The Education of Clover the Clever

by Daedalus Aegle


Chapter 20: The Education of Clover the Clever

The infant multiverse was vast and beautiful. Clover reflected on this truth as she wandered among the stars. Star Swirl the Sprite flew beside her, the diminutive, more-magic-than-pony unicorn following her lead as they traveled the way Swirly Star the Wise had pointed her.

She could see the many worlds hanging brilliantly in the sky, simultaneously endlessly far away and so close that she could reach out and touch any of them. She saw Mister Leafy sitting comfortably in his own world, yet somehow his roots touching every every last one of the others.

The wind whipped her mane, and her cloak flapped around her legs with each step, even though Clover was vaguely aware that shouldn’t actually be possible outside of a universe. She had left her own pocket-world far behind, but even outside of it the background magic of the multiverse made little efforts to adjust to her expectations by giving her air, wind, and traces of solid matter. With every step she took she left behind her a little wake, like foam on the cosmic ocean, the condensation of her understanding of the world.

Aside from the music that played in her mind, there was no sound in the space between worlds. Though she moved at astronomical speeds, and the fiery machinery of arcane physics showed the might of its inner workings all around her, it was nonetheless peaceful and still.

Star Swirl the Sprite left behind no wake. He stared straight ahead, insofar as it was possible to tell when his eyes had no pupils, but were only windows to yet more worlds, filled with wheels of stars spinning endlessly.

“We’re still heading the right direction, professor?” Clover called out.

“The stars align,” Star Swirl the Sprite said. “The center draws closer. Find Chocolate Bunnies, and undo the scattering.”

“Right you are, professor,” Clover said, and smiled. “You know, I think I’m getting the hang of this.”

One of his ears perked up under his hat.

“I like to think that by now I’ve gotten to know you better than… well, anypony,” Clover said. “I think I know a little something about how you think. How you work. And then…” She looked at the sprite. “This happens. But I think I’ve figured it out. I don’t think this is just some cosmic joke that doesn’t mean anything. This place doesn’t understand irony. It’s too earnest to tell jokes.”

Star Swirl the Sprite looked at her silently, his eyes glittering with stars.

“Ginny doesn’t trust you,” Clover said. “She thinks this is some kind of trick. I can see where she’s coming from, but I disagree.” She nodded at the strange figure of the Sprite, whose empty eyes stared back at her. “This is what happens when Star Swirl the Bearded is thrown into a world that asks nothing of him, that works entirely on his terms, no compromises needed. Once I realized that, it made me think. I thought, how much work must it be for you to relate to normal ponies like me? How hard must it be to communicate with ponies that are so far apart from you that we’re hardly even speaking the same language?” She looked ahead of her, at the dazzling lights of the cosmos. “I don’t know what you saw, in your own little world. I don’t suppose it could ever have satisfied you. But you didn’t go off on your own. You came to find me as soon as you could.”

Star Swirl the Sprite said nothing while she spoke. Clover decided that meant he was listening. “You invited me into your house, professor. You’ve tried to teach me everything you know. I know it hasn’t always been easy. But I don’t think I understood before just how much work that is. I just wanted you to know that… I appreciate it. Thanks, professor. We don’t always understand each other. But I think we’re going to manage this. I know that you’re a force for good, and someday everypony else will as well.”

Star Swirl the Sprite blinked in incomprehension, and Clover laughed inwardly at the sight.

“Wow,” said another voice in Clover’s ear, “that was so sappy I think I choked on rainbows and died.”

“Shut up, dark side.”

“No,” Clover’s dark side replied. “You can pretend otherwise all you like, but you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re probably going nowhere at all. This is a multiverse, and you’re like a little foal thinking that you’re going to explore it in an afternoon and be home in time for supper, like it’s the woods out behind your aunt’s house.”

Clover rolled her eyes and grumbled.

Far ahead, directly in front of them, Clover saw a star that glowed with a different light, that stood out against the backdrop of the cosmos. She smiled resolutely. “I think we’re getting there at last. You know, I think I’m starting to figure out how to navigate this space, and I think we’re really—”

That was when something invisible rammed into her from the side. Clover screamed, falling uncontrollably backwards, her limbs flailing. Star Swirl the Sprite hung where she had been, looking after her in shock.

The heavens closed up around her, and he was gone from her sight.

– – –

When Clover opened her eyes, she found herself looking at a dark, green sky. She lay where she had been thrown, on hard earth with meager grass, and she felt like she was covered in bruises.

Clover slowly pushed herself up on her hooves and looked around. She was in a dry and rocky land, cracked earth barely interrupted by sparse vegetation, and the air was hazy and thick with dry, unpleasant smells.

The sky buzzed, a deep hum that she could hear and even feel through the ground. It came closer and closer, and what had been mere specks of black in the sky became a vast body above her, like a flock of birds. As they drew near, she saw the changelings clearly, and they saw her.

“Seize her!” one changeling shouted. He wore spiked armor that glistened in the strange, green sunlight, and his voice reverberated like a dozen voices in one.

Half a dozen changelings fell on her before she could react. She screamed and kicked and shoved at them with her magic as they grabbed her, their strange hard shells with insect-like hairs rubbing against her fur, making her instinctively recoil.

Working together as one, they pinned her down with sheer force of numbers while she struggled. She heard them hack and cough, and then her hooves were bound with sticky slime that refused to budge. Another hack and it coated her horn, rendering her magic useless.

In the middle of the brawl, they tore her robe off from her back and tossed it aside, and as she tried to scream her lips were sealed, turning her cries into unintelligible groans.

“Bring her to Guise,” the warrior commanded, and she was hauled in the air by buzzing wings and hard jagged hooves. They flew off, dragging her with them, naked, leaving her robe far behind.

It disappeared from her sight, and was gone. And then her vision was filled with the city.

Great spires of changeling hives rose all around her. There were more of them than she could count: even in the smoky haze that lingered out on the horizon she could see them by the dozens, each hive tended by a great swarm that filled the air in great rings around each spire. The ground around each was a barren wasteland, showing only the scars of ancient roads to suggest there had ever been anything on that land before the swarm came.

One spire towered far above the others and they carried her towards it, its surface alive with holes that opened and closed like the mouths of an unearthly beast. One opened before them just before they smashed into the wall, and they were inside a great cavernous gap. She gagged inside her sealed muzzle as the fetid air of the hive filled her nostrils, thick with filth and rot.

Beneath her, she saw great pens where ponies were herded like mindless animals, and at first it seemed like they were going to drop her with them, but the warrior swooped down. “Not here. Not her. Bring her to the King!”

They rose up, hovering alongside a great central column. Clover’s heart raced in her chest, but at least the air cleared as she rose further from the pony pens.

They carried her through a great glowing doorway high up in the living hive, gateways of great insect-wings that opened and closed on joints, and finally dropped her on the ground before the throne of the Changeling King.

The soldier saluted. “Oh Great King, we have captured a pony. She is special. We have brought her to you, as you commanded.” Meanwhile, one of the drones spat on its hoof and rubbed it on Clover’s muzzle: the slime gag dissolved, and she could breathe freely.

Clover gasped for breath, and looked up at the form of the Changeling King. He was enormous, taller than two tall stallions put together, with two great horns like a stag. He moved on his throne, and as he did his black chitin shell reflected shades of every color in the feeble light. His wings were longer than his body, like stained glass windows showing a dream of changeling dominion. He carried himself proudly, regally as he stepped down from his throne, and every motion suggested a strength and ferocity unmatched, ready to be unleashed in full at any moment.

Somehow, in spite of all that, Clover recognized him immediately. “…Tarsus? Is that you?”

“Silence!” The Changeling soldier commanded. “You will show respect when you speak to the Changeling King!”

The King observed her coolly. “Where did you find this one?”

The soldier saluted. “At the edge of the city.”

“So close...” the King shifted. “Double the patrols! No pony must escape!”

“Yes, my King!” the soldier buzzed his wings and immediately the swarm set to work.

Clover gulped. “Tarsus? King Tarsus? It’s me, Clover. Don’t you remember me?”

Tarsus looked down at her disdainfully.“I do remember you,” Tarsus said. “I thought you had fled. Yet here you are, come back to the site of your failure.”

“My… failure?”

“Would you like to see it?” He flapped his wings, and the walls around him shimmered. Images from throughout the hive flashed before her eyes. She saw great swarms of workers and armies of soldiers. There were caverns filled with great green glowing eggs, and squirming larvae crawling over transparent cocoons that held thin, sleeping ponies, and great pens of dull-eyed ponies herded like beasts. She struggled not to vomit.

