The shadows were where it belonged. Where it thrived. Hidden from the sight of most mortal creatures, a beast slumbered. The corpse of its most recent kill sat well within reach, sitting uneaten as a warning to its fellows. This was its lair, and it wouldn’t tolerate intruders.
Of course, for every beast, there was something it feared. Something more menacing, more tenacious, more deadly. It lived in the shadows of the lair of one such creature. Ten times as large as it, this fearsome beast delighted in nothing more than tormenting those smaller and weaker than it.
“Opal, it’s time for your bath,” a voice sing-songed.
Case in point.
Opal’s eyes shot open as waves of sheer terror ran through her. Bath time. She scanned around her, looking through the holes between the legs of the sofa she had chosen to hide under. She ignored the mouse—Rarity could deal with that when it began to stink, Opal had decided—in favor of keeping watch for her owner.
Suddenly, a dull pressure washed over her, and her hidey-hole began to glow a faint blue. She had been found! Captured! The cat began to thrash about in a vain attempt to escape Rarity’s magical hold.
“Don’t struggle so much, Opal. You’re only making it worse for yourself,” Rarity said in a half-bored tone, dragging the cat out from underneath the sofa and floating her into the air. Rarity waited until Opal’s struggles waned to a dull thrash before continuing, “We do this every week, and you’ve never once escaped. Just give in, get it over with, and then we’ll all be happier, okay?”
Opal answered with a hiss. Give in to bath time? Never! In addition to redoubling her efforts to escape, Opal also began to claw the air around herself, hoping for a stray hit on her tormentor.
Rarity sighed and started bringing her cat to the wash basin, ready to be covering up scratches like she did every week.
A loud knock at the door pulled Twilight Sparkle from her reading. She wiped her eyes, hoping that action would ease the weight of marathoning an entire series on the potential applications of Griffonian plants from them. It didn’t work. She groaned as she stood up on stiff legs, half-stumbling over to the door of her library. “It’s a public building,” she mumbled, “but they always seem to knock.” She opened the door, taking a second to process that the mass of white and purple in front of her was in fact Rarity. “Good,” she paused to look at the sky, “morning.” She did a double-take. “It’s morning already?”
“It’s past morning,” Rarity replied. “It’s probably close to ten or eleven. Did you sleep at all last night.”
“Yes,” Twilight said decisively.
Rarity cocked an eyebrow.
“Maybe,” Twilight amended.
Rarity smiled slightly.
“No,” Twilight finally admitted. “Not a bit of sleep last night.”
“What were you reading that was so fascinating that you didn’t sleep?” Rarity asked.
“Well, most of it was about the magical and mundane effects of Griffonian plants,” the librarian said. “At the beginning, I was reading a book of prophecies whenever I needed a break from studying a thousand-year-old spellbook that Princess Celestia gave me. Nopony’s touched it in centuries, and she wants me to get the whole thing read by this time next week. However, it was just so complex that I had to take a break. At some point in the night, I got all the way through the prophecy book, so I grabbed other books at random until I found one I hadn’t read yet. It was just so fascinating, and I grabbed the next one when I was done instead of the spellbook.”
“Well, let’s take a look at this spellbook of yours,” Rarity said, stepping past Twilight into the library. “It seems like it could be interesting, and you have a bit of catching up to do.”
“No, you were here for a reason,” Twilight said, following at the other mare’s heels. “I’d hate to burden you when you have other things to do.”
“I was just checking in on a friend,” Rarity said. “I hadn’t talked with you for a few days, so I figured a visit was long overdue. Besides, this spellbook sounds fascinating.”
“It’s just a bunch of jumbled words,” Twilight grumbled as they approached a table in the center of the library. A large tome sat open, the current page barely away from the cover. “I wouldn’t even know that they’re spells if the Princess didn’t tell me herself.”
“Then you should look at them differently,” Rarity said. “How long did you spend on these first few pages?”
“A couple hours,” the other mare grumbled. “They just don’t make any sense to me.”
“A fresh pair of eyes can sometimes see things that were missed before,” Rarity commented. She scanned the open book, frowning more and more as she got farther in. “What language is this written in? These are obviously Equestrian letters, but they’re not in any order that I know of.”
“I said it was gibberish,” Twilight pouted. “What can you even get from this?”
sneppah gnihtoN syad emoS
Rucco shtaEd ylemiTnU, sRehto
sevlesmeht etavele NaC enoyrevE
gnirEffus fo eerf level a ot
EcnemeheV htiw rehtona enO evoL
thgin eht otni Af tsal evoL taht ekam
ecneserp ruoy morf eelf livE ekaM
liomruT ni dlrow a ot epoH gnirb dna
“What is even the point of the capitalization?” Rarity asked. “The only time it even repeats is with the word right there.” She pointed to the word “evoL”. She looked at the notes scattered around the desk, finding Twilight had transcribed the capital letters on their own in an attempt to decipher their meaning.
