Fetura: Celestia's Familiar

Stale. The air around her tasted stale. The sounds of birds chirping outside were the only thing that registered for her. Her body felt heavy, weak. Even the idea of moving felt like a horrible ordeal, she wanted to throw up but instead, she stayed still, unmoving, no desire to at all. Except to purge the stale taste from her mouth.

“Will Tia be okay?”

Luna?

“She should recover, but she’ll need more time,” Starswirl said. Celestia could hear him and her sister from right next to her, wherever she was. “Run along now, your mom is outside waiting.” He sounded tired. The sound of hooves slowly walking away followed before Starswirl spoke again in a hushed whisper “I need to find a way to get them out of her, and soon.”

Get what out? Celestia wondered. What was he talking about? Images of the previous events flashed by in her head. Pain shot through her just by the memories alone.

“C-Celestia? The spell is wearing off. Hold on.” The worried voice of Starswirl spoke out and just as quickly, sleep overcame her again.

“And you're certain there is no other way?”

“Either we remove them, or we medicate her. We can control it and she can birth them naturally.”

“Natura- She’s just a foal!”

“Would she survive the procedure?”

“It’s a risk. They’ve attached deep into her womb. Removing them could be just as dangerous. There could be complications, I mean we’ve never had a situation like this before.”

“Please. Please, you have to save my baby girl!”

“Excuse me, Doctor. I think she’s awake.”

“Celestia!?”

“Please stand back, we have to keep her sedated. Otherwise, it could make things worse.“

“Let me, doctor. My magic will be faster.”

“This isn’t happening. This is all one horrible nightma-”

The sun shined brightly through the window. The light was beaming directly into Celestia’s eyes. The filly slowly raised a hoof and covered her eyes. Her leg felt heavy and she lowered it again, rolling over and opening her eyes slowly, everything was just a blur at first, and she wondered where she was. It was dark but soon it all became clear that she was in a hospital room. Alone. No, there was a tiny filly at the foot of her bed covered by a blanket, a tuft of blue hair poking out. Celestia crawled over to the pony and gave them a gentle nudge.

“Luna?” She asked. The pony grumbled like they didn’t wanna be disturbed. Celestia grabbed the blanket. “Luna, wake up!” Luna sprung and pounced onto her. Celestia looked up at Luna’s face which had been replaced with a mass of wriggling tentacles.

She screamed!

Celestia screamed, sitting bolt right up in her bed.

“Tia?”

Celestia spun around in fright, grabbing ahold of her blankets, tightly pulling them close to her. Across the bed from her was her little sister Luna. Normal Luna, with her big blue eyes and not a face of tentacles.

“Luna?” She asked tentatively. The blue filly didn’t move, frozen from the reaction her sister just had. Celestia burst out into tears and then grabbed her sister, crying into her shoulder.

“Tia? What’s wrong. Are you hurt? You want me to get a doctor?” The filly asked worriedly.

The door then opened and Starswirl himself walked in, he saw Celestia was awake and rushed to her side.

“Dear Celestia, are you okay? Are you in pain?” He asked. The white filly pulled out of the hug and looked to Starswirl. She stared up at him with tears in her eyes.

“W-w-why?” Celestia asked. Starswirl tilted his head in confusion. “Why didn’t you come? You weren’t there! Why’d you let it hurt me so much?”

“I- I’m sorry… I couldn’t… I came as fast as I could.”

“No... No, go away! I hate you! I hate you!”

Celestia returned to hugging her sister and continued to cry. Luna returned her sister's hug as Starswirl stood stunned before he turned and walked out the room.

“Well the diagnosis is that she’s made a full recovery, physically. However, while the removal process was successful and should have no long-lasting effects, she may need to spend a lot of time with a foal counsellor. What she’s been through is… indescribable.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

The two ponies watched Celestia and Luna sitting together in a playroom, Luna clearly enjoying all of the toys and showing them off to Celestia as she sat on the floor, barely paying attention. The mare turned from the window, unable to watch anymore.

“Oh, my poor filly. What did you do that night? …Doctor, whatever did happen with those eggs?”

