“Bright Hope. My mom’s name is Bright Hope.” Misty kept repeating the name after Sunset had told her everything she had found out.

“That’s right,” Sunset said quietly as the two of them sat in the guidance counselor’s office she had borrowed while the rest of her class was off doing something else. The old student file Cadence had sent over along with printouts of the police file and Misty’s old letters were spread out in front of them. Sunset had held nothing back, almost nothing.

“How sure are you about this?” Misty asked while struggling to take all of it in.

“Pretty sure at this point,” Sunset replied. She picked up one of the letters Bright Hope had written to her daughter years ago, or more specifically the envelope it had arrived in. “I’m no expert in handwriting, but it looks pretty clear to me. Also, you mentioned how the letters came from all over the world, so I asked Mr. Starshine to go through his old notes. The dates and postmarks all line up with archaeological digs they went on together.”

Misty looked at her. “Sunny’s dad knew my mom?”

Sunset nodded. “I’m sure if you asked him, he’d be happy to tell you some stories about her.”

The girl reached over to pick up a photocopy of Bright Hope’s driver’s license from the police files, quietly staring at the grainy black and white photo of a woman in her twenties, an attractive woman with curly brown hair, a winning smile and a birthmark on the right side of her throat. Misty was simply staring at it silently.

“How do you feel about all of it?” Sunset asked gently.

Misty shook her head. “I dunno,” she admitted. “I’ve had a lot of theories over the years about why the letters stopped coming. The possibility that she killed someone and was on the run from the police, now that wasn’t on my bingo card.”

“We don’t know that she was responsible for Professor Discerning Eye’s death,” Sunset quickly pointed out. “Argyle certainly was very adamant about the fact that she would never hurt him.”

“How did he die?”

Sunset grimaced. While she had resolved to not hold anything back after her painful lesson in dealing with Hitch’s problems, she had omitted the autopsy report and the crime scene photos from the printouts. “There was a large piece of glass from a broken display case lodged in his heart,” she explained, sanitizing the more gruesome details as best she could. “The police thought it was unlikely to have been accidental, so that’s why they treated it as a murder case, probably as the result of a botched robbery. But they could never firmly place a suspect at the professor’s home in the time frame, and there were no fingerprints on the glass.”

“The fact that she ran away certainly makes her look guilty,” Misty pointed out hoarsely, “and the fact that she sent me to steal something for her doesn’t help her case either.”

“We don’t know that those newer letters came from your mom,” Sunset countered. “You’ve pointed out the inconsistencies yourself, Misty.”

“Fine,” Misty acknowledged reluctantly, “there’s still the thing where she threw away her only daughter like a piece of garbage.”

Sunset’s heart ached for Misty when she heard that statement, and she placed an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Misty, listen. I know this looks bad on the surface right now.” She pulled the crucial mid-term paper out and placed it in front of her. “But life is very rarely just black and white. If you do the math, she would have gotten pregnant with you when she was in her junior year of high school, barely a year older than you are now. Think about that for a moment. It couldn’t have been easy for her. There’s always two sides to a story.”

For some reason, despite the literal mountain of evidence in front of her, Sunset couldn’t bring herself to think of this woman as evil. Rather, she felt a certain kinship to someone who had clearly been an ambitious yet troubled youth at some point, someone who reminded her of herself in some aspects.

Misty turned towards Sunset, looking angry with tears standing in the corners of her eyes. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? Excuse what she did?” Her features shifted, and her lower lip began to tremble. “Maybe the simple truth of the matter is that she didn’t love me and didn’t want me.”

Sunset pulled Misty into a hug as she began to sob. “Sweetie, whatever you’re feeling right now, anger, resentment, sadness, probably all of the above and then some, you have every right to feel these things, and you have every right to some answers, answers only your mother could give you,” she said while gently stroking Misty’s hair. “But I want you to remember, whatever she did or didn’t do and however she feels about you, you are loved, Misty. There are people in your life who love you, and you’re worthy of being loved, always.”

Misty nodded while continuing to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said after a few moments, “I’m gonna ruin another one of your jackets.”

