Twilight arrived in Celestia’s study to find an alarming ruin of the usually comforting retreat. Used to many a crisis in Canterlot by this time, she readied herself for an ambush or battle. She considered asking her friends for help, but noted Luna had requested her and only her. She reminded herself that Luna had said her magic expertise was needed, not her defense, and so the sight in front of her left her wary of what precisely had gone wrong. The door had been roughly thrown open, and was still slowly swinging in the wind. Books lay scattered, the claw marks of some…thing that had made its clumsy way through the study riddling them. Twilight peered at them, already musing on what could have made them.
Bad summon? A magical creatures class gone wrong? But that wouldn’t lead to Celestia’s study… Whatever the creature was, it was obviously not used to confined spaces. Feathers were scattered amidst the debris, and the disturbed and crumbled books (Twilight vowed to mourn them later) were knocked about in a pattern of two gangly feet. Almost as if the creature, whatever it was, had not wanted to disturb them.
It sure doesn’t look like it was on a rampage. What it looks like is clumsy. Maybe somepony turned into this thing. Maybe it was a transformation spell gone wro— Realization struck Twilight. Her mouth dropped in horror, and all the blood drained from her cheeks. Oh no. Oh no no no no no no no no. She raced from the study, leaping over the damaged books with a spread of her wings.
“Luna!” she hollered, flying past a discarded feather the size of her hoof. “Luna?!” She flew through the hallways, seeking out the courtroom. She considered taking Celestia’s ‘secret’ passages straight to the solar regent’s chambers, but ruled that to start with she should know what exactly was going to be waiting for her when she got there. So to Luna she went. Thoughts raced through her mind as quickly as she raced through the hallways.
She turned corners, weaved through staircases and passages and made at least one cut through a set of hidden doors she’d found when playing hide and seek with Shining Armor years ago. All the while, her thoughts echoed with horrible transformation results all tying back to her incompetent spell formation. Blobbish lumps of living flesh, half-breed versions of multiple animals and mindless creatures stalking the hallways for tasty ponies all filled up her mind, making her shudder in horror and guilt with each awful fantasy.
She reached the court at last, breathing a sigh of relief at having reached the familiar golden doors, supportive (if unhelpful) guards and sanctuary from her anxieties that the location was sure to provide. Her heart plummeted when she noticed that those same golden doors were closed. She skidded to a halt, spreading her wings to slow herself to a stop. She reminded herself that she had to scan the situation before she could jump to any kind of conclusion. To that end, she trotted towards the guards, her shoulders hunched and her upper lip working at her lower one. “Excuse me, sirs, but is Luna holding court today?”
“No, ma’am.” One of them said as rigidly as possible. At her questioning look, he broke his formation to say. “She seemed to be looking for you, your majesty. Seems Princess Celestia has taken ill, and she wanted your opinion.” With that confirmation, Twilight could only bow her head in shame at the evidence of the havok her selfish request was wrecking.
“Oh...sorry, then.” She slunk away, her apology directed as much at all the ponies who would never have their requests heard by Luna’s ears than at the guards themselves. In her slump, she did not notice the pony standing in front of her, and so her head bumped into Princess Luna’s chest with a soft ‘thump’.
“Twilight Sparkle!” Luna’s voice carried warmth and relief, earning her an uncertain glance from the young alicorn below her. “Thank the stars you have arrived. Please, follow as quick as you can. Our time is precious.” Luna pivoted into a rigid stride and beckoned Twilight towards Celestia’s quarters with a solemn sweep of her wing. The little alicorn obliged, cantering to keep up with Luna’s urgent pace.
Hallways came and went, Luna weaved across carpet, cobblestone and even open air to make her way from the court doors to her sister’s study as quickly as she possibly could. At last she turned to wait, allowing Twilight to catch up with her elder. Twilight let out a sigh of relief, taking the opportunity the pause presented to stare up at Luna’s face and try to read her expression. “My sister has made a terrible error, Twilight Sparkle. And so, as is so oft the case, it has fallen to you to clean up her mess and correct her failings.” Luna’s eyes shined with mirth for a moment, though they stared forward in unwavering focus all the same.
“Mistake? The Princess?” Luna’s ears pricked at the sound of her sister’s formal title, a title that Twilight had stopped using with Luna months before. The other Princess’s amusement grew shadowed with exasperation, but still Twilight ploughed through the conversation like a neurotic bulldozer. “Oh, no no no. I asked her to test the spell I created, and that’s what got her into...well, you haven’t really told me what happened yet. But it’s still my fault that whatever has happened happened. My spell, my request, my fault.”
