*Click*
The snap of the light switch filled the dark basement. A moment of silence and darkness followed as the electric current traveled through the now completed circuit, warming the filaments of the overhead bulbs. One by one they flickered to life, illuminating the spacious workshop below. The stairs creaked softly as their owner descended, each sound corresponding to his hoof touching the next step. Finally he reached the landing, and he paused as he stared at all the equipment in front of him from the shadows. A tool bench, each instrument organized from left to right by frequency of use and importance. Wrenches, screwdrivers, nutdrivers, calipers, drafting scales, a solder gun, and many others were all stowed either in drawers or on hooks, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. A few feet to the right was a tall cage-like device. Its base was a wide dull grey circular platform, with a smaller similarly shaped ring of metal hanging overhead by an arched spine of brass. Six brass arches, three on each side, equidistant and exactly perpendicular to each other, jutted out of the machine’s spine like ribs, with there being enough room for somepony to step into the device if they chose to. The control box to the device, with its large black dial and several smaller buttons, hung on the wall by its cable on a hook. On the farthest side of the basement from the stallion was a walk-in fume box, with a small window through which one could see the process of chemical reactions take place. To the left on the wall was a large cupboard, each stocked with several milliliters of just about every chemical imaginable.
The old stallion mused that he had just about every means in the world to create something, anything worth his time and value. Stepping into the light, the earth pony’s square shaped glasses reflected their rays momentarily before he walked past the focal point, and his steely grey eyes appeared behind his lenses. His coat, normally a color similar to dark saw dust, blended with the hue of the bulbs projecting down on him. His Cutie Mark, an Erlenmeyer flask full of green liquid overlaying a gear with four radial arms, was slightly faded in color. There was no doubt of course that his Mark had aged with him; as his younger years left him, so too had the more vibrant aspects faded. There was, however, another reason entirely. He had no idea what he was going to do as he opened a drawer, removed a thin roll of drafting paper, and placed it on the workbench, spreading it open with his hooves. He took his drafting pencil in his mouth, and waited, the graphite posed. The minutes passed painfully slow as the inspiration he was looking for stubbornly refused to come. No matter. Perhaps he’d picked the wrong medium: chemical, not mechanical. Scrolling through his photographic memory he took stock of his many vials. Organic, synthetic, acids, bases, reactants, solutions, precipitates. Nothing stuck out to him. Nothing unique caught his mind’s eye. Finally with a dejected exclamation and a sigh, he turned away from the workbench in defeat. “Useless,” he muttered to himself as he trudged back up the stairs, and the lights went out behind him.
Most ponies would find a reason to stay at home a nice proposition. The old stallion could understand the reasons behind such a desire of others, even if he paradoxically didn't understand it at all himself. He walked from the basement door back down the hallway he had come from not but a few minutes before. Walking without seeing, he silently passed through a spacious room, which the windows in the rafters might have helped to make a bright and jovial place under different circumstances. The skies however were overcast in this region a majority of the time, and the furniture scattered throughout the room was covered with white linen shrouds to hold the gathering dust away. No one but the stallion had lived in the house for a very long time. To be fair, he hadn't lived there in a very long time either. While this was his ancestral home, and while his town, the dreary hamlet of Pferdshire, lay just outside its walls, they were not truly his. There was only one place in the world he could call both his city and his home: Canterlot.
Canterlot. Its shining spires. Its wonderful gilded towers.
He sighed to himself again: it was the home he could never return to, not while his sentence was still in effect.
Seemingly in response to his thoughts, a golden flash appeared before his face, soaking the entire foyer he stood in with rays of light that accentuated the colors that were at the moment dull and dim. A scroll tumbled out of the ether, landing with a bounce on the tile floor in front of him. The old stallion glanced down at the roll of parchment. He had a very good guess of who had sent it merely by the color of the magic, but the wax seal keeping the letter closed confirmed his thoughts: a sun with revolving arms of orange light. It was her.
Picking up the letter with his mouth, he then walked over to a small round table near the front door. After breaking open the seal, he carefully spread the letter open wide and skimmed its contents.
I hope you are well, my former student…I am doing everything in my power to convince Luna to reverse your exile…her position in the balance of power is still legally young, and I can’t just override her authority…Please try to understand...Cadence has just announced her engagement to Shining Armor.
Here he had to stop and reread the last sentence for a moment. He continued on.
Cadence has just announced her engagement to Shining Armor…I could at least be able to offer a 48 hour reprieve for the wedding if you chose to come and support her…I’m sorry things have to be this way for now. Send your reply by post as soon as possible. It will reach my hooves eventually.
Princess Celestia, Guardian of all Equinity, co-ruler of Equestria.
The old stallion drew away from the letter as he considered all the ramifications it contained. Cadence was getting married. There was a chance he could be able to return, not for just two days, but perhaps altogether if Celestia was able to convince her sister-
Then he remembered why it was he had been exiled in the first place, and his attitude became even more somber than it had been before. For what he had done, for the total devastation he had almost wrought, there was no redemption. Even if legally he could be redeemed, his career was already over: any return would only see him second-guessed by everypony and everyone around him. Besides, it was time for fresher, younger shoulders to take up the reins. At least out in the country he couldn’t hear the half-whispers or the judgments. In the end, though, if he could somehow go back to Canterlot, all opinions about him made moot, tabula rasa, he could never forgive himself for what he had done.
