Celestia has finally finished her daytime court, stretching as she steps down from her throne. While the material is the softest, cushiest thing possible, with further enchantments on top of that, her flanks always still seemed to be a little sore from sitting there for hours upon hours of dealing with the Canterlot elite and their frivolous, and sometimes downright brain-dead proposals and requests. Right as she reaches the base of the stairway, Forge teleports right into the room, disregarding the effect such a thing would have on the guards, who immediately close in on him. Sighing, Celestia waives them off with a hoof. It was going to be one of those days.

-<>~--*--~<>-<

Forge waits for the guards to exit the room, as Celestia puts up the barrier of silence. He then reverts back into his true form as a changeling.

Celestia clears her throat. "Greetings, Aurelic. To what-"

"You know damn well what." Aurelic cuts her off. "Nightmare. Night. Allowing a holiday like that, one that would ABSOLUTELY become a problem once Luna returned. With seemingly NO effort in preparing her for it? Do you have ANY idea what I saw last night, how egregious it was!? Better yet, I'll show you!" Aurelic begins projecting the things he saw that night. The horrible visage of the statue, the way the ponies in town reacted, including Pinkie with her gas-lighting and Applejack's own cowering.

Celestia is taken aback by this, looking at it in shock. "Oh, my goodness! I- I had no idea things were this bad! I was always led to believe Nightmare Night was a fun, harmless holiday that didn't take Nightmare Moon so seriously as to demonize her in this way! When I received Twilight's letter, she told me that everything went well that night."

"I'll show you what happened within the vision I had prior to this, and from what Luna said, things did seem to work out similarly in the end." Aurelic says, the perspective of the illusion changing quite drastically, as they appear to happen where someone couldn't feasibly stand without being noticed. "So it did resolve, somewhat. The lack of distinction between Luna and Nightmare seemed to be the core reason the problems arose. I... I got so mad I had to remove myself from the situation entirely, probably the only thing I could have done to ensure Luna found acceptance in Ponyville. The last thing she needed was an emotionally unstable individual at her side ruining the entire thing for her."

"Twilight did say you'd left abruptly, and that she'd snapped at you when you were clearly angry because of Luna's treatment. She acknowledged you'd both said some harsh things when the two of you lost your tempers." Celestia says, walking up to Aurelic, placing a hoof on his withers. "But, I do see where you're coming from as well. I had thought the holiday was harmless fun, but maybe some aspects of it need to be revised."

Aurelic sighs. "I understand. Luna's own judgement that it should be allowed to exist as a holiday would make any attempt by you to remove it go against her wishes, despite the reason being how offensive it would be to her. I just hope that she'll be okay. Nightmare was still part of her, so she might still feel some guilt, even if she laughs along at a caricature."

"I... I worry about that too. If she seems like she needs it, I'll try to talk with her about it. We are still sisters, after all." Celestia assures, dispelling the barrier of silence. "Have a good evening, Forge."

Aurelic dons his Forge form, nodding. "Likewise, Princess." He says, teleporting elsewhere.

-<>~--*--~<>-<

Aurelic practices using his punching spell on more pillars he's created in the old castle of the two sisters, the pillars breaking noticeably faster than before. Additionally, the conjured arms appear to be slightly more opaque, with the addition of a torso connecting them together. The torso's markings seem to consist of some lines leading between square, circle, and triangle shapes.

"Looking at it more closely, it doesn't seem to resemble a stand I've ever seen. Then again, I usually recognize stands by their heads or faces if it's a humanoid one, which this spell seems to be creating... I still can't believe I managed to combine spells together to form a completely new one, resembling a stand no-less. As far as I know, that particular virus would not exist in this world. And I'm also pretty sure anyone else looking at it could see it, meaning it isn't bound by the visible to other stand users only rule. I also don't see it being capable of doing anything other than punching, so perhaps this is more of a literal manifestation of the fighting spirit kind of spell. I wonder if Twilight could do some more research on it, scientific peers are usually needed in a study like this..." Aurelic ponders.

Meanwhile, a particular disguised bug has been watching Aurelic stare at the weird shape for some time. "You can already shapeshift into that weird bipedal form, why use a spell to make magic appendages when you can just have them on your body? This doesn't make any sense." Wasp thinks to herself.

Aurelic and his weird construct go back to attacking the stone pillars, each rapid hit echoing in the barren castle.

-<>~--*--~<>-<

Twilight sits at a desk, nose firmly planted in a book, though something else seems to be on her mind. "I wonder if I should check on him yet... Has it been long enough that he's cooled off? Maybe, it's been almost a full day."

A sudden bang causes Twilight to jolt, and Spike to scream in surprise. As soon as Twilight turns to look at the source of the noise, she sees a paper slowly falling to the ground. Before it hits the floor, she levitates it over to herself.

Dear Twilight, I wanted you to see this, and maybe test it out yourself. It's a new spell I created, or more accurately, a compound spell with unique enough results that I don't think it's ever been used before. If you could try using it, we can compare notes to see if it's unique from caster to caster or not. I would ideally like to have a third participant, but I don't really know another prolific magic user that could make good use of the spell. I'll come by tomorrow for your answer. Feel free to start when you get the chance, as any time you use with the spell would hasten our progress, even if it's not by much.

Aure Turner Forge

Below is a list of the spells used, and what stages to apply them at. Twilight is extremely excited at the prospect of a new spell, bouncing around the room giddily for a brief moment, before setting the note on her desk, horn igniting as she begins casting the spell.

