Starswirl was apprenticed to the Grand Archmage, Dream Charmer, in a ceremony in the auditorium at the end of the term. Celestia remained a novice, and while technically that meant they weren't supposed to see each other, nopony really enforced those sort of rules, as long as you didn't get caught en flagrante. She would have given one of her legs to be in his section, under his discipline (she giggled at the thought) though of course Bluesteel Barb was a decent stallion and had mellowed considerably after a few months. However, the Grand Archmage exempted Starswirl from all leadership and teaching duties and assigned him to conduct his research in the teleportation section. His calculations were sound in the opinion of the Archmage, but the Academy made important decisions through consensus and that required more experimental proof, teleportation of objects, longer ranges, virtual experimentation in the Dream World, in which Dream Charmer was the greatest practicioner in history, and ultimately it would require volunteers other than Starswirl. He had been forbidden to attempt further self-teleportations until it had been approved for non-experimental use; he was considered too valuable to lose.
There was also the small matter of professional jealousy. Not every pony was enamored of this wündercolt. Several ponies thought that they saw flaws in his calculations and raised one objection after another. Sometimes the attacks were personal, with senior mages calling Starswirl an arrogant child, a jumped up novice, a mediocre talent who lucked out with a guess, or possibly who stole the idea.
Apparently, her Arcanokinetics teacher, an adept by the name of Comet Crash, was one of those who had a low opinion of Starswirl. His rank was intermediate between that of an apprentice and that of a full member of the faculty.
"Class, what is the key to proper application of kinetic force? Focus! Failure to focus can lead to unbalanced application of force, which can lead to disastrous consequences. It can lead to bleed-off, which reduces your effective force. It can, most dangerously, lead to internalization, which is not only often fatal, it is also disgusting. So when you are working with large masses or apply large deltas against a mass of any size, it is important to keep your focus. You may be distracted by things that are going on around you. Don't engage in conversations, and don't, seriously do not attempt parallelism. Lifting a bunch of small things is fine, but lifting more than one mass of 50 kilograms or more at a time is asking for it."
He levitated a piece of chalk to the blackboard, his black coat and silvery mane rippling slightly. "There are three areas of Arcanokinetics, two of which will be covered in this class. These are Force Projection and Levitation. The third, Teleportation, is insanely dangerous and only an Archmage with many years of experience would attempt it. That or an idiot." Celestia reddened. Everypony knew about her and Starswirl, but she kept her tongue in her head. She was cross, not having slept well. She kept hearing those giggles in the hallway all night, but there was nopony there.
"You know, that new apprentice Starswirl is said to have teleported and lived to tell the tale. I don't know if that makes him a suicidal moron or a damned liar." Celestia's jaw popped but still she said nothing.
"Of course, we could always get it straight from the pony's mouth. Novice Celestia was there after all. Tell us, did he actually teleport?" He leered at her.
She could not trust her tongue, so she just nodded.
"Well then, that settles it. He's a moron." The classroom was silent. Celestia may not have been the most popular of ponies, but she was known to be kind and hard working. The way the teacher was treating her struck them as just wrong. Not that anypony would dare say so, but there was no laughter. Then she head that that tittering laugh she'd heard before in the hallway and last night, whispering outside her door. Her head whipped around but none of the other novices were laughing. They just sat there, watching the horrible scene unfold.
Perhaps that encouraged Comet Crash to go on. "Of course, you could be a liar too. The apprentice liar and his lying filly friend" Celestia's blood ran cold and she struggled to control her wrath. "Maybe you both cooked it up together, and got your classmates to go along with it so you could get into the Academy. Because neither of you deserve it. Especially that jumped up novice coltfriend of yours. I don't know what sort of strings your mother pulled..."
"That does it! Shut the hay up, Adept!"
"It speaks! For a while there I thought I was speaking to an heroic sculpture. You know, the ones that are twice life sized?" He grinned at her furious blush. "You just sit there and take it, filly! This is my class and I say what I want and you nod and say, 'Yes Adept!' or you fail. Maybe I'll fail you anyway. That would be suitable, I let you get through the class all the way to the end of the year then fail you because I don't think you belong in the Academy. And then, you won't be in the Academy! You and that pint-sized..."
"I challenge you, Adept." Icicles could have formed on those words.
