//------------------------------// // Chapter 8: Class is in Session // Story: The Adventures of Fragment // by A Dark Reminder //------------------------------// I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and ready to learn some magic. I leaned up in my bed and yawned as my eyes adjusted to the light. The sunlight filling the room was a light bronze color. "I must be up early..." I said to myself as I got out of bed. I stretched most of my legs and my wings (not like I was going to be using my wings anytime soon), as I stood. I shook my head to help wake myself up more as I opened the curtains with my magic. As my eyes adjusted to the increase in light I looked out the window and saw that some ponies were already awake; some just walking to work, others shopping at the market square, and I saw construction ponies working on the remaining damage of the Changeling attack throughout the city. "All of this damage because of the changelings, and the Princesses are helping me…” I said to myself as I rubbed my eyes. "I really am the luckiest changeling, aren't I?" I said as I looked to the clock in the room and saw it was six twenty-two A.M. "I should have asked when breakfast was when I had the chance." I said as I pulled my cloak out of the closet and put it on. I looked out the window again and just watched the ponies outside as I waited for a guard or somepony to tell me it was breakfast. I was waiting for breakfast by just watching the ponies working on the city, when I heard a knock on the door. "Come in." I said as I turned to the door. Blast Shield opened the door and took a step into the room. "Princess Celestia has requested you." He told me as I closed the curtains. "Okay. Why did she request me?" I asked as Blast Shield lead the way. "Don't know; I was just told to get you." He said as we walked out of my room with me closing the door. "Where's Striker? You said he'd be back by morning." I said as we passed the dinning room. "He'll be back around eight. Until then, I'm your supervisor." Blast Shield told me as we came to a set of doors that had a guard on each side with a spear. With a nod from Blast shield, the guards opened the doors revealing Princess Celestia in what appeared to be a training room with various targets and dummies. There were a few somewhat random items like a small red ball and a baton, along with a small stack of books, five multicolored juggling balls, some paper, and an inkwell. As we walked into the room Princess Celestia looked up from the scroll she was writing on and smiled at us. "Hello, Fragment. Did you sleep well?" She asked as the guards outside the room closed the doors. "I did. And I feel ready to learn some magic." I said as my stomach growled, to which Celestia gave a short laugh. "To translate for my stomach, when's breakfast?" I asked as I looked around for a clock and didn't find one. "Breakfast will be ready by eight thirty. Until then, I believe we can train." She told me as I walked up to her. "How did you know I was awake? There aren't any spies in my room or anything are there?" I asked as Blast Shield took his post by the door. "I told Blast Shield to tell me when you woke up, and he told me he heard you talking to yourself." Princess Celestia told me. "Anyway, shall we begin? It will be awhile until breakfast." She asked me as I took off my cloak and folded it up with my magic. "Let's get started then." I said. "First, I need to transfer some power to you." She said as her horn began to glow with gold light. "Hold still." Princess Celestia said as she touched her horn to mine, then I felt her power flow into and strengthen me. After a moment of power transfer I felt Princess Celestia pull her horn away. "Now we can begin. We will start with basic things that are easy to learn or you already know like the levitation spell and minor conjuring spells, then when you can use them with little to no trouble we will move on to more advanced magic such as teleportation and shielding. Once you have learned all the magic that you would need help learning, we can begin to try and figure out your shapeshifting." She explained. "Do you really think you can teach me how to shapeshift?" I asked unsure how she could help me on that matter. "I don't think it will be easy for either of us, but I'm sure we can figure it out with enough effort. It's mostly a question of whether it's an emotional trigger or a thought command like most spells. Now, let's start with levitation. You use that spell frequently, but can you master it as easily? We shall start with manipulating three of these balls at once. Normally I would start you off with a single ball, but given how easily you've used the levitation spell with your cloak and other objects, I believe it would be an insult to your skill to start you off with something that low level." Princess Celestia said as I lifted up three of the juggling balls with my magic. "So, what exactly do you want me to do? Juggle them?" I asked as I examined the juggling balls. "Close your eyes." She told me as I obeyed. "Picture the balls in