Magic is a fundamentally intuitive art. Despite the insistence of many a pretentious unicorn professor to the contrary, any foal with a horn and a shred of mental focus can cast spells if they have a good enough idea of the outcome they wish to effect. Spells that can be described simply (in mental terms, at least) are trivially easy to cast. Even an untrained pony doesn’t have much trouble with the concept of ‘move that thing over there around,’ and a sufficiently pliable local thaumic field will be more than happy to oblige such a simple request.
Nor do they have much trouble with ‘set that thing over there on fire,’ to the eternal dismay of the parents of many a young unicorn. There is a reason that most of the buildings in Equestria are over-engineered to the point of near-indestructibility.
Of course, this doesn’t take into account the large quantities of energy typically required for many ‘high-level’ spells, which are often entirely disconnected from the relative casting complexity of the spell. While incredibly detailed spells with nested triggering conditions and semi-intelligent state machines can be invoked with the thaumic energy equivalent of a good kick, spells that are deceptively simple in theory (such as most healing magic) can require more energy to be expended in a single packet than most unicorns accrue over the course of entire days of focussed meditation.
Teleportation is a spell that firmly fits into the latter category. ‘I want to be over there’ is such a simple request that many aspiring spellcasters will invoke the spell unintentionally while assembling other spells. However, the sheer energy required to forcibly disconnect one’s physical form from the space it occupies and move it to a desired destination is often prohibitive, to the surprise of most novice unicorns practicing the spell when they teleport and find themselves suddenly overpoweringly fatigued.
Or, as is far more common, unconscious. To be able to cast a long-range teleport and be immediately alert and cast-ready upon arrival is the sign of a truly gifted magi.
However, as is the case with most spells, one requires a clear, unambiguous thought in order to execute properly. Teleportation is a particularly egregious example, with rookie teleporters often being sent far off course for being unable to provide a sufficiently detailed mental description of ‘there.’ Attempting to teleport to a place you have never physically seen before is possible, but very ill-advised.
It is for this reason that while Twilight Sparkle was entirely awake and lucid upon arrival at the Canterlot Royal Dungeons, she was in the rough vicinity of the ceiling with nothing between her and an unforgiving forty-hoof drop into an oubliette.
Apart from the grey pegasus who had been spending the past hour fixating on the door she had just appeared below, dreaming up ways to creatively murder the very pony who had just arrived there.
The three sleeping members of Team Fifteen were abruptly ripped from their sleep by the successive cries of fear and pain as Twilight fell, only to be caught mid-air by Walleye and slammed bodily to the floor.
It was by the barest stroke of luck that Walleye recognised the interloper before she commenced her assault.
“What in Tartarus are you doing here?” Walleye asked.
“As opposed to?” Twilight groaned, taking in her situation as she pulled herself free of Walleye’s tackle. “I’m here to rescue you.”
“You were about to rescue us?” Lyra asked, the barest hint of smug amusement sneaking into her voice.
“Well, I was finished at Ponyville, so what else was I supposed to do?”
“So… what you’re saying is that you weren’t planning on running off back home and leaving us in the lurch?” The smugness was far more apparent now, bordering on arrogance.
“...Why would I do that?”
“You didn’t notice this was your homeworld?” Walleye asked, voice strained with barely-contained frustration.
“I did notice, actually. Why would it matter?”
Twilight could almost feel the smug grin Lyra beamed at Walleye when she said that, if only from the barely-audible grinding of Walleye’s teeth.
“So, where is she?” Walleye asked, slowly.
“Who? Oh! Your teammate!”
“Yes, my ‘teammate’. Where is she?”
“EF,” Twilight replied, pulling the catalogue from her saddlebags. “She’s in EF.”
“EF? Isn’t that the world where they hate royalty?” Rainboom asked.
“No,” Pinkie corrected. “They hate alicorns. Fairly smart move sending Theta there, the locals would do all the work of capturing her for you.”
“Lunatic is an alicorn,” Walleye pointed out. “The locals will attack her too.”
“And dehorn her, and then behead her…” Pinkie continued, recalling the details from memory. “They have a bit of a thing for public executions.”
“Dehorn?” Lyra asked, shuddering. “That’s… a bit barbaric.”
“I know, right?” Pinkie exclaimed, a happy smile plastered on her face. “It’s so weird!”
“Why does that make you happy?” Walleye growled, glaring at Pinkie.
“Because it’s weird! Weren’t you listening?”
Walleye quirked an eyebrow, holding her glare.
“Off-topic question,” Twilight interjected. “Celestia said I wouldn’t be allowed to return home until I ‘proved my worth’ or somesuch. Why am I here?”
