Spike very slowly poked his head from around the corner of the staircase leading up into Twilight's study.  The unicorn had locked herself in the room for the past week and very rarely left; not even to eat.  The dragon gazed in to see Twilight slouched over her desk, vigorously writing with a quill that seemed to be floating and writing entirely by itself, and surrounded by a bizarre collection of perfectly spherical objects made up of various materials.  

"Uhm, Twilight?"  Spike stayed behind the doorway with his head poking in, not daring to disturb Twilight too much when she was in this kind of a mood.

"What do you want, Spike?"  Twilight wasn't particularly aggressive in her speech, but instead chose to project it in a harsh, matter-of-fact type way that left the dragon reeling.  He opened his mouth to speak but was distracted by a paper sphere (crushed as dense as it could get) smashing against the wall next to him.  

"Are you feeling alright?  You haven't gone outside in days."

Twilight sighed and turned herself around in her chair, looking over to the dragon and showing her weathered and stressed appearance.  She hadn't brushed her hair that day, nor had she slept the three nights before, and her eyes were certainly showing it.  Her coat seemed to take on a slightly more pale color, and the space beneath her eyes showed what should have been an exhausted and agonized unicorn.  Her ribcage was all too visible on her malnourished body, even at Spike's distance, and the poor little dragon could only feel like Twilight was literally killing herself with her studies.  "I keep telling you, I'm fine.  Why does everypony keep asking me how I feel?"

"Have you looked in the mirror lately?"

"No.  I don't have time to stare at myself, there's more than too much learning left to do."

"Well, can't you at least eat something?"  Spike hadn't even bothered to make anything for Twilight that night, she always turned him away or just sneakily disposed of the food after he left her.

"I tell you the same thing every time you ask me that, Spike: I'm not hungry."

"Oh come on.  That can't even be possible!  You look like you're starving to death in your chair."

Twilight picked the dragon up with her telekinesis and dragged him over to her.  He didn't struggle, only whimpered and winced as Twilight's sinister look dug deep into his head.  "You have no concept of what's possible and what isn't, Spike.  I've seen things that would break your unconditioned little mind like a twig, so don't you lecture me on what's 'possible'...  Do you understand me?"

Spike refused to make eye contact with the unicorn; he learned a little while ago that she didn't take too kindly to any kind of insubordination as of late.  Instead, he looked down at the ground, tracing the pathways of various small objects that gravitated toward his location from the residual telekinetic field.  "Y-Yes I do, Twilight."

"Good boy.  Now if you'll kindly get out of my study, I've got something I need to do, and it could be dangerous."  With this, Twilight threw Spike back out the doorway that he entered through, not giving him any chance to recover and leave on his own.  The toss wasn't meant to hurt him, and he landed softly on his back just outside the door, but the worst wound went to his heart.  Spike stepped away, feeling more unimportant than usual with one of Twilight's episodes, and resolved to simply leave the library for a little while.  The unicorn looked back down to her papers, coming to the conclusion that what she was writing was absolutely wrong.  She continued with her psychological journal every single day, wanting nothing more than to keep an accurate account of her behavior down on paper so that she knew what direction she was going later on, but somehow everything she wrote just came out flawed.  Papers were balled up and scattered around her desk, each saying the same thing with one single little tweak that changed virtually nothing as far as meaning went, but each one brought her closer and closer to the "truth".  She dipped her quill into the inkwell and aligned one last scrap of parchment on her desk, intent on getting the journal perfectly correct this time.  

06/25/1012,  8:34 Saturday Night

Each day I train my mind harder and harder.  It's almost like I have a second body, one that's trapped within this frail, silly little pony that I am forced to walk around as every single day.  My second body is growing so strong...  I bet I could crush diamond with my telekinesis...  I need to hurry up and learn the rest of what I can so that I can get better with it.  I haven't a clue what Iago has in store for me, but based on what's happened so far: it must be absolutely spectacular.  I refuse to give up in the face of danger, which is great for the time being, because I'm about to start playing with Fire.

Wish me Luck, Twilight Sparkle.

Twilight lifted up the parchment from her desk and placed it inside of the small binding that she kept next to her.  A very old book cover had provided safe haven for her "psychological journal" and was quickly catching hold of every single note that she wrote.  Next to Iago, this was one of her most prized possessions.  She turned away from her journal and opened the book, looking into the softly glowing text and discerning her next set of instructions.

