Chapter 3:
Twilight laid in her bed, consumed by a feeling of dull emptiness. It had been only the day before that she had discovered her magic was stripped from her, and the unicorn had shut herself in her room and refused to let anypony in. She had told Spike she was incredibly ill, and that she didn’t want to get him sick, but it was only a matter of time before the dragon suspected it was something much bigger than that. Twilight knew he was already suspicious because she had made sure he didn’t call for a doctor. She didn’t want anypony knowing, and frankly, she wanted to forget the whole thing herself, wanted to believe it was all just in her head.
The bitter reality was that it had happened, and she felt terrible, as if she was missing half of who she was. Twilight also couldn’t shake the feeling of shame from the way she was acting. There were plenty of earth ponies in Ponyville, who didn’t have wings or magic, yet they seemed perfectly happy with their lives; especially a certain pink pony Twilight knew.
There was a knock on the door, and a voice called out from the other side.
“Twilight open up, I made you some soup. It should make you feel better.” Twilight couldn’t hide forever, and Spike was bound to find out the truth anyway. She would much rather tell him herself than to have him guess that something much worse was ailing his friend. Twilight got up from bed and crossed the room.
“Thanks Spike,” Twilight said opening the door, “but first there is something I need to tell you.”
“What’s up?” the dragon asked as he walked in the room holding a bowl filled with what appeared to be tomato soup.
“Well………I uh…sorta…” and she told him everything. Told him about the lightning struck tree and how she discovered the tomb, how she had longed for the adventure, how she had found the sarcophagus room with the ruby statue, and how she had accidentally knocked the statue off the stone platform which caused the whole place to collapse. She concluded with how she had only noticed her magic was gone when she had run into the door, and how it hadn’t been a spider that had caused her to scream.
When she had finished, the dragon sat there thinking for a moment, before he finally spoke.
“Well it’s obvious what we need to do.”
“And what’s that?” Twilight asked her assistant.
“We write to Princess Celestia of course, if anyone knows how fix this, I’m sure it’s her.”
“Are you crazy!?” Twilight asked, “I can’t tell the Princess about this. The reason I know Princess Celestia so well is because I'm her private student. It’s all because of my magical talent. What if there is no fix, and she forgets about me and just moves on to a new pupil?! I can’t risk that! I’ll just have to figure this out on my own…somehow.”
Twilight blinked back the tears in her eyes. What if she never got her magic back? How would she live? Her special talent was magic; what was she supposed to do now that it was gone? She had lost something that was irreplaceable. It was too much for Twilight. She dropped to floor as the tears began rolling down her cheeks.
Sitting there on the floor, Twilight cried and cried, and as she did the weight of everything that had happened lifted slightly. When the tears let up, she felt better. Spike offered her a handkerchief and she blew her nose, her eyes red and puffy.
“Do whatever it is that makes you comfortable,” Spike said, “just don’t forget that you don’t have to face this alone.” Spike walked over to Twilight, gave her a hug, and then added, “Now eat that soup, I still think it will make you feel better, even if you aren’t actually sick.” He took the soup bowl, reheated it with a small blast of fire, and then set it on Twilight’s bedside table before exiting the room.
Twilight sniffed, no matter what happened, Spike would always be there for her and that went a great length to cheer the pony up. Twilight stood, a little shakily, and moved over to her bed where she sat down again. She picked up the bowl filled with the crimson soup and drew in a deep breath taking in its rich smell. Lifting the bowl with her hooves, Twilight sipped at the warm liquid, one final tear rolling down her cheek.
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Twilight had a plan. She was going to write to Princess Celestia, but before she did, she was going to prove that she was still capable of accomplishing things, even without her magic. If she was successful, then she was pretty confident that the Princess would not forget about her, and instead realize that despite all that had happened she could still remain strong and determined. Still be worthy to be her pupil.
To start, Twilight turned to mundane tasks. These proved to be more difficult than she thought they would be. Suddenly she was forced to so many things without magic that had become second-nature to her with magic. No longer could she open doors with her magic, she could no longer levitate her toothbrush, the food she ate, the books she wanted to read. Never before had Twilight considered just how much she used her magic, she had used it for practically everything. She was determined to look past that, it was going to be hard, but she was willing to learn to get by without her magic.
