It was already July. That’s what humans had named their equivalent to the Equestrian seventh moon. Only two more months and Sunset would officially have spent a whole year in this world. It had been a long and arduous journey with many bumps along the way, but she felt like she was ready to reach her first milestone: Use human technology for magic purposes.

She still felt quite stupid for having overlooked quartzes. Sure, as Princess Celestia’s protegé, she was used to having unrestricted access to the royal gemstone depository and using only the most perfectly cut gems to work with. She even had the authority to request custom orders to the royal courier. She was so used to the best materials that she had never once thought about the inferior ones.

And that had set her research back almost a year. But there was nothing she could do except learn from her mistakes and move on.

After a bit of investigating, Sunset had more or less figured out how the Trixie girl’s smoke bombs worked. “Crystals and gemstones permit the flow of magical energy to pulsate along with the Harmonic Veil,” she had explained to Twilight. “Their resistance threshold is extremely low, which is what makes them so good for enchantments. However, they can also be used to store mana. This is usually done with uncut gemstones. They’re not particularly better at it than cut ones, but they’re cheaper and get the job done just as well.

“I believe that that magician girl infuses quartz chunks with her mana —or someone else’s mana— and surrounds them with black powder. The quartz chunks are filled to the brim, which makes them brittle, so when she smashes them, the energy gets out in a violent burst of energy, which sends the powder everywhere and creates the sudden cloud of smoke.”

Of course, whether her hypothesis was correct or not was irrelevant. What mattered was the fact that humans could use magic in some shape. The simplistic method told Sunset that they either didn’t know what exactly they were doing, or they did but the smoke bomb was the limit of their skill.

Regardless, it was of no importance. Sunset had always known there was magic in the human world. Her job was to prove it with scientific methods and create ways to help humans harness it. And to that effect, she had spent the past three weeks working with Twilight to build a detector machine. Twilight had dubbed it Harmonic Reader, claiming her right to name anything relating to human magic, previously granted to her by Sunset herself.

Sunset had only rolled her eyes. She didn’t particularly care, but even if she did, she supposed she could give that to Twilight. After all, the girl was the one getting her parents to provide the necessary funds to build the Reader. Which, in all fairness, wasn’t much. Sunset and Twilight had disassembled various other machines to get what they needed.

Sunset looked up, breathing in. The night was warm, the sky was cloudless, and there was a gentle breeze that ruffled only the ends of her hair. The three full moons of this month happened in the middle of the week, but since it was still summer vacation, it meant that they could go study the portal without issues. As always, both Celestia and Shining Armor were with them, setting a small camp post in the front yard of Canterlot High School.

“So, what’s all this?” Shining asked, pointing at the various wires and machines connected to each other and to Sunset’s laptop, all sitting on a table next to the portal.

“Twilight decided to call it Harmonic Reader,” Sunset said with a wave of her hand. “Even though we don’t know whether it works or not, yet.”

“And we named airplanes before we made them work,” Twilight retorted, pulling a pair of chairs next to the table. She turned to Shining. “After much theoretical consideration, we’ve built a machine we hope will detect the enchantments the portal has. It will send the signals through here and into the pulsator. Sunset says it will amplify the signals just enough for the detector to catch them. Then they’ll be converted into electrical signals and go into the laptop, where they’ll be interpreted in a visual manner.”

Shining nodded through Twilight’s explanation. “I’m surprised you made this out of human tech. Didn’t think our stuff was enough to interact with magic.”

“It’s not,” Sunset replied. “I replaced many parts in your machines with much of my quartz. The range of failure is still rather high, but it’s the best I could do, given the resources I have. But even if we don’t get the interpreter to work, it’ll still remember the pulsations, which is already going to be a success in itself.”

“Uh huh,” Shining said, leaning over the machines. “Well, good luck, girls.”

“Thanks, Shining,” Twilight said.

As Shining retreated to help Celestia with dinner preparations, Sunset started the last step of their own preparations. Using transparent tape, she stuck the detectors on the portal’s surface. They were six wires attached to flat rectangular quartz pieces, which Sunset had made sure were of as similar in size as she could, and all of them were connected to the pulsator. Technically, only one would suffice, but she hoped that having six of them, spread in equidistant locations along the surface, would increase the chances of them detecting the pulsations.

“So,” Twilight said right as Sunset finished getting the detectors into position. “I’ve been meaning to ask, but it kinda kept slipping my mind, so I’m sorry it’s taken me so long…”

Sunset turned to look at her. “What?”

Twilight blushed. “Uhm… when is your birthday?”

Sunset blinked. “My birthday?”

