Saphrim goes to Equestria

Humans, like Unicorns, have many spells and abilities that are unique to them, and them alone. Many of these consist of spells that are more complex than other, traditional forms of magic, used by Unicorns.

Humans have access to entire sections of magic that only very powerful Unicorns may ever hope to be able to understand it, much less be able to wield it or use it in any way.

This book will be looking at the very basics of human magic, with some information on other types of magic as well. This is not a book for Unicorns that want to learn human magic; if you wish to understand human magic you will have to ask a human.

Let's start with finding magic. Humans, unlike every other magic creature known to pony kind, have a very innate sense for magic. This is because, unlike Unicorns, humans don't channel magic through their horns as they don't have horns with which to do so. Instead, humans connect by going outwards, and controlling it that way.

Where Unicorns pull in magic to weave into spells, humans manipulate the magic around them itself. Many wonder why humans have this ‘unique magic access’, and it will probably be a question that will remain unanswered forever.

Now, the first step in practising magic is to be able to extend your will outwards. This is something books cannot teach, as it is different for everypony, or shall I say, everyone, as we humans say. You will have to learn this yourself before you can continue any further into this book.

Tips:

-try focusing on a single object first.

-try focusing your will through a single part of your body.

-try and ignore all that is happening around you.

You put the book down and thought to yourself. So it works sort of like your Nanites do. It seems simple enough.

You try to concentrate on a single book on the shelf opposite to where you were sitting down. After a while you notice a blue glow surrounding the book. You get excited for a moment but then frown once you realise it was just your Nanites. It seems you are going to have to disconnect from them.

Before you disconnect, you set all of the equipment you had to scan and record everything in a range approximate to the size of the library you were in. Then, you disconnect from the Hives that you had only just reconnected to after such a long time.

You still had your spatial and temporal manipulators but that was something you have had since birth. Hell, it was embedded into your very being on a smaller than sub-atomic level. Nothing was going to get those, at least, not anything that wouldn't kill you first.

You turn your attention back to the book you were trying to move. You began concentrating on it while trying to ignore everything else in your vicinity. Again, you see a blue glow, however, this time it's different. Instead of being made up of the tiny spots of light that was produced by the clusters of your Nanites, this glow was solid and wavy. It was a transparent blue of the same colour as your Nanites and it weaved around the book, in a seemingly random way.

You grin at the thought of you moving something with your mind, with naturally occurring technology as well! The only other time you felt like this was when you were using your Nanites for the first time.

You look back down to the book, eager to continue.

Once you have the ability to force your will onto the surroundings, everything else in this book shall become much easier to learn and understand.

The first thing you should probably learn is levitation. There are many different types of levitational spells that are around, however, humans have the ability to move objects without the aid of a spell of any kind.

To do this, all you need to do is focus on one side of the object more than the other side.

Seems pretty simply. You give it a try.

You focus more on the side that you can see; the spine of the book. The book slowly moves out of the shelf before it lands on the floor with a soft thud.

“Marhg! Books!”

You quickly swivel your head around to look for the source of the sound, which turns out to be the purple Unicorn. She stirred a bit more before resting back down and relaxing. You turn back to the book on the floor.

You try to pick it back up off the floor but struggle more than you had before. You put more effort in and you are rewarded with the book being ripped in half. Oops.

You rush over to the dead book and hide it before anyone else discovers the corpse.

Instead if sitting back down on the floor, you decide to stand up and practice. You go for another book, this time being a lot more careful to not damage it. You decide to follow some advice given by the book, and use lift your hand up and focus on that as well. For your efforts, the book floats off of the ground and starts hovering above a reading table set in the corner.

Now you had to move it. Instead of focusing directly on the book, this time you focus on your hand and imagine moving the book with your hand. You tilt your hand up a little and the book follows it. You tilt it to the left and the books does the same. You raise your hand and the book increases its altitude.

You had that down, now you should try without your hand aiding you. You lower your hand and focus on the book instead. You imagine the atoms that make up the book and focus more on the ones that are to the left of where you were standing. Your results were unexpected.

Instead of the book tilting to one side like you had planned, the atoms that made up the book broke away from it; still in the form of a book, just with an atomically thin cut going down the middle of it.

You tried to reverse the process and rejoin the two pieces of book back into one. You succeeded but with a margin of error; the book was now twisted down the middle, going down along the spine.

You frowned at your error, in turn causing you to lose focus and drop the book. You walk over to the floored book and place it back on the shelf; not bothering to read the title.

You walk back over to the book you had placed down on the floor and pick it up. You begin to pace around the room as you read.

Everyone has different ways of connecting to the surrounding magical energies, so finding a way to manipulate it is going to be something that you have to experiment with and find out for yourself.

Once you have achieved some basic control over magical energies, you can learn the first thing that is needed in order to make spells and enchantments, or rather, things, that are needed.

You need to learn to see magical energies, you need to learn how to pull certain areas of magical energies, and you need to be able to ‘sense’ surrounding magical energies.

To be able to see magical energies, all you need to do is focus on the surroundings around you and visualise how it moves, again this is going to have to be something you learn yourself. Remember; experimentation is key.

Visualising magic? What does magic even look like? If magic was the sub-atomic interactions you witnessed earlier then the closest thing you could think of was radiation.

With that in mind you look at the surrounding area and try to imagine what it would look like if it were infra-red, ultra-violet, or radioactive. Nothing happened so you closed your eyes and tried picturing it that way. At first, nothing happened. But then, you opened your eyes and saw the surroundings as different colours.

The wooden walls, floor and ceiling were all orange with some spots of very dark blue here and there. The ponies sleeping around you were all varying colours of blue, going from bright white blue to blue as dark as some of the spots on the ceiling. You yourself are also blue, but you have red spots where your Hives are and where you presume your Nanites to be.

Walking over to the window shows that the ponies outside are all blue as well. The sun is a very bright violet colour while the surrounding atmosphere is bright red. The stone pathways appear as varying shades of multiple colours, from dark red to aqua.

And then you blinked and it all went back to normal. That was such a strange experience. You could probably do it again if you tried. You thought of what you just were thinking moments ago and close your eyes. When you re-open them everything has gone back to the weird colour spectrum. It was also being made more weird by the fact that it was looking more realistic.

Not normal by any stretch, but still in greater detail than what is normal for this strange place.

You dispel the ‘magic vision’ and turn back to the book.

Everyone views the surrounding magic aura differently; no two are alike. However, one thing that everyone sees is all living creatures magical aura, how they are seen is something else entirely, that changes from human to human.

The next thing you need to learn is how to ‘sense’ and manipulate magical energies. This is just fine-tuning your ability to see, or rather, visualise magic. Using this ability is less about seeing - although some rare individuals can actually see what is happening - and more about feeling the magical energies.

