After so much time in between updates, I finally got SL back on track after season 3. I now have a detailed outline for the rest of the story, dedicated editors, and time to work with now that I don't have band practice for a bit. So, keep your eyes open for more updates. As stated, I’ve let go of all but one of my old editors, since they’ve all died. The new lineup is as follows:
Garbo802 (you’ve probably seen him around, he proofreads for a lot of people)
DPV111 (you know, that guy with the RD avatar who proofreads every featured story ever)
Alpha151 (apparently, he’s one of the proofreaders for Her Own Pony, which is a great story and you ought to read it)
If anyone has done/is interested in doing some fan/design artwork for Solitary Locust, please do contact me. I’ll write you a story with your favorite pairing in exchange, or something. It’ll give me incentive to actually work on something new for once.
Solitary Locust
IV. Twilight in Solitude
Twilight awoke sometime early the next morning to a marginally less horrifying situation than she had the night before: the gloomy, lonely hall of the old church, the itching of dust on her muzzle, and the light drumming of rain against the roof. The last was a minor irritation to her hypersensitive hearing, but not overwhelming the way it had been during the first few moments of her transformation. It was much more peaceful here than outside had been, with no animals to confuse what was, to the best of her knowledge, her newfound empathy sense.
As soon as she woke up enough to realize where she was, she also realized that she didn’t want to get up. It was actually quite comfortable inside her cocoon-like sleeping bag, save for the throbbing pain in her leg and and the slightly less severe but no less debilitating pain in her horn. Twilight could feel the cold outside biting at the aching process, and in response to this she burrowed deeper, careful to avoid putting pressure on her broken leg.
The dense haze of sleep still hung around her, and this time there were no horrible revelations to recharacterize it into a living nightmare. It took a long time for her to actually wake up, so the changeling was able to spend a few minutes more in the pleasant state of limbo before she was forced to deal with her waking reality. As the pain grew more intense, corresponding to her increasing level of awareness, Twilight groaned out loud and finally found the will to leave the warm, safe comfort of the sleeping bag.
Though the cold wasn’t bad enough to create a frost, she still shivered as she limped over to her saddlebags. Opening them, she dug out the bottles of painkillers and antibiotics she’d gotten (stolen) from Fluttershy’s so she could measure out and take the appropriate doses for the morning time. Then she hobbled outside to relieve herself—changelings might have been different from ponies, but they weren’t that different.
The sky above was dark, grey, and obscured by clouds and rain. Twilight could just make out the faintest patches of light here and there in the distance where the clouds thinned. She guessed it was probably around six or seven in the morning, though she couldn’t tell because of the clouds blocking out the sky. It hadn’t stopped raining, but the torrential downpour of the previous night had been replaced by something reminiscent of an ordinary pegasus-made rainstorm.
She had some trouble passing through the species barrier at the door again, but managed to push her way inside after some effort. Shivering, Twilight set about limping up and down the aisle between the rows of pews to warm herself. Since it seemed she had inherited the full body of a changeling, minor physiological quirks included, her core body temperature would likely have dropped by several degrees, which could easily cause problems if she wasn’t careful.
Her body ached terribly, as if she’d just galloped through the Running of the Leaves course three times over without stopping. An overwhelming sense of lethargy took over once the last traces of sleep left her, weighing each step down and making her stiff legs buckle beneath her. Knowing what she did about changeling physiology, and equine physiology in general, Twilight was aware that this was probably because of her horn injury more than anything else. Until her horn was back to normal, the healing process would likely continue to drain her of energy. Twilight grimaced at the thought of feeling this way for any extended length of time—she wasn’t exactly the most active unicorn in Ponyville, but she was used to feeling somewhat energetic when she was awake. Either way, she had to keep warm, and she also had to keep what little muscle there was in her legs (which there didn’t seem to be much of) from degenerating further.
Trying to think while she paced up and down the aisle was like slogging through the swamp the storm had created outside. Twilight’s brain simply didn’t want to function, period. No, it wanted her to go back into hibernation in the warmth and safety of her sleeping bag instead of limping around on wobbling legs that could hardly even keep her upright. It certainly didn’t want to tackle the enormous problem of how she was going to fix everything that had happened to her.
Very little seemed to make sense to her at the moment. She herself felt alien, out of place, and incomprehensibly confused; her new body more a frustrating maze with no exits than anything else. Magic was her special talent, and here she was, unable to solve or cure* this very magical mystery afflicting her. Was magic even her special talent anymore? Could changelings even have special talents? There were so many questions spinning around in her head all at once.
What had happened to her up on the podium?
What was she going to do to revert it?
Could she revert it?
How would she survive with only three good legs and almost no magic for however long it took for them to heal?
How was she going to convince her friends beyond a doubt that she was who she said she was?
Immediately before turning into a changeling, Twilight had made a speech demonstrating that she knew how changelings tended to give themselves away. What if they thought she was just a really wily changeling and didn’t believe her even after she returned to her normal form and had the revealing spell recast on herself to prove who she was? Just about any kind of magic could be blocked from working if you knew how to do it, so in theory it would be possible to form a shield that would protect her against the revealing spell. Certainly there were ponies in Ponyville who would never truly accept her back into their society, always looking for signs she might be a changeling...
“...which is a fallacious method of research, as it assumes the answer and attempts to support it with evidence, instead of attempting to determine the truth after the data has been gathered in full...” she mumbled to herself.
As she walked, Twilight looked idly around at the ageing church. It had gathered some dust in the time since her last visit, but she didn’t seem to have the same allergies as she did when she was a unicorn, so the floating particles didn’t bother her much. Small creatures (spiders, insects, and the like) had penetrated the species barrier over time, probably in places where it had been weakened. Twilight saw what she was positive was a bird’s nest in the corner of one of the rafters. She hoped there wasn’t anything living amongst the abandoned supplies near the pulpit.
