From the Log of Captain David Williamson of the ethership Good Fortune. October 9th, 1889.
The last two days have truly been eye opening and revealing to me. I was still a boy when the first ethership, a modified hot air balloon, slipped the surly bonds of Earth and flew to Mars, and in the 19 years hence the exploration of the solar system and the expansion of the British Empire to all the habitable worlds that are reachable has created a realm that the great Alexander himself would be envious of. Now here I sit, recording the second world shattering revelation of the last 20 years. Moments ago, our party exitted The Needle, the vast metal structure buried deep into the surface of Mercury itself, created by an ancient race of unknown origin and power, after witnessing firsthand the power of magic, and what such power can accomplish in the hands of a trained user.
This information has thrown many certainties of the world into doubt, and I am sure many philosophers and priests will argue the theology of the matter for decades, but the core truth is one that I doubt any man on Earth is prepared for. We have seen proof that magic, far from being restricted to unicorns, is something that all thinking species can wield, and I have no idea how the powers that be on Earth will react to this information. I want to believe this revelation could lead to a golden age for humanity, but I have seen far too much of man's works to ever believe such an age could come about.
In the depths of the planet, nearly twenty levels below the surface, we were standing in the great ruined enchantments that used to power this grand structure when our equine companion, Sunset Shimmer, informed us that she was about to attempt to repair the structure. She told us that she had no idea if her actions would be harmless or potentially fatal for all involved, and entrusted us with a set of sealed letters for her homeland and an estimate of the next time the gateway to it would open. As she was explaining to us how her word would guarantee that we received the promised payment even if she were to perish, Gertrude Bell, the runaway we were searching for when we arrived on this planet, interjected and attempted to tell Sunset that she was not going to leave the unicorn to risk her life alone.
As the two women, and I surprise even myself by the ease that I wrote that phrase, argued, I noticed something peculiar about Miss Bell. Her clenched fists seemed to glow with an unearthly light, and as I watched a burst of ethereal flame shot from them in the middle of a gesture. The room fell silent for a moment as we all took in what had occurred, and Miss Bell appeared to be torn between a manic joy and a deep concern as Miss Shimmer explained, in simple terms, that what we had seen was likely some sort of magic breakthrough akin to what the young of her kind experience. She pondered the situation for a moment and concluded that, given the amount of thaumaturgical energy we had all received, we would likely all have similar but distinct magical incidents in the near future, speculating that Miss Bell’s occurred first as a result of the time spent nearby while she was performing magic.
Turning to us, she told us that in the event she was to perish attempting these repairs, the next best bet for ensuring that this process did not harm us and that we could control it was to reach her people, where with the letter of introduction provided by her we would be welcomed as guests. Given the way the men were acting in response, I feel that it is likely I will have a crisis on my hands if Miss Shimmer were to perish below ground. Thomas and Jacob want nothing more than the return to civilization and put this all behind them, and I have noticed both glancing at their own hands as if terrified of what could come out of them, while Patrick and Daniel seem more interested in learning about magic, for their own reasons. Patrick because he’s a young man, if he told the truth about his age when he signed on then I’ll eat my hat, and the thought of learning magic has him excited in a way that young men always are at the prospect of an adventure. Daniel because, in his words, “If I am going to be loosing fire from my fists, then I want to only do it when I say so, not whenever I get pissed, otherwise no pub in Britain will let me in the front door.”
I have to keep them all calm and focused, but right now is the worst time for that. After their argument, and with Miss Shimmer’s insistence, all humans present, Miss Bell included, began to ascend the dark staircase towards the surface, the silence only broken by our footsteps on the ancient metal. Now that we are at the surface, the men are still barely speaking, bracing for the worst, while Miss Bell has retreated to her vessel, clearly distrusting us given our original reason for being on this planet.
With the men ill at ease and without knowing what will happen now, I have given the order to take off and circle the site. In the event of a blast of some sort, I hope that by retaining a wide berth and being in the open sky instead of level with the canopy of the nearby forest will improve our odds of survival.
Now all that is left is to wait for the bright orange unicorn to fix the magic enchantments…
I will never be believed if I tell this story back in London without proof.
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In the base of The Needle
Sunset Shimmer continued to count down the time. The others needed a head start in case this went badly, and she needed time to psyche herself up for what she was about to do. So, the energy starts at nodes on the perimeter, spreads out through channels working their way in, but can move laterally as well to other channels to reinforce them, which should mean that theoretically even one connection should be enough to get energy into the center. However, that connection would need to be strong enough to handle that much power… well, let’s see if I can get something set up.
