Begrudgingly, Twilight allowed Luna to visit her dreams once more. She tried to ignore the way Luna sometimes said things that made her skin crawl, and focused instead on the lessons she was teaching. How to sense the flow of magic through her body, how to tell when her ‘tank’ was low, how to see the energy within every pony around her. She’d understood such thaumaturgical concepts for years, and she had instruments to measure it. But she’d never imagined that she would ever be able to see it.
She held her hoof out over the simulacrum of Rarity, plucking carefully at the edges of the twisting ball of magic within her, coiled like thousands of tiny strings. She grasped one, not with her hooves but with her own magic, and reeled it in, watching it unravel, layer after layer.
“Carefully,” Luna said softly from behind her. “Do not pull too much. If you find a strand connected too deeply to a pony’s core, you must cut it, lest you drain them entirely.”
Twilight nodded slightly, and flicked her head, severing the strand. With a snap, one end recoiled back to ‘Rarity’ and the other fell into her own being, joining the well of power within her. She wasn’t like Rarity, or any other pony for that matter. She didn’t have a tightly wound magical core. No, her magic flowed through her entire body, a liquid pool of power that surged just beneath her fur.
She couldn’t see Luna’s magic. She didn’t know if it was because Luna was powerful enough to block her newfound senses, or if it was simply because this was the dream realm, and Luna alone chose what she could see here. It was a question that would be answered as soon as she saw another alicorn in person, and so she didn’t ask it.
“What would happen?” Twilight asked softly, pulling her gaze away from the fake Rarity, who kept smiling at her. “You said if I wasn’t careful I could kill her. Is that what happens to a pony drained of magic?”
Luna shook her head. “Not immediately.” She stepped forward and ran one hoof along Rarity’s flank. “Ponies are still flesh and blood, after all. They do not need magic to live.” She reached into Rarity’s chest, and plucked out the glowing ball of energy. Strands of power curled out of it, stubbornly trying to keep it connected to the pony it belonged to, but Luna severed them with a careless tug. All that remained was a tiny glimmer, barely visible. “Remove a pony’s reserves, and they will lose their magic, for a time. Earth ponies will lose their strength, unicorns their spells, and pegasi their flight. But most will recover, eventually.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad—”
“But you can go further,” Luna continued as if Twilight hadn’t spoken. “Here, we have taken her magic, but not her spark.” She reached into Rarity again, her hoof closing around that faint glimmer. Rarity squirmed, grimacing, but didn’t pull away. Luna yanked, and Rarity collapsed. Held in the alicorn’s hoof was a tiny dark ball, glimmers barely flowing across its surface. “This is what creates a pony’s magic. It is their spark, and each one is unique. It is what grants a pony a special talent and a cutie mark. As alicorns, we can take these for ourselves, if we so choose.”
Twilight looked down at Rarity, who was groaning and trying to struggle back to her hooves. But what drew her eye immediately was her flank, which was as blank as the day she was born.
“You may find this useful, on occasion,” Luna added. “We do not do it lightly, of course, but some talents can prove too dangerous to allow, or too useful to let fade. And ponies will survive even this, albeit… diminished.” She looked down at Rarity, before adding softly, “Though… we find they usually lack the resolve to continue.”
Twilight pulled back, not liking where this was going. “What do you mean?”
Luna waved a hoof dismissively. “They choose not to go on. Usually they stop eating or caring for themselves. Sometimes they take more drastic measures, but most simply stop performing the tasks necessary for life.”
“They kill themselves?”
Luna nodded. “Yes, all but a very few. As we said, you must be careful. Once you have absorbed a pony’s spark, it becomes a part of you. We know of no way to separate it and return it to the pony it came from.”
“That’s horrible!” Twilight exclaimed. “That’s… so much worse than I imagined. And you’re saying I can do this by accident?”
“Yes,” Luna said, unperturbed. “If you were starved enough for magic. As you grew hungrier, your instinctive pull would grow stronger and stronger. If you denied it long enough, when it eventually grew beyond your ability to suppress, you would drain every pony around you until you were sated. And you are a very strong alicorn, Twilight Sparkle. You would be able to contain it longer than most, we suspect. Long enough to consume all of Ponyville, perhaps. Certainly long enough to cause an incident too big to hide.” She raised a hoof and pressed it into Twilight’s chest, looming over her. “This is why you cannot be allowed to do as you please, with no oversight. You would bring all of ponykind down on our heads in a foolish attempt to protect them.”
