "So, you use a sword.  What of you, mister zebra?"

"I use a staff in my martial art," Zehan stated.  "The welts it leaves do more than smart."

Copper had shrugged off her harness and started to take a few covers off, and Anima turned to look at Justice, who merely stared back at him.  I shook my head before trying to figure out a way to phrase it.  "He's...different."

"He looks like a highly advanced golem," the crystal stallion said.

"That's one way of putting it," Copper quipped as she unscrewed a few covers.  "I'm pretty sure I'll be able to help him when the time comes for him to upgrade, though."

"You and Crono both," Justice replied, before going to stand in a corner, to better observe the proceedings.

Anima shrugged before turning back to Zehan.  "So, what were you thinking of, mister zebra?  Something light, or something with a bit more kick to it?"

"A weight is not uncommon, true, but the makeup I shall leave to you," Zehan replied.  "A smith is not my part, I would more than likely muddy your art."

Anima blinked a few times before chuckling.  "Well," the stallion said.  "I can already tell I'm going to enjoy my work for you immensely."  The crystal pony then turned to me with a cocked head.  "And you?"

I hummed as I drew my Crimson Katana and lay it in front of him.  "Think you can copy the style of this blade?"  I asked.

Anima, to his credit, did examine the blade as best he could with his eyes before picking it up and running the same examination again.  He nodded once and put it back down.  "I reckon I could make a fine example of that, if I had some time," the stallion replied.  "As for the staff...I think I have one in stock now, and can have another made in...well, about the same time it'd take me to make your blade.  I'll even work on them both."

I looked to Zehan with a raised eyebrow, and he nodded, prompting me to look back at the smith.  "We'll take the staff, and if you can have such weapons made ready when we next return...whenever that is, then we'll take those as well," I informed him.

Anima nodded and went to one wall, where a long pole lay across two pegs.  He reached up and pulled it down before passing it over to Zehan.  The zebra took it, bowed his head to the smith, and went through several motions to familiarize himself with the weapon, before nodding and holding it in one hoof.

"This staff is a fine work indeed, my part as a warrior is now freed," the zebra rhymed to Anima.

"Such lofty praises coming from one of the stripes," the crystal stallion said.  "Two hundred and fifty bits for that, though."

Copper passed me the sack that she'd apparently stashed all our money in, and I withdrew two golden bits and five silver ones, passing them over to the smith.  He nodded and put them on his desk.

"Well, I'll try to remember to swing by here at some point during our next stay here," I quipped to the smith.  "Hopefully by then you'll be done with what I'm sure will be impressive works."

"Oh, count on it, lad," the smith said, chuckling again.  "And I hope you put my work to work saving as many lives as you can."  He frowned a bit before continuing that thought.  "My weapons shouldn't be made solely to take lives.  Saving them is far more important."

The quote twinged with me, and I nodded stiffly at the stallion before gathering my companions up.

Hello there, Guru of Life... I thought to myself.  I had my suspicions, but now I know for certain...

Once the four of us were on the street again, and Zehan had put his new staff in a sheathe on his back that I hadn't even noticed was there, I turned to the zebra and made a 'go on' gesture with my hands.  "Bring us as close to the scene of the crime as we can get, maybe we'll find a trail they overlooked," I told the striped equine life-form.

The zebra blinked a few times, but nodded, apparently not having a rhyme for this, before he began to lead us towards the large, imposing palace in the distance...





So hey, fun fact.  Gryphons are apparently more security-conscious than you might think.

There was a nice, for-show, iron fence around the castle.  Followed by an old, stone wall from, presumably, time immemorial.  And the castle itself had yet another wall around it, big and thick and, again, made of stone, only this one was either newer or more well-maintained.

Apparently, when gryphons put in the effort to make a castle for their ruling body, they damn well want to keep landborn threats out.  It didn't take a genius to connect the dots as to which landborn things they considered threats.

