The heat beating down on them from the glorious morning sky had all the Princesses squinting, but Luna was by far the most uncomfortable with the absurd brightness, barely resisting the urge to mumble obscenities under her breath. It wouldn’t do to show anything less than a professional, ready attitude for the trainers of the morning, so even as their eyes were slightly unfocused the quartet kept their ears pointed in Applejack’s direction, who wasn’t wearing her hat but seemed unbothered by the lack of protection from the sun. Pinkie Pie was surprisingly quiet in spite of her massive grin, letting Applejack discuss what was in store for the Princesses first. “Good mornin’, sugarcubes! When Twilight done told us that y’all got earth pony power in yer blood, even though you don’t use it too much, we knew we had to get y’all used to relyin’ on it real soon. Can’t have ya defenseless as soon as ya get into a proper slug-fest with a minotaur or somethin’.” That was another thing adding to their discomfort: the leather harnesses strapping their wings down and the horn rings suppressing their unicorn magic. “Things like what y’all are wearin’ now are getting pretty common in recent days, but the discussion as to why will have to wait for later.” Twilight began to open her mouth. “Everypony knows you know, Twi.” She shut her mouth again with a pout. “The point is that the only way to stop an earth pony from wreckin’ house with ‘er bare hooves is to drain ‘er dry of all her magic or kill her. Full stop. You’ll eventually be versed enough in the ways of the earth to break out of restraints like those with yer physical strength alone, but to get all the way there y’all got to start with the basics. Stayin’ within the yellow guide-posts will get ya there eventually.”
Applejack gestured out to the obstacle course they were standing at the start of, beginning to break down each of its parts. “First thing is a simple hundred meter sprint to the first obstacle, which is twenty meters of laid-down cartwheels. Uniform construction, so pattern recognition will help ya there. Try not to trip.” Applejack smirked at them, her hoof moving almost imperceptibly to point at the next obstacle. “Cargo net right after. You’ll have to climb up with just yer hooves, then balance your way across the flat net to the drop. There’s a small mud pit at the bottom that you can just barely avoid iffin ya jump it just right. Next up are some under-over logs – you duck one and then jump the next and so on – ‘til you hit the monkey bars. Grip ‘em real tight with your fetlocks and ya shouldn’t have no trouble.” Applejack then nodded to Pinkie Pie, who had started rapidly vibrating on the spot in a way that seemed physically impossible.
“Alright, Princesses! That’s when things start getting FUN! There’s this thing I’m calling a cannon crawl after the monkey bars, and as soon as you pass a little magical trip-wire type thing, even though it doesn’t trip anypony and there aren’t any wires, the firepower starts up! When the last pony passes the exit it’ll stop. You’ll have to get down on your tummy-wummies and crawly-wallie under the barbed wire, which is actually wire, without letting any confetti get in your eyes. I’m pretty sure that would hurt a lot. Anyway, after the fun explosions there are some boring walls with ropes on either side for you to climb up with and then slide down on the other side. That’s when the course does a U-turn with a big, curved mud-pit! Keep your hoofsies clean by scurrying over the log maze and then jumping the log-jumpy bit! Gotta have really, really good balance for that. The logs aren’t really much of a maze, but they kinda zig-zag around a lot which is super fun! Then there’s this really cool weaver thing!” Twilight arced an eyebrow, looking at the pattern of horizontal metal bars that rose up and then came down again at a mild angle, slightly confused.
“Oh no.” Cadance bemoaned, having seen Shining Armor practicing with such an obstacle many times.
“We wanted to push ourselves.” Celestia reminded them all, trying to steel herself for the challenge ahead.
“Y’all done chit-chattin’?” They all nodded sheepishly, Twilight keeping her confusion to herself to let the explanation of the full course continue. She could ask questions later. “M’kay then. Next up is a chance for y’all to wash the mud out of yer coats. It’s a water-pit with a long-ish glass cover between the entrance and exit that you’ll have to swim on under.”
