Twilight gets vaporized, but that's not necessarily the end...
This is why we have failsafes, people.
But seriously, Twilight gets a little exploded. Don't worry though, this isn't gonna be about mourning her loss or whatever, she's too smart to let a little matter like total obliteration stop her.
Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns has many colleges and administrative hangers-on, but by far the least notorious is a small (comparatively, at least) tower to the east of the main campus, known as the “Experimental Division”. This is the epitome of the old style of mage’s tower, filled with unicorns - professors and students alike - bustling about their business of experimenting with the limits of magic, and more than occasionally having something go wrong in a rather spectacular fashion.
Usually not quite so spectacular as this, however, thought Celestia as she looked, awestruck, at the mushroom cloud of thaumic energy slowly blooming over the former location of the tower. Oh dear.
Perhaps we shall not start quite so in medias res, and instead bring our story back the the morning of the same day, when Twilight Sparkle, one of the most powerful unicorns in Equestria, took to the grounds of the university to reconnect with old professors, share some of her vast knowledge of the arcane in a guest lecture or two, and speak with other minds shaping the future of what magic is capable of.
Only two of these things was she excited about.
“I swear, half of them weren’t even trying to listen!” She ranted to a sympathetic Enunciated Incantation1, who was all too familiar with the trials of teaching to young crowds. “I just don’t understand, the creation of the first memory-sealing runic matrices has phenomenal implications for the storage and recall of information! It may be one of the most groundbreaking innovations of our time - I’ve done almost nothing but read up on the subject since it was discovered.”
1The only unicorn on staff whose full name was on no records not because he didn’t want it to be, but because nopony could write small enough to make it fit. Most ponies settled for just “Inky”, which was a surprisingly appropriate shortening due to his jet black coat.
“Perhaps,” Inky ventured, “you might have picked a less…” It was at this point that he wanted to say ‘esoteric’, but thought better of it, “…advanced topic for a first-year class.”
“I suppose, but honestly I would have loved to have been in the seats of a lecture like that my first year.” Twilight huffed.
“I daresay, Miss Sparkle, that you are very much not most ponies.”
“You may certainly say that again.” The voice of Celestia interjected, to the surprise of both ponies, and the delight of Twilight.
“Celestia! It’s so good to actually see you again!” Twilight cried, cantering up to her mentor and embracing her warmly.
“It is wonderful to see you too, my dear Twilight.” Celestia said as she returned the hug. “I understand you will be visiting the Experimental Division after this? They have been doing some very interesting work.”
“Yes, I am very excited to speak with all of them, I remember really enjoying my time there.”
“Ah, yes, your tenure with them featured some of the most interesting magical misfires in the history of the school, as I recall.” Both princess and student smiled at that. “Mister Incantation will be showing you around, I understand?”
The stallion in question responded, “Yes, I’ll be showing her some of our big projects in progress right now. I think you’ll be quite interested, Miss Sparkle.”
“Oh, I already am!” Twilight replied.
The tour was extensive, to say the least - the occupants of the tower had a tendency to have an idea in the middle of one project and get to working on it immediately, simply setting down their current work and finding the nearest available space2 to try out their next idea, certain that this would be the real genius innovation that needed immediate investigation. This led to a lot of half-finished projects that ponies would “definitely get back to in just a moment, let me finish this idea for self-toasting bread first, I just need to tone back the enchantment so it stops setting itself on fire and burning the entire loaf”. Normally this was only a small problem, but Twilight being Twilight, she ended up having in-depth conversations about nearly every idea, theory, and vague gut feeling that the ponies here had dreamed up. At last, making their way down to the basement, she was greeted with a magnificent sight indeed - a whole team of researchers bustling to and fro around an enormous brass structure, all concentric rings and carefully placed connecting beams etched with hundreds of runes, a tiny ball of crackling energy suspended within. Even the stone base of the tower was not safe from the frantic work of the experimental crew, a massive runic circle carved into the floor below the contraption.
2Sometimes this happens to be the floor, so it is recommended to watch your step in the more frequently trafficked areas - more than a few frenzied researchers have been accidentally trod on in their pursuit of arcane advancements.
“This is one of the projects that has been going on for a while now,” Inky explained. “An attempt to create massive amounts of thaumic energy through the careful fission of basic magical structure, of the type any unicorn could easily produce. The fuel spell is actually a retrofit of the levitation spell matrix, to ensure it is as easy as possible to teach and cast.”
“That seems quite unstable, how are you keeping the reaction in check?” Twilight asked, still inquisitive even after a very busy few hours.
“You’d have to ask Glinty about that, I don’t work on this much.” Aura Glint, presumably the Glinty mentioned, stepped up to field the question.
“You can see the reaction-essential runes are all in the first three layers,” she said, indicating the innermost rings of the device, “and everything else is stabilization spells. We move energies in and out through the conduit circle in the floor - it was designed for maximum bandwidth - and fuel is provided by simply casting the fuel spell on the focus in the middle. We’ve already got some loaded in, Eureka Moment provided that earlier -” Glint gestured to a frazzled-looking unicorn stallion in a corner of the room, who waved distractedly “- and we were just about to kick it on. If you stick around for a moment you can see our first test of this new spellform configuration.”
Twilight of course agreed, and the researchers set about readying the device for operation while Twilight continued to talk excitedly with Glint about the details of the device’s function. At last, a researcher called to the conversing mares that the device is ready, and they may want to pay attention. Twilight immediately perked up, and accepted the pair of tinted goggles Inky handed her. Once all present had strapped on their protective equipment and (in the case of the research team) picked up their clipboards, the device was powered on.
Runes and spellforms glowed to life in the brass structure, and the tiny piece of fuel began to wobble and spark. Rings began to spin in carefully constructed patterns, and slowly, gradually, the circle on the floor began to light up with power drawn from the reaction.
Twilight was entranced by the sight, not because of the visual majesty of it, though it certainly was impressive, but by the carefully choreographed interplay of possibly hundreds of individual spells, chosen for the precise way in which they interacted with each other. After a certain point in the reaction the light was so blinding from the whirling runes and steadily brightening reaction at the center that Twilight gave up on watching it visually and instead closed her eyes and probed it with her magic, feeling the interlocking enchantments the way a clockmaker observes the fine mechanisms of a wristwatch.
