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Joy in Elcenia
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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.
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A creature who looks... sort of vaguely like a dragon... appears in the circle. He is purple with green accents - tummy, ear-flaps, crest, wing membranes, eyes - and a little more than four and a half feet tall standing bipedally, which he currently is.

He blinks confusedly at the two girls.
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The girls seem to find him really surprising, especially the blonde one. They start jabbering at each other in gibberish.

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"Um, hi?" says Joy. "Whaaaaat just happened?"

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The girls look at him when he talks, but don't respond directly to him. The blonde one with the long pointy ears gets a book off a shelf and starts flipping through it.

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He waves cautiously.

"I guess you don't speak Equestrian. Well. This is gonna be hard."
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The brown girl waves back.

The blonde one makes a more complicated gesture and says more gibberish and then says, "There, that should work."
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"Whoa, I understand you now! Cool!"

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"I did a translation spell," explains the blonde, putting her book back. "It'll break when we send you home though."

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"Oh, huh," he says. "But you're not a unicorn or anything. What are you? I've never seen anything like you before!"

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"I'm a human," says the brown girl.

"I'm an elf - well, an elf thudia - what are you? You look sort of like a largish drake..."
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"I'm a dragon! My name's Joy."

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"Huh," says the blonde. "I guess you look a little like a dragon, enough that the spell is calling it close enough. I'm Korulen and that's Saasnil."

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"What do you mean, a little like a dragon?"

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"We have dragons here but they aren't - two-toned and - well, here," says Korulen, motioning Saasnil out of her way and shapeshifting. "I'm not a real dragon, but I can do this, this is what jade dragons look like."

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"Oh, awesome!" says Joy. "What kind of not-a-real-dragon are you that lets you do that?"

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"My mom's a dragon and my dad's an elf. I take after him, basically, and my little sister is a real dragon instead."

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"Oh. So it's like - huh. I don't think we have anything like that in Equestria," he says. "Different kinds of ponies can have kids with each other, but they don't end up with cool shapeshifting powers, they're just regular ponies of whatever kind."

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"Ponies?" says Saasnil blankly.
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"...Ponies," says Joy. "Like - people. Regular people who aren't dragons. They have hooves and manes and tails and they walk around on four feet instead of two like me, and have flat teeth instead of sharp like mine, and there's three kinds. Earth ponies are strong and good at doing physical stuff and growing plants, and unicorns have horns that let them do magic, and pegasi have wings that let them fly and do weather stuff."

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"I don't think we have those," says Saasnil blankly. "Humans and elves and stuff are regular common kinds of people here. And there's other kinds too, just not as many."

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"And you're a human and you're sort of an elf," he says, indicating Saasnil and Korulen respectively. "Okay... do all the kinds of people around here look mostly like you? I guess you said there's dragons. Is it just dragons and humanish-elfish-people, or are there more different kinds?"

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"There are more different kinds. There's merfolk and there's sprites... vampires can turn into bats but the rest of the time they look sort of humanish... there's fairies and pixies that are kind of like sprites... there's leonines, they walk on two legs but they look like lions... there's wolves, but I don't know if they count because they come with riders who look humanish... there's skyfolk and they're bird people," says Saasnil.

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"We have griffins in Equestria, and those're sort of lion-bird-people, but I don't think we have separate lion-people and bird-people... well, there's birds and lions, but those can't talk except to people who have the right talent to understand them."

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"You can talk to animals?" asks Korulen. "Just regular non-people ones?"

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"Well, I can't, but I know somebody who can. I can sort of pretty much tell what some critter is trying to get across if it's simple enough and I'm paying attention, but I don't hear them like they're talking language or anything. Cordy does, and she can talk back to them and be understood too."

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"Huh, I don't think anybody can do that here," says Korulen.

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"Oh. That must be inconvenient. But maybe you don't do stuff that you'd need to talk to animals for, like taking bunny censuses or waking up the creatures for spring...? I guess you could wake up the creatures without being able to talk to them, but it sure is easier Cordy's way."

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"...Why would the creatures need people to help them wake up?" says Korulen.

"What would anybody do with a bunny census?" wonders Saasnil.
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"Well... if nobody wakes them up, they might oversleep and miss the start of spring," he says. "I guess they must figure it out somehow in the places where there aren't any ponies to help, but I don't know, I've only ever lived in Equestria. And bunny censuses are important for tracking the bunny population, obviously, so you can tell if there's a change that doesn't look right and might mean something weird is happening to the bunnies. Cordial could probably explain it better, she's the one who takes them."

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"These are like... farmed bunnies?" wonders Saasnil.

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"No...? What would you farm a bunny for?"

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"Dinner," says Korulen.

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"...Ew," says Joy. "Ponies don't eat, like, creatures."

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"We're not ponies," says Saasnil.

"...Neither are you," Korulen feels compelled to point out.
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"Some dragons eat creatures, but I'm civilized, I eat plants and eggs and milk and stuff. And gemstones. Gemstones are tasty."

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"Okay, well, we eat plants and eggs and milk too but not gemstones, although I guess if you don't care where they're from it'd be easy to - I mean, if you were going to stay, but we do have to send you home in a few degrees," says Korulen.

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Joy perks up intriguedly. "It'd be easy to what?"

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"Oh, it's easy to conjure up gemstones, it's illegal to sell them so people mostly don't do it but it's not illegal to eat them," says Korulen.

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"Cooooooool. Can you give me a bunch of gemstones when you send me back? If it's not too much trouble, I mean? It's hard to find them at home."

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"I mean, to actually give them to you we'd have to do a much more complicated spell or take down the ward," says Korulen dubiously.

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"Oh. Okay. Don't worry about it, then."

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"Sorry," says Saasnil.

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"It's okay. What do you mean by take down the ward, anyway?"

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"Well, we didn't know we were going to get a friendly little dragon," explains Korulen. "We could have gotten anybody when we cast the summoning spell, it's random, it could've been somebody dangerous."

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"Oh," he says. "That makes sense."

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"Yeah. But you aren't going to be stuck for long, soon Nemaar will get out of his class and we can prove we could cast the spell and then you go back where we got you," Korulen says.

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"What if I wanna come back? This place seems pretty cool."

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"I mean, I guess we could summon you again with a non-random spell? But we are completely not allowed to let you out of the ward without getting you checked over first," says Korulen. "We weren't really allowed to summon you in the first place but that's less for safety reasons, more just we aren't graduated enough to do this big a spell unsupervised except we completely pulled it off because here you are."

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"Oh. Okay."

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"Like I could get my mom to check you but she'd want to know why we'd met a friendly little dragon from another world and wanted to summon him. I'm sorry."

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"It's fine, don't worry about it."

