Ponies of Fayra — Legend of Harmony

Runa stared into the golden, inquisitive eyes of the pale yellow pegasus pony. Who, as far as her horn was concerned, could be a Shardseeker packing several pounds of highly refined dust.

“S-sure, I can show you some of my work, but don’t expect it to be too interesting. Just some pretty stones with engravings on them.”

“Visual impressions aside, I’m most interested to see your patterns and hear your theories on the patterns themselves.”

“Oh — R-really?”

Cozy nodded.

“Alright, though I should check with the clan leader to make sure it—”

“Yes! All the yeses!” exclaimed Clef with a burst of enthusiasm. “While you’re with Runa, I’ll make sure your friends get all the supplies they need. Please, enjoy yourself.”

Clef walked away from the pair while motioning for Zeph to follow him.

“That was strange. You must have made quite the impression on Clef. Are you a new clan member or?”

“No. Just a pegasus and her friends passing through on their way to get a bunny back home, who happened to help a pony who was stuck in some vines.”

“That sounds like an interesting story.”

“Perhaps, to some.”

“Ah — I get it. Clef already wore you out on chit-chat. No worries, I get’cha. I’m the same way. I need conversation with depth too. Can only handle so much flutter talk before I need some good work talk to recharge.”

Runa began guiding Cozy to her workshop. “You already get the tour?”

“I saw the map. That’s the reason we came here.”

“Hopefully, it was useful. Took Dusty and I an entire moon to paint that thing.”

“It was, assuming it’s accurate.”

“Should be-ish. I copied most of it from the Shardseekers atlas, most of the places that were missing from that were filled in by the Echochaser’s ruin maps. Of course, there are still a lot of places missing or vague. Where you going? That way, I can tell you how accurate that part of the map is.”

“Apple Valley.”

“Oh, well, uhm, not super accurate. General locations should be about right, but I wouldn’t put much salt in the rest. I’ve never even been to the border of the Everglow myself. Clef and Midnight have. One of these days I want to though. It’s a pretty long trip, though.”

“Indeed…”

“Oops, we’re here… and I forgot to explain anything on the way by.” Runa laughed awkwardly. “Well, on the way back, I guess.”

Leading Cozy into her workshop, Runa made her way over to her shelves and pulled out a tray of gemstones. Sitting the gemstones down on her work table, she picked up a flat red stone.

“This one has the pattern for fire engraved on it. I got this pattern when I got a brief chance to study a fire starting relic used during a visit to the Echochasers with Clef. It’s the simplest of all the patterns I’ve found so far.”

“May I?”

“Sure.” Runa handed the stone over to Cozy, who studied it for a short while in silence.

“Put a pathway between these two points, and then make a circle pit here.”

“Uhm, sure.” Runa grabbed her tools and followed Cozy’s instructions. When the request was done, Runa lowered her head and examined the stone with her horn. “The energy’s moving now?”

“You had most of the pattern correct, but you forgot to close the loop, so it couldn’t flow. Now the pit on the other hoof is there to allow you to add a power source to ignite the spell.”

“Ignite the spell… Now that you mention it, the relic did require pollen to function. Though I had thought that was for it to create a useful amount of fire.”

“This is an old type of pony magic. It requires a spark to start the spell. From my understanding, unicorns provided this spark themselves. However, now any source of pure, pyro, light, or electro source should do. Basically, any element not contrary to the spell or the gemstone it was engraved in. You can, of course, use the gemstone itself, too. However, that method will erode the stone rather quickly.”

“Plenty of dust around here to try with…” Runa turned to her dust rack and grabbed the closest one that matched Cozy’s recommendation. “How about a dab of electro dust?”

“It’ll work, but it’s a waste. Stones are precious and not particularly renewable. They shouldn’t be turned into dust. You should use a plant extract instead.”

“We can go down to Willow’s greenhouse and pick up something.”

“It’s fine for the moment to use the dust, but in the future. Something to keep in mind.”

Runa sprinkled a tiny amount of dust into the pit and, in an instant, a burst of flames appeared.

“Now, of course, if you’d like to make something more useful than a stone that could light your mane on fire. You’d need to add in some delays or distance modifiers.”

“How do you know so much about this?”

“I’ve simply studied a lot of relics myself.”

Pulling out a green stone from the tray, Runa set it in front of her. “This one is more complex. It came from a music-making relic. Now, if I understand what you did to fix the fire one, I’d connect these paths, right?” Runa drew a path between several nodes with her hoof.

“Yes, however, you won’t need a pit for this one. This is dragon-style magic. Once the circuit is complete, it’ll begin generating a resonance bubble. Whenever that bubble is filled, you can use it to cast the spell.”

As soon as the work was done, Runa could feel a bubble of magic start to form around the stone. When it seemed to stop growing, she tapped the stone, which caused the most awful screeching sound she had ever heard to fill the room for several long moments. When the stone stopped, Runa’s ears were ringing loudly. “Sorry about that.”

Cozy shrugged. “Let me guess, you don’t usually use the relics you copy spells from, do you?”

“Not often. I’m usually lucky to get a chance to study them at all. I tend to get just enough time to sketch down a pattern before the owner gets weirded out. Except for the couple we have around here, but they’re also really complex, so I’ve never been able to engrave a copy of any of them. It’s pretty rare to come across two-dimensional spells.”

“When dealing with dragon-style magic, you generally either need to control the spell yourself or add in control circuits. Control circuits can be difficult to analyze, however, as they are dormant when the spells are not being used. So I have little doubt you copied all you could sense but simply didn’t know the control circuit even existed.”

When the bubble was full once more, Runa cringed as Cozy tapped the stone. But this time, instead of an ear-piercing screech, a haunting melody played. While it played, Runa did her best to follow the flow of magic from the stone and through Cozy, but found that it moved in too complicated of a pattern for her to feel it out.

“How did you get the magic to flow through you like that?”

“You followed the wrong flow. If it was complex, then you went through the back feed. Don’t try to find the magic within me. Focus on the tip of my hoof this time.”

Cozy tapped the stone again. This time Runa kept her focus on the end of Cozy’s hoof, which seemed to bend and guide the spell, much like it would flow through a pathway system.

“I used my hoof, but you should be able to use your horn to do the same thing.”

“I-I can?”

“I’ve seen Echochasers do it. Though they are oblivious to what they are actually doing. What they’re doing accounts to learning a traditional dance’s steps without learning any of the meaning behind them.”

“Speaking of steps.” Runa went over to her bookcase and pulled out the notebook she had been recording engraving steps and their potential meanings. “Since you seem to know an awful lot about this, would you look over my notes and see what you think?”

Taking the book from Runa, Cozy began flipping through its pages. “You’ve done well… I’ll need a pencil to correct a couple of things, though.”

After fetching Cozy a pencil, Runa diligently watched as Cozy made a few dozen corrections and wrote several long notes.

Upon closing the book, Cozy looked over to Runa. “This should help you on your journey to understand magic. There’s still a lot you don’t know, and don’t understand correctly, but keep at it.” Cozy smiled warmly.

“Thank you. Though, did you really learn everything you know just by studying relics?”

“Mostly. At least on this topic.” Cozy gave a smug smile before gazing out the window. “Dusk, already? I guess we’ll be taking Clef up on his offer to stay the night after all.” Cozy sighed heavily. “He’ll be thrilled, I’m sure.”

“I know I am. I’d love to hear about some of the relics you’ve studied… or anything else you want to talk about, doesn’t even have to be about magic.” Runa blushed as she felt a warm wave of excitement wash over her at the thought of getting to spend more time with Cozy.