Axioms

by NoPoemGuy

Chapter One - Prologue

Outside the halls of Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, summer was in full swing.

The most recent issue of the Royal Canterlot Census had asked every pony in the region which season was their favorite: over 80% had answered 'summer'. In fact, that question had sparked a formal petition to shave a month off both spring and autumn and reallocate them to summer, and to take half a month off each side of winter to help even out the difference, but a contingent of winter sports enthusiast ponies had opposed it so vigorously that it never reached Canterlot for a vote. Still, pretty much everypony loved summer, and it was not hard to see why. For one, it was beautiful; the flora was in full swing, and lush green grass, towering trees, and fabulous flowers of every variety stretched in all directions. It didn't take a nature buff to love the atmosphere. The sun was also at peak performance, casting its warming rays over all of Equestria, so nopony had to grow out their coat or put on a jacket to enjoy the great outdoors. However, the biggest reason for summer's overwhelming popularity, though most ponies wouldn't admit it, was the low workload. It just seemed that every occupation across the board became easier during summer. The agricultural earth ponies in Dodge Junction had planted their crops that spring and wouldn't be harvesting until the fall, so aside from the occasional watering or resoiling, they were free to kick back and do whatever they pleased. The temperature-controlling unicorns in Ponyville no longer had to keep every residence heated as they did throughout winter, and instead were only required to use their cooling spells, which were much simpler and easier. The weather pegasi had it the easiest of all; with almost no snowflakes, rain clouds, or thunderstorms to send down to earth, they literally spent their workdays sleeping on clouds. And of course, school was out for the whole season, so every colt and filly of every type could frolic, play, or just relax.

Almost every colt and filly, that is. On this particular day, here at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, the halls were buzzing with activity. The huge glass-paned doors to the building were propped open to allow for a steady stream of young unicorns and their families, relatives, and friends moving in and out. A line had formed snaking through the foyer, leading up to a desk with a rather bored-looking unicorn behind it, tossing paperwork at the parents to be filled out for their children. Throughout all this, all eyes were fixated on a small wooden door at the end of a long hallway in the back of the room, from which at any moment a child might emerge, either jumping excitedly and clutching an acceptance letter, or dejectedly hanging their head in shame as they made the long march back to the foyer. For here at the most prestigious magic school in the world, today was Entrance Examination Day.

Adjacent to the door of fate was another door, this one much larger and equipped with an ornate golden handle. It opened into a huge lecture hall, the biggest in the school, with an array of several hundred red-cushioned chairs laid out in front of a stage. Today, this room served as a waiting area; after finishing the paperwork, the ponies were hustled in here to await their turn to enter the examination room. There were only around twenty actual applicants in the room, but it was so full that several ponies had to seat themselves in the aisles. A chance to get into a magic school of this caliber was no small matter in anypony's book; every child had a big cheering section. Some of them were limited to the child's parents, close friends, and mentors, while others appeared to have shipped their entire hometowns to Canterlot for the day. The whole room was obnoxiously noisy, with everypony jabbering amongst themselves or making new acquaintances, sharing stories and jokes, bragging about all the amazing things their esteemed young scholars had done.

In this boisterous environment of ponies of every age, it was quite easy to pick out the actual applicants to the school; they were the ones who weren't talking. They were sitting on chairs or in corners, anywhere they could get a little piece of solace from the surrounding hubbub, with their noses buried in books, trying desperately to fill their little heads with as much information as possible before they were whisked away to the examination room to spit it all out again. A couple of them were up on the stage with their horns pointed at a ball or stone or textbook levitating in the air before them, practicing simple spells for the skills portion of the exam. There were a few other characteristics that singled these fillies out from the crowd. One was the look of apprehensive dread that universally stretched across all of their faces. Not only were they about to take a test that would either skyrocket them to the top of scholarly excellence or toss them back into their lowly grade school classrooms, but they also had to do it in front of essentially everyone they knew. The prospect of letting themselves as well as their families and friends down was enough to cause a few pairs of eyes to well up with nervous tears. But if their behaviors weren't enough to give away the fact they were auditioning for the greatest school in the land, their flanks were absolutely plenty. These ponies were truly the best, the brightest, the strongest unicorn fillies in Equestria, and their cutie marks showed it. One orange-colored filly sitting on the ground in a corner, huddled over The Complete Collection of Equestrian Wildlife, was marked with a butterfly net swinging down onto an open book, symbolizing her uncanny ability to remember absolutely anything and everything she read, even if just in passing. Another one, colored brown and located on the stage and slowly moving a rather heavy-looking rock in circles above his head, had a barbell floated above a cloud on his flank, a metaphor for the immense amount of raw magical power he was capable of channeling through his horn. Each and every one of them was gifted with a cutie mark that showcased his or her mastery of learning and magic.

Except one.

“Mommy, look at all the other fillies!” Twilight Sparkle shouted, bouncing up and down to get her mother's attention from her father, with whom she had been having a hushed conversation. “Every one of them already has a cutie mark! Every single one!”

Twilight's mother smiled down at her. She and her husband were the only two ponies accompanying their daughter today, certainly the smallest contingent of any filly in the room. “And honey, why should that matter at all?”

“Because I don't have mine yet!” Twilight shrieked, actually jumping up and down now. “They've all already found out that their special talents are magic, and I haven't!”

“Oh, honey, I'm sure tons of ponies get accepted here before they get their cutie marks, it just means that –"

“That's not true! Did you see the plaque on the wall, right outside this room? It had pictures of all the ponies that entered the school, and their names, towns of origin, and cutie marks! They ALL had one!”

“Dear –"

“And did you pay any attention to the ponies that were walking out of that exam room while we were filling out paperwork? Two of them didn't have cutie marks, just like me! And NEITHER of them got in! I mean, I know correlation doesn't imply causation, but it still means that –"

“Twilight, please, calm down!” her father said sternly, prompting Twilight to stop jumping and stare back up at him with wild, expectant eyes. “You're easily the youngest filly in this room! Of course you don't have a cutie mark yet, because getting your cutie mark is just a part of growing up. You'll get yours when the time is right, when you're old enough. It won't make a bit of difference in how you do on the exam, I promise.”

For a moment, that seemed to have calmed the purple filly down, but after a mere couple seconds she let out a gasp and went right back to hopping. “That doesn't make me feel better at all! If having a cutie mark correlates so strongly with age, that could just mean that ponies without cuties marks are doomed to fail the exam because they're not old enough –”

“The only thing that matters at this school is how smart you are,” her father asserted. “Tell me again, what is Twilight's Third Axiom?"

Twilight returned to the ground once again. “I am a smart pony,” she recited.

“You are a very smart pony,” her mother said kindly. She lowered her head until it was level with Twilight, staring into her daughter's eyes. “That's the truth. And I know how hard you've studied for today. It doesn't matter how old or strong any of the other students are, because I know that if you try your very best, you can make it.”

