Astral lay on the ground, glaring up at the sky. Every now and then, she’d trace out a crystalline bubble with her hoof, then push it away. All the world’s limits, destroyed, and she was bored. Lucid dreaming might’ve let you do anything, but it didn’t mean much without not being able to do something in the real world. And prison wasn’t the limit she was expecting.
It wasn’t bad. It was routine. The same thing, day in and day out. Doing just what she was told, reading textbooks in the library, paying off her debt to society. The only thing that changed was ponies coming in or leaving. She wasn’t doing anything, and if she vanished, nopony would miss her. She found herself actually waiting for letters for Moondog that never came, just so she could feel wanted.
Heh. Imagine wanting things to memorize to feel important. Hooray.
She pushed another bubble up, but it’d barely left her hoof before one of the facets opened up and the night sky flowed out. The sky dripped to the top of the bubble where it condensed into Moondog, somehow managing to perch and lounge on the tiny bubble at the same time. She looked down at Astral and opened her mouth.
“I didn’t do it,” Astral said immediately.
“Agree to work for me such that I should probably give you updates on ongoing projects so you know how your duties might be changing in the coming days?” asked Moondog, very very fast.
“…Technically, not really,” said Astral. “I just agreed to work for you. You added everything else.”
Moondog grinned. “Well, I’m here, so get ready for updates on yadda yadda.”
Astral suddenly found herself sitting in an overstuffed armchair, Moondog presiding in the empty air across from her, a massive scroll floating between them. “Now,” said Moondog, “I need to give you updates on everything, from the dreamlock and the mail sender to…” She flicked at the scroll and it began rapidly unrolling. Except no paper actually came out, so the scroll simply spun while getting smaller and smaller until it was an extremely wide sticky note. “…absolutely nothing else. Ain’t working for a nonphysical being grand?”
Astral shrugged noncommittally. “Depends on what I need to do.”
“Hence the meeting.” Moondog swiped a leg through what remained of the scroll and it vanished in a plume of smoke. “So. Dreamlock. I’ve been thinking about it, mostly. Lots of thinking. Kind of juggling around the right ponies for the job, especially if we’re working on the mailbox at the same time. Princess, dreams, sending information from one to the other, dream magic, thaumic magic, blocking dream magic, handling all that without-” Astral flinched as a few sparks flew from her ear. “-your head exploding. It kinda…” Moondog held her hooves about an inch apart. “…limits your options, you know? And they need to work well together.”
“Oh.” So what was this about? There was nothing in there that Astral needed to worry about just yet. Work hadn’t even begun on it. Unless… “Um… what sorts of ponies are you looking for?”
“One way or another, we’ll need somepony who knows dream magic, so you up for some research?”
Astral’s back went straight and her ears went up. “You want- Yes!” She broke out into a huge grin. “Prison is so boring. I just want to do some actual work that isn’t rote memorization!”
“You’ve barely done any rote memorization. How many letters have you given me, one?”
“And that’s still too much.”
“Wuss,” Moondog said, smirking. “Anyway, seriously, you’re probably the best pony for the job. Except Mom, but she turned me down. So act shocked when you’re told you’re getting paroled tomorrow.”
Astral’s jaw dropped in shock. Moondog quickly put it back in place and continued, “You’ve been a model prisoner and you don’t want to go back to your old culty ways. Twilight and I both think you qualify. Plus, it’s easier for you to help me this way.”
“Isn’t there-” babbled Astral. “Isn’t there a- a process or-?”
Moondog glared flatly at Astral for a long moment. Then she posed in the air with wings spread wide, trumpets blared, and fireworks went off around her as there slammed into being a neon sign flashing, PRINCESS (DUH). After a moment, more words began writing themselves out: There’s actually precedent, since-
“I know,” Astral said quickly, looking away. “I’m- just- surprised.”
More neon words appeared before her. Least bad way to go about it. “Also, don’t worry about housing or money,” Moondog said aloud, making Astral jump. “Twilight and I have set aside some quarters in the castle for you to live in and a stipend for you to get paid with.” She gave a low whistle. “I am so glad I don’t need any of that.”
“Um. Th-thanks.” Astral swallowed. “I… I can’t really remember the last time someone did something like this for me,” she said quietly, her ears folded back. The Eschaton’s cult hadn’t been one of the warm and fuzzy ones (which were actually a thing in Equestria), and prison was prison.
In spite of giving Astral something resembling a life back, Moondog just shrugged. “Welcome to the era of Twilight Sparkle. There’s gonna be a lot of firsts flying around soon.”
“A first is… something different when it’s happening to you,” said Astral. “It’s…” Deep breath. She’d wrestle with this later. “Thank you,” she said, her voice steady.
“Mmhmm.” Moondog nodded casually. “Oh, and FYI, I’m gonna be working with Twilight on codifying some dream laws. Just setting down some lines so the citizenry knows what I can’t do. And what they can’t. Short version: as long as it’s in your own head, you can do whatever you want and I can’t stop you, but if you use it to enter somepony else’s dreams and harm them, your tail is mine.”
“So the legalese is gonna take up twenty paragraphs, right?”
“Something like that. Anyway, you may or may not be getting letters about that soon. Hard to say.”
“A-alright. Thanks.” She was actually getting warnings. Huh. Getting the Eschaton to tell you his plans beyond the next step had been like pulling teeth, but less fun.
“And let me know if you need help with anything,” Moondog said, swiping open a portal in space with her wing. “Anything. I know this is all a bit much at once, and… well, I’m still new at this.” She grinned and shrugged. “Might be messing up something fierce without knowing about it.”
“Uh-huh. When I find the hole in my apartment wall, I’m sure you’ll be a lot of help with realty.”
“You’d be surprised,” Moondog said mock-seriously. “Have a good night.” With that, the portal swallowed her up.
Astral collapsed onto her back across the armrests. Well, she’d been hoping for a break in the routine, hadn’t she? She’d just never imagined it could come that quickly. (Which she really should’ve, working with Moondog. It made communication… trying.)
With no way to make this dream better, she closed her eyes and let her lucidity drift away. Finally, something to look forward to.
And so, over the next few days, Astral was taken from prison, assigned some quarters in Canterlot Castle (complete with an address), given everything she needed to live a sufficient life, given everything she needed for the dreamlock project, given extra just because, and turned out. No real problems at all besides memorizing the castle map so she didn’t get lost (too often). Her new freedom was… Well. If she was going to be useless, at least it wouldn’t be boring. Her parole meant she couldn’t leave Canterlot, but that was a small thing.