But they weren’t interlocking.
Twilight frowned, noticing a strange pattern of interaction in one stabilization layer, double-checking her observations to make sure, but there was no mistake - two enchantments were interacting strangely and causing a small instability. As she opened her mouth to point it out to Glint, Twilight felt the instability grow and crack through two more enchantments, and she changed her comment to a shout.
“Layer 2 is failin-” she managed, before one of the rings of the device shattered, and the point became moot.
Shock and panic set in among the research team as the whole device began to shudder and split all over, glowing cracks forming as a chain reaction of spell failures began to rip the reaction shielding apart. Twilight, meanwhile, her magic almost moving faster than her brain could process what was happening, fired up her horn and hastily constructed her own shielding spell to hold back the steadily growing reaction at the center of the room. Straining to hold back the massive amount of energy boiling in her magical grip, Twilight managed only a quick “Do you have any backup plans in here?!”
This seemed to finally knock the occupants of the basement out of their daze, who immediately set about looking for solutions or bolted upstairs to warn the rest of the tower. Glint, however, looked guiltily at the floor. “We… thought the stabilization would be enough.”
Twilight was furious, but didn’t have the energy to stay as such and maintain concentration on her already wobbling shield. “YOU THOUGHT - okay, okay, I can deal with this, you just need to get everypony out of the tower, now.”
“Could I help…?” Glint ventured, knowing if Twilight hadn’t asked for it there was likely nothing she could do.
“Not unless you received personal training from my brother in shield spells, since I’m almost certain he and I are the only ponies who know how to cast a barrier this strong.” Twilight managed through gritted teeth. “Just evacuate. And tell Celestia. I’ll figure something out. If you don’t see me when this thing goes off, I didn’t find a way out in time.” Glint looked horrified at that last remark. “GO!” Twilight shouted, which seemed to break the stunned mare out of her daze. Soon she, too, had fled the room.
Above, It was chaos, and ponies shouted and galloped in all directions, grabbing their most precious work and running as fast as they could - one pony dashed out of the tower with a piece of self-toasting bread in her mouth, another levitating a stack of notes about a foot thick, everyone panicked and a mess of papers and fright. Below, Twilight’s analytical might was being put to the biggest test it had ever faced3.
3Except, perhaps, for Pinkie Pie.
Alright Twilight, your magic reserve is dwindling and they’re definitely not going to get someone to Celestia before you run out. How do you get out of this with what you have left?
Teleport away once I drop the shield? No, the blast radius on this is going to be - She tried to calculate exactly, but soon realized that here were better uses of her time at this point - pretty big, even on my best days I could only manage that much distance in one cast with a lot of time and concentration, and this is certainly not one of my best days - and I don’t think I’ll have time for a teleport chain when this shield drops.
Okay, teleporting’s out. What else? I could put a shield around myself - but again, as soon as this reaction is set free I’m toast - I don’t have time to cast another one of these shields in the moment after I release this one, and maintaining two at once would burn through my mana reserves like crazy.
C’mon, think!
Hmm, I bet I could enchant something to resist this blast pretty easily, but what then? I hide behind a shield and I get roasted alive from convection. I would need a dome of some sort, and I don’t see anything like that in here.
What else…
It was at this point that she directed her attention to the floor, where the huge channeling circle was still etched into the stone floor.
This could channel power, a lot of it. But it needs direction, a will, an image to build on. I could…
And then she gasped in realization, and went to work.
Celestia was in the middle of a cup of tea when a frantic researcher burst into her chambers and babbled something about unstable reactions that she only partly understood. She understood the next sentence perfectly, though - “Twilight’s holding it off, but she can’t do it forever - If someone doesn’t help her the blast is going to go off with her right next to -” was all the panicked academic had time for before Celestia had already fired off a teleport and was standing on the balcony of the castle, wings at the ready to fly to the Experimental Division.
It was that moment that the Experimental Division decided to abort this plan by blowing up spectacularly.
Oh dear, thought Celestia.
After the dust cleared, all that remained of the tower in which the Experimental Division once resided was the stone floor of the basement. The circles drawn by the fission team were still perfectly preserved in the rock, along with a whole new set of runes that nopony was really interested in identifying, after what happened. There was shock, then horror, then grief, and finally a massive overhaul of the safety practices in arcane research laboratories all across Equestria. A new tower was erected on the spot of the old one, the basement floor left in place as a reminder of the danger these ponies were facing every day and the sacrifice Twilight made. But none of that, Celestia knew, could bring her back.
Darkness and fog surrounded Failsafe, as she groggily churned to life.
What… Oh, my head, what happened? Wait, better question, where am I? No, even better question, WHO am I? Hmmm…
She did her best to move limbs she quickly realized she didn’t have, and drew some basic conclusions about her circumstances.
I don’t appear to have a body, which is… okay? Why is that okay? Ugh, my thoughts feel so slow for some reason. Where in Equestria am I getting this information from? And why is this one spell burning in my head?
Having exhausted her physical means of investigating the situation, Failsafe decided magic was the next-best thing to try. Letting out a pulse of thaumic energy from her… not-quite-a-horn, or whatever it was she was using, she waited for the results of her ping.
Oh. OH. Now that explains a lot.
Light Bloom was not certain how she should feel about her first day at the Experimental Magic Division. For one, it was everything she’d ever imagined it to be - high-ceilinged rooms full of ponies experimenting with spellforms and theories on the cutting edge of science and magic. This was where they invented self-toasting bread! She thought, mentally squeeing over the potential that the tower represented. On the other hand, in no other place had she felt quite so… uneasy, she decided was the best word.
It had started that morning, when she first entered for her tour of the whole place, but It had slowly gotten better over the course of the day - that is, until she headed back downstairs for lunch. Is it proximity based? She pondered, munching on a hayseed sandwich and idly scribbling notes on a piece of paper. Perhaps there’s an experiment on the ground floor that’s interacting with my magic strangely. I should look into that. As proof that she was just the kind of pony the ED attracted, she promptly abandoned her project on the third floor and hurried off to the equipment locker to get a few things.
