A Primer on Magic

by SuperTaster

Chapter 1: Statuary

The statuary was always the first to go in the revolution. Perhaps that was why the little princess had been so irate. For his part, he never could figure out the little ones. They had reasons, and thoughts about things that were just so… limiting.

“Change the statues back now! Why are you doing this?” The voice was one Twilight Sparkle, princess of magic, and currently lacking in any of the demure attitudes one would expect of her station. This was not entirely unexpected: Discord did seem to bring out such aggravation in his admirers.

“Redecorating, of course! Come now, some of these are almost as old as I am, and there’s simply no variety in the castle. You need to liven things up!” Indeed, the statue garden was now a delightfully ‘lively’ place, although the various statues of chimera dancing in awkward poses were rather… lacking in regality.

“They’re not your statues. When the princess hears about this-!” Ah yes. Her. Well, there was no need to escalate things like that. It was just a bit of housekeeping!

“Well that’s why I’m doing it now! While she’s away for… diplomacy.” A horrible word, and a very good thing Celestia insisted on doing all of it herself. He’d never catch himself dead trying to reason with other cultures and creatures. Such was far too boring. “And in any case, it’s not fair to bring the larger pieces onto the board. You have to deal with things alike. My champion to yours.”

“I… what.”

“Oh yes, see?” A chessboard had appeared from some vacant hole in reality, with a few ornate if scandalously decorated pieces upon it. “Celestia’s dear champion seeks to stop me from modernizing the scenery, so it’s only fair we keep things at that level. No need to move up to the real players.”

“Discord!” Yes, the chimera was powerful, but he was also being a jerk, and needed a few proper magic lessons. Lesson number one would certainly be the staple of arcane theory, the magic missile. Take energy A at Alicorn Twilight and connect it to energy B at Draconequis Discord, and let the two collide together in a manner resembling a sticky hand snapping a child in the face. With explosions added, of course.

For his part, he eyed the glowing horn with dejection. “Violence so soon. How droll. Very well! Behold MY little pony… a vicious carnivorous alien creature from a wartorn world…” Goodness. Magic did rely on constructs and ideas, but this was something quite unacceptable. You can’t just create an object from outside the magical stratum, much less a monster.

Ah yes. This was Discord, though. He had never been one to play by the rules, even so far as reality was concerned. Perhaps scientific study would not help much here. A first strike, moreover, would suffice.

The two clashed, as Discord drew his champion from the ether, and Twilight sent forth a furious blast of purple mana… only to impact the body of a small human who was mildly confused as to why he was being shot at on this given morning. Discord watched, looking back over his shoulder as the limp form went hurtling across the statue garden, clearly in no state to ‘champion’ anything.

“Well. That wasn’t quite the intent.” Discord, for his part, had expected more tentacles.

He grumbled. The alicorn was advancing, and clearly in no mood for a repeat. “Fine! Fine. I shall change the statues back before Tia returns, little pony. Do try to enjoy them, you silly philistine.” Another blast of magic, but the chimera was gone.

“…why does the princess keep him around in the first place? It’s like trying to herd cattle. Chaotic, effusive anomalic cattle, of a draconic breed.” Twilight stopped her musing upon remembering the casualty of their fight. “Oh! Oh dear.”

It wasn’t very pretty, though she supposed it might not have been to begin with. A mammal, for sure, with minimal brown hair, though finely dressed in a fashion for much colder weather than was currently airing through Canterlot. The blood was a problem too, though she supposed that was her fault. It wasn’t deep, as the attack was meant to whelm the target, not explode them. Still, the force of the hit, combined with the continued impact of the ground and gravity had done a fair number on the creature.

