//------------------------------// // 16 The Incantation // Story: Errant Finale // by Doug Graves //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle peers into the bottle, attempting to clinically study Starlight’s severed cutie mark. She can see through the flawless crystal perfectly. It gives her thaumic senses no resistance, allowing her to inspect every aspect of the way the mark dances in midair, how it shifts and spins but at the same time appears to remain motionless. “Fascinating…” Twilight moans lucidly. It’s… daunting, in a way, trying to describe. How a two dimensional image can somehow be stretched and made almost three dimensional, and yet not. It doesn’t matter which way she turns her head, she can still see the mark clearly. As if the mark knows it is being watched, and turns to meet its viewer. But that’s impossible, right? And yet she is seeing it firsthoof! She could write pages describing this. Papers! Books! When Starlight had done this to the Crusaders, she didn’t feel this… this rush. It’s more like when Rarity had so graciously allowed her to partake of her Loyalty. No, that's not right. Her Generosity. And yet she had observed it all the same, but without noticing or placing it as out of the ordinary. All she needs is a way to break her mind of its rigorous preconceptions, those barriers to free thought, to allow her to comprehend this phenomenon. Maybe Pinkie Pie knows a way... “Yeah,” Starlight drawls, a mix of sarcasm and understanding that breaks Twilight away from her path towards transcending to a higher plane. “My first time was like that too. Madness?” “Um…” Twilight hesitantly admits, a bit of clarity returning to her mind as she tears her attention away from the bottle. “...Probably.” She takes a deep breath, steeling herself against her compulsion, that lust for power, that desire to find more ponies to subject to this. She is not going down that road! No matter how badly she wants to! “How do you do it?” Twilight plaintively begs. Her whole body shudders. “How do you keep from doing this to everypony you see?” Starlight shrugs, not quite uncaring but not really sympathetic. “The first time was the worst. It got… easier from there. To distance myself from it. Especially as I realized that I don’t actually gain any power from the marks I remove. It’s just the pony in front of me getting weaker. The mind plays funny tricks like that.” Starlight looks to the northeast, towards Our Town. “It’s not like I’m consuming the marks like some sort of Tirek.” She spits the name. “They’re all there, nice and safe, locked in a vault.” “Oh.” Now that Starlight mentions it, Twilight doesn’t feel any more powerful. She looks over at the unicorn next to her. Starlight looks exhausted, like she just finished Running the Leaves at Applejack’s pace. The unicorn’s pink is now muted, the aquamarine highlight in her purple mane now a dull sky blue amidst a sea of lavender. Wait, lavender? Starlight’s mane matches her coat!? Twilight grumbles to herself, yet manages to keep a slightly chipper if clinical tone as she asks, “So, how are you feeling? Any nausea, headache, weakness?” Her eyes shine white as she scans Starlight, a second column on her parchment describing the differences she finds. So far, her thaumic levels have taken a nosedive, no longer at a power level she would grudgingly admit is close to her own and now one barely above Sweetie Belle. One of Starlight’s eyes twitch, a hoof coming up to rub her horn. “My head doesn’t hurt. It’s more… sluggish. Like, I’m thinking of something, but I can’t find the…” The other hoof twirls around in a circle, muzzle curling to a frown. “...Word?” Twilight offers, a touch of confusion. So far, she hasn’t found anything else too significantly different. “Yes! W-or-d.” Starlight mouths the word like it is something foreign. “W-eir-d.” Twilight completes her scan; now, she’ll just need to get a baseline from somepony else, to get a better idea of what sort of changes their body makes when they go into estrus. Preferably a unicorn, so Rarity would be the optimal choice. And after she scans Rarity, have Rarity perform a scan on herself. Then track the changes to see where they diverge from Starlight. She goes back to the chest containing the Elements, about to close the lid. She smiles down at the purple apple, the pink lightning bolt, the blue butterfly, the orange balloon, and the black diamond. Wait, that’s not right. Twilight’s eyes grow wide as she gasps in horror - right in front of her, as she watches, the black diamond shifts to pink, and the pink lightning bolt shifts to black. Twilight’s concentration is broken by the faint sound of somepony screaming. Except, it’s a bit deeper than nearly every pony she knows, and growing quieter with every passing second. The intensity is the same, just getting farther away. Not Big Mac. It’s more like… “Doug?” Twilight remarks to herself, walking up to her bedroom window and peering outside. Not the best view of the Carousel Boutique, where Doug, Rarity, and Rainbow are staying tonight, but that is the direction the sound came from. Something is rising from the town, leaving a rainbow contrail, but it’s hard to make out in the dark. And somepony else is making their way towards the library, even though it’s after hours. “Huh.” Twilight turns towards Starlight; the dull unicorn is glumly staring at her bottled mark, eyes watering. “You hear that?” “Huh?” Starlight responds slowly. “No, not really.” She goes back to staring at her cutie mark, absentmindedly rubbing her horn. Twilight’s stomach grumbles, reminding her that she has been far too engrossed in Star Swirl’s spell book this entire time. The last two days, more like. “I heard that,” Starlight