The Smith manor was as far away from civilization as Kansas could be. The gravel road leading to the two story building was lined with trees, but the fields surrounding the estate were mostly flat grasslands. The only exception was a large wind farm that dominated the northern fields half a mile away from the back door with the rest of the area being left to nature. The pale green paint was slowly being chipped away by the passage of time yet the house still managed to look respectable albeit a little worse for wear. It was dark when James finally reached the property. The last leg of the drive had not been kind, as her changes were not patient enough to wait for her to arrive before altering Tune’s skeletal structure.
With slow careful control, James managed to park her car in front of the house and pry the driver’s side door open. Her arms were becoming sturdier as they were on the cusp of becoming forelegs. Tune still possessed fingers, but they were quickly losing all dexterity and feeling as the palms and wrists raced to completion while the fingers shrank.
James fumbled for the clasp of her seatbelt and fell out of the car onto unfamiliar legs, because her lower body’s changes were complete and refused to hold her upright anymore. Tune reached back into the car and pressed the button to pop the trunk open and fumbled to get the house key in what was left of her hand. “Come on fingers; just stay with me long enough to get the door open.”
Twenty feet and four stairs never seemed so far away in her life, but Tune was not about to let unfamiliar limbs keep her back. Her sweatpants and shirt conspired against her and her back hooves kept pulling on the pants legs. With more time spent on her side or belly than on her hooves, Tune managed to reach the door. After dropping it four times, she successfully slid the key in the lock. Her problems were not quite done with her as her fingers became too limp to turn the old stubborn lock.
“Come on just give me a break here.” No matter what she did, her fingers were simply too short and weak to get the job done. Her last attempt ended with her back hooves slipping on her pants and belly flopping on the wooden deck. She looked back and grumbled at the offending pants. “Screw it, I’ve got fur now so I don’t need either of you.”
Rolling on her sides and back when needed, James kicked to pry her pants and shirt off. It was not easy to free herself, due to the shape of her hind legs, and because the shirt got caught on her horn. It took seven minutes of struggling, but she met with success in the end. Relishing the small victory, she huffed in distain at the discarded clothes. “And stay off.”
Her attention returned to the lock then back down at her forelegs. “Good bye hands, at least you stayed as long as you did.” Rolling back over onto her belly, she glared at the taunting key. “The pants can’t save you now.” Rising steadily onto all fours, she propped her forelegs on the door, and slowly walked her forelegs up towards the handle so she could grip the key in her teeth. It took some straining, but the lock relented and slammed open once she got it started. “Whew. That didn’t taste nearly as bad as I thought it would have, and the door knob is a lever. Lady Luck decided to throw me a bone for once.”
Not checking which way the door opened, as soon as she depressed the lever the door fell open, with it hitting the wall bumper, and with Tune face planting into the marble floor. “Ow.” She groaned while rubbing her bruised snout. “Well at least I’m inside.” The indirect light given by the car’s headlights cast the entry hall in a gloomy atmosphere. A staircase to the second floor faced the front door before wrapping around the back wall on its way up. The adjacent rooms had no dividing walls between themselves and the foyer and were only distinguishable by the short bump along the floor where the floor styles changed. “Old man Smith really liked having open spaces didn’t he?”
Doing her best to ignore the eerie gloom, Tune brought up a mental to-do list. “First order of business…” She paused while studying her forelegs with a raised eyebrow. “Is to learn how to walk again. Second, shut the light off on the car. And third, get some food and lastly sleep.”
James pulled her legs in and shakily climbed to her hooves in a wide stance. “Right.” She said with equally shaky conviction. “This body feels like it’s meant to work naturally, so I should just let it tell me when and what to move.” Once she felt confident in standing in a more normal posture, she stepped forward with her left foreleg and leaned into it. By carefully gauging how her spine and pelvis moved in response, her body told her to move her right hind leg in tandem. “Nice, and slow.”
It took the better part of an hour before she was finally able to stop thinking about walking, and let her body do the thinking for her. I think my muscle memory is being rewritten along with the rest of me. I just hope all these changes don’t extend to my memories or personality. The thought troubled her greatly, and she resolved to be more self-aware of her own behavior from then on. It took an additional thirty minutes before she was comfortable enough to move on to the next item on her list. Tune walked from the entry hall to the car only half aware of the clip clop of her hooves on marble and wood. From the time spent relearning to walk it was quickly becoming a normal sound to her, and it was largely tuned out.
