Celestia fidgeted as she peered over her windowsill, looking down at the vast and colourful world below. It had been months since she was last allowed outside the palace. Being home-schooled by Starswirl the Scholar wasn't so bad, even if he was a strict teacher, but that minor comfort had been lost on her for weeks now. What was going on? Where was everypony?
She sighed.
A small rustling noise from behind made her ears twitch. Jumping down from the window, Celestia made her way over to the noise. Standing up on her hind-legs to look into the crib, a restless Luna was mindlessly kicking at her sheets and sucking her hoof. At least she didn't know what she was missing.
“Looks like it's going to be just you and me from now on...”
Meanwhile, in the court wizard's tower, Starswirl sat hunched over a tattered scroll, furiously scribbling down notes using a magically-controlled quill. Something had come together after days upon days of tireless research and reading—one last puzzle piece that made sense of all the others. His brow was dappled with sweat as he worked inches from a thick, sunken candle; his hasty jabs into the inkwell splattering dark blots across the edge of the parchment. Stacks of books pulled from the bookshelves lining his tower's walls loomed over him in the dark, markers sticking from between their pages and notes hastily scrawled in the margins.
He was close, he could feel it. Something was there, just waiting to be discovered. A new magic. A forbidden magic. But the time for doubt was past. Wait, was this a matter of time? Pulling the queen back from the past, before she died? No, that is impossible, you cannot change the timeline. And even if you could, doing so would erase Luna's very existence. Or would there be two of her? No, it was too risky, too many complications. He could not endanger the children.
Starswirl threw his quill into the inkpot in frustration, further splattering the page he was working on. He rubbed his eyes, overly tired and angry at himself, before sighing and resting his head in both hooves. He was still missing something, but what?
Shaking off the moment's reprieve, he levitated a book from one of the piles and began to flick through it. Time; Time Cubes; Time Traps; Time Travel; Time Turners; Time Zones; No, no, no! Again. T; Time; Time Avalanche; Time Portals; Time- Wait, Time Portals? Could that be it? He threw the book over his shoulder, scattering loose pages across the worn carpet. He stood on his hind legs and scanned the spines of the book-cairns around his desk, pushing aside two main stacks to reveal yet more behind.
Ahah!
Using his white-hued magic, Starswirl pulled a thick, dusty tome from a barely-lit crevice and brought it into the dim light. Giving it two good blows, he inspected the aged cover beneath the wildly flickering candle.
“Through the Looking Glass; A Guide to Portals and Parallel Dimensions”
It had been a long time since he last looked at this relic. Its pages were filled with theoretical ramblings and wild speculation, a gift that he was quick to file away in a forgotten corner after reading the first few pages. But maybe, just maybe, this was what he had been searching for.
Carefully clearing a space on the crowded desk with his magic, Starswirl placed the book in pride of place and flicked open the cover. The introduction was pure self-indulgence, just as he remembered. He continued flicking through the book. Nonsense. Theoretical at best. Purely subjective. Utter fiction. The blank pleather binding of the rear cover stared at Starswirl as intently as he stared at it. No, there had to be something, this had seemed like such a breakthrough. He reset the book and began to flick through the pages once more, at a slower pace this time, reading each page in more detail. One passage in a series of short theories suddenly stood out, something he had previously disregarded with its fellows:
“Given their innate magical essence, I surmise that it is possible to harness the power of these mirrors with such a spell that they not only show the world around us, but reflect other worlds entirely. As previously stated, the multiverse theory suggests that there are infinite variations of our own world, and the angle of reflection while casting a spell on the mirrored surface could influence the distance of separation between our universe and the connecting one. A short-angled spell could show a world where you are wearing different clothes, while a wide-angled spell could show you as an entirely different creature.”
At first glance this seemed like utter fallacy. The innate magical essence of mirrors? Mirrors were pony-made creations of metal and glass, not some arcane relic. But imbuing mirrors with magic... now that was an idea. With just the right harmonic resonance, perhaps a mirror could be shifted from reflecting this world to reflecting another? And with a little phasing magic, one could travel between the two planes... That would mean he could bring back an identical Queen Starshine from a dimension in which she didn't die! Sure, that realm might be down a queen, but let their Starswirl deal with it.
It was a long-shot, but it was the best lead he had found in nearly a month of tireless research and study. Brushing the book off the table, its usefulness at an end, the wizard pulled up a fresh piece of parchment and began scribbling notes and designs for what could be the single most notable development in modern history. Even in a thousand years, everypony would know the name Starswirl the Scholar. No, no, no, Starswirl the Wise! The Magnificent! The-... But he was getting ahead of himself. Magic first, names later.
