The next day was focused entirely on training. In fact, I was going to be able to spar with all three of the main fighters in the group.

And by being able to I mean being forced to.

Rusty had set it up so I could experience defending against different styles, with the main focus on parrying attacks or avoiding them entirely. It didn’t really help that he failed to even teach me the basics of parrying. He only said ‘Just divert the attack so it doesn’t hit you.’ as if I would just magically understand the proper technique.

“Ready?” He asked, drawing a sword.

I groaned, “I guess,” and drew my own knife from its sheath.

Now that I had a belt, I could actually handle a weapon without pausing to hold it in my teeth just to get my hand free. As such, the knife officially became mine, and it has been affectionately dubbed ‘my knife’ by yours truly.

I held my knife tightly in my left hand, and lowered my stance slightly.

“Here I come,” Rusty announced, quickly making his way towards me.

You’ll have to forgive me for taking a few steps back. Just yesterday he was only giving basic attacks from a standing position. I failed to even block those, and now he was coming at me at full force, or at least I think he was.

I couldn’t back away forever, and it didn’t take long for his blade to enter my space. Similar to last time, he wasn’t using his actual sword, rather a dull one that wouldn’t do too much damage if it hit. If I weren’t made of crystal I might add, getting hit with anything like that, regardless of its sharpness, would still probably cause me to crack.

Down came the first strike, and I sidestepped to the right, watching it just graze my thigh. Rusty followed up with a sideways swipe, which I couldn’t easily avoid. Blocking was out of the question, I didn’t want a repeat of what happened yesterday, even if it meant I could stop training.

That meant I had to parry, and by going off of Rusty’s advice, I just had to divert the attack so it didn’t hit me. Something easier said than done, I still had to intercept his blade with my own, and then I had to figure out how to change the direction of his attack without stopping it, all the while taking care not to apply too much force to my own body so that it doesn’t break.

I raised my knife at an angle, caught the end of Rusty’s sword, and pushed upwards as hard as I could as the blades glided against each other.

With a metallic shing, Rusty’s attack was forced upwards, directly into my face. The tip of the sword whizzed past my eyes, just barely missing me.

Before it caught on my cloak again and yanked it up, pulling the hood all the way over my head followed by the clasp. I stumbled back as cloth covered my vision, then tripped over the uneven ground and landed hard on my butt. My hips cracked, but nothing broke, so I just sat there for a few seconds to try and let it mend a bit.

“See? You got it.” Rusty began, “That cloak is doing you no favors though.”

I struggled to fix it for a few moments before finally finding the collar and getting it back around my shoulders. Looking up at the hood, it was still in one piece. Despite getting caught by a sword, albeit a dull one, there was little, if any damage to the cloth.

“It’s pretty tough,” I realized,

“It’s too baggy,” Rusty said, “That’s twice now that it’s caused you to go down.”

I pursed my lips, “It’s not like I can take it off…”

“Hm…” Rusty brought a hoof to his chin as he thought, “You’ve got your thing though, with the plants?”

“I feel like that’s also not the best to be running around in.” I said,

“Better than a gem though,” Rusty argued,

“...Yeah…” I muttered,

“Why don’t you take it off for now? Just to see what it’s like.”

I sighed, before sheathing my knife and pulling open the clasp, “Okay…”

With my cloak removed, I could see more of the plants that made up my disguise. They were starting to look a little wilted, I should probably water them soon. Still, with my arms free, and my legs uncovered, I could take longer strides and move faster. It was a wonder I was able to intercept any attacks with the cloak on in the first place.

I slowly stood, gyrating my hips a little bit to make sure they were good to go, then I moved over to face Rusty.

“Ready?” He asked again,

“Yes.” I unsheathed my knife.

He started forward, rearing his sword back to bring downward in a diagonal slash. I stepped back, easily avoiding the attack and thrusting forward with my own.

“Whoa!” Rusty jumped back, “This is just defense, remember!”

Something something offense is defense. I was too focused to speak.

Rusty quickly recovered, then swung his sword in a wide arc. Again it was something I could easily back away from, but Rusty continued to press the advantage, getting closer and closer with each swing.

