25: Spirit Journey
Near hurricane force winds blasted Twilight, pressing her goggles ever tighter against her face. She gritted her teeth as she watched from behind Spike as he grew, dwarfing her in moments. It’s not fast enough. Not even close.
A new sound joined the rain and charging kraken. Thumping blades growled as two Thunderbolt gunships crawled their way into the air. Generations of living in a weather controlled society made the pilots and gunners unequipped to counter the ever growing storm. Twilight dared to turn her gaze away from her brother to watch the struggling aircraft with desperation. “Of all the oversights! To think some part of me regrets Thorn’s peace treaty. Otherwise I’d have insisted on harsh weather pilot training.”
Still, I’ll just have to trust Praxia and the other commanders with direct operations. I’m going to need to focus all my concentration on Spike.
As the Greyhounds opened fire, Twilight’s eyes glowed with a blinding white light that pierced the rain drenched night. Her horn was a spear of light and her mane and tail sparkled like a backdrop on the night sky. She flared her wings, fighting against the relentless wind all the while. Above and between her wings, a circular portal opened, not to a different place, but to a different realm. Twilight’s connection to the astral plane was made manifest to the naked eye, and its power shot forth to bathe Spike in raw mana.
The dragon’s already steady growth surged with renewed speed. His clawed feet dug deep gouges in the soil. Soon he reached three stories tall, then four, then more. As he grew, his mass shielded Twilight from the worst of the wind, allowing her to hover behind his back. Yet this growth came at a cost. Spike forced his eyes to keep the kraken front and center in his reddening gaze. His mind ebbed away with a single thought repeated over and over. Rip and tear, rip and tear, rip and tear.
Both alicorn and dragon held back, allowing him to grow for as long as possible. Small and erratic puffs of broken shell or blood blossomed off the beast; something Twilight took note of as she stood on Spike’s shoulder. Good. They’ve wised up and switched the mana shells into kinetic mode. But it might as well be bug bites to that thing. Twilight’s eyes searched the kraken for potential weak points. She didn’t get the chance.
While still a good distance from the beach, and well within the deep harbor, the kraken halted and dragged a truly gigantic tentacle into the air. Twilight’s eyes shrank out of morbid fascination as magic, her magic, crackled up and down the leathery sea-green limb. It doubled in length, tripled, then quadrupled. It seemed to linger in the air, an impossibly tall pillar for being so thin, uncaring for the storm billowing around it. In Twilight’s personal display, she activated the rangefinder. With the monster staying so far away to remain in the harbor, it’s only going to be able to hit us with the leading tip of that. After hanging in the air for a moment, it started its crash straight down towards Seed One.
Gritting her teeth as her horn strained under the stress, Twilight closed the portal and teleported away. “Release!”
Spike’s eyes shot up to the tentacle. He jumped, cracking the ground below him. With a feral roar, he grappled the tentacle in midair, his arms barely long enough to encircle it, but he had no wings to direct the attack.
Twilight’s horn seared with light. “You think you can just steal my magic?!” She fired off a rippling wave of magic. A ribbon of explosions rippled along the left side of the tentacle, shoving both it and Spike off course.
She watched both of them crash into the rows of domed houses. Dozens of homes were demolished into unrecognizable ruins. Once on the ground, the kraken tried to pull the tentacle back out to sea, but Spike dug in his claws and heels to halt its retreat. The Greyhounds began to start swarming behind the great dragon after a new voice chirped on Twilight’s radio. ~“Ground Cav, focus all fire on this point. Let’s give the commander a chance to rip it off!”~
Twilight wanted to praise Praxia’s strategy, but she knew it would be distracting to both of them. As the kraken raged and tried to free itself from Spike, Twilight saw another massive tentacle rising out of the sea. I really hope you’ve only got two of those.
Keeping her eyes fixed on the plunging tentacle, Twilight’s horn flared with such brilliance that onlookers could only see a purple star. The wind howled and the kraken screeched as the tentacle, now as wide as a highway, fell towards Seed One. A massive baseball bat with Twilight’s cutie mark solidified in midair. “Let’s see you absorb this!” The building-sized bat swung and connected with the tentacle, pushing it off course. The huge limb crashed into the river delta, smashing the series of small bridges and fishnets, yet the tip of it slammed into the biolabs, destroying the entire east end of the building.
Twilight let go of her spell, causing the dented bat to explode in a torrent of loose mana, cast to the four winds by the storm and rain. Twilight couldn’t spare the time to see what was damaged. She raced down to the tentacle as it was slithering back into the ocean. She landed on top of it, near a patch of tissue with a collection of small mouths and gnashing teeth. “I’ll be taking my magic back now.”