Her own quarters meant free time, and free time meant reading. Lots and lots of reading. Not because she needed to (although she did); it was just that Astral had picked up the habit of reading up on magic until somepony told her to stop, and now the only pony who could tell her to stop was herself. She sometimes found herself missing her usual mealtimes because she got caught up in reading — but freedom meant she could eat whatever she wanted whenever she wanted, so that was no biggie. Plus, she didn’t want to be the weak link in the project. Moondog had given her so much, she didn’t want to let her down.
The dreamlock project met on Saturdays. The week passed in a blur, and suddenly, Astral found herself wandering through a wing of the castle, a key in hoof to a certain research lab. Her key. The one she’d been trusted with. One day, she’d get used to this freedom, but today was not that day. Especially since this particular part of the castle was still a blank to her.
She’d left what she’d deemed twenty minutes early, so Astral managed to still be two minutes early when she finally found the lab. It was nice, very clean with all sorts of cutting-edge instruments for… stuff. Science Stuff. Astral didn’t know what any of them were, but they’d all been neatly labeled and had a brief description of what they did. There were blackboards, chalk, pens, pencils, quills, even a roll of white kraft paper in the corner (for what, extreme note-taking?) and a cheap but serviceable mattress for actually dreaming. Not to mention books upon books upon books. Everything you might need for some hardcore dream research.
Including a partner. A pinkish unicorn was sitting on a stool, frowning at a scroll very intently. When she heard Astral enter, she looked up and gave a nod. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Astral said right back. “Moondog sent you?”
The unicorn nodded. “She scoured Equestria for the brightest, most powerful unicorns around. But they weren’t available, so you’re stuck with me.”
Astral snorted and extended her hoof, grinning. “Anyway, Astral Mind, ex-cultist.”
“Uh…” The unicorn blinked, then grinned right back and shook. “Starlight Glimmer, ex-cult-leader! We’ll get on like a house on fire.”
“Sending lots of ponies screaming and running for help to contain the damage?”
“Exactly!”
“…Since when has that phrase ever meant something good? I hear it and all I can think of is a house burning down.”
“You know,” Starlight mused, “I don’t think I’ve even heard it used seriously. Just in jokes about how bad a house on fire is.”
“Language is weird.”
“Mmhmm.”
Astral looked around the lab again. Very nice, very nice indeed. “So, I guess Princess Twilight likes the sciences, huh?”
Starlight whistled. “Like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve known her since the Storm Invasion, and believe me, if she could spend all day in a lab like this, she would. A good lab is her definition of splurging.”
“That, or she’s living vicariously through us,” said Astral. “As a princess, she can afford all this about a hundred times over, but can’t spend any time in it.”
“Erm…” Starlight’s ear twitched, then she looked away, obviously uncomfortable with the thought. “Mmmaybe…”
“Not that that’s a bad thing,” Astral continued. “It’s not like that makes it immoral to use this lab or anything. It’s just that she-”
The door to the lab opened. Astral glanced over her shoulder, waved at Star Swirl the Bearded, and continued, “-really likes seeing-”
-what the sunblasted friggety.
Astral spun around. Star Swirl, the Star Swirl, limbo-displaced Star Swirl, beautiful beard and all, was standing in the room without a care in the world, casually examining some of the instruments. Astral’s feelings of inadequacy shot through the roof faster than Luna to the moon. Like she’d ever manage to meaningfully contribute anything with him around. He- This guy- He was- Was he really-? But if-
She forced her jaw shut and managed to grin. “Hey,” she didn’t quite squeak. “You, you’re here for Moondog, too?”
“Indeed,” said Star Swirl, sounding exactly like she’d expect Star Swirl to sound. “When she asked, I could hardly turn down the opportunity to examine new frontiers of magic like this.”
“Oooookay,” Astral said quietly. Gulp. “I. Uh. I’m… Astral Mind and I… used to be in a dream cult that attempted to enslave Moondog.” Better to get her skeletons out of the closet now — honesty and all. Regardless of how lame it sounded, she added, “I’m good now, though. I’m Moondog’s intern.”
Star Swirl looked Astral up and down, then shrugged. “If you’re here, the princess trusts you, and that’s good enough for me.” Before Astral could be relieved, he said, “Now, I believe everypony is here, so shall we begin?”
“Um. Sure.” Astral cleared her throat. “So, uh, to recap, Moondog’s looking for two things: a way to transport information from letters to the dream realm without anyone having to read them, and a way to keep anything out of someone’s dream if they don’t want anything in. …Any ideas of where to start?”
“Yeah, actually,” Starlight said, making Astral do a double-take. She held up the scroll she’d been reading. “This is the spell Luna used to dreamwalk during her time as princess. We could start from there, but… Well, she invented a new system of math for it, so…”
“Did she?” Star Swirl took a quick glance at the scroll and immediately frowned. “Hmm. This is rather… disorganized,” he said, the last word dripping from his mouth like a curse. “But I suppose we can work with it.”
“Lemme see.” Astral snatched the paper away and peered at it. It was a muddle of writing and diagrams that seemed more concerned with looking elegant on the page than consistent syntax and focused on poetic language more than equations. In other words, perfectly typical dream magic. She looked at it this way and that, extrapolated the metaphors, thanked her lucky stars she didn’t need a thesaurus. Yes, it made the right sorts of nonsense. She’d never be able to do it herself — she didn’t have the willpower or the magic power or the magic dexterity — but it was internally coherent in that questionable sort of way for dreams. “Huh. Yeah, I get it. This is neat.”
She continued examining the spell, getting invested enough that it took her a few moments to recognize the silence that had fallen. She glanced up; upon seeing that both Starnamed unicorns were staring at her, Astral’s self-consciousness went into overdrive. She swallowed, but managed to keep any stammer out of her voice as she asked, “What?”
“You… understand that?” Star Swirl asked in disbelief.
“Well, yeah,” said Astral. “I mean, mostly. There’s one bit here that I don’t get-” She jabbed at a chunk that seemed to be binding the mind to the body, exactly what you didn’t want in dreamwalking. “-but other than that-”
Star Swirl teleported the paper straight out of Astral’s grasp and into his. He alternated between skimming the paper and giving Astral a Look. Eventually, he held it out to Astral as seriously as if it were her arrest warrant. “Explain,” he intoned.
“What, the- the whole thing?” Astral gasped.
“Yes.”
Astral made angry sounds that sounded like random letters mashed together before she managed to spit out, “Why?”
“I… have limited knowledge of oneiroturgy,” said Star Swirl. “Yours is… more expansive. This spell-” He gave the paper a little wave. “-might be the key to our success. And if that’s the case, it’s probably best that I understand it.”
“That’s- You must be crazy.” It wasn’t a… “big” spell, but it was dense, especially if you didn’t know dream magic. Each fragment of the spell, maybe all the way down to each quill stroke, would need to be expanded upon. In depth. Put it all together, and… “That- That could take… I don’t know, hours!”
