The Dark Apprentice

The midnight breeze was a cool kiss against Twilight’s coat and nothing more. If it was cold, it didn’t bother her—Twilight was beginning to wonder if she could even remember what being uncomfortably cold felt like. It had been three weeks since she slept. One continuous span of consciousness that oscillated between Dark Apprentice at night and Twilight Sparkle during the day. The mystique of her double life had lost some of its novelty, but her sessions with Luna were her favorite part of the daily cycle.

There was something comforting in the idea that when the sun went down this was what awaited her. It was an enjoyment she didn’t even know existed, and it wasn’t from sex or even the pleasure of leading a double life. In Ponyville she led her normal life, a thing that was sequential, structured. Wonderful, yes, but filled with responsibility and worry. Time with Luna always seemed to be cut away from reality, to be mystical, even.

Who knew that being the Dark Apprentice could be therapeutic?

“Are you paying attention to me, Twilight Sparkle?” Luna asked.

Twilight berated herself for losing her focus. “I’m sorry, Mistress. I let my mind wander.”

“Is that so.” Luna’s eyes seemed to harden. “Then tell me that you apologize, not that you’re sorry. I very much doubt you are sorry.”

Twilight hesitated. What was the difference? “I... apologize?”

“This is the third time your focus has failed you tonight. I almost feel as though you aren’t interested in my lesson.”

Twilight frowned, but it was a chance to speak her mind. “I just don’t really see how I’ll ever end up using this. Shadow routing, I mean.”

Luna arched an eyebrow. “Explain.”

“Well,” Twilight said, “It’s just... it’s night. There are shadows everywhere. The most efficient path is always just going to a be a straight line, isn’t it?”

“Shadows, yes,” Luna said. “But total darkness is still a flawless conduit, and it is not so abundant. And it is not always night, Twilight Sparkle. An accomplished academic such as yourself should know that it is also sometimes day.”

Twilight gave her a flat look. It was always so hard to tell if Luna was joking or if she was berating her. “That’s the thing. Even if it is day, and even if I can draw a path through twenty different shadows dark enough to give me a good coefficient, what’s the point? I can already teleport.”

“Coefficient,” Luna said with a slight amount of distaste, “you speak of the darker powers as though they were a school of engineering.”

“There’s definitely a clear relationship,” Twilight said. “I could draw us each up a chart, if you like. Power required is proportional to depth of shadow multiplied by—”

“Stop it.”

“—distance...” Twilight did her best to hide a small smile from the unamused princess. “How about I just make one for me?”

Luna narrowed her eyes. “There will be no charts, my Dark Apprentice. And you have yet to realize this spell’s true potential. You are not the only thing that you can send through the shadows.”

Twilight thought about this for a moment. “What kind of other things?”

“Words,” Luna said. “Spells. Sensations. There are things you can bring to yourself through darkness as well. Sight. Sounds. But first you will learn to do only yourself.”

Twilight sighed, but gave a resigned nod. She was hoping they’d cover ritual magic right away, but from everything she’d read it was sinfully complex—if it could be fully understood at all.

“Do not be so somber, my Dark Apprentice. Soon I will teach you to swallow the screams of others and make a secret of lightning.”

“Make a what?”

“A joke, Twilight Sparkle,” Luna said. She put a hoof to her chin. “Though it did sound good, didn’t it...”

Twilight shook her head. Luna had an extremely strange sense of humor.

“In any case,” Luna said. “The dawn approaches. Hit me.”

The words took a moment to register. “What?”

Luna’s eyes were steady and cool. “Hit me, Twilight Sparkle. As hard as you possibly can.”

Twilight realized that Luna was serious. “I can’t hit you!”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Do you think you would hurt me? Do you think you could, even if I allowed it?”

“I—what? No. I still don’t want to hit you. Why are you asking?”

Luna gave an almost-imperceptible shrug. “A fair question, but one I won’t answer. Do you break things around your house in Ponyville? Door knobs, ladders, dishes?”

Twilight peered at her. “You mean... because of my strength? Not much. I use magic to handle objects.”

“I see.”

Twilight was becoming frustrated. “See what, exactly?”

Luna’s mouth became a flicker of a smile. “See tomorrow’s lessons. But we will come to those tomorrow. We are still not done with tonight. I know the real reason you find it hard to focus, Twilight Sparkle.”

A surge of hope warmed Twilight’s chest. “You do?”

