//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 // Story: Wondercolts Forever // by Epsilon-Delta //------------------------------// Sunset walked into the sorcery classroom to find it looked more like a gym than a classroom. There was a wide-open area with no desks or chairs. The walls were lined with what Sunset briefly thought were brooms, but her eyes widened when she realized what they really were. She ran over to the racks to confirm it, and sure enough, they were magic staves! Each one was solid oak, its tip carved into a crescent moon with a blue gemstone floating in the middle. Of course! The human body was so magically feeble that it needed a prosthetic to use magic at all! It all made sense now. Sunset tried to grab one, but they were all chained up, the links enchanted to bind the magic. She hoped someone would come and unlock them soon. “Ah! It’s you! Sunset Shimmer was it?” Rarity asked. Sunset turned around. The rest of the class was here, but Rarity was the only person she recognized. “Yeah.” Sunset kept her gaze averted. She didn’t want to start a fight with anyone and draw attention. She and Rarity hadn't gotten off on a good foot. “There’s no need to be like that.” Rarity laughed. “I’m just glad to see you being responsible and taking classes! I’m sure you’ll be happy and fit in soon.” Sunset glanced over at her. She was being friendlier than Sunset expected. The teacher came in, a woman with a baggy dress. ‘Meadowbrook’ was her name according to the schedule. “Alright! Everyone, please get your staff,” said Meadowbrook. The chains on the staves fell off. Sunset grabbed hers like she was grabbing onto the ledge of a cliff! Yes! This was it! She could feel the magic flowing through it just like it went through a horn! She put one of her new textbooks on the ground and tried levitating it. The results were wobbly at best. She lifted the back end of the book, but only the back end, causing it to flip over. Trying to put it back right, she brought the whole thing up a little, but then she lost her grip. This wasn’t nearly as easy as using something attached to your body, but she was using magic again! It felt like such a huge relief, like having an amputated limb suddenly regrown. There was some hope of using the portal again, though she’d need practice with this thing. “Very impressive for your first day!” Meadowbrook clasped her hands together in praise. “Normally, students need days of practice just to use the staff a little. Have you used magic before?” Bad question! She didn’t know if using magic was normal wherever they came from or not! “Not really. I think I’m just a genius,” said Sunset. She got a few laughs, but no one looks suspicious, at least. “Well, that will certainly be useful to Principal Celestia! This week we’ll be practicing geomancy!” Geomancy wasn’t particularly helpful to Sunset but learning any type of magic would get the ball rolling. Meadowbrook tapped her own staff on the ground and the room changed, the walls vanishing so that the lot of them were suddenly standing in a field of grass that stretched outwards in every direction to the horizon. What spell was that? Where the heck were they?! At least Sunset wasn’t the only one with a strong reaction. The others all seemed to have a sense of wonder at the room changing, even Rarity who’d been here for centuries. Shouldn’t she be used to this by now? “Today we’ll be trying to bloom flowers where there are none.” Meadowbrook swept her staff around in a circle, flowers blooming all around her. “Since all of you already know the principles of flow we’ll skip over that part. The main trick here is to make your staff resonate in imitation of life energies…” About an hour later, Sunset Shimmer was on the cusp of making this work. She’d been paired with Lyra and Rarity for the assignment. The three of them put their staffs together, overlaying the crescents, and held them on top of a flower they’d previously summoned for the last part of today’s assignment. Despite having just met them, the others in her team were able to work together fairly well with her. Sunset was the strongest magic user; Rarity had the most control, and Lyra could react the fastest. Slowly, the flower bud began to grow. Sunset shoved as much energy into the flower as she could. Her focus was terrible, being unused to using a staff. It’d veer off to one side, but Lyra would quickly react, sending it hard back in the right direction. Then it was Rarity’s turn to get everything just the way it should be. Her attention to detail, bringing everything together was impressive even to Sunset. She was used to being surrounded by idiots, but these two were remotely competent. The flower bud continued to grow bigger and bigger until the bulb was just taller than any of the girls. Then came the final, most difficult part. They failed at this five times already. Sunset lifted her staff while the other two swept left and right. They all had to be in sync, or it would wilt. But this time it worked! The bud opened and began to bloom. And just as it finished blooming, the bell rang, the entire place