Twilight’s battle gauntlets came complete with diamond pointed claws that pierced and sank easily into the beast’s leathery hide, smashing a couple of mouths in the process. She flared her wings as wide as they would go. Using a merger of all three tribes’ magic, she grappled the mana flowing through the kraken’s tentacle and ripped it out through her hooves and vented it out of her wings. Twilight was awestruck by not just the sheer concentration of mana inside the beast, but the sheer volume of how much she was stealing away. By Celestia’s sunburnt flank, it’s like an ocean of mana!
Fearing what was going to happen, Twilight weaved a particular protective spell with what little stolen mana she could control. The density of atmospheric magic surged to the point where it was visible to the naked eye as long blue wisps being thrown about by the storm. And it was just Twilight’s luck that the magic acted like a homing beacon for the storm. Lightning struck the growing mass of mana, causing it to erupt in a massive mage-fire inferno that raged and fought against the rain.
The kraken screeched in horrid pain as the mana drain numbed the limb into complete uselessness, preventing the beast from thrashing Twilight off. All it could do was pull the deadened tentacle back into the sea. Yet as it did so, the collection of Greyhounds and explosives armed infantry had managed to blast enough of a hole into the other tentacle that Spike was able to rip it off completely.
Blood and leaking mana in the form of an evaporating mist shot out of the wound, yet it too was struck by lightning, turning the kraken’s spilling lifeblood into ribbons of expanding crystal. Spike was unaffected by the encroaching crystallized mana, and focused solely on his trophy, but the tentacle started to wither and dry up, shrinking down so fast he lost his grip on it. Between the combined efforts of Spike, Twilight, and the military, the kraken was paralyzed from sheer pain, halting its effort to drag Twilight into sea. The alicorn stopped in the middle of the beach, still venting huge amounts of mana that started to scorch the walls of Seed One.
“If I can just keep the fire far enough away…” Twilight growled under the strain of intermingling her magic with the firestorm of magic she was venting. It was taxing enough already to keep the heat ward in place, but she managed to move and shape the inferno to mimic the shape of her own wings, only on a grand scale.
Her fur and mane burned away from the enormous heat, but her body and feathers remained intact. A shrill alarm rang in her ear and personal display, but before she could gather enough wits to read it, her horn-circlet shorted out and started melting onto her scorched skin. Monster first, alert second.
The tentacle underneath her was shriveling like a prune. As it lost mass, it became desiccated and started to crack open. Twilight was not satisfied with just draining mana out of the limb; she wanted to pull it from the kraken’s entire body. The kraken had finally collected enough wits to try and reverse Twilight’s drain. What the creature lacked in finesse, it tried to make up for in raw strength. So powerful was its attempt that Twilight risked breaking her concentration. She risked looking out to the harbor to see if anyone had made progress in besting the monster. The sea creature frothed and raged against both Spike and Twilight, and was shrinking at an alarming rate. The color of its flesh was discoloring badly with rapidly spreading bruises and fissures weeping blood, but that was all Twilight could see through the flaming mana engulfing her.
I can’t let up yet. This drain could be the only thing keeping the kraken from doing any further damage. The sands were scorched to black glass, the storm even balked at the superheated updraft she created. Whether it was a few minutes or an hour, so focused was Twilight that she nearly jumped out of her skin when the kraken unleashed an ear-splitting unholy shriek of agony that all but drowned out the storm. Trying to ignore both the strain of her spell, and the ringing in her ears, she looked over again, and saw Spike had waded through the tides. The feral drake had grappled the kraken’s beak open, and was drenching its mouth with dragonfire.
A dozen smaller tentacles wrestled with the raging dragon, but none of them had any strength left. The beast slumped as its brain was boiled alive. It was at that same time that the mana flow cut out, abruptly ending the flames around Twilight. In death, the kraken started sinking into the water, nearly dragging Spike down with it.
I better get over to him before he starts looking for new things to fight. With the mana no longer flowing, the flames around Twilight died away, leaving hot rain to pelt her bald and cooked skin. Twilight tried to detach her mech-gauntlets from the tentacle, only to find them unresponsive. She looked down with a scowl, expecting to find the exterior just as charred as the bubbling and blistered flesh of the beast they were rooted in. Her fears were confirmed, but even more than that, the machinery inside was completely slagged, trapping her hooves inside them. It wasn’t helped by the fact it was horribly uncomfortable to have cooling metal encasing her limbs. Through it all, however, Twilight’s vision swam and blurred. What… what’s happening?
Muscle weakness gripped Twilight, and her wings fell limp along with the rest of her. She was held partly up due to her gauntlets being melted into her hooves. This is so strange - nausea? Fatigue? My horn feels so numb. A light blinked on in her mind while a goofy grin crossed her face. “Is this what mana exhaustion feels like? How novel.” A second later, the world went dark and Twilight passed out.
