Prologue (Revised)
Canterlot University was the premiere educational institute in Equestria; none were better than it. On the eastern side of campus lay two colleges: Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, a prestigious magical institute, and the School of Languages. On the third floor of the latter’s building, a professor by the name of Wax Poetic was lecturing on The Origins of the Gender of Glyphs in Traditional Unicornian.
Said lecture could be boiled down to one concept. Since the traditional language of the unicorns from before the Great Unification was written with the same glyphs as used to transcribe spells, traditionally feminine spell acquired feminine glyphs, and the equivalent for the masculine, dark, light, and neutral spells.
If you looked out the window of Wax Poetic’s lecture hall, you would see Professor Hex’s lecture hall in Celestia’s School. Coincidentally, he was lecturing on spin-theory, the very reason why Unicorn magic had genders in the first place. Simply put, the direction a unicorn’s magic spins in their core strongly influences the effect of the spell. Up-spin magic, the form 98% of the male population possessed, would be difficult to use to fuel a spell designed for down-spin, the form an equal percentage of mares possessed. And, although other “directions” of spin were known, they were so rare that there was little to no documentation on them.
Which is why the events that would happen in a few seconds and exactly one floor up from Professor Hex’s hall would have come to define his career as a spin-theorist, had he known what to look for and had followed through. Why?
Twilight Sparkle was performing her entrance examination.
“Well, Ms. Sparkle, we’re waiting…” the examiner stated, doing her best to look apathetic. Strictly speaking, Twilight Sparkle had already earned her place in this school on merit of her written tests alone, they were that good. But the examiner had to follow the rest of protocol regardless, and it was hard. The genius filly in front of her would be a pleasure to teach - she was sure of it – and the thought made her want to smile. Yet protocol for the impossible portion of the test dictated she act only with apathy in order to test the filly’s ability to handle failure.
As Twilight Sparkle jumped around the unfertilized dragon egg, trying in vain to hatch it, the examiner made notes. And, as Twilight humbly admitted defeat, the examiner noted a perfect 100% on her score card.
Light flashed outside the window, followed by a tremendous boom which shook the room. A floor below, Professor Hex was interrupted from a tangent on the effects of magic spin on uncontrolled magical release by the sonic rainboom, and then the crushing sensation he knew to be a unicorn nearby suffering from the very thing he was discussing.
He levitated his papers, and then stepped to the left/right. Or more accurately, he simultaneously stepped to both the left and the right due to the interaction of his own magic to the flux field generated by the unicorn filly above. Disoriented by the sudden sensation of existing in two otherwise mutually exclusive timelines, the two Hexes stumbled further in their respective directions and then cut their magical flow.
Senses suddenly restored to normal, the left Hex dismissed his class and headed to the left door of the lecture hall, now unaware that his doppelganger had done the same while moving towards the right exit.
As they say, the single flap of a butterfly’s wings can create future storms.
Twilight Sparkle was, in some ways, more and less lucky than the divergent Hexes. The fluctuations in the field caused by the middle aged professor’s movement imparted a unique spin on Twilight Sparkle’s rapidly depleting magical core, stabilizing some of the effects that her surge had on the local timeline, permanently affixing those effect to her. But, since Hex had moved in different directions, it had imparted two different spins, in-spin and out-spin, frequently associated with a form of dark and light magic respectively.
In the out-spin timeline, Twilight’s surging magic struck every pony in the room, hatched the dragon using a portion of her own essence as fuel to grow the dragon's half soul, transformed her parents into potted plants, healed the aches and pains of the judges, and grew the hatchling out of the building, which caught the eyes of Princess Celestia in the process. The cutie mark that appeared on her flank depicted a blue crystal tree with a starburst engraving upon it.
In the in-spin timeline, Sparkle - what she would eventually shorten her name to - struck every pony in the room with her surging magic, created a pseudo-dracolich out of the egg by fusing a portion of her own essence with the dragon's unfinished soul, stole the souls of her parents, rotted the flesh off the judges, and sent off a burst of semi-necromatic energy that had every unicorn and alicorn in Canterlot puking their guts out for the next hour. The cutie mark that appeared on her flank depicted a black crystal skull holding a starburst in its fanged jaw.
When the out-spinning Twilight was calmed down by Celestia, it calmed her counterpart as well. Seconds later, one went into shock at being accepted as Celestia’s personal student. The other went into a deeper shock, seeing the death she had wrought and hearing her parent’s screams echoing within her skull even as their bodies cooled. The in-spinner collapsed to the ground, only observed by the filly she could have been, and despaired.
Twilight, the budding healer and inventor, would look back at her silent doppelganger, seemingly invisible to her family, and wonder briefly before thoughts of celebration and ice cream pushed such musings aside.
Sparkle, the budding necromancer and mercenary, would be found by the staff of the school and taken to hospital, where she would spend three days in a trauma-induced coma. She would awaken curled up with the pseudo-dragon and her brother sleeping restlessly in a nearby chair. That would be the last truly peaceful day she had for a long while.