“Oh come on, Applejack.” Pinkie interrupted with a playful nudge. “You know it’s really a water-ball-pit.” Indeed there were several plastic balls floating at the top of the water at the entrance and exit of the pit, which would likely function as a minor nuisance at most, but at least it was visually striking and delightfully silly. “Then you walk on a rope with guide ropes on either side that are like training wheels on a bike, and then there are regular bike ropes after that.”
“What Pinkie means to say is that there’s a rope walk and then a rope shimmy. Y’all know how to shimmy, right?” They all nodded, except Twilight who shook her head again, feeling embarrassed. “S’alright, Twi; we’re gonna demonstrate in a minute anyway. After the shimmyin’ there’s three ‘steps’ of thick logs to vault for each of y’all, and then you have to drop safely.” It didn’t look too dangerous, the first step only maybe a meter high, not quite a mare’s average height but it would reach the nape of Twilight’s neck. The next two steps were just as much higher than the previous step, and a three meter jump wasn’t any higher than the drop from the net near the start. The last obstacle, though, was a different story. “Then there’s the seven meter wall.” There was a slight curve at the very bottom, continuing up for less than a full meter, and the rest of the wide wall was completely flat. “The fifty meters between the steps and the wall should give you plenty of room to get a nice running start, if y’all ain’t outta breath by then.”
“I even put slides on the other side and painted them to match your coat colors! You can have a celebratory slide back down every time you pull it off!” Celestia nodded back at Pinkie.
“What a wonderful way to end such a course.” Instead of glowing at the praise, Pinkie just awkwardly coughed into a hoof, waiting for Applejack to continue.
“’Twould be, yeah, but that ain’t the end.” Pinkie and Applejack shifted to the side so they weren’t partially obscuring the remainder of the course. Apparently it wasn’t a perfect horseshoe shape and was a bit longer at the second half. “After y’all slide down there’s four big rocks, one for each of ya. They each weigh exactly 80 kilograms.” Cadance's mouth dropped open while Luna smirked, grinding her hooves together. “After you push yours past the red goal-posts you move on to the hay-bale toss. Yer gonna use the ropes tied to ‘em to twist ‘em around and fling ‘em as far as ya can. Make it past the ten meter mark and you’ve done it. That’s the end of the Chipped Hoof course. After Pinkie and I demonstrate this one I’ll be off to help Rarity with another course to test y’all’s agility. The only reason we managed to build this one so quick is ‘cuz it mostly uses pre-built segments found in Royal Guard courses.”
“Hmmm.” Celestia didn’t seem particularly bothered by Applejack’s correction, a serene smile still on her face. “Even considering some portions were already built I’m impressed you and Pinkie Pie set this up in only five days.”
“Tweren’t nothin’, but thank ya kindly.” While Applejack calmly stepped up to the starting line Pinkie Pie bounced into place beside her, smiling manically. “The Chipped Hoof is also wide enough fer all four of y’all to go at the same time. Pinkie and I will be runnin’ the rightmost paths so y’all can see us good from the middle there.”
“Don’t forget to tell them the most important part!” Pinkie reminded her, but then went ahead and explained it herself anyway. “Any time you mess up and fall down on an obstacle, you gotta go back to the start of that obstacle’s section and start over on it! If you spend a whole hour messing around in there trying to get it right then you have to stop and rest until next time and start over. It’s okay if you can’t make it through this time. It’s super hard and this is only day five!” Suddenly Starlight teleported onto the scene, levitating a cup of coffee and a quartet of stopwatches. She had a serious case of bed-mane and bags under her eyes.
“Starlight!” Twilight exclaimed, leading the other Princesses over to her. “I’m glad you’re here already! Now you can time Applejack and Pinkie too so we can compare our times to ponies who already know what they’re doing.”
“Pinkie is running the course?” Starlight seemed perplexed by the idea, tilting her head. “Isn’t she a baker? What makes you think she’ll be better at a military style obstacle course than any of you?”
Twilight opened her mouth as if to refute the point, but nothing she could say would actually make much sense. After a moment of consideration she just said, “You haven’t known her as long as I have, so I’m letting that one slide for now. Just get the timers ready, please.”
Starlight rolled eyes, but did levitate two of the stopwatches closer to her face in preparation. They didn’t want to say it, but the other Princesses were as confused by Pinkie’s presence as Starlight. “Get ready to go in three! Two! One! Go!” Both watches clicked and started counting up.
