//------------------------------// // Chapter 104 // Story: Princess Twilight Sparkle's School for Fantastic Foals // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// The entire world was a jittery mess, and Sumac couldn’t figure out why everything wouldn’t stop vibrating. His mouth had trouble keeping up with his thoughts and when he tried to speak, he stammered and was unable to express himself. He had so many things to say, so many thoughts to express, so many good ideas, great ideas, brilliant ideas that needed expressing. All of these thoughts crashed together when he saw the centaur bones on the floor. Some were broken, he noticed, they looked as though they had been smashed, and the skull had a jagged hole in it. That didn’t look good, that didn’t look good at all, and Sumac began squirming. He would rather ride the train again rather than look at broken centaur bones. “I wonder what happened,” Twilight said as she began to study the bones on the floor. “Do you think the automatons turned on him for some reason? Another centaur? Something else? I wonder what killed him… and why didn’t the automatons do something with his bones? They’re supposed to clean up around here.” “We, like, found more bones in other places. By now, these bones should be dust, but they’re not. It’s like, all weird and stuff, and Dragon Lady Ember doesn’t like it.” Char reached out her hand and poked at a leg bone with her curved claw. “M-m-m-mmm-m-mmmagic won’t let them rot away,” Sumac stammered, expending great effort to be able to speak. “P-p-puh-preservation mmm-magic to keep alive, d-d-doesn’t realise b-b-bones are d-dead.” “How do you know this?” Twilight asked. “I w-w-w-wah-want t-t-t-t-to tell you s-s-ssso much.” “Nod for yes and shake your head for no,” Twilight instructed. “Is your magic feeling putting strange knowledge into your head?” Sumac nodded. “As a sorcerer, you’re picking up on the magic in this place, aren’t you?” Again, Sumac nodded. “Your mechanical aptitude with the train… it’s because it has arcanotech, right?” Several seconds passed as Sumac parsed Twilight’s question, then he nodded. “Can you sense centaur magic specifically?” Eyes widening, Sumac’s head bobbed up and down in an over-enthusiastic manner. Twilight, who had her own attunement to magic, looked around the ruined research lab, her lower lip protruding, and her eyes focused upon the banks of crystals in the corners, along with the the crystalline conduits, which ran down into the floor. These were artificial ley lines, sources of synthesised magic, and with her brows furrowing, she peered down at Sumac, who jerked and spasmed in an unpleasant way. “Sumac, as a sorcerer, your magic sense soaks in everything and gives you a sense of attunement, right? You have an intrinsic knowledge of spells and magic in this state, an intimate understanding… it’s like reading a book, right? But with magic.” The colt’s blinking eyes were out of synch as he stood there, thinking about Twilight’s words, and after a few moments, he nodded as one ear went into a spastic pivot, going round and round. “Twinkleshine… go back out to the train and fetch me that horn ring that Sumac used to power up the train. I have an idea.” Twilight frowned and looked over at the crystals in the corner. “Sumac, even if you don’t remember everything, it’s all stored in your mind and could be retrieved later, right?” As Twilight spoke, Twinkleshine hurried off to obey her commands. Face twitching as though he was suffering a palsy, Sumac gave Twilight a nod. Her face puckered into an an intense scowl of concentration, Twilight thought about Moondancer’s gorilla cookie clarity of mind spell. Her own understanding of magic was immense right now with Sumac’s amplification and influence. Once more, she looked over at the crystal pylons in the corner of the lab, and then down at the bones of the long dead centaur on the floor. Following Twilight’s example, Sumac looked over at the crystal pylons and understood what Twilight was planning. A cascade of thoughts was set off in his mind, almost overloading his thought processes. He understood and he knew. He waited for Twilight to look at him once more, and when she did, he nodded. Twilight looked surprised for a brief second, then she too, began nodding. Twinkleshine returned, bearing the horn ring and a length of crystalline conduit cable, which Twilight snatched right away. Moving with frantic energy, Twilight hurried over to the crystal pylons in the corner, studied them for a moment, and with a blast from her horn, she blew open a hole in the base where the crystalline conduits in the floor grew like roots from the crystal pylons. Understanding what Twilight intended to do, Sumac