Indigo Glow

by Lost Deep

The Oldest Peice of Furniture in the World

Twilight and Rarity both stumbled backward, and this time the arc was no instantaneous effect. It seemed to maintain itself, linking the two horns together with a stream of magic. They quickly retreated to opposite corners of the room, but this distance was not enough to stop the effect. Suddenly, in a fit of some mix of brilliance, heroics, and hyperactivity, Pinkie Pie leaped into the stream, severing it. The magic played over Pinkie’s body, and instead of falling back to the ground pinkie floated up to the ceiling.

“Are you two all right?” Twilight asked, not sure what to make of this.

“I’m fine,” Rarity said, checking her horn. “I don’t seem to be infected or otherwise changed.”

“Zero-G, Baby!” Pinkie shouted before the effect wore off, dumping Pinkie on her head.

Twilight sighed. “That was unusual. Rarity, what did it feel like? You’re not hurt, are you?”

Rarity shook her head. “Not in the slightest. In fact, disturbingly enough, it almost felt natural. The idea that anything of that sort would feel natural is an odd one, to be sure. More to the point, however, I think it was feeding on my magic.”

Twilight gasped. “Oh no… if this feeds off of other unicorn’s magic, too… I can’t go see the princesses like this! What if it drains their magic?”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “Twilight, there’s no permanent damage. It just kept me from doing magic for a bit. Even I would notice right away if my core magic ability decreased.”

“Still!” Twilight said, “It could be danger to unicorns around me.”

“And it really isn’t your color,” Rarity sighed, “And being all big and bright makes it stand out a lot, and I know how you don’t like to be the center of attention all the time. I know! I’ll get you a hat! I think you would look dashing in a trilby!”

“What’s a trilby?” Rainbow dash asked idly.

“It’s like a fedora, but with a smaller brim, often turned up in the back,” Rarity explained patiently.

After a moment to ponder this, Rainbow dash asked, “What’s a fedora?”

Princesses Celestia and Luna met Twilight Sparkle in their inner room. To say it was ostentatious would be misleading. It was obviously designed to be ostentatious, as if the builders expected the room to wind up lined with gold and jewels, but in reality it wound up lined with bookcases. The books varied between magic, poetry, diplomacy, history, and fiction. Twilight Sparkle silently noticed the complete Daring Doo series.

The other furniture in the room was expensive, but not honestly as expensive as would be expected for the princesses. There was a finely-crafted mahogany table and chairs, with some artistic swirls but nothing prohibitively complex. The silver tea set was of fine quality, but it was probably less expensive than Fluttershy’s tea set. A could floated near the ceiling, but it seemed to be a natural cloud, instead of one of those designer-brand comfort clouds.

Rainbow Dash had always insisted that natural clouds were straight up better than any artificial one. Twilight silently pondered trying that, now that she had wings and the natural magic to do so.

The princesses were there, of course. Celestia greeted Twilight amicably, and poured her some tea. It was Twilight’s second favorite, and had been her favorite for a great many years. The truth of the matter was that Zecora made the best tea, and that even the most expensive tea available in Canterlot could only be second-best.

Technically third-best, since Twilight’s second favorite tea was infamously cheap.

Twilight took a deep bow, but that was stopped by Celestia giggling. “Easy there, Twilight. You can relax here, here we’re all friends.”

Twilight looked around and smiled. “I admit,” She said, “that this has a lot more casual atmosphere than I expected.”

“Yes,” Luna said, sipping her tea, “the marble and gold trim is mainly a show for the public. Celestia’s real design sense is close to ‘early attic,’ with a bit of ‘antique store’ thrown in.”

Celestia laughed. “Yes, I admit it. There’s a lot of history in this room, if you think about it. Why, this table is older than I am. Amazing what the proper usage of mending and fortifying magic can do.”

Twilight blinked. “Don’t you pre-date known history?”

“Yes,” Celestia said, “Yes, I do. And this table pre-dates me.”

Twilight looked with awe upon the oldest piece of furniture in the world.

“Anyway,” Celestia said, “We do have a specific goal here today. Twilight, if you could please show us your horn?”

Twilight took off her dapper trilby, to let the princesses see her horn and the energy emanating from it. “Please be careful, I don’t want either of you to be…”

“We read your letters, Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia said in an effort to calm her. “We each have a magical ward active, strong enough that even Discord would have trouble affecting us.”

Somewhere, Discord broke into giggles, but this does not really affect this story.

