• Published 18th Jul 2017
  • 2,539 Views, 31 Comments

Just One Kiss - Fylifa



Twilight Sparkle is hit with a storybook curse with a very particular solution.

  • ...
2
 31
 2,539

Chapter 1

“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a title by the prose. Where will it stop? Only Celestia knows!” Twilight singsonged as she levitated books off shelves at random.

Deciding on some light reading, Twilight restrained herself to five books for the night and returned the rest. Humming once again, she settled into one of the comfortable chairs in her castle’s library. Time to look at her haul!

Novel. Biography. Spellbook! Storybook. Textbook.

Twilight’s eyes lingered on the spellbook. That one felt like the prize of the bunch, but she had a system! She’d read them in order. The anticipation would only make it better.

A short while later, Twilight closed the biography and mulled on it. It must have been one that Rarity had given her, as she didn’t know how else she’d have gotten a biography of how Photo Finish built their magazine empire. The novel before that was a mildly amusing story about a batpony guard, but definitely not on an A.K. Yearling level of writing.

“Now for the main course,” Twilight announced to herself as she peeked at the spellbook again. She lifted it up carefully. Canterlot library, standard preservation enchantments. She brought the book close for a testing sniff and guessed a hundred or so years.

The age made Twilight wary, not for the book itself, but for the possibility of enchantment. She knitted a protective bubble around the book, and with her telekinesis slowly opened the lid to page through it. After determining it wasn’t going to blow up, she dispelled her bubble and flipped back to the front page to begin her reading.


“Well, that was disappointing,” sighed Twilight. After so much promise the spellbook turned out to be an early edition. It was an often repeated stereotype that ancient magic was more powerful and more mysterious, but most cases showed that modern magic had built upon old spellcraft. The technique described in the spellbook was simply outdated.

Feeling glum, Twilight started on the next book. It was one of those collected storybooks for foals, though a second glance at the cover had her musing. This one also looked old, and its mark was from the Crystal Empire. Promising, though she’d likely return it to Cadance or lend it to Applebloom if it were exceptionally rare or full of cute stories.

Twilight opened the book, and immediately her nose itched. She blinked; was that some dust? Her horn started to tingle on its own.

Oh sweet Celestia, you’ve got to be kidding me!

Twilight leapt out of the chair and hastily teleported to her magic lab with the book in tow.

Spike, lounging on a beanbag with a comic book, looked up. “Hey, Twil—”

“Spike! No time! Get out!” Twilight shouted as she galloped all out towards the spell-hardened chamber of her lab. The book in her magical grasp was already starting to sparkle and change colors. She hated to be curt with Spike, but this needed all her concentration.

Spike heard the urgency in her voice and didn’t argue, running for the door fast enough to leave his comic fluttering in the air.

Twilight’s horn flared, and she snipped three threads of magic that had started to emanate from the book. A few moments later six began to grow, and she cut them in sequence, too. That worried her. If the book was going to blow up, it wouldn’t be that complicated.

Ten threads appeared, and Twilight quickly dismantled them. She thought she could do about twenty which left her precious little time to unravel the rest of the spell forms.

Something… about timing? Or is that the timing trigger. No, it triggered when I opened the book. It’s a timed spell.

Twelve threads appeared now. Twilight clipped them with a spread shot of purple magic before going back to her analysis.

Metamorphic for sure. Not petrify or disintegration, thank Celestia. Is it a fruit? Mustache? Hmm, animal?

Eighteen threads burst from the book and Twilight yelped and took a step back. She quickly bolted down seventeen, stumbled on the eighteenth and hastily poured her willpower into the bubble instead. Her shield took the blow of the spellform, but the field cracked under the massive strain.

Buck it! I have to get rid of this thing!

Twilight began building a disintegration spell of her own; she’d have to toss the book into the blasting chamber and hope that it’d be enough to muffle whatever was trying to come out of this book.

