//------------------------------// // The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter VIII // Story: The Twilit Tower // by Fresh Coat //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle’s eyes snapped open. She bolted upright and sat for a moment in her bed, staring wildly around her, flanks heaving. But no immediate danger showed itself, and the sun filtered in softly around the edges of her curtains. Eventually her breathing slowed, and she pushed her tangled mane back from her large eyes. Nothing was wrong. Everything was normal. She paused, analytical to a fault; what exactly had she been afraid of? But she could not immediately put her hoof on it, and habit took over. Her eyes went first to the clock; six a.m., an hour earlier than she usually rose, three hours before school started. Then her eyes moved next to her ‘to read’ pile, where they lingered longingly for a moment on A Treatise on the Life and Times of Clover the Clever; Her Spells and Magicks — and then finally to her calendar, pinned neatly over her haphazard desk. Pencilled into it was her study timetable, her reading for each day, her self-appointed tasks and tests…and circled five times in red ink so heavy it almost broke the paper, today’s date. Twilight jerked to her hooves, a bubbling cocktail of energy and terror suddenly fizzing over. The entrance exam was today! The biggest day of her life, and it was finally here. She tumbled out of bed and lit her horn, and the room erupted into activity around her. The brush moved haphazardly over her mane, her coat burst from the closet to enfold her, the toothbrush jerked almost painfully against her gums — and a whirlwind of books and notes and flashcards spiralled around her, a dizzying array of information flashing past her eyes. The hurricane of pages moved with her down the stairs, stayed with her at the breakfast table — each sheet halting only long enough to be skim-read before being whisked away and replaced by the next. At the front door, after extensive discussion with her parents, she was persuaded to condense the whirl into a tottering pile, to remain beside the mat in the hall. And then the foal, suddenly tiny without the swirling cloud of paper orbiting her, stepped out with her parents into the street. The last scraps of revision complete. Ready to face the biggest day of her life. The pavement was hard underhoof, the colours strangely bright. The world outside was…more saturated than she expected. Less purple. For a moment Twilight considered suggesting that they wait for Lyra, who had her entrance exam today too, but she decided against it. Realistically, Lyra wasn’t going to get into Princess Celestia’s school anyway; she was more interested in using her magic to twang the strings of her lyre than she was in using it to unravel the secrets of the universe. The two of them had little in common besides the fact they lived on the same street and both their parents felt like they should play outside once in a while, away from books or musical instruments. It wasn’t like they were really friends. Something about that word made Twilight’s chest ache, and she turned hastily away from the thought. Even if she and Lyra had been friends, once Twilight got into Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, she would have no time for anything as pedestrian as playing. She would be busy studying, learning, drinking deep from the font of knowledge. Spreading her wings beyond the junior school and the limitations of her classmates’ abilities. Preparing for her great and glorious future as the greatest magical researcher the world had ever known. No, she would have no time for friends. It felt better that way, somehow. More right. Twilight fell into step between her parents, tail swishing happily from side to side as she ran through Wisdom Grows’ theorem on magical energy one last time in her head. She had no idea what the testers at the palace would ask her, but she was sure she was ready. She was years ahead of any foal she knew, even Shiny, talented as he was. She had studied and studied for this. She was ready. Anything they could ask her, she could answer. And maybe the Princess herself would even be there! That thrilling possibility lent her eyes an extra sparkle and her step an extra skip. Twilight had never met a princess in the flesh — a vast lavender alicorn, mane full of stars — only seen Princess Celestia and her young alicorn ward from a distance on parade days. Imagine what it would be like — her aura awash with raw magic, her wings wider than time itself — to speak to a real live Princess! Twilight Sparkle quickened her step, confident that she was heading towards her destiny. ~ Twilight wet her lips nervously, and looked up at the adults surrounding her. There were her parents, smiling and nodding supportively, though nerves made Daddy’s smile look rather pinched. There were three teachers poised with pen and clipboard, and a throng of parents and children sitting around the amphitheatre-style lecture hall. But they were not the figure that drew and held the attention. They were not the creature that Twilight Sparkle’s entire being was focused on right now, in this crucial second on which all her future ambitions hinged. They were not Princess Celestia. The Princess stood at the rear of the room, unobtrusively positioned behind the hopeful entrants and their parents. But she was three times the height of anypony else in the room, with a horn as long as Twilight was tall, and wings four times the span of a pegasus. Her mane billowed out across the ceiling, glittering with a thousand unseen lights, her tail lapping at the floor like rainbow-coloured water. The Princess could not be unobtrusive. “What we want you to do is quite simple,” one of the teachers said. “We want you to try