//------------------------------// // Day ドリム // Story: The Weight of the Crown // by Non Uberis //------------------------------// There was a great stir at the gala that night. Everypony was abuzz with excitement and anticipation regarding Equestria’s newest alicorn. And how could they not be, when she was demonstrating the very pinnacle of what a princess ought to be? There she was, at the buffet table, doing what princesses did best: consuming everything that lay in her path. Whether it was entree or appetizer or dessert or drink, sandwich or salad or soup or cake, all of it vanished into her maw as soon as she got her hands upon it. Well, “hands” in a figurative sense, given that she could barely use hers, her arms swaddled in folds of flab that drastically inhibited their movement. Instead, she used her magic to seize her food and bring it over to her, cramming morsel after morsel into her maw. Her hunger dictated that there was no time to waste on any attempts at manners or cleanliness, thus the debris of her rampage, the juices and crumbs of her victims, had steadily accrued around her cheeks and neck and chest, all the voluminous folds nearest to her mouth. There were scraps of cloth left around her body, the remains of an unfortunate dress that she had chosen to wear with her to the gathering, long since obliterated by the continued expansion of her dimensions. She dragged herself across the floor, scarcely able to more her legs between their profound breadth, as thick as tree trunks, and the gargantuan gut which hung like an apron in front of them and the behemoth buttocks which stretched out to the rear, pink and white stars emblazoned upon her flanks making it all the more unmistakable who she was. Occasionally she dropped something on the way to her mouth, but it rarely went far, landing upon the sprawling shelf that was comprised of her breasts and belly where it could easily be scooped up once again. She knew what she was becoming, but there was no time to think about the repercussions involved. All that mattered was the tastes upon her tongue, the filling of her stomach, and the growth of her form, steadily taking up more and more of the ballroom. That was what it meant to be an alicorn. “I say, Lady Sparkle,” said a stuffy and very stuffed noblestallion who came up to her as the contents of the buffet table were finally drying up, “don’t you suppose that you’ve had enou—” He yelped as the magenta magic seized him and promptly dragged him into Twilight Sparkle’s mouth. She struggled for just a moment to work her jaws around his portly mass, but she managed to swallow nonetheless, a groan rising back up from her straining throat. The panic that began was promptly quelled as the all-consuming alicorn took each guest in turn into the grasp of her levitation and pulled them toward her, swallowing them one by one. Her gluttonous growth increased exponentially, spilling across the marble floors like a living landslide, crashing through furniture and architecture. The palace sundered, walls splitting open, debris carried away on the tide of lavender flesh. The slopes of Mount Canter were steadily consumed, though not before everything edible, whether or not it desired to be, was taken up to be added to the mass of the blob. “Oh, Twilight,” Princess Celestia said while her hips were being crammed into the alicorn’s mouth, “I knew you’d be perfect for this.” Twilight Sparkle swallowed. Twilight Sparkle gasped. She clutched at herself, arms crossing over her front to clasp at either side. She wanted to stay within the comforting warmth of covers and mattress, yet she also didn’t want to sleep, so she threw off the blankets and rolled to the side onto the floor. A hand reached to her throat, felt at the skin running down to her collarbone; the phantom sensation of distension yet lingered, the feeling of her anatomy straining in order to accommodate so much intake. The thought of eating suddenly seemed utterly unbearable. No, wait…something wasn’t right. Her skin was firm to the touch, hardly any squish to it. She looked down at herself, and she could see her hooves. Then she looked around, and in the bed cast in shadow on the other side of the sleeping nook there was no sign of Spike. And she wasn’t sure about her wings. She thought that she still had them, yet there was no physical sign of their presence, nothing happening when she flexed those muscles in her back. It was that dream-sense in which one felt certain that something was there even though the details were too hazy to identify it. Dream, yes. “I must admit,” a voice called out from elsewhere, ringing and echoing, “I am rather surprised that it took you so long to experience a nightmare such as that.” Turning out toward the main space of the room, Twilight Sparkle found that the library appeared different. She walked down the steps (with so much ease of motion that it was almost alarming to her) to the floor, where there were far more rows of books, forming a dense network of corridors. She didn’t know when exactly the material of the environment changed, shifting from the hewn living tree-wood of the library she was familiar with to darker shelves and a smooth marble floor. There was a cool mist around her, hanging low to the ground, faint blue clouds dotted