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"Okay. But we can chat while we're waiting for Nemaar's class to get out, if there's more stuff you wanna know about our world."

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"Sure!" he says brightly. "Like what's up with your weird magic, and how do you turn the seasons if it doesn't involve waking up creatures?"

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"...Even if bunnies overslept when unsupervised how would that have anything to do with seasons changing?" asks Korulen, bewildered.

"We're wizarding students," Saasnil says. "That's the kind of magic we're doing."
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"In Equestria a wizard just means a unicorn who's good at magic. Does your magic come in a bunch of different kinds? Who can do it, if you don't have unicorns? And turning the seasons means, like - actually, never mind the seasons, how do you handle your weather if you don't have pegasi? Do your bird people do weather stuff instead?"

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"There are kinds, and anybody can be a wizard, or a witch, and other kinds you have to be born with," says Korulen, "but most anybody can be those, although I don't think dragons can be lights or mages or sorcerers..."

Saasnil says, "Why would somebody have to do weather? Weather just... happens."
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"I guess weather weathers by itself somehow or other in places where there aren't ponies to do it instead, but in civilized places the pegasi manufacture clouds and rainbows and so on and move them around to where they're needed and make sure they behave."

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"...Are rainbows practically necessary for, um, anything?" asks Korulen.

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"I dunno. They're rainbows. It'd be weird and sad to have rain with no rainbows. And I think maybe liquid rainbows are an ingredient in some magical potions, but I don't know anything about potionmaking."

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"Huh," says Korulen.

"Well, there are weather spells," says Saasnil. "But they only come up if there's like hurricanes or droughts, not for everyday."
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"So you don't schedule your rain and stuff? That sounds really inconvenient, what if you're setting up a big important event and you get the wrong weather?"

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"Then you put up a rain shield?" suggests Korulen.

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"Huh. I still feel like having pegasi is better, but I guess it's all in what you're used to."

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"I guess," says Korulen. "I mean it'd be convenient if we just controlled the weather all the time and I guess we could, it just doesn't seem worth it?"

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"Well, worth it to who? Pegasi like doing weather, and if they don't like doing weather they do other stuff and leave the weather to the ones who do like it."

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"Wizards are the ones with the weather control spells... I guess air and water mages could do some too."

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"Well, I guess if your wizards and mages aren't already doing weather then either it isn't worth it to them or nobody's thought of doing it the way we do in Equestria because there aren't pegasi here."

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"Suppose," agrees Korulen.

"I'm gonna go get Nemaar," says Saasnil, and she slips out the door.
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"Who's Nemaar, anyway, why'd he want to see you summon a somebody?"

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"Oh, he was making fun of Saasnil earlier, she wanted to prove him wrong," explains Korulen.

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Joy giggles. "Oh."

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"He's one of the lion-people I mentioned so you'll get to see what they look like."

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"Cool," he says agreeably.

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Eventually Saasnil does indeed appear, with a lion-person.

"Huh, it's some kind of drake," says the lion-person.

"He says he's an otherworldly kind of dragon," corrects Saasnil as though she didn't learn this three degrees ago.
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"Hi," says Joy. "I'm Joy."

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"Huh," says Nemaar again. He steps forward and knocks on the empty space above the chalk of the circle; it stops his hand. "All right, so you can do summons."

"Told you," says Saasnil.
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(Joy giggles.)

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"I didn't even think you had the CC for this kind of thing," says Nemaar.

"Well, Korulen helped," says Saasnil.

Nemaar blinks. "So, how're you going to send him back, then?"

Korulen blanches.
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"Huh?"

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"You can't co-cast a reversal. Oh no," says Korulen.

"That," says Nemaar, "sounds like a problem for you." He leaves the room briskly.
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"What's that mean...?"

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"We can't send you home," says Korulen. "I mean - I mean, we'll be able to in a few years - but not now."

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"...oh," says Joy.

He sits down unhappily on the floor.
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"I have to tell my mom -"

"No, I'll be expelled!" exclaims Saasnil. "And then I'll never be a wizard -"

"I have to, we can't hide him under a rug or something!"
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"There has to be another way to send him back - can we just send him back -"

"No. He's not native. I have to -"

"No!"
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"Um... if you let me out of the circle I could just go away somewhere and then you wouldn't be in any trouble?" he suggests tentatively.

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"That would be much, much worse if we got caught," says Korulen. "I have to tell Mom. You won't even get expelled, Saasnil, you're my backup in case I can't do it even with a familiar."

Saasnil whimpers and sits on her bed.
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Joy has nothing more to contribute at this time.

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And then the door opens, and there is a pale human woman with jade green hair standing there.

"Hello, Joy," she says, approaching the circle. "I'm Keo. Do you mind if I do a minimally invasive scan of your mind to make sure you're safe to let out?"
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"...Huh?"

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"I have a lot of mind magic. I can let you out of the circle, as long as it's safe, and then you won't be stuck there while Korulen works on being able to send you home," explains Keo. "I won't look at anything that doesn't have to do with whether you're going to hurt people or break laws or things like that."

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"Oh. Okay, sure, I guess."

This is not the face of someone who expects to pass this test.
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There is a silence, and then Keo smudges the chalk. "All right, you have the run of the world till Korulen can put you back where you go," she says.

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"...cool," he says, brightening. "Thanks." He gets up and gets out of the circle. "...Can I have some gemstones now?"

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"I'll - go to the library and look up a spell for that?" says Korulen.

Keo raises an eyebrow at her child. "Yes, do."
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"I eat them," Joy explains. "They're tasty, but a little hard to come by sometimes."

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"Well, that won't be an issue here, Korulen and Saasnil have drastically inconvenienced you and can certainly spare some time out of their schedules to conjure you gems. Is that all you eat?" asks Keo.

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"No, I eat regular pony food too. I don't know what counts as regular people food around here, though, apparently you eat animals sometimes and that's weird."

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"Well, not everyone eats animals," says Keo. "What's a pony?"

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"Almost all the people who live in Equestria are ponies. They're... ponies. They have four feet with hooves and ones who have horns are unicorns and ones who have wings are pegasi and ones who have neither are earth ponies and ones who have both are princesses. And they don't eat meat. Because they're ponies."

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"Well, you can eat all the gemstones you want and there's plants to eat in the cafeteria too," says Keo, "while you're here. I'd put you in a dorm room but I'm not sure the students wouldn't consider you an odd curiosity and give you a lot of unwanted attention..."

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"Oh, people do that all the time anyway, it's fine. Where would you put me that's not a dorm room?"

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"I'm not sure, or I'd have skipped to suggesting it; you'd probably have the same issue in a hotel. If a dorm is fine that's certainly easier. Follow me?" Keo says. She looks over her shoulder at Saasnil. "You, I will deal with later."

