The Failing Light Prequel

Now we draw near to the event that made possible this telling, an occurrence that is barely remembered today but at the time caused the whole land to shake with fear. You see, as our research into the flow of time and its manipulation continued there was inevitably going to be an experiment in which we participated more directly. The enigma of what would happen if the casting was released on a pony was to a great mystery to be left unanswered. The master was initially against such an experiment fearing the consequences it could have, but after half a year of zapping apples and plants back into flowers and seeds, larger questions began to loom despite any such reservations.

During the last few seasons that we spent together we often studied separately as we each excelled in quite different areas; while I studied the crystals and Turner developed new theories to confuse me, the master worked on refining the two part spell that drove our invention. After several moons I noticed his attention seemed to have shifted to developing a new spell rather than refining the old one, and although he was careful to keep his work separate from ours I believe he was working on a way to simulated everything needed to perform a time alteration so we didn't have to build a larger physical device. I never learned if he completed the spell or not, but it certainly kept him busy through the summer and into the fall.

By that time Turner had overcome his initial dismay and was wholly committed to the study time and magic, developing a grand new theory to explain it all in terms of physics and science. He tried to simplify it for me several times so I could appreciate it, explaining that time did not flow straight from one instant to another but rather as a river does over rocky rapids, in waves and ripples... He suggested that the reason time seems so constant and linear to us was that we weigh heavy upon it, always affecting the future as we do, and thus we tend to experience it from the lower regions rather than those more prone to change. All above and around us flows a whole tangled mess of time he said, past and future all sloshing together in a wibbly-wobbly ball of timie-wimie stuff as we rocks set and shift its course from the depth.

The original device we had designed allowed a section of our time to connect with a section of previous time, but only that section was affected hence the localized effects. We weren't so much 'changing' time as reaching into our own future or past to cause an event that we could appreciate in the present... And from there his theory got more complicated than I can relate, no matter how elegant the analogy.

One of the more interesting ideas that sprang from this new theory was the thought that it might be possible to create a device which, rather than break the flow of time and force a new piece into its place, would break the device and perhaps it's user from the present and place it and them somewhere and somewhen else. As I have already mentioned, the master initially discouraged such research, but after a some lengthy theoretical discussions he seemed at least partially convinced that it was possible while I was perhaps less so.

I had not been idle while such theories and spells were developed and tested mind you, I had by then built a number of unique tools and devices to aid in our studies. One of particular note was to aid Turner in our research; building on an idea the master had suggested, I designed a device which would allow him to make use of a few simple spells which would otherwise be barred from an Earth Pony.

The tool consisted of a handful of simple castings contained within small crystal fragments, built into a housing of wood and copper. When one of the fragments was 'activated' by a switch on the outside of the device, the fragment was put into contact with two other fragments, one of which would return the casting to the original fragment and another slightly larger one which released a 'copy' of the spell in whichever direction the tool was pointed. The idea with it was to give Turner some means with which to cast a spell into a crystal for experimentation without having to interrupt his or our research, and he put it to very good use.

I must admit I was convinced to attempt to design the new time manipulation device only because I saw how excited Turner was at the prospect and how happy the 'wand' and the other small devices made him; at the time I was not at all convinced it was possible to scale our earlier design up as he wanted. As it turned out it was possible, but the project took close to a year to complete. While the wand and all the other devices were certainly as complicated as they were useful, the new manipulation machine was my masterpiece.

In order to break such a device from the flow of time the device itself had to be inside the crystalline cage rather than simply connected to it, which meant that the cage had to be large enough to contain all the inner workings of the machine and have room a pony or two as well... Which in turn meant many more crystals, and bigger ones for that matter, had to be gathered and mounted at very precise locations to ensure that the cage was perfectly balanced to prevent the casting from emerging unevenly.

I relied on Turner and the master to calculate the exact locations and angles for the crystals while working out the speed of the released castings to calculate how long each connection should be. In this machine more so than any other it was absolutely crucial that the casting be delivered evenly and at the same instant to all parts of the device; who could say what would happen were half of the machine were to try to shift while the other half still remained fixed in the present?

Eventually the machine was finished, and eventually the day came that we were ready to test it. Using our smaller devices we had developed a fairly comprehensive understanding of how strong  a casting had to be in order to have the desired effect on the subject, but as ever we were extremely cautious of new developments. The first casting seemed to work flawlessly; the master injected his spell and when he lowered the lever from a safe distance the device seemed to shimmer slightly before suddenly vanishing with a rush of displaced air.

While the master and Turner waited expectantly for it to reappear, I must admit to being rather nervous. I had been carefully observing the device for any signs of trouble and seen none, but there was no way of knowing if the experiment had been a complete success until it returned to us. There was plenty of time for doubts to occur, to wonder if each binding had been checked enough times, if each crystal was aligned correctly...

After several minutes and exactly as intended, there was a slight whooshing sound and the machine shimmered back into existence before us. It is hard to put into words my sense of relief or their elation at the theory's success, but for a brief moment that summer we truly were the masters of time.