Chapter 73: Find the Celebrity
Silver Wing dropped through the stadium…
…and right into a Sarlacc pit, with tentacles reaching upward and claw-like teeth pointing down inward.
His heart leapt into his throat and he almost panicked long enough to fall into the gaping beak at the bottom, but he triggered his broomstick bones, and then the beak lunged upwards at incredible speeds and clamped above him, enshrouding him in damp, dank, disgusting-smelling darkness, at which point Silver Wing tried to teleport (fail), Apparate (fail), portkey (fail), panicked for half a second, then remembered another out and tried for the Astral Plane. (Success.)
Moments later, well before the WHAT?!?! had a chance to even begin to subside, he got the impression of a light knocking on his door – he didn't know he had a door – and the screen of his Astral Plane computer began flashing, along with a robotic voice saying "You've got mail".
Prince Horizon Wing-Verres took a few seconds to calm down and organize his terror-tinged thoughts, his inner-critic informed him that he's stared down Professor Snape and Dementors and a Mountain Troll and Tom Riddle, why is he afraid of a Sarlacc Pit of all things? And that helped him realize that he was being silly, that he'd probably just been the victim of a bogart or something, some kind of magic that preys on things he'd found scary as a child and just hadn't thought about in a long time.
Sane once more, he walked over to the computer screen and mentally commanded the mail to open. All it said was:
"Spoilsport.
Sincerely,
Figure It Out."
That insult sounded familiar, triggered a flash of recognition, and suddenly Harry suspected he understood who was responsible for the Sarlacc Pit. Who very well might have been the Sarlacc Pit.
After checking his own memories of earlier in the day for quick confirmation – he did not use any Astral Plane functions that might have guided him automatically to the answer, if any such function existed to sort through his subconscious for hints like that, because that would have been the kind of cheating that might lead to reliance on a crutch – he found the memory manually and listened to it.
"Feel free to trespass through my trachea whenever you want and without permission, strange creatures I've never seen before. There is no such thing as 'illegal' immigration. This is a safe space where everyone everywhere is welcomed into my rolling stomach with a wide-open, gaping clawed tentacle maw so that they can be brutally beaten in battle after battle. But if you give me a stomach-ache, or I give you a headache, I reserve the right to throw you up at my convenience, so try not to do that. Tah tah!"
Prince Horizon nodded in satisfaction.
He took a deep breath (because hopefully the bad smell wouldn't last long), and he left the Astral Plane.
He proceeded to fall through a fleshy tunnel out of a horror film, one that he could now observe with calm eyes that could appreciate the careful artistry it must've taken to achieve that effect.
After about fifteen seconds of horror-tunnel, there was a soft-looking inflated red spongy material beneath him in a cavernous, pulsing red room full of holes in the ceiling. He performed an air-cushion instead of just colliding with the ground.
The theme of horror-tunnel had not ended at the tunnel. It was maintained and applied to the cavernous room, and to the room's cavernous exit. The only odd thing out was the massive, flashing, cheerful, eye-catching, carnival-esque "Welcome to Circus" sign above the exit.
Many ponies and other Equinoids were falling through the red holes in the ceiling and landing on the red pad. Or they had already landed. And the ones who had already gotten their bearings were locking gazes to the only pony in the room with a glowing mane, who was helpfully drawing even more attention to himself by floating in the air.
Prince Horizon gave a powerful air buck backed by earth-pony-strength, rocketing himself towards and through the room's exit.
He heard a massive crashing sound behind him after he passed beneath the Circus sign, and glanced back to see that imposing iron doors seemed to have cut him off from everyone.
Now moving with slightly less urgency, he found the first private place he could – a perfectly normal-looking modern bathroom, cut into the walls of an otherwise grotesque hallway. He entered a stall, closed the door behind him, and said aloud, "Circus, I have a bathroom I need to be in. Er, not this one."
"Oh I know," said a disembodied voice that sounded like everything outside looked, except that the tone was cheerful, which made it creepier. "Fifty-five minutes, thirty-two seconds on the dot. I thought I'd have everyone play a fun little game in the meantime. A game called 'find the celebrity'."
"Without giving me any warning first?" asked the celebrity in question. "Isn't permission something you take into account? And consent?"
The disembodied voice gave a bark of hideous laughter. "Permission, no. Warning, no. That would've given you time to think and prepare, same as if I gave anypony else a warning. There's way more chaos and improv this way." Then there was a dramatic, sad-sounding sigh. "But I do take consent into account. If you want to be a scaredy-cat and refuse to play, fine, I'll spit you out. I just thought this would be better for you and everypony. Instead of, you know, going off to some solitary, secluded room and reading alone for an hour while you hurry up and wait for Time to catch up."
There was a pause.
"Describe the rules of the game," said the alicorn after a dramatic sigh of his own, mimicking Circus's sigh as best he could. "And the rewards. If you would please."
"Oh, I'd love to. Biggest rule," said Circus in the Royal Canterlot voice. (If Horizon hadn't been learned how to use the voice himself, he might not have been able to recognize that's what it was, given the grotesque accent attached to it.) "Numero uno, for non-alicorn chasers and watchers: Your memories of this event will be locked if you do not leave now!"
Oh. He must be saying that to the whole stadium. Or… the whole… Circus crowd. Actually, how many of the ponies in that big room had come from the stadium? Had ponies followed him through the clouds?
His past self (i.e. the first time sitting through Silver Wing's official return as a human) had been muted and blinded more heavily by Prince Excelsior, so as to not 'spoil any surprises', after which they had been teleported from the stadium, the Defense Professor concluded the tour, and everybody went back to Hogwarts. (The Defense Professor had later located him, given him a portkey, told him to go to a bathroom stall, turn into his pony form, and snap it, at which point he had appeared directly beneath an ongoing Wonderbolts performance, on the center-stage stadium platform, disillusioned from any onlookers, with a timer ticking down in front of him and the simple written instruction "Turn it once at exactly 0:00. Prepare yourself mentally."
He'd done that, appeared in front of the stadium during the moment of silence (no longer disillusioned), given his speech, one thing led to another, and here he is, listening to Circus give instructions to all his inhabitants at once, probably.
"So this means you can try your little heart out and use fun strategies that you might want to keep in reserve for later."
And that line must be just for Silver to mull over while everyone else decides if they want to stay, given that staying meant a memory lock. (Which can't be unlocked by the de-Obliviation ritual? He might have to look into that.)
"This is a Circus Challenge!" said Circus, seeming to address an audience again. "So as always this is your chance to earn way more Circus Tickets than usual, depending on performance. No mini-games or bonus challenges though. There is but one objective. Tag Silver Wing, you WIN! You can tag him physically or with a spell that makes him glow. Winners get a conversation with him. The more winners, the less time each winner will get to talk, unless they all agree to have one big conversation. That conversation will not be memory-locked. Silver Wing will be trying to avoid getting tagged. Winners can keep playing after they win, just in case they want a longer conversation, or to help others. If someone wins, the game resets and everybody's position in the maze gets scramble-ized. As the game progresses, players might start getting power-ups if it seems too one-sided. Nopony over seventeen may participate. Nopony under ten may participate. Standard combat spell rules. Please sign the terms and conditions on the dotted line, then get ready to get teleported into the map at random." No paper appeared before Silver. "And no Astral Plane, mister."
Taking just a moment to switch gears from 'listening and absorbing' to 'responding', he said, "Okay." Then, "What do I get for playing?"
