The One Who Could Not Die
Rain battered heavy on the window, the incessant sound a monotonous background inside the room. Twilight Sparkle was lying in bed, a book opened before her, but she found it hard to concentrate on it enough to read. It wasn't the rain that was distracting her though.
Two months. It had already been two months. Twilight closed her book and turned the light off, then tried to sleep.
"Hey, Twilight!" Rainbow called out to her friend.
Twilight looked up at the pegasus with tired, half-closed eyes. "Hi, Rainbow," she replied with a yawn.
The blue pegasus landed in front of her. "So, is Starlight back yet?" she asked.
"No, Rainbow," Twilight replied, her head nodding off.
Rainbow noticed a steaming cup of coffee floating in mid air, the purple glow around it dangerously close to fading out. With a jump she caught it in her hooves just as it was beginning to fall to the ground, and after placing it on the floor she gently nudged Twilight awake, the alicorn having fallen asleep on the floor.
Twilight looked up at the pegasus with clouded eyes, then silently grabbed the cup and drank the coffee. "Thank you," she said afterwards, "and sorry about that."
"No problem," Rainbow replied. "Say, Twilight, is this thing supposed to take this long?"
Twilight got up, closing and opening her eyes to properly wake up. "No, I don't think so. Starlight said it was going to take a month at most. But I don't know, maybe something came up that forced her to delay the test. That sort of thing can always happen."
Rainbow began to nervously walk around. "What is it exactly that she's doing there, anyway?"
Twilight shrugged. "No idea. She told me she wanted it to be a surprise, so I'm just as clueless as you are about this."
Rainbow stopped to look at Twilight. "Did she really tell you nothing at all? Like, nothing nothing?"
"Well, I mean, I know what she took with her." Twilight began to walk around. "I know what she was reading before she left. I could probably figure out the general theme of her test by that, but it doesn't help me that much. It could be anything from a species-selective barrier or camouflage spell to an attempt at creating a cooking spell. All I know for sure is she needed a lot of magic, but whether it's for many small tests or few big ones I can't tell."
Rainbow fidgeted with her hooves, nervous. "So, are we going to wait or... should we go check on her?"
"I don't know, Rainbow, Starlight's not the best when it comes to estimating how much time something will take, and here we might be talking about something completely new. Maybe we would just annoy her. She wanted it to be a secret, after all," Twilight said, looking at the floor, still a little sleepy.
"I don't know, Twi. This whole thing rubs me the wrong way. I think you should go check on her, make sure that she's alright. She might not have enough food supplies, and if she's anything like you she might forget that she needs to eat while she's caught up in her work. I mean, it's not like it can hurt to go there, just talk to her if she doesn't want to show anything yet."
"I guess you have a point. I'll go check on her later."
"You might want to take a nap before you go."
"Yeah," Twilight yawned, "I think I will."
"You don't mind if I stay in the castle today, right?"
"No problem."
Twilight knocked on the door once more. Nothing, not even the echo of her knocks. The sky was dark and the wind was howling, and the first drops of rain began to fall. Twilight shook her head and decided to enter.
The first thing she noticed was the smell. It was like the place had been kept locked for weeks, and there was a faint hint of something burned, too. The second thing she noticed was the state the room was in, noticeable even through the lack of light sources. Broken chairs, a shattered mirror, the painting that was once hanging above the fireplace torn from the wall, now resting in pieces on the ground. Black stains were around the fireplace's structure and in front of it, like a fire inside it had gone out of control.
"Starlight!" Twilight called, worried, but no sound answered back.
She walked up to the rest of the painting, trying to figure out what had happened, and lifted up one of the pieces with her magic. Her own eye stared back from the canvas, seemingly ripped out rather than cut away. She remembered the hours spent posing for that thing when Celestia and Luna had demanded that she followed the tradition of getting an official royal painting. She'd never liked the end result, she felt it showed her as too detached from normal ponies, which was why she'd decided to put it in the mansion Celestia had gifted her with rather than in her castle.
When Starlight had asked for a place where she could conduct experiments in isolation that had seemed like the perfect place to send her to. At a short distance from Ponyville, relatively isolated but still easily accessible, not only was it a very comfortable house to live in but also one possessing a rather well equipped laboratory, courtesy of Celestia herself. Twilight had never really used the place, preferring to stay in her castle in Ponyville, so she'd seen no reason not to send Starlight there.
The purple alicorn nervously looked around deciding where she should have headed to next, and in doing so she bumped against something with her hoof. She looked down, squinting, and picked the object up with her magic. It appeared to be a syringe, the needle bent and stained with a purple coloured substance. Something had been written on the side of it, but the ink had been smudged.
