Mana Spark in Equestriaby James FireChaptersLessonsBlue blood does not save you from pranksThe Room.Lessons"Let the magic do its thing." We are in my workroom on top of Canterlot Mountain, with reinforced mana barriers to contain anything... unusual. My first lesson with Discord where I actually attempt to do it could prove disastrous, as I am inexperienced in letting the magic decide what to do, as well as it going against all my previous training. Three previous lessons were spent discussing magical theory, and how he did what he did. "So how does your magic work?" I can't keep the awe out of my voice, even after centuries of practice. "Well, I think what I want it to do, and it does it. I never studied it more than that, I just did what came naturally. I did do some surface scratching, so I know that I can cast it your way, but my way is natural to me." "Ya know, Twilight is probably going to want to know all this too. And before I start, I want to watch and test a few things, to see how it reacts to various things." "Of course. Anything for a friend." That was the last of that day, and the next was spent with Discord firing magic at various sacrifices targets, with me trying to disrupt them. I learned a lot that day. Like his Chaos casting method is able to partially or completely ignore barriers/shields, if they are thin or weak enough. Luckily, the reinforcing of the barrier on my workroom seems to have held, and if it didn't, the stone beyond absorbed any stray blasts. Under further testing, the mana powering the Chaos spell seemed to interact and communicate with other mana, and find a way around or through to do what was requested. It would draw more power while doing this, but it still did it. It seemed that Magic was sentient, at least. It could understand thought patterns, and execute simple instructions. While it had difficulty accomplishing more complex tasks on its own, like disassembling an old style computer without damaging anything, that is where Order casting comes in. You direct the magic along set paths to do what you want. This is less flexible than Chaos casting, but it carries with it greater power, as you have full, direct control over the framework of the spell, as well as that of the magic itself. It comes with limitations, such as requiring a strong will, but most spell asters have that anyway. Discord seems to be one such exception. In my conversations with him, he is distracted, but always paying attention. Even if I thought he was definitely not paying attention, and intentionally asked a difficult question, he would answer immediately and impeccably, leading me to believe that while he doesn't show it, he may have a very strong will in there somewhere. Probably with all the cotton candy he keeps making appear. On the final day, we talked about ourselves. I didn't learn much about his time before Equestria, aside from it happened, but I told him much about me. "You see, according to this scale I developed, I am only a third-level Demigod in terms of raw power. Of course, my control of magic and my throughput ability gave me a much higher value. My throughput ability is nearly that of a full Demi-Titan, with my control being on par with half God level. The main reason for such a large gap between those is that power is earned. Control can be taught and learned, but throughput can be magically enhanced. I have done so much of that, in preparation for the trials ahead. That's why I always carry many gems and such full of mana. I can't store it myself, but I can definitely use it. "Now, based on my observations of you, and the few times we clashed, I would rank your raw power slightly above mine. With your using Chaos casting though, it is difficult to tell what your control is, and throughput requires an intensive experiment session. It is mostly just pushing as much mana through you as we can. I attempted his method, telling the magic what I wanted, and letting it do it. "That's it! Keep going." The cheerleaders helped. I told my magic to turn the stone block in front of me into a teddy bear. My horn shining brightly from the raw magic throughput, I wasn't even tired at all from this. Very little exertion at all. POP I open my eyes, and there stands a five-foot tall teddy bear. Huzzah! First casting, complete. "Good. Now, you remember what we talked about with this?" Discord is serious for once, not distracted, not slacking. Full attention on me. "Yes Discord. While this is massively easier to cast, it can't do complex actions in a single spell. I still feel drained of a lot of mana though." "That is the other price of this. More mana is usually required to get the same effect as Order casting, but it requires less mental acuity. Order requires discipline and a strong will, but less mana." Gleefully casting rapid-fire spells, I am only half paying attention, but that is enough. That mug is now cotton candy, the workbench is now made out of allotropic titanium, and that crystal ball in the centre of the room is now tiger-eye. I quickly use Order based casting to return them to normal. I do inquire Discord of one thing though. "But I can use my will to make Chaos casting more powerful, right? Just like I can use more mana to make Order based casting more powerful?" "To a