with sparkling starlight. She didn’t know where she was going as she wandered through the stacks, but she didn’t particularly think about it either, and it wasn’t long before she arrived in a clearing. No, a room; she looked back and found plain walls and a door that had already closed instead of the sprawling library. The space was reminiscent of the private study in which she had spoken to Celestia some time ago, though the colors were distinctly darker, as was the mare who sat at the table in the center. “I apologize for not taking the time to meet with you sooner, Twilight Sparkle,” Princess Luna said without looking up from the book she’d been reading, “I have been most busy as of late.” “That’s okay, Luna,” she replied with a sigh, feeling at least a modicum of comfort in not being alone in this dreamscape. “But are you okay?” the alicorn asked pointedly in turn, only then turning her sharp azure eyes upon the younger mare. “U-uh…” Twilight Sparkle fidgeted, unable to make eye contact. There was a clamor, seat grinding and groaning as Luna pushed away from the table and stood. She dropped her book, letting it vanish into her cleavage without a trace. “I would think that you are not, if I have had to visit you like this,” she stated plainly while bearing down upon her. Twilight Sparkle’s heart pounded loudly in her chest, blood pumping in her ears. She resisted the feelings of intimidation that were welling up in her, being well-aware of the truth that the princess was not somepony to be feared, but it wasn’t easy. It certainly didn’t help matters that she had lost her alicorn height in addition to her girth, and that meant that Luna was just as imposing as she was used to. As she came closer, her stern face became framed by her cleavage, a sloping valley between her immense breasts, so much of the blue acreage exposed by the narrow straps of the dress she wore—Luna’s bluntness lead to her having no qualms in presenting herself to others, even if the most prominent part of her figure was more inherently sexual in its appeal in comparison to Celestia or Cadence. There was something unavoidably and delightfully tantalizing about having those huge mounds directly in front of her, mammaries large enough to smother a pony, though Twilight Sparkle might have preferred those of a certain white mare. “I…um…y-yes,” Twilight Sparkle dully admitted, brushing aside the locks of her mane from her eyes. “I guess I’ve…wanted to believe that I’m fine…but I’m still just worried about what I may become.” Luna hummed thoughtfully and replied, “It is quite understandable, given the circumstances. Your old life has been uprooted and now you are adrift in uncertainty.” She held up one hand and conjured a cloud of starry mist akin to her mane which manifested in an image of a scene in the palace of Canterlot. The events of Twilight Sparkle’s nightmare played out in miniature, the lavender alicorn gorging herself on food and ponies alike. She winced. “You have been presented with the opportunity to become far more than an ordinary pony, but in doing so you have also become exposed to the threat posed by your own hunger. The more power you gain, the more weight you will accrue, and you will have to resist the urge to expand beyond your control.” Twilight Sparkle huddled upon herself, folding her arms again, ears drooping. She wished she could fold her wings around herself for extra comfort. “No matter how much control I exert, I’m still going to keep growing,” she muttered forlornly, “I want to be a pony, not a blob.” “It is an unavoidable aspect of being an alicorn, I regret to inform you,” Luna said with somber severity while stepping closer still, circling around to one side. “Alicorns are like forces of nature, Twilight Sparkle, embodiments of magic, and we continue to grow ever stronger over time, and our bodies reflect that change. With enough time, there would be few things an alicorn couldn’t do, only limited by the physical encumbrance of their form.” She turned around so that the two of them were standing side by side, then leaned over, reaching past her bosom to pull Twilight Sparkle into a sidelong embrace, braced against her cushy hip and torso. “You have already succeeded in accomplishing so many things that other ponies could only dream of,” she whispered with a thin smile—it didn’t feel quite as comforting as Celestia, or even Cadence, yet there was something more personal about it, like an older sibling looking out for their younger companion. “Just imagine what you will be capable of in the future.” Twilight Sparkle looked up at her, sniffled quietly, and didn’t say anything, but still nodded slightly to herself. “And who knows,” Luna said, gently caressing her shoulder, “there may yet still be time for you to turn around on this matter, just like Cadence did. If not, you will always be able to compress yourself to your satisfaction.” Sighing through her nostrils, Twilight Sparkle dimly reflected on everything that she had gone through thus far, all the inconvenience which she had been forced to endure by her alicornhood, trying desperately to hone in on the positive aspects so she could— Her brow furrowed. “Compress?” she repeated, turning back to Luna. “…Yes?” the Princess said back, puzzled, “You know, compression