Bronze Tiara

Chapter sixteen

Working the needle back and forth with her horn, Bronze used her talons to hold the canvas against the frame on the workbench as she lined up the individual sheets to cover the different veins of her wing. Watching the needle pass through the fabric over and over again. The entranced eyes of the filly remained in awe as she sat there on the bench while the older mare practiced her craft.

“How fast do you think you can fly with them?” Topaz asked curiously, having heard of the many speeds achieved by Pegisy over the years from school.

Shrugging her shoulders, Bronze went about the motions of tying off the thread she used before cutting it free, “It would depend how much energy I would be willing to spend,” she answered flatly as if by automatic, “normally if it was just casual flying the charge would bleed back in to the gems after use… but the faster I beat them, faster I’ll burn them out.”

“So… what if you run out of energy while in the air?” a curious eye looked at the frame and how much dead weight it’d be.

“That… well that’ll be a bad day,” the shiver went down her spine at the thought of falling from the back of her creation, and having that happen with even more mass to pull her down, “luckily I should be able to glide with them as well.”

Yet, even with the company of the filly. Bronze found her thoughts constantly going back to the mines, more specifically, what she ran in to. Going through the motions, the mare threaded a needle again and again in an effort to finish up her project. Any hint of enjoyment she normally got from working with her own talons was lost, to the mare this was the only thing she could do to try and stave off the many lingering questions that started to pile up in the forefront of her mind. The effort however, while valiant, was an uphill battle like no other.

“You’ve been busy,” Marble said as he walked in to the work shop, “We only got back from the mine this morning, and you’re already about finished.”

“I work fast…” Bronze answered while concentrating on the stitches as she sat motionless on the stool.

The colt looked over the project that she had in her lap. Working together with her previously, they made good time with getting to this stage in the process he still understood little of, “I would have been happy to help though finish up if you’d have liked,” he pointed out to her, and watched as her eyes barely even lifted past the fabric in her grasp.

“It’s fine, I didn’t want to be a bother,” the mare said as she tied off another finished section, and rethreaded the needle for the home stretch.

Even if it wasn’t said, there were more tells about her that Marble picked up. The clenched jaw, the worry in her eyes, short almost mechanical responses. Bronze was always a cool, calculating mare back in school… this behavior however, was off to him. Something was up with the mare, something that was weighing on her.

“Topaz, why don’t you start getting ready for bed?” the father asked as he looked towards the clock on the wall, “it’s almost bed time anyways.”

“Awe… I’m not even tired though.”

“You say that now, yet in an hour I’m going to be the one carrying you up those stairs,” he pointed out to her, a fact she couldn’t really dispute. With a huff the filly hopped down to her hooves and went out the door, leaving the two there in silence as the mare worked. With a small flash of his horn, the door to the hall closed a bit more to keep out young ears as the colt turned towards his friend. “You never really did tell me what you found down there,” Marble opened up with as he leaned against the counter.

Bronze having finished up the last of her stitching looked over the finished product for anything that might give way during a flight. “There’s not much to tell honestly,” she said mirthlessly, bringing her talons to each of the gem stones and giving them just the smallest of charges to get going, “there was a bigger one, a dragon version, and it got away.”

“And you haven’t been the same since you got back from underground…” he pointed out, while trying to get more from her in any form, “You retreat to the shop, pour yourself into your work, haven’t seen you eat all day, barely drank a thing.”

The metallic mare shrugged her shoulders to him, trying to blow off the questions, “I just wanted to get back and finish this up, came so close to doing so before you got called away.”

Marble however, raised a brow to her, “and you were much the same way on the train back.”

Bronze let each word go in one ear and out the other as she turned her attention to the larger emerald at the base of the wings. With a little concentration and the outreach of her horn, the gems steadily started to take on their envious glow as the spell leached from her own body to the new appendages.

Using her horn, she lifted up the folded wings and brought them to her back. With a half-smile Bronze looked at the colt still waiting for an answer, “Help me out a bit?”

Marble stood there for a few more moments before he rolled his eyes and grabbed a screwdriver, “Sure thing… but I’d like to know what’s eating you.”

