Alicorns do not have impregnable immunity nor immortality, but permanent longevity. They are susceptible to pathogens just as well as normal Equestrians are. While their natural body systems are heavily reinforced to facilitate their boundless lifespan, they can become ill. It just so happens Twilight catches a nasty bug that has some... chaotic side effects.
The circular quarantine room was teeming with medicinal staff, carrying what seemed like to the princesses an endless supply of various tools and gauges. Twilight, Celestia, and Luna were each encapsulated in a thin dome with plastic tubes running between each of them. Equestrian doctors of all races ran through the tunnels like busy ants, barely taking a moment to chatter except for the most utmost important details.
“Is all of this,” Twilight readjusted her face mask, “necessary?” Her doctors looked at her like she killed a cat in front of them, and then reanimated it. Then killed it again. Their excessively violent response made her recoil slightly in her bed.
“Twilight,” Celestia said through the intercom in the room, “please forgive them. I understand you’re new to being an Alicorn and-” she paused for a moment as she ingested a colorful assortment of pills lying on the tray in front of her. She didn’t need a glass of water, she took them down as is. She pointed the doctor towards Luna who received the same set and followed in her sister’s steps. Luna thanked him and pointed him to Twilight. He shuffled through to her dome and presented them.
“There’s no reason for me to take all of this. I only sneezed,” Twilight rebutted, pushing the pills aside. If a frown could kill a princess, she’d look like a dead cat she recently reanimated. Both of her fellow royals wafted a hoof and the doctor rather forcefully pushed a glass of water forward to her on her tray. She rolled her eyes, recalling a memory about tough love and a pill she had tried to force on Celestia’s own pet. Reluctantly, she took them one by one.
“As I was saying, there is something you must know. As an Alicorn, you are not prone to most pathogens that hinder normal society. Your immune system is more like an immune military, effectively removing any foreign substances and invaders on the site of contact. But when one does manage to slip through-” Twilight wanted to sit up and hear more, but a nurse gently pushed her head back down.
“So I catch a small cold, it’s not a big deal,” Twilight frustratedly interrupted.
“You must understand something crucial.” Celestia suddenly stopped and slammed the red button by her side, alerting all staff. All unicorns aimed a magic pulse at her throat and nose while pegasi wafted in cool air from an exhaust port. An earth pony jotted down the time and sprinted out at a nearly impossible speed.
After what seemed like an age of unrest, she gently pressed her button again. Everyone in the room applauded their efforts and continued about their normal business. “I almost coughed, I apologize.” She cleared her throat with a mighty ‘harumph’ and continued speaking. “Infections of any kind dangerously alter our magic and create side effects that branch from our own areas of expertise. It does not favor us that any illnesses we can contract are magical in nature.”
Twilight looked at Luna, looking for a confirmation.
“It’s true, Twilight,” Luna spoke while starting to shiver. The most recent princess was beginning to get the bigger picture, even if most of it was unknown to her.
“So, what you mean to say is that whenever we leave top physical condition, we become prone to metamagical extremities?” Twilight winced as a needle entered her thigh. The nurse gave a quick apologetic nod and then checked a box on the clipboard hanging off the edge of her bed.
“Correct. I have sent a scouting party to assess the possible damage done by your sneeze. It may be that you had sneezed and you were not sick, but we cannot take the chance until we’re certain.”
Twilight didn’t need to hear the rest. If what her mentor was saying was true, which she had no reason to doubt, then it was clear why she had been rushed here to the infirmary. The thought of magic being influenced by a pathogen wasn’t a completely foreign idea either. Some diseases shut off magic in a pony completely, essentially making them lifeless blobs for weeks until it passed; granted, that was extremely rare. Other cases of horns misfiring while sleeping, sleep-flying and sleep walking had also been recorded.
“Princess Celestia, may I speak with you on your private intercom?” a stallion’s voice echoed in the room. The solar princess nodded and magically drew the curtains.
“Twilight,” Luna called to her softly. “Are you nervous about all of this?” Her voice came from a tiny speaker to the left of her bed and it occurred to Twilight that Luna was talking to her in a private channel. Most of the medical staff had left with only a few standing ready at the door close to where Celestia was.
“A little,” the young Alicorn whispered into the microphone. She noticed Luna’s raised brow and slightly tilted head. “Ok, maybe a lot.”
“Try not to be, when an Alicorn is sick for the first time, an opportunity for discovery is created,” she reassured. “We know what will happen when we perform certain actions under a cold and there are equally prosperous effects to match the devastating ones.”
“What do you mean?”
“You see, Twilight, certain ailments like coughing, sneezing, watering eyes and the like have… well for us it’s not like regular ponies. Our magic is intertwined with the land and the ponies who live here so naturally when we change, so do they. What happens isn’t what we always expect but Celestia and I have recorded these findings in detail. For example, if I were to catch Nullam Constantium and have my eyes water…”
Twilight could hear the excitement building in Luna’s voice.
“A meteor shower unlike anything you’ve ever seen will take up the entire night sky,” she said like she was telling a fairy tale to a child. “And if I cry, a midnight rainbow will reach across the night sky, stretching from end to end where dawn touches dusk. I’ve only ever seen it three times, that rainbow. It’s difficult to explain its appearance, I’m afraid.” Her voice gave away her pure sense of bliss, as if she wanted to be sick so she could see these things again. She watched Luna wipe a tear from her eyes as she became entrapped in a memory long past.
“But,” she continued with a darker tone carrying her words, “if I ever sniffle, the moon will turn red and plants start to wither. I hope you see the irony, for when I cry I turn into a sniveling mess,” she half-heartedly joked. “We’ve tried many cures so ponies and all creatures can enjoy those spectacles, but it always ends up the same. Ponies watch in awe and then flee in fear when they see the environment around them deteriorate.” She took in a deep breath. “I am pleased to say when I subside those emotions and the moon returns to its normal state, the plants revive themselves.”
Twilight watched her give the thousand yard stare at a blank wall. “Luna…” She looked out the window where the moon should be and noticed it was close to a new moon tonight. Only a sliver of white graced the twinkling canvas.
“Twilight Sparkle,” the voice on the intercom interrupted, “please engage your personal channel.”
The mare in question looked over at the set of buttons to her right. Ten buttons were arranged in a grid with five per row. She eyed it with uncertainty, letting her hoof waiver over it.
“The top left, Ms. Sparkle,” he impatiently added.
She blushed and gave a quick thanks. She pressed it and as soon as she did, Celestia’s curtain began to open and her own close. Just before she was shut off from the room, she observed Celestia’s frown and her solemn eyes looking directly at her.
“Hello, Ms. Sparkle, I am Cooperation and I am the head doctor of this ward. You may call me Cooper if you so wish.” His voice was light and friendly and reminded the librarian of the school nurse she had in her elementary days before she became Celestia’s student. “I have some good news and some bad news, which would you like to hear first?”
Twilight hesitantly pressed the button. “The bad news?”
“Interesting…” some scribbling noises came through the signal for a moment. “Unfortunately, you have contracted Nullam Constantium. Not quite so unusual, given how long you’ve been a princess. The preemptive medication will also be working and you’ll be feeling groggy, nauseated, and may be prone to headaches for the next few days. The latter was bound to happen either way.
“On the other hoof,” his voice picked back up to his initial cheery demeanor, “this means we can record the after effects and we’ve treated you before you could begin to feel the more powerful effects. You’ll also be in here for a week, free to have whatever book you want delivered to you at a moment’s notice. This also means after this week is over, it could be anywhere from ten to five hundred years that you’ll be sick again.”
Without thinking, she rolled her eyes at the thought of being tied down to a bed for a week. Sure, reading was fun in its own rights, but she still enjoyed exercise.
“Careful, Ms. Sparkle, we wouldn’t want you straining your eye muscles over this delicate recovery.”
She froze in place and then looked up and noticed a tan stallion with grey hair waving to her through a window one floor above her. She rested her face in a hoof and waved with the opposite to hide her shame. “If I may ask, what is this Nullam Constantium?”
“It’s difficult to explain given how little we know about it, but the best we’ve managed to discover is it’s no more dangerous than influenza but much stronger than a common cold. Nothing we can’t handle.”
“I hope,” he added too quickly for Twilight to respond. To her, it came off as a joke but with a hint of seriousness. Over the room intercom, the chuckling doctor announced, “Princess Luna, Princess Celestia, you two are free to go.”
Luna rolled out of the bed and righted the messy sheets by levitating them over the bed and laying them down flat and snug. She waltzed over to the button dash board and pressed down the middle button in the top row. “Twilight, do not worry, we will keep you company during your quarantine. For now, get some rest. It is nearing midnight and a restless patient does not make for a healthy recovery.” She walked through the tunnel and neared Twilight’s dome without entering. She held up her right hoof and crossed it over her left side, then held it close to her eye. Twilight nodded with a yawn she hadn’t realized she had been holding.
The nurses bowed as the royal sisters exited the room and the door closed with a loud but stern click.
“Luna,” Celestia said while giving the thousand yard stare, “Cooper told me some unfortunate news.”
Her sister motioned with her head to follower her. “I sensed it too. Even with the medication, Constant’s disease is going to have a hayday with Twilight’s magical abilities.” She playfully nudged her sister in the side who looked at her in surprise. “Oh don’t pretend you don’t remember your first time.”
The white alicorn warmly smiled. “The unhappiest week in the life of Equestria, I know. Odd, it wasn’t so funny back then.”
“It wasn’t that bad. Not all the symptoms caused mass panic. The country even got some much needed rain that week thanks to you.”
She silently nodded to herself. “You’re right, I shouldn’t be so worked up about this. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?”
There wasn’t a word Twilight knew of that could accurately describe her sleep. It was a confounding mixture of irony and complacency. The medication had forced her into a deep sleep, but this “Nullam Constantium” disease had kept her awake in her dreams. Yet, even though her mind hadn’t properly rested, she felt rightly so. Perhaps the best way she could have described it was a flower blooming in late autumn. What’s worse was even though she was awake in her sleep, she couldn’t think. All she did was watch clouds roll by on a sky that rotated the day and night every thirty minutes or so. How she was sure of that last part eluded her too.
She rubbed her eyes, but found it to be more out of habit than her actually being tired. She took a quick observation of the room and discovered her bubble was the only dome remaining. Two nurses were sitting in chairs near the door, dutifully checking on her after every round of cards. According to the chip stacks, the nurse to her left had terrible luck in the evening and was down to his last bits. The nurse to her right kept wearing a cheesy grin, like his luck was so great he had no use for a poker face.
Twilight’s stomach growled at her and the two staff members raised their heads. They looked at her and then grinned again. The winning nurse, a unicorn, lifted a tiny microphone on her scrub. “Hello, Ms. Sparkle and good morning.” His voice wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it was obvious he had ruined it somehow or another in the past. “How did you sleep? Can we get’ch- ahem, get you anything?”
“Some breakfast, if you wouldn’t mind.”
He nodded and his partner opened the door for him as he promptly left. Another nurse, a taller and slender mare that wore her mane in a bun, entered to take his place. Twilight was somewhat reminded of Ponyville’s very own Nurse Red Heart, she even had a similar cutie mark and shared a similar color scheme.
“Excuse me,” Twilight found herself asking, “but are you in any way related to Nurse Red Heart?”
She gave Twilight a blank stare before she realized she had been asked a question. “Oh, sorry I’m afraid I don’t know who that is.” She ended the question as if she had nothing else to say on the matter, so neither of them did.
It was a few minutes of stretching, yawning, and head shaking before the stallion returned with a wooden tray of variated food, delicately balanced on his back as he entered the dome. A bowl of cereal, an apple, a vine of grapes, a glass of orange juice, a blueberry muffin- it even made the letters GWS which she presumed was Get Well Soon- and two slices of haystrips. The nurse pressed a foot pedal at the bottom and raised the back of the bed slightly, propping up the princess properly. He pulled open two legs underneath the tray and rested it upright over Twilight. “Ms. Sparkle, I do need to request ya- ahem, you use your hooves to eat. Any magic usage during this time may accelerate the Nullam Constantium.”
“I understand,” she said along with her gurgling stomach.
The door opened once more and none other than Princess Celestia herself entered. All the staff members bowed and gave her some space. The stallion waited in the dome until Celestia walked to the farthest edge of the room away from Twilight. He exited quickly, noting to his fellow workers he was going to get sanitized. Once it was in the clear, Celestia walked over to the tunnel leading to her student’s bubble and stopped at the door. There she equipped an over-ear microphone and hummed softly into it.
“What are you doing?”
Celestia’s voice bounced through her ears pleasantly, like a mother humming to a child.“Making sure it was working properly. You wouldn’t have heard me if it wasn’t. How was your first night, Twilight?”
“Cloudy,” she stated flatly. She attempted to scoop up the muffin, but her hooves weren’t as well practiced. She managed to get most of it up, but she knew she looked like a young filly doing so. Twilight took a few bites into the food before speaking up again. “If I can ask, how did I get this disease anyways?”
Celestia tapped her chin and faint thumps echoed into the speaker. “Well, I’m afraid we don’t know the exact reasons; so far the pattern has shown to be catching it like one would a common cold. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, it’s more of a nuisance than anything else.”
As much as she disliked vague answers, it was likely the best one she was going to get. “Wait, Luna told me yesterday that whenever she sniveled, the moon turned red and plants died.” Celestia acted quickly and shielded the dome with a veil of her own magic, invisibly silencing Twilight’s thoughts from reaching the nurses. “Isn't that more than enough cause for concern?”