Twilight awoke to a gentle lullaby. It was an old tune, like a familiar blanket that warmed her spirits. It brought such peace with it that Twilight allowed herself those coveted five more minutes and continued to doze, completely forgetting everything but that sweet lullaby.
As with all things, that peace came to a shattering stop. A desperate voice called out to her from the distance, echoing like a speaker within a concert hall and silencing the soothing melody. Begrudgingly, Twilight stretched and cracked an eye open, only to find no warm bedroom, but a sea of stars and thin wisps of mist everywhere in a dark realm.
“Woah, what?” Twilight instinctively tried to stand, only to find she had no hooves, no legs, no anything. She was a formless cloud floating in the aether. Her body, if it could be called that, was easily the size of a stadium. A few moments of bewilderment were quickly shut down as her logic and experience kicked in and the shock of her situation faded. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised I ended up here.” She was slightly amused by how parts of her cloud body lit up when she thought aloud.
Well, if I don’t have a corporeal body, dead or otherwise, then logic dictates I must be in spirit form. Or at least a close analogy to it. Twilight reached out to feel her connection with the astral plane. It was a bit difficult to locate without a body to anchor it to, but find it she did. The polarity is reversed. That must mean I’m on the astral plane and the connection is to my corporeal body. Twilight would have sighed in relief if she had lungs. Good, that’s proof my body’s still alive. I guess I’ll have to leave matters in Praxia’s hooves for now.
“Momma, help! Where am I? Are you here?” a familiar voice called out below her. Being in the state she was in, Twilight’s vision was omnidirectional, but had very little clarity of sight. Yet by focusing on the direction of the cries, she was barely able to make out Prism Flash of all ponies in desperate flight. The young mare’s head and eyes whipped back and forth, trying to find her, but ultimately not moving forward in the slightest, such was the nature of this realm. All around her daughter were lenses into the past, memories even Twilight couldn’t recall anymore, hanging in midair around well-lit puffs of vapor.
With a bit of effort, Twilight managed to make her voice heard from the part of the cloud nearest to the panicked mare. “Prism Flash, dear, momma’s here.”
Prism skidded to a halt, or at least made the motions to do so. She scanned the horizon up and down, but didn’t see anyone, completely ignoring the purple vapor. “M-mom? Where are you?”
“I’m right above you, Little Wing,” Twilight said calmly, hoping her tone would sooth her daughter. She expected the confusion on Prism’s face when she looked up to find only a mass of glowing motes. “I’m a cloud at the moment, so you’ll just have to imagine I’m smiling reassuringly at you. Throw a wave in too.”
Twilight watched Prism’s eyes go wide at first before narrowing into a mixture of suspicion and disbelief. “Let’s see. I get blasted into some void zone, apparently, my memories are on display like some cliché security camera room for a claustrophobic guy, and now a cloud entity is trying to pose as my mom. You’ll have to try better than that, cloud monster. Why don’t you just drop the act and show me your disgusting alien face.”
Twilight sighed deeply, unaware that her body was slowly condensing. “If you are so against clichés then why would you force me to do another cliché of me reminding you of something super embarrassing to prove who I am?”
“You could always pick something not embarrassing… Okay, point taken.” Prism’s eyes wandered over the cloud claiming to be Twilight with less suspicion. “At least you sound like mom when she’s exasperated.” Prism shrugged, her heartbeat and breathing slowing to normal. “So why are you a cloud? Did you beat that giant squid thing? Where are we? Why am I not a cloud? If you start to rain, would that count as relieving yourself?”
“No, I don’t rain - at least I don’t think so. Also, gross. Anyway,” Twilight fumed as she tried to get her train of thoughts back on track. “I believe we did defeat the beast. I witnessed Spike breathing fire into the kraken’s maw before I woke up here.”
“He beat it doing that?! Damn, I wish I coulda seen it in person.” Prism kicked the intangible ground she was standing on, wishing there was a rock.
“You can watch it all on replay later I’m sure.” Twilight’s cloud had now shrunk down to half its original size and had started to take on a rudimentary pony shape. She only noticed as much because her vision was narrowing to her normal eye range, and had to bend down to keep Prism in sight. “I’m more interested in how you got here. You say you got sucked up here?”
“I remember it was your fault,” Prism barked with no real malice. “At least I think so.” Prism glanced down as she rubbed her chin at the memory. “My horn was burning like the dickens the whole time you were showing off your best phoenix impersonation.”
“Phoenix impersonation?”
Prism flapped her wings and wiggled her hooves while making a ‘whoosh’ sound. “You know, big ol’ fire wings the size of flippin’ Seed One! It was pretty flippin’ cool, I’ll give you that.” Twilight tried to take it as a compliment. “Wish I could have taken a picture, but those wings were pumping out some kind of pressure or whatever because it felt like my head was being pried open with a blowtorch.” Prism rubbed the base of her horn from phantom pain.
