I think it’s fair to say Princess Twilight knows herself pretty well. Which is to say, she also knows me pretty well. So when I came through the mirror portal asking to access certain restricted magical texts from her library, she must have known something was up. Which, to be fair, it was. I was on the verge of achieving some really out-there science. Learning was in the air. I could smell it. No doubt she could, too.
She might have also seen something in the look on my face. My friends say I get all weird when I start hyperfocusing on one thing. They say I look “spooky.”
I don’t think I look spooky. I think the word they’re looking for is “obsessed.” And that’s not a bad thing in my book. But perhaps it is a noticeable thing. Because when she greeted me to show me to the library, she went from all smiles to all worry.
And when we got to the library, she wouldn’t leave my side, not even for a moment. Whenever I grabbed a book, her eyes flashed across the cover. Every page I turned, she was there too, reading over my shoulder. After a few hours, the extra set of eyes really started to make my skin crawl.
“Do you mind giving me some room?” I asked after the forty-sixth consecutive minute of non-consensual observation.
“What? More room?” Twilight giggled in an entirely unfunny way. Her breath warmed my shoulder. “You’ve got plenty of room. Look at all this room you’ve got!” She stuck out her tongue. “See? I’m not even within licking distance.”
I couldn’t argue with her licking distance point, so I dropped it and went back to studying.
Things took a turn for the worse when I found the section on relativity--specifically, Rover Clover’s “Time Out! Relativity and Magic in the Modern Era.”
Before I could even set the book down, Twilight snatched it up with her magic. “I don’t think that’s the one you’re looking for,” she said.
“I think it is,” I replied, and grabbed it back.
She yielded, but in a flash more books appeared in front of me. “What about these? Friendship studies, social influence, coupon books for shopping--I think these are what you really need.” In the flurry of pages, I noticed her slip the book on relativity back onto the shelf.
“Twilight,” I said in my sternest voice. “What are you doing?”
“Helping!”
“Well, all this help is really hindering my studies. Could you please let me handle this?”
“But--”
“Twi.”
Her ears drooped. Her magic faded. The books trudged back onto their shelves in impeccable alphabetical order. “You’re right. Sorry. I just want to be a good host.”
“You are a good host,” I assured her. “I don’t mind you keeping me company either. As long as you respect the dignity of study time.”
“Yes. Of course. The sanctity of study time must be preserved.”
A gave her a soft smile, which she returned in kind.
Then I made the mistake of reaching for Inky Darkness’s “Time, Tension, and Tiramisu: An Impatient Pony’s Guide to Psychic Energy and the Dark Arts.”
Twilight exploded out of her chair. “I knew it! I knew it! I saw that look in your eye. It’s the same look I get when I’m about to pull some sort of dangerous magical shenanigans.” She wrenched the book away from me with her vastly more powerful magic. “Not today, mirror-missy.”
“Hey!” I stood up, thoroughly peeved. “What’s the big idea?”
“You’re not going rogue again, are you? Got any border-altering plans in store? Any governmental restructurings? Huh? Well?”
“Of course not. I’m trying to buy Christmas presents for my friends.”
Twilight’s eyes flickered over the book’s aged cover. “How is this gonna help with--” Her eyes went wide. “Oh. Oh. Absolutely not.”
So, time for a ten second treatise on science as a concept:
In the long and storied history of scientific inquiry, there have been many notable cases of noble aspirations leading to ignoble results. Nuclear bombs. Human experimentation. Fast food. All abominations grown from a sample of scientific curiosity mixed with an overwhelming desire to reach higher.
This, I think, was not one of those cases.
But when I said just that, her face scrunched up and her posture went all awkwardly rigid, which is exactly the same thing I do when I’m overwhelmed with an idea that’s so completely and utterly wrong I can’t even begin to formulate a counterargument.
“What you’re asking for is a crime in several countries, including this one,” she said.
“A crime? You can’t be serious.”
“I’m very serious. And to be frank, I can’t believe you don’t see the issue here.”
“Because there is no issue.”
“Sci, what you’re asking to do is highly unethical.”
“You know what’s really unethical? Giving bad Christmas presents!”
“It also goes against the spirit of Hearth’s Warming.”