“Yes,” Luna said. “We will return your lessons to the night’s oldest ritual, eventually. Until then, however, you will have to sate your lust elsewhere. I am not your puppet, Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight sagged. There was something truly terrible about being introduced to sex and then cut off from it in favour of fascinating spells and enchantments. She couldn’t say which one she’d rather have.

“Don’t be so upset, my Dark Apprentice. I shall be occupied two nights from now. Lessons will be cancelled. You’ll have free reign of the entire night—and Pinkie Pie is throwing a party. I’m sure if you ask nicely she’ll let you play with her toys.”

“Huh,” Twilight said. She’d been meaning to get back to Pinkie Pie at some point, but with sundown to sunup dedicated to lessons, there just wasn’t much time. “Wait—how do you know she’s throwing a party?”

“I watch,” Luna said.

“You spy on my friends?”

Luna rolled her shoulders. It looked more like she was shedding blame than she was shrugging. “Celestia and I both keep a careful eye on Ponyville.” Her smile returned. “The six of you can be... quite entertaining.”

-

The book was floating in the air, and it was open. Its crinkled pages were played and lit only by a scant amount of candlelight. The library windows had been covered, leaving her in darkness, where, bathed in the purple light of her horn, she floated, the book splayed out before her.

Weightlessness was relaxing for her body, but keeping herself aloft strained her mind. That was all well and good, because Twilight wanted to strain her mind. She needed the practice, and she’d found that the best way to break in a new spell was to multitask it. So there was a piece of her mind that shut out the feeling of weightlessness, shut out the new spell she was trying, shut out the waves of pleasure that ran through her body like an electric current, and focused only on holding her in the air.

But it was only a piece, and the rest of her was far more receptive to the senses. Her breath came out in heavy sighs, her head rolled from shoulder to shoulder, her tongue hung just outside her lips, and her forelegs were pulled tight across her own chest. Her initial opinion of A Study in Ecstasy had been wrong, Twilight was beginning to realize. The book was aptly named.

But the magic she worked inside herself was not nearly strong enough; not by half. Twilight smiled a lazy, arrogant smile that she’d never used to possess. She had to go deeper.

The door opened. Twilight fell to the ground, and so did a book that was over a thousand years old. The cover and several pages came off and splayed themselves across her carpet.

Twilight shrieked. She hadn’t opened her mouth with any particular words in mind, but she’d certainly expected some to come out. Instead she got an animal cry, a sound of rage and humiliation.

“Hey Twilight,” said Pinkie Pie.

A twitch shuddered up Twilight’s neck and through her ear before setting up camp in her eyelid. “The door was locked!”

Pinkie blinked. “Was it?”

“Pinkie Pie, I’m naked in here!” Twilight said as she scrambled to think of a less compromising position.

Pinkie Pie stared at Twilight, her eyebrows going up in confusion.

“Okay,” Twilight said. “So I’m always naked. But still. The door was locked.”

Pinkie Pie blinked her eyes innocently. “Why?”

“Because,” Twilight said quickly. “I-I was... just... reading a book all alone, and...” Suddenly her thoughts turned to the carpet below her. What if there was a stain? An enormous, dirty, nasty stain that Pinkie Pie could—

Relax.

Twilight shook the thoughts from her head. Ridiculous. So what if Pinkie Pie caught her in the act? They’d spent two hours trying out sex toys just over a week ago. It was only Pinkie Pie. Only Pinkie.

“H-hey Pinkie Pie,” Fluttershy said as she stepped into the doorway. “Hey Twilight. What are all the candles for?”

Twilight fumed. Relax.

“I think she’s having a seance!” Pinkie said as she took in the candles for the first time. “Twilight’s talking to deeeeeead ponies!”

Fluttershy seemed to shrink into herself. “You mean... ghosts?”

“I’m not having a seance,” Twilight said. “Ghosts aren’t real. Now if you two could leave me for a moment...”

“Ghosts are so real,” Rainbow Dash said as she glided in through one of Twilight’s windows. “One time my faucet kept turning on when I wasn’t even in the bathroom. You can’t explain that.”

Twilight looked from Dash to the open window, then back to Dash. “That window wasn’t even open, she said. “I had the curtains drawn.”

Rainbow Dash shrugged. “I sprung it from the outside.” She nodded to their other friends. “Hey Pinkie Pie, hey Fluttershy. You guys here to invite Twilight to the party?”

