Untamed
---Chapter 1---
Power
______________________________________________________________________________
Pain, it was a sensation that had driven most living beings to despise it in any form, and a special few to adore it. The feeling of your nerve cells sending the neurological impulse from the damaged area towards your brain to let you feel the punishment for your incompetence, it was fantastically horrible. It was a paradoxical event to the minds of living beings, both hated and adored by the pony population, even though only a few came to actually realize the latter. All of these facts, opinions, and ideas however shared one thing in common; They were meaningless to the young lavender filly twitching inside the charred crater that was a direct result of her sudden arrival. Pain was nothing more than a merciless tormentor to her as she tried to recover on the hot, smoldering ebony ground. She only asked herself one thing as she bore with her temporary inability to move.
What in Celestia's holy name had just happened?
The question plagued her young, intellectually advanced mind incessantly, leaving little room for calm amongst the storm of questions. The fog clouding her mind spread similarly to the burning sensation coating her five year old body, each minute ticking by only thickening the mental smog. She was stuck in limbo with nothing but the acrid smell of burnt grass filling her nostrils as she tried to decipher why she wasn't in her cozy purple bed, where her parents were, and where she was supposed to be. All of those futile guesses, however, were put to rest as some of her ability to physically feel anything other than constant pain came back to her. She managed to will her head to turn downwards, bearing through the stinging torture to allow herself to see what she felt pressed against her stomach, paralyzing once again as a influx of memories rushed back into her head. The purple egg nestled between her legs forced her to remember exactly how she had gotten there, bringing fresh tears to her face as each scene brought more longing for somepony to hold her.
For the first time in her short life, Twilight regretted knowing.
____________________________________________________________________
Earlier...
The young lavender unicorn sighed contentedly as she snuggled deeper into her beanbag chair, enjoying the crackling of the warm fireplace near her as its sporadic symphony lulled her into a lucid state. She was in her element on that night, clearly shown by the pile of read books thrice her height to her right, and it gained a new member as she gently shut the book she had just finished reading and levitated onto the literal mountain of knowledge next to her. Not feeling quite ready to call it a night yet, the well-read unicorn levitated a medical guide on mares in front of herself, opening it up to the page she had left off on.
"Chapter four, the mammary glands." Twilight noted that her habit of reading out loud came back for a moment, and she quickly buried it back inside her mind before she could let it develop again. The chapter itself was really revealing to the small filly, finally answering her question as to what the two little "thingies" near the bottom of her stomach were. She learned about what the milk produced consisted of at the fundamental level, the average age that mares would lose the ability to lactate, and plenty of other tidbits here and there.
The door to the Sparkle Residence's private library opened without the slightest of sounds, presumably due to the perfectionist the stallion of the house was and his compulsion to keep every hinge in the house properly oiled. Shimmer Sparkle made her way towards her daughter, who was far too engrossed with the book she was reading to even notice her entrance. She moved quietly towards her little filly, not wanting to disturb her intense study session just yet, but she learned that she didn't have to be so stealthy after the mountain of books next to Twilight collapsed loudly into a heap, yet it merely earned a flick of the small unicorn's ear before she returned to her intellectually beneficial reading. Shimmer didn't know what to think about her studious daughter, but pride was surely there. It's just that she found it a little different that the tiny filly unicorn could actually enjoy an all-day study rush, as opposed to the rebellious phase she had gone through when she was a filly herself. Not to mention that the lavender child was studying the biology of a mare's body, something that her infantile mind shouldn't be able to comprehend, much less look at.
"Now now, Twilight. You know that studying without rest is harmful to your health." The sing-song voice snapped the young horned pony out of her meditative reading style, only giving her a second to notice that her mother had decided to check on her before lifting away the advanced mare anatomy/biology book away from her small hooves. A pout instantly formed on Twilight's face as her latest source of valuable knowledge was placed back into its rightful place in one of the many bookshelves lining the room's walls, and a whine prepared itself to be unleashed.
"But mo~om, I was about to finish the entire book already. It said there were even a few spells I could learn if I practiced hard enough!" Shimmer recoiled almost imperceptibly, not liking having to separate her beloved daughter from her books, but it was for her own well-being. Besides, she didn't want to think about how much her little girl knew about ponies' anatomies now, or how that could possibly affect her behavior in the future, "Mommy, why are your cheeks all red?"