The windows were covered by downward-pointing diagonal wooden shutters with magic in between, rather than decorated with the intricate stained glass of the old cathedrals in Canterlot. The point of this, according to what Twilight had learned in her studies, was to focus shafts of magically unheated light from the sun onto the congregation. Maybe she would open them when the sun came out again. It would do a lot to raise her spirits; the expedition team had repaired the shutters to simulate a ceremony during their time there, and Twilight had found it extremely inspiring.
Princess Celestia inspires me.
Most of the feeling had returned to Twilight’s hooves by the time she sat down amidst the pews again to rest, following a half an hour of mostly mindless pacing. She was no better off, however, since the numbness in her hooves had been replaced by an ever deepening sense of inner dysphoria. The cold wasn’t just around her anymore; it was beginning to seep inside her, permeating her body. Part of her brain wanted to go back to sleep, a sentiment with which all of her body agreed. But sleeping wasn’t an option at the moment—she knew she needed to get as much done as she could while she was physically able to stay active.
She dug into the supplies—it turned out there wasn’t anything living in there, or else she had scared off what had been there the night before—to find paper, a quill pen, and a bottle of ink. With great care, she used her good forehoof to smooth out the parchment on one of the pews, and placed the quill and inkwell above it.
Her horn flickered again as she tested her magic. It was still very sore, but she grit her teeth and forced herself to see it through. Once, Twilight remembered, she had read through a book on unicorn magical rehabilitation, and it had mentioned that one of the of the most important things to remember when healing from a horn injury was to use very small amounts of magic from time to time, to reduce the risk of damage from magical atrophy.
Trying to summon magic up from within proved to be a laborious process that made Twilight feel as though she were a filly again, still learning to open books and levitate quills as she grew accustomed to the feeling of communicating with her horn. It also caused a prickling sensation around the base of her horn that slowly traveled upward; a similar feeling to that of a limb that had fallen asleep and was just waking up. Still, the soft greenish glow of the very small amount of magic flowing through it remained steady.
As much as she wanted to think the absence of any sharp, stabbing pain through her horn was because she was recovering rapidly, Twilight knew it was probably because she was channeling so little magic through it. The current charge was hardly enough to cast light on the pews around her; certainly not enough to perform a full spell. Slowly, Twilight increased the amount of magic flowing through her horn by increments, until she started to feel pressure in the root of her horn. She then stopped and let herself rest. The magic she’d managed to channel before running into a problem was very little, but it was enough that she could perform some basic spells to manipulate the ambient magic around her; a sort of cheat Princess Celestia had taught her for saving magic and energy.
Casting a spell on the quill infused it with a sickly green glow; the changeling color. That prickly feeling returned, but Twilight avoided causing herself any more pain by slowing down the rate at which the spell was cast, which channeled less magic at once; and so, although it took twice as long, it didn’t overload the damaged magical channels within.
The spell she cast was a self-contained one that made the pen twitch and jump up so that it rested on its tip. Self-contained spells, like this one, differed from other kinds of magic in that they could be assigned to an object or task, and the magic would remain there until it was either exhausted or called back. The major advantage of this, of course, was that the caster didn’t have to keep the channel open in order to maintain it, which meant that ponies with limited magical abilities could carry out manipulations that would have otherwise exceeded their casting power. In fact, the very first spell Twilight had ever learned (a simple instruction to turn the page of a book) was self-contained.
“Please test dictation,” she rasped at the still faintly glowing quill.
It didn’t move. She frowned as much as she could in her current form—which, with the enormous fangs in the way, wasn’t very much. The particular spell she had cast was a variant of one typically used for transcribing speeches, meetings, and interviews. It was supposed to remember certain voices so that it could differentiate between speakers. Twilight had further modified it to remember each speaker even after the magic dispersed and returned to her, so that she wouldn’t have to create new records every time she wanted to use it.
Contrary to what many earth and pegasus ponies tended to believe, spellcasting—particularly automated spells with preset behaviors—was a very complicated and potentially error-laden process. The most probable explanation for the spell not recognizing her voice was that it was, for some reason, under the impression that Twilight wasn’t among the parties whose words were to be transcribed, which had happened from time to time.
“Please tune to dictation vocal record A: Twilight Sparkle; and test dictation.” She waited for what she was reasonably sure was at least thirty seconds, but the pen remained still.
Of course it’s not working, Twilight thought with a discomfiting jolt of realization. It’s still looking for my voice, not... what I sound like now...
“Plea... Please add new vocal dictation record H... Twilight Sparkle in temporary changeling form... and t-tes... and test dic... No. Cancel that command...” Twilight took a couple of deep breaths, and waited until she was sure she was calm enough that she wouldn’t stammer and mess up the command. “Please add new vocal dictation record H: Twilight Sparkle in temporary changeling form, and test dictation.”
The moment she finished speaking, the quill snapped to attention and wrote, in the top right corner of the parchment, ‘This is a test of the automated writing spell, dictated by Twilight Sparkle in temporary changeling form.’
Any satisfaction Twilight gained from getting the spell to work properly was almost immediately overridden by the unpleasantness of having to confront and acknowledge her change directly. Her wasp-like wings buzzed a little on her back, involuntarily reacting to her stress and anxiety as she began to work her way around the large room in a slow circle again.
“My name is Twilight Sparkle,” she said aloud, and she heard the pen begin to scratch away at the parchment again. “I’m twenty-two years old. For the last fourteen years, I’ve been the personal protege of Princess Celestia de Sol, as well as the caretaker and librarian of the Golden Oaks Library in Ponyville for the last three.
