SEP 25 Monday.

I look over the small ruby and medium ruby for a moment and activate the gems in the proper order to transfer the gathered love. From one to the other.

I've spent some of my time over the past week making what I've come to call the Love Cell, basically a love battery. It has two modes and a way to just turn it off although that would disperse any love contained inside at the time.

The first leaves it on standby scanning for the nearest emotional shield and shows a small green light next to the gem when it finds one. The second mode is activated when it finds a small emotional shield and forms a second emotional shield around it.

Basically, you move it next to a Love Gatherer's compressed mode emotional shield, and then activate the Love Cell before turning off the Love Gatherer, the small gem will then have a small shield floating with it, now containing all the love magic inside. You tap it three times and the Love Cell's shield will expand so a Changeling can eat from it just like the Love Gatherer.

It's very basic and uses a lot of spells from the Love Gatherer, excluding the all important Love Rune, the Love Cell only took a few slow days to complete and send off to Celestia. I got a package back from her not long after, courtesy of Philomena, that thanked me again and also had several books and notes inside it.

After our meeting I was sent home with a lot to think about and a list of several books to read. At first, I found myself very distracted by everything I'd learned, but after a few days, I calmed down and relaxed again. Mostly because I can't do all that much at the moment.

Beyond my suggestions, Celestia has already been making many preparations of her own, and I don't really have much I can help her with beyond my spell work. Things will remain mostly the same for a while and might not even change that much after we finally get into full contact with Chrysalis.

It's an odd mix I've felt a few times before, I want to help to do things to speed up the process, but things like this are best done slowly. So it's back to normal life for me, the regular drum of talking to friends and the endless grind, regular everyday life for me.

Oddly enough all the worrying I did over changing the future and its consequences made me more able to deal with this. A war is raging and I'm sitting down studying, or I'm just a bit insane. I did spend more time on physical practice over the past week just to get any stress out.

Then there are my thoughts on everything, specifically the Changeling queens, let's start with Chrysalis. She's an odd one and something I will keep a close eye on as much as I can, but she's also not what I was expecting. Her being the voice of reason feels off from what I remember of the show.

I could make a guess about why she ended up the way she did. If the war was in the show but never shown then she could have faced varying difficulties as it progressed. Changelings have a hard time when it comes to food and I remember those Changelings in the woods so long ago talking about food difficulties.

It's not hard to guess that would only worsen in such a war, the mere fact one side is taking ponies while Celestia is aware of them is enough of a reason to show just how desperate both sides probably are. If Chrysalis lived in a hive that had just won a war only to start starving and dying I can see her doing something crazy like the wedding.

But this time might be better, with the new inventions we could still feed them, we'll eventually have to deal with overpopulation but that's a long time away. I'm still wary of her though, she's mostly an unknown if a somewhat reasonable creature to deal with.

I'll have to meet her myself to see how reasonable she actually is, but Celestia seems to think so and she is infinitely better at the whole talking thing. And then there is, Cascadia, I understand Celestia's disdain for that name and couldn't agree more.

This world is lucky, more lucky than any creature here could ever imagine. I know for a fact other worlds exist, from fiction and stories to alternate history, all of them are probably out there somewhere. But there are few worlds as peaceful and kind as this one.

Compared to some of the places out there my old world is a paradise, Equis might as well be a heaven. To take such a gift that so many would commit unspeakable actions to have, and distort it with such unnecessary violence and suffering? Why, why the fuck! It makes me pretty angry.

I don't know which side started this war, but to cling to your power so much that you kidnaped and literally farm another sapient being. I hate it, it makes no sense! Even if they don't know how lucky they are, they have magic! The ability to rewrite fucking reality!

You can solve this problem, is it easy? No, but it can be done. Even if I had help and was lucky the fact it took me, an outsider, to solve their problem is stupid. I don't blame the average Changeling though, they are just trying to survive like all others and often are too focused on that to do other things.

