Vacation for Three Please

by Blues Rider

8: The Mirror

Twilight bent down on her front hooves and examined the large brown book in front of her. Her horn shimmered its usual purple glow and she dragged open the heavy front cover of the book. Inside the contents page was illuminated by beams of orange sunlight that streaked across the room. It was getting late.

The contents page read as follows:

The Broken Art of Magic
By Starswirl the Bearded

Contents:

She knew the book well. Twilight had studied it heavily in her first year at Celestia's school. It was typically considered a grumpy rant against the uncouth use of magic by unicorns he labelled as "careless, unskilled pansies". However it did contain many philosophic and practical lessons for those looking to study high level, well refined magic. She studied the contents page.

1. Introduction
2. Prospects of the Sorcerer
3. The Art of Magic
4. A Brick is a Brick, Don't Refine it
5. Enchanting, Shields & Meadowbrook
6. The Art of Practice
7. The Safe Space
8. The Public Flauntation
9. My Work
10. Link Your Monsters To Your Spells
11. Magician's Culture
12. The Art of Refinement
13. Proper Care & Diligence

.IX

Nothing seemed unusual or different to her standard issue of the book. So for a moment, she left the book, and re-examined everything else in the large room. The sunset blazed into the crystal castle, shrouding the bookshelves lining the curved back wall.

The mirror was the only powerful artefact housed in the room. No Alicorn necklaces or unfinished spells that might have been accidentally used or become sentient. Twilight felt the unsuspecting brown rug beneath her hoof, examining the hardy texture.

"Any ideas Twilight?" Starlight pressed, hoping for a confident answer, knowing she wouldn't get one.

Twilight shook her head. "Nothing in the book immediately stands out to me apart from the fact that Starswirl wrote the book, and Starswirl created the mirror." She replied, still examining the problem in her head. "It would be a lot easier if I knew what was happening on the other side." That spiked a thought. She cantered over to the end of a self and pulled out three books, laying them onto a side table.

"Have you seen any of these journals glowing or buzzing?" Twilight directed the question to Trixie who perked up and cantered over to Twilight to investigate.

"Sorry Twilight, I don't think I have." Trixie replied. Starlight joined them around the table as Twilight opened one of the books and turned about half way through to the last diary entry.

"Oooohhh, Sunset's journals? I always wanted one of these." Starlight recognised the cutie mark emblem on the side of the books, the familiar mix of yellow sun and purple star. "Anything there?"

"It doesn't look like it, the last entry is Sunset confirming the pick up time for the girls' holiday." Twilight replied disappointed and curious. Twilight trotted over to the mirror. "I wonder if it'll even work while the mirror is in this state."

In front of Twilight stood the grand mirror portal to the human world. Only it was no longer a mirror. She touched it with her hoof, it felt cold, like glass. Glass coated with thick bands of opaque colours. Bands of purple, blue, orange, yellow, white and lilac streamed across the surface at random angles. It was no longer the jell like texture she had become accustomed to.

She examined Starswirl's masterpiece, now encased in her own device. The four thin tesla rods above her head arched silently away from Sunset shimmer's very first diary; the light brown book with Celestia's cutie mark which sat centrally above the mirror. She examined the magic weave to her right. Without the thin sliver of magic keeping it turning, the device seemed ominously quiet.

Twilight reflected about the creation of such a device. Starswirl's venturing into other dimensions was one of his greatest feats of magic, yet he never fully understood this work before the Pony of Shadows appeared in Equestria.

However there was no time to ponder upon this. Moments later a tapping sound came rushing down the corridor behind them. She turned to see the perpetrator of the galloping steps to be greeted by a bright yellow and blue streak darting through the door and then sliding across the polished crystal floor.

Sunburst came sliding to a comically timed stop just before hitting the bookcase. "Hi Everypony!" He turned to greet the room. "Princess Twilight," he addressed, "how goes the mirror problem?"

His comic style entrance lifted the mood in the room, and before Twilight could reply, Sunburst gasped, "Oh my." Twilight gave him a grimace back.

