Spellscribe

by Solaris Vult

Chapter 5: Arcane Science

The building was clear, and Harry’s nerves had calmed… She still hurt, but that Med-X stuff worked wonders, and the healing potion was mending her broken ribs nicely. She killed someone… The pony was crazy, trying to kill her... But she was still a living creature, she should have shot her in the leg, or destroyed her weapon... But that wouldn’t have stopped that pony’s friend, and the others would have killed them anyway… I did what I had to do… Did you, was it entirely necessary… These thoughts swam in Harry’s head making her dizzy.

“Hold up, got more mines here, Rosemary!” The Knight said. Rosemary, without a word, stepped up, his horn glowing pale red… Harry needed to learn how to do that, and with that strange ‘magic; they used, unlatched a pair of yellow discs from the floor, pressing a switch underneath them before placing them carefully into pockets on his robes.

Harry realized what had nearly exploded under her hooves, she should have seen that bomb, if she did, she would have been able to run away from those ponies, she wouldn’t have needed to kill them. They would have chased her, but she could have hid!

Harry was finding it weird how naturally thinking of herself as a ‘her’ was…

Eventually the group came to a stop outside a door, Rosemary went up to a blocky metal thing coming out of the wall, a computer terminal Harry quickly learned, “Harry, this could be useful for you, come up here and I’ll show you something!”

Harry complied, and trotted over to where Rosemary was using his magic to type something into the keyboard. “Alright, this door is locked behind a password, but there’s almost no way to know what someone two-hundred years ago used as a password, not unless there’s a old book, memory orb, or some form of note to give us that information… So, we need to be a bit clever.”

“Yeah?” Harry said, questioningly.

“All ministry, Stabletec, and government terminals use the same code, and they have a built-in back door to operate them!” Harry took that information in, why would you intentionally make it so your computers could be opened without a password! Sensing what she was thinking, Rosemary continued, “We think the government did this so they could spy on their own networks… Watch closely.”

Harry watched as Rosemary typed into the terminal, first, as he powered it up it said “Ministry of Arcane Science Property, password required.”

“MOM access requested, show password logs.”

“Ministry of Morale override command accepted, showing previously used passwords,” At that, a jumbled list of words and phrases filled the screen, Rosemary selected one, but the screen flashed “Incorrect Password, MOM notified of potential hacking,” Rosemary ignored this, returned to the start screen, and tried the process over again, he failed two more times until he found the right password.

“Aren’t you worried of this, mom, being told that you’re trying to get into this computer?”

“The Ministry of Morale is two-hundred years dead, anyone monitoring our activity is a pile of warped bones, or a shambling corpse, up in Canterlot… We just need to make sure we type everything correctly,” He typed a few more commands and the door opened, “You just need to be careful if the computer you’re trying to hack is connected to any automated security, some ponies took security so seriously that there are entire buildings rigged to explode if you get the password wrong…” Harry flinched, suddenly scared, “Don’t worry, as paranoid as the ponies of the past were, it works to our advantage, Pinkie Pie’s ministry had bugs on every terminal, and with the right commands, you can disable any security system from any terminal across the wasteland.”

With that, they walked deeper into the building, pocketing smaller bits of tech they found useful or valuable. Harry quickly found herself a pack-mule as she was instructed to help carry any trinkets they found. “Looks like the raiders never got this deep into the facility, we should be careful for automated security,” Knight Lightning Striker said.

“What exactly are we here for?” Harry asked.

Silver Heartstrings perked up “Oh, we’re here because of-” Rosemary and Lightning both sent her glares, “Never mind… That’s classified…” She finished dejectedly.

“We’re simply here to recover something this facility was constructing, it shouldn’t be bigger than a pony’s head,” The Knight said… A few moments passed before he shouted “Turret!”

Everyone reacted instantly, Harry found herself swallowed by a pale red-pink light as Rosemary threw her to the side, and everyone took cover behind walls and factory machinery as there came a bleep and then a horribly loud series of bangs from somewhere up ahead. Lighting Striker leapt out from behind cover and replied with his own “BOOM!-BOOM!-BOOM!”

---

After what felt like hours, the team finally found what they were looking for and returned back to the Stable, Harry never saw exactly what it was they were looking for, just a large metal box that it apparently had been inside, and soon they were back outside of the building, trekking back.

