Now with all of those formalities out of the way, let's get to why you opened this book. You want to learn how to use Alchemy, I'll bet. Before I tell you anything, there's something you need to know. It's so important, the rest of the text in this book won't appear until you read this message in full twice.
Alchemy is one of the most dangerous forces in the world. A young, powerless pony can cause destruction on a scale that not myself or even the princesses can do, just because they pulled the wrong string. But, they won't be able to control that destruction to any sort of degree if they're not sure of what they're doing anyways. But more importantly than destruction, is the impact on the lives of ponies around you. Alchemy is a very non-selfish magic; it takes and it gives in equal amounts, always. But it is very, very easy to let alchemy control you and become very selfish. That is why this book can only have come into your possession by a trusted teacher. Alchemy is not for the masses, and it never will be.
Now, you may be asking yourself, "What even is alchemy? What does it do? Why is it so dangerous? Why should I learn it?" Alchemy is a form of magic that doesn't draw upon the magic within you, but it draws upon the energy stored within all matter. It allows its user to create things from existing matter and energy, and even convert that matter into different matter. Changing iron into steel, granite into marble, and so on. There are no limits with alchemy; but, if you don't have the self control to limit yourself, you should not be allowed to learn this magic. If this magic fell into the hands of evil, it could all but crush society. But it has the ability to bring about more positive changes in pony, gryphon, zebra, and any other society that is benefits even still manage to outweigh the costs.
When you learn alchemy, you are learning how to alter physical reality directly. It can create, and it can destroy; but, it can only do so when equality is maintained. Most of this book will be learning about the balance of the universe, and how everything seeks to achieve equality. Without an understanding here, you may go on to cause great harm to yourself, or worse yet, the ponies around you. I have learned first hand what alchemy can do in the hands of an ignorant mind, and it worse than anything else I have experienced.
Now, the first part of this chapter, we will be looking at some similarities between arcane magic and alchemy, and studying the makeup of alchemy and why it's different but similar...
Two days have passed since Twilight has arrived in Canterlot. For her, it has been two of the best days she’s had in a very, very long time -- aside from the lack of information from her research, at least. After her first night, she stayed up until about two in the morning studying in the book about alchemy. She found herself too tired to finish the very large book – which was about 1200 pages long: big for even her – so she put it away and decided to read on it for several days. The next day, she woke up at about eleven in the morning! She found herself more rested than she had been in months, and ready to tackle the day.
The day was spent with a nice brunch with coffee, and several hours on and off in the dark, private section of the Canterlot library. The unicorn was finding her work was already stagnating, for she could not find any more information on the ley lines. She went through so many books, but none of them had any new information. That whole day was spent in and out of that section of the library, with her off time being spent catching up with Celestia over tea, or just chatting while they sat in the throne room, waiting for ponies to come to day court.
Celestia was sure to let Twilight know that she could stay for as long as she needed or even wanted to. But, at the same time, she knew Twilight wasn’t the kind of pony to sit and do nothing when she had something to get done, and it was looking more and more like she was going to need to be the one to go and check on the ley lines herself. She was going to allow herself one more day after this one to see what else she could find. That night she was in the library until about two in the morning before returning to her bedroom, showering, and going straight to sleep.
On her third day, she only spent until about seven-thirty in the library before returning to her bedroom, after picking up a cup of coffee. She was pretty sure that her body had a physical addiction to caffeine at this point, making it where she even went to sleep with a cup of coffee sometimes.
She cast a spell to preserve the heat of her coffee while she took a quick shower. After the shower, she flopped in the massive king sized bed, sighing loudly to herself. She was going to need to prepare for a possibly very long journey, including materials to take, people to take, where she was going to go, methods she planned on using to study the ley lines… All these things were spinning in her head, but she decided to not worry about it at the moment. She would take tonight off and read some more of that alchemy book, then ask the princess for her opinion on how she should plan her research expedition.
