//------------------------------// // 10. Experiment Three // Story: Divine Indifference // by Orthoros //------------------------------// Testing on live animals, entry #1 According to the books, of all the things that bugged me about runes, the fact that you weren’t supposed to inscribe on living beings was always curious to me. Of course, Brown Diamond’s experiment failed spectacularly and served as an excellent example as to exactly why that rule was established. Yet, we lost almost a whole bookshelf of tomes detailing the art of runes. The chances of there being an entire book or two dedicated to putting runes on living beings being destroyed was pretty high in my opinion. Now that we have the new cave addition for large scale experiments, I feel like it is finally time to tackle this particular subject once again, in a controlled and secure environment, of course. Starting today, I will dedicate all my time towards the research of this topic, and keep writing down my findings in this journal. Maybe there are some hints hidden within that research I stole from the Crystal Empire? After all, a lot of their spells involved enhancing a ponies abilities… Testing on live animals entry #2 I have finally managed to actually read the stolen research without feeling… too guilty. The unicorns of the Empire have created some amazing spells and I’ve hungrily absorbed their teachings once I got past the first hurdle of actually starting. I do believe that some of their basic principles could be incorporated into the practice of applying runes to living tissue. Of course, this will require extensive research, as well as maybe the creation of two or three more runes. I will ask Starswirl for help on the matter as always. Testing on live animals, entry #3 Starswirl was not happy with my proposition. He chewed me out for almost half of the day after I told him of my plans. Discord, of course, caught wind of it because of Starswirl’s shouting. Considering Discord’s origins, he wasn’t too sure of my idea, though, he said he trusts me to not repeat the incident. It took some convincing, but I got Starswirl on board as well. For now, we decided to study up on anything regarding the mana pathways and mana manipulation within the body before trying to apply it to the study of runes. Apparently, Starswirl was already doing that for a personal project of his, which he refused to tell me about until he was absolutely sure of his theory. Testing on live animals, entry #14 We finally managed to perfect our first mana manipulation rune. By applying everything we learned over the past few months and learning from our countless failures, it is finally complete. I decided to call it Mahnwa. By adding additional, pre-existing runes, the flow of nearby mana can be programmed to flow in certain directions, or even in simple patterns. To make actual tests on anything living thing feasible, we estimate that we need at least two more runes to support the Mahnwa rune. In order to not… overload the organism, the mana will have to be manipulated with extreme precision, and currently that’s just not possible. Recently, Discord has been trying to help out as well. He still doesn’t really care about runes in general, considering the nature of his magic, yet I think he understands the scope of what we’re attempting here. It’s also possible that he just wants to make sure we don’t recreate a certain accident by keeping an eye on us. It’s actually kind of cute and heartwarming. Testing on live animals, entry #22 Not really related, but Starswirl managed to royally fuck up one of the experimental arrays. Today I learned: Ponies without fur look hilarious. Testing on live animals, entry #42 We’ve just completed the fourth rune, Flaguz. This presents us with yet another milestone towards achieving our goal. After the success in manipulating the flow of mana with pinpoint accuracy after creating the third new rune, Kurwah, excessive testing revealed the need for a fourth rune that acted as a stabiliser. Flaguz has been thoroughly tested and proves to be stable, interacting with the runic arrays without issue. Now that we finally have the necessary framework figured out, we can finally move on to the REALLY interesting part. Actually creating an array that will be applicable to a living, breathing being. Of course we’ll have to thoroughly test anything we create, even before attempting to actually perform a live test. Wouldn’t want to kill a poor chicken or something similar just because we didn’t make sure what we created would work one-hundred percent. Oddly enough, the way we program the runes to manipulate the flow of mana reminds me of that card game I made back at the academy. I might have to make a new and improved deck in my freetime soon. I’m sure Starswirl and Discord would love to play every now and then. It took us almost two years to get to this point, let’s just hope it wasn’t all for nothing… Testing on live animals, entry #56 The chicken… it just… imploded… Back to the drawing board… Testing on live animals, entry #65 We figured out what we did wrong the first time, and it only took another five months and yet another new rune to fix it. We were so concerned with creating a stable flow of mana that we completely forgot that all that extra mana would need an outlet. The new rune, Drayn, was created to do just that. When added to the rune, it functions as a sort of “reload” mechanic by cycling the mana that is used for the array. By constantly expelling and drawing in new mana, an overload should be circumvented. The otherwise occurring mess as well, of course. Testing on live animals, entry #68 THE ARRAY WORKED! For the first time ever, a runic array was successfully applied to a living being! There is still one last kink that surfaced upon our success, though. As it is currently, there is no way to actually turn off the array, since it’s constantly resupplying itself with new mana. This problem should be easily circumvented by writing some more, already existing runes into the array, thus eliminating the need to create yet another new rune. Thank god. While we are getting the hang of creating new runes to fulfill specific purposes, they still take us months and a lot of singed fur to make. Testing on live animals, entry #74 It is finally time to test the theory on an actual pony. After three years of hard work, we are finally entering the final stages of this project. Seeing as I was the one who proposed this research, I obviously volunteered myself as the guinea pig. I have confidence that we’ll get it to work, but seeing as we were confident with our first chicken experiment as well… You get the point. Even if something should go wrong, I’ve got a pretty good insurance, which neither Starswirl or Discord have, so I technically never really had a choice either way… Testing on live animals, entry #75 Explosive disarticulation hurts. Testing on live animals, entry #80 After the horrifying experience last month, we’ve slowly approached an array that worked for ponies, or, at the very least, myself. I can also very much confirm that losing a limb hurts a lot more than exploding… twice. At least not completely combusting was a sign of progress. (I never thought I’d ever say that.) By now, we’ve agreed that we’ll probably never apply an actual array on anyone else than myself, since the risk is just too great. Oh well, I might get to make some cool permanent enhancements to myself in the future, so, worth it? I guess? Anyways, we’re just about to start our, hopefully, final test. Testing on live animals, entry #81 Great news everypony! The array worked perfectly, and I can now jump ten feet into the air effortlessly. More than three years of research and pain, finally bore fruit. The actual enhancement might seem insignificant, but for us, the success of the project is the greatest reward we could get. This is just one more step towards mastering the runes left behind for me by Hades(who I didn’t even get to meet after the failures). I’m sure Brown Diamond would’ve loved to see us succeed. Well, in a way, he did, I guess. As such: I declare this experiment a full-blown success!