Trying to sneak her way out of the palace would be disastrous, Clover reasoned—though 'reason' was really the wrong word to use. Equestria hadn't had anything to do with reason for a very long time.
Which made the snide little voice in the back of her head pipe up: Too bad reason's all you've got, then, isn't it, Clover the Clever?
She shook it away, plodded down the big staircase toward the main entrance just like she always did whenever she'd been dismissed, her hoofsteps no faster, her breathing every bit as steady, nothing that might draw the attention of—
No. Don't think his name, don't think about what you're doing, don't give him any reason to cast his foul, bilious gaze in your direction. And while Clover didn't believe as some ponies did that His Capriciousness could read thoughts, well, her mentor Star Swirl the Bearded had always said, 'Misdirection is the center about which all magic spins.' Not that Clover had ever been any good at lying, but she'd definitely come to learn the vital difference between speaking a lie and simply keeping silent about the truth.
So she ignored the prickling sensation along her back, her cloak covering her precious cargo, put one hoof in front of the other, and did nothing that would make her stand out as—
"Clover!" a bubbling voice burst over her, her ears folding for the briefest of seconds before she recognized it, turned to see Chancellor Puddinghead waving to her from among the ponies gathered on the edge of the pit that now took up most of the palace courtyard. "Your shift's in a couple hours, right?"
Not wanting to risk the feelings she knew would flood her, but wanting even less to do something out-of-the-ordinary like passing by without stopping to chat, Clover nodded and walked over to the leader of Equestria's earth ponies, a little gray streaking the chancellor's cotton-candy mane but otherwise very much the same pony Clover had first met so many years ago. "Yes, I—" Clover started, but a call from inside the pit interrupted her:
"Clover! Good to see you!"
Unable to stop herself, Clover glanced down, the bottom of the pit a bubbling, seething, expanding mass of custard, a team of ponies sunk in the center of it up to their shanks, their heads down and sucking the stuff up as quickly as they could around Commander Hurricane, the chains that bound her wings and held her in place just visible above the creamy goo. "Got time for a quick snack?" Hurricane asked, her sideways grin as jaunty as always.
Anger tried to bubble up inside Clover, but she tamped it down. "I'm just getting off duty, Commander, but I'll be back later." Either to take my shift eating or to join you in chains, she thought.
"Good!" The commander's face darkened like one of her namesake storms. "'Cause we need to show that slimy, mud-sucking sleeze ball that he can keep catching me and putting me in here, but he can't stop me from—!"
A wet blorch, and the custard surged upward, a tide that washed over and engulfed Hurricane's head; with a cry, the ponies around the rim of the pit leaped in and went to work licking and swallowing till her face broke the surface again, the pegasus coughing, sputtering, gasping for breath.
Shaking, Chancellor Puddinghead turned to Clover. "It's only two more weeks, he said, if she behaves herself. And besides, it's not like he wants to, y'know, really kill us!" The chancellor's laugh had more than a little hysteria in it, but when it cut off, it sounded like she'd taken a knife to it. "Does he?" she whispered, her eyes wide and shimmering.
It took all the control Clover had practiced the past however many years—and she really didn't know, she realized, could barely remember how long ago Princess Platinum had stood on this very spot and proclaimed it the site of Canterlot, the city the unicorns would build in accordance with the agreement Clover had put together with Smart Cookie and Pansy: "A shining jewel," the princess had said that day, "and a symbol of this partnership we unicorns have forged with our neighbors, the earth ponies and the pegasi! Together, therefore, let us create our land, our dream, our Equestria!"
With everypony pitching in to help, the city had come together quickly—a year, maybe two—and Clover would never forget the night after the last stone was set in place, she and Cookie and Pansy at the party the princess had called the Grand Galloping Gala, the purple flare of her horn wielding the scissors, Commander Hurricane and Chancellor Puddinghead beside her as she cut the ceremonial ribbon across the city gates—
Though it was at a later Gala, she was sure, the eighth or ninth perhaps, that she'd felt that first drop of chocolate rain against her snout, had heard that first silky-slick chuckle. But...how long it had been since then?