Sunset shrugged and patted Misty’s back. “That’s okay. This one was on sale anyway.” A weak chuckle escaped Misty’s throat in spite of herself, and Sunset smiled in relief at the sound. When Misty eventually broke the hug, Sunset handed her a tissue to clean herself up. “Are you ready to rejoin the rest of the class, or do you need some time alone?”

“No,” Misty said, shaking her head. “I think I’m good. I … I’m probably gonna need some time to digest all of this.” She gestured at the papers on the desk. “But thank you, Ms. Sunset. Thank you for telling me all this. I know more about my mom now than I did for the last fifteen years, thanks to you.”

“Of course,” Sunset said with a smile. “And if I find out anything else, I promise you’ll be the first to know. Speaking of, did any more suspicious letters arrive?”

Misty shook her head. “No, not since the night of the dress rehearsal.”

Which means whoever wrote them was close enough to realize that this part of their plan was compromised, Sunset thought to herself. For all I know, they might have been hiding in the shadows watching us that night.

Boom!

Startled, Sunset and Misty looked at each other after hearing the dull thud of an explosion. They picked up the paperwork quickly and made their way to the nearby chemistry lab.

When she opened the door, a thick, black smoke with an obnoxious smell greeted Sunset amid the coughing sounds most of Class 2-A was making. “Sta…, I mean, Mr. Writs! What happened? Is everyone okay?”

“Just a minor miscalculation in my demonstration, Ms. Shimmer,” Star Swirl said, fanning the air in front of his face while muttering. “Odd. It’s jumped again, throwing off the … Hmm, I’m going to have to look into this.”

Sunny and Hitch were in the process of opening windows to air the place out, but apart from a little coughing nobody seemed to be hurt.

“Blergh,” Pipp said, holding her nose with one hand and wafting the smoke towards the open window with the binder in her other hand, “this is like that time mom gave the staff the day off and got it in her head to cook for us.”

“I know,” Zipp said with a grin and raised her hand while mimicking the voice of their mother. “There’s no need to order in. I run three businesses, I’m perfectly capable of cooking some pasta.”

Laughing at the impression, Pipp also raised her arm, and the two sisters gave each other a look before simultaneously throwing their arms out in a mock imperious gesture.

Fhwoom!! Fhwoom!!

Suddenly, a gust of strong wind went through the room, pushing most of the smoke right out through the open windows. Most of the rest of the class had immediately ducked and now looked wide-eyed towards the two sisters who still stood there frozen on the spot with their arms outstretched.

“Wha …” Zipp was the first to get her bearings in the stunned silence that ensued. She looked over at Pipp. “Was that … Was that you or me?”

Pipp turned towards her, eyes wide. “How should I know? I don’t even know what that was.”

Sunset shared a look with Star Swirl before telling her students: “It looked a lot like pegasus weather magic to me. Zipp, come here a moment. And Pipp, go stand over by that window over there. Everyone else, just take a couple steps back, give them some room.” Sunset led Zipp to the corner of the room and pointed at a bit of leftover smoke just above them. “Try grabbing that.”

Zipp raised an eyebrow and gave Sunset a look as if she’d just grown a second head. “What do you mean, grab it? It’s smoke, Ms. Sunset. Have you ever tried grabbing a fistful of air?”

“Just suspend your disbelief for a moment and try,” Sunset encouraged, “do what feels right.”

With a dubious look on her face, Zipp reached her hand out towards the puff of smoke, not even able to physically reach it. There was a strange look on her face for a moment as she looked at her outstretched hand, then back at the smoke. She spun her wrist in a clockwise direction, and there seemed to be a flicker in the air. Another spin. More movement that disturbed the smoke. Again and again, until the smoke had pulled together into a handball-sized vortex of spinning air. Then Zipp made a beckoning motion and the ball floated towards her. “Whoa,” she exclaimed in surprise while batting the air around between her two hands like a ball. “That is … SO COOL!”

Looking over her shoulder, a mischievous grin appeared on her face. “Sis! Think fast!” With that, she lobbed the sphere over towards her sister across the room, although it was evident that the athletic Zipp had deliberately held back from throwing it at top speed.

“Wha? Ah!” With eyes going wide in surprise at first and then closing shut, Pipp frantically waved her arms for a bit before throwing them out in front of her. After a few moments of nothing happening, she opened her eyes again, realizing that the ball of smoky air was actually being held stable in front of her. She raised her left hand slowly, swatting the air ball lightly in the direction of the window, without actually touching it, where it dissipated outside with a whoosh.

