"Where—?" Clover stared at the crater around her, couldn't keep from thinking about the ponies who'd been in those now-vanished buildings, couldn't keep from wondering—
"Shhhh," came a soft voice ahead of her, and she blinked at Cadance, the pink winged unicorn's striped mane flowing in the damp, chocolate-scented breeze. "Don't let him unnerve you."
A bark of a laugh from Discord, his mismatched wings hovering him overhead. "Excellent advice, my dear! But I fear it's wasted on our little Clover." He settled to the ground, the dirt making a sound like air rushing out of a punctured balloon under him. "I believe 'unnerved' is her middle name."
Snorting, Pansy glared at Discord. "Shows what you know! Clover's middle name is 'the'!"
Discord choked, his nostrils flaring, then doubled over, hooting with laughter. "I swear, Pansy! You get funnier every time I see you!"
Pansy blinked, and Smart Cookie stepped around Cadance. "Keep it up, laughing boy," she said. "'Cause I reckon you're about to find the joke's on you."
A flapping on either side of them, and the two larger winged unicorns landed. "Yes," Celestia said. "Things might soon become a bit more serious than you care for, Discord."
"Oooooo..." Discord's eyes went wide. "I like you." He narrowed his gaze at Luna. "Your sister, not so much. She's a lean and hungry look about her that makes me nervous. And your earnest little niece?" He waved his lion paw. "Only if I was running low on cotton candy, I think."
Luna's smile showed more teeth, Clover thought, than a pony's mouth ought to have. "Isn't he cute? Perhaps when we're done with him, we can prop him up in a garden somewhere..."
"We'll see," Celestia answered.
"After all," Cadance chimed in, "it could be we resolve this disagreement amicably."
Clover found she was shaking her head. "Amicable isn't a word Lord Discord knows."
Shaking his head as well, Discord clicked his tongue. "What do I have to do, Clover the Clever, so you'll stop calling me 'Lord?'" He touched his eagle claws to his chest, a curly white wig appearing between his horns. "It makes me sound like some minor official in one of your unicorn courts." The wig burst into flame, Discord stepping sideways to leave it floating there on fire, his voice suddenly a growl: "And I'm not a minor anything! Let's get that straight right here and right now!"
"What you are," Celestia said, she and Luna moving to stand beside Cadance, "is a nuisance."
Luna nodded. "A major one, yes, we'll grant you that."
Cadance snickered. "But still just a nuisance."
The wig exploded, Discord staring at them open-mouthed, and for all that Clover wanted to cower down next to Pansy, she didn't want to miss a word the three mares were saying. It was so perfect, everything she'd been wanting to say to Discord since he'd first swooped in and disrupted all the hopes and dreams she and her friends had had for Equestria.
"Well!" Discord looked shocked, but Clover could smell his sardonic glee. "You know, I'm starting to get the feeling you ladies don't care for my company."
Celestia tapped a hoof in the mud. "You have two choices, Discord. Either you leave here on your own." Her eyes narrowed. "Or you don't."
"My sweet Celestia, my lovely Luna, and my cuddlesome Cadance." Discord grinned, and Clover felt her ears fold, saw surprise ripple over the others' flanks. "Oh, yes," he went on, his voice quieter than Clover had ever known it to be. "I've heard your names whispered on the winds of legend, have known since the very first tick of the cosmic cuckoo clock that we would all meet at this time in this place." He combed a claw through his scraggly beard. "Funny thing, though: neither the winds nor the cuckoo ever say exactly how I'll whip you like the sorry mules you are." He shrugged, a grin splitting his face like an axe splitting a log. "Guess we'll all find out together."
As one, Celestia and Luna leaped upward, their wings flashing, Clover catching her breath as energy both dark and light crackled from their horns to slam directly into Discord. Writhing and swirling like smoke, he only laughed, his voice vast and echoing back from Canterlot's towers: "Oh, my, yes! This will be fun!" Blood red fire spouted from him, a rotten vegetable stink making Clover wince, but two earth-shaking thuds forced her eyes to open, her heart freezing to see Celestia and Luna skidding face-first through the dirt almost all the way back to the sliced-up buildings.
