//------------------------------//
// 1 - Pride and Prejudice 
// Story: The Ninth Enchantment of Mage Meadowbrook 
// by Thornwing 
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Starlight Glimmer settled her flank against the hoofrest of the borrowed, Fluttershy branded chair on the far side of the cutie map. Her head tilted slightly left to right and back again, closely monitoring the serve and volley between Twilight Sparkle facing off against Starswirl the Bearded. The main points of argument had been dissected in two dozen different ways over the course of the past two hours. She absently scraped the edge her hoof against the smooth crystal trim of the map trying to keep focused while the sparring continued into a third hour. Everypony else had long since given up the argument and left the room to take care of their own chores. 

“I really wish you would reconsider,” Twilight said. Her voice cracked, dry and starting to rasp. She scraped up every last ounce of spit in her throat to try and convince the old wizard to stay.

Starswirl stood his ground, a slight quiver in his left hind leg from an injury received in an adventure long forgotten seemed to linger long past the time of his physical recovery. The years had certainly been kinder to his image as preserved in the hundreds of books dotting the libraries of the rich and powerful as well as the conscientious collectors of ancient lore over the past millennia than in the real form that sported the unkempt image of a hermit, frayed and dangling slightly loose upon his faded gray coat. His beard had lost its youthful luster and hung limp against his weathered neck. Long had the days of old vanished from popular memory only to have this fleeting glance of yesteryear appear within the modern domain. A brief parade and royal accolade for his recent efforts to save Equestria, and then it was back to the question of what should become of this pony out-of-time.  

Starswirl shook his head. “I cannot stay, Twilight. There is nothing more for me here. You have proven yourself a proficient and capable articulator of magic — magic of a sort I barely understand, much less feel I can take up a new study of. And on the other hoof, there is nothing more you could possibly learn from the likes of me. I trust you’ve studied all my spells and know everything I could possibly teach. You seem more familiar with them than I with my own own tail. I’ve failed to ascend to the next level, as your companion Applejack so aptly pointed out, and by finishing one of my own spells and proving your understanding of the most advanced principles of friendship, you have far surpassed what my teachings could ever provide in the way of instruction. You and your friends easily mastered the Magic of Friendship in my absence, and you yourself have proven beyond a doubt to have progressed far beyond my level of understanding of the subject. My errors in judgment led to a thousand years of darkness for the Pillars — lost to the world, and almost for good — and I nearly destroyed a friend I had tossed aside in the process. My place is not here, and it never will be. If I stay, I would only be a burden.”

Twilight looked none the worse for wear. Dark circles ran in concentric loops around her glazed over eyes. Her mane hadn’t been tended to since the royal ceremony welcoming the Pillars back to Equestria. The tip of her horn sparked with a touch of errant magic owing to her recent exertion and continuing recovery. Anypony could clearly see she wasn’t back to her typical self, and yet she pushed on. Determined to follow through with what had become the most important thing she had ever done, outside of becoming the Princess of Friendship, recovering the Elements of Harmony, and saving the world a couple dozen times over with the help of her friends, she persisted in her efforts to find a place for her idol to be welcomed into her world.

“That’s… not true!” Twilight stammered. “There is so much more I could learn from you, and you from me! Your work was instrumental in establishing the basis of the Elements of Harmony and laying the foundation of understanding the Magic of Friendship! The past—”

Starswirl held out a hoof to quiet the Princess. “The reality is, my dear, I’ve been stuck in limbo for over a millennia, and I find myself now, as it were, a seapony out of water.” Starswirl lit up his horn and levitated a towering stack of old, mismatched books covering random historical matters of the prior millennia off the map table, shrinking them down to the size of marbles with his magic as he deposited the entire stack comfortably within a fraying cloth pouch strung around his neck and hitched to one side, back across his left flank. He winced and turned to face the door. “It is time for me to accept my destiny and resign myself to the fate of all ponies who fail to keep up with the herd. Retirement!”

Twilight seemed to be on the verge of tears. Starlight looked on, trying to think of something to interject that could help sway the argument in Twilight’s favor. As much as she cared for Twilight knowing how much Starswirl meant to her, she couldn’t really think of anything to add to tip the scales. What little she could come up with had already been said.

“It’s time for this old wizard to hang up his conjuring hat and leave his frivolous magical pursuits in your more than capable hooves - and horns.” He made a sweeping hoof motion toward Twilight, and with a labored sigh, continued the motion around toward Starlight. Starswirl tugged on the satchel’s strap and slowly began to shuffle his hooves, trudging toward the throne room door as though subconsciously wishing somepony would physically stop him. The others looked on, tired and emotionally drained. He stopped himself just short of the door and tilted his head up, lit his horn once more, and painstakingly enveloped the door to open the way forward when he half-turned back toward Twilight. “Perhaps I’ll take a short journey and get to know a bit of the new Equestria before I settle down in some old, forgotten corner of the realm to pass the rest of my days?”

