City of Bronze

City of Bronze

Chapter One: The Train

Somewhere in the secluded fields of the frozen north, a train rolled across the snow-covered landscape.

The train was different than its southern counterparts, those traveling in the greener parts of Equestria. This one was made from a multitude of shining crystals, forged for the very specific purpose of grinding through literal tons of snow and ice as if it were nothing. Even with snowdrifts piled up higher than the train itself, it would plow through the stuff like a boat through water. It was truly a sight to behold, the powdery white snow and glittering shards of ice blowing across either side of the train in blistering jets as the hulking machine of smoke and crystal carved a path through the barren fields.

Princess Twilight Sparkle had never taken a train this far north. She was used to riding the rails in her more temperate and comfortable homeland. The princess had long since passed the Crystal Empire, and was now speeding through new parts of Equestria that she had never before laid eyes on. It had been an exciting experience for the first hour or so, but large flat fields of nothing but ice, snow, and the occasional rock formation became monotonous after a short period of time.

It was snowing. It was always snowing in the Crystal Empire's territory. The flakes were nothing but blurry specks that came and went by the hundreds as the train raced across the countryside. Twilight could just barely see the dark grey outline of the Crystal Mountain Range far off on the horizon, looking no closer than it did ten minutes ago.

Twilight sighed and slumped a little farther into her cushy seat. She should have brought something interesting to read. She did have a paperback copy of "The Equestriapedia! - All you need to know about the realm of Equestria and more!" as a quick reference guide. Though she had little use for it since she had probably read that particular copy a dozen times over. Having some sort of informative literature was a habit she had since time immemorial.

The alicorn's eyes idly wandered about the cabin in search of something to focus on for the long ride ahead of her. There was nopony to pass time with through conversation. She and Princess Luna, who had blissfully nodded off in the seat opposite of hers a while ago, had the whole car to themselves. There wasn't exactly much tourism going on up there in Autumn; the only trains that ever braved the early snows of the tundra were freight trains bound for the Crystal Mountains.

Twilight affixed her eyes on the royal princess of the night laying before her. Luna's ethereal mane still flowed and whipped of its own accord even when she slept. She had shed her black and silver regalia seconds after the train had left the station and was slumped up against the window in a snoring pile of princess. A tiny bead of drool slowly inched its way out of her mouth and down her slender neck.

Even after witnessing Celestia let down her multicolored hair every once in a while, she had not grown used to knowing her younger sister on an informal basis. Sure, Twilight and her friends had freed the princess from a dark and terrible spirit and helped her take her first steps into the modern world, but after that it had been nothing but proper manners and brief conversations between the two. Her strict night hours didn't help, either.

But after half a day alone with Luna on a boring, bumpy ride, Twilight learned that, like Celestia, Luna was just another pony. A very, very tired pony.

Well, it was probably time wake her royal sleepiness up. It was Twilight's job to make sure she stayed on a common pony's sleep schedule while they were working together.

"Luna," Twilight said, her voice breaking the thick silence that permeated the room. Luna, in response, gave not even the slightest of signs that she heard a thing.

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Luna, wake up!" This time, the night princess's nose twitched.

Twilight lightly prodded her partner with a hoof, eliciting an unintelligible mumble from the alicorn as she shifted and wriggled in her sleep.

"Oh for the love of- Luna!" Twilight grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her whole body back and forth. It worked better than she had expected. Luna's eyes shot open in an instant,  but instead of her piercing orbs of cyan blue, Luna's eyes shone with a fierce white light brighter than a pair of torches. Twilight instantly reeled back into her seat in shock and with no small amount of fear. Perhaps it wasn't the wisest thing to do at this time.

The intensity of Luna's voice violently shook the train and threatened to tip the whole thing over as she boomed in her traditional royal Canterlot voice. "THOU KNOW'ST NOT THE CONTAINER OF POSTERIOR PUMMELING THOU HATH FOALISHLY OPE- Wait, Twilight?"

Just as quickly as her fit of rage began, it faded back into normalcy. The princess looked about the cabin as if she didn't know where she was. Her blistering white eyes blinked out, and her voice went back to an acceptable speaking volume.