“Woohoo!” Applejack was nearly knocked over by a blast of air as Pinkie took off like a rocket, kicking up a dirt cloud that she left in her wake. To Applejack’s credit she recovered quickly and started galloping toward the cartwheels. Nopony was watching her do so, most of their jaws hanging open as they watched a pink blur that vaguely resembled an earth pony doing cartwheels. Pinkie Pie had run the full 100 meters in one tenth of a second, dancing her hooves into the spaces between spokes for the cartwheels required by her path, and not necessarily in the most efficient order. Then she scrambled up the cargo net like a spider, if a spider could use the accelero spell, and she breezed across the top just as easily, bouncing off the end and doing a front-flip to land past the first mud pit. “Down-up-down-up-down-up!” She was past the six under-over logs. Applejack had just started on the cartwheels.
Pinkie jumped straight up from under the monkey bars with her hooves tucked to her chest, which didn’t seem to be a good way to reach up and grab them at the apex of the jump. Sure enough, her hooves didn’t reach the bars, but she wasn’t falling back down. Then she started gliding through the air as if her mane was gripping the bars and carrying her across. She flipped onto her back as soon as she was past the bars and closed her eyes, her mane and tail gliding her across the ground under the barbed wire of the cannon crawl in just the same way. As party cannons fired she inhaled confetti into her nostrils and then sneezed it back out. The rope wall didn’t seem to phase her either, as she just ignored the ropes entirely, jumping to the top of the wall and then down to the other side as easily as if she were playing hopscotch. She giggled happily while dancing along the logs over the second mud pit until she reached the jump logs, leaping past them all to the other side of the pit with a happy squee. It was enough to distract Applejack for a moment while she was trying to climb the cargo net at the beginning of the course.
Pinkie did a celebratory jump before hopping over to the weaver bars and then slithering through them like a snake in clear defiance of typical pony bone-structure. She bounced five meters into the air as she left the metal and then stayed there for a second as if gravity didn’t exist, her tail sparking like electric coils being charged with a current. She stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth while aiming herself and then dive-bombed into the water-ball-pit, her tail churning like a propeller and pushing her through the water in only twenty seconds. She shot out the other side and shook herself off like a spastic dog before scrambling up the steps to the tight ropes, headbanging to a song in her head while stepping across hers and the one without guide ropes with her eyes closed. Then she was at the step-logs she was supposed to jump, choosing instead to impossibly stretch her body to literally step up them and bounce down. That dropped her at the fifty meter run to the vertical wall, and she lowered her chest and shook her rump in preparation. Applejack wasn’t winded in the slightest as she reached the under-over logs, but she was still panting just from witnessing Pinkie’s insane speed.
There was another explosive sound and Pinkie shot up the wall like a ramp, her head poking through a cloud before she started to descend, inexplicably slowing down as she fell to the apex of the purple slide and casually riding down it with her hooves in the air and her eyes sparkling. “WHEEEE! Haha!” She cantered happily over to her rock and poked her nose under it, flipping it over onto its side with her neck muscles. Rock farmer, Twilight thought to herself. Pinkie repeated the motion a few times and soon the rock was past the red goal-posts. She shook her arms around as if she was playing an invisible set of drums on her way to the hay-bale, and then she tossed it up into the air and bumped it with her butt on its way down, sending it just far enough to pass the mark for the toss. Starlight was too stunned to stop the timer, and after a few seconds Twilight reached over and clicked it to stop it herself. While the others continued to gawk stupidly, Twilight just turned around to watch Applejack, attempting to decipher the best way for anypony other than Pinkie Pie to handle the course.
Applejack was doubtlessly channeling a lot of earth pony magic through her hooves to swing from the monkey bars as easily as she did, and it was clear why she left her hat behind as she crawled under the barbed wire, getting confetti in her fur, mane, and tail. It stuck to the sweat that already made her coat glisten, but Twilight knew Applejack wasn’t one to tire easily and she finally began to see just how demanding the Chipped Hoof was going to be for herself. Applejack shook her mane out as she left the cannons behind, gripping the rope in front of her with her teeth and hooves. Her hold was firm, and she made her way to the top of the wall without losing any progress to gravity, and then she made the same force her ally as she slid down the rope on the other side. She had to watch her footing carefully to get past the mud pit and she spent a short few seconds after each jump at the end of it to readjust her weight, getting past it without falling once.
