Disclaimer: This story is based on actual events and reflects only the most unbiased representation of the truth. To protect the innocent, the names of all persons and places have been changed. Any resemblance of this piece to any content rightfully owned by Her Imperial Majesty, the Alicorn Lauren Faust, is purely coincidental.
What might have been
Chapter 2: Of Fire and Magic
Celestia's sun shone warmly down on the little town of Ponyville and all manner of ponies were enjoying its light. Rainbow Dash, having finished her weather mare duties for the day, was peacefully napping on a puff of cloud over the park. Below her, Fluttershy was busy checking up on the squirrels and woodpeckers that called the trees their home. On the outskirts of town, Applejack lovingly buried the roots of a brand new apple sapping in the fertile earth of her farm, and at Sugar Cube Corner, Rarity excitedly discussed her new fashion ideas with the ever optimistic Pinkie Pie. One pony however, was not enjoying the sun or the company of her friends.
Twilight Sparkle was hidden away from the world in her library home, hunched over the latest issue of 'Proceedings of the Canterlot Royal Scientific Academy', and desperately trying to find any information relevant to her current assignment.
Three days ago she had received a letter from Princess Celestia, asking her to look into the cause of a rash of strange happenings in and around Ponyville and Canterlot. Due to the nature, location, and timing of these phenomena (they seemed to have begun shortly after Discord was defeated by Twilight and her friends) the princess was inclined to think that there may still be some lingering effects of the spirit of chaos's short-lived rule.
The solar diarch had confided in her pupil that this was not the first time that such a thing had happened either. Long ago, in the First War with Chaos, it had been Discord's magic that had created the constellation beasts in an attempt to subvert Princess Luna's control of the night sky. After his first defeat, the maliciousness of the star-beasts was broken, but the beasts themselves were not inherently evil, and so they remained. Since then, their allegiance had fallen to the Princess of the Moon and this had earned her the title Mother of the Night. Celestia asked Twilight for her utmost discretion with this information however, as it was still a sore subject for her sister.
The events happening this time however, were far more subtle and far more strange. Two weeks ago, Celestia herself had spent nearly an hour trying to catch her reflection off guard in her mirror when, instead of a feminine princess appearing in the glass as it should, it had been a rather handsome stallion with a flowing red and gold mane, a neatly trimmed goatee, and a gold and ruby crown. The princess had come to the conclusion that she was desperately in need of a vacation.
That is until Luna had confided that she thought she had seen a teenaged Nightmare Moon dancing in the ball room a few nights prior. Luna said that she was at first terrified by what she saw, but then noticed that the black alicorn's cutie mark was a shield rather than a crescent moon. When Luna approach the intruder, the image faded like a mirage into nothing at all.
Twilight knew that similar things had been going on in Ponyville as well. Applejack and Rarity both had strange stories to tell about spooky things happening around their homes. Last week, Applejack had taken a freshly harvested crate of apples to her supposedly empty cold storage cellar, only to find it completely full. When she went to move the intruding apple crates, her hooves passed right through the material like it wasn't even there. Fearing for her life and sanity she then ran and got Big Macintosh, but when they both returned to the cellar, the phantom crates had become transparent and five minutes later they were gone altogether.
Rarity's tale was even more worrisome in some regards. Rather than just seeing things, she had started to find some of the dresses she had made would disappear from her shop in the night and be replaced by stallions' suits that had very similar color schemes and designs. Strangest of all was that all of the intruding garments bore Rarity's trademark on the tags, and were quite obviously her own work! Despite the fact that Rarity never remembered making such outfits. The fashionista had confessed to Fluttershy during their weekly spa visits that she believed that she was losing her mind.
Fluttershy in turn related to her friend that she had been having far greater difficulty keeping track of all her animal friends because she kept seeing them in almost more that one place at the same time. Yesterday, she had given Angel Bunny a carrot when he was in his box, walked into her kitchen and saw him sleeping on the radiator, then went outside and saw him harassing the chickens, all in the span of less than twenty seconds.