Then something truly unexpected happened; her usual expression of cold, calculated emotional distance was not anywhere to be found. Instead, she wore a mask of... sheepishness.  Her normally dark cheeks had flared up to a shade of red that was more suitable for fruit than a face. "Apologies, Twilight," the princess said. "We are not accustomed to being woken up in such a manner. Thou hath merely interrupted our pleasant dreams."

"It's, uh, okay," Twilight said, unable to hear her own voice from the ringing in her ears. Luckily, it faded quickly. "You know what they say about sleeping dogs and letting them lay."

Luna nodded sagely, stifling a powerful yawn. "Indeed We do, but tis a poor metaphor. Our eyes need to be open in order to conduct our important affairs effectively." The princess stretched and flexed her neck and forelegs tiredly, generating small cracking sounds from her joints that made Twilight cringe.

She idly scratched her belly and asked, "Hath we drawn near to the city yet?" Luna pulled back the curtain on her half of the booth. "Nay. Tis nothing but an endless expanse of white oblivion."

"I wanted to ask you about the city..." she began, "I just can't seem to find any books on the City of Bronze.  There were hardly any records of a place by that name, even in my personal collection. I was wondering if you could tell me more? I'd like to know the history of this place before we go in."

"Listen to this," she said, flipping open her Equestriapedia "The City of Bronze - A wondrous, wealthy city situated in the deep north at the edge of the Crystal Mountains. It is inhabited exclusively by a race of beings known as the diamond dogs (see page 217 for more information). It is a large producer of ores and gems including (but not limited to) iron, copper, tin, gold, and silver. It is lead by an individual monarch called "The Alpha"."

Her book snapped shut. "And that's the best entry I've found so far."

Luna laughed heartily, her oddly throaty voice filled the empty train car. "Twilight, there have been many a better way to gain knowledge than your tireless fancy for books. Thou cannot find much about the city because thou hath been looking for the wrong name!"

"I beg your pardon?"

The night princess chuckled again. "Thou know'st this City of Bronze only by its modern name. The older and more complete texts always refer to it by the moniker given to it by the first diamond dogs that inhabit the hole. Twas named ‘Bog’ during the first rule of Sister and I. The dogs, now possessing pretensions of education,  chose a much fancier term for it during my stay on that Lunar prison."

"Bog," Twilight echoed. "Why would they settle on such an odd name?" A city that far north could not in any way be described as "boggy."

Princess Luna let a nostalgic smile creep onto her face as the memories of years past flooded back into her mind. "Thou must understand that diamond dogs are not a people known for their wits. Ponies cannot pronounce its true name; tis spoken in a tongue that only mutts may understand. Roughly translated, it means ‘dog.’ Unfortunately, the mongrels had an even worse grasp of the Equestrian language than they do today. When they carved its Equestrian name into the gates leading into the city, it read ‘bog.’ They neither had the intellect to use a capital letter nor to tell the difference between a lower case d and b. Tis most fortuitous indeed! We had a good laugh at their expense when We first learned of this."

"Huh," was all Twilight had to say about that. What a strange bit of history. The whole city was named Bog for more than a millennia because of an easily avoidable spelling mistake. Fascinating. She made a mental note to not use words longer than seven letters around the diamond dogs.

"In truth," Luna continued "we hath not laid our eyes upon Bog in ages! We are curious as to how a filthy hole in the wall became the center of diamond dog culture in the time that We had been away. Twas nothing but a single pack of mutts with a crate full of digging tools a millennia ago."

"Well, they picked one heck of a spot. From what I've read of it, the city could have the largest deposits of iron and copper on the planet."

"Indeed," Luna said, staring thoughtfully out of the window. "But why would a city of great wealth like Bog chose to cut off its supply lines? Tis senseless! They doth not possess the land to grow crops or cut lumber. They would soon starve to death without the assistance of Equestria. What reason would they have to put their entire way of life in jeopardy? Tis bothering me…"

"Maybe they've found a way to grow crops in the cold," suggested Twilight.

"Perhaps. T'would not be the doing of a dog, should thou speak'st true." The princess wrinkled her forehead at the thought of diamond dogs having no need for Equestria's trade. That idea was disturbing indeed. "Twould require a pony, and a highly intelligent one at that. Tis a feat that a city full of boneheaded mutts could not accomplish."

Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but after catching the distressed look on her partner's face, she thought it best to stay silent for the moment. This problem was really getting to her. Twilight wondered if she should have been as worried as Luna.

"Equestria cannot continue to grow its current rate," Luna said solemnly, her eyes locked on the rushing scenery outside of the window. "Not without ore. Twas much easier when we produced everything that we require without the aid of foreign powers. Now look at us, thousands of working hooves hath been made idle when some arrogant diamond dog on the other side of the continent decided that Equestria was not good enough for their metal."

"Don't have to tell me twice." Twilight agreed. "Everything from forks, to swords, to jewelry, to hammers and nails is running low. We won't have much left of anything in a year."

"Let us pray that the diamond dogs can be persuaded to see reason." the night princess said, her voice returning back its icy impartiality. "We know not what caused this lapse in trade relations, but We hope that is was a mere misunderstanding between us and them and not something much more, ah... permanent."

The way she said that last word- permanent -sent an involuntary shiver down Twilight's back. She didn't completely understand what it meant, and that scared her a little. The thought that the dogs would have a legitimately good reason to permanently cut off trade made her stomach do a backflip. It was a sobering idea indeed.

Twilight had no reply to Luna, and the train crept back into silence.

Fifty hours.

It took that behemoth of a train fifty hours to get from Canterlot to The City of Bronze. Twilight Sparkle had never so bored in all of her life. Chugging along, chug chug chug nonstop for more than two days straight. Who knew that the ice fields just north of the Crystal Empire were so huge? Certainly not her.

The moment that the train came to a complete stop, when the incessant clickety clack of the rails had faded to blissful silence, the two princesses felt like the luckiest ponies to have ever walked the earth. Twilight, who had been unused to riding in such conditions, went wobbly as soon as she was on her hooves. She had heard of the saying "getting one's sea legs" many times before, but she hadn't experienced the true meaning of those words until then, and on land no less.

Princess Luna was first to step out of the car and onto the creaky wooden platform. A blast of frigid subarctic air and stray flakes of snow rushed up to greet the two as soon as the door was opened. Twilight cleverly remembered to at least bring along a fuzzy red and purple striped scarf on a trip to the Frozen North. She silently thanked Rarity for the gift as she pulled said scarf a little tighter around her face and followed her partner outside.

Luna, on the other hoof, did not give a flying rut about the temperature. She brought no articles of cold weather clothing as she would rather be invigorated by the biting air and the lashing autumn wind than try to shield herself from it. Luna loved the cold. It made her feel alive.

"Tis a glorious day today, is it not, Twilight!?" Luna merrily asked with a sweeping gesture at Bog's train station, a rickety old hovel tied together with nothing more than a couple of sticks, some rope, and a whole lot of hope. As there were few ponies or dogs coming and going from the city, the passenger drop off was not as well-kept and structurally sound as the cargo loading area.

"That depends on your d-d-definition of g-glorious." Twilight returned, her whole body shaking and her teeth chattering.

"Thou should learn to appreciate the frozen beauty of the Crystal Mountains. It is a most wondrous place to live thy life! We have taken many a vacation here in our lifetime. We vividly recall our last trip to Mount Spearhead -" Luna chucked devilishly to herself " - Our wing was injured because we were too headstrong to not fly through a raging blizzard on our own, so We had to walk the trail to the peak on hoof. Standing in our path was the most gruesome, vile, and ugly mountain troll that We had ever laid our eyes upon. We wished that thou were alive to have seen it. We should have packed a sword, for the beast had lunged at us with the force of a--"

Before Luna could go off on another of her wild "back in my day..." stories, she was interrupted by a coarse coughing from behind the two. They turned to see a two-legged figure lurking in the station's doorway. It was tall, tall enough to dwarf even Princess Luna when it rose to full height. The diamond dog stood like a statue with his arms crossed across his chest. He regarded the princesses with cold eyes and a stony expression on his wolfish black face.

Twilight couldn't help but stare wide-eyed at this beast before her. Was he wearing... a dead animal?! It looked like the dog had taken the dark brown carcass of a deer and made its skin into a furry smock with a hood. He even had the antlers tied to his body like pauldrons and bones fastened to the garment in different places as some sick kind of armor! The only thing that could be recognized as clothing was a tattered red cape that hung loosely over his shoulder. Disgusted to no end, she glanced at Luna, who looked completely unfazed by his repulsive clothes.

