Chapter 7:
Lectures
“Morning, Twilight.”
Twilight nodded to Applejack and to her other friends as they followed Applejack’s gaze and greeted her in turn. She stopped in front of the half-circle they formed and regarded each in turn. Then she yawned.
“Good morning, everypony. Did you sleep well? Were your rooms all right?”
All of her friends nodded affirmatively to both questions. Then Pinkie spoke, her impatience obvious in both her voice and features.
“My room was fine and I have managed to store all my party supplies without using the same space twice, like I promised I wouldn’t! But what about you? Did you find Celestia? I can tell Rarity knows something but she’s not saying even though I sang the Oinkoinkoink song at her all breakfast and that usually makes ponies cry and promise me they do anything if I just stop and I think even my Pinkie Promises wouldn’t be safe if I did that to a mirror but I haven’t tried because I don’t wanna cry...”
Twilight glanced at Rarity while Pinkie inhaled like she was trying to empty the hallway of air. She noted the nervous tic playing on Rarity’s left eyelid, the slight sway and the way Rarity’s eyes had trouble focusing. Yes, all of that seemed about right for someone who’d been subjected to sonic torture by Pinkie for half an hour. Then she focused back to Pinkie who sounded like her lungs were just about ready to explode.
“So anyway Rarity won’t tell but I can tell she knows and I want to know so you tell me what I wanna know or I start singing or maybe my picklebarrel kumquat poetry so tell me or—”
Twilight had placed a hoof in Pinkie’s mouth. This was standard operational procedure. She spoke mildly but with a hint of reproach.
“Pinkie, it’s not that Rarity won’t tell you. It’s that she can’t. She’s under a geas. You better apologize. I can’t tell you either, but I can show you if it’s what you really want.”
Pinkie had gasped and thrown her forelegs around Rarity’s neck, who’d twitched and tried to move away.
“I’m sorry Rarity! I didn’t know you were loaded down by invisible geese!”
Pinkie waved one of her forelegs over Rarity’s back in a desperate attempt to dislodge any offending but unseen fowl.
Twilight sat down on her haunches and rubbed her forehead with a hoof.
“No, Pinkie! I meant she’s under an enchantment that is preventing her from telling what she’s seen! So am I! And before we can show the rest of you we need to have it cast on you all as well!”
There was a warning tingle in the back of Twilight’s mind. She was skirting the very edge of what she was allowed to reveal to the uninitiated. She sighed and brought out the Scroll from her saddlebags, setting it down on the floor in front of her friends.
“You remember this, right? Well, I want to share this authority with all of you. All you have to do is read it if you agree. Um, I should warn you. What I— what was—”
She gritted her teeth and shut her eyes, trying to form a sentence that wouldn’t run afoul of the geas.
“Look, you might not like what you could end up witnessing, if there was something to witness – which I am not implying!”
The four uninitiated – Pinkie, Applejack, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash on her cloud – hesitated. Then Applejack looked down and started to read the Scroll. Rainbow Dash saw this, narrowed her eyes and looked down as well. Shortly after that Pinkie started scanning the text. Lastly, Fluttershy swallowed nervously and started reading.
~~~~~
“Whoah! This room is huge! I could practice some of my tricks in here!”
Twilight cringed at Rainbow’s half-shout. Something about these halls – no doubt including what lay on the bottom floor of this room – seemed to demand a reverent whisper.
“I don’t know why it’s this big. You’d have to ask Celestia or Luna. Now, everypony please look down to the floor below us. You have Celestia’s permission.”
She pointed a hoof over the railing and her friends crowded beside her, except for Rarity who was waiting by the entrance, showing great distaste at even being there.
There were gasps and exclamations of shock. Twilight took a deep breath and told them what she and Rarity had seen and been told. When she was finished her friends were visibly upset. Fluttershy seemed especially perturbed: she was turning this way and that, her eyes darting, as if desperately searching for something. Twilight spoke to her gently.
“Is this too much for you, Fluttershy? Do you want to leave?”
“No!”
Fluttershy ran away along the railing, swerving to glance into every opening she passed.
“Wait!”
Twilight started running after her, the others following.
Fluttershy didn’t turn away from one of the doorways, entering it instead. When Twilight reached it she saw it led to a circular stairway going both upwards and downwards. She could hear Fluttershy below her, so she ran towards the retreating hoofsteps. There was another landing after two revolutions of the stairway, but Fluttershy’s echoes still emanated from below. Two landings further down the stairway came to an end, and the only exit was a doorway back into the large room, now at floor level. Twilight re-entered as Fluttershy was only a few steps from the edge of the magic diagram.
“Stop!”
Twilight’s horn flared to life, and Fluttershy’s advance came to an abrupt halt as she was lifted a little bit into the air. Fluttershy struggled for a bit, legs and wings flailing, until she slumped and started crying with great, shuddering sobs. Twilight was alarmed rather than angry, but she was unable to avoid the sharp tone in her voice.
“Didn’t you listen to me? I told you Celestia had stopped time inside this circle! You’d be trapped in there!”
