//------------------------------// // Rift // Story: Magus Magesterim // by Blackhorn_The_Faithless //------------------------------// Twilight had come to honestly love all of her students. All of them held a special place in the vaults of her mind palace, and in her heart, beating with boundless love and friendship. But, over time as they'd failed or turned on her, she'd learned to do other things too. Her Mind Palace was something she'd done unconsciously for years before she became a princess, and she'd developed it afterwards. Now, she was capable of shutting away more than simple memories. "Now Fade, this lesson I'd like to teach you a little something different." Fade Rift was a curious little colt really, and he loved magic. His mind worked in strange ways sometimes, ways that belied his age in intelligence and, occasionally, wisdom. But he was still a colt, and with it came his coltish sort of enthusiasm for all things practical, and lack of for all things... theoretical. "What is it Princess? A new spell? Can you teach me how to make myself a thousand hooves tall? Or make myself shoot lasers out of my eyes?" Twilight giggled and shook her head. "No, I'm going to teach you something I taught myself a long time ago, to help with your memory. Remembering things, and being able to call upon that knowledge at a moment's notice. I call it a mind Palace." The pair were in Twilight's favourite part of her rather unorthodox castle, the library. In the restricted areas of the great book repository was a small room dedicated to Twilight's magical experimentation and, coincidentally, where all Twilight's magical lessons, theory or practical, were taught. It was virtually indestructible, and Twilight had been careful to design it as such. "A mind palace?" Fade asked, his brows furrowing in confusion, "What's that?" Twilight, who had Fade under her wing as she lay upon the rather attractively comfortable shag pile rug she'd laid on the floor some century or so back, smiled down at him. "Like I said, it's a memory technique. I'll try to show you." Twilight called upon the magic laying ready within her, an almost boundless wellspring since her ascension, and called an image of her mind's workings to being, in their raw form. "This is my brain right now," She explained gently, "Well, not physically. All those little bright spots? They're electrical signals being sent around the different receivers in my brain." "... It looks a little like space does during Astronomy class Princess," Fade replied dubiously, "Are you sure you're not just remembering that?" "Pinch me," She simply replied with a giggle, "And you'll see." Unsure of himself, but obedient, Fade did pinch her on the shoulder as gently as he could. Instantly, a flare of bright light lit up a part of the mind map. "That was the nerve centre for pain Fade," She explained, watching her mind work with a serene sort of look on her face, "It lit up like that because my body's nerves sent it a message saying I'd been pinched, and that it might hurt. Don't worry, you didn't hurt me-" She felt an apologetic nuzzle at the area he'd pinched anyway, and couldn't hide her smile. "Believe me now?" "Yes Princess... But I don't understand still. What's a mind palace." Twilight let the initial illusion she'd summoned fade, and conjured a new one, a mighty palace she'd built long, long ago within the recesses of her mind. "This," She said softly, "Is my mind palace." It was a thing of beauty really, soaring spires of marble topped with elegant conical rooves, a great door of blackened wood with golden embellishments... But they didn't enter. "It's something I created to help me hold onto important memories and lessons, so that I'd never forget them," She told him gently, "Each room in the palace holds something or somethings important. Some rooms share memories, others hold records of my history. I remember the date, time and location of everything that's happened for a long, long time." "Sounds a little silly to me." Twilight, quite surprised, actually let her illusion waver, and looked down at her pupil, who looked a little disgruntled. "I'm sorry?" "Why a palace?" he asked her in his childishly blunt manner "Palaces and castles can be broken into, I read about that all the time in the books you make me read on history. I mean, the Changeling Invasion of Canterlot like, six hundred years ago? They didn't even get detected until the wedding, and they almost succeeded. Before that, it was dragons and griffons, both of them got in easily enough. I just don't think it makes sense." Twilight, now more intrigued than insulted, narrowed her eyes as she thought, looking back at the illusion of her mind palace. "Then what would you choose?" She asked curiously. Fade seemed to think on this for a while. "A Submarine," He answered confidently. Twilight was still confused. "A submarine?" She asked, "Why a submarine?" "It's harder to bust into," He answered with a shrug, "All the books suggest so. I mean, you have to be on the submarine in the first place to get in it right? And there's no key locks, it's all air locks or something right? It has to be able to not let water in, and keep air in, so it's secure that way. You have to get a submarine to the surface to get in it too, you can't just open the doors underwater. You'd drown everypony and everything in it." "You wouldn't be able to open the door anyway actually," Twilight said quietly, her tone curious and introspective, "The pressure differential is too great, it takes far too much force to open the doors underwater at the necessary depth, even a unicorn would have trouble." **)~(** Night had fallen. It was cold, and Fade was having a nightmare. He couldn't remember exactly what it was that had scared him in it, it had faded from memory too quickly, but he was shaken. And he didn't want to sleep on his own, it was too scary, too much risk of the nightmares coming back to eat him, or something similar. No, he couldn't sleep in his room. So, he left his