to hatch this egg.” She stepped aside as she spoke, revealing an egg nearly Twilight’s height resting on a podium. It was purple with green spots, and…it looked familiar. Where had she seen an egg like that before? She was turning it over in her head, trying to place it, and the teacher coughed. “Any time you’re ready, Miss Sparkle.” Twilight froze in place. Any time you’re ready. She knew what that meant. We’re waiting on you. She shook off the feelings of deja vu and focused her mind. A hesitant step forward. Hatch an egg. It was not what she had expected. She had prepared for thaumaturgical calculations, alchemical recipe recitals, minute manipulations and alterations of her repertoire of spells. But egg-hatching was not a spell she had ever come across, not in any of her writing. Anything related to healing or life-magic was highly advanced sorcery, of course. Birth was a highly magical time, but Twilight’s self-assigned syllabus had not included anything on the topic. It had not seemed relevant. And — this was no ordinary egg, either. Twilight paced a slow circle around it, turning the problem over in her head. The adults stepped back to give her room. This was — well, it had to be a dragon egg. It could be nothing else, given the size. No other creature laid eggs of the right size. Twilight shut her eyes and reached out with her magic. A thread of pink magic quested across the room towards the egg, and she brushed against it, feeling the shape. The egg was cold; hard. No trace of the unique magical signature that accompanied most lifeforms. But that couldn’t be right. They wouldn’t ask her to hatch an egg if it wasn’t possible. Princess Celestia would not set her up to fail. Twilight was the sixth student to face the test this morning, but unlike the others, she had waited outside the room until her time came. She didn’t want to be distracted by the tasks others might be set. It was better to remain a completely blank slate, receptive to anything that might be asked of her. So she had no idea how the others had done — or even if they had been asked to face the same challenge. But even if they had failed, it did not matter. She would not fail. No, the egg lived. There was a baby dragon in there, and all it needed was a little nudge to get it out. She just had to find the right way to do it… Could it be as simple as a test of brute strength? Crack the shell, remove it without harming the hatchling, and then free the baby inside? No. This was Celestia’s school. There had to be more to it than telekinetic dexterity. That was hardly advanced magic. Twilight pushed her magical sense deeper, traced the frozen form of the baby lizard curled within. Still nothing; no spark. But it couldn’t be dead; there was something more to all this. She needed more information. Twilight opened her eyes and called up the Sight. For months she had been studying this strangest, most esoteric aspect of sorcery. Every mage needed the Sight, but it came differently to every individual. It was hazy and tricksy, and no two authors described it in the same way. Twilight had worked for weeks to even grasp the concept of how to empty her mind. There were just so many thoughts fighting to be heard. But she was finally at the stage where she could look out at the world and see a vague, hazy overlay of the truth that lay beneath the exterior. The flow of the lines, the glitter of the magic. It was still nebulous, but she could sometimes catch a hint at the way things could be twisted to achieve the result she wanted. She opened her eyes, expecting to see the room as she ordinarily did, with the slight white overlay of the lines in the corners of her eyes — — but her eyes blazed with white fire, and she stared out onto an amphitheatre of crystalline clarity, the lines cutting through it with military precision, a web of them weaving a close-knit grid through the walls and floor of this ancient Canterlot tower. A tower, the lines spiralling through it — not a grid but a tangle — not through the tower but of the tower — And dotted around the room, spikes of colour — midnight-blue for her father, pale lavender for her mother — Lavender magic, burning through her — — And at the very back of the room, a glorious wash of yellow, gentle and overwhelmingly powerful as a sunrise, soft and kind and burning white-hot all at once. Redolent with raw, magical energy, impossibly old. An alicorn. An alicorn. An alicorn, older than time and younger than Twilight. Looking her in the eye, and whispering, “Oh, how young I was.” And the egg, dead and cold and gone, thousands of years gone…but it didn’t have to be that way. Twilight knew how to alter the world, the flow of years — or she would know. “What am I supposed to do?” “Great things, little one. Great things.” A flood of images and memories, things she had done and would do and could or might or would never do, memories and visions and a great spinning wheel, lavender and lit with purple-pink magic just like hers, the world turning and turning with the wheel at its centre, and the tower at the centre of the wheel and at the centre of the wheel she was and would be and would never could never be would never stop being. Twilight Sparkle opened her mouth and screamed. Raw power came rushing in a torrent from her mouth and eyes and nose and ears, and the ponies in the room threw up their hooves to shield their eyes before the magic caught them and changed them, changed everything. Power flooded through the foal, millennia of power and pain and loneliness, and all she could do was scream. She screamed and magic that was not hers and yet was hers and would be hers washed through her, directed through her by a being that was both herself and not, changing everything and aiming at one little nexus. Aiming at the egg. It lasted forever