Starlight Glimmer sighed as she slumped onto the library table, her chin against the varnished wood top. She stared at the open book in front of her, and her tired eyes crept to the direction of the mountainous stacks of scrolls and tomes by her side that she had to get through after. She had been reading nonstop for what had to be hours by that point in time, and her eyes and flanks were sore. And she had only completed half a dozen so far.
She made another attempt to get back to the page she had stalled on, but all she could see were words. Collections of squiggles that no longer made any sense to her overtaxed mind. The diagrams made no sense to her anymore, and they may as well have been doodles in a foal's schoolbook.
"I don't believe this," she groaned, rubbing her eyes, "how many editions of 'Teleportation Theory' does one pony need?!"
The door to the library opened with a soft creak, and Starlight looked over to see a small, purple baby dragon walk in with a plate in one claw and a bowl in the other. The plate held a fresh hay sandwich, the bowl a colourful assortment of small gems.
"Twilight thought you could use this," he said, setting the plate on the table next to the mare.
"Thanks Spike," she sighed, the sight of the sandwich making her realise how hungry she was. She grabbed it in her magic and took a hearty bite, finding the soft white bread and fresh hay more delicious than usual, the delectable aroma piercing the scent of old paper. "I really do need it."
Spike nodded and hopped onto a chair beside her. "How're you holding up?"
"Barely," she sighed, shaking her head. "How does Twilight do this all the time? Just sitting here and...well, reading?"
"Beats me," the dragon shrugged and stuffed a clawful of gems into his mouth, crunching them loudly in his little fangs. "She's just always had a thing for books. Easier answer to remember than the one she gave me when I asked."
"What did she say?"
"She just sorta went off on a tangent about how important learning is and stuff. I didn't really listen, just smiled and nodded. She doesn't pay much attention when she rambles."
"So true," the purple mare snorted, then her eyes widened as something came to her.
An idea. A way to make getting through all these books and scrolls much easier.
"Say Spike," she went on, "don't suppose you know if Twilight has any books on...'book magic'?" She asked, forcing out the words like they were foreign to her.
Spike narrowed his eyes warily. "Book magic? Starlight, I dunno if you should-"
"I know, I know," the unicorn interjected, waving her hoof dismissively. "But this'll be a harmless one. And I'll be using it on myself, so it's not like I'll be messing with anypony, right?"
"I guess, but still," the baby dragon muttered, "just considering the last few times you've used magic to make your jobs easier. I mean, making the girls literally do what you say, swapping the Princess's cutie marks..."
Starlight sighed and shook her head. She was starting to get really tired of Spike bringing up her past mistakes so often. "Look, I'll know what I'm doing this time, okay?"
"Hmmm..." Spike murmured, tapping his claws on his chin. Starlight took this as the baby dragon's indication of needing motivation.
A cheeky smirk crossed her muzzle. "There's a huge bowl of gems in it for you when I'm done."
And in a blur of purple and green, the baby dragon was zipping around the library, scanning the spines of every book at breakneck speed. Starlight could barely keep an eye on him at the speed he was going.
And as quick as he left, he returned holding an old, leather-bound book in his little claws. "Here ya go!"
Starlight, a little startled at how little time it took Spike to find what she was looking for, took the book in her magical grip. The cover was embedded with the title, 'By the Book: A Basic Guide to Bibliomancy'.
"Thanks Spike," she finally said, levitating the book toward her desk. "I'll get you those gems when I'm done, alright?"
"I'm holding you to that," Spike warned her, smirking as he grabbed his bowl and walked toward the library door. "I'm gonna see if Twilight needs anything. Or maybe Rarity." He added with a not-so-subtle affection in his voice.
Starlight wondered if Rarity's collection of gems was how she had the baby dragon in her figurative pocket so easily.
"Right, see you later," Starlight said, and the two waved to each other as Spike exited the library, the door closing with heavy wooden clunk.
Wasting no more time, she rushed to the desk and opened the book to the index with her magic. She traced her hoof along the different sections and page numbers.
"Enchanting Quills...Paper Messenger Pigeons..." she murmured the chapter titles out loud, and then stopped at 'Bring the Words to Life'. "Aha! Maybe you're what I'm after."
She used her magic to flip to the appropriate page, and got the proper title, along with instructions and diagrams on how to literally lift the words from a book's page and into the target. According to what she could decipher, she could literally take the words off the pages and ingest the knowledge from them. A smirk slowly crossed her muzzle as she read on, finding the process to be rather simple to her.
However, the end of the section ominously warned that the spell, if cast carelessly, could have dire consequences. It even carried the warning that continuous use would put the caster at risk of a 'Yearn to Learn' curse, whatever that was.
