Princess Luna approached the door to Star Swirl's lab like a nervous filly who had just gotten herself into trouble. On paper, there was no reason for her to be afraid—this castle "belonged" to Celestia and herself, in a country they ruled. Everypony within who was not one of their servants was at least one of their subjects, Star Swirl included.

But while everypony in the Castle of the Two Sisters knew Celestia by name, sight and cutie mark, some significant majority of their subjects didn't even realize there really was a second princess. That apparently included some of the Solar Guard set outside Star Swirl's door, who squinted at her as though they didn't recognize her cutie mark and were debating whether to send her away.

They didn't try it at least, and Luna knocked several times on the old wood with the front of one hoof, in a special coded pattern that would disable the protection spells meant to allow the grizzled old unicorn to work in peace. Another second later, the door swung open and Luna slipped quickly inside.

There were no windows in Star Swirl's lab, and so the space was kept in perpetual gloom. The roof was vaulted to a height of nearly thirty feet, as high as the most luxurious chambers in the castle. The only light came as an even bath from the four crystals mounted to each structural support pillar, bathing the interior with blue-white light as soft and shadowy as moonlight.

Luna quite liked it in here. The cool of deep earth was nice too, along with the smells of water and wet stone. More things for ponies not to appreciate.

"I hear you over there, Princess!" Star Swirl's voice came echoing through the wide space. "I'm in the back."

Luna walked. There had been a time, decades ago now, when this lab was a hotbed of activity. Unicorns from all over the nascent nation of Equestria visited on a regular basis, taking the spells Star Swirl invented (or just as often, recovered) and spreading them far and wide. There had been lab equipment running all the time back then, beakers frothing, strange contraptions spinning, but all those were quiet now. Dark cloth had been draped over all of them, leaving the room filled with misshapen lumps, silent monuments to the past.

There were many dusty bookshelves, holding the tomes of common spells and charms Star Swirl was most known for. And just like me, nopony notices his important work. In a century, more ponies will know his name for beard grooming than for crop rotation. How is that fair?

There was no answer as Luna hurried to the back of the lab. There the ceilings rose to nearly fifty feet, and the junction of two walls were covered with enormous blackboards, towering over her head. Every surface was covered with intricate spell-diagrams, so complex that she doubted even her older sister would be able to make much sense of them. Illustrations and keys were written in the margins, explanations that Luna could barely even read, much less interpret.

In the very center of this space was Star Swirl, surrounded by more desks, papers and drafting tools than most ponies would ever see. The pony himself looked as he always did—as he always had, really. From her earliest days, Luna remembered this pony as an old, wrinkly stallion, with a gray coat and white mane. Despite being surrounded by work, Star Swirl never let his appearance get completely out of hand. He always smelled clean, his mane was always brushed, and his lab was always tidy.

"Dear Princess," he said, looking up from the thick pad of papers in front of him. He set down the compass and charcoal he'd been using, letting the magic fade from his horn. "It's always a delight to see you... but isn't it a little early for you? Shouldn't you be asleep?"

Luna waved one hoof dismissively, stalking up to the table. "I had an official visit in the Solar Court after my evening's duties," she said. "You'd never guess how it went."

"Oh, I think I have some guess." He smiled sadly. "The ponies you work so hard to serve didn't know who you were or what you were doing there."

Luna stomped one hoof on the stone floor. "I'd like to see the court manage the moon for one night! But..." She swallowed and took a deep breath. It was hard to look into those knowing eyes. Star Swirl didn't have to speak to teach—his silence and meaningful looks whenever a bad argument was made in his presence were often enough. Luna preempted him this time. "I know what you'll say. It's not their fault they don't understand what they can't see. We knew this would happen when we unified—we're separating ponies from the ones who make their lives safe. They're going to start taking those things for granted."

"Indeed," Star Swirl said. "There are ponies like your sister, or my apprentice. Ponies who flourish in the spotlight. Who enjoy parties, and court, and bureaucracy. The world will give them credit for every accomplishment, especially the accomplishments they never had. There are also ponies like us—who work hard doing what's right because it's right, regardless of who knows we did it."