"Oh! Uhm, it's a little warm in here, that's all." the alabaster unicorn that held a strikingly similar appearance to her daughter quickly devised an excuse to avoid an embarrassing conversation she really didn't want to have this early in the smaller unicorn's life, "Anyway, I know they won't ask you anything regarding equine anatomy on tomorrow's test, you'll do fine without it. Why are you even studying these kinds of subjects instead of practicing your spell set?" Shimmer now had the opportunity to figure out what led her daughter to reading up on such mature content, and she wasn't disappointed by the response she received.
"It's because I already learned them! I can lift up a glass of water without spilling any of it, I can keep a constant bright hornlight without spending any energy, and I even learned how to do this!" Before the unicorn with the white and violet mane could ask what she meant with that, Twilight disappeared from her academic nest near the fire in a burst of purple magic, reappearing behind her mother a split-second later with a enormous grin of self-pride on her face, "I can go anywhere I want just as long as I don't use it too many times, it gives me a headache whenever I do."
As Shimmer Sparkle watched her intellectual daughter rub the base of her horn, remembering an incident involving her exhausting her magical reserves and the migraine it brought, she let a smile of her own grow to a size that very well rivaled the little filly's.
'She's very talented, more than anypony I've ever seen before. That spot at Celestia's school is simply waiting for her to take its place, and the bright future that comes with it.' The older mare wiped away a tear that had managed to escape her sapphire eyes, she always had a weak spot in her when it came to her children. She was reluctant to even consider letting Shining Armor leave for his military training at the Royal Palace once he was old enough, but even her clinging emotions were overpowered by her will to push her kids to strive to be the best they could be.
"That's wonderful, Twily, I bet the other unicorns will be jealous of you and your teleportation skills. But it's still late, so come along now sweetie, you've got a big day tomorrow and you've got to be rested in order to do well on the exam." With but a single nudge, Shimmer prompted her obedient daughter to head towards her room, and she extinguished the flame lighting up the fireplace before following along. The door leading into Twilight's room stood out with its vibrant lavender hue, mimicking its resident's coat almost perfectly, and was gently pushed aside to grant the filly access to her plush bed. The white unicorn sat down next to her innocent daughter, feeling both excitement and sadness at the prospect of having her leave home to attend the fancy university. In the end, the good outweighed the bad, as it always did, and she kissed her lovely filly goodnight before trotting away to her own bedroom, where a dark blue stallion slumbered peacefully.
Twilight smiled as she heard her mother's bedroom door close, everything was going according to her master scheme. Without her mom around to watch her, the little unicorn lit up her horn in its purple aurora in preparation for the spell she was about to activate. With as much noise as a needle falling on a pile of cotton, the young spellcaster sent out a tendril of magic that fazed through the door as if it weren't even there, slithering down the hall shortly afterward as it neared its target in another room. Once the cargo was secured, the lavender pony activated the full effect of the spell, resulting in the guide on mare anatomy materializing in her hooves. She grinned again at her magical abilities, she was never one to boast but she knew that she should at least give herself a pat on the back for what she just pulled off. Her curiosity won out against her sense of fulfillment and she opened up the book to the page she had left off on. One last chapter couldn't hurt before bed.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Owww..." The freshly groomed lavender filly found herself rubbing her forehead as she tried to ease the small migraine that had been pestering her ever since she had woken up. Her late-night reading had evolved into an all-out investigation on a couple of old spells that she had managed to decipher and improve upon, so the vast amounts of memory needed to contain each spell's individual matrix had overworked her brain before she stored it away properly. Just storing the spells in her memory was enough to leave her feeling drained, leaving her in no condition to give the newly improved spells a test run.
Still, that was all in the past. Now she stood in a pristine hallway waiting for her headache medication to free her of her misery. The white marble hallway was filled with idle chatter between ponies she had never seen before, all of them attending the building for the same reason she was. Canterlot, being a city filled mostly with unicorns, always had a high registration rate for the private academy, which meant that parents pushed their kids to always be better than everyone else.
Most parents, anyway.