Twilight’s eyes narrowed when Applejack reached the weaver, committing her carefully practiced motions to memory. She used her ankles and fetlocks to keep herself off the ground at her designated edge of the bars, moving through them sideways and maintaining at least three points of contact at all times to keep her balance. She was grunting with exertion when she passed over the last bar, taking a moment to catch her breath and moving forward at a slow trot. She took a deep breath before diving into the water-ball-pit, paddling through the water with serene patience, breaching the other side before the lack of oxygen caused her too much trouble. Even as winded as she was she made the tight-rope look easy, knowing exactly where to place her hooves to keep her balance, and when she reached the less stable, singular rope she wrapped her legs around it, hanging down from it as she shimmied across. She swung herself up to the platform at the end and cantered down the stairs, blinking irritably as sweat dripped from her forehead. She took three big breathes in front of the step-logs, staring them down, and then hopped up to the first, then the second, then seemed to be falling short at the third, which was the farthest. Her left arm shot forward and wrapped around the log, and she dangled there dangerously for a spell. She managed to shift her hips back and forth until she was swinging with the log as a pivot point and tossed her left leg up at the perfect moment, straddling the log and shifting her weight until she was on top of it.
After Applejack hopped down she almost collapsed, and then she growled and huffed like an angry bull, galloping toward the vertical wall with renewed vigor. She kicked up from the incline of the wall when she finally reached it, jumping high enough to toss her forearms over the top of the wall and yank herself up. She smiled tiredly as she went down the pink slide, but even though Pinkie had been supernaturally capable, Applejack was still moving through more quickly than most Royal Guards could and she knew it. “Yeee-haw!” The exclamation itself seemed to lend her limbs new life. The Princesses could see her muscles shifting as her sweat matted her fur down to her skin, and her haunches tensed as she twisted around and brought her chest low. Then she bucked the 80 kilogram boulder, sending it into the air and well past the goal-posts. In fact, it landed next to the hay-bales, which meant it was in Applejack’s way when she got there. That wouldn’t do, so she huffed and bucked it right back to where it started. She took a few seconds to clear her mind and then gripped the rope attached to her designated bale, spinning around like she had at several rodeos and releasing it at the perfect time. It soared through the air and landed several meters further than the course demanded. “Woo-wee! That was fun.”
Pinkie Pie stopped slurping up a smoothie she’d pulled from her mane and stuffed it back to where it came from. “You bet it was! This was a great idea, Applejack.”
“Thank RD later, then. She’s the one who got the big picture sorted, including all these obstacle courses.” Applejack casually lined herself up with Pinkie’s boulder as she spoke, bucking it back into its starting position as she had done for her own while Pinkie dragged the hay-bales back.
“Is nopony going to mention the absurdity of what We just witnessed?” Luna pointed at the bouncing pink pony with a shaking hoof. “Pray tell Us, what is she?”
Twilight looked back at Luna with a slight frown. “She’s my friend.” Her voice was icy and serious, simmering with suppressed anger. “I told you already: don’t question Pinkie Pie.” Twilight then waited for Starlight to pull forth the notebook for recording times, but she seemed to not be doing anything for quite awhile. “Starlight, the times.”
“Right, sorry.”
“Also, you didn’t stop the watch for Pinkie in time. Her actual time was three minutes and ten seconds, not three and fourteen, with a half second margin for error.”
“Yeah yeah, I got it.” Starlight quickly scribbled in the times with her terrible horn-writing, and Twilight had to squint to read it properly. ‘Pinkie – 3:10 / AJ – 11:43’.
“…You didn’t add the margin for error.”
“Twilight, I’m not writing ‘give or take half a second’ on this time-sheet.”
“Of course not. That would be ridiculous. You’re going to write ‘plus or minus thirty milliseconds’ with standard mathematical notations.”