The sun was setting… Sorta… It was hard to tell where the sun was behind all those clouds, but it was certainly getting dark by the time they got back to Stable 107, and Harry’s legs were sore from all the walking, the Med-X had worn off long ago and her side hurt. Rosemary spent the trip showing her how to levitate stuff with her horn, it was… Weird, she found herself with all sorts of complex patterns floating in her mind, Rosemary had said these were the spell patterns, the unicorn’s brain automatically forming them from information regarding the spell they wished to cast, like a compiler turning readable lines of code into something a computer can understand… Whatever that meant… Was that why his Aunt and Uncle always said magic didn’t exist, was that why Humans couldn’t use magic, because their brains weren’t able to make these patterns? It hurt her head to think about, but as she visualized these patterns, and applied them to objects, they were enveloped in blue halos of energy, and floated around, the heavier the object the harder Harry found it to keep the pattern still in her mind, and the patterns quickly shattered, dropping what she was trying to hold… It took a much more physical toll on her as well, as she felt some strange energy deep within her chest being drained away by each spellcasting, at one point she nearly fell over from the exhaustion, and Rosemary caught her, saying “I think that’s enough spellcasting for today, don’t worry, you’ll get better and more efficient with your casting, and as you grow older your biological reserves of magical energy will grow bigger.”

As they returned, another group of Steel Rangers were leaving, with them were the bright blue colors of Victory Flame… Slightly disturbing Harry, she was carrying a pair of assault rifles strapped to her side, “Hey! Harry! I see you’re still alive!” Victory waved at her… Harry half-heartedly waved back.

They passed back into the Stable, and Harry settled herself on one of the bunks in the filly’s room as she listened to the radio… The comforting soft jazz ended as the voice of the DJ came on… Harry kept an ear out but mostly just wanted to sleep… The image of that raider with the bat still fresh in her mind… The DJ was going on about how a stable-pony had apparently died in a train crash near a place called Appleloosa… Harry drifted off to sleep, dreams of raider-ponies chasing her as she ran atop a train car about to crash… As the train went over the hill, and a raider took aim at her head, she woke up, sweaty and curled into a ball.

She quickly got dressed in her patchy scribe robes and trotted around… It was still night, at least she thought it was still night. There weren’t that many other ponies trotting around right now… She sat on one of the catwalks overlooking the Stable’s atrium, she had grabbed a few sheets of paper and a pencil as she did, drawing always calmed her down after one of Vernon’s beatings… She lifted the pencil in her magic… It was weird, seeing it float around at her command… She made it zoom one way, then another, it took some of her power to make it move, but barely any at all to make it stay floating in one place. She twirled it around, that took much more power, but she still had plenty, this wasn’t going to deplete her magic any time soon… Weird how that worked, she could feel the magic inside her, slowly growing, like a bucket slowly being filled by a tap, except that tap was only a tiny bit open, she felt like she could twist it open a bit more, if only she knew how…

She lowered the pencil to the paper and started to sketch, the only images in her mind the gruesome raider, the train she heard about on the radio, and the strange symbols in her mind feeding the power that kept her pencil afloat… She didn’t want to see that raider anymore, so she began sketching out a train, chugging along a mountain, with vague pony-shapes all over it… But then as she tried drawing it, she lost focus of the pattern in her mind, and her pencil clattered to the floor as the magic holding it failed.

“Hmm…” She huffed, annoyed. She picked up the pencil again and started another sketch, she wasn’t paying much attention to what she was drawing, but, after a few moments of mindlessly sketching, the paper started to glow… She had drawn the symbol in her mind, a complex series of circles, lines, cross-shapes, rings, curves, spirals… As she touched the pencil to the paper, the paper glowed slightly… Weird. Was the paper magic now? She placed her horn against it, and the paper started to float, even after she released her horn the paper stayed still in the air for a few moments before the glow died and it fell back down… Huh...

“I see you grasp the concept behind talisman production.”

A scribe-mare walked up, one Harry didn’t recognize. “Huh?”

“Talismans, small chunks of metal or crystal inscribed with spell-patterns, they basically work as an artificial horn, only, without being connected to a brain, they can only cast a single spell… Whichever pattern is physically built into them, all sorts of arcane tech uses them.”

