AUG 9 Saturday.

I leave the room me and Blaz work in as my shift is finally over, but I don't leave the library and instead start looking through books, it takes me a while to find any books about illusions that I haven't already searched but when I do find a few I start reading through them.

I've been reading a lot of books trying to find the last piece as Entropy's mood has taken a turn for the worst, after reading through the books I once again find nothing and let out a weary sigh, I put the books back and force myself to read something else so I don't completely burn myself out.

But I can't bring myself to stop looking so I pick a book about illusion spells, it's mostly theory and is dry but I like this kind of book as they always have something new to learn about magic, but as I'm reading I find a section about the exact rune I've been looking for.

This book is not about runes so I don't expect much, but after a moment of reading through the theory the book uses a rune as an example to demonstrate some theory, and to my surprise, it's the very thing I've been losing sleep looking for.

I had to stop myself from getting excited and make sure it was correct, and after checking and then double checking my notes, I was right it was the final piece I needed, I nearly jumped for joy before reminding myself I'm in the library, Entropy's state has been a source of constant concern and worry for me so finally being able to fix it is a great relief.

I rush home and after feeding Entropy I immediately start finishing the spell, the spell was only missing this rune so it only takes me an hour to complete it after that hour of work it's done, and I leave my workroom and find Entropy sleeping on the kitchen counter and gently wake her up, "Hey girl, sorry for waking you but I need your help with something."

She gets up and watches me as I practice the spell several times I'm ready enough to try casting it on her.

She seems to know I'm excited and stands there while looking at me, "Just stay still ok girl?" She seems to understand and keeps standing there, I start drawing out the spell and after a few moments of drawing the matrix and making sure it's correct I successfully cast the new spell, and in an instant she looks like a normal crow again.

She turns her head and looks around her new look for a while as I make sure nothing is going wrong, she looks fine and seems to be able to move around, wanting to test it I walk over to the other side of the room and call Entropy over, she looks at me and flies over landing on my back without issue.

We go through several tests and the spell holds up to her flying, moving around, and covers her completely, but like I thought if I touch her my hoof sinks into the illusion and it doesn't feel right, but Entropy only lets me touch her so as long as nopony else does so it should be fine, when I finish the last test I celebrate some.

"YES it works," I celebrate finally knowing for sure that the spell works I let myself relax, and after coming down from my high I look at the time and write it down, I still need to know how long the spell lasts without overcharging it, while I wait with Entropy I start work on my other spell.

Accounting for the time it took to test the spell it takes two hours for the spell to finally wear off, the spell takes a decent chunk of my magic but lasts a good amount of time, and if I overcharge it I can make it last longer if I need to, but for now I think it's time for Entropy to get some fresh air.

"Let's go to the park girl, what do you say?" She gets really excited and starts jumping around while cawing, and lands on my back before I can even get my saddlebags on, "Fine, fine let's get you outside."

time skip

We spent two hours at the park before heading home, it's near the end of the day when we got home and after entering my apartment I made us food and some tea for myself to relax.

I got really lucky finding the last piece of the rune today, but I have it now and I'm both relieved and excited to start testing with my other spell, it's mostly done but even with both runes it will take several hours to finish it enough for some basic testing, but for now I'll just spend some time relaxing without the fear of Entropy going stir-crazy.

But as I'm about to retrieve my sketchbook to draw something I hear a knocking at my door, I walk over and crack open the door slightly and look outside, there a guard stands waiting for me, seeing them I open the door fully, "I have a letter for you sir."

They like most guards, get right to the point and hold out the letter, I nod and take the letter like always, "Thank you," I open the letter and start reading it.

Dear Shade Evergreen, I'm writing this letter to once again invite you to the Grand Galloping Gala on the twenty-first of the month, I hope to see you there.

I'd also like to inform you that the Rocky Wheat has been growing well and should start being sent out after winter. Signed Princess Celestia.

The letter is much shorter than most she sends me but it gets the point across and she's probably very busy right now, I look inside the envelope and see an invite to the gala as she said, I quickly write up a response and seal in inside an envelope before passing it to the patiently waiting guard, they take the letter and give me a nod before leaving.

I'm not too surprised Celestia invited me again, and I had a decent time when I went last year so I might as well go again, but I'll need a new suit for that as I've outgrown my last one by a fair amount, over the past year I've grown an inch or two and have become much fitter, I don't like bragging as it's just not something I enjoy doing, but I do have a certain amount of pride over how far I've come in the past two years.

I shake my head and start working on my illusion detection spell, I've been working on this for a while even if I couldn't finish it until now, and during this process I've gone through several ideas and ways I could go about this spell, but the form I decided on was something that will need some preparation, I want this spell to detect illusions and I want it to be active for a long time, but that will take a lot of magic so I need to do one of two things.

First I will need to limit the effect of the scanning spell, or my second option, having it be vague enough that the spell doesn't need to scan something intensely, both of these options have downsides to them.

The first option is partly solved by me limiting the spell to illusions but that's not enough, so if I limit it to only bending illusions then that will massively cut down on magic use, but this project is also to see if I detect changelings, and I'm not sure if changelings use illusions so it might be useless on them.

