JUL 26 Sunday.

I groan and push myself off the ground, I look back to see several of my feathers out of their proper places. I take a few moments to straighten them out and get everything back in place, once that's done I walk back up the small hill that Blaz is standing on. "Well, that was better than your first attempt, but that's not saying much." He says with a mocking smile.

I roll my eyes. "Ya ya, at least I've learned to glide in a few weeks. How long did it take you when you first started?" I ask back.

He pretends to look perturbed. "I was a colt at the time, so it took a while." He admits.

I then give him the same smile he gave me. "All I'm hearing is excuses. Now, what did I do wrong?" I drop my teasing and get down to business. After that, he starts pointing out all the small things that I forgot or didn't do properly, and after that's done I make another attempt.

I brace my legs and gallop to the highest part of the hill before jumping as high as I can while out stretching my wings, I start to glide a little but I have to start flapping my wings to keep myself in the air. I manage to glide for nearly fifteen seconds before the ground starts to level out and I near it.

And now comes the really hard part, landing. I angle my wings the best I can but the wind resistance makes it hard to be accurate. My wings mostly slow me down and I brace my legs as I slide along the ground for a few feet before tumbling slightly from my wings being out of alignment.

And while I don't fully wipeout on the ground I do trip some before getting my hooves on solid ground again. It may have only been for a short distance but for the first time I've gotten off the ground and landed without eating dirt, and it feels amazing.

As I've learned more about flying and gotten to experience it myself I've become very excited about being able to fly one day. Maybe it's the human part of me but I find myself loving the idea of flying through the sky freely. But for now, It's time to once again walk up a hill and get lectured on how I fucked up, by magic Blaz is really not a good teacher but he sure is a fun one.

I walk home in the afternoon sun as Entropy rides on top of my head. The past few weeks have helped me calm down a lot, sure I'm still nervous about meeting Celestia but not as much. Spending time with friends has helped a lot, another good thing about that is how much flying practice I've had recently.

All my friends seem to be helping me in different ways, beyond just our game nights. Maple normally just lets me vent about anything while patiently listening, and occasionally commenting on things. Blaz has been teaching me to fly more often. And Daisy keeps knocking on my door once every two days or so to check on me.

They've all lessened how much they do these things as my mood has improved, and I'm very thankful for all of it. So I've decided to give them all a gift, nothing big but something that sounds fun. It's also the reason I'm walking through the markets to buy a few things.

First I need paint, black, blue, green, red, and yellow, along with some thick and very durable paper, and a deck of normal cards. That's right, I plan to make a certain game that has caused many fights between friends. Normally I wouldn't copy anything from my old world, but this is just for me and my friends so it should be fine.

When I arrived home I spent a little time feeding the gremlin before heading to my workroom. The paper I bought is not normally used for cards, but I couldn't find that kind of paper so I just bought something that will work. I start by grabbing a small block of maple wood and working on it.

Over time my ability to decompose certain parts of wood while leaving the rest intact has improved quite a lot, I can basically roughly carve out objects without needing to even touch the wood. But I'm going for precision here and make sure to not remove too much material, once it's in the roughly correct shape I find the deck of cards I bought.

I probably could just paint over these cards but that's not as fun as making them myself. I take a card and quill, I delicately draw out an outline in the wood and start carving. I want to make a small wood drawing frame that I can hold over the thick paper I bought and use it to draw out card shapes to then cut out.

The carving and paper cutting took me almost an hour before I was done, most of that time was the cutting, it took a while to draw and cut out a total of one hundred and eight blank cards. Now the real tedious work begins, I make one side of every card black before grabbing my paints and drawing the card's faces.

By the time I'm done with all the cards, it's dark and I have to turn on my magical light to see. The cards are laid out on one of my desks to properly dry, they should prove interesting at our next game night. Once that's done I stay in my workroom and continue to work.

I spend a little while draining my magic while training my space magic again, but as I'm doing this I get an idea. At this point, I can now keep two pieces of paper in the air with space magic, but this training is starting to become less effective with time and I need something more straining to continue my growth.

I want to train my control before anything else, mostly so I don't end up like my poor bed stand. I grab the card deck I was using earlier and take a single card before placing it in front of me. My new idea for training is to carefully move this card in specific ways, it should prove harder than just keeping something in the air.

I've also come up with a new idea for manipulating space, although I'm not sure if it will work and I'll need to be careful testing it. All I've done so far is very carefully manipulate space by very gently pulling and pushing on space, I want to see what would happen if I tried to keep the space as still as possible and lock that area in place.

I've been controlling my space magic through will alone, mostly because I don't have anything I could copy. The only things I've seen with space manipulation are Entropy and that odd rock I found, maybe I could ask Celestia about seeing it again sometime.

I slowly pull on the space in front of me and try to lift the card up, it's not that different from the pieces of paper and it doesn't take me long. I keep it in the air and then instead of pulling on the space I will the space to stop moving and try to hold it in place, and the next thing I feel is a decent amount of my magic draining away.

