Twilight spent a moment longer staring at the ashes of her lost books, mourning the loss of their tales and treasures from the shelves of the library. What had Star been thinking, harming her books like that? Then again, Star didn’t really seem to care much for books, which did prompt the question as to why in Equestria Star had become a librarian.
There was just far too much missing information when it came to that pony. She would have to be the most powerful unicorn Twilight had encountered, likely being able to even hold her own against Celestia. What was she doing in Twilight’s library, why settle for so little, why the incompetence and ignorance of the job if they could have aimed so high?
It was in a way a good thing that Star had destroyed her treasures. Not because she had harmed the books, no, Twilight could never forgive that, but the task of fixing up the damage gave her time to set her thoughts in order.
Using her advanced magic’s she began repairing the shelves, purposely taking the time to make sure that every grain of the wood she created was in place. She could set her worries about Star into the back of her mind for now, that pony was an enigma and there was no use worrying about her when she wasn’t around. Tenshura and The Old Man could both pose problems for her, being as unpredictable as they were, but they could also prove to be valuable allies. Neither of them were particularly hostile to her, but there seemed to be a high amount of tension between the two of them.
She would try to make allies of them; Tenshura shouldn’t be too difficult, even if he was the tiniest bit insane. The Old Man was another story. Twilight had trouble figuring out his motives in all of this. He clearly wanted Twilight to use the Death Note, yet at the same time he refused to help Twilight to utilize its powers. He wanted Twilight to surrender the Death Note to him, so he refused to offer his help to her…Perhaps if she could strike some sort of deal with the Shinigami.
As Twilight finished repairing the last pieces of the shelving she looked upon the books that had suffered. Not all of them were lost, a couple still bearing enough on their pages to be recovered. The rest however, would need to be replaced.
She began fixing what books she could; whenever words were missing she would attempt to fill them in from her own memory of the text. Fortunately, all of the ones that had been caught in the fire were ones she had already read through at least once, so as long as she could revive the paper, the books could be saved.
Working on the essence of the books brought back memories of her time studying under Celestia, and she felt the task of restoring the books become a subconscious one as she let her mind drift back to those times.
---------------------------------------------------
“Now Twilight, before you begin to learn to cast life magic, you must learn the principles of it. You likely remember that when I started these lessons that I told you every kind of magic has different principles.”
Twilight let Celestia cover what she had been taught. Despite the fact that she remembered everything Celestia had told her perfectly, Celestia always taught in this fashion, and she had almost made a game out of it. She would listen to what Celestia was recapping, and from that try to figure out what she was going to say before she said it, attempting to finish Celestia’s sentence for her.
“Arcane magic is where a large part of our day to day magic comes from. Levitation, Teleporting, all of that belongs to the school of the arcane. You’ll remember that arcane magic stems from the unicorns own power, and is more of an act of branching out that magic to effect the world around them.”
Twilight could guess where Celestia was going and before she could stop herself, spoke her thoughts.
“However, arcane magic is the only kind of magic that works in this way, every magic possesses a different origin and method of casting, and therefore different principles.”
Celestia, was taken aback for a bit, but then a smile lit her face. Twilight had already turned this into enough of a habit that her teacher seemed to actually be fond of it.
“Right you are Twilight, every school of magic operates differently. Illusion magic operates by messing with another ponies mind, conjuration magic operates by using the elements in our world, but what I am about to teach you is different from every other school of magic. The special thing about life magic is that its principles are based, not around your own magic, but the dormant magic of creatures and objects in this world.”
Now she was getting to the good stuff. Twilight already had knowledge of the other schools of magic from her own studies. There were advanced magic’s in each of the schools, often only performable by those who had mastered magical conservation, a feat that Twilight had accomplished in her first three months of her tutelage under the princess. It took most unicorns three years to learn magical conservation, let alone master it. It was Twilight achieving this that had led Celestia to believe that she would be capable of learning life magic.
“Life magic differs from the other schools in another vital area. It is one of only three schools of magic that are comprised entirely of advanced spells. The other two schools, Death and Time magic, are completely off limits Twilight.”