Zipp raised both her arms in the air. “Whoo! We can airbend! That’s so awesome!”

Awesome was clearly not the word on Pipp’s mind as she angrily stomped across the room to stand in front of her excited sister. “What was that!? You could have hit me with that!”

“Yeah, but I didn’t,” Zipp replied with a grin. “Besides, what’s the worst that could have happened? It was a harmless puff of air.”

“A dirty, smoky puff of air that would have messed up my hair and stank up my clothes,” Pipp replied in obvious annoyance, pointing at herself. “Do you have any idea how much work this takes? I don’t just wake up in the morning, roll out of bed and dunk my head into a tub of hair gel like you do.”

“Just goes to show which one of us has the superior morning routine,” Zipp said, the grin never leaving her face.

“Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?” Pipp raised her hand right in front of her sister’s face, causing a blast of air to go off. Zipp stared back blankly, her hair standing straight up and looking as if she’d just lost a game of chicken with a power outlet. Pipp began to snicker. “Okay, that is kinda funny.”

“There will be consequences, sis,” Zipp informed her giggling sister, although the grin still had not fully left her face, “grave consequences when you least expect them.”

“Alright, you two,” Sunset said, “I know this is very exciting right now, and it’s okay to have a little fun with your new magic. But let’s not overdo it indoors, okay?”

“Sure, we’ll be careful, teach,” Zipp replied while wrangling her hair back down into a semblance of order, “but you might wanna tell them that, too.”

Following the line of where Zipp was pointing, Sunset immediately face-palmed as she saw the rest of the class in the midst of trying out various gestures, poses and B-Movie martial arts moves. “Alright, everyone,” Sunset said, clapping her hands immediately, “if you wanna try, let’s aim outside the windows, where there’s nothing breakable Principal Celestia can deduct from my paycheck!”

Thankfully, Sunset needn’t have worried. As became evident rather quickly, nobody aside from Zipp and Pipp had developed this power. That didn’t stop the others from trying for another ten minutes or so while the two sisters did their best to give helpful tips and explain how they did it.

Sunset decided to let them get it out of their systems until the inevitable disappointment set in and walked over to Star Swirl. “What happened?”

“You’ve said it yourself,” he answered. “Looks like your two students gained access to pegasus weather magic somehow.”

“Not that. The explosion. I told you to watch them and demonstrate some safe experiments to them, not blow them up!”

“Ah,” Star Swirl replied, somewhat embarrassed, “like I said, a minor miscalculation. Tell me something, Ms. Shimmer. Have you noticed an increase in the magic background constant of this world lately?”

“No,” Sunset said bluntly. “It’s a constant. It shouldn’t be changing at all.” Pausing for a moment, she then added quietly: “Besides, you should know the answer to that. With my own magic all but gone, I’m limited to visually perceiving its effects like normal humans. I probably wouldn’t be able to recognize a 10th level spell if it slapped me on the ass.”

“Of course,” Star Swirl muttered, “apologies. Since the night of the dress rehearsal, I’ve had to readjust all my instruments constantly to compensate for the increase in magic, that’s why one of my demonstration crystals over-channeled earlier. The perplexing thing is, it doesn’t seem to be a linear growth. Magic is returning to this world in fits and spurts. I’m monitoring the phenomenon, but the reason has eluded me thus far.”

“Well,” Sunset said with a sigh, “we wouldn’t want things to get boring, would we?”

After the others had tried and failed to copy the power that had come so naturally to the two sisters, the class gathered back around Sunset and Star Swirl at the tiled chemistry table. “This sucks,” Sprout muttered. “Why do they get cool new powers and we don’t?”

Recognizing a teachable moment, Sunset looked over her class and wondered aloud. “Why indeed? I’ve taught you enough of the basics for you to start thinking on your own. So, would anyone like to hazard a guess?”

