Twilight Sparkle, despite her extensive magical knowledge, wasn't able to make the spell last. She focused and cast an enchantment on a silvery card with the intention of embedding it in the item. The result was the same as before. Each time she tried to do this a complex emblem, or maybe an emblem-shaped rip in the very fabric of reality, appeared on the card just to vanish shortly thereafter.
"Maybe the spell needs something extra... I'll try something new and special," she said as she closed her eyes and focused, imagining an intricate runing charm, sweat appearing on her face. She pictured a magical infusion of the spell on the card with solidness and integrity. It was exhausting. After she finished, she opened her eyes and breathed deeply only to see Moonbeam trying to hide her smirk as she stared at the top of Twi's head.
"Twilimp," Moon giggled.
Spike opened his mouth as to say something, then closed it, opened again and finally closed once more and muttered something under his breath. Twilight looked at the silvery card, which was completely stiff now and still without any emblems. It was smooth enough for her to see a reflection of her horn hanging limply.
"Eek!"
"Just stand still," said Moon and focused strongly, dispelling the enchantment and reducing the the card to a puddle of metallic goo, which Spike quickly cleaned up. She felt a bit dizzy and shook her head, then took one of the books from her pouch, Metal Gear Magic. She skimmed though it, hoping to find a solution, but without luck.
"I need to take a look in a spellbook," Twilight said, "Maybe somepony knows how to embed a spell like that, but I don't. However, I'm pretty sure I saw a proper sequence to build a permanent runing charm in a book once."
"We don't have a magical library in Maretown. That's also why Scarlet is so bored most of the time."
"It'll take hours anyway, so we could just as well go to Royal Canterlot Library. Look, it's a very, very difficult construct, it's like..." she thought of an analogy for a moment, "like trying to work without checklists! Or building a machine like one of yours, you can't do it without well-thought blueprints—" She paused at the knock on the door, after which Eclipse the black wolf and Chewer the bobcat ran inside. Following them, Scarlet Mane entered the workshop and froze at the sight of Twilight, who then came closer to greet her.
"Hi, you must be Scarlet Mane!" Twilight said as both Eclipse and Chewer ran after panicked Spike in a circle around Moonbeam. "Nice to meet you in person at last!"
Scarlet didn't say anything but her eyes followed Twilight's perfectly and without blinking.
"I'm Twilight Sparkle, I... uh... are you alright?"
Scarlet didn't move. Twi looked back at Moonbeam, who again shown only a poker face, then moved a hoof as to poke Scarlet and check if she's fine. Carrie leaned back slowly to evade the poke and then straightened again as Twilight moved her hoof away.
"H-Hi," Scarlet finally said meekly. Twilight looked at Moonbeam again and gave her a you have to be kidding me kind of look.
"I warned you," Moon said.
A light bulb shaped like a baby dragon popped on in Twilight's head.
"Say, Scarlet, you know a lot about magic, could you cast a—" she stopped as she saw Moonbeam making a cutting gesture with her hoof across her throat, however didn't really know why the gesture was being made.
"Help us with a spell construction," Moonbeam quickly finished before Scarlet's face finished frowning.
"What? But this is impossible to do just like that," Twilight said angrily, as she just told Moon it's not that easy. "Scarlet, could you try to cast and embed a spell into this punchcard?" she asked as she moved it with telekinesis closer to her, then got a bit disconcerted as her horn shot some violet red sparks and the silvery card fell onto the floor. "Oh my, I think I need to rest."
Scarlet Mane seemed to shrink a little, Moonbeam facehoofed and Chewer glomped screaming Spike's tail, Eclipse joining soon after.
"I c-can't cast any spell..."
"But you're an expert! You should—" Twilight said and stuttered upon noticing the cutting gesture again and finally realizing what it means, "—n't feel bad about not casting spells if you know so much about them! You're a theoretical sorceress, that's all!" she continued. "What I wanted to ask, can you help us with a spell construct to record the spell on those cards so they can be used by that machine there. Maybe you have a book entitled—"
"Oh, be right back!" Scarlet said and ran off to her room.
"She never said in her letters that she couldn't cast spells—I mean, she's a unicorn! I properly assumed she could," Twilight tried to excuse herself.
"It seems that not so proper after all," said Moonbeam. "Don't worry. And it seems she has the book you want."
