9| A Town Called Mercy
After I raised the moon, I was greeted by one of Celestia’s guards outside my door as I went for breakfast. I was taken to the conference room where a breakfast spread had already been laid out. Midnight, Boreas, Slipstream, Firefly, and Celestia were all patiently waiting on me.
“What’s all this for?” I tiredly croaked.
“I thought it prudent we all discuss our tasks in a bit more detail than yesterday, so I gathered everypony here and sent a guard to fetch you,” Celestia said.
“And you waited until the last minute,” I muttered as I slumped into a chair. “Next time, try thinking things through. We could’ve done this yesterday.” I shot Celestia a wry look, and she returned with one of her own. Eventually, my expression evened out during our stare-off as the awkward silence went far beyond uncomfortable.
“I’m waiting on you to start this, Celestia,” I said flatly.
Celestia cleared her throat to get everyone’s attention, then said that she wanted Atlas, the castle’s head cartographer, to fly out to the chasm with Slipstream while Boreas reconned the area. I questioned why Atlas wasn’t with us, and it was Celestia’s decision to keep him in the dark while we discussed the matter at hand. He showed up momentarily with his equipment, and was then informed that the extra security was because I’d decided to visit the town for the day.
With all our duties assigned, Celestia teleported Boreas, Slipstream, and Atlas to the general vicinity of the chasm. It wouldn’t be hard to spot a cotton candy pink mare with a rainbow mane when they met up with the rest of us later on. Once they departed, I left the regalia I normally wore with Celestia (save the peytral), and waited for Celestia to teleport Midnight, Firefly and myself roughly a kilometre outside of Mercy so that we would look like newcomers to the town, and so I had enough magic to teleport all six of us back. It was a tall order considering we were at least a hundred kilometres from the castle, but I was confident I could pull it off.
With a flash of white light, we found ourselves in the middle of a winding, dusty dirt road on the outskirts of a forest, the trees growing increasingly sparse the closer to the foothills they got. Though it was still morning, I could feel the heat of the sun beating down on me. Mercy was only partially visible in the distance thanks to the many craggy mountain ranges encircling the town and its multitude of farms.
It didn’t take us too long to arrive in town, but when we did, I was awestruck. All the buildings were crafted from thick, sturdy beams of wood like a western village during the 1800’s, but the stark contrast were all the vendors in the main street out and about selling hot, freshly cooked food. Charcoal-grilled corn, toasted nuts, as well as fruit, and vegetable kebab sticks. I was salivating at how delicious everything looked. Having such rich soil for crops, Mercy was a market hub where anyone could come from far and wide to buy food. A great deal of the castle’s food came from Mercy, and the various local farms reflected how many market stalls there were selling as many fruits and vegetables.
As we walked further down the street, I laid my eyes on an all too familiar face and beamed. Standing behind his stall chock full of corn and various sized sacks of different grains, Harvest smiled at each and every customer as they made their purchases.
Harvest dipped below the counter to replace a few sacks as I approached. When he stood back up and looked at me, he dropped what he had in his mouth and stared with abject shock, most likely because he’d never seen someone so… colourful. I was glad, too, for it was proof that my disguise was working.
“Hello there,” Harvest said, forcing an awkward smile and picking up what he’d dropped. “What can I do you for? I’ve got all kinds of grain you could want!”
“Good morning to you too,” I said with a friendly smile. “Me and my friends here are new in town and we were wondering if you could give us a few directions.” Harvest seemed to be fixated on me, but I couldn’t figure out why.
“I’d be happy to! Although, coming through the north’s forests, did you happen to pass through a patch of poison joke on your way here? I’ve uh, never seen an oddity such as you unless they’ve come that way.”
I wasn’t sure how to take that, but I just rolled with it. “That... would explain why I woke up like this a few days ago,” I said, feigning ignorance as I awkwardly rubbed the back of my head. I had no idea what poison joke even was.
“If it’s a cure you’re after, go visit Powder Keg in his shop. It has a cauldron for a sign, and he sells all manner of potions, cures, and other odds and ends. Though, I do have to warn you that his train of thought skews quite often because of his eccentricities.”
Powder Keg sounded like a kooky old grandfather. “And where might I find his shop?”
“It’s a few streets over at the north end of town. You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding it.” Harvest’s continued staring was beginning to make me uncomfortable.
“Are you alright?” I said. “You seemed to be paying me a bit more attention than normal.”
“I’m sorry for staring, it’s just… Your voice somehow reminds me of someone, but I can’t for the life of me remember who.”
Apparently, the colour of magic wasn’t the only thing the illusion couldn’t mask. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” I replied, grinning inwardly. If only you knew…
“If you say so,” Harvest said, clearing his throat to push those thoughts aside. “Before you go, can I interest you in some grain? It’s great for making fresh bread!”
Freshly baked and buttered bread was absolutely tantalising, but what was I going to do with a sack of grain I had no use for? “Thank you for your offer,” I said as I levitated out a couple silver coins. Spending Luna’s money was fun; there were ten copper coins to one silver, and likewise ten silver to one gold. “Here’s something for your troubles, though.”
