Sunrise

by Winston


IX - Luna Overdrive

Sunrise
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Chapter IX - Luna Overdrive

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The moon cresting to its zenith marked midnight, following the usual routine Quartz City’s lunarites kept to. Celestia could feel it from inside Winter Wheat’s woodshed without having to see it. She also sensed that the sun, by contrast, was parked behind the far side of the planet, almost motionless while it waited for the solar thaumocontroller to start pulling it toward the next dawn. Thinking about the many long hours still left to go between now and then made Celestia feel even more tired than she already was.

The distraction of these stray thoughts slipping through her mind broke her concentration on the large piece of transparent crystal in front of her. Near the point of magical exhaustion and having nothing to show for it, she eased off on her magic and let the crystal sink to the ground as slowly and gently as she could. The brilliant rosy light from her horn dimmed and blinked out. Her aching legs folded underneath her and she dropped onto a small pile of soft straw covered by a coarse blanket.

Panting to catch her breath, she allowed herself a little while to rest. Although she was trying to stick to their new approach and not to overwork herself so much anymore, sometimes it was hard to get around. Crystal resonators like the big hexagonal shaft of perfectly clear high-grade quartz she’d been focusing on just now didn’t fire themselves, after all. Power, and a lot of it, had to come from somewhere. Her aching forehead and the sweat matting her mane and beading in heavy drops in her coat attested that, right now, that somewhere was Celestia’s horn.

Trying to use a resonator to turn a steady output into brief pulses spiking at much higher power than any unicorn could produce on their own was an idea that she and Luna had concocted together, one of the best they’d come up with so far. Unfortunately, ‘best’ was a relative term, and Celestia ruminated with frustration on how hopelessly inadequate it still was. Although a crystal could serve as a very effective battery to hold large quantities of magical energy, the highest capacity piece they could get their hooves on was still orders of magnitude short, even when she pushed it to frightening extremes. At the most intense she dared drive it to, she could feel the stress in the crystal lattice, threatening to crack and shatter explosively. The undamped vibration while it was resonating also filled the shed with an ear-splitting hum even more painful than the screech of steel nails scraping across a chalkboard.

And all these problems are aside from the issue of output duration, which will necessarily be very short, not the type of continual link we’ll probably need…

She sighed and tried to let those discouraging thoughts drop away, distracting herself by idly conjuring up a small replica of the sun hanging in the air a meter in front of her muzzle. It was a perfect copy, complete with sunspots and tiny flares looping off of its surface while she watched.

At least her little illusion made her smile. Becoming so attuned to the sun that she was able to recreate its image in such precise detail gave her some hope. It reminded her that they weren’t entirely without progress, even if—

A sudden pop and a flash of light to her left made her start and jump to her hooves. The miniature sun blinked out, vanishing along with her moment of calm.

Being spooked gave way to feeling irritated when she looked over at where the disturbance had come from and found a rolled-up scroll lying on the floor. She levitated it and discovered that it was tied around the middle with a bow of clover-green ribbon and sealed with a blob of wax in the same color, making it easy for her to guess who it was from. After settling down a little bit, she broke the seals, unrolled the paper, and started reading the letter within:


Dear esteemed colleagues,

There’s been an interesting development! After consulting numerous history books and being pointed to some very old archives I probably shouldn’t have gone digging in alone (and nearly being eaten alive by spiders for my trouble—a story for another time), I hit a lucky break and found something that might be helpful to us.
It seems not all moon-moving unicorns limited their record-keeping to just calendars. I have discovered what appears to be a personal notebook belonging to a lunarite named Tidal Force, who lived long ago before the time of the thaumocontrollers. I surmise that she either died suddenly or lost these notes in some sort of disaster and couldn’t return for them—as they contain some of her ‘trade secrets,’ I’m certain she would have more carefully hidden or destroyed them if she’d been able to. Lucky for us, she wasn’t. The book, being hundreds of years old, was very fragile and almost crumbling into dust, but with care I’ve been able to devise the right spells to read most of it. I’ve transcribed some of the more promising pages and attached copies of them to this letter in the hopes that the two of you may find some clues to accelerate your efforts. The grammar and spelling are a little archaic, but nothing so far removed from our current language that it’s indecipherable.
Happy reading, and as always, I appreciate your hard work.

