Twilight Sparkle was a responsible mare.

There were those who would argue this was not the case, however. For instance, Pinkie Pie would say that Twilight still had a lot of growing up to do, and her brother, Shining Armor, could personally attest to a case where in her fillyhood, Twilight was given the job to raise a small fish for a class, and promptly researched how to care for the fish so obsessively that by the time she was finished, the fish had died of starvation.

Still, Twilight Sparkle was a responsible mare.

Which is why, when Princess Celestia sent a book to her containing one of the unfinished works of Starswirl the Bearded, her thoughts immediately went to not finishing the spell immediately, nor reading it right away, but attempting to refine the spell.

“Spike!” called Twilight, her gaze searching for her number 1 assistant and surrogate brother. “Have you got the supplies that I’ve asked you for yet?”

Her reply was muffled, from somewhere above her. “Yes, I have, Twilight; just gotta fit… these… through the door!” Spike sounded somewhat miffed; she made a note on her mental checklist to get him a few high-quality gems after the experiment-

A banging sound cut her off, and there was suddenly a rumbling. Her head craned around to look at the stairway, the rumbling growing louder by the second, before she saw Spike come into her field of view. He was running down the stairs like his life depended on it, looking behind him with a terrified look on his face.

A few seconds later, a large pile of books tumbled down the stairs, explaining the origin of the rumbling noise. Twilight’s eyes shot open wide, and she turned to dash towards the stairs. But unfortunately she was too late; Twilight had barely even started before the book avalanche overtook Spike, and even less time before it slammed into the floor. Still, she ran towards the pile of books covering the baby dragon, worry in her eyes. “Spike? Are you okay?” she asked, her voice tinged with guilt.

Spike responded by his head bursting through the pile, swaying slightly. He waddled away from the center of the pile, his face going green. “Yeah, I’m fine… but I feel a little… woozy…” He froze for a second, then held a hand over his mouth. After a few seconds, he took it off. “No, scratch that. I feel like I’m gonna vomit…”

Make that a lot of high-quality gems.

“Okay, then. Anyway! If you brought all the supplies I needed that weren’t in the laboratory already, I should find the book… Right around…” Twilight levitated a few books toward her, reading their titles, and then beamed, placing the other books in a pile with the others as she organized the rest into a neat 6 by 6 cube. “Here!”

The book’s title read ‘The Art of Incantations: Starter’s Guide’. Princess Celestia hadn’t taught her incantation magic, of course; it was a pretty rare art in the modern day. After all, most ponies had found more efficient ways to cast spells, after Trotsky’s Theorem for Wordless Magic was developed. Still, a few ponies made attempts to try and cast magic with Incantations, particularly Earth Ponies and Pegasi who wanted to use proper magic in a way. She leafed through the book, her eyes reading lines over and over. Then, she cross-referenced a few lines together, and wrote down a few notes..

This process continued for several hours. Eventually, she had finished with the cross referencing, and was now looking through Starswirl’s spell.

Spike, predictably, was bored of the whole thing, and had promptly fallen asleep half an hour in.

“Spike, I’d like you take a note,” Twilight said, her eyes panning over the book.

“…Spike?”

His eyes shot open. “Huh? What? I’m awake!” he said frantically, taking out a scroll and holding up a quill to write on. He then promptly realised it was the other way around which he was meant to use it for, and hurriedly flipped his stance around. “S-so… What do you need me to write down?”

“Well, Spike, I just looked over Starswirl’s spell, and I’d like you to write down a correction for it,” Twilight said, a smile visible on her face. “I looked over it, and, well… There’s been some advancements since his time in the art of incantations, so when I looked at what he’d written… it looked ingenious, but there were a few words and conjunctions that I changed around to make it better. Plus, I added another verse to the spell to finish it!”

“Alright then…” Spike was unsure about this. “I just hope you know what you’re doing, Twilight.”

“I’ll be fine, Spike! After all, what could possibly go wrong?” she asked. Then, her eyes looked back over to the book. “Alright, then…” Twilight took a short breath. Then, she read the incantation.

Spike held his hands together, wringing them nervously as she did. But then, Twilight finished the spell.

Suddenly, a swirl of light enveloped her, lifting her off the ground for a few seconds. Then, she disappeared. Spike, however, heard a loud noise. It sounded like it was something that popped. But it was far louder than anything he had ever heard before.

“Oh, no… This isn’t gonna be good…” he muttered, fretting.

Princess Celestia smiled as the daylight sun drew across the sky. She greeted a few guards on the way to her throne room.

Then, it happened. She felt a huge disturbance in the aether, as if millions of voices had cried out at once, only to suddenly be silenced for a few seconds then started to cry out far louder. How could something like that happen? That was impossible. The only ponies who could access the Aether were Alicorns, or those who were going to become them. In fact, the only way to leave the Aether was to become an alicorn, or to be an alicorn already.. It happened naturallly, however. But there was just one problem. The only alicorns that were in Equestria right now were her, her sister, and soon-

Celestia’s eyes widened a smidgen. “Twilight,” she whispered. Something must have gone wrong with her spell. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, to be honest; Twilight was actually a bit clumsy with her magic at times, even if it was her special talent. But this had the potential to go completely and utterly wrong.