"A score multiplier of times four for ticket-earning, instead of times two like everypony else. And one Hearth's-Warming wish if you make it to the final minute without getting tagged."
The 'Hearth's-Warming wish' part of the answer triggered a suspicion. "Did you consult with Prince Excelsior to arrange this?"
"Maaaaaybe. Or maybe he 'accidentally' let me see a memory or two from his mind so that I could come up with my own ideas from there, and he was not in any way, shape, or form expecting me to do this. What difference does it make in the end?"
"Hm… I have one last question then," he said, hiding the question behind his barrier of perfect Occlumency just like he had all the others.
"Shoot."
"Can I have my 'unicorn' helmet?"
"Are you sure you want to reveal your alias is connected to you?"
"You're locking their memories, aren't you?"
"Even if the explicit memories get locked, the effects of the experience will still be in their brains. If you get everypony's brain operating on Mithril equals Silver Wing as one of their primary assumed-as-true goal-orientation thoughts for a whole hour, even if the memories are locked afterwards, those mental patterns will be WAY easier for them to rediscover on their own. Even after the memory lock is in place, if they so much as think of the possibility that Mithril = Silver Wing AT ALL, their minds will just accept it as true, instead of doubting the thought like they normally would."
It took a moment to get over his sense of wow that's really useful information in general.
…
…
…
Okay, moment over.
Prince Horizon tried to imagine how he would feel if everypony suddenly knew Mithril = Silver Wing.
"Meh," he decided. "Autumn doesn't have any trouble. But you're right, I don't want to just reveal it outright. Tell you what, if you put giant illusion names over everybody, illusions that can be read no matter what angle you see them from-" like the Defense Professor's 'Tourists' illusion from earlier "-and I've got 'Mithril' above my head, and I'm wearing my helmet, and I use the mundane mane enchantment, who's to say I'll get caught at all? I'd much prefer a game of deception to a physical chase. You can broadcast the whole thing to the watching adults so they know what's going on. But make sure no outside communications reach the players, like Patronus charms or something. OH! And tags have to be deliberate. Winners have to actually suspect me, specifically, of being Silver Wing. They can't bump into me randomly around a corner, and they can't just systematically touch everypony they see because I might be wearing a disguise like a Changeling. If they're doing that, they have to actually reveal me, like by de-mundane-ifying my mane, or catching me in a lie or something. They have to know it's probably me, not just possibly me."
"I like it!" said Circus. "But fair warning, this is one of those special occasions. Players have an artificial way to talk to each other and find each other, if they want to be found. Not like it'll matter too too much. With how I set it up, they're basically competing to win the lottery. Of course, they still need skill to tag you after their insane luck lets them find you, but there's not much incentive to work together."
Hmmm... I can fix that.
A helmet appeared on the ground with the illusion Mithril hanging above it.
Silver Wing took off his headband, Prince Horizon inflicted mundanity upon his mane – a spell which would last even if he did something fulfilling to his Alicorn nature, like casting a Patronus – and Mithril put on his only piece of armor.
"Since you have a helmet, you can crash their communications, eavesdrop, lie, whatever you want."
The stall door slammed open. The toilet he was sitting on lurched forward, pushing him out of the stall. A sink stood up and wiggled itself out of the sink counter, then began shoving Mithril out of the bathroom with metal pipe limbs.
"Create as much chaos as you can, my fellow alicorn! The rules have already been conveyed to the other players."
The door slammed shut behind him.
"The hunt is on!"
Mithril immediately summoned his Patronus and began expanding it, making it large enough to encompass what felt like the edges of the massive crowd of lives clustered in one vast, physically challenged (in that it challenged physical concepts of space and geometry), all-encompassing life form.
"Oh, now that's just evil," Circus's voice observed, probably speaking to everyone.
"I warned them in my speech just earlier that Circus grounds are fair game," said Mithril to a potentially-watching – well, potentially-listening audience. "Blindness causes chaos, puts everypony at the same disadvantage and forces them to creatively adapt. Also, I'd like to see if anyone can develop a counter." Myself included, he thought.
"True dat. Good luck, chasers!"
First, he erected a simple shield that would prevent ponies from blindly stumbling into him or hitting him with an ordinary light spell.
Now for his own blindness…
He tried the first thing that came to mind, hoping it would work just like it had with the invisibility cloak. Since it was his Patronus, he should be able to see through it himself…
…nope. Not gonna be that easy.
Apparently, when you're blinded by your own happiness, it's not simple or straightforward to unblind yourself… actually, that works on a magically symbolic level too. Damn. Definitely not going to be that easy.
(And hadn't magical symbolism just been such a fun powerful wizard lesson from Tom Riddle which was totally not annoying and not insane and didn't violate his every sensibility as a scientist.)
Well, at least he can sense the locations of the sapient beings around him, and relocate if any are getting too close. Going by their slow hesitant movements, or their fast and abruptly-stopping movements that were probably them crashing into walls, none of those sapient beings seemed to be adjusting to the new challenge very well. Or at all.
"Mute this and my following sentence from the watching audience and records, please." Because the screens outside are on a five-second delay, to give you time to make requests like that. "Outside devices allowed?" Mithril asked aloud.
"Eh… sure, why not," said Circus. "Goes both ways though. Outside devices are allowed."
"I'm cool with that," Harry said. He was confident he would get more advantage out of the rule than his opponents would.
"Oh, but no super-invisibility cloak or other super-devices," said Circus. "But no Things of Power besides what I give you. Because, come on."
Hm… that still probably left him with more advantages than his opponents, so he didn’t object.
Mithril lifted up into the air onto his broomstick bones and silently flew to the ceiling, going slow enough so that when he blindly bumped into it, he didn't get dazed. It was a soft, spongy (damp, ew) material anyway. (Not smelly though.) So there wasn't much risk of, say, hitting his horn hard enough to send it into tingles, not unlike a funny bone, and losing concentration on the Patronus.
As for why he was going up, it was an old Circus cliché: ponies never look up. On the off-chance they find a way to see in the first place.
"If they don't come up with a counter in thirty minutes," said Mithril, "I'll dismiss it. But that counts as a 'win' for me, and the rest is me giving them a sporting chance."
Circus sighed. "Fine, but I'm megaphoning those words. Light a fire in their competitive spirits, you know?"
A sigh was made to match Circus's. "Fine." Then, in a whisper, "Don't communicate my following words to anyone, even the watching audience. This is super-classified, Circus of Good Chaos. But in a scenario like this where mass-casting of Finite Incantatum doesn't work-" because it's not magic that's fueling this spell "-I'm actually curious if a massed Avada Kedavra would chip away at my Patronus and eventually counter it, or just not do anything and get cancelled out the moment someone tries to cast one."
"HA!" Circus laughed in his ear. "Yeah, no way any chaser thinks of that in thirty minutes. Well, one might. But most everypony below eighteen doesn't even know about Killing Curses, let alone how to cast one. Except a few exceptional and ambitious young Occlumenses like yourself, of course. And just in case you forgot, this ain't a death battle! No deadly spells! Not everypony here has an anchor. Which, now that I think about it gives you a big unbeatable advantage if you have an outside device like that. No suiciding and hiding in your horcrux either. That's the same as cheating with the Astral Plane. Actually, wait, it's a Thing of Power, I already said no to those."
Mithril was grinning. "Fine, fine."