Celestia paused for a moment. She was partially glad the nurses couldn’t hear her speak, and even more so that they didn’t appear to have heard her. “Luna told you this?”
“When you were talking with Dr. Cooperation, she and I talked for a bit. While I’m thinking about it-” she stopped herself short. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask about private matters between you and a doctor.”
Celestia nodded her head. “Don’t worry, Twilight, the medication we’ve been developing will be more than enough to handle whatever the disease might throw at you. It is true that one of her symptoms has that unfortunate consequence, but I’m sure she told you of the midnight rainbow?”
She perked up slightly. “Right. She told me this was a chance of opportunity and I shouldn’t be afraid of it.”
Celestia warmly stated with a grin to match, “That’s the spirit. Don’t worry, since this is your first time, Luna and I will be here with you one hundred percent of the way in case something goes wrong. But knowing my faithful student has the magic of friendship on her side, I don’t see how it could.”
“Speaking of,” Twilight mumbled as she attempted to pluck the grapes off of the vine one by one. Just as she had managed to finish her crummy muffin, in both meanings of the word, she attempted to down the grapes. She wished she could use her magic, but it was the doctor’s orders.
“Would you like me to fetch you some silverware, Twilight?”
She held up a hoof, signaling she could handle it. Celestia watched with amusement as her student failed to realize that instead of plucking off the tiny fruits one by one as she did with her levitation, she could just hold up the vine and do so with her mouth. The thought just probably didn’t cross her mind. It would be a good lesson for her, even if a small one. I’m sure when she would realize it in a moment, they’d both laugh.
Her smile began to droop as Twilight continued to attack the food. If she became too frustrated with one, she’d smush it and move onto the next. It didn’t take long for Celestia to realize Twilight was having an issue coming to terms with the lesson. If a pony could snugly fit a hoof into a jug handle, why was Twilight having such a difficult issue picking up some measly grapes?
“Come on, just pop off the vine,” she pleaded to the tray. Even the nurses were beginning to worry. Celestia turned around and shook her head slowly, signaling them not to interfere. Reluctantly, they gave a bow and continued giving the recent princess nervous glares.
“Twilight, perhaps-”
“I’ve almost... got it.”
With a mighty ‘squirk’, the final grape smushed itself into the wooden tray. Twilight and everyone else in the room was speechless. She hadn’t managed but two grapes.
Just as Celestia was going to interfere, her protege ran a hoof to her forehead and began massaging her temples. “Twilight, are you feeling ok?”
“Yeah, I just have a minor headache. For some reason why, I just couldn’t stop going at it.”
Twilight’s horn flashed. Or, Celestia thought her horn flashed. It looked like it flashed, anyways, just a moment ago. Something must have been wrong with her student.
“Twilight, are you feeling ok?”
The hungry princess raised her head in confusion and slowly replied, “Yes?” She felt her horn tingle, but thought nothing of it. Twilight thought her mentor looked little “off” somehow. Her eyes would betray concern for one moment and then become neutral and she’d give her warm grin she always gave to her. But then she’d shake her head like she had forgotten something. Twilight felt her horn tingle once more.
“Twilight, are you feeling ok?”
A dull throbbing built up in Twilight’s skull as if someone was hitting her with a pillow from both sides. What was going on? Why couldn’t she just have eaten those grapes? Why didn’t she realize she was going about it the wrong way? She knew she wasn’t doing it right. She knew that. It was as if every time that tiny fruit came into her thoughts, she forgot how to do it. So she continued with the force method to no avail.
“Twilight, are you feeling ok?”
Amidst the head pain that was rapidly increasing, Twilight was able to deduce what was likely happening. Nullam Constantium was taking effect.
~~~
Apple bloom held the quill in her mouth as she stared at the blank paper labeled, “Cutie Mark ideas”. She sat in her chair and let her eyes wander across the desk, hoping the intricate wood carvings might inspire some sort of idea. The only thing inspired was a depressed moan. Her meeting for the Cutie Mark Crusaders wasn’t going to go well if she couldn’t jot down even one idea. The sun was going to come up soon, what might Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle think? They probably have at least one thought.
What haven’t they tried yet? The more she pondered the thought, the more she realized they’d done too much to count. She could never keep up with something like that. But she knew who could. She finally wrote on the page, “Ask Twilight how to make a good list.” Another groan escaped from her muzzle as she remembered her librarian friend was in Canterlot. She’d have to write her a letter from all of them.
She’d probably get a list about how to make a list.
With at least something down to discuss, she pushed herself back from the desk and walked to the window. The sunrise was about to begin and when she wasn’t sleeping in, she always came to the window to watch it. She enjoyed watching the shadows grow from the trees because sometimes they looked like ponies, and sometimes Cutie Marks. Her big sister once watched the sunrise with her and tried to tell a joke about how the trees looked in the morning. Something about how they must not be morning ponies because of their long faces.
Her eyes caught the site of the latest sapling they had planted to replace a tree that had recently withered. As the morning began and the grey sky turned to blue, Apple bloom took great care to notice the young tree was bending over and the leaves didn’t look quite right.
She had spent a lot of time planting that tree too, no way was she going to let it pass so easily.
With a stern nod, she raced out of her bedroom and galloped down the hallway, taking only a second to observe her mane in the bathroom which she pronounced, “eh.” Good enough for her. Down the steps and outside she went. She passed by her brother who said, “Mornin’, Apple bloom. Where yah off to?”
“I’m gunna check up on the tree we planted a few days ago, it don’t look too good,” she yelled over her shoulder. It was about a thirty second gallop to the tree she sought; low and behold, it was looking sickly. It was about twice the height of Apple bloom and as wide, and the trunk was discolored. Its leaves and branches were drooping and the healthy green she expected was browning at the tips. The farmer’s hooves patted the ground and felt the firmness of the dirt. It felt too dry here, and it wasn’t helping the sapling was at the top of a tiny knoll. The surrounding apple trees must have been siphoning its water before it could get to it, not that they meant to.
Knowing exactly what to do, she raced to the barn where she scooped up her watering can. It was two sizes too big for her to carry with her mouth so she delegated the task to her back. She filled it up at the pump, half way so she wouldn’t hurt her spine like Applejack said, and then began to take it to the spot once more. She didn’t know why she was running; the tree wasn’t going anywhere, it had plenty of time, she just felt obligated to it as if a friend asked her for a drink.
In a matter of seconds with speeds so fast even Rainbow Dash might be impressed, though she’d save that thought from Scootaloo, she returned and proceeded to water the plant. She watched the leaves start to perk before her very eyes, perhaps it was thirstier than she thought. She’d have to keep a close eye on it. Even trees need help from time to time. In fact, if it wasn’t for ponies like her, a lot of these trees here in Sweet Apple Acres wouldn’t even be here.
Her eyes widened as she realized the importance of what she just thought. “I know what I have a talent in! Its-”
Fwooosh.
She blinked out the dizzying circles from her vision. She stared at the healthy sapling in front of her with the sun rising behind it. “How’d I get out here again? I hope I wasn’t sleepwalkin’.”
Her leg bumped against a metal object. “Oh? Oh, it’s the watering can. Big Mac must have forgot it here when he was waterin’ this tree. I’ll take it back for him.” Her stomach gurgled. “I better get some breakfast.”
~~~
It was another weekend at Rarity’s who reluctantly, but generously as always, let her sister stay at her house. Sweetie Belle had woken up earlier than usual for the Cutie Mark Crusader meeting they had planned and she was given the objective to come up with more activities to try. She was licking her teeth in front of the mirror, going over each tooth with deft precision to make sure all obstructions that might look unseemly were taken care of.
She hummed an undeveloped tune, singing whatever note came to mind. As her tongue rested on her front teeth, she caught sight of her comb. It was too far away to grab from where she was standing, but perhaps...
She returned to a more dignified position and faced the comb directly. She began to recall the steps that Rarity had given to her. Step one, a unicorn must have a clear mind free of distractions. You can’t shove a square peg into a round hole, you must let it flow naturally.
But what if the square peg is smaller than the round hole?
It’s those kinds of distractions that will stop you from using magic, Sweetie Belle dear. However, you’re not wrong.
She cleared her head of all distractions. She was calm. Simple thoughts. Only do what needs to be done.
Step two, you must establish a connection between the two objects. Imagine building a bridge with your mind and connect the two.
Comb. Sweetie Belle. Magic. Bridge. Got it. She could feel it, there was something there at the top of her horn, like she could feel the comb’s handle there. It felt slippery, as if coated with water. She kept an iron grip on it to the best of her abilities.
Step three, tell the bridge what you want it to do. You must think of every step as magic requires precise order.
Sweetie Belle closed her eyes. Grab. Lift.
The comb slips through.
Grab. Hold. Lift.
The comb is held steadily in her magic, but does not rise.
Grab. Hold. Lift. Up.
A pressure of an unknown source exerts itself on her horn.
Every magical reaction must have an equal and opposite reaction.
She was doing it! She was really doing it! She was magically combing her hair! She opened her eyes and watched giddily, which temporarily causes the comb to waiver, as she curled her mane without Rarity’s help.
“Sweetie Belle!?” Rarity said in surprise as she walked past the door. “Oh, you’ve done it!”
“I know! Isn’t it fantast-”
Fwooosh.
“Eek!” The comb dropped to the floor, landing far away from Sweetie Belle. She and Rarity found themselves hugging from the sudden explosion that boomed in the distance. “What was that!?”
Rarity did a double take and gently let go of her sister. “I don’t quite know. Whatever it was, I’m sure it was quite something.”She took a moment to open the window and observe the world, but there were no alarms and no anomalies to be seen or heard from. As she tentatively closed it, she observed her sister’s mane which appeared to only be half combed.
“Somepony slept on one side of the pillow, I see.”
The filly looked in the mirror and giggled at her silly reflection. “I guess so.” She soon saw a familiar blue aura grab the comb and watched it weave effortlessly through her hair. “Thanks, Rarity. I know I’ll get it someday.”
“Your magic should be coming in any day now, I’m sure of it,” she said with utmost reassurance. “Every light must glow before it can shine. But I can tell one day you’ll be positively beaming.”
Sweetie Belle gave a sheepish and blush filled grin. A bird outside tweeted a happy tune, reminding them it was now early morning. “Oh my gosh, I’m going to be late!” She gave a quick goodbye and headed out the door.
~~~
Scootaloo’s alarm clock rang. She slapped the top of it and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Her head felt lighter than usual as she lifted herself out of the bed. Despite her active cognition, she couldn’t feel her legs walking across the cloud floor as she approached her dresser. To the side of it was a mirror just her height. Through the thin cracks of her eyes that refused to open completely, she noticed the top of her head wasn’t in the reflection. She must have been getting through a growth spurt she hadn’t noticed.
Her back was hurting too.
Her front legs reached the top drawer with ease, something she wasn’t accustomed to. She didn’t have to pull the stool to reach today. With an early morning smile, she lifted out the armbands she had bought yesterday with a rainbow pattern. She strapped one on each leg, giving it a loud snap against her fur every time to make sure it was on well. It certainly shot her eyes wide open, that was for sure.
She returned to her reflection.
“Oh my gosh!”
Her morning suddenly made sense! The light headedness, lack of feeling in her hooves, the mirror height; she was flying! Her wings were flapping soundlessly, a whole half foot above the cloud floor. And she wasn’t struggling, at all! Her wings must have finally grown in like the doctor predicted they would.
I’m sorry Scootaloo, your wings will take longer than the average pegasus to develop due to your premature birth. When they grow in however, I think you’ll find the results more than you could have asked for.
She couldn’t even feel them, it was effortless to her. She flew around in circles, giddy with excitement. She wondered if her hero shared her same setback. It would explain how Rainbow Dash was so awesome if she flew like this all the time. “Oh man! Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle are going to flip when they see-”
Fwooosh.
Scootaloo picked herself up off the floor, pushing herself up with the help of her bed. Whatever that explosion was, it shook her out of her bed. Her alarm clock had fallen on the floor too. It wasn’t on either. She guessed the bang had knocked it off her nightstand and it happened to turn off.
She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. She tried to spread her wings, but winced and tucked them back in. Her left side had a dull pain running through it. She chalked it up to landing on the floor. Probably not a good idea to use the wings today just to be safe, she thought. She looked at her legs and cocked an eyebrow. “Huh, I thought I took these off last night. Oh well, saves me some time using the stand I guess.”
~~~
Twilight’s headache subsided, letting go of the pillow she had clamped into her mouth for the past half hour according to the clock. The sweat on her brow soon dissipated itself, leaving behind a cooled forehead and lifting a weight off her mind she desperately needed.
“Twilight, are...” Celestia blinked three times. “What... happened?” her eyes shrank to the size of pins when she discovered her student breathing heavily in short breaths. “Twilight!”
“I’m fine... now.”
Celestia looked over at the nursing staff. “Why didn’t you retrieve Dr. Cooperation at once? This could have been dangerous.”
They looked at each other before returning to meet their princess’ scolding glare. “We tried, but every time we did we saw this purple flash and we just... forgot.”
As much as Celestia hated to admit it, her hooves felt stiff, she hadn’t moved from the spot. “Twilight, do you know what happened?”
