One week after the counter-spell was cast
A light enters into an expanse from a doorway, emanating from a shining crystal hovering in mid-air, surrounded by a golden aura. The light reveals only a hunched figure in a gold-trimmed scarlet shroud that steadily plods forward, a similar glow emanating from the front of its head. The light is dim, revealing only the floor before it, and its advanced age is evident in the slow pace and stiff movements. Yet it moves with utter confidence, as it moves forward in a ceremonial stride. When the light reveals the image of a pair of alicorns, one representing the Sun, the other the Moon, the figure stops, and looks at the image for a moment. If an Equestrian pony were to look upon the mosaic, they would think they were looking upon the image of the diarchy of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. But they wouldn’t be aware that the age of the image predated even their reign, and weren’t even meant to be representative of any particular pair of alicorns. The figure looks up, and the crystal rises into the air, entering into an object above it.
An opulent chandelier decorated with gold, silver, and glittering gems of every color of the rainbow, shone to life, and its multitude of lights revealed a windowless, cavernous chamber. It hung, suspended over the open, central space of the chamber by a black chain. Around this space was an orderly forest of mottled, marble pillars holding the expansive stony ceiling above the tiled floor. Shimmering rainbow cracks of light spread out from the anchor point of the chandelier like a spider-web, connecting to each column before snaking down each of them to placeholders holding even more crystals, filling the room with every color in the rainbow.
In the central space, a ring of eight thrones is arranged, each with a lower seat beside them. Flags of many colors and patterns are draped over the backs of the thrones. In the midst of these seats, an intricate mosaic is laid out, revealing a human man and woman dressed in ancient garbs accepting the gift of an orb of multi-colored light from the pair of alicorns in the foreground. About them, various human figures demonstrate magic of all kinds upon the seven hills in the background.
The figure spends a brief moment admiring the beauty about him, then straightens himself out, allowing his shroud to fall to his shoulders, allowing a golden robe to peek through, and revealing a bald human head with a heavily wrinkled face and bushy white beard, but also a pair of sharp, wise blue eyes that were exuding a golden aura. He spread out his arms, and then cried out in a loud voice in Latin:
“Magi! Disaster has fallen upon the world! The future is uncertain! Come forward, reveal yourselves to one another, and claim your thrones! Do not hold back your secrets and guide all from ignorance to enlightenment!”
When his voice finished echoing, eight groups of figures moved forward from all around the edge of the chamber toward the center. Three individuals comprised each group, one in the front wearing ceremonial garb reflective of their homeland, one wearing modern business attire, one dressed in subdued, but still ceremonial attire, complete with accompanying armament.
The only exception is the pair approaching directly from the old man’s rear, a mature woman in a suit and tie, and a large man dressed in Roman armor and armed with a pair of shotguns and a pair of spears on his back. The old man moves to the throne nearest to him, with the flag of Italy laid upon its back, as the woman positions herself before the smaller seat next to the throne, and the guard on his opposite side, standing at attention. The other groups mirror the same movements, taking their places before the thrones.
The old man speaks once more: “I am Matteo Tiberius Cavallo! Head of the Cavallo Family and all its Branch Families and Host of this Council!”
As the first of the Core Families, any and every Council held would be hosted by the Cavallo family in the Sanctum Magia. Also, one of the traditions at these councils was that only the family heads would be introduced as well as be permitted to speak openly and address the assembly. Their advisors would be allowed to whisper details into the ears of the family heads, but none would be allowed to openly speak, except in the event that a family head was physically unable to. Bodyguards were obligated to stay silent, but considering the amount of intelligence-gathering each family performs on one another, and since the ones assigned to these gatherings were usually the best fighters each family had to offer, none of the bodyguards were expected to need introduction.
Clockwise from him, a small woman with long, braided black hair and dressed in full plate armor adorned with fleur-de-lis’s announced herself in French: “I am Marguerite Poirier! Head of the ancient Poirier Family and all its Branch Families! It is my honor to represent them at this auspicious council!”
Each of the members present had long had the necessary translation spells for their interactions with one another, so the change in language wasn’t jarring for any of them.
It continued to the next one, a clean-shaven man dressed in a navy blue Spanish military coat announced himself in his native tongue: “I am Fernando Cristobal Gonzalez Castro of the proud Castro Family and its many Branch Families! There are few things that please me more than to have the honor of speaking on their behalf on this magnificent Council!”
Another established precedent from prior Councils that each family head would try to have the grandest announcement of their name in order to show up the other members.