Luna ground her teeth together, searching for a response. While she thought, she stared down at Star Swirl's work, trying to make sense of what he had on the page in front of him. It didn't matter that she had more magic in one hoof than in his whole body—this pony understood magic. He understood magic the way Luna understood the night. "But can't I be both? Like Celestia... she does her duty and ponies love her for it. Don't you have some spell tucked away down here?"

He frowned a little. "A spell to force ponies to admire you?"

"No!" She rolled her eyes. "I don't mean dark magic! You know me better than that. I don't want to change anypony else..." She looked down, away from him, feeling her mane deflate a little. "The only pony who needs to change is me."

Star Swirl didn't answer for several long moments. Luna could practically hear him thinking. Eventually he cleared his throat, straightening a little. "I am... There is a possibility there might be a spell to help you. A possibility. We aren't talking guarantees when we deal with magic this theoretical, Princess. What I've managed to reconstruct about this spell suggests it could be helpful to you, or it might've been used for something completely different."

Given her mood, Luna probably wouldn't have minded if he said she had to sacrifice a goat to power the spell. She looked up, beaming at him. "Really? There's a way? Please, Star Swirl... I must know!"

Star Swirl sighed deeply, then nodded. "Well... you know how difficult it is to change the minds of others. Your dream magic might very well be the most efficient method of doing so known to Equestria. But dreams have limited utility to change more sweeping aspects of a pony's mind. Mind magic can rewrite the memories of others, but a pony using it on themselves is likely to do very serious damage without affecting the changes they truly desire. Consider this the... direct method. As you know, minds are complex things. A change we think will have one impact might instead impose another, one we could not anticipate. But there is another way, one more... harmonious with the natural function of the mind."

He stepped away from his research, walking past Luna back into the rest of his lab. Not towards the door, though. "My research has led me to a conclusion that may be of relevance to you, if you decide to pursue it. Consider the soul of a pony... not as an object within them, but a place. An entire realm unto itself, from which every aspect of that pony descends."

Luna couldn't stay quiet any longer. "Star Swirl, is... is that true?"

He shrugged. "I am reasonably certain the conception has useful utility, yes. True may be a strong word. It is close enough to true that it might well exist within the same universe as the truth. Is that close enough?"

She had no answer, as she never did. Merely being an Alicorn was not in itself enough to grant her understanding of magical concepts like the ones he examined daily. Clover could understand them. So could Celestia, if he took a long time reviewing things and went especially slow. Luna didn't stand much of a chance.

Star Swirl was a better pony than the ones she had left behind in the court. He didn't rub in what she didn't know, didn't even mention it. It never came up that she had wanted to be an apprentice of his, many years ago. She hadn't measured up. "Anyway... if a pony wanted to change herself, she might make use of the same magic we use for teleportation and worldgating to extract an aspect from the Oneiros—the realm of the soul. I expect the realm would consist of places, people and things just like our reality does, each one acting to form the symbols that encompass a pony's life. More importantly, removing the aspect from within your Oneiros would allow you to confront it on conscious terms. Either to slay it entirely, or—much more desirably—to change it."

Luna had to take a minute to consider everything he'd said. "So... you have a spell that would let me remove something from my own... soul. I could take whatever it was that makes ponies fear me. I could take my inability to interact with them on a reasonable basis. My inability to understand their humor. Then... what, exactly?"

Star Swirl shrugged. They'd crossed the lab by then, into the cleared workspace on the far side of the room. The whole area was a recessed sphere about sixty feet across, the rock smooth obsidian instead of the granite bedrock that made the floor. Protection spells were set into the edge of the slightly recessed disk, protecting the rest of the lab from experimental spells. "Nopony has done anything like this, Princess. I know that anything removed would be essentially unreal—only an aspect of yourself. Also, the magic would by its very nature put parts of yourself at risk. Destroying the aspects you removed would destroy them completely from within as well. Your personality might be altered forever, or certain memories or talents erased completely from existence."