Twilight gazed right back at her mother. There was a certain sereneness dancing about her that seemed to calm the younger pony's nerves. “Okay,” she said.

Her mother leaned forward and gently nuzzled her. “But don't forget, even if you don't do as well as you hope, your father and I are still both very, very proud of you.”

…....…

Twilight continued watching her mother as she stood back up to her full height, towering over her own demure size, and reengaged her father in conversation.

Not helping, Mom, she thought sourly. You might as well have just said, 'I'll be really happy if you pass the exam, but I don't really expect you to.' Actually, now that she had sounded it out in her head, that mirrored her own views on the situation pretty well. Waiting in line out in the foyer, she had seen a total of eighteen fillies walk out of that wooden door, and only four of them had a letter of acceptance in their mouths. It was a small sample size to be sure, but she couldn't reasonably assume that any more than a third of the applicants passed the test. And here she was, the tiny little purple filly with the bare flank, trying to get into that lucky third…

Twilight gulped and forced her eyes downward, onto the open book in front of her. Celestial Mechanics, it was called. She was perfectly aware that this was very advanced stuff, probably beyond the scope of the exam and really more closely related to mathematics than magic, but it couldn't hurt to know more than she needed, right? It was certainly a better use of her time than reviewing the recommended material. She had received a list of books to review in the mail about a month prior, which she had promptly picked up from the library and rolled through in two days. Almost all of it was basic knowledge about magical history and the properties of magic – half of the books were ones she had actually read before – and the rest was just some “advanced” information about how to determine which spells one can cast, how to efficiently practice a spell so one can cast it in under a month, blah, blah, blah. She had quickly skimmed it to make sure there were no hidden important factoids in the text and then returned them to the library. It wasn't really relevant to her anyway, since she could cast any spell she wanted just by reading about it.

Why did so many ponies seem to have so much trouble casting spells, anyway? The theory behind it was clear enough. 'Magic comes from the mind'. Twilight had learned that all the way back in Magic Kindergarten; every single day, everypony in her class had been required to stand up and recite it along with the Equestrian Anthem. All a unicorn had to do was form an image of what it wanted to do in its head, then let it out through its horn. And the Canterlot Library of Magic had shelves and shelves of basically any spell she could possibly think of, complete with a full description of exactly what the spell did, a guide on how to form the thought and transmute it into magic, and even pictures detailing every step along the way. 'Magic comes from the mind' – how much easier could it be? Yet she had never heard the phrase uttered again after Magic Kindergarten. Instead she found herself asked to recite phrases like 'my magic centers around my talents' and 'if at first you don't succeed, practice, practice, practice': all very good advice, but wasn't it worth repeating that unicorns could cast any spell in the world just by thinking about it the right way? Everywhere she went in Canterlot, she saw advertisements posted for seminars on how to learn a spell to cook your own breakfast, or keep your own lawn trimmed neatly, or keep yourself from snoring at night. Why, just this past week, she had overheard her mother bursting into the house and crying, 'honey, I finally did it!' 'What's that, sweetie?' 'I learned that spell to keep my tail straightened!'

Maybe Mom needs to go back to Magic Kindergarten, Twilight thought with a snicker.

Oh right, exam. She again looked down to Celestial Mechanics. Laid out before her were the laws that governed the movements of the sun, the earth, the stars, every body in the entire universe, expressed in simple ink on paper. It absolutely fascinated Twilight that such huge objects, millions and millions of tons and farther away in space than the edge of pony comprehension, were actually controlled by something: invisible, omnipresent forces strong enough to toss planets across the cosmos on a whim without the help of any unicorn magic whatsoever. Okay, I've been lying to myself, I didn't really bring this book here to study, I'm just trying to calm myself down. And calm her down it did. Even here in this room, about to take a test that would change the rest of her life, she was filled with the same wonder that had enveloped her three years ago, on the first day she saw Celestia raise the sun. That day had marked the beginning of an era for her. Standing in the shadow of the awe-inspiring alicorn flying a hundred feet in the air as the sun's morning rays shone down all around her, she had vowed to herself to strive to be just like Princess Celestia. It was her unspoken daydream that followed her as she attended her lectures at school, studied her textbooks, and lay awake in bed late at night: someday, I'll be the pony raising the sun.

She now knew a lot more about magic than she had back then, knew that it was absurd to think that a unicorn like her could produce even a thousandth of the magical energy needed for such a spell, but it didn't stop her from dreaming. As a matter of fact, the very book laying at her hooves had given her a monumental step toward that impossible goal. It turned out that the concept of 'raising' the sun didn't make any sense at all. The sun was no different than all the other stars in the sky, a gigantic superheated ball of gas millions of miles away that the earth revolved around once a year. It was really much like the earth, with its own rotation, weather patterns and everything. But the earth was a special place unlike any other planet or star known to ponies, a place where magical energy ran supreme. While other cosmic bodies kept spinning and spinning forever, magic tended to slow the earth down until it ground to a standstill; it needed a little push to keep it going. So it was highly improbable that Princess Celestia was actually moving the sun in enormous circles every day; it seemed far more likely that she was simply nudging the earth to keep its angular velocity relatively constant, which would be a much, much easier feat.

Much easier. Yeah right. Now all I have to do is learn how to move six billion trillion tons of rock, and I'll be all set to rule Equestria. In any case, she couldn't help but feel proud of herself for figuring that out, just a little bit.

“Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight jerked her head away from Celestial Mechanics and looked up to the door of the lecture hall, where a tall silvery unicorn magically holding a clipboard was looking directly at her. As were her parents. As was everyone else in the room.

So much for the serene beauty of the cosmos. The terror that she had been fighting back all day crashed into her brain like a meteorite, sending a tremor down her spine to each of her limbs and immediately turning the world around her into a confusing whitish haze. “That's you, honey!” her mother whispered excitedly from somewhere close by.

“I know, I know, I know!” hissed Twilight. With one long, deep breath, she composed herself enough to struggle to her feet and start walking toward the silver unicorn. She was vaguely aware of a chorus of “good luck!” and “go get 'em!” being chanted all around her. Her stomach felt slightly nauseous, but not nearly so much as her brain, which immediately threw up and began regurgitating every fact it could dig up. Princess Celestia has been the ruler of Equestria for exactly 1048 years. The secondary colors of light are cyan, magenta, and yellow. Star Swirl the Bearded was one of history's greatest contributors to magic, inventing two hundred twenty six spells – wait, was it two hundred twenty seven? Had Star Swirl created the Crystal Ball from Thin Air spell, or had Reginald Cantermole done that? Oh no, I didn't study enough! I should have brought something to read besides that stupid physics book –

Too late. After a period of time that somehow seemed both like four seconds and four hours, she was standing outside the dark wooden door, the door that led to the biggest success or the biggest failure of her life.

She looked over her shoulder. A white unicorn filly was shuffling down the hallway in the other direction, accompanied by several older ponies on either side. Judging by the droop in her tail, she had taken the 'biggest failure' route.