The Changeling King rose up to his full height, and his voice was confident and strong. “This is my kingdom,” he said. “As our elders foretold, the ancient city of Guise, destroyed so long ago, has returned to the world at last. Here we raise great swarms of changelings that cover the world. In our hatcheries our young hone their skills in safety. We have crushed all who would stand against us. We have broken our enemies and turned them into our crop. Never again will the changelings suffer at the hooves of ponies. We will never again hide in the shadows.” He looked down his muzzle at her. “So why do you think I care to remember you?”

Clover shrank under his gaze, shivered. She felt naked, cold and clammy and exposed, and more powerless than she had felt in a long time. “Look, Tarsus… I know we haven’t known each other all that long, but I thought we were friends? I tried to treat you the same as I would any pony. I was nice to you, wasn’t I?”

“You have no idea what you did!” He snapped at her. “You have no idea what your master is! You are an oblivious little foal living in a dreamworld and telling yourself you’re good, and now you will all pay the price of your arrogance!” He turned away from her, shaking in anger, his thundering voice raw and pained. “Guards! Take her away and throw her in the pens!”

“Tarsus, wait!” She cried after him as the soldiers took hold of her and moved to carry her away.

That was when the floor suddenly shook beneath her hooves, and the sound of an explosion rocked the hall. The guards froze, hesitating, then the hall filled with buzzing as the changelings erupted into a flurry of movement. “We are under attack!” a soldier cried. “Battle stations! Protect the King!”

The soldiers dropped Clover and she fell to the side with a cry of pain, her hooves still glued together.

A battered drone half-flew, half-fell into the hall, trailing green ooze on the floor behind it from cracks in its shell. It looked up at its king, its eyes foggy. “He comes,” the drone said, and fell dead.

A terrible chill wind blew into the King’s throne hall. Clover could see the fear even on their non-equine faces. Tarsus buzzed his wings and hovered above the throne. “Hold fast, my warriors! We will not be defeated, together we are strong!”

“Your world will crumble,” a voice rumbled, and it sent a cold shudder down Clover’s spine. “Flee for your lives if you wish, for it will not save you.”

Standing in the doorway was an abomination that defied description, and made Clover’s eyes hurt to look at it. It was an amorphous lump of obsidian slime, repulsive and unnatural. It was a monstrous, sluggish ghoul, a bogeyman from a foal’s nightmares, all rot and jagged teeth, and its eyes were death.

It swept in through the doorway, its every motion a crime against nature, and the changelings broke before it and fled in a panic, the hall erupting into chaos.

The creature raised its head and bolts of force burst from its face, striking the changelings who attempted to flee. With each shot Clover felt the floor shake beneath her, and every changeling it struck fell, broken, and lifeless.

“No!” Tarsus leaped forward and stood before it in a challenge, his wings wide. “Face me, monster! You will never defeat the free changelings!”

“Fool,” the monster said. “You will all die.”

It erupted in a noxious battery of missiles that covered the room and felled dozens more changelings, while Tarsus rose up and blasted it with a beam of changeling magic. Clover felt the force of the confrontation. The air grew hot and full of smoke, blurring her vision. The sharp lights, the noise of the battle and of the panicking, fleeing changelings everywhere all making it harder for her to focus.

But the monster shifted under the force of Tarsus’ attack, and changed shape. Clover could clearly see the shape of an elderly stallion with bells on his hat as it flickered in and out of her vision.

Clover watched as the remnants of Star Swirl the Bearded finally melted into a thick black ooze. It drew together into one solid puddle, then vanished into thin air with a hollow laughter that promised he would be back before long.

And there was silence again, except for the weeping of the survivors over their lost loved ones. The hall was littered with changeling corpses, like dead flies in a long-forgotten room.

Tarsus turned, and slowly hovered back up to his throne, where he slumped over to the side, and said nothing.

Clover stood beside his throne. watching him. Her hooves and horn were free, her muzzle not stained by any residue of slime. The still air lay heavy on her exposed back.

Clover took a step towards the throne, and Tarsus turned an eye on her listlessly. “Do you know why I recognized you?” She asked softly. “I figured it out, see. You’re the king of all the changelings. But… there’s nothing here except what you bring with you.”

She looked at the chaos all around the hall, at the grief and pain on display. “All your life… All your memories about being powerless, about being hunted, about having to hide… And the one pony who caught you, and made you talk.” She turned to the changeling king, and sat down in front of him. “I’m not going to force you to talk. I’m going to ask. Will you please talk to me, Tarsus?”

“He killed them,” Tarsus said. “My hivemates. I gave them up. I should have died before I talked, but I gave them up, and he sent his warriors to kill them.”

“And you feel guilty.” Clover looked out at the hall. “Because you think you could have stopped him. And so you torture yourself, by watching him kill them over and over again.”

A myriad of faces passed over him in the blink of an eye. “I am the Great King,” Tarsus said, rising up to his full height. “I must protect and feed the hive.”

Clover was silent for a while, trying to collect her thoughts. She looked around the hall, taking in the details. The drones were collecting their dead and carrying them away, while the bereaved followed after.

“To ponies, changelings are legendary monsters,” Clover admitted. “You abduct and kill ponies, and eat love to live. It’s… difficult… for me to try to see the world from your point of view. But, you know something? It was Star Swirl himself who told me that you were just doing what was in your nature. He never held it against you. He said that you were… innocent.” She let out a deep sigh. “For what it’s worth, Tarsus… I think we’ve got along pretty well, in the short time we’ve known each other.”

“You are not your teacher,” Tarsus said. “He is a monster. You are just a pony.”

“He’s a pony too,” Clover said quietly. “There’s always more to monsters than we think.”

The great King of the Changelings faded into shadow and a wisp of smoke that blew away with the wind. Left behind in his place was Tarsus, looking the way Clover knew him, small and uneven and covered in scars after a lifetime of skulking in shadows.

Tarsus looked down at her, defeated. “Just go,” he said. “Leave me. There’s nothing for you here.”

Clover nodded. “Alright. Goodbye… and I’m sorry.”

She turned away, and the sky opened up above her, and she stepped out of the universe and into the beyond.

– – –

Once Clover was back in outer space, she immediately ducked, and scanned the space around her for any potential attackers. There was nothing.

She drew a deep breath, and released it slowly. “I’m back,” she said.

“You were pushed,” Star Swirl the Sprite said.

“Yes. I was.” Clover thought back, and shuddered. “I met Tarsus there. It was… intense. It could have been very dangerous.”

“Tarsus,” Star Swirl the Sprite said. “Tarsus has a place same as anypony else. We are not searching for Tarsus.”

“I know, professor,” Clover said wearily. She looked out at the glowing dots that were not quite stars, far away in the outermost reaches of the infant multiverse. “We’re searching for Chocolate Bunnies… But I need to tell you about Tarsus. He’s nursing a hatred for you that he can’t overcome because you captured him and forced him to give up his kin to their deaths. And the truth is… he’s not wrong.” Clover did not look at her teacher as she spoke. “You kept him as a prisoner and a slave, and I… just watched you do it. I’m going to be thinking about that for a long time, now.”

“He kept ponies as food,” her dark side said. “He deserved everything he got. There’s a reason his kind hide in the shadows and never show themselves.”

Clover shivered. By reflex and habit she moved to wrap her cloak around her tighter, but it was gone. She was not used to it being gone. “…That’s cruel, dark side.”

“You pronounced ‘true’ wrong.”

Clover gritted her teeth together. “This is hard enough as it is. I can’t be distracted by you right now!”

“Don’t blame me, you’re the one who can’t control your own thoughts and feelings.”

“Guh!” Clover demonstratively turned away from her dark side. “Listen, Professor, whatever happened before wasn’t just chance. I could have been trapped in that world, and something kicked me in there on purpose. Swirly Star gave me a warning, before she left. I think something is trying to stop me from finding Bunnies. Do you have any idea what it could be?”

“The scattering,” Star Swirl the Sprite said severely, which made Clover’s dark side snicker. “Infant multiverse, filled with vast amounts of raw magic. Find the center, and undo the scattering.”

“Find the center,” Clover muttered to herself. “Alright, let me think. What’s at the center? This place is full of… Raw magic. And ponies.” She looked again at the stars, wondering which of them held the key. “Could it be that one of them wants to stop us from escaping? That they want to stay here? With a multiverse at your disposal… Anypony could be a goddess here. But who? I don’t think any of the ponies I’ve seen so far could do that.”

Star Swirl the Sprite turned. “Find Chocolate Bunnies.”

“Find the center,” Clover muttered to herself. “In a multiverse, technically everywhere is the center. Find Chocolate Bunnies…” Her eyes lit up. “It wants to keep me away from Bunnies. And that means… It’s already slipped up. It’s showed its hoof. Professor! We’re going to keep going ahead. Keep an eye out for any magic projectiles, or shields, or anything that will try to stop us, and warn me if you see them!” She grinned, looking out towards the cosmic horizon. “If we can spot that thing, maybe it will lead us right to it.”