Her mother and father had been incredibly supportive of her throughout her life, always giving her a helping hoof when she needed it and never forcing her to be better than all the other children. Instead, they urged her to try her best whenever she could and to never linger on her failures. That lifestyle had helped her develop into the overachieving bookworm she was today, and she wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Breakfast that morning was no different than any other day that involved her taking a greatly important exam, save for the headache. Shimmer Sparkle and Midnight had both expressed their mutual excitement towards the wonderful day, assuring Twilight that she had nothing to fear with her plethora of knowledge at hoof if she were ever to need it.
"Twilight Sparkle, we are prepared to administer the entrance exam. Please, step inside the testing chamber." Time had flown by rather quickly, leaving the Sparkle Household as the only family left in the barren hallway. The lavender filly's heart rate picked up as the massive double doors leading into the dome-like chamber within were opened by an unseen unicorn's horn, sudden doubts beginning to root themselves into her mind. Just before she walked towards the center of the room where the test would take place, a navy blue forehoof touched her shoulder, and she caught the sight of her father smiling at her with wayward tears in his eyes.
"You can do it, Twily, your mother and I believe in you. Since the moment you were born, you've been our special baby girl, always trying to be your best without us having to tell you to." Twilight's amethyst eyes widened in response to how her father was speaking. He had always been a stallion of few words, relying on his actions to speak for him instead of his mouth, but this was nothing like that, "You've grown into the young little filly that will always hold a place in our hearts, no matter what happens. Here, I want you to have this before you begin."
The darkly colored stallion pulled out a medallion he had hidden underneath the simplistic black suit he was wearing, its beautiful, circular amethyst jewel going nicely with the silver chain that began to latch into place, hanging from the filly's neck.
"Da-ad I...I." the stallion pressed a hoof softly against his daughter's lips, stopping her stuttered thanks. His expression went back to the cool one he usually kept on, but the tone in his voice spoke tales of the trusting admiration in his heart.
"Now go teach them what a Sparkle can dish out."
That was exactly the kind of motivation she needed at the moment, and the trembling in her steps was lost as she trotted over to her spot in front of the judges, a confident smile ready on her face.
"Good afternoon, Miss Sparkle." It seemed as if the butterscotch mare acting as the mage council's high overseer was the only one that was going to speak on that day, seeing as how nopony else in the robed group had made a single sound other than their incessant scribbling.
"A good afternoon to you as well, Miss?" Twilight let the question stretch out, leaving a space to be filled in by the head judge. Her manners were noted by the silent judges, and a page-long report on her mannerisms was already written down. Whoever those ponies were, they were good at taking apart a living being psychologically in a matter of minutes.
"Quill, Quick Quill, a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Now then, are you prepared to take the academic portion of the entrance exam?"
"That'd be great, ma'am." The warm smile on Twilight's face subtly grew into a wicked grin, this part was in the bag. She had read an entire library in preparation for the test, spending her past week with nothing more than home-cooked meals in her stomach and an extensive book in her hooves, and she was about to let the world know just how far she was willing to push her limitations as a filly.
Everypony in the exam chamber spent the next hour and a half getting schooled by a pony less than half of their age. They varied their questions from ink types to geographical features in Equestria, most of which weren't even included in the curriculum, yet she managed to give them a clear answer accompanied by a barrage of "fun facts" that she generously provided. The I.Q. test, to any fool with ears to hear with, was a complete success. Twilight's predatory grin melted back into the warm buttery smile all little fillies should have as she looked at the shocked expressions that refused to leave the judges' faces, glee pulsing through her the moment she saw her parents silently congratulate her from across the room.
"Well...I daresay that this has been more...productive than I could have ever imagined it to be. Congratulations to you on my behalf, Miss Sparkle. If it were up to me I'd enroll you in our academy immediately, but there happens to be one last issue that must be taken care of first."
"The magical evaluation?" She could feel her apprehensive nervousness crawling back from whatever dark pit it had been banished to, but her parents' words of encouragement stood as a final shield that warded off her self-doubt. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it right.
"Yet again, your intellectual foresight proves to be correct, Miss Sparkle. However, there has been a last-minute alteration to this year's magical evaluation exam by Princess Celestia herself." Quick Quill went on to press a tiny red button on her desk to activate the intercom system linked to another room before speaking into a microphone embedded into her wooden table, "Bring in the specimen."