The young princess slowed her breathing and tried to gather her thoughts. “I felt my head throbbing and whenever it did, I could feel my horn tingle. But it kept tingling more and more each time like something was bubbling inside of it. It was scalding hot, dipped in what I can only think was lava. And then... boom. It all cleared.”
Celestia eyed the tip of her student’s horn and it was clear it had been burned sometime during the event. It was unconsciously allowing magic to pass through at a furious rate. She couldn’t imagine the pain she must have been in. Celestia wasn’t all too surprised. Her thoughts drew back to her own experiences with the disease. When she had the Nullam Constantium, her headaches caused heat waves that spread across the country, and Luna’s sky at night had every star moving in a small circle. It was sickening to be in either situation. Had the room really just been repeating itself for the last- she checked her clock- half hour? If Twilight’s magic did explode, she could only guess at what happened to her citizens.
“Nurse, she requires medical attention. Get Doctor Cooperation in here stat.” They both ran out of the infirmary. “Headaches were always the worst.”
The wall loomed over Twilight, its height alone stood above her by several stories and mocked her puny size. Its obsidian facing, etched with eerie luminescent dusk purple carvings made the young alicorn wary of its presence, but not afraid. She couldn’t help but stare further at it as light pulsed horizontally through the wall. What struck her as odd were the shapes that were cast when the symbols were lit. There was a layer of crystal in front of the light and though it would suggest they would cast beyond her, the light somehow made itself to the floor in front of her hooves.
Despite the unfamiliarity of the symbols, their shadows made words all too familiar. “TWILIGHT, IN, HEAR, ?, CONSTANT, CHAOS, LOVE...” That’s all she could catch.
The wall shook and pebbles fell from the ceiling. Light from the wall soon spread itself across the room in roughly chiseled viens, moving past each other in a maze pattern Twilight couldn’t comprehend. She followed them involuntarily and found another wall where the light lead to. Its destination was a raised, convex stone surface. The light flowed with a water texture and filled a circle around it. Five points, equidistant from each other, jutted out from the circle and headed to the center. There, a hoof imprint revealed itself.
Her hoof lifted. She pressed it against the panel. The world faded within a hissing noise.
“Not so loudly,” Luna scolded in a whisper. “We don’t wish to awake her.” Twilight wanted to open her eyes, but her curiosity for what they were talking about consumed her.
“Of course, Princess Luna. The reports are in; her horn has suffered some minor burns but otherwise her vitals are in perfect condition. Whatever that magic surge was earlier, the worst of it seemed to pass.” Twilight could not guess the stallion’s voice who spoke. He wasn’t Dr. Cooperation.
Luna sighed. “She’ll be glad to hear that.”
The shuffling of sheets caught the lunar alicorn’s attention. She approached the dome her sister’s pupil rested in and examined the sleeping body within. Her legs had twitched, that was all. Luna pressed her hoof against the thin dome, sullen that she could not be of any more assistance than a mere bystander. A nurse by the door threw his playing cards into the air as his companion scooped up the jackpot.
Twilight decided to stop playing coy. She arose and spread out her wings which felt stiff after being under her all afternoon. She pressed the talk button on the panel beside her bed and said with freshly awoken tenderness, “I am glad. And I think your microphone is on.” She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and grinned with Luna’s surprised smile.
“I did not realize you were awake.”
“The princess of the night not knowing who was asleep? Wha?” Twilight couldn’t help but snicker playfully.
Never let it be said princesses weren’t above sticking out their tongue. “I find it hard to imagine my sister knows when everyone is awake, or when you know if two ponies are true friends.”
“Ok, ok, you’ve made your point.”
A nurse from the door asked, “Does this mean we can stop whispering, Princess?” Twilight recognized him as the gruff voice from yesterday.
“Only if that is ok with Twilight.” Luna received a reassuring nod from the pony in question.
“In that case- Ha! Three aces ya slum.”
“Impressive. But I’m afraid I have you beat.” The other nurse smugly laid down his hand. “Four twos.”
“Four tw- you’re killin’ me Syndrome.” They both chuckled like buffoons and then set up another round. “Glad I ain’t stupid enough to bet real bits against ya no more.”
Twilight yawned and got back the attention of Luna. “What time is it?”
“Far too late in the evening for you to be awake.”
The patient had other ideas as she craned her neck this way and that, desperately trying to get crick out of her neck. A familiar tingling sensation from when she’d rest for too long in the library swept through her legs and much of her pent up energy was being difficult to handle. It hadn’t come up earlier, but she also hadn’t gone to the bathroom in quite some time and the urge was- perhaps literally- going to kill her. In short, she needed to move.
Without warning, she hopped out of the bed. Next to the bed was a blue respirator mask which she struggled to lift over her head and equip only using her hooves. After some minor fumbling and two attempts -the first of which ended up with an upside down mask- later, she pressed a hoof on the glass door. “I really need to take a stroll, walk around a bit.”
“Very well, a stroll around the castle would do you some good. Please, wait there for a moment.” Luna walked to the end of the chamber and pressed a yellow button near the exit. A fine mist spread through the dome and lightly coated the pony inside.
Twilight’s nose itched from the mask, and she wiggled her nose to adjust it. The scent of the mask caused her nose to quietly sniffle.
“Ara yoy reaer, Twilliwt?”
Twilight shook her head. She delicately rubbed a hoof in her ear, thinking the mist had messed with her hearing. “Huh?”
“Are you coming, Twilight?” Luna repeated with a thin frown. She opened the door in front of Twilight.
“Of course.”
~~~
Twilight heaved a large sigh that had been sitting in her chest all day. Her jittery legs subsided as she took another step in the hallway, delicately scratching her itchy nose. The castle’s bright, ornate tiling and windows assumed a dimmer, pale-blue luminescent reflectiveness. It wasn’t difficult for her to see, far from it, but it felt odd not being able to view the hall from end to end.
“How do you feel, Twilight?” Luna kept her strides short, matching with her friend’s slow gait.
“I don’t know. Fine, I guess.”
Luna knew there was nothing interesting about the floor which she seemed keen to keep her attention to. “You don’t sound fine. Are you worried?” She bent down and whispered into her ear, “The nurses haven’t tried to court you, have they?”
“What? I- no,” she denied with blushing cheeks that grew hotter with Luna’s stifled giggling.
At least her attention was off the floor now, Luna thanked in her head. “It is not becoming of a princess to present depression.”
Twilight took in a deep breath. “Did you have visions when under the disease?”
“Visions?” Luna repeated, unsureness obvious in her voice. “I had dreams, but-” she paused as Twilight sniffled, “ I couluo’c maam senes ofo thht.”
Twilight shook her head and knocked a hoof against her ear. “Come again?”
“I couldn’t make sense of them. Are you sure you’re-”
“Fine? Yeah, I think I just got some of the mist in my ear is all.” Luna nodded accordingly. Twilight continued her train of thought. “Do you remember anything about them?”
“In my life as a princess of Equestria, I have had this illness six times. It occurred to me and my sister that these dreams would predict an event in the future. As our magic grew over the ages, so did the vividness of these foreshadowing messages.” Luna eyed Twilight. “With magic as strong as yours so early, I would not find it surprising if they were strong.”
“They’re... confusing.” Twilight scratched her nose again as it became uncomfortable to breathe. She sniffled once more and couldn’t help but notice Luna’s eyes direct themselves at the moon for a moment when she did so.
“ Ifi Necesecen, I cac cooc ana visiv yooy dreerd ana perhrep heeh interetni thht?” she asked.
“Whht?”
“Twilliwt, Im’I beginigeb tot worow aboba yoy. Perhrep thht waaw waw non a goog iddi.”
“Luul, I thiht tht disesid isi takkat effffe ini mym noon. It’i makkam usu non underednu ono anotona.”
“Perhrep thht isi tht perfrep tiit tot teet yoy I dropord yooy toothhtoot ini tht bathhtab toiiot ana forrof tot rinir iti. Taat heaeh tht toiiot waw non ‘ussu’ durrud thht tiit.”
~~~
Pinkie and sneaky weren’t two words that pair well together. They were close to rhyming, but not quite; appropriate, given how inept she was at slinking down the squeaky stairs of Sugarcube Corner. Humming a spy theme while tiptoeing across the wooden floors wasn’t helping her case either. She peeked around the open archway to the kitchen. The refrigerator was on the west wall, closest to where she was observing the area. It was humming in the night, a subtle undertone to her musical dupery, as if it were waiting patiently for a certain pink pony to open it and take a midnight snack.
That was exactly what she planned to do.
Executing a perfect cartwheel, which not-so-perfectly knocked around pots and pans hanging above the center counter, she rolled to -or in her case, rolled into- the cabinets and gave herself a hi-hoof for her excellent sneakyness. The fridge was so close now. She could reach out and open the door if she wanted to.
“Don’t.”
Pinkie froze as her hoof touched the handle.
“Pinkie Pie, stand up, I know you’re there.”
Her other hoof raised itself above the counter, acting as a periscope that even had its own pair of glasses. Impossibly, it saw Mrs. Cake sitting in the far table, hidden by the shadows. Her hoof sank a little as it saw the grumpy face staring back at it.
“We need to talk, you and I.”
Her hoof shook its head.
“Yes, we do. It’s about your late night snacking.”
She wiggled her hoof around, conversing with Mrs. Cake in its own special way.
“Should I assign you more babysitting duties?”
Her hoof shook its head wildly and raised itself higher, soon followed by the rest of Pinkie Pie’s body. She attempted a grin, but even she couldn’t fake her way past Mrs. Cake disappointment. She placed the glasses on the top of the counter she had been hiding behind and mosied on over to the table, pulling up a chair and looking down at the wooden floor.
“Pinkie Pie, we can’t keep doing this.”
She sighed. “I know. But my tummy was so hungry, I just had to have something.”
Mrs. Cake crossed her arms. The trouble maker knew that wasn’t a good sign. “Tell me deary, what’s in the fridge.”
“...cake.”
“And who is the cake always for?”
“...the customers.”
“So who doesn’t get to have the cake in the fridge?”
“uhhh, Pound Cake?”
“Yes, and?”
“Pumpkin Cake?”
“Yes, and?”
“...Mr. Cake?”
“Yes, and?”
“...me?”
“Yes. This has been happening for the past week now dear, I’m worried about you.”
Pinkie Pie had once learned a lesson about responsibility and how she needed to own up to her actions. Her tummy might have been empty, but it was full of butterflies nonetheless. She knew what she had to do and from somewhere, she summoned her courage and nerves. “I think I have a sugus addicidda.”
Mrs. Cake furrowed her brow. “What?”
“I said, I think I have a sugus addicidda.”
Mrs. Cake slowly shook her head from side to side. “Oh Pinkie, you can’t stop playing games for one moment, can you?”
The mare in question gasped. “Of course I can! I just did! I’m trying to say I have a sugus addicidda! I mean, a sugus add-” she growled at her mouth. Maybe this telling somepony you have a problem thing was harder than she thought. “Ok.” She exhaled and moved her hooves like she was parting water. “I have a sugus addicidda. Oh come on!”
The show owner shifted in her seat. It was clear to her Pinkie really was trying to tell her something important. “It’s ok, Pinkie. I know how hard it is to tell somepony else when you have an issue. It sounds serious enough that your body just won’t let you say it.”
“Wait, let me try one more time. Sugar.”
“Sugar?”
“Addiction.”
“...addiction.”
“Sugus addicidda.” Pinkie Pie unceremoniously slammed her face into the table.
“Are you trying to say sugus addicidda?” Mrs. Cake clasped her hooves over her mouth. “Sugus addicidda.”
Pinkie mumbled something into the wood. It sounded like “See what I mean?”
Mrs. Cake sighed. “Why can’t we say sugus addicidda?”
“I don’t know! I think it’s cursed!”
“Sugar,” they said simultaneously. “Addiction. Sugus Addicidda.”
“What is wrong with us?”
Mr. Cake stood by the archway that Pinkie had not-so-subtly slipped through to snatch a meal earlier and watched with an emotion that he could only describe as a confused terror as his wife and employee sat at the dimly lit table, saying the same word over and over again like witchcraft. He did what any responsible husband might do and backed away, backtracking up the stairs. He wouldn’t ask in the morning what he saw.
“I think we’re both too tired for this. How about I cook some midnight cinnamon rolls and we head to bed?”
Her hoof, with its glasses inconspicuously back on, raised up and nodded.
~~~
“Cac yoy grrg mem a tissit?”
“Whhw?”
Twilight mimicked blowing her nose.
“A tissit?”
Twilight vigorously nodded. “A tissit!”
Luna summoned a handkerchief and levitated it to Twilight. “Heeh yoy ara.”
Twilight blew her nose, finding it to be an odd sensation of having to balance the cloth on her hoof instead of holding it steady with her own magic. “Thank you.”
“Ahh, much better.” Luna rolled her eyes. “I know how difficult it can be to understand somepony with a stuffy nose-” Twilight purposefully sniffled, not wanting to hear the rest. “-bub thht waw ridiccidir.”
“Well, now we know what that does.” Twilight and Luna jumped when a door they had recently passed swung open and slammed against the wall.
“If you want to make fun of me by mouthing off some gibberish in a foreign language, that’s fine. But don’t you keep it a secret from me!” The mare strode out, throwing a pillow over her shoulder. The pillow landed on the stallion’s face which he quickly swiped off.
“Lillian! I swear that wasn’t me!” he pleaded, crawling on his hind legs. “I mean, it was, but I didn’t mean it!”