“So, just to be clear, you want to run all over the ED waving around a thaumic energy detector looking for the one magical anomaly out of all the experiments and faffing about ponies are doing that shouldn’t be there, based on nothing more than a weird gut feeling you have?” Asked the pony currently on staff at the equipment locker.
“Um… yes? Is- is that not okay?” Light bloom managed, suddenly realizing how ridiculous her request sounded.
“Oh, no, that’s perfectly fine. It’s not even the weirdest request I’ve heard today. Somepony came by asking for a thaumacoil to help with their work on ‘Self-Toasting Bread 2’, whatever that is.” The quartermaster said, handing her an energy detector and a form to fill out.
“Why would they possibly need- what’s Self-Toasting Bread 2- I have so many questions…”
“I’ve learned to just let those kinds of things go, you have to if you want to have any time for your actual work around here.” He accepted the completed form and waved a goodbye to Light Bloom. “And remember, that needs to be back by Monday!” he called after her as she set off.
That quartermaster had an excellent point, Light Bloom commented to herself as she fiddled once again with the knobs on her thaumic analyzer, searching for a frequency that would tune out the clamor of spells being flung and experiments being started and restarted in maddeningly formed configurations. It’s going to be a massive pain to try and find one weird pattern in a building full of weird patterns. It’s clearly getting stronger the lower I go, however, so it must be on this floor, unless… She looked around.
After no small amount of searching and some mental mapping of the layout of the tower, Light Bloom finally worked out where the stairs to the basement ought to be - only to find a door labeled “Staff Only”.
“But I’m staff!” She protested, jiggling the handle with her magic. “I work here now!”
The lock, being inanimate, was deaf to her pleas. And so she set about doing some research on what she called1 “Arcane Penetration Testing”. Fast Hooves, her roommate and self-proclaimed “sneakiest unicorn on campus”, was excited to hear about this.
1Or rather, not what she called, necessarily, but certainly what she wrote on the official paperwork.
“Oh my! Has our little lightning bug finally succumbed to the dark side?” She asked, when Light Bloom approached her about getting into the ED at night.
“It’s not that, there’s something… weird going on in the basement. I keep getting these strange headaches when I’m on the ground floor, and the only place they could be coming from is down there. But…” she rubbed one foreleg with the other sheepishly. “It’s locked, and I don’t know anypony who’ll let me down there on a gut feeling. The quartermaster was pretty okay with it, but the only ponies with access to that area are senior professors, and I don’t think they’ll be quite as understanding.”
“Hmmm, there may be something I can do. Meet me outside the ED tonight after sundown.”
Light Bloom slunk nervously across the grounds in the shadow of the large tower that was the Experimental Division. She had made it nearly all the way to the door, scanning the whole time for any sign of Fast Hooves, when a voice behind her made her jump nearly a foot in the air.
“And what are you doing out here late at night, missy?”
“OhmygoshI’msosorryI- Oh, screw you Fast.” She said, realizing halfway through her panicked excuse that her friend had been the one speaking. “Are you going to help me or not?”
Her giggling compatriot pulled herself together and started towards the door. “Of course, of course, the opportunity was just too good to resist. Now, what have we here…” As Fast Hooves knelt to inspect the lock, Light Bloom checked over her thaumic detector.
“Aha! Got it!” Fast Hooves exclaimed, retrieving an oddly shaped device, clearly enchanted, from the lock on the basement door. “Now go, quick.” She motioned to Light Bloom. “I’ll keep watch up here.”
Light Bloom made her way down to the basement, detector at the ready. Without the magical noise of the upper levels and daytime research, the strange frequency was much easier to pin down, the needle of the device hovering at the low end of the spectrum. As her hoof hit the basement floor, however, the needle jumped, and the uneasy feeling washed over her like never before - it was pressing at her head, strange and unbearable, almost pushing her to turn back until, all of a sudden, whatever it was managed to stabilize the issue it was having and the strange pressure became whispered speech, too faint for Light bloom to make out. She she swung her detector in a wide arc, looking for the source of the noise.
The murmurs picked up in volume, apparently straining to be understood, but to no avail.
Light Bloom wasn’t quite sure what this meant - in fact, she wasn’t even sure the mysterious voice was coming from an external source, but all evidence from the wildly dancing needle of her thaumic detector implied there was something going on down here. She looked around, seeking anything to explain this strangeness.
The basement of the new Experimental Division was not the grand laboratory that it was before, instead relegated to being storage space out of a combination of a need for storage space - the ED ponies where the kind who ended up with a lot of detritus which they nonetheless insisted would be useful later - and, to be honest, no small amount of superstition2. As such, Light Bloom’s view of the rest of the basement was blocked by many teetering construction projects built of boxes stuffed with junk. And yet, through the narrow streets formed between the cardboard skyscrapers, she could just barely see the glimmer of runes humming with energy.
2It may surprise an outsider that ponies so devoted to logic and reason would succumb to superstition in this way, but there is a deeper instinct in all of us that will cause even the most avowed scholar of the scientific method to still not propose Titanic as the name for a new cruise ship, just in case.
It was only after she had started navigating a path to the center of the basement that Light Bloom realized that this may in fact be a bad idea. And then her curiosity took over once more and she pushed deeper into the maze of boxes.
At last, Light Bloom stumbled out of a particularly perilous corridor of boxes to find the very center of the basement to be completely clear of clutter. On the floor, carved into the stone, was some kind of channeling circle, and around it were rings of newer runes she could not identify.
Standing this close, the murmurs and whispers she had been hearing while moving through the boxes were louder than ever, but she still couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. She stepped, tentatively, past the first ring of runes.
The voice snapped into focus.
-ucking finally! Can you believe how hard it is to get someone to come down here? Stars, it’s like pulling teeth.
“What? Who are you? How are you talking to me?” Light bloom managed, gazing around the clearing of boxes in confusion.
Oh, yeah, I should probably introduce myself. Greetings! Call me Failsafe, since that’s the only thing resembling a name that I can remember. As for that last question, well, it’s not too difficult seeing as you’re standing inside my brain.
Light bloom dropped her gaze back to the floor, and realized the symbols had been humming in time to the rhythm of Failsafe’s speech. The pieces clicked together.
“You’re a thaumic consciousness? I thought those were still highly experimental!”
