Four Stars

Chapters

0 - 5: Gone
1 - 0: Trying to find a new world (CEL)
0 - 0: Vortex
0 - 1: Charcoal
0 - 2: Fashion
0 - 3: Trust
0 - 4: Questions
1 - 1: you'll find one for thee (DB)
1 - 2: All those problems it'll hold (Flare)
1 - 3: with all their races you'll see (NMS)
1 - 4: All those places, each a wonder (CEL)
1 - 5: about destiny you will ponder
1 - 6: when going out to explore
1 - 7: Flames
1 - 8: Out of titles
1 - 9: Reunited
Interlude

0 - 5: Gone

Over the next few days, I prepared myself for leaving my home. I sent a mail to my boss that I had to quit my job for personal reasons, and he responded that I could always show up again if I wanted.

Next, I jotted down a note that I was not to be considered dead for the next four years as I was going to a place that none of my family of friends knew, but not to die. That, I put it in my house on the table.

After that, I started meditating and tried to feel disturbances in the magic field around me.

However, I could feel a starry field of tiny orbs of magic around me. That confused me, as I knew I was in a stable and smooth field. I focused and changed my perspective, taking a metaphorical step back.

That, however, was not the right action, as I realized when I could see a galaxy formed from those magic fields.

I should have expected this, being a representation of a star. Of course, my magic sense would start on a cosmic scale!

Luckily, or unluckily, depending on the viewpoint, my actual magic was not powerful enough to influence anything on this scale.

However, when I reached out with my senses again, I knew better, and I got only a radius of about two light-years. Still a bit off-scale, but better than before.

Each of the objects in the solar system had a tiny amount of magic about them, but interestingly, the nine objects we once knew as the nine planets, the sun, and the seven most known moons – the Earth’s moon, the two moons of Mars and the four biggest moons of Jupiter had way, way more magic about them.

I wondered why that would be, but I then realized it was because the humans gave them meaning. And that belief was powerful enough that their magic increased. After all, a big part of magic was, well, magic and had no part in Science.

My next try managed to shrink down my perception to only the radius of Jupiter’s orbit, and I now noticed that the red eye of Jupiter had a ... less realfeeling to it.

The problem was that I could not reach it. I would have to work with what I found on earth.

It would have been perfect, too, but there are just some things one can’t have.

Finally, I managed to only ‘see’ the earth and moon. Ignoring the countless satellites, I instead probed the earth’s magic field.

To my surprise, central Europe had a wildly fluctuating magic field, while Ireland had a slightly less powerful, but very stable field.

On the poles, there was nearly no energy.

Russia had an even, but thin magic field, while China had a field that looked more like a mosaic. India was the same.

Australia’s magic field was essentially just a ring along its coast.

South America and Africa were the same as Europe, just on a bigger scale. The magic moved slower, and areas with high or low magic concentration were bigger.

Well… and then there was north America.

If I wouldn’t have seen the other magic fields first, I would have thought I inhaled drugs, but this was real.

America’s field looked like hundreds of thousands of single, big magic shards, all jammed into a jelly-like field below it. There were areas of incredible magic concentration, right next to magically void areas.

And there were also shards that were jammed through other shards, shards that were thrown together around NYC and completely covered the city whilst also forming a dome above it, areas that looked like they were picked off the ground by something or someone, and areas where they all pointed upwards, making it very dangerous for any being formed from magic to descend here.

Interestingly, around where I was, those shards seemed to melt and turn into what one would describe as a ‘normal’ magic field, if such a thing even existed.

But this magic field was not what I wanted to see. I looked around, trying to find the holes in reality that would bring me to other worlds.

And, when I found one I could use, I barked out a laugh.

It was in Lukas’ house. Whatever that self-proclaimed god did to appear in front of me weakened the fabric of reality in that area considerably.

A quick call solved that problem, and I soon was on my way there.

Of course, Lukas was still at work, and I exchanged keys with him. I handed him the keys to my house as well as a letter detailing that he would watch over it for me if anyone asked, and he gave me one of his two keys for his house.

For some bizarre reason, he always kept two on his person, but that now worked out in my favor, as I would not need to explain why four people would go in his house and vanish instead of one.

Right now, I was in front of his house, and to my surprise, I could see the guard of that weird agent there, looking at me.

I decided to humor him and walked over to him.

“What do you want?” I asked, my voice not showing my feelings.

“You’re leaving, right?” he returned, and I found myself nodding.

“Please… don’t, princess.”

“Why?”

“This world, earth, it… it lacks a drive. There is magic, but nearly none know about it. And more and more people just don’t see why they should keep moving,” he said, and I found myself nodding.

“So, what do you want me to do?”

He gave a small smile.

“Just show the world that there is still magic on this planet,” he responded, and I started thinking.

“You know what? I’ll think about it, and if I ever return to this godforsaken place…”

HEY!

“…I’ll see what I can do. Is that fine with you?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said, then started to walk away.

Only when he was out of my sight, I remembered that I still didn’t know his name.

Shrugging, I made my way inside of Lukas’ house, and after the other three entered, I locked the door and placed the keys on the kitchen table.

Then, I focused on the small rip of space that was still hovering in the air, before ramming enough magic in it to force it open. It became visible, and I pulled it open, before looking in it.

However, I only saw the swirls of the portal. Grinning, I started stepping into it and made sure to shrink it down before looking around. I now was hovering in a blue space, reminding me of the area I saw when I met that entity in my dream.

Well, no time like the present. I choose a random direction, then started moving, somehow managing to walk in space and fly in a vacuum.

1 - 0: Trying to find a new world (CEL)

Author's Note

Causally doubles the word count
Don’t worry, won’t happen often.

1 - 0: Trying to find a new world (CEL)

Stumbling out of the tear in the air, I noticed that I was still in my human form, but my hair had changed to adapt a four-colored scheme. Interestingly, the magic density in this area was really high in comparison to earth.

However, when looking around, I realized I was alone. I could not sense my other bodies, and that worried me greatly.

For now, I will try to find the other three, but it’s more likely that they will find me first. After all, that was the type of person Celestia was, right?

My smile slowly fell, and I scowled.

“GODDAMMIT!” I roared, punching the earth below me.

I heard a loud crushing sound, and a crater appeared below me, way over ten meters in diameter. It nearly looked as one would imagine a meteor strike to look.

“The hell?” I said, looking at my hands. Whatever this world is, being in it had strengthened me considerably.

Turning around, I noticed a tear in reality. I could tell that it would lead me back to the void, and while I may could find the others by going back in there, I did not want to risk getting lost in infinity, so I closed it as far as I could.

After that, I sat down and closed my eyes. Reaching out with my magic senses, I first noticed that the galaxy I was in currently was far smaller than the one I was in before. Barely ten thousand light-years in diameter, in fact.

Now knowing that I wasn’t just cut off from the others by some weird sort of phenomena, I shrunk down the radius of my perception again, once again only encompassing the solar system I was in. I spotted six planets and eight moons that were laid with more than just the ‘default’ amount of magic. Three gas giants, three rock planets, who surprisingly were all inhabited, two moons around the planet I stood on, one moon around the innermost gas giant the size of the earth (the moon, not the planet), and for some reason also inhabited, one other, smaller moon around that planet, and one moon around every one of the other planet’s.

The two outer gas giants had more moons than that, but I decided not to bother with them since they were both small and lacked an atmosphere.

Focusing my senses on this planet only, I could get a rough shape of the continents. There were two ice caps on the north and south pole, a big continent on the hemisphere I was not on, and two slightly smaller continents on the hemisphere I stood on.

Unluckily, the whole planet was covered in a good amount of magic, which made it near impossible for me to feel anything that could help me finding dimensional weak points. I knew about the one behind me, but I could not sense it itself, just the abrupt cutoff of my magic at that point.

However, I could feel a good amount of magic energy to my ‘east’ (I’m just going to call the hemisphere on I’m right now the northern one), and I stood up before starting to move in that direction since that was about the only place I could imagine another rip to be.

But, that concentration of energy was quite far away, and since I could not see anything in the skies, I decided to take a risk and raised my hand up to my horn, touching it.

Originally, I wanted to take the ring off, but to my surprise, when I touched it with the intent to return to my ‘real’ form, it did so without me removing it.

Feeling around in my robe, I then realized that I still had the magic guide in my pocket and could not help but worry for the other three.

But then I remembered what they were. They will be fine.

After swinging myself into the air and raising so high that I was flying just below the clouds, I just enjoyed the flight. It was peaceful up here, and the sweat I was working up felt good.

I knew that I would need to quickly learn how to clean my wings, but that was a small price to pay for such freedom.

After about half an hour, I could see other skyborn, too. A few wyverns were playing to the south, and I decided to head over to them.

The first one to notice me was about six meters long and had grey scales, and he flew over to a bigger, green one. He tapped the green one before looking back in my direction, and then the green one started to head towards me.

»Thou art not one of us. What is it thou art here for?«

I knew he spoke a different language than I did, but I somehow still understood him.

››› This one is a wanderer, ‹‹‹ I responded, my speech broken by my throat not used to such words.

…dammit. It is not him, it’s the language.

»So, thou wish to see the world,« the male voice responded, and I nodded.

››› Yes, for I wish to find something to bring me back to the three sisters of mine. ‹‹‹

»Thee art lost?«

››› It seems so. ‹‹‹

He stared at me for a minute, but then he smiled.

»I see. Thou seem to be a kind soul, and we shan’t hinder you. If thee wish, you shall stay with us for a while,« he said, and I bowed my head.

››› I offer my thanks to thee, ‹‹‹ I responded, and he then nodded, flying to one of the other wyverns that seemingly wanted to talk to him as well.

As soon as he did so, the grey wyvern flew over to me, and I could tell that he was but a child. I smiled, thinking it was good that he seemed like he was able to live such a carefree life.

…dammit. I am becoming Celestia.

But… was that really something bad?

I ignored the voice that was screaming ‘yes!’ over and over again in my head, and just played with the young wyvern, smiling the whole time.

Eventually, when my wings became heavy, the elder wyvern approached me again.

»Thee seem unable to stay afloat much longer. Does this mean thou will leave for the ground now?« he asked, and I smiled before shaking my head.

››› No. I have another solution that thee will be surprised about, ‹‹‹ I responded, and then flew towards a nearby cloud.

»What do thee wish to do with the wet air?«

I snorted.

That’s also something you can call clouds.

››› As thou have noticed, I art not a wyvern. ‹‹‹

»Thou art correct. But, what does that change for thee?«

I started to break off pieces of the cloud with my hands, then removed a big chunk from it, about twice my size.

››› What thee call ‘wet air’ is something that I, and only I, can touch and form, ‹‹‹ I responded, watching him get wide-eyed upon my demonstration of that ability.

»Thou could cover something in eternal darkness or dry it by removing all cover from the sun. That art a frightening power.«

I shook my head.

››› No. I shan’t do anything else than this. I cannot move much on my own, and to do something as thou describest, this one wouldest need to do this without sleep or any break. ‹‹‹

»‘Tis a relief. How does it feel for thou?«

››› This is the softest I have ever touched, ‹‹‹ I responded, finishing forming it into a floating mattress.

Would usually cause a few stares, but I doubted anyone would spot a two-by-two-meter cloud fragment almost a kilometer above the ground.

»So, thee can stay in the air even when asleep. This one has never seen such a thing!«

››› Thank thee for thy praise, ‹‹‹ I responded, and he chuckled.

»It seems solid. Can I touch it without disturbing it?«

››› This one does not know. Please, feel free to try, I can always do this again, ‹‹‹ I responded, and he nodded, then tried to push it with his nose.

To both our amazement, he could move the cloud.

»Thee look like thou expected something else,« he said, mirth in his eyes.

››› ‘Tis true. I thought thee would fall or fly through it, ‹‹‹ I responded.

We talked for a moment longer, and then the elder wyvern headed off, wishing me a good night.

I turned around on the cloud, watching the sunset in the distance, and I felt myself slowly falling asleep. The day caught up to me, I felt the soreness in my wings, and I closed my eyes, quickly falling asleep.

When I woke up, the first thing my sleep-addled mind decided to do was to straighten out the feathers of my wings, and by the time I realized what I was doing, I already finished fishing out all the loose or broken feathers from my wings and had realigned the rest.

»What do thee eat?«

››› I am a plant-eater, ‹‹‹ I responded, my mouth switching out ‘herbivore’ for ‘plant-eater’.

»I see. Before thee go, will thee listen to a request of this one?«

››› What do thee want? ‹‹‹

»If thee find what thee search… thou will leave, right?«

››› That is true. ‹‹‹

»Then, could thee leave something for the young one you played with?«

››› Why him? ‹‹‹ I found myself asking.

»He adores thee. Thou art friendly and only wish the best for others, and it would be good if he became like that, too,« the wyvern exclaimed, and I started to think about it.

››› Your scales… do thee shed them or do thee keep them? ‹‹‹ I asked, and he smiled.

»We do keep them. They do heal, but only if heavily damaged. Thee wish to leave a mark on him?«

››› I do, ‹‹‹ I responded, and he nodded.

»Very well, I will trust thee.«

He then called something I could not write down because whatever he spoke was a string of growls and grunts that I could not translate, and the young wyvern that I played with flew over to me, tackling me onto the cloud and then going cross-eyed upon seeing that he was lying on it.

››› Art thee surprised, young one? ‹‹‹

I smiled, then placed my hands on the scales on his chest, infusing them with my magic. A sun symbol started to form, and I could tell that it sucked in a part of my power, before fading away.

The scales were a bit warmer to the touch now, and I smiled.

››› That is what I will give thee to remember me. A part of me will stay with thee, and it will protect thee, ‹‹‹ I said, getting an approving look from the older wyvern.

The old wyvern smiled and then touched a wing to my forehead. I felt something shift, and then I found myself understanding the way the clouds moved and the way the wind flowed a little bit better.

I thanked the wyverns for their hospitality, and after a few goodbyes, I continued towards the big amount of magic I was sensing to the east.

It took me another day of travel to finally see whatever was responsible for that magical aura. To my surprise, it was an enormous city, with a big, complex castle atop of it.

I could only spot it thanks to the perfect weather and my pegasi eyes. If I had to guess, it was still around four more hours of flight from where I was.

Another cloud made for my bed that night, but since I could now sense many beings nearby, I slept atop of it and did not change its form. Additionally, I also concealed as much of my magic as I could without falling through the cloud I was lying on. I did this by simply ‘pulling’ on it, and to my surprise, it worked.

...

I woke up about half an hour before sunrise, and I started flying towards that city above the clouds. I had no intention of exposing myself if I didn’t need to.

It took me another three hours to arrive at the outer perimeter of the city, and I shot down, using the lower clouds to cover myself before letting myself fall the last few hundred meters.

Thanks to the quite high acceleration of gravity, it took me only a few seconds to arrive at the ground, and tapping the ring atop my head again caused me to revert back to my human form. Interestingly, my clothes did not switch, but I should have expected that from a world of magic, where robes are a more common piece of clothing than t-shirts.

Remembering a street I noticed, I walked around one hundred meters north to meet with it, then started to move towards the city.

There were two guards in front of the gate, and when I approached it, they stepped in my way.

“Halt! Speak your name and your intent here!” the one on the right commanded, and I decided to honor him.

››› My name art Samantha Faust, and this one came to find her sisters, ‹‹‹ I said, getting incomprehensible stares from them, and one moment later, I realized why.

I was still speaking in the language of the wyverns.

“Ah, sorry. I spoke with magic beasts earlier and forgot what language to use,” I excused myself, then repeated what I just said.

He seemed to check a list, then looked at me.

“You have not visited before.”

It wasn’t a question.

“No, I have not. Is that a problem?”

He shook his head.

“No. What is your affinity?”

“What’s an affinity?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“From where do you come that you do not know of affinities? Everyone on the four planets knows about them.”

“If you can travel between the planets of your star system, is it truly so hard to believe that I came from another planet than this one?” I asked, and he shook his head.

“Not really. I would recommend going to the academy. You should get an identification card first so that you can prove your identity.”

I nodded and thanked him, then started to make my way towards the castle, which I now knew was the ‘academy’.

While walking through the city, I could see a great number of people, some summoning water, some crating fires. Magic was strong in this world, and I smiled. It seemed like I could easily reunite with my sisters now.

I lost almost an hour strolling through the city, and when I arrived at the gates of the academy, I realized that it was almost noon.

Arriving at the gates, I walked up to the guard standing next to it.

“Excuse me?”

“Yes? What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to know my affinity and get an identification card.”

“Then please enter and ask either a student or a teacher. They should be able to point you to the respective rooms,” he responded, and I nodded.

“You have another question,” he then said, and I was once again surprised how accurate their predictions were.

“Yes. Is the academy always open?”

He chuckled.

“No, but I see why you could get that impression. There's always someone working here, and the academy is responsible for monitoring the eastern half of the continent.”

I blinked. Eastern half of the continent? How far did I fly?

My eyes blazed with arcane might for a second, then I just said “huh,” realizing that I traveled over nearly half of the continent.

That was… surprisingly fast. I didn’t break the sound barrier, did I?

“I did not realize how far I had traveled,” I admitted, and the guard chuckled.

“Most do not. The world is far bigger than people give it credit for,” he said, and I found myself nodding in agreement.

Entering the academy, the sound of the city abruptly cut off, and I found myself in a long, empty hall.

However, it was not empty for long. After a few minutes, someone walked in. It was a young man, wearing a light blue robe with a lightning symbol on it.

“A visitor? Are you here to get your affinity tested?”

“Along with an identification card, yes. Could you guide me?”

He thought a moment about it.

“Yeah, I have enough time before my next assignment. What’s your name?”

“Samantha Faust. You?”

“Leonard Clef.”

He opened a door at the end of the hall and started to walk up a flight of stairs in the hallway behind it.

“Do you wish to join the academy?”

I shook my head.

“No, I just wish to find something that allows me to get to my sisters,” I responded, and he nodded.

“I see. Why do you think you could find it here?”

“Because the magic of the planet is here at its strongest,” I responded, getting a snort of him.

“There's no such thing as ‘magic’. There are elemental energies, like the lightning energy my lightning attribute allows me to control, but magic is just a legend.”

“I see…” I responded, frowning. I knew for a fact this was wrong, so why did they think magic doesn’t exist?

“Well, if it is one of the artifacts the academy owns, you probably will need to stay for a while before you will get allowed to use them, but the strongest ones you probably will never see.”

I shrugged.

“What I am searching cannot be easily contained,” I responded, and he shrugged.

“That can be said for a lot of the artifacts that the academy watches over,” he responded, opening the door to another room.

It was a lecture room, but the professor wasn’t here yet.

I noticed a bunch of other people sitting on a few of the chairs, but none of them wore robes.

“Are those people who don’t know their affinity, either?” I asked while taking a seat, getting a nod from him.

Eventually, a professor entered the room, recognizable by the white robe he wore.

“Attention!” he called, and it eventually became quiet.

“So, I’ll start with the elephant in the room,” he said, looking at me.

“You’re new, and you want something that probably only the academy can provide, right? You are hopefully aware that joining the academy outside of the regular half-year period is near impossible.”

I shrugged in response.

“Well, I know that, but this cannot wait for me. I need something that is probably property of the academy.”

“Many do. Your name, for the record?”

“Samantha Faust.”

He was silent for a second.

“You don’t have an identity card.”

“That’s one of the things I’m here for,” I returned, and he nodded.

“Very well. See me after class, I will evaluate your affinity and create an identification card for you. Coincidentally, today is a basic class anyways, so you should be able to participate.”

“Now, on the tables in front of you, you can see orbs with the base affinities, as well as lightning and light affinities. They’re called foci. If you don’t have a training focus of your own yet, pick up the one that’s your affinity, of, if you only have affinities that aren’t present, the one that feels the warmest to each of you.”

Picking up each of them, I noticed that they all felt warm in one way or another. The hottest one was the fire, closely followed by the light, earth and air stone. After that was the lightning, and water was the coolest of the bunch, but not by much.

Picking up the fire focus, I then tilted my head at it. Now that I was focusing on it, I found that it had an odd resonance with my magic. It seemed to enhance the flow of it and shaped it into an aggressive, glowing flow.

I could see why the people here never discovered magic. Those ‘formations’ of the magic they called attributes were far easier to rely on than actual magic. Aside from instinctual spells, magic had to be shaped properly and given a very specific purpose to prevent it from causing undesired effects, and such ‘misfires’ could be attributed to someone not properly controlling their attribute yet.

On the other hand, while my hand was closed around the stone, I could feel my power flowing through it, waiting to be released.

It was almost like cheating.

That also explained the stones that were added to the robes and the hundreds of small trinkets I saw in the city. One could just touch one to utilize their magic through them.

I wasn’t sure if I liked this dominance over magic those stones had, but they only acted as powerful foci for one type of magic, they weren’t blocking other classes of magic or inhibiting normal magic from being cast aside from the fact they were incredibly easy to use. For now, I decided to ignore this.

“So, now that you have each a focus stone that resonates with you, push a small amount in it. And I MEAN small!” he exclaimed, his shout stopping some from moving when he looked at them directly.

“If you use too much energy, it will lash out! I only want to see you activating your attribute, not starting to throw it around! And that’s also why I took away the lightning and fire stone from your desk, Lina!” he exclaimed, pointing at one of the girls in the front row.

Silently chuckling to myself, I then pushed the smallest bit of magic I could into the stone.

It still caused a rather big flame to appear above my hand, originating from the stone.

To his credit, the professor only blinked once.

“Well. Not exactly a small flame, but impressive control. Take notes, guys, that’s how it’s done!” he exclaimed, pointing at me.

I, in turn, reduced the energy inside and around the stone more and more until there was only a small flame left. I then tried to move that energy over to the lightning crystal but was only rewarded with a small electric shock.

When I pushed a spark of magic in the lightning focus it worked, though.

This magic is weird.

After class ended, the professor led me to a small adjacent room.

“So, let’s introduce ourselves again. My name is Professor Simon Stone.”

“Samantha Faust,” I responded, shaking his outstretched hand.

“Now, let’s start with your attribute evaluation, miss Faust.”

“I… don’t really think that’s necessary,” I responded, and he chuckled.

“You have an affinity with fire, that I don’t doubt. But you might have affinities in other areas, too,” he said, then led me to a row of eight crystal orbs.

They kind of looked like the stones he had in the lecture room, but I could tell they were different.

“Just place your hands on them, and they will light up when you have an affinity with them.”

I swallowed. Even from where I was standing, I could feel all eight resonating with me.

So, I cut off my magic completely for the time being, then touched the seven orbs save for the fire orb. None of them lit up.

As soon as that was done, I reconnected my magic. That moment I felt incredibly weak, and I decided I did not, in fact, like it.

“Seems like you were right. No reaction from the other attributes. Can I ask you to touch the fire orb, though?”

Shrugging, I placed my hand on it, causing a big flame to light up in it.

“Yep. That’s one of the strongest affinities I’ve seen this year. Consider yourself welcomed in the academy, in that case,” he said, and I chuckled.

“Now, your ID,” he said, holding a sheet of paper out to me.

It had some standard blank boxes, like name, age, and place of birth.

Since the latter one wasn’t mandatory, I didn’t put in a town that wasn’t even existing in this dimension.

For the unusual fields, I noticed that the professor already filled in my attribute and marked it as strength ‘S+’.

Then, there was the ‘amount of energy’, ‘stamina’, and ‘elemental resistance’ field, on which I choose the option ‘very high’.

After a minute or so, I handed it back to him, and he nodded.

“It’ll be ready at the end of the week.”

“I see. Now, I am a temporal guest of the academy, right?”