So, that makes four out of nineteen. I really hope I can pull through this. Twenty five percent is such a nice round number…

So is twenty percent, I guess.

Her brain wasn't helping matters. She gulped and looked upward to her parents, hoping a for a bit of reassurance from them instead. They both smiled widely, clearly trying to conceal their nervousness, but the widened eyes and increased breath rates on both of them was a dead giveaway. Nope, nothing from them either. She was alone. Just her and her wits.

The wooden door suddenly began to glow a bright yellow and swung open. “Come in,” said a voice whose owner she couldn't see yet.

“Don't forget,” her father whispered, “Third Axiom.”

I am a smart pony, a mechanical voice chanted inside her. Well, that had helped a little bit. With one final breath, she entered.

The examination hall was much like the waiting room, only smaller. Two huge windows towered over her on the wall to the left, stretching from her neck level to the vaulted ceiling. Several ornate banners were hung from above, sporting the school's red-and-yellow colors, framing a rather lonely-looking blackboard equipped with an eraser and two pieces of chalk. To her right sat an array of the same red-backed plush seats, except these were not filled with rowdy ponyfolk from all corners of Equestria. The only ponies making use of these were four unicorns, two male and two female, each equipped with a pencil and clipboard. All four of them were glaring sternly down at her, as though she had just burst in on a very fancy party.

'Smile, smile, smile!' her mother had told her. She looked up at them and pasted a huge, cheesy, 'it's my birthday' grin across her face. All her other smiles had taken the day off on account of being terrified out of her mind, so this would have to do. “Good afternoon,” she said clearly. She wasn't sure if she was being way too soft or way too loud, but it was definitely one of the two. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. I come from –"

“Yes, yes, we know,” drawled the leftmost unicorn. “Your exam will consist of ten questions, followed by a skills test. You may answer the questions either verbally or on the blackboard behind you. Please tell us when you are ready to begin.”

She wasn't ready. Not another day, a week, a year of locking herself in her room to study could make her feel ready. “I'm ready,” she said.

“Question one,” stated the unicorn on the right, a gray-colored male. “List the steps that should be taken when attempting to learn a new spell.”

Twilight blinked; she hadn't seen that coming. It wasn't that the question was outrageous or unfair or anything, she had just expected something a little bit...harder. “Step one, identify a need. Step two, find all relevant material. Step three, practice until success. Step four, ensure there are no side effects. Step five, practice until perfection.” That was absolutely correct, taken verbatim from A Course in Magic, Part Five. She stared up at the proctors with a somewhat more believable smile, hoping for some small piece of approval.

“Question two,” said the gray unicorn. “Describe the process of multiplying together two ponynomials.”

A math question? But she was applying to a magic school! This was completely unfair, why hadn't anyone told her...oh, wait, she knew this too.

“You, uh...” she started. It was a little bit hard to put into words, it would have helped to have a pencil or a pen or...a piece of chalk. Laughing nervously, she turned to face the chalkboard and stared at the black slate surface for a moment, trying to clear her head. The bit of magic she was about to perform would require all of her concentration.

Telekinesis was the basis of all unicorn magic; Twilight had found that once she got into the right mindset, nearly every spell could be reduced to forms of telekinesis, so of course had a great deal of practice doing it. It required a very clear view of what she wanted to move, where it was right now, and where she wanted it to go in the future. It was the third part that made writing so hard: each and every letter had many intricate turns that had to be executed perfectly, lest the whole thing be rendered illegible. On top of that, the chalk had to be exactly the same distance from the board at all times, or it would either break or not make any mark at all.

Twilight had been writing with magic for a couple of years now. Given that such magic wasn't in the standard unicorn curriculum for several more years and she had to practice it all on her own with a little help from her parents, it had taken her a while to get even the basics down; for weeks she had scribbled erratically all over the page, cut deep marks in the paper, and sometimes sent the pencil flying clear across the room. She'd eventually gotten the hang of it though, and now she had a rather elementary, but still legible, script of big block letters. It was a good thing too: how embarrassing would it be if she auditioned at a magic school by writing out math problems with a pencil in her mouth?

Alright, focus. She walked forward until her horn was nearly touching the surface of the blackboard and looked downward. Piece of white chalk, nearly cylindrical. An inch and a half long, a half inch in diameter, weight approximately half an ounce. Distance from the tip of my horn: about six inches in front and twelve inches below. Using numbers wasn't how she had been taught in school, but Twilight loved numbers, and it worked just fine for her. She sent a short burst a magic at the chalk to test her estimations; it rattled softly. Okay, upward at half a foot per second. Move.

With that, she sent a steady flow of magic into her horn, and felt the soft vibrations in the front of her head that any unicorn felt when casting any spell. The chalk stick began to emanate a soft purple light and rose slowly into the air, her eyes carefully following its progress in case it slipped out of her control and fell.

Next came the hardest part. Rotate forty degrees clockwise in the plane of the blackboard. Rotate eighty degrees counterclockwise in the plane of the floor. The chalk was now oriented perpendicular to the board. Move toward the blackboard, slowly. She perked her ears, listening for the telltale tap of chalk against slate. Stop.

Open paren. Now a sort of muscle memory kicked in; she had drawn every character so many times that she no longer needed to give specific instructions to create each one. A large white semicircle had soon appeared on the board. Capital A. Capital X. Plus. Capital B…

Ponynomial multiplication was one of those things that, in her opinion, had no business being taught in any math textbook: it was just too obvious. Her copy of Algebra for Unicorns had spent an entire chapter explaining in excruciating detail the exact formulas for multiplying together ponynomials of degree two, three, and four. There were pages filled with equations such as

(AX+B)(CX+D)=ACX^2+(AD+BC)X+BD
(AX^2+BX+C)(DX+E)=ADX^3+(AE+BD)X^2+(BE+CD)X+CE

...and so forth. Was she actually expected memorize this? It was just a basic application of the distributive rule of multiplication over addition, and the book seemed to have turned it into some voodoo only Star Swirl himself was privileged to comprehend. One the first things Twilight had learned on her quest for knowledge was that if there was logic behind something, she had to understand that logic to understand the thing itself. So important was this realization, in fact, that she had termed it Twilight's First Axiom.

Twilight's Axioms. A set of facts on which she could call whenever she had difficulty approaching a subject. She had gotten the term from one of her early math books; an axiom was a fundamental principle assumed to be true in order to understand everything else. Her mom and dad thought it was a mighty good joke, and had hung the list above their kitchen counter, constantly reminding her of it at every turn. But it wasn't a joke. These were Twilight's Axioms. They were the assumptions she had to make to learn anything. They were how she saw the world.

Twilight's First Axiom: If something makes sense, it can be understood.

“I'm done,” she said, carefully lowering the chalk back into the tray and releasing it. She had simply written out the first few formulas for ponynomial multiplication – not from memory, sweet Celestia not from memory, she had derived them herself on the spot.

