The Collapse

by Lightwavers

Chapter 14

Radiance stared at the forest, tuning out the sound of his companions bickering in the background. They were an unusually cooperative bunch, and he had faith that they’d reach an agreement without him. For now, he concentrated on his other senses.

It was a common misconception that earth pony magic required interaction with soil to be used. It was a view that made sense though, since even a completely unskilled earth pony could bludgeon plants with magic until they grew. All it took to sense and mold the magic in the air was a certain mindset and a lot of concentration. And Radiance himself had learned one of the secret Ten Talents earth ponies possessed that made detection a lot easier: the ability to piggyback on the consciousnesses of other living things. The more like a pony it was, the better. Something too smart and self-aware could trap him in its head, but jump on something too simple and he ran the risk of dispersing his consciousness to such a degree that the pieces wouldn’t be able to think for themselves, instead just sitting there until he died.

To scope out the Everfree, he would have to make the second risk. He knew his limits; a quick extension through the grass and into a tree inside the forest and he could safely observe for a few seconds before his thought processes grew too hazy.

He gathered the magic floating around inside him, bundling it into a ball in the middle of his chest, then started shaping it into an often-practiced pattern. Using one of the Ten Talents was a lot like casting unicorn magic, except it was a lot more limited and he had to build his spell each time he wanted to use it, since it was impossible to hold the amount of concentration required to keep it together while sleeping. And he couldn’t just conjure magic from nowhere. Magic would naturally flow into ponies until the amount in their bodies and the atmosphere equalized. And Radiance had to constantly sit through that months-long process every time he depleted his internal stores.

Then it was done. Radiance fed some of his magic through the pattern, feeling a minute amount of what he held disappear. Then he focused on the grass in front of him.

Wind. Water. Growth. They were simple concepts, and Radiance easily brushed them aside, his mind flooding into thousands of blades of grass at once. Then he expanded in a circle until he could feel which parts of himself were the warmest and flowed in that direction. With a jarring thud that felt like he’d slammed into a wall, he hit resistance. He spread out even more, feeling the wall stretch before him.

He considered the problem. Thinking while sharing the mind of a simple organism was a strange cross between possessing a clarity of not being bogged down with any of the distractions of a body and the slowness of thought that came with being too spread out to think as fast as he was used to.

Can’t pierce it... he thought. Go...under?

Yes. There would be many living things underground that he could hitch a ride on, and the solid matter would lessen the strength of the magic saturating the air. It would also slow him down, but he was actually concentrating on the area, unlike the Everfree.

Tendrils of his consciousness reached down into the soil, finding seeds, a few burrowing animals (but not enough), and then, finally, a large root. There were no other trees in the area. It had to be from the Everfree. Radiance attached himself to it, then filled it with himself. The chaotic magic of the Everfree surrounded him, eroding away his consciousness, but the tree insulated him enough that with the amount of time he would be staying, it wouldn’t even matter.

With his unique position, Radiance was better able to determine the nature of the magic flowing around him. It was completely unstructured, just raw magic. The kind of stuff that saturated the entire world. The kind that shouldn’t pose a threat to anything. The only difference was its density. No unicorn had the power necessary to overpower the Everfree, or even just tear away the spellkeys it had on its free-flowing magic. This wasn’t something that was going to be staved off by a spell, no matter if it was made of runes, or canceled out with a ‘nullify.’ It would take years to make any kind of progress, since the Everfree would instantly detect any foreign magic and use its own to crush it. He would have to use another of the Ten Talents.

Radiance rapidly disengaged with the tree through the same root he’d taken it over from, then rushed through the grass until he found something intelligent. A light brush—and he recoiled. That was Gilda’s mind. Lyra’s. Fluttershy’s. Ah, there it was.

Radiance settled into his own body with a relieved sigh, only to find himself being prodded.

“Yep, he’s dead. Sorry Fluttershy,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Stop scaring her Rainbow Dash,” Twilight scolded. Radiance turned his head to see her looking at the yellow pegasus. “It’s okay Fluttershy. I’m sure—AAH! Zompony!”