“Yes. I’ve seen you with Leonard, he’s one of the few people who never get lost in the academy. He’ll be your guide for the time being.”

That surprised me a bit, but I didn't comment on it.

“Also, your next classes will be of year two.”

I tilted my head.

“Why?”

“Well, you already demonstrated that you could bring out and manipulate the amount of energy you use to bring out your inner flame, but I haven’t seen you doing anything fancy with it. I think you’ll fit good into with the second years.”

“I see,” I responded, then left in search of the area I would sleep in.

In the end, I shared a room with Lina and someone else from a second year. They weren’t there yet, so I decided to take a good look at the fire essence stone that I was given along with another robe and two books, one about fire essence and one about the manipulation of inner energy.

I’ll just call it magic from here on out.

“Oh! You’re the new one!” I heard a bubbly voice next to me, and I turned around, noticing Lina.

“Hello. I’m Samantha.”

“Lina, but you probably already knew that. You have a fire affinity, right? Mine’s water!”

I shrugged.

“To be honest, I don’t know that much about water. I could maybe tell you something about lightning and light, but not water.”

“Naah, it’s okay. You got your affinity tested, right? How strong is it? And have you more than one?”

I blinked.

“Thanks, yes, very strong, no,” I responded in order of her questions.

“Ah, I see. My water attribute is only strong,” she responded, and I nodded.

“Sup,” I then heard a voice behind me, and turning around, I could see the other girl that was sleeping here.

I could tell so from the color scheme she and her bed had: both were painted in dark, almost black colors.

If I had to guess, she had either the wind or water attribute, as the sun here was quite strong, and otherwise, she couldn’t wear such thick clothes all the time.

“You new here?”

“Yes. I’m Samantha Faust.”

“Nice,” she responded, then laid down on her bed and fell asleep instantly.

“Uuh…” I stated my confusion, not really understanding what just happened.

“Don’t worry, she means well. That’s just how she is,” I heard Lina say.

I shrugged, and then I picked up the book about the fire affinity. I decided I would focus on it first, as about the only thing this world could teach me about magic was moderation.

Interestingly, it seemed like it was meant for use through all the years, as the few pages that actually described what one could do with a fire affinity and how were barely a fifth of the whole book. The rest were technical diagrams, describing how to craft the fire ‘foci’.

My eyes narrowed. That looked awfully familiar to what I imagined runes to look like. Maybe I could reverse engineer them?

Lina tapped me a few hours later, I had a bunch of diagrams lying next to the book, all holding one group of runes.

When I tried to draw them with my magic earlier, I discovered that the rune group that was depicted first was responsible for forming inner energy – AKA, magic – into a ‘empty’ stone. I had marked which runes were responsible for drawing on my magic, and separated them from the rest on my copies, as I could do that on my own.

They appeared in most of the other rune complexes as well, too. It was interesting and explained why they were so easy to use.

I had no idea how they worked exactly, but it was useful to be able to spawn in objects using only my magic. While the books said that the process would take days of pushing one’s energy into a form, I could do so in seconds. My capacity for magic was simply so far off the charts that I had not to wait for my magic to trickle into the gem, instead I could simply buffer it with my reserves.

This also explained why humans in my world did not use magic. They had it, but it was so weak that it was practically non-existent. And without training like with the attribute gems? It was bound to stay like that.

“Samantha?”

“Ah, sorry. I got lost in thought,” I said, pocketing the orb I created and putting the books into my nightstand.

Walking down to the eating hall, I chatted a bit with her about ‘attributes’.

“I don’t think you should only learn how to use the water attribute.”

“I have fire and lightning, but what can I do with it?” she asked in response.

“No matter what I try, they just explode on me!”

“Seriously?” I asked, remembering what the professor said, then winced.

“Yeah… I can see that being an issue. What’s on the menu, anyway?”

“Stew. May sound boring, but our cook can make that really well,” she said, then tilted her head.

“Still… my attributes only started to act up when I started using the water attribute I had,” she said, and I tilted my head.

“I may have a solution for you, then,” I responded, fishing out the orb I created not an hour earlier from magic, dumb luck, and very fine motion control over both my hands and magic.

“What is that? I remember seeing the fire orb the academy gave you on your nightstand; it looked similar to this.”

“I made this one myself,” I responded, then pointed at the runes in it.

“It is laid with suppression runes. Usually, they’re only used to keep the energy from breaking out of the circuits the runes form, but in this case, they heavily limit the flow of energy as a whole. That in turn means, your mind becomes far more influential over the energy that does flow through it,” I said, handing it to her.

“Don’t tell me you had the same problem as I had…”

“Not exactly,” I responded, not sure how she would react to me telling her that my reserves were at least several hundred times stronger than hers.

The cafeteria was nice enough, and after each of us grabbed themselves a bowl of stew, we sat down at a random table.

I attracked a bit of attention thanks to my hair, but thankfully not too much.

Leonard and someone that was with him came over and asked if they could sit with us, but that was it.

“So, you two ended up sharing a room, I assume?”

I nodded.

“Correct. By the way, what should I expect from the academy?”

“There are some nobles here, but the academy has a strict policy about them. Nobody here is allowed to use any other resources than what they have themselves. Then, there’s the obligatory monster hunt.”

“Monster hunts? What exactly does the academy hunt down?”

“Well, mostly small fry like kobolds or snakes, but also sometimes ogres or wolves. It’s good training to use your powers in battle, because from time to time, some wyverns come here, too.”

I tilted my head.

“I encountered them on my way here. They did not attack me and seemed friendly.”

“Yeah, they are usually docile. But for some reason, near the academy, they get antsy and if they get too close, they attack. We don’t really know why,” the guy next to Leonard said, causing me to nod.

“Ah, I see. By the way, what’s your name?”

“You can call me September. It’s not my real name, but I won’t use that one for private reasons.”

I shrugged.

“You can call me Samantha, but it’s not my original name, either. My reason is probably different from yours, though.”

He tilted his head.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Well, if I had to guess, I’d just say that you have some sort of connection to a powerful individual or family, and since the academy forbids other resources than what you yourself have with you, it’s either because it would scare people of approaching you and thereby breaking that rule, or to hide yourself because something went wrong. Am I right?”

“Mostly,” he said, and I nodded.

“Well, in my case it’s because when I got my strength, my body also changed. I am way healthier than before, and I am sure I’ll live for a few years longer than I would have before. Then, before that happened, I only had the inner energy of a child, and my hair was also different. Nobody would recognize me like this, so I decided it was time for a new start,” I responded, and he nodded.

“Yeah, that also happens from time to time. You say the way your hair looks now is natural?”

I nodded.

“Not sure why, but it’s not really bad unless I’m playing hide and seek.”

A snort was my response.

Putting the empty bowl aside, I then looked at a clock on the wall.

“Recess was at nine, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

It was eight.

“I’d like to visit the library. There's something I’d like to check.”

“You won’t be able to take books with you.”

I shrugged.

“Not really a problem. My memory is pretty good.”

That actually came as a surprise to me, but I could remember almost everything perfectly that happened to me since the moment that self-proclaimed god turned me into alicorns.

“In that case, I’ll show you where it is,” Leonard said, and I nodded.

“The library and our dorm are quite far apart,” Lina then cut in.

“You should start coming back when it’s eight forty-five,” she commented, and I tried to remember that time as good as I could.

“Thank you,” I responded, then followed Leonard.

In the library, I grabbed the same book I was given before, as well as books about the earth, water, air, lightning, darkness, light and life essences. I then ordered them in front of me, so that the four ‘elements’ formed edges and the other four laid between them: Life between earth and water, lightning between air and fire, light between water and fire and darkness between earth and air.

That made it even easier to memorize what I was searching for.

Flipping through them, I looked into the creation of the essence stones. That was what I was after.

As expected, the first few steps were pretty much the same for each of the stones, but I also discovered a part of the rune that was responsible for giving the resulting essence stone it’s color. When I removed that part, it became white, and when I filled it with a simple circle, it became black.

Next, the runes holding the magic in check. They were a bit different for each essence, but they only varied in strength. Lightning and fire were more prone to misfires than water or light, after all.

Life was a special case.

That rune was far more complex than any of the other attributes, and when I looked over it, the best I could tell was that it redirected the energy back into the caster. Maybe the life attribute was capable of consuming life force? Now that was a scary thought.

Wait. They consumed life time, not life force. I barked out a laugh, I was immortal.

The runes that caused an easier connection between the magic of the holder and the stone were the same on each of them. After copying them once, I glanced at the clock, still having time.

Next were the different conversion runes. Those were the last part, but the biggest one, too.

Fire and lighting looked like less more than a few random lines, but there was an order in it. Water and earth, on the other hand, were made up of few, carefully placed lines. The same with life and light. All four had variations of the same circular muster.

Air was somewhat a mix out of them.

And then there was darkness.

It was a circle with four runes attached to it, each forming a small part of the complete rune. I had no idea what the four smaller runes meant, but I could tell that one was responsible for illusions and one for making sure that the magic got cast on the intended target instead of on the caster.

Another look at the clock told me it was time to clean up, so I closed the books and put them back on the shelves before starting to walk back to my dorm. One thought stayed in my head, though:

If those stones were so easy to interact with, why do the people only have attributes for a few of them instead of all of them?

The next morning, I was visiting a combat class.

It was different from the other classes in the sense that you weren’t grouped after year but after what you could do, and technic and strategy were favored over brute-forcing wins.

“Someone new?” I then heard someone right from me call out.

Raising an eyebrow, I turned to whoever said that. He wore a grey robe that had a light green and a light blue essence stone attached to it. He was fighting with life and lightning essence, something that I heard was quite rare as a combination.

“Yes. And you are?”

“I’m the ruler of this place!” he responded, self-confidence and overinflated ego clearly audible in his voice.

“Yea I’m not bowing to you.”

“WHAT?”

I crossed my arms.

“What I said. You look like an arrogant ass to me, not like someone I’d follow.”

He started to get angry more and more.

“Don’t think you can just say things like that and get away, or that I’d go easy on you because you’re a girl! I challenge you to a duel!” he exclaimed, and I thought a moment about it.

A bit of real combat experience would be good for me, so why not?

“I accept,” I said, and he got an almost wolf-like grin.

“Perfect! See that circle over there? In five minutes, I’ll meet you there,” he said, walking away.

I then turned around, noticing the worried look the nearby students gave me.

“Is something the matter?”

“Well, he’s a… problem, to say the least,” someone I didn’t recognize said.

“He beats the new guys and sometimes girls to show that he’s stronger than them. The problem is, even the stronger ones here cannot measure up to him, and I’ve scarcely seen him with such anger.”

“Soo… on a scale from one to done, that’s up there with kicking an elder wyvern?”

“Pretty much.”

I then gave a grin.

“For normal people, you mean.”

I walked over to one side of the circle while he stood at the other side. We were about one-third of the way from the border of it to the center, the circle itself being around ninety meters in diameter.

“So, what are the rules of this?” I asked, and he grinned.

“I’m glad you asked! We will attack each other until one of us is in no state to continue the fight! If that’s you – which it will be – you will drop out of the academy – if you’re still alive by then, that is.”

“Tie?”

“Won’t happen.”

“I’d still like to know. What happens when I win, too.”

“If you tie or win, you’d be able to partake in the same combat classes as me.”

“Is this an ‘anything goes’ duel?”

“Yes. But nothing you could conjure up will be able to stand against me,” he responded, laughing.

“I see. Then, I should allow you to attack me first, as the fight would be unfair otherwise,” I said, causing him to turn red from anger in a few seconds.

“WHAT? Do you think you can beat me without dodging?! Have at you, then!” he screamed, launching a white beam of energy at me.

It hit me square in the chest and pushed me back a bit, then a tingle ran over my entire body. However, other than that, nothing seemed to happen.

My magic seemed to become a bit more stable, though.

“Odd feeling,” I commented, getting a surprised look from my opponent.

“You should have aged half a century and fainted on the spot. I’m impressed, you actually were unaffected by that.”

That should explain it. If my body is now a century older, of course my magic is more settled down now.

That means, whatever magic actually was in this body.

I decided that I should attack him now as well, collecting mana in my fingertip and shooting a beam of yellow energy at him.

He dodged, and it exploded in the sand behind him in a fireball.

“Ah, you have a fire affinity. Unluckily, that won’t help you against me,” he responded, before collecting energy again in his hand.

I rushed forwards, bringing my fist down where he was, but he had moved to the side.

Using that moment of surprise, he slammed the energy in my back, and I could tell that it started changing my body.

Then, I realized that I felt like I was slowly losing control, like Luna when turning into Nightmare.

“What did… you do?” I asked, my voice cracking for a moment.

“Why, I just awakened the beast inside of you! You’ll turn into some low-level, unintelligent monster, and then I can easily kill you!” he responded, laughing.

However, I felt not like I was turning into an animal, and my anger at him seemed what allowed me to stay in control. I could tell that I was changing under the illusion the ring provided, and energy started to flow around me, obstructing my body from view.

Not a second too soon, as in that moment, the ring flickered out, returning me to my alicorn form. Or, what was left of it.

I had lost almost all of my fur, and my tail seemed to have become both much longer and much thicker than before.

My neck was lengthening, and I could tell that my face was changing. My horn also was growing longer.

It took me not long to realize my robe would rip when I would not put it away, and the ring still seemed to work well enough to store it away. When I looked down, I could see grey scales on my chest, and they ran down, through my crotch and along my tail, which now was more like that of a snake’s, with the aurora hair that was attached to it now on its tip instead on my back.

The rest of my body aside from my wings was covered in white, much smaller scales. On my hip, my cutie mark still existed, now made up of yellow and orange scales instead of fur.

My feet and hands had changed into claws, but my hands still were similar enough to actual hands that I probably could grasp stuff with them. I just would have to mind the claws.

(AN: Why the hell are ‘claws’ (paws) and ‘claws’ (fingernails) named the same?!)

Interestingly, my now visible jewelry stayed, and the rings on my arms had turned into golden gloves that left my fingers free, while the golden shoes I had turned into something similar along my feet and lower legs.

I looked like a dragon, but with all the jewels, my mane, tail, and my still feathery wings, I also kind of didn’t.

The transformation finished, and the energies around me died down, revealing my form.

“A wyvern? You must have had impressive potential. Too bad it ends here,” he said, firing a lightning bolt at me.

I just tilted my head. That little zap was supposed to do what, exactly?

When the lightning bolt touched me, I realized that he was more than just bark, and had the tiniest bit bite to him. I actually felt that!

“Impressive,” I commented, getting a shocked look from him.

“You’re still sentient? How? You should be completely taken over by the beast within you!”

“Oh, but I am,” I responded, my horn lighting up and burning with more magic than I had used in my whole time on this planet.

A fireball twenty meters in diameter appeared out of nowhere above my head, crashing into the area where he stood just a second before. He managed to dodge, but just barely.

In return, he sent another lightning bolt in my direction, but I took to the air, now hovering above the battlefield. I decided not to use magic to beat him.

I could feel the air around me, and pressure at the back of my throat.

Opening my mouth, I let loose a torrent of flames, and I noticed him protecting himself with a shield of some sort.

I felt so alive! And I knew I could win every fight, starting with this one!

A flap of my wings brought me back to the ground, and a lightning-fast punch shattered his shield, throwing him back. My wings flapped again, causing me to shoot in the air, and another flap sent me downwards.

He had no time to react before I made a barrel roll forwards, extending my tail and crashing it into him. The impact once again sent him flying, this time in the opposite direction than my previous attack did.

My feet touched the ground, I turned around, and I jumped forwards again, but I was stopped by a red energy field.

Turning my head to the side, I noticed someone in a white robe standing there, looking at me.

“This duel was not approved.”

“I agreed to it,” I responded, my scratchy voice causing him to shudder slightly.

The energy holding me in place was quite strong, I noticed.

“If you attack him again, we will have to fight you, as right now, you are a wyvern,” he said, and I chuckled.

“How about this: You release me now, and I will only end my fight with him,” I responded, pointing at the guy on the other end of the arena, who was gathering energy between his hands, probably for another lightning attack.

“I can’t do that,” he said, and I sighed.

Who does that guy think he is, holding me back from the fight that was mine!

“So be it,” I said, and then dumped about five percent of my magic reserves in my horn, sending a blast of pure energy outwards and shattering whatever was holding me in place.

I aimed my horn at him, and then let loose the magic. He got shocked by it, then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell unconscious, while the magic rubber banded back into my horn and into my reserves from there.

“That took you far too long! Now die! To the Magnificent Lightning!” my ~~real~~ other opponent screamed, launching an impressive lightning bolt at me.

I extended my wings, caught it with my right one, and then redirected it with my pegasus magic.

The amount of power it contained was staggering, and I nearly lost control, but only nearly. The lighting arched along my wings, and after stopping at my wingtip of my left wing for a second before jumping forwards, hitting him and causing such an impact that the area around us was tinted blue for a second.

Afterwards, he fell over forwards, smoldering and fainted. Now that I thought about it, wasn’t this quite a bit like that agnikai or how it was called from the avatar the last airbender series?

Feeling a sense of dread, I then jumped to the side, evading another lightning bolt.

Behind me someone with far more strength stood, his right hand coated in electricity.

“Leave, Monster,” he said, and I stared at him.

“That is what I came here for,” I deadpanned in response, causing him to raise an eyebrow.

“What do you mean?”

“I need to leave this world to find my sisters again. The academy was my best bet thanks to the number of artifacts and energy that is around this place,” I responded, and he sighed.

“You will not get any of those artifacts. For that, I will guarantee personally,” he said, and I snorted before turning to the sidelines.

“Who is this guy?” I asked, jabbing a thumb in his direction.

Everything was silent for a moment, but then I received an answer.

“…the headmaster.”

I turned to him.

“Don’t make me laugh. You don’t even have a chance at stopping me,” I said, a blue fireball appearing atop my horn, small, but with incredible amounts of heat everyone nearby felt.

“I wanted a fair fight, so I only used my body and a bit of my power to make my body lighter, so that I could fly. Against you, I’d fight seriously,” I said, drawing upon my magic again and this time radiating it, pushing everything else in close proximity away, including his lightning energy.

His eyes widened when he realized that I could suppress his power.

“I am a goddess in all butNAME! I came here in the hope to get help with finding those I lost, but I got attacked time and time again by ARROGANT IDIOTS! They can’t beat me!” I exclaimed, gesturing to the idiot behind me, before pointing at him. “YOU can’t beat me! And if you try, there won’t be much left of the academy afterwards!”

“Very well, I know an impossible fight when I see one. What is it that you want, then?” he asked, and I smirked.

“Not much,” I responded, feeling the anger slowly flow out of me. My form started to revert, and in two flashes of light, I once again stood there in my human form (including robe, luckily), nearly kneeling over from the energy loss and the exhaustion, but both the knowledge what would happen if I did and my alicorn body were preventing that from happening.

“Now, since you are no longer consumed by your wrath, could you tell us what happened here, miss Faust?” the headmaster asked, quickly changing gears, and I walked over to a nearby bench before letting myself fall onto it.

“There is a …condition… in my family. We try our best not to turn into those. What you saw was my secondary form, my opposite, my negative. I loathe hurting people, and I was supposed to one day rule over a small kingdom with a caring hand. No creature would have had to fear me, as I would allow every sentient being that would not attack the others to reside there; including wyverns and other beings you would call monsters.”

“I see. And what turned you into this second form of yours? And what was it?”

“The guy I was originally fighting was using something that was supposed to turn me into a ‘beast’, his words, not mine. It must have awakened what slumbered deep inside of me. And I turned into something that was a fusion between an alicorn and a dragon.”

“What are those?”

“An alicorn is a big pony with a horn and wings like you have seen on me, and a mark of their destiny on their flanks. The sun symbol I had in the same area was one such mark. A dragon is a stronger wyvern with arms, legs, only one pair of leathery wings, and a tail. Most older ones are quadruped. They usually have horns and spikes along their spines and tail. Normally, they are smaller than wyverns, but there are also those like lord Torch, who is literally the size of a small mountain. His head is four times as high as you are standing,” I said, then looked around and grabbed a nearby water bottle in my levitation before starting to drink what was left in it.

“And your claims about being a goddess? Were they true?”

I shook my head.

“No. I am practically immortal, but I am no god. I just have an incredible big reservoir of energy, which just means I could act as a god and likely not be found out for decades.”

“That is what some see as a god, is it not? And why do you try not to become this ‘opposite’ side of you when it gives you such a big power boost?”

I leveled an even look at him.

“I was nearly feral. The only thing that held my sapience and sentience together was my burning desire to obliterate the guy that challenged me to a fight. The next time this happens, I might not be able to keep control and start destroying the city. Which would take not too long, all things considered.”

A thoughtful look crossed his face.

“Yes, that is indeed a considerable drawback for this. Now, I remember you saying you wanted something from us to leave and reunite with your sisters. What is it?”

“Somewhere here is probably a quite literal tear in reality. If I find it, I can probably use it to get closer to my sisters again, but with all the life here, I just can’t say where it is.”

“I see. Then, how about a deal?”

I raised an eyebrow, then drained the last bit of water from the bottle I had picked up.

“A deal?”

0 - 0: Vortex

Author's Note

So, I've got quite a lot to say today.

First, everything from now on is a rewrite of the original story, since I would assume I have gotten better in the last two years since I started writing. All probability after, this will not be the last rewrite, either.

Secondly, for those interested, the old story can be found HERE, where it will stay. I will make no guarantee for the pictures still being there, though.

Third, changes of perspective will usually be indicated: For example, (Chrysalis) or (Tia). However, this does not always apply, and just scene changes will not have such a marking, also, it will only happen with the main characters.

And fourth, as I have discovered at this point, the first few chapters of my stories are always a bit weirder than the rest - so stick around for a while, and judge me then.

-Moterius

0 - 0: Vortex

Part 0: Prologue on Earth

Chapter 0: Vortex

Noticing my surroundings, I quickly realized I was dreaming.

Around me, there was space, and I could see thousands of stars around me. But there was no gravity or air, but all that did not affect me.

You are awake. Welcome, I heard a voice behind me, and even though I had no footing, I managed to turn around as if I had.

In front of me, a humanoid without facial features hovered, seemingly formed out of blue gas, littered with small motes of light.

“And you are?” I found myself asking, getting a chuckle from him.

I’m a god. That’s the closest word to describe me in your language, he responded, and I raised an eyebrow.

“Why would you entertain yourself with people like us, then? Aren’t you far above us, if that is true?”

He shook his head.

No, I once was mortal, and from time to time I come down to worlds I look over to relax and remind me that I am not perfect. I am supposed to watch over worlds, not to destroy them.

But that is not the only reason.

Called it.

There's a balance that must be upheld. Universes must be created and destroyed at similar rates, and in the same way, entropy needs to stay in balance. However, there are concepts that have to be balanced, too. One of those concepts is the balance of both perceived and fundamental order against chaos.

“Basically, an MLP copy on the scale of the multiverse?” I deadpanned, causing him to freeze up.

Excuse me for a second, he then said, and I raised a brow as he held his hand to where his ear and mouth would be, forming a phone with his thumb and pinkie finger.

Faust? Yeah, it’s me.

…what? NO! I just wanted to tell you that I got another world where yours seeped over!

…check the coordinates? Why?

…that could explain it. Why did you place those copies there?

How. HOW did you know that?

…you know, forget it. I’ll talk with you later.

He then turned back to me, sighing.

Well, this certainly is curious, and I had no idea your worlds were this close to each other.

Now, I was just annoyed about a colleague of mine, it has nothing to do with you. What I want from you is to create a bit of chaos.

“What exactly do you mean?”

Well, remember what I said about balance earlier? This is it. Giving you even a tiny amount of power would cause enough primal chaos to rebalance it against the predictability of spawned universes.