“Question three,” began the proctor.

A variety of questions were thrown her way: some about math, some about magic, some about history. All of them covered material well outside of the expected curriculum for a filly her age, and only seemed to get harder as the exam drew on. Yet every time she posed each question to her brain, her brain confidently yielded an answer. Ponynomials weren't the only thing she had wrapped her mind around; mathematical concepts, complicated spells, the basic laws of magic itself, all these things she had brought under the domain of logic using Axiom One. In fact, she had never encountered a single situation where that thought process didn't work.

Twilight's Second Axiom: Everything makes sense.

But there was still one little scrap of fear in the back of her mind. Even as she correctly answered question after question, as she slowly built herself a fortress of confidence, she knew that the skills exam loomed on the horizon. She fearfully imagined a huge gray boulder being rolled out in front of her by several groaning ponies at once; she could almost hear the voice of the proctor instructing, 'lift it'. And she wouldn't be able to. Twilight was simply not a particularly powerful unicorn, and no amount of reading spell books would change that. There weren't any weights to lift or calisthenics to perform to increase her magical output; she was born with a certain amount of power in her horn, and she was stuck with it. It wasn't that she was incredibly weak or anything, she was actually a little above the average...but she wasn't sure if 'a little above average' would cut it at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.

She remembered seeing one particular colt back in the waiting room. He had been levitating a positively massive rock, at least two hundred pounds, and seemed to be only slightly discomforted by the effort.

She couldn't have done that in a hundred years.

“Question ten.” Twilight inhaled sharply. This was the last one, surely it would be the hardest of all. “Describe the motion of the planets.”

Twilight almost passed out on the spot. A tsunami of elation had washed over her brain, and it took her a few seconds to get any sort of coherent thought in order. Celestial Mechanics! They actually gave me a question about Celestial Mechanics! She hurriedly whipped around and trotted to the blackboard, picked up the chalk in her magical grasp and sketched a large circle. This was probably supposed to be the zinger, the question to tear down the hopes of all the little geniuses, a problem no filly her age could possibly be expected to answer. But she was going to answer it, and her answer was going to be right.

It didn't make any sense, really. How did she of all ponies get here, taking the most difficult academic test for fillies in Equestria and ripping it to pieces? When there were scores of young unicorns everywhere, even in her very class, that carried amounts of magical energy she would never wield, why was she the one reading advanced magic books, casting with minimal effort spells that would take most adults a month to learn? If she didn't have any great power, why was she so powerful?

Twilight's Third Axiom: I am a smart pony.

“Finished.” With a definitive clink, she let the chalk fall into the tray and turned to face the row of professors. They all stared unrelentingly at her, but their visages carried a slightly different tone than before. Did she dare to think they were...impressed?

“That concludes the knowledge portion of the exam,” said the yellow-colored unicorn on the left. “We will now begin the...skills test.” Her horn glowed for a fraction of a second, and a blue double door at the far end of the room swung open.

I can't mess this up now. Not after a knowledge exam like that. Come on, bring out the massive rock. I'll pick it up. Somehow.

An orange earth pony, the first one she had seen in this building today, was wheeling a wooden cart toward her. The cart was topped with a bed of straw, and on top of that sat – Twilight's heart dropped a few inches – a rock. It wasn't as large as she had imagined, though; it was about the size of her head. It also looked rather peculiar, roughly egg shaped and colored purple with purple spots. She didn't think she'd have too much trouble lifting it, if that was what she was expected to do…

She then noticed a poster on the side of the cart. It displayed a picture of the same rock, cut into two pieces and split apart, and in between them...a dragon?

Twilight's eyes widened. A dragon egg! She cast her mental eye back to a book about dragons she'd read years ago, which had included a picture of an egg; yes, this looked exactly the same! She'd never dreamed she'd actually see one in real life, these were really, really rare, and supposedly filled with all sorts of interesting magical properties, like how the dragon hatchlings could actually talk with their mothers from the egg, and how notoriously difficult they were to crack...what was a priceless relic like that doing in a school? Surely a fossil like that belonged in a museum, or at least under the study of some renowned paleontologist.

That's when she saw the egg move. Just a small vibration, enough that it could have been a strong gust of wind that did it, but the air in the room was as still as a frozen lake, and the conclusion was unmistakable. The dragon was alive! This was no fossil, she was actually standing not three feet from a real, live dragon egg. She suddenly felt greatly honored to be where she was. This would surely be the only time in her life she'd ever get to see an object like this, she couldn't wait to tell the rest of her class during show-and-tell…

TWILIGHT, YOU'RE IN AN EXAM! her practical side inwardly screamed.

Oh, right. Placing her wonder aside as best she could, she turned to regard the egg a little more inquisitively. What am I supposed to do with this? It couldn't be something trivial like motion exercises; they could have used a rock for that. And she definitely wasn't supposed to crack it, there was a living, breathing dragon in there, and it took an incredibly powerful unicorn to do that anyway.

Or...was she?

She focused her gaze on the poster again. The egg was definitely cracked, split right down the middle, and the two arrows pointing away from their central axis seemed to confirm that it was meant to be broken. And yet the dragon seemed as alive and healthy as could be portrayed by such a picture.

Am I supposed to...hatch it?

“Well, Miss Sparkle?” the leftmost proctor said in a somewhat bored tone.

Hatch an egg?

Hatch a DRAGON egg?!

Fort Confidence came crashing down, the walls giving way to the tide of sheer panic and tumbling to the ground, leaving behind nothing but a burning pile of rubble. This had to be a joke. Twilight didn't know the first thing about hatching dragons, the only thing she knew was it was an enormously difficult task usually relegated to a whole team of advanced unicorns, and given that the only other unicorns in the room were the ones grading her, she didn't seem to have such a team at her disposal. There was nothing in her brain anywhere that could even get her started. She was only barely able to pull together enough mental coherence to stammer, “I, I, I don't know if, I mean, it's –“

“Miss Sparkle, I will be perfectly honest with you,” drawled the unicorn on the right. “This is not our standard skills test. Princess Celestia herself asked us to administer this test to you specifically. So perhaps you could at least attempt it before giving up immediately?”

“Wait, what?” Twilight blurted aloud without really meaning to. Princess Celestia? Princess Celestia said I could do this?!

I've never even met Princess Celestia!

And by some miracle of the brain, that was what it took to calm her down. Celestia was her idol, the pony she inwardly strove to be like someday. She didn't know the princess, but it seemed that the princess somehow knew her. And whatever she had seen, it had been impressive enough to trust her with this monstrous test. The princess was telling Twilight that she was capable of this, and if that was the case, who was Twilight to argue? If Celestia said she could do it…

...Then maybe Celestia was right.

But still, her princess's confidence alone wasn't going to get her through the infamously thick shell of a dragon's egg. If only she knew how to begin –

Twilight's Fourth Axiom: When in doubt, use Science.

