The Starlight Broadcast

by ponyfhtagn

Pt.1 - Chapter 15

Cadence knew about the egg.

Twilight was sure. Cadence must know. How could Cadence not know? Cadence always knew. Maybe Shining Armor had told her. Did he know about the egg? Of course he did. They both knew. The way they whispered about things but cut off when Twilight was snooping around. The way the kept finding excuses to barge into her room.

“Twilight, we’re worried about you. Twilight, you’re missing dinner. Twilight, there’s more to growing up than studying.”

It was all a pretence. Why didn’t they just come out and accuse her? Did they want her to dance for them? Did they want her to crack? Oh, they’d like that, wouldn’t they…? The unflappable Twilight Sparkle, falling all to bits over a stupid egg.

That must be why Shining Armor refused to admit the Starburst had drained her magic. “You were just scared by it, that’s all.” Twilight was not scared! Could a scaredy-pony have stolen an egg from the dragon project? Twilight didn’t think so…

But Shining Armor would just change the subject, if he could.

“Hey Cadence,” he’d sidestepped. “I was wondering… Why is Celestia now having shipments of apple cider brought to the palace?”

“Shining,” Cadence had complained. “Not in front of the foal…”

Yes, always not in front of Twilight. They were keeping secret from her. Them and Celestia. Did Twilight’s parents know? Who else was in on this?

“The Starburst stole the magic from those pegasi,” Twilight had pointed out.

“That’s because they were at ground zero,” Shining Armor said. “And it didn’t steal their magic. It just… broke it. I think. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.”

And there is was. He admits that he knows nothing! Yet he insists that he knows the Starburst Event didn’t drain Twilight’s magic at the crucial moment of her test. She’d been left for days without magic! Probably… Probably she had. Yes, she had.

In fact, even now she couldn’t be sure she was at full power. Maybe the Starburst had broken something in her, too. Yes, that must be it. They was why she hadn’t been able to hatch the dragon egg yet. She had Starburst Sickness. Or something similar maybe. It made her weak. She couldn’t let them know she was weak. What would they do then?

Twilight just had to keep telling everpony that she was fine.

Nopony ever listened anyway…

Nopony paid attention. They hadn’t even noticed her new cutiemark. Oh sure, she’d been hiding it, but shouldn’t some pony have noticed? It didn’t seem right that something so important would just go unnoticed! Somepony had to know!

Did they really know anything at all?

Oh… they did. They just waited. Waited for Twilight to give herself away and spill her secrets because she couldn’t handle the pressure. But she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction! If they were going to pretend like nothing was wrong then so would she.

“I’ll win this waiting game…” Twilight muttered to herself as she paced her room that night.

The house was dark. Her family were all sleeping now. Cadence had been in to visit today before being called back to Celestia again. Twilight had hid in her room for most of it. She didn’t like the way that Cadence would watch her squirm.

“Nice dress, Twilight,” Cadence had said. “It really suits you.”

“What does that mean?” Twilight had growled. “I have lots of dresses. It doesn’t mean anything. They’re not special!”

“Oh, okay…”

Cadence was on to her. Cadence and Shining Armor—they were up to something.

“Have they found anything yet?” Twilight had heard her brother ask.

“No, nothing yet,” Cadence had said.

They were obviously talking about the egg. They were just playing games now. They knew Twilight had it. Why else had they been talking where she could easily eavesdrop on them just by spying through a keyhole?

“Maybe I should run away…” Twilight was muttering to herself. “Once I hatch the egg I’ll take my dragon and all the books I can carry and we’ll go make a new life in… in Griffonstone, or something. I’ll dazzle them with my magic and they’ll make me their Princess. Yes…”

It started to rain outside. The heavy droplets beat against Twilight’s large bedroom windows but the magicly soundproofed glass kept the noise to a minimal. Twilight had considered copying the spell and casting it on the walls so she could make sure nopony heard what went on in her room. That was the problem with all the pacing and the muttering… But soundproofing, as it turned out, was not a matter of skill. It was a matter of power. Twilight still had very little power…

Twilight dragged out Warhock’s book and got back to work.