Twilight pushed Luna’s hoof away, refusing to be intimidated. “I should have known,” she muttered. “You still don’t care, do you? You’re only worried about me killing ponies because it would cause an incident.”
Luna took her hoof back, a frown briefly crossing her face, before she turned and stepped away. “You are still young,” she said quietly. “When you have lived for thousands of years, perhaps then you will appreciate how transient ponies are to us. They come and go, and the lives of the individual…” she paused, and then continued carefully. “It is not that they do not matter. But it is rare that a single pony changes the course of history. You, however, could change a great deal, and the consequences of your actions could have grave repercussions for Equestria as a whole. Forgive us if we are more concerned with the future of civilization itself.”
“Just because ponies aren’t immortal doesn’t mean they aren’t important,” Twilight objected. “They may not change the course of history, but they still have an impact on their friends, their families and neighbors.” She sighed. “I don’t want to do anything to break civilization. That’s why I’m still here, learning these lessons. Could you at least try to think of ponies as something with value?”
Luna snorted. “We have tried, Twilight Sparkle. It is among the many conditions our sister has placed upon us to show our face in modern society.” Her voice turned bitter. “No more may we demand worship, or take ponies that please us as our own. ‘Twould destroy what our sister has built, and we cannot risk her precious utopia, where alicorns must pretend to be something they are not to survive.” Luna turned back to Twilight, her gaze hard. “We will do what we must to adapt, as we always have. Your judgment in this matter grows wearying. You are here to learn, not lecture.”
Twilight glared. “I know you’re frustrated with the way things are, but I’ve lived in this world longer than you have, so if you’d just let me help—”
“We do not need thy help.” Luna cut her off, her body growing larger until she towered over Twilight, fire in her eyes. “You may be Celestia’s chosen, but you are still a fledgling. You see only one tiny piece of the world, and think your picture complete. Let us show you one you are missing.”
Luna opened her wings, and darkness spread from them until it blotted out everything else in the dream. Her fiery eyes were the last to fade, and when they did, the dream changed.
A grand palace rose around Twilight, dark stone walls covered in tapestries and lit by torches of pale blue fire. In the middle of a massive hall, flanked by two lines of pillars and a dozen attendants, lounged Luna. Not on a throne, but on a massive, sprawling divan. She gestured imperiously with one hoof, and the pony kneeling in front of her—a pegasus with a dirty brown coat—stood and bowed, before flying away.
The dream followed the pegasus, Twilight floating invisibly behind him, as days of travel passed in the blink of an eye. The pegasus landed at another castle, just as grand as Luna’s. This one held a pale green alicorn in a hard steel throne. The pegasus spoke, and the alicorn answered, but the scene conveyed no sound. Then, without warning, the alicorn’s horn lit, and a blast of magic arced out, striking the pegasus in the chest. He collapsed to the ground, and before Twilight had fully processed what had happened, another pony was pulling the body away, and the dream was zooming elsewhere.
Twilight found herself over a battlefield. Legions of ponies clashed below her, half with armor as black as night, and the others wearing gleaming silver. “Stop!” Twilight called out. “Luna, I didn’t ask for this!”
The dream ignored her.
Then there was an explosion below her, and Luna rose into the sky, in full battle regalia. She screamed a challenge, and from behind the silver army’s lines, the green alicorn rose to meet her. Luna shot a bolt of magic from her horn and the other alicorn deflected it with a brief shield, before returning with a bolt of her own. Luna twisted out of the way and dove towards her opponent. They met with a sickening crunch of hooves hitting flesh, the sound unnaturally loud given the impossibly silent battle below.
The alicorns fell together, but Luna was on top and clearly stronger. She kept one hoof pressed into the other alicorn’s head, keeping her horn pointing down, making her frantic energy blasts useless.
And then they hit the ground, and the battle stopped. Luna stood, and her entire body glowed with power. When she stepped forward, leaving the other alicorn unmoving and broken, both armies bowed before her.
Then Twilight found herself back in Luna’s castle, as if nothing had changed. There were different ponies attending Luna now, but she still lounged with the same indifferent expression on her face.
Then Luna turned to look directly at Twilight, and with a sudden hammering of her heart, she awoke.