Science was mental shorthand for a textbook called A Short Course on the Scientific Method for Earth Ponies, which currently occupied an honored position on the very top shelf of her personal bookcase. She and that book had been together since Magic Kindergarten; when leaving school one day, she had quite literally found it lying in the street, its gray cover battered and covered in mud. That was like throwing a gorgeous diamond in the trash to Twilight – even if it had no relevance to her, a book was still a book – and she had taken it home with her, intending to clean it up as best as she could, skim through it, then donate it to the library.

By the time she went to bed that night, she had read the entire thing three times, memorized large sections of it word-for-word, painstakingly scrubbed off all the grime until it looked almost new, and drafted a letter to her teacher suggesting that it be immediately incorporated into the unicorn curriculum.

The book was phenomenal. All her textbooks on magic were filled with interesting facts on how magic had progressed to where it was today, how she was supposed to wield it, and so forth, but this one taught her how to think, how to figure out magic for herself. She liked to think that the day Celestia raised the sun was the starting line of her academic journey, but science was the compass that had guided her all along the way. It was the reason she was already learning advanced teleportation spells while most of her class were struggling to magically write their names. Without that book, the rest of the Axioms probably wouldn't even exist. Axiom Four really didn't deserve to be the last one, it should have been the first, but it had already become so deeply ingrained in her mind by the time she started the list that she hadn't even thought of it as an Axiom: to her, it was the just the obvious way to solve big problems.

And there was one whopper of a problem in front of her now. But with Celestia's trust backing her up and the scientific method in her hooves, there was a chance – just a chance – that she could figure something out. She closed her eyes, exhaled slowly, and relinquished control of her thought process to Science. And the wheels began turning.

First, clearly define the problem.

“There is a live dragon egg on a cart in front of me,” she muttered under her breath, softly enough that nopony could hear but herself. “I have to hatch it.” She always did the first step out loud; sometimes there was an obvious solution that just didn't present itself until she heard herself say it. In this case it did nothing but cast another cloud of futility over the situation, but science-mode Twilight wasn't quick to give in to panic.

Next, gather data.

She still didn't know anything about the task ahead of her, and there were no books or teachers at her disposal, so she was stuck with whatever she could discern using her own senses. Taking a step forward, she examined the egg closely. It was the same shape as any other egg, only much larger, about ten inches in height. It was dotted by a series of dark purple spots spread uniformly across its surface. As she watched, it trembled again, as though whatever lay inside was getting restless.

That wasn't much to go off of. Luckily, being a unicorn had its benefits. Knowing what the egg's exterior looked like was useful, but to get the full picture, she needed to know what was happening on the inside. For that, a quick Close Range Scrying Spell would do nicely.

Twilight declined her neck until her horn pointed straight at the egg. She imagined she was trying to telekinetically push it over, but just as the spell reached her horn, she distorted it, enough that the telekinesis would fail. In fact, the magic energy wouldn't do anything at all, and instead would pass straight through the shell, erratically bouncing off of any matter it encountered. She immediately stopped the flow of magic and cleared her mind of any thought whatsoever, leaving a blank slate. In a small fraction of a second, the distorted magic had bounced off of its target and returned to her horn, carrying with it information about whatever it had struck. Her brain quickly and automatically constructed a full three-dimensional representation of the egg's inside, complete with color and data on the interior's temperature and material composition.

Just another spell she wasn't supposed to have any inkling of how to cast for another twenty years.

The baby dragon was huge. It was bent over double inside its tiny prison, its back smashed against one side of the egg while its head, arms, and leg scrunched up against the other. There was hardly any free space inside the egg at all. The shell itself appeared to be incredibly strong and brittle, made of some material Twilight couldn't recognize, but it was substantially weakened by the interior force exerted upon it. If this doesn't mean the dragon's ready to come out, then I don't know what does.

“We don't have all day,” came the bored voice of the yellow unicorn.

Come on Science, hurry up, they're going to fail us if we take much longer and we haven't even tried a single spell yet –

No. This has to be done the right way or it isn't going to work at all. Besides, Princess Celestia herself told them about me, I don't think we're going to get kicked out until we've given this everything we've got.

Alright, fine. But that's all the data we're going to get, can we move on already?

Step three: form a hypothesis.

No matter how much she didn't like it, there seemed to be one clear path before her. She had to crack the egg. There wasn't a complicated magical lock or puzzle of any sort, at least not that she could detect, just an egg and a baby dragon. And surely the extreme pressure of dragon scales pushing against the shell would make the job easier.

So, how would she go about breaking the egg?

The same way she'd go about breaking any other egg.

I hypothesize that this dragon can be hatched using the Simple Yolk Removal spell. It was one of the first spells she could remember seeing performed; her mother had used it frequently whenever she made Twilight's favorite oats-and-grass omelette. Twilight herself had not actually cast it in months, but she didn't expect to receive any trouble from a simple spell like this.

Step four: test the hypothesis.

She stared intently at her target. Dragon egg. Ten inches high, eight inches diameter, about fifteen pounds. Distance from the tip of my horn: twelve inches horizontal. Perform a sinusoidal motion, amplitude a tenth of an inch, sixty hertz. Move. The egg began to shake rapidly, barely moving from its resting place, but enough that she could see the motion by looking closely. Enough that its structural integrity was weakened even further. Enough that a powerful force applied directly to the apex, its weakest point, might be sufficient to shatter it.

Twilight narrowed her eyes and collected all the magical energy she could muster into her horn. This was it. The final moment. Either the egg would splinter into tiny pieces and she'd joyfully run out of the room clutching her acceptance certificate, or it would stand firm and she'd be going back to regular school that fall to learn more about the very basics of spellcasting. On the count of five. One, two, three, four –

The egg lurched sideways. Twilight's concentration and magical grip both broke simultaneously, causing her head to jerk downward as the magical bolt shot out of her horn, struck the broad side of the shell and splashed around it like a gentle wave against a stone fortress.

It was the dragon, struggling back and forth inside its shell, apparently doing its best to ruin her day.

Twilight was physically winded and slightly lightheaded from the exertion of the last spell, but she had to keep trying, she could feel the gazes of the proctors beating down on the back of her neck like the hot sun, she was so close, and no infantile dragon was going to get in her way. Sinusoidal vibration, about a tenth of an inch in amplitude, frequency of sixty – The egg jumped again, this time even more violently. Twilight suddenly found she was out of energy for the moment and let her head hang to the ground, panting heavily.

Is that dragon doing this on purpose?

“Miss Sparkle, you do know that there are others waiting to take this exam?” drawled the voice of one of the proctors.

JUST GIVE ME A MOMENT! she almost screamed out loud. Frustration began to descend upon her, hijacking her train of thought and driving it full-speed into the abyss. There was an impossible task in front of her, and not only did she have to do it with no help and almost no time, but now there was a dragon for her to battle at the same time…

Nothing to get angry at, this is just another scientific problem, we'll solve it like any other. First, define the problem clearly –

The problem?! The problem is that this baby dragon clearly doesn't know what's best for it! You'd think it would want to get out of that tiny egg, but apparently failing me is just too much fun!