NSRETURNCEEEVOLALEMTH
Return. Important, or coincidental?
Rarity’s face screwed up. “Is this even a language, or is Princess Celestia playing a joke on you?”
“I don’t think she’s playing a joke on me,” Twilight said. Rarity opened the tome to a random page, to find it wasn’t even written in Equestrian runes. “She was really serious when she told me that I had to—in no uncertain terms—learn the spells in this time in a little over a week.”
“Wait,” Rarity said. “Give this a look.”
“Rarity, it took me a bit to understand that I was seeing you at the front door. I don’t think I’m going to be able to pin down letters while they insist on swimming around the page.”
“Well, I found you a spell, so—” Rarity started.
“You found me what?” Twilight exclaimed, jumping up to the book and almost shoving Rarity away in her haste. “How did you find it? It looks like it isn’t even written in Equestrian. A close neighbor-language, maybe, but the runes are all off.”
“I’ll contribute this to you being tired,” Rarity teased as she flipped the tome upside down.
“They’re still wrong, Rarity,” Twilight deadpanned.
“Look at it in a mirror, then,” Rarity said. “It was flipped vertically. Rotate that ninety degrees, and it’s only flipped horizontally.”
Twilight’s horn lit up as a small mirror floated down the stairs, wrapped in a purple aura. She presented the face of the page to the mirror, mouthing words as they became clear to her. “Wow, this is really simple. I think any unicorn in existence could cast this spell.”
“Really? Then teach it to me,” Rarity said. “I’d love to be the first to cast this spell in centuries.”
“It might not be safe,” Twilight warned. “I don’t know fully what all the parts of it do, just the general jist of things.”
“What do you think it does?” Rarity asked.
Twilight lit up as she started talking about magic. “It’s called a ‘save point’ spell. It’s designed so that you can take an image and burn it into your memory, per se. It keeps you from forgetting something, be it a place, event, or idea.”
“How could that be dangerous?” Rarity asked.
“If you cast it wrong, you could seriously damage yourself,” Twilight explained. “Just because you can cast it doesn’t mean you can cast it right.”
“I have you to teach me,” Rarity said. “If you can’t teach somepony how to cast a spell properly, then nopony can.”
After a few minutes of arguing, Twilight agreed to teach Rarity how to cast the spell, given that they both get a few hours of rest. “There’s no reason for either of us to be exhausted when this spell is cast. Less danger that way.”
An hour after noon, the duo went down to Twilight’s basement. “We’ll do this with something you know very well,” Twilight said. “I want you to close your eyes and imagine the perfect dress. See all the frills and laces, and all the other parts dresses have.” At Rarity’s look, she coughed and continued. “When you have that in mind, you need to follow my instructions carefully, or something might go wrong.”
Twilight then led Rarity through the steps of casting the spell. To Rarity, it felt wrong. Every time a unicorn used magic, they touched the fabric of the universe, communing with reality in a primal manner. Even the weakest of levitation spells brought about this communion. The spell Rarity was casting, though, seemed to not touch as deeply, nor for as long. But as soon as these thoughts entered her mind, she felt her connection sever as her spell ended.
“Did it work?” Twilight asked.
Thinking back to the dress pattern she had forgotten about during her musings, Rarity was shocked to find that it was preserved in her mind exactly as she first imagined it. More worryingly, the feeling of wrongness and worry that plagued her mind during the spell were equally as strong. “Like a charm,” Rarity said, masking her nervousness.
“Okay, now try to save the room around you,” Twilight said. “This should be easier. Just focus on what you see and cast the spell. When it’s finished, what you see is what is saved.”
When Rarity cast the spell that time, there was no feeling of wrongness. The spell functioned properly, and she felt herself release a breath that she didn’t even know she was holding.
All of the sudden, her connection snapped, sending pain snapping deep into her brain. Her vision turned white, searing her eyes. Around her, winds arose, sending everything tumbling across the room. Rarity could do nothing but scream as she felt her mind and soul phasing in and out of her body. A separate screaming was heard from all directions, starting low but growing sharply. As suddenly as it started, the effects of the magic stopped, and Rarity collapsed onto the ground of the trashed library basement.
“That didn’t go as planned,” Twilight muttered as she picked herself up from the ground. “I didn't even know the spell could do that. Are you okay, Rarity?” She paused for a second to let the mare respond. “Rarity?” Another pause. “Rarity?”