♡,
C.t.C.

P.S., I am sorry to send a letter at such an odd hour, but I thought night would be better than day, for obvious reasons.


Celestia’s irritation had faded by the time she finished reading. Intrigued, she flipped through the attached sheets. They certainly looked like magical transfers from notebook pages, and as stated in the letter, the dialect was very old-fashioned. She stumbled briefly here and there on the unfamiliar style, but for the most part she was able to take the meaning without too much difficulty.

By the time she was done, what she’d read made her eyes open wide and brought an excited smile to her face.
​ 

☙ ☀ ❧



“Luna! Luna, wake up!” Celestia shook her sister excitedly.

“I— what…?” Luna stirred under her blankets, barely cracking open one eye. “…’S’it sunrise already?”

“Almost,” Celestia said quickly, barely noticing the question. “Look, you have to see this! Clover sent us something during the night. It’s important.”

“Tia.” Luna yawned and brought up one forehoof to push down the blanket covering most of her head, revealing a bird’s nest of bedmane and an unhappy glare. “How important?”

“Very,” Celestia insisted, resisting the urge to yawn in reciprocation.

Luna opened one eye a little wider. “More-important-than-coffee important?”

“Well…” Celestia studied her sister’s tired face and relented, smiling slightly. “I suppose you can drink coffee while you read it.”

Luna sighed. “…Good enough,” she mumbled, pushing the blankets down and stumbling out of bed.

“Wait.” Celestia levitated a hairbrush over from a small table and began brushing out her sister’s tangled mane. Luna stood still while Celestia went through what had become their new morning routine, working carefully to groom the silky cornflower locks back to an orderly state.

“There,” Celestia said softly, putting the brush down when she finished. “Now you look civilized.”

“Thank you.” Luna yawned again, then nuzzled Celestia briefly on her way out of the room.

Luna reached the kitchen and started some coffee brewing. “Now, what’s so important that it had to be this early?” she asked, looking out a dark window. “It’s still a little while yet ‘til dawn. I could still be sleeping.”

“You’ll understand when you see it.” Celestia pointed to the letter from Clover, lying on the dining room table.

Luna walked over and started reading. “Oh. She found something?” She finished the letter, then flipped it to the bottom of the stack of papers and started on the copied pages. Halfway down the first one, she looked up at Celestia, with wide, surprised eyes.

Celestia just grinned and let her keep reading.

After a few minutes, Luna broke to go retrieve her coffee from the kitchen, but it was almost an afterthought. The steaming mug that would normally have her full attention was relegated to only a brief second or two here and there for an occasional quick sip while she devoured the transcribed pages instead.

Celestia sat and waited quietly until Luna finished and slowly set down the last sheet. “Well.” Luna stared at nothing in particular, looking a little stunned. “This explains… a lot.”

“It certainly does.” Celestia nodded. “The question is, can we do it?”

“It almost seems too good to be true,” Luna reflected cautiously. “So simple it’s surprising. But that makes a kind of sense, because it’s also so simple everypony would miss it. Especially if they didn’t have just the right talents.”

“Simple, but the kind of thing you’d only realize by thinking far outside the box of the kinds of magic we’ve been taught,” Celestia agreed. “I wouldn’t have ever imagined it would be a self-sustaining process. All this time, we’ve been thinking about how to get enough output from ourselves, or from crystals, when the power is already right there if we can just finesse it into cooperating.”

“Right. If.” Luna nodded. “Have you tried any of this yet?”

“A little bit of poking at it,” Celestia said. “Just sort of experimenting, but not much more. I’m still on the first steps of feeling things out. I wanted to go slowly. I’m a little worried it might be dangerous. I was hoping we could work on it together.”

“Haven’t you already been working all night?”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing.” Luna shook her head. “You need to rest. You’ll be no good burned out. That’s what we agreed to with Clover. Something better for us all. We can’t go working ourselves to death, remember?”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll manage,” Celestia insisted. “And it’s not as if I’m being forced. I want to do this. Anyway, I’m not even that tired.”