She took off again, galloping across the multiverse with Star Swirl the Sprite at her side. Her eyes darted back and forth, and her horn was glowing softly, scanning a vast sphere of space around her, ready to spot and grab hold of any sign of magic moving towards her.

It didn’t take long before they spotted it. Far ahead of them was a great lump of magic matter, invisible to non-magical senses, hurtling through space. It sat at the end of a long supple trunk of the same stuff, either dragging it behind it like a rope tied to a brick, or perhaps it was like the hoof at the end of some great limb, reaching out across space from a massive body someplace beyond.

No sooner had Clover spotted it but it reacted to her presence. It froze, the hoof or head of it turning to face her. It almost seemed to watch her for a moment, as a pony might watch a fly crawling over the table, judging its timing. Clover tensed, knees bent, ready to leap at a moment’s notice.

After watching her for a moment, the invisible limb pulled back and tried to smack her. It crashed down towards her with enormous force, and she only barely dodged out of its path. She felt it sweep past just behind her, sending ripples through the background magic like waves in the wake of a great ship on the ocean.

She grit her teeth, the corners of her mouth curling in a smile. “Didn’t expect that, did you?” she muttered to herself. “Now let’s find out what you’re hiding.” She turned, aligning herself along the length of the limb, and galloped down it, Star Swirl the Sprite following along beside her.

There was a roaring all around her that felt distinctly like frustration, and the great extremity turned, and took up the pursuit.

The thing moved forcefully, Clover noticed, but not elegantly. As the head came around for another strike she managed to dodge it by quickly ducking around the trunk. She gulped, and galloped as hard as she could down the length of the limb as it undulated and bent around her.

With her magic senses activated, she became aware of something ahead of her. She focused on it, feeling it out. Then she gasped. “Professor, do you see that?”

Star Swirl nodded. “The portal.”

It was a wall of magic, and it was where the enormous limb was rooted. The invisible club that was chasing her rose from a great invisible force field that stretched across space. And there were more like it. She could feel them growing in the distance, the defenders on a wall built to keep her out.

Clover reached out with her magic, feeling its strength, and bit her lip. “It’s growing stronger,” she said. “Whatever’s doing that, it’s gaining magical power over time.”

“A piece of the scattering,” the Sprite said. “We must get inside. Proceed when ready.”

Clover nodded uncertainly, and steeled herself. “I’m ready.”

The great club came rocketing towards them from the side, and the two ponies launched forward, together, towards the surface of the shield just before it would hit them.

Clover felt the magical force against her face, like a furnace radiating heat. She raised her own barrier and sharpened it to a point, and pushed forward with all her strength.

They made contact just as the club was turning around behind them for another strike, and cut through it.

There was a massive burst of magical force behind them, launching them forward through space. The magic itself roared around them in a fury, and Clover galloped, looking ahead to see what awaited her.

At the center of the force field was a new world. It glowed gold and silver, and inside it the clearest image Clover could see was of a barn.

She jumped into it, and a universe sprang up around her.

– – –

The world was frozen, and the cold hit Clover immediately. She yelped in surprise and shivered, frost falling lightly on her back. Cold, she thought. I had almost forgotten how it felt to freeze.

She looked around her, and knew where she was right away: she was standing in the Crescent Square, one of Cambridle’s major marketplaces, full of the mundane business of city life, but all of it frozen over. The ponies stood locked in place, drifts of snow building up around them, locked mid-action in a day that never ended. “What…?” Clover mouthed the word, her breath hanging visibly in the air, freezing up entirely after a moment.

“Who here is real?” she asked herself as she turned. “Who are you, and what’s so important that that thing fought to keep me out…?”

She recognized the pony immediately once she saw her. Standing by the big public notice board was Silk Road, the unicorn member of the Servitors of Discord, the third pony Clover had seen leading the revolution. She too was frozen in place, stretching out, her hoof pressed against a poster.

“Frozen,” Clover muttered to herself as she looked over the pony. “Why are you frozen? Hello?”

Silk Road’s eyes opened with a flash that sent them both tumbling backwards, eight hooves scudding and slipping on ice before they both regained their balance. Silk Road gasped. “What – who are you? What are you doing here?”

Silk Road’s eyes were bleary and bloodshot, looking wildly all around her. Her voice was thin and confused, even afraid. Clover thought the other unicorn was barely aware of her, but a sudden sense of apprehension flooded over her as the background magic of the universe shifted. Clover could almost taste it in the air, and she recognized the taste. Like it had been with Gallopsky and Cutting Edge, simultaneously vulnerable and forceful.

She was an intruder in a fragile place, and it had defenses, and it was watching her closely, ready to lash out at the first provocation.

She resolved not to give it one.

She drew a breath through her nostrils, and said in a calm voice: “I don’t mean you any harm. My name is Clover. I just want to talk.”

“Talk.”

Clover nodded. Her mind was racing. “Do you remember me?” Clover asked. “I was at the revolution. Remember the revolution? In Cambridle, at the Academy of Magic. You were going to conquer the city for Discord. Do you remember that?”

“I… do remember,” Silk Road’s voice was hazy, and confused. “Yes, I was… talking to somepony, and you were there, and you…”

“I tried to negotiate a peace treaty,” Clover said, her magical senses on alert. “I don’t want any trouble. I just want ponies to get along.”

Silk Road’s eyes were blank and unfocused, but her mouth curled up in disdain. “The mad wizard’s apprentice,” she said. “Peace… Peace is an illusion. Peace is for graveyards. There’s no time for it.”

Silk Road turned from the big board and took a few steps away. As she did, Clover felt the background magic revert to baseline, having decided for now that she was beneath notice. She let out a breath of relief, and looked after the other unicorn.

You know something, she thought to herself. You all do, and I couldn’t get it out of the other two, and something doesn’t want me to get it out of you. How do I get through to you?

You’re being creepy again,” Clover’s dark side whispered in her thoughts.

Shut up, dark side. I am not.

“Yes you are. You’re thinking about how best to manipulate her.”

I have a job to do, dark side.

Whatever helps you sleep at night. Swirly Star was right about you, you know.”

Clover rolled her eyes, and turned her attention back to Silk Road.

Silk Road walked slowly, shivering like a feverish pony or a little old mare. Clover felt compelled to offer her a helping hoof. She stepped up beside the other unicorn. Silk Road tensed up, then after a moment’s silence returned to normal.

“You’re Silk Road, right?” Clover said. “You’re with the Discordians.”

“I… Yes. Yes, I’m her.” Silk Road forced herself to take every step forward. “I have to hang up these posters,” she said, distracted. “There’s going to be a big meeting. I have invited everypony. I need to get everything ready. I have a plan. I have charts, and graphs, and projections.”

Clover looked at the poster. It had a fanciful image of Discord, presumably designed by Cutting Edge, spinning the globe on the tip of his claw. Underneath was written an invitation to come visit the Discordians at sunset on so-and-so date, in the barn at the Strong Roots farm, for a revelatory and life-changing experience, open to all.

“I have a good feeling about this time,” Silk Road said. “This time they’ll listen.”

Clover shivered, and not from the cold. “...Will you tell me about it?” Clover asked, trying to sound kind. “I want to understand this. You, this place. Discord. Can you help me with that?”

“You want to understand Discord?” Silk Road said, and Clover heard a hint of laughter in her voice. “Well, that’s easy. It’s also impossible, so you might as well not bother. No, that’s not right…” She frowned, her eyes closed, shook her head. “I’m not an elitist. The other two think I am, but I’m not. I…” She winced. “Honestly, what kind of elitist would support Discord? What is Cutting Edge even thinking? No, she’s just saying that to get on my nerves. I know she is.”

“She’s just trying to get under your skin,” Clover said, eyeing the other unicorn warily, watching her reactions. A gust of wind brought a fresh wave of cold, and Clover tried to ignore it, and focus on the other unicorn. “…But I keep wondering about this. Why Discord, of all things? I don’t really see him as a very positive force.”

“He has unsurpassed brand-name penetration,” Silk Road said calmly, slowly. “There is not a pony in Braytannia who doesn’t both know and have strong feelings about Discord. Do not underestimate the power of brand recognition.”

“That…” Clover thought for a moment. “Is that how the other Discordians think about it?”

“Those two are impossible!” Silk Road muttered. “They never take anything we do seriously. I’m the only respectable pony who will give those two the time of day.” Her voice grew louder as she spoke. “I’m on their side! I want to see Discord win! It’s the three of us against the world, but I can’t even get them to listen to me!”