remarks blithely. The two glance downstairs as a knock comes at the library door. “I wonder who that could be?” Twilight asks nopony in particular. Starlight shrugs, her horn glowing a dull turquoise, tugging the door open and walking through. Except that she didn’t actually open the door, so she rams her muzzle right into the solid oak. “Ow!” Starlight exclaims as she falls back on her rump, a hoof coming up to rub the sore spot. Half a second later the door swings open and smacks her in the face. “You okay?” Twilight asks, cautiously inspecting the door. Everything seems normal. “I’m fine,” Starlight spits out, nostrils scrunching up. She pulls her hoof back - no blood. Just dull pink. “You have any ice?” The knock comes again, a loud banging that sounds a lot more desperate. Twilight looks down at Starlight. She’s in the way and making no effort to move. Well, easily dealt with. Her horn flares raspberry, and a split second later Twilight appears next to her front door, the Crusaders warily watching from the kitchen. She opens the door, nearly gasping at the sight. Rainbow Dash is standing in the doorway, if her slumped posture and lethargic reaction to the door opening could be called standing. The warm half of her mane, never the most well-kept, has tufts pulled in every which direction. Her eyes would be hiding under the cooler colors if her mane reached that far, but instead she is staring at the ground like she’s afraid something will jump out at her. One hoof awkwardly strokes her foreleg, and her blank flanked body shudders with every breath. Starlight moans from upstairs. “Twilight? You getting me some ice?” A pause. “I don’t hear you getting me ice.” “Rainbow Dash?” Twilight hesitantly says, ignoring Starlight and processing what happened to her Friend. “Are you okay?” “I-I didn’t w-want to just... barge in here,” Rainbow meekly states, eyes unable to meet Twilight’s. “I d-didn’t mean to d-disturb you.” “Rainbow Dash, you are never a disturbance.” Twilight grins to herself as Starlight bumbles down the stairs and goes into the kitchen. “I mean, sometimes when your tricks get a little out of hoof, I’m minorly perturbed, but that’s not the same thing.” “Sure,” Rainbow says in a whisper. Her knees bend, body turning as if to walk away, but she stops. “R-Rarity left me all alone. Something about animals.” Rainbow Dash shivers pitifully, even in the warm spring night. “C-can I come in? Please?” “Of course!” Twilight exclaims, moving out of the doorway. It isn’t until Rainbow Dash walks past her that she notices the missing cutie mark. Just a blank patch of cerulean fur, and her wings aren’t nearly long enough to cover where the mark should be. “Rainbow Dash!” Twilight nearly shouts, her tone stopping Rainbow in place. Demands, potential explanations, requests for more information flit through her head. “What happened to your cutie mark?” “What are you talking about?” Rainbow Dash asks, just the tiniest bit of bite drowning in a sea of self-consciousness. “I don’t have a cutie mark.” She flinches as she glances back, a frightened look in her eyes as if something might be on her flank instead of mere cerulean fur. Twilight’s eyes narrow. “Is this a prank?” Twilight demands, glaring at Rainbow. She turns to Starlight, eyeing the ice pack she holds against her muzzle. The pink unicorn seems to be having trouble controlling the pack with her magic; it keeps slipping, then raising too high, then dropping back on her head with a light crack. “W-why would you think t-this is a prank?” Rainbow Dash whispers, meekly dropping her barrel to the floor and trying to make herself as small as possible. She grimaces, eyes watering. “Is. This. A. Prank.” Twilight’s icy expression is colder than Starlight’s pack. Her hoof grinds into the library floor as her eyes bore into the timid pegasus, shining white as they flick to Rainbow’s flanks. No magical aura, no traces of paint or dye. Remarkably well concealed; kudos to them on the effort so far. “N-no,” Rainbow Dash stutters. She sniffs again, a few tears falling to the floor. “I-I’m sorry, Twi.” She turns to leave, head hanging low, clenching her eyes shut. “Wait,” Twilight says, her mind whirring. Rainbow Dash is a decent actress, but no way could she pull that off. Not for a prank. She takes another look at Rainbow’s flank as the pegasus stops. Still blank. And a quick overall magical scan shows drastically less energy than she expects. The black lightning bolt. The Elements! “Wait right here!” Twilight commands. She teleports again, leaving two confused mares behind. She pulls out the Elements of Harmony, staring at the colors. What should have been an orange apple is purple! It's supposed to be blue balloon, purple diamond, pink butterfly, orange apple, red lightning bolt! Everything is wrong! Now, all the colors are jumbled up, with no red at all! “Oh, no,” Twilight mumbles to herself. Had she… did she miscast Starlight’s cutie mark removal spell, thus messing up the Elements of Harmony? No, that doesn’t make any sense. That spell had very clearly defined limits of what it could do. Sure, you can boost it to grab three cutie marks at once. Maybe even five if she was really trying, but she would have had to intentionally do that. You don’t just get wild results like that with completed spells! You would need… Twilight gulps as she looks over at Star Swirl’s spell book. The one that contains a decidedly incomplete spell. A spell that Starlight couldn’t help but remind her of the wording. A spell that she might have accidentally cast just before removing Starlight’s cutie mark. No. No might about it. She had definitely cast that spell just before removing the cutie mark. And now, downstairs, is Rainbow Dash! Markless!