Okay...that'll work. Step two, gather data.

Shall I ASK the dragon why it can't sit still, then? She turned to glare angrily at the egg. Listen to me, buddy, I don't know what your problem is, but you're getting hatched today whether you like it or not!

Leave me alone, the baby dragon thought back.

Twilight staggered backward several steps before regaining her balance. Had she finally lost her mind, or was the dragon actually talking to her? She stared at the egg again, trying to imagine it as a full-grown pony, and tentatively thought, excuse me, could you repeat that?

I said, leave me alone, the dragon responded.

It did! It was communicating with her thoughts, in fluent Equestrian no less! This was incredible, Twilight had never read about anything like it – well, the book had said that dragons could communicate with their hatchlings, but she'd figured that was on some metaphorical level, nothing like actual direct telepathy...It was getting really, really hard to focus on the exam. Tell me everything you know, she thought excitedly. Surely a magical being like this knew about all sorts of secret magic, she had to find out everything she could –

What part of 'leave me alone' don't you get?

Well, can you at least tell me how many spells Star Swirl the Bearded created?

Either two hundred twenty six or two hundred twenty seven, I'm not sure, now go away.

Twilight blinked; this was getting more amazing by the moment. What were the odds that an unhatched baby dragon had exactly the same gaps in its knowledge of magical history as herself?

Precisely zero percent, she realized.

So the dragon wasn't talking to her. Really now, it had been absurd to even consider that an unborn baby could speak a language that it had obviously never even heard before. But no, it was definitely communicating with her some level, she could feel the annoyance in its thoughts, that wasn't something she was making up herself.

Which meant it was speaking to her...using emotions?

This was a baffling problem indeed. Which to Twilight was the same as saying it was a problem for science.

I hypothesize that the dragon is projecting its feelings into my mind, and I am doing the same to it, and somehow my subconscious is translating the dragon's thoughts into words, and the other way around.

It did seem a little bit silly, now that she'd put it into words. But to be fair, it wasn't any sillier than the idea that a grade-school filly could hatch a dragon egg in the first place. She would just have to test it a little more thoroughly.

Step four – One of the male proctors coughed loudly, snapping Twilight back to the reality of where she was. Step four, test the hypothesis by figuring out how to make it calm down and stop shaking the egg!

Unfortunately, Twilight wasn't very good with emotions. She had spent so much of her life alone with her books that soothing another being with nothing but her feelings was going into uncharted territory. The dragon was clearly annoyed, which meant something was bothering it, and the proper response to that was...affectionate concern?

I'm very sorry for bothering you. Can you tell me what's wrong? she thought in as kind a tone she could.

I'm afraid.

Yes, it's working! No, she had to stifle thoughts like that, pompous excitement wasn't going to get the dragon on her side. What are you afraid of?

I'm afraid of making friends.

And then a very odd sensation consumed Twilight's senses. A shiver ran down her back from head to tail; her ears became filled with a loud ringing noise; her eyes suddenly lost their focus on the egg and floated listlessly toward the ceiling; her brain was overcome by a sudden rush of dizziness. It was as though her mind was trying to reject the thought that had been unwelcomely forced upon it. It was true, she didn't have as many friends as the other fillies her age. Well...okay, she didn't really have any at all. But it certainly wasn't because she was afraid of them, she just didn't have the time for friends, she was far too busy studying and reading and making herself smarter to bother with such things, that was all. Besides, the thought hadn't even come from her, it had come from the dragon. But then why had it bothered her so jarringly?

No, the thought did come from you, said the voice of Science. According to the current hypothesis, the dragon projected the emotion of fear into your subconscious, and your subconscious constructed the thought itself. So we need to find out exactly which fears the dragon has and try to quench them.

That made sense enough. So...what would an overgrown baby dragon trapped in an egg be afraid of? She could think of at least one obvious answer.

Are you afraid of the world outside your shell? she thought.

No. I'm afraid of making friends.

Twilight's subconscious could be really mean sometimes.

The world is a wonderful place, she continued unabashedly. There are all kinds of amazing sights to see and sounds to hear and scents to smell. If you'll just stop shaking and let me free you from that egg, I'll let you see for yourself.

I'm afraid of making friends. Making friends requires interaction with ponies I do not know or understand. I'm afraid of things I don't understand.

Hot blood began to rush into Twilight's face, turning it a lush shade of magenta. Listen here subconscious, if you don't cut that out we're going straight to the library to read a bunch of Edgar Allen Poeny stories and have nightmares all night long!

Her subconscious didn't answer. So now she could add her own brain to list of entities trying to ruin this exam. But she had to remain scientific, there had to still be a way to calm the dragon down…

I think we're missing a key point here, thought Science. You're not communicating with the dragon, you're communicating with yourself. These fake emotions you're concocting don't mean anything to you, so they don't mean anything to it either. You're going to have to find out why you're so afraid of friendship to succeed.

But I'm NOT afraid of friendship! Twilight retorted.

Yes you are. Your subconscious says so.

No, I'm not, I never even think about it –

Suddenly Twilight was very aware of a corner of her mind that she had deliberately shut out from her internal discussions. A corner that was desperately hungry for the companionship of other fillies her age. Every time she walked past her classmates chatting amicably or playing twenty-square hopscotch together, it caused her to glance yearningly in their direction before it was forcefully shoved aside by the rest of her brain, because the rest of her brain was...scared?

Do we need friends? she tentatively asked this neglected figment.

YES! it screamed with a ferocity that left her head spinning. Do you see how happy all the fillies are with each other? Do you see how much fun they have? We could be having fun too! Can we go find some friends now? Please?

She'd had these thoughts bottled up inside her for years and never noticed them?

But it's a complete waste of time! retorted Common Sense, a third aspect of her conscious that had been chiefly responsible for the exclusion of Friendship from her mental forum. We have so many books to read, so many spells to learn! How is having a bunch of other ponies hanging around going to help us?

Friends can pick us up when we fall down! said Friendship. When we're bored or scared or lonely or angry, they're somepony we can always go to! And most of all, we could have FUN with them! Don't you at least want to try having fun, just for once?

For a moment, Common Sense seemed to be without an answer. Science, why don't you explain what I'm talking about?

Well, said Science, there seems to be quite a bit of cognitive dissonance going around in here. However, I think Friendship may have a point –

But...but you always side with me! stammered Common Sense.

We don't know anything about anypony but ourself. And it seems likely that communication with them could yield some very interesting results. And this concept of 'fun' does seem intriguing. Why should we not seek out relationships? Are you afraid?

Common Sense was too embarrassed to respond.

Alright, thought Twilight with a tone of finality, I'm afraid of making friends.

