//------------------------------//
// River of Time 
// Story: The Immortal Dream 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

"Bad news, huh?" Corsica asked, warily eyeing the sphere of energy isolating her special talent and its accompanying storm clouds inside the engine core of the immortal Dream. "Worse news than blowing up the Tree of Harmony? Or my brain?"

"I'm just worried it'll blow up the ship!" Twilight complained, ears folded against the confluence's menacing buzz. "Well, Starlight? You said you know what's going on here?"

"Enough to know we're in trouble," Starlight said, walking up to the cloud of rails and staring into the core. "That phenomenon surrounding it - the stuff that looks like storm clouds - is called a premonition flux."

Twilight nodded, squinting up alongside her. "You mentioned that once or twice when telling me about your foalhood adventures, and the Flames called it that too in the Laughter palace. It looks a lot like harmonic fire, except corrupted somehow?"

"Would make sense," Corsica said, keeping a healthy distance from the core - though it was much, much easier to feel curious about the mechanisms behind her wish-making now that she could no longer make them. "When I used that talent, I'd make my wish, and then I'd get a feeling that I was going to pay the price, and then actually pay the price when the wish came true. So I'm guessing that stuff is like a magical I owe you, or something. Maybe even more like a mental tax collector. And in this case, like at the tree, it got pulled out of my body before it could collect on its due."

"However your wishes worked, there must be some sort of energy transference involved," Twilight answered. "Maybe this premonition flux is the energy carrier, taking from your emotions and applying it when the wish is fulfilled?" She rubbed her chin in thought. "No, that wouldn't make any sense. Why would that lead to it exploding unless your wishes are thwarted somehow? But in the Palace, it exploded the moment your wish came true..." She glanced at Starlight. "Are you going to fill us in on what we're missing?"

Starlight took a deep breath. "You're right that it's the energy transference mechanism, and that it's a type of harmony. But Corsica was closest to the truth when she said it was like an I owe you. According to the Flames, premonition flux is an energy debt carrier. The actual energy consumed in making a wish is consumed when that wish is made, not when it comes true."

Corsica tilted her head. "So it's negative energy? Literally negative, not just bad. Like, I pay up front by creating this, and then it gets canceled out later by the mojo I lose when I actually feel the price?"

"It doesn't look like chaos or disharmony to me," Twilight said, squinting. "Usually that looks a bit more... Discord-y."

"Nope. Not the same." Starlight shook her head. "Emotions don't exist in negative numbers. Either you're feeling something or you aren't, and even if you think you're feeling the opposite of something, that's just a positive quantity of a different emotion. In this case, that emotion is still hope. The same thing both of us paid as a price when we used that artifice..." She nodded to Corsica. "And the same thing as my virtue, which is why it's the same color as the flames I use to power this ship. And it's quite a lot of it, at that."

"So what's negative about it, then?" Corsica asked. "Assuming this stuff does disappear when someone pays the price, it sure feels like I've lost something."

Twilight slowly blinked.

Starlight simply shrugged. "It moves backwards through time."

Corsica stared flatly at her.

"Premonition flux is created at some point in the future," Starlight explained. "It's an energy-intensive process, and hugely inefficient at higher concentrations as well - most of the excess power is lost, which in the physical world takes the form of an explosion. As opposed to when it's all happening inside your head." She walked to the other side of the engine room, drawing in the air with a hoof. "Then, it dissipates at some point in the past, releasing that energy as a power source."

Twilight hesitantly raised a hoof. "Is this at all related to that time when...?"

Starlight shook her head, though Corsica couldn't tell whether it was a no or an it's not important. "Because the premonition flux still exists contiguously between two points in time, we can see and even interact with it as if it was a normal state of energy. But if you tried to do anything to it, you'd see the effects of your action show up before you take it, and not after, hence the name. And if you try to change your action based on the results you saw in the flux... The flames didn't talk about that, but they clearly didn't want to answer. Either way, those storm clouds are waiting for a powerful energy source to create them in the future, and they're not going to be picky about what it is."

"Hold on," Twilight interrupted, "the first time you told me about this, it was related to Valey's artifice, wasn't it?"

"And Valey's artifice warns her about impending danger," Starlight agreed. "It's the same mechanism, only hers uses the premonition flux as a source of information rather than power. Because of that, it uses little enough that the actual amount of energy required to create the flux is insignificant. All of the artifices function this way."

"So where does that leave us?" Corsica asked, crossing her forelegs and leaning on one hoof. "Is it inevitable that this particular bit will be 'created' in the future? My wish already came true; that's how I got so small. Why hasn't it gone boom yet? Is it just gonna seek me out and chew on my mind anyway?"

Twilight frowned. "Well, right now, it looks like it's being held in stasis. Which is odd, because if the positive energy in the ship is doing that, why doesn't it just cancel out and explode right away?"

"I don't know." Starlight shook her head. "I do know that last time this stuff got into the physical world, a Flame of Harmony was able to pay the price to get rid of it. If we could get it out of the engine and somewhere the explosion wouldn't damage anything valuable, I could probably do that again. Going off Generosity's experience, it would hurt like crazy, but not debilitate me for too long. But moving it safely is going to be the hard part."

"Maybe the dragons could do something?" Corsica suggested. "Seigetsu has a weird power to cancel wishes I've made before they come true, and the premonition flux in my mind always goes away when that happens. Dunno what that would do for one that's already come true, but not had the flux vanish yet. I'm not down for anything that involves that stuff getting back in my head though, and I'm not budging on that."

"I wouldn't ask you to," Starlight said, still staring at the confluence in thought.

Twilight loudly cleared her throat. "If we've got something to try, can we go try it? Preferably not here? That buzzing is really starting to get on my nerves."

Starlight nodded. "Right. Seigetsu. I suppose she's the best lead we have. Ugh, go figure I'd spend the entire week psyching myself up to face the north again, and before we can even lift off I have to defuse a harmonic bomb that could blow my ship to smithereens... and this is still closer to a problem that can be solved with brute force than my usual luck in the north."

Twilight was the first out the door, and Corsica brought up the rear. On her way out, though, she could have sworn she heard a voice whisper, Good-bye!