“And now you go and lie to me, Button?” She shook her hind leg to get the fool desperately clasping on off. “If you wanted to say something to me, just say it.”
“But I-” he was cut short as he received a swift kick to the face. “Lillian!” he belted, holding a hoof to his nose. She didn’t look back.
The stallion collapsed into a sobbing mess on the floor, constantly repeating her name in a whimper.
“Should we go after her and tell her?”
Luna stood there with an unamused face. “No, he’s had that coming to him.”
Twilight was on edge. She was on an edge that looked over the abyssal space of nothingness and her legs were filled with enough energy to lift anvils. Behind her was a flat savannah that stretched into the horizon with a red sunset and aside from the stillness of the blades of grass that typically bent with the slightest breeze, it wasn’t too particularly interesting. Neither was the blackness of nothingness, only the edge of the two worlds proved to be anything significant.
She dared to peek over to see the world’s end was smooth, cut like a heated knife going through butter. It simply stopped. She took two steps back as one of her legs lunged forward, urging her to the precipice of the void. To her surprise, and fear, the chunk of land where she once stood fell. Now the void was up to her feet again as the circular gap in front of her removed the rubble from the sides, giving it the smooth impression she had seen.
Her legs moved again towards the gap. It was only a passing glance as she unintentionally looked over her shoulder but she saw the sun was setting. With each passing moment, the urge to jump was increased- no, accelerated. The land continued to crumble underneath her. The sun was down halfway. Twilight knew she wouldn’t be able to last much longer. Try as she might, she was going into the void. She was more helpless than a bug wrapped in tissue paper and though she could squirm, she would never be free.
Her body became a puppet as she flew herself over the edge. She felt weightless. She felt... safe? She felt something holding on to her leg. Twilight returned her vision to the sunset to see the silhouette of a pony. An Alicorn.
“Twilight,” Cooper said over the intercom.
The awakened pony lurched forward, gasping. She reacquainted herself with her hooves and her legs under the sheets, taking short light breaths. Her forehead felt heavy and she wiped off the sweat.
“Twilight,” Cooper repeated, “are you okay?”
Her modesty never seemed to sleep as she involuntarily replied, “I’m fine, I think.” She didn’t feel fine, but she’d feel worse if she let them know if she wasn’t. Half of her mind was trying to remind her that that is exactly what infirmaries were for.
“You were talking in your sleep,” he noted. “We tried to ask for Princess Luna’s help but-” he gave a powerful yawn- “she said something there would have made it dangerous to interfere. What do I know? I’m not an Alicorn.”
Twilight nodded. The intercom beeped at her, but no noise came through. Whatever Cooper wanted to say, it wasn’t important. With a faint click from the speaker, she was alone again in the room. The nurses had passed out, their drool running through the wood’s natural dents and on top of the cards. They had moved their table closer to a window so the moonlight would help them see, she presumed. On her door, there was a note saying Princess Celestia would be late this morning due to an unexpected meeting with a minotaur ambassador.
Either it was the dream or her walk last night wasn’t long enough, her legs were itching to get moving again. She examined her reflection in the dome’s walls and found herself appearing to be Maredusa. Even her fur wasn’t looking so well, with patches of it that she had slept on moving in odd directions. If it wasn’t becoming of a princess to present depression, certainly it wasn’t decent to look like a diamond dog.
It was still early for the morning of her second day of treatment. Since the other two who could possibly be affected were far away, Twilight realized she could take a moment to remedy her appearance and leave the room. There was something about being stuck in a ball all night that makes a pony want to move about. She had read, though the medical magazine was less than credible, that patients develop a strong sense of apathy over prolonged periods of time; having a strong ethos or not, there was truth to the statement and she refused to become lazy. She could use the spell for magic hair fix, but nothing worked as well as proper grooming. The awakened princess hopped out of bed and mosied over to the door. With a gentle push on the button, it swung open and she let herself out.
“Ms. Sparkle, I advise you not to leave the quarantine unit,” Cooper warned, watching his patient joyfully trot through the tunnel.
“Is Luna asleep?”
It took a moment for him to respond. “Yes?”
“And Celestia is away?”
“But she could be back from the meeting room soon,” he adamantly reminded her.
“Well, I could use a few minutes to freshen up, maybe take a shower without all the medication in the air.” She winked as she approached the door. “If I do see one of them, I’ll come right back, promise.”
“I can’t let you go. I have specific instructions from Celestia herself not to let you leave the room while you’re ill. I could ask one of our servants to fetch you what you require.”
Twilight blew a small puff of air up, clearing some hair out of her face. With the considerable effort her two fellow alicorns put into their hair, she could easily imagine Celestia forgiving her. It wouldn’t have been the first time she disobeyed Celestia.
“Please? I won’t even be fifteen minutes.”
Cooperation knew that when Twilight was on a mission, or so he had been told, she was nigh unstoppable. But he wasn’t going to take this lying down, he’d only failed a few patients in his life and it sure wasn’t going to be a princess of Equestria. He pressed button number one under the security panel and thick iron bars dropped in front of the door, firmly planting themselves into the floor.
“Bars? Really?” He could only imagine her face with a sort of sarcastic unamusement had he not been looking at the button panel. A flash of purple later and the button glowed blue, signifying it had been disengaged.
“I cannot let you leave this room.” He activated button two.
“Oh, now magic bars? I thought maybe we would have gone up a step.”
Two turned blue. Button three. “May I remind you, Ms. Sparkle, under doctor’s orders not to expend magic lest the Nullam Constantium become possibly stronger?”
“But I’m barely using any magic and I haven’t used any over the past few days,” she rebutted. Another flash of purple and the third button deactivated. Apparently she knew the combination of magic and metal and how to remove both. She was a princess after all, he mused.
“Fine, how about button four.”
“Fire spell number fourteen. I read this in middle school. It can only be disengaged with the opposite flame color on the color wheel.” Zap.
“Clever. You do know your stuff. How about button five?”
“The ball mechanism? Hmmm, oh I see it now. I just turn this cog here and rotate this platform there and...” Ding.
Well, she didn’t use magic that time. The unbreakable ball mechanism spell solved in a matter of moments. Why would she even need to know a spell like that?
“If you’re wondering, I lock up the library in Ponyville at night with that spell.”
“Number six then.”
“Oh, an Ever-ice spell. I can’t say I’ve ever seen one up close before.” She took a few steps back. “And now I remember why,” she said, shivering to remove slivers of ice forming on her wings. She threw a ball of magic at the door and it froze in midair, leaving a purple ice ball floating in mid-air with a swirling center. “Huh, that won’t work.”
“It’s borrowed from Windigo magic. It’s held back until it’s met with an intense heat-”
“Or the fires of friendship.”
He coked one eyebrow. “What?”
Twilight looked up at the window, more importantly the doctor, and frowned. It was actually the first time she had gotten a good view of him. He was chocolate brown with grey hair, and had an odd pair of red eyes. “The Hearth’s Warming pageant every year? How the founding tribes of Equestria pushed them back with an enkindled heart? The fires of friendship?”
“And you’re... the princess of friendship.” He bumped his forehead against the glass and kept it there. “Well, there’s no more buttons I can press. If you really want this, I suppose I can’t stop you now.”
She mouthed a “Thank you” and walked towards the door, her mind fraught with the ideals of friendship and the magic they had shared. The ice melted around her and she eventually turned the knob and left the room.
He hit his head against the pane of glass three more times. “This is why I’m not security,” he mumbled. His line of sight was drawn to his two lazy employees, still dozing away in their respective dreamlands. “As for you two! Syndrome, Psyde Effect, wake up.”
They continued to snore.
“Wake up or I’m moving you two to the nurse’s office for the school of gifted unicorns.”
They immediately awoke and sat up straight, shoving the cards off of the table and wiping it down with their leg fur. “Right, Dr. Cooperation! We were just havin’ a, uh-”
“Snoring and drool contest!”
“Yeah! Snoring’and droolin’ contest.”
They couldn’t see it, but the doctor bit his hoof at them. “Last time I leave you two on the night shift. Where’s Malady? She should be here by now.”
Psyde grinned. “I dunno, where is yer lady, Doc?” He winced as Syndrome smacked him on the back of the head.
“Thank you.” Cooper walked away from the glass and approached the intercom set in the thin room lined with surveillance equipment for the medical bay. He walked along the side until he found the button he was looking for. “Attention all Solar Guards, Princess Twilight is temporarily out of her quarantine room. There is no need for alarm, but stay alert and make sure she does not make immediate contact with any other Alicorns as a safety precaution. I’d also appreciate a location update every five minutes and transition to make sure she’s going where she says she’s going. Thank you for your attention and have a great day.”
“Sir!”
~~~
“Mr. Strong,” Celestia said, pushing the documents back across the table. “Our fortuitous meeting has been a waste of my and my country’s time. You have come into my domain demanding unreasonable charges against my citizens who have full rights to trade within the towns near the borders, telling me how to run my people even though we hold one of the strongest economic systems on Union, and deliberately spitting on my seventeen fifty seven extinct jampear tree table that has been sturdier and more reliable than your entire government in the last four hundred years.
“But perhaps worst of all is when you thought your threat of a military invasion should your demands be vetoed would be taken seriously by any form of higher establishment between here and the Crystal Empire. I could take away your sun privileges for weeks if I should need to; who cares if the Savanneigh Desert, a landscape so dry even the sky is pale, receives the extra sun in the absence of yours?
“I suggest with every fiber of my being that you remove your disgraceful self from my office and never return. I have never been more insulted than I am now to be in such poor company. You can tell Rex, Champion of the Minotaurs, that if he wants to come debate these terms with me, I will personally come over to his domain and rip his horns off and use them for my next piano. Do you understand me, Mr. Strong?”
The minotaur sat unphased in his chair which he reclined in. His legs were propped upon the very table he had defiled and there was a pillow behind his head. Unlike most minotaurs,his muscle girth wasn’t incredibly impressive and his horns were shorter; that wasn’t to say his entire body was firmly toned and those short horns were glossed. He had the vibe of one being who cared about strength and appearance, both social and political, equally. With a smug grin and slow clap, he replied,“I underestimated you, Princess Celestia; you do have the rage of a minotaur.”
Her frown disappeared and was replaced with her usual heart-warming smile. “Thank you, Mr. Strong. I’ve been training my mind for some time on the matter. I had heard you prefer your negotiations short and simple, and many... unsavory comments are to be said whilst the debate proceeds.”
“And you’d be correct. I almost believed you were angry too.” He leaned forward and rested his chin on his fist. “But this is a Jazzberry wood table, the tiny grains make music notes every three feet. A jampear’s has a similar grain design,” he added, dragging a finger across the top, “but is rugged to the touch and uses eighth notes instead of quarter notes. I first noticed it when you slid the papers across.” He rubbed his index and thumb together. “You almost had me.”
Celestia sipped on her cupglass of tea. “I would have been more surprised had I fooled you, considering Jamtrees used to grow in your kingdom, Mr. Strong. Our trade has been prosperous these last few decades and I would not want to ruin it. Now then, where were we?”
“Ripping my leader’s horns off?”
“Ahh yes. And furthermore-”
~~~
Twilight had been growing more accustomed to all of the eyes that had been falling on her, metaphorically speaking, lately; yet, the eyes of every guard staring directly at her, rarely blinking, was more than enough to keep her walking the straight and narrow along the grand, open hallways. Though the trip to her shower was a short one, it was an odd one. It would seem as if every turn she made to get to her new bedroom, a guard murmured something to no one in particular. They seemed unusually stalwart in their duties today, she noted.
She lingered at the entrance to her room, facing the not-yet-ornate door that was promised to be chiseled by a master carver, visualizing the guards at post behind her. It was becoming of a talent such as herself to harness the ability to detect magic, and there were thin veins of it in the helmets they wore. By chance, another castle dweller patrolled by and the team murmured softly once again. The veins thickened ever so slightly, only noticeable if one was focusing directly at them. It became clear it was nothing more than surveillance duty and she stepped inside.
She was greeted with the artificial scent of a cool spring day, generated by her everlasting candle stick on a sconce near the door. The room was circular and had one bed in the direct center. While castle interior decorators had insisted upon her part that she add more, she had politely told them she didn’t imagine she’d be in the room often enough to make it worthwhile. She eyed one stallion with great suspicion when he asked why she didn’t want it to appear presentable. “Nopony else should be in my room, right?” she remembered asking. “Why would it matter?”
In the right wall was another door leading to her shower. It was a smaller space than what she was expecting, a windowless room with one air vent to remove the steam, an oval mirror, a sink, and a ten foot long countertop. The shower itself had enough room for her to spread her wings out and be several feet away from either end. The room was a sterile white, from tiles to wall colors and after they had insisted it was improper to be conservative on the detailing, her bathroom in the library looked much like this and it felt right. Having not to pick up Spike’s scales off the floor was a blessing enough.
She caught her reflection in the mirror. She had forgotten about the bandages from the magic pulses released in her horn. Dr. Cooperation hadn’t said anything about them, and it felt fine, so she removed them. A trail of purple glitter trailed down in front of her face as she did so with a hoof and a few of the particles retreated into her nose.
“Achoo!” She shook her head and grabbed a tissue from the countertop, finishing the job.
~~~
“-then you expect me to just drop the tariffs like a hot rock because some pretty princess asked me to?”
