//------------------------------// // Arc 5.1: Chapter 31 // Story: Student 32: Sunset Shimmer // by Show Stopper //------------------------------// *CRACK* True to Evangeline's prediction, Sunset remained in the villa for several apparent weeks. There was no sun to mark the time, but the sky eventually changed colors to match twilight before fading to the black of night. The villa remained illuminated, as if by a full moon, even with nothing overhead but an endless expanse of black. *CRACK* The villa also constantly restocked itself. The interior of the main tower contained several floors of kitchens, bedrooms, dining rooms, libraries, and more. Sunset had picked out an entire floor for herself her first day awake and had been happy to discover a well-stocked pantry that Evangeline informed her would restock itself every night at midnight. *CRACK* The libraries were well-supplied as well. Each seemed tailored to a different subject, from history, to architecture, to mathematics, to various genres of fiction. Sunset was more than happy to spend her limited free time relaxing with a good action novel or studying up on some piece of spellcraft or another. *CRACK* And her free time was limited. Evangeline spent most of every day drilling Sunset through exercise after exercise designed to help her regulate her ki. It took most of a day for Sunset to figure out how to shut off her ki, and three days after that for her to trust herself not to burn her normal clothes to ashes. (Though she'd been more than happy to toss Evangeline's more magically resistant outfits, she'd also been more than a little concerned when the vampire had returned to the villa after a full day of absence with several sets of Sunset's own clothes; she'd immediately begun research into wards and alarm spells.) *CRACK* Another week had allowed Sunset to channel her ki to only parts of her body, rather than just going full off or full on. Evangeline had been impressed by how quickly Sunset had gotten the hang of it and had assured her that there was only one thing left to learn before it would be safe for her to leave the villa and resume her school-life. *CRACK* That had been six weeks ago. Sunset sighed as she took another porcelain tile from the stack beside her and placed it on the table. She was sitting in the gazebo, enjoying the ocean breeze as she continued this relatively exertion-free exercise. On her right was a tall stack of porcelain tiles. On her left, a pile of large, flat rocks. And on the other side of the heavily magically-reinforced table… *CRACK* "Damn it." ...a slowly growing pile of dust, pebbles, and porcelain fragments. Sunset swept her latest failure off the table before grabbing another tile and another rock. She placed the slab before her, placed the tile on top, and lined up her bare fist to punch straight down. The point of the exercise was simple: put just enough ki into her first to break the tile without damaging the rock beneath it. Simple in concept. *CRACK* Difficult in execution. "You don't seem to be making much progress." Sunset sighed and leaned back in her seat. "Yeah, well, when I first learned to regulate my magic, I had an army of professional tutors, a literal goddess for a mentor, and the best child therapist in the nation." "Therapist?" "It's relevant. Don't ask." Evangeline shrugged and pulled up another chair, sitting to one side of the table and looking over the pile of detritus. Sunset had grown far more comfortable with the vampire over the last two months in the villa, often taking time to discuss magical theory or philosophy with her whenever they took a break in Sunset's training. Sunset had been both surprised and amused to discover that her host/warden was less formally educated than she'd thought, often struggling to understand what Sunset was talking about unless she put things in layman's terms. Evangeline had begrudgingly admitted after much needling that she'd never been to any school of magic and had rarely opened a spellbook in her long life; apparently her teacher had utilized a more practical curriculum, though Evangeline remained tight-lipped on the details. Sunset had quickly learned that Evangeline liked to talk about her past even less than Sunset talked about her own, and they'd developed a mutual respect for those boundaries. In fact, "mutual respect" defined their entire relationship quite well. Sunset's panicked flight attempt upon learning that Evangeline had full access to her powers while within the villa notwithstanding. “Still, you’ve managed to work yourself down to half power,” Evangeline noted. “That isn’t nothing.” “It is when half power is more than enough to pulverize someone’s pelvis with a hip check!” Sunset groaned and leaned back in her chair. “I’m close; I can feel it! I’m one mental breakthrough away from figuring this out!” Evangeline shrugged and stood. “Well, I suggest you break through soon. A few more days, and you’ll have to stay in another month; better to miss the first day back than to interrupt your training when you don’t have good control.” *CRACK* “Case in point.” She stood and stretched her arms over her head, letting out a low groan. “Well, I’ve got stuff to do to get ready for classes to start up again. It should only take a couple of hours, so I’ll be back in time to oversee the last few days of your training. Or