Bronze Tiara

Chapter four

The steady grind of her joins to the ground told Bronze all but one thing. She was in need of topping off her gems once again. It had only been a week sense fighting those automatons in town, and sense then from the few towns she passed through. She was unable to repeat the events of the bar and keep herself charged up.

Holding the talon under her cloak for some darkness, the slight flicker in them screamed that they needed a boost. “I’ll have to make due,” she sighed, and concentrated on her horn.

Drawing the magic through her body by sheer force of will alone. The energies leeched through her body from the tip of her horn and down her frame, replenishing what they could along the way as the dim light in the limbs gems slowly started to brighten up after being fed as her horns own dimmed. Taking out the map, the next town should be right around this bend in the road that she found herself on, and hopefully from there she could get in to a unicorns’ bed.

Or have another fight.

The town itself seemed just like all the others she had passed through recently, blurring in to one. Ponies, gryphons, zebras, the occasional drake and dragon would go about town doing their own business like they had likely done for their whole lives without a care in the world. Though something seemed off with this town.

Everywhere she walked the friendly nature of those citizens of Seren poured out to one another. Yet behind the smile lied an unease that she read as if it was a sign around their neck. Something wasn’t right with many of the township.

“Extra, Extra!” a small gryphon chick shouted from his crate alongside the road, “armored attacks on the rise! Princess Grace urges citizens to remain calm!” he yelled as a paper waved in his claw.

Digging in to her dwindling bit supply, Bronze reasoned that hearing what the princess had to say about the matter was worth the coin it took to view it. Scanning over the parchment, apparently since her visit to the capital not too long-ago Grace had done an interview regarding all that happed in the war. If you could call it that.

‘It should have turned out better…’ Bronze grunted in the back of her mind, while she took the paper to a bench and set about reading.

“Citizens of Seren,

I stand before and declare that the fighting between our nation and its neighbors is at an end. The buildup of arms for the cause of war has been wound down to a near standstill, and instead has turned to a sense of research as to those arms they brought to the table in an effort to quell any future fighting…”

Bronze huffed over the top of the paper, “So now you’re going to arm your country and use my tech as a means for peace?” she wished she could roll her eyes at the mare face to face.

“…With my rescue from the Gryphon Kingdom at the hooves of another, and the death of both Chief Reinhart and King Rhorkin. My message to the new leadership that will take their place is this; aid will be given in the future after a new treaty is written like it always has been, and some given now to help stabilize the area. Any act of aggression towards my nation though will be swiftly quelled, and sanctions put on the nation responsible. This fighting started because of being given an inch, and trying to take a mile. It will not occur once more…”

‘But the Gryphons didn’t have you?’ Bronze glared at the words and even reread them through once more. “I had you, I had you in my grasp! Not them!” she shouted, before quickly glancing up at the few faces looking at her. With a sheepish chuckle and probably the most shifty smile possible, the mare looked over the paragraph once more. ‘With my tech there’s little either of her neighbors would be able to do to match Seren now,’ Bronze reasoned, ‘You’re welcome Princess,’ she said to no one and dived back in to the article.

“…To those in my own nation however, a threat still looms out there hidden around each of our territories that deserves our attention. A new sort of soldier resides in the remnants of those armies, and now find themselves scattered around our lands as well as our neighbors. They are dangerous, well trained, and likely well-armed still. I urge my citizens that if you see any of these ‘Tin soldiers’ to please stay clear and let your local guard garrison handle the situation. No more blood should be shed for this pointless cause.

To all my citizens, keep your wits about you, and we will get through this as one.

Sincerely,

Princess Saving Grace.”

For what seemed like hours Bronze sat there on that bench and stared at the paper in her talon. Nothing, not even an honorable mention of ‘hey there’s this mare that caused all this to our nation’ was conveyed in Graces words. ‘It’s as if I didn’t even exist in this war,’ Bronze looked up as she stared off in to space. Wondering in the end what she really even accomplished with the amount of her life that she dedicated to this cause.

“All I wanted to do was wipe the slate clean…” Bronze whispered to herself as she held the paper still, repeating that idea from before, “kill the leadership that took everything from me, give them all something to fight instead of one another, force them to work together as one… And now Grace is holding both nations by the throat, as she rightfully should granted… That’s not what I intended though,” she sighed and shook her head.

Her motives really were only known to her, and it would seem to the outside it was to end everything… but it wasn’t. “I just wanted the fighting to stop,” Bronzes’ eye clenched for a moment. However, when she looked up to those that walked about. She saw what she really managed to accomplish in the end.

Fear.

Fear for if they would come under attack once again.

Fear if a group of her tin soldiers would make it in to town.

Fear that the guards might not be able to stop them.

Couples walked with their kin closer to them down the street instead of letting them run around as children should. Those children that should have wanted to go out and play cowered behind fences in their yards wondering what might be out in the town ready to strike. Even those guards she has seen around town couldn’t hide their unease with their visors, and barely kept the sweat from trickling down their necks.

Bronze watched as the third party she always was, and only felt disgust in her throat for what she caused in the end. Wiping the slate clean she didn’t expect to be pretty, but she didn’t expect it to cause all of this before her. She wanted the nations involved to settle down and come together, but instead…

“I drove them all apart, and filled the gaps with dread…” she shuttered, and started to make her way out of town, “I made everything worse.”

