Pearl's Travels 1: Hollow Shades

by Makitk

21

Before lunchtime, in so far as I could judge the passing of time from within the cavern system, the five of us started off out of the common room and back through the tunnels.

Blaze was leading the way through the winding tunnel system. Oval came following behind her sister, giving casual looks back in my direction since I was following behind her. Matron had taken up the rear, with Breeze in-between her and myself.

After far too many turns going left, right, left again, then right again, I had lost all sense of direction. It was a good thing Blaze knew the way, but I wondered how I would find my way through the outpost on my own, or indeed the main Hive if I ever made it there.

We soon wandered into a room in which a waterfall rushed down to fill a small underground lake, which itself led out through another tunnel to form an underground river. The amount of moisture in the room was pressing, and I realized by the steam coming off the water that it was a hotspring of sorts.

A dozen Changelings were gathered around the lake near holes in the floor, some of their horns glowing green as they focused their magic on something inside these holes. It was not immediately clear what it was that they were doing, but Blaze was leading us along the walls in a clockwise circle around them rather than heading for them.

I quickly realized why when I spotted a small group of just five Changelings half-hidden in a dark corner of the room, just sitting, laying, or hanging about while watching the proceedings in the more lit areas.

One or two had already turned their attention for us as we neared them, and the rest of them had turned to face us by the time we got close enough to talk without disturbing the teaching in the main portion of the room.

"Hello sisters, brother," Blaze offered in greeting as she stopped in front of them, Oval walking up to her right side.

"Sisters," the Changeling closest to our little group offered in return, her voice clear as a bell. She looked past Blaze and Oval to me, raising an eyebrow.

"Is that Caster?" another sister asked, shaking her head. "Darn, now we need to find a new nickname for her."

"I thought we'd settled on Resinhoof?" The lone brother in the group suggested.

"Either way it's not going to work anymore," the earlier one voiced the general concensus, judging by the general shaking of heads.

"Give the kid a chance to earn herself a proper name, will you?" Blaze sighed with noticeable annoyance to her voice. "She's still needs to learn how to use her magic."

"Sure, we'll give her a chance," the Changeling in front agreed. "Did she pass your competence test then, Blaze?"

"Note how she's brought her whole clutch over," the sister behind her remarked, smirking a bit. "It's almost like there's something special about this Hatchling."

"Bah, she's too small to have come from a Queen's egg," the third huffed, looking back at her brother. "Do you sense any special magic aura around her or anything, brother?"

The male Changeling narrowed his eyes at me, but then shook his head. "No, but she could be hiding it."

There was a grumble from behind me, but then Matron trotted up past me in a huff. Blaze and Oval quickly stepped aside to make room for her as she walked right up to the group and straightened herself to full height.

"You all know better than to make jokes at another sister's expense," Matron told them. "I was there when you hatched and I have seen you stumble through your own training. Oh, the stories I could tell the little sister! She would never take you seriously again!"

The group as a whole looked shocked and backed away a little from Matron.

"Ah, I didn't mean to say she had no magic prowess at all," brother muttered back. "I mean, I'll train her if she wants?"

"Yeah, we were just fooling around, Matron," one of the sisters agreed.

"We're just a bit bored, Matron," another offered up. "There are fewer Hatchlings around than were expected for our rotation."

Matron glared at each in turn, but then pointed a hoof at one of them in particular. "Moonshine, if I remember correctly you've been studying pony magic in your guise as a scribe at Canterlot's Royal Archives? Have you made any progress applying this knowledge to our own?"

The sister shook her head and looked down a bit. "I can't even begin to comprehend some of the stuff I'm reading there, Matron. I would have reported back to our Queen at the first sign of a breakthrough, you know that."

"But you understand magic better than your clutch siblings, even if some are better at reading auras or have stronger magic prowess?" Matron enquired, to which Moonshine gave a nod which was taken up by the others around her.

"Then tell your little sister how she can manifest her magic without blowing herself or us up, will you?" Matron decided, stepping aside so I was left face-to-face with the other Changeling.