Twilight moved in to try and hug Prism, but only succeeded in roping her in with mist. “I’m sorry, Little Wing. I didn’t think that mana bleed would have caused anypony any suffering - well, aside from the kraken and Seed One’s paint job at least.”
Prism waved her concern away, and ran to escape the suffocating embrace. “I’m alive, you’re alive - I hope, so long as we can get back home I’ll give you a pass this time.”
“Ever the paragon of forgiveness,” Twilight chuckled sheepishly.
A smug grin cleaved Prism’s muzzle. “Yes, well, I am the nice one. So ah - any chance you can get us back home?” Prism scowled at the floating memories of ice and snow, crying with her mother, and watching ponies freezing in the streets. “I can think of a million different places I’d rather be.”
Twilight studied her solidifying body with more curiosity than anything else. “I can feel my magic control returning, but I believe we’ll need to wait until I’m down to size before I can make the attempt.”
“And how long will that take?”
“Well… time moves differently here,” Twilight mused aloud. “The material world could be moving faster or slower than us at random, so it is impossible to say. Although I suspect we have nothing to worry about. I taught Praxia how to quell Spike in the event I am unable to rein in his primal state. Plus I instructed Praxia on how to revive me should this ever happen, so we shouldn’t be trapped here indefinitely at least. This is just a guess mind you, but I suspect once I’m back down to normal size, my corporeal body will have recovered enough for me to open a portal back home.”
“You act like you’ve done this before.” Prism wished there was a face she could scowl at.
“Let’s just say I didn’t get to sit and have tea in the castle all that often,” Twilight replied cryptically. She knew Prism was going to pry so she changed the subject. “At any rate, I have little doubt the colony is in a tizzy with you missing and me presumably comatose. So Praxia isn’t going to make a public to-do about reviving me. At least she won’t if she doesn’t panic and misinterpret the signs and try the wrong method.”
Prism scoffed. “She’ll be fine. So the neigh unstoppable archmage had a backup plan for dying? I don’t know why you keep denying you’re a chess master.”
“Just because I believe in contingency plans, doesn’t mean I’m some kind of puppet master.”
“I know, that’s why I called you a chess master,” Prism teased back. “Why? Do you think you’re a puppet master too?”
“Ugh, I don’t know whether to be glad you can handle strange situations with jokes, or be terrified.” By now, Twilight’s body had shrunk down to the size of a baseball diamond, giving her enough physical presence to pinch her nose in frustration.
“So ahh…” Prism’s studious eyes lingered on her mother’s shrinking body for a bit before wandering around to take in the scenery, or lack thereof, and settling on the memories buzzing past her. The scenes playing out in front of her had changed to show her younger self running and playing inside the Ponyville Castle to grieving with her mother at her father’s funeral service. Prism made a point to look away from that painful memory. “Wait a sec… is this is the alicorn realm you used to sing about? No wonder you don’t visit often. Seems like a boring place full of depressing home movies.” She tore her gaze away from the memories, giving Twilight a melancholy frown at the dismissal. Prism pointed at the balls of gentle light surrounding them, both near and far. “So what’s with these lights? Are they portals to somewhere or some cheap lighting?”
“You seem awfully at ease for somepony who just got booted out of the known realm in the midst of a battle. Repressing your fear isn’t healthy, you know. Why not take the time to meditate?”
Prism hesitated in her study of the strange space around her. “I - I don’t think I can center myself enough in this freaky place. I just want to go home and see if Silver is okay. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to have your pilot suddenly disappear right in the middle of a fight.”
Now that she had a more defined form, Twilight was able to swing herself below Prism’s floor so she could be eye level with her. She tried to nuzzle Prism, but her body only offered a hint of resistance before Prism’s face passed through her clouds. The act produced a stifled chuckle out of the young mare. “I’m sure he’ll be just fine when you return, sweetheart. And don’t worry about the rest of the colony. Praxia has things well in hoof, I’m sure.”
“What makes you so sure she didn’t flip a feather when you went brain dead?”
“Because she doesn’t have any to flip,” Twilight quipped, causing Prism to let out an amused snort.
Prism tried to hug her mother, and found more physical resistance, but still nowhere near enough for a proper embrace. She slumped with her weak smile gone and a depressed frown in its place.
As with most mothers, Twilight hated to see her daughter being miserable and was quick to think of a distraction. “Little Wing, have you taken a moment to remember what I specifically said about this place?” Prism looked up and balked at the twin lavender suns her mother’s eyes had become, yet Twilight mistook it for her getting confused. “While your arrival here was premature, you are here nonetheless.”
“Iiis that a problem?” Prism’s ears flattened and she held a foreleg in close.
“I do not know, my child.” With the greatest of care, Twilight caressed Prism’s cheek with a truck sized hoof. There was just enough resistance for Twilight to know when she made contact. “We alicorns are so rare, and thus far, each of our ascensions has been unique. The only unifying element is that we all came here as the final catalyst of our ascension.”
