Fire and Lightning, Blood and Shadows
“Spike, I need you to focus!” Twilight snatched away Spike’s plate of steaming nachos, ignoring his protests as she placed his food into the fridge. “We can eat later. Right now we’re on the verge of the greatest magical break through of our time! We can’t afford to be distracted.” Twilight’s lecture was interrupted as she forced down a yawn and took several mouthfuls of extra strong coffee straight from the jug. Her diet for the past several weeks had consisted of nothing but caffeinated liquid to help keep her awake several nights and days in a row and noodle cups to stave off her hunger pains. It wasn’t very healthy, but she was determined to give her current project every ounce of her attention. Her five friends insisting they come over and spend time with her were the only reason Twilight was still sane and able to work. “Now, Spike if you find me ‘scroll seventy seven-B’ we should be done with the theocratical stage!” Squeeing with excitement she pounced across the room to go over her work again.
Stuck to the crystal wall of Twilight’s current study room were dozens of pieces of parchment depicting a diagram of a full sized alicorn pony with patterns of runes covering its entire body. On her most recent exploration through the library in the Castle of the Two Sisters, Twilight had found an ancient runeology book, written by Starswirl the Bearded himself, hidden in a chest heavily warded with protective magic. She spent the next two days painstakingly breaking the wards one by one, upon discovering the book of Starwirl’s Lost Runes, in the chest, she took it back to her castle and spent several weeks deciphering and recreating the runes in Starswirl’s turning them into the diagram on the wall before her. Once the last piece of the puzzle was in place, she could test the properties and abilities of arcane runes on herself.
Theoretically the arcane runes would act as mana storage for different spells and rituals. Unlike a typical rune user, the user of arcane runes could place any spell into any rune they wanted. And instead of having to charge the runes after each time they were used, arcane runes tapped directly into a pony’s ambient magic and recharged themselves.
“Got it!” Spike exclaimed running up to Twilight with a length of parchment grasped in his claws. She grabbed the parchment with her magic and placed it on the wall to complete her diagram. Grinning with pride, Twilight stepped back to admire her finished work.
“Do you realize what we’ve done here, Spike?”
Spike shrugged and glanced over the diagram of the rune covered alicorn. “I don’t know, made an extremely scary version of pin the tale on the pony?”
Twilight rolled her eyes and used her magic to clear everything out of the room so it was empty apart from herself, Spike and her project. “No, Spike. I may have just proven that arcane magic is not only a viable and stable source of magical power, but this could revolutionize a pegasus’ or earth ponies magic!” Twilight squeed once but her joy fell at the sight of Spike’s clueless expression. Sighing, she cleared her throat for a lecture. “As you know, earth ponies and pegasai get their abilities of extreme strength and weather manipulation from their ambient magic.” As she talked, Twilight walked around the room summoning different medical equipment. “While they can’t tap into this magic like a unicorn or alicorn taps into their internal mana reserves, but they can strengthen and broaden their ambient magic to be more effective.” She placed a gurney in the corner of the room and hooked IV bags of different liquids to the IV stand. “There’s even a rumor in the History Enthusiasts Club that Commander Hurricane was so disciplined in meditation he found a way to tap into his ambient magic and use it to fluence, and to some extent control the weather and its forces!”
Twilight cleared her throat and pointed to the diagram on the wall. “These arcane runes Starswirl the Bearded created can give a non alicorn or unicorn pony the ability to cast physical magic!” She first placed three bags filled with blood on the IV stand and a bag filled with a glowing, violet liquid. “They’ll only be able to cast tier five spells, just mere levitation of one or more objects depending on which tier they are able to reach under five. But with further experiments and studies, these arcane runes could perhaps give an earth pony tier ten magical abilities! Applejack could possibly one day teleport to different parts of her farm without having to walk there, saving her much more time and effort doing her chores!”
Spike blinked several times in confusion at all the new equipment filling the room, and glanced at the diagram of the rune covered alicorn with apprehension. “Uh-huh, so why would a unicorn or alicorn need arcane runes if they already have magic?”
“Well, these arcane runes would make it so I wouldn’t need to dip into my mana reserves every time I cast a spell. When fully charged with mana, these runes could give me the ability to teleport from here all the way to the Crystal Empire and back again and not even be tired.” With the gurney and its IV stand prepared, Twilight summoned a medical cart and pushed it into the middle of the room and created a drain hole. “I’ve only been studying tier fifteen to twenty magic for a year now, I’m only up to tier sixteen, but these runes could jump start me all the way to tier twenty without the need to study!” Twilight blushed and folded her ears back against her head. “Not that I would ever use these runes to cheat on my studies. But I could use them to improve the lives of pony kind!”
“Twilight, what are you doing with all this medical stuff?” Spike inquired.
“Well, now that theory work is over, I can move into the practical work.” She pulled a small, metal case from the cart and gulped as she opened it to reveal a collection of scalpel blades. “Now comes the hard part. Creating the runes.”