Morning came with an unnatural abruptness, a sure sign that the king had missed the scheduled time yet again, much to the confusion of those outside the royal inner-circle. Starswirl wearily opened his eyes, the lifeless remains of a pillar candle filling his view. Sleepily smacking his lips, he lifted his head off the slightly angled writing desk, bringing with it the parchment he had been writing on, stuck to his left cheek. Pulling it off with an annoyed grunt, the groggy unicorn tried to focus on the contents of the paper, not yet remembering his impassioned scribblings of the night before. His accomplishments coming back with a start, Starswirl shot off his stool and grabbed his dress-cloak, making his way down the tower's spiral staircase to report to the king.
Waiting until the colossal gilded doors to the throne room had opened, the court wizard made his way down the expansive hall and past the elevated thrones, heading directly for the King's chambers. The King had become more reclusive of late, rarely leaving his chambers the last two weeks, and allowing only his personal servants and most trusted advisors to enter his sanctum. This was the third time Starswirl had reported to the king this month, with the previous two being both short and unpleasant, having had no progress to share with his highness. But this time would be different. Knocking on the ornately framed wooden door in a firm, but respectful manner, the king bellowed a demand for identification from within. Giving his name, Starswirl waited a few minutes before being given clearance to enter, gingerly breaching the threshold to face the monarch. Entering the dimly lit chambers, the wizard immediately felt the air heavy with dust, visible from shafts of light cutting through the clumsily drawn curtains. The King had obviously disallowed the servants from cleaning his room while he was in it. Nevertheless, Starswirl kept his head down and stated his purpose with the dignity and respect any royal deserved.
“My King, I have made great bounds in my attempt to... undo the wrongs of the past. If His Majesty would graciously peruse this spell...” His words trailed off, noting the vacant expression on the king's face as he sat slumped in his chair, one hoof groping an intricately carved wooden stein. Clearly his state was deteriorating. The King had always been a model of propriety, clean-shaven and attentive, with immaculate posture. The sight in front of his long-time advisor was a sorry one to say the least: messy hair, stubble, bags under his eyes, crown at an angle, mantle draped over the back of the chair and stained with whatever he had been drinking copious amounts of.
“Answer me this, magician,” his voice slurred, having lost all pretence of regality or decorum. “Does it work?”
The blunt and candid question caught Starswirl off-guard. He adjusted his hat and looked down at the parchment, his eyes skimming over the text like it was an alien language, mind racing for empirical evidence when there was none. Stop, calm down, you can do this. You know what you're doing, just tell him. There is an order to these things, he must understand. Stop. Stalling.
“I have not cast it yet, Sire, but in theory-”
The King scoffed, slowly turning his head to the low glow of the fireplace beside him. Pausing for a moment, Starswirl began to notice the piles of tattered books, scrolls and etchings littering the room. Some of these writings were of such rarity that even he hadn't read them before, not to mention the illegal ones. It seems he wasn't the only one researching the problem.
“Theory. I have no use for theory,” the King spat at the fireplace, the reflection of its smouldering embers flickering in his eyes.
“My Lord, if you will but let me cast the spell, we shall see what my efforts have wrought. There is still hope. Your daughters deserve...” He trailed off, knowing he had said too much.
It then dawned on Starswirl that he had been so embroiled in this research that he hadn't seen the girls in three weeks, ever since his last meeting with the king. This was all supposed to be for them; how could he have forgotten that so quickly? First agreeing to perform the dark arts, and now abandoning his wards... Was his loyalty to the sovereign really worth that price?
“Cast your spell, magician.” There was that word again; tinged with spite, yet tired and directionless this time, like it was aimed at fate itself, not just the wizard. “We shall see if you truly deserve your place by my side,” he continued, slowly turning back at his advisor. “I will not tolerate failure.”
Starswirl swallowed, not used to being under this sort of do-or-die pressure. He was a scholar, for Elysium's sake, and the best of his generation for that matter, not some... magical mercenary who warps reality just to do a depressed despot's bidding.
But he wasn't doing this for his sake; this was for the children. The future queens of Equestria deserved to grow up with a mother, to teach them the ways of a true and just monarch, which is something he feared their father could no longer accomplish. How things had changed in but a few short months...
The wizard looked around the room for a moment until his eyes fell on a large object covered with a dirty sheet to his left. Approaching it, Starwirl used his magic to lift the cloth, revealing an alicorn-sized freestanding mirror. It was stunningly beautiful; its design was like an ovoid horseshoe on a raised platform, coloured with rich blues and purples, detailed with pink gemstones and surrounded by ornate metalwork swirls. If its lineage wasn't immediately apparent by its design, the large emblem sitting atop the structure made its origins clear: the sigil of the first rulers of Equestria. This mirror was older than the king himself; older than the palace, even, which explained why it clashed so poorly with the grey stone and red drapes of these chambers. While visiting the king's bedroom was not a common occurrence, just one glance of this unique specimen would have been enough for Starswirl to remember it.
