Winter Wane 7th 3473 EE
Figuring this hetro-thaumic triune out is proving a lot harder than we expected. Everything in the literature assumes a homo-thaumic combination, three sets of unicorn magic. I knew we'd have to make major adaptations, but we're practically having to rewrite the scroll from scratch. It's awesome!
I do have some progress to report. In normal power sharing rituals, the 'pushing together' of the different unicorn magical energies produces a repulsive effect. The thaumic energy level in the centre of the ritual is much higher than the ambient, and like a raised water source, tries to flow outwards carrying the sources with it.
Note to self: A raised water source would be a practical alternate method of creating a shower of hot water? Creating a cloud from the bath water works, but only for pegasi. You could have a series of holes in the bottom of the tub, uncovered by a panel when you wanted it. Think about this later.
A good part of the design of a ritual diagram for a power sharing ritual, whether triune or pentagram, is building in anchoring to stop the unicorns in question being thrown to opposite ends of the room. Ohhh! Actually, if we could do this for a triune of pegasi, and deliberately broke one corner of the triune, it would make an excellent launcher, even better than a catapult. That sounds like fun!
However, the pressure isn't there when mixing different types of magic. Instead, it appears that attempting to share the powers of different races of ponies produces an attractive force. After some experimentation, I've come up with a hypothesis. The mixing of magic seems to create a sink, or a cancelling out, drawing more ambient magic in, and the ponies involved with it.
This could prove useful, as it the magical energy can be redirected into the spell effect, meaning we may get an overall power level of more than six times our original powers. However, we need external anchors of some kind to avoid being sucked into the effect ourselves.
If that happened, it could result in anything from the creation of a single creature combining all our bodies and minds (which, no matter how much I love my sister and cousin, is closer than I want to get) to what happened to the enchanted iron statues we'd used as place-holders. Ouch!
On the other hand, our protective shields held, and some of the drops of molten iron landed in a water bath on my alchemy workbench. They formed perfect spheres, or pretty near. I wonder if we can duplicate the effect deliberately (dropping molten iron into water to get spheres, not blowing up parts of the lab). I've worked out plenty of ways to do that, sometimes intentionally.
Note to self: Idea! Could a group of those metal balls arranged around an axle act like a set of rollers under a big block? Might be an alternative to greasing cart axles. Balls that bear the load of a cart, an interesting thought, but what to call them?
I just realised those iron statues came out of nowhere... ouch, now that's a creepy thought, statues that are enchanted to animate, and attack ponies, but can only move when your not looking. Don't blink!
Note to self: Write up the idea as a story, so I can tell it to Luna the next time we have a sleep-over. It'll scare her out of her socks! It may even be better than the Alfalfa monster gag.
So, iron statues. Gems are an excellent buffer and mediator for unicorn energies especially moonstone and diamond, and often used at the point where the unicorn actually stands in a ritual diagram to connect her into the network. Luna long since invented rune-sets she could carve into the stones to buffer her higher power level. With some theoretical research from me, and some arithmancy from Atlas we've improved it even further, creating large capacity magical stores.
Since we are breaking new ground, and occasionally parts of the walls in our research, we really need stand-ins for ourselves. Atlas commissioned a couple of dozen half scale statues of us, with a gap where the heart was. Replace that with a gem filled up with magic, add some power-flow runes to allow it to ground and a control rune linked to the original, and you have the perfect stand-in, able to feed magic into the triune on command.
The real trick was figuring out a storage medium for me. Atlas was easy, almost any gem fits with an Earth pony, but to our surprise, simple quartz worked best. Or maybe not so surprising, it's solid, useful and practical, so there is a fit. But pegasi don't have any earth linkage, as we found out in our earlier experiments. However, a crystal of ice condensed from a cloud works nicely and even takes the power-runes easily. Keeping it frozen is easy enough with my powers, or Luna's.
You may be wondering how we transferred power, Earth ponies and pegasi not being able to manifest it except through our abilities? Well, we did have all that research on wands, and it was illegal to take it any further. However adapting it to draw off power into a storage element rather than directing it into a spell effect is not. Of course, we're keeping this whole thing a deathly secret anyway, against spies.
Oh on a completely different topic, Atlas has finally popped the question to Blue Mane! I was beginning to think we'd have to lock the pair of them in a room until cousin Atlas stallioned up and asked her. We are having the wedding next month, on the fourth of Budding. It shall be the greatest party in the history of the Fife of Maresia.
Note to self: Find out what they want as a wedding gift. Invent it if necessary. Maybe the shower design I was thinking about.
I'm definitely giving them a ride up to the edge of the air, so they can see what Luna and I saw. From up there, you don't see the Fifes, and you don't see different types of pony. All you see is a green, growing land. Maybe if more ponies saw it that way, we wouldn't need to do what we're doing, but I'm the only pegasus who can fly that high, especially with a chariot.
And diving back down at insane speeds was fun! Even Luna enjoyed it, once she'd cast some of those new sticking charms she's developing for horse-shoes to keep her in the chariot.
Enough wool-gathering, I've got to go collect some ingredients for filtering some of the magical reagents Luna's using in her latest spell effort... Oh, it looks like we need fresh wool as one of the ingredients, so looks like I'm wool-gathering after all.