“Study… Practice… Compose…” Twilight repeated to herself, flipping through the pages. “Study… Practice… Compose…”

She picked up the wands at the back of the book, read them and unlocked them each in turn. Then she picked up a few enchanted objects she had brought home from school or had made herself. A locking spell, a light spell, a growth spell, a blight spell, a colour-change spell, a camouflage spell, a shrink spell, an invisible ink spell, and probably a kitchen sink spell for all anypony knew.

Twilight felt like she had attempted every basic spell she had gotten her hooves on. And in just the few short days she’d been practicing she had improved her spellwork immensely. Her magic moved like a living thing, flowing and dancing and twirling itself into the desired shapes and colours and patterns. But there was room for improvement. There was always room for improvement…

Study… Practice… Compose…

By the time Twilight was done reading over the various layers of magic on her window she had to admit that she was only stagnating at this point. She had nowhere left to go except… the obvious. All her instincts told her that she still needed to study more before her ‘test’. But this time Twilight was the professor and she would decide when the test was held. And, as the clock struck midnight, Twilight decided that that test would be tonight.

She closed Warhock’s book. It had nothing more to teach her anyway. It was not a proper tutorial on spell hacking. Only spell reading. Twilight had had to extrapolate the next level on her own. She couldn’t afford to draw more suspicion from Cadence or others by searching for illegal spell books. Twilight was therefore as ready as she would ever be. Why not tonight?

The rain poured down and the house was quiet and dark.

Why not tonight?

Twilight performed the appropriate magic sequence to unlock her spell-protected toy box. Then she undid the camouflage spell she had worked on the interior and its contents. She put out the light spell—a ball of magenta magic—that had been hovering around her room. She would need concentration for what she was about to do, and could not afford the distractions of other ongoing spells.

Localised spells seemed to bother Twilight more than usual of late. Even her mother levitating mountains of papers work around the house seems to grate on Twilight’s senses. Magic was so loud. Or… hot. Or something. It baffled her that she’d never noticed before—that nopony else seemed to notice it now. She could barely tolerate school; all those amateurs slinging their ugly spells left and right. How did they not feel what she felt? Twilight hoped this wasn’t a side effect or something. She turned her attention back to her toy box.

The egg seemed to stare at her. It was purple and spotted but now in the dark it was just a shape, revealed only by the faint light from Twilight’s windows. It still held that slight warmth and that slight pulse of life. It had not dwindled, nor had it progressed. It was… an egg. But Twilight had begun already to sense the layers and layers of magic it held. There seemed to be a core magic in place, covered with the arcane dust of unnumbered spells and enchantments.

Twilight hesitated. Was she ready to face such a layering of spells? Was she ready to face the natural magic of the egg itself? She steeled herself. How bad could it be? She had already been practicing with her bedroom window—a thing that had at least seven different enchantments on it, as her family was privileged to afford such luxuries as automatic sun-tinting. That window had perplexed her only momentarily and she had soon gotten a handle on the different layers. But how many layers did the dragon egg have?

Twilight would soon know more. She felt ready to see. To see what was really there. She took a few calming breaths and closed her eyes. She could feel the presence of the egg and directed her focus towards it now. Her horn began to glow with magenta light as she summoned together the well-practiced components of Warhock’s spell. Tonight she would see and she would know everything.

The spell clicked—

And the world became a firework.

There was too much!

Too many spells all at once screamed through her mind like aimless shrapnel.

Twilight thought she cried out—or maybe she just choked. She tried to throw herself back from it all—or maybe she just fell. Noise became light and Twilight felt herself unravelling in the face of infinity…

“There was…”

The proto-thoughts drifted formlessly.

“There was…” the purple lump continued, “…a reason…”

The lump could not continue in this direction. To progress it required concept of… concept of… of something.