“Regardless, we need to know,” said Star Swirl. “And we have time. Plenty of time.”
“He’s right,” added Starlight, almost guiltily. “I… I know some dream magic, but not a whole lot. You obviously know a lot more, so if… you explained it, and made sure everypony was on the same page…” She flashed a nervous grin. “That’d be greeeaaat.”
Astral stared back and forth between Starlight and Star Swirl for a moment. This was the best Moondog could do? A project based around dream magic where only one third of the team members really knew dream magic? Sweet Celestia. No wonder she’d needed to include Astral.
Well, nopony said it would be easy. Astral had just hoped “not easy” didn’t mean “explaining a spell to Star Swirl the Bearded”. Except, no, she hadn’t hoped that, because the mere possibility of it was ludicrous. Billions to one. And yet, here she was. “Fine.” She wheeled a chalkboard into the center of the room and scribbled down the spell as quickly as she could while maintaining its structure. Wishing she wasn’t here, now, Astral circled the first instructions. “We start here…”
True to Astral’s fears, it took hours to fully go over the spell, to the point that Starlight briefly left to get them some snacks. Contrary to Astral’s fears, Starlight and Star Swirl both picked up on dream magic quickly enough; the bulk of the time was spent answering their questions and clarifying parts of the spell in ways Astral hadn’t imagined before. When she’d first seen it, she’d thought it was pretty clever; now, she knew it was genius. It wasn’t for nothing that Luna was Equestria’s premier dreamwalker to the point that the only rival in anything close to resembling her league was a machine purpose-built for dreamwalking. A machine she’d built.
“…which,” Astral said as she underlined the penultimate verse of the spell, “gives Luna easy — well, ‘easy’ — access to and from the collective unconscious without actually falling asleep.” Pause. “I think.”
“Yeah, that seems right,” said Starlight. She seemed to have a better grasp of dream magic than Star Swirl. “From what I know, she’s pretty easy to rouse when she’s in her… dreamwalking fugue.”
“And how much do you know?” grumbled Star Swirl. During the explanation, he’d gotten more surly with each new word.
“Not much. But I do know that.”
“Hmm.” Star Swirl set aside his pen and looked at the spell as Astral had written it. He nickered, flicked his tail, and said, “Is this the best you can do? It’s rather… fuzzy.”
Astral looked at the spell again. Yes, it seemed alright. Best she could do, at any rate. And it was definitely clear. “What do you mean by that?”
“These instructions here start out well,” Star Swirl said as he pointed at the beginning, “but then they get more and more vague as you progress. Here, for example. You say not to use too much thaumatic energy in the spell, but you don’t say how much is too much, so how am I supposed to know when to stop? And look at this! Step 4 is very nearly, ‘then a miracle occurs’! It would behoove you to be a little more explicit!”
Astral glanced at Starlight and was relieved to see her as exasperated as she herself felt. “It’s… That’s the way it is. That’s the way it works. I can’t go any more explicit than that.”
“I should hope,” Star Swirl said darkly, “that you have a better explanation than ‘that’s the way it works’. This is an important part of our work, and you’re waving it away without much of an effort to explain it.”
Astral felt her jaw tighten, very slightly. Already, this pinnacle of arcane thinking was reminding her of the Eschaton. Technically a genius, but also very deep in whatever rut they’d carved. They kept trying to twist the facts to work in their favor, rather than changing their plans to fit the facts, and assumed that being brilliant in one field meant they were brilliant in all fields. Unlike the Eschaton, though, she was getting paid to deal with Star Swirl. That alone made it easier to put a leash on her emotions. Plus, Star Swirl didn’t threaten to turn her mind into soup. (Not yet, anyway. Maybe that’d change.)
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then said levelly, “Look. Mr. Bearded. Dream magic isn’t a hard science, with equations and laws and whatever. This isn’t even a soft science, with categories or… I don’t know. This is an art. And I don’t mean ‘art’ in some snooty self-important way. I mean ‘art’ like there’s no instruction manual. There’s no one way to paint a sunset, right? Hay, there’s no one way to make paint. It’s different for everyone and you need to learn your way for yourself. If you keep looking for a step-by-step, hard and fast process, I can’t help you with this. It doesn’t work like that.”
She pointed at the spell. “I say here to not use too much energy. You ask how much is too much. I say it’s different for everypony. It depends on a whole bunch of different mental attributes. And you can’t know what ‘too much’ is for you until you try it. It depends entirely on the spellcaster’s state of mind. Just like dreams.”
Star Swirl grimaced and seemed to be sulking as he looked over the blackboard again. “If you say so,” he said, his tone resigned.
“So!” Starlight said loudly. “Uh, is it just me, orrrr…” She flipped back through her notes. “It almost looks like the collective unconscious is… kind of a pocket universe. Parts of these spells… I’ve seen things like them in Twilight’s research into dimension-hopping.”
“When the magic is behaving, that’s certainly true,” said Star Swirl. All traces of grumpiness were gone from his voice. “And it makes sense, does it not? Each dream, no matter how temporary, is a whole world to itself, in a manner of speaking. Yes, thinking of dreams as separate universes is, at the very least, a good starting point.”
It was only with great effort and a lot of luck that Astral managed to not look clueless. Dimension hopping? Dimension hopping. Something she knew jack squat about. Great. She would be of so much help on this. It wasn’t like-
“Let us know if you need help understanding it, Astral,” Starlight said casually.
Sweet Celestia, was it that obvious? Astral stammered out, “W-well, I-”
“Moondog brought you on because of your skill in dream magic,” Starlight said, “I can’t really expect you to just happen to know dimension-shifting magic. And I work at a school; I can recognize the ‘I have no idea what you just said and I’m too scared to admit it’ look from a mile away.”
She would, wouldn’t she. Students. “Um. Thanks.” Astral glanced at the blackboard again, ignoring the way Star Swirl was rolling his eyes. She had no idea which part actually had anything to do with universes, but at least she wouldn’t have to pretend. She cleared her throat and said cheerfully, “Alrighty then! Time to study planeswalking! Which one of you’s got a transuniversal portal stuffed in their closet?”
“Twilight left one at my place,” Starlight said immediately, “but it’s back in Ponyville and kinda bulky… Can we pause this for a bit? If I can find Twilight, I’m sure I can get her to teleport it over.”
Astral wasn’t sure whether she was insane or everyone — everything — else was.
Between teleportation and Equestria’s head of state squeeing about science like a little filly, they hauled it in within the hour. A group of workponies carefully moved a large, thin box into the lab, set it up, and were gone. Starlight and Star Swirl slowly opened up the box bit by bit, exposing a large, gaudy mirror. Astral walked around it, examining it from every angle. It didn’t look like much, but if she made assumptions based on that, Moondog never would’ve considered hiring her.