For this reason most find it easier to sense magical energies with their hands. Try it now.

Ok. Just sense the magic in the air. Can't be too difficult can it?

You activate your Vision, as you were going to call it from now on, and extend your arm out and try to feel for...something, you're not sure what. At first nothing happens but after a while you feel...something. Again, you're not sure what though.

Looking closely at your hand reveals something of interest though; bits of coloured light was flashing between your hand and the air. It was microscopic as well. Maybe even smaller with how hard it was to focus on it.

You notice something out of the corner of your eye so you look up and let out a gasp upon seeing what caught your attention. The entire room was alive with more of the same lights. They were everywhere; on the walls, on the ponies, IN the ponies and IN the walls. You noted that there was a concentration of the lights on the inside of the ponies heads, where their brains should be. Not only that, but the lights were flowing down pathways that you concluded to be motor neurons and sensory neurons, in bursts or in an organised pattern.

You took a look at yourself.

You thought the ponies looked complicated. There was easily millions, if not billions, of more pathways flowing through just your forearms alone. It was an incredible sight, that's for sure.

You shook your head and when your vision cleared everything was back to normal. Minus the cartoon colour palette, of course.

Ok, enough of the magic for now. You wanted to know what was happening when you were using your Vision and whatever that last thing was.

You reconnect with your Nanites and look through the data that had been recorded during your experimentation.

Fascinating. What you were ‘seeing’ before was actually atomic interaction. You were actually seeing atomic and sub-atomic particles interact with one another.

That would explain why everything was weirdly coloured; you were seeing it according to how much energy it had compared to how much energy it was releasing. The sun would have been purple, or rather, violet, because of the large amounts of energy it was releasing.

Wait. Before your scans said that the sun wasn't releasing any radiation. At least, it wasn't releasing any non-visible radiation like it should be doing. But then again, you weren't exactly looking at the normal spectrum visible to humans. You needed to look into that later.

The question is, what were you seeing inside of the ponies and the walls?

The most obvious answer would be more atomic interaction but it couldn't be that as what you saw was following clear pathways. A little digging into the Hive archives and you had the answer.

What you were seeing was complex atomic interaction, only found within organic matter and also magic connections apparently. The more complex it is the more pathways you would see. That would explain why you had so much more pathways flowing through you. You didn't just have these creatures biological functions. You doubted - no, severely doubted that you even had the same biological functions as the humans that call this land home. It would probably be similar, or at least have some similarities, but it would not be the same.

It would probably be very unlikely for anything to have similar biological functions to you, considering you possessed no normal biological functions. Your DNA were probably so much more complex and different compared to everything else on this planet that you might not even share any similarities with them at all.

You were getting off track, you wanted to know how you were seeing what you were seeing.

Some more searching and you had more answers. Apparently, all magic here depends on modifications, just like the cloud you saw in the forest. Except this time the photons were on the non-visible spectrum and were passing through your skull to edit the neurons responsible for registering sight. The photons would stimulate a certain neuron in a certain way and you would be seeing things slightly differently. This system gets more complicated the more you study it, and by the looks of it you are only just scratching the surface.

You shook your head to rid yourself of the thoughts that were plaguing your mind. It wouldn't matter, you could experiment on that later but right now you wanted to learn more from the book.

You walk back to the book and sit down this time to continue reading from where you left off.

Once you have learnt how to visualise magic the next thing you need to be able to do is control it to a fine detail. You already know how to control it, but only with little accuracy and with low precision.

Being able to see what you are doing helps, which is why you had to learn how to see magic; it will help greatly with future magic lessons.

The first spell - and probably the easiest - spell would have to the levitation spell. As you already know you can do levitation without a spell, but it will require more focus and willpower to keep it as accurate as a levitation performed with a spell.

It is a trade-off: one has easier accuracy but you have to weave the spell first while the other just takes more of your mind to control.

It is true that people can get so good at non-spell levitation that they actually have greater accuracy than that of an actual spell, but that requires a very large amount of practice and not everyone can do it.

Now, onto the actual spell. It is just as easy as pulling magic from the surroundings and literally weaving the magic ‘strands’ into these arcane symbols, exactly how Unicorns do it except humans do it better.

These are the arcane symbols:

Below the text was some symbols. The first looked almost like a backwards, stylised seven, with a vertical line going down the middle, which was also stylised.

The next one was a circle with an almost semi-circle on top, with the closed side of the circle coming though the other circle. On the middle of the semi-circle - which was also the centre of the full circle - was a dot, along with two other dots at the ends if each line forming the semi-circle.

The last symbol was a modified Omega, with stylised, spiky curves coming from the top of the Omega and flowing downwards towards the open end of the Omega. The symbol was perfectly symmetrical, just like the second but unlike the first symbol.

That seemed pretty simple. You activate your Vision and look around. Again you see more of the atomic, or, ‘magic’, interaction strands flowing in and around everything. You attempt to pull one of the strands and succeed straight away. It moves towards your outstretched hand and stays in place; not fully stable as it was wobbling slightly after being moved. Instead of just moving a piece of the ‘magic’ as you had expected, you had actually just stretched one strand and made forced it to change shape.

You began pulling more and more strands into your palm, looping them into other strands to form more complex shapes and to hold the larger shape you were making together. After about a minute if pulling you had almost finished all three symbols. Once you had completed the symbols something unexpected happened; a brief flash appeared and the symbols were gone. Instead, you saw a single stream of violet light weaving around your hands, waving around your fingers.

You briefly came out of your Vision to see if anything had happened to your hand. Something had happened; your hand was covered in a similar glow to when you levitated the book earlier.

You went back into your Vision to further study what was happening.

Nothing. Nothing was happening. Wait, you should probably try to levitate something first. You concentrated on another book and it became engulfed in a bright red light before lifting off the ground. Moving it around was much easier than without the spell, as it was like using your Nanites. The object literally had a connection with your brain.

“I see you have learnt telekinesis.”

You dropped the book, startled by the sudden interruption of the quiet. The voice was much softer than Celestia’s, so it was probably her sister, Luna. You turned around and sure enough, Luna was standing there, or rather sitting-slash-standing, as she was sitting on her rump while standing on her forelegs.

“Yes, just learning the basics now actually.”

“Really? You seemed pretty good before.”

When had she seen you before. Wait was she...

“How do you know I can even use magic?”

“You used it to battle Nightmare Moon in the Everfree forest. I saw it myself.”

“You saw that? How?”

Was she there...or was she...

“...were you there?...”

“You could say that I suppose.”

Her voice had suddenly dropped in volume.

“...”

“...It was you, wasn't it?”

