Author's Note

hey hey remember PE#1? yeah, this thing builds on top of that :V

also incorporates the slime study because I am on a ROLL tonight with lore integration.

also also, WOAH what is this? Celestia acting like a proper mentor for once? Celly and Twily in the same room together without a single mention of the latter being disgracefully expelled for medical reasons???

magic now drew energy from a newly-discovered energy field? (PE#9)

"...And you're saying that you've been aware of this event happening for years in advance."

Celestia sipped her tea, carefully lowering the cup back to the table with her hooves. "Yes."

Twilight planted both hooves on the same table. "Why didn't you tell me? Ponyville is in utter chaos right now over--"

"Calm down, Twilight, you're shaking the tea," Celestia... lit her horn and pushed Twilight back. "We had to keep things under wraps for national security reasons. The general populace might not have seen it coming, but our military has been well aware of and preparing for this event the entire time. Do you know what would happen if our adversaries learnt that within some set amount of time, one of the core aspects of how our society functions would undergo a fundamental shift in mechanics?"

Twilight lowered her gaze, responding only with a slight nod.

"Still," she began, "as one of the Princesses of Equestria, shouldn't I have been informed about this upcoming event?"

Celestia leaned back in her seat, her eyes wandering toward the ceiling. "I forgot."

"E-excuse me?"

"I forgor 💀" Celestia repeated. This time, with passion! "I don't believe you were even a Princess yet at the time of discovery, and with you ruling the Ponyville autonomous region, an enclave within Equestria proper, it simply slipped my mind that you hadn't been told yet."

"Oh."

Celestia clapped her hooves together. "Anyway! About the reason why I invited you back here. You saw that I was drinking my tea again, yes?"

"...Yeah?"

She lit her horn and poured out another cup, sliding it across the table. "Have a sip. You'll find that its properties are rather potent."

Twilight lifted a brow, but took the cup nonetheless. Having practiced the other day in training her expectations helped tremendously in preventing her from spilling the hot tea all over herself. It was strange, though, needing to rely purely on blind expectation for what could happen in order to force what would happen. It seemed so counterintuitive, given that expectations themselves tended to be molded by observation and not the other way around.

She stared into the cup, watching curls of steam rise away from the surface of the liquid.

Wasn't this violating causality in some way?

"I promise you, there's nothing wrong with the tea," Celestia's voice cut through her thoughts. "This is simply an exercise to introduce you to one of our discoveries in recent years."

Twilight glanced up at her former mentor, then back down to the cup. She took a tentative sip. "I don't feel any different," she pulled the cup away. "Was there meant to be..."

She looked around. Celestia had vanished.

"...Princess?" Twilight stood up, teacup still floating gently in her magic. She paced toward the door. "Celestia, I'm not a filly anymore. This isn't funny--"

Celestia slid open the door, a soft smirk forming across her face. "Guess what."

"Hu--" Twilight finally noticed the teacup hovering in her aura just as the magenta glow began to sputter out. "Wait wait wait, I--"

Celestia caught the cup in her own magic before it hit the floor. "You finally used your magic again for the first time since it disappeared, even though during that initial disappearance you were already expecting it to work?"

"Yes."

The teacup floated down in front of her, bobbing gently in the golden glow of Celestia's magic. "It's in the tea. Sometime after our earliest observations of the ability to influence probability, we discovered that it was tied to a previously undetected field that seems to have abruptly sprung into existence. My top researchers tell me that they're still hard at work trying to figure out the origin of this field and what spurned its creation, but most relevant to our discussion today is how it behaves."

Twilight took the cup in her hooves again and took another sip. "Behaves? You've already found a way to directly interact with the field?"

Celestia tilted her head a little as she made a face. "Ehhhh, not quite. What we have discovered is that this field appears to have ripple, in a sense. Peaks and troughs made up of fluctuations in energy within the field itself. These ripples remain somewhat localized to Equestria for whatever reason, but they can interact with matter in rather interesting ways. Do you remember that slime that you and Fluttershy caught and studied?"

"Yeeeesss?"

"A number of them have been found in and around Canterlot as well. Not only that, but we have unintentionally synthesized them in our lab during occasions when a ripple passes through. We believe that the excess energy carried by the peaks is imbued into matter that it passes through. And when that matter is living, such as a puddle with a large population of water-borne organisms, it seems to give rise to mutant beings created almost entirely of magic. Can you guess what is in your te--"

"Slimes." Twilight took a sip. "You steeped slimes in the tea and extracted whatever energy it is that was imbued into it by the ripples." She paused, swirling the tea around a little before taking another sip. "And I assume that that excess energy is what allowed me to momentarily use my magic again?"

"Well put, my faithful student."