Rummaging through one of the trunks, Maud Pie lifted out several boxes, until at last, she came to a wooden box stored at the bottom of the trunk. She lifted this out and then began packing the other boxes back in.
Tarnish, who was still setting up the camp, fixing some food, and purifying the water, looked away from his tasks to watch Maud, trying to figure out what she was doing. He watched as she lept down from the wagon and landed upon her sturdy hooves.
With an internal excitement that did not show, Maud grabbed the wooden box by the handle with her teeth and opened the lid. Inside there was a piece of expensive arcano-tech on loan from the University of Las Pegasus. There was a little metal box that had a grippable handle, a sensor array, and a display readout. Also inside the wooden box was a small solar panel to charge the arcano-tech device.
“What’s that?” Tarnish asked.
“A thaumaton reader,” Maud replied.
Tarnish shook his head. “A what?”
“Magic is measured in thaumatons.” Maud took a deep breath and prepared for a bit of an educational lecture. “Right now, we are at the place where the Ghastly Gorge empties into the Froggy Bottom Bogg. The water here has a mild charge of magic. I suspect that the rocks here have a higher charge of magic, because rocks for some reason absorb thaumatons… but I don’t know why and neither does anypony else. But the water acts as a carrier. The water here drains into the Froggy Bottom Bogg, and then all that water seeps down into the ground through the limestone and the water leaves behind all of its magical charge in the rocks, charging the ground, the very rocks themselves with thaumatons, filling the ground with magic.”
For a moment, Tarnish worried that his brain was going to leap out of his ear and then take off screaming, retreating off into the wilds. He blinked and tried to process what Maud had just said.
“The Crack of Doom is a major ley line intersection and it is absolute certain death for ponies who enter. It has a lot of dangerous, chaotic magic. It spills up out of the ground, like any other radiation, and goes into the different bodies of water, which hold a massive magical charge. Some of the radiation is lost to the air, decaying, but the water carries enough magic for it to eventually reach here, the place where we are now. The magic here is harmless, having somehow been made harmonious. I don’t know how. I suspect that the rocks do it somehow, but it is just a theory. The rocks hold a thaumaton charge quite well. If we measure the water here we’ll see a bit of minor magical radiation, but if we measure the rocks, we’ll see a higher level of thaumatons present. If we crack open a large rock and touch the sensor array to the inside immediately after the rock has been split open, we’ll see a much higher concentration, but this effect only lasts so long, as the radiation does begin to decay. Thaumatons want to stay deep on the inside of a rock, and the surface of a rock will always have a lower reading.”
“Um, okay.” Tarnish nodded and made an attempt to look like he understood what was going on. It was just easier this way.
“We owe the rocks for our continued existence.” Maud looked down at the stones all around. “The bad magic spews up from beneath the ground in the same way that good magic does… magic of both kinds fills the ground, the water, and the air. The magic in the air is the weakest, rapidly losing its charge as the thaumatons decay. The magic in the water is much the same way. The decay rate is just too high.” Maud took a deep breath. “But rocks, it is my belief that rocks act like batteries. They store the thaumaton charge, preserving a healthy amount of background magical radiation, allowing for the continued existence of magical creatures.”
“I see,” Tarnish replied.
“Tarnished Teapot, you are a magical creature.” Maud looked at her husband, trying to guess how much he understood. “Without background magical radiation, you would probably die. And so would I. But you would probably go first because you are a unicorn, and then I would be sad because I would be alone again.”
It took a moment, but Tarnish’s brain, when faced with overwhelming science, decided it wanted to live. After a few clunks, the mental gears turned and Tarnish had a moment of understanding. “And poison joke fits into all of this because it helps to filter out the bad magic, just like the rocks do.” He paused. “Not just bad magic, but strong magic, like a really powerful ley line, poison joke can grow there as well, so there is a magical eco-something—”
“Ecosystem,” Maud corrected.
