All the Shining Stars

All the Shining Stars

Chapter 1

A Daring Escape

I was in a chariot of fire. The white-hot flames licked at the golden gilding with ravenous tongues. The chariot itself was blindingly iridescent, but that didn’t stop me from staring straight ahead at the great Golden Gates with a wild grin spread across my face. Everypony around me was cowering before the sight of me and I loved it. I was more than just powerful.

I was a god.

As I dismounted from the chariot, I searched my mind for the proper spell to break down the Golden Gates, not an easy task. Well, a difficult task for an earth pony, that is. I decided on the most threatening one, a simple blend of earth and fire. As I levitated some stones out from the nearby cliff, I blasted some flames at them, enveloping them in a blaze. The mix of the two elements created a searing hot chunk of rock the size of three gryphons.

“Oh, this will do just nicely.” I said with a wicked glint in my eye. I hurled the burning rock as hard as I could. The men behind the Gates braced for impact, I was laughing maniacally.

The stamp of a hoof on the rough wood of my desk brought me back out of my dream world.

“What do you think you are doing, apprentice!?” The old bearded unicorn stallion was enraged.
“You are supposed to be studying the spells for the ultimate test that you obviously care nothing about, don’t you remember?” he said with a thwack of his hoof on the back of my head. The vein in his forehead was bulging.
“Sorry, Master Starswirl, I-”
“I don’t want to hear it!” the wizard shouted with another stamp of his hoof. “Get back to your studies! I should be ashamed to have you as one of my oh-so-important proteges,” he huffed, trotting back down the long spiral staircase.

I could tell he wasn’t truly angry at me. After all, I was the most successful trainee since Arctic Frost. It was too bad he was dead. I chuckle to myself at the irony of his perish. Killed from frostbite and exposure. When the rescue team had found him, we was but an icicle; even his mane was as frozen as the glacier he had made the mistake of sheltering in. I remember at one point I wanted to blast him with a heat wave to warm him up and revive him in my desperation. He was my only friend.

I shake myself out of distraction once more. I had to study and get my techniques down before sunrise tomorrow. ‘You know what,’ I thought to myself, closing my spellbooks and packing my various scrolls away. ‘I deserve a break. I’ve been studying for the past...’ I pause to look out my window at the sun. ‘Fourteen hours.’ Just as I am about to slide down the railing in my usual dramatic fashion, I realise that Old Swirly probably wouldn’t be too pleased with my escaping of the confines of Canterlot’s spires. Tapping my hoof to my chin, I start devising an escape plan. It is then that I remember that I had a book of utility spells. I fling the spellbook out of the saddlebags on my bed and it lands on the oak desk on the other side of the room. The cover of the book is emblazoned with various symbols. I flip through the pages to the table of contents, finding a wide range of useful spells. Gem finding, wall-phasing, fish baiting- Aha! Slowfall. I examine the spell, and it appears quite easy, even to the point where it could be cast in a total panic.

I close the spellbook after a thorough study of the combination of runes, confident that I could pull off the spell. Taking the stance that the book illustrated, I focused on a mind’s image of a feather, lightly falling to the ground. My horn glew with ethereal energy, casting a subtle pale-yellow light around the room. A flash of light coursed across my body and I felt a thousand times lighter than usual. Mounting the desk, I took an experimental leap to the floor of my room, and sure enough, it took me thrice as long to reach the floor, and there was little impact. Grinning at my fast success of the spell, I cast it one more time, just as to make sure I got the full duration out of it for the drift to the ground far below. I took one glance out the window and consecutively stumbled back, woozy from what I was thinking of doing. I liked the view of everything, but I was never one for heights. Shaking my head, I focused on the task at hand. I had to get out of here or I would go just as crazy as Old Swirly. After taking a deep breath, I drew back a few steps and galloped full-speed towards the window.

Just after taking my leap, I heard the door open. It was Morning Star.
“Hey, Storm Runner, I was just wondering, do you have any-” She looked up just as I pounced out the window and she let out a horrified scream.
“STORM RUNNER!”
“See ya later!” I said, touching my hoof to my forehead in a salute.
Morning Star galloped straight over to the window and saw I was falling much slower than usual.
“Oh, Starswirl is going to kill you!” She said angrily as she backed away from the window.
“Give Swirly my best regards! I’m going out for the night!” I said to myself, laughing lightheartedly at my farewell to the other, more studious unicorn.

I took a moment to look at my surroundings. I had taken an air balloon around the city before, but this was an entirely different experience. It felt as if I was in zero-gravity. I do some flips and tricks, floating down past the towers of Canterlot Castle. I even get a laugh as I drift pass a kissing couple that were by their window. They took a moment to stop and stare at what must have been a dream or something. It was a feeling of freedom. One that I never got when I was stuck inside that stuffy room way in the top of one of the student towers of the castle.

As the ground came into view, I looked for a suitable landing spot. However, I suddenly got the feeling that I gained a few pounds. My face scrunched in confusion.
“That’s weird, I thought you gain weight over a longer period of time...” Then I got a few more pounds heavier. Then a few more. Then a few more.

My eyes widened at the thought of what was happening. The spell was wearing off after all the time wasted floating around aimlessly. I scanned back and forth frantically, trying to find an emergency mattress stand or a random chariot filled with pillows. But then I was out of time. I was plummeting down what was probably the remaining twenty or so feet to the ground. I simply prayed that I wouldn’t break any bones.

I take a heavy landing on what felt like a stall of some sort. I wonder for a moment if it was the emergency mattress store I was hoping for, but that was only until I felt my body plunged into leafy greens. The stall fell apart as I made my crash landing, wood and cloth flying.
“MY CABBAGES!” The startled stall keeper yelled. His mouth was agape, but then he found me put on an enraged expression.
“You’ve ruined my cabbages!” He said, picking one up in his hoof, a slight tear forming in the corner of his eye.
“Look, I can explain, I’m an apprentice of-”
“I wouldn’t care if you were Nightmare Moon herself descending upon me!”
I scramble to my hooves and attempt to awkwardly back out of this situation.
“Look, I’m sorry, I can pay for this!”
“But look what you’ve done to my beautiful greenery!” He said, angrily chucking one at me. Now I start to run.
“Come back here, you murderer!” He shouts at me, throwing his products at me furiously. I think back to the spellbook. There was a wall-phasing spell that I could vaguely remember. I hastily cast a guess as to what the spell was, and sure enough, I ran straight through the wall I was about to run into.

Right into the living room of a family of four.

The mare in the corner was about to yell something at me, but then I heard a thunderous roar.
“STORM RUNNER, WHAT HAVE YOU GOTTEN YOURSELF INTO NOW!?”
I wince at the all too familiar voice of my mentor, helped by the fact that it was probably being broadcast all over the city. I give a deep sigh, apologizing to the family for any surprise I might have caused them and focused on the mental image of my room in the spire. My horn glows with the golden veil once again and I teleport away in a flash of light.

I feel my stomach drop for an instant, the cause of which being the teleportation, and appear once again in my stuffy stone room. Starswirl the Bearded was standing in front of my desk, glaring straight at me. He simply shook his head, levitated the spellbook and a couple scrolls over to me, and lifted me over to my desk. Trotting out and closing the door behind him so hard it nearly came off the hinges, I sat, defeated from my worthless attempt at a night on the town. And so I resumed my studies. “Page 394...” I muttered to myself, shuffling through the pages of the ancient book.