Starlight's lecture on the nature of magic


                                            >"Anon, I can't do that, that's not how it works."

                                            "Why not? How does it work anyways?"

                                            >"Well do you want the crash course or the full lecture?"

                                            "Uhh, fuck it, give me the lecture."

                                            >"Ugh, fine." Her words imperfectly hide her excitement to talk about this topic.

                                            >"First things first is that you need to understand that magic inhabits all space equally. The air, the ground, living beings and so on.."

                                            "Uh, huh."

                                            >"By concentrating magic in various volumes and shapes you can create, not just matter, but also energy."

                                            >She twirls her right hoof and tilts her head from side to side as she explains.

                                            >"In pretty much all cases an instrument is needed to manipulate magical fields. The horn of a unicorn is a perfect tool but you can also see other creatures using magic, such as the eyes of a cockatrice turning their victims to stone."

                                            "Hah, cock."

                                            >"So to elaborate let's use a simple spell as an example. Teleportation!"

                                            "Isn't teleportation a fairly difficult spell to master?"

                                            >"It is one of the first spells you learn after passing the basic magical training."

                                            "Soo it's the simplest advanced spell you can cast?" You try to clarify.

                                            >"In a way, yeah! One more thing before we get into it, concentration of magic into a magical field requires focus of equal proportion and obviously it cannot be maintained over large distances due to exponential rise in the effort on the caster's side."

                                            "I see, so you can't actually conjure up an item and have it exist for as long as you want."

                                            >"Correct! Well, not quite, but let's not get ahead of ourselves."

                                            "What about Discord?"

                                            >"Well of course the primordial being of chaos can manipulate magic like no one's business, but get this, you know the chocolate rain he does to cover the world? Well it doesn't cover the *whole* world, only a large region."

                                            "I see, so if someone were to be turned into a pig they could just walk far enough away from Discord and they would turn back the moment they leave the invisible radius."

                                            >"Back to teleportation." Her voice lowers and she carefully picks her words.

                                            >"The magical act of teleportation is split into three parts. The first is the creation of a magical duplicate. By concentrating magic you can create a magical clone of yourself in a different spot in the world."

                                            >"Guess what, you can't clone the soul of a living being. The magical duplicate is essentially an unthinking magical statue bearing your likeness."

                                            >"But what you can do is transfer your own essence, your soul, through magical currents over to the mass of you-shaped magic."

                                            "Incredible. But wait, didn't you say all magical fields eventually disperse after their caster gets tired or leaves too far away?"

                                            >"That's all correct. This is where the third act come into play. Using magic (again) you disintegrate your original body and reassemble it in place of the magical clone. The one your soul inhabited temporarily."

                                            "That's amazing. And to think it all happens instantly."

                                            >"Hah!" She couldn't help herself but gloat catching you in her trap.

                                            >"Incorrect my star pupil. I have discovered that spells contain... a fourth dimension!"

                                            "Time?!"

                                            >"Time! Now obviously I don't mean the wind up time, that's variable from caster to caster. What I mean is that teleportation takes exactly one sixty millionth of a second."

                                            >"A split second, to disperse matter and reassemble it elsewhere. Unnoticeable and seemingly instant, but still present. Like the thickness of a piece of paper making the paper three dimensional."

                                            >This comes as mostly meaningless to you but Starlight's excited stance on it gives you the impression that it's a huge breakthrough in her understanding of magic.

                                            "Going all the way back. The creation of a clone and it's existence for a split second. This is how you made your similo duplexis work isn't it." You make the connection.

                                            >"Oh I wish it was that simple. Again, cloning a soul of a being is impossible. You can create a clone but the best it can do is be used as a standing decoy and only if you're close enough to maintain it."

                                            "So how did you figure this out?"

                                            >"So in theory, what do you think would happen if I were to switch my soul between the two bodies indefinitely? Teleporting my body six million times a second."

                                            "Well, first of all could you maintain it? Assuming yes, I can only say you effectively get two Starlights." You go for the obvious answer.

                                            >"You wish. Since the clone still bears the memory of my bodily self, when I enter my clone I do the same act as my original self. Meaning, my clone can only mirror my actions. With that tiny time difference of course."

                                            "Ah. So we've upgraded from a still decoy to a moving one. As long as the original is doing the same actions."

                                            >"Yes.." she sighs. "This was not unknown to any school of magic by the way. But it gave me an idea. One that took me three months to develop and two more to create.. a prototype let's call it."

                                            >"I'm listening."

                                            >"What if my clone.." she pauses ".. wasn't an exact copy of me?"

                                            >The cogs in your head turn but they're not coming up with anything obvious this time around.

                                            >"What if.. I wrote it's own memory? When my soul is transferred over it is not aware it's a copy. So in theory if I were to create an 'imperfect copy' if you will, would it behave differently?"

                                            >"Cue a three month research and studying session dedicated to learning the secrets of mind manipulation.."

                                            "Uh oh." you cut in.

                                            >She continues "...followed by two months of writing a convincing backstory to my self-aware clone."

                                            "How convincing does it have to be?"

                                            >"Very. Otherwise the dissonance between the soul and the mind causes severe mental disorders."

                                            "That sounds scary."

                                            >"It's not that bad but I digress."

                                            "Finally, did it work?"

                                            >"The amount of joy and pride I felt when I turned my head to the left and my clone turned it to the right is unpararelled."

                                            >You feel your own heart tug.

                                            >"I went to perfect the clone to behave exactly like me and then wrote a few more for special purposes."

                                            "Let me break this down for.. well for myself." You start.

                                            "Using the power of ceaseless teleportation you trick everyone into seeing and feeling two Starlights, even though there only exist one at a time."

                                            "Then - one of those Starlights - has its own memory, so when you inhabit it you are capable of not doing the same thing as your original. Effectively making a fully functioning clone."

                                            >"You've got it!"

                                            "So.. could you maybe teleport in two places at once?"

                                            >"I'm sorry Anon. There just can't be a foursome with three Starlights."