Scootaloo’s leg muscles tensed as she prepared to leap. Her wings, as weak as they were, would only hinder her here, so she was forced to rely entirely on her legs. She grit her teeth in concentration. Sure, she had done this task several times, but each success had let her tormenter know that it was alright to up the difficulty for the next time.
She lept. Her body soared over the precariously stacked tower, but her rear hoof clipped the top. She hissed as she landed, frightened that she might have caused a catastrophic collapse, but the tower, wobbling ominously, eventually stilled without falling.
The orange filly sighed in relief, before turning to her last obstacle. Mercifully, this one was much lower and much less likely to crush her if it fell. With an athletic leap, she arced over it and landed safely on her bed mattress on the other side.
“Seriously, Rody. You have too many books.”
So, perhaps it was a bit of an exaggeration brought forth by a childish mind, but there was a nearly three-layers deep sea of books on the floor of their shared bedroom, which made walking quite hard.
Rhodium merely hummed in noncommittal acknowledgement. The pages of her current book flipped by exceedingly fast, much faster than Scootaloo thought possible while still reading. And yet, Scootaloo’s roommate remembered everything she read.
In the time it took the pegasus to recall the time she had tried to call Rody on her speed reading ability and then discovered that it was in fact real, the unicorn snapped her book shut. “I’m going back to the library,” she said.
“AT LEAST TAKE SOME OF THESE BOOKS WITH YOU!” Scootaloo shouted.
The faux-filly complied, taking as many as she could carry... which hardly left a dent in the sea of books. It was almost as if those she’d removed had already been replaced, even before she would return with more books.
Scootaloo envisioned herself drowning in a sea of paper. At this rate, it was the way she’d most likely go.
The door clicked shut - a miracle considering the pressure the books exerted on it - leaving Scootaloo alone in her shared room. She had come up here to do her homework, but amid the paper ocean, she found her eyes and mind wandering. Maybe she could hide her homework in here and say she lost it among Rody’s books. Rody was always reading in class, so maybe it wasn’t that far off.
The young filly’s eyes paused, fixed upon a book on the top of the pile that stood out somewhat from the rest. Instead of words on cover, it had a drawing of a five pointed star inside a circle that was decorated with other shapes and symbols.
A shiver went down her spine. Her eyes widened unconsciously.
She picked it up, curious about its contents, and flipped it open. Scootaloo very quickly realized that she could read less than half of it, as most of the stuff was written in a strange, foreign language. A second later, it clicked as to where she’d seen those kind of symbols before: Sweetie Belle sometimes wrote like that. Did that mean that this was a spell book?
The crusader knew that Sweetie Belle was getting old enough that she would soon be able to consciously control her magic, and so thought that the white filly might be interested in the spell book.
Shutting the tome, she hopped off her bed and trotted out the bedroom door, homework forgotten.
Scootaloo galloped up the ramp to the clubhouse, book clutched in her teeth. She lept through the door and landed right next to Applebloom, who, not expecting her sudden arrival, startled a bit. Scootaloo set the book down on the single table within.
“Hey, Sweetie! I found a book written in that funny language you sometimes write in. I think it’s a spell book,” Scootaloo exclaimed.
Trotting over from where she was behind the podium, Sweetie Belle looked at the aforementioned book. Her eyes widened with pleasant surprise. “Cool! It is one. Rarity won’t let me read her spell books until I can levitate things well enough, so I’ve never actually read one before.”
“So can you read it?” Scootaloo pressed, “‘cause it looks like a bunch of strange, little drawings to me.”
“Yeah, except I’m not really fast. It might take a bit for me to translate...” Sweetie Belle said.
“So? What’s it even called?” Applebloom asked.
Sweetie traced her hoof around the symbols on the cover. “Hmmm... The closest thing I can think of is ‘Enemies Fall,’ though this symbol here implies getting back at somepony and this one is either ‘trap’ or ‘prank.’ I think either one works there.”
“You sure?” Scootaloo asked. “You sound hesitant.”
Sweetie frowned at the doubt cast on her reading ability. “I can read it just fine, it’s translating that’s the problem. How did Rarity explain it? Unicornian doesn’t specify magnitude in the same way that Common does, so” - Sweetie made a series of intelligible noises - “could mean Applebloom poked me or she applebucked me so hard that I went flying. You have to guess how hard from the context and tone. And then there are a lot of words that are like mixes of other words, so it’s hard to imagine the right one.”
