Chapter 20: Yes!
Chapter 20: Yes!
“Starry, for your sake, I sure hope the surprise is worth making me walk all this way on my only day off. And in full armor no less,” Cory told Starry, annoyed that she was wasting her precious time walking, when she could be doing more important things like sleeping, or finding other ways to relax.
“We are almost there. Look!” Starry said pointing towards a small forest that was visible in the distance.
A few minutes later they reached the grove, and passed right through it, stopping only when the entire thing was between them and the camp. They were now standing in an open field that stretched for miles, the only thing that stood out was a small pond.
“Okay, Starry we are here. Now what?” Cory asked starting to lose her patience.
“Stand still for a bit.”
Starry’s horn glew and his blue aura surrounded the star-shape, cyan gem that provided power to the armors enchantments, and pulled it out of its slot.
“What are you doing!” Cory yelled at him. “Do you want to get me kicked out of the Guard!?”
The enchantments were gone, and Cory body returned to her natural colors. Her white coat turned yellow, and her blue mane and tail were again light green.
“Relax,” Starry tried to reassure her, “I know what I am doing.”
Inside the small bag he brought with him he placed the cyan star he removed from the armor, and pulled out an oddly shaped transparent gem. Half of it was in the form of a five point star, while the other half was ovoid shaped. Starry levitated it towards Cory and placed it where the previous gem was. It fit perfectly. Now instead of a flat cyan star, on the pony’s chest was an half of a transparent egg-shaped gem, that did nothing.
“Was something supposed to happen?” Cory asked tapping the gem.
“Don’t do that!” Starry yelled at her when he saw what she was doing. Cory immediately stopped tapping the gem.
“Just give me a second.”
Starry walked towards Cory, lowered his head, and touched the gem with the tip of his horn. He did the same thing he did every night on Armor Duty, he let his magic flowed from him into the crystal.
“Closed your eyes.” Cory listened to him.
When he pulled his horn away a blinding flash of blue light came out of the gem, it lasted only for a second before fading away.
Cory and Starry were now staring at the gem. At first it looked just the same, but in a matter of seconds a small purple blob seemed to float inside it.
“What the...”
“Wait for it,” Cory interrupted her.
The blob moved through the crystalline structure of the gem as if it was moving through water, and it was growing, and spreading. Soon the entirety of it became purple, and the part of it was darkening. A few minutes later the the process finished and in the center of the ponies golden armor now stood a purple ovoid shaped gem with a thin, black, vertical line down the the middle, from the front it almost looked like the eye of a dragon, or of a cat.
“Okay...” Cory said not very impressed by the whole light show. “Now what?”
“Now this!” Starry yelled as he fired a small bolt of magic straight at the gem.
Again it let out a burst of light, only this time Cory did not have her eyes close. The sudden flash startled the pony, and, acting on instinct she raised her wing. It was a basic flight or fight response, as a pegasus with his wings spread seemed a much larger opponent, the position also allowed for a swifter take off, with just a single flap of the wings the pegasus would be airbone, well out of range of any potential assailant.
“You could have warned me!” she told Starry as she was rubbing her eyes, and lowering her wing.
Despite her vision being blurry, she could still see the large smile on the excited unicorn that stood in front of her.
“What?” she asked him.
“It worked!” he replied, barely stopping himself from jumping up and down.
“If your plan was to blind me, then yes it worked!” Cory said annoyed that she was still having troubles seeing.
Starry walked beside her and put his hoof around her neck. “Come on, let’s get some water on your face. It will help you get over it faster.”
“I don’t thin...”
“Trust me,” he interrupted her again.
“I swear to Celestia, if this turns out to be some sort of prank...”
“Trust me.”
He lead the mare to the small pound, removed her helmet, and took a few steps back while she washed her face. The water did not help her recover faster from the flash, but that was never his intention. By now her eyes recovered on her own, and her vision was more or less fine.
