Preliminary Experimentation
“-with that being the case, if we can precisely calculate the energy expenditure across the higher dimensions, we should be able to reach as far as, say, here, or here, while using less than a quarter of a percent of the total power we have, but that’ll also depend on the gravity of the other celestial objects within at least twenty-seven million miles and the energy necessary to match orbital velo-“
Twilight paused and flicked her ears at a strange sound to her left, turning to face the disturbance. At first her heart skipped a beat, thinking Spike was clamping his hands over his snout to keep from throwing up, until she saw how red his face was, and the tears running down his cheeks. Confused now, she followed his gaze over to Luna, and promptly turned red herself.
Luna was leaning back on her haunches, fore-hooves barely meeting the floor, staring at Twilight. She had rarely had occasion to use the word “flabbergasted” before, but the look on the Princess’s face fit it pretty well.
“…Princess?” she asked, a little hesitantly
Luna blinked a few times before responding.
“Forgive me, but…I wasn’t expecting that you would already be so familiar with the subject.”
“Well, I did a lot of ‘extra-curricular’ reading while I was in Canterlot,” she admitted, blushing. “The idea had occurred to me before, but even with all my research, I just couldn’t find a way to reduce the spell’s consumption enough to make it work.”
Luna thought about the power source currently occupying her bedroom back at the castle, decided to hold onto that information for a bit. She wanted a more realistic appraisal before she whipped out the magic ticket.
“About how much power do you think it would take?”
“Easily enough to raise the sun at least a dozen times over-what is it?”
“Nothing, please continue,” Luna replied, endeavoring to keep a straight face.
“…alright. Anyway, as I was saying, I can’t think of any way to reduce the consumption any further. I mean, teleportation spells are more strenuous to cast the further you’re trying to go, and that’s just distances of a few miles. I know you and Celestia can use some pretty powerful magic, but I gotta say this is beyond even what you two could pull off.”
“Have you tried working it all out on paper?”
“Oh! I completely forgot. Spike!”
Her number one assistant sat up from where he’d been starting to drift off from boredom.
“Huh, what?”
“Can you get that set of papers I had you file under “experimental” a few months ago?”
“Sure!”
He scampered out of the room, leaving the two mares alone. Twilight anxiously hoped her mentor’s sister would approve of her work. She hadn’t had a lot of subject matter to use as a basis, so she’d had to wing it on many of the figures, or as close to “winging it” as she ever came.
Luna was still trying hard not to smile and give away how impressed she was. Given her role as monarch and avatar of the night sky, nopony could really understand her interest in visiting her own "charges". Either that or they would simply wonder why she hadn't done so before with all of the power at her disposal. It was nice to find someone who could actually appreciate her interest, though that brought up questions she would ask at a later point. Luna started to feel like she might be able to finally pull off this crazy plan.
Spike returned with the requested papers, and Twilight laid them out on the floor between the two of them. All told, there were twelve large sheets covered in charts, graphs, and equations. Luna looked them over with a studied eye, ignoring for the moment the anxious look she could feel Twilight giving her as she ran the figures in her head, and compared them to what she had recovered of her own earlier work from where her sister had stashed it away in the royal archives. Making a mental note to thank her again for preserving those, she returned to her scrutiny.
As far as she could see, Twilight’s numbers were only missing some frame of reference points on the precise manner in which the heavenly bodies interacted with each other. What she had were book numbers, which were as accurate as book numbers could be, but they were no replacement for the visceral way in which she knew these things by heart. That could be easily remedied, however.
“Very good work, Twilight Sparkle. I can see only a few miscalculations, and those are more due to your sources. I see you marked this with a question mark, this line here?”
She began making the necessary corrections. Twilight walked around to her side to get a better look, nodding her head in silence at some of the changes, and cocking it to the side at others. When Luna lowered the quill back to the floor, she could see that all trace of trepidation had left her sister’s protégé. She was in full-on analytical mode, the Princess of the Moon sitting right next to her completely forgotten. She was only broken out of this trance by a voice below her.
“Uh, what does all this mean?” asked a clearly befuddled Spike, scratching his head.
Twilight, reflexively opened her mouth to begin another explanation, realized what she was doing, and spied the clock as she looked up.
“Oh my goodness, I lost track of time! Your bedtime was almost an hour ago!”
“Rats.”
He didn’t protest as she lifted him onto her back and carried him upstairs, though, and Luna smiled at the open doorway after they passed through it. If it weren’t for the obvious differences, you’d almost think they were siblings. She could recall fond memories of similar times she had shared with her own sister. The smile soon began to leave her face, though.
As with the phrase “no pony is an island”, so it is with memories. Hot on the heels of those happy recollections were the all-to-vivid images of the final months before her exile. Visions of bat-winged pegasi slaying their brothers in mid-air danced against the back of her eyelids as she tried to force her mind off the topic.