"Pffft," she scoffed, "what harm could a book do? Besides, this spell looks so easy!"
With that, she began going through the instructions on how to cast the spell on another book, as this one had protection against magic. She didn't take much care in reading the warnings - she was such a natural in magic that she was sure she'd get it right. And if not, practice makes perfect as they say. The spell itself had to be harmless anyway, even with a silly-sounding curse like 'Yearn to Learn'. Besides, she was sure there was a reversal spell for it. Twilight was bound to know it in case things somehow got out of hoof.
She pulled over one of the magic textbooks she was yet to read, and with a deep breath, she began to attempt the spell. Small grammatical symbols appeared and swirled around her horn as it glowed its usual mint colour. After charging, she fired a blast at the book, capturing it in an aura matching her magic, and it rose up into the air. The book opened and its pages flapped front to back, then back to front, over and over, each time getting faster and faster. And just as Starlight was beginning to have second thoughts, a pulsing noise sounded amongst the rattling of paper, and the book suddenly stopped at a page near the middle.
She took a step forward to get a closer look, and her jaw dropped as she saw the title of the page, 'Advanced Teleportation Theory', began to remove itself from the page. The magic was literally peeling the words themselves off of the paper!
Starlight stared in a mix of shock and triumph as letter after letter tore itself from the page, making the sound of a bandage being peeled off. The symbols then started to swirl around the book itself in single file, before floating toward Starlight. They began circling her head, no longer forming words and instead being a mishmash of scrambled lettering, and she could only watch, blinking in confusion.
"Don't you just enter my head or something?" she muttered, mostly to herself.
Then the letters swirled back around to where she could see them, and some of them began to form position in front of her.
Open wide
Starlight stared dumbly at the words floating in front of her, and shook her head as she pieced it together. Not only did these letters seem to understand her, they were outright telling her she had to take the symbols in orally. At least, that's what she assumed.
Deciding it was a better idea than no idea at all, she opened her mouth wide open. The words then split back up into letters and shot right inside, and she closed her jaw and started chewing on instinct. Strangely, they tasted mildly of peppermint. She never thought words could have flavour.
Once she swallowed them, she allowed herself a little giggle. "Talk about eating your words."
She carried on eating mouthful after mouthful of letters, finding the experience rather enjoyable in itself. Soon she had finished a whole page, and then had begun on another. And another, and another. Diagrams unfurled themselves and flowed into her mouth like string, causing her to suck them up like spaghetti strands. Some letters even formed the words of foods, such as 'chocolate', 'cake' and 'hay', which made them taste exactly like the real thing!
Soon she had emptied the book of all it had to provide. She'd even taken the index and annex contents for herself. The book lowered down onto the desk, devoid of words and images as if it were fresh and ready to be filled in.
And Starlight had the right mind to fill it in herself. The spell had done its job, and she felt like a master teleporter with that entire book absorbed into her mind. She just had to try it out! Her horn glowed normally, and with a magical pop, she found herself inside Carousel Boutique. Then another pop, and she was in the dusty town of Appleloosa, then the cooled throne room of the Royal Sisters, then she was outside a café in a town in Saddle Arabia!
She swiftly returned to the library with a final pop, giggling and feeling rather proud of herself. "Wow, that book spell really works!"
Though, it wasn't just her mind absorbing the book's contents. The mare's middle had rounded out, slightly bloated from how much 'knowledge' she had ingested. A small burp escaped her before she put a hoof to her gut, which felt a little funny.
"Ooof, maybe I'll give the teleporting a break," she murmured, not seeming to realise said gut had distended. Her eyes locked onto the stacks of books she was yet to read. She wasn't dreading the job anymore, not with this spell. If anything, she was looking forward to it.
In fact, she felt a small desire welling up in her. An urge, really. Suddenly, she felt like she had to do this. She needed to absorb all this knowledge, and she needed to do it now.
She used her magic to toss the blank book to the side and grabbed the next one nearest to her. 'Super Shapeshifting Made Simple: Advanced Transfiguration Techniques'. Starlight giggled, licking her lips as she flipped the cover open, and the word peeling spell started charging up once more.
And like that, Starlight was having quite the enjoyable afternoon. She wasted no time emptying every single word, symbol and diagram from every single page, happily chewing and slurping them up like she were one of Applejack's pigs enjoying a trough of slop. When she finished, she tossed the blank tome aside and rested her hooves on her belly, which had grown bigger and rounder from her binging. Her haunches had also grown a bit as well, filling out her seat and ever so slightly daring to droop over the sides. Her cheeks were the slightest bit chubbier, and her legs were the tiniest bit thicker. All changes that went unnoticed to the mare.