To top it off Rainbow Dash and her weather team had received multiple complaints of shadows from clouds that weren't even there; the shadows were there, just not the clouds that should've been casting them. Pinkie Pie's pinkie sense was on the fritz and Twilight Sparkle was stuck with the question of why an entire town full of crazy ponies had suddenly gone off crazier than usual.
That was why she had been pouring over the latest scientific publications, looking for anything that might relate to her assignment. Unfortunatly, the best she had found (other than a diagnosis of mass schizophrenia) was a mathematical treatise on 'tempero-spacial topology of n-dimensional riemanenian manifolds'. This article had given her some ideas, but it looked like she was going to have to resort to good old fashioned experimentation to find her answers.
Closing her book, Twilight leaned back in her chair and huffed. “Well feathers! Three days of straight research and I hardly know more than when I started. I guess this really is a new field of study.” She looked around her workspace. Text and reference books were strewn about in haphazard piles, prestigious journals and periodicals littered the floor and available table space, and accenting the mess here and there were little gobs of crumpled note paper.
However, the young mage was distracted from her thoughts by the sound of her name.
“Oh Twilight! Where are you?” Came the sing-song voice of Pinkie Pie from the library's common room.
“I'm here. Just a second.” She called back. Closing her book and shoving her papers into some semblance of order, Twilight came out of her study/cavern to find Pinkie and Rarity waiting for her.
“Hi girls! What can I do for you?”
“Why Twilight dear you've done so much! We are so thankful for you looking into the...uh, problems that everypony's been having” Rarity began “but we haven’t seen hide nor hair of you in three days and we're all starting to get a little worried.”
“Well thanks for the concern, but I don't really feel like I've made any progress on what's been happening.” the mage confessed
“Oh, don't worry about that.” said Pinkie “We just want you to come hang out with us and enjoy the sun for a while. We saw Fluttershy and Dashie in the park a few minutes ago and and they both though it would be a great idea to have lunch together. Dashie's already on her way to Sweet Apple Acres to see if Applejack can come too! Also, I have a big surprise for you!!”
Oh boy, here we go. thought Twilight. “What's the surprise?” She tentatively asked.
“I'M THROWING A PARTY TOMMAROW NIGHT AND YOU'RE INVITED!!!” The pink mare exclaimed as she tossed a hooffull of confetti in the air.
Some how, that's not all that suprising! The mage giggled to herself. “What's the occasion then?”
Rarity spoke up before Pinkie could go on to one of her rambling explanations.
“Well after all that dreadful business with the changelings at your brother's wedding, and considering all the awful visions that have been affecting the town recently, the mayor decided to let Pinkie throw a party for all of Ponyville in the town hall to boost morale. I dare say you're one of the last ponies left to receive an invitation, what with you being cloistered away for so long. We wanted to make sure you were coming”
“Of course I'll be there.” Twilight replied with a smile on her face. “And lunch in the park sounds like the perfect thing to get my head straitened out over this whole visions thing.”
“GREAT!! I'LL GO GET THE CUPCAKES! SEE YOU GIRLS THERE!” Pinkie Pie declared, then bolted out of the library towards Sugar Cube Conner.
“Spike!” called the purple librarian. From out of the kitchen came Twilight's draconic assistant.
“Yeah Twilight, what's up?”
“Spike, we're going to have lunch in the park with the girls, make a few extra sandwiches and put them in a basket. Rarity and I will close up the library. Be ready to leave in fifteen minutes.”
A toothy grin spread across the baby dragon's face, Lunch with all his friends in the park, awesome! Spike snapped out a quick salute “Yes ma’am!” He said, then scampered back into the kitchen.
