Chapter One - What If...
“Consciousness.”
“Even with the recent breakthroughs and advancements in our understanding of neuroscience, we are still no closer to finding the consciousness than we are to finding the soul. Perhaps this is no coincidence, but I digress.”
In these cool hours of the night, the world around Ponyville was calm and motionless. Nothing seemed to be happening in the little town. Not a single pony was to be seen in the streets; they were all taking solace in peaceful slumber that only a beautiful night like tonight could offer… all of them but one.
“Despite its elusive nature, we know intelligent consciousness exists, for we have seen definitive and conclusive physical evidence of its existence through observing chosen cells, glands, and transmitters. Even if consciousness is somehow metaphysical, invisible, like the soul, its physical connections are still abundantly clear.”
Twilight sat at the foot of her desk in the main study of the library, unblinking eyes darting to each new word on the page she read from. She was so immersed in the passages she was reciting that she paid no mind to the heaping mess of scrolls and spell diagrams that surrounded her. The library was placid and motionless; utterly still save for the flickering candle on the desk. The otherwise perfect silence was broken only by her words.
“And therein lays a weakness of mortal consciousness. Perception is not reality, but the only reality we know is the one our minds perceive through our senses. If what we perceive as reality is what we can see, what we can hear or touch, then reality is nothing more than chemical signals firing in the brain. So if we can better understand those chemicals; how to alter, control, or manipulate them, would we inherently be able to indirectly command consciousness itself?”
As many times as she’d read that passage, on this night, she allowed herself a slight pause to let the weight of those words sink in before she got to the topic that the essay was building up to.
“As heinous as this concept is, it’s all but alien to us. We subject ourselves to this manner of self-deception so often that we don’t even realize that our minds are presenting us with false realities when they are… because they do so on an almost nightly basis.
“I speak, of course, of dreams.”
Twilight took another pause; this part always got her.
“All that we are is accessible when we slumber in the fabricated worlds made by our subconscious. Despite their illegitimacy, dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.
“So what if we could take control of our own dreams? What would we find; what could we do? Could we shape our own realities? Build our own worlds? Could we find our own consciousness or our soul?
“What if we could share these dreams? What if we could create dreams for others? What if we could we gain access to all they are? What if...”
“What if…” Twilight repeated those words. The speech always ended just as it was getting good, but some other event had clearly interrupted the author, preventing its completion. Fortunately, it was not alone.
Twilight moved the loose-leafed cover page away with her hoof to look over the other pages in the ensemble. Notes, hypotheses, diagrams, and equations for theoretical spells so complicated they made even her head spin.
Their discovery had been a most serendipitous find. Twilight had pursued her initial concept to begin looking into understanding the nuts and bolts of how dreams worked and the potential implications they possessed when she found the packet of notes that now lay before her. They had been hidden ever-so cleverly in one of the books she’d borrowed from the Canterlot archives. How exactly they got there and who hid them there still eluded her, but their writer remained no mystery to her. Even with every page initialed by the author, Twilight recognized the style of writing anywhere.
She flipped back to the ‘about the author’ page of the book that she had discovered the original notes in and came face-to-face with the portrait of a handsome unicorn stallion. His beige coat juxtaposed nicely with his formal black-and-white dress shirt and overcoat. He bore a wide, circular face with slicked-back, golden brown hair, and his prominent eyebrows, faint goatee, ever-so-slightly crooked smile, and vibrant blue eyes gave him a palpable coltish charm, like a dashing bachelor with a touch of con-artist, giving the stallion a romantic sense of danger about him.
“Dominus Cob,” Twilight spoke his name with an admiration bordering on reverence. He was a highly respected unicorn among those that took the study of magic seriously and an esteemed professor who had taught more advanced studies at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Cob’s work had dealt mostly with theoretical spellcraft and the fundamental connections between magic and ponies. His multiple essays and research endeavors into the matter was what had given him recognition as one of the most outstanding practitioners of magic in the modern era... and oddly enough, he was also a fairly accomplished and very talented architect, too.
Twilight had even met Cob and his wife Mal once several years ago with her brother when she was still a young mare at a Summer Sun Celebration in Canterlot. To this day, she still couldn’t help but smile as she remembered how unable she was to contain her fan-girlish excitement around him and how she was geeking out when she asked Cob for his autograph... and how she almost fainted when Cob in return asked Twilight for her autograph.
At least that was the legacy he’d left behind. Several years ago, shortly following Mal’s sudden death, Dominus disappeared without a trace, along with just about every spare scrap of work he was involved in that hadn’t already been published. Academic speculators liked to gossip that everything else of his had been confiscated by the Royal Guard.
That was what made the sheets of paper in front of her so valuable. Not only were they research notes of the famous Dominus Cob, but research notes of perhaps what could have been the most important spell of his career: perhaps one of the most important spells of the century.
Dominus had started down the path to complete one of the most radical spells ever devised. And on this evening, Twilight had finished it.