"Ho-ho! You know that students can't challenge teachers! I can have you suspended for that! I think I will." Comet Crash chuckled and the mysterious giggling in the back of the room continued, the rest of the students very much dismayed.
"You have deliberately provoked and insulted me, insulted my coltfriend, you've accused my mother of bribery, you've spent most of the class so far denigrating me in the most disgraceful and unprofessional manner, and I have done you no wrong. And you did it in front of all of these students."
"And I'll deny everything and these novices know better than to try to gainsay the word of an adept, don't you novices?" He looked at the seven other students in the classroom who were all looking like they wished to be somewhere else. A female voice from somewhere piped, "She challenged you for no reason! She's crazy! I think she's hearing voices!" Celestia controlled herself, knowing that the auditory illusion was only effecting her. She needed to find the source before she could act on it, otherwise somepony might we think she was mentally unbalanced. If it was indeed Comet Crash doing it, she needed to simply ignore it.
"A bully, and a coward. What sort of adept hides behind his robes when challenged by a mere novice?" She slowly and deliberately reached her hoof up to her horn and flicked it. All unicorns knew what that meant. Comet Crash immediately went from gloating to raging.
"Very well then, Novice! We'll settle this on the sand at midnight, alone!" That was completely against the rules; there were always seconds and witnesses to ensure that there was no cheating, that nopony got seriously injured and if they were that there was medical attention available.
"That suits me just fine, Adept."
"Now get the hay out of my classroom!" She stood up to her full height, scowled down at the adept, levitated her saddlebags onto her back and walked out of the room with as much dignity as she could, with the tittering laughter following her.
______
Midnight found Celestia alone, outside the Arena. She could not open the door herself. She heard hoofsteps from across the courtyard, and presently Comet Crash strode into view. "So, you showed up, eh? Brave... and stupid." He sneered as he opened the ward and mockingly bowed to her, allowing her to walk in first.
As she walked towards the center, relaxing her mind and thinking about her tactics just one more time, she heard the door click shut. Then she was slammed in the back of the head with heat and force. A sneak attack! She hit the sand, dazed and smelling burned mane. He's using fire in a challenge! She instinctively activated her body shield and felt several powerful impacts strike her They were almost powerful enough to breach the shield. If it wasn't for the shield... he's trying to kill me!
She spat blood and rolled to regain her hoofing and face him. "Oh, a body shield, well aren't we fancy! No matter! The Academy, the race of Unicorns for that matter, has no place for a freak like you!" He built power for a heavy strike.
That will breach my shield. She waited for his strike, then concentrated her force against it, using a powerful directional shield to deflect the blast. Then she felt pain in her side. How? Where? Her flank throbbed where the power bolt had struck her, unshielded, and she staggered. She looked around has he built up for another heavy force attack, then dodged as she saw another bolt coming in from out of thin air. He's got an invisible ally! Can this get any worse?
She had to think fast. She blasted down with a small amount of force and kicked up a lot of dust, then started moving. One disadvantage of her size was that it made her a big target, but if she was moving, perhaps Comet Crash would have to break up his strong attack into several weaker ones to hit her. She absorbed her directional shield back into her body and pranced around in as close to a random pattern as she could. She needed to let the dust settle.
Sure enough, instead of one big bolt, several small ones were fired in rapid succession, one glancing off her body shield. Then she saw what she was looking for; a coating of dust settled on her second opponent, and she fired a heavy blast right at it. There was a shriek as the bolt struck home and a small blue unicorn mare appeared as she was being thrown into the wall by the force of the blast. She hit it with a sickening crack and slid boneless to the sand as Celestia watched in horror. She wasn't even shielding!
A blast of heat and flame staggered her, some of it breaching her body shield, but her size and strength allowed her to roll with the force and the heat just crisped some of her coat. Meanwhile, blood started to flow from where the mare lay. "Hold! She's badly hurt!"
"Yes, and when you had her down, I saw you deliver the killing strike with my own eyes!" He shielded against her and turned his head, aiming at the downed unicorn, barely more than a filly. "She's weak anyway. Good with illusion, but she can't even manage to shield while invisible. I'll get a better one and you'll be executed for murdering her. A pretty good night for me, all in all." Power flared at his horn glowed, leveled at the helpless mare.