After waiting a bit longer for the others to clear out, she sat down, focusing as she pulled out five scraps of metal from the wrecked elevator in the shaft. Using her magic, she straightened them all and etched enchantments into each and every one that would guide the magic down them. They were crude, but they should do the trick… she hoped.
Gripping all five with her mind, she set them all down, allowing the energy of the active enchantments to flow into them while verifying that they were all equidistant from each other, the one nearest to her on top of a massive, glowing crystal, humming with energy. With a sigh, she counted down, one, two, three, and as one pressed the five metal rods to the center…
And jumped back as they split in two, metal fragments flying everywhere. She barely got a defensive spell up in time to avoid a large piece that had gone flying straight towards her head. Looking at the enchanted metal, the tips still hot enough to glow, she realized she had a problem. I don’t have enough power to keep them in place, not with how much energy is involved. I just can’t make something strong enough to hold the power… at least, not right now I can’t.
Well… maybe instead of connecting them like that, I should try to repair the enchantments themselves… after all, it’s the same principles as any other repair spell, aside from the massive amount of power in one part of the system that may explode on me if I do things wrong. Sunset thought, stepping onto the same crystal she had used as the base for one of the poles, muttering spells as she tried the pull power from it for a repair spell… only for it to fail. With a grunt of frustration, she stalked around the circle, eyes like a hawk on every square inch of surface, searching for any hint of a solution. But all she saw was an empty circle, the enchantments connecting the power source and The Needle long since destroyed. But a thought touched the back of her mind, a low, quiet idea that continued to speak to her, getting louder and louder as other theoretical options were disproven.
Connect them with yourself. Become one with the system, see how it works. The idea was insane, and she knew it… but at the same time, she was increasingly running out of options. Another voice told her Don’t be stupid, you can leave this be, the planet won’t be destroyed that quickly. I should just leave, go back to the camp, and bring Celestia with me-
No. She shook her head, shutting down the second voice with certainty. This is what I have to do myself. I made this mess, and I’m not running back to Celestia and asking her for help.
Is my pride worth risking-
It’s not pride. I made this mistake, and that makes it my responsibility to fix, and for all I know not fixing it could cause so many problems with the planet that I will be dead by the time I can talk to Celestia again.
I could die doing this.
Yeah, well taking an entire planet with me because I was a coward isn’t any better. This structure is on the centerline of the entire world, directly in between the face that is always in sunlight and the face that is always in darkness. It is magical, pulsing with energy for unknown purpose, and the big huge river that follows the same center line has some places where the water falls up! The fact is, this planet should not be liveable, it is to close to its sun, the river that waters it relies on magic… if I don’t fix the magical structure that is part of the system running that, how much of the planet will suffer? Am I fine slowing the world river for a year waiting for Celestia to show up? How about letting the winds between the cold and hot sides pick up, causing massive storms that destroy the forests of the twilight zone? I am not doing this because of my ego, I’m doing it because I might have just messed up an entire planet, and I refuse to run away from my mistake!
There was no response, since she had only been arguing with herself. The young unicorn sighed, snorting with annoyance as she stepped up towards the center, one hoof on a glowing crystal, the others farther forward in the dead zone surrounding the central pillar. If she were to just lean forward, then her horn would touch the structure, and the thaumaturgical energy involved would have a clear path through her to the enchantments within. All she had to do was lean forward…
I could die. The thought cut through her brain like a knife. This much power, coursing through my body… I have only seen one pony use this much energy at a time, and she regularly raised and lowered the sun and moon. I’m not Celestia’s equal though… and I doubt I ever will be. The admission would have, when she first went through the portal all those years ago, driven her ego insane. But now… now it was just a fact, one she had accepted because denying it would be to deny her own weakness, and surviving in an untamed world was no place for an ego.
With her breath catching in her throat, Sunset looked up at the vast pillar in front of her, the alien alarms that had first hinted something was wrong still ringing in her ears. “I don’t know if anyone can hear this, and if you can then… ah what the hay. Look, I was a brat, and an idiot, and I honestly would have died if I hadn’t packed as much as I did and been lucky, but… this is stupid.” She shook her head, staring around as she just sighed with acceptance. “I am Sunset Shimmer. I’ve made mistakes, and was an absolutely horrible student, but none of that matters right now. I found this place broken, broke it even more to try and save the lives of the people I came here with… and now I’m going to fix it, not just for them, but because leaving it unfixed might destroy this planet.”
