Twilights Discovery of the Portal Spell
Twilight looked up from her desk suddenly “I’ve Finally done it!” she exclaimed
Spike looked up from the comic he’d been reading in the corner. “Now will you tell me what you’ve been working on?” he said
She got out of her desk chair and faced spike with a manic grin.
“I’ve discovered a way to more efficiently move objects with magic!” she said
“So you spent the last week working on super levitation?” he said lifting an eyebrow.
“No” She said as she flashed him an annoyed look.
”I found a way to teleport things better.” The grin returned. “All I had to do was shrink down the teleportation area of effect from a three dimensional instantaneous semi-sphere to a longer-lasting 2.5 dimensional disk, and keep it open long enough to allow a pony to walk through it! It takes longer than teleportation, but because it has such a comparably small area of effect even a filly could power it! Granted that filly could only keep the rift open for a few seconds before magic exhaustion would take effect, and they would need extensive knowledge on advanced space-time altering magic, but they could still do it in theory!”
“Maybe you should eat something twilight” he said with a look of concern. “You haven’t had anything since yesterday.” he said putting down the comic and standing up.
“I can’t wait to tell Princess Celestia!” she said.
“I’m gonna go make some cookies while I wait for you to come down from your science high.”
“Perfect, Cookies would make an excellent test subject”
“Fine, but your cookies are the subject not mine” he said walking away.
“Fink ‘f the fosifilities fike” she said with a mouthful of chocolate chip.
“Don’t you ever breathe?” he said looking at her wide eyed excitement apprehensively.
She swallowed her cookie, “Maybe I’ll use it to tell Celestia in person!”
“Didn’t you say you were going to test it?”
“What’s the worst that could happen?” she said
“You know how I feel about that phrase.” he said
“Then to ease your worries I’ll just tell you. The worst thing that might happen to anything traveling using the teleportation disk would occur if the disk teleported small slices of whatever went through instead of one continuous uninterrupted teleport; Worst comes to worst the spell will still be useful as a replacement for the typical deli slicer” she said cheerily
“And you want to teleport to Princess Celestia using that untested teleporter disk thing?” he said
“Of course, it would be so cool to see her marvel at the science happening right before her eyes.” she said with an excited spaced out look on her face.
“You have no thoughts on the possibility of the deli thing happening to you when you go through?”
“Oh” she said her eyes coming back into focus. “I guess I should’ve thought of that” she said with a sheepish grin, “sorry”
“Don’t worry about it, I don’t want you getting hurt. It’s hard enough keeping food in you when you get in that mood of yours.” he said finishing his cookies.
“Thanks spike” She said
Even though spike was older, he was still always there to keep her in check when she was trying new things. It was part of the reason she had decided to only try new spells around him, just in case she went a little crazy.
“Sure” He said, “I’ll always be here for a reality check, whether you want one or not”
He got up and started to wash the dishes.
“Maybe you should try the spell tomorrow, you haven’t slept in a few days and your always a bit more yourself after you get some sleep.”
“I guess I can wait a few more hours” she said with a yawn following soon after.
She began to make her way upstairs to her bedroom, the instant her head hit the pillow she joined Luna in the land of dreams.
The next morning after her breakfast and coffee, twilight and spike made there way out of castle of friendship to the large grass field between Ponyville and the Everfree forest. Now that she had a bit more sleep, she was wide awake and ready to deal with anything that spell could cause.
Her saddlebags were filled with a few objects to test the spell with and a clipboard with her safety checklist and notes.
“And that’s everything” she said checking ‘Make sure there are no spiders nearby’ off the list.
She floated the checklist to spike who was sitting next to her saddlebags a few feet away.
She closed her eyes and focused briefly before a ring of white formed next to her in the air. The ring appeared as though someone had drawn a fine white line in reality itself; the ring had a diameter of about half of a meter and a completely transparent center, making it fairly hard to see.
Twilight opened her eyes one down one to go she thought
Twilight closed her eyes again and a few feet to her right, another ring appeared, identical to the first.
She opened her eyes again, Okay, now I just need to connect them.
She closed her eyes again and with only a little concentration the rings became circles, and the center of one took on the look of what the other was pointed at. She looked between the two and smiled.
She waved spike over and they started testing them. The first thing to go through was a quill. Twilight was pleased to note that it passed through, and her magic was able to continue to hold the quill on the other end of the portal. No deli slicing occurred.