“Party?” Fluttershy asked.

“Pinkie Pie is throwing a party tomorrow night,” Twilight said. “Now if all of you could just—”

“Hey!” Pinkie Pie said. “You can’t know that it’s tomorrow! I didn’t invite you yet!”

Twilight frowned and shifted where she sat. “Sorry, Pinkie Pie. What time is the party?”

Pinkie grinned. “Tomorrow!” she said.

“Great,” said Twilight. “I’ll be sure to come. Now if all of you could just leave me alone for a moment—”

“Oh goodie, Twilight!” Pinkie shouted. “I was hoping you’d say yes! There’s gonna be dance music, and candies, and non-dance music that we can dance to anyway, and money cake...”

Twilight rolled her eyes as Pinkie went on. All she had to do was sit there and wait for her to finish and for them to leave.

“What’s with the book?” Dash said as she picked up a loose sheaf of pages. “Inserteth thine horne—”

Twilight slapped the pages to the ground with her mind. “That’s nothing!” she said. “Just a book!”

“Really?” Dash asked. Then she narrowed her eyes at Twilight, seemingly confused. “You’re all sweaty.”

“No I’m not.”

“Uh...” Dash reached out and poked Twilight’s chest. “Yes you are?”

“Look,” Twilight said, “It’s a beautiful day out! Why don’t we all just carry this prying and inquisitive conversation outside? I could pack us a picnic! Why don’t all of you leave right now and I’ll meet you out there. Sound good?”

“You sure you don’t want to like, take a shower first?” Dash asked.

Pinkie Pie bounced on her hooves. “Ooh! I could help you pack the picnic!”

Fluttershy raised a hoof tentatively. “Do you want any help picking up these papers, Twilight?”

Dash splayed a couple pages out on the ground before her. “Hey Twilight these have some funky diagrams—”

“Ooh! I wanna see, lemme see!”

Twilight let out an exasperated growl. “Do I have to shoe the three of you away with a broomstick?” she shouted. The three of them looked up at her.

She waved a hoof, and her shadow left her side and swept across the floor before her, gathering pages as it went. When it returned to pool in vague shapes beneath her hooves, the pages were gone and it was notably darker. “I was masturbating!”

Nopony said anything as Twilight gave them each a look. “Okay? I’ve spent the whole morning using my prodigious magical talents to pleasure myself with a suite of spells that were in this ancient tome of sexy magic. It is the most absurdly simple, selfish, and impulsive use of magic that I’ve ever heard of, which makes me feel guilty, which makes it all feel so. Much. Better.”

Twilight finished and took a deep breath, then cringed a little while she realized exactly what she’d said. Did she really have to tell them that being naughty and indulgent turned her on? She swallowed and scratched the back of her mane. Fluttershy was blushing a bright scarlet. Pinkie Pie looked like she was suppressing the urge to giggle. Dash scratched her chin and said:

“You use candles?”

“Why wouldn’t I? The book said...”

Dash shrugged. “It just seems like a lot of effort for uh, flying solo.”

Twilight frowned. “Well what if it’s a unicorn thing? You can’t know for sure it’s a unicorn thing.”

Dash peered at her. “Right.”

“Silly filly,” Pinkie said. “You should do that in your room, not out in the open! When I was little Mrs Cake would always tell me—”

“Stop right there,” Twilight said, absolutely certain that she didn’t want to hear that sentence finished. “I would have used my room, but I was spell testing. I need at least eight feet of clearance on all sides, even for little things, ever since the incident with the carnivorous splinter beetles.”

Some of the red faded from Fluttershy’s cheeks as she approached. “Carnivorous splinter—”

Twilight waved a hoof. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. Those beetles were harmless. Now if you three could leave me alone for a second, I’m fairly certain I’m sitting on a small puddle.”

Fluttershy’s pupils shrank and her blush returned immediately. “Eww,” Pinkie Pie said in an unserious tone.

Rainbow Dash blinked. “A puddle? Come on, Twilight.”

Twilight gave her a flat look. “I’ve been at this for three hours, Rainbow Dash.”

“Huh? That’s not even—”

“It is for me. It’s a unicorn thing. Now you two should probably take Fluttershy outside before she faints.”

The three of them left, Fluttershy breathing something about how sorry she was for intruding, and Twilight let out a sigh as soon as the door closed.