At the very least, the blow had knocked it out. It was very awkward, asking permission to levitate someone, though sleeping bodies did not complain about their means of transport. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you right up to the hospital, and AAAAHHH!”
As Twilight had picked the human up, he began to spastically twitch and jerk, as if having a seizure. Dropping him clearly didn’t help matters, but nerves were not the princess’ strong point. “Oh no, oh no, what is this… did it get hurt deeper in the fight? Oh…”

“This can’t end well.”
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Sam was never one for unfamiliar ceilings. There was something comforting about being able to look up and note that yes, in fact, your bed was still your bed, and had not been swapped in the middle of the night by some devious prankster. In this case, he had been eagerly devouring lunch when the accident happened rather than sleeping, but the principle was still the same. This was not his ceiling, and thus not his bed. Someone would have to be punished severely for this, preferably in an embarrassing manner.

“Oh, you ARE awake. Good, I was beginning to worry.” The girl’s voice came from his right, but he was far too wrapped in the blankets to get a proper view. She didn’t sound like she was to eat him, though, which was good. Sometimes people did that in dreams, and it was good to figure this out ahead of time.

“Um… why am I… wherever I am?” A hospital, perhaps, but he was used to them having the silly foam tiles for the ceiling, not well-carved limestone. Sitting up a bit, the rest of the warmly sunlit room did no favors for normality: no medical equipment could be seen in sight, though there were odd onyx obelisks situated around the bed, with a few ornate line drawings in what appeared to be a magic circle. He was fenced in by modern art, as if this was to help his mood.

“Well… that is a good question, actually. But, we can wait on that, I think. How do you feel?”

“Like a steamroller hit me.”

“…I assume that’s painful?”

“You have no idea.” Oh dear. Sam was not sure he wished to entrust his care to someone who didn’t understand the magnitude of pain a steamroller could inflict. This seemed like something a nurse should know, at least in theory. Much confirming the sense that nothing was right was the fact that upon closer examination, there was in fact, no nurse in the room, but rather a purple equine staring rather confusedly at him. “Do I even want to know?”

“Know what?” Yep. The horse was talking. At least now he knew reality was no longer on speaking terms with him. It was always good to know where you stood in such matters.

“I’m… not entirely used to talking horses, is all.”

“Ponies.”

“What?”

“Well, the technical term is a unicorn pony. Horses are bigger, and don’t tend to live in this area.”

“Right.” Oddly enough, that was the least of his concerns.

“And what might you be?” Spoken as one might address a costumed youth on Nightmare Night, though Twilight had seen enough of his injuries to know it wasn’t exactly a costume. Aliens! Her excitement had been mildly dulled by the fact he refused to stop his nap just because she was curious, though now it was starting to creep back into her actions. So many questions. Questions that would be probing and impolite to someone cooped up in a hospital bed, but politeness would just have to deal. This was a matter of Science.

“A human, last I checked. That’s still right, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, everything else has gone pear-shaped, so I might as well assume that any questions will be related to something gone wrong.”

“Well, we haven’t figured out whether it’s wrong or not yet. We’ve had to… deal with a few things in that regard.”

“Come again?”

“Well, you’ve been having serious reactions to any and all kinds of magic. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, as it’s not anything I’ve seen in any local races. How did you survive until now?”

“Magic.”

“Yes. Did I say something wrong?”

“Well…” He pondered missing Kansas, but Sam had never actually been there, and didn’t really have too much of a desire to find out what it was like. He hadn’t heard interesting tales, regardless of cultural reference. “Magic isn’t really a thing where I come from. Like, at all. You’re saying there’s magic here? Wherever here is.”

“Of course! How could you not…? That’s just… wow. I guess that could make sense.”

“What would?” Sense was good. He missed it so.

“Well, half of the idea of magic is that of concepts. Hot, cold, things like that. You can put ‘hot’ into somepony and make them heat up, or catch fire if you do it enough.” The mental image of burning horses was odd, but he squashed it for the sake of the talking equine’s theory. “But, if you’re from somewhere that doesn’t have magic, you don’t really have a concept associated with you. Magic doesn’t know what a ‘human’ is.”

“And it doesn’t like that.”

