“If they hadn’t brought blood magic back, Equestria wouldn’t be such a shithole!”
Every train ride seemed to have somepony like this, since time immemorial probably. Lace Agate kept his eyes locked on the window ahead of him.
“Ponyville used to be a nice little agrarian town! Now it’s all high rises, neon, homeless ponies! You can hardly take a step without crunching some spent fakie underhoof!” His eyes darted to Lace; Lace could feel them on him, but he didn’t dare raise his eyes from their unfocused gaze out the window. Sleek, modern buildings zipped past as they approached their next stop, far too fast to see any cracks in their glossy exteriors. Advertisements danced with glowing lights from every available surface, selling better hair, better clothes, a better life.
The other ponies in the train car were in the same position as Lace; they kept their eyes out the window, or on their bags, or on the glowing screens of their phones. They didn’t want to see him, and they definitely didn’t want to get involved.
“What’re you doing here, anyway? Running some errand? Maybe committing crimes for a drug lord who doesn’t want to get his hooves dirty?”
Lace Agate’s gaze darted to the stranger sidelong as he swayed close; the hover train they rode was smooth, but not perfect. Magic was a poor copy for many of the more elegant technological advances of the griffon nation, but Lace suspected that this pony swayed for reasons other than mere hover train imbalance.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you! I know you’re a fakie!” the stallion sneered when he caught Lace’s eye, and grabbed hold of a pole to steady himself as he came closer. Lace looked like any other pony from far enough away; that was the point of a construct, to imitate life. But up close you could see that his lilac-blue coat had faint mottled striations along his belly and legs from the base material used in his creation. His eyes were two different colors, brown and dark purple, because the magic used to conceive him was unstable. It took a lot of skill and effort to make a construct look like a real pony, and only those who were incredibly talented could manage the darker colors. Accordingly, Lace Agate was a study in pastels, from his striated legs to the blue and white stripes in his mane. The final nail in the coffin was his cutie mark; or rather, the lack thereof. Constructs didn’t have cutie marks, and so his hip was adorned with a small dark purple smear on each hip with a few dots alongside, as if they had fallen from an artist’s brush.
When he didn’t respond, the stranger darted out a hoof towards him. “What’s in your little bag, huh? Explosives?”
Lace Agate leaned back; his two-legged hold on his satchel tightened.
“Ex-cuse me, sir!”
The stallion leaned back, and a third party took the opportunity to interject themselves between the pair, all but shoving the swaying stranger back.
“I believe it is Equestrian Council Code 13112 dash 6 subsection 1 paragraph 2 which states that abusing or mishandling a magical construct is unlawful and is grounds for severe legal punishment, up to and including banishment from Equestria!”
Lace Agate couldn’t help but stare; he’d never seen a robot up close before. Of course, pony robots weren’t usually so elegant, or nearly so functional. Griffon technology had metal beings walking and talking, moving through streets and battlefields with equally adroit skill. Ponies usually only saw one right before it killed them. Pony copies were … well, they were still figuring out the walking thing.
But this didn’t look like a robot at all; it wasn’t blocky, and it didn’t speak in the language of whirs and screeching metal. It was made of some glossy off-white substance, so glossy it shone, and it looked exactly like a pony if you saw it from a distance. It had all of the right pony parts, round ears, large eyes, electric-blue hair - or, sculpted hair as if caught mid-breeze, the copy of a living being - and what looked like an elegant cutie mark, even. Some kind of illustration of a multi-petaled flower, blossoming against a few leaves. The only thing that made it look a little ‘wrong’ was the monochromatic color scheme, and the way that it stood so very, very still.
The stallion squinted down at the robot distrustfully. “What’re you?”
“I advise you to step away from the construct, sir, or else I will be forced to inform the authorities!”
That got the attention of the silent passengers that surrounded them. They didn’t want to get involved to stop a drunk stranger from murdering a fakie, but they sure as hell didn’t want to get involved in a governmental inquest. An angry mumbling started around them, and the stallion’s head twisted sharply, considering his options.
