Chapter 1
Once upon a time there was a slime mold.
Slime molds are strange things. They are made of a millions of amoeba-like creatures, countless tiny blobs of life all bound together into a single, larger blob. And that larger blob, despite being made of nothing but identical little blobs, behaves like an animal with a nervous system. Not a very smart animal, there are flatworms smarter than a slime mold, but said flatworms have nerves and even a primitive brain, while a slime mold has nothing but amoebas. Nobody quite understands how a slime mold can seek out food, flee discomfort, or rejoin itself when cut in half, but it does all those things, though it does them very, very slowly.
Slime molds are not particularly pretty. They look like nothing so much as blobs of mucous, though this mold was purplish black, rather than being snot yellow or bile green. It was of fairly average size for a slime mold, being a pancake-like blob of gelatinous goo perhaps six inches across. It was crawling very, very slowly through a forest. It was, in a way, hunting. It ate whatever it encountered, and it moved in whatever direction seemed most likely to contain more food. Mostly it ate little bits of crumbled, dead leaves, but when it encountered a partially rotted piece of wood, it thought it was in heaven, or would have if it had been capable of abstract thought. As it was, it simply set about eating the bit of wood and growing, which is what slime molds do.
The slime mold didn't know it, but this particular bit of wood was special. It was rotting away now, but once it had been polished smooth by long use, and it was still possible to see the runes carved into it. It had been a magic wand many decades ago. Dropped when the owner died in battle, discarded for something showier, stolen by some thief who then threw it away as useless, or simply lost, there was no way to know how the wand had ended up on the forest floor. But there it was, providing food for a very happy slime mold.
But magic is a tenacious sort of thing. It clings. Traces of old spells are always hanging around, even after they've been dispelled. The weaker ones evaporate in days or weeks, but the stronger ones can leave traces that last for years. And this wand had been used to cast very strong magics, for a very long time. Magic was woven deeply into every particle of it. And it wasn't long before quite a lot of those particles resided inside the slime mold.
This had no immediate effect. The particles of magic were not a spell, as such. They were just magic. But as the slime mold ate more and more of the wand, something began to happen. Any observer would have needed to be very patient indeed to notice it. Simply put, the slime mold began to move faster. Now a slime mold moves so slowly that most people never realize they move at all. The process of eating its way down a mere eight inches or so of rotting wood had already taken several weeks. But the last few inches took only a few days. And when the slime mold crawled on it was moving almost fast enough to see. It would have lost to a snail in any sort of race, but its motion was no longer measured in inches per day, but in inches per hour. The magic that it had incorporated into itself was fueling it, enabling it to move at what was, for a slime mold, a super-hero-like speed.
Which is how the slime mold caught the beetle. It had eaten lots of dead beetles. Dead beetles were like the cupcakes of the slime mold world, much better and full of more energy than the usual fare of dead leaf bits. But this was a live beetle. It had been severely injured by a bird, and had only escaped because the bird didn't really care if it caught the beetle or not. Now it was dying. But before it could die, the slime mold crawled over it and ate it.
This is a rather disturbing scene, it is true. Anything, even a beetle, being eaten alive is not exactly a happy thought. But that is the way of nature. And the beetle didn't feel any pain. For the slime mold was eating it with magic, as much as it was eating it with digestive juices, and the beetle's mind was absorbed painlessly into the slime mold long before its body died.
The beetle provided the slime mold with a lot of energy. So it began moving a little bit faster. It might have kept up with a snail now, if it really tried. It was larger now, nearly a foot across, still a glossy slime black with hints of purple. But something else had changed as well. For the slime mold suddenly had something that was almost a thought. It wasn't a thought the way a pony or another sentient being thinks. But it was much closer to being a thought than anything else the slime mold had ever had. The thought went something like "Eat beetle good want more eat beetle." Only not even that coherent. The slime mold didn't really know what "good" meant, or even "want" but it had a vague recognition that it had experienced something pleasant, and repeating the experience might be pleasant as well.
Slime molds do not have eyes or ears, they experience the world through something more like taste than anything else. Or perhaps like scent, as they can taste the air on their upper surfaces as well. So the slime mold had no way of seeking out other beetles. Even if it crossed the scent trail of a beetle, it moved too slowly to hope to catch up to one. But it still had a sort of primitive desire to find more beetles, and that motivated it to keep moving, even when it found another bit of dead wood that otherwise would have stopped it for hours while it ate. Dead wood was better than leaf bits, and it consumed and absorbed as much of the wood as it could while it passed over it, but beetles were better, and so it kept on crawling, hoping, if such a mindless thing could be said to hope, that it might encounter another beetle.
It did eventually find one, though this one was already long since dead. The slime mold ate the beetle, and enjoyed the extra nutrients, but nothing else changed. There was no tiny beetle mind for its magic to absorb. The slime mold, however, was not capable of feeling something as complicated as disappointment. So it simply finished its meal of dead beetle and continued on, still hoping for something enjoyable to cross its path.
Then the world flew apart with a messy splat.
"Ew! Ew! What have I stepped in? Is there any on me? Is my coat dirty! Tell me!" The white unicorn went in a frenzy of spinning, trying to see every inch of her formerly pristine coat.
Her orange companion rolled her eyes. "Ya look just fine to me, sugarcube. Now quit frettin' and let's get goin'."
The two ponies galloped off, leaving the slime mold splattered across the forest path, which it hadn't even known it was crossing.
