Acolyte of the Lunar Court

by Lets Do This

Shadow Magic

"Woah!" Spike said, as he walked into the room ahead of her. "This is nice!"

"Yeah, it's... cozy." Twilight followed, looking around doubtfully.

Rather than shuttle back and forth to Ponyville every evening, she'd been assigned quarters in the palace to use as needed. For herself, Twilight had been half-hoping she might reclaim the room she'd had as a filly when taking her initial lessons with Celestia. She had fond memories of standing on the couch by the windows, looking out at the grand landscape of Equestria spread before her like a living map.

However as Luna's personal student this apparently was not suitable. Instead she'd been assigned a grand suite in Luna's section of the palace, with a connecting door to the Princess's own private quarters. It was much larger than she was used to and had extra-heavy drapes to block out the sunlight during the day. It had deep pile carpeting decorated in Luna's moon-and-stars motif, and a map of the entire night sky spread across the circular ceiling.

At least there was a bookcase. Twilight trotted over and idly examined a few of the titles, which were all related to shadow magic. Spike amused himself by bouncing on the four-poster bed.

"Hey, you gotta try this, Twi! It'll be like sleeping on a cloud!"

"I'm a unicorn, Mister, not a pegasus!"

"Aw, you know what I mean! Oh, hey, is that mine?"

He'd noticed the smaller bed set on the floor beside the main one, and hopped down to give it a prod. "Mmm... sweet! Gonna sleep well tonight! Er, I mean today. Is it still today? I keep losing track."

"I know the feeling! But let's take a tour later. Right now I need to practice."

"Aw, Twi! Didn't we do enough homework in the classroom at the Library?"

"That's just the stuff Luna assigned me to do. I want to get a jump on what we'll be covering next. Come on!"

"Oh, all right." He trotted over, and waited patiently as she set the shield spell around him. "Just go easy, huh?"

"Spike, I'm using baby-weight power! It doesn't hurt you!"

"Huh, easy for you to say! You're not the one on the firing line!"

Despite his protestations he gamely darted about, jinking and weaving, presenting a moving target for her to aim at. She worked through the list of offensive spells she'd prepared: fire, ice, shock, crystal, paralysis, disorientation. She avoided the more brutal attacks: nausea, demoralization, poison, pain, and a few even worse categories she'd had to go into the Restricted shelves to look up. For the moment she focused on accuracy and precision, also gauging whether her estimates of power drain were correct. She wanted to be certain she was ready to give Luna a good fight, if and when they had a re-match.

"Twilight?" Spike asked, when she took a break for a moment to let her magic recharge. "Why do you think the Princess wants you to learn all these attack spells?"

"Got me, Spike! My guess is she's just being thorough. I do need the practice, after all!"

"But it's not like there's anything we need all this stuff to deal with, is there?"

"Well... remember the Ursa Minor? I was just lucky I was able to use calming spells on it. And when the Diamond Dogs grabbed Rarity, and we were lucky she managed to talk them into giving her back? And battling Discord? And when your greed ran away from you and turned you into Spike-zilla?"

"Oh yeah, I'm never living that down, am I?"

"Sorry, Spike!" she said. "But that's just it! We don't know what might come at us next so it's best to be prepared. Although..." she looked thoughtful. "I do wish I knew why Luna felt it was so important!"

She levitated a book from the bookshelf and flopped it open on the carpet in front of her. "Okay, so next up would probably be defensive magic... hmm."

"What is it?" Spike trotted over to peer at the page with her.

"Interesting. Shadow magic defense is based on wards rather than shields."

"What's the difference?"

"A shield is actively maintained, so it's stronger, but also takes a constant drain of attention and power to keep it up. A ward is a one-shot spell that deflects specific kinds of attacks. It's not as strong in general and it fails pretty quickly, but it's much stronger than a shield against the specific attack it deflects. And the nice thing is you don't have to maintain it. Fire-and-forget... it lasts 'til it fails!"

She smiled. "Okay, Spike, now it's my turn to be the target! Let's find some small objects to use. Preferably something with a bit of heft."

They rummaged in the dresser drawers, the closet, and elsewhere in the room and soon had assembled a collection of items ranging from hair brushes to a small steel pony statuette, plus a cushion from a nearby divan.

"Now, when I say go, you start throwing things at me."

"Huh? Isn't that dangerous?"

"Only if I don't get my wards up in time!"

"Well... lemme start with this cushion first, just in case."

"Okay -- one sec." Peering at the page, she ran over the spell in her mind, and then readied it.

"All right, Spike. On three. One, two -- OOMPH!"

"Whoops! Sorry! You said on three, so..."

"No, no... it's okay!" She shook her head and nudged the cushion back towards him. "I need to learn to react faster anyways. Let's go again... one, two, three!"

Her horn gleamed and a physical ward, bright gold in color, sprang into the air in front of her. The cushion went straight through it and smacked her on the snout again.

"Ow."

Spike sniggered. "Sorry, but... this is kinda fun!"

"Don't get used to it, Buster!" She looked at the page again. "I should be able to apply more power to the ward, and it should at least slow the cushion before it fails. Well, practice makes perfect! Okay, let's go again."

They worked on wards for a while, just so Twilight felt she could put one up quickly enough, and they even progressed as far as the hairbrushes, though Twilight wasn't sure she was ready to block the statuette yet. And she'd have to wait to try the magic-repelling wards later with Princess Luna.

So they moved on to illusion spells. And here Twilight had even more difficulty. For a proper illusion to work it was necessary to want the illusion to exist. Which basically meant being willing to lie to yourself, to see something that was not actually there. You had to convince yourself first, and only then could you fool others.

Twilight realized she had so thoroughly schooled herself in being rational, in seeing things as they were, that she was at a real disadvantage. Nevertheless, she flipped through the pages on casting a mirror illusion, and then tried it out on Spike.

After a bit of practice, and a few false starts that were barely more than disturbing ghostly after-images, she had something that kinda sorta worked.

And suddenly there were two Spikes in the room.

"Yeegh!" Spike said. "Is that what I really look like?"

"Huh, speak for yourself!" the other Spike said. "I think I look pretty darn awesome! Yes, sir! Numero Uno Dragon, right here!" He flexed proudly.

The real Spike looked plaintively at Twilight. "Aw geez! Do you have to lay it on like that?"

Twilight had a hoof pressed to her snout. "You have to admit, Spike, you do sound like that sometimes!"

The illusory Spike waved as it faded away.

Spike looked seriously grouched. Then he suppressed a yawn. "We about done, Twi? I'm getting sleepy!"

"Just one more, Spike, I promise!" She turned to the chapter on materialization. And here she was on much more solid ground: she knew a few materialization spells already, and it turned out materialization in general required a detailed understanding of the object or substance one was trying to materialize, which was right up her bookworm alley.

She noticed a feather on the floor that had come loose from the cushion the last time it had hit her. She studied it hard, getting every detail clearly in her mind, using her knowledge of the structure and function of feathers to help cement the image in her thoughts.

And then buried Spike in a small avalanche of feathers.

"Pthah!" he said, clawing his way out. "I sleep on them, not in them ya know!"

Twilight giggled. Then she used levitation magic to collect all the feathers and plop them into a handy wastebasket. It might give the cleaning staff some funny ideas about her personal habits, but she didn't want to take the risk of trying a fire magic spell to dispose of them.

Then she yawned too, and decided she'd been diligent enough for one night... er... morning.

"Okay, Spike! Let's turn in!"