//------------------------------// // Epilogue – Four Years Later // Story: On the Nature of Alicorns // by Typoglyphic //------------------------------// A crowd of ponies gathered in a small park in the centre of Ponyville. At the heart of the crowd, Scootaloo pawed anxiously at the grass beneath her hooves. Twilight sat off to one side, carefully studying her work. She had developed a good system for casting these long, interconnected spells. It was much more efficient than Star Swirl’s method, but it still required a lot of preparation. She glanced up over the cover of her note binder at the fidgeting filly before her. Twilight sighed, then snapped the binder closed and stood. A murmur spread through the crowd, followed by almost absolute silence. Scootaloo perked up. “Are—” her muzzle snapped shut as her voice echoed past the silent onlookers. Every eye was turned toward the young pegasus. She ducked her head, and continued in a whisper. “Are you ready?” Her wings fluttered nervously. She gulped. “Because I’m ready.” Twilight tried to smile reassuringly. “Absolutely. Don’t worry. I’ve done this before.” “What do I need to do?” Scootaloo asked, her confidence betrayed by her shivering feathers. “Just stand still, and I’ll take care of everything else,” Twilight said. It didn’t actually matter whether or not Scootaloo held still, but she found that giving patients something to focus on made them much easier to work with. Twilight lit her horn without fanfare, and began to weave spells together. She began with updated versions of the first spells in Star Swirl’s masterpiece. She was vaguely aware of Scootaloo shaking out of the corner of her eye. Twilight focused her attention on the task at hand, casting the first spell of her own invention—the first of dozens. Her wings twitched and ruffled, feeling for the lingering traces of pegasus magic deep within Scootaloo’s cells. She cast the next spell. And the next. The clearing was still and silent but for the occasional pop and sizzle of magic and the wind whispering through trees. Twilight worked her way through a vast web of facts and ideas, numbers and sensations. This was the sixth time she'd tried something like this, and she was casting all the same spells in the same order.. It should have been routine, but each treatment felt profoundly different. After five minutes of meticulous spellwork, they were in the home stretch. Twilight could feel every chromacord in Scootaloo’s body as if they were her own. Holding her breath, she cast the final spell, the most taxing by far. Scootaloo gasped and toppled to the ground, her legs twitching and her eyes squeezed shut. Twilight fixed every iota of her concentration on ensuring this final transformation went smoothly. That tiny chromacord, number fourteen, began to glow all throughout Scootaloo’s body. The familiar weight settled around Twilight’s skull, greater than any other spell she’d cast since her ascension. She gritted her teeth and, with a final burst of light, it was over. The clearing was still and silent once more. “Scootaloo?” a voice called from Twilight’s right. She looked over to Scootaloo’s parents. The small green earth pony stared at Scootaloo, then at Twilight. His hoof was tightly entwined with his wife’s. Her eyes were wide and frantic, but her wings were still and her jaw didn’t tremble. “It’s done,” Twilight said, and the couple bolted forward. Scootaloo’s father crouched down and ran a hoof through Scootaloo’s mane. The filly shivered, her eyes still squeezed closed. Her mother hovered next to her daughter. She shot a panicked glance at Twilight. “Is she okay? What happened?” “Don’t worry, Scootaloo is fine. This is a very normal reaction.” Twilight strolled forward, her vision slightly blurred from the strain of spell use. “She’s just in a little bit of shock right now. In a few hours, she’ll be as healthy as ever.” Her father frowned, eyeing Scootaloo’s tiny wings. “She doesn’t… look any different.” Twilight smiled. “Her wings were never the real problem. Once she’s feeling up to it, get her try flying again. She should be able to, now. Her wings will grow rapidly over the next few months.” The pegasus mare zipped over to Twilight, crowding Twilight’s face. “Will that hurt?” she asked. “Will there be side-effects? How long should she wait before flying? Is—” “There might be some growing pains, but otherwise Scootaloo now has the magic of an average pegasus. None of my other patients have exhibited any negative effects so far.” “D-dad?” Scootaloo groaned. “I feel… weird.” She twisted around on the ground, her hooves kicking lightly. Scootaloo’s mother nodded thankfully and flew over to her daughter. “Come on, Scoot. Let’s get you home.” Twilight turned and started walking back to the castle. The crowd parted around her and slowly dissipated, except for one pony. “That was amazing, Twilight!” Nurse Redheart trotted next to her, bouncing slightly on her hooves. “I’ve read all of your papers on it, but seeing it myself…” she trailed off, still keeping pace with Twilight. “This may be a second enlightenment! All of the diseases we thought were incurable, solved in one fell swoop!” Twilight nodded. “Yes, well, I’m only one pony. But there’s more to come. I’m sure you’ve heard that Princess Luna is founding a facility in Canterlot specifically for treating patients with genetic disabilities. Once we’ve trained enough doctors and can open the hospital properly, cases like Scootaloo’s should be easy to treat.” “Oh, of course!” Redheart exclaimed. “I simply can’t wait to…” Twilight smiled and nodded, tuning out Redheart’s babbling and keeping up her pace as they passed Ponyville’s centre. In the years that she’d been working to understand Star Swirl’s research, she had gotten used to the immensity of the discovery. Without Celestia chasing her down, it had all come down to numbers, patterns, and spell forms—the minutiae of the work didn’t hold quite the same excitement. But now that Equestria was on the cusp of such a huge medical development, she found herself looking to the future. After all, Star Swirl hadn’t developed his masterpiece to cure diseases. She said goodbye to Redheart at the door to the castle and made her way up to her study. It had grown since she had started her work. What had been a glorified office now occupied half of its floor, with a connecting lab, library, and magic isolation chamber. The original room was still there, though. Twilight plopped herself down in front of her desk and dropped her notes onto it. Chromacords were everything about a pony. Their size, their race, their magic, their sex. Even, as her side-project into researching moon-madness indicated, personality. All of it came down to tiny variations in a pony’s chromacords. Star Swirl’s spell, which used to be so complex and intimidating, barely scratched the surface of possibility. In fact, ‘ascension’ almost seemed a crude misuse at this point. She chuckled at the thought. Nearly four years ago, Celestia had receded from the public eye, and Twilight and Luna had taken her place. Twilight still wasn't sure how much Luna had known about her sister's condition, but after working alongside her for so long, she knew better than to underestimate Luna's intuition. Twilight had taken careful stock of every book Celestia had hidden over the years, and the results were staggering. She could hardly take credit for the dozens of cures for various diseases they'd developed based on those lost volumes. With so many avenues opened up, what might they do in another ten years? Could they make ponies stronger? Faster? Longer-lived? She winced, thinking of her brother. Shining wasn’t the stallion he used to be. In the end, the Sparkle family curse had landed on him as well. He still lived with Cadance in the Crystal Empire, but his mood swings were getting worse, and with a foal now in the picture… And her friends wouldn’t be far behind him. They were all still young, but time waited for nopony. Or rather no earth, pegasus, or unicorn pony. Longer-lived. Twilight glanced toward one of the bookshelves that lined the room and lit her horn. A thick, dusty old tome floated toward her and settled onto the desk with a thud. She flipped to the last page and ran a hoof over the ancient ink. She didn’t need to read it. She knew it by heart. She smiled. Yes. She could do this. "From all of us together, together we're friends. With the marks of our destinies made one, there is magic without end."