“You do realize, Your Highness, that you’re essentially heading straight into the lair of whoever’s trying to kill you?”
It was late morning and Twilight and Spike, followed by Stormwalker and Askari, were walking to the Imayini consulate. She’d briefed the three of them on her conclusions from last night, and the guards were both antsy about the prospect of what she was about to do. Spike, on the other hoof, seemed to be taking it just fine.
“I realized that a long time ago,” said Twilight. “But if I don’t do something worthwhile, I’ll just keep feeling worse and worse. Besides…” She forced some cheeriness into her voice. “When you get right down to it, a private theatre box is still a public location. This is a private one. Me getting killed here would narrow down the suspects quite a bit, so any attempted murder is unlikely. You’ve heard of the eye of the storm, right?”
“I still say it’s idiotic,” muttered Stormwalker.
“She has a point,” said Askari. “A small one, but a point. So long as she’s careful, it’d be difficult to hurt her in there and get away with it.”
“That doesn’t change my opinion at all.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Spike. (Twilight lightly smacked him on the back of his head.)
The door to the Imayini consulate didn’t look all that different from any of the other doors in the hall; it was maybe a touch more elaborate, and had a sign that translated to, “Imayini (Some Word Twilight Didn’t Recognize)”, but that was about it. If Livingstone hadn’t told her where to find it, Twilight would’ve missed it completely. Her brain running on autopilot, Twilight reached out for the knob that wasn’t there on the door, instead of using the pedal. And the moment her hoof touched the door, she felt the same full-body tingle she had after the bolt had nicked her the day before.
She yelped in shock, yanked her hoof back, and jumped away with a flap of her wings. Stormwalker and Askari shuffled to opposite sides to give her space. Twilight started to scramble backwards, but then she realized the tingling was already gone. She looked at her hoof, turned it over. It looked alright (not that it wouldn’t). She could cast sparks with no problem. She could hover with no problem. So wh-
“Twilight?” asked Spike.
“Are you alright, Your Highness?” inquired Stormwalker.
“Um, yes,” Twilight said, still looking at her hoof. “I think so.” She took a few steps forward and placed her hoof against the door again. The tingling returned. She withdrew it. The tingling vanished. Touched, returned, withdrew, vanished. Hmm. She touched the door and tried to cast sparks. Her magic slipped away from her. She withdrew her hoof and tried to cast sparks. No problem whatsoever. Hmm hmm.
Spike cleared his throat. “Uh, Twilight? What’re you doing?”
Now that she wasn’t distracted by someone shooting at her, Twilight could almost tell what was happening. It felt a bit like her magic was being… diverted, somehow. Redirected. Not to anywhere in particular; just someplace it wasn’t useful. The ground, maybe. Rather than getting shaped into spells, it would just pseudorandomly disperse. That wasn’t a bad idea, actually. Harder than simply blocking magic, but harder to overcome. On a whim, Twilight reached out and tried to grab the whole door with magic. Same result: her magic slid away and had no effect. If it was going into the ground (which was hard to tell), then she might be able to stop it by-
Sadly, Twilight’s investigation was cut short when Stormwalker suddenly had an intense coughing fit that, for some bizarre reason, sounded oddly like, “Get on with it.” Twilight sighed, gave one last look at the door, and stepped on the pedal to open it.
Immediately, she noticed the first difference between her temporary embassy and this permanent consulate: this suite had a lobby. It was very minimalistic and didn’t have much other than a receptionist’s desk and a few doors opening off to the sides, but there was no mistaking it for anything else. A lobby. Her own accommodations suddenly felt inadequate, even though their temporary nature meant that was the best she could have at the moment.
An receptionist was at the desk, an abada writing something down. Twilight knew to expect it, but she still looked oddly small, particularly since the desk was sized for her, but everything else was sized for zebras, Imayini being a multispecies company and all. Twilight figured it was something she’d get over soon enough.