“Oh my,” came Harvest’s airy response as his eyes widened at the coins. “That much would get you the largest sack I have available.”
“How big?” I pressed.
“Five kilos for two silver,” he replied.
A lot of the earth pony vendors wore bags of coins around their neck like their own cash register, so I levitated the two silver pieces into Harvest’s. “Consider it a little extra for being friendly and helpful,” I smiled.
“Well thank you very much! I must insist on giving you something in return. It doesn’t feel right taking that from you.”
I chuckled as Harvest rifled around under the counter. “How can I say no to that?”
He brought up one of the smaller sacks of grain, and I took it from his mouth with my magic. “It’s a special variety of corn I’ve been growing,” Harvest said as I opened it up to look.
My eyes shot open. Those hard, deep gold kernels were all too familiar. “Thank you very much,” I said as I cinched the sack closed and put it in my bag. To confirm my suspicions, it would go straight to the kitchen when I got back to the castle.
“I don’t think I caught your name, by the way,” Harvest said.
“Corona,” I replied. It wasn’t the name of the beer, but the aura around the sun during an eclipse.
“It’s always nice to have newcomers in Mercy, Corona. And what are your friends names?”
“This here is Midnight and Firefly,” I said, pointing to them respectively.
“Will I be seeing you three again?” Harvest asked.
“Perhaps,” I said with a small smirk. “Maybe our paths will cross again in the future.”
“Happy trails until then!”
“Until next time, Harvest,” I smiled. As we began walking to find Powder Keg’s shop, I turned to Firefly and asked; “What’s poison joke?”
“It’s a magic flower that turns you into a walking contradiction. I would’ve thought somepony like you knew about it.”
“You’d think so, but my time is mostly spent around the castle. If Powder Keg has the supposed cure, then maybe we could pick it up and some of the flowers. It’d be funny to prank Celestia,” I whispered.
Midnight almost tripped over himself. “You’re going to do what?!”
“Make her some tea with poison joke and give it to her at breakfast. It’d make court substantially more interesting if she doesn’t realise what’s going on.”
Firefly could barely contain her laughter. “Oh wow, I can’t even imagine what she’d look like!”
That actually made me think. “If poison joke turns you into a walking contradiction, what do you suppose it’ll do to me?”
Firefly rubbed her chin in thought while Midnight gave us horrified expressions. “Why would you do such a thing to a princess?” the stallion asked.
“Well for one thing, I am also a princess and Celestia’s sister, so that makes it OK. Two, I owe her for last month.”
“To answer your question,” Firefly said, “who knows? Only one way to find out for sure.”
“Princess?” Midnight asked hesitantly. “I hate to be a wet blanket, but we are here for a reason. I’d like to remind Firefly of that so we can do what we came here to do.”
“Fine,” Firefly groaned. “That said, try to use the name Corona gave Harvest earlier. I also feel obliged to keep the chatter on the down low. In a town like this, there’s bound to be ears in places you’d least expect them.”
We went silent after that, but in a good way. It put my companions back into character, and it let us keep an eye out for the mysterious stallion and Powder Keg’s shop. We kept heading north, and soon enough found what we were after: a wooden cutout painted to look like a cauldron with the handle of a spoon sticking out the top. “This has got to be it,” I said as I went to make a grab for the handle.
The door was violently blown straight off its hinges at us, but Firefly reacted in time to turn the door into a charcoal briquette. I blinked in shock, then a moment after I grasped what the hell just happened, I looked to Firefly. “What did I say about collateral damage?” I said through clenched teeth. Meanwhile, the various ponies in the street near us were rolling their eyes and fanning their noses at the acrid smoke billowing from the shop like it was a regular occurrence.
When nobody came out hacking up a lung like I expected, we all went in holding our noses. Most of the smoke had cleared out, and through the thin haze still present, I could just make out the defining features of the shop. Shelves lined the right hand wall, filled with all sorts of labeled potions, vials, and other jars with unrecognizable things in them that had been knocked around and shattered by the explosion, and other jars with bits and pieces I hoped weren’t as advertised. In the far left corner was a bubbling cauldron, the source of the smoke, and an open window next to it. There were weird tribal masks hanging askew on the walls, a shelf full of books, some of which were on the floor and smoldering, and swaying dreamcatchers strung from hooks in the ceiling. I couldn’t help but snicker at those. The entire place had a distinct voodoo vibe to it, but I couldn’t see whoever created the explosion. They were most likely on the floor and buried under the contents of the two shelves that were previously stacked next to the cauldron.
Like a zombie rising from the grave, one of the wall masks rose up from the pile of clutter, complete with pained moaning. “Success!” the mask suddenly declared. Whoever wore the mask pulled themselves from the mess, shaking off anything stuck to them in the process, then tossed the mask to one side.
Though his black-and-white striped coat was singed and covered in soot, it did little to hide the distinguishing colour scheme all the way down to the zebra’s cutie mark. I had no idea what it was supposed to be, but it looked like some tribalistic depiction of flames. Did all zebra cutie marks follow the same design scheme?
