“Alright, let’s see… Conversion of Material…” For once, Arcanica decided to simply give herself and Blossomforth the day off, so she was currently continuing with her studies of the Eldritch book that she had long since accepted as real. So far in her studies of the book, she had found several interesting spells of late. For the most part, there had been mostly combat oriented spells similar to the chain conjuring spell she had started with.
Filling in the gaps between the combat spells were a number of stories of other ponies to hold the book before her and several different curses with a wide variety of effects. Some she could understand being effective, like a supposed bone melting curse, but some just bordered on absurdity. Why would I need to make it so somepony’s clothes turn into lettuce in the rain?
This particular spell looked much more promising though. It says it changes any singular material into another form of matter… So logically… She smiled as she turned her attention to a potted plant sitting on her window ledge. “Ok, take that plant as the target…” Closing her eyes, she felt the now familiar and slowly intoxicating sensation that accompanied the book’s spells and indicated her horn was glowing black. “Ok, from a daisy… into a rose…”
“Hey, Arcanica! You home?”
“AAGH!” Her focus broken, she lost control of the spell and caused the flower to combust. A loud growl escaped the mare as she glared at the remnants of her failed attempt at potentially forbidden magic. There was a loud knocking as the calls for her attention resumed. “Who could that be?” Leaving her seat, she opened a different window and looked down to the entrance to her shop where she saw a familiar purple dragon. “I’m up here, Spike.”
Seeing her, the baby dragon ran over and stood underneath her vantage point so he was looking straight up. “Oh, there you are. What’s up?”
She sighed as she dragged a fetlock down her face. “Nothing much. Just doing some work in regards to my books. Did you need something?”
“Yeah, Twilight asked if you could swing by the library. She’s reorganizing the library and was hoping you could help her with it.”
“Oh dang, that’s today isn’t it?” She brushed her mane back as she realized the original reason she arranged for the day off. “Hang on, let me put some stuff away. Tell her I’ll be right there.”
“Will do!” The little dragon took off as quickly as his small legs could carry him, leaving Arcanica to her own devices. She began heading towards the door to leave her apartment, but the book caught her attention.
“Hmmm…” Flipping back a few sections, she found the entry she had in mind. It had been penned by a unicorn scholar who had lived under the reign of the Platinum dynasty years before the founding of Equestria. “Here it is, Path of the Wayward Shadows. Journey between two points known to the caster based on the shadows.” A small smile at finding it faltered when she saw the notes left on the page by a later owner. More specifically, how badly the spell can go if the user loses focus or miscasts it, especially as the distance travelled got progressively further. “Maybe not directly to Twilight’s library.”
Looking back out the window, she saw an alley across the street being completely shadowed. “But if I were to make quick jumps like from here to there...”
If anypony were paying attention to the ground, they would have noticed a strange blur of shadow darting between darkened alleys and underneath carts. Fortunately, nopony was paying attention outside of Twilight’s treehouse when the shadow vanished into the overhang from the tree’s canopy. A small patch darkened before large tendrils made of pure darkness shot out of the darkened patch before abruptly getting sucked back into the ground. In their place was a shivering Arcanica who quickly ran from the shadows and into the bright sunlight.
“Ok, never doing that again,” she muttered as she smoothed out her mane. “Funny how none of them ever mentioned the things that like hiding in there.” If she were completely honest, she was convinced that the plane she just did a mad dash through was simply an extension of the Eldritch nightmare world she wrote about in her stories. The horrors she had seen simply walking around in there…
Shaking her head in an effort to get the image of those monsters out of her head, she pulled open the door to the library. “Hey everypony, sorry I’m late.” She jumped back in shock as a wave of books poured out of the doorway. Being as cautious as possible, she climbed over the pile and saw everypony but the two pegasi picking up the books. “Um… I wasn’t aware this was how you reorganized, Twilight.”
“It’s not,” she muttered as she picked up a large pile of books and began placing them on shelves. “Rainbow Dash knocked them all off the shelves when she crashed through my wall.”
