Chapter 8
"And we don't go with her?" Firelance, dressed in the crystalline armor that the castle itself had made for him, watched the train pulling out from Ponyville station while he asked Lyra his question. "Aren't we supposed to guard her?"
"It'd be more exciting, I bet, but protecting Twilight from harm isn't our job. We have fillies to teach, ponies to help, and a castle to understand. And that's not even counting meditation." Using her magic, Lyra used the latest friendship spell Dinky had taught her—one that could clean whole rooms in an instant—to put extra sheen on her armor.
About to question her again, Firelance froze when he remembered who he was talking to. Thinking about his future again, he changed tack. "Can you help me increase my magic regeneration?"
"Of course, and that's part of the meditation, too. As you will know, from your training in the Guard, there are several ways to boost your magic output. I used to believe there were only two, but I have identified two others now."
"Two others?" It made Firelance stand a little straighter. He knew, of course, about the methods for expanding your magic storage and for enhancing regeneration, but he liked the idea of a third and fourth way.
"The two we already knew, capacity and regeneration, are straight forward, and I expect you to be working on both as much as you're able. The third is density, and it will boost the effectiveness of both the first two. I can start teaching you that right away." Of course, Lyra was waiting for him to ask about the fourth, so she left it out of her description.
"Density, so we could store more and regenerate more. I definitely see the advantage to that. What's the fourth?"
"Well, you're not qualified for that, and I hope I'm not qualified either. Frankly, the idea of it terrifies me." Looking around the road they were walking down, ostensibly to make sure no one could overhear them, Lyra lowered her voice to a whisper. "The fourth way to expand your magic is to become an alicorn."
It took Firelance a moment to realize what she'd said and to process it. "Okay, you're right on me not being qualified, but really?"
"Twilight didn't take much convincing to study her magical potential, when I mentioned it. She has three orders of magnitude more storage capacity and regeneration now, at least half of that gain coming from a density boost and the rest from just being an alicorn."
Looking at Lyra's back, Firelance couldn't help but remember the wings Lyra had been sporting recently. "Is that part of a test with that wing spell?"
"No. That spell has nothing to do with being an alicorn."
"Except wings."
"Except the wings. Besides, they were pegasi wings, not alicorn wings. Spend some time around Twilight and Rainbow and you'll understand the difference." The walk from the station took them right through the middle of town, but Lyra diverted them to angle toward Sugarcube Corner. "What are your thoughts on having wings?" Lyra asked Firelance as they stepped into Sugarcube Corner.
"That I'd confuse ponies a lot. That everywhere I go they'd think I was a mare." Firelance didn't have problems with mares, far from it, but he was sure about who he was.
"Do you follow any research journals, Firelance?" Comfortably in line, Lyra set up a gotcha question for him that she hoped would encourage him to do his own research.
"I get the latest training material the Guard puts out, as well as any new spell research."
"This was in a psych journal. A paper under the names of Lyra Heartstrings and Twilight Sparkle that went into details about a social experiment to investigate the phenomena of Unicorn and Pegasus Blindness. Simply put, if you kept your wings down, most earth ponies that see you will spot your horn first, and thus think you are a unicorn. Same with unicorns themselves. Pegasi, however, will see your wings and believe you a pegasus."
"What happens when they see the other parts?"
"They don't. It's a cognitive bias. Unless you slap someone with a wing who thinks you're a unicorn, they won't even notice that you have them." Shuffling forward in the queue, Lyra was only one short of the front of the line now. "Some ponies still didn't after we hit them with wings or used our magic to pick something up."
Firelance shuffled along with Lyra. "I can't believe anypony would be that stupid."
"They're not. Not stupid, at least. Cognitive biases are extremely difficult to take into account in your day-to-day life unless they're pointed out, and there's even a bias that makes having your bias pointed out be treated as suspicious. We trust ourselves and our intuitions to be right." Stepping up into the front of the counter, Lyra was about to ask Cup about the latest delicious cakes when she made some quick observations about her. "Need a hoof?"
Cup Cake, riding the edge of madness, nodded vigorously and almost fell over. "Pinkie left on something she called a map quest, Carrot's doing a delivery in Canterlot, and I have the foals here on my own!"
"Lucky you have Twilight's Royal Guard here to save you!" Firelance wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but Lyra asking if Cup needed help made it obvious they'd found themselves work to do for the morning, at least.
