Putting on a Silver Robe and Wizard Hat

by David Silver

255 - Striding Forth

Wagging's legs swung back and forth as she sat in a chair. Her eyes were on Silver, but his eyes were not returned. He was buried in his book, scribbling manically as he read from several others back and forth in a manic writing fury.

"How is this going to win the battle for us?" asked Wagging with a roll of her eyes. "I thought you'd use more awesome magic."

"That's what I'm doing." Silver licked over his lips with his still mildly stinging tongue as he turned to the next page. "This should help our chances a lot. I feel like I've used this before, but couldn't find the spell... Maybe in the dream." His words turn to muttering as he worked.

"Dream?" Wagging's eyes wandered to the other forms that studied in the library. There was no fun to be had with them. "This was from a dream?" she pressed. "How does that work?"

Silver paused, tapping his quill against the table a moment. "I had a... very powerful dream. It was no normal one. I was put in it by a powerful being quite practiced in the art, for over a month." He smiled at the she-pup. "I learned things, lived what felt like two extra lives in there... I would not recommend it to others, but it is part of me now."

The quill resumed its dance of writing. "I am a prince thrice-crowned. I am a stallion that has known childbirth. I am the living that has already died." He blushed softly as he looked away a moment. "I'm being dramatic, sor--"

"Tell me more," bid Wagging, her tail whipping back and forth quickly. "You died? You can get better from that?"

Silver reached with his magic, patting Wagging gently. "I did, and I managed, but, I remind, this was a dream. Even in it, it was only with great sacrifice and effort. Other people cared for me, even in that lost world. They cared so deeply they broke the world a little to make it happen and pulled me through the cracks." He set the quill aside, abandoning his writing for the time. "I didn't even fully come back."

"Like a zombie!?"

A harsh but quiet shhh echoed.

Wagging blushed at being called at out and repeated, quieter. "You were a zombie?"

Silver shook his head. "Not as you're probably imagining. My heart worked, as did everything else. I ate, slept, talked. I was just missing... a piece of myself. It took some time to reclaim it, another adventure in itself. An ally had laid a curse on me, without meaning to."

"Did you get revenge?" She bounced in her seat, clearly enjoying the story.

"Oh, no no. She is a dear and gentle friend. It was truly a mistake on her part. I couldn't imagine holding it against her. Besides, I did recover." He picked up his quill and resumed writing, ears swiveling to follow the quiet steps of other in the library. "Perhaps the strangest part is that, outside the dream, she barely knows me."

"She wasn't just a dream then?"

"She was a dream of a real person. I met Nefertari there first." He smiled, facing his book as he wrote. "We fought there. I met your people there, though it was a different impression. I met one of your war camps, in the sands."

Wagging gasped dramatically. "I've always wanted to see a real desert camp... Were they as powerful and ready as they say?"

"Possibly more." Silver glanced up at her with a smile. "They did not treat me, a soft pony trying to offer peace, very well."

Wagging hopped up no her chair, her hands supporting her on the table as she leaned over it. "What'd they do?"

"They..." He thought back, bringing the memory back into recollection. "They tied me to a post as communal property. I was just a pet they shared for a while."

Wagging's eyes widened before narrowing. "And here you are, helping us? Why? If I had a dream like that with ponies, I don't think I'd trust them, ever." She waggled a paw. "I never saw anyone do that though. If we didn't like someone, we'd just kill them, it's nicer."

Silver cringed. "I... It was degrading, but I persevered, and eventually got through. If they had just killed me, that would have been the end of that story." He shook his head slowly. "I would prefer a world where we didn't humiliate or kill people we didn't like."

"You're a pony."

Silver flinched back before the smallest laugh escaped him, almost a cough. "You have no idea." He folded his book shut. "The spell is as ready as ever it will be, without testing it. For that, we'll need someone who can go quickly, like Nefertari."

"You go pretty fast," argued Wagging. "I saw it."

Silver tucked his book away as he shook his head. "It's not the same. I teleport. I don't move fast, I just skip the space in the middle. Nefertari moves through that space incredibly quickly." He tapped his quill on the table and dragged it without making a mark. "This is Nefertari, she moves."

He returned the quill to the start. "Now here I am." He lifted the quill up and didn't touch the table, just tapping the end point. "And now here I am. I never went through the between spots."

"Ohhhhh." Wagging tilted her head, looking fascinated. "Why doesn't she do that then, if it's better?"

Silver shook his head. "I don't think it's 'better'. For one, she is much more aware of what she's approaching, since she can see it coming. I know nothing until I'm already there. She can do it with less energy than I expend with each hop, I think. It's hard to measure that. They're different." He rose up to his hooves, his socks muffling the sound of his hooves on the stone floor. "Help me put away these books?"

---

"There he is." Nefertari clapped Silver on the shoulder the instant he walked in the front door. "And he kept her safe, as I was sure he would." Her eyes settled on Wagging a moment. "Your mother was worried for you."

The chief snorted at the idea. "Nonsense."

Wagging grinned, teeth displayed. "Mom knows I'm fine. She was probably more worried I'd make trouble."

Silver lifted the jackal up and set her down beside himself. "She was a perfect angel. I'm as ready as I can be, unless we've learned more about our enemy?"

Nefer raised a brow. "You've called her an enemy? Progress."