“...yes.”

Her voice was barely above a whisper.

“Why?”

She recoiled, as if expecting to be struck, when you asked the simple question. After a few moments later, Luna stopped shivering and removed her hoof for her face so she could open her eyes.

“Your not mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you?”

“I attacked you! I tried to kill you!”

“So? I don't really care all that much.”

“You seemed to care an awful lot when it was happening!”

“That was then, this is now.”

“Ponies usually hold grudges against ponies who try to kill them.”

“Meh, I've died plenty of times, its not all that bad.”

“But - wait, what!”

Here we go.

“I said its not that bad.”

“...”

She didn't respond for a very long time.

“You...you...you've died...before...”

“Oh yes, many times.”

“...”

“...How are you alive still?”

Hmm, that answer is complicated and you don't feel like explaining very complex technology at the moment. Magic seemed more interesting at the moment. Another time maybe.

“Well, it's thanks to a very complex machine. A very, very complex machine. You wouldn't understand the details, perhaps I'll explain it to you at a later date, but now is time for magic practice. Perhaps you would like to help me?”

The Alicorn grumbled a bit.

“I'm not very good at human magic. The only spell I learnt to use effectively was the entrance to the dreamscape spell. Even then it took me decades to perfect it.”

Dreamscape?

“What's this about a dreamscape?”

She raised an...you didn't know what to call it. She raised the patch of fur on her head that was thicker than the other bits of fur and vaguely resembled an eyebrow.

“You do not know of the dreamscape?”

You shook your head.

“Well then, the dreamscape is just that, a landscape used to enter ponies dreams.”

“Wait! You can enter someones mind just by going into the dreamscape?!”

“The spell only allows entrance into pony dreams and only while they are dreaming.”

“So you can't just enter someone's head whenever you feel like it?”

“No, of course not.”

Ok. Still seems like a big intrusion of privacy to you though.

You shook your head.

“You still haven't answered my question.”

“I told you I don't know human magic all that well. I would probably be more of a hindrance to you than a help.”

“Not true. The best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else, it gives you a new perspective and a broader vision.”

She seemed hesitant.

“...ok. But only while I have time and only what I can.”

She walked over from her place next to her still sleeping sister and sat down next to you. Before she could reach for one of the books you stopped her.

“Tell you what. Why don't we learn what your good at first.”

A smile formed on her face, and one found its way to yours as well.

“That would be much better thank you. I feel very uncomfortable using human magic. It just feels...unnatural.”

“Fair enough. Now...where do we begin?”

She seemed to become very excited at the prospect of teaching you something she was good at. It was weird, she switched from being against the idea to being all for it in a matter if seconds. Best not to dwell on it now though.

“We shall begin with magic that I am the best at! Night magic!”

Seemed interesting enough.

“Night magic is the magic that I use to move the stars and moon. Although...I haven't been doing my job as of late. I shall hopefully be doing it again soon though.”

Wait, what?

“You move the stars? And the moon?”

“Yep!”

She's the one responsible for that pile of energy that resembles a night sky?

“Why is that? Surely you haven't always been controlling the night?”

“Well...me and my sister were sort of chosen by the heavens to control them, it's what we do best after all.”

“And what happens if you die? Does that mean that the world just stops having a day and night?”

“No, the heavens would choose another to control them, so long as we are alive they don't need to.”

“Can't these ‘heavens’ just control it themselves?”

“No, they need us to hold the form of the night and day. Without a living creature to hold it together they would just fall apart into strings of pure, concentrated magic.”

That's a flimsy system. But that would explain what was keeping the energy you detected in the sky from taking other forms like heat and mass.

“...I see...well are you ready to teach me about your special brand of magic.”

She nodded her head in excitement.

“I've never taught anypony else before, this is exciting!”

You could see that, she was clapping her front hooves together.

“Oh, no!”

What!

“What is it? Is something wrong?”

“I need some spell books, hang on I'll be right back!”

She disappeared in a flash of light similar to what she did earlier back in the forest, which caused your spatial and temporal manipulators to have a brief fit. Just as fast as she had gone, she was suddenly back again, this time with some books in her mouth.

Eww.

“These will be essential!”

She was surprisingly good at speaking with a mouth full of book. She didn't even make a mistake.

“What are they?”

You already knew the answer.

“Spell books!”

You pick one from out of her mouth and look at the cover.

“Ah!”

You threw the book at her face, where it stuck there, giving her ample opportunity to read the title.

“Oops, sorry. These are the wrong books. I'll be right back.”

She was gone again, and you were left to think about what had just transpired. You almost had a heart attack when you read the cover of the book. Why would ponies even need a book on cross-species mating habits?!

Before you could contemplate it any further Luna reappeared in a flash of light, leaving you slightly dazed.

When you could see again what you saw was a very embarrassed Alicorn with a blush adorning her cheeks.

“I'm terribly sorry about that. Didn't mean for you to have to-”

“Let's just forget it ever happened at.”

“But-”

“Lets just forget it. Ever. Happened.”

“...ok”

“Marvellous! Now what's the first thing to do?”

She seemed to drop the subject pretty quickly and for that you were glad; you didn't even won't to know why she picked that book up in the first place.

“The first thing you need to learn is basic spell weaving.”

“I was just doing that a minute ago.”

“Oh. I thought you were doing that weird thing were levitating things without a spell.”

“No that was an actual spell.”

“Oh, ok then. In that case you probably want to learn how to read arcane symbols.”

Reading the symbols? It wasn't like it was difficult to just look at it and understand it.

“Done. I also did that before.”

“Oh...I guess you can just read through these then I I'll help you as you need it.”

“Ok then.”

She hands you the books which were on the floor by her forelegs which you flip open and look at the first page. It had more symbols all throughout it and you were only on the first page.

“This is going to take a while.”

“Yes it will. Magic can't be learnt overnight of course.”

Why not?

“Ok then let's get started shall we?”

You begin reading the book while Luna distracts herself for a while.

Star spell.

The star spell is exactly as it sounds; a spell to move, modify, add or remove stars. It is a spell that is derived from a common levitation spell but with more focusing arcane symbols. The spell is the simplest form of the night magic category and should be learnt and mastered before attempting any more complicated spells in the night magic category.

Here are the arcane symbols:

There was some more symbols beneath the text, one being the same modified omega from before. There was a lot more symbols this time though, as instead of there being just three symbols there was ten.

The modified omega symbol from before.

A circle with a dot in the middle of it. It had two lots of a third of a circle on each side of the larger circle forming a sort-of spiral out of curved lines.

Again, another one from before; the reverse seven.

The fourth symbol was a slightly-more-than semi-circle with the blank side facing left. It also had a triangle in the middle of the curved line.