"Fire, Twilight Sparkle, the destroyer of all and shaper of woe.  The mighty phoenix understands the necessity of fire for renewal, as do all young forests sprouting from the ashes of their ancestors.  Without air, there would be no fire, and without fire, there would be no rebirth.  Do you think you can control such a violent and volatile element?"

"Of course I can, Iago.  I've mastered the other three haven't I?"  The unicorn's ego had grown proportionally with her power, giving her the attitude that there was nothing she could not do.

"You've mastered earth and water, but air still eludes your direct will."

"Is that so?"  Twilight looked over her shoulder and gazed among the loose papers littering the floor; with one swoop of her concentrated mind, the room erupted in a gale that lifted anything lighter than a chair from the ground.  She used her telekinesis to keep things mounted on shelves as papers and broken quills whirled around and, when she gave the mental order, flew directly into her already full wastebasket.  "Then what, pray tell, is more responsive than that?"

"You can force air, Twilight Sparkle.  There is far more to control than simply pushing something to your whim.  You can create a tiny spire out of earth that measures thinner than your horn and threatens to stand tall against the ravages of time.  You can bring water out of a river to meet your face, writhing and thrashing with all the energy and flow that it carries on its own, but you cannot control air anywhere close to the level of finesse of those other two.  Create a vacuum from the ceiling to the floor for me and then we'll talk."  

"A vacuum?  What will that accomplish?"

"While it is good for you to question practicality, it isn't good to question me.  I told you to do it, so do it, unless you can't handle the pressure."

"Ha-Ha..."  The unicorn wasn't amused at all by the horrible pun, but decided to go along with the command anyway.  She certainly was eager to please Iago, even though he... it... wouldn't tell her anything about itself.  

"Theoretically, in a vacuum, a heavy ball and a feather would fall at exactly the same speed.  If you can make a vacuum then you can test that little theory and be the first pony to ever truly know; while at the same time demonstrating the fine and delicate control of holding air back when the forces of the whole planet's atmosphere are working against you."

"Alright, alright.  You've made your point.  I'll give it a try."  Twilight gathered up a few things from the center of her room that didn't get tossed away by her gale and pushed them to the side.  She designated a specific section of the floor to create the vacuum in, figuring that she should try to make this quick.  Every single day her patience wore down until she reached a constantly snappy and upset state of mind.  Air was a finicky element, always evading capture in the specific, little things.  Twilight knew exactly what Iago wanted her to do; the only reason she was so upset was that it actually would take some effort.  The unicorn was slowly getting to the point where she wanted all of the reward without any of the work, and she didn't even realize it.

Twilight did her best to focus on a small sphere of air right in front of her, willing it to expand out from the center.  The most difficult part for the unicorn about this kind of magic was that there were no immediately visible results: she'd just have to assume if she'd gotten it right or not.  She concentrated and tried her best to keep the flow of energy directed at one spot, and since there was no backdrop or visible mark around the vacuum, Twilight had to walk slowly around the area in a circle to keep the depth right.  She could feel something happening; it took a heavier and heavier load of concentration each passing second to keep the energy stuck in one place, so she knew to expand it upward and not just simply out.  The invisible ball stretched up and down, touching the floor and displacing the air around it, but didn't quite reach to the ceiling at that point.  Twilight kicked a small scrap of paper by her hoof into the range of the invisible cylinder, watching as it curved its trajectory from meeting a wall of air that separated atmosphere from vacuum.  

The unicorn let loose everything that she had, pressing the vacuum up to the ceiling and forcing it to stay with all of her might.  Once it actually reached the surface it became much easier to hold, so she managed to allocate her attention back to the book.  With a quick and very rough yank Twilight brought the book over to her with her telekinesis, dropping it at her feet and looking down, hesitating to move her body at all.  Twilight flipped the book open without any effort and read what it had to say, reflexively craving every bit of praise she could get from Iago.

"That's the trick, now try dropping a feather and something heavy from the ceiling, just to see if it's a true vacuum."