Curiosity flared within Twilight's intellectual mind as soon as she registered what exactly was unfolding before her very eyes, a curiosity that shortly thereafter degraded into the apprehensive nervousness that nearly crippled her before she even entered the exam chamber. The self-doubt spurred was further spurred on by her fear of the unknown, morphing into a contagious plague that would have paralyzed any and all rationality she could depend on had it not been held back by the memory of her parents' words of encouragement.
The towering double doors opposite to those she had entered through swung open to reveal one of the innumerable Royal Guardsponies stationed throughout Canterlot wheeling in a wooden cart whose contents were concealed by a simplistic white cloth. Faced with uncertainty of what the blanket hid beneath itself, Twilight churned out various possibilities of what the challenge she would have to face would be, but her impromptu guessing game was cut short after the guard pulled off the accursed blanket as soon as the cart came to rest.
An egg whose shell coloration was strikingly similar to Twilight's own lavender fur, excluding the purple polka-dots spread evenly on its smooth surface, laid on a moderately cushiony surface of hay, taunting her knowledge with its sheer presence. Having grown tired of being uninformed, the little unicorn filly took the initiative and cast a simple scanning spell that would allow her vision to bypass the colorful shell to a certain degree, revealing the silhouette of a creature she never thought she'd live to encounter.
"Is that what I think it is?"
"That depends on whether or not you presume that what lays before you is a dormant dragon egg, a rarity provided to us by Princess Celestia to serve as the final phase of the evaluation exams. Oh, don't look so mortified, Miss Sparkle, we wouldn't so much as dare to go and steal an egg from its rightful nest. This precious capsule of life had been abandoned for reasons unknown after its parents migrated to a new nest, so we might as well give it a shot at life by awakening it."
"Awakening it?" As much as the prospect of going up against the unknown intimidated her, the promise of knowledge at the end of the arduous road was more than enough to drive her forwards, and she'd be damned if she wasn't going to milk the situation for all its worth.
"Oh my, forgive me, I do seem to be getting ahead of myself." Quick Quill cleared her throat quietly before beginning her summarized explanation of what was expected of the filly before her, "Dragon eggs are unlike any others on the face of the planet, for they require not only heat and time to be hatched, but a spark of magic significant enough to light the Fire of Life of the infant within. This specific egg is the most...shall we say needy of all, and it is up to you to supply this very egg with enough raw energy to initiate its hatching process."
"Is there anything I should know on how to properly do this?"
"Please pardon the unexpectedness of these recent developments, Miss Sparkle, but your guess is as good as ours. We of the Magi Council, for all our experience, are somewhat unfamiliar in the areas of draconic ritualistics. Princess Celestia's own instructions were vague at best, considering that all she said was that you were to focus all your attention on the egg and try your best to channel your power into it."
The complete lack of any knowledge on what she was about to attempt irked Twilight to no end, feeding the incessant crescendo of doubts whispering in her ears. She had managed to dig up some dusty tomes containing information on the limited dragon ecology within Equestria's boundaries, but there wasn't a single viable point of reference she could summon that related to dragon eggs, probably because anypony foolish enough to snoop around a wyvern's nest would be incinerated the second they so much as looked at a mother's eggs. She was going up against odds that seemed nigh impossible to her, but she wasn't about to back away from a challenge without giving it her all first.
Twilight's amethyst eyes drifted shut and her horn took on its violet hue as she established a connection between herself and the unborn dragon by encasing it in her unique magical aurora. As soon as the bond was made, the dormant child began to leech away at her mana reservoir, feeding on the energy her childish body naturally produced continuously. A haze of drowsiness began to befall her mind ten minutes into the transfusion process, without a doubt a direct result of her magic being used as a form of nourishment for an infant, but it was still weak enough to go ignored by Twilight as she concentrated solely on doubling her output.
The minutes ticked by without the slightest of changes occurring to the draconic egg. Sadly, the same couldn't be said for the filly trying her hardest to complete her final test; beads of warm sweat dribbled down Twilight's throbbing forehead, their salty taste occasionally reaching her tongue as she panted heavily under the pressure of arcane exhaustion, and the once bright light that shimmered at the tip of her horn began to dim as her power reserves neared absolute depletion. At the cost of intensifying her raging migraine, Twilight invested the last of her remaining willpower into her straining concentration.
One by one, the dull trivialities that made up the scene around the studious filly faded away into the all-encompassing darkness consuming her field of vision. None of them were important to her anymore, so she didn't spend her attention on perceiving their useless existence. Be it the floor upon which she stood her ground, or the onlooking eyes of critics and supporters alike, they all ceased to exist in her burning eyes.
