In Pursuit of Magic

"Twilight!" called a tomboyish voice, accompanied by a harsh crashing sound. "You have to come see this!"

I wearily looked up from the book I had been studying intently. "What is it, Rainbow Dash?"

The pegasus lept up from under the bookshelf she had overturned. "A magic show!"

I stared blankly at her. "I have studied magic for years. What about a magic show could possibly excite me?"

"It's just... it's special! You have to see it!"

Oh great. I thought, rolling my eyes. Trixie's back in town.

"Fine." I sighed.

Rainbow Dash ushered me out of the library, and out onto the street, where a small throng of ponies was gathering, congregating towards something in the town square.

Even over the drone of dozens of ponies conversing and clamoring, a sound rang out clearly: music. Singing. A crystalline voice, dictating a loose, haunting melody penetrated the din of the city.

Following Dash's lead, I lifted off and passed over the gathering crowd, landing on the edge of the town's center.

In the middle of the square stood a ragged, portable stage, similar to the one Trixie had used. Upon it, though, was not Trixie, but a rare sight: a gryphon, standing on its hind legs and singing, filling the air around us with a sonorous static. The small, understated black beak denoted the gryphon as female; her feathers were predominately white, with black and grey accents around her eyes and claws.

Her voice was pure and haunting, and pervaded the very air with its arrhythmic, enchanting descant.

On stage with the gryphon was a large pane of glass, which hovered about a foot above the ground. As the gryphon's song ebbed and flowed, colorful points of light danced around inside of the glass, forming complex shapes and patterns.

I could not help but stare, awed, as the geometrical figures grew and evolved.

Finally, after several minutes, the song came to an end: the gryphon struck a single, high note and held it for a solid minute. Her vibrato seemed to resonate with everything, to a degree. Even ponies wandering with disinterest past the square stopped and looked, captivated by the resplendent, piercing wail.

As the note ended, dropping by a major seventh, a change which had a noticeable physical reaction among the audience, the points of light grew brighter, becoming, briefly, white-hot coronæ suspended in glass. As these faded, they left pocks in the core of the glass pane, each one singed a different color, forming a spiraling rainbow effect, with the outer curves in vibrant purples and blues, transitioning, as it curled inwards, along the spectrum, terminating at its center in a deep red. The pane then lowered gently to the ground, caressed in its descent by a haze of chromatic light.

The gryphon fell down onto all fours, and bowed deeply to the silently-enthralled audience.The audience remained quiet for several minutes after this, unmoving; despite this, the gryphon betrayed no signs of worry, instead gazing calmly out among the throng, observing their drawn-out reactions with confidence.

Finally, I stomped one hoof, and the rest of the audience followed suit, creating a veritable stampede of applause, and making the gryphon smirk, then bow again. This applause drew on even longer than the silence preceding it.

The gryphon stepped off the stage and wandered behind it, and the audience hesitantly began to disperse, going on about their days.

I, however, driven by curiosity, was compelled to investigate. I followed the gryphon to the opposite side of the stage, where she had set up, in a small trailer, a temporary home.

"Hello," I said.

The gryphon, previously sifting through a hat full of change, looked up sourly. "What do you want?"

I gulped and grinned nervously. "My name is Twilight Sparkle. I am a student of magic, and I found your display highly enchanting. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a few questions."

The gryphon sighed roughly. "Like what?"

"Well, first off, what exactly were you doing? I mean, obviously you were singing, but—"

"Have you never seen a gryphon before?"

"Only a couple, I'm afraid, and neither of them could sing."

"Nonsense. All gryphons can sing."

"Oh..." I hung my head, slightly embarrassed. "So how were you doing that... thing to the glass?"

"I'll show you." said the gryphon, retreating back into her trailer. "I'm Lydian, by the way."

"Nice to meet you. I'm sorry if this is weird, it's just not often that I have an opportunity to learn about another species' magic, let alone see it firsthoof."

Inside the trailer, Lydian reached into a small refrigerator, retrieved a glass of water, and set it on the small table in the middle of the room. "Not a problem."

She stood on her hind legs once more, resting her hands on the edge of the table.

She opened her mouth and let out a resounding baritone hum, which bounced off the walls and ceiling and filled the small space with sublime vibrations.

The surface of the water in the glass rippled excitedly, and droplets began to spray into the air. One by one, these droplets began to hang above the glass, coalescing into larger drops; before long, the entire contents of the glass were suspended over it, a single immaculate sphere of water. Then, the gryphon’s tone shifted suddenly upwards, and the sphere rippled once, before falling to the table in the form of a perfectly polished ball of ice.

Lydian leaned back, her arms crossed and her face marked with satisfaction. I stared, slack-jawed, at the ice. I reached out to pick it up, but as soon as it was enveloped in my magic, its glass-like surface immediately became frosted and marred.

“How?” I wondered aloud.

Lydian’s grin grew wider. “I sang what I wanted to happen.

“See, everything is connected,” she explained. “Everything is in contact with everything else by the air. The only line drawn between them is what they’re made of, their resonance.”

She picked up the ball of ice and held it to the light. She hummed a quick, consonant tuplet, and the inside of the sphere rearranged itself; the light passing through it now cast a cool purple-blue gradient on the wall.

“It’s just a matter of resonating with things, finding the right pitch and volume, and then you can do whatever.” She repeated the low-pitched tone from before, and the sphere began to unravel, spiraling lazily through the air and into the cup, once again in liquid form.

“Wow.” I said. “Can you teach me?”

“No.”

“What? Why not?” I asked, suddenly offended.

“Ponies can’t do it. You’ve got a horn, instead.”

“Huh.” I hadn’t really considered that. “Either way,” I continued, taking a seat on the floor, “tell me more.”

I have spent my whole life studying unicorn and pony magic, with no end in sight. I knew other species had entirely different systems, but I had never before seen it, not up close.

As I left that trailer, my mind raced: do zebras have magic? Buffalo? Dragons? When I returned to the library, I greedily scoured the shelves for every book I could find on foreign arcanology, spellcraft, and so on; my search turned up a disappointing collection: a stack of only three books: Spellsingers, about gryphon magic; The Alchemists, a recounting of travels among the Zebra lands; and Qilin: Ponies of the Far Isles, which I honestly know nothing about.

If it were any other subject, I would have given up here, dejected. But I am a student of magic, personal protégé of Princess Celestia herself; I am the very Element of Magic. If there's anything left to learn about magic, then I am charged with discovering it, not just to sate my own curiosity, but for the betterment of all magic users; I have decided I will go to any length needed to learn all there is to learn. Like the great magical scholars of yore—Starswirl the Bearded, Maresius Hoofton, the Witch of the White; I have decided it is my time to shine, to make my mark on the annals of magical history.

Seldom is awareness of any particular school of magic wholly grasped by those not directly exposed to and trained under it; thus, the frameworks of magic, as they differ among species, is an elusive and slippery topic of research. Previous excursions seeking to ameliorate this (the most recent of which was more than 70 years ago), to compile a solitary volume of magic, were highly limited by a multitude of factors: contemporary political environment and interracial and -species tension, biased and partial research, and scope. However, I—without wanting to sound boastful—am confident in my own ability, as the Element of Magic, Princess of Friendship, and star student of Celestia's School of Magic, to travel the world and bear witness to everything magic has to offer, and, hopefully, create the be-all-end-all interspecies magical reference guide.

—Princess Twilight Sparkle