“Did you know,” Starlight said, apropos of nothing, “that moving the mirror itself with magic is actually pretty tricky?”
Star Swirl stroked the source of his title. “That doesn’t exactly surprise me… You need to keep a stronger hold on your magic or else it’ll bleed through to the other side, yes?”
“Yeah. It’s like it’s twice as heavy as it actually is.”
“Hmm. Interesting. Something to be considered, then.”
“So, uh, what is this?” Astral asked. She’d struggled to get a straight answer out of Starlight and Star Swirl as they were scrambling around to find Twilight.
“This-” Star Swirl slapped the frame of the mirror. “-is an archetype anchor that creates a Holstein-Rosenner bridge, entangling the worldlines of two universes across the multiverse — not solely through physical geometric space, mind you, but metaphysical paradigmic space as well. Thaumatic conception catalysts enchanted into the mirror coalesce the morphogenic gestalt fields into their nearest real quiddity values as the haecceity of a person or object travels extropically from one end of the bridge to the other, regardless of the originating endpoint. Although the proportional magnitude of the arrow of time is loosely malleable between the two endpoints, the achronal nature of the journey and multifacient properties of the bridge itself mean the subject suffers no symptoms — physical, physiological, psychic, or otherwise — stemming from timelike discontinuities or changes in entropy rates. While the original design was semimetastable in a continually changing environment, Twilight’s further research of each universe’s pseudodogmas have resulted in the connection’s energy signature being altered to a fully stable, environmentally-independent state, enabling the bridge to remain open in nigh-perpetuity. Simple, really.”
“Uh…” Astral blinked. “Say it again, but slower and dumber.”
Star Swirl sighed. “Dimensional portal.”
“…Too slow and too dumb.”
Star Swirl and Starlight looked at each other. Star Swirl snorted and looked away. Starlight cleared her throat and grinned nervously. “Uh… It’s a portal to another universe where we’re not ponies due to… underlying metaphysical properties we don’t completely know yet. It moves across… ideaspace or something, and we’re turned into these things called, uh, humans. Basically furless monkeys.”
“Apes,” grunted Star Swirl. “Humans don’t have tails.”
“And,” Starlight continued, “rather than all the different creatures we have over here, humans are the only sapient species. That’s part of the whole… paradigm thing. It’s like… on some metaphysical level, the mirror ‘knows’ sophonts are human over there, so it changes you to be human. Or… something.”
Astral nodded slowly. “I… think I get it.” She glanced at Star Swirl and pointed at Starlight. “See? Slower and dumber without being too slow and too dumb.”
Star Swirl snorted again, rolling his eyes. Ignoring him, Astral looked at the mirror again. “So if I’m hearing this right… it doesn’t send your body, but more your… everything else. Your identity.”
“Your haecceity,” said Star Swirl. “It’s your essence, your uniqueness, what makes you you.”
“The information about you,” said Astral, mostly to herself.
“I… suppose,” grunted Star Swirl. “It’s far more complex than just ‘information’.”
Was it, though? Astral figured that the fact that she was a reformed dream cultist was part of her haecceity, but that bit was a fact, and that made it information. Exactly what they needed. She looked at the mirror again. “S-so, uh, now what?”
“Well, we’ve got the mirror and a writeup of how it works.” Starlight held up a book that looked heavier than a cinder block. “I guess we just start reading this?”
Still looking at the mirror, Astral swallowed. Experience was an important part of dream magic, so, unfortunately… “Maybe we should… go through?” she said. She poked vaguely in the direction of the mirror. “Just so we… know what it feels like.”
“I’ve already been through,” Starlight said.
“As have I,” Star Swirl said.
Of course they had. Which meant she’d be alone. Great. Astral swallowed again.
“I suppose it’s not a bad idea,” Star Swirl continued obliviously. “Just make it quick. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”
“Right. Yeah.” Astral inched forward and poked the surface of the mirror. Or at least, she would’ve if the “surface” had actually existed rather than being a rippling, reflective hole into nothing that didn’t feel like anything. At least it didn’t hurt. After a moment’s hesitation, Astral plunged in.
Several moments later, she stumbled back out, screaming her head off.
“Astral?” asked Starlight. “What’s wrong?”
“My feet had legs! FIVE legs!”
“I’ll get the chocolate milk,” Star Swirl said with a sigh.
Warm chocolate milk was better than sedatives for calming you down. Astral lay on the floor, still curled up in the fetal position but no longer shivering as warm, chocolatey goodness flooded her veins and smothered the memory of the thing she’d been. “Why five?” she mumbled. “Why five? It’s prime.” She took another drag at the crazy straw. Because, seriously, why five?
“Paradigms,” grumbled Star Swirl. He was holding his own cup of chocolate milk. “I can’t say why five was chosen as the number of digits for that particular universe, but it was.”
“It’s really not so bad once you get used to it,” said Starlight.
“I’ll take your word for it.” Astral removed the straw, downed the rest of her milk, and sat up, massaging her head right beneath her horn. “Okay, so, uh… now what?”
A scroll was teleported into the center of the group. “This system vastly simplifies the equations involved in the mirror’s function,” Star Swirl proclaimed, “but it will suffice for study, at least to begin with. We simply need to discover the endpoint.”
“In pure paradigm space,” Astral said, so promptly she even surprised herself. “Or whatever it’s called. Dreams don’t have a thing to do with physicality, just ideas.”
Star Swirl glanced at Astral, frowning, then examined his equations again. “Yes, that would make sense… Very well. Let’s give it a go.”
And so they did. They picked apart Star Swirl’s equations, bounced ideas back and forth, occasionally got into shouting matches, requisitioned supplies, enchanted doodads, and generally worked. Astral felt… satisfied, but not much more. The whole thing went easily, but almost too easily, like they were barking up the wrong tree. Or maybe up the right tree, but not high enough. Logic said she ought to ignore it and get to prototyping. Her heart attempted to wrestle logic into a full neighlson and gag it, but luckily logic retained just enough control and vocal ability for Astral to keep working.
After what felt like (and probably was) hours, the trio had cobbled together an artifact, not much more than an enchanted, rune-inscribed bowl connected to some power gems, that ought to work as a proof-of-concept. They just needed one last test.
“…And finally, fourth ehwaz,” Astral said, moving the meter to the next rune.
Starlight stared at the arcanoscope for a long moment, then broke out into a troublingly fitting mad-scientist grin. “Just as we expected. We’re good to go.”