“I disagree. I want my friends to know I love them. Getting them good presents is one way of showing that love. And why stop at good presents? Why not get a really good present? Why not get them a perfect present? Why not reach deep into their mind and extract their deepest desires and transform them into material possessions?”
“If only we could.” Twilight shook her head. “There’s just no ethical way to look into someone’s mind like that. It’s the most serious breach of privacy.”
“Have you ever tried shopping for Applejack?”
“Yes. Believe me, I understand. Have you considered getting them gift cards?”
“Gift cards?” I gasped. “Listen, you.”
“Me,” Twilight corrected.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
I let out a long sigh and cupped my head in my hooves. “The only reason you’re being so defensive is there’s something to be found in one of these books.”
“I never said that.”
“Two points. One, you know yourself very well, which means you know me very well. Which means you’re well aware of how stubborn I can be.”
“How I can be.”
“Two! Either you help me find the best option or I go at it alone. And if there’s one thing I’m absolutely qualified to screw up, it’s archaic mind-probing magic.”
Twilight still seemed unconvinced. Time to bring out the big guns.
“What if you helped as a Christmas present to me?”
The unrelenting logic of my rhetoric had finally found a weak point in Twilight’s armor. With a sigh and a string of what I’m fairly certain were curses in this universe, she slumped into the chair across from me, silently admitting defeat.
Her horn lit up. A book on a distant shelf came to life and floated our way. I breathed a silent sigh of relief. That shelf was the last place I would have looked.
“There’s a way,” Twilight began, “but it won’t be easy.” The book landed between us and fluttered open. “There is an artifact that allows users to passively read the mind of another without directly touching it.”
“Sounds perfect. Why didn’t you just show me this earlier?”
“It’s hidden thousands of miles away from here. It’ll take three days by train, and another one on hoof.”
“Cutting it awful close to get back in time for Christmas,” I conceded.
“There’s more. It’s guarded by a demon.”
“You have demons in this world?”
“We have a lot of things.”
I waited for Twilight to elaborate. She didn’t.
“Oookay. Why’s it guarded by a demon?”
“It’s demon magic, obviously.”
“Is everything in this world magical?”
“Yes.”
I groaned. “And demon magic is safer than regular magic?”
“Surprisingly safe. And even more surprisingly ethical. Demons are tricksters like that. It’s never the macguffin that corrupts the user, rather the spirit of the user’s intentions.”
“Cryptic. Sounds like just the thing to hedge our bets on. When can we leave?”
“Tomorrow morning.” Twilight slammed the book shut. The whole library, every book and brick, leapt in surprise. “And we’ll need parkas."
I knew Twilight like I knew myself. Which is to say, when she said things would get chilly, I knew she was telling the truth.
I still wish she’d been lying, though.
Wind blasted my face and threatened to toss me off the edge of a sheer cliff face. The fuzzy lining of my parka caught droplets of freezing rain, where they hardened into jagged bits of glass. Every time I turned my head to see whether my next step would be my last, they dug into my cheek.
The ridge we were climbing was one of several narrow switchbacks winding up a nameless mountain, a single peak jutting unnaturally from otherwise rolling hill country. Two hundred lengths below, the ancient and massive Fawn Forest spread out for a thousand miles.
Apparently, risking our friends’ psychic autonomy was far less ethical than risking our own skins. Weird how it tended to work out that way.
At the path’s terminus, the cliff shifted directions, giving way to a flat clearing just big enough to stretch out and rest. Here, the cliff shielded us from the worst of the wind, allowing us the luxury of a small warming fire.
Once we stopped shivering, Twilight tore herself away from the fire and snooped around the edge of the clearing. “Over here,” she called, pointing to a non-descript portion of the rock wall.
I reluctantly left my place at the fire to join her. “Looks like rocks,” I remarked.
In response, Twilight held her hoof against the wall. It shimmered like water at her touch. Then her hoof went right through.
The sight sent a shiver up my spine. The sheer unscientificness of it all.
Together, we put our heads through the false rock. Light trickled in through the magical facade, just enough to illuminate a sheer drop.
“It’s down there, alright,” Twilight said.
"How do we get down there?"
"Simple. I pick you up, and we glide down."
“That seems unlikely to succeed."