She stopped at the car door. “Actually, I better drag the coolers inside before cutting the lights off.” James walked to the back of the car and pushed the trunk fully open with her snout. “Now if I can just…get…under…neath.” She grunted while forcing her hooves under the first heavily laden cooler, she heaved with all her strength to pull it up and over the lip of the trunk. That strength was not very much, but it was just enough to prop the wheels on the edge. She let out a tired breath as she fell back on her haunches. “That’s a start, now for the other one.”
A repeat performance took just as long as the first, and soon both coolers were propped on the lip of the trunk. “My luck hasn’t been that great so far, so you owe me this one Lady Luck.” James crawled around from the driver’s seat into the back and gripped a release lock on the passenger side and pulled the seat’s back forward so she could crawl into the trunk and behind the coolers. “Gah, the floor’s wet from the ice. I’ll have to leave the trunk open so it can evaporate.”
With no opposable thumbs, Tune had no other recourse but to grip the handle with her teeth and push the cooler up and over. Easy…easy… Once the first cooler was angled properly, it slid down to the ground with its speed checked by her dragging her hooves until it settled quietly on the ground as it leaned on the bumper.
“Oh yeah! No damage to the car or cooler, now to get the other out and both of you inside.” Fortunately, James had not jinxed herself, and managed to drag the coolers inside and placed them next to the stairs. The effort left her badly winded, which was compounded by the exhaustion from the day’s events. Three minutes of labored breathing later, Tune looked hungrily at the closest cooler. “The lights can wait, my stomach can’t.”
With a bit of force, she popped the latches with a hoof and pried it open to gaze upon her treasure trove. Carrots, lettuce, broccoli, strawberries, and other roots and berries hit her nose like a hammer. She nuzzled the melting ice away from three carrots and grabbed all three in her mouth and sat on her haunches with her tail swept forward with her legs. Tune used both fore hooves to grip the carrots so she could at least have the dignity of not eating on the floor. “Oh my god, these are soooo good.” She quickly consumed the carrots in their entirety, leaves included.
James devoured a head of lettuce and half of a squash, before her hunger was satisfied. “As much as I hate not brushing my teeth, I’m too tired to bother right now.” Her musings were interrupted by a yawn and she tiredly trudged over to the door and extracted the keys before shutting it. After that, she walked over to the car and twisted her head around to click the lights off. Tune climbed into the backseat and pushed the seat back upright so she could at last lay down to sleep.
The next morning came softer than most. A strong wind blew through car rustling her fur and hair enough to rouse her at well into late morning. She found herself on her back and stretched in a catlike fashion. She cracked her eyes open right before ending the stretch, which dashed any hopes of it all being a dream upon seeing her silver coated forelegs. She let out a despondent sigh and let her legs drop to a resting position across her barrel. “Well there you have it James. You’re a pony now.”
She laid on the backseat for several minutes trying to fully come to terms with that fact. Denial will only make it worse later. Outside of pushing myself to get to that spell, fighting it is only going to hurt me in the long run. And even if I do get to that spell, will I even be able to cast it on myself? What if the very act of casting it on myself breaks the spell cast, and I end up some pony/human monster? Is it even a spell unicorns can cast? What if it’s only for earth or pegasi? Her thoughts made her take a second look at her hooves. Mother always said not to leave all your eggs in one basket. Her brow furrowed in resolution. “Changing back is still plan A, but I better be mentally prepared to deal with the possibility that I can never go back.”
Tune did not wish to dwell on those thoughts for long, and got up to pull the tome out from under the seat. “You got me into this, so you’re going to help get me out of it.” Her stomach protested the absence of food. “Well, bodily needs first, then magic.”
Breakfast consisted of strawberries, honey oat cereal, and a few bananas. James let none of it go to waste except for the banana peel, which she found out was not as appealing as she thought it might have been.
After breakfast she dug into her backpack and produced her toothbrush and paste. By placing the brush on the cooler, and opening the toothpaste lid on the handle, she was able to use her hooves to squeeze a good amount of toothpaste onto the bristles. “Who needs thumbs when you have brains right?”
James was not perturbed by the tap water still being off, the mare used a chair to climb up onto the kitchen counter, and opened the cabinets until she found the bowls. “Good they’re some plastic ones.” No longer worried about breaking the dishware, she shoved a stack of bowls off the shelf and let them clatter noisily on the floor. After jumping back down to the floor, she picked them up with her mouth, and set all but one on the counter and took the last one to the open cooler and scooped up some water and carefully took the bowl out to the front porch. She stepped back inside to grab the toothbrush from the other cooler and sat down next to the bowl. She took the brush into her hooves and used extreme caution to make sure it did not slip out of her grip as she dunked it into the water and proceeded to brush her teeth. Few things can compare to a minty clean mouth.