"I didn't even give her the title," Twi said and lowered her voice, "and I didn't notice her cutie mark, I take it's a taboo too."
Moon nodded.
"Well, many great wizards were eccentrics," Twi said quietly, as to herself, the moment Scarlet Mane came back with a notebook and a small brush in her teeth, then put them down and ran away again.
"Why don't you just use a telekinesis spell—" Twi stopped and winced as she got quite painfully nudged by Moonbeam, then continued, "to get us some tea, Moon?"
"Righto."
Scarlet opened her notebook. Twilight noticed it's empty and expected her to do something magical to reveal hidden contents. Instead, Scarlet just tore out a page, lay down and holding the brush in her teeth started drawing an increasingly detailed simulacrum of the spellthought.
"Don't you want to know what kind of spell we're embedding first?" Twilight asked.
"What kind of spell we're embedding first?" Scarlet laid down the brush and answered.
"Let's start with Want It, Need It, the one we tried as the last one..."
"Oh, a classical illusion. Mayhem group, we seek a master rank permanent rune..."
Twilight smiled nervously, remembering the mayhem it caused the last time.
"Maybe it's a better idea to start with a novice rank, just to see if it works," she said and began to wonder if it's really such a great idea to do that spell at all.
"Uh... I don't want to waste Moon's punchcards," Scarlet said as she took the brush in her teeth again, making Twilight look awkwardly at a pile of burned, disintegrated or otherwise destroyed cards in a trash can besides her.
"Okay, do you want me to help you bringing all the books and tables here?"
"Whath wooksh?"
Twilight slowly sipped hot tea Moonbeam provided when she began to see the black ink stick out of the flat piece of paper, then slowly move. After a minute the whole thing made her feel hazy, yet unable to turn her eyes away.
"It's... beautiful," she said just as Moonbeam returned with more tea, laid down the cups and joined Twilight. Both stared for several more minutes. "I've never seen a scroll so... alive."
"They aren't used very often, most ponies either learn spells or go to somepony who did it already, but this is a special case," Scarlet Mane said while she completed the pattern and then looked at them just to see them mouth agape.
"Uh... you can see the spell now, right?" she asked.
"Y-Yes," Twilight stuttered.
"Please cast it on Rupert then, should be working," she said and stood up to bring some punchcards.
Twilight nodded and tried to pick up the drawing, for the first second just lamely shooting sparkles from her horn. When she finally did so, she thought about what she had heard.
"Wait, did you say Rupert?"
"That would be this royal armor," Moonbeam explained.
"Let me guess... Royal Unicorn-Pegasus Enchanted Robotic... uh... Thing?"
"Uh... yeah, exactly. Yes," Moonbeam said and quickly scribbled something in her notebook.
"Rupert. Nice, I like it. Better than, say, Moonbot," Twilight giggled and focused on the simulacrum. She felt like it exploded into her mind, which felt quite nice—as if she was a bit smarter. She then aimed at Rupert and the spell exploded out of her mind, and with a sharp jolt took the memory of the pattern with it. She shook her head.
"I forgot how unpleasant this is," she said and looked at the piece of paper, now just a cloud of tiny bits held up by her telekinesis. "I don't remember that part either."
"That was just paper, not high-quality magically-tempered parchment you use in Canterlot," Scarlet said after putting down some cards. "It cannot withstand the curl of the thaumic field."
Both her and Moonbeam stared at Twilight, hoping she understands.
"You mean the rapid change in time of the primary field rips it apart?"
"Indeed!" Scarlet almost yelled, happy that at last somepony understands her in person. She then took another page out of her clean notebook and painted a different simulacrum.
"A box?" Twilight said in surprise when she saw the picture starting to stick out of the flat surface.
Soon, Scarlet added another dots and curves that in Twilight's eyes changed the box into a small metal-looking cube with a keyhole of an impossible shape.
"This is made to capture your first planned spell," she said as she laid down the brush. "Go ahead and cast it on the paper. After that, take the paper and cast the full spell from it on the card. Moon, just after it's done, put the card into the machine, otherwise it won't last very long."
Scarlet Mane, despite being unable to cast any spells herself—or so she said—knew exactly what to do to teach Rupert new enchantments. It seemed that she didn't just read a part of a magical library, but she wrote most of it. Which, as Moonbeam thought but kept to herself, might even be more or less true, if one of her ideas about how Sagacity Stones work was correct. She shivered. This was highly unlikely, but not impossible...
