Sidewinders and Shadows

by LimeAttack

Setting the Board

As she worked, Rarity hummed a little tune, a small number she thought up on the spot a few years back while making dresses. “Stitch by stitch...” With a flourish, she turned the fabric over and over in the air, the icy blue material flashing with a magical sheen and catching the sunlight in its translucent threads as she muttered some incantations she had read in the book’s rather useful appendix. As she finished, the material gave a short glow. Rarity smiled contentedly, letting her work flutter down onto a ponnequin—a rather excellent model for her purposes—enchanted specifically for the task. “Little by little, no need to rush this project. I have a very sizable amount of time to complete it.”

Just then, a knock came at the door to her boutique. With a quick swipe of magic, Rarity drew a thick curtain over her special project and trotted into the entryway. “Just a moment, darling!” After a quick second spent tidying up, Rarity answered the door. “Welcome to—oh, Rainbow Dash, such a pleasant surprise! What brings you here, perchance?”

With a brief flap of her wings, Rainbow hopped inside. Taking a brief, somewhat disinterested look around the currently clean shop, she turned to Rarity. “Well, let’s just say that I had a bit of a mishap with some of my flight gear.” A pair of tattered flight goggles came into view. “I was just wondering if you could patch them up, maybe even put a little flair in it. I gotta have pizazz when in the air, after all. As one of my pals likes to say, ‘Style is directly proportional to coolness.’” The smug smirk said it all.

Rarity gingerly swept the goggles into a blue aura, chuckling. “How very much like you. I think I will have something ready by tomorrow, at the earliest. Stop by then and maybe we can chat! Right now, however, I have a trip to make out into the market and a pony or two that I must visit.” The goggles settled on a workbench along with some scraps of rather durable fabric.

Rainbow Dash nodded and began waving her way out. “Okay, I guess I’ll be back tomorrow then. Thanks, Rares! And remember, coolness above fashion.” When the splashed color of the pegasus’ mane finally went out of sight, Rarity collected herself and prepped for her short shopping spree. She checked her workroom, ensuring that the rest of her projects had their notes up-to-date and that everything sat in its place. Walking back out into the main entry, she made sure to clear out some room in her saddlebags for everything from special threads to fruits and spices. After a quick glance to the book resting at her workstation, she picked it up as well and trotted out the door.

---

In the town square, the day lumbered to the trailing end of its peak, and the crowd lessened just enough to the point where it proved no challenge to navigate while also not drawing direct attention to a certain unicorn moving through it like water. Rarity swept herself from stall to stall, paying no mind to how many she visited. Bits exchanged hooves for peaches here, sage there, and numerous threads of varying value anywhere else—everything from simple silken threads to mage-spun cashmere ones. As her saddlebags slowly filled with substances ranging from pricy and rare to abundant and cheap and her coin purse slowly began to feel more and more like a sack of air, Rarity considered how she was to run her business while doing her more important work. Perhaps... Yes, that would work! It would work so, so very well...

When the sun sank down just before dinnertime, Rarity made her last stop of the day at a traveling blacksmith’s stall. His smile broadened when she approached. “Why, hello there miss! How can I help you today?”

With a devious grin, Rarity unleashed a barrage of jargon that could only be described as uncanny. After the stallion recovered from the sudden onslaught of phrases, he reached into his stock and pulled out two large, circular stones. “Here you go, miss, just as requested, although that’s pretty specific for a mare such as yourself. What could you need them for?”

Rarity simply turned a slight amount, showing her cutie mark to the stallion. “To cut gems, of course! Along with any other metals or materials I use to make my dresses and the occasional suit.” With a calculated swish of the tail and sway of the hip, she casually walked in the general direction of her boutique, the grinding stones in the pull of her light blue magic. They easily weighed a good twenty kilos each, and she felt the drag they caused as she trotted back to her home. Upon arriving there, she went about the house, stowing everything she bought and making a small list of the places she stored them. Then, she quickly made her way right back out and toward the library.

---

Twilight Sparkle answered the door to see Rarity, smiling beatifically and positively glowing with excitement. “Twilight! So good to see you awake and alert! I tried to come by this morning, but you were a little... unconscious.”

Grinning sheepishly, Twilight stepped aside to let Rarity in. “Well, let’s just say that I ended up staying awake a bit too late and my alarm got mysteriously destroyed while I was sleeping.” She grinned sheepishly and looked off to the side, suddenly very interested in the frame of the door. “Yeah, that’s it.” After smoothly sliding the door shut, Twilight picked up a duster and resumed her work cleaning the library shelves. “So, Rarity, how are you?”

