Twilight decided that today was the surrealist day of her life.

Across from her, studiously stirring a skillet-full of scrambled eggs, was the magister named Trixie Lulamoon. She had only said a distracted, “Morning” when Twilight had crawled from (her?) tent, lured out by both the desert sun just starting to peek through the slips in the canvas and the wonderful smell of a hot breakfast.

The silence wasn’t totally unwelcome. Twilight remembered most of the previous night, including her horrific breakdown. It’d been years since her last one and Twilight had almost come to think she was over wild, out of control lapses like that. The fact she’d had two witnesses to it made her cheeks burn scarlet. Adults weren’t supposed to lose control of their magic like that. Hell, teenagers weren’t supposed to lose control like that, either.

Whichever way 17-year-old Twilight sliced it, she was behind the curve.

It should have been prime material for a pony like Trixie. Twilight didn’t know the other unicorn very well, but she knew the type - full of herself, a braggart, the social queen bee. The type of pony that had once avoided Twilight like the plague, and never missed an opportunity for a few barbs. Twilight would have preferred the verbal sparring because it would let her push away the awkwardness of the morning, but Trixie wasn’t obliging.

She was just cooking, quietly, with a silly look of concentration on her face that would have probably made anyone other than Twilight giggle.

As if reading Twilight’s mind, the unicorn glanced up from the campfire. “What? Can’t a pony cook without being judged?”

“I didn’t say anything!”

The spatula leveled at Twilight. “But you were thinking it! Trixie has a sixth sense for when she’s being judged!” The cooking utensil came so close a speck of egg landed on Twilight’s snout. “Any more lip from you and you don’t get breakfast.”

Twilight mimed zipping her mouth shut and that mollified Trixie enough that she went back to cooking.

Maybe it was just a little bit funny to see Trixie being so domestic. Twilight certainly had the discipline to keep a neutral face, but she still distracted herself with fixing the coffee from the cooking supplies laying around. It worked out as Trixie was taking the eggs off the fire just as Twilight got the water ready.

“So,” Trixie started, “about last night.”

And there it was, right on cue. Twilight was surprised it took this long. “I just-” “-you’re very powerful.”

Twilight’s mouth snapped shut with a click. Trixie looked annoyed at the admission, but unlike Twilight she pushed through with the thought. “Very powerful. Powerful enough that Trixie understands why you are getting so much attention.”

“...thanks?” Twilight wondered if that was the right answer. She’d never gotten praise from anything close to a peer before.

Trixie rolled her eyes. “‘Thanks’, she says. You should be worried. Powerful, untrained ponies like you don’t get far in this country if you can’t control yourself.”

It took a second for Trixie’s tone to sink in. “Is that a threat?”

The unicorn looked back at Twilight like she was simple. “Of course it is. What do you think the Magisterium’s job is? Solve magical mysteries? Look dashing in robes? Hunt monsters?” Trixie scoffed. “Not all monsters are monsters, if you catch Trixie’s meaning. And now you have the attention of the High Magister himself. Trixie hopes you understand the implications there.”

“The Guard will teach me how to control my magic,” Twilight countered, breathlessly, because she certainly could understand those implications. Just like she could put two and two together to realize that the High Magister of Equestria had most likely been the pony to stop her anxiety attack. And he’d said Celestia had known Feldspar, and that both of them knew how much of a hothead she could be, and-

Twilight suddenly felt a sharp, painful jolt of electricity race through her flank. She yelped and nearly stumbled into the campfire as she flailed around. “What the hell, Trixie?!” Twilight screamed. She could see the unicorn’s horn glowing and crackling with yet another shock spell.

“Concentrate!” the magister barked. “Block Trixie’s spell!” Another bolt of electricity lanced out from Trixie’s horn at that exact moment. Twilight saw it coming and jumped out of the way; the bolt hit the metal grill of the cook fire and only quick telekinesis saved the precious coffee.