point. If you rely on your will too much, it becomes Order. You can give the chaos parameters, and very specific instructions, but if you control it too much, you are just using Order with the mana of Chaos." That makes sense. Now I truly wonder how much fun I can get out of this before I run out of mana. Time to be childish. Author's Note Who is ready for this thing? I honestly have no idea what direction this thing is going to take, so tags will be added as necessary. Blue blood does not save you from pranks"Peekaboo!" "Oh, hiya Mana Spark!" Note to self, Pinkie Pie is immune to scaring. "Run Discord! We've been discovered!" Discord pops his head out of a nearby bush, and does a double take. "We have! Hurry, get away!" He starts running on the spot, digging a hole into the ground. Realizing that this isn't working, he snaps his talons, and disappears with a poof! I, on the other hand(hoof?), just run. We meet up at our designated 'safe spot', which should be safe, but you never know with Pinkie Pie. Staying quiet for several minutes, we begin to relax. Until a wild Pinkie appears! We vacate the premises, going to our next hideout. The first one was really only an emergency one, just a clearing in some bushes. This one though, was much better. An expertly camouflaged treehouse deeps in the Whitetail woods, even the CMC hadn't found it (and destroyed it) yet. We should be safe to wait it out here. "Just in case though, do we have a Pinkie Pie distraction ready?" He produces a pink balloon. "Yes we do. Ready?" I nod, and he releases it. We hear a squeal, and a very high-pitched voice. "Oooh! Get the balloon!" Now that the pink blur is out of our hair, we can continue. "Well, you know this place better than I do. Who is next?" "Nearly time for my daily pranking of Prince Blueblood. Want to help?" An evil smile spreads across my muzzle. "Let's loosen him a bit." And so, we appear in Discord's rooms in Canterlot castle. I suppose Celestia is very gracious and doesn't want him appearing in random rooms all the time. Probably the latter more than the former where Discord is concerned. Since he said it was 'daily pranking', I wonder what he had in mind today. "Daily? How long have you been doing this?" He waved it off as unimportant, "Only a few months. Since you are here, I think you can come up with the prank. What have we got?" "Well, from what little I know of him, he is arrogant, hates being even the slightest bit dirty, and is not at all patient. I think it's time for a bit of magically-enhanced dye. He shouldn't be able to remove it by scrubbing or minor magical interference, but it doesn't last that long either." "Sounds perfect! Let's get just an eye dropper of it, and slowly polka dot his face." "You are truly evil." "I try." Collecting and creating all the ingredients took a bit of time, what with me still getting the hang of Chaos magic, but the results were great. We set up out trap in one of the hallways that Discord swore he passed through everyday, and soon would. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Discord was growing slightly impatient. "How long has it been!?" "Two minutes." "Oh." We then hear footsteps, and I ready the spell to trigger our paintball syringe. Blueblood comes around the corner, and I trigger the trap. He is mildly surprised at first, just feeling wet spots on his face and neck, but then starts squealing once he passes a mirror placed in the hallway. "What has been done!? Some pony has ruined my magnificent facade! AUNTIE TIA!" "We should probably go, before Celestia gets here." Discord, having done this before, agrees. "Yes, let's go. Take the trap though." Author's Note I'm not dead! Not yet anyway. The Room.Twilight had decided to spend the day with me. I didn't mind, much. I had planned on investigating the runes I pulled out of the old castle fully, and maybe Twilight could help. Of course, this assumed that she didn't get me to teach her more first. “But Mana, I need to know!” Case in point. “I already told you, tomorrow. Today I'm studying the old runes from what you call The Castle of the Two Sisters. I was hoping you'd be able to help…” “You're no fun.” Sigh. “What’s so interesting about them anyway? Aren't they just holders for spells?” Technically, she was right. All they did was hold spells. The real stickler was that somehow, 14 runes all worked in tandem on the same spell. And only worked if they were laid down in a circle. Very complicated, very powerful, and done by someone very, very, skilled. Someone I could learn a lot from, it would seem. “Well, yes. They are ‘just’ holders for spells. In much the same way that we are ‘just’ thinking meat. It's a lot more complicated than that, and is very special and interesting in its own way.” I prepare to cast a 3D rendering and explosion view spell. It basically takes all the connections in a spell’s framework, and gives an exploded view of it, to hopefully help in interpretation. The basics of magic don't change, but the style used, the casting method, and even personal biases all affect the end result. Two people casting the same spell with have the same general shape and pathways, but the intricacies and connections could be very different. Twilight was awed by the view. “Whoa. This would be so useful in finding where I went wrong. Can you teach me that spell too?” We aren't going to get much done today, I think. “In due time. You know how your species casts magic, so you can give a better interpretation of this. What's your take?” Twilight thinks long and hard about it, intensely studying, measuring, muttering, writing things down. 3 pages of notes. 