went over to join her as she spliced the frayed crystalline fibres from the horn ring into the damaged crystalline conduit fibres. As she worked, the fibres began to heal together from the touch of her magic, forming a viable connection that grew with amazing rapidity. When she was done, Twilight pulled out the bottle of zap apple tincture, and, looking grim in a very profound way, she held it up in front of Sumac’s nose. “I won’t make you do this,” Twilight said to Sumac, “but we have so much to gain. I don’t even know if this will work for certain, but I think we both have a good idea that it might.” “Twilight, no!” Twinkleshine stood rigid as she realised what was about to happen and Pebble grabbed onto her leg. “Twilight, you’ll scramble his brains!” Scowling, Twinkleshine started forwards, dragging Pebble along with her. “F-f-f-f-ffff-for t-t-t-the gr-gr-grrreater good,” Sumac stammered as he took the bottle of zap apple tincture from Twilight. As he pulled out the stopper, Twilight raised a shield around them to prevent any interference from Twinkleshine. “I und-und-under-st-stand.” And without further ado, Sumac drank down the entire bottle of zap apple tincture. A faint rainbow glow could be seen around his body, a shimmering sheen of the entire visible light spectrum. Aetherfire crackled along his horn, along his ears, and began to manifest as magical static all over his body. With his telekinesis, Sumac slipped the horn ring over his horn… And all of Tartarus broke loose. The crystal pylons, which had been dim, now glowed with inner light, which pulsed and throbbed. The conduits in the floor powered up and the artificial ley lines came online, radiating power once more. The crystal pylons, a storage device for ideas, for memories, for magic, had a direct interface to Sumac’s brain. The knowledge of centuries, of eras, of aeons began to pour in, causing Sumac to convulse in a frightful manner, his teeth chattering together, and his eyes rolled back into his head as his body writhed. A low rumble came from beneath the floor, and everything got a terrific shake. Dust sprinkled down from the ceiling like snowflakes. For Sumac, the world went weird and he saw dancing spectres all around him. No, not spectres, memories given life through illusion. A kind looking centaur teaching a classroom full of little pony foals. A grand city under siege by shadows and cadaverous looking enemies. A stern looking centaur having a discussion with a flighty looking alicorn colt. It was like reading thousands and thousands of books all at once, which was too much to take in. With the same suddenness as it had started with, it was over. With a sound like ringing bells, the crystal pylons exploded, bursting into fine, glittering dust. Sumac sat there like a lump, unable to move, unable to speak; when his eyes rolled back into view once more, they were out of focus and pointing in different directions. Twilight lifted the colt up from the floor, it was difficult to use her magic now, she was on the bleeding edge of surging. She looked at Pebble and Twinkleshine, then said, “Let’s get that vault opened up and get out of here.” “Twilight, that was reckless,” Twinkleshine snapped. “Like, that was far out.” Char headed for a doorway in the back of the room, walking on two legs, and her tail swished around behind her. “The vault is right through here...” Pebble, though worried, realised that the situation was in hoof. She didn’t understand what had happened, not exactly, but she did understand that she felt smarter, so much smarter, and she was strong now, maybe even stronger than her mother, which scared her a teensy-weensy bit, because her mother was strong. The little filly, wearing a dirty, smudged dress, thought about every conversation she had ever had with her mother on how not to destroy the world. Those had been important conversations, meaningful exchanges, and meant even more now as Pebble tried to hold everything back. No doubt, with a good, solid punch, she could reduce something to its constituent atoms. Just walking across the floor took all of her focus, all of her concentration, and without even being aware of it, Pebble really had become her mother, complete with her own ennui-exuding deadpan expression and a blank, sleepy stare. On the far wall was a familiar sight. Bright orange centaur steel. A round door could be seen embedded in the wall. Pebble knew that it was more than a door; no doubt, the centaur steel vault was a round sphere, impregnable, impossible to open. She looked up at Twinkleshine, who was scowling at Twilight, and wished that Twinkleshine would relax. Needing no instruction, Pebble knew what needed to be done as she knocked upon