Too far, there's no way I can get there! Wait. Levitation, the application of force against an object. Quantum tunneling, the tendency for some particles to do things that are basically impossible. Overlay with precognition... In her mind she saw herself dying in a multitude of horrible ways: her atoms scattered throughout the universe; herself turned inside out on the sand, making inequine sounds as she bled at though from a million small wounds; herself embedded in the wall, causing a mass energy conversion that leveled the entire Academy and several blocks around; and many worlds where she stood on the sand between Comet Crash and his apprentice. She picked one of those and pushed herself through reality into it. Her ears popped.
Her shield flared as she deflected the strike high into the night. Comet Crash stared in disbelief, his shield pointed ninety degrees from where it should have been. "And that is how we teleport, Adept." Celestia blasted him with a restrained amount of force, not as much as she wanted to, smashing him in the head, knocking out several teeth and sending him to the sands.
"HOLD!"
The Grand Archmage strode into the Arena wearing her sleeping gown. Celestia immediately stopped casting magic and bowed her head. There was a flash and she went sailing through the air to land in a heap next to the dying mare.
"I SAID HOLD, BY THE MOON!" The red coated mare's flowing gold mane spun as she rounded on Comet Crash in a fury.
"A thousand pardons, Archmagister, but she has slain my apprentice!" Dream Charmer's eyes widened as she glanced at the blue form, then she looked back at Comet Crash.
"Explain!"
Comet Crash spat blood and bits of tooth onto the sands. "I couldn't find Clover anywhere, so I went out looking for her. As I was passing the courtyard, I saw a flash from the Arena. I knew there was no contest scheduled this late, so I ran here and opened the door, and Celestia was battering poor Clover. She was trying to surrender, but Celestia just blasted her down and threw her into the wall. Then she attacked me without provocation!"
The Grand Archmage glanced at Celestia. "And the burn marks?" Comet Crash thought fast.
"I admit I used fire to defend myself, Archmagister. She is very powerful and this was not in challenge, it was life or death." Celestia moaned and tried to get up. She was immediately locked in glowing red chains and a coffle covered her horn, preventing her use of magic.
"She must be a powerful, and capable novice, to have defeated an apprentice and an adept."
"Archmagister, please, this mare is dying!" Celestia tried to focus her eyes but her head was ringing from that last impact.
"And you killed her. I can read your magical signature all over her body. She wasn't even trying to shield." A small, gloating smile was barely visible on the black stallion's muzzle.
"I didn't mean to! I didn't know she wasn't shielding! She was invisible, archmagister! I was fighting a challenge with the adept and his apprentice struck me while invisible!"
"Lies, the rantings of a madmare, perhaps, Archmagister."
"Please save the apprentice, Archmagister! I don't want her to die! Please!"
There was something of desperate sincerity in Celestia's tone that softened the caustic reply that sprang to the Archmage's lips. "I cannot. She is too badly injured. She has massive internal injuries. A physicker team of two could possibly do it, but I cannot by myself, and they will never be here in time. And Adept Comet Crash here cannot physick. He has a block. I know, for I signed the exemption myself when he 'prenticed."
"Then let me help, please! I've read ahead in physicking. I can Delve for you!" The Grand Archmage's eyebrow rose skeptically in response..
"I think you've helped Clover quite enough already, Celestia."
"Please! It's not like I can hurt her any worse, is it?" Celestia's eyes pleaded with the Grand Archmage, who thought for a second and then shrugged. The manacles started to disintegrate.
"Archmagister! It's a trick!" Comet Crash looked agitated as he rubbed his swollen jaw.
"I appreciate your concern for my well being, Adept, but I'm pretty sure I can handle a novice, no matter how murderous. Very well, Celestia, delve." The coffle on her horn disintegrated and Celestia looked into the body of Clover. Broken, no, shattered ribs perforated her lungs, liver and intestines in dozens of places. Jagged edges stabbed dangerously close to her slowing heart. Shock due to blood loss was setting in and her brain was not getting enough oxygen. She needed the lost blood replaced in a hurry.