Twilight sagged, a bittersweet smile overtaking her lips. The sting of dragging herself through the mud was outweighed by her having saved Celestia’s good name, or so she had hoped. The pair of them turned a corner to find the last leg of their destination ahead, the notable length of the hallway giving ample time for the discussion the two were starting.
“Not so.” Luna contradicted, her voice stressing each syllable with slow, steady purpose. “Your spell was the catalyst, ‘tis true, but it was Celestia’s own oversight that caused the crisis at hoof.” She saw Twilight’s eyes light up with defiance, and so she silenced her companion preemptively by launching into her explanation.
“The race my sister selected when testing your spell was—for reasons that I cannot discern and she refuses to share—a beast that is as ferocious as it is forgotten. She cannot speak, she can barely walk and she of course cannot do magic, and all of this is her own doing, thanks to her own decisions in casting the spell. ‘Tis not my fault if I am to craft a carriage and its driver then steers it into a lake.”
Twilight brushed past the dated metaphor, focusing on the ways in which her blame could trump her dearest friend’s. “Even then, she should still be able to turn back, and therefore, it’s my oversight for not properly describing the spell and its range of species to her when I sent it to her. And therefore,” Twilight concluded happily, “it is my fault.”
Luna’s smile was strained, but still patient, and she spoke softly and slowly. “Wrong again, Twilight Sparkle. You continue to jump to conclusions despite my assurance I have reasons to showcase the contrary. Matters concerning our sister, it seems, dull that brilliant brain she is so often fawning over.” Twilight blushed, but Luna pressed on, her teasing smile growing more grave and flattened to match her changing tone. “The beast my sister morphed into was a predator of our ancestors, Twilight Sparkle. We suffered under its terrors as foals, and as such remember its most dangerous trait. She currently finds herself in the body of an animal immune to magic, as many of those animals who preyed upon our species were.”
Twilight grew pale at the words, feeling the blood drain from her face. ”She what?” She came to a stop between two suits of battle armor, her brain barely registering that the doors to Celestia’s study were visible in the distance.
Luna gave a bittersweet smile. “Such was my reaction.”
Twilight just slowly shook her head, panic rising higher and higher into her throat with every word she produced. “I don’t think you understand, Luna. If she’s immune to magic, that means there’s nothing I can do to change her back. I won’t be able to scan her to see what she did, I won’t be able to cast an anti-spell and I won’t be able to reverse the spell she cast. You don’t need a mage, you need a biologist. Until we can figure out how to counteract her immunity somehow—and that could take months!—We’ll be completely powerless to change her back!”
Luna’s brow grew more and more furrowed at Twilight’s continuing description. Twilight looked ahead for a moment, and almost jumped out of her skin when she at last noticed the state of one of the castle’s most familiar sites. Celestia’s lovely, cozy and beautiful bedroom was a mangled ruin of its former self. Those welcoming, kindly shining gates of embroidered gold and wood were nothing more than twisted metal and shattered splinters hanging limply from their straining hinges. Feathers and papers scattered across the floor, Twilight’s wide eyes searching in horror.
A pit was starting to form in her stomach, the sight of the truly gigantic feathers invoking a sneaking suspicion in her mind. She let her pupils quiver for but a moment, her face soon changing to the determined stare she had levelled at so many other threats to Her Princess in her time as Celestia’s student. “What exactly is the creature she changed herself into, Luna?”
“‘Tis an ancient creature, and it has long since gone extinct.” Twilight’s thoughts ran down the list of extinct feathered pony predators that were immune to magic that she had learned of, and given it was a list of one, what had once been a mere hypothesis soon turned to a certainty at what Luna was about to say. “I am not certain you would know them, for they are seldom mentioned in history. We called them—”
“The terror birds?” Twilight’s voice was hardened, but still not devoid of panic.
“You encountered them in your readings, we presume?” Luna raised an eyebrow, the faintest of knowing smiles gracing her inky blue lips.
“Just this afternoon, actually. I was reading about the history of races of Equestria because Spike asked me to teach him about the books I had in my room for my spell.” Twilight looked at the monstrous maw with splintered teeth resting where her mentor’s open book of a study should have rested. “Let’s just hope that what I read stuck.” She said more to herself than to Luna.
Luna opened her mouth to reply, but Twilight was already on the move by the time the nocturnal alicorn had begun to curl her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Luna completed the motion by clicking said tongue instead. “Perhaps ‘tis best to let those two well enough alone.” She mused, giving a long-suffering sigh.
