Untitled Celestia Fic

by SPark

The Alicorn of Books

Celestia absolutely had a muffling spell on her hooves as she slipped through the darkness inside Twilight’s Castle of Friendship. She was taking every possible precaution tonight. None of this sportsmareship or “fair play” nonsense; she’d need every single advantage she could get.

At least getting in had been easy. The castle was semi-public, and although it was locked at night, the lock had been simplicity itself to open.

Now, though, as Celestia stepped into Twilight’s personal library, she could feel the force of the warding spells all around her. It wasn’t that any of them were especially strong, there were just so many of them! And the fiendish ways that they looped intricately around and through each other—they were layered and nuanced things, draped like glittering lace over every book and shelf in the room.

Celestia shuddered at the flood of information from her horn. Her heart was racing, her whole body tense as she approached the terrifyingly competent spells protecting Twilight’s precious books.

Now, Celestia, she told herself, calm down. You are the alicorn of the sun, the ruler of Equestria, with countless centuries of experience. You can do this. The worried little voice of doubt that had made her shudder tried to answer that the spells she was about to mess with had been laid down by the alicorn of magic, and anyway, she’d never been that skilled at fiddly spellwork. She’d always gotten by with either brute force or diplomacy.

No! She could do this. She only had to insinuate her magic into the spells enough to stretch them around a hoof-full of books. Luna hadn’t specified how many; the task list merely said “put Twilight Sparkle’s personal library out of order.” Even moving one book to the wrong spot might technically count. She could do this.

Standing here telling herself so wasn’t going to actually get it done, though. Taking a deep breath and narrowing her field to a pinpoint, Celestia began to gently pry at Twilight’s protective spells. Metaphorically speaking she slowly tugged the strands of magic away from one of the shelves and the book on it. They were brittle “threads”, and Celestia was sure they would alert their mistress if they were broken, but if she could “stretch” them delicately enough with her own spells she could pull a book or two free of them.

Abruptly the magenta strands she was working with flared, snapping back from where she’d pulled them loose and coiling around her own golden magic in a sticky tangle.

Celestia bit back a curse.

She hadn’t even begun to try and disentangle herself from whatever Twilight’s spell had done when a loud pop sounded behind her.

She still didn’t actually curse out loud, but her mind was filled with a profane litany. She’d been caught, in mid-task, by Twilight.

“Princess Celestia? What are you doing?” Twilight, who’d appeared braced for conflict, teeth bared and magic alight, now relaxed and tilted her head to the side in puzzlement.

“I was, ah, hoping to borrow a book.” Celestia reached out at random and put a hoof on a book within reach.

Twilight’s magic closed around the book in question, pulling it from the shelf. Her eyebrows went up. “This book? Really?”

“Yes, really,” said Celestia, stuck now and hoping her facade of calm confidence would once again carry the day.

“You had a desperate, 3am need for Sweet Savage Love?” Twilight gave Celestia a stern look, but it was slightly spoiled by the flush on her cheeks.

Celestia managed to not choke. “And what if I did? There’s nothing wrong with that.” She lifted her chin primly before continuing, “Clearly there’s nothing untoward about it, given that it’s on your shelf. Or are you ashamed of owning it?”

“Aheh. It’s not mine. It belongs to Rarity. She left it behind the other day.” Twilight’s cheeks were even more red now. “I mean no, there’s nothing wrong with saddle rippers, but really, it’s not my book.”

“And that’s why it was on your own personal shelf, in your own personal collection? Because Rarity left it here?” Perhaps if she could embarrass Twilight enough, she’d forget everything and shoo Celestia away to avoid the conversation.

“Books should be properly filed. Seeing it sit on the desk was bothering me.” Twilight glanced away, her ears flicking back.

Celestia chuckled. Suddenly she could believe it.

“Anyway, I don’t think I believe you.” Twilight rallied, and her tone turned sly. “I happen to know that you already have a copy of this under your bed.”

Now it was Celestia’s turn to blush. “And just how do you know that?” she fired back.

Twilight waved a dismissive hoof. “I know things about books.”

Celestia snorted. “Twilight. You are not the alicorn of books, no matter what you or anypony else might say. Just when were you looking under my bed? Definitely not recently…”

“Never mind.” Twilight was positively scarlet now. “Don’t think you can embarrass me out of finding out what’s going on, Celestia. We both know perfectly well that you didn’t come here for this.” She wiggled the book in her magic, then slid it back into its place on the shelf. “So what did you come here for?”

Celestia cast about desperately for some other gambit, for something else to say, but couldn’t think of anything. What plausible lie would cover her being in Twilight’s library, messing with her books? She’d been backed into a corner, and coming up with some other half-baked excuse wouldn’t work. Twilight already didn’t believe she was borrowing one, she had no realistic reason to need to catalog them or consult one. Why else would she need Twilight’s library in the middle of the night?

“Well? Is this some kind of…prank or something?”

Celestia sighed, accepting defeat. Twilight—and by extension Luna—had won. She’d failed and there was no recovering. “Something like that.”

“Oh?” Twilight sat back on her haunches, fixing Celestia with a faux-innocent expression of wide-eyed curiosity.

Celestia snorted. “Don’t look at me like that. I suppose I might as well tell you.”