And before you ask, let me explain. What I – we essentially do is managing universes. Spawning in new ones, destroying old ones, observing those who suddenly gain extra time dimensions or laws of nature, that kind of stuff.

The problem here is, that every time we do not personally create a universe, it essentially uses a ‘preset’, while nothing inside these universes change. On their own, they may be chaotic, but looked at a whole, you find millions of copies amongst which there are only rarely unique worlds.

And there are only four known entities, including me and Faust, capable of changing that, at least right now.

Unluckily, we simply do not have the time to deal with all of this. While time travel is possible, you usually cannot use it to change things outside of specific universes, nor travel in the past from your perspective. Slowing down time or linking universes up in a way that time in one does not flow from the perspective of another is easy, actually traveling back in time from your perspective is incredibly hard, except if done inside of one singular universe.

Basically, since I and my colleagues create those universes, we cannot go back in time, and if we do try, reality usually makes that the new baseline, essentially making our efforts useless in that regard. For that reason, we need other people who were not there. If you jump into another universe, you can jump to any point in time you were not there yet from your perspective when observing the time inside of that universe.

I blinked.

“Eh, what?”

To simplify: You can jump to any universe to any point in time you do not exist afterward of – from your perspective. Since I created most of the universes around here, I cannot time travel between any of them. If I do, before I can enter one, I must wait before the past me traveled back in time, which makes the whole ordeal completely useless.

And what I want from you is quite simple. You’ll be given a power that was chosen randomly – because outside of universes, randomness is still sometimes random, then sent back to where I plucked you from. Since I am not in your world right now, that means I can send you back to the exact moment I took you from.

That one interaction from me is enough to change your world enough to make it permanently different from the others.

Your power could be anything from changing your eye color to becoming a reality bender of the highest order, but it’ll be probably something in between. So? Do you accept it?

I thought a moment about it. Right up until now, I had lived a relatively normal life, but then I wondered how it would be if I had supernatural abilities.

“What if I can’t control it?” I asked, a bit worried.

Ah, I can see why you would see that as a problem. You get your power and I will give you a few items to control them better when I know what it is. Deal?

I thought a moment about it.

“Okay.”

Perfect! he exclaimed, summoning a bucket filled with hundreds of tiny scrolls, before shaking it.

Pick one!

Grabbing into the bucket, I felt around for a bit, then eventually touched a scroll that was feeling warm. Intrigued, I pulled it out, and when I opened it, I could see four sun symbols.

Nobody else ever got that one. Now, I won’t tell you what this is, but after what I heard, you’ll know what it is when you wake up. Also, heads up: That one is not designed by me, he said, before rummaging through a desk that suddenly appeared behind him.

Handing me a small book and four rune-laid, silver and golden rings that were about three to four centimeters in diameter, he then smirked.

Good luck. Have fun.

The only thought I had when he sent me flying back to wherever I came from was why in the world he would say that.

“Vortex?”

Faust… was it really alright lying to him? This is the fourth time we have seen this happen, after all.

“He’ll probably understand. Also, what you said was not exactly wrong.”

But not technically right, either. I will observe the world for a while to make sure it’s path truly changes. It worked for the last three times, but you can never be too sure.

“Do that, if you think that is a good solution,” Faust responded before leaving.

0 - 1: Charcoal

When I woke up again, I felt as if a truck had run me over. My entire body was arching, and I knew for a fact that every bit of movement would be painful.

I still knew I needed to stand up, though.

Sighing, I opened my eyes and took notice of how blurry everything looked. I could remember my talk with that ‘god’ I met in my dream, but if he really were a god, he at least could have suppressed the pain. Or told me his name, at least.

Sitting up, I saw my perspective shift as expected, but I could still see the ceiling above me at the same time. It disoriented me enough so that I fell back again, landing atop of someone else.

Now, while that alone would have been enough cause for concern, what really worried me that, in the exact same moment, I also felt someone fall onto me.

Groaning, I focused on the feel of my body, and to my surprise, I could sense headaches and that sore feeling multiple times. By then, I realized that I somehow had managed to get at least a second body, which I controlled somehow, but I did not know which ones I had.

Focusing on the body I just tried to move into a sitting position, I managed to move only it. It was far easier than splitting my perception and control over more than one body, and when I pushed myself up again, I realized that I still felt sensations from the body below me. However, I also had a feeling as if there were more than just two bodies.

I was moving carefully, but that stopped when I started to both feel a raising heat and hear a sizzling sound.

Opening my eyes in alarm, I looked around, accidentally doing so with all my eyes again. Luckily, I managed to focus on one pair of eyes, but when I looked behind me, I could see three figures lying behind me.

They were anthromorph ponies, no better way to say it.

And, I knew those ponies.

However, there still was the fact that I could feel and hear something burning, and I quickly realized that it was because two of the three ponies on the bed had manes and tails made from flames.

I panicked for a second, but I then realized that the only things that were burning were the actual flames of their manes and tails. Even though they touched the bed frame and sheets, they did not burn.

Now not panicked as much, but (thanks to the scare) awake enough to take note of them, I looked over the three ponies on the bed. One was Celestia. Magenta eyes, crown, four-colored aurora hair and tail, big white wings, and feet covered with golden shoes.

Around her wrists were golden bracelets without any other details than a few engravings, and she wore a robe that was covering most of her body. It was not covering her arms or wings, though, and held up by the necklace she was always wearing.

It was made out of a silk-like material and was lined with more gold. Interestingly, a belt with a similar design was wrapped around her waist. It seemed to only serve decorative purposes.

From there one, each of the others wore less clothing than the one before 'her'. Next to Celestia, I could see Daybreaker, although buried below the wings of the former.

Getting both of them to stand up using the wall to hold on to when I concentrated on another body, I then took a good look over her.

The wings were lined with the orange armor I remembered from that season seven (eight?) episode, and the crown on her head was made from the same orange material. The gem inserted into it was a deep, bloody red.

Her chest was luckily still covered, but the orange breastplate left not much to the imagination. It had a lightning-shaped form, and whilst it was still bearing the sun mark in its middle, it left one with a good look at her cleavage and her belly. And her ribs. And her shoulders.

I was honestly wondering at this point if the armor was purely decoration or enchanted to catch attacks in the free areas. It would be easier to list the areas that were covered than those that were not.

Her arms and feet were covered in orange gloves and boots, respectively, and her crotch was covered with another piece of armor that looked more like a slip than a normal piece of clothing.

Both gloves ended about halfway up her upper arms, and the boots also stopped about two-thirds up her legs, leaving nothing to the imagination. Her cutie mark was clearly visible, a bright yellow sun amidst an orange mark that looked more like a flame than a splotch of color.

What really drove home that she was a demon was her face, though. I could tell that she had fangs, and both her pupil and her sclera were a dark red, while her iris was a bright yellow and surrounded by a small ring of orange whilst also being silted like a cat’s.

(In the image she may have been human, but in this story, Daybreaker has fur like the other ones.)

The third one on the bed was a not-so-well-known version of Celestia. Nightmare Star.

She appeared once in that card game that someone tried creating. It was kind of similar to the pokémon collection card game, I think. I just learned about her randomly while browsing the web.

However, unlike in the card game, she had not white but brown fur and wings for some reason, and I only identified her by the ridiculous amount of jewelry she wore.

It was the only things that she wore.

Her hands and feet were in short golden gloves and shorts respectively, and from each of her ears hung a light pink and dark blue crystal, respectively.

Atop her head sat a crown fitted with five amethyst gems and fake demon horns, and on her actual horn, I could spot a thin golden ring. She wore three necklaces, two little more than golden chains, but the third one was something akin to the one that Celestia wore. Unlike Celestia's, though, it was bigger and more decorated. The gem in front of it was also bigger, and along the gold connecting it to her back, two more gems hung down in the same colors as her earrings, while two more gems were embedded in the sides of the necklace a bit more to the front.

Around her right arm, another golden ring sat, slightly above her elbow, and around her right leg, a chain also made from gold wrapped itself around twice.

When I looked at those chains, I also noticed that her cutie mark was different from Celestia’s as well. It looked nearly the same, but it was slightly darker, and the rays from the sun were a dark orange.

Her face once again showed me that she was not prey but a predator, her sclera darker than normal, her iris like queen Chrysalis with two yellow-red colors and her pupil a dull, but still recognizable yellow color and the same silted form.

Like Sombra, she emitted energy from her eyes, but unlike Sombra, in her case, that energy was formed out of flames as well. All the flames along her body had an orange color, and that was once again showing me that this was a vastly different version of Nightmare Star than the original was, but with all the jewelry and the crown with the fake horns, she could not be anyone else.

Lastly, there was the one ‘I’ currently was, and using ‘Celestia’s‘ vision, I could tell that ‘I’ was Solar Flare, the (first) ‘fan version’ of Daybreaker before the community came into contact with Daybreaker.

My body was black, and the material my ‘skin’ was made from reminded me of obsidian. There were areas that looked like they were made from hot, glowing lava instead, though. Between those areas, cracks were visible, reminding me of the cracks that lava created when breaking through old layers of volcanoes.

Hands, feet, and for some odd reason the breasts were yellow glowing, but around them were not the only areas with cracks visible. From my eyes, I could see some going outwards, almost looking like make-up, and on my side and along my arms I also noticed some cracks.

However, I was not indecent. That would be the joke of the century – a golem with a gender. I just looked female.

My cutie mark was in the color scheme of Nightmare Star, but unlike hers, mine was made up out of the same cosmetic cracks that littered my body, causing it to be twisted, distorted.

My eyes had an orange sclera, yellow iris, and cat-like black pupils, but that also looked demonic when compared to the black frame of my face.

Instead of having eyebrows, they, too, were cracks running along the upper edge of my eyes.

What caught my eye though (aside from the fact she/I had no fur) was the horn. Unlike the others, there was no grove spiraling around it.

It instead looked more like Sombra’s horn. Bent backward and a deep, red color, while being covered in what once again looked like cooled down lava, giving it a more dangerous look.

The flames that made up her hair and tail were yellow and bright, but there was also a bit orange mixed in.

I moved up my hand, and I saw myself moving up my hand. Deciding to stop pondering about this, I looked around, trying to see the book and the rings that quote-unquote ‘god’ gave us.

Eventually spotting both the book and the rings on my nightstand, I made my way over to them, noticing a note pinned down by the rings.

‘On your horns, they make you look ‘normal’ if your base form is close enough to what is normal in the dimension that you’re in,’ I read, picking them up.

When I put one of the rings on my horn, it slid down until it touched the base, then I could see myself changing. My fur vanished as well as my wings and horn, then my eyes turned into normal, human eyes with a brown iris. I essentially looked like a muscular, African woman.

Were it not for the fact that my hair was a bright orange color.

Testing the rings out on the others, they, too, turned into women, but for some reason the clothes they wore vanished while doing so. I choose to ignore that for now.

Celestia and Nightmare Star became white women, and Daybreaker had slightly darker skin. Aside from Celestia, who had pink hair, the others had orange hair again.

Interestingly, I was still genderless and now noted that the same applied to to the other three as well. Were alicorns just genderless or was it some property of the rings?

But how does that explain Cadence, then? Musings for a different time, I guess.

We also were about 1.9 m in ‘human’ form, while as anthromorph ponies (not counting the horns) each of 'us' was about 2.1 meters high.

'Our' faces all looked similar enough that we could be mistaken for siblings, and another thing I noted was that the canines of all but Celestia were bigger than normal, about one and a half times their usual, human size.

Interestingly, it seemed like this was not a transformation, but a mix out of transformation and illusion. I could still feel the fur on my bodies (well, save Flare’s), but we did shrink down to 1.9 meters of height.

I wondered how this mix was possible.

Next, I picked up the book that was lying below the rings and the note. It had the title ‘basic magic along the universes’, and I found myself snorting upon reading that title.

The introduction spoke about the fact that most magic was almost the same throughout the universe, and then started talking about some technical stuff I really didn’t understand.

I skipped over the introduction and then opened the first chapter about mana manipulation.

That sounded advanced, but what did I know?

‘Mana manipulation: Sounds hard, sometimes is, and absolutely necessary for almost every type of magic.
Before you can start casting spells, you need to be able to draw upon your magic. For that, you need to feel your magic first. Meditation is a good starting point for this.
Concentrate and ignore everything around you. Ignore your sense of sight, sound, and hearing. Only focus inwards and do so until you can feel something more inside of you. Depending on the amount of magic you have, this could be the easiest or hardest step in learning how to utilize it.
Eventually, you should feel your magic inside of you. If you don’t, you should search something that can help you focus, like a wizard’s wand if you are in a world where magic is something that is known.
Alternatively, you could use the rune at the end of this chapter to make drawing out your magic easier.
When you have found your magic, the next step is to form it. Bring it up to wherever you want to focus it, then form it there in a sphere. Move it around and then make it as weak as possible without completely absorbing it.
Many spells require both enormous amounts of magic and incredible fine control over it at the same time. For that reason, you should also learn how to regulate the flow of mana, and many beginner’s spells can be overloaded by even an amateur who has nearly no magic.’

I, in turn, sat down on my bed again, my hunger forgotten, and started to do exactly that.

After a few seconds or hours, (I really couldn’t tell,) I sensed a white, hot glowing ball of energy inside of ‘me’. The interesting part was that I felt that only once – even though I should feel it four times, mediating with four bodies.

Trying to coax a bit of magic out of it, I then felt four small orbs of energy splitting off it. It seemed that whatever the ‘origin’ of my magic was is bound to my consciousness, and not my bodies.

Opening my eyes again, I blinked upon realizing that the horns had become half-visible again, the energy that was split off now running along them.

‘Celestia’ had a soft, golden glow along her horn.

‘Solar Flare’ had a dark orange color running along her horn, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the color of her horn or of her magic.

‘Daybreaker’ had a deep, aggressive red color along her horn.

And ‘Nightmare Star’ a sickly looking, grey-ish yellow tone.

Interestingly, that magic – because what else could it be – was quite warm, and I could tell that only ‘Celestia’s’ Magic was not so hot it would cause burns on anything alive it touches.

Drawing back the magic, I managed to make it vanish again, and then I concentrated solely on ‘Celestia’, trying to only bring forth her magic. Once again, since I now only focused on one body alone, I could do things with much greater precision.

Remembering the feeling the magic caused in my horn, and drawing upon it again, I found it quite easy to draw up the magic again.

The real question was what to do with it.

Before I opened up the next chapter of the book, I realized I was a bit hungry, and I shrugged, before standing up and stretching. I could tell that my wings moved while doing so, but they did not touch the bed or the wall like they should have.

The only thought I had was pocket dimensions, and I choose to just ignore the question of where my wings were right now. Probably better for my sanity, too.

Author's Note

Screw it, I'm tired, and I'll rewrite this anyways at some point.

Same deal as last time (but without the colors this time 'round):
To avoid further confusion and make writing easier for me, I will refer to ‘Celestia’ as ‘Cel’, Nightmare Star as NMS, Daybreaker as DB and Solar Flare as SF when perspective becomes important. To a ‘real’ Celestia I’ll refer as ‘TIA’.

I'll search the images later.

0 - 2: Fashion

Sitting in my kitchen, I watched myself making breakfast. The room was too small to have more than one person running around, and I also was relatively sure I couldn’t control more than one of my bodies at the same time yet.

Or at least not so that nothing goes wrong, anyway.

Interestingly, it seemed like both Nightmare and Flare had no ‘hunger’, and I couldn’t help but wonder what they ‘ate’.

Appetite, yes, and it seemed they could sustain themselves upon normal food, but no hunger.

I still made each eat a few sandwiches, and then I started thinking about what I should do.

First off, clothing. I would need to get clothes for all four of them, so that I could at least go outside. Interestingly, when I looked at my bodies and ignored the fact that they all were naked (which was now that they were not covered in fur considerably harder than before), I could tell that their proportions were exactly the same. Same height, same waist, same head-form, same everything.

That at last made this ordeal a little bit easier.

I eventually decided to go as Celestia, since I wanted to try and lower the temperature the magic the others had. I wanted to be able to levitate stuff without melting it.

Still, could be used as attack.

Grabbing a few (hopefully) androgynous clothes, I then pulled them on. I could not see anything out of place, and they were not too big or too small, so I decided to roll with it.

Right now, I wore a jeans, some older shoes that still were good, a yellow T-shirt and a white sweatshirt with a few black specks for decoration. Grabbing my wallet, I then made myself scare, jogging into the city, my goal being the clothing store.

Luckily, while being in anthromorph form my balance was off from what I was used to as a human, but when I was disguised, my body luckily felt like there weren’t wings worth at least fifteen kilos of weight attached to my back.

(SF)

Having played with the rings for a while, I found that they had no influence on my magic but made my wings ‘vanish’.

Shrugging, I started pulling my magic up again, being able to do that because I could multitask enough to keep walking as Celestia.

Feeling my horn lighting up again, I then focused, bringing the magic in front of my eyes. I could move it with my hands, but as soon as I stopped concentrating on it, the magic vanished.

Bringing the light in front of me again, I then tried pulling out as much magic out of it as I could, and it started to dim. To my eyes, it soon became invisible, but I could still touch it with my hands and feel where it was with both my hands and horn.

‘Feeling’ things with my horn was quite an interesting sensation.

Closing my eyes, I then tried to move as Daybreaker, and while I could do that, the strain on my focus was too big, and the ball of magic dissipated.

Sighing, I stood up myself while sitting down as Daybreaker again, picking up the book myself.

The chapter about magic manipulation also had an addendum about magic that hurt others when being used and recommended to try and strip away it’s aura.

The ‘aura’ was essentially the imprint one left when using their magic. It allowed one to identify who cast magic, and what gives most spells their color.

Not all, of course, a spell designed to generate blue light won’t turn orange when Flare would use it, but it accounted for most.

The process described was not sounding too hard, so I focused again, bringing an orb of magic in existence and then started draining it again.

However, this time I concentrated on draining the ‘me’ in the magic, not the magic itself. I noticed that while doing so the magic got pulled back as well, but there was a oh so tiny moment where it did not move.

Using that short amount of time where they were separated, I managed to pull out most of my aura. It was still there, and the magic was still warm and had the same orange color as before, but it was considerably cooler than before.

I tried to drain more of my aura out of the magic, but I then got surprised when someone spoke to ‘Celestia’, causing me to lose my grip of magic and causing a short burst of pressure that caused a bit of a mess by whirling around the lighter objects in the room. Luckily, nothing broke or was set aflame.

However, I should definitively check up on her.

(CEL)

“Excuse me, miss?”

Shocked out of my stupor, I realized I had arrived where I wanted to go and was standing in front of the store. I blushed upon realizing I completely forgot about this body of mine.

…that was a sentence I never even thought I’d ever say.

“Ah, sorry. I got lost in thought,” I responded, and he nodded.

Stepping inside the store, I looked around, and I picked up a few items to check if they would fit me. I ended up picking a t-shirt with a flame motive, a light jacket, some underwear and slightly better fitting jeans, as well as another plain blue t-shirt.

Neither my looks nor what I bought was what caught the stares of the cashier, but the fact that I bought everything four times.

I shrugged; it wasn’t really that important what the people thought about me.

When I arrived back home, I put the new clothes I bought (save the jeans) into the washer, then pulled the ring off my horn. I realized I left my clothes on, but they vanished in the same manner my robe did when I put the ring on originally.

That was… useful. It meant that I would have no problem changing between forms and no need to carry clothes if I wanted to hide myself.

Trying to move my wings, I found that I could do so by imaging them as my arms, and I stepped in my garden.

Since I was living a bit out of town, I had a quite big property, and I tried to flap my wings, but I only got a tiny bit of lift.

Walking back in my house, I turned my computer on, then watched some videos of birds flying in slow motion, trying to remember them as exact as possible, then walked back outside.

I found that I could remember the motions perfectly, and I then started to move my wings like I saw in the video. I started to feel a pulling sensation on my back, and before long, I was lifting from the ground a bit.

Moving the wings faster, I now was hovering above the ground, and I tried to move, by tilting the wings slightly forwards. It had the effect I hoped for, but at the same time it also meant I had less lift, causing me to stumble upon falling the twenty centimeters back down to the ground.

Trying again, I found myself moving my wings faster when I started, lifting me up about half a meter, and then started beating them in the rhythm I had before. I hovered in place, then slowed down long enough so that I sank, now once again only a few centimeters above the ground.

Interestingly, it seemed like I was able to hover without problems, the question was why.

Then, a burst of air caught in my wings, causing me to stumble sideways in the air. I fell down again, groaning.

It gave me an idea, though. I quickly switched to Flare, who also pulled the ring off her horn, then came out and opened her wings. I flew up again, then got her to beat her wings once while holding them perpendicular to the ground, causing a similar gust of air like the one that threw me off last time.

Since I knew now that a bust of wind would come, as soon as I felt it hitting me and tilting me to the right, I beat my right wing, causing me to fall over to the left because I did it too strong.

“Again!” I said to myself, dusting off the robe and beating my wings again, raising in the air.

Eventually, I would be able to correct my flight unconsciously, which was something I would desperately need when actually flying higher than a few centimeters.

0 - 3: Trust

Author's Note

~~So I just realized my story had left the ‘top 10’ window on the website or whatever it’s called.~~
~~I can’t have that! Have another chapter!~~
Dang didn’t work.

0 - 3: Trust

(DB)

Having slept after training flying – I eventually switched after Celestia became too tired training with Star – I was woken up by the ringing of my handy.

Knowing that custom ringtone, I grabbed the phone, looked at the clock and answered it, my brain not properly working although having four times the volume it had before now.

“What is it, Lukas, it’s like five o’clock in the morning. The hell do you want?” I growled while trying to suppress a yawn.

Unlike him, I wasn’t one of the people who could stand up early and be awake.

“Hey, could you give me to Samuel? I haven’t talked with him in a while.”

I thought a moment if I should tell him the truth or not, then decided to just go with it.

“I’m Samuel, although I should go by Samantha now,” I retorted, getting awake slightly more than before.

“Seriously? Don’t screw with me, Samuel is male.”

I groaned.

“Summer, 2016. Me, Lisa, you and your sister, the lake, you thinking you saw a squid,” I shot back, knowing that only the people I just listed knew about that day.

On the other end of the connection, I could hear something clattering to the ground.

“…r-really? You’re serious?” he then asked, a slight amount of panic in his voice.

“Yeah,” I responded, then looked at my wristwatch that was lying on my nightstand. I completely forgot about that one.

“Then, how about we meet at my place? It’s Sunday anyway, so you should be able to come here before 11 o’clock.”

I shrugged, then thought a moment about it. Jogging there would cost me about half an hour.

And right now, it was five in the morning.

“ONLY if you stop calling me when I’m not awake.”

“Just turn off your phone. Welp, I’ll see you later, I guess,” he responded, and then ended the call.

Fair point, he usually called me on my mobile phone.

Sighing, I made my way down before eating breakfast. Whilst doing so, I realized that even though ponies were supposed to be herbivores, I still could eat meat. (Actually, I just made scrambled eggs with bacon and ate it without thinking about it, but the meat tasted, for some reason, even better than before.)

The rest of my time was spent trying to fly. I also noticed that Flare had less lift than the other three, but also seemed heavier. Maybe she was actually made from molten stone?

By ten thirty, I could hover and move around quite well in all bodies, but strong air bursts still threw me off and caused me to crash more often than not. And while I knew that an alicorn was quite resilient, I had no intention to test that or allow myself to be spotted by someone.

I put the horn ring back on, noticing the clothes reappearing that I put on this morning. I had the flame t-shirt and the jacket as well as one of the jeans I bought on.