Celestia prepared a teleportation spell. Concentrating on the runes that appeared in her mind, she made sure to remember a certain 3 of them. Soon afterwards, her horn flared, and she disappeared from her reading room. The only trace that she was there a few seconds ago was the book on the ground.

A few seconds later, the royal Alicorn was dropped out of the teleportation vortex, her position the exact same that she had entered in. She took a few deep breaths, in and out. Teleporting to the Aether was always a daunting task, compared to anywhere in the material world, even for her. The only one she knew who could do this at will was Discord. But he wasn’t important right now; what was was the state of the Aether.

Looking up from the ground, Celestia expected to see an empty landscape, filled by points of light. What she actually saw was different from her expectations – very different.

Ponies were everywhere. From pegasi to earth ponies, there was nopony who wasn’t there, besides her sister and Cadance. For the first time in years, Celestia’s easygoing demeanour was shattered. Her jaw dropped open, and her eyes had widened to the point where you’d be hard-pressed to find a book that was large enough to fit over one of them. She couldn’t see Twilight, though;; the population was dense enough that she wasn’t able to see her student.

Extending her wings, Celestia flapped up, a light gust of wind moving around the area, but she had managed to float a few meters above it. Flapping lightly above the crowd, she looked around, searching for her student.

It almost seemed like hours as she searched for her; Twilight stood out in a crowd, even for a pony. After all, lavender coats and purple manes were not very common; in fact, they were a fairly recessive gene. She had always wondered about Twilight’s coat colour, of course; Celestia had a coat of very light pink.

Shaking her head, she put that out of her mind. Now wasn’t the time, after all. She needed to find her student. Coincidentally, just as she thought this, she spotted Twilight out of the corner of her eye. Her Cutie Mark and coat colour just stood out too much.

Turning directly towards her, she began to fly down towards Twilight. Soon, she had alighted down on the ground – or whatever passed for a ground in this plane. “Twilight, are you alright?” she spoke, waiting for the unicorn to turn around.

Twilight, meanwhile, hearing the words of her mentor, turned around, a confused look on her face. The confused look, though, turned to one that expressed excitement. “Princess Celestia!” she gasped. She ran up towards the princess, putting her legs around her. She stayed there for a few seconds, her own teacher giving a small hug back. Afterwards, they pulled apart from each other. “Yes, I’m alright, Princess… but do you know what’s going on?”

The princess sighed. She knew Twilight would ask something like that. “No, I don’t, Twilight. You did something. Something… strange. Do you recall when I sent you that spellbook with Starswirl’s unfinished spell?” Twilight nodded mutely, and Celestia continued. “Did you, perchance, do anything with it? Like, for instance… edit it?””

Twilight blinked, and a smile sprung up on her face. “Yes, I did! I edited the spell. After all, even though Starswirl was the greatest mage in the history of Equestria, there’s been a bunch of improvements in the art of incantations since his death! And I finished it, too!” she said happily.

“Well, you see… The thing is, Twilight, what you did was edit the spell in such a way that its intended purpose failed,” Celestia explained, sighing wearily. “It’s a spell meant to make somepony ascend to the status of an Alicorn. It brings them to this plane – which I know as the Aether, which after a short time, naturally increases the power of all types of ponies, and provides them with a large amount of magical power of the other two tribe’s magics.”

Twilight blinked. “Wait. So, you’re saying that everypony in this place becomes an Alicorn?” she asked for confirmation. Celestia nodded. Her face went blank. “And everypony in here has their power increased to an absurd level?” she pressed. Celestia nodded again

“Now, I would like to know how many ponies are in here exactly,” Celestia asked, preparing for any answer at all.

“Well, according to my calculations-” Twilight began. Then, suddenly, in front of her popped out two ponies, one of them yellow with poofy brown hair, and the other Pinkie Pie. They both took a deep breath.

“THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF EQUESTRIA!” the two of them yelled at the same time, neither even noticing the other. They disappeared soon after.

“…Yes, the entire population of Equestria,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes. “Seriously, can I get in a conversation without somepony interrupting me at some point ever again?

“The entire population… Of Equestria…” Celestia’s eye started to twitch, and she fought the urge to smile like a madpony. “That’s… a lot of ponies.”

“Yes, I know; about 19.5 million ponies,” Twilight added. “And if all of them are going to turn into Alicorns… well, I’m not sure what’ll happen, but I know it’ll be bad.

“19.5… Million… ponies…” Celestia’s eye twitched more. “E-excuse me, I have something I need to be doing.” With that, and a bit of concentration, she teleported away from the plane she was on, returning to the mortal coil.

Suddenly, inside the Aether, an enormous white globe of energy, maybe the size of the moon, began to descend from the sky. The attention of all of the ponies was drawn to it, and Twilight’s eyes widened.

Suddenly, the sphere broke up into millions of white energy beams, which condensed themselves to be just above the size of a normal pony. The lights surrounded every single pony inside of the plane. It lifted them into the air, floating around them, before suddenly, they all disappeared, the lights going into a single point.

The next thing that all the ponies in the Aether knew was Darkness.

Author's Note

So, after seeing so many stories where someone else turned into an Alicorn, or more than just Twilight did, this idea just popped up into my head.

I'm sorry.

I'm so, so sorry.