The Light Within Us

by theOwtcast

New Ambitions

Over the following couple of days, Pharynx and I completed the list we’d started making. It had taken less effort than I’d expected; after all, there were only so many countries in the world, even if we’d been at war with all of them, and the strategies against each had remained more or less unchanged over the centuries. How wouldn’t they? Not much new had been invented in terms of warfare magic and technology, and deception often even when the other side expected it, so the soldiers only had to wait long enough for a particular strategy to be forgotten about by the intended targets before reusing it! Pharynx scoffed at the foreign troops’ naivety and the failure to learn from their predecessors’ mistakes. Annoyed by that, I’d asked him once or twice why the changeling armies hadn’t succeeded in conquering the world long ago if they were so superior, not that I complained that they hadn’t, of course. Starvation, he’d said. If you were inclined to keep the wars going, Thorax, we’d be unstoppable now! Heck, you could have become the Emperor of Equus months ago if you’d just tried!

Yeah, no. I would have to keep disappointing him in that regard.

The wild beasts hadn’t been much harder; again, there were only so many species, and a lot of them had a weakness of sorts that could be exploited. The trick was to get them into a situation that allowed for exploitation of that weakness… and for those that didn’t have any obvious weaknesses that we’d managed to learn of, the trick was to gather up enough brute force to stand a fighting chance. One unfortunate side-effect of the brute-force approach was that some of that force sometimes had to be sacrificed for the sake of victory… Pharynx took it for granted, but I hoped ponies would be able to find a way around it. Maybe they already did have a way for at least some of the beasts and could tell us about it?

So with that finished, I moved on to arranging the library.

Psycho and Proboscis helped me narrow down the selection of suitable chambers; I inspected all of them and, satisfied with its size and position, opted for the former Prey Storage 27, located roughly halfway up the hive from the lowermost underground level to the plateau on top, and large enough to house the quantity of books I expected Twilight might obtain for us and maybe even with some room to spare for the books that would continue piling up in the upcoming years. Proboscis’ workers and some of Pharynx’s mildly disobedient soldiers swarmed the place to clear out the clutter that had piled up and a few arts-and-crafts enthusiasts dropped by to measure the space for the bookshelves they intended to make.

The bookshelves were finished within a week. They were somewhat crude in design compared to the ones in the Crystal Empire’s library and in Twilight’s castle, but it didn’t matter; they were sturdy enough to hold the books and that was all that mattered! The drones had made more shelves than I imagined was necessary right now, but they would be filled up eventually, so it wasn’t a big deal. The newspaper stand they’d made to fit in one of the library’s alcoves was pretty neat, too, though I wasn’t sure if it had to be quite so big.

Then came the books.

I was alerted about it in the morning after the bookshelves and the newspaper stand had been fully set up. Sleuth and Retina galloped into the throne room out of the blue, telling me to come quick, and disturbed by the jumbled auras and the lack of explanation on what I needed to come quick for, I followed them to the source of the commotion. There, in the hallway in front of the library entrance, was a crowd of drones gathered around a literal pile of books that kept growing taller and wider as more and more books teleported in.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, staring dumbfounded at the endless stream of books materializing out of thin air.

“We don’t know!” Carapace said. “They just started coming, no warning or anything!”

“Do you think Starlight might have something to do with it?” Hornet asked.

“Starlight?”

“Yeah, I saw her around here earlier this morning. She asked if this is where we’re planning to set up the library, I said yes, and she just teleported away.”

I grabbed a few books from the pile. Astronomical Almanac of All Things Astronomy… Supernaturals… Seapony Etiquette… Starswirl: A Stellar Biography of a Stellar Sorcerer Star… Daring Do and the Quest of the Sapphire Stone…

“Okay, mystery solved,” I said, laughing in spite of myself and the soon-to-be-obliterated hallway. “These are the books Twilight promised us, apparently!”

“...I thought she’d have somepony bring them in boxes and carriages,” Hornet muttered.

“Me too,” I admitted. “But hey, this was probably easier for them? It sure would have taken a lot of carriages…”

“Yeah, no kidding!” Carapace interjected.