Rarity carefully deposited her saddlebags in a small cubby made for that purpose. “I’ve been well, Twilight. I just recently completed a rather long shopping list.” She paced up toward Twilight, stopping within reach of the librarian. “As to why I’ve made a visit, which you’re no doubt wondering right now, I want you to teach me some advanced magic. Things such as teleportation and shielding, seeing as how it’s served you so much use already. I thought that a time may arise when we’re separated during some violent event. Given the tendency of disaster to follow us around, it would be excellent knowledge to have.”

Twilight momentarily stopped dusting to turn to her friend. “You know, Rarity, you didn’t have to explain it away. It’s only natural for a unicorn to want to know more magic. I’d be perfectly happy to teach you! In fact, we can have the first lesson right away!” With control and poise befitting an exceptionally powerful unicorn, Twilight drew objects and books from multiple places around the library, eventually ending with the amalgam of material stacked neatly on a desk.

Taking a deep breath, Twilight launched into an impromptu lecture on the inner workings of advanced magic. Rarity slid into a sitting position watched her friend talk about the material with such knowledge, such insight, that she became enraptured in a subject she previously might have regarded as somewhat dull. Needless to say, Twilight’s deep enthusiasm and natural pace pulled her into the teachings, showing her a world of magic that she never considered before. After perhaps half an hour of intense learning, Rarity slowly fed magic into her horn, approaching her growing understanding by aiming to observe the content directly.

Twilight took notice and smiled warmly, halting her lecture in order to witness the process of discovery that she herself undertook some years back when the Princess herself explained the nuances of advanced magical theory to her. Taking a seat next to Rarity, Twilight lit up her own horn and heightened their perceptions of the magic around them, proceeding to manipulate the currents and spin them around in intricate patterns. After considering the best way to explain the next portion, she continued the lesson. “All magic around us works like fine threads of spider silk drifting in a summer breeze. Unicorns can draw on that magic and weave the threads together to ensnare objects, lifting and moving them with barely any effort at all. The basic teachings usually skip out on the detail, instead using euphemisms that help children to harness their natural abilities without having to understand the concepts at work. However, advanced magic works in ways pertaining to these threads—understanding them can increase more than just precision and finesse; in-depth knowledge of magic can increase power and stability as well.

“Not only that, but those threads of magic allow pegasi to fly as well. Their wings catch hold of these threads, giving them a much more direct control of their velocity. Pegasi can come to a complete stop from immense speeds in a very small amount of time and vice versa. Furthermore, the threads can pull in any direction, giving pegasi a very small turn radius and allowing them to perform complex acrobatic feats while airborne. In all reality, this way of looking at magic can explain how more advanced spells work. For instance, weaving the threads into a fabric can create shields of varying shape and structure, although rounded shapes are preferred due to their ability to deflect rather than simply absorb. It’s much easier to make a spell or object change direction than to halt it completely, after all.” Rarity nodded, somewhat absentmindedly, as she played with the delicate little bits of magic stringing their way around the room. She noticed that the closer they got, the more they tended to lazily drift toward her horn, gathering on it in clumps and masses. She glanced over at Twilight, who simply watched. Rarity noticed that the threads on Twilight’s horn followed the spiral, coating it evenly and smoothly with gossamer ambient magic. With a silent sigh, Twilight darkened her horn and the magic slipped off it, returning to the soft currents swirling about the air. Rarity focused on her own horn, trying to straighten the threads out and get them to fall in order like Twilight had.

“No no, don’t force it.” Twilight put a hoof on Rarity’s shoulder. “Instead of trying to get the magic around you to form to your current, why don’t you try forming your magic to its current?” As she turned and walked away, Twilight grinned when she heard the gasp.

Rarity’s eyes widened as she watched the magic naturally curl into the spiral of her horn, resting naturally in the miniature leylines already laid out for their order. It’s so deceptively simple. I merely have to give in and let my own magic follow the natural magic. It’s... elegant, relinquishing complete power to gain a subtle control.

