Bronze Tiara

Chapter six

From across the vantage point at her bench in what seemed like the towns square. Bronze watched the mare from earlier leaving the store for the night. All the others in the town had started to dwindle down to only a fraction of the citizens that were out previously that day. Even the guard patrols had started to slow down doing their rounds for the night.

“All according to plan,” she muttered to herself, looking at the store from underneath her vale.

If there was something forgotten, the mare would have been back shortly for it. So, Bronze thought it better just to lie in wait and count the ticking of the clock. A rather boring prospect at that, though patience was a virtue, and one she was all too familiar with.

“Thirty seconds…” Bronze watched as a guard patrol rounded a corner and started their pacing in front of the several stores that dotted the strip. She had gotten it down to mere moments now of how long it would take for them all to make their rounds, and even only going off of the local clock at the top of the towns hall. Bronze still managed to find the pattern that each patrol would give up the more she observed.

“Ten seconds…” she got up from her bench and waded her way over towards the jewelry store, and as the seconds ticked by, the patrol when around the opposite corner once more, “Now ten minutes.”

Darting up against the side of the building, Bronze creeped around the corner to the narrow alley way between the stores. While she wasn’t expecting to make all that much noise, she still didn’t want another patrol to catch her sulking around where she probably shouldn’t be at this time of night. Keeping her horn at the ready should she have to use a last bit of magic to get out of a pinch. The mare looked up and around the wall to the store, and with the glint in her vision, she saw her opening.

A narrow window several feet off the ground may have been closed, but needless to say it was a small obstacle for one such as herself. Latching on to the brick and mortar with her talons, and pinning her hind legs between the two buildings. Bronze clanked her way up the side and finally reached the window, and with a small tap and a crash, punched a hole in to the pane with her peg.

‘Sorry about that,’ she muttered to the store owner, and slipped her talon inside while bracing herself using her hide hooves.

A quick latch later and the window swung open, letting the mare slither herself inside what appeared a store room undetected. The hard part was done, as she didn’t worry all that much about the guards outside seeing her from the store front. Opening the door to the room, Bronze looked out at the same display cases she saw just hours ago.

“Well, hello there,” she ran a talon across the glass cases in the dim light of the street lamps coming through the store, even eying the necklace that adorned her earlier.

While it would have been a tempting grab, Bronze knew she needed something a little more substantial. Working past the various cases, and to the door that the shopkeeper had come out of before. The mare opened up the door to the back rooms and flipped a switch, quickly finding a tinkers’ dream there before her eyes.

Small files, jewelers’ pliers and screwdrivers, even a smaller crucible for melting down the softer metals such as gold and silver all scattered themselves around on various workbenches throughout the room. If she had all night, then Bronze may have been able to make a full limb right here to replace the peg.

However, what the room really contained that she needed were the larger uncut stones in cases scattered around on the shelves. Diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, topazes, and even a few of the citrines like she had admired. All laid ready and waiting to be worked on for future adornments of others.

Nabbing a small sack from a bin, Bronze set about going through her pick of the litter. Certain gems were easier to charge and control for a non-magically inclined pony such as herself. That’s half the reason she stuck with cheaper gems in the first place. This time though, she knew the limitations and didn’t want to set about have the same reaction as before from her limb blowing up in her face.

“Diamonds the purest I can get, might be able to charge them, but could never control it,” she pushed the sparkling stone to the side and picked up one of its green cousins, “Emerald works better with raw energy…” Bronze scooped up a good talon full of the gems. Nothing worth trying to sell to a buyer, but certainly good for what her intentions are, “…would I need any for spells?” she asked herself while looking at the other shades.

Her horn was mainly what she cast spells from, and while it may be tempting to shoot fireballs from her talons. The first thing she had to try and focus on was getting on all fours once again. Improving on the designs could come later once she was out of those woods.

Along on another shelf the mare saw the few smaller ingots and sheets of the more precious metals, along with some of their less lustrous counterparts. Sliver and gold ingots laid next to various plates and thinner sheets of brass and copper. They may not have been as valuable, but a good polish on brass can make any piece shine just as much as gold would.

“Hmm I wonder what you’d be able to come up with,” Bronze asked herself while thinking of the owner, having paid little attention to some of the actual pieces out for sale during the day.

“Should come during the day and find out.”

She heard a voice from over her shoulder, and before she could turn around. Bronze found herself in the dark once more as the lights were flipped out. Though, the energy pulse shot through the air did light up some of her vision when it smacked in to her chest and forced her to drop the sac of gems, as she tumbled back against one of the benches.

The tingling spread through her body as each muscle started to spasm before finally coming to a halt. Whatever kind of spell it was, it wasn’t lethal. ‘Still hurts like hell…’ Bronze groaned as she got back up to her hooves, “I’m terribly sorry about doing this.”

“I don’t know why you’re taking something from back here,” the pony, a stallion from what she could make out from the sound of his voice, said as the pitch black of the craft room hid his location, “the merchandise up front is far more valuable.”

Another energy bolt shot through the air, this time though, she was ready for it. With a quick duck, Bronze hit the deck and rolled out to the other side of a work table to where she could only imagine was right in front of the owner. Reaching down to her pocket, the mare plucked out the hammer and swung it in to the open air hoping to hit something valuable.