Still no sapient beings nearby.
"How do I access the communication network?"
He'd only ever done solo battles, and teams in the multi-queues are supposed to manage their own communications.
Having a built-in comms network like this is 'cheating' in the sense that outside the walls of Circus, in real life, there's no such thing. Not unless you build a network yourself. The only time this amazing, multi-brain-powered comms network exists is when Circus is actively running it, which Circus should not be relied on to do in any real emergency. Plus it would be tied to the helmets anyway, and/or Circus's range of influence. But Circus does have the ability to create a comms network, she does like to use it on special occasions like this one, and Mithril is not familiar with it because he hasn't participated in one of these special occasions before.
"Ponies control it with ear and tail flicks," Circus explained, followed by a brief overview of simple commands.
Mithril followed the instruction for turning it on and was bombarded by a barrage of voices overlapping each other, with only snippets like 'Sunglasses' and 'don't work' making it to his conscious brain. He turned it off again.
"Normally," said Circus, sounding greatly enthused, "there's the option of going speech-to-spelling. You get a scrolling transcription wall so you're not bombarded with sound. But this big bright light of yours means that ponies literally can't see a centimeter in front of their face, so that's out. I might be able to mess with their brains directly and just send them the visuals that way now that I know I've got back-door access to my visitors like that, but I get the feeling that's dangerous, and Twilight would insist I test it on some rats first in case there are any long-term effects other than the psychological problems that might naturally come from seeing illusions produced by someone else's magic going through your brain. I'll go ahead and start testing that right now in my private lab, but for today, visuals are a complete no-go until the Patronus is handled. And to be honest, they might be a no-go period, even if they solve the light problem. Comms are a lot more truly chaotic this way, especially when you don't have a team dynamic with an established leader." She gave a put upon sigh and despondent drawl. "But they're also a lot less good." They grew chipper again. "This time I can say it's truly not my fault, I did the best I could, now let chaos reign, and you learn how to deal with it! Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha!" After the laughter died down, Circus sighed blissfully. "I love it when I can say that. Oh, I wonder if your charm is making me happier. If so, thank you, and also up yours for messing with my mind without asking permission, not that I have any right whatsoever to complain on those grounds. You're on your own from here on out. Good luck!"
And Mithril was left to his own devices.
A minute of nothing to do was quieter than he thought it'd be.
Most of the lives he could feel were staying in one place, so he didn't have to react to anypony trying to find him yet. There was the brief impulse to try to learn how to air-stand instead of cheating by using his broomstick bones, but this really isn't the time to try to learn that.
So instead he opened up comms, only to (worryingly) hear what sounded like a systematic effort to find a counter to Patronus blindness. It was being directed by a voice clearly experienced at command and leadership.
A voice of the Royal Canterlot variety.
In a flash of inspiration, Mithril decided to throw a monkey wrench into their efforts. "Hey that's a good idea using the Royal Canterlot Voice to rise above the rest mind if I do it too thanks hey did you know I can speak into this network too really neat this network it's my first time but I think I'm getting the hang of it pretty quickly-"
"VOTE!" said the commanding voice of Madam Chaos, followed by a massive chorus of voices overlapping with each other saying "VOTE!", followed by the entire network going mute, and soon after by an automated sounding voice:
"MADAM CHAOS WOULD LIKE TO BAN PRINCE HORIZON FROM THE NETWORK. SPEAK YES OR NO."
"Um… no," said Mithril into the eerie silence.
"IN A VOTE OF 24,213 TO 43, PRINCE HORIZON IS BANNED FROM THE NETWORK."
"Hey!" Mithril shouted indignantly. His Patronus wavered, and he refocused on his happy thought.
"I know I said you're on your own," said Circus, "but one last thing. That's democracy baby. Totally fair and balanced with no exploits. It sure does feel really good when you're in the minority opinion and have to live by a rule that 51% of the population wants 100% of the population to live by, amiright?"
Mithril just fumed. Both at being banned and at the blatant insult to, as Professor Quirrell had once put it, his 'precious democracy'. Not that he'd been overly partial to Democracy since Azkaban, but still. His Patronus wavered again, and he stabilized it again.
"And it gets even better when you just need a plurality of votes instead of a majority because there's more than two sides to the debate! Of course, this time you did deserve it. Next time try deception like you said you would," Cicrus suggested sternly. "Noequus likes blatantly disruptive noise. Oh, and I've only banned you from using the Royal Canterlot Voice – they banned Prince Horizon, not Mithril or Silver Wing – but your seekers don't necessarily know that yet, and I would have let you figure it out on your own by interacting with the visual systems if those were usable right now but since they aren't I decided this would be more fun. Now you're really on your own, I've given you waaay too much help already, but I felt like it because you are it and I did spring this on you when you didn't really want it and haven't used comms before and I am super-happy right now so that's my blatantly biased rationalization. Ta!"
And Mithril was left in silence once again.
So he tuned into the comms network again, and he didn't understand right away what was happening, but after a few seconds of listening and hearing a few interactions he pieced together that another series of votes must have been carried out or something, because 'Madam Chaos' seems to have been granted at-will authority to mute anypony for any reason for a full minute, at-will authority to temporarily mute all 'noise' (i.e. all voices except whatever one voice she chooses to permit), and at-will authority to perma-ban anypony from the comms. Oh, and she was once again carrying out a systematic attempt to generate useful ideas for dealing with the blindness.
Part of that attempt included procedures for avoiding ponies speaking over each other, which took up a good deal of time. Though she settled into the system of just muting noise after the first pony spoke up, and banning any counter or unproductive contributors. They only had around 20-25 minutes left in their 30 minutes to find a counter.
One Equinoid suggested they use eclipseglasses, not mere sunglasses like everyone tried earlier. (It wasn't possible to tell what species, but she had no recognizable accent – i.e. the secret sign of tongues translating somepony speaking in a different language – and so the speaker was probably one of the three standard pony races, or raised in Equestria.)
Mithril smiled at more time being wasted.
Madam Chaos said that it wasn't likely to work, but some speed-Transfigurers should have an answer in thirty seconds or so. Any other good ideas?
In yet another flash of inspiration – this time tempered by the wisdom of past failure – Mithril said "Emergus". He used the wizarding spell to change his voice, then waited a moment for another useless suggestion to fly by.
"Has a massed finite incantatum been tried yet?" asked the voice of Darth Vader. "I don't know if it has," he said as an excuse to potentially pre-empt a ban and to waste a bit more time. "I'm a late arrival."
There was a brief pause.
"You should mute him," said the voice of Draco Malfoy, who was apparently participating in this. "He's probably a villain in this game."
Well, thanks for at least not spoiling anything, Draco.
A chorus of noise almost started, and was silenced.
"Noted, but I'll give him a chance," said the voice of Madam Chaos, who had not deduced Vader = Harry Potter = Silver Wing like Draco had. "Explain what a finite is, Vader."
"Finite Incantatum is the generic human wizard spell for canceling magic." Not surprising that she hasn't gotten that far in her classes just yet; it's only been the first week. Or maybe she's just pretending to be ignorant for the tens of thousands of listeners. "No doubt a pony version exists. And a dragon version and so on." He knew a pony version existed, but any plausible excuse to waste time by talking, he was going to take.
"Is he telling the truth about the spell, Light?"
