Twilight's Conquest

In principle, it was very simple to shrink an object, store its mass as magical potential energy, and then restore the object to full size.  Unfortunately, it was difficult to contain as much energy from the mass conversion product as would be generated by any object larger than a few kilograms, which meant that the energy was frequently lost through dispersion and had to be collected through natural absorption by the magician and the object restored over a considerable period of time.  And doing such a thing to living creatures was inherently hazardous; smaller creatures could be sat or stepped upon, eaten by cats, and most importantly, a magic user could only access as much power as his or her horn could absorb, and that was reliant on surface area, so small magicians absorbed power relatively slowly compared to larger ones.  Therefore, a unicorn shrinking herself and then restoring herself to full size was exceedingly impractical.

Twilight Sparkle tapped her breastplate, not for the first time thanking Sweetie Belle for her insanely dangerous phlebomantic creation, the blood stone set in the center of the blackened steel.  The stone was now dark, the energy in it drained and used to preserve food and speed the seasoning of wood.  The brass messenger ball, about four inches in diameter, sat on the table before her, as Fluttershy and Sanaar Cargool looked at her with considerable apprehension.  "Everpony ready?  The cat has been put out?"  Fluttershy nodded shakily.  "All right then."  Twilight began her spell.

To her perception, and those of her Spymistress and the Commander of the Guard, the room and those in it grew as they moved away from one another, the floor's growth spreading them out, until they had shed 99 percent of their mass.  The bloodstone blazed, very close to capacity as the rushes on the floor topped her head.  When she could no longer see anypony, she ceased her casting.  A red mite the size of her hoof looked at her from the side of a rush stalk which was as big around as a tree and it galloped off, disappearing with astonishing speed.

She flew up, noticing for the first time that the air was full of small flying things, mainly fairy wasps and the various no-see-ums that the fairy wasps preyed upon, and laden with coils of shed pony hair and thin wisps of dragon scale cuticle.  The air itself seemed much thicker to her.  She labored to breathe and flying felt almost like swimming... she almost felt like she had buoyancy.

The ruler of Celestiana flew up to the tabletop near the ball that was their agreed upon rendezvous, a candle with a white chalk circle drawn about it.  The candle stood tall as a tower, the flame atop it a mighty conflagration that she could hear spitting and hissing.  The prince landed beside her, and bowed, breathing as hard as she from his exertions.  On their current scale, the flight was a hundred feet straight up, itself not normally a tiring feat, except for the thickness of the air.  She returned his bow, but anxiously watched for Fluttershy.

"What takes her, your royal highness?"  Snargle peered over the edge of the table as one might a cliff.  Suddenly, two moths shot up over the edge and he fell back with a grunt.  They landed inside the chalk circle, and upon closer inspection, one of the moths turned out to be Fluttershy, who patted the moth-friend she had just made and warned it against investigating the candle flame too closely before it flew off.

The three looked up at the message ball, an eighth piece of which had slid open to reveal an interior which had been stuffed with cotton padding,  Twilight flapped her wings twice and was inside.  Snargle and Fluttershy followed.  Then Twilight's horn lit up and the cutout panel slowly slid shut, the alicorn grunting with the effort.

When it was finally closed, they were plunged into blackness, so Twilight kindled a glow from her horn.  The looked at one another in the dim light.

"Now what will happen, Twilight?"  Twilight looked at the dragon prince.

"Miss Fluttershy, we are about to be consumed by dragonfire."  He endeavored to look as grim as possible.

"What?  But why!?"  Fluttershy was genuinely concerned, as would anypony with half a brain.

Twilight laughed.  "We'll be fine Fluttershy.  We're just trying out a new method of travel.  It's been tested on animals, so we know it's safe."  Then she clapped her hoof over her mouth.

"TESTED ON ANIMALS!?"  The outrage on Fluttershy's face caused Snargle to backpedal into a pile of cotton swabs.  "We will have a little talk, your highness, when this is all over."

Fortunately for Twilight, the message ball started to move and they were all thrown off their hooves and claws, respectively.  "Hang on, folks!"  The flamelancer courier did his best to keep his claw steady as he raised the message ball to his snout, but the difference in scale magnified small shakes.  Twilight wasn't quite sure what would happen, since she wasn't able to speak with the mouse and the frog about their experiences.  Hmm, maybe if I had brought Flutters on board, she could have gotten them to volunteer anyway and then tell us what happened.

The world turned green, and there was a brief sensation of falling, vastness, disorientation, nausea and finally her ears popped.  Then everything went dark again.  Twilight rekindled her horn.  "Is everypony, or dragon, OK?"

Fluttershy nodded "Is that it?"  Snargle flexed his wings and grunted.

Twilight pushed against the side of the message ball with her magic and the door slowly opened.  "Stay here, please," she said, as she flew out into a dimly lit room.  There seemed to be giants somewhere nearby, speaking in deep tones.  Here goes!

She reached into her spirit mind, and dove down into her own blood.  The similarity between the vital fluids of her body and the structure of the bloodstone allowed her to bridge the magical potential gap between her body and the bloodstone.  The metal of the breastplate was a highly effective conductor as well.  She could access a vast amount of energy in a short time through this arrangement.

However, now that she was shrunk, so was the breastplate and the bloodstone.  Of course, that too had been accounted for in her calculations.  Just as the surface area smaller, the density of the magical field in the bloodstone's crystal lattice structure was also greater, so the two should net themselves out.  The magic inside the bloodstone would be straining to come out, and once she opened the pathway for it, it could come shooting out like water at extreme pressure through a small crack in a dam.  It would take some careful modulation, however.  This is the tricky part.