“Well, any attempt to use magic around you caused bad reactions on your body, so clearly it’s not taking the link well. Magic doesn’t know what you are, so it’s trying to make do with something similar. The closest equivalent in our world, as it were.”

“Please tell me I’m not about to spontaneously become a pony.”

“No, any data we got on bits of you that had normalized weren’t consistent with pony magical fields. That said, we’ve had to do some quick research on setting up an area without natural magic. After the speech spell, we put that up pronto.”

“Speech spell?” He supposed it did make some sort of sense. If this… pony was from another world, there’s no reason it would be speaking his language. But… “Wouldn’t that be blocked by this… area?”

“That was the problem, but we found a good way. This thing…” She gestured at a small emerald amulet around her neck, by way of an excessively flexible forelimb. “…can take a copy of somepony’s vocabulary, and let it be used in conversation. It’s really meant to be on the odd pony out, but since it doesn’t work inside the field, we had to improvise. It’s mainly why I’m staying over here, because we can’t actually talk inside the field.”

“Still, handy that.” He sighed, and lay back on the bed. “So, I don’t suppose you know why I’m here? Or why I feel so awful?”

“Well, um…” Twilight’s voice got nervous, tense even. “The injuries aren’t important, just a few bumps and scrapes from when you arrived.” Now was not the time to admit shooting an alien visitor, even on accident. It was sure to put a damper on the relationship, which would end the questioning. Science was on the line, and Twilight would take no chances.

“And the other part?” Darn. Not off the hook yet.

“Bad summoning spell. As best I can tell, anyway. To be fair, I can’t imagine summoning somepony from another world, much less one without magic. It makes little to no sense, but the… person involved isn’t much one for following rules. A rather delinquent chimera, with a penchant for causing trouble. I believe the proper terms of the spell were for… ’a vicious carnivorous alien creature from a wartorn world’. Or something like that. Somehow that snagged you.”

“…he’s not going to do anything worse, is he?”

“I am told on good faith that he has been put in The Box.”

"Do I want to know?" Sam was all for putting chaos elementals in boxes, but was unsure what this would actually entail. He pictured a chimera sitting happily in a cardboard box, drinking a martini. This was, oddly enough, not far from the truth, though Discord’s preference for wine over martinis was not entirely relevant.

“I have heard that Fluttershy is keeping him there, wherever there is, and he is not allowed to leave until his behavior improves.” This did not seem like the proper name for a warden, but Sam raised no objection. Stranger things had happened, and were still happening. This was not worthy of argument in comparison to the rest. “In any case, he shouldn’t be causing any more mischief until we get things sorted out. Which means he’ll start up again just as soon as we do, just to make things worse.”

“That is how things work, isn’t it.”

“Always. In any case, you are currently in the hospital wing of the Canterlot palace, and should be reasonably fine as long as the anti-magic holds.”

“Which it won’t.” Sam was, if nothing else, a fast learner.

“Magic doesn’t like being told no. We’ve got a few days at least, to figure out what we can do about this. Worst comes to worse, we can always try to ease the normalization process, and work on changing you back later when we have more time to research.”

“You’ll understand if I’m not entirely keen on that being our first option?”

“Yes, quite. Not everypony wants to be a tree, after all.” There was some sort of in-joke here, but he was not privy to it. Still, the horse- sorry, pony, seemed reasonably convinced that he would still be ambulatory, and not in fact sprout apples from his head. An improvement over the worst case, if only a minor one. “In any case, get some rest. You do still need to heal up, the nurse says. Do you have a name?”

“Sam.”

“Sam. I’m Twilight Sparkle.” They both thought these names were odd, but did not say too much. The nomenclature of alternate realities was not something they expected to be similar, in light of the already odd differences between the two. At the very least, they could pronounce each other’s names, which was better than some people they had met.

“Well, I do need to be going. Enjoy your vacation, I guess?”

