Runaway to the Future

by TheGreatEater

Training Arc pt.2

Soul Shard sat curled up with Friend, nuzzling it as she contemplated her day. It was late at night, and nature provided no light, yet Soul's ambient light orb enchantment was still glowing brightly, giving off light with the intensity of a room full of candles. As a result, Soul didn't have to wait for her eyes to adjust to the dark before starting her night time rituals; saving money on candles and magic-heavy mage lamps was a wise move.

“Well Friend I promised to tell you how my day went before I start training for my next test; I do have three months, after all. So... I didn’t ace the test, Friend, but I did score above the average adult mare with an affinity for magic, so that is worth celebrating.

"Yes, Friend, I know that’s a little harsh. And yes I agree that if I was going up against my own age bracket I’d do spectacularly. But these are unicorns we’re talking about; since when has fairness ever mattered to them? They’d probably throw out some adult name who could do better, so I have to prove that I’m spectacular, if not perfect, or I’ll never be accepted. I mean, if the princess’s own school laughed me out for being a pegasus, the princess is going to need me to wow her if I should have a chance at being taken seriously. I have to have more power, more skill, and more talent than my peers or she’d simply scoff at my presence like Mother and Father did. Since it’s her school, I have to accept that she’d be just as bad as they were.” Although she knew Friend couldn’t talk back, she liked to pretend that it could. Being as lonely as she was, it was the only interaction she got when she wasn’t fleecing nobles.

“You know that light spell I’ve been working on? I think that if I can mass produce it, I can make a killing. All I need to do is get some seed money for a business, then master the age spell or get better at transformation magic. I’m still working out the kinks on the transformation spell... yes, Friend, I know that squirrel was peeved, but at least I didn’t explode it like the last five. And if I get my inventions sold, I can get money through honest work. I don’t like stealing from others. Yes, Friend, I know they deserve it for being cruel, but it still feels wrong.

“I can’t wait to earn the money to start my own business. Maybe we can go to Las Pegasus, show off our skills. To make things easier, we can just say we had help with a unicorn enchanting objects if they ask about our skill. But I can be cheered for my work, get some bits, and then do some harmless hustling of the casinos. Pegasi gravity magic hasn’t been experimented with as far as long distances are concerned, so I should be able to use that get some cash. Then it’s honest work the rest of the way.

"Oh! Oh! Oh! One last thing. Remember how I’ve been mentally slaving over the Reality Bubble? Well I finally nailed it; I pulled it off! I’m going to go into it too see where it goes.

"If I can master the mechanics of that spell, who knows what I’ll be able to do?! And since it’s new, that means that I’d be the master of that field... the Princess would HAVE to accept me!”

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Soul was still too small to within the spell confines of the bubble, even when crouched. Even though the bubble was not physically visible, Soul was able to remember how big it was, having formed the bubble recent enough to remember such a minute detail.

However, she had no idea what to expect. A good mage learned everything he or she could about the spells they cast, which in this case was finding out what exactly the spell accomplished. While Soul knew that her spell desynced a segment of reality by creating a bubble of space to disrupt part of the physical plane, she wanted to see where exactly she was sending things so that she could better build upon the spell.

Taking the "switch" of the spell, Soul twisted the variables needed to dislocate the space within the bubble. She first noticed the feeling of a tight push, as if she were being forced through a very small hole and flattened similarly to her teleportation spell. This sensation was soon followed by a blindness as she felt her body lose it’s solidarity and everything faded to black.

Regaining her sense of sight, she screamed in delight. All around her was aglow in ambient magical light. Such things as auras, visual pathways of lay line energy, and magical formations, both fully formed and barely cohesive surrounded her. It was like looking into another world, one that resided just beyond the veil of the physical plane. Looking beneath her, she saw the prismatic bubble and the anchors of the spell keeping it in place, almost as if it were a physical object. The other creations she made for testing and practice not only glowed, but had their own physical aspects in this place. It was if magic formed on this plane and was purely physical, as opposed to where she had left, where it was unnoticeable unless active.

“I shall call you the Etheric Plane, and I claim you in my name!" Soul exclaimed. having a sense of large-scale authority for the first time. "I shall be Princess of the Ethers!” She had never heard of this place before; even her parents' library didn't have information on this phenomena. Having come across it filled her with ecstatic glee. Being curious by nature and inquisitive by habit, she decided to explore this place before attempting to go back to the physical plane. This was mostly to satiate her burning curiosity and adventurous spirit, but it was also to learn what she could about this place; with that knowledge, she could utilize this place more efficiently in the future.

Soul saw that the bubble she created was a prismatic structure with the spell variables placed around it in a glowing electric blue fashion. The anchors twisted alongside the bubble's field of influence, wrapping around it like a mummy covered in a translucent, shimmering cloth.

She felt an odd sensation as she tried to walk; her right foreleg passed through the table. Picking her foreleg back up, she tried focusing on moving forward rather than stepping. While she was able to move this way, it felt weird every time she moved only to feel her leg pass through something. As she stepped off the table, she laughed; Her body didn’t automatically fall to the floor until she concentrated on moving downwards. This place is amazing! It seems that movement is determined by the will of one to move rather than by physical locomotion. Amazing! I can do so much here. But I need to find away to do this that isn’t as draining as creating a Reality Bubble, nor as uncomfortable to travel through. This whole place will be my playground.

After passing through the wall she noted the awkward feeling yet again, Soul looked up at the night sky and looked in rapturous, jaw-dropping awe of the sky in this place. The stars glowed in a magnificent aura and their magic thrummed majestically. What really left her short of words, though, was the brilliant centerpiece of the darkness above: the moon. For years she had swore on and to the Mare on the Moon, not daring to swear by the Solar Princess for whom she had no trust to hear her pleas or care about her. After all, if she really cared, she wouldn’t have allowed Soul to suffer for doing what she felt was her destiny.

But Soul was witnessing spell upon spell wrapped around the moon in a form that was more complex than anything she had seen before. Two stars far away were connected to the moon, the basic mechanics resembling a mixture between a Shield, Seal, Ward, and Barrier spell. Whatever was in the moon was locked more intensely than anything she could think of; It was a true wonder. That’s when it hit her, that if something was bound within the moon then it was being kept away from everypony.