Hearing the door open, the receptionist looked up, twitched, and straightened enough to gain an inch in height. She smiled, although it was clearly hiding some anxiety. “H-hello, Your Highness,” she said in a voice Twilight suspected was a bit more high-pitched than her usual one. “How can I help you?” Her eyes briefly flitted over each member of Twilight’s retinue, and it occurred to Twilight that her group must look very strange: an alicorn and a baby dragon guarded by a pegasus and a zebra. At least the receptionist seemed to be handling it well enough.
“Hello,” Twilight said. She stopped a few paces further from the desk than she normally would have so she wouldn’t tower over the abada. “I was wondering if I could have a personal conversation with some of the consuls or CEOs of Imayini. Any one will do.” Not entirely true, she wanted to talk with Mtendaji or Okubi, but close enough. “Just a diplomat-to-diplomat talk, no work involved.”
The receptionist blinked a few times. “I, I’m not sure,” she said. “They might be busy, a-”
“And I understand if that’s impossible,” Twilight said quickly. “I don’t want them to go out of their way to talk to me. I can come back later.” She’d’ve preferred not to, but she didn’t want to look like she was an entitled royal jerk.
Once again, the receptionist blinked a few times, then slowly released a breath. “No promises,” she said with a bit more confidence, “but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you, um…” Thankfully, Twilight knew enough Zebran to read her nametag. Unthankfully, the name on there was rather complicated. “Visi-… -vyo-… -kuwa? Visivyokuwa.” She grinned awkwardly, hoping it wouldn’t look to insensitive of her to stumble over the name. Just because she was a princess and could get away with it didn’t mean she should do it. She opened her mouth to apologize.
“Call me Visi,” said the receptionist before the apology could start. “Everyone does. Now, if you’ll just give me a second…” She placed her hoof a gem inset into the desk and spoke into the air. “Ma’am? Princess Twilight Sparkle is here. Says she just wants to have a diplomat-to-diplomat talk.”
Visi paused and immediately, Twilight’s mind began racing. What sort of magic was in that gem? Sound transference of some kind, most likely. Two-way. Similar to voicepipes sometimes used in Equestria, Visi could talk and have her voice transmitted to whoever was on the other end, and they could talk back and, judging from her silence, have her hear them without someone else overhearing. And Visi’s horn wasn’t glowing, so the only magic required to use it was probably just in its creation. She’d have to look into that a bit, find out how it was controlled. What was it like on the other side, for instance? Did that side require any input?
Visi started talking again. “Just a personal talk. A getting-to-know-you type of conversation.” She looked quizzically up at Twilight, who nodded. Visi nodded back and continued, “No work or anything like that.”
She paused again, this time for longer. “I know, but she said she understood if you didn’t have the time. Maybe she’ll understand if you have to leave early.” Visi looked at Twilight again, who nodded again. “Yeah, she says she’s fine with that.”
Another short pause. Visi nodded and said, “Will do.” She took her hoof off the gem. “Consul Mhate only has a short time, but she’s willing to meet in the conference room.” She pointed off to one side. “Second door on the right, marked clearly, you can’t miss it. She’ll be there in a few minutes or so.”
“Thank you,” Twilight said with a nod. Not the greatest, but it would do. Plus, she was an abada; they might be able to answer her questions about the door, which might answer questions about the crossbow bolt, which might… allow for something. It’d depend on the answers.
Twilight opened the door Visi had indicated and stiffened slightly when she noticed two abada guards, easily identifiable as such by their dark gray armor. Her first thought was that they were going to kill her. Her first observation was that they were leaning against the wall, they weren’t holding their spears, they were talking with each other and hadn’t noticed her yet, and neither of them was wearing their helmets. Her second thought was that her first thought had been overly panicked.
“…so then I say to her,” said one guard, “‘If you’re gonna-’” And then he noticed Twilight and her retinue and snapped to attention. His right front hoof twitched back and forth a few times before he settled on doing a salute. His partner followed suit, right down to the twitching.
Twilight had to hold back a giggle; it looked silly (she heard Spike barely keeping his own laughs behind her), but it wouldn’t do for them to see her looking so… She wasn’t sure of the right word. “Cold” and “calloused” were a bit too strong. Un-regal? Common? None of those sounded right, either. Whatever the term, she needed to keep her composure. Her face stayed serious as she passed them, but she gave them a nod of acknowledgement.