“No, Mr. Strong, I’m not asking you to, I’m encouraging you to! I’ve received notifications that my citizens are having a hard time sustaining themselves because of that idiotic tax. They’re requesting some funds to leave the province if their conditions do not improve! I’m sure a minotaur as intelligent as yourself would be able to figure out that if they left, so does most of your trade on our goods!”
“Thank you for calling me intelligent you soap bar with wings!”
“I too thank you for calling my pretty! It’s not often people can be straightforward with me!”
“Why can’t all negotiations be this easy with yelling!?”
“I’m unsure! This is the most productive meeting I’ve had in years!”
“Would you like a voice soother so your voice doesn’t wear out when we’re done!?”
“I’d love one!" Celestia swung out her front hoof and smacked the minotaur across the lower jaw, sending him to the floor. She gasped and ran to his side. “Mr. Strong! I apologize, I have no idea what came over me.”
He pushed himself up and rubbed his chin. “That...”
Princess Celestia gulped and her eyes scanned for anything in the room that might alleviate some of the tension. “...was a fantastic punch! You have done your research into minotaur politics, Princess Celestia.”
The gears in her head, ancient but faithful, stopped clicking. “Excuse me?”
“The punch that seals the deal. I can’t disagree with a ‘motion,’” he stressed, winking slyly, “like that. I’ll speak to King Rex about the tariff and relate to him your firmness on the issue.” He took his hand off his jaw and popped the bones in his neck. He reached into his travel bag and retrieved the voice soothers, two red pills, and handed one to the hard-hitting hailer. “Now then, about weather control.” He cleared his voice after swallowing the medicine. “Your rookie pegasi seem to have an issue understanding our biome.”
She stared at the pill in her hoof, the very one that had lashed out, and then returned her attention to the bellowing mammal. That movement wasn’t her own, she felt something behind it. She shook it off for now, perhaps she had simply lost herself in the heat of the moment, retrieving information she wasn’t aware she had. She swallowed the pill. “What seems-” she stopped, clearing her throat, ”What seems to be the concern!?”
~~~
Luna massaged her head as she stumbled back into her bed. She must have had a powerful dream to have rolled out of bed like that. She thought she had fixed that problem a millennia ago.
~~~
The lack of a window or a more efficient vent caused the room to fog much faster than she had anticipated. At her library, she would never have to worry about it, spare wiping the mirror down. Here, she could hardly see the soap on the rack right in front of her. She groaned as she turned the hot water down and pouted in the lukewarm rain. The steam had been doing well to clear her nose as well.
“Achoo!” She wiped her nose. Something was clearly trying to leave her system and she welcomed it.
She did aim to keep her promise to Cooper as the five-hundredth second rolled by in her head. She wiped her hair back, sending a wave of water splashing across the backwall. Her wings were spread out to their fullest and it was an odd sensation, feeling liquid pellets drip off each feather.
“Five hundred and thirty.” She pushed the faucet back to the left and the cascade ended with a few remaining drips that hit the tile with a plip. “Ok, time to dry off and comb. I don’t think he’ll mind if I use a drying spell to quicken the process just this once.”
~~~
“Well, Mr. Strong, that was a fine series of negotiations.” She held out her hoof and they shook on it. “I hope this will ease the tension along the borders of our two countries.”
Strong huffed a puff of smoke from his nose as he hoisted up his scrolls next to his chair. “Agreed. I shall spread word to my colleagues about your negotiating skills and how wrong we were about you.”
Celestia chuckled, “I’m glad.” In one swift movement, she enveloped the remaining documents in her magic and placed them in his grasp. “Would you like a travel bag?”
He peeked his head around the pile in his arms. “It would help.” With a puff of sparkling dust and some sparks, a bag appeared on the floor, long enough to carry the scrolls comfortably. He bent down and put them in one by one. “If you will excuse my rudeness though, I do have to return to my student’s side in the infirmary. Are you sure you can manage to navigate the castle halls? I can call for a guide.”
He straddled the carrying bag over his shoulder. “No, that shouldn’t be of any concern. We live in mazes and while your abode is occasionally perplexing in design, I certainly remember my way.”
“Very well. I’ll be going no-ooooh!” she yelped as her body flung itself against the frail wooden door and she crashed through it, her body feeling like a ragdoll filled with iron. She clamped her hooves against her head, shaking off the sudden dizziness. She rolled over and stood up, wiping tiny chips off of her fur as she did so. Back in the room, Strong gave her the most peculiar expression; it was the kind of expression that could have been taken any number of ways, but to her it appeared inbetween impressed and frightened, or perhaps confused.
“Is this some exit ritual?” He looked down at the floor where the once-door laid, utterly destroyed. “Is there a second exit where I break that door?”
“I assure you, it’s not that. It would appear... well I’m not able to inform you what that was. But-” Her hind quarters raised itself above her head, leaving her balancing herself undignified on her front legs. Then she flew backwards, though her wings remained tucked in. Her gold hoof decorations scratched the floor as she desperately tried to cling onto it. An invisible force dragged her down the hall.
“Butt?” Strong asked himself, standing in the open archway. “I suppose they have their own strange ways of ending meetings. We should add that door smashing to ours.” He shrugged. “Well, I can’t go against code. I guess my best way to leave this place is hand walking since I can’t fly and all.” He stretched his arms and popped his neck, then cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders. If it was natural for minotaurs to walk on their hands, no one could have disproved Mr. Strong as he steadied himself in one “Up!”. He temporarily balanced himself on one arm as he wrapped the bag around his leg in a criss-cross pattern. “Hand-walker silver medalist in the Centaur Games! Time to bring these muscles out of retirement! HOO YAH!”
~~~
Luna’s eyes popped open once more as she slammed herself against the floor. It wasn’t a figure of speech, she was literally slammed against the floor. “What in the Big Dipper is-” her cutie mark moon rose above her head, leaving her hind legs to dangle helplessly in the air. “Have I been enchanted?” Her front hooves clung to the bedpost as her rear hovered towards the door.
“Oh no you don’t. Dream or not, I shall not allow my own... wait, how does my bottom know where to go?” She snickered as an immature thought ran through her head. “It must have superior hindsight! Ha! Ha ha!” She wiped a tear from her eye, even though she knew it wasn’t that comical. “Jokes ass-side, I must figure out what force is causing this. Perhaps if I spot it, I can flank it.” Her eyes scanned the dimly lit room. Nothing near the door, nothing in her closet and nothing appears to be near her bed. What about under her bed. But under where in the bed?
“Underwear? Really?” she scolded herself. “I must be sleep deprived if I’m joking about such things.”
The force returned, pushing her dairy-air blimp towards her bedroom door. Her hooves hugged on tightly to the bedpost. “I refuse, demon! Show yourself, whatever vile villain is causing this atrocity of privacy invasion to occur! I hope you do let yourself known, because if I find you first I’m going to morph you into a dog and force you to eat chocolate.”
~~~
Twilight discarded the towel she wrapped around her body as a torrent of sneezes stopped her from opening the door. Unimaginable to any other pony, she had lost count after five sneezes.
~~~
“Guards!” Celestia screamed as she whizzed past them. Her body had become a rag doll, flying helplessly through the air. A pair of nobles ducked out of the way as her back was going to careen into them, narrowly missing having their faces impacted that would have left them with a much different kind of sunburn.
The guards spared no time in wising up. Between the two of them, one being the unicorn and the other a pegasus, they immediately concocted a plan, years of training syncing their minds together. The magician summoned a ballista and wrapped a rope around his feathered companion. He tied the other end to a column and then fired the ammunition: his partner.
He caught the Princess and ran the rope around her middle. “Hold on!” he said, not a moment too soon as the rope snagged against the pillar. The guard was flung off and rolled along the floor until coming to a grunt-filled stop. He realigned his helmet and said, “Attention all on-site security. Negotiation halls, wing b. Rogue missile spell. Alert Dr. Cooperation Alicorn activity is prominent.”
Celestia wound the rope around her front leg as her backside continued to tug against the force of the rope. Underneath her, guards gathered on two sides of her anchor and began to reel her in. The unicorn who started the ballista took lead. “Pull!” he ordered. They pulled and a pair of two remaining soldiers wrapped the slack around the pillar further.
The tether began to crackle as Celestia’s force strengthened.
“Men!” guardspony Trigger spoke. “Tie more rope, keep her from flee-iiiaaaa!” The line broke as all guards were flung to a wall by an invisible force. Celestia gulped as another crack emitted from her only anchor. He pushed himself off the wall and shook the dizziness away.“Princess! What’s happening?”
“Nullam Constantium! Twilight must be-” she stopped herself short as the rope unwound itself around her middle and went over the front of her body. By pure primal reaction, she managed to catch it with her hoof and magically wound it there. Trigger leapt for her other hoof and pulled her closer to the ground.
“Men, make a chain! Something’s trying to kidnap the princess!”
“Sir!” As if nothing had happened, they resumed their duties and followed the order. Making an impressive line of twenty soldiers, they held each other leg locked in leg and made their own rope to the same pillar.
“Don’t worry, Princess Celestia, we will not let go.”
Both of their eyes were drawn to their only means of support as an ominous fault emerged on the pillar.
“Oh dear.”
~~~
Luna flapped her wings as hard as they could, tired and damaged as they were after her recent tumble down the stairs after her bedpost gave way. She must have been reaching twenty wingpower without moving a single inch. “I must think smart, not push harder,” she thought. To her left and her right were two metal supports for the ceiling, temporary measures until the pillar restoration process was complete. For once, ancient castle restoration was about to play in her favor.
She fired a blue pulse of magic at her hooves, turning them into dense chunks of iron. They pulled her directly to the ground, dragging across the floor. Keeping her wings moving as fast as she could, she walked with her two front legs to her right support beam. With a magic discharge, she felt her metallized hoof gain charge and stuck it to the beam. “Good, that’s one.”
Her wings were letting up, she needed to hurry. With one last release of magic, she felt lighter. “Rubberized Ponies. I don’t know why I remember this,” she admitted, huffing in between words, “but I am glad.” She pulled herself with her one hoof to the other beam and stuck it to the metal there. Her body stretched across the entire width of the hall and she could finally let her wings rest.
With a sigh of relief, she stopped. Whatever it was pulling her pulled with all its might, her body with not stretch beyond a certain limit. “Try all you would like, evil do-er. This spell does not permit a pony to break of stretching! I don’t even feel your wrath! I’ve been meaning to catch up on my morning stretches anyways!”
She looked up and down the hallway. “I am glad no one heard that.”
~~~
“Princess!”
They didn’t need to say any more, she saw it with her own two eyes. The crack in her grandiose pillar was unmissable as it ran across the entire front. According to the intrepid fear in her guard’s eyes that looped around it, it was likely across the back too. If it gave way, there would be nothing stopping her from careening through space.
“Attention guards, do any of you remember a mending spell from your training?” Celestia observed the faces down the pony rope and grimaced when none could confidently reply. “No one?”
“I apologize, Princess Celestia,” the third guard down in the chain sorrowfully replied. “The castle servants take care of the mending, I’ve never seen a guard use a mending spell in all of my years of service.”
As fate would have it, it was the exact wrong moment to forget something seemingly useless to a soldier.
A massive stone chunk released itself from the pillar, sending the entire team of guards and herself soaring through the air, screaming in terror, some with manlier screams than others. An unexplainable gut-wrenching force pulsed through their bodies as they took sharp turns through the winding hallways. Nobility and servants alike ran for cover as they zoomed by. Celestia thanked her luck as she realized her and her team were high enough to not hit anything below, but still low enough to give any passersby a heart attack if they were surprised.
It wasn’t until the fourth turn left that Celestia noticed she was approaching a blue net.
The blue net yelled, “What in the world is that!?” and she realized it was her sister somehow also trapped within Twilight’s unintentional spell.
“Luna! Hold on!”
“I don’t have a choice in the matter!”
Luna winced as twenty one pony bodies slammed into her belly, causing her to stretch far more than she should have. Most of the guards gave each other awkward glances as they tried to make sense of the matter.
“Luna, why are you-” Celestia was stopped short as a hideous grinding sound broke her concentration. She pulled her face out of Luna’s body and turned around to see the mammoth chunk of rock coming their way. “Oh no.” It wasn’t rolling across the floor, but across the walls suspended in the air. To make a terrible situation worse, it was headed straight for them.
“I see it too.” She grumbled, “I hate mornings.”
Even if a rock could show mercy, it hit Luna without any sense of the word. Her metal hooves slid off the metal support beams and found themselves wrapping around each other, encasing the stone and the entire team in a blue rubbery ball. They rolled down the hall, screams of terror ensuing.
~~~
Twilight smiled as she reached second eight hundred and thirty in her head. No more than fifteen minutes as she had promised and she looked presentable. Her mane was the way she had always worn it, cleanly cropped and not in every which direction, her fur was properly combed down and there wasn’t a speck of dirt to be found on her. It was a simple matter of opening the door and returning to her dome before Princess Celestia arrived. If anything, she was slowly walking to her now, smiling at her subjects as she walked by and offering each and every one of them a hello and not rolling a gigantic blue ball directly at h-
The two astral deities gave Twilight Sparkle the meanest stare they could have ever given her in their entire lives at that moment behind their own plastic domes. Celestia was wrapped from head to hoof in bandages and casts from being crushed by a stone repeatedly; Luna had to have three beds lined up to accommodate her stretched body. Her long, slender legs limply rolled off the bed and curled into buckets with ice in them. Twilight was suffering from emotional guilt as she had managed to get out of the incident unscathed. She had ducked behind the door and activated the Ever-ice spell, which had thankfully slowed them down enough to not careen into the wall.