The door began to sway in Starswirl’s horngrasp as Twilight choked on the words she couldn’t formulate to stop his departure. Suddenly, the glow around the frame faltered and fell away. Starswirl shook his head and rubbed his temple. Twilight raised a hoof, half arrested but readying to sprint to his aid.

“Ahhhh!” Starlight blurted out, jerking up, and nearly falling out of her seat. Tipping off the edge of her chair and almost losing her balance, she reached back to rub her flank as Twilight and Starswirl broke off their failed attempts at exchanging an actual goodbye, and turned their attention toward her.

“What in Tartarus?” Starswirl exclaimed. A pulsating glow illuminated the floor beneath his robes. He too reached back to further examine his hindquarters.

“Ugggghhhh,” Twilight exhaled, finally generating an audible noise that didn’t sound like she was choking on her tongue. Standing upright on her hind legs, she perched her forehooves on the edge of the Cutie Map and rapidly scanned the terrain through bleary, bloodshot eyes.

Starlight quickly found her balance and shot a gaze across the map as well. “Umm, Twilight? Does this mean what I think it does?” Her cutie mark pulsed with an inward glow across her matted flank. The outline of a falling star, rising and falling over and over into the center of the original design, sent a wave of pleasant warmth up and down her spine. Her thoughts swam back to the last time she was called to solve a friendship problem, and her stomach tensed as an uneasy knot began to form.

Starswirl returned to the table, twice as fast as he had left it, taking up a vacant spot across from both Twilight and Starlight. “Perhaps fate has other plans for us.” He lit up his horn to try and connect with the magic of the cutie map. The hornglow faltered almost as soon as he reached out with his knowledge seeking magic. Either the map rejected his intrusion, or he’d somehow misjudged the spell’s effectiveness given the map’s current beckoning state. He looked perplexed.

Three cutie marks descended over Canterlot, but in the process of their decent, they flickered and disappeared. Starswirl peeled back, nearly stumbling over his own hooves. Twilight’s breath caught in her parched throat once more. Starlight’s eyes widened.

“Well, I’ve never seen it do that before,” Starlight said.

Twilight’s mark suddenly reappeared over the Southwestern desert, and then vanished again. Starlight’s did the same across the opposite side of the map. Starswirl’s cutie mark reappeared above the map and started making loops in the air as though it were riding an invisible roller coaster. 

“What is the meaning of this?” Starswirl said, pulling off to the side and squinting to clear his line of sight.

“I don’t know,” Twilight said, exchanging nervous glances with Starswirl, the map, and back at Starlight. “Like Starlight said, it’s never done this before.”

“Maybe it’s broken,” Starlight said, giving the edge of the map a little bump of her forehoof. The clop of hoof against stone sent an echo through the chamber from which she instantly recoiled and smiled a sheepish grin like she’d just been caught destroying a priceless antique.

“Powerful magic such as this does not simply ‘break’,” Starswirl said, pulling a hoof against his wispy chin-curl of a beard. “There must be a reasonable explanation.”

The trio of cutie mark symbols danced and twirled across the map, each moving to a rhythm and pace different from the other. One by one, the marks flickered and sped from one end of the map to the other as if chasing each other in a grand game of tag. The motion accelerated the longer the chase wore on to the point the ponies couldn’t tell if a mark was chasing another or being chased itself. The contrailed blurs left a sort of rainbow helix in their wake similar to the trailings of one of Rainbow Dash’s sonic rainbooms.

The race continued for several minutes with each pony’s flank taking on a greater buzz from the illumination of their flashing cutie marks. The growing vibrations made it hard to focus. The room around them felt like it was spinning out of control.

“I think I’m going to lose my lunch,” Starlight said as she brought a forehoof up to cover her mouth.

“Hmmm,” Starswirl mused, a slight rumble in his voice bubbling up from his pulsating cutie mark. “From what I know and can deduce in this moment, the map only calls you and your friends to solve ‘friendship problems’, correct?”

Twilight and Starlight both nodded, heads rocking slightly as they did.

“And, while I have no actual frame of reference to compare with what is happening now, the only time I’ve ever been called to perform a similar task in this manner was long ago, and for that there was no cutie map, malfunctioning or not, involved. So it would only stand to reason that…”

Twilight and Starlight leaned forward, both eager to hear what the old wizard had concluded in his rambling thoughts.

“I’m afraid, and also further establishing my previous point, that I am once again out of my depth.” He dropped back to all fours and spun to face the door once more, overturing just a hair so as to slightly correct before falling head over hoof.