She rearranged her pillows and sat up in the bed, pulling the book of alchemy out of the drawer in her nightstand. Looking at the cover, she wondered where this book had come from. It was written in a very archaic dialect of Equestrian that might have looked like a whole new language to ponies unfamiliar. Some of the language in the book was broken, too, which told her that this might even be a translated copy of the book. If that were the case, then she assumed that this alchemy was not actually originally a pony creation. That thought made her curious whether or not she would even be able to use alchemy herself were she to try… Should she try? The book doesn’t really explain much about alchemy itself, and really the spells in the book are really only accompanied with explanations to what they do.
Twilight cracked open the massive tome to the spot where she left off: transmutation. The first few chapters were about things that arcane magic could already do, which left her wondering just how different alchemy even was from normal unicorn magic. But, the first paragraph of this chapter had made her realize just how different it really was.
“Transmutation acts as the base, most fundamental part of what makes alchemy the great wonder that is. The magic is crucial if one is to progress further in this art. Transmutation is the act of taking one material and completely changing it into something else. For instance, one can turn stone into gold, given that there is enough stone...”
Twilight coughed as some of her coffee went down the wrong hole, and she almost spilled her cup on herself and the bed and book. She set the cup aside and reread those last two sentences several times. Changing one material into another… That was something that arcane magic can NOT do. All of a sudden, Twilight was getting very excited about studying, and she started to read further. The rest of the chapter was different equations that outlined turning one substance into another entirely. It detailed several, including one type of stone to another, one type of metal to another, water directly into ice, air into water, dirt and sand into stone, and many others. By the time she was halfway through with the chapter, she was getting very anxious to actually try some of these out herself to see if this magic was even for real.
She gave in and took the book with her to the floor. She laid the book on a rug and used her normal magic to extract a single stone slab from the floor under the rug. This way, if she were to mess it up, it at least wouldn’t be noticeable. She set the slab down in front of her and looked at the book. The first spell she wanted to try was to change the stone into a different type of stone completely. The floor of the castle was created from polished metamorphic slate. She would start small, and keep it in the same rock classification, and turn it into marble, a metamorphosed limestone. She looked at the spell in the book again, guessing that the symbols she saw worked in much the same way that arcane symbols did. She memorized the patterns on the page, then looked at the slab in front of her. She focused on that slab entirely, then brought the image of the alchemic symbols into her head. Since this wasn’t arcane magic, she didn’t need to draw upon her own magic. She just needed to balance that equation in her head. She focused on the formula for marble, then focused on the slab in front of her and added its properties into the equation in her head. She noticed her hooves start to glow with power, and she reached out and touched the slab.
After she initiated the spell in her hooves, the rest seemed to almost come naturally to her. When she touched the slab, the magic in her hooves reached out instantaneously and encompassed it and it glowed white for a second. When the light dissipated, the slate slab that she had been looking at was now a pristine white color. Twilight’s face went through several different emotions in rapid succession. First, was a look of almost horror, the second one of surprise, and the last and the one that stuck, joy. She squealed, clapping her hooves together and walking around the piece of marble that now rested on the floor like a dog might walk around and examine a bone. She leaned down to look at the tile, and touched it. It looked like marble, and it felt like marble. Though she noticed that this marble tile was smaller than the original. Maybe marble was worth more than slate, so it didn’t output the same amount when the equation was balanced?
After that one successful attempt, Twilight had more questions pop in her head than she’d ever had before. This felt the same as when she was a filly, still working out how to do simple arcane magic that all unicorns can do. And what was the first thing she would do when she was a filly when she did something cool? She would try to replicate it, of course! Twilight went through the same process that she did before, but in reverse. Instead of starting with slate and going to marble, she changed the equation in her head to go from marble to slate. Her hooves started to glow, and when she touched the marble tile, it changed back into its original form, with just as much material as there had been originally.
Twilight went back to the book and looked for something else to try. She changed the slate into a few more different types of rocks, all with varying degrees of worth. Sometimes the slate got larger, and sometimes it would shrink, depending on the value of the stone it was turning into. Once she had read and practiced this some more, the question of what exactly decided value came to mind, and filed that under “Look into later” in her head.
