Learning the Ropes

by OrionsBelt

Magic

"Oh for the love of me, Twilight, why don't you ever include escape clauses in your enchantments!?"

Celestia glared at the little alicorn, resignedly sulking and still trapped in the bubble of her own creation. They'd managed to get it out of the throne room floor via Twilights own penchant for teleportation but had achieved exactly zero success in disarming the spell. Phasing Twilight's magical aura simply caused the shield to match it, though curiously only the inside of the bubble. Both Luna and Celestia's attempts to phase through were met with similarly mirrored frequencies, stopping them as surely as solid stone even when all three attempted it at once. In the end, unable to move any matter into or out of the bubble, they'd settled on simply rotating the ground and the "pinkie-doll" to the back of the bubble and making them invisible. Admittedly, a serious problem. Still, Celestia had been confident that she could scheme or, if necessary, blast their way out of it.

That had been just over a month ago.

Celestia dragged a hoof across her features, inadvertently getting an unwanted assessment of just how wrinkled her face had become. 'Beauty sleep' was much less metaphorical for Alicorns. Whether it was simply the wear and tear of their own power or something inherent to their biology, consecutive days without rest led to the onset of rapid aging.

And for the first time in a long, long time, Celestia felt her age.

Well. Maybe not quite that old, but she still felt archaic.

She felt the gentle nudge of her sisters power, wresting control of the heavens from her for the night, and irritably dropped the sun behind the horizon. The moon rose much more stately, overshooting its position slightly as it seemed to peer concernedly after the sun, before taking its usual place in the sky. Moments later, Luna arrived in the flesh, looking abnormally coherent for this time of night as she gracefully descended onto the balcony holding two steaming cups. Celestia ground her teeth at the sight.

"WAGH!" Luna recoiled, wings springing open to take flight, nearly dropping the drinks before she got a hold of herself, "Sister, you look dreadful!"

"And you're blue." She muttered grumpily, tossing a book haphazardly onto the table and making Twilight wince.

Luna rolled her eyes, daintily picking her way through the mess of papers and books strewn across the room, "The day court is growing anxious sister, you've been at this for weeks. Twilight can stand to be in a bubble until we come upon a reasonable solution, why do you insist on-"

"BECAUSE I SAID I WOULD NOT REST UNTIL SHE WAS OUT OF THE BUBBLE SO I'M NOT GOING TO." The Royal Canterlot voice shook the foundations of the castle and Luna winced. Twilight, of course, couldn't hear it.

Luna flicked her ears, no doubt to rid them of the ringing, and turned her attention to Twilight's failure to do so, "How is her telepathy coming along?"

"Ask her yourself." Celestia keeled over onto the couch, baggy eyes fixed on the ceiling as she tried to think of something she hadn't tried yet.

"_{I&m still working on the basics^ it&s hard to focus when there&s so much going on. I feel like someone&s always watching me.}"

She glanced furtively at Celestia before looking intently at Luna, "_{Luna listen^ I&m worried about Celestia^ could you... I don't know^ like knock her out or something?}”

"You're still broadcasting Twilight." Celestia deadpanned, raising a withered hoof and glaring at it like it was the source of all her problems.

Luna peered in at Twilight, "Your volume could use some work as well. Not to mention your apostrophes are coming across as ampersands and your commas are... whatever ^ is." Luna scrutinized the bubble, as she had each evening for weeks, "Resisting the efforts of three alicorns for an entire month, including the one who cast it... Sister, we really must learn how Twilight managed such a feat. This spell could be invaluable for containing the next apocalypse."

Celestia grunted, turning over and lethargically dragging a book on metaphysical anchoring to her side. She had been concerned when she'd realized the resolve-case of Twilight's spell but she hadn't expected it to take this long to get her out. Celestia was old. VERY old. She knew secrets of the universe that physically could not be learned anymore because the universe itself had changed in the time since. She knew how to levitate cities into the sky, destroy truly immortal beings, even step beyond existence itself into the realms of infinite possibilities.

And she couldn't pop a bucking bubble.

True, they had yet to try any genuinely "percussive" solutions beyond physically hitting the bubble out of irritation but in Celestia's experience, building magic up in a tiny space until the container ruptured was... risky at best. Genocidal at worst. Not to mention the preciousness of the bubble's contents. Other solutions, like temporarily removing Twilight from reality or destroying her body so that she could reincarnate elsewhere, remained a last resort for the inherent risks. If it had been her in the sphere she wouldn't have hesitated: teleport to the other side of the moon, channel a coronal mass ejection into it, and float around in the aether for a day before reincarnating. She and Luna had both come back from far worse. But Twilight...