the last few before you resign yourself to another month. Whichever.” “Happy to know that you care so much about my progress,” Sunset griped, setting another slab on the table. “Go on, then; I know where the food is, and I hopefully won’t run out of stone or porcelain before you get back.” Evangeline turned and walked away, waving casually over her shoulder. “Good luck!” *CRACK* ***** Dinner was a simple affair that evening. Sunset sat on the edge of the tower, munching on a ham sandwich as she watched the sky begin to change colors. She’d always loved the time of day that was her namesake, even if the current sunset lacked any actual sun. Something’s missing, she mused as she swallowed her last bite of sandwich. Something I’m just not getting. This training feels so familiar. If I could just figure out why! Sunset sighed and shook her head. “No use getting frustrated; that’ll just make it even harder to figure out. What I need to do is calm down and… now there’s an idea.” She quickly stood and walked back to the gazebo. She pushed all of the furniture out to the sides, freeing up a large space in the center. She sat down, crossing her legs and making herself comfortable. I haven’t tried this in years, she thought. Here’s hoping it works for humans as well as it does for ponies. Sunset closed her eyes, rested her hands in her lap, and took a deep breath. In for seven seconds. Held for seven seconds. Out for seven seconds. In seven. Held seven. Out seven. Equis equis alicornus, Sunset thought as she continued to breath. Equis equis alicornus. Equis equis alicornus. Equis equis alicornus. In. Held. Out. Equis equis alicornus. Seven. Seven. Seven. Equis equis alicornus. Slowly, little by little, Sunset’s whole body relaxed. Her breathing became fluid, airflow accelerating slowly from inhale to halt to exhale rather than jerking from step to step. Her mantra replayed itself over and over in her mind... In. Held. Out. Equis equis alicornus. ...fading, fading, fading… Seven. Seven. Seven. Equis equis alicornus. ...until her mind was blank. ***** “Meditation?” Princess Celestia, Goddess of the Sun and sole ruler of Equestria, smiled down at her pupil. “Yes, Sunset. Meditation. It is a Zebrican technique designed to focus the mind and bring hidden things to the surface.” The young filly sitting across from her scrunched up her muzzle, wincing as the action agitated her scars. “But, I don’t understand, Princess. How is a zebra technique supposed to help me use magic again?” Celestia’s smile turned sad as she considered the condition of the filly before her. “The scars on your body are not the only ones which require healing, Sunset. Your heart and mind have been injured as well. While the doctors can heal your physical damage, and your brother and loving teachers and friends can help to ease the pain in your heart, your mind requires a very different treatment. One that you must provide for yourself; I can only guide you in the right direction." Sunset frowned. "I don't understand." Celestia smirked slightly. "Well that's a given, since I haven't started guiding you yet." Chuckling at her student's sheepish smile, she continued. "Try to light your horn." Sunset paled. "U-um, th-the doctors said I'm not supposed to cast any spells for at least a week." Celestia nodded. "And you shouldn't. Your more delicate circuits still need time to heal. However, the central circuits should be more than strong enough to handle producing simple light. Give it a try; I promise you that it won't hurt." Sunset swallowed nervously, but nodded. She closed her eyes, focusing on her wellspring, the boiling, writhing, violent furnace of energy that sat barely restrained within her chest. She took a shuddering breath, opening the necessary pathways in her horn to allow magic to flow through and produce light. She then opened the circuits between her horn and her skull. And from her skull to her neck. And from her neck to her chest. Sunset trembled and shook as she slowly, cautiously, opened connection after connection, slowly drawing closer to her wellspring. Finally, only one circuit was left to be opened. Sunset's whole body was shaking, her teeth chattering as tears streamed down her face. Slowly, hauntingly, cruelly, the sound of fire and crackling wood filled her ears. Her head. Her entire soul. Two voices began screaming in twisted, tortured agony. Sunshine's hooves were a noose around her neck, slowly cooking her as she struggled and sobbed and burned and burned and BURNED AND- "Sunset." Celestia's voice, firm but kind, cut through the miasma. Sunset let out a broken gasp, her eyes flying open as her magical circuits slammed closed. With what little strength she could muster, she threw herself into Celestia's chest and began sobbing uncontrollably, barely noticing as her tears agitated her burns. Celestia, meanwhile, held her close, stroking her back soothingly and whispering quiet assurances into her ear. Slowly, glacially, Sunset's tremors stopped and her tears dried. With a final great sniff, Sunset pulled away, staring down at the ground ashamedly. "I… I'm sorry, Princess." "My little Sun, you have nothing to apologize for." Celestia reached down and tilted Sunset's chin up, meeting her gaze with a sad smile. "You've been through something horrible, and your own magic was the cause of it. It's perfectly