Dr. Cooperation had readied it, thankfully, after hearing the multitudinous screams coming through his intercom. It didn’t take a medical genius to piece together the two were related. He half-heartedly chuckled. “It was going to happen either way, Princess Celestia and Luna. Her sneezes appear to cause ponies and other objects to gravitate towards her. However... if she had stayed inside the entire time as I had instructed, you two wouldn’t have made contact with her and not... caught... Nullam Constantium.” He knew how awkward it was to say it, but he couldn’t have even imagined how awkward it must have been in the room.
His patients didn’t speak for the longest time. Over his personal intercom, he had to deal with finding twenty rooms for injured guards, some more emotionally troubled than others. It was going to be a pain in his side, to say the least. He took one more glance at the three princess’s medical records and became wide-eyed as he stumbled upon one crucial piece of information. “No two princesses have ever recieved the disease at the same time. But now... I have three.”
Twilight stared at the ceiling, as she had been for the past four hours. At one point, she had been fed more medication and received lunch, but she couldn’t remember it clearly. Maybe it was a daisy sandwich. It all tasted the same to her. The room was more mundane than writing an essay on magic theorems in the middle grades, filled with the soft hum of machines and the constant beeping that followed. The ceiling was her only solace of privacy to let her thoughts wander and for her mind to wonder.
Why had she left the infirmary? She could have asked the two lazy nurses for a portable shower and asked them to leave. On second thought, her mind traced back to when Luna had asked her if they had tried to court her, so maybe they didn’t have her best interests at heart sometimes. She could have asked permission to use a spell, or some other talented unicorn to initiate a grooming enchantment on a comb. Though, in the scope of fifteen minutes, it was unlikely a servant would have made it in time before the whole incident. Even if one had it wouldn’t have changed the fact her teacher and her sister were both stuck in the same situation she was.
What would have happened if the Minotaur ambassador hadn’t arrived? Celestia would have been in the infirmary and likely ripped through the dome, no doubt getting her Nullam Constantium. But surely neither of them would have ended up in any pain, nor Luna. She was sure Celestia would think of something to prevent it anyways.
What if she had tried to stop the sneezes? She wouldn’t dare try to preemptively block one now, but what if? Would everything move away from her? If that were true, that might be worse than what happened based on the reports from the guards. They might have been haplessly tossed out a window and from these heights... even a flightless Alicorn may not survive.
Twilight rolled over, facing away from the two. Doctors had been working on mending Celestia’s wounds and returning Luna’s body to the proper lengths. They get the best treatment all of Equestria has to offer. She was at least glad to hear they would be back in top condition after two weeks. From her terrible habit of eavesdropping, it wasn’t a painless operation though as bone growth took much energy from the body.
She was tired of thinking, of the what ifs. It happened. She left because it was the best idea at the time, following Luna’s advice to remain decent at the calculated chance of nothing going amiss due to the circumstances at hoof. But she had forgotten to apply the possibility of sneezing causing princesses to fly like model rockets at her inside of a blue, rubbery pony. How obvious.
She closed her eyes and attempted to sleep.
~~~
To say the dream wasn’t something she expected would have been an understatement. She had the jittery sensation in her legs once more and she was hanging over the edge into a depth-defying void. She felt... safe. But she wasn’t being held by an Alicorn this time.
“Discord?” She couldn’t mistake the silhouette for anything else, for she only knew of one draconequues with that devilish grin. Not counting she only knew one draconequues, anyways.
“Are you surprised?” He pulled her back over to the savanna and delicately put her on the ground. He snapped his fingers and one loud beat from a drum rang in her dream. Twilight turned around and saw a regular savanna.
“How are you here?” She tentatively poked the ground and scraped some dirt with her hoof. Whatever that blackness was, it was gone. “And why?” She turned around and saw the god of chaos relaxing in a black massage chair, patting his hand on the armrest for her to join him in an identical seat next to him.
“Well it’s my dream, why shouldn’t I be here?” He beckoned with his claw once more. “Come now, join me, Equestria’s newest princess.”
Having no other apparent choice in the matter, she rolled her eyes and huffed some hair out of her face and sat down. Some of her tension faded with the chair as it was comfortable. Her eyes were drawn to a selection of buttons to her right, especially the triad that made low, medium, and high. She pushed the low button and it started to hum and gently tingle her spine.
“I suppose we might as well address the elephant in the room.” He sighed and slapped the backside of an elephant that was apparently behind him and sent it marching along. “Much better. Now we can talk.”
“I bet you use that joke on all the newest princesses.”
The god of chaos chuckled. “Yes, actually.” He slouched further into the chair and kicked the vibrations up a notch. “Isn’t this dream so peaceful, so serene? Unlike me, isn’t it?” He lifted his head and looked directly into Twilight’s confused stare.
“Don’t answer that. We both know what the answer is.” He pulled out a can of orange juice from literal nowhere and took a sip of the metal can, exposing the liquid. “I suppose I should start by congratulating you, Twilight.”
“For what?”
“For being here. Now, Celestia and Luna are both powerful and crafty individuals, but neither have been able to actually reach me. You could say they’re always headed in the wrong direction. They will, one day, but while you’re still tuned to the Elements, your magical,” he rolled his paw around, searching for the right word to grace the tip of his tongue, “prowess is stronger. Combine that with your raw magical ability and you’re one powerful force to deal with.”
“So, these dreams I’ve been having-”
“are mine, yes.”
Twilight looked up into the sky and saw a swirling mass of clouds. A light, white cloud was moving behind a darker, threatening one. It looked familiar to her, she had read once about a philosophy about Yin and Yang.
“Are you the one who’s been hinting at what the disease will do to me?”
Discord grabbed a lever to the side and the chair sat him straight up. “Don’t tell me you’re oblivious to the connection.”
“Wait...”
He pulled out a stopwatch and pressed the button at the top.
“If these are your dreams, and you’ve been the one hinting at what I might do... and it makes sense now that the symptoms would come one at a time... you’re causing this!”
Click. “Nine and seven eighths of a second. Impressive.” Balloons floated out of the tall grass and into the air, popping into shrouds of confetti when they reached a certain height. A friendly gust blew away the scraps of paper. Twilight looked over her shoulder to see they formed a thumbs up before disappearing into the horizon. “It’s true. Every few hundred years, I mess with the princesses’ heads in an innocent way that looks like a disease but cannot be traced. It does some good, some bad, but it’s a reminder that even they can succumb.”
“To what?”
“To what? Anything, Twilight. A Princess is only as strong as her greatest weakness. Even time can affect an immortal,” he added with an air of solemness as he returned to a more relaxed position in the chair.
Twilight knew not to stare a cockatrice in the eyes, both as an expression and a life experience. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m glad you asked.” His chair ascended and he floated only a foot or so above the ground. “You’re going to keep this secret between you and I. Should you fail, I’ll increase the powers of my disease ten-fold and then nopony will be happy with the princesses.” He chuckled and raised his paw over his set of buttons on his massage chair. “Of course, you could risk it and try to find a cure, but you’re gambling with an entire kingdom.” He flipped open a secret tab and pressed the red button inside. “And guess who can fix all of the chaos you’ve caused? Who else but the draconequues of the hour?”
Twilight felt the world rumble. The grass shrank into the ground and the sun blacked out; yet amidst the blackness, she could still see Discord and herself clearly. There were thick white lines that ran where the horizons once were and they merged in such a way that it looked like she was in a box. “Show me, Twilight, how a princess faces a threat to her kingdom.”
As he filled the realm with maniacal laughter, the world rotated and she helplessly rolled out of her chair and into the void.
~~~
“Twilight? Twilight, are you ok?”
She pressed her hooves against the side of her head and forced her eyes to stop rolling in her head. She clambered up the bedside and managed to stand on her own. It felt as if a brick had smacked her upside the head. It wasn’t exactly a headache... just painful. “I’m fine... I think.” She tried to recognize who she was talking to and found it was Princess Luna lifting an elongated leg to press her intercom button.
“You rolled out of your bed the same way I had.” Her eyes grew large. “You’re not going to sneeze again, are you?” The freshly awakened princess activated her own intercom button. “No, I feel past that. Just a... bad dream.” She looked left and saw Celestia soundly sleeping in her bed.
“Another one of those visions? I had one too. I couldn’t quite make out what it meant.” The princess of the night had no clear intentions of stopping anytime soon, so Twilight returned to her bed and threw the sheets back over her. “I was this grand elephant in a savanna. I was told to march, but not where. I heard behind me, I suppose my traveling companion, talking to some mistress. So I kept walking. It was a very peaceful vision. I don’t know what to make of it.” She blissfully sighed. “But it feels as if the dream took away all of my anger and it made me realize you hadn’t meant it. I knew you never did, but it’s much harder to forgive when you’re in pain. I hope you can forgive me, Twilight.”
“I should be the one apologizing. If I hadn’t left my room, you wouldn’t be stuck here with me, a princess who can’t even follow directions from a doctor.”
“Ms. Sparkle,” Dr. Cooperation called from the room above. “May I have a quick word with you?”
“You should talk with him, he’s been meaning to speak with you when you awoke.” Luna turned off her channel and waved a hoof, telling her to go on with it. Luna gave her a smile before she rolled her head over, looking away. Twilight felt eased knowing at least one of her friends wasn’t too mad at her anymore. She pulled a curtain closed, mirroring Celestia’s earlier act of privacy.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Show me, Twilight, how a princess faces a threat to her kingdom...”
She twisted her neck fast enough she swore she could have broken it as she looked towards the window. Up in the window was Dr. Cooperation wearing a pair of mismatching horns above his head. “Discord!?”
“What better place to be for a disease than the doctor who treats it? It’s time to make a decision, Twilight.”
The horns disappeared in a poof along with the doctor.
She couldn’t let Discord get away with poisoning them all these years... but she can’t put everypony at risk. She realized her king had just been put into checkmate. She had to put herself and a few close friends above the many, as much as she hated for him to get away with it.
“Discord,” she whispered into the intercom. Surprisingly, she heard a faint blip of static on the other end.
“Yes, Twilight?”
“I thought you wanted to do good with your magic now. Why are you doing this to us?”
“I’ve told you, Twilight, this is for your own good. How can an immortal princess practically immune to all diseases have empathy for the ill when she herself cannot become so? I am chaos, a reminder that things can go wrong.”
“That’s the worst justification I’ve ever heard,” she yelled as loud as she could while still maintaining a whisper.
“I don’t need justification. I’m doing you a favor. By the end of the week, you’ll see what I mean.”
“What do y-”
“Excuse me, I have other patients to attend to.” Click.
Twilight rolled over in her bed and faced in Luna’s general direction. “Luna.”
“Yes, Twilight?”
“I... ” she couldn’t summon the courage to tell her, no matter how ready her tongue was ready for her confession to roll off of it.
“I accept your apology,” Luna returned. “You’ve had a rough day, you’ve earned some more rest. With all three of us under this sickness, we’ll need it.”
Twilight closed her eyes once more, miserably moaning in a gut-wrenching feeling that she had made a terrible mistake. She didn’t feel tired, but sleep came all the same. For the first time in the last few nights, a vision did not come. She shivered as the final words from Discord rang in her head. “Good choice.”
This wasn’t the way Twilight had intended waking up early in the morning, floating above the floor which was also on fire, despite nothing in the room being combustable. Celestia and Luna were still asleep and floating as well along with all of the medical equipment, nodding off as if nothing was amiss. She flailed her hooves around in the air and remembered she had wings. She gave a smile that practically said, “Oh, right!” and then flew herself to a wall where she landed vertically. She ran across the wall and to the door where she opened it from the topside. She peered outside and watched with amusement and fear as the earth pony guards tried to air-swim to any tether possible with no results. There wasn’t much time to lose. She needed to act quickly. Syndrome and Psyde, her nurses, seemed to be doing ok as they bounced off of the walls, performing tricks to outdo one another. She rolled her eyes, wondering how they ever got a position here. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“Good mornin’, Princess Twilight!” Psyde greeted with a wave of his blue hoof which knocked into his friend’s head as he floated by. “Woops, sorry.”
“Yer fine. Ahh, Ms. Sparkle, the most wonderful thing has happened.” He curled up into a red ball and began to do front flips.
“Gravity has lifted! Why, I’ve never felt so alive!”
“Y’know, Syndrome, it’s not polite to flip off a princess,” he jeered, poking him in the ribs.
“Ah course. I apologize. I’d stop if I could,” he chuckled. He extended his legs into a cartwheel but continued to spin endlessly. His pal grabbed onto him, but got caught in the momentum. “I’d actually heard about this in my classes. The princesses would have these bizarre side effects under Nullam Constantium, as you know, but one of the best was while under a fever. Luna’s was known for lifting gravity for a short while, and Celestia’s... well I thought the fire gave it away really.”
“And you two aren’t going in there to help them?”
The two pushed against each other to land safely against a wall. They shook their heads, removing the nausea they had acquired from too much spinning and then returned their attention to Twilight. “I wish I could,” Psyde said, “but there hasn’t been anything developed in ages to treat their specific fever. No offense to you, Princess, but I wouldn’t go in there, the room’s on fire!”