The jeans were not one of those slim, elastic ones but some that had a bit give, which meant I could actually jog or run without worrying about them ripping apart on me. Also, I didn’t want to show off. In the end, it took me about twenty-five minutes to actually get to his house

Ringing on the bell, he then opened the door and let me in, staring at me.

“So, no prank?”

“Nope,” I retorted, chuckling.

“How did this even happen?” he then asked, shaking his head.

I sat down and explained my encounter with that self-proclaimed ‘god’, carefully cutting anything out about what I had become.

“Wow. That’s deep,” he then said, and I found myself nodding.

“How does one cope with being told their whole world is just a copy of a copy? You either stop doing anything or you walk forwards, one step in front of the other,” I said, and he nodded.

“Yeah, you’re right. Still… for some reason, I think I know your voice from somewhere.”

I shrugged.

“My voice is bound to sound similar to someone. There are way too many people on the planet for that to not be the case,” I retorted, knowing my voice probably sounded like whoever was voicing Celestia in MLP.

“Still, did you get anything else out of this?”

“Magic,” I deadpanned, causing him to raise an eyebrow.

“Magic?”

“Magic,” I said, lighting up my right hand with the white glow my magic had when I pulled out the aura.

That also meant I had only a very small amount of magic to work with, but it was not my intention to show him how powerful I actually was. Additionally, if he had any idea about MLP, the color could give him enough information to tell him what I had become.

“So, it’s real? I always wondered if it was,” he said, and I found myself nodding.

“It’s very real,” I said, pulling out some pages I copied from the book describing how to draw upon one’s magic.

He took them and quickly skimmed over them, before putting them on a shelf.

“I’ll try that later, but I don’t think I’ll succeed. If I had to guess, whatever happened to you also gave you magic.”

“Maybe,” I responded – Correct, I thought.

“Oh! By the way, in the night from Friday to Saturday, a meteor shower hit the earth, and it caused some confusion as we had no idea where it came from. Could maybe be linked to whatever happened to you.”

Ah, right. He was an astronomer. Maybe I should tell him who I am?

Meh, why the hell not. Why was I hiding that, again?

“Well, you’re interested in astronomy, right?”

He nodded.

“Yeah, why?”

I focused my magic in a small orb between my hands – and then I pulled at my reserves. It glowed brighter and brighter until I could feel enough magic between my hands to blow up the city. A small replica of a star was now hovering between my hands.

Grabbing it with my left hand, I then changed it a bit so that one could touch it, and so that it would only slowly lose strength instead of exploding. I did not know how I did it, but I knew that I succeeded.

It had a nice, yellow glow.

“What did you just do?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

I handed him the star.

“Okay… and what is this?” he asked, turning it between his fingers.

“It’s a miniature star. I thought you might appreciate it,” I responded, causing his eyes to go wide.

“You… you did what now? Are you still human?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t think so. But for an astronomer, a star is the right gift, don’t you think?”

He just nodded slowly in response, then placed it on his kitchen table. I could tell that a small amount of magic was flowing from the star, which then got absorbed by him.

Realizing this, I made a mental note to get some sort of harness for the star. I got the whacky idea to make it look like that eye of something (I think it was called Eye of Amaretto) that held the time stone in the Marvel movies.

May I help with that?

Looking around shocked, I noticed that Lukas stopped moving and that ‘god’ was hovering next to me again.

“The hell are you doing here?”

Just wanted to play a bit around. I’m bored.

“…weren’t you the one who complained about not having any time to do your job?”

If I stay in only one world, I can return to my office in the multiverse at the moment I left it, and I really need a bit of vacation after what my co-worker just dumped on me. So, you want to create metalworks?

I nodded.

Well, I would recommend using Flare for that. She should be able to bend rocks and metal with her magic easily. As you may have noticed, your powers are not exactly the same as they should be, and what Flare turned into was not an alicorn with the power of the sun coursing through her body, but an alicorn made from stone and obsidian, kept alive by insane amounts of magic.

As long as you only want to form metal and not have it specific attributes, like being steel, she should be able to do that. Ciao!

And before I could do anything, he vanished again, the world resuming.

I decided to just ignore what happened but still made a note that Flare was made from rocks.

At least makes healing easier…

“Samuel? You look a bit lost…”

“Sorry, I get lost in thought easy lately. Did you say something?”

He shook his head.

“No, but I was wondering if you will stay.”

“What do you mean?”

“People are bound to notice that something happened to you, and if they ever hear of your abilities, they will probably try to get you and use them to their advantage,” he said, and I nodded.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll probably not stay too long, but I promise that I’ll try to stay in contact with you, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure. After all, it’s not me that should tell you how to live your life,” he retorted, and I chuckled.

“I’m open to suggestions,” I shot back, and he facepalmed.

After a bit more banter, I eventually left, reminding him about the magic he should now possess on my way out.

0 - 4: Questions

Author's Note

Obligatory bad chapter.

0 - 4: Questions

A few days had passed. I informed my boss that I was ‘too sick’ to work, and thankfully, he did not question me further.

I had trained my magic, this time the ‘cero’ spell. I was not sure why it was called that way, but it worked by gathering and firing magic at a target. I could do that with my hands, but when I used my horn, the strength behind it was far greater.

Then, there was my endurance. I could basically run for hours without an end, and I also found that my strength was far higher than before.

Right now, I was back in town as Celestia, and I was on my way to the junkyard.

However, before I could turn around the last edge, I felt a short, sharp pain in my shoulder, and I collapsed a few moments later.

(SF)

To put things simple, I was pissed.

Whatever hit my other body, it was something that worked even with my now different biology, so Flare was the best choice to track down whoever was responsible for this.

After putting the ring on my horn to disguise myself, I started running towards the area of the junkyard, and when I arrived at the place Celestia was knocked out, I could feel her magic.

I grinned. Whatever they did, it caused her body to start releasing a bit of her magic. Not much, nothing somebody would easily notice, but I also found out that I could sense both extremely small and extremely weak amounts of magic.

This was both, and I was probably the only one who could tell it was even there. However, it was like a red thread, showing me exactly where I should go.

Star and Daybreaker were still home, and I decided to keep them there for the time being. However, I put on the rings on them as well, before meditating and cutting off the flow of magic through them, in turn making them invisible to magic detectors.

It was a precaution, and I doubted reliable ways to detect magic even existed, but it was one I could do without problems.

It took me around half an hour to find the office building the magic led me to. It was in the middle of the town, and it was guarded. I could probably not sneak in there.

Still, that did not mean they had the means to deal with someone like me. Moving a few blocks away again while trying not to look suspicious and at the same time keeping my head away from the cameras to avoid being spotted, I then walked into a small alley – before grabbing the walls to my left and right and flinging myself upwards.

Grabbing a fire exit ladder, I then used it to get on the roof of the building, and when I looked at the office building, I noticed there were no guards at its top.

While I was almost sure projectile weapons would not work on me, I was not willing to test that theory yet.

For the time being though, I snuck closer and tried to stay out of any possible camera feeds. I probably could jump over the gap between the house I was on and the office building, but for now, I decided to wait.

That wasn’t because I was patient, though. It was because I could feel Celestia waking up again, and my focus shifted back to her.

(CEL)

Waking up, I found myself sitting on a brown couch. In front of me was a coffee table made from some metal, and to my right, I could see a black desk with a computer on it. On the other side of the coffee table, two people sat, both wearing suits.

I should not have been able to spot this, but I could see a document on the desk, and even from this angle, I could somehow tell that it held the FBI logo on its front.

“Ah, you are awake,” the agent in front of me said, pocketing his handy.

“Who are you?” I asked in return, and he flashed me his ID. Once again, my ability to remember stuff surprised me as I could recall every last detail of it, even though I saw it for less than a second.

“Agent Meyers,” he responded, before pointing to the guy next to him.

“This fellow here is my guard.”

I was silent for a moment, looking at him. He looked back in my eyes but said nothing either.

“So, I have some questions I would like to ask you.”

“Which ones?”

“First off, did you notice anything weird during the last few days?”

“Well, I dreamt of a self-proclaimed god,” I shot back.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, I trained a bit and got stronger.”

I could tell that my answers were annoying to him, but for some reason, I found myself easily able to keep a poker face. He asked me a few more things and I continued to respond in this matter until he eventually broke.

“First your friend and now you! Why are you not telling me anything?!” he exclaimed, getting angry.

However, those few words told me a few interesting things.

“Friend?” I asked, my voice calm and betraying my emotions completely. I could tell that my magic was starting to boil, though, seeking a way out.

“We picked up that guy named Lukas, but when we asked him where he got that magic artifact, he said nothing! You have to know something!”

I shook my head.

“How did you even got this position,” I returned, noticing his eye twitch when I said this.

I stood up, facing him.

“Bring me to him. Now,” I said, and he barked out a laugh.

“You aren’t in any position to make demands here, miss!”

A carefully placed fist completely shattered the (metal) table in front of me. I raised my hand; it was looking as if I did not just punch through a plate of metal.

“Care to repeat that?” I asked, and he pulled out his gun. He shot it at me, but I batted it aside with my wrist, noticing that this caused a bruise to appear.

My hand shot forward, crushing his gun, then knocked him backward. His bodyguard tried to attack me, but when his fist connected with my ribs, they did not move.

A slap of my hand caused him to stumble backward as well, and he fell down, staring at me.

“What… what are you?” the guy that tried to shoot me asked, and I snarled at him.

“I am the one responsible for creating that artifact,” I shot back, my hand now holding a golden glowing orb of magic. It seemed small, but it would rip almost anything apart if let loose.

“That voice…” I heard the guard say, his eyes wide.

Voice…? Oh, right! Celestia, duh.

“Seems like some people here know who not to mess with,” I said, looking at him. My eyes showed no emotion.

“It still begs the question what you know about me, and why,” I snarled, the color of the magic in my hand darkening, becoming redder, and starting to look like flames.

“A show! A theory says every work of fiction is real somewhere and the same in reverse!” he exclaimed with panic written in his features.

The guy who introduced him as Meyers now managed to stand back up.

“You speak as if you know her. Who is she?” he asked, his voice now back under his control.

“Celestia,” the guard whispered, causing the agent to blink.

“Who?”

“A being from another dimension. She’s an alicorn there, a white entity with angel-like wings and a horn that allows her cast magic powerful enough to move stars,” he said, then turned back to me, cautious of me.

“And what about my friend?”

“He’s unharmed. We only questioned him!” he said, his eyes going wide.

I gave him the sweetest smile I could muster. Coupled with the steel in my voice, it gave an unnatural, quite frightening combination.

“Where is he?”

Stretching, I walked out of the building.

“How were you able to force them to let you go?” Lukas asked, causing me to turn around and smile at him.

“I just talked with them,” I responded, then winked at him.

“Anyways,” I continued, fishing the dart headed for my shoulder out of the air and flinging it back the way it came from, then turned back at him.

“It is probably time for me to leave.”

“Already? Is it because you want to prevent things like that from happening?”

“Yeah,” I responded, fishing the miniature star out of my pocket.

“Before I go though, there’s the matter with this thing. It radiates away its magic, and if you keep it close, it will allow you to use magic yourself. But things like this will continue to happen, and I will not be there to help you when that happens again,” I said, causing him to nod.

“You’re right. You should keep this,” he said, and I looked at him surprised.

“I expected you would want to keep it,” I said, and he smiled.

“Yeah, but I am not one for such a hectic life. The last few days were interesting for sure, but I cannot live like this. I hope you understand.”

“Of course, I do. Everyone has a different outlook on life,” I said, and he chuckled.

“Well, and then there’s my house. Could you look after it while I’m gone? Make sure it does not fall apart?”

“Sure. But once again, please make sure to visit,” he said, and I nodded.

“I will,” I said, and we walked the rest of the path to his home in silence.

1 - 1: you'll find one for thee (DB)

Daybreaker blinked when she heard the eruption of magic behind her, reacting just in time to throw up a shield.

In front of her, she could see a white unicorn with the same statue as she had, facing away from her. A flaming sword appeared in her magic grip, and she let it luge forwards, aimed at the horn of the pony.

The exact same sword popped into existence, parrying the strike, not making any sound. The horn of the mare in front of her glowed for a moment, but she seemed not aware of it.

Quickly glancing at the sides of what she had presumed to be a unicorn wearing saddlebags, she realized it were wings, instead, and another look made her realize that the alicorn bore the same cutie mark as she did.

The only reason she did not immediately realize that there was a double of herself in front of her was the fact that her mane was not set ablaze. Either she was very calm right now, very angry, or suppressing her magic from flowing through her mane and tail.

Considering the cursing, it couldn’t be the first option.

“…course we would get separated! Wait – maybe someone here knows more,” Daybreaker heard, quickly deciding to disguise herself. Luckily, a spell to hide her form from the eye was quite easy, and reducing her power was simple, as well. Both combined meant she looked like an advisor she had a few decades ago, fiery red, but not ablaze mane, lanky, but not alicorn-tall figurine, as well as only having a horn instead of a horn and wings.

Then, she dispelled the spell that made her voice echo, before opening her mouth and calling out to ‘Daybreaker’.

“My queen?”

She could swear that she heard her double whisper ‘queen?’ before turning around. The eyes of the pony in front of her were empty, as in not showing emotions, but there was a fire behind them. She was impressed by this, but not intimidated as she could do the same.

The stare she received was the same she was used to give, so she recognized it easily. ‘Talk, or you are dead,’ it said.

“It is time to raise the sun,” the (from her perspective) real Daybreaker continued, and the alicorn in front of her gave an almost invisible nod, her horn singing with power.

That power, though, carried an abstract promise of pain. It showed three other magics, of the same strength as the alicorn in front of her. Daybreaker was suddenly very glad she did not try to fight her double any further, as it would have meant facing three other alicorns of roughly her strength. With her and Nightmare destroying everything that could pose a danger to them, and by extension to other mature alicorns, there also were no artifacts besides her personal weapons and armor that could hurt them.

She could feel the sun rising in the east, basking the land with its power. Interestingly, it seemed like the double in front of Daybreaker decided to lift it with slightly less power than she normally did, making the day a bit colder than usual. The ponies would probably approve, be confused, and disapprove, depending on who and where they were.

You could never satisfy everypony, even if you threatened them to burn them to shut them up.

Sighing, she told the ‘current ruler’ of Equestria that breakfast would be ready in ten minutes before excusing herself.

(DB)

GREAT start into the day.

My first priority after finding out where I landed and why that pony did not freak out about my form would be finding out how to get back to ‘Celly’.

The reason I choose her was that I was confident that my other versions would try the same. She is the ‘first’ one of us and should therefore be the one we use as ‘anchor’. Does not explain why I cannot feel her anymore, though.

Additionally, when we separated, I felt something inside of me change. There is a good chance my judgment is impeded right now.

Deciding to go with the flow, for now, I ‘dressed up’ before walking down the hallways that would lead me to the dining room. I could tell where it was thanks to my nose, as my sense of smell was considerably better than as a human now.

Breakfast was a quiet affair, only the servants were nearby. Interestingly, this world’s Daybreaker still seemed to be a pony, as I was served no meat.

Then a messenger came.

He waited until I beckoned him to speak, which he did, surprisingly without fear entering his voice.

He probably had already served for a while and knew that good messengers were hard to come by.

“Your majesty, your sister sent a letter that she would visit this afternoon, concerning an artifact she had found. Will you meet with her?”

I nodded in response.

“Yes. If it is what I think it is, then it will help me …greatly with a personal project. See that a room is prepared for our meeting,” I responded, standing up.

Then I turned to the red-maned mare that told me about breakfast.

“What else has to be done today?”

A few minutes later, I was sitting in court, watching the ponies below try to get their case before the throne and hindering each other while doing so.

Eventually, I got bored by the bickering and pointed at a white stallion with blue hair and a suit I knew I’ve seen before on the show.

“You there, what is your name and case?”

“My name is Fancy Pants.”

Pony names are still stupid.

“After an incident last week, a part of my belongings were destroyed in a fire. I would like to hand the land I have no use for over to the crown, under the condition that there would be built something to benefit the city, like a library.”

“Considering this is the most intelligent proposal of those I heard in this room today, granted. Everything else is rejected and be glad I am not throwing you in prison for trying to bring matters like your personal gain in front of the throne. Fancy Pants, you will speak with one of my aides about this,” I responded, referring him to the redhead that was following me around.

“The rest of you are dismissed!”

The ponies quickly left the room, and Fancy Pants followed the aide, but as soon as they left, I heard someone call out to me.

“Your majesty!”

Turning my head, I noticed a guard walking up to me. It was a pegasus mare I knew quite well.

That rainbow mane was hard to hide, even with dye.

I tilted my head.

“Brazen of you, calling me out like this. I presume you have important news?”

“The dragons have declared war on us, but unlike the gryphons, they have prepared themselves! Somehow, they have become resistant against lightning and most spellfire, and while cursed flames still hurt them, there are far too many to stop them with such an energy-intensive attack.”

My face turned into a mask.

“I will deal with them later. They have to be on their way here, thinking they can take me out.”

She nodded.

“They rain fire down upon villages, but they do not stop flying in this direction.”

“How long ago was this?”

“This morning, your majesty!”

I thought for a moment about it.

“Considering the distance, this is a surprising speed and endurance. Well done, you’re forgiven for interrupting court,” I responded, noticing the time.

“Now, which of the conference rooms does my sister currently destroy?” I asked, getting a sigh from the aide next to me.

“Number two,” she responded, and I nodded. After telling the guards to inform the ponies that court had ended for the day, I made myself scarce.

When I stepped into the room, I could tell that something was wrong.

My magic seemed to cut off from me in a sense. I could still feel it, but not access it.

“Nightmare,” I said, looking at the alicorn opposite of me.

“Celestia,” she responded, causing me to tilt my head.

“We both know that I am not her. I never was.”

“But you will be soon enough,” she responded, her magic lighting up. Interestingly, her horn glowed in a pale blue, almost white color.

What she was using was holy magic. Cleansing magic.

“You learned a magic you hated just to have a shot at defeating me,” I realized, tilting my head. It was impressive. For her, that is.

“But what is it supposed to do?”

Her smile grew wicked.

“Simple. It will separate you from your host and send you back to the fiery hell you came from,” she responded, while I could feel my strength flowing away.

“And I know that in such places, one does not survive long,” she said, blasting me with the spell she built up, sending me to the sun.

Having finished talking with Fancy Pants, Daybreaker made her way over to the conference room her double and her sister were in, overhearing their conversation and feeling the spell cast.

If it had landed on her, there was a good chance it would have ripped her in two.

However, the presence of her double did not transform, it just vanished. Daybreaker could not help but wonder what that meant.

For a moment, there was silence, but she then realized something. A build-up of magic. Not next to her, not even in the city. But thousands upon thousands of miles above her.

Like in a trance, she walked in the courtyard, her magic sense telling her that her sister did the same. Looking up, she could spot the sun, which was slowly darkening, becoming a bloody, crimson red.

Then, a lazy looking flow of energy separated from it, coming down towards the planet. But to anyone knowing how far away the sun really was, they knew of the speed it really had.

Within a few seconds, it became closer and closer, condensing into a thin beam of energy that penetrated the atmosphere, creating a sonic boom while doing so, and landing in the middle of the courtyard, shattering a nearby fountain and damaging the marble of the palace upon impact.

In the bright red glowing stream of energy, a form became visible. It was her double, but all sense of calm was gone from her face, and her voice was a snarl when she spoke after the energy transporting her back to the planet ceased.

“Did you really thought I would die… just because you killed me?”

Then, without any warning or even detectable buildup of energy, a thin, blue beam of energy shot out of her horn, nearly skewering Nightmare. The latter barely dodged the beam in time, which splayed against the wall, revealing itself as concentrated flames, at least several thousand degrees hot.

They also heated up the air around them, causing a small shockwave, which caused Nightmare who was right next to it to stumble. She lost precious time, and when she had regained her footing, a crimson-clad hoof had punched her, sending her flying in and through the half-molten wall behind her.

Daybreaker’s eyes widened upon realizing that her double was not only physically as strong as she was but considerably faster, as well. The sun alicorn that rushed after the night alicorn was showing incredible reflexes, strength, and speed, even for Daybreaker’s standards.

Nightmare flew back out of the room, a shield forming around her and a second spell stopping her unintended flight. She settled back down on one of the marble walkways.

Then, the double walked out of the room, stepping down, using her magic to form a construct that acted as flooring.

“You know, I always preferred to stand on my magic. It is far harder to disrupt than ground is,” she said, dispelling the construct below her forehooves and slamming them in the ground. The resulting tremble in the ground once again caused Nightmare to stumble, but this time she kept her eyes firmly planted on her opponent.

It proved to be a good decision, as it meant she saw the next attack coming, stepping out of the way of the plasma blast that was sent against her.

But now, the sun alicorn had taken flight, coming towards her opponent with energy formed around her wings. Nightmare’s shield held, but only barely.

Then, a sudden, blinding light was seen above her, and when she looked up, she saw an ocean of flames, surrounded by a dark red ring of energy, and held back only by a layer of similarly colored energy.

(DB)

“You wanted to attack me using the flames of the sun. But how do you think you compare to them?” I asked, opening the portal, plasma pouring down upon Nightmare, who quickly teleported.

But a bit of the plasma got taken with the teleport spell, which I could sense.

A shield blocked the attack that was launched at me.

I responded with yet another beam of blue flames.

“Do you know what you did wrong? You did send me to where I get my power from, to the fires of the sun. You did not bind me to it, and as a result, I am overflowing with solar energy. I have enough magic inside of me to completely regenerate my body. About two times over, in fact.”

I looked at her, burnt fur, bent helmet.

She snarled at me.

“I will still defeat you!”

My eyes narrowed, and my pupils turned into thin slits.

“You will not. If you take another step forward, I will no longer fight you to defeat you, but to kill you.”

“You’re bluffing!” Nightmare responded, taking flight and rushing at me, her shield springing back into existence at full power.

A massive flash of light was seen, before a thundering sound and a wave of incredible heat rolled over the city, originating from the castle. A cloud of black smoke started rising up from said castle, promising death to any pegasus stupid enough to enter it.

Part of the castle started crumbling, causing even more dust to raise up from the ground.

Watching from one of the towers, Daybreaker was impressed by what she saw. While her double seemed originally only marginally stronger than she was, being thrown in the sun raised her strength by nearly half.

Not to mention the mana. She probably had more than two times as much mana as she had that morning. That told her that even though the sun is a practically infinite energy well, it was not possible to fully tap into it. Or a death sentence to try.

The calamity over and sounds of fighting gone, she then decided to go back down, using a spell to get rid of the dust and smoke.

What she saw surprised her not much, but still shocked her.

At the wall, her sister was lying, her black coloration now stemming from the charcoal her fur and flesh had turned into, instead of the fur she normally had.

The armor she wore had melted off, some metal puddles nearby indicating where it had landed. Would Daybreaker a normal pony, she would have gagged at the smell, but she had seen burnt ponies more than often enough to not be moved by it anymore.

“Aide, take note,” she then heard her double speak up, suddenly next to her on the tower as well.

“Yes?” she asked, her voice even.

“Take Nightmare to the dungeon. Allow her to regenerate but place a magic blocker on her. I do not want telepathy, teleportation, hypnosis or just levitating the key for the cell nor sensing her surroundings with magic an option for her. I will take a rest, the battle has exhausted me a little,” she said, and Daybreaker nodded.

This also meant a good opportunity to talk with Nightmare without the black mare interrupting her, as she could just clamp her muzzle shut. Usually, a shield would block such magic, but that obviously was no option for Nightmare right now.

“What made you think that was a good idea?”

