“Hey again,” Starlight greeted as she entered the library.
Jade turned around from her work and grinned as she saw Starlight. “How’s our Starsicle doing?”
Starlight groaned. “Please don’t tell me you’re still going on about that.”
“Starlight,” Jade said, tilting her head with a raised eyebrow, “I’ll always be on about that.”
“It happened a couple days ago,” Starlight murmured, “Isn’t that enough to forget?”
“It’s just like the internet,” Jade shrugged, “Once it’s up, no one forgets.”
Starlight went cross-eyed. “What’s an ‘internet’?”
Jade blinked. “How should I know?”
“You’re the one who said it!”
“Starlight, I don’t know what I’m saying half the time.”
Starlight opened her mouth to make another retort, but chose otherwise. “Huh. That sounds like somepony I know down in Ponyville.”
“Does she happen to be pink?’
“Huh?”
Jade shrugged again. “Nevermind.”
Starlight blinked multiple times. “O-kay then…” With an awkward silence suddenly filling the air, she bit her lip. “Look, can I have a book on astral projection?”
“A who in the what now?” Jade asked.
“Astral projection. Like that weird thing the Ancient One did to me day one?”
Jade squinted her eyes at the unicorn in front of her. “You’re not ready for that.”
“Try me,” Starlight smirked. The incredulous look Jade gave her made her frown. “What?”
“Pffffft!” Jade began to sputter before bursting out laughing. “Snkkkt hahahaha!”
Starlight grimaced. “Seriously, what?”
Jade continued to giggle and wipe her eye before she saw the look on Starlight’s face. Quickly falling back to a grin, Jade shook her head. “Y-you’re actually serious?” She struggled behind held back laughs.
“Yes.”
Jade wiped her forehead. “Phew! Okay, nice try, but let me be serious myself, you’re not ready for that kind of stuff.”
“Come on, Jade,” Starlight implored, “Help a girl out, here!”
“Starlight, Starlight.” Jade shook her head. “Come back when you’ve at least mastered portals.”
Starlight groaned. “Come on, I’m already getting ten times better with each attempt!”
“Must I remind you of your hilarious second attempt?” Jade grinned. “I swear you would’ve died!”
Starlight rubbed her hooves against her face. “Unnnggh… the Ancient One never said what direction the portal had to face, okay?”
“Still,” Jade remarked, “You can’t make something like that disappear from my fantastic memory.”
“Maybe if I still had my magic…” Starlight muttered between breaths.
“Wuzzat?”
“Mmm… nothing!” Starlight exclaimed, before sighing. “You know what, fine. Maybe later.”
“Thatta girl!” Jade nodded approvingly. She watched as Starlight weaved her way out of the library. “All in due time, Starsicle!”
Starlight sat on the edge of her cot, glancing to her shut doors and blinds. Biting her lip, she smiled and blew air threw her lips.
Rubbing her hooves together, she envisioned the very books she would need…
And opened a portal big enough for a leg and a book. A portal to the first book. With silent agility, she stuck just enough of her head out to look around. Widening her eyes at the sight of the back of Jade’s exposed head, she yanked herself back, grabbed the book, and slid out it out, shutting the portal immediately behind her. Breathing heavily, quietly, she waited. With a slight titter and a nervous giggle of exhilaration, she smiled once more. Envisioning another one, she opened another portal and swiped it before closing it immediately.
Certain she had already gotten her books, she squinted her eyes and swirled her hooves in front of her one last time. She stuck her head out and glanced around. Her parted with mirth at the sight of Jade out of her seat and looking around at the shelves with incredulous fervor, she took the book Jade had been poring over and closed the portal before she could see.
Hugging the books close, she giggled before glancing at the title of her first one. “The Realms of Luna and Beyond”. Blinking, she looked at the publication date and found it to be concurring with the reigns of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Making an about face, she began to turn the pages and founder herself immediately smiling. New study habits… was all Starlight could think. In other words… sweet!