Twilight cast every spell in her repertoire on the royal armor, then another from the simulacrum, this final spell pushing her over the edge. The jolt she felt when the spell burst out of her was so strong she staggered.
"I'm exhausted! I don't think I can do it anymore, with or without tea," she said.
"I'm sorry, I should have warned you that the last one could be, uh... tiring," Scarlet admitted.
"The last one? Good, I'm off to take a nap."
"Sleep is good. At this moment the more sleep, the better."
"Don't eat now, though, Jelly Joy promised to bring back some tasty treats from the contest," Moonbeam said and noticed a glow from Rupert's direction.
#
Pistacia knew she can't beat Cinnamon Cream in baking. You don't bake ice cream, which was Pistacia's cutie mark after all. She went for something most closely related, namely waffles. Having taken them out of the oven she saw Cinny starting to decorate her cakes with Scarlet Mane's glowing cream that she recognized from Blasting Boom's party. The memory was strangely fuzzy, but she remembered the cakes were delicious.
Envy awoke inside of her. She began to sneak behind stalls. Upon reaching Cinnamon Cream's she noticed there were candles around the cake and that Cinny was looking away from it. Deciding it might be a good idea for some reason, she moved one of the candles a little closer. She looked around inconspicuously and pushed it even nearer, no more than an inch away from the cake itself, then snuck back to her own booth.
Cinnamon Cream turned around and gasped. She tried to blow out the candle, accidentally causing the flame to tilt enough to touch the cream. And so the first part of the competition, baking, started with a bang.
When Cinny managed to put out the red flames she looked around for a culprit. Pistacia appeared to be very busy, which she indeed was, due to all of the time she wasted on sneaking around. Jelly Joy with her cutie mark of fireworks was instantly a suspect. Cinny looked at her with her eyes narrowed.
"Pyromaniac," she said aloud, failing to notice jury standing in front of her stall.
"Quite fitting name for a..." Wysteria said and glanced at a clipboard with a list of competitors to make sure what she's actually going to taste in a second, "erm, a cake looking like this," she finished and despite it seemed completely burned, which it was, tried to take a piece. Mr. Truffle and Poppy Roll followed.
"Uh... no, I... ack!" Cinny stuttered in panic as she watched them eat. Wysteria winced noticeably.
"For Celestia's sake, what did you do to that cake?" Poppy Roll exclaimed. "It's burned and dry!"
"Deep inside it is good," Mr. Truffle said with his deep, booming and slightly trembling voice. "I do not think we can give you a good overall score, however."
Cinny sighed and observed as the jury gives similar scores to Jelly Joy, who baked pretty good, but also pretty usual cookies Poppy Roll loved, but which Mr. Truffle regarded as disappointingly boring. Pistacia, who didn't manage to finish her special sauce and the waffles ended up being not as sweet as they should, got a score very close to Joy's.
Jury then approached Pinkie Pie and began to sink their teeth into her cupcakes.
"Dashing!" Wysteria exclaimed and met with bewildered stares.
"Are you insinuating something?" Pinkie Pie asked her just as Poppy Roll let out a chuckle.
"Oh dear," muttered Mr. Truffle.
"What? But... uh..." stammered completely confused Wysteria. "I... what?..." she went on for a while and then sighed in resignation and lifted a porcelain plate with an 8.
Remaining jurors gave her 7 and 6, then continued to another booth. Derpy Hooves had her eyes on both Mr. Truffle and Wysteria, however in truth she was closely observing every move of Poppy Roll standing in between. Going crazy with anticipation as they all tasted her muffins, she started to shift her weight from one hoof to another.
"That deserves a 6," Mr. Truffle said coldly. Wysteria followed with even less impressive 5 points, then walked to the next competitor. Poppy Roll clearly had a different opinion and stayed behind for a moment.
"Dashing," she whispered as she lifted a 10 and they giggled together.
Derpy looked at Pinkie with a wide grin and then rolled her eyes in an impossible way as she did the math in her head.
"Twenty one. Huh," said Pinkie with disappointment as it turned out they got exactly the same score.
Derpy, who hovered besides her, just shrugged.
"We'll settle this in the final round," Pinkie said. "No holdsh bawwed, anything goesh," she added as she ate one of the cupcakes she just baked.