“Well, I realized that in two months you’ll have spent a whole year in this world, so I wanted to know, you know… You gave me this and…” She fiddled with the necklace Sunset had given her. She never took it off. Even when they had been at the beach, she’d been wearing it. Sunset didn’t take hers off either, but it was because the chain wasn’t large enough for her to simply take it over her head, and no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t will her fingers to operate the ridiculously small hook.

“If you must know,” Sunset replied, “I was born in the new year.”

Twilight gasped. “You should’ve told me! We could have had a joint birthday party!”

Sunset cocked her head, narrowing her eyes as she processed what Twilight said. “Oh, my bad. I was born in the Equestrian new year, not the human one. Seriously, why do you guys celebrate it barely a week after winter starts?”

“Uhm… So you weren’t born in January?” Twilight asked. “Then…”

“In Equestria, we have something called the Summer Sun Celebration. We celebrate the defeat of Nightmare Moon. Princess Celestia makes it a solstice as part of the celebration. I was born during the solstice.”

Twilight frowned, then looked up, then frowned again. “Wait, does that mean your birthday is at the beginning of summer?”

“Yes.”

“But that was a month ago! Why didn’t you say anything? We could have thrown you an early birthday party at the beach!”

Sunset shrugged. “I don’t really care.”

“But…”

“Twilight, don’t make a big deal out of this,” Sunset said. “You always celebrate your birthday, that’s good for you. I don’t. Simple as that.”

Before Twilight could talk again, Sunset stepped away from the portal and sat in front of her laptop. The clock barely marked a few minutes past ten, but the moon was already reaching full luminosity. Sunset hated that neither the moon nor the sun followed more consistent patterns in the human world. All their technological advancements and they still couldn’t properly control them.

“Alright, the moon will reach full luminosity any moment,” Sunset announced, which prompted everyone to get closer and stare over her shoulder at the laptop.

Twilight had gotten her hands on something called an educational software that interpreted morse code, which was a pseudo-language that dealt with pulsations. The software had some functions that let the user come up with their own codes, which Sunset took advantage of to input all the magic arrays she could remember so that when it detected the portal’s pulsations, it would interpret them and show them in a visual manner.

The only problem was that the software was very limited in the input speed it allowed. After all, it was made for speeds humans could achieve when pressing a button to make the morse codes. However, magic arrays pulsated at least ten times faster than what the software could handle. Fortunately, after Sunset explained that the arrays repeated themselves ad infinitum, Twilight had come up with a solution. She had managed to get into the software’s programming and made a series of changes that forced the software to remember whatever pulsations it detected, then it would wait for the arrays to repeat and try to catch the pulsations it couldn’t during the first loop. The program would do this ten times before trying to interpret them to increase the success rate.

This meant the program would be slow, but then again, they had more than enough time.

There was no sudden hum, no ominous breeze, no strange flash of light. The only indication that the detectors were picking something up was that the software produced a single message saying ‘translating’. Sunset swallowed dryly as she waited for the results of her work. She had spent a whole week racking her brain to remember as many arrays as she could. The loss of her horn meant she couldn’t access that information as easily and instead had to recall the information normally, which resulted in a very sad amount of arrays saved in the software.

The first word in the list appeared, and Sunset found her heart skipping a beat. Battery. She had named it as such, and seeing the word pop up was the confirmation that her work had bore fruit. The quartz detectors were picking up the pulsations, and the modified machines were working as intended. After almost a year of work, she was finally seeing some tangible progress in her research.

“Sunset, are you ok?” Twilight said.

Sunset breathed in, noticing the shakiness of her movements and some moisture in the corners of her eyes. She quickly dried the tears off with the sleeves of her sweater and shook her head.

“I’m fine.” She clicked her tongue, angry for allowing herself to show such weakness in front of others.

The next few arrays the software translated into simple words told Sunset all the specifications about the battery. Just as she suspected, the portal used moonlight magic to power its many enchantments. It made sense, since moonlight was the most reliable source of renewable energy. Solar magic could get the job done in a fraction of the time, sure, but it was also unstable enough that it could easily overload the battery arrays and render the enchantments useless. Moonlight magic was always consistent, so there was no risk of that.

After the battery’s arrays finished showing, the next word that appeared was ‘Unknown’.

“What does that mean?” Shining asked, pointing at the word.

“There are thousands of spells made up of thousands of arrays,” Sunset explained. “I can’t be expected to remember them all off the top of my head.” Even if she still had her horn, she doubted she’d be able to remember the more obscure ones she’d only read in passing.

The following arrays were a mixture between known and unknown ones.

“‘Spatial Axis Referential’?” Twilight asked. “What does that mean?”

“Enchantments need an enclosing cage that determines the area the arrays will affect. Without it, the spells either fail or go out of control,” Sunset explained. “This part is the array that determines the dimensions of the cage.”

