Ponyfinder Chronicles: Shades of Green
…“If it takes forever”…
…“I will wait for you”…
…“For a thousand summers”…
…“I will wait for you”…
-“Do you really need to listen to vinyl each time we try to talk?” a female voice asked someone in the dark, pure night interrupting a song, the only noticeable source of sound at this hour in the forest.
-“You have a problem with it?” a male voice asked the other voice, but still stopping the record from playing.
-“It’s not an hour to listen to music neither is it a time to sit around doing nothing” female voice replied, her voice echoing a little in the forest.
-“I would disagree on that one, Sonance. We have more than plenty of time, we have a bearer and enough energy to perform the ritual. He will have the stone by tomorrow evening. And I will have my cutie mark” the other voice replied, relaxed without a single concern in his voice.
-“You better be right about it, failure is not an option right now. We have only one straight shot at it. We know where Leo is and I presume you already released the Scorpio?” the mare named Sonance asked, looking at the night sky, noticing a chunk of stars missing from it.
-“I did indeed” the male voice replied “I still had to use help of hired muscle with the girl through.”
If someone else would be where, one could make out a handful of shapes of what seems to be big dogs, patrolling surroundings of half destroyed castle surrounded by forest.
-“Did it go as planned?” Sonance asked with her tone was giving away her lack of interest in the matter, she was asking to be polite more than anything else.
-“Of course not, she managed to kill one of them before the others succeeded in putting the amulet on her. She probably figured something fishy was going on and came prepared. Not my problem through, I warned them to prepare some traps in advance.” He replied, putting his hoof on the gramophone and turning in on once again.
…”Till you’re back beside me, till I’m holding you”…
…” Till I hear you sigh here in my arms”…
On a nice, shiny day somewhere around marketplace of Ponyville, two ponies, a pegasus and a unicorn filly were walking around looking for something.
-“Do you really need a quill and ink? Why don’t you just use the spell?” the pegasus asked, his black coat and fiery looking mane poking through amounts of colorful ponies with ease, but mostly due to the fact his mane and tail quite literally was glowing a bit with gentle fire, as it does whenever someone has inner magical talent, be it a unicorn, pegasus or earth pony.
-“Fenris, it’s different this time around. I’m writing to presumably a pen pal, not random someone. Besides I need to fill in paperwork at Adventurer’s guild later today” the filly replied, looking around for at least a quill. She was a rather pretty little filly, green coat and green eyes combined with a grey mane and tail. Even though she was at least thrice smaller when Fenris, as she referred to him she was keeping up with him with no problems at all.
-“Spell Firebrand Shock, how did you promise to call me?” he asked with a smile, he didn’t mind her calling him by his name, but she did promised to not do it, at least for some time.
-“Ugh, why you so picky ’daddy’” – Spell answered with a grimace still putting a bit of sarcasm in the last word of the sentence – “So, what are we going to do with this letter of yours from the Mayor? I would think by the amount of ponies going into town hole a while back, something is going on”
-“Honestly, we will go and see what she wants to talk about at least” – Fenris replied thinking about it – “I’m kind of curious about why she would invite so many ponies at once. Just don’t forget you have a meeting at adventurer’s guild, would be kind of silly to miss it after all the paperwork I had to do for them to consider you. And here is the ink, go ahead and buy it. It even goes with its own quill.”
-“Yeah, I guess they don’t get too much fillies nowadays, but then again they don’t have much of a choice in the situation we put them in.” Spell replied, counting away 20 bits for the ink, which was rather expensive for a small bottle of ink, but she really did need it at the moment, so go figure.
As they finally finished their shopping for ink, they went to the town hall, heading in to the office of the Mayor and entering it, seeing a handful of ponies already inside.
One of the earth ponies, with brown coat and double colored mane of red and blue was toying with a flask of what appeared to be a hair dye, his lime colored eyes were looking at the flask changing color from every spin he did to it. He wasn’t the only brown coated pony, there also was a unicorn with more pale color of brown and a grey-green striped hair which kind of reminded Spell of her own color scheme, which was natural against many ponies disbelieve. She also noticed he had green eyes as well. The next person who cached her eyes was a female unicorn pony with broken horn. Her coat was like ice and her mane, tail and eyes were light as snow.
