June 12, 12:08 AM

Complete the Overgrowth Spell (93%)

“I want to complete that vaccine as much as you do, Ruby,” Wayfinder began. “But the whole point of involving Sunburst in the magical aspects of this government is that he actually knows this stuff. It’s his magic, and I promised I would help with it. We’ll have to gather more when this is finished.”

Ruby’s ears angled inward, and her tail flicked sharply from side to side. She glanced between the two of them, as though she might start shouting. Then she sighed, slumping forward. “It was a bit of a long shot anyway. Figured you would side with him, given—everything else going on. Guess I’ll start working on the backup plan.” She stood up, flicked off the screen, and turned to go.

“I want to see you succeed,” Sunburst said. “I want to see your previous species endure in their existing form. But if we don’t contain the wild magic, we’ll be lucky if we survive. Neither of you have any concept of how dangerous this magic can be. We’ve adapted in some small way within this settlement, but that won’t be possible on the scale of civilizations. Human survivors elsewhere on your planet have few tools to resist manifestations of wild magic.”

She sighed. “I know you think it’s important. I hope Wayfinder’s right to agree with you.”

Sam stood up as Ruby left, stretching low like a cat, then padded after her out the door without looking back.

She flicked out the lights on her way out the door, leaving the two of them in the dim lab.

Way lit her horn by reflex as the lights went out, filling the area around her with a blue-gray glow. “Time to focus on this, it sounds like,” she said. “The Isolation Zone might not still be standing in a month. If we’re going to come apart at the seams, at least we will have done this. We can protect them without anyone knowing what we did.”

“I can show it to you now—the spell, I mean. It’s in my old office. I’ve run just about every experiment we could to get ready. Eventually, the only way to know is to cast the spell.”

A few minutes later found them in his office. Most of the practical information about running his city was gone, since all that had been swallowed by the broader work for the Isolation Zone. The office contained only magical references now, along with maps of the surrounding mountains, and a few magical instruments with purposes she couldn’t even guess at.

He pointed at the map. “We’ll have to travel here, high into the mountains. There’s a road that goes close, so it shouldn’t be hard to reach. This will be the new center of the wild magic, so it’s where we anchor the spell.”

“Even though the Overgrowth doesn’t reach that far yet?” She asked. That map suggested a location near the peak, near one of those tiny ski lodges that she never could’ve afforded to visit before the world ended. They could take a truck most of the way up there, but would need to walk the last portion unless they could get a lift working. “I thought we were expanding it? Like… explicitly. We’re basically inviting it to get bigger.”

“We are,” he agreed. “And that would be a problem. When we cast this, it will be like… pulling open a drain stopper in a bathtub the size of the world. It’ll all swirl this way—the magic released by every newly-created pony, every casualty—all here. Part of the spell is the buffer that prevents it from spilling over into the Isolation Zone. That means when it grows, it can only go in one direction, towards where the spell is happening. It won’t so much have to find you as naturally reach you.”

He levitated a sheet towards her, unrolling it in the air in front of her. It was much larger than most spell diagrams she’d ever seen, closer to a structural blueprint than an enchantment. “This is our final draft. Though I would obviously want to go over it with you for approval, in case you have other ideas.”

Wayfinder looked over the diagram for several seconds, trying to make sense of the complex relationships feeding power from one section to the next, let alone the complexity of whatever a “consent loop” was. All the magical practice in the world couldn’t prepare her for something that complex. She suspected not even Equestria contained sorcerers who routinely cast spells of such power and complexity.

“I don’t know what I would need to approve of, this is… intense. I’m not going to know what you’re doing better than you can. Even if you want to suggest that I’ve done enough practice that I can manifest more voltage than you can. Or—what’s the unit for measuring magic?”

“SU,” he supplied, without missing a beat. “Sunlight units. It’s… a really old and not super useful system, so don’t start me on it. A single one is what it takes to move the sun, which is something only two ponies on Equs can do, so everything gets measured in small fractions, and—I have no doubt you can. Remote translocation requires about ten thousand nSU, something in that range. I’ve never manifested a spell like that in my life. It’s—part of what made me ideal for this role, since I needed to discover local talent and help them save their own planet. Which is… what we’re doing here.”

“I trust you to do the math parts of it,” she said, moving up next to him. Close enough to rest her head against his neck in a gentle hug. “And I think you’d regret it if you got me hurt. You’d be back to sleeping alone.”

He levitated the diagram flat atop his desk, frozen with her neck over his as though some delicate butterfly had rested there, and he didn’t want to startle it away. “That’s true, but—a rather cynical view, Wayfinder. You were my friend before you were my special somepony.”

She shrugged. “I know, and I believe you. But things have been—my life hasn’t exactly been stellar since I woke up as a pony. It’s my defense mechanism; if I always assume the worst, then anything good that happens is a pleasant surprise. I don’t have to end up disappointed.”

