Atlas wandered through the corridors of his newly finished workspace. Deep underneath the Castle of the Two Sisters he had carefully crafted his new home over the past few months. While not as big or intricate as the cave systems which he had built over several years, all of the essential rooms were present. He’d received generous housing inside the castle, and because of that the need for general purpose rooms was eliminated and he was able to focus on study and proper labs.
A long hallway illuminated by mana lights on either side connected all of the different rooms, eight in total, each specifically crafted to serve a certain purpose. His current destination was the room at the very back, which he had designated as his personal study.
He entered through the stone door, which could be hermetically sealed with magic, and went over to his desk. Celestia gifted him with an absolutely ridiculously big desk that barely fit in the room. He had absolutely no idea how she managed to even bring it in here in one piece, which made him suspect that she finished building it here like she bought it at Ikea. At least he hoped she did, because if she brought random ponies into his new secret lab, he’d have to have a little talk with her.
Of course he was still grateful, as the desk was able to fulfill all of his day to day needs, with an amazing amount of; workspace, drawers, and even a few hidden compartments for the really important stuff. As such, as was becoming his tradition, every piece of available space was littered with; notes, documents, early stage experiments, and knick-knacks of all shapes and sizes.
While this was usually the case with all of the desks he’d ever had. This time around the papers occupying his desk were all about his current project. When he’d come to the realisation that his mana batteries were essentially the Elements of Harmony, he’d decided to treat them as such. Making them adhere to canon would be one of his last tasks he’d have to complete before leaving the castle.
While they were already plenty similar to the elements from the show, there were still some discrepancies and missing pieces. First off was their shape. He didn’t worry about this one too much, since they had already proven to slowly grow and change over time, most likely due to the vast amount of mana that was being stored in them. Apparently the mana of this world had a mind of its own, which only displayed itself when a ridiculous amount was gathered in one place.
Second, and most importantly, the Tree of Harmony was still missing. While Atlas barely knew anything about the tree’s true purpose or how it functioned in the show, he did have a few ideas of his own. He was planning to make the Tree of Harmony take on the role of a charging station for the Elements, supporting them in their task of taking in and storing mana. The tree would be designed in a way that would let it store excess mana from the batteries, while amplifying the gathering rate at the same time.
While making the Elements adhere to canon was one of his motives for creating the tree in this particular way, he had another ulterior motive. As he had learned from Hias, no matter how he approached the problem of disconnecting his pocket dimension from the gods realm, he’d need an astonishing amount of mana to do so. As such, having the tree collect mana over a thousand years would supply him with the necessary mana to pull off his feat of magic.
The only problem he had with the project was, as always, the “how”. Of course he had the option of making the tree in the same way as he did the elements, but considering how big the Tree of Harmony was supposed to be, this would at least take him a few years. While he definitely had the time to pull this off, he had no doubt that this incredibly mentally taxing and extremely boring task would drive him insane.
Thus, all of his current experiments were intended to help him find a better, faster way to create a tree of similar or greater effectiveness as the Elements.
Number one on his list of things was a way to mass produce the mana crystals. The obvious choice that presented itself, was to outsource the task. While this was a fairly simple solution to his problem, he was hesitant to release the method into the public. Mana Crystals were insanely convenient and had a ton of potential, but at the same time the amount of wrong one could do with them was just as vast. With the Crystal Kingdom still being an unknown, he just didn’t want to risk it.
Of course he could just have Celestia or Luna assemble a task-force sworn to secrecy, but even this method contained risks. Having this solution blocked to him, he’d just have to figure out something else. Initially he was testing methods to streamline the process, or maybe even automate it. Currently he was looking into a way to use his mana batteries as a sort of 3D Printer for mana crystals, by employing a seperate device that would extract stored mana from the battery and transform it into the desired product.
Since it wasn’t really a problem to fuse the crystals together, this would be an incredibly effective way of mass producing them.
