Chapters "Remember Spike, the circle has to be absolutely perfect for the spell to work." Twilight paced back and forth in front of her assistant as he painstakingly chalked a circle roughly three ponies wide, using an array of complicated looking instruments to make minor adjustments to the line he was drawing.
"Twi," Spike looked up from his work, "Couldn't you just, you know, magic it up?" He waved a powdery claw around in the air.
Twilight stopped short of her twenty third pace, not that she was counting, a gentle blush betraying her embarrassment. The alchemical chalk sparked slightly as her telekinetic grip materialised around it, quickly finishing the circle.
Three blue circles were drawn at even intervals inside the rim of the larger, only about a hoof wide. Arcane chalk left behind gently glowing purple runes that bordered all circles. A glyph in golden chalk was drawn in the centre, before the chalks, instruments and open books were quickly flown back to their places, save one old tome.
"Remember," Twilight looked Spike in the eye, "If any part of me starts burning, singing or toasting in any way, pull the lever." The lever in question was rigged to pour a cauldron's worth of water over the circle, double enchanted just to be safe. Twilight wasn't taking any chances, especially after the last time.
"Don't worry Twi, no flames get past a dragon!" Twilight's mouth drew itself into a wry smile, as the spotless tome was opened to a bookmarked page.
Twilight reviewed her mental checklist. Circle? Check. Book? Check. Water? Check. Failsafe? Twilight near face hoofed at her blunder, quickly casting dozens of fire dousing, fire discouraging and fire proofing spells over the area, before adding another half-dozen as an afterthought. Just to be safe.
Standing firmly upon the eight-pointed golden star glyph in the circle's centre, Twilight opened a smaller one of her many magical pathways, causing a slight trickle of magic to pass into the world. In her mind's eye, she could see it spiralling down lazily, until it filled the magic pathways the chalk traced, a magical gutter of sorts.
The magic ceased to flow, but remained anchored to her horn by a sliver of purple aura. She gently tugged on each of the star's corners, firmly grasping the magic and folding it into the centre. A second thread left her horn, through another minor pathway, moving straight up, pooling into a ball and splitting into three lazy arcs, filling each blue circle. The purple glyphs glowed as the overflowing energy spilled into them, returning it to the vast well of power, before being pulled from it again to strengthen the enchantments.
Now, with enough power stored a third, almost solid, tendril of power left Twilight. Threatening to arc, snap or dissipate at any moment, Twilight threaded the raw, arcane power into the fabric of reality around her, linking it back to the three pools of power within the circles. The arcs of power pouring into them widened, forming a dome around Twilight. Taking the utmost care, she gently began to pull the arcane thread tight, anchoring it to the glyphs, completely independent of the magic pool.
Twilight could feel it happening, she was so close! Her excitement caused the spell to waver, becoming unstable. Twilight began to panic as the magical dome began to contract, like a ballon that had been untied. Bolts of lightning crackled and arched about the room, and a mighty purple blaze sprung up around her feet. Twilight stared in horror at the hungry flames around her.
'No. Not again.' she thought, lashing out at the lever with a blast of telekinetic energy. The wall was blown out behind it, but the effect was instantaneous. Twilight was engulfed by a veritable tsunami of tingling, glowing water that instantly dowsed the flames surrounding her.
Twilight stood triumphant among the wreck of her spell. Water may drip from her mane, but she had prevented a disaster! A crackling sound drew her attention to the marred chalk lines that crackled with arcane energy. Water-logged and super charged with arcane magic, the colourful slurry was spreading across the room, sparking and hissing
alarmingly. She had barely time to see the look of horror on Spike's face before the room exploded.
>x<>X<>x<
Twilight sat in one of the pillowy sofas she had bought to make the crystal interior of the lounge room less harsh, but really just brought attention to how sterile and cold it was anyway. Spike was upstairs ('My own bedroom!?') nursing several bruises, while she sat in front of the roaring hearth suffering from a magical concussion. The excess feedback energy had obliterated her natural sense for background magic, like stepping into a bright light from a dark room.
A simple stone, straight from the garden, sat in the hoof dangling limply over the edge of the chair. She simply sat there, scratching away at the ground for a few minutes until she left a small impression, then watching the crystal slowly cover and fill the hole in a matter of minutes. Some rocks were better at digging, others not. She guessed she should be thankful for a treehouse that could grow back, after what happened to the last one...
Sighing, she stood, and adopted a casual pace as she climbed the stairs. The jewels suspended from the ceiling, blue, orange, yellow, pink, white and purple, glowed with a soft radiance that came with magic. The material beneath her hooves changed from blue diamond to smoky quartz as she approached the only door in the hallway.
