Budding 4th 3473 EE
I should be at a wedding, or rather stuffing myself with candied oat-cakes and honey glazed carrots at the reception. What? It takes a lot of metabolic energy to fly as fast as I do, even with pegasus magic helping out. Luna always tells me I'll end up looking like her namesake at full. Though she's not averse to spiking the odd pastry off the buffet herself.
Wait, fly back, I'm writing why we weren't at the wedding. Wedding called on account of disaster, the history books will probably write. It appears that certain of the most uptight and powerful of the unicorn nobility attempted a nice piece of economic warfare, the frou frou maned, pointy headed egotists! And it was partly my fault.
I've been encouraging the spread of the cloud manipulation spell effect to other pegasi, and I was a bit surprised at how little resistance the court put up. I see now that it was because it would allow them to enforce their decree about cloud ownership. And I thought that was just to stop pegasi using therm to build homes.
We each had to pay a tax to get the clouds delivered, not a big one, the other nobles would never stand for it, and it wasn't until it was too late that we found the Fife of Maresia's tax was incorrectly processed. We ended up getting about half our money back, and about half the clouds we needed. They actually destroyed clouds that would have crossed our land.
I know it may sound ridiculous, but if you understand the geography you'll see. The Fife of Maresia stretches from Ponyville, which borders the King's own domain and the demesnes of Canterlot, over to the Eastern Spires mountain range. Much of Equestria Antiquate is to the west, and during spring, the prevailing winds are north-west, up out of the Horseshoe sea. We're last on the delivery route, so to speak.
Without the early spring rains at the right time, our fields would suffer, and our harvest would be poor. And Maresia has a lot of agriculture, it's one of our major trading commodities. We've been building up manufacturing, encouraging artisans to settle here with financial aid, and the new flying chariot industry, but we need that trade surplus to bring in the gold to invest in it.
We managed to piece it together after the fact, but there was nothing solid for us to take to the king. We had enough wells and rain to avoid a drought, but we were in serious trouble. It was a lot of long faces in the Citizens Council when we met to decide what to do.
I'd better explain that too, as it's not the way most Fifes are run. Both mom and uncle are engaged in their own researches a lot of the time, and so are we, but we all do our part in the running of the Fife. Auntie Ponydra and Atlas spend the most time at Canterlot, doing the diplomacy thing.
(Where do you think he got his manners from? Belgarhoof is my uncle, and I love him dearly, but while he suffers foals gladly, adults who act foalish get short shrift and the sharp end of his horn. He's to diplomacy what a pegasus is to deep sea diving.)
They're aided by Gladstone, our Senechal, and a noble unicorn from one of the few families who are allied with us. Of course, dad and I are always there to take a message.
Note to self: Find some faster way to get messages around. Wink along ley-lines the way Luna or mother does? But there would need to be a carrier medium, a magical one. Work on this later.
One of the reasons we knew there was skull-skulduggery was that Gladstone came down ill at exactly the right time to be unable to check on the progress of our rain requisition, food poisoning they say. Atlas was here working on our project, and Aunt Ponydra, bless her, was more worried about Gladstone than checking a minor administrative detail.
Anyway, the rest of us take turns doing the dull administration stuff, and one of the reasons it doesn't take too long is that we only provide policy and leadership, and let the towns and counties implement it themselves. Hence the citizens council, a body of town leaders and respected tradesmen from all over the Fife, who provide us feedback and raise any problems that need solving.
It's held at Maresia Keep, the castle at the centre of our Fife, and our main work place There, unicorns, pegasi and Earth ponies, all listened to with equal weight given to their words. After all, they're the experts in their fields. Sounds obvious enough, but there is no other Fife where the words of an Earth pony, no matter how sensible, would be given consideration by a noble.
So there they were engaging in a pity party, when I decided to take away the trenchers and shut down the buffet. Spanrow, a big earth pony and leader of the farmers was calling it the worst disaster the Fife had ever faced. I stood up and told him that I thought it would be our finest hour.
Then I laid out the plan I'd come up with (C'mon you knew I had one, grin). It was outrageous, insane, complex, and would require everyone working their tails off. But and not only supply us with the water we needed, but use their biased laws against them, and also scare the horse-apples out of those smug pointy headed idiots who thought the Fife of Maresia would just raise it's tail and take it in the rump from them. I think the fact that I actually used that last phrase shocked them out of their stupor.
We took every flying chariot we had, and every one we could convert, and flew in convoy to the Horseshoe sea. Of course we had to assign ownership to a unicorn for each, but our Fife has a lot of unicorn artisans. They were all taught the basic rune-crafting to create a flying chariot out of a normal one. Blue Mane was one of them.
I got together the pegasi and taught them a couple of things I'd learned from our experiments with the cloud shaping power, the ability to condense a cloud and use it to keep something cool. It's how we kept those ice crystals stable. I've also used it to cold distil a soluble salt out of a liquid before, very useful in my alchemical experiments.
We passed over several other Fifes, ones owned by our opponents, but they couldn't complain, as they'd pushed for free access to the skies for flying chariots (after all they were the ones using them). We flew out over the sea, and then came the clever bit. Most of the chariots carried unicorns, and they all cast freezing spells on the water.