And as the two mares parted, the two timelines would peel apart and render each mare isolated from her doppelganger. The timelines would temporarily merge again when they eventually discovered their hidden connection in the days and weeks to come.
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Dark magic specialty Twilight Sparkle? Uh...
Shit.
Too much magical terms... Still awesome though
Dracolich, not dracolitch. There is no 't' in lich.
>On the eastern side of campus lay two colleges;
*:
>the examiner had do follow the rest of protocol
*to
Ok, the story has an incredibly interesting prologue so far, but I couldn't help finding the split comparison pretty damn funny.
Outspin: Stuff goes right :D
Inspin: Shit goes wrong D:
Ooh! We're getting quantum here! That's always fun, even if I only understand the vocabulary and not much more.
thats a creepy cutiemark for inspin twilight to have
The "spin" of a particle doesn't actually refer to the literal spinning of said particle. It's far more abstract, and "spin" simply refers to a property of the particle. The definition of "spin" would be the same even if we called it something like "dryness". Simply put, it's not a physical property that can be "measured" (though it can be sorted).
This is about magic, though, so it probably doesn't apply.
I had better time trying to explain about Napoleon in French to non-French speaker than trying to warp this inside my head
5532886
In other words, Thallia
Damn, now that's an opening.
5548129
Although it does have to do with the magnetic dipole moment, and magnetic moments are often associated with spinning charges, so, y'know, it does have /some/ properties that are better described by 'spin' than 'dryness'. 'Color', however, has no such excuse.
An impressive beginning for a story. Definitely going to read the entire thing
I feel overloaded with magic mumbo jumbo that left me confused. Hopefully in the future chapters I can just enjoy the story while shrugging off the technical side of the explanation.
Well then.
This looks like fun.
You literally had me staring at the screen in shock, slack‐jawed for about ten seconds before I came to my senses. Wow. Just… wow. Now that is the way you start a story.
Dark Magic Twilight and an undead Spike?
For realizies?
Liked, faved, and upvoted.
Holy shit.
That is one hell of a way to start this off.
I have no idea what is going on.
This is how my feels feel like right now.
new1.fjcdn.com/comments/The+face+getting+squashed+reminded+me+of+this+_5e2770b0ea9822b0358cc0ea9c79e473.jpg
Well, I am a sucker for parallel multiversal explorations, so this should be interesting...
So interesting, I can feel my inner reader rattling at his cage waiting to come out. What a start
Why didn't I start reading this earlier?!
This is HIGHLY interesting!
oh fuck sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/i/keep-calm-it-s-wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey.png
Well that's some serious world-building, as well as an interesting take on unicorn magic. Do you think that Alicorns have all spins at once, kinda like a superposition?
5595781 Oh come on, admit that the technical stuff has gotta be your favorite, besides the giant explosions.
Dis gon' be good.
pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw10327-discord_popcorn.gif
Very well. You have my attention
because this is quite a unique story i believe
And you can have one of these too
If I had to say something I would say necromancers rule and Paladins drool.
Nice story, but at the time, the Sonic Rainboom was considered a myth, so the professor wouldn't have been teaching them about it. This sounds like a great story though, I'm definitely going to read this
6243120 I think what the author meant was, the professor got interrupted by the Sonic Rainboom while he was giving his lecture.
6243668 Oh, thanks
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Hold up! That profesor new what would happen when he moved, didn't he! He was just talking about the theory, obviously he had an inkling at least of what his actions would do, right?
6352727
I would presume that though he felt what he had been teaching, he couldn't avoid the event, as that would be battling time, in a sense. If we assume that the multiverse theory can still apply in this instance, it'd be like completely preventing a possible scenario from happening, ever. And simply put, that is impossible.
Wow. Um . . . why haven't I read this yet? I need to stop judging books by their cover.
This is beyond intriguing! I'm in love with your head canon being used here, and I can't wait to read this story to its ultimate end.
This looks promising so far :)
Oh this will be fun.
Also,
That quote reminded me of this for some reason.
6380638 I've only just stumbled upon this today, and already the whole idea of spinning magic through the spiral, whether up or down or in or out, is a very interesting concept.
To you, good author, I commend thee for an already promising tale! I shall recommence reading after I've slept a few winks. Au revoir~!
I don't get the spin theory, but if confusing and possibly contrived magic theory is what is required to set this story up, I'll take it.
Well that's a rough start for Sparkle...finally starting this after being on my list forevor.
This has been on my watch later list for so long, i'm finally getting around to reading it. I am impressed, that was quite the prologue.
Mercenary, you say? Yeah, this'll be worth the price of admission.
CHAOS THEORY/BUTTERFLY EFFECT IS THE BEST, AS IS THIS STORY.
I have read this story 3 times so far and I'm back for round 4
This is the start of my 3rd read through.
Now, i can see you trying to push some of the quantum physics into your story.
But you clearly got problems with temporal coherence.
Twilight is a healer and sparkle is a necromancer light and dark magic yin and yang ☯️ they have some kind of connection one can't exist without the other I see where you are going with this
Sooooo... magic make the timeline go all fucky-wucky and now there is two Twilight's in alternate timelines... Cool, alright, color me intrigued...