Knocking gently, she slowly opened the door, allowing a billowing cloud of smoke to pool around her hooves, moisture coalescing on the cool surfaces, stained with ashy soot. Walking inside, a gentle glow emanate from the centre of the room, casting a dim light over the basalt furniture.
"Hey Twi." Spike arose from the gentle depression from which the light emanated, hot, glowing rock glowing dangerously. "What's up?" He clambered up a series of basaltic slabs, allowing him to reach the ceiling. Brilliant, finely polished gems sprung from the ceiling's corner in all their glory, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, twinkling gently in the half-light. Spike snapped one off at the base, choosing to roll it around in his mouth slowly. Twilight scowled.
"Get some light in here!" Beams of brilliant sunshine poured into the room as hidden blinds were wrenched apart. Spike gave a serpentine hiss, diving under his messy bedcovers. "Now Spike, you-" A bolt of arcane lightning hit Twilight square in the chest, flinging her across the room.
"Twi?" Spike peeked out from under the sheets, as the smell of singed fur filled the air. "TWILIGHT!" He rushed towards her, swerving around crackling purple bolts. Twilight stirred groggily.
"Ugh... what happened?" She said, hoof to forehead. Spike extended a shaking claw.
"That happened!" The bubbling, pulsing ball of white light hovered only a few metres off, shaking in a volatile manner. Purple bolts of arcane lightning regularly issued from it's depths, leaving scorch marks on both quartz and basalt. Sounds could be heard issuing from it, heavily garbled speech, mutilated from it's journey through space-time.
"It looks like a portal of sorts..." Twilight reached out towards it intrigued, only to receive a quick jolt from the orb. Still staring into it, she fancied she could almost see something moving within it's depths. So deep was her intrigue, she reacted too late when something shot out of the orb, clipping her horn and ricocheting off into the far corner.
Spike leapt into the air in surprise, attaching himself firmly to Twilight's face. A few seconds later, the bubbling ball of energy collapsed into itself, leaving no evidence of it's arrival save several scorch marks and the stationary object sitting inconspicuously in the corner.
Prying the drake from her face, Twilight cautiously approached the blackened object.
"Careful Twi, it could be dangerous! It could eat your soul! Maybe it's- *Gasp* -An evil artefact created by a crazy villain in order to DESTROY. THE. WORLD!" Twilight rolled her eyes, carefully scraping away the ashes.
"Don't worry Spike, it's only a mug." Twilight paused, halfway through excavating the remaining char. She carefully examined the picture she'd just revealed with a slight frown. "Spike, what do you see here?" she jabbed at the offending image.
"A cat?" Spike shrugged.
"A grumpy cat ." Was her only response.
"Your destination's probably not going to come meet us here. Is it? So go on."
-Wheatley, Portal 2
"Twi, I'm starting to think that lightning went to your head. You've been in here for days! " Spike placed an ordinary mug, brimming with strong coffee, next to the dozens of empty mugs that already stood there.
"It-It's okay Spike. I'll just stay up a teeny bit longer before bed, honest!" Spike rolled his eyes, switching off the desk lamp. A loud thump and sudden snoring indicated just how tired Twilight had been.
The ambient glow of the castle illuminated his path, the gentle sound of scales scraping against crystal echoing off the walls. Everything was so peaceful...
x<>X<>x
"What do you mean it 'went poof!'" The casing of the cheap phone creaked under the pressure the man shouting into the receiver exerted in his anger. A nervous response emanated from the speaker.
"Look, just get back here, then get out, you'r done." He snapped the cover shut before the other could reply, grimacing. The first truck they'd lost in twenty years, he would have some explaining to do...
x<>X<>x<
The clouds drifted lazily overhead, and the flowers were in full bloom, bright colours spilling forth from every garden bed. Derpy dug around in her mailbag, revelling in the morning sunshine. Grasping the corner of a bulky, rectangular parcel, she walked up to the door.
Only a few dozen metres away, a brown stallion suddenly bolted when four loud, pronounced knocks reverberated out of the castle, amplified by the great empty expansive rooms inside. He disappeared down a back alley, mane streaming out behind him.
Derpy was oblivious of all this as the grand doors slowly opened, admitting a ruffled Twilight Sparkle onto her porch.
"What is it- Oh, hi! Is that what I think it is!?" Twilight snatched the parcel from Derpy, brown paper flying in all directions. "Oh, it is!" Turning to Derpy, she opened her mouth in thanks but was met with a face-full of mace. Her eyes swelled shut and her mouth, nose and throat burned. Before she knew it she was pinned to the ground, limbs bound by the mailbag strap and a muffler placed over her horn. Derpy stood on her wings.
