“Run…”
Being the first thing that comes to mind to say at this situation, it is pretty appropriate as the ghost shrieks at us while being surrounded by sharp kitchen implements. Before anything else can happen I shove Twilight to the side as I attempt to slam the door shut again. This mostly works as it gets the purple unicorn out of the open door and behind cover, but the door only blocks most of the flying utensils with a couple sneaking by and grazing my flank.
Yelping at the pain from the minor cuts, I quickly bolt towards the stairs with Twilight right behind me. Without us noticing when we were looking into the kitchen the furniture in the entryway was also floating into the air while we were distracted. Between the two of us though, me with levitation and Twilight with her shields, we were able to deflect most of it away from us though it blocked the front doorway.
We quickly raced up the stairs as the kitchen door slammed open behind us with the ghost and flying implements gliding through it. “I hate undead, I hate undead, I hate hate hate HATE undead!” are the only things coming out of my mouth as we dodge our way towards the open bedroom, while all I hear from Twilight is heavy breathing.
With a few more close scrapes to me, and none to Twilight thanks to that purple shield of hers, we finally manage to dive into the bedroom to safety. As the door closes we hear the sound of all the remaining tools slamming into it, followed by the angered shrieks of the ghost controlling them.
It takes us a while to calm down and catch our breaths from the close encounter, and the first thing I can think of to say is, “I guess that rules out option two of it being a friendly ghost trying to scare people.” Twilight just stares at me, her eyes shrunken down to pinpricks still.
“That was a ghost, ghosts should not exist, how is there a ghost here, why is there a ghost running around your house?” tumbles out of her mouth when she finally is able to speak again. As her eyes go back to normal she enters her thinking pose, “And how is it that it can’t seem to come into this room but has free access everywhere else?”
“To your first question, I have no idea. That’s why I was at the library; I was trying to find answers on why it was there, what kind it was and how to get rid of it. Unfortunately I only found possibilities on the what. Your second question is much more easily answered though,” at this I levitate the moonstone down from the chandelier to in front of her. She stares at it oddly for a second and asks a question I wasn’t expecting.
“How did you bring this down here?” she questions while bringing out a quill and parchment from her packs, both surrounded in her magenta aura. Glancing between that and the lack of aura around the stone a couple times I finally grasp what she is asking, “Ah, that… I’ve actually had to learn how to suppress my aura for a couple reasons, mainly for safety and to conserve energy,” I explain, “If you look closely you can still see lights waves of it still, and it also shows up if I am focusing hard enough or am strained.”
Twilight nods absently at this while examining that as well as the stone while writing down something on her parchment. This goes on for a bit as she examines the stone, occasionally with her horn growing brighter, with a deepening frown growing on her face. “That’s interesting about the aura, I’ve read about it before, but it’s extremely rare. This stone on the other hand I can’t quite grasp what is on it or how it’s stopping that creature like you said,” se comments while obviously avoiding the ‘G’ word now.
I set the stone on the ground so that my magic no longer interferes with her observations and start to explain, “Well the important thing is that it is enchanted in a way to provide both light similar to moonlight as well as an effect that protects the area from magical influences. It being a moonstone causes it to resonate especially well with those kinds of spells.” At this explanation she turns to look at me with a raised eyebrow while still writing.
“That’s a rather powerful enchantment to be in a gemstone, there aren’t many that have the ability to do things of that level. Where did you get something like this from?” she asks, not knowing the effect it would have on me. I wince at the question, though briefly tensely, “My mother… WAS able to do enchantments of this quality, she taught me what she could but I’m not anywhere near as good as her.”
She pauses in her writing as she catches my tone and tries to apologize, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that was a touchy subject with you.” I shake my head a bit trying to clear my mood, “It’s fine, I try not to think about it too much as it’s been a few years now. That and all my traveling I haven’t had time to get ahold of all my feelings on it.” She looks at me with an odd look in her eyes before shaking her head and looking at her parchment.
“Well anyways enchanted gemstones are pretty rare, especially of this level. Even those that can do minor ones are well sought after,” she pauses as she considers this, “If you wouldn’t mind I would love to see how you do it since we are safe for now.” I ponder this for a second, grateful for the topic change, and slowly nod to her. “I guess I can show you, though I may only have enough power for a single gem right now. I need a space on the floor cleared of dust though if you can do that.” As she seems to be done with it for now I send the moonstone back up to its place on the chandelier before bring out the unenchanted gem bag from my pack.
Looking through the bag while she clears off a space I consider which one I should show her. Noting that I still have a good number of them, I retrieve a turquoise from the pouch and return the rest to their place. Setting the stone in the space cleared off I then pull out my journal as well as a piece of chalk, both of which Twilight looks at oddly. Turning to the appropriate page, I start to draw out the diagram of a simple focusing circle around the gem.