“Due to an as-yet unknown error in the casting of a non-unicorn spell designed to interfere with the inherent magic of changelings, I have taken on the physical, and possibly magical, characteristics of a changeling drone. As of this writing, I am hiding in the Originist-Celestian church ruins located approximately two miles inside the Everfree Forest. I have suffered injuries to my leg and horn due to an... an extremely negative reaction... from the local populace...”
She shuddered, remembering the boiling mass of angry colours that had surrounded her in the town square. The memory itself was strangely abstract and empty of detail now, and if it weren’t for the fact that she could see the dilapidated wooden floor through the holes in her legs, Twilight might have thought she was remembering a particularly bizarre dream. She reasoned that it was probably because her panic and confusion at the time had prevented her mind from fully assimilating the experience.
Shaking off the intruding memory, Twilight resumed pacing. Though it had only been a few minutes, she could tell that she was going to need to sit down and rest soon. “After performing a test of my current magical abilities, I have determined that I am still able to utilize a small amount of energy in spite of the damage done to both my horn and my reserves. Keeping the severity of my situation in mind, my goals are as follows: First, to restore my physical body and magical connections to their natural state. Second, to clear my name of any suspicion and reintegrate myself into pony society without further incident. Third, to determine the root cause of my sudden transformation, so as to prevent further incidents of this nature among those who use the revealing spell.”
The changeling’s voice went silent for a while as she paced, slowly putting together a plan for the unknown length of time stretching ahead. It was difficult to consider all the variables in her potential courses of action, since the painkillers made her head spin and her thoughts spilled out through her ears when she had too many of them, but Twilight was able to come to some basic conclusions after working hard to keep her concentration steady.
“For the time being, I am essentially imprisoned here by the unreliability of my magic and the crippling injury to my leg. That I managed to get so far into the Everfree at night is nothing short of miraculous. If I’m going to make another journey through the forest, I want to have enough magic available to me that I can defend myself against attacking predators... or ponies, if need be...”
Though the thought of having to fight somepony chilled her, she wasn’t the sort who would deny the possibility of being found by ponies who would try to capture her again. Twilight knew it was foolish to let everything she had left rest on the ability of her conjured chemical shield to ward off everything that came near her, or the power of reason to talk down anypony she ran into. Not after what had happened to her two days before.
Having assessed her situation, the changeling moved on to the next problem: she needed to figure out how to use the next few days. It was likely that reversing the transformation would require a great deal of powerful spellcasting. Her horn was in no state to facilitate such a feat, so she wouldn’t be able to do anything about her current state until she’d regained control of her magic. However, now that she was able to think more clearly than she had in the town square or in the fields or woods, she realized that she might not have to spend all of that time alone.
In the haze of her escape from Ponyville—which, like her memory of the events in the town square, was somewhat fuzzy and detached from the rest of her consciousness—Twilight had completely forgotten that there was a pony who was relatively removed from the changeling hysteria. Zecora was near enough that she wouldn’t have to risk going near Ponyville, and the zebra knew just what it was like to be persecuted by suspicious ponies and might be more receptive to the idea of helping her.
Just as importantly, Zecora had various potions that could potentially help Twilight’s body heal faster. They might even be able to come up with a solution and a cure to the mystery of her transformation together. Twilight knew that Zecora was well-versed in the magic of zebra shamanism, which was purportedly able to do things that ordinary pony magic couldn’t do.
Of course, that was assuming Zecora did give her a chance. It was possible that she would give Twilight the benefit of the doubt and allow her to explain, but it was equally possible that she wouldn’t think twice about bucking Twilight’s head off her shoulders. There were supposed to have been changeling hives in ancient Zebrica—Who knew what kinds of legends the zebra had passed down regarding them? For all she knew, Zecora could have just as much against changelings as the rest of Ponyville, or even more.
But if there was one thing Twilight had learned from her adventures with the Elements of Harmony, one thing which she still held onto despite her ordeal, it was that there was always a friend somewhere you could count on. She wasn’t about to just discard every lesson she’d learned about friendship. Twilight had to trust that Zecora would help her, or all her time in Ponyville would have been for nothing.
Getting to Zecora was another matter anyway. Her tree house might have been a good distance from Ponyville, but Twilight’s current location was still far enough away that she ran the risk of being attacked by something in the forest anyway if she tried to get there. Running blindly through the forest again wasn’t a particularly bright idea at all.
“Within the next few days,” she finally summarized to the pen, which began writing again, “I hope to have recovered well enough to relocate myself to the dwelling of my friend Zecora, a zebra shamaness and healer who lives approximately one mile into the forest. It is my hope that she will receive me more positively than the townsponies of Ponyville proper. In the meantime, I will attempt to determine the exact nature and cause of my transformation.
“New page; title: ‘Observations during self-examination’.” Twilight rubbed her forehead absent-mindedly with her hoof, trying to get rid of the growing pressure behind her left eye. Next on her list of things to do was assessing how severe the injury to her horn and magical reserves were. After that, she decided, she would analyze exactly what kind of magical residue had been left behind by the spell and see if she could determine anything from it. Very powerful spells often left behind impressions of their unique magic, rather like hoofprints on a beach, and the spell she had used had been very overpowered in order to achieve the blanket effect.
“In order to determine what happened in the town square, I’m going to have to determine how deeply the change has permeated my form,” said Twilight. She looked down at the blackened chitin on her hoof as she spoke, then raised this hoof to press against her forehead again. “I appear to have taken on the... aura of a changeling when casting normal spells. This indicates... that it may have... a-altered... the way I express m-magical p-power... a-ah!”
