Twilight awoke slowly. This is in no way abnormal to her after the hours of studying she did last night, but there was something very new to Twilight this morning. She wasn’t in her bed, instead, she was on a small pile of hay in a random forest she didn’t recognize.
Once she was fully awake, she began to panic as she had no idea where she was, how long she had been asleep, how she got here, or really anything about the situation. It took her roughly 30 minutes to start thinking again.
“Okay first things first, where am I?” Twilight asked herself, having calmed herself down. To her surprise, she got an answer.
“You are very deep in the Everfree Forest. I don’t think you ponies mapped this far yet, but who knows?” A very polite, feminine voice said at a speed that betrayed its pleasant tone. Right when Twilight was about to panic again, a Draconequus
popped in front of her.
She was similar to Discord in appearance, the same crazy eyes and mismatched body. If Twilight looked hard enough then she might be able to notice a few key differences, but they were minor for the most part.
“Another Draconequus? How!? Why!? Whmmm,” Twilight was cut off by magic sealing her mouth in the form of a pillow.
“If you let me introduce myself first before you start panicking, then maybe you’ll get your answer. I’m Genesis, and I have task for you to complete. If you fail, then I will finish where Discord left off.” Halfway through her introduction, she noticed that Twilight was still not calming down. With a snap of her claws, she forced the alicorn to calm down with a store-grade stress relief pill that Twilight probably invented to keep herself from going mad. “You see those gems,” Genesis pointed to a stone wall right next to the pair. On it, there were five gems in a circle, each a different color. One blue, one grey, one red, one white, and one green “Each time one of my tests has been completed, one of them will light up. If they are all lit up, then I’ll leave and teleport you back home. Are we clear?” Genesis asked, finally dropping the polite tone and going for an annoyed one.
“Crystal, but why do this in the first place?” Twilight asked.
“I’ll tell you after you beat your first challenge.” Genesis promised. With another snap, they stood at the edge of a huge lake. “Make it to the other side.” Genesis said in a slightly more pleasant tone and teleported off, but not before shoving Twilight in the water and making the shore line disappear. “Oh, and no magic or wings.” As she said this from who knows where. Her wings were bounded with a magic chain and her horn was sealed up by crystals not unlike the ones Sombra used against Twilight’s brother.
“Gah!” Twilight said as she splashed into the cold water. She got to swimming quickly, going at a pace she hoped would take her to the other side without sapping her energy or giving her hypothermia.
She paused when she saw an underwater cave. Twilight was going to pay it no mind, but her curiosity got the better of her, as it so often does. She swam down and entered a small opening. She shivered as she got out of the water, the coldness of the water having got to her. The cave was clearly artifical, the perfectly round shape of it and pedestal made of limestone in the middle of it.
Twilight walked over to the pedestal, seeing a spell book on it. She instantly got to reading, the desire to read entering her mind. She was barely three paragraphs in before she dropped the book in confusion. ‘Why would someone make this?’ Twilight asked herself. She read the rest, seeing it was simple, even though it took a lot of mana to pull off. The spells in the book were only for emergencies, but it would give the caster an attribute of an animal and integrate it into their body. By itself that wasn’t so bad, but there was no “reverse” switch, so it was permanent. ‘Okay Twilight, think. If I fail this test, then everything's over. So I should cast it, even if I don’t want to?’ Twilight concluded. ‘How am I going to get these crystals off?’ She was quite intent on answering that question. First, she tried just casting a spell. The magic seemed to have no problem getting to her horn, but it just couldn’t leave it.
‘But if I cast something that uses outside energy, like say, a magnet spell that repels crystalline structures, then I should be able to break it.’ Twilight thought. She channelled magical energy to her horn as to cast the spell, but this time, Twilight was simply casting a low level magnetic repulsion spell. It was a slow process, but the crystals on her horn eventually flew off. After testing some basic spells, just to make sure her horn still worked, she then took a deep breath and casted the transformation spell.
Nothing happened immediately, as was expected, but Twilight was more or less sure that the spell had worked. With another deep breath, she jumped back into the water.