They sprang into the air again instantly, refocused their fire, blasted him over and over, but Discord seemed to shrug off each attack, his claws hurling balls of sickly green vapor, water balloons, huge arcs of electricity, and custard pies with equal abandon and pretty good accuracy, Clover had to admit.
"Dang!" Smart Cookie shouted after several minutes of back-and-forth had sent the two larger winged unicorns crashing to the ground another four or five times. She nudged Cadance, still standing between them and the fight. "Reckon they could use your help there, ma'am?"
"My powers aren't quite as flashy as my aunts'," Cadance replied, but Clover could see the tendons standing out in her neck, her pinion feathers twitching her obvious desire to take flight and join the other two.
"But—" Pansy had actually gotten to her hoofs, was staring up at the fight from behind Cadance. "This isn't working! We need a different way!"
Cookie nodded. "A smarter way, at least." An explosion overhead made her ears flatten. "Them two is tough as anything I've ever seen, but this is only getting us nowhere!" She looked at Clover. "So what's the plan, Leader Girl?"
"I—" Clover grasped after the ideas flitting fast as fireflies through her. "It's just...the magic of friendship we kindled that night in the cave, we need to...to expand its reach, need to add more elements to it, need...need Celestia, Luna and Cadance with the power they draw from all ponies everywhere, need to bring that into harmony with the power we drew from each other that night." She looked from Cookie to Pansy, saw once more the love and trust and belief there even though she was sure they didn't understand what she was talking about; she didn't understand it herself, after all.
"Very well!" The words tolled out of Cadance as deep and clear as the note of a bell, her wings flaring up. "Aunts! Attend us here!" The air around her shivered, wavered like the horizon on a hot summer day, and when she tucked her wings back against her flanks, Clover's jaw dropped to see the deep blue of a perfect afternoon above her, something she hadn't seen in so long, she'd almost forgotten how beautiful it was.
"Where—?" Pansy gasped.
"—are we?" Cookie finished.
"We're safe," Cadance murmured, and Clover stared around at the serene green meadow rolling up to the crest of a hill on one side, rolling down to the trees of a shady and dappled forest on the other.
"For a few moments, perhaps." Celestia was panting, winging in to land with Luna beside her, soot and ash staining the formerly pristine white and black of their respective coats.
Luna shook her mane. "But we dare not stay. This is the last place we would wish Discord to discover!"
"True." Cadance looked back and forth between the other two, and Clover could easily hear her reluctance as she said, "But I have to agree with our mortal friends: these tactics are proving less than effective."
Luna snorted, but Celestia nodded and said, "We're certainly open to suggestions."
A prickly silence, then Clover felt a hoof touch her shoulder. "Well," Smart Cookie said softly, "Clover here was saying something about elements and harmony and the like..."
And suddenly, five pairs of eyes fixed on her, the expectation in them so heavy, Clover almost staggered backwards under the weight. "I—" she managed to squeeze out, thoughts flashing through her again, concepts she'd learned during her apprenticeship with Star Swirl the Bearded, other principles she'd discovered on her own after that night in the cave, after her mind had opened to so many new possibilities.
But she couldn't drive away the constant hiss of Discord's snicker, the sneer that always made her name an insult. If you're truly Clover the Clever, came a whisper in her head, why haven't you been able to drive him off? Why have you stood idly by, allowing him to slither into Equestria and destroy everything you've devoted your life to??
"I—" she said again, and she couldn't pretend, couldn't keep all her doubts from tumbling out: "I don't know what I'm doing! I'm flying completely blind here, and I don't even have wings!" She glanced up, met Celestia's deep purple gaze, had to look away. "I don't know how I formed the Fire of Friendship when Cookie and Pansy and I almost froze to death with everypony else in that cave, don't know how I summoned the three of you, don't have a single idea at all about what we can do next!"
"And yet," a familiar voice said behind her, "you keep doing that next thing, and you keep doing it well."
Spinning, she stared at the figure stepping from the forest, felt her mane stand on end at the jingle of the bells along the brim of his unmistakable hat. "Star Swirl!" Shouting and laughing, she galloped down the gentle slope to throw her front legs around his neck, his well-remembered scent—old books and peppermint—tickling her nose. "Oh, it's so wonderful to—!"