The hover train came to a jerky stop. THIS STOP, PONYVILLE. NEXT STOP: COSSA, VERNAL, AND REGIONS BEYOND, intoned the recorded voice above their heads.
The stallion considered the robot, the promise of violence in his eyes, but it quickly faded. Like most bullies, he was eager to go up against a smaller opponent that society told him didn’t matter, but the promise of an easy fight had faded. With a grunt and a toss of his mane, the stallion stomped away, moving to the next car.
The robot turned back to consider Lace Agate, but he was gone.
As soon as Lace saw the doors open for Ponyville, he’d taken off. He was good at vanishing out of plain sight; he had to be, being a construct.
Constructs hadn’t existed for very long, compared to the regular ponies that filled Equestria. He had to be careful of them; many of them didn’t trust constructs, or blood magic, or anything involved with them.
Lace Agate, full name Blue Lace Agate, had been rescued by the gentle-hearted Bubbling Cauldron, a kindly but generally bumbling scientist. He was the junior assistant to the mare who had created Blue Lace Agate, using the dark magic that had been forbidden only a few decades before. That’s what he was doing now, today; Lace was on an important mission, a mission to help Bubbling Cauldron and every other construct in the world.
Lace took in a deep breath and exhaled it. He stood that way for a long moment, pressed up against the side of an alleyway, eyes closed.
Cauldron had warned him that this would be difficult, weeks ago. ‘You have been imbued with a sublime directive,’ he had told him; Lace Agate had found the quote later in a book, but he supposed he couldn’t blame Cauldron for the plagiarism. He was well intentioned, but a bit bumbling. He spent every day cleaning up after the senior scientist Lace Agate never saw, but he didn’t want to, based on the frightening stories that Cauldron told him. ‘This is why you have to assassinate her partner in the city; if he stops sending orders, she’ll have to stop making constructs like you, who just get abandoned and killed on the streets. You’re very lucky I found you when I did.’
Lace Agate had been afraid the first time he’d seen a ‘spent’ construct. Beings like him, made of raw materials like iron, cobalt, or even blue lace agate, had an artificial time limit on their lifespan. They used to be built solely for the war effort, and unicorn scientists had to have a lot of very high governmental clearances from the Equestrian Council for the right to practice blood magic; but nowadays, Cauldron had complained to him one day, any old unicorn with a beaker and a couple of rocks could create life.
It wasn’t a real pony; it was just a shell, a being without a soul, an amalgamation of science and magic that had turned the tide in a brutal conflict. But Lace Agate couldn’t see past their similarities, how it looked exactly like any other pony did, sprawled out on the sidewalk like that. He'd vomited the day that he found her, in an alleyway much like the one he hid in now. Maybe the same one.
Constructs came into being as a full size pony, but they had to be taught in the same way that a child would, how to walk, talk, eat, all of that. Construct-teaching services had sprung up as the construct market had grown, and they were as easy as dropping your glassy-eyed new life in front of a screen for twelve hours or so. Lace had been lucky; he had been taught by Bubbling Cauldron, raised as his own son, and given important mineral supplement injections every day with the promise that he would live much longer than any other construct.
This was why Lace Agate had to do this for him; this was why Lace Agate had to learn to kill.
It had only been a few weeks ago that everything in his life had changed. Lace Agate had found him slumped over his desk, and it frightened him. Bubbling Cauldron hadn’t even wanted to tell him that they were in trouble, because he loved him so much. But Lace had pried it out of him, and Lace was the one who had asked if they couldn’t just send somepony to stop the bad stallion from Ponyville - permanently. Bubbling Cauldron had seemed alarmed at the very suggestion of it, but after the second threatening letter from Gleaming Trumpet came, he had to reconsider.
Lace had been practicing for weeks; coming into the city, calculating how long it took on the train, how long the walk to the enemy’s apartment was. He’d been very precise in his calculations; he had to be, after Cauldron had yelled at him the first day when he used approximations. (‘I’m sorry, dear lad; I’m just under so much stress,’ he’d apologized, and of course Lace Agate had forgiven his father. How couldn’t he?)