Here and there neighboring bits of purplish-black goo oozed together, forming into larger pieces. These larger pieces sought each other out, until once again the slime mold was a single blob. How exactly the slime mold did this was a mystery. It had nothing to do with magic, all slime molds, however ordinary, can rejoin themselves when divided. Since they experience the world mostly as taste or scent, it is probably the scent and flavor of the pieces that draws them together. Nobody knows for certain.
United once again, the slime mold was also once again changed. It had not eaten the white pony, but it had touched it, and its magic had absorbed a tiny fraction of the white pony's essence. This fraction, having to do with personality, creativity, and art, sat like an invisible pearl within the slime mold. The slime mold had no mind with which to have a personality, no thoughts with which to think about art, and it certainly had no capacity for creativity. So these concepts remained dormant while the mold crawled onward.
Quite some time passed as the slime mold slowly oozed through the forest. It encountered several more small insects, all deceased, and even a small dead bird, which it stayed on until it had absorbed all of it. It grew considerably, and became faster as well, the magic that aided it growing as it grew. Then a centipede blundered into it. The many-legged hunter walked right over the slime mold with no concern for the possible danger. But then it had never encountered a slime mold that could move faster than inches per day. And with the centipede standing on it, the slime mold was just fast enough to ooze a fold of itself over the insect and trap it. Once again its magic absorbed the tiny mind. The centipede was a little bit smarter than the beetle had been, though both were still utterly mindless by the standards set by sentient beings. Still, the addition of the centipede's hunting abilities let the slime mold have another primitive thought. It wanted more small, bright lives and minds, but more than that it wanted more magic. And it could smell, or taste, or feel, something magical nearby. If it wanted magic, and there was magic nearby, it should seek that magic out in order to eat it.
So it followed the scent of magic eagerly, moving so fast it might have perhaps caught up with a turtle, if there had been any nearby. But there were no turtles here. Indeed the land surrounding the slime mold was no longer the damp, dankness of the forest floor. This was open land that had, a thousand years ago, been a paved courtyard. It had been buried in dirt and dust, and weeds grew there abundantly, as well as a few small trees, but there were no forest giants. And up ahead there were even fewer plants, though the slime mold couldn't see that. It had no eyes, after all. All it knew was what it tasted and smelled, and the feel of magic on the night air.
It followed that elusive trace across the courtyard and into a wilderness of tumbled stone. And here it found a fleck of dust, a speck of magic blown on the wind. Eagerly the slime mold devoured it. The creature felt something very like euphoria as it added this tiny speck of power to itself. The dust mote was small, but the magic that contaminated it was part of something vast and powerful, a thousand times stronger than the magic of the wand. And it sensed more ahead. It crawled over stones, seeking out and absorbing dozens of tiny flecks of power. Magic infused it, and with the magic came something else. It was subtle, and totally alien to the mindless creature, so the slime mold ignored the strangeness that came with these bits of power, and simply sought out more. Dust motes were scattered all over the ruins, but one place held more than any other. And soon the slime mold, moving faster now than any turtle, reached the chamber that held them.
It still had no eyes, so it could not appreciate the desolate beauty of the waxing moon shining into the ruined throne room. But it could sense the magic all around it. It crawled across the floor, methodically absorbing hundreds of specks of magical dust and occasionally finding larger fragments of power.
When it was done it crawled to the center of the room. Something strange was happening, and the slime mold was afraid. Which in and of itself was strange. It had not previously had enough of a mind to know what fear was. But it did now. For the specks had not held pure magic. Rather they were magical because they were the fragments of a magical being. A being that had been shattered on this very spot. Knowing there was power in the shards, others had come and born them away, but they had not picked up the flecks and specks, the hundreds of miniscule bits that had broken off from the larger pieces. They could not have gotten them all even if they'd tried, but they had made no effort. The microscopic pieces hadn't even crossed their minds.
They crossed the slime mold's mind now, for it had a mind. A mind newborn, full of confusion and fear. A mind that had some faint hint of slime mold, beetle, and centipede, but that was mostly composed of the thoughts and feelings that came with those specks, blended with the pearl of being absorbed from the white unicorn.
As the mind began to think, the magic that filled its body stirred. The blob of purplish-black jelly at the center of the room quivered. It extended pseudopods that then retracted. It writhed and twisted, and finally it shot outwards and upwards to assume a different shape.
Standing in the center of the room was a pony. Its coat was purplish black. Its mane was a nimbus of indigo mist, plain and unadorned by stars or other ornaments. Its tail was likewise a haze of purplish blue. It bore a horn on its forehead and wings on its back. On its flank were etched three black diamonds, outlined in white. When it opened its eyes they were ink black, almost invisible against the deep color of its coat.
It immediately closed its eyes again. Sight was confusing, alien, overwhelming. But gradually it remembered seeing. It could remember seeing ponies, other ponies. They bowed, or cringed away, or fought with it... but no, they were friends. They admired its art, they supported and helped it. In confusion it opened its eyes again, and looked out on the barren room. That was easier than remembering those contradictory memories. The room demanded no thought. In fact the room was peaceful, beautiful. The pony that had been a slime mold looked at the moonlight beaming in. My moon, it thought. My night.
But no. Not my moon. The moon and the night belong to... to... Princess Luna? But that is me, or was. But... I am not a princess, I am only a unicorn. The pony shook its head. It remembered something else now. It remembered crawling through the forest, eating a wand and a beetle and a centipede. It was not a princess. It was not a white unicorn. It was something else entirely.
It collapsed back into a blob.
But now it had no eyes, and it could not see the moon. So it reformed itself into a pony and walked over to stand next to a window.
"What am I?" asked the pony of the night outside the window. "Who am I?" But the night didn't answer.