“Hmm, how did you put it when I tried this?” Luna thought for a moment. “Oh, yes. I remember.” She pointed one hoof at the door to their room and stared at Celestia with stern eyes. “Bed. Now.”

Celestia stared at Luna in surprise for the briefest of moments, before an amused look formed on her face. “Why you little…”

Luna smiled back and stuck her tongue out. “This is what you get for being a good sister and looking out for me. Now I must repay you when the horseshoe’s on the other hoof.”

Celestia rolled her eyes and huffed. “Fine, if I must,” she conceded, then walked to Luna and hugged her. “Goodnight, then. And good luck.”

“No. You were right.” Luna nodded and tapped the papers on the table with a forehoof. “It’s not a matter of luck. Not anymore.”
​ 

☙ ☀ ❧



The forest was empty, a quiet place filled with shadows stretching out long in the light of the setting sun coming through the branches. The trees were bare, having dropped their leaves for winter, though the air felt mild and there was no snow on the ground.

Celestia?

She looked around in surprise. The call unnerved her, with the way her name seemed to be whispered on the wind, coming from no particular direction.

Celestia, can you hear me?

The voice was still directionless, but a little louder and more familiar now. “Luna?” Celestia called out in response.

Yes, it’s me.

“Where are you?” Celestia turned her head back and forth, squinting through the fading dappled light. She didn’t see anything.

I’m not really sure. It’s your dream. I’m afraid this is something unfamiliar.

“The forest?” Celestia asked, looking around hesitantly. “It’s not very familiar to me, either. I don’t know my way around, exactly.”

Have you been here before?

“I…” Celestia thought about it. “I think so? Occasionally, in other… dreams? You’re saying I’m asleep right now?”

Yes. Just a moment. I think I can find you.

“Where are you?” Celestia asked again. She glanced around in various directions and still didn’t see anything but more trees.

“Over here!” a distant voice rang out, finally coming from somewhere specific this time.

Celestia turned her head to look to where the voice was coming from, and started walking towards it. “Luna?” She peered through the trunks, trying to see her.

“I hear you!” Luna shouted back.

“Luna, I’m coming!” Celestia continued following the sound. Finally, she spotted something moving, a midnight blue form walking through the woods. She ran to it, while the form likewise turned and began to approach her.

The deep blue figure was vague and indistinct at first. As she got closer, it took on what seemed to be a more solid appearance and a finer level of detail, coalescing as if made out of mist. Luna’s cornflower blue mane and tail became clear and defined, along with her teal eyes and silver crescent moon over black clouds on her haunch. After another few seconds of closing the gap, she was standing there as fully formed and solid as ever.

“Hello, Celestia.” She smiled.

“Luna.” Celestia tilted her head slightly. “What’s going on?”

“Apparently, this worked,” Luna replied.

“What worked?”

“Dreamwalking,” Luna said. “This is just a crude version, and there’s so much still to learn, but it’s a beginning.”

“Beginning of what? How are you doing this?”

“That’s what you need to see, Celestia,” Luna said. “What we read about, it’s like no other magic I’ve ever used or felt. This…” She gestured with a hoof and tried to speak, but nothing came for a few seconds. “…Just… just watch.”

Luna’s horn began glowing, and Celestia felt an accompanying thaumic field begin to build. It wasn’t out of the ordinary at first, just normal amounts of magic trivial for any unicorn. Then it rapidly started escalating, ramping up to what felt like the level of a strong telekinetic exertion, although Luna didn’t seem to be moving anything.

“Luna, what is it?” Celestia asked curiously. “What spell is this?”

“I wish I could tell you, but I’m not exactly sure how to describe it.” Luna shook her head. The field continued to grow in intensity, until it started to feel like the radiating magical blaze of strongly enchanted crystals. It surprised Celestia with power beyond what a unicorn, even one as strongly magical as Luna, should have been able to produce on her own.

It didn’t stop. The intensity of the magic Luna was channeling just kept rising, to levels not only impossible, but truly frightening. Celestia lowered her head and flattened her ears. She didn’t like it. Something didn’t feel right.