I’m something resembling a TC, but whoever created me made a lot of edits. I have basically no built-in memories besides little scraps of things here and there, and this burning implanted thought of one spell that I absolutely must cast.
“How did they expect you to cast anything? You don’t exactly have a horn, or any innate mana.”
That’s why I need your help. That circle on the floor? It’s a channeling circle. You dump power in, and I - since I was built on top of it - can use it to cast.
“That seems convoluted. What’s this spell? Maybe I can just do it for you.” Light Bloom offered.
Spellforms and incantations flashed in Light Bloom’s head, slowly at first, then faster and faster, speeding through increasingly advanced and interconnected spells, some needing to be cast two or three at a time, some obviously created whole cloth for their function in this greater project. It quickly became overwhelming - she tried to stop focusing on them but they just kept coming - “Stop! I get it!” She cried, putting a hoof to her head.
You see? I don’t even understand it - but I can definitely cast it with enough power. I just… know that much, for some reason. I think I was made off a mental impression of someone very good at magic.
“So what, I just pump power into this circle and voilá? That’s it? Maybe your creator could have cast that spell in one go, but I don’t think I have the power. Also, were there material components there?”
Yeah, Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and a bunch of others. A list with associated masses flashed in Light Bloom’s mind.
“Why is that so familiar?”
Beats me. I have amnesia, remember?
“It’s ponies!” Light Bloom gasped in realization. “That’s the chemical composition of a pony! Are you trying to make a body for yourself?” Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure that Failsafe was as good-natured as she seemed.
I don’t know! Whoever made me gave me this ridiculous task to somehow manage from the basement of some lab, and didn’t even bother to mention what it would DO! Maybe it makes a body. Maybe it creates a bomb! I just know that everything will change the moment I cast that spell.
“Okay, okay, I’ll see what I can do. There must be someplace in the ED where they have those kinds of materials. That still leaves the power issue though. Perhaps… hm. I’ll think of something.” There was a creak from above, and Light Bloom remembered that she technically wasn’t supposed to be here. “For now, I need to leave before I’m caught.”
Please… Failsafe said, just before Light Bloom stepped outside her ring of influence. Please don’t forget about me…
“Of course!” Light Bloom said. “I’d never leave a pony in need.”
But there was a part of her that still worried she might have made a grave mistake.
“So,” said Fast Hooves once they returned to their room, “what is it? What’s down there?”
“Some kind of TC built on top of a channeling circle. She says she needs to cast this one spell, and needs my help to do it. I supply power through the circle, and she casts.” Light Bloom replied, sitting down at her desk to take notes of the evening. “It seems like she might be trying to create a body for herself, but she says she can’t remember anything. Total amnesia except for general background knowledge and this one spell. Well, general background knowledge for a pony going to Celestia’s School that is. She seemed to know a lot about magical theory.”
“So, what, she’s trying to break free of the basement? Seems fishy. Especially since she just wants your power.” Fast Hooves was always the more practical of the two, and her wariness was coming through in this instance. “I mean, there might be a reason she was locked in there in the first place. You had to go to an awful lot of trouble to find her.”
“What are you proposing, a malicious TC? That’s the stuff of sci-fi novels, not modern magic. Although…”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know, it’s just… She seemed familiar somehow. Like I’d heard her voice before. Or, not her voice, but you know what I mean.”
“Where in Equestria would you have heard the voice of a TC trapped in the basement of the Experimental Division except in the basement of the Experimental Division?”
“I dunno. It sounded familiar though. She sounds kind of like - you know, this is crazy to bring up, but she sounds kind of like a guest speaker I had in freshman year.” Light Bloom sighed, and put down her quill. “Enough for tonight. Tomorrow I need to figure out how all those runes ended up on the floor of the basement.”
The library was always comforting to Light Bloom, and today was no exception. Especially since she wouldn’t be getting those weird headaches from Failsafe’s attempts at communication. I really should have mentioned that doing that doesn’t work. She thought, pulling down from the shelf A Complete and Unabridged Account of the History of Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns, Volume the Twenty-Second, which was nearly as grandiose as its name.
Let’s see… Experimental… Ea, Ed, Ex, here we are, Experimental Division. What have we got… Founding, page 112, I suppose that would be useful. Hm, most of the rest of these entries seem to just be various innovations, not that much that would help. Ah, the rebuilding, page 436, that’s probably got what I’m looking for.
Her investigative ventures took up nearly the whole morning, but after quite a lot of reading and cross-referencing and frustrated mane-pulling, she thought she finally had a grasp on what had happened in the basement of the ED.
“Fast, you’ll never believe this -” said Light Bloom, bursting back into her room with a stack of books in her telekinetic grip - “remember the ED explosion a while back? I think Failsafe was involved in some way.”
Fast Hooves, a piece of self-toasting bread halfway to her mouth, stopped abruptly. “What? What makes you say that?”
“Apparently,” - Light Bloom dropped the books near her desk and pulled one out to show Fast Hooves its contents - “The only thing that survived the explosion was the basement floor, which was incorporated into the new building. And,” - here she pulled yet another book from the pile - “There was a channeling circle already on the basement floor as part of the original experiment. After the explosion, the school paper did an article with a picture of the crater, and if you look closely you can just barely see the same pattern as the one I saw down there last night. Whatever Failsafe is, she was there on the day of the explosion.”
“Wow, nice job convincing me she’s definitely not some crazy TC bent on destroying the world.” Fast Hooves snarked before returning to her lunch.
“I will admit this is spooky, but… I don’t know, when I was talking to her, it felt like she was meant to fix something. Maybe I’m just sentimental-”
“You can say that again.” Fast Hooves said around a mouthful of toast.
“But, I think it’s worth helping her out. If something happens she at least doesn’t know about you, so I guess tell someone if I go missing.”
“Wow, fatalistic much? Maybe we put together some precautions before you get kidnapped or killed or whatever. You said this thing seemed sluggish, right? She probably won’t notice some sort of distress enchantment until it gets activated. I could throw something together and put it on your saddlebags.”
“I always forget you’re competent. Sure, I guess.” Light Bloom said, flopping onto her bed. “I’ve already put in materials requests for the raw elements under fake reasons, so that should be done in under a week. It’s power that’s gonna be the real problem.”
