“Princess Luna?! What are you doing here?” Twilight is the first one to spot us as we walk out of the side room to greet them. Everyone but Rarity drops down into a bow, but Luna just gives them the same “you bow to no one” spiel that she gave to Rarity.

“I’m surprised Rarity did not tell you. We’re both here for our Gala outfits, I had several offers from supposedly prestigious establishments in Canterlot, but Rarity was the only one to also offer to make something for Ignis.” Luna continues after they all rise from their bows.

“You literally cannot say anything. Miss “I’m not gunna tell the local guards or the mayor that I’m coming, good luck everybody.”” I shift my gaze over to the purple unicorn, “Hey Twilight do you have charcoal, incense, herbs, and a brazier at the library? I need to resummon my familiar but forgot to do it before we left Canterlot.”

Her ears twitch and her eyes widen. “Familiar? I thought those weren’t real?! I have everything but the brazier, the library is a tree after all, but there should be several along the border between Sweet Apple Acres and the Everfree. They use them to keep the treeline well lit and deter any predators from leaving. Just head over to the library and ask Spike for those ingredients.”

“Sick nasty, thanks. Luna you’re staying here I assume?” She gives me a nod. “Alrighty, well it’ll take me well over an hour to perform the ritual so I won’t be back for a while.” I start to leave but notice Twilight looking at her group of friends then at me then back to her friends. “You good Sparkle?”

“I don’t wanna ditch my friends that I’ve already made plans with, but I really want to learn more about your world's magic… I still need to try on my dress too.”

“Like I said it’ll take me over an hour, and I’m coming back here afterwards. Just try on your dress or whatever and I’m sure your friends won’t mind you stepping out for a few minutes. But, it's up to you. I could always show you the ritual some other time, but it’s pretty time consuming so I don’t know when the next time will be…Eh whatever. Be back later!” I give the ladies a wave as I walk out of the shop.

I’m surprised none of them mentioned my eyes, but maybe it’s not as noticeable as I originally thought. That’d be ideal. Walking through Ponyville I notice something about the town that’s much different since the last time I was here. Most of the ponies that I walk past either have no reaction, as if they don’t even care that I’m here, or they smile and wave. Did the entire city just suddenly start being accepting of other species since the last time I was here? I can feel my body relax as a soft smile finds its way onto my face, this is a nice change of pace.

Opening the door to the library I find a… small purple reptile? Oh it’s the big lizard I saw sitting on Twilights back the first day I showed up here. Is he Spike? Either way it turns around from the bookshelf it’s organizing and speaks with a childish voice. “Hey didn’t anypony teach you to knoc- woah are you the elf creature Twilight was talking about a few weeks ago?”

“Knock? Isn’t this a public library?”

“Oh yeah…”

“But, yes I am an elf.” Suddenly my smile becomes bittersweet. “Well I guess you’re not technically wrong. In this world I am THE elf, not an elf. Anyways, I need some charcoal, incense, and herbs. I was over at Rarity’s shop with Luna when Twilight popped in and told me I could get that stuff from here.”

“Oh yeah we keep all the magic stuff in the basement, follow me.” As we walk down the dimly lit stairs he continues. “Are you guys gunna be in Ponyville for a while? Big Mac and I could use another bro to hang out with. Too many mares around here…”

“Nah, we’re just here to have our Gala outfits made then we’re heading West for a couple of weeks. After that it’s back to Canterlot. I wouldn’t mind coming by here more often though. If you guys wanna get up to something you can just mention it in one of those letters you send to Celestia. She’ll…. probably pass it on. Yeah she would.” He seems pretty young, but I’m pretty sure Big Mac is an adult… I think I remember him being the big red pony at Applejacks place. I could use more dude friends.

We arrive in the basement and as Spike walks over to the shelves and desk with multiple containers of different magical items he asks me a question I wasn’t expecting. “Do you read any comics? How many of each did you need by the way?”

“You guys have comics here?! What the fuck, how have I not seen any? I need 10 bits worth of each ingredient. Don’t ask me for a better measurement cause I have no clue, my spellbook just says the ingredients need to be worth 10 gold pieces. It’s a very strange spell.”