“But ya can understand it, right? Ya just can’t say it, is that what yer sayin’?” Applebloom asked, to which Sweetie nodded.
Something else Sweetie Belle had said registered in Scootaloo’s mind. “Hey, you said it was a prank book, right?”
“Errr...” Sweetie Belle looked down at the cover again. “Yeah.”
“Cool! I wonder if Rody learned any cool spells from it?”
Sweetie’s ears twitched. “Is this Rody’s book?”
“One of the millions of books covering our floor. I’m sure she’s already memorized it by now, so she won’t miss it for a bit, and we can always bring it back if she needs it,” Scootaloo said.
Applebloom snickered. “Yeah. Remember that time when Cheerilee gave Rhodium a pop quiz when she was reading, and Rody got a perfect score anyway?”
“Yeah. Hey, Sweetie! Prank spells! See if there’s anything good in there!”
Sweetie Belle flipped open the book and began to skim through the different spells. After a few pages, she was frowning, and a few pages further on she was turning slightly green. “Some of these spells are really gross, or really mean. There’s a spell for turning a pony inside-out. Ewww...”
Scootaloo tapped her hoof to her chin. “I dunno. That could be kind of funny,” she commented.
The little unicorn flipped several pages forwards and stopped on a dog-eared page, unaware of the warning written in bold and in the common tongue on the previous, obscured page. “Bad Joke? Hmmm...” Her eyes scanned across the text, unknowingly completing a magical circuit inscribed in the binding of the book, which planted an idea in her head. “This one looks interesting.”
“What is it?”
“Hang on...” Sweetie’s eyes thoroughly examined the page as her mind worked to translate the runes. The occasional note written in the margins helped with the translation somewhat. “This is for a potion that... makes the pony who eats... something made with it to see... something scary, and if they scream, it... plays a joke on them. The main ingredient is poison joke.”
“Heh, Ah remember when mah sister got poison joked. She shrank until she was smaller than me!” Applebloom said.
“And my sister got really hairy!” Sweetie said.
Scootaloo giggled. “That sounds really funny. Hey, can you imagine what it would do to Diamond Tiara if she got hit with poison joke?”
“Or bad joke?” Sweetie offered. “It’d be like being scared by a ghost story and then getting pranked!”
“Yeah!”
Applebloom had some reservations, however. “Hey, remember the last time we gave somepony a potion? Mah brother almost married Ms. Cheerilee.”
“Oh yeah,” Scootaloo said, deflating somewhat in mood.
Sweetie Belle was undeterred. “Pfft. That was only because we didn’t read all the directions first. We’ve learned our lesson.”
“And when we were trying to prank Babs Seed?”
“We were going to do it until we learned that she was being bullied, but we know that Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon aren’t being bullied. They are the bullies,” Sweetie argued.
“Huh,” Applebloom said. “Well, you got me there. So, are we really going to make this?”
“Sure,” Scootaloo said, smiling.
“I don’t see why not,” Sweetie Belle added. “It looks easy enough.”
All in agreement, Sweetie read out the short list of ingredients, and the steps, while Applebloom recorded them in the common tongue so that they didn’t have to keep looking back at the book. Once they were satisfied, they ran off to gather the ingredients, unaware that Sweetie Belle had skipped a very important note.
The mare now known as Rhodium trotted back into her room, new books in tow. Unlike her roommate, her steps were quick and sure, as she knew that the books on the floor were really just an illusion created for the sake of annoying Scootaloo. Some of the books she was carrying with her were library books, as she had said, but some of them were her own personal books as well.
A bead of sweat dripped down her brow; it was the last trace of the strenuous magical exercise that she’d been doing for the last hour of real time (four hours according to her body’s clock) in her pocket dimension. Though she was still fruitlessly struggling with trying to get a different magic type, her dark magical skill was advancing like always.
Banishing the illusion of books on the floor, Sparkle noticed that some of them remained; frowning, she levitated the real books that had fallen on the floor. Upon seeing the titles, she grimaced. They were her spell books, and she had been astronomically foolish in leaving them out. What if-
There were six in her grip. Where was the seventh? The only pony who came in here was Scootaloo; did she have it?
Sparkle swore a very colorful phrase and dissolved into smoke. Her body vanished in the shadows and raced towards Sweet Apple Acres, where she hoped that Scootaloo would be. The necromancer prayed that they hadn't tried anything.