The next symbol looked like a backwards stylised four but much more curvy than a normal four should be.

The fifth was just an average circle with nothing special about it at all.

The sixth was three small circles linked together to form a vaguely triangular shape with curved lines; one circle on top, one on the bottom right and one on the bottom left.

The seventh was another semi-circle, this time with three lines coming form the open side of it, each getting larger the closer it got to the bottom, overall making it look like a set of stairs.

The eighth was once again a semi-circle except this time it was smaller than the others. The only difference from the last symbol you could note was that it was pointing diagonally; upwards and to the right side of the page.

The ninth symbol was vertical line with a small line coming off from it at an angle. On top of that line was another line which was parallel to the first line.

The tenth and final symbol was a sort-of ‘e’, with the top left half of it replaced with blank space and the top right half appearing to be a straight line.

Unlike before where the symbols were in a random order, these symbols were arranged in a specific pattern which was detailed further down the page.

In the middle was the fifth symbol; the generic circle. Above that was the first symbol which was connected by a single line to the fifth symbol. A lot of the symbols appeared to be in arrangement like this. In fact the whole diagram was just the other nine symbols in a circle around the fifth symbol, all connected by a varying amount of lines.

You put the book down and enter your Vision to be able to see the magic around you for easier manipulation. Before forming the symbols from the book you try to recreate the last spell you did.

It is easier to do this time, and a few tries later it gets easier and easier for you to make the symbols. Alongside that you got faster at making it as well, and it took less of your attention to do. You concluded that it must have been some kind of muscle-memory type thing.

You dispel the spell that had ‘sunk’ into your hand and started forming the diagram from the book held within your other hand, occasionally looking back to it for guidance. It is much more difficult to create than the last one had been, as you had to weave it in a specific order otherwise it would get tangled in a mess or just break apart.

After twenty or so attempts at it you manage to succeed and create a picture perfect copy of the diagram in the book. Like the other spell it flashes and disappears from its position above your palm, however this time there is no glow around your hands once it does disappear.

You exit your Vision to see if anything else in your surroundings had changed. Most of the ponies were still sleeping so that hadn't changed. You decided to ask the one waking pony for help.

“Hey Luna?”

“Yes?”

She pulled her head away from the window that she was looking out very quickly, almost as if she was waiting for you to need help.

“I've done the first spell but nothing has happened. Have I done something incorrectly or what?”

“Oh, you probably just need to envision it to make it happen. A lot of magic is based around imagination.”

“Envision it. Got it.”

You imagined a couple of stars just drifting around through space. It wasn't difficult as you had spent a lot of your lifetime in deep space with nothing to look at but stars, galaxies and other amazing objects.

Within a couple of seconds the room was filled with seven different stars, all different colours. They ranged from bright white to dark blue and varied in size from small to medium. Of course ‘small to medium’ in the sense of relativity; they weren't that big compared to actual stars. They were tiny, only about half a metre in diameter on average.

“Amazing for a first try!”

“Thank you.”

You briefly entered your Vision to see what it looked like through that and it looked very much different compared to the normal spectrum. Instead of before where there was webs of ‘magic’ going between you and the object you were controlling, this time they were all connected together by millions of different strings, each having separate ones going to each other. They formed a sort of network of lights as each one was connected to every other one by at least one string.

When you thought about moving one thousands of strands shot out from the one you were ‘editing’ and into you, with the other stars doing the same but with far less strands going into you.

You exited your Vision and turned to face Luna.

“So you do this every night?”

“I used to. But now I'm hopefully going to do so once more.”

“You must be pretty amazing at it then.”

“It's my sole purpose in life, just as my sisters is to raise the sun and shepherd the day.”

Not just a figure head then.

“You must be loved by your subjects then, to bring such a marvellous gift to the world that is the night.”

She winced. It seemed like you had hit a nerve. A very painful nerve by the looks of it.

“Not necessarily...”

“What do you mean by that?”

You really didn't want to make the situation worse but your curiosity got the better of you.

“I...didn't get all that much attention in the past. It may have made me a bit jealous of my sister who received all the attention. Which also made me a bit angry. And a bit lonely. Then something in me snapped, and I attacked my sister! I was an idiot and I attacked her! How could I have done something like that? I attacked my sister! She punished me fairly though! She sent me to the moon! Yes she sent me to the moon! Oh, the cold moon which became my prison. Where it was even more lonely and lonely and - ha ha - lonely and lonely-”

You think you broke her. You were not expecting such a reply and it really caught you of guard. By now she had shrunk into a small ball and was muttering ‘lonely’ over and over again. Something was clearly bothering her if it had driven her to a state of insanity in such a short amount of time. Then again, you knew little to nothing of these ponies physiology or psychology.

You walked up to the shivering pony and put your hand on her back between her wings, the action caused her to tense up in shock and stop muttering.

“You all right there?”

She was panicky at the moment, looking around the room sporadically with her eyes unfocused.

“She'll send me back! Gotta’ be good otherwise she'll send me back!”

This pony was clearly suffering from some kind of mental trauma. Funny, you didn't notice anything off about her previously, besides her sudden shift in attitude before.

“Why would your sister send you back?”

You tried calming her down by stroking her hair which was strangely normal, from what you seen of other Alicorns’ hair at least. It wasn't working though as she was still freaking out and mumbling words under her breath.

You took a more direct approach. You lifted up the light Alicorn and cradled her in your arms. It made you feel awkward holding her but you would rather that than have her break down further.

Picking her up was easy as she didn't even come up to your hips. It was just a struggle to fit her in your arms as she still was quite large in comparison to her weight.

Apparently she hadn't noticed that she wasn't on the floor any more as she continued on with her insane ramblings. You put her in one arm and used your other arm to stroke her belly gently.

You had never felt more awkward in your entire life.

At least you got her to stop as now she was just laying completely still in your arm. You couldn't even tell if she was breathing anymore, she was that motionless. She did move eventually though, she turned towards you with a completely blank expression.

“Why am I in your arms?”

Why did you just freak out?

“...”

“...oh, no reason...no reason at all.”

And with that you dropped her unceremoniously onto the floor.

“Oof!”

“Where were we again? Oh yes! You were complementing me on my fine spell work.”

You gestured around you towards the stars that hadn't changed at all during Luna’s meltdown.

“Oh! Yes! Yes, of course! How could I forget!”

She seemed really quick to drop the subject. Perhaps she didn't actually forget her breakdown from moments ago. Oh well, you didn't really care at the moment.

“So...what now?”

“...”

“You know...I didn't actually plan this far ahead...”

Wow. Some teacher she was.

“Well...I suppose we could sit around and wait for night. You have been practicing for most of the day and my brand of magic is best cast at night anyways...”