Twilight stumbled from the bed, feeling sweat against her neck and sticking her wings to her back as she fumbled for a glass of water. She felt sick, and when she closed her eyes to try to settle herself, all she saw was the calculating, calm indifference on Luna’s face as she had murdered the other alicorn.
Luna had wanted her to see it. Wanted her to see her kill another member of her own kind, over a life she never cared about. She’d wanted Twilight to see what she was capable of. And Twilight had gotten the message, loud and clear.
Luna did not return to her dreams again.
As the days passed, Twilight settled into a routine that allowed her to spend most of her time in the library. She would spend her days studying the shards of the Elements or her own magic, and her nights being tutored by Luna on just how to be an alicorn, at least until she pushed too hard and Luna stopped appearing to her. Occasionally she would be forced to venture outside to visit Fluttershy to restock her supplies of meat, but the rest of her needs Rarity was happy to take care of. Rarity probably would have been happy to stop by Fluttershy’s cottage as well, but she didn’t yet know about all of Twilight’s needs. Twilight told herself it was because Rarity didn’t really need to know, and it was good for her to have a reason to venture outside anyway. But in truth, she knew it was because she was afraid of what Rarity would think, and she depended on her too much to risk it.
Increasingly, Rarity was taking up the mantle of her assistant, as Spike spent most of his time elsewhere. There was an unspoken agreement between them to pretend nothing was wrong, and so Spike didn’t comment when Rarity spent entire days in the library, and Twilight didn’t comment when Spike left without telling her where he was going. It wasn’t ideal, but Twilight had bigger things to worry about.
One of those things was monitoring very carefully just how much magic she was pulling from Rarity. Luna had been frustratingly correct about her inability to prevent herself from draining anything at all. The more she tried to limit herself, the sooner she would find herself drawing in power without even realizing it because she’d become too engrossed in her research. So instead she rationed it, allowing herself very careful “meals” each day so her own magic wouldn’t go looking for more when she wasn’t paying attention.
Rarity claimed that it tickled, having her magic drained from her. She treated the whole thing like it was a game, or even an opportunity for them to become more intimate. It was something they shared that no one else knew about, after all.
Twilight had tried to tell Rarity just how dangerous she was, tried to make her understand, but Rarity couldn’t see it. How she was just a tiny droplet that could be consumed by Twilight’s ocean if she drifted too close. She dismissed Twilight’s warnings, and Twilight was unwilling to give her a real demonstration of her new abilities.
Rarity spent almost all her free time at the library, now. She had claimed a corner of the basement as her own, and moved in a sewing machine and a ponnequin, enough to keep her occupied when Twilight didn’t need her. Despite how often she was present, Twilight still wasn’t sure what they were, exactly. She’d never formally agreed to be Rarity’s marefriend, and Rarity had carefully danced around any specific definitions. She was just always there, ready with encouragement, or a cup of tea delivered with a soft caress or a peck on the cheek.
Twilight didn’t want to tell her to stop, or to leave. So she quickly determined that it was easier to focus on her impossible research projects, rather than trying to determine the exact nature of her relationship with Rarity.
But despite spending nearly all her time on it, Twilight felt no closer to any breakthroughs on either of her projects. She had the ability to examine her own magical aura directly now, rather than relying on instruments, but that didn’t make the spell that made up her very being any less complicated. And looking at an active, constantly shifting spell was hardly ideal, either. She couldn’t take it apart or examine it while it was inert, after all—not if she wanted to be alive to do it. She was left with a jigsaw puzzle made up of briefly glimpsed, fuzzy pieces, with no way to tell when or if she would ever see them all.
The Elements, at least, were simpler. Their spellwork was complex too, of course, but they were at least inert, static. She could map each piece at her leisure without worrying if it would be different or gone entirely the next time she looked. But it, too, was a puzzle with pieces missing. It took weeks, but eventually she could no longer ignore the conclusion she had reached: the shards she had weren’t enough. She had a much better idea of just how the Elements worked—the way they drew power from their bearers, the complex mechanisms they used to channel and shape that power, even their connection to Equestria itself. But she still didn’t know why they had malfunctioned so catastrophically.
“This isn’t going to work,” she finally groaned, looking up from the table she had been working at for the first time in hours. Instinctively, she checked the link between herself and Rarity, ensuring that it was dormant. Once that was done, she stood. “I need more data.”
Rarity looked up from whatever project she had been working on, the sewing machine going still. “Where would we find that?” she asked. “Do you want to look through your books again?”