"Yes Keo," squeaks Saasnil.
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Joy glances back doubtfully as he follows Keo. "I don't want anybody to get in a lot of trouble because of me..."

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"You didn't do anything. They cast a spell well beyond their ability to responsibly handle and they're in trouble for that. While they work on being able to repair their mistake, the school is responsible for you."

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"I guess. Okay."

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"Is there anything else you're going to need besides gemstones and plant-based food and a place to be?"

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"Not really... well, can you send a message back to Ponyville to let everypony know I'm okay? Otherwise they might worry."

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"Yes, we can do that. We can even summon people from your world - with appropriate safeguards so they can go home again - if they want to visit you."

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"Nifty!"

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"Do you want to write the letter yourself?"

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"Yeah, sure."

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"I'll get you some paper and a pen, then." They reach the lift, and she opens the door and ushers him in.

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"Okay. Sorry to be a bother."

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"It's all right; like I said, the school's responsible for you."

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"Well, yeah, but the school's made of people, and it's people who have to do stuff because I'm here and you're responsible for me, so..."

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"You didn't decide to be here," Keo says. "That's why the school is responsible for you. If you had wandered into the front hall and started asking for things we'd be having a different conversation."

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"I guess."

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Keo directs the lift to a residence hall. Lurch goes the lift.

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That's cool. In a lurchy kind of way. "Is this another magic thing?"

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"Yep. Don't go into the stairs; they get people lost. The lifts will take you to anywhere in the school."

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"Okay. I'll remember."

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The lurching stops; the door opens on a different hall. Keo takes him to a room that looks like Korulen and Saasnil's, but less lived-in. "Does this look comfy?"

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"Sure! I'm not picky."

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"Okay, then it's yours for the duration. You can will the ward on the door to admit or keep out anybody who you want to let in or not, although I and my husband - he's the headmaster - can override if there's ever a reason. Korulen will bring you your gemstones when she's found a spell for them and conjured them up. The lift will take you to the cafeteria if you want to go there for non-gemstone food and I've keyed you to it. If people hassle you, you can tell them to talk to me. If you need to talk to me, all you have to do is think 'Keo' loud and clear and I'll pick it up and," <we can talk, like so. Any questions?>

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"I don't think so. Thanks for everything!"

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"You're welcome. There's also a library, if you get bored," Keo adds, and she lets herself out.

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Ooh, a library! Libraries are pretty neat. Joy takes another look around his room, tests the comfiness quotient of the beds, and then goes looking for the library. (He guesses he can get a lift to go there.)

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A lift will go there!

The library: has books.
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Books! Are any of them about interesting stuff? He'd better look at a bunch to find out.

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They're about all kinds of stuff! This funny square planet's got all kinds of countries, and magic, and animals, and history, and there are books on it.

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Well, then, Joy is going to read about a lot of stuff.

And possibly lose track of time a little.
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People look at him, but don't bother him. Except Korulen, who spots him before she leaves to deliver the gemstones.

"Oh, you're here - I don't know what kinds you like so I conjured a bunch of different ones," she says, dropping a clinky bag of rocks next to his stack of books.
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"Thanks!" he says, and he reaches into the bag and pulls out a stone and munches on it. Nom nom. "Mffis is really good! Can I learn how to do that?"

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"Probably not. I can check if you have a channeling capacity?"

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He shrugs. "Okay. What's one of those? Is it the thing you need to have to do the magic that makes gemstones?"

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"Yeah, you need one to be a wizard. The spell isn't huge but if you don't have a CC at all you can't cast."

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"What kinds of people have them?"

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"Most anyone who's from here, but in theory at least people from other worlds wouldn't have them."

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"I guess that kind of makes sense. How do you tell if I have one?"

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"I go look up a spell that's usually used to see how much of one you have, and cast it on you. I'll go find it." Off she trots.

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And Joy goes back to reading his increasingly large stack of books. (He keeps finding new things to look up!)

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Korulen comes back and casts a spell and says, "Sorry, nothing."

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"Okay. It was a long shot anyway, right?" He shrugs and munches another gemstone.

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"Yeah. They taste okay, even conjured?"

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"Yeah!"

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"Okay, good." That seems to be that. She wanders off.

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Meanwhile, in a very different library, a tiny blue unicorn is preparing a spell. She double-checks her parameters, squints at her scroll of notes one last time, then lets it snap shut and drop to the floor while she concentrates. It should work fine, as long as there aren't any dragon-like creatures close enough to Joy for it to get confused about; she's fiddled with the targeting as much as she dared, and can't refine it any farther without compromising safety measures.

And... cast.

There is an enormous puff of faintly glittery red smoke. Blueberry squints into the cloud, then clears it away with a little subtle telekinesis.
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A beige mammalian biped who is wearing clothes and has red eyes and appears to have been sitting before he was violently removed from his chair falls to the floor. "Ack!"

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"You don't look very dragon-like," Blueberry says dubiously.

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"Excuse me? You don't look like the treatise on spell invention parameters volume three!"
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"That is because I'm not a treatise," she says reasonably. "I'm a unicorn. And I was trying to bring back a dragon who disappeared a little while ago, but the spell I'm using has trouble distinguishing people except by broad obvious categories like species... maybe it got confused some other way. Do you know anything about a green and purple dragon suddenly appearing somewhere near wherever you just were? He's about this tall," she floats a book to a Joy-ish height to illustrate, because even if she stood on tip-hoof she'd be much too short to gesture it herself, "and his name is Joy and he's very friendly and helpful."

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"I'd figured he was messing with tasteless illusions. I'm a dragon, I'm just not shaped like one right now."
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"Oh, that makes sense. Well, it shouldn't be very hard to put you back now that I've got you... you're definitely the only dragon-like creature in Ponyville right now. Do you want me to do that? I'd just have to reverse a few things and then check my work, it won't take long. But then I guess you should tell Joy to go somewhere there aren't any dragon-like creatures for a size-of-this-roomish distance anywhere around him, before I try again."

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"What is going on?"

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"From my perspective, Joy disappeared mysteriously a little while ago and I went and looked up some spells until I found one that told me where he went, sort of, and then I went and looked up some more spells until I found one that could get him back. But it isn't very good, so it accidentally got you instead."

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"Aaaand where did you get me to, pray tell?"

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"Equestria! Ponyville specifically. The Ponyville public library, even more specifically."

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"So I'm gathering I'm not in Elcenia anymore, is that right?"

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"If Elcenia is the world you were in a minute ago, yes."

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"Ooookay. And I am here because your spell is badly targeted."

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"Yes. I could've refined the targeting, but only by sacrificing important safety precautions, and I didn't want to do that. It's better to accidentally get the wrong dragon for a few minutes than to risk somepony getting hurt in the process of getting the right one."