Letting out an aggravated sigh, Celestia set the book down, "I very much doubt that the spells resilience is its own doing. Rather, I believe that the fact the caster was Twilight Sparkle, the physical avatar for the magic of friendship, is the reason for its abnormalities."

Twilight tilted her head, "_???"

Accepting one of the steaming cups from Luna, she regarded her perplexed student, "Well, as you know, our working theory was that you accidentally 'turbocharged' the spell with your recently increased magical potential." She reviewed, coining a term Twilight had used, "However, I believe it goes farther than that. I suspect that you somehow tied the spell to your domain of influence as an Alicorn princess." Taking a slow breath, Celestia gulped down the cup and made a face that Luna scoffed at, "Blegh! Sister, this is wretched, how do you manage?"

"Tis an acquired taste. Besides, you brought it on yourself. If you simply slept-"

"No."

Luna gave a long-suffering sigh, gracefully reclining next to her, their various contrasts serving to highlight how very youthful she was and how very old Celestia felt. She tried unsuccessfully not to dwell on it, her resolve wavering for just a moment as she both stifled a yawn and winced as a pang of arthritis struck her foreleg. After a moment of silence the two of them realized Twilight was speaking, or at least trying to.

"_{How the buck am I supposed to know what my domain even is?}"

Feeling ever-more crotchety, and despite the fact that they were using telepathy, Celestia perked her ears and leaned forward, "Say again Twilight? Try to focus your thoughts, we can't hear you."

"_{I said: but I don&t even know what my Alicorn domain is!}"

"You are the princess of friendship!" Luna stated in a tone that a lesser pony might have followed with, 'duh'.

Twilight huffed, or at least made the motion, for it would be quite a feat with no air to breath, "_{Well^ ok^ but how does that work exactly? Do I have some greater power like you do over the moon? For all the pranking I&ve been through^ I feel like I haven&t gotten much in the way of helpful explanations.}"

Luna looked rather hurt but Celestia chuckled, the sound dry and a little too grandmotherly for her liking, "An understandable grievance. The truth is Twilight, we don't really know. When you metamorphosed we were relatively certain that you shared some of our combined qualities, most of which relate to being generally unkillable, but even those we had to test under controlled circumstances. Hence the pranking. At least partially."

She shared a look with Luna, whose mouth quirked into a small smile that she hid behind her cup, "Unfortunately, we know about as much as you do in regards to the actual specific qualities that make you a princess of friendship. Is that more closely linked to the magical qualities of friendship and therefore making you a princess of magic as well? Or is it more about the actual personal bonds themselves and you holding sway over their large scale formation? We think we can say, with some certainty, that we should not expect the arrival of any other celestial bodies, but a new force under your guidance? A kind of rising and setting of magic itself on Equestria? Who knows."

The implications seemed to awe Twilight for a moment and Celestia felt a mentorly twinge of satisfaction, tempered by the realization that she was getting off topic, "In any case, you have a bright future ahead of you. We just need to get you out of that bubble." Having somewhat calmed her earlier frustration, she levitated all the books within sight and began sorting them into piles according to expected usefulness and helpfulness thus far, "Magic is about connections, a give and take of people and forces, bonds that tie the world together. You now have a very strong claim on being the most magically-connected entity in existence. Magic has thus far held you to its rules and regulations but you might be able to make that bond work both ways. If you've somehow managed to insert a note on how this particular spell will not, and in fact cannot fade unless a very particular set of conditions are met..."

She sighed heavily, setting the last of the books in place, "Then I'm afraid none of the classical counterspells or nullifiers will work."

Twilight balked at her, mouth hanging open, "_I rewrote _{the laws of} magic!?"

"Maybe." Luna amended, "And if you did, then logic dictates that you should be able to do so again. Fear not, Twilight Sparkle, you shall be free. But in the meantime-" THWACK.

---

Twilight held a hoof to her mouth as Celestia slumped back on the couch, unconscious. Luna delicately set aside the weighty book, Top 50 Near-Apocalypses of the Last Century, and gave her sister a cursory examination.

Gently laying her sisters head down on a pillow, Luna shook her head at Twilight, "Trust me, she'll be fine. At this point staying awake any longer would do her far more harm than even a book as dense as this could ever do." She sighed, "Sometimes she just gets so stubborn."

"_{Will the coffee wake her up?}"

"Oh no." She took an overly long, self-satisfied sip, "I gave her decaf."

Comments

[manacar]

Lol

[Ri2]

"Oh no." She took an overly long, self-satisfied sip, "I gave her decaf."

You BITCH!

[PrincessTwilightSparkle1]

Somepony is gonna be pissed when they wake up...