“Um, Twilight? Maybe we should discuss this first?” Fluttershy tried. No one noticed.
“Now!” Twilight yelled.
Nothing happened. Maybe she’d changed her mind?
Then Twilight staggered back and fell back to her haunches, forehooves on her horn and face showing bewilderment.
“It...it just sucked all the magic I tried to summon. This whole cave has no magic. It’s like your fields,” she said, looking at Applejack and Pinkie Pie, “but instead of blocking magic it just...eats it.”
“Twilight?” Fluttershy tried again.
“Oh, what is it Fluttershy?” Twilight said, rubbing her horn and looking at the cave walls with unfocused eyes.
Fluttershy fluffed her wings and walked toward Twilight. She might be a unicorn with a lot of magic, but they were friends.
“I think we should discuss things before we do them. If that’s okay with you,” Fluttershy said.
Maybe that was too strongly worded. Oh no. Now Twilight would end up hating her. She wished she could take those words back and say them again.
“I’m sorry Fluttershy, you’re right. I was being stupid. Just because you’re not unicorns, it doesn’t mean you don’t know magic. Or common sense,” she added with a strained smile.
Fluttershy quickly moved away. That could’ve gone very badly. But it hadn’t. And Twilight had actually taken her advice. She felt a smile of her own spread across her face.
“I have a theory. But I’ll need to test it. I’m going to probe the area. You’re going to have to lower your anti-magic fields for a few seconds when I say. You okay with this?”
“Sure as sugar am. I got nothing else.”
“Yep! I’m just full of ideas, but mostly for baking right now. I’m hungry.”
Rainbow Dash grunted.
“Okay...and you, Fluttershy? Got any other ideas?”
Fluttershy jumped. Her?
She stood frozen until twilight gave her an encouraging nod. “Um. No? I mean, not right now. I’m sorry.”
“Alright. You all might want to get comfy. This is going to take a while,” Twilight said.
“Twi. They’re going to collapse soon,” Rainbow Dash said, pointing at Applejack and Pinkie Pie. She was pacing around the cave in a never-ending circle.
Fluttershy watched her sympathetically. Earlier, Rainbow had informed her that she would much rather be sleeping, but without a cloud it was just too uncomfortable. Fluttershy didn’t have the skill to keep a cloud solid for more than a few hours, but she was too nervous to attempt sleep. What if the Everfree did something? Its brain was apparently right there in the middle of the cave, in the shape of a crystal tree.
“Nah. I’m...good. Can keep this up for a while longer. Don’t you worry none,” Applejack said. She was sitting on the floor, eyes closed. The image of calm, with only her voice betraying her exhaustion.
“Me too! But the rocks are burning up, so you might want to hurry up,” Pinkie said, bouncing up from the floor and speeding up until she was next to Rainbow Dash.
“Hey Dashie! Want to play eye spy?”
“What? No—”
“Okay, I’ll go first. I spy something gray.”
Rainbow Dash stopped walking and turned her head toward the other mare. “The walls?”
“Oh, you’re good. Okay, your turn!”
“I don’t want—”
“That means it’s my turn! I spy something blue and grumpy and red and grumpy and yellow and grumpy and—”
“Me. It’s me! Can we stop now?”
“Not until you play, silly!”
Rainbow sighed.
“I’ve figured it out!” Twilight said.
“Well, what is it? Tell us tell us tell us!”
“Okay, so I sent a bunch of probes out, along with greater and greater amounts of magic. The Everfree’s core is like...like a magical version of the sun. It pulls any magic close enough into itself and completely overwhelms any structure it has, adding it to its storage. This happens with any magic in the area, even its own. So if it sends any vines in here, they’ll just get their magic sucked out of them.”
Twilight started pacing herself, eyes bright and eager.
“I’ve done some calculations, and to send anything at us, it’ll have to bring a huge amount of magic to this place to be able to keep it together this close to its core. It’ll have to gather it all from the forest, put it together so it doesn’t lose cohesion on the way over, and give it a golem so it’ll be able to operate semi-independently. We have at least a day before it’ll be able to get it together. Er, day-like amount of time.”
Rainbow Dash scoffed. “You’re supposed to be this super egghead, and all you can say is that the amount of magic it’ll need is ‘huge?’”
“We don’t really have ways to measure magic! There’s usually just too little of it to bother. It’s ‘three seconds worth,’ or ‘a whole lot.’”
“That’s stupid.”
“I know. Anyway, we’re safe without the anti-magic fields for a long while.”
Applejack slumped to the floor. “Oh thank goodness,” she muttered into the ground, finally showing her weariness.
“I’ll stop too. Got to save these special tummy rocks!” Pinkie Pie said, then stopped bouncing and curled up on the ground. She was snoring seconds later.
“Now that we’ve identified the problem, we just have to figure out how to get a lot of magic without the Everfree sucking it up,” Twilight said.
“This isn’t working!” Twilight said.
Her mane was disheveled and her eyes were in the abnormally open position of somepony who’d gone without sleep for days. Except it had only been a few hours.
“Can’t gather up any amount of magic myself without it being eaten, can’t interact with the Domain directly, earth ponies can’t modify Talent functions...”
Fluttershy poked the pink stone at the edge of the tree. Normally she kept her hooves to herself, but this one felt welcoming. Inviting.
Then it pulsed with a warm glow.
“What was that? Magic? Is that magic?” Twilight darted over with a maniacal expression.
Fluttershy backed away.
The unicorn put her own hoof on the gem.
“They’re...they’re hiding! I couldn’t even sense them before, but these have magic in them!”
She whirled around and stalked toward Fluttershy. “How did you know?!” she demanded.
“I, um, didn’t. I just touched it...” she said, squeezing herself against the wall.
“Good job Fluttershy. Good job!” Twilight said with a cackle, her words completely at odds with her tone.
“Um. Thanks?”
“These are magic. They’re big magic. The Everfree hasn’t eaten them. It hasn’t even eroded them. They’re hiding. And they’re doing it on purpose. They’re Domains!”
“Oh?”
“I know right? It’s crazy! I bet they were the other magical signatures Rarity was...detecting...earlier.” Twilight slowed down. Her eyes lost their wide look and her too-large smile disappeared. “But we’ll get them back. After this is over.”
She said it like she was trying to convince herself. Did she know something? But Fluttershy wouldn’t ask. She obviously didn’t want to talk about it.
“Um. Anyway.” Twilight sniffed, turning her head to the side and wiping away a tear that Fluttershy still saw. “I’m going to connect to them and...hm. This is grossly oversimplifying things, but I’m basically going to ‘ask’ them for magic so that I can brute-force the Everfree’s core. I just hope they have enough.”
Fluttershy did too.
“And let me in,” Twilight muttered.
That wasn’t reassuring.