Mana Spark in Equestria

by James Fire

The Room.

Twilight had decided to spend the day with me. I didn't mind, much. I had planned on investigating the runes I pulled out of the old castle fully, and maybe Twilight could help. Of course, this assumed that she didn't get me to teach her more first.

“But Mana, I need to know!” Case in point.

“I already told you, tomorrow. Today I'm studying the old runes from what you call The Castle of the Two Sisters. I was hoping you'd be able to help…”

“You're no fun.” Sigh. “What’s so interesting about them anyway? Aren't they just holders for spells?”

Technically, she was right. All they did was hold spells. The real stickler was that somehow, 14 runes all worked in tandem on the same spell. And only worked if they were laid down in a circle. Very complicated, very powerful, and done by someone very, very, skilled. Someone I could learn a lot from, it would seem.

“Well, yes. They are ‘just’ holders for spells. In much the same way that we are ‘just’ thinking meat. It's a lot more complicated than that, and is very special and interesting in its own way.”

I prepare to cast a 3D rendering and explosion view spell. It basically takes all the connections in a spell’s framework, and gives an exploded view of it, to hopefully help in interpretation.

The basics of magic don't change, but the style used, the casting method, and even personal biases all affect the end result. Two people casting the same spell with have the same general shape and pathways, but the intricacies and connections could be very different.

Twilight was awed by the view. “Whoa. This would be so useful in finding where I went wrong. Can you teach me that spell too?”

We aren't going to get much done today, I think.

“In due time. You know how your species casts magic, so you can give a better interpretation of this. What's your take?”

Twilight thinks long and hard about it, intensely studying, measuring, muttering, writing things down.

3 pages of notes. 4. 8. 20.

I gently nudge her. “You done?”

Startled, she jumps. “Don't scare me like that! And yes. I've got the basics for it down. As you already determined, this is incredibly complex, and would require hours of deciphering, considering I don't have any of my books handy.”

“The books can be retrieved. Let's see those notes.” Good thing part of the learning session with Celestia included the written language. Translating is so much easier.

Taking a good long look at the notes, “So they are all actually separate spells, governed by a single one? Unusual.”

Twilight is very excited to talk about magic. Especially old magic. “Yep! Seems that they are all linked, so they can share the burden of storing energy, and no single one overflows.”

“We should get your books, so this can be studied more in-depth. Once we have that done, I'll teach you some.”

Squeeee!

“Whatarewewaitingfor? Let's go!” She pops a teleportation spell, and away she goes.

I wait. Organize some notes, make some sandwiches, have a nice lunch…

Pop!

“I'm back! I hope I have everything.”

Judging by the room being half-filled, and it is not a small room, she brought her entire library with her.

“I only brought my books on old magic, and my notes on studies of old magic.”

The ‘notes’ part would explain that.

I start us off. “Well, let's start with anything you got from the same relative period as these. What have you got?”

“Well, these date to the Post-Discordian era, but also before Nightmare Moon. That does narrow it down considerably.”

She moves half the books and notes to one side of the room.

“The next limitation, is that these are runes specifically, which were pretty popular at the time. Lucky for us, these are powerful runes, so that leaves only a few mages that could have made them.”

She moves some more.

“Lastly, these are power runes specifically, used for amplifying the power of the user.”

She moves even more. Got about a dozen books, and still several hundred pages of notes.

“And now we organize what we have left!”

“Has anyone ever told you that you take too many notes?”

She ignored the comment and started sorting.

“This book is Star Swirl’s forays into runic magic. He did some, but nothing really groundbreaking. That was reserved for spells.”

I peruse the book a bit, and glean a few details, such as Star Swirl basically being their equivalent of Jesus. For magic anyway. Probably an interesting concept of study.

“These three follow Court Mages, and everything they did. Truly some stellar record-keeping.”

A quick glance through the index of each does have some specific chapters focused on the runes that were created for various uses. Good research material.

I wonder if the chaos magic Discord taught me would be any use here. “Hey, I wanna try something.” I begin to cast, telling the spell what I want. Instead of my white aura though, it is instead chaotic, purple, green, yellow. It appears on the notes and books Twilight said pertain to runes, and they start sorting themselves into several piles.

Twilight is concerned at the aura change, and says so. “What happened to your aura? It was white before.”

“Discord taught me chaos magic. And look, it worked.” I pointed to the piles of paper. “Let's see what it did.”

Looking through the piles, the spell seems to have sorted them by relevance to my exact question. The one book it put in the left most pile pertain to the construction and making of similar rune setups, assuming it isn't explaining this one. As we move right, they get less relevant, with the rightmost ones being on runes in general.

“Well that was great.”

Twilight is interested in Discord teaching something more than the books though. “Discord taught you chaos magic? That isn't something special to him?”

“Not as I could see. He could cast magic just as we do. He just chooses to do chaos, cause it's easier. We do ‘Order’ magic. We shape the spell to do what we want. Chaos works the other way. We shape the effects, and let the magic make the spell shape.

“It takes less willpower to do chaos, but more mana to power a roughly equivalent effect. It is more efficient at doing things like teleportation though, since magic naturally wants to go to its home plane.”

“So that's how Discord can pop just anywhere in rapid succession.”

“Yeah, pretty useful. And for someone as powerful as Discord, using extra energy isn't a problem. I could definitely use it, but not as freely as he does. You alicorns could do it too, but again, not as freely.

“Anyway, let's get back to those runes, then I can teach you something.” I smile at that, happy with the prospect of teaching someone so thirsty for knowledge, simply for knowledge’s sake.

Author's Note:

So... yeah. I realize it's been a year, but now I seem to be able to dedicate more time. Catching up on stuff I want to read, and hopefully having a semi-regular posting schedule for this.

Anyway, typos need to be banished, and I hope you guys (the four that are following this) enjoy this chapter!