Time was burning; Lace had no more time to sit in an alleyway and stew. With a quick look around, he resumed his steady pace, rejoining the crowd on the sidewalk.
“You must,” Bubbling Cauldron had instructed him just that morning, “finish it within the hour. Do you understand? Gleaming Trumpet is being called away to an important appointment at noon; if you don’t catch him before noon, then this is all for naught. We may never get another chance.”
“I won’t fail you, Father,” Lace insisted, and he felt something big and brave swell inside of him, just like in the stories he devoured so voraciously.
But that had been in the safety of his home; here, out on the mean streets of Ponyville, things were a lot less thrilling and a lot more real. He touched his satchel for the thousandth time. He felt the outline of his book, and then the outline of the blaster, the weapon that was promised to be equivalent to a unicorn’s horn, more deadly than any mere bullet. He’d practiced at home to be certain he could shoot it. Cauldron had given him a piece of paper too, a warning he was supposed to leave with the supplier’s body, so that no one else would get any ideas about finding out who did this.
Everything would be quick and clean. At least until Lace ran into the blockade.
The main road through the city was blocked off, and suited officer ponies were waving ponies back, directing them to detours down side streets. There was a large crater in the center of the street; Lace couldn’t see any bodies, for which he was grateful. One dead fakie had been enough for his entire life.
“It must have been a griffon bomb,” one pony whispered to her neighbor, pushing past Lace as he froze in the crowd.
“How did they get past the magical barrier? I thought it was supposed to protect us from their flying machines!” her companion fretted.
“A magical barrier is only as strong as the unicorn who casts it, and they lost Galliford the Great years and years back now, wasn’t it? We’re running out of unicorns…”
Someone shoved Lace’s shoulder, and he was yanked out of his trance. With the main road blocked, how would he make it to the target’s apartment in time? He turned in the crowd and did his best to hurry without seeming to. A running construct was suspicious to anyone, especially in front of the officer ponies directing traffic.
Lace broke into a run when he found an empty alleyway, and he began zigzagging his way across the tangle of streets that criss-crossed the once tiny farm town, galloping whenever he was alone. He knew he was going the right way when he found the corner shop he always passed on his scouting missions, with its bold sign CONSTRUCTIVE CONSTRUCTS FOR HIRE! in neon over the large glass window. The same construct sat in the same place in the showcase window just as it had every day for the past two weeks, a midsize brown stallion with white and green hair. The construct considered him from under a half-lidded gaze, and watched him as he galloped around the corner. Lace’s heart raced higher into his throat with every step, with every delay; he was getting further and further away, and it was going to be terribly close!
Blue Lace Agate was only two blocks away from the target’s apartment when he collapsed.
Time seemed to move in slow motion; he hardly even felt his head bounce on the sidewalk when his legs went out from under him. A crushing, squeezing pain took hold in his chest. Constructs are bred to die; that’s what they are for, Bubbling Cauldron had informed him the day he came home crying about the dead fakie. They have a purpose, and once they fulfil that purpose, they are gotten rid of. Every construct is born with a countdown over their head. But that will never happen to you, dear boy; never fear. I will never begin that countdown for you.
Somewhere beyond his sense of understanding, a large clock chimed twelve times.
His memories seemed to be slipping away; was this what dying felt like? He was watching his life in snapshots, bits and pieces of it, but it felt all wrong. He could see his memories with Bubbling Cauldron, learning to speak and read; but it was fading, the dying glamour spell cast by a mid-level unicorn gone brittle and crumbling to dust as his neurons began misfiring. He could remember more things now, new things; he could remember being plopped down limply in front of a screen where a reassuring voice told him that Bubbling Cauldron had raised him. He remembered the last moment of understanding before it was wiped away, replaced with the memory of a loving, benign creator.
Feebly, he reached into his satchel; around him, earth ponies looked down at him and kept walking. Some sneered; some pretended not to see him. Just another dying construct. Look at what this city has come to.