Soul felt bad for whatever was in there; the Mare in the Moon likely felt more lonely that she could comprehend.

She was probably more lonely than Soul herself.

She collected her thoughts. “Hi, Mare on the Moon! I don’t know if you can hear me, but I wanted to say hello. I found out how to enter this Plane of Existence and it’s simply... breathtaking. I just noticed the spells around my things as well as magic in the ether. If you could see the Everfree, it’s as creepy here as it is in the Physical Plane... I don’t really know what to say other than you must be really lonely. I'll send a duplicate of my... friend... to help you with that! I would keep you company, but I can’t teleport to you; I have the feeling that going to the moon is a one way trip. But that doesn’t mean you should be alone. Hopefully Friend will be as comforting to you as it is to me, and I can send you letters. Good night, my friend. I’ll talk to you later. I promise.”

Going back to the table, she switched the variables to flow back to the Physical Plane. It was as uncomfortable going to the Physical Plane as it was when to depart it. Walking wobbly to Friend, she took a few minutes to regain her land legs, as it were. She cast a simple duplication spell, essentially making a second Friend, and walked outside with it.

"There is somepony up there, and they must be lonely. My own Friend has helped me stay sane and, well, not so lonely all these years. Now it’s your turn to do the same."

Casting the teleportation spell on the blanket, she watched it flow away and hoped that it found its way to whoever was up there. Everypony needs somebody to be there for them; nobody was meant to be all alone, and she wasn’t about to let a stranger be lonely either.

Going to her own friend, she lay down and gave it one last talk before starting on the next phase of her training, “Hey Friend, I think I made another friend. She’s as silent as you are, but that’s okay; you both are wonderful listeners. Now, Friend, it’s time for me to do some mindcrafting in my mindscape. It’s a skill that I know is important, but that I've been avoiding... sadly due to how much effort goes into it.”

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Standing in the foreground of her mind, Soul saw the chaotic swirls of ideas, experiments, and memories flowing directionless through her mental recesses. This was not a magical skill by default; it was a skill that any entity could do on themselves, but was rarely done due to the fact that it was a rather obscure field. If it wasn’t for her family's Grimoire, Soul herself would have overlooked so many forms of magic that were passed on from the eldest of the family. Over 200 generations, starting from before the founding of Equestria, spread into a major tome of research, knowledge, and creations that belonged to the family. What made the Grimoire most useful was that the last page was dedicated to sealing the next book in the series, effectively making the family tome efficient.

But this was a skill that as Soul approached it, she started to see why it was so important. As a filly who loved organization, the chaos within her head was annoying. The first step to the process was to mentally create a room, a start to the mental foundation. She mentally designated her archives and records of everything she thought of and experienced to this room.

First, Soul made a section dedicated to each group of magic other than sorcery, which she found impractical and inefficient. The first to be categorized was Wizardry, the scientific analyzation of magic, the multitude of laws, theorems, and mathematical computations that governed everything about a spell. It was less about doing a spell and more about what was understanding everything about what was going on inside the spell.

Next was Psionics, the melding of ones mental energy to effect mind over matter. Most unicorns spells were essentially one form of Psionics or another, utilizing psychokinesis to alter reality to fit ones will. Since most magic was from the mind, Psionics was easier to learn than actual spell casting. As a pegasus, Soul had less luck with raw Psionics, but was slowly but surely learning to use basic psionics beyond levitation. She had to make additional magical links for the work that she had translated from direct mind to arcane magic. Next was channeling the power through her hoof as a pegasus, Soul didn't have a designated magical output, like unicorns had with their horns.

Next up was Soul's personal favorite: Thaumaturgy, the taking of essences, elements, sub-elements, and vibratory patterns, Then using a form of arcane, spiritual alchemy to augment, alter, or transmute the properties and effects of a targeted object. It fell within five categories: White, Black, Purple, Red, and Grey. White dealt with biological substances and objects. Black, White's magical and chromatic opposite, dealt with death and souls, going by the aptly named Necro-Thaumaturgy. Purple, what Soul mostly used, dealt with Element Crafting. It dealt with the complete control and manipulation of both positive and negative elements, and shaping them to the user's will.

Red was an even more rare and recently maligned art. It dealt with the magical manipulation of blood. It was also known as Diablerie, the art of summoning, and thaumturgically working on the blood of oneself and, more commonly, others. It was something that Soul Shard was very uncomfortable with witnessing, let alone dealing with; it was a power that drained the blood of others like some kind of vampony. And was able to turn blood into acid, or make a victim's blood so thick it stopped the vital organs or had the potential to craft contagions, an even more dangerous effect.

But the last was Grey, one of her personal favorites. It was the polar opposite to all the others in that it dealt with technology. Grey thaumaturgy was the shaping, transmutation, alteration, and augmentation of metals, gems, and craft components. In a far more skilled form of Grey thaumaturgy, one could even shape these objects together to create a large amount of magically and psionically crafted technologies. It was something that gave Soul great joy in pursuing.

The last was colloquially known as Crafting. It covered everything from Ritual Craft to rune and sigil crafting. It was the building of magical items, spell forms, spells formed by a physically built structure, and other aspects of magical construction. It also covered everything from Alchemy to Xenoarcana, in simplest terms, the study of foreign types of magic that required physical components rather than raw arcane energy.

Altogether, it took Soul half an hour to place everything in it’s own mental shelving units, breaking down each file to it’s individual building blocks of metaphysical knowledge. Once that was complete, she broke down all of her collective knowledge and went to work for the next four hours, putting everything in it’s own category. It was only understandable that, after all that, a mind would need to rest and regain energy, which Soul was more than happy to allow.

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The light of the noon sun woke her up, forcing its way behind her still-sleepy eyelids. Groggily making her way out of bed, she got herself a good helping of grass and a swig of water before going about her daily stretches and workout. Once she was physically and mentally ready, she sat down to map out her day, and the things she hoped to accomplish within it.

I should focus now on Mindcrafting, and I should work on strengthening my skill with Purple and Grey Thaumaturgy. As a whole, crafting is not a strong point of mine, so I might as well work on Ritual Craft and spell forms.