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"Your language is really speciesist, did you know that?"
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"Yes, but it's the only language around unless you count animal speech and that's not learnable, so I have to put up with it."

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"Rrrright. Anyway. I would like to be put back eventually so it's comforting to know you think you can do that, but I am pretty curious about this place I find myself in, what with it being magical and unfamiliar."

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"You can ask me about Equestria if you want, I won't mind answering things."

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"Right, so is more or less everybody ponies and dragons?"

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"Equestria is a pony country. I don't know if there are any dragons living in it at all other than Joy, and if there are, they don't live in pony villages with ponies like he does. But there's dragons in other places farther away, and griffins, and certain kinds of sea monsters that can talk... I could probably look up a list of all the non-pony creatures who're known to use learnable language, but I might have to send away to another library in Canterlot for it."

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"Learnable language as opposed to?"

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"I mean, you can teach a dragon or a sea serpent Equestrian, but you can't teach a bear or a bunny or a bee Equestrian. But certain ponies who have the right kind of special talent can understand and communicate with bears and bunnies and bees; they just don't use a learnable language to do it. Someone who tried to learn how to talk to bears might get pretty good at it, especially if they were an earth pony to begin with, but they'd never be as good as somebody with a special talent for it."

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"Explain 'special talents'."

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"Every pony - and I only mean ponies this time; dragons and griffins and sea serpents don't work the same way - every pony has a special talent that's unique to them. With some ponies it's more like being good at chess or fashion or dancing, and with some ponies it's more like being able to talk to animals or cast a special spell nobody else can do, but everyone gets one. Most ponies start to figure out their special talents when they're a little older than me, and when they know what it is, they get a little picture on their flanks that represents it. The picture is called a cutie mark."

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"...this is almost interesting enough to convince me to learn to turn into a pony of some kind."

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"You could do that?" she asks, intrigued. "Which kind would you pick? There's three. Technically four. Unicorns like me have horns and can do magic; earth ponies don't have horns and are strong and good at some kinds of things; pegasi don't have horns and do have wings and they can fly and manipulate the weather. And princesses are like all three kinds of ponies together, and they have horns and wings and can do magic and fly and manipulate the weather and are strong and good at earth pony things. But princesses are very rare and I don't know if they're a kind of pony in the same way the other three are."

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"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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"Yeah. You will notice that I have not, yet, turned into a pony," shrugs Kaylo. "So what-all kind of magic can unicorns do?"

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"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'."

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"So... sorcery plus. Does one learn spells out of books?"

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"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."

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"Can I have a look at a fairly basic spell in its learn-from-a-book form?"

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"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.
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"This is completely unlike any kind of magic I've studied before," says the dragonish person with absolute fascination.
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"What are the kinds of magic you've studied like?"

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"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."

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"And what are the things about them that are very different from how unicorn spells work?"

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"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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"How long does it take to cast unicorn spells, by and large?"

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"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."

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"Oomph, right - is there a unit you can measure oomph in? And if so how much do most unicorns have?"

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"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."
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"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."

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"I think I'd like to travel to Elcenia," she says.

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"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."

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"That would be nice of you! How would your magic do it?"

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"I'd draw a fiddly little circle specifying the spell I want to use - which matters not only because different spells do different things but also because you can't have the exact same spell active twice per caster simultaneously - and then I'd wave my hand like so," he waves his hand like so, "or something, I'd have to look up the exact power pull for whichever spell I settled on, and then I'd say the magic word, while concentrating on aiming at you in particular, and then there you'd be."

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"Interesting! What are the fiddly little circles like?"

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"Two concentric circles, enough room for whatever you're summoning in the middle, various symbols in between - I'd draw you one but I don't have enough of the stuff memorized."

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"And the symbols specify which spell, or do they specify other things too?"

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"The symbols don't fully specify which spell - they and the word do, together. Words never duplicate, gestures often do, circles technically can although they usually don't."

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"I think I want to learn all about Elcenian magic."

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"Trade you."

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"It's a deal." She holds up a hoof.

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"I have no idea what to do with that," he says of her hoof. "If it were a hand I'd shake it. Do you shake hooves?"

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"Yes," she giggles.

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So he bends down and shakes her hoof.

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It is a very tiny hoof, and... somehow... capable of clasping his hand well enough to shake back.

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How convenient.

"So my name's Kaylo," he says.
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"Blueberry," says Blueberry. "It's nice to meet you! Should I start figuring out how to send you back home now?"

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"Sure, if you want to tell me when to summon you on my end in terms of something suitably non-astronomy-based."

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"I don't know..." she says thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, we might not use the same units of time. So any measurement I gave would be pretty inexact. How hard is it for your magic to pass messages between worlds, as opposed to people?"

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"I can send you letters and collect them again later, but it's the tedious circle business every time. I can make a decent estimate of time conversions if you can show me something keeping time."

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"Hmm. Well, there's the clock."

She points a wee hoof at the clock. It's a little cuckoo clock.

"The long fast pointer goes by one little mark per minute, and there are sixty minutes in an hour, and the short slow pointer goes by one of its big marks per hour, and there are twenty-four hours in a day. And a second is one-sixtieth of a minute."
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"The language handled the ratios for me," Kaylo says, watching seconds tick by. "So a second looks to be about a split, aaaand, arithmetic arithmetic, an hour is close enough to an angle to make very little difference in the smaller quantities."

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"Okay then. Let's say... half an hour after I send you back, you can bring me to Elcenia? Does that seem like a reasonable amount of time, or should it be longer?"

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"It's going to take me longer than that to find, select, and draw a spell, and it could take a couple angles to find a teacher who'll authorize me to do it even if you don't account for the casting part," says Kaylo.

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"Hmm... okay, three hours? If it gets to be much more than that I'd want to wait until tomorrow and that seems more complicated."

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"Three hours is doable. And once I have the circle I can mostly reuse it without a problem so we can work it out from there. I don't think my roommate wants overnight guests, even tiny unicorn overnight guests."

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"I probably wouldn't be allowed to stay overnight in a strange world anyway," she says.

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"Ah, you've got somepony minding you? I can tell you're juvenile for the species and approximately how much but that doesn't tell me about your social status, you see."

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"Yes. I have an adoptive mother named Clover Honey and she's not bad about things like letting me stay late at the library, but I think she wouldn't want me to stay overnight in strange worlds at least until I was confident I could get home on my own if I needed to."

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"I don't know how well a unicorn spell will do at interfering with a summon," Kaylo says. "It'll be worth testing, anyway - under circumstances void of unicorn magic you can only go home from a summon if the summoner reverses the spell or dies. Well, or if someone does a break, but hardly anyone's any good at breaks."

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"We can experiment," Blueberry says cheerfully. "It'll be fun."