“Ascension?! Me? Why didn’t you say so earlier?!” Prism pealed out with a girlish squeal of delight as she touched her horn, only to find it was the same length as before, barely long enough to poke through her bangs. Her elation deflated almost as quickly as it came. “Uhh, are you sure?”
Twilight’s body was now only fifteen feet tall, and she was able to stand on the same ‘ground’ as Prism. She extended her right wing, drawing Prism’s eyes towards it. “My wings only appeared when I returned to the material plane, so you will have to wait until our return to see.”
“Oooo! Why did you tell me that now?” Prism’s scowl only elicited a playful yet innocent smirk out of Twilight. “Now I can’t wait! How much longer until you can take us back?!” Prism tried to hug her mother’s leg, only to fall right through and go into a tumble as if she were in low gravity. With a few flaps of her wings, she corrected herself easily enough.
“Soon if the rate I’m shrinking is any indication,” Twilight said she looked herself over. “But again, time could be moving differently for us. We could have been gone anywhere from a few hours to potentially years, so just don’t be surprised when we get out.”
“A few years?! Prism shouted in a panic. “The colony’s going to have a conniption if both of us are gone for that long.” Prism searched her mother’s face for shared terror, but Twilight’s face still had a misty appearance, obscuring any definitive body language. “There’s no way the colony’s not a flaming wreck by the time we get back if it’s really a few years. Praxia probably died of love starvation without us!”
Twilight did feel heavy concern threatening to bubble to the surface. Oh no, I didn’t even think about that! But I can’t let Prism see me freak out. “I trust Praxia to hold the fort, and I’m sure she could ask some new parents to borrow some parental love. Changelings are nothing if not adaptable survivors.”
“But years?! What if Silver really thinks I just melted or something? Would he move on, thinking I’m dead? Would he get all super depressed thinking my death was somehow his fault?! He already suffered that with his folks!”
Prism started pacing back and forth, muttering increasing levels of panic and fear. “What about Spring Roll?”
As Twilight’s body took on a more normal appearance, her mask of control was starting to show cracks. “I have every confidence in Sawbones to look after her.”
“But you said Spring Roll needs an alicorn to nurse her or she could go Fire Shrine 2.0! She could be going insane at this very moment!” Prism’s mane had frizzed so much out of stress she looked like an electrocution victim. “The colony could be in flames! We—”
Twilight pressed a solid hoof on her daughter’s muzzle, yet the attempt to silence her failed as Prism just kept on jabbering. Twilight furrowed her brow and used both hooves to clamp her daughter’s mouth shut long enough to get a word in. “The common ponies are not so dependent on us that they cannot keep things together. Have a little faith.”
Prism pulled her face away from Twilight’s hooves. “What if Praxia’s gone super lonely without us and was forced to create a harem for herself just to stay sane?”
“Honestly, that might be the healthiest thing she could do for herself,” Twilight rebuked softly. At least she’d stop hovering around my office door. She shuddered involuntarily for a moment.
Twilight’s body flashed with light as her form became solid at last. “Ah, there we go.” She gave herself a once over, not really expecting anything to be wrong with her soul’s appearance. She did notice some scars that she did not have in her real body. A few healed lines, a knot of scar tissue here and there, but on the whole she looked healthy. Some scars never heal if not treated in time. Shaking it off, Twilight beamed a smile at Prism. “Ah, I can feel the connection to my body is still intact, as expected,” she added in a mildly patronizing tone, hoping to have some irritation replace the panic in Prism’s mind.
“Now then.” With a swipe of her horn, Twilight tore a clean hole in midair, revealing a hospital room in Seed One. Without waiting for Prism to register the portal, Twilight unceremoniously kicked her daughter through the portal and jumped in after her.
Prism face-planted on the sterile white ceramic floor with only her pained groan and a heart monitor to welcome her. She groggily picked herself up to find a stunned, slack-jawed nurse in the middle of checking her mother’s vital signs.
Twilight was stirring from the bed and sat up groaning at stiff muscles and a throbbing pain at the base of her horn.
The one thing that Prism noticed right off the bat was that her mother was completely bald, only the ghost of regrowing hair was present. “Laugh later,” Prism said more to herself. “Hey doc, how long have we been gone?”
“Uh, nurse actually, but um, two days.” The unicorn nurse seemed to recover a bit and pressed the doctor call alert on his personal display. “Might I ask where you went?”
“Oh, nowhere special,” Prism commented so offhandedly it might have been insulting, “just the alicorn secret clubhouse. Speaking of which! I need a mirror.”
The nurse blankly pointed behind Prism to the requested object resting on the wall. Twilight strategically remained silent, allowing Prism to occupy herself so she could do something about the horrendously embarrassing lack of fur.
