Darkness and fog surrounded Failsafe, as she groggily churned to life.
What… Oh, my head, what happened? Wait, better question, where am I? No, even better question, WHO am I? Hmmm…
She did her best to move limbs she quickly realized she didn’t have, and drew some basic conclusions about her circumstances.
I don’t appear to have a body, which is… okay? Why is that okay? Ugh, my thoughts feel so slow for some reason. Where in Equestria am I getting this information from? And why is this one spell burning in my head?
Having exhausted her physical means of investigating the situation, Failsafe decided magic was the next-best thing to try. Letting out a pulse of thaumic energy from her… not-quite-a-horn, or whatever it was she was using, she waited for the results of her ping.
Oh. OH. Now that explains a lot.
Light Bloom was not certain how she should feel about her first day at the Experimental Magic Division. For one, it was everything she’d ever imagined it to be - high-ceilinged rooms full of ponies experimenting with spellforms and theories on the cutting edge of science and magic. This was where they invented self-toasting bread! She thought, mentally squeeing over the potential that the tower represented. On the other hand, in no other place had she felt quite so… uneasy, she decided was the best word.
It had started that morning, when she first entered for her tour of the whole place, but It had slowly gotten better over the course of the day - that is, until she headed back downstairs for lunch. Is it proximity based? She pondered, munching on a hayseed sandwich and idly scribbling notes on a piece of paper. Perhaps there’s an experiment on the ground floor that’s interacting with my magic strangely. I should look into that. As proof that she was just the kind of pony the ED attracted, she promptly abandoned her project on the third floor and hurried off to the equipment locker to get a few things.
“So, just to be clear, you want to run all over the ED waving around a thaumic energy detector looking for the one magical anomaly out of all the experiments and faffing about ponies are doing that shouldn’t be there, based on nothing more than a weird gut feeling you have?” Asked the pony currently on staff at the equipment locker.
“Um… yes? Is- is that not okay?” Light bloom managed, suddenly realizing how ridiculous her request sounded.
“Oh, no, that’s perfectly fine. It’s not even the weirdest request I’ve heard today. Somepony came by asking for a thaumacoil to help with their work on ‘Self-Toasting Bread 2’, whatever that is.” The quartermaster said, handing her an energy detector and a form to fill out.
“Why would they possibly need- what’s Self-Toasting Bread 2- I have so many questions…”
“I’ve learned to just let those kinds of things go, you have to if you want to have any time for your actual work around here.” He accepted the completed form and waved a goodbye to Light Bloom. “And remember, that needs to be back by Monday!” he called after her as she set off.
That quartermaster had an excellent point, Light Bloom commented to herself as she fiddled once again with the knobs on her thaumic analyzer, searching for a frequency that would tune out the clamor of spells being flung and experiments being started and restarted in maddeningly formed configurations. It’s going to be a massive pain to try and find one weird pattern in a building full of weird patterns. It’s clearly getting stronger the lower I go, however, so it must be on this floor, unless… She looked around.
After no small amount of searching and some mental mapping of the layout of the tower, Light Bloom finally worked out where the stairs to the basement ought to be - only to find a door labeled “Staff Only”.
“But I’m staff!” She protested, jiggling the handle with her magic. “I work here now!”
The lock, being inanimate, was deaf to her pleas. And so she set about doing some research on what she called1 “Arcane Penetration Testing”. Fast Hooves, her roommate and self-proclaimed “sneakiest unicorn on campus”, was excited to hear about this.
1Or rather, not what she called, necessarily, but certainly what she wrote on the official paperwork.
“Oh my! Has our little lightning bug finally succumbed to the dark side?” She asked, when Light Bloom approached her about getting into the ED at night.
“It’s not that, there’s something… weird going on in the basement. I keep getting these strange headaches when I’m on the ground floor, and the only place they could be coming from is down there. But…” she rubbed one foreleg with the other sheepishly. “It’s locked, and I don’t know anypony who’ll let me down there on a gut feeling. The quartermaster was pretty okay with it, but the only ponies with access to that area are senior professors, and I don’t think they’ll be quite as understanding.”
“Hmmm, there may be something I can do. Meet me outside the ED tonight after sundown.”
Light Bloom slunk nervously across the grounds in the shadow of the large tower that was the Experimental Division. She had made it nearly all the way to the door, scanning the whole time for any sign of Fast Hooves, when a voice behind her made her jump nearly a foot in the air.
“And what are you doing out here late at night, missy?”
“OhmygoshI’msosorryI- Oh, screw you Fast.” She said, realizing halfway through her panicked excuse that her friend had been the one speaking. “Are you going to help me or not?”
Her giggling compatriot pulled herself together and started towards the door. “Of course, of course, the opportunity was just too good to resist. Now, what have we here…” As Fast Hooves knelt to inspect the lock, Light Bloom checked over her thaumic detector.
“Aha! Got it!” Fast Hooves exclaimed, retrieving an oddly shaped device, clearly enchanted, from the lock on the basement door. “Now go, quick.” She motioned to Light Bloom. “I’ll keep watch up here.”