As she was making the connection, she felt a huge spark across the magical potential gap, and she nearly blacked out.  So powerful!  An alicorn is, however, more than a unicorn with wings.  She also had earth pony strength and endurance to sustain her, so she was able to absorb the initial spurt of raw power and was able to reduce the flow to something manageable.  I must re-inflate quickly, to reduce the pressure!  Without preamble, she called upon the molecules bound by contact to the bloodstone to remember their original mass and size.  As she grew, the pressure lessened and she quickly saw a ceiling come into view.  She was in a vestibule where the message balls would appear from what appeared to be an apparatus that, from the scorch marks around its brass mouth, belched dragon fire and deposited the balls into the basket that her ball was in now.  So they've automated the receiving process?  How interesting!  I bet they smelted the message balls and the receiver from the same ore, to maximize similarity.  The voices she heard were coming from a large, lit chamber behind her.

She leaned over to the opened brass sphere and whispered, "You can come out now."  Two diminutive forms emerged, flying, and perched on the edge of the basket.  "Fly up into the middle of the room."  The two horsefly sized creatures obeyed and Twilight released the magic in the bloodstone, first restoring Snargle and then Fluttershy to their normal sizes.

Snargle dusted himself off from the small bits of cotton that were snagged in his scales.  "That was remarkable.  We are in the message receiving chamber next to my father's privy council."  His whisper rasped with his snarling gargle.  "Somedragon will be here to investigate the green flash shortly, I am sure.  Princess Twilight, this has some pretty significant security implications, your realize."

"Indeed, but none of your enemies are aware of this vulnerability.  And bloodstones are few and far between, I am sure."  Twilight walked forward into the chamber where there were several dragons speaking as Snargle, unsure what protocol would be appropriate under such circumstances, followed, while Fluttershy tarried, looking about the small room.  The four dragons were gathered around a table with a map of the East splayed out across it, engrossed in their conversation.  Upon the map were numerous red markers, nearly as many gray, some green, and a few blue, concentrated on the south coast of Vanash Ritoor.  Ponies, perhaps, are the blue?

"Magaar, you should heed me."  A small grayish dragon, who seemed very elderly, wagged his claw.  "This princess carries the very Element of Magic itself, and she is not to treated lightly!  She has the friendship and respect of the King himself!  And her people are desperate refugees.  What you propose would deny them access to the fishing grounds immediately to the west of their coastline!"

"Bah, Ganash, what care I for friendship and fishing grounds?"  A thickset, rather ugly looking green drake snarled at the elder.  "Now that Scylla and Charybdis are no more, trade with the West can resume!  Our dragonships will be able to trade with the Griffons and Minotaurs once again, as it was before Celestia released that scourge to protect her precious ponies from the humans, leaving us to shift for ourselves."

"You know very well that the King approved that decision, reluctantly, but he saw the need."  Ganash sighed.

A tall and thin gold dragon put his talon on the coastline.  "This is the only place the harbor can be built, Ganash.  The great current to the north side of the coast would make outward shipping prohibitively expensive.  We wouldn't be able to export without having our ships run all the way up past Angara, and that would be madness.  I have to agree with Magaar on this."  A silver chain clinked around his neck. The Chancellor perhaps? thought Twilight to herself.

A short and otherwise very well-made dragon rounded out the quartet.  He almost appeared to have rainbow hues.  "Dorgon, we need to think in the long term here.  Ganash is right about that princess' relationship with our royal family.  Why, I wouldn't be surprised if Sanaar was trying finagle himself a royal wedding with that equine, the way he talks about her."  Twilight blushed and glanced at Snargle, who was wearing an expression of stone.  "It is our place to advise the King, not manipulate him."  Growls of denial were his reply.  "I know you want what is best for the kingdom, as we all do.  Perhaps the ponies could be made to see the benefits of trade with the griffons.  You are aware that they have some griffin chicks with them, are you not?  A griffon colony, right here!  Perhaps others would be persuaded to migrate from the west now that Equestria is in ruins.  Their economies must all surely suffer."

"Strahan, they have the greater incentive to move into the rich lands left vacant by the invasion!  And in any rate, while more allies here would of course be a good thing, I don't want to encourage any more immigration!  Could you imagine more of those western savages coming here?  The great, fat, greedy louts!  No, we already have enough of them here as it is!"  Magaar shook his scaly head.  "No more westerners, I say!"  The other dragons all nodded, having scant respect for their uncivilized cousins.

Snargle cleared his throat and the four dragons turned to face him and the princess.  For few seconds, all was quiet.  Then the privy council bowed, their eyes bulging and choking noises coming from several.  "Gentledragons, I present Her Royal Highness, Princess Twilight Sparkle."

The elder, Ganash, was the first to speak.  "Your highness, this is most irregular.  We are of course very happy to greet you, but we didn't expect you to be eavesdropping on our private conversations."

Twilight smiled and bowed her head.  "It was not our plan either, good dragons.  We merely wished to travel here by the fastest route possible, and that was by messenger ball.  We did not intend to spy upon the privy council. You have our apologies."

Magaar was plainly furious.  "Your highness, you have given me no choice but to petition our King to immediately begin work on the harbor we were discussing!  This interference in our internal affairs is intolerable and I must take decisive action!"

"By all means, my lord, build your harbor."  Magaar blinked twice.  "Perhaps you don't realize this, but ponies are vegetarians.  We don't fish.  We only need enough for a dozen griffon chicks and they are well supplied by the fish stocks in Crusader Bay."

Magaar's mouth dropped open and Ganash started laughing, followed by the other two concillors and Snargle.  Slowly a smile crept across his features and a belly laugh erupted from him.  "Some privy council we are!  Ha!"

Twilight quietly congratulated herself as Fluttershy came out of the vestibule, tucking a half empty bag of critter treats into her saddle bag with a conspiratorial smile at Twilight.  So far, it's been a pretty good day.