The students looked around at each other with questioning glances, except for Sunny, and Sunset had to suppress a smirk of pride when she saw those furrowed brows that she had learned to recognize was a sign of her first student of magic being on the verge of a lightbulb moment. Picking up a piece of chalk, Sunny wrote four words on the blackboard: Formal, Harmonic, Chaotic and Dark. “First of all, we should define which of the types of magic we’re dealing with here,” she mused and, upon receiving a nod from Sunset, went on: “I think we can exclude formal magic. Ms. Sunset told us that we wouldn’t be able to do formal magic except maybe through the use of artifacts.” She crossed the word out.

Star Swirl quietly harrumphed, causing Sunset to look over and note a look of disapproval on his face, but he kept quiet for now.

“It’s not dark magic either,” Misty said, picking up some chalk and crossing out that option, too.

“What makes you so sure?” Sunny asked.

Misty shook her head with a self-deprecating smile. “Trust me, I know. I’m the only one who has really felt those effects up close, and it wasn’t that.”

“What … did it feel like?” Hitch asked, hesitantly and evidently trying not to come across too pushy on a sore subject. “You never talked about how it felt.”

Misty considered the question for a bit. “Cold,” she said eventually with a shrug. “It felt really cold. Like, a really chill wind on a cold winter’s day and you forgot your jacket at home, piercing through you from the outside. At least, that’s the best I can describe it.”

“Well, it didn’t feel anything like that,” Zipp pointed out. “Especially that part about coming from the outside. This definitely felt like it was welling up from the inside, right?” She looked over at her sister who nodded in agreement.

“So that leaves Harmonic and Chaotic, right?” Izzy put in.

Sunny nodded and looked at her teacher. “Ms. Sunset, would chaotic magic affect different ponies differently in Equestria? Like, would it have different effects on a pegasus than an earth pony, or a unicorn, for example?”

“No, it usually wouldn’t,” Sunset answered.

“Then, I think we have to conclude that it’s harmonic magic, and that’s the reason why it’s only the two of you,” Sunny argued.

The rest of the class, having nodded along so far, grew visibly confused as the last step of Sunny’s logic eluded them. “How’s that?” Hitch was the one to ask for clarification.

Sunny turned to her classmates. “Don’t you remember how Ms. Sunset explained harmonic magic to us? Each of the pony tribes and even the other creatures like changelings expresses harmonic magic in their own way. That would explain it. Ms. Sunset mentioned pegasus magic.”

After a bit of a stunned silence, Zipp was the first to point out the obvious. “But we aren’t ponies, let alone pegasus … es? Pegasi?”

“The correct plural is pegasus ponies,” Sunset pointed out.

“Uhm, yeah, that’s the one part I don’t really get myself,” Sunny admitted.

That admission of a lack of knowledge in the face of being put on the spot somehow made Sunset prouder than all the rationale leading up to it. Acknowledging what you don’t know was often more important to good scholarship than being able to lay out what you did know. “It was a very well reasoned deduction as far as it went,” Sunset praised while putting a hand on Sunny’s shoulder. “I’ll take it from here.”

Sunny took the compliment with a huge smile and stepped to the side to listen to Sunset’s further explanation.

“It’s true that you aren’t ponies,” Sunset began, “but just like what we’ve been discussing in regards to cutie marks the other day, you all have that potential in you. Back when the portal to Equestria was open, I’ve seen humans go into Equestria. Just like I turned into a human coming from there to here, the reverse is also true. They came out the other side as ponies, and the tribe they belonged to wasn’t random, seeing as it matched their counterparts. I can’t point to any part of human physiology that can tell what tribe one would belong to, but it is something inherent and consistent that comes with access to that specific harmonic magic. If we were to go to Equestria right now, I’m sure Zipp and Pipp would turn into pegasus ponies. As for the rest of you, you’d likely either be earth ponies or unicorns.”

“Oh!” Izzy suddenly became very excited. “Does that mean we might have some other magic? Like, like, moving things with our minds!” Placing her index fingers against her temples, she began to stare intently at one of the empty beakers on the teacher’s desk, her tongue sticking out adorably as she concentrated. When nothing happened, she let out a disappointed: “Awww.”

“Well, it does stand to reason that you might develop other powers over time,” Sunset mused. And fuck if I know what they’re gonna be! “So, be on the lookout for anything strange happening around you, and tell me right away if it does. As for you two, Pipp and Zipp, I’d like you to meet me at the park this weekend. I’ll run you through some exercises to test out your new abilities, but that’s best done outside.” Once they’d confirmed that, Sunset turned her head towards her fellow magic expert. “Alright, I think we should get back to it, then. Sorry to derail your lesson, Mr. Writs.”

