Auroras & Souls

by Blues Rider


11: Regrouping

The purple alicorn pulled herself up the last step to the castle roof. The effort was like moving the planet underneath her legs rather than her legs over the floor. She took a second to take in the scene. The calm pool lay still in the centre of the roof, surrounded by ten deck chairs for sun-lounging and 'chillaxing' as Rainbow Dash had called it.

She wiped eye dust out with her hoof and made her way over to the edge of the tower. A platform raised up that looked over Ponyville to the south. She bought herself up those extra few steps and took in the view.

The town bellow was silent. That gave her more will to stop whatever was happening. She wasn't just saving her friends, it was everypony.

She inhaled deeply, filling both lungs with still, fresh night air.

Preparing herself, she grounded her four hoofs, steadying her stance and pulling herself up to full height. Lifting her head and looking out over the horizon, her wings unfolded naturally as she prepared her spell. Her horn glistened it's radiant purple in the vibrant orange light of dusk.

Unfurling the tip of the left wing to full span, followed by the right, she let go.

All the tension in her body dropped as she was lifted off her hooves by the spell. She felt weightless.

When the spell reached full charge she felt herself falling, yet never moving. Her body forgot about gravity as she used all her willpower to drag the sun, down from it’s position to set. The sky was black.

Twilight then turned her attention to the moon. She could feel it. When she got a hold, she willed it, and willed it, and willed it and eventually it moved, slowly at first but as it gained momentum so did the spell, she was fully connected with it. She felt the magic of the ethereal plane.
'This is slightly easier than the sun' She told herself, and then before the moon reached it’s full height, Twilight blacked out.

Her body tumbled onto the overlook beneath. She lay there still.


Starlight Glimmer was left in the throne room with the map and some calculations. Between textbooks, Sunburst and Twilight, she had been learning how to calculate the correct approach to combining spell forms. After checking the calculations three times over – which wasn’t hard because it was Twilight’s work – she set about preparing it.

She studied each part of the spell and now she trotted around the cutie-map preparing herself.

“So start with a simple communications encryption. Then combine in a super-receptor with a transaction-prediction. The next layer is an invisible-magic-projection-sweep which I will have to charge but not cast. Finally then connecting with the map by an enticement and throw the triple underlay of the spellform to affect it.”

She sighed, took a breath and read it once more time for good measure.

Carefully she selected five appropriate spell books from the pile of books Twilight had transported from the library to the throne room. Flicking through them she found the pages she would need.

"Right then...," she said, examining the pages in front of her, "So If I start with Enigmaus, then tuningomas and calcamucast, that's an unusual combination I'll never use again." She chuckled. "Followed by..., viscuwarenessem, like earlier, but then I can use..., oh! Cajeria! Like old times." She teased. "And I can activate cojeria by anchoring it to the map."

She turned to the map.

“I got this.”

Then Starlight did as she had read.

Her horn glowed and glimmered it’s pale green aura. Then her magic aura widened as double-cast the second spell. As she cast the third stage she connected with the magical ethereal plane and her body felt a little lighter. The aura around her horn was large now, the first and second layers glowing brighter than the last.

As she shrouded her three layers with a fourth spell-form the aura grew almost as big as her body, illuminating the whole room in bright green light.

She almost lost her balance under her newfound weightlessness, firing the spell into the centre of the cutie-map. A direct plasma beam cut through the air, finding it's place in the centre of the cutie-map.

The bright green beam sunk into the map which flickered, reacting to the spell.

Starlight fell to the floor. Her head was pounding, she was exhausted by the creation of the spell. By some miracle she had pulled it off. She pulled herself up by an arm of Rainbow's throne just in time to see the holographic images on the map flicker and start to change.

Then it became obvious what was happening.

Black streams of magic were flowing through Equestria from all over the land to the Crystal Empire. The Empire was centred in the map because of the spell. A red and blue orb shrouded the Crystal Palace. The red orb created a gradient, slowly becoming less and less opaque as it reached out to Equestria's boarders.

"Twilight was right, there is something seriously wrong with the Crystal Empire." She muttered to herself.

'But that would mean that any spells cast within the reach of these auroras feeds back to the dark energy.' She considered, her vision starting to blur in and out of focus. She looked towards Southern Equestira, It seemed as though it was too far away to be affected by the dark auroric tendrils... Every spell has it’s limits.

As Starlight took this in, a small number of Cutie-marks began to appear on the map. Hers and Twilight’s in this castle. Cadence’s heart in the Empire. A large collection in Twilight's school. Two in Canterlot.... and an hourglass in the centre of Ponyville?

She didn’t instantly recognise most of them. A few others started appearing, but they were too late for Starlight to notice. Her body dropped as she fainted to the floor.


Spike and Doc ran through the empty streets of Ponyville toward the castle.

Having spent an hour decoding the message as much as possible, listening and discussing the possibilities, running the tape through a few phase detectors to try and work out some of the background noise and arguing just a little bit they had a pretty vague idea of the possibilities.

Then one of Doc's machines had switched to alert. Something in Ponyville had changed.

To both their surprises the night sky had appeared and the moon had risen.

It was, to be quite frank, unexpected... Considering everything that they thought had happened.

The moment they set foot outside to double check the readings Doc had said that they should get to the princess and quickly, shortly followed by a rather loud “Alonzee”. In moments like this Spike was glad for his wings, they gave him more independence and also allowed him to keep up with running ponies.

As they approached the now dark castle Spike looked up and saw a fallen purple body on the roof.

“TWILIGHT!” He called as he beat his wings quicker and felt the air drop beneath him pushing him upwards soaring towards the rooftop terrace. He found Twilight cold and unconscious on the floor, her body sprawled over the steps up to a viewpoint on the roof.

His scales were cold normally but her body was freezing, exposed to the new night air.

He looked over the edge. Doc had noticed him flying up and waited for him down the bottom. It was a long way from the roof but given the still air and the lack of background noise Spike called down to him with ease, his voice reverberating off the side of the castle.

“Twilight is unconscious. Starlight was with her earlier, check the castle, the Throne room is upstairs, through the centre corridor, three doors to the right. Starlight's room is five doors later to the left, check both, she’ll be there somewhere.”

“Will do Mr Spike!” Doc called, giving him a small salute before charging up the steps to the front door. With a “YEEHA” he flew the doors open and ran inside.

Spike turned back to attend to his best friend, and adopted sister really.

He did something he wouldn’t normally do. He went over to a deckchair and broke it up. Then took the pieces of wood over to the sleeping body with the blue and white fabric of the chair sling, arranging them in a pile next her.

Breathing in the cold night air he drew a small lungful, let it sit in his chest for a second and lightly blew a light crackling flame from his mouth, setting alight the wood and cotton turning it into a smouldering fire that slowly cracked and hissed.

In a few places flames started to take light and before long it was a small fire that was just enough to shed some warmth over his cheeks and over the body of the princess. The orange flames clashing colours with the purple body.

Even with the heat he was still shaking in the cold night air. He sat next to the body and held her hoof in his claw, waiting for any sign that his friend would wake from this slumber, hoping and wishing that Doc would be able to find Starlight alive and well quick enough. He couldn’t carry an alicorn on his own, no matter how strong, or brave, or glorious he was.

He looked at her still body again.

Her hair definitely looked funny, sparkling even.