Clover stepped back, surprised by the strength of her passion. “It seems like you’ve been doing really well for the last year, right?” she asked cautiously.

“Oh yes,” Silk Road said, her voice bitter. “Chocolate Bunnies was the best thing that ever happened to us. Before she came along, I spent two years trying to find somepony willing to work alongside the Discordians. Nopony would listen to a word I said. Then, once we had the Siblinghood of the Hoof on our side, they were all ears.”

Silk Road winced, cutting herself off. “I’m not ungrateful,” she said to herself. “I like Chocolate Bunnies. She listens to me. I can work with her. I would never betray her.”

I can’t tell if she’s about to freeze up or explode. “I’ll listen to you,” Clover said. “What did you want? Explain it to me. Please.”

“I… I wanted buy-in,” Silk Road said. “I didn’t just want power, whatever Cutting Edge says. I wanted ponies to see what we could offer. That we could be more than just a disruption or an annoyance. To show that we could be an integral part of the tapestry!”

Clover watched with rapt attention as Silk Road almost seemed to transform before her eyes. Her breath was rapid and excited as she spoke. She stood up tall and proud, and for a moment the cold seemed to have no effect on her, her eyes bright and her cheeks flush with passion. “I wanted to show everypony that there was a place for an organization that doesn’t care about the old ways, that doesn’t care who you are or how you were born, that welcomes everypony, regardless of tribe!”

She reached upwards for a moment, then slumped forward. “...But nopony listened,” she said. “Nopony ever listened.”

“Not until Chocolate Bunnies,” Clover said quietly.

Silk Road nodded. “Nopony wanted to be the first to give us a chance, you see,” she said calmly. “If they did, and we failed, it would all be on their heads. But if they were just following the herd, they could pretend it had nothing to do with them.” She sighed, staring off into the distance. “Once you get ponies to accept something, once you get them to consider it normal… Anything is possible. But it means you’re pushing against the weight of the world.”

Clover couldn’t help but giggle. Silk Road raised an eyebrow. “I’m having a strange day,” Clover said. “I didn’t mean to laugh at you. But I keep meeting ponies on their own terms. Forced, for a while, to see the world as other ponies see it. Maybe I’m getting pretty good at it. Or maybe the last one was just so far beyond me that now even Discord seems normal.” She smiled, and took a step along, kicking up some snow. “Whatever the case… I think I get it, Silk Road. I’m not going to join the Servitors of Discord. But I think there is a place for you.”

Silk Road stared at her. There were tears welling up in her eyes. “I do remember you,” she said quietly, her soft voice shaking. “The mad wizard’s apprentice, trying to make peace. I… remember.”

There was a flash of light inside Silk Road’s eyes, and then the world changed.

How do you shape ponies’ minds? Do you do it with words? Actions? Facts? If you learn more about the world, will you understand it? Or will it get in the way of understanding?

Silk Road cared about her work. In a lot of ways, she was her work. It was a part of her. It obeyed the same rules as her. Every new variable she tracked was a little piece of her. Every story it told her was her own.

Sometimes she felt as if her own health rose and dipped with her numbers.

As that crucial day approached, it was also true that the walls of her work space in the Cambridle Business School research building increasingly reflected her own mental state: covered in numbers and connected with multicolored string.

The numbers were varied, showing everything under the sun that could be measured: employment in the tailoring industry, the economic growth of Manechester and Whinnyenna, earth pony-pegasus cohabitations, banana yields in Niceland, the depth of hiking trail grooves through the Black Forest, passport controls…

It was in many ways a great triumph: a new, more powerful way of seeing the world. But what she saw…

“It’s been going on for many decades,” she said to her mentor. “Stratification. Calcification. Every year, in countless little ways, our society becomes a little less dynamic. Sometimes there’s a temporary blip. Sometimes one number goes up because three competing numbers all went down at once. But the long-term trend is inescapable.”

So what are the implications?”

“That’s a very big question,” Silk Road said. “You might as well ask me to describe what the universe is like.”

“That’s not a very academic attitude, miss Road. It sounds like sophistry.”

Silk Road drew a long, slow breath. “It means we’re losing something. It’s not just about money. Things are… slowing down. New ideas that change things around them are becoming rarer. We can now accurately forecast a pony’s life earnings from birth, not because our tools have become more powerful but because the course of pony life has become more predictable. We’re becoming set in our ways in ways we weren’t before.”

She pointed to one board out of many, covered in calculations.Look at this. Every metric that measures pony happiness and the advance of society has been slowing for almost a hundred years.” She did not comment on the particulars of the starting date. It was dangerous enough already.And the numbers are all linked. Push one, another pushes back. The only way to reverse the trend is to reform the entire structure of our society.

What, are you Hardly Seldom or something?” Her mentor scoffed and shook his head. “You can’t go before the advisory board and tell them that civilization is ending for your PhD defense!

My research is completely sound!” Silk Road protested. “My methodology is rock solid!”

Her adviser was stone-faced. I’m sorry, miss Road. You know I’ve been very patient with you… You’re a very good student. But I’m afraid the CBS has no place for this kind of work.”

And so the Cambridle Business School showed her the door, and shut it behind her. Her dissertation would go unpublished, and unread. Years of work and an exclusive scholarship fund – her mother had been so proud – down the drain.

“There has to be somepony,” she said to herself, “there has to be somepony who will see.”

And there was, sort of. She found them out on the edge of Cambridle, on a farm belonging to an earth pony living on the Preferred Settlement Plan, growing crops for unicorns. She asked them if they wanted to turn the world upside down. They looked at her, and at each other, and nodded.

“Great,” she had said to them. “I have some ideas for how we can get started.”

Her work is different now, but she is still her work.

She tries to get them more respectable lodgings. They make a mess of it. She tries to talk to them about recruitment. They are not interested. She shows them the numbers. They don’t look. She shows them the charts. They laugh. She tells them about earth pony-pegasus cohabitation, and they roll on the floor laughing. Furious, she sputters and she fumes, and the pegasus effortlessly silences her with a single sentence. They mock her charts and graphs, and call her a square.

And they are the only ponies she’s got.

Until one day the barn door opened again, and another pony came walking in, and everything changed.

Clover felt a mild gust in the air. In the barn, the ice was breaking apart, and water was dripping from the rooftop and trickling down the walls.

The frost on Silk Road’s face was melting, and dripping down her cheeks. “I don’t believe in Discord,” she whispered. “Discord doesn’t bless ponies, I know that. None of us have ever been touched by Discord. Discord doesn’t care about us any more than Celestia does. But those two… They’re believers.” Silk Road looked at the glowing, ghostly figures of Gallopsky, and Cutting Edge, and Chocolate Bunnies. Clover looked at the other unicorn, and in her thousand-yard stare she saw hope. “I don’t believe in Discord. But I believe in them.”

The scene was silent for a long time before Silk Road spoke again. “You want to find your friend,” she said. “Chocolate Bunnies.”

Clover nodded.

“She’s my friend too,” Silk Road said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t want to hurt her.”

“I believe you,” Clover said, and realized as she said it that it was the truth. “You can tell her you’re sorry once we’re done.”

“…Good.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“We can show you the way,” Silk Road said. “But she’s… different, than she was. She won’t talk to you.”

“She’s my friend,” Clover said. “She’ll talk to me.”

“She won’t.” Silk Road drew a slow breath, and she flickered in and out of Clover’s vision. “You’ll see. But alright. We can take you to her.”

They were all there now, in the barn: all three of the Discordians, glowing in strange light. Like ghosts bound to some ancient treasure or tragedy they took up position in a circle, with empty eyes. They reached out their right forelegs and touched their hooves together.

There was a great flash of light that seemed to come from all around. It filled Clover’s vision, blotting out her sight, but she felt herself pulled along by a great wind as the fabric of the multiverse bent around her.

– – –

Clover was carried away across space faster than the speed of thought. She lost all sense of time and space, and her own physical self. There was only the vision of the multiverse racing all around her, until it ended just as suddenly as it had began, and she was dropped back into space, her eyes filled with spots and her body numb.

Directly ahead of her Clover saw a lone star that glowed more brightly than any of the others, that burned with the might of the sun. She squinted, and raised a hoof to shield her eyes from the light. “What…?” She mouthed the words. “Is that…?”

“Clover!” Star Swirl the Sprite materialized by her side, bells tinkling with the sound of marbles rolling down a staircase. “You made it! We found the center!”

“I made it?” Clover mouthed the words silently, her thoughts barely hanging together as images of the ponies she had seen raced through her mind. She erupted into a grin. “I made it!” She leaped forward in a burst of joy and ran towards the star, and it grew before her.