“I’ll try.” He’d much rather be skiing, but Sam reminded himself that such an activity would end him up in a hospital anyway. He was rubbish at skiing, even if he preferred it to being abducted by alien ponies.

The door closed behind Twilight, and Sam was left alone with his confused thoughts.
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Sam had forgotten his hat. This worried him, but not as much as he felt it should, which only served to worry him more. Such was often the case when hats were concerned.

“You’ll never see it again!”

Above him, a noodle art-deco impression of a chimera sat holding a cap labeled HOME, which was clearly some sort of baseball reference. “Why not?”

“It’s mine now! Besides, you’re a monster!”

Sam was indeed a monster, though he was not entirely sure why this was the case. He didn’t remember putting on his monster outfit this morning. Did he miss a memo? Casual days at work were so confusing. He struggled to pull the “Hi, I’m a Monster” tag off of his chest, but it only served to create a vast, gaping hole, out of which many blood-colored ponies came galloping forth.

He awoke with a start, yelling something about “Never again!”, then promptly fell back into the covers and forgot all about it.
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“Are you awake?” Twilight’s voice rang out again. She hadn’t been around since yesterday, or what the nurse claimed was yesterday. Time had that habit of woozing by as far as hospitals were concerned.

“Should I be?”

“Well, yes and no. We’ll work on that, though the particulars will be up to Princess Luna.” Indeed, there did seem to be a newcomer here. A deep blue unicorn, winged like Twilight. He wasn’t entirely sure as to the meaning of the wings, for they weren’t apparent on any of the nurses.

“I didn’t realize I merited royalty. To what do I owe the honor?”

Twilight wiggled a bit on some irony lost to Sam. “Well, technically I’m a princess too. Sorta. It’s more of a title in my case. Luna here, however, is the Princess of the Night, which makes her well equipped to handle the procedure.”

The one known as Luna nodded her head. “Charmed.” It was a much deeper, more regal voice. Sam did not need any notice from Twilight that this was somepony of importance.

“So you will be putting me to sleep, then?”

“Not in a direct manner,” Luna offered. “That would likely interfere with the normalization process. Still, we suspect it might be uncomfortable, so keeping your mind distracted, dreamlike if you will, should aid in the overall process.”

Twilight moved towards the obelisks. “So, if you don’t mind, we’ll get started on this. It’ll be… odd. I think. But it’ll give us a lot more time to work on undoing the change later.”

“Go for it.” Sam was not all that ready to be a monster, or a pony, or a pony monster, but clearly this was better than whatever they were afraid would happen otherwise. He found himself struck with a feeling of floating off gently into the clouds, though he could still see the ceiling above him, and hear the rustle of the wind coming off the magical emanations of the two princesses.

Twilight’s voice echoed over the floaty feelings. “Just keep talking, it’ll help tide things over.” Sam understood this principle from far too many injections in his time, though he wasn’t sure how directly it applied to magical mutations.

“So… Princess of the Night. What exactly does that entail?”

“Among running the affairs of state, I work to raise the moon to usher in the night.” Luna mentioned this matter-of-factly, as if this was a sort of thing that everyone did once in a while.

“What? But… how does that even work? Does your planet just not rotate normally?”

“Its orbit is erratic, and we’ve found that it’s far easier to ensure constant seasons by aligning it with the celestial bodies at regular intervals. The process is very similar in appearance to ‘raising’ the moon and sun, and so this makes a convenient moniker for ponies not versed in astronomy.”

“I… see.” This was a little more plausible, but Sam still had mental shivers from being in the same room as some pony thing that casually spoke of aligning the moon every night.

“It is preferable to the alternative. The results can be…destructive if modified otherwise.” Another in-reference, though this one did not seem to be as joking. Sam decided not to probe further about the thought of the sun being left constantly overhead or some such. It was probably a sore spot in their history. There was a feeling of the world righting itself, and Twilight and Luna’s voices began to arrive from closer to home.

