• Published 1st Oct 2016
  • 1,523 Views, 326 Comments

A Cavalcade of Cards - QueenMoriarty



Thirty-one random Magic: The Gathering cards. Thirty-one random-er pony stories.

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Knowledge Is Power

Starswirl the Bearded walked into a bar. And then he burned it down and went to a cafe, because he wasn't in the mood for jokes and anyway he hadn't so much as touched a glass in seventy years.

This particular cafe was located at the junction of two of the least busy streets that had ever been constructed in the great city of Canterlot. Of course, that didn't exactly count for much since basically everypony was dead, and had been for several years now, but the fact remained that this was the junction least likely to see traffic from any of the Canterlot survivors, or even the numerous spirits who insisted on hanging around. The poor souls haunting the serving dishes and the kitchen only counted for so much foot traffic.

Starswirl approached the cafe with a certain amount of reverence. He nodded his head and tipped his considerable hat towards the hovering silver platter that stood beside one of the tables. He regarded a dust-covered menu with his most polite imitation of sincere interest, and pointed vaguely at one of the items that had long since faded beyond legibility. The platter tipped and rattled as though the waiter holding it had made a short bow, then it turned and wandered back inside the cafe.

"A good chap, that." The sound of Starswirl's voice was such an unfamiliar one that he startled himself by speaking. "Have I really had so little reason to speak, all this time?" It was a disheartening thought, that the world was now so empty and the company so far between that one's own voice could be completely forgotten. Still, he had more important things to worry about.

Starswirl turned, and regarded one of the many empty tables that sat just outside of the cafe. He sat down at the table alone, and waited. The silver platter returned, laying a plate of dust and ash and at least one long-dead rat in front of Starswirl, and he smiled and nodded at the empty air underneath the still-hovering dish. Then he turned, and glared across the unoccupied table at his guest.

"Give it back," was all he said. It was all that he felt needed to be said.

"In order to do that, I would need to have taken something from you." The figure grinned, discarding its cloak of whispersilk and allowing light to fall on its unnaturally pale skin. "You asked me if you would ever know everything. And even though I warned you that there were things you shouldn't know, you wanted my answer anyway. And rather than answer, I stood aside, and let you learn what you shouldn't have."

"You broke my time spells," Starswirl growled, poking at the ash on his plate. "I've tried to go back and fix it, but none of it works."

"That wasn't me, Starswirl. This is a living world. You've got a sentient crystal tree that's older than your entire universe, and you expect it to never work out that time magic is dangerous? You blocked yourself out by using it too much."

"So un-block it. Give me back my powers."

"Do it yourself," the guest snapped, and the city shook. "I'm not going to tear apart an entire timeline just so that you can delude yourself into thinking you've solved the problem."

"And what do you call this?" Starswirl shouted, gesturing at the dead world around them. "What else would you call this, except broken?"

"Natural," the guest answered after almost a full minute of deliberation. "Starswirl, this is not the first world I've seen die because of this. Most of them do, one way or another. Someone learns just a little bit faster than they should, or they test out a spell that has warning labels left over from a whole other universe, and then all that's left is some token survivors, a planet of ash, and a whole lot of regrets."

"And didn't you ever try and fix it?"

The guest looked stung by that. "A thousand times. In a thousand ways. But I've learned, after all my millennia of suffering. People die. Worlds perish. The magic always goes away, sooner or later. No matter what I do, it will only delay the moment of truth."

"If this is truth, I can name a few thousand ponies who could stand to put up with a few lies here and there." Starswirl leaned forward, his beard brushing against his pathetic excuse for a meal. "I know you can do it. It'll hardly take a few seconds. So why not do it?"

"Because it won't work. This is a dead world, Starswirl, and it knows what it is. The time stream doesn't want to be changed. Your entire universe has rolled over and accepted its fate. Why can't you?"

"Because I remember a time when I could have stopped this," Starswirl answered without even a second of consideration. "Because I could name for you a hundred thousand times between the last time we spoke and now when I could have turned around, cast my little spell, and gone right back to the start and ripped the book out of my own hooves. Because if I had even a spark of that old mana left, I would be throwing it all away for one desperate chance to save my world from what I did. Don't you know what that's like, Mister Markov?"

The vampire Sorin Markov bared his quite impressive teeth, and for a moment looked poised to spring across the table. But he didn't. "Starswirl, you have not seen what I have seen. You have not fought the struggles that I have fought. Yes, I was once like you, constantly tittering away about how I'd undo all of my mistakes if only I could. But then, something extraordinary happened."

The vampire leaned across the table, as though to whisper in Starswirl's ear.

"I learned to live with my mistakes."