He stopped in the very center of the spelling circle, removing a large box of chalk from where it rested on the ground there. Within were a dozen different colors, and several lifted into the air in his magic. He began to draw on the ground, concentrating on several different lines at once, and not one out of place.

"That sounds... bad."

"You could say so," Star Swirl said. "It seems an extreme end to go for a pony who is simply unsatisfied with the way ponies treat her. Wanting to improve yourself is noble... but most ponies don't use magic to do that."

"Would it be faster with magic?" Luna asked, standing just outside the circle of Star Swirl's drawings. "Most ponies I know who have attempted to change important parts about themselves spend many years and fail. I don't know if I can go through years of this, Star Swirl. If I must look out at all those smug faces one more time... a whole court full of nobles who have sat beside me at galas for years and don't even know my name... I don't know what I'll do. Probably something I'll regret."

The unicorn had not slowed in his work, though he looked up to listen. "I had a feeling your mind was made up. But before you cast—and it must be you, even if I may prepare—there are other warnings as well. Dangers that you must clearly know and accept before we may begin."

Luna nodded, waving a hoof dismissively. "Whatever they are, I accept them."

He ignored her. "The spell I am preparing is essentially scrying and teleportation rolled into a conjuring spell. As with any teleportation, it relies on the sympathetic connection a caster maintains with their destination. Picture it unclearly, and you might instead end up summoning... anything."

They shared a shiver right then, both remembering the same event. Equestria had almost not survived it.

"So to stop that from happening..."

"You have to know the destination," Star Swirl said. "In this case... you're looking inward. So how well do you know yourself, Princess?" He set down the chalk then. The entire floor was covered with interlocking diagrams, thousands of characters scrawled in Star Swirl's perfect script. She could just as easily have been staring down at a fine art exhibit. There were two large sections, which even Luna could recognize. One was meant for the caster to stand in, containing and channeling their magic. The other was meant to contain whatever they were summoning, a prison of lines that would keep most demons from escaping into the physical world long enough to be banished again. So long as nothing broke the lines.

"Well enough," Luna said, glaring down at the floor. She would show her sister—she would show everypony. "Show me what to do."

Star Swirl did. It took several hours of instruction, so that it was probably well past noon in the world above before she was finally casting the spell. Even without the exhaustion, it was Luna's weakest time. She probably should've waited until the moon was full again to cast a spell like this, when the essence of Equestria would be serving her instead of resisting her. She didn't wait—if the spell was modest enough for an ordinary pony to cast, then a weakened Alicorn would do fine.

"I can see it," she eventually said, resting on the ground in the center of thousands of glowing runes. Star Swirl stood just outside the circle, close enough for her to hear easily, watching her intently as he had been for the length of the entire spell. Luna couldn't see him anymore, just like she couldn't see the lab, or anything else for that matter.

"There are... trees. Tall evergreens, covering a rocky mountain less steep than those in Equestria. Wait, there's a river down there too... time is moving quickly, the water swims so fast. Oh, now it's frozen! Snow covers everything, and... yes, it's melted again, without ponies to end the season." It felt very much like peering into the dreams of a sleeping pony. She was seeing into a world not her own, a world that was nevertheless a true place, with its own rules that must be obeyed.

Star Swirl's voice came to her as though very distantly, echoing and stretched. "Focus on your sense of time, Luna! All worlds move at their own pace, even the worlds within. You must slow your vision until you can see the lives of whatever beings dwell within."

She could still feel the obsidian under her hooves, still feel the occasional breeze passing through the lab. But her vision and much of her hearing had been completely subsumed by the magic. "What then?" Luna asked, as she began to focus. It took concentration, a rare and precious resource for her while she was already so overwhelmed by the spellcasting. But she could do it. The next winter came and went before the whole world lurched. Suddenly there were birds in the air, familiar species like eagles and falcons and smaller songbirds that she knew from Equestria. Larger animals moved below, such as the bear fishing for salmon in the river with its mouth outstretched to catch them as they swam.

"What am I looking for?" she asked, straining to take it all in. She didn't have a body in this place, and seemed to move with just a thought. "It worked... I can see animals now."