The spell’s exact manner of operation was as fiendishly complicated as it was difficult to cast and maintain, but the premise of its design was simple enough. It acted as a multi-functional spell that sedated any number of targets, opened psychic pathways between each mind that the spell was being cast on, and generated a dream in a single mind through electrostatic matrices of near unfathomable complexity that manually intercepted neurotransmitter functions, creating a malleable dream world that each adjoining consciousness would enter into. All of which could be operated on a subconscious level, meaning the caster could enter the dream as well.
Simple enough indeed.
At least that was how it was supposed to work. Twilight had yet to actually cast the spell, but based on all the work she had done, she was certain it would work. She had meticulously composed every single conceivable function of the spell’s formula based off Cob’s projections, filled in the blanks where needed and finished everything he hadn’t. Then it was with unmerciful scrutiny that she’d double-checked every possible aspect that she could think of no less than twelve times. This spell would work… she hoped.
Twilight allowed herself a glance at the heaping piles of scrolls that surrounded her, each providing witness to the months of obsessive research, study, planning, calculation, and documentation that had gone into a spell she hadn’t even lit her horn for yet.
“What if…” Twilight wondered aloud. “What if this actually works?”
Twilight rose from where she sat and cleared a pathway through the forest of paper with her magic. She trotted upstairs and retrieved a pillow from her bed, then returned to her sanctuary of study and lay down. She nestled her head into the pillow as she reviewed the diagram she’d written with the final version of the spell one last time.
With all the pieces set up in her mind, Twilight focused on every single function she was supposed to achieve with the spell, then finally lit her horn as she began to carefully expend massive amounts of magic.
Twilight began to feel light headed as the magic enveloped her. She puzzled herself with how her thoughts could feel both energized and sluggish, like how she felt whenever she came down from a sugar high after partying a little too hard at any event hosted by Pinkie. Even as she fell into slumber, Twilight couldn’t help but feel a sense of exhilaration as at least part of the spell was apparently working. The last thing she saw as the world faded to black was the orange light of the candle glow brighter and hotter.
- - - - - -
Twilight found herself standing in one of the hallways in the west section of the Canterlot archives. She looked around at the shelves and the hundreds of thousands of books organized on them, and breathed in the smell of bookbinding and old paper with a contented sigh.
Twilight felt giddy with excitement, and couldn’t help but give a triumphant giggle as she did a little prance in place.
The spell worked! Just like my duodecuplthe check had said it would!
“So then,” Twilight said, regaining her composure, “this is what a dream world looks like.”
She began to trot down the long, extensive wings of the archives, looking around and taking in all the details of the labyrinth of knowledge, from the multitudes of books stored in the massive shelves that towered over her to the fine architecture of the library itself. Everything looked exactly as she remembered it. Twilight thought for a second about Dominus’ words about “building our own worlds,” and wondered for a moment what that idea could mean. That would have to wait though; this was just a test run.
“Let’s have a better look, shall we?” Twilight spoke and looked down the aisles.
She realized she was in a particular favorite section of hers: one dedicated entirely to documentation, records, personal journalism, and checklists. Excitement now mixed with curiosity as she approached the end of one of the shelves and picked out a personal favorite.
“The Art of the To-Do List,” Twilight commented with fondness. She opened the cover and flipped through the pages. It looked just as she remembered: an exact copy of the real world duplicate.
“The spell must be generating projections based off my memories,” she thought aloud.
A sharp noise that sounded like a crack reverberating through stone whispered through the air, breaking her concentration. She looked up from the book and looked around, but saw nothing. Not a single pony, no movement, not a stir. The library remained still and motionless as the one she was sleeping in. She shrugged and returned to her observations.
Twilight put The Art of the To-Do list back in its place and looked at the book next to it, Assembly of Order: How to Organize Your Life. She’d remembered seeing it before but had never read it. Curiosity took hold, and she took the book in her magic and opened it.
Twilight frowned as she flipped through the pages. They were all blank, devoid of any shred of information.
It must not be generating anything for lack of memories as a template, Twilight thought.
She heard another crack, but it echoed throughout the entire room as loud as if somepony had cracked a whip right next to her ear. Twilight put down the book and looked around, trying to locate where the noises were coming from. They sounded like they were coming from the north wall of the section, and she set off at a brisk trot in its direction.
Twilight came to the final row of bookshelves, rounded the corner, and saw a network of deep, ugly cracks that were forming in the wall near the floor, branching out in multiple directions.
An ominous feeling come over her, but it was secondary to her mounting curiosity. This event was utterly unprecedented, and had to be a result of an error in her calculations or some underlying component she either didn't or couldn’t have planned for. Either way, it bore the need to be investigated.
The spread of the cracks slowed as Twilight approached them. She moved in for a closer look as stone dust fell from the openings. She continued to peer at the cracks until she was mere inches from them and tentatively put forth a hoof to touch them.
