Conversation 46.3: Twilight Sparkle
“Is there any other place to cross?” Mary asked, stopping in front of the rope bridge over the ravine.
“Oh come on, it’s perfectly stable,” I insisted.
“Stable for you,” she stated, placing one foot on the first board of the bridge and gingerly testing it. “My center of mass is a lot higher, and I can’t even grab the rope for support.”
“Can’t you… I don’t know, make it lower?” I suggested, rearing up, which brought me eye to eye with her. “I’m not athletic at all, either, but I can walk on two legs if I absolutely have to.” I might have wobbled a bit there, but my point was made.
Mary looked at her hands. Then at the bridge planks, weathered and covered by a thin, old layer of dirt. Then at her hands again.
At this rate, we’re going to be stuck here until it’s time to go home. “You could just say you’re afraid of heights!” I exclaimed, grabbing her in my magic and lifting her up, which resulted in a muffled squeak.
“I’m not afraid of heights!” Mary protested, keeping very still in my grip, as I trotted across the bridge. “I’m just very concerned about wooden bridges!”
Funny, she’s only a tiny bit heavier than Spike. She really does resemble a withered and stunted Everfree willow, especially in that tracksuit, with all the folds making her look like she’s covered in bark. “I’ve been here less than a month ago, it held up fine,” I stated, setting her down gently on the other side. “See? Nothing to worry about.”
“Has it occurred to you to wonder why?” Mary inquired, folding her arms on the chest with a displeased grimace on her face.
I opened my mouth to answer, and stopped mid-breath. No, it has not occurred to me. It should have.
All the nature preserves and wild forests in Equestria at least get managed weather, but Everfree is neither. It is the territory of the Kingdom of Equestria, which, ironically, is not itself part of the United Kingdoms of Equestria. Land owned directly by Celestia – and Cadance, and Luna, now that she’s back. The kingdom of alicorns, in which every citizen is a princess, an antique legal fiction. The crown of the United Kingdoms does not claim this forest, and neither do the Weather Bureau nor the Royal Mail. The Royal Guard occasionally sends a pegasus patrol through to keep an eye on the local megafauna, because they’re the only ones who have jurisdiction here, but that’s all. None of the trappings of civilization apply.
There are huge pockets and eddies of wild magic here, and in summer, it blossoms like a jungle, with feral storms and rain directly beneath the canopy. These boards should have rotted through in a few decades in this excuse for a climate, like most of the castle furniture. But if Celestia and Luna were up to casting a preservation enchantment on a rope bridge, why didn’t they build a stone one to start with? Doesn’t the residence of the Royal Pony Sisters deserve a proper bridge? How would you even build a castle here if you had to transport all the stone by air?…
While I was thinking that, Mary crouched before the pillars that held the bridge up and was now inspecting the frayed end of the rope that Rainbow had to retie when we first visited the place. “You got a match?” she asked. “Or a fire spell? Something neat and easy to control.”
“Do you want me to literally burn our bridges?” I tried for a joke. “I don’t think the moment is appropriate for that sort of thing.”
“No, amusing as the idea is, I just want you to light the end of the rope and immediately put it out,” Mary replied, with no hint of humor in her voice.
I wasn’t sure why she wanted this, but seeing the results would be quicker than listening for an explanation. With a trivial spell, the end of the rope lit up, letting off a thin trail of smoke with a sputtering, bubbling sound, and I immediately cooled it down below the flash point.
“Nylon,” Mary declared, looking at the melted bead on the end of the rope. “Parachute cord, even.”
That was unexpected. Parachutes were an idea as old as cloud homes. Nylon was not.
“We already knew someone had been here between the time the castle was abandoned and the time I found the journal,” I commented. “I’m not sure what this gets us.”
“Not much,” Mary replied, straightening out and looking at me with a thoughtful expression. “But if you just needed to cross once, would you build a bridge?”
“I would just teleport,” I admitted. “Any creature with wings would use them. Applejack would make a zip-line…”
“So someone didn’t just visit the castle once to place a journal in a secret room,” Mary nodded. “They’ve been in and out multiple times, and it happened before last summer, but not long enough ago for the bridge to fall apart.”
“I think you’re making unfounded assumptions,” I said. “There’s no reason to believe whoever built the bridge and whoever wrote the journal are the same pony.” Even if it is tempting, that would be too simple.