The unicorn was becoming almost addicted to reading good things in the book, so she obeyed its every command; when she thought she could gain from it, of course.  She glanced around the room quickly, grabbing a used quill and the remains of some old device that Twilight had crushed into a sphere just for fun, moving the objects up to the approximate edge of her vacuum.  With a slow progression she pushed them inside, watching the air distort and leave a small trail of steam from the rapid condensation as the objects entered the space.  Twilight strained to keep focus on the cylinder and the objects within it all at once, taking only enough time to make sure they were aligned well enough before letting them go.  

To Twilight's surprise, the objects actually did fall at nearly the same rate, with only a small flutter in the feather as a tiny bit of residual air must have stayed inside the cylinder.  The unicorn let her concentration go and sat back on her haunches, staring up at the ceiling and catching her breath a bit.  The room felt a slight breeze as air rushed in to fill the vacuum once more, letting Twilight's hair blow into her face; a minor annoyance.  She flicked her head to the side and looked down to her book, reading into whatever it had to say for her.

"Very good, with a little practice you might be able to make a perfect vacuum.  Something that I myself needed time to master.  So, do you wish to master the art of pyromancy?"

"As long as you can teach, I can learn, Iago."

"Good answer.  Let's get started, then.  Go find a candle, or anything to focus on really, and set it up on your table."

Twilight complied and went to her small storage space beneath the lofted portion of her bedroom.  She grabbed a few candles and brought them over to the desk, arranging them by color and setting the book off to the side.  After a short time, she decided to also go get a bucket of water, just in case.  

Once everything was ready, she performed her usual routine of flipping the book open to any random page; something that still intrigued her.  Iago had already prepared a lesson for her.

"Ah, Fire.  The most powerful, most feared, and most beautiful of all the tangible elements.  My personal favorite, for it is violent, ruthless and utterly unstoppable once it begins to consume, yet it never quite removes something.  A field will burn away, and the soil will be fertile behind it.  A village will be immolated, and its inhabitants burned, scarred, and annihilated, but flowers and trees will engulf the land within a decade.  Fire is impartial: consuming and destroying good and evil, and fueling balance on this lovely little rock that you call Equestria.  There's something so hypnotic about watching flames lick along something, turning it black and shriveled, and then to dust.  Don't you agree, Twilight Sparkle?"

"Of course I do."  Twilight's answers were kept brief and to the point; a recent slew of scoldings had trained her to do so, if not without the occasional burst of insubordination.

"Fire is an easy one to start, Twilight Sparkle, but is one of the most difficult to control.  Like air, it is dependent on energy for its strength, but the stronger it is, the more focused you have to remain.  Like water, it cannot be lifted simply like an object, but instead nudged along in the universe, and like earth, fire must be replaced if it is moved from somewhere else, lest it spontaneously extinguish or explode.  With enough energy, no fuel is needed, for even the air around it can catch fire, but this is extremely taxing to your body, and may destroy you.  Are you prepared?"

"I've never been more prepared for anything my whole life, Iago."

"That's certainly true: you've never had me to prepare you.  Now, focus on the wick of the candle.  We're beginning here because these are a local and static fuel source: this minimizes the risk of the fire spreading against your will."

Twilight located the long, unburned wick of the new candle and straightened it up with her telekinesis, focusing so firmly on it that she could pick out the individual fibers that make it up.  Without moving the candle, or even her head, she levitated the tome by her side and turned her eyes to read.

"Imagine each little particle within that wick, then move them.  Find them all, vibrate them, force them to quiver, and the energy generated will eventually build to combustion.  This is a rudimentary ability, but can produce some of the most powerful effects."

Twilight brought her gaze back to the wick of the candle, measuring its shape and distance from her face, and then closed her eyes.  The unicorn's mind was flush with mental images of herself 'zooming' in on the wick.  She passed the threads, and then passed the fibers, moving inward closer and closer, smaller and smaller, until she was envisioning the very molecular structure of the thread itself.  With all of the practice that she'd been having, Twilight's telekinesis was fine tuned so well that she could pick each of these imaginary atoms and cause them to twitch.  After a few seconds of doing this in her mind, she reopened her eyes, trying to follow the same intense level of concentration that she'd built up.  The wick itself began to quiver, but she fixed that problem and held it perfectly still, beginning once more.  She could see a few of the small strands begin to fray and pull away from the thread, then she spotted a slight discoloration begin to form.  She poured herself into the candle, feeling her body tense up and cringe as her mind ripped energy out of the ether.  The discoloration brought the wick from white to a light tan, slowly burning away the unperturbed substances in the thread.

