//------------------------------// // 00 - Made of Starstuff // Story: Distance Education // by 32ndArtbomb //------------------------------// Everything was perfect. Or at least, as close as one could get to perfection outside of a hypothetical environment. I mean, our plane of existence does have its own avatar of chaos. Entropy and imperfection, while they could be offset, couldn’t be eliminated while he was around. Or rather, they couldn’t be eliminated without freezing all of existence in a single moment for all eternity, and even I wasn’t so full of myself as to think that was a good idea. Stop looking at this entry like that. I only know that would happen because I’d asked Celestia why perfection was unattainable over tea one morning. The broad thrust of her answer was that without the destabilizing influence of Discord on the fabric of reality? All of existence would be frozen in place while our thoughts carried on, and eventually every living creature would quietly go mad and stay that way forever. Naturally, after cleaning up the tea I’d spilled across the table, I agreed to drop the matter of perfection. Some avenues of research just aren’t meant to be fully explored, like polyazide chemistry. So instead, I settled on research into advanced summoning spells. I may be the Princess of Friendship, but friendship is magic in a very real sense, and the reasoning I gave was that it might be nice to make new friends without worrying about the boundaries of time and distance. In reality, and I suspect Celestia knew this the moment I brought it up, I just wanted a hobby to keep my mind occupied. In the twenty years since my ascension, I’d come to terms with my immortality as best I could. My friends... It’s still hard to think about the future. We’ve been enjoying our time together, but I realize it will eventually end. I felt that if I had something to do beyond my royal duties after that point, I’d be able to handle it better. I told Celestia as much about a year ago. I won’t lie, I broke down. All of my fears and worries about the future came pouring out, and I wound up sobbing into Celestia’s shoulder for… Well, for long enough. There’s a reason our early histories refer to her as the all-mother. They’re wrong, or so Celestia claims, but that’s not the point. She’s just so naturally comforting, it’s easy to make the association. As I was calming down, I felt a splash of something warm and wet against my neck. Naturally, I looked to see where it came from. She was crying too. It wasn’t the same full-body production I’d gone through, but those were still tears pooling in her eyes, and as I watched, a second droplet rolled down her cheek. For as long as I live, I will never forget what she said next. “My faithful…” There was a pause around here as she swallowed, and to my surprise, she knelt before me and bowed her head. “There is nothing in this world, or any other, that is more important to me than supporting you in your times of need. I would be honored to know the mare Twilight Sparkle as more than simply a student or a peer of the realm.” Then she raised her head, just enough for me to see the hopeful smile on her face. “If you will have her, then Celestia Invictus will happily call you her sister.” There was only one possible answer, but I was too wrapped up in my emotions to say it. So instead, I pulled Celestia into a hug and wept anew. Not out of fear or anguish, but out of joy. Once we’d calmed down, we immediately cleared our respective schedules and spent the rest of the day just getting to know each other better. Favorite foods, favorite authors, favorite kinds of cake and ice cream… We were able to set our regalia aside and simply live. When Luna heard the news, she didn’t hesitate for a moment to recite the same oath. Then, naturally, she declared the day a national holiday. Neither Celestia or myself could stop her, at least not without starting a diplomatic incident, but she at least allowed me to decide the “precise manner of the day’s celebrations.” Then all three of us spent a week off just getting to know each other. There is far more to Celestia and Luna than anypony suspects, and I cannot overstate just how much it means to me that they have accepted me as a sister. Though, given that they also consider Cadance to be a sister, that has certain implications on her relationship with Shiny that I think I’m going to spring on him the next time I visit. Purely because I’m his little sister, little sisters excel at making their big brothers uncomfortable, and I have backup. Yes, my new sisters and I are going to prank my brother together. He won’t know what hit him. Insert mock evil laughter here. Sorry for going off on a tangent like that, but I figured a bit of background would help set the stage, and I guess it got away from me. Things are put into a whole new perspective when you consider that the diary you write in is also considered to be an historical document, and I’m still getting used to the idea. Anyway. Everything was going fantastically. I’d finally finished the spellwork for my first summoning a week previous, Celestia and Luna had both looked it over to ensure I wouldn’t be contacting anything dangerous - the last thing we needed was another Tirek, or worse - and had given me the go-ahead, and Celestia and I had just finished laying down the wards, runes, and circles in my sub-basement lab at her castle to contain whatever it produced. Even if my experiment didn’t work, I’d have still spent quality time with my… My big sister. Creator, that’s still a strange thought to have. Not bad, though. Just strange, like breaking in a new set of saddlebags. Something that you know you’ll get used to in time, but the newness is still off-putting. I suppose I’ll grow used to it over time. So, yes. My sister and I finished the physical portion of the spell layout, and after a brief break for lunch - I am still amazed at how talented a chef Spike has become, but that’s a