Celestia looked down at the human, his arms and legs bound by four chains made of reinforced steel. He had been placed in a cell with no magical reinforcements at the Archmage´s request. Celestia and the Archmage had stayed with the human since he lost consciousness, observing his body’s reactions to different spells and documenting everything.
A few things always happened, regardless of what kind of spell was cast. The first was that every spell required much more magical energy when cast on the human than on something else, like a pony or griffin. The second was the reason for the first. He absorbed magical energies at an incredible rate, using it to bolster his own physical strength and endurance, as well as strengthening his skin and possibly clouding his judgment and suppressing his sapience. The collar was supposed to preserve his sapience and keep his mind clear at all times and reduce all other effects, along with making him look like a household pet.
A blood sample revealed small traces of an unknown chemical, capable of multiplying magical energy and storing it. Whether it served any other purpose was unclear.
With Celestia´s great range of immunity to poisons and diseases, they injected her with a milligram of the unknown chemical, harvested from the human´s bloodstream and magically multiplied. The effect was instantaneous. She felt a great urge to just do something, anything that involved moving and spending energy. She started to trot in place. That wasn´t enough so she flew up into the air and did some summersaults and flips.
Only a few seconds after the injection she was feeling faint. Her heart was pounding so fast she thought it would burst free of her constricting ribcage and start bouncing around the room. Her flaps were getting so erratic she had trouble timing her flaps to stay in the air, until she clutched her chest and fell to the floor, a pained gasp leaving her mouth.
She lay there for an unknown number of minutes. Her breaths were labored and the pain that followed the rapid beating of her heart was almost too much for her. When her heartbeat finally normalized she was exhausted and her throat stung. She at last recognized a voice speaking to her, along with hooves rubbing her back. She looked over her shoulder and saw Practical standing over her with fear, confusion, and most of all, curiosity radiating from her eyes.
Celestia would have chuckled at Practical´s priorities if not for her exhaustion and the pain in her chest.
“-elestia. Can you hear me?” Celestia nodded. “Oh thank… Well, you… That you´re alright. I´ve been trying to talk to you since the injection but you didn´t seem to hear me. What happened?” Practical pulled out a notebook.
Celestia took a moment to gather her thoughts on the matter.
Finally she answered. “I felt full of energy at the start, so much so that I was sure I could rip the Canterlot mountain out of the earth and hurl it to the moon, even with my current limitations.” The Archmage nodded and wrote what Celestia said down. “After that I felt like I had overdosed on energy and couldn’t help but speed up my flaps to the point where I thought my wings were going to fly off on their own.” Another nod and more furious scribbling. “After that my heart started hurting and I´m fairly certain it stopped a number of times. I was aware of some static in my ears and my vision fading to black, along with a headache that I still have.” Practical spared her a glance and then continued scribbling. “Right now I´m utterly exhausted and feel unable to rise to my feet. Over all, a regular pony, griffin, minotaur or anything not at least twenty times my size or immortal would be dead. I believe we injected me with too much of the chemical. And my throat hurts, could I get a glass of water… Or ten?”
A couple hours later and Celestia had recovered. The frail old Archmage had carried her to her room after she announced that she was fine with sleeping on the floor and couldn´t be bothered to walk or teleport to her room. They were talking about the creature and Practical was explaining to Celestia what she had read in Riften´s notes.
“So, you´re telling me he can absorb not only the energy of the spell, but the effects of it as well? That would make it almost impossible for a unicorn or other magic reliant races to do anything other than strengthen him. But what about the gravity spell? That seemed to work just fine. Why?”
The Archmage was quick to answer Celestia. “Because that spell was being fed a constant stream of energy. Spells that are cast once and then not fed any more energy are absorbed instantly, regardless of the intensity or power of said spell. Enchantments are one variety absorbed instantaneously, like the enchantments in the cell floor and doors, even the magical restraints I put on it.” The Archmage stopped talking to crack her aching back, before resuming her speech. “The restraints were enchanted with a relatively simple enchantment; No escape. I´m unsure as to whether or not it affected his psyche, but I do know that that is what allowed him to crush the earth pony guard´s windpipe. A-” A violent coughing fit interrupted the Archmage.
Celestia looked on with concern. She summoned a glass of water for the aging Archmage and patted her on the back. The coughing fit subsided after a while and the old mare cleared her throat.
“I´ll explain the rest later. Those were just the most important aspects of his power, maybe we´ll see the rest in action.” The Archmage made to leave, but stopped dead in her tracks and turned her head to face Celestia. “Shining Armor told me how you acted on the way to the containment chamber, he said you had completely lost your mind, upset one second, angry another and then all of a sudden overly happy, why?” Practical raised an eyebrow and waited for the princess to say something.
Celestia stayed silent for a moment before answering. “Have you seen the statue in the Royal gardens? The serpentine one with the eagle claw and a lion´s paw?” Practical nodded. “Me and my sister put it there after the fall of Discord as a reminder to us never to walk down the same road as he did.” Celestia closed her eyes.
