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In Paraasilan, Esmaar, a pair of roommates are about to break a rule that, compared to the one about running in the corridors or even the one about unlicensed teleportation, is there for a good reason.
In unison, they complete their shared spell.
Joy in Elcenia
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lialen
"Well, I'd want to think about it more, I can only pick a new form a limited number of times and I've done," he gestures at himself, "one of five already. But probably a unicorn, unless it turns out princesses are in fact something I can turn into and not a - nonspecies."
or-coincidence
"Unicorns do seem like a pretty good choice if you're interested in magic. But if I were you, I'd wait and find out if there are any records of any other kinds of creatures turning into ponies, first. If there are, then you could find out useful information like whether or not they got cutie marks and how it affected them if they did or didn't. I could look that up for you, if you want! I might need a trip to Canterlot to do it, but Canterlot's not that far away."
lialen
"I mean, this information would be interesting, but it wouldn't necessarily be a definitive guide to what happens if my kind of dragon does it," says Kaylo. "Since I bet you that's never been done before."
or-coincidence
"But I still think it would be helpful to know about, because even if the your-kind-of-dragon part hasn't been done before, the nonpony-turning-into-pony part has intricacies that nonponies turning into other kinds of nonponies wouldn't have to deal with. It wouldn't be a definitive guide, but it would be a pretty good hint."
lialen
"Yeah. You will notice that I have not, yet, turned into a pony," shrugs Kaylo. "So what-all kind of magic can unicorns do?"
or-coincidence
"We can use telekinesis," she floats a scroll to demonstrate, "and cast spells. Usually our horns and whatever we're doing magic to glow when we do magic; I'm just weird. Telekinesis is just about as simple as it looks, and spells can do all kinds of different things and work all kinds of different ways depending on the spell, but it usually comes down to 'concentrate on the spell you're casting in the right way and it happens'."
or-coincidence
"Usually! One can also learn spells from other unicorns directly, but I read a lot and don't know a lot of unicorns I could learn interesting spells from."
or-coincidence
"Sure." Blueberry trots up to a shelf, retrieves a book, floats it over to the mysterious dragonish person, and opens it to a page with the heading Compass Spell. The text reads:
Compass Spell
Handy for lost ponies.
Ingredients
None
Tools
None
Procedure
Visualize a large compass lying flat on the ground, then cast. The image of the correctly oriented compass may be projected from your horn like a spotlight, or appear under your hooves, or guide you invisibly as a feeling telling you which way is north. With practice, you can learn to pick which manifestation you get.
lialen
"This is completely unlike any kind of magic I've studied before," says the dragonish person with absolute fascination.
lialen
"I'm in school for wizardry, I have academic familiarity with witchcraft and lightcraft and magery and sorcery, and I am a dragon and I'm studying what there's been done on native dragon magic - I know less about the other species-specific stuff."
or-coincidence
"And what are the things about them that are very different from how unicorn spells work?"
lialen
"Wizardry is gestures and words and in most cases also intentions and occasionally diagrams. Witchcraft's potions. Lights do healing, among other details, and mages do elemental control one per, and sorcerers do telekinesis but nothing else."
or-coincidence
"Oh, we have potions, but you don't have to be a unicorn to make them unless they need a spell cast on them at some point to work. Some of them aren't magical at all. You could say unicorn spells involve intentions, but I think it might be more accurate to say they involve... ideas. A compass spell uses the idea of a compass."
lialen
"Witches don't have to be anybody in particular either, it's just a skill. And the intentional components are most often along the lines of, 'this is who I am aiming the spell at', or 'this is the color I intend to turn that object' or whatever."
or-coincidence
"Oh. Yes, I see what you mean. Unicorn magic has that sort of thing too, but only incidentally. Like when I was casting the spell to try to get Joy from wherever he went, I specified in my head that wherever Joy went is where I wanted the spell to look and dragons were what I wanted it to bring back. And all the safety stuff on top of that. It's a hard spell and it's not very good, but I didn't want to wait a week while I figured out how to invent a better one."
or-coincidence
"It depends. Mostly it's a few seconds or less, depending how big and complicated the spell is. Some spells you don't just cast once and have done with, you have to actively keep them going, and those need your concentration and oomph for as long as you want them to go on, but that's not really the same thing as casting time; they still don't take all that long to start."
lialen
"Oomph, right - is there a unit you can measure oomph in? And if so how much do most unicorns have?"
or-coincidence
"It's hard to measure oomph very precisely because of small variations in the amount of oomph a particular spell takes across different castings and the amount of oomph a particular unicorn has from day to day, and of course any two unicorns you pick probably don't have exactly the same baseline power level. But it's generally accepted that most unicorns replenish oomph faster than they can use it up by simple telekinesis on objects that don't weigh any more than themselves, and making your horn glow at an ordinary brightness takes even less oomph than that, and small continuous spells like the compass drain oomph a little bit faster than simple telekinesis but not enough that I'd worry about holding a compass spell all day if I had to do that for some reason."
She scuffs a hoof on the floor and adds, "I could look up some unit systems if you'd rather talk in those, but I don't like them because they imply much more accuracy than they really represent. And offhoof I don't remember how most unicorns' total oomph carrying capacity compares with their rate of replenishment, but I think it might be complicated, like different unicorns have different ratios and casting big one-off spells has effects on replenishment rate that aren't consistent enough between unicorns or between castings for anypony to have figured them out completely yet. It would be lovely if there was a spell that let you just tell how much oomph a unicorn has, but I don't think anypony's invented one yet. Or if they have, it takes too much oomph for most ponies to want to bother with it."
She scuffs a hoof on the floor and adds, "I could look up some unit systems if you'd rather talk in those, but I don't like them because they imply much more accuracy than they really represent. And offhoof I don't remember how most unicorns' total oomph carrying capacity compares with their rate of replenishment, but I think it might be complicated, like different unicorns have different ratios and casting big one-off spells has effects on replenishment rate that aren't consistent enough between unicorns or between castings for anypony to have figured them out completely yet. It would be lovely if there was a spell that let you just tell how much oomph a unicorn has, but I don't think anypony's invented one yet. Or if they have, it takes too much oomph for most ponies to want to bother with it."
lialen
"Well, it doesn't sound hard to make a wizard spell that'd do it, but those can only be cast in Elcenia," muses Kaylo, "and maybe there's a wrinkle I'm not seeing and it'd take a few experimental iterations."
lialen
"That can be arranged," he says. "I can do it myself, even, from there, I'll have to get a teacher on board but if there's somebody from here already free to wander the library I don't imagine that'll be too hard."