//------------------------------// // Fine Structure // Story: The Outsiders // by Arania //------------------------------// It took Twilight Sparkle all of a fraction of a second to react, momentarily suspending the four utter dome spells under her command for long enough to teleport Walleye, Lyra, and Pinkie to her own location, the sharp triple-crack of the chained teleports only barely drowned out by the sound of the world around them fracturing at the seams. The dark abyss within her psyche continued to spill magic through her, the flow completely unaffected by any grip, restraint, or degree of control Twilight attempted to enforce upon it. Where the magic was going was a completely mystery to her at that point, for all she knew it was being vented directly into the Void, atomising chunks of the world around them and firing them as reaction mass, turning them into a steadily-accelerating thaumic rocket, flying upwards out of reality. Barely able to think as she held the font of magic from growing any wider, tendrils of black and purple flowing in her peripheral vision, she spoke, words echoing unnaturally in the enclosed space and triggering synesthesic feedback as the words mixed with magic. “Okay. What now?” “What do you mean, ‘What now?’” Lyra shouted, standing on the wall of the now-reinstated utter dome, at right-angles to Twilight’s own subjective ‘down.’ “I don’t even know what you just did, let alone what you should do next!” “Way to not panic, Lyra,” Walleye snarked. “No, you don’t get to be a smart-flank about this, Derpy,” Lyra shot back. “I just ran for my life from a creature that I have never bloody seen before, and that is saying something. I’ve seen everything, I’ve been nearly everywhere that you could call dangerous, I live in the bloody Celestia-damned flank-kicking RUINS, and today is probably the first day in my entire bloody life when I’ve been scared for my life. I’m bucking done, alright? The moment little miss Sombra over there gets us back to civilisation, I’m out, I’m finding some hole in the ground and…” Walleye slapped her. Lyra blinked, holding her face in her hoof. “We good?” Walleye asked. “I… yeah,” Lyra replied, shakily. “Yeah, we’re good.” Walleye smiled, turning away from her and back to Twilight. “You do that again, though, and I will kick your flank,” Lyra remarked, rubbing her cheek. “I’d expect nothing less.” “Sorry to interrupt this heartfelt moment,” Twilight interrupted, anger and frustration echoing to a nearly visible degree in her words. “But the world is disintegrating around us. I have little to no control over the spell that’s doing it, and I’m out of ideas.” “How long?” Walleye asked, eerily calm. “How long until what?” “How long until the world completely disintegrates?” “Seconds. Maybe single-digit minutes if I really put effort into stemming it?” “Can’t you just dismiss the spell? Short your magic out?” Lyra asked, licking her hoof and tapping it to her horn, demonstrating the de-facto method of short-circuiting runaway magic. “This isn’t my magic. If it was, I would have depleted it already and been knocked out. I’m not in control, it’s just running through me.” “Serious question, if you die, would it stop?” Walleye asked, straight-faced. “Sorry, what?” “We’re not killing Twilight!” Pinkie cried. “It’s drastic, I realise,” Walleye admitted. “But if the choice is between all of us dying and just one of us dying… well…” “And leave us stuck on a piece of rock?” Pinkie countered. “Even Maud wouldn’t be able to live here for long, and she eats rocks!” “Maud?” Walleye asked, confused. “No, Pinkie’s right,” Lyra cut in. “Even if we stop the fragmenting, that still leaves us stuck here on a tiny island floating through the Void. It’s not viable.” “Okay, fine,” Walleye relented, turning to Pinkie. “Who’s Maud?” “Not relevant!” Twilight interrupted. “No, yes, you’re right. “ Walleye sputtered. “What’s the magic doing now?” Lyra asked. “Near as I can tell? Venting into nothingness.” “Magic doesn’t vent, Twilight, you know that as well as I do. What. Is. It. Doing?” “I… don’t know. This magic is weird. I… I think it’s trying to get back to where it comes from, back to the Void. I’ve opened a valve, and since I can’t close it again, it just keeps flowing and flowing and running back to its source and tearing everything apart along the way.” “Give it something to do, then, if that will stop it.” Twilight boggled at the request. “Give it something to do? There’s more energy flowing through me right now than I accumulate over entire weeks of meditation and focus. Kilothaum-watts. Gigathaum-watts.” It was hyperbole. Twilight didn’t have a reliable method of gauging the exact magic flux, but it solidly conveyed the point. “You know as well as I do that the right spell will just accept as much energy as you can throw at it. Pick something simple that scales up easily, and plug it in.” “That won’t stop it!” “No, but it will slow it down. If you give it somewhere to go instead of just taking a shortcut back into nothingness and tearing us apart in the process, it could buy us enough time to figure out an escape plan.” Twilight didn’t reply, pulling a single