Upon seeing that mirror, a mad hatter grin cleaved Prism’s muzzle at the much longer horn crowning her forehead. Excitement mounted so rapidly she started to hyperventilate. The nurse stepped around the bed to reach her when Prism’s breathing got uncontrolled enough for her to start to foam at the mouth and wobble on her hooves. Twilight forgot her baldness and reached forward with her magic when she saw Prism faint and keel over. She would have hit the floor if the nurse had not been quick to catch her in his telekinesis, as Twilight’s own magic only fizzled at the attempt.
“Oh, by the stars, that girl.” Seeing Prism was unharmed, Twilight allowed the nurse to tend to the young mare while she whispered a few commands to Voyager via the wired phone next to the hospital bed.
Sawbones all but burst into the hospital room along with a second nurse. “The alarm - oh, so you’ve awakened at last.” Seeing that the situation was not critical, Sawbones gave whispered instructions to the nurse that had followed him to depart.
By the time he refocused on Twilight, she had put the finishing touches on her hair and mane illusion while Prism was coming around thanks to the nurse’s assistance. “You gave all of us quite a start, your highness.”
“My apologies, doctor,” Twilight replied as she climbed out of bed. “I overexerted my alicorn magic.” As soon as her hooves hit the floor, Twilight was suddenly lightheaded, and would have collapsed had she not shot out a wing to hold onto the bed.
Sawbones was quick to help her stand properly, and she gave thanks for his support. “You alicorns may be made of sterner stuff, but maybe you should take it easy, at least for an hour or so.”
A weak smile crossed her lips. I think I’ll take you up on that advice.” With his assistance, Twilight got back in bed and gave him a grateful smile once she was comfortable. “If you can spare the time, I’d like to know all of what’s happened while I was out.”
Sawbones heaved a fatigued sigh, but kept his face professionally warm. “That would take more time than some of my other patients can spare, I’m afraid. But I suspect Praxia would be a bit more accurate than I.”
A saddened frown marred her face along with flattened ears. “Was it really that bad?”
Before Sawbones could elaborate, Prism all but bulldozed the poor doctor in racing back over to her mother and painfully banged her horn into Twilight’s own. Prism couldn’t care less about the pain because only one burning question was on her mind. “I need a second opinion!” She pointed at her much longer horn with both wings. “Is it official? Is it? is it?”
A sly yet proud grin crossed Twilight’s face before being quickly replaced with that of an archeologist studying some mildly interesting uncovered pottery. With a hoof, she positioned Prism’s face left then right, up then down; humming a studious hum now and again. It was a distraction from the coming bad news that she welcomed. Prism’s grin slowly morphed into a scowl of confounded annoyance. Twilight knew exactly how long she could play her game of studying the lab rat, and spoke up right as Prism was going to voice her displeasure. “Yes, I dare say you are now a full alicorn.” The mask of an impartial judge vanished as Twilight roped Prism into a squashing bear hug and giggled happily. “I knew you could do it, sweetie. I’m so proud of you.”
Prism decided to have mercy and dropped her irritation for one of shared joy, and returned the embrace with full force. It was enough to slowly crush the air out of Twilight’s lungs. “Can you hold off on announcing the news though? I wanna celebrate with Silver.”
Twilight let go of the hug and kept an eye fixed on her daughter as she climbed out of bed. “Just be sure to have protection, okay?”
“Psh, I’m not stupid. Bye, love you!” Prism bolted for the exit, nearly running into Sawbones again, but the doctor managed to duck to the side.
The good doctor had used the interruption to recover his warm bedside manner and inform Praxia of Twilight’s awakening and Prism’s return. “I would love to spend the evening catching back up with you, your highness, but you rarely need a doctor’s eye, and I can’t say the same for one of my other patients at the moment.”
Twilight nodded in understanding. “I trust my house is intact.”
“Yours is, not mine, sadly.” Sawbones waved the nurse over and shared some orders via the personal displays. “It’s been crushed into splinters, so I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of staying in yours while I cared for Spring Roll.”
“Not at all.” Not caring for his staunch professionalism in the workplace, Twilight dragged Sawbones over so she could nuzzle him. “Why don’t we make it a permanent affair?”
Prism’s first destination was the nurse’s station on the medical floor, and found one doing documentation on the wall display. “Heyya, miss?”
The cream colored unicorn turned around and gasped at Prism’s presence. “Oh my, you’re Prism Flash right? I heard you went missing.”
“I got better,” Prism shot back with a proud grin and a mane flip to show off her new and improved horn. “You got some spare display goggles? I sorta lost mine somewhere.”
“We have a small printer that can replicate you a copy, I’m sure you have clearance to use it.” The mare pointed at a nook in the wall and ordered Voyager to start making a copy.
