The Invisible Mare

by Thunderhalk89

3: No Pain, No Gain

An explosion of Red and purple smoke burst forth with a cacophonous sound from the test-tube and had enveloped the entire lab within seconds. Twilight coughed, clearing the fumes from her lungs as her horn began to glow. With scarcely a thought, she had cleared the room and was observing the test-tube with a suspicious eye, as if it were just waiting to attack with its obnoxious fumes again. Once sure that the compound was stable, she began double-checking her notes and equations. If everything had gone to plan, then she would be one-step closer to her goal.

“Twilight!” Spike was at the top of the basement staircase, looking down over the small balcony. He knew that Twilight hated to be disturbed when she was down there, but the explosion had shaken the entire library, and possibly several of the neighboring buildings. “Are you okay? I heard a loud explosion and thought you might be hurt.”

She quickly made sure that her most important notes were out of site before looking up the stairs, “I’m fine. I just miscalculated the proportions of several unstable compounds.”

“That’s not like you, usually you’re more careful than that,” Spike called back, obviously concerned. He was normally Twilight’s number-one-assistant, yet she had not wanted him involved with this latest research project. Whatever she was doing was probably really important: maybe even orders from Princess Celestia; he however, could not remember getting any letters from the Princesses recently.

“I know. It’s just that I’m so close to a new discovery that I’ve been spending more time than I probably should thinking about it.”

“Well, if you’re sure that you’re alright, I’ll just go back up here and finish dusting off the Equestrian History shelves.”

“I’m fine,” Twilight confirmed again before calling back up to him, “and as soon as you are done up there, you can head out to Sugarcube Corner and pick yourself up a cupcake. Just tell them to put it on my tab.”

Spike seemed overjoyed with the prospects of a break from his duties and a tasty treat.

~~~

She was a lot closer than she had realized only hours before. She held the roll of parchment in her magic as she examined it from every angle. The only evidence that she was holding anything was a purple glow; within the aura of her magic, however, seemed to be nothing but air. Many would more than likely argue that she was just forming her magic into the outline of a scroll. She knew the truth though.

“Prank shops might have invisible ink,” she chuckled to herself, “but I have invisible paper!” She held it high above her head in triumph.

She had done what many believed to be impossible: she had created a spell that could turn things invisible. She looked around, as if waiting for applause and cheering from some unseen audience.

“Well,” she thought aloud, “I only have one thing left to do.”

With those words, she set the roll of parchment down and relit her horn. Nothing could have prepared her for what she was about to experience: it was not pain, nor was it pleasure. It was both, yet neither, and everything in between. Her coat and mane faded into pure white as she poured more magic into her spell. More and more she glowed. Her own appearance was so bright that she was forced to shut her eyes. The tingling sensation that was every feeling at once intensified. Even so, she continued.

She knew from the scroll that the spell only took less than a second, yet it seemed as if minutes were passing by.

More pain was flowing through her body than she had ever known possible.

Those minutes were now turning into hours.

More pleasure than even when she was wielding the Elements of Harmony.

Hours rolled into days.

Everything was quiet.

~~~

She sat, exhausted at her kitchen table. A steaming cup of tea sat in front of her as she rested her head upon her forelegs. The night seemed to, almost eternal for her. She barely remembered anything beyond making a scroll seem to vanish right before her eyes. All she really knew at this moment was that her brain hurt, her horn hurt, her eyes hurt: her everything hurt.

She took a sip of her tea. The sight of it disappearing as it approached a space not too far from her eyes no longer amused her. Had the miraculous ability to make tea disappear from a cup by drinking it ever been amusing; and why did the moon have to be so bright? She groaned as she tried to drag herself away from the table and upstairs to her bed. She often thought it funny when Spike talked about being able to hear his bed calling him. She no longer found such thoughts to be crazy.

As she was finally able to pick herself up and slink toward the kitchen door, Spike entered. She froze. She really did not want to be seen in her current condition. She assumed that she probably looked worse than when Rarity had taken her to the spa earlier that day.

“Twilight?”

If she were just half as away as she was now, she would have been able to give some kind of answer. It might not have been intelligible, or even identifiable as what one could consider a language, but it would have been a response.

“Huh. Thought you were down here,” he seemed to say to himself with a shrug, before noticing the half-empty teacup. "She must have forgotten to put that away," he paused a moment, "I have really got to stop talking to myself. Guess that means it's time for bed." He gave a little shrug before seeking out his bed.

Twilight was needless to say, confused. She was standing right in front of him. He even looked right at her. How could he not have seen her? Her head was buzzing even more now than it had before.

I must be hallucinating, she thought, there is no other logical explanation. I must be more fatigued than I thought.

~~~

As Twilight arose from her much needed rest, she grabbed her hairbrush and began untangling her mane as she trotted toward her bedroom mirror. Although well rested, she was still a bit groggy. The memories of the previous night were still a bit blurry, and she could have sworn she had a dream about Spike being a hallucination.

She thought over the day’s schedule, while watching her hairbrush float around the mirror. It was almost mesmerizing: it danced around like a conductor’s baton guiding an orchestra. As it moved and swayed about the mirror, the reddish-purple glow of her magic illuminated nothing.

She paused a moment. Still being a tad bit groggy, she was having trouble processing the image before her. Normally the magical glow that surrounded her brush and horn would reflect of at least a few strands of hair. She studied the brush's reflection in bewilderment. She could see the brush, the glow around the brush, and the glow around her horn. What did not appear visible was her horn or that mane she was supposedly brushing.

Now that she was thinking about it, she did not see anything in the mirror. Immediately her mind snapped to attention. Now fully awake mentally, the image being reflected back from the mirror began to sink in.

"I'm invisible," she whispered to herself. She began to smile, and before she could stop herself, she was jumping in circles around her room chanting, "I did it! I'm invisible!"

Her celebration would not last long. She saw the corner of her bed; what she did not see was her shin: pain ensued.

