Crimson Trail

Chapter 1

A Totem Of Magic

Edited by The Metallic Dash

“Akilina can you please get the totem and bring it over to the lab bench,” Said a voice from the other room.

“Ok!” I called back.

I quickly slipped over to the room next door inside of which a small metal box lay in the far corner sitting atop a table. As a made my way over to it I could hear the professor a couple rooms away giving some long-winded speech about science, magical theories and other things I could not make out.  I can only assume he was talking to the committee of science and magic development. As I grasped my talons around the box and gave it a quick heave up I stumbled around for a second trying to get my balance on my hind paws. After a couple seconds of stumbling around I instinctively flexed out my tail to help counterbalance the box.

“I swear this damn thing gets heavier every day,” I muttered to myself.

I began to canter out into the hallway and after walking a little way down it I nudge the door to the lab open with my wing. Once inside I hurried over to the lab table and gently placed the box on top of it. Then I gave myself a quick shake to reposition all my feathers. Right as I finished shaking the professor came in with a much larger committee then I was expecting.

“Aw Here is my assistant Akilina. She’s a pretty young lad, eager to learn and not to mention this project would not have been possible without her assistance,”

He beamed while gesturing towards me.

A slight blush came over me at the complements but I quickly regained my composure and began to size up the committee. I could tell at a glance who was actually interested and who was just there because they needed to be. I made a mental note that there were about 5 griffins and 12 ponies. And after everyone made it into the lab the professor began telling his story and explaining what we had discovered/manufactured. I slipped past the group heading to the back of the room and spotted a stool against a wall. I walked over and sat down and tuned my ears onto listening to the professor.

“Now as all of you may know magic is classified in the present-day world as two types. Active being unicorns weaving complex spell matrix's, and passive being Earth ponies superior strength.  Although these classifications are not very good when it comes to Pegasi because they do not fit in either category.  They are able to choose to fly through a cloud or land on top of it. The cloud itself has not been changed in any way but the Pegasus magic changes the way that their bodies react with the cloud. In a way the Pegasus are in fact making a simple spell matrix for themselves,” The professor stopped to take a deep breath and then began more excited than before.

“Here’s the first big discovery that we made. In the case of a griffin the idea of passive and active magic is even more lacking than for pagasi, due to the fact that griffins cannot only fly through or land on top of clouds. But we found that rawjen like effects are always taking place unconsciously.”

“What is rawjen?” one of the ponies asked.

“O yes of course,” the professor cleared his throat and then continued.

“Rawjen is a word from old Griffin tong it means Warriors rage. It originated from stories of long ago battles when griffins were fighting for their lives past the point of rage they would find a calm tranquil feeling overcome their bodies. Well under the effects of rawjen it is said that your talons will never break or dull, minor cuts and scrapes will heal up in a matter of seconds and flight capabilities beyond the sonic rainboom can be achieved. It is the legendary state of combat although most people nowadays believe it just to be a story made up to boost the confidence in Griffin soldiers.”

The pony seemingly satisfied with the answer given, gestured to the professor for him to continue.

“Now this lead helped Akilina and myself with are first big discovery. Which was that rawjen does have a speck of truth to it even if in the stories it was greatly exaggerated. What we discovered was unconsciously the passive magic in griffons body’s moves around to enhance different places. Such as when a Griffin is flying the majority of magic is focused in the wings allowing them to fly much faster than their wingspan should permit. When a griffon is on the ground the magic is focused in its lags allowing them to run great distances and reach superior speeds with less drain on their stamina. And when in combat the magic is focused in their talons and their beaks strengthening and sharpening them. From this discovery we were able to deduce that under extreme emotional conditions it is possible for a massive magic release throughout the body creating a rawjen like effect. We are still working on understanding if a similar thing happens in Pegasi but are currently unsure at this time.”

A couple hooves shot up in the committee. The professor proceeded to dutifully answer the questions.

“How were you able to test your rawjen theory?” A blue unicorn wearing a lab coat and a pair of glasses asked.

“Good question,” He said well walking a little closer to the lab bench

” Akilina did most of the testing by herself. If I remember correctly she did several different endurance tests well putting herself in different physical and emotional states as well as Talon strength tests and several more tests I can’t remember off the top of my head. After graphing out all the results there was a pretty clear the changes happening. The test also showed the difference that emotions caused. The strongest reaction being too the emotion of rage and or the physical feeling of pain. The weakest reaction being with the emotion of guilt and or the physical feeling of starvation.”

He glanced around at the assembly of griffons and ponies in front of himself.

“Any other questions?” He asked.

“How is this helpful in any way, I understand that knowing is important and I’m sure that your findings will make their way into the textbooks of the future. But when you call the committee together you said that you made a discovery that will change Equestra forever,” asked a light brown earth pony.

“I will be getting to that in a minute but before I move on are any other questions?”

The assortment of ponies and griffins shuffled around awkwardly for a couple seconds before stopping at the sign that the professor was about to continue, unhindered by the lack of enthusiasm.

“Well for Akilina and I when we made that discovery the big question in our minds was if we are able to control our inner magic why can we not use spells? And the obvious reason was because we don’t have horns so then that raised the question what do horns do to magic? After several weeks of reading all the reference material we could find about unicorn horns, enchantments, and basic magical theory, we had quite an extensive understanding of the effects of a horn on magic.”

“And what are these effects,” Asked a tall brown Griffin with a black streak going down his back.

The professor seemed a little upset at being interrupted, after a moment to gather his thoughts he proceeded to answer the question.

