//------------------------------// // Page 2: Grimoires // Story: A Unicorn in the Clover Kingdom // by LordBrony2040 //------------------------------// Secre Swallowtail had lived a hard life.  Born in a world where magic was everything, she had the fortune to have gained a magic that most people would have considered absolutely useless. That magic was the ability to both lock and unlock things. Doors, chests, gates, anything with a key had been hers to get into. Because of that, Secre had been considered absolutely useless and assigned to be the research assistant to Lumiere Silvamillion Clover, expected to spend the rest of her days fetching lab equipment for the eccentric mage. It had been the moment that changed her life, when she stopped being a useless mage and found someone who respected the girl for what she could do. Then, everything came tumbling down within a single afternoon. She had to watch her best friends try to kill each other while a being of pure evil looked in from beyond with glee at what it had brought about. The identity of her friend who had become the demon vanished from history, while the friend who managed to stop his insane rampage was mortally wounded. So, she used forbidden magic that drew on the power of the netherworld to lock away her friend’s consciousness and ability to move, turning him into a statue. And that was the true story of the First Wizard King. But, it wasn’t the entire story for his supporting characters. Because of her use of the forbidden magic, Secre was transformed into a bird that had an unlimited lifespan. She would spend eternity alone, because even death would not reunite her with a man frozen in stone. A condition for which there was no real cure. Because even if she did manage to release the king from the seal preventing his movement and return him to the waking world, he would be more akin to a moving statue than anything else. The kind of magic Secre was looking for didn’t exist in this world. Until she saw a girl cast a magical spell without a grimoire. Just like another magic user she and her master had met hundreds of years ago when he stumbled through Lumiere’s full-body mirror that had been hung up in his closet. Not that the magical nerd ever actually paid attention to anything he wore unless Secre made him. So Secre had followed the girl to learn about her as she interacted with a pair of boys, one of which was loved by magic, and the other who was despised by it. She was young, but talented in the extreme. Hurt, but also hard. And a bit vindictive, but also kind when it suited her. Which was why Secre revealed herself to the girl on the eve of what was bound to be a scandal unless she gave them a fair warning. And...to ask a question. Sunset’s eyes narrowed as she condensed the fire in her hand, making the bird a little nervous. If she hit the king with her magic, would it actually damage the statue? “How in the hell do you know that name?” “Then, you are from the same realm as Starswirl?” Secre asked, daring to hope as she looked down at the girl. “A member of the same...tribe, I think he called it.” “NAME DROPPING STUFF THAT ONLY BRINGS UP EVEN MORE QUESTIONS ISN’T HOW YOU GIVE ANSWERS!” Sunset yelled. Yuno raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been hanging around Asta too long.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” Asta grumbled at Yuno before he looked back to the bird. “AND HOW THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING?” With the girl still glaring at her, the taller boy with the usually bright eyes completely lost, and the loud one trying to draw the attention of the whole valley, Secre took a moment to regain her composure. She was the one needing answers, so it only made sense to give some to gain a little goodwill. “I was a research assistant to the First Wizard King. Because of the use of forbidden magic, I was turned into a bird and given an extended lifespan while he was turned to stone.” Sunset frowned. “That’s impossible.” “I thought you of all creatures wouldn’t question the existence of a talking animal, little nag,” Secre replied. The result was just about what she expected. Sunset’s face turned red and she quickly glanced to the boy’s flanking her before glaring back at the bird. “Keep your mouth shut about that or I might just decide to take up eating meat!” the fiery teen exclaimed before pointing an accusing finger at the bird. “And you making people noises wasn’t what I meant! Starswirl vanished over eleven-hundred years ago, and Unicornia was absorbed into a larger confederation of nations before that! So even if you really were the Wizard King’s fancy parrot, there’s no way that you could possibly know him!” Secre found herself at a loss for words. Does that mean our realms run at a different pace? the bird wondered, with Starswirl’s being nearly twice their own? Lumiere had said something seemed off when he tried to reconnect the mirror to go and visit the older wizard in his homeland. “So, let me get this strait, you meet a talking bird that knows of beings from another realm, and you’re