Twilight poked her head through the door with trepidation, taking in the scenery as quickly and carefully as she could. “Princess?” Her voice was unsteady, but she did her best to make it as comforting and heartfelt as she could. She noticed the scattered furniture and shredded paper scraps almost immediately, while the mess of discarded objects surrounding the claw-scratched vanity came to her attention not long after. A warble came from behind the bed, bring Twilight’s eyes to the silhouette of the giant monster that housed the mind of the love of—of her oldest and most trusted friend.
The creature revealed itself by walking a few slow, shaky footsteps away from the silk curtain that framed the bed it had been hiding behind. The thump of a giant’s feet echoed out through the doorway with enough force to shake Twilight’s chest. What surprised Twilight the most about the disturbing mesh of feather and blades that pulled into view was not that Celestia now stood another full pony’s height taller than her, nor that she had a set of ruthlessly curved, sharpened and pointed killing instruments where her muzzle and hooves should have been.
No, what struck Twilight first was how uncannily the spell had reproduced Celestia’s colour scheme. Green, pink and blue feathers radiated in a pair of smooth and rigid crests from her tail and head. Bright white feathers, by contrast, covered the bulk of her body, with the naked skin of her legs striking up the same light beige tones that Twilight knew rested beneath Celestia’s coat. The eyes that stared out at her were the same inviting pink as Celestia’s own, though they were slitted with daggerlike jet black pupils. This, of course, repelled Twilight more than anything else, as if she was looking at some cruel mockery of the pony she loved.
The creature’s stomach rumbled, setting both it and Twilight on edge. The room stood completely still for a few moments, giving Twilight’s mind plenty of time to conjure a plethora of scenarios and fears. Is the Princess aware of her actions right now? Could Celestia really lose so much control as to try to eat me? Maybe I’m just not important enough for her to remember me. Twilight’s heart sunk, the next thought bubbling up against her will. She’ll eat me, then barely remember me when somepony else finally changes her back.
She shook her head, defiance building up inside her. Luna seemed fine, she reasoned, granting herself a respite from her fears. Her anxieties, however, had more to say on the matter. Even if I mean as much to her as Luna, I didn’t think to check if Luna was actually able to cooperate with Celestia or if she just held her in place. Twilight fought the urge to bolt from the room.
Stupid! Stupid! Always check the facts always check the facts always check the facts! Twilight squeezed her eyes shut, praying an ambush was not awaiting her. After several tense moments of utter silence, she cracked open her eyes, focusing immediately upon Celestia’s warped body. The first thing she noticed was that the monster was still staring at her, its crest raised and its body leaning away from her.
This managed to relax her just a little, which was enough. If she really was dangerous, Luna wouldn’t have left her to roam free like this. And she sure wouldn’t have let me go in without so much as a warning. Twilight took a few steps forward, and the monstrous animal’s crest fell back. It gave a mournful warble, bowing its head away from Twilight.
“Princess, I’m so sorry—Oh, this is all my fault…” Twilight tilted her head. “Can you even understand me?” Celestia nodded her head, prompting Twilight to bridge the gap between them. Twilight stretched her wings, flapping up to Celestia’s eye level with awkward wing beats in what she hoped would be a gesture not unlike Celestia’s lowering of her head to reach Twilight’s gaze. Celestia’s stomach protested once again, making her cringe away from Twilight and turn her beak as far from her pupil as possible.
Twilight placed a hoof against her shoulder, shakily at first, but firmly once she had made contact. She gave the Princess her best smile, a smile she usually reserved for a trembling Fluttershy. A scaly claw rested itself against Twilight’s hoof, a gesture that at once frightened and reassured her. “Princess Luna said you asked for me, but she also said you’re immune to magic. Is that true?” The bird gave a glum nod. Twilight looked down. “Guess that means I’m not gonna be much help in the changing you back department.”
Celestia tilted her head at this, but before Twilight could elaborate her crest rose and her eyes widened. Her mouth fell open, and she then closed it with a quiet warble. Twilight let her process her thoughts. Celestia stayed silent for a moment, her claws folding together while she thought. Twilight took the pause to study Celestia’s new body in greater detail. Streaks of ink stained the arm feathers and paper shreds clung to the scales on the claws, while the chest’s feathers were of a fluffier composition than the flanks and shoulders. She also noticed that her ex-mentor’s feathers were of two types—the upper feathers being strong, slender shafts of rigid fibres and the ones beneath a weave of fluffy plumes.
