Starbeam/Stellar

"Hubris has almost gotten us killed before." She notes fairly. "We're helpless without magic, but we rarely account for losing it. It's probably why Zaros eluded us so often. His skills were already flexible, and far less crude than what we worked with."

"Crude, huh? About magic? And you're saying it?"

"I do try to make my art as beautiful to me as possible, though it's a process. There's an old adage that describes my stance on the matter quite well. 'A unicorn is bought a house, a pegasus has all the proper materials supplied for them, and an earth pony has to craft the whole building from scratch'. When you hone an art from the ground up your entire life, it's going to be at least up to scale with a gift that somepony else simply got naturally, and usually much better.

As for Aurora, it's crafted from life, and damages life. Life magic works in both directions. It literally drains the vitality from you, which is why the leftover scars don't fade. But I know full well the damage more mundane methods can cause."

A sheen curls from Starbeam's horn down to her tail, and where it travels, old injuries appear. Various scar tissue litters her torso, a chunk of her left ear is missing, a mark traces a white line from her scalp down one eye and to her upper lip, and it looks like a large patch of her flank was burned off with acid at some point, among other bits and pieces. Essentially, she looks like she just came out of a horror movie.

Then the marks fade, and she returns to her normal appearance. "Geez, why don't you look like that 24/7? You looked like a batpony out of hell."

"It scares my students." She states simply. "Besides, those have long since healed. It's just a brief flash of Memento's Malicious Memoir, a glamor that shows all of the injuries a pony has sustained over their lifetimes."

Stellar chuckles. "Oh, so basically you flashbacked into a zombie to score brownie points with Blades."

"Brownie points do not concern me." She scoffs. "...That sounded incredibly pompous, sorry."


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Arvadraa

"The head's going to be tricky...it needs very fine...ahah." She pulls out Wolfsbane. "Thin lines like from a knife."

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Snowstorm

The pegasus laughs. "Impressive or no, I know better than to tangle with a master in his field. You may have to get me some cider first. Hm. Even then, we might end up with just a few off-color limericks."