Starswirl opened his eyes.
Immediately, he scrambled out of his bed and rushed over to the closest window, peering out against the bright sunlight.
Of course, the bright sunlight was a good sign.
Starswirl smiled, then laughed. The skies were clear! He’d succeeded!
Or, rather, they’d succeeded. If he ever met Lyra Heartstrings again, he thought, he’d have to find some way to repay her.
But now was not the time for such thoughts! There was work to be done! He skipped down the stairs, not bothering with his robes.
“Boy!” he called out. “Notchleaf! Come down to the workshop, I have need of you!”
He didn’t wait for a reply, springing down the stairs two at a time until he reached the workshop. He hadn’t felt this spry in decades!
Walking up to the box, still set on the bench it had been crafted upon, he pulled back the lid, reassuring himself that the journal was still there. He smiled and shut its lid again, reading by habit the inscription in the top:
“For Clover, at last my promise is fulfilled.”
He lifted it into the air with his magic and carried it over to the stairs, climbing them as quickly as he dared. It wouldn’t do to drop the box at this juncture.
“Notchleaf!” he called out again. “Boy! Come here!”
No response. Starswirl frowned. Perhaps he had gone out for supplies?
More likely, he was still asleep. The youth these days! Well, if that were the case, he’d be with his mother anyway, and that was the important bit.
Starswirl continued his climb, until at last he was standing below the trapdoor that led to Clover’s part of the tower. He had provided her with the highest room in the structure, so that she would not be disturbed by his comings and goings.
He knocked, three times, the door’s iron handle rattling with each impact.
“Clover!” he called out. “I have something to show you! May I come in?”
No response came.
Starswirl frowned. That was odd. He knocked again.
“Clover? May I enter?”
Nothing.
His heart skipped a beat. Supposing if…?
He pressed his ear to the door, listened. He could hear something, a murmering… and then a whimper.
His eyes flew wide. He threw the door open with his magic, leaping up the stairs into Clover’s room. “Clover! Is everything all—”
He froze. Beside him, the box dropped to the floor, popping open, the journal spilling out of it.
The whimper had not come from Clover.
It had come from Notchleaf.
The colt’s eyes flashed over to Starswirl as he struggled to turn his head against the crystalline bonds which restrained him and held his muzzle shut. Tears streamed down his face, and his pupils were pinpricks, tainted red by the light which enveloped the room. Light which emerged from the construct drawn on the floor, lines of salt and charcoal glowing crimson with power, geometric patterns that twisted and bent in ways impossible to follow.
And standing over the colt, in the middle of the hellish pattern, horn lit a burning crimson, lips mouthing words from a hellish book, was his apprentice.
“Clover?” Starswirl said. “What is this? What are you doing!?”
She did not answer.
“Clover!”
“Fixing things,” she said, not looking up from the book in her telekinetic grasp, “if only temporarily. Please, do not interfere.”
“Don’t interfere!? Fix things!? What could you possibly be fixing that would require such methods—”
“Everything you couldn’t!” Clover screamed, her head snapping up. Dark clouds billowed from her eyes, eclipsing the thin, pale skin that stretched over them.
Starswirl took a step back, his limbs working on their own. Ice shot down his spine. “C-Clover!?”
She returned her attention to the book. Starswirl couldn’t see the cover—but he could see the pages. Parchment, old and yellow and rough.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “You weren’t supposed to see this.”
“Then it’s a good thing I did!” he said. “What is this? What are you doing to him, Clover?”
“Saving myself,” she said.
“How!?”
“By placing my soul into his body,” she said. “I needed more time—we both knew that. More time to work out a more permanent solution. This is the best option available to me right now—the only one that doesn’t harm me.”
“And what will happen to the boy?” Starswirl asked.
“He will fade away, happy in the knowledge that he has saved his mother.”
“Happy—Clover, have you gone mad!? That’s your son!”
“He doesn’t mind,” Clover said. “Do you, Notchleaf?” She reached out with a hoof, caressed the child’s cheek.
Notchleaf whimpered.