“The castle has not been looted down to the last scrap of carpet, even though it contains numerous valuables,” Mary commented, walking towards the stairs leading up to the large double doors. “Very few people ever came here. I would say it’s more likely that the author of the journal is our only culprit.”
“But we’re not actually looking for the author,” I objected, trailing after her. “At least, not specifically, we have no good leads on that. Star Swirl’s laboratory is a lot more promising. From what I have been able to make out, this ‘veister’ object has characteristics consistent with fast thaum emissions.”
Mary chuckled. “One day you’ll have to actually explain what those are,” she said, walking up the steps with no sign of apprehension or awe. It’s almost like she’s trotting down the street in Ponyville, instead of exploring an ancient ruin. Where’s her sense of wonder?!
“Well, for a very, very condensed explanation,” I started, stepping into the door she opened for me, “most of the magic in the world comes from the Moon, in the form of highly energetic thaums that have frequencies far outside the range where they interact with matter. They get frequency shifted in the gravity field, so near the sea level they start slowing down, get deflected, and form natural currents. That allows them to be trapped in minerals, and eventually they make their way to the surface, where they participate in the magical metabolism of living creatures.”
“So whatever emits them here has to be powerful, and probably not artificial,” Mary guessed. “Which would be a good fit for our hypothetical natural magical object producing a continent-wide mind-affective spell effect… What is it, a chunk of the Moon?”
“The source of the emissions is not moonstone, it’s the Moon’s spinning core,” I corrected her. “A window to the Moon, I think. ‘Veister.’ Which probably wouldn’t be natural, but I’ll tell you for sure when I see it.”
“It’s a strange word,” Mary commented. “Almost sounds familiar, and yet I can’t place it.”
“Most of Star Swirl’s surviving notebooks are in Old Ponish, an earth pony language, and that’s where the word is from,” I explained. “Allegedly, he used it because he was jealous of every other unicorn wizard. But I’m sure it was because the printing press is an earth pony invention, it was simply easier to get a book printed this way. It shows forward thinking!”
Mary snickered and calmly stepped over a pressure plate even before I remembered to warn her about it. Longer legs appeared to offer some unexpected advantages in this place. “Sure it does.”
I stuck my tongue out at her, and got a smile back.
“So what’s the plan? What exactly do you know of this laboratory?” she asked.
“I just know it’s here,” I admitted. “Star Swirl’s hornwriting was famously atrocious, I barely deciphered that much.” In fact, I was mostly studying the diagrams and sketches, which were far more legible.
“So how are we going to find it, then?” Mary wondered, stopping next to a winding staircase. “It’s not like we can measure the thickness of every wall, and I foolishly decided that asking Rika for a ground penetrating radar would be too much.”
The idea that a non-magical means to solve this problem might be available is definitely something to keep in mind, but I’m sure that this time, we can do without. “I figured your special talent for picking books is probably just as applicable to searching for secret doors,” I grinned. She definitely has no thaumometabolic pathways at all, even around the golden eye, but some of the things she did in the Crystal Empire would need a full-blown pattern selector matrix to explain.
“Really now,” Mary scowled. “First Moondancer, now you.”
“I don’t understand how it works, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful,” I said. “Most pony special talents are notoriously difficult to thaumomechanically deconstruct, that’s not unusual.”
“Well, all right,” Mary said, rolling her blue eye. This didn’t have the effect she probably intended, as the creepy golden one remained staring straight at me. What a strange deformity. “I’ll use my ‘special talent’ and try to poke my nose into every crack I find,” she said, making the air quotes with her fingers – a gesture that looked quite silly on a human – “but if I end up opening the wrong door, it’s on you.”
“I doubt they have left anything particularly dangerous in this castle,” I said.
“They did leave the Elements,” Mary stated, raising a finger.
I found nothing to contradict that, but surely, that was the limit. How many powerful relics could they even have?
She sighed and looked at the staircase, hesitating. “Couldn’t you detect those fast thaum emissions?”
“I would need a lab,” I replied. “Ironically, exactly like the lab we’re looking for, but a thousand years more modern.” Pre-classical equipment would mostly involve enchanted lenses and crystal balls, and today, we would use a waveguide thaumometer, but while these devices could not be any more different, they still measure the same things.
Mary sighed, and started a wary ascent up the staircase, gingerly testing every step before putting her weight on it.
