Seared

by nonamed

Prologue

The golden rays of Celestia’s sun beat down on the sun-baked sand of the San Palomino Desert. Each drop of golden sunshine, ordinarily akin to a blessing from the sun goddess herself, was now another heated dagger piercing into Lotus’ shimmering green coat. Although her head covering abated its intensity, a lack of any meaningful respite from each and every brutal stab of light caused her to grow extremely weary.

Her mission was simple enough: cross this Celestia forsaken desert to Las Pegasus, dropping off an important item: a golden amulet, housing a gem that was black as night. Some referred to the stone it was etched from as “The Soul Of The Night” or “Luna’s Heart.” One name, however, struck Lotus as a perfect fit: “The Seared Stone.”

Fabled to be have once been a part of the horde of the famously dangerous dragon Fitalazaar, the stone was rumored to possess powers of a dark nature, possibly darker than even the magic of the famed King Sombra. Other, more fanciful rumors suggested it to be a physical fragment of the power used to banish Princess Luna - some of her magical energy encapsulated into a soul fragment.

Whatever power or legacy the stone did or did not possess, however, was but a trifle to an earth pony like Lotus - her interest lied solely in how many bits she could extract from her buyer. She wasn't a treasure hunter by trade - rather, she started as an antiquities salespony. She soon found, however, that it was rare gems and artifacts that truly turned a profit. It didn't take long for her to shut down her store and begin researching and traveling to famed locations all across the surface of Equus.

She wasn't a desert pony by trade, either. In fact, this particular trip to San Palomino was her first - and hopefully, she continually thought, her last. Most of her treasure seeking jobs involved scouring areas like the Everfree Forest or some location near the outskirts of Ponyville, so this new setting was definitely a change of pace.

The desert began to taper off as a sun bleached Las Pegasus came into full view. The buildings were mostly wood, adorned with worn-down paint jobs of various muted colors, eroded by years of numerous sandstorms. The ground had been packed down through the center of the town to take the form of something remotely resembling a street, but the sun-parched clay wasn't able to take a solid form without cracking en masse. She casually trotted through the town, stopping and entering a rust-colored building with a sign hanging over the entrance that read:

Lotus had been told by several sources (mostly those dealing in the same type of inventory) that this shop - “the one with that stupid sign” - was a good place to sell most black-market goods. The store owner was an old unicorn who went by the name “Solstice.” He was fairly heavy-set for his age, with an aged muzzle and a mustache gracing his tawny snout. He had agreed to pay 5,000 bits for the amulet - more than Lotus had ever received for a job.

As Lotus opened the door, a bell mounted on top of it gave a jingle. Solstice wore a jolly smile, attending to various notebooks and mechanical adding machines. “Welcome to Artifacts, Antiquities, and Ar-” He stopped as he looked up and saw Lotus staring him down. His smile dropped to a neutral expression. “Ah, Lotus. Here with the amulet?” He asked, eyeing her saddlebags.

She nodded. “I assume you’re sticking to our agreement?” She asked, rifling through her bags to find the tissue paper cradle holding the amulet.

“Well...” Solstice trailed off, with one brown hoof gently scuffing the creaky wooden floor.

Lotus looked up from her things to stare daggers into the old colt. “What do you mean well? We had a fucking deal!”

“Yes, but...” Solstice rubbed the back of his neck with one of his front hooves. He was beginning to sweat, with beads of it dripping down his leathery muzzle.

“But what!?” Lotus hopped her front hooves onto the counter, attempting to make herself look threatening.

“But...It’s been difficult to find a buyer myself! No collector in their right mind would dare touch a stone as cursed as that one!” Solstice shook his head.

“What makes you so different?”

“I never said I was in my right mind, did I?” Solstice chuckled lightly to himself, before a glare from an angry Lotus prompted him to nervously clear his throat.

Lotus shook her head. “Whatever. Are you gonna pay me the agreed price, or what?”

“Or what. I think I need to trim it down a little.”

“Define trim.”

Solstice’s face crumpled as he looked down at his hooves, hesitant to answer.

Lotus took her own hooves off the counter, and buckled her saddlebags with her muzzle. “Tell me how much you’re knocking off the fucking price, or I’m leaving and finding another buyer myself.”

Solstice looked up, his eyes bugging out of his sockets. “Only half a thousand bits!”

“ONLY?” Lotus screamed. “You think that’s Celestia damned pocket change?”

“I-I admit, it’s not an attractive offer...” Solstice stutters, more sweat pouring down his mane and snout.