Celestia’s movement broke her from her study of the strange, alien body before her, shifting her focus to the pony she so loved and what she needed. Celestia stalked towards her desk with stumbling movements, faltering here and there. Twilight watched the feet move their ponderous way along the floor, noting with a sort of morbid fascination that the deadly implements that she had seen stopping a pony in its tracks in terror hours before were now making a drunkard’s walk across a floor fluffed over with papers and feathers. Celestia began writing at her desk, her arms controlling a quill with jerky, erratic infrequency. The sounds of tearing paper and the writing implement’s scrawling tip filled the silent bedroom for a moment.
At last, Celestia held up a paper with a simple sentence made up of oversized words (if Twilight was to be honest, referring to the abominations of weaving spidery lines on the page “words” was generous) placed erratically across its span. With some effort, the scholar was able to parse the chickenscratch phrase in front of her. “Help me to walk?” It said. Twilight’s reply was cut off by a rumble from her companion’s stomach, giving them both pause. Celestia turned to her desk and set back to writing with a doubled vigor. A much larger, much clearer single word took up the next page. “Hungry”, it read out.
Twilight gave a weak smile. “Yeah, I think I can probably do something about both those problems.” She dropped down from her flapping position to the cluttered floor, deciding to tackle movement first. She put a hoof to her chin, thinking on how best to teach Celestia to walk. Walking on her hind legs was an action she had only ever seen that minty green pony with the lyre cutie mark try, and she was pretty sure that doing so would throw one of her hip sockets out of place, so that option was out of the question.
She thought of simply trying to analyze how Celestia was walking and go from there, which seemed like it was thus far the most appealing option. She needed time for such a method to work, however, and Celestia’s hunger pangs gave her very little of that. This left teaching by example, but Twilight found herself at a loss as to how she would do so.
Celestia’s stomach growled again, and Twilight’s gaze hardened into her game face once again. She raced through any thoughts she had on the awkwardness of walking upright, and immediately a memory of what was by far the strangest species she had ever transformed into came to mind. A transformation process she had, at least in part, based the transformation spell itself upon.
She closed her eyes and tried to capture that distant magical aura, letting her memories of that other world she had visited months before flow over her. Celestia looked over at the shining of Twilight’s horn, her beak opening to give a squawk of concern. Twilight, however, was already in the beginning stages of her transformation, magic flowing across her body like water over a fish. With every gust of magic, her body morphed a little bit more, not unlike watching a caterpillar’s chrysalis subjected to an accelerated aging spell.
Her figure was stretching, becoming more slender and curving like a bell in places. She could feel her breasts moving up to rest between her armpits, something that she had always found to be by far the most disturbing part about this particular species. Her body began to lose the fur that clothed it most of the time, being replaced with a sweater, dress and boots that inexplicably followed her wherever she went in this form. Her hooves expanded out into spidery limbs not unlike Celestia’s talons, but thinner and blunted at the tips. Her shoulder bones expanded like miniature wings of their own, and her clavicles formed a collar framing over her chest to make it more impressive and sturdy.
Lastly, her head changed shape in what Twilight considered by far the most appealing aspect of the new body. Her face smoothed down, softened, and took on a tiny, scrunched up nose. Her lips flattened out, and her eyes widened and grew circular. Her forehead expanded, rounding her face out into a shape somewhere between a heart and an oval. The most important part about this form, however, was that her body was now angled in a vertical direction, where before it had been horizontal.
“There. This should help.” Twilight said, flexing out her new vocal chords. She stretched out a hand, making sure each of the fingers was as separately articulate as they had been in the mirror world. Next, she paced a few steps forward and backward across the study, and then at last she turned around to look at Celestia.
The bird in front of her had its beak dropped open, the slitted pupils widening to sizes Twilight had not thought possible. The crest, too, raised in a fluff of feathers. Ultimately, this made Celestia look less menacing and more lopsided than before, making Twilight let out a nervous giggle. Celestia only tilted her head, beak still hanging in a numb gape. “What?” Twilight looked at her in concern.
Celestia grabbed another set of paper, scribbling out more of those messy, uncontrolled lines. She held up the resulting page, this one inscribed with the words “What is this?” Twilight looked down at her new body, hands idly tugging at the dress.
“Oh, this. Well, uh, remember what I told you about those weird creatures from the mirror world? I thought, since they have hands and they walk on two legs, it might be easier if I teach you how to walk on two legs by showing you. And maybe help you with your writing, too. Though I’m not that great at mine anyway, unless I’m forgetting.” Twilight gave a sheepish blush, walking slowly and purposefully to the other side of the room.
