23. It's One Thing After Another
“Yes, they certainly do exist,” Steve explained, struggling to maintain his patience, “but that doesn’t mean you can have one.”
Twilight gave the unicorn an annoyed look. “Why not?” Surely with all their advanced science and technology, they wouldn’t have any problems creating and controlling such objects.
Outside the observation lounge, a squad of crystal ponies was transporting a large wagon full of raw crystals to the construction site. It was only mid-morning, but the ground had already been cleared of the wild grasses and the crystalline floor was almost complete. Under the efficient direction of her brother, the enclosure for The Mirror should be done before sunset.
Twilight had only been able to spare a few minutes for watching their magic at work, growing and shaping the crystals with their hooves. It was a good adaptation to this treeless environment. She had made a note to ask Pinkie Pie if there were any similarities to rock farming.
Steve’s patience was clearly wearing thin, mystifying Twilight. Why wasn’t he jumping on board? It’s not like he had a better plan—or any plan.
“Because the nearest one we know of is over a thousand lightyears away—that’s on the order of ten to the sixteenth power miles.”
The alicorn’s jaw dropped. “Ten to the…” Just how big is their realm? “Can’t you make one?” she weakly ask.
The unicorn slowly shook his head.
If they can’t make one, and the nearest one they allegedly knew of… “How can you be so sure they actually exist?”
“The evidence was mostly circumstantial,” he admitted, “until recently when a composite radio telescope spanning the entire planet successfully resolved to a disc the event horizon of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. The observations were consistent with theory.”
They can do that?
She shoved her curiosity aside. Now was not the time.
There had to be some way to make it work. She didn’t have any alternatives. “Do you think I could make one using magic?” she suggested. “A small one?”
Steve stared hard at her before replying. “I doubt there is much that is beyond your abilities,” he said. “But don’t go down that path, I beg you. Maybe you can create a black hole with magic, but once you do, I seriously doubt you can control it, never mind get rid of it.” He turned away, looking outside at the construction site. “This is an object that could literally destroy our world.” He looked back at the alicorn. “We also have no idea what would happen when that trans-dimensional junction hits the singularity.”
Twilight turned to Meg, her hopes desperately clinging to a lifeline. “Can’t you simulate that with your computers?”
The pegasus shook her head. “No, for two reasons. First, we have no mathematical model for whatever it is that’s transporting magic from your universe to ours. Second, the laws of physics as we understand them break down at the singularity. The equations produce infinities—infinite density, infinite curvature, stuff like that. What happens when the density of magic is infinite within an infinitesimal volume?”
She had no idea; the equations describing the magical field also broke down under those conditions. And, she was forced to concede, she probably wouldn’t have control over a block hole once it was created, simply because time stopped at the event horizon. Without time, there was no possibility of change, her magic powerless. Even if her magic did pass through the horizon, in its own frame of reference, it would become disconnected from her, no more under her control than an amputated limb.
Her frustration boiled over. “What am I supposed to do?!” she demanded, punctuating with a hoof stamp.
Meg cringed, and Steve blinked.
Twilight inhaled and exhaled. “I’m sorry,” she exhaled again. “We’re running out of time, and I’m out of ideas.”
Steve walked away from the panoramic window, pulled over a cushion, and laid down upon it facing Twilight. “Quite honestly, we don’t know enough to offer suggestions. It was never obvious to me that closing the hole on our end would solve the problem on yours. I simply assumed you knew what you were doing.
“That magic is entering our world under incredible pressure. Sure, a black hole would present an impermeable barrier, but what if that only caused the… whatever between our universes, through which the magic flows, to burst open and spill it there? Our world would be spared—maybe—but what about yours? How did you plan on closing that hole on this side? Why must you close it on our end first?”
Twilight’s ears folded back as she turned around and plodded to the back of the lounge. He has a point. She never did pass on to them what Discord had told her and her friends. If it had ever made sense to withhold that information, that time had certainly passed. Perhaps with their different perspective, they could see something she had missed.
The alicorn turned around and walked back, pulling over her own cushion and setting down upon it. “Here’s everything I know…”
She told them everything Discord had said concerning The Mirror, including his own inability to fix it. She also mentioned her brother’s failure to black the flow, that no magical shield can long survive the magic vacuum on one side. Nor did she leave out that it was her actions, using the Element of Magic to defeat Sunset Shimmer, that caused the problem in the first place.