“Do we even have enough shelves for all this?” Sleuth asked.

“I… think so… but that might not be true if they keep coming for much longer…” They were still teleporting in. “Is the entrance to the library still accessible?”

“Hold on.” Retina turned into a sparrow and flew through what little space remained between the books and the ceiling, careful to dodge the incoming stream and the books it dislodged on its way in. She was back a couple of minutes later. “Eh, marginally, depending on how small you’re willing to get, and I’m not sure for how much longer if this keeps up.”

“Do we have any other entrances?”

“A couple,” Sleuth said, “but as far as I noticed, they’re all blocked off by the bookshelves. Maybe we-”

The influx of books suddenly stopped and Starlight popped into existence next to us.

“Hi Thorax! Just dropping by to see if the books made it here…” She trailed off as her gaze fell on the pile she’d sent us. “Huh… I thought the library entrance was around here… guess my destination targeting is a little off at this distance…”

“Oh, the entrance is around here alright!” Hornet spat. “You just clogged the entire hallway leading to it!”

“I… did?”

“Well, yeah, kind of,” I said, looking disapprovingly at Hornet. Couldn’t have been a little less rude? It wasn’t like anyling had gotten hurt in the process! “But that’s okay, we can always move them-”

She popped the two of us out of there and into the library.

“-aside until… Are you sure we can fit all of that in here?”

“...you know, I’m not sure,” she said, looking around herself. “Twilight and I must have spent so much time surrounded with books that we lost all sense of proportion!”

“Let’s try anyway.”

“How do you want them arranged?”

“Doesn’t matter right now. Let’s just grab some and shove them wherever until there’s enough space to walk through that corridor!”

“Heh, sure! Sorry about that…”

We both started levitating books and moving them onto the shelves. She was better at it; I tried to copy the neat stream of books she’d lined up in her magic, but kept losing focus and dropping half the books in my grasp and colliding half the others with the shelves and the already-shelved books, which only resulted in a big mess, so I gave up and went back to the easier method of taking individual stacks of books one at a time. Slower, yes, but at least I had better control of what I was doing.

“So where did you get all this?” I asked eventually.

“All of them are Twilight’s. I know a duplication spell so we went through her library and made copies of pretty much everything. It seemed faster and easier than looking for them in bookstores, plus some of them are discontinued editions and there’s no promise we would have managed to track them down even in second-hoof bookstores.”

“You copied the whole library?! No wonder the hallway is clogged up…”

She winced. “Actually, that’s barely half. Twi wanted to continue but Spike insisted that you’d be too overwhelmed if we sent everything at once… and my horn was starting to hurt and fume… so we agreed to call it a night and deliver this lot to you in the morning… and I’m starting to be glad I got to see just how much space this is taking up!”

“Yeah, no kidding… we’re gonna need a whole new library if Twilight intends to send the rest…”

“I can tell her not to! Or check what you’ve got and return what you don’t need and select what you want us to duplicate from the rest of the library... but it’s not a problem for us! If you’ve got the space to expand the library, I’m sure all the books will find their readers, and you never know when something might be useful!”

“Expanding might work if the other available chambers are still available, and I don’t like to throw away your hard work and possibly insult Twilight by refusing books… Are you sure you’d be up for continuing all this?”

“Did you forget you’re talking to one of the most stubborn mares in Equestria who can’t even trot down a street without resorting to magic? Of course I’ll do it! And Twilight will have a nervous breakdown if she only shares half of the library!”

I sighed. “Something tells me I’ve gotten myself in way over my head… but okay. At least we’ve got a nymph who’s bent on reading every book in existence, by the looks of it. She’ll probably die of happiness when she sees this!”

“Is that the same nymph you mentioned to Twilight as a possible candidate for the school?”

“I think we’re way past ‘possible’ now unless the school gets obliterated or something. You should have seen her when I asked if she was interested! That surge of joy could have easily catapulted you right back to Ponyville!”

“Sounds like we shouldn’t expect to have any problems with her, then! Not that I thought there’d be any, of course…”

“Of course. So, you’re teaching, too?”