Whatever Fluttershy would have answered went unsaid since a new voice was quicker with an interjection.
“Not quite.”
All six ponies turned to look at the newcomer, a unicorn mare with a surgical-green coat and a short, graying mane, who was walking leisurely up to the magic circle. She spoke with a calm and quite strong voice made slightly gravelly by age and use.
“Celestia is very powerful indeed, but even she cannot bring time to a complete standstill. Not even in an area as small as this.”
The new pony had walked up to the circle and was apparently peering through her square glasses at a small object in front of her, suspended in the air only a small distance inside the magic field. After inspecting the item for a moment she turned towards her onlookers.
“I flicked this coin with great force, and with as much of a spin as I could muster, when I first arrived here. I roughly aimed it so it would travel across the center of the circle. It hasn’t moved much since it hit the boundary of the magic but it has indeed moved. I estimate Celestia managed to slow time to between one hundred thousand to one million times slower than normal.”
She sighed.
“It’s still much too fast for my liking.”
Applejack spoke up.
“Beg your pardon, miss, but who are you?”
The pony’s demeanor brightened. She raised her eyebrows and let the ghost of a smile wrinkle her cheeks.
“Indeed, introductions are in order! I know who you are, of course, and let me assure you I am not offended if I am unknown to you. My name is Marble Chalice. I usually lecture on the theory of harmony and related subjects of magic at Canterlot Academy, but Princess Celestia has for the moment assigned me to spearhead the rescue effort of this unfortunate being you see inside the circle. Pleased to meet you.”
Fluttershy was still suspended in Twilight’s magic, but she flailed about until she was facing Marble Chalice and fixed the unicorn in her stare.
“You said Celestia wants you to help this creature? Well, why haven’t you?”
Marble Chalice wilted under Fluttershy’s gaze, but only slightly.
“I doubt you understand just what kind of difficulties we are facing here. Would you like me to show you what we’ve been doing?”
Twilight’s ears had perked up when Chalice presented herself, and now she nodded vigorously.
“Yes, please!”
Chalice nodded and addressed the levitating pegasus directly.
“Miss Fluttershy, if you’ll bear with me I’ll explain the situation. Please, follow me.”
She walked towards a doorway with Twilight and friends in tow.
“First I must ask how much you’ve already been told. Do you know the origin of this creature?”
Twilight answered.
“Celestia told us how it fell out of the sun.”
Chalice had led them into a long hallway with only a pair of doors facing each other at its ends.
“Then she related to you her, ah, difficulties trying to manipulate the mountain and the creature? They stem from the same problem, you see. The creature is made from the same alien matter as the mountain. We’ve also gathered reports from the villages and towns that have been lost to the ash, as well as studied those affected by it who have been brought here and to the hospital, and they all tell the same thing. Trying to use magic of any kind on this matter results in extremely painful feedback and carries a risk of serious injury. Worse, coming in physical contact with this matter is lethally dangerous. You most likely know how poisonous it is since you must have walked through the castle grounds. That’s just patients with surface contaminations. Were any matter to enter a unicorn’s bloodstream, for example, it—”
Chalice removed her glasses from her snout and polished them silently against her coat. Twilight, walking beside her, noticed her lips were quivering. After an uncomfortable but short silence Chalice replaced the glasses.
“Forgive me, I was sidetracked. The stakes of my research have been preying on my mind. The core of what I was trying to say is: Any pony coming into contact with this matter in any way is putting herself in deadly peril. But that’s only half of the problem we’re faced with.”
Rarity spoke up, interrupting Chalice with a single, quizzical word.
“We?”
“Princess Celestia allowed me to pick a team of three to assist me in my research. As I was saying, there is the reverse situation as well. Ponies trying to manipulate the alien matter end up destroying it.”
Rainbow Dash’s question had a challenging tone to it.
“That’s good, right?”
“Matter doesn’t just vanish when it gets destroyed. I can demonstrate what I mean.”
The group had reached the end of the hallway and now entered a spacious yard placed on a ledge in the mountain. The doorway was placed in the middle the cliff face forming one of the longer sides of the yard and the opposite side was a sheer drop down the mountainside, blocked by a stone fence. A couple of huts had been constructed along one of the shorter ends of the yard, to the right of the entrance, while the other side held a large tent-like structure. Chalice walked towards the pavilion while she called out.
“Ruler! Scales!”
A mare and a stallion shoved a tent flap to the side and peered out at Chalice from inside the tent as she issued instructions.
“Fetch a small piece and prepare a demonstration of the saturation test.”
Chalice turned back to the others as the two ponies nodded and released the tent flap.
“The saturation test involves charging a crystal with some magic and then letting it discharge onto a piece of matter from the mountain. This removes the direct manipulation that is so painful to unicorns and frees us to observe the results. We’ve done this before, so we know the precautions we need to take.”