“Simple answer?” Pinkie replied. “She was lying.”
“...Lying?”
“She does that. You wouldn’t have had any incentive to help us if she told you that you could just go straight home…”
“Why would she need me to help you?”
Pinkie shrugged.
“Right, well, Perhaps it would be best for us to leave,” Twilight offered. “My departure from Ponyville wasn’t exactly subtle, the Guard will be after me soon enough.”
“Wasn’t your point here to be stealthy?” Walleye barked, snapping her glare to Twilight. “We get noticed, and you don’t.”
“And if we don’t want to get noticed again,” Twilight hissed, a twinge of hostility sneaking into her voice. “maybe you should stop yelling.”
She leaned in closer, scowling. “That is, unless you’re trying to get us all captured. All things considered, I have my suspicions.”
Walleye hit her, hard, sending her crashing painfully into the wall with a yelp. Pinkie and Lyra both stared at her in horror.
“Oh, that’s it!” Twilight shouted, igniting her horn as she slowly got to her feet.
Rainboom took a step back, flaring her wings. “Don’t try it, Twilight. There’s four of us.”
“Four?” Pinkie asked. “I’m not fighting her! She’s my friend!”
“Friend?” Walleye spat. “She’s an Insider. They’re not our friends.”
“Oh lay off it!” Lyra sighed, exasperated. “For all your talk of her being an Insider, she is right. She got the job done and even came to rescue us. I’m not seeing this pathological traitor in her that you seem to see.”
Walleye rounded on her, eyes narrowed. “Is that so?”
Lyra glared back, unmoving. “You don’t scare me, Derpy.”
She stepped back reflexively as Walleye swung at her with all the accuracy and poise of a boulder. Years of not-at-all-professional fighting instinct came flooding back in an instant, sending her own hoof back towards her attacker’s face. The sickening crack of keratin-on-bone echoed throughout the hallway as Walleye was sent crashing into the wall, a semi-circular indentation on her cheek already welling up from the impact.
Everything went stock-still for an instant as a razor-thin trickle of blood marred Walleye’s fur, surface-dwelling blood vessels compromised by the impact and leaking through minute tears in the skin. Lyra and Walleye glared at each other. Rainboom crouched, wings fluttering in anticipation of a brawl. Pinkie pressed her right rear hoof against the wall, preparing an attempt to dive into the melee and stop any further fighting.
Twilight Sparkle ignited her horn, selecting a set of spells to fire in a very specific sequence.
The tension cracked. Walleye and Lyra dove at each other. Rainboom flared her wings fully, sending herself catapulting towards Lyra. Pinkie pushed off, firing towards Rainboom like a pink, fuzzy cannonball.
Twilight teleported.
The world went sideways.
------
The roar of the crowd was deafening, a cacophony of cheering and jeering combined together and focussed by the surrounding buildings to create the most unholy, unbearable noise ever heard by pony ears. It seemed as though the entire city of Canterlot had turned up to watch the dehorning and execution of the two captured alicorns, with both the ground and the air stuffed to near breaking point.
Lunatic didn’t bother to look up as she was led up onto the hastily-erected stage in chains. Between the sheer density of ponies in the crowd and the heat-like haze caused by what she surmised to be a spell field of some sort, she would have been hard-pressed to make out any individual pony. Besides, she had no desire to look upon the cheering faces of those who would demand her demise.
Theta, however, was being considerably less cooperative towards the guards. Unlike Lunatic’s comparatively paltry chainbound hoofcuffs, metal collar, and horn-covering thaumic suppressor, Theta was contained within what seemed to be a straightjacket built from highly-enchanted tempered steel. A thick metal bit muffled most of the rabid screaming, reducing the noise to garbled unintelligibility.
Four muscle-bound elk stood on the corners of the stage, their rune-encrusted armour prominently bearing the sigil of their executioner-to-be, the six-pointed starburst of Princess Twilight Sparkle. The Princess herself stood at the front of the stage, bedecked in the regalia of her office, horn aglow, and a smug smile on her face as she watched the two alicorns be led (or wrangled, in Theta’s case) onto the stage. A menacing purple-bladed axe floated in the air beside her, no doubt the weapon she intended to use to lop off Lunatic’s and Theta’s horns, before following suit with their heads.
The crowd slowly settled as they were bolted down to the stage, Twilight raising her hooves to the clamouring ponies in a call for silence.
“Today,” She began, her magically-augmented voice washing over the square. “I bring you an event unmatched in pony history! The capture and rightful destruction of not one, but two alicorn tyrants!”
