Ponywatching

by ThunderTempest


Prompt #449-Understanding Magic

The Light, it blinds. The Darkness, it binds. The Love, it cries. The Magic, it dies.’ So reads the inscription above the entrance to the Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Most ponies who visited the school, even if they noticed the carved words, paid it no mind. For the few who stopped to wonder, the phrase made no sense. Most ponies worked out quite quickly that ‘The Light’ either refered to Celestia, or the sun. And after Princess Luna’s return, many easily made the connection with her and ‘The Darkness’. Some ponies, after seeing Princess Cadence’s special talent, assumed that she was ‘The Love’, and then, after Twilight Sparkle’s ascension and coronation, said that the purple princess pony was ‘The Magic.’

From there, many ponies inferred that the inscription referred to a future time, where Princess Twilight would die, and the other three phrases described how the other princesses would react. And everypony was happy with this explanation. It was nice, neat and wrapped up all loose ends.

It was also completely and utterly wrong.

‘The Light’ was a reference not to Celestia, but rather to her patron school of magic, the Art of Alteration, which could force powerful changes onto the natural world, such as revealing the hidden evils, and bringing light wherever she went. It was this which caused one of Celestia’s titles to be ‘The Harbinger of Change’

Similarly, ‘The Darkness’ did not mean Luna’s control over the moon, or the night, but rather her exceptional command of the Art of Restoration, for it is in the darkness that our wounds bind themselves closed, and the dark of night that offers refuge from harm.

‘The Love’, and its tie with Cadence was the most straightforward of the four phrases. Cadence is a master of the Art of Illusion, able to trick ponies into changing their emotional state. Interestingly, this also applies to Queen Chrysalis, and the Changeling Queen before her, and the one before her, and so on.

‘The Magic’, completely unbeknownst to Twilight, referred to her developing mastery of the Art of Destruction. While Twilight would fiercely debate any preference for any particular school of magic, and the other alicorns had yet to clue
Twilight in on the fact that any pony who was an alicorn, by any means at all, gained an intuitive mastery over one particular school of magic. This instinctual mastery went above and beyond what any pony, even another alicorn, could actually learn.

***Time***

This inherent mastery is also not chosen. What exactly assigns any particular school to a given alicorn is unknown. They suspect that it is somewhat tied to their cutie marks, and thus, tied into the deep, innate magic of Equestria itself.

But even with this knowledge, there is still a gap. The phrase above the School for Gifted Unicorns is incomplete, an intentional mistake. Because there are four alicorn princesses, and five schools of magic. There are only three beings in existence who know the full phrase, and only two of them are Princesses.

‘The Light, it blinds. The Darkness, it binds. The Love, it cries. The Magic, it dies. The Chaos, it rises.’