“What happened to him was tragic. He had, as far as we could tell, infinite power and no shortage of ideas as of how to use said power. He was much more powerful than my sister and I, and far older.” Celestia closed her eyes and sat down on her haunches. She sighed before she continued. “For as long as I can remember, he was there for both me and my sister, making sure we stayed on the right path and never let our power control us. For thousands of years he stayed with us and cared for us.” Celestia turned her head up but kept her eyes closed.
“He also taught us that to live for thousands of years one needed an anchor. When we asked him what he meant, he said that thousands of years could drive anyone insane. He would say ‘To try and face eternity alone is like trying to empty an ocean into a soup bowl with nothing but a rounded stone and expecting nothing to spill.’ While there wasn´t a doubt in our minds that he could do exactly that, we knew what he meant. We would live on for thousands of years, maybe even forever, and the only thing we could be sure of was that all three of us would be there, and whether it was on good or bad terms, we needed each other.”
Celestia took a deep breath and grimaced, still not opening her eyes. “One day he told us he moved both the sun and moon, constantly pulling, pushing and dragging them across the heavens. He told us that unlike us he didn´t use spells as a basis for his magic, he just did what he wanted. He told us, out of nowhere, that he was getting bored, that if we wanted the sun and moon to continue their daily rotation, we would have to learn how to move them ourselves. We were shocked at his sudden coldness and disregard for not only our, but everyone’s lives. We asked him if he was joking, but he just snapped his claw and we found ourselves in front of our new responsibilities. We were far above the ground. I was possibly millions of miles above this planet, and my sister thousands. We probably spent hundreds, if not thousands, of years apart. A few hundred more and I might have forgotten all about both Luna and Discord.”
Practical was listening intently to Celestia´s words. It wasn´t every day that one would get to hear the princesses life story, however shortened it was. “Finally I found a way back through a solar flare and later learned that I had arrived only days after my sister. What I saw was nothing like the planet I had left, the ground was checkered. Trees and chunks of earth floated in the air and ponies of various shades of gray walked around with their noses either hung low raised into the air, depending on whether or not they where upside down.”
Celestia inhaled slowly, and then exhaled. “I spent a number of weeks just wandering around, trying to find Discord or my sister. When I finally I found them, they didn´t look like themselves, a smug grin on his face and an angry, teeth baring scowl on hers. I walked over to them and Luna immediately jumped on me, smiling her widest. I also smiled, and was unable to hold back my tears of joy. I looked to Discord, expecting him to be happy that we were all together again, but he huffed and snapped his lion paw. Back then no one was capable of teleportation other than Discord, as it was still a few thousand years until Riften was born, so we spent years tracking him down. The ponies were no help, as their minds and personalities had been twisted to the point where any interaction at all was inconceivable.”
Celestia opened her eyes and looked at the Archmage. “During our travels, we found the Elements of Harmony. Discord had told us stories of the Elements, of how they could be used to cleanse even the greatest evil. He had told us that of the Elements were maybe the most powerful magical artifacts in the world, as he could do anything, except stop them. We ended up using the Elements against him and turning him to stone. What that meant we didn´t know. It could be that there was no evil to be cleansed and he did it all for the greater good, or he was pure evil and nothing else.”
Celestia stood up and made for the door. “He and Luna were my anchors. After his fall only I and Luna remained, until a powerful mind controller and necromancer turned her against me after years of subtle mind manipulation. After I was forced to use the Elements on Luna I had no anchor left and so I started eating. I started eating half a cake a day, then one cake, then two, then three, until I was eating over a dozen cakes a day. Cake became my new anchor, and even with my sister´s return, she isn´t the same as she used to be, so cake is still my anchor, the small thread that ties me to my sanity. The last hindrance insanity has to pass before taking over me like it did Discord. Well… Technically speaking he was Accord before, and Discord after.”
“Accord was our father, Discord was a monster. Accord made me what I am today, the princess everypony looks up to for her kindness and generosity. Discord forced me to learn how to control the sun…”
Celestia cleared her throat. “I apologize. It seems I went on a tangent here. Long story short I need cake to stay sane. Due to recent inconveniences I haven´t had any today.” Celestia smiled down at the dumbstruck old mage.
The aging unicorn shook her head and huffed. “I must be going senile. I could have sworn you just told me that a random assortment of animals was your dad and that you´re nuthouse material without cake. No wonder I can´t get laid, I´m crazy!”
While the Archmage grumbled something under her breath, the princess only laughed. “In any case, Practical, let´s see if the human is awake. If he is not, we´ll conduct another test with the chemical. This time we will only use about 1/10000 of the amount used in the first test and slowly work our way up to larger quantities. Let´s go Practical.”
As they neared the human´s room, they noticed an increase in guards. When they reached the door of the human´s room, it was clear something was going on. Celestia asked one of the dozen or so guards posted just outside the door why they were here.
“Prince Blueblood ordered us to stay outside this room while he speaks with the creature.” This didn´t look good.
After ordering the guards to step aside, she and the Archmage walked into the room. To their surprise they saw the human unshackled and laughing at a table in the middle of the room. Sitting across from him was Prince Blueblood, also laughing.