Lyra gave a firm nod in support of her subordinate's statement. "Do you want us to take care of the foals or to run Sugarcube Corner?"
Both. The word was on the tip of Cup's tongue, but she dared not utter it. Normally, at this hour of the morning, running the bakery would be the easier task—but since she'd been baking on her own with the foals distracting her left, right, and center, she'd barely gotten anything prepared for lunch. "The bakery needs two sets of hooves right now. I haven't had a chance to make the croissants for the lunch run, and somepony needs to run the counter out here."
Lyra started gesturing around. "I can do your baking for you or run the counter while you bake, or look after the foals while you bake and Firelance runs the counter. Please, Cup, pick whatever will make your day easier."
"I'll…" Cup sighed and smiled. Despite her foals being more work to take care of when they're excitable, she welcomed some time to spend with them. "… take care of my foals. You know where we keep the boards showing what needs to be baked?"
"I do, Cup. Firelance, permission to shuck your uniform. Use a refresher spell and start memorizing prices. The mission today is to ensure everypony leaves with what they want to buy and a smile." Barking out the orders, Lyra was happy to see Firelance snapping off a salute—that he wouldn't let go of until she sketched one back to him.
Firelance could feel the rush of magic pouring into the kitchen where Lyra disappeared to. This wasn't what he would have considered his ideal duties would be, but made himself a promise that no matter what came, he would face his destiny head-on. The doorbell rang and his first customer entered.
Blinking in surprise when she walked in, Roseluck eyed the stallion behind the counter. "Where're the Cakes?" she asked.
"Carrot Cake is making deliveries and Pinkie has a special mission," Firelance said, having not been told that anything was to be kept quiet. "We're helping Cup Cake with the bakery today."
"'We'?"
Lyra picked that moment to poke her head out of the kitchen. "Firelance, we have—Oh! Hello, Roseluck. I hope you're having a great day?"
Seeing a familiar face, Roseluck perked back up to her usual self. "Lyra! You must come and see our chrysanthemums. They're so pretty right now. We managed to mutate a yellow variant to blue, and it's simply gorgeous."
Not seeing any way out of talking flowers to a flower-crazed pony, Lyra stood in the doorway to the kitchen with her horn blazing, preparing and baking pastries for all she was worth. All Lyra knew about flowers was what Roseluck had said to her during their various meetings in and around town, but she tried not to forget the details of something that meant so much to a pony. "Do you still have the soft cream and the dull pink chrysanthemums too?"
Pointing out what she wanted to Firelance, Roseluck quickly tried to remember what she had growing. "I do, but not many. Did you have something special in mind?" But she didn't closer her mouth long enough to let Lyra speak when she remembered why those colors were important. "Oh! Oh of course! I'll get a perfect bouquet ready. Do you want anything on the card?"
Sappiness was so hard not to slip gags into, but Lyra put in the effort this time. "To my darling Bonny. Happy anniversary."
Almost missing writing down the message, Roseluck danced in place. "It's your anniversary? How long?"
"Seven years now. Time really flies by when everything is so perfect." And just like that Lyra had lost herself to her memories.
From the first time she'd met Sweetie to the previous morning when her wife had gone to work in Canterlot, Lyra's memories were filled with her darling. "Well, if you forget about all the invasions and rampaging monsters."
Roseluck paused for a moment to think on it, then laughed. "It's not like you caused any of that, though. Do you have any spinach and feta danishes?" She knew they did, there was a shelf right in front of her filled with them. "I'll have one of those too. Warmed up if you could."
The sound of a timer chirping drew Lyra back into the kitchen. She located the dough that had finished rising and turned it out onto the counter. Humming a tune to herself, she worked and cut the dough into rounds and then put them all into the fryer one by one.
An oven let her know its contents were done, so while turning the donuts over she used her magic to check the cake and then lift it out. A fresh pan went in to replace it.
With the day wearing on, Lyra was surprised when Carrot stepped through the back door and froze. "Afternoon! Cup is upstairs."
Having worked himself up to kiss the mare (his wife, he expected) in the kitchen, Carrot paused a moment longer. "What happened? Is she alright?" Anxiety started to rise as Carrot's thoughts raced with all the terrible things that could have happened.