Sweetie Belle smiled in satisfaction at the little bottle filled with a translucent blue liquid. She'd actually done it! She'd done real magic!
"So it's done?" Scootaloo asked, picking up the bottle and examining it closely.
Sweetie Belle nodded. "Yep. All we need to do now is put it in Diamond Tiara's food."
"SCOOTALOO!" The door to the clubhouse burst open, propelled by a black hoof. Scootaloo jumped, sending the bottle crashing down, where it shattered on the floor. "Scootaloo, have you seem a book with a-" Sparkle cut herself off, spotting the very book she was looking for sitting closed on the table. "Please, please tell me you didn't read it!"
"Uhh... Well, you see..."
"Damnit, damnit to the pits," Sparkle cursed. "Did any of you cast anything?"
"Yeah," Sweetie Belle replied. "Just one of the prank spells."
"Prank spells?" Sparkle asked, her mind struggling to comprehend the statement. "That's a book of curses! What did you-?"
The smell of the spilled potion finally registered in Sparkle's mind. She looked down at the ground, and then at Applebloom, whose hooves were wet with the spilled concoction and whose eyes were unfocused.
In a fraction of a second, Sparkle's power went from tightly bound to fully flared. Every living thing, seemingly including the tree that the clubhouse was perched on, immediately recoiled. "WHAT. IS. THAT?" Sparkle demanded, her voice monstrously distorted.
"B-b-bad j-j-joke," Scootaloo squeaked out.
"Bad joke? You mean morbid joke? Damn. COBALT, WOULD YOU KINDLY GET OVER HERE?" Suddenly, the necromancer lunged at the entranced Applebloom and magically slit her trachea vertically. Sparkle clamped the filly's mouth and nose shut, forcing her to breath through the emergency tracheotomy incision instead; since no air could pass through Applebloom's larynx, she couldn't scream no matter what she saw or felt in the hallucination.
"What are you doing?" Scootaloo shouted.
"Saving her life."
A distortion appeared midair inside the clubhouse and a blue stallion hopped out. "Sparks?" he asked.
"Restrain them, and then help me keep her still and breathing. Knock her out as well, but keep the other two awake. Watch out for the spilled potion; it's poison," Sparkle commanded.
He nodded. His forehead illuminated with magic as the earth stallion grabbed Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. With a thought, Cobalt inflicted paralysis on the fillies. Satisfied, he turned towards Sparkle and Applebloom, the latter of whom was now convulsing uncontrollably.
As he had done for the other two, Cobalt cast a paralysis spell on Applebloom, followed by a sleep spell. His magic then appeared around her neck and worked to keep the hole open and free of blood. Meanwhile, Sparkle’s magic spread across Applebloom’s fur coat, cleaning off any of the spilled poison so that no more would seep into her through her skin. Then, once that was done, she created a second incision, cutting all the way down to a major artery in Applebloom’s shoulder; however, instead of letting the blood spurt out, her magic kept it contained as she filtered out the lethal poison.
Sweat dripped down from her brow as she concentrated. Her reserves were already low from training, and though she was sure that it would last through this, her control was shaking like an overused muscle.
Slowly and steadily, she filtered the earth filly’s blood of the toxin. The little globule of blood plasma and toxins that she had extracted grew steadily larger with each passing minute; by the time a half-hour had passed, it had steadily grown to the size of a large grape.
Then, when she could feel no more of the insidious magic inside of Applebloom’s blood, Sparkle injected her own magic into Applebloom’s blood to fight off any infectious agents that may have entered through the two gaping wounds on her body. The necromancer wouldn’t go through the trouble of saving her from Morbid Joke poisoning only for her to succumb to septicaemia. And finally, when she was sure that Applebloom would live, she healed up the two incisions in such a way that there would be no visible scarring.
Sparkle tapped her horn against Applebloom’s head and pushed her magic into the unconscious filly. Memory modification may have been a difficult art, but erasing whatever visions she saw and pain she felt - as recent as it was - proved to be a sinch. She’d wake with a killer migraine, but Sparkle figured that would be punishment enough for her foolishness. As for the others...
“What the buck were you thinking? Making Morbid Joke? That’s an assassination-grade poison!” Sparkle yelled at the two fillies.
When they didn’t answer, Sparkle realized that Cobalt still had the paralysis curse on them. She motioned to him, and he in turn freed the other two Crusaders. “Well?”