By far the hardest challenge that faced the pony was learning to write with her mouth. It was a skill she had never needed to learn. It felt awkward to have a quill in her mouth, just unnatural. Her writing looked terrible; it was like a filly’s writing, possibly even worse. It was all rather draining, but Twilight kept at it.
The next problem Twilight had to face was very different than learning to cope without magic. She had to confront her friends. She wasn’t sure how her friends would take the news. Part of her wanted to keep it a secret, but the other part knew she couldn’t hide forever. They hadn’t seen Twilight for several days; and her friends came to the library to find out if anything was wrong. Each time one of them came to the door, Twilight hid and told Spike to inform whoever it happened to be that she was ill. She wasn’t even exactly sure why she was lying to her friends, but for now Twilight felt the need to keep them in the dark.
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It was a week after she had lost her horn, and Twilight had made some excellent progress in coping without magic. She had even re-shelved all the books in the library without any magic, a feat of which she was quite proud. He writing was actually legible now too.
Twilight was practicing her writing once again, when there was a knock on the door.
“I’ve got it this time,” she told Spike confidently as she strode towards the door. Whoever it was, Twilight was now ready to face them. Peering through the window in the front door, Twilight saw her friend Applejack waiting patiently on the doormat. When she opened the door, Twilight saw her friend’s face light up.
“Twilight! Boy, it sure is good to see ya!” Applejack exclaimed.
“It’s great to see you too Applejack, come in.”Twilight stepped back to allow the orange pony enter. “So, what brings you here?” Twilight asked.
“I wanted to be sure you were alright. Why, I haven’t seen you for days. Spike said you were sick, but I guess you’re better now.” Applejack looked at Twilight and smiled. The orange pony’s smile faltered however as she continued to look at her friend. “Uh, did something happen to your horn? It’s not there.”
“Yes, my horn is gone.” Twilight explained all that had happened for the second time. When she had finished, Applejack just stood there, staring. Her face was hard to read, but Twilight suddenly felt uncomfortable, sure her friend would abandon her because of how she reacted to losing her magic.
“I don’t get it,” Applejack said eventually, “why didn’t you say somethin’ before now?” It was a fair question, and Twilight thought for a moment before speaking again.
“I guess I was just scared. I had felt so bad when I lost my magic, like there was a part of me missing. I had convinced myself that I could never recover from this. But then I felt terrible for my selfishness because earth ponies like you don’t have magic and yet you all get by fine, and there was me feeling like my world was over. I didn’t want you to be angry because I was being so shallow. It’s okay if that’s how you feel, you can leave if you want to. I just figured that I owed you the truth.”
“Why would you ever think I would be angry at you Sugarcube? Your magic was a part of who you are, it wouldn’t be normal if losing that didn’t upset you. I’m your friend, and I’ll always there if ya need me.” Twilight’s heart lifted, Applejack wasn’t angry at all and in hindsight it seemed foolish to have ever thought she would be. “Now why don’t you come back with me to Sweet Apple Acres, some fresh air after having been inside all week ought to do ya some good. Not to mention some of our famous apple cider.”
“I’d like that.”
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“Whoa, that’s incredible! Well it’s bad, but still pretty cool. I mean, sure you lost your horn, but you got to wander through an ancient tomb! I wish I could go wandering through some ancient tomb. But what if it was really dangerous? It would still be fun though.”
Twilight waited patiently for her excitable pink friend to calm down. She had come across Pinkie Pie when she had been walking back from Applejack’s, and the pink pony had noticed right away that Twilight was missing her unicorn horn, who had now just finished recounting the events leading up to her mishap.
“You know what we should do!? We should go bake cookies! Cookies always make me feel better, and you don’t need magic to bake. I should know, I do it allllllll the time!” Pinkie Pie was smiling widely.
“Oh, sure, why n-“
“GREAT! Let’s go!” Pinkie was bouncing up and down excitedly. She started to hop in the direction of Sugarcube Corner. “OH, what kind of cookies should we make? We could make sugar cookies, chocolate chip, chocolate with chocolate chips….”
Twilight couldn’t help but smile as her friend continued to ramble, wondering aloud if popcorn cookies even existed. It seemed that no matter what happened, Pinkie Pie would always continue to love life.