I did decent on combative transformation but because of my test scores in... certain fields, I’ll be improving magical inventing and engineering. But I don’t want to get out of shape; working on intense combat would be useful for ensuring that I don’t grow soft.

This was not what concerned Soul the most, though. At that moment, her mind was a completely different place entirely. I need to work on a new project with what I saw last night. Perhaps I can work with the Etheric Plane and bring it into the physical plane; after all, if it works one way then it should theoretically be reversible. With how spells are formed there, I wonder if I can form programmed laws and ignite it within a sphere of dislocated space. That would be so... cool! I have to try that. Although the workload ahead of me is going to be insane...

Soul Shard sat over her desk, nearly a week into her self training. She was happy with self-training because the only limitations to consider were the ones she set for herself; she didn't have to deal with closeminded ponies saying she couldn’t do something simply because she was a Pegasi or a filly. However, it came with a draw back; she had to learn through trial and error, instead of instruction. To say that this was chaotic was an understatement.

But now she was working on personal creations, which, as it turned out, was harder than she expected. She had tinkered with Mindcrafting, and made a mental laboratory that took what she knew of magic and tinkerd with, tweaked, and fixed her inventions before she made them. Unfortunately, that only took into account what she knew of the things she worked with, and didn’t take into account all the little side effects and new outcomes that came from her work. Which, of course, created new tidbits of knowledge to add to her mental hall of records.

Her most recent experiment was something that she found most interesting. Most electronic equipment worked by taking unicorn magic, and the arcane energy that was stored within it, then slowly dissipated the charge through the electronics. The problem with this was that it took either time, or knowing a unicorn with free time to charge up the device. Needless to say, this was horribly inefficient.

Soul Shard’s discovery was purely by accident, but was something that, upon finding it, she cursed herself for not discovering it previously; it was so simple! By taking a crystal and passing layline energy through it, you are filling it with an Arcane Energy. Then by compacting it, and pressing it’s molecular structure together, its electric charge was merged with tremendous amounts of arcane energy. This, in essence, not only created a Mage Capacitor, but also a Mage Battery. Unfortunately, she still needed to work on stabilizing it before the generated heat melted to crystal. This was a huge gap to cross.

“Blast you, Moon!" Soul yelled in a primal roar of irritation. "You stupid, inane, blundering project! I will you to stop being a total twat, or I swear by all that’s holy and unholy I will destroy you! FRRRAAAA!” Soul immediately contemplated what she just did; I must be losing my mind. . Going to her bed and throwing herself into Friend, she let herself calm down and have a good calm talk with her companion. So I lost my cool for a second. it’s not that big of a deal.

“So what do we need to do, Friend? Well, all you need to do is be my support, but as for me? I love making technological breakthroughs, but I need more engineering knowledge. I need to grit my teeth and buy a bucking Arcanelectro Mageometer. Come on, I've told you about this, Friend! I mean, at first it starts vibrating, then after it gets compact enough, it emits a loud sound. I don’t know the exact decibel, but it does get loud after a certain amount of compaction. Then it starts emitting actual electrical sparks. Unfortunately, it doesn't do this for long before it overheats and melts. We’ve gotten past the point when I can measure the energy by ear, so I need to get some type of semi-professional laboratory equipment.

"I need to sneak into a library and do the gate spell we made yesterday. With this, I can mass-teleport duplication spells here. I'll get the knowledge into my MHoR then sell the duplicates to book stores. No, Friend, that isn’t illegal, it’s simply being a one pony printing press. Making a profit from something I didn’t have permission to copy. As long as I don’t get caught, I won’t get in trouble. That and we need the money so it’s win win.”

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Although the trip to Manehattan and back was as uneventful as they come, Soul was unable to keep herself from sending over more books than she had originally planned once she arrived. Seeing numerous books on mechanics, electrical engineering, magical experiments from the DIY Wizard series of books, and a large amount of books for magitech caused her to become... a bit greedy.

She squeed with delight with the raw knowledge at her disposal when she arrived at her home, seeing the vast wealth of information truly available to her. And so it was two weeks later that she had read all the books available, and committed the knowledge to her archives.

It turned out that when it started vibrating, it was generating five volts of electricity. When it actually started humming, it was generating 24 volts. By the time it was generating actual sparks, it was generating far more than what it could hold, but 120 volts/5 milliamps was enough to melt the crystal, so she had found her range. The next was setting it within some type of device in order to store the electrical charge and send it to electronic devices, but that could wait to later. With her Light Orbs and Mage Batteries, she had enough good ideas as it was to make a profit from to support herself when she started things up. Then when ponies across Equestria were using her patented creations, she could finally go to the Princess and not only demonstrate her power, but would have a company that would have her genius stamped across the populace.

She sometimes felt like a filly version of Silverbrook, or Neighcolti Tesla. Before their deaths, both of these geniuses contributed to modern computers that were used by scientists for a large amount of scientific work, but still had to find a consumer application: electronics that were used by unicorns around the world and many other areas of modern technolog. Tesla’s greatest work was for the electronics and lightning manipulation within Pegasi cloud homes, while Tesla’s help with his unicorn contributors made vast steps in motors and MCs. It was easy for Soul to imagine herself in their shoes when she had such innovative ideas and vast knowledge in the very fields they excelled in.

After having created a heat sink and bracket to hold and store electrical power, she had a primitive, but still working prototype. Her main problem was that the half an inch oval crystal was to big for smaller electronics, but any smaller and she’d need to rework the container at a faster rate than she felt comfortable with.

I think a nap is in order...

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At the end of the first month of Soul's three month training course, she had successfully finished integrating all the disparaging aspects of her mind. Everything was now in order, and she was now looking upon her mental kingdom from outside her MHoR. Outside that building was a massive field of blue grass, which contained many golden paths to several other buildings. These buildings were made of marble and had a uniform height of thirty feet and there was a third of a mile between each of the buildings; each building had room to expand if necessary. The entire structure was built following the Golden Ratio, with her hall of records as the center. Bridges linked each building together, in a similar fashion to the segments of a seashell. This was chosen not only for it’s mathematical beauty, but Soul's innate love for the seashell and its "inspired" look.