Her eyes flicked to the spears. If the abada’s diversionary magic was common enough to be put into locks, would it be present in spearheads? Probably. An idea struck, and Twilight cast a sort of zero-effect spell; it’d spread out like water poured across a flat surface, but it wouldn’t actually do anything. Unless something else did something to it. Such as nullifying it in some way.
Twilight felt the tingle in the two spearheads, and the entire spell flexed slightly around them, like it was getting pulled towards them. Well, if she couldn’t stop whatever was blocking her magic, she could at least be aware of it. She cast the spell again, with a larger area. Aside from one or two things that felt like locks, those two spears were the only magic-countering things nearby. Still, Twilight resolved to periodically cast the spell during her conversation, if only to be on top of thi-
“Twilight!” hissed Spike. “Right here!”
Twilight stopped walking and took a few steps back to the door she’d almost passed. “Whoops.” She double-checked the sign. “(Some Word Twilight Didn’t Recognize) Room”. Promising. Just to be safe, Twilight recast the detection spell. No nullification inside. Promising.
But when Twilight pushed open the door, that didn’t mean she liked what she saw any more.
Okubi was sitting at one end of the long conference table, a stack of parchment on either side and a pen in her mouth. She was sketching away at something and didn’t look up from her work. In fact, if her ears hadn’t angled toward the group, Twilight would’ve thought she was unaware the Equestrians had entered the room at all.
But after a quick moment of apprehension, Twilight realized this wasn’t such a bad thing. Okubi was one of her two main suspects, right? She didn’t have any magic nullifiers on her. Physicality definitely wasn’t her thing. There was no way she could hope to take Twilight down here, alone. If Twilight examined her reactions closely, she might find some evidence of guilt or innocence.
That was a pretty big “if”, though, and, from what little Twilight knew of Okubi, she might not have a reaction at all. But it was better than nothing. Twilight cleared her throat. “Excuse me, but we’re going to have a… a non-business conversation in here with Mhate, if you don’t mind.” Kind of awkward, but what else was there to say?
Okubi didn’t look up or miss a beat in her drawing. “Very well. I shall not disturb you.” If she was surprised to hear Twilight’s voice instead of somebody else’s, it didn’t show in the slightest. For some reason, Twilight wondered if she played poker or whatever its Zebrabwean equivalent was.
Twilight took a seat at the table and magically lengthened the legs of the chair right next to her for Spike. With nothing better to do, she got a better look at Okubi. She still looked as scrawny as she had at the dinner, but there were a few key differences. Her clothes, instead of being nice and tailored, were ratty and loose, clearly meant more for comfort than appearance, with her position daring someone to complain about them. Her mane was unkempt; not greasy, just messy. Her muzzle was smeared with ink splatters, some only visible against her black stripes by their shine. It all added up to Okubi looking slightly less creepy than she had at the dinner. She still looked odd, but, Twilight had to admit, at least she didn’t look off.
“Wonder what she’s doing in here alone,” muttered Spike. “Can’t she do this in her office or whatever?”
“Spike, don’t talk about her like that,” Twilight whispered. “It’s not nice, and besides, she might be able to hear us.”
“I’m here because this is where I can focus at the moment,” Okubi said. “I also don’t care about what you say.”
Spike twitched in surprise, but recovered quickly. “Really? Not at all?” he scoffed.
“As of yet, you have no influence on my position or capabilities. You do not matter to me, so I do not care about you.”
“Friendly, aren’t ya?”
“Spike, stop it,” scolded Twilight. “We don’t need you getting into arguments with CEOs.” She hoped she didn’t need to add, Especially if they’re trying to kill us. Except Okubi had said Spike couldn’t affect her at all. Did that include Twilight as well? She might be lying to throw off suspicion, but that seemed awfully blunt for a lie. On a whim, Twilight cast her detection spell again. No change from last time.
“But-” Spike’s protest stopped in his throat, and he mumbled, “Fine.” He slouched in his chair, arms crossed, and glared at Okubi. Okubi didn’t respond.