Her sister was always telling her to forget these memories, to remember the lessons of the past and nothing more, and never herself get tied up in the recollection. Celestia was normally a wonderful sister in all regards, and an excellent source of advice, but she had never been what Luna had, and her words – though well meaning – failed to remedy her younger sister’s affliction.
With a final wrenching effort and a firm shake of her head, she re-opened her eyes to find Twilight looking at her with concern from across the charts on the floor, mouth half open as if she had been about to announce her presence. The Night Princess took a deep breath and did her best to smile.
“I hope he didn’t give you any trouble?” she asked, hoping Twilight would pick up on her unwillingness to discuss what she had seen.
“None at all,” her host replied, looking back to the papers spread before them. “I normally never lose track of time like that, but this is…kind of exciting for me.”
“So I’ve seen.”
Twilight cleared her throat, the slight blush receding as she again immersed herself in the formulas Luna had modified. She frowned in concentration as she re-evaluated the power requirements of the tweaked spell. She eventually found herself shaking her head however, as the energy requirements were still far beyond what even the most gifted alicorn could produce at once, and there was no way to gradually execute the spell.
Upon seeing Twilight shake her head, Luna decided it was time to reveal her surprise. She stood, informed the lavender mare that she would return shortly, and then vanished in a flash. Though the librarian was confused for a few moments, that soon turned to open astonishment at the sight of what the princess returned with.
Lowering the glowing stone to the floor gently, Luna allowed a slight smile to cross her face. Her host was clearly dumbfounded, and she could clearly hear her sister’s laughter from the night before echoing in her mind as Twilight stood there with her mouth hanging open, her surroundings forgotten before this object. She slowly walked forward, stopping a foot from the motionless intruder, and reached out with her magic. She wasn’t fast enough to stop the loud gasp that left her lips as she felt only the tiniest fraction of the power coursing through the gemstone in front of her.
“Wh-ho-what is this?!”
“Think of it as a magical container. I spent over eight-hundred years storing my power in this diamond while I was on the moon.”
She mentally prepared herself for the next question, determined to give at least some kind of an answer, as she felt that her host deserved that at the very least, given the help she would be providing. She was somewhat astonished when Twilight spoke.
“It was a weapon, wasn’t it?”
“…yes, it was”
“I see…”
She didn’t back away though, Luna noticed with some admiration. The look in her eyes hardened slightly, but the analytical mind behind that gaze was still clearly in play, unperturbed by the origins of this glowing gem.
Twilight, for her part, was going over all of the calculations in her mind again, factoring in what she estimated was the total capacity of Luna’s stone. Even factoring for as much fault margin as possible, it might be possible to accomplish several trips to a sufficiently close celestial object. They would still need to find one, however, and they’d need a destination to visualize in order to make the transition.
The princess of the night was forced to duck as several heavy tomes from the shelves around them flew rapidly over her head and opened in front of the librarian, each turning to a page it would remain on for no more than a few seconds before its pages began to turn again as Twilight’s focus shifted between them. She muttered to herself, the words unintelligible to her guest, her mind operating at a breakneck pace. Finally, she closed the books and stacked them on a nearby table, turned back to Luna.
“It’ll work. You’ll only be able to manage three or four round-trips at the most, but that thing will cover the energy consumption. What we need now is to do some tests.”
She lapsed back into silence, clearly working out more figures, the frown on her face deepening with her focus. Having spoken with her sister about her protégé on numerous occasions since her return, she could see the tell-tale signs of obsession setting in. The only difference was the intensity with which this obsession was taking shape. Celestia had described most of these occurrences as somewhat manic, and that had been what she had mentally prepared herself to deal with. This was something else entirely, and she couldn’t help but think her presence in the mix was tamping down Twilight’s natural enthusiasm. Though she tried to convince herself that her concern was misplaced, she couldn’t help but feel a bit worried at the implications of that much manic energy being restrained.
“Twilight.”
Her host started at the sound of her voice.
“Y-yes?”
“How well do you know the night sky?”
“Quite well, Princess! I’ve memorized almost every star chart in the Canterlot archives. Why?”
“How about hazardous environment protection spells? Have you learned ones for exploring the ocean, ones that can hold air?”
“Uh, yes?”
“Demonstrate one for me.”
Twilight was very curious at this point, but her eagerness to demonstrate the fruits of her studies to her mentor’s sister won out. She closed her eyes, and with a brief glow from her horn, she felt the spell settle into a sphere around her. Before she could open her eyes however, there was a bright flash against her eyelids, and she felt momentarily disoriented. Opening her eyes did nothing to improve this.