Just as Twilight thought she'd failed, the candle lit itself; a quiet and placid flame danced atop the small wax cylinder.  The unicorn took a startlingly deep breath, realizing that she'd forgotten to breathe in the time that she was focused on the candle.  Instead of looking directly back to Iago, however, she simply tried to augment the flame by herself.  She knew what was going to come, so she simply focused on the base of the flame, where wax touched wick, and repeated her earlier process.  The flame danced more rapidly, as if in a small breeze, and then grew slightly, reaching out and away from its waxy base and toward the ceiling.  Twilight continued, not realizing that the wax around the wick had liquified and rose up a little.  Without any warning (other than a small "sweat" of wax along the edges of the thing) the entire candle burst into flame, sending a few weak bits of wax from the brim flying about the library.

Time seemed to slow down for the unicorn as the exploded candle sent trails of flaming liquid in almost every direction.  She could watch as the liquid spread in the air and caught fire, moving at a snail's pace toward her very flammable walls, floor, and worst of all: books.  Twilight froze, feeling as though her loss of control had just cost her everything, including her very home, but a single voice resounded through her mind:

"Focus, Twilight Sparkle.  You can do this."

Hyperventilating, the unicorn looked to her side and read (at what could only be described as a super-pony speed) what Iago had written for her.

"This is good: panic, fear, resentment, hatred... passion... will bring you power. If you aren't careful, though, emotions can bring about your destruction.  I'd suggest you learn to suppress them.  Save your library until then, Twilight Sparkle, and use all of your experience to do it, if not out of skill, but out of necessity."

The unicorn turned her head to look around.  Everything was still slow, including her movement, but she could see the burning wax leaving trails of liquid flame behind it anywhere she looked.  She turned around and around, taking in the slowly changing positions of any flames as they came in contact with the various surfaces, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.  Something inside her changed right then; she distilled all of the panic and all of the fear down into a single, calm sequence of procedure.  Her constant obsession with scientific theory led her to do everything in a heartbeat, so she simply assessed her situation.  

Twilight stirred the air in the room, ripping the still moving wax away from wherever it was going, and then used her knowledge of water magic to stabilize and control the flaming liquid.  Anything stuck already to a surface was pulled away with telekinesis, keeping it far away from the many flammable objects in her midst.  She brought everything in toward herself, still keeping her eyes closed and keeping focused on the very aura of the room.  She could feel the energies flowing around herself, and she made use of this.  The residual flaming wax that stayed stuck to the bookshelves and walls was extinguished when Twilight brought in all of the air around the room into a small bubble around herself, concentrating the oxygen and subsequently bringing the combustion of the candle and stray wax to a violent, and roaring blaze.  She opened her eyes to see her handiwork: marveling at the swirling mass of burning fluid as it encircled her.  She pulled the already half-liquid candle off of the wooden table and extinguished the burning wood that it separated from, merging the destroyed candle with the ring of fire around her body.  She looked out and saw barely anything but a scorch mark on her walls and floor, everything was completely under control.  

Twilight breathed in deep, watching the inferno around her with a stark concentration.  She released the bubble of air and let it fill out the room once more, blowing any small objects around her desk all directions around the room.  With a smile, she crushed every bit of the flaming wax flowing lazily around her into a ball, igniting a raging (yet still controlled) inferno in front of her.  Her breathing increased in rate as she moved one hoof above the ball and one hoof below, crushing the ball into as dense as it could go with her telekinesis, and watching the fire consume it.  She tried to directly manipulate the flames themselves, pressing against their wild and unbound forms, and bringing them down, away from the ball.  As the flames obeyed her, Twilight stared down into the ball, watching a lick of fire rise and fall in every single direction from the ball of wax, including downward.  The thing resembled the sun, burning bright and violently, yet completely within her grasp: it was exhilarating.  

The only other lit candles around the room were blown out during her gale, so this ball was the only source of light for the study.  It cast an eerie glow and dancing shadow of the standing unicorn onto her wall and made the rest of the world seem to shrink away.  The raw, unbound power of fire dancing and writhing between Twilight's hooves brought a grin to her face.  What couldn't she control if she could control all of this?