4. 8. 20. I gently nudge her. “You done?” Startled, she jumps. “Don't scare me like that! And yes. I've got the basics for it down. As you already determined, this is incredibly complex, and would require hours of deciphering, considering I don't have any of my books handy.” “The books can be retrieved. Let's see those notes.” Good thing part of the learning session with Celestia included the written language. Translating is so much easier. Taking a good long look at the notes, “So they are all actually separate spells, governed by a single one? Unusual.” Twilight is very excited to talk about magic. Especially old magic. “Yep! Seems that they are all linked, so they can share the burden of storing energy, and no single one overflows.” “We should get your books, so this can be studied more in-depth. Once we have that done, I'll teach you some.” Squeeee! “Whatarewewaitingfor? Let's go!” She pops a teleportation spell, and away she goes. I wait. Organize some notes, make some sandwiches, have a nice lunch… Pop! “I'm back! I hope I have everything.” Judging by the room being half-filled, and it is not a small room, she brought her entire library with her. “I only brought my books on old magic, and my notes on studies of old magic.” The ‘notes’ part would explain that. I start us off. “Well, let's start with anything you got from the same relative period as these. What have you got?” “Well, these date to the Post-Discordian era, but also before Nightmare Moon. That does narrow it down considerably.” She moves half the books and notes to one side of the room. “The next limitation, is that these are runes specifically, which were pretty popular at the time. Lucky for us, these are powerful runes, so that leaves only a few mages that could have made them.” She moves some more. “Lastly, these are power runes specifically, used for amplifying the power of the user.” She moves even more. Got about a dozen books, and still several hundred pages of notes. “And now we organize what we have left!” “Has anyone ever told you that you take too many notes?” She ignored the comment and started sorting. “This book is Star Swirl’s forays into runic magic. He did some, but nothing really groundbreaking. That was reserved for spells.” I peruse the book a bit, and glean a few details, such as Star Swirl basically being their equivalent of Jesus. For magic anyway. Probably an interesting concept of study. “These three follow Court Mages, and everything they did. Truly some stellar record-keeping.” A quick glance through the index of each does have some specific chapters focused on the runes that were created for various uses. Good research material. I wonder if the chaos magic Discord taught me would be any use here. “Hey, I wanna try something.” I begin to cast, telling the spell what I want. Instead of my white aura though, it is instead chaotic, purple, green, yellow. It appears on the notes and books Twilight said pertain to runes, and they start sorting themselves into several piles. Twilight is concerned at the aura change, and says so. “What happened to your aura? It was white before.” “Discord taught me chaos magic. And look, it worked.” I pointed to the piles of paper. “Let's see what it did.” Looking through the piles, the spell seems to have sorted them by relevance to my exact question. The one book it put in the left most pile pertain to the construction and making of similar rune setups, assuming it isn't explaining this one. As we move right, they get less relevant, with the rightmost ones being on runes in general. “Well that was great.” Twilight is interested in Discord teaching something more than the books though. “Discord taught you chaos magic? That isn't something special to him?” “Not as I could see. He could cast magic just as we do. He just chooses to do chaos, cause it's easier. We do ‘Order’ magic. We shape the spell to do what we want. Chaos works the other way. We shape the effects, and let the magic make the spell shape. “It takes less willpower to do chaos, but more mana to power a roughly equivalent effect. It is more efficient at doing things like teleportation though, since magic naturally wants to go to its home plane.” “So that's how Discord can pop just anywhere in rapid succession.” “Yeah, pretty useful. And for someone as powerful as Discord, using extra energy isn't a problem. I could definitely use it, but not as freely as he does. You alicorns could do it too, but again, not as freely. “Anyway, let's get back to those runes, then I can teach you something.” I smile at that, happy with the prospect of teaching someone so thirsty for knowledge, simply for knowledge’s sake. Author's Note So... yeah. I realize it's been a year, but now I seem to be able to dedicate more time. Catching up on stuff I want to read, and hopefully having a semi-regular posting schedule for this. Anyway, typos need to be banished, and I hope you guys (the four that are following this) enjoy this chapter!