He felt the paper, pulled it out, as if it might hold some answer for him. THIS HIT HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY BUBBLING CAULDRON ENTERPRISES! ALL FORMER CUSTOMERS OF GLEAMING TRUMPET ARE OFFERED 10% OFF THEIR CONSTRUCT ORDERS BY MENTIONING THIS FLYER!
There was no senior scientist that Bubbling Cauldron had to protect him from; there was no evil supplier who wanted to produce constructs only to die. Bubbling Cauldron wasn’t being threatened; he was bumping off his competition. And Lace had begged to help.
Lace Agate’s grip weakened as his vision began tunneling, and the paper slipped out of his hoof. He was afraid to die; everypony was, Lace Agate thought to himself, because his books had told him so. His breath was beginning to go shallow. He only wished he had more time. There were so many books he hadn’t read yet; that was something safe to focus on, instead of the crushing heartbreak of his only parent and friend being the result of a training video.
He knew constructs didn’t have souls; but he hoped, wherever he went next, that there would be books. That would be nice.
Something hit his shoulder, but he was almost gone; he could hardly feel it. He did feel the stinging pain when something bit his neck, and a sudden burning, stinging sensation began to spread under his skin. It was getting worse and worse - no, wait, it was that something was pulling him back, and as he began to return to living and breathing, the pain became more perceptible.
Oh, ow. And it was also definitely getting worse.
“C’mon, you can’t die! Wake up, you little - you little -” it was a mare’s voice, close to crying, and it was coming from somewhere very close by. Something pushed his shoulder again, hard, and he felt an intense pressure suddenly compress his ribcage. As the pressure released, his ribs sprang back into position, forcing a breath back into his lungs. Colors danced in front of his eyes; he realized, suddenly, that his eyes were working well enough to see colors. The pain, which he now recognized started in his neck, stung and spread a little further, and Lace gasped in pain.
“Hey! HEY! Don’t die, c’mon, hold on! You gotta hold on!”
Lace Agate gasped, again, because his neck burned; but he realized, amidst the burning, that the horrible crushing sensation in his chest had vanished. He opened his eyes; it took a couple of tries to remember how to work them. Finally, he rolled his head just enough to be able to look up at the strange voice.
“Hey!” she was crying, but she was smiling at the same time; Lace had only heard about that happening in his books. She was a gentle grey color, with springy pink curls that framed her face, and green eyes filled with tears. “You’re okay! You’re okay, right? You’re - breathing, and everything? Can you talk? Can you hear me?”
“I can talk,” Lace rasped, and tried to get up - and failed. “And hear.”
“No, oh no, don’t - don’t get up, yet. You died! Or almost died! I was so scared I wouldn’t make it in time - I saw you from down the street, and I thought, if I’m not fast enough - oh, here, hold still.”
She leaned close, and grabbed something from his neck. When she came back into his vision holding an empty syringe, Lace Agate felt his tenuous grip on consciousness falter.
“Oh no! You don’t have to - this is good! Good stuff! Oh, Cels. Stay with me, little construct! You can’t die twice, I only brought one syringe!”
Despite himself, the promise of getting stuck a second time with that big needle prompted Lace to fight to stay awake a little more fiercely.
“There we go!” the mare misinterpreted his rolling eyes as something less panicked. “Okay, my home isn’t far from here - we can go stay there, okay? We might get stepped on if we stay out here any longer,” and then just like that, with a strength that belied her small frame, she all but threw Blue Lace Agate over her back and took off at a trot.
As his head bounced near her flank, he caught sight of her cutie mark; a blobby hoofprint in green, smeary and clumsy as if daubed on. A construct.
They didn’t have to go far; it seemed that the mare was only a little ways from home, and all Lace had to do was let his head bob along, his thoughts rattling around in his head as he bounced against her side. They bounced around the corner, up the stairs to another high-rise among dozens of others, just as glossy and gleaming as they had been from the train window. Up close, he could see the cracks in the concrete, the film of greasy smog on the windows, the homeless ponies camped in the leeward side of each complex. He was so lost in his own thoughts and mulling over his near-death that it wasn’t until they had crossed the threshold of her apartment that he realized that he knew exactly where they were going.
