Twilight skipped through the dead grass at her hooves. The ice stood resolute among a wave of purple fire was now beginning to fade into mauve embers, but Twilight didn't care. She'd done it, she unlocked the Aether!
"Oh Twilice I did it! What do I do now? What can I do now?"
"Twilight..."
"How can i get rid of the Wall now? I can't just explode it. Maybe I can move it somewhere, or maybe..."
"Twilight."
"Ooh, what If I sealed the Wall in a portective barrier to keep anyone from getting out, or I could-"
"Twilight, I'm getting motion sick from sitting on the swaying sea that is your brain, so for a moment could you quiet down?"
"oh, right... Sorry Twilice, I'm just so excited to see what new possibilities this magic provides me!"
"Yes, we all are, but there are still two monumental problems we need to solve before you go experimenting with the Aether, alright?"
"Right, of course."
Twilight stared at the towering pillar of ice. All along its surface, tiny cracks continued to form, like the slow building of a spider's web. It made no sense to her. The ice's spell be breaking on its own for what appeared to be no reason, and she could chip pieces off of it with no problem, yet a concentrated Aether assault did nothing but change its color? Surely there was something she was missing. If it was a defensive spell, it was unparalleled in its strength. But surely no single pony could have made such a powerful ward, even with the Aether at their disposal.
Twilight scratched her chin. "Hmm... what if..."
"You're thinking of something. I'm not sure I follow, Princess."
"What if the ice isn't a protective spell, what if it's something else?"
"What alternative do you have in mind?"
"I'll try and show you. I'm gonna cast a stoneskin spell on it, which should cover its surface in rock. If this does work, sorry."
"Wait Twilight let's think this over first-"
Twilice didn't have time to finish her sentence before the spell was loosed, a thin beam of purple energy flew out from Twilight's horn and into the ice. Small bits of slate sloughed off from the thin laser as it made contact with the air. Once the laser found its mark, the ice began to glow a bright plum. Twilight held the spell for one second, two seconds, then five, then twenty, until she could no longer sustain it. She collapsed to the ground in front of the unchanged ice, which was now slowly returning to its default shade of blue.
"Well... at the least, I am not contained in a prison of ice and rock, though I'm still not sure what you're trying to accomplish."
Twilight slowly rose to her feet without a word. Within the span of a second, she loosed another spell into the ice, to the same result. Again and again she threw spells of all kinds into the pillar, and every time it gave her the same thing: nothing.
Twilight panted heavily as she stared the block down. It stood unaffected by her efforts, mocking her with its face covered in miniscule cracks that weren't even from her. With one last burst of energy, Twilight released one last spell.
It was a miniscule spell, it's glow was faint, and it shimmered as if it were going to fizzle out at any moment. Slowly, it shoved itself off of Twilight's horn and sluggishly floated its way towards the ice. The two Twilights watched with bated breath as the humble light embedded itself into the ice. A small bubble of purple began to glow on the ice's surface as the spell dug itself deeper into its surface. But after a moment, the glow disappeared, and the ice was back to normal.
"...What was that?"
"A mending spell, to fix the cracks."
"Well it seems to have been unsuccessful in doing so."
"Correct, and now I know what spell might this ice is made from."
"Really? Do tell."
"it's not a ward, It's not a shield. It's a magic sponge. It doesn't reflect magic, it absorbs it and disperses it. That must be what that glow is, it absorbs magic, crushes it to nothing, then releases it back into the air."
"Well look at you... You figured it out. I knew you were a keeper."
Twilight beamed widely as everything began to click into place. "That must be why it was blackened out on my map and in the Aether. It wasn't malfunctioning after all! The map couldn't see it because it was devoid of magic!"
"So... what are you going to do with this knowledge?"
"I need to tell Cadance, and Gilda, and my friends! I can't believe I finally figured it out, they'd need to know."
"Well... hold on now, let's focus on freeing me-"
Unfortunately for her friend, Twilight was already galloping back to the cabin. The princess could feel the cool wind, now compounded by the blow of the Aether, brush across her face. Once a deluge of magical energy, the Aether had sufficiently calmed down as it evened itself out, allowing Twilight full awareness of her surroundings, and a little more. As such, it caught Twilight by surprise when she looked up into the sky to see... the rising sun?
Twilight skidded to a stop as she looked up at the still dark sky. "How... how is this possible? Dash and I got back by early afternoon, There's no way we..."
"What, spent all night throwing hundreds of spells at a block of ice? I'm sorry to say, Princess, but your little experiment was quite time consuming."
"But that's-no, I've never been this bad with time. Why am I so unpunctual all of a sudden? What's happening to me? Is it-"
"Watch it, Princess."
"...It's been the same with these headaches too, they only show up when you disagree with me."
"Princess, enough. Now is not the time for-"
"What, are you gonna give me another migraine, deprive me of another night's sleep? Huh?"
"Would you stop arguing about nonsense problems and pay attention to-"
"Of course it's nonsense to you, you don't care about anything I'm doing if it doesn't involve you-"
"No! Look out for-"
Twilight didn't hear the end of her doppelganger's sentence, for she was suddenly pushed down into the snow by a pair of feathery talons.
"I got 'er here! Hurry!" Gelgen shouted out, and not a moment later, the rest of the cabin was at his side.
Twilight squirmed and thrashed under his vicelike grip, all while Princess Cadance approached her with a pained look. She opened her mouth to say something, but she clamped her eyes and mouth shut. She lowered her horn carefully towards Twilight's head. Twilight noticed, and thrashed harder, her horn nearly gouging Gelgen's eye.
She continued to flail, though she had lost all agency of her own body. She couldn't feel anything, even as her head slammed into Gelgen's beak, and her feathers ruffled and bent as she flapped her wings wildly. But no matter how hard she tried to pull away, Cadance's horn grew closer, until it brushed her cheek, and her muscle immediately gave out.
As her consciousness faded, the last thing Twilight could hear was Twilice's panicked roars.