A growing headache behind her eyes had joined the dull ache in her horn and leg, in spite of the fact that it hadn’t been very long since she’d taken the pain medication. It was a very unpleasant feeling indeed, akin to what she imagined being stabbed through the eye with an ice pick might be like. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pressed her other hoof hoof against her forehead as well, momentarily forgetting that she was no longer capable of experiencing tension or sinus headaches, but it did nothing to help.
“...the c-continuing pain in my horn... and now in my head... suggests a potentially serious internal injury. I will have to face the possibility of... a permanent reduction... in my ability to use magic... thanks to this ordeal...” continued Twilight, still with her eyes shut and her hoof pressed against her head. She shivered and paused as what she had just said fully sank in.
She didn’t expect to have much trouble casting spells once her horn was healed, regardless of whether there was permanent damage or not—Twilight’s magical reserves were practically unlimited, and she didn’t expect it to diminish even with an injury unless it was a very serious one indeed. But magic was everything to Twilight Sparkle. To lose even a fraction of her ability to connect to that energy would have been like having a piece of her soul stolen away from her. Even now, unable to engage her special talent as she pleased, she felt as though some part of her had been physically paralyzed. Twilight wondered if this was what had been like for Rainbow Dash when she’d had to wear a cast on her wing the time she’d broken it, or what Pinkie had felt like the week she’d been sick with pneumonia and couldn’t hold any parties.
One of the very first things she had ever learned from Princess Celestia, back when she was a little filly who still had a lot of trouble managing her newfound well of magical power, was how to let her magic out when it wanted out. Actually, it was only a small fraction of her magic that she’d actually let out, but the Princess had taught her that it was always a good idea to moderate such things. It was only unicorns and alicorns that had enough control to do this, and only the most powerful of them all could manifest their magic physically.
Lowering her head slightly, Twilight let her magic’s aura run free. It hurt, but it was a cathartic sort of pain; nothing like the angry stabbing from before. A shimmering stream of green magic poured out of her horn and swirled around her as though it were alive. It wound around her body like it was trying to wrap her up, until she was completely enveloped in it. This magic twitched and undulated about her, dancing like sickly green flames in the half-darkened hall. Something about it just wasn’t right; it felt unnatural and unwieldy, as though it weren’t truly a part of her, and as though something inside her wanted her to stop using it.
More to Twilight’s delight, the green changeling-like aura was joined by a familiar lavender ribbon that stirred the first real feelings of comfort or relaxation she’d experienced since her speech. Sighing, the changeling leaned back and closed her eyes, enjoying the sensations it triggered—it reminded her of the smells of parchment paper, ink, and books, and of looking at printed words and Princess Celestia’s smile, and the soothing voice of her mentor in her ear, and—more than anything else—home.
In spite of how unpleasant it was to have that unwanted changeling magic mingling with her own, Twilight could have likened releasing her magic this way to sinking into a hot bath. Having her magic outside in the physical world instead of in the noncorporeal core where it was usually contained also significantly reduced the pressure on her horn, which in turn made it a little bit less sore. It did nothing for her migraine, but the burst of delirious happiness that accompanied the release took some of her attention off it.
Something struck her as odd about her native magic, and she absent-mindedly noted it to the automatic pen: “It’s... shinier than it used to be. More colourful. How odd...”
With her magic keeping her warm and making her much more comfortable than before, she moved on to the next step of her examination: the horn diagnostic spell. This was a basic spell for medical students, and one Twilight had learned in order to keep an eye on her horn because of the potential for injury when she was performing more complex spells.
It had no actual physical effect on her horn; instead, it used a very tiny magical charge to project a synesthetic illusion into her mind’s eye that corresponded to the different ‘connections’ through which magic could emerge. With this spell, the ‘inside’ of her horn was represented as a series of colored lines, like a very poorly organized rainbow. Each line represented a connection between the well of magic that was her inner core and the outside world, since, in order to form a connection, there had to be a point where the magic entered her horn and a point where it exited. She could test these in the same way one might pluck the strings of a harp or a lyre in order to find out how well they were functioning.
Many of the connections caused a burning sensation inside her horn when she tried them. It wasn’t the same as the throbbing spike that seemed to regularly attack her, and it actually made her feel a lot better because she knew that feeling, even though she didn’t know what was causing it this time. The pain was of the type that came from magical overexertion; of having too much magic forced through at once.
There didn’t seem to be any permanent damage to these, only a very severe case of burnout. There were only two lines that weren’t burned out, and the rest were completely useless until they had healed up. The input from the two that did work was so little it was practically negligible, and would probably power little more than tiny self-contained spells for the time being. Still, it was good that she at least had some magic available to her.
“The transformation appears not to have affected my established magical abilities beyond the temporary damage done by casting while the change was occurring,” she noted as she combed through the synesthetic diagram. “However, there is significant burnout present in most connections. The input from the two that are still working properly is enough to power little more than the standard range of self-contained spells, though I am very thankful that I still have this, at least.”
The next phenomenon of note was the massive damage to the ‘rainbow web’ that had once crisscrossed Twilight’s connections. There had always been a large part of Twilight’s diagnostic visualization that had the synesthetic sensation of looking at a rainbow. It was woven from one intangible side to the other, as though a huge spider had come along and spun a web inside her horn itself. Until recently, neither Twilight nor Celestia had been able to identify the source of this magic, but upon finding out that Rainbow Dash’s sonic rainboom had been the event that unleashed her power that day in Canterlot, Twilight had formulated a theory that it was some sort of residue from the rainboom’s enormous magical output.
