The Truth About Dark Magic
Twilight stumbled out of Sugarcube corner, trying not to trip over the front steps in front of her friends and family. Normally this wouldn't be a problem for the young princess, she had conquered far more dangerous enemies. Tonight however was different: she was drunk, absolutely plastered even; two full wine bottles from the Cakes’ wine cabinet were now empty thanks to her alone. The myth of Alicorns being immune to intoxication turned out, much to Pinkie Pie’s dismay, to be just myth. That being said, it certainly took her a lot to get there.
The occasion had been joyeous: Princess Cadence and Shining Armor announced to her and her friends that they were having a baby! It took them so long, Twilight had feared that it wouldn’t even be possible for an alicorn to get pregnant. The proof to the contrary was enough for celebration, and for Pinkie Pie to bring out the really good stuff. Thus, the close-knit groupe, save for Cadence herself, had enjoyed a night full of hard liquor and baked goods. Twilight giggled at the thought; she remembered Cadence getting red in the face when her brother called her by her old college nickname of “Kegstand Cadence”.
Unfortunately, midnight had come and gone. Twilight needed to get home to get some sleep and prepare for a trip to Canterlot tomorrow. She was to discuss various types of practical magic, and would rather do that on full sleep and after dealing with the inevitable hangover. Thus, she had waved goodbye to everypony and made her way out the door.
Twilight dipped forward as she missed a step, front hoof flailing in the air and wings outstretched to try and save herself from kissing the dirt. Alas it was not meant to be; her outstretched hoof tipped her center of mass far enough to send her off the top step and onto the dirt, hitting the ground with an undignified smack. The clumsy princess groaned into the dirt as she heard her friends and family laugh.
“You okay there Twily?” She heard her brother call out in between chuckles.
She got to her hooves as quickly as she could and made good use of the “one-feather salute” that Rainbow Dash taught her last week.
“Yeah she’s good”
She harrumphed, then made her way down the street and to the city outskirts. Twilight murmured incomprehensively, unsure of what even she was saying. The alcoholic buzz was wearing off and now she just felt like she carried a lead weight in her skull instead of a brain. Thankfully, she didn’t feel the need to vomit. The sooner she could collapse into bed, the happier of an alicorn she’d be.
Fortunately, she knew a shortcut home. The Whitetail Woods intersected Ponyville in such a way that normally, she would have to go all the way around the forest in order to reach her castle. If she cut through them instead, she’d save herself an entire 5 minutes! That would give her just enough extra time to learn a new spell, read a new book, or just get some extra sleep. Twilight drunkenly giggled. She was so smart. She was such a clever pony.
Five minutes later, Twilight Sparkle was not laying in bed as planned.
Instead, she found herself in the Everfree Forest. She could tell by the ash-grey trees, the utter lack of chirping Cicadas in the night, as well as the green deer-like creature with a skull for a face that was currently staring her down.
Twilight was not a clever pony.
“Twilight Sparkle.” He spoke in a deep, raspy voice. She assumed the creature was male at least.
“And you are?”
“My name does not matter. What matters, Ms. Sparkle, is that I have been looking for you for a very long time. And now, I have found you.”
Twilight slowly tilted her head. “Right…and why exactly did you want to meet me so bad?”
The creature’s mouth curled into a predatory smirk. “Why, to make the most powerful alicorn in Equestria my slave. You can probably guess why.”
Twilight couldn’t suppress a monumental sigh. The last thing she needed tonight was another villain showing up to threaten Equestria and the ponies within it, or whatever garbage he thought he’d get away with. As much as she loved her friends and how far she’d come in her magical ability, moments like these made her wish she had lived out her foalhood fantasy of becoming a house painter.
She furled her brows in frustration and looked up at the creature. Through the fog of frustration and drunkenness emerged her curiosity: specifically, curiosity on how exactly he was going to control her.
“So, how exactly are you going to enslave me?” Twilight asked incredulously.
The creature’s antlers glowed red in response, cackling with energy. “Why my dear, with dark magic of course! I’ve studied and practiced spells that you naïve ponies would never dare to touch.
“Is that so? What makes you think we don’t study dark magic?”
The creature raised an eyebrow, or at much of an eyebrow as a skull-faced creature could have. “If this is a bluff Ms. Sparkle, then I have to say I’m disappointed.”
“No, seriously, what gave you that impression? Do you even know what dark magic is?”
“Of course I know!” He barked, confusion clear on his face. “It’s magic that society forbids!
“That’s a popular myth, but actually less true than you think.” Twilight, despite being drunk and staring down a creature trying to control her, switched into her “magic lecturer” mode. “What is typically known as ‘Dark Magic’ is simply nothing but using spells outside of their normal tried-and-true, guaranteed-safety situations. Any caster can tweak the spell’s parts to gain a different result, at the risk of injury.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” The creature tried to interject, looking more and more baffled by the second.
“What I’m talking about is that anypony can play with fire if they want to risk being burnt. Just as an electrician can ignore safety protocols if they need to solve a wiring issue, so too can a wizard if they wish to achieve a certain niche effect with their spell. It gets called ‘Dark Magic’ because of its risk, and ponies think that’s cooler than calling it ‘High-Risk Magic Alteration”. Indeed, I’ve done this before with a spell called-“
“ENOUGH OF THIS!” He screamed into the night air, tree branches swaying from the force of his shout. “Your mind is mine, Twilight!”. With that, his antlers glowed crimson red, a sparkling ball of red energy forming between them and projecting a beam directly at Twilight Sparkle.