They took that part a lot better than she had expected. Apparently, that battle was in one of the cartoons as well—not one belonging to the four seasons she had already seen, for some reason, even though those events took place between three and four. Watching it was now on her todo list.
“So, the idea is,” she said in conclusion, “that once it’s closed on your end, even if it doesn’t fix it on our end, the flow would back up long enough for there to be enough magic for Discord to open the portal, enter, and fix it.”
Outside, a gentle breeze drove waves across the endless sea of grass. The floor of the enclosure had been completed, and work had begun on one of the walls. Inside, silence reigned as the two ponies digested what they just learned.
Obviously, they weren’t going to come up with something right this instance, and there was stuff that needed to get done. “Think about it, and let me know if you come up with something. For now, let’s go get that synthetic rope.” She headed out of the lounge, going to where she had secured the pill dispenser.
“Uh… I just realized there’s a problem,” Meg said.
Don’t we have enough already? Twilight stopped and turned around.
“Our car is sitting on the balcony of your castle.”
Twilight blinked, then face-hoofed. It’d take too long to go back to Ponyville, and the Zephyr was needed here until the construction was finished. “You do know where the store is that sells it, right?”
“Well, sure, but wouldn’t I have to take a pill for that to work? I can’t walk into that store as a pony.”
Did she have to spell it out? Wasn’t it obvious? “Only one of you has to take the pill; the other can enter the store.”
Meg nodded. “Right… that would work… except the only places I can think of are in public view, and it wouldn’t do for a person to suddenly appear out of nowhere.” She tapped her chin with a hoof. “We’d have to go there to do reconnaissance, find a suitable spot with no people around, come back, then bring one of us there as a human.”
Fine, whatever. She just wanted to get this out of the way so she could deal with the FBI knowing she had an alternative. The scheduled time for her checkup on the doll was approaching. “You two decide who’s taking the pill, while I go get them.”
Twilight left the lounge, went down a corridor, and into a small kitchen. Flapping her wings, she lifted herself to an upper row of cabinets. She released the magical lock she had placed on one of them, opened it, released the lock on the always-full dispenser, and turned the knob twice, receiving two plaid pills.
The alicorn hovered, wondering if it was worth the bother securing it again. She would have to come back in a few minutes for another. Maybe it was safe taking the extra pill for a roundtrip to the other realm, but she didn’t know that for a fact. Nopony knew the dispenser was in that out-of-the-way cabinet anyway.
Sighing, she turned the knob one more time; one of them could look after it while the other did reconnaissance with her. That being decided, she relocked the dispenser, closed the cabinet door, then relocked it. With the pills levitating in her magic, she returned to the floor and trotted back to the lounge.
As she entered, Meg informed her of their decision. “I’ll take the pill, Steve will buy the fishing line.”
That sounded reasonable enough. As both of them had wings, they could stay off the ground and avoid accidental contact as they waited for Steve to come out. She floated one of the pills over to Steve. “Hold onto this until we come back.”
“Will do.” The glow surrounding the pill went from lavender to teal.
Another pill floated over to Meg. “Remember, you’re selecting the destination. Wait until we both have a pill in our mouths.”
“Right,” she confirmed. “We’ll cross over hovering well above the ground.” The pegasus wrapped her mouth around the floating pill, then began hovering.
Twilight followed suit. Crossing over hovering was a good idea; she approved. Meg closed her eyes, briefly concentrated, and swallowed. As she vanished, the alicorn did likewise.
They were above the parking lot in front of a really large building, perhaps the equal of a Manehattan skyscraper, if laid on its side. Twilight looked around, but could not see any spot obviously out of view. “Any ideas?”
Meg looked towards the building, inside of which were presumably all the stores, considering the options. “There’s a parking lot on the roof over there. It should be empty this early.”
On the roof? There was no evidence their cars could fly. Curious as to how that would work, Twilight followed Meg as she climbed above the building and flew over the roof. Far from being flat and featureless, there were numerous panes of glass, leaned against each other in pairs along the midline of the roof, forming prism-shape windows that illuminated the interior with sunlight.
She caught a glimpse of the interior as they flew over, which only whetted her appetite for more. Don’t get your hopes up, she told herself. She might not have the option of going inside.