It's not a massive amount but it's still more than what I use to pull on space, but it does work, the card sits completely still in mid-air. I almost reach out with a hoof to touch it but stop myself, I remind myself of my main rule with space magic, never touch it. Instead, I let the magic run out and everything returns to normal while I drink some tea.

I rest a while and just work on my runic casting while I wait for my magic to regenerate. Instantly casting a spell means I need to memorize it and practice forming it, and I regain more magic than those two things take. So as long as I don't actually cast the spell I can practice while waiting for my magic to fill again.

When my magic is full again I grab a branch from the Iron Oak and take off all the leaves and offshoots. I hold the card in the air with my field and then once again try to freeze the space, and once again I feel the drain on my magic, I keep a close eye on how much magic I have.

I test this new method of space magic in the most human way possible, by poking it with a stick. I can feel the stick pushing against my control as it moves into the area. It reminds me of the stasis spell I made, the frozen space can still be moved if I use enough force and effort.

But the more magical power I use the stronger the effect seems to be. I tried to use my will and control to let the stick move while keeping everything else frozen, and I succeeded, for about one second. Then it becomes too hard to control and it all starts to slip out of my control slightly.

I don't want that so I focus my will on keeping the space magic stable while using the rest of it up. Once it's all used up I relax, ok not the easiest thing but it's still controllable, plus I now know a new direction in which I can take my space magic. I was able to let an object move unhindered in the frozen space, it will just take a lot of practice to make it usable but it has a lot of potential.

I keep up my practice for the next few hours before going about my normal activities. A quick trip through the Void, cooking dinner, showering, and finally getting some well-deserved rest.

POV shift Celestia

I sigh as more forms are placed on my filled desk, the last few weeks have been trying to say the least. I look through another form and set it down after looking it over.

So much work to be done, and so much to prepare for. When I learned a war has been raging under Equestria I was less than pleased, and even more so when I realized what my missing ponies were taken for. Even now it angers me, but my ponies don't need anger right now they need calm and reassurance.

At least there is some good news in this mess. This war seems to not spill over into Equestria at large, it would have well been well hidden for me to not have noticed it before now. And while the situation is not great things aren't too bad, we may have potential enemies but we also have potential allies.

Those two mares. I stop that thought and correct myself, those two changelings have given us valuable information and time to prepare, even if they don't seem to know much of the larger situation. My thoughts are interrupted by a guard walking in and placing yet another report on my desk.

I glance at the top page and see it's a report on the prisoner. So far they have still refused to say a word, and it's looking less likely as time goes on that they will say anything without some incentive. I can think of a few ways but I would rather not resort to such things.

I try to keep my mind from a dark place, thoughts of wars and conflicts long past suffusing once again from so long ago. I hoped Equestria would never see war again, but I will protect my ponies. I once again tried to pull my mind off those thoughts, and I succeeded with the thoughts of a new friend.

Shade has been on my mind a lot recently, and not just because he's inadvertently started all of this, for which I am thankful for in an odd way. Yes, he's shown me a massive problem, but I would rather see a problem than be ignorant of it.

One thing in particular keeps coming up in my mind. To be blunt Shade knew something he shouldn't have, but he did. When he gave me those two spells I still remember his face, he looked scared in a way I've never seen before. Most might not have seen that fear under his mask of calm but I've seen it enough to recognize it, and it is a source of great concern and confusion for me.

He knew something he shouldn't have and was beyond hesitant to speak about, but he still did, and as far as I can tell he did it to once again help others. The spell he gave me has many uses, and I'm very thankful he gave it to me, but that curiosity about how he knew to make it is still there.

I want to know the how and why, but he made it very clear that he would never say. He even went as far as saying he's willing to give up any form of friendship we have if he needs to. I've never seen him so serious about something before.

Which leaves me in an odd place, I want answers, but I'm not willing to lose a friend for them. It's a dilemma I've had a few times but never to this degree, but still, I intend to keep that promise. I won't lie and say the thought never crossed my mind to break it, but I refuse to do that.

Shade put a large amount of trust in my promise, more than I even thought he would. It's easy to see he doesn't trust easily, and he chooses his friends carefully, and I don't want to betray that trust. I let my thoughts run for a while as I work my way through form after form, while I glance at the plant on my desk from time to time.

Shade is a pony I could one day consider one of the few ponies to ever be close friends with me, somepony who looks past all this gold and silver. I watch as the glow of solar and lunar magic intertwine as they come off the plants, oh sister if only you were here.

I have to stop myself from frowning slightly as another guard fills the gap in the wall of paper that I just made, enough of these thoughts I have much work to do. I smile a little at the plant and pick up another form, if nothing else it will be nice to talk to him again even with everything happening.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :)

Brownie points of you guess the card game.