Spike wanders over to the note, looking at it. Unfortunately, it seems to be scrambling the letters into incomprehensible lines. His disdain promptly ceases when he sees something truly bizarre floating next to Twilight.

-<>~--*--~<>-<

Forge teleports himself directly from his room to in front of Twilight's door. Having had enough practice with the route, he's mastered long range teleporting there. He knocks on the door, hearing some hoofsteps before it opens.

Twilight greets Forge at the door. "Forge! You're not gonna believe this, but-"

In an instant, he puts a hoof up to her muzzle to silence her before entering the library, shutting the door behind him. "Not yet, I'll take us to a more remote location, so we don't have any eavesdroppers. If some random pony tried this stuff out, we might end up having a huge problem with potential injuries and damages."

"Can I come too? I wanna see what your spell is like too!" Spike asks excitedly.

Forge nods. "Sure, you can watch, just don't get too close, okay?"

Right then, Forge teleports them all into the first room of the old castle of the two sisters, many more stone pillars having been set up since the previous night in preparation for this.

"Woah, you must really like this place dude. It's still so... creepy..." Spike says with a shiver.

"Anything in the Everfree Forest would be creepy Spike. Considering I lived here for a week before moving to the castle, and it's still a relatively secluded place nobody would ever dare to go, it works as a perfect testing site." Forge says, reverting back into Aurelic.

"What are these columns doing here? I don't remember them being here before." Twilight asks.

"Built them to demonstrate the way the spell works for me. Observe." Aurelic says, the torso with arms manifesting from his back, moving above him just slightly before punching a pillar in a flurry of fists.

The pillar begins to crack, more cracks splintering from the original until it shatters, the stony debris flying forward, safely away from Twilight and Spike.

Twilight gawks at what she's just witnessed. "I- wha- bu- HUH!? It's that strong!?"

"Yep. I've shown you mine, let's see yours." Aurelic says, catching the accidental double-entendre as soon as he finishes his sentence.

Twilight ignites her horn, a mass forming from it that shapes itself into an extremely transparant, full pony, the face looking chiseled yet feminine at the same time. In place of the mane and tail, seem to be a ton of quill feathers. Quill tips adorn around its hooves, flank, and neck as if they were jewelry, her cutie mark emblazoned on its quill tips. Twilight manipulates it into picking up a piece of rubble in one hoof, and a second in the other, piling the rubble together. "I figured out that I can use it as a sort of double, able to do a task while I'm busy doing something else. That was what I thought you'd made the spell for. I thought it was weird when you mentioned damage and injury earlier, but seeing yours... It, kind of looks like part of your old... hooman body."

"Human, there's a hyu in there. Maybe I'd been focusing on the strength of it so much I diverted all of its energy to the arms and torso. Let me try..." Aurelic says, the opacity of his construct lowering as more of it is revealed.

Now it was Aurelic's turn to look shocked. Floating slightly off the ground is a semi-buff human male, its waist down being an upside down, wispy flame similar to the typical portrayal of a genie or djinn, emanating from a belt covered in what look like computer chips, with a USB symbol on its belt buckle. Its face resembles a more chiseled version of his old human face, wearing a pair of aviators over its eyes.

"No. Fucking. Way." Aurelic thinks just as his mind begins blanking.

Twilight and Spike both marvel at the ghostly human floating before them.

"This one looks so awesome! How did you make it look like this?" Spike asks with enthusiasm.

"I uh, I'd be lying if I said I expected it to look like that. I didn't even know what it would look like in its full form." Aurelic says, still gazing at his unintentional creation. "Let's see... Ghostly tail looking thing, computer chips and a USB symbol, it's wearing Aviators... This, it matches so perfectly with... Ghosts in the Code? It's only one though, so a slight change to Ghost in the Code should work... It's the only name that fits."

Twilight looks between the two constructs, noting the vast differences in appearance. "You were right that it might not be the same between casters. They look so different, it's hard to tell they come from the same spell." She remarks.

"Yeah, what gets me is that mine resembles a human, but yours is a pony. The fact that I was a human before coming here definitely influenced its appearance." Aurelic says, looking between the two even more. "Want to try punching a pillar with yours? I made mine able to do that by focusing solely on the arms and upper torso. Perhaps if you focus on your forelegs and frontal torso you could get the same effect."

Twilight nods, looking at one of the pillars. The forelegs of her construct gain some slight opacity, as the hind legs lose some more opacity, but that's about it. She tries to have it hit the stone pillar, but it's as if a normal unicorn were hitting it, doing practically nothing to it at all.

"Okay, it's not working... Maybe it's because I have a higher tolerance for violence. Human culture has a lot more violence driven conflict than ponies do." Aurelic surmises.

"Well, I wasn't really planning on fighting with it anyway... But, why would you?" Twilight asks.

"It's a precaution. One can never be too prepared in case of something dangerous. I have a feeling Nightmare and Discord aren't going to be our only problems." Aurelic explains.

"Really? Like what?" Twilight asks.

"Not too sure, have you heard of other pony legends similar to those of Nightmare Moon's or Discord's?" Aurelic asks.

Twilight puts a hoof to her chin in thought. Soon enough, her face begins to show more and more fear as she realizes just how many there are. "Surely n-not all of them, right?"

"No, not all of them. However, you of all ponies should know every legend is rooted in some kind of truth." Aurelic says, looking at the pillars. "And I'm not waiting until the next one shows up to start preparing."

Author's Note

Well well welly well well well, they may not be 1:1, but a stand spell exists now. Yet another advantage for magic users.

Edited slightly because I realized I needed to add a few more details in a few spots. Will update this again once I have the artwork of the not stands done