skeptical because my math is a little off?” “...” Sunset replied as she just glared at the bird. “Excuse me,” Yuno suddenly said, breaking into the debate. “But would one of you please explain what’s going on? Even if everything you said is true, it doesn’t tell us what you’re doing here, or why you’ve decided to speak to us after what you say is five centuries of keeping silent. I would have thought a creature as old and knowledgeable as you would have been advising the current Wizard King, if not the ruler of the Clover Kingdom himself.” Secre snorted, or tried to, it came out as more of a chirp. “The current royal king is a fat idiot and let’s just say if you do become Magic Knights and meet the current Wizard King, you’ll get why I stay clear of him,” she explained as best she could without stepping on their hero. In truth, the guy was a bit too much like her old master for Secre’s comfort. “And I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to Sunset. But since she’s always with someone from the orphanage, I had to go with the best option I could find.” “Fine, why are you talking to me, then?” Sunset asked with annoyance written all over her face. Despite all the waiting and planning on how to address the situation, Secre felt nervousness swelling up inside of her. Her orders had been to wait until the devil returned, but faced with the possibility of truly reviving her king, didn’t she have a duty to seek the best possible outcome? “I want-no, I beg you. Please, reverse the spell that I placed on Lumiere Silvamillion Clover,” she said as she bowed her head. “I could give you a hundred reasons. I could go on and on about the state of the kingdom, how the nobles that do their jobs are few and far between the ones that abuse their positions. You’ve seen the poor and downtrodden that need help for yourself. I could tell you how he could turn everything around and save everyone. But it would be a lie. The truth is, I just want him to be free to live his life again.” Sunset rolled her eyes and held out an open hand. “Geeze, you could have just said that instead of making the stupid speech,” she grumbled as mana flowed around her to light up the morning sky, building up more and more until it became a blinding flash. And then… … … “Are you sure you’re doing it right?” Asta asked as he looked at the statue that hadn’t changed at all. Sunset’s eye twitched as she found the eleventh slot on the statue. Now that she knew what she was looking for, it was easy to make out the ethereal magic circle around each one that was connected to the others in a complex web that joined them all together to form a large magical spell matrix. “You could have told me there was a lock before you had me blow half my mana on a flesh to stone spell reversal.” “It was worth a shot,” the bird replied as she flapped her wings to stay just outside of Sunset’s swatting reach. “So, we’re not going to be able to meet the First Wizard King?” Asta asked in a dejected tone. Yuno crossed his arms. “Well if there’s a lock, that means there has to be a key, right?” he asked as the stone on the bottom of the necklace he was wearing swayed back and forth from the wind. The bird looked over to the tallest biped in the group. “Don’t even think about it. I only asked Sunset because she might have been able to fix things easily. The magic stones that are required to restore The King were scattered and hidden for a reason,” she said. “Just go back to your lives and forget you ever talked to me.” “NO WAY!” Asta yelled, getting a glare from the other two humans. “Just because we hit a little bump in the road doesn’t mean we just give up! This is the First Wizard King we’re talking about here! If we free him, then he might even make me the-uh...well…” Yuno looked over to Asta. “Technically, he’d be Royal King, since he’d be higher in the line of succession than the current ruler. So the Wizard King post would still be open for him to appoint me to.” Wow, they actually managed to turn this into an argument about that, Sunset thought to herself before looking back to the bird. “Hey Polly.” “My name’s not Polly,” the bird replied. “Hey Polly, these stones, you know where they are, right?” Sunset asked. If they were the catalyst for the spell, they would have had to of been present when it was cast. So she should have been there to see where they all went. Somehow, the bird actually managed to look uneasy. “After the demon was defeated, the stones were divided up. Some of them were hidden away while others were given to groups and families for safekeeping,” she replied. “However, only a few, like the magic stone handed down through the House of Vermillion are still protected as they should be. Although I doubt they still remember its true purpose, just that they have to keep it safe. There are more things that those stones unlock than a simple statue.” “Like what, exactly?” Yuno asked. When the bird didn’t answer, Sunset looked back to the stoned king. “Well I guess if we’re never going to find the way to unstone him, then I can just throw this statue over the side.” “Quit