Luckily, it was at that point that Mhate entered the room, alone and levitating a tray with several cups and what looked like a teapot in front of her. She inclined her head to Okubi and said, “Ma’am.” Laying the tray on the table, she took up a place across from Twilight and Spike. She smiled vaguely and said, “Just so you know, Your Highness, this, um, this is new to me. I, I usually don’t entertain guests. Not that it’s unwelcome,” she added quickly, “just that it’s new to me. I, I brought tea.” She tapped the teapot with a hoof. “And, um, if you ignore Okubi, she’ll ignore us.”
“I think you’re doing fine so far. I like tea,” Twilight assured her. “And please, just Twilight.”
Mhate began pouring and passing out tea. “Right. Just Twilight. And…” She pointed a hoof at Spike, paused, and frowned. “I know you’re Spike the dragon, but I can’t remember if you had a title, sorry.”
“I’m her number one assistant,” Spike answered, “but I don’t know if that’s really a title, or just what I am.”
Mhate tapped her chin for a moment. “You could, um, be a steward. How’s that sound?”
“Steward Spike…” Spike grinned. “I like it. But just Spike’s fine, too.”
“Good. Good.” Mhate sipped at her tea. “Just so you know, I’ve got a meeting to leave for in about twenty minutes, but at this point, it’s just formalities, so I’m not worried. Just so you know.” Another sip. “So, um, is there any particular reason you wanted to talk? Or is it just because? Anything new with you?”
Twilight took a moment to think. Mhate hadn’t heard about the assassination attempts on her and Spike. Probably. Should she tell her? Probably not, Twilight decided. No need to worry her. “Not really, but there was one thing.” She took the teacup in her magic and subtly cast a poison-detecting spell. The tea was clean in all cups, so she took a quick sip. It had a slightly bitter aftertaste, but other than that, was pleasantly strong. “I tried to open your front door with magic, and it… I don’t know, it felt weird, and my magic just sort of vanished.” She looked briefly at Okubi for any sort of reaction, but Okubi was as impassive as ever.
“Oh, you do it differently? The door’s just, um, grounded.”
That was a new term for Twilight (at least in the context of magic; she heard it all the time in relation to electricity). “Uh… grounded?”
“Yyyyeah, grounded,” said Mhate slowly. “You know, connected to the ground? We can’t just have anybody who wants to flicking open the door with magic.”
“This is new to me.”
Mhate blinked, then laughed. “Ha! Moves the sun, doesn’t know what grounding is.” Twilight’s wings twitched slightly and Spike’s eyes narrowed, but Mhate didn’t notice. “Sorry if that sounds insulting, just…” She shrugged. “In Wilayabada, that’d be really strange. How do ponies block magic?”
“Just basic spells to nullify incoming magic,” said Twilight. “Cancel it out via mirrored energy. You… you know about those, right?” Hopefully, the two of them were at least on the same page. It’d be difficult to talk about magic if neither of them knew what the other was saying.
“Well, yes, but…” Mhate cocked her head. “Those’re just so crude. If they work, great, but… it’s not very elegant.”
Something Twilight could sympathize with, to a certain extent, but still. “To me, your system seems a bit… overkill-y. Why are you putting something that powerful on plain old locks? How can you do that?”
“Because compared to Wilayabada, the development of magic in Equestria is most likely stagnant and doesn’t require such an effective defense.”
Twilight, Spike, and Mhate all looked at Okubi. She was still scratching out designs and didn’t give a single sign that she’d spoken. But she had spoken; no one else had that slightly scratchy voice.
“What makes you say that?” Twilight asked slowly. “You barely know anything about Equestria.”
“What little I do know is just enough.” Okubi let the pen drop from her mouth and looked Twilight in the eyes. “Consider. Equestria has existed with minimal change in leadership for over a millennium. That provides a certain amount of stability, true? But if everything in a country is fine, then there is no need to change. If there is no need to change, there is no need to innovate. You have been united and had peace for a long time. Which means you have had a status quo for long time. Innovation comes when the status quo is shaken.” As she spoke, she barely moved at all, except for her mouth. This included a lack of blinking.
