Dreams Recalled

I. Cell 20

Year 10 B.H. (Before Harmony)

Behind the glass there was an earth pony filly half-awake and in chains. She breathed hard and heavy, her bulged abdomen hairless and wet like a toad. On her scalp there were nicks from the razor that had shaved her mane, and the amber of her decayed teeth was quite visible through her gaping mouth. The lights were harsh and her body glistened. Block writing on the other side of the glass read “Cell 10.” Nearby stood two unicorn observers, who may as well have been invisible to her—instinct had forced her eyes shut. They talked.

“…would entirely remove the need to remove the marks during adolescence.” The speaker was a turquoise mare with a fluffy white mane, dressed elegantly in a wine red cape. In contrast, her companion, a white stallion with a proud bearing, had on an imperial scarlet coat stiffened with gaudy jewels. Around his neck he wore a gold choker and several pendants bearing symbols. He watched the pony behind the glass with an anxious fascination.

“What’s her name?”

“Before she was selected for testing,” said the mare, “it was Juniper. She had a congenital defect that made her lame in one of her legs. If we hadn’t taken her, she might’ve been killed.”

The earth pony wriggled slightly, kicking her hind legs. There was an agonized groan and the observing stallion wrinkled his nose at the discharge that gushed out. The turquoise unicorn tapped her hoof pointedly. From behind her, a swamp-colored earth pony dashed forward to unlock the cell door and clean up the mess.

“Are you sure he should know about this?” asked the white stallion. “What with the insurrectionists?”

The mare released a tight, barking laugh as if she had been storing it up all day. “I’ve had Calico since I was a filly. He can be trusted. Isn’t that right, Calico?”

“It sure is, Ms. Mercury,” said Calico, grinning as he emerged from the cell. “I got no time for the rebels, Your Majesty.”

“That’s very reassuring,” mumbled the stallion. Turning back to Mercury, he said, “At any rate, if I’m impressed with your progress on my sister’s little project, I’ll speak to some traders and gauge their interest in this Juniper.”

Mercury bowed her head and said that Majesty was very kind and she would deeply appreciate it. Calico trotted behind the two unicorns as they passed through an empty holding cell to access the stairs. Juniper let out a wretched moan as they left but it was made impotent by the soundproof walls.

Mercury said, “It’s just this way, Prince Glimmer.”

The main staircase spiraled in both directions and neither floor nor ceiling was visible. Both the steps and the rounded wall to which they were affixed were a mottled crystalline white. The deceptive fragility of the structure was somewhat disrupted by the doors. Some were wooden and some were steel and they were evenly spaced all up the staircase.

The ponies went up until they reached a metal door. It said on it, “Cells 11-20.” Mercury pulled a key from her saddlebag and entered.

The room was clean and well lit, identical to the chamber that housed Juniper, with two doors leading to the other cells. There was nothing behind the glass, which was marked with the number 11. A small group of unicorns stood before Mercury and the prince, and she introduced them as her team. After the exchange of pleasantries was over, Mercury explained that what she had to show the Prince was in Cell 20 and asked if he had any questions.

“Yes,” said the prince. “I understand that you have called this creature the Alicorn, correct? What is that?”

“Until recently, the Alicorn was a hypothesis. If you want a unicorn capable of raising the sun on her own, the test subject’s horn would need to be made into a far stronger magical conduit. We first experimented with increasing the horn size of unicorn volunteers and other such stupidity. It did little to increase their magical capability. After several failed efforts, the team and I decided to tackle the problem from a different perspective: what sort of unicorn would be capable of raising the sun on her own? I hypothesized that such a dramatic increase in magical potential would likely make her a new type of pony altogether. Theoretically, it should resemble a winged unicorn. I coined the word ‘Alicorn’ to describe such a creature.

“Of course, my calculations indicated that we simply didn’t have the magical energy necessary to create an Alicorn even if all the unicorns in Somn pulled together. Once again, I had to think outside the box. Long story short, I began to experiment with dimensional spells and I discovered something incredible. If I suggested that a true magical augmentation spell was possible, what would you say?”