“Do that one more time and I’ll-” Twilight couldn’t even properly threaten the other unicorn before the spell came at her once again. She had no choice but to put the metal coffee pot between her and the bolt. The water instantly vaporized in a small steam explosion when the current hit it, but Twilight was ready to avenge her favorite drink. Her horn lit in furious orchid fire and she tried to grab at Trixie’s magic, to suppress it.

But her spell slipped right off Trixie. Twilight was so shocked that she didn’t move in time for the return bolt, which hit her square on the flank. The jolt was horrible and Twilight might have actually whinnied (so embarrassing!) as she fell back on her rump.

“Is that all? Where’s that fury and fire from the other night?” Trixie asked. “Come on! Fight Trixie!”

Hurting, embarrassed, and angry, Twilight grabbed the nearest thing to her, a massive stone larger than Trixie was tall, and hurled it at the unicorn. Twilight realized what she had done in a heartbeat, but it was too late; Trixie was too close!

Just as Twilight screamed out a warning, Trixie whipped her head. She didn’t try to block it with her shield as she had at Fort Dressage. Instead, a thin line of magic rippled out in her horn’s wake. The boulder was neatly bisected down the middle, splitting on either side of her like a magic trick.

In that moment, cape billowing by the air the boulder displaced, horn already crackling with another lightning spell, Twilight felt something she hadn’t felt in a very long time -

A tiny trill of fear.

But Twilight had been trained to master fear, or at least not show it. She clenched her jaw and got back to her feet.

Trixie smirked at her. “There’s that bravery.” Her horn glowed whiter again and Twilight readied herself. “Now, shield!”

“I don’t know how to make a shield!” Twilight yelled as she dove out of the way. She snatched up the grating from the fire and levitated it out between her and Trixie, knowing it wouldn’t do much. Trixie had cut a rock in half a second ago; a cast iron grate wasn’t going to do anything.

But Trixie wasn’t really trying to kill her. If anything, she seemed to be at a bit of a loss for words. After a moment, she finally asked, “You really can’t cast a shield, can you? It’s the simplest combat spell you can learn!”

Slowly, slowly, Twilight lowered her oh-so-threatening cooking grate. “I told you that I only knew two spells at the fort!” she snapped. “Did you think I was lying or something? I can levitate things and suppress magic!”

“Trixie thought you were just trying to hide your skills! What… but you have so much power! How can you not know anything?”

“I don’t know what that even means!”

“There is no reason to yell at Trixie!” Trixie yelled at Twilight.

“I’m not yelling!” Twilight yelled right back. Then, finally, some sense came back to her and she took a deep, deep, breath, just like the school counselor had taught her to all those years ago. She counted to ten, then to fifteen, and finally to twenty, before opening her eyes again. “Okay. So. Please explain why you were trying to electrocute me to death.”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “You are more dramatic than the Great and Powerful Trixie. If Trixie wanted to electrocute you, she would have used Static Shiv’s Arc Lance instead of just a weak Telsavolte’.”

“That tells me absolutely nothing, Trixie! Do you just go around shocking ponies for no good reason?”

The other mare stamped her foot. “Trixie has a good reason! She was told to train you, so that you would not embarrass all of us on this monster hunt! Trixie only has two days before we meet the main group on the outskirts of Las Pegasus, so Trixie is going with the fastest way she knows to teach.”

Her horn lit again and Twilight tensed, ready to jump, but instead of a lightning bolt or something else she just floated over something from one of her traveling trunks. “Give Trixie a flat surface,” she ordered, and Twilight grudgingly levitated up a nearby boulder with a flat side wider than Trixie was tall.

The magister looked it over and nodded. It would work. “Perhaps a neanderthal pony is good to have around after all,” Trixie said. The thing she had pulled from her trunk turned out to be a piece of red chalk which she used to draw a wide circle on the rock. It was as perfect a circle as Twilight had ever seen anyone draw free-horn before, drawn with the ease of years and years of practice. “You know what this is, don’t you?” Trixie asked as she continued drawing.