She stared down at the spell, squinting at the complex diagram. “Give me the highlights. I’m sure I’ll need a few days to study this. But if you walk me through what each of these sections represent, I could… get a head start.”

His face brightened. He levitated something else over—a slide rule, one marked in a system she’d never seen. “So, the core problem: wild magic released by mostly negative experiences. Death, sickness, suffering. Carries those negative emotions, tainting it. But magic itself isn’t inherently sad, angry, or violent. Those are impressions left on it, the same way friendship inherently amplifies magic, or love. The key combination here is context. Think of all this magic as… a toddler throwing a tantrum. If we don’t do anything, they’ll bash the walls in and knock over the furniture and stomp their hooves all over everything. You can be their mom, showing them that there’s a productive way to channel that anger.”

He pointed at the center of the diagram. “Everything in this spell revolves around a single unicorn to act as that caster. Magic has no life, so yours is amplified to serve as that context.”

“That sounds…” she swallowed. “Not chickening out or anything, but that sounds like you signed me up for a lot.”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t trust very many ponies to serve such a crucial role. But you clearly meet the requirements. You’re reliable, determined, and calm. You’ve diffused dangerous situations for the Isolation Zone, delegated when required, and not exploited the position for personal gain. Your magical talent is only a small part of what makes you ideal. I’ve been… watching your behavior for a long time. You’ll do fine!”

Her ears folded back in sudden embarrassment. She wasn’t so sure she deserved praise in that department. But if he thought she was good enough, then she would trust him.

“That’s less than a third of this thing. This whole area is me, and I recognize this top section as gathering magic and draining it through me into… the area, I guess. But what’s the rest of it do?”

He pointed from one to the next. “This here keeps it from expanding towards the city, but leaves it free to go in any other direction, that’s simple. This over here is to build something permanent, so future wild magic ends up here as well as anything that exists now. Which requires an ongoing connection to the caster, marked here. This part helps the trees and other plants contain magic rather than leaving it free to radiate all over the place.

“Finally, this whole section here is supposed to make sure the magic permanently recognizes visitors inside the area as friendly so long as they don’t destroy anything. The Overgrowth could be quite enormous when the wild magic of an entire planet is absorbed here. We need a safe way for anyone who ends up inside it to leave again. Broadly speaking, ponies may wish to live inside it full time, there are a large number of advantages. This part of the spell allows that, so long as they aren’t logging dozens of trees.”

He settled the slide rule down. “So that’s the whole thing! It’s pretty simple when you break it down into parts like this. Gather the magic together, ground it somewhere, and make sure the result is safe. Of course—a spell like this will exist for a long time, maybe forever. It will probably grow in ways I can’t guess from this moment, like a living creature. Like the vines of a tomato or grapes, all we can do is build the trellises in the right shape and hope they grow strong. But a significant portion of that will come from your role in the spell while you’re casting.”

She sank onto her haunches in front of the diagram, not meeting his eyes anymore. “The more you talk about this thing, the more nervous I get. I didn’t sign up to… influence something that would last forever. I just thought I was casting a spell.”

Sunburst circled back around to the other side, and rested his foreleg over her shoulder. “You’re the only pony on this planet I would trust to do it, Wayfinder. You’re compassionate and you’re competent. I’ve found plenty of both among your kind, but not enough overlap. If we sit here and wait for the perfect mare to come along, we give more time for wild magic to root itself all over the planet. That leaves more time for hostile creatures to come into being and spread. Every one of them can kill and spread magic, creating more wild magic that perpetuates the cycle. An imperfect but well-meaning casting is infinitely better than a perfect spell that never happens.”

She closed her eyes and rested up against his neck, holding herself there against him. Nothing in her human life before this quite prepared her for how it felt to be held like this, by someone larger and more confident than herself. Though Sunburst was only slightly taller than she was, his build was still stockier, thicker, and generally more male. More importantly for that moment, he was much more confident about their current dilemma.

Sunburst knew what the magic was for, he knew how important it was, and he trusted Way to cast the spell correctly. If she didn’t feel strong or smart enough to do it, she could trust his judgment.

Wayfinder could’ve used six months to plan and practice the spell she was about to cast. Yet the magic was so complex she doubted whether it would even make a meaningful difference. The fundamental difficulty of her task wasn’t learning the words or memorizing the diagram, it was the experience that casting would bring. She had to somehow manifest stability for the wild magic of an entire world, through herself.

She found Ruby and ‘Blazing’ in the cafeteria of the little colony that morning, looking as though they had slept far more than she had that night. She collapsed onto the bench like a slime mold, looking at her bowl of overnight oats more than eating it.

