JUN 27 Saturday.

It's been almost a week since I got home from my little trip and I've spent that time working on a few things and catching up with a few other things. I mostly just needed to make sure my plants were fine and still alive.

As for what I've been working on, well there are a few things. The first is flying practice, although calling it flying might be giving me too much credit. Blaz and I agreed to meet at the park whenever we both have the free time needed, he's been helping me learn how to fly and use my wings properly.

Right now it's mostly just him helping me get better control of fine movements and how to properly take care of my new wings. While we were doing this we noticed a difference between his wings and mine, it might be because I just got my wings but Blaz's wings seem to be more flexible in general.

From what Blaz could tell I should still be able to fly just fine but holding and picking things up will be harder to do properly. After some research I think this non-flexibility is just the spell not being perfect at what it does, it's still a very good spell but it's not perfect.

Overall there isn't much to say about our practice, it was mostly just me trying to not look like a foal flapping their wings in an adult body, and failing.

Moving on we have the protection spell I've been making for the Apple couple. I've had time to think more about all of this and I've come to realize I might be jumping the gun a little. I have changed the world and it's a distinct possibility that they will live even without further intervention.

But is that worth the risk? Sure I could be wrong and they'll be just fine. But if I presume that and do nothing to help them, then what happens if they do die? To be blunt, I'm not willing to take that chance with lives, especially when it's easy for me to help them.

I bought two matching silver bracelets with simple engravings and small rubies embedded in them, they cost me less than I'd make in a day and they might save two lives. I've been working on a simple shield spell that can take a decent amount of damage and provide convenient portable protection.

The spell itself isn't the best, it can help with attacks but is only somewhat effective at protecting you from things like fires or floods. But it's still a decent shield for a bracelet. But I still have a problem, how do I get the bracelets to them?

I don't know them and sending them a gift like this would raise far too many questions, so how to go about this? Well, the easiest way to get it to them would be through the mail. That's easy, I can just drop off a package at the post office, they let you drop things off in a mail slot at night.

I can just drop it off at night and leave the sender and return address blank, it may raise a few questions but it's very unlikely to be traced back to me considering how far away I am. But that leaves me with a different problem, I can send it to them but they might not accept a gift from some unknown pony.

That might just be my paranoia but it's still something I need to account for. The best idea I've come up with is a little stupid but it might work. I'll say I'm a family member who wants to send them a nice gift in celebration of their third foal, but I don't want to upstand any other gifts sent by family, so I'll leave my name out of it.

I'll admit it's not the best idea, but I'm not good at this. Because I'm starting to feel my resolve weakening with time, thoughts creep in and whisper about how this is all a bad idea and that I should just walk away before it's too late. I don't want to listen to those thoughts, but I don't think I can ignore them forever.

I need to do this before I convince myself to back out, so even though this plan is far from perfect I'm still going to go through with it. I'll be doing it later tonight, I don't think anypony will be awake but I'll make sure to be careful regardless.

Right now I'm sitting in my workroom with two new discoveries, the seed and branch I took from the Golden Oak Library. And as a first step I'm going to try and grow a new tree from the branch, I want to keep the seed as a backup, mostly because it took so much life magic to grow.

I've been keeping the branch alive by giving it life magic until now, I take the foot-long inch-thick branch and cut its thick end off a little. I strip the thick end of its bark and sink it into a pot filled with soil, then I start using my life magic to make it grow new roots.

It takes a little time but it successfully takes root and starts to grow larger, I make sure to keep its size under control. Once I have a decent-sized sapling I start really examining the plant. At first glance it does look like oak, in fact it's so similar that I wouldn't be surprised if it's directly related in some way.

But I've never come across a type of oak like this before. If you look closer you start to see some of the smaller differences. The leaves are a lighter shade of green, and they have incredibly tiny golden threads winding through the leaves and the leaf's stem. After examining the leaves I cut off the whole sapling and moved it to the side before regrowing the plant.

I take the sapling to the kitchen sink and start removing all the tiny branches and leaves, then I draining all of the moisture out of the wood. Once it's properly dried I use my wood carving knife to start cutting the branch into inch-long sections, I look at a section and see the wood inside it.

The inside looks like regular oak, but just like with the leaves the wood grain has tiny golden lines weaved throughout it. The wood is also a little stronger than regular oak, but not by much. I'm still not really sure why this tree is magical but it definitely is, no plant takes that much life magic to grow a single seed without a reason.

And that leads me to the seed, after some thought I decided to not plant it, planting an unknown magical seed in my apartment doesn't sound like a good idea. I clean things up before examining the tree seed, the amount of life magic in the seed is large, nothing like Entropy or Celestia but still much more than a large tree.

