How do you go about describing power to someone? It’s amazing how many ponies aren’t satisfied with my description of ‘feeling powerful’. But, again, it’s not something you can really put into words.
How do you describe the feeling of blood rushing through your veins, burning its way through your system as your senses are kicked into overdrive? How do you go about re-telling the experience of when the world seems to pause and wait for you to make your move?
The simple answer seems to be that you just don’t tell them how it feels. It’s apparently a tried-and-true method of staying out of both the dungeons and the looney bin. Yet even that method doesn’t work sometimes.
Have you ever had an experience that you simply couldn’t keep to yourself? Power can be a bit like that… It whispers to you, reminding you about that one moment of bliss that only you could achieve. It begs to be shared amongst others so that they may know of true power.
But, again… if you tell them that you can crumble a rock to dust with mere thought, they start to doubt you. If you tell them that you can turn that dust to lava with a command, they start to avoid you. If you tell them that you can float that lava and use it as a weapon, they start to fear you.
Someone once said that it was for those with great power to decide whether or not they wanted to use it.
I think I can see what they meant now. Great power removes the choice of good and evil and changes it for another. It asks the user whether they choose to be feared or to not use magic at all.
It’s very hard to not fear someone with great power, especially if you’re there, stood next to them as they lose control and turn everything in their way to smoke and ash.
I’ve lost control once or twice in my life… Simple things… Every unicorn loses control at least once when their power is awakened. It’s a simple estimate as to how much power they can control at the time and can usually be controlled.
Thankfully this is usually when the unicorn is still young, meaning that the magical fallout from an unstable unicorn is usually minimal. The worry generally comes when an older unicorn loses control…
One of the first things a unicorn is taught is control. It’s accompanied by the grave warning that control must be kept at all times, else the unicorn is likely to endanger both themselves and anyone around them. The more powerful a unicorn is when they lose control, the more danger they put themselves in.
But losing control of your power… is one of the most cathartic experiences in the universe. For every second you aren’t in control, you relax more and more, letting the built-up emotions inside of you loose onto the world.
You learn to love the feeling of power coursing through your body; that wondrous feeling of being completely invincible and unbeatable.
You become accustomed to knowing that you can truly do anything, and the sudden lack of that becomes a barrier.
You start thinking that perhaps control is optional; that to loosen control is to improve yourself until you have no control yet your complete power.
It’s the wrong theory, of course. Control is a method of stemming the flow of power through you. If you lose control for too long, you run out of magic to burn and you start burning up yourself for fuel.
But… it’s still enticing, sometimes, to let go.
To feel the blood heat up in my body, to feel my senses widen and my well of power open. Some would probably say that to enjoy the feeling of my mane crackling into flame, and to relish the sensation of the power sat behind my horn, is to invite fear unto myself.
To them I say: “I don’t care.”