As she looked out the window of the Canterlot suburban house she was in, Vinyl Scratch reflected that she had a very interesting relationship with her tutor.

On one hoof, she and her tutor had a relationship going back a couple of years now. Since they had met back then, the two had become rather close, and were almost like family. Despite the tutor’s formal background, Vinyl had a gregarious, occasionally casual relationship with her. On the other hoof, her tutor’s background sometimes came into play, making their relationship more complicated.

But what else would you expect when your tutor was Princess Celestia?

“Now Vinyl, take a look at this gem.”

Vinyl turned away from the window, looking back at the room she was in. Like many of the Royalty’s other parlor rooms in other buildings across Equestria, it was a well furnished space. In this situation, the theme of the room was definitely the color red, as shown in the rose-covered wallpaper and ottoman furniture on the wooden floor.

Celestia herself was resting on her belly on the room’s largest ottoman, sharing the space with a tiny purple dragon. Said dragon, still only a fraction of the size of even the filly Vinyl, was clasping onto a light blue diamond. The diamond, though apparently shined and polished at one point, now sported a number of tooth marks.

“The diamond’s cool,” Vinyl said, “but why am I looking at Spike’s lunch?”

Princess Celestia smiled. For some reason, she often did that when Vinyl acted regularly around her.

“This is not an ordinary diamond. Most of them are mined from deep under the Earth, be it by Diamond Dogs or other species, including some ponies. However, this diamond was not found, but made.”

Vinyl looked up from the diamond and into Celestia’s eyes with a puzzled look on her face. Diamonds could be made now?

“Your next question for today,” the Princess continued, “is to figure out how a pony could do that.”

The filly snorted. Celly was a great tutor, not to mention a totally awesome sun goddess, but she liked to do this sort of thing. She’d give a piece of information, turn it into a question, and let Vinyl figure out. As often as not, Vinyl wouldn’t be able to figure out the question. When that happened, sometimes she wouldn’t even share the answer, instead asking the same question again a few weeks later. There was this one riddle involving toast that had been a recurring nemesis for months now.

That said, Vinyl felt a bit more confident about this one.

“Well… a while back, you talked about how diamonds are made of the same sort of stuff as coal and whatnot. Except it’s been exposed to a lot of heat and pressure and stuff. So if a pony did a really good job at getting the right stuff out of, I dunno, a big chunk of coal, and then put it under heat or pressure, would that do it?”

“Very good memory,” Celestia replied. “For bonus points, figure out how a pony could get that much heat and pressure.”

Vinyl was starting to feel stumped. She didn’t know about heat and pressure! What, did some earth pony light the coal on fire and then stomp on it?

“Well… I guess if you used a forge… or maybe a volcano’s magma… but how would you crush it?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said the princess. “It was sort of a trick question. Yes, a pony made this diamond, but that pony was me. And it wasn’t easy. I left that piece of coal tucked beneath the sun’s surface for a couple of centuries.”

“…why the buck would you carry a lump of coal to the sun?” Vinyl exclaimed.

The alicorn looked sternly at her pupil, who looked down embarrassed. Celly was very cool, but like most adults in positions of authority, she didn’t react well to fillies cursing in front of her.

Relaxing a bit, Celestia began to explain. “I spent a lot of time traveling back and forth from the sun in my early days as a ruler. It became a place to escape to when I was feeling overwhelmed. I planted a lot of coal as sorts of time capsules, something I could look forward to finding again. Naturally, by the time I was able to collect any diamonds, I barely looked forward to them anymore. Hence, why I have no problem with sharing one with Spike here.”

Princess Celestia nodded toward the little dragon sitting beside her, who had begun sucking on the edge of the diamond again. He was still only a couple of years old, meaning that his teeth couldn’t crush diamonds quite yet, but his saliva did a good job providing him with valuable carbon.

Looking up from his treat for a moment, Spike asked Celestia “Wanna piece?”

The ruler smiled at the tiny dragon.

“No thank you. We will have lunch in a little while.”

“Lunch is good,” Spike solemnly confirmed.

Vinyl walked over to the pair, putting her head next to Spike’s.

“You know Spiky bro, you already have this diamond,” Vinyl whispered. “You sure you’ll need lunch?”

Spike jumped back from Vinyl, shocked by her suggestion. Before he could protest though, Vinyl began laughing. And before long, Spike and Celestia joined in.

