Trinity, Equestria
5 AHW*
The mare squinted at the rod, her horn glowing violet as made miniscule adjustments to the magical foci, jiggling the gemstones in their casings. The room echoed with a pulsing drone emanating from the rod and five others like it in the room.
“Stop playing with that thing,” the stallion in the corner admonished her, exasperation beginning to edge its way into his tone. Recognizing his voice, she jumped before she managed to resume her professional demeanor.
“I-I’ve just got to adjust… this…” Dangit, she hadn’t been able to keep that initial waver out of her voice. Finally, the rod gave a series of distinctive clicks as the gems were all correctly aligned.
“Give me the spell-weave calculations,” the stallion instructed. “NOW!” he barked when her attention remained on the rod. Startled from her inspection, she stalked over to a table and levitated a scroll inscribed with the spell process. Glancing at the other unicorns in the room, she noted that they seemed terrified by his sudden outburst. They were probably worried that he was angry and would take it out on them. She was worried about the fact that he was nervous.
“They’re already done,” she protested, though she passed him the scroll anyway. Unrolling the diagram, the stallion moved to the center of the circle created by the rods, the rune etched onto the floor illuminating him in a soft silvery glow.
Star Swirl the Bearded. Wearing his iconic hat and cloak embroidered with lunar symbols on a blue background, his long gray beard rustled quietly as he absentmindedly stroked his chin. His name was legend throughout all of the three tribes, his skill with magic unparalleled and his intellect unmatched. Most of the unicorns here looked on this chance to work with the aging mage as the high point in their careers. For her, it was just another crazy project with her mentor. Then again… this project was easily the craziest that either of them had ever worked on.
The stallion held his hoof upturned towards her. Taking the hint, she passed him a quill from the table. The work of several days by the top mages in the land disappeared under a few quick swipes of the quill. Clover was sure that if they’d been here to see it, all those unicorns would have screamed at the casual manner in which their work had been altered.
Star Swirl nodded to himself, passing the scroll back to her as he produced a pocket watch from his cloak and began to toy with it. Looking over his changes, she had to admit she was impressed. He’d improved the spell’s efficiency by almost a factor of three. The reduced strain on the unicorns casting it would make maintaining it much easier, giving him a larger window of opportunity.
“I wonder if it will be snowing,” he dryly remarked as the modified scroll was passed around, each unicorn studying the changes before nodding and passing the scroll to the next in line. Once they had all memorized the new adjustments, they took up their positions, five other unicorns each taking a place between two of the rods, while Clover took the position facing Star Swirl.
“Good luck,” she called, allowing just a hint of affection to show before resuming her professional demeanor. “Standby.”
As one, the six unicorns circling the elderly mage lit their horns, the rods emitting a single rising note as they began to glow as well. The rune collapsed in on the mage, turning red as soon as it touched him. Then, with a final crash reminiscent of a sonic rainboom and a similarly blinding flash of light, he was gone.
/////
Somewhere in the Hippogriffonian Mountain Range
50 BHW**
Icy winds swirled around the three windigoes as they rested on the mountainside, the unnatural gale shrieking in the cave behind them as stones began to split in the extreme cold.
The Windigoes’ piercing gazes swept over the vast valleys that lay below. They saw towns and farms filled with growing things, cities and mines that glowed in the light of countless spells, and clouds shaped into homes and guided across the land.
They could feel the anger of the creatures in the fields, who worked so hard to make their crops grow and their food plentiful only to have their produce stolen away.
They savored the scent of resentment from the beasts in the sky, who fought hard to gain authority through personal betterment, yet were forced to take orders from those who had not earned their authority or risk letting their children starve.
Their ears flicked at the sounds of indignation from the beings in the city, whose power ensured the continuation of the cycle the whole world relied on and brought them great wealth, yet had no choice but to associate with such crude and brazen beings or risk losing the wealth and stability they had fought to gain.
Every creature in the valley reeked of dissatisfaction, anger, and resentment just waiting to erupt into full-blown hatred, and the smell was intoxicating. The spirit’s hooves stamped eagerly on some invisible plain as they began to prance in a circle, their heads held high and a bounce in their gait. Such a feast! Such a buffet! Surely this land would feed them for decades yet before their chill squeezed the life from the land!
Just as they began to charge towards the waiting banquet, the cave behind them flashed with a brilliant light and a sound like a phoenix rocketing past. Pulling up, short, their ethereal manes whipped in their chilling wind as they turned to confront whatever force had made itself known.
The intruder was a creature like the ones in the cities, yet the anger in his heart was much weaker than theirs. His strange blue hat and cloak were adorned with several tiny bells that tinkled softly in the wind, yet he showed no sign of feeling their chill. What manner of creature was this, that was not frozen solid in their presence? Their knickering grew nervous as they paced back and forth, their ears folded back as his horn began to glow.
His body blazed red as the rune ignited, tinging the cave pink as the power began to build. The Windigoes felt the warmth within the creature’s magic, eyes widening as they recognized its power and felt fear for the first time in centuries. Too late, they turned to flee from the harbinger of their destruction; even as they turned the spell grew complete and burst out towards them. The rocks on the mountain shattered as the wraiths screamed in agony, their ethereal bodies thrashing in impossible contortions as the red glow surrounded them, the blazing heat dissolving their very being.
Star Swirl winced as their cries echoed through the cave. The runic lines had disappeared once the spell was cast, which now compressed itself one last time before bursting apart, flooding the cave with warmth and the chilling fog that was all that remained of the frost spirits. Shielding himself with a hoof, he winced as that ethereal fog touched him.
In that moment, countless images and sensations flooded unbidden into his mind. In that final moment when his body glowed once more and began pulling him back to his own time, he saw and felt what the Windigoes had learned.
/////
The second flash made Clover see stars, forcing her to rub her eyes to relieve the burning. Blinking through the pain-induced tears, she breathed a silent sigh of relief at the sight of her mentor, his posture unchanged from when he left.
“Well?” she pressed. “Did it work?” While not the greeting she wanted to give, the fact remained that the facilities’ wards isolated them from any change in the timestream. They had no way of knowing whether or not her spell had actually worked, only that it had sent him somewhere and brought him back.
Murmurs began to break out among the observers as Star Swirl remained silent, looking straight ahead with a thousand-mile stare.
“Star Swirl?” she prodded, unable to hide the worry in her voice. To her relief, he started at the sound of her voice, the murmurs dying down as he slowly began to look around. Finally, his mouth opened, and the room fell silent.
“The Windigoes...” his words were careful, his tone the absentminded drone of one lost in thought, “…are… out of the way.”
A sense of achievement swept through the room. Colleagues quietly shook hooves, more than one embracing those nearby as a quiet air of celebration settled on the room.
“Congratulations, Arch-mage!” Clover gushed, the myriad of possibilities now opened up running through her mind. “With the Windigoes gone, the tribes-“ –would never need to leave the valley, would never have begun arguing in the first place, would be free to grow and expand without resorting to that mess of an attempt at unification that had seemed like such a good idea at the time-
His raised hoof cut her off before she could voice her thoughts. For the first time, she truly noticed the detached look in his eyes, the way his shoulders slumped as he failed to join in the celebrating. What he did next sent shivers down her spine.
“Time will tell,” he intoned in the voice of one whose mind is miles away. Pulling out his pocket watch, he nodded to himself. “Sooner or later… time will tell.”