Lessons"Let the magic do its thing." We are in my workroom on top of Canterlot Mountain, with reinforced mana barriers to contain anything... unusual. My first lesson with Discord where I actually attempt to do it could prove disastrous, as I am inexperienced in letting the magic decide what to do, as well as it going against all my previous training. Three previous lessons were spent discussing magical theory, and how he did what he did. "So how does your magic work?" I can't keep the awe out of my voice, even after centuries of practice. "Well, I think what I want it to do, and it does it. I never studied it more than that, I just did what came naturally. I did do some surface scratching, so I know that I can cast it your way, but my way is natural to me." "Ya know, Twilight is probably going to want to know all this too. And before I start, I want to watch and test a few things, to see how it reacts to various things." "Of course. Anything for a friend." That was the last of that day, and the next was spent with Discord firing magic at various sacrifices targets, with me trying to disrupt them. I learned a lot that day. Like his Chaos casting method is able to partially or completely ignore barriers/shields, if they are thin or weak enough. Luckily, the reinforcing of the barrier on my workroom seems to have held, and if it didn't, the stone beyond absorbed any stray blasts. Under further testing, the mana powering the Chaos spell seemed to interact and communicate with other mana, and find a way around or through to do what was requested. It would draw more power while doing this, but it still did it. It seemed that Magic was sentient, at least. It could understand thought patterns, and execute simple instructions. While it had difficulty accomplishing more complex tasks on its own, like disassembling an old style computer without damaging anything, that is where Order casting comes in. You direct the magic along set paths to do what you want. This is less flexible than Chaos casting, but it carries with it greater power, as you have full, direct control over the framework of the spell, as well as that of the magic itself. It comes with limitations, such as requiring a strong will, but most spell asters have that anyway. Discord seems to be one such exception. In my conversations with him, he is distracted, but always paying attention. Even if I thought he was definitely not paying attention, and intentionally asked a difficult question, he would answer immediately and impeccably, leading me to believe that while he doesn't show it, he may have a very strong will in there somewhere. Probably with all the cotton candy he keeps making appear. On the final day, we talked about ourselves. I didn't learn much about his time before Equestria, aside from it happened, but I told him much about me. "You see, according to this scale I developed, I am only a third-level Demigod in terms of raw power. Of course, my control of magic and my throughput ability gave me a much higher value. My throughput ability is nearly that of a full Demi-Titan, with my control being on par with half God level. The main reason for such a large gap between those is that power is earned. Control can be taught and learned, but throughput can be magically enhanced. I have done so much of that, in preparation for the trials ahead. That's why I always carry many gems and such full of mana. I can't store it myself, but I can definitely use it. "Now, based on my observations of you, and the few times we clashed, I would rank your raw power slightly above mine. With your using Chaos casting though, it is difficult to tell what your control is, and throughput requires an intensive experiment session. It is mostly just pushing as much mana through you as we can. I attempted his method, telling the magic what I wanted, and letting it do it. "That's it! Keep going." The cheerleaders helped. I told my magic to turn the stone block in front of me into a teddy bear. My horn shining brightly from the raw magic throughput, I wasn't even tired at all from this. Very little exertion at all. POP I open my eyes, and there stands a five-foot tall teddy bear. Huzzah! First casting, complete. "Good. Now, you remember what we talked about with this?" Discord is serious for once, not distracted, not slacking. Full attention on me. "Yes Discord. While this is massively easier to cast, it can't do complex actions in a single spell. I still feel drained of a lot of mana though." "That is the other price of this. More mana is usually required to get the same effect as Order casting, but it requires less mental acuity. Order requires discipline and a strong will, but less mana." Gleefully casting rapid-fire spells, I am only half paying attention, but that is enough. That mug is now cotton candy, the workbench is now made out of allotropic titanium, and that crystal ball in the centre of the room is now tiger-eye. I quickly use Order based casting to return them to normal. I do inquire Discord of one thing though. "But I can use my will to make Chaos casting more powerful, right? Just like I can use more mana to make Order based casting more powerful?" "To a point. If you rely on your will too much, it becomes Order. You can give the chaos parameters, and very specific instructions, but if you control it too much, you are just using Order with the mana of Chaos." That makes sense. Now I truly wonder how much fun I can get out of this before I run out of mana. Time to be childish. Author's Note Who is ready for this thing? I honestly have no idea what direction this thing is going to take, so tags will be added as necessary.
