Game of Assumptions, or, How Many Mages Fit in a Magpie?
Twilight Sparkle shuffles another sheet of notes across the room, levitating any back into place if the papers try to blow away. She looks at the grandfather clock, sitting near the door, then the door itself, then the window, getting progressively more anxious each time. She stands and stretches her legs and wings.
The room is dark, with only the occasional candle placed to light the surroundings. Candles stacked one on top of the other in an effort to get the most use out of them drip their thick wax off the tables, shelves, and mantles, they're placed on onto the floor, making pools and hills.
Twilight looks out the window, towards Canterlot. Her vision is met with a dark sphere, covering the castle. If it weren't for its distinct color, she might have mistaken it for one of Shining Armor's shields.
She laughs.
Wouldn't that be something?
Standing up, she picks up several books around her with her magic and carries them downstairs. "Spike? Any word from Rainbow Dash, yet?"
Spike looks over from the pile of scrolls he was cataloguing. "No. And if you come down here and ask again in another five minutes, I'm going to bed."
Spike looks tired. His eyes are scrunched up in the dim light and his scales droop off to one side. He sets another scroll onto a shelf.
Twilight sighs, slumping down almost to the floor. "I'm sorry, Spike."
Spike rubs his eyes and pats Twilight on the back of her head. "I'm sorry, too. Any luck figuring out how to get through the shield?"
Twilight cackles. A lightning bolt lighting the sky outside wouldn't have been more appropriate than just then. "Are you kidding? I don't even know what's powering it. I don't know what it's supposed to keep out. I can barely tell how far it extends. This kind of shield is way out of my league."
Spike nods, stroking Twilight's mane back and smoothing the loose hairs.
Twilight stands. "I'm going to check the shield again. You should get some sleep."
Spike raises an eyebrow. "Is that really a good idea? You need sleep, too, you know."
Twilight shakes her head, trotting out the door. "I'll be fine. I'm just checking up on what it prevents. You rest."
Spike tries to raise another complaint but the door slams behind Twilight and she's already gone.
Spike shakes his head, casting another glance at the door. Frowning, he goes upstairs and climbs into bed. The last thing he sees before closing his eyes is Twilight's empty bed.
"Be safe."
{#}
Twilight trots into the night, a heavy wind blowing the books still clutched in her magical grasp almost out of her reach.
Twilight breathes, closing her eyes. She draws three diagrams in her mind, then another two, overlapping the first three. She feeds magic into the diagrams and she feels a rush of wind.
She opens her eyes and looks at her surroundings. In the darkness, she can still make out the road in front of her, leading into the inky blackness of the shield. The shield itself warps and twists, circles and patterns weave in and out of sight like wild beasts in the Everfree.
She lifts a stone in her magic and launches it at the shield. When it hits, it makes a loud metallic ringing sound and bursts into sparks on the other side.
She brings a clipboard in front of her face and writes 'Destroys solid, inanimate, objects'.
"It blocks illusions, too."
Twilight turns around, meeting the eyes of a blue unicorn mare with a white mane. "Trixie."
She nods, frowning. "I'd say no magic can get past this. Just a guess, though."
Trixie closes her eyes, and she conjures sparks, firing them toward the shield. They bounce off it and land at the two mares' hooves.
Twilight watches the display, then turns to Trixie. "You got my letter."
Trixie lifts a scroll out of her saddlebag with her magic and shakes it in front of Twilight. "If you wanted me to come sooner, you should have addressed it to 'The Great and Powerful Trixie,' instead of just 'Trixie'."
Twilight laughs. "I'll keep it in mind."
The two mares stare at the shield for a while, watching its shifting patterns and shapes whorl around the black sphere.
Trixie smiles. "'My eyes are filled with darkness; staring at my future, I can only see it staring back at me,' that was a mare named Quick Knick, who wrote that. It's funny that I think of it now."
Twilight lifts her books and clipboard up off the ground. "Let's go back."
