Scholar Arc
Year 11, Month 6, Day 2
Atlas sat at the table, eating breakfast. He was just munching on some cereal when Belle came back into their shared living room. She got into the chair opposite of him and pushed over the newspaper before starting to eat her own breakfast.
"Thanks..." Atlas mumbled, still half asleep.
He grabbed the newspaper within his magic and unfolded it. The headline read: 'Royal Foal Born to King Gold Bar and His Wife, Queen Silver!'. Intrigued, Atlas flipped over to page two, so he could read the featured article.
'Yesterday, in the evening hours, Queen Silver gave birth to a healthy unicorn filly. The happy parents have already given a name to the newest addition to the nation's Royal Family: Princess Platinum.'
Atlas furrowed his brows; the name seemed oddly familiar, but he just couldn't place where he had heard it before. He racked his brain for anything relating to the name but came up empty.
"Have you read the headline?" Atlas asked Belle.
"About the royal foal?" Belle asked. "Yeah, looks like a healthy and beautiful little filly. Why?"
"Well, it is pretty big news," Atlas replied. "But the name Platinum seems to ring some bells, do we know anyone with a similar name?"
"I don't think so," Belle responded after mulling the question over.
Atlas shrugged, deciding to ignore the feeling for now and just continue reading. He got almost halfway through the paper when it finally hit him.
"Princess Platinum..." he said under his breath.
Atlas mentally slapped himself for almost forgetting her name. The realization came to him, that he was already forgetting details about the show. He made a mental note to write down as much as possible of what he could still remember soon. There was a lot of time between now and whenever the show's events started, and it was entirely possible that he could forget everything between then and now.
Since his prison was literally made to resemble the show, he had to preserve any information he had about it. Knowing future events before they happened could prove... useful.
He folded the paper back up after he finished reading and slid it over to Belle. His cereal bowl floated over to their sink as he stood up from his chair.
"Already leaving?" Belle asked, unfolding the paper in front of her.
"Yeah, today's the big day," Atlas answered with a smile.
"Already?" Belle said, surprised. "Didn't you say it would be sometime next week?"
"Yeah, but that was just accounting for possible errors," Atlas explained. "We've gone over everything thrice, and it looks like it should work perfectly."
"I wish you the best of luck then," Belle said, an enthusiastic smile lighting up her face.
"Thanks, I just hope the array doesn't blow up in our faces," Atlas joked.
They shared a hearty laugh, remembering the times when things actually blew up in the lab, which occurred pretty often. Atlas' water affinity had proven invaluable in putting out fires over the past years.
Atlas slipped his saddlebags on and made his way over to the door. Belle got up to send him off and planted a kiss on his cheek.
"Have fun," she said in a cheery tone.
"Thanks, you too," Atlas replied. "Say hi to White Mallow for me, would ya?"
"Sure, he's always happy to hear from you."
They said their goodbyes and Atlas started his commute. As usual, there were already tons of ponies up and about; the steady stream of bodies wound to and fro from the academy and never really stopped during the day.
Over a year had passed since their daring escape from the dragoness. They lost almost all of the books they’d found that day, but at least they were able to successfully bring home six of them. If they'd put all of them into Doc Brown's saddlebags they would have been totally screwed, since Atlas wasn't sure if Hades could even send over new ones.
Amongst the books they retrieved were two that explained the basics and four more pertaining to more advanced techniques. They were missing a great deal of information but they’d made do with what they had.
Atlas’ body was moving on auto-pilot while he traversed the well-known path towards the lab. Soon enough he found himself passing into the academy grounds proper through the big gate.
It had taken them a long time, but after hundreds of experiments on the basics as well as long hours of studying, today was finally the day where they would try out a large rune array. Up until now, they seldom used more than ten runes, but their most recent experiment contained a total of two-thousand, three hundred and fifty-four runes.
Admittedly, it was a pretty big leap in quantity, but most of the runes were actually security arrays, in case something went wrong. If an array of five runes could decimate an entire desk, they weren't taking any chances on a runic pattern that was almost five hundred times longer.