She went back to the first chapters of the book and experimented with changing the stone from its different forms. She then went through a few more trials, where she turned the stone into a fine sand, then back to the full stone. She almost turned it to its liquid form, before realizing that dumping a load of magma on the floor of the castle was probably a bad idea. She then assumed from that, that turning it into a gas would be a really bad idea. Another chapter let her change the slate into a different shape. She turned it into a small statue of herself, then into a small knife, then a coaster, then ball, and then final back into the slab that it originally was.
Twilight was beginning to grow more confident in this new ability of hers. She flipped back to the transmutation page of the book, looking for something interesting. She saw something that caught her eye; turning stone into water. If this were possible, she thought, then it could make living in the desert such an easy thing for ponies! They could just turn the sand directly into water! In her excitement, she merely glanced over the equation, finding it to be mostly the same as the other one… mostly. She failed to notice one very, very crucial difference in the equation.
Not realizing her mistake, Twilight focused on the magical equation in her mind, letting the runes almost physically appear in front of her. She once again focused on the slate tile in front of her, but when her hooves started to glow and she touched them to the slab, something catastrophic happened.
In the span of a second, the failed spell that Twilight tried to cast spread out over a vast majority of her room in the direction of the door. There was a blinding white light for less than half a second. After the light appeared, a large portion of the stone that made up the castle had a violent reaction to itself, and then the explosion happened. A loud boom shook existence, and it threw Twilight violently against the wall behind her. The whole middle section of Canterlot Castle exploded outwards: stone tore through stone, wood, glass, and metal. The sound of the castle crumbling down then followed, though Twilight could hardly tell.
She heard two massive crashes that shook the floor she stood on, which was thankfully still holding strong. The second sound she noticed after the crashes was the screams of many, many ponies. Some were screams of shock, some of horror, some of pain, and some of death. All in Canterlot castle, stone fell on top of ponies, splattered them against walls, buried them in inescapable traps, and sometimes even sliced them up. Others had their bones splintered in hundreds of places by the force of the explosion’s shockwave, or blown out of a window and onto the ground anywhere from five feet to one hundred feet in the air.
In about five seconds, all was still, save for the screaming of ponies in the background. Twilight groaned as she struggled to open her eyes. When she managed to pry them open, they were just met with a veil of dust that made them burn even more. She forced herself to her hooves, standing wobbly in the mess of what used to be a bedroom. She looked around the room, trying to focus through the choking cloud of dust that now filled the air. From what she could tell, there was a massive hole in her bedroom that seemed to expand outwards in a relative cone shape from where she was sitting with the book. The damage only got worse the further out, due to the massive amounts of energy released in such a large area.
From what Twilight could tell, the servants’ quarters were almost completely obliterated. From her vantage point on the outcropping of stone in her room, she looked down into a huge crater of stone below her, her legs shaking from physical shock, mental shock, and emotional shock all at once. She felt like she wanted to purge her stomach right there, but something prevented her. She looked up from the mess of stone and bodies, seeing where the kitchens had been. There was a huge fire raging in the middle, with several ponies probably burning in it, unable to escape from the stone. And something that struck probably the biggest personal blow to her heart, was that the Royal Library was compromised; stone had blown in the stained glass windows and broken into the main area. One of the towers had fallen straight into it and had collapsed the upper levels that she had spent so much time in the last few days – the area that held the most valuable and important knowledge that the library had to offer – had fallen in on itself and millions of ancient books spilled and mixed into the main area.
Twilight sank to her haunches, tears welling up in her eyes and spilling down her face as she stared in utter disgust as the destruction and suffering she had just wrought, from one simple spell. Many ponies were dead, the Castle of the Royal Sisters was completely destroyed beyond repair… ‘Oh no, Celestia!’ Twilight’s thoughts jumped to her mentor, as well as Princess Luna. She looked around, and saw their towers seemed to still be standing. Where were they two, she wondered? It’s been at least a minute since the explosion, and he hasn’t seen them-
Suddenly, over by Twilight’s bed, a magical aura was streaming from her saddlebags. Celestia was calling the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony to Canterlot, in case of an attack! Celestia didn’t know what had just happened, and suspected the worst. Just as Twilight thought about it, Celestia appeared next to her in a flash of light. The larger pony breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Twilight sitting mostly unscathed.