"That was a legal offence!" cried Derpy, blasting Twilight in the face with more mace, just for good measure. Twilight choked, incapable of thought. She could barely see through a crack in her eyelids, a figure above her outlined by the sun. Then there was a almighty BANG , and she was free of her captive. Something sharp shored through the mailbag strap, and she managed to pull off the muffler, which had not been locked. Gathering what was left of her coherent thoughts, she cast a healing spell, banishing most, but not all, of the puffiness and burning.
Coughing and rubbing her throat, she glanced around. A mangled pile of metal, roughly the size of a small house, had clipped Derpy as it sailed through the air and carved a furrow in the earth, resting in a deep ditch with smoke pouring from it. Derpy was still recovering, not six feet away. Derpy saw Twilight, free, a split second before the ground shook and they were consumed in a fireball of epic proportions.
x<>X<>x<
Twilight struggled to consciousness, barely aware of the ringing in her ears. She couldn't make out anything through the thick plume of smoke that surrounded her, dark and choking. She stared blearily at the silhouette that began to form as the smoke dispersed, lying still in the scorched grass. With a jolt of fear, Twilight began to crawl towards Derpy, smoking gently, burnt patches littering her coat. As she approached, she tried to make out the rise and fall of her chest, but the smoke distorted it all, made it hard to see...
Collapsing on the ground next to her, Twilight weakly rolled Derpy towards her, fearing the worst. What she saw caused her brain to shut own from sheer befuddlement. Derpy's eyes were wide, her pupils covering almost all of the white surfaces. Her whole face seemed frozen in a state of pure bliss, like she'd glimpsed a place so divine no mortal should see it.
In her mouth was a muffin.
x<>X<>x<
Struggling to her hooves, she observed the wreckage. Thousand of muffins, some slightly charred, lay strewn across the area, next to bright, colourful crates. Gutters were filled with muffins, ponds were filled with muffins, even the grass seemed hidden under a mountain of muffins. She stood stock-still in shock and awe, before groaning when she realised who'd be responsible for cleaning up.
At that moment Spike burst through the door.
"Hey Twi, guess what! I was looking out the window and..." Spike looked down at the muffin he'd just stepped on. Then he looked at the rest of the muffins, taking it all in with a blank expression. After but a moment, his mouth split into a wide grin. "Sweet!"
"That it is, that it is !" Pinkie emerged spontaneously from under the muffins below Twilight, sending her flying. "Hey! Where'd you go?" looking around, she spotted the disgruntled alicorn hovering above her. "Oh, there you are! You know Twi, I don't know why you did this, but it's AMAZING ! But," -she sidled up to Twilight- "you do know you'll have to clean it up, right?"
She dove beneath the muffins and disappeared from sight, her presence betrayed by the sound of loud chewing and the great sinkhole that suddenly began to appear.
A glimmer among the muffins brought Twilight to her senses. In the midst of the incident, she'd forgotten about the great hunk of metal, that had deteriorated only slightly from the explosion. In fact, even more deadly sharp surfaces covered it now. Muffins relented to her hooves, as she spooled out magic to gently pull it free from the ground.
With a lurch and an ominous groan, the majority of the structure departed the earth, allowing inspection from all angles. Bent, twisted metal rods, intricate mechanisms, shattered glass and strips of rubber made up it's majority, like someone had taken to a huge, delicate machine with a giant sledgehammer, then burn it for good measure. Seeing nothing, Twilight set it aside gently, careful not to damage it further.
Allowing magic to surge from her horn, it spilled over the field if muffins, rapidly spreading up drainpipes and over bridges, the arcane mass seeking every muffin within proximity to the caster, until almost all were enveloped in a ocean of magic, bonding with the very matter of the muffins and infusing them with magic. Twilight, with a subtle twitch, cut off the stabilising stream of magic from her horn, causing the ocean if magic to snap back into it's own dimension, dragging the magic-infused matter with it to be broken down into pure energy.
In a literal flash, the field, and most houses, were free of muffins. Pinkie fell from the air after the baked goods supporting her vanished, and Spike collapsed onto his haunches with a look of despair. Now that she could think without a series of space-time anomalies to distract her, she summoned the mug she'd studied so hard to her side.
The cat stared at her from its ceramic prison, as if she was to blame for all misery in Equestria.