"It's pretty bad Sunny," Starlight interjected into the conversation, "we don't really understand what's going on."

"It looks like the veil membrane has crystallised." Sunburst instantly analysed, not taking his eyes off the curious sight of the rainbow mirror.

"I mean that's exactly what I was thinking." Trixie sourly mocked from the corner of the room. She was heard, but mostly ignored.

"I'm so glad you're here Sunburst, there's not really much on Starswirl's portal experiments. We're going to have to do some serious research." Twilight greeted him, taking a step away from the mirror. She cantered next to him and turned to look at the mirror.

"Oh Great!" Trixie mocked sarcastically. "Research." The line of ponies stood looking at the mirror, each attempting to decide what to do next. Trixie attempted to calculate whether she'd be noticed if she sneaked out to get tacos.

"And you have no idea what caused this?" Sunburst asked.

"None, we don't know what happened to the other side either." Twilight replies.

"It wasn't me." Trixie added shamelessly.

"We know it wasn't you Trix, don't worry." Starlight comforted her friend.

"Ah good. So where do we start?" Trixie asked clueless.

Sunburst turned around to the satchel that had just fallen off his back. "Well I decided to bring my copy of 'Starswirl; definitive timeline volume four'. If there's anything about mirrors, or portals, or other dimensions, it'll be in here." Sunburst's yellow horn lit up and the book floated out of his satchel and onto the carpet in front of the group.

It was wrapped in a protective cellophane cover, despite its apparent old age. "I've never read it, but I understand it's one of the most complete biographical accounts there is. I believe it was written before Princess Celestia & Luna's coronation. It's so rare I didn't want to damage it." He explained, pealing open the plastic. "What do you think is the best place to start?"

"Sirens." Twilight said definitively.

"Oh?" Sunburst questioned, carefully opening the cover of the book with his hoof.

"The second time I visited the other world, there were three Equestrian sirens who had been banished there by Starswirl. So we know he was capable of using portals by that point. If we can find that event, maybe we can work forwards or backwards from his research." Twilight thought back to the second time she had visited the realm. "I think I actually left that book in this basement somewhere nearby."

"That could be useful too, what are we looking for?" Sunburst asked. "I'll help you look."

"It was a Historical Equestria textbook." Twilight thought back, scanning the shelves for a clue where to start, trying to remember the last time she reorganised these shelves. "Volume three I believe." And with that. Sunburst turned to the back shelves and started scanning row by row.

Trixie stood in the centre of the commotion, examining the mirror and it's surrounding contraption. Something looked wrong to her, and not just the mirror's surface. She piped up a thought as Twilight flapped her wings and started examining the top shelves.

"Is that contraption supposed to be a part of the mirror?" She asked curiously, referring to Twilight's tesla-coil based invention behind the mirror.

Starlight replied, annoyed Trixie wasn't searching the bookshelves. "Twilight created it to keep the portal constantly open. Now come help us search."

"Yep." Twilight replied proudly from above. "So you did listen." She teased Starlight.

"Of course, haha." Starlight chuckled. "Come on Trixie." She tried coaxing her friend. But Trixie was stood in the centre of the room in thought.

"It's just, if Twilight created that contraption, surely she knows how the mirror works?" She asked a valid question. Twilight felt her cheeks to heat up slightly as she started to blush. Starlight looked up to her old mentor and noticed she had stopped scanning the shelves.

"Weeeell..." Twilight thought. "I didn't really think about it too much, I just reverse engineered the magic in Celestia's diary." She replied guiltily, feeling their eyes settle upon her. "IT WAS AN IMPULSE MOVE OKAY!" She yelled, embarrassed by the lack of care and attention she paid at the time. Everybody chuckled.

"And I thought I was the only one who acted on magical impulses." Starlight mocked.

"FOUND IT!" Sunburst yelled from the back of the room. He gently removed the large book, identifiable by the large golden unicorn head on the front cover. He also floated the table into the centre of the room and placed the book down. Sunburst gathered Starswirl; definitive legends timeline vol.four and The Broken art of magic, placing them into a pile with Sunset's old diaries.