“The first, and best known, the Lunar Tyrant herself!” Applause thundered throughout the square as ponies rapped the ground rhymically, prompting Twilight to grin with smug satisfaction as she grabbed Lunatic’s head with her magic, forcing her to face the assembly. “Resurfaced after being thought dead for over four years, only to foolishly allow herself to be captured with the assistance of the Royal Elken Guard!”
“Many of you are old enough to have witnessed this tyrant’s first resurfacing after her millennial banishment,” Twilight continued, jabbing Lunatic in the side with the pommel of her axe, forcing her to the ground with a pained yelp. “And her subsequent defeat by my own horn! I will admit to having thought her defeated that day, her form utterly destroyed by a blast powerful enough to obliterate the castle of the Tyrant Sisters, hidden deep within the Everfree Forest.”
“It is not a mistake,” she said, grabbing Lunatic’s wing with her magic and forcefully, painfully drawing it to its full extent. “I shall be making again!”
The axe dropped, cleanly severing the wing. Lunatic’s screams of pain were quickly drowned out by cheering as Twilight threw the wing into the crowd, a sadistic expression of glee plastered across her face.
“Pathetic,” she muttered, turning away from the mutilated alicorn, her spell maintaining her audibility over the cacophony.
“Our other ‘guest’,” she paused, holding smug emphasis on the word ‘guest.’ “Is one that is singularly unexpected. A once dear friend of mine, twisted beyond recognition and driven mad by the Lunar Tyrant. Though she may now be lost to us, she may still fulfil her dreams in death. After all, there is nothing that this mare loved more than a little celebration.”
As the cheering grew to a pinnacle, she turned, facing Lunatic. “Once upon a time, alicorns prided themselves with their apparently-unmatched magical potential. A claim since refuted, but every alicorn since seems to hide behind that little lie, using it as a crutch to inspire fear and terror in ponies they seek to suppress.”
“Today, we shall show this tyrant the place they ultimately deserve. Totally reliant upon their magic, we shall remove the tool with which they weave that tapestry,” readying another spell, she turned to the guards. “Remove her horn guard, so that I may remove her horn.”
Two guards approached Lunatic, carefully using their own magic to unlock the full-horn thaumic suppressor with a series of complicated arcane keys. The dull blanket feeling of magical deprivation lifted the moment they pulled it clear of her horn, her mind immediately digesting information regarding the local magic and nearby active spells.
Before she had time to react, Twilight loosed a single spell at her, the purple beam striking her in the neck and surrounding her head in thin purple tendrils. The blanket feeling returned as the magical suppressor spell struggled to nullify her own magical capabilities. Lunatic pushed back against it, the spell barely able to hold ground against her.
Twilight cocked her head, confused. “That should have…”
The spell disintegrated, motes of purple-and-blue light erupting from the tip of Lunatic’s horn as the spell components flew apart, unable to fight against a spellcaster vastly beyond that which it had been intended for. Fighting against the pain from her severed wing, she immediately ignited her horn, weaving a teleport spell with the dangerously-simple destination of ‘anywhere but here.’
A wave of pain slammed into her mind as her teleport was smacked down, blocked by the force field bubble surrounding the stage. Her trajectory rebounded, forcing her to reappear on the opposite side of the stage as the unused thaumic potential unceremoniously converted itself to kinetic energy, slamming her to the floor. Caught off-guard, Twilight primed the same spell again before hastily firing.
With a pained grin, Lunatic erected a focussed ward, catching and reflecting the spell beam back towards its source. Twilight was slammed backwards, unable to erect a ward of her own before the thaumic suppression spell hit her square in the face. The purple tendrils quickly sought out and enveloped her horn, the unicorn’s dismayed screams petering out as her magical megaphone spell was cut off.
The four elken guards hefted their weapons, runes of power along their armour igniting and granting them immunity to whatever Lunatic could throw at them, magical or otherwise. She looked around frantically for anything she could use to defend herself as the guards advanced on her, her vision eventually settling on Theta’s bound form, chained to the stage mere hooflengths from where she had crashed.
She ignited her horn, probing the field that enveloped the stage. After ensuring that it wouldn’t block what she was about to attempt, she drew every last piece of magical energy at her disposal and tied it into a single spell, a spell usually inlaid onto an object for energy efficiency, but one that could (with sufficient application of magical energy) be fired off directly.
The guards charged at her. Lunatic dodged sideways, wrapping her legs and remaining wing around Theta’s thrashing, captive form, and discharged the spell.
The world went sideways.