She shivered as she kept swimming, occasionally going up for breath. She noticed how the ceiling seemed to be close to her head. So, she started to swim faster, hoping the stress pill was still active, a move that Twilight would later regret. Eventually, she noticed that she was unable to swim for more than a meter without stopping. Now with only enough room to put her nose above the water, she was running out of options. Panic overtook her quickly as she tried to hold her breath and keep moving forward. She tried teleporting, unwrapping her wings and anything else she could think off before giving in to rising panic. The ceiling finally touched the water and Twilight’s breath was running out. From what she could tell, the water was becoming a lot more red. Twilight felt water burst into her lungs with speeds that should have ripped her apart as she saw nothing but black.
Until a burning sensation rippled through her, jarring her into a state of confusion as to what caused it. Before her mind could figure it out, her chest cried out in pain. Twilight yelled, letting even more water into her lungs, increasing her pain further. The pain led way to fire as her neck felt as if it was melting along with her lungs,causing Twilight to become completely blind to anything around her.
Twilight didn’t know how long she was out for. What she did know was that she should be dead. Shaking the dizziness from her head, she got back up on to her hooves and took a deep breath. Only to then realize she was underwater.
“How the…!” Twilight asked before cutting herself off. ‘The spell, of course.’ Twilight thought. ‘What else could it be? It fits every piece of evidence.’ After realising this, she kept swimming a lot more carefree this time, after all, there was no way she could drown.
A few minutes later, she resurfaced on a shoreline that, unlike the rest of the lake, actually had a view of the sky. Before Twilight could even take a sigh of relief, she heard Genesis’ voice calling to her. “Twilight.”
“Look at that, you're not dead. I would’ve thought that the ceiling closing in would have done it for sure.”
“You were trying to kill me!?” Twilight shouted directly in Genesis’ face.
“No, you were just being slow,” Genesis replied. “Now for your reward for completing the challenge. My reasoning for this is quite simple. Boredom,” She stated flatly. “Now before you can ask me any more questions, off to the next challenge.” And with that, Twilight is whisked away.
Once they arrived at their destination, Twilight was able to take in the scenery, of which there wasn’t much of. It was just a series of stone walls and ceiling. “Oh great, I guess I have to find the exit,” Twilight said with a loud groan.
“You guessed it,” Genesis replied, teleporting away.
“Well, here I go,” Twilight said, starting to walk down the bland hallway.
Twilight’s thoughts started to drift from her as she just kept moving from hallway to hallway. She learned quickly that she couldn’t make any marks on the walls and she couldn’t teleport as she didn’t know where it might end her up, the only option was to just keep walking.
She started to wonder if time was still flowing at a normal pace when she stepped on a pressure pad. Without any further warning, a wall came slamming in behind her, sealing her path back the way she came. Then, a series of blades came swinging down from the ceiling, causing Twilight to back into the wall with fright. ‘What do I do what do I do what do I?’ Repeated in her mind several times before she was calm enough to think again.
“First things first, look for a way out,” Twilight said to herself as she started to look around. Everything seemed normal, except for the swinging blades that is, but then she noticed a small little opening right past the 2nd blade. ‘I don’t know if I can make it there,’ Twilight thought as she started to plot her course with one of her favorite tools. Math! ‘Let’s see, each blade moves at about 40 meters per second at their course can be described as X…’ Her mind continued focusing on that for another few minutes before she finally got it. ‘Got it, I have to jump when Blade A is at it’s start and when Blade B is halfway through!’ She thought as she prepared to make probably the fastest jump in her life.
Everything was going smoothly until the second blade made a huge gash across her ribcage. Twilight screamed in pain as she completed the jump and made it to the safe spot. She fell to her knees as her blood came rushing out. Her wing was cut badly too, now it almost in half. ‘I’m...Losing… too much blood.’ She thought desperately as she lay there, dying.
Until once again, the spell kicked in. Unfortunately for Twilight, that meant even more pain than what she’s feeling right now. The spell first affected her wings, specifically the one that was hurt. She felt as if someone had just injected fire into her bones, burning her up from the inside. Every single feather could be felt shriveling up and dying as the wings disappeared from her body.
