Chapter VI - A Day in a Star's Life

Twilight stood out on the balcony of the castle, looking out at the sunrise. She hadn’t slept a wink last night; she hardly ever did. At night, sleep cut into time with her teacher, something that was an unacceptable side effect. On the other hand, during the day, she needed the time to practice what she’d learned the night before, making sure she’d be ready to move onto something bigger and better by the time night fell again. Some nights, she managed an hour or two of sleep, although it had no effect on her seemingly solemn demeanor. New moons, the one time that she had time for a full night’s sleep, seemed to be the only time that she showed any signs of being happy, let alone possessing emotions. After any night with a new moon, she would always wake up feeling happy, though it never lasted long. The next morning, she would, without fail, be back to her old emotionless self.

    Twilight turned, her lengthy but well groomed hair billowing in the gentle morning breeze as she strode back into the stone building, preparing to start her morning routine. First, was the building of the castle. She stalked through the barren hallways of the place that she called home, eventually reaching the circular central room of the castle, containing a vaulted roof and a small circle in the middle. As she stepped onto the circle, a perfect portrayal of her cutie mark, two overlapping six pointed stars, shone brightly under her hooves.

    Her eyes were shut tight, her hooves gripping the floor as she concentrated. She took several slow breaths, leveling out her breathing to a slow, steady pace. Standing at this point made her feel as if she were part of the castle. When she was here, she could use the walls as her eyes and ears, she could tell everything that was going on inside the castle, simply by letting her magic flow through the veins of the building.

Twilight gave a heavy grunt of exertion, the circle below her glowing more brightly, some of the glow flowing up into the eight pillars around the room that went all the way up to the vaulted roof.  From here, the light traveled from each of the pillars into a blunt spike on the top of the building, causing that to glow with energy. With little warning, the spike discharged its magical payload, shooting a bolt of lightning up into the air, narrowly missing a passing cloud. The flow of magic up the pillars ground to a halt as Twilight found the balance between the strength and amount of magic that was so important when casting large scale magic. Slowly, she opened her eyes, now two glowing orbs of white as she gritted her teeth, focusing on the base of the building. Slowly, the entire castle began to shudder, before suddenly lurching upwards, stopping just as fast. A fresh new layer of bricks had been added to the bottom of the castle, pulling themselves out of the ground as if by magic.

Relaxing, Twilight’s eyes closed again, opening to once more display a aloofness that few eyes could manage. As she was leaving the room, she staggered catching herself on the door frame. As she steadied herself, she once again mused about how much it took out of her to do this, although it had gotten easier with time. When she’d first started building the castle like this, she remembered fainting the moment she took a step. She’d made a lot of progress since that point, she knew, but she needed to make more if she wanted to meet Nightmare Moon’s standards.

After having time to gain a fairly certain grip on herself, Twilight stood again, shaking her head as she walked back into the halls. Her next stop would have to be the mess hall; she might be able to abstain from sleep, but it’s much harder to replace food with magic than it is sleep. She sincerely hoped that today was one of the days that Pinkamena had woken up early and decided to make breakfast. The pink pony’s cooking skills were more than respectable, when she decided to make herself useful and make up meals for the two of them.

Twilight finally arrived at the kitchen, finding it dark and odorless. She gave a soft sigh as she struck up a flame using her magic, lighting the candles around the room. Before long, the air was full of ingredients, each and every one surrounded by a purple aura. Cracking a few shells and floating some lettuce down to the table, Twilight supervised her magic’s beating of eggs and chopping of vegetables. It wasn’t long before she had a modest plate of scrambled eggs and salad prepared for herself.

Twilight’s eating went to autopilot as she sat down, all the utensils floating quickly back to their places, allowing her a moment of rest in the middle of her busy, exhausting schedule. Her mind wandered back to the night before, remembering the hint that her teacher had slipped her. Some big landmark in her apprenticeship was coming, and if the way Nightmare Moon had talked about it was any indicator, it was coming soon. She had no idea what it could be, but she had a feeling it was going to be important for the future of her apprenticeship. Whatever it ended up being, she was going to make sure to do it right, and do it well. Twilight knew what Nightmare Moon thought of failure, and the mere thought of it sent shivers down her spine. It was a good thing that she never failed, most other ponies couldn’t have made it through even a year of learning under such an unforgiving pony.