Something they conveniently forgot to mention in their reports.
A commotion caught his attention just before he was about to turn down through one of his shortcuts. He was currently still on the main path and could see the gate separating the Manipulation and Life districts, where a rather large crowd of ponies were excitedly chatting amongst themselves.
His interest piqued and his route forgotten, he made his way over to them. Their attention seemed to be focused on a cart in the center of the mass, so he politely pushed his way forward until he could get a proper look. Three eggs were resting on top of a bunch of hay, all of them as big as a pony's head with blue dots on their white shells.
Apparently, Teras had recovered some slain monster’s eggs again, which they regularly sent over to the top researchers in the life district to examine. It would seem like today's haul was something a little more special than usual, so he looked around for someone who could tell him what it was.
He spotted a familiar face in the crowd and made his way over to him.
"Hey Tourmaline!" Atlas called out to get his attention. "Long time, no see."
Tourmaline Quartz was a unicorn with a light gray coat and a green mane. He graduated together with Atlas and was the valedictorian of the school of Life. If anypony knew what was special about those eggs, it would be him.
"Atlas?" Tourmaline called back. "You got that right, we haven't seen each other in what? Five years? How have you been?"
"Oh you know," Atlas replied with a smirk. "The boring researcher life, complete with lots of explosions and whacky adventures."
"Tell me about it," Tourmaline replied, matching Atlas’ smile.
"So, what's this all about?" Atlas asked. "Some sort of special eggs?"
"Oh yeah, definitely," Tourmaline replied with a twinkle in his eyes. "Dragon eggs, actually. I heard they found one making its nest in the mountain. At first, they tried to get it to leave peacefully, but since it was guarding its eggs the situation escalated. As you can see, the Teras won that little bout."
"Impressive," Atlas said. "Dragons are pretty tough, so whoever managed to kill that one must've been quite capable."
"For sure. I heard the last time someone brought back real dragon eggs was almost fifteen years ago," Tourmaline commented, still gawking at the eggs. "I'd give one of my hind legs to get the chance to study one of them..."
A little drool was starting to make its way down the side of his face as he daydreamed about the possibilities.
"Uh... sure," Atlas said. "Well, it was nice seeing you again, but I really need to go now; I bet my partner is already waiting for me.”
Tourmaline Quartz snapped back to reality and focused back on Atlas.
"Oh yeah, good luck with your research," he said, holding out his hoof.
"You too," Atlas replied before lightly bumping his hoof.
Atlas split away from the crowd and resumed his trek towards the lab. There was no doubt in Atlas’ mind that Doc Brown was already impatiently waiting for him.
A few minutes later he pushed open the door to their shared building and entered. Just as he suspected, Doc Brown was already flitting about the room, checking the array for any mistakes. They had cleared a large space to the left of the entrance so they could etch the array directly into the stone floor.
The complete array was almost twenty-five feet wide, and in its center rested a small pedestal, covered in nearly as many runes as the floor.
"'Morning," Atlas said as he levitated his saddlebags off to somewhere where there was free space.
"'Ah, good morning Atlas!" Doc Brown replied. "I've been waiting forever, where have you been?"
"First off, I'm still an hour earlier than the time we agreed on," Atlas said absentmindedly while trotting over to their notes. "And there was a commotion over in the Life district; looks like they got some dragon eggs from Teras."
"Dragon eggs? We'll have to try and get our hooves on one of their shells then," Doc Brown said while comparing a drawing to the runes on the floor.
"What for?"
"I'd love to see how much magic they can hold! Who knows? Maybe they'd be viable conductors." Doc Brown nodded, satisfied, and pulled out the next drawing.
Atlas looked up from the notes they'd dumped on two desks they'd pushed together. "That would actually be interesting..."
"Anyways, I've already checked and double-checked everything since I came today, everything seems to be in order. You want to go over it as well?"
"Sure, better safe than sorry," Atlas replied.
He grabbed a stack of notes and started to make his way around the array. They had painstakingly planned out every detail of the array in three months of work.