With the first genuine smile of the day, she cleaned up after brushing and put it away to explore her new surroundings. I do not want to be reading and see a rat gnawing on my food.
Deciding to move in a clockwise fashion, Tune started in the entry hall and moved into the dining room. It had a large rectangular dark wood table dominating the space with the chairs rounding out the set. A granite wall table ran along the outside wall and curved around to the kitchen and several landscape paintings dotted the three walls.
Next was the kitchen and it was just as big as the dining room, but felt more spacious thanks to the absence of any furniture crowding the center. Aside from the silver and dishware, all of the cabinets, drawers, and the pantry were empty. “Looks like the fridge and freezer are vacant too. No surprise there.”
The laundry room and adjoining half bathroom were connected to the kitchen with the laundry room having a door to the outside. The next room was completely open and dominated the center part of the house with only a large double sided fireplace supporting the second floor. Again, like the previous rooms the floors were all hard surfaces of different materials, but there were some throw rugs strategically placed throughout. The furniture was sparse here, but the placement did not suggest it used to be a living room and den combination. “You could fit a studio apartment in here with room to spare. If this place had been built closer to civilization Q wouldn’t let this place go to waste.”
Finishing off the west part of the house was a bedroom the size of a one car garage, two walk in closets, a bathroom meant for a king, and on the southwest side was a piano room. When James walked from the piano room back into the entry hall she sat on the stairs in astonishment. “Holy moly this is a big house. And that’s just the first floor!” Aside from a lot of cobwebs, this place has been rather bug free so far.
A quick tour of the second floor revealed three guestrooms, Qubert’s old bedroom and two smallish full bathrooms. Tune took a special liking to the one on the far east corner which had a tasteful décor that did not feel old fashioned nor as posh as the others. “I hereby lay claim to this land in the name of Tune!” She giggled at the outburst. “But I can’t sleep here until the power and water are back on so I can do the laundry. No way I’m sleeping on a year’s worth of dust and bed bugs.”
A glance outside found there was a separate five car garage and a jacuzzi attached to the large back deck. The moment her eyes passed over the jacuzzi, James’s eyes dilated to comical proportions and produced a high pitched squeal of delight. “No way, a hot tub!? Please oh please tell me you still work. Gah! No power no water make me sad pony.” It suddenly dawned on her how she was acting and cleared her throat while dusting off her forelegs. “Get a hold of yourself. You need to find a broom and clear all the cobwebs then get to studying the tome.”
It took two minutes to find the broom closet, but it took two hours to find a way to balance herself on two legs while leaning on the broom. It was four thirty in the afternoon by the time James declared the manor livable. “Not quite hungry enough for dinner, so now is a good time to hit the books.”
Going through her backpack she grabbed a lantern flashlight and brought both it and the tome the lounge chair in the living room. Better make sure the cushions aren’t hiding any bugs. Placing her items on the floor and pulling the cushion off and giving it several good shakes and hits until she was satisfied, James used a hoof to brush away as much dust as possible before replacing the cushions and settled down on her belly with the book in front of her and the lantern within reach for when it started getting too dark to read.
Tune pressed her left fore hoof on the lock, opened it, and turned to the last page of chapter one. “Okay, here goes.” She bent her head down and touched her horn to the page. A dim light passed from her to the page and back again. She felt a short lived tingle behind her eyes. “Was that it?” She flipped the page and was rewarded with legible text. “Yes, progress!” She cheered as she read the contents.
Welcome to chapter two dear student. This section will cover the very basics of mana manipulation. As I’m sure most of my unicorn readers will believe they know everything they need for the basics, I may surprise you with tricks and tips you might have missed or forgotten about in school. In addition, this section is to help nonunicorn parents help guild their unicorn foals in developing their magic. This chapter will also cover the earth and pegasi tribes as well. We all know both tribes use their magic innately, but-
James shook her head. “I don’t have any use for learning the other tribes’ magic, only my own.” She flipped through the pages until she came across the first unicorn lessons.
A unicorn’s magic is intrinsic to their very being, and as a result, they are the most susceptible of the three tribes to Magical Exhaustion(ME). ME will be covered in higher detail in later chapters, but this lesson requires that I cover the dangers of ME before moving into learning basic spellwork. When members of the other tribes suffer acute ME, a pegasus will become physically exhausted and lethargic. The Earth tribe is characterized by their steadfast resilience and they can typically ignore any negative effects of ME. It should be noted that many Earth guardponies who use runed armor will rarely realize how close they are to exhaustion in the heat of battle until the runes lose power.