“Gleaming Trumpet! I’m back from the store!” she shouted, and Lace noticed the shopping bag only when it landed on the floor beneath his nose. “I found another construct!”
“Good work, dear,” and with a thrill of horror, Blue Lace Agate watched as his target Gleaming Trumpet rounded the corner. He looked just as he had on every reconnaissance mission; a grey-blue unicorn stallion, with a white mane shot through with streaks of salt-and-pepper green. He looked more wrinkled up close. “He looks like a strapping young thing, doesn’t he?”
“He’s okay! My syringe worked great on him, he came right back!” His horror was missed by the mare, apparently, and she shrugged him off onto a squashy sofa. Lace couldn’t do much but flop into place. “He’s kinda quiet, though.”
“Some of them aren’t taught to talk,” Gleaming Trumpet said boredly as he fussed with something on his worktable. He wore a heavy rubber apron like Bubbling Cauldron did, and a pair of thick goggles rested just above his horn.
“Oh, he can! He’s just quiet from the almost-dying, I think?” she knelt on the carpet in front of Lace, and her big, shiny green eyes stared up into his face. “I never got your name! Do you have one? Or like, a number?”
“Blue Lace Agate,” Lace responded, almost automatically. He touched his satchel; it was still there, looped around his neck and shoulders, even after his death.
“Wow! Very elegant, three names in one!” the mare giggled, and smiled up at him all the more brightly. “I’m Ilium! It means ‘hipbone’, because that’s what I was made of! I bet it’s the same for you, huh? Look at these spots!” she traced the striations on his side down to his belly, and he jerked away, a laugh dying behind his lips. “Ticklish!” Ilium whispered, and giggled again.
“Let’s have a look at him, shall we?” Gleaming Trumpet was on them before Lace could quite believe it, he had arrived so quietly; Ilium the giggly mare was quickly brushed aside, and the unicorn began looking him over. “Ilium, why don’t you start our dinner? I’m quite hungry.”
“Oh! Yes, certainly!” and off she went, grabbing her shopping bag and vanishing into the other room. A kitchen, he had to assume.
Gleaming Trumpet didn’t bother to make small talk, like his construct; his eyes were magnified, oversized in their goggles, and he looked Lace over like one might look over a cut of meat at the market. He lifted his forelegs, inspected every hoof, from toe to frog to heel, and then he looked into Lace’s ears. He looked at his mismatched eyes, pulled down his eyelid to look at the red flesh beneath, he looked in his mouth. It was when he came to his chest, though, that Gleaming Trumpet froze.
“It can’t be …” He whispered, and lowered his horn, pointing it at him. His horn glowed, and then a point on Lace’s chest glowed, and Gleaming Trumpet swore under his breath. Lace was barely breathing.
“Gleam, did you want the hayburgers to have grilled tomatoes on top, or did you decide you liked the onions from last week more?”
“Come here, Ilium. Look at this.”
Ilium, now clad in a pink apron that read Kiss The Cook-struct!, dutifully trotted over. “But my hayburgers will burn!”
“Damn the hayburgers, look at that.”
Ilium considered Lace, and frowned a little. “His chest glows?”
“Yes, yes; but why does his chest glow?”
Lace didn’t know the answer to that question, himself; he had never glowed before.
“Because … it’s the core of what he was constructed from?” Ilium looked confused, and no small part of worried.
Gleaming Trumpet huffed out a nasty feh!; Ilium winced as if it was a shot from Lace’s blaster. “Yes, obviously, but they do not usually glow. Only items of the most powerful and holy luster will glow this brightly when exposed to hornglow. Other unicorn horns, especially, will glow when connected to another.”
“So … Lace was made from a bit of horn?” Ilium frowned. “But that’s not a big deal, right? I was made from hip bone, so why not -”
“Stupid girl, have you learned nothing?” Gleaming Trumpet spat, and Ilium’s ears vanished in her curls as they dropped to half mast. “Of course constructs are made from horn; they can be made from any organic matter. But I suppose I cannot blame you for not understanding. You’re only a construct,” the unicorn sighed, and crossed to his workbench.
