auroraexpress | The Twenty-Eighth Trial

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The Twenty-Eighth Trial

Who: trialgoers
When: Day 60 all day
Where: the trial zone and elsewhere

[Sometime this morning (morning? there's still no sun, so what's the difference), you feel the call to a new Trial.

The entrance to the Trial Zone is a new one: a tower has sprung up in the clearing, like a bit of a fairytale castle. It's made of a sparkling pink granite and has lovely star-themed carvings -- if you can see them behind the excess of neon and lights its been decorated with. If the fairy godmother made a dance club, this would be it!

Rather than a disembodied "come hither", your call is a video on a big screen above the entrance -- a young man in a masquerade mask and a flashy, witchy costume (including a big hat) stands... on top of the tower?? It's hard to see up there, but on the screen you can tell he's got twinkly star-filled hair and a black cat with blue eyes perched on his shoulder. He's also striking a pose.]

Heroes of Distant Stars, gather 'round! I, the mysterious and handsome witch of love, have a Trial for you! Come into my party tower and prove your love to me! If you're not a weenie, that is...

[Upon entering the tower, you find yourself in a vast ballroom. Lit with rainbow lights, magic sparkles, and an excess of blacklights and glowing things, it really does look like a club. Bubbly electronic pop blares over the speakers, though there are several tables and curtained-off booths if you'd prefer to avoid the dance floor. One table includes infinitely re-filling glasses of fruity soda, which lower inhibitions incrementally as you consume them (though only for positive urges). If you wish to get even more in the mood, there's a changing room with costumes -- all hybrids of fantasy and neon pop, just like the decor.

Time to get your love on!]

Rules ☆ Turn-in ☆ Winners & Endgame

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I mean, yeah, it can take that subconscious thought, but does it fall if you forget about the cup completely is the thing I'm wondering about.

That depends on the degree of forgetting. Were something to erase it from my mind entirely, it would likely fall -- but the same would be true for my hand, would it not? As I said, it requires no more effort to maintain than it would to keep the same glass from falling from my grip.

Honestly I find telekinesis easier than hands, and hooves are a whole thing about when you do and do not think, so the metaphor is getting muddled a lot.

Mostly I was wondering if that would be stationary if you forgot it. Which is usually why there are tables, to save smashed cutlery.

Absent an active memetic attack, I believe I've established that the answer is yes.

[he tilts his head, birdlike, to study her; the light reflects off his irises for a moment, faint and crystalline]

Whom do I address, who claims such wisdom in the ways of Essence-wielding? And who is not without power herself, I see.

So you could just leave that glass for like a year? I would think that's easier than holding something in a hand then. Or are hands supposed to be that easy? But no. How does that work? Telekinesis is about wrapping energy around an object to hold it in place as the base concept, is that not what you're doing? I would think that involves at least subconscious thought, but if the memory has to be literally removed, that's something else entirely.

Home calls it magic. I'm Solar Flare.

You make this far more complex than it needs to be. My will serves as much of a limb as my hands, though capable of many things my hands are not. To hold something in place this way...

[the glass drifts back into his hand]

...is no more and no less effort than to hold it in place with my hand. Do you see? Talk of holding something in place for a year misses the point entirely. I could, no doubt, just as I could hold my hand still for such a time if I so desired. But to me, there is little difference between the two, save that my will is stronger.

Of course I'm making it more complex than it needs to be. Making magic do things is often easier than why or how it does things. Like a unicorn can do telekinesis and if they're really good at it, then it doesn't really take thought. But if we forget about it entirely, then it's going to drop. But it's just plain forgetting, not destroying the memory with magic.

I was a student for the immortal ruler of Equestria, understanding how and why is necessary to make new spells which I'm sure she'd want if she was going to tutor me herself, and I've been tasked with figuring out magic in a whole new world that originally didn't have magic, this is a thing I do.

I have told you the how, if not the why; I myself do not know the latter. The truth is as simple as this: my will acts as my hands would act, unless I choose otherwise. I am at no more risk of dropping something I carry with my mind than I am with my hands, and no less. I can state it no more clearly than that.

I go by Tide, until I regain the name I was born with. I've not yet decided whether we are well-met.

Will is how like ninety percent of people doing anything. What force its acting on is the real question. Though now I'm wondering if you just never drop stuff you're physically carrying? Because you make the essence sound super unwavering without memtic attack, but say its like your hand and now I'm wondering if I'm really missing something about hands. I don't usually have them. Do humans just never drop things ever?

...you do realize ending like that just is borderline insulting, right?