Twilight noticed that Celestia was staring at her sternly, almost menacingly. It was no secret that Twilight had quite a thirst for knowledge, so it made sense that Celestia would warn her off those two magic’s.
“I promise I won’t attempt those magic’s without your permissi-”
“No.” Celestia cut her off. “Never mess with those magic’s ever, even if I give you permission to. It’s not that I don’t trust you Twilight, you are my favorite pupil and, though you may not see it that way, my best friend. It is because of this that I warn you away from those magic’s.”
Celestia sighed, remembering her past. “Death magic is a forbidden art, yet there are still ponies out there that practice it. Time magic is different. It is not forbidden like death magic, but it almost always carries consequences. That time when you travelled back in time to warn yourself not to worry for instance. That was a very fortunate occasion for Equestria. If you hadn’t travelled back in time like you had, and instead chose to forget about the ordeal, you could very well have destroyed half of Equestria, and who knows what else?”
Twilight gulped as she realized just how close she had come to bringing about the apocalypse without even realizing it.
“…I’m sorry.” It was all that she could really think to say. What else was there? She hadn’t intended to nearly kill everypony.
“It’s fine Twilight. As I said, you ended up saving us…even if it was from yourself. I’m not sure I would have been able to do the same in your situation, in fact, very few ponies would have. That is why I must warn you away from that school. Not that it’s likely you’ll ever be able to find somepony to teach you. That spell you found was one of the few time spells that are still on paper, and has been appropriately sealed away until it is decided whether to destroy in order to prevent such an even from happening again.”
“But I still messed up. Just because I didn’t mean to, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
Celestia approached her student as Twilight turned her head away, unable to bring herself to face her mentor after what she had done. Before Twilight could react Celestia embraced her in a comforting hug, Twilight blushed at the kindness her teacher continued to surround her with.
“It was my fault Twilight. I should have checked the library more thoroughly, or warned you away from those magic’s sooner. I should have known it would happen sooner or later with your appetite for knowledge. I’m just glad that you made it through okay, not many ponies could have cast a spell like that and remained conscious, let alone alive. You’re special Twilight, and I don’t want to lose you.”
Celestia had been so close to her then, and Twilight still kept the feeling of that closeness in her mind long after the lesson had finished. After what seemed far too short a time Celestia pulled away from her student, reminding the two of them of the distance between them, both in years and position.
“We must put the past in the past, so that we can look to the future. So we shall continue the lesson from where we left off. It should be obvious as to why Death magic is forbidden, so we will proceed onto the fundamentals of life magic. You have an immense amount of magical power Twilight, but I don’t want even you to attempt these without my supervision.”
Twilight nodded, she knew her own limitations well enough to know she could likely cast the more basic life magic’s without Celestia’s help, but she could wait for their lessons.
“Good, now the fundamental rule of life magic is that it does not need your own magic to be used. Which means it isn’t as likely to exhaust you. However, plenty of inanimate objects, such as books, do not have enough dormant magic in them to be ‘healed’. Healing is the primary function of life magic, and can also be achieved with either time or conjuration magic. Often healing is mistaken for conjuration, as using life magic to ‘heal’ often involves replicating parts of an object or creature in order to fix it. However, Conjuration is the creation of an entirely new object, and essentially just gets rid of the need to find materials, the correct knowledge of how to ‘heal’ the subject of the spell is still required. Whereas life magic directly fixes whatever injuries or otherwise the subject might have.”
---------------------------------------------
Twilight suddenly snapped out of her reminiscing as she realized she had been trying to restore the last of the recoverable books twice. She would likely need to order in new books for the library, as she wasn’t comfortable that her own knowledge of the irreparable books would be enough to restore them to their original condition. Either way, conjuring the words had taken far more magic than she had expected it would.
Twilight yawned; everything had been so hectic since she had gotten back. Was this how things had always been in Ponyville? As she looked out the window she realized just how late it was, the sun setting behind the towering buildings of New Ponyville. It was strange having everything look so familiar and so different at the same time.
So much had changed since she had last been here. Everything seemed darker now, and not just because the sun was setting. There had been bad times for Twilight and her friends before, but they had all made it through them just fine, there had always been that light at the end of the tunnel. No matter how bad things had gotten there had always seemed a way through it, yet now Twilight couldn’t think of anything. All she could do was keep on living and hope that everything worked itself out.
