The Fading World

by Neon Czolgosz

Heirloom

Bluestone Manor had three dining rooms: the Grand Hall, with space for six long tables, a buffet, and seating for three-hundred ponies, the cozier Canterhorn Room, with a mere fifty-pony seating capacity, and the downright cramped ‘War Room.’ with a tiny twelve-pony roundtable. The Grand Hall saw use once a year at Hearth’s Warming and a few times every decade for a wedding, the ‘War Room’ saw the occasional belligerent family dinner when Polaris’s relatives deigned to visit, and the Canterhorn Room had not seen use in years.

Instead of the actual dining rooms, Polaris and his coterie ate most of their meals in one of the manor’s many game rooms, one chosen for its equidistance between his chambers and the kitchens. Meals were eaten on a card table, a disused billiards table was covered in mounds of documents, the shelves of games and manuals had been cleared and filled with arcane tomes and notebooks, and particularly important documents were pinned to the walls with playing darts.

Presently, Rarity sat at the card table, drinking tea and looking over hornwritten notes. Lists of names and locations and pertinent details of the Canterlot criminal element. The Grail War had the explicit cooperation of the Royal Guard, but there were a great many places in this city outside of their reach. It fell to Rarity to pass along needed warnings to certain ponies, both to ensure the safety of the masses and to avoid the involvement of those best left uninvolved.

Polaris Blueblood burst into the room with such force that the door slammed against the wall, and several darts fell to the floor.

“Clear the table,” he said, breathlessly. “We have it!”

Rarity filed away her papers and the duke placed a package in their place. It came unwrapped in a frenzy of paper, cardboard and packing straw.

Blueblood held in his magic a small, X-shaped piece of metal, barely the size of a drink coaster. The metal was a lighter shade than silver, the four spokes were perfectly cylindrical and flat at the end, and a diamond the size of a peanut lay in the very middle.

“A late Hearth Warming’s present from Miss Yearling...” said Blueblood, reverently.

“She really found it,” whispered Rarity. “The Platinum Razor...”

Blueblood levitated the cross a safe distance away from them, and focused. A thin, barely-visible blue blur extended from one of the spokes. He manipulated his magic, and the blur lengthened and shrunk. He experimented, and the blur disappeared entirely before reappearing out of one of the other spokes, and then from several spokes at once.

He scanned the room and selected a crystal goblet from the drinks cabinet. He placed the goblet on one corner of the billiards table, extended a beam from the cross, and let it swim across the goblet in two deft strokes. He trotted to the billiards table, and gave one end a solid thump with his hoof.

The goblet collapsed into three perfectly-cut sections.

Blueblood turned to Rarity, and grinned. “They don’t make them like this any more.”

Rarity laughed. “May I?”

He nodded and passed her the cross. She took out a jewelers loupe and began to examine it in great detail. “The Platinum Razor... it’s marvellous. Why, it must be thousands of years old and it’s in perfect condition. Not simply untarnished, but not even nicked or dented! I don’t even recognise the enchantments... cuneiform engraving, not visible in normal light, three consecutive bands of script in a triple helix, one visible in ultraviolet, another in spectrarine, and the third only visible in a combination of both. I can’t even begin to imagine how such a thing would work!”

It was more than a powerful magical artifact. It was a catalyst, an object with a strong connection to a hero of legend. It would allow the hero to be summoned, and the stronger the connection between hero and catalyst, the easier the summoning would be.

“The personal hornblade of Prince Platinum III, third ruler of Equestria and fencer extraordinaire,” said Blueblood. “The quality of the magic is to be expected. He was known as the Patron Prince for the lavish sums he spent on scholarship, arts and sciences. He surrounded himself with the most powerful mages of his day and followed their studies with some interest. Considering the sheer amount of knowledge lost over the centuries, this blade is possibly the finest of its kind in existence. And, given that Prince Platinum was a very distant ancestor of mine, something of a family heirloom to boot...”

A sly look crossed Rarity’s face. “Something of a family resemblance too, if the busts are to be believed.”

“There is that, yes.”

“Do you think he’ll go along with your plan?”

Blueblood nodded carefully. “He understands honor, and he was quite the devious bastard when it benefitted his line and his country. Even if it means a slight loss of personal glory for him, he will know my plight. With the training and artifacts of my line at my disposal, I shall show the other Masters the true legacy of House Blueblood. Even if I do not win the Grail, I will show them true honor, and that there is power in Canterlot and its citizens undreamed of in their philosophies.”