How was this happening? She didn’t understand. If she was sure of anything, it was that this was far too much, far too dangerous for any one unicorn to handle. Luna’s eyes started glowing white with stray thaumoradiant emission, an alarming and unmistakable symptom of serious magical overexertion.

“Luna, stop! It’s too much! You’ll hurt yourself!” Celestia cried out in fear. “What are you doing?!”

“What I was born to do,” Luna answered calmly. She raised a foreleg and pointed at the sky with one hoof while she stared at Celestia with a serene expression.

Celestia suddenly noticed Luna’s mane and tail emanating a deep purple-blue glow and starting to become translucent, rising and flowing slowly in the air as if on an unfelt ethereal breeze. Tiny points of twinkling light, a night sky full of stars, shined in them—no, not just in them, through them, as if they were a window into the depths of space.

The swelling torrent of magic coming from Luna felt like a blazing white-hot inferno now, so intense it saturated the perception in Celestia’s horn. She was magically blinded in its glare, the way staring at the sun made it impossible to see anything else. Almost on the edge of panic, Celestia took a step back away from her sister.

Even through her fright, she still had enough of her wits about her to look up and follow Luna’s pointing hoof with her eyes. Through the lacework of tree branches overhead, she saw clearly what was there in the painted sunset sky: the silvery moon, already far up over the horizon, and sailing through the heavens so fast that its motion was easily visible.

Celestia’s heart almost stopped when all the pieces fell into place and she realized what was happening.

Luna was raising the moon.
​ 

☙ ☀ ❧



Celestia’s eyes snapped wide open as she woke with a gasp. In an instant, she kicked the blankets off herself and rolled out of bed. A muffled “Oomph!” escaped from somewhere low in her throat when, in her haste, she faceplanted in a clumsy heap on the cold floor. She ended up with legs sprawled out at awkward angles and her rear in the air, tail arched forward and flopped over her back like a dead fish and tangles of unkempt pink mane covering her face.

Completely heedless of her own indignity, she scrambled to her hooves. Still shaking her mane out of her eyes, she started bolting through the house, pulling open the bedroom door ahead of herself telekinetically so she wouldn’t have to stop for it. But she was overeager and this still didn’t feel fast enough. Halfway through the main living area, her horn flashed with rose light and she teleported herself through the walls of the house, appearing in the yard with a loud pop.

She hadn’t entirely thought this plan through: all the conserved momentum from running kept her moving forward, but now on a much less sure footing than a moment ago. Her legs wobbled underneath her while she tried to keep her balance on hooves suddenly skidding over icy ground.

Once she managed to stop sliding and steady herself, she looked up at the sky. It was mid-day, clear and blue with nothing but a few distant wispy clouds. She visually scanned a full circle, but didn’t see the moon anywhere.

She scrunched her muzzle in confusion, and felt around at the ambient magic of the world, finally thinking enough to take the time to pay attention to what her horn could tell her. The moon, she discovered, was in its normal daytime parking position behind the far side of the planet.

Relief, quickly followed by a sense of letdown, came over her. The aftermath of her fading excitement left her feeling deflated. The dream felt so vivid, so real. Was any of what she’d just seen true?

It was a good question, but after a few moments of staring at the sky lost in thought, another issue was quickly becoming more pressing: she’d just bolted outside without her cloak, or any other warm clothing, on a vicious below-zero winter’s day, and the razor bite of bitter cold wind brought reality setting in fast. Her stinging, watery eyes and the shivering in her legs and sides told her this would quickly turn out to be a serious mistake if she didn’t do something about it.

She turned and galloped over to the woodshed, opening the door and letting herself in. The shed wasn’t heated, but at least it wouldn’t be windy and there might be warm clothes inside she could use, not to mention answers to her questions.

“Got your attention, did I?” Luna watched her enter, seeming unsurprised.

So Luna knew. Her presence in the dream had been real, then. “You can say that again.” Celestia nodded. She felt her coat bristling from the cold as she closed the door.

“Oh my. You’re freezing. Here.” Luna levitated her own dark blue cloak and draped it over Celestia. The gentle heat of the phoenix feathers lining the inside felt heavenly, warming her back up and calming her shivers.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Celestia took another moment to warm up. “So, what did I just see?” she asked.

