Do not tempt Happy-Fun Glimmer?
Set in an AU from the main story of G4. Not super important, just don't want to confuse people too much.
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It was a lovely winters day in Canterlot and Royal Mage Twilight Sparkle couldn't be more pleased with herself. Only a few months ago, Twilight's friendship studies had led to her completing an ancient spell Star Swirl the Bearded himself hadn't finished and being made the first Royal Mage of the Princesses Court in nearly a thousand years.
It had been wonderfully fulfilling. With her understanding of the Magic of Friendship, she was officially the most important magic specialist in the kingdom. Of course, her studies didn't simply stop there. The magic of friendship was an ever-evolving element in their world, and it was Twilight's job to observe and understand it. With that understanding came the ability to deal with malicious forces that might threaten ponykind or the other creatures of Equestria.
But she didn't have to deal with anything as stressful as that today! Well, not yet perhaps. Today was all about finishing up the final preparations before Hearths Warming in one week!
'It was best to be ready well ahead of time, as anypony should know!' Twilight proudly thought to herself as she stood in her personal study of the castle, surveying her checklist of tasks.
There were only a few things left to do. They mainly revolved around preparing the castle and Canterlot itself for the busy festivities. But she had a small collection of staff to help her with that. Her faithful adopted brother Spike the dragon and some of the other elements of harmony were more than happy to assist. As well as-
"Master Mage Twilight," The slightly manic voice of Starlight Glimmer rang out from behind the door to the hallway. "I urgently need your attention!"
Twilight cringed slightly at the sudden intrusion, but admitted the unicorn to enter before she rudely opened the door anyway, as she suspected the speaker would do. She was very correct in this assumption as the heavy wooden door swung open threateningly before being automatically slowed down before it could thud into the wall by an anti-slamming spell that Twilight had imbued upon it for just such occasions. It was not the only item she had needed to Starlight-proof since employing her.
In walked said mare, clad in her purple armor. Starlight Glimmer had similar coat and mane colors to Twilight. Both were a shade of purple except that Starlight's coat was so light that it was practically pink. Starlight's mane was a more traditional purple with a teal streak while Twilight's was so dark-purple that it was practically blue with a dark pink and purple streak going through it. Along with these visual similarities came some personality. Starlight had neurotic tendencies similar to Twilight's own. Not only that, but Starlight was almost as book smart as Twilight as well, even more so on some topics. Twilight had found that it was easy to talk to the mare and go down theoretical rabbit holes with her without going over her head.
Their friendship had a rather interesting start. Starlight had been caught up in some shady stuff, but Twilight and her friends had been able to put a stop to it. After some rehabilitation, Twilight found the wayward unicorn to be intellectually kindred and her lower opinion of the common pony's ability to not engage in illegal acts ended up making her a fairly good choice of bodyguard for the new Royal Mage.
Although, there were some issues...
Twilight smiled at Starlight, ignoring her slight rudeness at almost smashing her doorway. "It's good to see you Starlight but, for future reference, 'master mage' isn't something you should call me in front of other ponies. It's not technically incorrect but the title has an unfortunate history in the Badlands."
Starlight blinked at her, having lost a train of thought as she absorbed this. "Oh, I'm sorry Twilight! I'll whip myself for this mistake in my private quarter's later."
Twilight's smile dropped and her eyes snapped open. "Oh my gosh, no! You don't have to do that! The Royal Guard hasn't practiced that for centuries!"
The armored mare brought a hoof to her chin in contemplation. "Really? But it seems like such a practical way of self-discipline. A way to impart a lesson though pain. right?"
"I mean, psychologically, I guess the theory is sound, but Princess Celestia heavily discouraged it a long time ago because it was starting to get out of hoof!" Twilight's eyes narrowed in scrutiny. "How did you even find out about that in the first place?"
"Oh, it was in the old section of the royal library." Starlight said, very casually.
Twilight frowned. "Starlight!"
"I said the old section, not the forbidden one!" Starlight gave her an innocent smile. "I remembered not to go there without permission this time!"
It was Twilight's turn to blink as her coming lecture ground to a halt. "Oh. Well, that's okay, I guess. Still, you really shouldn't take much of what the old section has too seriously. It's mostly old manuals and documents preserved for the sake of history. Why were you back there anyway?"
Starlight perked up. "Oh right! I was trying to see if there were any old tips on how to defend the castle from magical creatures! Can't be too careful with the holidays right now." She said with a prideful grin.
Twilight's eyebrow raised in confusion. "I appreciate your dedication to your job, but the castle already has all sorts of defenses and experts against magical intrusion."
Starlight shrugged her shoulders. "Well, they can't be that good if the reindeer keep getting in."
Twilight's pupils shrank as she gasped and rushed to the door to her study. She did a quick check to see if anypony had been listening before shutting and locking it. She turned on Starlight who was looking at her with an innocent stare as though she hadn't just said something that could be misconstrued as being extremely undiplomatic.