“There was…” it tried again.

It tried for what? What was the what of anything here?

What was… up? Up was a fantasy. There was nothing in that direction. There was no other direction. The lump drifted. It rolled along with the other shapes and colours. It did not remember having a beginning… and this was fine. The lump did not understand what it meant to have ending… and this was fine.

“There was… a reason I—”

Now what had the purple lump done? Something had happened. The lump was… self. No—not quite yet. But the lump was different from the other shapes and colours now. This was… “I…” the lump continued. “…a reason I was…”

Was? When? Will? Was or was not?

It hurt to go this way. The lump curled up and drifted again. Just another colour, just another shape.

“A reason I was here,” the lump continued.

This ‘reason’ this ‘reasoning.’ This strange idea. It was out of control. It was runaway. It grew and grew and grew unchecked like a… like a… like…

“There was a reason I was… I was here,” the lump went on. “I was here to… to… to see. To know. To…”

What was seeing? What was knowing?

Did the other shapes see or know? Did the other shapes know what it was to know? Did the other shapes think of empty things like this which had no answers?

What was answers?

“To see… To know…” the purple lump persisted, as if struggling against some colossal weight. “To understand…”

The lump looked around now. The other shapes and colours shrank back from it. It was strange, the purple lump. It was not right. It was not the same. The shapes and colours did not like how the lump seemed to look at them, or to look through them. The lump did not see the same as they saw. The lump did not behave.

“To see. To know. To understand,” the lump repeated. “Study… Practice…”

It struggled. Pain was a colour. Or was it a shape? The lump resisted the pull. The pull of shapes and colours. Angry? No… they were afraid.

Fear was a colour. Or was it a shape?

“Study… Practice…” The lump gaped at the next piece, just out of reach. “Study… Practice… Study… Practice… Study… Practice… C… C… Compose…”

The lump twisted. Or maybe space twisted. Things were… flat. Things were thin. Things were smaller now. There was… a big-ness in waiting. An openness somewhere now. A becoming. If only the lump could—

The lump looked up. It looked up at the up. The up was too huge, too wide, too many too much. To real.

The lump shrank. It became small and tried to hide like the other shapes and colours again. But they would not take it back. The lump was becoming a self now. The shapes were not. Could not. They would not take it back. The lump had to grow.

The world got smaller and flatter and thinner.

The up got bigger and wider and deeper.

The purple lump began falling… falling into the up. She was—

Oh. How strange. ‘She.’ To be she and to be self. To be a purple lump and to also be a self and a she and an I. Falling, falling and growing. She was bigger now, and wider and deeper. She was…

“Reason,” she said. “There was a reason I was here… A reason I am here. I am… reason. I am… here. Here is… To see, to know, to understand.”

The shapes and colours that she had known were now so small and flat and thin. They moved without reason. They were not self. They were nothing. They did not remember her and they could not see her now. She was big-ness. She was… was…

Around her now were other things, where many shapes and colours would come together and become almost a self. But these things were not self. Not as the purple thing was a self. The self she was now becoming.

She saw a line of circles stretching for infinity. There were more lines, many lines of many circles, all around. Big-ness is a colour or maybe a shape, she thought. If I am becoming big-ness then is this big-ness I see now? The squirming things seemed angry that she would ask this. Who was she to come here with outer reasoning?

Who was she indeed?

The purple lump continued to travel upward. She became less or a lump and more of a big-ness. More of a… self. Her limbs, her… legs… She trod the void beneath her, kicking at nothing, and bigger she became, always rising. The lines and lines of circles became smaller and smaller, tightening in on something. Something too much to see. Something that was everywhere and all too much to see. The things seemed angry. The things that she could now see were all of one thing—a big thing, but forever a small thing, inside the lines of circles which—

No. Inside the chains.

It was huge. Impossibly huge. She grew and grew and upwards rose but it was bigger still, looming and shifting within the glowing red chains.