She nods, turning away from the shield and the two mares trot back home.
{#}
Twilight and Trixie trot into the library, twilight setting her books down on a table and using her magic to light the now burnt out candles. "Just sit anywhere, Spike and I were organizing earlier when we were looking for any answers to the shield."
Trixie chooses a sturdy looking wooden stool to sit on and sets her saddlebags on the floor with a dull thud. Examining the room, she sees the piles of books on the floor, the shelved scrolls in front of another piles of unshelved scrolls, the candles and their wax puddles on the floor, and finally Twilight's eyes, staring at her. She couldn't see it before, but in the light the candles cast, she can see deep lines under her eyes and forehead and bags under her eyes so heavy it seems like they could drag her eyelids all the way to the floor.
She stands up, but before she can command Twilight to bed, the door opens. Trixie and Twilight turn to see Rainbow Dash drift in a few meters, then collapse on the floor.
Twilight rushes over to her. "Rainbow Dash, what happened?"
Rainbow looks up at Twilight, tongue half out. Her eyes drift off to opposite sides slightly and her eyelids twitch as they stay open, like it takes some great exertion to keep them from closing. "I've been flying for two straight days, that's what happened."
There's an armchair in the corner of the room only a few feet from Trixie, Twilight helps Rainbow Dash into. "Did you get Shining Armor?"
Rainbow Dash shakes her head. "No. According to the guards, he was in Canterlot, contracting 'royal business' when the shield came up. I did get you a present, though."
She gestures to the door and a yellow unicorn mare with streaked hair trots in. "Did someone call for a unicorn?"
A silence follows.
Trixie raises an eyebrow. "Did somepony call for a unicorn?"
Twilight turns away from Rainbow and faces the mare. "Sunset Shimmer? I thought you were in the mirror world."
Sunset brings a glass of water from the kitchen and brings it to Rainbow Dash. "I was, but the gate reacted with the old magic just released, so it opened up again. The same thing happened around the time Nightmare Moon first escaped, Discord was freed, and of course when Sombra returned. That's when I first heard about the new Element Bearers."
Rainbow Dash takes the water and drinks it, her eyes now closed and her shoulders slumped firmly into the chair. Setting the cup down, she firmly tunes out the conversation and succumbs to sleep.
Twilight checks Rainbow Dashes breathing, then nods and moves closer to Sunset. "But Celestia said it only open-..."
Sunset interrupts her. "Celestia doesn't know everything and she's certainly no expert in that kind of magic."
"What kind would that be?" Trixie trots closer to Sunset and Twilight. "The Great and Powerful Trixie, at your astonishment, I'm sure."
Sunset blinks. "I think I remember you from the mirror world."
Trixie steps back, an eyebrow raised. "Pardon?"
Sunset takes a step forward, her eyes furrowed and bent slightly to the upward right. "I always used to make fun of you for those magic tricks you did. I'm sorry, they were actually pretty cool."
Trixie stares at Sunset, looking her up and down. "Right. Getting back into something more closely resembling sanity, however, we have a problem. Twilight?"
Twilight opens a window with her magic and the three mares peer out it. "I don't know if you've noticed but somepony's taken over Canterlot."
Trixie rolls her eyes. "Of course Trixie noticed. Do you think she doesn't see when the sun stops coming up?"
Sunset nods. "And I just said the gate reacted with old magic just released. It wasn't in the Crystal Empire, so it must've been in Canterlot."
Twilight nods. "Okay, then. There's some kind of shield up over Canterlot. I was trying to get my brother because he knows something about shield magic but what do you two know?"
Sunset shrugs. "The shield is blocking both physical objects and my teleport spells. Whatever's powering it must have quite a toll taken on their magic reserves. Besides that, I've got nothing."
Trixie turns away from the window and rubs her eyes, going back to her chair and sitting down. "From what I can tell, it's blocking both physical objects, and forms of magic. Miss Shimmer's test with the shield blocking teleport spells helps confirm this."