“Yes, a magical ecosystem at work, a whole harmonious system that works to filter magic and somehow make it suitable to sustain life.” Tarnish, feeling proud of himself, saw Maud nodding. “If the magic was too strong, or too chaotic, everything would be like the Haunted Woods back home, all warped and twisted from magic… but without magic, there would be no life at all… er, at least not magical life, like us ponies, because we’re directly connected to the world through magic.”
“Correct. Earth ponies draw their strength from the earth, pegasi fly through the trace amounts of magic in the air, and unicorns draw upon magical ambience to cast their spells.” Maud, studying Tarnish, could see that his mind had been engaged. He was thinking, he was learning. She loved him most when he was like this. “Mind you, this is a theory, but I believe there are special ponies that are different from other ponies. They have a stronger connection to the earth, the air, or to magic. I have a connection to rocks. I am strongest when I am on rocky ground, because I am The Rock. Ponies like Twilight Sparkle have a stronger connection to magic, but she is an extreme example. There are pegasi like Rainbow Dash who have a stronger connection to the air. Where most pegasi would only gain a minor amount of strength from the thaumatons in the air, my theory is that Rainbow Dash is optimised to make the most out of the magical radiation available to her, processing it through super-efficient means. It makes her fast.” Maud paused and blinked. “And then, there are ponies like you. Ponies like you that help to prove my theory. You are part of a larger system that balances everything.”
“And it all comes down to the rocks.” Tarnish looked down and prodded a rock with his hoof. “And this is why you want to study the ley lines… and all because you wanted to know why the rocks on the rock farm changed into valuable rocks.”
“Yes.” Maud nodded.
“Maud?”
“Yes?”
“What if you took that thaumaton sensor thing and touched me with it… I mean, measuring me in my various states of harmony and chaos?”
“Oh… that’s an interesting idea… hmm.” Maud’s ears pitched forwards, angling over her eyes. It was a somewhat dangerous idea, and it would mean allowing Tarnish to slip into his full blown ‘poison joke’ state. Maud eyed his amulet, which glowed a soft blue. Maud prefered a hoofs on approach to science. The direct approach, with counting, measurements, and raw data collection. Tarnish wasn’t a rock, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t interesting. Tarnish was part of the system that the rocks contributed to, that rocks were the very foundations of. Or so Maud believed.
“It occurs to me that you and I are both islands of stability.” Tarnish’s brows were furrowed from his concentration. “Well, I can be a source of instability, but when I’m surrounded by bad magic, I generate an actual island of stability around me. We’ve seen that and even took photos of it back in the poison joke grove back home. And you, with your rock cutie mark, you have the stability of a stone. We have complimentary talents… we really are ideal for one another.” Tarnish looked at Maud, his eyes narrowing. “I wonder if I could protect another pony, going into a dangerous place. I mean, if they stayed close to me, inside the magical field I generate.”
“I don’t know.” Maud shrugged. “That might be too dangerous and too risky to test.”
Maud angled the solar panel towards the sun, plugged a thick, springy cord into the arcano-tech device, made an adjustment on the panel, and then heaved a sigh. It was time to wait for the device to charge.
Turning, she saw Tarnish dumping oatmeal into a pot. Maud liked oatmeal. It was plain, filling, was full of good nutrition, it was an ideal food. She heard the plopping of small bits of dehydrated fruit being spilled into the oatmeal pot.
“Some water keeps a magic charge, doesn’t it?” Tarnish asked as he looked up from his task. “Like the mirror pool that Pinkie Pie got into.”
“I guess so… I don’t know very much about magical water bodies, but I do know that they exist. They change, and are no longer water, at least not in the most general sense.” Maud sat down upon the stony ground. “There are mirror pools, portal pools, love springs, there are all kinds of magical bodies of water.”
“I guess those would be found on or near ley lines.” Tarnish lifted up a spoon and gave the quick cooking oatmeal a stir. Little whorls of steam rose up from the pot.
“We’ll probably encounter a few in our travels,” Maud said.