“Jeez, you’re hard to hit.” He grumbled, “But you can’t do that forever.”

He was right, we were quickly approaching the edge of the area, with the solid wall of the inn to one side of me, and a bunch of bushes on the other. Rusty was backing me into a corner, and doing a pretty good job of it at that. I began trying to step around him, but he wouldn’t let me, and his attacks started to get even closer, some even grazing my disguise.

Pretty soon I had my back against the wall, and Rusty was holding his ground steadily. In order to avoid his attacks I needed to get around him, but in order to get around him, I needed an opportunity, and in order to get an opportunity, I needed to stop his attacks. But I couldn’t block.

Therefore I parry.

Rusty prepared another overhead strike, and I swung my knife to smack it away. My wrist definitely cracked from the action, but the sword embedded itself in the dirt to my side. I then took that moment of pause to jump over it, only to immediately trip over the blade and fall flat on my face.

“Oop!” Rusty exclaimed, “Anything broken?”

I’d broken from falling on sand before, and the dirt here definitely wasn’t as soft, but I did have a layer of plants to cushion my fall.

“No.” I groaned, pushing myself back up.

“Good,” Rusty nodded, pulling his sword back. He tapped me lightly on the head with it, “That wasn’t too bad for a first attempt. I might not have to go so easy on you next time.”

I sighed, letting my head drop back to the ground, “That was supposed to be easy?”

“Yup.” Rusty smacked his lips.

And here I thought I was doing well.

“Anyway, you seem pretty good at dodging attacks, but what about attacks that are too fast to dodge?”

“Huh?” I picked my head up,

Rusty had stepped away, and now Dagger was standing in front of me.

“Uh oh…”

“Try to go easy on them, will you?” Rusty whispered,

Dagger grunted, “No.”

I scrambled to my feet, clutching my knife tightly as I brought it close to my chest.

“Oh well.” Rusty shrugged, “Begin.”

Dagger swung his hoof out, something flashed in his cloak, and the next moment there was a knife sticking out of my leg.

Throwing knives?! That’s what Dagger used?

Thankfully it wasn’t very deep, and I was once again thankful to have a layer of plants surrounding my whole body. The tip still managed to pierce through though, but it wasn’t enough to crack my crystal, only chip it. With the plants holding everything in place, the piece wasn’t going anywhere either.

A second later there was another knife in my other leg, and I immediately started running, circling around Dagger as more knives came my way. Thanks to my efforts, not all of them hit, but a few managed to find their way into my side and arm.

“You shouldn’t be letting yourself get hit like that!” Rusty called out, “Even if it isn’t doing much.”

Dagger tsked, and redoubled his efforts. It felt like a dozen knives were coming at me at once, and true to Rusty’s words, there was no way to dodge them all. I skidded to a halt, then turned to face Dagger with my knife ready.

Like the most dangerous game of baseball ever, I swung my knife at his, managing to knock a single one out of the air as several more embedded themselves across my chest. With this many in me, it didn’t take long for cracks to start appearing along the faultlines, and as I moved, some of the tips started digging in deeper.

I brushed some away to help alleviate this, then started moving again in the opposite direction. This time my knife hand was facing Dagger, and I was able to intercept a few more knives as they came flying at me. That was until one struck me right between the eyes, causing me to stumble and almost trip.

Almost trip, this time I managed to stay standing as I fought to regain my balance. When I was stable enough, I looked over just in time to see Dagger level his crossbow with me.

Twang

The bolt came flying forwards, straight towards my chest. I only got a moment to say “Ah-!” before it…

Bounced off?

…

I saw it happen, the bolt impacted my chest, scraped away a rather large patch of my disguise, then just… kept going. Maybe it was the angle it hit at? If I had been facing Dagger head on then it probably would’ve shot right through me, I don’t really want to imagine the aftermath if that happened. I guess it was more accurate to say the bolt ricocheted off of me then.

That was a relief.

Dagger hastily began pulling back the string to set another bolt.

“Okay, okay!” Rusty interrupted him with a hoof, “That’s enough.”