There was nothing in her world other than the egg before her and herself.
There were no limitations to weigh her strength down, no laughing fools telling her that she would never be strong enough to stand up for herself, no barriers to stop her from proving them wrong. She had become what she was told she would never amount to, she had transcended the judgmentally taunting eyes' lies...she had become pure, unadulterated power. However, absolute power comes with unforeseen consequences.
"Hatch darn it! Hatch! HATCH! HAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
The exam chamber trembled along with everybody within it as a deafeningly tremendous boom rippled throughout the skies of Equestria, painting the heavens in a extravagant chromatic array of light that would go on to inspire those of the fine crafts. The phenomenon's beauty was never even perceived by the lavender filly lost to the intensity of her transfusive bond. To her, the magnificent Sonic Rainboom was not an act of splendor to be observed, or a rare event to be examined; it was the factor that finally managed to push her over the edge of reality and into the world she so desperately desired.
Twilight was no longer a part of the meaningless classroom that confined her within its walls, lost to the ever shifting plane of her infinite mind. In her place stood power, raw and unrestrained primal energy that manifested itself in the form of the lavender filly responsible for its transition into reality, her juvenile body defying the undefiable force of gravity as it began to levitate itself into the air. Every pinprick-like pore on her body exuded a pure alabaster light of brilliance that put even the aesthetically pleasing chromatic array of the Sonic Rainboom to shame, its simplistic perfection beyond comprehension to the mortal beings who looked on at the glowing filly's ethereal display.
The little unicorn's once amethyst eyes of innocence snapped open to reveal two frigid pools of burning white infernos to the world.
Her name was Twilight Sparkle, but her name defined her as a weakling no longer.
Like a newborn sun ageing eons in the span of seconds, her body's immaculately blinding glow expanded outwards, sealing her small body at the epicenter of the sphere of light she had conjured around herself. All of the unicorns observing the developing phenomenon with a feral terror of the unknown shining brightly in their eyes felt their heads pulse painfully as the ambient energy being radiated by the raging star in the room overcharged their sensitive horns, forcing their fight or flight instincts to awaken. They screamed. Their screeches of fear and imposing dread were drowned out by the cacophonous symphony created by the reins of existence being harnessed by a new master, eternity itself being heralded by the new shepherd of reality.
Twilight's surging mind was captivated by nothing but her sole objective, the one mission responsible for the leap she had taken to become more than a common filly taking her entrance exam, and she would stop at nothing to accomplish her goal.
"Must...hatch...egg."
That voice...that was not the sweet voice of a filly telling her beloved parents about her latest literary exploits, it wasn't the voice of a child afraid of a new experience or the trembling voice of a solitary unicorn discriminated by faces she didn't want to remember...it was the voice of a goddess. It shook the concrete exam chamber far worse than the multicolored sonic blast that had awoken the dormant arcane beast ever could, causing puffs of dust to shake loose from the quaking ceiling.
Before the echo of her mighty voice could even fade away, shining violet tendrils burst out of the miniature star Twilight was enclosed in with a blinding speed and sped forward to wrap themselves around the purple draconic egg, unintentionally disintegrating the puny wooden cart it rested upon with the magical appendages' excess energy. The polka-dotted egg was drawn into the confines of the pulsating ball of light and held directly in front of the surging unicorn's burning, all-knowing eyes.
At the filly's blatant display of power, the Magi Council, an ensemble comprised of the greatest minds and strongest masters of the arcane arts in all of Equestria, scampered out of the room as if they were nothing more than pathetic vermin fleeing from burning flames. Their nonsensical screams echoed into the day's clear sky, reaching the Royal Palace itself, infecting its lonely hallways with the primal sounds of fear.
Princess Celestia's dainty footsteps came to an abrupt halt the second the Magi Council's shrieks reached her perked ears, instantly banishing any thought of continuing her morning stroll. Anyone else would have been struck by worry if they were in the Sun Monarch's position, but Celestia simply let a nearly imperceptible smirk spread her lips as she nodded knowingly to herself. She spread her angelic wings and lunged through the nearest open window she could find, soaring through the air enroute to her personal academy's examination chamber.
