Dreamscape

“C’mon, Lucy! You can do it,” her subconscious shouted over the buzzing of the unicorn casting a dozen different spells in her most-recent effort to sustain the magical creation she was attempting to build.

Lucidity’s horn was shrouded in a light-blue aura, fiery to the touch from the demanding workload it was being put through as it channeled a wide array of spells whose purposes ranged from feedback loop prevention to magical buildup monitoring. The grey unicorn felt like she was about to burn out from keeping up this large of an energy expenditure for so long but pushed her worries aside, instead trying to focus on finding the faint, practically nonexistent ley lines of the Dreamscape through which she would be able to feed her magic much more easily.

“You’re almost there, Lucidity! I can feel it. Just remember what Miss Postulate taught us. ‘Imagine pressing your magic together, concentrating the aura into a more solid mass. Visualize your finished product. Keep the thaumaturgic fields bound together tightly.’”

“I know,” Lucidity responded through gritted teeth. “But it’s a lot more difficult than it sounds. It’s almost as if these fields don’t want to stay together.”

“Hmm… Maybe this type of magic induces a charged current in the flow of aura. Try flipping some of the fields’ orientations.”

Lucidity’s body tensed up as she strained her horn even further, trying to straighten out the various aural matrices she was working on by reversing some of their polarities and then attempting to line them up properly again. With an explosive crash, everything suddenly snapped into place, the accompanying flash of light bright enough to blind the blue-eyed mare for a few moments. As the light cleared, a large, shimmering, translucent-blue dome formed around its caster, protecting her from further harm.

Lucidity collapsed onto the ground, her body exhausted and energy depleted. Her horn dimmed down to a faint, blue glow, glad to have a rest from how overworked it had been. “Ow,” she deadpanned groggily, still dizzy but otherwise relieved to find that most of her safety measures and precautionary spells had held up in spite of the accidental magic discharge.

Once her ears had finally quit ringing, Lucidity stood back up to find her subconscious beaming at her from across the glassy barrier. “Woohoo! Great job, Lucidity; I knew you could do it!” she whooped and cheered excitedly.

The object of Lucidity’s adulation smiled back appreciatively before noticing that they still had a bit of a dilemma. “Um, Lucidity. How am I supposed to get out of here?” She leaned against the wall of her magic enclosure, testing how well it would fare against the force of her weight being placed on it, but found the dome to be quite secure and impenetrable.

“Yeah, that could be a problem,” her subconscious conceded as she searched the shield’s surface for some sign of a flaw or weakness that her conscious counterpart could exploit as an escape route. “Hey, wait a second,” she called out, remembering something. “Isn’t this thing supposed to be mobile? Try shrinking it down and dragging it along in tandem to your movements.”

Lucidity reached up and prodded her sore horn, wincing a little but satisfied to find that it would still be able to function even after the earlier, violent backlash. Her horn’s low thrumming—soft and slow now that it was no longer swamped with various spells—intensified as Lucidity experimented with changing the size of her protective dome. She found the now-properly aligned thaumaturgic fields to be a lot easier to manipulate and control—thankfully so, since she didn’t want to overdo anything and risk her overworked horn spazzing out a second time.

Eventually, her fiddling resulted in a roughly pony-sized bubble, its reduced size meaning that Lucidity could now use her magic to push it alongside her with relative ease. “Alright, this is fun and all,” Lucidity commented, her voice just loud enough for her subconscious to be able to hear her through the pale-blue dome. “But I think my horn needs a rest from all this magic for a while. How do I get rid of this thing?”

“Can’t you just drop the spell holding it all together?” Lucidity asked pointedly.

“No. I’m afraid that if I do, it will expand all out of control again and trigger another massive explosion. We have to find a way to let it disintegrate calmly, without it blowing up.”

“That could be difficult; all that energy’s gonna have to go somewhere,” Lucidity pointed out.

A moment of silence passed between the two unicorns as they tried to come up with a solution to this newly discovered dilemma. After a while, Lucidity piped up. “What if I just start undoing the shield’s framework piece by piece? That way, the energy will be dispensed slowly—in short, small bursts that can’t do a lot of damage.”

“That might work…” her subconscious said cautiously, shuffling backwards a couple of steps just to be safe. “But I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

“Alright.” Lucidity took a deep breath in and slowly let it back out. “Let’s do this.” She screwed her eyes shut in concentration for what was hopefully the last time in the next few hours, mentally prepping herself for the difficult task that lay ahead, and once again brought her still-painfully throbbing horn to full power, its loud humming serving as a constant reminder not to push herself too far.

As she worked on finding the best way to safely dismantle her protective shield, it started to shimmer slightly, slowly oscillating between a pale, near-translucence and a strong bluish color closely resembling Lucidity’s own aura as the occasional strand of magic strayed and collided against it, the contact causing the dome to come back in full force for a moment before it settled back down into a lower, more stable energy state once again. Not too long after she had begun, numerous holes started to appear on the sphere’s surface, signaling that the unicorn’s work was beginning to weaken the bonds holding the magical contraption together. As more and more of the thaumaturgic fields were disabled and discarded, the dome began to disintegrate more quickly.

Its disassembly soon started to lose control, and any remaining magical energy was quickly dragged away in dangerously large waves, dispersed into the distant reaches of the Dreamscape with loud sizzles and pops that were soon accompanied by bright blue flashes of light.

“Well that wasn’t too bad,” Lucidity commented a couple seconds after the lights and bangs had ceased. “Definitely more controlled than I thought it would be. And I think you got most of its payload away before that nasty chain reaction took over.”

Lucidity, now totally exhausted from magical overexertion, gave a weak nod in agreement before wordlessly wobbling over to her subconscious.

Her companion met her halfway, offering the drained unicorn a shoulder to support her and help her stay standing. “Do you think you’re okay to keep going, Lucy?” she asked worriedly, concerned that the toll of all her recent spellcasting may have strained her consciousness a little too far.

“I think… maybe I should… rest a little first,” Lucidity pronounced slowly.

“I think you’re probably right,” the other mare agreed, seeing Lucidity’s already half-closed eyelids, heavy with fatigue. She gently helped the tired pony down onto the ground so she could recover from the stresses of the last few hours.