magic?” Twilight Sparkle only stared back and blinked, equally bewildered. Luna’s eyes widened. “Celestia didn’t tell you about compression magic?!” “N…no?!” she sputtered. “Oh, for the love of…!” Luna covered her face with her palm as she stood straight and turned away. “Of course, the fear of uncontrollable excess,” she muttered, “it all makes sense now…I swear, Celestia, you and I are going to have a chat in the morning. Actually, she should still be asleep, I could go to her dream right now and—” “Luna!” Twilight Sparkle shouted and waved at her to get her attention. “What are you talking about?! What…what is compression magic?!” Slowly calming, Luna looked back toward her. She was angrier now, even more intimidating, but since Twilight Sparkle was upset as well, a fire lit in her (much flatter) stomach, she was less inclined to back down. Eventually, Luna grumbled, “Very well, I suppose I should fill in where my sister so egregiously failed in her duty as your teacher.” She assumed a firm stance, pushing out her chest and planting her hands on her hips while turning toward Twilight Sparkle—though, viewed head-on like this, her upper body was largely occluded by her breasts. “Tell me, Twilight: do you suppose that my sister and I ought to be larger than we already are?” “…Wh-what?” she blurted out, only finding herself even more confused than previously. That was, until this question settled into the clockwork gears of her mind, and it happened to fit neatly with something that she had just been told, and her pupils shrank. “If…if alicorns are…constantly becoming more adept with their magic then…” She looked at Luna, taking in the breadth of her form, and although she was thin in her dream-body she was aware of how fat she was in the waking world, and she knew that she was not much smaller than the elder alicorn now, or her sister, or even Cadence for that matter. Even with the knowledge that her rate of gain had been so much faster than any of them, however, there was simply no way that it was enough to overtake the sheer advantage that the other alicorns, especially the sibling diarchs, had in terms of time. “We have been alicorns for centuries, Twilight,” Luna said plainly, “and in all that time we have passively grown stronger, year by year, pound by pound.” She tapped at her chin. “Perhaps it would be easiest to simply show you.” The dreamscape shifted. Twilight Sparkle felt a lurch within her, the jolt that came from waking up abruptly in the midst of drifting to sleep, and she stumbled and nearly fell over. The imbalance was exacerbated by the feeling of the ground beneath her hooves, which was far less stable, compressing beneath her as she sank in, a consistency somewhere between quicksand and gelatin, yet the warmth suggested one thing very distinctly: fur, skin, flesh. She looked around herself, and through the haze of dream matter she saw sloping dark blue surfaces, a steady hill which she stood upon and two steeper mounds which rose to either side. Then she looked up and saw Luna standing higher up at the head of the valley, where the two mountains converged at their bases. “This is my body, Twilight Sparkle,” she announced, “my true body.” The lavender mare walked up over the slope, approaching and then passing Luna. Beyond her, there was a small heap, a pile of tiered folds. There was something at the center of the fleshy mass, its shape difficult to discern, buried as it was beneath layers and layers of fat, but there were at least key features which could be used for identification: equine ears, a long horn, and an ethereal mane of blue dotted with stars. “Oh, Celestia…” she whispered, aghast, as she turned back toward Luna’s dream avatar, “you…you use magic to make yourself appear smaller?!” “Correct, that is compression at work,” she replied with a nod. “The excess mass is displaced from the body and stored in a pocket dimension.” She reached around her breasts, their span too broad for her arms to encompass, but then as she squeezed inward they began to shrink, as did the rest of her figure, slimming down gradually to a size that might be construed as merely chubby and buxom. “This allows us to assume a form that is more convenient for everyday tasks and public appearances. Even with magic, we only would be able to accomplish so much if we were blobs.” Twilight Sparkle looked around and beyond the head region of the Luna-mountain-body. There was scarcely any distinction between the neck and shoulders and arms, which seemed to have sunken inward, reduced to useless sleeves of flesh. The sides of the torso ran down toward a broad plain of thighs and buttocks which surrounded the central mass. “And you’re…you’re all this fat?!” she asked incredulously. “No,” Luna said plainly. “Cadence is still far smaller; her total mass is a little over double what her outward appearance would suggest. She has only been an alicorn for just over a decade, after all. Celestia, though…” There was a thinly restrained sense of bitterness to her tone as she said, “She is even larger than I am, on account of gorging herself on cake while I spent the last millennium on the moon.” Twilight Sparkle felt such a chill in her veins that she thought surely her face must have turned completely white. “Th-then…” She looked down at the fleshy