Nightmare Moon had been lenient enough at first, to be sure, but as the months passed, she grew more strict, and less tolerant. She’d imposed rules for all their lessons, and eventually guidelines for each day. Quickly, a rule against emotions during lessons had been levied, in order to create a more efficient learning environment. As the years dragged on, this behavior began to seep into her normal life, and before long she was emotionless from dusk to dusk. She still felt of course, she felt the same emotions as everypony else, but she didn’t show that she felt. Her face was always solemn, and her eyes were unreadable, causing the few ponies she interacted with to tread carefully around her.

She surfaced from her thoughts as she reached to grab another bite, finding only air and an empty plate before her. Letting out a small sigh, her picked up the plate, an intense light shining around it. As the light faded, the plate drifted ever so slowly down, spotless and sparkling as it touched gently down on the table. Checking the clock on the wall, she found that she’d spent more time in the kitchen than she’d meant to, setting off at a brisk trot for the exit to the forest. The castle towered of the countryside now, a long, convoluted stairway leading down to ground level where the rest of the castle seemed as if it were still growing, like a plant, out of the soil.

    Opting to leave the stairs unused, Twilight quickly teleported from landing to landing, skipping over entire flights of stairs at a time as she shaved down her journey to the front of the castle. After only a few purple flashes of light, she stood at the base of the stairs, where they ran straight into the dirt. As of yet, the castle had no gate, or outer walls for that matter. Twilight still had far to go, she knew, before the project would be complete. Two more stories would be built onto the orderly mess of the main building, after which walls would rise out of the perimeter. Then, at last, her project that had stretched on for years would be complete.

    Stepping out of the tilled grass of the castle grounds, and into the forest, she forced her mind to refocus. It was time for training, and if there was anything you needed to focus on while practicing, it was magic. If you didn’t control it, magic could hurt you, or even kill you. Most ponies didn’t even try to perform the kinds of magic that carried such risks, but Twilight was working with spells that were the standard for a ruler of Equestria one thousand years ago. These kinds of spells could not only kill you if done carelessly, they could wipe every particle of your being from existence. This was one of the reasons that Nightmare Moon tried to keep her student emotionless; emotions could kill when handling magic of such a high caliber. Twilight took a deep breath, having arrived at her normal training ground. A once peaceful meadow was scarred by the remnants of sessions gone by, the ground charred and blackened, while some rocks supported plant-life and still others seemed to be completely transparent.

    Today, she was going to practice a kind of magic that she’d dabbled with before, but never tried to truly make use of. Today, she was working with the mighty force of electricity. Sure, she knew how to make a spark, how to stun somepony with a shock, but just the night before, her teacher had taught her how to really use that power. Just the night before, she’d learned to create lightning

Her eyes shut calmly, her breathing even as she focused on what she’d been taught. “Step one: Feel the power.” She repeated to herself, opening herself to the air around her, and the electricity she’d been told was laying dormant everywhere, even in her own body. Gaining a sense for how the current flowed through the air, she used her magic to slowly manipulate the flow of the electricity, making sure that it all flowed towards her. “Step two: Collect the power.” The hair of her coat stood on end as it flowed into her, keeping her breathing calm and steady. As she gathered more power, pulling it from the air around her is a whirlwind of energy, the charge began to build. It started off as nothing more than a spark, a small noise coming along with the blue speck of light that quickly died. Before long though, Twilight’s body was coursing with the charge, blue arcs bouncing from one point to another irregularly. It wasn’t enough yet though, and Twilight knew it. She continued to siphon her power out of the air, trying to remain calm as she felt the arcs hopping from point to point on her body, a feeling that slowly became sharper and more intense. By the time she opened her eyes, having collected all the latent energy that she could muster, her body was crackling with blue streaks of light, constantly jumping from one point to another, an aura of arcing light. “Step three: release.”