The next family head was a tall man dressed in formal white attire and top hat fit for the Victorian Era. He introduced himself: “I am Augustine, Third of the Name, and the Honourable Head of the Wellingsford Family and all Branch Families under its purview! It is my distinct privilege and honour to represent their interests at this gathering!”
Each family was positioned the way they were in the order of their founding as officially recorded in the official archives of the Cavallo Family, who are generally recognized as the first family of human magi in the world. However, many suspected that a similar society of magi existed in the Orient, but there was yet to be any confirmation from any expedition sent there.
The next head was a large and beautiful woman with icy gray eyes and flowing blond hair, and dressed like a medieval princess with a flowing black dress with scarlet trim and a golden cross around her neck. She declared, “I am Teresa Gottschalk! I am Master of the Gottschalk Family and all Branch Families it protects! I am proud to be able to serve and defend my family at this important conference!”
Each of the Core Families had a number of vassals known as Branch Families related to them by blood and who had pledged fealty to them in exchange for sharing their own research into magic while aiding the Core Family in its own desired projects. Each Branch Family was closely monitored, as any of them could turn their backs and run away to either realign themselves with another Core Family or become an unaffiliated Outlier. The German Gottschalks themselves were once a branch of the Poiriers, but broke away during the Protestant Reformation.
Sixth in rotation was a robust man with a long, bushy brown beard and dressed in a long gray coat trimmed with silver edges. Speaking in a Zurich accent of German, he spoke: “I am Adalheid Ruch of the esteemed Ruch Family and its prosperous Branch Families! I genuinely hope to be of help to all Magi for the benefit of all!”
Each of the Core Families’ power and influence in relation to the others was largely tied to their respective homelands. While often immune to short-term economic and political fluctuations, the overall status of a Core family’s homeland can have long-term impacts on the morale of their respective factions. As a result, although the Ruchs headed the smallest faction, the wealth and neutrality of Switzerland allowed them to build connections and wealth that rivaled or surpassed each of the larger Families.
Second-to-last was a mature man dressed in a dark blue aristocratic shirt and pants with a large maroon cloak over his shoulders. He stated in Russian, “I am Evgani Ruslan Rasputin! Patriarch of the Rasputin Family and its Branch Families! I attend this Council bearing their pride and their hope in my heart, and will not allow either to wither away!”
Most Core Families’ actions go unnoticed in historical records, but random members may sometimes find themselves in just such instances. A distant member who became an Outlier and a monk gained the ear of the Tsar’s wife in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and was later assassinated, but not before several prior attempts all failed.
Finally, it came to the group to the right of Matteo Cavallo, the head of which was a young man with a ready smirk in his mouth and a confident gaze in his eyes, dressed in dark blue and a tricorner hat like a gentleman who had walked out of colonial America. He said, “I am Marius Springer. I am the Head of the Springer Family and Sponsor of its Branch Families. It is a pleasure doing business with all of you.”
Although the Springers were easily the youngest of the Core Families, their ascendancy to Core status was just as easily the fastest. Formed in the aftermath of the American Revolution by breaking away from the Wellingsfords, they were initially derided as another Outlier. However, their style of association with Branch Families, modeled after the freedom of the American system, allowed them to quietly gather Outliers and already-affiliated Branch Families and play the other Core Families against one another in the Family Affairs. It was such a successful method, and tied with America’s growing significance on the world stage, their base was soon strong enough to allow them to face the other Core Families on equal footing, and successfully become acknowledged – grudgingly – as a Core Family.
Matteo Cavallo spoke again: “All Magi here have themselves known! Sit down, and let the Tenth Council of Magic commence!”
All of the family heads seated themselves on their respective thrones, and the advisors beside them, while the bodyguards remained at attention. Matteo looked out at the assembled Magi, and while he could see that they were all maintaining quiet respect for the ceremony of the occasion, some of the younger members were hiding their anticipation to get the proceedings moving along rather well.
“Now that all ceremony has been concluded, I can see the eagerness of you all to, as you younger generations would say, ‘get down to business.’” Cavallo stated.
“I hardly think the situation before us requires any manner of introduction, Mr. Cavallo,” a voice spoke up to his right. It was Marius Springer. “We all noticed the transformation magic present in the most recent strain of influenza to sweep the world, but the fact that it transformed its victims into the same kind of ponies that are claimed by ancient record to have brought the gift of magic to this world was most surprising. And now we have a global population of more than 300 million of these sentient equines running around, irrevocably revealing the existence of magic to the entire world.”
“A rather concise, if crude, summary of these events,” Augustine Wellingsford III said. “However, it also leaves out the fact that it has been confirmed that the manufacturer of this pandemic was, in fact, a pony from Equestria, the same world from which the equine emissaries to Rome first came.”