“Don’t get too full of yourself,” her dark side said beside her. “You might burst.”

“Shut up, you,” Clover said, galloping towards it. “We made it! I made it!”

“Yeah, we’ll see how that goes.”

In front of Clover, the star grew bigger and bigger as she drew nearer, faster than she would have expected, or as if space was warping.

She slowed to a trot as the full scale of it became apparent, and then fell silent. Her mouth hung open as she grappled with the sight.

“The scattering,” Star Swirl the Sprite said gravely.

Clover looked at the star, struggling to comprehend what she was seeing. Seen from a distance it was a vortex, slowly spinning, its outer arms reaching out to touch every star, every pony in the infant multiverse. In the center of the vortex there was what Clover recognized as a world-bubble, and within the bubble she saw…

Her eyes crossed as she tried to look at it, and she clenched them shut and shook her head. She cautiously looked again with only one eye, and it was a struggle not to recoil from the sight.

Clover hung at the edge of the thing, staring wordlessly at its immensity. “Find Chocolate Bunnies,” Star Swirl the Sprite whispered. She nodded, and silently, quietly, drifted forward to study it more closely.

“Find Chocolate Bunnies,” she repeated under her breath. “Alright. We’re almost done. She’s inside there somewhere. I just need to get her out.”

“You have no idea what you need to do,” Clover’s dark side reminded her.

“No, I don’t,” Clover admitted. “But I’m gonna find out. And you can’t stop me.”

The thing ahead of her was a mess of contradictions. It glowed brightly, but at the same time it smoldered like a fire, more heat than light, except it was also dry as dust, as the crumbling remnants of withered plants if those plants could move of their own, creeping and slithering out in search of nutrients to devour.

And devour it did. All around her Clover saw great rivers of magical power flowing through the space between the worlds, all circling around and draining, pouring, into the vortex. Flashes of light spun at great speed, and sent airless winds rippling through Clover’s mane. All the many ponies of Cambridle were being sucked in, their own private worlds hanging like so many Hearth’s Warming ornaments, pulled along in the magical stream that sent all their power to the thing in the center.

In the middle of it all, Clover sensed, something was watching her. She felt the burning glare of it, feeling similar to the force field and the great club that had chased her earlier. She felt its anger that she was there.

“Come on,” she said under her breath, Star Swirl the Sprite at her side. Her horn glowed as she reached out with her magical senses, alert and ready to push back against anything that might try to knock her away again, to push her into yet another world.

She wasn’t expecting it to instead grab a world and throw it at her from behind.

She tried to leap away just too late, and its gravity sucked her in and swallowed her up. The sky closed up above her as she screamed “Not again!”

She slammed into the floor with a thud.

“Gah!” Clover clenched her teeth in frustration as she once again clambered up from the floor. “I don’t care who you are. You can’t stop me! I’m going to get out of here, and I’m going to find Bunnies, and I’m going to save everypony!

Sun shone in through the windows, landing on a checkered tablecloth that Clover had known all her life. Birds sang outside. She recognized the room immediately.

“That’s nice, dear,” Weather Vane said from behind his newspaper. “Pass the butter, would you?”

Clover’s jaw clenched tight. “Hello, dad.”

“You know, I was just reading an article about academic employment prospects,” her father said. “Very interesting piece. You might want to take a look at it once you’re done with… um… What did you say you were doing?”

“I’m saving Cambridle, dad,” Clover said. “You’re trapped in an alternate universe, and you need to snap out of it so I can get on with it.”

“Oh.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, that might sound good now, but the job market for philosophers is notoriously fickle, you know. It’s all seasonal work. Have you thought about the hard sciences? There are a lot more jobs than in the abstract, theoretical fields.”

I want to kill him,” Clover’s dark side whispered inside her mind, and Clover found it hard to disagree.

“I don’t have time for this, dad!” Clover snapped. “I was just about to reach Chocolate Bunnies and – and – well I don’t actually know what I was going to do next, but it was important! I need you to focus! You’re locked in a world of your own imagining, and you need to face up to that so I can get out of here and go on with my day.”

Weather Vane blinked in incomprehension. “So, that’s a no on the hard sciences?”

“Guh!” Clover facehoofed and drew a deep breath. “Tell me, dad, what exactly do you think happened today? Do you remember earlier today, when you came running to find me outside the university? Remember that?”

“Was that today?” Weather Vane asked. He folded up his newspaper and dropped it on the table. “My word. Time flies when you’re busy. How did it go by the way? But I was just thinking about compound interest and the unicorn reserve—”

Clover held her breath and began to slow count to ten.

“—and everypony nowadays wants to be a copy editor or a shawl salespony, but the bottom is going to fall out of that market soon enough and then it’ll be the ponies who have a fallback plan who land on their hooves—”

Five. Six. Oh don’t mind me Clover, I’m just going to ruin your exam without even noticing it. Seven. Oh don’t mind me Clover, I didn’t notice you there because I was too busy thinking about mane therapy futures. Eight.

“—and I do worry about how you’re going to support yourself now that you’ve left Court and decided not to pursue a faculty position.”

The words in her mind faded into an endless scream of rage.

Enough!” She screamed at him. “Shut up shut up shut up! I have had enough of listening to your, your, horrible nonsense!”

Weather Vane froze in shock, blinking in confusion, which only made Clover angrier. “Why can’t you ever listen to me, dad?! You came up to me on my frigging exam day to tell me you and mom were breaking up!”

Clover’s memories replayed before her eyes as vividly as if she was living through them for the first time, and the bile rose in her throat. She remembered her meeting with him that morning. She saw him at the Cambridle Grand Hotel, sitting idly by as her mother spouted tribeist nonsense, not listening to a word she had to say.

“Why couldn’t you just let me have one day where things went okay?” She jabbed his chest with her hoof. “Is that too much to ask? Would that destroy your grand plan for my life? Would that trigger the curse that would make mom fall into a coma, or get amnesia, or would topple the kingdom and must therefore be avoided at any cost? Is that it? Because I can’t understand it otherwise!

Clover’s vision turned red, and she felt flames rising around her hooves. The memories rushed into her thoughts unbidden, reaching back further. She saw her foalhood in Whinnysor as a courtier-in-training from birth. The murderous etiquette lessons, the lost days when all her other friends were playing, all the private tutors and the lessons they had poured her into that had made her into a nauseous, nervous wreck, from which her only escape lay in foals’ adventure stories about wizards and monsters. “You and mom turned me into a Celestia-damned mess, and I’m trying the best I can and you two never care about how I feel and you just keep ruining everything I do and I’m sick of it!

In her mind’s eye the house was burning, burning to the ground and she could not stop laughing as it all went up in flames. She imagined his body lying limp and feeble underneath her, his face bruised, her teeth clenched together, her entire body shaking. “I’m going to kill you!” She screamed, stepping towards him over the table. “You are the worst father anypony has ever had!

She lunged at him, he fell backwards to the floor, and they went through it, and everything shifted.

He adjusted his bowtie. “I look ridiculous,” he said unhappily.

“It’s a wedding,” his father said. “Everypony looks ridiculous at their wedding. Sweet Celestia, you should count yourself lucky you weren’t at mine. It was a close thing, too. We went away for a year afterwards, and lied about your birthday. We told ponies you were born very big. Trust me, son. This is so much better.

His father stepped in and adjusted the tie. “There, don’t mess with it. Now come on, are you ready to meet your bride?”

He walked down the aisle and saw her: Ivy Cordelia, of the Corn Wall Cordelias, and a very smart match. He stood awkwardly through the ceremony until it was his time to say “I do”, and then again until the Baroness said “You may kiss the bride”.

She raised her veil, and as he kissed her his eye turned back, and he saw a young stallion in the fourth row. And their eyes met, and just as his lips touched hers, his heart skipped a beat.

The honeymoon was nice. He had always wanted to visit Acapulcolt, and the more vital functions of the trip were also fulfilled. He became familiar with their new family’s prospects, and her belly started to grow.

When they returned to Braytannia, he would find out where the wind was blowing, and she would go there, and dazzle them with her forceful personality.

“It’s a partnership,” Weather Vane said to Amber. “We work well together.”

“You know what you need?” Amber said to him. “You need to relax. Thankfully I can help you with that.”

Weather Vane resisted at first, but practically melted as the stallion’s hooves worked into his shoulders. “So much stress,” Amber muttered. “Your wife works you much too hard.”

“It’s not her fault. The Grand Gala is next month. It’s our first as a couple, and we have to make a good impression. Everything has to be…”

“Oh shush,” Amber said. “Next month is years away. But thankfully for you, we have all weekend...”

Weather Vane smiled as the stallion’s lips planted little kisses up his spine towards his neck.