Should a unicorn’s reserves ever be fully drained, death will soon follow if ether is not administered quickly. I know putting it so bluntly may come across as rather harsh, but there is no gentle way to put it without detracting from the warning. James cringed at the prospect and continued reading.
Now that being said, it is in everypony’s best interest to learn proper mana management. To start off, we must first look into measuring your mana pool’s baseline. To get an accurate reading I strongly suggest casting no spells for seven hours if you have only done light spell casting since the last time you had a full night’s rest. Please note that this is not because it takes hours to recharge per say, but a unicorn’s body generates mana at different rates at different times. The carbuncle (which will be covered later.) increases production the lower your pool is. When a unicorn’s magic is near their current max capacity, the carbuncle generates very low amounts as the body’s metabolic energies are conserved for future needs.
James tapped her chin in contemplation. “Seeing as I haven’t been able to cast anything thus far, I think its safe to say I’m at baseline already.” The possibility of death did little to deter Tune from learning the book’s secrets. “There’s already a million ways to die in the world, one more won’t make a difference.” She looked at her hoof as if regarding it for the first time. “Still. It’s strange to think that I literally need magic to stay alive. Just four days ago I thought it was all fiction and now I live off the stuff.”
She pushed her troubled musings aside and started reading again. From here I will be assuming that you have waited the prescribed amount of time. Since magic is so ingrained into a unicorn’s biology it is easier for them to see their mana pool. All one has to do is center yourself and open your inner sight. That is the first step towards self-mastery. The subsequent five pages consisted of various calming and breathing techniques along with diagrams on what she would be looking for once her inner senses were opened.
“There are a bunch of different methods here. Seems like the princess was smart enough to know one single method wouldn’t work for everybody.” James had to give Twilight a nod of respect for such foresight. “This one looks like something I’ve used in the past with just a few differences, so I’ll start with it.”
She readjusted her sitting posture to have all four legs pulled close to her barrel and shut her eyes to close herself from the world around her. Random thoughts kept sneaking their way in, but a breathing technique she found on a different page helped immensely and her mind was slowly cleared. Shortly after reaching this state she started to feel a slow pulse within her core. It felt as if there was a roughly egg shaped mass of liquid residing behind her lungs which had tendrils spread throughout her entire body. It’s like a second circulatory system. The “heart” pulsed every half minute, reinvigorating the capillaries in every last piece of her body. Her inner sight noticed one capillary was thicker than the rest that ran straight through the center of her barrel and up her spinal cord and into her horn and brain. The horn itself had a hollow core where a small reservoir of magic resided with capillaries creating a thick web making the ivory look honeycombed with it. In addition, there were slightly thicker veins running along the spiral of her horn. Only her brain could rival her horn in capillary density.
The revelation stunned James out of her inner sight. “Oh man. Reading it and seeing it are two totally different things.” She resumed her breathing exercise and returned to a calm state to read the next entry.
That pulsing center you no doubt noticed is called a carbuncle. It’s a common misnomer to associate it with the heart, but I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the sentiment does have some merit. While it is true both the heart and carbuncle keeps the blood/mana flowing; the primary difference is that the carbuncle is your fount of magic, whereas the heart is just a complex pump. It is there that your body, regardless of tribe, generates and distributes magic. However like the heart, it can be considered a muscle in light of the fact that it can be exercised to become stronger. Again like a muscle, you must use your magic to increase it. It lends credence to the old adage: “you have to spend bits to make bits”.
For now we are still keeping to the basics and I can say from firsthoof experience, that the best way to learn is studying and practical application. The ratio between the two is entirely dependent on the individual. Since we have already covered theory in this chapter, let us move on to the practical application. For that dear student, you will be learning the two most common spells for unicorns: horn light and telekinesis.
James’s attention was riveted on the last word. “Telekinesis? Seriously!? Hallelujah!” She flipped the page with her snout only to feel a little crestfallen that horn light was going to be taught first. “As much as I want levitation, there might be critical parts of the light instruction I’ll need to know.”
The basic light spell is quite simply the easiest spell to learn and master. Simply focus on your horn and imagine a point of light. Be sure the foal does not try to force it over much. Fabricating these very simplistic spells only require one’s horn and thus is solely rooted in your willpower. Just focus and will the light into being.
Tune took a slow deep breath and focused on her horn. Let there be light. She felt a stirring in her horn, but nothing more. “You can do this. It’s just like learning to ride a bike.” Five minutes of effort produced nothing. Ten minutes made her flex to get the cricks out of her joints. Thirty minutes saw her give a short expletive and a small scowl. An hour saw her standing in front of the tome grunting, as she demanded her horn to obey. An hour after that she was standing on the floor with legs apart in a wide stance with her horn pointing at a wall and her cursing it for its continual defiance.