Next was her body, which didn’t so much as burn. Twilight, if she were still awake, probably would have compared it to Tartarus. Her body got longer and slender. Muscles that would make Applejack jealous formed throughout her entire being. She was shocked back to the waking world as a ripple of pain blasted through her jaw. Growing in size and in deadliness, as now there were sharp teeth fit for ripping through just about anything.
Her legs elongated, bent, and snapped at new angles. Her hooves shrank, revealing paws in the most painful fashion possible. Claws then added salt to the wound by jabbing out, causing her to once again to pass out. Her nose and eyes were some of the last things to change. Her eyes shrinking to pin pricks at the edges of her now cat-like pupil. Her nose became bigger, giving her enough oxygen for the very final change, which were her mane and tail. Her mane seemed to disappear, thankfully not in a painful fashion, and her tail became a tiger’s as pink stripes cascaded throughout her changing fur.
After recovering from the ordeal, she immediately noticed her new paws, which happened when she promptly fell down onto her face, giving her a bloody nose. The spell, unlike last time, instantly sprang to life, but instead of altering her body, it altered her mind. A stream of memories that weren’t hers came streaming into her head. Of someone, something, hunting, walking, breathing, killing, and every little thing that an animal would do in its natural life. All of this flowed into Twilight much like a refreshing taste of water. This was not painful, but it definitely changed her. The intelligent mind that she had once had was still there, it was just now protected by her new predatory instincts.
Once Twilight got back onto her feet, she first tried to figure out how in the world a spell could be that smart without using up enough magical energy to light the sea on fire. ‘Why was the spell acting like that?’ Twilight thought to herself. ‘That was a full biological change. Why didn’t it just heal my wounds? Oh, I got it. It was because I was so close to death. Before, sure I was drowning, but there is only one thing that you need to fix that. How do you fix a bad body? Get a new one.’ Twilight got while checking out her new body out in the magical made reflective rock. ‘Good to know my magic is as good as ever.’ Twilight thought with a grin. ‘Now then, back to the challenge.’ Twilight thought as she got ready to jump back in.
Her first move was to jump over the nearest blade and then roll under the 2nd one. She then got herself placed in between two and noticed another small hole in the side of the wall. She then leaped over the next three blades and landed safely in the indent. 'Too easy.’ Twilight grinned, starting to feel quite confident of herself. She looked around to see if there was anything in here she could use. ‘Ah, a spell!’ Twilight said as she looked at runes carved on the wall. ‘It seems to amplify spells based around transfiguration.’ Twilight mused. ‘Do I have enough magical energy left? I could barely cast a reflection spell.’ Twilight decided to just go for it. Her horn, which was probably one of the only parts of her that wasn’t changed at all, lit up as her familiar aura covered her body. Once she had spent about 5 seconds like that, that arua covering her turned green, indicating that the spell was complete. ‘That wasn’t so hard.’ Twilight thought to herself as she took a stretch and leapt straight for the exit,dodging several blades with ease.
After that, there was a fork in the road. Twilight, just making a random guess, took a left. After some more walking, and a lot more random turns, Twilight came across a narrow pathway that seemed to lead out of the maze. ‘No way is that easy.’ Twilight sighed as she saw the obvious pressure plate in front of her. She leaped over it and trotted to the exit.
Once she stepped over the checkered line that had the word “Finish” hovering above it, the entire room faded away like paint in rain, the forest reforming around her.
“So how did it go oohhhhhh,” Genesis said as she saw Twilight teleport right in front of her. “Looks like someone found my nature spell, so that’s why you didn’t die!”
“Yes, I did, to be honest, it was the only thing that gave me a fighting chance,” Twilight admitted.
“Why do you think I put it in there?” Genesis asks. “Anyway, for finding it, and the amplifier, I will give you two questions that I will answer.”
“Okay, are you and Discord related in any way other than species?” Twilight asks.
“Yes, we are brother and sister,” Genesis answers.
“Why am I doing these challenges?”
“Because you are the element of magic, and I couldn’t think of someone with more qualification for representing ponykind. Well, maybe the other princesses, but I know too much about them for this to be fun,” Genesis said, slightly rambling. “Now then, on to the next challenge.”