Original Cover Art for Volume II

As the months passed by, Sunset found herself forgetting about the letter she had Twilight write for the princess. She had placed the journal on the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, upon which she’d placed old blankets and pillow cases. If it signaled a reply from Equestria, Sunset was none the wiser.

With the absolute success of the Harmonic Reader, Sunset started the second phase of her plans for manipulating human magic. Creating a pseudo-horn; an appendage-like machine to allow humans interaction with the Harmonic Veil just like unicorns.

It took her only a month of practice, but she managed to make her mana flow into a quartz and back into herself. She trained this process for another few weeks until the action came as naturally as it had been back in Equestria. Mana flow was essential for spellcrafting and enchanting. Nothing else could be done without it. And once this was achieved, she started building prototypes.

Still unable to get her hooves on proper gemstones and materials, however, she soon found herself at a dead end.

With the help of Shining Armor, Sunset built an intricate set of iron wires with indentations at appropriate intervals to allow carefully molded quartz stones inside. The whole thing was an exceptionally heavy helmet that covered most of Sunset’s head.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work. She tried channeling her mana through the quartz that touched the middle of her forehead and tried to make the flow reach the other quartzes. However, the flow quickly met a wall as it tried to leave the first stone, unable to get into the metal. With a frustrated huff, Sunset increased her mana flow to overpower the metal’s threshold.

And then all the quartz stones in her helmet cracked, and her mana dissipated into the air. She had panicked for only the brief moment she had thought it had been her actual horn that had broken under the pressure. Two more tests, replacing all the stones with sturdier ones, had ended up exactly the same.

She had been forced to accept the fact that she couldn’t recreate unicorn horns with her current resources.

Of course, she had reacted with dignity and grace.

“Are you quite done?” Twilight asked with an infuriatingly calm tone and an eyebrow rising above her glasses.

Sunset growled, breathing heavily as she finished smashing her proto-horn with her foot, leaving the thing completely unrecognizable. She sat down and huffed. “Yes, actually. And I feel much better.”

“Look, I understand your frustration,” Twilight said. She flinched when Sunset glared at her. “... Somewhat. But from what you’ve told me, recreating magical pathways and nervous terminals is just not feasible right now. Let’s focus on what’s next.”

“What’s next?” Sunset said, slamming a hand on the table. “Without a horn there’s no way for unicorns to cast spells!”

“But we’re not unicorns,” Twilight replied, then continued before Sunset could yell at her. “We’ve already established that humans can do magic to some extent, yes? Even I have learned how to make my mana flow into quartz and back, which is still a very weird thing to say. What I’m saying is, if we can do this much, and the Harmonic Reader works just as intended, then there must be a way to do magic without the need for horns.”

Sunset crossed her arms. “Are you going anywhere with this?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Twilight said. She pushed back her glasses and opened a notebook. “Every time you talk about the mechanics of spellcrafting, you say that the Harmonic Veil is punctured, and that creates a pulse. And a certain amount of pulses and lack thereof in a certain order creates a spell. But what if what you do is not a puncture?”

Sunset raised an eyebrow.

Twilight turned her notebook around and showed it to Sunset as she explained the contents. “If you use your own mana to make the pulses, then it stands to reason that instead of making a puncture, you are energizing a fixed point in the Harmonic Veil. And if we can make our mana flow through quartz, which is sensitive to magic, then I believe we can build a machine to cast spells, as long as we provide the correct arrays and feed it with mana.”

Flipping the pages and reading Twilight’s hypotheses, Sunset had to admit that it was worth a shot.

There were many things interfering with their progress. One was a lack of resources, of course. Celestia gave Sunset only so much, and since Sunset refused to let others in on her project, they didn’t have many reasons to invest in it. Shining Armor helped when he could though, mainly by carrying stuff or using power tools when needed.

The other thing that got in the way was that Twilight went to school, and so they could only meet up properly on the weekends. Sunset spent much of her downtime drawing different designs for the machine they wanted to build, working on the numbers, trying to remember more spells and adding them to the Reader, and even practicing with the violin.

When Twilight’s birthday arrived again, Sunset had worried that she’d have to actually put some thought into her gift this time to keep the girl happy, but fortunately, Twilight had preemptively asked her that, instead of an item, Sunset would play the violin with her in a duet. Sunset had agreed immediately. It beat having to find another trinket. And so she spent a week learning the right notes, then a weekend before, where Twilight played the piano with her so they’d learn how to play together. And when her birthday arrived, they performed in front of everyone.

Sunset felt quite proud of herself as she was regaled with a round of applause and cheers, and didn’t even stop to consider before agreeing when Twilight asked her to spend the holidays. And so Sunset, Celestia, and Luna joined Twilight’s family, which always included Cadance. Sunset refused to sing her lines in their family Resonances, but did join in the choruses.

The human new year arrived, and with Twilight on winter break, the girls managed to build their first Enchanter prototype —Sunset had given up on stopping Twilight from naming all machines related to human magic, though she still voiced her disagreement at calling the whole of magic-related machines ‘Magitech’.

The prototype didn’t work. It was to be expected as it was only the first instance, and even Sunset was delving into new territory. But it still had made her want to smash the thing.

“Sunset, you can’t smash things when they don’t work,” Twilight had admonished her.