I imagine there was a scowl beneath his hood as he holstered his crossbow. I then took a moment to pick all of his knives out of my body, each leaving small slits in the plant layer. Looking down at my chest, there was still a large portion missing from where the bolt hit me.

“This thing isn’t invincible you know.” I walked over to the patch of turf laying on the ground next to the bolt and picked it up.

Pressing it back into place yielded a similar reaction to when I did the same thing with my own pieces. The plants that made the underweave slowly stitched back together, and the dirty roots merged back into one solid piece, though there was still a small line left behind.

“I don’t want it to die.”

“Well maybe stop getting hit so much.” Rusty suggested,

I just glared at him.

“Kidding, I’m kidding,” Rusty held up his hooves, “That doesn’t mean it’s not true though. Still, nice to know you’re arrow-proof.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.” I muttered,

Arrows were a pretty big enemy of the Lustrous, though I guess there was a pretty big difference between crescent tip arrows versus the traditional pointed tip. As long as I got hit at the right angle, I didn’t have to worry about getting shot.

“Alright, last one.” Rusty announced,

He walked over to me, a pair of much heavier footsteps accentuating his own as Maul entered the makeshift arena. I feel like the ground literally shook, and a small earthquake rang out as he dropped his hamaxe on the ground.

I gulped. Rusty opened his mouth to say something, then stopped, and put a hoof around my waist. He practically had to rear up to do it, but he still did it for whatever reason.

“Say.” He whispered, “What happens if you get shattered?”

I glanced at him with wide eyes, “You’ll have to put me back together.”

He nodded slightly, “But you won’t like die or anything, right?”

“N-No.”

“Oh good.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well…” Rusty continued, “You know how Dagger won’t hold back?”

“Uh… I guess?”

“Maul doesn’t know how.”

“I- what?!” I demanded,

“Best of luck to ya.” Rusty patted me on the shoulder, then quickly vacated the premises. “Begin!”

“Is this really necessary-eeeee!” Maul was already charging at me like a bull,

I whipped around and started running in the opposite direction, only to come face to face with the thick bushes bordering the area. I turned back around just in time to see Maul ready his weapon and swing it. I dove to the side, the bladed portion shearing straight through the top of the bushes.

“I hope you fight well, pretty gem!” Maul exclaimed, snorting as he stomped around behind me.

I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing, I was more focused on getting away. I scrambled forward, crawling as fast as I could before trying to get to my feet. Not even a second later the hammer slammed down between my legs, a spray of dirt shooting out from below me. It didn’t even hit me and I still feel like my legs cracked.

I jumped to my feet and pulled out my knife, then I turned to face Maul. His hamaxe was already up in the air, and I readied my knife to intercept it, but quickly decided otherwise. There was absolutely no way I could parry an attack like that. If I cracked from hitting a sword, then a hammer was going to go right through me.

So I turned and ran again.

The ground shook as he followed after me, and even though he was weighed down by all that armor and lugging around that gigantic weapon, it seemed like he was faster than me. It probably didn’t help that I was stumbling over my own feet every other step, but I only just recently remastered walking, running was going to be a whole other issue.

One awkward step on a poorly placed stone later, and I felt the cracks in my hips worsen. I definitely couldn’t keep running away, but Maul was literally going to smash me to pieces, I had to stop him somehow.

Try to tire him out? Like I would even last that long.

Try to trip him up? He was wearing full plate armor, and probably weighed more than I did.

Try to get the others to stop him? I looked over at Rusty and Dagger, who were situated all the way at the edge of the area. Rusty was even ducking behind one of the tables.

That wasn’t going to happen either.

Maul was already upon me, so I didn’t have time to think of anything else. Instead, I watched where his weapon was, and got ready to dodge. He swung it overhead from the right, so I moved to the left, only pausing when the earth shook from the impact. Maul quickly pulled it back, and practically turned his whole body as he readied a horizontal attack. I was lucky he was so much taller than the other ponies, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to duck under the swing.

He growled, and I swear steam billowed out of the holes in his helmet.