She wasn’t surprised by these either. All enchantments required enclosing cages. No self-respecting mage would attempt otherwise. Whoever made the portal understood this much. There were a few unknowns mixed in between, but the overall idea was much as Sunset expected of the foundation of any enchantment.

However, just as the arrays for the enclosing cage finished, the program detected a very long list of unknowns. Sunset blinked. She had included whatever she could remember about teleportation spells, but none of those were being detected. Had she made a mistake? That was unlikely, since she had mastered teleportation a while ago and could remember all the necessary arrays. If the portal had no teleportation spells, then how did it work?

As Sunset thought about this, various arrays were recognized again.

“Identity Perception. Mana Signature Referential. Identity Referential…” Twilight read. “What do all these mean?”

Sunset studied the arrays and the order they appeared in. “These make up the awareness spell of the portal. It seems I was correct when I said this was the reason only those who know about the portal can interact with it.”

She was proven correct when a bunch of arrays related to the awareness spell started showing signs of a barrier that would appear only when the portal was open. Which was interesting to say the least. If the objective of the enchantments was to make a portal between worlds, why reject entry to those unaware?

Not only that, as soon as the awareness spell’s arrays were all detected, more similar arrays started showing up. They were mostly about mana and identity, but some strange ones, like time referentials and other unknown ones made the mix. Sunset was dumbfounded by these. What kind of spell was that last one?

Finally, the program started looping back the arrays, which meant that there were no more enchantments to detect. Sunset leaned back on her chair and pursed her lips. She couldn’t call this a huge success, but it wasn’t a failure either. She had proven a few theories, while others had to be discarded. The overall result was a good one, she had to admit. Just getting human technology to interact with magic was enough to lift her spirits. She was slowly but steadily closing the gap between her and her destiny.

The next step of her research would be to analyze all the unknown arrays and see if she could figure out what they were. She wasn’t looking forward to that, if she had to be honest. The shortest arrays were made of more than one hundred pulsations. A look at the program’s registry told her that these arrays were everything but short. She let out a sigh. Analyzing all those unknown arrays would take anywhere from weeks to months, and even then, there would be no guarantee that she’d be able to know them all.

Her reason for being in this world wasn’t to understand how the portal worked, was it? No, it was to help humans harness their magical potential, and Sunset already had all the tools she needed.

There was a Harmonic Veil in this world, humans were as receptive to Harmonic Resonances as any Equestrian, at least some humans were capable of manipulating their mana to some extent, and their technology could be modified to interact with magical energies.

Using those as a base, Sunset was sure she could kickstart a huge magical revolution in this world. It would take much trial and error, but she was certain she could build a machine that would serve as replacement for horns.

She looked towards the tent she’d be sleeping in. Knowing that they were going to test the machines, she had brought a sort of back-up in case the detectors weren’t enough for the portal’s enchantments. Since they had worked, there was no need to use the back-up… But, then again, there would be no harm in trying. She had gotten all the information she needed from the portal.

Before she could chicken out, she stood up and went towards her tent and to her bag. She returned, aware that everyone was looking at her, with a large journal in her hands.

“What’s that?” Twilight asked as Sunset placed the journal on a free space on the table.

“A journal,” Sunset replied dryly as she sat back down on the chair. She made sure to save all the data she had collected from the portal, then a backup, before she stopped the program. “It’s the only thing I brought with me. It’s also enchanted, so I figured we could use the machine to detect its spells and make sure the interpreter works.”

Twilight cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “You know all the spells of that journal?”

“Yes.”

“And you added all those spells in the interpreter.”

“I added the arrays, but yes.”

“So we could have used the journal to make sure the Harmonic Reader works perfectly.”

“That’s literally what I just said.”

Twilight’s left eyes twitched. “We could have tried the Reader on the journal before the portal! What if it hadn’t worked?! We would’ve come here for nothing!”

Sunset didn’t like being spoken to like that. She wanted to give Twilight a piece of her mind, but instead found herself sighing. “I know… I just didn’t want to use the journal.”

That made Twilight calm down. “Why not?”

“It’s connected to an identical one, owned by the princess. Whatever happens to one, happens to the other,” Sunset explained, feeling a strange pressure in her chest. “We… used it to talk to each other when she was in other cities.”

“So like, instant letters or something?” Shining asked.

“It sounds more like text messages,” Celestia offered.

Sunset fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Except that the text appears instantaneously in the other journal. You can’t correct any misspellings, for example.”

“It also glows and vibrates,” Celestia said with a chirpy tone that did make Sunset roll her eyes. “It does that on a weekly basis, but I don’t know what it means.”

“It means the princess is writing on it,” Sunset muttered, placing a hand on the cover. Every single week, Princess Celestia wrote in the journal, asking if Sunset was alright and requesting her to reply. At first, Sunset had been angry at the words, so full of superiority and condescension at the same time. Sunset had not replied to any of those. If the princess didn’t see Sunset as her student anymore, Sunset saw no reason to see her as a mentor, either.