“Why’s that?”
“Look at your legs. You don't strike me as the type to go to the gym often.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not that you don’t look good or anything. You look like me, so I know that’s objectively untrue. But going off how little I go to the gym--”
“Yeah, okay, true,” Twilight cut me off. “But I have magic. We’ll be fine.”
I frowned, wondering how many sticky situations magic was going to get me into today.
Unfortunately, her logic was sound. So she grabbed me by the barrel as tight as she could (which didn’t feel nearly tight enough) and together we began our descent into the darkness. The natural chimney was barely wide enough to glide down in a tight circle. Luckily, Twilight’s magic lit up enough of the rock around us to keep us from crashing into the walls.
The chimney eventually deposited us into a massive underground chamber a hundred lengths tall and just as many wide. In the dim light of Twilight’s horn, I saw stalagmites bursting from the ground, rising to meet the ceiling at the edges of the cavern. Craters and bones littered the ground, signs of an ancient struggle.
Twilight killed her light. In its place came something new, a dim red glow coming from the other side of the cave. A choking smell of rot and ash filled my nose. My muscles tensed.
The demon’s silhouette was enough to send shivers down my spine. It--whatever unholy marriage of goat and lion and ox and human it was--was fifty lengths tall. It laid on its side, its massive body shrouded by a pair of wings. The light seemed to be coming from all around it with no natural source. Its eyes were closed. It seemed to be asleep.
That all changed when our hooves touched down.
Its eyes snapped open. They glowed an unnatural red in the otherwise darkened cave. We froze. Twilight shed her saddlebags and spread her wings defensively. I followed her lead.
“Do not be afraid,” the demon said in a deep, sulfurous voice. “Have you come to feed me?”
Twilight, sounding more curious than afraid, said, “Feed you what?”
“Your souls.” As it spoke, its body disintegrated into shadows, then reformed, this time fully upright on trunk-like human legs, directly behind us.
I screamed and dove for the nearest stalagmite for cover. Much to my horror, Twilight didn’t move an inch.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather prefer some company?” Twilight asked. “Or some oats? We have some oats.”
“Foolish mortals,” it said, each syllable smelling of sour rotting death. “Your lives are but a pittance to me. For your intrusion, I shall take them.”
Twilight folded her wings against her sides and took a step towards the demon. “Say that again, please?”
“I shall--really?” The demon paused, momentarily thrown off guard. “I said, for your intrusion, I shall take your lives.”
“Mhmm. That’s unfortunate.”
She took another step forward. “What are you doing?” I hissed.
“I happen to be a princess of Equestria, you see. And threatening me is a very serious crime.”
The demon smiled wide, exposing a row of razor-sharp, bloodstained teeth. “I sense your power. Your essense will nourish me greatly, pony princess.”
Twilight seemed more bemused than frightened at this point. “Ew,” she said in a deadpan voice. “But go on.”
“Cling to your lives while you can and do battle with me. I will defeat you like all the others who have come before you. And once you have been destroyed, I will consume your essence, and then you will have the eternal honor of adding your meager reserves of life-energy to my massive, throbbing--blurrghk--”
The demon, perhaps encumbered by his colossal stature, failed to react in time as Twilight Sparkle teleported up to him and slipped a small crystal dagger into his heel.
“Yeah,” she said. “Mmm-hm.”
A purple light glowed through the creature’s ancient, gnarled skin. The flesh around the dagger turned grey, then solidified into stone. The creature clutched its chest, its expression changing from that of an unflappable godhead to an old man riding a wave of burning indigestion.
“Interesting,” Twilight mumbled. “Seems like the stonification process works faster internally than externally.” She looked over her shoulder at me. “What do you think, Sci?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but all that came out was a barely-audible squeak. Guess I was still terrified.
Twilight turned around. “Right.” She unfurled her wings and took to the air. When she was eye-level with the calcifying demon, she lifted its chin up with her magic and looked it square in its dead, soulless eyes.
“Listen up, buster. I know you weren’t setting out to terrorize anyone, but there are laws against eating ponies. Even so, I’m only gonna stonify you for five years. Consider this a warning. When you unstone, I’ll expect a concise five-paragraph MLA-formatted apology for trying to consume our life essences. There’s no page limit, but don’t take that as an excuse to skimp."