Everypony gathered around. Twilight quickly turned to the page about Sirens. Sunburst cross-referenced the approximate timing of the events with the Starswirl definitive timeline. Twilight cast a spell, only instead of a glow, her horn crackled thin black lines around it. She extended the crackling around sunburst. To Starlight and Trixie, both ponies seemed to loose their colour. They started to hover and shrink simultaneously, and their coats turned to white. Now they were only definable by pencil thin outlines of their bodies. Moments later, they were on the page of the book, then they disappeared into other pages.

Trixie prodded The Broken Art of Magic on the pile in front of her.
"So what exactly are you about then?" She questioned the inanimate object.

"Let's see if there's anything more to it." Starlight said, opening the book between her and Trixie.

"Oh I thought Twilight would have made you read it, seeing as Starswirl wrote it."

"Well I manage to get away with reading everything in the upstairs library. I've never really looked at the books down here." Starlight explained, turning to a random page. "I manage to avoid the extracurricular reading." She joked.

They took a look at the randomly selected page. It happened to be the start of a chapter and read as follows.

3: The Art of Magic

3.1: Imagining Procedures

I don't know how to talk to ponies if they don't recognise magic as an art and a science.
All too often I meet ponies, pegasi and even unicorns who take the benefits of magic for
granted. A baker will mix the ingredients without using their hooves, a librarian can
hover a whole shelf of books off the floor and reorganise them without making a mess,
or a window cleaner can levitate a scraping device reaching the highest windows with ease.

There are no seeming to our use of spells, and yet all too often I find ponies cursing
the use of spells, especially mono-reactive ones. A pony can bake, why should a unicorn
try to finesse the art using magic. This kind of self-impotent comment pains me. It
removes any soul from the magic user, discriminates them, tarnishes the skill that can
take decades to master.

But this anger towards unicorns is not always badly placed. Their discrimination is based
off of experience, and all too often I find unicorns out there in Equestria who mistreat
the gift of magic. A unicorn's incompetence is enough to turn a single pony against
an entire race of pony. It disgusts me.

.61

"Wow. That's a harsh slap in the face." Trixie commented. Feeling a little guilty of her long, long lost past.

"Hmmmm..." Starlight thought for a second. "let's find another page."

She skipped forward a good chunk of book to a page in the middle of chapter nine.

9. My Work.

as opposed to working within structure. As a result I undertake most of my research
solo. When learning to weave multiple stereo-reactive spellforms into one simple
mono-reactive spell, you cannot risk an incompetently placed "and" or overthought
phrase.

The only problem with working solo, is that it presents you with no opportunity to
get an independent review of your work to check for mistakes. This is why I created
the 'temporary amnesia' spellforms. To allow myself to check my own work in
a variety of different ways. A system I would have no need for if others were more
disciplined in following strict systematic structure.

However, an unexpected bonus is that I managed to create another new form of SLAM!

Starlight closed the book so suddenly Trixie jumped back, her whole body twitching in shock. "STARLIGHT! Some warning would be nice." Trixie yelled.

"I think I figured it out." Starlight replied.

Just at that moment, a crackling came from the open book opposite them. Pencil lines like lightning forks shot out of the book and spun themselves into the form of Twilight and Sunburst.

"I found a period of time before the sirens where Starswirl was working on creating or accessing limbo!" Sunburst announced pleased. He had barely finished materialising. "It seemed like he was planning to use it as a cost free prison or hidden laboratory." His excitement was undercut by Twilight's silence.

"Twilight?" Starlight asked concerned. It took her a few seconds to respond.

"How have I never come across this book before Sunburst?" Twilight questioned. She looked shocked.

"Oh well I believe there are only two known copies." Sunburst replied proudly. "This one, that I found abandoned in an unused warehouse, and one hidden in Canterlot library, probably in the restricted section somewhere."

"What did you find Twilight?" Starlight asked cautiously. She knew not to push Twilight when she was absorbing information. After moments of anticipation, Twilight seemed ready to reply.