Nightmare lifted her arching head, looking at the red-haired mare in front of her, behind the bars.

“And… who are you?” she asked, her voice sounding quite dry.

The expression of the mare in front of her did not change.

“So?”

They stared at each other for a few minutes.

“Did you know that you did not fight against your sister?”

Now that got her attention.

1 - 2: All those problems it'll hold (Flare)

Author's Note

Sorry for the late upload, but it had been a few hellish days, and the next week will not be better. Luckily i remembered i had a few chapters pre-written. No guarantee for quality today tho.

1 - 2: All those problems it'll hold (Flare)

I got spit out on someone, and I sat up, groaning.

Nothing on my body hurt – which would be a considerable feat when one remembered I was made out of sentient stone – but I was still lying face-first in the dirt, something I remedied as soon as I realized it was the case.

I also realized I hadn’t just ended someone’s existence, as what I landed on was solid rock.

How that felt soft to me, I had not the faintest clue.

Oh, and I was quadruped.

Around that moment, I realized that I was alone. The other three just… vanished.

I tried to walk, only to stumble and fall over a second later.

That was going to take some time.

I eventually got rid of the wings – as it was quite annoying when I landed on them – then started to wander around. I hoped to find some sentient beings to talk to.

But my body was still made out of magma and obsidian, and my mane and tail were still replaced by fire. I could draw them in by limiting the flow of my magic, but that just made them disappear, and, for some reason, it also increased the temperature of my body.

Since it would be both a stupid and a useless endeavor, I just let them be as they were.

Something worried me, though: Everywhere I stepped foo- err, hoof, I left a burnt imprint.

“A golem?” I heard a voice to my right, and I noticed a unicorn standing there, looking at me in worry.

“Oy, I’m sentient,” I responded, noticing that my voice sounded incredibly dry.

What in the world did I expect?

“Apologies. I’ve seen where you are headed, and I’d like to ask you not to go there.”

“It’s a settlement, is it not?” I asked, getting a nod from him.

“If it is agreeable with you, I’d get some to visit you so that you don’t get too lonely.”

Shrugging, I continued.

“I won’t enter, but I’ll try and build a residence for me,” I said, and he shrugged.

After a while, I came close to the village and decided to build a residence nearby.

Eventually, I spotted a good area, and I started to smoothen out the earth, but after a while, I had no idea how to continue. Then, I remembered that I was essentially living lava.

The result was a small cabin, with a landscape created from obsidian, basalt, and other materials around it that appeared when lava is cooled off rapidly.

Everything that was still emitting heat was placed away from the paths so that my house could still be reached by normal beings.

After that was done, I started to dig searching for some ‘soft’ feeling rocks I found in my surroundings and made a bed out of them. With me having no spine, there was probably no need for that, but meh.

Eventually starting to meditate. I tried to lower my body temperature and I somewhat succeeded. The flames that were on my body started to dull slightly, turning to a darker, red tone, while the yellow glowing cracks on my body also stopped glowing so brightly.

However, my hooves mostly stayed the same, and my horn did not change at all, staying in its red, ominous glowing form.

“Okay, who in their right mind constructs a lava fountain?”

Surprised that I already had a visitor, I made my way outside, spotting a pegasus that was staying in front of the area I changed.

“Helps that my brain is a molten mess,” I commented, getting a snort from him when he saw me.

“Yeah, I can tell why Violet didn’t want you in the city. Nearly everything in there is made from wood.”

I shrugged.

“Well, I’d like to visit, but I cannot easily control the heat my body gives off.”

“That’s indeed a problem, but I think he already started asking around for something to help with that. I’m actually here to list your name as a temporary citizen of the town.”

“Does ‘this town’ also have a name?” I quipped, and he shook his head.

“Nope. By now, the debate around the name of the town caused it to be known as ‘nowhere’, as we just can’t find a name for this ‘where’. In short, a ‘nowhere’,” he said, and I blinked.

“Seriously?”

“Yep. Your name?”

“Ah, sorry. Solar Flare,” I responded, having already determined that my name would not give me many problems, were I to reveal it.

There were no princesses, no Sombra, nothing. I was either in the far past or far future, but I wanted to meet the main six, dammit!

“That’s an interesting name. Are you part of the unicorns that raise the sun?”

Technically… “No.”

“Ah. Well, could have been. Anyways, I think that you could be of great help to us if you could help us constructing builds from stone, but you would either have to work from here, or find a way to not burn everything around you.”

I shrugged.

“I’m working on it.”

“Then I wish you good luck with that.”

“Thanks,” I responded, and he nodded, then excused himself and flew off.

Remembering that I had wings myself, I made them reappear from my mass, then took to the skies, careful not to come close to anyone else that was flying.

To my surprise, there weren’t many pegasi here, and when I flew higher, I could see only ‘normal’ clouds.

Nobody had started forming anything out of them. I noticed a pegasus lying on a cloud, taking a nap, and another moving a cloud over to a farm, but nobody was seriously shaping the clouds.

That also meant that I couldn’t do that without having a good explanation for both how I got wings and how I came up with that idea.

I looked a bit around, then decided to land on a high-altitude cloud. It was quite peaceful but keeping myself aloft was tiring for me.

As soon as I hit the cloud, I only wondered why I hadn’t done this sooner. The cloud was perfect bedding, and I rolled around for a moment, amazed by how fluffy the clouds were. This had nothing on normal beds!

I laid my head down, and I then fell quickly asleep, unaware of the sizzling sound the cloud started emitting when I laid down on it.

That was when Star pulled me in a dream, explaining that she wanted us to meet in Equestria near Canterlot. However, she flickered for a moment and then told me to find (our) Celestia, instead.

What woke me up ultimately wasn’t time or someone calling out to me, but an abrupt, violent hit to my side. Blinking, I sat up, groaning. It hadn’t hurt that much, but I could tell that there was a considerable amount of force behind that impact.

When I looked around, I realized I was no more on the cloud, but back on the ground. Looking up, I could see a cloud with a hole in the middle of it.

Realizing what had happened, I resisted the urge to facehoof. I fell asleep on the cloud. So far, nothing unusual.

However, since I was now made from lava with a bit of magic in it holding it together, I started evaporating the cloud and plummeted, eventually to the ground.

Standing up, I started to walk back to my ‘house’. I was still a bit dizzy, but I could walk without falling over.

Eventually, I drew closer to my house, and noticing the pegasus from earlier, I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to have wings. I quickly tapped the ring atop my horn, watching as my body turned into that of a black-furred mare with no wings and a cracked sun as a cutie mark. All flames turned into bright orange and red hair, falling down instead of hovering slightly above my body.

Taking a few steps closer to my house, I then realized that I no longer burnt the earth below my hooves.

Seriously? That’s all it took?

I groaned.

“I so don’t want to deal with this right now,” I said, then walked up to the pegasus.

“Miss Flare?”

“Yep, that’s me. I managed to get a hold of my magic. What’s up?”

“I was nearby, and I heard a loud, cracking sound. You seem okay, but do you know what happened?”

“Not exactly, but I think it’s nothing dangerous. It was the backlash from a mistake of mine when I tried something.”

“Ah. I see, then. But now that you seem to have your flames under control, would you like to visit the town?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

He started to fly in the direction of the town, and I started following him - on the ground.

“You seem powerful. How strong are you?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I have not yet found anything that exhausted my magic reserves. There are very few ponies who can beat me when it comes to the amount of mana they can call upon.”

He chuckled.

“Too bad you’re not born a pegasus,” he said, and I scrunched my nose.

“Well, to be exact, there are spells for unicorns that can give them wings and that can control the weather, at least to some degree. I cannot stand on clouds, but that’s about it.”

“No, I meant that you would be able to fly at incredible speeds if your claims are true.”

“Teleportation,” I countered, and he shrugged.

“If you can use it for long-distance travel. Most unicorns can’t teleport further than a few hundred meters.”

“Touché,” I said, and then we fell silent for the rest of our short walk.

When entering the village, I immediately noticed how basic everything looked.

None of the houses had a second story, and while there was a wall, it was little better than a sturdy fence.

“Hey, Velvet!”

Looking up ahead, I spotted the unicorn that originally greeted me.

“Flare, I presume? You found a way to tone down your magic, I see.”

“It’s not really pleasant melting all the time, so yeah, that was a given. I’m surprised unicorns and pegasi live here together, though.”

He let out a loose laugh.

“Heh, there are still some that are surprised by that?”

I shrugged.

“I mostly lived alone, so yeah.”

I then realized something peculiar.

“Ah, right. What currency do you use here?”

“Hours of work. Since there is no authority higher than a major that really holds anything, each town has to set its own currency. This is what we choose here.”

That wasn’t as stupid as some other real currencies I knew of.

(Brazil, hint hint. Fake money became a real currency there, and I had NO idea how they made it work.)

“Though, with your abilities, you can demand more work than you actually give.”

“Oh?” I asked, tilting my head.

“You are one of the few who could create structures out of stone without putting in a huge amount of effort, I’d presume. It takes us days to even build a normal house. I’m not stupid, I can tell that strength-wise, your magic is above my own.”

“How about it?” the pegasus that I followed in the town then asked.

“Stay for a while, then decide if it is fit for settling down.”

I chuckled.

“I’ll only stay here temporarily. I am trying to find my sisters.”

“You lost your family? That’s unusual, how did it happen?” Velvet asked, tilting his head.

In response, the pegasus whapped him in the head with a wing.

“Velvet! That’s not something you ask a stranger!”

I held up a hoof.

“No, it’s fine. It was caused by our own stupidity in the first place. A teleportation accident, so to speak,” I responded, getting a nod from them.

After that, Velvet told me he set up a job offering for me and explained no one in the town could go above one hundred hours of work ‘saved up’. That was probably to prevent someone from working all week and then having others work for them all week.

The first job I took was replacing the wall of the village with stone. Not particularly hard, but time-consuming, and it was what I worked on until the evening.

After sleeping in the next day, I decided to head to the market.

Most of the things did not interest me. Food was unnecessary, and clothes would get soon enough get destroyed were I to wear them.

However, there were also some weird oddities and some things of interest in the market.

I found out that the ‘smallest’ unit of currency was fifteen minutes of work, and therefore many things were priced with fifteen minutes of work.

A good idea considering what was possible, if all prices would be allowed.

Right now, I was standing in front of someone selling gems, amongst other things.

It was clear that the mare who collected those things was not working much herself, and that she was still quite young.

Picking up one of the bigger gems, I then inspected it with my magic.

To my surprise, it started sucking in my magic, bypassing the ring I wore to disguise my true form and to hold back my magic, absorbing roughly a tenth of my energy before stopping.

After leaving a note that I bought the stone from her, I then returned to my home, noticing that the lava in the fountain has become solid.

Maybe the spell failed when I took on my disguise? Well, whatever.

Placing the gem on the table, I tried numerous things.

The first was cast a levitation spell while at the same time already holding the gem. Thanks to the ring, my magic was cool enough not to melt the gem or the rock that I was holding, but there was no reaction.

After that, I tried casting magic through the gem, but I found my power repelled. It seemed that it was saturated with my power, not accepting any more. As I said before, I could still hold it, though.

Shrugging, I dropped the gem and the rock, but then I heard a very small sound I would have missed if not for my pegasus hearing and alicorn magic.

It was a crack.

A small wave of heat washed over me, then the crack widened, and the heat increased, quickly. Essentially, the gem had become a bomb.

And I just pushed the trigger. The explosion ripped my (albeit not very stable) home to shreds, leaving a crater and a groaning pony (AKA me) behind. The damage was as expected from the amount of magic absorbed, but I really should not have been surprised how easily my magic had become destructive. The crater was not very big, though, about five to six meters in diameter.

Luckily, my disguise was unaffected.

“Solar! Are you okay?”

Turning to Velvet, I smirked.

“Have you forgotten what I am? You can’t rip me apart that easy,” I responded, climbing out of the crater and stretching.

“But yeah… that could have gotten better.”

“Maybe,” he commented with a completely straight face, using his magic to pull me up.

Before we could exchange further pleasantries, though, a pegasus came rushing in, nearly crashing into me.

“Velvet! Big problem!”

“Bolt? What in the world happened?”

“An army appeared to the south! It’s spearheaded by a blue goat!”

I froze.

“WHAT?!”

Shocked and half-deaf by the outburst, the pegasus next to me jumped up, looking at me.

“Do you know him?”

“Not personally. However, Grogar is known as the ‘father of monsters’, and not someone even I would like to face alone.”

“Can you defeat him?”

I tilted my head.

“I am not sure. I’ll try, though.”

My gaze turned upwards.

“Who controls the sun?”

Ending up in the town hall, I was looking at a scroll describing a very simple spell that could be cast without a drawback.

Usually, unicorns within the MLP-fandom were only able to move the sun when they gave up part of their magic to do it.

In this case, if enough unicorns cast this spell, the sun would move for a day, and from what Velvet told me, after a case of corruption, the original spell was rewritten by a unicorn to make it impossible for a small number of creatures, unicorn or otherwise, to seize power over the life-giving, yet dangerous star. I made a copy of the spell, just in case. Something told me that it would become lost to the ages.

Interestingly, it seemed like unicorns could choose to push any amount of energy into the spell. Thanks to that, there were unicorns that used almost all of their magic to keep the sun moving and were treated appropriately. At least that explained the question from earlier.

Then, I grabbed a map, after which the pegasus informing us of Grogar pointed to his approximate location. He appeared out of nowhere in the south and is marching up the western coast, and he is only three days away from a big, spread-out area where many earth ponies live and farm.

Luckily, the map also showed me where big villages and cities were. That gave us an edge, as it allowed us to plan the order in which we would inform them. The village I was in was near the eastern coast, and the army of Grogar was about one point five thousand kilometers to the south. I doubted that Grogar had a complete map of the continent, at least, not yet.

(Bolt spent the last few hours flying up here, and after telling us of this, went to sleep.)

Upon realizing what had to be done, pegasi were sent out to warn the other towns and to provide communication, while we as one of the closest would have to decide if we wanted to flee or fight back.

I, meanwhile, had flown back to where my house stood, and cast a tenth of my maximal mana in a single point before releasing it, creating an explosion of the same size as the crystal did.

My horn arched a little, but I could still stand it.

After that, I cast an ‘explosion’ spell with the same amount of mana, easily quadrupling the affected area. I was surprised that it was not bigger, and slightly shocked when Velvet told me he had seen unicorns creating similarly sized explosions.

That information meant that even though I was an alicorn, my strength here seemed not to be too terribly high above average.

But my mindset was completely different than that of the ponies, also, I probably was effectively immortal. So, I started scheming.

After buying another gem, I could verify that my spells could be stored in them, as long as they did not exceed ten percent of my mana capacity in the amount of mana poured into them. There seemed to be no limit in their complexity.

I collected as many of those as I could, placing them with a book about destructive spells in the subspace the ring on my horn generated.

I had no idea how it worked, but I was not looking a gift horse in the mouth right now.

“Velvet, how many ponies could we get rallied up against Grogar?”

“Not too many, I fear. Each of them will think that somepony else will do it.”

“Gryphons? Dragons?”

“Neither of them will help.”

“Curses… I will do my best to slow him down. You try to get a resistance set up. We’re a small number of ponies playing war, and this will become far bigger than any of us could expect in a very short time,” I said, my horn powering up.

“Stay alive,” he said, and I snorted.

“I planned on doing that.”

With that, I left, deactivating the magic from the ring as soon as I was far enough away from the town. I grew in statue and cracks opened up along my body.

After that, I recreated the wings I absorbed the other day. A flap brought me some dozen meters above the ground, another flap higher than the lowest clouds. Soon, I could see only clouds, but still knew where I needed to go.

Since my wings were so enormous, I had not much trouble staying in the air. I stumbled a lot, but I still had an incredible speed.

Eventually, night fell, and I stopped when I could see the army in the distance. Settling down for the night, I decided to face them the next morning when I was back at my full strength.

“GROGAR!”

The goat looked up, spotting a black pegasus with yellow accents hovering above his army of creatures from other worlds. There were monsters, demons, and everything in between, like undead or golems.

“Bold of you to face me,” he said, looking up.

“What can a single pony do to an army like this? Even if you call down lightning, my archers will kill you, and the foes you have slain will rise again,” he said, amused by the pony that thought it stood a chance against him.

“Well, for starters, I can blow you up.”

He had barely time to blink before a crystal landed in front of his hooves, cracked, then exploded.

His reflexes saved him as he threw up a shield, blocking the blast in his direction, but the troops surrounding him were not so lucky. They were obliterated in the blast, not even bones remained. The same happened at numerous other locations, he could tell.

This made it impossible to raise them as undead. He realized that he grossly misjudged the situation. If the mare hovering up there knew what she was doing, she could cause quite a lot of damage to his plans.

However, there came no other bombs. He tilted his head. Was this the only attack the pony had?

Deciding not to take any chances, he charged up his horns, a sickly looking, yellow and black glow appearing around them, then he released a bolt of magic, striking the mare and blowing about half of her head away. She started falling, and she landed in the crater she herself had created.

“And this once again shows why I reign supreme,” he said, turning around and starting to walk away.

Unbeknownst to him, though, the pony was looking at him with the one eye she had left, burning with emotion. Not with fury, but still with considerable anger.

And the reason he could not sense her was that she, too, technically was not alive – and her magic got covered by the residue of the explosion. As such, Grogar assumed her to be gone in the same way his troops were, turning away.

1 - 3: with all their races you'll see (NMS)

Author's Note

Same damned deal as last week.
Might have worse quality than usual.

1 - 3: with all their races you'll see (NMS)

Slowly stirring awake, I started looking around, trying to find out where I ended up.

I was not sure what happened, but I got separated from the other three, and I also could not feel them, anymore. However, I did know they were not dead in some instinctual way.

Next most important thing probably was the question where I was.

Looking around, it looked like I was in the dream realm. Interesting, but is the dream realm a unified existence along all worlds? Highly unlikely.

There was still… a tether! I could sense my other selves!

Quickly thinking, I pulled Flare’s consciousness to me but found that I could unfortunately not concentrate enough to pull in Celestia as well.

“Huh? Wait – Nightmare?”

I nodded.

“Good to see you alive. I think it would be a good idea to set a meeting spot. I’d say Equestria, Canterhorn, flame symbol?”

She shrugged.

“Sounds good. I am far in the past, so it could get a bit problematic, but otherwise, I’m fine,” she responded, and I nodded. She vanished from the dream, and I concentrated on Celestia.

She just tilted her head at me.

“Equestria, Canterhorn, meeting, flame symbol. Flare agreed, but I cannot sense Daybreaker,” I said, remembering that the real Celestia was good at decision making, and hoping that this applied to her now as well.

She just gave me a blank look.

“Is there any reason for you acting as if we’re short on time?”

“Not really, but I want to explore the dream world. Maybe I can find Daybreaker.”

Celestia shrugged.

“That’s as good of a reason as any. I think it could be an idea to meet there. By ‘Equestria’, do you mean where Flare is right now?”

“Let’s just say yes,” I responded, thinking. There was still the question of how we’d get to the future, though…

“Well, if there are more of us in one place, I think Daybreaker could sense us. The question is if she will think about trying to sense us, though.”

I shrugged in response.

“Well, she could be stuck in the flow of time… Flare and you seem to have been separated from me longer than I was ‘only’ me,” I said, getting a thoughtful expression from her.

“Let’s just think about that when we’re one entity again. I believe the magic I’m studying could help with that, as it gives me a way to virtualize some aspects of it,” she responded before excusing herself.

She vanished, and I took a look around in the mostly empty dream realm.

Now what?

“Yeeeeargh!”

Ah.

Checking up on the scream, I found a dream filled with black energy. I had no idea what it was, but I could tell that the pony was suffocating in it.

After removing said energy, I then saw a green unicorn where it was previously, not having his mark yet.

“Ah, you survived,” I drily commented, getting an outdrawn sigh from him.

“I guess I – wait.”

He then turned to me.

“Nightmares I may have, but I never dream lucidly. Pray tell, who are you?”

“Nightmare.”

After a while of explaining and laughing (on my side), the stallion explained a bit about the world he was in. He also mentioned something peculiar.

The arrival of a sentient golem made from lava.

“Well, that’s probably my sister,” I realized, getting a surprised look from him.

“Really? Well, I can see the similarities, I guess…”

A bit more questioning revealed that he talked a bit with Flare, but that was about it.

“So, your name is Nightmare? Does it mean something?”

I shrugged.

“I’m not sure what I am supposed to be. Or should be able to do. I cannot tell you much more than I already have.”

“I see. You said you were searching for your other two sisters?”

I shook my head.

“Not exactly. I know roughly where they are but not how to get to them,” I responded, shrugging.

“Are you trapped in the dream realm?”

I shrugged again.

“I’m not sure, honestly. But at least I know where Flare is, and roughly where Celestia is.”

“Then, what about taking, uh, Flare was it?”

I nodded.

“To Celestia and then try to find the last one?”

I tilted my head.

That… could work.

“Hey, Flare!”

The black pony raised an eyebrow at Celestia and Nightmare.

“Yeah?”

“Plan changed.”

“How so?”

I turned to Celestia.

“You said you were in a world where you could put magic into script, runes, the like, right?”

A nod.

“We’ll try to find our way to you, and you should try to create a signal beacon or something of the sort for us. When we’re with you, we’ll try to find Daybreaker.”

“Sounds good,” she responded, then tilting her head.

“You can track me, right?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Then use that. Now, I have time, so what should I do while I wait?”

After discussing our plans for the intimidate future, the two left again, but for some reason, I felt like I should follow Flare.

Watching her, I could her see build a wall around a village, blow up some gems and talk with the ponies around her, but unfortunately could not hear anything.

Thanks to her expression I could tell that something was wrong, though, and followed her within the dream realm.

And I felt worse and worse as time went on, and as Flare went south-east.

Just after a few more minutes, she was shot down by sickly yellow magic.

“Need a lift?”

She froze up for a second, but then recognized my voice, allowing me to pour myself into her. We might be separated in mind right now – but not in soul.

1 - 4: All those places, each a wonder (CEL)

Author's Note

This time I got an excuse!
Nearly eight thousand words takes a while to edit.

1 - 4: All those places, each a wonder (CEL)

The next morning, I found myself sitting in the Headmaster’s office.

“Well, first allow me to ask a few questions,” he started, and I nodded.

“Sure.”

“I know that you have a fire affinity, correct? The problem I have with that is that you had not used the fire foci during that fight.”

“That’s correct. If you can feel the energy in your body and can picture the lines that make up the matrix inside of the foci, you are able to substitute that for a focus. Fire is a special case, as that energy easily burst into flames, so I don’t even need to draw one, except for blue fire.”

“I see. Can you teach us how to feel that energy?”

I shook my head.

“No. I can tell you two problems with that right off the bat, too. One, humans naturally have low magic control, and two, it feels different for everyone else. Therefore, everyone has to trace the energies for themselves, and when they can grasp them, it is not too long until one can form them.”

“And what about the focus you handed Lina? How did you make that one?”

I blinked.

“How do you even know about that?”

“That I cannot tell you. So, about the focus?”

“I condensed some energy into it. After carving in the runes I copied from other foci into it, it eventually worked. Of course, I tried to understand what the runes did first.”

“Are you aware that what you just did should be impossible on all accounts?”

“Well, I’m not exactly human. I take it you are, at least here, not able to condense that energy?”

He shook his head.

“No. We can only find those energy stones in mines and dead monsters.”

I blinked, then realized something.

“You absolute MORONS! The monster attacks are caused by those stones!”

“The monster stones do not attract monsters,” he responded, and I sighed.