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"It's good that your mom's well-behaved about library-ing," Kaylo mentions.

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"Yes! It's very convenient."

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"Anyway, I'll go see about summoning you - and you wanted me to tell that purple and green fellow something?"

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"Well, maybe, but I think if I'm going to be visiting the world in three hours anyway it doesn't matter as much. I was going to say that he should go somewhere there aren't any dragonlike creatures nearby - would that be easy to do, or are there lots of dragons around where you were?"

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"Not a ton. Headmaster's wife, me, one other student."

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"Well, that's pretty easy then. Tell him that if he really wants to go home right away, he should go somewhere there aren't any dragonlike creatures nearby, and if he doesn't he can wait for me to show up and talk to him myself."

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"Sure thing."

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"Thanks!" says Blueberry. Then she floats her scroll of notes in front of her, opens it, and picks up her quill to start scribbling a second version.

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Kaylo peers over her shoulder while she does it. Well, pretty much over all of her.

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Yes. She is very small and peerable-over.

Scribble scribble think think scribble look something up in a book scribble scribble think scribble.

"Hmm..." She frowns a tiny frown at the finished version of the second spell, then fetches a blank scroll and opens it up beside the first scroll and transcribes her notes more cleanly. They're not written as understandably as the compass spell in the textbook; subheadings include 'Safety safety safety' and 'What?' and 'Where?', with lists of fragmented sentences laying out relevant parameters.
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Kaylo, being about to be subject to this spell, is particularly concerned with the "safety safety safety" section.

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One entire list item is just the word 'Teleport' - the first one, in fact. Then there's 'extra attention: land comfortably' and 'extra attention: cancel for danger' and 'extra attention: do not land on people'.

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"I assume 'teleport' has its own list of parameters you're referring to here?"

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"Yes. Teleport safety is its own thing, I don't need to re-list all of it - the spell would be worse if I tried to pay individual attention to every single thing, because then I might miss something. But most of the time when ponies teleport they're teleporting themselves and they can either see their destinations or are pretty familiar with them, so an interworld teleport needs extra attention to things like not sending you if something unexpectedly dangerous is going on where you would be put, and not dropping you on top of a table or another person or into a pond."

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"And the spell understands 'danger' as a concept just fine?"

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"Yes."

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"How does it do that?"

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"Well, most ponies understand 'danger', don't they? It's not that complicated of an idea."

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"But you're sending me to another world. There's potential dangers you've never heard of," says Kaylo.

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"Yes, that's why I made sure to have unexpected dangers as an extra point. I don't think you have a different definition of danger, do you? It still means 'things that might hurt you', more or less."

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"Yeah," Kaylo nods.

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"So the spell won't have a problem noticing dangerous things just because I haven't heard of those particular dangerous things. They're still dangerous things."

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"Welp, that will completely shred half the open questions on my list and open up about twice as many new ones."

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Blueberry giggles. "What do you mean?"

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"I have this long list of open problems, and magic that can take a definition and use it to sort things that are not individually analyzed by the caster is an automatic fix for a bunch of them - maybe not half - and then the question is how exactly it goes about doing that, which subdivides like crazy, probably - I'm guessing, on both counts, I'll need to sit down with my list and you and go through it."

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"That sounds like a lot of fun! Do you want to be put back now?"

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"Yeah, go for it. And I'll collect you in about three angles give or take and tell your friend to wander off someplace if he wants yoinking - will you be able to tell if he does that versus deciding he's not in a hurry to come back here?"

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"Yes. I'll look at him again every so often and if there doesn't seem to be anypony nearby and he doesn't seem to be busy with anything I'll cast the spell to bring him back."

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"All right, scrying, good, I'll let him know. Oh, do you want me to look up a translation spell for you? I speak Equestrian just fine but that's because I'm a dragon, you wouldn't be able to talk to anyone else without magic."

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"That seems like it would be really convenient, then! It'd take me longer than three hours to find a good translation spell, probably."

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"They're common for wizards, I can find one in about a tick, no problem. Okay. See you then," he grins.

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"See you!"

And she rereads her notes and double-checks everything and concentrates and - casts.

Kaylo appears back in the library he came from, next to the chair he was sitting in. In a large cloud of slightly glittery red smoke.
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"Pah -" He waves away the smoke, then gets up looking for purple-and-green guy.

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Purple and green guy: Still sitting behind an increasingly large stack of books, munching on gemstones and reading about... Linnipese history, currently.

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"Hey, uh, Joy? You know Blueberry?"

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"Huh? Yeah!" he says. "Why, have you seen her?"

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"Yeah, she summoned me and said to tell you that if you want to go home you need to go someplace that isn't near any," he raises a hand, "spell-confusing dragons or dragonlike creatures. If you aren't in a hurry though I'm gonna summon her in about three angles - hours - anyway I'm going to summon her soonish and you could talk to her then directly."

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"Okay. Thanks for telling me! Did she really summon you by accident trying to get me?" He giggles.

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"Yeah. It was startling, but you know what, I will take the inconvenience, we're gonna swap knowhow about magic, it's gonna be great."

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"Have fun! Blueberry's pretty great, she knows all kinds of stuff. And she's cute and tiny."

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"She is!" agrees Kaylo. "Anyway, I'm off to convince a teacher to let me summon her." He waves and wanders off.

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Joy goes back to his reading.

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As promised, Blueberry checks up on him every so often.

One hour into the three-hour interval, she sees him hanging out by the side of a pond, not doing much. As far as Blueberry can tell, there isn't anypony nearby, unless they are hiding at the bottom of the pond or something.

She casts her spell.

This time the cloud of smoke resembles billowing black glitter.
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"QUACK!"

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"...oh dear," says Blueberry. "You don't look much like a dragonlike creature either... but last time I thought that, it turned out to be shapeshifting. Are you a shapeshifted dragonlike creature? I can put you back where you came from without much trouble, but if you're not a shapeshifted dragonlike creature I want to find out what you are instead first, in case there's something wrong with the spell."

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The duck looks around and quacks again.

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"Oh, dear," sighs Blueberry. "I'm going to go get Cordy. I'll just be a minute."

And she darts out of the library and conscientiously closes the door behind her and gallops off.
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The duck... waddles up to the window, peers out of it, and then looks at the spell scroll.
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The spell scroll contains Blueberry's notes on a spell to bring a person from one world to another. It pays particular attention to safety measures, and there are some scribbled laments in the margins about having to sacrifice accuracy to make sure nopony gets hurt.



Blueberry comes back, leading a bigger, older pony with spiderweb marks on her flanks.
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"Hi," says Cordy to the duck. "What's up?"

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The duck just looks at her.

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Cordy sits down on the floor.