Just as the laughter was winding down, two guards, seemingly identical white unicorns in golden armor, burst through the doorway into the room.

“Your highness!” they declared in union, an urgent tone in their voices.

Celestia’s laughter disappeared, and the ruler of Equestria quickly stood up.

“What’s the problem?” she asked.

“Some sort of giant rainbow appeared to the east of here, seemingly around Cloudsdale,” the guard on the left replied. “There may have been a major accident at the rainbow factories, or there-”

The guards, Vinyl, and Spike were astonished to see Celestia, in a fraction of a second, go from an alert yet regal pose to a combat-ready one. As she crouched while flaring her wings, her horn began to glow. A golden bubble popped out of her horn, rapidly expanding to engulf the group.

“What’s going on?” Vinyl shouted.

“Gentlecolts,” Celestia began, her tone graver than Vinyl had ever heard it. “Watch my student and her companion. Tell your comrades to retreat to this room if they feel weaker than usual or otherwise strange. I’ll be back as soon as whatever the situation is has been contained.”

And with barely even a flash from her horn, Princess Celestia had disappeared.

“Vinyl, I’m scared,” said Spike, toddling over to her forelegs.

Looking at the guards, whose confusion and alarm was apparent despite their years of training, Vinyl had to agree.
------

Princess Celestia’s first action was to teleport a few miles into the air. There was no notable weather formations scheduled for the area today, meaning that she could see around for miles. Just as importantly, this was well above where most pegasi would usually fly, giving her the space to perform some of her more dramatic spells if necessary.

Closing her eyes, Celestia focused on what she had felt on the ground. There was something, not too far away, that was draining magic in the area. Objects that did this were far from unheard of, but such items were uncommon outside of law enforcement, itself a fairly limited field, and had limited range. Whatever this was had an incredible range, suggesting some kind of very powerful creature.

The princess had a poor history when dealing with very powerful beings. Discord was the most notorious, but there was also Keshi, Sombra, Ixion, Tirek, Nightma- she was not going to think about that last one. In any case, it was likely that whatever this threat was, she would have to fight it, possibly by herself.

Allowing a modicum of magic to leave her body, Princess Celestia opened her eyes. A hypothetical witness would notice that her eyes were all white, as she focused on the bit of magic. A few moments later, she saw that it was slowly floating in the direction of Canterlot.

The diarch took a moment to sigh. For some reason, the big bad guys tended to target her capitol city. Even though there were plenty of other cities, many of them more populous or strategically valuable, they just had to target the one she was personally attached to.

Celestia teleported a few miles over to Canterlot before gliding the final few thousand feet to her castle. She rushed past a few meandering pegasi, hurrying to one of the castle’s many courtyards.

Descending, she saw that one of the lieutenants was already there, yelling at nearby soldiers to assemble. This was both good and bad. Good because it meant she didn’t have to go hunting down her military command, bad because whatever was going on had been noticed here too, despite her only noticing it a few minutes earlier.

“Your majesty!” the officer called out, as Celestia came to a rather hurried landing next to him.

“What’s the situation?” she asked him.

“Approximately four or five minutes ago, several unicorn members of the guard noticed that there was some sort of disturbance in the air. More and more of them have been reporting sensing abnormalities as well. We assumed that there is something happening with the magical field in this area. We mobilized in case this is a prelude to an attack on the castle”

“It’s worse than that,” Celestia interrupted, slightly relieved that whatever was happening hadn’t escaped her notice for long, but worried that even regular unicorns were feeling the effects when whatever it was remained out of sight. “Some being or object is absorbing magic, and from what I’ve seen so far, its covering much of the Canterlot region. I need any talented spell casters here to make themselves known immediately.”

Several guards stepped forward. Without any explanation, Celestia asked them to spread out throughout the courtyard, telling them only to “try to emulate the spell I’m about to cast.”

Celestia cast a spell similar to the one she had cast earlier. This time, she made note of the unicorns copying her spell to the best of their abilities. They were mostly failing, but by noting the minute differences in the flow of their magic and hers, she would be able to precisely locate where the draining thing was coming from.

There! It was a couple of miles away, at her School for Gifted Unicorns.

Either that, or several thousand miles in the opposite direction.