The second option would be vague and non-specific, I can do this in a few ways like making the spell only scan in a limited area, or having the spell only scan something enough to know it's there and tell me.

But now that I have both runes and the spell is actually possible I have to decide how I want to use this, I decide that I should first make sure that the spell will work properly, so I start working on the spell removing parts and fixing things that break as I go.

It takes several hours until I'm done and the night drags on when I finish, but when I'm finally done I don't have much time left before I need to get some sleep as I still have work tomorrow, so I quickly enchant a small ruby to hold magic and add the new spell then I fill it with enough magic to see if the spell will work.

The spell works by picking a radius to scan, in this case I set it to twenty feet, and then I needed the spell to inform me in some way, so I have it make the ruby glow green if it detects anything, but the spell won't be able to tell me where what it detects is just that's it's there.

I move my small planet to my desk and activate it, at the same time I activate the new spell and wait for a while, the scan is much simpler than the fluid scanner so it takes much less time, and after a few seconds the small ruby glows green as it detects the spell.

After seeing that the spell is finished enough to work I call it a night, I need to clean myself off and sleep both tired and relieved.

time skip

AUG 14 Tuesday.

I get out of bed and go through my normal routine, after some food and our trip through the darkness I grab my saddlebags and head for the upper city markets, I need two things and the first is a new suit for the gala, I walk through several streets before finding the same place I went to last time.

And just like last time I got measured and after looking through a few options I found a nice simple black suit that I bought, after getting my new suit I started looking for a piece of jewelry, I have a plan and for that I need something, so after finding a shop in the upper city markets that sells more high-end jewelry.

It takes a while to find something that I think will work, and after some haggling with the pony running the shop I end up paying more than I like but less than I would have had to, I bought a bracelet made from silver with several rose carvings engraved on it with a small diamond in the center.

After getting everything I need I head back home, it doesn't take long and after getting my saddlebags off and attending to Entropy I make some tea and sit down at a desk in my workroom, I take a closer look at the bracelet and study it, it's elaborate and quite beautiful and I think it will look nice.

The diamond is also of a good quality and will work well for my plan, I want to be able to detect changelings but I need to be extremely careful in how I go about this, as for why? Well, the only real way I can see to test this spell is to find a changeling, and I don't think I'll find one who will willingly work with me.

So I need to find one moving through the city without them knowing, that's where this gets dangerous and where I'm not sure if I should do this, but after a lot of thought I think knowing if I can detect them is worth it, and if I do this right they will never know.

I want to enchant my new bracelet to hold the illusion detection spell, but the current spell uses too much magic to work with my idea so my plan for today is to work on that, I grab my notebook and start deconstructing the spell matrix and thinking of ways to lower it's magic consumption.

I start with the way the spell informs me it's detected something, I can't use something that others will be able to see or hear, so I decide on linking in a very weak heating spell as I can have it get warm when it detects something, after that I work on what the spell detects.

I still don't know if changelings use illusions, but I know other ponies rarely ever use illusions in public as they can fail and accidentally reveal what they are trying to hide, and both these runes might be able to detect something even if it's not an illusion spell, but if it does the reaction will be weak.

The reason I bring all this up is because I need to know how intently I need the spell to scan something, this is one of the things that uses the most magic so after some back and forth with myself I decide to go as simple as possible, if they do use illusions then I just need to know nothing else.

The scan will probably take several seconds to detect something, I also added the other parameters for the spell’s scan, I limit the spell to only ten feet and to limit magic use I have it only tell me if it detects an illusion in that radius, not where the illusion is or how close it is.

This is far from ideal but should be enough for the bracelet to hold the enchantment, after enchanting the small diamond to hold and gather magic and start enchanting the bracelet with the new spell, it takes a few practice attempts to cast it correctly but after that I enchant the bracelet.

After I'm done I take both it and my small planet to the main room and place it on the far side of the main room, I activate it and walk more than ten feet away before marking a line and activating the bracelet, after checking that it's stable and not breaking I slowly walk over to the small planet.

I enter what I think is roughly ten feet and wait, and after a few seconds the bracelet on my foreleg starts to warm up, as I get closer the warmth increases before leveling out once I'm a foot away from the small planet, it seems I was pleasantly wrong.

I can tell the distance they are from me but only roughly, still that's better than nothing, after several more tests I check on the bracelet and see how much magic it's used, after a little over an hour it's drained a little more than a tenth, I can't get an exact amount but that seems about right.

Despite my best efforts I couldn't make the spell completely passive, but it will still last several hours and that should be enough, after I'm done testing and writing down notes about it I put everything away and decide to relax some.

To be honest with myself stressing over Entropy safety last week and how much I've been working on I need a little break, and as much as I don't like large crowds I am looking forward to the Gala, I enjoyed the last one even if all I did was talk about magic, or maybe that's why I enjoyed it?

Doesn't really matter I suppose, my point is that I'm hoping to relax some and maybe talk to Celestia some, talking to her can be a little stressful but she always has something interesting to say, so for now I think I spend the rest of my day off just reading something stupid or doing something stupid, maybe both?

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :D

Also 50 chapters, I'm very happy that you have all read this far, truly thank you all for reading my half baked ideas.