As the three of us were standing there at a complete loss for words, Keg – that’s what I later learned everyone called him by – came up and began sniffing me like a curious dog. “Hmmm… Dry, stale, earthy,” he said. “You don’t get out much, do you?” Keg then shot a disgruntled look at Firefly. “I hope you’re going to buy me a new door after you torched it. Go and talk to Knocker the next street over. Mention my name and he’ll know what happened.”
I looked down to Firefly and grinned. “Go on then. You owe the stallion that much.”
“He blew his own door off its hinges!” she protested.
“On the contrary,” Keg said, “I can usually fix it after a low-key boom such as that. You, on the other hoof, burned my door and made my mother’s cooking look palatable!”
Grumbling, Firefly reluctantly went off to pay for a new door. Meanwhile, Midnight stayed by my side as per Celestia’s instruction. “Now, what is it you want?” he asked us.
“Some poison joke and the corresponding cure to,” I said.
Without any questions, I was promptly awarded with two vials; one full of purple liquid labeled “PJC” and the other was filled with blue liquid and labeled “PJ”.
“Three silver pieces a pop,” Keg announced. “That stuff ain’t cheap or easy to make, and getting the flowers is an entirely different story.” That wasn’t a problem, so I levitated out the coins and gave them to Keg, then he carelessly tossed them onto the pile of other coins that had spilled from a large clay pot. That was a robbery waiting to happen.
“Hey Keg, you old prat! I need some more of that boom sand you made!” a voice shouted from behind us.
I turned around to see who it was, and I saw… him. Rust-red coat, green eyes, wings, but this time he wasn’t wearing a cloak; his cutie mark was a wavy square of parchment with three bold red lines and a large red ‘X’. That suddenly made everything that much more interesting. I couldn’t help but grin widely at the oh so apt crescent moon scar on his forehead from when I headbutted him. The irony was equally delicious as it was cliche.
“What the fuck are you looking at, missy?” the stallion said, eyeing me up and down. I tensed. Every fibre of my being wanted to punt him into next week for what he did, but I held my composure.
“Pardon me, I thought you were my friend returning,” I said with as much grace as I could. Firefly wasn’t anywhere near as rude as he was, just careless.
“Well you and your little boy-toy there can scram. I got shit to take care of, and I can’t do it with you two in the way.” He shoved his way past us, and we calmly exited the store as soon as we could.
“What was that guy’s problem?” Midnight grumbled once we were outside and could breathe fresh air.
“Probably got some sand in his vagina. Would probably explain why he’s so rude. By the way, Midnight, that’s the stallion that broke into my room,” I said in a hushed voice. “When he comes out, follow him to wherever he goes. Do not talk to him, do not interact with him. I only need you to find out what he’s up to.”
His eyes promptly widened to the size of dinner plates. “But Celestia said–”
“I don’t care what Celestia said. Firefly will be back in a few minutes and I’m not going to wait for her if it means losing sight of him. I’ll tell Firefly what happened when she gets back with the door.”
“Ok, fine, but I’d better not get in trouble for disobeying an order from Celestia.”
“I’ll see to it,” I affirmed.
The stallion came back out a minute later with several sacks of something hung around his neck with string like ballasts on a balloon. He glanced at me one more time and rolled his eyes before walking south, where I gave Midnight a nod to follow. Once he lit his horn, the stallion completely disappeared from sight. His magic worked on the principle of perception, like when you fancy someone and they don’t even know you exist. It’s simply altered how you view the spell’s target, so that was Midnight’s version of an invisibility spell.
A few moments after that, Firefly came back levitating a door and grunting in annoyance.
“Ha-hah!” Keg exclaimed, catching me off guard and making me jump as he stepped outside. “Can you mount it in the frame please?”
“Hey, you blew it off, not me! If your doorframe was made of metal and not flimsy wood, I could weld the hinges to the frame.”
“Firefly, just fix the door so we can get on with our day,” I groaned, pinching my brow. Firefly proceeded to angrily shove the door in its place and use a concentrated concussive blast of magic to drive the nails home, then tested the door to make sure it worked properly.
“There, can we go now?”
I laughed inwardly. “Sure. By the way, Keg, do you know where the schoolhouse is?”
“Follow the path east out of town. Should only take a couple minutes, and thanks for the new door!”
“Whatevs,” Firefly said dismissively, to which I shot her a glare.
“You don’t have to be such a hot head all the time,” I teased.
She snorted and grinned slightly. “I haven’t heard that since I was a filly. Everypony called me hot head, flame brain, etcetera, because I was always the spritely one.” She blinked and looked around us. “Where’d Midnight go?”
“The stallion that broke into my room just so happened to walk into Keg’s shop while you were fetching the door,” I said.
“With Midnight gone, looks like I can’t leave your side, then.”
I looked over my shoulder, eyes narrowing at the map stallion one more time. I was already thinking of ways to get back at him, but justifiably so. If you take the bull by the horns, expect to get gored.
“What do we do now?” Firefly asked as we ambled up the street.
“Not sure,” I said with a shrug. Then a thought occurred. “The cutie mark of the stallion we’re after is akin to a treasure map; he stole a map of an area that recently had a chasm appear, so I’m thinking if this town has a library, we might find some records that’ll help us. He also wanted some ‘boom sand’ from Powder Keg. What is that anyway?”