While there were fifteen buildings altogether, the two that received the most attention were her combat building and her laboratory, she was sitting in the latter currently. With it’s remote access to the MHoR and it’s mental construction, she was able to more fully expand upon the various ideas running through her head, an opportunity Soul took advantage of quite frequently. Her latest attempt to work on building extraplanar space had finally shown some promise, and her large store of knowledge had proven advantageous once again. Very recently, it had allowed her to compile the components necessary to form what she called the Globe Garden, or G2. If she was able to troubleshoot it properly and get rid of its current glitches and bugs, she could literally transform a Reality Bubble into a sphere of augmented reality. Unfortunately, if the globe broke, the spells within it would implode and destroy all of her hard work. Soul had nothing to worry about, though; she still had two months left to go.

Sitting back from her mental simulations, Soul thought back to her combat training and how it was finally showing some progress after a month of horribly messing up. Her real stumbling block came in the form of a hard choice: she either had to add a step to Psionic and Magical combat that unicorns never had to deal with, or she had to perfect the combat using Pegasi magic efficiently and ranged enough to cut away the additional step. Unfortunetly, this would lead to decreased accuracy at farther distance without resorting to using wingsight, although Soul wouldn't have to worry about this disadvantage much; soul had gotten rather skilled with wingsight the more she was forced to use it for alternative spell casting.

In her combat room, she made numerous mock enemies ranging from simple and weak pawns to ones that she had was still unable to fight, and had sealed away. While she had made them to be peaceful outside the arena, it was the fact that they were there that gave her a goal. Regardless, Soul felt unease at the notion of having to go up against them someday. But as far as progress is concerned, she had gotten to level 15 out of 45, the last level being a three headed princess with a dragon neck and head for a tail, with four giant bat like wings that shot streams of every element, form of matter, and attack type (piercing, bludgeoning, gravity, striking, and slashing) imaginable. She also gave them malleable, extendable limbs, and the ability to turn into a snake with a skull mask capable of shooting balls of the same energy type as their lightning, flight, and enhanced regeneration. To say she wasn’t looking forward to level 45 was about as much of an understatement as to say that the level would be "a bit challenging," but the wards and programming to stop the monster short of death were not extremely relieving, especially after the level 10 fiasco. Regenerating, asexual, quick breeding Dire frogs with the ability to explode at will was a very poorly thought out plan.

But today was the day where she would do the training in real life, on a real life ponequin. She had decided that it would need to wait until after her second month, when she’d find some beast in the Everfree and fight it. Soul, being as close to the forest as she was, needed to find a challenge to overcome. Fighting something that didn’t fight back wasn’t good training as much; it was more a waste of time and energy.

Allowing herself to leave her mind, she let her eyes adjust to the outside world. After a light series of stretches, she trotted out to begin her combat training. She gave a small chuckle at memories of past exercises as she gazed upon her beaten, battered, heavily used combat dummy. If she had never learned the restoration spell from the Grimoire, she would have been spending most of her time building a new ponequin every few days or wasting money buying a new one. Standing before it, she cleared her mind and began her combat forms.

Going insubstantial, she crafted two blades of psionic energy and split herself in two. Controlling each cloud while attacking was something that she still had trouble with, and the blades were difficult to swing quickly. But she had at least learned to hide the blades in the clouds and, when near her target, to swing them forth through a flurry of strikes, counter strikes, and stabs to juggle her target as it was being torn to shreds. She liked this method of combat the most because it allowed her a low consequence form of battle to use against mundane combat. Although if she was to go up against a mage, or a sword-fighting expert, her blades and body would be useless if handled without care.

Reforming herself, Soul restored her dummy and started with a new set of maneuvers. She first assaulted it magically with bouts of fire augmented to be solid, before switching the heat into a bitter cold encasing the target in ice. After transmuting the ice into water and fixing the dummy again, she moved onto psionic combat, using non-wingsight targeted levitation to exact what would be a series of distracting blows; all the while powering her spell. Channeling a light, shimmering field of Arcane energy from her hoof to her head, she synced her mind with her magic. While more draining than what a unicorn would have to deal with, this synchronization was enough to allow her at least seven attacks before she suffered a magical disorientation and needed to drop the spell.

Soul send a mind-link bolt towards the target, attaching herself mentally to the ponequin, before sending herself out to the target. While she was able to touch the wooden ponequin mentally, its insentience dispelled her attempts at forging a link. Heaving a contented sigh, she shut down her spell and walked back inside. The biggest problem with practicing against a dummy rather than a living thing was that she wasn’t able to get feedback on any errors she was making. Nevertheless, it was something that she enjoyed doing, and she was counting down the days until she went against something more dangerous than woods.

Only a month left.

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Soul took a look at her calendar; when one had very few things to look forward to, one looked forward to these things intensely. She saw that she was a only week away from her two month real time combat training. Soul knew that she’d need to socialize with some ponies, even if only to scam ponies of their money in Las Pegasus and to persuade an executive to let her start a company. Having been shunted into her room or library as a child then laughed out of Canterlot by the CSFGU, she had little socialization practice, other than buying things from others, of course. So Soul had no choice but to grit her teeth and try socializing with some group in Manahattan; At least it’d teach her what to avoid when dealing with others. That and it was a personal break after having done so well with her training.

When Soul arrived at the park, one thing became apparent: she was stupid trying to jump straight into a social setting when she had no idea how or where to initiate conversation. Still not one to give up, she walked through to the playground, watching parents and their children interact. The warm feeling of love that emanated from the parents and children was an alien feeling to Soul. Never having experienced it herself, she felt a twinge of jealousy at their sounds of laughter and delighted conversation. Thinking that this was a bad idea and that she should try a less intense group activity, she walked behind a large group of tall bushes and tried to conjure a more sensible course of action.

As she considered her options, a pure white unicorn who couldn't have been much older than Soul herself, with crimson eyes and a neon blue mane and tail ran right into Soul, knocking the wind right out of her.