Again, her mood changed so quickly, why is it - wait, what.

“Did you say I've been practicing for most of the day?”

“Yes, I did. Why?”

“And remind me again, how long does a day last exactly?”

She gave you an odd look which made you want to laugh. You forced down your laughter.

“...Three hours. Six if you count the night, which I always do myself.”

So...a full day lasts six hours. A quarter of a standard Earth day and very short compared to your home planets day and night cycle. That would explain all the lost time you had been experiencing lately, at least.

“Ok then. We could wait for the night I suppose.”

You sat down on the floor opposite Luna yet still facing towards her. Soon she followed your example and sat down as well. A silence descended upon the room so you decided to break it with some questions that had been gnawing at you since you first saw these ponies.

“How do your legs work?”

Luna didn't respond at first.

“...what.”

“How do your legs work? They seen to have no bones whatsoever.”

“...”

“...I really don't know. Any thing that was discovered about our anatomy is...well...lost on me. I wasn't exactly around to study it now was I?”

“Wait. Nothing at all? You weren't around to learn anything at all? How long were you imprisoned?!?”

She went really silent again.

“...one thousand years...”

“...”

“One thousand years. You were on the moon for one thousand years. One. Thousand. Years.”

That wouldn't be all that long for you or any other human that you know of for that matter, and they have shorter days than most human colonies but still, one thousand years? Was that really necessary? One thousand years of confinement? Couldn't they have just locked her in a room for a few years? The other Alicorn who was somehow this Alicorn was not all that difficult to defeat.

“I'm sorry to hear that. But at least you are back now, that's all that matters.”

She smiled at you.

“Thank you.”

“So...how much longer until night time?”

“About half an hour, maybe an hour.”

You nodded to her in response. So you had half an hour to kill. You might as well look into what was making this ‘magic’ tick.

You entered the archives in your Hives and fished around the near-endless amounts of data within until you found the correct information.

You started with your Vision.

Apparently what was happening was that the strings or strands of ‘magic’ that you were pulling was actually many different types of interaction. For that ‘spell’ in particular it was taking non-visible radiation and pulling it together into your palms using highly precise electro-magnetic pulses. This light, which was in the form of optical data once it reached your hand, was then further refined into more detailed instructions using your mind.

Each piece of quanta was a piece of data that would be received by the surrounding molecules and acted as instructions once released from your grasp. Each minute detail could have massive impacts on the overall product of whatever you intended to do in the first place. Each piece of quanta was changed to be at an exact frequency and programmed to be released at the exact right time.

It just got more interesting from there.

Each bit of quanta that you received was carrying all the information from the atom from whence it came. All information on every single atom in your surroundings. Every. Single. One.

Most of that information wasn't even being processed by anything, your subconscious was literally just ripping the bits of data that was relevant and dumping the rest back into the surroundings. Your subconscious then literally had to compile that relevant data in a way in which you would be able to understand on a conscious level. Then, when you tried to change the surroundings in the very same way you were receiving data, more updated data became available and was received only to be compiled once more. All of this done near instantaneously.

The implications of this were not lost on you. You were literally in a massive computer - artificial or not, you had yet to decide - that programmed and recorded everything. Every action, every movement, every thought and every thing within itself.

You felt a massive swell of pride knowing that even the extremely outdated machines within you had the capacity to do exactly what the surroundings were doing. Even more so when you thought of how this ‘ mega-computer’ paled in comparison to even the most basic of all human computers outside of your home galaxy.

“It's almost night-time.”

You were startled out of your Hives by Luna, who was walking upstairs to the higher levels of the tree. You quickly got up and followed behind her, being careful not to shatter the wood with your tremendous weight.

At the top of the stairs there was another large room, with another floor that lacked any walls covering almost half of the room itself. This room, like the last, was filled with more books. While on the lower section of the floor you were on looked like a library still, the upper half looked more like a private study or even a bedroom, if the beds were anything to go by. Unlike the ground floor this floor seemed to be lacking in the dust and grime department and for that you were grateful. You didn't want to waste any of your time cleaning some stingy library.

Luna spread her wings once she reached the middle of the room and took off for the higher level of the floor. Seeing as you didn't have wings you just walked up the stairs. Luna then led you out onto the balcony where you could see ponies going inside as the sun began to set.

She laid down on the balcony as you arrived next to her, which you promptly followed suit and sat down beside her.

Luna then began doing the most weird thing you had ever seen in your life. She bent her neck backwards and began shuffling the feathers that were on her wings, plucking a few out every now and again. The action looked so alien and foreign on the Alicorn as you never expected to see a mammal pluck out feathers from their own wings. That is, assuming these ponies even are mammals at all. For all you knew they could be some weird parasite in the shape of equines.

Once the little Alicorn besides you had finished with her chore she turned back towards you just in time for the sun to set completely, sending the world into twilight. You took this opportunity to set a clock going in your Hives and set it to the local three hour time, for future use.

Luna turned to face back towards the horizon.

“My sister does her job very well, does she not?”

“Yeah, she really does.”

Soon the balcony descended into a silence. Luna and you were the only ones that you could see that was looking up at the sky as the first stars appeared amongst the steadily darkening sky.

“Well...it is night now...what are we doing again?”

“We are going to test your magic.”

She pointed towards a cluster of seven stars that was directly in front of you from your position on the balcony.

“You want me...to move some of your stars...now...after about, I don't know...an hour?”

“Well, why not? If you get anything wrong I can always fix it.”

“What of one of your subjects notice the change though? Wouldn't that be a little difficult to explain?”

“What ponies?”

She pointed outwards towards the houses in front of you. Not a single light was on.

“Ok, point taken. I'll give it a shot then.”

You turned away from the little Alicorn and faced your goal. Instead of just activating your Vision you decide to try and modify it a bit. You ‘overlay’ your magic ‘sense’ over the top of the cartoon world, allowing you to see things...differently.

Everything you could see had multicoloured lines going between them and their surroundings, forming a web-like network that made what you saw in the library look pathetic by comparison.

The stars looked even more complicated. They had at least twenty different coloured strands going to each and every one. If you looked closely at the stars you could see something even more complex. The stars themselves were comprised of many strands that had been joined together, not by an adhesive, but just by bending around one another in an infinitely complicated way which formed even smaller web-like networks within the other networks.

And you had to change it in some way without breaking the whole system. Oh joy.

“I can smell the failure already.”

Luna ignored your comment and kept her gaze directly on you.

“Fine then.”

You released a heavy sigh then returned your gaze to the stars that seemed suddenly more beautiful all of a sudden. It was most likely because you could now comprehend how they were formed.

