The Essence of Magic

by Acermanta

Rating: teen
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Luna, Tragedy, Adventure, Princess Celestia, Pinkie Pie
Length: 2935

Twilight follows the advice of Pinkie and winds up in a rather strange situation.

While researching the inner workings of Magic, Twilight gets some unexpected help from Pinkie and everything goes wrong.

*Updates are likely going to be really slow, sorry in advance*

Published 2012-08-26 23:54:03 UTC
Last updated 2013-04-22 08:14:38 UTC

Prologue

Dear Princess Celestia

Something has gone terribly wrong.

I will meet you soon.

Your faithful student,

Twilight Sparkle

Princess Celestia looked away from the scroll back to the purple pony that lied at the steps to her throne and let her gaze rest upon her familiar violet eyes. Sunlight streamed from behind the throne, casting Celestia’s features in a cold, unforgiving shadow.

“Come Twilight Sparkle, follow me.” Twilight silently got up and followed a wordless, cryptic Celestia through the maze-like passages of the royal castle. Much to Twilight’s surprise, Celestia had halted in front of her personal chambers. Celestia beckoned Twilight in and sat down next to her in front of a warm fireplace.

“So tell me my faithful student; what happened?”

Twilight looked up at Celestia and slowly began to speak.

“Well…” Twilight paused to gather her thoughts “It all started when I decided I was due for a new research topic. I was reading through some of my books on magic and noticed something; although there was a massive number of works about how to use magic and the theory behind how it works, there was very little about why it works or where it comes from.”

***One Week Earlier***

A cry of frustration followed by a muffled thump could be heard late one night coming from the bottom floor of the large tree that served as a library in the small town of Ponyville.

“You know Twilight, throwing those books around won’t help you find whatever it is you’re looking for,” called Spiked from upstairs in his small bed.

“I know Spike, it’s just... Urgh!” Twilight’s frustration was obvious on her face as she stomped up the stairs to glare at Spike.

Spike let out a sigh, “You always get like this when you're stuck on something, have you considered taking a break?”

“I have no time for a break Spike! I’m this close to figuring it all out! I can’t...”

“No, forget I asked.” Spike interrupted “ Do you even know when the last time you met with your friends was? Weeks, Twilight! Tomorrow you will go outside and you will spend some time with your friends!”

Twilight grumbled to herself as she retreated to her room to collapse onto her bed.

* * * *

The next morning, Twilight was drawn from her bed by the smell of breakfast.

“Good morning Twilight! Sleep well?” called a rather cheerful dragon from the kitchen. After receiving nothing more than a deathly stare in return he decided it was best to let Twilight drink her coffee before he bothered her.

“So what was it that had you all in a study frenzy yesterday?” Spike asked a less tired Twilight after she had finished her third cup of coffee.

“Well, I was stuck on the problem of how exactly unicorns get their magic. As I’ve found out, it’s a rather difficult problem that most scholars have just kind of gone around rather than actually solve.”

“Doesn’t it come from their horn?”

“A common misconception Spike; most ponies used to think the same thing but a long time ago Star Swirl the Bearded discovered that a unicorn's horn does nothing more than control magic and that the actual source of magic lies elsewhere. That was the last major study into the origin of magic; it seems most ponies only care about what they can do with it rather than where it comes from...”

Spike scratched his head and shrugged.

“Well anyways, it’s about time for you to head over to the Sugarcube Corner”

Twilight stared at Spike in confusion, “For what?”

Spike sighed, “To meet your friends. While you were busy catching up on sleep, I decided to organize a meet up with your friends at Sugarcube Corner to make sure you couldn’t get out of your day off.

Twilight glared at him before rolling her eyes and giving him a wicked smile, “Well I best be off then. Since I won’t be all day thanks to you, I want you to reshelf the entire magic theory section of the library.”

* * * *

On arriving at Sugarcube Corner, Twilight quickly found herself at the business end of Rarity’s brush.

“My goodness Twilight; what have you done with your mane? You simply cannot learn can you…” chided Rarity as she worked her way through the knots that had accumulated in Twilight’s mane over the past few weeks.

“Hehe... A few long nights I guess…”

“Up studying again?”

Twilight nodded, slightly embarrassed.

“Spike kicked you out again to force you to take a break?”

“Yeah...”

As the morning passed into afternoon, the rest of Twilight’s friends had managed to make their way into the bakery. Pinkie Pie was in the kitchen, Rarity and Fluttershy were gossiping over at a table and Rainbow Dash was telling a rather bored Applejack about her latest new trick.

Fluttershy excused herself from Rarity and walked over to Twilight “Hey Twilight… When Spike invited us to this he said you needed a break from your research… Umm, so what was it that got you all worked up? If you don’t mind me asking that is...” she meekly asked.

