To my surprise, it was Daybreaker who found her way to us first. The reason this was surprising was that we haven’t talked with her about our plan to meet in this world.
As for how she arrived? Well…
I was watching the sunset I was not responsible for, a notebook next to me with a drawing of said sunset. I had found that my skills with drawings and spells had increased significantly since we got separated, and I had a guess that this was because of the body I held.
For Daybreaker this probably meant that she had become less… sociable than before.
In one moment, nothing, in the next, she was flung into me.
“Oof! What gives?” I exclaimed, picking myself up and noticing the alicorn atop of me.
“…Day? How did you know we’d meet here?”
She shrugged.
“I didn’t. I landed in an Equestria ruled by ‘me’, and then teleported in the multiverse, but with a goal this time. I am not sure how long I spent in the void, but it spit me out here,” she responded, causing me to nod.
“So, what are you doing here? This world does not look like Equestria,” she said, looking around.
“I’ll answer you if you take on your disguise,” I deadpanned, getting her to facepalm.
“I knew I forgot something. Sorry, Celestia. That’s probably why we should let you lead us,” she said, pulling out the ring. Interestingly, it provided her with a robe I could tell was pulled from the ring that I had on my horn.
“You suspect that your body had influenced your mind?”
She nodded.
“As time went on, I found myself caring less and less for the world I was in, to the point that I hit dragons so hard that I might have killed them. Now, my question?”
“I’m teaching magic.”
Daybreaker was silent for a moment.
Then…
“Wh- hahaha! Really? Really? Let me guess, this school’s yours at well?”
I deadpanned.
“I’m not Celestia, and that’s why I go by ‘Samantha’.”
“Fair,” she responded, looking around.
“What got a ma- woman to do for some meals around here, anyway?”
“Quadruped world?”
“Yep.”
I shrugged.
“You could just register at the guild,” I responded, tearing a page from my notebook and quickly writing down a recommendation letter for my ‘sister’ Daybreaker.
She raised a brow at that.
“I didn’t peg you for the adventurous type.”
“Well, I’m still human, at least where it counts,” I responded, pointing to my head.
“I’m not content with sitting on my ass doing nothing for weeks.”
Daybreaker laughed.
“I like you! You’re far better than Celestia ever was! Now, mind accompanying me? I’m sure questing together is the better option compared to random parties,” she responded, causing me to shrug.
“Might as well, but you’re the melee. Oh! I nearly forgot, but I have to introduce you to the wyverns!”
“Wyverns?” she asked, following me towards the guild’s building in this city.
“Yeah, I gave one of them a tiny sliver of my power. Don’t worry, it is so little that it has already regenerated, and it cannot be used against me. However, the magic had made the wyvern quite powerful,” I responded, getting a raised eyebrow from my ‘sister’.
“You sure that won’t become a problem?”
“Nah, he’s like Flutters.”
“Surely not that bad,” Daybreaker said, looking at me skeptically.
“Not that bad,” I verified, opening the doors in front of us.
“Samantha! Back for new quests?”
“No, I’m here to recommend someone to the guild. Daybreaker here is my sister, and she is as powerful as I am,” I responded, getting a nod from the receptionist.
Since Daybreaker was a ‘close blood-relative‘, I could recommend her without her having to go through the verification quest. Her strength of course got measured, and her rank got set equal to mine, to D.
She raised an eyebrow at me.
“You haven’t tried raising your rank to A?”
“The more powerful you get, the more you get noticed. Also, I nearly blew up the academy once by turning into my version of you. I’m trying to keep a low-key profile right now,” I responded, causing Daybreaker to stare at me.
“You? You, out of all four of us, pulled something like that?”
“To be fair, I was under the influence of mental magic at that moment,” I responded, causing her to chuckle while facepalming.
“How long were you in this world, anyway?”
“A few months, why?”
She blinked.
“For me, only four days have passed since we got separated.”
Oh.
“Not like it matters much,” I responded shrugging, pulling out my notebook again.
It had a spell on it which I currently was trying to redesign to use less mana. It was supposed to be the beacon signal for the others.
“On that topic, how did you even find me?”
She shrugged.
“I got lucky. As said, I was in a world with Daybreaker. Her magic was similar to yours, since she, unlike me, originally was Celestia. I just set a goal that magic signature combined with my own.”
“I see. Then, could you help me cast this spell?”
“Sure. How am I supposed to do that?”
“Just give me access to your mana pool. This spell is supposed to break through the layer separating reality from the void, after all.”
“That, I can do,” she responded, holding out her hand to me.
As soon as I took it, I could sense our mana pools connecting, and the leylines in our arms started expanding, although I could tell they would only do so temporarily. I made a mental note to investigate this phenomenon later, pouring my mana in the spell instead.
The intricate matrix formed atop my (invisible) horn, seemingly not doing anything, before it flashed white and then proceeded to drain mine and Daybreaker’s mana pool within a second. Wholly unprepared for this, I nearly fell over because of the drain, and my ‘sister’ was not faring better.
Luckily, the spell required nothing more than being cast and absorbing enough mana. I encased it in a crystal to protect it, then pocketed it. If it would be broken, it would just stop working, but the feeling of having sucked all your mana out of your body was not one I wanted to feel again anytime soon.
“How much do you have?” Daybreaker asked, helping me up.
“About… two percent,” I responded, causing her to nod.
“I have twelve percent left. It seems that thanks to you being closer to the source, it prioritized your mana pool. Or maybe it had something to do with the mana transfer.”
I shrugged.
“It’s not like we have to find that out now, now do we? After all, we have all of eternity to do so.”
She snorted.
“Fair. I’m still not comfortable with the thought of being immortal, but that’s probably just me.”
“You have more than enough time to familiarize yourself with the idea,” I deadpanned, starting to guide her back towards the academy.
When the students came in next Tuesday, they noticed that someone had been added to the class again.
However, what they didn’t expect to see was me sitting there, torn between amusement and resignation.
She had come up with a plan to show the other students what magic could really do, and I eventually agreed with her.
Eight o’clock.
“Quiet! As you may have noticed, we got a new member in class. Daybreaker.”
“Morning.”
“She’s not here as a student, though. She’ll assist my lessons, instead. And is about as strong as I am. Currently, she has more power than I, but that is because I nearly emptied my energy pool casting a location spell so that she could find me, and am supporting the shield spell around the city.”
A half-truth is better than a complete lie, right?
“Also, feel free to speak with her when testing spells. With the materials here, I would be surprised if you could create a spell even remotely capable of seriously harming either of us. Our energies provide us with low-level protection, but it more or less cancels spells of the level we’re currently discussing.”
“Sam?”
“Yeah?” I asked, turning to Daybreaker, raising a brow.
She gave me a fanged grin.
“How about a spar?”
“…later,” I responded, pulling out the notes I made about colorless runes.
“Over the last few weeks, you all have learned the essentials for creating spells, so today I have two special things for you. One, a spell I myself created, a spell without an attribute. Secondly, I will teach you how to deconstruct simple spells.”
Both of these announcements visibly shocked my audience with the first being supposedly impossible and the second incredibly hard.
But, with the right methods… it became easy. I allowed myself a smile.
The only thing this world was missing was an outside perspective, of someone rejecting ‘common sense’.