-“And a little snowflake on top of it too, charming” – Spell thought for herself.
The last person was a large looking earth pony, with black coat and again green of eyes and one she actually knew. It was Necrose, local gravekeeper.
-“Oh, finally the last person we were waiting for. I hope the bed was warm” the ice colored pony replied quite annoyed since they came just as she went to half-sleeping in her chair.
-“Miss Tundra, please” the mayor replied and asked Fenris to sit down “And could you ask the young miss here to…”
Spell just raised an eyebrow and went out of the door, waiting until Fenris exits from there. Within ten or so minutes, the whole group of ponies exited the Town Hall and Fenris approached Spell, who stood alone near the exit.
-“Apparently, there is someone kidnaping ponies” he told her “we were asked to investigate and help to resolve the situation if possible, so I guess we should try to go and get that license of yours.”
-“Okay, I guess I should introduce myself?” she asked looking at ponies and thinking how they would react to the need to wait for her an hour or two, or maybe something else – “I’m Spell Shock or just Spell. And good evening Necrose”
-“Aye” the ice coated pony replied, bored to death still “I’m Tundra, here’s the policy – no snow puns in my direction in exchange for no sword to the face puns in regards to you. They not really puns, but they are still rather funny.”
-“Good to see you in better circumstances when last time. Not by the whole lot through” Necrose replied, calm as usual.
-“I’m Firewater, glad to meet’cha” the pony who played with the flask replied “Firewater Elixer”.
-“And I’m Zathra” the last pony replied “Blacksmith extraordinaire”
Looking at the whole group, Spell thought to herself how weird it looked from aside. At least four ponies here had green eyes.
-“Are we going to stand around the whole day? Can we at least find a shadow to do it?” Tundra asked after a while and when released a glare in the direction of Zathra “Someone planned to ask around about ponynapping”.
-“I guess we should go and check this shop which got robbed last night” Fenris replied to it and looked at Spell which gave him a strange glance “Forgot to mention it to you before, there was a robbery last night”.
-“And then they went around looking for something no one knows that.” She replied rolling her eyes up and giving a clock on the town hall a glance, she still had plenty of time, but the sooner she would be done with it, the better.
After a little bit of walking they found themselves in front of a General Shop, which was open not even considering the fact it got robbed last night. After entering into it Spell had a chance to hear the part of conversation Zathra initiated with shopkeeper.
-“And you have no idea who could have done it?” Zathra asked “I mean, who would want just gems? They not what expansive I would presume if they are not in the safe somewhere in Manehattan”.
-“I told it before and I will tell it a million times over, the only thing where was is a bit of freshly digged out dirt near the chest where gems were, but I couldn’t see any breaks in the walls and all windows and doors were intact as well!” shopkeeper replied getting annoyed at someone asking the same goddamn question once again.
-“Diamond dogs” Spell replied, after a brief moment of thinking and after receiving two pair of eyes on herself she added “They eat gems just like dragons do and they are exceptional diggers. A little bit violent at times though. They probably came from Everfree and honestly, since they came all the way here from where I would say it’s a possibility they could be behind the whole kidnapping thing.”
After that there was a brief moment of silence after which the shopkeeper asked “So, will you buy anything or you just going to eat up all this lovely space in which the actual customers could fit in?”
-“Oh, excuse us for looking around, jeez” Tundra replied to the statement, making it look like she did care, but it was just a snarky comment.
Still, after a little bit of time they all got out of the shop and started to discuss what to do next. It was agreed that they would check in the Everfree forest.
-“Well, sorry to spoil the fun for you lads, but I have a meeting at adventurer’s guild.” Spell replied “I will catch up to you later, just don’t forget to throw the bread around, I wouldn’t want for you to get lost”
After finsihing her sentence she just went in the general direction of adventurer’s guild, it was located on the outskirt of the Ponyville, a rather large building, several floors in sizes. Entering it, Spell couldn’t fail to notice the lack of ponies here, which wasn’t a big surprise, since Equestria was calm enough last decade or two to cease on amount of adventurers required, but they still were around, helping with things which paid the bill. At least in the entryway there was no one beside her, everything she could see was a few stands with weapons, a fine longbow, a few crossbows, swords and wands, as well as some armor and of course the Logbook.