Her memory of the movement was not as strong as she remembered it being, as she found out when she drove her knee painfully into the side of Celestia’s bed. She groaned, grabbing the offending limb with both hands and pulling it out of harm’s way with a wince. After a moment of fumbling with her leg, however, she was back on track and making her way across the room smoothly, if not quickly. “See?”
Celestia was watching carefully, her head tilting to one side to follow the strange shape around the room. In particular, she found herself staring at the sway of Twilight’s hips, something that made her crest raise itself in a stiff display of multicoloured feathers. She paid it little mind, instead worrying about how the rotating socket of bone and muscle beneath that purple dress worked.
She was, of course, inconvenienced by the obscuring nature of said dress, and so she found herself following the place where the dress was tightest around Twilight’s hips. From what she could see, one leg stood still while the other one pivoted in a small arc in front of her, then the other leg followed up to rest slightly in front of its partner. This cycle served to get Twilight across the room with relatively even steps, though she did make mistakes here and there.
Once she had seen a few cycles from one corner of the room to the other, Celestia decided to give it a try herself, pushing one foot forward while the other stayed in place. Her head bobbed with every step, something she noticed Twilight’s didn’t do, but rather than muse on this she instead made to press forward. She was finding, to her annoyance, that she had more and more questions about her current form building up in her mind. She pushed forward, fighting back the feelings of powerlessness that were building up with every question she had to push away. Unfortunately, her focus on simply walking with a steady gait meant she didn’t notice she was changing her direction until Twilight was shouting “Princess!”
The hard wood of her vanity collided with her chest like a sucker punch, knocking the wind from her lungs and making her fight to breathe amidst coughing, undignified squawks. She clutched her chest with both scaly claws, trying and failing to force her diaphragm to pump air in even beats with every breath. At last she gave a long, low, raspy growl, letting her lungs expend their air contents in a gradual exhale. Twilight was, she noticed with some gratitude, holding her in place while she coughed and wheezed.
“Princess! Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry! I didn’t notice you had started walking until it was too late, and I should have been paying more attention, and—” Celestia silenced Twilight by placing a claw on her shoulder. Twilight looked uncertain, so Celestia leaned in and gave her a nuzzle. This did not appear to exactly comfort Twilight, but at the least she had stopped offering up apologies for things that were very barely her fault. It was at this point that Celestia’s stomach decided to return to grumbling with a vengeance, making them both stop to stare down at it.
It rumbled again, this time giving a cramp that made Celestia’s eyes squint and muscles tense. She hissed at the pain, the sound crawling from her throat to slither its way into Twilight’s darkest, most instinctual fears. Twilight reacted almost instantly. She broke away from the reassuring embrace with a quick step to the door, making sure she was safely within escape distance. “I...think maybe you’re hungrier than we—well, mostly I—thought.” She said the words as slowly and carefully as she could, eyes searching Celestia’s own for any sign of killer intent.
Celestia opened her mouth to reassure her, but the soothing words came out as a barking squawk that made Twilight take yet another step back. Her body glowed with energy, shrinking back down to the four-legged shape that was so familiar to Celestia with a burst of magic. “I’ll be back soon. I promise I will.” She said these words forcefully, though her head pointed away from Celestia and towards herself.
“I just need to be sure, I—I’ll find you something to eat, I promise! But until I do, please, please stay here. Just try to stay out of trouble. No, I have a better idea.” Twilight’s horn flashed with magic, and at once the walls that had once housed the doorway grew together into a single, solid unit. Celestia stared at the sight of her student locking her away with a sinking heart. “I’m sorry.” Twilight said, once again more to herself than to her mentor. “I have to make sure. I just have to, Princess. I’ll be back. I promise!” With that final plea for understanding, the panicky alicorn vanished in a flash of salmon magic, leaving Celestia locked within the wreck of her bedchambers.
The protests that had been on the tip of her beak died with the last flashes of Twilight’s magic, her beak closing quietly. Celestia looked round at the shredded papers and broken furniture from before, which took on a much darker meaning now that Twilight had fled her presence. The feelings of powerlessness that she had forced back earlier overtaking her at last. Worse, she was a danger. A clumsy, powerless danger, both to herself and to the others around her. Especially to the others around her.
She felt like a mix between criminal and child. On one end, completely dependent, hopelessly incompetent in even the most basic of life processes and host to emotions and behaviours she barely understood. On the other, an enemy to her hosts, a threat to their survival and a leader of a lifestyle neither they nor she desired or fully understood. She gave a quiet, defeated warble, knowing that her only solace was the hope that her loved ones would once again stoop to carry her.