"You aren't looking for an animal," came Star Swirl's reply. "But I don't know what you'll find. Parts of you ought to be intelligent—as intelligent as ponies. It might be a pony you find, or it might be something completely different. The soul isn't really a place. You're interpreting something in terms it never really existed. How your imagination chooses to do so is as impossible to predict as a pony's dreams."

Luna kept searching. She soared over mountains, over rivers and valleys and plains. The world of her thoughts was appropriately vast, an untapped, untamed wild like Equestria had been before ponies arrived. Eventually her vision filled with something else—a city. Its streets were made of even sheets of identical black rock, more perfect than the finest earth-pony flagstones. Its buildings would've towered over the Castle of the Two Sisters and some mountains as well. And its people... nothing like ponies.

They were tall, towering by pony standards, with bare skin, no fur, and a great deal of clothing. "Star Swirl..." she whispered, pausing in her incorporeal flight. "I think I... I think I found it." There were so many beings here! More than there had been ponies in all the pioneers who came to Equestria. How could one pony, even an Alicorn, have so many aspects? "There are too many! How do I find the one I'm looking for?"

The answer came in the same stretched, distorted voice as Star Swirl sounded during the spell. Only this time, there were so many sounds around her that she almost couldn't hear. These beings had vehicles faster and louder than any cart, vehicles that zoomed along their perfect roads flashing and belching fumes. Even so, she could still make out his words. "Search for one who embodies the aspects you wish to change about yourself. It doesn't matter what it looks like—extracting it from within your Oneiros will shape it into something even ordinary ponies can comprehend."

She knew better than to argue with him, or to point out just how difficult that search might be in a world with so many beings. Star Swirl did not exaggerate, ever. When he gave an instruction, it meant that was the only way to proceed. So Luna searched. She could not see into the minds of these beings, if indeed they had minds. She could only listen to them, as they spoke and shouted and whispered and fought in languages with far less music than ponies. She saw no magic in the way they lived their lives, and there was no way for her to bring any of her own magic into the search when it took everything she had just to keep the doorway open.

Eventually she found what she was looking for. While most of the strange beings seemed to be grouping up in the way ponies did, impressing each other and forming intricate social bonds, one of them kept going off on its own. It had one of the metal carts, and over and over in the blur of time she watched it zoom off into the wilderness around the city, to walk alone through the forests. It never went to the same places twice, never seemed to be going anywhere. I know that feeling, Luna thought. It's trying to get away. It wants to be alone. It can't stand the pressure of so many bodies around it. It needs somewhere to think. These beings didn't have wings, they couldn't fly off into the night to seek solitude in the stars. Where else could they go but out into nature?

"So you said... if I kill something in here, it will change me forever, right? What if I were to destroy this creature right here?"

"Be careful!" Star Swirl's voice came back in a sharp, urgent bark. "You can't fill in a hole by blasting it with more magic, you'll only dig it deeper!" A brief pause. "Even if you have located a part of yourself you would wish to erase completely, it would be better to bring it here first. Don’t jump into actions with permanent consequences."

Luna focused, slowing her perception of time as slow as the being was experiencing it. It was hard to judge anything coherent about any of these creatures, with as dissimilar as they looked. No cutie marks, none of the signifying sexual identifiers she was used to, and only a little fur on the top of this one's head. It carried a huge pack of gear, with tents and other travel essentials, moving along a steep rocky trail with an end that was still miles away. "Alright, I can see the one I want. What now?"

To her surprise, the creature stopped walking. It looked up and around, removing a strange object from its ears and inspecting it.

"It must be isolated," Star Swirl said. "The consequences of summoning more than one into the same body could be... very serious. There aren't any other beings that might be accidentally caught in the effects of your summoning spell, right?"

The creature resumed walking. It wasn't rushing, which would have been difficult anyway considering how many supplies it was carrying. "No others. It is alone."

"I hear you!" the creature shouted, looking around itself, searching. "Whoever's hiding at least have the balls to look me in the eye!"