She withdrew her hoof in an instant. The wall had been scorching hot, like she’d touched the hot plate on a stove. Concern became worry as she backed away from the breaking wall. The violent cracking resumed, branching out across the walls and towards the ceiling.
Twilight backed away, eyes narrow and her breath still, staring in fear as they violently ripped their way up the wall. She lit her horn and tried to magically seal the stone back together. The stone failed to yield and the cracks continued to spread. Whatever was causing the sudden failure of structural integrity, it wasn’t natural.
Twilight dispelled her magic and stared at the tree of cracks branching outward across the wall. If they reached the ceiling, the whole library could come down.
Just as the cracks neared the ceiling, they stopped. Twilight froze, uncertain. Moments passed, but the cracks remained as unmoving as her. Twilight allowed herself a sigh of relief.
The ear-splitting sound of shattering stone reverberated throughout the entire library. She snapped her head towards the new direction of the noise, but it was coming from everywhere. Her heart rate shot up, and a new wave of fear washed over her. She realized there was one thing she had overlooked when planning the test-run for the spell; with all her preparation to ensure everything went right, she hasn’t come up with a failsafe for what to do if it all went wrong.
Now, the first step of an exit strategy was obvious: get the hay out of the library. Twilight turned and took off at a full gallop.
An odd, strained sound rose over the cacophony of splintering wood and crumbling stone that came from the initial crack. Twilight stopped to look back at the jagged fractures on the wall and ceiling. Just as Twilight could’ve sworn she saw them glow an angry hue, the wall exploded and the ceiling began to fall, rock and rubble dissolving into flame.
“The dream is collapsing?!”
Twilight lit her horn and threw up a shield spell around her just in time to keep from eating a facefull of fire.
The shield held back the initial blast, but the force of the explosion knocked her back from the blast and into a pillar abutting the exit into the library’s main hallway. The shield popped with the impact, and Twilight smacked into it with a crunch. She shrieked in pain and fell to a crumpled heap on the floor.
Adrenaline now surging and panic threatening to set in, she tried to get up to keep galloping. She could still move well enough, but to do so was to stab daggers into her spine. Her back wasn’t broken, just riddled with hairline fractures in several places.
Dominus’ words came back to her. Dreams feel real while we’re in them.
Now that she was in a self-destructing dream world and in so much pain that merely standing caused her to tremble with exertion, the thought came with a cruel sense of irony.
She knew she was in a dream world, though. Now that the world around her was violently burning into nothing, that realization and sense was all the more prevalent, and became all the more prevailing with each passing second.
The thought that it was all just a dream was the only thing she could hold to as the consuming blaze charged for her, and everything faded into blinding light.
- - - - - -
Twilight opened her eyes as she fell back into consciousness from her dream. Her head shot off the pillow as she looked around her.
Her library was on fire.
Her species’ natural fear of fire gripped her with a death hold. Her logical mind spun on stripped gears, unable to form a plan as instinct and panic prevented her from concentrating. Then one thought pierced her mind and muscled past all her fear.
“Spike! Owloysius!” she cried out. Neither of them called back.
With fear beginning to choke her, she took off at a gallop in search for her friends. Spike was nowhere to be found in the library, nor Owloysius. All his favorite perches remained unoccupied by the owl, and all the windows were still closed. Had he even stopped by for the night?
Hoping her owl wasn’t in the library, Twilight turned and ran up the burning stairs. The planks threatened to collapse under her hooves as she galloped up them, fighting back her own increasing urges to turn tail and escape the blazing tree by herself.
Twilight bucked the door to her bedroom open.
“Spike!” Twilight yelled through the clouds of smoke.
From within the dark haze, she heard a cough.
“Spike!” she called to him again. Twilight got low to the ground and tried to hold as much of her breath as possible, prowling through her smoke filled bedroom. Her eyes watered from the acrid smoke.
A hoof collided with something on the ground. She gasped.
“Spike!”
His response came with raspy coughs. “Twi—” another cough, “Twilight... help...”
“Don’t worry Spike, I will!” she said as she used her magic to hoist him up on her back. “Let’s get out of here!”
Twilight took off for the front door as fast as her hooves could carry her, all but flying down the stairs. One of the planks gave way as she ran down them. She lost her balance and tumbled down the rest of the stairs, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. Spike still clung to her, face buried into her mane with fear. She moaned in pain over her bruises as she got back up on her hooves and continued for the door. All that mattered now was getting out of the burning building.
A crack came from above her head as a large piece of the ceiling broke away and swung down, colliding with the side of her face hard enough to knock her off her hooves, send Spike flying off her back, and slam her onto her side.
Twilight was almost knocked unconscious as she hit the floor. Her vision blurred and her ears rung, senses numbed by a burst of adrenaline. As her focus returned, she became aware of Spike frantically shaking her, that she couldn’t see out of her right eye, and that she was screaming in pain.
“Twilight! Are you okay? Please get up, we need to get out of here!” Spike said, fearful.