Silver frowned at that. "An enemy is a friend you haven't made yet." A few groans echoed from the darkness, not sharing that philosophy. "Either way, any news?"

Nefertari curled a finger as she turned away. "We were not idle while you were gone. We know where we meet her, and we will be ready for the meeting. It has been scheduled. She knows we're coming, at least, she knows you will be there, and I."

Silver looked around the gloomy room, barely picking out the forms of other jackals, tense and ready. "If she is as frightening as you've suggested, she'll notice."

"She will." Nefertari spread her hands out. "And she will probably have a smarmy comment ready for it, but she will not stop it. She is confident. Let us use that against her."

"Smart," agreed Silver before looking to Wagging. "You will not be coming."

The chief nodded firmly. "In this, we agree completely. It is not time for your first hunt, Wagging."

She pouted fiercely at the shutdown. "I watched him do his preparations. I can help!"

The chief howled with a fit of laughter. She was beside her daughter and grabbed her at the ear. "Watching a wizard prepare their spells is no help for a warrior. You are no sorcerer, his books hold no knowledge for you."

She squirmed against the grip, but her ear was quite firmly held. "Don't tell me what I can and can't do! If I want to learn magic, than I will, and I'll be even better than him."

Silver lowered his head to be even with her. "I would love to see that, truly. Please, practice and hone your skills. One day, you will amaze me and I will be so very proud to have known you even before then."

Wagging ceased her squirming, looking at Silver oddly. "You are not my father."

"I am not," easily agreed Silver. "Does that change things? You are a child, and if I gave a little nudge, the littlest, and it leads to you growing into a capable adult, should I not be a little proud?"

Wagging's cheeks began to warm, as hard as it was to see in the gloom. Her mother pulled her away. "You do not intend it, but your words are that of a person trying to take the part, or at least someone who is quite intimate with the family, which you are not. You are assuming a role of guardian and confusing her."

Nefertari slapped the top of Silver's head in the middle of his quick raising of it. "Wherever you go, you seek intimacy. It is good that I feel confident you have no untoward motivation, dear husband."

Silver staggered back a step. "I was just being friendly. She's a good kid."

Nefertari rolled a hand. "She is a pup, oh wielder of strange language. And she is, so let's leave her to it."

Silver watched Wagging be half-dragged away by her mother. "Then we have to succeed. If we don't, she'll be left alone..." He took a wavering breath. "I would not be happy with that ending."

"This we can all agree on." Nefertari swept a hand over the mostly unseen eyes. "Let us face this, so that our children may grow strong and untroubled."

A roar of agreement rose from them all, leaving Silver to awkwardly stand in silence. Nefertari flicked his nose lightly. "You were the one that began it, why do you not cheer with us?"

"That's a warcry. I will try to avoid that, and only... if I have to... I will not celebrate it. Hopefully this will be put to rest without it. He turned back for the exit. "But we will do what we must. Oh! I want to test this, and need someone who can move very quickly."

"Does this involve your sorcery?" Nefertari was holding his book suddenly, the flap of his bag only just then flopping back down into a resting position. "You are lucky I do not comprehend the workings of unicorn magic, nor do I possess a horn."

Silver pondered a moment what Nefertari would look like with a horn protruding from her canine skull, and what horror could result from the expanding of her magical talents. It was, perhaps, better they not find out. "I need you to move, when I say so." He reached for his book with his magic and she didn't stop him from reclaiming it. With a quick flip, he pulled up the spell and quickly scanned his eyes over it, refreshing his tenuous memory of the new spell. "And... Now."

Nefertari was by the exit. "Was something supposed to happen?"

Silver smiled at her. "It worked perfectly, I could feel it, but I didn't have it turned up high, or it could hurt you badly."

Nefer scowled at that. "That is quite the threat, husband. When this is over, I will demand you tell me what you have dreamt up."

Silver waved a hoof to dismiss the idea. "Let's focus on the task at hand. Where do we need to be?"

Nefertari glanced aside at one of the other jackals, who rose and darted away. "Tomorrow, and not before then. For today, we rest and prepare. We will put an end to this, one way or the other."

Silver stood as tall as he could, which was fairly tall as ponies went. "We will face her, and hopefully we can set this ugly matter behind us... One way or the other, as you say."

Author's Note:

What manner of spell is Silver planning?

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Comments

[Dravkwn]

Makes me think of that spell from Ruin Explorers. Time like molasses or something and it made things move very slowly.

[Sigmacipher]

A kinetic energy reversal spell something that would make her opponents speed a weakness...has silver done something like that before.

[Booster Spice]

Move rapidly and get burnt? Silver has made the equivalent of a magic is magnetic field spell? Anyone moving rapidly through the spell field acts like an electrical conductor in a magnetic field, the higher power teh magic user the more perfectly the magic flows through them, the greatre is the energy dumped in them?

Create a magnetic field strong enough and bullets would come to a stop, red hot ot molten as their kinetic energy is near instantly comverted to pure heat in their own mass?

[David Silver]

8903062
You may or may not be a clever pony.

[RuneStone]

Silver has not turned up the power for more typos in this new spell.....yet.

[DerpTape]

I think it is a lazar blast!

[Alvsecret]

Wagging gasped dramatically. "I've always wanted to see a real desert camp... Where they as powerful and ready as they say?"

Were

[David Silver]

11715170
Were, where, we're. Deadly mistakes for any writer.