Crusader's Crutch

Chapter 1

Chink, crack. Chink, crack.

These were the only sounds across the land that signalled the coming of the dawn, dragging the residents of Canterlot from their beds to the fields and offices, where they would turn the cogs of the city. Hours would pass, they would waddle back to the concrete basement they called a home with a few bits in their saddle-bag and then they would sleep; dreaming of that potential promotion or the foal-hood friends long gone, waiting for the chinking of chisels to prompt their rise again. These noises, that were the humming in the well-oiled machine of the former capital, rung out from the sterile strips that made up Canterlot’s commercial rock farm. Those who have ended their career in those strips, without throwing half their life savings at a doctor, shrink or undertaker, have often been known to dub the place with the extremely flattering and eloquently expressed title of “a hole”- A name with a considerable amount of accuracy, given the fact that with all the isles of rocks, hammers and chisels that drilled away at each other for centuries and centuries, one would be forgiven for seeing the farm as a hole in the space-time continuum.

Often the family in charge of the firm, with their committees and ties that blended in with their flow charts, drew up names cheesier than a Delicatessen on a moon actually made of cheddar, to slap on their product like “Super Sedimentary” or “Boisterous Boulders” all for the sake of catching the eyes of the confectionary stores, who practically smelt bits for the local dentists yanking the teeth with five hundred pounds of rock candy out he gums of fillies and foals. Even so, all the paid endorsements from the aristocracy and the gaudy slogans on posters made of recycled construction paper in the world did little to morph the mouths of the muddy stallions to any shape beyond that of a neutral line. Yet despite all of those strips that showed their links with the same rocks, the same expressions and the same supervisors that patrolled the same paths, there was but one portly earth pony whose merry whistling marked him with a sort of uniqueness.

If one was to skim the records held by Canterlot’s government, they would eventually find this brown pony filled under the name of “Back-Bone”, after several hours of searching. The reason as to why hunting for one tax payer in that meticulously designed register they called a database had mutated into such a time sink, was merely a quarter due to the current white, Unicorn Mayor of Canterlot running to his wit’s end and listing all the citizen names in descending order in an attempt to give his term a some distinction over the white, Unicorn Mayor preceding him and all the predecessors prior since the vanishing of the sisters; regardless of what most world weary ponies will tell you over a cup of cider. In reality, it was primarily due to the fact the name “Back-Bone” doesn’t quite catch the eye in the way that those such as “Breezy Brilliance” or “Blight Trotter” do. Indeed, if it weren’t for the whistling and the singing that made the nails of a banshee on a chalkboard sound like Sweetie Belle, Back-Bone would have faded into the crowd; another of the many faces that lined like cattle along the rocks and combined to construct the image that granted the farm its infamous reputation.

So comes the inevitable explanation on how Back-Bone’s life wound him up in such a position: the pony was born to parents who were ponies. Now, while that statement may be the equivalent of saying that the sky is blue, one would be hard pressed to describe his immediate family with any other word, as the mother and father had no remarkable failures or triumphs throughout the entirety of their existences. Back-Bone was raised and then tossed into the Canterlot Elementary that was built after Ponyville’s destruction, with the rest of the children. By the time his prepubescence was in its twilight years, Back-Bone’s flank was without a cutie mark. He ignored it. By the time the itching between his hind legs dragged his eyes to mare’s shower rooms during Gym class, Back-Bone’s flank was without a cutie mark. He tried everything; painting, music, athletics; every subject and hobby known to the curriculum and ponykind. By the time he graduated out into the wide confines of the city, Back-Bone’s flank was without a cutie mark. There are of course, many worlds and civilisations held within each individual star that occupies the nebula of space and while the cultures that pervade them have remained entirely alien to one another since time immemorial, those traversing the planets from whatever cramped corner of whatever wasted universe that was abandoned by its owners first, would find the single similarity that the stars all had regarding the ridiculous requirements to be met in order to secure a job that handed out even an eleventh of a penny more than the minimum wage; employers in some galaxies, for example, value hard earned diplomas, whereas others demand applicants to perfectly recite ancient archaic literature while being water-boarded. Equestria has, since the battle at Ponyville, differed in this regard due to the fact that even the thickest of the ignorant found themselves contributing to Canterlot’s 97.8% employment rating without a lick of effort on their end. Such is the case when your qualification is tattooed on your rear for all to see. Therefore, lacking a talent to his name and lacking in connections thanks to that one time in the elementary where he smashed a filly’s snout for convincing him that the word “gullible” was on the ceiling for the tenth time that week, Back-Bone found himself with an ultimatum: decompose in the rock farm or decompose in his mother’s apartment.