Moonshine glanced around to her siblings a moment, but they looked everywhere except at her. "Oh, thanks for the support, guys," she sighed.

Resolving to teach me, Moonshine walked forward - through the opening left between Matron and Oval, and gave me a weak smile. "Well, runt, I guess we're going to do some magic together. Follow me."

I raised an eyebrow at being called "runt", but moved to follow her as Moonshine passed me by and headed for one of the unoccupied holes near the lake.

Our movement out of the darkness caused a few heads to turn, but they either returned their attention to their students or were chided for it by their teachers shortly after.

Without the cast around my leg, I was just another Hatchling to them all. There was no sign that any of them had overheard the conversation taking place in the darkness near the wall.

Moonshine took a look in the hole as she neared it, then used her magic to pull a glob of green water out of it. She moved it out to the small lake and let it sink into the body of water so it wouldn't make a splash.

She then proceeded to lift a fresh blob of water out of the lake and deposited it in the hole she had just cleared. I watched as she stirred the water around a bit, then lifted it all out again and put it back in the lake.

I opened my mouth, intending to ask what she was doing, but Moonshine was not at all paying attention to me. Instead, she lifted another blob of the warm water out of the lake, put it in the hole again, and peered down through the rising steam.

I closed my mouth again, looking around me at the other Hatchlings. They were using their magic to do something within the holes, but the holes themselves were deep enough that only they and their teachers could see what exactly.

I heard a spitting sound and looked back at Moonshine, who looked up at me in the same moment.

"Okay, so you'll find a blob of hard resin resting in the water here," she pointed out, motioning toward the hole with her left forehoof. "All I want you to do is to look at it, and make the resin spin."

I raised an eyebrow at that, taking a step forward to look down through the rising steam at the green blob drifting in the small layer of water inside the hole.

"Okay," I offered, "so how do I do that?"

"Our magic is mostly transformative; we pick a guise and apply it to ourselves to appear as something else," Moonshine started. "You should have already learned how to do this while in a previous room."

I gave a nod to that, and motioned back toward the darkness. "Yeah, Oval taught me about most adult pony forms and I tried to learn from Breeze how to do foal forms, but I can't quite get that last bit down yet."

"Heh," Moonshine responded with a shake of her head. "If you want my advice; forget about the foal stuff. It's more trouble than it's worth."

"The thing you need to get out of this is that that magic was turned inward; you imagined something to happen and then turned it onto yourself so you transformed into a new guise," Moonshine continued to explain, motioning with her hoof to indicate the magic going toward her.

"In this training, you'll start the same way; you imagine what it is you want to have happen," she stated, then moved her hoof away from her instead of toward her, "but then you push it out, not in."

I gave another nod at that. "Sounds easy enough?"

"The trick is to control just how much magic you send out," Moonshine warned. "Our bodies can take a decent punch before we go down, so our transformative magic is mostly harmless to us."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "Mostly?"

"Yeah, don't worry about that for now. The resin cube down there can take a lot less of a punch, though," sister explained, her horn starting to glow.

"If you do it right, like this, you can make the resin turn around, like this," she continued, staring down in the hole.

I looked down in the hole as well, watching as the resin started to slowly spin clockwise, but picking up speed as I observed it.

"If you send too much magic out at once however," Moonshine continued, the cube starting to spin faster and faster until it finally exploded violently!

I stumbled back until I landed on my rear, my eyes wide from the ferocity of the explosion!

Moonshine simply stood near the hole, a green glow covering the top of it. She grinned up at me and withdrew her magic shield, which had been the sole reason I did not have a face full of resin.

"Okay, I see your point," I coughed uneasily, watching as Moonshine moved to clear the hole from resin dust and put new water in.

Moonshine spat another blob of resin at the hole, then motioned for me to join her again. "Your turn."

Comments

[tsaukpaetra]

Moonshine has spunk. It's back to the determination building!