“No, I’m not!” Twilight narrowed her eyes. Seconds passed. Starlight huffed. “Okay, fine, I’ll add the damn margin for error, for Celestia’s sake.”
“You know I’m standing right here, miss Starlight.” Celestia’s own eyes narrowed as well, and her sister looked miffed too.
“Yes, and so are We. Why does nopony ever exclaim that something mildly agitating but helpful is being done in Our name?”
“Ugh!” Starlight then turned to Cadance, staring at her. “Well?”
“…’Well’ what?” Cadance asked, confused.
“Aren’t you going to complain about something too?”
Cadance huffed and grit her teeth, practically growling through them while the other Princesses glared at Starlight with her. “You’re lucky all of us are wearing horn rings.” That finally seemed to wake Starlight up properly, and she realized she’d just antagonized every Princess in Equestria for no good reason. She suddenly chugged down her whole cup of coffee as if to fortify her senses against making another such mistake any time soon.
“I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me.”
“Hey girls!” Starlight flinched as Pinkie bounced over to them, Applejack already gone and on her way to help Rarity with another ground course. “Who’s ready for the Chipped Hoof!? It’s super-duper funsy-wonsy!”
“I suppose we better get started sometime.” Cadance seemed somewhat regretful as she spoke, glancing up at her mane. “Goodbye, clean and casual manedo. I’ll miss you.” They were all taller than the average pony, and Cadance was expecting the barbed wire to be Tartarus for her mane.
Back in Twilight’s castle…
Celaeno had spent the last week reading all about Equestria and its historical culture, hoping to have her curiosity mostly sated before she had her assignments mapped out for the training program. She reached for the next tome that caught her fancy, planning on a nice, relaxing morning of--
BOOM!
"squawk!" Her feathers rustled as she jumped a foot into the air, her crystal leg hitting the crystal floor with a loud clang as confetti settled over her and the bookshelf. "What..?"
"SURPRISE!"
"AAAAH!" She ducked in shock and pulled the blade at her side, twisting around to find--
Nothing. No one was there.
Celaeno shakily reached for the same book, lifting it from the floor before taking several slow, backward steps. She was trembling when she finally turned around and sprinted toward her quarters.
“Huh.” Pinkie mused, watching Sunset and Sunburst walk toward the lake together. “I just had a random thought.” Most ponies considered almost everything Pinkie said to be ‘random,’ so hearing her use the word meant that whatever she was talking about was exceptionally unpredictable, and the five other ponies around her gave her their full attention. “I don’t think anypony ever told our new friends about the surprises I hid throughout the castle. Some of the cannons have voice-boxes hooked up to them, too.” They all followed Pinkie’s gaze to a particular window, catching a burst of color that might have been a confetti explosion.
“…We’ll tell them later.” Twilight decided, turning back to the starting line for the Chipped Hoof. “Count us in, Starlight!”
“Three!” They’d all done their stretches, but it didn’t make the wing restraints any more bearable. “Two!” That was part of the point, of course. If they ever lost the use of their wings it would be at the least because of similar and tighter restraints. “One!” Cadance was on the far right, shaking out her mane, with Twilight beside her, then Celestia, and finally Luna on the far left side. They were ready. “Go!”
The others immediately broke into a full gallop, but Twilight tried to pace herself, making good time at a fast canter without getting too winded. The others started on the cartwheels before her, but they needed to take great care to get through them without an embarrassing fall. Twilight made a few quick calculations as she approached and shifted her gait, losing barely any speed as she cantered through the cartwheels. It was as easy as Applejack said it would be for anypony who noticed the pattern. She was first to the cargo net and found that climbing it was actually easier than she expected; it was all a matter of balance. The others didn’t seem to have much trouble with it either, but moving across the horizontally stretched part was a lot more awkward, and all of them slipped their legs through the holes in the ropes several times. Luna recovered from it the quickest, making her way to the edge and jumping down elegantly. She just barely cleared the mud pit, and her sister almost managed the same, only one rear hoof sinking into the mud slightly. Cadance took a second longer to compose herself for her own jump than Twilight expected, and the shifting of weight at the wrong time caused Twilight to trip up and fall horn-first into the mud.