Pain was a colour. Or a shape…

There were other awarenesses now. Now that the world was bigger it was also deeper. She turned her head and—

Head. Legs. Body. Self. She.

—turned her head and saw the many shapes and colours that comprised the big thing in chains. She saw a place that suffered a tortured thing. It twisted and crackled in endless leaps and falls, braiding itself around and around in the tangles of chains. A huge network, a… a… a tree. A tree was growing from the thing in the chains. It had… had… branches and roots, all twisted through and around and around and wrapping around. A strangler vine of green energy and network shapes all tangled and suffocating. It sapped at bits of the thing—the thing in the chains, that twisted—and bits and flickers were stolen away. Stolen into the pulse of the strangler tree.

She became bigger still. Still rising. Now she was high above the thing in the chains. It appeared too distant now. Too covered over by layers and layers of… something. A great smothering of something. Something always and all. And still the up continued to pull at her. Or was she pushing herself up?

“Reason I was here…” she remembered. “But now… No. Have to get… have to get out of here… Up is out and out is… is… is…”

An amputated thing flew screaming past. It was wild—it was untethered—it was phantasmal in its freedom. Nowhere to go! No reason! No reason! It was not a growing thing. It was already dead but not allowed to die. Not allowed to be born. And there were others, too, ricocheting off the chains, caught in decaying orbit around that which was imprisoned beneath them. They were like circling vultures.

Or ghosts, perhaps…

The entire scene suddenly pulsed and contracted, expanded and shook. She felt a creeping sensation as of having been noticed by something unfriendly.

Pain was a colour… or a shape…

She felt a flowing, pushing thing. This was… time. This was urgency. This was being and moving on to the next bit of being and being some more and needing to be and to be and to be before there was no more being.

The mad things rushed downwards as she grew. As she became more self.

“Up is out and out is… is… out is the self. Up is out and out is self. I am self. I am being. I am… I am… name. I am name. I…”

She looked again. Not down, not up. She looked around. Around and around and there was too much to go around. Things, so many things, all caged and chained and drained and crushed, broken and set adrift, and screaming. The world was a network—a network of chains—crisscross, crisscross—the skeletal scaffolding of… of… of…

Then at last she was too big for the sea. The sea she had not seen. Had not known she was drowning in until her head broke the surface and she gasped at the upward space. The sea was deep and heavy. The water was crushing, smothering, sedating. It was trying to drag her under but she was almost whole now. She kicked her legs and held her head above water. Her hooves became tangled by something below the surface. The sea wanted to drown her! She was in too deep.

The sea held her legs—or the chains did—or… something else.

But she could see the self at last—high in the upwards—a shining star above the sea, suspended in the void of dark and light. She just had to get there. Get to that distant star and become the self. She did not know what it would be like but she had to become it or else… or else…

She fell beneath the water again. Something had hold of her. It was pulling her down. Or maybe it wanted her to pull it up. It was huge and dark below the water. It was not chains—the chains glowed hot. It was the thing inside the chains. It was hurting and angry and forsaken. It wanted to be. It wanted to be.

It wanted the self now!

No! It could not have the self! It was her self! Her star!

The hot chains slithered tighter around the thing, holding it back. Her head broke the surface again and she locked eyes on the shining star above her. That point of reference in a formless void. She reached out—choked out a scream. She had to become the star! Become the star or she would never—

She hit the floor with a foal-sized thud, snapping violently back to herself, gasping in air. She clung against the carpet and emptied herself of screaming until she could remember how to cry.

Pain was a colour… it had purple spots.

Pain was a shape… the shape of an egg.

She tasted blood. She must have bitten her lip. She tasted tears. This was fine.

The rain beat against the windows as hoofsteps beat down the hallway. Doors were flung open. She distantly felt the snap of the locking spell she had sealed her room with. This was fine, too…

Voices were saying something. Saying… a name.

“Twilight? Twilight what’s wrong!? Twilight!?”

…that’s right, she thought tiredly, my name is Twilight.