"Apparently...." Twilight started, turning to stare at the mirror. "This isn't the only portal Starswirl created." Twilight still tried to process exactly what that meant.

"Huh?" Trixie let the sound fall out of her mouth while Starlight and Sunburst merely became confused. Twilight made her way around the mirror to examine the tall, silent object. It suddenly seemed much more mysterious, more ominous, more significant somehow. Twilight turned back to the group.

"When Starswirl discovered the Sirens weren't banished in limbo he tried to discover where they had gone. He created these portals to figure out what he had done, where the spells could lead." She explained with great concern. "Each portal was unique. Not all were mirrors, some were walls, statues, doorways, tabletops. But he found mirrors the easiest to interact with. He created hundreds of portals in the Canterlot basement, every one lead to a different world, but he never found the Sirens."

Sunburst was a gasp and Starlight looked concerned. Trixie seemed to be concentrating very hard. Twilight continued. "That came from a source close to Princess Luna, but I've been through the basements and they certainly aren't there now. I'm no wiser about opening the mirror, but we need to find any remaining research Starswirl left behind about these mirrors."

"Mmmhmm." Sunburst agreed, but was unable to use words while processing these new facts.

"We need to get to the Canterlot Archives now." Twilight started to charge up a teleport spell, she was acting on pure impulse.

"TWILIGHT WAIT!" Starlight called. She fired a neutralising spell at Twilight's horn disabling the teleport spell. "I've found something." She hoped Twilight would stop and listen. Twilight seemed slightly stunned from the disabling, so she continued. "I believe this is a friendship problem."

"A friendship problem? But how? We haven't had any of those since the new tree of harmony grew."

"The mirror. When I tried to restart it with my own magic, it shot a beam straight at this book by Starswirl. If you read closer, he's really angry, and lonely because he didn't integrate friendship into his work. You remember what he was like when he returned from limbo. What if the mirror is trying to communicate to us."

"Communicate what?" Trixie asked. That stumped Starlight a bit.

"I.. I don't know. Maybe that friendship is missing over there at the moment, maybe it needs to be found, I don't know. But the mirror has been in this castle a long time now, we know friendship magic works over there. What if it's all connected?" Starlight theorised.

Twilight took a deep, focusing breath, and let it out slowly.

"Maybe you're right." She considered for a second. "Trixie, why don't you go with Sunburst to the archives, see what you can find. I'll message Spike, let him know you're coming and he'll give you access. We can stay here," She indicated to Starlight, "And go over some old friendship problems, maybe we'll find something we can use."

"No time to lose!" Sunburst agreed, coming to terms with all they had learnt in the past few minutes. He trotted around the table to Trixie and lit up his horn. "Already on it." With that, the light of his horn bathed the room in green light as he and Trixie teleported away.

Twilight quickly grabbed some scroll paper from one of the book shelves, scribbled a letter detailing Sunburst's security pass to allow him into all sections of the library. Twilight's horn lit up and dissolved the scroll into a stream of purple particles ready for Spike.

Then she and Starlight turned to look to one another.

It was going to be a long night.

---

On the other side of the portal, a dimension away, human-Twilight Sparkle put her hand on the cold, hard concrete portal. The rain beat off the coat that kept her dry, but soaked into her bare hands as she examined the portal.

The surface was solid, and Twilight took a step back to examine it from a distance. She got her notepad out, using her body to shelter it from the rain and drew a sketch of the portal, covered in multi-coloured lines.

From a distance it looked like somebody had spray painted the lines onto the concrete surface, but Twilight knew they were more than just paint. They were barriers to another dimension and she was pretty sure she could decode what they meant with a little thinking.

She reattached the notepad pencil and pocketed it trading it for the car key in her coat pocket. She kept the mirror portal in her eyesight as long as possible on her journey to the car, cautious of any change or adaptation as she left. She continued to ponder the scenario as she got into her car and made the drive home through the rainy orange sunset.

Comments

[Blues Rider]

10391202
Thanks very much. Hope you enjoy the second half :)

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Oooooh. The plot thickens!