Mystery
Several days later…
"Do you really wish to go to such trouble?" Sauron asked as he turned the page of the book, a traveler's guide for some city called Vanhoover, ignoring the garish illustrations in favor of absorbing the spelling conventions. "I had thought the matter reasonably accounted for."
"The phrase, and I quote, 'something something Cutie Mark' does not constitute a satisfactory explanation for this phenomenon!" Twilight retorted as she fixed another wire onto his left shoulder. This was the eighth now, with the rest being distributed across his body according to some esoteric pattern known only to the Alicorn.
Sauron turned the next page and, finding nothing new in the arrangement of the letters, skipped it. The Equestrian script was highly phonetic, but there were the occasional uncouth inefficiencies, such as silent letters and alternate spellings, of the sort that inevitably developed when a language was allowed to mutate without supervision. Having exhausted his use for the Electric Teaching Device and rapidly absorbed Sweetie Belle's redundantly named 'text' books, Sauron found himself in need of further reading material both to master the less obvious nuances of the script and to further his knowledge of Equestria.
He had been surprised (which must stop happening immediately) to learn that Princess Twilight Sparkle, together with being the nation's de facto chief diplomat and a circumstantial troubleshooter, rather incongruously retained her prior role as Ponyville's public librarian at what he could only imagine had been her own insistence.
Seemingly quite surprised by his rate of progress, she had been all too happy to allow Sauron access to her castle's library, but had rather fervently requested that he submit to her examinations. Fortunately, these had thus far proved to be relatively noninvasive.
He had thought at first to try to avoid attracting undue scrutiny before his power base had been sufficiently established, but in retrospect this had been pointless from the beginning, even without Olorin and his nocturnal pet breathing down his neck. A dragon could hide among sparrows with the right skills and discretion, but the sparrows would still notice that one of their fellows was unusually large, breathed plumes of flame, and held sway over the minds of its lessers. No, even in his current state he could never hope to be mistaken for mundane- it was simply a matter of attracting the right kind of attention.
True, he was obliged to humor the inquisitions of Twilight and others after displaying his talents so openly. But on the other side of the coin, his first wave of smithing commissions and the down payments for the next had already proven to be quite lucrative, so much so that he was blessedly able to purchase a small workshop and material for building an elementary forge. Not that continuing to use the Apple forge presented any meaningful difficulties, of course. Sauron had merely preferred to move out of Rarity's guest room and become economically independent before he started to accrue inconvenient obligations and to hamper The Parasite's spying operations. Not to mention that he did not wish to travel all the way to Sweet Apple Acres every time he needed to forge something.
Again, not that doing so would be particularly problematic.
Obviously.
"Does it not? The others seem to disagree." Indeed, after her initial surprise Rainbow Dash had been quick to point out that his 'special talent' for smithing, while apparently unusual in its manifestation, was not nearly as remarkable as a Sonic Rainboom and felt no further need to comment. Applejack had asked some rather pointed questions, but these had more to do with his painfully sloppy loss of composure during the Incident of No Particular Concern. A loosening of his scarf to show his scars and a few terse words about his niece's hound had satisfied her for the time being and netted him an awkward apology. Rarity had seemingly become quite concerned about his emotional wellbeing once she had heard about what happened, requiring all manner of irksome reassurances both before and after he announced his intention to move out of her residence. At least his handlers had left his sleep unmolested these last few days- one creature wanting to discuss his feelings with him was more than enough.
"The others don't have an advanced degree in Magical Theory from Canterlot," Twilight replied primly. "Now hold still while I get your baseline."
Sauron watched intently as she followed the attached wires back to their machine, an inscrutable black box of dials and blinking lights. The Alicorn flipped several switches; a mute humming sound began to emanate from the device, followed shortly thereafter by a ribbon of paper jerkily emerging from a small slot. Twilight plucked out the ribbon and made a note in one of the several floating notebooks orbiting her.
"Hmm. Your innate Earth Pony magic is fairly powerful, about on par with Applejack, but that's not unusual in and of itself." She gave the Maia an eager grin, rubbing her hooves together in anticipation. "Compared to Unicorns, unique manifestations of magic in Earth Ponies and Pegasi are really understudied- this heat resistance of yours hasn't even been documented before! Ooh, I can't wait to write a paper on it! No wait- two papers!"
"How exciting," Sauron humored as he grabbed a new book from his stack- a rather more useful bestiary of the Everfree Forest. The thought of turning the more esoteric creatures of this land to worthier purposes was almost enough to compensate for the fact that most of the index was composed of puns.
"I know!" Twilight replied guilelessly as she began to assemble what appeared to be a large collection of medical supplies on the table next to him including several rolls of bandages as well as various ointments, concoctions, and what appeared to be a small potted plant with thick fleshy leaves. Sauron raised an eyebrow as the Alicorn levitated a large basin onto the table, filled it with conjured water from her horn, instantly froze the liquid and, in a flash of violet light, minced the ice into hundreds of tiny identical cubes.
Not for the first time, the Maia was struck not only by the sheer flexibility of Twilight's abilities compared to the one or two tricks he'd seen employed by most Unicorns, but also by her willingness to use them for even the most mundane tasks.
I need to earn as many favors from her as possible, Sauron schemed. And I know exactly how to start.
"And you're sure that this won't hurt you?" Twilight asked anxiously as she assembled a candle-like apparatus, a blackened steel nozzle where the wick would ordinarily be. A narrow, flexible hose connected the device to a small canister bearing a blue flame symbol and the word 'FLAMMABLE' in bold letters.