Twilight tucked her tail neatly about her and settled her wings, then looked at Celestia expectantly. Celestia would have felt proud of Twilight’s perfect response—expectant silence was a much better way to get somepony to explain herself than asking questions—except at the moment she was far too busy feeling embarrassed. “Well, it started with a prank war.”

When Celestia paused, Twilight said, “Luna once mentioned that you pranked each other when you were younger.”

“Yes. We had an unfortunate tendency to…escalate things, though, which eventually got a bit out of hoof. There were several incidents of considerable collateral damage, and we both ended up quite upset at each other.” Celestia shook her head. “I sometimes wonder if those arguments didn’t add to the growing disconnect that lead to, well, to the Nightmare and all that came with it. In any case, we declared an end to the prank war, and eventually the events you’re already familiar with unfolded. When Luna returned and we talked over those days, she told me that she missed the early days of innocent, harmless pranks. So...between us we devised a new game. Rather than prank each other, we would assign each other pranks—mostly very small, very simple—to perform on other ponies. There is a scoring system for completing them, but we’ve both found that while winning is, of course, better than the alternative, succeeding at the task itself is very much its own reward. I think, however, that we may still have a problem with escalation—Luna definitely upped the ante by sending me here to prank you.”

“Ah. I see.” Twilight frowned. “So you were going to do something to my books? I can’t say I approve.”

Celestia shrugged with a sheepish smile. “I was only going to put a few of them out of order, so you’d be puzzled when you couldn’t remember mis-shelving them.”

Twilight smiled wryly. “I suppose that’s relatively harmless. I probably wouldn’t have tried any time travel to figure out how I’d managed to misplace a book.”

Celestia decided it was best to believe that was meant to be a joke. “Well, that’s rather the point. Minor vexations are the usual sort of prank. Although what ‘minor’ means can be a bit flexible. Also, sometimes it’s not so much about vexing ponies as it is about an amusing challenge. Right now, Luna is trying to have a tea party in Trotfalgar Square without being caught doing it, for example.”

“Oh my.” Twilight’s eyes flicked back and forth, and Celestia could almost hear her thinking. “That would be an interesting challenge... Are there limits on magic use?”

Celestia chuckled. Trust Twilight to zero in on the technical challenge. “Not as such, but we try to keep the spellwork to a minimum. It’s not challenging to merely teleport things around, though sometimes it becomes inescapable.”

“Interesting.” Twilight’s brow was furrowed, obviously still thinking deeply.

There was a long pause as the two alicorns looked at each other. Then, her head tilting in curiosity, and a little smile tugging at the corner of her lips, Twilight said, “So, hypothetically, how would a pony get herself assigned her first challenge?”

Comments

[Herald of Opera]

Ready Player Three?

[jpony]

epic fail

[Venerable Ro]

Personally, I would have attempted to introduce errors during a reshelving session rather than try sneaking in when the wards were at their strongest.

But hey, now we have a third participant!

[JMP]

9942544
Celestia failed in the best way possible, in my opinion. This seems like a "No, but" scenario. No, Celestia didn't put Twilight's library out of order, but she got Twilight in on the pranks instead. This is almost better.

[Merula]

Imagine a goose with the intelligence of a scientist

Imagine that same goose also having access to insane amounts of magical power

We're doomed

[RP422]

If Celly was clever, she would've disorganized the library while Twilight was distracted talking about the To-Do list.

[Morphy]

9943116

The alert spells would have still gone off and the jig was already up, as it were. A far more insidious way of completing the task could have Spike being tricked into shelving books in the wrong place since Twilight has him doing it unsupervised so often.

...and how the hell does Twilight know what books Celestia has under her bed???

[lord Martiya]

9943250
She filed all of Celestia's books, of course.

[lord Martiya]

So, Twilight getting the challenges... We're doomed.

But in a cute way.

[Moon_Fire]

9942981
That is indeed what is happening.

[Cerulean Blue]

Someone's already stolen "Ready Player Three", but yes, Ready Player Three. I liked how the chapter turned from celestia failing the prank to twilight joining in.

And at twilight knowing what's under celestia's bed.

[Aurora Dimmet]

Celestia? Not good with the vagaries of magic? Before Twilight, Celestia was the Bearer of the Element of Magic (and Generosity and Kindness).

[True Edge]

9946675
Where did you find that information? I’ve always wondered if there was any canon information on which Elements the sisters held.

[Stainless Steel Fox]

9952030 I think it's from the flashback to the sisters nuking Discord. They each had three crystals.

Celestia
Magic - Purple Star
Kindness - Pink
Generosity - Purple

Luna
Laughter - Blue
Loyalty - Red
Honesty - Orange

[SilverDiamond]

9946675
I think it's less that Celestia is bad with Magic, it's Twilight so much more capable.
Celestia lost Magic, but she had:
skill and/or power
Twilight had gotten the Element and she has RECENTLY been using it, as well as becoming an ALICORN of Magic.
skill
power
technicalities
finesse
improvisation
studying under Celestia
copying spells after SEEING them ONCE

I'd say Twilight needs a little work to disarm something Celestia did, but Celestia needs a LOT of effort, and even then there's a chance that she will fail.