"I know it's probably confusing, but I promise we can get everything sorted out," she says. "You just have to give me something to work with."
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"Quack."
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"...Blueberry, could you give us a minute?"

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"Sure," says the blue filly. She goes outside again.

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Cordy waits until the door is closed.

"I have a special talent for communication," she says to the duck. "Which means I can tell when creatures understand me, and I can usually guess how to get them to understand me, and I can understand them if they mean to be understood. My name's Cherry Cordial. I don't want to make trouble for you, but it's important for Blueberry to know if you're a dragonlike creature or not. The spell she used has a known flaw where it can accidentally grab the wrong person if the person it's looking for is near other people of similar species. If it can accidentally grab random sparkly ducks when it's looking for a dragon, that's a whole different thing. If you really don't want to answer, I can just tell Blueberry I couldn't talk to you and get her to send you back, but it'd cause a lot of trouble that could be avoided."
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"I'm not a dragon. I want to go home," says the duck.
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"Are you a dragonlike creature?"

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"I guess."
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"Thank you, that's all I needed to know."

Cordy goes and gets Blueberry.
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Who comes back in, and flicks her tail in a shruglike fashion, and opens up her other-direction sending scroll, and sends the duck back where she came from in a large puff of glittery black smoke.

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The duck swims into her little hidey-hole.

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Blueberry starts trying to refine the spell some more. That flaw is turning out to be much more inconvenient than initially projected.

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And a couple hours later, Kaylo summons her.

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"Hi, Kaylo!" she says cheerfully.

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"Hi, Blueberry! I tried to get out of it but apparently if I'm gonna let you out of the ward, the headmaster's wife needs to check you out, that's only necessary the first time and shouldn't come up again. She just does a mind scan thing with green-group dragon magic, she won't look at anything besides whether you're dangerous. If you want to skip it I can send you home and we can just work in Equestria instead, she can't stop me from being summoned. Oh, and this is Aar Kithen, but he can't tell how old you are by looking, nobody except dragons is going to be able to do that unless they see more ponies, I kind of recommend not bringing it up."

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Blueberry giggles. "Okay. Sure, I don't mind a mind scan. Although I'm curious about how it works!"

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"Keo's the only person who can do it at the moment," explains Kaylo. "Occasionally a dragon hatches with extra dragon magic and can do extra color-group-relevant things. Green groups are empaths, ones with a little extra are telepaths, ones with a lot extra are pretty arbitrarily mentally powerful. Aaaand she says she's done -" He turns to Aar Kithen, says some things in Leraal, gets a nod, and smudges the chalk. "There you go, she's all done, congratulations, you're certified safe."

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"Dragon magic sounds interesting. I want to learn all about it!" she says brightly, trotting out of the circle.

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"You and me both!" he says, waving at Aar Kithen. He pulls a scrap of scratch paper out of his pocket, looks at it, puts it away, and casts a spell. "There's your translation, now anybody'll understand you when you talk and vice-versa." He leads her out into the hall.

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"How convenient. So what are we looking at first?"

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"Wanna see the library and get sort of generally oriented?" he asks. "Oh, and maybe Joy's still there if you didn't get him back."

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"Right, I haven't done that yet. I think he was in the library last time I looked."

Technically this is true. (Cordy mentioned that the sparkly duck seemed very shy about her dragonlike state, and suggested that Blueberry just omit mentioning her to anyone.)
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"Lift's this way, do you have lifts?" The lift is a tiny little room.

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"We don't! What's a lift? Does it lift things?"

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"And moves 'em in other directions. It's faster than stairs, and in this building, less badly enchanted - don't go in the stairs unless you have enough oomph to teleport somewhere that is not the stairs while disoriented in space." He shuts the door and says, "Library," and the lift moves.

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"Noted. This seems really convenient. I wonder if I could figure out how to enchant something like it at home."

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"They're mostly only worth it in larger buildings or sets of them like this campus. Really tall buildings often have ones that only go vertically."

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"Buildings in Ponyville mostly aren't big enough to need them, but in places like Canterlot and Manehattan it's a different story."

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The lift comes to a halt and the door opens on the library. It is a fair bit bigger than the Ponyville library.

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"Oooooooh. It's much more impressive in person!"

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"Isn't it just? How about you find Joy and I'll run up to my room and get some notes on some things?"

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"Sure!"

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Kaylo goes back into the lift and is carried away.

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Blueberry finds Joy.

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Joy scoops her up and hugs her.

"Hi, Berry! I went outside for a little bit but then I came back."
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"The spell I've been using to try to get you has serious problems. I think I'm going to want to invent a whole new one that doesn't," she says. "It probably won't take much more than a week."

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"Sure, that sounds fine. Did you know this world is a square? They've got maps and everything! It's pretty cool. What shape's ours? The maps I've seen mostly just show Equestria."

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"It's a sphere. It's actually mostly water; at night the sun is still shining somewhere, but only on lots and lots of ocean. But because there's plenty of land and it's all bunched up close together, nopony bothers making maps that show all the rest."

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"That makes sense, I guess." He goes back to the book he was reading.

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Kaylo comes back with full to bursting binders flagged with various colors of sticky notes. "Hi again," he says. "Where do you want to start, Blueberry?"

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"Well, figuring out interworld transport seems like the most immediately practical thing. Whether or not unicorn spells can override wizard spells, and how to make a better unicorn spell so I can go back and forth between the worlds by myself without accidentally dragging any other ponies along."

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"Come to think of it, do you think you might have had trouble grabbing Joy because he's under a summon?"

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"It's possible. But it's hard to tell, because the spell I used is so bad. It was originally supposed to be for moving large groups of ponies long distances - that's why it targets by species. I managed to get it narrowed down so it didn't try to grab all of the dragonlike creatures in the building, but now I think it would be a better idea to abandon it and invent one myself."

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"Want to walk me through how you're going to do that?"

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"Well... casting a spell depends on being familiar with what it's supposed to do. So I think I'm going to learn all about how wizardry does interworld transport first, and then figure out how I want my spell to do it, and see if I can make a spell that works how I want. I haven't done a lot of work in spell invention, so it might take a while."

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"Okay. Lemme get us an intro interworld spells book and we can go through that?"

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"Sure!"

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Kaylo calls up a book meeting this description without having to get out of his chair. It flies to his hand and he thunks it on the table.

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Blueberry hops up onto a chair, and from there onto the table, and sits and reads the book.

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Wizardry can do the following things interworld: scry, summon, and send. Scrying involves looking at things in other worlds, summoning involves pulling things from other worlds and putting them in Elcenia, and sending involves taking things that are in Elcenia and making them stop being there. Objects that are summoned or sent do not leave their relevant spells active once they've made the trip, but live creatures have "native world" as a property that continues to tie them to wherever they're from; an active summon or send must constantly work against that in order to continue working. Active summons may be broken, at least in theory (breaks are difficult); sends can't but only because their targets are not in places where wizarding spells may be cast. Active spells, if not broken, must end via either reversal or caster death.