“As is the headband,” Star Swirl spoke up from the other side of the room. The headband had its own enchantments and simply linked the wearer’s dreams with the contents of the bowl, at least in theory. “The connection spells are holding.”
“Excellent,” Starlight said, giggling.
“Megalomania coming back?” Astral asked. But she was grinning, herself.
“Not yet,” Starlight responded. “Not yet.”
Starlight and Star Swirl each took a spare scroll and scribbled something down, out of Astral’s sight. If Astral had those scrolls in her dreams and the contents of those scrolls matched without Astral knowing what they were in the real world, mission accomplished. Meanwhile, Astral retrieved some potions that had been specially brewed for them, fast-acting sleeping potions that wouldn’t last long but allowed for testing the mailbox with no problem. Testing cross-dimensional transportation had all sorts of unique issues, especially if one of those dimensions didn’t always exist.
Starlight and Star Swirl both put their scrolls in the bowl. After waiting a moment to be sure nothing exploded, Astral downed one of the sleeping potions in a second, gagged on its taste, and sat on the mattress in the corner. “Say, do either of yuh haff ehmmy ibbuh…” Astral’s head drooped forward and she lapsed into unconsciousness before she could finish asking how long it would take her to lapse into unconsciousness.
She “awoke” in a forest. She didn’t spare a second for the trees but immediately began looking around for… something informational. She didn’t know what, just that she’d know it when she saw it.
Assuming she saw it.
She wasn’t wearing anything. She wasn’t in a library. There were no stone tablets for her to read. The clouds above had not been arranged to form letters. Nothing was written on the trees. There was nothing she could glean information from. She spared a few moments to do some looking around, but if the mail wound up in some random position in the dream every time they tried it, the mailbox wouldn’t be very useful. Sighing, she pulled a sword from the air and stabbed herself in the chest.
She awoke with a twitch and a groan, rubbing her eyes. She didn’t like the eager way Starlight and Star Swirl were looking at her. “Didn’t work,” she said as she hauled herself up. At least her head was clear.
Starlight’s grin slipped a little. “Not at all?” she asked.
“Nope.” Astral pulled the headband off. No headaches. “Didn’t see anything like the scrolls.”
“Hmm.” Star Swirl’s brow furrowed. “We must’ve missed something.” He went back to review their notes.
As Astral swung herself off the mattress, Starlight asked, “Do you feel alright?”
“Effh.” Astral shrugged. “Fine.” Not much more, though. One of her first major contributions had turned out to be a failure; it was hard to not feel a little down after that. “I know we didn’t, but I can’t help feeling like we wasted hours on this.”
“…I meant physically, but don’t worry about it,” said Starlight. “This happens all the time in research. Come on, let’s help Star Swirl. I bet we’ll crack it soon.”
Half an hour later, they did not.
“We’ll have this figured out by the end of the day.”
Several hours later, they did not.
“A break is good! We’ll come in for next week’s session, have a flash of inspiration, and figure it out first thing.”
One week later, they did not.
“We’ll get it by lunch break, right?”
Several hours later, they did not.
And so it was that, just after noon, Astral found herself in an establishment that was about as classy as could be while still being a bar, stuffed with a beanburger and bingeing on cider (soft cider, since she still needed to think. Stupid job). She knew the chances of getting the mailbox figured out this quickly were slim. Like, atom-thin slim. But something kept nagging at her, something she was missing. It was like she’d climbed the tallest mountain in Equestria with ease, only to find the last few yards before the summit were missing any hoofholds, but she hadn’t yet remembered her pitons. She just needed the right idea, the right word, then she’d have it.
“So what do you do when you’ve got a problem hanging over you like a vulture and you don’t know how close you are to being dead?” she asked the bartender.
“You know I’m a bartender, not a wisdom dispenser, right?” the bartender replied.
“Yeah,” said Astral. She rubbed her head. Luckily, the potions didn’t seem to have any side effects. What to do, what to-
Out of nowhere, Starlight settled in next to her. “Hey. Feeling alright?”
Astral shrugged. “Well enough.”
“Would you be okay if we brought in another unicorn to help?” Starlight asked. “Not right now, just in a few weeks if we can’t get over this wall.”
“If Moondog’s okay with it, I guess,” Astral mumbled. “Not sure why she wouldn’t pull that unicorn in now.”
“Mainly because she lives on the other side of the mirror.” When Astral gave her a Look, Starlight continued, “Sunset Shimmer. She used to be a student of Celestia’s here. Then she got power-hungry, and… Long story short, she lives over there now. Don’t worry, she’s reformed. Also a long story. I had a quick talk with her and she’d be happy to help if we need it.”
Astral would have more patience for long stories when she wasn’t stressed from work, so she didn’t press the issue. Instead, she said, “Sounds fine. So… so power-hungry that she fled to another dimension for it?”
Starlight shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“…Just what in the sunblasted friggernaffy is going on in this country?” Astral asked. “Are all unicorn mares doomed to have a pantomime villain streak for a little while? Except Princess Twilight, I guess.”
Starlight suddenly looked both amused and nervous at the same time.
“Don’t wanna know!” Astral yelled, folding her ears down with her hooves. “Do! Not! Want! To! Know.”
“It was contained to Ponyville, which is why you’ve never-”
“I am currently blissful in my ignorance,” intoned Astral. “Please allow me to remain so.”
“Probably for the best. It’s not really something she likes talking about.” Starlight’s voice dropped as she shifted from talking to voicing her thoughts aloud. “Which is weird, because it was pretty low-key, as far as pantomime villain streaks go. But Sunset became a demon and tried to take over Equestria with an army of her enslaved fellow high schoolers-” (Astral’s cider set a new speed record as it exited her nose.) “-I led a cutie mark removal cult, and you were part of a dream cult that tried mind-controlling one of the princesses.”
“To be fair, she wasn’t a princess at the time,” Astral said as she wiped down her muzzle. “But she is now.”
“And we’re all… sort of okay with our pasts,” Starlight continued. “And those were actually criminal. So why does Twilight go all beet-faced when you bring up Smarty Pants?”
Astral took note of the name “Smarty Pants”, mainly to make sure to never ask who that was. Instead, she said, “Maybe it’s because it was low-key. Our megalomaniacal phases are important parts of our pasts, so we either own it or wallow. But whatever Twilight’s thing was — blissful in my ignorance, Starlight! — if it was small, she can try to sweep it under the rug.”
Starlight’s ears went up as she caught on. “So if somepony brings it up,” she mused, “she’s not as used to talking about it, so it’s still embarrassing. And it’s not like she learned anything from it besides-”
Astral made a choking sound and Starlight quickly switched tracks. “-besides, uh, stuff that doesn’t really apply outside- that specific… incident, so it’s not even…” Her voice trailed off as she searched for the right word.
