Twilight returned a few day later with the books I asked for. She seemed rather sullen when she came in my room. Something was greatly bothering her. She cheered up as soon as she saw me, though it was likely her putting on a brave face despite whatever her issues were.

"Hello Griffin. Good to see you're taking studying seriously." She remarked at seeing the books she'd brought me previously laid out on the floor as I tried to translate the gibberish horse runes into a reasonable language. Some runes were letters, some runes were entire words, but only if they had a specific rune somewhere else in the sentence, or the next sentence, and directly translated the grammar came out as, 'Yesterday, for eggs I went to the market.' but only sometimes, and sometimes not. It was worse than french verb tenses. No wonder only ancient unicorns used it. So, as you might imagine, it was slow going.

"Would help if unicornian made any sense."

"What? But it's easy!"

"It doesn't follow any sensible grammatical rules whatsoever!"

"Well, that's because the ancient unicorns were... whimsical. They thought it would be better if their writing came out in rhyme." Twilight explained with a bit of a blush. "In fact, a lot of spells are a lyric of some kind you think in your head." Well, I suppose that could be why the grammar is all messed up, because the next line spoke about a cart and where to 'park it'. "That's only the more advanced spells though. For the beginner level spells, you just need to know the right way to direct magic at it, while the advanced ones require both."

"Huh. Thanks. Might make this a bit easier."

"As for this one," She pulled a book out of her saddlebags. It was bound in a lavender cover, same as her coat. The title read, 'The nature of Alicorns, by Twilight Sparkle'. "I couldn't find any books in the library about alicorns that weren't folk tales so I took the liberty of writing one myself." She snickered a bit. "And Spike said I'd never get any use out of the do-it-your-self book binding kit I ordered."

"Wow... thanks." She outright wrote a book for me.

"These ones are library books but I've already made copies of that one, so you can keep it."

"Alright. Thank you. I'll start right away."

We all know the rumors about alicorns, the immortal princesses and leaders of our land, but there is very little recorded in terms of hard facts and evidence. Most knowledge on this topic is pure conjecture. As a unicorn-turned-alicorn myself, I feel I am best suited to try and clarify some of the misgivings regarding the subject. This should be considered an encyclopedic journal, and as such is not written in a proper scientific format, but in a method to make digesting the information as easy as possible and drawing from my own personal experiences.

The first thing we know about alicorns is they have both the horn of a unicorn and the wings of a pegasus. That implies they can perform magic as well as fly, and both these cases are true. What is less commonly known is that they also possess the natural strength of earth ponies, and tend to have a larger physical form because of this, while still maintaining the sleek, noble look means that this generally results in an increase in height to proportionally match the increase in mass.

The second point is that alicorns live forever. This can be attributed to their massive magical reserve. Magic comes from within, but is both a physical and metaphysical force. To put it in simpler terms magic is the essence of the soul, contained within the body. If the magic is powerful, that means the spirit is equally powerful, which in turn causes the body to be strong, in the case of alicorns providing limitless longevity. This is also why unicorns tend to live longer than earth ponies or pegasi. In the case of King Sombra who used dark magic to enhance his own, when his relatively average body was destroyed by Celestia and Luna in ages past, he didn't 'die', instead persisting as a spirit with a non static physical form. He then took himself and the entirety of the crystal empire into a pocket dimension for a thousand years while he recovered his strength, which he did by drawing on the stolen crystal heart.

As for my own experience in becoming and alicorn, it occurred while I was researching an old spell of Starswirl the Bearded's that he never finished. When I completed the spell it drew on my connection to the elements of harmony and overloaded my body with magic, very similar to an occurrence I once had as a filly when I was overcharged by Rainbow Dash's sonic rainboom, though much greater in power and stability. After this took place, I found myself in a strange mist filled land, which I was later told was the spirit world, where Princess Celestia found me and returned me to the physical realm, at which point I found that I had become an alicorn. Eyewitness reports that when I disappeared all that remained was a black scorch mark on the ground.

These facts have lead me to believe that the overwhelming surge of magic I encountered was too much for my current physical body to hold, so it was destroyed and reconstituted with my current alicorn body. My physical form ceased to exist, but my spirit was strong enough to manifest itself.

These points raise numerous questions. Is it possible for anypony to become an alicorn? The answer to that is no. It seems one trait alicorns all have in common is their connection to some powerful aspect of creation. Princess Celestia is linked to the sun, Princess Luna is linked to the moon, Princess Cadence is linked to the crystal heart, and I myself am linked to the element of magic, which is in turn linked to the tree of harmony.

So what then of the other element bearers? Will they too, one day, become immortal alicorns like myself? Not likely. It would take years of study and training to develop their natural abilities to the level that they could no longer be contained.