The logbook was quite important for adventurers, since it was the way to track adventurers going in and out of the towns on villages, also keeping the track on their deeds and other useful things. If something rather bad happened involving some adventurers who decided to take less when pleasant job, logbook was a way to round them into investigation. After approaching the Ponyville logbook, Spell opened it and looked at it, it was full of entries, and each signed with signature, unique to each adventurer.
-“I guess I need a signature too, soon enough” she mumbled to herself going through a door and going on a search for a local guild master. This search ended up shortly, after she found the guild master. He was a rather old pony with dark-blue coat and cyan mane and tail, as soon as he noticed Spell approaching he just signed and shook his head in disagreement.
-“I presume you Spell Shock, miss?” he asked, looking her over and when once again, but with something glowing in his eyes this time. After he was done staring at her, he signed and looked a little bit more relaxed “Okay, I guess it’s not such of a suicide. So, you are here to get your license to adventure, risk your life without even finishing the school?”
-“Yes, sir. Could we please leave this topic outside for now? It’s a right thing to do for me and it’s personal” she asked, she wasn’t going to back up right now.
The old guild master just sighed and went with her through the little tests they had set up for new adventurers. They skipped the practice on melee combat since he could clearly see she was a magic-user, much like unicorns usually are. Instead, they went with test on her aim with a crossbow. She did had a little trouble with this little odd device which was put with a leather strap on a hooves of a pony, but she hit most of targets she needed to hit, which was good enough. They then skipped to a simple puzzle solving, course about running and simple things like what, to the old pony’s remorse Spell did rather well on most of them, the one exception being picking locks.
-“I guess that’s it, I guess you have the fee on yourself?” an old pony asked, the situation being that there wasn’t a law against her being able to join them, her and her parent pushing it and her doing relatively well on the test he didn’t actually have any other choice than to just comply with it. Maybe she would realize it was not for her after first troubles, he just hoped she will survive as long. In moments like this he really didn’t liked those loopholes which adventurers used for generations now to do things a little bit out of their “official” rich, like one being not having any age restrictions, really.
-“Yes, a hundred gold coins, they are here in this purse” she replied hovering a little velvet purse to the table.
-“Very well, then let me give you some advice. First of all, you are planning on using your magical abilities, right?” old pony asked and after getting a nod handed her a short sword “When my advice is, take some training in armor to use it efficiently and never wear any type of robes against anyone who has any wits. And keep this sword on yourself, just pretend like you a fighter or something like what, believe me this will save you a world of hurt.”
-“I guess it is a good idea” Spell replied, she didn’t though about this one fact really. Unicorns, even ones which never studies magic what much could outright smash an iron door with their magic, so it would be wise to target someone who looks like he going to go summon walls of fire on you.
-“Second advice is, potions are you best friends when you have none and your best buddies when you have friends.” An old pony continues “And the last piece of advice is never put on anything you have a bad feeling about. Identification spell still does its job, but if this really nice necklace doesn’t feels nice just do not wear it. Cursed items are diabolical murders. Now, you can keep the crossbow and the bolts, other stuff I will hand you over later.”
After a bit of work he handed her a silver card with information about her and a few other things and let her out with a word of good luck. After saying her thanks, Spell went to the logbook and signed her with a flourish. Afterwards she went into Everfree, this little license was her key to do what she wanted to do – be it good or not, her own business. Through she still hoped it’s at least somewhat legal.
-“I hope they didn’t forgot to throw bits of bread around” she replied chuckling to her own joke.
DISCLAIMER
I do now own Pathfinder, which is owned by Paizo neither do i own MLP:FiM which is owned by Hasbro. I also do not own characters beside Spell Shock, at least as far as first chapter goes. This disclaimer won't be seen in any further chapters.