She tried to hold a hoof to her newest injury, but withdrew it immediately as another wave of pain hit her. The lids of her right eye had swelled shut, and the bones around the socket had been shattered.
“I’ll live,” she winced through the pain. “Come on, let’s go!”
More desperate than ever now, Twilight got back up on her hooves and stumbled towards the door, coughing as the smoke began to fill her lungs and more pieces of burning debris fell around her.
Another loud crack sounded from above as another large part of the library roof fell inwards, blocking the exit.
“Forget this!” she yelled in exacerbation and pointed her horn towards the door. It lit with an aggressive glow of magic. Twilight released some of her pent-up anxiety with a powerful concussive blast, blowing a large hole in the library.
Wait: backdraft...
Fire exploded outward into the night, fueled by fresh oxygen. Twilight just barely hobbled out the new door with Spike, frantically stomping out the places where her tail had caught fire and brushing the flames off her coat. She looked around at the town and gasped.
Ponyville was on fire.
“What the hay?” Spike muttered, bewildered.”How did this happen?!”
Twilight stood motionless for a moment, overwhelmed by what she was seeing. Her home, her livelihood, and the homes and livelihoods of all the ponies she cared about and loved were dying all at once before her, murdered by the fires that consumed them. Then one thought took precedence over all others.
My friends...
“Our friends could still be in danger, Spike!” Fighting off her woe with steely resolve, Twilight galloped further into town.
She ran first to Sugarcube Corner since it was on the way to Carousel Boutique from the library. Twilight was hoping that at least Sweet Apple Acres and Fluttershy’s cottage were a safe enough distance from the town to not be caught up in the blaze, and she didn’t figure Rainbow’s residence was in too much trouble since clouds weren’t combustible.
Ponies everywhere were screaming in panic and galloping about incoherently. Teams of pegasi were flying clouds over as many of the buildings as they could, desperately attempting to douse the flames, but the fires blazed on, unrestrained.
Twilight rounded the edge of the street to the lane where Sugarcube Corner was. The sweet shop was already ablaze, licks of flame pouring through the windows and out the chimney, shingles from the roof falling as the building creaked and moaned.
Through the fiery portal, she saw the first of the shop’s occupants exiting into the night.
“Mr. and Mrs. Cake! Oh Celestia, is everypony okay?” Twilight called out to the family.
“We’re fine...” Cupcake coughed. “Twilight, you’ve got to help; Pinkie is—”
Sugarcube Corner exploded.
The store and everypony within twenty feet of it disappeared with a deafening boom and a flash of blinding, white light. The blast ripped through the air with a shockwave that seemed to warp reality itself.
Twilight stared, frozen in place. The world slowed as all the panic and anxiety finally caught up to her.
They’re gone...
Gears spun hopelessly in her mind, incapable of cognition.
I just saw ponies die...
All of her senses failed. Whatever registered could not be processed.
Pinkie Pie...
She was only vaguely aware of somepony screaming indecipherably in her ear.
Pinkie Pie is dead!
“TWILIGHT!” Spike yelled at the top of his lungs.
Twilight was jarred back to Equestria.
“We’ve got to do something!” Spike cried.
The blinding blast was still expanding. It reached out to the surrounding burning buildings, and they too exploded, dissolving into flame, cutting off access to downtown..
“We... I can’t...”.
“But—”
“THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO!” Twilight screamed.
Ponyville was rocked by another explosion. The blasts consumed every pony they touched with a blinding flash, and the two of them stood in the path of destruction.
With no other options, Twilight turned around and ran, tears dripping from her eyes and her breathing ragged. Her galloping was impeded by her burdened heart; it was so heavy that it felt like it might break through her ribs and fall right out of her chest.
She ran past her burning library and had to turn and look away, the sight too painful to look at. Twilight ran up several more streets and past more burning buildings until they reached the edge of town, and she saw the countryside.
No way... it’s not possible...
“No... it’s not possible!” Spike echoed.
Equestria was on fire.
Twilight could only stare dumbfounded at the plane of fire that stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. The trauma had put her into a state of shock. She was so overwhelmed that she temporarily lost the ability to process either thoughts or emotions. She couldn’t hold on; it was all too much to take in.
The library exploded behind her, opening great cracks of blinding light in the ground. The advancing, violent cracks passed around her, snaking over the countryside and onwards onto the edges of the horizon.
The bright tears in the ground reached the border where the sky and the ground met, and then shot upwards, traveling across the night sky. They moved unmitigated across the night and in between the stars until the entire sky was a web of fractures.
Twilight stared in disbelief at the spectacle. No spell or branch of magic was capable of tearing reality asunder like this. Why, the only thing she’d seen that was remotely like this, where an entire world had been spontaneously collapsing was…
A high-pitched, very familiar voice came from behind Twilight. “Oooo, now this is neat-o!”