Twilight brings a stool in from the kitchen and sits on it, while Sunset navigates her way to an armchair across from where Rainbow Dash is sleeping. "Our best bet would be to get more unicorn mages in here until we find one who knows what's going on. As it stands now, you've recruited two ponies you've clearly already defeated to do something you yourself weren't able to. If you really needed more help, what about all your friends from the Canterlot School for Gifted Unicorns?"
Twilight rubs her two front hooves together, embarrassed. "Well, most of the ponies there don't actually have a magic talent so they take different fields anyway and..." She turns away, "I didn't actually make any friends."
Trixie stands up, cheeks slightly red, and comes between Sunset and Twilight. Facing away from Sunset, she lifts Twilight's head up and smiles. "The Great and Powerful Trixie believes friends are a unnecessary. She thinks you made the right choice."
Twilight smiles, wanly.
Sunset Shimmer wrests herself from the armchair and brings another stool from the kitchen in, sitting down starting with her legs draped over the side and then shifting to sitting normally. "Where are we going to find more unicorns, then? Wait until someone else is defeated by Twilight?"
There's a silence and Twilight and Trixie exchange glances.
Sunset rolls her eyes. "Until somepony else is defeated by Twilight, are you happy now?"
Twilight's brows furrow. "No. What if we got ponies we were sure could help. Sunset Shimmer said this was old magic, right? What if we brought in some old magic of our own?"
Trixie raises an eyebrow. "What are you suggesting? An old spell?"
Twilight shakes her head, an obnoxious grin creeping its way up her face. "Old unicorns."
A deathly stillness overcomes the room with a quiet so dense the candles could be heard burning from several meters away.
Sunset's mouth opens with a slight popping noise. "How do you propose we bring dead unicorns from the past, here? Or are you suggesting we evacuate an old pony's home?"
Twilight's grin persists, despite the lingering silence. "I used a spell from the Starswirl the Bearded wing to go back in time a week."
Trixie leaps off the chair she's sitting on, landing on the floor with a thump. "I assume this is the same Starswirl the Bearded wing that's currently in Canterlot? You know, the Canterlot we're actively trying to get in to?"
Sunset shrugs, her mouth still partially open. "If she used a spell from it, we can still use that."
Trixie sighs, planting her face in a hoof. "'To go back a week' we can still use the spell to go back a week. Do you suggest we recruit wizards from the long forgotten time of last Thursday?"
Twilight's eyes light up. "We can change the Modifier. I have a spell that allows time travel so all we need to do is change how far it goes."
Trixie steps toward Twilight, fuming. "What? That's like saying all we need to do is win the Equestrian Games, twice. With a limp."
Twilight's grin persists and in her eyes, instead of the bleak drowsiness Trixie saw before, she now sees something else: a spark. A spark of intellect, of design, of hope. It doesn't take long looking at that spark for Twilight's manic grin to start up on Trixie's face until she laughs in defeat. "Fine. We start today."
The three mares get to work changing the spell.
"What have I got to lose?"
{#}
The three mares sit in their minds, watching the circles and motions of Starswirl's time travel spell. To say the spell is complicated would be the understatement of the century; the spell is a maze of diagrams within diagrams overlapping with other diagrams. It's like looking at a plant leaf, up close, if each part of the plant was shifting and oscillating around the screen.
It's in this mess of a spell, Twilight, Trixie, and Sunset, need to find the part where it outlines how far back the user travels and replace it with a searching spell they can use to find and fetch the unicorn mages they choose, as well as addendums to the original spell for added security or time to keep them in the present.
In short, the task is impossible.
Assuming the three unicorns can actually find the Modifier to the spell, they then need to alter or replace it. Assuming they can do that, they still need to design the diagrams for additional effects. Assuming they can do that, they still need to cast the spell, with no clear idea how it works or any dangers to the spell itself.
