Goblins, Gold and Glycerine
Gold Chapter 1) - Goblins, Gold and Glycerine
In Equestria, gold has always been the most valuable of all resources. While anypony, can cast a spell to find gold, not many actually wish to. You see, in Equestria there are Diamond Dogs, beasts with a thirst for precious stones, there are also Gold Goblins, a much more fearsome beast. While having a cheesy name, these beasts are very dangerous and, being central to this story, they probably deserve a brief paragraph.
Diamond Dogs are stupid, Gold Goblins are not. They have had control of Equestria's gold supply for well over 950 years now. It used to be one of Princess Luna's duties, before her tragic 'incident', to manage Equestria's economy. Luna had always loved gold and had always done a good job of making sure it was supplied to the kingdom but, after her 'incident', there was promptly no one who had any idea of how to manage the gold mines of Equestria. The Gold Goblins moved in and have had a monopoly on gold ever since. Gold Goblins are brutal, ferocious beasts. If a pony were to encounter one by accident, the Gold Goblin would promptly smash said pony's skull in with a spade (there preferred weapons, being both useful and deadly). They would then take a knife to the carcass and cut off the cutiemark of the dead pony, almost like a scalping. Though, for all their brutality Gold Goblins are not irrational barbarians. Everything they do is in order to instill fear, they are not skilled in anything except quarrying and mining and so they make the most of what they have. All gold is brought from the Gold Goblins in exchange for technology, food and other such things. In essence the Gold Goblin society is almost like that of a large investment bank.
Now, gold is valuable because the Gold Goblins wish so and nopony wishes to anger them by mining for gold themselves. This means that magic comes into play. Unicorns have always had the ability to change one element into another, but it is no easy task. This is where the 'Philosophers Stone' comes in, this is also where Twilight Sparkle comes in.
"Spike!" Twilight called out as the purple dragon clumsily tried to make his way upstairs, clinging desperately to the pile of books in his arms.
"I'm coming already." He grumbled as he bit his lip, holding back words of resentment.
"There's no time, we must hurry."
Spike was beginning to lose his patience with Twilight, she'd been running him ragged for the past three days. She was excited because she has discovered something or other which Spike neither understood nor cared to understand. Lack of sleep does that to dragons.
"Here you go Twilight, the books you wanted."
"Perfect, just what I needed. Now here's a list of all the equipment I'll need."
Twilight handed Spike a seemingly endless list of pieces of equipment with long, cryptic names. The list was marked with coffee stains and was crawling with spidery writing filling every available space. Twilight's normally pristine writing had turned into the scrawling of a foal in the past few days. Spike took it as a sign that she had been sleeping even less than he had.
"Twilight, how am I supposed to fetch all these things, and help you make notes, and keep the place tidy all while getting ready for the princess visiting this afternoon." Spike moaned, the lack of sleep was getting to him and he didn't think he could carry on like this for the rest of the afternoon.
"The princess is visiting!" Twilight jumped up from her reading position into a stance of a pony who looked as if they were being attacked. Her face contorted into all sorts of expressions as she realised the date.
Today was her monthly progress meeting, once a month the princess would come over for dinner and she'd discuss with Twilight her progress in her studies. It was supposed to be a formal event but, being the princess's star pupil, it was always rather informal. Still, the princess was a ruler of the land and rather liked things to be tidy.
"Celestia's coming here?" Twilight almost whined with a look of complete nervousness on her face, mouth agape at the state that her living quarters had gotten into over the past few days. The normally elegant looking living quarters of the palace tower nearest to the observatory were a mess. Books and experimental apparatus were lying everywhere. Plates, cups and cutlery were scattered all over the floor and reading desks. Twilight did not like the look of what she saw.
"Spike, how long do we have before the princess arrives?"
"About half an hour."
Light burst from Twilight's horn. She began to use her telekinesis to pick up books and put them back on shelves randomly as she rapidly teleported round the room hiding large piles of mess into cupboards and under furniture as she went.
"Quickly, Spike. We have to rush, we must be ready by the time the princess is here. She'll be so mad." Twilight's voice had a twinge of panic in it as she imagined all the things that Celestia might do or, at best, say to her when she saw the state of the room. Twilight knew she was over-reacting but she desperately didn't want to upset the princess. Not after what happened last week.
"I'll go and start cooking something."
"Good idea. Oh, and take these with you." At that moment Spike was crushed under a huge tide of plates and cutlery Twilight had dumped upon him, without thinking.
Twilight remembered back to last week when the princess had made her attend Moondancer's birthday party. The princess had insisted that Twilight make an effort to just mingle and chat with the other students of the school, in order that she no longer was seen as the insane recluse in the tower. Twilight at first had complained bitterly but after a while had realised that she was going to have to go, her liking it or not. So Twilight decided to see it a a challenge. She studied the art of 'partying' for days before she came to the conclusion that in order to make an impression she must have a 'party trick', as her books referred to it. So she began work on a spell to turn water into wine, an idea she found amusing, sadly though, no one else did. Her 'trick' went wrong and she accidentally turned water into nitroglycerine. Luckily, Celestia sensed the problem before the fireworks began. Sadly, she only had time to cast a spell to protect all living things in the vicinity. Moondancer held her party in the informal greeting hall in the west wing of the palace. There no longer is an informal greeting hall in the west wing of the palace, just a remarkably large crater. Moondancer was not amused, nor anyone for that matter, other than Celestia, who was wanting some renovation work done on the palace and now had an excuse. But still, discipline had to be maintained and so Celestia had some words with Twilight, albeit full of silent giggling.
At this moment in time Twilight was feeling rather guilty about the whole ordeal and had spent the last few days trying to reconcile with herself what went wrong. She was rather enjoying it though. Hence why she'd rather not have to talk to Celestia about why everything was such a mess and what she was studying.
There was a knock at the door, the princess was early.
