The Riddle

Twilight didn’t know if Rarity had expected her to change her mind over the course of the week, but if she had, then such had not come to be. Twilight had reconsidered, she truly had, but she had arrived at the same conclusion, be it for different reasons. If phoenixes really were intelligent, and if nopony had studied them before – and everything she had learned so far seemed to point in that direction – then, then she was about to dive into a whole new realm of unexplored potential, potential that went beyond just scientific discoveries. It was worth the risk.

And yet, sometimes, Twilight still found herself struck by a sudden rush of fear, and she imagined what would happen if she was wrong, if she really... this was probably the true reason why she had wanted to act so hastily, to avoid this fear... once, she had broken into sweat at the thought, and almost given into panic. Within those moments, she had expected herself to change her mind once it was over, but she had not. One percent, so she had told herself, that was almost as unlikely as a die rolling six and six again and then five or six. Somehow, thinking of it like that had make her feel a tiny bit better.

The other four had all offered to be there when she tried, but Twilight had declined. Having other magical creatures present not only wouldn’t be helpful; it could actually be dangerous. Unforeseen magic bursts could trigger avalanche effects, which was why she hadn’t even bothered asking the princess for help. Pinkie Pie in particular was a wildcard, and although one of the others would be unlikely to make the difference – why take the risk? Amethyst was there for the shield, and Rarity was there to provide moral support if, somehow, she was being attacked psychologically. Including anyone else would not be smart.

And so, nine days after her first attempt, the three of them stood at almost identical positions on the library floor, and Twilight still felt afraid. Rarity who, at their latest meeting, had pulled her aside to put her conviction on trial one more time, was now standing beside her, their gazes locked. Twilight could see no chagrin in her gaze, only open worry, and perhaps a reflection of her own fear.

“Don’t die.”

Twilight nodded. “I won’t.”

Rarity drew her into a hug. She gave her a squeeze before she let go, taking a step away, but leaving a hoof resting on her shoulder.

“You’re ready?” she heard Amethyst say. She nodded, and moments later she could feel the signs of a spell on the magical plane, seconds before its effects became visible. The shield was purple, a lighter version of her own.

Her heart pounded as she finally did it, hesitating no longer so as not to risk the shield decreasing in power. Her senses exited her mind, reaching out for the phoenix who was once more sitting still, almost as if he understood that something was happening. Gradually, Twilight made herself familiar with the texture of his being, holding her breath for just another moment as she crossed the line into the realms of his mind.

Without warning, without reason, a crushing wave of pain assaulted her, sending her screaming out in shock and panic. She retreated her senses as fast as she could, taking a few moments to realize that Rarity was holding her head between her hooves, shouting her name.

“Twilight! Twilight!”

“I’m okay.” Breathlessly, Twilight threw a confused look around, realizing that she had collapsed.

She stood back up.

The pain had vanished the same moment her tie to the phoenix’ mind had snapped. Moreover, it had left no trace; not in her body, nor in her mind. It was only the shock that had made her fall, and the panic in that one moment when she had thought it all a horrible mistake.

But it was fine. She was fine. Well, at least she was still alive, and that was good news. Her fear had been injury, potentially fatal injury, and while the result certainly hadn’t been what she had hoped for, it also hadn’t been what she had feared.

She told Amethyst to put out her shield, then explained what had happened as well as she could. Rarity looked relieved, and Twilight actually felt flattered by the amount of empathy she showed.

“At least you are not, ah, injured. I suppose you did get hurt.” Rarity shook her head. “Please tell me you aren’t going to try again.”

“I can’t.”

Rarity gave a sad sigh.

“It’s less dangerous than it was on our first try. I did it, and whatever has caused the pain hasn’t injured me. It makes no sense to stop now.”

The fashionista said nothing at that.

“You need the shield again?” Amethyst asked.

“Good heavens!” Rarity’s head spun around, giving both other unicorns a stern glare. “We aren’t going to try right now. Take a break, Twilight. You can give it another shot once we have all calmed down.” Her gaze drilled into hers, and Twilight nodded hastily. There was no reason to rush things.