“Oh, that,” Luna said. “Maybe it was a little too dramatic, judging by how quickly you came running out here. I’m sorry, but I thought you’d want to know sooner rather than later.”

Celestia skipped straight to the question that mattered most. All else could wait, as far as she was concerned. “Can you actually do it?”

Luna smiled. “See for yourself.” Her horn started glowing, and a surge of magic rapidly built to an intense crescendo.

Resisting the urge to protest as she had in the dream that it might be dangerous, Celestia tried to simply trust that Luna knew what she was doing and focused her attention on the moon. It was difficult through the flaring magical interference, but she managed. What her sister was doing now didn’t seem to be as severe this time around, at least.

For the briefest of moments, so quick she thought she might have only imagined it, she saw a faint shimmer of ethereal deep blue night sky and glints of starlight enmeshed in Luna’s cornflower mane and tail.

In that same split second, she also felt the moon shift its position—just barely, only a small nudge that jarred it out of place by a perceptual hair’s width, but enough to know that it happened.

It was the tiniest of movements, but in that moment, it couldn’t have felt more enormous.

“It’s true!” Celestia gasped.

“Well, I’ve only barely started,” Luna said. “And I’m still clumsy.”

“But even so!” Celestia felt breathless. “This is the breakthrough! And in my dream—” She peered at Luna. “How were you in my dream, for that matter?”

“That’s still a somewhat clumsy experiment as well,” Luna said. “It’s difficult to explain, exactly, other than that it… felt as if it came naturally, once I began working with the moon’s power. I used what I recalled from Cardinal Clover’s dreamwalking machine: simple telepathy and memory spell elements, but powered with lunar magical energy rather than the crystal arrays of her device. I think my version is more… organic? I’m still somewhat unclear about all the details myself, but I was working mostly by feel. A lot of it came to me intuitively once I started.”

“Interesting,” Celestia said. “Although I’m a little surprised you would be one to dreamwalk, after your experience.”

“I was wary of it myself at first, but I found it wasn’t the same.” Luna shook her head. “I felt like if you’d been dreaming something you didn’t want me to see, I would’ve been able to tell and I wouldn’t have entered. I didn’t think I was risking invading anything particularly private.”

“How could you tell, though?”

“I don’t know how.” Luna shrugged. “I only know that I could. Spells cast by a pony have a very different quality than the thaumotechnology of a machine, but the difference isn’t always easy to explain in precise ways.”

“I suppose that’s true enough.” Celestia nodded. “Well, we can worry about it later. For now, I think there’s a more important task at hoof.”

“What’s that?” Luna asked.

Celestia looked at Luna, fiery determination blazing in her rose-colored eyes. “Teach me how.”
​ 

☙ ☀ ❧



The moon was something primordial; something old and powerful beyond reckoning. She could sense the overall impression of it in her mind, vast and silent while it looked down at Equus from across space and emanated enough strength simply by existing to move entire oceans. It permeated the world, an omnipresent field that bathed everything.

Now she understood. Their assumptions had been wrong, so woefully, ignorantly wrong, this entire time. To access these powers wasn’t a matter of trying to reach out to them. It was the opposite. Just as the old journal had said, they were already here, all around her, waiting. She just had to let it come in. All it took was a call, the right kind of invitation, and the magical power of the moon bent, becoming focused as if through a lens, flowing into her from its diffuse field to form a concentrated torrent.

Opening herself to that power was like nothing she could have ever imagined. It felt like cold quicksilver rushing through her veins; a refreshing, energizing kind of brisk chill, more intense than chewing the strongest peppermint. She immersed in it, letting it saturate through every fiber of her being. The magical torrent obeyed her direction effortlessly, acting in concert with the magic of her horn in such perfect synchrony it was indistinguishable from her own. It was like drawing from her own natural well of magical energy, but made inexhaustible.

This power felt so vast, so limitless! She felt that her telekinesis, if she wanted to, could rip great ancient trees out of the ground, level thick stone buildings, tear apart huge swaths of the very earth beneath her hooves. Even the moon itself answered her call, moving if she commanded it.