"She's fine. Pinkie had to go on some kind of special mission with her friends. We came in and found Cup in a panic as to what she was going to do—and volunteered to help until you got back." Lyra had started with the reassurance to calm Carrot down, but when she got to the part about helping he looked confused. "Something the matter?"
"I'm just overwhelmed. Who else did you get to help?"
"Well, I have a new subordinate in Twilight's Royal Guard, so I stuck him out there on the register. He's doing fine. Even used his magic to heat things up. Go and see Cup, she's been looking after the foals all day." Pulling a tray of cookies from the oven, Lyra set it down to cool on a rack.
"I'd better go and see her. I'm sure we'll be down as soon as we can." Carrot unloaded the last of his things and made his way upstairs.
By the time the pair returned, each with a foal riding on their back, Lyra could feel a relaxed aura about them. They both kept shooting the other happy glances and she was sure that a piece of paper couldn't fit between them. "Welcome back."
Cup walked over to Lyra, pulled her into a hug, and proceeded to squeeze the life out of her. "Thank you so much. I don't know what we could do to make up for this."
Hugging back, Lyra shook her head. "You don't have to. That's not how friendship works." Extracting herself from the hug, Lyra led the way into the front room where, after the lunch rush, things were quiet. "Come on, Corporal, time to find another friendship mission of our own."
"The garrison sent a relief force?" Firelance asked, stepping out from behind the counter to let Cup in.
"Yes, but we have other duties. Come on, we need to get dressed for the part." Lyra left Cup with a wink before retreating back into the kitchen where their armor sat beside the door. Using her magic was considered cheating when it came to putting on armor, so of course Lyra did just that. Even still, they both went through the ritual of checking each other's gear. "You don't mind if we leave through the back, Carrot?"
"Oh! Go ahead, Lyra."
Firelance was quiet as they wandered around Ponyville. Lyra wasn't, she chatted about every little thing that caught her interest. Finally, though, she seemed to pause to let him speak. He wasn't sure how she knew he was ready to say something—but he was. "That felt good, you know?"
Liking the position of wise elder, Lyra just raised an eyebrow at Firelance wordlessly.
"Not in the same way as winning a fight or doing a whole day of hard work until you collapse into bed, but it—It's hard to explain. It's nice to help ponies. Cup Cake could have managed. She would have been ready to collapse by the time Carrot got home, but she would have. Probably nopony would have noticed except her husband.
"But just for a few hours of our time we gave her the gift of not having to struggle. I—I like that. Is that what you mean by Friendship Guard?"
"You heard that one, huh?" Waiting for his nod, Lyra went on. "Yes. That's exactly what I mean. We're never going to be able to fight Tirek, Discord, Nightmare Moon, or Queen Chrysalis on our own. Don't even try. But we can help around the edges. We can make Equestria a better place by finding places where ponies can be made happier and doing that.
"It's more than just helping, too. It's leading by example. It's showing others that being a pony is about more than just smiling and waving to everypony else. Songs and happiness are fine, but to grow as communities, ponies need to raise every everypony else to be better."
Firelance nodded. "It's a nice ideal, but do you think it can really work?"
"I don't know." Lyra laughed and did a quick four-legged pronk for several pony-lengths before returning back to a trot. "But I'll be a monkey's uncle if it isn't a great way to spend your life trying to see."
The rest of the day posed no problems, leaving Lyra and Firelance to roam around and show off their fancy armor. Before nightfall came, a strange unease befell Lyra.
She sat in her living room and strummed her guitar, unsure why something felt off, but realizing that it had something to do with friendship itself. Setting her guitar aside, she stood up.
"Something wrong?" Scootaloo asked. She'd been finishing off her homework.
"Yeah, but I need to check something at the castle." Looking at her armor, Lyra thought about it hard and then opted to put it on. She didn't say anything as Scootaloo suited up in her own, either. If there was going to be a fight, she'd rather her filly be clothed correctly for it. "Ready?"
"Want me to scout the castle?" Pounding her hooves in a stationary run, Scootaloo rolled her shoulders to be ready for anything.
"No. This isn't a problem at the castle, I'm just hoping it can tell me what's going wrong with friendship magic." Stepping out into the evening, Lyra could feel the slight crack of winter coming. It wouldn't be long and the snow would be here and everypony who wasn't a pegasus would be softly cursing the snow slowing them down.