[pauses for a moment, thoughtful]

If that is an assumed shape, much is explained. You began by asking whether it was a particular effort to hold the glass in my mind, rather than my hands. For me, what I had done was not dissimilar to passing it from my right hand to my left, so I answered in the negative, as it was no more effort than I had previously been spending. Perhaps the root of the confusion lies there. Though I will say that my will is more dextrous and more capable than my hands, to be entirely accurate.

[at the last, he gives her a dry look]

I have taken a similar insult from the manner in which you pursue your inquiries, which has seemed more geared to disprove my own understanding of my power than to learn from my perspective. It seems now that the distance between our perspectives is greater than I had thought, so if I have been incorrect, you have my apologies.

I was born a unicorn. Four legs, hooves, horn. I drop things left and right as a human. I know some is being foreign, but I imagined humans still dropped things on accident sometimes. I drop things with hooves, just nowhere near as often. Didn't expect humans to permanently hold a thing, but didn't know enough to say they couldn't, but then its how.

Though that does say the table is less effort, which helps some of the confusion. It sounded like all of it was the same effort as the table then just hands to essence. Two parts are equal, not all three.

I wasn't trying to disprove understanding as trying to understand how it was working. A zero effort of table seems like it should be some kind of freeze spell then a hold spell, but minimal effort hold spell makes sense. Something that doesn't make sense means having to make sense of it.

I'm not familiar with the species. Regardless, the rate at which humans drop what they are holding depends on the individual and the circumstances, but I would say that a habit of doing so commonly would mark the human in question as rather clumsy, and that it is rare to do so out of simple forgetfulness; the act of holding the object reminds us of itself.

Correct, to set it down would be slightly less effort than holding it with either will or hands. I had not thought that needed explication, but I see that I was incorrect in that assumption.

The distinction you are making is doubtless quite reasonable when working the magic you know, in the world you were taken from. In mine, a "spell" is something quite different, and the technique I am using is neither of those things; it is an ability to wield my will in place of a limb. Your assumption that the metaphysics of my world are the same as yours has led you to a false conception.

Maybe that's part of it. You can't really feel when you're holding something with telekinesis unless it's way more weight than you can magically hold and that's less the weight as more the magical strain.

I did say it seems silly to exert the extra effort when there was the table.

I think it's a misconception of vernacular. What does 'will' mean in your world?

That would be a core distinction. The tactile feedback I receive is not identical, but I do receive it.

Yes, and it seemed rather condescending at the time -- as though you expected me to justify something you considered frivolous.

What is the difference you suspect lies between our definitions?

Well, it kind of is? Frivolous, I mean. Unicorns use telekinesis a lot because it does alone for more fine tune movement that hooves can't do, but usually if we don't need to be holding something, we put it down. Seems show offy just to hold it up indefinitely.

Though maybe that's because Pegasus and Earth ponies don't....or maybe because most unicorns don't have large magical reserves? I wonder if there's been a study on telekinesis habits of unicorns, that seems like something that would have been. [Tapping her chin thoughtfully.]

You say will like it IS the power that holds something. Like...Essence? Is will? Will can affect magic, yeah, but will and magic are two distinct things. Like if there was something canceling out all magic, willpower still exists. And people of weak will can also do magic, though things usually go real wrong because they lack proper control if they try to do anything fancy.

And why should your standards, rooted in the metaphysics of your world, apply to my use of my own skills? Your judgement is presumptuous and, to borrow a phrase, borderline offensive.

Essence is the power that underlies the world. It is the medium, in this case, by which my will is made manifest. I have drawn a quantity of it into a stable configuration which allows this, and learned techniques to refine my use of it.

....'who claims such wisdom in essence wielding.' [Flat look.] I said something was a bit silly. You, meanwhile, told me to prove my wisdom or was my claim false. Then went off on how you don't know if this is well met.

That's two insults at my character, not that something I did was a bit silly. Especially when I'm the one doing the labor in trying to understand the differences here. Which was why I let go those comments because I assumed it was just how your social etiquette runs.

Then there's the fact you started on the assumption that I knew 'essence wielding' instead of a power that has some similar functions, continued to talk like everything you said was obvious without trying to translate the metaphysics into basic terms that should be easily understandable, so you started the metaphysics assumption while I was trying to figure out the differences which is why I was asking the questions.

But if you just want to continue to insult me like it's fine and then be insulted at me not knowing the differences while trying to figure them out?

Then bye.

[And then she turns and walks away.]

[he makes no move to stop her or try to claim the last word, just turns away to more pleasant conversations]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Twenty-Eighth Trial

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