During her little break, an idea came to her. Being quite the imaginative magic aficionado, one technique she had picked up while studying under Princess Twilight was the process of combining spells together. She once used it to clone herself so she could go through multiple friendship problems at once. Or attempt to, at least. But this time would be different, she knew what she was doing now.
"Hmmm," she murmured, tapping her chin with her hoof, "what would happen if I combined this word spell with a cloning spell...?"
Deciding there'd be no harm in trying, her horn began to glow once more. The grammatical symbols appeared around it, looking much more lively and colourful than before as they swirled around. She fired the spell, but instead of a single beam, it projected as a stream of minty-green tendrils toward multiple books in the stack. The targeted tomes floated up and, like the book before them, flapped their pages rapidly as letters and symbols flowed out from between them and toward her mouth.
And Starlight continued to enjoy her 'study session', chewing and slurping up the knowledge that still tasted oddly of peppermint. Adding the cloning spell seemed to be a good idea so far, since it meant she could empty multiple books at once. She could learn much more from one blast, and cut down her time all in one foul swoop. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, the loss of her figure would count, if she had even noticed it. With every book she emptied, Starlight's belly grew rounder and larger, bloating with the symbols being packed into it. By the time she had gotten down to the last book on her stack, she was looking like she'd just come back from a Hearth's Warming feast at Sweet Apple Acres.
She stifled a burp with her hoof and rested the other on her gut, which gurgled and groaned softly with how stuffed it was. But despite how full she was, she had a strong urge. A desire to have even more books. Even more magical knowledge to absorb into her limitless memory bank. She wanted to be the smartest and most talented magic user in Equestria. She felt stronger than Twilight Sparkle by now, but she still wanted even more!
But oh, so full...
"Oof," she grunted, and lazily charged up the spell once more, "Maybe one more before a little break..."
She carelessly fired at the last book on the table, but this one didn't move. For a moment, Starlight considered firing it again, before the tome began vibrating ominously. It span in place for a few full turns, before quickly shifting position to the centre of the table. The bloated mare leaned forward, grunting from the pressure put on her overfilled middle, as she eyed the cover of the book.
'Jovial Jinxes: A Fun Guide to Magical Mischief'
A sudden wave of realisation hit Starlight like a tsunami; she'd just used book-related magic on a book designed for magical pranks. Harmless ones, but still nonetheless.
Before she had a chance to think of the counter-spell, the enchanted joke book flipped to the centre. She yelped and covered her head with her hooves as blasts of minty-green magic fired in every direction around the library. She scrunched her eyes shut, hoping one of those blasts wouldn't hit her. She couldn't even think of what the effect would be if she were struck. Would she be turned into a book? Would she be fed to a book? Would her knowledge be drained out of her and she'd be left with about as much magical knowledge as a cave troll?
But the sounds of magical blasts soon dyed out, followed with the slam of a shutting book. She felt no different, so she dared to open her eyes and lower her hooves. Though what she saw made her wish she were struck and turned into a book so she could hide from how angry Twilight would be if she saw this.
Every single book in the library had been lifted off its place on every shelf, and were floating around the room, their covers always facing Starlight. She could almost swear they were upset with how she had abused magic so carelessly once again, and almost expected a Twilight-level lecture to come from them.
But no such angry words came. Instead, the books began to flap their pages back and forth, and like the books before them, letters and diagrams spilled out and shot through the air toward her. The anticipation of what she knew was coming made Starlight's belly ache even more.
In a moment of desperation, she raised her hooves defensively and tried to reason with the floating grammatical symbols. "W-wait, hold o-MMPH!!" But it was all for nought as the word 'EAT' forced itself into her open maw. And Starlight had no choice but to chew and swallow, equally dreading any extra effects the 'Jovial Jinxes' might have as well as the inevitable stomach ache.
Though strangely, the ache didn't get worse. If anything, the more letters that were shoved down her throat, the duller the pain in her stomach became. She wanted to try and decipher what could possibly be happening to her, but she was too busy flailing her hooves in a vain attempt to ward the words away. Letters formed the words of food before jumping into her maw, diagrams unfurled into string which she had to suck up like spaghetti strands, and little paper ponies jerkily moved their pointy limbs as they snickered mischievously and held the poor mare's mouth open.
Though if anypony were watching what was happening, they would see right away what effect the prank book was having on her. Her stomach was growing bigger indeed, but not from fullness. It was beginning to lose its round shape and was starting to pool out as cellulite began to form. Her flanks began to expand in her chair, already threatening to spill over the sides. Her cutie marks began to stretch out to fill the extra space being made by the flab accumulating on her rump. Her face began to round out, her cheeks becoming puffier even without symbols being stuffed into them. Her legs grew softer and thicker, her poor hooves slowing as her muscles weakened and became weighed down by the new layers of flab growing around them.