floor and imagined it a lighter shade of lavender instead of blue. She whispered, “It’s only a m-matter of time bef-f-fore I…” “You do not have to worry, Twilight,” Luna replied, her voice calm and level, “you will have the magic necessary to cope with your circumstances.” “Why…why can’t I just…use it now?” she asked desperately, “I could have done that all this time…I wouldn’t have had to worry about gaining weight!” But Luna frowned ruefully and said, “I am afraid there are certain complications with that. There are two reasons that we do not simply make ourselves thin. The first is a simple matter of necessity; because our bodies are focal points for channeling magic, we need to be fat in order to use our alicorn power to its fullest capacity. If you made yourself as thin as you were before your ascension, you would be drastically kneecapping your potential.” Twilight Sparkle gave a prolonged groan of despair, clutching at her face. “Okay, fine…what’s the second reason?” That prompted Luna to finally let go of herself, and her body rapidly reinflated to its previous profound size. “Because we enjoy being this way, Twilight,” she stated, and this time she hefted the underside of her bosom, lifting the huge globes until her face was nearly obscured, “do you suppose that I would go parading about with tits like these if it was not something that I found enticing?” “I-I…” Twilight Sparkle could only stammer and blush. “And I can assure you it is the same for the others too.” Luna let go of her breasts, leaving her form to bounce and wobble, revealing a thin smirk on her muzzle. She pushed out her rear and swayed her hips and tail from side to side. “Celestia adores the way her rump feels when she shakes it, or when she grinds it on something. Or somepony.” Now Twilight Sparkle’s face was turning redder and redder. She couldn’t help envisioning the sight of the white alicorn’s behemoth buttocks looming upon her, coming dangerously close. “And Cadence—oh, Cadence.” She moaned exaggeratedly as she reached beneath her bosom and clutched at her relatively small but still considerable gut. “Such lurid fantasies she envisions in which your brother ravishes her middle with the most delectable—” “That’s a little too close to home, thank you very much!” Twilight Sparkle desperately didn’t want to imagine anything of that sort, yet the images were prying at her subconscious mind. Luna only smiled at her. “Okay, fine, I…I get it,” she muttered. “I still don’t understand why nopony thought it would be pertinent to tell me this sooner.” “I can only surmise that my sister thought you would be better off without that knowledge, so that you might adjust to your new state instead of trying to stave it off.” Luna sighed heavily and looked upon Twilight Sparkle sympathetically. “For what it’s worth, I would have told you sooner.” Twilight Sparkle smiled wryly back and said, “I appreciate that.” She crossed her arms over her front, and she was distinctly taken by the flatness of her stomach and how much slighter her breasts were through the thin cloth of the gown she wore. “Perhaps it ultimately was for the best…I suppose I simply wish the choice had been there from the beginning.” “Well, Twilight Sparkle, you have that choice now.” Luna spread her hands wide, as if to emulate the arms of a scale, weighing either side. “Only you can decide what kind of alicorn you wish to be.” They stood there quietly for some time, neither saying anything. Twilight Sparkle couldn’t have said when the dream shifted again, returning them to the simulacrum of her home, shrouded in mists of night. She wasn’t entirely sure, either, when the breadth of her midsection pushed so far outward, straining the span of her arms. She looked down at herself, at the fleshy slopes which comprised the body she had grown so accustomed to. She pushed her palm into the cushy mass, tracing around herself, over her front and around to the back, kneading gently at her voluminous buttocks. Warmth seeped from within the pliant bulk, and she exhaled in relief. The thought of how incomplete she had felt hadn’t occurred to her until her new sense of normalcy had been restored to her. Luna chuckled, the sound echoing. Twilight Sparkle looked up toward her and saw that, without moving, she was sliding away, receding into the dream-haze. “It seems that your mind has settled upon what it desires without you realizing it.” “But Luna!” She called out after her, but stepping forward didn’t do anything to close the distance. “What do I have to do to know what I really want?” “Twilight, have you really not learned already?” The alicorn’s grin lingered in the gloom, hanging like a crescent moon. “There is only one thing which any of us want you to do, and that is whatever makes you happy.” Then Twilight Sparkle woke up. Later that day, Spike belched up a letter from Celestia in which she profusely apologized for neglecting to tell her about compression magic, inviting her to come to Canterlot at her soonest convenience so that they could begin the necessary lessons and so that she could make the reparations that she thought were owed. There was also a letter from Luna, informing her that if she ever thought that Celestia was neglecting her in some form again then she should say the word “banana” to her.