Everything was going exactly as she planned.
It was a well-kept secret that she hadn't dared share with another soul in the past, a plan she had crafted out of necessity before the tribulations of the future struck her down. She needed the Elements of Harmony to be operational before the thousandth anniversary of her sister's banishment, and to achieve that she required the ponies who would bear them and their immense power. She had managed to find every Element Bearer thus far, searching far and wide on her free time to seek out the children that would grow up to be the guardians of the new age...all of them save for one.
The final Element was a complete mystery to her, for she had never lived to see it in her eternal life, only knowing about its existence because of the prophecies she was entrusted to bring about. As opposed to the other Elements of Harmony, Magic was a sneaky entity to the tip of the letter, young and naive, using its immense power to hide its exact presence, thus hiding the bearer from her sonar. It was new, fresh, and oblivious to the responsibilities it was destined to carry about.
She had set up the "hatching" portion of the test to weed out the undiscovered Element Of Magic after tracking it for months on end, seeing as only the power it would provide could possibly hope to actually hatch the dragon egg, but the undiluted fear etched on the Magi Council's faces was more than enough evidence for her to assume that she had found the final child she needed to assure her success in the future.
A gust slithering in through the windows of the hallway she had landed in swept her ethereal chromatic mane as she trotted towards the exam chamber's heavily gilded doors, pushing them open with her telekinetic power before standing stock still for but a second to gawk at what she saw inside.
Things were much more catastrophic than she could have ever anticipated them to be.
Instead of the modestly stronger surge she had been expecting from the filly or colt destined to be the Element Of Magic, she walked into a maelstrom of arcane destruction that vaporized any abiotic object in the room with an arc of violet lightning. She could barely make out the twitching filly at the epicenter of the magical hurricane, but two potted plants could be clearly seen nearby. So, in an attempt to halt the ever expanding ball of raw energy from consuming her entire capital, Celestia began to brave the storm's might as she pushed herself closer to the newly discovered element. Her horn buzzed as its energy began to fluctuate wildly, being both drained and overcharged simultaneously by the surging Element's disruption of the natural flow of the ambient energies etched into reality.
A reality who now obeyed a new master.
Twilight never actually "saw" the princess coming towards her, far too engrossed with the prime task at hoof, but she very much felt the presence of a powerful being trudging towards her despite the searing winds she had managed to whip up in the room. That one being seemed to want to interrupt her work, and she didn't like that at all. Unconsciously, the surging unicorn lit up her horn's aurora, a beacon of light that would have blinded the Goddess had the sun not been her own specialty, and unleashed a barrage of frigid frost bolts flying towards the monarch.
Celestia's eyes widened at the realization that she had just been thrust into a hostile environment, barely dodging the ice spells before they rendered her helplessly immobile. With reignited vigor, she fought against the onslaught of the magical winds, getting within a couple of hooves from the heart of the storm. She attempted to reach out and soothe the young filly with comforting words, assuming that she was just frightened by the power she had both unbound and unleashed. The princess had only been so wrong once in the past.
The magically endowed unicorn gritted her teeth out of frustration when she felt the strong entity move closer to her, the perceived threat distracting her from transferring her unlimited excess energy into the dragon egg. Nothing else mattered to her save for hatching the unborn creature, not even the consequences the crime she was about to commit would bring.
Princess Celestia was caught off guard as Twilight's blindingly bright horn charged up a pulsating cyan glow a second before it fired a concentrated arctic-frost beam directly at her, it was an attack so rawly barbaric that she couldn't have hoped to even stand a chance at dodging it. The numb sensation beginning to posses her bore deep into her being, freezing both her mind and her body solid in the crystalline ice as it traveled up her legs to the tip of her horn, locking her expression of dreading terror as it silenced her feeble pleas for the unicorn to snap back to her senses.
With the pestering lifeform neutralized, the surging filly returned to her work on the egg. She summoned tendrils that would serve as extensions from her mind to probe the depths of the unhatched egg, flawlessly phasing through the smooth shell to inspect the unresponsive dragon within. For the remainder of her inspection, she became one with the unborn child's body, knowing everything about it the moment her mind touched the creature's inactive one. He was a genetically defective specimen, suffering from an anomaly in his nucleic sequence that hindered his ability to properly absorb and use any of the energy being provided to him, thus preventing his rightful birth.