What followed were twenty minutes of time spent downstairs. Twilight made tea for them all (a more commonly used mixture of Matcha and ginger), and Rarity did a serviceable job of introducing conversation. But even though there was no tension between them, and even though Amethyst turned out to be quite an affable mare, Twilight’s heart was simply not in it. Her thoughts only revolved around one thing, and soon they found themselves in front of the table once more, about to run the experiment a second time. The shield was up, even though Twilight began to suspect that it would be of little use, and Rarity stood beside her. When she dove into the phoenix’ mind, the result was the same as on the previous try.

It hurt. It hurt a lot.

But it wasn’t injuring her.

Twilight took the pain in, observing the situation apprehensively, and with surprising calm. The pain was not in her head, nor in her horn. Instead, it seemed to be close to her breast, somewhere... and it was neither a stitching nor a squeezing kind of feeling, nor did it burn or, really, feel like anything she had experienced before. It was just pain, pain with no apparent cause or reason. Twilight could feel no magic coming from the phoenix, no traces of a spell that was causing this. Was she just imagining it? But...

She squeezed her eyes, groaning quietly, and then did the only sensible thing in pulling back. Once again, the pain evaporated into nothingness the moment that she lost touch with the phoenix’ mind, and Twilight took a few seconds to relish in its absence. As soon as the pleasant feeling of not being tormented by an invisible force seized to console her, however, she felt a quickly growing sense of frustration.

What.

This didn’t make sense. At all. It made no sense. None.

She would be forced to repeat the process. There was no way she could back down now that she had all the more reason to assume that it wasn’t really dangerous. But what kind of research would this be, that made her suffer so much? And what would happen if she wasn’t going to find out more? That would be the most disappointing project she had ever undertaken, and the the most unpleasant one to boot.

“And...?”

Twilight shook her head. “Same result,” she said, realizing the harshness in her voice only after the words were spoken. “I’m sorry,” she added in a friendlier tone, “I mean, I got the result again. It hurt a lot, somewhere in my breast, but I don’t even know why, and as soon as I pulled back, it stopped. I mean, you’d think there’d be some kind of aftermath, but it’s just gone.”

“Sorry about that. I didn’t feel anything, so I assume my shield was pretty useless?”

Twilight nodded. “I didn’t even sense any magic. Whatever is doing this, it doesn’t seem to care at all about spells. I’m sorry.”

Amethyst Star shrugged, seemingly unbothered. “No worries. You said from the beginning that it probably wouldn’t make a difference. Wouldn’t be science if we already knew it worked.”

“No...” Twilight agreed with a sad sigh. “It wouldn’t.”

Later that evening, Twilight tried for a third time. Since the only tradeoff was her enduring temporary pain, so she had rationalized, it was smarter to act now, while she was filled with a strange sense of determinism fueled by her frustration, than to think more about it, try to decide whether it was worth it, conclude that it was, and do it later. As soon as she touched his mind, pain ignited inside her breast. This time, Twilight could locate it easily. It was contained, it was predictable, and it hurt like fire. And she had understood something else, too. The reason why she was able to endure this, even willingly, was the particular nature of the pain. If you hit your head, broke your leg, or had caries, then it wasn’t just the pain which was unpleasant, it was the feeling of that particular part of your body being injured. Pain was inherently tied to injury, it was why it existed in the first place, as a way for your body to send warning signals.

But now, as Twilight continued trying to understand the pulsating source inside her breast, that was not so. There was no part of her body that felt injured, no feeling signaling that the pain was bad for her, no negative feedback save for the pain itself. And this must have been, must have been the reason why she had been able to endure this for as long as she had already, because, because if she had been asked, after the first time, then there was no way she would, would ever have guessed a time of, of, how long had it been already, two minutes? Two minutes of a pain this strong?

It was not enough to stop, stop it from being bad, from being negative. But it was, was a large, was a large difference. And maybe, just maybe, maybe it would, would be possible, possible for her to stop sensing, to stop sensing it as negative; maybe...