“Woah you cursed dude. Twilight would be so mad if she was here. That isn’t the strangest way to measure these, but I’ll kinda have to guess. I got an issue of Power Ponies upstairs if you wanna see one.” As he talks he hands me handfuls of each ingredient. Woah someone else has hands here!

“I’ll check it out before I leave Ponyville, but I’m kinda in a hurry right now. I need to get this ritual finished as soon as possible.” I really need to know what happened to Callisid in the colosseum and if he saw anything before he got dismissed.

“Oh. I mean yeah for sure, no biggie. Whenever you’ve got time. What’s all this stuff for?”

“Oh I’m summoning my familiar. I brought him with me to the badlands and something happened to him while we were there, so I’ve gotta resummon him.”

“Woah like in the fairy tales?! Can I watch?”

“I don’t mind but the ritual takes over an hour and it’s pretty mind numbing. You’d probably be better off just doing whatever you were doing here for like 45 minutes then come find me. I’ll be where Sweet Apple Acres meets the Everfree, gotta use all this stuff in a brazier.” I go to put the ingredients in my backpack when I realize.. I don’t have it. Luna didn’t grab it from my room and I was blacked out. Fuck that’s annoying. Not for this specifically, but because that’s where my spell scrolls are! AH! “Thanks for the help, Spike.”

“Yeah, no problem. Cya dude.”

Okay, summon Callisid then have Luna teleport me back to Canterlot. That bag has my jerky.. Which maybe I should throw away now that I know the jerky is illegal since it’s beef. It also has my water pouch and my bedroll. So I can grab that then come back here. Easy day.

Eventually I find my way to the tree line of the Everfree and take a seat in the grass at the first brazier I happen upon. I have an important choice to make here, I could keep him as a bat or I can change his form. I have to think about this strategically, half the reason he probably got caught back at the summit is because he was a bat in the desert. If I want to send him to the dragon lands and report back would a bat be okay there? Probably not, but if I choose something like a lizard or a weasel it’ll take him ages to get there.

“Oh perfect you haven’t even started yet. Is there a problem with the ingredients?” I’m interrupted from my internal decision making by purple unicorn.

“Huh? Oh, maybe. I’m not sure if this will satisfy the 10 gold pieces condition for the spell, but that’s not why I haven’t started yet. I’m having trouble deciding what form I want him to take. Last time he was a bat, but I think for most situations a bat sticks out too much. It’s a tough decision.”

“Can it be in any form or are there restrictions? Does he have a preference for his form?”

“I honestly have no clue if he has a preference, I’ve never asked. There’s a list of different animals he can be. It’s either a bat, cat, crab, frog, hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, snake, fish, rat, raven, sea horse, spider, or weasel.” Honestly if I wasn’t planning to use him for recon and scouting I’d just make him a cat or a weasel and call it a day.

“Hmm,” she brings a hoof up to her mouth as she hums in thought. “If you want something that doesn’t stand out I think it has to be a lizard or a rat, but that’s assuming it’ll be indoors. If it’s not restricted in that way then a hawk or a raven would be best. What exactly are you planning to have the familiar do that requires him to be hidden?”

“I’m planning to send him to the dragons. There was an incident at the Global Summit and I’d like to know what they’re planning. Plan is to send him there to lurk around in whatever their version of Canterlot Castle is for 3 weeks and then return to Canterlot. Although that assumes he can get there just from looking at a map… maybe Luna can teleport him? Ah fuck it, he’s gunna be a raven this time around. Ravens are dope and he should be able to hide in any shadows. Alright Twilight, once I start I’m going to be locked into the chant for the ritual for over an hour. All your questions need to be yes or no and my answers will only be through head nods or shakes. Got it?”

She flashes her horn and a notepad and quill appears in the air. “Got it.”