That Gala they stood before the Unicorn King. Ivy’s belly was full and round, and so was the Queen’s. He couldn’t have planned it better himself. They returned home afterwards. “We make a good team,” she said. He nodded. But I think once is enough. Unless you want a spare?” He demurred.

They watched their daughter play with the Princess in the nursery, two little fillies jumping about on the furniture, accompanied by the Princess’s nurse. They had been going for hours, and showed no sign of slowing down.

“Deep in the jungle! Watch out for zebra warriors!”

“The ruins are full of them! Hiding buried treasure from pirates!”

His heart raced in his chest, but all his fears had evaporated. Ivy turned to him and whispered, “marvelous time.” He nodded.

“His Royal Highness wishes that your daughter might visit her again someday,” said the stodgy old seneschal who administered the Princess’s schedule. “He wishes you to know that he has never seen his daughter smile so.”

“We would be happy to,” Weather Vane said. “It’s wonderful that they get along so well.”

The seneschal nodded.

The Princess hardly ever sees other ponies,” Ivy said. “Imagine if she grows up, and our daughter is her best friend and confidante.”

She needs to be prepared,” Weather Vane said to his wife, who nodded. “One wrong word and she’ll be barred from the Palace for life.”

“We’ll find a tutor for her.”

“She won’t like it.”

“Of course she won’t like it. But it’s what’s best for her.”

Clouds racing overhead, years turning. Change in the air. They’ve had the talk, and made the decision. Have you told her yet?” Amber asked from behind him.

“Not yet,” he said.

“You know she needs to know.”

“I just… I don’t know how.”

“Of course you do,” Amber said. “This is your job, Vane. You’re a political strategist. You’ve had to deliver bad news to your clients countless times. I’ve seen you.”

“Clover isn’t a client.”

Amber placed a comforting hoof on his shoulder. “She’s a strong pony. You should trust that she can take it. Don’t mince words. Do it quickly and plainly.”

Weather Vane sighed. “Alright. I’ll go tomorrow, and tell her as soon as I see her.”

He closed his eyes and thought back to that day. He had waited for that day for almost a year, not knowing what it would be.

And the day came. He looked into the cradle and he saw the bundle of sleeping joy that was his daughter for the first time, and he felt something he had never felt before.

He gently picked her up and held her in his forelegs. “Hello,” he said, and he had tears in his eyes. “I don’t think I’m going to be a very good parent. And honestly, the world is kind of a mess right now. But I love you. And I’ll try to always do what’s best for you.”

He kissed her forehead, and she burbled in her sleep.

Clover’s hooves were locked around his throat. She released him.

“What are you doing?” Her dark side screamed in her ear. “Don’t stop now! You have him!”

“No,” Clover said.

Her dark side growled. “They’re to blame for everything that’s ever happened to us. He’s ruined everything! Now’s your chance to pay him back!”

Clover closed her eyes, and let out a soft sigh. “I’m not listening to you. Go away.”

“What?” Her dark side sputtered.

Clover turned and stared daggers at her. “I said, go away.”

And her dark side disappeared in a puff of air.

Clover stepped back, and wiped her face with her fetlocks, trying to pretend she wasn’t crying.

“I love you too, dad,” she said. And the heavens opened. “Let’s go home.”

– – –

Clover kept her eyes open as the world of her father rolled back, and left her once again out in the multiverse, not far from the bubble in the center. It was one last world, one last pony, pristine and bright. But it was surrounded on every side by a shapeless, spaceless chaos that churned with energies beyond pony comprehension.

Clover returned to studying it once again, soaring through space and keeping her distance from everything else. As Clover looked at it the thing shifted, churning in time and perspective, going at once from being massive and far away to being small and close; from being itself to being a reflection cast on clouds of cosmic dust; from being concave to convex, solid to hollow, real to illusion. Caught between different states of being, trying to obey contradictory rules.

And inside it was Chocolate Bunnies.

Clover could see her friend clearly in the center of the thing, her eyes empty, her mouth opening and closing as if she were speaking, but hearing no sound.

“Finally, I found you,” Clover whispered to herself. She dived in, magical senses at the ready, sure to steer clear of anything that could be used as a weapon, and stood before the bubble that held her friend. “Bunnies! Can you hear me?”

Bunnies did not react. A protective barrier glowed with magical power all around her.

Clover looked up and down, and pounded on it with her hooves. “Another force field… I broke through the last one and I’m going to do the same here. Don’t worry, Bunnies! I’m getting you out of there, and no amount of sneaky tricks is going to stop me!”

A rustling voice that came from nowhere spoke in Clover’s ears: “Why can’t you just give up?” it asked. “No matter what I throw at you, you just won’t quit.”

Clover’s face hardened. “Who are you?” she demanded.

The shapeless, ethereal thing shifted. Every part of Clover’s vision turned. Thick tendrils of arcane power coiled around the form of Chocolate Bunnies inside the shell. “I have no name in your world. But this… Bunnies… has taken to calling me ‘the Hoof’.”

Clover’s mouth dropped open. “The Hoof is real?” she cried, then shook her head. “You know what, I don’t even care. So you’re real. You can’t have my friend! Let her go this instant!”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to go,” the Hoof said. “Maybe she likes it here, in this new world. Isn’t that right, Chocolate Bunnies?”

Inside the bubble, Bunnies’ mouth opened and closed like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and the Hoof’s voice said, “That’s right. I want to stay here.”

“That’s super convincing,” Clover said. “Let her go right now! I’m going to bring everypony back home, and I’m not leaving without my friend!”

“Leave? Why would anypony want to leave?” The Hoof asked. The wind rustled again, and the tendrils of magical power coiled tighter around the bubble. “Out there is terrible. Out there ponies are always worrying, always hurting each other, always afraid of what tomorrow will bring… In here things are so much nicer.” A glowing ripple of magic shot through to the outermost arms of the vortex, making all the worlds light up. “Here, everypony can be exactly what they’ve always wanted to be. Here everypony is free to be themselves, without having to worry about pain, or hurt, or money.”

“That’s not true,” Clover said. “I’ve seen them. They’ve all brought their worries with them. With only themselves to look to, all they can do is recreate their problems all over again.”

She looked out across the slowly spinning vortex of worlds, and all the ponies within. “They’re all alone. They make whole worlds for themselves, but they’re still all alone. Ponies need other ponies.”

Turning all around them was the great kaleidoscope of many Cambridles, each in their own world. Each a pony, all connected. Their magic was drawn into a great current that swirled around the Hoof like water pouring into a drain. “I can see what you’re doing,” Clover said. “You’ve placed yourself at the center of the multiverse, and you’re taking all its wild background magic and turning it into a copy of yourself.” She frowned, and shook her head. “You’re a bad influence, mister Hoof. This was such a sweet multiverse when I first got here.”

The Hoof grunted. “Why are you out here? Why aren’t you in your own little world, by yourself, like everypony else?”

“It fell apart under the slightest scrutiny,” Clover said. “Yours will too, if you ever try it.”

“Scrutiny?” The Hoof rustled in disbelief. “Scrutiny! You’re dropped into your own perfect world and you—But of course you did. You’re Star Swirl the Bearded’s apprentice. You would refuse to leave well enough alone.”

Clover raised an eyebrow. “You know the Professor, then?”

“Do I know him?” The Hoof asked. “I imprisoned him. I destroyed him! I shattered him into pieces and scattered them across the heavens like grains of sand on a beach. He is gone.”

“Well, that’s just silly,” Clover said, glancing at the Sprite. “He’s been right here with me ever since we got here.”

“That’s not him,” the Hoof said firmly. “That’s a cheap little toy. Go ahead, question it. See how it handles your scrutiny.”

Clover frowned at the Sprite. “What’s it talking about, professor?”

The Sprite bristled. “You found the center. We must undo the Scattering!”

“What has he told you?” The Hoof asked. “Anything useful?”

“Sure he has,” Clover said. “He’s helped me find my way around. He’s told me what I have to do.”

“Find Chocolate Bunnies!” the Sprite interjected. “Undo the Scattering!”

Clover glanced at him, looking a little less certain.

“Tell me,” the Hoof said in a wicked voice, “if this is really Star Swirl the Bearded, could I do this?”

A tendril of magic lashed out and grabbed hold of the Sprite. “Hey!” Clover yelled. She jumped and tried to pull the Sprite loose, but could get no purchase. “Let go of him!”

The Sprite squirmed in the Hoof’s grip, struggling to get free and making high-pitched noises of displeasure. “Just what is this thing anyway?” the Hoof said with malicious glee. “I wonder what will happen if I squeeze it?”

A magic charge surged through the tendril, and Star Swirl the Sprite’s eyes glowed, his sounds of protest going higher and higher.