Blue blood does not save you from pranks"Peekaboo!" "Oh, hiya Mana Spark!" Note to self, Pinkie Pie is immune to scaring. "Run Discord! We've been discovered!" Discord pops his head out of a nearby bush, and does a double take. "We have! Hurry, get away!" He starts running on the spot, digging a hole into the ground. Realizing that this isn't working, he snaps his talons, and disappears with a poof! I, on the other hand(hoof?), just run. We meet up at our designated 'safe spot', which should be safe, but you never know with Pinkie Pie. Staying quiet for several minutes, we begin to relax. Until a wild Pinkie appears! We vacate the premises, going to our next hideout. The first one was really only an emergency one, just a clearing in some bushes. This one though, was much better. An expertly camouflaged treehouse deeps in the Whitetail woods, even the CMC hadn't found it (and destroyed it) yet. We should be safe to wait it out here. "Just in case though, do we have a Pinkie Pie distraction ready?" He produces a pink balloon. "Yes we do. Ready?" I nod, and he releases it. We hear a squeal, and a very high-pitched voice. "Oooh! Get the balloon!" Now that the pink blur is out of our hair, we can continue. "Well, you know this place better than I do. Who is next?" "Nearly time for my daily pranking of Prince Blueblood. Want to help?" An evil smile spreads across my muzzle. "Let's loosen him a bit." And so, we appear in Discord's rooms in Canterlot castle. I suppose Celestia is very gracious and doesn't want him appearing in random rooms all the time. Probably the latter more than the former where Discord is concerned. Since he said it was 'daily pranking', I wonder what he had in mind today. "Daily? How long have you been doing this?" He waved it off as unimportant, "Only a few months. Since you are here, I think you can come up with the prank. What have we got?" "Well, from what little I know of him, he is arrogant, hates being even the slightest bit dirty, and is not at all patient. I think it's time for a bit of magically-enhanced dye. He shouldn't be able to remove it by scrubbing or minor magical interference, but it doesn't last that long either." "Sounds perfect! Let's get just an eye dropper of it, and slowly polka dot his face." "You are truly evil." "I try." Collecting and creating all the ingredients took a bit of time, what with me still getting the hang of Chaos magic, but the results were great. We set up out trap in one of the hallways that Discord swore he passed through everyday, and soon would. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Discord was growing slightly impatient. "How long has it been!?" "Two minutes." "Oh." We then hear footsteps, and I ready the spell to trigger our paintball syringe. Blueblood comes around the corner, and I trigger the trap. He is mildly surprised at first, just feeling wet spots on his face and neck, but then starts squealing once he passes a mirror placed in the hallway. "What has been done!? Some pony has ruined my magnificent facade! AUNTIE TIA!" "We should probably go, before Celestia gets here." Discord, having done this before, agrees. "Yes, let's go. Take the trap though." Author's Note I'm not dead! Not yet anyway.
The Room.Twilight had decided to spend the day with me. I didn't mind, much. I had planned on investigating the runes I pulled out of the old castle fully, and maybe Twilight could help. Of course, this assumed that she didn't get me to teach her more first. “But Mana, I need to know!” Case in point. “I already told you, tomorrow. Today I'm studying the old runes from what you call The Castle of the Two Sisters. I was hoping you'd be able to help…” “You're no fun.” Sigh. “What’s so interesting about them anyway? Aren't they just holders for spells?” Technically, she was right. All they did was hold spells. The real stickler was that somehow, 14 runes all worked in tandem on the same spell. And only worked if they were laid down in a circle. Very complicated, very powerful, and done by someone very, very, skilled. Someone I could learn a lot from, it would seem. “Well, yes. They are ‘just’ holders for spells. In much the same way that we are ‘just’ thinking meat. It's a lot more complicated than that, and is very special and interesting in its own way.” I prepare to cast a 3D rendering and explosion view spell. It basically takes all the connections in a spell’s framework, and gives an exploded view of it, to hopefully help in interpretation. The basics of magic don't change, but the style used, the casting method, and even personal biases all affect the end result. Two people casting the same spell with have the same general shape and pathways, but the intricacies and connections could be very different. Twilight was awed by the view. “Whoa. This would be so useful in finding where I went wrong. Can you teach me that spell too?” We aren't going to get much done today, I think. “In due time. You know how your species casts magic, so you can give a better interpretation of this. What's your take?” Twilight thinks long and hard about it, intensely studying, measuring, muttering, writing things down. 3 pages of notes. 