“Not even a defining moment,” said Astral. “Just something incredibly embarrassing from her past.”
“Yeah,” said Starlight, nodding. “Yeah, that’s it.”
Nice to know even the Princess of Friendship had bad days, at least. Astral took another sip of cider and changed tracks. “So… fellow high schoolers? Just how much of a prodigy was this Sunset?”
Starlight opened her mouth, paused, and said, “Short version, there’re time shenanigans involved. She’s a high schooler over there even though she’s an adult on this side. It’s complicated. Star Swirl’s model of the mirror left any time magic out for simplicity.”
Ding.
“Which he shouldn’t’ve,” Astral said, slowly sitting up straight. “That’s what’s wrong.”
“I know you’re about to have a Twilight moment and I should take cover,” Starlight said, “but…” She leaned forward expectantly. “What’s wrong?”
“The mailbox,” said Astral. She felt breathless for some reason. “You know how I said it doesn’t- stick?”
“Yeah. And you’ve figured out why?”
“I, I think so. It’s because time doesn’t always run at the same rate in dreams,” said Astral. A grin had somehow found its way onto her face. “We’ve been assuming it’s constant when it really isn’t! And, and that’s just the start, physicality isn’t a thing in dreams! They aren’t rigid the same way universes are! Simplifying the system was exactly the wrong thing to do!”
Her mind was racing. She went over Star Swirl’s equations again in her mind, and holy crow were there a lot of assumptions in there. Assumptions as simple as both worlds being physical and using atoms. It made things a lot more complicated, but also a lot… nicer? There were some patterns that seemed to be cropping up frequently. Sophisticated patterns, true, but maybe they could be simplified down to a nice, simple f(x). But she couldn’t be sure, not without-
Screw it. She was free, she could do this. Astral downed the rest of her cider and hopped off the stool. “I’m gonna get back to the lab,” she said quickly. “I, I just, I need to work on this.” If she didn’t get it out soon, either her head would explode or she’d forget all about it. “See you later.” She darted for the door.
“Don’t channel Twilight too much! Remember to eat!” Starlight hollered after her.
If there was one thing Astral had never really understood about Moondog, it was the borderline obsession with which she managed dreams. Dreams were pretty much all she did, literally, and she never took a break. But she never seemed to ever need one; asking her to stop managing dreams would be like asking a pegasus to stop flying. True, a construct’s psychology was probably a bit different than a pony’s, but Astral had always found it weird.
Now, though? Astral got it.
She’d dug up the equations that defined the mirror and, bit by bit, was tracking down what every single variable and coefficient meant. Relative time magnitude? There it was. The haecceity function. Right here. Underlying paradigm whatchamacallit? Right over there, and it was so wonderful how mathematics could let you abstract something so you could work with it while knowing so little about it. No matter how much work she did, she never felt tired. In fact, stopping would’ve drained her rather than rejuvenating her. She wasn’t working, she was flowing, smooth and easy, effortless effort.
And if Moondog felt like this all the time, no wonder she didn’t stop.
The kraft paper, once something Astral had scoffed at, was unrolled for what felt like miles as she took notes, more and more and more and more. She didn’t bother with neatness; it’d interfere with the well of information springing forth. Equations got cramped near the edges and instructions curled into canes as they ran out of space. Any thought she had got jotted down, regardless of how relevant it was to the most recently written note. Sometimes, two bits of information connected and sent Astral’s train of thought screaming down another track. And, gradually, a design began to take shape.
Seconds before lunch break ended at 1:00, Star Swirl appeared in the middle of the room, brushing some sprinkles out of his beard. “You know,” he said, as if to just hear the sound of his own voice, “it still amazes me to think that some foods mass-produced in this day and age would be delicacies of the extremely wealthy back- when… Heavens to Maregatroyd.” For he had just seen what Astral had done with the place.
One entire wall of the lab was covered with Astral’s notes, one corner to the other, top to bottom, stuck on with a combination of magic and a dozen rolls of tape. She’d also commandeered all but one of the blackboards, carefully scribing detailed equations and instructions in verse across them. She was just putting the finishing touches on one of the last equations when she noticed Star Swirl was back. “Hi!” she chirped, giving him a wave. “I had a brainstorm and did some work!”
“We… only had an hour for lunch,” Star Swirl said, agape. “How did-”
“Half an hour, technically!” Astral said cheerfully. “I spent the first half moping in a bar.”
Boggling was a most unbecoming action for a wizard of Star Swirl’s stature, yet boggle he did. He levitated himself up to the ceiling to start reading Astral’s notes from the very top.
“Let me know if you have any questions,” Astral said. Star Swirl, asking her questions about magic. Ha. (He seemed to agree, because his only response was a grunt.)
Starlight opened the door and promptly twitched. She looked at the notepapered wall for a long moment, then said, “I told you not to channel Twilight too much!”
“I only covered one wall!” Astral said defensively.
“Well- that’s-” Starlight ripped her gaze from the wall. “Did you at least eat?”
“I did, Mom. At the bar before you arrived.”
Starlight sighed and turned her attention to Star Swirl. “So what’s this all about?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “She seems to have started from scratch-”
“The equations you gave us were simplified to the point of uselessness,” said Astral. “I had to start from scratch with the real ones to get this.” She slapped the blackboard. “It’s a more detailed version of the system we were working with, and I’d bet money it works where the other didn’t.” Seeing the dubious looks on the others’ faces, she added, “Yeah, I know it’s a mess. Take a seat and I’ll explain it.”
Once they were settled in, Astral pointed at part of the first equation. “Alright. You see this? This is the haecceity of the po- Of the person. The thing that doesn’t change when going from one universe to another, even as the dimensional bridge gives or takes away clothes. As we simplify everything else, we don’t want to touch the haecceity.” She circled it and drew an arrow pointing to a ha(p).
“That’s all well and good,” said Star Swirl, “but it makes it quite tedious to-”
“This,” Astral growled, “is the haecceity.” She jabbed a hoof at the function. “Do not. Touch. The haecceity.”
“But-”
“Touch the haecceity and die,” Astral snapped. “Or have your identity altered beyond recognition to the point that you might as well be dead.”
“I don’t think it’s quite that severe,” said Star Swirl, his voice growing slightly louder. “We are talking about transferring words on a sheet, not a pony’s mind.”
“And if we don’t transfer those words correctly,” Astral replied, also a touch more loudly, “then this is all pointless! We need-”
“Whoa, whoa!” Starlight jumped in between Astral and Star Swirl, waving her hooves. “We don’t need to shout, we can-”
“A few misplaced letters here and there won’t make any difference!”