But to rule an entire hive, and seemingly carry on like normal? Fuck that. If I had a hive objective number one is fixing the food problem without relying on just natural ability, but it's not up to me. Maybe it's part of their nature? To just continue on without changing, pun intended.

Humans are the same in many ways, but only ever for a while. Suffering is something all humans try to avoid, we often fail but we try. To imprison a sapient being and trap them in their own fantasies? That sounds almost, Human. Enough of getting angry at my own mental rant, the problem still remains and this bitch is harming ponies without a good reason.

I want to do something about that, oh do I want to? All it would take is a single spell with the right runes and I'd have something to fucking destroy Changelings, but again this is not my place. I am many things, but I am not arrogant enough to believe that I have the right to do something like that, not when many innocents would get placed in the crossfire on both sides.

So for now I create and wait, I wait for the day when I will see her fall. I do try to keep this anger away, but it isn't helping me any and it is only a distraction right now. I move the gems back onto a shelf and take a moment to look over what remains of my gem collection.

It's dwindled over the past years and I'll need to look for more soon, I might be able to talk to those Diamond Dogs? It's been a while but I might be able to find them again. I go through my shelves and find a small pendant I was given a very long time ago with a symbol on it.

Something to check on then, fall has already set in and many trees are losing their leaves so I'll have to check before the winter starts. I doubt they would be caravanning gems through snow, that's all for later though. I place the pendant back and make my way into my apartment's main room.

I glance at my small table and the several books now resting on it and sit down to continue reading. Over the past week, I've spent most of my time reading up on rituals and the Anti Scanning spell, mostly the former though. I've only skimmed the material for the Anti Scanning spell because I wanted to spend some time relaxing from my spell work and try to balance my free time better.

The Love Gatherer and Love Cells will take a good while to start any production anyway so I have time before making the improved Anti Scanning spell. Now, onto the truly interesting topic, rituals. At their base rituals are surprisingly simple things, a magically conductive dust drawn into a proper ritual matrix.

Unlike modern spells, rituals use much more runes instead of math and are also inherently less stable. Interestingly enough any magically conductive dust or powder works, but gems are by far the best option. I could probably use the gold dust, yet another thing to look into.

The main difference between modern magic casting and rituals is the power source. Rituals can either take from living things around them, the environment itself, or a gem, but it can never contain its own magic source or store magic. The ritual Celestia sent me is of an advanced rank, but far from being impossible for me.

It uses a total of twenty runes and would take up a decently large area, I'm still working on that second part actually. This ritual is very basic in effect though and can't really go wrong unless I really fuck things up. I just need to make the ritual properly and have Entropy move her shadow magic into the ritual before placing the band in the middle.

Entropy should also have more than enough magic, the main factor of cost in this ritual is the size of the item you're trying to Imbue. Honestly learning about Imbuing an object has been the most interesting part about all of the information Celestia sent me from the topics I asked about both after and at the meeting.

Imbuing is like enchanting but in a different way. First and foremost the entire process heavily depends on what you are Imbuing. The object either needs to be able to conduct the magical affinity you want or any affinity at all. Mithril is a neutral material and can conduct every type of magic, but just because it can conduct any affinity doesn't mean it's good at it.

While something like Entropy's feather would only conduct shadow or space magic. Something like Vita Tree Wood would not conduct shadow magic at all and wouldn't work for my needs. Obviously, a material that conducts the affinity used is better, but not strictly necessary.

Imbuing itself is very simple, it's to saturate an object in a type of magic to give it a desired effect. Imbuing was mostly done with things like powerful weapons, so you could Imbue a blade with fire magic and then it would have a fire effect to it. The more fire magic you use and the more powerful the ritual the stronger the result would be. But how does it power itself?

Well, it sort of doesn't. Over time the effect would consume the magic Imbued and fade, you'd need to redo the ritual again to imbue more magic into the object to make it work again. That's not a problem for the band as I don't need it to use the shadow magic just contain it, so that will last basically forever, but for a weapon, it's a pretty annoying thing.

