Princess Diaries

by emstar

Job One 1.6

I sipped some more coffee and reclined in my backup desk chair. It was a sturdy old piece of polished wood, a hybrid between a standard chair and a rocking chair, it would lean back slightly to accommodate me (but not too far, that would be too relaxing). It was important to have an optimized seating situation at your workspace, especially if you thought you needed to stay up for a long while past your bedtime. I wasn’t sure that I’d need it, but I wasn’t in the mood to take any chances. My wakefulness was currently being fueled by the remainder of the adrenaline in my system, an ever increasing amount of caffeine, and the mix of stubborn determination and all-consuming curiosity that I inevitably sunk into when I was Working On Solving A Problem.

I had a couple problems, actually.

First, and most concerning to me at the moment: I needed to install some sort of security system in my house. That one I had some ideas for and was fairly confident I could do it in a few hours. Even if it wouldn’t last more than a few days, it would do for now.

Second, and most obvious: I needed to figure out how to deal with the vampony sorceress that was apparently in town, who may or may not be related to the rest of my problems (though, it was sort of unlikely that they were all entirely coincidence). I could always sit tight and wait for the White Council to respond to my SOS, but while appealing (in the sense that not having to deal with flesh-eating monsters was appealing) that seemed like the wrong move.

Third, was the fact that it was probably up to me to figure out what was going on with the magical indigestion sickness thingy that was plaguing some of the animal’s at Fluttershy’s clinic. Since the sickness was magical in nature, that implied a magical cause. It was entirely possible that it would simply go away on its own, but given that my pet rhinoceros beetle was currently sick, I wasn’t going to be taking any chances on that front.

Fourth, there was Celestia’s letter. “Black sorcery” heavily implied that there was a mortal warlock in town— so it couldn’t be Ms. Nectarine. That means there was another player in the game. At least one.

I thought about all of these and tried to picture what the world would look like after I had already solved these problems. What would I have done?

It would definitely start off with me sitting in my office for the rest of the night, working on some anti-burglary measures and doing some research on what reference guides I had on my shelves. After that, my mental map of how things would go became a bit cloudy, as if I was trying to solve a puzzle that was missing a couple pieces, or I was trying to walk through a dangerous woodland trail that was absolutely enshrouded in fog.

That usually meant that I was missing some information (or just not able to see or remember a crucial bit of information) that I needed to Solve The Problem. Not always, but usually.

I kept at it for another couple minutes, trying to make some progress on the off chance that something would click. My brain tossed another hint at me before giving up on that front.

“Alright,” I muttered, “Tomorrow’s to-do list: delegate some things at the library before heading over to Sweet Apple Acres and talking to Applejack. Her reaction at the clinic wasn’t what I would expect, and learning why that was the case might lead me somewhere else.”

After that, I started prioritizing: first, I’d sort through my books here looking for vampony lore in case they had some glaringly obvious weakness I could exploit with some advanced preparation. After two hours of that, I’d put that task aside and set up some alarms throughout the house. The rest was a pile of issues for the Twilight Sparkle of tomorrow morning.

I floated over several White Council approved encyclopedias and field guides on supernatural creatures. I opened my favorite one, A Manual of Monsters Moste Malicious which was a door stopper written in the exact same style as an Ogres and Oubliettes monster manual was— in fact, it presented itself as some sort of faux-official expansion content. I had suspicions that the wizard who had authored it was either directly involved in the company that owned that Tabletop RPG or that they were a massive fan of the game as well.

This earned them some brownie points from me.

I flicked through the pages until I got to an entry marked “Vampony-Red Court”. There were other types of vamponies, of course (primarily the White Court and Black Court vamponies, but there were a scattering of other types as well) but I didn’t want to waste time looking at their entries. The danger of getting lost in an all-evening encyclopedia binge was just too high for me to ignore.

The entry was a couple pages long. I skipped straight to the section on how best to deal with them in a fight, since it was probably most important to read that one first. Unfortunately, the author managed to lose some major brownie points, since the vast majority of the tactical information it contained was limited to the same advice.

“What kind of advice is this?” I complained. “Who thinks that two full pages worth of ‘use Fireball, and only Fireball’ is practical!?”

Fireballs were out, as was anything else that did fire anything. Nope, nada, not on my metaphorical spell list.

Some of it was presumably useful, at least if you were more experienced than I was, or you had a more experienced wizard helping you out. I had no idea how I would go about “folding the essence of dawn” into a napkin, nor did I have the expertise needed to execute a number of other suggestions.

The most useful bit of advice was to acquire a sawed-off shotgun and some ammunition, and get good at using it.

That’s it.

I groaned and went back to the start of the entry, reading the whole thing this time.

They had something of a distaste for being around during the day, and the book claimed that the light of dawn weakened them somewhat. Their puppet bodies were apparently called a “flesh mask” and they were pretty sturdy. Red Court vamponies apparently had some pretty impressive strength and speed, but they were still within a stone’s throw of a mortal. That was a relief, there were some supernatural beings that could juggle train cars and casually tie railroad tracks into knots as if they were spaghetti noodles. It was apparently inadvisable to fight them underneath a blood moon. They didn’t seem to be capable of crossing a threshold without giving themselves a serious debuff, but that didn’t mean it was impossible.

Alright. I still needed some more information. Was there anything else I could be doing in the meantime? It would be beneficial maybe to get some more eyes and ears somehow, since I was mostly flying blind still — metaphorically, since I couldn’t actually fly. Self-powered flight was very difficult and super exhausting if you weren’t a pegasus.

I popped an Oreo into my mouth and chewed on it thoughtfully. An idea slowly formed in my head. I eyed the summoning circle in the center of my great big office rug.

“Hmmm.”

I floated another Oreo up into the cookie consumption queue and grabbed a binder of notes labeled Twilight’s Conjuration Compendium from one of my desk drawers.

Comments

[Pinklestia]

So... she won't make fire spells and Spike is only awake for like three hours? She is fucked.