A Giant Adventure to Equestria

by ThePinkedWonder

Chapter 2: The Nightmare Prevention Spell

During the evening of the day before the young human named Eric Reed found himself in Equestria...

In a huge crystal castle, on top of a tree made of blue and purple crystal in Ponyville, the Princess of Friendship, Princess Twilight Sparkle, a purple Alicorn, was training her close friend and ex-student, Starlight Glimmer, a purplish pink Unicorn. They were in the biggest room of the castle, where they usually did Starlight's magical training, so they would have plenty of room. Crystal pillars of a mix of light-purple, pink and blue grew on parts of the dark-purple walls of the room. A pile of books full of the names of numerous spells sat between both Twilight and Starlight.

"All right, Starlight, which spell is best for fixing a lamp?" Twilight asked, and then warned, "You have ten seconds."

With a nervous frown, Starlight replied, "Hmm...it's this spell, right, Twilight?" as she pointed with her hoof at a page in a book she held with magical telekinesis.

Twilight shook her head. "No, that one is best for fixing bigger things, like trees, remember?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot." Starlight lowered her head and gave a small sigh in disappointment. Lifting her head back up with a more determined expression, Starlight looked back to Twilight and asked, "Okay, give me another question."

"All right, let's try this one," Twilight responded as she thought of a different test. "In ten seconds, show me the page of a spell you'll use to counteract an out-of-control speed spell."

"Okay, I think I know this one," Starlight said, a bit unsure of herself while glancing through her book and used her magic to turn the pages. After settling on a page, Starlight pointed at it and exclaimed, "It's this one!"

Twilight smiled at Starlight and nodded. "That's right, and you found it in just five seconds!" Twilight proudly said. "I'm not sure if I could've found it that fast!"

Starlight held her head up, with a prideful smile, as Twilight praised her.

Starlight Glimmer possessed incredible magical abilities even for a Unicorn. Starlight, while a friendly, well-meaning pony, was far from perfect. She could sometimes be reckless. She also struggled with a deep-seated habit on relying too much on spells, and had a tendency to accidentally make problems worse by using spells to try to help or fix them. Especially if she was stressed.

After trying to encourage Starlight to rely less on spells with very limited success, Twilight Sparkle thought it could be easier on Starlight to just help her learn to use spells more responsibly. By forcing her to quickly choose the best spell or spells to use in various hypothetical situations, Twilight hoped it would not only help Starlight use spells more responsibly, but become less reckless overall.

"Okay, Starlight, I think that's enough for today," Twilight suggested.

Starlight gave a relieved smile since she was getting bored with her training. Then she thought of an idea.

"You want to try that spell again, Twilight?" Starlight asked, leaning her head toward her friend with a mischievous smile.

Twilight raised her head a bit and rolled her eyes up, thinking about Starlight's idea, then smiled and nodded.

Starlight grinned and quickly trotted to near the center of the room. Twilight did the same and stood directly in front of Starlight, facing her. But they stayed a short distance away from each other.

As her horn glowed pink Twilight asked, "You ready?"

"Yep!" Starlight's horn, in turn, glowed light-blue. At the exact same time, they each fired a beam of magic that collided between them and quickly formed into a sphere about the size of an adult pony's head, at the point of contact before it changed from their light-blue and pink hues to a plain white.

Gritting their teeth, the two powerful ponies continued to forcibly release magic from their horns, and the magic between them went from white, to blue, and then eventually green. Seeing this, Twilight and Starlight immediately stopped releasing magic, as the magical ball turning green meant they did it correctly. Huge smiles formed on both their faces while grinning at the floating magic between them.

"Yes! We did it, Twilight!" Starlight yelled excitedly as she quickly ran around the magical ball to embrace Twilight in a hug.

Twilight hugged back and yelled, "I couldn't have done it without you, Starlight!" just as excitedly, but not quite as loud.

"Nah, you didn't need me," Starlight said modestly as they let go of each other. But Starlight's happy smile quickly turned into an embarrassed one. "Wait, what was this magic for again?" she asked, blushing.