But, for now, autumn was still holding sway and so they galloped through the town, up the roads, and all the way to the castle. Lyra didn't knock, simply opening the door with her magic so they only had to slow to a fast trot.
"What are we looking for?" Scootaloo asked, curiosity running rampant.
"The map room. It formed early today when Twilight and her friends all sat in their chairs. It showed them a location of where they needed to go and—and I let them go without backup." When she ran through the open doors of the map room, Lyra spotted Firelance and Spike already there.
"Lyra! Scoo—" Firelance shook his head, this was business. "Commander, their cutie marks have…" Stepping back from the table, he let Lyra and Scootaloo see what had happened.
Where the six cutie marks had circled, above a strange little village Lyra had never heard of, there was now six orbiting equals signs. Worse, there was a dark and still line of clouds slowly spreading out from the place.
Staring, Lyra wanted to cry. She could feel, now, the break with friendship magic. It was like it had been snapped at its source. "Scootaloo, I need you to take a letter to Canterlot. The train won't be fast enough, and I think I need to do something here."
Snapping to attention, Scootaloo saluted Lyra. "I am ready to go."
"Spike, take a message." Lyra barely had to ask and Spike had writing materials ready.
Not questioning Lyra's request for dictation, Spike did want to remind her about his own abilities. "You know I can send it to the castle quicker than Scootaloo can fly, right?"
"To the princesses, sure, but I need to notify the Guard. She'll reach them before somepony could run across town with word." Clearing her throat, Lyra dictated a quick letter that nonetheless had all the details of what had happened. When Spike passed it to her, she used her magic to duplicate the page. "I will get you to send one to the castle, though. Thanks, Spike."
Relieved to have something else normal to do, Spike took one of the letters, held it up, and blew his flame onto it. He was so focused on it that he didn't even notice Scootaloo had left. "What are you going to do now?"
"Well, we're going to try to anchor friendship magic with the help of the castle. You're going to go around town and bring everypony up here—and I do mean everypony. Every unicorn. Every earth pony. Every pegasus." Lyra closed her eyes and felt for the threads of magic that were unraveling without Twilight to maintain them. "Maybe in time this new magic will be established enough to exist on its own, but for now we need to nurture it until Twilight can—until she is back in control again."
"How can I help?" Firelance asked.
"I'm going to work a feedback. The biggest feedback ever. I'm not going to sugarcoat this, it's not going to be a lot of fun unless we get support." Closing her eyes, Lyra reached both forehooves up and onto the map. She could feel friendship bubbling inside it, evaporating and losing itself by the second. "Come on, you're not going to give up just because one mare is indisposed?"
Firelance's eyes widened as an inferno started to pour into the room. Lyra was working a spell unlike anything he'd seen before. He knew what a feedback was—when a pony tied magic in a knot and usually got their own horn burned as a result—but this was an entirely different scale. Worse, still, he was about to join her.
Reaching out, hesitantly, Firelance touched Lyra and was drawn fully into her working. He grabbed onto the map for dear life and clung to it like a life-preserver in a violent sea. More and more magic funneled through them. It came rushing in with snarls and runs where it was falling apart, and somehow Lyra was weaving it back into a continuous whole before letting it out again.
It should never be needed. Lyra was working through the feedback, filtering all the friendship magic as fast as she could, but it was taking its toll. She couldn't stop, though, or the key thing that had made Twilight who she was would fail—and she had no wish to know what that would mean when Twilight was whole again.
"H-Hello?" Walking into the map room, just as Spike had said, Sweetie Belle strode ahead of her parents. When she saw Lyra and Firelance, she gasped. "We have to help them!"
"But how?" Hondo Flanks asked. He and his wife had been picking up their youngest when she'd informed them they had to come to the castle as soon as possible.
"Hondo, dear, can't you feel it?" Cookie Crumbles gave her daughter's mane a little ruffle. "This is important—we have to trust them to show us. Uh, right?" The last she asked of her daughter.
Sweetie Belle was already walking forward and jumped on her big sister's seat, leaned forward, and pressed her hooves to the map.
Seeing their daughter leading the way, Hondo and Cookie took a position on each side of her and mimicked her actions—and all three were pulled into the working, easing the load on Lyra and Firelance.