Meg found what she was looking for on the far side. A few cars were already there, clustered around what looked like an entrance to the building, a small enclosed space on top of the roof. Twilight assumed there were stairs inside, leading down to the levels below. The parking lot itself was a long strip of concrete, with various projections sticking out to one side providing additional parking. Lines had been painted, marking the parking spots, just like below. Some of those side projections had spots with limited visibility—perfect, so long as they didn’t fill up with cars.
At one end, the strip ended in a ramp that descended into a multi-level structure, each level also a parking lot. No need for flight capability, it would appear. It was also clear why this lot was virtually empty: getting up here was a bit inconvenient, something to be done only if the others were full.
Meg had selected a spot, far away from the building’s entrance and further still from that ramp, and touched down. “This looks like a good spot.” She looked around for something, and having found it, pointed at it. “Security camera. But those are going to be everywhere. I guess they’re recording everything, but no one is going to bother to look at them without a reason. They’re there to deter crime.”
It wasn’t the only one. Now that she knew what to look for, Twilight could see others. The coverage was quite thorough. How ubiquitous were these things? Could the actions of everypony in public be recorded and viewed by Celestia knew who? She was willing to bet they weren’t just outside either.
No, Twilight corrected herself, Celestia would not know, not here, not in this realm. Was this the sort of technology ponies should welcome in Equestria? And, yet, she would also bet the technology that made this sort of universal surveillance possible shared much with the technology ponies ought to welcome.
Regardless, here and now, Meg didn’t think they’d be a problem. That made sense. There must dozens, if not hundreds of them. It would take a small army to review every minute recorded by every camera. Unless somepony reported a crime, why should they bother? As her eyes scanned the empty lot, the odds of a crime happening then and there seemed quite low.
“Okay. I’ll fetch Steve.”
Twilight invoked the return spell and found Steve in the same spot, still levitating the plaid pill. “I’ll take that back now,” she chirped, as she magically grabbed the pill and brought it into her mouth. A few seconds later, an alicorn and a human appeared next to Meg.
“Ah, the rooftop parking lot,” Steve said, recognizing where he now was.
“The entrance is to the right,” Meg said.
The invisible ponies followed Steve as he walked the short distance to the road running along with roof, turned right, and followed it to the entrance. “Are you coming inside?” he quietly asked, all too aware it looked like he was talking to himself.
Twilight’s eyes lit up, not that he could see that. “It wouldn’t cause any problems?” she hopefully asked.
“I don’t think so,” replied Meg, “as long as no one else tries to use the elevator at the same time.”
Elevator? Like what skyscrapers in Manehattan have? This building hardly seemed tall enough to bother with that. And wouldn’t there be stairs anyway? They were approaching the entrance. She would find out soon enough.
The entire wall, including the door, was made of glass. Nopony else was around. It slid open by itself as they approached. Steve paused briefly at the threshold before entering. They were in a small room that contained nothing but an elevator. No stairs. Steve pressed the button as the glass doors behind them closed. Mechanical noises erupted and shortly the elevator door opened. He held the door open until he heard two sets of hooves enter, then entered himself and pressed another button.
The door lethargically closed, and they began sluggishly descending. I sure hope the elevators in their skyscrapers go a lot faster than this! Not that it needed to go faster when it was only descending two dozen feet or so. It came to a stop. The door opened only slightly faster than it had closed.
“I’ll keep it open,” Meg nearly whispered. She stood on her hind legs as she put a hoof against a button.
Steve exited first, with Twilight right behind him. They were on the upper of two floors. It hugged the walls, leaving a vast open space between much of the ground floor and the ceiling. Meg joined them, the doors closing behind her.
“Go get the fishing line,” she told him. “We’ll meet you back here.”
“Okay.” He purposefully began walking towards the sporting goods store.
There weren’t many humans around this early, but it was still a good idea to get off the floor. Twilight went airborne and drifted over the railing, coming to a hover halfway between the walls. Meg joined her. “Wait a second,” she quietly told the pegasus, as she reactivated the inaudibility feature of their magic bubbles. Switching to a normal voice, she then said, “We can talk freely now; nopony can hear us.”
“It won’t take him long, only a few minutes,” Meg said. “We could simply fly from one end to the other, so you can see the selection of stores.”
There wouldn’t be time to do much else; she could always come back later. “Let’s do that.”