Light Bloom made her way down to the basement, detector at the ready. Without the magical noise of the upper levels and daytime research, the strange frequency was much easier to pin down, the needle of the device hovering at the low end of the spectrum. As her hoof hit the basement floor, however, the needle jumped, and the uneasy feeling washed over her like never before - it was pressing at her head, strange and unbearable, almost pushing her to turn back until, all of a sudden, whatever it was managed to stabilize the issue it was having and the strange pressure became whispered speech, too faint for Light bloom to make out. She she swung her detector in a wide arc, looking for the source of the noise.
The murmurs picked up in volume, apparently straining to be understood, but to no avail.
Light Bloom wasn’t quite sure what this meant - in fact, she wasn’t even sure the mysterious voice was coming from an external source, but all evidence from the wildly dancing needle of her thaumic detector implied there was something going on down here. She looked around, seeking anything to explain this strangeness.
The basement of the new Experimental Division was not the grand laboratory that it was before, instead relegated to being storage space out of a combination of a need for storage space - the ED ponies where the kind who ended up with a lot of detritus which they nonetheless insisted would be useful later - and, to be honest, no small amount of superstition2. As such, Light Bloom’s view of the rest of the basement was blocked by many teetering construction projects built of boxes stuffed with junk. And yet, through the narrow streets formed between the cardboard skyscrapers, she could just barely see the glimmer of runes humming with energy.
2It may surprise an outsider that ponies so devoted to logic and reason would succumb to superstition in this way, but there is a deeper instinct in all of us that will cause even the most avowed scholar of the scientific method to still not propose Titanic as the name for a new cruise ship, just in case.
It was only after she had started navigating a path to the center of the basement that Light Bloom realized that this may in fact be a bad idea. And then her curiosity took over once more and she pushed deeper into the maze of boxes.
At last, Light Bloom stumbled out of a particularly perilous corridor of boxes to find the very center of the basement to be completely clear of clutter. On the floor, carved into the stone, was some kind of channeling circle, and around it were rings of newer runes she could not identify.
Standing this close, the murmurs and whispers she had been hearing while moving through the boxes were louder than ever, but she still couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. She stepped, tentatively, past the first ring of runes.
The voice snapped into focus.
-ucking finally! Can you believe how hard it is to get someone to come down here? Stars, it’s like pulling teeth.
“What? Who are you? How are you talking to me?” Light bloom managed, gazing around the clearing of boxes in confusion.
Oh, yeah, I should probably introduce myself. Greetings! Call me Failsafe, since that’s the only thing resembling a name that I can remember. As for that last question, well, it’s not too difficult seeing as you’re standing inside my brain.
Light bloom dropped her gaze back to the floor, and realized the symbols had been humming in time to the rhythm of Failsafe’s speech. The pieces clicked together.
“You’re a thaumic consciousness? I thought those were still highly experimental!”
I’m something resembling a TC, but whoever created me made a lot of edits. I have basically no built-in memories besides little scraps of things here and there, and this burning implanted thought of one spell that I absolutely must cast.
“How did they expect you to cast anything? You don’t exactly have a horn, or any innate mana.”
That’s why I need your help. That circle on the floor? It’s a channeling circle. You dump power in, and I - since I was built on top of it - can use it to cast.
“That seems convoluted. What’s this spell? Maybe I can just do it for you.” Light Bloom offered.
Spellforms and incantations flashed in Light Bloom’s head, slowly at first, then faster and faster, speeding through increasingly advanced and interconnected spells, some needing to be cast two or three at a time, some obviously created whole cloth for their function in this greater project. It quickly became overwhelming - she tried to stop focusing on them but they just kept coming - “Stop! I get it!” She cried, putting a hoof to her head.
You see? I don’t even understand it - but I can definitely cast it with enough power. I just… know that much, for some reason. I think I was made off a mental impression of someone very good at magic.
“So what, I just pump power into this circle and voilá? That’s it? Maybe your creator could have cast that spell in one go, but I don’t think I have the power. Also, were there material components there?”
Yeah, Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and a bunch of others. A list with associated masses flashed in Light Bloom’s mind.
“Why is that so familiar?”
Beats me. I have amnesia, remember?
“It’s ponies!” Light Bloom gasped in realization. “That’s the chemical composition of a pony! Are you trying to make a body for yourself?” Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure that Failsafe was as good-natured as she seemed.
I don’t know! Whoever made me gave me this ridiculous task to somehow manage from the basement of some lab, and didn’t even bother to mention what it would DO! Maybe it makes a body. Maybe it creates a bomb! I just know that everything will change the moment I cast that spell.
“Okay, okay, I’ll see what I can do. There must be someplace in the ED where they have those kinds of materials. That still leaves the power issue though. Perhaps… hm. I’ll think of something.” There was a creak from above, and Light Bloom remembered that she technically wasn’t supposed to be here. “For now, I need to leave before I’m caught.”
Please… Failsafe said, just before Light Bloom stepped outside her ring of influence. Please don’t forget about me…
“Of course!” Light Bloom said. “I’d never leave a pony in need.”
But there was a part of her that still worried she might have made a grave mistake.