returning to the classroom at the last moment, giving them only the briefest second to see their finished work. But they did do it. Sunset and the other two laughed. They actually did it! Sunset really felt like she wouldn’t have been able to finish that on time! They were the only group that got all the way to the end of the sequence! “At the last second!” Rarity cheered. “Certainly, the most thrilling way to do it.” “That was great!” Lyra held up her hand. “You really are a genius!” “Huh? Oh!” This was the ‘high five’. Sunset slapped Lyra’s hand. She decided that Lyra and Rarity actually weren’t so bad if you got past all the insanity. “Well I couldn’t have done it without you,” Sunset admitted. “You’re pretty fast.” “Oh? The genius is being humble now?” Rarity gave her a high five as well, smiling wide. “I see you’re smiling a lot more than before. I told you you’d love taking classes.” Sunset did catch herself smiling a bit more than maybe she should given her situation. “You all did wonderful work today, class!” Meadowbrook encouraged them. “Be sure to turn in your staff on the way out.” “Is there any homework?” Sunset asked. “Homework?” Meadowbrook asked. “What’s that?” “Never mind.” Sunset didn’t want to give her any ideas. A high school without homework did sound perfect. Sunset also learned today that there were no grades in this school either. You just focused on learning. That shouldn’t sound surprising for a school, but it did. Sunset returned her staff, smile fading. She’d need to find her own staff if she wanted to get out of here. For a minute there, Sunset completely forgot about her actual mission of opening a portal. That was actually… kind of fun. It was a lot less serious than the magic lessons she was used to; people were joking through half of it. Back under Celestia, she had managed to drown entire buildings under vines without feeling any sense of accomplishment at all, only feeling that it still wasn’t enough. Yet somehow making a single flower bloom was a rush now. Maybe the difference was because Sunset was free of her old mentor, no longer being pushed as hard as possible towards a goal she wasn’t even allowed to know about. Princess Celestia never actually cared about Sunset or teaching her magic and friendship. It was all just a means to an end. “Are you alright, dear?” Rarity snapped her out of her daze. Sunset realized she’d been staring blankly at the staff. “Oh! Yeah! Just got lost in thought,” said Sunset. “Hey, Rarity. How much does buying your own staff cost here?” “It depends on how nice of a staff you’re looking for. But they usually cost two thousand dollars minimum.” 2,000… dollars? The money she’d been given added up to 200, so ten weeks? Screw it. If Sunset ever got a good idea for escaping, she’d steal a staff and run. Though if she was going to be stuck here longer buying, one to practice with on her own time would be a good idea. “Hey!” Lyra ran up to her. “You’re cool. If you want to practice magic out of class, you can always join the mage fight club! It’s in the basement after school. I’ll be there and so will Bonbon - she’s cool!” “Uh! You know, that’s probably a good idea, sure.” Sunset needed the practice. Lyra held her thumb up before running to her next class. Did Sunset actually make a friend already? It seemed so hard before, even with Celestia desperately shoving it down her throat in a mad attempt to fulfill her schemes. She’d probably ruin it in a day or two like always… Sunset ran after Rarity who was a good deal ahead of her. “Hey, Rarity?” Sunset asked. “I’m curious why you waited so long to take sorcery.” “Whatever do you mean?” Rarity asked. “You’ve been here hundreds of years, right?” Sunset reminded her. “Oh!” Rarity laughed. “Why I’ve finished the sorcery courses many times over, of course! They really are one of my favorites to take. Why I finished going through all seven of them, then seven more semesters in grand sorcery just five years ago. I’m always excited to take them!” That didn’t sound right. Something wrong was happening here. Rarity was nowhere near as good as someone who practiced for years should be. Did she seriously forget everything and go back to being a novice in just five years? But Sunset learned her lesson about asking questions that would make her seem overly ignorant. Despite having a million more things to ask, she kept her mouth shut, simply nodding and smiling before changing the subject again. This gave her a new theory, though. What if Principal Celestia was eating their memories? Or maybe it was their knowledge, but it was likely something similar to that. It was the best guess as to what they were feeding Celestia. So far, anyway. They’d gain new memories and knowledge in class, then Celestia would absorb it keeping them in eternal mental stasis. She’d have to test whether this absorption was passive or active. The minute she got home, she’d write down the capital of every Equestrian province and every other nation. She’d write down all sorts of facts about Equestria and quiz herself every day to see if any of her memories or knowledge were fading.