Now that rainbow web, as it were, was completely shredded; the crystallized colors shattered into pieces; the veil torn away, and this formerly static magic was now bloating her own inherent magic. In the web’s place was a new spiderweb of lines crossing through each other with no particular sense of order about them. Trying to find a logical pattern in them was too complex a task for Twilight’s aching brain to carry out, and it just ended up making her dizzier than she already had been
Judging by their similarity to the lines she had used to tap the changelings’ inherent magic in the past, Twilight could draw a reasonably accurate conclusion as to their nature, and she related this to her record-keeper. “It may be that actively channeling magic through my horn at the time of the transformation prevented the standard changeling magics from integrating, resulting in this mess of exclusively changeling-based lines at random... Such a massive alteration of a pony’s magical structure without the involvement of an event like the sonic rainboom or an artifact like the Elements of Harmony is all but unheard of, but as I have already broken the rule about ponies becoming changelings, I have chosen to disregard that for the time being, as this is clearly not an ordinary case...”
She stopped the spell to rest, and leaned over to the side a bit in case she had to get sick. Her headache had grown so severe it was making her stomach churn, the way she sometimes felt when she went on long chariot rides for school field trips when she was still a filly back in Canterlot. Twilight decided she needed to finish her examination up as soon as she could, before she became too ill to continue, so her break didn’t last long.
Testing one of the changeling connections caused a sharp pain in her horn and made her ears pop. Twilight had also had this happen to her a few times before, when she was younger, and also to a lesser degree in recent times when she had experimented with particularly powerful new spells. It was the feeling of her body trying to force more magic through a single channel than could possibly fit; a phenomenon that, according to Princess Celestia, sometimes happened to very strong unicorns who had established connections to new types of magic and were unused to managing the power they were channeling.
Twilight was so used to being able to channel almost any amount of power she needed through her horn that she’d forgotten what it was like to have to limit her casting. Now, however, she needed to be very careful not to put any strain on her burned-out older connections or the weak newer ones. She began to analyze some the new connections individually by sending little pulses of magical energy through them, to determine how much they would accept. As she had guessed, they weren’t actually defective; just unfamiliar and undeveloped.
“Further experimentation may be necessary, but at the moment it appears that these new lines are foreign and poorly defined enough that they’ll need a great deal of exercise and practice if I hope to make them work at all. My magical makeup also may not be fully suited to accept magical connections based in changeling magic at both ends. It may be necessary to drastically redistribute the inherent-ambient ratio in my casting for the time being, to adjust for these changes if I want to utilize the magic I now possess.”
Though there were many, many more things she would have liked to explore within her rearranged magical layout, but her headache, and the irritation in her horn, had progressed to the point where she could no longer stand to poke around any further. Feeling unsatisfied, Twilight canceled the spell and paused a moment to collect her thoughts so she could come up with a conclusive summary of her findings.
“All things considered, after viewing the state of my horn I feel I’m lucky to be able to do magic at all. I doubt I’ll be able to reverse the transformation, or even begin to determine the cause, until my injuries have healed. I also don’t know how long I’ll have to wait before that happens. Perhaps Zecora will be able to help me there.
“A side note: I think I’ll also have to watch out for my health in the meantime. My physical body is in very poor shape as of right now. In addition to my broken leg, my muscles seem insufficient to carry me for extended periods of time. ...It may be that the transformation redistributed certain nutrients within my body, and there was an insufficient level of one or more to form an adequate changeling muscular system...”
Twilight stopped there, feeling rather anxious as she considered just what that implied. If it really was the case, then there was a good chance other systems in her body might also be weakened. For all she knew, she could stop breathing or have a seizure at any moment, or even simply drop dead as her malformed body spontaneously shut down.
At that point, she judged (rather wisely, in her opinion) that it would probably be a good idea for the magic swirling around her to go back inside before she overexerted herself. This was both painful and enjoyable; the latter because it left a warm, fuzzy feeling on the interior of her horn. Twilight was sad to see the lavender magic leave her side again, as it was the only familiarity she had at that moment.
There was a very soft whistling noise in her ears after the last of the ribbons had returned to her horn. She looked around, trying to figure out where it was coming from, but no matter where she looked, it always seemed to be coming from all around her. In the end, she decided it was probably the wind whistling through a hole in the wall, or something of that nature.
Eventually, Twilight managed to distract herself from the odd noise by doing some of the calculations to retune her spellcasting to better fit what she knew about changelings. If she learned to adjust how much magic she used to compensate for the change, she would most likely be able to use most or even all of the spells a real changeling would be able to use (which included her own unicorn magic) once she built up her ability to cast again.
Tuning spells was something Twilight Sparkle not only enjoyed and was good at, but found relaxing. Changing the way a spell was cast to fit a particular type of caster required a great deal of numerological and magiologial calculation—both of which were fields in which she was adept. This was one of the reasons she was able to do magic even more powerful unicorns couldn’t.
At first, Twilight experienced a sort of war in her head between the numbers she was trying to crunch and the fears she was trying to ward off. Her current state made it easy for her attention to wander, so she repeatedly found herself going silent in her dictation for long periods of time. Half her brain was trying to stick with her notes and calculations, while the other was in another place entirely, filled with images of her own body’s sudden failure; of her heart stopping, and of her brain spontaneously ceasing to function.
As time wore on, however, all of these things, whether she was trying to concentrate on them or not, faded out of focus and were replaced by a single, constant, universal presence within her mind: that unholy whistling noise. It hadn’t gone away as Twilight had hoped it would. Rather, it had grown ever more intense as she worked, and had gradually been joined by a churning of her stomach and (more worryingly) an increasing pressure at the base of her horn.
She tried to ignore it for a while, pretending nothing was wrong even though she knew something was, but it was a siren inside her head; like her body was trying to warn her that she was in danger. Inevitably, it got to the point where she couldn’t ignore it—but in her hazy confusion she also didn’t know what was causing it or what to do about it. In the claws of this frightening phenomenon, which had graduated to an ear-piercing wailing coming from within, she could only panic and whimper.