“Oh yeah.” Rusty called out, “Maul really hates it when you dodge his attacks.”

“You’re telling me this now?!” I exclaimed, then dove to the side as Maul brought the hammer around again.

I landed hard on my side, and what was left of my right arm broke off. I didn’t have time to do anything about it though, as Maul dragged the hamaxe through the dirt in a sweeping motion. I rolled over, pushed up with my left arm and tried to stand again. My knuckles broke around the handle of my knife, and all of my fingers snapped off except for my thumb.

“Tch!” I had no choice but to leave it there, and I quickly stood to see what Maul would do next.

He was winding up another swipe, only this time it was much lower. I wouldn’t be able to get underneath it, and I couldn’t back away fast enough to avoid it. It was too wide to go either left or right, so I had to go above it. I crouched down and readied to jump, and sprang upwards as soon as the hamaxe started to move.

Of all the times for my knees to buckle.

All the damage I had sustained over the course of training had finally caught up with me. It was like a singular crack shot from my head to my toes. The main issue was my legs, and I wasn’t able to generate as much force as I would’ve liked. As such, I only got a few inches of height, nowhere near enough to clear the attack.

Maul’s hamaxe clipped the bottom of my foot, which immediately shattered it, and caused me to spin to the side. As I slammed back down on the ground, several of my other limbs detached themselves as well, though my disguise kept them in place. Maul continued with the motion, bringing the hammer all the way up above me, then right back down.

“Wait-!” I gasped out, reaching upwards with a broken hand.

There was a glint behind the Maul’s helmet, and the hamaxe slowed ever so slightly. Then it smashed down on my abdomen, literally splitting me in two.

Shards of me flew up as my lower body was shattered, each leg kicking out slightly as they separated from my hips. I just gaped at the damage, then let out a small sigh as my head lolled back, my arm falling limp beside me.

“Whoa!” Rusty shouted as he ran over, “That was some hit! Are you okay, Phos?”

“Oh.” Maul began, “Sorry. I broke you.”

I looked over to Rusty, ‘Do I look okay to you?’ Is what I meant to say, but no sound came out of my mouth,

“What was that?” He leaned closer, “I couldn’t hear you.”

It took me a few moments to find my voice, but by then all the anger had left. “...Just… put me… back… together…” I mumbled,

“Speak up. You’re too quiet.”

“...P-Put…” I scowled, managing to scrounge up some irritation, “...Put me… back to… gether!” Despite trying to shout as hard as I could, it only came out as a faint whisper.

Rusty sighed, then nodded, “Alright, yeah. I figured. Maul, help me with this.”

“Uh…” Maul trailed off,

“Right.” Rusty rolled his eyes, “Dagger?” He called back,

We all looked over, Dagger was gone.

“Of course.” Rusty grunted, then he turned his attention back towards me. “Can you move?”

All I managed to do was slowly and shakily raise my fingerless hand a few inches, then it fell back down.

Rusty exhaled, then hung his head. “Alright…” He looked around a bit, his eyes landing on something out of my view. “Get them on the cart, we'll fix them from there.”

It took a few moments, but eventually Maul responded, “Okay.”

His heavy footsteps made their way behind me, and an armored hoof slipped underneath my shoulder.

Being dragged away from half of your body as just a torso was not a pleasant experience. I could only stare as more of my body was revealed, or maybe I should just call it a pile of shards. There was no indication of its original shape, with the only thing telling me that it had been my waist was that my belt was strewn across the broken crystal. I don’t think I was ever more grateful that Maul used the blunt end of his weapon to smash me. If he had cut my belt right after I bought it, then I don’t know what I would’ve done.

I don’t know what I could’ve done really.

A few more shards of me chipped off as I was dragged through the dirt, but eventually I was hoisted up and placed on the back of the cart.

“Bring it around,” Rusty said, “Let’s try to fix this before the Captain gets back.”

There was a grunt from Maul, before I heard him move around to the front of the cart. A few seconds later it jolted forward, the wheels creaking as Maul maneuvered it. I couldn’t do much more than lay there, just watching as the tops of trees or the roofs of buildings entered and exited my view.