“A rune,” Twilight answered, slowly sliding closer. She was still wary of Trixie and her violent teaching methods, but this was real magic and she couldn’t resist. In fact, she added, “It’s the basis of all unicorn magic outside of natural magic like telekinesis or magic suppression. And magic associated with a cutie mark.”

The look Trixie gave her out the corner of her eye might have been somewhat impressed. “Well, at least Trixie doesn’t have to teach you everything.” A few final flourishes with the chalk and Trixie stepped back, pleased with her work, and turned to Twilight. “Maybe, then, you can tell Trixie which rune this is.”

Canterlot Public Schools hadn’t actually gone into runes beyond their basic purpose in spellcasting. Typically, unicorns didn’t actually learn runes for various spells, relying on telekinesis and whatever came instinctually with their cutie marks to get them through life. The few unicorns that actually did have a talent for magic, and who didn’t go to Celestia’s school, went to specialized universities to learn the runic alphabet, as well as how to put everything together in a magically-coherent fashion.

Twilight had never considered one of those colleges after joining ROTC, but as a filly, before her failed admission to Celestia’s school, she had studied the runic alphabet. She pointed to one of Trixie’s scribbles, ᛥ, that sat in the middle of the circle. “That one stands for stone, right? It’s like… a directing rune?” That sounded right. “It directs magical power into a form, or something.”

“Very good,” Trixie cooed, as if Twilight were a small foal. She pointed her piece of chalk at the larger circle around stone. “This is all called ‘magical layering’ and it’s the basis for all Equestrian spellcasting. You force your magic to be the thing you want it to be.” Trixie groaned when she saw Twilight scratch her head.

“Alright, imagine a spell is a wild animal, never seen before by another pony, and you have to describe it for the first time. What it looks like, how big it is, what color is its coat - things like that. Are you imagining it?”

“I’m imagining!” Twilight snapped. She didn’t like feeling dumb, but she didn’t see how this helped. “Can’t you just give me a book on magic? I’m good with books!”

Trixie threw up her front legs in exasperation. “Books. Trixie hates books! Trixie does not have the time to lay around and read! Trixie is a doer! Now imagine Trixie’s example and stop interrupting her with your ignorance! Ahem. As Trixie was saying, imagine that you are trying to describe how some animal looks to someone who has never heard or seen such a thing before. You have to describe the beast, define the edges of it until that pony understands what it is you are telling them.”

“...like you’re forcing a perspective? Like…” Twilight could almost see what Trixie was getting at. What the runes meant beyond being the basic building blocks of a spell. “...like the magic doesn’t want to naturally be a spell, but you have to… mold it into one? With the runes?”

Twilight had the thread now. She blinked at the rune Trixie had drawn and it clicked. “That’s it, isn’t it? Spells are unnatural. Natural magic, telekinesis, and cutie mark magic doesn’t need to be anything. It just is. This ‘magical layering’ thing is really just forcing that natural magic to do what you want, using the runes? So stone would mean… something hard. Something sturdy.” She looked at Trixie, smiling. “A shield. This is the spell for a shield!”

Trixie stared at Twilight’s smiling face, then looked back at her diagram. “It took Trixie a whole semester to learn that,” she muttered. “But, yes, that’s...more or less right. Good work?”

Twilight didn’t even register the sarcasm. This is what she had been missing all those years ago! An explanation! The books she’d consumed as a filly hadn’t explained how the runes interacted with spells and actual spell books were tightly regulated.

But this! This was so simple! Twilight hurriedly pointed to another rune in the circle. “What’s this one mean?! What does it affect in the shield? Can you add other runes, changing how the spell works? Your shield back at the fort had a lot of runes on it! Was it better than a regular shield? Can you-”

Trixie’s hoof slapped over Twilight’s mouth. “Dear Celestia, what has Trixie done?” she lamented. “This purple monster is going to be the death of Trixie!”

