Lifeblooms

Ellennara arrived back to her dorm room late that night to an odd sight. Bloom, sitting at her desk (which was so rarely used for anything it was easy to forget it was there at all) completely engrossed in a book. This alone was enough to perk the zebra’s interest, considering in all the years she had known Bloom, Ellennara could count on here hooves the number of times she saw the pony enraptured by a book. This time however the ponies delight seemed to be something more. The grin on her face gave Ellennara pause as she approached; it was massive, bordering on mad.

“Umm… Bloom,” Ellennara asked, a little apprehensive about the response she would receive. After all the last time her friend had a smile like that on her face, it took a week before the west side of the dorms were safe to live in again.

Bloom jumped, startled out of her inner musings by the sudden sound in an otherwise quiet room. “Ellennara you have to come look at this, it is possibly the best thing ever.” Bloom called as she turned to face where her friend had spoken from. Her impossibly wide grin somehow growing even wider, crossing from the land of strange into something closer to creepy.

With a bit more caution than normal Ellennara slowly approached her overly excited friend.  “So…” she asked, “what am I looking at exactly?”

“This,” Bloom exclaimed as she unceremoniously shoved the book she had been reading towards Ellennara.

“Umm… yes very nice, you do know I can’t read this right?”

“…”

“Forgot about that little detail didn’t we?”

“…shut up,” Bloom mumbled, in her rush to show Ellennara just how great the book was, she had in fact forgotten it was written in braille.

This prompted a good natured sigh from the zebra before she said, “Ok so why don’t you just explain what’s so great about this book?”

“Well first of all it’s not a book; it’s the journal and notes of a wartime shaman. And he seems to have invented a spell, well two spells that if done properly could allow me to see again!” This statement however wasn’t met with the level of excitement Bloom was expecting. That’s because it wasn’t met with any excitement at all, the room was dead silent. “What,” Bloom finally asked, more than a little annoyed by the lack of response. “What is your problem this is wonderful news.”

“Tell me Bloom, what type of magic do these spells use?” The zebra’s voice was low with just a hint of concern. It was the worry in her voice that brought Bloom out of her daydreams of sight, and back to reality.

“Well it was odd magic I’ve never heard of, but before I explain the spells and my plan for them, you have to promise not to freak out.”

“Umm… OK…”

“Promise me you won’t over react and that you’ll hear me out until the end.” This time her voice was stern and left no room for argument.

“Fine I promise, now explain.”

“Well the base concepts are simple enough to understand. The spell seems to have originally been designed to allow a shaman to temporarily displace the spirit of an elemental with the casters. Though the time any soul can be away from the body before the body feels the effects is rather short. In short bursts of about 15 minutes or so there was no damage to the shamans body. And while the soul was in the elemental, it could be controlled as if it was the shamans own body.”

“Hold on a second, are you suggesting taking your soul out and placing it in an elemental!” Ellennara seemed horrified at the prospect.

“Will you shut up and let me finish?” The silence was all the answer Bloom needed, “Thank you. Now as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, it seems the shamans wanted something more permanent for war. After all elementals are notoriously volatile and violent, but with their power it’s no wonder any race at war would want to use them. So they came up with a second method of controlling elementals, this time more permanent. They would completely remove a shaman’s soul, and bind it with a few simple runes into an elemental body.”

Ellennara was about to interject again but Bloom held up a hoof to stop her. “Once again thats not my plan, at least that’s not all of it. Whoever wrote this journal wanted to find a way to bring elementals under control, more like pets. And in that they succeeded, at least in part they did. See while putting all your soul into an elemental, forces out the spirit that owns the body. Putting only part of your soul into it simply binds the two of you to each other. The trick was getting the spirit to listen and assist the shaman, because the binding acts like a spell. Shamans kept losing control of the binding spell and it would go haywire. They had to use a host of runes to keep the spell under control, and most shamans couldn’t take the magical strain.” At this Bloom was grinning widely, as if she had already won and was politely waiting for everypony else to realize it.

“So how is this a good thing? I know for a fact you can’t hold the magical strain of possibly dozens of runes.”

Her grin only got bigger, “tell me Ellennara, have you ever seen one of my spells go wild?”

“I…” she paused to think. “No… I can’t say I ever have.”

“That darling,” she said, mimicking a pony from times long past, “is because my spells have simply never run wild before, Ever.”

“That’s not possible, no one can keep control of ever spell they ever cast.”

“Well I’ve never told anypony this but… I don’t really cast any of my spells.”

“What do you mean you don’t cast your spells,” Ellennara asked, not quite sure if Bloom was joking or not. “I’ve seen you cast spells, sure you need runes but you still cast them.”

“Yes and no, you see I have very little magic of my own, most of it goes to activating the runes I wear. After that I simply ask the spirits to do the spell I wish to have cast and they do. As far as I can tell only nature spirits listen though, the others just ignore me.”

