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.
As she eased into consciousness, Twilight Sparkle yawned. She stretched her legs up into the air, ignoring the odd tickling sensation from her sides; she was feeling more refreshed than ever. She must have had a really good sleep last night… Strangely enough, she didn’t recall getting into her bed, though. Last thing she remembered was researching that spell. She must have fallen asleep sometime while researching it, and Spike must have brought her to her bed. She didn’t recall falling asleep, though…
After a few seconds of wracking her memory, she sighed. She didn’t have an eidetic memory, after all. Sure, it would have been convenient for memorizing books, but she preferred to read over them again than having to remember all of them all the time. Memorizing books completely would just bore her. Well, most books; she had to memorize some. Yawning again, a memory suddenly sparked in her mind.
After a few seconds of reviewing the memory, she shook her head. That couldn’t be right… According to her memory, she had managed to cast the spell, but it brought every pony in Equestria to some sort of astral plane. The princess had also told her something… she couldn’t remember exactly. Opening her eyes slightly, she looked over towards where Spike usually slept. She didn’t know why the young dragon preferred to sleep in a basket right now; he’d declined her offers to get him a bed, even.
Seeing that Spike was sitting in his basket, reading one of his comics, (Power Ponies, it looked like) she smiled; it was always good to see him enjoying himself. “Spike,” she spoke up, her voice somewhat hoarse. Spike stiffened, and quickly closed the comic, turning to face Twilight. “I had the weirdest… dream… What’s wrong?” Spike had a concerned look on his face. Why would he be worried?
“Uh, Twilight…” The baby dragon took a deep breath. He needed to break it to her gently. “That thing where you cast that spell and disappeared? Then some time later, came back as an alicorn? That… that wasn’t a dream.”
…Spike really hated his lack of restraint sometimes.
Twilight suddenly felt a lot more awake than a few seconds ago. “Wait a minute… you said that it wasn’t a dream?” she asked. Spike nodded mutely. Twilight blinked.
She looked down towards the foot of her bed, noticing that she was covered by her blankets. Her blankets that had two, very odd-shaped lumps poking up, directly where a pegasus pony’s wings would be in proportion to her body.
“I… I have wings?” she whispered. A huge smile spread on her face. “I have wings, I have wings, I have wings!” She jumped off her bed in celebration, almost hanging in the air for a few seconds, before she rushed towards Spike, holding him up in the air and almost dancing, before putting him onto the floor again and staring him in the eyes. “I have wings! Oh, Spike, do you know what this means?”
“Uh… you’re a princess?” he asked. “You do realise that getting wings… probably isn’t a good thing, right?” Twilight shook her head at that.
“No, it’s not a bad thing! It’s amazing!” she gushed. “Now that I have wings, I can have access to the library of Cloudsdale more often than just when I bother to cast a cloud-walking spell!” Smiling, she stared Spike in the eyes. “And besides… being an Alicorn means that I can study a lot more magic than I could before!” She looked up to the sky, or at least the roof, her eyes shining in excitement. “Age spells, actual transmogrification spells, more efficient and powerful teleportation spells… Ooh, even more potent time travel spells!”
“There’s just one thing I’d like to know, though…” Spike tapped his chin, looking up at the ceiling. “After you cast that spell, what happened? All that I could see was that you disappeared, and sometime later, reappeared, but with wings.”
“Um, well… Let me think…” Twilight put her hoof to her chin, piecing the events together before smiling. “A-HA! I’ve got it!” she exclaimed. Spike raised an eyebrow.
“I’m still not hearing any reason that happened,” he said.
Twilight chuckled nervously. “Right. Getting onto that…” She coughed. “Anyway, what happened was after I cast the spell, I found myself in this odd place. I think Princess Celestia called it… the Aether? Yeah, the Aether. And everypony in Equestria was there, I think… at least, that’s what Pinkie Pie and some other pony said. I’m still not sure why he popped up with Pinkie, though.” Twilight shrugged. “Anyway, Princess Celestia came and told me that whenever someone came to that plane, they would naturally turn into an Alicorn before being ejected from it.”
Spike nodded at her explanation, thinking it over, before his eyes widened a touch. “…Wait a second. You said that everypony in Equestria was there, right?” At Twilight’s nod, he continued. “And that everyone who went there was turned into an alicorn before being spit out from that place, correct?” Another nod.