“That’s likely a misconception. A small number probably does not, but a big number? I can feel the energy you piled up in your basement! And I’m not even trying! Do you know how much my senses are muddled by interference with my own energy? Those monsters can definitively sense the stones.”

He cursed.

“Dammit! And what else are we supposed to use? The city contains millions of stones!”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“We don’t even know if they’re after the monster cores or after the mined crystals. It’s a problem, but not a big one, right?”

“Well, that’s true, too,” he responded, and I nodded.

“Unluckily, this presents another problem. Will they attack the city in search of the stones that I create? If not, I can just create them, but if they do, this will just make the situation worse.”

“In any case, I believe we got a bit off track. I want you to do your best to teach what you know to the students in a special course, and I do not believe we can teach you much,” he responded, luckily keeping a level head.

“Oh, but you taught me a lot already! I discovered how strong of an amplifier the right set of runes can be! Did you know that humans have usually such a minuscule amount of magic that they can literally do nothing with it? But here, thanks to the foci, everyone can use it!”

“I take it you did not know about this thanks to your overwhelming energy pool?”

“Precisely. I can cast a spell by picturing the matrix and channeling energy,” I explained, getting a nod from him.

Still stupid that ‘spell’ is a valid word here while ‘magic’ is not. THAT, I will change.

“I see…”

“Oh, and I’d like to take some of the monster stones and mined crystals. I may have a way to find out which of them attract monsters.”

“Please do that. What else are you interested in?”

“The runes you know about. How they interact with each other, what they mean, their effects alone, their usage, and so on. Because runes can form spells, that would mean I could figure out a way to craft spells, given I’m lucky,” I responded, causing him to raise his eyebrows.

“Can you make them usable for humans, though?”

I blinked.

“Well, that will be a challenge. Oh, and another thing. When I found my sisters, I’m leaving.”

“That’s fine if you wait two weeks and after that until the next end of the month.”

“Given that two weeks are seven days and a month roughly four weeks on my world, yes. Is it the same here?”

He nodded.

“Then, you have a deal. Now, when do you want me to start?”

“First, we need to introduce the course. I have a good idea on how to do that, too.”

Looking at the about two thousand people in the hall, I looked at the headmaster.

“If anything goes wrong, this was your idea,” I commented, shaking my head.

“Yes,” he just responded, turning around.

“Students of the academy! I have an announcement to make!”

“Yeah, we know!” someone replied from below, getting a chuckle from the rest of the audience.

“Such disrespect! Oh, where have we come to!”

I see. He takes the comments, makes his talk longer, ensuring that everyone is annoyed at the interrupting person.

He lamented for a moment longer, then returned to the actual thing he wanted to talk about.

“Well. Now, that we are all here! I want to reintroduce someone to you. You may have heard of the fight yesterday? Well, after investigating, it became clear that the new student was not at fault, as she was challenged and attacked by two forbidden life techniques afterward, the time break and the mind break technique. In return, Samantha fried him with his own attack.”

After that, he paused for a second, inhaling.

“However, during the fight, Samantha showed an interesting ability. The conjuration of fire without the use of a focus.”

“Additionally, it was clear that she was not exactly from around here, with her incredible reserves and self-control. We talked, and she agreed to teach us what she knows during her stay here. Miss Faust?”

Stepping forwards, I now could see the students below me, and they could see me.

“Sup,” I said, looking at Lina. She cringed but was looking on with seemingly horrid fascination.

“Also, challenging her to a fight is added to the list of punishable offenses. Not because of her, but because of us – I have no intention of finding out if she was serious when saying she’d accidentally destroy part of the city if fighting seriously.”

“Now, could we get a little preview of what you will teach?”

“Sure,” I said, collecting a small amount of energy atop my finger. It was equivalent to the amount of energy a human in this world could collect and use within a reasonable amount of time.

“This small ball of energy is equivalent to the energy you can collect within about twenty seconds,” I explained, getting nods from the students.

I then threw it in the air, only using my ability to manipulate magic to change its form. It quickly became an extremely complicated matrix I designed yesterday, based on the runes I learned from the foci.

Then, a ball of electricity started to form into it.

“While this may seem like normal lightning, the electricity in this one is actually gathered from its surroundings. You become charged, as the energy that makes up lightning is sucked out of the surroundings,” I explained, getting a surprised look from below.

“That is possible with twenty seconds of energy? Did you not use more to form it?”

I shook my head.

“No. I only used my ability to form energy. This is something you could possibly learn as well,” I explained, reversing the flow by changing the runes in the outermost ring, causing the electricity to flow back slowly without shocking anyone.

“There is another thing. I need to leave the academy for a short while to check a theory I have about the monster attacks, so I will start here as a teacher next week, on Monday. If I’m in the academy, you can find me either in the library, the reading hall, or the longue,” I then added, nodding to the headmaster.

“Thank you! Oh, and another thing. Miss Faust had refrained from using the terminology from her world, but this will be different in her lessons. Her name for our inner energy is magic, and for her, the word has a different meaning than it has for us. So, remember this, as she probably will not mention this again when starting to lecture,” the Headmaster interjected, remembering some of the details I gave him earlier.

“Dismissed.”

“Will you change dorms?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll do it if the headmaster insists on it,” I responded, putting the papers I had with me in a bag. I knew that the ring currently hiding my real form had some sort of spatial storage, but I was not willing to push it.

Eventually, I made my way to the headmaster.

“Ah, Miss Faust.”

“Question, why did you call me by my first name exactly once?”

“What?”

He chuckled.

“Okay, I’ll get serious. And it’s just that I address people differently depending on the situation. I was talking firstly about the fight, but then talked about you as junior staff.”

“Ah,” I responded monotonously.

“In any case, here are the stones,” he said, gesturing to three crystals. They were marked, one was from a wyvern, one was mined, and one taken from an… orc? Okay…

After pocketing them, I then stepped on the balcony.

“Please make sure to come back on time,” he said, and I nodded.

Then, I jumped, feeling the stone below me crack while doing so. I rose up about a hundred meters, which was high enough for me to tap the ring and use my wings to start flying without worrying too much about beeing seen.

I rose while flying in western direction, eventually coming to rest on a cloud after about an hour. The city was far behind me, and the magic in it no longer completely blocked my senses to the outside world.

That meant that I could now meditate, and search for the magic signature of the wyverns I met before. I was planning on speaking with them about the cores, but I needed to find them first.

After a while, though, I could sense my magic. It had grown, and I could tell that the young wyvern had become more powerful in the process.

Smiling, I flapped my wings, rising from the cloud, before flapping them once again, speeding away, towards the wyverns.

However, they were quite far away, and even when flying close to my maximum speed, I had only crossed half the distance to them after about four hours of flight. Eventually, I decided to look down, raising an eyebrow when I realized I was flying above the ocean.

Not sure if I could fly when wet, I decided not to test my luck. Still, I needed a rest, and I settled down on a nearby cloud.

I meditated again, extending my magic senses. The wyverns had moved a bit more, but not by much.

However, something else caught my interest. There was a very slight interference in the magic I was using to find them, and I only spotted it because the area around it was swirling slightly, while the rest was perfectly homogenous.

What I saw where I felt it, though, was only an empty patch of air. Now curious, I used more magic to get a better look, and to my surprise, the energy got absorbed, and a small tear started growing in front of me. I tried moving it, but I could not. The tear itself was moving slowly, relatively to the ground.

I made a note where I found it, in which direction it was moving, and how fast. There is a chance that this is the tear that had dropped me in this world, and it could also be my connection to the others.

After that, I removed my magic from the area, causing the tear to shrink again. I started flying towards the wyverns again, not forgetting my primary objective.

Eventually, I came close enough that I could see them, and they, in turn, me.

»Thou have returned.«

››› This one has. I needed to ask help of thee, ‹‹‹ I responded, pulling over a cloud with my magic to sit on.

»What do thee need?«

››› This one needs to know of thou: Is this what makes thee fall in rage? ‹‹‹ I asked, pulling out the three different crystals the headmaster gave me, and one I made myself.

»It is,« he said, pointing at the wyvern crystal.

»This one can feel the second heart of our brethren. It is angering for us. That one, it feels annoying, but not more. This, I cannot sense. That, it feels comforting, and we would never attack it when it is alone, not tainted by one who wishes for evil or destruction,« the old wyvern said, pointing, in order, at the wyvern and orc core, at the mined crystal, and at the one I made.

››› This one thanks thee, ‹‹‹ I said, holding out the wyvern core.

››› And this one should belong to you, ‹‹‹ I said, watching as the wyvern carefully took it, before breathing on it. The crystal started dissolving, and I could feel a wave of joy, before it vanished, leaving behind only motes of dust.

»His spirit, this one released it. This one sees you wish to learn this, too?« he asked, noticing my curious glance.

››› A core crystal contains the soul of the creature? This one is intrigued. That must be what draws the monsters to them. This one wishes to set the souls free. ‹‹‹

»This one knows that your goals are noble, so it will teach you.«

»White!«

Turning around, I noticed the young wyvern I gave part of my energy. To my surprise, his magic had grown considerably, and his scales had a golden glow about them.

››› Little one, we meet again. ‹‹‹

He smiled, giving me a rough nuzzle.

»Power!« he said, collecting golden energy in his claws.

I patted him on his head, chuckling.

››› Then be careful with it, okay? ‹‹‹ I asked, getting a nod from him.

»One will!« was the response, before he flew away again.

I had already destroyed the gem created from my magic and released the spirit of the orc gem, and now turned around, noticing that the young wyvern was pointing at the waves below.

»Catch water food?«

Water foo- ah, he means fishes. Probably.

››› This one is not sure if she can fly when wet, ‹‹‹ I responded, getting a look from him.

»Help if need help,« he said, pointing to himself. I found myself smiling and started to descend with him. After a few minutes, we spotted a school of fishes, and the wyvern dove down, describing a clean, round path below the water, using his mouth to catch the fish. He then flew up, and opened his mouth slightly, letting the water flow out, before chewing and swallowing.

»Try!«

Chuckling, I breathed out and in one more time before holding my breath, diving down and using my hands to divert the water in front of me. I found that the water was similar to air, but it slowed me down considerably. Still, I could use my wings to propel myself forward and managed to somehow skewer a fish on my horn.

When I flew up, the moment I left the water, I realized flying had become much harder. My fur and clothes I forgot about for a moment were drenched in water, and that made them really heavy. On top of that, it made my movements sluggish.

Hovering was quite difficult now, and I grabbed the claw of the wyvern, letting me drag up from him and onto a cloud. It seemed that he had learned and remembered from earlier that I could use them as solid ground.

»This one is curious why thou did this albeit having fur,« the elderly wyvern then commented, drawing closer.

››› This one has not had tried something like this before, ‹‹‹ I responded to the elder wyvern while wringing out my mane.

››› Thee should go back for a bit, ‹‹‹ I then said, creating a flame in my hand. He nodded, and I allowed the flame to grow so big and hot that it started to rival the small star I created back home in power and heat.

The water quickly vaporized, and a few good flaps and bursts of wind removed the salt that stayed behind. The fish I caught earlier vanished somewhere between me resurfacing and drying off.

Only afterward I realized that it might have been a bad idea to remove the salt like this, but I shrugged it off. There was only a low chance of injury, anyway.

After playing and staying a little longer with the wyverns, I eventually started making my way back towards the academy. However, I did not reach it again before nightfall started, so I looked around in search of a place to sleep, finding a small village.

Fly down, change form, dust salt off clothes (how is it that it stuck to me that long?), and make my way over to the village.

It seemed like there were a few adventures on guard duty. I found myself starting to smile widely again – this was a fantasy world through and through!

“Halt! What is your purpose here, magician?” the one on the right asked, surprising me.

“I am on my way to the academy, I am supposed to start teaching there in a week,” I responded, tilting my head.

“How is it that you can tell I use magic?”

“There is a sort-of aura around you guys. You have some of the feeling of a brawler, some of the feeling of a priest and a really dense aura around you, so I assumed you were a mage.”

“Ah, I see. That’s interesting, I did not know that.”

“Shouldn’t a magician of your power be aware of that?”

I shook my head.

“No. While being fairly strong, I only have recently taken to practicing magic, and this is my first long trip.”

“I see,” he said, winking me in.

However, when I tried passing through the gate, yellow sparks rose from my body in the air, confusing me.

Holding my arm through the entrance, I could tell that there was something supposed to keep something out, but I had no idea what or why. Maybe it was a shield against weaker monsters or a warning system.

The guards did not comment on it, so I shrugged it off, walking to an inn and renting a room by agreeing to gather firewood for them the next day.

This night, Star pulled me into a dream with Flare (she couldn’t find Daybreaker) to discuss what we would do next, and we decided on a world we would go to after finishing whatever adventure we were on in our current one.

There, we then would meet where Canterlot will be/is/was and go on from there. Meeting place was the hill next to the mountain, and the symbol we would use is a flame lit along our horn.

Our time window was a year, earlier if possible.

Since I knew I could reach the academy from here within a day, I decided to first collect the firewood I promised – which I did within an hour, to both the surprise of the guards as I was carrying far more wood on my shoulders than I should be able to by my looks, and the innkeeper, who thought I would be busy until noon at least.

After that, I vanished into the adventurer’s guild I discovered earlier.

“Hey! We got someone new!”

Turning, I noticed the guards from yesterday.

“You’re the mage, right? Want to take a look at quests?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, but I presume one needs to register first, right?”

The guard shrugged.

“Well, if you have an id, that is usually enough. The only thing we need to verify is how you act in actual combat. You said you would start teaching at the academy, so I assume they already issued an id, right?”

I nodded, handing him mine.

“Let’s see… oh, a very high fire affinity? That could become useful, but is kind of a glass cannon.”

“Why?”

“Well, let’s assume you’re underground… and burn away all our oxygen. Or set yourself aflame.”

“Ouch,” I said, imagining it would not be very fun to be unable to breathe.

“Yeah, so you’re restricted to open field combat, unless you are either experienced, have a healer with you, or can fight without using flames.”

“Ah, that is possible,” I responded, wrapping my golden magic around my hands. Then, I heated the magic up. It did not burn, as there was nothing to burn.

I then formed the energy in some different shapes, including a shield (which was solid and blocked a wooden bat (nobody was willing to risk actual weapons)) and a rusty morning star.

“It still can easily set things on fire, though.”

“That probably is not a problem unless you’re in a dry forest or a similar, flammable area,” the guard responded, shrugging.

He then pointed to the receptionist.

“I can see that you’re quite strong and would probably fare well without battle experience. I’d say E, or maybe D as your start rank.”

Walking over to said receptionist, she then explained that I would have to do a quest with a seasoned adventurer – she pointed at a slightly stronger than average looking man – with at least C-rank. Then, based on my strength and how I would react to the battle, I would gain a rank each. That also gave a good indication of my potential.

Shrugging, I then told her that I would like to do the evaluation quest.

“So, since your strength is top-notch, I expect you to deliver a great deal of damage. We’ll deal with the D-ranked Orcs that appeared in the forest, which should test both your capability for battle as well as your fine control of your magic.”

The man shrugged, sheathing his battleax and beckoning a nearby mage over.

“Since this is more of a formality, and you said you would teach at the academy, I’d like to take my party’s mage with us so that she can observe you as well. Maybe she can learn something from you.”

“I see. My name is Samantha Faust, and I’ll be either nicknamed Flame Queen or Glass Canon fairly soon,” I joked, holding
out my hand to her.

“I’m Jessica. Nice to meet you.”

“So, shall we go?” I asked, receiving a nod from them both.

“Ah, there is another thing. There’s probably a mimic in the area, so be careful,” he said, and I tilted my head.

“A mimic? Those dammed chest monsters?”

“That is not entirely correct,” the mage said, before explaining.

“A mimic is a masquerading monster. They do sometimes turn into chests, but that is rather rare. But the shield around the village picked up a powerful, non-human aura. It was not fitting with any monster we know, though.”

I shrugged.

“That’s probably me. My magic is a bit… different.”

“Probably,” she deadpanned, falling silent again.

Eventually, we arrived at the place the orcs were sighed, and I took a good look around.

“The branches,” I then realized. Since the forest was relatively dense, the orcs had broken the branches on the trees, and while there were no footsteps visible, this allowed us to track them.

“Correct. It’s the best option you have unless you can track them by their scent or magic.”

Well, I could, but it would be more trouble than it’s worth.

Following the trail, we then found a base. There were seven orcs, judging from the magic I felt, and I held up seven fingers to indicate as such. They nodded, and both jumped on a nearby tree, from where they could observe the area.

I simply walked over to one of the orcs, who noticed me and grabbed his club, before swinging it at me.

I caught it in my bare hand, feeling the shock, but in no way injured by it.

I raised an eyebrow, then lit up my right arm with energy and drove it through his body. His eyes got an empty look, and he fell over backward.

But what surprised me more was how… cold my emotions felt while doing so. I killed something sentient, and nearly sapient, but it felt just like a chore.

I decided to keep a very close watch on my feelings and morals.

The heavy body hitting the ground alerted the other orcs, and I decided to have a bit of fun with them.

First, I wrapped my magic around the closest orc. It was hot enough that it hurt, but not hot enough to burn or seriously injure him.

Then, I used that magic to puppeteer him. I made him jerk around and swing the club down on the orc next to him, crushing the skull of the third one. Then, I lifted him in the air and slung him away, causing him to crash through a nearby tree, killing him as well.

They still were monsters, and they wanted to kill me as well. I felt no remorse.

A fireball lit up in my hand, and changed color from dark red, to orange, then yellow, then blue, and lastly, to white.

It burned a hole through the fourth orc, killing it in a similar manner to the first one.

Three left. But by now I was bored.

So, I tried to do something different.

For the fifth one, I projected my magic outwards, engulfing it. Then, I used that magic to create pressure on him. Something shattered in him, and he fell over, not dead, but dying.

The sixth one was trying to get close to me to knock me to the side, but I whirled around, exhaling blue flames that roasted him as well. That maybe was not that good of an idea though, since my throat was now incredibly scratchy.

Turning to the last orc, I noticed that it was trying to get away, but noticed that I had seen it. It snarled and lifted it’s weapon, but I could see that it knew it was dead. However, it had been a while since I had a good spar…

My magic lit up, boosting the orc’s strength, resistance against magic and physical attacks, speed, eyesight, and hearing. The magic ran along the club, turning it into something more akin to a morning star than a club. I grinned at it, cracking my fingers, and it understood my intent.

It understood my intent quite well.

The mage rushed forwards, slamming a hand alit with yellow energy in the weapon the orc raised just in time to block her. It then hit her with his other hand, sending her back a bit.

A fireball appeared, but the orc slammed it in the ground, before closing the distance between them, swinging his club with both hands at the woman, but she blocked it with her hands, showing only little strain while doing so.

She now jumped up, hitting the club so that it crashed back into the orc, before jumping around him, attacking him from that position, but the orc noticed her, catching her small fist in his big one.

Samantha was not phased by that, though, and just ripped her arm up, taking some flesh pieces from the orc’s hand with her. Then, they continued to trade blows for about forty seconds.

Eventually, the orc made a mistake, and a small but fast hand crashed into his throat, crushing it and distracting the orc, which got used to steal the club and use it to bash in the orc’s head.

“You boosted the orc?”

“Yup.”

“To make him stronger?”

“Yup.”

“Because you wanted to fight a strong opponent?”

“Yup.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I’m very intelligent.”

Somewhere while we were ‘discussing’ my ‘strategy’, the receptionist had filled out my card. Magic rank A, battle rank D. Higher, so her explanation, was not possible, at least not without a letter of recommendation.

Shrugging, I pocketed the card.

“You’re going?”

I turned back to the young mage.

“Yeah, I want to see what else I can deal with. Why?”

“Could you teach me how you did that?”

“What?”

“The boost.”

I blinked.

“Ah, I just pushed my ma- energy into him. Depending on how you do it, it can either harm or boost your target; the intent is important here.”

I then explained a few runes and how to form them in the mind. Thanks to them being simple, they could probably be formed by her without requiring a focus crystal.

After spending a few more days with those two, mostly exchanging pointers but also doing some quests, I then eventually left to return to the academy.

It was interesting, and for the first time, I really realized I was in a fully-fledged fantasy world.

Levitating above the city (I was not stupid enough to just fly in), I realized something was amiss. I could feel a great deal of energy collected in the academy, and I could not help but wonder what had happened.

Landing on the academy grounds, I noticed a great number of monster cores piled up in the back, powering a shield to repel monsters that extended around the city.

“What did you guys do now?” I asked, landing next to one of the teachers I recognized.

“Uh… the headmaster told us to bring out all the monster cores that we could find,” he responded, causing me to nod.

“Ah.”

I stepped closer to it, placing my hands on the side of the enormous pile. After focusing for a while, I exhaled, dissolving the cores. First only those that I touched, then the other cores nearby. I quickly got all of them to start releasing the souls stored inside of them.

“Wait – What are you doing?!”

“Those cores attract monsters, especially in big numbers,” I responded, entwining my magic with the shield and placing the strain of upholding it on myself. It would be good exercise, anyway.

“Ah, miss Faust! You have returned! What is the result?”

“One: Wyverns can ‘fly’ underwater, two, yes, monster cores attract monsters, and three, a horn is not the right tool for fishing.”

In response, he just laughed.

“You’re almost as convoluting as me! Are you doing this on purpose, too? Well… it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow you start, are you ready?”

I shook my head.

“I still need to prepare a few things,” I responded, turning to get to the library.

“While I can remember and do understand most of the fire, life, and lightning runes, water and darkness runes are still eluding to me,” I said, shaking my head.

“I want to read up on them a bit more,” I explained, getting a nod from the headmaster.

Also, I wanted to see if I could find any leads that would bring me spatial runes. I wanted and probably needed to teleport.

“You’re back!”

“Hello Lina,” I drily greeted, smiling at her afterward. She chuckled.

“It was boring without you here!”

“I can only imagine. Mind accompanying me to the library?”

“Don’t you already know everything?”

I shook my head.

“No. My powers allow me many things, but efficiency, they do not. I cast spells instinctively, but this also consumes a great amount of energy. Therefore, to make my spells faster, more efficient, or just overall deadlier, I need to know how they work,” I explained, getting a nod from her.

Remembering where the books were, it took not too terribly long finding them again, and I picked up the water and darkness book, just as I said.

While air and earth were still slightly eluding to me, I remembered enough to bluff myself through it if someone asked.

“So, how long do you think you’ll need?”

“Bout three hours? I’m not too sure,” I responded, pulling out paper and pen again.

After a minute or two, she sighed.

“You know this is nothing for me… I’ll go back to my room and practice with the focus you gave me,” she responded, and I nodded.

I nodded, then started to look at the runes again. I wonder if I could combine some of them into a single focus crystal?

Maybe. The problem was the nature of the elements… For example, earth canceled lightning, water canceled fire, darkness canceled life and air and fire seemed like it would lead to… explosive results.

Maybe I could put earth, water, and life in one focus, darkness and lightning in another, and light and air in the last? That could work since none of them interacted much with each other. Channeling both would be something dangerous, though, so I would have to make sure that only one set of runes could be activated at the same time.

Wait, wouldn’t that make it possible to squeeze all elements in one focus crystal? Just block the other runes?

I grabbed a paper. So, what was needed in a focus? The runes to draw energy out of the user, the runes to move it through the crystal, and the runes that would bring the effect into fruition. Usually entwined with each other to make casting faster and more efficient.

Ah, just use a bit of energy to close an energy transfer rune. Unless one removes all the energy from the focus or is extremely skilled, that rune will suck out the energy from the rest of the focus, making it impossible to activate more than one at a time. Now, how to put those runes in a gem…

“You did something insane again,” Lina commented, looking at the crystal hovering above the table.