She decided to check the school first.
------

Professor Penworthy, one of the senior members of the school staff, had started his day with the usual expectations. Get up, have some coffee and croissants, go to teach a bunch of ungrateful youths, so on and so forth.

However, in the middle of his classical Equestrian literature class, he noticed that several of his students were fidgeting. Which was not unusual, except that they usually wouldn’t be this restless until closer to the end of class.

Pausing for a moment to figure out what was distracting them, he noticed that his horn was feeling… unusual. In fact, upon further introspection, it was as if he was casting some sort of spell, even though he wasn’t holding onto any chalk at the moment. Which meant that something was drawing the magic out. Which meant…

“Class, stay seated until I come back. Anypony who I catch out of their seats will risk demerits.”

With those parting words, Penworthy practically fled out of the room.

In the hallway, he heard galloping in the distance. Realizing that whatever was doing this was probably in that direction, he followed the sounds. Soon, he was running alongside two other professors, a mare and a stallion, as well as a female upperclassman.

“Anypony know what’s going on?” the young mare shouted over their galloping.

“No,” replied Penworthy, “but whatever it is will probably be dangerous. If you think there’s any danger of your fellows getting hurt, I’m trusting you to help start an evacuation.”

The student opened her mouth as if to protest being told to run away, then closed it, thinking better of the situation.

Finally, the four ponies reached a hallway where a crowd of teachers, staff, and strangely enough, a couple of fillies, colts, and presumably their parents had gathered. They seemed to be forming a mob around a closed doorway, which Penworthy remember led to one of the older classrooms.

Oh Celestia. This must be where they were holding placement testing today. Which meant that whatever was in that room was probably attacking a foal.

“Alright everypony, listen up!” shouted Penworthy. Some of the others turned to face him. Good enough. “I’m going to blast that door down. Whatever’s in there is absorbing magic, and if it can do so through solid objects, that means it’s probably intense in there. I want everypony to grab something and fire it at whatever is doing this. C’mon, there are some folding chairs over there! Right, on the count of five, I’ll blast the door open. One… Two… Three… Four… Five!”
------

What is the first thought a living thing has when they’re born?

For many baby ponies, it was something along the lines of “wow that’s bright!” Other popular choices included “Suddenly I’m feeling agrophobic,” “Somepony just slapped me!” and a more ambiguous “Bwuh?”

Unlike baby ponies, however, the thing inside the room had no memories of being in a womb to easer them in. It was thrown into life much more abruptly, but not without prior circumstances.

Therefore, the Crying Human’s first thought was “Why am I crying?”

It took a little while to have this thought. Everything was moving at a glacial pace. As things sped up though, the human began to realize that his first thought had a logical answer.

“I’m hurting. Ouch! Celestia damn it this bucking hurts!”

Like many thoughts in the minds of young beings, this one led to yet more questions.

“What is a Celestia?”

“How do I know words?”

“Why am I hurting EVERYWHERE?”

As the world sped up, the pain only got worse. The human wanted to thrash about, but their limbs were being held still by something. As the world got faster and faster though, and the pain got worse and worse, freedom came. The human’s muscles clenched, his arms holding his legs to his chest, as he began whimpering and rocking back and forth.

It didn’t take long for the human to become curious though. Where was he? What exactly was hurting him? He only had to open his eyes…

The human’s eyes opened. For possibly the first thing he ever saw, he was not impressed. There was a little purple unicorn (how did he know what a unicorn was?) floating in front of him, glowing purple. Some distance behind her were two larger unicorns, but something was wrong with them. They were collapsed, with only the white one’s eyes open. The mare (how could he tell the difference?) was staring at the purple filly, her left foreleg stretching out.

That was when things became crazy.

The door in the background, which the human barely even noticed earlier, flew in his direction. Fortunately for him, the purple filly was in the way, taking the blow from a large, hard piece of wood. She was knocked down to the ground, the glowing starting to fade.

Before the human could consider what this meant, he saw a multitude of things coming out of the doorway. Desks, chairs, potted plants, bundles of papers; all were covered in some shining color or another, all seemed to be moving independently. But with a single purpose.

To head in his general direction at as high a speed as possible.

The human had never stopped feeling the pain, but as the first chair slammed into him, knocking his limbs aside, he knew that his knowledge of pain would only expand from here on out.