//------------------------------// // Epilogue // Story: Duelists of the Autumn Crown // by DrakeyC //------------------------------// Duelists of the Autumn Crown   Epilogue “Come ooooon, Twilight!” Rainbow groaned. “I’m almost done!” Twilight muttered. She finished scratching the runes into the side of the crystal with her chisel, and blew on it. The dust scattered and the rune began to glow a pale green. “That should do it.” She stepped back and looked it over. A semi-circular metal platform about the size of a table stood on the ground in front of her, blue crystals embedded in its sides. Two taller spires of crystal were mounted on the top at the tips of the table. A few hoof lengths away, an identical construct faced this one. Rainbow stepped up to the platform and reached into her saddle bag to pull out a deck of Duel Monster cards. “You ready?” At the other table, Applejack nodded, her own deck already on the field. “If this here thing works, Ah am.” “Well, there’s only one way to find out.” Twilight leaned her head down and fired a bolt of magic at Rainbow’s table. The crystals lit up in blue light and began to pulse. She turned and did the same to Applejack’s table. “Okay, give it a go!” “I’ll go first!” Rainbow reached out to draw six cards from her deck and looked down at them. “I summon Harpie Queen!” She slid the card onto the metal table. The blue crystals on either side of Rainbow lit up and shot beams of magic down at her card. The transparent image of a woman with winged arms and talons on her legs appeared over the card, stretching her wings out. Rainbow gasped. “That is so awesome! Um, okay… I set a card and end my turn.” “Let’s see here…” Applejack lifted a card from her hand. “Ah summon Naturia Pumpkin!” As she put her card down, the crystals on her table lit up and projected the image of a small green and yellow fruit sitting on her card. Applejack whistled low. “Well, how about that!” “You did it, Twilight!” Pinkie squeed and hugged Twilight around the neck. “Well, not yet,” Twilight coughed as Pinkie squeezed her until the other pony let go. “This is just a crude first effort, really a proof of concept. I only enchanted the crystals with images for a few cards, mostly just our decks. It was hard enough getting them in anyway since the crystals can only hold so much magic before they explode and quality specimens like this are rare. If I actually wanted to expand them I’d probably have to try enchanting smaller crystals with only a few cards, maybe let a duelist carry around a crystal attuned to their deck. But then every time they adjust the deck the spells would have to be changed. I could just try a new spell to let the crystals create images on their own by scanning the card image, but some of the designs don’t show the full monster. Not to mention this is a long way from actually being portable to the point a pony could wear it comfortably—” “Twilight.” She stopped at Rainbow’s voice. “Can we just play?” “Oh, right.” Twilight blushed. “Sorry.” “I call winner!” Pinkie shouted. She, Spike, Rarity and Fluttershy sat down at the side as Applejack continued her turn. Twilight watched them for a moment before heading into the castle to go to her lab. I didn’t even get into the difficulties of actually expanding the card database. I remember a lot of the cards I saw and I could probably design original ones, but creating a crystal magic Duel Disk is one thing. It’s another to come up with a properly balanced card game. She looked around the lab she had used to build the disk, books on magic and hardware crafting strewn about along with pieces of metal and crystal. The binder from her friends in the other world, many of its cards removed to be used for testing, lay on the table. “For now, these will do.” She looked at the binder and smiled. There were several hundred cards in it, most of them lacking synergy to properly build a deck comparable to the ones she had seen in the other world. But it had enough cards for her friends to assemble workable decks and try out the game, and they were taking to it rather well. She was sure that as they kept playing and refining their understanding of the game, the six of them could put their heads together and come up with ideas worthy of the original game. As Twilight examined the cards, light began to shine from a nearby shelf. She turned to it and saw the source in a stack of cards. She lifted them over to the table. “Sunset?” Sunset Shimmer’s blank deck of cards looked up at her, their surfaces shining. Twilight spread them out over the table and watched. In waves of sparkles, the blank white boxes on the cards were washed away to be replaced with new artworks. Symbols Twilight didn’t recognize, blue and red triangles with numbers below them, were on either side of the cards’ effect text, which was split into two boxes. When the glow ended and the cards finished their transformation, Twilight looked at the nearest one. “Pendulum monster?” Scrunching her nose at the unfamiliar term, she looked up at the card’s artwork. A humanoid figure with long pink hair and pale blue and green armor posed with a bow, aiming at some unseen enemy. Twilight’s jaw dropped as she saw the name of the card. “Harmony Guardian Gracia?” She looked over the other cards. The visages were all at once familiar and new, depicting seven human figures in colored armor wielding assorted weapons. Twilight lifted up one of them and brought it closer. A human figure in golden armor sat atop a rock outcropping, a sword with a sun on the hilt resting against her leg. Red and yellow hair streamed down her back and blew in the wind. Harmony Guardian Compassio.   Twilight set the card down. A duelist’s deck reflects what’s in the heart… She closed her eyes and smiled. Congratulations, Sunset. We’ll duel again someday. I promise.