Taking a deep breath, she leaned forward, pressing her horn against the metal. With a muttered spell, power flowed through into the enchantments, drawing from her inner reserves. With another spell, she began replacing that power with energy from the enchantments on the floor behind her. Pushing the power through herself, she felt the energy flow, as if she had just opened the spillways on a dam. Each and every moment that passed, the flow intensified, and she could see enchantments lighting up as power flowed into The Needle the way it had been designed to.
However, it wanted more. It was like a vacuum, sucking up every ounce of power, pulling it through her body like a hose, the vast amount and speed of energy flowing through her making the unicorn physically ill. With her legs shaking, she reached out, attempting to enact the second part of her plan. She felt the flow of magic, doing her best to see how the enchantments in The Needle took in the power and distributed it, while at the same time trying to feel the currents in her own body. But despite her focus, it was like trying to watch the currents in an ocean while on a raft in a storm.
Magical energy leaked through every portion of her body, from her hair to hooves, and she felt her mind begin to, for a better word, spread, observing the entire system as her very soul was bound up and to the magical flow. No, no I need to focus. She thought to herself, struggling against the power as she tried to cast a repair spell, anything to make a connection that wasn’t herself. But nothing happened, the magic would not be contained, or even directed. It went where it wanted to go, and Sunset nearly gave in to despair as she realized what a mistake she had made.
This energy… it’s the energy of the planet. I don’t know how it’s being generated, but it’s not coming from a reserve anywhere, it’s literally the magic of Mercury, focused and concentrated into these Needles. And now… now I am the one connection between the planet and a Needle on the planet. The revelation shook her to the core, as she realized the sheer magnitude of what she was working with. She had had a hint beforehand, but the sheer scale of a planet is always something that is hard for people to wrap their heads around until something forces them to understand or die.
I shouldn’t have done this all by myself, I shouldn’t have sent everyone else away and said it was for their own safety! She ranted internally, feeling the power start to wash at her soul, threatening to erode away her very essence. “But you know what!?” She shouted out loud, gritting her teeth. “If I was just doing this for myself, to prove how strong I was, then I would be willing to give up, to try and pull out… but I’m doing this for an entire planet, and everything that lives on it, and I’m going to fix this or die trying!”
Sunset stopped fighting to control the magic, embracing it and metaphysically opening the doors to her soul, absorbing the power coming from Mercury and feeling it merge with her own. She felt the echo of the original design, the power flowing out from the planet into The Needles, not only keeping the planet liveable, but doing… something, to the other planets of the system. She could see what was what, which enchantments performed which tasks, not because she understood the language of the builders, but because she was mentally watching every inch of enchantment in the massive structure and deep below, seeing how the planet itself slowly produced magic, crystals deep in the core buried by the creators of The Needles. She did not need to see why they were built to know that these builders, with all their power, had used these massive crystals in the crust of the small world to turn it from a dead realm into a source of magic, one that she could only assume went terribly, terribly wrong.
Looking at the amount of power pressing against dead connections, yearning to be freed, she realized that solving the problem of The Needles was going to be challenging. With a careful effort, she grabbed debris near her physical body, reshaping and changing it according to a pattern from elsewhere in the system, and slowly placed it in the dead zone. Bit by bit, she filled in the gaps, painstakingly focused on her task, with emotions, thoughts, everything but the objective pushed from her mind. Sunset Shimmer was part of the system, this vast magical system that covered so much of Mercury, and the needs of her flesh and blood faded away as she focused on the damage to her enchantments.
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From the journal of Gertrude Bell, October 10th, 1889.
The last day was one of the most nerve wracking I have ever experienced. When I fled my father's home and stole this vessel from him, I never had a chance to stop and think about my actions until I made it out of the atmosphere of Earth, and even then the demands of teaching myself to control a vessel through the ether en route to Mercury denied me any true free time with my thoughts. That was not the case on that day. With the revelation that my body had gained the ability to unleash spurts of magic power, and Sunset’s insistence on attempting to repair an ancient monolith by herself, my mind was not exactly filled with pleasant thoughts as I waited on the ship.
There was no emergency to distract me, no tomes of engineering or navigation to study as if my life depended on them, I had only to sit and wait, anxious and terrified, with the sealed letter Sunset had given me resting like a lead weight in my trousers. The minutes ticked on like hours, and even now looking back I can only remember it as a long blur of emotions.