“Shut up...” she moaned, pressing her hoof against the side of her head. “P-please... stop...”
But it didn’t stop. It got louder and louder, until it had eclipsed everything else with its shrieking wail. Twilight let out a low moan, then turned her head to the side and threw up onto the floor beside the pulpit. It felt like she was the sole support for ten thousand tons of bricks balanced on the tip of the jagged spike she could see when she turned her eyes upward.
The pressure built until it made her vision swim and her ears ring, the latter of which she somehow heard through the whistling. Then, very suddenly, it all seemed to release itself at once in a violent burst. She was given little warning before the pain hit, except for a shower of white-hot green colored sparks falling out of her horn and cascading down her face. And then all the pressure was released at once.
Twilight’s horn set off a deafening blast like a cannon, nearly giving her whiplash from its force and shooting gouts of magic everywhere as she screamed, lost her balance, and toppled over onto her side. The agony it brought with it was comparable only to that of what she’d felt in her time in the town square, and even then only just barely. It felt like her head and her horn were being split apart and white-hot knives driven into the open spaces.
A long, multipronged tongue of sickly green electricity emerged from the tip of her horn and whipped around wildly for a split second, crackling and popping loudly as it burned everything it touched. When it vanished, it left behind a series of black marks all over the floor in front of Twilight where it had made contact. Little pockets of air near where the explosion had gone off flared briefly, then were extinguished just as quickly as they had lit up.
And then Twilight was left alone in silence again, with only her terror, her shock, and the almost completely paralyzing agony to keep her company. Still laying on the floor, she slowly curled up into a foetal position—though with her bad leg sticking out—and started to shake, her body only just reacting to what had happened. She stayed like that for a long time, trying her best not to break the mild dissociation that had come with the trauma.
What brought her back to her senses was a peculiar fizzing sound, which reminded her of Pinkie Pie’s soda pop for some reason. It sent a brand-new jolt of fear through her: what if her horn was going to explode again? Twilight didn’t think she could handle that kind of pain twice in a row. She would lose her mind.
Still dazed, she did the first thing that came to mind: she reached up with her good hoof to touch her horn and see if it was warmer than it should have been. Before she even came in contact with it, she let out a raspy yelp and withdrew her hoof again. A large portion of the inside of her hoof had been burned, and the greenish residue pulsating all over it told her that it was a magical burn. It wasn’t too bad, but she would have to clean and bandage it as soon as she could.
The changeling finally had the sense to look up at the tip of her horn, which she discovered was glowing green. The glow wasn’t the normal halo of a spell, either, but a tiny flame burning a few millimeters from the tip, like a flame from a lighter. Twilight’s eyes followed a little green spark as it popped out of the fire, bounced twice across the floor, and winked out.
Still reeling as though she’d taken a sonic rainboom to the head, she absent-mindedly dictated her scattered thoughts to the enchanted pen, in a quavering, broken whimper of a voice: “I am e-experiencing... violent and painful regurgitation of magic. My horn appears to be leaking after the fact... it’s making a strange noise. I think the... the a-alteration might have i-injured my conversion chamber in some way...? I don’t know... I don’t know... I’m scared... I want Princess Celestia...”
If indeed she was suffering from a perforated conversion chamber—a hole in one of the parts of her horn where the summoned magic gathered to be shaped into a spell and cast—then it had probably been leaking intermittently in this way ever since she’d escaped the town square. Such an injury was certainly a plausibility after having her magical connections altered while they were still open, and would explain why her successfully cast teleportation spell was interrupted mid-way.
She had been wrong: exercising her magic and waiting wouldn’t help her heal. A perforated conversion chamber was the kind of thing that required magical surgery to repair. As much as Twilight liked to think she was well-versed in medical knowledge, she had absolutely no idea how to perform surgery on herself and would probably make things even worse if she tried.
“It’s just one thing after another, isn’t it?” she said quietly to herself as she stared the floor in front of her, having righted herself to huddle against the pulpit again. “Just... one thing... after...”
Twilight fell silent, deprived of the ability to speak by the shock as she slowly dug up what she knew about horn perforations from the recesses of her mind. She didn’t know much about them, especially since they were rare injuries only seen in the most extreme of cases, but her excellent memory allowed her to retain a basic knowledge from what she’d seen in medical books.
The injury would limit how much magic she could channel at one time. Casting spells of any significance, or even releasing her aura, ran the risk of having excess magic painfully regurgitated through her horn again, and there was a chance that whatever magic she tried to do might mutate or backfire on her if there was too much pressure in her horn. Any spells she did cast successfully that weren’t self-contained would most likely be severely underpowered, no matter what she did.
And, she added silently, the damage is going to get worse the longer it’s untreated, until one day I try to cast a spell and my horn will just fizzle and pop uselessly like it did when I was a foal...
It wasn’t even the physical pain that truly hurt her, but the idea of a life without magic. It absolutely terrified her. If for Twilight Sparkle losing a bit of her magic would have been like having a piece of her soul stolen from her, losing all her magic all would have been like having it gouged out in huge chunks. Like cutting off Rainbow Dash’s wings or Applejack’s legs. Like removing the part of Pinkie Pie’s brain that made her able to laugh and smile. Unbearable.
And once a unicorn lost his or her ability to manipulate magic, there were very few ways to get it back short of extremely complicated rituals or powerful ancient artifacts, most of which were so legendary they’d become more the subjects of Daring Do adventures than of serious scholarly interest.