your mind, then try to lift them into the air without opening your eyes." I did as instructed. I could hear the static hissing sound of my magic as I levitated the balls. Because my eyes were closed I couldn't tell where the balls were, so I had to completely rely on my memory. Which seemed weird based on my history with memories. "Now, I want you to have the balls orbit you while keeping your eyes shut." Princess Celestia instructed. It was convenient that I had done almost the same thing on the ride to Canterlot with the Daring Do book. I tried to do it, but it's difficult when you can only guess as to where the things you're trying to move are. Nonetheless, as I tried to have the balls orbit me, I would occasionally feel one of the balls bump into me and when it did I tried to remember where it was and move it a small distance away from me while having it follow the others. Or at least I hoped I was, I still had my eyes shut so I wasn't sure. "What's the point of this? Is this supposed to be like muscle building or something?" I asked as another ball bumped into my wing. "It's to train your mind. First you need to trust yourself with what you're trying to do. When you believe in yourself you can do wonders. To truly master a spell you must know that you can do it at will and without mistake." She told me as another ball bumped into my ear. "You are doing well with this exercise, but now I want you to try something more complex. Drop one of the balls, then have the remaining two orbit you in opposite directions. You may open your eyes for this; it can be difficult even when you can see what you're doing." Opening my eyes, I dropped one of the balls and held the other two in front of me for a moment, then I began to have them orbit in opposite directions, which is harder than you may think. If I didn't stay completely focused my mind would try to have both balls go in the same direction. But despite that I kept them on their own paths. We practiced for a while, mostly with levitation, we also used some conjuring like the mustache spell I used on Striker. After sometime there was a knock on the door. "Enter." Princess Celestia said as the doors opened and Striker walked in wearing his royal guard armor and a saddlebag. "Good morning everypony." Striker said with a suppressed yawn. "Your majesty." Striker said with a small bow as Blast Shield left. "Morning." I said as I attempted again to conjure a bucket of water but failed. "You can take a break now if you'd like, Fragment. Breakfast will be ready in ten minutes." Princess Celestia said as she walked towards the doors. "I think I'll take you up on that. Doing this for so long is giving me a headache." I said as the doors opened for her. "I will send a guard to inform you when breakfast is ready." She said as she walked out of the room leaving me and Striker to our selves. "So how's your morning been?" Striker asked as he walked over to me and examined the things I had been practicing on. "Pretty good. I got really fancy with levitation a while ago. What about you?" I asked as Striker picked up the toothbrush I conjured. "Don't know yet, it practically just started." He said as he dropped the toothbrush. "So what have you been up to?" "Princess Celestia has been teaching me magic. She says I've practically mastered levitation even though I haven't been using it that long." I said as I sat down. "Impressive. But what's all this stuff?" Striker asked as he picked up the baton. "Most of it is stuff I conjured, the rest of it is stuff Princess Celestia had me practice with." I explained as I looked over the items I had conjured; including but not limited to: a candle (wick included), a match, a rubber ball, a wooden chair, and an operational clock. "Well aren't you a fast learner. By the way, this package showed up for you." Striker said as he reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a brown paper bag. "A package for me? Who even knows I'm here?" I asked as I levitated the bag. I examined the bag for a second before I slowly opened the bag, and the moment the bag was slightly opened there was a loud pop sound and confetti shot out of the bag causing me and Striker to jump back in surprise. "Confetti?" I said as I looked into the bag and saw a letter, a cupcake with vanilla frosting and a cupcake with green mint frosting with chocolate sprinkles. "Pinkie..." I said with a small smile on my face as I set the bag down, pulled out the note and began to read. 'Hi, Fragment! It's me Pinkie Pie! I was just making some cupcakes when I thought 'I should write to Fragment!' so then I tried to find some paper but I couldn't, so I asked Mr. Cake if we had any paper and he didn't know so I had to look some more and I still couldn't find any so I went to Twilight's and she was like 'what do you want paper for?' and I said 'so I can write to Fragment!' and she gave me some paper and I ran back to Sugarcube Corner and then I was about to write the letter when I realized I didn't have anything to write with!' "What's it say?" Striker asked as I noticed I was only half way through the letter. "It's a letter and a two cupcakes from Pinkie Pie." I said as Striker walked to my side so he could read it himself as I resumed reading it. 