Especially when two griffons in guard uniforms flew down out of the sky in front of us and crossed their halberds, denying us any further access to the castle.  When I moved around them, they let me by with nary a glance.  But when the others tried, the griffons employed a variety of blocking tactics.

Yeah, totally not racist at all.  I looked at my adventuring party and sighed.  "Well, I'll go ahead and see what I can see, guys.  But I promise to come back and get you once I've found something at least."

Copper and Justice nodded, while Zehan merely drew his staff and held it with one end in the dirt, giving the guards the same stink-eye they were giving him.  With the staring contest of the century underway, I walked closer to the castle.  I actually managed to get past the first wall, and the second, before I acquired my own, personal guard-block.  Trying to get around him earned me the same reaction from the others that were blocking my allies, and I sighed.

"Well," I said to the stoic griffon.  "At least you're taking your job seriously."

The griffon said nothing.

"Look," I said, holding up my empty hands to show how unwilling to resort to violence I was.  "I'm here to try and help.  Believe it or not, I have a small interest in these affairs being wrapped up with all parties getting what they want."

The griffon still said nothing, though he did at least cock his head at me out of, I presume, curiosity.

"Could you help me see where the abduction took place?" I pleaded.  "Anything I can do is better than nothing."

The griffon gave off a short nod, so short you could almost miss it, before he began walking in one direction.  I followed after, being careful not to try and get around him, before we stood outside a large tower that had a smashed window.

"Thank you," I told him, before beginning to comb the area with my eyes.  I walked from one side of the tower to another, taking a good twenty minutes before I found the one thing I needed.

What looked like a disturbance in the grass, along with a variety of footprints in the dirt.  The trail indicated that something had...landed, or at the very least, impacted the ground nearby, before it dragged along the ground, facing a new heading, and then it was gone again.

Recalling the direction the sun had risen, I saw this clue ended up pointing me west.  I had no idea what was west, beyond, hopefully, our missing princess, but I now had a heading, which was better than before.  "My thanks," I told the guard before I turned around, going to retrieve my allies.  "Hopefully, I'll be back with good news," I called over my shoulder.

...If I had known, I would have never made that promise.





"C'mon," I said to the threesome as I rejoined them.  "I got us a heading."

"Oh good," Copper said as she finally looked at me instead of the guards.  "Zehan and the gruesome twosome have been staring for way too long."

At that moment, one of the griffons blinked, and Zehan smiled before closing his own eyes.  Presumably to hide the effects of healing the dehydration rapidly.

Justice beeped once before asking his question.  "What is our heading?"

"Not in front of others," I said, before I began to lead them around the palace, seeing that we wouldn't be able to make any progress as long as they were intent on blocking us.  I had a plan too.  We'd head north first, then once we lost sight of them, go west.  We'd walk until we left the city if we had to, in order to lose them.

I was intent that we would complete our first quest, without outside forces intervening if at all possible.  Others claiming credit for our work would remove the underlying message.  That of all of us getting along and accomplishing what others thought impossible, despite what they thought.

In fact, we did end up leaving the city, and then walking a good way down the road north, before we could safely turn south-west and begin a trek that way.  "Okay," I finally told my companions.  "The mark I found outside the castle indicated that whatever it was, ended up going west once it got out of the castle.  It was a big mark too.  Easily griffon-sized.  I'll be surprised if we end up finding the princess before they do, it was so obvious."

"Ah," Zehan said with a nod.  "And once we do find the princess, we bring her back without any of the guard knowing which way we went, thus earning us all the credit.  And maybe, finally, making them see hooved quadrupeds in a better light."

Justice beeped.  "Records indicate that of the settlements of this time, the first one we will likely run across if we head west of the capitol is...Truceburg.  A city where ponies and griffons live in harmony.  And indeed, the first of its kind ever since the accord with Princess Celestia."

Hmm, I thought to myself as we trudged onwards through the wilderness.  Wasn't there a city named like that back in Chrono Trigger?...I thought there was...