“Let me guess, she’s still practicing for that Flyers Competition in Cloudsdale?”
“Nailed in one, ‘Canica.” Applejack was stacking books so Twilight could reorganize them. Taking the hint, Arcanica quickly used her own magic to start making several stacks so the five of them could stop standing on all of the books.
“It’s too bad we can’t support her, though,” lamented Rarity.
“I know, right? I feel so bad that I can’t be cheering Dashie on in a competition as big as this!” Despite the randomness of it, Arcanica wasn’t even going to question how Pinkie Pie wound up on top of the bookshelves without a ladder.
“Yeah, but you know how it is, Pinkie. Only pegasi can stand on the ground of Cloudsdale.” As she said that, Arcanica picked up a book that had fallen open as she cleaned. One of the pages was dominated by an illustration of a unicorn with large transparent butterfly wings. The opposite page was covered in text that immediately caught her attention. “Hey Twilight, what do you think of this?”
The book was quickly passed between unicorns and Twilight began scouring the pages for any piece of information. When Arcanica saw her eyes light up, something told her Twilight was excited to give this new spell a try.
Arcanica sighed as she laid down, grateful clouds were so soft. “Everything alright, Arcanica?” She glared at Twilight. Currently, the two of them were sitting in the Cloudiseum with Applejack, Pinkie and Fluttershy waiting for their friends to perform.
“Sure, if you don’t count the headache I’m suppressing after putting up with Rarity all day.” The purple unicorn had the decency to flinch at the harshness of her tone. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the mare like a sister, but you have no idea how tempted I have been to put a hole in those wings of hers.”
“Yeah… no offense but, um, she has been a bit excessive today. Although, I don’t think it’s needed to go quite so far, Arcanica.” Despite her soft-spoken voice, there was a distinctive edge of “don’t do it” to her statement.
“At least we got to tour Cloudsdale and the weather factory. I never realized just how much work goes into creating even the simplest clouds!” The mares all chuckled at that statement. Leave it to Twilight to find the silver lining in learning about any given topic.
“And now we get to see Dashie and Rarity perform for everypony!”
“That is true.” Arcanica looked over the Cloudiseum and was still amazed at the amount of detail in the structure. It reminded her a lot of the towering temples that had defined the lost city of Marethon. Marethon… She grit her teeth as her head throbbed with a dull pain. Despite actually having knowledge of that historical era, she saw flashes of the city from a first-pony perspective as memories of a time long-past began popping up in her head. Not now. I’m not letting those in now. Shutting away the images of the city being attacked some manner of abhorrent creature, she let the cheers of the crowd draw her back to reality.
Content that the rush of memories was abated, she smiled as she watched Princess Celestia open the contest and the first entrant began to perform. “Anypony know what numbers Rainbow and Rarity are?”
They all turned to Fluttershy, assuming she would know. “Oh… um… well, I’m pretty sure Rainbow Dash was entrant number 2, and Rarity was number 4.” The announcer called out for entrant 2, but the pegasus who appeared was most certainly not Rainbow Dash.
“Ya sure about that, sugarcube?”
“I was positive, but maybe I was wrong about her number…”
“I don’t think so,” muttered Twilight. “That pony was a little confused when she first took flight.”
“You think Dash switched their numbers?”
“But why would Dashie do something like that?”
“I don’t know, Pinkie. I just don’t know.” Their confusion continued when entrant 4 was called out, but never appeared, leaving them to skip directly to number 5. “And now Rarity isn’t appearing for her turn.”
The show went on, with the five friends politely cheering for the other contestants as they performed, but Rarity and Rainbow Dash never appeared until the very end. Apparently, they were running low on time, so the two had to perform at the same time. Rarity’s outfit made them physically cringe at the sheer gaudiness of the entire ensemble while Dash was far too nervous and was letting her nerves negatively affect how she was flying.
“Come on, Rarity,” muttered Arcanica, “stop showboating and being so obnoxious.”