The effect can vary by a large amount. A blade with fire magic could be strong enough to burn, do a bit, or melt through them like butter, it depends. The ritual and items used to account for this, but will and intent are also important, I'll get to that though.

Imbued magic does last for a while before fading, up to decades depending on how powerful the ritual is and what material you use. The main advantage is the object doesn't need any of your magic to work, a useful thing on a battlefield. The main downside is it needs to be redone in the ritual.

That can get very costly if you are using a large and powerful ritual. It does open some interesting possibilities for me, mainly in my space magic. The effect you want to Imbue into an object can be more structured like an enchantment, which makes the ritual more complicated but can be done.

With the right ritual, it would allow me to use space magic in an object, which immediately gave me the idea that I am definitely trying. A bag of holding, or anything like that really, the sheer possibilities of that alone. A ritual like that would be hard but I can't see a reason why it wouldn't work, I will need to do more research for it.

To loop back a bit. I've learned that rituals are based on both the will and intent of those involved, and the actual Ritual Matrix. Both have a large effect and contribute to the end result. Rituals have a flexibility to them that makes things both easier and harder to accomplish.

With normal enchanting you can give a single item complex, structured, and layered effects, at the cost of needing to be incredibly accurate with all the spells involved. In contrast, the runes used in rituals can be a little off with their Runic Context, the math can be off by a bit, but they would still work.

The flexibility allows you to stretch the definition of runes and use your imagination more, much like with Guided Evolution. It would let me make something like a bag of holding without needing to make any runes for space magic, as I could use runes that would be close enough in context.

The downsides of rituals are plain to see though. From less stability, to any item needing to be re-imbued, and the much higher magic costs. But a large downside is that you only Imbue an item once, you can still add enchantments, but a single item can only ever have one Imbued effect.

I put down the book I was reading and left my mental rant before picking up a second book from the pile Celestia sent me and glancing inside to remind myself of its contents. Before our last meeting ended I was able to ask her about sending me any information she has on life magic, specifically about modifying plants.

She wasn't able to find much on short notice but she did find a bit. It mostly follows the same method I used but also adds an interesting angle I didn't think of. When using Guided Evolution to directly modify a plant you can watch how your will and magic change the plant's magical flows.

Once you find how you are changing things you can better direct your will and magic to that specific point. It gives your mind something to work towards beyond just your own imagination, an anchor point is the term they used. I put down the book and looked out the window.

The sky is cloudy as a cold wind blows yellow and red leaves off of the trees dotting streets and the countryside in the distance. I leave the book alone for now and move over to Entropy. "Hey Girl? Up for a trip to Gaia's Eden?" She stops preening herself atop her perch and flies right down with a happy chirp.

"Yes, go." That's all she says before we both vanish from my apartment. When we arrive in my shack Entropy dives right out a window with some parting words. "Love, go play!" I chuckle a bit and leave her alone for now. She doesn't seem to like fall and winter all that much, I think because her and I spend more time inside.

I spend a moment gathering a few seeds and pots, before making my way outside and to the pavilion. The Everfree forest always withstands fall and winter better than anywhere else, but this year is different from the past few. All because of the Vita Tree.

I still drain my remaining life magic into the tree every day when I check up on Gaia's Eden. The Vita Tree is now fifteen feet tall, five feet taller than at the start of the year. Its field of denser life magic has also grown to fifteen feet, causing all the plants around it to grow wildly.

Even with the approach of winter and full might of fall the plants refuse to brown or die, even a small bit. I think that as long as I add something to keep the snow off the plants they will live through winter just fine. As a nice bonus, I also had to adjust the gold dust gathering enchantments, it's now producing even more gold dust than before.

It's helped with the Copper Lily project and a few other plants I use it on to keep them healthy. I sit down in the pavilion and get comfortable to begin my botanical work. I bought a Cherry Blossom seed and something I've had with me for a very long time. My variant of Moon Glow, the variant I selectively bred to make the entire plant glow instead of just its flowers.