"Starlight! We are on good terms with," She had to paused as she gave it some thought, "I'm pretty sure all of the Cervidae, including the reindeer! You work for the Crown. You can't say things like that!" She said through grit teeth.
This was probably one of Starlight's worse features. While she was quite intelligent and naturally talented with magic, she was often extremely blunt in her social skills. Twilight suspected that this lack of etiquette possibly helped lead Starlight to falling in with the wrong crowd in the first place.
It took a moment, but Starlight ended up chuckling as she waved her boss's accusation off. "Oh no Twilight! I just meant the magical reindeer!"
Once again, Twilight found her lecture halted by her friend's nonchalant correction. "Um, what? Starlight, reindeer don't have magic."
"Well duh! Not the normal ones! I'm talking about the three special ones. The ones that fly around on hearth's warming?"
Twilight's entire face relaxed into a blank stare as it all came together. "You mean Aurora, Bori, and Alice?"
Starlight became very serious. "Absolutely Twilight. They break into other creatures' houses and even castles! Doesn't that seem like a huge issue?"
Twilight gave a huge sigh as she reached up to rub her face in exasperation. "Starlight, I'm pretty sure those three aren't even real and even if they are, they do that to leave gifts."
"Oh come on! We literally have the physical embodiment of chaos frozen in stone in the royal gardens! Three magical flying reindeer can't be impossible!"
"Okay, they aren't impossible, but it's extremely unlikely that they're a threat!"
"But we can't know that for sure!" Said the unicorn whose sanity Twilight was starting to become worried about. Starlight came around and put her hoof around Twilight's withers. "Look, just come with me and tell me what you think of my deterrents! It'll be fine!"
Twilight's ears twitched and sent a twinge of dread through her at the word, "deterrents". "Yes, I think maybe I should see what you've been doing lately. Please show me."
"Great!" Without warning or permission, Starlight's horn activated with a blue glow and teleported the two mares to her quarters. The teleport was actually somewhat unnecessary since her room was just down the hall from Twilight's study. Glimmer didn't really think of it as showing off though. It was more of it being a simpler way to get around.
They rematerialized in the middle of Starlight's room. Being the personal guard to the Royal Mage earned you some generous personal space. So much so that Starlight had her own little workshop on one side of the room to do with as she pleased. Within this space was a workbench and a rack of weapons on one wall, along with-
"Oh no Starlight, did you have to put antlers on those training dummies?"
Twilight was mortified at the sight. Two pony shaped dummies were set up with a pair of fake antlers on each of them. They had several arrows and other points of weapon damage on their frames. She desperately hoped nopony had been looking too closely into the room lately.
Starlight ignored her as she rushed over to the weapon rack. "Just look at this!" She brought out what looked like a crossbow except that it had a structure that Twilight wasn't very familiar with.
"Um, it's very nice. What is it?"
Starlight grinned. "The Neighponeze call it a repeating crossbow!" She began working a lever on the device which worked a short series of mechanisms that actually fired and reloaded the crossbow several times in succession. They didn't seem to go very far in comparison to one of the regular crossbows used by the royal guard but most of the arrows did hit the dummies that Starlight was aiming at.
Twilight was silent as she watched the simulated carnage, but she managed to get her thoughts together at the end of it. "Um that's very," She paused as she considered her words, "Interesting? But also, I'm a little surprised at the low-magic solution."
Starlight set the empty weapon down. "Yeah, I was skeptical at first too, but all the old stories say that that's how you deal with the old magic! Given how long hearth's warming has been around, Aurora, Bori, and Alice must be part of the old magic and you can only really deal with that if you have some old magic of your own. Like the elements of harmony! But if you don't have anything like that, then you gotta hit em' with the basic low-magic stuff."
She used her magical aura to hold up an extra arrow she had lying at her hooves. "Like this arrow! I coated it in sage!"
She held up another item in her hooves. It was a sword blade that hadn't been given a handle yet. The metal was also darker in color than what Twilight normally saw the guards use. "I made this with pure meteoric iron! They call it cold iron! I don't quite understand that part myself, but it is actually harder to hold in my aura!"
That did peak Twilight's attention, but Starlight quickly moved on to another item that looked significantly more dangerous. "And this is something those black-powder ponies have been working on! They call it a blunderbuss! You basically load it with whatever you've got lying around and shoot it in a general direction. It vaporized my third dummy!"
To Twilight's dismay, she did suddenly notice the shredded remains of a third practice dummy on the far corner along with more than a few chips in the wall's stonework. How had she not heard that going off? Maybe Spike was right. Maybe she was pulling too many late-nighters.
She pointed at the blunderbuss. "Why does it have an ax head on it?"
Starlight examined the equipment briefly before replying. "Oh! I added that! Thought it would be neat." She said with a smile.