Lotus glared at him. “Not selling your case any better, you old colt. Give me one solid reason why I should be payed half a thousand bits less for this super...voodoo...” Lotus made vague swirling hoof gestures. “...amulet...thing. Give me one reason why I should sell it to your disingenuous plot.”

“I-I-I...” Solstice began.

Lotus laughed as she turned around and headed towards the exit. “That’s what I thought. You’ve lost this sale.”

“No, please! I’ll knock off only a quarter thousand off the price! I’ll give you store credit! Anything, please! Just let me buy the amulet!” Solstice stretched a desperate hoof out towards her.

Lotus paused in her departure. “How pitiful.” she sighed, brushing a hoof through her mane.

“W-what?”

“You want this amulet so bad you’re willing to pay nearly 5,000 bits for it, and yet for some unknowable reason you can’t even describe why you want it. I know why I traveled through unbearable desert heat to retrieve and sell it - money. I love money.” She was shaking now, her whole body in the throes of her lost temper. “What’s your motivation, Solstice? Tell me why I’m wasting my time with you!”

“U-uh...” He stuttered, looking back down towards his hooves.

Lotus’ anger cooled after a few seconds, returning to pity. “Celestia, you’re sad. No integrity and no motivation.” She shook her head as she exited the store, returning to the crowded, sun bleached street. She shook out her dark blue mane, covered in dust and grime from her trek through the desert, attempting to comb out a bit of the refuse. She sighed softly as the tousled strands of hair fell gently onto her delicate shoulders, feeling and looking no better than before. “It’s gonna take so much water to get this shit out of my hair,” she sighed, her eyes patrolling the busy streets. She decided to leisurely stroll through the town, in a vain attempt to enjoy what little interested he while she was there. She figured she’d head out the next day for Canterlot, with the hope of finding a seller with a little more commitment to his trade.

First on her short list of attractions was the local lending library - although Lotus did a lot of research in such locations, she was also an (albeit closeted) bookworm. A larger building than most, with three floors of material, the structure was a rare sight for the town, with its entire structure having been sculpted from red granite instead of being constructed using wood. This made it practically invincible to the sandblasting - any amount of it tossed against the stone walls just polished them further.

She scaled a short flight of granite stairs and entered into a stuffy library foyer. Near the door was a directory sign - showing a list of all the sections and their locations on the floorplan. She used her hoof to run down the list. “A-1, A-2, A-3...” she droned, looking for a section full of historical fiction. “Ah, B-4!” Her eyes lit up as she turned towards the spiral staircase near the far-left corner of the cramped foyer.

On the second floor of the library, shelves covered practically every inch of the blue carpeted floor, each one constructed out of solid oak, magically reinforced by various material wards and strength runes. This gave each and every one of them an almost off-worldly glow, as if they were alive. The books that lined them were mostly fiction - variously coloured spines with illustrious, intriguing, and downright strange titles. Ersallius: Book Five, Moondust, Fall To Equus...” Lotus read off the names in the new arrivals section. She always loved picking up the newest books possible, as it was a good way to keep up with any of the many fiction series published by numerous authors. Although Fall To Equus looked enticing, she was holding out hope for the newest Chronicles of Celestia novel.

Lotus continued to peruse the multitude of stories on the shelves for several minutes, but nothing relating to CoC could be found, much to her dismay. Defeated, she grabbed Fall To Equus and sat on a wooden bench near a window overlooking part of the town. As she looked outside, she noticed just how beautiful the rustic town was: the golden sun gently caressed the cracked clay ground and worn wooden buildings, casting elegant shadows in eerie shapes. “In all honesty,” she thought to herself, “I don’t really mind this place. If it wasn’t for all that Celestia damned sand...” She ran her hooves through her mane again, desperately combing out various particulate matter from her locks.

She turned back to her saddlebags, and unbuckled one of them. “And what about this amulet?” She thought, pulling out the tissue paper. “Who on Equus will buy this thing? ‘Finding another buyer’ was a bluffing technique, and my stupid temper wrote a check my plot can’t cash. Even if I trekked all the way to Canterlot, it’s still impossibly unlikely that I’ll ever have an informed buyer willing to pay the amount that Solstice ‘agreed’ on.” She laid her muzzle on the table and let out a hearty sigh. “Maybe it’s for the best? This stupid amulet does look pretty cool.” Lotus removed it from the paper cradle as she looked at the gem in the sunlight. The stone almost seemed to absorb the light that struck it, giving it a strangely matte finish for something so incredibly smooth.

Lotus hugged the amulet close to her. “Maybe I’ll keep it. Money be damned.”