All the Shining Stars

Chapter 3

An Adequate Performance

I was wielding a massive sword about three full paces long. It was black -- some kind of obsidian-like metal -- and crackling with electricity. I was cutting through guards left and right, but there was only one thought in my mind: I had to rescue her. I whipped my sword back and forth, a bestial flare in my eyes. There was nothing more important than rescuing her right now. I was nearly halfway up the tower now, but how much longer did I really have?

This thought only served to increase my focused rage and I moved with such speed and finesse that the guards started to fall back. My pitch black sword leaving behind jagged streaks of blue must have been intimidating. I could tell that they were broken; the look in their eyes said they wanted to run. I stopped for a moment so as to let them pull back while they had the chance. There had been enough bloodshed today. They, of course, did the smart thing and ran. Except for one.

“Stay back! I swear, I’ll... I’ll...” The guard said with a wavering voice.
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll cut you to ribbons! I was the best swordsman in my class!” He emphasised this by waving his sword pitifully at me.
“Look, don’t make me kill you. Just let me pass and you can live, I just want the prisoner being held here.”
“I can’t let you do that! I was tasked specifically with keeping the prisoner safe.”
I could tell he was going to remain where he stood. I sighed and simply levitated him up and over me.
“Go. Leave my sight before I change my mind.” This seemed to make his decision for him as he slowly stepped backwards down the hallway. I stepped up to the door, breathing out a slight “Finally...” and opened it. To my surprise, though...

The prisoner was gone.

I woke up to the sound of a door shutting loudly.
“If you won’t accept my son as one of your apprentices, then you must be blind to talent!” Shouted an enraged blue unicorn at the aforementioned door.
“The nerve of that ‘All-Powerful Wizard.’ All-Powerful my hoof...” He grumbled to himself.
I shook the drowsiness out of me and trotted up to him.
“Excuse me, were you trying to register your son in this school?”
“Why yes! However could you tell?” He said sarcastically. “That Starswirl wouldn’t know talent if it bit him in the rear!”
“How talented exactly is this son of yours?” I questioned, curiosity getting the best of me.
“Oh you wouldn’t believe some of the stuff he can do! He can move nearly an entire ton of rock! He’s been training all his life for this day.”
“You know, I’ll let you in on a secret: This school doesn’t really teach you much more than you could just study on your own. Although, I do have an alternate idea.”
“Hmm? What do you mean by ‘an alternate idea?’”
“Well, me and one of my fellow trainees were planning on heading out to Gryphus. We heard there was an old unicorn that knew way more advanced forms of magic. Would you possibly consider letting your son come along with us?” He was shaking his head doubtfully before I even finished.
“No, that sounds a bit risky. All the way to Gryphus? That could be dangerous! Not to mention how long he would be away from home!”
“Well could I at least talk to your son and get his verdict?”
“Well, I see no harm in letting you talk to him, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll let him go. He’s just outside the school right now.”
“What’s his name?”
“His full name is Hesther, but I’ve heard his friends just call him Harry for short.”
“That’s a strange name. What made you choose it?”
“Well, he actually arrived on my wife and I’s doorstep one night with a note on top of him, reading ‘Hestia.’ We assumed that was his name, but we thought it was a bit too feminine and so we changed it to Hesther.”
“Huh, strange. Well anyways, thanks!” I said to him, trotting over to the large front doors.

The doors opened up to show an amber colored unicorn sitting on the ground; waiting for the results, no doubt. He had a short orange mane and tail that flared out at the ends and was accented with some yellow on the tips. His cutie mark was two crossed logs on fire surrounded by some stones.

“Hey, are you Hesther?” I said to him. He looked up, but as he moved, his mane seemed to flicker with a faint fire of its own.
“Yeah, that’s my name. Why? Who are you? Are you with the school?” He said excitedly in one breath.
“Okay, okay, okay. Slow down. My name is Storm Runner, and I’m not one of the staff, but I guess I am with the school. I’m one of the apprentices.”
“So what’s going on? Was I accepted?”
I almost felt bad to be the one telling him. I remember how excited I was to hear that I was accepted into the school.
“Well... I might as well tell you the truth. You weren’t accepted into the school-” His eyes cast downward. “But, to be honest, you really don’t need this school. You don’t learn much more out of it than you could in a normal school. Regardless, I have a better idea.”
“Yeah? What is it?” He was excited again. I smiled a bit at his enthusiasm before responding.
“Well, I can’t really tell you everything right now, but come back again by nightfall and I’ll let you in the doors here. We’ll go to the library and then let you in on all the details then. Okay?”
He nodded earnestly to show he understood.
“Great. Remember, meet here at nightfall.”
“Okay, gotcha... Storm Runner was it?”
“Yeah. And Hesther?”
“Oh, that’s such a formal name. Just call me Harry.”
“Alright, Harry. I’ll see you later.” I said, giving him a quick salute before turning to head back inside. The doors opened and Harry’s dad emerged with a sullen expression on his face.
“Come along Harry, we have some things to discuss. You... weren’t accepted into the school-”
“Yeah, I know dad,” Harry interrupted. “Storm Runner here filled me in on that already.” His father looked like he just had an enormous weight lifted off his shoulders.
“Oh. Okay, good. Thanks, Storm Runner.”
“No problem. It was a pleasure meeting your son. You take care now!” I said, waving to them as they trotted away.