Twilight, now knowing what the root of her problems were, began to siphon more of her boundless mana reserves to strengthen the bond between herself and the dragon inside the egg, using that bond to transcribe some of her own genes and rearrange them in a fashion that she hoped would successfully replace the defective ones. It was entirely hypothetical, thus not guaranteeing any surefire success, but it was the only thing she could afford to do at the moment. The transfer process went without a hitch, bringing an almost imperceptible smile to the possessed filly, leaving the destruction of the corrupt DNA as the only thing left to do.
Before she could finish her work, however, a barrage of shock spells collided against her, ruining the spell's process.
A platoon of guards had entered the chamber while she was absorbed in her genetic modifications, and they all turned hostile against her after they connected the dots as to why their monarch was frozen solid. Their resolve began to waver a bit as the filly they had just attacked screamed out in agony, both from the lightning spells that had just hit her and the backlash she received from the failed spell. Her body responded instinctively to the situation, shooting out a raw arc of unprocessed magic that turned half of the guards into mice that skittered away from the pulsating ball of destruction she had surrounded herself with.
Fearing that the remaining guards could ruin everything she had already accomplished, the young surging unicorn switched her tactics away from the defensive hostility towards something much more fitting for the situation she was in.
"Retreat...to a more...productive environment."
Her mind made unconscious connections on its own to find her destination, questions so basic that it was hard to believe they were the keys to cast the most advanced teleportation spells known to ponykind.
Where was she at? The capital of Equestria.
What did she need to do? Hatch an egg.
What type of egg? A dragon egg.
What is a dragon's natural habitat? Draconia.
The remaining guards watched with fear plastered onto their faces as the filly responsible for everything going on began to float even higher into the air, taking the modified dragon egg with her as she blasted a hole into the exam chamber's ceiling through which she could escape. The exam room began to tremble as its support columns suffered from some of the blast's damage, crumbling into charred stones as the ceiling caved in, locking out the fleeing guards and sealing the frozen monarch within the destroyed chamber.
The blinding ball of violet light caught the attention of everypony roaming the streets of Canterlot, and they regretted turning their raised noses towards it the second they felt their eyes beginning to sting from the immense brightness. The clouds in the sky were pulled towards the sphere, spinning around it as they were caught in the windstorm being stirred. Excess energy leaked into the alabaster piles of fluff, turning them into the strongest ebony colored, lightning-charged forces of nature they could be.
The dark mass of storm clouds shrouded the capitol in darkness, plunging its residents into fear for their lives as it swallowed the sun. They understood that a pegasus weather team could stir up a storm of that magnitude with enough time and effort, but they never imagined one pony being responsible for a hurricane of that magnitude, much less a little filly.
She was the sole source of light in the sky, the blinding epicenter of the storm she had created, and a threat in everyone's widened eyes.
An agonized scream of torture tore past her raw throat when another platoon of guards patrolling the streets opened fire on her, trying to put an end to the catastrophic storm building over the capital city before it began to destroy everything. No words left her after that, no sounds to be heard escaping her, only swift judgement was dished out by her upon the ponies of Canterlot, cold and uncaring.
A tiny lavender hoof within the violet ball of arcane destruction pointed towards the lower districts of the mountainous city as its owner finalized the preparations for her departure. A single, thin beam of blindingly white light pierced the air with a shrill cry of power, engulfing the entire lower district in a dome of alabaster energy once it collided against the ground. It grew larger and larger, silently consuming multiple buildings and its inhabitants before simply fading away from existence once it was no longer being fed power by the magical manifestation.
The screams came even louder, yet the voices were less various.
The unstable Element Bearer of Magic raised her hooves above her head, willing the berating winds she had summoned as the swirling maelstrom of darkened clouds to obey her every command. Arcs of violet lightning could be seen jumping from cloud to cloud, anxious to be unleashed from its charged prison, and they wouldn't be disappointed. Twilight began spinning her hooves in a circle above her head, constantly increasing the speed that her forelegs moved at, and the raging clouds followed along in perfect synchrony. The winds and their howls came back with a vengeance, serving as a backdrop to the thunderous cry of the lightning bolts as they pierced the air and collided against the mountain city's buildings, setting anything they touched ablaze. One after another, they fell without mercy, enacting judgement upon the supporters of those who conspired to hinder her plans as they tore the city to pieces and burned those pieces to a sinder.