Lifting her eyes, Twilight thought she saw a light flickering in the corridor in front of her, and having no better lead she decided to follow it. After walking through a hallway in as messy of a state as the room she'd left she passed over the rests of a wooden door and entered another room. It had once been a living room, if she recalled correctly, but all the furniture had been moved out. The only things remaining were a series of candle stumps on the ground and a lectern, standing in the middle of the room with a closed red book on top of it.
Twilight walked up to the book and opened it, beginning to read.
Day 0
I've arrived today at 6:17 p.m.
I will be preparing the materials in the lab tonight
Testing will officially begin tomorrow
Day 1
The lab has been set up, everything seems to work fine
The heating had to be fixed, tell Twilight about it
Day 3
Preliminary tests completed
Day 5
The central matrix keeps short-circuiting, haven't found a way to deal with it yet
Project might be delayed by a couple of days
Day 7
Fixed the matrix
Day 10
Phase 1 completed, will begin phase 2 tomorrow
Day 11
First attempt to imbue magic in an inanimate object successful
Running out of ink
Day 17
All attempts successful
Phase 3 will begin tomorrow
Day 20
33 attempts, all unsuccessful
Day 25
Managed to successfully complete the project on a plant of poison joke
Previous failures might have to be attributed to a lack of a system able to support magic
Day 26
Successfully replicated yesterday's results by implanting artificial systems in other plants
Despite the way my previous theory has been disproved, I have decided to proceed with phase 4. I told Twilight I would be finished in a month. Minor corrections to the equation I was previously using should suffice.
Day 27
Implant successful
Day 28
It hurts. It shouldn't hurt like this. Hard seeing things.
NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO
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PA OBYAZ
Day 40
The final test was a failure
Destroyed most of the furniture while in shock
Out of ink
Day 45
Still deteriorating
It appears the system was incompatible
Occasional memory loss
Day 50
Still alive
It still hurts
Maybe a different vessel could survive the procedure without consequences
Day 51
Found moved objects in the house
Might be experiencing temporary loss of control
ejf fkg glh hmi inj zcoromnz
I don't remember writing this
Need to investigate further
Day 55
Waiting no longer seems like a valid option
Rearranged the laboratory
Sufficient supplies for further testing
Day 63
Found a test subject
Twilight recoiled from the book. Then she moved closer again. There was something weird about the last page. She touched it and found the writing was still wet. A sudden sound to her left made her turn, but she didn't have time to see what was coming towards her before she was hit.
"Wake up Twilight!"
Twilight slowly opened her eyes and adjusted to the dim light in the room. She tried to get up, but found her hooves were restrained, and something was preventing her from using her magic. From her position, lying on her back on a cold surface, she could only see a portion of the ceiling. "Starlight?" she called.
"Oh, finally awake I see," came a voice behind her.
"Starlight! What happened here?" Twilight asked, trying to crane her neck to look behind her.
The sound of hoofsteps getting closer came from behind the alicorn. "Nothing much. Just a failed experiment."
As Starlight's voice moved closer to her, Twilight's head was forced to look left by the unicorn's magic.
"You see, Twilight," Starlight said from the alicorn's right, "it turns out that a normal unicorn's body is unable to integrate artificially introduced magic. The results aren't pretty, trust me. I'm going to release your head now, but I would advise you to not look at me. And sorry about restraining you and drugging you, I couldn't risk you accidentally attacking me."
Twilight felt the magic around her head dissipate. She immediately turned towards Starlight, and she regretted her choice just as quickly.
White. It was the first thing she realized wasn't supposed to be there, before her brain accepted what she was seeing. That, and the black around it, where the flesh was still rotting away to reveal the bones below. It was on her right leg and on the left part of her jaw, and some more on her chest. It wasn't the only black thing on her. Chunks of hair and skin, most of which had began to become pale, had been burned. There was black on other parts too, mostly mixed with the red of the dried up blood. The most prominent wounds were on the back, visible even from the front.
Starlight stared back with her only remaining eye, the right one now just an empty socket. "It's weird, you know? This thing is eating away at my body, but it's also keeping me alive. Quite well, you might have seen in the main hall how I tried to end this by myself. I wonder what would happen if I waited long enough, if I'd become a ghost."
Twilight was speechless.
"Well, I guess I'll find out eventually. It's been nice seeing you, T-" Starlight stumbled backwards. She started coughing and disappeared from Twilight's view, and she was heard knocking something over.