There were dozens and dozens of stores of various sizes, lining both walls on the two levels. At either end were really huge stores, and another huge store off to one side in the middle, though they didn’t go into those. Hanging from the ceiling, in a few places, were gigantic screens showing… well, it didn’t make any sense to her, but the sheer size of those things was impressive enough.
It was now clear the images were formed from tiny individual lights, lights that must have been really tiny, too small to be individually seen, on their portable devices. Their technology never ceased to amaze her. No doubt she would be spending years studying it.
A surprising number of the stores sold clothing—but then, humans did wear a lot more clothes, so that did make sense. What Rarity would give to browse those stores. Other stores sold eyewear, chocolates, jewelry, perfume, and many other things that she could and could not recognize. Two of the larger stores sold computers, tablets, and phones of the sort Meg and Steve had. Curious that one was far busier than the other.
There were also toy stores, one of which had on its window a prominent My Little Pony poster featuring an ecstatic Pinkie Pie. Below that, there was a lavender doll looking back at her with those absurdly large eyes, head, and short barrel. Also wings. At least she now had an answer to Pinkie’s question.
Nor was there a shortage of restaurants; indeed, there was an area devoted to them. It was too early for lunch, but they were open nonetheless and a few humans had taken advantage of that. Some of the food available looked quite enticing, others… well, she knew humans were omnivores. It honestly wasn’t worse than anything back home catering to griffons—better actually, since humans did not care for raw, uncooked flesh with the skin still attached. The meat was so processed, it was hard to tell it had ever been part of an animal. Nor was there any evidence of the animals being kept nearby.
Eventually, they completed a loop, returning to the elevator. Steve was already there, leaning against a wall, waiting for them. He was holding a bag… Twilight didn’t know what that bag was made of. Certainly not any kind of cloth or paper. Maybe she could keep it and analyze it later.
She switched off their bubbles’ inaudibility. “We’re here,” she whispered to him.
He responded by pushing off against the wall, walking over to the elevator, and pressing the up button. The door immediately opened; it was still at the floor. Nopony else was around who might also take the elevator. They all entered.
Once the door closed, Twilight said, “We can return right now.” She took the bag with her magic, just in case it’d be tied to his human form and vanish with it, and invoked the return spell, taking the bag and Steve with her back to the Zephyr’s observation lounge. Meg popped into existence by her side a moment later.
Twilight opened the bag she was levitating and pulled out a spool. “So this is it, huh?”
“Yep,” Steve replied. “One thousand meters per spool, rated for one hundred pounds.”
Over half a mile long, and yet it weighed practically nothing. It was hard to believe something so thin could be so strong, especially without magic to assist. What could it possibly be made of?
Even so, a single line might not be strong enough; but if it weighed this little, there was no reason not to use several lines, one per pegasus. Or possibly loop it around two or three times. The magic free zone wasn’t that big. Not yet, anyway.
The alicorn continued twirling the spool around various axes of rotation, though her attention was focused inwards.
“So… what are you thinking?” Steve asked. “Do we still need the helicopter?”
“Need… probably not.” She put the spool back into that strange bag. “I’m keeping our options open for now. We still don’t know if we’ll have use of one.”
Outside, one of the walls had been completed and work begun on another. It was on track to being completed by mid-afternoon.
“We should be returning to Ponyville before dark, so you can get your car back home.” She’d immediately come back here once that had been done. With luck, they could move The Mirror tomorrow. “Would you be available tomorrow?”
Meg and Steve walked away to have a private discussion. After a few whispered exchanges, they came back. “If necessary,” Meg said. “We already called in that we had to work from home today due to car troubles. It looks like it might take an extra day to fix the problem.”
“Maybe we should leave the car where it is for another day,” Steve added. “It’s not being worked on if it’s home.”
Perhaps she wouldn’t have to go back to Ponyville after all. Guess it all depended on what the other girls wanted to do. Right now, they were all enjoying themselves back in the Crystal Empire. Spike, for that matter, was doing more personal appearances today. She’d touch bases with them later.
“It’s time to pay the doll a visit,” Twilight declared. “I’d like you to come along, Meg, to advise me.”
The pegasus scrunched her muzzle in indecision, then exhaled. “I suppose… I guess they’re past treating us as ‘persons of interest.’”
“How do you want to cross over? They can’t imprison you as a pegasus.”