“No, I’ll be the guidance counselor. Twilight and the other five are teaching the Elements of Harmony, each of them her own Element, plus Twilight is the headmare and Spike is her assistant as usual.”

“And the students?”

“We got a couple of hundred applications from all over Equestria and half a dozen from the Crystal Empire, so we’ll have our hooves full. As for the foreign ones, the Abyssinians definitely backed out of it at least for this year, but we’re still getting a griffon, a dragon, a yak, and a hippogriff, unless Grandpa Gruff changes his mind about enrolling Gallus.”

“Is that likely?”

“I haven’t met the guy, but I heard he only has two settings: ‘angry’ and ‘cranky’, or three if you count ‘stuck halfway between both’ as a separate one. So yeah… it wouldn’t come as a surprise to see him throw a fit because the wind blew in the wrong direction and bail out.”

“Would it help if I can track down anyling who used to be an infiltrator in Griffonstone and could share any tips on how to calm him down if that happens?”

“Spinning Chrysalis’ tactics to do good?” she smirked. “I like it! But I won’t impose. You probably have other things on your mind, and if my luck is contagious, doing it even with the best intentions is sure to backfire spectacularly!”

“But I want to help! Isn’t that what allies are for?”

“You’re right. Okay, I won’t mind if you can tell us something useful, but don’t feel obliged to do so. After all, it’s not like we’ll be seeing Gruff on a daily basis, and he doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who’d travel a thousand miles to screech out his frustrations on somepony if there are suitable enough victims closer by.”

“Maybe because traveling costs money,” Carapace quipped, trotting in with a stack of books on his back. A stream of drones followed with more books.

“Maybe- Hey, we made a passage through the books!”

“Already?” Starlight glared. “Alright, heh… guess we lost track of time while talking…”

“Where do you want us to put this?” Sleuth asked.

“Just put them wherever there’s space and we’ll sort them out later. How cleared is the hallway?”

“Single-file passage, but anyling going in the opposite direction would have to walk on the ceiling or turn into something with a small enough wingspan to fly over without hitting obstacles.”

“Then let’s widen it!”

We all worked until every last shelf was filled to the brim with books, most of them double-row except when the books were simply too large. Now that there were a lot of us, things were going considerably faster, but it still took a while due to the sheer amount of books that had arrived. In the end, there was still a pile of unshelved books in the hallway, but small enough to be moved aside where it wouldn’t obstruct traffic by much.

“I should have known to take it more gradually,” Starlight mused, looking at the residual pile.

“It’s alright,” I told her. “We’ve already established that we’ll need more libraries here!”

“How many more books are there?” Psycho asked.

“This wasn’t even half.”

“Hmmmm. We could repurpose Weapons Factory Three, in theory. That’s about twice as big as this cavern. The only problem is that Pharynx threatened to rip my throat out if I touch it because, ‘The first time a war breaks out, you’ll be sorry you ever messed with it!’ As if Factories One and Two aren’t plenty enough already, and if I can admit it, so can he!”

“So it’s not in use?”

“We’d have to clear out the smithing tools, but no, it sits empty, waiting for some hypothetical war that’ll probably never happen. It would have actually been the first place I’d have recommended for the library if it weren’t for Pharynx.”

“I’ll deal with Pharynx if he keeps complaining. Is there a place we can move the smithing tools to in case we end up needing them anyway?”

“I can distribute some to the other two factories and stash the rest in Proboscis’ warehouses or one of the decommissioned armories that are still unused.”

“Good. Starlight, would you like to stick around for a bit?”

“I would, but I’m afraid I can’t. Rarity has me scheduled for a fitting for my Gala outfit, and you know what she’s like with clothes…”

Memories of my own fittings for the coronation outfit flooded my mind and I winced. “Uh, yeah, sure, you’d better go, then… And thanks for the books!”

