“Hello again, Starlight,” the Ancient One smiled, eyes closed in meditation. Starlight joined her on the ground in front of her. Mimicking the Ancient One’s position, she crossed her hind legs and rested her forelegs on them, frowning inside at the slight discomfort.
“I’m sorry for casting you outside. It must have been gruelling to be knocking on wood for several hours.”
Starlight could only nod in response. “Uh… yeah, it’s okay, I guess.”
“Quite,” the Ancient One responded cryptically. Opening her eyes, the Ancient One looked Starlight in the eyes. “Lesson One; are you ready?”
“Absolutely,” Starlight nodded.
“Let’s start with the basics. The one’s of old figured out magic long before the tribes unified into a single force. Ancients, as we call them, created what came to be known as spells. Spells that did not need to be cast by a unicorn horn. Spells that needed no runes, only one’s knowledge and belief. That is why, in the early ages, unicorns were usually rejected from joining such schools of magic.”
“Wait,” Starlight said while the Ancient One had paused, “You guys existed before the Friendship Fire, and unicorns weren’t allowed?”
“You could go as far as before the Princess’ time, yes,” the Ancient One allowed. “And as I said, many thought that unicorn magic was one and the same as occult magic, or arcane magic, as some would put. Honestly, there is no proper prefix for it and we usually refer to it as just ‘magic’.”
“Alright. ‘Magic’ it is,” Starlight said to herself.
Slowly, the Ancient One started to move her hooves as she spoke. “Moving on, we earth ponies and pegasi were able to create our own forms of magic; our hooves and wings doing most of the work.” And just like that, lines in the air started to form.
Bright, burning lines were starting to get drawn by the hooves of the Ancient One, thin strips emerging from the center of each of her hooves. With little effort, the Ancient One completed a circle of energy, and she continued to draw lines. Line upon line, each one adding to a bigger picture, all of it connecting.
“Even though unicorns seem more proficient in their spellcraft, this is how we can truly tap into the magicks that lay just beyond our reach. We pull energy from other dimensions, a multiverse of diversity, and we harness this power into spells. Spells similar to unicorn magic that can do all sorts of things, as a unicorn like you would know, and many more that cannot be cast by horn alone.”
A spinning set of squares within squares to look like an octagram now lay inset within the circle, the diagram looking more and more complex. The Ancient One could only smile as the face of awe on Starlight continued to grow. “Yes, some spells can only be cast by the power of the multiverse. If a mortal soul were to pull the energy required from their reserves alone, they would shrivel up and cease to exist within a matter of seconds; this is yet another reason why unicorns do not tend to seek this place out.
“Everything is connected, Starlight,” the Ancient One finished, her drawing complete. “And thus, we have magic.” The drawing drew in a wind from an unknown source, billowing around Starlight and the Ancient One. With a resolute hoof, the Ancient One pushed the drawing outward, and it pulsated, eventually dissipating into sparks of mana and energy.
Dumbfounded, Starlight realized she knew a lot less than she really did. “But… even if my hooves could do that… or however a unicorn would do it, my hooves would just be waving around.” With a gesture of pointing from herself to the teacher, Starlight asked the one dominant question in her mind. “How do I get from here to there? How can I use magic again?”
“How did you get to cast spells that manipulate time and remove cutie marks?” the Ancient One replied, raising an eyebrow at Starlight. “Spells from that horn of yours, a horn now incapable of doing even the simplest of tasks?”
Starlight could only wince at the memory of what she had done to her village. The terror and destruction she had seen revolving around her reality-breaking endeavour. The pain she had endured using her shattered horn. With a gulp, Starlight answered. “S-study and practice, of course. Lot’s of it.”
Smirking, the Ancient One nodded. “The same applies, Miss Glimmer. Study and practice. It will not be easy, but it will be well worth it.”
Finally getting up, the Ancient One moved to her desk in the room they had come to occupy. Sighing, Starlight herself was glad that they did not have to sit in such a cramped position anymore, however “meditative” it may be.
“Tea?” the Ancient One asked, “We’ve still got a whole lot more to go through after this. You of all ponies especially, if you want to get that horn of yours working in whatever time you seem to be planning.”
“Yes please,” Starlight smiled, before frowning. “You seem to know a lot more about me than I thought.”
“When one shatters the universe trying to change a fixed point in time,” the Ancient One began, handing Starlight her tea, “It’s hard not to notice.”
“I guess so…” Starlight whispered, taking a sip. Suddenly, she spit out her tea, the water dissipating into the air. “W-wait, what?”
“Oh yes, don’t think that little stunt of yours went unnoticed,” the Ancient One smiled, “Especially when an alicorn princess was using the spell just as much as you were. It is quite remarkable you were able to figure such a spell out, given its complexity and it’s taxing cost on the multiversal scale.”
“I didn’t mean to- it was only just- I mean-” Starlight stammered, trying to explain to the Ancient One just exactly why she did what she did.
“It does not matter the why you did it anymore, Miss Glimmer,” the Ancient One said, cooling her tea just a smidge, “What’s done is done. What matters is what you’re going to do to fix it. Something happened, Miss Glimmer, something that broke the universe in more ways than one. Even now, events don’t seem to have happened the way they should’ve.
“Because of that one event, things changed. Past, present, and future. Though they may have been indirect, your future changed. It split, to put it simply. Here, you may be now, but in another time, another place, another universe, you never got injured.” The Ancient one tilted her head and pointed her eyes towards Starlight’s horn.
“That horn of yours never broke, and you continued on to become Twilight’s first graduated student of friendship." Sighing, the Ancient One waved a hoof. "Neigh, it is all irrelevant now, you being here and all. I just thought you should know,” the Ancient One finished, before finishing her tea as well.
“On second thought, we’ll have our next lesson tomorrow. Check out a few books, study the basic concepts and principles; I'll let the librarian know you're coming. I believe you have a lot to think about.” With that said, the Ancient One left the room, leaving a dumbfounded Starlight behind.
With her entire mind going into shock and her face perpetually frozen in revelation, Starlight flapped her mouth open and closed like a fish.
“I… I didn’t know…”