the floor a few times with her hoof, and she could feel her magic surging through her, making her even stronger. She had to be so very careful. If she knocked too hard, she would shatter the stone she stood on. She could see all of the places where it would fracture, all of the shatter-points, all of the fragile places within the stone invisible to most. “Hey, rock, we need to talk,” Pebble said to the stone all around her. “That’s Mister Rock to you, munchkin.” Pebble sighed, hating the stone just a little. “Fine. Mister Rock, we came to ask you a question. We need to get into that vault over there. We know it opens with a passphrase. Surely you’ve heard the passphrase being spoken at some point.” “I have,” the rock replied, “many times.” “Would you please tell me what it is?” Pebble asked. “That presents a conflict of interest,” the rock said, and there was a sound very much like sighing that came from all around. “Things are put into a vault to be kept safe.” “If you don’t tell me, the world might end.” Pebble’s deadpan words sounded exactly like her mother’s. “We have a good idea of what is in there. We’re trying to stop Grogar. We need artifacts and weapons.” “Well, I know the passphrase, but you’ll have to live with disappointment.” Again, Pebble sighed and while sighing, she thought about punching the floor with maybe one one-hundredth of her strength just to see what might happen. “The vault is empty. Just before this facility was sealed off to ward off the coming catastrophe, the contents of the vault were all taken and moved to another facility. I don’t know which one. Maybe try Black Sands, they mentioned that place a lot in the panic that took place here.” “Thank you, Mister Rock, you’ve been very helpful.” “You’re welcome, little filly.” “I don’t suppose you know where Black Sands might be?” Pebble asked. “No, I’m sorry,” the rock replied, sounding apologetic. “The only thing I know about Black Sands is that they were going to sink the island back into the sea after they hid a bunch of stuff there. The Director spoke about it a lot.” “Thank you again, Mister Rock.” Pebble sat down upon the floor and tried not to think about how her bum was now touching a stranger she was having a conversation with. “Say, Mister Rock, do you know what was studied here?” “The centaurs were perfecting their ability to draw magic out of others, merge them together to form new magics, and then put that new magic into something else. They did a lot of alicorn research here for the new and improved apocalypse-proofed alicorns. They drew the magic out of earth ponies, pegasus ponies, and unicorn ponies, refined it into a state of near perfection, and then put it into the very first alicorn volunteers.” Pebble could hear the sounds of Twilight and Twinkleshine’s heavy breathing. “The magic of phoenixes was also extracted here and was highly refined for the celestial machinery management project. I can only assume that it must’ve worked, because all of you are alive and here to talk to me. The sun was scheduled to break and then begin dying.” “That’s… animancy…” Twinkleshine looked troubled as she shook her head, and then she looked over at Twilight. “Soul splicing. Making soul-chimeras. Twilight, this is what the Ascendancy is trying to do.” “Oh, ponies weren’t allowed to practice animancy. The centaurs forbade it. That’s one of the things that started this mess. The centaurs had some of their students turn on them… what a mess.” “What mess, Mister Rock?” Pebble asked. “Never mind, cute little Miss, you don’t need to know,” the rock replied. “But it might help us,” Pebble argued. “That’s what those naughty students said before they wrecked everything. Animancy is the power to create gods and even the centaurs admitted that it was a mistake to tamper with it. No new gods need to be made and the last batch were very troublesome.” “But they made apocalypse-proofed alicorns?” Pebble tried very hard to understand what was going on. “Surely some good has come out of it.” The rock did not reply, and it dawned on Pebble that the stone was done speaking to her. Rather than be petulant and sulky, she caressed the floor and smiled. “Thank you again, Mister Rock. You’ve been very helpful. It was very kind of you to talk to us and to help us with our problem. We’ll be going now, and we won’t bother you anymore.” There was no response. “Twilight, we should be going. We need to get Sumac home. I don’t think he’s well.” Pebble drew in a deep breath, caressed the stone floor once more, and stood up. She gave her bum a shake to get the dust off, and flicked her tail. “Goodbye, Mister Rock, it was nice meeting you. I don’t meet many nice rocks.” And with that, Pebble was ready to go.