Eventually, the cart stopped, and Rusty peaked over the side. “Here.” He dropped a pouch next to me, a couple of my fingers rolling out.

I just looked at him, my half lidded gaze turning to a more irked one as my eyebrows raised.

“I hope you weren’t planning on doing anything else today.”

I reached up and hooked my thumb in his collar. “I… h-hope you… weren’t… either…” I lacked the strength to pull him close, but he definitely heard what I said.

Rusty grit his teeth, right as Maul tossed one of my legs onto the cart. It immediately snapped in two.

This was going to take a while.

♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♥ ♦

My upper body was the easiest to put back together; there were only a few places where it broke, so whatever parts that came off could just be put back on. I had all one and a half of my arms back in only a few minutes.

The rest… not so much.

After a couple hours of work, we only managed to get one of my legs reattached, with the other remaining firmly uncooperative. Maul didn’t smash me dead center, and as a result, the most severe damage was concentrated on my left side. The shards that resulted from the hit: were borderline grains of sand.

Maul gave up pretty early on, while Rusty adopted an ever increasing scowl as he repeatedly rushed back and forth from where I was hit, to the makeshift operating table that was the back of the cart. I still couldn’t do much. Despite getting all of my fingers back, they were still very much damaged. I could only handle the small stuff, which giving how things were turning out, was everything.

That being said, it wasn’t easy to work on the inside of your leg from the top down. Thankfully, when the shards were that size, it was more about building a foundation than it was piecing together the pieces. It was still a little odd, I could immediately tell if a shard was originally an inner piece or an outer piece, but they stuck all the same, and the feeling would eventually dissipate after a few seconds.

I imagine it was just them adjusting to their new position, which it was good to know that I didn’t have to be exact in my placement. Unless of course, the pieces just didn’t fit. When there were this many, and at this size though, it didn’t really matter, but I still adopted a method. I saved all the pieces that were obviously a part of my exterior, then began work on filling in the empty space behind them when I went to fit them in place.

You could compare it to… tiling a floor? I guess?

With this method I was able to more or less fix my waist, though Rusty was the one doing most of the work. The real issue came with finding a way to reattach my leg. The shards that led to the break progressively got larger, which made it easier to figure out where they were supposed to go. The problem was that we actually used a few of those important shards to fill in space in my hips.

Rather than just undo all our work though, we began adding shards to both pieces, trying to flatten them out as much as possible so we could just stick them back together.

As you might imagine, creating a flat surface with just a bunch of shards wouldn’t be easy. We had actually gotten decently close, but there was still a concerningly large disconnect between the two pieces, enough that it wouldn’t hold up if I tried to move it. So we were currently discussing what to do about it.

I wanted to chip off the most offending pieces and use them to fill in the gaps, while Rusty suggested just grinding them down and sprinkling the dust in between when fitting them back together. I wasn’t too privy to the idea of turning my already loose shards into something even looser, but before we could debate the matter any further, Rusty’s ears perked, and he looked over to the side of the inn.

“Oh! Uh…” He turned back to me, “How about we try this instead.”

He grabbed my leg and forced it against my hip, twisting it a few times. It… sort of worked, the raised shards crumbled and the two pieces were finally able to touch, but so did part of my hip.

“Ah! No-” I exclaimed, quickly picking up the shards that fell and slotting them back into place.

Rusty shoved a hoof in my face and shushed me. I went to retort, but instead looked over to what had sparked his outburst.

Captain Morningstar was approaching, and he didn’t look too happy.

“What is going on over here?” He demanded,

“N-Nothing!” Rusty bumbled, “Just… going over what we did in training today.”

“Is that so?” Captain Morningstar gaze landed on my midsection,

With all this focus on putting my body back together, there was no time to fix my disguise. A gigantic patch laid bare all around my hips and legs, revealing a lot of my crystal, most of which was still heavily cracked. It was immediately obvious what had happened.

As if to make matters worse, my leg popped off again.

Captain Morningstar inhaled deeply a few times, each breath sounding more like a growl than the last. “Need I remind you that we are going on patrol, tomorrow?”