“Hmm, our records show that Starswirl has taken the embryos and properly disposed of them.”

“Thank goodness. Starswirl blames himself for this entire situation. If we only were in the castle, we could have stopped this!”

“You shouldn’t blame yourselves. You couldn’t have known something like this was even possible.” The Doctor said trying to reassure her. “Your daughter has much more magical potential then we could ever have expected. A spell such as this should have been impossible for her to cast at her age. She’s special. Mark my words, she’ll make it through this.”

“And this one is a Moonbear. Rawww!” Luna continued to show off more of the toys, trying to get her sister to play with them but she wasn’t listening. She had been here now for two weeks, including the 5 days she'd been kept sedated. Celestia kept recalling images of that night, how it all seemed to keep going on forever and ever. The pain, how much it hurt… and how good it felt. She lowered a hoof to between her legs absentmindedly, touching herself where it had penetrated her all those nights ago. The doctors had told her that all the damage caused by the Fetura had been treated and she was healed. Yet, that couldn’t be right. She felt… empty.

Luna ran up to her sister making the bear fly like a spaceship. Celestia quickly snatched her hoof away from her fillybits, hoping the still innocent minded filly didn’t notice. She didn't really understand what had happened to her, only that she got hurt. Then something else came to her mind, something that she'd never gotten an answer to yet, but they were alone now. She could finally ask her.

“Hey, Luna.” Celestia spoke quietly. “When you left to go get Starswirl... Why were you gone so long?”

Luna stopped running at that and sat down, she made the bear stand on its legs as she nervously wobbled it about.

“Well… I left to go get the professor, like you said, but he wasn’t in his room. So I kept looking and looking, I found him in the basement but, the door was locked. I banged on the door but he didn’t answer. I saw him through the keyhole though. He was doing a lot of magic spells like you did. As soon as he saw me, he came out and I told him what was happening and then he ran with me to save you.”

Celestia squinted as she looked at her sister.

“He didn’t teleport? Wait, what do you mean, the spell I was doing?”

“Yeah. With the portal and the ten-tickles thingy.” Luna continued to absentmindedly play with the toy. Celestia stepped over to take the moonbear away. “Hey!”

“Luna, tell me about the portal he had. Was the Fetura attacking him too? “

“N-no. It was… It seemed more like he was letting it through the portal.”

Celestia’s mind was racing. What did that mean?

The basement was dark with only a single candle glowing. Starswirl was adding notes to his booklet as he cast spells over an object in a tray.

“Day 14: The specimen has taken a darker form and seems to be developing sprouts which release magic altering spores. Smaller bumps along the tendril seem to show perhaps a possible defence if matured long enough.”

A faint gurgling sound came from behind the unicorn. He turned to look at the source of the noise.

“Easy my pet, you still need your rest. You over-exerted yourself last time.”

Starswirl took the tray in his magic and carried it over to another table placing it down next to two other trays. Each had a pile of what could only be described as black vines, each crawling around on each other.

“Seems your eggs are more like seeds. Especially when mixed with Alicorn DNA. I’ve never seen anything like it. Why I bet if we could get a few more of these, we could use them to help defend Equestria. An unstoppable fighting plant that could hold back armies. Could you imagine it?”

The groaning noise echoed through the room again.

“Well no, they aren’t nearly big enough yet. But these were the most successful yet. We’ve just been going about this all wrong. Unicorn mares just aren’t strong enough. Nor are pegasi or earth ponies. But an Alicorn… that’s a different deal altogether.”

Another groaning noise followed, Starswirl turned to face the creature.

“Yes, I’m aware of the risks. We’re lucky we didn’t allow these to birth naturally inside of the poor filly. If these had grown inside her, she would not have survived. But there’s no denying that these vines grew stronger just by being housed inside her womb. It’s amazing what these princesses are capable of.”

The Fetura weakly reached out a tentacle to Starswirl, but he used his magic to place it back into the glass tank.

“Now now, none of that. You need to rebuild your strength.”

The stallion walked away and headed over to his desk.

“After all…” Starswirl reached up onto the shelf and pulled down a framed picture of himself, Celestia and Luna. “There’s still more test subjects available.”