“Abadas, on the other hoof, lacked such unity for much of their history. The different city-states would be at each other’s throats, constantly trying to get a leg up on each other. Moreover, the fact that every abada can be assumed to know magic means that, logically, a highly effective defense against magic would be quite sought after, as such a weapon would cripple the opposition beyond repair. In Equestria, where the similar use of magic is far less relied upon, it would have much less of an impact and have far fewer opportunities to be used; the lack of general usability would make any focused efforts into such a specialized weapon wasteful. If I heard correctly, unicorns are just uncommon enough that ‘good enough’ truly is good enough in most situations. In Wilayabada, the omnipresence of magic means that ‘good enough’ is rapidly eclipsed by ‘better’ is rapidly eclipsed by ‘better yet’ and so on, whether in increased strength or decreased cost, until diminishing returns set in and getting to ‘even better yet’ is not worth it, resulting in a low-cost but highly effective defense against magic anyone can use. Different priorities lead to different answers for the same question. Did you imagine that abada magic would evolve in the same way as your own?”
And without further ado, Okubi took up the pen in her mouth again and went right back to sketching.
Everyone stared at Okubi, who remained supremely indifferent. Eventually, Mhate spluttered, “Just where the heck did that come from? That’s more non-business talk than I’ve heard from you all year!”
“It was an analysis that begged to be said,” responded Okubi, not looking up.
“It still kinda came outta nowhere,” muttered Spike.
“Actually, it came out of my mouth.”
Okubi was so expressionless that Twilight couldn’t tell if Okubi was joking or missing the point, both of which seemed unlikely (somehow). Before Spike could snipe back, she said loudly, “So anyway. Grounding. How does it work?”
“Weeeeell…” Mhate rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t know the specifics, I was, um, always terrible at arcanodynamics, but from what I can tell, it basically works by… by…” She looked at Okubi and frowned. “What?”
Twilight suddenly realized the scritching of Okubi’s pen had stopped. Okubi herself was staring expressionlessly at Mhate, not drawing even though her pen was still in her mouth. Mhate and Okubi stared back and forth for a moment. Eventually, Okubi said, “Nothing.” She lowered her head and went back to sketching.
Mhate sighed. Twilight and Spike exchanged glances. Mhate continued, “I, uh, think it works by… moving magical energies from spells into the ground or something like that. It just shifts the way it all flows. Or something like that.” She shrugged. “You can’t cast a shield spell if the magic never reaches the shield.”
“Huh.” Twilight nudged her teacup. The explanation was probably simplified, but if the basics were true, then that would explain a lot. That tingling would’ve been her magic getting redirected; technically, she felt a similar feeling in her horn whenever she used magic, but by now, her brain would tune it out unless she focused on it. And if-
“You seem awfully quick to share your defense against magic with a relative unknown,” Okubi said to Mhate without looking up. “One more powerful than any known abada, no less.”
“It’s not like she’s our enemy,” Mhate said. She took a sip of tea. “Besides, I don’t know how it works. No offense to you,” she said to Twilight, “I’m sure you’re perfectly intelligent, but I don’t think you could work out how to do it based just on that.”
On the contrary, Twilight’s mind was already getting lots of ideas and away from her. It was complicated, incredibly so, but magic wasn’t her special talent for nothing. If her ideas were correct, the main difficulty with one person casting it was that the very nature of grounding meant you had to be ludicrously careful to not ground yourself by accident, and even then you were risking-
Wait. Okubi had disapproved of Mhate telling Twilight the basic mechanics of grounding (which was reasonable)… but hadn’t actually stopped her, or even tried to stop her beyond a vaguely disapproving glare. It wouldn’t be hard for her to do so — she was Mhate’s boss, after all — but if she didn’t think it necessary to stop Mhate, then she probably didn’t think it was that dangerous that Twilight know what grounding was. So did that make Okubi any less suspicious? Twilight was leaning towards “slightly”; Okubi seemed fairly intelligent, not the kind of person to just let incredibly dangerous information like that slip away. And it wasn’t like she was having an off day, not with that glare. It didn’t rule Okubi out completely, but it di-
Spike kicked her under the table and snapped her back to reality. She blinked, coughed, and tried to smile. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I, I can get distracted.” She took a sip of tea, using her telekinesis to hide the casting of another detection spell. The spears were gone outside, but nothing new had come into range.