"Starlight!" Twilight called.
The unicorn walked back. "Shh, please. You wouldn't want to wake her up, would you? She doesn't know I'm here, after all."
Twilight looked confused.
"Now, now, I think we can finally begin." Starlight pulled up a small cart with a tray full of syringes and a cable connected to something out of Twilight's vision.
"Starlight? What are you doing?" Twilight asked, her voice shaking.
"Experimenting, of course. I'm fairly sure that an alicorn would be able to survive this with no consequences. And if I'm right, then we could implant everypony with a copy of your systems. A bit more intrusive than my original plan, but it will still work out in the end." Starlight lifted a syringe and began to levitate it towards Twilight.
Instinctively, Twilight pushed it away with her magic, and the syringe flew away. "Starlight, stop this!"
Starlight looked briefly confused. "Impressive. Your body was able to process all of the inhibitor I gave you in such a short time. I'm sure this experiment will be a success." She began to walk towards the syringe, but while she was picking it up she stopped. "Twilight?" she called, her voice cracking.
"Starlight?" Twilight replied.
"What was I doing?"
"You tried to inject me with that."
The bonds restraining Twilight flew open. Starlight looked at her right leg. "How long have I been away from Ponyville?" she asked.
"Two months," Twilight replied while getting up.
"Run."
Twilight turned towards the unicorn. "Starlight, what-"
A jar was launched towards her and she just narrowly dodged it. Looking down at it she saw an eye floating inside it. She looked at Starlight and saw the unicorn charging at her, her remaining eye of an empty white, growls coming from her throat. She tried to teleport away, but part of the drug still in her system stopped her. Starlight was now very close to her, and Twilight reflexively used her magic to smash the cart on the unicorn's side.
Starlight fell to the ground, and in the impact one of the syringes planted itself in her neck. The unicorn stumbled while trying to get back up, and in the commotion one of her hooves landed on the tip of the cable. She began to scream, and her body began to glow of a bright blue light, parts of it appearing as if they were being consumed.
Twilight ran away from there, grabbing the jar with her as proof. On her way out she took the diary she'd found, too, and as soon as she got out of the front door she headed towards Ponyville, despite the incessant rain.
Twilight ran away.
"Twilight!" Rainbow said, opening the door.
The alicorn walked in, unable to form a coherent sentence. She simply passed the book to Rainbow and sat down, the jar still held in her magic.
Rainbow looked at the thing and began to read it. "Twilight, I wanted to tell you-"
She was interrupted by a sound from the other side of the room. "Hi Twilight," Starlight said, poking out from the bag she was carrying.
"-Yeah, she came back while you were away. Anyway, why did you give me this? You know I can't read your writing."
Twilight's jar fell to the ground, shattering, and the violet eye inside it rolled on the floor.
Twilight's jar fell
Twilight
~~Starlight~~
Twilight
Twilight
Twilight screamed
"We're losing her!"
...rebooting
Rain battered heavy on the window, the incessant sound a monotonous background inside the corpse. Twilight Sparkle was lying in bed, a book closed before her, but she found it hard to concentrate on it ~~enough~~ to read. It was~~n't~~ the rain that was distracting her ~~though~~.
Two months. It had already been two months weeks days hours centuries. Twilight closed her eyes and turned the light on, then tried to ~~sleep~~ ~~sleep~~ ~~sleep~~ ~~sleep~~.
The ground swallowed them.
"Hey, Twilight!" Twilight called out to her friend.
Twilight looked up at the pegasus with tired, half-closed eye. "Hi, Rainbow," she replied with a yawn.
The blue pegasus landed in front of her. "So, is Twilight back yet?" she asked.
"No, Rainbow," Twilight replied, her head ~~falling~~ nodding off.
Rainbow noticed a steaming cup of coffee floating in mid air, the purple glow around it dangerously close to fading out. With a jump she caught it in her hooves just as it was beginning to fall to the ground, and the liquid poured over her body, burning and melting her skin away. After placing it on the floor she gently nudged Twilight awake, the alicorn having died in the burning hole.
Twilight looked up at the pegasus with clouded eyes, then silently grabbed the cup and drank the coffee. "Thank you," she said afterwards, "and sorry about that."
"No problem," Twilight replied. "Say, Twilight, is this thing supposed to take this long?"
Twilight got up, closing and opening her eye to properly wake up. "No, I don't think so. Starlight said it was going to take a month at most. But I don't know, maybe she died. That sort of thing can always happen."
Rainbow began to nervously crawl around. "What is it exactly that you're doing there, anyway?"