“Yes, that’s right; I did say… that…” Twilight trailed off. As much as she prided herself on her intelligence, Spike had some degree of situational awareness that she didn’t when looking at things in a vacuum, disregarding the times where he had gone through some odd phases of dragon puberty (she still didn’t know what he was thinking that day where the timberwolves attacked). Sure, he didn’t believe her when Cadance was replaced, but he didn’t know her as well as she did. Then there was the time where Spike thought that Zomponies had eaten everyone in the town, as well as other times, which were explainable; he was still just a baby dragon, after all, with an active imagination. But when his imagination wasn’t running wild, and his puberty wasn’t raging, Spike was usually the more situationally attentive of the two.
Possibly.
Sometimes.
So when Twilight realised what he was implying, her eyes widened. “But that would mean… Everypony in Equestria is an Alicorn now?!” Twilight’s ears perked up fully. This was going to be amazing!
“Yeah, this is gonna end pretty badly,” Spike summarized.
The sun rose over Sweet Apple Acres, the apple trees almost glowing with health. Applebuck season was near, and the Apple family was all sleeping peacefully. The idyllic scene was punctuated by the cries of birds, flying over the farm.
The farm’s rooster crowed, its loud noise floating through the home of the Apple family. Today, though, the rooster only woke one pony of the family: Applebloom, youngest of the Apples, and still searching for her cutie mark. She yawned. For some reason, she felt exhausted, but at the same time, refreshed.
Her stomach grumbled, and her eyes cracked open a little bit. “Wow… I’m starvin’…” she murmured, bringing her hoof towards her stomach. “Must’ve done a lot a’ crusadin’ yesterday.” She threw off her blanket and rolled onto her side, an odd squishing feeling coming to her, then onto her stomach.
Getting to her hooves, the filly yawned again, stretching herself around, when she felt something odd. Applebloom blinked, looking down towards her barrel. There was a small lump on the left side of her body. She paused, then looked at the other side. There was a second small lump. Holding up a hoof to one, she poked it. She felt it twitch as it shook out slightly, feathers fluttering in the slight breeze from the twitch.
…Wait, feathers? Applebloom poked it again in the same spot, and once again it twitched out, revealing feathers. She looked over to her other side, and hesitantly poked it in the same spot as the first.
It twitched, too.
After a few seconds of staring gobsmacked at the lump on her side, which she was pretty sure was a wing, she spoke. “I got wings…?” she muttered. Then, a grin the size of a mountain spread across her face.
“I got wings!” She beamed, jumping in joy. Her bed was bouncy, after all, and even though Applejack told her that it was a Bad Idea to jump on the bed because you’d hit your head, she did it anyway. “Yes yes yes yes yes-!”
Her celebration was cut short when she hit something on top of her head on the bed’s roof, and fell to the bed on her stomach. A searing pain reverberated through her head, but it was nothing that Applebloom couldn’t bear. After all, she was usually bruised and bleeding in a few places after a failed Crusade that was especially dangerous. What was odd, though, was her head wasn’t that high…
While she thought of this odd occurrence, she reached up towards her head to rub the pain away with her front right hoof, when she hit a stopping point. Literally.
In the center of her forehead, Applebloom felt a bony protrusion. She squeezed it with her hoof*.It was conical, at least…
Her hoof began to raise itself, moving along the conical protrusion, before reaching the top a few seconds later. It was a pointed top; not sharp, but blunt and round.
“A horn…?” Applebloom’s eyes widened to the size of saucer plates. “A horn! I have a horn! And wings!” She felt ecstatic. A day ago, she hadn’t even thought that something like that was possible. She still felt her Earth Pony magic within her, too, or at least her body’s strength hadn’t changed.
Then, it occurred to her. “Does that mean that… that I’m a princess?” she whispered to herself. Suddenly, her grin split her face from ear to ear. “I’m a princess?!” She bounded off her bed, and began to jump for joy, this time on the ground. “I’m A PRINCESS!” She was shouting now, her voice almost as loud as when she shouted the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ name for the world to hear.
