"Don't worry about your magic during the trip; I said I'd train you, but we'd have to start with energy conservation first," Spritelight told me with a sideways glance.
"Energy conservation?" I wondered, peering over the edge of the basket to where the other three were looping ropes around their shoulders and forehooves so they could pull us once in the air.
"Yes; it won't do to overload your horn like that. You only ever need a small amount of magic to do common everyday tasks, after all," Spritelight explained calmly.
"Ah," I returned as the balloon set in motion with a light jerk. "I didn't mean to, honestly. I had no problem using my magic yesterday while Josey and me were looking for the map, but that was because it connected to objects when I thought about them. How do you grab at air?"
"You don't," the other sighed. "We told you to warm up the air around you; it's more like sending a vibration into the space around you than trying to grab at something as small as air particles."
"While it's certainly possible, given enough training," she continued, the magic glow around her horn fading out, "it takes years to get to that point. You have heaters in this world, right? Of course you do. They don't grab hold of the air they're warming up either, do they?"
"No," I agreed. "They get warm themselves and the air flows by them naturally."
"Convection, yes. Warm air rises," Spritelight agreed. "You should think of it that way. Josey was surprisingly fast on learning how to control the flow of air, and I've been studying magic all my life. You don't have a hope catching up to either of us if you don't grasp the mechanics behind it."
There was that dig again. She kept doing that, I had noticed; tried to be nice and uplifting, only for then to tag on something which made it seem like it was not worth it.
"Why do you keep doing that? Putting others down, I mean? You're nice one moment, and dismissive the next?" I pointed out, and Spritelight shifted her weight a bit before looking at me.
"I'm not being dismissive," she denied flatly.
"You are though. What's that about not even trying to catch up? It's like you don't think I'm capable," I snorted. "And earlier you were giving off on Christianity like it didn't matter that half the world believes in it. Just because you apparently have gods walking among you doesn't mean our religion is less important to us."
"Well, your planet is so backwards compared to Equestria, is all," Spritelight mumbled dismissively.
"In what way?" I pressed. "Why are we using a balloon which is getting pulled through the air by the others when we could just as well have taken a plane?"
"Do you have a plane on you?" Spritelight demanded, frowning at me. "Do you know how to fly it? Can it take off from that rooftop we were on?"
I frowned back. "Well, no, but..."
"What good is your technology if you can't use it?" the Equestrian unicorn decided. "Our magic is inside of us, always at the ready. We learn to control it from a young age and then it's ours to do with as we please."
"I came into your world trying to help fix those wars that are ongoing on your planet. There's no hope for your future if you keep destroying one another," Spritelight sighed, her expression darkening. "There's too much grief in this place. Not enough kindness."
I stared at her, finally starting to get a hint at the full picture which led to my eventual transformation. "So you did something to cause this."
"Well, yeah, that's the short of it," she agreed with a sigh. "Turns out the magic I'm using to turn you all into ponies was banned for a good reason."
"So why do you keep transforming people?" I wondered, shaking my head at her. "If you know it's bad magic, why not stop doing it?"
"Because the wall of flesh will consume all human life on this planet if we don't stop it and I can't in good conscience leave a group of humans behind when I had to rest in their midst, and Josey agrees with me on that," she threw back.
I stared.
"If we have to evacuate the people of your world anywhere, the only place which is safe for them is Equestria," Spritelight continued. "I can't just throw a bunch of humans into my homeworld. They wouldn't survive in our society without first becoming ponies."
"...why not?" I asked, not getting the big deal.
"Because we need a wholly different diet than you humans do, our homes are made smaller because we are smaller. We don't have the resources to take care of humans," she explained. "We might end up having to put them all out in a field somewhere and let them fend for themselves. And that would have given the Changelings a chance to transform them instead, which would destabilise Equestria."
"I don't understand... you're doing fine over here in our world. You had no trouble making breakfast using our kitchen," I pointed out. "Why not just do that but in reverse for humans?"
"I did," Spritelight sighed, nudging my left shoulder. "I turned you all into ponies so you could all be taken care of by your peers; earthponies by earthponies, pegasi by pegasi, and us unicorns by unicorns. It's far easier than having to figure out how to cater to humans."
"How? How is it easier?!" I decried.
Spritelight looked away at my outburst. "It just is. Don't... I'm using blood magic to help out. It's not like I'm doing this for fun or because I intended to destroy our worlds or anything."