“The same stuff that you’d put in cannons,” Firefly said.
My eyes shot open. “You mean gunpowder?!”
“...Maybe? I haven’t heard it called that before.”
“Break-ins, maps, a chasm, and now explosives? What the hell is that stallion up to?”
“Nothing good, that’s for sure,” Firefly said. “Hopefully Midnight finds out what he’s doing, and maybe Boreas and Slipstream can clue us in as well.”
“Let’s make ourselves useful in the meantime by doing a bit of research,” I said. To my amusement, Firefly groaned and rolled her eyes.
“Books and me don’t tend to get along. You know, promancy plus paper equals cinders.”
I snorted humorously. “Use your hooves to turn the pages, then.”
After getting directions from a passer-by to the library, we were pointed towards Town Hall, an imposing building that could have passed for a large manor. Consisting of three floors, the topmost had a balcony with a set of double doors that led inside, and above that was a massive clock for all the town to see. The bottom floor had a deck with railing that spanned the entire face of the building, complete with an awning to provide shade from the harsh sun, and slumped forward in a chair next to the wide-open doors was a tan-brown stallion with crossed forelegs, a stetson pulled down over his face, and a smoldering cigar that looked as though it was just about to fall out of his mouth.
Firefly and I gingerly walked up the creaky stairs so we didn’t wake the stallion, but we momentarily found out otherwise.
“Can Ah help y’all?” he asked, tilting his head to look up at us.
I just about jumped out of my skin. “Pardon me, I thought you were sleeping,” I said, which earned me a snort as if to say yeah right.
“Ah’m the mayor of this’ere town. You can call me Granite, and Ah remember every single face that walks through them doors. Mind tellin’ me what y’doin’ here?”
“We’re travellers sightseeing around your town, and wanted to purchase some books,” I said.
“‘Fraid there’s nothing in the library that’s for sale, though you’re more than welcome to browse. Anything inparticular you’re after?”
“It’s like this,” I chuckled disarmingly. “On my way here, I passed through some poison joke and woke up looking like a filly ate some paint and threw up on me, so I was hoping there might be a book on flora and fauna to know what to look out for in the future.”
“There’s a shop over yonder that sells the antidote,” Granite said, roughly pointing in the direction of Keg’s shop.
“Been there done that. Powder Keg said it’ll take a while to work, so it’s something I can take before bed, but, I digress.”
Granite went to take a drag on his cigar, but pulled it out with an annoyed grunt to see why he couldn’t, then proffered it to us. “Got a light?”
Firefly lit Granite’s cigar with a spark of her horn. With a smile, he took a long, satisfying draw, then exhaled. “Flora and fauna are in the back-right corner next t’the window. There’s parchment and quills you can use, just leave a littl’ somethin’ so we can replace what was used if y’don’t mind. Anything else Ah can help you with?”
I wanted to ask Granite if he knew anything about the stallion we were after, but that would’ve lead to questions we couldn’t answer. “I’ll be sure to ask if anything comes to mind.” With a polite sweep of his foreleg, Granite allowed us passage inside.
After an hour and a half of reading through all the scrolls and books we could gather pertaining to the town, we couldn’t find anything that would help us which didn’t confirm what we already knew about the town. Although, I did find out that the mountain range was called Macintosh Hills (a bit of a misnomer), named after an apple farmer from out west in the desert. The town itself was founded some hundred years ago by a mare of the same name, who set up the first farmstead, and the town grew from there. I couldn’t find records of any earthquakes before the one from several years ago, leading me to wonder what had caused it.
“Find anything that’ll help us?” I said over my shoulder to Firefly.
“Turns out Mercy was founded and settled because the dirt makes growing crops a breeze,” Firefly boredly replied.
I tsked disappointedly. “I guess all that’s left to do is wait for Boreas, Slipstream, and Atlas to get back.” I closed the book I was reading and restacked everything on the shelves, and Firefly followed suit. “Come on, there’s somepony I want to pay a visit to.”
“At least it beats reading,” she said eagerly. “We should make it quick, though, we don’t know when the others are getting back and we don’t want to miss them.”
Just after noon, Firefly and I passed through the main street and picked up a snack to eat on the go, and I also got something sweet for Hayseed. Keg’s directions to the school took us a little ways out of town, to the general area of all the farms. It made sense the schoolhouse would be closer to the farm houses so the kids didn’t have far to travel from home. The barn-like structure had a belfry above the main entrance with steps leading up to the deck and awning, and the fenced-off area had a variety of toys and playground equipment scattered around.
“Looks like we’re a bit early for their lunch break,” Firefly said. “Who did you want to meet here?”
“A little friend of mine. What time is break?”
“Another five minutes if I had to guess. Let’s just hope we don’t get weird looks from anypony,” Firefly dryly remarked.