Considering this, Trixie laughs again.
So why, Trixie thinks, do I feel like we can't fail?
Sunset's eyes dart from circle to circle. There, she thinks. That must be where the Modifier is.
Twilight watches the Modifier's loops spinning and twisting in the spell's inner workings.
We can do it.
Together.
{#}
The six bearers of the Elements of Harmony gather in the dim library. Sunset Shimmer, Trixie Lulamoon, and Spike sit off to the side, the trio dozing off in tandem. None of the ponies in the room look particularly well rested, Pinkie Pie is frowning slightly, Rarity has loose hairs in her mane, Applejack has bags under her eyes where she couldn't sleep the night before, Rainbow Dash has an imprint of the couch cushion she was laying on last night on her neck, Fluttershy seems calm for outward appearances but her eyes dart around the room and it seems her blinks take longer than usual, and Twilight still hasn't slept since yesterday morning.
Twilight stands up, her legs wobbling slightly. "Okay, I think the spell is ready. The only question is, who are we going to bring here from the past?"
Sunset and Trixie stir from their slumber, untangling themselves from each other and finally standing up from the pillows they were lying on. Sunset looks attentively at Twilight, while Trixie's still rubbing the dust from her eyes for minutes after.
Spike remains motionless, curled up in a tiny reptilian ball and breathing smoothly.
"How many eyes do you think we need on this?" Sunset asks.
Twilight shakes her head. "I have no idea. Whatever's attacking Canterlot has power I've never seen before. But I don't know how many the spell can bring. The Bend for the time travel spell features Anchors attached to the ponies we bring back which we'll be able to tell their locations with and which keep them in this time until we dismiss them. We need it to keep them in this time for more than a few seconds but the addition of the anchors causes a severe drain on my magic. Even with the addition of you and Trixie, it will still be hard to keep more than a few ponies here."
Trixie shrugs, eyes still mostly closed. "How about three? We'll each pick one."
Twilight nods. "Alright, what about Starswirl the Bearded?"
Sunset Shimmer smiles. "I'll take Lax the Straightener."
Trixie pauses, mid yawn. "Clover the Clever, for me."
"Ooh, ooh." Pinkie Pie raises a hoof in the air and jumps up and down, her smile has mostly returned but her mane still lacks some of its normal bounce.
Twilight looks over, running her eyes across each of her friends and checking their conditions before settling on Pinkie Pie. "Yes, Pinkie?"
"What about Muffin Spoonbender? He knows all about shields."
Twilight tilts her head, eyes now firmly locked on Pinkie. "Who's Muffin Spoonbender? I've never heard of him."
Pinkie pulls a book from within her hair. "He's the one who wrote my favorite cookbooks. I liked his recipes so much, I got his autobiography when I was in Manehatten. In it, he describes his natural talent with telekinesis, being able to cast it from a very young age and even using it to form shields. He studied at the Canterlot School for Gifted Unicorns before transferring to the Las Pegasus Cooking Academy. From what he describes of what was happening at the Canterlot School for Gifted Unicorns before he transferred, he got out of there just in t-..."
Twilight holds up a hoof to stop Pinkie. "Fine. We'll bring four, but that's all. Are we sure these four can help us?"
Trixie shakes her drowsiness away and leans down, charging magic to her horn. "We're not even sure if this spell will work. Stop worrying and cast, already."
Twilight charges magic to her horn as well, assuming a half bow position, and Sunset Shimmer does the same, until their three horns are practically touching. The three unicorns create a stream of magic, bending it to their designs. They start creating the first diagram, locked in their combined magic, then the second one, spinning around the first, then another within the second one, then another, then another, they create more and more of the designs Starswirl invented and they tampered with and at the same time they funnel more magic into it. With the creation of the last diagram, they start to move farther and farther back in time.