“Oof!” She recoiled back as the beam gripped her horn, engulfing it with energy. She grit her teeth but stood her ground, looking back up at him with fierce eyes.
“Your mind is mine Twilight.” He grinned his fanged grin, and waited for the magic to run its course.
Waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Slowly, his grin fell. The magic was still flowing into her horn, but why was she still standing? Why was he not controlling her by now.
Even worse, Twilight was smiling. Hell, she looked like she was about to laugh.
“You really didn’t do your homework, did you?”
“How can this be?! I have enslaved many ponies before you! I know this spell like the back of my cloven hoof!”
“That may be true,” Twilight replied, taking a step forward. “But you really should have done more research on me.”
“What are you talking about!”
Twilight chuckled. “You see, your magic is enough to overpower one pony. But…we alicorns, we have the magic of three ponies in us. You’re going to need more than you have to take control of me.”
“That’s bullshit! You will fall under my spell any second now.”
“You know what’s even worse?” Twilight continued, before he could defend himself further. “I know this spell, the one you’re trying to cast on me. A tweaked version of Sweet Lemon’s Empathy Connection, right? By mixing this spell with Sour Salad’s Emotion Sender, you can override the recipient’s emotions with your own, essentially controlling their feelings and thus influencing their actions. A clever mixup I admit, but there’s one problem…you’re stuck until it’s finished casting.”
Twilight chuckled. “That’s right, Mr. Villain. You’re stuck here until your mana pool depletes. Or until, well…”
Twilight inspected him up close, now that she was close enough to. The creature couldn’t speak, only look at her in shock. Maybe because of how he couldn’t deny her claims, or perhaps because every muscle in his body was glowing red, bulging outward as his magic kept expending to keep up the spell. If Twilight was right, the way this spell was cast would result in expended mana being converted to gas. Not a big problem normally, but Twilight paid attention in science class. She knew what happened when gas expanded rapidly.
She took a step back, and then five.
BOOM
A huge concussive force reverberated through the night air, shaking leaves off trees and almost knocking her over. Twilight instinctively closed her eyes and ducked her head away. That turned out to be a very good idea, thanks to the sudden tidal wave of something very wet hitting her.
When she opened her eyes, all she saw was a red mist. Curiously, it was exactly where the creature was standing not a few seconds ago. Even in her drunken state, she knew that meant one thing: the spell overcharged, and the creature self-destructed. Violently.
For a whole minute, her mind was blank. She stood still on the forest ground, unmoving, barely comprehending what had happened. Slowly, her senses were coming back to her, her mind trying to process everyone. She looked up, and what she saw… before she could think about it she could only do one thing.
She could only laugh. The Equestrian monarch-to-be could only laugh at the sheer absurdity as the villain’s body parts fell from the sky like an especially gruesome weather event: a downpour of blood fell from the sky like red rain. Viscera and organs dropped down hard as hail, the silence broken by their muffled impacts smacking the ground and rustling through tree branches. By Celestia, Twilight swore she felt one of the creature’s legs bounce off of her withers. The fog of fading shock and her lapse in logical thinking made her unaware of anything beyond the muffled thumps of bloody chunks hitting the ground with force.
Twilight couldn’t tell how long she had been laughing for until she started hyperventilating, almost collapsing as her body screamed for air. Her head hung low as she sucked in breath, swallowing huge gulp after huge gulp before she blacked out. With every inhalation she regained more lucidity, able to finally think logically and take in the violent scene around her.
The entire forest clearing was drenched in blood. The trunks of trees around her were marked in impact blood spatter. Tree branches dripped dark red blood onto the ground below them, especially for those that caught a “piece” of the creature in them. Twilight herself was caked in blood; her muzzle and breast were coated in blood, as if she just bobbed for apples in a barrel full of said blood. Speckles of blood tainted her horn and wings, and she was certain that even more of it stained her tail and mane.
A loud thump right in front of her snapped Twilight out of her haze. The creature’s skull, still smoldering and deprived of its sick grin (as well as anything else), came to a rolling stop just a few steps away. It left a bloody smear in the grass where it landed and carried the pungent stink of iron and burnt ash.
There he was, the remains of the creature that started this whole mess. That tried to end Twilight’s night out on a sour note by attempted mental enslavement. A creature that grossly overestimated his knowledge in dark magic and paid the price for it.
In between her shock winding down, the craziness of tonight’s events, and still being intoxicated, Twilight could only think of one thing to say. It was all she could do to cope with what she was seeing in front of her.
She walked forward and looked the skull right in its empty eye sockets.
“By Celestia, they’re going to have to glue you back together.”
She shoved her face just inches away from the skull, and screamed.
“IN TARTARUS!”
“…and the lesson is: magic is not a toy. Learn how to use magic safely and properly!”
Twilight Sparkle finished her presentation with a smile, looking up at the crowd.
The lecture room was filled with ponies consisting of senior-level students at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. All of said unicorns’ eyes were wide, in baffled shock at the story they just heard. Jaws were bolted to the floor, and at least one mare look like she was one step away from vomiting.
Celestia herself, sitting in the top row, was covering her face with her hooves.
Luna, seated next to her sister, could only laugh.