“Well, I’d call you crazy, I suppose.” A frown came over the prince’s delicate features. “Magical augmentation beyond perhaps a simple party trick is firmly in the realm of fantasy. I believe one of Maple’s old fables revolved about the folly of such an endeavor. Do you intend to prove me otherwise?”

“We have been looking in all the wrong places, Your Majesty,” said Mercury. “With a few adjustments to a teleportation spell, I discovered that I could do this…”

Mercury raised her horn and cast a spell that the prince had never seen before. Her method was counter-intuitive, like she was trying to cripple herself, and Prince Glimmer half-expected it to backfire, but instead a strange purple glow appeared in Mercury’s eyes. He could have sworn that her body flickered for a moment as well, as if she were about to teleport. Then, she vanished.

Prince Glimmer yelped and drew himself up with a fussy cough. “H-hello? Mercury Drop? What are you doing?”

For a glad moment he thought she had gone forever and he wouldn’t have to think about her ever again, but then Mercury’s voice came disembodied in reply, a high sound ringing out from all directions. “I am here in the room with you, Your Majesty. And—I can see—I can see…”

“What can you see?” asked the prince hastily.

“Oh, I can see everything. Everything. All the magic in the world, Your Majesty. I see it all.”

The prince swallowed uncomfortably. He rather wished that his older sister could’ve dealt with this matter, but the summit in Vanhoover naturally took precedence. As great of an asset as Mercury Drop was to the university, he still found her intensity frightening. By contrast, Princess Platinum was an old friend of hers from school, and she fueled the frightening ambition that ached deep in Mercury’s murky grey eyes.

In truth there was no small amount of envy that the Prince felt for Mercury. She wasn’t even a peer and yet commanded more respect in the Imperial Court than he did. A year ago, he had made the mistake of trying to court the daughter of a duke, named Rhea Celeste. When Rhea's brother was later arrested and purged for his connections with dissident activity, he suffered the consequences for his unfavorable relationship. He severed ties with her, but it was already too late and he was packed off for six months to work as a special envoy to Phoenicker—a major region of Caeland, to be sure, but it was no duty befitting a prince. As if the humiliation wasn’t enough, he returned to Somn to find his sister had largely superseded him in the political arena. His friends were few, and he spent much of his time doing busywork for Platinum.

Sucking in a sharp breath, the Prince affected a mild tone. “Could you—could you perhaps explain more clearly what you mean?”

Mercury reappeared with a crack and turned back to the prince with a broad smile. “Think of the world in two parts—here we are in the physical world, and behind it is the world of magic. One cannot exist without the other. The gap between the world, I coin—I flatter myself—the Veil. Normally, we use our horns as a conduit to access that other world, but it takes a great deal of energy just to access that magic, without factoring in the effort of actually using it. This spell allows me to skip that stage, to go beyond the Veil, so that the effort my horn expends on casting spells is reduced dramatically. I can reach all of that magic now—directly! Do you understand?”

“I think so,” said Prince Glimmer, pursing his lips in thought. Gauging from Mercury's excitement, he decided it would be a bad idea to encourage her too much. She was quite intolerable like this.

“Let me demonstrate with a simple engorgement charm.” Mercury left the Prince’s side and trotted over to a desk, atop which were two quill pens. “If I were to cast the weakest engorgement spell I know, it should increase the size of that pen by a factor of about 1.5.”

The prince nodded, and Mercury’s horn glowed. True to her word, a grey glow surrounded the pen and its size increased by about half of its original proportions. A fairly unremarkable spell that any unicorn filly could cast.

“Now, observe what happens if I use my new spell first.” Mercury snickered and raised her horn. Prince Glimmer turned back to the desk, chewing his lip.