'So I started looking all over the place for a quill and some ink but couldn't find any of that stuff either! So I was looking EVERYWHERE but I still couldn't so I went back to Twilight's to borrow some ink and she asked why I didn't have any and I told her I didn't know so she gave me some ink to use and then I started writing this letter! So what's up? Is the Princess really nice to you like we were? I wouldn't believe you if you said she wasn't. Anyway there's a cupcake for you and one for Striker in this bag. P.S Tell Striker I said hi.' "Well... that's interesting." I said as Striker picked up his cupcake and took a small bite of it. "Vanilla's my favorite. Do you think she knew that?" Striker asked as he looked at the letter suspiciously. "She wrote all of that... just to ask what's up? Oh and before I forget. Striker, Pinkie says hi." I said as I folded the letter up, put in the bag and pulled my cupcake out. "She seems rather eccentric, but she makes damn good cupcakes." Striker said as he ate what was left of his cupcake whole. "And it sounds like she expects you to write her back." He added with his mouth full. "I guess I'll have to ask Princess Celestia for some paper and something to write with." I said as I took a bite of my cupcake. A few minutes later the doors opened and a guard told us breakfast was ready. I was surprised when we got to the dining room to find that Princess Celestia wasn't there. The same guard who told us it was time also told us that training would resume in an hour, something came up that required Princess Celestia and Shining Armor, but Princess Celestia left some books for me in my room to study while she was occupied. Nothing noteworthy happened at breakfast and after we were done we went back to my room. "So what do you think came up that required Princess Celestia and Shining Armor?" I asked Striker as we walked back to my room. "No idea." Striker said with a shrug "Maybe the changelings are back and causing problems. Or maybe a dragon. Take a guess, you might be right." He said as I opened the door to my room. As we walked in I almost immediately noticed the new addition to my room; a large bookshelf to the left of the door that had four shelves, each one held as many books as you could fit. Most of them were text books on magic and there was one Daring Do book on the shelf. "The Princess certainly didn't underdo the books did she?" Striker said as he examined the forty or so books. "I'll say." I said as I picked out a basic combat magic spell book. "Why would she give me a combat magic book?" I asked as I read the index. "Who knows?" Striker said as he took the Daring Do book. "Maybe she wanted you to have variety. The real question is what do you want to read?" He said as he took a seat in the new chair by the bookshelf. "I'll go with the conjuration book." I said as I pulled out the 'Conjurations for the new student' book. "I doubt you have much interest in magic, but conjuration is really cool." I said as I got on my bed and opened the book. Me and Striker spent our time quietly reading in my room waiting for somepony to tell us it was time to resume training, he read Daring Do and I read a conjuration textbook. Conjuration is difficult to learn, both due to it's magic cost and it's general complexity. According to what was explained in that book, me being able to successfully conjure an operational clock was impressive to be pulled off by an amateur because of the complexity of the gears and such to make the clock work properly. The ability to materialize objects out of nothingness is difficult magic that someone as inexperienced as me shouldn't have been able to do with only a few mistakes. The more I read the more I wondered how I could do these things without the days of practice the book claimed would be needed, and I also wondered if Princess Celestia was at all surprised by how easily I was doing all of this. I hadn't tried to smell her emotions to get some kind of idea what she was thinking, but I made note to do so later. Some time later there was a knock on the door. "Come in." I said as I got off my bed thinking and hoping it was time to resume. The door opened as a dark gray Pegasus in full gold royal guard armor walked in. "I was sent to inform you that your training will continue in five minutes and the Princess would like you to return to the training room now." He told me as Striker got back up. "Thank you." With a nod the guard left and Striker began leading me back to the training room. "What time is it anyway?" I asked after we had walked for about five minutes. "About eight fifty." Striker said simply. "Striker!" A voice called from behind us. We turned around to see a light gray earth pony guard running up to us. "Captain Armor has called all guards to the courtyard in twenty minutes." The guard said as he tried to catch his breath. "Why? What's going on?" Striker asked. "I don't