//------------------------------// // A Walk in the Woods // Story: The Long Twilight // by ultiville //------------------------------// Despite Twilight's early start the next day, Sweetie's day passed quickly, engrossed as she was in First Law's ancient work. They still weren't sure if the runic manuscript was complete, but by the time Last Standing reported that the guards expected to be ready to leave around noon the next day, Sweetie had already worked out how one more line of runes lined up with the two she'd sorted out earlier. Not long after, she'd managed to work out what they meant. By late afternoon, the motes of light drifting around the room drew lazy, spiraling trails, each fading into obscurity after a few hooflengths. "Great job, Sweetie! That's the second magic sensing spell most ponies learn. Those trails you're seeing are showing you where those little bits of magic came from. As you can see, they don't last too long, not much more than a week even if undisturbed, but it can be useful anyway. At the very least, you can see if anyone has recently used magic in the area, and once you learn more, the colors can tell you what kind of power they used, though nothing like the exact spell. I'm really impressed, I never expected you to understand this so quickly, after your problems with telekinesis. " "Well, I have been working on it all day. And I heard myself humming that time! It's weird though, I don't think I know the tune." Twilight frowned. "I've never heard of anypony doing that, even one like Lyra who has music as her talent. Maybe she did when she was learning? Let's ask her when we get back." "Did it sound like I was humming the same thing as yesterday?" Twilight shook her head. "If you'd ever seen me dance, you'd know I don't really have a head for music. It sounded similar, I guess? But I don't recognize the tune either, so I'm not sure." "Oh, ok," Sweetie went back to the notes, then gathered her courage and spoke up again. "Hey, Twilight? Thanks for letting me help you out. I've never felt like I'm good at magic before, but this is really making me feel like I might get it." "Of course, Sweetie! But you don't need to thank me, I think you've really discovered a talent for this stuff! At this rate I might have to bring you on as my student after all." Sweetie blushed and smiled, and returned to the pages of runes. She felt like there must be something she was missing. She was beginning to understand how the runes indicated tiny movements of the horn or adjustments of the magical field, and she even more was figuring out how she had to think to channel the energy as they indicated. But something about the way they lined up was nagging at the edge of her mind. It felt, much like the feeling she'd had in Twilight's basement, like there was something she almost remembered about it. She didn't figure it out before dinner, though, nor bed, nor even before noon on the next day, and soon they were again setting out into the Everfree. Sweetie hadn't slept well the night before, despite Twilight's comforting presence, because she'd been worried about returning to the forest, but as it turned out, it wasn't so bad. The midday sun illuminated the forest trail more brightly than she remembered, and she felt safe surrounded by Twilight and the guards. She'd still been some distance from the castle when she'd caught up, so the first few hours of their trip were through terrain she didn't recognize. They started in the rocky lands around the castle, which she'd seen out the castle windows, but spent what felt like forever trudging through the deep woods, which she'd never seen before. The parts of the forest near town mostly looked like the Whitetail Woods but wilder and more overgrown, the trees all oaks and maples and other kinds found near town. Here the trees were different, stunted and twisted, mostly evergreens and some vicious-looking thorny trees, both of kinds she'd never seen around town and couldn't identify. The ground was dry and rocky, and a sickly-looking grey. She realized in a back corner of her mind that if she weren't surrounded by the burly guards (and an actual Princess, to boot) she'd have been terrified. Instead she looked around with interest. Idly, she hummed out the increasingly familiar tune and watched the motes of magic and their swirling trails pop into view. Twilight looked back at her with a little smile and nod. The magic looked very different from the castle. There the motes were like everything else in the castle: ancient and mostly undisturbed. Many of the motes along the walls and windows there had no trails at all, no magical creatures having disturbed them for centuries. Here, though, the magic was clearly constantly in motion. The air in front of her was crisscrossed with ghostly trails in greens, purples, and reds, and the whole sky swirled with motes of blue, grey, yellow, and white, moving so quickly that she could barely separate the trails left by her sensing spell from the blurs of motion. She wondered where all that magic had come from, and if it was responsible for the Everfree's infamous weather. "Wow," she said softly. "Yeah," Twilight said, "when I first moved to town and had time to look into this place, after the whole Nightmare Moon thing, I spent a good week just looking at all the magic swirling around here, seeing if I could figure out where it came from. I still haven't, it seems like something about the forest calls it up somehow. A lot of the trees and plants here are magical, and my current theory is that somehow together they influence the weather here to help them grow, but it'd be on such a large scale I don't know how I'd test the theory." Sweetie looked over at some of the trees. They did indeed seem to be manipulating the magic somehow - the purple and red trails swerved around the hunched evergreens, but the green ones turned towards the needles, where they clung to them, illuminating them like Hearth Warming lights. The thorn trees, though, looked different - trails of all colors swerved towards them, but only strange deep purplish motes clung to their sharp thorns and small leaves. They weren't exactly black, but if light could be dark, it seemed like they were what it would have to look like. "What's with the thorny trees?" "Those strange looking motes are dark magic. It isn't exactly evil, but it's certainly dangerous, and because of what it does, it's often regarded as unwholesome. Remember that inspiration manifestation spell Spike gave your sister?" Sweetie nodded. "Yeah, that was bad news." "Dark magic deals specifically with selfish desires, especially those that disregard the feelings of others. That makes it suited to controlling magics, like that inspiration spell, or to those dealing with causing harm, or even death. Because it's so self-centered, it also reacts poorly to other magics trying to control it - that's why it took so much effort to clean up the mess. That also makes it hard to study those trees, so I don't entirely understand them myself. There seems to be a whole genus of them living in various parts of the forest, some of which are very dangerous. These aren't so bad, or I'd have trimmed them back from the path, but you still want to stay away. They use the dark magic to drive off predators. If they stick you with their thorns, you get a pretty nasty dose of it. It won't kill anything as large and magical as a pony, even a young one like you, but it hurts a lot, and if you get too much of it, it can shut off your magic for a few hours or even days until it clears out of your system. And I mean all your magic, not just your horn, so it makes you feel weak and slow and sad, like when Tirek got to everypony." Sweetie shuddered, and looked elsewhere. They passed the next few hours in idle chatter, Sweetie mostly distracted by the different ways the magical motes swirled and eddied throughout the forest, which Twilight was more than happy to lecture her about. Eventually she mostly tuned it out, but the calming sound of the Princess's voice distracted her so much she didn't notice they were nearing the spot where she was pursued until they rounded the bend and were confronted with a mass of the dark magic motes, trailing long trails in the direction of her pursuit. They were interspersed with crimson motes of a type Sweetie had never seen before. "Whoa," Twilight muttered, and Sweetie stopped in her tracks. "I told you something came after me," she said, though she couldn't manage the joking tone she'd intended. "I believed you," Twilight said, "but if I hadn't, I would now. I wish I'd thought to use this spell when we were here first, but I was too worried about you." "Thanks," Sweeite said. "What are these weird bright red ones? I've never seen those before." Twilight swallowed, eyes wide. "Neither have I." Sweetie shivered. The woods didn't seem so bright anymore, nor the guards so safe. "Can we go home?" She said. "Yes," Twilight answered, slowly, "let's do that."