“It’s nothing… really,” she lied as he tightened the screws to the joints.

“Bronze, I have a kid… I like to think that I’m good at figuring out when someone’s lying to me,” Marble finished one side and went around to work on the other, “Seriously you can tell me, anything at all.”

‘There are some things you shouldn’t know,’ the mare waited as he finished up and put the tool down. With only one talon held up to him to stop any further questions for the moment, Bronze closed her eyes and stood there.

Flexing and rolling out her shoulders, the wings went with the motion from her body working on its own. No magic at first, she just wanted to see how they felt, and how well attached they were. Balancing them out along her frame, the mare went back in to her mind as she focuses on the gems along their frame. Feeling the outline of her own magic, she reached from her core, to her shoulders, and on in to the frame. As if reaching to the familiar wings that had long been torn from her.

Opening her eyes, she looked to the wings on either side of her as they flex out on their own. The gems in each giving off their own ambient glow from the control of their master taking hold. “It’ll take some getting used to again,” Bronze said as she folded and unfolded them a few times for exercise, “but these should be more than enough.” With worry still in her eye the mare looked at her host and could only bring herself to curl part of her lips, “I can’t thank you enough for this Marble, truly.”

Seeing them stretched out, even Marble lost himself there for a moment while she moved, “Don’t mention it… it’s just a few gems and metal,” he smiled at her hoping to have it returned, yet the same dead expression on her persisted beckoning him even further, “Bronze… please, what is it?”

Folding her wings back to her side, the mare shook her head more so to herself than him. ‘I shouldn’t,’ she took a deep breath, ‘I can’t ruin this,’ her thoughts fell in order, ‘why am I doing this?’ she asked and turned around to face him. With a single tear falling down her cheek, Bronze answered, “I built it.”

A second passed, and another, and another. Marble stood there as he too shook his head, “You built… what?”

“The tin soldiers, the weapons they use, that bucking monstrosity in the mine… I created them!” she poured out and fell back as she leaned against the bench with her gaze to the floor, “Everything that Seren has going on now, from the new tech to the automatons attacking, I caused all of it!” Bronze snapped her eyes back up to him, forcing his silence, “I’m the one who went to the DDR and the Gryphon Kingdom, I’m the one who gave them this edge to try and beat Seren. I’m the one who sent my creations on the hunt after it all crashed and burned around me, and gave them the order to wipe the slate clean!”

The colt looked at her questioningly, and try as he might. He couldn’t see this from the mares’ eyes of how she could have, “That’s insane,” he said flatly, “I know you’ve had a few issues here and there with everything that happened, but there’s no way you’d-”

Without so much as a pin drop, the mare had a talon around his muzzle. The stumped glance of the stallion met the cool and calculated glare of the pony before him. One who has been told a few times too much what she would and wouldn’t be able to do. “Don’t… doubt… me,” she hissed, taking care to keep her grip on him light, “You have no idea how much I lost over the years, being distant from you parents is nothing compared to losing them outright.”

“I lost my wife.”

Like that, the ingot he had knocked her out with the first night they ran in to one another returned. Although more metaphorically than literal. Bronze brought her talon back to her side, keeping them firmly on the ground to try from lashing out once more. He may have not lost part of a family he cared much for…

‘…but he did lose that which gave him a family of his own,’ she answered to herself somberly. “Fair point,” Bronze tried to riposte back to him on that trump card, “Though you still had something left over in the end… what did I have?”

The silence between them already answered that to the colt. Pommel passed and he still had his parents, regardless of his relation with them. Even so, he had Topaz there to help him along the way in mourning. If his wife had passed before the birth, it would have destroyed him, and he knew it. He had a reason to be happy at the end of the day, and a reason to keep going. Which begged the question…

‘Yet, who did you have in your corner?’ he asked himself as they both stood there dumbfounded at one another. Him trying to come up with some response, and the mare waiting ever patiently for him.

“My point exactly…” she said in a huff, holding herself firmly backed against the counter of the bench as her eyes stared deep shards of thorns in to his eyes. The years of pent-up frustration and anguish she had let fester of that time, pushed her ever closer to the reality she created, “so, I started doing what I did best, and oh did I do it even better.”