They find Muffin Spoonbender a mere twelve years in the past, lifting pots and pans and stirring batter all at once, the pans seeming to move completely autonomously, and launch him forward, fastening an anchor on him as they do so. They go farther, finding Clover the Clever at one thousand and one years in the past, sitting behind what looks like the statue of Discord that was in the palace statuary with books strewn all around her, they throw her forward with significant might, fastening another anchor on her. They go a bit farther, then stop, picking up Starswirl the Bearded at one thousand and two years past; before they grab him, it looks like he's sitting on the railing of a balcony, with a mare, watching the moon rise in the sky. They fasten an anchor on him and shove him forward, through the wildly churning magic. They go even farther, the river of magic flows into a sea and they go even farther. They find Lax the Straightener at one thousand and seven hundred years in the past, sitting down on a chair and reading a book with apparent disinterest; clumsily affixing an anchor amongst the buffeting waves, they carry her forward with them into the present and out of the sea.
The three unicorn mares sit gasping for breath for a few minutes while Applejack and Rarity stack pillows behind their heads and give them water, trying to make them comfortable. Trixie and Twilight are breathless but relatively unharmed while Sunset Shimmer has a wide gash on her side, bleeding profusely. She tries to cry out, but the gash stops her, the pain freezing her voice. Sitting there, she looks like a fish that just landed in the boat, flopping around without air. Pinkie Pie finds a first aid kit in Twilight's kitchen and Fluttershy tries to dress the wound, disinfecting it and wrapping it with gauze.
Four unicorns stand in the center of the room, two mares and two stallions, completely motionless.
Twilight recovers enough to look over at them and faces Applejack's questioning glance. "It's okay. The spell brought their bodies here and the anchors are keeping them here. They're still transitioning to the time, though. So they won't be able to do anything for a while, still."
Trixie stirs and gasps. "What happened to Sunset Shimmer?"
Sunset Shimmer lies down, breathing faintly and haltingly, even with the bandages.
Rainbow Dash trots next to Sunset and sets a hoof on her mane. "If she's okay to move, she needs to be taken to Nurse Redheart. We can't leave her like this."
Twilight nods. "I checked, the only affected area is that one on her side. She doesn't have any broken bones or concussion. Can you take her?"
Rainbow Dash picks Sunset up and flings herself through the door, her wings flapping just after breaching it.
Fluttershy examines the four frozen figures, looking each of them over in concern. "How long do you think they'll be like this? It looks awfully uncomfortable."
Twilight stands up, shakily and looks at the still unicorns. "They should be fully adjusted by tomorrow but I'm actually surprised they're even here. The spell casting took much longer than I thought it would and I need to find out what happened to Sunset and make sure it doesn't happen again. I'll also need to read up on these unicorns more. I think I read some mention of Lax the Straightener once but I don't know who she is, otherwise, and I have no idea who Muffin Spoonbender is, so I'll have to read up on him, and I thought Clover the Clever was Starswirl's pupil, but then why did we find her only a year separated from Starswirl? It doesn't make any sense. There's so much I have to do."
Fluttershy lays a hoof on Twilight's shoulder, a stern expression on her face now and looks into her eyes. "No. You're exhausted from casting that spell and you need to rest. I'll watch them in case they wake up in the night, but you and Trixie need to sleep. Twilight, I think you still have that spare bed, Trixie can sleep in there and I don't want you casting any more spells. You're strained enough without using magic to turn off the light."
Twilight opens her mouth as if to protest but stops and nods to Fluttershy, smiling faintly. Trixie stands up and trots after Twilight up the stairs, as if in a trance, like her eyes are fixed on something far in the distance. Fluttershy sits down and stares at the face of the stallion in front of her, a unicorn with a deep grey coat, black mane and a small beard, all black, jutting a few inches past his chin. If she didn't already know who he was, she wouldn't be sure if he was a unicorn at all because he wore a wide brimmed hat, dipped over his eyes and completely covering his horn.
What a strange thing to wear.
She thought.
There are even bells hanging off it.