Twilight woke early the next morning. She had spent most of yesterday afternoon with her friends and now needed to devote herself to her experiments. Not that she would have done anything different. Spending an afternoon with her friends was comforting in a way she didn't even know she had needed. With all the stress of these phantasms and illusions on top of the recent events in Canterlot, the usually warm autumn air of Ponyville seemed cold and tense. It was a chill that set your nerves on edge, and made your heart feel like it was thumping off beat. A thin kind of cold that refused to be banished by the sun.
Her friends had warmed her though. Sitting in the park with Fluttershy, and Applejack had made her feel safe and welcome. Sharing her worries with Rarity and Rainbow Dash allowed her anxiety melt away, and of course Pinkie Pie had made her smile. The time she had spent with the other Elements of Harmony had thawed the reedy strain that hung like a pall over her head and gave her reason to believe that everything would turn out alright. It was a feeling of security that she hoped Pinkie Pie would spread to the whole town with her party tonight. Until then, it was up to Twilight to hunt down an explanation and actually make that happy ending come to pass.
A task easier said than done to be sure, but somepony had to do it and there really was nopony more qualified than Twilight Sparkle. After a rigorous and exhaustive review of the available literature, it was finally time to begin her experiments.
Her reading had lead her to believe that the most likely explanation for what had been occurring (again ignoring the schizophrenia hypothesis) was that some how Discord had managed to leave behind a quasi-teleportation field capable of spontaneous partial transmission of photo-material information. When she had explained this theory to Spike however, he had boiled it down to “Discord made it so that random stuff from elsewhere in Equestria sometimes half way shows up here for no good reason.” Both were accurate ways of describing it she supposed.
Thus the first order of business in Twilight's mind was to find out just where all this random stuff was half way showing up from. Twilight descended to her laboratory in the library basement and looked through her notes. After a few minuted checking and cross checking her calculations just to be sure, she walked over to her testing platform to begin.
The platform itself was nothing special. Just a roped off section of her lab that was about five meters on a side. Hopefully that would be enough room to ensure that if she accidentally did teleport something where she shouldn't, nothing would be in the way that might be damaged.
Starting with the basics, the purple unicorn called a simple teleportation spell into her horn and released it. With a flash and a pop, Twilight found herself on the other side of her testing area. “Well, nothing unexpected there, but it never hurts to start with what you know.” She said to herself as she marked off a check in her notebook. “OK next, attempt to half-cast a teleportation spell.” Calling on her magic a second time, the violet librarian began her spell, then yanked her magic away from it.
The effect was immediate. The spell rebounded back towards the caster and launched her backward into her work table. With a crash and a thump, Twilight found most of her research notes scattered about the room, the table knocked on its side, and a slowly darkening bruise on her rear. Levitating her notebook over and scrawling down her results, the battered unicorn decided that more safety padding would be needed before further testing.
From up in the kitchen of their home, Spike was beginning to worry about his bookish friend. She had been down in the basement for almost the entire morning and the crashes and bangs hadn't stopped since. Not that the young dragon thought that Twilight was in danger of seriously hurting herself. He knew the if nothing else, the studious unicorn took safety seriously. Although he wasn't quite certain if he should be reassured by the fact that she had all the pillows in the building down there with her, or concerned because she thought she might actually need them.
Regardless, It was his job, no his duty, to make sure that she didn't go off the deep end with her project or starve herself of food, company, and sunlight. To that end, Spike was hard at work putting the finishing touches on a delicious lunch of celery and tomato soup with daisy and daffodil salad. Let it never be said that Spike the dragon is a poor cook! He thought to himself.
With all the practice he got catering to Twilight and her friends, it was no wounder that his prowess in the kitchen was improving. There before the heat of the burners and with all the possible ingredients laid before him like an army waiting for command, Spike felt like a master of creation. From his post as chef, the amethyst dragon would order his troops forth to build for him a monument of taste. It was exhilarating. It was empowering! It was WHUMP...
What the hay was that!?!? Spike thought as oily black smoke began to seep up through the floorboards.
“SPIKE!” came a panicked cry from the basement “SPIKE GET THE FIRE EXTINGUSHER!!!”
