Twilight let out a long exhale as she sat herself down at her dining room table. Despite no longer requiring sleep, she was feeling exhausted beyond belief. As much as she liked foals, taking care of three (or maybe four?) of them for that many hours in a row took an extreme amount of energy; Even fighting Tirek seemed easier at times.
It was immediately apparent that Applebloom and Scootaloo had a crush on the poor colt at first sight. The fillies were of course amazed when he was introduced as Death, but after he began to shyly greet them, something piqued Sweetie Belle's infatuation as well.
Twilight had to admit, watching Death being absolutely clueless towards the three fillies' crushes was adorable. At times like those, when he wasn't actively trying to guide souls to There, she could even convince herself he was another innocent colt. He did, of course, eventually catch on to the girls' intentions, and had to let them off with a gentle 'I don't date clients' speech. Unfortunately, that seemed to have only made the fillies fancy him more, leading to what appeared to be a contest between the three of them. They reasoned that once they were dead, he'd be fair game, so they seemed to intend to wait for him for their entire lives. Twilight was fairly certain they'd give up in a week.
Pushing thoughts of schoolfilly crushes aside, she opened the strange leather-bound book back up and went back to work... not that she had really accomplished anything in deciphering it since she had first cast the spell. There were no other runic matrices visible in the book, and the rest of the text was still nothing but 'gobbledygook', as Pinkie would put it. Twilight wasn't sure where the baker had gotten that term from, but it seemed appropriate.
It wasn't even just that the words were too archaic or grammar too esoteric, the letters themselves didn't make sense. While not fluent with every language, Twilight was pretty confident in recognizing the scripts of the different languages across Equus. The strange loops and rigid angles of the bizarre symbols looked like nothing she had seen before. She even tried comparing it to ancient Abyssinian, to no avail. Trying to translate such a language with no start point was nigh impossible.
Another scrunched up bit of parchment hit the wastepaper basket as she started once more, trying to rethink the problem and approach from another angle, despite the doubt and futility of the situation constantly nagging the back of her mind.
At some point, Spike came by with her usual cup of tea, placing it on the table. She didn't have it in her to remind him she could no longer drink, so she just thanked him and continued her Sisyphean task.
"Maybe it's some sort of cipher mechanism?" She mumbled to herself. "But it that's the case, it'll take years to figure out what language it's a cipher for. Maybe I could figure it out by averaging word length, and comparing it to the averages for other languages?"
"Brilliant." Came a sarcastic voice from beside her, startling her out of her concentration. Her vision was quickly filled by the sight of a long-necked creature with bright yellow eyes and even brighter red pupils. "Taking inspiration from puzzles on the back of cereal boxes now, are we?"
"Discord." Twilight hissed in response, not needing to say anything other than his name to make her annoyance abundantly clear.
"Oh good, you remembered my name! After all the time you spent with my nephew, I was afraid you'd forgotten about me. I was so terribly alone, you know." He purred in response, swirling his serpentine body around her chair legs. "Though, I guess I can't blame you for being upset. I forgot to come to your 'Welcome to Immortality' party after all. I didn't even get you a gift! How could I be so thoughtless towards my good friend?"
Twilight sighed and looked away from him, going back to her work to try and tune him out.
"Oh come now, Twilight. Don't you know it's rude to ignore company? I'm pretty sure that's quite 'unfriendly' of you, when I came all this way just to offer my help." He said, somehow phasing his head through her notes, blocking her vision.
"Go away, Discord. I'm busy."
"Ah yes, busy, busy. Busy trying to fill your trash can with paper balls, more like. I didn't know you were practicing for the Ponyville basketball league." With a snap of his fingers, her trashcan quickly levitated up near the ceiling. Grabbing her current notes, he rolled them into a ball and swooshed them through the basket, a very compressed and digital sounding fanfare accompanying the motion. A chorus of tiny Discords on her desk in even tinier little cheerleading outfits waved their pom-poms and did a routine. Twilight wasn't amused. "Oh come on, don't give me that look. You and I both know the latest straw you were blindly grasping for was just as anemic as all the others. But don't worry, your best friend Discord is here to help!"
Twilight continued to give him an annoyed glare for a few more moments before finally letting out a sigh and rubbing her temples with her hooves. "Okay, Discord. Fine." She pushed her chair away from the table and turned to look at the chimeric being. "What did you need to tell me?
Discord crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. "How friendly of you. Do you know how rarely I actually try to be helpful to people? This is extremely out of character for me. I'll get so much flak for this."
The princess just made a 'get on with it' motion with her hoof while continuing to stare at him.
"Ugh, fine. Fine. I won't even be cryptic with it. I'll just tell it to you straight, though I'm amazed you yourself haven't noticed it. Its been what, a month since you turned? And you still haven't realized it? I assume it's your brain hiding the truth from you. Protecting itself from trauma, you'd probably say, if you had some fancy-smancy degree. It's even crazier considering you're the Element of Magic and everything."
Twilight blinked in slight confusion. "And what, pray tell, haven't I notice?"
Discord leaned in and spoke in a quiet, surprisingly concerned tone. "Twilight, when was the last time you actually used your magic? Because I'm fairly certain you haven't used even a single spell in over a month."
Only once Twilight had finished hyperventilating into a bag helpfully supplied by Spike was she able to talk. Of course, her voice was rather scratchy from the terrified screams she had let out, which had drawn the drake's attention in the first place.
Discord, surprisingly enough, had sat beside her and patted her gently on the shoulder throughout her entire panic attack. Whether it was from Fluttershy's constant 'Being a Good Person' lessons, or because he actually was worried about her, it was still... surprisingly nice of him to do.
"Thanks..." She croaked out, taking the glass of water from Spike. She wasn't sure which one of them she was thanking, but the fact the Spike responded with a smile, and Discord didn't respond at all, implied that they all assumed she was referring to the dragon. "How... did I not notice? I can't even feel my magic..."
Discord grimaced slightly. "Like I said, your brain likely couldn't handle the concept of not having access to your magic. So it distracted you from that."
Twilight nodded slowly, drinking from the glass of water held shakily between both hooves. She didn't trust herself not to drop it if she only used one. "So... why can't I use my magic? I thought my whole body was magic now, shouldn't it be easier to cast spells?"
Discord huffed and stared at the ceiling. The ceiling grew a small pair of eyes and stared back, so he looked away as to not be rude. "Yes, and no. Your body is filled with magic, and is capable of quite immense spellcraft now. But... you're dead. Your tissue is necrotic, your blood vessels are clogging, your signs are flat, your humours are unbalanced, whatever you want to say. The only reason your body isn't completely rotting away is the magic constantly rejuvenating your tissues. It can't, however, keep this working." He tapped her horn with one talon. "As I'm sure you know, the horn is the one body part we can't properly regrow or make prosthesis for, no matter how powerful the healing spell we cast. You probably have a better idea of why that is than me, not that anyone's fully sure of the reason yet. The point is, this little protrusion on your forehead is now about as useful as a doorknob when it comes to casting spells."
Twilight stared at the table for a while. "So... I can't use magic anymore? I'll never cast spells again?
Discord grumbles and crossed his arms. "Well, it's not impossible. Most species are capable of channeling magic of some kind without horns. Zebras can imbue plants with arcane energies for use in witchcraft, merponies can create enchantments using their voice, even changelings can do their little transformation trick without using their horns. You just have to use the magic your biology is designed to use."
Twilight grimaced. "But I'm an Alicorn, so I guess I still have Pegasus and Earth Pony magic. Great. That's not really casting spells though, Discord."
The deity just gave her a wink. "You're not just an Alicorn anymore though, are you?"