“Wavandr!” Twilight indignantly corrected. Trixie just rolled her eyes harder. “Fine! Lavender! Whatever.” She pulled back her hoof and wiped it off on the ground with a sour look. “The point is, Trixie thinks you have the gist of what she is saying. Try casting it.”

“Right. Because I can just magically cast something just because I’ve seen the rune,” Twilight deadpanned. “You haven’t taught me anything yet! How do I take that,” she pointed to the rune, “and turn it into something usable? You’re horrible at this!”

Trixie nodded along with Twilight, which the lavender unicorn thought was quite high-minded of her. That was, until her horn started to glow again with the crackle of electricity. “Trixie prefers the pressure cooker method!” she shouted, sending a lightning bolt at Twilight’s rump. The quick unicorn got out of the way, but Trixie already had another spell chambered and ready to let fly. “Think! Think about the runes and their configuration! Imagine it!”

“I’m not good at abstract thought!” Twilight snapped back, but cowering behind a rock as she was, she didn’t have much in the way of actual menace. “You can’t just tell me to ‘imagine the runes, Twilight!’ and then start zapping me! Who taught you how to teach other ponies?!”

“You should be pleased with Trixie’s methods! Trixie learned at a much slower pace!”

Twilight yelped when Trixie jumped right over the rock to get at her. Twilight tried to catch her in telekinesis, or with magical suppression, but again Twilight’s magic slid right off the other unicorn. Trixie had obviously cast some kind of protection on herself and Twilight couldn’t hope to figure out what it was or how to get around it, especially not with the unicorn shooting lightning at her!

Her only hope for this rump-roasting torment to end was the shield spell, even though Twilight knew she probably could just ask Trixie to stop and the other unicorn would probably cut it out. Out of all the little holdovers from her fillyhood, Twilight’s stubbornness had never quite gone away. Because of that, she was not going to lose to a pony who unironically only spoke in the third person!

So, Twilight clenched her jaw and counter-charged at Trixie. The lightning aimed at her flank instead hit her barrel, but Twilight pushed past the sharp snip of pain it caused and bowled the unicorn over. Trixie shrieked and toppled, not being that athletic, and Twilight got her chance - a few precious moments to study the diagram Trixie had drawn.

Twilight knew that the runes themselves had magic - they were conduits for unicorn magic, not the source - but they played an important part in making spells work. Just knowing what a rune meant, though, wasn’t the key. If it was, Twilight would have been casting spells as a filly with just a few introductory magic books as her guide.

No, the runes weren’t a source, but they were the framework of a spell. Twilight had guessed that much and Trixie had confirmed it. The magister had told her to ‘imagine’ them, too, but Twilight had no idea what that meant. Imagine the runes? Twilight closed her eyes and an exact replica of the runic circle appeared in her mind. She imagined casting the spell, she imagined it succeeding, she imagined -

“Ouch!”

Trixie’s laugh brayed throughout the campground. “And once again the Great and Powerful Trixie toasts the Slow and Unimaginative Twilight! It is now three points in Trixie’s favor to your zero! What shall your next move be?”

Twilight’s response was to levitate the breakfast Trixie had been cooking, skillet and all, in front of her. Any lightning would probably hit it and it would meet the same fate as the pot of coffee.

“You wouldn’t, ” Trixie growled. “You’re hungry too.”

Twilight stood her ground. “I’ve gone three days without eating as part of my guard training.” Her eyes narrowed. “Try me.”

Trixie considered. Twilight could see the gears turning behind the magister’s eyes as she tallied the pros and cons. “A truce until I finish eating,” she finally said, horn slowly losing its glow.

“Truce until you finish eating,” Twilight enjoined, and handed over the skillet.

Twilight had to admit, sore rump and all, that this was a fun little game. And Trixie seemed to actually be hungry because she was rooting around the scattered and trampled campsite for a good place to sit with her scrambled egg bribe.

This was the opportunity. Twilight eagerly went back to the drawn runic circle, looking and memorizing. She was sure now that she only recognized the stone rune in the center, but the other shapes were simple and easy to pick up. There were only three runes in all on the whole thing, linked with flowing lines between them. They were precisely arranged in the circle, one unknown run on either side of stone.