bluffing,” the bird told her. “You’re much too good a person do actually do something like that. Why do you think I watched you for so long before I asked for your help? You talk a harsh game girl, but I’ve seen candy less sweet than you can be.” Sunset pressed her lips together and huffed. “Well, let’s get going. If there’s nothing we can do for now, I’d rather not be standing on top of a corpse that’s been around since before my grandfather was born.” She grabbed the boys before bringing in the bird close with her unicorn magic, which made her let out a loud squawk before Sunset teleported them down into the nearby forest. While the three humans quickly found a place to sit down, the bird was held up by Sunset’s levitation magic while it got its bearings. When the bird managed not to throw up, it glared down at the transformed pony. “How in the world can a child of the Tribe that Understands Magic be that bad at spatial magic spells?” she demanded. “Hey! They work just fine where I come from!” Sunset snapped right back. It wasn’t her fault humans were just too fragile to take a little upending of their stomachs. “Which is where, exactly?” Sunset froze so hard she lost the concentration needed to maintain her hold on the bird and let it go before glancing over to Yuno. Unfortunately, Asta had also stopped dry heaving in time to catch wind of the conversation and was actually paying attention for once. “You know, that place she mentioned. Far, far away.” “And who was that Sparstirl guy she was talking about?” Asta asked. Not seeing the harm Sunset rolled her wrist around as she leaned up against the log behind her. “He was a famous sorcerer from a thousand years ago that did some stuff before he just went missing,” she told them. Without really telling them anything. Then, the bird had to open its little beak as it stood on a branch of the fallen tree Sunset was resting against. “He was the royal mage of the Unicornian Court and an expert at his craft. He was also the sorcerer who crated a magical mirror that allowed him to visit the Clover Kingdom. Aside from that, he did help us to build a better understanding of magic during the short time he was with us and aided my master in a few experiments.” Yuno looked back to Sunset. “So, you got to this country by a magical mirror?” “Yeah,” Sunset grumbled. “That was a magical artifact created by a powerful mage in service to your country’s royal family,” he went on. Sunset raised an eyebrow. “Are you getting at something, or just saying things we already know to hear yourself talk?” After a few more seconds, Yuno looked over to the bird. “Sunset’s magic, is it on par with the other Unicornian you met?” “She’s a bit younger than him, but I’d say she’s on track to be just as strong,” the bird replied. Yuno went back to studying Sunset for a few seconds. “Back during your first week here, did you lie to me?” Not seeing where he was going with this, Sunset just blinked. “Huh?” “You have an amazing amount of magical power, an education must have been equal to any noble, training in magic that nobody in this entire kingdom would have undergone,” Yuno surmised. “That’s not something an orphan gets, no matter how much mana they have as a child.” Oh, now I get it, Sunset thought before she made a hand into a fist. “You’re going to stop this line of questioning right now, or I’m going to knock your teeth in.” Asta looked back and forth between the two as he sat on the grass. “What? What is it? I don’t get it.” With everything needing to be spelled out for him, Yuno turned to Asta. “I think Sunset is really a-” “LAST CHANCE YUNO!” Sunset warned the tall boy very loudly. He looked back at her. “I was telling Asta, not asking you. So it doesn’t count.” After holding onto some earth magic for a few seconds, Sunset let it go and slumped against the log. “Yeah, well I don’t want to listen about stupid theories. I am an orphan. Nobody wanted me.” Even after all this time, it still hurt to say that. Silence reigned in the group for several seconds after that until Asta spoke. “So, is the whole Uni-thing why you can cast spells without a grimoire?” he asked. Sunset made a displeased sound and looked away from the shorter boy. And of course, the bird answered for her. “Of course.” “How?” “That’s a bit complicated,” ‘Polly’ replied. “You see, the races of this realm...we can all...work magic. We can even be inventive enough to figure out new ways to work magic. Lumiere Silvamillion Clover spent most of his time coming up with ways to lock magic into objects that would have allowed people with barely any magical power to do the same amount of work as someone with enough mana to make it into the Magic Knights. But our ability to use magic is instinctual. We simply can’t delve into the inner workings of mana.” When the boys just looked at her blakely, the bird sighed. “Think about it like this, you can move your arm, clench your fist and wiggle your fingers. But do you know every little process needed to do those things? Could you put your arm back together piece by piece if it was taken apart? Most people know how