“No apologies necessary, Ms. Shimmer,” Star Swirl replied cordially. “I’ve often found my most fruitful research resulting from a tangent. But as you say, let’s pick up where I had left off earlier.” Pulling an object out of his pocket that looked slightly too big to have been contained in said pocket, he sat the thing down carefully and beckoned the students closer.

The class stared, ranging from confusion to wonder to disappointment, at the geometric object before them.

“This is an enchanted crystal,” Star Swirl the Bearded said. “The crystal itself is capable of holding a magic charge, and if you look closely, you will see that it is inlaid with an arcane latticework circle, capable of directing the flow of magic to perform desired functions.”

The crystal was a pale pink and purple color, and as it turned they could see the circle like a hologram inside, rainbow-colored.

“Functions?” Sunny looked up from the crystal excitedly. “What can a crystal like this do?”

“Anything,” Star Swirl the Bearded said bluntly.

Sunset cleared her throat. “Well, anything might be a bit strong. Really, back in Equestria crystals like this are used for fairly minor tricks.”

Star Swirl snorted. “It’s hardly my fault that other wizards lack vision. To be sure, some ponies only use crystals to hold their shopping lists, or to light up a room, but in truth a magic crystal can do anything we command it to do. The trick, of course, is learning how to command it to do what you want. But in this it’s no different than a blank sheet of paper, or a hammer. Magic is a tool first and foremost, children, and artificial boundaries like this,” Star Swirl gestured disagreeably to the different kinds of magic Sunny had written on the blackboard, “are of no help at all. Small minds have always been afraid of what they do not understand.”

Feeling the need to defend the categorization she’d learned since magic kindergarten, Sunset said: “The fact that a framework does not perfectly model all empirical data does not make it useless. An established model is like a template. If we hold it up to the light of reality, we can see the rugged edges and missing pieces where our predictions don’t match what we see in the real world. And those are the places where we can learn something new.”

“Exactly,” Star Swirl concurred, “don’t limit your mindset to a rigid thinking, the gray areas are often the most fascinating ones, even if they lead into what can be labeled as dark magic, but that doesn’t make them taboo for study.”

“Theoretical study,” Sunset pointed out firmly, “so we can recognize and take the necessary precautions when dealing with it. Because the problem with your hammer analogy, Mr. Writs, is that dark magic is like a hammer that whispers to you to destroy everything and revel in the power. And when the other ponies around you turn against you in horror you should smash bigger things, to show them, show them all.”

“Just like a regular hammer, yes. I’ve done much of my best and most famous work while resisting the temptation to succumb to the dark vision of the whispers. And you can too, children!”

Sunset sighed deeply and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Where’s Clover the Clever when you need him?”

“So, uhm,” Sprout asked, breaking the minor tension while poking at the crystal, “what does this thing do?”

Star Swirl cleared his throat and pressed a hidden button on the object, causing one side to flip open. After a bit of internal whirring and a minor rainbow lightshow from the object, a waffle cone with a perfect sphere of minty green and chocolate chip sprinkled ice cream on top sat before the class. “Sufficiently charged with moonlight focused through the lunar mesh, it produces one perfect serving that keeps your breath minty fresh with zero risk of cavities!”

Sunset could practically hear her students blink in confusion. “It’s a … lunar-powered ice cream maker?” Sunny asked incredulously.

Star Swirl nodded judiciously. “It also repels werewolves.”

Once the students had left, and Sunset was helping Star Swirl pack up his instruments, she couldn’t help but notice the soft smile on his bearded face. “Thank you for today,” she said.

He looked up and nodded with that same smile. “I ought to thank you. It’s been quite some time since I’ve had the opportunity to teach. I’d almost forgotten what it was like. They’re good kids.”

“They are,” Sunset confirmed. When she picked up one of the crystal examples, she paused. “Can I get your opinion on something? Your lesson today kinda made me rethink some prior assumptions.”

“Of course, Ms. Shimmer. I told you before, you’re always welcome to ask me for some advice.”