Unless…
Twilight opened her saddlebag and pulled out the Death Note, a sinister grin on her face.
There was something that she could do about it. She had the Death Note, if she couldn’t bring an end to the darkness then nopony could.
“Old man!”
No response.
“OLD MAN!!! Come out here right now, it’s about giving up ownership of the Death Note.”
As if on cue the Old Man appeared, actually putting some effort into making his entrance look terrifying. Clouds of red smoke billowed out from the ground, forming skulls before they dispersed into nothing. With a flash of lightning the old man appeared in the middle of the clouds only without his cloak, leaving his skeleton body revealed. Crows flew in through the walls forming into black cloth the moment they touched him, until he was in his robes were fully formed. Another flash of lightning happened inside the room, this time the Old Man caught it, the crackling bolt taking the shape of his scythe.
Twilight regarded the whole spectacle with amusement.
“Impressive, Old Man.”
“Humph, you could have at least tried to look scared, I actually put some work into that.”
“Really? And here I was thinking you were preparing an entrance for Nightmare Night. Maybe with a bit more effort you might be able to beat Pipsqueak.”
Though it was impossible to tell due to the hollow sockets where his eyes would have been, Twilight could swear that the Old Man had just rolled his eyes at her.
“Anyway, you said you were going to give up ownership of the Death Note?”
“Not exactly…”
“Then we have nothing to talk about.”
“WAIT!!!”
Twilight almost screamed it out as she saw the Old Man begin to fade away, causing the Shinigami to pause and fade back into vision.
“What is it?”
“I’ve been thinking about it…Would it be possible for me to give up a portion of the Death Note?”
The Old Man sounded wary, but she also seemed to have caught his attention. “What do you mean?”
“Say, if I were to give up 10% of the Death Note, would you be willing to provide me with names and faces of the ponies that I need to kill?”
She had him hooked now, she could tell by the pause he left that there was no way the Shinigami was going to refuse her offer. All that was left was to negotiate just how much of the Death Note it would cost her.
“So what you’re saying is that you will relinquish parts of the Death Note in return for my help, and once you have given up 100% of the Death Note, It will be mine again?”
“Yes.”
“Very well then, we have a deal. However…”
Twilight knew this would happen. How much would the Shinigami want? 10% had seemed like a reasonable amount to her. Surely he wouldn’t ask for too much more.
“…I am unsure as to how I would provide you with their faces. I can easily provide you with their names, but their faces are an entirely different matter.”
He agreed to it. 10% of the Death Note for the power to destroy all the evil in the world, was it really that easy?
“It’s a deal then Old Man, as for how you can give me their faces, I have an idea.”
The idea had actually occurred to her while she had been repairing the books with her life magic. It was really quite a complex spell and she considered the idea quite a stroke of genius, even for her. By combining Life, Illusion, and Conjuration magic’s she could possibly create an entirely different spell. Even as she thought about it she began to contemplate what to call it. She was actually going to do it…she would create a spell all of her own. ‘Mind Canvas’, that sounded about right.
She began at the essentials of the spell, picking up a piece of paper with her magic and imbuing it with conjuration magic, causing the image of a book to appear on the paper.
The Old Man looked at the paper as Twilight wrought her new spell on it. “What are you doing?”
Twilight ignored him and focused all her attention on the paper. She should probably have slept and conserved her magic before attempting this. Creating a spell was hard enough, let alone being exhausted while she was doing it.
The image on the paper washed away, slowly fading into nothing as she consumed a substantial part of her own magic to increase the dormant magic in the paper. She stopped for a second to check that she hadn’t accidentally given the paper life. A quick check of the paper assuring her that it was most certainly still an inanimate object. The image however, was not. It moved about the paper, changing color and shape as it did so. One second it was a butterfly, the next a dragon, each one lifelike and detailed.
The spell was progressing better than she anticipated, but the hardest part was yet to come.
“Old Man, I’m going to need you to co-operate with me, focus on one image in your mind, make sure it isn’t anything personal.”