Reality hit her, and with a gasp, she dug her hoofs into the grass. "But you—! Before we even came to Equestria, you...you—!"
"Died?" He cocked his head, the little sideways crook of his beard telling Clover that this was undoubtedly and impossibly her old mentor. "I'm fairly certain that's the word you're looking for, Clover."
All Clover could do was shiver and stare.
Star Swirl sighed. "We haven't the time right now, I'm afraid, or I would love nothing more than to sit with you as we used to and explore the ramifications of the situation. But what you need to know, my best and most faithful student, is that you have surpassed your old teacher in every possible way."
"No!" she said automatically. "Nothing I've done or could ever do will match your—!"
"Clover?" The steel behind the word she recognized from their long debates so many years ago. "For the first proof of my position, I will point to the land of Equestria and how it is not an ice-bound ruin due to you finding and harnessing a form of magic entirely unknown to me. And for the second proof—" He gestured up the hill to where Cookie and Pansy stood with the three winged unicorns.
Staring at them hit Clover as powerfully as a bolt of lightning but with a warmth and gentleness she'd never known anywhere before. It connected her to all five so intensely, she could almost see herself through their eyes, could almost feel their chests rising and falling as they breathed, could intimately sense their love and belief in her. "With your friends standing beside you," Star Swirl was saying, "and you standing beside them, there is literally nothing you cannot do."
"How?" she managed to ask, unable to look away from them.
"Honestly?" He gave a little laugh. "I haven't a clue. It's almost as if you've become the focus through which all ponies everywhere concentrate their love and their fears, their hopes and their disappointments, their dreams and their nightmares. They know it was you who saved them before, and they're giving you all they've got to give, Clover the Clever, so that you might save them again."
With an effort, Clover wrenched her gaze back to Star Swirl, and his smile made her swallow against a sudden tightness in her throat. "I'm so proud of you," he whispered.
Nothing could've stopped her then from spring forward, throwing her front hoofs around his neck. "I miss you every day!"
"Shhhh..." A nuzzle at her ear. "We'll be together again, never fear. But for now—" He stepped back, Clover blinking till her tears cleared and she could see his smile again. "You have a power in you, you and your friends, a power I never even imagined. Use that power, and save our peoples once again."
A spark rustled in her chest, and nodding, she turned to her friends further up the hill, their scents flavoring the air. She drew a breath to fan the spark, held it, let it grow just behind her eyes, then with a whoosh, she blew it out, let the flame surge from her horn even larger than it had that night in the cave, six white-hot embers spinning in it like meteors. "It's the six of us!" she shouted, charging toward the others. "Pansy, your generosity and loyalty let me bring forth Luna! Cookie, it was your laughter and kindness that I was able to spread out into Cadance! And my...my..." Her thoughts faltered, doubts once more—
Cookie laughed, the sound steadying and feeding the fire. "Your stupid honesty, Clover!"
Pansy's eyes shone. "And your wonderful, incredible magic!"
She reached the group, the winged unicorns' horns glowing, and the fire from her own horn swirled out to surround them all, the embers crackling to a halt, one hovering over each of them. "What—?" she heard Cookie ask breathlessly.
"—are they?" Pansy finished, wonder in her voice.
Clover felt light enough to start floating. "What you said, Cookie. The Elements of Harmony."
"Oh, Clover, yes!" Celestia whispered. "Concentrate, everypony!"
Stretching her neck, Clover felt rather than saw the other three horns—white, black and pink—touch hers, two front hoofs, dun-colored and lemon-yellow, reaching up as well, and Clover's heart flooded with joy. Light blossomed, the ground slipping away beneath her, the air laughing and dancing to raise her and the others into the blue, blue sky. "The Elements of Harmony!" she cried out again, and the ember in front of her burst into a golden necklace, a ruby-red crystal at the front in the shape of her cutie mark.
Other flashes bathed her, the necklaces springing up before Cookie, Luna, Cadance, and Pansy, and when hers slipped around her neck, the excitement and strength she felt made Clover resolve to do whatever she could to spread that feeling to all ponies everywhere.
One last flash, a sunburst tiara settling onto Celestia's brow. "And now, my friends," the sun mare said. "I believe we have some harmony to spread."