But a few months back, the princess’ entries had started including more apologies. Half-baked explanations that somehow felt less condemning and more regretful. Her words had stopped being so overly formal and started sounding more familiar, more similar to how she had acted during the happy days of Sunset’s apprenticeship. Sunset hadn’t replied to those either, though she couldn’t exactly say why. She simply read them a few times, then closed the journal again.

Last weekend, to Sunset’s surprise, the last entry had been extremely brief.

Sunset, please tell me that you’re ok, that no harm has come to you. Please reply.

Sunset hadn’t been able to sleep. Perhaps that had been the reason she’d brought the journal in the first place.

“So,” Twilight said, snapping Sunset out of her thoughts. “Do you want me to connect the Harmonic Reader to the journal?”

“Yes,” Sunset said. She watched as Twilight removed the detectors from the portal and started placing them on the journal’s cover. For some reason, she almost stopped the girl from touching the journal, a knee-jerk reaction she barely managed to contain. Instead, she focused on the program, and once everything was ready, she started the process with a single click.

Just as she expected, the program detected each and every single array that made up all the spells of the journal. She could remember them all quite easily, as she had committed them all to memory as soon as Princess Celestia had given her the journal.

“There’s so many arrays,” Twilight said in wonder as she stared at the screen. “Even more than in the portal. Why is that?”

“Because, unlike what you might believe, the two journals are not copies of each other,” Sunset replied as memories surfaced in her mind when the princess explained this to her. “It’s only one journal that was divided in two. The two parts are connected so much that if you moved one, the other moved as well. They had to be enchanted with several other spells to avoid that from happening, so that only the content of the pages would be registered in both. She also added the spells to make them glow and vibrate whenever there is a change.”

“Fascinating,” Twilight replied, scribbling something on her notebook.

Sunset waited for a few minutes. Shining Armor had gotten bored and stepped away to keep preparing dinner. Celestia followed suit a few moments later. Still, Sunset waited a bit more. She knew what she wanted to do, but hesitated. Was it even a good idea? But that last message… It had almost distracted Sunset from her work. She couldn’t keep them distracting her, not until she made a glorious return home.

“Twilight,” she said, hearing her own voice low as a whisper. “I’ve got a favor to ask of you.”

Twilight lowered her notebook and smiled. “Sure, what can I do for you?”

Sunset reached out and grabbed the journal, taking the detectors off, and opened it to the last entry. She read it again, then flipped the page so that nothing could be read.

“I need you to write a message for me.”

Twilight blinked at the journal. “A message? Me? But isn’t your princess going to read it? She doesn’t know me! What if she gets mad or—”

“Twilight,” Sunset insisted. “Please.”

For a few, long seconds, Twilight looked between Sunset and the journal. “What do you want me to write?”

“You have to promise you won’t repeat these words to anyone,” Sunset said. “And you won’t ask me anything about it. If you do that… I’ll do one thing for you, whatever you want, no questions asked.”

Twilight bit her lower lip. “A favor for a favor, huh?” She let out a nervous chuckle. Then, after a whole minute, she finally nodded. “Alright… I’ll do it. I promise I won’t repeat this message to anyone and I won’t ask you anything about it.”

Taking a deep breath through her nose, Sunset nodded. She had Twilight memorize the message before letting her write in the journal. After which she closed it and put it back in her bag. It wouldn’t be until weeks later that she’d confirm that her plan worked exactly as she had expected, for Princess Celestia never wrote back again.

Still, every night, Sunset would remember the exact words of the message Twilight wrote to the princess during the moments it took her to go to sleep.

To Your Royal Highness, Princess Celestia of Equestria,

I am a native of this world, and I write these words to you on behalf of your former student Sunset Shimmer. She is well and comfortable, and she has found the nature of her destiny in this world. She has begun pursuing it in earnest, having made several discoveries already. In the moons yet to come, I foresee that she shall achieve greatness and lead groundbreaking developments.

She shall return to Equestria your equal or she shan’t return at all. This world is no more dangerous than yours, and she has surrounded herself in better company. The journal shall be archived and stored, so any and all future attempts at communication shall go unheeded. Please do not waste any further ink.

The portal is known to only a quartet of highly trusted individuals, myself included, so you can be rest assured that there shan’t be any disturbances coming from this world.

I finish this missive wishing you health and prosperity.

Best regards.

End of Volume I

Author's Note

And here we are! End of the first volume! All the cogs are in place and ready to start spinning.

Before volume 2, there are going to be a couple of special chapters. I'm particularly excited to start publishing those, so I hope you find them equally interesting.

If you liked it, please leave a comment! They give me life!