The paper currently floating in front of him had the schematics of such a device already sketched on it, and making a prototype wouldn’t take long now. While he stole the idea from 3D-printers, his device wouldn’t be nearly as exact or versatile as the printers from back on Earth. At best it would just create blocks of crystal which he then could cut and fuse into the desired shape before inscribing them with the necessary rune arrays.
Once he’d have completed his plans for a prototype, he’d have to see if he could catch Luna away from her royal duties, so she could take a look at it. Aside from the fact that he didn’t trust regular researchers to proofread his plans, Luna was currently the only one with enough knowledge about runes to even understand what he was attempting.
Cross referencing his notes from last time, Atlas put a feather to a blank sheet of paper, and began drawing the actual schematics for building his own, magical 3D-printer.
Atlas was magically welding together the first finished parts of what would one day become the crystal tree of harmony. It did take him six iterations of prototypes and four months of hard work, but eventually he made himself a working machine. Sure, it was a crude thing, but it worked. Just as he had planned, the only thing he could create with it was medium sized blocks, which needed quite a bit of further work to get into the desired shape.
Still, in the end he would save himself a lot of time and sanity by doing it this way. All six of his batteries were currently hooked up to six separate printers and merrily producing light blue crystals.
In the time he had after successfully finishing his printers, Atlas didn’t waste any effort and immediately started plotting out the design and necessary arrays for the Tree of Harmony. Since he had a lot more space compared to a battery this time around, there was no need to create thousands of thin crystal slices, chock full of runes to get the desired effect. Instead, he could just take the separate blocks made by his printers and write on their surfaces.
While this may sound like there would be a lot less space for him to write on, it was actually the complete opposite. Since the tree would be quite big, he’d have almost twice the amount of runes compared to one battery.
His diligent work was disturbed by a rumbling sound, echoing off the smooth walls of his workroom. Blinking owlishly, Atlas stopped his work for a second while trying to locate the sound. Nobody knew about the location of his secret lab, much less how to get inside, except for Celestia and Luna, so he should be alone.
It didn’t take long for the sound to re-emerge once again, and this time Atlas was able to determine its source. It was himself, or, more specifically, his stomach.
“Silly me… Forgot to eat again…” Atlas commented with a chuckle.
Recently he’d gotten so immersed in his work that he’d routinely forget to eat. Of course he could survive like this indefinitely, since he was special, but he didn’t have any fond memories of actually starving for a prolonged amount of time, so he usually at least tried to eat once a day. Celestia and Luna would often complain to him every time they noticed him skipping meals, which was also a motivator for him.
The two sisters could get scary when they were worried about him.
When his stomach let out yet another loud grumble, Atlas got up from his chair, stretching out his stiff limbs. The batteries would work even without him in the room, so he had no qualms with taking a little break. Intent on eating his fill, Atlas made his way out of the room and started his, admittedly quite long journey towards the royal dining room.
One upside of living in the palace was that they had proper chefs working for them now. While Atlas was an average chef and Celestia had learned a lot of his craft, the chefs working in the palace kitchen were the cream of the crop, to which he couldn’t even compare. So it was with a skip in his step that he sauntered down his lonely hallway towards what seemed to be a solid wall at its end.
He cast the necessary spells which would unlock the door, which looked like just a regular piece of wall on the outside, and it started to slide open without making the faintest of grinding sounds. Passing through it, he entered what was officially regarded as his own room, located in the basement, much to the confusion of a lot of the staff.
Of course everybody knew of the relation he had to their newly crowned princesses, and as such he received almost the same treatment as the princesses themselves. Celestia even went so far as to dub him a lord against his will, which probably factored into his favourable treatment as well. Thus, the staff was even more confused to see him completely vanish for days at a time and then randomly popping back up again, with nopony knowing where he actually went.
Atlas went outside, ignoring the lavishly decorated room which he barely used and started walking the halls of the castle. On his way he greeted the occasional passing maid or guard, until he reached the stairs leading up to the ground floor. Once he passed the first window, he was able to determine that it was late evening, so he would probably be able to meet both Celestia and Luna in the dining room.