“Twilight! You’re going to cut the runes into yourself?” Spike’s whole body paled and he rushed forward to grab the blades from Twilight. She used her magic to grab him by the tail and pull him to a corner in the room.
“Spike, I assure you I have everything under control. If anything goes wrong we have a fully stocked operating room right here to fix me up. Everything will be fine.”
Spike grit his teeth and struggled helplessly to free himself from Twilight’s magic keeping him trapped in the corner of the room. “You don’t even know if these runes will work!”
“I’ve been over this many times, Spike. The science is sound and Starswirl the Bearded himself created these runes. I think the greatest mage in the history of Equestria knows what he’s doing.”
Spike angrily hissed his displeasure and tried clawing his way to Twilight. “No! I won’t let you do this to yourself!”
“Spike, don’t make me lock you outside. Once I begin I cannot be distracted or disturbed. If you try to stop me from doing this, you could make me hit a vital artery. At least with you here, I’ll have someone to help me if anything goes wrong.”
Spike looked up at Twilight, defeat shining in his eyes. “There’s nothing I can say or do to make you change your mind?”
Twilight smiled sadly and shook her head as she pulled Spike into a hug against her chest and nuzzled through the spikes on his head. “No, Spike. Tonight I have the chance to make a real and positive difference to pony’s lives. If there is even just a mere one percent chance this ritual will be successful, I’m willing to go through with it.”
Spike hugged his mother figure back and nuzzled into her chest fur. “After tonight I’m telling Celestia and all our friends about this so they can tear you a new one.”
“Deal, now promise me you won’t interfere with this ritual unless my life is at stake.” Spike reluctantly nodded his assent and stepped back to give Twilight room to work.
She lit her horn and the torches burning on the walls with an intimate light roared into infernos that lit the room like the noonday sun. Twilight’s magic guided the scalpels from their case and they floated through the air to her body’s flesh. Gritting her teeth to stop herself from crying out, Twilight pressed the largest of the scalpels into the flesh of her left back leg, just above her hoof and guided it to carve the runes she had meticulously memorized into her flesh.
The scalpel parted her flesh as easily as a hot knife could slice through butter. Tears from the blinding, searing pain of cutting herself so deeply stained the violet fur of her cheeks but she didn’t stop until she had finished cutting the last lines of the runes into herself.
“T-that wasn’t so bad.” She smiled reassuringly at Spike who was growing paler by the second. “Barely even felt it!” Twilight glanced at her back left leg and grimaced. Her leg was thickly matted with blood, its metallic, coppery scent becoming so powerful it burned the back of her throat. Her flesh looked like mincemeat and in some places she could see the tendrils and fibers of her muscles. “Just to think, only one hundred and thirteen runes to go.”
The scalpels, guided by Twilight’s violet, magical aura went back to their gruesome work. Twilight carved deep and shallow lines over her right back leg. At times coming millimeters away from slicing a vital artery. But following Starswirl’s instructions and the measurements on the diagrams stopped her from making any lethal mistakes. The ever increasing, burning pain throughout her body was starting to distract her and with an extreme force of will she cleared her mind. Thick, crimson rivulets of blood flowed in the wake of the razor sharp scalpel blades, matting down her fur and filled the room with an overpowering scent of copper. Forming on the floor beneath her hooves was a thick, congealing puddle of blood. The puddle trickled down the drain hole Twilight had created in thick clumps. Hours passed, Twilight had to begin an early blood transfusion as she continued her work. The scalpels moved over her back, through her delicate, sensitive wings cutting and slicing through her feathers to mark the flesh beneath them.
For Spike’s sake, Twilight remained as still, unmoving and silent as a statue through the whole thing. She showed no signs of discomfort or pain as the flesh on the underside of her barrel was sliced and transformed into an intricate and delicate lattice work of lines and runes. She used the smallest of the blades to slice the delicate, thin flesh on the back of her ears, the back of her eyelids and all along the flesh of her cheeks, nose, lips and throat. Her forelegs were soon put under the blade and it was all she could to stop herself from from collapsing from pure exhaustion.
Fives hours after she had made her first cut, the sun was rising and she only had one last rune to cut into herself. Whimpering from the pain of raising her tail and bending over to expose her marehood, Twilight choked back her cries of pain as she slowly, meticulously cut the rune of pleasure into the folds of her marehood. As she added the very last cut, she gratefully dropped the blade and stood.
“D-d-d-done...” she breathed out. “N-n-n-need stitches... C-c-cleansing a-alcohol... B-b-bandages...” Twilight was shaking and shivering uncontrollably as the first stages of shock set in. She couldn’t feel Spike already using his skills in first aid to cleanse, stitch and bandage the more severe and deeper cuts. Twilight spent the next day and a half on the gurney in a daze of consciousness and dreamless sleep as Spike worked tirelessly to fix her. He stitched closed as many of the cuts as he could, he sponge bathed the blood and stains out of her fur and kept her on a steady drip of morphine. When he was finished with his work, Twilight’s entire body was covered in bandages underneath them were combinations of gauze, stitches, potions and ointments mixed with oils to stop infections and increase the healing.
