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.
Twilight Sparkle and the Cursed Tome
When Twilight opened her eyes, she wasn't in Ponyville anymore. That much she knew. What she didn't know, however, was where she was. Or why she was no longer a pony.
With a moan, she sat up slowly, rubbing her head with her new, very human, hands. Her hair was frizzed and smoldering at the tips, and with a squeal, she quickly smothered the budding flames. She placed her hands on the ground and pushed herself up to her feet, stumbled on her new human legs, and fell straight back down onto her rear again.
“Whoa, there,” a deep voice said from behind her, and before she knew it, she was being lifted to her feet by a massive hand. She whipped her head around at the man who helped her, and almost screamed.
He was a giant, with the biggest, frizziest beard she had ever seen. Despite his massive size, and his tattered trench coat, his eyes were kind, as well as his smile. With the hand he helped her up with, he steadied her until she could somewhat stand on her own, then proceeded to dust off the dirt on the robes she wore.
“There ya are,” he said politely, lifting up his other hand, which held a lantern, to her face. She blinked in the light, and looked up at the great man, and wondered what was going on.
“Well, I'm Hagrid,” the man told her, then grinned and pointed at a gathering of other humans, some male, some female, all wearing the same black robes as her, all looking just as frightened as she. “Git with th' rest o' the first years, eh? We'll be goin' over to Hogwarts soon enough.”
Before she could ask for clarification on what a Hogwarts was, he left her to join the rest of the group of children and lumbered off into the darkness, forcing her and the other 'first years' to follow him. She looked around as she went, and saw plenty of other humans, dressed in robes with ties of all colours, chatting animatedly about what they did over their summers. There was an old steam engine train, idling on the tracks, and owls swooping in and out of the people around them, hooting at one another. It made her heart ache for her own beloved owl, Owlicious, left behind in Ponyville. With a gulp, she looked forward again, stumbling along the path that led to a pitch black lake. Whether it was naturally black or tinted so because of the darkness around her, she didn't know.
She was guided into one of the many little wooden boats along the water's edge, squeezed in with about four other students. They looked at her curiously, especially at her hair, and she stared right back at them. Two averted their gazes, one tried to smile, and the other just went hmph and turned right around.
“Don't mind him,” the smiling human whispered to her, his voice stuttering just a touch. “I don't think he likes anyone.” When Twilight blinked in surprise, the boy's face turned red, seen even in the weak light of the lamp hanging at the front of the boat. “Um.. M-My name is Albus Potter.”
“I'm Twilight Sparkle,” she told the boy, and it was his turn to look confused. His blue eyes widened in curiosity, and he tilted his head, dark hair falling to the side.
“That's a funny name,” he told her. The boat lurched underneath them, and Twilight and Albus Potter were both forced to grab the edge to keep from falling over.
“It's a, uh, common name, where I'm from,” she told him, slowly letting go of the edge of the boat. It seemed to be propelled over the water by some sort of invisible force and, letting herself feel around with her mind, she came to the conclusion that the force was magic. Magic with no colour.
“Where are you from?” Albus Potter asked her, his hands still clinging to the boat. She thought about telling him the truth, but decided he wouldn't believe her. If he had shown up in Ponyville and told her that he got sucked into a tear in time and space, she wouldn't have believed him, either.
“A little town in a little country, you wouldn't know it,” she told him, and he nodded, as if he knew she was right.
They sat in silence the rest of the way there, Twilight's gazed fixed on the gorgeous stone castle in the distance, growing larger and larger as their boats approached. Firelight flickered from the windows, making the whole structure glow with life, and she found herself smiling, reminded of the castle in Canterlot where Celestia and Luna lived. She missed them already. Them, and all her friends in Ponyville.
The boats arrived at the other side of the lake, and they were all led up a path by the giant man named Hagrid, his lamp swinging in his hand, throwing shadows left and right. She walked next to Albus Potter the entire way there, somewhat comforted by his presence. He seemed like a friendly human, unlike the other blond one that had scoffed at her earlier, as if she were nothing but pond scum.
They arrived at the castle, and were lead inside and through the hallway until they reached a small side room. They all crammed inside, waiting for something. What, they didn't know, but there they waited.
Another human, an adult this time, walked into the room with them. She was an elderly human woman, with small round spectacles perched on her nose, her grayed hair tied in a bun, and her face set in a stern expression. Her gaze passed slowly over each and every one of them, before it stopped on Twilight. They gazed at each other a moment, and Twilight felt herself looking away from the cold expression. The woman looked at the remaining students, then cleared her throat.
“You will all be following me into the Great Hall for your Sorting,” she told the trembling students in front of her, pulling a scroll out from a pocket inside her robes. “You'll all be called up to the stool by name, where you'll have the Sorting Hat placed upon your head, and-”
“I'm going to be in Slytherin, of course,” the blond boy from the boat muttered to his friends with a smirk. “Just like my father, and my grandfather.” The elderly woman glared his way, and he fell silent.
“As I was saying,” she continued, her tone irritated, “ You'll have the Sorting Hat placed upon your head, and it will place you in one of the four Hogwarts houses; Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin.”
A second person came in, another adult, and whispered to the first. The woman nodded once, then turned to the children. “They're ready for you now, so if you'll all follow me, please.”