“Then why are you two goofing off!? Call for some water, get Dis-” Twilight stopped. “Doctor, get Dr. Cooperation.”
“The fire’s harmless.” Syndrome grabbed his hat and pushed himself towards a trail of fire running across the floor out of the infirmary. He swooped his hat through it and put it on his head. “See? The fire don’t- er, doesn’t even have heat. My hoof is on fire too. It doesn’t even sting.”
“Oh no, Syndrome, now your head’s on fire.”
“Why I do believe it is.” He ran his other hoof through his flaming hair and licked the magic embers off. He ran his tongue across his lips and then made a popping sound. “Would you like some?”
“Free fire?” Psyde rubbed his chin as if in very deep thought. “I suppose I can’t say no to that.”
“Where would you like it?”
“Oh, my back right about there. I’ve heard of hot rocks soothing ponies, imagine what a flame could do!”
“You’re a genius!”
My nurses are complete blunder-heads. They probably couldn’t stop themselves from running into a parked carriage. “Where’s Dr. Cooperation?” she asked, tapping a hoof against the apex of the door. She knew for a fact he could solve this.
“I’d try the mess hall. He stayed up all night finding rooms for those poor ponies caught up in the rolling ball accident. He’s probably guzzling down more coffee than he can handle again.”
Pegasus guards flew down the hall, carrying lengths of rope in their mouth. One by one, they stopped at any floating citizen and carefully tied them down to an anchor. One such helper flew to the concerned princess. “Princess Twilight, we have begun securing all civilians in the absence of gravity. Are there any other orders?”
She nodded. “Yes, Mr...”
“Back, Feed Back, your highness.”
“Mr. Back. A magical, non-threatening fire is going to be spreading through the hallways. I need you to alert everyone in the castle not to panic. According to... my nurses that are acting like cogwheels at the moment...”
“Oh come on! When are we ever going to get this chance again?”
“C’mon, have a bit of fun! Just because you have wings and can push air around doesn’t mean you can’t tuck them in and enjoy yourself.”
She shook her head and returned her attention to the guard. “Right, well then. The fire can even be consumed and it apparently tastes fine.” She leaned in closer and whispered, “Keep an eye on these two, make sure they don’t try to play pinball or something down the hallway.”
“Yes ma’am,” he softly replied. With much more vigor and volume, he activated his helmet. “Attention all staff-”
Twilight saluted him and flew down the hallway, occasionally gently pushing down the floating noble down to earth.
~~~
This wasn’t the way Big Macintosh had intended spending his early morning bucking some early ripened apples off of the trees. He had managed a couple of buckets and had plenty of energy for several acres more, but he had more important matters to deal with. At first, he should have noticed the signs that apples were floating out of the basket. It was cured with a simple push down of his hoof so he figured some unicorn, somewhere was using his or her powers to mess with him. Not that he minded much as long as no harm was done and everything went back in place.
That was... until he himself started to float. His legs felt lighter and he figured those extra hours he had been putting in at the local gym had finally been paying off. Then he couldn’t feel the ground. There wasn’t a magical aura around him or anything, so it couldn’t have been any pony magic he knew of. His mouth gripped a sturdy branch in the tree to keep him from flying away.
“What in tarnation,” Applejack huffed as she walked to him, using a pair of rake heads tied to her front hooves to grapple the ground, “is goin’ on here?”
“I can’t say I know.” He swatted an apple back down into the bucket. “Think Twilight might know?”
“Maybe. Lot of strange things have been happenin’ around here. I tried to send a letter to Twilight but I can’t seem to find Spike anywhere these days.” She looked straight into her brother’s eyes. “Think he’s a little lost without Twilight. I don’t know if he can handle runnin’ that library all on his own.” She flipped over a bucket with enough apples just below the top and slammed it into the dirt.
“Eeyup.”
~~~
It didn’t come as a surprise to the friendship princess when she was greeted to the sight of “Dr. Discord” slurping on a cup of coffee at an upside down table. She ignored the plates of food roaming about in the air or the airborne streams of orange juice flowing in a hypnotic spiral. As much as she wanted to use her magic and nail everything to the floor, she restrained herself with the reminder that such use could make the disease stronger. Even if that was a facade, she didn’t want to take that risk with the master of chaos himself. All she needed at the moment was to get this deal out of the way.
He looked up and waved, rubbing his eyes with his other hoof. Out of habit, she pulled a chair along with her and sat at the table with him.
“Good morning.” Discord took another sip and then peered into the bottom of his cup. He grimaced as he threw it over his shoulder. “Did you sleep well?”
“Cut the crabapples, you know why I’m here.”
He summoned another cup out of thin air. She noticed that her omnipotent caretaker didn’t give himself a horn. Not that it mattered if he did conjure coffee, no one was around to see it except for her. He inhaled the scent of the dark liquid and said, “I’m afraid I don’t, actually.”
She pointed a hoof behind her at the general nonsense. “The gravity? Fire?”
“Yes?”
“Could you be so kind as to, I don’t know, stop it?”
He looked above the rim of his cup and furrowed his brow. “Somepony woke up on the wrong side of gravity this morning.” He waited for a moment, holding his hoof in the air to tell her he wasn’t finished. After three loud gulps, he slammed the cup back down on the table. “If you haven’t forgotten, Twilight Sparkle, I have been disguise as a doctor. I’m not one for keeping acts up for so long and your work with the last symptom has made mine far worse than any previous occasion.”
The doctor ran a hoof through his disheveled mane. “Even chaos magic can only do so much. I’ve been awake for one hundred and forty-eight hours. Not bad, if I do say so myself. By the time my twenty three cups kick in-”
“Twenty three!?”
“-please, don’t shout. Yes, twenty three cups kick in, Celestia and Luna will have awoken and this will have been a moot point.”
Twilight rotated herself in the air so they could look each other eye to eye. “So, there’s really nothing I can do?”
“I’m afraid so, Princess Snarkle.”
She sighed. “Fine. I suppose I should go help the guards tether everyone down.”
He summoned a large coil of rope and passed it across the table. “I think this might help you. I don’t see why you would want to, they’ll wake up in the next half hour.”
She caught it in her hooves and gave her enemy a suspicious glare. “What’s the catch?”
“The guards, I thought.”
“I mean, why would you give me some rope?”
“Oh, right. That’s enough rope to tie down every citizen, noble, and useless patrolstallion inside the entire castle. All I ask is that you don’t inquire what happened when you got your fever when you were asleep.”
She put the rope on top of the table. “I’ve already had my fever?”
“You want to know why you didn’t have any dreams? I was up all night fixing yet another one of your blunders.” He downed the last of his drink and pushed himself up further into the air. He landed on the ceiling and pointed to her, smiling. “If you thought I was a menace, you don’t even know what you’re capable of, Twilight.” The caffeine kicked in at that moment as the calm pony/draconequues she had been talking to returned to his normal chaotic mannerisms. “That hit the spot! Ahh. Now then, Twilight. Here’s what we’re going to do. I can force Celestia and Luna to stay in their fever dream state for another two hours, or you can sacrifice the knowledge for the sake of your castle. Oh, and I’ll return their fever effects to their normal state. I was just waiting for that morning drowsiness to leave.”
Twilight slammed a hoof on the table. “You can’t just do that! The fire has probably spread across the entire castle a-and I told everyone it was safe!”
“Oh no,” he mocked, clasping his front hooves to his face. “Well I guess little Twilighty can’t know what she did then. Such a shame, it really was quite the spectacle. It took me forever to fix.”
Twilight stared at the rope in front of her. If she really said no, she could save the castle by using the sprinkler spell. But using that much magic could strengthen the tie between her and Discord and make her disease even stronger. If she said yes, she’d lose out on the knowledge of what she does during her fever and what Discord meant by “fixing it.” And he’d get away with his pranks. Again.
She was being toyed around with. Ever since she woke up, he must have known she’d try to handle the fire and guards as a princess would and then go to meet her. He’d stall by drinking coffee...
Twilight wanted to grab him by the horns and shake his head like a rattle until-
She spread her front hooves out as if all her anxieties were piles of papers and she was pushing them aside with a deep breath.
“Ok. Fine.” She took the rope and Discord gave her a salute before poofing into the unknown. Twilight rested her forehead on the top of the table and moaned. I have to tell Celestia and Luna what’s going on when they wake up. If he keeps getting away with this, what kind of princess am I?
As if on cue, Psyde and Syndrom entered the hall as one might expect, one rolling on top of the other, imitating two rolling pins on top of one another.
“Princess? Are you alright?”
“You don’t look too good.”
She mumbled through the wood, “I’m ok, I just need a cup of coffee.”
~~~
Applejack saw the new field had been cleared. And even the hills had been exceptionally tiered.
Rarity was ecstatic at her new clientele. She couldn’t fathom how her business had gone so well.
Pinkie discovered a present at her door Which gave her a tool for an instant dance floor.
Angel bunny stopped acting so misbehaved and there was an abrupt end to the pranks that he played.
And Rainbow Dash felt faster than ever as if she had been given a lighter, but stronger set of feather.
And to make a short tale shorter about an exceptional day None of them knew how it happened that way.
If anypony were to walk behind Twilight as she stood at the door, he or she would be inclined to think she was frozen in time. Her hoof was raised, but it did not touch the wooden facing on the infirmary door. Her eyes, if anypony could see them, were distant. They were looking down at the crack between the floor and the entrance and the little shafts of light that bled through into the hallway.
The castle was buzzing with how frightening or fantastic the gravity and fire incident was and how Princess Twilight Sparkle came to save the day with the help of the local force. With grace and ease she swept through. They cheered, “Praise Twilight, she can handle any tragic without magic!”
It wasn’t as if she had any choice in the matter.
The fire had burned out a while ago. There wasn’t even a scorch mark, it was completely harmless. Citizens had been calmed over the last few hours as they all saw their capital ablaze. It was difficult to make them believe in a magic fire, even though they sang about one every year, but a few unintentionally well placed sneezes and the crowd was silent. The headache they caused her only further proved her point as the reporters found themselves asking the same question over and over to the point where even they became annoyed.
It was good she was able to handle the press so well. But if she could handle the capital... why couldn’t she tell them what was going on? She knew the risks. Three Alicorns vs. one measly draconequues. The odds were in her favor. Unless they used magic, and that could strengthen the bond. Discord could gain the upper hand as the fight lasted. But what if they stopped him before that happened?
How do you stop chaos?
She couldn’t stand here forever. She closed her eyes and rested her hoof on the door. All she had to do now was open it.
One simple push.
Maybe she shouldn’t tell them.
Her hoof lifted off.
If Celestia and Luna could cause fires and anti-gravity in their sleep, and having Luna cry make plant life die, maybe a little annoyance every several hundred years wouldn’t be so bad. Surely they have some secrets they are hiding from her. Problems stay manageable, Discord gets to have a bit of fun, and it keeps life interesting. Everypony wins. It’s not worth facing a triple magnitude super fire while navigating through space on Equestria.
But then Discord holds a card over her he could play every ten to five hundred years. Who knows what else he could be doing behind their backs. If he knows he can get away with it and none of the princesses will stand up to him...
What makes it worse is that Discord wouldn’t be beneath revealing to her mentors. With that one message, he could sow a seed of distrust so powerful that when it took root, it could take literal ages to remove. He could twist the message to the populace and no one would trust her as a princess.
Her hoof pressed on the door once more. She opened her eyes and sternly looked forward. No, it had to be done. She needed to tell Celestia and Luna.
She pushed her leg forward and the door creaked open. She walked into the center of the room. The other two patients looked at their friend with surprise and concern as she entered with a command of the room. The lunar deity raised her head and attempted to lift a rubbery leg. Celestia ordered her nurse to rotate her bed so she could see her pupil easier.
“Good afternoon,” they both greeted.
“I need to tell you two something, ”Twilight spoke sovereignly, switching eye contact between the two. “I don’t like what I’m about to say... but I have to say it. Ever since I found out, I didn’t know how to approach the issue.”
Luna shook her head as if knowing this would eventually come to attention. “I can buy you a new toothbrush.”
The mare in the middle of the room cocked an eyebrow. “What?”
“Oh, we’re not talking about- never mind.” She wafted a wiggly hoof, barely mocking the motion of her to continue. Psyde and Syndrome at their table put down the cards and stared at the night princess with concern. Twilight shook her head with her eyes looking at the ceiling and started once more. “I’ve been meaning to say... I think I figured out how Nullam Constantium works. Well, actually, I know I do.”
Her two friends beamed at her. “I must say, I’m curious to know as to how you discovered the cure for this menacing disease,” Celestia said. “Not that I’m surprised my top student would be able to solve this problem.”
“Well, you see, the thing is, if I tell you... it won’t be pretty.”
Luna nodded her head, as if understanding. “It involves surgery, doesn’t it? It’s probably an error with our regenerating glands, or the magic condensed in our horns.”
“Uh, no.”
Celestia turned to a more mute expression. “Does the treatment have side effects like baldness or power flashes?”
“No.”
“I bet th’ cure involves some freaky ingredients like Changelin’ fang and manticore spit,” Psyde added to the conversation. “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had to use medicine with questionable material Ms. Sparkle, it’s ok. We’ll find some explorers to do the dirty work for you.”