“Hey!" the unicorn said in a soft yet urgent tone. "Listen, filly. You have to hide me, just don’t tell the colts following me where I am ok?”

Looking at the worried filly Soul heaved a sigh “If I hide you, will you tell me what’s going on?”

“Yes!”

Taking a hold of the Unicorn, Soul cast a teleportation spell to the opposite end of the state park. She’d never have teleported another living creature with herself prior to this, and she was surprised to feel that the flattening stretching sensation her teleportation spell was made more odd when she felt this filly pushing against her, almost as if she was trying to fuse with Soul. After the spell had achieved the desired action, the unicorn took a deep breathe and looked around her.

“Wait! What did you do?” She asked, eyes wide in confusion.

“A teleportation spell I crafted years ago. Now, can you tell me what that was all about?”

“You... you cast a spell? But you’re a Pegasus.”

Feeling the old accusations against her coming back, she put on a slightly frosty glare, which spread the sense of sadness through every part of her face. “Yes, and I can cast magic.”

Vinyl smiled, and hugged the pegasus in appreciation, not delving any further into her ability; she could see that it was a conversation the unicorn didn't want to have “That's actually pretty cool... thanks a lot for saving me back there, by the way.

Having never been hugged, Soul was shifting uncomfortably under the attention. “You’re welcome. You're actually the only Unicorn to say that my talent is 'cool.' Others seem to think I’m a crime against nature.”

The filly stepped back and looked at her with a concerned glare, “That’s bucked up. Well, if it means anything, I think you’re awesome. My name's Vinyl Scratch, by the way. What’s yours?”

“Soul Shard, and it’s a pleasure to meet you. And yes, it is"bucked up," but I learned a long time ago to take of myself, so it worked itself out. After all, one of these days I’ll show the world what I can do, then everypony will have to acknowledge me.”

“Well... that’s cool, I guess." Vinyl said, her concern in a different place entirely. "So... where are your parents?”

“I don’t have any of those things." seeing the shocked look on Vinyl's face at the mention of parents as "things," Soul felt it necessary to apologize.

"I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable; I haven’t socialized with other ponies much before and I had the stupid thought that I could learn by immersion. I've only learned so far that I am way over my head. So I do apologize.”

“No I’m not uncomfortable." Vinyl denied. "It just seems sad that you don’t have a family and from what you said, your life sounds like it sucks.” Vinyl gave Soul another hug, although she stepped back when she felt Soul squirming in her hooves. “Sorry, you don’t like being hugged do you?”

“Well to be honest, even before my parents disowned me, I was never given a hug, so I don’t know how to react. I mean I hug my blanket, but other than that I was never on the receiving end of one until today ... and it was quite sudden. But no worries, Vinyl Scratch. They are ... nice.”

Vinyl smiled. "Well, as promised, I'll tell you about why I was running. I was being bullied because of my eyes, so I thought I’d run and hide until they forgot about me. Then I ran into you and... here we are.

"Hey," Vinyl said, a sudden curiosity in her voice. "I like your cutie mark! How’d you get it?” .

“I’m sorry, but that’s not a story that I really like going into. But I can tell you that it represents my special talent of magic. And I’m glad I could save you from those bullies; It’s never okay for anypony to hurt another just because they are different.”

Vinyl gave a friendly chuckle. "Yeah, you're right about that. When I finally get my cutie mark, I want it to be related to music in some way in music."

“Wait. Why do you want a musical cutie mark?”

Vinyl closed her eyes and fell into a completely serious demeanor. “Well, music makes you forget your worries. Everything wrong in your life fades away into the beat, and for a single moment in time you’re free." Vinyl smiled. "That and it’s the most pure way of speaking one's heart. Ponies live and die, but music lives forever. And I want to give that to the world.”

“That’s a noble endeavor, Vinyl. Best of luck to you, and if the only thing they are mad about is your eyes, then you might want to get some shades. Although you might not want to hide them completely from the world; the rest of the world will appreciate them. Have a good day, Vinyl. I hope our paths may cross again someday."

Vinyl laughed again, starting her trek back across the park. “Yeah. Hopefully they will. And I'll take your shades suggestion into consideration.

"Take care Shar, I’ll see you around.” And with that Soul Shard teleported back to her cabin, and let herself wrap her mind around just transpired, as well as what she should do differently next time she went to Manehatten or Canterlot.

Soul decided that she had more than enough time and resources to gain a sense of social normality, having two days to dedicate towards socialization and a mental building dedicated to social simulations. She decided she’d use an age spell to set "her daughter” up for a socialization / leadership program, and see what was available through the city.

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It turned out the only thing available for what she wanted was in Canterlot, a month from her travels. It was also a week long, which was far more time than Soul thought she'd have to put towards socialization. The price was easy enough to come by; even though she'd have to teleport money from her family's estate, it was a simple price to pay, and with some extra bits laying around, she was able to buy a pricing guide. It told her the values of the various gems, metals, and spell components, as well as where to find them and where to sell them for the best prices around Equestria.

According to the guide, Soul had tons of gems around her location. She rarely needed to dig around; after all, one normally doesn't go into the Everfree on a whim, but this guide gave her what she needed to find the most precious gems. With them, she could build an income, get combat training, and spell components in one go. And as this would be her first attempt at live action combat on top of a gem hunt, it was killing two birds with one stone.

The weeks passed, and although her searches into the Everfree were devoid of strife, she found a few deposits of quartz, a small area of gold, and vast quantities of gold-rutilated quartz. It was here that she got several interesting ideas for her newest creations. Unfortunately, aside from those ideas and several failed experiments turning coal into diamonds, she was having an uneventful passage of time, and was in a bit of a rut.

Fortunately, just as the week of the leadership training started, Soul finally found the right mixture of gravity spell and fire to pressurize coal into a diamond. Screaming with joy, she set about forming a small Reality Bubble to hold the components of the spell in, and reinforcing wards to seal it away and let her access it as needed. In addition, she wanted to craft an expansion series of spells that allowed her to grow the pressure spell over non living things, so the spell would self-activate without her. So it was with this that Soul burnt a hundred meters of forest and, after reducing it to charcoal, set it with in the spell and left it while she went away.