The two whipped around to look behind them. Pinkie Pie sat behind them, oooing and awing at the scene before them, unfazed that reality itself was falling apart. Nor did she seem any more concerned when the entire atmosphere rumbled, and pieces of the night sky began to fall, revealing massive chunks of white nothingness as they fell to the ground and shattered.
“Oh, look! Everything is coming undone!” Pinkie exclaimed through her giggles.
Twilight’s mind was shattered by incomprehension.
“What?” Pinkie asked innocently. “Did you want a song or something?”
Twilight still stared, mind so blown away that she didn’t look up when the very moon fell from the sky, rushing downwards at the two, accompanied by a blinding light.
Twilight opened her eyes.
She lay on the floor in the middle of her study, head propped up by a pillow and surrounded by her extensive piles of notes.
She remembered everything at once: self destructing archives, burning libraries, broken bones, dead friends, reality tearing into pieces. Her head shot off the pillow, heart suddenly pounding as she looked around and checked herself.
Twilight found that she was perfectly fine. She was bereft of bruises and broken bones. Her breathing was regular, she could see out of both her eyes, and it didn’t hurt to move.
Further investigation revealed everything was as it should be. The library, for one, was not on fire. The nearest open window framed the deep blue skies and shining stars of the early night. There were no fires raging outside, and there were no other events of unfathomable magic to crack the sky. Owloysius was perched over on the writing desk, watching over her as he jotted down notes on something or other. Her pulse picked up again as she heard what sounded like fire coming from the kitchen, but then the smell hit her and it became immediately evident that it was just Spike making dinner, cooking an eggplant lasagna with his dragon fire if she placed the aroma correctly.
Twilight turned her head away from Owloysius and came nose to nose with a smiling Pinkie Pie.
“Hi!” she chirped.
“AH!” Twilight screamed in surprise, backing away and hitting her head on the table in the middle of the room.
Pinkie giggled. “Boy Twily, that sure is some spell you’ve got there. And the way you just tore that whole thing down, so awesome!” She squealed as she pressed her hooves against her cheeks.
Twilight rubbed where she’d hit her head tenderly with a hoof. “Only Shining Armor gets to call me “Twily,”” she said with a bit of a grumble. “Hey, wait; how did you know what that spell was? For that matter, how in the hay did you get into the dream?”
Pinkie adopted a look on her face like she’d just been asked “what color is your coat?”
“I just read your notes,” she said, motioning to them with a hoof. “Duh!”
“Oh…” Twilight responded, feeling suddenly stupid.
“As for how I got myself into the spell without a fancy horn or magic,” Pinkie breathed in and continued rapidly. “Since your research and thesisis clearly states that the magic works through mental ties by way of velcro-static matrixacesess that at the same time can be subconscioussesesly maintained, I figured that not only could somepony get in with some electricity of their own, but that the magic would hold up so long as any new added variable wasn’t disruptive enough to dismantle the operation.” Pinkie snapped her head to one side and inhaled sharply, having gone through that entire sentence without once stopping for air, giving Twilight a chance to stop wincing inside at her mispronunciations.
“So…” she whipped out a shag rug from behind her back to demonstrate. “I just got some carpet, shuffled my hooves across it, and opened a hole in the magic field surrounding your head by shocking it. Then I just wiggled my way in! Hee-hee!”
Twilight stared at Pinkie, agape. “That’s... one way to test a theory...”
Pinkie playfully touched her hoof to Twilight’s nose, shocking her with a jolt of static. Twilight shot her a quick look of annoyance as she rubbed her nose, but brushed it off.
“So what brings you here at this time of night?” Twilight asked, changing the subject. “I know you didn’t come all the way here just because you’re interested in my studies. I’d have thought you’d be busy making dessert for your dinner tonight.”
“Precisely!” Pinkie proclaimed. “I was feeling extra creative, so I was going to make a super-duper-extra-special-awesome triple-layered chocolate cupcake cake! But to bake something so complicated, I figured it’d be best to consult some professional direction. But when I looked through the cupboard with all the cookbooks for the one I needed, it wasn’t there!”
Twilight was having trouble keeping up. “A chocolate cupcake… cake?”
“A cake made out of cupcakes,” Pinkie explained. “Anyway, I looked everywhere for that book, but I couldn’t find it! Mr. and Mrs. Cake hadn’t seen or used it, it wasn’t in any of the places Pound will hide things when he’s being a mischievous little rascal, Pumpkin wasn’t off goobering on it, and I would never misplace a cookbook as important as one with a cupcake cake recipe, but it was still nowhere to be seen!
“But that’s not the only thing that was missing. As I sniffed around the sweet shop, seeking to solve this stumping stupor, I noticed that lots of other stuff was missing! Not only was the book gone, but so were several utensils, the pilot light in the oven, the clock in the store front, Pumpkin’s favorite squeaky toy, half of Mrs. Cake’s jewelry collection, several planks from the stairs and everypony’s left horseshoe!
“Why, with all those things gone missing, there’s only one explanation,” Pinkie stated and got right up in Twilight’s face, bearing a dead serious expression. “There’s a thief on the loose!”