The mare thought back to some of her original designs for the weapons she’d arm those of the nations with against the one that harbored her now. All the planning, and coordination between spying on meetings, scoping out patterns of trade, and listening in to the rants of those leaders involved. Waiting for the right time to step in and offer a solution to the DDR and Gryphon Kingdom. It was a symphony worthy of an opera house.

And she was the conductor at the forefront leading them all on.

“It took years to amass a decent amount of product to even tantalize the taste buds of those I wanted to involve,” Bronze remembered demonstrating her own hoof born weapon on one of Chief Reinhart soldiers, when she first met the chief himself head on. It was a gutsy move, but one that paid off in full in the end, “Yet, once they saw a sliver of what I could bring to the table, I had Rhorkin and Reinhart hooked like a trout… and they danced to my song.”

It’s not every day you envision your houseguest is a war maiden, but for Marble, he still found his head trying to wrap about what exactly she was saying, “But… Why? Why would you try to… to destroy everything?”

Bronze relaxed her thoughts, and took a breath. She didn’t want Topaz to come down here from a commotion and see her like this, “A long time ago, a little filly had an idea… wipe the slate clean, it seemed like a perfect one at the time,” she remembered back to that simpler time, when it all seemed to make sense. “Take revenge on those that took what I loved from this world, upset the balance of all those nations involve, and give them something worthy of their attention that they’d have no choice but to do it together,” it had been a sound plan at the time for her.

“I had it all… the weapons, the support, the army, and the will… I almost succeeded,” she thought to the one that foiled that plan, and in some way snapped her out of it. An exploding airship will bring you to your senses like that, “even with me falling from my pillar, my creations were still out there doing their work… but I hadn’t created any cohesion, I just gave birth to fear.”

She thought back to the various faces of those citizens out in town and on the way to the mine. The worry of what would the day bring and if they would come under attack by what her talons had spawned. “I couldn’t stand it, I couldn’t face what I had done then, the number of families that would get the same news I had gotten when I was younger,” the knot wrapped up in her throat as she caught herself, and swallowed before she broke down from the thought that hit a little too close to home, “I went to a cliff, tried to end it… see if my parents would still be able to look at me, but that didn’t even work.”

Marble looked over the mare. The scars that had been on her from the years of toil, travel, and creation. It had taken its toll, and everything she was shooting for no matter how vile, still was the only thing keeping her going at the time. To lose that would have been to have the rug pulled out from under her. A mare who was already at a loss, getting kicked once more when she was on the ground.

“So, what changed?” he asked carefully, debating where and what to tread on, “if you wanted it all to stop, how are you here now?”

“I’ve had a few close calls since it all went to shit,” the mare chuckled for the first time since the mine. From running in to those wolves out in the woods, her creations a number of times now, and trying to take her own life. Something hadn’t let her ride that river quite yet. “My dad never would have wanted me to take the easy way out. So, I’ve been trying to right the wrongs that I made.”

For a time, the colt there with her stood silent. Bronze wasn’t sure if he was going to knock her out and turn her in, throttle her a few times, or laugh at how preposterous this all sounded in the end still. One mare, waging a war on her own front apart from the three largest nations in the region. No matter which way it was sliced, it certainly was a lot to take in. The colts’ mouth opened, though he didn’t get to start any semblances of a sentence.

Bronze held up another talon to him, “I’m sorry… for everything, but I have to try and stop it.”

With nothing more to be said on the matter, the mare got up to her feet. Figuring this is as good a time as any to test out her wings, as she started to walk towards the door Bronze wasn’t sure if she should be hurt that Marble didn’t try to stop her. Then again, he had all the reason in the world to let her leave. With her cloak plucked from its hook, the mare paused in her tracks, checking to ensure her hammer was still in its pocket.

“For what it’s worth…” she called over to him from the door, watching as his eyes met her own. Far past those wonderous aqua orbs of his that made her own self stop and stare. Hidden behind them, she could see the trace of loss that was spoken silently, “… I’m glad… you rounded out.”

With that, the mare shut the door.