“Indeed, we should be quite safe from stray magical effects for the duration of this meeting,” Luna agreed. As if to rub in that this wasn’t true, an arc of energy flashed out to Luna, momentarily making her coat a shimmering starfield. She gasped, Celestia blinked in surprise, and Twilight winced. It only lasted a moment, of course, but it was still very surprising for everyone involved.

“Impossible,” Celestia said, And then shook her head, “Er, well, not impossible, seeing as it just happened, but still very important.”

“And my ward is still up, so instead of powering through it, we know that it bypassed it, implying that this is a kind of magic completely undiscovered!” Luna exclaimed, gesturing for emphasis. “Quick, use scanning spells. Let’s look at it before it can cause any real trouble.”

A pair of regal horns glowed, and Twilight sighed. She wished that she could be the one doing the examination, instead of the one being examined. “Twilight,” Celestia said, “Have you been having odd dreams, or thoughts, or intuitions?”

Twilight shook her head slightly. “No. Why?”

“Just the kind of thing that commonly winds up happening with odd stuff,” Celestia said. “I’m not sure what this is at all… wait.”

“What?” Twilight asked.

“Luna, what do you think of this?”

“I have no idea.”

“Run an identity.”

“I did. It’s not Twilight.”

“More detail. Isn’t it familiar, though?”

“I gue-what?”

“What?” Twilight asked.

Celestia and Luna stopped, and exchanged looks. They turned away from Twilight and began to whisper to each other.
“You two are scaring me,” Twilight said, “It kind of reminds me of the time that Pinkie Pie completely mixed up every book in my library. She knew that I would find out, freak out, and proceed to re-shelve everything, but she was hesitant to tell me. Except worse. Come on! I’ve gone head to head with the most dangerous villains in Equestria. I can take bad news! If you don’t actually tell me, I’ll have to assume it’s something horrible, like an alien shapeshifter energy form that will eat my brain and turn me into a stronghold for their invasion of Equestria. Or worse. You know, actually, the idea of me changing into some kind of contagious hive entity is scary. Would I still be a person if I was a collective?”

“Uh,” Celestia interrupted her student, knowing that she needed to nip this line of thought in the bud, “In the interest of everyone here not having nightmares tonight, we’ll just tell you. The magic energy signature isn’t yours; it’s a mix of yours and Rarity’s.”

Comments

[Inside A Dream]

This is one amazing story so far!!

[i_am_the_jam]

I wonder why they didn't try using a suppressor ring...

[Lost Deep]

3063889
It could be that such things don't exist in that timeline. It could be that she didn't think that she needed one.
More realistically, though, it's because the author doesn't know they exist or what they do.

[Prane]

I like the concept overall and I'd love to see where it goes!

If you'd like to improve your writing, you could start with giving more depth into particular scenes. Let's take Twilight's weird magic effects on her friends. I understand that they only lasted for a while, but there could be so much more into that - Fluttershy's coiffure in flowers? Why not have Angel or another animal smell them, or even eat them? Or perhaps they were allergenic, Fluttershy's graceful sneezes are always adorable. Oversized Applejack? She'd surely lose her balance, perhaps crash into something? How about her giant hat falling on her friends?

And finally, the effect on Rarity:

Rarity rolled her eyes. “Twilight, there’s no permanent damage. It just kept me from doing magic for a bit. Even I would notice right away if my core magic ability decreased.”

How did she even know that? For me it sounded like if she had a mana bar under her hooves - you could at least make her try to cast a simple spell and describe how she was struggling to do so. And if she really can just feel it, write about "a sudden, unpleasant emptiness washing over her mind".

That's definitely something within your reach - think about how nicely you went into details in decribing Celestia's inner chamber (with the table and the tea set), and apply to other parts of your writing.

And there are some technical thingies I would like to point out:
- capitalization (plenty of spike and twilight's horn, Crystal empire and applejack - they can all be fixed with some careful proofreading)
- scene changes (I suppose you could indicate them with * * * or - - - whenever action goes from one place to another; it's a bit confusing as of now)
- indentations (they're doing their job, but they are missing in few places)

[Lost Deep]

3072689

Thanks! This is exactly the kind of feedback I like.

The notes on the writing are appreciated, but I'm unlikely to go back and refine this story. It's an armchair story; I sit in an armchair and see what I write. If this was any kind of serious work, I would be doing more of that kind of stuff. In fact, I may look for that kind of thing in the serious work I am writing!

As for the proofreading errors, thank you so much! Poor proofreading is honestly a pet peeve of mine, so I would like to take this moment to apologize to other people like that out there. I'm going to go through and find all those places that I can and try to fix them.