She didn’t hear what the two said, but did feel the weight of the bench shifting beneath her. Something heavy settled onto the spot next to her, and a wing lifted her back straight. Sam looked down on her for a few seconds, those gold eyes unreadable, then cleared his throat. “If you studied this hard before, you wouldn’t have dropped out.”

Way nodded, the gesture feeling strained and out of focus. Sam’s features blurred together, yellow and black into white like a giant bee. She shook her head once, as though she could dislodge the disorientation within. “Turns out some things matter more than making some… stupid database for some stupid company. People… live and die here. If I don’t do it well, mostly die.”

“So he says,” Ruby said. She stared at Way from the other side of the table, expression unreadable at first. “I know how much you like him, Way. But just because things worked well for the world he came from doesn’t mean we can just apply them here. It might not be a big deal here. Maybe our magic works differently. You shouldn’t be killing yourself over it.”

Way could still levitate her spoon well enough to bring food towards her lips and swallow. She couldn’t really taste it, but some part of her knew dimly that she was hungry and needed to eat. She reached for the cup of coffee on her tray, but her magic fuzzed away as someone else’s grip caught her. Blazing, his claw wrapped around the paper there.

“I don’t think so, princess. What you need is at least three hours in bed. If you drink this, you’ll be in purgatory. Not awake enough to be productive, just to torment yourself. You eat, then I’ll get you to bed.” He said it so forcefully, without any hesitation or doubt about her obedience. He sounded more like he was going to pick her up and carry her there whether she wanted to go or not.

Way went back to the bowl, squinting in the dawn light beaming in through the glass ceiling high above. “Magic doesn’t work differently here,” she said, her voice low and exhausted. “Same as gravity or any of those other… important fundamental laws. We didn’t have a way to observe it before, but the rules are the same. Otherwise, we couldn’t even communicate with Equestria. Sunburst wouldn’t be able to exist here. And we couldn’t be ponies.”

She didn’t quite feel hungry enough to finish, so pushed the bowl along the tray, settling the spoon sideways into it. “I’m sorry we can’t make the vaccine first. But we will… I’m going to make that a priority as soon as this is done, Ruby. I do want it. And I’ve been promising it to our contacts at NATO, so—if I don’t give them results, they won’t keep my administration afloat.”

The unicorn stared at her across the table, expression unreadable. “I know you care,” she said. “I just—don’t get caught up in their whole magical cult thing, Way. They have a great way to live. Starhall is much safer than Denver, and their way of farming and making things seems cool. I’ve even picked up levitation since I got here. I just don’t want earth to turn into a colony of wherever they came from, that’s all. It’s our home; we get to decide what we do with it.”

“Alright, that’s enough fundamental philosophy for one morning.” Sam stood up, then turned sideways next to the bench and dropped low to the ground, inclining his head towards her. “Either get on or I’ll do it by force, Blue. Might as well make it easy on both of us.”

Way slept, eventually. She didn’t know exactly where. When she woke, she had the difficult step of requisitioning enough resources to perform her task. The police obviously wouldn’t understand, and the less detail she shared the better her results would probably be.

With Peter’s help, she put together the support for a truck and fuel to get up to the site of the spell and back. But minimal gear otherwise, not even camp supplies for an overnight. She wanted anyone who heard or saw what they were doing to know that she was not fleeing the city, not evacuating or abandoning them. A few other careful choices helped cement that vision: she picked two officers basically at random to accompany her, rather than bringing those she was closest to. No Lance, no Peter. Though not all refusals were as easy to give.

Keeping the mission secret from Hazel was a losing endeavor. Nor was she the only one; as the black suburban came to rest beside the border of the Overgrowth, it wasn’t just Sunburst waiting to get into her truck. Ruby and Sam were both there, each one carrying a padded plastic crate filled with equipment.

“You two shouldn’t be here,” Way said, hopping out of the side of the truck. “And you, Hazel—how’d you even get to Starhall without me noticing?”

The not-changeling looked away as she spoke, pawing at the ground, and said nothing.

But Ruby did, levitating the box carefully to the ground in front of her. “Sunburst told me this magic was about how good your friends were. So what’s the best way for them to be? Having us right there with you, obviously.”

“It will… not be safe, precisely,” Sunburst said. “But having them there might help. I don’t think they would’ve left even if I asked them.”

“Absolutely not,” Sam said, settling his own plastic crate on the sidewalk. “You’ll have to order us not to go. Otherwise, we’re your friends. We’re with you.”

Wayfinder looked between them. Hazel with her body quivering. Ruby looking insistent, Sunburst heavily burdened with books and notes. Then Blazing, wings half open and a silly grin on his face. All waiting for her decision.

Wayfinder had to decide…

1. Order them to stay behind. It could be dangerous, she can’t subject others to that.

2. Allow them to come. Even Hazel chose to come, she had to respect their decisions.