Even the reports Twilight had read of the ‘remarkable ability’ of changelings to heal quickly from debilitating injuries were of no use to her anymore. Perhaps her leg would get better more quickly, but it was specifically mentioned in one of the Inquisition’s documents that not even changelings could heal conversion chamber perforations on their own. She didn’t know how they knew that, as it wasn’t a common injury, and a very small, very uneasy part of her said that she might not want to find out, either. The bottom line, in any case, was that her new physiology was of no use in this matter. Nothing she had available to her could heal it.
The only other thing to be done was to completely block her magic. Twilight shuddered, and hung her head sadly at the very thought of having to do something so awful to herself, but she knew it was necessary. The sooner she got something to suppress her magic, the less permanent damage would be added to what had probably already been caused. Better to lose her magic for a little while than to lose it forever. Maybe when the last of the storm had cleared, she would go see Zecora anyway. It wasn’t really a matter of waiting for her horn to repair itself anymore, since the injury would only get worse with time, so there wasn’t much point putting off the journey now.
Though she dearly wanted to sit behind the pulpit for an indefinite length of time and just wallow in self-pity, Twilight had an injury that needed to be tended to and dressed, and once the pain in her horn died down enough, her hoof took precedence. Slowly and sluggishly, the former unicorn wobbled her way across the few meters between the pulpit and the place she’d left the bag from Fluttershy’s.
She didn’t trust the Everfree rainwater, so she sacrificed one of Fluttershy’s little plastic bottles of Ponyland Springs water she’d put in the bag to clean the wound. Since magical injuries tended to be more sensitive than normal ones, it was an unpleasant task scrubbing the flickering green dust off her hoof; it got bad enough that near the end she had to clench her teeth to prevent herself from making noise. Compared to the previous night’s task of setting her leg, though, it wasn’t much of a challenge.
With her hoof bandaged, Twilight sat down on her sleeping bag to rest and wait for her horn to stop leaking. She was absolutely exhausted, but the full extent of her weariness had only just hit her. All she wanted was to go to sleep; to return to the empty bliss where she didn’t have to deal with exploding horns and changeling magic and pain. Unfortunately, she had to wait until her horn stopped leaking magic, to avoid setting anything on fire in her sleep. This proved to be a disturbingly long wait, spanning what felt like hours and hours in which she just sat motionless, listening to her horn fizz and pop atop her head.
Growing anxious and bored, Twilight started to fidget nervously. This was going on for far longer than it should have. Something was keeping the connection open and allowing magic to spill out of her horn like a fountain. It was getting to the point where she could feel the heat being conducted down from the top into the base, a sign that it was in serious danger of melting shut, which would lead to very, very bad things.
Just when she was starting to panic again, there was a little slurp, and the fizzing finally stopped. Twilight looked up at the tip of her deformed horn and was indescribably relieved to see that it was no longer projecting a green flame, although wisps of steam were still rising off it. The pain was still awful, and still enough to make her shake and shiver, but it was gradually getting better. The very moment she was sure she wouldn’t accidentally set anything on fire, she let herself fall back onto the sleeping bag, crawled halfway in, and started tossing around, trying to find a comfortable position to lay in.
She ended up on her side, running her hoof across the silky material that made up the insulation of the sleeping bag since she didn’t have a tail anymore, as she distantly thought about what had happened. Today had been a nightmare. It wasn’t even afternoon yet, and already Twilight wished she could fall back into the emptiness of sleep. She should have been getting ready to go have tea with Rarity at noon, then attend Pinkie’s birthday party for Winona, if she remembered her schedule for the week correctly (and she knew she did); not laying in a dusty old church with her leg shattered and her horn ruined, inhaling the stench of burnt enamel, and wondering she would ever see Rarity and Pinkie and her other friends again.
Almost as great as her fear of losing her magic was her fear of having to suffer through it alone. Though as a filly she’d spent long hours isolated in the library, reading book after book instead of making friends as she should have been making at that age, Twilight wasn’t used to being truly alone. There was always Princess Celestia to teach her magic, her parents and Shining Armor to visit, and Cadence to play with. Even in the library, and even on field trips, and even when she went on that expedition without her newfound friends, she’d at least had Spike to keep her company.
She wondered if Princess Celestia had told Shining and Cadence what had happened (or what she probably thought had happened, rather) yet. Shining might never trust her again, even after she came back, and Cadence would most likely be afraid of being alone with her. Twilight certainly could understand why they, of all ponies, might have trouble trusting somepony who’d been transformed into a changeling, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to think about it. And then there were her friends. What if Twilight never saw them again?
It was entirely irrational, but she had a horrible feeling that she would never go to another overwhelming after-after-after-party held by Pinkie Pie; never make her legs sore bucking apples with Applejack again; never again cringe as Rainbow Dash burst through the library window and ruined her well-organized bookshelves; never be fussed over by Rarity for a dress she’d only wear once; never watch Fluttershy scold chickens for pecking at her hooves.
Oddly, some of the things she normally found most annoying about her friends seemed terribly important to her all of a sudden, and she felt rather disgusted and angry with herself now for not taking the time to appreciate them when she had the chance. What were a few sore hooves and unwanted makeovers compared to the magic of friendship? She wasn’t a solitary pony, for all her introversion and love of quiet corners in old libraries. For all of Rainbow Dash’s joking about Twilight’s supposed conversations with her books, reading old, dusty books about old, dead ponies wasn’t the same as having a living friend who could talk back.
More than anything, she wanted somepony—anypony, really—to come and hold her; to remind her that she was a pony on the inside, and not the hideous... thing she’d transformed into. She wanted to feel the hooves and wings of her friends around her, and know that somepony still cared about her.