Luna regarded him with a friendly smile, forcing herself to drop her normal archaic dialect and pick up a more modern one. "Good day to you, sir! I am Princess Luna, and this is my partner, Twilight -"

"I know," the dog said, his deep baritone voice like a growl. Luna furrowed her brow for a split second.

"Ah, you were expecting us, no doubt." Her demeanor was still as cheery as ever, despite how she did not like to be interrupted like that. "Good, and to whom do we owe the pleasure?"

The dog didn't say anything at first; he just stood still and silent. His glowing yellow eyes seemed to pierce their skin and look into their very souls.

"'Kay then. Come," he said, and turned around, striding slowly down the path with those long legs of his. The two exchanged a glance and followed the dog, their metallic boots making crisp crunching noises as they trotted through the freshly fallen snow.

As they walked, Twilight couldn't help but notice several rectangular stone arches that stood over the beaten cobblestone walkway. They looked old, some crumbling, some mere piles of rubble, and all bearing a collection of odd hieroglyphic symbols etched in by hoof - or paw, in this city's case. Upon closer inspection, she recognized them as an old dialect of Growl, the diamond dog language. Unfortunately for her, she had never learned to read Growl, so whatever tidbits of ancient wisdom that the arches held remained unknown to her.

The silent dog lead them up a series of grand stone staircases, probably three ponies wide, winding up and down and through the rocky base of the mountain range. Looking up, she could finally get a decent glimpse of the mountain that the City of Bronze had been carved into. The monolith that was Mount Spearhead loomed above them, dwarfing all of its sibling mountains in the same way that Princesses Celestia and Luna dwarfed their subjects.

They passed more and more of these curious arches as the gates of Bog grew nearer. No two were alike in any way, and each one seemed to tell a longer story than the last. Perhaps they all collectively told a single tale? Twilight couldn't help it, the burning curiosity was getting the better of her.  What were these things even for, anyway? Those stone constructs were there for a reason.

Twilight galloped a few paces ahead of the black dog and gestured to the arches. "What are those?"

The dog gave her a cold and impartial look. "Wards.".

Wards? Wards were magic, magic used to keep things away. That meant the dogs under the mountain had things that they didn't want coming in. "What do they ward off?"

He waved a paw dismissively. "Bad things."

"Bad things like...?"

He shrugged. "Evil."

Twilight let a small grunt of frustration resonate within her throat. She might as well have been asking him about quantum temporal mechanics. She let her pace slow down until she once again trotted beside Luna. Twilight leaned in a little closer and whispered in her ear, "Who is this dog, anyway? He looks real shifty to me."

"We know not." Luna murmured back "We had simply assumed he was our guide, although guides do tend to act with more appropriate manners."

Twilight furrowed her brow. "Yeah, you're right. He could just be a stranger for all we--Woah."

Twilight had immediately forgotten what she wanted to say when she caught her first glimpse of what lay ahead - the gates of Bog.

It was an arch, but unlike the rectangular wards that they had passed through, this arch was smoothly curved like the top half of a chicken's egg. It melded flawlessly with the rough mountain into which it was hewn. A thousand years ago, the pure bronze gates by which the city had been named would have glittered and sparkled in the golden sunlight. Alas, all of those years of exposure to the elements has turned these gates a shade of greenish blue that was closer to the rock than the metal. More Growl hieroglyphics had been carefully etched into its rusted surface; thousands upon thousands of unrecognized words covered the entire structure.

Never before had Twilight seen old world architecture like this with her own two eyes. She had been blessed with the opportunity to see a piece of history up close and personal, a breathtaking experience for the newly minted alicorn. She felt the sheer age of the gate in her very bones. What untold wonders had this ancient building seen? Countless numbers of dogs and ponies alike must have passed through these doors. She struggled to imagine the  myriad of important events that had taken place in an area that a millennia ago, had been nothing more than a collection of tents and an alcove in the mountain.

The black dog stopped mid-stride and slowly turned around to face the two ponies. He smiled a wicked grin, revealing all of his long yellow canine teeth.

"Welcome to Bog."