"Yes," said Draco with a put-upon sigh. "But if everybody casting magic canceling spells at the same time doesn't work, he probably knew that it wouldn't work and he's trying to waste our time. I register my prediction that it doesn't work, and heavily recommend that we ban him."
Meh. Fine. He can always switch to less obvious voices.
"Recommendation registered. I'll give a countdown of five. Everybody get ready to cast the strongest magic canceling spell you can in five, four, three, two, one."
On his end, Mithril felt… not much in particular. He didn't waste any effort on a dispelling attempt himself. His Patronus was still going strong, he could still feel the lives within it.
"Well, well, well, looks like he's not getting banned after all," said Autumn. "Thank you, Vader."
WHAT?!
"Finite Incantatum," said Darth Vader's voice, wielding Harry Potter's wand, in the hoof of Mithril the Circus-battling pony.
Nothing happened.
He almost wondered if he was being messed with now, but his brain supplied the intuition of 'wrong answer' and he kept thinking. In the meantime, Draco's voice claimed that it didn't work for him, and all the ponies said it's working fine for them and/or "THIS IS WHAT I WAS TRYING TO TELL EVERYPONY TO DO BUT I COULDN'T SPEAK-" (ban) and/or they don't know what Light's complaining about, so he's probably just being a sore loser about his prediction being wrong and he should get banned, and all that caused Mithril's mind to generate a separate hypothesis.
He cast the unicorn spell for canceling magic.
From his forehead extended a cone of visibility, gently pushing away the borders of his Patronus. Not canceling it, just clearing a sightline through the corporeal light wherever he pointed his magic-dispelling efforts. Like a lighthouse piercing the darkness, only in reverse. Like an anti-flashlight.
The dispelling did not last if he changed targets, it seemed to simply push his corporeal Patronus magic aside as a constant force, and if the force changed locations, his magical light would rush back in. Not that he was using much magic for the Patronus… and that's probably why it was so easy to mess with like this.
They weren't breaking his spell. They were just creating pockets of magic-free space within its vast borders, starting from their foreheads, clearing small individual cones of clairvoyance.
And since the human version starts from the wand, a human wizard wouldn't notice the effect unless they pointed their wand at their face, or held their wand in an awkward position next to their eyes.
A quick test of dispelling his facial area with his wand proved this assumption to be true. It also proved that the mundane mane enchantment couldn't stand up to a finite. And with everypony running around pointing a finite equivalent at everything they look at…
Darn. Well, actually, it's better to realize that now. He recast the mundane mane spell with the intention of thinking about it later, and kept thinking about Finite.
Could the Finite Incantatum spell take shapes other than a straight beam? He knows it can at least be a continuous beam, he remembered watching Tracey and Daphne clash with their Inflammare vs. Finite in the last battle of first year.
But until this exact moment, he'd never thought any more deeply about the spell than 'it do what me want'. Which, unfortunately, is what happens to your brain sometimes when it's on magic. When you have no obvious reason to question the limits of a spell (or the underlying rules of broomsticks), you tend not to question the limits of a spell. Even after you've spent years trying to train yourself to overcome that problem.
Can Finite be shaped like a shield by someone skilled enough? Can it be maintained indefinitely if it's cast weakly? These are questions Harry Potter hadn't been curious about before.
By the time Mithril had gotten over his brief frustration (one does not have time to get frustrated in a counterproductive way mid-battle), Draco had been temporarily banned from the comms and the living beings inside his Patronus charm were starting to move.
His mind generated the hypothesis that their horns and part of their heads might now be encompassed by magic-canceling, but not their bodies. So he could still track their movement.
Movement could not be allowed.
Thus far, his thought of encouraging life to grow had been happy, but mild. His corporeal Patronus, although it was very large indeed, was not actually all that bright. Not like that time he lit the corridors of Azkaban to be as bright as the sun, or made it bright enough to destroy Dementors in general.
And so, he took a few moments to imagine a happier thought than encouraging life to grow.
The thought he settled upon was: 'encouraging life to be prepared in the face of obstacles, so that it grows strong enough to defeat death on its own.'
His Patronus doubled in brightness, then tripled as he focused on his thought.
He felt like he might not be able to maintain this indefinitely – not just because he was expending more energy, but because he didn't have practice expending more energy consistently. But being the Alicorn of Life, he had the gut feeling he could keep this going for a while. Not all day, but probably at least an hour.
There was now a great deal of complaining in the comms. It doesn't matter that you can clear a path through the light if that light is so peripherally bright that it blinds you anyway.
"Calm down everyone," said Autumn. "Unban Light. Permaban Vader. Looks like you were right after all, Light. And were you not defending your pride when you said it wasn't working for you? Were you being honest?"
"Yes," said Draco's voice dryly. "I was being honest. I pointed my spell at my head while I was banned, and that worked. Humans don't have wands growing out of our foreheads, our spellcasting point is far away from our eyes, so this 'beam of clarity' you guys were talking about wasn't immediately obvious to me."
"Noted. He increased the brightness so our beams are basically useless now. Any new ideas, anyone?"
Mithril's mind generated the idea of echolocation. There's got to be a charm for that.
But that is something he is not going to suggest, even as a time-waster, because it might actually be a winning idea for the opposition. All they need is to have somepony who knows how to cast that particular potentially-maybe-a-spell and teach it to others quickly.
"Not an idea, but important!" someone said after a few temp bans of bad ideas and one permaban of a counterproductive waste of time, "Silver Wing has got to still be listening in on us. Maybe he's eavesdropping on somepony. Everybody cast a simple spy detection charm right now, don't give him time to retreat."
"Or," said another pony into the brief silence as, presumably, many ponies began warding against spies, "We didn't ban him. We banned Prince Horizon, not Silver Wing."
"Good catch, Lawyerific. Circus, please permaban all iterations and aliases of the cognitive mind behind Silver Wing," said Autumn's voice without pause.
And then there was silence.
Crap.
Well, off to go eavesdrop on somepony like they suggested.
He thinks he can generally tell which lives are bigger (i.e. older and likely stronger) and which are smaller (i.e. younger and likely weaker) just by the feel of his Patronus.
And as luck or perhaps Circus-manipulation might have it, one of the closest life forms seems to be small, alone, and wandering around aimlessly. Or pacing back and forth, it was hard to tell.
Getting to that ambling life form, that was a different matter.
Would it be more productive to just sit here and ask himself what they might try? Was he confident in his own abilities to out-think a competently directed crowd-sourced force of idea-generation that was twenty-five thousand minds strong?
Yeah, no.
(It did not occur to him that, when votes come up, there are plenty of abstainers, and that many ponies often don't go through the effort to actually vote if the outcome isn't in doubt. Also, he could not count or even estimate this many lives at all. He didn't even know if they were all players, or if some were watchers.)
Mithril positioned himself awkwardly against the ceiling, touching it slightly with his fur, then used his broomstick bones to glide along at a sedate pace, his hooves outstretched in the direction he was moving in case there was a wall. And there turned out to be many walls, all slowing down his efforts, but he got steadily closer.
As he neared his destination, he began to feel a small number of lives moving around a bit too quickly and confidently – making sharp turns, avoiding what were probably walls – to be anything other than a solution to blindness.
Mithril sped up his pace. Thankfully, his target didn't seem to be one of the rare movers. Four walls and four right turns later (was this a dead end, or Circus imposso-geometry?), he heard a sound coming from where the source of life seemed to be located.