She tried with a few other inanimate objects before she put a fresh apple through. Half of her expected it to loose its color or rot instantly or one of many other potential side effects, but it didn’t. It came out as pristine as it went in. After analyzing it with as much scrutiny as she could muster she decided it was just an apple and concluded that no side effects occurred.
“Okay spike, nothing bad happened to the apple, so I think it’s safe for pony travel!” she said excitedly. “I’m going to climb through. I need you to watch the disks and see what happens”
“Got it” he said quill at the ready
Twilight walked up the first disk and tenderly poked it with a hoof. To her joy when she pulled it back, not only was it unharmed but she could see no effect on the disk either. She got a little bolder and pushed her left foreleg through it. When she felt nothing wrong she jumped through and came out the other portal.
“You okay?” spike asked
“I’m better than okay spike! It works! There weren’t even any side effects.” she said
“Cool” he said.
With the testing done, twilight dispelled the disks and they made there way back to the castle.
“Spike, now that I’ve tested it, I’m going to use it to go talk to Celestia.” She Said, “I might be gone for a little bit but I promise to come back before dinner.” She said
Then with no further words, she opened a disk and was off to Canterlot
Celestia was sitting at her desk in her personal quarters reading what must have been the thirtieth written complaint she had received that day. She rubbed her face with a hoof before placing her reply in the box labeled outbound on her desk. The sound of hoofsteps behind her broke her out of her zombie like state. She turned around expecting to see someone like Luna come to check on her. She knew mail day tended to cause her stress and the two usually took a break around this time.
What she hadn’t expected was twilight walking out of a portal in the middle of her room.
“Hi Princess Celestia!” Twilight said cheerfully
Celestia stared at her as though she was a ghost for a few seconds before realizing somepony had spoken to her. She put on her serene face before addressing the young alicorn.
“Hello Twilight,” She said “I see you’ve discovered the portal spell” she said with a sigh, he face twisting to a frown for a second.
“Portal spell? That’s a much better name than I’ve been calling it” she said
“What name did you come up with?”
“Teleportation Disk” she said
“I suppose that is an accurate name”
The two stood there for a few seconds in silence.
“Wait, How did you know what it was?” twilight asked
“Because Starswirl came up with it a while ago, you might have realized that the portal to Canterlot high was quite similar to this spell.” she said with a smile.
“But, then, what?” twilight struggled
“Because of the implications of such a spell on ponykind” she said a sad look fading onto her face.
“As of now, as far as I am aware, myself, Luna, and now you, are the only ones who know how to cast that spell. Once Starswirl came to me with his discovery. We had a frank talk about the implications of such a spell and realized that it would be foolish to inform the public.” Celestia said.
“But, why?” she said, unsatisfied with her answer.
“Think about it twilight, If unicorns had access to near instantaneous travel en mass, than many jobs occupied by the other tribes would become pointless. Mail shipments would take one powerful unicorn instead of a team of pegasi. The train would no longer run, a few unicorns transporting anypony anywhere they wanted for a few bits. Earth pony carpenters would no longer need to make carts, which is a very lucrative business in itself.”
“My point is that with that spell, unicorns would make many forms of transportation obsolete, causing some of those who once worked those jobs to be bitter towards the unicorns that took them.” She said.
Twilight frowned “Then what happened with Starswirl?” She asked.
“I made him swear to secrecy, but I let him continue his research. Just because its current form was unable to be revealed to the public doesn’t mean that he couldn’t use it to make something better. Eventually he created the mirror portal. He added a number of safeguards to make sure it would not have many if any negative side effects to equestria. For instance, he made the spell only activate once in a while, as opposed to being on at all times, among other things.” she said
“Twilight, I know you might not like it, but I need you to swear you won’t tell anypony, Okay?” she said with a mother like smile on her face.
She thought for a moment, then she nodded “Okay, I promise” she said.
“Fantastic, you’re welcome to use it around me and Luna, just keep in mind that the only reason you can get in here is because I trust Luna to respect my privacy, so I haven’t warded against that spell. I trust that in the future you will respect my privacy and use the door as she does.” Celestia said with a playful smile “Now, why don’t you join me for lunch, we can tell Luna the news at there as well.”
The face of seriousness on twilight made way for one of joy yet again. While she may not be happy about the spell, at least she got to have lunch with the princess.