room, and went searching through the castle. He knew where he was going even before he was heading in that direction. Princess Twilight rarely slept, and when she did it was always after visiting the same place. Her laboratory, which was just off of the library, in case she needed a book or something he guessed. In fact, it was connected to the training room she taught him in. So all he had to do was slip into the darkened library, where he stopped and shivered. Something felt... off. The darkness was oppressive, as it had always been to poor little Fade, but there was something evil about it now, it felt off. Very off. The books, instead of being comforting like he was used to, seemed almost to leer at him, cursing him with their emotionless gaze instead of welcoming him like he was used to. He didn't know how long he stood frozen there, but when he finally forced his hooves to move, he felt cold and the fur on the back of his neck was raised. Something was very wrong. He made it to the training room, and here it felt even worse. The shag pile rug seemed to be waiting for him to step on it so it could wrap him up and crush him, maybe eat him afterwards. The racks on the left wall holding the wooden training staves and weapons that he'd been told he'd learn when he was older seemed to quiver in anticipation of something, and the bookshelves had the same feel to them as the ones outside. And there was a light underneath the doorway leading to Twilight's laboratory. Not the light of a candle, which is what Fade was used to seeing. This one was a sickly green and tinged with purple darkness. With a gulp, he approached it, pointedly avoiding the rug and staying away from the books. Suddenly, the nightmares didn't seem so bad. He wanted to turn around and go back to bed, his warm, safe bed where he could pull the covers over his head and pretend nothing was wrong. He didn't know what drove him to open the door that day, to peek in at his mentor in her lab rather than running away and going back to bed. Maybe it was providence, or morbid curiosity, or maybe it was just good old fashioned stupidity. Whatever it was, he did open the door to look in on his mentor, and what he saw horrified him. Twilight was there, naturally. Her horn shone in the oppressive darkness, beating it back. A little over two meters in front of her was a green ring of some sort, hovering in mid air. Twilight herself could have easily fit into it without even having to crouch. But it was the thing looking at Twilight, and talking back, that terrified him. It stood taller than her, and wasn't pretty. Its skeletal face dripped bloody tears from the eye sockets, and flesh rotted on the bleached bone. Through the purple darkness that surrounded its form, Fade could vaguely see a long spinal column, and the remnants of a ribcage, but it didn't seem to have legs, nor arms. It simply seemed to hover, perfectly level, with no regard for gravity. And its voice.... It sent chills down his spine. A horrifying sound, like bones being crushed under a steamroller and the sound of crumpled flesh blended together, guttural and dark. Clearly this creature didn't belong in this realm. It seemed they hadn't noticed him... And then the door, still swinging open, creaked on its hinges. Both of them stopped talking suddenly, and swung to look at him. Twilight's eyes widened in terror, but the creature seemed to grin around its horrible rictus. "Fresh meeat..." it growled, and Twilight spun back to face it, her horn suddenly bursting with light. The creature, however, clearly knew what she was going to do, and an arm formed out of blackness, bony and clawed, and viciously backhanded the Princess, sending her through the air like a ragdoll, and with a tyrannical roar, it bounded for Fade. Time seemed to slow down as Fade's mind, at the height of adrenaline levels, perceived the world around it in microseconds. The creature in front of him, bounding towards him, now with legs made of shadow and stubs of bone where a hip bone, previously unseen, showed itself through brief gaps in the shadowy cloak around it. Its mouth was open, clearly to bite Fade in two. Princess Twilight, tumbling through the air and her instruments, a cry of pain and terror. He dimly registered she'd screamed at him to run. But something kept him there. An alien calm washed over the little colt, like he knew it was going to happen this whole time. focus.... The voice floated through his mind and, instead of cowering, he smiled. He felt his magic, deep within him, blaze forth in power he'd never felt before. His eyes blazed with light, and his horn flashed in indigo brilliance, A spell he'd never cast rose, unbidden, to his mind and he cast it. With a hideous screech, the veil between worlds wasn't just opened, it was shredded under Fade's power, ripping open a rift between worlds. Had the creature eyes, Fade was certain they'd be popping out of its head as it tried to bring its shadowy bulk to a halt. But somehow it couldn't. It was like a vacuum coming from the portal. And from within it, fire roared its anger at being disturbed. The creature said something, but the world was moving too slow for Fade to understand it. It was pulled off of its feet, the shadow cloak being stripped from the creature as it was dragged into the abyss of the portal that Fade had torn open. It was pulled in, and with another blaze of magic, Fade fixed the rent he'd made in space, closing the portal completely and locking whatever creature the thing had been away in wherever he'd deemed necessary to place it. Within the vaults of his mind, he heard a delighted voice crying out in exultation. And then it faded, and time began to move normally again, and he collapsed, twitching as the magical backlash of what his little body had just achieved hit him and hit him hard. He was dimly aware of Twilight running over to him, calling his name before he blacked out. **)~(** Urgent Missive to Princesses Celestia And Luna Fade Rift is the first Element.