“Oh Twilight, I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you alive and well right now. An explosion that big had to have been caused by a being of immense power… I’ve called the Elements to Canterlot as soon as possible. But right now, we need to get down there and help any ponies that might still be alive.” Celestia turned to the unicorn, to find that Twilight wasn’t looking at her. “Twilight, are you okay dear? I know this is an awful thing, but we must-”
“I-I… I caused it…” Twilight’s words were weak and quiet, and beyond all the chaos that was erupting around them, Celestia couldn’t quite hear her.
“Speak up, Twilight. I can’t hear you.”
“I said… I caused the explosion.”
Celestia gave Twilight a look that rested somewhere between “I don’t believe you” and “You had better explain yourself.”
“I-I was testing some magic from that book about some new magic called alchemy…” Celestia jumped back, her eyes going to pinpoints as her brain processed what was just said.
“A-alchemy… That explains why the wards on the castle… Y-you used alchemy?” Those three words were directed at Twilight with a hint of emotion that Twilight had never felt from her teacher before, especially towards herself: hatred. The next thing she said caused Twilight to flinch and jump, due to the magically enhanced Royal Canterlot Voice being used.
“YOU USED ALCHEMY?!” Her voice shook the very floor that they stood on, and it served to shake Twilight from the daze she had gone in. All of the emotions and thoughts flooded into her head. Celestia’s eyes burned with so much hatred that Twilight could almost physically feel it… Nope, that was heat she felt. Celestia’s eyes turned pure white, and her normally pink and blue mane changed into that which resembled the flames of a sun, with only a little bit less brightness of the real thing.
“P-princess Celestia, please…” Twilight pulled for words and that’s all she could come up with. She started to step backwards as the raging alicorn princess slowly started to ease her way towards Twilight, the heat picking up slowly.
“TWILIGHT SPARKLE, YOU HAVE COMMITTED ONE OF THE HEAVIEST CRIMES IN EQUESTRIAN LAW. NOT ONLY HAVE YOU PROBABLY CAUSED THE DEATH OF DOZENS OF PONIES, BUT YOU USED THE FORBIDDEN ALCHEMY, AND IN THE CASTLE OF THE TWO SISTERS NONETHELESS.”
Twilight shrank back, her eyes going wide. She had a feeling that she was in the biggest trouble. This was so much more than missing an assignment, or failing to not be fully groomed when Celestia made a surprise stop at her library, or some other stupid, trivial thing that Twilight thought would get her in trouble. No, this was a crime on magnitude with something that could land a pony in Tartarus for the rest of their days.
“COME QUIETLY TWILIGHT SPARKLE AND YOU WILL NOT BE IMMEDIATELY HARMED. YOU ARE TO BE DETAINED AND PUT UNDER CLOSE WATCH WHILE MY SISTER AND I DETERMINE YOUR PUNISHMENT FOR THIS ACT. YOU HAD BETTER HOPE IT BE ONLY A LIFETIME OF IMPRISONMENT.”
“B-but I didn’t know! I didn’t know! P-princess, please hear me out, I didn’t know that alchemy was forbidden or that it would cause this, or I never would have even taken the book off the shelves!” Twilight had tears flowing down her face, and the air around her was becoming uncomfortably warm from the seething princess that stood in front of her. She didn’t want to go to prison, or be put to death. She didn’t want her teacher and mother figure to hate her for the rest of her life. She didn’t want to have to repent for sins that she didn’t mean to commit. Twilight’s brain switched into a more primal mode of survival. As the situation grew in intensity, along with the alicorn’s emotions, as did her want to just leave and not be around this anymore. She was sobbing violently as her mentor closed in. The flames that acted as Celestia’s mane struck out at Twilight on their own, causing the unicorn to call out in pain as part of the fur on her left foreleg was singed off by the unbelievable heat.