“I… didn’t consider that possibility,” I awkwardly replied. Firefly and I took the time to finish our snacks, at which point a bell sounded, indicating break time. Ten seconds later, at least a dozen little colts and fillies poured out the back door and made a mad dash to claim their favourite toy or piece of playground equipment. I couldn’t immediately see Hayseed, but a moment later, I smiled widely as he casually walked out with a mare sporting a lemon-yellow coat and lime-green mane. That must be Citrus, I thought. And a fitting name, too. Hayseed had a brown bag in his mouth, most likely his lunch, then he and Citrus both sat on one of the benches against the wall to eat. Citrus sat on his left, obscuring me from his view, so I walked up to the fence and waved to get his attention.
It took a couple tries, but eventually Citrus poked Hayseed in the side and pointed over to me. He promptly dropped his sandwich and dashed over to me, leaving Citrus by herself and wondering what just happened.
“Princess!” he almost shouted in glee. Hayseed was positively vibrating with excitement, which made my day.
“Keep it down,” I hushed. “You don’t want to make the other colts and fillies jealous.”
“Hayseed, who’s that? You know we’re not allowed to talk to strangers,” Citrus said as she tentatively approached.
“Well she isn’t a stranger, she’s my friend!” he replied.
Citrus was giving me a weird look, so I tried making conversation with her. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“M-my name’s Citrus,” she said shyly.
“My name’s Corona. Now we’re not strangers anymore, are we?” I said with a smile.
“Excuse me there, who are you?” an older voice asked. I looked up and saw a mare with a dark burgundy coat and greying mane approach. Going off her cutie mark, she must have been Ms. Abacus. “Is everything alright?”
“Of course!” I said with my best attempt to dissuade her suspicious stare. “I know Hayseed, so I thought I’d pay him a visit while passing through town.”
“Is that right, Hayseed?” Ms. Abacus said.
“Corona’s my friend,” he said. We both shared the same small smile at that.
“Fine, but I’ll keep an eye on you if you don’t mind. And Hayseed, come back inside after you’re done eating.”
“I understand,” I replied. “I won’t be too much longer, just popped by to say hello.” With one final suspicious stare over her shoulder, the teacher went back inside, but shot me the stink-eye from the window.
I sat on my haunches and rested my forelegs on the picket fence, and my chin on my legs to talk to Hayseed and Citrus. “So, how are we doing today?”
Hayseed winked. “We were learning about Celestia and Luna, but our next lesson is math,” he finished sourly.
I reached into my saddlebags and pulled out a candied apple on a stick to offer it to Hayseed. “Maybe this will help make it better?”
“Oohhh,” he said excitedly. “Can I share with Citrus?” It was nice of Hayseed to consider his friend, so I used my magic to cut the apple in half. He finished it happily, and even Citrus began to smile, albeit hesitantly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a stocky, brick-red colt with a grey-black mane looking our way as he strode up to the bench Hayseed and Citrus were sitting on. “Hayseed, who’s that?” I said with a nod in the colt’s direction. Hayseed turned to look, and his ears nervously flattened against his head.
“Bastion,” he said emptily. Bastion then proceeded to levitate and upend Hayseed’s lunch bag, nonchalantly taking the apple and other sandwich then shooting Hayseed a “haha” smirk. Not taking any of Bastion’s thieving bullshittery, I used my magic to pluck the apple and sandwich right out of his aura and put them back in the bag, levitating it back over to Hayseed. Confused, Bastion began walking over to me with a disgruntled expression.
“What did you do that for?” he said through narrowed eyes.
“Because it wasn’t yours to begin with,” I said. “Now go and eat the lunch your mother made instead of stealing somepony else’s.”
“But Hayseed said I could!” Bastion protested.
“Did you, Hayseed?” I said. Hayseed just shook his head, shying away from the abrasive colt. “There, that settles it. How about you go play unless you want me to tell Ms. Abacus?” As our eyes met, Bastion’s smirk told me all that I needed to know.
“You wanna go play in the sandbox like yesterday, Hayseed? Oh wait, you can’t,” he laughed, cantering over to the swingset.
Prick. I looked down to Hayseed, and the poor guy’s eyes were beginning to water. “Hey hey, it’s alright there buddy. You still got your lunch, and even the apple I got for you!”
Hayseed closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then looked back up to me. “Thank you, Luna,” he said quietly. Judging by the funny look Citrus gave Hayseed, she definitely heard, but didn’t know what to make of it.
“Hayseed, come back inside, please,” Ms. Abacus sternly said from the same window she’d been watching me like a hawk through. “You’ve had enough time to eat and talk to your friend there.”
“Yes Ms. Abacus,” Hayseed hollered over his shoulder. He looked back to me and spread his forelegs wide. How could I say no to that? I reached over the fence, and Hayseed wrapped his arms around my neck, squeezing tightly while Citrus watched on.
“Hayseed!”
“Coming Ms. Abacus!” The cheeky bugger actually snuck a little peck on my cheek before running back inside with Citrus in tow. I wasn’t even mad, that was cute as all hell.
Some twenty minutes later, Firefly and I were sitting outside a local eatery. Firefly was wolfing down candied apples while I drank some much needed water.
“Where do you put it all?” I asked in awe.
“I have an above average metabolism because of my magic, so I’ll have a big meal if there’s no fire to replenish my magic,” she said.