You put your hand up towards the sky even though it wouldn't actually affect your spell in any way at all, it just seemed natural to you. That and it looked better than just staring at something as hard as you could.

You started on just one star, pulling at a single strand of magic while holding all the other ones in place. After you had pulled the whole thing out you began yanking on the other ones, repeating this process until you had nothing left but a bunch of strands left behind.

“Well done, now put it back together.”

Oh shit. How were you going to do that.

You began by weaving a few strands into a circle, then looping a few more around that to hold it still. You ‘let go’ of the strands to see if it would hold without your assistance and was happy to find that it did.

You repeated this process of making circles, with each one being halfway between the two closest edges of the circle. Had you been looking from the side it would have looked like a line, then a plus sign, then a...shape, of some sort, divided into eight equal pieces, and then continuing until eventually you could no longer see any more gaps.

By the time you had finished the shape was a perfect sphere of strings expertly woven together, if you do say so yourself.

The end product was a star that shone brightly, more bright than any of the other stars in the sky.

“Well? How did I do?”

Luna’s jaw had somehow unhinged and was literally on the floor. Ok, you could handle the other weird stuff, but how in the actual FUCK is she doing that!?! Do they seriously have no bones in their bodies at all?!?

During your internal rant Luna had regained her bearings and was about to reply before you cut her off.

“What in the actual shit is this? What the fuck!”

She stumbled backwards slightly, either from the force of your shout or your foul language. Either way you didn't care, you were still fuming over the bizarre pony in front of you.

“W-w-what?”

“Your jaw, it - how - just - argh!”

You really shouldn't be surprised at this point. After all the other bullshit this world has been shoving down your throat nothing should surprise you anymore. Hell, even you knew that anything was possible but still, a little warning would be nice.

You sucked in a deep breath to calm your frazzled nerves. You were quite honestly surprised your mind hadn't completely snapped yet.

“What about my jaw? Is something wrong with it?”

“Are you seriously telling me you couldn't feel you jaw getting splinters from the floor?”

“No, why would my jaw do that?”

You shuddered at the realisation that she was talking like her jaw could actually do that, almost like this was a regular occurrence. You don't think you could survive if that was the case.

“Ok, ignore that question! how did I do?”

“Y-y-you, did amazing!”

Did you really do that good of a job?

“Really?”

“Oh yes! I didn't even do half as good as you on my first try!”

“Can you tell me what I did well on then?”

You were curious as to what made your star so ‘amazing’ as Luna puts it.

“Certainly! The best thing about your design of star is that your star was brighter than mine.”

“That's it?”

“No, it is excellent because you got a brighter star from the same amount of magic. I would love to see the spell you weaved just then.”

“I didn't weave a spell. I just thought it up on the spot and went on from that.”

“That's even more amazing then! You're-”

“Sister? Are you up here?”

You turned to face the stairway that led to the lower region of the library; the direction of the voice which you had identified as Celestia’s. Soon the face that matched the voice appeared in the doorway, which promptly settled on you and Luna.

“What are you to doing?”

“Practicing spells sister! Isn't it amazing! Some pony actually wants to be taught by me! I feel special!”

Celestia’s gaze turned towards you.

“Really?”

“Yep. I even made a star just a second ago. It's a very nice star if I do say so myself.”

She did a weird motion with what you would call eyebrows. You think that she was once again trying to raise them. It failed. It looked like someone had smeared coloured chalk pastels all over her forehead.

“You made a star? On your first go?”

She seemed really skeptical. If someone told you that they had made a star you would believe them. It was an almost everyday occurrence where you were from, even more so outside of your home galaxy.

“Come see for yourself if you want to.”

You pointed towards your star, shining brightly in the night sky.

Celestia followed your hand and her gaze settled upon your freshly made star near the horizon. Her skepticism was replaced with disbelief.

“You made that?”

“Yep. Had you been here earlier you would have seen me make it.”

“Incredible. I have never seen anypony with such magical potential.”

“I'm not a pony remember.”

“I know, but still, such skill is impressive.”

You really didn't agree but you didn't interrupt either.

“It will be morning soon and I believe the new Elements wish to throw a party in your honor sister.”

“B-b-but there'll be other ponies there! I can't go!”

You came up with a compromise.

“How about we just throw a little celebration in this library? A sort of, ‘welcome back from the moon sorry for almost killing you’ kind of thing.”

“Perfect!”

Celestia’s eyes almost exploded out of her head when you said ‘almost killing you’. That's right, she wasn't there in the forest was she?

With that said Luna flew down the stairs, past her still bug-eyed sister and disappeared from view. You followed suit, leaving behind the stunned mullet of an Alicorn that was Celestia.

Upon arriving at the ground floor you noticed that the other ponies in the building were beginning to wake up. They must really get up early.

You decided to just sit down in the corner and wait for them all to get up of their own accord. In the meantime you took notice of Luna leaving the room with Celestia any going into another room in the ‘tree-brary’. They emerged a few minutes later and by that time all if the ponies had roused from their slumber.

Luna stepped forward to speak with them.

“H-hi. Um...I would like to thank you all for saving me from...well, myself. I know that you would like to throw a celebration for doing this but I must decline this offer as-”

“But why not?”

“Well you see...I'm kinda’ nervous around other ponies...so I thought a small celebration just between us would be better...if that is ok with you.”

You still hadn't decided what was up with Luna. You had definitely seen evidence for some form of multiple personality disorder, along with some kind of other mental trauma. You couldn't figure out what it was though.

“Woo-hoo! It's time to party!”

Pinkie Pie pulled out a cannon from absolutely nowhere and lit the fuse, making sparks fly from it. She then proceeded to lift the cannon over her head and place it in front of her, just as the fuse ran out.

To avoid being shot in the chest you dive out of the way just as the cannon fires and smoke fills the room. The room continues to fill with smoke until everyone in the room is coughing and absolutely nothing is visible.

Luckily for you though, you were near a window so you just walked over to it and opened it up.

“Next time make sure the window is open when you try to...um, what.”

The whole room was filled with decorations and other party equipment, but that wasn't what had you startled. No, somehow in the time between the cannon being fired and the smoke leaving the room the ponies had arranged themselves to make a tower. Celestia was on the bottom, followed by Luna, then the purple unicorn, followed by the white unicorn and the orange earth pony. After that there was the blue Pegasus and Pinkie, followed by Fluttershy on the top.

They were all blinking their eyes slowly, with the exception of Pinkie, who you think would probably be jumping were it not for the other pony on her back.

Flittershy was the one to break the silence, using her quiet voice as usual.

“...um...how did I get up here? If you don't mind me asking, that is.”

“I am confused as well.”

Before anyone in the room could react, Pinkie Pie jumped down from the stack of ponies and landed on the floor, bringing down the pony on top of her as well, who clung on for dear life and let out a little squeal of surprise.