Twilight shrugged. "No idea. She told me she wanted it to be a surprise, so I'm just as clueless as you are about this."
Rainbow stopped to look at Twilight. "Did she really tell you nothing at all? Like, nothing nothing?"
"Well, I mean, I know what I took with me." Twilight began to walk around. "I know what I was reading before I left. I could probably figure out the general theme of my test by that, but it doesn't help me that much. It could be anything from a species-selective barrier or camouflage spell to an attempt at creating a new species. All I know for sure is I needed ~~a lot of magic, but whether it's for many small tests or few big ones I can't tell."~~ MORE TIME
Rainbow fidgeted with her hooves, nervous. "So,#wait#" wait wait wait
"I don't know, Rainbow, Starlight's not the best when it comes to estimating how much time something will take, and here we might be talking about something completely new. Maybe we would just annoy her. She wanted it to be a secret, after all," Twilight said, looking at the abyss, still a little sleepy.
You might not have enough food supplies, and if you're anything like you were you might forget that she needs to eat while you're caught up in her work. I mean, it's not like it can't hurt to go there, just force her if she doesn't want to show anything yet."
"I guess you have a point. I'll go check on her later."
"You might want to take a nap before you go."
"Yeah," Twilight yawned, "I think I will."
"You don't mind if I stay in the castle today, right?"
"No problem."
Rainbow impaled herself on a jutting piece of crystal.
Twilight knocked on the door once more. Nothing, not even the echo of her screams. The sky was dark and the wind was howling, and the first drops of blood began to fall. Twilight shook her head and decided to enter.
The first thing she noticed was the smell. It was like the place had been kept locked foryearss, and there was a faint hint of something burned, ~~too~~. The second thing she noticed was the smell, like somepony had died there ~~the room was in, noticeable~~#. Broken bones, a shattered mirror,
she hated that mirror
she was there, laughing back
the pony that was once hanging above the fireplace torn from the wall, now resting in pieces on the ground. Black stains were around the fireplace's structure and in front of it, like a fire inside it had gone out too soon.
~~"Starlight!" Twilight called, worried, but no sound answered back.~~
She walked up to the rest of the painting, trying to figure out what had happened, and lifted up one of the pieces with her magic. Her own eye stared back #, seemingly ripped out rather than cut away. She remembered the hours spent trying to get that thing off. She'd never liked the end result, she felt it showed her as too detached from normal ponies, which was why she'd decided to put it in the mansion Celestia had gifted her with rather than in her castle.
~~When Starlight had asked for~~ A place where she could conduct experiments in isolation. That had seemed like the perfect place to#. At a short distance from Ponyville, relatively isolated but still easily accessible, not only was it a very comfortable house to live in but also one possessing a rather well equipped laboratory, courtesy of Celestia herself. Twilight had never really used the place, preferring to stay in her castle in Ponyville, so she'd seen no reason not to send Starlight there.
The purple alicorn nervously looked around deciding where she should have headed to next, and in doing so she bumped against something with her hoof. She looked down, squinting, and picked the object up with her magic. It appeared to be a syringe, the needle bent and stained with a purple coloured substance after she'd smashed it against the wall behind the painting in a moment of lost control. Starlight had been written on the side of it, but the ink had been smudged.
Lifting her eyes, Twilight thought she saw a light flickering in the corridor in front of her, and having no better lead she decided to follow it. After walking through a hallway in as messy of a state as the room she'd left she passed over the rests of a ~~wooden~~ corpse ~~door~~ and entered another room. It had once been a living room, if she recalled correctly, but all the furniture had been moved out. The only things remaining were all the furniture # and a lectern, standing in the middle of the room with a red book on top of it.
Twilight walked up to the book and closed it, beginning to read.
Twilight recoiled from the book. Then she moved closer again. There was something weird about the last page. She touched it and found the writing was still wet. A sudden sound to her left made her turn, but she didn't have time to see what was coming towards her before she was hit.
"Wake up *light!"
*light slowly opened her eyes and adjusted to the dim light in the room. She tried to get up, but found her hooves were cut off, and something was preventing her from bleeding. From her position, lying on her back on a cold surface, she could only see a portion of the ceiling. "*light?" she called.
"Oh, finally awake I see," came a voice inside her.
"*light! What happened here?" *light asked, trying to break her neck to look behind her.
The sound of hoofsteps getting chopped came from behind the alicorn. "Nothing much. Just a failed experiment."
As *light's voice moved closer to her, *light's head was forced to look left by the unicorn's magic.