“Until they do, you dolt! We’re doing the hard work now so we can make things easier later!”
“You are making things unnecessarily difficult!” yelled Star Swirl. “You have ever since this project began!”
“Maybe that’s just because I-”
Starlight’s horn went off like a firework and suddenly everything went silent except for the wonderful ring of tinnitus. Astral stepped back and winced, slapping at the side of her head, as if causing herself more pain would fix anything. Star Swirl flinched and blinked, then his horn sparked and his ears shimmered. Whatever he did, he promptly got into a heated discussion with Starlight. A discussion Astral couldn’t hear, no matter how deeply she dug a hoof into her ear.
After a minute or two, the old fogey clamped his jaw shut, nodded stiffly, and stepped back. Starlight’s horn started glowing; Astral’s ears tingled and her hearing returned with a pop. “Okay,” breathed Starlight. “Will both of you children keep quiet for a second?”
Astral bristled and opened her mouth, only for Starlight to shoot her a strangely intense glare. Astral closed her mouth, silently and reluctantly conceding the point.
“You two… You just need to talk. Not shout. Talk.” Starlight held out a coin. “You’ll both get to state your case without the other saying anything. Heads, Star Swirl goes first. Tails, Astral. Good?”
Astral and the fossil looked at each other. After a moment, Astral nodded and the coot grunted, “Acceptable.”
Starlight gave an angry nod and flipped the coin up. After an eternal second of it spinning, it landed on… tails. She and Star Swirl both looked at Astral.
Astral let out a breath, long and slow. “Alright,” she said. “Just… gimme a sec.”
It took her a moment of putting the right ideas together, a moment during which Star Swirl grew more and more broody. But soon, Astral had an argument she thought sounded coherent. “Okay. Star Swirl. You’re trying to simplify things. By, like, four over two is the same as two over one. And in any other situation, that’d be fine. But dreams don’t work like that. It’s like- suppose you’re making a cake. You need to cook it for twenty minutes at 350 degrees. But you can’t cook it for ten minutes at 700 degrees, right?”
“Actually, based on absolute zero-” Star Swirl began. He twitched and shook his head. “That simply makes your point better.”
“We’re working with different physics, here,” said Astral. “If it all even counts as physics. We can’t just start simplifying things like crazy because we don’t know if they can be simplified yet. Yeah, it’s a mess, but for now, it’s the best we’ve got. And, look, let’s be honest, you’re not a genius, here.”
Star Swirl’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth, but Starlight stuck a hoof in his face to keep him quiet. She made a “continue” gesture at Astral.
Astral gave her a nod of thanks, then said, “I mean, you are smart. In thaumic magic. And this isn’t thaumic magic. This is something totally different.” Before she lost her nerve, she added, “And if you can’t handle that, you should just leave. Moondog’ll understand.”
Starlight snapped to stare at Astral and Star Swirl looked like he’d been hit on the back of the head. For a moment, Astral felt mortified; she nearly opened her mouth to apologize. But this wasn’t about good feelings; not hers, not his. They had a job to do, and if somepony was interfering, they ought to leave. Even if that somepony was Star Swirl the Bearded.
Silence reigned. The clock on the wall ticked onward. Starlight remained dumbstruck. Star Swirl’s face cycled through at least ten different expressions, like each emotion was fighting to be the only one he felt. Astral coughed. “And, uh, that, that’s it,” she said eventually, trying and failing to avoid sounding sheepish. “I, I’m done.”
Resignation won out among Star Swirl’s emotions and he sighed, hanging his head slightly. “Wake-up calls should not be this piercing,” he mumbled. He pulled his head back up and sucked in air. “You must understand: I am a genius. The gold standard. For a millennium, I was the bar by which all subsequent arcanists were measured. My name had been inked into the annals of history well before I entered limbo. I was unparalleled in my field.”
Astral remained silent. This line of thought had to be going somewhere. But if that “somewhere” was “you have to listen to me because I’m so super smart”, then something else would be going somewhere: her hoof, right into his face, whatever the consequences.
“And… And…” Star Swirl shook, like saying the next words would poison him. “And over the course of these sessions,” he choked out, “I- forgot that- we had left my field. We were in an area in which I am-” Astral could almost hear his diaphragm creaking. “-not a genius.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”
The old fogey actually managed to chuckle. “You said it yourself: onieroturgy is an art, not a science. And I am a terrible painter.” He bowed his head. “I- apologize for the- way I acted. I- I shall do my best to- curb my… personality.” A pause. “However, it would have been nice to be reminded of the fact that we were working with different physics before the situation devolved the way it did. We must both try to be aware of the other’s blind spots.”
…Yeah. She probably should’ve noticed that. Still, that one act of humility made Star Swirl roughly a bazillion times better than the Eschaton (rounding down, of course). And she’d been given a second chance for far worse actions, so- “Fair enough,” said Astral. “I’ll do my best to avoid getting shouty if you do. Deal?” She extended her hoof.
“Deal.” And they shook.
Star Swirl looked at the system again and grimaced. “Very well. Explain the rest of the system. I am much better at tinkering than painting.”
Astral grinned to herself as she took up the explaining again. This one would work. She knew it would.
But it didn’t.
Oh, the new spells had pushed them further, true. Now, Astral found that she was wearing a saddlebag in her dreams, one that held whichever scrolls were put into the bowl in the real world. But those scrolls never stayed. Either they couldn’t be opened, or they fell apart whenever Astral tried to interact with them, or the letters refused to stay put, or a number of things. They were closer, but they still weren’t there.
“We’re doing fine!” Starlight had said when they broke apart for the week. “It’s not like we’ve been stuck on this for moons! We don’t even have a deadline! Stop worrying!”
But Astral had found herself carrying the bowl and scrolls back to her apartment and idly tinkering with them for about half an hour before hitting a no-sounding-board-induced brick wall. She’d done so little she didn’t even bother testing it. Yet now, lying in bed, staring at the darkness that shrouded her ceiling, possibilities were giving her a headache from the way they were bouncing around. They were so close, she knew it. What was she missing? Why didn’t it come to her?
Well, no sense worrying about it now. Astral reluctantly closed her eyes and tried to let herself drift-
That was what the last part of Luna’s dreamwalking spell did. It strengthened the connection to the mind and the body to make it easier to leave the dream realm in case of… physical attack? Or something. Not that important, more of a just-in-case thing. But it kept a constant connection between the dreamer’s body and haecceity. So if you enforced it on a scroll…
Astral barely even thought about it before she was up and had plonked the bowl on her nightstand. It was such a small, simple thing, she could spare a minute to work on it. That particular aspect of the spell had been relatively simple; all it took was for Astral to scratch a few of the right runes onto the inside of the rim, imbuing them with magic as she did so. It was the equivalent of nailing a door shut to compensate for its broken lock: crude, but it’d get that one singular job done until the fix could be properly made. And the mailbox seemed to accept it easily, so that was a plus.