Twilight and Starlight looked over at each other and shrugged. Returning their attention to the remarkable display, they continued to watch as the map played host to a full Olympics worth of cutie mark gymnastics, at one point appearing as a pair, other times alone, and then again as three together. Starlight strained to keep up with the movement across the map, so intent on tracking the marks that it made her increasingly dizzy. She rocked back on her hindquarters and flopped against the seat back, holding the sides her head in both of her forehooves as the room continued to spin. “I’m really going to be sick,” she groaned. Twilight grit her teeth with her forehead scrunching up below her horn. Beads of sweat began to build on the surface as she nervously shifted her weight between her tapping forehooves while trying in vain to think of something she could possibly do to resolve the issue.

“You aren’t giving up, are you?” Twilight sat back on her haunches and rubbed her forehooves against her temples, a worried look on her face.

“Nonsense,” Starswirl replied. “I merely have no clue where to start… unless—” He spun back toward the map, a hint of balance in his step regained in the process.

“Let me try something,” Starswirl said as he broke the awkward tension, bringing his elder magic to bear. The gentle glow of his aged horn called down a beam of light that spread from the near edge of the map gliding toward the far side where Twilight stood. The cutie marks dancing above the surface slowed to a crawl and stopped. 

With their constant motion arrested, Twilight rubbed her eyes and peered out across the map hoping that the blurred vision she took in was only imagined. Instead, she saw the reality of the mark’s placement — three localized spots, with a copy of all three marks appearing at each.

She drew in a breath.

Starlight rolled forward clutching her belly as she went.

Starswirl scratched at his beard once more. “I believe I’ve found the problem.” He paused to assert his aged intellect. “This map is most certainly broken.”

Twilight exhaled a muffled scream.

“But that’s impossible!” Twilight said, quickly regaining composure. “It’s never done this before. How can it call all three of us to three different places, and all at the same time?”

“It’s obvious that the internal compass controlling the extrapolated friendship problem locater element has failed. I’m not sure if we can trust the map’s directional indicators or internal celestial guidance system given its current state. I am also not sure how one would go about growing a new internal compass or recalibrating such a device. It’s not like this castle or this map came with an instruction manual, or did it? Anyway, it seems to have taken a thousand years to grow the last—”

“Or…,” Starlight interjected, “there could be another reason why our cutie marks are showing up in three different places at once.” She turned toward Twilight, given that she, more than anypony, had faith in what Starlight knew she could do. “I’m not entirely sure what it all means, Twilight,” Starlight said, leaning forward and scanning over the locations. “I’m not even sure exactly why it would send the three of us together since these are all places somepony has been to before. Perhaps the map is broken, but maybe there’s something big, and I mean really big, as in a friendship problem that’s going to take all three of us to solve big, and it’s not going to be sitting around in just one location for us to stumble onto.”

Starswirl circled around the table, examining the indicated locations more closely. “I am familiar with that first location in the center of the map indicating Canterlot of old, and also the second grouping here to the south — the Desert of the Shifting Sands, but I have no knowledge of this third location.” He pointed to the Northeast corner of the map where their trio of cutie marks had settled on a small cluster of stables about half way between Canterlot and Manehattan.

“That’s Starlight’s old village!” Twilight exclaimed, surprising even herself with the force of the outburst. “If there’s a friendship problem there of all places, who knows what kind of danger Equestria could be in?” She shuddered and cast a comment aside, “No offense.”

Starlight cocked her head to the side and sighed. “None taken.”

“Yes, the village where it was said you brainwashed an entire herd and stole their cutie marks, making them all as equal as possible. I do recall that made mention now that you speak of it.” Starswirl continued to stroke his beard in a very knowing manner that made it look like he had just accused Starlight of perpetrating the entire friendship problem herself.

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?” Starlight sighed and dropped her face into her crossed forehooves. The nausea subsiding with the arrest of the spinning marks shifted into a throbbing in her head as she could feel the blood pooling in her cheeks as a sign of her growing embarrassment.

Starswirl lifted his head to the side and scratched his chin contemplating his thoughts for a moment. Dropping back to all fours, he shuffled around the map as he spoke. “Before I fully retire, I may want to understand more about how you accomplished that feat, but for now it can wait. We have a quest that we are called to fulfill, and however misguided it may be, I say we start with what we know for sure.”

Starswirl came full circle, having taken in the map from every angle. With a little nudge of magic, he broke the enchantment of his prior spell. The map sputtered and the trio of cutie marks spun back up to their blurring speed before taking off like a helicopter into the roots of the old library tree hanging from the ceiling above and disappearing among the light sparkling off the hanging crystal memories. The map of Equestria below sunk back into the smooth crystal table surface leaving no trace of the image as though it had always been that way. 

The trio’s cutie marks settled back into their flanks, the pulsation finally come to rest in their familiar symbols of destiny.

“We best be off,” Starswirl said, tossing his head toward the slightly cracked open doorway. “First stop, Canterlot!”

Twilight fainted, dropping to the floor with a thud.

Starlight raised a hoof in protest. “Correction. First stop, Ponyville General.”