We continued wandering for some time, guided only by her inscrutable intuition. Mary was cautious and thorough, and managed to only trigger three traps along the way, avoiding getting hit by the results each and every time. She even prevented me from stepping into one, a sharp contrast to my earlier experience in the castle. It looked like we wouldn’t even need the jar of bruise ointment I packed, which I took as a good sign.
Eventually, the edges of the rotting carpet on the floor, decorated with a familiar pattern of musical notes, clued me in where she was going. Almost too late, as we came up on the immense organ, occupying pride of place in the gloomy hall.
“You’d think something would have eaten the candles in a thousand years,” Mary commented, stopping in front of the stairs leading to the pedestal the organ rested upon.
I took the hint and lit the candelabras to either side of the organ, bringing some warmth into the room. Unfortunately, this didn’t make it much less creepy – instead of simply mysterious, now it looked incongruous, like a blotch of sauce left on the cover of a book. “Do you think it’s here somewhere?” I asked.
“I think it opens here,” Mary replied, climbing up the stairs. “The journal says the organ controls all the trapdoors. Does it still work?”
“Still makes sounds, if that counts,” I replied.
“Where’s the source of wind, then?” Mary wondered, peeking behind the organ.
“There’s a water wheel down in the ravine,” I said. “I think it’s driving a bellows.”
“Which certifies that the ravine had been here when the castle was built,” Mary commented. “But that’s beside the point.”
“Can you play an organ?” I inquired. I knew she could play a piano, but they’re substantially different instruments.
Mary unceremoniously dropped onto the bench before the organ and cracked the joints of her hands with a loud pop. “Well, I never had a chance to play an actual organ before, but I do have some experience with a harpsichord…”
Just as her fingers touched the keys, even before she started playing, I heard the wind howling through the corridors behind us, a strange, eerie and wispy sound. And when she pressed the first key, the slow and quiet melody of the wind was effortlessly joined, in a much higher key than I believed this organ could possibly produce, flooding the hall. I was reminded of the time we all went out to watch the meteor shower together, that haunting impression of the great, unending sky, drawing me in… I didn’t even notice how I climbed the stairs to look over her shoulder at the fingers softly dancing across the keys.
“Just on the border of your waking mind,” Mary intoned, in a voice ringing and distorted, as if not her own, “there lies another time...”
She abruptly interrupted herself and stared at her shaking hand. “This place is getting to me,” she stated.
“Why did you stop?!” I exclaimed in the sudden silence. I’m sure it was a heartsong! Holding a heartsong in is very bad for you!
“Twilight?” she whispered in a wavering voice. “Please shut up for a moment.”
And I shut up.
It took Mary at least a minute to collect herself. “Let’s try this again,” she declared, and hammered out a short sequence of sharp, loud notes, without any regard for the welfare of the instrument, quick like a tumble off a staircase interrupted by two long, pained yelps.
She made a short pause, and was about to continue, but suddenly, the archway to the right of the organ responded with a deep, loud scraping rumble of moving stone. “Not very secret for a secret lab,” Mary commented.
“Wait, w-what did you just do?!” I stammered out. “How did you know?”
Mary looked at me curiously. “So you don’t recognize the melody?”
“Pretty sure I’ve never heard it,” I admitted. I didn’t even think it was particularly distinctive.
“Funny, it’s only the most famous organ composition ever,” Mary said. “Literally the first thing anyone would want to play on an organ. Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis 565. I expected this one would be known in your world, I know at least some classic melodies match.”
That’s not the first thing she did play. The first one had some deeper meaning for her.
“I’m not familiar with griffon music,” I admitted. The title, at least, sounded like Griffish, which Equestrian griffons haven’t spoken for centuries.
“Griffon music, right,” Mary snorted.
“What?” I protested.
“Never mind,” Mary grinned, standing up from the bench. “Let’s go check it out?”
Only then I remembered that she actually did find a secret door, and raced down the steps to be the first to enter the secret laboratory. Mary trailed behind me, still talking. “It really was just a lucky guess. You’re calling it a special talent, but it’s mostly about looking for things that I and this bloody thing have fundamentally incompatible opinions about. For example, things that the golden eye does not notice…”
But I wasn’t listening, I was busy leaping into the dark, fully enclosed room that just opened, lighting the way with my horn. A lab that Star Swirl the Bearded himself had used, a magical relic that he studied and experimented with, and maybe even more notes and books!
And just as abruptly as I entered, I stopped, digging my hooves into the layer of dust on the bare stone floor.