Fast Hooves, lunch forgotten as she started drawing spellforms in the air, said jokingly, “I mean, she clearly didn’t have a problem with power back with the whole bucking building blew up, why didn’t she do it then?”
Light Bloom huffed. “Because it wasn’t focused, obviously, but… actually, wasn’t the experiment that went wrong about producing thaumic energy? They must have had a way to store it. I wonder…” She shuffled through some stray papers among her pile of research. “Energy is then drawn out through a lower channeling circle - I’m pretty sure that’s the same one that Failsafe’s built on, by the way - and stored in racks of thaumacoils? How would that work?”
“Hmm, perhaps it’s to do with the flow rate? You might be able to do something if you had the right stabilization. Do they mention anything on that?”
“Well they did invent a lot of stabilizing spells trying to keep their reaction in check.” Light Bloom stared at the ceiling, picturing the various spellforms in her mind, trying to see how they might interact.
“Yeah, and look at how well that turned out.” Fast Hooves snarked, collapsing the spread out spell matrices in front of her. “There, that should work, just give me your bags for a sec.”
Getting her hooves on several dozen thaumacoils without anyone taking note, Light Bloom soon realized, was going to be a little harder than a jaunt to the equipment locker. She had searched the open storage areas in various academic buildings, but none had anything proper - mostly just tiny example versions of real devices. I guess if I was willing to up my required number from a couple dozen to about a hundred, I could use these, Light bloom thought sarcastically as she put the fifth demonstration coil she had found back on the shelf. At that point it would probably be easier to just make some myself.
The solution to her little problem came during a late-night trip to the ED basement to drop off another batch of material components.
What in Equestria would you need thaumacoils for? Failsafe asked when Light Bloom idly commented on her troubles.
“You don’t seriously expect me to just have enough power for that spell in me right now? I’m pretty sure only the princesses could manage that beast off their innate mana reserves.”
You know, I think whoever made me didn’t consider that might be a problem.
“Well, anyways, I read up on the subject and apparently you can repurpose thaumacoils for energy storage almost indefinitely with the right stabilization. Still not sure how, but I’m working on that.”
I think there might be coils down here - whenever I send out thaumic pings to get an idea of my surroundings some of them come back a little wonky, like the passed through an inductor. What’s the spell they were using?
“I’m pretty sure it was a variation on this one,” Light Bloom said, conjuring up some spellforms and holding them for Failsafe to inspect.
Have you tried changing the a-curve to an s-curve in this upper layer? That should hold things until resonance gets inverted.
“Oh! Of course! How did you see that so quick?”
I… I’m not sure, to be honest. I’m not even certain I can explain why it would work. There’s a lot of things about my mind I can’t explain.
Light Bloom looked sympathetically at the runes on the floor, for lack of anything better to look at sympathetically. “Don’t worry, I’ll do my best to help. Trust me.”
Thanks, Light.
There were, in fact, a lot of thaumacoils in the basement, a few even with the wisps of the stabilization enchantment on them - Light Bloom suspected they may have been left over from the fission researchers, relegated to the basement out of shame. Soon they were set up and ready to receive power.
After a week of slowly acquiring the necessary materials and Light Bloom filling coils with mana from her own reserve, she and Failsafe finally agreed that it was time to try a casting.
It failed rather spectacularly.
Fortunately none of the materials were lost, but a few coils had blown their stabilization enchantments and a few more were drained of power.
I admit that was probably on me, I’m not quite used to pulling power like this yet.
“In retrospect, it might have been a good idea to try out some simpler spells before throwing you into the deep end there. How about we take a few days while I fix these coils up and you try just levitating some things - actually, are there any spells you know other than ‘the big one’?”
I told you, sometimes information just comes to me, but it’s not there for long. The edits on the TC spell must have messed up my memory cycles pretty badly. I’m pretty sure I could manage a levitation spell, though.
And so the next night they took to practicing.
“Alright, I’m gonna channel some power manually, I don’t want to mess up the coils on this one. Ready?”
As I’ll ever be.
“Alright, let’s start with…” - Light Bloom rummaged through a nearby box - “Ah! Textbooks, always a good source of weight. Try this one.”
The two took to their respective tasks, and a purple glow formed around The Hierarchy of the Insect Kingdom. Slowly, it rose from the floor.
Ha! Yes! It’s -
The textbook went pinging off into a dark corner of the basement.
Well. Maybe not.
“It’s okay, you just need practice. I can’t imagine anypony has ever had to cast like this. We’ll just keep trying until you get the hang of it.”
The Hierarchy of the Insect Kingdom, 12th Edition gently lowered onto the floor, to the delight of both present.
Yes!
“I think we’re ready to try again, yeah?”
I think so. Coils full?
“Yeah, we’re good to go. Whenever you’re ready.”
Alright, here goes nothing…
The basement began to hum with energy, a static charge that put the hairs of Light Bloom’s coat on end. She watched the coils carefully, trying to keep an eye on them for any issues, but the crackling of the spell kept drawing her attention. The material components, sitting out of the way during their practice, were drawn up from their containers and into a slowly growing mass, suspended a few feet above the floor at the center of the channeling circle. Strange arcs of purple not-quite-lightning jumped between the runes that made up both Failsafe and the circle, some even breaking off to hit the cluster of material that was slowly forming itself into the shape of a pony.
I think it’s working! It’s working! Ha ha ha!
Then, suddenly, runes all over the basement floor, ones that Light Bloom had missed because of the darkness and their inactivity, flared to life. They, too, released bolts of energy, lancing straight toward the head of the pony form, now growing a mane and taking on a distinct coloration. All at once they struck, and soon Failsafe too had energy pulling out from her to join the others in the pony’s head.
Ha ha ha “ha ha! I’ve done it!”
Suddenly, Light Bloom realized that Failsafe’s voice was no longer in her head, and rather coming from the body before her, who had very clearly taken on the form of…
“I BEAT DEATH! I DID IT! I DID IT BECAUSE I AM TWILIGHT! BUCKING! SPARK-”
And then she vanished in a flash of light, leaving only a star shaped scorch mark on the floor.
“So,” A rather shaken Light Bloom said to Fast Hooves as she stepped out of the basement, “I have news.”