“Come on guys! Let's get partying!”

Pinkie began bouncing around the room, completely oblivious to the pony still stuck to her even as she began to ‘eek’.

“eeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEeeee-”

Fluttershy's voice was being altered as every time Pinkie Pie landed from another bounce her lungs would get compressed.

“Um...Pinkie darling, I think you are frightening our friend here.”

She suddenly stopped, forcing Fluttershy onto Pinkie’s side, still clinging on as if her life depended on it.

Pinkie looked down at the shivering yellow clump that was stuck to her fur.

“Heh heh, sorry.”

Fluttershy flopped off of Pinkie and fell onto her back on hone floor, still shivering.

“O-o-oh d-don't worry P-pinkie.”

Fluttershy seemed really shaken up. Pinkie Pie seemed to stop caring pretty quickly though, as she just walked off towards one of the tables that had appeared out of nowhere where she started eating some of the food, which also appeared out of nowhere.

You were still trying to process what just happened.

“Did I miss something here?”

“Aah!”

You looked towards the now smaller pile of ponies just in time to see Luna fall off of Celestia, bringing everyone else down as well.

Ignoring the group of ponies that were struggling to get off of Celestia while apologising, you turned towards Pinkie over at the table and made your way over to her. You had something you wanted to ask her.

“Hey Pinkie?”

“Hmm?”

Her head swivelled around from its position to face you, bits of cupcake frosting stuck to her lips. How does she not have diabetes?

“Last time in this library you said that humans couldn't do magic. Why was that?”

“What? Oh! Silly filly, I didn't mean all magic! I just meant Unicorn magic.”

“Ok then...I guess.”

You left Pinkie Pie to her...food fest, and headed towards the other ponies in the library. You still had yet to learn some of their names.

The ponies had somehow managed to get themselves out of the mess of limbs and fur and were now apologising to Celestia and, to a much lesser extent, Luna. As you approached Luna looked towards you, probably to distract herself from saying ‘it's ok’, and ‘no need to apologise’, to the still apologising ponies.

“I'm so sorry Princess! I don't know how that happened! I'm so, so, so-”

“It's alright Twilight. Nopony knows how that happened.”

“But-”

“It's ok Twilight. Now aren't we supposed to be celebrating my sisters return?”

“Yeppery!”

Pinkie appeared out nowhere in a shower of confetti and streamers, thoroughly startling all the ponies present, leaving only you immune to her sudden arrival. She still had frosting and other confectionary all over her, somehow getting some on her chest region and hair.

“Come on guys! This is a PARTY! Let's go get some food!”

And then she bounced off again, towards one of the tables covered in food. This time, however, all the other ponies - minus the white Unicorn - left as well. The only remaining pony turned towards you.

“Well, that was a bit startling. I do believe I offered to make you some apparel, seeing as your current attire is completely ruined.”

“Yes it is.”

You look at your clothes. They were completely and utterly beyond repair, at least without Nanite intervention. You preferred the idea of new clothes though, and you already had an idea in mind. With a little use of your Nanites you managed to make the ‘blueprints’ for some new clothes, which you handed to the white Unicorn.

“Can you make these? I have a specific material in mind, which I will have sent to your place of business as soon as possible. I will pay whatever the fee may be once it is complete.”

She quickly skimmed over the paper, taking in as many details as possible.

“This seems complicated, but I always like a good challenge. Deal.”

You shook the small ponies hoof, crouching down to reach the little equine.

“Be careful Pinkie!”

You turned back to the table to see a levitating Pinkie, smoke and fire billowing out of her facial orifices. Great, what had you missed this time?

“W-what did i miss?”

The voice came from the doorway upstairs. Shortly afterwards you saw a small reptilian creature waddle down the stairs, rubbing his eyes blearily along the way. As he reached the bottom of the stairway he released a large yawn before turning towards the purple Unicorn.

“What happened Twilight?”

So her name was Twilight? Or it could just be a nick-name, you didn't exactly know for sure.

“We fired a rainbow at Nightmare Moon and a Princess came out!”

Pinkie Pie was obviously faster to answer than Twilight.

“...what.”

“We saved Princess Luna from Nightmare Moon.”

“Oh, ok.”

The little reptilian wandered off, probably going back to sleep if his yawns were any indication. The ponies continued on as if nothing had happened.

“Hey, who was that?”

“Oh, that was my assistant, Spike.”

“I take it he's a dragon?”

“Yes. He's only a baby though, so he needs lots of sleep.”

That was a baby dragon? How big do they get? He was still tiny compared to you, but he was apparently a ‘baby’ dragon. He seemed to be able to talk pretty well for a baby as well.

You discarded your thoughts and sat on the floor before levitating some food over towards you. You didn't even know what you were eating but you didn't care.

“How are you doing that?”

“What? The levitation?”

She nodded her head, curiosity shining within her eyes.

“Well...let's just say that science is magical, and leave it at that.”

She scrunched up her face in confusion, something which you had to stop yourself from laughing at.

“What?”

You lent in close to her, not an easy feat considering you towered over her.

“Shh, don't tell anyone.”

Her eyes crossed over for a moment in what you assumed to be intense concentration, before she finally replied.

“Oh, ok! A secret! I won't tell anyone!”

“Good, good. Now excuse me I'm going to go and read for a while. Enjoy the party.”

With that you walked over to the corner of the room and sat down in it, carrying the books you were reading before with you using a combination of your magic and Nanites. The other ponies seemed to be enjoying themselves without your presence so you opened your book to the part you were up to and continued reading it. Or at least, the part you think you were up to.

Humans have an array of unique magic that they can and only they can cast, one such unique type of magic actually comes under another category, the teleportation.

Humans have a harder time grasping at the Unicorns ‘blink’ spell, and so, have other methods of ‘transportation’. One of the most famous and difficult ones is the portal spell.

You stopped reading. That was it! You could use a portal to get home. You just needed to get to your temporary residence and work out the details. You stand up and turn towards the ponies. They didn't even notice you missing so you're sure they wouldn't notice it if you left.

You leave in the stealthiness way you could think of.

Straight through the glass window.

By now it was midnight, possibly later. You couldn't tell as the weird time system here was screwing you over. Still though you pulled yourself out of the broken pieces of glass and brushed yourself off.

Before going directly home you decide to stop by at Rarity’s place of business, only problem was you didn't know where she worked. Before Pinkie mentioned a boutique, so you scanned the village for any buildings that fit that ‘class’ of structure.

You soon located it and followed a little blue line that appeared on the floor, leading you to your destination, courtesy of the Nanites you infused into your eyes.