Starswirl swallowed, his mind a whirl of thoughts—this was his apprentice! This wasn’t possible! It must be the disease—yes, the disease!
“Clover, see reason!” he said. “This isn’t right! Something’s come over you, you aren’t thinking clearly! Listen to me!”
She snapped the book shut. “No,” she said. “I’m done listening to you.
“You promised me life,” she said. “You promised me freedom from the pox that consumed my body—and you failed! You promised me immortality—and you failed! Again, and again, and again! Empty promises, every time!”
“They weren’t empty!” Starswirl pleaded. “Please, you must listen! I have—”
He stopped. A thought had occurred to him, and it made him sick.
An alicorn. A divine being, ageless, deathless, with power unbelievable, with dominion over the natural world itself.
The thought that silenced Starswirl’s tongue was this:
Could the sick, twisted thing before him deserve such power?
“Enough!” Clover roared. “You have proven yourself a fool, again and again! My destiny is on my own shoulders, now—and I will ensure that it is the right one! For all of us!”
Starswirl closed his eyes. He let out a breath.
Then, his eyes snapped open, filled with the tempered fury of the old and wise. He took a step forward, and this time it was Clover’s turn to flinch.
“You,” he said, his voice deep and cold and even, “are not my apprentice.”
“I have not been your apprentice for a long time,” Clover said.
“Then I will regret nothing."
His horn lit, a piercing white light amidst the red. “I will not allow you to do this.”
“You have no choice,” Clover said. Her horn flashed, and so did her eyes. “The spell’s begun.”
Clover’s image began to stretch. Her body collapsed to the floor, limp and empty, but over her stood a ghostly afterimage, red in colour, like a shadow in space.
She began to walk forward, towards Notchleaf. The colt struggled, screamed against his restraints, but to no avail. Tears dropped off the sides of his face, landed on the floor, fizzled and evaporated where they made contact with the circle.
“You’re wrong,” Starswirl said. He snatched up the box from the floor, held it aloft before him, lid open and facing the shadow.
He cast his mind back, running through his perfect memory to a spell once encountered, many years ago in his early studies. A spell memorized and quickly turned away from.
He cast it now, his horn glowing with starlight.
Chains of light shot out from within the box. They wrapped around Clover’s shadow, binding her chest, her legs, her neck. The thing looked at him, surprise etched in its features. Its mouth moved, but no sound emerged.
The ropes began to retract. The shadow was dragged across the floor, struggling to gain a hold against the floor with its hooves but finding none.
The ropes continued to pull, dragging it further, further into the box until at last, at last, the entirety of the thing sat inside of the box.
One last hoof reached out, towards Notchleaf.
It was pulled in with the rest.
Starswirl snapped the box shut. His face was neutral, empty, but his cheeks glistened in the fading light.
He closed the latch on the box and set it down on Clover’s bed—he didn’t want to look at the thing. He turned his attention to Notchleaf, releasing him from his bonds. The colt said nothing, but his hooves shook and he shivered where he stood.
Starswirl bid him follow, and he turned to the stairs. His eyes caught sight of the journal, the journal that was to have been his gift to Clover.
He thought of the question he had asked earlier. An alicorn. Could anyone deserve such power?
He snatched up the journal. Perhaps someday, he decided, there would come someone who was, truly, worthy of such a thing.
But not this day.
Together, the two left Needlewood behind, moving back towards the capital. The ponies there celebrated Starswirl's return—but often, when he wasn’t around, they would comment that he had changed considerably while he had been gone. Why that was was left to conjecture; Starswirl himself spoke little of his time away.
Starswirl would take Notchleaf in, raise him, and eventually, turn him loose on the world. He would live a long life, and meet a wife whom he loved, and have children of his own. He would never tell them of his mother.
And neither he nor Starswirl would ever return to the tower. It stood there, abandoned, forgotten, as Needlewood was deserted and the forest reclaimed the region.
Thousands of years passed, and perhaps it would have remained undisturbed for all of eternity, had it not been for the plucky archaeologist who saw fit to plunder it.