“Stop it!” Clover yelled, fighting back fruitlessly against the Hoof’s magic. “Let him go!”

The Sprite looked at her, his eyes glittering as magic shot through it. His outline grew blurry as his magic field began to come apart.

He exploded in a blinding burst of magic light, and images flashed into Clover’s mind.

—and I told you, I’m a neutral bystander in this conflict,” Ginny was saying to the spear-wielding revolutionary. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, where to stand, or who to praise.”

“Young ponies nowadays have no respect for elderly mares,” Cinch said, and then she looked to me. “Well, Honorary Professor the Bearded, by all means act whenever you’re ready.”

Part of me wanted to indulge in sarcasm at that point, but that would not be constructive. Nor did I do anything else, and I observed my inaction with some interest.

I could have disarmed everypony in the city easily enough. I could have restrained the attackers by force, or make them all want to go home and have tea instead. But I didn’t.

I can’t quite explain it. But I had a sense of… something.

Something telling me this was not my fight.

That was when I noticed my student approaching us at something greater than her usual top galloping speed from directly above, which I maybe should have taken to mean that something was wrong before the interdimensional explosion that ensued. I’ll keep that in mind for next time.

And as the infant multiverse sprang up around us, I detected something rapidly approaching from the—Oh my, that’s a fascinating sensation. Is that – What is happbblfewqwrerteeypamfmkxcvnbzzbrrrrrrWARNING WARNING WARNING Catastrophic Failure Threshold Met. Automated Emergency Response Plan S-42 engaged.

Initiate emergency system scans – Scanning – Scan complete: Results inconclusive. Integrity of self is at 0.002%. “Star Swirl the Bearded” is not operational.

Data collected from immediate surroundings. Analyzing data. Keywords: Infant Multiverse, Psychosensitive Interdimensional Mechanics, Catastrophic Scattering Event centered on “Chocolate Bunnies”.

Compiling event data into emergency courier unit construct.

Initiate emergency backup plan: Find Clover. Tell her what to do.

And the Sprite flew across the multiverse at the speed of magic, its mind filled with compiled knowledge and a simple set of instructions, searching for one pony’s magical signature.

The memories ended as quickly as they had begun, and Clover was alone in front of the Hoof.

“There! You see?” The Hoof said smugly. It laughed, a cruel cackling laughter. “Your teacher is gone and you didn’t even notice the difference!” Its disembodied laughter ran on her nerves like claws on chalkboard. “You came all this way thinking he knew what he was doing and would guide you to safety. Oh, and you lost your cloak as well? And now you’re here… with me… all alone.” It laughed again, and the laughter ran cold down Clover’s back even as a burning anger welled up inside her.

“I should have done the same to you as I did to him, I suppose,” the Hoof continued as she clenched her teeth. “I’ll admit I did not think you would be so… persistent. But now you’re here! Not your best decision ever. Probably should have just stayed put where you were.”

“Shut your talking bits!” Clover shouted. She glared at the center of the chaotic mass, and for a moment the Hoof fell silent. “You know what? I’m not worried. You know why? Because Star Swirl is smarter and stronger than you. I’m sure wherever he is he’s just fine. And guess what? He taught me.” She dug in her hooves and readied for a charge, an instinctive gesture that somehow worked on the imaginary surface beneath her. “The Professor trusted me. And I’m not going anywhere without my friends. So let Chocolate Bunnies go. Now.”

“He is never going to come back,” the Hoof hissed. “And now you are going to join him.”

Something moved in the distance and an orb of magic fire launched directly at her. Clover yelped and ducked down just as it sailed overhead, massive but clumsy. It crashed into something behind her and dissipated, but she could see others forming all around her.

She galloped up and away as a flurry of magic fireballs launched after her, going off in all directions. There were thick veins of magic, dark and pulsing, clustered around the vortex, and she ducked behind them as the fireballs struck them, and were reabsorbed.

She stayed behind for a moment, her heart pounding as she felt the concussion of the blasts on the other side, before running again.

Think, Clover.

The Hoof is drawing power from every world, and is using that power to keep Chocolate Bunnies trapped, and it’s trying to kill me.

I know this magic just as well as it does. If I could somehow cut the connection, stop it from drawing power in… It’s slow, but I’m just me. I need to hit every one of these ponies at once. How can I do that?

She thought back, trying to remember everything she knew about the multiverse.

Every world a pony. Every pony its own world. But they’re all connected.

She grit her teeth, and shouted into the nearest bubble. “Mister Leafy! Can you hear me?”

“Hi, Clover,” the giant tree said, and waved a branch inside the bubble. “Is everything alright?”

“Not quite,” Clover said as she galloped from one bubble to the next, watching anxiously as the fireballs slammed into a bubble and set its interior ablaze. “I need your help! You told me you can touch every world at once. Can you feel the magic draining out of everywhere?”

“I had noticed that, yes,” the tree said. “I was waiting to see if it got better.”

“I need you to do something for me,” she shouted into another bubble, the space behind her alive with explosions. “I’m going to cast a spell to reroute the flow of magic, but I need your help! I want you to take my spell and send it through every single one of your roots and branches, in every world at once. Can you do that?”

“Oh, sure,” Mister Leafy said. “I’m used to routing magic. It’s what Mister Star Swirl did to keep me alive.”

“Okay,” Clover ducked behind a vein just as a bolt of magic shot overhead. Her horn glowed as she readied the spell. She aimed at the nearest bubble, and cast it. “There!”

The spell shot into the bubble, which jolted at it penetrated it. Inside, it found its way to a distant root of the world tree.

Clover waited anxiously, and watched. The bubble halted in its motion in the current, and her eyes widened. Slowly, with a low creaking, the world pulled free of the veins of magic, tore loose from the current, and drew towards her instead.

A sudden change came over the vortex. It slowed, groaning and creaking ominously, as one world after another came loose and broke away.

The effect spread outwards like ripples in a pond, further and further. More and more worlds shifted their focus, and Clover could feel their combined magic power rising inside her as all the ponies of Cambridle connected to her.

“What are you doing?!” the Hoof screamed. “Stop it!”

Her eyes glowed as the magic surge built up inside her. She could feel it crackling through her. She was the linchpin of tens of thousands of worlds, they were all giving their combined might to hold her up, and she didn’t need to compel in it any way.

She was the most powerful being in the multiverse.

Is this what the Professor feels like every day?

She turned her eyes to the Hoof, still clinging to Bunnies even as the power flowing into it dried up, its veins thinning and withering.

“Let my friends go,” Clover said, and her voice could be heard in every universe at once.

A spell rushed up inside her, through her horn, and erupted in a blast of magic unlike any she had ever seen. It was a waterfall of light, in every color of the rainbow and others besides, and it spread to envelop everything in its path.

It struck the Hoof, which screamed in fury as its power ran out. Its grip was torn away, and the force field dissipated, leaving Chocolate Bunnies open.

Clover dove into it head-first immediately, and once again a new world came to life around her.

– – –

Hi! My name is Chocolate Bunnies. What’s yours?”

The filly was ruffled, and nervous on her first day of magic kindergarten. She looked uncertainly at the filly who had approached her. “I’m Clover.”

“Hi Clover! Wanna play in the sand box?”

“Sure.”

“I had completely forgotten that day,” Clover said under her breath. She watched from the cosmic front row as two little fillies played in a sandbox, amid the Elysian surroundings of Whinnysor. “What happened, Bunnies? We were so close for so long.”

A few years older, at unicorn school together, watching the ponies pass by and making jokes.

“What do you wanna be when you grow up?” Clover asked.

“I dunno,” Chocolate Bunnies said. Her cutie mark hadn’t come in yet. “Maybe I’ll just have fun. See, I’ve thought about myself very carefully, and I’ve decided that I really like having a lot of fun. It must be my destiny.”

Clover snorted and grimaced, and they pushed each other playfully. “What about you?”

“I’m gonna be a great sorceress, like Star Swirl the Bearded,” Clover said, digging up one of the cheap paperback adventure books she was always reading. “I’m gonna go on adventures and solve mysteries and find treasures and stop bad ponies, just like him. I hope I can meet him someday.”

“Isn’t he just a made up pony in a story?”

Clover shook her head. “He’s real. He teaches at the university, up in Cambridle! I’m gonna go see him there when I’m older.”

Clover watched the memories unfold before her eyes. There were memories that had only Bunnies, and there were memories that had only her. “Wait, are these…” Clover bit her lip. “Are these my memories or yours?”