A lot of the runes they learned from the books were familiar to Atlas, since they resembled Nordic runes from back on Earth. Even so, it greatly surprised him that there were quite a few runes he had never seen before. Every rune had multiple meanings and effects, and their position and sequence could greatly alter the outcome of the spell.
It was a rather vague art to master, but Atlas seemed to have a knack for it. He didn't rule out the possibility that Atlas, the titan, knew about them, and that some of his knowledge was trickling through.
Since they had to create something which would be of use to the guard if they wanted to keep their funding, Atlas suggested they try to create a map. The lack of accurate maps was something which annoyed Atlas ever since he’d arrived in this world, and he was determined to solve at least this problem.
Luckily, the higher-ups agreed that accurate maps would assist them greatly when planning out combat maneuvers, and their project was quickly green-lighted.
The array was designed to send out a magical pulse that would send back any kind of uneven terrain as data to the pedestal, which would then convert the information and imprint it on an enchanted piece of paper. The spell was designed to be as accurate as possible, so they would have to clean up the map afterwards; otherwise it would be detailed to the point of being unusable.
Atlas and Doc Brown fussed over their array for well over an hour before they were satisfied. Atlas proceeded to secure the enchanted paper to the pedestal before taking up his position outside of the circle.
"Well, this is it," Atlas said nervously.
"Nothing to it but to do it!" Doc Brown replied giddily.
"Right, right..." Atlas murmured.
The task of supplying the array with mana fell to Atlas. They didn't want to risk an uneven flow of energy, so they decided it would be better for one of them to do it alone, while the other kept watch for anything going wrong.
Atlas took a deep breath, doing his best to calm himself down, and started feeding the array with his mana. It would take him at least ten minutes to achieve the calculated energy level before he could activate it.
He channeled the mana through the pedestal in the center and saw the runes around it slowly starting to glow a dim pink, matching the glow on Atlas’ horn. Doc Brown was circling the array like a shark, watching intently.
The minutes ticked away; Atlas could feel his horn straining as hundreds of runes lit up, one after another. He started to sweat with the effort of keeping the spell going, but refused to quit. They had put in too much work to fail now.
Eleven minutes later, the array pulsed once, before glowing a little brighter. The charge was complete.
Atlas gulped once, and activated the spell. Originating in the center of the array, a bright green pulse washed over them before phasing through the walls and out of sight. The pulse made Atlas' mana pathway tingle when it passed over him, but otherwise didn't seem to have any lasting effect on their surroundings.
Doc Brown and Atlas looked at each other and nodded. Everything seemed to be in working order, so they refocused their attention on the pedestal in the center, neither of them daring to move. Several minutes were spent waiting with nervous anticipation before the pedestal pulsed twice.
This was it: the moment they'd been waiting for. Three months of work were about to be either paid off, or wasted.
They watched the paper with bated breath until black lines started to appear, filling out the available space in short order. As the picture on the paper grew, the array's glow started dimming, and both of them immediately darted over once it went out completely.
Resting on the pedestal, was now a perfectly detailed map of half of the kingdom. Just as they had expected, they'd have to clean it up a bit, since almost every single building was present on the map, but otherwise their experiment was a complete success.
Both of them stared at the map for a while, eyes wide, taking in everything they could, before their faces broke into huge grins.
Cries of joy filled the lab as they hugged each other, jumping for joy. Their celebration was cut short, however, by a bright flash of light behind Atlas, immediately stopping them in their tracks.
"I really, really hope that wasn't one of the runes..." Atlas gulped.
"Oh it wasn't," Doc Brown said, letting go of Atlas with a smirk. "But you might want to take a look at your flank."
Atlas furrowed his brows in confusion and craned his neck to see what he meant, his jaw dropping when he saw what was on his flank.
Atlas had finally earned his cutie mark.
He spent a few seconds gawking at it, taking in every detail he could about it before his eye twitched in annoyance.
"Oh come on!" he cried out in frustration. "My cutie mark is a pun!?"