A Phoenix Beyond the Veil - The Philospher's Stone

by gerandakis

39 - Arcane Theory

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Arcane Theory

---

Looking over her shoulder, Sunset saw the diminutive stature of Professor Flitwick enter the office. "Ah, Miss Shimmer, you're already here."

"Yes Filius, we've already had a most enlightening conversation. Take a seat."

Nodding, Professor Flitwick sat down in the chair beside Sunset's looking between her and the headmaster. "Now, shall we get started?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Yes. Miss Shimmer, the reason Professor Flitwick is here, is because you've already shown the results of combining the magic of both our worlds in his class."

"Yes," Flitwick agreed. "Most impressive. I think it will be more or less supplanting Lumos once it gets out to the public. It may be a little more difficult to learn and cast, but the added versatility more than makes up for it. We mainly want to see what else we can learn from you. You did say you wanted to try combining the magic of our two worlds in more ways, have you made any progress?"

Sunset nodded. "Well, there is one more spell I managed to combine with its equivalent from Equestria before we came here. A spacial distortion spell, to be exact." When she received a pair of confused looks, she groaned. "Oh you wizards with your weird names. You'd call it an undetectable expansion charm."

The two men's eyes widened. After sharing a glance with the headmaster, Flitwick turned to stare at Sunset eagerly, an expression in his eyes that Sunset knew all too well. The hunger for knowledge. She smirked. "I happen to have something for that here." She reached into her bag, closing her eyes for a second, then pulled out the long, slender pack of the boys' tent they had used at Winsome falls.

Placing it on the ground, she drew her wand and set it up with a few quick movements. Putting her wand away, she smirked at the two men. "Wanna take a look?" With that she stepped into the tent, the two men eagerly following her.

Once inside, the two looked around, quickly exploring the large family home she had crammed into the tent with the help of the Equestrian craftsponies. Once they had gotten a good idea of its size, they drew their wands to analyze the spells. The results left them stunned. "How did you accomplish this?" Flitwick finally managed.

Sunset gave the two a quick rundown of how Equestrian spacial distortion spells worked compared to Earthen ones and how she had managed to combine them. They seemed quite impressed.

"Do you think a variability matrix could be attached to this spell?"

Sunset tilted her head, looking at Flitwick.

"Oh, right. A variability matrix allows something under the effect of an undetectable expansion charm to expand and shrink its interior space as needed. I'll have to give you a book on that later."

"I'll see if I can make it work. I know that a retrieval matrix works fine." Seeing that she was now the one receiving questioning glances, she quickly amended her statement. "A retrieval matrix allows you to retrieve whatever is stored in an item with a spacial distortion spell on it just by reaching in and thinking of whatever you want to retrieve. I've got one on my bag."To demonstrate, she reached into the bag several times, pulling out a different item each time and returning it immediately.

"Oh my, that sounds rather convenient."

"Indeed it does, Filius."

Sunset nodded. "It is."

Once they were back in the office and the tent was back in Sunset's bag, they all sat down around the desk once more. "Now was there something else you wanted to ask?"

The two men looked at each other. Dumbledore was ultimately the one to answer. "My professors tell me of your skill at apparition."

Sunset's eyes narrowed. "I've experienced apparition once. That was more than enough, I won't go through that again. I use a proper teleportation spell, thank you very much."

"Of course, my apologies. I do find your skill at, teleportation, was it?" When Sunset nodded, he continued with a winning smile. "Yes, teleportation most impressive. I wonder if you could perhaps teach us? I hear you've already taught the skill to Miss Granger."

"I could, but I think I can do you one better." She got up, stretching an arm out in front of her. "Philomena!" With a flash of flame, Philomena appeared on her arm, startling Fawkes from his sleep. "Could you take me to my suite at the palace right quick?"

In a second flash of flame, the two disappeared.

Flitwick turned to Dumbledore. "The windows into subspace were a nice touch, weren't they?"

"Yes. Hard to believe wizards haven't thought of that yet. It seems like such an obvious thing to do."

"It really does, doesn't it?"

With a third flash of flame, Sunset reappeared, Philomena perched on her shoulder and a book held in her hands. "Here we go. Now I just need to translate it."

Walking up to them, she placed the book on the table, and drew her wand, tapping the book with it. The two were startled and quickly cast visualization charms when the book began floating upwards, an identical binding jumping from it in a flash of teal.

Looking closer, Albus saw that the binding actually wasn't identical, he hadn't been able to read the text on the other book, but this one was written in English, identifying the book as Basic Arcane Phase Theory – Third Edition by Professor Graceful Warp, Canterlot Academy of Arcane Sciences.