“B-but,” the monster trembled, “h-h-how?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “I’m a princess, motherbucker.”
The demon’s brain turned to stone. Then the eyes. Then the rest of his face.
Twilight went, “Ew.”
With the threat calcified, I emerged from my hiding spot behind the stalagmite and took stock of the situation. A few paces away, I noticed my saddlebag containing all our cold-weather gear, parkas and boots and hats and hot chocolate-filled thermoses, reduced to a cold downy smear on the rocky floor.
“It stepped on our stuff,” I noted dryly.
“Better the backpacks than us.”
True, I thought. But still.
“That knife’s pretty wild, right?” Twilight said to me. “Crystal Empire magic. Totally different system of magic than the regular Equestrian kind. Turns things to stone. I call it, The Stoner.” She looked at me, eyebrows raised, expecting me to reply--oh God, she was expecting me of all people to say something back. Was this the part in the adventure where we were supposed to banter or something?
“Uh,” I said, and walked around the stonified monster to the very back of the cavern. Tucked away in the corner beneath the natural stone slab that made up the demon’s bed, I found a small wooden chest inscribed with crudely-drawn runes. A cheap stone lock hung from the front.
I reared back and kicked the lock to pieces. Very unscientific. But whatever, I was cold, and I had really been looking forward to that hot chocolate.
Inside the chest, I found a curved goat’s horn, hollowed out and polished to porcelain smoothness.
Twilight was at my side in an instant, her eyes wide. “Is that it?”
I held the horn aloft. In the dim light of the cave, I could see a faint rimming of gold on the hollow edge. Very gently, I placed the horn over her own. Then I channeled a faint aura of magic so it filled up the empty space between my horn and the larger goat horn.
After a moment, it started to glow the same purple color as my magic. “Is it working?” Twilight asked.
No time like the present for a test. I turned to face her, leveling the bone horn at her forehead. “Think of something.”
Twilight closed her eyes. I focused everything I could into that goat horn. But after a moment, it became alarmingly clear to me. My head was full of nothing. No other ponies’ thoughts. Not even a demonic curse from the horn. It was blank, blank as the answer box of a test you forgot to study, blank as the look of a substitute teacher being asked a complicated question. Blank as the look in the demon’s stoned eyes.
Twilight picked up on my distress. Her face fell. “That can’t be.”
I took the horn off my head and gave it a long, wan look. “I can’t believe books led us astray.”
A thought struck me just then. An awful, terrible thought. I took the goat horn and held the rim up to my nose. My face twisted up.
“What?” Twilight asked. “What is it?”
I passed her the horn. She smelled the same thing I did and gagged. Sulfur and sweet honey mead.
“Well... um.” Twilight bit her lip, trying not to curse.
After days of travel, after far more close calls than were necessary, after freezing, starving, and exhausting ourselves traversing the rugged terrain to get to this cavern, all we had to show for our efforts was one well-used, not-psychic drinking horn.
“It’s not all bad,” Twilight insisted. “We learned demons are lightweights.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Giant demon. Little horn. Don’t tell me that’s not interesting. You’d think with all the fire and brimstone inside them--”
I put the horn in my saddlebag without another word and started towards the exit.
“Right,” Twilight said, her smile faltering. She went to follow me, then thought better of it. She went instead to the massive heel of the stonified demon, where her dagger was still stuck in its rocky flesh.
She levered her hoof against the demon’s heel to yank the knife out. A thunderous boom echoed through the cavern. At the same time, a long crack appeared in the demon’s leg, running from the point where the knife had gone in all the way up to its knee.
Twilight let out a string of what I’m absolutely certain were curses in this universe.
“Can we go?” I asked from the other side of the cavern. My voice echoed all the way up into ancient darkness.
“Yeah,” Twilight grumbled, “let’s go.”
We flew like mating dragonflies, Twilight cradling me beneath her, me hanging on for dear life. Together we ascended through a natural chimney to the surface, leaving the wounded and stonified demon alone with its thoughts in the underground cavern.
