//------------------------------// // No Magic is No Fun! // Story: Land of Misery // by UnKnownSalvation //------------------------------// Ch. 3: No Magic is No Fun! Twilight woke up in pain, to the sound of the wind outside. She managed to sit up without feeling like someone stabbed her and looked out the window to see snow falling. She looked over towards Zero's bed, only to see he was missing. "Where did he go?" She looked around and then noticed something on the table in the room: it was the same jeweled covered box that brought her here. Her expression turned to anger at the cause of her current predicament. "That thing! Why did it send me here?! Was it a joke, a prank or a trap? And then there's this Zero pony... What is he after? He seems too nice and too willing to help me..." As she continued to wonder why all of this is happening, she tried to get out of bed. Despite some difficulty, she managed to stand on her hooves, though still in a lot of pain. "You know what? Forget walking!" Twilight's horn began to glow, as she tried to levitate herself, but something immediately went wrong. As she began to get off the ground, Twilight's horn turned black and her magic backfired on her, blasting herself towards the wall, injuring her back. "AHHHHH!" Suddenly, Zero burst into the room, wearing a blue scarf. He looked over towards Twilight to see her rolled up like a crumpled ball. "Twilight, what happened?!" Zero asked, as he ran to her and lifted her back into the bed. Twilight could barely respond, due to the pain she was in. "This should help. If I can remember how to do it..." Zero thought and tried a spell to dampen the pain. "Twilight, what happened?" Zero asked with worry in his voice. He turned her turned over onto her back and Zero took a step back to keep a reasonable distance away. "I… tried to… use magic to… get out of bed and get around… and when I did, my magic failed and sent me flying. I think it has something to do with that box." Twilight said, pointing to the box on the table. "I think it made it impossible for me to use magic... oh no… I CAN'T USE MAGIC?!" Twilight's screams were quickly muffled by Zero's hoof covering her mouth. "Listen. I know that losing your magic is probably the worst thing that can ever happen to you, but I need you to not scream. Now, what else can you tell me about the box and this time, be calm." Zero then removed his hoof to let Twilight speak. "That box is the reason I'm here in the first place! I don't even know what it is or why it sent me here." "I think I might have an idea. When I found you, that box was glowing bright as the sun. It's actually the reason I found you." Twilight looked confused. "That box made a clear beam into the sky that I'm sure could be seen for miles! It's like it was trying to alert everyone in the country to its presence! I had to carry you a few miles to where I felt safe enough to treat you and not get attacked!" Then it dawned on Twilight. "That box was a trap?!" "And that's not the worst part: when I left to get wood for the fire, I saw the royal army combing the woods. It looked like there were fifty of them, maybe more. All I know is that we don't have much of a chance in a straight up fight with you unable to use magic. We have about thirty minutes before they get here, maybe less." says Zero, trying to keep a calm head, though Twilight wasn't exactly calm. "This is great! I can't use my magic, I'm in a country I know nothing and I'm being taken care of by someone I barely trust! No offense!" "None taken." says Zero nonchalantly. "And now the entire Adaptus army is looking for me! Can this get any better?!" Suddenly, an explosion shook the whole house and voices could be heard outside. "Looks like they move much faster than I thought! We're going to have to roll the dice: I'm going to carry you out of here and we're going to see how fast these guys can move!" As Zero explained his plan, Twilight looked at him like he was insane. "Are you sure that's going to work?!" "No." "Do you have a better plan?!" "No." With that, he levitated his bag and Twilight onto his back and put the box into his bag. He wrapped a red scarf around her neck just as a soldier dressed in black armor busted through the door, as Zero turned to them. "You're coming with us!" "Uh… No." With that, Zero fired a beam at the soldier and sent him flying. "AHHHHHH!" Two more soldiers took his place. "So much for the door." "Hang on!" Zero shot another beam towards the wall on his right, blowing it away and then ran out the hole he made. "Later geldings! Haha!" says Zero, as he ran through the trees. "Are you imbeciles going to let him insult you like that?! After them!" The alicorn leader commanded, dressed in black armor much better than the ones his troops were wearing, covering his entire body. "Yes, Sir Blacklight!" The soldiers said, as they took off to catch up with Zero and Twilight. "How did I end up with these idiots?" As the soldiers chased Zero and Twilight through the woods, Twilight was astonished what Zero was doing. "Zero, are you insane?!" "Why do you ask?" "You're running through