Rarity held the small, brilliant thought pattern in her magical grasp. It struggled away from her scrutiny, trying to flee back to its crystal, but she held firm. The pattern was wrong.
Everyone needed to contribute to the war effort. Most ponies who knew Rarity had thought she'd turn to churning out uniforms for the soldiers. As if. Rarity thrived off inspiration. What she did wasn't as important as how she did it.
She picked the pattern apart, looking for any flaws. Shield spells were incredibly volatile, and could not be mass produced. Each one was a unique piece of art, an intricate array of interwoven meaning and power. Ponies were trying to change that, but she held to her ideals.
Once completed, no one would be able to directly see the beauty of the pattern, and at a cursory inspection each one would appear to be functionally identical, but they all had their own unique quirks. The one she was trying to finish up now, for example, would push back anything moving toward it at a certain velocity with double the force, instead of leeching at the kinetic or magical energy, or deflecting it. Above all, her spells were designed to fail gracefully; this one would save up its last reserves of energy and spend it all in one burst once it fell below a certain point, knocking back everything outside of its radius with explosive force.
There it was. She twitched a strand of magic within the pattern an iota to the side, causing it to settle fully into the channel of power flowing through the arrangement. It settled down within her grasp, now fully stabilized. Her fix complete, she let it slip through her grasp, settling back within its anchor of magically insulated crystal.
She designed each vessel herself. It might not be the work of weeks that the spell itself was, but it was what the ponies using it would see, and presentation mattered as much—if not more—than functionality. This one was a pyramidal chunk of amber patterned with faint impressions of flowers—marigolds, roses, and begonias—with a small ruby topping it, complete with a silver chain that would allow it to be clasped about somepony's neck.
Rarity relaxed her stance, drinking in the sight of her beautiful construction on top of her worktable. Her smile soon faded as she took in the sight of the rest of her boutique. Instead of racks of dresses and carefully arranged needles and spools of thread spread throughout the room in case a sudden bout of inspiration should strike her, shipments of clear blue crystals and tall, silvery contraptions inscribed with runes—horrible things that belonged in a factory—dotted her room, all regulation standard, all still unpacked from within the boxy metal cases that had been delivered to her doorstep. She pointedly ignored them. The Apples might have given in to the demands of the war, but she wasn't going to follow their example. Their farm was an ugly cesspit of industrial waste now, with the Apples themselves nothing but glorified mechanics.
She gave the small pile of unique gems on the side of her table a worried glance. Still, if the war dragged on long enough without respite, she might not have a choice. Her personal assets had been mostly invested in raw materials before the war, and she'd had to sell everything at a massive loss. Combined with the massive importation fees of dealing with the zebra nation so that they would ship crystals to her…
She'd jumped on this task because she knew it was traditionally one that nopony had standardized. Spells were uniquely crafted to a specific task and ordered on demand. But with constant government pressure to follow the identical spellforms they'd somehow imprinted on those machines, over and over, and only providing her with shipments of the same 'approved' crystals, she didn't know how long she could keep following her standards while still obeying the senseless mandates of the government.
The sound of heavy hooves pounding at her door startled her out of her contemplation.
"Yes, yes, I'll be right there!" she called, rising to all fours and padding across the carpet toward the entrance.
Another series of thuds fell on her poor door. It wasn't meant to withstand such abuse; her old clientele had been much more gentle.
"Honestly," she said under her breath, picking up her pace. "I'm coming!"
She pulled the door open, then froze.
Two unicorn stallions clad in worn copper armor flanked a serious-looking orange pegasus, wearing only a silver cap with a single red feather at the top and a pair of plain brown saddlebags.
"Ah...what can I do for you fine gentlecolts?" she asked, putting on her most welcoming smile.
The pegasus turned his head and flipped the latch on his saddlebags, then poked his head in and retrieved a scroll. He gestured to the stallion on his right, and a bright green aura surrounded the paper, which then unrolled and then held still in front of the pegasus.
"Miss Rarity?" he said, then waited until she nodded. "I'm captain Hillswift. You're being reassigned."
What?
"Captain, I'm sure there's been a misunderstanding," she said, frantic. "I'd need new materials, time to learn a new skill—"
"If."
Rarity paused midsentence.
"As I said," Hillswift said, looking back down at his scroll, "If you don't meet the minimum by the end of this month, you're going to be reassigned. It says here the recommended assignment for you is making uniforms, since you have the background for it."
It was midway through the month already! This was outrageous. How did he expect her to—
He held up a hoof, forestalling her protestations. "I'm not the one who made these orders. Arguing with me won't do anything."
Ah. Fair enough. Then she'd have to got to the top, mail a letter to—
"I'm not finished."
Rarity waited expectantly for him to continue.
"Wait here," he said to the guards. "Miss Rarity, if you would follow me?"
She didn't really have a choice, did she. With a sigh, Rarity stepped out of her boutique, though not without a backward glance at the two guards now flanking the doorway. Some of the instruments and unfinished thought patterns were extremely delicate. Thankfully, they seemed content to stay in place.