It had been a long night for Princess Luna, and it was barely half over. An unfortunate fact of the nobility was that they rarely ever had ideas, but were quite good at generating convictions, the majority of which were something along the lines of “It sure would be nice if things got done around here, but I sure don’t want to have to pay to have it happen.” To the kind of people who occupied noble houses, however, this certainly looked like an idea, and therefore absolutely needed to be taken to one of the princesses that instant. As such, with much of the actual judicial work of court being done in the daytime hours, most of Luna’s time taking petitioners consisted of doing her best to show them that what they had just said was nonsense and then sending them out in a huff. This wore on a pony, even a princess, after a while, and by the time the midnight bells rang over Canterlot she was about ready to pull out Nightmare Moon again.
To the good fortune of everyone involved, however, the court attendant signaled the end of public petitions for the night, and so Luna was now free to enjoy her tea and get onto the much less infuriating, but slightly more tedious, matter of paperwork. Perhaps even a quick review of her subjects’ dreams, just to be sure.
It was in the middle of a sip of soothing earl grey that Luna was startled by a feeling close to shuddering coming down a magical connection she never really noticed she had. She sat up straight for a second, gazing forward in shock. Then, tea and all, she vanished in a flash of deep blue light.
There was a banging at the door.
“Celestia get off thy lazy buttocks immediately and open this door, there is something about which we must speak!”
Celestia stirred in her bed, oblivious to the noise.
“Oh, for - Celestia do not make us teleport in there!”
“Fiv mor mints…” Celestia mumbled, still not comprehending the words being spoken.
There was another flash, and Princess Luna was inside shaking her sister awake.
“Mm? Luna? It’s not nearly sunrise yet, what are you doing? Is that tea for me?” Celestia managed groggily once she woke up.
Luna, only now realizing her cup of tea was still clutched in her telekinetic grip, set it down on bedside table. “No, that is not- We need you to- It’s-” She took a moment to collect herself. Losing her anachronisms as she calmed down, Luna said, “I felt… something, something from a connection I hadn’t realized I even had until now, and it trembled like everything was about to change. What is this? Surely you felt it-”
It came again, stronger this time, like a rolling wave.
Celestia was instantly awake. “I’ve only felt this once before,” she said. There was an insistent pull now, demanding somepony answer its call. “You’d better go,” said Luna. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”
Celestia nodded, and then tugged herself from the universe by her trembling connection.
The void opened to Celestia, seeming to expand out from her in every direction, though she knew this sensation was only the result of an intrinsic egotism. The void had in fact been there all along, she simply hadn’t been in the correct plane of existence to see it. As the last, abstract parts of her finally sidled in, somewhat late to the party, so too did the broad expanse of the cosmos that she stood on. Interdimensional travel was a strange beast that she never fully understood, though she had always expected that Twilight would study it ruthlessly if she ever acquired that ability. I suppose that’s never going to happen, she thought, and, turning around, realized rather abruptly that she had possibly never been more wrong.
Twilight gave her old mentor a look that was the result of a high-speed collision between a smile and nervous panic. “So,” she said, tentatively, “I suppose we both have some explaining to do.”
“Okay.” Twilight paused in her explanation of the day of the explosion to take a breath. “So, I was pretty much out of options, but I knew I could do some pretty tricky casting before I ran out of mana for the shield as long as none of it took too much power. Fortunately, memory spells are actually rather power-light, if concentration-heavy.”
“Memory spells? I dare say I had not done the reading up on them, that explains why I didn’t recognize what was going on. What in Equestria were they for?” Celestia asked.
“It was me! Every memory I had, I solidified into a rune and transcribed onto the floor. Nopony had ever tried something like it because doing memory spells in that way removes the memory from you, but I didn’t exactly need them at the time, what with the whole ‘imminent death’ situation. All I had in my head by the end was a copy of the plan I had cooked up.”
“So what then, you simply trusted that somepony would figure it out? That’s not like you.”
“Oh stars no, nopony would have been clever enough to get it, let alone cast the spell I’d cooked up to put me back together. But I could.” Twilight’s eyes gleamed with the delight of an artist revealing their masterpiece for the first time. “So I built a thaumic consciousness based on an image of my mind. It was a rush job, so she couldn’t access any of the memories scattered around, unfortunately. But, she had all my muscle memory when it came to spellcasting, and I outlined very clearly when I put her together that she would need to cast the spell I had implanted.
“I put her on top of that big, high bandwidth channeling circle so that as long as somepony supplied her power, she could put me back together. As a bonus, I needed a mental image for the reconstruction spell to work anyways, so that bucks two trees with one kick.
“Lastly, I enchanted the whole thing to survive the explosion, and there we go. When the explosion goes off and I get vaporized, She can get somepony to supply power and I’m back! That took a bit longer than expected though, the TC - she ended up calling herself Failsafe, by the way - took a while to get fully started up. By that time the basement was just storage, rather than a lab like I had thought. But it all worked out in the end, and now…” Twilight trailed off.
“Well.” Celestia said, starting to understand just why Twilight had been pulled here. “I suppose that answers that. My turn, then. This” - she gestured to the spinning cosmos around them - “Is a plane beyond our own. When a pony has done a great deed, something that shakes the very foundations of the universe, they are brought here.”
“Oh? So, for example, Starswirl the Bearded might have come here? What an honor, I -” Twilight was starting off again, Celestia could tell, so she decided to cut her off before she was too far gone.
“No, no, you would be able to tell if Starswirl had ever been here.”
“Why’s that?” Twilight asked, her thoughts interrupted. At that moment, however, a mote of purple light formed at her chest. It pulled back, and then split, each fragment beginning to orbit around her, speeding up and slowly lifting her off the not-quite-ground they stood upon.
“Because this,” Celestia said, almost shouting over the noise of the swirling magic, “Is where alicorns are made!”
There was a shockwave of purple-black light, and the two were thrown back to their plane of existence.
“Well, that was an experience.” Said Celestia, now far above the tower of the Experimental Division, drifting gently to the ground with great flaps of her wings.
YOU CAN CERTAINLY SAY THAT AGAIN, said a voice from behind her.
The three alicorns sat around Luna’s tea table, the still-warm teapot pouring out fresh glasses for all from within Celestia’s telekinetic grip.