Rarity laughed, and a smile crossed her face in spite of herself. “Oh, Blueblood. Only you could conceive a harebrained scheme like this, and only you could convince me to go along with it.”

Blueblood shrugged. “I still have some charms.”

“I don’t know who’s madder,” said Rarity, shaking her head, “you for fighting this war, or Fancy Pants for supervising the whole thing.”

“I’m the mad one,” said Blueblood. “Fancy Pant’s role here is perfectly sane, even if he’s neurotic about mustache wax and cocktail garnishes.”

“He’s not ‘neurotic,’ he’s dreadfully allergic to olives, that’s hardly the same.”

“I’ll take your word for it and avoid serving any martinis in his presence. In any case, he’s not mad, he’s simply in a bind.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. He’s mad to serve as the adjudicator for the sheer danger it puts him in,” said Blueblood, “but he’d be mad not to adjudicate because of the sheer danger of letting the Grail War run amok. He may not be able to control the war, but he can at least direct it.”

“Hmm. Well, be glad I remember to send him Hearth Warmings and birthday gifts from you,” said Rarity, “since he is arranging sanctuary for defeated Masters.”

“How is he going about that, exactly?” asked Blueblood, raising a brow. “I never saw him as the sort to have a secret base full of mercenaries.”

Rarity put on her reading glasses, and pulled out a set of her notes from under the table. “If my sources are correct, he’s working through trusted members of the Royal Guard. I don’t have the exact numbers, but they should have two to three companies of guardponies and their warlock auxiliaries at their disposal. Not a force that could end the Grail War, at least not with the involvement of the Canterlot Academy, but powerful enough that antagonising them would be unwise,” she said. She flicked through the pages until she saw something else of note. “The diplomatic lodgings at the Watchtower have been booked out for the next several months. I assume that’s where Fancy Pants will have any defeated Masters tucked away.”

“Excellent. If I’m lucky, that’s where I’ll end up.”

Rarity laughed again and smiled, but the smile never quite reached her eyes. “No, Blueblood, you will not. You’ll get to the stage where you have proven your honor and won more than you dared to hope for, where you should fall back and let your Servant take the blow, and then? Oh, you’ll do something brave and daring and reckless and wonderful,” she said, “and it will be curtains."

Blueblood laughed, and swallowed. “Yes, I suppose I will.”

Rarity looked away, and when she looked back she said in a very quiet voice, “I swore to see this through. I have known from the beginning what the reality was, and what the likely outcome will be.” She swallowed, as if choking something back. “Please do not think that makes it any easier for me.”

And with that, she walked out of the room.

Comments

[dragonjek]

5452061 It would be a good idea (although I'm biased in that I quite like learning about those facts that just can't be naturally explained in-story), and loyal to the Fate end of the source material. I'm pretty certain that somewhere around half of what we know about the Nasuverse comes from Type Moon's various interviews and side materials.

[ZealousChristian24]

Well, it appears Polaris is shooting to get Saber, as Sunset and Twilight aim for Archer and Caster. Assuming they actually get the right Class, that leaves Berserker, Lancer, Assassin, and Rider.

I'm torn. While I like Polaris, and want him to succeed in his goals, I don't really want him to win. I mean, he and Applejack mean well, but they're just a bit shortsighted, comparatively speaking. Canterlot won't collapse this winter? The Apple family can produce enough food for the town not to die this generation? I can understand why they think such victories would be worth killing for, and why they would think this is all they could hope for. But Sunset and Twilight are the only ones of the four we've seen so far who can offer a way to make things better for everyone.

[horizon]

5454866
I'm holding out hope that we'll see the My Little Pony half of the crossover kick into high gear as Twilight and the other members of the Mane Six start meeting, and start cross-weaving the "Friendship is Magic" premise into the "World is Screwed" one.

(It's got plenty of potential either way, so I won't be crushed if it hews closer to the source crossover, but there's just something fundamentally awesome about the sincerity of MLP's core premise.)

[Neon Czolgosz]

5454866

Actually, Applejack has a very similar goal to Twilight and Sunset: both of them want to stop the slow drain of life that's happening to Equestria, they just have two different ways of going about it. Applejack seeks to heal the land so it can sustain everything, and Sunset seeks to sustain the heavens so they can sustain everything.

I'll also note that Twilight is kinda just folllowing orders out of lack of anything better to do...

[Avid Reader]

Commence read.

Death flag on the field. One of many, if crossover stands true.

Interesting weapon, that of Prince Platinum.