Sunset pulled out her phone and opened the pdf-file of Professor Eye’s unpublished article of the Crete excavation. She scrolled forward until she found the illustration of a certain something, zoomed in on the picture and handed it off to him. “What do you make of this?”

Star Swirl took it and began to study the picture of the rough-cut artifact in the shape of a hollowed out bull horn which looked at first glance like an ornate drinking horn. A dry sense of amusement washed over Sunset as she watched the wizened, bearded man who she knew to be a wizard handle the smartphone, zooming in here and there. “Is this a magical artifact?”

“You tell me,” Sunset said, “I don’t wanna prejudice your analysis by fronting my own conclusions.”

“Hmmm.” He made a wave with his left hand, in which a coffee mug appeared out of thin air. He took a sip while he mulled that over. “I assume the author is not a wizard. But it says here the majority of the material is obsidian with ruby inlays. I’d like to confirm that on the original item.”

“It’s not available, I’m afraid,” Sunset told him. “It’s currently being held in a safe location. But I can confirm the material composition. I’ve checked it myself.”

He nodded. “Obsidian’s unusual for the base of an enchantment. Low magic albedo, tends to absorb the charge that’s placed in it. Very inefficient.”

“That’s what always irritated me,” Sunset admitted. “Why would someone use it?”

Star Swirl shrugged. “Perhaps because they were still learning and didn’t know better. Perhaps because there was nothing else available. Perhaps simply because it looked cool.”

“Or perhaps they knew exactly what they were doing and used it for a reason,” Sunset countered.

He looked at her and quirked an eyebrow. “So you do have your own theory. I suppose if the intended enchantment was too powerful, it would be a good way to prevent over-channeling. Or it might have been intended to keep the item hidden. The properties of the material would swallow up overflow, make it harder to detect.”

“What do you make of the latticework?” Sunset asked.

“Crude but effective,” he replied. “The ruby is very precisely inlaid for maximum reinforcement. It’s a simple and old technique, but it seems very precise and intentional in its application, which leads me to revise one of my earlier theories. We’re not dealing with an amateur here. This human author obviously didn’t know what to look for, but you’ve checked it with your own eyes, Ms. Shimmer. Tell me, did this have a spell matrix?”

“Not when we acquired it,” Sunset said, “and no charge either.”

Star Swirl hummed, taking another sip from his coffee. “There’s three possible reasons for that. Number 1. It was never enchanted in the first place.”

“I don’t think so. There was dark magic residue on it. I’m reasonably sure it was active at some point prior to my analysis.”

Star Swirl nodded, accepting that conclusion without argument. “Number 2. The spell was a single-time use and it has been expended.”

“That was our initial conclusion, a summoning spell that unleashed a number of creatures which were subsequently defeated. What’s the third possibility?”

“That it was dispelled,” Star Swirl said, then he shook his head. “But that seems unlikely. It would explain the absence of a spell matrix, but it would leave a residual charge. You said it had no charge when you found it.”

“What if whatever dispelled it was the charge?” Sunset suggested.

The old wizard drew his eyebrows together. “Ms. Shimmer, I’ve given you my unbiased thoughts. Perhaps it’s time for you to fill me in on the context. What is this thing?”

“That,” Sunset said, tapping the phone screen, “is the Horn of Sombra, and we, that is two separate Twilight Sparkles and I, believe it to be responsible or at least instrumental in the Maretime Bay incident from three years ago.”

“Sombra?” Star Swirl’s eyes widened. “There was a Sombra in my world, enslaved the Crystal Empire for a thousand years.”

Sunset nodded. “Yeah, my Equestria had one, too. And there was one here as well.”

“I wasn’t aware of that.”

“Evil CEO businessman type,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “My friends and I ran into him during our freshman year in college. He was using stolen Umbra magic to produce a shampoo that could mind control people.”

“Was that connected to this weird ad that was playing everywhere at the time? With the weird but catchy hip-hop song?” he asked curiously.

“That’s the one,” Sunset confirmed. “We had to create a musical counterspell and disseminate it by making a viral video with a rapping dog. It was a whole thing.”

“Is there a connection with this Horn of Sombra?”