4. 8. 20. I gently nudge her. “You done?” Startled, she jumps. “Don't scare me like that! And yes. I've got the basics for it down. As you already determined, this is incredibly complex, and would require hours of deciphering, considering I don't have any of my books handy.” “The books can be retrieved. Let's see those notes.” Good thing part of the learning session with Celestia included the written language. Translating is so much easier. Taking a good long look at the notes, “So they are all actually separate spells, governed by a single one? Unusual.” Twilight is very excited to talk about magic. Especially old magic. “Yep! Seems that they are all linked, so they can share the burden of storing energy, and no single one overflows.” “We should get your books, so this can be studied more in-depth. Once we have that done, I'll teach you some.” Squeeee! “Whatarewewaitingfor? Let's go!” She pops a teleportation spell, and away she goes. I wait. Organize some notes, make some sandwiches, have a nice lunch… Pop! “I'm back! I hope I have everything.” Judging by the room being half-filled, and it is not a small room, she brought her entire library with her. “I only brought my books on old magic, and my notes on studies of old magic.” The ‘notes’ part would explain that. I start us off. “Well, let's start with anything you got from the same relative period as these. What have you got?” “Well, these date to the Post-Discordian era, but also before Nightmare Moon. That does narrow it down considerably.” She moves half the books and notes to one side of the room. “The next limitation, is that these are runes specifically, which were pretty popular at the time. Lucky for us, these are powerful runes, so that leaves only a few mages that could have made them.” She moves some more. “Lastly, these are power runes specifically, used for amplifying the power of the user.” She moves even more. Got about a dozen books, and still several hundred pages of notes. “And now we organize what we have left!” “Has anyone ever told you that you take too many notes?” She ignored the comment and started sorting. “This book is Star Swirl’s forays into runic magic. He did some, but nothing really groundbreaking. That was reserved for spells.” I peruse the book a bit, and glean a few details, such as Star Swirl basically being their equivalent of Jesus. For magic anyway. Probably an interesting concept of study. “These three follow Court Mages, and everything they did. Truly some stellar record-keeping.” A quick glance through the index of each does have some specific chapters focused on the runes that were created for various uses. Good research material. I wonder if the chaos magic Discord taught me would be any use here. “Hey, I wanna try something.” I begin to cast, telling the spell what I want. Instead of my white aura though, it is instead chaotic, purple, green, yellow. It appears on the notes and books Twilight said pertain to runes, and they start sorting themselves into several piles. Twilight is concerned at the aura change, and says so. “What happened to your aura? It was white before.” “Discord taught me chaos magic. And look, it worked.” I pointed to the piles of paper. “Let's see what it did.” Looking through the piles, the spell seems to have sorted them by relevance to my exact question. The one book it put in the left most pile pertain to the construction and making of similar rune setups, assuming it isn't explaining this one. As we move right, they get less relevant, with the rightmost ones being on runes in general. “Well that was great.” Twilight is interested in Discord teaching something more than the books though. “Discord taught you chaos magic? That isn't something special to him?” “Not as I could see. He could cast magic just as we do. He just chooses to do chaos, cause it's easier. We do ‘Order’ magic. We shape the spell to do what we want. Chaos works the other way. We shape the effects, and let the magic make the spell shape. “It takes less willpower to do chaos, but more mana to power a roughly equivalent effect. It is more efficient at doing things like teleportation though, since magic naturally wants to go to its home plane.” “So that's how Discord can pop just anywhere in rapid succession.” “Yeah, pretty useful. And for someone as powerful as Discord, using extra energy isn't a problem. I could definitely use it, but not as freely as he does. You alicorns could do it too, but again, not as freely. “Anyway, let's get back to those runes, then I can teach you something.” I smile at that, happy with the prospect of teaching someone so thirsty for knowledge, simply for knowledge’s sake. Author's Note So... yeah. I realize it's been a year, but now I seem to be able to dedicate more time. Catching up on stuff I want to read, and hopefully having a semi-regular posting schedule for this. Anyway, typos need to be banished, and I hope you guys (the four that are following this) enjoy this chapter!