Meg shook her head. “No, becoming a fugitive is not going to solve anything. That was true for Steve, and it’s equally true for me.”
“Don’t worry.” Twilight gave her a smile. “If it came to that, I would make Equestria’s position on the matter very clear.”
“If it’s all the same,” Steve said as he walked over to a box in a corner, “I’ll stay here and get some work done.” He pulled his laptop out of the box. “We are supposed to be working from home today.”
Twilight went to the kitchen to retrieve another plaid pill. It wasn’t long before an alicorn and a human appeared out of nowhere in a desert, not far outside a circle of vehicles. She figured it would be best not to appear amongst them, taking them by surprise; they had weapons.
It was surprisingly overcast and a stiff wind was blowing. Could it actually rain? She wished Rainbow Dash was there to offer her professional opinion, even if it wasn’t clear how useful it’d be in this place. An umbrella spell to repel the rain was easy enough to cast, if needed.
The wind carried voices from the other side of the RV a few dozen feet in front of them, her ears trying to lock in on them. “I think I hear Fowler.”
Meg shrugged. “Let’s not keep them waiting,” she said, and they walked towards a gap in the circle of vehicles.
Agent Fowler was, indeed, there, talking to somepony Twilight remembered seeing before, though his name escaped her. The agent heard them approach and looked in their direction, lighting up as she recognized them. “Go get the doll,” she told her associate, and walked towards the approaching visitors.
As they came to a halt in front of each other, Fowler gave Meg a once-over. With a raised eyebrow, she asked, “No wings?”
Meg held up her hands in response and wiggled her fingers.
“Yeah… too bad you have to choose one or the other.” She turned around and slowly walked back to where she had been, expecting Twilight and Meg to follow. “By the way, did you remove or turn off that GPS tracker? It’s been off the grid for a while. If you wouldn’t mind, we’d like to have it back.”
“No, we haven’t touched it,” Meg informed her. “I imagine it’s because our car is still parked on the balcony of her castle.”
She looked at her in surprise. “Oh?”
“We haven’t returned to Ponyville yet,” Twilight said. “We’re busy building a new site to house The Mirror.” With an expectant look, she added, “it’ll be finished this afternoon.”
The associate—Eduardo, that’s his name—came out of one of the RVs, holding the doll, and quickly walked towards them.
“We’re still working on that… though there has been a… development,” Fowler uneasily said. “Put the doll on the ground here,” she instructed Eduardo.
He did so, and Twilight began her measurement ritual.
“Speaking of surveillance devices,” Meg said as she moved a few feet away from the busy alicorn, “you didn’t happen to leave any inside our home?”
“We didn’t see the point. We were right next door, after all, sharing a wall. We did have something on the wall listening in, but it never picked up anything. We assumed you were on to us and were keeping quiet.” She shifted uneasily on her feet. “That didn’t make you look innocent.”
Twilight looked up long enough to admit, “That was my doing. I cast a spell to prevent sound from passing through the wall, so you couldn’t hear what we were talking about—or hear me talking at all.”
Fowler inhaled deeply. “Well… that’s all in the past. That apartment is now empty, by the way. I suppose even if we had left bugs in your place, you could find them all with a spell anyway.”
“Not yet,” Twilight replied as she wrote down some numbers, her magic keeping the pages of her notepad from being tossed about by the wind. “Otherwise Meg wouldn’t have had to ask you.” Presumably, “bugs” referred to those surveillance devices. She looked up once more at the agent. “But Princess Celestia is right now forming a team of our best mages to create those spells.”
She had received a scroll from Celestia via Spike that morning informing of that. They would all have to be sworn to secrecy, of course, and they needed to get their hooves on some of these devices—or, at least something close enough in the ways that mattered—but Meg could help with those details.
“I’m surprised you’re not working on that yourself.”
Twilight moved the flow meter away from the doll. “I’m only one mare, and besides—” she waved a hoof at the doll “—I have more important things to work on.”
A movement caught Twilight’s eye. It came from a window of one of those RVs. The curtains were closed, but she was sure somepony was watching them. “Is that Agent Holmes in there?”
Fowler turned to look at the RV. “No…” she said uneasily, “he’s not here right now.”
A musical tune began playing. The agent pulled out her phone, looked at the screen, touched it, then brought it to her ear. “Hello.” For half a minute, she listened without speaking.