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The "native world" property is interesting. Blueberry suspects that unicorn magic doesn't interact with that, or doesn't interact with it in the same way, because she's managed to move people between worlds without having to keep a spell active to do it.

She rereads the parts about summoning and sending a few times. Then she says, "Can I have something to write on and something to write on it with?"
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"Sure." Kaylo gets her some paper and a graphite stick.

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Blueberry starts writing notes and drawing little pictures, clarifying for herself the concept of an interworld-teleporting unicorn spell.

"Are there any books that talk about the idea of where different worlds are in relation to each other?" she asks after a few minutes of this.
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"As far as I know, no, there isn't any relevant concept of adjacency or distance."

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"Hmm. What is there, then? What identifies worlds as different from each other but the same as themselves?"

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"...good question. When we look for someone specific it's a matter of being able to identify it through a unique description or personal experience, like, I've met you, I could go serve as a focus if somebody else wanted to summon you, if I were going to send somebody to your world I could put them in your library..."

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"Hmmmmm. I want something better than that," she says. "But if you can't find anything then I guess it'll have to do."

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"It'd certainly be convenient if worlds had, say, ID numbers, but if they don't naturally exist I can't make a spell to 'find' them. Probably."

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"They have to have something. Because they are different, so the way they're different has to exist," she says reasonably. "But it might be very hard to find out about. And it's not necessary, it would just be nice to have while I'm making my spell."

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"Is it necessary that they be different in a way that is not just being contiguous with different things? Like, Elcenia is all the stuff that you can get to by moving around through space from here, and your world is all the stuff you can get to by moving around through space from your library, and the two don't hook up unless you're doing interworld magic, and that's all?"

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"It isn't quite all, though, is it? There are different kinds of magic and different shapes of planets in our worlds, and there must be some kind of reason for that. Even if it's just that worlds are a type of thing that can start off in a lot of different ways that end up producing different magic and things, that's still a reason. The more I understand what worlds are, the easier it is to make a spell for moving between them. As it is... I think I can probably make a spell for moving between Equestria and Elcenia specifically, with just what I know now, which is better than not having one at all but not as good as having one that generalizes easily to different worlds."

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"The magic could be significantly explained by this world not having unicorns and yours not having the wizarding reservoir... but... my theory about how dragon and vampire shapeshifting works involves there being an extra little world sort of attached to this one... I wasn't conceptualizing it as near in any sense, just magically accessible in different ways than worlds like yours..."

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"Interesting. Tell me more about that? What's the theory, and why do you think it works that way?"

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"...Can you keep a secret?" Kaylo asks, looking around to see who's in earshot.

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"Sure," she says.

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"Okay, but seriously don't tell anyone, it'll wreck everything. I've been publishing research papers under a pseudonym for several years because I'm a hundred sixty and that's adolescent for dragons and no one will take me seriously if I do it as myself. I need this theory not to be too strongly connected with my real identity yet."

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"I understand completely," the six-year-old unicorn assures him.

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"Thought you might. Okay, so the theory is called Lialenan matter theory and it supposes that shapeshifting involves storing our alternative shapes in a semi-dormant state in an attached world-of-sorts that I named Lialen for mythology reasons. Right now I'm in my human form, but if I stay in it for a year and never turn back to my natural one in that time, I will find after that year that my natural shape has grown and healed from any injuries it had and so on. If I tuck away physical objects - like, if I shifted now, my clothes would go away with my human shape, they wouldn't be destroyed or anything - then they'll come back when I resume the form. Etcetera. Shifting is truly instantaneous once the intention to do it is formed correctly, like teleporting or summoning is when the spell is completed and unlike any spell that actually changes a thing itself - a color change takes a tiny fraction of a split to happen, but it still takes that period of time, for instance."

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"I see," says Blueberry. "That is interesting. So if worlds come in types, Lialen is a different type from Elcenia and the one where Equestria is."

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"Yes. I mean, if I'm right. It's all extremely theoretical stuff. I tried summoning something from Lialen, didn't work."

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"I wonder why it didn't. Did you try scrying, too? Was there anything remotely informative about the way it failed?"

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"I did try scrying. The spell didn't fail outright, but apparently, it's very dark there. The summon just didn't work at all."

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"Hmmm... if you knew someone who had an alternate shape that glowed, you could try scrying that... unicorns only glow sometimes, so that won't work. But there's creatures that glow all the time, I think."

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"That depends on them still glowing all the time in Lialen. I'm pretty sure that shapes in Lialen don't breathe, they definitely don't eat or drink, it could easily also be that they don't glow."

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"Any shapes? No matter what kind of creature it is or how they usually go about glowing? That seems worth investigating, at least."

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"Maybe, but my pseudonym identity isn't a dragon, so I can't really have him petition the dragon council for experimental volunteers," sighs Kaylo.

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"Could I petition the dragon council for experimental volunteers? Or - I bet I could find a unicorn spell that makes things glow and cast it on one of your shapes and see if you can scry it then. That would at least be a start."

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"I don't think the dragon council will talk to you, as you are not a dragon or even a thudia. But feel absolutely free to attempt to glow my dragon shape so I can scry on it while I've got hands to cast with."

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"Does the dragon council not talk to people who aren't dragons? Why not?"

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"It's not what they're for. They're a dragons-only sort of deal, to coordinate the species for species-relevant things."

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"It's species-relevant that you happen to be the only species that can deliberately turn into glowing creatures to be scried in Lialen - isn't it? Are you? It doesn't really get any more or less species-relevant depending on whether or not whoever thinks of it can find a dragon to talk to the dragon council about it for them, anyway."

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"I mean - yes, it is species-relevant that that, but they're not set up to take requests from non-dragons. If you want to talk to them about something dragon-relevant you go through a dragon, and I don't want me and my dragony-ness too close to Lialen theory. They figure if you can't find any dragons to pass up the message it can't be that important."

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"That's very silly of them," says Blueberry. "But I suppose I'm not likely to convince them of that. Anyway, a glowing spell shouldn't be too hard, I'll look one up when I get home. Ideally one that stays on once it's cast and doesn't need active maintenance, but can be turned off afterward. It would probably be inconvenient if you just went around glowing forever."

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"A little bit. I mostly just use my dragon shape to fly and breathe fire occasionally, it wouldn't be that big a deal, but yes, one that you can turn off would improve the situation. When you're home can you also look up that stuff about other creatures turning into unicorns? Dragons don't get species-specific magic from, say, vampires if we turn into those, but since their magic is also shapeshifting it's hard to be sure why."