All the while, Jade was scrambling to scrawl down the volumes that had suddenly disappeared from her shelves, grinning wickedly as she knew of only one pony who could be stupid enough to attempt it. “...idiot…” she breathed with a chuckle.
“Once in this room, you pleaded for me to let you learn. Now I’m being told that you question every lesson, regardless of whether I teach it or not, preferring to teach yourself.”
Starlight winced before laughing nervously. “Ehehehe… well, me, er, pleading to help you was only a few weeks ago. I don’t think I’ve been advancing that much.” Clearing her throat as she stopped alongside the Ancient One to the same room she had first witnessed, Starlight smirked. “Just as well, once in this room, you told me to open my eyes. Now ponies are telling to blindly follow rules that make no sense even upon scanning through tomes of the topics! A habit, thanks to one Princess Twilight Sparkle.”
The Ancient One turned to raise an eyebrow at her. “Hm… So, you also find the need to break the rule about conjuring portals in the library, especially after the incident with an old student of mine, who I’m sure you’ve heard about.”
Starlight doubled back, blinking. With a grin, she said “Jade told on me?” Though she really wasn’t all that surprised to be honest.
The Ancient One only looked at her with mirth before glancing at the center of her room. “You are advancing quickly, Starlight. Faster than any other pupil I have taken on in my lifetime. Now, seeing as you were the student to one the Element of Magic… it still fascinates me to an extent.” The Ancient One tapped her hoof, slid it forward and made a motion as if to shatter something. As Starlight looked to where the Ancient One was looking, her jaw went unhinged.
In front of her, the world seemed to have fractured. A verifiable wall of undulating essence now distorted the world in front of her from the ground up, seemingly jingling with the sound of clinking glass and shattering china.
“You need a safe space, Starlight,” the Ancient One remarked, walking towards the break in space. “However much you have progressed in your studies of magic in any form, you need a place that you can practice it all, without damaging the world around you.” Mentioning for Starlight to join her, they both entered the new gateway.
As she walked through, she could almost feel the world change around her. As if her essence passed through something that seemed familiar… yet backwards. Looking around, she had to blink multiple times, seeing how the world all around her now looked… broken. Fractured. Like a jagged mirror.
“You are now inside the Mirror Dimension,” the Ancient One explained as Starlight observed her surroundings. “Ever present, yet undetected, the real world is not affected by what happens here. We use it to train and surveil…”
Starlight watched as a fellow initiate went to fill a cup of tea, and saw that her image seemed to shift in opposite directions as her body passed behind a fracture line. Waving her hoof in front of her, there was no recognition at all of her presence. Raising her eyebrows in a ‘wow’ expression and blowing air through her teeth, she nodded her head to the side.
“...and sometimes to contain threats.”
Starlight flicked her ears.
“You don’t want to be stuck in here without a ridge gauntlet.”
Starlight turned to face her mentor with a baffled expression. “Woah, wait.” Waving a hoof and laughing a little, she looked around. “What do you mean ‘threats’?”
For a second, the Ancient One looked at Starlight with a silent expression.
And Starlight looked back.
Wordlessly, the Ancient One stomped to hooves down, causing the entire world to shudder. In the blink of an eye, the ground beneath Starlight’s hooves folded inward and outward, croaking and booming. The walls bent and expanded, collapsed and contracted. The ceiling flew and descended, it’s ridges increasing tenfold, twentyfold. Right before her, the very world changed, before settling with a reverberating thud.
“Learning of an infinite universe, Starlight…” began the Ancient One, “Included learning of infinite threats and dangers. Surely, you didn’t think that what lies in Equestria and Equus is all that there was to the fabric of reality.”
Tapping her hoof on the ground, she paced, nodding her head before turning to look at Starlight once more. “And if I told you everything else you don’t already know…”
Starlight shivered at the look she beheld.
“...you’d run away from here in terror.”