The two watched as, in further flashes of teal light, page after page jumped from the original book to the translation, materializing into pages mid-flight. After a few moments, the light-show stopped and both books settled back onto the desk, where Sunset picked up the original, placing it in her bag and leaving the translated copy behind. "Here you go. That should teach you all you need to know for the basic teleportation spells. It even has a chapter on short range teleports even though they don't technically fall under arcane phase theory."

"What was that spell you just used?"

"A spell to copy books and writing with a translation matrix linked into it. I could use it to translate any text I can read into any language I know."

Dumbledore looked at her with interest. "And how many languages do you know?"

"Ten. Modern Equestrian, Old Ponish, Pony Latin," When the two professors looked at her incredulously she crossed her arms. "What? I didn't come up with the name! Anyway, then I know ancient and contemporary Thessian, Gryphonian, Minotaurian, Draconic and, since coming to this world, English and French."

"So you could translate this book into French?" The headmaster's eyes were twinkling.

"Sure. One moment." Sunset placed a finger to her temple for a moment then drew her wand again and tapped the book a second time. In short order there was a second one, this time in french. "There you go."

"Thank you. Olympe will be very interested in this."

"Who?"

"Oh. Of course. Madame Olympe Maxime, the Headmistress of the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic."

"I see. Now, was there anything else?"

Dumbledore seemed preoccupied with the book, so Flitwick answered. "I was hoping we could meet on weekends and see what we can do about combining the magic of our worlds."

Sunset nodded. "Sure. We can do that. When were you thinking?"

"Would Saturday after lunch suit you?"

Sunset considered the offer for a moment. "Sure, I can work with that."

Looking up from the book, Dumbledore looked at Flitwick. Sharing a glance, the two nodded, then he turned to Sunset. "Thank you, Miss Shimmer. That would be all for the time being." When Sunset turned to leave, he cleared his throat. "Miss Shimmer." When she turned around, he pointed a finger at Philomena. "Your phoenix."

"Oh right! Nearly forgot." Stroking a finger over Philomena's feathers, Sunset once more disguised her as an eagle. "Have a nice afternoon."

---

Sunset had only just arrived in the Gryffindor Common room and met up with Dean, Seamus, Pavati and Lavender, when the portrait of the Fat Lady swung open once more and the rest of her friends came in.

Seeing her, Hermione came over. 《Sis, there you are! What did Dumbledore want?》

Sunset smiled back, enclosing her into a hug. 《Not much, really. He just asked about your parents because Ollivander told him. I'll be teaching how to do that to Madame Pomfrey.》

《Who?》

《The School Nurse. Flitwick came by too, we'll be working on combing this world's magic with mine. Should be fun.》She chose not to mention the matter with Harry for the moment. She wanted to check in with the Princess first.

Lavender came up to them, looking slightly confused at hearing them speak in a different language. Still, determination was clear on her face. "So, when are we ...?"

She trailed off, but Sunset knew what she meant. "I could do it now, but it could be very dangerous if the spell isn't cast perfectly, so there is a lot of due diligence I'll have to do. I probably couldn't get through five of you before dinner."

Hermione nodded. "True. It does take a while and dinner will be starting soon." The Weasleys and Luna gave their own agreement, so the group spent another half hour in the common room, talking and taking care of some homework.

When they returned from dinner, it was finally time. The boys guided them to their own dorm after being assured that the safeguards on the girl's dorms weren't mirrored there. Sunset got a chair ready to cast the spell from.

Finally, everything was prepared. "Any questions?"

Sunset was surprised to see Hermione look over to her. "I've actually been meaning to ask this for a while, but how does this spell actually work?"

Sunset chuckled a little. "Funny thing that. I don't actually know exactly how it works. It uses something called conceptual magic. It allows me to see the brain and its functions as concepts and change them as concepts as well, the magic extrapolates from there. I don't exactly know all the details of how the magic does what it does, only how to get it to do them, and that's plenty complicated for my tastes."

"Like the difference between knowing how to drive a car and knowing how a car works?"

Sunset looked over to Dean, nodding. "Yeah, pretty much."

"Alright. I'll go first then."

Sunset nodded to him, then gestured to his bed. "Okay, take a seat then. Shifting into her equine form, Sunset hopped onto the prepared chair. "Brace yourself."

She closed her eyes to focus. After a moment, her horn lit up in its usual teal and she started to build the spell. The thin film of teal energy slowly reformed into a cloud of mist that flowed off her horn and through the air over to Dean. It momentarily surrounded his head, then seeped into it.

His expression was one of obvious discomfort, as usual for this version of the spell, but not of the excruciating pain the original version caused.

After repeating the process for Neville and Seamus, Sunset spent several more minutes scanning the three to ensure the spell was formed correctly and the first, subtle changes were happening as intended. Then, while she was at it, she also scanned Harry and Ron, to ensure their spells were still working as planned.

She frowned slightly when she noticed that the spells had less power left than she had estimated, she gave each of them a bit more to compensate.