Once again, Mercury’s eyes changed their coloration, like she was wearing glass lenses, and she vanished. Prince Glimmer looked from side to side nervously. The remaining quill pen then gave out a twinkling lambency that quickly escalated into a fiercely intense glow; the prince had to squint as the shape loomed up before him. When the light faded, the pen was grossly oversized, pressed up between the walls of the room, the shaft of the feather twisted and the quill bent. The sight was farcical; Prince Glimmer would have laughed were he not so shocked. The other members of the research team broke out in practiced applause. Mercury reappeared, giving the Prince another start, and called for Moonstone, her research assistant. Moonstone quickly emerged from the group of scientists and cast a spell to return the pen to its proper size, while smug Mercury returned to the prince, who still stood dazed on the other side of the room.

“Could a unicorn raise the sun by herself with this kind of magic?” he asked.

     Mercury smirked. “Oh, she could do more than that! This breaks all the limits of magic as it is presently understood. It’s a precise technique, and a poor practitioner might hurt herself trying to cast it, but with this kind of power, I realized that we could do more than simply raise the sun. It can’t be used for sustained periods without exhausting the caster, but with enough unicorn collaborating, we could do anything. We could make new life. We could make the Alicorn. Come along and I’ll show you.”

“N-new life?” spluttered the prince, too shocked to restrain himself. “That’s worthy of Star Swirl himself. Beyond him, in fact!”

“I’m glad you agree.” Mercury was already trotting towards the door to the other cells. “Follow me and I’ll show you what my team and I managed to create.” She turned, and briefly, the hem of her cape rode up enough to display her cutie mark: the classic illusion of the impossible triangle, colored the same thundercloud grey as her eyes.

Prince Glimmer followed Mercury Drop with no small degree of apprehension, but now at least his interest was truly piqued. This, he thought, was something quite big.

Cell 20 was directly accessible from Cell 11 due to the circular organization of the floor. Mercury Drop was gazing proudly into the glass as Prince Glimmer entered the room, and she invited him to gaze upon this creature she had made—a being crafted of pure magic with the potential to be mightier than any unicorn in all of Astrony.

The first thing the prince noticed was that it was huge. Though it was currently lying on the floor of the cell, it likely stood head and shoulders above Mercury or himself. Despite this, it was covered in an off-white peach fuzz coating, like a tiny foal, and its wings lay spread out and bedraggled. The long, thin legs extended across the floor, the light pinkish flesh and blue veins still visible beneath its down. It had a pronounced, masculine jaw structure—kingly features, despite its bleary-eyed expression. Meanwhile, its horn was more impressive in length and girth than any unicorn horn Prince Glimmer had ever seen.

“You must forgive her appearance,” said Mercury. “She’s big, but she’s really just a newborn foal in every other regard. She’s developing abnormally fast, though.”

“A w-winged unicorn,” murmured Prince Glimmer. “To think I would live to see…to see…”

“Yes. The stuff of legend,” finished Mercury. “Is she not beautiful?”

The Alicorn moved her head at the noise, moaning softly. The prince blinked furiously, not quite believing what he was seeing. This impossible animal was here, breathing the same air as him, brought fully-grown into existence by the mare that stood sat his side. His gaze traced the Alicorn’s muscular flank to arrive at her cutie mark, which was—

“The sun,” he said. “Her cutie mark is the sun.”

“Appropriate, I think, given the circumstances of her birth.” Mercury smiled with an almost maternal kindness at the creature.

Abruptly, the prince came to his senses. “I must get back to the Palace. I must write a letter to my sister and inform her of all this immediately. This is—this is quite remarkable, Mercury. You have outdone yourself. For my part, I feel that this has quite exceeded all expectations I had for this unit.”

Mercury bowed in gratitude as the prince made to leave. As he opened the door, a question sprung to his mind, and he inclined his head back toward Mercury to ask:

“Does she have a name?”

Mercury nodded. “I thought that she ought to have a name befitting our great nation—something that represented our Starlit Path.” She smiled again, softly. “Her name is Celestia.”