“I thought it was just a potion to play a joke on somepony!” Sweetie Belle wailed. “I thought it was a book of joke spells!”
“It’s a book of trap spells!” Sparkle shouted back. “What, are you so foolish as to blindly follow any recipe without understanding what it is? Without making sure you read everything properly?”
Scootaloo and Sweetie visibly flinched. Sparkle’s eyes widened with realization. “You’ve done it before. Of course you have. Foals are idiots; why did I expect any better from you three?”
“Maybe because you were a self-taught, self-raised child prodigy?” the previously silent Cobalt quipped.
Sparkle glanced at the only adult pony in the room with a carefully neutral expression. “Thank you, Cobalt. You may go now,” she said tensely.
“Meh, I’m waiting to see how you handle this, and to keep the brats from escaping while you try,” Cobalt said while smirking.
Sparkle grit her teeth.
“Can somepony please tell me what’s going on?” Scootaloo exclaimed, interrupting the dialog between master and apprentice.
Sparkle didn’t react immediately, but after a second’s hesitation, she turned a faux-smiling face towards Scootaloo. “Well, to me it looks like you stole from a monster, almost poisoned your friend to death, and then forced said monster to come and clean up your mess.” She pulled off her glasses, flared her considerable magic, and glared at the two fillies, who instantly recoiled in fright. “Yes. I’m a monster. I’m only pretending to be a filly; if I didn’t like you three so much, and I didn’t need to hide, I’d kill and eat you three. Instead, I’m going to cast a little spell on you three to make you keep my secrets. Don’t make me regret it.”
Her magic erupted and enveloped the souls of all three fillies.
"So, what have we learned?"
"Don't make potions without the proper training," the three fillies chorused.
"And?"
"Take proper safety precautions."
"And?"
"Don't make potions to hurt ponies?"
"And lastly?"
"Never touch Rhodium's stuff."
Sparkle eased up on her magic, allowing the three crusaders to stand again. "I'm glad we could get this sorted out. And I'm sorry about all that..." The artificial world around them shifted, transforming from a scary-looking classroom into a pleasantly decorated dining hall, complete with a table full of food. Sparkle helped herself to a slice of cake, knowing full well that it would taste exactly as she had imagined it because she had literally imagined it.
"So, ah... Are you really a pony-eating monster?" Scootaloo asked from where she stood rooted to the ground.
"Something like that, yes," Sparkle agreed. "Not that I want to be one. Life's so much easier when everypony thinks you are a good pony. It's been, what, almost two months since I came to Ponyville, and I haven't once caused a problem."
Sweetie Belle and Applebloom both nodded, while Scootaloo voiced her agreement. "So you're a good monster?" Sweetie asked.
"I'm trying to be," Sparkle nodded. "The whole reason I'm pretending to be a little filly is so that I can live a normal life, where ponies don't know I used to be a monster. I'm not quite sure how well this plan's going to work out, though, all things considered." She paused, and then said, "You're welcome to eat, if you want."
"And what about him?" Applebloom asked as the other two relaxed and helped themselves to the food. She was pointing at Cobalt, who was happily snacking away.
He swallowed and smiled. "My name's Cobalt. I'm Sparks' apprentice. She's teaching me magic, and I pay her and assist her with her research. I'm also just a normal pony,"
"Hey, Rody, why does he call you 'Sparks?' Is Rhodium not your real name?" Scootaloo inquired.
Sparkle shrugged. "It is, and it isn't. To my brother, sister, and son, I'm Sparks; to my sire and dam, I'm Obsidian Knife," – Cobalt suddenly choked on his food, to which Sparkle rolled her eyes – "and to you and all of Equestria, I'm still your friend, Rhodium. At least, I hope we can still be friends."
"Ya promise not to try and eat us?" Applebloom asked.
Sparkle stuck up her right hoof. "I promise that I will do everything in my power to avoid hurting any of you three, cross my heart, the end is nigh, stick a spear point in my eye." As she spoke, she went through her own version of the motions. "Now, since this all started because you wanted to prank Diamond Tiara, might I suggest something?"
She told them her idea.
As the three excitedly discussed the proposition, Cobalt glided up next to Sparkle. He whispered, "Obsidian Knife?"
"Ruby's last lucid act was to name me that," she whispered back. "I know exactly what it sounds like, but we cannot assume anything."
Cobalt nodded.
Oblivious to the little exchanged between mistress and student, Scootaloo cheered, "This is going to be EPIC!“