“You’re overthinking it,” Trixie called out. Twilight turned enough to glance at her out the corner of her eye, full attention still on the diagram.

“How can I be overthinking it? I’ve never even thought about it at all until today!”

Trixie shrugged, stuffing another fork full of eggs into her mouth. “Trixie doesn’t know,” she responded between bites. “You just seem like the type of pony to overthink things.” She smiled around her fork. “Do you want a hint?”

Yes. Very badly. Twilight almost voiced that as well, but the sheer smugness of Trixie made her keep it firmly behind her teeth. She really, really didn’t want to lose any more face around this unicorn. It was stupid - Trixie was a trained Magister; had spent years at it, according to her - but still. Trixie looked to be the same age as her but she was so damn good at magic!

Twilight wanted to learn this spell more than anything - except not having to ask Trixie for any more help. So, she just firmly shook her head and went back to the rune, Trixie’s giggling ringing out behind her.

There was a trick to it. Overthinking things. How could she be overthinking it? She needed to figure out what the other two runes were, didn’t she? And then… imagine them?

Twilight let her eyes close again, this time moderately sure Trixie wouldn’t zap her. Imagine doing the spell. Imagine it working. Imagine you have a shield. Imagine it blocks Trixie’s spell. Guide the magic into the form you want - it doesn’t naturally want to be a spell.

Imagine it… like you’re trying to describe the spell to a blind pony, Twilight thought. Trixie had originally explained it like that, hadn’t she? Define the spell until it becomes clear. Define it with the runes.

Her horn lit. Wrong. That was wrong. That was just regular magic waiting to grab or suppress something. It wasn’t magic-magic. She saw the runic circle in her mind. Not just the runes on it, but the entire circle and the way Trixie had deliberately drawn the runes and the lines between them; the precise way she’d drawn the circle itself.

“Oh Twilight~ Trixie is finished with her breakfast~”

A circle. A path. “... a flow.”

Her eyes snapped open just as Trixie’s surprise attack came at her. Twilight’s horn lit again, but this time she could feel it was right. The flow of the runes, circle and all. Forcing the magic into purpose, like taming a river.

Magic sprang up around Twilight. A wispy, thin, bubble-like sheen of transparent orchid magic. Trixie’s electricity spell slammed into it, making the whole thing ripple and quake, but it held.

Trixie stared at Twilight; Twilight stared at Trixie.

“That’s-” “I-”

Twilight reached a shaky hoof up to the bubble. It felt like a thin piece of plastic. Elastic, but also too firm to push through. When Twilight did press hard, it just deformed around her hoof and bounced back as soon as she let the pressure off.

It was, without a doubt, a magical shield. Belatedly, Twilight realized her horn was still glowing. Yep. Her magical shield. She let the image of the rune circle go from her mind and it faded back into the nothingness it had been spawned from.

Twilight collapsed. She couldn’t believe it. “I cast a spell?” she asked, looking up at a wary Trixie. She suddenly hopped up to her feet, scaring the sarcasm right out of the pony. “I cast a spell! I can cast a spell! A real spell!”

Trixie shivered when Twilight galloped over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. “More!” she demanded, eyes hungry. “More!”

I really did create a monster, Trixie realized. She’d gone and lit a fire in the unicorn and it was… unnerving, how quick she picked up spell casting. Sol Shard had told Trixie to train Twilight, but did the stallion know how fast she could pick magic up?

Calm down. Just two more days and you can pass her off to the main team. Just two days and she’s some other pony’s problem.

Trixie wondered if she would last that long.

Author's Notes:

Just a nice little chapter explaining a bit of how I write magic in Equestria.

It's actually pretty hard to assign a system to the way unicorns do magic in the show. Some episodes show that you can clearly learn spells in books, but others imply it's all the Power of Imagination™. So, I tried my best to cobble the two points together. Let me know if it makes any sense.