"You really forgot? This magic is able to prevent nightmares, remember?" Twilight explained, with a slightly annoyed tone and expression. "If it works, Princess Luna can finally have some nights free of fighting ponies' nightmares."

"Oh yeah, sorry," Starlight said, still with an embarrassed grin. "I was just so happy we did it, and I forgot for a moment what it actually did!"

"Well, I guess I can't blame you for being so excited, after how hard we worked to get this spell right the last six months," Twilight admitted, more understanding of Starlight's feelings.

But the two ponies' excitement turned to confusion when the green magic suddenly started to rise higher in the air. It wasn't supposed to do this on its own.

"Wait, what's going on, Starlight?!" Twilight yelled while slowly moving back from the ball of magic, alarmed.

"I don't know, but I didn't mess anything up, I promise, Twilight!" Starlight pleaded as she, too, stepped back, frowning and a bit scared.

The uncontrollable magic continued to rise, pulsed out three times, with the third pulse being the biggest. Without any warning, it flew out of the castle through a nearby window.

"It's getting away!" Twilight yelled.

"Hey, you get back here!" Starlight pointlessly demanded at the escaping magic.

Twilight and Starlight immediately sped out the doors of the castle, chased the green ball of magic throughout Ponyville, and ran by many confused ponies that were puzzled as to what was going on.

The puzzling magical sphere continued to elude the two friends as it led them into the woods, where it suddenly vanished without warning. Twilight and Starlight exhaustively searched all through the trees and thick grass of the woods, but they couldn't find any signs of it.

"Magic doesn't just vanish!" Twilight stated to Starlight, looking down, frustrated and panting lightly. "It has to go somewhere!"

"I know, but where could it be?" Starlight asked while also panting lightly. "Did I do something wrong with the spell?"

"No, you did it right. It wasn't your fault."

"I hope you're right, Twilight."

Since it was so late, Twilight didn't think that they could do any more for the time being so the two tired friends trotted back to the castle to rest for the night. The castle belonged to Twilight, but after making Starlight a student, Twilight let her move in, and Starlight has lived there ever since, even after graduating. Spike, a young and small purple dragon that was Twilight's first and long-time friend, also lives in the castle. However, he'd recently gone away to the Dragon Lands to visit another dragon, Ember, who was both his friend and the current Dragon Lord.

---

During the late morning of the next day, Twilight and Starlight, now well-rested, departed from the castle. They were ready to try to find any hints on the elusive green magic.

Rarity, a white Unicorn and one of Twilight and Starlight's good friends, saw them standing together. Smiling, she walked up to her friends to greet them.

"Hello, darlings!" Rarity greeted with a smile, "Glorious sunny day isn't it?" but she frowned when she saw that her two friends looked worried about something. "Is something wrong?

"Starlight and I finally cast a spell that we've been trying to master for months," Twilight explained as she turned to Rarity with a frown, her ears drooping. "We finally did it, but the magic flew out of the castle, then later it just vanished!"

"Vanished?" Rarity questioned. "Are you sure you didn't just lose track of it?"

"Yep, we're sure, Rarity," Twilight answered.

"Magic doesn't just disappear out of thin air, so something might've gone really wrong, Rarity," Starlight added, frowning with her ears drooping down. "I just hope I didn't mess up the spell because if I did, and somepony gets hurt because of it, I--"

Twilight gave a firm frown to Starlight. "Come on, I told you already, Starlight. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I know you did, Twilight, but..." Starlight hesitated, still unable to shake the guilt that this was somehow her fault.

Twilight softened her expression, stepped closer to Starlight, and gently put her hoof on Starlight's right cheek. In a comforting voice, she assured, "Starlight, listen to me. I know you feel like this might be your fault, and I understand. But, you blaming yourself without knowing if you even did anything wrong won't help anypony."

'That's right, darling!" Rarity encouraged Starlight while putting her own hoof on Starlight's back. "Let's first worry about finding where that magic of yours went first before you start blaming yourself for something that you probably didn't even do."