Twilight could not make out any words, to her surprise. Whoever was speaking was doing so quietly—as if aware equine ears were present? That wouldn’t be possible, unless…
“Will do.” Fowler put her phone away and turned to Meg. “The person in that RV wishes to speak to you.”
Meg did not move. Twilight looked up at them, wondering what was going on and if she should be concerned.
Fowler glanced briefly at the curtained window, not sure how to handle this. “Did your husband ever tell you that we had mentioned that this had attracted the attention of people with a sufficiently high pay grade?”
Meg nodded.
“I strongly recommend you talk to him.”
Meg looked at the RV, but did nothing more.
“You’re not in any trouble, if that’s what you’re worried about. I give you my word.”
Is her word worth anything? Twilight decided it wouldn’t be tactful to ask, and pointless besides. If it wasn’t worth anything, then neither would be her claims to the contrary.
Meg remained still for a few seconds more, but she then began walking towards the RV, picking up speed as she went. Twilight had put her tools away, and began to follow, but Fowler shook her head. “Just Meg, for now.”
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Is that you, Mister President?
I really can't say much about every single chapter. This did as a good job progressing the story as all others have, although it's not one of the more exciting ones. Nevertheless I am still enjoying your story very much and am looking forward to the next chapter
6110698 Chuck Norris.
Twilight Sparkle needs to be shown Wolfram Alpha, the king of useless questions.
Oh dear.... Would that be the president? I did speculate that CIA or NSA or someone would pick this BIG anomaly up and, as admitted, attracted the eyes of the higher powers. Being a legit first contact situation, pretty sure that this goes straight up to the highest one in the chain of command.
Super excited for the next chapter!
Read this with a friend. Here are the results of our discussions.
Typo demon strikes again :p
They already new that -- Meg wondered if the taste was funny to him.
They're also usually fed to a bank of monitors with guards watching. Almost certainly someone saw Steve walk through the parking lot, only question is if they'd bother looking back to review where he came from. I say probability is low, less than 5%. Friend thinks more than 10%.
Fire hazard. Also, just one elevator? I suppose there could be multiple elevators spaced out, but that seems a pretty small capacity for a mall of this apparent size.
While in one of the cameras on the "most frequently watched" list because the inside of an elevator is an easy place for criminal activity to occur. This was not Twilight's most brilliantest idea ever.
So I'm thinking Secretary of State.
6110936 I'm betting on Pee Wee Herman, myself.
6113936
It's been twenty chapters since it last struck. Fixed.
It slipped her mind
I killed that sentence.
As for the shopping mall, it's based on an actual mall. Yes, there is just that one elevator to the roof, which comprises a tiny fraction of total parking capacity. There used to be escalators, but they got rid of them. I haven't a clue why. As for fire hazard… in case of fire, why the hell would you go to the roof instead of using the dozens of exits on both levels?
Re guards: I think you're overestimating how much money they're willing to spend on people who do nothing but stare at monitors all day, or the kind of people who would take such low paying jobs—and there really would be well over a hundred cameras. Not saying it's impossible for someone to notice it live, but even if they do, what do you think they'd do? Blink a few times, maybe rub their eyes, and swear off partying until the small hours of the night or whatever.
Sure, it's recorded, and that's proof—except it's probably just a malfunction anyway. People simply don't vanish into thin air. Cameras don't malfunction that way? You think they hire engineers or something? They don't know that. Their bosses don't know that. Easier to forget it, especially since there's no evidence anything bad actually happened. No crime was reported, no body was found, no one was reported missing, etc… How would you explain someone just disappearing? Would you risk your job over it?
I doubt this will satisfy you, based on our previous exchanges, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
6114130 Honestly I agree with you completely on the camera part, regarding the parking lot. Low priority area at a time where there's no traffic, no reason to pay any real attention to that. The elevator...not so much. That's not a low priority area, and that's where your poor tired security guard is most likely to have his attention at any given time.
And the reason I keep jumping these things is that you keep bringing things up. Cameras or trackers or phones or alibis, you have a continuous tendency to spend a couple paragraphs going over a possible security concern only to do something that doesn't make sense, or take refuge in audacity.
I only ran across this yesterday, but it has my attention, and I am quite curious how it will go from here.
He should've worn a Bluetooth, maybe for extra points they could've had one too, to talk through him through the silencing spell , if that extra step would work anyway
6110698
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