Funny, I could never imagine Star Swirl using an electrothaumograph. I was always wondering what would he say when presented with the post-classical theories that went into designing measuring devices so much more precise than anything he had access to. Theories that are so radically unlike the way he imagined magic worked.
Devices like this one. A steam powered model for field work, with an oscilloscope tube and rolling paper tape.
“Looks like somebody found the place first,” Mary commented somewhere behind me. A cone of bright white light joined my light spell, and glancing back at her, I noticed a tiny flashlight in her hand.
“Recently,” I confirmed with a sinking heart. “This… Most of it is the kind of equipment I used back in school! Just older models! Electrothaumograph, mechanical calculator, arc transformer, crystal battery…” Also, a huge mess of oscillators and alchemical polarizers assembled into some kind of contraption. I couldn’t even begin to understand what was it supposed to do, beyond directing energy, but the parts were just as modern as everything else.
“Nothing that looks like that ‘veister’, I take it,” Mary stated.
“No…” I mumbled, slowly sinking down to the dusty floor. The center of the room, the place where I expected to find the huge sheet of crystalline material of unknown origin that Star Swirl was working with, was empty. I covered my eyes with my hooves, trying to hold back the tears. It’s almost like Daring Do finally getting through an ancient temple only to see Doctor Caballeron already there, stuffing the relic she was after into a bag.
Worse. To find the relic missing, and the consolation prize isn’t even a trap, just a sarcastic note from Caballeron, who had come and gone long before Daring Do has ever heard about the thing.
I could only hear Mary’s footsteps as she slowly walked across the room. A grinding sound of gears, as she cranked the calculator. A bump, as she tried to lift the crystal battery and failed. And then she spoke.
“We have a message from another time, Twilight,” Mary announced.
I rubbed the wetness out of my eyes and looked at her. She was standing in the middle of the room, shining her flashlight at a piece of paper on the floor, next to a rectangular patch of thinner dust.
I got up and trotted over to look. On the dusty piece of paper, in black ink, which ran, as if somepony sprinkled a few droplets of water on it, there were only four words in neat, very legible, almost calligraphic hornwriting:
Don’t look for me.
Stats
Page generated in 0.031 seconds
Total duration
1,124 users online
1,765,343 hits today, 1,872,792 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
It was Trixie wasn't it. Right before she wiped her memory.
Hmm... (Searchs the lyrics of the broken heartsong...)
Gak! You... You!
Keep up the good work
9120075
An interesting theory, to be sure.
I'd also give fair odds to the most famous of mirror-travelers, Sunset Shimmer. After all, one of the few who'd have knowhow about and a reason to visit the old castle by themselves, even as a kind of sanctuary.
I wonder how bad it is to hold in a Heartsong.
9120438
Given this scene, I'm guessing it can't be too fatal.
9120438
9120511
I believe the bigger question is what will it take for her to actually let a heartsong occur? Considering the gadget Lyra uses was made by Rika specifically for Mary to get her to sing (and she apparently constantly refused it; I bet there were many scenarios of situations collapsing that Rika dangled that item in front of Mary with which she could totally save the day with, but she never took the bait). She'd either have to be quite rattled, or have it forced upon her by somepony like Lyra using the gadget and her own special talent.
In short, if it ever does happen, it will be a big deal.
Well, I'm pretty confident Starswirl's gear comes from the more advanced dimensions he visited and pulled a Berlinghoff Rasmussen.
Not sure if I understand all the implications of the moon generating magic, but my guess is whatever is at the core of the moon, it is in some way similar to Chryssi's throne.
9120567
The symphogear? Do you remember in what chapter it was stated Rika made it for Mary? I forgot, or at least thought it was just something Rika picked up.
9121521
9121647
Ah thank you.
9121064
except instead of absorbing magic it emits it (so completely opposite functionality).
Yes, just like Chryssi's throne
More seriously the 'veister' (described as a "huge sheet of crystalline material") was obviously stuffed into a frame and then left laying around so random, totally not twilight clones, to fall in to every 30 moons.
Oh, like how the City of London is not a part of the Greater London area?
9122177
Close enough.
9120112
Oh, I recognized that one instantly. I heard it enough times while playing the fan anime opening for DAICON IV. When it came out it was like someone in a dorm made Avatar, heh. (12 people, all hand drawn animation)
Jump to 2:08 if you just want to see the song used but I'd highly recommend watching it from start to finish.