“The horn itself works like a channel for magic. When a unicorns use their inner magic it adapts and changes the way the magic flows through their horn making the magic receive a desired effect. The closest analogy I can come up with is a river with several pathways for the water to flow, except every path changes the way the water behaves. The point of the spell matrix is to close off certain paths and open up others to allow the magic or in this case water to adapt the desired effects for a spell. In a sense making a miniature version of the spell held inside there horn. after this is done the unicorn can then use their horn like an amplifier they take Equestria’s natural magic and form it into a spell which can then be cast at will.”

“If this is true then, why can unicorns not learn spells if unrelated to their talent?”  The same Griffin asked.

“Well that is because certain unicorns may not have the correct channels for specific modification to magic that a spell needs. Some spells are easy like a levitation spell in which the magic only has to go through 20 or 30 different pathways that every unicorn has, although some more complex spells can have thousands of pathways for the magic to go through such as a teleportation spell. Does that answer your question?”

“… Yes,” the Griffin replied a little bit flustered by the answer he got.

“Great. Now back to what I was saying,” the professor said a little bit too cheerfully.

“After we figured out what a horn dos to magic, Akilina and I started to do hundreds and hundreds of tests seeing if we can make a synthetic magical framework… This is when we started to have troubles due to the fact that synthetic materials did not modify the magic in any way. It came out exactly the same way it went in. it took us several months before we finally found a solution to the problem and after several more weeks of experimentation we created this”

The professor quickly spun around, unlatched the two latches on either side of the metal box and quickly reached inside to retrieve what we called a totem framework. From the side it looks like a piece of steel pipe with the radius of 6 inches and the length of 10 inches. Everyone in the committee seemed confused at the site of this and quiet murmurs began to pick up, however they stopped and everyone looked on in fascination when the totem was turned sideways to reveal hundreds of little pegs on the inside. Some stretching the full diameter of the pipe and others going partially out and then stopping. The real mystery was the ominous dim glowing coming from the pegs.

“This!” The professor said lifting it high into the air.

“Is the product of years of research,” he proclaimed.

“Uum what is it?” the unicorn from before asked.

“I’m glad you asked. This is an artificial spell matrix. One that cannot change making it set to a single spell in specific... a light spell,”

The committee watched in fascination as he grasped the pipe on one end with both of his talents closed his eyes and began to focus. After a couple of seconds a dull orb of light began to form just outside of the opposite end. Everyone stared in awe for several seconds before it flickered out and ceased to exist. When the professor was done and opened his eyes to see a looks of astonishment on the faces of everyone in the committee.  He gave a smile and then proceeded.

“As you can see I just performed a basic light spell without a horn. I was not able to maintain it very long because my magical stamina is incredibly low but,”

Before he was able to continue a huge flurry of questions came forth the most prominent being. How does it work? After quieting everyone down the professor began again.

“It works in the same way that a horn works. While focusing on it I was able to express my inner magic, which when transferred through the totem retrieve the desired effect of a light spell. The reason I cannot hold on for very long is because I needed to use my inner magic to fuel it instead of the magic of the world around me. But if we were able to harness the power of the world’s magic we could create portable lights for everyone… but not just that we could have Teleporters able to transport people from the Griffin Dominion to Equestra in a matter of seconds. With no need of trains or long flights or if you’re unicorn the risk of magical burnout, but that’s just the start of it. Any spell could be formulated and created for everyday use!”

Another question sprang up from the crowd.

”I thought you said the use of materials to modify magic was impossible?”

“Impossible no. incredibly difficult yes, it works by having each of the cross braces inside enchanted in a different way, the enchantments slowly bleed off into the magic passing through the totem to change the magic’s properties. Although currently we are not found a way to keep the ambient magic from degrading the enchantments. That is why I had to keep this in this magic free lock box when not in use.”

As he said that he proceeded to then place the totem back in the box, close the lid, flip the latches down. Then turn back to the group. Another flurry of questions came up but the professor waved them off and said.

“Please let us go back to the conference room so we can sit down. I can answer all of your questions once we are there.”

As the group shuffled out I slipped off my chair and followed them to the conference room. Then I took a seat and help the professor answer questions over the next 4 ½ hours... when the committee was finally satisfied and had begun leaving the building my throat was sore from all the talking. The professor was thanking everyone for coming, and was showing them the way out. After he was done he came over and sat next to me.

“Well that went better than I expected, and the turnout was way more than I thought it would be.”

“Yes because getting my ear talked off by 17 people instead of 10 is so much better,” I retorted sourly.

“Oh quit your belly aching. We not only got the grant we were hoping for but several other independent sponsors. We now have enough resources to finally put together a test teleporter and then some.”

“Wait… we got the money? I must’ve missed that,” I said excitedly. “When do we start construction, is anyone else interested in joining the team, where will we be going to get the materials,” I began asking only to be cut off.

“Pipe down, and of course I got the money you think I would go throw all of that for nothing? As far as construction goes we begin tomorrow, and this time we have a whole construction team although they won’t be here till next week.“

“That’s incredible,” I said excitedly.

“By the way why didn't you mention the griffon bloodline discovery? I swear you were more excited about that then being able to cast a spell.” I asked confused

He looks back at me with a somber expression.

“We can't tell them about the royal griffon bloodline, and how their inner magic is more powerful making them stronger hence how they got their position. Because in a way if I was to say that, it would make it seem that I could possibly be challenging the emperor. More importantly if we were tell them they would ask about how we were able to make that discovery. And we can’t have anything leading back to you. As far as the world is concerned the first daughter of the Emperor was killed on her solo hunting trip four years ago. That is the way it has to stay unless you want to be taken back home.”

“Thank you. I never thought of it that way, even after all these years are still looking out for me,” I said gratefully.

“That’s what I’m here for. So how is about we go get some chow, I know you haven’t eaten anything since this morning.”

“I would like that.” I said as we walked towards the door.