“So that’s why you don’t have any defensive runes…”

“Ya, well I don’t need them, it’s not like I could force a spirit to my will even if I wanted to.”

“Even so, why tell me all this?”

“Umm well you see…” Bloom started, a little nervously. Her entire plan hinged on convincing a shaman, a real shaman not her warped interpretation of shamanism. And Ellennara was the only one that might be convinced to help. “I… that is, earth ponies can’t really do spirit magic so…”

“You want me to do it for you.” Ellennara deadpanned.

“Please,” Bloom squeaked.

“Do you have any idea how many types of illegal that is!”

“Only like four or five.”

“Are you mad, its breaking international law!”

“Who is even going to know?”

“Oh I don’t know how about whoever sees you with a fuckin soul bound elemental.”

This caught Bloom off guard, she had never heard Ellennara curse, ever. “I’ll say I made it myself.” At that Bloom could hear the unmistakable sound of Ellennaras hoof connecting with her face.

“You like just told me you couldn’t do this spell on your own.”

“And? You’re the only one who knows that. As far as everypony else knows I simply don’t wish to do anything but nature spells.”

“You could get in a lot of trouble for this you know…”

To Ellennaras surprise Bloom began to laugh at this. “What, are they going to arrest the poor blind pony for trying to get her sight back using spells that nopony knew she could even do? No I’ll be fine, worse comes to worst I’ll ask Celestia for help.”

“Wait what? You know Celestia, as in the ruler of Equestria.”

“Err ya... my sister used to be…important. Look can you forget I said anything, the point is I’ll be fine just help me, please.”

“This still seems like a bad idea Bloom, what if something goes wrong.” Even though she didn't push the issue, Ellennara hadn't missed how casually her friend mentioned the ruler of a country, as if she was an acquaintance.

“At least let me explain how the spell is done before you decide.”

After a long while Ellennara let out a defeated sigh, “fine, how is this theory you found done?”

“No way.”

“Elly please just-“

“No.”

“Come on for me.”

“I am not ripping apart a chunk of your soul and pinning it to an elemental!”

“When you say it like that it sounds way worse than it really is.”

“Worse than it is! You could die, or worse have your soul broken beyond repair.”

“So long as the runes are placed correctly, the journal said the risk of damage is low. I trust you’ll do it right.”

“You trust me, that’s nice because I don’t trust me. Low doesn’t mean zero Bloom, and I won’t risk your life on low.”

Bloom paused at this, opening and closing her mouth a few times as if looking for the words. After a long silence she spoke again, but this time was hardly above a whisper. “Elly I need this, please,” her voice caught in her throat. After a moment she continued, “I want to- no I need to see again. To see the grass and trees again, to see the endless blue sky, and the clouds that float through it. It’s been so long I can hardly remember what snow looked like as it blanketed my home town. Or the simple beauty of the night sky my princess makes for us all.” Bloom had to take a slow deliberate breath to steady herself before moving on. “I’ve never seen my room, or my cutie mark, or even you…” At this, her voice finally broke, and she would have been crying if her eyes still permitted such things.

“Do you know how I lost my eyes?” Bloom asked, the question catching Ellennara completely off guard. Bloom was rarely one to show such emotions, and never so openly.

“No,” Ellennara whispered, as far as she knew Bloom had never told anyone just how she came to lose her eyes.

“A creature form Tartarus ate them after it finished eating the rest of my family and burning our home to the ground.”

Ellennara gasped, she hadn’t known what to expect but that surely wasn’t it. “I-“

She started but Bloom quickly cut her off.

“I didn’t tell you for your pity, I just want you to see why this is so important to me.” She sighed, “My family owns a farm, an apple orchard to be precise. With what I’ve learned here I can regrow what was lost to the fire but I can’t run it without eyes. My family has been on that farm for generations and I won’t be the one that let the dead down.”

For a time there was nothing but silence, with only Ellennaras breathing to tell Bloom she wasn’t alone. The zebra was in the middle of an intense inner war with her better judgment, and it seemed as if her better judgment was losing. Every part of her mind was screaming at her that this was a bad idea, while at the same time telling her that any good friend wouldn’t leave a friend in need. There was seemingly no end to the mental circles her mind was running in. After a time it was the sound of Bloom breaking down into quiet sobs, having mistaken her silence for a ‘no’ that decided the inner battle.

Pulling herself to her feet she wrapped the earth pony in a gentle hug. It always surprised Ellennara just how small the pony was, seeing her walk around as if she owned the university made Bloom seem a lot larger than she really was. Surprised by the sudden contact Bloom was shocked out of her sobs as Ellennara whispered to her, “this is such a bad idea.” She sighed again and Bloom began to shake with a fresh round to sobs readying themselves in her chest. “We are going to need to translate that spell into something I can read so it can be studied. If you’re insistent on this I want to make sure it’s done right.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind Ellennara knew just how terrible an idea this truly was. But that side had lost the mental war, and as such also lost the rights to any input on the current situation.