Do you understand how it works now? Luna’s voice ran through Celestia’s thoughts.

Yes, I see how to do it. Celestia communicated back through the telepathic link they were sharing. I think I’m ready to try on my own.

Good. She felt the sense of intimate connection to the moon’s primal power blink out in an instant as Luna dropped the link.

“Thank you for showing me,” Celestia said, opening her own eyes now that she no longer had Luna’s perceptions to see through. She blinked a couple times while they readjusted to the light. “That was very helpful.”

“I enjoy having the chance to be the teacher sometimes.” Luna nodded. “It’s not often I get the opportunity. Though even if I hadn’t, I think you would have discovered what to do easily enough on your own. I did.”

“Still, it’s important. Every chance to learn from each other reduces our odds of making a dangerous mistake by having to guess,” Celestia said. “But the real test, of course, will have to wait until tonight.”
​ 

☙ ☀ ❧



Waiting for the rest of the day until after sunset was torturous for Celestia, with impatience blazing in her heart and making her restless. She alternated between pacing around aimlessly and trying to nap to make the crawling time pass by more quickly.

When the hour finally came, she found that the power of the sun was of a distinctly different character than the moon. Opening up to it was a similar process, but called for letting something else in, something that felt like pleasantly heated water flowing through every part of her at once, a warm bath of white-gold light saturating her body. It was something more dynamic and active, a sensation of heat and immediacy compared to the cold stasis of the moon’s long slow-turning cycles.

But as different as they felt, both were near-equal in the sense of incomprehensible power they lent. As she’d felt the moon do for Luna, the magical energy of the sun gathered into her as if bent to a focal point through a lens. The experience was new but familiar, commanding the vast well of energy becoming intuitive and second nature faster than she would have guessed possible. She almost thought she even felt a tingle in her cutie mark, though with the greater part of her concentration invested in focusing on that power running through her, she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just her imagination.

Either way, it hardly mattered. This was the moment of truth. Was it better to be careful and slow? Or to dive in? Did she dare try to move it?

What choice was there, really? It had to happen some time. She bit her lip, almost shaking with anticipation…

And she dared.

It seemed wisest to start small, so her first effort was a timid nudge, the lightest touch she could manage. Nothing happened, the sun remained stuck where it was. It didn’t feel like the moon. This was a far larger mass, and she found that it demanded more.

So more she gave it. She pushed harder, gradually increasing the force bit by bit. Still, nothing.

Finally, right when her exertion began to feel almost worrying in its magnitude, she hit a breaking point. Like a rusty hinge cracking loose, the sun moved. It shifted its position just a bit, just a hair’s breadth.

As soon as she felt that movement, Celestia stopped, taken by surprise. With no experience to serve as a reference, it suddenly occurred to her that she had no idea if inertia would be a factor, especially in a mass so large, so she watched carefully for a tense few seconds, making sure that the sun was truly still once again. A sigh of relief escaped her when it held its position with no further intervention.

Her fear was quickly forgotten, replaced with a wide, triumphant smile on a beaming face that held the pure joy of a child.

I did it! I moved the sun!

She wanted to sing out in joy, scream in ecstatic triumph.

This was even better than the first time she’d discovered how to use telekinesis as a little filly. It brought the same kind of elation so sublime she felt like she could walk on air. Nothing else she could recall in her life had ever even been within a pale shadow of feeling this satisfying. Now she understood how Luna said she felt, and she agreed without reservation. This was what she was born to do.

Although her inner voice of responsibility said that Clover should have been told immediately, the accomplishment felt too good not to do some reveling in first. Celestia spent much of the rest of the night making small adjustments and manipulations to the sun. She moved it in straight lines, then eventually circles, figure eights, and experimented with her speed and finesse, all the while being careful to maintain it in a position on the far side of the planet so that it wouldn’t cast any unusual shadows or lights on the horizon. It wasn’t until about an hour before sunrise that she carefully parked it exactly where it was supposed to be and went inside to write a letter excitedly informing Clover of what she and Luna had accomplished.