She winced. "Star Swirl, I think it can hear me!"

"Yeah 'it' can!" it said, growing angrier. It removed something small and metallic from its belt, holding it up menacingly and rapidly pointing it around the woods. "I'm armed! Whoever you are... get the hell away!"

Star Swirl's voice came in at about the same time, though thankfully nothing he said was lost in the rush. "Focus as closely as you can on the target! The spell just rips a chunk of the world to bring with you, so you want that chunk to be as small as possible! Narrow as closely as you can, then terminate the spell. The rest is just a matter of remaining conscious long enough to cast.

She obeyed, flying closer to the alien being. She could practically smell its sweat this close, see its wide-eyed terror as it pointed the lump of metal at nothing. What was it, some kind of magical weapon? Luna supposed it didn't matter. This wasn't a person, no matter how real this world seemed. She was looking within her own mind. Even killing it would be no more of a crime than the bleeding process doctors used to balance the humors and treat an overabundance of blood.

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Yeah? Yeah, yeah?!" The creature said some other things, words she took for swearing and insults but which made no sense to her. "How about you show your face then? I don't know what kind of black hat shit this is... NSA or FBI or whoever you are... but I ain’t done nothing wrong. You don't have anything on me!"

Hopefully it was normal for her not to have any idea what this creature was talking about. "I'm about as close as I can get, Star Swirl. You sure it's that easy? Just... end the spell? Haven't you consistently advised against that course in the past?"

"Do it," said Star Swirl and the creature at the same time. Unfortunately, their words diverged from that point, and whatever Star Swirl had been attempting to communicate was swallowed in the creature's furious shouts. "You think just because I don't have some fancy corporate lawyers you can roll all over—"

The alien gasped, words choked off as the spell abruptly ended. Luna felt the jolt along with a jarring deceleration, as though she'd just woken from a dream of falling an enormous distance. She opened her eyes with a gasp, right about the time as the air in front of her exploded.

The open circle in the spell filled in the blink of an eye—with dirt, rocks, even an entire towering pine. She'd ripped a huge chunk out of the trail, big enough that it overflowed the lines, sweeping her and Star Swirl and everything up in a terrible wave. The castle itself shook, rumbling with the force of the earthquake sounding in the deep.

Luna might've been crushed by the force, if something hadn't grabbed onto her with its magic. She opened her eyes and found she'd been teleported inside a protective shield. Star Swirl clenched his teeth together, horn blazing as he held them in place against the tide. When it stopped, there was another flash, and they were standing on the surface of the trail, surrounded by rubble from the world Luna had seen. The lab had been positively decimated—machinery crushed, shelves toppled, whole pillars swept away.

The wizened old unicorn laughed. "P-Princess... I believe we may have to review our terms. This is hardly what I'd call 'focused'."

There was distant shouting from far away. Ponies running, scrambling down towards the lab. The guards outside hadn't opened the door yet, but it was probably only a matter of time now. "Y-yeah..." She chuckled, though she was still shaken from the spell. "I guess... I might've gotten a bit distracted at the end."

Star Swirl shrugged, nudging her affectionately. "No matter, Princess. The world you visited was not a true one... this matter is the creation of your imagination. Your spell was meant to embody a single intelligent creature. As to the rest of this, well. Just as the stuff of dream fades..." He held out one hoof, indicating the trees, rocks, bushes. He waited. Nothing happened. "so too... will..." He put his hoof down, paling. "this."

It didn't.

From not far away, Luna heard a voice, utterly unlike the one she'd been listening to scream at her in the world within. It had the same musical quality she was used to from ponies, and was much higher. Closer to her own than to Star Swirl's. "Shit."

Author's Notes:

A note on story language:

Anyone who watches the show probably remembers the way Princess Luna (and presumably everypony from the era she came from) communicated, using a pseudo-Victorian speech pattern. I've decided that writing an entire story with that language would be positively awful, both to compose and to read, and I've used contemporary language throughout.

Like any story taking place anywhere but the English-speaking world, I consider this a "translation." Hopefully this won't be a deal-breaker for too many people.