"Clover?" a voice was saying, and she blinked at the chancellor, fear a sour note in her usual cookies-and-cream scent. "Are...are you OK?"
"Of course!" Not that she was, not even remotely. Forcing herself to keep calm and quiet and collected in case His Capriciousness was watching—and when wasn't he watching?—she murmured, "And you're very right, chancellor. Killing us would deprive him of the pleasure he feels when we buckle and fold. Which is why we mustn't buckle and fold, mustn't give up hope, must remain steadfast in the face of every obstacle." She was gritting her teeth so hard, she wasn't sure her words were even intelligible, something that brought that snide little voice back—Such an inspiring speech! A pity no pony could understand it!
But the chancellor was nodding, biting her quivering lip. "You're right," she said. "You're always right." A sudden leap, and the chancellor was hugging her, her front legs tight around Clover's neck. "And we'll all be with you tonight," she whispered fiercely, her breath damp and hissing. "Even if, you know, we're somewhere other than actually there."
Then just as quickly, Chancellor Puddinghead was leaping into the pit. "See you later, Clover!"
Clover turned away, refused to think about how tight and spinning her stomach was. Just because absolutely everything depended on her. And she had no idea what she was going to do.
No, that wasn't true. She knew all too well what she was going to do. She just had no reason to think it would work.
Trying her best to look like nopony at all, Clover trudged through the palace gates and into the streets, forced herself not to sigh when the sun reversed course with a screech and plunged back below the horizon. A sound like glass shattering, and the full moon shot into the sky like a stone from a sling, the drifting cotton candy clouds bursting to pink mist.
Whatever time it was, though, she knew Princess Platinum would be out in the city, spreading the word for all the groups to gather in their back rooms and basements; Clover could almost feel the warmth of their hope glowing through the chocolate milk rain spattering into her face. She shrugged the cloak closer around her shoulders and winced as the cobblestones below her hoofs suddenly went squishy, squeaking like rubber toys with each step she took.
Something popped like a balloon behind her, but Clover didn't look, didn't want to know. She couldn't afford to get distracted, not now, not with so much riding on—
She rounded the corner, the stones becoming solid again, and ducked into the third building on the left. Seeing the familiar hallway, she puffed a sigh of relief: last week, His Capriciousness had switched this whole block of the city for a different one from across town.
Hurrying down the hall, heart racing, Clover tapped twice against the last bare wooden door and pushed it open, hoping to see—
Pansy staring back, her eyes and wings as usual wide with surprise. Smart Cookie stood on the other side of the shabby table, the only piece of furniture in the tiny square room, the dun-colored earth pony's cheeks thinner than when Clover had first met her during the hard times. But Cookie's face lit up when Clover met her gaze, her smile making her look almost like her old self.
The three rushed into an embrace, Clover murmuring, "Thank the sun you're both still all right."
"Us?" Pansy's breath ruffled Clover's mane. "This nightmare's been worst of all for you!"
Cookie gave a little laugh, her voice rough. "Time to wake us all up from that nightmare, then. Everything set?"
"Yes." Again, not exactly true, but Clover stepped back, tried to keep herself from shaking, looked between her two oldest and dearest friends. "With all the meetings going on around the city right now, there's no way he'll be able to—"
A jagged flap fell open in the wall behind Pansy, Clover choking on her words, that long sallow face leering an all too familiar snaggle-toothed grin at her. "I'm spying on you!" Discord announced.
Wrapping her thoughts as thickly in fear and panic as she could—pretty easy to do, actually—she stammered, "Lord Discord! I didn't—! We weren't—! This isn't—!"
"Oh, now, really, Clover the Clever!" Discord slithered through the hole and into the room, a smell of burnt toast wafting up from him. "How many times must I tell you: there's no need to be so formal! We're all friends here!" The grayish-yellowish-brownish stretch of him filled the room like water in a sink of dirty dishes, his grin sharpening, his mismatched eyes narrowing. "All the very best of friends."
Smart Cookie's grin got just as sharp. "Could be that word don't mean what you think it means."