Sunset shook her head. “No. We thought so for a time, because the effects of the shadow magic were so similar. But they aren’t the same. The name kinda stuck, anyway.”

“So it’s an unrelated tangent,” Star Swirl said, nodding judiciously, “I’d still like to hear that story someday if you wouldn’t mind recounting it in detail.”

“Buy me a drink when all this is over, maybe I’ll tell you about it,” Sunset replied cheekily before making her way over to the blackboard. “Back to the matter at hand, though. Back then we concluded, much like you just did, that it held a powerful, single-use dark magic spell. And when cast, it unleashed Tartarus on Maretime Bay.” She drew a simple outline of the Horn of Sombra on the blackboard, with an arrow next to it, and next to that the outline of several small shadow creatures and one enormous one.

Star Swirl nodded. “A reasonable assumption, Ms. Shimmer. But I get the impression that you’re second-guessing it right now.”

“There was something in your lesson today that made me think,” Sunset admitted, biting her lip. “About how we are biased in our thinking through the lens of a rigid model. We saw dark magic, we found the Horn afterward. Since this was everything we had to go on, we assumed the Horn itself was evil, but what if we had it wrong the whole time? What if the Horn was actually an instrument holding back dark magic that was then dispelled?” She erased the arrow from the Horn to the shadow monsters. “We saw those shadow beings resurface recently. But the Horn can’t be responsible for it on account of not having a charge and not even residing in this world, and unless we somehow missed some back in the day and they avoided detection for years, …”

“… they must have been a secondary effect, not directly related,” Star Swirl finished the thought.

Sunset nodded and drew a question mark in between the two other drawings, adding new arrows that went from the Horn to the question mark, and then to the monsters. “So the primary effect caused the secondary effect, something that is capable of planning, strategy, knowing to lay low for years until trying again.” Sunset immediately erased the question mark again and replaced it with a little smiley face with devil horns and a forked tail. “Some kind of conscious entity that was previously held at bay by the Horn of Sombra.” She drew the same devil smiley inside her rendition of the Horn.

Star Swirl stood up, picked up a piece of chalk and began adding runes to the Horn in the rough approximation of a ward spell. “So you’re saying this was a prison with some kind of dark entity that was dispelled. But what of the missing charge?”

“Living beings constantly produce their own magic, and you said obsidian by its nature would work very well to absorb magic.” Sunset added a few scraggly lines from the devil smiley towards the edges of the Horn, signifying a transfer of energy.

“Huh,” Star Swirl went, bushy eyebrows rising high. “A self-reinforcing magic containment device, with the entity trapped inside acting as its own magic battery. The more the prisoner rails against its prison walls, pouring their magic into it, the more powerful the seal keeping it in becomes.” He added some squiggly lines coming from the outside that stopped at the edges of the Horn. “And since the obsidian would absorb most, if not all, magic coming in from the outside as well, they couldn’t gather magic from the outside to break it either.”

“No chance of escape, unless someone was to dispel the spell matrix itself from the outside.” Sunset shuddered involuntarily at the thought of being trapped inside something like this for eternity, every attempt to escape foiled, no matter how powerful you are, and in fact made even more effective the more powerful the inmate was. It was almost too immoral an idea to contemplate.

“Ms. Shimmer,” Star Swirl said, apparently less appalled and full of intellectual curiosity, “I do believe this might be the most ingenious design for a magical prison I’ve ever seen. I’d sure love to have a chat with whoever came up with it.”

“Well,” Sunset muttered, “if Professor Discerning Eye’s Carbon-14 dates for the other artifacts found at the site are any indication, they died over 5,000 years ago.”

“Hmm, a shame,” he replied, “I never was that good of a necromancer, but I suppose, without a body, the point is moot to begin with.”

Sincerely hoping that he was just making a dark joke, Sunset said: “So you agree with my conclusion?”

“It’s a sound hypothesis,” he replied carefully. “If I was to peer review your work for publication, I’d probably have to insist on some experimental data to back up your findings, though.”

“Which brings me exactly to my next point,” Sunset said, her eyes fixed on the little devil smiley she had drawn to represent the artifact’s previously unknown occupant that was now apparently making a comeback. “If we’re gonna put this genie back in its bottle, we’re gonna have to construct a new Horn of Sombra.”

Author's Note

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