Why diamonds? It was a more powerful than quartz, and could generate greater power. And in a more important matter, was more valuable and could be sold for more money. It was almost enough to turn her away from Las Pegasus, but after months of building up her expectations, Soul decided that going there was something that was needed.

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The Canterlot Academy for Young Leaders, the CAfYL, was a side branch of the Canterlot Academy for the wealthy and well-off. To say it was a learning experience was an understatement. She knew there was a reason she disliked unicorns aside from Vinyl Scratch, and this meeting showed her just how much other nobles and the wealthy resembled her parents.

She learned that it was less of what you knew as much as who you knew. That with the right words and connections you could twist others to your way of thinking. Many of the things she wanted to do were handled as if they were simple elementary goals. How can one do a legal, hostile takeover while making it look as civil as possible to others? How can one properly network, and keep that network strong with as little effort as possible? How can one run a successful company according to modern business standards? It turned out that being OCD, semi-ruthless, and apathetic towards self-preservation were all good traits in the work place.

And while a majority of the ponies there sickened her, she met enough ponies that with whom was able to make a decent network. By saying that her family owned a diamond mine, a gem farm, and had access to rare Everfree Spell components, while being honest enough for her to pass it off as the truth, she was able to fool many of the greedy ponies there that she was impressive, from a social and economic standpoint. She made business acquaintances with of a group of ponies who she thought could help her with future business aspirations, and could get her into higher parts of society if neccessary. They got a pony who could give them access to diamonds, gems, and spell components from the dangerous Everfree. It was a win-win scenario.

Once out of the CAfYL, Soul no longer had to hide her talents from the world. She went back home with a group of contact addresses and a list of who they were, who they knew, how she could use them, and things they liked. It made her feel a little dirty, but Soul knew that's how the world worked. It killed a bit of her innocence to learn, but it was a way to get ahead.

At the CAfYL, she also gained perhaps the most important piece of business knowledge: if one wanted to have useful contacts, one had to be useful to others.

When she arrived at her home, she saw that her artifical diamonds had formed magnificently, and with a bit of magical thaumaturgy she was able to clear them of their few imperfections. She started sorting a wide range of sizes and began the tedious process of using a duplication spell on them. While using a more tedious, annoying, and energy draining process of erasing the spell trace on the diamonds.

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So the final day of the test came to an end. The journey up to this day was different, to say the least; not in her wildest dreams would she have guessed that she could have conjured so many new crafting ideas and learned so many new things, and she would never have guessed that she’d have such a prolific burst of inspiration. But now, her biggest test was underway.

She had already passed her previous goals on mindcrafting, having used it constantly over the last few months for everything she did even if it was for mostly increasing her inventive powers and coming up with new ideas. So she gave herself an A+. Next up was Thaumaturgic crafting.

She first dealt with the elemental crafting portion of Thaumaturgy. While she knew how to make many things, one thing really interested her. She remembered her talk with Vinyl Scratch, and while she never was one for music before, perhaps if it was an instrument that she made, it would be worth learning. The only thing that came to her mind off the top of her mind was a guitar. With Elemental crafting she could make the most intricate, capable, and... well, epic guitar ever made. Sitting down she focused on building the outline and mechanical shape of the guitar.

Soul crafted fire within the shape of the guitar, then solidified it. She felt it turning into a solid substance before she altered it's heat level until it was warm to the touch. After crafting a permanent base she added solidified lightning for the strings.She then worked on some flavor spells that gave off a temperature-less flame around the wielder as well as harmless electric bolts flowing from the guitar, with a simple link spell to ensure that its size and visual intensity was linked to the wielder’s will. In her eyes, it was the most epic electric guitar ever. Since it was, in every conceivable way, a true electric guitar.

She used her levitation power to play around with it. It did what she wanted, but with her inexperience it sounded horrible. Since she wasn’t judging herself on music, she decided to judge herself on what she actually accomplished. Her creation was solid, and the guitar looked like it was supposed to. It sounded like what a guitar was supposed to sound like, and considering that Elemental Crafting was something she used on a regular basis, this was an A+. When she thought about it logically, this was a mixture of Technology Crafting and Elemental Crafting, so she decided that it was a good grade over all for her crafts.

The next was Ritual Crafting. This was something that she put much thought into, but she spent less time actually learning and getting better at than she thought she should, having lost herself in her inventions. Luckily, she had enough sigil practice and gems to set up and perform a good ritual. Sadly, she was going to have to grade the first part now, and let it cook for six months over the rest of the year. Using levitation, she grabbed eight round diamonds, and a four food by four foot piece of wood that she had crafted from a piece of an Everfree tree. Setting everything down, she cleared her mind and entered her mental laboratory.

“Ok, mind. Impress me. I was planning on doing a lay line augmentation, but ran into problems here. I think I have a solution but I want to see what happens here first.

"Okay, so just throwing power into a stone with biological constants is a bad idea. But what about syncing the stone with a biological entity’s blood, and therefore DNA, then adding a binding spell that mimics the biological arcane nodes? I also need away of disipating the heat... maybe if I can find a way to transform heat to arcane energy, I can loop the spell upon itself.”

She continued to mumble to herself as she ran through the various sigils, spell forms, energy pathways, and reference material she needed to use. After running the spell through her simulations, and replacing the quartz with diamonds,she was able to bind the energy together in simulated energy field. But even the,n it would take a month to fully synchronize the spell to a biological constant without worrying about the nodes running dry.

However, she encountered a large problem: power spikes within the Internal Energy System, the IES. Going from a lower rate of energy to a higher one had unforseeable consequences; it would probably cause short term or, if too much energy was given, long term neurological damage. Even then, Soul had no idea if the pain would be come-and-go or chronic. She was secure that having done arcane compaction for the better part of four months was enough to take away the brunt of the harm, but she had to just wing it and hope for the best, having nothing to compare this to that's all she had, hope. If she pulled this off successfully, she would be an S rank for sure, with a tie to the universal core’s spiritual energy nexus. Which would hopefully give her plenty of power to tap into before feeling physically drained.

