3rd person POV

After freaking out about where Joseph had gone, Twilight quickly went to Rainbow's house and had had her get the rest of the main six. Once they were all gathered in the Golden Oaks Library, Twilight took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself down.

"So what was so important that you needed to get all of us here?" Rainbow asked while yawning, since Twilight had woken her up so early in the morning.

"Joseph ran off into the Everfree forest while me and Spike were asleep." Twilight said while still breathing a bit faster than she should. Everyone in the room, except for Spike and Twilight, gasped upon hearing this. Twilight then levitated the note up for them to see before turning to Spike.

"Spike I need you to write a letter to the Princesses explaining the current conundrum." Twilight said causing Spike to look confused at the word conundrum.

"Problem." Twilight said while sighing a little before turning back to the others as Spike started writing a letter explaining what had happened. Twilight was trying her best to stay calm and failing. Princess Celestia had tasked her with keeping an eye on Joseph and she had already failed. She had tuned out the conversation that the others were having as she had started muttering to herself about how she had failed Princess Celestia.

"You aright there Twi?" Applejack asked while putting a hoof on Twilight's shoulder, causing her to snap back to reality.

"Not really. The Princess had tasked me with keeping an eye on Joseph and I already lost him." Twilight said before getting an idea.

"Why don't we go into the Everfree and find Joseph?" Twilight and Rainbow said at the same time, causing them to look at eachother before Rainbow shrugged. Twilight looked at everyone as they all nodded, including Fluttershy.

Joseph's POV

I'd been traveling for a while until I finally reached my destination, the castle of the two sisters. I had decided to go there to see if I could find any books on magic that I could read in order to test a theory I had. My early thoughts during the party and the internal questions that followed caused me to form a theory that humans were capable of using magic but our world ran out of mana at some point, thus preventing us from using it. My only real evidence to support this theory was the existence of magical creatures and magic in human mythology. I felt like we had gotten the idea from somewhere and that maybe the gods that were described in the different mythology's were just people that could use magic. Of course it was a bit of a stretch but if my theory was true I would be able to use magic thus giving me another weapon to add to my fighting style.

"Bout damn time. I was about to walk back to Ponyville. At least I got to practice against some of the monsters here while I was trying to find this place. That cockatrice was so fucking scared when I looked it right in the eyes and smirked!" I said while laughing a bit as I thought about the fights that I had been in on my way to the castle. The cockatrice was my personal favorite, though I was sure that Dash would love the one where I snapped a manticore's neck using a tree and its own tail. Damn thing underestimated me and I ended up cutting off its stinger and wrapping what was left of its tail around its neck before pinning it to a tree with my swords and kicking it in the head until its neck finally snapped. I ended up leaving its body hanging in a tree because it was too damn heavy to take with me and I wanted to get a nice coat made out of it. That or a hooded cloak.

I walked across the old rope bridge and smiled as I walked into the ruins of the old castle. My mind was filled with ideas involving me repairing the old castle and turning into a type of bunker with some help from Twilight and the others. That train of thought excited me as it would mean teaching them about some very helpful information that could advance them technologically. Of course I would try my best to avoid teaching them how to make guns, but my thoughts ran into a problem with that one. I didn't want them to know how to make guns, but I wanted to eventually ask a blacksmith to first turn my peacekeeper revolver into a working gun before asking them to make a weapon that I had wanted to have ever since I first discovered it. I wanted a working version of Lance's gun blade from Epic Battle Fantasy 3. It was a perfect weapon due to its long range capabilities, revolver style reloading and the fact that the barrel of the gun was also a sword.

I frowned while trying to think of a way to get the weapon made without them mass producing them. I sighed before shaking my head and going back to exploring the decrepit old castle. I eventually found what seemed to be an old study that looked like it had been quickly and haphazardly packed. It felt like someone had been trying to run from something or more specifically someone. Based on what I knew I guessed that whoever the room had belonged to had been in a hurry to escape Nightmare Moon. I shrugged before going over to one of the books on the floor and picking it up.

After a closer inspection I found that it was a book on dark magic, specifically demon summoning. I shrugged before opening one of my duffel bags and shoving the book inside. The next book I picked up was a guide to sorcery, magic that involves will, rhyme and music. I kept this one out as it interested me a bit more than the summoning of demons. The last book, if you could call it that, was torn and faded, though it was still somewhat readable.

From what I could read it was a book on the most basic types of magic that every living thing should be capable of using; healing magic and augmentation magic. That second one threw me through a loop until I thought about what it would entail. Augmentation magic was magic that either positively or negatively affected the target based on the spell. It turns out that healing magic and augmentation magic are mostly based on emotions, desire and will. Healing magic heavily focuses on the desire and will portion while augmentation magic focuses on emotions and desire.

I couldn't get much more than that from the book as it seemed that whatever magic had been used to preserve the other books hadn't been used on this one. Thankfully I had enough information to put together a few bits of information and it actually had a couple of intact spell pages for both healing spells and augmentation spells. It seemed that, for augmentation magic, if you combined an emotion with a desire for something to happen to a specific target you could cast different augmentation spells such as a spell to make living beings attack everything around them by using anger and the desire for your target to attack. Healing magic seemed a bit trickier than augmentation magic since it required will and desire. The basic healing spell, which was unoriginally named light heal, only seemed to require the desire to heal others while more advanced ones required the caster to have enough will to beat the world itself in a battle of wills.

It made more sense to me the more I thought about it. After all an advanced spell like regrow, which could regrow limbs, or revive, which could bring the dead back to life without the use of necromancy, would go against the laws of nature and the circle of life.

Once I finished thinking I walked back into the ruins of the throne room before sitting down and attempting some of the augmentation magic in order to test my theory. I started with the one that was listed in the book instead of trying to experiment with possibly dangerous magic. The spell was called Serpent Sight and it relied on feeling nervous with a desire to see more.

I had no idea what I was doing so I just closed my eyes and focused on my feeling of nervousness about being around living beings as well as a desire to see more. Upon opening my eyes it seemed that I either couldn't use magic or that I just didn't know how to use my magic properly.

Author's Note

Yes, Joseph might be getting some magic. No he will not be an idiot that uses it all of the time if he does get magic, especially since his mana/magic reserves would be rather small from being in a universe that was devoid of magic.