Ponies wailed, ponies fled in their panic, ponies burned along with their possessions.
Twilight didn't care for any of that, her glowing eyes were only set towards the northern hemisphere of the planet, the one place she would be able to complete her ultimate goal. Using all the might she could muster, she removed herself from the physical plane along with the egg, resulting in a flash seen throughout Equestria that transcended the splendor of the Sonic Rainboom that occurred shortly ago.
With their power source gone, the storm clouds began to dissipate after spending their energy by damaging the burning city. The sky cleared up again, revealing the sun still shining bright in the sky, almost as if nothing wrong had happened, taunting those suffering underneath with its unreachable haven in the heavens.
Equestria had suffered severely on that fateful day. Its monarch was temporarily frozen to the ground with a never before seen expression of terror plaguing her iced face, the storm had set the once regal city of Canterlot ablaze and left it to burn slowly unless its citizens could save it, the Element of Magic was lost, and not a single pony was found within the silent reaches of the capital city's lower districts, dead or alive.
Equestria learned on that day what true power, unbound and unlimited, was capable of.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Twilight plummeted through the sky she had willed herself into, barely able to stay focused as all of the energy she once had began to shed away, leaving her not as the manifestation of power she briefly was, but as the filly she was born as. She felt the frigid wind cut into her as it whistled in her ears, tormenting her almost as much as the sight of the ground getting closer to her by the second.
In a last ditch attempt to save herself, Twilight began to focus as much of the quickly fleeing energy as she could into her horn to form a shield spell her brother had taught her. The egg that marked her ultimate objective fell alongside her, destined to the same fate she was, but the filly wouldn't be having any of that.
She reached out with all of her legs, cradling its unhatched shell close to her chest just as she cast the spell that would decide if she lived or died on that day. A purple sphere much like the one that had surrounded her in Canterlot grew to accommodate her body just scant seconds before she crashed into the ground.
Raging agony swept her mind as her protective bubble smashed against the earth, stimulating every pain receptor her brain had. The influx of devastation on her nerves robbed her of her consciousness and let any control she had on the unstable magical reserves trying to leave her body slip through her hooves, resulting in a rain of hellfire as a violently violet explosion of arcane fury tore apart the clearing she had fallen into.
____________________________________________________________________
Now she lay in the exact spot she had collided into, tears of sorrow matting her young face. She questioned her sanity for letting the magic take over her body. Was she a bad pony for all the things the magic made her due against her will? She didn't know if she would even be welcomed back home if she were to ever go back, she wasn't sure her parents would ever want to see her again after her destructive rampage. That train of thought led her to ask herself a more pressing question.
"W-where am I?" Her skin stung as she moved her head around in a futile attempt to figure out her location. Her mind subconsciously knew that they were in the land ponies feared to ever go near, where explorers would meet a fate sealed by flames, but it was a thought too minuscule to be read properly. Anywhere her amethyst eyes turned to she was greeted by burned grass and woodlands in the short distance. The horrid smell of charred plants filling her nostrils, along with the heat radiating from the barren ground, was enough to drive her to brave the pain of standing on her hooves.
Soft whines accompanied new tears as her tender flesh burned, and she went through a moment of panic as the thought of herself being burned to a crisp came to mind. That image was banished after she turned her head to look at her small body, finding nothing wrong with it. She still had her soft lavender color, although it was covered in ashes and dirt, and her blank flank still taunted her with its existence.
What really caught her attention though was the egg that rolled away from her a little after she had forgotten about its place in her hooves. She contained a huff upon seeing that it was still unhatched, even after everything she had unwillingly gone through to get it to open up. The unicorn didn't know why she picked up the polka-dotted object, considering that she began to think that it was sterile, but she did it anyway.
A roar of disturbed rage tore through the silent clearing, the smell of billowing smoke escaping a twin set of heated nostrils filled the air, and the shadow a fire-breathing hunter of the sky slithered across the ground as it scouted out its territory. Those images, those horrid visualizations, were fear itself in Twilight's amethyst eyes.
She gripped the smooth shell in her small hooves, gripping onto its durable form as she rubbed her moist muzzle against it, letting the agonizing fear seep down her face in salty streams that she feared would never stop.
For here was a filly, lost in the land of dragons.