It was fitting, Lyra realized, that it was friendship that shared the load of maintaining friendship magic. With each additional pony—not just unicorn—the load became easier and her horn ached less. It didn't surprise her in the least that even earth ponies and pegasi just being present helped.
Ponies came and went. Darkness fell over Ponyville and needing to maintain friendship magic didn't stop them from becoming hungry or getting tired. Lyra, though, couldn't leave. She had to anchor all the others into the spell.
When Sweetie Drops finally reached the castle, with four squads of unicorns, it was to see Lyra and Firelance surrounded by ponies at the map table. "Lyra! We got your message."
The moment Sweetie reached her side, Lyra felt a surge of strength within her. Not just the love she held for Sweetie, but the magic she was nurturing reacted and revived her. "Don't take them all away. One at a time, give it five minutes to let me balance things again, then the next."
"What are you doing?" Precise Pedagogue asked. He might be retired, but he'd been having a chat with Stiff Peaks when the messenger had arrived.
"Something happened to the princess and friendship magic itself started to unravel. I'm holding it together, anchoring it." Talking and focusing on magic at the same time was starting to become a strain. Every second, something would change about the magic and she'd have to coax it back into its normal shape before letting it flow out. "The mass of the magic can be helped by others but—but I have to do the shaping myself."
The explanation went into theories that, to Precise, were nothing more than hypotheses. "Okay." Turning, he addressed the guardponies he'd escorted. "Form a line. We can only replace one pony every five minutes. When you come in, you need to focus on—on friendship."
As time ticked on, Lyra noticed that things became a little easier as the few unicorn residents of Ponyville were replaced with fresh unicorns from the Guard. The rest of the room, though, slowly shifted between residents. It helped to bind her closer to friendship. Derpy, the Cakes, the Apples—she'd forged bonds of friendship with just about everypony in town, and now it made her stronger and capable of undertaking her task.
"You need something to eat."
The words cut into Lyra's task. She spared some focus to look at Sweetie who had a bowl of rice with some kind of sauce on top of it—her nose told her it was something made with bean paste. "Kinda busy."
"Then just hold still and open your mouth. You don't need to chew this." Holding up a spoon, Sweetie pushed the first load in the moment Lyra complied. "It's almost dawn."
"Firelance?" Lyra asked around the first mouthful.
Sweetie chuckled. "Scootaloo already fed him."
The food was distracting, but not as much as her empty stomach. The rice was almost immediately digestible and returned strength to her—though it did nothing for Lyra's fatigue. When Sweetie held a bottle to Lyra's lips, she shook her head. "I don't know how long I need to be here."
"We sent a full battalion. By midday there will be more Guardponies in that area than grains of sand." Sweetie put the top back on the bottle. "Here's some water then. I'll grab you a regular coffee when I figure out where the others got theirs."
"There's one thing you can do for me," Lyra said. She tilted her head slightly toward Sweetie.
Knowing exactly what was needed, Sweetie tilted her own head so she could kiss her wife.
Just like that Lyra felt even more refreshed. She had never had a friendship quite like the one she shared with Sweetie, and the kiss reaffirmed and reminded her of that. Even as their lips parted she turned her full focus back to the friendship magic.
She settled back into her zone, holding friendship magic together by her will and the power of the ponies around her. The sun came up and the crystal castle welcomed it by refracting and reflecting it all around the room.
As the day progressed, Lyra welcomed Sweetie feeding her again and, just as the sun was reaching its zenith, all the weight left her shoulders and Lyra felt a shock of heat pour through her. On the map, six cutie marks reappeared and started circling each other again.
The train ride home had seen Twilight distracted the whole way. Her friends were their usual chatty (even Fluttershy) selves, but she couldn't help but wonder about Starlight Glimmer. The mare was a puzzle, enigma, and a lot of confusion all wrapped up in a unicorn-shaped package. It was like Twilight had a sore on the roof of her mouth and poking it with her tongue didn't stop it from being sore.
As the train slowed for Ponyville, she tried to perk herself back up and wish her friends goodbye, but she still felt slightly drained too.
"Is something the matter?" Fluttershy asked Twilight.
Lifting her head from where she'd been hanging it, Twilight asked, "Huh?" It took her brain a moment to realize she'd been asked a question, but it wasn't until Fluttershy patiently repeated her question that Twilight said, "It's just that whole thing with Starlight. She wasn't—I mean, her magic was formidable, but it wasn't more than I could handle."