Starlight thought about what her two friends just told her. With a little smile, she nodded to Twilight, then to Rarity. "You two are right. I'm sorry," she said, feeling less guilty.

Twilight and Rarity, both with sympathetic smiles, lifted their hooves off Starlight.

"Well, first things first: We're gonna need some more help," Twilight decided. "Starlight, Rarity, can you two go get our friends together and go ask around Ponyville to see if anypony saw or noticed anything different today? I'll head to the woods where we lost track of it and see if I can find any hints there."

"Of course, dear," Rarity confidently said to Twilight.

"But whether you all discover anything or not, meet me back at my castle in one hour, okay? That's where I'll be if I don't find anything."

Both Starlight and Rarity nodded, and they both trotted off in the direction of the farm belonging to one of the friends Twilight had asked them to find. Twilight went in the opposite direction, toward the woods where she and Starlight had been searching the previous evening before Twilight decided it was late and they wouldn't find anything in their tired state.

---

Once again in the woods, Twilight sat down by the side of the dirt road she ran on to catch her breath from her running, and to enjoy the light, cool breeze flowing on her face for a minute. Taking calm, deep breaths, she was still thinking about how magic doesn't vanish. She was worried that it might've found its way into something, or possibly somepony, for multiple reasons...

While still sitting, Twilight's ears perked up and picked up on a few, very faint, sounds. She could just barely hear them and quietly asked herself, "Hm? What was that?"

Trying to pinpoint where the sounds came from, Twilight stood up and stepped along the side of the road with her head tilted towards the ground, and turned it from side to side to scan the ground and grass for anything suspicious. As she did, she quietly muttered to herself that what she heard could be a clue about the vanished magic.

The sound from the "clue" that Twilight thought she heard was just from the tiny human Eric Reed, who was calling out for help. He had peeked out of the grass and spotted her. He's currently not in Twilight's line of sight, but she's creeping in his direction, and at this rate will soon spot, or possibly even step on him. Terrified of her size, Eric's debating on if he should come out of the grass and call out to her, or hide back in the grass, unsure of what Twilight's reaction to him would be. The very last thing he wanted was for the (to him) giant Alicorn to try to crush him, thinking he's a "bug".

Author's Note:

If this story could be in the actual show, from a timeline standpoint, it would take place during the middle of season seven of FIM. Save for a few ret-cons here, such as Luna wanting nights off, and the "Nightmare Prevention Spell" being a thing.

You can think of this as a season seven ret-con of sorts. For this reason, the limits of Eric Reed's knowledge about Equestria will be limited to around the middle of Season seven, so he won't know things such as the Pillars being in limbo, just like how MLP:FIM fans didn't know it until the Season Seven finale aired.

Comments

[maurellio]

'"Let's first worry about finding what that magic of yours went first, before..."

I think you meant "where", rather than "what"?

[ThePinkedWonder]

9419717
Oh yeah, I did. That was a grammar mistake I missed to fix. Thanks for catching it, and I fixed it

[Pete100]

Starlight Glimmer possessed incredible magical abilities even for a Unicorn. Starlight, while a friendly, well-meaning pony, was far from perfect. She could sometimes be reckless. She also struggled with a deep-seated habit on relying too much on spells, and had a tendency to accidentally make problems worse by using spells to try to help or fix them. Especially if she was stressed.

Ain’t that the truth.

[Luckyfanisaac]

"Yep!" Starlight's horn, in turn, glowed light-blue. ——)At the exact same time, they each fired a beam of magic that collided between them and quickly formed into a sphere about the size of an adult pony's head, at the point of contact before it changed from their light-blue and pink hues to a plain white.(——

"I don't know, but I didn't mess anything up, I promise, Twilight!" ——)Starlight pleaded as she, too, stepped back, frowning and a bit scared.

——)Spike, a young and small purple dragon that was Twilight's first and long-time friend, also lives in the castle. However, he'd recently gone away to the Dragon Lands to visit another dragon, Ember, who was both his friend and the current Dragon Lord.

Twilight had asked them to find.(—— Twilight went in the opposite direction, toward