“TWILIGHT, YOU OF ALL PONIES SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN TO GO DABBLING IN MAGIC THAT YOU KNOW NOTHING OF. ALCHEMY HAS BEEN BANNED IN EQUESTRIA SINCE BEFORE LUNA’S BANISHMENT, AND FOR GOOD REASON. EVEN THE LOWEST OF UNICORNS CAN CAUSE DESTRUCTION ON THIS LEVEL, AND BE THE REASON THAT MANY PONIES LOSE THEIR LIFE. I TRUSTED YOU MORE THAN ANY OTHER PONY BESIDES MY SISTER, SO MUCH THAT I LET YOU STUDY UNATTENDED IN THE FORBIDDEN SECTION OF THE CANTERLOT LIBRARY, AND YOU REPAY MY TRUST WITH THIS?!” The final part of that was screamed, and when the sun goddess, transformed into a being of pure fire and hatred, screamed in the Royal Canterlot voice, it was one of the most horrifying things anypony could ever experience. It was with this traumatic exposure that Twilight went into full panic mode.
Her mind went from appeasing the angry goddess and mourning her own stupid actions, and immediately to surviving. She did a single take around the room, marking items that she was going to take with her on her impromptu journey. In the span of about two seconds, Twilight teleported over to her saddle bag and slipped them hastily on, teleported over to the book of alchemy that was still lying face open on the floor, unscathed by the explosion, and slid it in her saddlebags. She then teleported out of the room to the courtyard of Canterlot Castle. Princess Celestia was so blinded by rage that she wasn’t thinking quickly enough, which allowed Twilight the time she needed to get away safely.
When Twilight reached the courtyard, she looked to the castle and saw exactly what she had done to the once majestic structure: two of the castle’s four towers had fallen inwards – one on the library area, and the other into the central garden – and then the portcullis that lead into the hallway, to the throne room, had also collapsed in on itself. The bodies of several guards were splattered there, causing Twilight’s stomach to retch inside of her. All of the guards along the outer wall of the castle were too stunned and shocked to even notice Twilight’s appearance, let alone move to do something about it.
She couldn’t stay and stare at the castle long, though, and Twilight teleported with only her saddle bags back to the train station. She stood in front of several shocked ponies, and found that many ponies were screaming and running away from the castle. Smoke raised high into the night air, illuminated against the still somewhat lit sky. Twilight then realized why else it had taken the princess so long to act; she was in the middle of lowering the sun, and had to stop midway. She hoped, for her sake and those of any other pony that might cross her that night, that Luna would be able to calm her sister into a rational state. Twilight turned back to the train, realizing she could not take the train back to Ponyville. It would be much too slow, and it could easily be tracked and intercepted by the Royal Guard, or by Celestia herself.
Another teleport found her at the front gates of the city, which were always open. The guards stationed there looked confused and worried, staring dumbfounded towards the chaotic scene in the distance. One of the guards heard the teleportation pop and pointed right at Twilight as she appeared.
“Halt! State your name and your business within Canterl-“ Before he finished his sentence, Twilight was gone in a flash, just as she had appeared. She kept teleporting, and teleporting, and teleporting. She knew that she probably had just enough magic stored in her body to make it home to Ponyville, but it would leave her absolutely exhausted. She needed to not teleport after Ponyville anyways: teleportation could be tracked by the princesses and some of the upper mages in the military. As she popped in and out of reality down the Canterlot mountain and into the fields and forests that dotted the way to Ponyville, her mind was calculating the most efficient method of getting away before she could be found.
Once she reached Ponyville, she would go straight to her library and pick up anything else she might need to take with her. She needed to let Spike know that she would be leaving for a very long time, and to tell her friends not to worry about her. She would need some parchment and quills, as well as some ink. She needed a bedroll. She needed a cloak. She needed the book in her saddlebags. And she needed a few potions she had stored for emergencies, because this was certainly an emergency. Most of all, she needed something that she would not be able to collect at her stop in Ponyville; some hope for the near or distant future.