He made his way through the spacious hallways, with unnecessarily high ceilings and lined with various pieces of contemporary art as he made a beeline for the dining hall. Now that he had left his basement, aside from the staff, he would occasionally pass a noble or two. To them, Atlas was a mysterious stallion that nobody really knew anything about, except for that we was incredibly important, so they usually went so far as to bow to him in passing.
Something which annoyed Atlas to no end.
Finally, he made it to the royal dining room. The large door was currently flanked by two guards in full armor, indicating that at least one of the sisters was currently inside. They barely acknowledged Atlas with a curt nod, letting him go inside without issue.
Just as he suspected, Luna was sitting at the surprisingly small table inside, jovially eating a generous helping of some sort of pasta. In fact, the whole dining room stood in stark contrast to the rest of the castle, being designed rather small and cozy, as opposed to the large and lavish design that dominated everywhere else.
“Father!” Luna gasped between two gulps of food, slightly startled by his sudden appearance. “How nice of you to join us! We thought you’d never leave your secret hole in the wall.”
“You know I tend to forget trivial things such as eating on a regular basis,” Atlas said, taking a seat opposite of Luna. “And could you stop it with the Royal We? It’s kind of annoying.”
“Apologies,” Luna muttered. “It’s slowly becoming a habit I don’t really care for. I still have no idea why they want us to speak like that.”
Luna was wearing black regalia that was specially created for her by the royal blacksmiths, making her look exactly as she did in the show, minus the floaty hair. Celestia had of course gotten similar bling, in line with her canon looks.
“They’re probably just still going nuts over finally having actual princesses and being united in harmony,” Atlas said. “Wish fulfillment if you ask me. If it were me in your position I’d just tell them to fuck off and let me speak like a normal pony.”
“I could never do that, they were so happy when my sister and I adopted this way of speaking, and just denying them and seeing their disappointed faces would make me sad,” Luna said with a small frown.
“Yeah, and that’s why you two are pretty princesses now, and I’m not,” Atlas said with a roll of his eyes. “I’ll take whatever she’s having, but more,” he told a maid that came up to him to take his order.
“Where’s Celestia?”
“She should be wrapping up her day court by now,” Luna commented between wolfing down her food. “I’m sure she’ll join us momentarily.”
Atlas winced slightly at Luna’s comment. While he didn’t give any input towards how they should rule most of the time, he was quite unhappy with the fact that they had adopted a day and a night court as per their advisors suggestion. It was how the timeline was supposed to be, but by letting it be this way, Atlas had to wonder if the road to Luna’s banishment was drawing closer.
Yet, at this point he was so committed to making the original timeline happen that he stayed his hand. It would be unfair to Discord if he didn’t let this happen, or at least that was what he was telling himself to justify his actions, or lack thereof.
“So did anything interesting happen recently?” Atlas asked curiously.
“More than you’d imagine,” Luna sighed. “The fact that we’re basically building a country from the ground up generates mountains upon mountains of problems and paperwork and there’s no end in sight.”
“I’d much rather spend the whole day studying a boring book than doing paperwork, so I don’t envy you,” Atlas said, thanking the maid for bringing his food to the side. “Did you finally finish up the gardens?”
“Yes, they were finished just the other day, actually.”
“Did you do what I asked you to?”
“Yes, we did set up Discord’s statue in the gardens, just as you wished,” Luna replied. “I still don’t understand why you’re so insistent on this.”
“Just trust me on this, we want to treat him with the utmost care,” Atlas replied cryptically. “I’ll go check it out later.”
“I do trust you,” Luna sighed. “That doesn’t mean that I understand. I mean, Discord terrorised ponies for years, so why you think that he deserves such gentle treatment is something I just can’t get through my head…”
Atlas was just about to reply when the door opened once again shortly followed by Celestia strolling into the room. Her eyes lit up when she spotted Atlas sitting at the table and she hurried over to his side.
“Atlas, just the pony I was looking for!”
“Alright, what is it?” Atlas asked intrigued. “You don’t intend to bestow any more unnecessary titles on me, do you?”
“No, nothing of the sort,” Celestia ignored the quip. “I just met somepony who wanted to meet you in court, so I brought him over.”