Coming out of her Mindscape, she looked upon the board before her and placed the etchings she had been looking over upon it. After ensuring that everything was where it needed to be, she cut her leg above the hoof to draw out blood, and coated the diamonds with them. After a short healing period, she started fixing up the rest of the room to channel the spell and placed her power within it. As she did, the power of natural energy and a small piece of the universe’s core flew down in a maelstrom of power. As the spell kept going, the sky turned black and a group of pitch black clouds started swirling above the clouds, making a terrifying screaming sound. The woods moaned and a screaming breeze slammed around the house as the air inside yanked at Soul Shard.

Then, as the shard of the universe's core entered the earth, a brilliant aurora light the sky, and a white cloud of energy decended through the clouds into the cabin, disintegrating the roof. As the entirety of the light's energy hit the diamonds, the rest of the spell activated and the eight diamonds were transformed into eight golden spheres, each one filled with enough energy to cause Soul's skin to crawl. The orbs sat within their containment fields, drawing energy from nature, laylines, and the ether around them. Pulsating like eight tiny golden hearts, they hovered benignly, waiting for the day they would join with their creator.

Soul Shard walked over to Friend. “I haven't gotten much better, sadly. The reality bubble knocks me out on my first try, and my recent spell was heavily overdone!"

Soul could feel herself getting tired, and it was getting harder to stand and maintain a proper thought. "Well, at the very least it worked, and that alone says a lot. So I’ll give myself a B, or maybe a B+ since I did so well.” With that, she passed out, falling onto Friend as she waited for her power to return, her Arcane Pool largely forgotten in the far corner of the cabin’s interior.

She awoke to the chill of the night’s embrace. She got up and cantered to the wall, finally getting a good look at the state of her cabin. Letting out a wave of magic, she performed a mass-restoration spell, reforming the ceiling. With good reason, Soul decided to wait until the morning to continue her training. Not because she disliked the night, but rather due to the fact that she was still too drained to think straight, much less cast spells and grade herself. And the last thing a pony wanted to do while dead-tired was intense combat magic.

It was well into the next day when she woke up again. She decided that she was going to summon a monster to test her combat, rather than simply wait for one to just pop up. All she needed to do was summon something at a safe distance before she threw herself at it. She went off to get her Arcane Pool, siphoning energy from it to power up her spell. She cast a summoning spell to grab herself an Arachataur. It was a variety of sentient spider that was seven feet tall and eleven feet long. It’s lower form was a pure black, shiny exoskeleton, and the throax and above was humanoid, with a dark grey exoskeleton. The arms ended in black nails that shone with a shiny polish. It’s face had prehensile mandibles that extended from its cheek bones and greedily stretched towards Soul Shard.

Going insubstantial with her psionic blades, she flew to it and started hacking. Unfortunately she forgot the greatest axiom of combat: know thy enemy. Its exoskeleton made it hard to cut through, and her blades only making nicks and scratches as the monster tried grabbing Soul with it’s arms and legs. Then, as if things weren't bad enough already, it released some of the venom in its nails and swiped at her. The poison started to slowly eat away at the cloud, forcing her to remove part of her mass before moving away from the monster. Transforming the blade into a hail of smaller shards, Soul threw her all into hitting her opponent with the storm of projectiles. and was eventually able to cut further into the nicks she had made. The Arachataur jumped at her, trying to swipe at the cloud. While missing the clouds, it was successful in hitting the barage of shards, and the shards it struck melted away into nothingness. As it turned it’s attention from the cloud of magic to the shards themselves, she had to let go of the spell. She decided to craft swords and try a different tactic.

Seeing that this was a stupid idea with a very small chance of success, she climbed atop of her cabin and reformed. Although to keep her body in one piece, she lost a tenth of her power and reduced her power to that of a five year old filly, rather than that of a seven year old one. This greatly reduced the raw strength she had to work with, and only made her more vulnerable. As soon as the Arachataur sensed her presence, it galloped straight towards her. Soul channeled the magical energy in the air and sent a massive burst of fire straight towards the enemy. Sadly, the monster's pesky, enhanced armor lessened the damage of the fire as it approached at a slower rate.

In a masterful maneuver, the Arachataur jumped towards her, evading the fires completely. Moving into Telekinesis, Soul struggled to hold it still as it pushed to her with it’s mighty legs. It turned out holding a sedentary boulder was a lot less difficult than a struggling, enraged, murder machine. To make it worse, it’s venom was slowly corrupting her magic, weakening her grasp by the second.

She encased it’s lower body in ice, hoping that it would buy her time. She was livid when the monster slowly started to crack the icy prison. Panting heavily, she focused her mental energy into her hoof and slammed a psionic blast into the monster, effectively accessing its thoughts. Inside it’s mind she was welcomed by a chaotic swarm of mental energy trying to push her out and cut away at her. She started wailing away at it’s mind with blast after blast of mental energy, trying to shatter its mindpower. But the mind of this monster was as strong and violent as its physical body.

She managed to weaken it with her attacks, but needed to move from simply forcing it down to attacking it with mental warfare. Twisting the arcane energy within it’s mind, she ignited a light spell to show the mindscape more clearly. It was a massive forest with houses made of massive webbing. The monster before her retreated from the light momentarily before the trees around her whipped at her, trying to crush the unwelcome intruder.

Sending a mass of fire, she burnt the trees, and watched as they became completely engulfed in flames. Unfortunately for Soul, the Arachataur crafted a mental storm to put out the spell, before pouncing towards Soul Shard. She resorted to whipping at him with the broken trees, and using the tree limb to slam into him repeatedly. After breaking it sufficiently, she bound it within it’s own webbing, and sent slivers of her mental energy into its mind, with the intention of performing a Domination Spell. Doing as much as she has done was far beyond what she was used to doing, but fighting for survival had given her the push needed to fight far past her comfort level.

When she finally left the monster's mindscape, the migraine she felt was enough to make her want to die. She had enough energy to undo the monster’s prison, and she forced it asleep before passing out on her roof. When she awoke, the sun was almost set. She awoke the monster, and worked on reinforcing her mind onto it. She didn’t think the Domination Spell she learned in her family's Grimoire would ever be used, but here she was, alive, adrenalin pumping, and a massive migraine, but having performed it on a living creature.