Everything was silent except the sound of her slow exhalation and the crackle of crackle of electricity. Bracing herself, she slid a hoof forward, turning to point herself towards a burnt tree, a favorite target of hers.

The sparks disappeared from her body.

Her horn glowed a bright blue.

With a sudden flash of light, everything exploded at once. A searing blue bolt shot with pinpoint accuracy from the tip of Twilight’s horn, striking the very center of her target. At the same time, a clap of thunder nearly blew out Twilight’s eardrums, and the shock-wave from it sent her tumbling backwards, the bolt having been loosed. She rolled along the ground a good ways before getting her feet under her, still sliding a few more feet before grinding to a halt.

After such a bright light, it took Twilight’s eyes a moment to adjust, and when they did, she looked to the tree. She looked to a smouldering stump where the tree had been standing, just a moment before, at least.

    Another flash shook the forest, and left Twilight panting. She’d been at it all day, and she’d greatly improved, much to the dismay of the trees. There was a certain trick to it that had taken her some time to catch on to, a trick that helped to eliminate the explosive recoil she’d experienced with her first few shots. The secret to lightning was relaxation. If you were tense, if you resisted, it would jolt you. But, if you relaxed and simply let the energy flow through you, it would exit, smoothly and quickly, damaging only the target. To be sure, she still stumbled every once in awhile, but more often than not, she had smoothness and accuracy on her side.

    All around the clearing where she trained, there were smouldering stumps, splintered wood coating the grassy ground. The sun was just beginning to drop behind the hills, painting the sky a brilliant orange and making the clouds appear a dull violet. “Time to head home...” Twilight muttered, turning away from the scene of destruction behind her. The true nature of magic was so much more destructive than she’d ever imagined, and sometimes she couldn’t help but think that there must be better uses for it.

    Twilight could already feel her teacher’s presence as she walked back to the castle, even before the sun set. It seemed to be happening earlier and earlier with each passing day; when she’d come here eight years before, Nightmare moon had been little but a voice, now she appeared every night, in a form Twilight would’ve sworn was tangible, even as it flickered and faded away into the daylight. Was it that she was getting stronger, or was Twilight just getting more attuned to her?

    The unicorn shrugged, pushing the thought from her mind as she arrived back at the castle she’d built for herself, climbing the stairs. Part of being emotionless meant not having random thoughts, thoughts that didn’t matter. Her teacher knew if she was having thoughts that didn’t matter, something that had quickly stopped her tendency to daydream, or nightdream, as it were.

    Twilight climbed the last flight of stairs, finding herself in front of the cathedral like structure that topped the whole thing; the only structure that had been there when she had started. She passed Pinkamena on the way in, giving her a sidelong glance when she called out “Good evening Twilight.” In that friendly but subdued voice that she always seemed to use. Twilight hardly paid her any attention anymore, she’d  become more a feature of the castle than another pony to talk to. Of course, Pinkamena was the closest thing she had to a friend these days, and she still acted friendly even while she was being ignored.

    Past where Pinkamena sat absentmindedly drawing on the floor while she waited to observe the lesson, was Nightmare Moon. Her almost completely opaque form looked just as menacing as ever as Twilight approached her, bowing low. Nightmare Moon nodded acknowledgement, motioning for her student to stand. “Tonight, I have a treat for you, my faithful student.” Twilight had been anticipating this, and worked to keep her emotions in check as Nightmare Moon paused.

    “A special task, one that you must complete if you wish to receive any more training from me.” She sounded far more serious now, her voice losing any kindness it had held. Twilight closed her eyes, wrestling her emotions to the back of her mind. “I need you to show me how much you want to learn.” Twilight heard nothing but her teacher’s words. “I need you to kill.”

    A lock slid heavily into place.

    "Who?"