She walked beside Hillswift in silence for a while, following the path through Ponyville. The town had been transformed in the few short years since Sombra's kingdom had come back. Dirt roads had been paved, whimsical, aesthetically pleasing houses with straw roofs—easy to repair in peacetime—had been replaced with squat stone and timber boxes that didn't require ponies to halt production and focus on maintenance. Steam boilers coughed smoke into the sky, powering heavy machinery.
Rarity hadn't gone on many walks since the start of the war. It was too busy and cluttered in Ponyville for it to be relaxing, and a longer one would take too long; she'd been in a perpetual struggle to reach her quota.
Hillswift stopped walking, and sighed. Rarity took a sidelong glance at him. He stared off into the sunset, clutching his helmet to his chest. "It's rare that we get time to just slow down and take everything in, anymore," he said, keeping his gaze locked on the distant horizon.
"Yes...yes, I suppose it is," Rarity said, taking a quick look at the sun herself. Ouch. Too bright.
He let out another sigh and placed his helmet back onto his head.
"I know what you're going through, miss Rarity. Those of us at the front lines, we have to adapt a lot more quickly. Adapt, or die. I used to be a messenger. Part of why I took this assignment."
"And the other part?" Rarity said.
"The other part..." he started walking again, forcing Rarity to scramble to catch up. "It's refreshing to interact with normal ponies. Ponies who still retain traces of who we once were. Puts things in perspective."
"Ah..." She didn't know how to respond to that.
They stepped up to the town limits. There was a wall now. It was an ugly thing, sloppily constructed with bricks and then abandoned. After Sombra had started targeting the towns supplying the war effort, defenses had been erected in every town that could afford them. Hillswift signaled the guard, who pulled a lever. The gate slowly cranked open, and Rarity followed the pegasus outside the town. The paths were still dirt here. Vegetation had become brown and deadened through pollution, but in the distance she could see the bright green grass and luscious trees that had once characterized Ponyville.
"Why are you doing this, miss Rarity?" Hillswift said evenly.
"What?"
"You're far behind the minimum quota. Why? You don't have to give excuses. Just...why?"
Rarity scrambled to find an answer. The question was unusually frank. "It takes time! Each spell is a work of art, a piece of inspiration that can not be churned out like it's on a production line." She practically spat out the last words, as if they were something vile she'd accidentally inhaled from her coffee.
The pegasus was silent for a stretch, looking as if he was contemplating the meaning behind her words. She felt a slight tingle of nervousness. She'd been ready for shouts, or an ignorant stance that focused solely on the quota. Her lip curled at the very thought of that disgusting word.
"And does it bother you that your work ethic is causing ponies to die?" He said it without a trace of accusation or judgment, as if he was genuinely curious to know if she cared.
"W-What? I'm not hurting anyone!"
"Not directly, no," he agreed in that same, infuriatingly even tone. "But what do you think the shields you make are used for? Target practice?"
"Well, no..."
"Then what?" He didn't even look at her. Just kept walking, as if he was out on an everyday stroll, not trying to make it seem like she was killing ponies.
"Well, they're for defense, of course..." she said.
"And when there are fewer shields to go around, we die. Do you know where your particular spells go?" He continued without waiting for a response. "Straight to the top. The generals, the colonels, the ponies who won't benefit from your superior charms. It's the rank and file, the ones at the front lines, the ones who get the average, mass-produced garbage equipment, the ones that give their lives that have to suffer the shortage. The war is not a joke, miss Rarity. The consequences are real. The requirements are real."
"I—" She stopped. What was she supposed to say to that? "You—You're wrong! It's not like that," she said, ducking her head to hide the wetness in her eyes, and angrily wiping it away.
"Then what is it like? Tell me. Please."
She stopped. The unpolluted grass was right before them, beckoning. "It's—"
Is this really about them?
Was she thinking in the best interests of the soldiers, those poor, brave Equestrians who were fighting and dying so she didn't have to? Or was she thinking about herself? Was she avoiding responsibility just so that she could have fun?
"Fine. Fine! I shall make those horrible, garbage, abominations," she shouted, before she could reconsider and back out of it.
Hillswift finally turned to look at her, wearing a sad expression on his face. "War isn't easy, miss Rarity. There's a reason the Princess has been avoiding it for a thousand years."
She stared back at him, stiffly.
"But that doesn't mean we have to abandon everything we are," he continued, finally letting some emotion into his voice. "I might have to lead a dozen new recruits, without any combat experience whatsoever, every battle. But I don't have to make them run headfirst into the enemy. You might have to go through the motions, copying something that has gone stale long ago. But you can still work in a custom spell every month. Or more, if you're fast enough."
Something caught at the back of her throat. She wiped at her eyes aggressively. No crying. That was stupid.
"I...thank you, captain. For that."
He gave her a single, short nod, then turned around and headed back toward the town. Rarity hesitated, then darted past the brown and into the green. She plucked a single flower from the ground, then galloped back to where Hillswift was walking.