And in that moment, as Friendship broke free from its prison in the basement of her consciousness and gleefully flooded over her mind, she felt a range of emotions that she hadn't felt in a very long time. Fear. Loneliness. Envy of all the other fillies and the connections they shared. Hope that one day she could share those connections too.

But Common Sense wasn't ready to give up quite yet. How do we even go about making friends? It's entirely different than anything we've ever tried to learn before, how can we even hope to understand –

First Axiom, chanted several of her mind's voices in a chorus. In her world, the Axioms were the law.

But the way the other fillies talk to each other doesn't even make sense! They just sit around for hours and hours, chatting about nothing –

Second Axiom.

But...but...even if making friends does make sense, how can we be sure we'll be able to figure out –

Third Axiom.

Fine. You win, Friendship.

That was a monumental juncture in itself; Common Sense never lost debates.

Twilight turned to face the egg once more. There was no need to determine which emotion to display anymore, the words came straight from her heart. I know how you feel. It can be scary to think about the outside world...ah, I mean, making friends...oh, who was she kidding, they were one and the same to her...but that doesn't mean you should run away from it. There are all kinds of wonderful things friends can do for you, and I don't even know what all of them are, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth it to find out.

It took a couple of seconds for the true meaning of the words Twilight had thought to sink in. There was a whole dimension of life foreign to her, that she had unthinkingly shied away from in truly unscientific fashion, but now that she had overcome that mental barrier, a realm of possibilities unfolded itself before her. It was almost as though she were seeing the world again for the very first time.

Just as she recollected her thoughts, the dragon responded. I'm also lonely. Will you be my friend?

And in that moment, Twilight realized that the thoughts pouring in through her subconscious were more than just a challenge set up by the exam proctors. They were coming from a dragon, a real dragon with real feelings, a dragon that violently resisted any attempt to extract it from its shell because it was terrified of what lay outside. This must be what it meant to be a friend. It meant understanding the fears and hardships of another, and helping to work through them.

I think...she thought shakily, I think I'm already your friend, little dragon. I still don't know exactly what that means, but I have to say, I'm really excited to find out. Let's explore this new world, together.

A moment of silence, and then – Alright, I'm ready to come out.

The egg lay before her, as still as a rock at the bottom of the ocean.

Twilight's eyes began to water up, even as she meticulously listed the dimensions of the egg to herself and began to rattle it once again. It hardly mattered to her that she was about to pass the most difficult exam in Equestria. She had made her first friend that day, a friend who had needed her support, and she had given it to him. Just that little piece of knowledge brought her more joy than all the books she had ever read. And now she was going to help her new friend one more time. Sparks began to fly out of the tip of her horn as she threw the whole of her heart, mind, and body into the final stage of the Simple Yolk Removal spell, which manifested itself perfectly above the tip of the egg and crushed downward with the force of a hurricane –

And splashed.

And suddenly Twilight was standing in the middle of an examination hall, with four pairs of impatient eyes peering down at her, staring at an egg that she could not crack.

She was done. Every ounce of her magical energy had been expended in that spell, she knew she couldn't possibly cast it again, she doubted she could even lift the chalk sitting on the blackboard. Even with all of her knowledge, her intelligence, her spellcasting repertoire, and the engine of Science bringing them all together into a perfect machine of brilliance, there was one obstacle she had failed to overcome: her lack of raw magical power. Many of the other fillies waiting to take the exam had it, but she did not. And without it, she could never become truly great.

She didn't belong at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.

“I'm sorry I wasted your time,” she mumbled, staring at the ground as she desperately tried to fight back her tears. I'm sorry, professors. I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry, Mom.

I'm sorry, baby dragon.

I'm sorry, Princess Celestia.

And then, as she began to tread back toward her parents, her eyes were flooded by a brilliant light, all the colors of the rainbow, shining directly into her brain and washing away any semblance of coherent thought she had left. “Eep!” she shrieked in fear and confusion, as an odd, tingling feeling swept over her face, as though some immense source of power had suddenly been unlocked, a power that forced itself into her mind, mixed with the spell she had most recently cast, and shot out through her horn –

…....…

“I'm sorry, Miss Wand,” said Professor Pranceton, “But I do not think you are a good fit for this school.”

The filly standing before him, an extremely young white unicorn with a short yellow mane and tale, hung her head dejectedly, dropped the chalk she had been holding in her mouth onto the floor, and walked back to her parents. He could hear them gently consoling her as the wooden door swung shut.

Pranceton was now alone in the examination room. For the first time in hours and hours, he stood up from his chair and stretched gray, aching legs, heaving a sigh of relief. That had been an extremely long examination day, by far the longest Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns had ever seen; he normally finished in plenty of time to eat dinner, yet the pale moon had been shining through the window for nearly an hour. All three of his colleagues had taken their leave of the school long ago, but as Pranceton was blessed with the unfortunate title of Head of Admissions, he was given the honor of staying well into the night to administer the remaining tests by himself. Now he simply needed to wait until Celestia arrived to give her his report for the day, and he could get some well-deserved sleep.

He magically picked up the stack of acceptance paperwork from his desk and began to rifle through it. Twenty four unicorns had been accepted to the school that day, about a quarter of the total applicant pool. There were a few toward the end who had performed at a rather mediocre level and gotten in purely on the merits of Pranceton's fatigue, but he couldn't be bothered to care. He glanced at each child's picture in turn, trying to recall how each had sufficiently impressed him and his colleagues to earn his or her place in the school; however, his mind was mostly just building up anticipation for the one he knew would be coming up toward the middle.

At last he reached the page in question. Twilight Sparkle. The tiny purple filly who had entered the room with no acceptance letter, no cutie mark, and no baby dragon, and had walked out with all three. Pranceton had seen a lot of smart fillies in his time at the school, but this one...this one was really something else.

It wasn't the sudden surge of magic that had trapped him in a Continuous Levitation Spell and turned the filly's parents into potted plants that impressed him so deeply. Baby unicorns displayed completely unpredictable blasts of power all the time; it was a well understood phenomenon. It was, perhaps, somewhat rare to see such an occurrence in a filly as old as this one, but it wasn't unheard of. Why, Pranceton had seen young unicorns perform all kinds of amazing feats, such as filling the castle fountain with alligators and teleporting Celestia's personal throne to the top of a tree.

But none had ever hatched a baby dragon. That was impossible. It took a lifetime of study to even attempt such a task; no filly could just walk into a room and do it without an enormous amount of help and preparation.

But she had both of those things, didn't she? Pranceton grinned to himself; he had figured out what was going on here. Celestia was playing one of her pranks on him and his colleagues. Why else would she have suggested such an absurd task for this particular filly? Obviously the princess had been tutoring Twilight on the art of hatching dragons for weeks, probably months, perhaps even years. And then there was the fact that the newly born dragon had begun crying inconsolably the moment Twilight had started to leave, and could not be stopped for anything, until Celestia had been compelled to give it to her. Surely she wouldn't trust such a dangerous, fragile creature with a filly she didn't know exceedingly well. On top of that, Twilight had even received her cutie mark during the process; it wasn't one that he recognized, but for all he knew, it was the mark for Dragon Hatching Master.