“Let us also not forget another thing,” Marguerite Poirier added. “The perpetrator, Sunset Shimmer, was acting alone. Furthermore, the counterspell that stopped the transformations was actually created and performed by another Equestrian, one Twilight Sparkle, who is apparently royalty with her title of Princess of Friendship, in tandem with the ponies of Equestria themselves. She is noted to also be a close friend, if not advisor, to the current rulers of their land, Princesses Celestia and Luna. In light of this, I don’t believe we will need to fear any manner of state-level hostilities, at least from their end.”
“That is hardly the point of this council, Miss Poirier,” Teresa Gottschalk pointed out. “While foreign relations are important, the existence of the other world is now an open fact for the global populace. Those details can be handled by our countries’ governments. The point of each of the nine councils that took place before was to gather together and examine how tectonic shifts in global affairs would impact us and how we will adjust ourselves to respond accordingly. We don’t gather to talk about everyone else. We gather to talk about us, and how we will be affected.”
“That is very true, Mistress Gottschalk,” Evgani Rasputin interjected. “While the homelands of some have been impacted to a greater degree than others-” he said as he waved his hand at Marius Springer, “-this particular crisis poses a unique threat to our livelihoods. Namely, our secrecy.”
“We also may not have very long before we are discovered,” Marius Springer declared. The other heads visibly turned to him.
“What do you mean by that?” Fernando Castro asked.
“Two things that I believe you have each neglected to fully consider. One detail that is soon going to be making the rounds in the academic world is an archaeological discovery by one Sarah Tanner in Lazy Pines, Colorado, or Ground Zero for the ETS epidemic. She found that the ancient Anasazi people of North America actually made contact with the same people of ponies a little over seven hundred years ago. The second is that the FBI confirmed that a Hopi reservation in nearby Arizona was actually immune to the plague, and a doctor working at Ground Zero was confirmed to be not only immune, but also of Hopi ancestry. This is significant as the Hopi are believed to be descended from the Anasazi.”
“Do you think the Equestrian emissaries told the men they were working with about the Roman Contact?” asked Adalheid Ruch.
“My sources say they absolutely did,” Springer replied. “And I don’t think we need to think very hard about the implications of that.”
All of the Magi went quiet for a brief moment. Being Magi, they themselves were largely immune to all but the most brutal illnesses, and thus were able to emerge largely unscathed from the epidemic. But as they all knew, the ability to use magic is genetic, the only reason they were all able to use it was because they were all descendants of those exposed to magic in the first place during the Roman Contact almost two thousand years ago. Thus, non-magical members who had been adopted by or married into each of the factions were vulnerable, and a noticeable handful of their number had been affected by the pandemic. While the plague had been finished off only in the last week, if someone noticed a pattern of immunity among the magic-using families, everything could be exposed.
“Because of these events,” Marius Springer continued. “I believe that, whatever we do after the conclusion of this council, we must prepare for this inevitability: that the existence of human magic will be revealed to the world.”
After a brief moment, Matteo Cavallo responded. “I have lived a long time, and I have hosted the four prior Magic Councils where the previous heads of your family have all clamored about the inevitable exposure of magic to the world. I berated them as hyperbolic fools each time they did so. Now, it seems I owe those men and that woman a most profound apology. I believe all of us at one point or another have considered the possibility at least at one point in our lives. But we pushed it aside for how patently absurd that we would fail to keep our little corner of the world hidden from society. But now, with this latest occurrence, it seems that time has closed.”
An outside observer might expect people so steeped in tradition and arcane arts to express outrage or shock at such an announcement. But Magi were, if nothing else, very thorough people when it came to planning. Each and every family head had entered the chamber already considering the possibility of disclosure, and the Americans had always been the most vocal about preparing for it. Now that it had been acknowledged by the single most senior member of the entire hidden world of magic, the issue had now been upgraded from an uncomfortable thought to an imperative agenda.
“Now that it seems we are all quite resigned to this incoming future,” Augustine III said. “The question is now no longer how we will be affected by this crisis, but how we shall prepare for the inevitable storm before us.”
“There are already two ways this can happen,” Marguerite stated. “First, we wait for the storm. We simply gather our assets and keep a close eye on them, then plan out, prepare, and practice for different contingencies. The second is that we step forward and meet the storm head-on. We take stock, prepare our lines, practice with select individuals to gauge possible responses, then decide what we reveal, when and how we do it.”