My plan is to add some more night lights to Gaia's Eden, and it works as a good test. I start out by growing a small plant from each seed and have them flower before crossbreeding them together. As I grow the seeds I focus my will on changing the plant's effects so that the Cherry Blossom has glowing leaves and flowers.

I watch how the seed's life magic flows change in my senses, it's small and hard to make out in the tiny seeds, but they do change. The flows of life magic shift a tiny amount, if I wasn't looking for it I'd never have noticed without some great luck. Once the seeds are grown I pick them and decompose both plants.

I study the seeds and notice that all of them look the same but their magic is very slightly different from a normal seed of either plant. I plant one at random but it doesn't grow, a dud, three more duds later and a seedling finally sprouts from the soil. A moment later a small three-foot-tall Cherry Blossom sapling is grown.

The difference is seen in the small leaves and flowers of the sapling, they have all turned into deep green variations of themselves. Not exactly what I wanted but let's see if it works correctly, I cast a spell to form a dome shield around me that blocks out all light, the same spell I used to hide Celestia's piano.

A moment later I see the flowers and leaves of the sapling emit a soft white glow, the effect transferred correctly then. I left the other seeds alone and instead focused on this sapling, attempting to use Guided Evolution to create what I wanted while gaining more practice.

I use Guided Evolution again and pay close attention while trying to change the flowers and leaves back to their original colors. Leaves and flowers fall and regrow rapidly, I focus as the flows of life magic in the sapling shift some, mostly around the trunk and branches.

I keep those changes firmly in mind and continue to grow and replace old growth with new, a shower of falling glowing petals and leaves. After using half my life magic and studying the flow's subtle changes I cancel the shield spell around me and the sapling. My eyes take a moment to adjust to the outside light, but when they do I look down to see the floor is covered in flowers and leaves blowing away in the wind.

Many are green or white, but the ones on the sapling are the same color as a normal Cherry Blossom Tree. The sapling's leaves and flowers glow a bit more before dimming after I take away the shield blocking out sunlight. I smile at the success and start to write notes in my illusionary notebook.

The process this time was both faster and easier to do after I found the changes happening, and keeping them in mind did in fact help. I think it even cut down on the magic cost some, not a lot but it is nice to see. The changes to the tree also seem more focused and complete.

I did this mostly to test if the new method works and to see if I could use Guided Evolution to transfer magical properties in plants to other plants, I can safely say it can be done. The new Cherry Blossom Tree is a nice bonus. I've been meaning to find a visually appealing way to light up the fish pond at night.

All I need is a name, Glow Cherry Blossom Tree is too much of a mouthful. Glow Cherry? No, that's too blunt even for my tastes. I guess I'll give it some thought. I spend a moment collecting seeds from the new type of tree and decomposing them before standing up and stretching.

The chilly wind blows through again and I shiver a bit. An upside to being a pony is that the cold bothers me less, but it can still be annoying at times. I reach into my saddlebags and unroll my green scarf before wrapping it around my neck, it turned out to be a rather good gift.

With nothing else left to do, I slowly walk through the grass and over to the Water Tree and my little fish pond. The fish have been doing well and are preparing for the cold freeze of winter. I've kept the berry bushes full of fruit and the fish have grown large and healthy over the past few months.

I walk around it and plant three seeds before quickly growing them into ten-foot trees covered in flowers and leaves. I sit under the shade of the new trees around me at the edge of the pond. I still need to see how much of a glow the new trees give off, but from how much light the small sapling made I think it should be enough.

I should still wait for dark, and it has been a long time since I've mapped the stars. I smile in comfortable silence while taking out a sketchbook to draw the fish while I wait. I look down at the swimming fish and take a deep breath of the fresh air, even in war there are moments like this.

Moments of peace.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :]
Current year is 995

I realized I wanted to take a break form all the talking and war so I thought we could have a few lighter chapters, things like learning new interesting magic and plants, or Shade's friends.

Also, me leaving the new tree without a name, you know what that means! It's time to ask you all because I am also horrible at names and couldn't come up with any. So... Any ideas?