"Yes, but you've had millennia. I have had only a handful of centuries." Starswirl changed the angle of his head so that he was brow to brow with Markov, and he grinned. "And there's another key difference, Mister Markov. This isn't a plane I just happened to accidentally doom. This isn't a tourist destination that's unexpectedly going through some apocalypse-type event. This is my home. And can you honestly tell me that you would allow your home to perish without even trying to save it?"

Markov and Starswirl stared each other down for hours, both of their minds turning over and over and playing the conversation from that point out in their heads. As the minutes turned to hours and the hours threatened to turn into days, Starswirl's eyes began to grow fluttery and weak, and Markov sighed and gave a faint smile.

"'If I had even a spark'... you don't have a single speck of mana left in your bones, do you?"

Some ancient forces of debatably-evil, Starswirl mused bitterly as he nodded, would have had the decency to gloat. Instead, Markov was doing his jaded best to look like he actually pitied the unicorn.

"Well. Much as I am loathe to admit it, that changes things." Markov got up from his seat, making sure not to forget his invisible cloak, and began to pry up cobblestones from the street. Some of them hovered in the air for a few seconds, and then their form flowed like water and they came together to form a gate.

"Lithomancy?" Starswirl asked, his curiosity piqued. Markov nodded, not turning to face the mage as he rooted around inside of his clothes for something.

"When you have lived as long as I have, you cannot help but pick up a few tricks that are outside of your normal skill set." Markov drew his head out of the folds of his jacket, and Starswirl saw that he was holding three sapphires in his teeth. "One of the advantages of having lived longer than most currencies. Plenty of time to scoop up the valuables before the locals discover jewelry."

Even with his own magic having long dried up, Starswirl could still feel mana. And meager as the supply was, each of those sapphires was crackling with a spark of blue mana.

"I said I wouldn't tear apart this entire timeline," Markov said as if to the gate. "And I won't. But I am not one to leave debts unsettled, so I will not leave you with nothing." Markov hurled one of the sapphires between the pillars of the gate, and Starswirl stared as the precious stone disappeared rather than pass the threshold. Markov did the same with the other two sapphires, and as the third met the invisible barrier, something ignited. The gate now crackled with blue magic, and rather than look onto the other side of the street, it opened onto a rolling plain of green grass.

"What is it?" The mage couldn't help but ask.

"A little spell called the Day's Undoing," Markov spoke as though announcing a play. "Give me a lever and a solid place to stand, and I can change the course of history." Markov turned and smiled at Starswirl, and for the first time since they had met, Starswirl felt the smile was genuine. "When I activate this spell, you will very briefly be returned to the height of your power. You will never be more perfectly poised to mount a direct assault on time itself. I trust you know the way back."

Starswirl nodded, truly struck speechless. Markov's smile widened, and he turned to go. "One last thing," he shouted over his shoulder as time began to bend around them. "If you pull this off, and we should happen to cross paths again, I will most likely not remember anything I have said or done here. Alternate timelines, and all that." Without another word, the vampire stepped through the portal and disappeared.

The world shook. History collapsed. Centuries of magic came pouring back into Starswirl's bones and mind, and he grinned like a lunatic who has seen into the heart of the world. The city that had been Canterlot crumbled to ash, new earth erupting all around the mage as his horn cast spells purely to vent them, the rush of water drowning out the few meager screams as the magic built into a crescendo.

Starswirl the Bearded was no longer standing in the dried-out husk of a world that was his fault. His mind stood in the center of a grand library, one so overflowing with books that pages lay strewn about on the floor, and every page turning and twisting as though it were caught in a great tempest. One imaginary tome flew past his face, and Starswirl scanned the pages. He recognized the spell. He took hold of the massive surge of mana within his heart, and directed it. While his mind remained braced and ready in the library, Starswirl felt his body racing backwards in time.

Then he felt his hooves skid to a stop on a very familiar floor, and Starswirl stepped out of the library and back into his own head. The air around him crackled like never before, and as if in a haze he turned to see his younger self standing beside him. There was Sorin Markov, standing on the other side of the room with the faintest hint of a mischievous grin on his face. And there in his younger self's aura was the journal, which held the spell, which had doomed them all.

Two spells. The first, an erasure to remove the spell from his own memory. The second, a telekinetic grasp to rip the final page from the journal and crumple it to nothing.

The world was saved, and nobody would ever know it. Nobody except for the stallion left drifting, cut loose from time by his own magic.

And that is the story of how Starswirl the Bearded got his Planeswalker's Spark.

Author's Note:

Ironically, there isn't much of the battle of wits about this card. It's probably the alternate win condition that's the easiest to spot, usually from the other side of the gaming hall.

"Hey, why does that guy have a deck as tall as he is?"

"That's it. Someone get me my mill decks."

But it does make for a sick avatar.