“What do you mean, ‘if there’s no fire’?”
Firefly glanced around, then settled on a grill across the road. “Watch this.” She lit her horn, then tendrils of red magic began snaking their way from the burning coals, directly into her horn and extinguishing the grill.
“See?” Firefly said with a proud smirk.
“I think I’ll file that under ‘things that continue to amaze me’,” I said. I noticed Firefly’s gaze shift up to the sky, and I turned around to see what she was looking at. Three specs in the distance were coming in from the south-east, who I immediately assumed to be Boreas, Atlas, and Slipstream. To my serendipity, I could begin to make out each of them as they got closer. Boreas was the first to touch down, followed by Atlas, then Slipstream, all of whom were breathing heavily from their flying.
“Where’s Midnight?” Slipstream asked heavily as she approached.
“He had a run-in with a friend of mine,” I replied. “He should be back soon.”
“That crevasse is huge,” Atlas exclaimed. “It’ll take a week to properly chart the entire area!”
“I could arrange an extended stay in town if you need it,” I offered.
“That shouldn’t be a problem, though I’ll need to speak with Celestia to see what she wants to do,” Atlas said. “It might be an idea to bring in Cloudy to do a proper analysis of the area; that chasm just shouldn’t be there,” he added.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Atlas rolled his hoof over how to tell me. “Imagine, if you will, that you walk into the throne room one day and see a third throne staring back at you. You’d want to know how and why it got there.”
“I see what you mean,” I said with a glance to Boreas. When we locked eyes, I could tell by her tense expression that she’d found something noteworthy. Not here, I mouthed. The three of them went off to get some food, then we all sat back down to a fresh pitcher of water.
“Flying all day in this heat really takes it out of you,” Slipstream commented as she drained a glass in record time.
“Not me,” Firefly gleefully chirped. “I could run circles around this town!”
“Maybe you should… chill out?” Boreas sniggered.
“Hardy har-har,” Firefly mocked. “I hope you like your water. It’d be a shame if it were to suddenly evaporate.”
By the time Boreas went to take a drink, the water had disappeared. “Oh come on!”
Firefly smugly went to take a bite of her last apple, but instead closed her mouth around thin air as the apple vanished. “What the…” She owlishly stared at thin air, but I knew what had happened.
I scanned around us to confirm my suspicions, and I saw Midnight poke his head out of one of the alleys. “Pardon me a moment. Nature calls.” While everyone ate and drank under the scorching noon sun, I made my way over to the alley. “What’d you find?” I quietly asked.
“There’s a camp half way between here and the crevasse. The stallion from before met with a few others and stashed some equipment away. After they left, I went and teleported their gear as far away as I could manage, and dumped their blasting sand in a nearby river.”
“Did you find the map that was stolen?” Midnight shook his head, then I sighed and rubbed my brow. “On one hoof, you bought us some time and set them back. On the other, however, when they find their equipment missing, they’re going to start asking questions.” I was rather angry that he went against orders, but I couldn’t say so lest someone hear me. “Come on, let’s get back to the others. We should get out of here ASAP.”
“Atlas,” I said as Midnight and I approached the table. “Do you need to do anything else before we leave?”
“I would like to see if there’s any other maps and charts in town if that’s alright.”
“If it’s all the same to you, would you and Slipstream like to stay behind while I take the others back? I can come get you when you’re finished, and I can check with Celestia about you spending the week.”
“That sounds alright to me,” Atlas said. “Slipstream?”
“I don’t mind either way,” she nonchalantly shrugged.
“We’d better get going, then. We should be able to catch Celestia on break from court.” Despite the throng of ponies around, and minus Slipstream and Atlas, I teleported the rest of us back to the castle’s conference room.
“Alright,” I announced once we gathered our bearings, then stared Midnight down. “First off, Midnight, I told you to follow that stallion and find out what he was up to, not to tamper with his equipment.”
“I can understand your frustration, but I do have a reason for doing so,” he said.
“Please, explain,” I said curtly.
“They’re better off sourcing new equipment than looking through hundreds upon thousands of acres of forest to find the crates. If we can find out where they were getting their equipment from, then we can cut them off at the source.”
“Pray tell, what was in those crates of theirs?” I queried.
“The one that was open had machinery I hadn’t seen before, both cast and forged. The rest were still nailed shut. We need to be looking for blacksmiths that have shady business dealings,” Midnight finished.
“A fair assessment. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now. What do you suppose were in the others?”
“I believe I can help with that,” Boreas said as she went to rifle around in her saddle bags. What she pulled out, however…
“Oh. My. God,” I balked. It was a lump of quartz the size of my hoof with veins of gold running through it, and streaks of something red and unidentifiable running through the quartz.
“They’re mining for gold underneath Mercy,” Boreas simply said. Midnight’s gaze was firmly glued to the lump of gem and precious metal in abject disbelief.