“Well, things seem to have settled. Is everything… in the right place?” Twilight’s bedside manner left something to be desired, but she probably didn’t do this often.

Still, things clearly weren’t in the right place. Everything had moved around, even the things that hadn’t been there before. The human had given way to what appeared to be a winged lion of sorts, wearing tan fur in place of the usual bare skin, though with Sam’s head hair and the end of the tail remaining the same sort of dull brown that was to be expected. The gaping chest wound was gone, which was clearly an improvement, though the replacement fur and lumps wasn’t exactly the preferred body part of choice. She was rather annoyed that the pronoun of the moment was correct, though not as much as she thought it should annoy her. It was another grievance in a long list, and she would feel cheated if the world had skipped one or two changes for the sake of streamlining things.

The body, at least, seemed to know its way around, despite the three extra limbs. Sam gingerly got off of the bed and into a ‘standing posture’, though it was far lower than she liked. Her body was longer than it used to be, and was certainly larger than the ponies in that regard, though they were still taller at the shoulder than her, due to their longer limbs. She pondered for a moment if she was wearing some other lion’s body, and that someone would be yelling at her in the coming days to ‘give back her face’, derpy and confused though it might be.

Twilight was the first to break the mood, blushing slightly at the more awkward parts of the change. “A sphinx… I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in Equestria before.”

“They used to be more common before your time. Still, presuming common traits of a foreign carnivorous traveling mammal with a penchant for intellectual discourse, it would be the easiest type to work with. Similar body size and disposition.”

“Huh. I suppose we have sphinxes in folklore, though they’re less lion-like. Part lion, part eagle, part human.” Sam’s voice was smoother, but more guttural. It was similar to how she imagined a cat might talk, if it were disposed to speak of more things than “Feed me, worthless mortal” and “How did I get up here?”

“While ours are simply half lion, half pegasus,” noted Luna. “As we have no humans in our world, there would have to be a variation, even if the term existed in both.” She stepped back, and began to dismantle the anti-magic modern art. “It is not disagreeable?”

“Peculiar, I think the word is. Things are dangling off me where they should not.” More blushing from Twilight, before she got that Sam was talking about wings. Luna did not seem bothered, either due to a sense of regal calmness, or just a lack of interest in the particulars of various species’ boinking rituals. “This isn’t too permanent, is it?”

Twilight paced in a circle, pondering the finer points of undiscovered magic. “Well, it’s permanent in the sense that it won’t change until we change it, but we should be able to work on a way to deal with it. We just need to construct the magical concepts of a human, and a spell to re-initiate the change. Which… I’ve never done either. And we’ve lost our only reference for a human. Still, one step at a time! Science demands victory.” She envisioned a heroic pose upon stating this travesty of a motto, as if bold colors were brilliantly flying in front of an unseen camera. If such an effect was real, it wasn’t obvious to Sam, and only served to make Twilight look rather immature. Excitable scientists seemed to be this way in fiction, so at least she was in good company, even if they would scoff at Twilight’s magical field of study. “So, shall we take a walk outside?”

Luna bid herself leave with little fanfare. “You know where I shall be if you need me, Twilight.”

“Oh! Of course, princess.” The sphinx and the alicorn were left alone in the ward, and not wanting to indulge the remains of the modern art any more than they already had been, they left to explore the outdoors of Canterlot.

Comments

[Traiden]

The premise of the story is something I could get behind, but something about the writing style just does not draw me in. Not to say that you are a bad writer, just that it feels like you are making too many assumptions with what the reader knows and what you have written down. It took a bit to long for me to make the connection that Twilight was arguing with Discord in the opening. Hopefully this critique helps, and I am sorry if it is seen as offensive, I have been told I am rather blunt at times. I mean only to help.

[Luigi-fan 470]

Ummmm....question, did the protagonist gender swap when he became a sphinxes? You very clearly refer to him as a female around that point. You might want to make that a more important fact.