tendril of mental focus free from the iron-clad grip around the fissure in her mind to poll her mental list of spells, searching for something simple, yet scalable. Under normal circumstances, simple spells were that way for a reason, utilising the caster’s own preconceptions and innate understandings in order to avoid having to fully define every last detail of the spell to be cast, and had a typically fixed amount of energy that could be channeled into them. For instance, a spell such as light, which consists entirely of issuing that single word as a magical command, will universally create a light source that the caster considers neither too bright nor too dim, with a commensurate energy demand. However, given enough energy, any spell can be pushed beyond its initial limits. Typically, such energy demands are only available to sufficiently skilled unicorn magi, alicorns, and coordinated ritual circles, but the fissure of Void-ness flooding Twilight’s mind with black magic was anything but typical. Outside the opaque dome protecting the remaining members of Team Fifteen, a pinprick of light flickered into existence. A moment later, as Twilight turned the Void magic source in her mind around towards the mental pointer that corresponded to the light spell, the pinprick of light became as bright as the surface of the sun. Simultaneously, the violent shuddering that had gone largely unnoticed in the panic abruptly ceased, plunging the interior of the dome into eerie calmness. “Well,” Lyra breathed. “That seems… better?” “Wait a moment,” Twilight said, gingerly removing her mental grip on the Void source within her mind. Despite her relaxed control, all the magic flux remained centred on the spell pointer. “That’s… strange. I wonder…” Experimentally, she wrapped the light pointer in a maintain spell, a simple metamagic trick designed to allow a spell to continue autonomously with an independent energy source, designated the Void source as the ‘pool,’ and released her grip entirely. Abruptly, both the spell pointer and the Void source disappeared from her mind, the purple-and-black tinge quickly fading from her peripheral vision. “That should buy us some time.” “It worked, then?” Walleye asked. “Your eyes aren’t all green and purple any more, so…” “My eyes were green and purple?” “Green, with these purple-y tendrils flowing off them. ‘Going Sombra’ is what it’s usually called.” “Yeah,” Lyra pitched in. “Telltale mark of black magic. Though I’ve never seen it do… that.” “It’s probably some weird cross-reaction between my having travelled between worlds,” Twilight guessed. “Or at least, having prolonged contact with the Void, or being near the Void when you tap into black magic… I dunno. Outsiders are probably immune to it as a side-effect of your other magic quirks, I’d guess.” “Again, you’ve lost me,” Walleye complained. Lyra smirked, shaking her head in bemusement. “Okay, long story short, I shouldn’t use black magic because my travels with you have made my usage of it vulnerable to loss of control which could tear the world I’m on apart. I’ve solved the immediate issue, for now, but we’re still stuck inside a sealed bubble on a small chunk of rock, hurtling through the Void, with limited air and supplies.” “Let’s go home,” Pinkie offered. “How do we go home, featherbrain?” Walleye snapped. “We’re out here to find out who’s attacking the Exterior. Just because we now know doesn’t mean we just go back there. The ponies we would report that info to are likely dead!” “But…” Pinkie stuttered, taken aback from the hostility. “Can’t Twilight send us somewhere? Somewhere friendly?” “The spell to do that doesn’t work, apparently.” “Well, actually…” Twilight corrected, pulling Lunatic’s spell up and executing it. On cue, a reflective silver sphere formed around the four ponies, signalling the spell’s success. RF? She yelped with glee. “We’re good, we can teleport! Where should I send us?” “Oh, so now it works…” Walleye grumbled. “Bastion,” Lyra replied, ignoring Walleye. “It’s a world on the Edge of the falls that Runners like me use all the time. It’s friendly to Outsiders. Pretty grouse all-round, actually.” “Grouse?” Walleye questioned. Twilight ignored her, issuing the destination order to the spell. Confirm Ex54A2FF05-Bastion? Without a second thought, she issued the confirmation and the spell grounded, silver walls falling away to reveal the vibrant vista that was downtown Canterlot, mildly surprised ponies slowly backing away from the four newly-arrived offworlders. “Well, at least nopony’s screaming,” Pinkie observed cheerfully. In the distance, a pony screamed. “You just had to go and say it, didn’t you?” Walleye groaned. More screams came, mixed with shouts of alarm and confusion, none of them directed at the new arrivals. In fact, the ponies in the square seemed equally confused as to the source of the screaming, glancing around with worry. “At least nopony’s screaming at us?” Pinkie sheepishly corrected. “Where in the name of Celestia’s fluorescent flank is that screaming coming from?” Lyra wondered aloud. “And what are they screaming at?” “I think I may have an idea,” Twilight stated, eyes fixed