“That’s… okay, that’s actually not that far-fetched a concept. Mrs. Cake’s jewelry I understand, but stair steps and left horseshoes? Why would anypony want those things?”
Pinkie gave out a playful little huff. “I don’t know, silly; I’m not the thief! But what if I was… oh, but what if I really was the thief, but I wasn’t the thief because the real thief is actually my evil twin?“
“Okay, now that’s just absurd,” Twilight said. “As pressing a matter as that may be, what does this have to do with you being here right now?”
“Oh, right!” Pinkie giggled. “So, since I’ve yet to catch the crook, I was wondering if you might have a copy of the same cookbook here that I could borrow, at least until I track down the thief and take my book back from her.”
“Hmm, we might. Owloysius, could you help Pinkie Pie find her book please?”
“Hoo,” the owl responded as he flew from his perch and over to a bookshelf. Pinkie trotted off to help find the book, leaving Twilight to look over her notes. Her eyes caught the freshest note, the wet ink still glistening in the fading light.
Month five, day twenty-two, entry four-hundred and seventy-nine.
After almost six months of obsessive research and study I believe I, Twilight Sparkle, have finally completed the dream spell first hypothesized by Dominus Cob so many years ago.
At least, I think I have. This monumental task has been by no means easy, nor the conclusions I’ve come to along the way by any means absolutely certain… hence why magic like this is called “theoretical.” Though if anypony had come closer to getting this right, it probably would’ve been Dominus, and unfortunately nopony has seen or heard from him in years. So as it stands, the most feasible, if not only writings out there on how this spell might work are probably mine.
I don’t think I’ve ever doudecuple-checked anything before ever in my life. I’m pretty sure I know what will happen when I cast this, but what I’ll admit is a little unnerving is that I don’t precisely know what will happen.
No more; the time has come to stop trotting around it.
To whomever may read this; if something malfunctions or I get trapped in a dream world or something else happens that I perhaps better not think about right now, you have my notes and Dominus’ to try and figure out where I went wrong.
But what if this actually works?”
Twilight sat in silence as she read those last words on the page.
“I found it!” Pinkie called from the other room, causing Twilight to jump. Pinkie trotted back happily from the other room. She turned to Twilight with a smile, revealing the book shoved halfway into her mane.
“Thanks, Twilight! I’d love to stay, but I’ve got a cupcake cake so chocolatey that you could call it murder to bake. Oh! But you should totally show me more of that spell later!”
“Maybe…”
Pinkie gasped with excitement. “You promise?”
“I didn’t say…”
“Pinkie promise!”
Twilight sighed. How do I get roped into things like this? Whatever, it’s just Pinkie Pie, she thought.
Twilight began to recite the promise with the customary movements. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my…” Twilight froze as she moved a hoof towards her right eye. She didn’t have the best experience when it came to the hoof-in-the-eye part, but last time she touched a hoof to her right eye, she had been greeted with stabbing pain as bone shards got lodged into her eyeball.
“Come on, you’ve got to finish it!” Pinkie insisted.
“In my eye.” Twilight finished, tentatively touching her hoof to her closed eye. There was no pain, but she still withdrew her hoof quickly, just out of reflex.
Pinkie looked to Twilight quizzically, then lit up with a smile. “That’ll do. See you later, Twilight!” she chirped and bounced out the door.
Twilight looked back to her notes, troubled by what she had just read. She pondered the information, trying to piece everything together, then levitated a quill over a new piece of parchment and began to write.
“Month five, day twenty-two, entry four-hundred and eighty.
She wrote a quick log documenting her experiences using the spell for the first time: that it did indeed work, that the dream could be shared with multiple ponies, and that Dominus wasn’t kidding about “dreams feeling real.” She speculated about dreams being built from memory and occurring during R.E.M sleep, hence why she didn’t remember casting it and ending up in a dream in the first place.
She theorized that it’s collapse could have been attributed to either Pinkie’s intrusion, or when she tried to enter another dream when her mind was already hosting one.
That piece of information was the most fascinating new discovery; that the Dreamscape Spell couldn’t just make dreams, it could create dreams within dreams.
Twilight looked over the paper. She allowed herself a moment of contentment as she let the sight sink in; all the time, research, study and number-crunching had finally paid off. Feeling exceptionally accomplished, Twilight fetched a fresh roll of parchment and began to write, eager to share her triumph with somepony she knew would appreciate it.
Dear Princess Celestia,
Several months ago, I by chance found some lost research papers written by none other than Dominus Cob, hypothesizing the beginnings of a spell that would allow somepony to delve into the subconscious through magically generated dreams. Tonight, I’m proud to report that not only have I finished that spell, but I’ve tested it, and it works! I’m still working out the finite details, but it has been confirmed that this is no longer a theoretical magic.