“Oh not at all Fluttershy. I was just trying to figure out how Unicorns get their magic.”

All of a sudden a flour covered Pinkie Pie stuck her head out of the kitchen and shouted “Harmony!”

“Huh?” Everypony in the bakery turned to look at the strange pink pony.

“Pinkie, what in Celestia’s name do you mean by that?” asked a shocked Twilight.

“I mean Unicorns are in harmony with magic! You know, like Earth ponies with the earth and Pegasi with the air?”

Everypony stared at the normally quite silly pony standing in front of them in shock. Rarity was the first to speak up.

“But Darling, how can all other unicorns be “in harmony” with magic when only Twilight is the element of harmony for magic?”

“Because she’s more in tune with magic, duh.” and with that dismissive statement Pinkie walked back into the kitchen to resume whatever it was she had been working on before.

After a moment of silence Rainbow Dash broke out into laughter soon followed by the rest of the witnesses to this rare moment of Pinkie being serious except for Twilight, whose face slowly changed to an expression of comprehension and surprise. She hastily said her goodbyes before bolting out of the bakery leaving the rest of the group behind.

* * * *

“It all beginning to make sense now! If Pinkie is correct and Unicorns use magic through a harmonic link with it then it has to exist in some form or another. We know that magic does not exist here in the physical realm so as weird as it sounds, magic must exist in some sort of parallel plane or dimension.” Twilight began to pace around her room as her mind started piecing together the puzzle of where magic came from.

“We also know from Star Swirl’s research into the matter that a unicorn’s horn controls the flow of their magic. Therefore, it must be the horn that acts as the link between the two realms. But how does that link function?”

As Twilight finished that train of thought, Pinkie Pie burst from her closet, “Does nopony listen to me? I said ‘Harmony’!” and with that, Pinkie hopped out the window.

Too wrapped up in thought to pay attention to Pinkie’s odd manner of exit, Twilight resumed her pacing of the room. “Well, if we attribute the linking to a harmony between the hypothetical magical plane and a horn, it could explain the differences in every unicorn’s latent magical ability; if a unicorn has less harmony with the plane, there is going to be some interference with the link, limiting the throughput.”

Twilight stepped out of the groove in the ground she was forming and slumped down against a wall with a groan, “This hypothesis is all well and good but how could I ever prove it?”

Spike, who had been listening in on Twilight’s rambling, decided on that moment to step in, “Why don’t you just teleport there? You said it was plane or something like that right?”

Twilight jumped in surprise and turned to face Spike “Well… yeah, but for me to teleport somewhere, I need to know where it is…”

Spike rubbed his chin in thought; after years of being Twilight’s research assistant he had learnt a thing or two about magic theory, “You have a link to that plane right? Can’t you just follow that?”

Twilight leaped to hooves, “Spike! You’re a genius!” she ran over to give her favorite dragon a hug, “Although other ponies might not be able to sense the link because of the interference, I should be able to not only find it but follow it! Spike, grab your supplies; you’re going to be recording everything that happens.”

As soon as he returned, Twilight sat down in middle of the library and began to search her mind for a link at the source of her magic and soon enough she found it. “Spike, start writing. I have found the link to my hypothesized plane of magic; it was located in my mind at the center of where I draw my magic from and was disguised to blend in with the surrounding energy. Without knowing what to look for, the link would be imperceptible to me and probably impossible to any other unicorn even with knowledge of the link. I am now starting to trace the link and form a teleport spell.”

Spike continued to jot down observations as Twilight clenched her eyes shut in concentration and her horn began to glow with a bright lilac. Her horn glowed brighter and brighter and in a flash of light, she disappeared.

* * * *

Just moments later, she reappeared in what, at first glance, appeared to be the exact same room she was just in; even Spike was still standing there.
“Spike, it appears that the teleport has failed. I’m going to recuperate momentarily before trying it again. Can you fetch me a glass of water?” Spike however, continued to stand there with a worried face as he glanced around the room. As Twilight looked around the room and at last noticed something was off; there was not a single shadow anywhere in the room. While she pondered over this curiosity and whether or not it meant her spell had worked, Spike had decided that she had been gone long enough and it was time to write to the princess.

Twilight jumped in surprise as the cloud of magical smoke and ash from Spike’s letter was not the traditional green but rather bright lavender! All around Spike’s flame were ripples of that same lavender light, flowing around where it had been long after the flame had disappeared. Twilight walked over to touch the letter that was still moving through the room towards the window. As she touched it dissolved into nothingness and her mind was filled with a single thought.

She, Twilight Sparkle, was right!