So unprofessional. So sloppy.
Banishing the thought from his mind, something else occurred to him: he should have made more immediate note of it, but he was running low on screws.
Finally, an objective: something to distract himself from the monotonous lack of task or inspiration. Even if it was only for an hour, it would at least mean he could escape his manor and mausoleum.
After he had prepared himself with a small pouch of bits, he trotted slowly over to the front door and swung it open. A sharp gust of November wind burst into the house, causing the letter he had received to fly into the air before once again falling to the floor with a bounce. Glancing back to look at it for a moment, he shrugged a little: he could pick it up later.
Closing his front door behind him, the old stallion looked at the landscape around him. The sky was full of clouds that looked like they were boiling over. The mountains to the north seemed to draw a few clouds away from their journey towards the east, making them swirl in between the peaks, cut off from their fellows. Down the path that led to his front gate, and consequently down the hill the manor sat on, lay the outskirts of Pferdshire, all two-dozen or so buildings of it. As he walked to his front gate, he got lost in thinking about what type of screws he needed.
Tapping screws. Five sixteenths of an inch. Fifty per bit. Better make it five sets of fifty: don’t want to run out any time soon.
A scream pealed across the landscape, shattering all previous train of the thought the earth pony had had. It had come from over the moors behind the manor. Life and purpose entered into him a second after, and he surged from a plodding trot into a furious gallop as he tore around the house towards the back gate. His hooves almost tore up the grass as he pounded across the lawn with heavy hooffalls.
Something was happening out there.
Somepony could be in danger.
Thank Celestia, something that finally merited his attention.
Try as she might, she couldn't seem to get away from them. They were always on her hooves, but never where she could see them. The unicorn mare, cerulean coat covered in dirt and with chipped hooves, ran through a labyrinth of sloping earth and long grass, while just behind her three trails of upturned earth gave chase. Panting in terror, she turned back to look at just how far away her pursuers were when a large paw burst out of the ground and tried to grab at her back hooves. She yanked her hooves up and screamed out in fright, then began to gallop even harder.
A fork appeared in her path, the left looping back around, and the other path abruptly turning to the right. She barreled down the right fork without a second thought. The trails of tilled soil turned after her, not giving her even a foot of distance. After she turned to check on their progress, she looked forward again to find the last thing she could have possibly wanted: a rocky, boxed in dead end. The adrenaline in her system seemed to all but drain away with her hope of escape, and she slowed to a stop as she approached the wall looming above her.
She heard the three distinct sounds of her pursuers erupting up above the ground, shaking themselves off and snorting for fresh air, and she whimpered a little to herself. As she turned to face them, the three Diamond Dogs blinked their eyes rapidly, and sniffed the air.
“S-Stand back,” the mare try to say with bluster, but it fell utterly flat as her fear betrayed her, “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with?”
The smaller two of the three looked up to the pack leader, and then the three of them chuckled stupidly.
“Yes, we know who you are,” the smallest one said, “You unicorn. You find gems, make us rich.”
“Not just any unicorn,” she tried to continue with her boast, “For I am the Great and Powerful Trixie! Leave me in peace now, and I may yet spare you a gruesome fate!”
The three dogs looked at each other again, and another round of guffawing ensued. “You think we stupid?” the ringleader asked, “Diamond Dogs dumb.” He then pointed at her with his right paw, “You came to us. We dumb. You stupid!”
“Leave me be, or your doom is assured!” she tried to bellow.
The dogs slowly began to approach her, a glint of evil in their eyes.
“Wait,” she yelled as she was forced to push her back up against the pit wall, “If you let me go, I will shower you with the riches you want! I can make it fall from the sky!”
“We no think so,” the third, tall, lankiest dog declared.
Suddenly, something small hit the top of his exceedingly large brow and slid off to the ground in front of him. All four of them stared down at the object: it was a solitary golden bit.
The lanky tall dog picked it up between his claws and bit into it suspiciously. Suddenly his pupils dilated, and he looked giddily to his peers, “This real gold!”
Trixie just gawked at the humble bit of currency in the dog’s paw.
The smallest dog shook his paw at her, “Do it again!”
Miraculously, a second bit fell from the sky directly onto his awaiting scalp. The little dog happily swiped it from off his head and bit onto the edge to confirm its authenticity, and he giggled as he looked to his equally blessed compatriot.
The ringleader’s eyes narrowed, and he growled, “Hang on. Her horn no glow.”
Trixie, having been internally thanking whatever lucky star she had been born under, realized that her fifteen extra seconds of freedom had just been used up, and that she hadn't tried the least bit to escape. The two other dogs, abruptly stopped staring at their magically appearing treasure, and then looked to their leader mystified.
“Then who was gold?” the lanky dog ask in wonder.