"Cookie, Cookie, Cookie!" Twisting like he didn't have a single bone in his body, Discord tapped Cookie's snout with his eagle claw. "Of course we're friends! You wouldn't have invited me here otherwise, would you?"
Clover couldn't stop her jaw from dropping. "Invited? How could you possibly think—??"
"How could you possibly forget??" Discord wheeled, his look of mock surprise always making Clover want to grind her teeth. "After all, it was the three of you who did so!" He snapped his lion paw, and the room crumpled like a sheet of paper, an ice-filled cavern taking its place.
A gasp beside her. "It's us!" Pansy said, and Clover blinked to see the scene exactly as she always remembered it: the princess, the commander, and the chancellor standing frozen, a younger version of herself singing an old ballad with her new friends, both looking just as they had that fateful night all those years ago.
"Why, it is you!" Discord spun in the air above the group. "And don't you all look so sweet, a tiny island of warmth and peace and friendship!" He somehow managed to sneer that last word. "A fragile little spark glowing and growing amidst all the lovely chaos and misery!" His wings swept the scene aside, Clover's drab rented apartment snapping into place again. "How could I ignore as open an invitation as that?"
Clover blinked at him. "But...we...you...I...I don't—"
A puff of licorice-scented breath from his nostrils into her face, and Discord turned a bored expression at Smart Cookie. "Perhaps you could explain things to your associate?"
Cookie shrugged. "Near as I can figure, you're the sorta fella who loves a challenge. Us ponies weren't anything like that when we was squabbling, but soon as we started getting along, we got real interesting to you, didn't we?" She grinned. "So you just had to come popping in and pay us a visit, see how we ticked and tocked and made other assorted noises."
"Oh, well done!" Discord pulled a bruised and half-eaten apple from thin air and held it out to Cookie. "Go to the head of the class, my dear!"
"That's OK." She wrinkled her nose at the thing. "Looks like somepony's already staked a claim on that one..."
"Then—" Clover shook, thoughts sparking like lightning bugs through her head. "We summoned you?"
Discord sniffed. "Let's say instead that you created a spot I felt inclined to turn my attention toward." He slipped sideways onto the floor, his body flowing all the way around the walls of the room till his tail came to rest just below his chin. "But that's enough about me. Let's talk about you girls and what you're up to."
Clover couldn't answer, Discord's words so completely unexpected, they took her breath away. Because if he was telling even a partial truth, then maybe...just maybe...
Dimly, she heard Cookie ask, "What, you saying you don't like surprises?"
His laugh sounded like wind through winter-bare branches. "On the contrary. But while I firmly believe that any ruler who doesn't have at least a dozen rebellions brewing against him isn't worth talking about, I suppose I find it a bit incongruous to imagine you little ponies rising up in any way against my enlightened despotism." He interlaced his various front claws and batted his eyes. "You're all just so gosh darn cute!"
A sigh that Clover recognized as Pansy's. "We might as well come clean, Cookie. Discord, we're planning a birthday party for you."
The silence that followed smelled of hot mustard, then Discord's whooping laugh smacked Clover as cold as a bucket of water on a frozen morning. "Oh, Pansy! And here I thought Cookie was the comedienne in your little trio!"
Blinking, forcing herself to focus on the here and now, Clover looked up into Discord's peculiar eyes, a glint there that she rarely saw in her day-to-day dealings with him. "I'll give your team five points for that answer, however, which moves you into first place!" He swiped his lion paw at the wall behind him, left five jagged slashes in the wood, then cocked his head, a barbed smile curling his snout, a talon touching Clover's chin. "Y'know, I've always had such hopes for you, Clover the Clever, and you've always been such a disappointment to me. I can only imagine Star Swirl shaking his head and turning away in disgust as he watches his greatest student flail about so ineffectively."
He straightened, snapped his lion paw, and vanished with a flash—except for his mouth, floating and still speaking above her. "Once I check in with the other groups I've noticed gathering around the city, I'll come back and let you know how you're faring in our little contest. But remember: it's not whether you win or lose. You can't win, after all!" A wet pop, and Discord's ragged grin disappeared.