Can you begin to imagine the possibilities? Dominus himself speculated that we might be able to explore the ties everypony has to magic and the very foundations of what makes us who we are, perhaps even find our own consciousness, maybe even our own soul this way.
This could be one of the single most important revolutions in magic of generations to come, perhaps second only to the reactivation of the Elements of Harmony. As a spell with such a magnitude of importance, I wish to arrange a time that we could meet and discuss all my research on this topic face to face. I just know you’d love to hear all about it.
If only somepony knew where to find Dominus so I could tell him about it, too.
Your Faithful Student,
Twilight Sparkle
She set her quill aside and capped the ink bottle, then rolled up the letter and sealed it as she called out to the kitchen.
“Spike, I have a note to send to the Princess. Could you send it to her when you have a moment?”
“Sure thing, Twi,” Spike answered. “Just let me finish setting up everything for dinner, okay?”
He sounded like his normal self, going about business as usual, but just to hear him for real brought a very warming sense of relief to Twilight.
“That’s alright,” Twilight responded as she placed the note on the table and looked over all her notes, the accumulation of almost six months of grueling, pain-staking research.
Pinkie’s words about a thief in Ponyville came back to her. She just attributed it to Pinkie being her usual self, but if she was right, that could be bad for these notes, especially if there was indeed a thief on the loose who knew the value of information and knowledge. What dire consequences would come if they got their hooves on this kind of information? Was there a black market for something like this?
As she looked over the shores of paper, she decided to err on the side of caution. She shuffled her notes into one organized stack and put Dominus’ notes back into the book that she had found them in, then carried them all upstairs to her room where she locked them in her heavy trunk. If that kind of power could be abused in such a way in the wrong hooves, then it was best to keep it under wraps until she could discuss it with Celestia.
Twilight went down the stairs. Spike was standing by the main desk, staring at his claw and the note gone from the table.
“Thanks for sending that off to the Princess,” Twilight commented.
“Yeah…” Spike replied, voice somehow uncertain. He changed topics before Twilight could call him on it. “So, are you hungry for dinner?”
Twilight’s response was spoken for her by her growling stomach. Spike chuckled as Twilight gave a slight smile of embarrassment, following him into the kitchen.
The wonderful smell of the food was even more whetting to the appetite in the dining room. Twilight breathed it in until it filled her nostrils before pulling up her chair.
As much as she was compelled to dig in, Twilight took a moment to watch her friends. Owloysius stood on his table perch, woodenly pecking at some nuts and a fish he’d caught earlier. Spike stood in his chair, hovering over his food as he wolfed it down at a pace that would make Rarity flinch in offense at such etiquette.
Twilight smiled sincerely, warmth filling her heart. Owloysius, Spike, Pinkie, all her friends… they were all okay. She cherished them all, but felt especially grateful for them tonight, when she felt the harrowing pain of what it might be like to lose them.
She closed her eyes and bowed her head, and said a solemn prayer in her heart to Celestia, offering her gratitude for being blessed with such wonderful friends that she cared so much about and who truly made her own life worthwhile.
Twilight finished her prayer with a hope that she’d never have to endure what she went through in her self-inflicted nightmare ever again.
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Inception and Ponies. Very nice. Put on read later list!
929043 Hell yeah!
But why not read it NAOW?
929212
Because it's late at night and I don't have the time to read over 17,000 words! Sorry
Wait...17,000 WORDS?!
929341
Fair enough. I've been working graveyard shift for so long that I forget the people mostly do things during the day.
Seventeen thousand, five hundred and seventy-nine words in the prelude.
fim.413chan.net/oc/src/134075457726-RARITY.gif
Yeah, I'll admit that the one thing I'm not is concise; Hell, the prelude alone is longer than entire fictions like 'Her Weight in Affection' and the legendary 'My Little Dashie.' And with thirteen chapters planed on top of that, this one will probably end up being longer that fictions like 'Anthropology' and 'The Games We Play'. Though it probably won't be as long as 'Background Pony'. And I swear to Celestia that even as wordy as I can be, this won't be the next 'Fallout: Equestria.'
But there is substance to everything written here, so it's all for the purpose of immersing the reading in the story we've written.
- Christian 'Verbose' Harisay
Alrighty, my notes on this chapter.
1. I can hear Cobb's voice in my head while she reads. It's pretty epic.
2. Caught an error. In the story, you say this: “So then,” Twilight said, regaining her composure; “this is a dream world looks like.”
It should be "this is what a dream world looks like."
3. Didn't catch me this time! I actually KNEW it was a dream with in a dream. I'm not pathetic!
Yay!
4. What was the ghost Pinkie was talking about? I have a feeling that it's a reference to Harry Potter, but I'm not sure.