Cheers from the others, and Clover looked back, saw Star Swirl with head bowed, a smile on his lips and tears in his eyes. Then the lush green landscape vanished in golden fire, the dingy gray skies and sour milk mud of the crater in the center of Canterlot popping back into place, Discord stretched out in the dirt below and peeking at the face-down cards in the solitaire game he was playing.
"Discord!" The force of Celestia's voice blew the cards away. "This ends now!"
Yawning, Discord sat up and blinked. "Gracious! What lovely accessories!" His eyes narrowed, his thin lips curling. "I certainly hope you brought one for me. After all, I don't have to remind you that it's my birthday, do I?"
"Fear not, tyrant!" Luna gave a snort, her voice every bit as forceful as her sister's. "They're all for you!"
Cadance held up her hoofs, her words quiet. "Please, Discord. Can't we come to some agreement that would have you leave us in peace?"
Slowly, Discord shook his head, but his eyes, Clover noticed with a shock, fastened themselves on hers. "Tell them why, Clover the Clever," he said. "As the only honest creature within the sound of my voice, tell them the truth."
Clover shivered, didn't want to know what he meant, didn't want her mind to make the connections it was suddenly making, didn't want to think the thoughts now flopping through her head like fish pulled from a lake. Even though she knew they were right...
His grin as sharp as a shattered window, Discord whispered, "Didn't your beloved Star Swirl just spell it out for you, dear Clover the Clever?"
Which stopped her completely. "How...how did you know—?"
"Impossible!" Cadance interrupted. "The Groves Beyond are—! You can't—! They're not—!"
Discord waved his lion paw. "Fear not, Cadance. Your little domain is quite safe. As our clever Clover pointed out to Chancellor Puddinghead earlier, I've no interest in dead ponies." When his gaze narrowed and fixed on Clover again, she felt like she'd picked up a load of fleas. "Although, I do have to say, I might be tempted to drag Star Swirl from his eternal rest just to get someone out here who might present me with a challenge."
Coldness washed over Clover. "You wouldn't dare."
He spread his arms. "Then stop me, Clover the Clever. You're the center about which all of ponydom careens, are you not? Was it not at your express command that these three lovely and talented thingamajigs sprang forth from the better natures of all ponykind?" A smell of overcooked cabbage rose from the curl of his grin. "And do you not also possess the power to manifest the less flower-bedecked aspects of yourself and your fellow little ponies?" He jabbed an eagle claw at his own chest. "How can you deny that I am every bit as much a part of your hearts and minds as yon sweet shimmering sylphs?? How can you say that you did not create me the same way you created them??"
Silence fell over the crater, Pansy and Cookie staring open-mouthed at her. But the closed eyes and turned heads of the three winged unicorns told Clover all she needed to know. "It's true," she told Discord, his smile growing even more jagged. "We did create you, all of us, every pony who's ever refused to accept a real apology, who's told a dishonest lie, who's pushed another away for no good reason. You are our responsibility, Discord, and we can't turn away from that."
"Exactly!" He waved his arms, confetti exploding from his claws and talons. "One big happy family: that's us!"
"Except—!" Clover shouted, the power building inside her, the glow of her necklace reflecting that of her friends'. "We won't be ruled by you anymore! Yes, you're a part of us, but in the name of Harmony, we won't let you be the only part! We won't even let you be the biggest part!"
Celestia aimed her horn at Discord. "We can't unmake you, spirit, but we can certainly do our best to contain you!"
Discord clicked his tongue. "Don't talk nonsense, girls. Now, let's have our little 'Kumbaya' moment and get back to fighting, shall we? All together!" He touched his lion paw to his chest, stretched his eagle claw out, tipped his head back and began to sing: "Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday, dear me! Happy birthday to—!"
Clover unleashed her power, light flooding from the others at the same moment, crashing over Discord with a blast that made her mane stream out behind her. And when the light cleared, there stood Discord frozen in mid-song, as smooth and gray as if he'd been—
"Turned to stone?" she asked no one in particular.
Another rush of power, and Clover looked up, saw the spongy pink and brown clouds popping like soap bubbles, the sky clearing for the first time in longer than she wanted to think about. "Let's call it dawn, shall we?" Celestia asked, and tears blurred Clover's sight of the sun slowly starting over the horizon, the dank gray sky deepening to blue.