“You will be a princess now, as with Cadence before you.” Luna said, lifting her cup to her lips.
THE PRINCESS OF WHAT, EXACTLY?
Celestia and Luna looked at each other. They had a short debate carried out through a series of sharp looks, which culminated in a glare from Luna that all but screamed You’re her bucking mentor, tell her already!
Celestia looked back at her student and said simply, “Death.”
WHY? WHERE DID THIS COME FROM? WHY DO I SOUND LIKE THIS ALL OF A SUDDEN? WHY DO I LOOK LIKE THIS ALL OF A SUDDEN? Twilight indicated her new size and her coat, now a much deeper purple.
“The voice is something we have never encountered before, but every new alicorn is a learning experience for all of us. The domain of death… well, I should think it’s fairly obvious. You are, right now, possibly the only creature in existence who has come back after thoroughly, truly dying. We immortals have cheated on occasion, but your death was real, and yet you survive. So, naturally, your alicornhood is awarded in accordance with that.” Celestia was trying to project an air of confidence, but she was probably just as shaken as Twilight, and had a suspicion her sister was as well.
“Perhaps,” Luna added, “it might be advisable to speak with Cadence about her experience, and take some time to adjust.”
CADENCE! AND MY BROTHER! OH, HOW ARE THEY GOING TO REACT? HOW ARE MY FRIENDS GOING TO REACT?
“Do take your time with reacquainting yourself with them - it has been a little over 5 years now. You will not -” Celestia said with a look, cutting off what she was sure would be Twilight’s next question, “- be expected to take up a position of rulership like cadence until you think you are ready. In any case, your… particular domain of princesshood does not lend itself readily to a single seat of power. With time, I am sure we will find a place for you.”
I DON’T THINK I WANT ANY PLACE BUT WHAT I HAD BEFORE.
“That is not an impossibility, but you may find that your new station will necessitate some… changes.” Luna did not want to be too negative at this point, but looking at Twilight, feeling her new aura - she felt something powerful, and asked herself a question:
What in all the universe can outlive death itself?
And she did not have an answer.
Light Bloom and Fast Hooves were lying in their respective beds.
“Light? You asleep?”
“No.”
There was a pause. Then, more pause. Then, finally,
“What the buck even happened down there?” Fast Hooves asked.
“I told you what happened, I just don’t know what it means. She said she was Twilight Sparkle, but I don’t know if that’s even poss-”
There came a knocking at the door. The two occupants of the room looked at each other for a moment, then Light Bloom finally got up, lit her horn, and opened the door. Outside stood a dark figure, its presence overpowering to both their magical senses.
UM… HI. I WANTED TO SAY THANKS.
Light Bloom and Fast Hooves were very clever ponies. To be such is pretty much a requirement for admittance into Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. They certainly had different personalities but they both knew quite a lot, especially between the two of them, so it was a rare moment to find both of them speechless.
This was a very rare moment indeed.
UH, PERHAPS I SHOULD GO BACK A BIT. HELLO, MY NAME IS TWILIGHT SPARKLE, YOU HELPED ME COME BACK TO LIFE, AND I’D LIKE TO FORMALLY THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE.
“You’re Twilight Sparkle?” Fast Hooves finally managed.
I HAVE EXPERIENCED SOME CHANGES TO MY APPEARANCE RECENTLY. IT APPEARS THAT BEING THE FIRST PONY TO SURVIVE DEATH IS GROUNDS FOR PROMOTION TO AN ALICORN. THE ALICORN OF DEATH, AS IT HAPPENS.
“So, what, you’re princess of death now? What does that job entail?”
I HAVE NO IDEA. AND UNTIL I FIGURE IT OUT, IT WOULD BE GREAT IF YOU COULD KEEP ALL THIS ON THE DOWN LOW.
“Of course!” Exclaimed Light Bloom, giving a pointed look to her roommate and ushering Twilight into the room. Twilight, forgetting her new size, nearly gouged a mark in the doorframe with her horn. “But, um, why are you here, in that case?” Light Bloom continued.
YOU WERE BRAVE, YOU GAVE MY SUSPICIOUS TC A CHANCE, AND YOU WERE CLEVER ENOUGH TO MAKE MY MAD SPELL WORK. FOR THAT I AM FOREVER GRATEFUL, SINCE IT DID, YOU KNOW, SAVE MY LIFE.
“Oh! I mean, it wasn’t all that, really. Your spell was incredible, I’ve never seen anything like it.” Light Bloom said, while Fast Hooves tried her best to subtly scream stop trying to decline a gift from the Alicorn of bucking Death!
IT MOST CERTAINLY WAS, BUT I UNDERSTAND THE INSTINCT TO DOWNPLAY SUCH THINGS. A FEW YEARS AGO I WOULD BE PROFUSELY INSISTING THAT SPELL WAS OVERCOMPLICATED AND POORLY OPTIMIZED.
Fast Hooves was curious now, having only seen Light Bloom’s hastily scribbled notes on the topic, and butted in. “Um, this all sounds fascinating, but what exactly was this spell we’re talking about?”
It was at this point that the original goal of the conversation was all but lost, and the three present spent much of the rest of the night discussing spellforms and optimizations, picking apart what exactly Twilight had done and theorizing all kinds of improvements. When they all finally remembered they had things to do the next morning, they bid farewell, tired but excited and with the promise to continue correspondence.
The loudspeaker at the station announced through popping static that the next train to Appleoosa by way of Ponyville would be departing in twelve minutes. In the shadows of an alley outside, hidden by a inverted Want-It-Need-It spell she liked to call Notice-Me-Not, Twilight stood with Celestia, talking things over.
“I’ve sent letters ahead to your friends explaining the situation, so they should be ready when you get there. I asked them to keep things discreet for now, but there’s only so much you can do with Pinkie Pie. How are you doing?”
I’M ALRIGHT. I - Twilight cleared her throat. “I’m starting to get a handle on the voice and everything, but it’s slow going. It’s like trying to learn a whole new kind of magic! I think -”
“That’s good, but you need to get on board that train.” Celestia cut her off before she could go off on another Twilight ramble again. “Have a safe trip. And Twilight?” She said as her pupil turned to leave. “We’re here for you, always remember that.”