I forced myself to calm down and consider her situation.
She was clearly from a different world, theirs as alien to ours as we were to them.
She made a decision to help us, however misguided it ended up being, and went around doing what she thought was right.
...and had brought forth the end of days in the process.
I lowered my ears and sighed. "There's so much of this I don't know the full story behind... so much that makes no sense... and you being dismissive of my faith, however much I'm doubting it myself, doesn't really help when you, yourself, came here on faith."
"Well, no, I wouldn't call it that," Spritelight protested.
I closed my eyes and leaned my chin against the edge of the basket. "So what do you call it when you just go to a different world to change it without knowing exactly what's going on there? I would call that faith. Maybe not religion, but faith nonetheless."
It was quiet for a brief moment, only the pelting blood rain and wind passing by the balloon as we drifted through the air in the direction of Yellowstone, but then she snorted.
"Okay, maybe I took a leap of faith with this, I can see that," the other unicorn finally decided. "But, tell me; doesn't your world need outside help? You've been at war with one another for so long. All your previous efforts to stop it have been for naught. What about poverty? Famine? Disease? Equestria could help out so much."
"I don't know. I'm just a teenager," I threw back. "But I'd think you could have reached out to the world's governments or something... get diplomatic relations going or such."
"And they would have driven their tanks into Equestria through whatever portal we set up, no thanks," Spritelight grumbled.
I considered her words, opening my left eye to glance at her.
"How would you even know about our situation here? I didn't know about this Equestria place you keep talking about until you dropped out of the sky yesterday," I asked.
"I found documents describing humans visiting our world before, way in the past," Spritelight revealed, shifting her weight a little to get more comfortable. "They mentioned a world called Earth, so I dug deeper."
"The archives at the royal palace in Canterlot only go back so far. A lot of tomes from before its founding are still missing or misplaced. So I went to the palace of the two sisters in the hope of finding more information," she continued.
"I don't know either of those places, or their history," I reiterated.
Spritelight turned her head to study me. "Right, I should simplify it even more. There are written books and scrolls hidden in our world which describe yours, in surprising detail if you can translate the old language used."
"I went from place to place to find them, piecing together that our worlds were once one and the same before something split them apart," she listed. "The documents spoke of a connection existing even after the split, with a mirror allowing one to view the other realm at will in order to do teleconferences with those left on the other side."
I turned my head to face her proper. "A mirror?"
"Yes, it was conveniently located in Canterlot, our main capital, so I headed there next and found the mirror," the other unicorn explained with a surprising amount of patience. "When I activated it, I was met with the most horrendous images I had ever seen; death and destruction all around. I will spare you the details."
"Yes please, we got enough of that on the news already," I agreed.
"It made me realise the worlds were out of balance; Equestria is mostly a harmonious place where everypony can live in peace with each other and their surroundings," she reiterated. "Some small exceptions remain, but nothing as bad as over here."
"So you're a utopia, got it," I yawned. "Sorry, I am just tired, not bored."
"Lean into me if you need to; we can't exactly lie down in this basket," Spritelight offered, smiling weakly. "I tried pleading with our rulers; princesses Celestia and Luna, to try and make a difference here, but they didn't even entertain the thought that Earth was a different place from ours. They still don't, given how Josey said it was just Councillor Puddinghead's name for what is now Canterlot."
Spritelight got a thoughtful look on her face, even as I dared to lean sideways into her soft form.
"I still think they're wrong. There might have been two Earths, but this one could still have been linked to Equestria," she mumbled more to herself than me. "Took me months to find the right spell to open a portal to go see for myself. That one was hidden in the Crystal Empire, next to a scroll describing blood magic. I simply had to read it while I was there."
I closed my eyes and gave a small nod. "Uh-huh... got to do that learning no matter what world you're in, huh?"
"Yes, blood magic is a very different kind of magic from what we unicorns use normally," the other kept going on, not caring that I was slowly drifting off.
Her words started to bleed together as she continued into an explanation of the differences between using the natural energy we stored inside ourselves or the lifeforce of our surroundings or something... I was too tired.
Tired, wet from the blood rain, and a little cold from the wind passing by as we travelled through the air, I leaned in more against her warm pony body and sought comfort in her presence.
The light shaking of the basket definitely helped me to drift off, like a crib being gently rocked by a parent.
Spritelight's words became a murmur, the red light of the apocalyptic sky darkened, and I was out.