This was another quirk of Starlight's that made her difficult to work with for most ponies. She had a very liberal view in the use of violence to solve a problem, whether it be in its use or merely as a demonstration. Twilight had managed to look past this also with several sternly worded lessons on when such actions were appropriate when she was doing her job. Up to a few minutes ago, things had seemed very manageable but now it looked like Starlight was legitimately preparing a one-mare war with three storybook characters.
Twilight lips pressed together in a thin line as she took a sighing breath through her nostrils. "Starlight, this all seems a bit much, don't you think?"
The other mare's response was one of mild confusion. "Really? But I haven't even shown you the ballista yet."
The Royal Mages face stayed the same apart from her eyebrows furrowing. She knew full well that the castle still had ballistae in use. They were mainly a deterrent against anypony who thought that it would be fine to just fly past the walls and into areas where they weren't supposed to be. Although, last year during the changeling invasion, Twilight had discovered that not only were they still functional, but they were specially designed to fire significant groupings of small projectiles at airborne targets. The few shots they had gotten off before being overwhelmed had made quite a mess of the first wave of changelings.
She sighed. "Just take me to it please. Show me what you've done."
Completely overlooking Twilight's irritation once again, Starlight happily complied and teleported them up to the top of the nearest tower of the castle. There, she showed off three boxes of ammunition.
"So this one is just stones that I covered in my leftover sage! The second one is a bunch of scrap metal with some pure iron mixed in there. And the last one is just all the nails I could find! Because that's most of what I stuffed into the blunderbuss and it really seemed to do well when I tested it! So anyway,I figured-mmph!"
Starlight was stopped by a gentle but firm hoof being placed over her muzzle. One last sigh escaped Twilight before she spoke. "Starlight, is this the last of your current preparations? Please, just nod or shake your head."
Starlight blinked at her but quickly nodded in confirmation.
"Good." Twilight removed her hoof but continued to speak. It was time to put an end to this before somepony got hurt. "I appreciate what you do Starlight. I really do. But part of hearth's warming is that it's a time of year where we take little risks and invite creatures we might not be very familiar with into our spaces to enjoy this peaceful time of year with us. Not everypony does it but, since we're part of the Royal Court, we're expected to in order to send a positive message. This extends even to creatures who we aren't sure exist. It's our role to be a good example and part of that is not rolling out the armory when the distant relatives come around."
To her credit, Starlight actually did take the time to absorb this for a minute or two. It wasn't what she was expecting to hear but it did make a sort of sense after having it laid out to her like that.
"Right. I suppose you make a pretty good point about that. But does that mean we have to completely drop our guard this time of year? Just to set an example?"
Twilight gave her a genuine smile. "Of course not, Starlight. Setting a good example doesn't mean we need to make ourselves helpless. We just have to be more..." She rolled her hoof as she searched for the appropriate word.
"Polite?" Starlight suggested.
Twilight giggled. "I was going to say subtle, but that also works!"
She looked down at the ammunition at their hooves. "We should probably move these before somepony gets a bad idea. Lots of cider going around this time of year." She said with a wink.
The other mare waved a hoof. "Oh don't worry, I'll just zap it back to the armory!"
A blue aura wrapped around the three boxes before they disappeared with a flash.
"Oh! Is that where they came from?"
"Mostly!" Said Starlight a little too quickly.
Twilight almost started to lecture Starlight about picking up after herself or something along those lines but quickly decided that she had gotten her win out of this scenario already. Besides, she had other things to talk about.
"Lets walk back to your room this time, I want you to tell me more about these old books you found. Especially whatever you read about cold iron. I'd like to look into that more."
Starlight squeed. "That's great! I knew you'd find that interesting!"
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Meanwhile, in the castle armory, two royal guards were on duty. One was a pegasus, the other an earth pony. The earth pony was just a bit older with a rougher exterior.
Suddenly, a trio of bright flashes appeared behind them, leaving behind three boxes. Both examined the contents.
"Huh." Said the pegasus. "Wasn't some of the castle staff complaining about some nails going missing?"
The earth pony nodded. "Yup, and here's a big box of scrap the blacksmith was complaining about. Looks like a hearths warming miracle. We'll send a message and they can come get them if they really want em."
The pegasus looked at the last box. "What about the rocks?"
The earth pony shrugged. "We'll call em combat rocks. That way we can just keep em here."
"Oh." The pegasus thought on that for a moment. "Is... is that what we're supposed to do?"
The earth pony leaned over to his ear. "Well let me put it this way, do you want to haul that box out somewhere just to dump the contents somewhere that somepony is going to complain about later?"
Something clicked for the pegasus as his eyes went wide. A realization of laziness dawned on him. He leaned over to the earth pony's ear. "Is this one of the secrets of the quartermasters?"
The earth pony gave him a pat on the back. "You're learning rookie. I'm proud. It's another hearths warming miracle."
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