Mhate nodded. “Mmhmm. I know the feeling. So, five thousand miles of ocean between here and Equestria? Sounds like a lot.”
“It took a week and a half of constant sailing,” confirmed Twilight. “And I swear I could still feel the shore tilting when we got back to land.”
“It wasn’t just you,” said Spike. “It took me a little while to get my balance when we arrived in Bandari Mji.”
“Which, I, um, suppose means you got your sea legs,” said Mhate. “Did you really come over here just to form an alliance?”
Twilight cocked her head. “Yeah. Why?”
“Well, it’s, uh…” Mhate ran a hoof along the rim of her cup. “Five thousand miles is a bit much for nothing more than that. You didn’t want anything?”
“I didn’t know enough about Zebrabwean to know if it had anything Equestria wanted. Can’t I form alliances for the sake of forming alliances?”
“Like I said, five thousand miles is, um, a long way to go and expect nothing but friendship in return.”
“Well, I can understand trade,” said Twilight, “but that’s not the only thing. Saying ‘nothing but friendship’ is like saying ‘nothing but food’. It’s not everything, but it’s an important part of our lives.”
“And friendship is pretty powerful in Equestria,” added Spike. “Like, ‘saved the world plenty of times already’ powerful.”
“Still…”
Twilight bit back a groan. Money was important, yes, but the world didn’t revolve around it. “Exactly why is me not coming here for money so hard to grasp?”
“Abadas like profit,” put in Okubi. “A lot.” For some reason, Twilight found it really annoying the way Okubi refused to look up when talking. It was like she was ignoring all of them, even though she obviously wasn’t.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Mhate said to Okubi.
“I did no such thing. I am simply stating the facts. If I thought it was a bad thing, I wouldn’t be working here. I like profit, too.”
“There’s more to diplomacy than just countries giving money to each other,” Twilight said.
“True, true,” said Mhate. She started tapping a hoof on the table. “But if you don’t have any money, then you can’t do anything, and coming here with no expectation of money is a sunk co-”
Twilight held up a hoof to stop Mhate and turned to Okubi. “Exactly how much do abadas like profit?” she asked.
Okubi stopped drawing and looked up. “Corporations hold considerable sway in Wilayabada, well beyond what you can see in Zebrabwe. In fact…” She paused, and the free end of the pen bounced up and down as she nibbled on the other end. Eventually, she said, “To drum up business, private military corporations occasionally give out coupons.”
…Okay, what? No. That… No no no. “PMCs…” Twilight said, “give out… coupons.”
“So, what, they have ‘hire one mercenary, get one free’ deals?” asked Spike.
“And half-offs, and x-percent-offs, and lowered rates for extended periods of employment, and everything else one can imagine.” Okubi went back to sketching.
Twilight stared at Mhate, who simply shrugged. “Sales, um, attract customers. Why not?”
“…Because they’re soldiers. You can’t put ‘buy one, get one’ deals on soldiers.”
“…Why not?”
“They kill people!” said Spike.
“Yes, and? You’re paying them to, uh, to kill people anyway. If you’re already putting a monetary value on life, then what’s, what’s the harm in offering discounts?”
“Well, it’s…” But Mhate had a point. Anyone who hired mercenaries to kill someone would like to save money on it if they could. The problem was the hirer, not the hirees. At least, not completely. There was still the whole ‘getting paid to kill people’ issue.
“And, besides,” said Mhate, “PMCs provide a lot more services than just killing people. Like, um, temporary high-grade security. You know, basically rent-a-cops. Or rent-a-soldiers, I guess.” She ran a hoof around the rim of her teacup. “Really, a PMC is a business, and it does business things to make money.”
“I guess. It still seems weird.”
With no one offering another line of discussion, there was a second of silence, then Mhate coughed and said, “Sorry, but I, I have to get going.” She slid off her seat. “Nice talking with the two of you, at any rate. Hopefully, we can get together again sometime for longer.”