It wasn't exactly a sound he'd been expecting to encounter.
He stumbled for a moment, both at the sound and as he scrambled for an idea on how to approach it, and then as he scrambled for a different necessary idea when his brain decided upon an approach.
And then he whispered, "Mimicus," changing his voice to Neville's.
It had taken him precious seconds to decide on the voice. Mimicus requires you to have somebody's voice in mind, somebody whose voice you can recognize instantly, and that you are very familiar with.
Mithril knows that a different spell exists for changing voices, one that selects a voice at random, not necessarily from among the list of voices you've ever heard in your life. That spell ensures the listener doesn't recognize the speaker by sound alone. (Unless the listener is a Lore holder who knows counters to everything.) But Harry Potter had only bothered to learn the Mimicus spell, which is something he should probably remedy after this battle.
In Neville Longbottom's voice, Mithril asked, "Hello? Is somepony there?"
"I-I'm here!" replied the sniffling voice.
"What's wrong?" asked Mithril.
The voice was laced thick with emotion. "I can't block magic," said what sounded like an 10-year-old. "I never learned. And I can't do transfuh- um, transfish-!" After a frustrated grunt, "I can't make sunglasses! I'm stuck! I can't do anything!"
For a brief moment, Mithril was tempted to…
His inner-voice of Prince Excelsior strongly recommended that Prince Horizon reconsider the temptation to just let this random crying colt win. Even as a trade for information.
"What does it matter if you can't do those things?" he asked instead. "Those ideas didn't work anyway."
"Yu-huh!" the colt rebutted eloquently. "Bang says so."
Bang? Better not ask. Instead Mithril decided to ask, "Is it working for everypony?"
Whatever the movers were doing, it must be difficult enough that not everyone could do it right away, given how few success stories he could feel.
"Well… no," said the colt. "Didn't you hear? It's hard. You have to do both. At the same time! And I can't do any!"
Do both?
Ah!
That explains it.
Thank you, little colt.
Now, what to do about you…
"What's your name?" asked the voice of Neville Longbottom.
"Soft Spoken."
"Well, thanks, Soft," said the voice of Silver Wing / Mithril / Prince Horizon, no longer obscured. "They banned me, but you just told me everything I need to know. Catch me if you can!" And just for cheek, Mithril ran for just a little bit to make the floor-scuffed-by-hooves noise, then silently flew upwards instead of away, planting himself high enough that the colt wouldn't be able to touch him if he followed.
He could have stunned the little guy. He could have left without saying a word. If he only cared about winning, he should have and would have. Revealing himself to the enemy in a cheeky mocking brag is probably violating at least five rules on Tom Riddle's list of 37.
But there are more important things in life than winning fun games. Like giving others playing the game a chance. Especially little colts who can't even counter your busted alicorn magic.
While the colt fumed and fumbled and stumbled around, Mithril went to cut off a strand of fur, encountered the obvious problem, thought ahead to the next move and saw yet another problem, and then another, and tried to think about how to handle those before he even tried to solve the first.
After settling on a strategy, he took out his headband as a better bet for a Transfiguration target than fur, given that he was fairly familiar with how it looked already. It pained him, but (going by feel, and then by cutting charm) he cut out the section of headband responsible for the space-concealment charm, leaving him with a straight line of cloth. He then cast the unicorn version of the dispelling charm, aimed at the ceiling, and if he was close enough, he could focus his vision just enough to get a good, long look at his no-longer-necessary headgear, despite the bright Patronus light.
Then he stopped dispelling and started Transfiguring, now made possible by his newly-acquired mental model of the former headband. You do need to know a target that you intend to Transfigure. Those ponies who started moving early on must be skilled. At Transfiguration, at least. And, he suspects, also skilled at maintaining a Transfiguration while it sits inside a dispelling charm. No wonder there are so few successes so far.
It took some time to complete the pair of strongly-tinted sun-goggles, pony-sized. (Thank you for the reference frame, swimming lessons at Cloudsdale.) Luckily, the movers were directionless and just running around at random while he was vulnerable in his Transfiguration trance, and there weren't enough movers for that to be a problem. Plus, Soft Spoken did seem to have gotten himself stuck in an obscure dead-end, so this was a harder location to stumble upon in general.
Mithril snapped his goggles in place over his eyes, then began to sustain the Transfiguration, constantly adding a stream of his own magic. Hopefully that would prevent the Transfiguration from reverting when…
...Finally, and as weakly as he could cast it, he once again invoked the unicorn version of the dispelling charm.
He could feel the sustaining magic in his goggles clash with the dispel, and he added just a bit more magic to the stream to counter it. Like pressing his own two fingers together so that they applied equal force.
He knew casting both at the same time was possible in theory and practice. He'd cast Finite Incantatum PLENTY of times back when he was sustaining the Transfiguration on his father's rock, and on Hermione's corpse. It's just that he'd never targeted a constant, incredibly weak Finite AT either Transfiguration he was sustaining. Or better yet, a practice marshmallow. Because he hadn't been curious enough.
Needless to say, all of this took a great deal of split concentration. But he could see through his own happiness now, it did work. It's the sort of split-concentration that's easier to handle when you've done the separate parts so often in the past that they basically become unthinking habit, so you can focus on the new, difficult application.
Since none of the other movers were particularly close – they still had to find him amidst whatever vast maze Circus had constructed for them all – Mithril took just a bit more time to get used to moving around while maintaining his anti-flashlight.
After he got into a good rhythm and his mind started wandering, he wondered if there was anything new he could do to troll the chasers.
"Hey, Patronus Charm," Mithril addressed.
"Yes?" asked his Patronus politely, his own voice emanating from all around him.
He'd never done this before either, but his Patronus does have its own cognition, borrowed from his own, like the Sorting Hat, like Circus.
"Are you able to deliver messages to multiple sapient beings at once?"
"I am, if they are in near enough proximity at the time of sending."
"Does inside of you count as near enough proximity to get messages to everyone inside you all at once?"
"Yes."
"Do I need to know their identities to send them messages, or does-" feeling their lives, knowing their locations "-being inside you suffice?"
"This suffices."
"Do you need my conscious input to share my happy thoughts that don't reveal anything important but are still the sorts of things I'd say to ponies?"
Given what had happened in Azkaban when his Patronus had acted autonomously, and what had happened when speaking with Dumbledore just before his escape…
"I do not need your fully conscious input. Your happy thought must simply involve the deep desire that the message be spread, combined with the understanding that it will lead to the promotion of life, and no hints of suspicion that it will go horribly wrong."
"In that case," said Mithril, grinning, "can you start making some noise?"
"Not with that thought. Sadistic glee at your own power over others is not the right kind of happy thought. It is not truly 'happy' at all. The firing of dopamine receptors, the simple feeling of 'elation', that alone is not true happiness."
And wouldn't you know it, but on some level, Mithril knew that. (It's just that, before this point, he really, really, really didn't want to admit it.) He felt an impulse to argue with his Patronus, but he felt it waver, and decided to just let it drop and accept the report as presumed-true until he had time to think about it later.
Hm.
Maybe talking to your own Patronus makes for decent therapy? Actually, probably not. It can't give you new thoughts, new perspectives, which you often need in therapy. It can only highlight the healthy and unhealthy thoughts you currently have, IF you already know them to be good or bad on some level. Talking to your own Patronus would be, quite literally, talking to yourself. The part of yourself that's truly happy. Which, to be fair, is still useful.