As she spoke, one of the ponies appeared from the pavilion dragging a cart containing a stack of thick glass panes and a pile of bricks. He quickly assembled the four low walls of a box out of the bricks and then set the glass panes to one side. Behind him the other assistant appeared, walking slowly and gingerly carrying a small bottle seemingly filled with oil. Floating in the oil was an indistinct pebble of gray rock.
“Hold up a bit, Ruler. Miss Sparkle and friends, this is a piece of the mountain that was thrown quite some distance away from the impact site. We’re keeping the bits we have in deharmonized oil. Take a look, please. I promise you it’s safe.”
The six ponies gathered around Ruler who held the bottle aloft so they could see. The pebble was entirely commonplace and would have passed unnoticed in any road or field. Chalice lectured on.
“It may look ordinary, but I do not recommend trying to grip it with your telekinesis unless you have a very high tolerance for pain. Miss Ruler here will now use some pliers to extract the pebble and place it on a brick in the center of this structure Scales made. Meanwhile, perhaps you’d like to help me, Miss Sparkle? I have here a simple one-minute crystal capacitor. Would you like to do the honors of charging it?”
Twilight was visily flattered as she furrowed her brow and brought her horn to life, sending a bright beam of her characteristic purple magic towards the crystal which seemed to absorb it.
“Thank you. Now I shall drop this next to the pebble... Done! Panes in place!”
Chalice and her two assistants quickly stacked the panes of glass on top of the brick box, sealing the pebble and the crystal within but letting everypony observe what happened. Once the minute was up, the gem flashed as small arcs of magic started to discharge themselves. One arc hit the pebble and grew larger, causing the other arcs to peter out. The arc died after a few heartbeats, and the gem fell inert. Everypony held their breaths for a few seconds. Then Rainbow Dash grew bored.
“Well that was—”
The pebble exploded with a loud pop, spreading a black soot over the inside of the box and shattering the innermost pane of glass. Then blue and black motes of light, like cold fire, started coruscating over the soot. A crackling noise was heard, and the light intensified to a brilliant blue-white glare with an eldritch core of blackness that made it difficult to perceive what was happening. A sudden splintering sound, followed by the stack of panes settling differently on top of the box, caused all ponies to start and back away. Then the light weakened and died, though crackles and crystalline pings still sounded from the box. Twilight finally gathered the nerve to approach and try to peer inside as the sounds also faded away.
There was no sign of the pebble or the soot it had created. Two more out of the six thick glass panes had shattered from some twisting force, and their shards were scattered inside the box. The brick the pebble had lied on was unrecognizable: it was a twisted, melted green-black shape that sported translucent bubbles on its top. Some of the glass shards were also twisted into new and unrecognizable forms. The six ponies regarded this with some horror as Chalice explained.
“Feed enough magic, of any kind, into this alien matter and it dissolves into a powerful burst of energy. We know the exact amount of magic per weight unit of matter needed, and it doesn’t change provided you know how much the matter has already received. This is easily measurable – the alien matter starts to radiate closer and closer to background amounts of magic as it gets saturated, and we have a reliable formula already. An interesting fact is that we can extrapolate back to when this matter arrived and tell you that it had no inherent magic whatsoever back then. The light itself is relatively harmless, though even the light from this small amount of matter can blind the unwary. Much more dangerous is the incredibly volatile burst of chaos magic accompanying the light. We haven’t been able to quantify it: all we know is that it utterly reshapes all the native matter it touches, corrupting the inherent harmony in the process.”
Chalice gazed at her audience of six while her assistants glumly bowed their heads, reluctant to hear and accept her words even though they knew she spoke the truth.
“I need to make sure you understand this: The matter itself is a catalytic poison that is very lethal. But worse still is that it reacts violently to magic, and once it has soaked up enough it destroys itself while corrupting all nearby matter. The corrupted matter will not decay further, but it is deeply out of harmony. The corruption affects about twenty-four times as much mass as what the destroyed piece held. Even small amounts of this happening to a pony would be incredibly harmful.”
She took a shuddering breath.
“First and foremost, this means we can’t use magic on the creature. Second, this means all of the matter that fell with the mountain will eventually disappear in a massive burst of chaos energy, due to it soaking up the background magic naturally present in Equestria. Some of it a bit sooner, some later, but it will all be gone no more than forty-five days from now, and when it goes it will devastate everything Equestrian close to it. And it is spreading. The pegasi can’t fly high enough to prevent it even if they could get close enough without breathing minute particles of ash. Since they can’t get close enough, weather around the ash plume has grown steadily more chaotic. Storms are racing outward from it, carrying the ash ever further in all directions and forcing the weather control teams further and further back. We must find an answer or we could be facing our doom.”
Chalice smiled.
“That’s why I am so glad Princess Celestia foresaw my request and summoned you here.”
This caused an exchange of baffled glances among her audience. Twilight spoke.
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We have a huge outburst of chaos impending. You are the Element Bearers, wielders of a set of artifacts capable of restoring harmony on a massive scale. She predicted we’d have need of you and summoned you here.”
Chalice’s smile faded when presented with the blank looks of the ponies in front of her.
“Didn’t she?”