I perform the ritual the exact same way as I did in Canterlot. Every 2-5 minutes Twilight asks some question about the weave or the intricacies of the familiar contract. Honestly being limited to yes or no questions makes some of this quite impressive, she basically just asks the same point over and over but with different methods or definitions and uses my no answers as a process of elimination. She tries to figure out why verbal and somatic components are so important for our spells and attempts to figure out if there’s any method to the madness for why certain spells need specific materials.

An hour and 100 questions later and the fire in the brazier goes out. The ashes laying at the bottom begin to swirl and rise into the air before compressing together into a tight ball that morphs into a raven. “Callisid, that’s you right? Hope you don’t mind the new form.” I call out the bird telepathically.

“Woah! What can he do? Does he talk? He must be able to if he’s able carry out orders like spying on foreign leaders, right?” Twilight immediately fires off another barrage before the familiar can answer me.

“Shh, yes he can talk, but only telepathically and only with me. I need to ask him some questions though so gimmie a few minutes.”

The bird stops staring at the purple unicorn and lands on my shoulder. “It is indeed I, sir. I was beginning to believe you’d forgotten about me again.”

I don’t have the heart to tell him that I kinda did forget about him. I didn’t try to contact him until after the Summit, just before I went back into the hive to rescue Force. “What… no. I’ve just been very busy. Being unconscious for a week didn’t help, but Callisid what happened to you? I tried to call on you to observe a meeting during the summit and you were MIA. I assume you weren’t out of range and something caused you to dispel?”

“I am afraid I was collateral damage during the scuffle with the dragons. One of them got launched through the roof and I had just happened to be hanging upside down on the spot it went through. Quite unfortunate. I am pleased to see you survived that encounter, however. It wasn’t looking very good before I got caught between a rock and a dragon.”

“Did you overhear anything interesting before you went back to the Celestial plane?”

“I did see something a bit suspicious, but I wasn’t entirely sure if it was worth reporting so I was just going to wait and report about it with something else. I saw a pitch black changeling that was almost the same size as their queen and she was lurking in the shadows at the edge of the colosseum. Just a few minutes before your duel that changeling was speaking to the leader of the dragons. I was too far to hear any details though.”

“No, that's actually really good information. Chrysalis was conspiring with the dragons… now I’m even more certain they’re up to something. Okay just stay on my shoulder for now, we’re going to go back into town and talk to Luna, but I’m likely going to send you off on a scouting mission.” I look over to the patiently waiting purple unicorn. “Alright, sorry I just had a lot of catching up to do. You had some questions?”

She looks at the notepad for a second then back up. “Yes. Since your relationship seems purely magical, I was wondering what all he could do besides talking and flying around.”

“Yes so Callisid here can do many things. The most useful thing is that as long as he’s within 100ft of me I can communicate with him telepathically, which you already knew, and I can see through his eyes and hear what he hears. Another very useful trick we can do is that any spell I have that has a casting range of “Touch” , like my Cure Wounds healing spell, I can channel the spell to be casted through him. So if you were 90ft away and wounded, time is of the essence, I’m caught up in my own life or death situation, but if I don’t heal you in the next 5 seconds you’re dead. Callisid can fly over to you and I can cast the Cure Wounds spell. It’s extremely useful. I mostly just use him for recon and scouting though.”

Her quill is moving faster than a blur as she scribbles while I talk. “One thing I’m still really confused about is that you mentioned a theory about how your incantations and hand movements likely served the same purpose as our runes and that’s why you were able to learn Light so quickly. But, when you use magic there is no mana. It’s almost like you’re manipulating some invisible force and then when you finish all of your preparation actions some dense energy just appears in the air. It was gathering all around you during that ritual, I could barely make it out at first, but whatever it is, it's unique to you and it’s different than mana.”

“Yeah it’s called the Weave. I’ve actually been wondering why I even have access to it at all… I have a couple of theories on it, but haven’t had time to really investigate it. I didn’t have all my memories back when I gave you that theory, but now that I do I can say that you pretty much nailed it. Off topic, but did Spike show up at some point? He said he wanted to watch, but after I told him it’d be boring he said he’d show up later. I don’t think I ever saw him though. Let’s go meet up with everyone else.”