The miles passed by much quicker than they had by train, and the four hour trip was becoming a thirty minute trip. Twilight could probably have gone the whole length in a single spell, but that would have sapped her energy much worse than this. With this, she wouldn’t drop from exhaustion as soon as she got to her destination, unable to do anything. If she did it in increments like she was, she could focus and harden herself to push on longer than she should be able to.
Her mind worked out what Celestia would do when she was finished with the search and rescue mission in the castle. Would she immediately come after Twilight on her own? Would she send the entire Equestrian army after her? Would she blow up her library and threaten to kill Spike if she didn’t turn herself in? So many thoughts were come to the forefront of her mind, and it was driving her to teleport quicker and quicker. She needed to be as far away from Canterlot as she could possibly be, and she needed to be that far as quickly as possible.
After thirty minutes of straight teleporting, Twilight found herself standing in the middle of the Sweet Apple Acre orchards, panting heavily and trying to keep from falling over from exhaustion. She closed her eyes and braced herself, and then one more teleport and she was standing in front of the Golden Oaks Library – that was a precise and practiced teleport. She quickly undid the locks on the door with her magic instead of reaching for a key and slipped inside her home, collapsing to the floor in a heap, trying to catch her breath.
After the minute that she took to be able to speak again through panting, she stood up and called out, “Spike, please come here! It’s urgent!” in as urgent of a voice as she could possibly muster. She rushed over to her desk in the main library area and threw some quills and blank scrolls and some ink vials into her saddlebag. Then she rushed for the kitchen and opened her potion cabinet, pulling out a vial that actually glowed yellow in the darkness of the lightless kitchen. She popped the cork off of the potion and chugged it. A chill ran down her body as every last bit of the potion was downed and all of a sudden, Twilight didn’t feel like she was about to pass out from overexertion any more. While energy potions weren’t safe to drink very often, this one should be enough to get Twilight out of Ponyville and away from whatever threat was sure to follow her.
Spike groggily poked his head around the kitchen entrance, “T-Twilight? Why are you home? Why are you drinking that energy potion? Why are you yelling at ten at night? Why a-“
“Spike, I need you to know something.” Twilight walked over to Spike and placed her hooves on the dragon’s shoulders, looking him square in the eye. The baby dragon could feel the weight of what she was about to say – or, maybe he could just see the tear stains on her cheeks, and the now freshly welling tears in her eyes. “I have… done something terrible. I made the biggest mistake of my life, and I need to run away for a long time.”
Spike gave her a look that said, ‘I don’t believe you and you’re overreacting.’ Before he could actually say anything, Twilight placed a hoof on his lips. “Spike… I just blew up half of Canterlot castle and probably was the cause of the deaths of maybe a hundred ponies. P-Princess Celestia was angrier than I’ve ever seen her – more than I’ve ever seen anypony before. I’m not going to ask you to hide me, I just want you to know that I’m leaving for probably a very long time.” Twilight was failing to fight back the tears in her eyes, and she could see them welling in Spike’s as well. She fell into the dragon, her hooves wrapping around him in a tight embrace, and he obliged with a hug in return. After a few seconds, Twilight broke the hug. “I need my bedroll.”
“I’ll get it for you.” He said simply, not bothering to question Twilight any further on what happened, and hurried off upstairs to grab it. Twilight composed herself and grabbed a couple more potions from her cabinet, throwing them into the saddlebag as well. By the time she retrieved her cloak from the coat closet, Spike returned with the bedroll. She took it and strapped it to her back, but Spike also handed something else to her. He opened his claws and handed her a small gem with a string tied around it in a necklace fashion. The gem was a blueish-green color and seemed to glow very faintly with magical power.
“T-this is my prized gem. It’s not very big, but this is one of the rarest gems in the whole world. I was saving it to give to Rarity, but I think you need it much more than her, Twilight. It will watch over you and keep you safe wherever you may go…” The tears in Twilight’s eyes welled even more than they had in the hug. Her smiled was both forced and natural, and she took the necklace and put it around her neck. The new weight against her chest was comforting.