a blizzard, being chased by a small army who want to capture us and now you're taunting them?!" "Don't you love the southern hemisphere?! Plus, you'd be surprised how easy these soldiers are to trick. But if given the chance, they'll use the saying "strength in numbers" and just gang up on you." says Zero, as they came to a clearing at the base of a snow-covered mountain. "I see them!" They heard a soldier exclaim. "These guys don't want to quit? Fine by me!" Zero said, as he ran to a path at the base of the mountain and ran up it. "Zero, what are you planning?" Twilight asked with worry in her voice. "Something stupid and/or crazy!" With that said, Zero rounded to a corner and saw a huge cave. "There's a cave!" Zero stopped and looked up towards a giant snow piles and fired a beam up at them, causing an avalanche. "ZERO, YOU NUTCASE!" Zero smirked at Twilight's response and proceeded to run into the cave. Zero set Twilight down. "Twilight, please don't get mad at me." He grabbed Twilight's hoof and pressed his own against it as his horn glowed. Suddenly he started to glow and when Twilight could see, his fur, mane and eyes turned the same colors of Twilight's and the zero on his cutie mark changed to the giant star on Twilight's. He then turned to face the front of the cave. "Let's see if I can do something this big!" Zero's horn glowed the same color as Twilight's, as he stood on his hind legs and motioned his arms to his left. What happened next shocked Twilight; large rocks came out of the wall and with a strained push, covered up the entrance to the cave just as the avalanche came passing just overhead. The move put a lot of strain on Zero's body, as he barely was able to put a barrier around him and Twilight to avoid getting hit by falling stalactites. After the avalanche passed, Zero fell onto his back from the amount of strain the spell put on him. He managed to pull off one more spell by lighting the whole cave up with three red orbs so they could both see, before changing back into his normal form. "That… sucked…" Twilight was amazed. She had never witness any pony change color and cutie mark and then move the earth with such force. "H-how did you do that?!" Twilight asked, as Zero chuckled. "I learned it from a small mining community I met awhile back. They had spent generations perfecting a spell that could move large amounts of dirt to uncover jewels and gold underneath. I was lucky to learn the spell and I got decent at using it, though what I just tried I've never done anything like it before..." "Not that! The color changing and your cutie mark looked like mine! Your horn glowed like mine too!" "Oh, you mean that… ha ha…um…funny story. I don't exactly know what I did." Twilight was annoyed by Zero's excuse, but her need to know everything wouldn't make it easy on him "Then how did you know how to do it and what it would do?" Zero sighed, knowing she wasn't going to let it go. "OK... you win." Twilight clapped her hooves together, happy to learn something about Zero. "I have a very rare ability that not every pony can learn, but one must be born with the capability of using it. It's called 'Power Mirror'. It allows me to copy, for a short time, the abilities and powers from another pony or ponies. Even though it's extremely powerful in this regard, there's a major drawback. The more ponies I copy and the more of the power I use, the more strain I put on my body to the point that if I'm not careful, it could easily kill me. I have problems just copying two ponies, but I can handle one just fine." At this point, Twilight was wide-eyed, mouth wide open and just flat out astonished to learn that such power could even exist and how risky it is to use it to where death could be an outcome. Her mind was officially blown by this information. "If you could do that, why didn't you just take out all the soldiers?" "The strain of taking out an unknown amount of enemies would have made it easy for them to catch us." "But I can't do anything like that! If you copied my ability then you wouldn't have been able to do that with the wall!" "When I copied your magic ability, I added it to my own to power myself up. I learned all the spell that you knew that I didn't and lost those spells when I reverted back. So when I copy ponies, I power up but if I use too much it gets dangerous." "Tell me everything about you and your power!" "If you must know, I might as well start as far back as I can remember..." ()()()()() Meanwhile outside... ()()()()() Blacklight comes into the clearing... and sees soldiers buried in the avalanche Zero caused... and face hoofed "Sir... w-we lost them..." one of the soldiers not buried said. "Well... I can see that you idiots can't handle two ponies! One of them is injured! How hard can it be for all of you to catch them?!" "Sir... we'll find them!" "You better! Or you can tell the Queen you lost them!" "Sir yes sir!" The soldier began to help dig the rest of the others out of the snow. "They won't get away that easily... since we know where they're going..." Blacklight said staring towards the mountain... "Miracle City..."