She felt a little guilty about the delay while she wrote, and wondered if abandoning herself to enjoy playing with her newfound abilities instead of having discipline hadn’t been a mistake…

But she shrugged it off by the time she was signing and sending the letter. There was good reason to be proud and celebrate. They’d accomplished the impossible. After all the hard work and uncertainty, here was the payoff at last. What harm could it do to let herself have some fun, for once?
​ 

☙ ☀ ❧



“Mage Star Fire?” A voice, accompanied by the blue glow of a small communications portal spell and distorted with its characteristic distant reverb, came through in the darkness. “Mage, are you there?”

Star Fire lifted her head from her pillow, deep violet eyes remaining most of the way closed. “Who is this?” she snapped in a sharp, dry voice. “Explain why I’m being remotely called upon at—” She lit up her horn and glanced at a small clock “—3:09 in the morning. Explain now.”

“I’m– I’m sorry, mage,” the voice came through again. “This is Rose Quartz. Something’s been detected. It’s the kind of thing you left instructions to contact you about.”

Star Fire sat up a little. “What specific kind of thing?” she yawned.

“A massive energy signature,” Rose Quartz responded. “Per your directives, I’m contacting you first.”

“Where?” Star Fire straightened bolt-upright. “From your monitoring sector?”

“Yes, mage.”

“Are you sure nopony else has been informed?”

“I’m sure, mage. You’re the first.”

“Good.” Star Fire thought silently for a moment. “Go to my office,” she finally said. “Wait for me there. I will join you shortly. Speak to nopony. Do you understand?”

There was slight hesitation. “Yes, mage.”

Unceremoniously, Star Fire dispelled the communication portal, sending wispy blue magic scattering away into nothingness. A different spell was already building in her horn while she rolled out of bed and stood up, replacing the blue with deep purple light the color of her eyes. It was faint at first, but suddenly built up in intensity until she teleported out, vanishing with a bright flash and loud pop.
​ 

☙ ☀ ❧



“This can’t be right.” Star Fire, sitting at the desk in her cold office, scowled at the report in front of her. “Can it?”

“It was verified on independent detection systems, Mage.” The pale pink thaumite standing in front of Star Fire’s desk looked uncomfortable. “Three times. The odds of that many simultaneous false indications, all at the same high values, all at the same time…” She trailed off.

“Astronomically slim, yes.” Star Fire looked nonplussed. “But this kind of intensity of unaccounted for magic? Coming from middle-of-nowhere earth pony farmland? What do you make of it, Rose Quartz?”

“I’m sorry, Mage. I couldn’t even guess at a likely cause.” Rose Quartz shook her head, her snowy white mane rippling with the motion. “Thaumosciences has no large operations taking place anywhere near the area, and the characteristics don’t match well with any general class of unicorn magic or thaumomachinery there was available data to compare it to. It’s very unusual. I thought it could possibly be pegasi doing some sort of weather work, but this doesn’t look like any of their usual kinds of weather magic. When I checked with the Meteorological Controls Authority, they also said there’s nothing authorized in that area right now.”

“Well, if it’s not them, and it’s not us…” Star Fire leaned back and pondered for a moment. “But this particular area… could it…” Her voice trailed off while she stared up at the ceiling to her office. “Clover?” She scrunched her muzzle and frowned, making her already stern face seem even more severe. “That’s the only thing that makes any sense. She steals my thaumite, then this happens in the same place that… yes. Yes, it must be…”

“Must be what, Mage?” Rose Quartz asked quietly.

“It must be something that’s going to have to be looked into.” Star Fire said, suddenly leaning forward and standing up. “I want to see it for myself. I’m very curious to know what somepony is up to, out on this farm – this unremarkable, little, middle-of-nowhere farm, where nopony would think to look for strange magic.”

Star Fire started pacing, silently roving her eyes back and forth around the room for a few seconds with the predatory look of a prowling wolf.

“Rose Quartz.” She suddenly stopped in her tracks, staring sharply at the thaumite. “Contact the city guard and arrange for a detachment to accompany a Thaumosciences investigation. Tell them to expect the possibility that several arrests may need to be made, of both earth ponies and unicorns.”