It had the same size as other foci, but it had roughly eight times the amount of runes in it, all carved in such a way that they did not touch each other, and twisted so that they did not affect each other, surrounding a custom-made rune in the center responsible for channeling energy in the right one.

…and it exploded with energy when anyone except me touched it.

“Maybe,” I responded, shrugging, and eliciting a groan from her.

The students that had an interest in a new view of the ‘energy’ they were using slowly entered the room and Lina took a seat as well. I had prepared myself quite thoroughly, having read the books multiple times, created some foci, and packed enough chalk to turn the chalkboard white and then some.

Eventually, the clock hit eight, and I started.

“Quiet, please. I believe it is time to start,” I said, and the people quickly stopped chatting.

“I’m sure you all remember what the headmaster said last week. I hope you can forget what you think you know for the time you’re here. Now, do you know what stays the same along with all the energies you use?”

I picked randomly.

“Isn’t it that we use the same energy for both lightning and fire?”

Nodding, I formed a ball of white light.

“Correct. This, for example, can be turned into either a lightning strike or a very bright light. You are a dual-type?” I asked, causing the ball to vanish again shortly afterward.

He nodded.

“Well, that’s a start. But there is a small problem with that energy almost all humans have. Can you tell me what it is?”

This time, no one was sure enough to raise an arm.

“It is an extremely low amount of energy humans have. You see, even a monster like an orc has about the same amount of energy as an average human,” I explained, getting surprised and doubtful expressions.

“But why don’t use orcs it, then?” someone in the back asked, tilting his head.

“The answer to that is actually quite simple. They can’t. The energy they, and humans, have, is high enough to be recognized as such – but far too low to be utilized. We found a quite ingenious way around that.”

I picked up the crystal hovering above my desk, lighting up the runes of the light element.

“Focus crystals, like this one. They draw out the energy without requiring us to have anything to channel the energy and turn it from raw energy – mana – into a spell. Over time, this will make your reserves grow, and leylines to channel the mana will form.”

Turning to the chalkboard, I quickly drew the simplest focus there was: A rune to draw energy, inside of a rune to create a light, surrounded by a circle to stabilize the thing.

“This is probably something you’ll never see as a focus crystal, but it is good as an example, as it shows what they do. The rune in the middle is a rune you see in most foci, it connects your mana pool to it. The circle is simply to stabilize the whole thing, and the last rune creates light.”

I pulled out a bottle of ink, in which I mixed very fine ground crystal dust, making it conducive to magic, but not very stable. The crystals would decay or rearrange themselves, making the ink useless after a few hours, but it was good for demonstrations.

“It is also something you should learn. Right now, I am deconstructing the foci listed in the academy books and try to understand the runes in it. Later, I’ll provide you all ink mixed with crystal dust, which will allow you to draw those runes, and activate them a few times, but anything drawn with this ink becomes unusable after a few hours.”

“Next lesson, I will start going with you over the basic runes, but this lesson is to see who are interested and give you an introduction.”

“Miss Faust?”

“Yeah?” I asked, turning to the student that had asked. He was someone I haven’t seen before.

“There is a rumor that you used fire without having to rely on a focus, is that true?”

I nodded.

“Yes. As I said before, the foci are tools. Nothing more, nothing less. You provide the energy, and the focus forms it into a spell. However, that also means you can form spells yourself if you can control your mana. But that is something that requires either being someone that has high amounts of mana, long training, or being that lucky one-in-a-million birth. I’m somewhat half the first and half the latter.”

Drawing out my mana again, I turned it in the rune to create light, and added a limiter rune so that it would not dump all the energy instantly into a bright, quick flash. It lit up white.

“But the drawback for this is that you have to concentrate on that spell. It also takes far longer than just using a focus and changing the amount of energy flowing through it.”

I shrugged.

“However, doing this also increases your mana pool faster than just using foci. Depending on the amount of work you are willing to put into it and the need you see in either a bigger mana pool or the ability to cast spells without foci, you should decide if you want to learn it or not.”

“I see… thank you, but I think I’ll stick to using foci.”

“That’s fine, too. Instead of casting spells yourself, you could also just learn the runes – and design spells yourself. You can just take a plate of crystal, etch a spell on the surface, and cast it. The advantage is that you can cast far more complex spells than you can cast without foci, because you do not have to worry about forming it, but the problem here is cost, as crystals for spellcasting are not really affordable.”

“Also, may I remind you that you are not allowed to use your money or connections from outside of the academy here. Before that becomes possible, you, therefore, have to somehow get a supply of crystals.”

It seemed like many had just realized now how costly it would be to visit this class or to research spells in general.

“But don’t worry, most of the things we do are theoretical anyway, and I’ll provide material if we do anything practical.”

“Thanks,” someone said, and I nodded.

“Now, another important thing is when we will hold this class. Since it is an additional class atop the other classes, I’m more or less forced to take the afternoon class. To make up for that, I’ll try to make this worthwhile. I also want you all to copy me your schedules so that I can see when you are free, if we’re lucky we could get a time window where all of you are free.”

“I think Tuesday in 3rd and 4th is time,” one of the older students commented, getting nods from the others.

I tilted my head.

“I remember seeing a schedule where that was filled… you all have free time then?” I asked, getting a shrug from the student that spoke up.

“Yeah, because that is the time where the younger students have their introduction to foci, and what we know about them. It’s kind of required to understand that before coming here, but usually only taught to the first and second years,” he said, and after verifying that everyone had time on Tuesday, I then made a note to put my lessons there from now on.

“Okay. That aside, I want you all to take a look at the foci you possess, maybe you’ll learn something new. That’s it for today from my side,” I said, and they nodded, leaving after about twenty minutes later. They had several questions, like the amount of magic they had in relation to each other. (For those interested, it was in about a 20% margin from weakest to strongest.)

After that was done, I checked up on the shield, and then went on to create empty, crystalline plates to create spells on. I also created staff-like foci, with a tip that carved out the crystal from below it. That way, they could carve the plates without having to worry about breaking them.

Unluckily, it took me almost the entirety of the night to fine-tune the runes so that the plates would not break when looking at them weirdly after being touched by the carving spell. And after that I discovered that they left traces of their own spell carved in the runes, making them essentially worthless. Wednesday evening was when I finally managed to fine-tune the spells to work as intended.

Thursday was spent watching over the training of first years. As it appears, a teacher here has to do more than just teach.

And Friday, I was busy trying to find out why Lisa was so bad with lightning and fire, she had an aptitude for it. Unluckily, I got no results.

The week quickly passed, and it was Tuesday again.

To my surprise, the number of people attending had increased by nearly half, and I could tell there were not only students but even a few adults I haven’t seen before. Teachers, maybe?

I shrugged.

“Please copy whatever material you do not have, I will not repeat myself unless I deem it necessary,” I told them, getting nods.

“Now, those that were there, you have copied the runes I showed you last time, right?”

Nods.

“Good. Then, each of you please pick up a crystal plate and an inscribing quill,” I said, pointing to the barely one millimeter thick plates – to prevent too powerful spells from being inscribed – and the pens that I formed into feathers. I originally only wanted to change the one I was using (I was bored), but then discovered that it made it not only easier to write, but also seemed to slightly self-correct when errors were made, especially when drawing bows or straight lines.

I was not someone to look a gift horse in the mouth, shrugged, accepted it, and then remade the rest into quills Sunday.

They all quickly picked up the plates and quills, and some realized that the crystalline quills contained runes, as well.

“Miss Faust? Are those foci?” the student – Johnathan, I knew by now – asked, the same who asked last lesson if I was using magic without foci.

I nodded.

“Yes, but you will be unable to cast through them. They take a bit of your mana and use it to remove the crystal from below them, but only the same crystal they are made from. They will only work on the plates you have in front of you,” I responded, then realizing there were not enough quills.

“Ah, right. While I made more than enough plates, I only made thirty quills. I cannot create more right now since I have neither the time nor patience to do so, so please share them with the new students when you are done,” I said, getting nods.

“Now, behind me, you see the rune for limiting magic flow. I want you to combine it with the two runes I showed last time and etch them in the plates. Make sure not to merge them! That will cause them to stop working outside of some very special cases,” I explained, getting nods from the people in the classroom.

After a few minutes, some had already finished, and I then heard an explosion in one of the upper ranks. Blinking, as I was sure that should be impossible considering the way I created the plates and quills, I walked over and picked up the shards.

Luckily, they had written down what they had carved out before supplying the spell with mana, so I could take a look at it. It seemed normal enough, but I then realized that the runes touched and crossed very slightly between the limiter and light rune, not touching each other. In the angle they were to each other, they created a feedback loop above the crystal plate.

“You put the runes too close to each other,” I explained, inscribing a second plate with the same runes, but spacing them further apart.

The spell flickered a bit, but it worked.

And once again, I reminded everyone not to allow the runes to cross.

Four weeks later I started research in spatial runes. And, eventually, I succeeded in creating one.

Star later visited me and Flare in our dreams again, and we agreed to meet in the world I was in right now, instead. They figured they had a better chance coming here than to Equestria, especially considering they might end up in a different Equestria.

All I had to do now was to wait – and create a beacon for them to follow.

Unluckily, we still had no clue where Daybreaker was and depending on if she would follow the signal our magics would create, we would wait here or try to find her.

1 - 5: about destiny you will ponder

“Ah, there you are,” the copy said, causing Daybreaker to freeze up. She was still in the dungeon but luckily had stopped talking with Nightmare a few minutes ago.

“You know, I was meditating earlier… and I noticed some interesting things. Have you noticed that there is magic residue from a teleport in the courtyard from two different ponies?”

Daybreaker knew that her copy knew who she was. But she was the one who designed this castle, and she could tell that the mind of her opponent, at last, was different.

The dungeons were a zone where teleportation was blocked. Except for her.

However, while readying a shield spell, a teleport spell, and a stun spell, she decided to play along.

“I have observed the fight and teleported when it became too dangerous. Have I done wrong?”

‘Daybreaker’ chuckled.

It was not a friendly chuckle.

“No, you have not done wrong, per se. But, you see, I do not like ponies or any creatures for that matter that try to manipulate me,” she said, lowering her head to stare at this world’s Daybreaker.

The crimson-and-yellow eyes bore into her now white and red ones.

“Did you truly thought I would not notice you? Your magic might be different than it normally is… but it still has the signature of an alicorn.”

Shaking her head, she chuckled.

“Were you aware that I would have done nothing but left this world would you have given me the chance to? But now, I will not… as it seems like things are getting interesting here.”

Out of nowhere, Daybreaker felt something inside of her shatter, and she nearly collapsed, but managed to stand. She suddenly felt so weak…

The spells building up in her horn fizzled out at the same time, much to her horror.

“What did you do?!” she all but screamed, taking a few steps backward.

“Oh, I just took the ‘me’ out from you,” her copy responded, causing Daybreaker’s eyes to widen.

Looking down at herself, she could tell that she had… changed. The illusion she placed on herself this morning broke, and she was now wearing golden horseshoes instead of crimson ones.

Her mane had reverted to the weak form she once had, but luckily, she could feel the spells placed on her mind. At least her spirit would not be touched like this.

“You know…” the double started again, causing Daybreaker’s head to whip back at her copy.

“…if you find it in yourself to honestly apologize, I will give you back what I have taken,” she said, causing Daybreker’s eyes to widen.

“With every passing second I stay in this world though, I can tell that it influences me… so, if I were you, I would do so before I become what you see as your ideal for yourself,” she responded, giving her a long, piercing look, before teleporting.

Probably to deal with the dragons.

“What will you do?”

Daybreaker sighed, using the reduced amount of magic her original form had to reapply her disguise.

“I don’t know, Nightmare. I really don’t know…”

However, before Daybreaker could move, the ground shook, and she could hear the screech of dragons. Shrugging, she teleported away as well, noticing how it felt somewhat more pleasant than with her usual magic.

Maybe some sort of side effect from having a boost in magic power?

(DB)

I was annoyed at the dragons. Bordering on anger.

I noticed ‘Celestia’ teleport up on a nearby tower. Grinning and winking at her, I then turned to face the dragons – releasing a beam of blue flames, severing the right wing of one of the dragons.

The others tried to claw at me, but I dodged them, and when they tried again, I turned myself into flames. I knew that wounds inflicted on my form would reappear when reforming, but they did not.

I could sense something swell up in me while flying and ‘teleporting’ around the dragons. It was as if some sort of hidden energy well deep inside of me had just shown itself, and it was boiling with dark emotions.

Since I realized that this was to me what ‘Daybreaker’ was to ‘Celestia’, I made sure to keep a lid on it. I had no intention of this energy overpowering my mind – it might help me win a battle, but I would end up losing in the long term.

However, doing so proved to be a fatal distraction, and a claw scraped along my back, throwing me in the stone below that was the palace of Canterlot.

I blacked out for a second, but then found myself fully healed, and slightly higher, standing in the rubble. My strength was clearly increased, and I felt completely refreshed, but I also realized that the energy I had tried to keep under control had ended up flowing into me.

My judgment was probably completely useless now, so I decided to only attack dragons unless I was threatened directly. That way, I could probably prevent killing anyone that did not deserve it while staying in this form.

One might wonder how I realized what had happened with my mind, but going from only ‘fighting off the dragons’ to ‘kill anything that looks at you funny’ in your mind was a quite good indicator that something was wrong. Alas, I only decided to take my anger out on the dragons.

I shot up, my hoof slamming into and breaking the jaw of the dragon that hit me.

“Not a bad hit, admittedly. But now? Now I’m angry,” I responded, powering up my horn and summoning the plasma of the sun again.

The dragon’s flame resistance might be incredibly high, but the flames of the sun quickly washed away their magic and started to burn their scales. Of course, they quickly left where the stream of plasma was falling down, not stupid enough to stay in place and get roasted.

For a moment, I wondered about my next course of action, but then I got a quite good idea of how to deal with the dragons.

I summoned the flames of the sun again. But instead of just throwing it at them, I created a Warhammer out of it, launching myself forwards with a beat of my strengthened wings, and arriving at the first, surprised dragon with nearly half the speed of sound, swinging the hammer around with a similar speed.

Not having the time to block the hammer, the dragon blasted me with flames, but they just blocked my vision and were not enough to stop me from hitting the dragon.

“I’m a being made from flames and magic. I do not believe I can be beaten with flames or magic,” I responded drily, slamming the hammer down on his head a second time, causing him to pass out and start to fall.

Turning to the smaller dragons, I then gave a sinister, fanged smile.

“Who’s next?”

Seeing the dragons flee, Daybreaker decided it was time to fly up to her mirror image, wondering how she recovered so fast.

However, she quickly realized what had happened – the magic aura of the pony hovering there had changed to what it was before. Only a little, but it had changed, and Daybreaker remembered what this change in one’s magical aura meant.

She had turned into her primal form.

‘Daybreaker’, however, was supposed to already be a primal form. This was confusing for her, but it made sense considering the comment her ‘copy’ had given earlier. That she never was ‘Celestia’.

“I suspected you would come to take a look,” she spoke up, startling Daybreaker.

“Come. Celestia.”

Daybreaker froze but then realized that right now, she looked like she did a millennium ago. Magenta eyes, and aurora-like mane, not intimidating at all. She grimaced, but she also knew that she would not dare to speak up to someone that was that much more powerful than she was.

“Tell me, how did it feel when I took away your powers?”

Realizing she was asking that question to return herself to her normal, less powerful, and less intimidating form – granted, a flaming mane was intimidating, but a being twice as high as she usually was could be counted as intimidating as well.

Also, if personal experience taught her anything, then her stronger copy was having the same problems as she once had – a murderous intent, primed on killing everyone around her.

She herself eventually got a hold of it, but it took her a few years, and she came more than once close to killing the ponies near her. Considering the strength of the pony hovering in front of her, Daybreaker was not sure if her copy could stop herself in time were she to accidentally attack someone…

As such, both for fear if she lied, and for fear for her own safety, she decided to answer truthfully.

“It felt as if you suppressed something inside of me, then pulled it out. At the same time, I felt like I was remembering how it felt to touch things, even though that sense was not impeded at all in my real form,” she said, getting her copy to nod.

“That is enough.”

After a moment of concentration, the sun painted on her opponent’s chest faded, and the statue of the pony in front of her became ‘normal’ again.

“Now, have you decided?”

For a moment, Daybreaker wondered what her copy meant, before remembering what was told to her earlier.

She would have to sincerely apologize… and her copy knew for sure that she could not do that as Daybreaker.

“Fine!” she snarled, tugging at the strings that made up the enchantments on her mind, dispelling them. She felt something change in her but then sighed, looking back up.

“I’m sorry! There! Satisfied?”

Her copy shrugged.

“Yes. Alas, I cannot give you back your power.”

Daybreaker blanched.

“You promised!”

“Ah, but I never took it from you. I just made it harder for you to turn back into your ‘evil’ self. Power is not evil, Celestia, but it can corrupt you very easily. I usually have companions that hold me back, but since I ended up here, I found my heart growing cold.”

Eyes devoid of emotion turned to Daybreaker, staring deep into her soul.

“Your heart is still there. Otherwise, your pride would have held you back. You still worry a little, feel a little. Let me warn you, Celestia: Never forget or forgoes what emotion you still have,” she said, causing Daybreaker to feel quite uncomfortable.

Lighting up her horn, the copy teleported herself and Daybreaker back to the dungeon.

“Nightmare, or should I say, Luna. At this point, I do not really care.”

“What do you want?” Nightmare hissed at the copy.

“The spell you used against me. You may not know it, but it feels very similar. If I have the spell, I can leave, leaving this world back in your and your sister’s hooves. Oh, and I probably should warn you.”

“HAH! Warn us? What for?!”

The copy narrowed her eyes at Nightmare.

“The return of the demon is neigh,
Chaos will rule, order will cease.
For a day, power held high,
Not earlier the world will be released.”

It took but a second for both queens to understand the message behind those words…

“And if you don’t give me that spell, I’ll help him win.”

Now THAT was a compelling argument.

“Nice to see I haven’t even changed in other worlds,” Daybreaker snarked, having reassumed her real form sometime during the following day.

Her copy shrugged.

“In some. In others, your roles are reversed. In others, none of you are alicorns. In some, Daybreaker and Celestia, as well as Nightmare and Luna are separate entities. Most variations that could exist of this world do exist,” she responded, tilting her head.

“In one, Discord stands for ORDER of all things.”

The three ponies all shuddered while imagining that.

“Will you pester us again?” Nightmare asked, still quite annoyed by the copy’s questions.

She in turn shook her head.

“Probably not. Unless you want me to, that is.”

Using her magic on a nearby rock, it got infused with her magic, adapting a spiraling pattern depicting a sun. A tether of magic connected it with the copy.

“If you ever require my aid, you can use that to send a request per dragonfire. Be warned, it will only transport ink, paper, and papyrus.”

Nightmare couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“And why would you leave something like this with us? Couldn’t we use this to attack you with tracking magic?”

The copy shrugged.

“Well, if you do, there’s a high chance I will have enough time to make this world’s sun either explode or make it collide with the planet. You have nothing you could threat me with, really.”

Fuming with frustration, Nightmare had to accept that the pony in front of her was right, but she then felt that anger being suppressed by the copy’s magic.

“I do not plan on returning here. There are enough worlds so that every one of us will find enough space for themselves. Now, I wonder where that sister of mine is?”

“Which one?” Daybreaker asked, remembering the different magics she had felt on the alicorn earlier.

Her copy blinked again.

“Well, you’re surprisingly sharp. The golden one, of course – she was the first to exist, and she is the one who determines where we meet,” she responded, giving a real, serene smile for the first time since Daybreaker had seen her.

“I believe I should be off. After all, while I would like to have the resources of a nation available to myself, I still know that those are yours, not mine. And while not as strong as me, you come close thanks to your experience and link with this world’s sun – whose power you could have wrangled from me at any point in time. Also, I want to see them again,” she said, her horn glowing and ripping open a hole in the fabric of reality.

It looked wrong, for lack of a better term.

Nightmare peered into it, then reeled back.

“WHAT was THAT?!”

The copy raised an eyebrow.

“Wow, you actually looked. I’m impressed, you still seem as sane and lucid as before. Or maybe you just got lucky?”

Daybreaker tilted her head, curious, but a bit shocked that her sister would react like that.

Noticing this, her copy once again told her what happened.

“If you peer in the void, it peers back. What did you expect?”

“Just go…” Nightmare said, her eye twitching.

“I guess I’ll do just that. Ciao!” the copy said, jumping in the portal backward, making it look like she threw herself at the wall, before vanishing with it from existence.

Nightmare then turned to her sister.

“Now then, Daybreaker, I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

Daybreaker’s eye twitched.

“You will not get anything from me!”

And once again, their horns locked in eternal battle, the sisters once again forgetting everything else, including the two days a different Daybreaker ruled, and the prophecy of Discord’s return.

If one were to listen carefully, they could hear a low chuckle from the chaos demon’s stone prison. Because here, he was no longer a spirit – the sisters had fought so much and bought so much calamity that he had become even more powerful than before. They haven’t figured that out – yet.

1 - 6: when going out to explore

(Flare)

Magic poured into my body, not that of a parasite, but that of an alicorn.

I had ‘lost’ against Grogar. I was not sure what he was thinking, but I decided to wait until he left, which he eventually did. I could feel the range of his perception, and as soon as I left it, I stood up, regenerated my rough form with rocks from the vicinity, then threw myself in the air again.

I dared not to hope that he would lower his caution, thinking he had defeated one or the defender of ponykind, for that, he was too smart.

However, I now knew far more than I did before, and I could tell that a good lightning strike would work just as well as my ‘bombs’.

I was careful not to exceed the speed of sound. I did not intend to alert the goat to my presence.

“Velvet!” I called out in two-toned disharmony, getting the attention of the unicorn that was busy writing messages and mailing them with nearby pegasi.

“You don’t look so good…” he commented, getting a huff out of me.

“I encountered Grogar. He has powerful magic, strong enough to cut through stone effortlessly. He should not be faced in direct combat by any but experienced, powerful fighters,” I said, rubbing my left eye. It was still not fully regenerated.

“How – ah, right. What else can you tell us about him?”

“His army is made up of undead soldiers. I do not know that for sure, but I could feel them. They are undead,” I/we said, getting him to nod.

“On that topic, there is a message for you.”

“Oh?” I asked, grabbing the envelope.

“How do people even know… oh crap.”

The letter was written in the year 1001… of Celestial Reign. Thousands of years in the future.

It instructed me to search for the guardians Sunshine and Selene, marked by their empty flanks, wings, and horns they both bore.

Seemed like I was not the one who would stop Grogar…

Unfortunately, the letter also mentioned that the guardians have not mingled with other ponies for generations and did not know of the dire situation. Fortunately, a map was included.

“Something important?”

I raised an eyebrow at Velvet.

“You could say that. This may decide the outcome of this war… I cannot help you anymore, at least not for the time being,” I responded causing him to sigh.

“And I’m almost out of mail pegasi, too…”

I gave him a (hopefully) encouraging smile.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll manage.”

“Thanks. Before you go, though, I have just one question.”

“Eh?”

“How’d you get there and back here – within half a day, without even looking winded?”

I deadpanned.

“I’m still a mess of molten rock.”

“Ah, fair. Well, good luck, I guess,” he grumbled, returning to his paperwork.

Do you think he suspects us?

‘He has no reason to,’ I responded to Nightmare, shrugging.

‘Also, should we test how much you boost me?’

Sure.

A quick test revealed that the explosions I created now had a diameter about twice as big as before. This was a substantial power boost, but the problem was that the only comparison I had was that Velvet said that an explosion half that size could be created by an experienced unicorn.