"Absolutely, Twilight." Sauron placed one forelimb just above the mouth of the nozzle.
She bit her lip and fumbled with the valve on the canister. "So you're completely certain?"
"I am rather familiar with the matter, yes."
Fidget, fidget. "…You're absolutely, completely, totally-."
"Do the thing, Twilight."
"RIGHT, doing the thing!"
The Princess turned the valve, and with a hiss a distinct, acrid smell began trickling into the room. Sauron squeezed the flint striker, and the resulting spark immediately ignited the gas into a tongue of cool blue flame that brightened to a radiant yellow where it touched his skin. Seeing his lack of reaction, Twilight heaved a sigh of relief. "And that doesn't hurt at all?" she asked.
Sauron rallied his patience. "I am aware of the heat, but am not experiencing discomfort. You will note that my tissues are undamaged."
The Alicorn's anxiety was once again replaced by anticipation, her excitement almost charming in its sheer earnestness. She retreated back to the machine and coaxed another paper ribbon from its innards, her hind leg unconsciously beating out a staccato rhythm on the floor. "Great, great! Now, I have a theory that the draw on your magic reserves is linearly proportional to the amount of energy being-."
Twilight froze, her expression deteriorating as if she were sucking on a lemon. She glared stormily at the paper ribbon and seemed to visibly restrain an impulse to tear it to pieces before slowly setting it aside with a growling sigh.
"Is everything alright, Twilight?" Sauron asked innocently, pretending to be absorbed in his next book- a brief history of the Three Tribes era.
"Oh no, everything's fine. The world makes no sense and I know nothing, but what's wrong with that?" she replied with false calm, her voice cracking with contained frustration.
"…It's not doing anything," she muttered at length, turning off the gas and rapidly flipping through her notebooks.
Sauron repressed a smug grin. "Pardon?"
"Your magic isn't doing anything!" Twilight snapped, completely exasperated. She snatched up the two paper ribbons and glared at them sourly- Sauron craned his neck and observed that the numbers and patterns printed on them were completely identical.
"If your magic was protecting you from the heat somehow, even passively with a barrier or energy dispersal structure or what have you, then the machine would have detected it," she continued, pacing back and forth in her agitation. "But it's completely inert- everything I know says that you shouldn't be different from any other Earth Pony!"
Sauron let himself smile now- it was time to bait the hook. "How wonderful! Congratulations, Twilight!"
The princess gave him a mortified look. "For what?! We're completely in the dark here!"
Sauron dug through his pile of books and passed Twilight a volume entitled 'Famous Feats for Foals: An Illustrated History of Magic'. An irksomely familiar-looking bearded unicorn occupied the cover, his face contemplative as he consulted dusty tomes by candlelight in a transparent attempt to appear more credible to impressionable minds.
"Tell me Twilight, did Starswirl the Bearded discover the theory behind one-to-one transmutation because he woke up one day and decided to revolutionize our understanding of physics? Was the idea of vanishingly tiny particles composing all matter as obvious and intuitive to him as it is to you?"
Twilight scoffed. "Of course not! He was trying to improve teleportation magic by exploring obsolete ideas about 'quintessence'. It was by complete accident that he…" She froze, her eyes widening as she realized the point he was making. "It was by accident."
"Precisely," Sauron praised. "You may recall that relatively few significant discoveries have been made because a researcher found what they expected to find. You may be in the dark, but because of that you have bumped your head against something that you had no idea was there. That no one knew was there."
"That's… amazing, but more than a little intimidating," Twilight replied numbly, seemingly stunned by both the emotional whiplash and the slow realization of what she had stumbled into. "A… an entirely new field of magic, just out of nowhere like this. Where do we even begin?"
Sauron's grin widened; it was 'we' already, was it? Truth be told the matter was nowhere near as complicated as she was making it out to be, nor did it involve what she called 'magic' in the slightest.
She certainly did not need to know that, though. Not before he had put more work into her.
"I have a few ideas," he replied demurely. "Though they may seem strange to you. After all, mysteries are often mysteries because they require a more… oblique approach to unravel." Sauron chanced a challenging smirk. "Unless, of course, you are content to leave your understanding of this at 'because magic' and move on?"
The Alicorn's face flashed with surprising vitriol. "No, we're getting to the bottom of this. I refuse to accept another 'Pinkie Sense' situation." That… rather sounded like something he should look into at some point, but now was not the time.
The Maia saw a familiar light begin to kindle in Twilight's eyes. Confronted with the truly novel, what she felt now went beyond mere curiosity; hers was a furious instinct to illuminate and explore the unknown, an aching, almost physical need to KNOW. He had seen it before in some of his Nazgul; philosopher-kings and would-be sorcerers who would pay an ever greater price for that next flash of insight, for a little bit more time before sickness and age put an end to their research.
There were aspects, workings of the universe that mere observation and experimentation could never uncover. Things that could only be glimpsed through wild intuition and half-remembered dreams yet were easily dismissed out of hand by any sound and logical mind; transient fantasies of children and other madmen. For the Ainur though, for Sauron, they were a matter of the most intimate familiarity, at least as far as their own spheres were concerned.
Oh yes, Sauron knew what Twilight wanted. And if he knew what she wanted, he could buy her.
In the meantime, though, it couldn't hurt to pursue a few pet projects; he had undoubtedly earned it. "That aside, Twilight, how much do magnets cost?"