What of the late King Sombra? He wasn't connected to any aspect of creation, but he bound dark magic to himself to increase his power. It is probable that because of this unnatural enhancement that he became an immortal when he first died, but did not take the form of an alicorn like someone of that caliber should have.

This leads to the final point of this chapter. Is it possible for non-pony species to become immortal? Yes, and no. Necromancy, though long banned, is a possible method of gaining immortality, though any foolish enough to try would be trapped forever in a state of undeath. Then there's the case of 'Varg the Undying. While there isn't any proof as of the time of publishing, there are numerous legends of a diamond dog who simply doesn't die, and, according to the legend, even he is unaware as to the reason, though whatever it may be it is clearly different in nature from alicorn ascendancy. Changelings can also be considered functionally 'immortal'. They feed on emotions, which are tied to magic, and so long as the changeling in question has a sufficient supply of nourishment they will not perish. In fact, changelings do not age at all. An interview with Queen Chrysalis confirmed this.

"A changeling has only two fates available to them. To either starve to death, or be killed in another manner. We do not age. We do not take ill. So long as we have enough love to sustain and heal ourselves we cannot die. A changeling queen will often live several thousand years, until she is either slain by an usurper or the hive cluster starves to death."

Ponies are the most magically gifted of the races in this world, and as such are the most likely to reach this ascendancy, because they're the most likely to be selected by an aspect of creation. I have no doubt in my mind that I was chosen by the elements of harmony. While it is theoretically possible that a griffin or a diamond dog could achieve this level, this has not occurred at any point in history, recorded or otherwise. If it had there'd be an immortal of their kind running about. Such exceptional individuals are not easily forgotten. This concludes chapter one. In chapter two the nature of magic itself, as well as further in depth deconstruction of non alicorn immortals such as Chrysalis and Discord.

Twilight may not have known it at the time she gave me this book, but it was the single most valuable gift I had ever been given. It was as if someone came out and told me exactly how gods worked. Such insights into the nature of the divine were so rare, she said so herself, and she gave it to me just like that. It was more than I expected. In just reading the first chapter I had already discovered everything I'd been seeking to learn and more. Completely unexpected was that I knew how immortality worked, at least in this world, and if you know how something works, you just become that much better at breaking it.

The other books were useful as well. I refreshed my knowledge of biology and anatomy. I could never remember how nerves worked. Was it potassium and and sodium out, or the other way around? The books reminded me that sodium is inside and moves out, then potassium moves in. What I do remember is this causes the voltage inside the nerve to go from -70 milivolts to +30 milivolts, at least in humans. A human can also survive several thousand volts passing through their body, in the effect of a taser, which forces the action potential and causes the nerves to be unable to process signals temporarily. Griffins also have a natural disposition towards weather magic, including lightning generation, so it's should be a reasonable expectation for myself to develop this kind of effect, assuming I can get control of my magic. This would also have several non combat uses, such as an impromptu pace maker or defibrillator. Sustaining a person, even myself, after a normally fatal injury, if I combine that with my blood control... which I'll have to completely relearn.

That reminds me. My human body is still brutally wounded and out of magic. I'll have to get someone to turn me back at some point, preferably while I'm laying on a surgeon's table surrounded by several specialists who've already been briefed on the situation. Literally all it would take to kill me right now would be a quick true form spell and I'd bleed out. It should be fine because it's not like anyone will think of that. Except I just did. No. It'll be fine. I'm sure of it.

Thirty seconds later, I was pounding on the door to my room, practically begging the guard to take me to the ER and to call in Dr. Exotic so I could be operated on, screaming that I didn't want to die. He initially dismissed this as an insane rant, that is until the smoke alarm went off and all the sprinklers in the hallway turned on. At that point he agreed, so long as I didn't destroy another hospital room. On the way down to the operating room I could hear him swearing to himself about property damage.

Author's Notes:

Now, if any of you have an issue with unicorn magic being some lyric in your head, I'll direct you to the season 3 finale with Starswirl's unfinished spell. Twilight clearly speaks a rhyme and that's how it works. Considering unicorns aren't always rhyming, you'd have to assume they do it in their head at the same time as channeling magic. This also explains why when she was trying that one magic spell earlier in the season, she kept turning things into oranges. Nothing rhymes with orange. Except door-hinge, if you count that. Congrats, I just blew your mind, unless you'd already figured that out previously.

In case you didn't realize this before now, this hospital is probably going to be obliterated by the time Griffin leaves it.

Also, some.... interesting... things have been planned for down the road. As in 'after Tirek'. And after all the other interesting things I already have planned that happen before Tirek. Yep, before and after Tirek are all interesting. Tirek himself will be boring because Grif doesn't actually do anything. youve all seen the show, you know what happens.