There was nothing but stars. These were not stars as she had seen them before. These were bright, untwinkling and many. The entire sky above her was enshrouded with a brilliant blanket of hundreds of millions of tiny lights in the darkness, and she had to remind herself to blink. Heedless of the princess who stood next to her, watching with a bemused expression, a grin began to cross her face that would have made Pinkie envious.
Though the lack of air made it impossible to hear Twilight’s response to this new development, as she watched her clamp her fore hooves over her muzzle, Luna would have said she could feel her elation across the void between them. For the next minute, the lavender mare’s eyes roamed the heavens ceaselessly, cataloguing every star and constellation, mentally testing her knowledge. After a few breathing exercises she had memorized from a particularly useful book Celestia had recommended to her early in her studies, she finally calmed down enough to speak.
“Princess, this is amazing!”
“There’s no air here, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Oh, right,” she replied, switching to a telepathy spell with a slight blush at her mistake. “I was saying that this is amazing! The stars are so bright here, and there are so many more to see.”
She finally looked over to Luna, and saw that she wore no protective spell around herself. This confused Twilight momentarily, before she chalked it up to the Princess’s immortality, and turned her gaze back to the stars. Now that she was over the initial shock, she started looking for stars she recognized as being closer to their world from her studies. She marked two or three, and made a mental note to do some more accurate measurements once they got back to Ponyville. Speaking of which, she was probably getting close to having used most of the air in her bubble.
“We should probably head back now, Princess. I’m not sure how much air is left in this spell.”
“Alright then, I have one last thing to show you.”
With that, there was another bright flash, and Twilight re-opened her eyes to a sight that nearly made her faint again. Instead of a carpet of lights, there was a massive blue and green sphere, whisps of white drifting slowly across it’s surface. The analytical part of her mind quickly identified the continents “below” them, while the rest of her still tried to grapple with the fact that she was seeing her entire world turn majestically in front of her eyes. She stared until her vision grew blurry, blinked to clear away the tears that then drifted beside her weightlessly. It was…profound.
As they drifted, the planet making its slow revolution as it always did, Twilight could see Equestria appear over the horizon and begin to make it’s way beneath them. As it reached that point, she suddenly noticed a small group of twinkling lights sliding by, only a few miles away from a much larger grouping, and realized where those lights were coming from. If her previous tears were due to drying out her eyes by staring, she knew she couldn’t pass these new ones off as the same. That was her home, and Canterlot, where she had been born and lived most of her life. Both were just small clusters of lights on the surface of this massive sphere, and as big as her world was, it was nothing before the majesty of the starry expanse that girded it.
She looked over to Luna, floating beside her, and saw her smiling. She smiled back, sniffling a little, before wiping her tears and nodding to her. With a final bright flash, they were back in the Ponyville library, and Twilight let her spell dissipate around her. She opened her mouth to say something, closed it, tried again, and was still silent. Luna just chuckled softly and turned toward the door, feeling more in the mood for a night flight than a quick teleportation spell.
“I imagine I’ve left you with quite a bit to think about. Why don’t you sleep on it? I will return in a few days. I have some matters of state I must assist Celestia with. Goodnight, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Goodnight, Princess.”
Several hours later, still staring out her bedroom window, the lavender librarian gave up trying to calm down, and just played back the events of the day, that same childish grin returning at the thought of finally being able to fulfill the dream that both she and Luna now realized they had in common.
They were going to find new worlds among those stars, and she couldn’t wait to get started.
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Huzzah! Another chapter. Nice work.
I like it, tracking.
One (Freudian?) mistake - it's probably Luna's immortality that lets her survive without air, not her immorality.
I got a chuckle from this.
She finally looked over to Luna, and saw that she wore no protective spell around herself. This confused Twilight momentarily, before she chalked it up to the Princess’s immorality.
I think you meant Immortality. Easy mistake.
Like the story. Keep it up.
532155
Okay, I finally managed to stop laughing. Thanks for pointing that out, man.
This is getting better. But if you want to maximize nerdiness in this story, you should use metric. It's completely optional, of course. To me, it just sounds more scientific that way.
God damn I love sciencefics.
I like where this is going.
They can see the lights of their cities from orbit well enough to identify a small town like Ponyville?
Beautiful characterisation and, I think, a very in-character set of responses from Twilight. You see, she would be the one who dreams the impossible dream and imagines what lies on the furthest frontiers.
1283714
Maybe the moon is just fairly small and fairly close? I mean if Luna explored the whole thing thoroughly in just 100 years it cant be that big.
Wheeeeee, I love when fantasy flirts with hard sci-fi.
1283714 Okay, this is a VERY late response to this comment, but the Space Shuttle was actually able to observe fires lit on the open planes in Africa from space.