And that she did.

The crunch of tissue and bone under the blow, while a crude swing from her skill level, still had the desired effect and sent her attacker back in to a shelf full of parts from what she could make out from the clattering. Giving Bronze the opening she needed, she leapt up on to a table away from him, slipped the hammer back home, and trotted towards the light of the front room. However, the stallion had other ideas.

Grabbing on to her back legs, Bronze may had been a little heavier for her size given the augmentations. Though that didn’t stop her from having her legs pulled out from under her and tossed around like a rag doll. Landing on to another bench, the stallion held down her talon and peg with his own hooves as he charged up another spell. Twisting her head out the way, the singe on the wood of the work bench blinded her for but a second, as she kicked up her own hind legs in to that which made him a male.

“Cheap… shot…” he groaned there as Bronze pushed him off of her.

“Call it what you will,” she tutted, brushing herself off, “I call it effective…”

A quick right hook though stopped any other comment from her as her own side shot with pain from the punch. Whoever this stallion was, he wasn’t going down without a fight. Bronze side stepped from the silhouette that moved in the dark around her. It may have been a low level of light, but even after his spell, her eyes adjusted to match the environment.

Just as his did the same, and he blocked any jab or punch she might have thrown his way. Standing a few feet apart from one another, the stallion still remained between her and the door. Bronze could deal with the guards at this point if they tried to catch her, she was fired up enough and just wanted to get some rest after this day. The stallion though had to be taken care of first.

“Alright, enough of this,” she grabbed hold of a stool and threw it towards him.

A sloppy attack, but as he caught it in his magic the aura lit the room up just enough, and he didn’t have time to catch the mare leaping over top the stool as it hovered in midair. With a cold talon, Bronze grabbed on to the stallion by the horn with the utmost of care. He had already gone back and forth with her long enough, and she was running on fumes at this point. Whoever he was, he wasn’t in the wrong for defending his own property, and Bronze wasn’t about to kill the colt just out of annoyance.

A single surge shot from her talon as the mare drained what little she could from the stallion, not overdoing it like she somewhat did with Stellar, but just enough to knock the wind out of him. Even with her gems recharging from the new life breathed in to them, Bronze could still feel the stallion she held on to resisting the flow.

Some creatures gave it up easier. The weaker the mind, the easier it was to pull every last drop of magic they had to spare at once. Though some, like this one, always seemed to be able to hold off on the draw as Bronze fought for the drops she received. Sweat dripped down her brow, and even her own hooves began to shake from the own will she was having to muster to fight back against this stallion.

Soon enough though, to her own thanks, he fell and remained on the ground with a shallow breath, “It’s… not personal,” Bronze repeated once more as she watched through the twilight the colt lay there looking up at her with some vendetta in his own eye, “… I just couldn’t afford to keep fighting.”

With that the mare pushed herself to her own hooves and shambled her way towards the door, glad to be rid of this place for the night, as she picked up her sac of gems and kept her eyes forward.

“Can… you,” she paused in her tracks, listening to the colt out of pity, “afford to duck?”

‘That’s an odd-’ with that last thought, Bronze felt a cold smack at the back of her skull before the warm trickling of blood started to make its way down her neck. Hitting the ground on a knee at first, she knew it wouldn’t be enough to kill her, but she wouldn’t be able to run either in that kind of daze.

Using the new found energy in her horn, Bronze charged up a spell in a last-ditch effort to poof her way out of this one like she had done so in the past. Though another smack, although a lighter one, against her head threw that idea in the trash as the stars in her own vision danced and small birds flew their way above her head.

“…Crap,” the mare muttered as her face hit the floor of the shop, and the world around her turned as black as the room.

The stallion may have been on shaky legs from having most of his energy zapped from his body in one go, but that didn’t mean he was out for the count. Dropping the gold ingot, he used as a make shift baton. He flipped on the light and took a look at the back of the mares’ head, hoping that he hadn’t swung too hard.

“No… just a flesh wound,” he checked the bleeding and found that it already was starting to clot. With a gentle touch he rubbed the underside of his jaw where she had socked him moments ago, “better than what you deserved.”

Though with a gentle push he rolled the mare over to see if she was still breathing, and from there he had to check his own to ensure it didn’t stop all together as his rump met the ground just as her body had. From the metallic coat, to the tom coltish short black mane and tail, the mare before him was one that he had known all too well.

“No… there’s no way, could it?” he questioned while looking her over once more, not at the injuries just sustained, but all those self-inflicted.

The makeshift metal horn atop her head, adorned with gems along its shaft. The false limbs that protruded from underneath her cloak, one that seemed to have far more care put in to it than the other. What really grabbed him, was the handle sticking out from under the cloak, of a tool he’d seen only once before.

Using the remaining magic in his horn, the stallion grabbed a few rags from the drawer of a workbench and wrapped it up underneath her head to help with any residual bleeding that might come back. As well as with a careful hoof pulled back on an eye lid to the mare to check for a reaction.

With a steady contraction of her iris, a heavy breath escaped the stallions’ lung as he knew for sure then and there she was still of this world. Just out cold for the moment. “I’m sorry, Bronze …” he said, while the beginnings of a single tear begged to fall from his own duct, “What happened to you…?”