A cheer rose from the city, and unicorns began zapping into the dirt below them, their eyes wide and fixed on the three winged unicorns. "Clover!" somepony shouted, and she looked down to see Princess Platinum waving wildly. "It worked! Your plan! You...you summoned help!"
"Yes, your highness!" she called; she turned a quick glance to Celestia, and the big sun mare nodded, her horn glowing to lower them all to the ground.
Clover got hug after hug, first from Cookie and Pansy, then from just about everypony she'd ever met while pegasi swooped down, earth ponies sprinting into Discord's crater from the streets of the city around it. The crowds stayed silent, though, looking up at the winged unicorns with wonder in their eyes, and Clover could hardly believe it when, after she'd introduced Princess Platinum to the three newcomers, the princess levitated her own crown from her head and bowed. "Royal ponies," she said. "Wherever you've come from, please say you'll do us the honor of staying."
Celestia's smile in the full light of the morning sun was more dazzling than Clover had imagined it would be. "We don't want to be a bother," she said.
"Ha!" Armor still dripping custard, Commander Hurricane dropped into the spot beside Princess Platinum. "For taking out Discord, I'm gonna name you three admirals of the pegasi for life!"
"Yeah!" Chancellor Puddinghead pushed her way through the crowd to stand at the princess's other side. "And you're Big Cheeses of the earth ponies now, too!" She swept a front hoof over the desolate landscape. "You can put your castle right here, and then we can all come visit you all the time!"
"Or—" Luna's horn began to glow. "A lovely garden, I'm thinking, with a hedge maze and statuary." The glow reached out, wrapped around the stone figure of Discord, straightened it in the mud. "We already have the first, after all."
Slightly nervous laughter from the crowd, Celestia rolling her eyes. "Thank you, ponies of Equestria!" she said then, her voice so loud, Clover was sure the whole city—maybe the whole country—could hear her. "Then we'll stay!"
More cheers, but Celestia raising her hoof cut them off: "With the proviso that you allow us to make ourselves useful. I'll ask, therefore, your collective permission to take over the daily duty of seeing to the sun rise."
Luna's eyes lit up. "Oooo, yes! And I shall work my magic upon the night!"
"And I," Cadance said, again so much softer than the others, "I shall appear to each pony once you've all seen your allotted days and nights that I may guide you gently and lovingly into the Groves Beyond." She bent down to Clover and whispered, "As I've already been doing, if the truth be known..."
Clover blinked at her, Princess Platinum calling out, "Then this will be a day of festivities such as Equestria has never known! The defeat of Discord and the arrival of our new princesses: Celestia, Luna and Cadance!"
"You got that right!" Commander Hurricane bellowed.
"Party!" Chancellor Puddinghead waved her hoofs.
Unicorns popped in with musical instruments, ponies grabbing them up and starting a schottische Clover hadn't heard in years. But as much as the dance called to her, she couldn't take her eyes off Cadance's. "But—," she sputtered. "Didn't...didn't we just create you? So how could you—? How could Star Swirl—? And how could Discord say he'd known about you since the beginning of—"
"Time's a funny thing," Cadance said with a smile, the heart of her cutie mark seeming to shimmer. "It only takes a moment to change the whole world, after all, but the consequences of changes like you make, Clover the Clever, they ripple out in every direction as if a pebble had been dropped into a pond. Now, if you'll excuse me..." She spread her wings. "I believe we have a party breaking out around us!" She leaped into the blue above to join her aunts, swirling with Commander Hurricane and the other pegasi to the music, earth ponies and unicorns dancing and singing along.
A nudge at Clover's right flank, and she turned to see Smart Cookie grinning back at her. Another nudge, then, on her left, and she looked over to see Pansy swaying little dancing steps in the mud. "No more thinking," Pansy said, mock sternness in her voice.
Clover started to protest, but Cookie prodded her in the side again. "At least for the rest of the day!"
"Hmmmm..." Clover tapped her chin, pretended to be thinking it over, then threw her front legs around her friends' necks with a laugh. "All right! But just this once!"