Acting on pure adrenalin, the baby dragon lunged across the kitchen and ripped the extinguisher from the wall, wooden mount and all. He turned and raced back across the library toward the basement hatch and yanked it open. Thick smoke black belched from the trapdoor passageway but Spike's dragon eyes were unphased by the plume. Taking the stairs three at a time the young reptilian scanned for the only thing down here that he truly cared about. Standing on the far side of a rather impressive crater filled with roiling flame was a soot black unicorn blasting ice spells from her horn in rapid succession. Close enough he thought, then yanked the pin from the red cylinder and began filling the smoking hole in the ground with gooey, flame retardant foam.
In a matter of seconds it was over. The fire was out, the smoke was dissipating, and every surface was covered thickly in soot, extinguisher foam, or both. Standing on opposing sides of what used to be their basement floor stood a panting dragonling still deep in the throghs of his own fight-or-flight response, and a somewhat shaken and thoroughly embarrassed pony covered in soot. They held each others eyes for a several tense and awkward moments. Finally it was Twilight Sparkle that broke the silence.
“So... uh... on the bright side I think I have a working theory for where the phantasms are coming from.”
“WHAT THE BUCK WAS THAT TWILIGHT!!! WHAT IN TARTARUS HAPPENED DOWN HERE!?!?”
The named unicorn had the good sense to look ashamed of her obvious blunder. “I was channeling a spell to probe the space between spaces that I move through when I teleport, but it rebounded. I think the backlash reacted with the runic circle I set up and, well...” She gestured toward the lack of flooring before her. “This.”
Spike took a deep breath to try and cool his blood. A dragon's ire however, is not easily quelled, and his still burning anxiety came out clearly when he spoke. “Damn it Twilight, you could have been hurt or worse! I've never been more scared in my life. I'd never be able to live with myself if anything happened to you!”
“Watch your language Spike,” the mage scolded, a hint of the stress piking through her own words. However it was quickly drowned out by the somber realization the her dragon assistant was right about getting hurt. “I'm sorry Spike. You're right. I... I just...” She held her legs in tight to her self and lowered her head. Though the room was still far too hot, Twilight couldn't stop herself from shivering. Spike came over to her and wrapped her in a tight embrace.
“Hey, its ok. We're all ok.” He gently stroked her mane and comforted her as she slowly regained her composure.
“I'm all right, thank you Spike.” She said after a moment, pulling away from him. “Thank you for... all of that.” Twilight gave him a sincere smile as she looked into his emerald eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Of course. I have lunch ready upstairs for you, once you get cleaned up.”
“That sounds lovely Spike”
She had been rattled by the catastrophe in the basement, but not even a brush with death could put the curiosity of Twilight Sparkle off for long. After a few bites of her salad and a half bowl of soup she was back to her usual peppy self. By the end of her salad and the start of her second helping of soup the mage's mind was grinding away on what she could learn from her experiments thus far, and when her meal with Spike was ended her determination and excitement to continue had returned in full force.
“...and that's why, when I released the trans-spatial displacement gaeis, it bifurcated in the harmonic convergent zone of the materio-energy matrix. No wounder I haven't had any success yet. It's so obvious!” The purple unicorn finished.
“Yeah. Uh, obvious.” Spike replied. He had been completely lost after the first two sentences of Twilight's rambling explanation, but he was glad that she was feeling so much better. Unfortunately his relief was not to last. As soon a Twilight finished her word vomit (Spike really had no better way to describe it) she started to go off about resuming her experiments this very afternoon.
“Of course, I'll need a new place to set up the apparatus, someplace outside where any catastrophic failure isn't likely to damage anything. Somewhere where there will be help nearby if something does go wrong... hmm, ah ha!” Twilight slammed her hoof down on the table at her new idea. “I'll go ask Applejack if she'll let me use Sweet Apple Acres! I'm sure she'll have an unused corner of the farm that would be perfect!” She clapped her hooves together in excitement then turned to Spike. “Spike get my saddlebag, I'm going to see what I can salvage from the basement then I'll get going.'