“T-thank you, Spike. Thank you so much. I love you like a brother; I want you to know that.” She hugged him once more and slipped on her cloak, then put her saddlebags on over it. After she was sure everything was in line, she walked to the door. Spike stood in the middle of the library, tears quietly flowing down his cheeks as he waved goodbye to her. She waved back, then gave him a reassuring smile and pulled the hood of the cloak over her head. “One last thing: my friends were called to Canterlot. When they come back, don’t tell them what just happened. Don’t tell them I stopped by. Don’t tell them you saw me. Just pretend you were asleep and didn’t wake up when I came by to grab my stuff. And finally, don’t look which way I’m going. I love you, Spike…” She pulled the door closed behind her and made straight for the Everfree Forest… almost.
The sun had long since dipped below the horizon at this point, and Twilight knew she needed to use the boost of the energy potion to make as much time as possible while it was still dark. Instead of heading straight for the Everfree Forest, she teleported a few times west out of town, before running the whole length of Ponyville back the other way. That might throw them off her trail for a little bit when they started looking for her. She then made way straight towards the dark line of trees on the eastern side of Ponyville.
It wasn’t long before she found herself shrouded by the canopy of trees in the edge of the Everfree, dodging trunks and leaping over roots with the help of her darkvision spell that she decided to cast. She was deep enough in the forest that she couldn’t see the edge, but not so deep she couldn’t escape if something nasty wanted to do her harm. Her legs pounded the ground and she kept her mind on her breathing, knowing if it wandered too much that it would probably put herself in some sort of trouble. So for the time she would just focus on where she was going.
After about twenty minutes, Twilight made a sharp cut to go deeper into the forest. She went about a mile deeper and made a quick stop. She caught her breath and drank some water from the waterskin she always kept in her saddlebags. It wouldn’t do well to overexert herself now when she was just beginning. After a ten minute break, she began her trek again. But, this time, she started teleporting again. Now she was deep enough in the Everfree that any sort of magical trace would be difficult, if not impossible, to pick up without standing right on top of it. She would teleport a ways, then run for a ways. She kept her bearing by the moon that she could see just barely through the canopy. The moon and sun always rose directly in the east and sat directly in the west. The moon was just off its zenith, telling twilight it should be near twelve at night.
She debated resting for just a while, but the more distance she put between herself and whatever or whoever was following her, the better off she would be in the long run. Also, stopping in the Everfree was dangerous business, and she could find herself not waking up at all if the wrong creature decided she looked like a tasty purple treat while she slept. Hours rushed by and the buzz of the energy potion began to wear off as Twilight pounded on through the forest, making better time than she should have been able to without aid of that potion. With her current course, she was headed directly for what in her opinion was the best place to get lost and not found: Zebrica. Zebrica was the second largest of the nations, behind only the Gryphon Kingdoms of the North. It was a huge, hilly and mountainous landscape of thick jungle and foliage. The Zebra lived and thrived within its deep, dark depths, using the jungle’s mystery to harness their own form of alchemy – the alchemy of potion-making.
Twilight knew that once she crossed international lines, even if friendly ones, the Equestrian military would not be able to cross over until the Zebran government gave them the military access. In a more effective system, allies would have military access anyways. But, it wasn’t very often that one nation or the other had fugitives running from their government, and both parties had an agreement that rash military movement across borders could be taken the wrong way if caught off guard.
But, Twilight still had a very large amount of ground to cover, be it by hoof or magic, before she would reach Zebra territory. At about four in the morning, the borrowed time had worn off and Twilight was now draining energy from her own reserves. She didn’t have much left, and a wrong move could prove fatal were she to be caught because she was too tired to run. She picked a spot about a thousand yards from the entrance of the Everfree in a very remote area between Ponyville and Fillydelphia to make camp. She didn’t build a fire or anything. She just cleared a spot in the dirt, rolled her bedroll out, and lay down to hopefully get a few hours of unattested sleep.