---

Pharynx didn’t take lightly to losing one of the weapons factories, no matter how unused it sat and no matter how unlikely it was that that would change in the predictable future. It didn’t help much that even the other two factories were barely producing anything these days; with all the wars ended and the abundance of weapons already in existence, there was simply no need for more, and even the training drills weren’t damaging the weapons and equipment quickly enough to require another spree of mass production; unless a war did somehow break out against all expectations, the current reserves could easily last a decade! He didn’t even have the use for the factories beyond production of training dummies and weapons repair for the time being anyway! So, with both of us agreeing not to produce weapons for sale to other countries - me out of pacifism, and him because he didn’t want to make our military technology widely accessible and put us in the situation where we might one day be attacked with our own weapons - he was left out of arguments for keeping Factory Three under his command awaiting to be restored to its purpose, and upon being promised that all equipment and machinery would be stored somewhere on the off-chance it would become needed again, had begrudgingly surrendered the factory to its brighter future.

I caught a glimpse of him darting my picture later that day, but when I tried to talk to him, he kicked me out of the room.

The drones were already clearing the place out by then and moving the stuff to Factories One and Two and a storage area that Proboscis had provided. The cavern was empty by the next afternoon and measured up for the bookcases by evening, and building the shelves started first thing in the morning. I helped too whenever I had a free moment, and surprisingly, so did Pharynx when the time came to hammer things down.

Okay, judging by the fervor with which he was slamming down the nails and the noise he was making in the process, maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all…

In the meantime, another group of drones had taken it upon themselves to bring some level of order into the books that had been haphazardly shoved into the shelves of the other library earlier. I dropped by over there a few times too, but Urtica and Ocellus seemed to have everything under control, and I was mostly just standing in the way and blocking traffic as a dozen drones milled about moving books from one shelf to another, so I tried to minimize my interference.

After about a week, the books in the first library were organized to perfection and the new one was fully furnished, and the only thing missing were the remaining books.

They arrived the next day, only this time, Twilight and Starlight were teleporting them in much more slowly and in pre-organized bundles, having learned their lesson the first time, so shelving went much more smoothly and no hallways ended up cluttered. The process may have taken the whole day as a result, but at least it went painlessly, and I even got to hang out with Spike during lunch break!

“Okay, that’s that,” Starlight said as she levitated the last book onto a shelf. “Whew! I never thought just Twilight’s books would fill two whole libraries to the brim! Really puts things into perspective, eh, Twi?”

Twilight grinned sheepishly.

“It might have been one library if we had buildings like ponies do,” I said, “but building one here would probably have taken a while, and if everything else is in the hive itself-”

“I don’t see a problem,” Spike said. “Except maybe if you’ll need to find two librarians! I’m guessing it’ll be a pain in the flank for any drone who gets tasked with managing both libraries… I mean, having to constantly run from one to the other and back… They’re not even close by!”

Indeed, they weren’t: Library One was just about in the center of the hive, and Library Two was in the western spire.

“That’s okay,” I told him. “Carapace and Shadow already volunteered to each take one. Thunder said he’d be interested too, but both positions were already taken by then so I offered him to act as a backup in case one of the main librarians can’t make it sometime.”

“Or you could offer him to sell newspapers?” Twilight suggested. “Oh, almost forgot! I enchanted a pair of trays: one for the hive and one for the news stand in Ponyville. Whatever gets places on one tray will automatically teleport to the other, within the weight limit of a few pounds, about as heavy as a standard stack of newspapers. We’ll use them to send the newspapers and magazines to you so the hive can always have the latest editions at the same time as Equestria! Ponyville will send some of their fresh stuff to you every morning or whenever things get published - some magazines come out weekly and some do monthly - and you, or your drone in charge of selling them, place the money and any unsold newspapers on your tray in the evening to send it to us. Since this is new, don’t worry about the cost or any other issues for now; I’ll cover the expenses of the unsold papers until we figure out how much of a demand there is and adjust the shipments accordingly. Also, if you need more of anything, just teleport a note to the Ponyville news stand within working hours and they’ll accommodate if they can!”

“Okay!”

“And if it proves to work properly,” Spike added, “we could eventually use something similar to transfer urgent mail or such things! Maybe even ponies who can’t teleport on their own!”

