Twilight Sparkle and the Cursed Tome

It was a gorgeous, sunny day in Ponyville. Everyone was outside for the day, enjoying the bright, cloudless sky and the warm weather.

Except for Twilight Sparkle.

She had holed herself up in the library for the day, after finding a spell in one of her old, dusty tomes that she had never seen before, or even heard of. So, naturally, she had to figure out what it was, and what it did.

With Spike at her side, fetching anything she needed, Twilight read and re-read the spell over and over again. The text was written in a language she had never spoken before, but she had about a thousand referrence books she could go to.

“Spike!” she yelled, and the little green dragon was at her side in an instant. “I need more books! How can I figure out what this says if I don't have what I need?!”

“On it!” Spike assured her, and ran off again, pulling down book after book off the many library shelves, anything he thought would be useful to her. He carried the stack over in his arms, the books swaying dangerously from side to side.

“How's this?” he asked, peeking out from behind the load. Twilight didn't answer. Instead, her horn lit up, and books started to fly from Spike's gathered stack and swirled around her, all glowing. They all snapped open at once, pages flying to the side, and Twilight skimmed them all while they floated past her face, mumbling the words on the pages to herself. She flicked her horn at one book, sending it flying away, finding it of no use to her. She did that to another, and another, and yet another, until she was left with three.

“There just has to be something in here, somewhere,” she grumbled to herself, hovering the remaining three tomes in front of her. This time, she flipped through the pages a little more slowly, her nose basically shoved into the crease of each one as she went.

“Here!” she all but screamed, making Spike jump. The two side books went flying, and the middle one was placed next to her dusty old tome. “Spike, I found it!”

“Finally,” he muttered. Twilight just ignored him.

With her horn, she levitated a quill and some parchment over to her station, and quickly scribbled down the translation as she went, muttering out the words the entire time. The spell was lengthy and complicated, and by the time she was done with her translation, the sun was almost set. Spike had lit candles for her, to help her see her work in the growing darkness.

Once she was finished, she huffed and sat down, massaging her temples with her front hooves. She was mentally exhausted, but her physical body felt alive with a rush of adrenaline. She had completed the spell translation, and her pride was bursting through the walls about it.

Twilight gathered up all the books she had used, and magicked them all back into their rightful places. She then levitated the translated spell in front of her, so she could read it over and over again, until she had it all memorized.

It wasn't until an hour past midnight that she thought she had it figured out. Placing the parchment on one of the tables, she looked around for Spike, to have him stand by her and watch as she cast the spell. But, he wasn't anywhere to be found. Frowning, she climbed the stairs to the room they shared, and found him curled up in his bed, fast asleep and snoring. She smiled, tucked him in, and went back downstairs. She could tell him the results in the morning.

With the parchment in front of her and a fresh candle lit, she cleared her throat and leaned in closer to the words, chanting;

Day turns to night

While their night turns to day

With sun, moon, and stars,

And the words that I say;

Darkness is always

And life always near

This world grows ever smaller

When these words, they hear;

One becomes many

And many never ends

To the others, I seek

Transport, they send;

Day is now night

And night, now day

Many stars, many planets

Many lives here to stay.

She chanted this spell, over and over again, her horn glowing brighter each time, her voice rising in rhythm to the words that she spoke. She could feel the energies of the earth flowing into her veins, traveling to her horn to aid the spell she wished to cast. Rays of magical power shot out of the tip of her horn, filling the room with a magenta glow, getting ever brighter and stronger as the time passed. Suddenly, as she finished the last line of the spell for what seemed like the thousandth time, power exploded from her horn, and blasted the walls of the library, throwing her backwards into one of the shelves. She slammed into the books with a grunt of pain and dropped to the floor, some of the books falling onto her head.

Her front legs flew above her head to try and block the falling tomes, after most of them had fallen, and when she thought that threat was over, she used one hoof to rub the spots on her skull where spines and covers had made contact. Blinking away spots in her eyes, she tried to focus her gaze on the magical happenings in the library, and gasped.

The massive orb of energy that had been released from her horn was now hovering in the centre of the library, trails of darker purple magic swirling around the orb like rings. Spikes of energy flashed outwards like pink lightning, zapping at the walls, shattering the windows. Twilight threw herself to the side just in time to miss one such energy bolt from frying her to the spot, and she crawled underneath a table, shivering in fear. She looked towards the door, but an energy bolt had melted the handle, making it impossible for her to leave.

As she frantically racked her brain for another escape route, the orb expanded, engulfing everything as it went, then suddenly retracted in on itself with a great sucking noise, and disappeared. Sweating and shaking, Twilight counted to twenty before crawling her way out of safety, wary of her surroundings. All was deathly silent around her. Slowly, placing one hoof carefully in front of the other, she inched her way towards the spot the orb had occupied. There was a circular mark burned into the wooden floor, still smoking and hot to the touch. She sniffed it carefully, then circled around it, examining the perfect edges. With great care, she placed her hoof on the mark.

There was an explosion, and the sound of tearing cloth, and the space in front of her was torn open, revealing a swirling mass of stars, planets, and visions of other creatures behind it. She tried to wrench away from the tear, but her hoof was stuck to the scorch mark. She panicked and opened her mouth to scream, but as she did so, teal and white energies from the tear in the universe lashed out like vines, snaring her legs tight, and dragged her within it. She never had time to make a sound and, once she had disappeared, the tear's energies closed itself up again.

When Spike went downstairs in the morning, oblivious to the sounds of the previous night, he had quite the shock of his life when he found a half-destroyed library, and no Twilight Sparkle to be found.