“Uh.. don't you think you ought to take a breather after that explosion? I mean, you almost burned down the whole library with the both of us in it. Maybe you should hold off on any more experiments until tomorrow when you've had a chance to figure out what went wrong?” The dragon pleaded
Twilight giggled. “But I do know what went wrong Spike. Weren’t you paying attention a minute ago? Besides, is see no reason to put off an assignment of this importance just because I had a little bad luck.”
“Oh, is that what you were talking about? I couldn't really follow.” He said and scratched the back of his head in embarrassment.
“That's alright. If it will make you feel any better, I promise to take a fire extinguisher with me.”
“Well... I still say you should wait, but ok. Just please be careful!”
“Don't worry Spike. I think I know what I’m getting into this time.”
Applejack had been happy to accommodate Twilight and her research. She lead the unicorn around to a disused area next to the the old barn that Rainbow Dash had demolished a few months ago. The Apple family hadn't quite gotten around to building a replacement just yet, as there were only a few days until the first of the Earligold apples would need to be harvested and there were a million and one things that needed to be done on the farm before apple buck season.
“Ah'm awful sorry I can't stay and lend you a hoof sugar cube, but me and Big Macintosh have ta get all the storage crates mended an' we still got over three hundred to get to.” Said the farm mare. “But if you need anything you be sure to holler.”
“That's ok AJ. I understand.” Replied Twilight. “If I need any help I'll be sure to let you know. I'll see you at Pinkie's party right?”
“Sure as shoot'n. Later Twi!” With that Applejack took her leave and the violet mage got to work.
The first thing she did was set up her runic circle. When she began her testing beneath the library it had rapidly become apparent that the magic she needed to be working with was too complex for even a sorceress of her talent. The studious mage had set up an apparatus that would allow her to set parts of her casting aside in order to work on the spell piecemeal, rather than try preforming the whole thing all at once. It was like having a magical coat-rack on which she could hang some threads of her mana while weaving others. It was a very useful tool.
It was also a liability for the vary reasons that made it so helpful. If Twilight put too many spell threads on the circle, or over powered the threads, or if too much of a completed spell was hung on the runes, then the circle's ability to sustain the spell would kick start what spell fragments it did contain. This usually had the effect of letting loose what amounted to a magical avalanche, usually with rather impressive and pyrotechnic results. Taking in to account the large size and quite staggering complexity of the spells Twilight was working with, her use of the runic circle was a lot like playing with a rubix-cube that had a bomb in it. Needless to say it was nerve wracking work.
Twilight was well acquainted with the dangers of what she was doing however, and with the experience that came from her past and recent failures, she quickly managed to get right back into the thick of things. She was so close to a breakthrough when she had blown a new subbasement into her home, it felt like she had arrived at the very spell that would yield her the answers she needed. But but when she called the magic into her horn, all her senses went bonkers.
There wasn't many ways to better describe the feeling. It was like the most intense vertigo imaginable, in conjunction with seeing around in a circle to the back of her own head. Her eyes saw in ways that her brain said couldn't happen and her stomach was not going to tolerate such a dispute. Before things could get out of hoof again, The young mare dropped the spell, stumbled away from her work space, and retched.
Struggling to regain her balance Twilight decided to put some of the more obscure research she had done to use. I hope that mathematical treatise I read was good for something. She thought to herself. Calling the theatrical structures to her mind, she drew on her magic and applied the thought to the spell.
Where before she saw only a roiling cauldron of vertigo, nausea, and confusion, now in the depths of her working was a hollow path. The spell she had been casting wasn't a teleportation spell at all. It was a door. And beyond that door lay the explanation to all the funny phenomena happening in Ponyville and Canterlot.
Twilight Sparkle looked around to see if anypony was watching, then consumed by curiosity, she stepped through.