completely different entry in itself - we went back to the lab and I began the ritual. Celestia was there as a contingency, at her own insistence, and I certainly didn’t disagree. If something were to happen to me, somepony would need to shut the spell down, and Luna was off negotiating with the gryphon clans over mineral rights to some distant corner of Equestria that a dragon had abandoned for some reason I’m still not entirely clear on. Everything went as expected during the initial casting. Mana flows were steady and unimpeded, the brass runes I’d set into the floor charged exactly as I predicted they would, every layer of shielding lit up as intended, and I carefully drew back the power from my horn as I reached the first checkpoint. Celestia and I took a moment to inspect the precautionary wards and barriers before continuing. Unfamiliar spells are best done in stages, with carefully-defined inspection points to guard against cascade failures or unintended consequences. I still remember the time I accidentally swapped Rarity and Rainbow Dash’s subspecies with what I’d thought was a simple disguise spell. If you’d like to know more, go back about five years from when this was written. We all learned something valuable that week, and we all had something to add to this diary, but when it was over the girls all made me Pinkie Promise never to cast an unfamiliar spell on a whim again. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that you never break a Pinkie Promise. Ahem. Moving right along. The casting went largely as expected. I’d energize the various runic patterns in the concrete until I reached a pre-determined stopping point, my sister and I  would inspect the casting to determine if it was safe, and I’d continue. Time passed, as it is wont to do, and we eventually reached the final checkpoint. The room was humming with power, to the point I could actually see the magical interference patterns affecting Celestia’s mane and tail. It was certainly a novel sight to behold, and I only wish I had thought to have a camera nearby so I could have shared the moment with Luna. A thorough inspection proved that we could stop for a short supper while Celestia lowered the sun, and I could tell from the smile on her face that she was genuinely enjoying the time we were spending together. After the moon had risen, we entered the lab again. A quick double-check of the spellwork proved redundant, but I’ve learned it’s always better to be safe than sorry. It may not happen often, but the times you don’t double-check your work are more often than not going to be when you’ve made a mistake somewhere. That was another reason I was glad to have my sister with me - a second set of eyes can often catch a mistake you’ve overlooked, after all, and with a working this charged? It was worth having the extra precautions. We stood in silence for a moment after we finished our inspection. I was admiring the magic itself, looking for ways I could possibly improve the spell’s efficiency in the future, and I’m positive that Celestia was proud to see the lessons I’d learned reflected in how I’d built the summoning spell’s containment system. But one can’t admire one’s spellwork forever, particularly when it’s still incomplete. I glanced to my sister - as I said, I’m still getting used to the idea, but I find myself liking it more and more with every mention - and was happy to see her nod at me to continue. I took a breath and stepped into the energizing circle one last time, then I lit my horn. A moment later, my eyes followed suit. Instantly, the summoning spell before me was laid out in front of me like a flowchart. Ultimately, the spell would summon an entity that was no more harmful to Equestria than an upset yearling who had been told to eat their vegetables before they could leave the dinner table, but could still bring knowledge we hadn’t yet discovered to our attention. If it could not do that, it would power itself down in a controlled manner. Really, it was a simple spell. My sisters and I use something similar all the time to send paperwork back and forth between our respective palaces. The real effort had been in designing it to handle the higher energies I intended to put at its disposal, and to transport a living being or the essence of a living being, and that had meant some low-level changes in how it handled energy. I didn’t expect any catastrophic side effects, but since expectations and reality often conflicted with one another, I’d surrounded the summoning spell with every type of shield, ward, and barrier I knew of. Better to have them and not need them, after all. Funny thing about controlled magical overload. Your perception of time slows to a crawl. My pre-fire inspection was as thorough as possible, but I only felt my heart beat once. I was satisfied that my sister and I had done everything we could to prevent a negative outcome, and I was ready to energize the summoning spell proper. I lowered my horn and, with a sense of finality and acceptance, poured power into the spell. The effect was immediate. Images of other beings on Equestria flashed by me, too fast for me to register more than rough impressions of species, then something changed. A starfield blossomed across my vision, and a blur of color poured past me from each speck of light. Then… Then I saw the realm where I had met Celestia when I ascended, only for a moment, before my point of view was shot from a cannon. Beat. I found myself plunging through countless planes of color and light and sound, each one passing over and through me in an instant, and I somehow knew that each one of these planes was another universe entirely. Each one an entirely different realm of existence, populated by beings I couldn’t name or describe even if I wanted to. And it was beautiful. Beat. I could feel the slow pull of muscles as I began to smile, and the softness of tears welling up in my eyes. That… Magic like that is what I live for. Nopony had