firmly upwards. Far overhead, a long, slender, off-brown shape was streaking towards them, nearly-invisible particles of debris shedding from the object’s surface like metal dandruff before disintegrating as they slammed into the stationary air outside the object’s slipstream. “What is that?” Lyra demanded. “It’s supersonic,” Twilight observed, catching hints of the tell-tale conic shockwave as debris passed through it. “Sorry… what?” Walleye asked, taken aback. “Supersonic?” “Solidly supersonic, for sure,” Twilight confirmed. “Probably around Mach three or four, judging by the angle. Would probably give Rainboom a run for her money.” The mention of their fallen colleague blunted Walleye’s reply. Twilight, a fraction of a second too late realising her mistake, grimaced at her, apologetically. “We’re going to die,” Pinkie observed, somehow still managing to retain her cheerful tone. Around them, all across the city, pegasi had begun to take flight, vectoring towards the falling structure in a haphazard attempt to defend the city against the perceived attack that it represented. In the distance, towards the palace, Twilight spotted at least two distinct Princess Celestias take flight alongside the rapidly-growing fleet of airborne ponies. At the edge of the city, a force field dome began to materialise, a rosy ripple rising out of the mountain that supported Canterlot and up into the sky, easily recognisable by Twilight as her brother’s work, or at least one of his duplicates. While the shell was taking its fair time to fully form, there would still be ample time for it to solidify before the object arrived, protecting the city against any physical or energy-based attack. Beyond mild surprise, everypony in sight was largely unalarmed. Why should they be? Even Twilight herself knew that there was no danger. If the armada of pegasi and alicorns now closing on the ‘threat’ didn’t manage to slow or divert it, it would impact Canterlot’s force field dome and likely disintegrate. In the unlikely event that the object had some esoteric thaumic properties that would allow it to bypass the shield, failsafe spells built into the city’s very pavement would execute and teleport the city itself or its inhabitants to safety. Or at least they would, if those spells existed on this world’s Canterlot like Twilight’s own. In all likelihood, there were probably further layers of defensive measure on top of that that she didn’t know about. Of course, such spells vary from world to world, as was demonstrably the case with Falls-EF, where such defenses were either disabled or omitted, but by and large, at the end of the day, the only place safer to be than the streets of Canterlot was beside one of the Royal Sisters themselves. Twilight knew it, Team Fifteen knew it, everypony in the city knew it. There was no fear. There was also absolutely nothing Twilight could do to influence the unfolding course of events. Without dipping back into the malevolent font of darkness she had only barely managed to free herself from moments ago, she had only her own magic reserves plus whatever dregs remained in her powerstone - a few dozen thaum, tops. The object was massive, easily over a thousand hooflengths long and weighing hundreds of thousands of tons. So she watched. Before her eyes, easily a thousand pegasi took flight, streaking upwards to meet the falling structure before Canterlot’s shield closed. Over the span of the next few minutes, they took formation around the object while the few alicorns among them (of which Twilight spotted at least twelve: five Celestias, four Lunas, the rest she didn’t recognise) attempted to slow the object with magic enough to allow the rest of the flight to nudge it off-course. Exactly two hundred seconds after Twilight first spotted the object (she counted), it slammed into the side of Mount Canter, well outside the city’s defensive shield, but close enough that the shockwave knocked everyone off-balance, at a speed that was only barely subsonic. The mountain yielded. The object did not. It took another hour for Team Fifteen to make their way to the impact site, struggling their way through obstructive Royal Guard, crowds of fascinated onlookers, and the massive dust cloud that had been kicked up by the impact and now blanketed the entire mountain. With Lyra’s navigational skills at the helm, they arrived only barely behind the emergency response teams from the city. The four of them stopped dead as they good their first good look at what exactly had fell from the sky, a spike of eldritch grey metal, jagged and chaotic, now jutting out of the side of Mount Canter at an odd angle. They all recognised it, since they had been standing outside of it only a few hours before, only it had lost all it’s scrap-metal adornments and was now upside-down. Out of the fog and dust strode a pair of pegasi, two Rainbows, one clearly injured and being supported by the other. Twilight’s breath caught in her chest as she caught sight of the latter Rainbow, immediately recognising the black uniform and noticeable-but-not-prominent ‘15’ embroidered on the sleeve. “Oh, good,” Rainboom said. “About time you lot got here.”