chalk

[alicornucopia]

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.

~~~

with Adarin (Aestrix)

with Ekador (kappa)

with Brilliance (kappa)

with the admin (kappa)

with Teah (kappa)

with Katran (lambda)

with Hall (kappa)

with Joy (kappa)

with Kalinda (Christy Hotwater)

Comments

[joyfulnoise]

"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?"

[alicornucopia]

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

[joyfulnoise]

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

[alicornucopia]

"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."

[joyfulnoise]

"What kinds of people have them?"

[alicornucopia]

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

[joyfulnoise]

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

[alicornucopia]

"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.

[joyfulnoise]

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

[alicornucopia]

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

[joyfulnoise]

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

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah. They taste okay, even conjured?"

[joyfulnoise]

"Yeah!"

[alicornucopia]

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

[or_coincidence]

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.

[alicornucopia]

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!"

[or_coincidence]

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

[alicornucopia]

"Excuse me? You don't look like the treatise on spell invention parameters volume three!"

[or_coincidence]

"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."

[alicornucopia]

"I'd figured he was messing with tasteless illusions. I'm a dragon, I'm just not shaped like one right now."

[or_coincidence]

"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."

[alicornucopia]

"What is going on?"

[or_coincidence]

"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."

[alicornucopia]

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

[or_coincidence]

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