“Sweetness, thanks. And one more thing.” Prism started to plan on what sort of reveal she was going to do to Silver. “Can that printer make the pill?”
Over an hour later, and a brief announcement that she was awake again, Twilight stood outside further inland. She gazed forlornly at Spike’s hibernating form, and held a hoof on his car-sized chin. The dragon was circled up and lying upon a massive pile of fake gold coins and replicas of other valuable looking artifacts.
The ground around his hoard was still waterlogged from the storm and light flooding. The clear orange tinted sky glinted on his scales. His huge frame rose and fell with slow breaths that reeked of sulfur. Loose mana steamed slowly off of him and was pulled into a trio of pylons that stood on the outer edges of the gold pile. They were responsible for drawing out the excess mana that his body clung to like glue.
Spring Roll was asleep inside a carrier that Twilight kept strapped to her while Praxia stood at the bottom of the coin pile. “I made the mana leech to the specifications you left in your scenario four plan.”
“You’ve always made me proud to be your teacher, Praxia. By all accounts, you’ve handled my absence well.”
Praxia blushed to the point where her whole head was red. Her wings buzzed excitedly as she bowed reverently. “Thank you, Sensei. Keeping everypony’s eyes away from you was somewhat easy by focusing on damage control,” Praxia replied a bit too fast, “but I admit I couldn’t think of a plan after that.” The grey changeling’s mane was styled rigidly straight-cut to a fault, yet she still managed to look like she was recovering from rebellious disguise magic, and her head was ever so slowly returning to its normal color. “I - I wish you wouldn’t push yourself to such extremes. What if the soul tether ritual didn’t work?”
“Then I would have to trust you to find some other way to bring me back,” Twilight replied with pride coloring her tone, hoping it did the changeling good. “I have complete faith in you, Praxia.”
Praxia visibly swallowed the lump in her throat, and had to ride the high she felt from the praise. Some part of her felt Twilight’s accolades were justified after all. “I’ll do the best I can, Sensei.”
“Glad to hear it.” Twilight’s manner hardened a bit as her thoughts drifted to the conflict with the kraken, in particular, the two gunships that were rendered useless due to the storm. Either one of those could have warded the kraken away. Yet it had to fall to Spike and me. As much as I dislike pulling a Celestia, the common ponies need to be able to deal with such threats without my direct intervention. If the natives are going to be this hostile, we all need to be ready. “Praxia, inform Spike’s advisors and staff to report to my office. With Spike out of action, I will be taking a more direct hoof on military matters.”
“It will be done, Sensei.”
Just before Twilight announced her return to the waking world, Prism Flash had used a mixture of stealth and pleas to arrive at the Pathfinder garage with her coworkers unaware of her. A grey snout poked its way through the open shutters between the hall and the garage. Prism already knew from Voyager that the other Pathfinders were out on assignment. So that should leave only the engineers, and one bat in particular.
The garage had not changed much. The rover docks were empty, save for her own. Sure enough, only three ponies were present. A unicorn stallion was in the machine shop working on parts, and a pegasus mare was working underneath a new rover model that Prism had only seen on proposal memos Ruby had forwarded from R&D. It had specialized robotic wheels that were cycling between a wheel and robotic claw form. That looks cool. Might be useful in mountain ranges where the air is too thin for it to fly.
Dragging her thoughts away from the new toy, Prism cast her eyes upon Joe and the particular bat stallion eating lunch on top of it while the rover’s camera stalk was looking at him. Perfect, everypony’s distracted.
Before she tiphoofed into the garage, Prism spotted her imperfect reflection in the metal frame of the shutters. Her eyes drifted once more to her fully fledged alicorn horn and blew a kiss at it. Lookin’ awesome, girl!
Returning her attention to Silver Belle, Prism fussed with her bangs to make sure they were just right. Ruffled hair took a surprising amount of precision, as a matter of fact.
Once she deemed herself presentable, Prism crept her way through the garage. With grinding machine noises drowning out her hoofsteps, Prism got all the way to directly behind the hapless engineer.
With a mad-hatter grin, Prism pressed a few buttons on her personal display and the garage’s hologram projectors created a mask around Prism, making her look ethereal and ghostlike, complete with spectral chains that loudly clattered. It was that clattering that drew Silver’s attention out of the maintenance panel. “Gearbox, be careful with that calib—”
Silver jumped out of his fur the instant he registered a ghostly Prism with black hollow pits for eyes and worms burrowing in her tongue and flesh. “Siiilver, why did you damn me?!” Prism accused harshly. “Whhhyyyyy?”
“P-p-p-Prism?!” Silver scrambled over the rover, kicking tools off the side of the machine in a mad scramble to flee. His wings locked to his sides, keeping him from flying away.
“You doomed me to Tartarus with that cursed soup!” Prism swung a zombie-like hoof. “It was sinfully good. And now I suffer!”