5. Cupcake cake! CAKECEPTION!!!
6. Pinkie Pie somehow is an expert on dream science. I guess that makes sense...in a Pinkie way.
Finally, I would like to say how wonderful this story is turning out to be. I have read one other Inception/Pony crossover called "The Regal Dream." Unfortunately, while I did finish it, and at times found it interesting, it followed the plot of the movie too closely to be truely good. In other words, it was too "cut-and-paste." Meanwhile, THIS story has tons of originality to it, and that is the reason that I think that it will succeed. Keep in mind that you don't need to follow the movie exactly. You don't need someone to get shot on the first level, you don't need someone driving an equivilent of a car on the first level, etc. A good Inception crossover takes the science of Inception, but the plot and characters of the other half. This keeps the story fresh. Luckily, this seems to be the direction that you are already taking, so I have high hopes that this will be a great story!
In other news, this is the longest comment I have ever written.
Why would anypony what those things
I fond, I fond!
why would anypony want those things?
Anyway, Inceptions and Ponies, good story.
Well, I must say that I liked this chapter much more than the last. Of course, that could plausibly be because I read it in two parts, or because it's shorter, or because I didn't feel like I was reading a synopsis for an old episode, or because of this great music I'm listening to. I prefer to think it was the writing.
First: a few typos in here. You mispelled appetite as "apatite" or something. Also, you used latter instead of later somewhere. I know there's another one, but I can't remember it. On to the story itself.
One thing I notice here is that you tend to explain all the little details you put in. Like, for example, you have Twilight come up with a guess as to why that one book has no words in it. Though this may simply be a matter of personal writing style, I think it is usually better not to explain such things, but to instead let your audience infer it themselves. Remember that they're not stupid. Either way, the potential mystery behind why one book had no writing would have been more interesting than the conclusion she draws. Though we can probably figure out the reason ourselves with the hints you offered, it is still more fun since we the readers can't actually be sure. At the same time, if there is a logical backstory behind it, then it'll probably be at least a half-decent mystery. You'll see me doing that plenty in my own writing; there are many things in the Outer World that I let happen, but I don't explain them because, well, Dissy wouldn't understand them anyways and they're more intriguing is mysteries than features. Admittedly, a logical conclusion is in character for Twilight, and so is being right, but I think her mental responses to the events would be better as a question.
I like the little notes she takes. It's very Twilight and allows you to put in some exposition and contemplation without needing a second character.
I found myself questioning whether it was in character for Twilight to test this spell without a contingency plan. Although she could get excited about the spell, I imagine that "work out escape plan" would be on her checklist somewhere. And she dodecachecked it. Or whatever that word is. I was abit skeptical that she wouldn't have some kind of preparation for a spell or dream failure, but was willing to put it aside for the sake of the plot. Gotta have plot, after all.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before and forgive me if I have, but on the subject of parentheses: they should never be used. Simply never. It's kind've like writing a prologue, except a prologue is sometimes justifiable and necessary. As for parentheses, on the other hand... if you have to use specific marks because the comment is so out of place, then why would you make the comment at all? If you want to keep it in, then you can easily rearrange the wording to get it there without those awkward half-circles. Look at this:
"Twilight recognized that hoof-writing (or perhaps it was more accurate to say ‘horn-writing’) anywhere."
It could just as easily be written as:
"Twilight recognized that hoof-writing anywhere. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say horn-writing?, she mused."
The comment can stay, and the parentheses are no longer a problem. How often do you see those things in big, successful stories? Since this story is first-person anyways, all of the aside comments can easily be written as thoughts. It just flows better, and doesn't interrupt the reader's thought process.
That'll be all. I certainly can't say as many bad things about this chapter than the last. Gonna go on reading the next... eventually...
Golden 'I missed my latest chapter's deadline' Wing42
Generally you have watertight grammar, but the above was quite a derp.
Now... Hmm... A very nice structuring of the Inception characters of Cob and Mal into the story as the creator of the Dream Spell and his wife. It reminds fans of Inception while providing background at the same time. The chapter, I am guessing its goal was mainly to provide context for the dream spell and remind everybody of its mechanics. It worked. I do understand the dream spell quite well and the important facts behind it. However, there are a few issues.
Twilght making the jump to dreams used by thieves being one of them. I understand Pinkie's mentioning of thieves (nice foreshadowing BTW) can create that, but its a LITTLE forced. given we don't know the specifics of the dream spell and how one could steal knowledge... that was sort of out of the blue. Maybe Twilight can contemplate a little longer on how ponies can have dreams stolen and think about mechanics?
Also, while Pinkie... well I believe she's the best pony to explain how she managed to disrupt Twilight's dream, she is a little OOC. I mean... given Pinkie's short attention span, which is a feature of her and her ability to go off tangent, I'm remarkably surprised she has managed to hold onto such a long winded and factual explanation. you need to have a moment when she gets off topic and Twilight has to remind her or... have her make an inference to one of her hobbies, forcing Twilight to bring her back to speed.
All in all, there are a few things, you should be aware of, but generally given the long pace of this story, I think this chapter fulfilled its purpose.
Ponified Leonardo DiCaprio seems to have trained under Morpheus.
goingahamm.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/wordpress-morpheus.jpg