all right to be scared." "I'm not scared!" Sunset protested. A single raised eyebrow from Celestia made her shrunk back a little. "Well, I mean, maybe a little…" Celestia nodded. "That fear, Sunset, is what you need to overcome if you want to use magic again. Your mind currently connects your magic with pain and misery. You must retrain your mind and convince it that your magic won't hurt you again. Only then will that fear vanish." Sunset frowned, but nodded. "So, meditation?" Celestia nodded. "Meditation both clears and focuses the mind. It clears it of emotion and wayward thought and focuses it on the issue under contemplation. Through meditation, all emotions and assumptions are stripped away, allowing one to see things more clearly. It should help you to either overcome or circumvent your fear." Sunset looked down, her face screwed up in thought. Eventually, she nodded. "Okay. How do we start?" ***** Months passed. Sunset's physical scars vanished with a steady, consistent application of healing magic, and her horn recovered to full functionality. Sunset's emotional pains were slower to heal, but she cried herself to sleep less often than she had before and her nightmares had finally limited themselves to one per night. Meditation was slower to come to her. Sunset was impulsive and dynamic by nature, so sitting still for hours at a time was almost impossible at first. Harder still was quieting her mind. Ever curious and extremely intelligent, Sunset always found her thoughts drifting from one topic to another. She'd interrupted more than one meditation session with a screaming tantrum when it all got to be too much. Nevertheless, she progressed. Within a month, she could sit for the entire session without fidgeting. Within two, she could place herself into a sort of half-aware trance. Finally, three months after Celestia had first introduced the concept, something clicked. Oh, Sunset thought, her mind clearer than she'd ever imagined. All outside sensation was suddenly irrelevant. Even her own biofeedback was easily ignorable. That single word, the acknowledgement of epiphany, was, for the moment, the only thought in her mind. So that’s how it works, Sunset thought, before turning her mind to other topics. Her mind raced calmly back to that tragic day - objectively horrifying, but I suppose that doesn’t matter right now, - and the feeling of magic flowing through her horn. Flowing. Not bursting. Not exploding. That didn’t happen until it had already exited. The mostly unfocused pyromancy pulled all of the heat it could from the room to support the level of power that I was pouring into the spell. That explains why I felt so cold, despite the ball of fire blazing above my head. So I turned to the fireplace and… ah. Of course. Such a small oven couldn’t hope to hold that much fire. I suppose the explosion of heat after that cold must have placed me into shock. That would explain why I couldn’t react to anything until Sunshine had carried me outside. A tiny smile briefly flickered across Sunset’s face, not that she noticed. So it wasn’t a lack of control after all. In fact, my magic was perfectly under my control the entire time. It was simply the aftereffects which spiraled beyond my ability to manage. Is that the trick, then? A flash of uncertainty broke through her calm venere. So, it was still my fault. More so than I had thought. It wasn’t my magic surging beyond control that killed my parents, scarred my body, and destroyed our home; it was me. My carelessness. My rash mistake. I can’t let that happen again. Control. What I need, more than anything is control. I must be master of my magic like I am master of my body. I must fine tune my mind so that I can make split-second decisions such that I am left without regrets. I must be better than I was. Than I am. The only question is, how? I suppose- -set. ...what was that. -unset. It sounds… familiar. A… voice? Someone’s voice? Sunset. That word… that’s… that’s… Sunset. Me! A wave of weariness swept over Sunset as her eyes fluttered open, the cadence of her breathing interrupted by a sudden inhale. “Wh- what?” Celestia smiled down at her student. “I see you have finally managed to enter a full trance, but I’m afraid our session has gone on rather longer than it should have.” “Session?” Sunset asked, rubbing her eyes and trying to get her brain to start up again. “Longer? What do you…” Sunset trailed off, her eyes going wide as she noticed that the room’s various candles and sconces were lit. A quick check out the window revealed that the moon was already high in the sky. Their morning session, which was supposed to last two hours at most, had gone on well into the night. “I would have ended our session on time,” Celestia explained, “but I noticed that you had finally reached the state of mind that you needed. From what I can see, I made the right decision; your fear doesn’t seem nearly so visceral as before.” Sunset blinked heavily a couple of times, trying to focus. It was a little harder than usual, for some reason; it felt like her mind was half focused on another task. “What do you mean, Princess?” Celestia chuckled and pointed to her own horn. Sunset stared in confusion for a moment before her eyes went wide. Slowly, very slowly, her eyes crawled upwards until they caught the faint, teal glow of magic. Her magic. “I… I…” Almost as soon as she’d seen it, it flickered out, the extra pressure on her mind retreating at the same time. “I… I was using magic,” Sunset whispered. Her face slowly morphed into a radiant grin. “I WAS USING MAGIC!!!” She stumbled to her hooves and launched herself at Celestia, nuzzling into her chest. “Thank you, Princess! Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!” にちぼつ Celestia laughed as she held Sunset close, enfolding her in both forelegs and wings. “My dear Sunset. It was my pleasure. Now, you’re probably starving after going without lunch or dinner. Let’s go and see what we can-” にちぼつ ...that was strange. Those sounds, so foreign. Almost inequine. にちぼつ No. not almost. Completely inequine. Sunset was sure that no pony could make those sorts of sounds. So sharp. So unmelodic. What was this? にちぼつ Ni...chi...bo...tsu. But what was Ni-chi-bo-tsu? It sounded familiar… Nichibotsu. It was one of those human words, wasn’t it? One of those Japanese words. What did it mean again? Nichibotsu! Ni-chi-bo-tsu. That’s right, it means “sunset.” Just like my… ***** Sunset’s eyes shot open. Immediately, she took note of the time. Night was falling, and her body was complaining angrily that she hadn’t eaten in more than a few hours. A full day had passed. Sunset finally focused on the person who had been calling out to her, an irate-looking Evangeline who was now rolling her eyes. “Finally,” the vampire mumbled. “I was beginning to think that I’d have to slap you out of that trance. Hmph. Not that I would have minded doing so.” Sunset blinked a couple of times, shaking her head as she quickly returned to full awareness. “Sorry about that,” she said. “My name is usually enough to wake me up almost immediately. I guess I haven’t really internalized ‘Hikaru Nichibotsu’ as much as I’d thought.” She raised a curious eyebrow at Evangeline. “What are you doing back here at this time of night, anyway? I’d have thought you would be out there for at least a couple of hours.” Evangeline huffed, looking away and blushing slightly. “The boy stopped by. I had to get some time away from the idiocy he was spouting.” “Oh?” Sunset asked, smirking. “What sort of idiocy? From the way you’re blushing, I’d almost suspect that he asked you out on a date or something.” Evangeline’s face went from pink-tinged to tomato-red in an instant. “Wh-wh-wh-WHAT?! NO!!! Why would you even think- agh!” She grit her teeth as Sunset started howling with laughter. “You think that’s funny, horse meat? Just remember that I’m at full power in here! I don’t care how good you’ve magically gotten at regulating your ki; I will tear you to shreds if you say something like that again!” “Sorry, sorry,” Sunset said, getting her laugh under control. “It was just too easy. Though by your reaction, I assume it at least had something to do with… wait.” The humor slipped from her face, replaced by an inquisitive frown. “What do you mean, ‘regulating my ki?’ I haven’t been working on that since I started meditating earlier.” Evangeline raised a sceptical eyebrow and pointed to Sunset’s forehead. ...oh you’ve got to be kidding me. Sunet’s eyes rolled up and spotted a faint teal glow coming from her forehead. “...I’m an idiot.” “We agree on that,” Evangeline snarked, “but how about you be more specific.” "Ki comes from the same wellspring as Equestrian magic," Sunset muttered, half to Evangeline and half to herself. "And I've spent most of my life mastering fine control of Equestrian magic. I already know how it feels to manipulate it precisely through a horn, or through my forehead in this case, so I can use that as an example." Closing her eyes, Sunset focused on the power emanating from her forehead. Focus on those circuits, Sunset thought. Everything between the wellspring and the forehead is familiar to you. She then turned her attention to the skin just outside of where her horn was flowing and the newly discovered circuits that connected there. She traced those circuits down to where they joined the currently open path, finding the path that she needed to open. Gently, Sunset thought, studying this new path and comparing it to her active one. Don't open it all the way. Just enough to copy the main path. Sunset took a deep breath, let it out, and opened the path. "Not really sure what you're doing," Evangeline said, trying to mask her interest, "but the circle of ki on your forehead just got bigger. Doesn't look like it's any more powerful, either." "Good," Sunset replied, opening her eyes. "That's exactly what I was hoping for. If I keep this up, I should be able to extend that level of output to my entire body. Then to just one part at a time. After that, it's just a matter of repetition to get it to come more quickly." "Hm." Evangeline crossed her arms and raised a sceptical eyebrow. "Sounds like that will take a while to master." Sunset nodded. "Master, yes. But…" She got up, groaning as her body informed her that it was displeased with having sat upright for so long. She made her way back over to the gazebo, slowly spreading out her ki all the while. She took a plate, placed it on top of a stone slab, and lined up her punch. *crack* Sunset smiled and turned back to Evangeline, holding up the unmarred slab and the remains of the porcelain plate that sat upon it. "...I think it's good enough for me to get out of this damn vila."