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"Yes, I'll do that too. Are there wizard spells that - oh, but they'd probably break when you switched - hmm. Do wizard spells on people break when they switch shapes?"

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"No, they remain active, but on whatever shape's in use - like, if you put a sunscreen spell on a vampire they will still be sunscreened in bat shape and still be sunscreened in humanoid shape again."

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"Hmmmm. What if you cast a spell on a specific part of a person? Like, I don't know... making the end of your nose glow?"

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"Sometimes that'll fall apart - oh, you know what's a good example of that, there's this ultra-basic one-trick spell called the Lanfen trace, it makes the tip of your right forefinger leave a glowing white trail wherever you move it until you reverse the spell. If I shift while that's on, my natural form doesn't have fingers per se and the spell breaks."

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"Aha. Hmm... actually, you said you could take objects with you, what about if they're glowing objects?"

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"That'd be a good thing to try, I can get a lamp or something and tuck it and check that, see if it still glows - it might not, but it's an easy test."

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"Yes. And you can do different kinds of glowing things. Does fire burn in Lialen?"

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"Suspect not - if my sleeve catches fire and I shift and shift back it will not be on fire anymore."

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"That seems pretty conclusive," she giggles. "But if you tuck a non-fire lamp that's on and then bring it back does it still... lamp?"

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"I don't know about lamps in particular. I did once tuck a waterspout that was still spouting and then when I shifted again it was still doing so..."

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"Waterspouts spout water?" she guesses. "That's interesting. Is there a way to find out if it was spouting while it was there?"

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"Not without looking and seeing if there's a lot of water floating around the relevant place, I don't think."

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"Hmm. Which you can't do because it's very dark there, right... are there scrying spells that don't rely on light?"

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"There are spells that'll do sound, but I didn't hear anything either."

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"I wonder if you could make one. A scrying spell that shows you what's somewhere without needing the things it shows you to be illuminated where they are."

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"Maybe... I'm envisioning dizzying practical problems with what 'source' the objects are supposed to be lit from in the rendering..."

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"Project an illusion lit as though the objects are in the room the illusion is projected into?" she suggests.

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"What if Lialen is completely tiled with solid stuff...? I guess as long as you aim at specific objects they could be divorced from that context in the scry..."

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"Yes. You could have it show you just your dragon shape, or just the lamp, or whatever. At least, if that's the sort of thing that sort of spell can do."

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"Shouldn't be a problem, it's not customary because most scries are supposed to produce some information about context but - yeah, I think 'my dragon shape and objects tucked therewith' is sufficiently concrete."

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"Great!" beams Blueberry. "You can do that, then. And all the things about glowing things are less urgent but still interesting."

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"And I'll see about a nice crisp analysis of oomph, too."

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"What does an analysis do exactly?"

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"Lets you look at magic. Often other wizard magic, but not necessarily."

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"How does it do that?"

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"I'm not sure what kind of 'how' you mean - for devising one for oomph I'm going to design what I want oomph to look like, since it's not in discrete units like wizarding power I'm probably going to go with a metaphorical substance in a metaphorical graduated cylinder, and then while I have that spell on, if I look at a unicorn I will be able to literally see this cylinder however full it is. I'm probably going to use you as a baseline because I've met you, with enough leeway that if you suddenly doubled in oomph the spell would handle it - I'd make a new version if I needed to handle ranges bigger than that."

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"Yes, that's what I wanted to know - how it presents the information. If it matters to your spell, unicorn magic comes in colours - every unicorn has a specific colour that their horn glows when they're doing magic. My horn doesn't usually glow, but when it does it looks like this." She concentrates for a moment and a pale blue glowing aura appears around her horn; it doesn't quite just emit light, because if that was all, the colour wouldn't be so clear. "So if you made your substance look like the glow, you'd get a little bit of extra information about what the unicorn's magic looked like. The colour doesn't make any practical difference, but it seems tidy to show it anyway."

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"Why is it that your horn doesn't usually glow?" Kaylo wonders. "But yes, that's good to know, it can look like a cylinder full of glow."

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"It's just a trick I can do. I think it's probably related to my special talent, because I haven't heard of anypony else being able to do it, but I don't have my cutie mark yet so I don't know for sure."

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"Huh. When-ish do ponies usually get those?"

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"When they're older than me but not a lot older. I'm six; ponies usually get their cutie marks between eight and ten."

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"But you still have functional talents before then?"

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"Well, it's usually hard to tell. Most ponies get their cutie mark the first time they realize what their talent is, and especially if it's a magic talent and not something like being good at chess, there's no good way to tell the difference between not being able to do it beforehand and just not having done it yet. Maybe if I was an ordinary pony I wouldn't have found out I could make my horn not glow until I was eight, but here I am doing lots of magic before then."

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"Huh. Are there any cases of somepony as young as you getting a cutie mark?"

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"Not that I know of. But it could've happened a few times and just not been noticed by anypony who would've written it down."

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"It's almost like people don't care about researchers having access to statistics. Well, I suppose it'll be informative if you wake up with one on the morning of your birthday."

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She giggles. "Yes."

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"How long are you planning to stay today?" asks Kaylo.

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"At least a few hours, unless your sunset is soon."

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"Sunset's in -" He casts a spell, he peers at the time. "Two angles, why?"

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"I guess it might be different here - in Ponyville most things start to close a little after sunset when it starts getting properly dark, and I'd be allowed to stay at the library but people who didn't know the librarian well would be asked to go home."

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"Library's open all night to students and authorized guests. Aar Kithen watched me summon you, I'd say you're authorized."

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"Well, that's convenient."

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"Yup. Something like twenty-five percent of why I haven't graduated yet."

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"And what are the other three quarters?"

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"Nowhere else obvious to go until I'm old enough to claim my pseudonym, and pissing off my aunt."

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"Do you have an unpleasant aunt?"

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"Yeah, we haven't ever really gotten along."

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"Unpleasant aunts are no fun," says Blueberry. "Clover had one of those. Then she went away."

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"Good for Clover. I'm stuck with my aunt until I run out of ways to piss her off, pretty much - my parents wrote up this eccentric will and I only inherit any of their money if she bails on paying for my education with it, so I'm dragging it out as long as I can or at least until I have some kind of income set up that doesn't involve her."

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"That makes sense. Well, what you're doing makes sense. The eccentric will sounds... eccentric."

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"They were eccentric people," Kaylo sighs.

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"Sometimes people are that. Anyway, let me see if I have a better idea of interworld travel now." She commences scribbling again.

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Kaylo watches.

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Slightly impenetrable notes and occasional clarifying diagrams on the subject of what worlds are and how they relate to each other, with reference to the difference between how Lialen relates to Elcenia and how Elcenia and Equestria relate to each other.