“OK, this… This is on a whole other level,” I said, taking a moment to let the sight of the gold sink in. I had a theory about the quartz and gold, but no idea what the red stuff snaking its way through the quartz was. Whatever it might’ve been, I doubted it was good news. “Here’s what I want to happen. Boreas, leave the gold here and go get Celestia.” She promptly left the room and galloped down the hall. “Midnight, I’m sending you back to Mercy on these orders: Return to their camp site and scout for the mine’s entrance. If the map stallion comes back and finds his equipment missing, try and follow him to the source. If you can, try and get ahold of the stolen map. After Celestia lowers the sun, return to the same spot we were at earlier and wait for me. Clear?”
“Yes, Princess.” And just like that, I sent him back to town.
“Is there anything you’d like me to do, Princess?” Firefly said.
“At the moment, we wait until Boreas returns with Celestia.” Which she did about fifteen seconds later by way of teleportation. Without saying a word, I telekinetically tossed the lump of quartz and gold to Celestia.
With wide eyes, Celestia scrutinized the quartz from multiple angles. “Where… did you get this?”
“Boreas found it. Inside the crevasse, correct?”
“There is a vein of quartz at the southern end, yes,” she said.
“Did you happen to find anything else?” Celestia pressed
“Unfortunately not. That chasm is about as deep as it long,” Boreas explained. “I didn’t have a lot of time to explore it.”
“Well, this is certainly a revelation,” Celestia breathed, then turned to me. “What do you make of this situation?”
“I’d hazard that the stolen map was needed to chart the area for gold deposits. Although, there’s a couple things that don’t make sense. Like how he knew where to find the map in the first place, and why it’s taken several years for anypony to think about exploring the crevasse.”
“Mercy is an earth pony town,” Firefly said. “They don’t have any resident pegasi to explore it, or those that passed through simply didn’t care to, and the map? I think somepony would’ve had to have prior knowledge to inform the stallion about it.”
“A reasonable assessment,” Celestia said approvingly. “Although, we shouldn’t rule out any other possibilities just yet. And where are Midnight, Slipstream, and Atlas?”
“We ran into the same stallion that broke into my room, so I had Midnight follow him back to a camp that had crates of equipment, which, at this point, we can all safely assume is for mining. After reporting in, I sent him back to watch for any activity. Slipstream is with Atlas, still in town. He said it’d take him a week to properly chart the entire chasm, and is wanting to know if it’d be OK to stay in town to do exactly that.”
With a raised eyebrow, Celestia continued to look over the crystal contemplatively. “That shan’t be a problem, although, I would like to speak with Atlas before the end of the day. Can you have him back before I lower the sun so he and I can discuss details? It would be a boon to update the maps.”
“That won’t be a problem, seeing how I have to return to Mercy and get Midnight anyway.”
Celestia was quiet for a while, transfixed by the quartz. “Since you’re here,” Celestia continued, “would you mind helping me out by looking over some of the scrolls that have accrued in your absence?”
I didn’t have anything else I needed to be doing between then and returning to Mercy, so… “Uhm, yeah, why not.” What I didn’t say was that I wanted a quick trip to the kitchen to confirm my suspicions about the corn.
“Thank you. Now if you don’t mind, I’m due back into the throne room.”
After she turned to leave, I almost forgot about it. “Celestia, the quartz? Boreas did find it, after all.”
She paused to look over her shoulder. “Oh yes, pardon me.” She levitated the rock over and into Boreas’ bags.
“Thank you, Princess.”
As Celestia left, I took Firefly and Boreas up to my room. “So, Boreas, what you going to do with that?”
“Hmmm, I’m not entirely sure.” She fished the gem out of her bag, and tossed it between her hooves a couple times, then paused to look over at Firefly with a smile. “Say, Firefly, do you think you can use your magic to melt the gold and pull it out?”
“I can certainly try. Would you mind if I kept the crystal?”
“Sure,” Boreas nodded, tossing it to Firefly.
After a moment, I began to feel the heat radiating off of Firefly’s horn. Very slowly, thin ribbons of molten gold began leaching out of every nook and cranny of the quartz, forming into a liquefied ball that floated like water in space. Firefly drew the excess heat out, then levitated the cooled, solid gold nugget over to Boreas, whose eyes shined at the sight.
“Oohhh,” Boreas cooed, her face split with a wide smile.
“Why not take it down to the treasury and see if the metalsmith will buy it off you?” I suggested. “Alternatively, I can talk them into turning it into gold coins and using any leftovers in some jewellery if you’d like.”
“Yeah, I’ll go do that! I’ll come get you if I can’t tempt them with a gold coin as payment,” Boreas chuckled.
As we turned to look at Firefly, Boreas and I had to do a double take at what we saw.
“Why… are you licking the quartz?” I said.
“Hmm? Oh, uh, that red stuff running through the quartz? Only the volcanic kind has that. It’s magical fire residue, so it’s like licking the most expensive caramel apple money can buy.”
“Heh, well, okay then, you do that.” I didn’t make it halfway to my desk before a thought occured. “Hold on, did I hear you correct when you said that’s volcanic quartz?”
“Yeah, why?”
Extremely fertile soil, circular mountain ranges, and now volcanic quartz? I quickly pulled the copy of the map that was stolen from its cubby, unfurled it, and took a long, hard look. “Firefly, Boreas, I don’t think we’re dealing with just a gold mine.”