Dream Charmer took the driver's seat as the Mender, viewing the overlay from Celestia's delving, accepting the diagnostics she was providing, and stimulated the marrow in Clover's skeleton to start producing red and white blood cells at a vastly increased rate. She gathered moisture from the air of the arena and used to replace lost fluids. She started moving broken ribs, first the ones near the heart and then the others, binding them with heat, cauterizing and suturing dozens of wounds, nudging herniated intestines back into the abdominal cavity. Work progressed quickly, with Celestia doing what the Grand Archmage considered to be a highly competent job of delving. Soon, the patient started to stir, groaning with pain. Celestia, as the delver, was responsible for reducing nerve activity, and spent more of her effort suppressing pain messages to the brain as the operation progressed.
They didn't notice as a dozen other ponies entered the Arena. Comet Crash did though, and as several of the novices from his Arcanokinetics class filed in, he glared at them.
The Grand Archmage broke contact with the patient with a grunt, and Celestia closed her delve. Clover was breathing slowly and steadily. "Thank you, Archmagister. Thank you so much. Now please, I'm ready to be taken into custody."
Clover moaned, and opened her eyes. She looked up at Celestia. "Nice shot." Then she looked at the Grand Archmage, who's golden eyes regarded her with concern and curiosity. "Archmagister?" She glanced nervously at Comet Crash, who was looking at her with the promise of certain doom in his eyes. Then she smiled at him. And started to laugh.
"She's suffering from a concussion, Archmagister, and needs rest. Look at the poor filly!" Clover started to recover from her laughing and looked at Celestia.
"I'm sorry, Celestia. You should have just let me die. I deserved it, for all the things I did to you." Then she turned to Dream Charmer. "He made me do it, Archmagister. The illusions, waking her at night with whispers so she'd be short tempered, and just now trying to ambush her in the arena. He said he'd confine me to my quarters and withhold my stipend if I didn't do as he told me, and my kid brothers need that money to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies." She turned her drooping head to regard her master with unconcealed loathing.
"You are addled. Go back to your room and get some sleep and we'll talk in the morning." Comet Crash's eyes blazed death at her, while Celestia reached a hoof out to stroke her mane.
One of the newly arrived novices cleared his throat. "Pardon me, Archmagister. I'm Novice Wood Warden. This afternoon in class, Adept Comet Crash deliberately provoked this fight, and when Celestia lost her temper, he accepted her challenge after saying he was going to fail her no matter how well she did in the class. He also spent a lot of time making fun of your apprentice."
"Archmagister, these students are all in cahoots! This is a ridiculous pack of lies!" Comet Crash looked like he wanted to kill several someponies.
The Grand Archmage seemed as though she was barely keeping hold on her own temper as she looked at the black unicorn. "If that were the case, what is their motive, Adept?"
"Perhaps they don't want to have to take my class." Comet Crash started looking worried rather than just angry.
"So you are saying your teaching is so awful that a half dozen students conspired together, after one day of class, to discredit you by faking a fight where one of them was very nearly killed? And they cast a teleport spell as part of that deception to make sure it attracted my attention?" Celestia stiffened. "It is alright, child, but the signature is unmistakable."
She took a step towards the adept. "I think I know what happened here. You provoked Celestia, Adept. Then you accepted her foalish challenge. You and your apprentice attacked her when she arrived here. She came close to killing Clover because you put Clover in an insanely dangerous position, unshielded in the middle of a battle."
She shut down Comet Crash's incipient denials as her voice grew in power and she advanced upon him. "You decided to finish off your apprentice and blame the death on Celestia! She shielded your attack on your own apprentice by teleporting, taking a foalish risk, perhaps," the assembled novices gasped, "and then she beat your flank hollow."
Her face was now a mask of rage. "Words cannot describe the contempt I now feel for you, Comet Crash. There will be a full investigation, but for now you are to power down and..."
Before she could finish speaking, the adept grabbed an object from his saddlebag and threw it to the ground. There was a sudden wailing sound, like that of lost souls, and something like a black pit opened on the ground. There seemed to be movement within it. "A Tartarus gate!" Dream Charmer's eyes were wide with shock as Comet Crash leapt for it. As he vanished through the gate, he threw a final blast of black spite at his erstwhile apprentice, Clover. Then the gate vanished, leaving behind only a foul odor.
There was no time to shield. Celestia lurched forward over the weak blue unicorn and took the blast full in her side. There was pain, the world spun, and she felt very cold. Then all was blackness.