Rainbow Dash burst out laughing, curling up into a ball on the ground and pounding her fist on the ground. “Hah! He got all of you! Good job, professor.”

“That wasn’t funny Rainbow,” Twilight said, frowning.

Radiance cleared his throat. Every pony looked at him. Gilda looked more interested in something dead she had clutched in her talons.

“I’ve been hiding something from you,” he said, finding it easier and easier to keep wearing the emotionless he’d spent his youth hiding in, before he’d begun teaching at Celestia’s school.

“Well no duh. First Discord outs you, then you say you have something so awesome that even with me here, it won’t matter if you use it on an attacker,” Rainbow Dash said. At least she was honest.

“Yes, well, here it is: I have some enchanted items in my saddlebags that act like an extreme version of a ‘nullify’ spell. They can probably get us quite a ways through the Everfree before I run out.”

Radiance held his solemn expression and looked everyone in the eyes. He didn’t even vary his breathing rate. The royal interrogators would be proud.

“Okay...I just don’t understand why that was a secret,” Lyra said with eyes wide and ears laid back.

“Good.”

Radiance hoped none of them did. They were all some of the finest examples of ponydom he’d seen, so it probably didn’t matter if they did, but the thought still made him nervous. And Gilda probably wouldn’t care either way. Still, being brought up from birth not to reveal the true extent of earth pony abilities—as well as a few other...experiences—had an impact.

The mindset dated back to the wars between the three tribes. The pegasi had retreated to their cloud cities, ignoring everything that happened below, but the earth pony and unicorn tribes had been in vicious battles for decades. It had been a mostly even fight at the start, but the unicorns had been slowly gaining ground. When the earth ponies’ situation had grown obviously hopeless, a few hundred earth ponies who had mastered the usable eight of the Ten Talents had sneaked behind enemy lines, and—ignoring conventional wisdom in what you just did not do in a war—had done as much damage as they could. Their resistance against magic, ability to instantly deploy huge thorny walls, coupled with the abilities to speed up both body and mind so they were just blurs, left the unicorns a bloody mess. Corpses were everywhere, magically cultivated crops destroyed, homes destroyed, wells despoiled, libraries burnt—it was horrific.

It had only gotten worse when the unicorns retaliated. Magically propagated sicknesses were released, mind control spells used with abandon, and sealed weapons unleashed just for the purpose of wreaking as much destruction as possible.

The earth ponies had surrendered, and frequent insurrections caused any use of their abilities to be banned, on pain of death. The pegasi were horrified, of course, but it took them years to decide on a plan of intervention, and by then the precedent had been established: earth pony Talents were not to be used. Ever.

In modern times, death wasn’t likely from the general population, but there were unicorn groups out there that still remembered. And so did their assassins.

“Professor? You, uh, kind of faded out there,” Twilight said with a worried smile.

“I’m fine,” Radiance waved her off. “But get ready, and try to build back some of your more useful skills. These things degrade over time, so it’s best if we enter as soon as possible.”

It was true. Radiance couldn’t activate his magic resistance ability without help, and learning the Talent required someone else who already knew it to guide him through it. The process of learning took months at a bare minimum. There was more to earth pony magic than just memorizing a pattern. So he cheated. In his saddlebags were a collection of obsidian, filled with the specific magic pattern needed to resist magic. Some rock farmers had specifically shaped the magic inside of them, discreetly selling them to anypony who needed them. It was extremely expensive, though, since the process needed a skilled pony to thread the magic through the rock for hours at a time instead of filling other rocks with ambient magic that they could sell as magical batteries to unicorns. He could trigger the ability within each rock by consuming one of them. Earth ponies actually had a second tiny stomach specifically for that purpose, though few knew what it was for. So he was prepared.

He just hoped everyone else was.

Comments

[Level Dasher]

I've got an "Unforgivable Curses" (Harry Potter) vibe from these Ten Talents. Was that the inspiration?

[Lightwavers]

8598666
Good guess, but not quite. :)