“I haven’t done anything!” Sunset had yelled.

“Your foot is still in the air.”

Sunset had not entertained her with a reply. Instead she had huffed and sat down to read their notes to try to figure out what had gone wrong. The quartzes had not cracked like they had done with her proto-horn, but the Enchanter had also not done anything, which only made it more difficult to track the problem.

And of course Twilight’s break ended and had to return to school, greatly reducing the time they could work on fixing it. Sunset tried not to let her frustration get the better of her, but it was difficult whenever she thought that the Enchanter was so big they had to use Twilight’s garage to store it, which meant Sunset had to wait for the weekend to work on it.

It was weeks before Sunset had the brilliant idea of using the Harmonic Reader to make sure the Enchanter was actually doing something. Which it was, but not the way it was supposed to.

For starters, they discovered that the quartzes the Enchanter used to create the pulses were not sending strong enough signals. The reason was not clear, however, so Twilight suggested they brute force their way through. Which, of course, meant that they had to make tiny changes like differently shaped quartzes, or quartzes of other kinds, or of other sizes, or maybe the metals they were using the make the mana flow wasn’t conductive enough, or maybe the quartzes they were using to store mana weren’t efficient enough.

Their progress had slowed down to an excruciating crawl.

“Alright,” Twilight said chirpily. “Enchanter activation test number fifty-six. Jasper batteries at full capacity. Hexagon shaped twelve-ended howlite pulsators, variation sixth, caged in duralumin at ninety-six percent aluminum purity. Common copper wires. Physical enclosing space, variation second, barrier made of glass. Target object, lightbulb. Spellcraft circuitry arrays for illumination enchantment verified. Ready to engage.”

Sunset scoffed. “Well, at least you’re having fun.”

Twilight blushed. “Just… start it up.”

With a groan, Sunset looked at the machine Twilight had dubbed Enchanter. Though calling it a machine was probably a stretch. It was barely more than a bunch of cables connected with each other and to a small machine plugged into Sunset’s laptop, and at the other ends they held the cages that contained the ‘pulsators’, the quartzes that would interact with the Harmonic Veil and create the spell they input in the software. Since they had to work with their hands, they had needed to make these cages by themselves —by asking Shining Armor to make them— which resulted in them being larger than a fist each.

All the pulsators, cages and all, were suspended by wires around a glass box they used to measure the magical enclosing cage they needed for the enchantment to work. Inside the tube, there was a solitary lightbulb. This all meant that the Enchanter took up half the garage’s space.

Sunset turned to look at her laptop. “Ok, fine. Test number fifty-six. Activation in three, two, one.” She clicked the ‘start’ button. Immediately, the Enchanter’s pulsators began to hum. They had started doing that last week, but Sunset could feel the humming this time was stronger. After a few seconds, the lightbulb flashed once, twice, and the third time it finally settled into a low white glow.

There was silence as the Enchanter’s humming subsided, and Sunset couldn’t stop the sob from coming out of her mouth. “It worked…”

“It worked!” Twilight cried out as she stood up, knocking her chair down.

She didn’t know when she had stood up, nor did she notice who started the hug, but Sunset paid it no mind as she and Twilight cheered, tears streaming down both sets of eyes. Finally, after a year and a half, Sunset had managed to successfully cast a spell. It was a very basic spell, one that all unicorn foals could do by instinct alone, but she had done so without her horn, instead building a machine.

Sunset broke the hug and turned around, hoping that Twilight wouldn’t see her drying her tears.

“This is huge, Sunset,” Twilight said as she walked up to the lightbulb. Though it was giving off light, it was dim enough that one could see it directly. “This will change humanity forever.” She used a lever to lift the glass tube, then grabbed the lightbulb. It lost its enchantment. “Huh?”

Sunset felt her stomach fall. “Lemme see that,” she ordered, snatching the lightbulb from Twilight. She focused on it but couldn’t feel any pulsations.

“What happened? I thought the enchantment was supposed to last three hours.”

“It is,” Sunset said, turning the lightbulb in her hand. She gave it back to Twilight and went to her laptop. “If the enchantment didn’t stick, it means that I messed up the circuitry.” An idea popped in her head. “Check the batteries.”

Twilight hurried towards the jaspers they had set to store their mana. “I can’t be sure, but I’d say they were drained by twenty percent or so.”

“Both of them?”

“No. Combined.”

Sunset nodded as she started going over the arrays. “That’s within my expectations. I’m relieved there’s not much mana loss…”

Twilight stepped next to her. “You know, I’m surprised you’re taking this so well. You’ve been wanting to smash the Enchanter for months.”

“Because it didn’t work,” Sunset replied. “But it does now. The only thing left is to figure out why the enchantment didn’t stick. We’re back to something I know how to solve.”

“I see,” Twilight said. “I’ll refill the batteries and record the Enchanter’s parameters. We’ll think of improvements when we can make it work consistently.”

Author's Note

Your eyes do not deceive you. There is indeed a new cover art for this fanfic. Will I make a new one with every volume? Only time will tell.

Now Sunset and Twilight had created the Enchanter. This is but a small brick in the castle they'll eventually build.

If you liked it, please leave a comment! They're the brakes in my old bycicle.