She was surprised at how mild their reaction had been. Sure, Fluttershy had been too stricken to speak—and perhaps Twilight should have handled the situation more tactfully with her in the room—but Rainbow Dash had taken it all in stride. In retrospect, Twilight shouldn’t have been particularly surprised. The mare had a strange set of priorities sometimes, and she probably just saw stigmatizing sex as ultimately useless. Pinkie Pie, of course, didn’t care.

She wondered about her other friends. Would Rarity have considered Twilight’s admission scandalous? Would Applejack have seen it as a breach of propriety? She’d once thought it wasn’t an okay thing to talk about with any of her friends. Exactly how open-minded were they?

Still, it had been a terribly awkward situation, and not one that Twilight was interested in repeating. She’d have to be more careful in the future. And she also ought to apologize.

Twilight pulled the remnants of the book from her shadow and placed them atop a nearby desk. Then she followed her friends outside.

“Hey girls,” she said to them. “I’m really sorry about what happened back there. I didn’t mean anybody to—”

“No problem, Twilight!” Dash said, giving her a pat on the back. “A mare’s got needs.”

Twilight nodded. “Right then. How about that picnic?”

-

It was, all in all, a good picnic and an excellent afternoon. The previous topic of conversation was tactfully steered away from in favor, and life went on the way it normally did with her friends—messily and unpredictably. But there was a definite appeal to a day without nightly escapades and darker powers. A day of Twilight Sparkle.

But the day passed into night, and Twilight once again moved to the small clearing of the everfree where she expected to meet her carriage. Instead she found Princess Luna.

Who, ignorant of any and all visual cliches, stood in the center of a single shaft of moonlight observing her reflection in a pond.

“Good night, my Dark Apprentice.”

“Evening, Mistress...” Twilight said slowly. “Are... lessons to be held out here tonight?”

“Indeed,” said Luna, making a sinuous stretch that turned Twilight’s brain to different subjects entirely. Stupid divinity. “But first I must explain the nature of our lesson.”

She walked across the surface of the pond, her hooves making only the lightest ripples. Pegasus magic, Twilight wondered? Or something else? Regardless Luna came to circle her.

“I gave you power, Twilight Sparkle. Power that you shy away from. Last night you refused to hit me.”

“I don’t see why that’s a problem. Do unto others as you would have done to yourself. Celestia’s rule. And it follows from the exception that proves the rule to not do unto others as you would not have done to yourself.”

Luna gave a careless shrug and said in a voice totally unlike her usual cool tone: “Sometimes I like to be struck.”

Twilight’s pupils narrowed to points. Sweet Celestia’s Burning Blood and...

“But that is neither here nor there,” Luna said in her usual voice. “Tonight you will begin to learn the limits of your power, and in time you will come to know them with flawless exactitude.” She continued to pace around Twilight, all animal grace and poise.

“I have decided that fighting is not in you, Twilight Sparkle, not in the way I would require. And so your talents must be flexed in another fashion.”

Luna crouched down, a predator about to pounce...

Twilight swallowed as she realized she was the prey.

Luna grinned. “Run.”

-

And so it was that exactly ten minutes after dawn Twilight stomped back into the library covered in mud, branches and dirt, having spent an entire night playing the most panic inducing, terrifyingly fast game of tag she’d ever played with the immortal princess of the night.

She’d run into trees. And rocks. And the various monsters of the Everfree Forest, which had hardly been worth a second glance compared to the dark shape of Luna hurtling after her through the ridiculously dense underbrush, barely a sight or a sound.

She’d teleported. She’d shadowrouted. She’d bounded thirty feet into the air. She had, on the spur of a very poor decision, climbed a tree and done her best to stay quiet.

And she’d been caught again and again.

Always, Princess Luna would pin her to the ground and grin, and always the prey-like fear that drove her on would instantly fade, only to rekindle itself as soon as the chase began anew. If it was magic Luna was using, it was not any magic Twilight understood or knew.

It had not been the most enjoyable night as the Dark Apprentice. After all that physical activity Twilight just wanted to sit down read a book. She was working on a report of the relative boom in linguistic development in the seventh century for Princess Celestia, and historical reports to Celestia always merited extra research. The princess had, after all, lived through pretty much all of it.

But first she’d take a shower. She couldn’t show up dirty and unkempt to Pinkie Pie’s party, after all...