In the unscented silence that followed, Clover inhaled for what felt like the first time in minutes. He didn't know! For all his unmistakable power, he didn't—!
"He knows!" Pansy squeaked, cowering on the floor, her front legs covering her face. "He knows, he knows, he knows!"
Cookie stroked a hoof over Pansy's back. "Whether he does or he don't, we got no choice. We hafta—"
"He doesn't!" Clover kept her voice down, and as much as she wanted to grab her friends and start dancing, they just didn't have the time. "In fact, what he said proves we can do this! We can stop him!"
Pansy's eyes wavered, peering out from beneath her hoofs. "You...you mean it, Clover?"
"Then—" Cookie took a step toward her. "Your research? You found what you was looking for?"
"Well, no," Clover had to admit. She fumbled to pull her cloak off. "In fact, I discovered that Discord's somehow enchanted all Star Swirl's books: anything I read, the letters disappear as soon as I pass my eyes over them. But I know that the magic we three summoned in the cave, it was like nothing Star Swirl ever taught me." She was shaking so badly, she couldn't hook her magic into the laces tying her cloak on. "Could you guys maybe help me with—?"
The other two sprang forward, caught the ties in their teeth, and Clover felt the knot go loose at her throat. "But Discord said it himself just a minute ago!" she went on, still amazed to have found confirmation from such an unlikely source. "When the three of us came together that night, we touched a force like none I've ever known, a magic that didn't depend on formulae and rituals and incantations like Star Swirl's. It was a magic of...I don't know: a magic of the heart."
Her thoughts moved almost faster than she could follow; letting her horn glow, she whisked her cloak off. "A magic you feel, not a magic you study! The magic of—" She looked at the two of them and felt the truth of the words as she said them. "The magic of friendship."
Pansy and Cookie were blinking at her, and she let her cloak fall, wrapped her power around the precious bundle she'd taken from the deepest archives of Canterlot Tower. "Our friendship never should've happened, you see? Strife and suspicion had soured the air between our three peoples for so long, the magic of just getting to know each other had been lost to the ages! But when we found it again, we took a step forward—all of ponydom took a step forward! We moved past any threat the windigoes could pose to us and became targets for a larger threat!"
She'd been unfolding the bundle this whole time, the glow of her horn dancing over the walls like the half-forgotten sparkle of sunlight off fresh water. "So we need to take another step forward, summon a greater good, create a power of truth and light and peace like we did before, but it's gotta be bigger this time!" Smoothing the cloth, she spread it flat over the little table. "We need them!"
An indrawn breath from her left. "Ummm, Clover?" Pansy asked. "Isn't that just the Equestrian flag Thimble Spinner put together?"
"Exactly!" Clover reared back and planted her front hoofs beneath the two black and white figures circling the central sun and moon. "Because we need these! Larger than the strongest earth pony, swifter than the fastest pegasus, mightier than the most powerful unicorn! They're the symbol of everything Equestria stands for, our three peoples coming together in harmony and becoming more than any one of us could ever be on our own!" She let her eyes rest on the simple, beautiful images. "We need to make these creatures real..."
The silence this time felt more than a little uncomfortable, and the "Ummm" this time came from her right. "Any idea how we go 'bout doing that?" Cookie asked.
"Not really." Clover lowered herself to the floor. "But we didn't know what we were doing in the cave that night, either. And yet, together, we saved the world." She looked from Cookie to Pansy and back again. "Do you trust me?"
"Always," Pansy answered immediately.
With a chuckle, Cookie nodded. "Well, you gets points for honesty, anyway."
A warmth washed over Clover. "And do you love me?"
"Always," Pansy said again.
For a second, Cookie looked more serious than Clover had ever seen her; then she smiled, stepped forward, and poked her nose against Clover's. "A goof like you, you makes it easy."
The air itself vibrating, Clover wrapped her right foreleg around Cookie's left, reached out her own left to Pansy. "And do you believe in me?"
Pansy took her hoof, her face pure happiness. "Always," she said.