I began pulling all the books and scrolls on gems and geography I could find from my bookshelves. Please, please don’t let me be right… I found the two books I was looking for, and I opened both side by side while Firefly curiously looked over my shoulder.
“What’s gotten you in a tizzy?” she asked.
I practically shoved the map in both their faces. “Alright you two, considering everything we know about Mercy, and given the quartz, what else do you notice?”
“I don’t…” Boreas began looking over the map with a knitted brow, then after a short while, it rose with the same realisation I had. “You have got to be kidding me, right?”
“Can you point out where the chasm is approximately?” I said.
“Right about… here.”
I looked to the area where her hoof pointed. “We need to tell Celestia about this, and now. I’m going to get her.”
“Wait!” Firefly shouted. “I have no idea what you two are gawking about, but Princess, I feel obligated to point out that you still look like a filly puked paint on you!”
I blinked and looked down at my pink forelegs. “Oh.” I quickly removed my peytral and broke the illusion, then teleported straight to the throne room.
I turned back to the crowd of petitioners and the two present and said; “I hope you’ll forgive me, but something important has just come up and I need to talk to Celestia.”
“We were barely about to talk, but I don’t mind waiting for a short while,” one of the mares said.
“Thank you, and I apologize for the interruption.” I whisked Celestia off to my room.
“Is everything alright, Luna?” she asked between sincerity and annoyance.
“This is going to be wild from start to finish, so I need you to listen carefully.” I cleared my throat to speak coherently. “After you left, Firefly pulled the gold out of the quartz and gave it to Boreas. After that, Firefly then began licking the magical fire residue off the quartz because it’s volcanic.” I showed her the map. “That’s not just a mountain range, Celestia. Mercy is sitting inside the caldera of a massive volcano.”
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The mysteries this bloody fic creates is annoying to the level it gives me anxiety.
So you're doing a good job with it. But it actually makes me nervous when I read it, If only a little bit.
A volcano!? D:
8552471
The mysteries and drama are only going to increase
8552494
Oh, you monster.
8552497
Get them outta there
boop ba boop boop boop
8552580
Exactly! Nobody likes him!
8552493
Yes, a volcano. Let me show you a map, and keep in mind the maps we have of Equestria are not to scale, nor is the one I've got indicative of the time period in which the story takes place, mainly what I'd imagine the maps Kate/Luna has look like.
i.imgur.com/vNzlUt3.png
The red circle is the mountain range that is the volcano's caldera.
The green X is the town of Mercy.
The blue X is the Castle of the Two Sisters, and the distance between the green and blue X's is roughly 100km (also roughly 62 miles).
The marked yellow area is where the crevasse would be.
When I was looking at the map I pulled up when researching sites for the story, the hilly area looked a lot like a caldera, so that's what I'm saying it is for the purposes of the story, heh.
8554420
Well, looks like they're doomed.
8554506
Doomed how? The volcano is extinct.
8556459
For now :O
8556482
Take a look at this picture: yellowstone-caldera.weebly.com/uploads/2/6/8/5/26857074/9672770_orig.jpg
When a volcano dies, i.e. goes extinct, the magma chamber under the volcano collapses, which creates the caldera. It's not spoilers, but when Earth was being formed, volcanoes spewed out all sorts of materials that helped terraform our planet, and that's exactly what happened with this volcano on Equestria, which is dead. There is exactly 0% chance of it erupting ever again.
Oh boy! I look forward to the next chapter.
8558358
How do you like it so far?
8558426
It's like a build up to a major turning point in the story.
8558464
I wouldn't go so far to call it a major turning point. More often than not, everything that happens in this story will happen for a reason, shaping events for the rest of the timeline.
8558493
Haha, certainly feels like it
I've really enjoyed this so far. Some people might ask why Celestia doesn't suspect anything about Kate and Luna's switch, but I think it makes much more sense for her not to. After all, if a friend in your day to day life did something out of the ordinary, would you immediately suspect someone from another dimension has replaced them? There is a tipping point for becoming suspicious that something weird is going on, but it's a pretty far out there conclusion to jump to.
8557901
You know what they say: "The chance of something happening in fiction is inversely proportional to the chance of it happening in real life."
8573139
I'm glad you're enjoying this! As for you "inversely proportionate" comment, I don't know what that is, so I'm going to guess it's got something to do with being mutually exclusive? If that's the case, I really like giving logical and scientific explanations of how things work in magical horsey land. It makes things more down to earth, and gives an alternate explanation of how things work that isn't limited to just "magic". After all, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
8573183
It was just a joke at literary tropes. Basically, it says that anything that has an incredibly low chance of success is an almost guaranteed thing in fiction.
I agree completely on trying to have an explanation for everything, though.
8573139
Not to mention the changes are ones Celestia wanted, after she had a chat with Luna the night before (presumably about being more responsible). So its reasonable to assume the changes are Luna agreeing and trying to grow up.
Oh, so she's a Conduit, nice. :)
All quartz is volcanic...
I think your missing a letter after Corona
Double word
Oh my god she's basically natsu from fairy tail
Good god... I'm very happy it's not an active volcano
The title made me think of this.
2:28