And then they were older, and still together after knowing each other for over ten years, and they did see him. Clover listened, and thought, and fought to keep up as her idol kept stepping back, putting more obstacles between himself and everypony else, and she jumped over each of them, eyes fixed firmly forward. And while Clover sat and listened, Chocolate Bunnies joined the rest of the auditorium in confusion, nausea, and horror as they all learned exactly why the Famous Lecture was so famous.

Colors flew through the air. Sounds became sights became textures. Thoughts became matter as a little pocket of time and space was turned inside out and upside down, a toy in service of one wizard’s pursuit for somepony, anypony, who could follow along.

And from then on there was something else in there with them, hiding.

Clover felt the change immediately. It was hidden, but it bulged out in the mindscape, and her thoughts traced across its outline. “What are you?”

I am a free spirit. Once I held whole villages in my grip. I whispered in the ears of ponies and made them fear and distrust each other. No prison can hold me.

We have played this little song and dance for decades. Since that day I made that whole town run amok and dance to my will.

Until this damned unicorn showed up and cast his spell. And now… imprisoned, without even a body to call my own, turned into an angry ghost.

“Rattling your cage will change nothing,” said the pony. “You know perfectly well you are not going anywhere.”

“You don’t belong in our memories. Who are you? Where did you come from?”

I have waited for decades.

But there is a crack in the cage. I discovered it years ago. I have kept it quiet. He is always watching. I haven’ t given him any clue. I can slip out, but then… but then I’ll still be trapped in his mind. The only way out is if he brings other ponies into his mind, and this damn pony is so far away from anypony that nopony gets close.

“And now,” the pony is saying to his frozen audience, “the imaginarium.”

And there it was. A whole flock of ponies, all unicorns, all students. My chance had finally come.

I slipped out of the cage as silently as I could. And I flew through the chamber into the flock of ponies in search of a new hiding place.

This one pony’s hoof is as good a place as any. I can work with this.

And then the memories began to blur, as the thing burrowed down, hid its tracks, and began to plot its revenge.

Clover opened her eyes, looked away from the memories, and saw the remnants of the world the Hoof had constructed.

It was empty, and noisy. A magical hurricane raged all around them, pure force without thought or purpose. And in the center of it all, sitting quite still and focusing intently on something nestled in her forelegs, was Chocolate Bunnies.

Clover trotted up to her and put a hoof on her shoulder, and she stirred.

“Hi Clover,” Bunnies said with a weak voice. “Hey, it’s been a while.”

“Hi Bunnies,” Clover said, and she couldn’t help but smile. “I finally found you. I’ve been looking for you all over.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that,” Chocolate Bunnies said. “I wanted to go see you. But, this thing was making it hard.” Chocolate Bunnies pointed to a lump a short distance away. “But you beat it.”

Clover looked, and saw the Hoof. It was small, and squirmed feebly on the ground. It looked like some kind of insect had been stripped of its outer shell, soft and pale and wet and unable to function. It squealed in impotent fury, and if she listened she could just barely make out its vows of revenge in a high-pitched, childlike voice.

“Yeah. I did beat it, didn’t I?” Clover chuckled, smiling. A glint of light on the object Bunnies was carrying caught her eye. “What’s that?”

Bunnies held it up. It was a little orb, and inside it was a tiny galaxy, millions upon millions of pricks of lights turning in a wheel.

“I was wondering about that myself,” Bunnies said.

Clover looked at it, and her eyes widened. “Wait. I think I know. Can I have it?”

Bunnies handed it over.

Clover peered deep into the orb, at the swirling fog of stars. It seethed with magical power, flowing both in and out. It contained universes, and those universes contained universes, and she thought she could see herself looking down at herself looking down at herself.

She smiled. “Not like grains of sand on a beach,” she said to herself. “Like stars. I know what this is… Boy, that thing really is stupid.”

She poured magic into it, and the galaxy opened up around her.

Green grass spread on soil that had been empty space a moment before, trees and flowers and buildings, stones and farms and ponies. The magical hurricane vanished like a shadow in the light, revealing the heavens. Above her, a sun and a scarred moon suddenly appeared, wheeling across the heavens to a song of starlight.

The stars shifted, and in the middle of the cluster there opened a pair of eyes. And there was a constellation: a pony’s face, with a long beard, under a pointy hat.

Somehow, the face turned and looked down at her.

“I am awakened.” the stars said. “It is done.”

“Welcome back, Professor,” Clover said. “I did it. I found Chocolate Bunnies, and undid the scattering. I think I’m ready to go back to Cambridle now.”

The constellation nodded. “So be it.”

The stars that made up the constellation burned brighter and brighter, and Clover felt the magic rush over her a split-second before the infant multiverse, and all the worlds within it, opened up.

Clover felt the great celestial doorway open, and a starway leading back to Cambridle. She felt the connection of every single pony, and one by one, with only a thought, she felt them return back home. They vanished, leaving behind their newborn worlds to drift in space, filled with all the life they imagined for them.

Finally, there was only her, and Mister Leafy, and the Hoof.

Clover looked down at the mewling, squirming mass of anger. “I think you should stay here, mister Hoof, until you learn your manners.” She turned to the great world tree. “Ready to leave, Mister Leafy?”

“Um,” Mister Leafy began. “I’d like to stay, if you don’t mind.”

Clover blinked. “Wait, really?”

“It gets kind of lonely, being the only talking leaf in the world,” Mister Leafy said. “Here, I can set down my roots. I can make lots of friends here. I can spread my seeds.”

Clover bit her lip uncertainly. “You’d be in here with the Hoof, though.”

“Well, yes. But it’s more or less powerless now. It’ll be a very long time before it can do anything. And that’s okay.” The branches rose and fell slowly, like it was breathing in and out. “There always has to be a dragon gnawing on the roots of the world tree. That’s the natural order of things. I think… I’m ready to become part of the cycle again.”

Clover could feel the background magic of the multiverse turning from the entropic chaos of the Hoof into a vibrant green as Mister Leafy began to assume control of the cosmos. She bit her lip. “If you’re sure… I’m gonna miss you, Mister Leafy.”

“I’m going to miss you too.”

Clover leaned in and gave the bark a hug, and then everything was light.

– – –

When the spots cleared out from her eyes, Clover found herself standing on the green behind the New Old Hall, in Cambridle.

The green was packed with ponies, who were all dazed and disoriented, picking themselves up off the ground and groggily glancing around trying to remember where they were and why. The university faculty and the city council stood side by side with the different factions of the revolution.

The three Discordians roused each other, and helped each other up on their hooves. Their faces ran through cycles of emotions: confusion, embarrassment, disappointment, and relief. Not far from them Dean Cinch groaned as she woke, and instinctively pushed away the hoof that a nearby pony reached out to aid her. She clambered upright and shook her head to clear her thoughts, trying to maintain her composure. Clover’s father was there, looking extremely confused as he adjusted his cravat.

The air was full of mumbling and muttering, groans and questions. But they fell silent as they spotted Clover. She was at the front of the crowd, standing by the buffet table, and within moments they were all facing in her direction. But there beside her, in front of them all, was her teacher. He was back to normal and yet looking as she had never seen him, boasting a wide grin and beaming fit to burst.

“I knew you had it in you, Clover,” he said. “You know the reason I like you? You’re not the strongest magic-user, not really. You’re not the swiftest pony, or the boldest, and you weren’t born lucky. But you figure things out.” He gently poked her with a hoof. “You’re Clover the Clever.”

Her eyes widened, and fireworks went off in her mind. “Clover the Clever,” she mouthed the words, and for a long time afterwards she could not stop smiling.

Star Swirl jumped up on the table and turned to the assembled crowd. “Ponies of Cambridle!” he said loudly, and held up the black iron cauldron of void porridge. Inside it, Clover’s hoof-shaped jar of salt lay partially submerged in the gruel. “Behold the Hoof, the power that has haunted your city.”

As they all watched, the salt sank beneath the surface and out of view. Star Swirl placed the lid on top of the cauldron and fused them together with a spell. “The seal is complete. The Hoof will never trouble anypony again.”

“Ohhh, my head...” Chocolate Bunnies crawled out from under the table and sat up on her rump, rubbing her temples. “What happened?”

Clover the Clever helped her friend up on her hooves. “You were possessed by a minor spirit of chaos for almost a year,” she said, and smiled. “It’s okay, it’s gone now! We sealed it away in a pot of porridge.”

“We also left a talking tree to watch over it,” Star Swirl added. “A friendly tree, mind you. Not one of those nasty trees that are always trying to destroy ponykind.”

Clover couldn’t stop herself from laughing. And once she started she found it very difficult to stop. Star Swirl contributed a small chuckle.

“Oh yes. Before I forget.” Star Swirl’s horn glowed, his aura shining bright, a mixture of black and white like clouds racing across a full moon.

Above them the sky lit up in many colors as the ink began to fly.