Starlight breathed a sigh of relief when the books stopped their onslaught, allowing her a chance to collect her thoughts. She looked down, seeing the large round ball of pink pushing her legs apart, and a red flush crossed her chubby cheeks.
"S-sweet Celestia!" She gasped, and tried to search her brain for a counter-spell. "Come on, come on...!"
However, she was having trouble remembering the spell she needed, or even if she knew what it was. The combined spells had stuffed so much knowledge into her head so fast that it was all jumbled up and unorganised in her memory, like a huge file that had been completely unsorted. She allowed herself a brief snort of amusement at the thought of Twilight losing her mind at such an unorganised file, before realisation hit her hard.
She looked up at the floating books, which seemed to be toying with her, making her wait, and dread filled her heart. "Twilight's going to kill me..."
Her dread only grew when floating letters formed words right in front of her.
Not done yet!
The sun was beginning to set on the horizon by the time Princess Twilight had returned to the castle. She let out a yawn, covering her mouth with her wing, and smiled down at Spike, who was dutifully walking down the hall next to her.
"Wow, that was a long day," she said. "Equestria's communal leaders certainly had much to talk about."
"I bet you loved it though," The baby dragon murmured sarcastically.
"Of course I did!" The alicorn beamed, puffing out her chest. "Who knew Vanhoover was so passionate about ice hockey? Maybe I should get Rainbow Dash to visit and help them build their sports centre. She'd love it!"
Spike rolled his eyes with a smile, before getting caught off guard by his owner's quick subject change to something a little more topical.
"Oh, by the way," she went on, "how's Starlight doing?"
"She seemed a little nervous about getting through all those books," she said, "so I helped her point out a book to help her along. Haven't heard a thing from her for a while so I figure it was helping."
Twilight narrowed her eyes. "Which book?"
Spike tapped his chin with a claw, trying to recall the name. "Uhhhh...'By the Book' or something like that?"
Twilight's ears flopped and her eyes diluted. "Oh no."
The two began sprinting down the hall toward the library, and Twilight swung the door open with her magic. Her jaw dropped at the sight before her. "Oh no..."
To say Starlight Glimmer was a blob would be putting it lightly. She had transcended 'blob' status and was something more of an enormous mass of purple, room-filling cellulite. An enormous fold curved along the middle of her belly to give her one mother of a spare tire, which was the closest thing to Twilight and Spike as they walked in.
Her flanks had grown to the size of carriages, with her cutie mark greatly distorted thanks to the size and collection of rolls and folds sloping on her rump, which was squishing against the wall behind her. Her tail was amusingly tiny, flopped above the massive mare's formidable backside. Her hooves with thick like tree trunks, and were reduced to stumps being sucked into the great collection of fat on her legs. Her front legs were forced outward and rendered useless.
Her face was almost nonexistent, her sagging, blushing cheeks forcing themselves over her mouth and giving her such a squint that Starlight could barely see. An avalanche of tire-like chins sloped beneath her face, almost covering her thick chest completely.
Once the shock had worn off, all Twilight could do was sigh and shake her head. The mess of blank books at her hooves confirmed her earlier fears. "Starlight, what do I keep telling you about using magic as a shortcut? First the mind control, then swapping the Princess' cutie marks, and now this! What do you have to say for yourself?"
Starlight could only manage a tiny, pathetic belch, causing letters to roll and bounce down her blobby form, making her flab ripple and wobble with each impact. The word BURP! landed on the floor in front of the Princess.
"You're lucky I know a counter-spell for this," she went on, "or I'd have you replacing all these books!"
Starlight's laboured breathing turned into pathetic grunts and huffs as she tried to wiggle her limbs, but to no avail. They had grown too heavy and flabby to have any hope of being useful right now.
Another yawn escaped the alicorn. "But I'm exhausted after a long meeting, so I'm going to have some dinner and go to bed. I don't like leaving you like this, but you need some time to think about this. And I expect a good apology and an even better excuse for why you did this."
And with that, the Princess turned on her hooves and walked back out. Spike could only offer Starlight an apologetic shrug before jogging along after her.
Luckily for Starlight, she already had her apology ready, after having enough time to think about it. The excuse, however, might need some more time to perfect.
The thought of dinner made her gigantic middle grumble with hunger, almost shaking the castle with how thunderous the growls were.
And then a collection of words floated right up to the helpless mare's eyes.
Dinnertime!