***

If she had still been a foal, Bronzes’ head would have been low enough to be dragging on the ground by this point. Though, even as a full-grown mare, she still came pretty close. The path she took from town thankfully remained barren in her travels. She hadn’t gotten anything to eat while milling about, and with her power still failing. Bronze knew she wouldn’t get very far if something attacked, and she had to drag her talon through the fight. The rumbling in her stomach was ignored though, as more pressing matters found their way to her head from what she saw in that town.

“Wipe the slate clean…” she rehearsed the line to herself once more for the dozenth time while on this path.

It was a simple goal to her, one that she dreamt about frequently after getting her first limb to work all those moons ago. Now however, looking back she wishes she could talk some sense to that young filly, or at the very least tell her not to underestimate a certain unicorn. With her hooves starting to wander off the roadway, Bronze continued without a care. Maybe a walk about nature would clear her head of the doubt.

“They always fought, always, and nothing was going to change that,” she said out loud to the trees. ‘These three nations have always been at each other’s throats for decades,’ the mare thought as she stepped over a log and went further down the rabbit hole of her thoughts, ‘nothing was going to change. Unless someone did something radical.’

And she was just the mare to do it.

She had the will to make it happen after losing what she loved most in this world. A younger Bronze may have not understood why her father had died, or why for that matter Seren was always so controlling of its resources.

Yet, even an older Bronze still couldn’t care about the politics involved in keeping a country working. She wanted her dad back, to visit him in his shop. She wanted to see her mom again, curl up in the evening and talk with her over the kitchen table and a cup of tea. More importantly, the mare wanted to give them both a hug and cry in their shoulders.

Though now after what she’d done, ‘Would they return it?’

That thought stopped her in her tracks, and Bronze hung there lost in time. If the DDR and Gryphon Kingdom went to war with Seren forgoing her gifts the fighting would have been over in a few months. Seren always would have beaten them when it came to supplies, and her neighbors would have waved a white flag as soon as their stomachs ached from hunger or their troops couldn’t be armed. The number of lives lost in the end might have stained the newspapers for a year, but they wouldn’t be more than a footnote in the history books.

However, with her help. The two had enough of a force multiplier to level the nation as a whole. Countless civilians died from her test, but it was a field test. ‘Those are supposed to test its effectiveness,’ Bronze told herself, trying to rationalize her slaughtering of a town. Yet even left unspoken, she still managed to taste vinegar in that thought. ‘The automatons on the loose now are targeting soldiers… mostly,’ she tried to use the thought to quell her mind. What of those that weren’t soldiers caught in the cross fire? The orphans that would be created, or widows that would have gotten the same message her mom had. Only one thought seemed to do anything for her subconscious, and calm the fire burning, ‘In time their numbers will dwindle and then Seren will likely help her neighbors mop up their own infestations. Bringing the nations together.’

What if they couldn’t be stopped though?

‘I made them tough granted, but they aren’t invincible,’ she reasoned to try and rationalize setting them loose on the unsuspecting countries, ‘and there are only a limited number of them. Production was supposed to stop after I sent out the kill command.’

For the average guard taking down one was a hassle in itself, and the body count after trying to clean up the whole country along with the surrounding lands would be higher than she may have intended or even dreamed. So much so that the very infrastructure of those nations that tried to remove them might just collapse all on its own.

‘Wipe the slate clean… and bring the nations together,’ Bronze mused at the juvenile thought that formed in her younger brain and festered over the years. They couldn’t be brought together if there wasn’t a nation to being with.

The mare could feel her parents looking down at her in disgust for what she had done. That stabbed more of a knife in her than when the spear tip when into her leg. She may have had the will to try and make a change, but that didn’t give her the right to do so. With a single signal from her horn, she all but likely doomed the nation she resided in. Her legacy would be that of destruction, and whenever she met her own end. Her parents’ backs would be the only welcome she would receive.

A tear trailed down from the edge of her eye to the tip of her muzzle as it fell off and raced down the cliff face of the waterfall the mare resided at. If she had been paying attention, she may have actually noticed how far she had traveled while lost in thought. There wasn’t a soul around, and only with her own thoughts did she find herself in the company of.

A company she didn’t want.

“I… I’m… sorry mom and dad,” the once proud mare that challenged countries on her own with all the strength of an army, reached in to her cloak pocket and pulled out the tool she carried with her still. Looking down at its worn handle from years of use and memories etched in to the grains of the wood, Bronze did the only thing she could do.

She wept like a foal.

Tears wouldn’t fix it in the end, and there was little she could do to begin with. Her limbs were in shambles, her power was failing, and all she wanted was for one of her creations now to come out of no where and finish her. She was in pain, and she wanted that pain to go away. As she watched her tears join the raging waters below the mare let a calm breath escape past her lips.

How deep it was, she had no idea. If there were any jagged rocks on the bottom, not a clue. How high up was she, hopefully high enough, it certainly looked larger than the last one. With anything and everything clouding her mind, Bronze set on to one thought that kept coming up, “Maybe I can tell them that in person…”

With that, and a single step. She went over the edge to join her tears.