"It was her ideology."
"Yes!" That was a thing Twilight hadn't been able to reconcile. "It was like she recognized friendship, but she twisted it into something bad. Friends shouldn't have to reduce themselves to fit in."
Nodding, Fluttershy reached a foreleg out to hug her friend. "Precisely. You don't see me trying to dumb myself down just to hang around with you guys." She waited a moment for Twilight to stare at her before she giggled. "I was joking."
It wasn't that Twilight was unfamiliar with such jokes, but she just hadn't expected one from Fluttershy. "R-Right. You're amazing with animals, the most kind-hearted and empathic pony I know. I wouldn't expect you to even surrender that to hang around with a dork like me."
Fluttershy giggled. "You're the most empathic dork I know."
"Still. We should celebrate our diversity, not restrict it." Twilight finally reached out and hugged Fluttershy back, squeezing her friend a little and leaning the bridge of her nose against Fluttershy's shoulder. "Like right now. Thank you."
The train ground to a stop while they shared that moment, supporting each other and building up their confidence. When the conductor cleared his throat from the end of the car, they finally broke apart and giggled.
Stepping off the train, Twilight felt something renewing in the air, something magical. "Thanks, girls, for helping with this one."
"No problems, Twilight, but I gotta go and sleep for a week. If anypony asks for me, tell them I moved to Yakyakistan." Rainbow gave Twilight her best grin and shot into the sky.
"Likewise, darling. I need"—Rarity paused for effect, as she often did, though instead of trying to look her best she just yawned—"to sleep as well. It is almost unbelievable how those ponies managed to live like that for so long."
One by one her friends excused themselves and left Twilight standing on the platform. She couldn't blame them, everything about Our Town had left her with more questions than answers. Trotting through Ponyville, she got almost to the front door of her castle (two words she still couldn't believe went together) before she realized something was odd. There were hardly any ponies on the streets and what few there were looked completely out of it.
Throwing open the doors to the crystal castle, Twilight was halfway ready to bellow for Spike when she saw two startled Guardponies standing at attention on each side of the doors. "Uh, hello?"
"Your Highness! Commander Sweetie Drops should be in the map room. She asked that if you arrived, you be told she's there." Razzle Dazzle was still a little bit surprised by how small Twilight seemed. He'd spent time in the map room supporting Lyra, and it left him feeling wrung out and drained. Knowing that Twilight was doing the job of a dozen unicorns was nothing short of astounding to him.
"O… kay." Twilight walked through the halls of her castle (the two words never ceased to sidetrack her) until she found the map room. Poking her head in first, she saw Sweetie look up from the map. "I was told to report in to you here, sir." She snapped off a perfect salute—just liked she'd trained to.
"At ease, corporal." What made Sweetie smirk all the more was how Twilight responded to that command. "Lyra's in one of your guest rooms sleeping. I guess it's my job to report in her stead, Your Highness.
"I will debrief you after this, but I want to fill you in on everything that happened. At approximately 4 P.M. yesterday something happened to you. Your connection and support of friendship magic was severed and it started to unravel.
"Lyra rushed here and found your six cutie marks on the map had been turned into two parallel lines. With just Corporal Firelance supporting her at first, she took over your duty of maintaining friendship magic."
Twilight stared in complete and utter shock. She wanted to ask a million questions—a million squared questions—but she recognized Sweetie was going to keep unrolling events from this side.
"She had, before doing this, sent messages to Canterlot via Spike and Scootaloo, to ensure everypony knew what was happening. I led a contingent of unicorn Guardponies here to assist her while the E.U.P. Guard and Royal Guard both sent ponies to your last location.
"Lyra maintained friendship magic, in her own words 'kept it from unraveling', throughout the night and most of the morning. She collapsed when the map showed you'd recovered. Since then she has been sleeping with an order from a commander of the E.U.P. Guard not to be intruded upon in any way, shape, or form. That includes you, Your Highness, Sorry." Sweetie smiled in a perfect example of her namesake.
Taking a long breath and shoving her questions aside, Twilight began to narrate the events that'd taken place in Our Town. She explained how they'd tried to talk ponies out of following Starlight, how things had happened in the cave at approximately 4 P.M. in the afternoon, and how they'd been treated overnight. Even how the whole situation had been resolved.