"Could you share that idea?" Mithril asked his Patronus.
"Glad to," said his Patronus.
(And then, to every sapient life within his Patronus's radius, his Patronus began describing in careful detail the likely long-term happiness and mental health benefits of regularly consulting with your own Patronus to determine which thoughts are good happy and which thoughts are other happy. For example, Prince Horizon's giddy glee at gaining an unfair advantage over others by using his Patronus to babble in their ears and distract them was not a truly happy thought, it was a thought tinged with the sadistic joys of bullying, the thrill of having an unfair advantage over others and they can't do anything about it and he wins, ha ha! But using his Patronus to share a useful tip to find happiness in general, a tip to check and see if a happy thought is truly happy, that is a truly happy thought and so on et cetera.)
Mithril felt an impulse to say Ban THAT! but ignored it in case the act of vocalizing that 'sadistic glee of his own unfair advantage over others' interfered with his Patronus.
Mithril instead brought a few other ideas to the forefront of his mind, things his Patronus could discuss after it exhausted all the details of the previous topic, so there would hopefully be a backlog of topics to discuss.
Then, on second thought, he asked his Patronus to pause in its message. He waited ten seconds. He asked it to continue. He waited five seconds. He asked it to pause. Wait. Continue. Wait longer. Pause. Wait very shortly. Continue.
Randomizing the up time should make it harder for ponies to tune it out as background noise. It's not like he had anything better to do while he waited for any movers to start to approach. Actually, he did have something slightly better to do.
He flew around his local area, trying to get a general layout of the corridors and a 'feel' for the architecture – in this case fleshy pulsating corridors and rooms with landmarks like pools of bubbling yellow acid – which is the best you can do in the absence of more concrete certainty. Circus might or might not be doing the upper-reaches-of-Hogwarts thing of changing rooms after you left them, but even if Circus was doing that, there's still something to be said about environment familiarity, encountering problems now (like big holes in the floors of hallways that you have to jump over, didn't know those existed until two seconds ago) instead of mid-chase.
Just as he was starting to get a bit bored of exploration, just as he was starting to get the feeling that there was something better he could be doing, just as he remembered the mundane mane dispelling problem as something that needed addressing, he no longer had the luxury of waiting for the next move of the players.
Mithril sensed ALL the movers suddenly start going the right direction. Towards him. And of course there are many more movers in the fray now than there were at the very start, though they were still somewhat few in number. Maybe 10% of lives at most.
Furthermore, a lot of the non-movers began to vanish. Not by dying, he could tell just by the feel of it that their lives weren't being snuffed out. They were simply leaving his Patronus Charm, almost certainly by teleporting out.
Well, he didn't have time to focus on the quitters. The very large number of quitters.
Ponies were converging on his position from all directions, he had to figure out why and how-
His mind generated the obvious hypothesis. He kicked himself.
Well, there is a reason Voldemort probably didn't ever violate his own rules.
Time to get as far away from little Soft Spoken as possible. Too late to go back and stun him now. "This is what I get for being nice and not ruthlessly stunning him, or even just silently leaving the moment I'd gotten what I'd needed," Mithril said aloud with a sad sigh, hoping his words would be conveyed to the watching audience. "And ponies wonder why evil exists. I knew I was making a stupid decision at the time when I gave the colt a chance by announcing myself, but I did it anyway because I knew I had an audience watching- well, listening. I'll remark that if you disincentivize mercy by exploiting it for victory like everypony just did right here, that's when you get less mercy in the long run from the ponies actually good enough to be merciful. Unless they've got some other way of tracking me, in which case never mind about everything I just said."
He stopped talking at that point because the closest movers were closing in. He stuck to the ceiling and did not point his anti-flashlight downward. He kept it pointed firmly forward.
His situational awareness then informed him that ponies were teleporting into his Patronus's range of influence, the opposite of teleporting out, and they were instantly becoming movers. They weren't quite big enough to be adults, and they were getting teleported in at seemingly random locations, so they probably weren't an adult emergency response team or anything like that. Come to think of it, they must be the ponies he'd assumed had 'quit' earlier.
Why did they-?
Ah. Outside devices are allowed. Sunglasses are an outside device. Most ponies probably own a pair at their home, or could convince their parents to buy them a pair real quick. The combination of the Transfiguration being difficult to do in the first place and then maintain while canceling magic in a space that included the Transfigured object had been the bottleneck of the blindness-counter. But if ponies had their own sunglasses, that removed the bottleneck and allowed movement for anypony who could cancel magic at all. Which was most unicorns no longer in primary school, and probably most non-beginner regular Circus-goers too.
After slowing down and allowing ponies to pass beneath him – they're definitely locked onto Soft's location somehow, probably a pointer-compass-function like Professor Quirrell had handed out in the battles of the upper reaches of Hogwarts – Mithril whispered, "Circus."
There was no reply from Circus.
"You would not like it if I teleported out to retrieve tinted swimming goggles from home," Mithril whispered.
He did not own a pair 'at home' in the sense of his parents' house in Oxford, or in his room at Twilight's (which doesn't exist anymore), though he probably could find such a product in Ponyville if he had a time-looped hour. (Time Turners are not Things of Power, though he really shouldn't waste another hour just for that.) He'd shopped for a lot of things in December of first year, and he eventually got the hang of finding what he needed quickly.
"You would call it cheating if I left," he continued speaking without any indication from Circus that he was being heard. "I ask that you teleport in a pair for me, given that I can't leave the premises like you just allowed the participants to do." It'd be much easier if he didn't have to worry about sustaining the Transfiguration on his current pair of sun-goggles.
Mithril felt a pressure around his left forehoof and found a pair of tinted goggles resting there.
He wasted no time swapping out the pair for his own, saying as he did, "And since I asked that because I'm it, not because I can't teleport – I can – I also ask that you do not use this as justification to give a pair of sunglasses to literally everypony here, even the ones who can't teleport, or whatever reason some ponies didn't leave."
"Eh…" said Circus's voice. "Too late? Sorry. My bad."
A lot of ponies began moving now. Basically all the rest of the non-movers, with a few stragglers who probably didn't know the dispelling charm.
"Tell ya what. Make it to the five minutes remaining mark without getting tagged, you'll get your big reward."
Mithril took a few moments to overcome his useless indignation so he could concentrate on the new constraint of probably just about everypony being able to counter his spell now.
He decided, upon reflection, to keep it going, because it's still generally useful to reduce visibility of pursuers.
Then he practiced at ramping up and down the strength of his dispelling spell at will. It felt not dissimilar to going from pressing your finger lightly against a table to pushing as hard as you can, then letting up to a light touch again.
Or perhaps it was more like going from blowing the lightest breeze from your lips to blowing as hard as you can. Blowing a light breeze is something you can sustain indefinitely, in theory, if you learn to simultaneously breath in through your nose and out through your mouth, as some wind instrument musicians have to learn in order to sustain really long notes or sequences without pausing.
Blowing as hard as you can, on the other hand, isn't something that anyone can sustain indefinitely, or even all that long.
Aiming a weak dispelling charm at sustained magic without breaking that magic is like blowing a sustainable breeze from your lips across a candle without killing the flame. Firing a strong dispelling charm and succeeding in canceling a spell is like blowing the candle out completely. With massed finite's being like lots of wind and strong magic being like large fires instead of candles – only Mithril doubts that finite's are capable of 'fanning the flames' of magic, which is where the analogy might break down, but still.