“Same here,” Twilight said with a nod. “Be seeing you.” After Mhate left, Twilight cast the detection spell one last time. Nothing. They were clear.
As they left the consulate, Twilight’s mind was racing. That had turned out much better than she expected. She’d gotten reason to discount Okubi on her suspect list, at least a little, which left Mtendaji as the most likely candidate. Maybe she could think a bit about the how and why. More interesting, though, was knowledge of how she’d lost her magic. It was a very basic knowledge, to be sure, but it was a place to start. She was already coming up with several ideas to block it. Unfortunately, without something to experiment with, she couldn’t actually test her ideas. It was a shame she couldn’t stand outside the door and investigate its reaction to her magic, and she didn’t have any oth-
“Askari, there wouldn’t be any chance we could get that crossbow quarrel out of evidence, would there?”
Twilight peered closely at the bolt in the embassy, Spike and Livingstone watching her. It didn’t look unusual, but the arrowhead still staunchly resisted her attempts to manipulate it with magic. Just the arrowhead, though; the shaft behaved normally when exposed to magic. Getting the bolt out of evidence had been surprisingly easy (although Askari suspected that was only because Twilight was a princess; “Anyone else, and you would’ve been laughed off.”), and they didn’t need it back, and now Twilight had all the time in the world to study it.
She touched the arrowhead (square, as on Equestrian crossbows); her magic was diverted. She stopped touching it. Her magic returned. Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm.
“Are you okay, Twilight?” Livingstone asked. “You’ve been staring at that for quite a while now, yes, and I’m wondering if…”
“I’m fine,” Twilight said, not taking her eyes off the bolt. “I’m just studying it. This…” She turned it over to examine it from another angle, even though it all looked the same. “This is a very interesting application of magic. The basic principles are pretty much the foundation of every single type of magic, ever, but how they’re being used…” She clicked her tongue slightly as she thought. “Pushing magic like this is usually only done with your own, not somepony else’s. It’s a lot more complex, but it’s very effective.”
“I suppose it might be,” Livingstone said. Twilight suspected she was trying to hide a “what in Celestia’s name did you just say?” reaction. “So what will you do about it?”
“I’m gonna try to block it.”
Livingstone blinked. “Wha- block it? Your Highness, um, Twilight, you do realize that abadas have presumably had a while to work on that… grounding, and they will have their own defenses against it, yes?”
“I have indeed realized that,” Twilight answered. She twirled the bolt in front of her. “I’m still going to try. I’ve got some ideas to test, with plenty of backups in case they don’t work out.”
Spike spoke up. “And Twilight’s smart, and I mean really smart. If anyone can do it, she can.”
“Perhaps,” said Livingstone, “but simply being smart is not eno-”
“Twilight’s not just smart. She’s so smart, she makes other smart people look dumb. Did I tell you about the time she created a dimensional portal in a few minutes using nothing but a magic mirror and a book?”
Livingstone’s jaw went slack. “What? No. That is… No.”
“Seriously,” Spike said, nodding. “Right, Twilight?”
“You’re exaggerating a little, Spike,” Twilight said as she rolled her eyes. “The connection was already there; I just made sure it stayed open. The transuniversal equivalent of a doorstop. And it took a little bit of extra machinery to work, not just the mirror and the book.”
“But… you did make it, yes?” said Livingstone. “With those two objects and a few extras? In that time?”
“Yeah.”
Livingstone started blinking a lot. “Very well, then. That… that is quite… quite impressive, yes. Perhaps you can counter this… grounding.”
“I hope so,” Twilight responded. “If I can, then we can all step outside without worrying about assassins too much, and I can place some wards on this place to keep bad guys out. Which I probably should’ve done in the first place, but now I can do it better, at least.”
“That would be nice… Our guards wouldn’t have to stay up to all hours of the night…”
“Exactly. And that’s just for starters.” Twilight rolled her shoulders and flexed her wings. Time to get her study on. She pulled open the door to her room and headed inside. “I’m going to start sciencing this as much as I can. Don’t worry if I don’t come out before dinner.”
As the door closed, Livingstone yelled, “That’s not exactly reassur-” Click.