I still am surprised at the speed with which I became attached to my Equine companion. She showed me kindness and was willing to listen to me, and it appears that simply returning those gestures was enough to make us friends. I believe that mostly speaks to how lonely the two of us were at the time, but I do not wish to complain, far from it. Becoming friends with Sunset was some of the greatest luck I could have had after landing on this planet, and I was terrified beyond all relief that I would lose her when I noticed out of the corner of my eye The Needle beginning to glow with multi-coloured light…
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Piece by piece, hour after hour, Sunset/Mercury worked, each inch of ground around her glowing with energy. But rebuilding the structure wasn’t enough, otherwise it would just break the way it had before, so she was also searching, looking over it inch by inch. Despite her awareness covering the entire Needle, she didn’t know the purpose of many enchantments, only what they were doing now that they had power. Looking over them, she saw the ones affecting Mercury and left them in place, and the ones affecting everything else she simply shut down, with small, easily identifiable cuts, some instinct deep inside her/their combined senses saying that certain things must stay and some must go. As she/they slowly worked over The Needle, she felt the magic flowing in other Needles across the planet, her/their actions used as a template. The part of the combined essence that was Sunset, which provided the brain and personality, was fascinated, taking constant mental notes whenever she reasserted herself, while the other part, the vast magical reserve that had no thoughts of its own, only a desire to be fixed and flow freely once more, ignored her, continuing on its path. Through it all, Sunset Shimmer’s body glowed with magical light, her form disappearing inside it and giving the impression that there was only a vaguely equine sized ball of pure energy.
After hours of this, she felt the last piece slide into place, and the connection was made. The energy flowing through her physical form dropped off, and her soul was left, exhausted, battered, but in some ways stronger than ever. She had risked everything, accepted that she could die, and done what she could to make right her mistakes. With a sigh, the orange pony collapsed and fell on her side, only barely noting and reacting to the slight pain she felt from landing on the new pair of limbs jutting from her flank. After a break that could have lasted for hours or seconds, surrounded by the enchantments around her humming with power, Sunset pulled herself to her feet and began to walk, step by step climbing the stairs out, her pace slow and steady as she slowly ascended from the depths, to exhausted to ask some very big questions about what had happened to her body.
Reaching the top, she shuffled through the empty hallways, the magic in the air the only thing keeping her going as each and every step felt like struggling through gelatin. Finally, she reached the exit, blinking and squinting as the low magical light she had been using was outshone by the light of the sun, even in the Twilight Zone of Mercury. Struggling out the massive dirt ramp that she had helped the humans dig out what seemed like weeks before, she could barely focus, her body begging for food, water, and sleep. As she approached the campsite, seeing it packed up, she worried that she had taken to long, that everyone thought she was dead and had left, when she saw movement.
Gertrude stared at Sunset, trying to comprehend what she was seeing. She… she grew wings. Did she not tell me that the only way for that to happen was… to ascend… The runaway heiress shook those thoughts out of her head as she saw her friend stumble, barely catching herself as she fell. Rushing over, she stood next to the pony, reaching down to place a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Easy Sunset, I’ve got you.” She said.
Looking up, she could see the mercenaries craft coming in to land, and sighed with frustration. She understood Sunsets reasoning for working with them, but to act so casually with men who do anything for money, who were sent here to bring her back to her father… she reached with her free hand under her coat, resting it on her revolver in case it was needed.
As the ropes came out, with men sliding down them and wrapping the thick lines to trees, she saw the captain himself approach alone, a smile on his face. Likely pleased he’ll receive his payment. She thought darkly as the man approached. However, when he was about ten yards distant, he paused, looking at Sunset.
“Miss Shimmer.” Captain Williamson asked, staring at the wings on her flank. “I can’t help but notice that not only is The Needle active, but you have… wings.” He said, trying to keep his tone calm as he stared, trying to wrack his mind to remember if she ever mentioned such a possibility.
Sunset blinked, incomprehension on her face at first as she simply stared at him for a long moment. Turning to the side, she looked at The Needle behind her, glowing with power, and then at the feathery limbs sticking out of her side. Had she been fully awake, she would have felt overwhelmed as joy, awe, and dozens of other emotions would flood through her. As it was, she stared at them for nearly a solid minute before uttering a single phrase.
“Huh. I don’t feel like a Princess.”
And with that, Sunset Shimmer passed out, sliding against the side of Gertrudes legs and laying on the dirt, chest rising and falling as she slept, leaving the humans around her to just stare and ponder what the hell they had just seen and heard.