“I said. Let there be light!” She roared at the top of her lungs. The tip of her horn sizzled and spat small sparks until a pulse from her carbuncle pushed the pathways to her horn an infinitesimal size bigger, and a small mote of light stabilized on the tip of her horn. The effort had finally winded her and she collapsed on the floor panting for breath. James was about to give up on the whole thing and grab dinner when she saw the light reflecting off the wooden floor. A gasp of first disbelief and then joy escaped her lips. “I did it. I actually did it!” She tried looking up at her spell, but saw nothing. “I think I need a mirror to see it.”
Tune raced to the master bedroom and found the three paneled mirror she saw earlier. Without thinking about maintaining the spell, the mote died on the way over. She forgot about the spell for the moment as she stared at herself for the first time since her transformation was complete. The silver mare staring back at her was slightly bedraggled. Her coat was unkempt and her mane was in mild disarray. Yet those features paled to the fact that there was not a trace of her humanity left in her.
“This form is only temporary, but until I can turn back I better get used to it.” She spun around a few times to look at her reflection from as many angles as possible. “Odd that my horn is the same color as my fur though.” She moved her face in close to the glass. “It doesn’t look like its covered in fur, just straight silver ivory.” My eyes are the same shade of blue that my mane is, and they’re so massive. Due to the decreasing light from the windows, her pupils were dilated to the point where it started to scare her a little to keep looking at them.
The light from the waning sun made any further observations difficult and it reminded her of the reason she came into the master bedroom in the first place. “Okay, just breathe calm and focus.” Her horn sizzled and spat a few azure sparks before the mote of white light returned along with a face splitting grin. Let’s make it bigger. The mote resisted at first, but responded to her will and the light on her horn grew to the point where the whole room was lit up and the reflection was blinding her.
James turned away from the mirror to rub the spots out of her eyes and refused to let the spell die away now that she had it going. When her vision returned to normal Tune noticed that the room was still brightly lit, but she could not see the light source when looking up at her horn. In its place she only saw a faint azure luminescence coating her horn. It only took a glance around the room to realize that her horn was the only illuminating presence.
Tune took careful side glances at the mirror and saw the blinding spotlight on her horn, but when she looked directly at it, the light was absent save for the azure glow. “Now that is one classy light bulb. I can only see the light when it’s reflected so it doesn’t blind me.”
“How does that even work?” She shrugged at it. Magic. She couldn’t help an insane giggle from escaping her throat. “This is incredible!” She dimmed the light so she could look directly at the mirror and the silver unicorn with a beacon of light above her head. “That’s really me. I’m actually using magic. I mean sure a flashlight can do the same job, but the point is I don’t need a flashlight anymore.”
She spent several minutes in front of the mirror with the spell active so she could study herself more fully. Cognitively, James knew and accepted this was her new form; emotionally however, she was subtly becoming attached to her pony shape. Closer to identifying herself as mare, rather than a human in a pony’s body. This shift in mentality was interrupted by her stomach and bladder protesting their lack of attention. “I’ve spent too much time in front of the mirror anyway.”
With the water off, she had to be content with a tree far away from the house for her business. James made the act into an exercise of sorts on how well she could maintain the spell while focused on other things. The spell bounced between strobe light and candle, but it held all the same.
Upon returning to the manor Tune went straight for one of the grocery bags of preserved goods and pulled out a packet of tuna. “If a crash course in magic isn’t a call for fish I don’t know what is. I just wish I thought to buy some sauce or spices.” Wait a second, I’ve got an idea.
She walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a plate. Upon her return, she put it on the first stair and fished out her pocketknife. Then she grabbed a head of lettuce in her hooves and held it over the plate while gripping the hilt of the knife in her mouth and cut the lettuce into an uneven salad and sprinkled the tuna on it. “There. It could use some dressing, but it’ll do well enough.”
The act of bringing the plate over to the lounge chair was difficult with the dish in her mouth and her nose touching the salad made it nearly impossible to just drop the plate on the floor and eat. I never liked greens this much before, but I can’t get enough of it now.
James pushed an ottoman over to hold her salad, so she would have enough room for both the book and plate. She studied telekinesis long into the night, and tried multiple times to remove the apparent mental block to fully realizing her magical abilities. Constant failures and only incremental improvement sapped her strength, and fatigue started to settle in from both lack of sleep and excessive magic usage. Nevertheless, her furious determination to master the one spell that would allow her to circumvent her lack of thumbs proved to be her demise. Complete exhaustion overtook her after four in the morning, and she passed out with her face down in the open tome.