(And maybe Things of Power and other non-finite-able magics are like fires protected from wind by a barrier of glass or steel or whatever, a barrier that you have to pierce with something other than wind? Mithril was currently getting a lot of ideas that might be incredibly good for his private powerful-wizard lessons. Thinking in analogies is what lots of powerful wizards do in order to wrap their minds around difficult and complex topics, at least at first. But it's not so helpful when your ideas distract you from the task at hand.)
And now for the purpose of all this theorizing. The practice.
When a new group of ponies passed beneath him, still rushing towards the location of Soft Spoken, Mithril very briefly pointed his anti-flashlight of dispelling at one of the ponies below and ramped up his dispelling efforts to 'as strong as I can make them'.
The cry of alarm was expected.
Having true goggles that won't 'blow out' if he ramped up his dispel to max power also gave him an immediate working tactic to counter the earliest arrivals – the ones who had countered him the hard way, the ones with Transfigured sunglasses instead of true ones.
Transfigurations can remain sustained within the presence of a weak dispelling charm if you supply them with a steady stream of magic. But they can't be sustained in the presence of a strong dispelling charm unless (probably) you can instantly ramp up your own sustaining magic to match. Which (probably) only super-experienced battle wizards like Moody and Riddle and Dumbledore and Bellatrix can do mid-combat.
(A lot of this was going down on the mental 'ask Riddle about it later during private lessons' list. Riddle would answer just about any question Harry asked, if Harry asked it specifically enough. Or at the very least, he would soon arrange a lesson where Harry would learn the answer in a very visceral and unforgettable way.)
What Mithril did not expect, but made sense in retrospect, was when he briefly saw the tint on the glasses worn by his target fading to normal transparency, along with the shape reverting to more normal-looking eye-glasses.
Which informed him that a lot of the earliest earliest movers were probably wearing normal glasses to start out. It's much easier to Transfigure a pair of sunglasses by simply modifying the glasses you already have.
Pegasi might hardly ever need glasses, but plenty of unicorns wear them, same with city-dwelling Earth ponies. Transfigurations in general are much easier when the separation of form doesn't differ too greatly from the starting object, which is why the first lesson is matchsticks into needles.
He wondered how many of the early movers did it the really hard way like he had, Transfiguring a new pair out of whole cloth.
Now that a nearby chaser had been blinded out of the blue, he stuck around just long enough to confirm that the group below didn't suspect someone else of having done any dispelling. Since it didn't happen to the whole group, just one pony, that pony is more likely to blame themselves for a lap in concentration rather than blame their enemy's deliberate offense.
It was a risk, but a calculated one. He wanted to confirm that a lot of the assumptions he'd been making about his opposition were accurate. His brain was on high alert, his full faculties activated and pushing the limits of his cognition. As one must do if they wish to learn.
Also, he enjoyed confirming once again that nobody ever looks up, so long as nothing in the direction of 'up' is moving, or contrasts greatly enough with its surroundings, or is not far off from direct line of sight, or changes the brightness of the sun by blocking it, or is obscured too heavily by darkness. Or brightness.
After hearing an exchange along the lines of "Are you alright?" and "Fine, just lost my transfiguration", he continued on.
When ponies approach, it's never in a straight line because of the maze-like nature of the battlefield. So he hides behind the upper corner that they turn around and he doesn't move. Then he turns the corner himself the moment he's likely to be out of their peripheral vision. He spends as little amount of time as possible within their potential line of sight, giving him the least risk of being spotted.
In this fashion he continued in the direction of away from Soft Spoken until he felt he had gotten far enough, then found a nice little dead end hallway to occupy, one that a pony would never turn down by accident if they were trying to get to Soft Spoken by following a magical compass pointing at him.
Once ponies started spreading out from Soft Spoken's direction in a search attempt, he would continue away. Which means he shouldn't be at the end of the dead end, he should be just around the corner to the dead end's entrance.
After a bit of positional re-adjustment, he checked the time with a tempus. Around half the time of the game had elapsed, which is to say that in twenty-five minutes, there's a bathroom he needs to be in.
"FIFTEEN MINUTES REMAINING!" said Circus's voice, presumably to all players, and loud enough to overcome Harry's irregularly droning Patronus message. "NO WINNERS YET! COME ON EVERYBEING, YOU CAN DO IT!" Definitely to all players.
And it seems Mithril is being given ten minutes lee-way. Thank you, Circus.
Actually, wait, that's probably just to give time for the reward if someone wins.
Wait, you know what, why is Mithril dead-ending himself at all? Sure, it's harder to get here, but it's also harder to escape. Why not find a junction room so he has multiple escape routes? He'd come across some of those by now. That would be way better than cornering himself…
No, on second thought, he'll try to find a junction room if he's found and being chased. Moving around out in the open is more likely to get him discovered in the first place. He should focus on hiding until that stops working, then on running and escape routes.
He focused on ramping up his Patronus distraction to give his mind something to do. And also on running through mental scenarios of how he should behave if it doesn't seem like there's a way to avoid getting seen, especially if it's in a tight corridor or something. Which reminded him of the mundane mane problem. Which gave him something actually tangible to make progress on. He'll improv his lies, but the mane getting dispelled by ponies looking at him needs addressing.
"TEN MINUTES REMAINING! PORTAL TIME!"
Portal?
Mithril heard a squelching sound behind him, and he turned around to see a circular sphincter now imbedded in the formerly smooth – well, somewhat smooth – wall.
He also began feeling lives begin disappearing and reappearing at completely different locations, starting slowly but quickly ramping up until the lives he was feeling were a constant jumble.
After a flash of fight, flight, or freeze, he flew to just above the sphincter, closed his eyes, stopped dispelling, executed a series of precise gestures, aimed his wand, and said "Colloportus". He then reactivated his dispelling charm and opened his eyes again.
He had put as little power behind the lock as he could manage. He did still feel it activate, but it didn't tire him out all that much. The standard unlocking charm learned in the standard unicorn magic curriculum in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns did not unlock Colloportus – he tested that a while ago – so he could afford to skimp on the power. Unless Draco came across the other side of this door and cast Alohomora, or unless there's an advanced magic user who knows more unicorn unlocking spells than the standard one, he should be good.
Now all he had to worry about were portals in nearby corridors. And his mundane mane. Which were quite worrisome indeed. In his place around a corner, he waited with bated breath as ponies trotted towards his dead-end, glanced down it as they passed (but not up), and kept running.
"FIVE MINUTES REMAINING! MANY PORTALS!"
Sphincters appeared to line the walls now.
"Opening in ten, nine, eight,"
It took Mithril a split-second to realize that his best path forward now was…
"…three, two, one!"
All the portals opened, and a few pony heads peaked into the empty corridor and looked around. One in particular…
"Hey! Mithril! Wanna join me?"
"Huh?" asked Mithril, an (according to his perfect Occlumency barrier) perfectly normal contestant trying to find Silver Wing just like everypony else. "Yeah, sure," he said in an altered voice, a voice that did not sound like the Patronus babbling in everypony's ears.
(The small, constant stream of magic to his mundane mane spell, feeling almost exactly like a sustained Transfiguration, prevented it from being dispelled by the arrival looking at him.)
"Great!" said the arrival. "Come on over. You remember me?"