“I don’t know, I’d actually quite like to join them to the Changeling Capitol. I heard it was only a stupid rumor that they all live underground.” Syndrome stood on top of the table. “I’ve heard it’s got a building almost as tall as this mountain and when they aren’t busy trying to conquer kingdoms, their establishments and the residents there are actually quite nice. It’s not even true that they’re all wearing black exoskeletons, but they divide the color spectrum based on task. It’s actually quite colorful.”
“As fascinating as that is, that’s not what it is about.”
The two nurses received glares from all around, ordering them to shut it.
Twilight took a deep breath. “No, it... involves someone. Someone close to us.”
“Do ya- ahem, you mean like it involves the both of you and... doin’ the midnight d-” Luna levitated them out of the door and slammed it shut, locking it with her own seal. A muffled yell of, “I was only jokin’!” came through the door, but that was the end of it.
“Continue, Twilight.”
“You see, this someone has a deal over my head and if I tell you who he is... bad things happen.” Twilight’s legs began to feel lighter as the tension in the air became strikingly heavier. Both of the grins on Celestia and Luna were dropped.
“This person isn’t going to harm you, is he?” Celestia spoke firmly with her eyes seething with rage.
“No... not me... specifically,” she half mumbled the last word. “More like us. And maybe all of Canterlot.”
“Twilight, this is an urgent matter, you must tell us who this villain is right now.”
“No,” Luna spoke over her older sister. “Twilight is right to approach this with caution. She knows the risks better than anyone. Whoever is doing this is clearly a clever and cunning individual and we should not take this matter so lightly as putting the kingdom at risk.”
“As much as I’d like to agree with you, sister dearest, this someone has threatened the lives of our kingdom and of my student. This level of threat must be handled immediately.” Celestia searched with her eyes across the entire room. “This person is not here right now?”
Twilight ran a hoof down the back of her mane. “I don’t think so.”
Before Celestia could further interrogate her student, Luna interrupted. “Even if he’s not here, we know very well there are powerful scrying magics that can remain undetected.”
Her sister struggled against her restraints. “So what would you have us do? Remain in these hospital beds while this villain escapes free of penalty?” She tried not to spit out the words, but they came off as furious none-the-less.
“No, of course not. Look at the condition we’re in, sister. We’re not capable of fighting.” Luna heaved a heavy sigh. “If we were to fight now, we’d be fighting our own injuries and this degenerate.”
“I’m aware of this. Twilight, what specifically will happen if we hear our enemy’s name?”
“The Nullam Constantium is increased several fold. But when we all know who it is, we can stop him so at least it’ll never happen again.”
Luna smirked. “Well, then I’m glad this will never happen.”
Celestia furrowed her brow and scoffed. “Did you have to reveal that so early in the discussion?”
Twilight shifted her expression from solemn and ready to face the consequences to that of a confused child looking at is first math problem. “Huh?”
The younger sister giggled. “I can’t help myself, just look at how tense Twilight is. It’s really not fair to her.”
The eldest rolled her eyes. “But these are emotions she must feel when serious tasks are at hand.”
Luna nodded. “I know, but I can’t help but feel this first test was a bit too strenuous.”
Twilight spoke up. “Excuse me?”
Celestia said, “Oh ho come now, his first test on us was with an active volcano and sticks of dynamite strapped to our legs.” Luna shivered, her legs jiggling in the process. “I’m beginning to notice a running theme here with my legs being injured every time we have a test.”
Her sister replied, “It does appear to be quite serendipitous.”
Twilight yelled, “Hey, anyone want to tell me what just happened?”
It was at that moment that Dr. Cooper strolled in along with the two nurses who had previously been thrown out. He had a bundle of multi-colored balloons wrapped around his waist and held a bouquet of flowers in his mouth. Psyde and Syndrome were marching, creating an applause with their hooves. Through the muffled mouth of the insidious doctor, he said, “Well done, Princess Twilight. You’ve passed the royal test!”
“I... what?”
The doctor looked down and realized he was in his pony form. “Oh, right.” He... snapped with his hoof, to the confusion of everypony in the room, and returned to his multi-creature self. With a smile, of course. “You passed the test! Oh I knew you would do it!” he rejoiced, pulling in Twilight for a knuckle-head rubbing hug.
“Good on you, Princess Twilight!”
“She’d do the right thing, I knew it.” Psyde and Syndrome bowed their heads and walked backwards out of the room, closing the door behind them.
She broke free of his grasp and backed into the wall where she could see all three faces of Celestia, Luna, and Discord.
“I’m... confused.”
The other two princesses shared a warm grin. “Nopony was ever in any real danger,” Celestia began. “We hired Discord to cause some harmless fun to help prepare you for tough decisions in life.”
“What.”
Luna grinned in agreement. “We were well aware of the consequences. We knew something catastrophic might occur, so we believed we may get some free time away from the throne. It was actually Discord’s idea.”
“What.”
The draconequus of the hour held out his talon hand and summoned another cup of coffee from Starbuck. “I had given such good training to your princess friends when they overthrew me that I thought I should extend that knowledge to you.” He slurped from the lid of the drink, but the bottom of his body disappeared instead. “Keeping secrets from your friends is never a smart idea, especially when I’m involved. You should never negotiate with bad ponies, Twilight.”
Twilight sat on her rump, back against the wall. “So... none of this...”
Discord, now in the cup completely, spoke by flapping the lid of the cup, “None of it was ever real danger. I told you when I was fixing the situation, I meant it. All of the guards are back at full health and your incident was fixed.”
At first, Twilight sat there motionlessly. Then she stood up, with her expression mute. She huffed and blew some hair out of her face. She walked towards the liquid chaos contained on the floor and eyed it with a malicious grin. She levitated the cup up and shook it around a bit, not letting one drop spill.
“Ok,” his voice echoed from inside, I probably deserved that.”
“Oh, and this.”
“And wh-AHHHHH!” He screamed in terror as Twilight drank him. She smacked her lips and then stuck her tongue out for a moment with a sour expression.
“Blugh, needed some sugar.” With a pure happy smile, realizing she had been had and summoning her previous experiences with a pair of pranksters she knew at home, she asked, “How long did you two know?”
“Before you even started your first sneeze,” Celestia admitted casually. “As a matter of fact, while Luna and I were busy taking sugar pills, the necessary solidified magic that is necessary for altering an Alicorn’s immune system was taken willingly by you. That needle was the chaos inhibitor, which apparently didn’t make Discord’s work much easier with your raw magical abilities.”
Her stomach replied, “It’s true, you’re one tough cookie to handle. Remind me not to get on your bad side... or on your insides.”
Twilight’s eyes bulged as she realized something. “Wait, what about Luna’s gravity or Celestia’s-”
“You really believed we were asleep?” Luna admitted, coyly mocking her sister’s pupil. “The princess of the night knowing how to fake sleep? Wha?”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” Twilight herself was surprised at how well she was taking the entire situation. It felt unusual, but she was familiar with dupery and being duped. So perhaps her strong social upbringing over the past few years in Ponyville weren’t all for nought. it was as if everything had wound itself up in one perfect little bow and-
“Oh, and one more thing,” Discord gurgled from Twilight’s stomach. “The medicine does take an entire week to fix and as promised, Twilight’s effects will no longer be inhibited.”
“Wait.”
“No.”
“That means!”
Discord laughed. “I always get the last laugh, Princesses. Have fun with your week, I’ve fulfilled my obligation.”
“Discord, wait-”
Twilight belched and released a brown gaseous puff with two eyes and a half mean-spirited grin. In a mere moment, he disappeared along with his echoing laugh, leaving the room to incredibly awkward silence.
“Gosh dang it, Discord. I needed to ask him what happened during my fever.”
As much as her heart was screaming to open the door, something pushed her through that protest raging inside her. She was risking a lot... a lot! It was the easiest way for her to put it; simply, a lot. She didn’t have the knowledge of what other side effects her mentors were capable of nor her own unused symptoms. She could ask them for stories, but that would be sly and underhoofted. Plus it would raise suspicions from them and eventually they’d interrogate her. If she fled, and she knew they couldn’t give chase, it would terminate all doubt.
It wasn’t worth putting Canterlot Castle or even Equestria at risk. She could harbor this choice, this knowledge. If Discord did pull a fast one on her and use this situation to his advantage, she’d just have to evoke some sympathy she had no choice in the matter.
Twilight knew they’d be upset, but everything passes. Even if it does take one thousand years sometimes.
It was a crummy situation she had been put it. She was powerless. The press knew her as the princess who helped keep Canterlot Castle secure just hours ago from the unknown disaster. But she knew the truth. What did that make her?
She was tired of thinking. Thinking. Thinking! I’ve thought too long about this decision and now where am I!? Nowhere, stuck in front of a door. She backed away from the infirmary into the middle of the hallway.
“Decided not to tell them?” a hideously familiar voice sympathised with her. The frustrated princess turned to the source and saw Equestria’s very own Dr. Discord. But he wasn’t wearing a cheesy grin or hyped by coffee, his face was solemn and he looked exhausted.
She pulled her face back in disgust.
“Come now, Twilight, let’s not be so cruel to the doctor who just finished twenty surgerys on the crew during your pony rubber bowling ball incident.”
She rotated her head slowly and her ears perked up. “You... what?”
“I’ve told you, Twilight, I’ve been at work fixing your mistakes. When you were asleep and with that fever... I had to structure chaos magic, let’s put it like that.” He started walking past her and as he looked over his shoulder, he lightly jerked his head. Twilight raised an eyebrow and followed the draconequues in disguise.
For what seemed like the longest time, the two casually strolled through the hallways of Canterlot Castle. It was... unusually empty today. There was the occasional noble or servant, but it was the two of them for anywhere else. Everytime Twilight attempted to speak up and ask where they were headed, he simply shushed her in a near indescribable way; it was a shush that promised all would be explained.
And for his sake, Twilight hoped he did.
They climbed up a spiral staircase at the end of one hallway. At the end was a tiny ladder to a trapdoor in the ceiling which he pushed open with a hoof. He instructed the young Alicorn to ascend before he did with a “Ladies first” motive. Twilight did not immediately approach the ladder. She sidestepped around Discord as much as she could and then made her way up.
She was met with the always awe inspiring view of Canterlot Castle and the infinite horizon. She smirked as she saw two massage chairs, aimed at the impending sunset. Knowing immediately where this conversation was headed, she sat herself in the left chair and Discord sat himself in the right after shutting the trap.
“So, here we are, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Why exactly are we here?”
He pressed the light massage button on his armrest and yawned. “To congratulate you, of course.”
“Forgive me if I missed something.”
“Hmm? Oh, right.” He pulled the lever on his chair and balloons filled with confetti rose out from underneath the rising leg flap. They ceremoniously popped just above them, showering them with a rainbow of paper scraps. Twilight caught one in her hoof and saw they were in the shape of her if she were to stand to the side and raise her wings. “You passed the test.”
“A test? What test!?”
“You were willing to face the consequences and not get others dragged into your problem.”
The testee furiously shook her head. “So the fires, the gravity, the symptoms of mass destruction, that was all a ruse!?”
“They were very much real, but the environment was controlled. Nopony actually ever got hurt. I needed to see what kind of princess you are, Twilight. You’ve shown me how a princess faces a threat to her kingdom.” He summoned a glass of coffee and offered her a cup to which she declined with a gentle wave of her hoof. “Do Celestia and Luna deserve to know?” He slurped some coffee. “Yes. Would the extremely increased have caused mass damage? Absolutely.”
“H-how much?”
“If you thought Luna’s killing plant life was horrible, at least that grows back once my connection is broken. I can’t say the same for any meteors she may cough up.”
Twilight’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. “She coughs up meteors?”
“Well, her coughs bring meteors. Celestia has a really fun symptom as well. When she sneezes, everything on the visible color spectrum changes. All blues become orange, or maybe purple. If she sneezes again, maybe all the reds turn to greens.”
She reclined in her chair and looked up at the sky. “So, if I had told them, it would have ended badly.”
“In a matter of speaking. But you don’t have to worry, I’m not going to act that way. I told you this was to teach you Alicorns how to interact with your subjects. Since you can’t get sick on your own, I have to remind you of how terrible it can feel. You’d be surprised how much your sympathy fades when you cannot feel it for yourself.”
The bottom of the sun touched the horizon. “So, what happens now?”
“Your disease will run its course. When I feel you have forgotten your way, I’ll help you again with a fresh dose of Nullam Contantium. For now, let’s enjoy this sunset.”
Twilight wanted to ask more... but she didn’t. Discord didn’t ever make sense. He poisons three Alicorns, reveals himself unnecessarily just to force her into a decision, and then when he gets his way, he doesn’t do anything with it. Maybe he really did want to keep the princesses in line. Maybe it was just for fun. There wasn’t any understanding to Discord.
She’d keep an eye on him, prevent him from doing any more tricks. But for now, she’d eye the sunset and wonder what the next few days had in store for her. She couldn’t say she felt relieved that she didn’t alert the princesses of the disease, but knowing that if she had the world could have very well ended... or at least have been repainted, she figured that was the best option now. Every princess has her secrets.
The sun would set. A midnight rainbow would form. Twilight would stand. Discord would not be in his chair. She would stare at the beauty, and then she would leave.
She would walk. She’d pretend nothing was amiss.
It was peaceful up there. Twilight would return to that spot.
And at the end of the day, which it was, a little annoyance in favor of doom was ok. She could put up with Discord.
But one thing bugged her the most. What happened during that fever?