“Come on Rainbow Dash! You can do it!” Pinkie Pie was screaming into a megaphone she had gotten from… somewhere.
“Rarity is going too high.” The others shot Twilight a confused look prompting her to explain. “Those wings I made her are extremely delicate and fragile. Any higher and the sunlight might melt the dew they’re made from!”
“Too late for that!” The five gasped when Rarity’s wings evaporated at the peak of her ascension right before she plummeted downwards.
“RARITY!” The Wonderbolts on duty quickly dove down after her, but the girls became panicked when the professionals’ trails abruptly vanished.
“Somepony has to do something!” The crowd was screaming and terrified at the mounting developments. As the girls panicked, a familiar rainbow blur shot straight downwards towards the plummeting ponies. The cyan mare got closer to the falling ponies before the impossible happened. With a loud crash, a wave of rainbow color exploded outwards from Rainbow Dash with the stadium feeling the shockwave from the Cloudiseum.
“Was that…?”
“WOOHOO! A SONIC RAINBOOM!” screamed Fluttershy as she began cheering like Pinkie Pie. Rainbow Dash, now flying at a greater speed than ever before, shot back into the arena with Rarity and the Wonderbolts in hoof.
“That explosion…” Arcanica stared in awe as her friend was declared the winner of the contest. That looked… familiar…
“Congratulations, Rainbow Dash!” The seven friends were back home in Ponyville celebrating the pegasus’ accomplishment. Due to house size, Twilight was hosting while Pinkie and Applejack provided the food. “That was so super spectacularly amazingly cool!”
“Thanks, Pinkie Pie.” The mare of the hour was currently wearing a medal and had the trophy tucked under her wing while enjoying the celebration cake Pinkie Pie had baked for the occasion. “Man, this was one heck of a day.”
“You’re telling me, darling.” Rarity, now devoid of that obnoxious outfit, sipped at her punch. “After all that happened today, I think I’ll be sticking to cloud walking spells from now on.” She noticed all of them giving her unamused looks. “And… I suppose I may have let having those wings go to my head.”
“Well, I suppose that admission is better than nothing.” The others all snickered at her comment and resuming the party. As they celebrated, Dash was giving everypony a play-by-play of her performance that she was obviously over-hyping to make herself look much more confident; not that any of them wanted to stop her. It was just too satisfying seeing their friend regain all of the confidence she had lost prior to the contest.
As the party was winding down, the girls all began to discuss their plans for the coming week. Twilight was planning on researching the creatures native to the Everfree Forest in the near future, Rarity had a line of dresses she needed to finish for a client from Canterlot, Applejack had farm work, and Arcanica had a deadline coming up.
“A deadline?” asked Twilight. “Didn’t you just publish a book recently?”
“Please remember I do more than just books, Twilight,” she said good-naturedly. “Ever since I went public, my publicist has been getting more deals for me to have some of my short stories featured in various collections. The deadline is a story that’s going to be featured in an ‘Authors of our Time’ book.”
“Oh, I see.” Her eyes lit up as a coy smile spread across her lips. “Ya know, if you ever need somepony to proof-read before you ship it off…”
“Twilight I have my editor and a publishing company for that.” Twilight blushed at the slightly annoyed look the other unicorn was sending her. “I’m not letting you proof-read my stories before I ship them off. You finding Lost City was the definition of a fluke.”
“Wait a minute!” The sudden outburst got everypony to look at Pinkie Pie as she thought something over. “There’s something about this week…” She began digging around in her mane before pulling out a small calendar and looking it over. When she found what she was looking for, she gasped dramatically. “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I didn’t think about it sooner!” They kept staring at her as she babbled to herself about frosting scheduling and confetti rationing.
“Um… Pinkie? You okay?” asked Twilight.
“No, I’m not!” She slammed the calendar onto the table so all of them could read it. “Arcanica’s birthday is at the end of the week and I need to start preparing.”
“Oh, so it is.” The author shrugged before taking a bite of her cupcake. “It’s not a big deal, Pinkie. There’s no need to get all bent out of shape over it.”