“Must you uncover that cursed thing?” the King growled from behind him.
The King seemed to have a particular dislike of this mirror. Perhaps he had grown to loathe the reflection of his broken self, or perhaps it was an ancient coronation present that reminded him too much of the Queen.
“My Lord, this mirror would serve as a fine artifice to enchant. Its size is ideal, and its structure already exudes magical-”
“Do what you will with it, but do it elsewhere,” he grunted, continuing his empty stare towards the fireplace.
This was his cue to leave, but how in Equestria would he bring the mirror? The frame alone would have been manageable, but the solid marble base was far too heavy to levitate, and even then it was too wide to fit the doorway. He considered translocation for a moment, but there was a strange magical radiation from the mirror that made his focus hazy. He could move it short distances at a time, easily into the throne room, but there was a risk it might appear too high, too low, or at an angle... Or even worse, in or over somepony.
The King sensed this hesitation and turned his head, a weary scowl on his face, first at the wizard, then at the mirror. A distortion appeared at the centre of the artefact and spread around its full form, as though it had been covered in dark liquid glass. In the blink of an eye, the mirror was sucked into the void, leaving nothing but a swirling puddle of deep space floating mere inches in front of Starswirl. The King had very little reason to use magic, besides raising the sun and the moon each day, so it was not a feat the wizard saw often, especially this close. His magic remained as powerful, beautiful, and terrifying as ever.
“The mirror is in your tower. Do with it what you will.” The King turned back to his smouldering malaise. “Do not return until you have accomplished your task.”
In fearful awe, the court magician bowed to his liege and made for the door.
“And Starswirl,” he continued, halting the wizard in the doorway. “Return with haste.”
Starswirl froze for a moment, struck by the King's threatening demeanour. This was it. This was really it. Last chance. Awkwardly bowing once more, he turned and made a hasty retreat from the chambers.
King Sol's words echoed in Starswirl's ears as he rushed back to his tower. That was not the king he had served all these years, full of anger and resentment; a bitter and hollow husk of the utopian leader he had admired so much. To think that the loss of a loved one could change somepony so entirely... That was a risk he was glad to have abstained from.
Galloping up the tower's spiral stairway, the loud clops of hoof on stone echoing off the walls, Starswirl reached his study and was immediately confronted by the monolithic mirror sitting squarely in the centre of the room, covering nearly the entire floorspace. There seemed to be a good portion missing from his desk, as well as the complete absence of his stool, no doubt caught up in the King's matter-translocation magic and now floating somewhere out there in the endless dark-sky. He was a little jealous of what it might be seeing, could it see. And to think that he had recently sat on the world's first extraplanetary object. Stargazer never could have predicted that.
Starswirl shook his head, refocusing his thoughts on the task at hoof. Reaching under his cloak, the court wizard pulled out the magic scroll he had intended to show the King before its execution was so immediately demanded. Facing the mirror and clearing his throat, he unfurled and levitated the parchment reading-distance from his face. Let's see...
As that hack of an author had proposed, it made sense—almost certainly by accident—that the angle of the spell cast would inform the degree of separation between this universe and the mirror's. Ideally he would have been on an equal plane to the glass, but he didn't have time to construct a solid platform to properly account for the raised pedestal. Should the worst happen and this spell fail, he would require as much time as possible to formulate another. But now was not the time for second-guessing; now was the time for triangulating the theoretical angle to open a theoretical passage to a theoretical 'mirror universe'. This had better work, for the children's sake... and his.
“From eyes to view, and magic wrought—
The world is one, yet many.
A bridge betwixt is hereto sought—
For reflections' sights to ferry.”
A powerful glow emanated from his horn as he pointed it towards the lower-third of the glass surface. There had been no time to test this spell beforehoof, meaning his future relied entirely on this working perfectly the first time.No pressure.
“Through tinted lens, reveal thy path—
To old planes borne anew.
A gateway sought to cross thine hearth—
By degrees, I hereby skew!”
A solid beam of bright white magic shot from the tip of Starswirl's horn, hitting the mirror and bouncing back at a slight angle, striking the wall behind him with an fierce heat. This was an unexpectedly intense magic, causing his hat to leave the room entirely. It was not inherently destructive per se, but used high-frequency vibrations to destabilize an object's density and restructure its molecules at a microscopic level. These vibrations were being used to essentially corrode the mirror's anchor to this reality, creating a gradient between the two planes' unique frequencies, using a single 'hinge'—the mirror's glass—as a common reference point on both ends. This technique was entirely experimental and somewhat out of his wheelhouse, exemplified by the fact that he had not accounted for the possibility of the glass reflecting the beam and causing collateral damage. Of course, the damage to his books was assuredly preferable over what would have happened to him, had he been standing directly in front of the mirror.