I really needed to meet a legit Celestia…

Flare, look! Over there!

Snapped out of my thoughts, I concentrated on my surroundings again, noticing the valley that was marked on the map. Flying down, I noticed that it was lush, filled with many trees, and completely green.

However, I saw no indications of (civilized) life. But wasn’t it said the guardians lived here?

I decided to meditate again. Wondering why I haven’t done this sooner, I looked at the area around me, eventually…

Finding nothing.

The area here was empty. For at least five decades, no creature had cast any spells here, nor were there any traces of weather magic. That did not mean no ponies were living here – an earth pony’s magic was incredibly hard to detect, after all – but why would go anyone to such lengths to hide?

I’ve been tricked. Why? By whom?

Snarling, I turned tail, flying back to the village I just came from.

That unicorn had a lot to answer for!

1 - 7: Flames

Author's Note

My upload schedule will probably get more consistent after this week.
See ya.

1 - 7: Flames

To my surprise, it was Daybreaker who found her way to us first. The reason this was surprising was that we haven’t talked with her about our plan to meet in this world.

As for how she arrived? Well…

I was watching the sunset I was not responsible for, a notebook next to me with a drawing of said sunset. I had found that my skills with drawings and spells had increased significantly since we got separated, and I had a guess that this was because of the body I held.

For Daybreaker this probably meant that she had become less… sociable than before.

In one moment, nothing, in the next, she was flung into me.

“Oof! What gives?” I exclaimed, picking myself up and noticing the alicorn atop of me.

“…Day? How did you know we’d meet here?”

She shrugged.

“I didn’t. I landed in an Equestria ruled by ‘me’, and then teleported in the multiverse, but with a goal this time. I am not sure how long I spent in the void, but it spit me out here,” she responded, causing me to nod.

“So, what are you doing here? This world does not look like Equestria,” she said, looking around.

“I’ll answer you if you take on your disguise,” I deadpanned, getting her to facepalm.

“I knew I forgot something. Sorry, Celestia. That’s probably why we should let you lead us,” she said, pulling out the ring. Interestingly, it provided her with a robe I could tell was pulled from the ring that I had on my horn.

“You suspect that your body had influenced your mind?”

She nodded.

“As time went on, I found myself caring less and less for the world I was in, to the point that I hit dragons so hard that I might have killed them. Now, my question?”

“I’m teaching magic.”

Daybreaker was silent for a moment.

Then…

“Wh- hahaha! Really? Really? Let me guess, this school’s yours at well?”

I deadpanned.

“I’m not Celestia, and that’s why I go by ‘Samantha’.”

“Fair,” she responded, looking around.

“What got a ma- woman to do for some meals around here, anyway?”

“Quadruped world?”

“Yep.”

I shrugged.

“You could just register at the guild,” I responded, tearing a page from my notebook and quickly writing down a recommendation letter for my ‘sister’ Daybreaker.

She raised a brow at that.

“I didn’t peg you for the adventurous type.”

“Well, I’m still human, at least where it counts,” I responded, pointing to my head.

“I’m not content with sitting on my ass doing nothing for weeks.”

Daybreaker laughed.

“I like you! You’re far better than Celestia ever was! Now, mind accompanying me? I’m sure questing together is the better option compared to random parties,” she responded, causing me to shrug.

“Might as well, but you’re the melee. Oh! I nearly forgot, but I have to introduce you to the wyverns!”

“Wyverns?” she asked, following me towards the guild’s building in this city.

“Yeah, I gave one of them a tiny sliver of my power. Don’t worry, it is so little that it has already regenerated, and it cannot be used against me. However, the magic had made the wyvern quite powerful,” I responded, getting a raised eyebrow from my ‘sister’.

“You sure that won’t become a problem?”

“Nah, he’s like Flutters.”

“Surely not that bad,” Daybreaker said, looking at me skeptically.

“Not that bad,” I verified, opening the doors in front of us.

“Samantha! Back for new quests?”

“No, I’m here to recommend someone to the guild. Daybreaker here is my sister, and she is as powerful as I am,” I responded, getting a nod from the receptionist.

Since Daybreaker was a ‘close blood-relative‘, I could recommend her without her having to go through the verification quest. Her strength of course got measured, and her rank got set equal to mine, to D.

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“You haven’t tried raising your rank to A?”

“The more powerful you get, the more you get noticed. Also, I nearly blew up the academy once by turning into my version of you. I’m trying to keep a low-key profile right now,” I responded, causing Daybreaker to stare at me.

“You? You, out of all four of us, pulled something like that?”

“To be fair, I was under the influence of mental magic at that moment,” I responded, causing her to chuckle while facepalming.

“How long were you in this world, anyway?”

“A few months, why?”

She blinked.

“For me, only four days have passed since we got separated.”

Oh.

“Not like it matters much,” I responded shrugging, pulling out my notebook again.

It had a spell on it which I currently was trying to redesign to use less mana. It was supposed to be the beacon signal for the others.

“On that topic, how did you even find me?”

She shrugged.

“I got lucky. As said, I was in a world with Daybreaker. Her magic was similar to yours, since she, unlike me, originally was Celestia. I just set a goal that magic signature combined with my own.”

“I see. Then, could you help me cast this spell?”

“Sure. How am I supposed to do that?”

“Just give me access to your mana pool. This spell is supposed to break through the layer separating reality from the void, after all.”

“That, I can do,” she responded, holding out her hand to me.

As soon as I took it, I could sense our mana pools connecting, and the leylines in our arms started expanding, although I could tell they would only do so temporarily. I made a mental note to investigate this phenomenon later, pouring my mana in the spell instead.

The intricate matrix formed atop my (invisible) horn, seemingly not doing anything, before it flashed white and then proceeded to drain mine and Daybreaker’s mana pool within a second. Wholly unprepared for this, I nearly fell over because of the drain, and my ‘sister’ was not faring better.

Luckily, the spell required nothing more than being cast and absorbing enough mana. I encased it in a crystal to protect it, then pocketed it. If it would be broken, it would just stop working, but the feeling of having sucked all your mana out of your body was not one I wanted to feel again anytime soon.

“How much do you have?” Daybreaker asked, helping me up.

“About… two percent,” I responded, causing her to nod.

“I have twelve percent left. It seems that thanks to you being closer to the source, it prioritized your mana pool. Or maybe it had something to do with the mana transfer.”

I shrugged.

“It’s not like we have to find that out now, now do we? After all, we have all of eternity to do so.”

She snorted.

“Fair. I’m still not comfortable with the thought of being immortal, but that’s probably just me.”

“You have more than enough time to familiarize yourself with the idea,” I deadpanned, starting to guide her back towards the academy.

When the students came in next Tuesday, they noticed that someone had been added to the class again.

However, what they didn’t expect to see was me sitting there, torn between amusement and resignation.

She had come up with a plan to show the other students what magic could really do, and I eventually agreed with her.

Eight o’clock.

“Quiet! As you may have noticed, we got a new member in class. Daybreaker.”

“Morning.”

“She’s not here as a student, though. She’ll assist my lessons, instead. And is about as strong as I am. Currently, she has more power than I, but that is because I nearly emptied my energy pool casting a location spell so that she could find me, and am supporting the shield spell around the city.”

A half-truth is better than a complete lie, right?

“Also, feel free to speak with her when testing spells. With the materials here, I would be surprised if you could create a spell even remotely capable of seriously harming either of us. Our energies provide us with low-level protection, but it more or less cancels spells of the level we’re currently discussing.”

“Sam?”

“Yeah?” I asked, turning to Daybreaker, raising a brow.

She gave me a fanged grin.

“How about a spar?”

“…later,” I responded, pulling out the notes I made about colorless runes.

“Over the last few weeks, you all have learned the essentials for creating spells, so today I have two special things for you. One, a spell I myself created, a spell without an attribute. Secondly, I will teach you how to deconstruct simple spells.”

Both of these announcements visibly shocked my audience with the first being supposedly impossible and the second incredibly hard.

But, with the right methods… it became easy. I allowed myself a smile.

The only thing this world was missing was an outside perspective, of someone rejecting ‘common sense’.

1 - 8: Out of titles

Flare! Wait!

“WHAT?!” I yelled, stopping my flight to concentrate on Nightmare better.

You yourself said you only noticed the absence of unicorn and pegasi magic! The guardians hide for a reason! You have become hot-headed!

…eyes widening in horror, I realized she was… right…

Turning tail, I rushed back, landing circling the valley, and this time looking at it. I spotted only nature, but Flare was right – an alicorn could hide. Without magic.

‘And you have become manipulative.’

Some of us have to be, she responded, before materializing next to me. She was incorporeal, but still carried the magic of an alicorn.

And her non-existent body stretched, turning into naught but magic energy. She blanketed the land, before condensing into an ethereal form before me again.

Some creatures. They are that way. I could feel the slow flow of natural magic. Maybe - more like probably - it is those you seek, she explained, pointing in one direction, before merging with my body again.

I nodded, thanked her in my thoughts, then started to walk in that direction.

And to my incredible surprise, I actually found ponies there, in an underground cave which was lit up by crystals, bright as day.

Two young alicorns.

Before they got a good look at me, the ring atop my horn got activated by Nightmare, and I noticed with surprise that it turned me into a pegasus with white fur, instead of a black unicorn.

I touched the ring – your form with it is a unicorn, and that appearing here would be quite hard to explain.

I nodded. That was good for two reasons, one, I now knew for sure that Star could keep a level head, and two, well, she just mentioned why.

“Guardians!” I called out, causing the two ponies that were there to step forwards, watching me.

They were about my size, one pure white with a light pink mane, and one pure royal blue with a light blue mane. They were the Celestia and Luna of this world, but I dared not to assume that this world and ‘Equestria Prime’ were similar enough to assume them to be named like that. Especially not with the names I was given.

Wait… Right. I’m just stupid – that letter was 1001 Celestial Reign. Those are just not their original names. Duh.

“You are Sunshine and Selene, dubbed guardians of ponykind?” I asked, receiving a slow nod from Sunshine (I just presumed the white one to be Sunshine), to which I sighed in relief.

“Equestria is in need of your help again,” I continued, getting a stare from Selene. She seemed to not believe me.

They still said nothing, but looked at me, telling me with their glances to go on.

“A necromancer by the name of Grogar had appeared, and he is leading an army against the ponies. We cannot defeat him on our own, and so they wish for your assistance,” I ended, hoping they would follow me.

They both were silent, but then, Selene spoke up.

“How have thee found us?”

I handed the letter over to her, and she tilted her head.

“This is my writing,” Sunshine realized, tilting her head.

“Time travel is likely involved; you need to send that letter in the past when you eventually write it. Ask around, you should find out when and where you have to send that letter in the future,” I added, getting a nod from Sunshine.

“Thank you for informing us,” she responded, and I nodded, walking out and starting to fly back to the village. I wanted to help in every way I could.

But alas, not everything was as it should be. Because eventually, about halfway there, an enormous build-up of energy appeared below me, blasting me. I knew I needed to stay conscious, but I fell into darkness far too quickly, not having the chance to even throw up a shield.

Author's Note

Merry Christmas, guys.

1 - 9: Reunited

Author's Note

No. The Christmas present I prepared is an update for each of my stories, and I will release them shortly. The chapter on the Nightmare Moon story still needs ~~some~~ massive editing.
In any case, here’s this story’s update.

1 - 9: Reunited

“I cannot allow you to interfere in this fight.”

“Luckily, it seems like the guardians are unaware of my presence.”

“They are not with you.”

“Now, I will send you into the void between worlds, to never be seen again. I knew you were not dead.”

(CEL)

Waking up suddenly and falling out of my bed was not pleasant per se, but at least it now hurt far less than it would have a year ago.

However, what surprised me was who had thrown me out of my bed. Because on my bed I could spot an unconscious Solar, slowly burning through the bed below her. I quickly scanned her, realizing that some sort of magic was wreaking havoc on her.

Considering that she was an alicorn, I was a bit worried about her.

Then, her eyes opened, dull orange flames emerging from them. What I heard was not her voice, but Nightmare’s voice instead.

“C-Celestia? Our Celestia? Oh, good. Quick, I think we got hit with necrotic energy, and enough of it to nearly kill Flare!”

Realizing what this meant, I summoned up my power, casting cleansing after cleansing spell, using the support of Daybreaker who just woke up, and Nightmare who was doing her best to hold this truly black magic back.

The magic was of incredible strength, but eventually, I managed to flush it out of her body, using up a good chunk of my magic in the process. Satisfied, I fell asleep immediately, incredibly exhausted from what just happened.

Luckily, I woke up before Lina came in to wake me up, which she usually did if I slept in late.

After Daybreaker’s arrival, I made sure to move into a new, big room in the dorm, since I suspected something like this might happen.

However, there were some things we now had to do.

First, I woke up Daybreaker, and she yawned, used two spells to make her decent, then she teleported away. She knew what this meant – we would leave this world after the end of the school year, being reunited.

While we were sleeping, Nightmare took the time to materialize herself. It seemed like the ring was providing her with a physical body. I was curious where or how she might have lost her physical body, but I was not planning to ask. I’d know eventually, anyway.

I woke up Flare and noticed that the ring atop her head was, while still working, only casting an illusion over her. A different rune was lit up with arcane light on it, and I recognized the rune – protection.

Something, probably the havoc the magic had caused made it unsafe to use portals, teleportation, and similar spells on her. I estimated about a week until they would work normally again, but I could be wrong.

After explaining to them my position here on the school, they reacted like Daybreaker, that is with chuckles and the question if I owned the school. The (current) answer still was no.

From there on, I taught them everything I knew in my free time, that was until it was time for me to teach. Since there was only about a month of school left before the summer break, this meant I would only teach this class only four more times, and I gave them just about everything I found out about the spells of this world.

“Listen up, you all!” I exclaimed, walking into the room.

“This is the fourth-last lesson of the year you’ll receive from me this year, and probably the fourth-last lesson at all, ‘cuz I’m leaving. I taught you most if not all the essentials about spells in this world, and I now want you to prove that I haven’t wasted my time.”

“I want you all to construct three spells.”

“However, this time, I’ll give you something special. If you want to test your spell yourself, I will give you temporary material for tier three spells, but if you’d like to do your work theoretical, you can design and hand me up to tier five spells. One spell has to work as an attack spell, one has to work as a defensive spell, and one has to simply be something useful.”

“Excuse me?”

I turned to Leo.

“Yeah?”

“What do you mean with ‘temporary’ material?”

“It’ll vanish if someone else but you touch it or if the spells on it get activated with malicious content. Those materials are manifested life energy. Also, they vanish when they leave academy grounds, or if I leave academy grounds. Therefore, you will be unable to sell them despite being worth incredibly much, nor will you be able to attack anyone with the spells on it.”

“Uh, then how are we supposed to show attack spells?”

“As I said, you cannot use them with the intent to harm. Using them against dummies or my sister is perfectly fine.”

“HEY!”

Some chuckled, and after I got their notice if they wanted to do it theoretical or practical, I handed out material. Over the next one and a half hours, I answered questions, corrected rarely made mistakes because the runes never got used with each other, handed out some new quill-foci because the old got broken, and explained to those interested the quirks of four- and five-tiered spells.

From tier three upwards it becomes complicated quite quickly. They become far more fragile from that point on. For example, tier four spells usually simply use a tier five stabilizer, if simply for the fact that there are three different tier four stabilizers seemingly doing the same thing, but actually disabling your spell completely if used wrongly. It was by no means energy-efficient, but even I haven’t found a better way to decide which stabilizer to use than intuition, so I actually forbade tier four stabilizers.

“Miss Faust?”

“Yeah?”

“Combining Lightning and Fire seems possible,” someone commented, and I walked over, interested.

It was indeed possible, but not that easy. Combining elements usually resulted in volatile spells, controlling them required both knowledge and experience.

“Huh. Not a bad idea, and you actually one-upped me on that one,” I commented, after explaining how not to use elements in conjunction.

“Really? How? You know almost everything!”

I laughed softly, shaking my head.

“Not exactly. But I can tell how a spell will work, usually with a quite high accuracy. That’s how I can tell how, for example, the runes you got here will interact. And I never thought about using fire and lightning in the same spell, fearing a misfire – but this is exactly what I assigned, is it not?”

“Right! You are more focused on foci than on spells!”

I nodded. I managed to teach a few people how to create weak foci and mana crystals because I could – scratch that, would – not be around forever.

After the lesson was over, I walked over to Daybreaker.

“Were you really planning on letting them use the spells on me?”

“Maybe,” I responded, chuckling.

“But I’d of course cast protection spells before they would use anything truly dangerous.”

“That’s a relief. Sorry for doubting you.”

“Let’s not comment on that. I’ll check up on the other two, ok?”

“Sure,” she responded, and we teleported away, landing in our room.

Time passed, and Nightmare and Flare told her story. I used a divination spell, catching the moment Grogar was banished, and Flare finally agreed to not (immediately) try to return to the world she came from.

After two weeks, the date for the assignment came, and I started collecting plates and papers, all holding new spells in them.

We four were all present.

“Who are you two?”

“Relatives of me and Day,” I responded, placing the scrolls and plates down.

We were outside, to test the spells and grade them. Thanks to the shield spell still straining on my magic, I could lower myself down to the average power level to cast them. Otherwise, everything would flat-out work or explode, with no compromises, or anything inbetween.

Most of the spells were quite normal, like ice spears, but some were quite creative.

For example, a shield spell that could power itself indefinitely through ambient magic. Casting it took quite some time, but if you simply cast it again... and again...

And then there were some theoretical tier-5 spells that showed great promise for the students that created them, and three that took me completely off-guard.

The less ludicrous ones were the attack spell combining fire and lightning, the shield spell from the same person combining ice and wind as well as a spell that would temporarily turn something soft – while temporarily meant in this case ‘until magic ran out’, which is in a world of magic is more or less never.

There was an explosion spell with a 94% efficiency ratio – even I managed only about 85% and took notes – and a utility spell of tier four that was able to determine both if something was sapient and sentient.

Then there were the three spells from Leo. They were shocking.

The first one – a tier five attack spell – used spatial runes which I only demonstrated once! And there was no documentation on them published yet. It worked by turning and twisting space in a weapon and using it for a piercing attack, like a spear.

Then there was a shield spell, tier five as well – designed to defend against his attack spell.

And lastly, a stabilizer spell of tier five. You could cast damn near any ‘normal’ over that thing and needed to concentrate to even mess up a little! Like sparks or more mana use than necessary!

“…full marks,” I commented, my eye twitching.

I then called over the other three, gave each of them one of the spells, handed Day my journal about spell creation and told them to get to work.

I would not need to search for a rip in space. I would just open it myself. Redesigning the attack spell sounded like a plan.

“You’re leaving?” Lisa asked, a good deal of my students and the teachers behind her. Granted, the tier twelve spell I set up was not that hard to overlook.

I smiled.

“I told you all I would have to, but there is one thing you may be surprised about,” I retorted, cracking my fingers. After transferring the load of the shield spell onto in the last year mined crystals instead of monster cores, my hair had returned to its former luster, and the illusion spell on the ring changed, preventing my real hair from showing, but still allowing the vibrant colors to become visible again.

“We learned a lot here, from the wyverns, orcs, and humans. From the monsters, from the students, from the teachers, from all of you.”

“And for that, we are all grateful,” Day added, smiling.

Spending time with me had helped her with her anger issues massively.

Therefore – that smile was genuine.

“Don’t worry, we’ll surely visit again!” I exclaimed, getting a chuckle in response.

“Knowing you, that is a promise you will keep!” Leo shouted at me, causing a low chuckle to run though the other students.

I grinned.

“Yep. See you all!” I exclaimed, activating the shield spell to protect them from possible fallout.

Then, I powered the rest of the array. Thousands of runes lit up, most of them the same. A blast of black-white energy crashed upwards into an invisible barrier, straining it and eventually opening an unreal looking rip. It looked like something that had no business existing in only three dimensions.

Grinning, I powered the protection and stabilization runes again, as well as an anchor rune to find my way back. I would always know where this world is as long as I still had my magic.

Stepping forwards, hands crossed, we once again jumped in the vortex of the multiverse, concentrating on a world of magic – on Equestria.

Of course, it did not work.

Interlude

Welcome back. I did not expect you to enter the world between worlds intentionally, at least not so soon.

“Vortex?” I asked, realizing that I felt… different.

For the time being, you are an… emergent being. The culmination of your four personalities, but yet not their true union. That is why it feels like something is wrong.

There are a lot of things I never taught you before. Me intervening subtly in your world has changed events. Nightmare surprised me. I expected you would become four completely normal alicorns. I was wrong.

“Then what is it that you need to teach me?”

Teleportation. Here, take this and remember it.

I could see that it was a magic circle, designed similar to a teleportation or summoning circle.

Both.

“Did you just read my mind?”

I cannot help it. Right now, we both are just beings of thought, but I shield my thoughts so that you do not hear me thinking. I’ve been told it is quite distracting.

I glanced down.

“Not to say anything, but I still have a body,” I drily responded, not sure if it was Day or Night that was making me do it.

It is you who believes you have a body. Not like it matters much.

“That much is true,” I shrugged, accepting it.

Good. Now, as you probably are aware, jumping straight into the multiverse had… detrimental effects on you, you, you, and you.

“No need to rub it in!” Day snapped back, before receding back into me.

Good. Now, I believe there is something you need that I can help you with. I will bring you to an ‘Eques’.

Nightmare blinked.

“What exactly do you want?”

Well, remember what I told you in the beginning?

“Something something perceived and real balances something something,” I deadpanned, not sure who it was that answered.

Correct. You see, while you did a fine job at causing change, the concept out of balance now is life and death.

“Is ‘change’ different from ‘chaos’?” Samantha asked, causing Vortex to nod.

Yes. You changed things, you did not disrupt them. You made things unintentionally orderly, and unintentionally chaotically. Not important right now, besides the fact that neutral change may not tip the scales, but does help so that they will not fall over.

In any case, I can only help you here if you agree to a small deal.

“...what sort of deal?” Nightmare asked, skeptical.

I believe I just told you the balance of life and death is tipped in the wrong direction, did I not? There are two problematic worlds right now, one from an ...unavailable creator who lived on the first version of earth to exist in the multiverse, and one version of Eques.

The problem is, right now, there are thousands of creatures alive that will NOT be there anymore when the thousandth year will come in that version of Eques.

“I think I understand,” Daybreaker responded, cautious. “You want us to save as many beings as possible, right?”

Correct. Since you are not one yet, you will also not land in the same places. In a way, that is a good thing, though. You do what you can to help the creatures on the planet, and before the summer solstice comes, you meet up in Ponyville. Another thing, if you do this task good enough, that will gain you enough ‘favor’ so that I can mend you into one being, like you were supposed to be.

I / we thought a moment about it.

“...very well. One thing before you send us away, though.”

Yeah?

“I left something in the other version of Eques I visited, so that I can talk with the ‘me’ in that world. If I want to travel to that world, how do I do that?”

You know what? Just call upon me.

“What? I thought I would need to do something for you to help me?”

No, not for something so trivial. Do you have any other questions?

Travelling between worlds is trivial?

Ignoring that thought, I found that I had no other questions.

“No.”

Good. Then, please do brace yourself. Oh, and I can only bring you to worlds you already visited.

While I did start feel his power enveloping me, it did not teleport me instantly. So, I asked him why that was.

Well, to travel to a world, you need to know where it is first. For beings like me, knowing about a world is considered far more worth than transporting something to a world like that, and as such, I cannot bring you to worlds you have not visited yet for free.

“That makes sense,” I responded, eliciting a nod from him.

I’m glad you can see that. Good luck, he said, before his powers whisked me away.