The circle is a simple five pointed star, surrounded by two circles. Between the two circles at each point of the star I draw a symbol corresponding with the five natural elements; earth, fire, wind, water, and magic with the last being at the top point. Through all this Twilight is still writing notes, already on her third page now. I then leaf through my journal to the page containing the cooling spell I know of as a reference.
Making sure that the stone is perfectly centered while I am at the section opposite of the magic point I place my front hooves on opposite sides of the circle, just barely touching it. Glancing one more time in my journal I proceed to channel the spell from the five points of the circle and directed into the gem. It takes a couple minutes and most of my remaining magic, but the gem eventually gives off a light glow before settling back down to normal.
As I catch my breath Twilight lifts the gem up in her magic and examines it from different angles, occasionally poking it with her hoof feeling the effects it causes. “Fascinating, I’ve never watched somepony enchant anything before and even of those that I have read about none have used magic circles before,” she says while writing still.
I ponder her statement and wonder how best to respond to this, “Well I’m not sure about others that can do this, but I use them along with one of my magic affinities to place the spell on the gemstones.” Her ears perk up as I mention affinities, “What do you mean by magic affinities? I’ve never heard of that term being used when somepony describes their magic before.”
Why do I feel that we are going to be here the rest of the day if I keep describing magic I think to myself before responding, “Well in my travels I’ve noticed that when somepony uses magic it tends to work best if it follows a certain element or type. Those aligned to fire are good with fire spells, or those with an affinity to levitation can lift either great weights or a large number of objects, things of that type. I have found that there are two types I know of that I work well with. The first involves enhancing the nature of an object or, in the case of gemstones, what it represents to various extents; I’ve labeled this affinity Order for lack of a better term. The other one I haven’t fully grasped what it is, but it seems to involve breaking rules of things, such as that glue spell you saw it’s really just enhancing the tendency of the object to stick to other things.”
Throughout this she is scribbling furiously, going through a couple parchments which Is odd as it seems to be more than what I’ve mentioned, most likely other notes as well. “This is fascinating,” she says distractedly, “I haven’t heard of anypony looking at magic in this way before, but it makes sense when you think about it. It even can explain a bit on the reasoning for why certain cutie marks are the way they are,” I wonder what she means by cutie marks when she stops for a second and point towards my flank with her quill, “Speaking of which, do you mind if I ask what yours represents? I haven’t seen anything like that before and I’ve been curious about it.”
I turn my head to look where she is pointing and notice she is referring to the mark I put there. Oh, that I think while rapidly trying to come up with a story for it. Examining the symbol I take in the fox head in the center and the wreath of tails surrounding it before an idea comes to mind from a word in her question.
“Well there are a few things that it relates to, but it boils down to three things mainly. First is for my cleverness in putting ideas together, which led me to using the circles for enchanting. Second is for curiosity and how I research into things that catch my attention. Third would be a bit for craziness, as why else would I be trying to live in a haunted house,” I laugh a bit at the laugh though the joke is ruined by the howling outside the door.
Twilight looks thoughtful about this before going back to her notes and examining the gem. Thinking on this I come up with an idea, “You know you can keep that to study later if you want as thanks for trying to help out here. Also hopefully you could lend me a book with that shield spell you used; I could really use that if I have to face the ghost again.” She brightens up at the offer though winces at the use of the word ghost again.
“Um, sure, I can find you a copy of that at the library if you think you can handle it,” she replies looking out the window. “It’s getting pretty late, so we should probably do that now if you want it done today,” she starts to pack away the notes she has taken at this and we both head over to the window. We both climb down the ladder, with Twilight pausing to examine the glue spell again, and make our way back to the library.
As we make our way through town I notice a few ponies giving me odd looks and I start to wonder why. As we enter the library I find out why pretty quickly as Spike greets us, “Hey, welcome ba- Whoa! What happened to you out there?” he exclaims while pointing at me. Glancing at where he pointed I realize that I had forgotten about the cuts I had received from the ghost, “Ahh, I forgot about those. I kind of got nicked a few times by flying knives the ghost was hurling at us. I was distracted by all the magic talk and enchanting.”
Twilight blushes at this and sends Spike off for a med kit while she looked through the books before pulling one down. “This one has one of the more basic spells for shielding, it’s probably best to start with this one,” she says while setting the book on a nearby table while bringing out the turquoise and sitting at another with her quill out again. Taking a seat on a cushion at the book she set down I bring out my journal to take notes.
I get absorbed in taking down notes on the spell that I don’t even notice Spike return to treat my wounds. Even the pain of whatever he put on them doesn’t distract me, and neither does his attempts at conversation. He soon gives up and gets Twilight’s attention to find out what happened as he finishes bandaging me up.