She gently reached out, the tentative magical hoof of a filly reborn in a world of new magic grasping at the tiny wisps of delightful energy lazily coasting around and through the room. As she let her magic flow freely, Rarity noticed the threads aligning and shifting, swirling about in a slow, cosmic dance that made its own tempo and fashioned the steps out of pure whimsy. Magic gently slid across and into her body, weaving this way and that, currents of infinite possibility holding in an immortal, timeless state until a creature came along and made that change into reality. In a moment of pure vision, the relatively miniscule unicorn caught a glimpse of the vast ocean of reality itself unfolding and waiting before her eyes, keeping itself in limbo until willpower caused it to take shape.

As quickly as the sensation came it left, Rarity’s horn fading into darkness and her deep sense of longing reaching out to the very real beauty of existence. Getting the urge to work further on her project with this newfound knowledge, she pulled herself out of a trance as she stood to leave. “Thank you so much, Twilight. I learned quite a bit. When do you think I’ll be able to come by again for another lesson?”

Twilight wore a pure smile, still enlightened and very much so wistful for the amazing view that only came when a unicorn first learned about advanced magic. She simply chuckled and reshelved some of the books she drew references from. “How about the day after tomorrow? Spike will be back by then, and he can make us a dinner. After all, you’re going to need to be well-fed starting next lesson.” She chuckled at the thought. “It’s still a little hard to believe, that I’m giving lessons on advanced magic. I thought I would only study it. I guess some things just happen.”

Rarity, having collected her saddlebags, stopped just short of the door. “You know, Twilight, I would venture to say that I can understand that better than the lesson itself. I’ll definitely be by then. See you, darling!” The door slid shut behind her, and Rarity slowly started on her way home through the deepening red of the evening sky.

She eased into the boutique, making sure not to hit anything as she moved through the dark rooms. Eventually coming to her own room, Rarity slid inside and lit up her horn. As she gazed at the swirling magic around her, she calmed her own influence and allowed the threads to find their own alignment. She felt her magic strengthen, and her horn grew visibly brighter. Imagining a needle, Rarity let her mouth hang open in awe as some of the strings wove together and became like a needle, complete with magic threaded through the eye. With a mind for exploration, Rarity manipulated the needle this way and that, pulling threads together and weaving them into a small patch of solid magic. As she continued to add thread after thread of ethereal magic, it slowly began to shine of its own right, bathing the room in a cornflower blue glow. When she reached out to touch it, Rarity felt the firm force of her magic stopping motion through the shield. With a happy sigh, she let the magic fall away. The miniature shield faded away and the world returned to its dark state. Oh, I could get used to doing magic like this. It’s definitely far more fluid and refined than that brutish way we were taught in early school.

Rarity flicked on the lights as she paced back into her workroom, picking up the old flight goggles Rainbow Dash dropped by earlier. They really were a mess—the leather wore thin in many places and tattered in others, compounded by the fact that the glass itself had lost most of its enchantments and teetered on the edge of completely shattering in the rings. “Oh, this simply won’t do. I’ll just have to make a new pair, completely from scratch!” Using some heavy silk thread and the durable fabric scraps still resting on the table from earlier in the afternoon, Rarity went to work fashioning a new set of goggles. The physical needle working the fabric pulled along with it magic that she imbued in every stitch of the material. After a good fifteen minutes of work, the straps lay complete. Taking note of the previous size of the glass, Rarity dug into the supplies she purchased earlier that day and withdrew a well-sealed box containing a sheet of solid lens material. With some specialty diamond-tipped tools and one of the grinding stones, she fashioned two smooth, new eyepieces. As she continued her work, Rarity drifted someplace else. Let’s see... There’s plenty of ways to imbue. Maybe I could try encasing the glass in a weave, or perhaps enhancing it with magic. Perhaps these threads could be used in other ways. I imagine I could create a spell with them and weave it into cloth, or perhaps even creating cloth out of the magical energy. It would lose much of its power, but it may be able to phase in and out of physical presence...

After an hour spent completing the goggles and fashioning them into an element of style and considering the depth of magic’s power, Rarity finally came to a stop directly in front of her project. With a newly opened mind, she set about her project, trimming here and spinning there, working tirelessly with a finely-tuned magical sense now spent developing a fine cloth. Her weaving intermixed with the mage-spun cashmere acquired earlier and the magic Twilight previously expounded before her very eyes. Thread by thread, Rarity continued toward a final garment that would serve her well in the coming performance.

Comments

[deathtap]

Oof. Some of your paragraphs are enormous.

I'll track this and see how you go along.

[LimeAttack]

1152272

Fixed, along with other ellipse troubles. Truth be told, that really is a somewhat obscure rule.

[Pokey the Unicorn]

Hey, new chapter! Will read soon.