The effort was lead by Luna, Belgarhoof and Marelin, using one of our newest triunes, which had been inscribed on the floor of a large wagon we'd converted for flight. Dad, I mean Epheron, or rather Belepheron, as uncle had granted him use of the family prefix and I were towing it. As you can imagine, it was rather powerful.
When we'd frozen a big enough area for a ritual diagram, we moved the spell casting on board. As unicorns got off, we lowered each chariot into the water, and allowed it to freeze into the face of the ice, along with a number of long ropes. And of course, every unicorn not adding to the freezing spell was staring to inscribe flying chariot runes into the ice face, plus a few that we'd developed for pegasus power transfer.
When we had a suitable block, the Earth ponies who'd travelled in the remaining chariots dived into the sea carrying the ropes (and wearing leather goggles we'd manifested earlier). They swum down, and once in contact with the sea floor, drew on their earth powers tipped the entire block around so the chariots were facing sideways.
It took some careful management and a bit of levitation magic as well as some outright carrying, but we managed to move all the unicorns to the new surface without any falling in. There they started extending the ice block, and carving in the runes as they went. Pegasi landed and used the condensation spell to make sure the ice was free of salt. It only worked on the surface but the ice could be pushed down with levitation to fuse at the lower side.
Actually, some of the surfacing Earth ponies claimed to have seen and heard the mythical sea ponies, though that was probably the cold talking. Only Earth pony toughness could have survived the cold at all, and only the coldness of the ocean that early in the year made this even possible. Still, a few were singing the siren song they thought they'd heard, though I don't know how so many ponies hallucinated hearing 'shoop-de-doop shoop-shoop-de-doop' at the same time. Maybe it's something like the roaring you hear in a sea shell. Time enough to explore that later.
Eventually we had a long, massive block of near-pure water, inscribed with chariot levitation runes and pegasus power transfer runes (remember, ice crystals are the one type of crystal we can empower). So the unicorns laid out matting they'd carried in saddlebags and had a rest while we pegasi took our turn. They also had towels for the Earth ponies.
Every pegasi, including me and my dad, pushed our power into the block, through the specialised runes charging it with thaumic energy. The entire thing started to float higher in the water, uncovering the chariot harnesses on the front face. Then we had to rest, well most of us. Food from saddlebags was distributed, and there were even a few iron braziers and firewood to warm us.
Once we pegasi were recharged, we took up the harnesses and basically lifted the whole thing into the air, aided by the unicorn contingent's levitation magic. It was slower than a regular chariot, and harder to manoeuvre, but as long as a few were pulling it, it stayed up in the air, so we could ever take shifts.
I say we, I was in harness the whole way back. After all it was my idea, and I am, I can say without modesty the most powerful pegasus in the Fife. It took the rest of the day and a night to travel back. It does mean I was rather out of it when we flew past Canterlot the next morning. But I'm told the mass dropping of jaws as we flew past was audible in Ponyville, which meant my work there was done.
While we'd been away, a large contingent of Earth ponies under the direction of Atlas had been digging the irrigation channels and blocking up small valleys to act as the reservoirs that would feed them. Obviously we dropped off sections at the various reservoir locations, and the earth ponies stomped on them to break them into slush.
Of course, I didn't see most of this, as when we got back to Maresia Keep, I staggered up to my bed and collapsed for a day and a night. I am eternally grateful that it took those affronted pointy heads at Canterlot that long to put together a delegation to come arrest us.
Oh, it was wonderful watching Atlas at work. His whole more in sorrow than anger tone, crossed with the way he acted like he was explaining the obvious to foals, and the exquisite way he pushed the horn in and twisted. Everything we'd done was completely legal. It wasn't a cloud, so it wasn't covered by the Crown ownership or taxation rules.
We'd even registered it as a chariot, and paid the licensing fees for it and the other new ones, all legally registered to unicorns. Two can play at bureaucratic games, and Gladstone pulled that one off like a champion, sliding it in under the muzzles of the nobles in question.
I think having the chance to take them to pieces verbally was one of the best wedding gifts I could have given Atlas, and the look on their faces as they realised they'd been given the horn quite thoroughly was a pretty nice gift for me and Luna. I loved the offer to do the same for them if they found they didn't have enough water. Maybe they've also gotten the message that you do not buck Maresia and get away with it!
The whole thing demonstrated just what we could accomplish if we worked together, not as unicorns, and pegasi and Earth ponies, but as ponies each with different skills and different abilities to offer. When that sort of unified effort is possible all over Equestria, then our work will be done.
The only downside is that we've had to reveal at least some of the things we've been working on, the most worrying the pegasus power transfer into ice crystals. However the essential secrets of a hetro-thaumic triune and the power sharing ritual remains safe. For that matter,the results I've gotten from the monitoring spells attached to the main triune will help our research immensely, even though it was all unicorn.
But I still have one major problem to solve, what to use as external anchors? Nothing we've tried has enough power to stabilise us, not at the projected power of the ritual diagram. Oh well, I'll work on that another day. For now I've a celebration to go to. We may not be having a wedding, but we are having a party to celebrate out-witting the nobles and securing water for all. Candied oat-cakes ahoy!