A quick probe proved that the risk of explosion was negligible, so Astral dropped the two scrolls into the bowl and the headband onto her head and, despite her anticipation, somehow managed to fall asleep. When she slipped back into lucidity, she found herself either on a beach or the roof of a Manehattan skyscraper; it depended on which way she was looking. But she had a bag at her side, carrying two sealed scrolls. She took one of them out and shook it. No letters fell out. The other: same result. She waited. No disintegrations. She pulled at them. The seals broke and the scrolls flexed.
Staying calm grew a bit harder.
Astral almost ripped open the scrolls right then and there, but then she got a better idea. They were testing this for Moondog, so… She twisted her magic in just the right way and sent out her spell to ping Moondog.
It was only a few seconds before the space next to her fell away as Moondog arrived, gracefully stepping from nothing onto the sand. “It’s still kinda weird, having to be prompt,” she mused. “Mom never cared all that much. But I guess that’s one of the great responsibilities that comes with great power.” And her crown sparkled with a ting.
“I suppose so, Princess,” Astral said. The not-quite looseness of her research was definitely preferable to the nanosecond-rigidity of jail. “How’s your law coming?”
Moondog’s expression turned blank. Bit by bit, she pulled each limb inwards until she was curled up into a ball in the air. “Lawyers,” she whimpered, staring off into the distance. “Lawyers everywhere.”
Right. To help with the law. “At least they’re on your side,” risked Astral.
“That makes it worse! I can’t throw any jabs at them without looking like a huge jerk! And even worse-” Moondog suddenly got in Astral’s face, her eyes wide. “They’re actually useful,” she whispered. “They’re helpful! They know the law! I’d go mad without them and I want them around! All while they’re still lawyers! What in Discord’s name is this world coming to?”
“A functioning legislative system, unfortunately,” pouted Discord.
Astral yelped and jumped back in surprise, but he was already gone. Moondog rolled her eyes and muttered, “He does that for attention, just ignore him. But aside from nearly contracting lawyer poisoning… efh, it’s going great, technically. We’re getting everything done, but it’s tedious like you wouldn’t believe.”
“You’d call boiling an egg tedious, Your Nibs.”
“Anyway,” Moondog plowed on, “what do you need me for?”
Astral took a deep breath that meant absolutely nothing. The moment of truth. “Testing.” With an almost-steady hoof, she pulled the two scrolls from her bag. “We think we’ve got the mailbox working. Star Swirl and Starlight both wrote something down on these scrolls, and I don’t know what it is. So if-”
“If I can read them anyway,” Moondog said as she snatched the scrolls away with her mane, “and it actually matches what was written, it’s proof we can bring in info from outside your head. Alrighty…” The first scroll unrolled before her to read. She skimmed it, blinked, then muttered, “Yeah, that’s Star Swirl’s.”
“What’s it say?” asked Astral. She leaned forward to get a look at the scroll, only for it to blur into illegibility before she could read it.
“Heh.” Moondog crumpled the scroll into nonexistence. “You don’t wanna know.”
One of Astral’s ears drooped. “Yeah, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yeah, I do. And even if I don’t, I still need to know it so I can compare it with the real thing.”
“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Moondog cleared her lack of a throat and said, in Star Swirl’s voice, “‘For we can a priori and previous to all given objects have a cognition of those conditions, on which alone experience of them is possible, but never of the laws to which things may in themselves be subject, without reference to possible experience.’”
Astral had never imagined that she could actually feel her brain shutting down, and yet… “…What in the name of oral diarrhea was that?!”
“Either Manewell Kanter or one of the reasons why everypony hates moral philosophy professors. At least that couldn’t’ve come from you. So, then, Starlight…” The next scroll unrolled. After only a glance, Moondog promptly rattled off, “Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.”
“You can say that five times fast,” Astral snorted.
“I really can! Sixsickhicksnicksixslickbrickswithpicksandstickssixsickhicksnicksixslick-”
“I get it.” Astral clouted Moondog across the face. Or at least, she would’ve if Moondog hadn’t been intangible right at that moment. (Fortunately for Astral’s mind, Moondog still shut up.) “Are you immune to tongue twisters or something?”
“Hey, you can’t twist your tongue in a timed travesty of treacherous term trippings if a truly tangible tongue is tiresomely truant.” Moondog frowned. “Huh. I thought that’d be more of a twister.”
Astral shrugged noncommittally. “Anyway, thanks for your time, Your Nibs. That’s all I needed.”
“Glad to help. You know, I felt you blipping in and out of the dream realm like whoa earlier today; everything alright?”
“Yeah, just failed tests. I’m surprised those potions didn’t give me any headaches.”
“So you’re working on this alone right now? Your fellow minions are both asleep.”
“Yep. I just had a brainstorm in the middle of the night and needed to get it out.”
Moondog tilted her head and frowned. “Huh. Well, keep up the good work. Just don’t mess up your circadian rhythm to do it.” She blurred into nonexistence.
Although she’d been quiet, Astral’s mind was buzzing. She had the scrolls’ contents. Maybe. She just needed to check them. She clenched her eyes shut, twisted her mind in just the right-
She woke up with a jolt, barely able to make out her wall in the darkness. The ring on her nightstand was still glowing. She touched it; not too hot, so it wasn’t wasting any energy at all. She reached into the perimeter; no bad feelings from… anything metaphysical. She grabbed a scroll-
Moondog was right. She had done this alone. This last bit, at least. Something neither of the other two had spotted. True, given time they probably would, but Astral had seen it first. Then she’d just… gone and done it. This was exactly the reason Moondog had chosen her for this job. It was a funny feeling, being important as Astral and not some easily-replaceable cog in a machine.
If the scrolls matched.
Astral tried to beat her insecurities down, but they put up a fight and refused to go quietly. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest as she unrolled the scroll.
For we can a priori and previous to all given objects have a cognition-
She didn’t need to read the rest of the scroll. It’d match, she knew it would.
The mailbox was working.
The cynic in her told her to not get too excited. Maybe it’d been a one-off. Maybe the other one hadn’t transferred properly. Maybe the mailbox would burn out soon. Maybe one of a number of things. And still she couldn’t keep herself from smiling. Even if the mailbox was only semi-working, it’d been not-at-all-working before.
Next scroll. Even her magic was shaking as she opened it.
Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.
She’d solved it. The last problem they’d been facing before completion, and she’d solved it. She’d solved it.
Astral collapsed onto her tail, giggling and crying at the same time. She’d never felt more useful in her life.