“That’s a little ambitious; I’d have to recalibrate the spell to support heavier payloads and adapt it to support multiple destinations or even unspecified ones! I’m not saying it can’t work, but it’ll take years to figure it out!”

“And knowing you, it’ll be done in a month if you get obsessed enough with the idea!”

“You’re just trying to figure out a way for Thorax to drop by more often, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I can learn how to teleport,” I mused. “Assuming it’s possible for changelings, that is…”

Starlight trotted over to a shelf and pulled out a book: Archanology: Intermediate Level Made Easy for Semi-regular Magic Practitioners. “Start with this. Teleportation is around page two-hundred, I think. If you have any questions, I’ll be glad to answer. Oh, and when you’re ready to test the spell, try to have no distractions the first few times or you might end up singed or taken to a completely random destination.”

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind!”

So they left for home and I took the book with me to study in my free time. Hopefully it would work!

---

The teleportation tray proved functional the very next morning. Our news stand was already filled with various newspapers and magazines when I came to check up on it, and the line of drones waiting for their copy stretched through five hallways at least! If I’d known the drones were that interested in reading the newspapers, I’d have tried to set something like this up ages ago! Even Pharynx bought a couple of things! I decided against buying anything for myself, lest I make any of my subjects wait in line for nothing.

Later in the afternoon, I found him reading Canterlot Times in his bedchamber.

“Anything interesting happening in the world?” I asked.

“Other than some overly optimistic king who decided to convert a military compound into a book dump? No, can’t really think of anything.”

“You’re still mad about that?”

“I’m not mad. I still think you made a mistake, but I can recognize an impending defeat when I see it, so I just cut my losses.”

“If that’s the way you see it-”

“But you know what? We have a glorious army even if you made it potentially short on logistics!”

“I’m sure you’ve trained them well-”

“And if you bring us any kind of enemy, we’ll prove it to you!”

“Uh…”

“Those ponies or griffons or whatever will never know what hit them!”

“...I feel like you’re trying to tell me something that isn’t part of your usual grumbling repertoire. Are you trying to tell me something?”

He shoved the newspaper in my face. An article spanned an entire page, and it was titled, Cities Across Equestria Prepare for Equestria Games Host Selection; Who Will It Be? I got to reading. It basically said that the next Equestria Games were to be held two years from now, and it was time to select the city that would host them. All interested cities were expected to submit an application within the next month, and an Equestria Games representative would visit each candidate city to inspect it for suitability before making the decision.

“You want us to host the Equestria Games?”

“It’s probably the closest we’ll get to actual combat in the foreseeable future. Why not?”

“Well… I’m not objecting, it would be a nice opportunity to show the world that we’ve become civil and to forge some friendships, but… what if we don’t get chosen to host the Games? I doubt we’ll be the only ones to apply, and we’re not even in Equestria-”

“So what? Crystal Empire isn’t in Equestria, either, and they hosted the last Games just fine! And it doesn’t matter if we don’t host; applications for hosting automatically count as applications for participation! Didn’t you read the article?”

I skimmed through the text. Sure enough, it said so, and it said that there’d be a separate application process for the cities that had no ambition for hosting the Games but still wanted to send their athletes.

“So, worst case scenario,” Pharynx continued, “all we have to do is pass the qualification rounds for at least something and we’re in, even if some other place turns out to be the host. But it would be great if we could beat the ponies to it, right? Right? Why would only they ever get to do the good stuff?”

“Well, they started the tradition, but it can’t hurt to try, I guess…”

Comments

[Gordon_Freemane]

Oh boy, Harshwhinny and Pharynx? They'll either be bestest of buds or start a war.

[Screw]

Wow. This is interesting!

If these changelings are anything like the show where Ocellus recalls her Hearths Warming, I really wonder how much more crazy Pharynx could make it!

Maybe this time, their position is swapped and Thorax really doesn't want them to participate in their own special kind of way, with Pharynx's influence or not.

[origami]

To quote Valentino from Hazbin Hotel:

Well, this just got interesting

[theOwtcast]

11838983
So the rest of the story wasn't interesting?

[origami]

11839566
Oh, it has been. It just has a moment now that seems especially interesting.