We start the long walk back into Ponyville as Twilight continues with her inquiries. “No, he never showed up. Probably just forgot. Hey, I wasn’t able to come to a conclusion about your spell ingredients, why do some spells need certain materials?”

“Honestly, I have no clue. The materials honestly just seem like a joke cooked up by the universe. See Invisibility requires powdered silver, Alarm needs a bell and silver wire, Grease needs either pork rind or butter, Dragon’s Breath needs a hot pepper, oh and my personal favorite Darkvision needs dried carrot. You know, cause carrots improve eyesight? Honestly when you lay it all out like that it doesn’t even seem like magic. I could just throw powdered silver in the air and the invisible people would be covered in it, I can set a perimeter alarm with the same items as Alarm, eating a hot pepper lets you spit fire? I mean the jokes just write themselves. My entire world's magic system is a big joke. Some spells are exceptionally potent though. How did things go with your dress? You tried it on before you came here right?”

She stops writing for a second to answer me. “It fit perfectly, I mean Rarity had my measurements so I didn’t doubt that it’d fit. Personally though I did want to make some tweaks to the design, but I was in a rush to watch the ritual so I decided the dress was good enough as is. All my suggestions were just nit-picks anyways.”

The rest of the walk is in relative silence and a short time later we’re back at the boutique. I spot Luna, Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Applejack talking about something but the conversation dies once Twilight and I approach the group. Luna spots the bird on my shoulder, “Is that your familiar? I thought he was a bat? Did something go wrong?”

“Nah, I can pick his form when I summon him.” I hold out my palm and gesture towards the bird on my shoulder. “Ladies this my familiar his name is-,” but when I look over I see he’s gone. I turn my head to the right and find the raven perched on Fluttershy's head.

The pegasus then says something that surprises me. “Wow, Callisid, that’s such a pretty name. Oh you’re such a good bird.”

“Luna, did you tell her his name?”

“Nay.”

Pinkie Pie bounces into view, “That’s her specialty! Fluttershy can talk to all sorts of animals, you should’ve seen her calm down the manticore in the Everfree. It was all like ROAAR, and she just walked up to him like it was nothing!”

“Huh, well that’s neat. Sorry to break up the party for a bit but Luna can we talk outside?” I point towards the door as I look at the princess.

“What is it? Did Callisid give you any important information from the Summit?” She asks with a slight tone of concern as soon as we leave earshot of the others.

“Sort of, he spotted Chrysalis talking to the dragon lord before my duel. They were conspiring together. Unfortunately he didn’t get to hear any of their conversation and shortly after that he was crushed by a dragon being sent through the ceiling. The other reason I wanted to talk to you is because I need my backpack, it has all my traveling supplies and my spell scrolls, and it appears it was left in my bedroom at the castle. I was gunna see if you could just teleport me back to the castle and I’ll let you know via the Sending crystal when I’m ready to come back?”

“Ah I knew I was forgetting something. I had that nagging feeling in the back of my head, but I couldn’t quite place it. You’ll need my magic quill for the ink I promised as well. It should be on the desk in my bed chambers. Are you ready to go now or do you want to go grab your familiar to bring him along?”

Yo, Callisid I’m going to Canterlot for a bit so I’ll be out of range. Keep out of trouble and keep an eye on Luna.

Understood, sir.

“Alright I’m ready to go, I just let him know I’d be out of range for a bit.”

With a flash of light I’m back in the familiar courtyard of Canterlot Castle. Alright, grab the backpack, grab the quill, talk to Celestia. That’s it, in and out 10 minute adventure.

Author's Note

Lmao I think I'm done giving estimation on how many chapters these events will take. I really thought we'd be alot further into the episode by the end of this chapter, but we are absolutely not. I think I just underestimate how long some of my conversations end up being.. oh well. Not much to say on this one, we got our boy Callisid back and made friends with Spike.

Sorry the amount of time between chapters has gone up lately. I did kinda warn that this would happen once I started class, but was hoping to put something out atleast every 3 days, but it's been 4 days the last couple chapters...

Thanks for reading!