"I hate you." Twilight gently tried setting the metal straight, to no avail. Frowning, the glow on her horn intensified, as she tried with a little more force, still without result. A little more strength, and the mass of metal remained unchanged. Gritting her teeth, metal suddenly went flying everywhere as the metal snapped straight in a hundredth of a second under the sheer power of the spell, sending deadly projectiles in all directions. Even Pinkie looked up when a stray shard shore half her mane off.
Twilight panted for a moment, before regaining her composure.
"See! Perfectly fine!" She now had an assortment of metal bars, rods and sheets that glittered annoyingly. Shielding her eyes with one hoof, she observed to rivet holes occurring in some pieces, as well as the tiny mechanisms that looked out of place next to the brightly painted sheets of steel. "The majority of the wreckage appears to be made out of a iron type material," she noted aloud, "and although it is stronger, it appears more brittle." Steel fragments went flying as Twilight snapped a rod in half, disposing of the pieces in a flash of purple.
"Twi, didn't you say a while ago that you preferred non -destructive testing?" Spike said from her side.
"Sure, but with so much material," Twilight... squeed... "I can run as many tests as I want! However. I. Want. Them!" her face split into a wide grin, like a filly on Hearth's Warming who had jus seen the massive pile of presents under the tree. Twilight turned towards him. "Don't you see, Spike, this could hold all the answers! Maybe I'll finally figure out just what's going in here!" she said.
"You mean the things randomly appearing and causing mass devastation?" Spike asked.
"Of course not, silly, the mug! THE MUG! THE GRUMPY MUG!"
"Twi, you should sleep more often."
x<>X<>x<
Donning my sunglasses, I walked out the door into the bright midday sun, paper bag smelling deliciously of cinnamon donut in hand. I smiled as I walked across the road, looking out upon the hundreds of people, pets and cars going about their lives, I but a stranger quickly forgotten, as were they.
Browning leaves crunched underfoot, and dense cloud cover obscured the sun, creating the effect of an ambient light. Hoisting my coat up to my ears, I continued towards the most notable building in town. The great glass monolith, just under half the size of the Empire State Building, was in the shape of a giant sphere, supported by eight metal curves shaped as if someone had cut a hoop in half, in which the sphere rested on the neck created by the arches. Another eight metal curves ran from the base if the larger, curving inwards and upwards to meet the sphere slightly off-centre, with hundreds of thousands if sheets of glass creating a concave effect between each. Eight elevators, each an eighth of a circle, rose and fell out of sync as they traversed from the ground floor, through the neck, and up into the sphere at beck and will.
A huge set of doors adorned all eight faces, with an electronic sign above each one. Reaching the wide footpath that ran all the way around the building, I stepped onto a passing train (Courtesy of the Transport Division), as it continued its eternal loop of the building. Munching on my donut, I stepped off the transport as we passed an obscure sculpture composed of various mechanical parts. I made my way towards the door, stepping around a pair of gawking tourists, and sighed in relief as the cold air inside the building wafted over me.
A (What do you know?) glass wall separated this eighth from its neighbours, the Finance and Economy Division and the Utilities and Services Division. Making my way past reception, I swiped my card against the elevator console. Disposing of my donut bag, I licked my fingers as I watched the sleek object descend. The doors opened with a gentle swish , allowing a disgruntled fellow struggling to hold together a binder full of papers into the lobby. I made my way inside, jabbing at the button for the eight level of the sphere, Research and Development Division, Zoological Research Floor.
As the elevator squeezed through the neck, I was rudely interrupted by a jagged chunk of crystal, the size of a small horse, flying past the window. I pushed my face against the glass, watching as it crashed through the lobby roof, causing half the roof to buckle and shatter. A wooden beam, a boulder and a cake followed it in quick succession.
Pressing myself against the back of the elevator, I daren't look up lest a missile or something crashed through the glass, but an ominous buzzing drew my attention upwards. I quickly risked a look upwards, trying to see around the metal roof of the elevator as it delivered me upwards. My mouth was left hanging as a great green and purple ball of plasmatic energy filled my vision, as it tore apart a small portion of the building, while continuing to spit out things that didn't even make sense.
Realising the elevator was going to deliver me into the great roiling orb, I began to severely panic, my hands shaking as I collapsed onto the floor, breathing heavily.
"Think, think, you have a degree!" I told myself.
"In zoology!" I responded.
"Come on, there must be something I can do!"
"We're not bloody Bear Grills!"
"I know, I know, just shut up and let me think!"
I glanced up, as the orb drew only a dozen metres closer. Abandoning all my wits, I screamed as I was consumed by the fiery depths.