ever attempted something like this before, and I was the first to experience this. I was expanding the boundaries of Equestrian knowledge, like Starswirl the Bearded before me, and it was beautiful. Beat. The plunge of my consciousness across dimensions stopped, and an unfamiliar starfield bloomed before me. Every speck of light glowed in turn, and then one was highlighted by the glow of my magic. The spell had found something that fit its criteria. Beat. I found myself looking at a world not unlike Equus, from what I suspected was its moon. It was blue and green, slightly more of the former than the latter, with puffy white clouds swirling through its atmosphere. My attention was drawn to… It’s difficult to describe, but I will attempt it. Imagine a small square stage, just big enough for two ponies to stand side-by-side upon. Bevel the corners slightly, until the ninety-degree angle between two sides is flattened to two forty-five degree angles. Attach a spindly leg to each of these shorter sides, and elevate the stage until its base is roughly level with the height of Celestia’s knees. Now cover this structure with copper foil and set it on the surface of the moon. Off to one side was a small, bent flagpole. The flag itself was faded, but I could still make out the pattern. Thirteen stripes, alternating between white and what may have been a vibrant red at one point. The quadrant nearest the pole’s tip was a field of what I can only assume had been a rich blue, possibly equivalent to Luna’s coat in hue, with fifty five-pointed stars spaced evenly upon it. I could not tell what had bent the flagpole, but there were what appeared to be faint scorch-marks upon the platform’s foil covering. Beat. I felt my magic spread across the surface of the moon. Nothing lived upon it, and my spell turned its gaze to the world itself… And it was full of life. Billions upon billions of minds, each one unique in its own way, each one striving to make their lives and the lives of their loved ones better… But they were being disqualified almost as quickly as they were being counted. Violent tempers, xenophobic attitudes, fear and anger and hate… I could still feel the tears forming in my eyes, but now they were of regret. This world had so much potential in it, but its inhabitants were unknowingly squandering that potential to fight amongst themselves. Beat. Then the spell found what it was looking for, and it released me. In an instant, I was back in my lab. With a gasp, I staggered back from the charging circle. Celestia moved to abort the spell, but I shakily waved her off. She hesitated, then nodded and walked over to let me lean on her. I hadn’t expected the spell to take that much out of me, and it was clearly showing. Before either of us could relax there was a sharp crack of displaced air, like the sound of a quick-and-dirty teleportation, and a swirling orb of color appeared in the center of our containment measures. I didn’t need my magic to know it was the essence of whatever entity had been selected by the summoning spell, and I smiled. Then an arc of power lept from the charging circle to my horn, like a continuous bolt of lightning, and from there it jumped to Celestia’s horn. But it didn’t hurt. It just… Tingled. Not entirely pleasantly, but not unpleasantly either. It simply was. Before either of us could react, the energy arc dissipated. My sister seemed worried, and I was too, but I at least was confident that whatever happened wouldn’t be outside of our capacity to deal with. Now, this may seem fantastic, but that sphere of otherworldly essence began swirling faster and faster, compressing down into the shape of… Well, the shape of an alicorn. She was somewhere between myself and my sister in height, her coat and feathers were the color of deeply blued steel, and her mane and tail reminded me of a wheat field at harvest time. And she didn’t have a cutie mark. In hindsight, I think that’s what struck me. Here was an entity that had been granted the form my sisters and I shared, one that was revered by all as a symbol of what it meant to truly be Equestrian, but that one missing piece was enough to set her apart from us in a very unreal fashion. I looked it up before I began writing this entry, and the effect is known as the ‘uncanny valley’. It’s a hypothesis that states there is a point where increased realism in a fabricated equine appearance only serves to more profoundly highlight any differences between the construct and an actual equine, and thus instills a sense of unexplainable revulsion. It’s most prominently used in horror novels - zombies, for instance, are squarely in the middle of the uncanny valley - but examples can also be found in paintings, sculpture, illusion spells, and puppetry. The spell released her a moment later, gently setting her hooves on the bare concrete at the center of my inlaid spellwork, and her eyes opened. They were the color of polished gold, and her irises shrunk to pinpricks as her gaze frantically darted about the room. Her wings snapped open, and she did everything she could to look back at them without actually moving her head or neck. One of the muscles under her left eye even developed a twitch. And in that instant, the uncanny valley disappeared. This was no longer a thing, this was a mare, and she was more terrified than anypony I had ever known. In spite of that fear, however, her attention finally focused on Celestia and I. The fear, as Luna would likely have said, had been doubled. She outright stared at us, the way I had once stared at a full-grown dragon that was about to kill my friends and I, and her muscles began trembling under her coat. But in spite of all of the signs that she was going to try and bolt - which, thanks to the layers and layers of containment measures we’d set up, wouldn’t have gotten her very far - she spoke. Her voice barely wavered from an even conversational tone, even as her body language was screaming. “Where am I?”