and for no time at all. Then the shell cracked and the dragon burst forth — My name is Spike, and I’m your faithful assistant — And it erupted upward into the sky. And then it was over, that strange touch from beyond the world withdrew, and the magic went with it, a tap shutting off. And Twilight Sparkle, just a foal again, leaned forward and threw up all over the white marble tiles of the classroom floor. ~ Twilight came slowly back to herself. Her mouth still stung from the acrid taste of the vomit, but she no longer lay on the cold hard marble. Now she was cradled in legs as white as the stone, but softer and far more yielding. She traced those legs back to the smooth white shoulders, the gold peytral resting on the snowy breast. The wide white wings, the swanlike neck. The ageless face of the Sun Eternal, beaming down with a smile as warm as her cutie mark. “Pr-Princess Celestia?” said Twilight Sparkle, the words leaving her lips like a prayer. “Twilight Sparkle,” the Princess said, and the prayer was answered. Still bewildered, Twilight began to look around for her parents, but could not bring herself to tear her gaze away from that beatific face. “What happened?” “You don’t remember?” Amusement touched the edges of the Princess’ mouth, but Twilight didn’t feel like she was the object of fun. It was like they were both in on a joke, a secret, just the two of them. “Mm-mm.” She shook her head. She felt unutterably weary, but so long as she was here, cushioned in the arms of the Princess herself, shielded from the world by those soft angel-wings, all was well. “You fainted, little one.” The Princess smiled with maternal indulgence. “But only after you had performed a magical feat no mage has performed in centuries.” Twilight’s eyes widened. “I did?” Celestia’s smile widened, and she moved her wing aside to reveal a small purple creature, all big eyes and gummy mouth, sitting in the ruins of its own eggshell. “You hatched the dragon egg, just like I asked you.” At last, a small smile crossed Twilight’s own muzzle. “I did it?” “You did. And providing a magical surge big enough to hatch an egg like that is very difficult, Twilight Sparkle, but what you did here today — that egg was a fossilised egg. Do you know what that means?” “Of course I do.” The fears of being rude were lost in the wave of indignation at being thought stupid. “A fossil is organic matter buried in the earth for so long it turns to stone.” “Exactly,” the Princess nodded approvingly, and more warmth washed through Twilight at that one word than any of the praise her most effusive teacher had ever lavished on her. “That egg was laid over fifteen thousand years ago, by a dragon named Morgwynne. And now you have hatched it at last.” “I…wow.” Twilight tried to think back to the exact spell she had cast. But there had been no particular finesse to her actions. She had just opened herself up and channelled the magic right at the egg. There had been something else…a feeling of unease…something forgotten — a nightmare, perhaps? But the Princess was speaking again, and she shrugged it off. “It was a dud egg even then — it never hatched, and Morgwynne gave it to me as a gift. But you, Twilight Sparkle, did what I never could.” A pause. “I am so proud of you.” The heavenly heat that suffused Twilight’s every molecule then was like nothing she had ever known. Princess Celestia, Princess Celestia, a princess and an archmage amongst archmages, was proud of her. In all her life, Twilight would never wish for more than she felt at this moment. The Princess was proud of her. “That’s not all,” the Princess went on. “Look at your flank.” She gestured with her muzzle, and the movement sent a ripple all the way down her ethereal mane. It was hypnotic, and it was only with difficulty that Twilight tore her eyes away to look at her own body. And there, on her flank, was something utterly alien yet entirely familiar — a six pointed star, the same purple as her eyes, orbited by five smaller stars in white. Where had she seen it before? She knew she had seen it before. While she was puzzling over it, the Princess nudged her gently, and that simple gesture of affection, delivered from a living goddess, the kindest, goodest, cleverest pony to ever live, was startling enough to drive all those thoughts out of her head. “Your cutie mark,” Princess Celestia said softly. “What do you think?” But Twilight was not looking at her flank when she answered. She was looking into the Princess’ soft fuchsia eyes. “I love it.” “Your magic is among the strongest I have ever seen, my little pony.” Celestia bent closer, and she delivered the next question in a voice little more than a whisper. “Would you like to be my personal student, Twilight Sparkle?” Tears rose unbidden to Twilight’s eyes, and she thought she might die from sheer joy. The summation of her short life’s work, everything she had ever dreamed of and more. “Yes,” she croaked, and then again, almost desperately, “Yes!” “That is wonderful, my little one,” Celestia laughed again, and the sound was like bells chiming. “My faithful student. I think you are exactly what I have been looking for.” Twilight, beaming so hard her face hurt, let the remnants of that half-forgotten dream die where they lay at the very back of her mind, and focused her entire being on the radiant alicorn in front of her. Her faithful student. I am exactly what she has been looking for. Her faithful student. That’s what I’ll be. The tower watches. The tower waits. Ponies move within and without and the tower watches, and waits, and puts the pieces into place. Lessons are learned, and lives are shaped. The wheel turns, and all is as it should be. All is as it will be. The tower watches a new pony leave. An old pony. Older than anything, but still only seven. The wheel is turning.