Twilight gasped as she pulled herself out, reminded of her days at the spa with Rarity while the mud matted her fur. The taller Princesses were using the length of their legs to hook onto the monkey bars, very slowly inching forward, but as Twilight watched Luna lost her grip, growling in frustration as she stepped back to the small set of stairs that Pinkie had ignored in favor of simply jumping. “That’s not the point.” Twilight muttered to herself, tracing her hoof through the dirt. She remembered when Zecora taught her how to walk on water and the feeling of channeling powerful magic directly through her hooves with finesse and control. She couldn’t access the unicorn magic she’d used for that, but she wasn’t just a unicorn anymore. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She could feel it.
Celestia was almost past the bars, Luna and Cadance still struggling, and then Twilight gripped the first bar at her fetlocks, just like an earth pony would. Even so it was taxing for her upper body muscles and she was suddenly very thankful for all the pull-ups Rainbow Dash insisted on. When she let go with one hoof to stretch it to the next bar the pain from the strain increased exponentially, but with a grunt of effort she managed to move to the second bar. “Come on, everypony!” Pinkie had slipped into her cheerleader outfit and was shouting encouragement from the sidelines. “This is the obstacle foals use to have fun on the schoolyard playground. It’s got nothing on you!” If Dash had said the exact same thing it would have been both sarcastic and highly motivating for how insulting it was. Since Pinkie said it she sounded completely sincere and chipper, which just made it even more motivating for how pathetic it made Twilight feel. Soon she was swinging from bar to bar with speed, the pain pushed to the back of her mind.
As Twilight passed her, Celestia closed her eyes and focused, searching for the same thing Twilight had found. She’d known her physical might once, long ago, and she could feel it now. Her legs slipped loose until they weren’t wrapped around the bars, but she grabbed them with her fetlocks, smirking to herself. Luna and Cadance nodded to each other and did the same, and all four of them left the monkey bars behind. To either side of them the cannons began to fire as they took to the next challenge. Twilight had the simplest time of it, the others having to twist with utmost care to keep their skin away from the barbed wire, their height becoming a disadvantage. Cadance's mane quickly became a total mess, but Celestia’s and Luna’s ethereal manes flowed under the wire without being snagged. The cannon blasts may have been loud, but Twilight was quite acclimated to them after so many years living in Ponyville, so she emerged on the other side, unfazed.
Cadance was a little fazed, but she’d get over it.
Twilight gripped the vertical rope in front of her in the same way she’d seen Applejack do so, the others following suit. Actually managing to pull herself up the rope took a great deal of effort, and she found herself slipping down slightly several times, rope-burn afflicting the frogs of her hooves. “Come on, you can do it! Climb climb climb!” Pinkie’s cheering was the precise opposite of a drill sergeant’s methods, as Cadance knew from Shining Armor, but Pinkie’s ludicrously good record for the same course they were struggling through enhanced the effectiveness of her encouragement by making it feel exceedingly patronizing. They didn’t have time to think through why Pinkie would never mean it that way, too busy sweating and straining to lift themselves without horn or wings. “Wooo! Go Celly!” She was the first over the top, straddling the wall to catch her breath. She remembered her youth, kicking and screaming in a forest to protect her sister. Her face hardened and she slid down the rope on the other side.
Balancing on the logs above the second mud pit was a lot harder for all of them than it had any right to be on its own, their already tired muscles twitching and cramping at the worst times. Twilight had just grown accustomed to using her wings to improve her balance a couple of years ago, and there she was in the mud, her wings having strained uselessly against her restraints. “I can do this.” She whispered to herself, paddling back to the start to try again. Celestia was the only one who hadn’t fallen, but it had taken her such a long time to reach the jumps. Somehow the vertical logs barely sticking up out of the mud looked a lot smaller up close, probably because she was about to try to land all four of her hooves on just one of them, and then jump from that one to another and another, and then make a heroic leap to the end. She tripped on the first jump, cursing under her breath and splashing into the mud. Twilight easily kept track of everypony’s failures, and by the time they were all past the pit Celestia had fallen twice at the jumps, Luna had tripped up three times, Cadance only once from moving extremely slowly the second time through, and herself tallying up four falls.