Starlight rushed into the room calling out, “Twilight! What’s going on?! Spike said—”

“Get out! It’s a spell-trigg—” Twilight gasped before having to abandon the spell-bubble, disintegration beam, and nearly her magical grip when twenty-five threads appeared. The distraction had set her back too far!

Twilight worked frantically to knock the spell down. Twenty… Twenty-two… She blinked away sweat running down her brow from around her overheated horn; she wasn’t going to make it!

Blue magic added to her own and snipped the remaining threads. Starlight strode up beside Twilight with her own horn lit. “What in Tartarus is this?”

Twilight sagged in relief and puffed out an explanation. “It’s a spell-trigger trap somepony put in a children’s book.”

“Really? Who spell-trigger traps a storybook? Why is it so unstable?” Starlight asked before she and Twilight split the work in severing the next batch of threads.

“Ancient magic,” replied Twilight sardonically, “Which is harmless until it’s not. I was trying to get a read on it, but we’re going to have to destroy it instead. I think continuously counterspelling is just making it stronger.”

When the spell pulsed next, its complexity caught both alicorn and unicorn off guard. Not only were the threads innumerable, but to Twilight’s horror, it lashed out at the closer-standing Starlight.

Twilight threw herself at Starlight intending to grab her and teleport them both out.

The spell was quicker, and Twilight felt the impact strike her back. She gasped, and the world went dark as tightness cinched around her throat.


“Twilight! Twilight, wake up!” sobbed a voice. Twilight groaned as she opened her eyes. She was alive! That was certainly a positive. She had barely moved her head before it was grasped by dragon claws.

“It’s okay, Spike. I’m okay,” said Twilight, and hugged him back with a kiss on the forehead for good measure.

Starlight placed a hoof on her shoulder. “Thank you for saving me, Twilight.”

The strain in Starlight’s tone had Twilight look up and see that Starlight’s eyes were a little red. She’d been crying, too.

A glance over at the storybook showed it open on the floor, plain and un-magicked now that the trap was sprung. “It’s alright,” said Twilight. “I guess we fell for a prank of some kind.” After the stress of the moment, she felt like giggling.

Spike and Starlight shared a glance.

“What?” asked Twilight, frowning at their reaction.

Starlight pointed with a hoof. “You should take a look at what’s around your neck.”

Twilight blinked, and with some trepidation, looked down.

She was wearing a collar.

Twilight usually didn’t have much of an opinion on jewelry, but even she could tell it was a pretty collar. It looked like woven threads of gold neatly knitted together around her throat in a natural and organic style.

If the spell had turned the magical threads into a physical material, it had enough magic to make her a sweater, not just a collar. Twilight wondered how dense the material actually was, considering how many threads there were by the end.

Only one part of the collar wasn’t gold: a brooch-like emerald in the center. It was shaped like something, but Twilight couldn’t quite make it out. “It… gave me an accessory? What's that symbol?”

Starlight leaned in and squinted. “A cricket…?”

Spike called out from beside the storybook. “It’s a frog, says so here.”

“Spike! Get away from that!” Twilight cried. The book had surprised her twice now; she wasn’t taking any chances.

“We gotta help you!” replied Spike. “I don’t care if it hits me.”

Twilight sighed. “I care if it hits you, Spike! Whatever… ‘this’ is.”

After gently shooing away Spike, Twilight sat and read the story the book had fallen open on. It wasn’t that long, and by the end of it Twilight groaned.

“How bad is it? Should we get the others?” asked a worried Starlight.

“You could, but I don’t think they can help. This is silly.”

Starlight had a turn reading the passage. “A reluctant princess should kiss and be well not to dismiss, the power of love to forebode... the hour of the toad.” She rubbed at her chin. “Not a very good rhyme, is it?”

Twilight grumbled as she focused her magic on the collar. “It’s a story about a princess who was too haughty to kiss a frog.”

Starlight blinked. “Wait, does that mean… ?”

“Yep. This spell is going to turn me into a frog if I don’t kiss a princess.” Now that Twilight knew the context, she could guess the elements of the spell: A timed transformation curse. “I have about two days.”