“Well,” Ilium began, trying to salvage her creator’s good mood, “you said powerful and holy luster, right? And - and I was made from one of the Great Mares, so perhaps - Lace is, too?”
Lace held very still on the couch, but his eyes darted from Gleaming Trumpet - pouting over his workbench, it seemed - to land on Ilium, locking on her sharply. The Great Mares? Lace had read about them; not easy to do, with everything as it was. Canterlot had lost all but the faintest traces of them, statues and half-broken stained glass pieces in museums, but there were still some mentions of them, enough to know who they were. Wouldn’t Bubbling Cauldron have said something if he had been created from a mystical, historical unicorn’s horn?
“You found my piece by chance in an unmarked graveyard; maybe Lace’s creator found his piece the same way!” Ilium offered, and she turned to look at Lace instead, offering him a comforting smile. “That has to be special, being descended from two of the Great Mares. It kind of makes us cousins, don’t you think?”
“Mayhaps,” Gleaming Trumpet replied, and he sounded bored again. “Unicorn horns are imbued with great power, even beyond the grave; there is a reason they are so jealously guarded in graveyards. I can’t imagine what might happen if I combined the power of two Great Mares into one body.”
Ilium turned to look at Gleaming Trumpet, but she didn’t turn quickly enough to see the wrench that smashed into the back of her head.
Lace watched, frozen, as Ilium fell like a sack of potatoes. She landed on the floor, hard, and didn’t move. Lace’s eyes darted up to Gleaming Trumpet as he lifted the wrench again.
“This will only hurt for a moment,” Gleaming Trumpet said, in that same bored voice, “and then you will be remade into something beautiful. All creation requires a li-”
Lace’s back hooves connected with Gleaming Trumpet’s chest mid-word, and it was the unicorn’s turn to go down like a sack of potatoes.
The slow-motion feeling had taken hold of Blue Lace Agate’s mind again; but this time, he kept moving, with a certainty that he didn’t think he’d ever felt before. As Gleaming Trumpet struggled to get back on his hooves, wheezing through cracked ribs, Lace darted a hoof into his satchel and pulled out his savior.
Gleaming Trumpet was mid-swing when the two quick blasts hit him.
Lace held still, breathing shakily, and waited for the unicorn to get back up; when he didn’t, he dropped to his knees and rolled Ilium over.
Her eyelids fluttered; there was blood on the floor, but his books had always described fatal head wounds as ‘widening pools of blood.’ There was blood, sure, but it wasn’t a pool. That was good, right? Ilium groaned, and something hopeful jumped up into Lace’s throat.
“Trum … Trumpet?” Ilium whimpered, and looked up at Lace through mostly-closed eyes.
“He can’t hurt you anymore,” Lace Agate whispered. He climbed to his hooves and trotted to the kitchen in search of a towel, giving Gleaming Trumpet’s body a wide berth. It was a small, clean space; he could almost imagine breakfasts in here at the little table by the window, normal enough that you’d never imagine a wrench could end it. Something acrid hit his nose and he looked left, and found the hayburgers now burned to the bottom of the pan. Almost as an afterthought, he turned off the burner.
Ilium laid exactly where he had left her, but she was whimpering now. She startled sharply when Lace pressed the towel to the back of her head, but relaxed when she recognized Lace.
“Is, is he -”
“He’s taken care of.”
Ilium closed her eyes; fresh tears leaked out of them, and not only from her head wound, Lace thought.
“We need to get out of here.”
“Where will we go?” Ilium whispered, her voice thick with tears and pain. “This is my home.”
“I have somewhere I need to go,” Lace Agate murmured, and he lifted his head; in his mind’s eye, he could see the exact route he would need to take to get there. He could be there within precisely 33 minutes. “I have been imbued with a sublime directive that is very nearly complete.”
“Talk normal. That sounds like something from a book,” Ilium sniffed, and lifted a blood-stained hoof to rub one eye.
Lace lifted his blaster. “It is.”