Twilight shook her head. “No, if there was anything to find in them we’d have found it already. We need to go back to the source. It’s time we took a closer look at that tree.”
Rarity sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that,” she said. “I can go fetch the other girls—”
Twilight interrupted her. “No, there’s no point. It’s not like there’s Elements for them to wield. All they could do is sit around and watch me do research, and I’m still surprised you put up with that.”
“I have ulterior motives, my dear,” Rarity said with a smile. “If no one was here to keep track of you, you’d never eat or sleep.”
Twilight snorted. “That may be true, but nopony said you had to be the one to do it. Regardless, I might as well do this myself.”
Rarity shook her head and jumped to her hooves. “Absolutely not. I’m not letting you wander into that forest all on your own.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m much stronger now—”
“No buts, darling!” Rarity interrupted. “I’m coming, and you can’t stop me.”
Twilight rolled her eyes, but she was smiling inside. “Oh very well. If you insist.”
The Everfree Forest was dark and foreboding, but at least this time it wasn’t actively invading Ponyville. Unfortunately, that meant there was no convenient trail to follow to return to the cave that housed the strange tree. Twilight was relatively sure she knew the general direction, however, and how hard could it really be to find a massive fissure in the middle of the forest?
They walked for almost an hour as Twilight tried to remember when and where she had turned. The forest looked different without the vines winding everywhere through it, but she was sure she was at least going in generally the correct direction. All they had to do was pass close enough to the fissure to spot it. But as they kept walking longer and further without any sign of it, Twilight could tell Rarity was starting to worry.
“Shouldn’t we have arrived by now?” Rarity finally spoke up. “I don’t remember it taking this long last time…”
Twilight shook her head. “We were distracted last time. It probably seemed shorter than it was. I’m sure we’ll be there soon.”
“What if we’ve passed it, though?”
“I don’t think—” Twilight stopped suddenly, ears perking up. “Wait. Do you hear that?”
In the distance, but growing steadily louder, the sounds of howls drifted through the trees.
“Timberwolves!” Rarity yelped, backing away from the sound. “Run!”
“No! Rarity, wait!” Twilight encased Rarity in her magic, holding her in place. “If we run, we’ll be even more lost. Besides, only pegasi can realistically outrun a timberwolf over any real distance.”
“Then you get us out of here!” Rarity replied, gesturing to Twilight’s wings.
Twilight shrank back. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean…” she began, before trailing off. She’d spent the last several weeks ignoring her wings whenever possible, and she certainly hadn’t spent any time practicing with them. “I can’t actually… fly, yet. I mean, I’ve crashed every time I’ve tried. Besides, I’ve had other things to—”
“Twilight!” Rarity interrupted, her voice even higher pitched than normal, and Twilight turned to see that the time for running had passed.
A large timberwolf stepped out of the trees, a head taller than even Twilight. And it wasn’t alone, as dark shapes and yellow eyes peered out at them from the trees, the rest of the pack circling around to prevent their escape.
But that wasn’t what caught Twilight’s attention. What drew her eye was the magic swirling through the timberwolf. It was a twisted green and black, but it wasn’t a solid core of power, like Rarity and every other pony. It was a pool that filled its entire being, just like Twilight. It was just thinner, weaker, more diffuse.
“Oh,” Twilight murmured, fascinated. “Of course. You’re just sticks and magic, aren’t you? I mean, I knew timberwolves were magic, but I hadn’t really thought about it before.”
“Twilight, I’m sure that’s all very interesting, but don’t you think there might be more pressing matters,” Rarity interrupted from behind her. Her horn was glowing, prepared to cast a spell, but her gaze flicked fearfully between the creature in front of them and the shapes in the trees, unsure how to proceed.
Twilight shook her head. “No, don’t you see? They’re just spells. That’s all they are.” She reached out with her mind, and pulled. And like a river, the timberwolf’s magic flowed out of it, swirling around her.
It must have sensed something was wrong, because it growled and leapt forward. But it never landed. Twilight drew its essence away from it, and it collapsed into a pile of sticks mid-leap.
Another timberwolf growled its defiance and charged forward. Twilight raised a hoof to block, and it clamped its teeth down on her foreleg. Twilight yelped, and shook her leg, trying to throw it off. Magic swirled around her hoof, dislodged from the wolf and clinging to her instead, and the teeth in her arm dissolved into sticks and fell away, until the creature was nothing but a shimmer of magic and a pile of leaves. The punctures in her leg closed, without even a hint of blood.