Mithril blinked a few times at the illusory name of 'Big Bang' above the pony. (His inner-self was cursing Circus. No such thing as coincidence. It had to be someone who kinda knows my Mithril persona, didn't it?) "Um… yeah. We fought for first once, right?"
"Yep! Sorry we haven't had a chance to do a co-op yet. I bet we'd kill it." By now, Mithril had trotted over to Big Bang's portal. "Actually, I'm gonna come through to your side," said Big Bang, stepping through. "Man, Circus gave you the portal jackpot. This is a great hub! Come on, let's check each one. Start at the dead end and work backwards, I'll get this side, you get the other."
"Good idea."
After about thirty seconds had passed, "Pretty fun, huh?" asked Big Bang.
"It'd be more fun if I could win," said Mithril, a bit sourly.
"Aw, don't be like that. It's like playing a lottery. Just here for fun and tickets, don't expect to win. Same as a lot of special Circus events."
"Yeah, I know," he lied. "But still, it'd be pretty cool to win."
"Sure would be! The trick is to not get bummed out when you lose. Times like this, you just have to really expect to lose. And play for the bonus tickets," he said in a cheeky voice. "Do your best, reap the rewards, and look at what the winners did in the recap. Except this time we can't do that, I am a bit bummed about the memory lock thing, but no biggy."
"You've got a good attitude about it," said Mithril. "I wish I could see things that way."
"Well, it's all how you look at things, you know? By the way, why do you sound a bit different from last time? You got a thick accent."
"Hm? I don't know. Might be a helmet malfunction. Circus has been thinking about giving voice charms as a ticket reward."
"Really? That would be so cool! Just imagine sounding like Tirek. Or Nightmare Moon. Totally bad-flank."
"Uh-huh. Say, are your comms working? Those are on the fritz for me too."
"Really? Wow, Circus never drops the ball like that. Well, whatever. Yeah, comms are a manure-fest."
"TWO MINUTES REMAINING!" said Circus.
Then, two seconds later, "HEY!" shouted a distant voice. "I FOUND HIM!"
Big Bang shouted back. "NOT HIM! BEEN IN GAMES FOR MONTHS, SILVER WING JUST CAME BACK AN HOUR AGO!"
Mithril's heart was not hammering in his chest thanks to the perfect Occlumency. His eyes gazed out at where the distant voice had come from, which allowed him to have Big Bang in his peripheral vision. "Not the first time that's happened," he said in a casual voice.
"Oh, wow!" said Big Bang's voice. "I thought he just had bad eyesight, but you do look like Silver Wing. Huh."
"ONE MINUTE REMAINING!"
"You'd think the mane and cutie mark would be enough," he said in an annoyed voice.
"Yeah, well, when Madam Chaos warns everypony to be on the lookout for a normal-looking Silver Wing with a disguised cutie mark and name, I think this is one of the few times you shouldn't be annoyed. Come on, let's give these last thirty seconds our all! No more talking, eyes focused on these portals!"
Mithril nodded. "I'm not that gullible. You've seen through it," he observed.
He erected a shield to block the suddenly-stunner light bolt. He floated up to the ceiling.
"Can't blame a stallion… for… trying!" The air-buck-propelled pony and shield-breaker were anticipated and dodged. (That combo had gotten him the last time he lost to Big Bang. Of course, he couldn't use broomstick bones then, and his private lessons have since involved a lot of instant-reaction-to-spellbolts-using-broomstick-bones.)
"No, but I can blame him for choreographing it," said Mithril easily. "And being cheeky. Next time don't do that until after you hit me." He zigged and zagged. "Look how easy it is for me to escape."
"Well, crap."
"TEN."
"Occlumens?" asked Mithril. (It was the obvious guess for any pony being good at lying on the fly.)
"NINE."
"Yep," said Bang.
"EIGHT."
"Wanna free win?" asked Mithril.
"SEVEN."
…
"SIX."
"You sure?"
"FIVE."
"Sure."
"FOUR."
"Alright," said Big Bang.
"THREE."
"Here." Mithril darted down and offered a hoof, unshielded, taking a second to do so.
Big Bang touched it at the same time Circus said, "ONE."
His horn had glowed in a spell that prevented Mithril from taking his hoof away at the last second.
Which Mithril had tried to do.
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Cue theme music and credits, cos both won?
Does Astral Plane computer run Windows 95 and use Pegasus Mail?
doomworld.com/drsleep/step1a.gif
Lame, he tried to 'down low, too slow' him
> Unless Draco came across the other side of this door and cast Alohamora, or unless there's an advanced magic user who knows more unicorn unlocking spells than the standard one, he should be good.
Fairly sure it's Alohomora, not Alohamora. Unless this is a special Hawaiian spell variant.
Congrats on the challenging puzzle with an obvious-in-hindsight answer. I guessed Circus or Discord, making a Sarlacc pit due to Chaos Magic, but I didn't have any guesses for the motivation. A game show is obvious in hindsight.
Also, I wanna see Discord and Circus talk! Preferably in front of stuffy personalities like Moody or Tom, for maximum annoyance.
I really do adore this fic. It's fantastic.
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Aloha? Maybe that's why my brain thinks it should be spelled that way. Or maybe it's from playing the computer games for Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban so much as a kid, with Harry's voice actor really sounding like he's saying "Alohamora" instead of "Alohomora". When you say them both out loud, your mouth wants to use the "a" rather than the "o". Or at least, mine does. And even when you say it with the "o", if you say it quickly enough, it still sounds like you might be saying "a".
And thank you for the kind words.
I keep worrying I'm dragging it on too long when I get ideas for chapters like this, 11,000+ words that weren't there before, with more that had to be added before and after. But the late-coming binger-readers typically write comments that help ease that worry. All of this is building to a conclusion, but we'll get there when we get there.
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I don't know if you remember, but I'm the dude that gushed about the fic in r/hpmor. Trust me, I'm not getting bored, I want this fic to keep going on forever lmao. That's less from 'early hyperfixation' and more 'the fic focuses on the strongest and least fic-applied concept of hpmor (harry-tom)'
One request: If, at any point, you decide to stop writing it for whatever reason, write a short paragraph that conveys the rest of the unfinished plot. It'd be great for closure. Best wishes!
Got a typo here.
Anyway, the one thing that disappoints me in this chapter is that Silver immediately goes for obvious low-effort voice spam disruption attempt upon finding the network, somehow not expecting countermeasures against that, while also revealing to everyone that he has access to the network for very little gain. It's such an obviously horrible move (even more in hindsight) that it really don't mesh with my understanding of Harry/Silver.
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I don't think it's an impossible mistake for a Harry that's heady on the rush of revealing himself to a whole stadium to do that as a prank if he's not taking the whole thing too seriously. It was pretty funny.
I'm more confused by how they permabanned Vader after he gave them a hint that WORKED.
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Because, at that moment in time, Vader's solution didn't work after all, like Draco predicted. From the perspective of a skeptical, cynical observer, it was possible Vader was on Silver's side, suggested something he knew could be countered, wasted everybody's time and emotional effort by getting their hopes up, and then dashed them a minute later, like any proper scheming villain would do.
Also, 'they' didn't permaban him, it was an autonomous decision by Madam Chaos, who was disinclined to like Vader in the first place. If you want to assume she un-banned him off-screen, when the final working solution was found and when Harry couldn't hear her because by that point he'd been fully banned, go ahead.
Funny filler chapter, poor foal.