She had no time to ask whether he was doing as she had instructed or not as she plunged into the next stage of spell. She began weaving a complex on herself, weaving the image on the page through the Old Man’s thoughts. It was immensely difficult, since she needed to essentially reverse the illusion process, and she could swore that the more she thought about the image on the page, the closer she got to losing her mind.
With a great effort she finished the spell, an image of a piece of paper on the paper that she held. However, as she looked closer, she saw that there was actually a piece of paper on that piece of paper, the closer she looked the smaller the paper on each of the image’s got , until she was straining her eyes to see what must have been the 14th piece of paper on the image.
“What the buck is this Old Man?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know? You were the one casting the spell!”
“Yes; and the spell I cast was one that should allow me to an image on this page when you concentrate solely on it, so tell me what it is.”
“It’s a piece of paper.”
Twilight gave up in frustration, before actually staring at the piece of paper as a whole and seeing that he was right. All he had done was envisioned the piece of paper, but from there he had envisioned a piece of paper inside of that one, creating a never-ending tunnel of paper on the page.
Perfect, now it was time for the real test.
“Old Man, I want you to picture me in your mind, concentrate on it hard.”
Even as she told him that the picture on the page was rearranging itself, eventually resembling her perfectly. This was brilliant, as long as the Old Man could concentrate hard enough on the ponies face, she could use this to hunt down anypony she wanted, no matter where they were.
“This is perfect.”
The Old Man looked confused, though it confused Twilight even more when she tried to think about how she knew that.
“What do you mean it’s perfect? It’s a piece of paper. Did you somehow make it more papery? Do you want me to draw their faces for you? I’ve never had to draw so I highly doubt it would work.”
Understanding dawned on Twilight’s face. The spell was made as an illusion for her. It tricked her own mind into thinking that the blank page was what was on the Old Man’s mind. Nopony but her could see what was on it…of course that meant she would need to do one final test.
“Think about something else Old Man, anything else.”
“Okay…”
The Old Man was clearly getting irritated by being kept in the dark. How ironic, that she could keep him as ignorant as he had kept her so easily.
The image on the paper suddenly flared up, an image of Tenshura appeared on the page, the Old Man slashing the half-Shinigami to ribbons with his scythe. What amazed Twilight was that picture actually moved, showing the blood shooting out of the stallion quite vividly.
“Why was the first thing that came to your mind decapitating Tenshura?”
“What?”
The Old Man looked taken aback by her question…at least she thought he did, which probably meant that she had been right.
“Old Man, were you, or were you not just thinking about killing slicing up Tenshura with your scythe.”
For probably the first time since she had met the Shinigami, he was entirely straight with her.
“Yes. Is that what the paper does, it lets you see into my mind?” He sounded almost frightened by the prospect.
“Yes and no.” Twilight tried her best to sound unconvincing, before going into a full explanation of what she had done to the paper, which likely would have bored the Shinigami were he not so worried about the window into his mind. “…So in conclusion, it only allows me to see images that you concentrate hard on. Passing images and any other kinds of thoughts won’t trigger it.”
“I see…” The Shinigami chuckled to himself as the image on the paper changed again. This time showing a humiliated Twilight begging Star, looking as if she were in desperate need of-
“Cut that out Old Man. I would never even think of doing that with a mare, let alone Star of all ponies. That unicorn’s going to pay for that humiliation, and for what she did to the books.”
The paper wiped itself clean, as if it had never held such crude image’s on it. Perhaps the Mind Canvas was as much a nuisance as it was an aid. However, the image had triggered her hatred of Star, which in turn had given her an idea.
“Old Man, as a god of death, you would know all about Death Magic wouldn’t you?”
“Well…yes, but that’s more from experience with those who have actually used it than being a Shinigami.”
“Good, now how does 40% of the Death Note sound in order for you to teach it to me, and I mean all of it. In effect, once my training is complete, you will have a total of 50% of the Death Note, a good halfway to having it all to yourself again.”
It was too good an opportunity for him to pass up. The Old Man agreed to the terms Twilight set, the purple unicorn grinning menacingly as he agreed.
And so it was that Twilight became the disciple of death.