“N-No, sir.” I vehemently shook my head, “Um… It’ll all be good by then,” I gestured to my legs.

“It better be.” Captain Morningstar leaned forward with a glare. He then turned back towards Rusty, “How did training go?”

“Good.” Rusty nodded, “Phos is at least capable of dodging, and is relatively decent at it too. We’ll have to go more into the specifics later though.”

Captain Morningstar kept his steel gaze between us for a few moments before eventually sighing, “Verywell. See to it.”

“Yes sir,” Rusty saluted,

I quickly matched it, only for one of my fingers to snap off. Captain Morningstar just stared at it, then grumbled and stepped away.

A moment later a green sprite came rocketing towards my face. Not entirely expecting it, and still feeling quite weak from the damage, it actually managed to knock me backwards onto the cart.

“Phos, phos!” It exclaimed, "Hurt, hurt!"

I tilted my head at it.

What was this fairy doing here?

…

Wait…

…

It wasn’t called a fairy, it was called a Breezie.

…

And it was here as proof. I would be taking it to show…

…

To show…

…

Somebody important… A pony, I think… Whose name was…

…

I don’t remember.

...

Oh shoot! I quickly sat back up and pressed my leg against my hip again.

I immediately let out a sigh of relief, then looked up at the Breezie hovering just above me.

“Don’t worry, Shinsha, I’ll be fine.”

Shinsha chirped a little, then settled down on my head, digging through the flowers growing out of my hair.

Wait a minute. What was Shinsha even doing here? I had left them with Indigo while I trained, and if they were here now then…

“Hey Phos,” Indigo announced, walking up to the cart.

Speak of the devil.

“I see you’ve been training hard.” Indigo looked at my midsection in a similar manner to Captain Morningstar,

“I’ve been trying to,” I muttered,

She just nodded, then a piece of parchment floated into my face. “Letter came for you.”

“Huh?” I slowly grabbed it, unfurling it with my thumb.

I don’t know what I expected really, it was just a bunch of symbols that I barely recognized. The script was different than how it normally was too, like cursive was to print.

“I can’t read this.” I handed the letter back,

“I figured as much,” Indigo snatched it out of my hand and looked at it closely. “It says:”

“‘To Phos and company,

We’ll be seeing each other soon enough.

-Manuscript’”

To Be Continued…

Author's Note

♦Conglomerate's Crystal Corner♦

Phosphophyllite has a hardness of 3.5, and a perfect cleavage. To put it simply, it means they are weak. To be more exact however, the Mohs hardness scale only measures how difficult it is to scratch a material. Of course, 10 is the hardest, reserved for gemstones like diamonds: it is really hard to scratch them. 3.5 on the other hand, is rather weak. You can go lower, but at 3.5, your hardness is comparable to a penny. So not the weakest, you wouldn't be able to scratch it with your fingernail, but I'm sure you can imagine many ways to scratch a penny.

As for cleavage, that just represents how crystals tend to break. Different types of cleavage amount to different shapes, which is why stuff like Pyrite forms in cubical shapes, and stuff like Obsidian breaks in wavy formations. Perfect cleavage means there is no specific shape the crystal breaks in, each axis is equally weak.

This all adds to a gem's toughness, which is demonstrated lightly in Land of the Lustrous when comparing Jade to Diamond. Jade is only about a 6 on the Mohs hardness scale, while diamond is all the way up at 10. And yet, jade is harder to break than diamond. This is just because of how the crystals are structured, a good comparison I saw was to compare a leather belt to a wine glass. You can scratch a leather belt rather easily, but actually breaking it is much harder. A wine glass can't be scratched as easily, but you can shatter it without much effort at all.

In terms of Phos, they are weaker than glass. You can scratch them with any metal tool, and almost any hit will cause cracks. There is a reason that gemstone quality phosphophyllite is so hard to find. In fact, you could probably punch Phos with your bare hand and they would break. It wouldn't feel very good, but you could do it.

You guys are getting this chapter two hours early because I have to be somewhere at my regularly scheduled posting time. Enjoy it! ♦☻♦