Canterlot’s Academy of Magic: a prestigious institute which had schooled Equestria’s most gifted unicorns for countless generations, giving rise to some of the greatest magical minds the kingdom had ever known.

Immensely busy by day, deserted by night. Or, one should say, deserted most nights.

***

Moonlight shone down into the room through countless windows, illuminating row upon row of desks and tables which groaned under the weight of various gems, tomes and scrolls seemingly stacked onto them haphazardly.

At the center of the room stood one table - tidier than the rest - that held only a single, faceted piece of amethyst, roughly the size of a grown stallion’s head. Two male unicorns - one with a grey coat and a black mane, the other with a yellow coat and a brown mane - flanked the table, staring at the gem in complete silence.

Minutes passed and still not a word was spoken. Suddenly, the grey-coated one shifted his gaze to the other pony.

He hesitated for a few moments, a glimmer of doubt in his blue eyes. When he finally spoke his voice sounded calm and dignified, but the shaking of his legs betrayed him.

“You sure you want to go through with this, Tomar?”

His yellow companion didn't react at first, as if he had trouble tearing his attention away from the gem, but eventually he looked at his friend, his green eyes filled with all the determination the other’s lacked.

“We’ve come too far to stop, Arcus. Could you really take a step back now and pretend you’re not running away from the greatest breakthrough in the history of thought projection?”

He paused for a moment as he shifted his gaze back to the amethyst in front of him. “You knew the risks, I knew the risks... But we agreed it was worth it. We agreed to try. And I intend to, with or without you.”

Arcus sighed deeply and shook his head, trying his best to keep his nerves in check. “You know I’d never leave you hanging... Together then?”

“Together,” Tomar agreed, “on three?”

Arcus nodded his approval. “One.”

“Two.”

“Three!” they both yelled as their horns lit up and discharged a carefully balanced amount of magic into the gem between them. The amethyst seemed to absorb both spells effortlessly, lighting up with a faint inner glow.

For all the fuss the two stallions had been making, not much seemed to be happening at all, apart from the gem’s glow slowly intensifying. Arcus raised an eyebrow. “Did it work? Perhaps we made a mistake...”

“No mistake,” Arcus reassured him. “The enchantments on the gem were flawless: I checked them thrice. But perhaps this is the wro-”

A bright flash burst forth from the gem, bathing the entire room in unnatural, purple light. Arcus fell silent as his body collapsed onto the floor, in perfect synchronisation with Tomar’s.

The two stallions found themselves floating in a vast expanse of nothingness; a greyness that stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction.

As far as they could tell, there was no source of light for them to even see anything by, but it didn’t seem to matter. They both opened their mouths several times, as if to speak, but neither one of them seemed able to put his thoughts into words as their minds reeled to overcome the shock.

Surprisingly enough, it was Arcus, normally always the least collected of the two, who first regained his bearings.

“Wh... where are we?” he muttered.

Those few short words seemed sufficient to pull Tomar out of his stupor as well, and he shook his head to dispel the last mists of surprise from his mind.

“It... it worked? We did it! A mental connection to a plane of pure thoughts - the discovery of the century! Think what wonders we could create here,” he said excitedly, looking left and right as if to drink in all the details of the grey, featureless world.

Arcus started looking around as well, his mouth wide open in awe. “It’s different from what I imagined, but does this mean we can...” he mused as he closed his eyes, focusing intently on the image of a single tree on a grassy hill. He banished all other thoughts and pictured not only what the scene would look like, but also what it would smell like. What it would feel like. What someone would hear when the leaves rustled in the wind.

And suddenly, his thoughts became reality. Tomar let out a little yelp of surprise as the greyness around him warped and shifted, a grassy hill forming right under his feet. And on top of that hill a single, marvelous tree - just where Arcus had wanted it to be.

He opened his eyes, only to see Tomar grinning at him as if they were both little schoolcolts again, planning their next act of mischief. He laughed heartily as he observed the wonder that had transpired, and his friend soon joined in.

Once they got over their initial elation they nodded at each other, both certain that they were thinking exactly the same thing. With joined effort and renewed determination, they turned their minds to the task at hand.

And so a new world was born.