“It would be wonderful beyond words if I had somepony here to hug me right now,” Twilight said rather wistfully to herself. Although she heard the magic pen scratching away, still dutifully notating every word she said, she wasn’t entirely sure whether she was talking to anypony or anything in particular anymore, or just voicing her pain to make herself feel better. “I don’t like being a changeling. I want to be a unicorn again. I want to wake up and h-have this all b-be a horrible, horrible nightmare... ”
Twilight trailed off and shut her eyes very tightly. She could almost feel that awful spell from the town square stabbing at her horn like it was happening all over again, except now it was mixed with the explosive release of pressure she’d felt when her horn started vomiting magic. She sniffled and tried to push the horrible sensory imprints away. But they didn’t want to leave; they wanted to stay in the forefront of her mind, replaying themselves until she went insane. In particular, the ghostly sensation of having her horn stabbed and clawed at wouldn’t go away, nor would the urge to reach up and cover her horn, even though she knew there was nothing on it. Twilight swatted at the space around her horn, for a moment not caring if she touched it, then hit herself several times in the forehead with her hoof, trying to rattle herself back into reality.
“...I’m scared. I’m very alone.” She rolled over and faced the empty church, shaking her sore hoof. “I’m not a pony anymore, but I know I’m not a changeling, either. It’s... it’s awful. It’s so awful. Part of me wants to just go back and turn myself in, because it would be easier in the long run... but I can’t do that. They’ll take my horn away from me if I go back like this.”
And they can’t have that. I’ll never let them have it. Never.
“I just wish I had somepony to talk to besides myself... I hope Zecora will help me. I’m lonely.” With nothing else coherent to say, the next few minutes were filled with half-formed exclamations and statements as she fumed and fretted over the unfairness of her situation, and worried about the future. It was all so wrong; she hadn’t done anything to deserve this, and yet here she was, having her friends, her life, her dignity, her health, and now her special talent, magic, and horn systematically stripped away from her.
Her eyes, though tired, flickered back and forth, the only part of her still animated, until they caught on a particular point at the edge of the nearest window. Then they widened, and she sat up again and squinted curiously at that spot. At first, she was unsure if she was seeing something real—little blobs of colour had been popping in the corners of her vision ever since her horn blew up—but it stayed where it was, unmoving and unchanging. It was really there.
A single ray of reddish-golden sunlight timidly peeked through a crack between the window and the wall, casting a soft patch of light on one of the pews. It was the first encouraging sight she’d witnessed in two days, and it probably would have showed on her face if she’d been capable of doing anything more than widening her vacant eyes and letting her mouth fall open as she got up, drawn to to it like an insect toward an open flame.
“I’m... I’m going to go look at the sun...” said Twilight dreamily as she passed by the enchanted pen and parchment. “End transcription...”
It was the sun. Twilight had seen it every day of her life since she was a filly, and yet at that moment it seemed more significant to her than it ever had before. There was a definite symbolism in the fact that it had chosen to come out in her darkest moment, when she was at her lowest. To think that Princess Celestia raised and lowered the sun for her alone was beyond absurd and self-absorbed, but she couldn’t help romanticizing the events just a bit in her head as she thought about them.
When I had no other friends, she thought, though it seemed muted and distant like everything else except that light, Princess Celestia gave me the sun to keep me company...
There was a rod hanging from the top of the windowframe that was supposed to be turned to open the slats, but Twilight didn’t bother with it. Not even thinking about what she was doing, she powered up her horn and used it to unlock the shutters, completely ignoring the pain it caused her in her rapidly growing mania.
“Thank you, Princess Celestia! Everything’s going to be all right!”
Sunlight flooded into the church, driving out the dark gloom that had inhabited its corners. Twilight, sitting on her haunches beneath the window, spread her forelegs wide and closed her eyes, allowing the light to wash over her. For just a moment, she imagined that she was safe again; that Princess Celestia had swept her up in her wings; that the Princess was going to protect her faithful student from the wicked world outside and make everything better again.
But her emotional illusion didn’t last long. Soon, she was desperately grasping at anything to keep it alive; to make there be warmth around her, to hear soothing words being spoken, and to feel the Princess’s bright aura of safety to hide inside. The light was faint and dull, and had only looked bright because she had been in the dark for so long. Inevitably, she had to open her eyes.
When Twilight opened her eyes, she saw a great burst of red and purple, like a massive bruise, surrounded on either side by angry stormclouds that seemed to have parted right down the middle to show her what they had been concealing. And in the center of all this, there was a tired, slowly sinking orange ball heading downward toward the horizon. It was not morning, as Twilight had believed. It was not even afternoon. The sun had long since risen, and now it was on its way back down.
Celestia was leaving her.
It was like the last thirty or forty seconds had grown a great big bubble inside her, and seeing the setting sun made it burst. Everything came crashing down in a wreck of unrealistic expectations and strange collisions between her objective and subjective mind. Twilight unbalanced and fell back onto her rear, staring at the glowing sphere with an open mouth full of fangs.
She didn’t even understand why it was affecting her so badly, or why watching it set caused such a melancholy feeling within her and gnawed on her with the ferocity of a swarm of parasprites. She hadn’t expected Celestia to actually be there—at least, not consciously. But where she had hoped to find reassurance in that reminder of her mentor’s omnipresence within the sky, there was only more lonely twilight.
“Heh...” she half-snorted, half-sniffled to herself as she lay down in the sun’s last rays and watched it with glazed eyes. “It’s just one thing after another, isn’t it.”
The silence that followed was deafening, and broken only by Twilight’s sniffling—which was entirely unnecessary, of course, as she wasn’t a unicorn anymore. Her eyes started to itch and burn, so she put her bandaged hoof up and rubbed at them a little. It came away wet. Startled, she touched her cheek and found more wetness.
“...B-but I couldn’t cry before...”