The absurdity of the accusation didn’t even register on him for a long moment, enough time for Prism to slowly fly above him, rattling her chains. “Sssoup? But I thought you liked it!”
“I liked it toooo much. You should have made bad soouuuppp.”
Finally Silver stopped trying to distance himself, and scrutinized the so-called ghost with a critical eye. Pony holograms were rather good, but they still had faint scanning lines that passed over them if you knew how to spot them. Silver noticed three of them oscillating around the chains first, then the ghost’s body. Prism was in the middle of another accusation when Silver’s fear was starkly changed to supreme indignation and he jabbed a hoof on the ghost’s very solid chest. “Come on, Flintlock, way too soon! Prism died, for Twilight’s sake!”
A stupid grin cleaved Prism’s face as she tapped the off button and the hologram was replaced by her normal appearance. “I told you it’s weird when you swear in my mom’s name.” There was only great amusement in her tone.
A series of expressions colored Silver’s face from disbelief to shock before settling on jubilation. “Y-you’re alive?!”
Prism shot him a playful salute. “Sorry about that; mom decided I needed an upgrade a bit early.”
She didn’t get another word in before Silver jumped forward and roped her into a desperate hug. Prism was initially shocked by the stifled sobs that heralded an even tighter hug, as if he couldn’t believe she was real. It was that shock that reminded her of the same fear she had in the astral plane before Twilight revealed herself. Prism eagerly returned the embrace, her tears joining his.
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Hoo, now that was some Pacific Rim stuff there!
Hehe. Somepony is getting laid tonight!
It's so nice to have an alicorn this happy about her ascension! So much more realistic -- not to mention interesting -- than the moody ' woe is me' crap.
Seriously: Prism is just the best!
Clicks end turn button
Can't wait for the next one!
If the main OCs in this story were voiced, what would they sound like? Or did I already ask this?
So spike pulled a Godzilla? Niiiiiiice
Prism went FULL Phillip J. Fry (like in a Fishful of Dollars) on seeing her horn!
It's funny seeing Prism show both Twi's and Dash's traits.
Also I now picture the greyhound like a Lav 300
8561166
Well, that was epic. And Prism, be nice
My browser crashed in the middle of Twilight venting mana. I blame mana overload.
You give me withdrawals every time you update slow. It's too good and you're damning me to tartarus. ;p
Prism's prank was epic! And all in all another great chapter ^_^.
Wait, what did the Mane Characters look like again? i forgot.
8562658
Twilight Sparkle is about the height of Luna as depicted in the show.
Prism Flash has dusty grey fur and a mane with three equal sized stripes, rust red, steel, and dull yellow in that order. She also has amber eyes that have the same shape as Twilight.
Praxia has darker grey fur but with a solid orange mane and tail.
Spike is normally around the size of an average human male.
Silver has light brown fur with navy blue wings with purple hair with ruddish red streaks.
8562798
That reminds me, have you seen any fanart of your characters yet?
8562810
Only of Fire Shrine. Which chrome is for some reason not allowing me to add to this comment. Edit: here it is.
8561319
Probably like Alvin and the chipmunks, and chipettes. /nods sagely/ most definitely
.
8562817
What about a link?
Missing opening quotes
Interesting... What is the point of having all that around him?
8564171
For a dragons greed is their greatest weakness. They used the "jewels and gold" to calm the beast and bring him under control, just like how a regular dragon in cannon and mythos would when they nest.
This is so good I finished it in 3 days. 0 productivity for me, but I got a good story oh my gosh yes
Shame that Alf wasn't around to witness that. He hasn't gotten a full taste of Alicorn Divinity yet.
8562798
It's amusing at least. 
I imagine Prism as a grown up Flurry Heart, because you didn't describe her much early on and that's just what my brain went with.
Number agreement error.
Hyphenate
Consider replacing that first comma with a period.
Comma splice.
Homophone error. The correct spelling is hoard. You'd need a horde of warriors to dislodge a dragon from his hoard.
8590928
Thanks for the catches. As for the comma splice, that is in dialogue, and i use commas there to indicate brief pauses. Not following standard grammar rules during dialogue is intentional in most cases for the sake of inflection, tense, and manner of speech without the need for extra words such as (he paused) in between a sentence.
8596444
Granted, we do not use perfect grammar in speech. However, even that does not justify a comma splice. If you want to signify that the speaker didn't make a full stop between sentences, use a semicolon. A mere comma implies that the speaker is running from one sentence to another, as if he's speaking in a hurry. (And even though you haven't done this, I'll say this here for the sake of completion: No punctuation at all between sentences--a run-on sentence--implies that the speaker is just going on and on without taking a breath. Think Pinkie Pie.)
Supreme indignation? Really wondering what that looks like.
I will never be able to look at that word and not think about Splatoon and the Squid Sisters.