“Darn it, Applebloom!” the filly heard Applejack shout; the words were muffled, but she could understand them. “Would ya quiet down? I’m tryin’ to get some sleep here!” Inwardly, Applebloom groaned; Applejack would stop her from having her fun, as usual when she did have fun. The youngest member of the Apple family did love her elder sister, but she could be annoying at times.
…She wondered why Applejack wasn’t saying anyth-
“WHAT THE HAY?!”
Applejack had awoken about an hour ago; oddly enough, it was before the sun had risen over the horizon. She had felt almost exhausted then, but she’d managed to pack some more sleep in. She’d gone back to sleep quickly after, after Twilight taught her about healthy sleeping practice (not that she was really an expert on that, after all; she knew Twilight had gone without sleep for a day at least 2 times before). So, when Applebloom awoke her with shouting, she was grumbling and grunting.
Fortunately, though, enough time had apparently passed for Applejack to wake up and feel great. This was a good time to put on one of her trademark hats, and prepare for a wonderful day of applebucking.
Applejack was an observant mare. This is, of course, the reason why when she put on a Stetson and heard a tearing noise, she took it off, and observed it.
There was a hole in it. That wasn’t really surprising; she had lost several Stetsons by a hole being torn in them.
The surprising part was both how it had been ripped so early, and where the hole was. It was in the center of where her forehead would be.
She reached up to her head, feeling a cone on top of it, with a rounded point.
Her eyes widened and something on her barrel shot out instinctively. She looked towards where she felt the odd feeling on one side to see a wing attached to her body. Her eyes widened, and her head whipped around to look at her other side. There was another wing there.
Her ears flattened. Then, she shouted.
This, of course, was an hour prior to what we are seeing at this moment.
“What the hay is goin’ on, what the hay is goin’ on, what the featherin’ hay is goin’ on,” she said underneath her breath, looking at her wing, then looking back at the other again. She was an alicorn, and like all little fillies, knew that transforming into an Alicorn made you a princess. It was something she had been taught at school, after all; it was taught in Tribal Dynamics, in Ponyville High School, a mandatory subject. It was one of the first things anypony learnt.
But she had dropped out of Ponyville High soon after alongside Big Mac, when they were more than a few years older than Applebloom, when their parents had… died. Applebloom did need someone to take care of her, after all. She winced at the memory; it still stung, her parent’s death, even so many years after it had happened. Sometimes she just woke up and wished that they were here again, and would take over the farming responsibilities again. Speaking of farming responsibilities, that was one of the reasons that Applejack couldn’t be a princess, she had a job that she needed to do, and she had important responsibilities.
A lot of them. She needed to take care of Applebloom; after all, Big Mac had a lot of responsibilities and a lot less time than she did, and Granny Smith’s old age was showing itself more every day, so she had to take care of Applebloom. Then, there was Winona. But if Applebloom was a princess too, and what she was just saying wasn’t a game of pretend… Applejack shuddered. She didn’t even want to think about the sort of things Applebloom would need to do.
Then, she thought about it for a minute, and grew a very hopeful, and desperate, smile.
“I know, this’s just a dream, an’ I’m gonna wake up an’ find everything’s alright,” she said. ”It’s just a dream…” Applejack was an awful liar, especially to herself.
First, though, she needed to confirm that it wasn’t a dream. Holding up a foreleg, she gulped, and brought it to her face. “This’ll tell me whether or not this is a dream,” she muttered. Opening her mouth, she brought her foreleg close to it, and bit. It hurt, and she pulled back, hissing slightly from the pain.
“So, it ain’t a dream. It ain’t a dream.” Applejack grew a forced smile. “I know it ain’t a dream. I know; I’ll go to Twilight. If anypony can fix it, then she can.
Applejack got up, almost tripping over herself a few times, before finally standing up properly. She began to walk. Twilight would fix it; she knew she could. And if she didn’t, well… she didn’t know what she would do.
So she walked.
Author's Note
* A pony’s hoof is a particularly odd and wondrous thing; at the end of their front legs, they have 2 squishy, hard, jelly-like piles of flesh inside 2 indents. They can extend these piles by a few centimeters, and use them to grasp, grapple, or stick to certain objects. They’re even dextrous enough to pick up objects like forks and use them, although many do not use pencils after picking them up, as that would be the equivalent of taping a pencil to the end of your fist and trying to move it in a legible manner.