The simple power of the word made Clover feel too big for her skin, and when she felt Cookie press her flank against her, heard her say, "And forever"—
Power burst from her like nothing she'd ever imagined: as clean and clear as that night in the cave, that night she'd first known what friendship could mean, had first realized how she and these two other ponies were the same despite their differences, how they were each wonderfully unique despite their similarities, how together, they added up to much more than three, much more than three thousand, so much more, they were able to warm the hearts of every pony in the world.
But this, this right here and right now, flooding from Smart Cookie and Pansy into her and from her out into the hearts and minds of every pony gathered in Canterlot, every pony hovering in Cloudsdale, every pony huddled in Manehattan or on a farm somewhere across all of bruised and battered Equestria, this power, it swooped through the clouds of Discord's chaos like the rainbows Clover hadn't seen in so many long, horrible years. The power radiated out, gently touched every pony's wishes, dreams, and desires, and rebounded to her, came back to her to shape, to build upon, to form into—
A blast of wind, light exploding beyond her clenched eyelids, thunder shaking her from mane to fetlocks, Clover opened her mouth to cry out—
But stillness came over her instead, the air she sucked in scented like simple flowing water. Opening her eyes, she heard Pansy gasp, felt Smart Cookie's shiver where she still stood pressed against her. But all she could see, all she ever wanted to see for the rest of her life, on the other side of the rickety wooden table with Thimble's flag stretched over it, filling the dingy little room with light and electricity and an excitement that crackled like static over Clover's skin—
Three mares, long-limbed, tall, and perfect, their wings unfurled, their horns sparkling with colors Clover didn't know names for. The white one in the center, her cutie mark a sunburst, looked back at Clover with a slight smile, her pink mane flowing down to cover one eye. To Clover's left and directly across the table from Pansy stood a black and dark blue mare nearly as large as the first, her cutie mark a crescent moon, while on the sun mare's other side in front of Smart Cookie, a pink mare not much larger than Clover herself blinked, her mane and tail striped with yellow, red, and purple, her cutie mark a blue heart with gold filigree around it.
Questions rattled through Clover's brain like popcorn, but before she could ask any of them, the sun mare exchanged nods with the moon mare, turned and did the same with the heart mare, then looked back at Clover and said, "Thank you."
The confidence in her voice so warmed Clover and filled her with hope that she let her every question blow away. But—
"Who—?" Pansy began, her voice as quivery as always, but Clover heard amazement dominating any fear there.
"—are you?" Smart Cookie took half a step forward, something Clover wasn't sure she could do just yet.
"We are you," the sun mare said.
The moon mare gave a little shrug. "Well, your hopes and dreams made manifest, at any rate."
"So," the heart mare added, her smile moving sideways into a grin, "if you'd be so kind, perhaps you could tell us who we are."
"Celestia," Clover said, the name coming to her as naturally as a breath, and the white mare bowed her head.
"Luna." Pansy was looking at the black mare.
"Cadance," from Smart Cookie, and she gave a grin that matched the pink mare's.
Celestia's eyes twinkled. "And we're very pleased to make your acquaintance. But right now—"
"What's this??" The words thundered from outside, and the walls of the room exploded into a million sharp, spinning pieces; Clover spread her hoofs and called up a shield spell, but the three winged unicorns were faster, Celestia flashing fire from her horn to burn every shred of wood, Luna wafting shadow from her wings to extinguish each fire immediately after it had done its job, Cadance whooshing a blue swath of energy through the ashy air to catch Clover and her friends and set them safely onto the ground.
The ground? Glancing around, Clover saw the entire neighborhood—buildings, streets, lamp posts, everything—had vanished, the whole area for hundreds of yards in a circle around her nothing but bare dirt, the rest of Canterlot standing just outside the radius. "Where—?" she started, but a familiar voice interrupted her.
"Well, well, well!" A part of the sky shimmered and cracked, Discord oozing out to float above the hole in the city. "Forgive me for doubting you, Pansy! You are throwing me a birthday party!" His face curdled into a leer that made Clover want to start running. "And three such wonderfully sweet presents you've brought me!"