His tears invisible to passers-by in the autumn rain, Back-Bone hauled his hooves over to the place of his now widowed mother to crawl into his bed and whine himself to the grave over the talents that he failed to obtain and gave up on, before some words of wisdom from his parent hauled him to the strips for the twelve hour shifts at 2 bits an hour and the rows upon rows of blank faces that bore the same blank flanks; working away in the stead of the bees that accompanied them in the summer. In the time he lost chipping and heaving big grey stones, half a decade had slipped Back-Bone by. It was a period of his life that included the passing of his mother, the appointment of a brand new white Unicorn Mayor and the earth pony being mixed up in a relationship with a pink Unicorn baker by the name of “Stale Dough” from the confectionary store at which workers on the strips received a discount.

There is very little that’s worthy of note concerning the affair between these two. On his break, Back-Bone would walk up to the store counter and Dough would give him his midnight lunch of slapdash strawberry cupcakes with glittered icing and a glass of water, in exchange for some bits to use in the salon and an ear to go on a quick tirade about how much more dazzling her friend Sparkling Spectacle looked. Their favours did however extend a tad further, albeit mostly on Back-Bone’s end, as often on those bitter early mornings, Back-Bone would be bombarded with the usual hassles of:

“There was this bottle of Acre Relic apple scented perfume that Sparkling had on from Charming’s Cosmetics; could you go and grab some for me after work? And make sure it’s the Royal Gala kind.”

Or

“That dress I was gonna wear for Star Reacher’s birthday is a size too small; can you return it for me? Thanks.”

Thus, Back-Bone fetched the old fragrance, fetched the dress’ vacant hanger and fetched whatever bits and pieces were wailed out for by Dough’s cherry-sized mind to sate her mental hunger.

So that was the routine of Back-Bone: wake up, chink at rocks all day under the lashings of the elements and unnerving silence of the supervisors, consume some food at the store, burn that off to the best of his ability hammering at the rocks some more and then lie in bed until his eyes decided to shut; all the while awaiting that moment on the fleeting horizon where a tiny stone would miraculously materialise on his mucky rear and act as a prideful scar of the banality. It never appeared. Hence the noose that the pony hung from the beams on the ceiling within the apartment he inherited, which he swore he would put himself on at some point during the next week or so.

Such was the crossroad that the stumpy little earth pony was stuck at, when the hand of destiny, luck or whatever hypothetical force one choses to store their faith in, lifted him softly by the hooves and down the path that lead to this whole business. The Pegasi were practically wringing every last droplet from the rain clouds upon the crops that lapped at the base of the mountain Canterlot latched itself to, and rocked frantically in the wind. Back-Bone’s hooves were lugged over to the public library by the returning of a cookery book, which he proclaimed to himself to be a parting errand for his marefriend. After stutteringly stating his request to hand over the book to the unconsciously hoarse librarian, Back-Bone was directed by the piqued pointing of her flame red hoof to the hollow space in the non-fiction section the hardback inhabited alongside it’s white, brown and black clones. The gravity of that last chore’s finality pressed a clear, broken breath from his mind as he placed the book back amongst its brethren and turned his head towards the exit.

Yet in that turning, an alluring flare of the purest purple drew in his left eye. The shining shone, naturally, from the stem of a lonely book with golden lacing, thicker than an unabridged documentation of a teen’s ramblings and appeared as such a diamond in the rough of the other books that you’d swear that Sirens were singing to you with every glance. Stupefied by such sensations, Back-Bone carefully removed the text from the wide empty shelf, evidently made to house further copies, and examined it closely. The book was a hardback, as was told by the smooth leather cover that massaged the bruises on his hooves and the aforementioned lacing flawlessly captured the earth pony’s reflection, such was the extent of its sheen. Though out of what one can only assume to be the result of eye-rolling supernatural intervention or the artiness of some scotch swirling auteur, deserving of further critical eye-rolling, neither the cover nor first page bore a title or author. There were however, six symbols etched into the cover and stem: one of three butterflies, one of three apples, one of…you get the picture. His eyes with a brighter curiosity than a light in a tunnel to those isolated from the surface, he snapped the cover open and skimmed some excerpts of a random page. One quote in particular rose to the top, every letter caressing his very heart as he read:

“Maybe you’ll fly someday, or maybe you won’t. You’re all kinds of awesome anyway.”

As this statement melted into the natural cracks of his brain, Back-Bone called to the librarian with an abnormal clarity, “Excuse me, do you know how much this costs?”

