//------------------------------//
// The Ritual 
// Story: To Heal Alicorn 
// by The Lunatic 
//------------------------------//

Strength. Power. Might. None of these words meant a thing to Starlight as she put together the finishing touches of the spell she was working on. She slowly drew the chalk lining on the floor, every line exacting. Everything precise. The angles measured down to the hundredth of a degree, the lines to the millimetre. The array was something she’d been working on for years. Something she'd only just managed to find what she needed to complete it. 

She looked at the array as the last line was finally finished. It wouldn’t take too much more time now. All she needed was a few more ingredients now that the array was laid down. She began with the candles. One candle at each of the seven equidistant points of the heptagram. Then, she spread some powdered bone of dragon within the inner heptagon, connecting each point to the five others that were not already connected via chalk line. Next came the ash of oak—held in a sacred urn—that was spread in a circle so that the heptagram was inscribed within it.  

Then, at each cardinal direction, she drew the ancient arcane symbols for air, water, earth, and fire at north, east, south, and west, respectively. Next, she lay a dagger made of purest silver next to the northern candle.

The next step in the process really started to become difficult. Starlight stepped within the array and began to cast. The spell was long and complex. Even more so when Starlight’s power-saving modifications were added in. It began with a chant and channeling. The bottom half of her horn glowed an iridescent grey, the top half completely inert. Soon, the array came alight as well. The dome of magic formed exactly as expected and the energy drain on her was normal and sustainable. She picked up the knife and cut into her foreleg near the hoof barely enough to draw a few drops of blood for the spell. She dropped the blood from the knife onto each point of the heptagon, into each candle flame. 

Up to there, everything had been going perfectly. This was the point that everything went wrong. There was a small line in there. A bit of spell coding that cut out the caster as anything more than a battery after the bloodletting. It wasn’t something she’d found in going over the array for almost a week continuously. Months of work. She then felt the magic begin to dig. It dug into her very being, and Starlight threw back her head into a silent scream. Or maybe there was sound? If there was, she couldn’t hear it over the roaring agony in her ears as the probes of the spell kept going. It seemed they were unable to find what they were looking for. 

Deeper and deeper they dug, feeling like they were physically digging into her soul. She longed for unconsciousness, but it wouldn’t come. She wondered how long it had been. A minute? A second? An eternity? It was hard to judge through the haze of pain. 

Eventually, the magic seemed to find what it was after. It found a seed at the core of her being. Another seed was there as well, even smaller, but present. And the magic jammed into them. And it opened up into those seeds. That wasn’t supposed to happen!

Before her thoughts could go any fuarther, another wave of pain hit. It was probably worse, but at that point, Starlight really couldn’t tell the difference. The wave was almost like taking a fire hose and trying to fill a titanium water balloon. Too much going into the thing too fast. 

As if from a great distance or through water, she heard voices. They sounded as if they were calling her name. She tried to focus through the haze of pain. To see the ponies calling to her. There was a brown blur in front of her. It seemed to be trying to bash through the dome of the spell. But that was impossible. The spell was unbreakable while it was in progress. 

Behind the brown blur was two of blue, one mixed with green and the other mixed with yellow. She couldn’t make out anything else. They, too, seemed to be yelling. Starlight couldn’t understand what for. The pain had stopped. She didn’t know when. Or maybe she’d just relegated it to the background… agony seemed to be subjective that way.

Just then, a new wave broke over her. Right from her shoulders and firing up and down her spine. The fresh wave caused Starlight to whip back her head. The scream couldn’t have been silent, but still she couldn’t hear it. Not over the symphony of agony sounding through her body.

She began to feel magic interweaving with her own. Or maybe it was her own? Starlight couldn’t tell anymore. All she wanted was for it to end. For the ability to sleep. But that relief wasn’t coming anytime soon. It wasn’t going to grant her wish of blackness. Instead, another wave of roaring agony ripped through her body. Starlight opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She was tired. So tired now. But still the pain wasn’t stopping. It wasn’t receding. It just continued onwards. 

Once again, it seemed to recede into the background. Starlight wasn’t going to trust that, however. She wasn’t going to trust that the pain was gone. That it wasn’t just biding its time, ready to come up and blindside her when she was least expecting it. And yet… and yet, that’s exactly what it seemed to be doing. The magic was receding, the pain as well. Starlight felt herself floating down. She felt the perfect agony of the spell leaving her. Depositing her gently into a strong set of forelegs. She could feel, more than hear, the care in the words spoken to her, muffled as though she were underwater.

But even as her world faded into blackness, she knew. The spell had been successful. She had healed her horn. She was now whole.