Twilight realized that her thoughts were getting slower. Considering the pain as merely an occurrence and not as horrible was slowly seizing to work. It was overwhelming her, just as it had last time, only this time it had taken it longer. With a sigh, Twilight pulled back.

Once more, the pain vanished immediately, leaving nothing behind, just like the last two times... and the time before that, where she had been so thoughtless, and had needed Rarity to nudge her into the right direction, when she had made a mistake, acted irresponsibly...

Err, what? What had been then? She had lost her train of thought.

Well, it was obvious that she was in an exhausted mental condition. Managing a smile, she felt for a box of nuts, putting a few on the table in front of Peewee, whose position on the table had remained unchanged. It was important to signal to him that she wasn’t blaming him for anything, because if there was one thing she was sure of, it was that this was not his doing, least not voluntarily. It had been her decision to force this clash of natures, and the results were her burden to bear.

Peewee gave an eager flap of his wings at the sight of the four cobs Twilight had produced, so she cracked them open with her telekinesis, one at a time, offering him their tasty interiors.

She watched him eat, feeling her tiredness increasing as she did so, even though it was still had to be at least four hours ‘till midnight...

Amethyst Star had been nice, and looking back on it, she found herself glad that she wasn’t holding any grudge against her. Not that she had actually done something wrong... getting a pony to do the shield had surely been the smart thing to do, there was no doubt. It was when she had wanted to do it the first time that she hadn’t been smart; rather ruthless, really, irresponsible towards the other girls, and everypony else she knew, for that matter...

“You want some more?”

Peewee was finished with the four nuts she had provided, each one swallowed in a single bite. As expected, he showed no reaction to her question, so she just produced another four.

“You’ll have to answer for all this,” she muttered absently while cracking them, “if I end up finding out that you’re actually intelligent and understand every word I’m saying.”

It took only two seconds after her glow had faded around the final nut that his spout came shooting down, picking up the first.

“But I suppose you there’s no chance you really do, is there? Why should you? Even if you are smarter than us, there’s still no way that you would understand my language. Which makes it so strange that Celestia thought Philomena might have been reading her letter...”

Her voice trailed off.

“Maybe you don’t understand what I’m saying, but you infer everything by reading my thoughts? Is that how it works? Can you interpret them, but only as long as I don’t think in words? Is that why you didn’t fly around while I was experimenting? Or why you came back home with me? Or why you go out when you...”

She frowned.

“I don’t know if I ever actually wanted for you to go out for that, though. Or did I?”

She wasn’t sure. She didn’t remember.

As she thought back on it, she noticed that her thoughts kept drifting away, thinking about bigger things... how she should be glad that she was still alive. Maybe she should stop Pinkie before she threw a Twilight-is-not-dead-party, because, surely, that would be a terrible idea, she had no intention of others knowing about this, ponies had a tendency to be irrational when it came to touchy subjects... she herself was not excluded from that, just affected a bit less strongly...

And she thought again about how she had been so ruthless, been so stupid. It was not good to be stupid. That was sort of the number one rule as a magician: don’t do anything stupid, it might get you killed. It only applied for those who were powerful enough to seriously harm themselves, which weren’t many, but she was among them. If she wasn’t careful, then there were no limits to the harm a failed spell could do to her... and to others. She didn’t even need a phoenix for that. But there was a simple rule to eliminate such risk, which was that, if you weren’t sure whether something was the right course, you simply delayed it until you were. Which was something she should know better than breaking, but which she had broken nine days ago...

Her eyes flickered onto the table. Seven of the eight nuts were gone, but the final one still lay inside its broken shell. With a frown, Twilight lifted it up at eye’s height, wondering if there was something wrong with it, but she failed see what it would be.

“Not hungry anymore?” With a shrug, she ate it herself. “Passing up just one nut? That’s a strange behavior for an animal.”

Peewee gave a quiet chirp at that, as if laughing at a joke she had made.