“There are pros and cons to both plans,” Fernando Castro pointed out. “The first allows us to continue operating as we always have, while preparing for whichever way we are revealed, and it accounts for how disclosure, however inevitable, may still be some time away. But it also hinders our ability to take control of the disclosure event once it occurs. The second allows us to take control of the disclosure event, and determine the pace, setting, and overall message and contents of the event. But the drawback is that we are forced to set a deadline and disrupt all operations we are already undertaking in order to prepare for disclosure, and that’s not taking into account the possibility that we will be forced into a disclosure situation while we are still in the middle of preparing for it, wreaking havoc on whatever preparations already made.
“Furthermore,” he continued. “Once disclosure happens, there are several things which will happen no matter the response: Suspicions of conspiracy from the masses and the elites. Investigations and scrutiny from government agencies. The intervention of the Church to establish purview over our practices. Demands to access into our research from every organization of note on the Earth.”
“Those are all negative effects we’ve all known for some time. But this time, there is also one major benefit we can gain from the current state of affairs,” Springer noted, with a smirk on his face.
“What might that be?” Fernando asked.
“Access to Equestria’s libraries and their research on magic.”
An audible gasp could be heard from a few of the magi present. While it was true that they had been researching magic for almost two thousand years, the limited access to magic and the even more limited number of magic-capable individuals stifled the potentials of their research by a great deal. The Cavallos, for example, had been pursuing immortality since the Roman Contact, where they learned that immortal creatures did exist. The current head of the Cavallo family, Matteo, was the height of their accomplishments, as he had successfully lived for over six centuries. Unfortunately, he wasn’t immortal; it was actually a miracle he hadn’t gone senile already, and many believed he wouldn’t last another ten years at most.
Inwardly, most of the magi were practically drooling at the thought of being able to access an entire world of magic and destroy all barriers to their research in the process.
“That brings up yet another interesting question, doesn’t it?” Adalheid Ruch spoke up.
“Do tell us, Master Ruch,” Springer beckoned.
“How will the Equestrian ponies respond to our existence?” Ruch asked. All of the magi were left quiet as they contemplated this thought. He continued. “We don’t know all that much about Equestria. But we do have detailed reports about those native Equestrians who have crossed over into our world. And not just Twilight Sparkle, but also her apprentice Starlight Glimmer, her five friends Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie, along with one Star Singer, who apparently was once friends with the rogue Sunset Shimmer and has a limited ability to predict the future. From what I’ve read on their, admittedly hastily-assembled profiles and recorded statements, Equestria as a whole is a generally peaceful society that is largely averse to violence and seeks nonviolent solutions however and whenever possible that don’t conflict with their ideals.”
“Is there a point to this, we know all of this already,” Teresa Gottschalk responded.
“The point is, how do we as magi compare to them? We utilize deception, espionage, sabotage, and even outright conflict on rare occasions to achieve our goals. We are naturally arrogant, suspicious, callous, obsessive, spiteful, and even destructive. Ponykind is reluctant to execute even a hardened, unrepentant criminal for the sake of even the faintest hope of redemption. Otherwise, they are locked away forever, or probably even banished. Our pasts are drenched in the blood of innocent souls who were unlucky enough to either be subjects of horrible experiments or simply for catching a passing glimpse at a hint of magic. I doubt that Equestria would go to war against us. But it would be well within their nature to simply bar our entrance from Equestria and its magic altogether. And because they control the portal and hold all of the necessary research, we would be able to do nothing against them.
And just like that, the greatest frustration and worst nightmare of every human magi was brought to the fore – the knowledge of the existence of greater magic out there, but sitting too far out to ever be grasped.
“I tell you all now: while we may be resigned to our inevitable exposure to the world, our access to the wealth of magical knowledge lying in Equestria beyond that portal – which leads into their capital city of *ahem* Canterlot mind you – is anything but certain. We can negotiate our continued existence with our own governments, they would be fools to pass up the opportunity. But Equestria can afford to put us at arms’ length, deny us their permission to study their magic, and even drive a wedge between us and much of the world. Whatever we do, we must tread around the Equestrians with the most caution, and hope and pray to God some Outlier doesn’t destroy our efforts by doing something beyond the pale.”
It was a truly sobering thought, one that thoroughly tamped down on the passions that had just been running wild, as the heads finally began openly turning to their advisors and whispering with them. When Matteo Cavallo stood up, everyone’s attention returned to him.
“You young ones always seek to do everything as quickly as possible,” Matteo Cavallo stated. “And I must admit, the thought of what is to come has my blood rushing like it hasn’t since the French Revolution. I believe we need little more debate among ourselves. Confer with your advisors, and let us have a vote on what we shall do. Shall we stand our ground and wait for the storm to bear its fury, or shall we go out and unleash it ourselves?”
The other magi spoke with their advisors briefly once more, then rose as one, and made their decision.