Another wolf was stalking towards her, but it paused as it saw the fate of its packmate. Twilight just looked at it, and its resolve broke.
Yip! Yip!
With a cry of panic, it turned and fled, tail between its legs, and the rest of the timberwolves followed, their shapes melting back into the trees.
Twilight watched them go, until Rarity smacked her on the flank and reminded her the other unicorn was there.
“Why didn’t you tell me you could do that?” Rarity demanded. “I was scared half to death!”
“I didn’t know,” Twilight admitted. “I hadn’t thought about how tied to their magic they were.”
She looked back to the ball of magic in her hoof, and with the smallest of motions, she absorbed it into herself. She gasped as the foreign magic interweaved with her own, and suddenly the forest was nothing like it had been before. Their trail was so obvious it might as well have been lit with neon paint, and she knew where the timberwolves had gone, and the distance and direction to Ponyville, and the locations of a half dozen rabbit burrows and game trails.
“I know where the tree is,” she murmured, surprising even herself. “The fissure is changing how the wind moves. It’s this way.”
Twilight stepped into the trees, and after a moment, Rarity got over her surprise sufficiently to follow her.
“What in Equestria happened back there?” she asked, after several seconds of silence. “I didn’t know alicorns could just… dissolve timberwolves.”
“That’s not really what happened,” Twilight muttered. “They’re not real creatures. They’re just piles of sticks bound together by magic. And… well, alicorns eat magic. All I had to do was pull it out of them, and then there was nothing left.”
Rarity considered that for a moment. “And that’s why you’re suddenly an experienced woodspony?”
Twilight nodded. “The spell that powered them is part of me now. It gave them their senses, their understanding of how to navigate in here, what signs meant what. It’s all in my head now.”
Rarity fell silent for a long moment, a frown on her face. Finally, quietly, she ventured, “...could you do that to a pony?”
Twilight stopped dead. “No! No, of course not!” she insisted. “Ponies are flesh and blood. You’re not held together with magic. If I took it away, you wouldn’t dissolve or fall apart or anything like that.”
“But you could take it, just as easily as you did with those timberwolves,” Rarity said quietly.
“...yes,” Twilight whispered. “I tried to tell you.”
“And I didn’t listen,” Rarity murmured, before letting out a soft laugh. “I should have known better, I suppose. But you do have a tendency to exaggerate your worries, dear.”
Twilight blinked. “You’re not… afraid of me?”
Rarity shook her head. “No, why would I be? I already knew you had power. It’s part of what makes you so attractive.” She stepped forward, reaching up with one hoof to cup Twilight’s face. “I don’t have to be afraid, Twilight. It’s even a little… thrilling, knowing what you could do, if you really wanted to.”
“I wouldn’t!” Twilight hastily insisted.
Rarity shook her head, and flashed Twilight a smile. “I want to be with you, Twilight. World-shattering power and all.” She pressed herself against Twilight, rising up to kiss her on the cheek.
Twilight’s heart fluttered. She laid her head on Rarity’s, marveling only briefly that she was tall enough to do so. She wrapped her hooves around Rarity, and was rewarded with a happy sigh. The whisper of the forest around them faded, until it was drowned out by the beat of Rarity’s heart. Twilight could taste that rhythm, the way her very soul pulsed and shimmered through her.
Rarity’s magic sparked just beneath her fur as they embraced, tantalizingly close to Twilight’s overwhelming black hole. A thought pierced her. Is this how changelings feel all the time?
Twilight jerked back, pushing Rarity away with a shudder. Her wings rustled in discomfort, reminding her they were there, and she pushed down the wave of disgust that surged through her. “No, no, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t,” she panicked.
Rarity tried to step forward again, only moments after regaining her balance. “Twilight?” she ventured, her eyes shimmering.
“I’m sorry,” Twilight murmured, stepping away. “I want to. I wish I could just... be okay. But every time you get too close I’m afraid I’ll hold you so tight there’ll be nothing left.”
Rarity stopped. “I trust you, Twilight,” she said, as if saying it could somehow fix everything.
“I don’t,” Twilight whispered.
Silence stretched between them, neither knowing what to say. Finally, wordlessly, Twilight turned and continued towards the tree in the middle of the woods.
She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed when Rarity followed.