"You see, *light," *light said from the alicorn's right, "it turns out that a normal unicorn's body is unable to integrate artificially introduced magic. So is an alicorn's. So is every living creature. I should have stopped. The results aren't pretty, trust me. I'm going to release your head now, but I would advise you to look at yourself. And sorry about restraining you and drugging you, I couldn't risk you accidentally attacking me."
*light felt the magic around her dissipate. She immediately turned towards *light, and she regretted her choice just as quickly.
Black. It was the first thing she realized wasn't supposed to be there, before her brain accepted what she was seeing. That, and the white inside it, where the flesh was still rotting away to reveal the bones below. It was on her right leg and on the left part of her jaw, and some more on her chest. It wasn't the only black thing on her. Chunks of hair and skin, most of which had began to become pale, had been burned. There was black on other parts too, mostly mixed with the red of the dried up blood. #. It hurt so much.
*light stared back with her only remaining eye, the right one now just an empty socket. "It's weird, you know? This thing is eating away at my body, but it's also keeping me alive. Very interesting indeed. The excess magic in my system is consuming my physical structure, but it's in itself sufficient to keep my brain going. I would eventually become a creature of pure energy and thought. Trying to set myself on fire wasn't a smart idea."
The ground opened up, and fangs began to emerge. Worms began to crawl out, and they began to eat away their bodies. Molten lead was raining from the sky.
*light stumbled backwards. She started coughing and disappeared from *light's view, and she was heard falling and screaming.
~~"*light!" *light called.~~
The unicorn walked back. "Shh, please. You wouldn't want to wake her up, would you? She doesn't know I'm here, after all."
*light looked confused.
"Now, now, I think we can finally begin." *light pulled up a small cart with a tray full of syringes and a cable connected to the generator #.
"*light? What are you doing?" *light asked, her voice shaking.
"Experimenting, of course.
It should have worked.
It should have worked.
Why didn't it work?
And if I'm right, then we could implant everypony with a copy of our systems. ~~A bit~~ Far more intrusive than my original plan, but it will still work out in the end." *light lifted a syringe and began to levitate it towards *light.
Instinctively, *light pushed it away with her magic, and the syringe flew away. "*light, stop this!"
*light looked briefly confused. "Impressive. Your body was able to process all of the inhibitor I gave you in such a short time. I'm sure this experiment will be a success." She began to walk towards the syringe, but while she was picking it up she died. "*light?" she called, her voice cracking.
"*light?" *light replied.
"What was I doing?"
"You tried to kill yourself with that."
The bonds restraining *light flew open. *light looked at her right leg. "How long have I been away from Ponyville?" she asked.
"Two days," *light replied while getting up.
"Run."
*light turned towards the unicorn. "*light, what-"
A jar was launched towards her and she just narrowly grabbed it. Looking down at it she saw her eye floating inside it. She looked at *light and saw the unicorn charging at her, her remaining eye of an empty white, growls coming from her throat. She tried to teleport away, but the magic overloading her system stopped her. *light was now very close to her, and *light reflexively used her magic to smash the cart on her side.
*light fell to the ground, and in the impact one of the syringes planted itself in her neck. The unicorn stumbled while trying to get back up, ~~and in the commotion one of her hooves landed on the tip of the cable~~. She grabbed the cable and pushed it deep in her throat. She began to scream, and her body began to glow of a bright blue light, parts of it appearing as if they were being consumed.
*light ran away from there, grabbing the jar with her #. On her way out she took the diary she'd ~~written~~, too, and as soon as she got out of the front door she crawled towards Ponyville, ~~despite the incessant rain.~~
Twilight died that day.
"Twilight!" Rainbow said, opening the door.
The alicorn flowed in, unable to form a coherent shape. She simply passed the book to Rainbow and became a puddle on the floor, the jar still held in her magic.
Rainbow looked at the thing and began to eat it. "Twilight, I wanted to tell you-"
She was interrupted by a sound from the other side of the room. "Hi Twilight," Starlight said, poking out from the bag she was carrying and dragging her rotting carcass over that of Rainbow Dash.
"-Yeah, she came back while you were away. Anyway, why did you give me this? You know I can't read your writing."
Twilight's jar fell to the ground, shattering, and the violet eye inside it rolled on the floor.
It melted through the floor.
Twilight fell into the flames, her eye rolling around inside her.
"Hi Twilight," Twilight said, drinking her cup of blood.
In the laboratory
not when she'd first tried it out
trying again on Starlight
She knew
she knew
it wouldn't work
Twilight screamed
...rebooting