Twilight was pleased that Sweetie was taking notes, because she didn't want to have to explain this more than at least once or twice more. "And that, led to our trip home and me coming here and finding you. Now, we may need to send word of what's happened to—Sorry, I have to put my princess hat on. Whom is in charge in Our Town now?"
"Commander Spitfire was sent with a squad of her best to be scouts and to assess the situation and take command. If you have any orders beyond what she would require to assist with the recovery there, I can arrange a message to be sent." The idea of dispatching one of their fliers to find Spitfire wasn't something Sweetie relished, but she did have such a contingency. "There was another matter, though it's non-urgent now. Go and rest, recover from your journey, and hopefully Lyra will be able to explain her situation to you by nightfall."
Twilight was now officially curious about what had happened that Lyra would need to explain, but she recognized that there were several facts keeping her from finding out for herself—not the least of which being that Sweetie hadn't told her what room Lyra was in.
Though she'd lost a lot of books when Tirek had destroyed her library, Twilight still had a good collection she was rebuilding. She advanced on her library, the castle's library, and set about finding something she hadn't read too many times.
That took a full two and a half hours of procrastination and the invention of three entirely new methods for sorting books. It was a new record for her.
She finally settled on Spells for Making Fart Noises: Vol. 5 when she heard the door to her library open and hoofsteps slowly advance on her domain.
"Can you turn the lights down a little, Twilight? I still have the world's biggest headache," Lyra said. She'd walked into the library with a blanket over her back and looking about as pale as a mint-green mare could ever look without being confused for white.
Twilight was careful with her magic. She reached out to the curtains and pulled them closed, then adjusted the light controls to dim them. Not for the first time she wondered how the lighting in her castle worked.
Finally, with the light dimmed to an appropriate level, Lyra walked up to Twilight and hugged her. "Please don't do that again."
Hugging her friend back, Twilight kept her voice pitched as low as Lyra had. "Do you want to explain it all? Sweetie said some things, but I'm not sure they make complete sense."
"She does her best to understand magic, but some of this can only be fully absorbed if you have spent years studying and living it." With one last squeeze to reassure herself that Twilight was back and she wasn't still at the map trying to bind reality together with her will, Lyra let go and found some soft cushions to settle on. "I felt the moment friendship magic was severed from its source. It screamed in pain. I almost cried as I galloped up here to find out what was going on.
"Somehow, Twilight, you are literally a leyline of power. You are the anchor for friendship magic. Without you it was dying. I had to do something. I had to save it. It showed me what it needed—what you do every moment of the day and night without even realizing it.
"It was easy at first—is how this normally goes, but it wasn't. Taking up that mantle was the hardest single magical working I have ever done. Is Firelance okay? I buffered him as best I could, but I—"
"He's fine, Lyra. He's sleeping."
Twilight's words soothed one of Lyra's worries. She let out a sigh. "I'm glad. He worked hard to support me until the rest started arriving."
"Who?" Twilight asked.
"Everypony. The whole town came in at some point, did what they could to support me, then left when it was too much for them. They eased the weight of all that magic rushing through me, but I had to keep working to keep friendship alive.
"When you took things up again, I felt friendship slide away and back to you. I don't remember much after that. I noticed something, and told Sweetie about it, but she ordered me to sleep. She's still a higher rank than I am."
"I could invent a new rank for you. Attache to the Princess of Friendship? Royal Magic Ladybug Zapper? First Unicorn of—"
"Ladybug zapper?" Lyra asked.
"Don't ask. Those things are just creepy." Twilight knew that would be the thing Lyra would latch onto—she'd basically dangled the line like bait. "Sweetie said there was something important about you?"
"Yeah. You remember my idea about storing wing and muscle data in a morphic field?" When Twilight nodded, Lyra continued. "Well, one of the effects of dealing with so much magic has resulted in my morphic field becoming somewhat more phase-shifted toward the visible spectrum."
"I hate to ask this, but what exactly do you mean by that?"
Slipping the blanket down her back, Lyra let the barest trickle of magic flow down her horn to gently light the tip.
Twilight gasped at what she saw. Two ghostly, golden wings appeared on Lyra's back. Phase-shifted toward the visible spectrum was very literal, she realized. A smile cracked, then a giggle broke loose. "I thought you said Sweetie out-ranked you, Your Highness?"
