In one of the Castle of Friendship’s many side rooms, Sweetie Belle frowned down at the spell book. Intermediate Spells for Fillies 7th Edition had been her bane for many Twilight Times now, ever since the Princess had presented it to her young student. Sweetie Belle had been excited at first about the over-sized tome but all the spells were so hard. She’d just managed some of the basic ones in the first chapter, but anything beyond that was seemingly beyond her.
She looked up across the large circular table she sat at to see Twilight overseeing Applebloom’s progress on a potion. She was keeping quiet, with a encouraging smile stuck to her face, as the younger pony carefully double checked the formula. Then, with her face scrunched up in concentration, Applebloom slowly added three measured drops of white liquid to the dark brown muck in a small beaker above a low burner. Nothing happened for a heartbeat, then the mixture began to swirl on its own.
“Sugar.” Twilight quietly prompted.
With haste, Applebloom grabbed the bag borrowed from the castle kitchen and poured with as much care as she could. Most got in and Applebloom stopped pouring after the mixture changed colors to a shade of shiny black.
“Is that it?”, she said.
“Perfect!”, Twilight said, clopping her hooves together. “Marigold’s Alertness Potion! My old friend!” She picked up the beaker with her magic and seemed to be about to take a gulp before halting herself. Her ears flattened. “But Princess Celestia said no.” With a sigh, she placed the beaker down on the table. Her sad eyes stayed locked on the potion.
“But what does it do?”, Applebloom asked peering at it.
“Marigold’s Alertness Potion”, Twilight replied, sounding like she was reciting, “gives the drinker the energy of the ten times the equivalent liquid amount of coffee or strong tea.” Her tone became flatter. “I was forbidden from ever drinking it again.” She made a scoffing sound and continued with more heat, “I got so much work done that semester! I wasn’t vibrating or slurring that much, either! I tried to tell her, but she just kept going on about me not blinking.” She sat down in a chair with a huff and crossed her forelegs, her face turned to look at the wall. “I had eyedrops, what was the matter with that?”
“Ooo-kay”, Applebloom drawled, her concerned eyes meeting Sweetie Belle’s alarmed ones. “Tell you what, Twilight. I think we’re all done here. I’ll clean up and you can go back to helping Scootaloo with her toaster, alright?” She grabbed the beaker with her teeth and made a hasty exit to find a sink.
“Appleb-!” Twilight cut off her protest, closed her eyes and took a calming breath. As she turned to where Scootaloo was re-soldering some broken links in the scrapheap appliance, she looked at Sweetie Belle with a smile. “Everything alright?”
“Yep!” Sweetie Belle squeaked, managing to come up with reassuring smile. As Twilight refocused on making sure Scootaloo didn’t burn herself, Sweetie Belle went back to frowning at the book. Twilight was so nice to keep helping her this way. She had to make one of these spells work today.
The unicorn filly started flipping pages quickly, scanning for something that looked easy or at least easier than the translation spell she’d been stuck on. After a few minutes, she found an illusion spell that looked kind of similar to one Twilight had taught her last Fall. ‘Traxby’s Beginner Duplication Spell’ was a way to make a clone of caster. It was just an illusion, with no substance, and for a beginner it would only last a few seconds, but it looked like something Sweetie Belle could actually do.
She studied the magical diagram for several minutes, making mental changes to the spell she knew and closed her eyes, focusing. Sucking in a breath, she opened her eyes, looked at her reflection in the full length mirror standing in the corner of the room, thought ‘copy’ with all her might and cast the spell. Her horn sparked a couple times and then a stream of light green magic shot towards the mirror.
It promptly reflected back off the mirror’s surface and came straight towards her.
With a cry of fear, Sweetie ducked down and the magic shot over her head. She heard Twilight’s shout of pain but didn’t have time to turn to see her magic strike Twilight’s horn, be absorbed for a fraction of second, and then fly back with a changed aura color and at enough of a different angle to strike the back of her head.
Sweetie Belle fell to the floor as her whole body hurt too much to even scream. She felt like four Big Macs were gripping her legs and were trying to pull her apart. After a very long moment of this, she thankfully blacked out.
When she came back, the pain was mostly gone except for an ache in her bones. Blinking, she could hear a commotion as someponies shouted her name. As her blurry vision focused, she found herself staring into the eyes of another filly, lying directly next to her.
Her coat was dark grey and her mane was a dim version of her own. That made Sweetie Belle realize, her mouth falling open, that otherwise she was looking in a version of her own face.
As she heard the sound of a pair of ponies coming to her size, the other filly grinned unpleasantly.
“Sweetie Belle!”, Twilight shouted next to the them. “Are you...what?!”, she exclaimed as she saw the newcomer.
The filly came to her feet with more speed that Sweetie Belle thought she could manage and regarded the three of them, the nasty smile still on it’s face.
“I am Elleb Eiteews and I am evil.”, it proclaimed. With a cackling laugh it ran between Scootaloo and Twilight and out the door, both too of them shocked to stop it.
After a breath, Twilight chose her priorities, leaned down and put a hoof softly on the little unicorn’s shoulder. “Sweetie Belle, are you in any pain?”
There was a groan in response. “A little.” Sweetie slowly got her hoofs under her and rose. She rubbed the back of her head and felt a painful knot growing there. “I think something went wrong.”
Twilight touched her own horn and winced. “Yes, some kind of magical feedback loop, I believe. I think Tobin’s might have something about this…”
“Twilight!” Scootaloo shouted, running to the window. “Look!”
They all gathered at the room’s window overlooking the path into Ponyville and their eyes went wide at the sight of the negative Sweetie Belle, a large stick in her teeth, whacking Hayseed Turnip Truck hard. He was retreating, a leg over his head, shouting “Hey! Hey! Ow! Stop it!”
“Oh no!” Twilight cried and they ran out of the room, zipping past a returning Applebloom.
“Hey!”, she called, chasing after them, “What’d I miss?!”