Over in the girls' dorm, Sunset repeated the spell first with Lavender and then with Pavati. Finally, she jumped down from her conjured chair and dismissed it. She repeated the scans on the other girls minus Hermione, finding that their spells, similarly, had used up more energy than she had expected and compensating accordingly. Finally, she returned to human shape again and pulled the journal to the Princess from her bag.

She had a message to send.

Author's Note:

It's been a while since we had one of these, but this chapter once more warrants it. Have another edition of:

Lore of the Veil:

Delving into the Abstract – Conceptual Magic:

Magic comes in many forms. From destructive to healing, from light to dark, from magnificent to subtle and from obvious to obscure. But of all the many forms in which it comes, Conceptual Magic is easily the most abstract.

Used primarily to manipulate things which aren't common knowledge or not entirely understood by ponies, it is a vital tool in Equestrian science, used to push the boundaries of what is known. With its ability to simplify complex systems, it is also a vital tool for first diagnosis in medical magic.

Of course, everything that is learned from conceptual magic is a gross oversimplification. As such, any information gleaned from it, should be taken with a grain of salt and spells of this kind intended to manipulate systems, not just observe them, need to be carefully designed to ensure nothing can go wrong. That fact is what makes it so essential to ensure that these spells are cast without a single error every time.

It is also frowned upon to try creating such a spell without a complete understanding of the subject matter. So even if the caster doesn't entirely understand how their conceptual spell does what it does, somepony, somewhere, probably did.

Comments

[zachary12]

nice work.

[gerandakis]

9627937
The limiting factor (on both versions of the spell) is their complexity, not their power draw.After all, from a neural surgeon (or any surgeon) you would expect dexterity over strength, wouldn't you? Well, the spell fulfills the same role. The main thing the revised version costs more over the standard version, is time.

[Chronokat]

Can't wait for Neville to put two and two together and ask sunset if theirs anything she could do for his parents. Since she can literally look into heads and effect it with magic.

[A.P.O.N.I.]

Thank you for seperating the lore out into an author's note. Also,

Sunset onto the prepared chair.

is missing a verb.

[RolkFlameraven]

9627979
Oh, wow didn't even think about that. If asked hopefully Sunset would be smart enough to ask to bring them to Equestria to have someone a bit older and more learned take a look.

[gerandakis]

9627977
The reason that it took more magic is that that is just how much magic it takes and the estimate that expectation was based of was simply a bit off.

9627979
9628043
Would that work though? The condition of Frank and Alice Longbottom is the result of emotional trauma induced by severe pain. Physically, at least, there is nothing wrong with their minds. Now there may be a way to correct what happened to them, I certainly won't deny that possibility at this juncture, but it would certainly require a different spell.

[AWizardDidIt]

I gotta say it doesn't seem like Sunset should be allowed to perform what's effectively brain surgery on a bunch of minors without permission from their guardians.

[RolkFlameraven]

9628073
That it would, and it might be impossible. But after living under Discord you would think that Ponies would have come up with something to deal with the aftermath of his chaos and the uncaring trauma he inflicted his fist time around. They would be very old spells at this time, and maybe forgotten, but it would be a start to help them, perhaps.

It is why I hoped Sunset would take them home to have profreshionals take a look and not try to blunder in on her own. She should be smart enough to know better, and even getting them out of the hospital might be impossible, or at least have to go through Neville's Grann.

[gerandakis]

9628141
Perhaps not. But if she considers it safe and the subject of the spell is okay with it, perhaps she simply doesn't think it necessary to ask. After all, Molly and Xenofilius agreed without much issue. Assuming that others would likely act the same (that is, Sunset would assume that) she simply didn't see a reason to ask a question to which she already knew the answer. (Or thought she knew, at least)

[AWizardDidIt]

9628240
I suppose that's fine but honestly is everyone going to receive this treatment? At this point, there really is no reason why everyone at Hogwarts and possibly beyond doesn't have this done to them beyond Sunset just not wanting to which seems unlikely since she's happy to hand it out to people she's just met like it was candy.

[isheepzu]

9627979
He probably won't because the assumption is that it's a side effect of the Pain spell, not the minds natural response to torture.

[furryman]

Pony Latin

I pictured a language that turns everything into horse related puns , but that wouldn't work. Although that would explain the names of cities like Manehatten and Fillydelphia.

[Detsella Morningdew]

9648755

[Blue Streak]

It seems like this chapter needs editing. At the point where the chapter should end the story repeats itself.
Cool story so far.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

"Yes. Hard to believe wizards haven't thought of that yet. It seems like such an obvious thing to do."

Hey, people have had pets & doors forever but it took Isaac Newton to invent the Doggy Door (he owned a dog named Diamond).

He also blamed his dog for starting a fire that ruined his manuscripts. Yes people, Newton invented the excuse "The dog ate my homework."!