“Celestia, you clever rascal,” he chuckled to himself.

“I beg your pardon?” said Celestia from the doorway.

Pranceton gasped and whirled around, his face instantly turning a much lighter shade of gray than normal. The princess towered over him, her discontented expression scalding him like a skillet of french fried hay. “P-p-princess! I didn't mean, I didn't mean that, I-I just wanted to say –"

Celestia broke into a mirthful laugh. “Oh, don't worry yourself, Pranceton. I assure you I take it as a compliment. Now, I believe you have a new class of gifted fillies to introduce to me?

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Pranceton, feeling rather relieved. He levitated the stack of papers that he had dropped on the floor and sent it over to the princess. “We have twenty four new students at the school. Each one was thoroughly tested for both their knowledge and abilities, and displayed an exceptional grasp of magic. They will all become very fine young scholars, I'm sure.”

“My, that certainly is a lot!” exclaimed Celestia. The aura surrounding the papers changed hue from gray to white as she accepted them and glanced at the first one. “Any particular reason you've chosen to leave this one on top?”

“Who, Twilight Sparkle?” asked Pranceton. “Why wouldn't I place her on top? She has to be the most amazing filly ever to enter the doors of this school after what she's accomplished today!”

“Can't say I disagree with you there.” Celestia lifted her eyes to meet Pranceton's, a playful smile on her face. “If I may change the subject, may I ask what I did to deserve the honorable title of clever rascal?”

“Well...” stammered Pranceton, “to be honest, I don't think Twilight could have hatched that egg today without help from somepony. And, um, it did seem a little strange that you would give such a difficult test to such a small filly, so I guessed that you were playing a joke on us by training her to hatch it and not telling us. And if I'm right, then let me tell you, you certainly did get me! I haven't been that surprised in decades!”

“I suppose that does seem like the sort of thing I would do,” replied Celestia. Her mirthful smile had dampened slightly; she seemed more pensive than anything. “It hardly matters at this point, but how did Twilight perform on the knowledge test?”

“Perfect score,” Pranceton said bluntly. “Only filly all day to do that. That alone would've been enough to get her an acceptance letter, even if she hadn't hatched that dragon.”

Celestia didn't answer right away; she seemed to be deep in thought. For some reason, her smile appeared to have weakened even further. “Tell me something, Pranceton. What if I were to tell you that Twilight Sparkle has never had any experience with dragon eggs to the best of my knowledge, she has never received instruction from me of any kind, and part of the reason I wanted her to try to hatch that egg was because I failed to do so myself?”

Pranceton laughed heartily. “I'd tell you to lock her up in the castle's deepest dungeon and throw the key in a river, because a unicorn that powerful will have overthrown you and conquered Equestria by the end of the year.”

The smile was now completely gone from Celestia's face, replaced by an expression of abject horror. “Oh no, I'm so sorry!” sputtered Pranceton. What had he said to get that kind of reaction? “I didn't mean that at all, it's just that you were joking around, so I told a joke too, I didn't mean that you should actually...”

With visible effort, Celestia forced a grin. “You're right, it was just a joke. I'm sorry I made you feel uncomfortable.” She glanced out the window at the rising moon. “Well, it's been a very long day for me, and I'm sure it's been an even longer one for you. You should go home and get some rest.” With that, she turned her back to him and began to head out the door.

Pranceton watched as her dazzling multicolored mane swept around the corner. A growing feeling of uneasiness had taken hold of him. “Princess, you...you were joking, right?”

Princess Celestia left the room.

Comments

[vaarsuviuss]

11k words in 1 chapter...on it boss

[Alphaetus_Prime]

If I may make a suggestion.
Instead of referring to the axioms as Twilight's Axiom One, Twilight's Axiom Two, etc., refer to them as Twilight's First Axiom, Twilight's Second Axiom, etc. Just makes it flow better.

[Brony Tom]

Holy sweet mother of Celestia, I am flabbergasted by this masterful piece of art. The prose was absolutely delightful, and the characterization of Twilight was simply fascinating, especially the way that the Axioms work. The internal debate between Practicality and Friendship was quite amusing and simultaneously highly informative. Also, the whole interaction between Spike and Twilight was just breathtaking in its sincerity and depth of character. The plot was spotless and had me hooked from about the first two or three sentences, and the progression along the chapter was smooth as can be, ending at a sufficiently suspenseful conversation without resorting to cheap cliffhangers.

All in all, one of the fics truly deserving of an instant 5-star, instant track, and instant favorite.

(Although, you may wish to modify the description; the part about the new alicorn made me instantly think "Mary Sue alert"...)

[NoPoemGuy]

198174

I think I agree with that. Thanks for the tip!

Err...I probably sound dumb for asking this, but how do you save edits to a chapter?

EDIT: Haha, nevermind, found it.

[biodork]

holy shit 11000 words im gonna have to read that tommorow but ill track it for now

[Samusbot]

Lol, poor Pranceton! If only he knew. If only.

Anyways: CONGRATULATIONS! You have won a free Author Tracking and Five Star Rating!

SO WRITE MOAR NAO!

[ScootaLewis]

Reginald Cantermole? Is that just a little Harry Potter reference I spy? Yes it is! I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE!

[Shaderx]

You had the polynomial multiplication wrong it's suppose to be (AX+B)(CX+D)=ACX^2+(AD+BC)X+ >> BD <<.

All in all good read 5 Stars!

You might want to have a few prereaders to catch these mistakes. Since this is in Twilight's POV there can't be any errors! She's is a smart pony!

[biodork]

yeah that was pretty good keep it up

[Dane]

I have to largely repeat what everyone else has said here on this being excellent! Starting the way that you did from when Twilight received her cutie mark to show the Axioms was a great idea, and the way that you wrote filly!Twilight made her quite adorkable. The ending discussion between Celestia and Pranceton, I think was one of my favorite parts in this. It'll be interesting to see how you might write the relationship between the two.

[quick_study]

I may have to save this one down to my hard drive. I think I'll very likely be reading it more than once, after it's finished, and I very much don't want to run the risk of losing that ability like I very nearly did with Eternal.

[BonesTheHeretic]

There are no words. I literally cannot believe how perfect this is. It's just... perfect.

Please tell me you're still working on it?

EDIT: nevermind it appears you updated as this page sat in another tab, waiting to be read. I have the best timing ever.

[Dream Catcher]

One or two typos, but spectacular nonetheless!
If you're nitty-gritty, here are the typos I noticed:
"Twilight's concentrate and magical grip both broke simultaneously,"
And then you used 'filly' as a term to describe children, when filly applies only to the younger females. You probably should have just used 'children.'

[aquilerafroot]

Good writing, new favorite

[LegitTheKid]

That was pretty freaking great. Gave me a whole new perspective to Twilight. Can't wait to keep reading!