Lyra snuffed her horn's light which instantly hid the ghostly wings. "Don't you start that. You know I'm not an alicorn precisely because we'd have Celestia all over us with those pretty white mares singing behold. No. It's just a magical phenomenon that came about from testing experimental spells."
"What's the other thing?" Doing her best to hide her giggles, Twilight was nonetheless utterly failing.
"My magic capacity. Have you ever seen what happens to a hole in a piece of metal when you use a hammer to beat a cone into it? That's what my magic feels like now. I've been regenerating for…"
"It's been seven hours since I recovered my cutie mark."
"Right. I've been recovering magic for seven hours and I still feel like I'm moderately empty." Lyra raised an eyebrow. "Sound familiar?"
"A little. Back before you taught me how to improve my regeneration and before I gained a wingspan, it would take the better part of two days to recover all my magic from empty. Though, given your recovery rate—something I'm still a little jealous of—I'd say you had closer to Cadance's magic reserves."
Lyra slumped down to the pillows, flopping her head down as gently as she could and covered it with her forehooves. "No."
"Only one pony ever needs to know about the wings." Settling down before Lyra, Twilight set her choice of reading material back on the shelf—though she looked forward to deciding to read it another time. "Rarity could redesign your armor to hide wings. Perhaps even make you some more common outfits to hide them when you aren't wearing your armor. As for your magical capacity—nopony has to know about that."
Lifting her head out from below her hooves, Lyra looked at Twilight. "What about Princess Cele—"
"No. You're my Royal Guard. You are my responsibility." Smiling her best smile, Twilight didn't so much as twitch until Lyra smiled too. "Now, would you like to hear about the most incredible, adept-level magic for making rude noises?"
Almost ready to cry, Lyra fought against it with all her heart. "I can't think of a single thing I want to do more than learn about ridiculously difficult spells for doing stupid things."
Stats
Page generated in 0.029 seconds
Total duration
915 users online
207,838 hits today, 2,314,256 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Now Lyra is nearly a full platypus. That's code.
I think Lyra is now Monkey OS running on Unicorn Hardware with pegasus peripheral ports loaded and ready to be connected
Huh, she's doing that process gradually it seems. Also, an interesting nod to G5 : )
And by the next big magical thing lyra somehow manages to asxend into alicorn hood inside friendship magic, and the best theorys point to it being cause friendship
Oh, that is nasty, Im pretty sure the Weave unewaving has been used in several stories, but the only one that currently springs to mind is the sequal to Days Of Wasp And Spider, where the magic field being unraveled is an even higher level of power. And its being forced to?
The Tree is the Crystal equivalent for the spell anchor, like the central seed for Penrose aperiodic crystal tiling?
From child soldiers to child labour.
This was a great chapter and I like how Lyra managed to stabilize Friendship Magic when Twilihgt was unavailable. I expect that Lyra will have to inform the rest of the gurad about Starlight Glimmer if Sweetie Drops hasn't done so already.
Ask a question. So Lyra, how many fart sounds were you and Twilight able to make to help relax you both?
While we know that Lyra will just jump into the frey when need in the name of Friendship if she keeps that up she may soon earn her real wings and become the newest Alicorn.
<.<
>.>
>.<
...Unless somepony gets her a Red Bull.
Alicornism is contagious. Confirmed.
Yeah, turns out tearing a chunk out of an alicorn's soul has some consequences. Who'd have thought?
I feel like that's something Twilight may have wanted to settle before leaving, though I can understand wanting to get out of there with all due haste. And maybe some undue haste.
This says literal volumes about unicorns throughout history.
Well now. Lyra's well ahead of the curve if she's emulating Sunny Starscout. The question is if (when?) those wings undergo an even more visible phase change, and how.
Looking forward to more, especially as Lyra deals with this latest involuntary promotion.
this sure sounds to me like Lyra is one tiny hair from having the wings be permanent.
How do you just miss an entire Guard battalion roaring hell bent for leather down the same railroad spur you're traveling back up?
Also, Lyra's a demialicorn now, I hope she's very proud of herself.
It's okay, the race blindness will take care of it, they'll just think she's running a shiny spell!
Holding on to the structure of a leyline is unheard of, any lesser unicorn would have been evaporated in minutes!
Great, how Lyra is an even bigger magical battery than before. Secret weapon in a tiny package!