The spell is relatively simple as, once you get around most of the technical speak, it is basically a hardening of magical energies into the shape you wish. While figuring out the notes I come up with a few other applications that this can be used for as well, such as an impromptu ramp or projectile, which I add to the notes as well. Pondering testing the spell, I give up on the idea as I hadn’t recovered from making that gem yet, but add a few more notes on the spell that I find elsewhere in the book.
As I finish filling up the page and use a tiny bit of magic to finish drying the ink I look up to notice that Twilight is nearby looking over my shoulder, causing me to jump. “Wow you weren’t kidding when you mentioned you curiosity and cleverness. Once you got going I don’t even think the library falling down on you would have interrupted you, and some of those uses for the same spell are rather ingenious,” she mentions causing me to blush a bit.
“Err yeah; I do tend to have a bad habit of losing track of everything when I start taking notes in my journal. It’s gotten me into a trouble a few times as well and I’ve been meaning to try and fix that a bit,” I reply while noticing that my wounds are also cleaned and bandaged. Digging into my pack I pull out a fire opal and get Spike’s attention, “Sorry about ignoring you, take this as an apology and thanks for helping me.” I toss the gem to him, knowing dragons collect and eat the things, and he catches it before examining it, “Whoa, a fire opal, don’t see many of these come through here,” he then stashes it away for whatever he has planned for it.
Looking at him a bit longer, I ponder what would happen if a dragon eats an enchanted gem. I file this thought away for later and turn back to Twilight, “Since you had no idea about ghosts being a real thing, I’m guessing you have no ideas on how to deal with that thing.” Seeing her flinch at the ghost word is starting to get amusing though her response is as expected, “Unfortunately no. Even researching it will take a while as I have no idea where to even look for something like this. This type of thing just doesn’t happen often enough to have many books dealing with how to deal with them.”
I nod at this while glancing through the book still on the table in front of me, “Yeah, I thought that might be the case. Undead creatures aren’t a common occurrence, and even if they were there are still so many factors to take into account; such as type, numbers, composition, what made it, and a slew of other problems.” She looks at me oddly at the list I spew out, “That’s a rather comprehensive list for something you say is uncommon.”
I look back over my shoulder at her and comment, “When you travel around to enough places you start to see uncommon things more often than normal, like baby dragons, and even some rarer ones as well. Remind me to tell you about that friendly zombie I found sometime.” This brings about the expected response of, “There’s no such thing as zombies,” though Spike’s “Z-z-z-zombies!” is a bit entertaining.
Shaking my head I turn back to the book and notice it stopped on a locater spell. This catches my interest as I flip my journal to the one I know and compare the two. They are very similar, though the one I find has more detail to it that I didn’t know of before. I add those extra details and one jumps out at me that causes me to wonder on a potential use for this. If this can be used on words in books, I stop and turn back to Twilight sheepishly and see the miffed look on her face.
“Sorry about that, it happened again,” I then close the book as she just shakes her head and heads back to her podium. I glance outside and notice that it is starting to get dark out there. “I probably should head back for the night, hopefully the fun from earlier will cause that thing to be quieter tonight.” I turn towards Twilight, “Thanks for the attempted help with it though, I have a couple ideas to look into tomorrow, but if you find anything do you think you can let me know?”
Twilight looks up at this, “Sure, whatever that was I want to know more about it. Something that dangerous should have more information about it somewhere and I’d rather not have something like that this close in the first place. The Everfree Forest is a big enough threat as it is.” I chuckle at the comment about the forest as it didn’t seem to be that bad a place, “Thanks, I’d like to actually be able to use the home I bought sometime without worrying about flying kitchenware.”
Waving to the unicorn and dragon as I exit the library, I make my way back towards the manor. Thinking about the name of it I realize I should really come up with a better name for it, especially once I clear out the pest problem. Speaking of that, “Where can I go for more information on that thing? The princesses I saw would probably have a library where they are with information on it, but the information I’d need would probably be in a guarded section, not to mention I’d like to avoid them if possible.”
Glancing towards the forest as I round my house an idea starts to form. “Hmm, there was that castle I passed in there. Even if it is an old ruin that doesn’t mean it’s empty, and there is probably a chance that there are books in there not found anywhere else.” I ponder this idea as I climb the ladder into my room and close the window.
The ghost seems to have quieted down for now, and the room also seems to still be protected as well. I set my packs down and pull out and apple, as well as some of the bread and cheese from the drawer for a dinner meal. “I have too many things I need to do to this place still; it would be so much easier if I didn’t have that pest out there so I can inventory what I have.”
Finishing my meal I crawl into bed for some sleep, hoping to get some before the racket starts up again. Before drifting off to sleep something occurs to me, Where DID those six mares go to in the Everfree Forest anyways? Other than the castle was there anything else out there, also why did they need to go out in the first place…