“No big deal?!” She grabbed the unicorn’s face and got in extremely close. “Arcanica, how can you say that about your birthday?!”
She found herself ensnared in a pink aura as Twilight put her back in her seat. “Pinkie! Give the mare some space!” She sent an apologetic smile to the author and got a nod of gratitude in response.
“If you must know, I barely celebrated my birthday before moving to Ponyville. Even back before I invented ‘Page Turner’ I didn’t celebrate it that often.” She shrugged and finished off her cupcake. “As long as it’s nothing big, I don’t mind you throwing me a party. I’d honestly be fine if we didn’t throw a party and treated it like any other day.”
“But it isn’t any other day! It’s a birthday! That’s one of the most amazing days besides Hearth’s Warming and Nightmare Night!” Once again, she was in Arcanica’s face, only this time she was standing on the table and leaning down. “How can you not care?!”
This time, the red unicorn levitated the party pony back to her seat. “I just don’t see the big deal. My parents never made a big deal and I saw no reason to after I left Seward Shoals. Now can we drop it?” Arcanica took a drink of her punch, confident that she had defused Pinkie Pie’s fixation on throwing her a party. She never noticed the looks the Elements of Harmony shared nor the look of sheer determination on her pink friend’s face.
It was much later when Arcanica finally made it home. Emptying her mailbox, she went up to her home and turned on the lights in her kitchen. Setting down her mail on the table, she set a kettle on the stove to brew herself a cup of tea to unwind before bed.
“Why didn’t you do something?” she didn’t have to turn around to know who was sitting at the table behind her. “You and I both know you have learned plenty of spells in the book to have at least done something when her wings evaporated.”
“The most I would have done is make things worse for everypony and raise questions about how I learned magic like that.” Her magenta eyes met misty black as the green pegasus chuckled.
“Perhaps,” he admitted. “But if push came to shove, would you have been so concerned for yourself that you would let your friend perish just to save your flank?”
“I don’t have to answer you. Especially considering just who you are.”
He laughed at her jab. “Oh, come now, Hoofcraft. What difference does it make when we compare my actions to your inactions?”
“My inactions don’t destroy cities!” He kept smiling as she glared at him unwaveringly. Behind her, the kettle began whistling. “Why are you even here? I thought you were content being among Them in the Void Beyond.”
“Oh believe me, Hoofcraft, I do enjoy my ascension to Their world. However, you’ve been much slower than the rest of us when it comes to that book.” His smile melted into a look of unamused irritation. “Considering you can see the horrors of the Void Beyond and how they impact Equestria, I’m honestly baffled. Most of us have to learn through experience. You have the most knowledge of the past out of all of us, yet you are the most hesitant to understand what you’ve been given.”
“Not all of us are so willing to give up our mortality and sanity for Their blessings.” She removed the kettle without breaking eye contact. “I may not completely buy into everything I’ve read in the book, but I do know that some of what’s in there shouldn’t be messed with.”
“Oh, like the shadow walking spell.” She blanched. “Oh yes, I know all about your usage of that particular one. Don’t worry though, They wouldn’t let something happen to you while you use it. If anything, They are much more overjoyed that sompony is utilizing their gifts to Equestria once more.” He leaned in, his smile revealing fangs in place of normal teeth. “Tell me, Hoofcraft, have you started to hear the calls? The soft whispers of the power offered by the book? The seductive feeling of the power no mortals should wield without Their blessings?”
“Leave.” He chuckled. “I mean it. GET OUT!”
“Very well,” he said simply. He stood, his dragonic wings shifting to lie more comfortably on his sides. “I look forward to seeing your progress, Hoofcraft. After all,” he sent her a dangerous smile, “you know what you’re doing better than the rest of us.” She blinked, an involuntary reaction to his statement, and found nopony there. It was as if the stallion was never there. She’d be content thinking nopony had been there at all, if it weren’t for the half-empty cup of tea sitting in front of the empty seat with a large bite taken out of it.