~~~

Ensuring that Spike had left to go complete the weekly ritual of restocking the library's quill and parchment supplies, she carefully trotted back down into her lab, magically locking the door behind her. She slowly and carefully took one-step at a time, remembering how she nearly fell down the staircase from her bedroom down to the main floor. She closed her eyes and was moving primarily by feel. After that incident with her shin, and then her other shin, and then her hoof, she came to the conclusion that seeing everything but herself was messing with her kinesthetic sense, and could only tell were all her limbs were by removing her sense of sight.

When she made it to her desk, she looked over her notes once more. Her spell seemed to work just as planned: the only flaw was that the magical aura around her horn could still be seen whenever she used magic. She looked over her final notes and performed the spell again, this time just focusing on her horn and magic. Once complete she levitated a book to test the results.

"Horse-feathers," she mumbled to herself, having failed. She checked her reflection using the dome she used to study brain waves to see if her horn still gave off its ethereal glow as well.

It did.

She would need to research a bit more on how to fix that, "But what if I can't fix it," she cried out, "What if a pony's magical glow can't be turned invisible?"

She was flustered to have come so far, only to be thwarted by the tiniest thing. Something she had not even thought about up until now.

"No, I can fix this," she was filled with a new resolve, determined to find a solution.

She looked up at her horn and at the book levitating beside her, both still glowing with her magic. She began retracing her experiments in her mind; back to when she had first began looking into the possibilities of true invisibility.

"Illusion spells." That was it! All she would have to do would be to cast a simple "Chameleon-spell" on her magic. It would not be perfect, but the chances of a pony noticing it without knowing to look were slim. She frowned at the spell's title. I really need to write a letter to somepony about that name. She filed that thought away for later as she began to cast the spell.

~~~

"We aRe the CUtiE MarK CrUsaDerS! On a QueSt to fiNd oUt whO we Are!"

Birds flew away; squirrels hid in the deepest parts of the trees, shutters were closed and locked. A pony could only take so much awesome singing of an epic rock ballad before she was driven mad.

Scootaloo and her scooter zipped around Ponyville at break-neck speeds, pulling the cart Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom were riding behind it. She was careful to avoid damaging anything… too much. She launched them off improvised ramps, and careened around corners.

Sweetie Belle clung to Apple Bloom for dear life. She knew that there was no reason to be afraid. She just preferred when they were not heading straight for buildings. I should probably say something, she thought, that house is getting really close. "You can see that building can't you," That was not very hard.

Scootaloo grinned maniacally as they raced toward the building. She waited until the last second before turning, hard. Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom held on as the cart leaned onto two wheels before slamming back onto all four with a jolt. The two riding along, let out a breath neither knew she was holding. When everything seemed fine and they felt safe, they were thrown forward through the air and skidded several feet.

"Who in tarnation did you hit this time?" Apple Bloom's eyes were rolling around in her head as she tried to shake them strait again.

"It wasn't my fault," Scootaloo replied defensively, having landed beside the other two, "my scooter just stopped."

"Maybe you hit a rock?" Sweetie Belle offered, trying to hold back tears causer by this latest round of bruises.

"Do you see a rock?" Scootaloo shot back.

"Well, no, but," before she could continue, all three paused. It almost sounded like another pony was there.

As they perked their ears, they heard the unmistakable sounds of a pony breathing heavily, as if she had just bashed her shin into a corner really hard.

"Solar-flaring invisible shins!" If they were not mistaken the mysterious breathing had muttered, ever so quietly, under its breath.

There was only one reasonable explanation for a bodiless voice whimpering just out of earshot. It popped into each of the fillies' young minds at the same instant:

"Ghost!"

All three did the only thing a pony could do when one rammed a ghost with a scooter at full speed: they ran around in circles screaming. After several seconds of that, they quickly picked up the scooter and the cart and sped away.

If anypony could have seen the "ghost", they would have seen a pony with a blank expression blinking in bewilderment and confusion, before going back to cursing all four of its now thoroughly bruised shins.

~~~

After her recent meeting with the Crusaders, Twilight considered her experiment a complete success. She teleported back into her lab unnoticed. She quickly went to work on undoing the spell. She felt like she had stubbed her hooves and smashed her shins enough today, if not for the rest of her life.

After undoing the spell, she walked up the basement steps to the landing and the library door. While undoing the magical lock she had put on it, she noticed that her magic was still disguised. Without another thought, that spell too was undone. It was not until she lifted her hoof to push open the door that she noticed that she still had no hoof.

She stood there on the landing; invisible hoof still raised up to push open the door a few moments, before rushing to reapply the locking spell. She did not want anypony seeing her like this. She attempted to undo her invisibility spell again, and again. Each time she was met with failure.

Great, she mused to herself, rolling her invisible eyes, The one time I don't mess-up a spell I created and put all of Ponyville in danger, and I can't undo it.

Comments

[kamil]

Cephalopod-spell... Such a nice ring to that, don't you think?

[Adam Jensen]

"Her celebration would not last long. She saw the corner of her bed; what she did not see was her shin: pain ensued."

i.qkme.me/3spr57.jpg

[Jake Witt]

2016079
...good job.