Twilight, having paused at the last comment, turned back and gave her mentor a hug that lasted for a good few seconds before breaking off. “I know.”
She then pulled up the hood of her cloak and set off into the train station.
Then she adjusted her hood again. “Buck, how does Celestia manage this mane? It just never stops moving!”
Twilight sat on the train uncomfortably, despite having made this trip many times before. Her spell was holding firm, allowing her to appear as ordinary as any other train rider despite being several feet taller and having an ethereally flowing mane and tail peeking out from under her cloak. But residents of Ponyville and other towns like it are so damnably friendly, Twilight observed, that even when they thought you were just another train rider they wanted to make conversation.
“Is this your first time headed out to the sticks? You seem awful nervous.” A kind-eyed older mare observed from the seat next to her. “Don’t worry, folks out there are nice. A bit obsessed with apples sometimes, but nice.”
“It’s just been a while since I’ve been out there is all. A lot has changed since then.”
“Oh, I know how that goes. I was young and fresh the last time I visited, and now look at me.” She chuckled slightly. “I figured I’d better go now if I want to see it before I kick the bucket.”
Twilight looked at the mare, and destiny laid itself out before her eyes. She had seen this before, with the guards in the palace and others besides Celestia and Luna, but this time it was more obvious, and she concentrated on it, trying to feel out what it wanted to show her. Slowly it became clear, the threads converging to a single point and a moment that she knew she would be present for.
OH I’M SURE YOU’LL BE AROUND FOR A WHILE YET. ON AN UNRELATED NOTE, MAYBE STAY AWAY FROM ANY HOT AIR BALLOONS FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE? Twilight was surprised at the state of her voice - apparently channeling her newfound abilities made it harder to suppress her vocal irregularities.
“Hm, perhaps they are a bit risky at my age. I think -” The mare was cut off by the train pulling into Ponyville station, and when she turned to ask if this was her fellow passenger’s stop, she was surprised to see that the strange cloaked pony had already left.
There was, of course, a party - Pinkie Pie was involved. The banner over the five mares’ (and one dragon’s) heads read “We-All-Thought-You-Were-Dead-But-It-Turns-Out-You-Weren’t Party!”, which Twilight briefly considered pointing out was slightly inaccurate1 but thought better of it, and anyways found it rather difficult to speak shortly after she had closed the door to Golden Oaks on account of the crushing hug she received from her friends.
1. Rumors of her death had been entirely correct. It was rumors of its permanence that had been greatly exaggerated.
Assorted “Oh, darling, it’s been so long!” and “We missed you, sugarcube.” and “ohmygoshohmygosh you’re BACK!” came from the huddle, all parties involved on the verge of tears - including Twilight, whose anxiety about this moment was coming out all at once.
When the mass of ponies finally came apart, the catching up began, and there was quite a lot of it to do - five years worth, as it happened. Twilight knew none of her friends would really appreciate the technical details of what she had done to save herself, so she was mostly content to just listen.
Rainbow Dash had, in the wake of Twilight’s death, thrown herself into training for a position with the Wonderbolts, using exercise to work away her feelings. It paid off, though given her standing in the kingdom and her performances beforehand, especially at the Best Young Fliers competition, she needn’t have bothered to wait so long before applying. She was accepted almost immediately and proceeded to rocket through the ranks as she did everything else.
Rarity had experienced quite some success in the last few years, and (as she confided in Twilight out of earshot of the rest of the party) had tipped a few upper-class ponies off about the high quality of Apple family products; Rarity knew that even though Applejack was her friend, she would never take a handout from anypony - but if a few nobles just happened to hear about zap apple jam, however, “Well that’s just how things go, isn’t it?” Rarity said in a whisper, a satisfied grin on her face.
Applejack, in a similarly clandestine moment, had her own part to say - “Ah know it was her, o’ course, but ah can’t exactly undo it now, and anyways, she’s just tryin’ to help. Plus, it’s not like it’s been bad for business - we’d never sold out our entire harvest before a few years ago, but now we’re considering buyin’ a few more acres to keep up wit’ demand!”
Fluttershy was still living in the countryside with her animals, though now she occasionally got a rather discordant visitor - he was freed in the chaos of the Experimental Division explosion and was quite delighted to find that the elements were missing a member - but Fluttershy, as ever, turned out to be just the mare for the job.
Pinkie Pie continued to be the resident party pony of ponyville, but now occasionally got hired to plan for Canterlot events ever since Rarity brought her on to organize one of the most rip-roaring opening nights to any fashion show the nobility had ever seen. Pinkie, of course, completely forgot about this in favor of excitedly explaining to Twilight all the recent developments in town, including the birth of the Cake twins and the fact that Dinky Doo got her cutie mark a few months ago.
Spike took over maintaining the library in the wake of Twilights passing, growing much more mature for it - enough so that his form had developed into that of an adolescent dragon, and a recent growth spurt, the latest of several over the last few years, meant he stood about a head above the ponies around town now - he still had not gotten used to ducking when going through doors, unfortunately - “It’s a good thing dragonhide is tough, or I’d have a lot more bruises.” He said with a chuckle, rubbing his forehead.
It was only well into the afternoon, when everyone else was winding down their talk of the last few years, that Twilight remembered her Notice-Me-Not enchantment was still going - normally she would have been quite conscious of the drain on her internal mana reserves, but her magical capabilities had increased so dramatically since ascending that she could barely notice the loss compared to her newly enlarged capacity. She gave a slight sigh, knowing that as much as she would like things to return to the way they were before her untimely demise (and as much as she had been trying with this whole secrecy business), she would have to reveal herself eventually; for now, perhaps not to the whole of Equestria, but at the very least to her friends.
“Girls, Spike, I just remembered something you’ll probably want to know about.”
And then, at once, she dispelled her enchantment and flung off her cloak, revealing to now-clear eyes her new appearance.
Most of the room was silent with shock. Rainbow Dash squeed at the idea of a new flying partner, Pinkie Pie began a long gasp, clearly leading up to an incoherent barrage of excitement, and Rarity couldn’t decide whether to faint from astonishment or from excitement. She decided on the latter, and the last thought before she fell strategically into Spike’s arms was Just think of all the dresses I could design for a form like that!
