AC97
Magic, for the lack of a better term, is lazy at times. It can’t just disappear into the aether, go to nothing, and if it’s been stolen from somepony, it wants to return to the owner. Hence, it can be assumed that magic going to neutrality is not the path of least resistance, and magic wants to do any option which is simpler if it exists.
Therefore, if ponies shared a cutie mark bond on the level of “almost identical, ala the CMC’s cutie marks,” and one or more of them died, magic would take the next best thing, and funnel into the one(s) left of its own accord. Most ponies would describe such a thing as them being with them in spirit.
To bring that official Ponyville Mysteries book series into this, this is how “Auntie Eclipse” became so abnormally powerful for a unicorn, and how she lived so long without explicitly knowing how to do an age spell. She was once bound by a cutie mark bond with other ponies, she was a rather average/weak unicorn, and envied the power of others, but one day, when one of the others died, she discovered she had grown more powerful. Her jealous nature got the better of whatever moral qualms she had, and so she ended up murdering the rest of them so she could grow strong. Her lifespan was drastically increased, though as her body grew frail from age, heavily slowed down as it was, over time, her magic waned somewhat. The False Cutie Marks she gave the others to bind them by, at least some of them were in fact the cutie marks of the ones she murdered/outlived.
After all, she declared herself “Eclipse Destiny” when she got the Helmet of Shadows and turned into an “alicorn,” and she was supposed to have been a rather weak unicorn in the grand scheme of things, next to the others, so she truly grew beyond her lot in life, for the way that she saw it.
@Wiimeiser
Probably unlikely. Colored contacts, hair dye.
Therefore, if ponies shared a cutie mark bond on the level of “almost identical, ala the CMC’s cutie marks,” and one or more of them died, magic would take the next best thing, and funnel into the one(s) left of its own accord. Most ponies would describe such a thing as them being with them in spirit.
To bring that official Ponyville Mysteries book series into this, this is how “Auntie Eclipse” became so abnormally powerful for a unicorn, and how she lived so long without explicitly knowing how to do an age spell. She was once bound by a cutie mark bond with other ponies, she was a rather average/weak unicorn, and envied the power of others, but one day, when one of the others died, she discovered she had grown more powerful. Her jealous nature got the better of whatever moral qualms she had, and so she ended up murdering the rest of them so she could grow strong. Her lifespan was drastically increased, though as her body grew frail from age, heavily slowed down as it was, over time, her magic waned somewhat. The False Cutie Marks she gave the others to bind them by, at least some of them were in fact the cutie marks of the ones she murdered/outlived.
After all, she declared herself “Eclipse Destiny” when she got the Helmet of Shadows and turned into an “alicorn,” and she was supposed to have been a rather weak unicorn in the grand scheme of things, next to the others, so she truly grew beyond her lot in life, for the way that she saw it.
@Wiimeiser
Probably unlikely. Colored contacts, hair dye.