"Funny, it's only the most famous organ composition ever," says Mary, of the compositional equivalent of a floor sweeping, sustained through lonely decades only by the dedicated copying of old-timey music nerds, revived over a century later at a benefit concert by a slightly more notable old-timey music nerd who had to guess at the key signature, driven for good into the popular consciousness by a mouse-shaped mallet as an orchestral rearrangement featuring no organ at all.
(And, to be fair, a bunch of pre-talkies which needed a cinematic shorthand for "somewhere, a spooky organ exists", and certainly 565 is iconic, much as the THX test pattern is iconic, and possibly for the same reason.)
Taking a giant flying leap that this might actually prefigure anything, it's that Twilight just bit down on a giant mouthful of irony and those actually are Starswirl the Bearded's tools, but magical theory needed a few centuries in timeout before it was actually ready to understand how to use them, and pretended nobody would notice if they just didn't mention it. Which, to be fair, is usually how those things work.
9123284
Twilight does describe it as “a tumble off a staircase interrupted by two long, pained yelps.”
It’s interesting how the history of this composition is so shrouded in mystery, don’t you think?
9123398
Sadly, I understand it's quite easy to become shrouded in mystery when nobody thinks about you for a century.
I wonder... what if this "veister" device Starswirl was using was being used to research interdimensional portals of some sort? Maybe the idea of a sandwich comes from Earth after all! Or maybe that's too easy...
9137405
If you remember, the reason the sandwich was originally chosen for defining this problem is precisely because it is something that is made every day, trivial to experiment with, and is very much a matter of taste, so matters of practicality and fashion should, in theory, take precedence…
9138020
Practicality. Maybe it turns out that sandwiches with two pieces of bread are easier to store -- for picnics and such -- than open-face sandwiches.
Wouldn't explain why you'd order one at a restaurant, though...
Why did it say a number instead of a name? How do you do that?!
9349107
Maybe it's to let them scoot the plate onto one hoof and flip the sandwich onto the other hoof.
Will this get any more updates?
9500186
Soon™️ – life situation permitting.
9599526
What I thought that meant was that she could leave a story and get back to the library.
I did not think that she could return to a given story, including her home/original world/story.
Congratulations, you have earned a spot on The List!
i.postimg.cc/sDLsnphg/Princess-Columbia-s-List-Badge.png
Your story, Aporia, was considered worthy of spreading around to as large an audience as possible. The blog post explaining why can be found here.
9864092
Damn, now I need to get off my ass and finish it, but work/life/current episodes aren’t treating me any better…
Current outline calls for ~37 more chapters, and only two of these are done.
It's definitely not going to be Sunset Shimmer, but I would absolutely love it top death if it were!
Anyway, I hope you decide to continue writing this soon. Loved the re-re-read, and Mary's interactions with others are just so great.
Ahh~~~ I remember reading this story, I didn't get it
And another year nearly out. Sigh. I remember the hiatus in the middle of the Crystal Empire arc, and the excitement of new chapters being dropped out of left field. This story’s still a favorite, and one I’m watching out for.
9864113
Please. Even if you just manage 3 or 4 chapters a year, that will finish in a decade or so. It's progress.
10581654
I wish I could manage one per year at this rate. :(
A little off topic, but this:
If you are talking about member-of, or in this case, not member-of, you are talking about sets, right? A set is NEVER a member of itself.
The rules for set construction and "what is a member" got changed when some smart people demonstrated that the old rules were not consistent. The modern zeno axioms are ... confusing :-). Best description I can give is that instead of a few axioms, there are a few rules that each generate an infinite amount of axioms. And no, I don't know them properly.
(And don't get me started on Axiom of Choice vs Axiom of Determinism.)
10584085
Unless we’re talking about the canonical definition of Russel’s Paradox, and the set is never a member of itself because of that paradox… :)
I've thoroughly enjoyed reading through this the past two days. I don't know the exact words for it, but the world-building/character-history of Rika and Mary's past world/worlds/Library has kept me wanting more, while that tied into the sandwich-and-related other mysteries has been awesome, and the drama remains fulfilling even with Mary's spare knowledge.
I was left smiling or thrilled many times throughout - Lyra delivering that item was a tremendous scene, the dresses are super neat, many of the POVs are engaging to read, a few well played puns made me chuckle - I really enjoyed this story as its gone along so far. I read your recent blogs some 1/3 of the way in, best of luck finding what you bits can use for your own way to finish things. I think this story here is competent enough for Mary herself to enjoy it.