“Cool… I guess…”

“Yep…” The scribe paused, in thought, “You should talk to Shockweld if you want to learn more, he’s a bit of a genius when it comes to making talismans, he’s mostly down in the engineering bays, fixing the magical components in the reactors, water purifiers, and air purifiers… Sometimes he’s also fixing stuff like broken energy weapons, he could certainly use the extra help.”

“I’ll think about it…” Harry certainly thought the idea was unique, and it would help him learn a bit more about what this magic really was.

“Oh, and, quick warning, in two more days the foals are being taken out on some more field-work.”

Harry’s heart sank at that, the scribe trotted away, but Harry couldn’t help feeling nervous at the thought of going back out there again… She needed to learn magic, and fast, it seemed like the only thing that could really help her out in the wasteland… The thought of that stallion raider with the bat, ready to bash Harry’s head in came back… And she quickly collected the paper and pencil, putting them back where she found them, and soon she marched off toward the stairs, following the signs that said “Engineering”

---

Shockweld had placed a gun on the table, centimeters from Harry’s nose, Harry gulped, “Well, you wanted to learn more about magic, first you need to learn telekinesis, and I find there is no better practice exercise than this.”

“W-What do you want me to do…” Harry carefully said, looking at the revolver.

“Disassemble it, and reassemble it.”

“R-Really?”

“Yes… Here are the tools you will be needing,” He continued, dropping several screwdrivers of various sizes on the table, “Later we will be practicing with disassembly without conventional earth-pony tools, but for now, these will make it slightly easier.”

Harry was nervous, but he took the screwdriver in his magic and tried removing one of the screws connecting the handle to the revolving chamber, Shockweld watched in slight disappointment as Harry had difficulty trying to hold the screwdriver… Soon he got it into the slots in the screws and twisted, but all that did was make the entire gun twist.

“Hold the revolver steady as you unscrew.”

“Sir-” Harry began, “How exactly do I hold two things at once, I don’t think I can hold all of this while making only the screwdriver spin.”

“It’s simple, just try…”

“Sir-”

“Try…”

Harry did so, holding the revolver and the screwdriver in the same magic field, and tried to twist, but again, everything moved, not just the screwdriver. “Don’t hold everything in the same field, even a newborn unicorn foal knows that,” Sparkweld scolded.

Harry “Perhaps if you could actually show me how!”

“You do not need my help in this, it is simple… Just keep on trying until you get it.”

Harry looked at the gun and the screwdriver, and tried to pull his magic apart without pulling the gun apart with it, but all that happened was his telekinesis failed completely.

“Try again.” And so… Harry kept on trying. Eventually, after what felt like hours of failure, he succeeded in splitting the magic between two targets… He formed two separate telekinesis spells in his mind, one on the screwdriver, the other on the handle of the revolver, he ended up making the gun spin instead of the screwdriver, but it had the same effect, the screw came out. “Poor performance, but at least you succeeded, just remember to actually make the screwdriver spin next time… That is all the time I have for you today, keep the screwdriver and gun, I want all the pieces disassembled by next morning, and if you lose a single piece you’ll be sorry… Got that.”

Harry only nodded as the stallion trotted off.

Comments

[Ranakastrasz]

It's been a while since I read Fallout Equestria, so I am unsure if Littlepip was believed to have died from that train derailing or not. Hence not sure if this is an AU where Littlepip dies, throwing everything further off the rails. Either could be fun, due to the story's uniqueness.

[Solaris Vult]

10814186
Littlepip was temporary thought dead, she's still alive, just near the ruins of Cloudsdale currently.

[Ranakastrasz]

10814218
Ruins of Cloudsdale? Like piles of junk and other non-cloud material on the grouns under where iy got dissipates?

And alright. Makes sense.

[Solaris Vult]

10814279
Yeah, in the original FO:E, after the train crash, Littlepip wandered off toward an area that was infested with ghouls, and mostly just a lot of vehicles and broken equipment, that was everything on cloudsdale before it collapsed and fell to the ground.

[Josiador]

Wow, I was not expecting another update so soon! This is great!

We're going to get timeskips, right? Because I can't wait to see Dumbledore's reaction, and I don't think we need to see the entire two years she spends in the wastes before she turns 11.

[Solaris Vult]

10814323
There will be timeskips, but there are a few important events I'll need to cover (Like the war with the Enclave during the third act of FO:E)

[Josiador]

10814636
That makes sense, and what side in the steel ranger split her chapter takes would change everything.

[Clopian26]

New chapter already