Upon arrival you noticed that it was another weird building but you didn't care anymore, instead you started making the material you wanted Rarity to make your clothes out of.

You pulled the fibroin out of your space-time pockets and weaved them into a fabric, leaving behind some Nanites in the process. You left the Nanites there as you figured that it would be easier for you to just keep a digital copy of your new clothes in case anything happened to it. They were there to record every little movement the fabric made and then calculate it into a visible image for you to work with.

Once done you left the fabric by the door with a note explaining that the material could be dyed if she wanted to. You didn't think she would though as you left her specific instructions for your clothing designs.

With your minor chore out of the way you continue on your journey to the forest where you lived. Yo eventually got tired and bored of walking so you just sprinted the whole way there, the scenery really not all that interesting to you anymore.

You noted that the manticore wasn't at your clearing anymore. In its place was a giant blood smear and a massive crater. If you had to hazard a guess you would say that this manticore might have accidentally ran into Luna during what you had pieced together as her ‘nightmare moon’ persona. Oh well.

Before entering your house you collected a sample of the manticore’s blood for later testing using your Nanites.

Once inside your house you begin planning immediately.

You knew some of the facts. You knew that the humans here had a way of making ‘sub-rifts’ in this rift, or at least some form of spatial tearing in order to move around from place to place. You had a lot of energy at your disposal, but it probably wouldn't be enough to make a hole in the rift you were in. That would be your first goal. Your second would be a focus; you needed something to concentrate that energy into a single point and use it to create a portal.

You ran a few calculations through your Nanite Hives, as you would not be able to do them yourself. Using the size of the rift you were in and the amount of energy it contained, as well as a few other factors, your Hives calculated you would require the energy equivalent to twelve mini fusion reactors of the same type you had.

You already had nine, plus building them would be easy so you set about that first.

You began searching for blueprints in the massive archives of your Nanite Hives, eventually finding some for a machine that produces the same fusion core you had. Building it was easy enough, as you already had the desired materials and the blueprint already made up. Within seconds you had the machine in your hands. It was small - at least compared to some other monstrously huge machines you had seen - about twenty centimetres and roughly square. It looked like a shiny steel box with no openings at all.

You placed the machine on the nearest table to you, which happened to be the dining table, and connected wirelessly with it through your nervous system. As your hand hovered over it blue holograms appeared floating just centimetres away from the surface of the shiny metal. On it was a list of all the materials required for the machine to do its job of making reactors, all of which you had on you and for that you were grateful; you didn't want to have to search around for materials.

You extracted the exact amount of each required material and turned them into solid bars of metal in your hands, or in the case of the water, a solid ball of ice. This action caused the machine in front of you to move. The whole box broke down into many pieces and started forming a sphere of metal, with two other pieces leaving the now sphere metal machine and floating over to your hand. The metal slices picked up the materials from your palm using even smaller pieces of metal that had broken off from the ones above collecting the materials.

These two little pieces, now carrying cargo, returned to metal sphere and deposited the resources in the centre. The two pieces of metal, having done their job, returned to the other floating chunks of metal which had now started spinning around the materials in the middle slowly.

The now rotating began periodically releasing bursts of amplified radiation of the green wavelength, making the ball of spinning metal look like an inverted light show, with green lines bouncing around with an extremely calculated accuracy.

You checked the hologram again and it showed that it was going to take a week for all three reactors to be finished.

Now the hard part. You had to make the portal focus non-specific, so that way you would be able to change things on it if necessary. And that meant doing something that you had very little experience in; quantid programming and assembly. You hadn't really looked up on the subject besides a basic crash-course on the topic, and that was probably due to your upbringing in an Event galaxy. If you had to code any lower than that you don’t know what you would do as you had absolutely no idea what was lower than the quantid level.

No use in having such pessimistic thoughts. The programming would come later, for now you should just come up with a functional design. You set out and starting thinking of ideas of what your focus would have to be shaped like. You settled on a basic design of spherical revolving mass of different pieces of metal, much like the machine working away in front of you.

You have it so that the twelve cores would be in three layers; three on the top in a triangle, four in the middle in the shape of a square, and three on the bottom in the shape of a triangle, but facing the opposite direction to the top triangle. It had a shape so that it would direct all of the energy into the centre, where the focus would force the Spatial and Temporal fields to stretch into the surrounding fields, to make a massive, artificial rift. Hopefully it wouldn't blow up in your face when you activated it. Knowing how well you did at quantid programming it probably would.

Now that you had a general concept ad design thought out and stored in your Hives, you now needed to program it. Wonderful.

You would just use the four standard inputs and not bother with anything too out of your league, lest you mess anything up and have catastrophic results. You would use the inputs T, S, G, and R to program your machine, and use the surrounding TSGR frequencies as an example for your machine to run off of. Hopefully that way it would be less likely to explode in a violent fashion. Or at least that was the idea.

You began programming, making it so that the TSGR quantids were in the same quantity as the surrounding molecules. Luckily for you, you had a helpful little program that gave you visualisations of what your programs would end up looking like had you assembled it as it was. That way you could go and work it into a basic shape and gradually make it look more like the final product.

That was what was weird about building something using quantid programming, you almost always started with the final product and then went backwards, getting less and less complex with each ‘layer’ of instructions, until you had the most basic of commands.

Eventually you had programmed it to be an exact replica of the model you made earlier, including the floatation and movements of the metal pieces. Now you just had to assemble it, which would probably take a while.

You began assembling your program and at first nothing happened, but then a ball of tiny flashing blue lights appeared in front of you at chest height. You reached out to the orb and lightly touched it, not exactly sure what would happen if you did.

Surprisingly, nothing happened. Your hand interacted with it as if it was a normal object, albeit one that defied gravity completely. Of this was what was assembling your program you would have to keep it safe and close by. Using your Nanites you were able to fashion a metallic necklace of sorts, with a ‘string’ hanging halfway down from the loop of the larger ‘string’ of metal.

You picked up the orb and attached it to the middle piece of metal, leaving the lower piece empty and just dangling there.

You used this opportunity to take a closer look at the fusion cores on your belt. A little bit of experimenting shows that they were even smaller than you originally thought, as what you were seeing was mostly just metal casing. The actual core was only about the size of your thumbnail. This was convenient.

You pulled all of the cores out of their casings and stuck them on the lower end of your necklace, leaving room for the three other ones that hadn't been made yet. Now you had a necklace that had nine shiny metal spheres hanging in a vaguely oval shape around a glowing blue orb.

And thinking of orb, you wanted to see how long it would take before it would finish and you would be able to test it out.

Looking through your Hives told you that it was estimated that it would be complete in approximately two to three standard Earth years. You had two years of this place to live through...

“Oh, fuck me.”