“Somepony who wanted to meet me?” Atlas asked with confusion. “But, almost nopony even knows I exist, much less that I hang out around here, who could it be?”
“Well, he seemed rather insistent, apparently somepony told him he could find you here,” Celestia explained further. “I thought you could use somepony to socialise with.”
“Alright,” Atlas furrowed his brows. “So where is this mysterious pony that I should meet?”
“Oh, he’s waiting outside, I’ll go get him,” Celestia said. “You can come in now,” She called out so the pony outside could hear her.
The pony didn’t lose any time and entered immediately. “Really like the new place, a bit lavish for my tastes, but definitely a step up from a dank cave on the side of the mountain,” the blue stallion said, slowly moving over towards the table. “Oh, hi Atlas.”
Atlas mouth hung open and he slowly got up from his chair, his food ignored and forgotten at the sight of his old friend.
“Starswirl?”
Yay! He's back! I wonder what Starswirl's been doing until now.
Enter Gandolf I mean Starswirl
HES BACK! I find it funny how similar Starswirl’s opinion on the Castle of the Two Sisters is to Atlas’s opinion on the Canterlot Castle.
You are mean Starswirl just came back and you end it there!?
BOI!!! YOU CANNOT END THE CHAPTER LIKE THAT!!!!
Noioooooo!!!!! Cliffhangers suck.
You diabolical cliffhanger creating fiend!
Well done.
I didn't think the old codger would be back so soon. Rather interesting, although Luna's imminent banishment does sadden me.
And once again, Orthoros makes us rage with cliffhangers. Bravo. Bra. Fucking. Vo.
Anyone else think Luna will get an answer about discord because of Starswirl?
Oh man!! He's finally back!!! I'm so excited!!
I think I'm glad I stayed up WWWAAAAYYYY too late tonight, but to see this? I feel it'll be worth it. I'm so excited to see what happens next.
Yay! Starswirls back!
hiiiii sterswerl
Oooh snap! Guess who's back?
Also wonder how he's gonna break discord to starswirl, then find a way to shut himself away while Luna goes mad, and then the future when he gets out of his little cave hibernation and meets the bearers finally!
-Hello there!
-General Starswirl.
Ah yes...
The return of the cliffhanger... With a vengeance...
Ye he back
Also for those of you who think this is a cliffhanger, you're wrong. A cliffhanger would be not revealing who the mystery stallion is.
(Tardis wooshing intensifies)
Ah, the insistence on adhering to canon. And now he's trying to justify it with 'I did it for Discord so...'
*sighs and hugs the poor guy*
Suggest that the sister's trade off Courts. If you insist on having a court at separate times, let them run both in turn. Could release Discord early too...
Anyway, Starswirl's back! And now you get to explain things to him XD
I wouldn't be surprised if you and Vongoalyken traded notes on frustrating cliffhangers
Woohoo! Starswirl's BACK! Yeah and the cliff hanger... Thanks for the update and now I'm eager for the next one.
Yay! Starswirl's back!
SWIRLYS BACK! HUZAH!
That author's note though.
8720682 Uh... this is definitely a cliffhanger, as we have no idea what happened to Starswirl and the author ended the chapter at that scene.
Starswirl has returned.
a grate chapter the detail just rocks.
YES!!! The Swirliest of ponies hast returned!! Joy and jubilation!! We must commend thou on a well written chapter!!
This is the only thing in my comment.
Woo! Starswirl the breaded has returned at last!
Swirly!
8723350
Crispy, crunchy, light and fluffy, baked with cheese, and dipped in honey!
Star Swirl is back, But has he been on his timeline-spanning adventures yet?!
So it does begins.... good.. let the fun consume you.. hoo hoo hoo hoo~
8723465
Of course! What sort of bread would he be without it?
8720273
luna's banishment is hardly imminent, Starswirl must still go through his time with educating the royal sisters, long enough to turn into a cranky old codger, then dissapear, before Luna is due to go Nightmare.
Swirl Star the Bearded!
He's BACK!