Pinkie’s smile was looking a bit strained as Twilight panted breathlessly, staring at the others trying to shimmy between the first two bars of the weaver. Twilight marched forward and made to copy Applejack’s expert motions from before. Tired, irritated, and disappointed in herself, Twilight pulled from a deep well of strength she was only just learning how to tap into, slipping over and then under the bars with a speed and fluidity that made the others pause to watch her technique. Soon Twilight was plunging into the water-ball-pit, the others catching up quickly, all of their hooves glimmering with a subtle magic as they paddled through the water. When Twilight emerged on the other side she was gasping and sputtering for a few seconds, but she ignored the burning in her lungs and pushed forward. Being water-logged made the tight-rope walk seem a daunting task, but Twilight followed intuition and stepped along where the guide ropes connected to the one beneath her. The taller Princesses struggled a bit more, having been more reliant on their wings for balance and for much longer, but none of them fell. Shimmying across the next rope felt almost too easy after their experience shimmying up one earlier, but it was another strain on their legs and those were starting to add up.
The step-log obstacle had a reputation amongst the Guard along with taller cargo nets for washing out any ground-bound recruits with a fear of heights, and none of the Princesses possessed such a weakness. Twilight was smiling as she jumped from one to the other and finally down with ease, adrenaline surging through her and making her strained muscles tingle pleasantly. She could feel her earth pony magic pulsing with her pounding heart, warming her from the frogs of her hooves to the tip of her snout. As if by some unspoken signal all the Princess reared down together when the last of them landed past the step-logs, and then they all took off at full gallop toward the seven meter wall. Celestia reached it first, her long, powerful legs slamming into the top of the incline and magically propelling her up until her arms could hook over the edge of the wall. Luna and Cadance didn’t make it quite as high, but their fetlocks still gripped the top, and with mighty heaves and grunts of effort, the least regal noises they’d ever made in their lives, they managed to pull themselves to the top and collapse onto their slides.
Twilight was the last to reach the wall, kicking off just like the others, stretching her arms as high as she could, but she came up short. She slid down the wall, her body slamming against the incline and bouncing into the dirt with a soft thud, her wet and clumpy mane becoming an even grimier mess in the process. She groaned, stretching her limbs over the ground in exhaustion. The horn ring was built for training purposes: firm, but not digging in nor locked in any way. If she just lifted her hooves and removed it she could cast a spell to quiet the pounding in her skull and banish the pain in her muscles. It would be relief. It would be against the rules. It would be giving up. She left the ring alone and forced her way to her hooves, panting as she turned toward Pinkie, who was a lot closer than she remembered. “Our magic doesn’t come only from our hooves, Twilight. We just channel most of it through them most of the time. Can you feel it spreading from your heart with every beat?”
Twilight closed her eyes, breathing slowly and focusing on the feeling of her lungs filling with air. She could swear she felt the oxygen reaching her heart, spreading through her body. “I feel it, Pinkie.”
“Let it help you, and finish this thing!” Twilight took a few steps back, smiled, and rushed forward. She jumped from the incline, soaring up through the air, over a full meter above the top of the wall. With a shift of her stance she fell straight to it and cantered down her slide. The others were struggling against the massive boulders, pushing them ever forward with strength they didn’t know they had, Celestia almost finished with hers. Twilight stepped in front of hers, took a deep breath, turned around, and bucked. She felt her legs shudder as a reactionary force that could have shattered them surged through to her flanks, and the reaction of the magic she’d focused there made the exertion almost pleasant. She felt a bit winded and the boulder was only half way to the red goal-posts, but she knew she could do it again and she did. Tossing the hay-bale afterward was just a matter of imitating Applejack’s practiced motions until she had the fortune to make a toss good enough to pass. It took her four tries. Celestia had finished first and Luna and Cadance were right behind them, but they didn’t care about that. Each of them was just glad that they’d done it. It was over.
“Good job, Princesses!” Pinkie squealed while Starlight recorded their abysmal times. “Now you just have to do it four more times and you’ll be done with the first half of everything you have to do today!”
Twilight had a feeling it was going to be a long day.