Currently, it was only midday, so there was still plenty of time before the meetup. It was then that I remembered the test. I stood for a moment before rushing off to Starswirl’s office to see if I could still take it...

“Okay, Storm Runner, any day now.” Starswirl was standing off to the right of the elemental circle. I was tasked with making an “adequate display” of each of the four elements and an extra spell of my choice. Grinning, I decided that I had made the old stallion wait long enough.
“Alright, alright, hold your horses, I’m getting to it.”
I had decided already that I was going to make a show of it and combine all four of the elements to create something spectacular.

I took a deep breath, preparing for the strain that was about to come on. My horn started to glow with the same pale-yellow aura that I was so familiar with and I drew some water from the south side of the circle. I focused on a combination of a swirling orb of energy and the bone chilling cold of the glaciers far north. As I focused on my spell, the water came floating around me, forming a perfect, hollow sphere. After that, it slowly turned to ice from top to bottom, encasing me in a shell. At this point, I was hovering from the amount of ethereal and static energy being created from the spell.

Grinning slightly at my easy success of the first part of the spell, I started the next part. I focused on the east side of the circle and created some fire out of the heat emanating from it. I took the fire and focused on swirling it around the sphere in a heated wind; just fast enough so it didn’t melt the ice as it hung in the air, and just slow enough so it didn’t just dissipate. I was luckily safe inside my case of ice, so the fire wouldn’t harm me.

Now comes the more difficult parts. I had observed the rocks on the west side of the circle beforehand, and they were too large for what I was about to demonstrate. I had decided to just smash them apart into smaller pieces. I had to focus hard on doing this along with maintaining both the fire and ice as well. I considered myself good at multitasking, but when it came to magic, it got a bit difficult at times. A few of the large boulders were enveloped in my aura and levitated out of the ground. They subsequently smashed on the ground and shattered into slightly smaller chunks. This was definitely one of the hard parts of this demonstration. I repeatedly smashed the rocks into smaller and smaller pieces until each was about the size of an orange.

I was already thanking Celestia that that had gone through without a hitch. Now it would get a bit easier. I just had to swirl them around with the fire, which would be good because I already had swirling in my mind. They flew one by one into the heated blaze around me until they were a storm of probably-lethal stones.

Now came the hardest part. I considered myself especially experienced with lightning, considering I was named after something lightning related. Heck, my cutie mark was a lightning bolt surrounded by a rock, a drop of water, and a spark of fire anyways. Despite all that, this was going to be very tasking on my mind.

Lighting was a strange element. It was associated with both fire and air, but it was very hard to just conjure out of nothing, like normal fire. It also wasn’t naturally available all the time unless you had a pegasus and a storm cloud with you 24/7, so redirection was out of the question. However, I had taken note that all the static generated from the heavy magic around me could probably suffice, it would just need a bit of tweaking. A separated electron here, a connected proton there. I focused hard on making a simple starter. After that, it would catch on to the rest. My mind was starting to hurt at this point.

Finally, I got it. Electricity sparked up in the air around me and took hold of the remainder of the static. Soon, it attached to the rocks surrounding my protective ball of ice and short lighting was sparking off in all different directions. It was truly a magnificent display of magic, even for my own skill level.

I opened my eyes for a moment to see how Old Swirly was holding up and he had smartly put up a protective bubble around him. He doesn’t get impressed very often, but when he did, you could tell quite obviously. He looked pretty impressed.

Satisfied that I had done my part, I went on to my extra spells to end the demo. I cast a protective bubble around myself and used the wall-phasing spell that I had learned from the spellbook the other day. I stepped out of the ice ball and luckily I was protected from the other elements on the way out. While doing all this, my mind was racing, trying to keep up with all the magic I was handling at once. I tried to look as impressive as possible to maybe score some extra points with the sole judge, but I think I had already aced the test anyways.

I walked over and stood next to Starswirl, and then just let all of it fall. The ice bubble shattered on the ground, the rocks, still charged with electrical energy, hit the ground, still sizzling, and to top it all off, I made a big fiery explosion for the icing on the cake. I instantly sat down, an intense migraine coming on from all of the simultaneous magic that I had to focus on.

“So... How did I do?” I asked with a grin on my face, despite the intense pain I was experiencing now. The old stallion had to manually shut his jaw, much like I did when I heard about the letter from my parents.

“You did... adequately. You may remain under my apprenticeship for another five years.” It was so like old Swirly to act unimpressed. I knew that I had just blown his socks off though.
I just smiled back and said, “Thank you, Master Starswirl. Always a pleasure studying under you,” and began the walk back to the grounds. On my way, however, I took notice of a familiar mare galloping back as well.
‘Was that Morning Star again? She sure does like eavesdropping on me. Or... eaveswatching...? Spying. That’s a better word for it.’ I thought to myself. ‘I’ll just ask her about it at the meeting.’

Once I returned to the castle, I just stumbled -- nearly falling asleep -- up the stairs to my room. Once I got in, I just shut the door and windows, plopped down on the bed and took a nice nap, content with the whole day’s happenings.