know. I was just told to inform the other guards." He said as he began jogging down one of the hallways. "Okay… So first Shining Armor and Princess Celestia are required for something, and now there's some big guard gathering…? What the fuck is going on?" I asked as we began walking again. "I honestly have no idea, but it seems pretty important…” Striker said as we came to the doors to the training room. The guards opened the doors for us and we entered the room. As we walked into the room I looked around and saw that the Princess wasn't there. "Well where is she?" I asked as Striker took his post. "She shouldn't be too long." Striker said as the doors began to open again. "See?" Striker said as Princess Celestia and some white Unicorn with a black vest and a blondish mane and tail and a compass rose cutie mark walked in. "We haven't even discussed the costs of such things. We cou―" The unicorn stopped talking the moment he saw me and there was a short awkward silence as we stared at each other. "..." "...” I didn't know what to do other than nothing. "..." "..." "CHANGELIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING! AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" He screamed In an incredibly high-pitched tone causing me to try and cover my ears, which meant dropping to the floor so I wouldn't fall. Thankfully his screaming only lasted a few seconds until he fainted and Princess Celestia began to laugh. "What in the name of deafness was that?!" I shouted trying to talk over the ringing in my ears. "Fragment, this is Prince Blueblood." Princess Celestia said as she conjured a small cup of water and poured it onto Prince Blueblood causing him to stagger back to his hooves. "What happened? I thought I saw one of those nasty changelings." He said as he turned and saw me again. "I'm going to ignore that insult." I said with a glare. "AUNTIE! Why is there a changeling in the castle?!" He shouted as he hid behind Princess Celestia. "What? Everyone in the castle gets the memo except h― Wait, what does he mean by 'Auntie?’" I asked thinking the very illogical. "Prince Blueblood is a very distant relative of mine. Blueblood, this is Fragment. He was found in Ponyville a week ago and he is my guest here for now." Princess Celestia said as Prince Blueblood cautiously walked out from behind Princess Celestia. "Why was I not informed of this sooner?" Prince Blueblood asked as Princess Celestia's smile grew. "Did I not send you a letter?" She said as she tapped her chin in thought. Her horn then flashed gold light and a scroll appeared. "Ah, here it is." Princess Celestia said with smile as Prince Blueblood opened and began to read the scroll. "Amnesia?" Prince Blueblood asked as he looked at Princess Celestia. "Yes, and I'm going to help him regain some degree of skill in magic and if possible, in flight. Though he seems to have plenty of skill at learning." "Well regardless, as I was saying there needs to be extra security around Equestria. The Secretariat comet has begun passing Equestria." The Secretariat comet? I wondered as Blueblood continued. "The damage of the events that are sure to come would be very harmful to the economy, therefore we need―" "I am well aware, Blueblood." Princess Celestia said cutting Prince Blueblood off as she began to walk out of the room motioning for us to follow. "Me and Shining Armor have already discussed this and he will be debriefing the guards in a few minutes, then he will begin to ship them out; large battalions to larger cities like Manehattan, and smaller ones to the smaller settlements." Princess Celestia explained as we walked. There were a lot of guards heading down one hallway. "Striker! Come on, this way!" The same guard from before called from the mass of guards. Striker ran to catch up to the other guards leaving me with Princess Celestia and Prince Blueblood as we walked to a balcony over the courtyard where the guards were gathering. Shining Armor was in front of them. "Princess Celestia." I said getting her attention as we walked onto the balcony. "Yes, Fragment?" She said as she watched what was going on below. "Other than a comet, what is the Secretariat comet?" "It's a magical comet. As it passes by Equestria all magical creatures will be strengthened in power. I'm sure you felt it when you woke up this morning, you just didn't know that you were. alicorns, changelings, unicorns, dragons, and countless others will have far more power as the comet passes, and when this happens many evils tend to pop-up. Because of this we need extra security around Equestria until the comet passes." She explained as she looked into the sky. Following where she was looking I saw the comet. It was dark red and left a fairly long streak behind it. "Do you think the changelings will try to use it's power to get revenge?" "I doubt it. They had the advantage of a surprise attack before, but now we're on high alert for changelings." She explained as Shining Armor began informing the guards of the situation. But in the back of my mind, I felt like something was wrong somehow…