This was better than a dead Arachataur, since the only reason she summoned one was because it’s poison, when milked, was worth 300 bits per pint. And their poison glands dried up shortly after death, so one had to be very quick about it. Having a live one was sure to, as far as money was concerned, strongly reinforce her.

She decided to perform the last part of the spell the next day; she had had enough for one day. She moved her Arachataur minion into her cabin, and forced it asleep until she could figure out what to do with him. It was a he, though, Soul noted; it lacked the back nubs the females had that produced the oil needed to strengthen the exoskeleton, even the exoskeletons of males. The wax coating of the Arachataur would be so worth it when she was awake enough to do a proper summon. She was eager to see if she couldn’t find its colony, and get herself a good farm going on. But for now, she had nothing to do but lay down for a nice, long nap.

Ok. I narrowly survived my fight with it, and lost a good amount of magic, mass, and strength fighting it. I guess there’s a reason why all of its spell components are rare, and insanely valuable. Its silk has armor like properties, its oils strengthened materials with an armor inducing polish, and its venom had tons of magical properties as well as alchemical ones. So that’s one of many things I can do to build up funds, and the fact I survived gives me major points. Unfortunately I over exerted myself and needed to sleep to recharge myself from the physical and mental exertion. So that lowers my score. My combat was also sloppy and needs refining.

So I guess I can give myself a C+. An A for effort, but a C on follow through. I bet a Royal guard could have defeated it in mere moments. Although to be honest, I've never fought a Royal Guard before, but if they protect the Princess they must be skilled.

It was sunrise the next morning when she awoke again. She decided to try communicating with her new minion before she set about getting started with her last test, “So minion... what should I call you? And I want to ask you a few questions.”

Looking at her with dead, unfeeling eyes, it spoke to her with a voice that resembled hoofsteps over dry leaves, “My name is Amon. Of the Rael House in the Blood Silk colony. What is it you wish to know, master?”

Grinning at being called master, and a small thrill of power zapping up her spine, she started her barrage of questions, “How many are in your colony? Are you the strongest? What is the leadership structure on the colony? And how far are we from there?”

“There are five houses, with anywhere from four to seven per house. I’m not the strongest by far. The leadership is a Matron who rules over the houses. Each houses is ruled by a mother who rules her home. Each Mother tends to the needs and wants of the house, who, in turn, is tended to by the Matron. And I have no idea how far. We are in the Everfree Forest, one week from the old castle, two weeks from a town called Trottingham where quite a few ponies come from.”

“Okay, so you are about one or two weeks from here. I don’t know about any old castles, but that’s not too far. I want you to not harm any ponies, but you can go into the forests near here and eat. I’ll find a way to contact your colony soon. Now, Amon, I want you to return here when the moon has reached it’s highest peak.” With that she led Amon out and, when the door closed behind him, let loose a squeal. “I can’t believe I did that! That was so awesome, and soon I’ll have control over the colony. Today is going to be perfect!”

Sitting down, she stared in front of her bed and began the process of creating a temporary extraplanar sphere. The first stage needed her to etch the reality bubble, and cleanse it of all impurities before filling it with etheric matter. Next was the laying of the sigils, spell lines, anchors, and magical computations. The next few parts were going to be the hardest. Allowing herself to go into a light trance, she mentally flew into the sphere she was working on.

The making of this type of plane was tricky to say the least. She needed to travel to it and see the sigils and spells lines not as magic, but as physical reactions that shaped the laws governing the spelled sphere. As she looked upon the chaotic mass of pulsating energy, and the strange interactions of the multiple spells, she added her magic and worked on calming everything down to a nice, smooth pace. Then she built a central core. From here, she placed and organized the spells that governed the “physical” laws of this augmented reality. By having everything in a centralized core, one was able to fine-tune and alter things as necessary without having to worry about searching through the entire bubble for what was needed.

She didn’t know if her own universe worked under similar programming structures, but this was surely the most amazing aspect of her magic. Shaping not the world around her, but shaping a world of her own, even if it was only a foot in diameter. Once the core system was set she went about shaping the ground, atmosphere, and other unique laws within her bubble. After this was all set, she went about making the "piece de resistance" of her plane. Going through her mind she ran through all the runes, spells, sigils, glyphs, and symbols responsible for biological constants, while taking advantage of the Etheric Plane’s malleability.

Soul shaped a bush that grew a celestial flower. It’s outer edges formed from the magical properties of star light, magical celestial space, and most importantly, regenerative and restorative qualities to keep it healthy. As she ignited the spell to give it life, she exited the bubble and watched it in real time. The bubble solidified into a glass like prism as it folded space upon itself. Then it drew up on the components of the spell, taking parts of ritual craft and thaumaturgic crafting to take small amounts of power and cascade it upon the larger structures, each spell giving way to another as it built upon itself. The Bubble expanded until it reached a four foot by four foot sphere.

Then came the bush. Starting as a glint of light, it grew, and pulsated with raw power, twisting and stretching as it grew at a rapid speed, until at last it was finished.

Using her magic, she pushed out a single flower and was knocked on her flank after giving it a taste. The flower had a creamy, smooth feel with a taste that was both sweet and slightly spicy. It felt like velvet on her tongue and it instantly rejuvenated herself on all levels. She jumped for joy before giving herself an A for the creation. Overall, she had an A-, but that was one grade higher than the last test. So, with a great sense of pride, she sat by her bed and started planning on her final tests, the biological augmentation from this month's ritual, and her final project.

Author's Note:

Authors Notes

Comments

[BrokenSpaceBar]

remove the () and whatever in it, sounds like it wasn't meant for reader but for you and your editor...

[TheGreatEater]

2971590

Actually it was a mix of editor speaking to me, some of it was my own stuff that was unchanged, and others I think were added. But thank you for pointing those out. I got rid of all but 1 where I describe the attack types. I hope that makes the read easier and I'm going to go through the other chapters to see if they also need a fix. Thank you very much for pointing it out.

Edit:

Well I can say that the next 2 chapter's () were intentional, and I'll keep an eye out to get rid of the one between the editor and I when I put up the rest of the chapters.