The seed itself is similar to a maple tree seed. It has a single seed at its base and then two flat pieces of plant matter shoot off and form flat wings. For maple trees the seeds use those wings to spin as they fall and gain distance from the parent tree, this lets the maple tree spread its seeds further around giving them a better chance of survival.

Not seeing anything else of note I leave the seed be for now and place the small sapling next to my Iron Oak. As I'm rearranging my plants I see and hear the now familiar flash of flames as Philomena teleports into my apartment. And as I expect she's holding a letter for me, she flies around for a moment and then lands on my back.

I give her some berries as a thank-you treat and take the letter from her, it's a reminder from Celestia that we have a meeting tomorrow at five. I smile and put it to the side before pampering Philomena with pets and scratches, it will be nice to see Celestia again.

After Philomena is satisfied she flies over to sit next to Entropy on her perch. I still have a few hours until it gets late enough to implement my plan, so I decide to continue experimenting with plants. Specifically the Spine Leaf, I've been slowly breeding it to make stronger needles for a while now.

And it's been going well, the plant's needles are much stronger now, but I still haven't found much of a use for them. I spend a while just thinking of potential uses for the needles but come up with nothing, however I do come up with an idea for the plant itself.

The Spine Leaf grows faster than any other plant I have, with second place going to the Companion Vine. So my idea is simple, if I breed them together I can make a very fast-growing vine with very sharp needles. It could be very useful to constrain or capture someone if I need to.

It could also just be used to grow a wall of natural barbed wire, a great way to give me time to run. I don't have a reason to need this plant right now, but having it in reserve seems worth the effort. With no better ideas, I go into my workroom and gather everything I'll need.

A Companion Vine seed, a Spine leaf seed, and three pots filled with fresh soil. Once I have everything on my desk I start the slow process of selective crossbreeding. The good news is that these two plants grow very fast, so it's faster than breeding any of my other plants.

After six hours of me breeding plants I have something with some promise and potential. The resulting vine has very small needles growing on its leaves, I'll need to breed this new vine to have larger and more frequent needles, but this is a good place to start.

The new vine also lost a decent amount of the speed growth that its parents had, but once again that can be fixed with more selective breeding and time. I check the time, it's eleven at night and should be the right time to get moving. I gather the things I'll need. My dagger, the two bracelets in a sealed box along with a letter.

Once I'm ready I have Entropy take us through the Void, and I get to experience the dark silence of that place again. But like every time before it doesn't last more than a moment, me and Entropy reappear in a thickly wooded area in almost complete darkness.

The only light comes from the dim moon hanging in the night sky above us. I cast a small spell that acts as a compass, and after gaining my bearings I start walking through the dark woods. In the past few days since my trip to Ponyville I took a trip back here to find a better place for Entropy to teleport to.

This spot is around a one-hour walk away from Ponyville and it's near a road that goes through a thick forest. I find the road after a few minutes of walking and start following it. It takes me longer than expected to arrive because of the darkness but I do arrive at Ponyville at a little past midnight.

The town is silent with only the odd light here or there to break through the darkness. I remember where the post office is but it's dark and it takes me a while to find it again. I'm on edge the whole time, I keep looking around at small sounds or any movement.

But things go smoothly, I find the mail slot and drop the package inside before walking away. It's at the exact moment, but then in the darkness, I see a pony walking towards the post office. I don't think they see me so I duck into an ally in between two houses.

I hold my breath as they walk past me, I worry they'll look over, but they just keep walking and don't even glance in my direction. Once they walk far enough away from me that they won't hear me I have Entropy leave my shadow, "It's time to go home girl." Hopefully, before anything else can happen.

After a short wait, I'm thrown through space again and appear inside my apartment. Once I'm home I feel the tension leave my body. I'm pretty tired so after eating something I just take a shower and head to bed. I'm glad I did this on the weekend because I'm definitely going to sleep in tomorrow.

Author's Note

Thank for reading. :]

Ok so, good news and bad news.

Good news, Sparkly sparks gifted me a higher quality cover for the fic, so a very special thank you for that. :]

Bad news, while making this chapter I had some technical issues and the file I used to store all notes for this fic got snapped out of existence.

To give you some idea of how bad that is, it contained, the names of all oc's, how many gems Shade had and of what type, all the spell names, all of his inventions and when they were started and finished, all the words Entropy knows how to speak, all of Shade's schedule, all the runes he knows.

And so much more, now as you can imagine this is a problem for me. But most of it was easy to find in the fic again, so I've already gotten most of it organized again.

But if you see any errors in the fic's, timeline, logic, names, or Shade having things he shouldn't, you now know why. And if it's not too much trouble I'd very much appreciate a heads up if you happen to find anything wrong. I'll try to fix this as fast as possible, but I'm definitely going to miss things, sorry in advance.