As the high-frequency beam continued to pound the glass, the reflected view began to twitch beyond simple vibration; now shifting up and down, and left to right, as though it were physically moving beyond the confines of its frame. Something was happening, making it harder to maintain the spell's angle. Behind him, the reflected beam began to slowly carve an arc into the wall, setting fire to the books around it, while melting the wooden bookshelf as though it were metal. Starswirl could not see this himself, as he was currently facing the floor with his eyes closed from the strain. It was too late to stop at this point, anyway; releasing a spell exuding this much friction prematurely could have potentially explosive results, shattering the priceless mirror and likely him, too. As beads of sweat ran down his exposed brow, attempting to restrain the spell's drift was taking an unexpected toll on his constitution. Magic this dangerous to the user and others would require forbidding immediately after this fiasco.
The shifting reflection in the mirror ramped up its intensity, now a blur of motion as the beam's angle strayed even further from its mark. Suddenly and without warning, the reflection in the glass shot backwards, exposing an infinite and streaming void of images; a vortex of reflections; billions upon billions of possible concurrent existences. This sight would have driven anypony instantly insane, even a great mind like Starswirl's, who was saved thanks only to the immense strain he was currently under. With the mirror's change of view came a massive vacuum, sucking in loose pages, parchments, and dragging whole books toward the portal. The wizard's knees became weak, trembling under the strenuous maintenance of the spell, and now fighting to keep his hooves planted on the ground. With failure on any front meaning certain death, the only way was forward.
Just as suddenly as it had started, the spell was complete, abruptly cutting off with a soft hiss. Starswirl collapsed to his knees, wheezing from exhaustion as his horn cooled down, smoking with residual energy. Wearily opening his eyes, he noticed some unfamiliar hair had fallen across his face; what had once been a mossy grey mane was now streaked ghostly white. Never had a spell taken such a toll on his body, and rarely had such effects been documented. Wearily, the court wizard turned to see the aftermath of the destruction behind him. There were no longer any signs of fire, though the pungent smell of char hung in the air like a contemptuous ghost haunting the scorched tomes and carved shelves. The final path of the beam had been anything but straight, cutting a large crescent into the wall, not unlike a horseshoe on its side.
The aged unicorn shakily pushed himself from the tattered rug and closed his eyes in preparation for what he was about to see ahead, taking a deep breath to calm himself. As he raised his newly bleached head toward the mirror and looked into its reflection, he saw...
Nothing.
Before him stood the same exact view as before, now updated with the still-smouldering gash in his wall, mirrored just as it should be. But this wasn't how it should be. It should be different! Strange! His own, tired eyes stared directly back at him as his jaw slacked in disbelief. That couldn't have been it, could it? Did it fail? Was this all for naught?
Needing to test his failure, Starswirl stepped up the mirror's platform and tentatively held his hoof over the glass. This was it, failure or success, in one... brief... touch...
A hollow 'clang' briefly echoed throughout his study: the sound of a hoof on glass.
“No...No, no, no!” Starswirl screwed up his face with intense anger, standing on his hindlegs with both forelegs on the mirror. With an intense and frustrated growl, he reared his hooves up, ready to bring them down on the mirror's surface. Luckily, his great intellect quickly regained control, and his hooves returned to the surface with little more than another 'c-clang'.
“Why...? The spell was perfect. The incantation was perfect. The execution was perfect. What went wrong?”
The lowly magician stepped backwards off the pedestal, his weary eyes pleading for answers to reveal themselves in the mirror's glass. This was it, his last chance to sate the King's madness, gone. He felt the life draining from his body as he stared at the failed portal, its calm image reflecting the room before it, just as much of a mirror as it had started. He hung his head in shame and turned towards his sleeping chambers, slowly and carelessly stepping on ripped pages and knocking aside the corpses of fallen books in his path. This was the culmination of his life devoted to the advancement of magical understanding: a fruitless pit that bards would mock for centuries to come.
Letting his cloak unceremoniously fall to the floor, Starswirl climbed onto his bed and rolled over to face the conical ceiling. “'Starswirl the Magnificent?' Pah. More like 'Starswirl the Impotent',” he thought to himself. Tomorrow he would have to face the King and tell him of his failure. He should make the most of what little time he had left, but for now he needed to rest.