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“Let’s give it another go!” Pinkie Pie said as she tossed the third bad batch of ruined cookies, baking cookies was something Twilight hadn’t done before. The pink pony had also insisted they invent their own cookie type, and Twilight hadn’t attempted to reject the idea for she knew that convincing Pinkie to change her mind, was like convincing a Rhino to stop charging toward you: both illogical and impossible. So they had attempted to make cookies without a recipe, and their results were dismal.
Pinkie Pie seemed determined as ever as they mixed a new batch of cookie dough. Just as they sent yet another tray into the oven, there was a knock on the door.
“Oh no! Is that the guests?!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, “I haven’t set up the decorations yet!”
“Pinkie, what’s going on? Do you have party planned for today?” Twilight asked her friend.
“Of course! Today is Cheerilee’s birthday. I got so distracted by the cookies that I didn’t set up the decorations.” Pinkie Pie ran out of the kitchen and could be heard rushing around in the room next door. Seeing that her friend was obviously busy, Twilight went over to answer the door. Opening the door with her hoof, she looked to see who the visitor was. Her eyes met those of Zecora. The zebra was wearing her brown traveling cloak. Standing next to her, Twilight saw Spike who was holding a book she didn’t recognize.
“Twilight, there you are,” the young dragon said, “we’ve been looking all over for you.”
“For me, why?” Twilight asked, stepping aside to allow them to enter.
“To help you get your magic back. You said that you didn’t want to tell the princess, so I tried to think of who else might know what happened. It was then that I thought of how Zecora helped cure you of the poison joke, and I wondered if she might be able to help with this.”
“Spike, while I appreciate your concern, this is different than the poison joke incident. We knew what caused all the problems that time. I have no idea why my magic is gone.” Twilight said.
“Spike brought me to the tomb you described, and there, a stone with ancient writing I transcribed,” interjected Zecora. Twilight stared at her.
“You can translate what was written on that stone?” Twilight asked her mind thinking back to the stone that had covered the staircase. Zecora nodded and motioned over to the book Spike held in his hand. Twilight looked toward it. Rune Translations was the title, and it looked very old which would explain why it wasn’t a book the Ponyville library had.
“From the forest fire, that book was saved, now the text can come to your aid.” Zecora said.
“So what exactly did the stone say?” Twilight asked. At this, Spike pulled a sheaf of paper from the center of the book. At the top of the paper the symbols from the stone had been copied, and underneath those was what appeared to be the translation. The dragon cleared his throat.
“It says, ‘For those who enter filled with greed, the tomb will remove what you most need. But if without it you learn to live, then-’” Spike broke off as there came another knock on the door and Pinkie Pie came rushing into the room.
“Coming!” Pinkie pie yelled as she ran to the door. Twilight looked over at the door as it was opening. At the front of a sizable group of ponies, she saw Apple Bloom, Sweetie Bell, and Scootaloo. They rushed in with the gifts they had brought for their teacher. Twilight turned away from the door and back to Spike hoping to hear the rest of the translation. His attention however, was still directed towards the door, and he had a dreamy look on his face. Twilight followed his gaze and realized he was staring at Rarity who had just entered with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. Rolling her eyes, Twilight reached out to take the paper and read it herself, but before she could grab it, the young dragon had already begun walking toward his crush.
Twilight made to follow, but she found her path blocked by Rainbow Dash who had rushed over after spotting her purple friend amongst the crowd.
“Twilight it’s been days,” Dash announced, “I had begun to wonder if everything was alright. It’s good to see you again.”
“Oh yes it is. Spike had said you were ill, but that it was nothing to worry about. But I was getting worried.” Futtershy had also spotted Twilght and walked over to her. The yellow pegasus however, noticed what her blue counterpart had not. “Uh, Twilght…um… what happened to your horn.”
“What?” Dash asked, clearly confused. She looked closely at Twilight and gasped. “Yeah, Fluttershy’s right, it’s gone. What happened?”
Twilight sighed as she began retelling the story of what happened. Rarity walked over to her group of friends and Twilight had to start over to fill in her unicorn friend as well. The silence that followed was broken up by the arrival of Pinkie Pie who had just finished showing Cheerilee inside.
“This is a great party!” the pink pony stated to her friends. They all laughed, her over-enthusiasm brightening up the mood that had come with the conclusion of Twilight’s story.
“It certainly is,” Twilight agreed, glad the conversation had shifted away from her. And for that moment, everything was happy and peaceful, but then that all changed as a foul odor hit Twilight’s nose.