"Two whole days and nothing!" Dash grumbled, slamming the book she held down on the desk.
"Rainbow Dash!" Twilight scolded. "Be careful! These journals are old!"
"Sorry." Dash muttered, "But seriously, Twi...how much longer do we keep reading and re-reading this stuff? I've read the same journals at least twice!"
"As much as it pains me, I must agree with Rainbow Dash." Rarity conceded, rubbing her head. "As many times as we keep going over this, we still haven’t found anything that helps."
Dark Magic rubbed his own head. He was developing quite a headache from all the reading and listening to the back and forth of speculations. But he wasn't going to complain. He didn't want to cause further tension between himself and the others, aside from which, with so many pairs of eyes dissecting and second guessing the intentions of his every move, he was perfectly safe from anypony else whilst he was shut in here with them.
Twilight sighed and put her book down.
"I know it's tiring and frustrating." she said. "But I really feel like we're close to cracking this. I mean, really close."
"Close isn't exactly the same as having solved it already." Dash pointed out, unhelpfully.
"I know that!" Twilight groaned. "But it just feels like it's right in front of us! Dark Magic, can you think of any stories, any at all, about any odd spells or anything of that nature?"
He leaned forward, staring intently at Twilight over his reading glasses, his watery old eyes seemingly heralding a note of caution as he tapped the tips of his forehooves together.
“These books only go back at most a hundred years, yet the magic predates the forming of Equestria. I have long puzzled over this anomaly and the conclusion I have drawn is that it must have once been considered so dangerous to possess, if not downright heretical, that it had to have been captured within our family’s oral tradition. However, when our numbers declined, the chance had to be taken to transcribe the knowledge lest it be lost. I am convinced there is a lot more in those books than is readily apparent, but even after extensive study I’m sure I haven’t learned all the secrets myself yet."
“But you have learned more from these books than we have, even though we’ve read them all cover to cover. What are these books telling you that they’re not telling us?” asked Twilight.
Dark Magic frowned thoughtfully, rubbing his muzzle as he pondered.
"There is one form of magic that stuck out to me, because of its name." he stated. "But it was always considered a family secret ... none of my ancestors ever shared it outside the family circle that I know of."
"What was it?" Twilight enquired.
He studied her. "It was revealed to me by my grandmare when I was a colt. She made me promise not to share it outside the family, but ..." he took a deep breath, "Princess, I must have you swear to me that it not leave this room."
"Agreed." Twilight nodded, seeking confirmation from the others around her.
"Very well." Another deep breath. “It’s known as ‘Judgement’s Blessing’. It either enhances magical effect or it can rebound destructively and quite horribly, I’m afraid to say.” explained Dark Magic. ”It works by seeing into the heart of the petitioner and boosting the magic if their intent passes three tests of being noble, honest and selfless. Well, needless to say, the opportunity of enhancing the power of any given spell caused for it to be requested often, but in almost all cases, the petitioner’s heart could not pass all three tests and so it backfired more often than not. As you can imagine, instead of the petitioner blaming themselves for their own impure thoughts, they found it easier to blame the spell caster for shoddy magic. It is, alas, a spell that earns more enemies than friends."
“I can see how that would be a temptation.” mused Twilight reflectively. “But in this case I can only see purity of motive.”
“Yes, but would you be prepared to take that chance with these young mares lives?” he asked looking over his glasses.
“Of course!” chipped in Dash. “Like,
duh, it’s a no brainer!”
Alone amongst her friends, Twilight looked worried. Dark Magic caught her eye.
”Now you see why I withheld it from you.”
"Judgement’s Blessing? I just saw something..." Rarity searched through a stack of journals before levitating one up and quickly going through the pages. "Ah! Here! Middle of the page on your left, darling!"
She levitated the book towards Twilight, who regarded it coldly with some trepidation. She was on to something and she wanted to know, but warning bells were going off in her head, but she had to know …
Twilight laid the tome down in front of her, running the tip of her hoof along the passage in question. It described how the spell dated back to the pre-Unicornian era, but stopped abruptly mid-sentence with the words ‘twisted mandrake’. She said these words out loud and repeated them over again.
“Wait a minute, I’ve seen something to do with that just now!”
Twilight made some space on the table and flipped back a few pages in the book she had been reading, then a few more before shouting triumphantly, “There it is; ‘twisted mandrake!’”
Dark Magic smiled admiringly as he watched the only pony other than himself piece together the arcane spell.
Twilight was a hive of frenetic activity, finding the words linking together the next pieces of the puzzle, until finally she had taken over the whole table with an overlapping procession of musty pages, finally joined together to reveal the complete spell.
“Clever as Clover!” announced Twilight, “It was there all along. Hidden in plain sight!”
“Well” said Dark Magic enigmatically, “Now you’ve found it, what are you going to do with it? The stakes are high, my fellow magician, but you will understand I cannot allow you to hold me responsible for the outcome.”
Twilight stopped in her tracks. She knew this was the point of no return, whichever way she chose to go. She had been buoyed up by the idea of having reconstructed the spell from its constituent parts cunningly hidden amongst the journals, and from an academic perspective in its own right. But now the thought of failure weighed heavily on her, given how much she loved the young mares and how much they looked up to her and trusted her to do the right thing.
She folded her forelegs on the table and buried her muzzle in them with a loud groan.
“You’ve got to do it, Twi.” cajoled Dash. “If you don’t, Scoots is crippled for life. You know what a good flyer she is, you can’t let her throw that away.”
“But if it goes wrong, what will happen to Apple Bloom?” advanced Applejack. “You can’t send her back to how she was, not now she’s had a taste of freedom.”
Even before she had finished, she had felt Dash’s accusing glare staring at her from the other side of the room. Reluctantly, she turned her head to face her friend; steely determination facing sadness and pity, neither prepared to back down.
Two good friends, two possible courses of action, two young mares with their lives ahead of them and one curse dividing them. She peered up over her crossed forelegs, eyes bloodshot from the tears that matted her fur and gathered in small puddles on the table top. Her sightless gaze focused slowly on the eyes of Dark Magic, who stared right back at her. He had faced this dilemma before and felt for her as she weighed two compelling arguments, glad that he wasn’t the one making the call.
Her gaze slowly focused into his, almost pleading and desperate in it's intensity, as if he somehow had the answer she sought. She said nothing, but her inner battle was clear from the pain in her eyes.
"This...is not...a choice I want to make..." she finally whispered, his ears alone picking up on her statement, and the agony in her voice. "It's so hard..."
Dark Magic nodded sadly. “How well do you know your friends and how easily could you face them if you act or if you don’t?”
“If only it was as simple as that.” she thought out loud, weighing up the damage either course of action could wreak among their friendships and how that would come to affect their ability to wield the Elements of Harmony together as friends.
She knew that her decision had implications beyond just the young mares, but also her own friends and the future safety of Equestria.
Twilight laid her head back down and sobbed loudly, agonising over the hardest decision of her life.