* * * *

Twilight gasped in amazement as she stepped outside the library. Everywhere around magic glowed. By now, Twilight had figured out that her spell had worked and that her hypothesis was right; there was a plane that acted as the source of all magic in Equestria, but she had never expected how much it interacted with everypony. All around her, ponies were simply glowing with the same lavender light; some were brighter than others but everypony of all races glowed nonetheless.

Twilight briefly took the moment to look down at herself and noticed something she wasn’t quite sure how she hadn’t noticed it before; not only was she somehow floating just outside the window of the library’s top floor, but she couldn’t see herself. Twilight was not known for dealing with impossible very well; she ran back inside the library and stormed down the stairs to start research. Her horn started to glow with telekinesis as she attempted to grab a book before she was thrown back by the ensuing explosion.

* * * *

Twilight regained consciousness around an hour later; the library was a mess, Spike had disappeared and she was still stuck in the plane of magic. As she walked around Ponyville to get her mind off the mess she would have to clean up, she had managed to figure out a couple of things. The first thing was that her spell had teleported into the magic rather than to the same place as it; Twilight wasn’t quite sure yet of all the side effects of this yet except that trying to use magic made large explosions and that although she had first interpreted it as ‘seeing’, she was actually ‘feeling’ everything around her. Next was that she had no idea how to get back to her plane of existence without using magic. It was time to start experimenting.

Twilight’s brain was going as fast as it could as she linked everything she had learnt about magic to what she had skimmed from her time here. First thing on her agenda was to try moving something not part of what was normally her body; if she really was now part of the magic here, she should be able to exert some sort of control over it.

Twilight took a solid stance and tried to feel out the rest of her, before clenching her eyes shut and squeezing in front of her. She slowly opened her eyes to see a spot of glowing light in front of her, she sighed in relief, let go of the magic and got tossed backwards in another explosion.

As Twilight got back up she put together her new knowledge. The explosions were caused by magic being compacted into a single spot and being released rapidly; when she had tried to move a book earlier, her horn must have created a rapid buildup and release of magic. She also was now sure of what had happened to her; she had become magic. Next on her list of things to try was an old trick from when she was just starting to learn magic. Magic didn't come quite as easily before as it did now so Celestia had taught her to think of magic as a muscle; when she wanted to do a spell, she had to bend it into the right shape. Maybe Celestia knew more about this place than she let on…

Twilight thought back to her Telekinesis spell and slowly began to move the magic around her into the right shape and lift something. Much to her surprise, it had worked. Now she was had a solution for her biggest problem; she could now get back home. It wasn’t going to be easy, she had never tried to envision such a big spell as a teleportation spell as a movement before and she had no link to follow back home, but it was at least plausible now. She glanced over to her right to see and feel another unicorn picking something up. Something clicked in her mind; all she had to do was follow somepony else’s link back home!

Teleportation was less like a single muscle being clenched and more like many muscles working together to push you as Twilight soon found out. After many failed attempts and explosions leaving a small hill outside Ponyville a rather deep crater, Twilight felt confident enough to try it on a unicorn’s link. There was only one unicorn she trusted enough to try this on: Rarity; as she entered Rarity’s boutique she came across one of the missing pieces of her puzzle, Spike was curled up in the corner of the room while Rarity worked. Twilight prepared the spell and as Rarity lifted a roll of silk she was surprised to find Twilight surge through her horn and burst into existence in front of her.

* * * *

As Twilight looked around she knew something had changed with her. She was definitely back in her Equestria, she could see herself now but everyone still glowed with magic; she could see the underlying magic behind everything still! There was much experimenting to be done; but before that, there was a rather startled white mare to be dealt with.

“Umm, hey Rarity… Sorry about that…” mumbled a slightly sheepish Twilight.

“It was nothing darling, but look at you! How in Celestia’s name did you manage to snag yourself a pair of wings like that? Although, judging from what wittle Spikey-wikey was telling me, they’re not from Equestria are they?” tutted Rarity.

Twilight gasped as turned her head around. There on her back were a pair of brand new wings; slowly unfurling in surprise. She turned back to Rarity, “Rarity, you have to pinkie promise me not to tell anyone about my wings.”

“But darling, they simply look marve―”

“Not. A. Soul. Rarity”

Rarity rolled her eyes at Twilight, “Fine dear, cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye. Happy?”

Twilight nodded rapidly at Rarity before turning away, “I have to go write a letter, I’ll hopefully talk to you again.”

Rarity stared at Twilight as she ran back towards the Library. A weary Spike woke up in the corner and looked at Rarity before saying, “What did I miss?”

Author's Note

So, the new Prologue is up and it's time to finish writing chapter 1. Hopefully it'll be up before my exams start.