As one could probably tell, Back-Bone had stumbled upon a published compilation of the parables of the legendary six, who fought at Ponyville all those centuries ago. Of course, these crucial figures of history were hardly news to anypony’s ears; arbitrary events where picked from the memories of tutors in kindergartens for the sake of telling a tale of caution and a borderline obsessive number of plaques and statues in their name where chucked all over Canterlot during Heaven knows what era, in addition to the well-aged windows that still inhabit the city’s palace; ironically, the only reminder of their status in their time. It’s rather difficult however, to dwell on the past while Manticores are pulling your crop farmers kicking and screaming into the overgrown Everfree Forest in the present. So the plaques began to rust and the stain glass stopped drawing the public eye entirely. Thus, it was in these neglected souls that Back-Bone found a kindred spirit. The word for word speeches of the friends the lines contained; he memorised. The melodies sung by them to ignite the fading vigour in themselves and their allies that the text also possessed; he could sing by ear. In the end, he believed to know them like his own:

Twilight Sparkle was clever and occasionally witty, Applejack was honourable though bland in his perceptions, Rainbow Dash was what Back-Bone could only articulate as “badass” and Rarity alongside Fluttershy, in his eyes, infested the same dreary cesspool. Back-Bone never did explain such hatred, but one thing quite noteworthy was the fact that after reading a passage related to either of these ponies, he could not bear to look into the book’s reflective lacing. Yet there was one single pony that toppled them all, who, if she indeed lay buried, would produce a final smile at her posthumous ability to let others do the same. So it was that from the day he read the story of the rainbow forming from the rainboom at Pinkie’s rock farm and gawked at the diagram of her sky blue eyes, Back-Bone locked the hanging noose away and grinned as he hummed the party pony’s songs in front of the raised brows of the supervisors; his own rainbow at the fore-front of his mind.

It’s funny how words on paper can alter the very fabric of one’s reality, but in time this proved for Back-Bone to be a double edged sword. On one hand, even the more prestigious ponies of Canterlot appeared now to be less the oppressors of those on the lower rungs in any capacity on the ladder of existence and more of the slaves to a social system that preaches pessimism and the malice of life. Yet on the other hand, fundamental pieces of the society in which he inhabited made, in the context of the book, little logical sense.

For instance: the Everfree Forest somehow eclipsed every major settlement in Equestria, with the obvious exception of Canterlot due to its altitude; yet according to the book when Discord’s seeds of chaos rose from the ground, Canterlot was one of the first places to be struck.

So why did the growing cease at the base of the mountain?

Also, at the end of that same tale, Princess Twilight and her friends sacrificed the Elements of Harmony to maintain the Tree of Harmony, which halts the forest’s growth; yet it grew.

So what happened to the Elements?

With the book’s final section holding only the spottiest details about that last battle and journeying through the forest past the nearby Zap Apple trees being rendered all but impossible, unless the sound of arriving at what’s left of Ponyville with limbs petrified, shattered and generally misplaced sounds appealing to you, these questions lingered in the air without answer.

Here marked the beginning of Back-Bone’s quest, when he discovered one day that in his infatuation he was far from alone. The great purple book nested in Back-Bone’s saddle bag, leaving only to be browsed when he awoke, when he was at the confectionary store or in public during his painfully brief holidays and when he lay in bed. Yet on the odd occasion where he turned his head from the pages in a café, bar or wherever, he would always be met by that peculiar sight in an isolated corner of the room. A pony of a pale lavender always sat away from the crowd with a faint smile, clutching another copy of the thick, purple book that shone with equal glory. The pony consistently donned a black raincoat and fedora, even in the sweltering summers, so the query of which race it belonged to was quite the conundrum. Its facial features though, were distinctly feminine and in all the places Back-Bone laid eyes upon her, she never once left her seat nor spoke to any waiter. Instead the mare would scour thorough the pages, then scour through the pages some more before slowly raising her head to stare in Back-Bone’s direction with her mirrored shades and giving him a courteous nod. She made no advances and never tailed him down the dark back alleys as far as he could tell and still she dominated that little space in Back-Bone’s brain between the designated “Pinkie Pie” and “Smiling” spaces. He frequently wondered how she obtained a second book, evidently showcasing that the memory of that wide, empty shelf in the library had been purged from his thoughts. He also wondered whether or not her book was being read out of commitment or extracurricular analysis and if it was in fact the former, whether or not conversation could be struck. Then suddenly he recalled the feebleness of the mare’s smirk, curious if such weakness was there due to the text’s inherit joy falling deaf upon her or on the off chance that the more implausible circumstance had occurred, in that the happiness she inhaled from the passages in the past no longer gave the desired effect. As he dwelled upon this thought he almost swore he could hear the disquieting cries of his little pink pony that were said by in a page to have rung out so long ago:

“Make it stop! Oh, make it stop!”

Refusing to bear the weeping any longer, he resolved to approach the mare upon their next encounter. There was no need however, for when Back-Bone arrived at the confectionary store the following midnight, the mare was all but absent and in her place was a note left at his usual table which read:

“The Memorial Tree.

Saturday, 2.00 AM.

Come.

-Your friend”

So he did.