“Lift your wing!” Starry yelled from a few feet away.
“Why?”
“Just do it and look in the water!”
“Fine, but after that you better explain to me what’s going... on...”
Just like Starry asked of her, Cory lifted her wing in high in the air. Her back muscles tensed just as her pectoral relaxed, at the same time the biceps relaxed and the triceps contracted, as did the forearm muscle and the pegasus held her wing stretched out her wing.
Looking back at her from the waters of the pond was her reflection. They looked the same, both wore the same golden armor, with a purple cat-eye-like gem in the middle of their chestpiece, both their manes were white, their coats light pink, as were the feathers on their wings. Only that the the reflection had something that she did not.
From the stump of her right wing a new wing seemed to have grew. The muscles were for the most part the same, only longer, as were most of the bones, but the things that was the most different was her “hand.” Her digits, all four out of five of them at least, were dozens of times longer, stretching out to the tips of her wings, thinner too. While the actual wing had no feathers at all, all it had was a thin membrane that stretched between the ponies digits and connected to her side, leaving the tips of the digits exposed, like claws. The wings were colored the same as the gem she had on her chest, black for where the bones and muscles were, and shades of purple for the membrane.
After the initial moment of shock passed, Cory turned her head to her right and looked to see if she too had the extra appendage, she did. As soon as she realised that it was not just some trick of the lick or a messed up reflection she did what any sane pony would have done when he would see a new limb suddenly present on his body, panic.
Cory pressed her wings tightly against her body and started running aimlessly, screaming as hard as she could. Starry grabbed Cory in his telekinetic field and held the hysterical pegasus trapped until she could be talked to. It took her almost an hour to calm down.
“Are you done?” Starry asked removing his hooves from his ears.
“Yes,” Cory said, embarrassed by the scene she made.
“Good.” He lowered the pony to ground and released her from the magical prison.
“Starry, what is this?”
“A wing,” he answered bluntly.
“I can see that but why do I have it?”
“Because of the gem. You see I altered the spell that changes the color of your mane to change the shape of your wing.”
“But I don’t...” she paused “I guess I didn’t have a wing.”
“Well you did have something or the spell wouldn’t have worked.”
“You meant to tell me that this is actually my wing? Made from my flesh and blood?”
“Not quite. It is mostly made out of magic.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You remember seeing Princess Celestia?”
“Umm...”
“It was a few years ago, the day Foggy stole the cookies from the kitchen...”
“And stole the milk! Yes I remember, we went afterwards and saw the Princess passing through town. Yes I remember her now.”
“Do you remember how her mane looked?”
“It looked like it was a pink bed sheet flapping in the wind.”
Starry laughed at the unusual, yet surprisingly accurate comparison.
“Well your wing is made out of the same stuff as her mane.”
“Oh I see,” she moved her wing a few times. “This is a nice illusion.”
“Flap harder,” Starry encouraged her.
Cory flapped her wing faster, but she had to stop shortly after because she was losing her balance.
“It’s real!” she cried out, her eyes opened wide in amazement.
“More or less. But real enough to move the air and allow you to...”
“FLY!” Cory exclaimed. “I can fly?”
“Well you could, if you tried and practiced.”
Cory wasn’t paying attention to him anymore, all she could think of was that after all these years, she would finally be able to fly.
She lifted both her wings as high as she could, bent her knees, and pushed her wings down, at the same time she pushed up with her legs, and lifted herself off the ground. Like a little filly at her first day of flight camp, she wobbled, and fell after only a few seconds, but it did not matter. For those few seconds she flew. For the first time in her life she flew, and if she was to say that it only felt amazing she feared that celestia herself would descend from the sky and beat her up for saying such a big lie. Nothing even came close to the pleasure she felt for those few seconds, nothing.
Starry sat down on the grass and looked as his friend spent hours getting used to the wing, learning to fly on her own, and loving every moment of it.