A light appeared above us. We flew higher still, until finally we emerged through the false rock wall and onto the mountainside ledge. The Fawn Forest in all its inhospitable majesty stared back at us. Biologically speaking, it was a fascinating view. Had I viewed it in book-form from the comfort of my reading nook, curled up beneath a blanket with some warm tea by my side, it would have been enchantingly educational.
But I was not in my nook. I was in the picture. In reality. And reality was forty degrees with a sharp windchill.
In addition to stomping on our cold-weather gear, the demon had smashed our provisions. We would never survive the trip all the way back.
“If we keep going northwest,” Twilight shouted to be heard over the wind, “we’ll hit the coast in a few hours. We can find a fishing village and try to find a ride south.”
“Christmas is in four days. Will we make it back to the portal by then?”
Twilight shrugged helplessly.
“Guess we walk,” I said.
“Guess so,” Twilight said
We set off at a glacial pace. Twilight took the lead, and together we started to pick our way down the mountainside. Even with several magical orbs of warming around us, the wind battered every mote of heat from my body until I felt no more mobile than the calcified demon we left back there in the cave.
“It’s not all bad,” Twilight said. “You could tell your friends your gifts got lost in the mail. Or you could just get them gift cards. It's the thought that counts."
The wind took her words and whipped them into my face, a cold stinging blow. I shouldn’t be getting angry right now. It wasn’t the time. It wasn’t scientific at all. But heaven above, I’m still a human being, not some immortal princessly godhead or whatever my mirror-me was.
“Yeah,” I said. “And this was kinda nice. In an unscientific way.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ve never been almost before.”
“Well, it wasn’t really being eaten so much as having your essense consumed--”
Anger boiled up inside me and brought my frozen bones to life. Just as I was about to say something really unscientific, my hoof caught on a stray stone. I lurched forward, catching myself just before gravity sent me careening over the edge of the cliff face.
A shower of stones and debris were not so lucky. I watched the rocks fall the few hundred feet to a clearing below, driving divots into a bank of freshly-fallen snow.
There was a flash of motion below, shapes moving through the frozen trees. I blinked, and squinted, and when my eyes adjusted the clearing was filled with dozens of deer.
So, five second history lesson. Turns out, it’s called the Fawn Forest because lots of deer live there.
I really did say it would be five seconds, didn’t I?
Anyway, when we finally made it down to the base of the cliff, we found ourselves surrounded by a small tribe’s worth of deer. No cause for alarm--deer were friends of Equestria, a sort of spiritual, wise, creepy older cousin. The deer had no written language, communicated telepathically and thusly never spoke, and for some reason always seemed to be carrying spears.
So, no cause for alarm... but still.
“Are they going to eat us too?” I asked half-sarcastically.
“Ha ha!” Twilight said, a little too loud. “No. They’re not. They’re our friends. And they’re vegetarians.” To the deer, she said, “Good afternoon! I am Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria. We bid you noble deer good day. We are on our way back from an adventure. We hope we have not intruded on anything important.”
The deer looked at each other. Then back to Twilight.
“Eheh, heh.” Twilight’s laughter froze and died in her throat. “Yeah. We’ll just be going, then.”
As we turned to leave, one of the deer, a doe a full head taller than Twilight, stepped out from the pack. She nodded to us, then to the pack. Then she shrugged her shoulders, miming a shiver.
“Oh. Oh.” Twilight’s eyes lit up. “Yes. We lost our belongings fighting a demon. No big deal. We won, as you can see. No cause for alarm. Not for another five years, at least. Heh.”
The doe seemed unphased. Which was pretty crazy, all things considered. Imagine some stranger almost pelts your alters off with falling rocks and then tells you about a demon living in your backyard--which, by the way, no cause for alarm, because she just killed it.
Instead of doing the rational thing and freaking out, the doe tugged on a small knapsack wrapped around her midsection. Twilight and I tensed, ready for anything. But our worry was for naught.
From the knapsack, the doe produced two thick woolen cloaks, which she offered to us with a wordless smile.
What a nice gift, I thought as I affixed the cloak around my neck.
You’re welcome, the doe beamed directly into my mind.
I let out a bone-rattling scream. The sensation of another creature inside my head--screw it, I thought, I’ll just get my friends gift cards.
Author's Note
Written for the incomparable FanOfMostEverything. Merry Christmas buddy! Much love.