Abruptly he was crushed from above as a large brown mass caused him to crumble to the ground.
“Well damn,” the old earth pony exclaimed as he sprang off the crumpled unconscious mess of a dog he had just used as a landing pad. Leaping over the ringleader’s head, he tackled the smaller dog to the ground and slammed his forehoof into his jaw, then slammed the dog’s head into the ground. As he got up and brushed himself off, he scoffed to himself, “I suppose we know now that even stupidity has its limits.”
The ringleader gazed in surprise at how quickly this earth pony had incapacitated his fellows. The stallion then stood on his hindlegs, moved into some sort of fighting stance and brought his forehooves up, with his right hoof leading and his left close to his chest. The dog could see plain as day that his opponent was old, but what he could also see was that his opponent was shaking slightly from the exertion of taking out his mates. The mud pony didn't have much fight left in him for long.
The ringleader smiled, flashed his canines, and charged his enemy, loping forward using his large gorilla-like arms to propel himself forward.
The old stallion glanced towards the unicorn for a split second, then returned his gaze to his charging opponent, “When I give you the signal, blind him.”
“What?” she stammered, but he didn't hear her over the howling war cry of the dog barreling down on him. The dog leapt up into the air, lunging towards him. It was only at the last minute that he dove to the right out of the way. Realizing his mistake, the ringleader hit the ground and immediately tried to stop himself before he hit the stony wall filling his vision. The stallion landed on his front hooves just as he had planned, cocked his backlegs while they were still in the air, and released them with a powerful buck. The blow impacted right into the dogs ribs, and he whimpered in surprise and pain as it hurled him off balance. Wasting no time, the earth pony leapt on to his dazed enemy’s back, and yanked his enemy’s head up, “NOW!”
The unicorn huddled back against the rock wall behind her, paralyzed with fear, and didn't give off so much as spark of light.
“Oh horseapples,” the old stallion spat as the dog beneath him began to recover. Injured and enraged, the ringleader stood up, the earth pony hanging on by his neck, and he began to try and rip him off. The stallion kept a loose enough grip that he was able to mostly maneuver around the dog’s claws, but he still managed to get a few glancing gashes on his back. Doing his best to ignore the pain, he tried to reach around the dog’s neck to put him into an improvised sleeper hold. It wasn't working.
Somehow their struggle had brought them closer to the unicorn, who could only look up in abject terror. The dog finally stepped within swiping distance of the mare, and he roared in frustration as he tried once again unsuccessfully to pluck the pony from his back. This was enough to send her over the edge. Shrieking in fear, she released an enormous burst of magenta light. Since no one had been expecting the magical outburst, everyone, including the unicorn, was blinded by the great flash of energy.
The ringleader was finally able to reach around and toss the stallion off his back in spite of his blindness, leaving the pony to tumble gracelessly over the trails of upturned earth left in the dogs’ wake. Unable to banish the flashed image of light from his retinas, the stallion closed his eyes. As he righted himself, he perked his ears up, straining them to listen for every sound possible. To his left he heard soft whining, and the sound of rough skin scraping across fur. Then he heard the sniffing. At first it was muffled slightly as the dog probed the air for his scent. Then the sound became clearer, and the sniffing more incessant. Too little too late did the stallion realize that the ringleader had everything going in his favor. He was old, injured, and blinded, and the dog was used to being in environments with little to no light, meaning its hearing and smell were honed to crystal clarity.
I’m a damned fool, he thought to himself, but then another thought crossed his mind. Wagering his position was already compromised by his scent, the old stallion yelled to the unicorn mare, “I need fireworks!”
He heard the Diamond Dog snarl, and he heard his lumbering pace as he approached.
“Aim the fireworks towards the sound of my voice,” he called out.
There was no response, only the bounding approach of his enemy.
“Trixie,” he roared out authoritatively, “Give me fireworks now or I will die!”
He could practically feel the dog’s breath on his muzzle. He heard his war cry. As he leapt out of the dog’s path of attack, he heard a fast approaching screech and whine, and he covered his ears as he fell to the ground.
A dull explosion like a mortar went off not a few feet away with a loud but muffled ‘whump’. When he was sure it was safe, he uncovered his ears; the ringleader was howling himself deaf. On a whim, the old stallion opened his eyes, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the majority of the blindness had already faded, though he was still seeing sporadic after-images every time he blinked. Wincing against the pain from the muscles in his back, he trotted away from the solitary Diamond dog, past his still unconscious brethren, and towards the unicorn mare. She was breathing raggedly from the stress and fear that was still coursing through her, and her horn remained pointed at the howling dog.
“He’s not going anywhere for a while,” the earth pony declared as he approached her, “but he will retaliate as soon as his senses return to him.”
Trixie slowly looked up towards him, and her breathing began to even out.
“We’re defenseless here, but my house is nearby,” he continued, “I suggest that we retreat there in the meantime.”
After a few seconds of just looking at the older stallion, she nodded her head slowly. “Alright,” she exclaimed, then after a pause and a clearing of her throat, she responded more confidently, “If you insist.”