to work their arm like they know how to work magic,” the bird told him before pointing to Sunset. “She knows how magic works on a basic level that people just can’t grasp because...well, you can’t just stop a piece of your arm from working at will.” As the boys digested that information, Sunset took in a deep breath to help her stomach settle. “So, we’re going after the magic stones, right?” “WHAT?” the bird yelled. Asta pulled himself back onto his feet. “Yeah. If the First Wizard King is a rock, we really should...un-stone him? De-stone?” he said questionably before looking around. “What’s it called when you do that?” Getting more upset, the bird flapped her wings and flew over to Asta’s face. “Didn’t you hear a single thing I said?” “Of course we did,” Yuno replied as he regained his footing. “And I’d be a pretty poor candidate for the position of Wizard King if I ignored all the problems the Clover Kingdom is facing. You said it yourself, the current king is a poor ruler and things need to be done to clean things up. Even if I did become the Wizard King, it sounds like I still wouldn’t have the authority to fix everything without someone to help me rein in the royals.” The bird few back around to look at Yuno. “You don’t even know where most of the magic stones are!” Sunset raised a hand and surrounded the flying animal in a force field before pulling her back to where the not-unicorn was sitting. “But you do, right? Guess that means you’re just going to have to come with us then.” And come up with a better name than Magic Stones. Humans seriously suck at names. “So you’re just going to take me along because you think I’ll point a few glowing rocks out for you?” she asked. “No,” Sunset told her as she got to her feet. “I’m taking you with us, because you’ve been alone for five-hundred years and just reached out to someone in all that time. I’m sorry I couldn’t help your friend right away. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying to help him and you. So, are you going to tell us your actual name, or am I just going to keep calling you Polly?” “...it’s Secre Swallowtail,” the anti-bird said after several seconds. At which point, Sunset released her field. Asta looked back at the flying animal. “But you’re not a-” “I am well aware of my current species!” the bird told the boy before she landed on his head to peck at him for the remark. As Asta gave a discomforting scream from the assault, Yuno moved closer to Sunset. “So...what’s Unicornia like?” Sunset gave a little shrug. “Eh, better weather, more musical performances,” she said before looking down at herself. “You guys are better at making pants and boots though.” March the First came and the sky was filled with firefly dandelions. As was tradition, all the children of the Clover Kingdom who had reached the age of fifteen gathered at the nearest Grimoire Tower for the Grimoire Acceptance Ceremony. Outside the tower, numerous tents had been set up, selling hot food, trinkets and other little things that parents in the poorer regions had saved up all year to buy for their children to mark such a momentous day. And because the place was nearly a mile away from Hage, combined with the fact that the Clover Kingdom didn’t bother to make paved roads in its poorer sections as well as everyone in the orphanage wanted to come, Sunset found herself getting up at the crack of dawn to walk down a muddy road at the back of a crowd of humans who had yet to invent deodorant while a smartass bird rode on her shoulder. “So, out of curiosity, did Starswirl get one of these things when he came here?” she asked softly. Secre did the best shrug a bird could manage. “We didn’t have time to check if he even could before the portal destabilized and he had to leave,” she said. “If a book doesn’t fly to you at the appointed time, grab one while they’re all still floating around. Just make sure its from the bottom level.” The suggestion got a frown from Sunset. “Won’t that mean someone is going to be missing their grimoire when it comes time to claim it?” She wasn’t going to ruin someone’s destiny just to cover the fact she wasn’t really human. “It doesn’t work like that,” Secre told Sunset. “The grimoires produced by the towers are blank. There’s no specific grimoire for a specific person just waiting to be claimed. Well, except maybe the four leaf books, but those are a special case and stored on the top shelf.” Sunset raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I was wondering about that. Every clover I saw in the village had three leafs. But the one on the front of the Wizard King’s book had four. Is it some kind of royalty thing?” The bird looked over to Sunset and then back to the road as the kids from the orphanage continued on ahead of her. “Right, you’re not from here,” she said before taking in a deep breath. “The three leaves of the clover stand for Faith, Hope, and Love, the three virtues of the Clover Kingdom. Grimiores with a fourth leaf are said to possess good luck, and great things are expected of those who posses them.” Feeling a bit of her old pride swelling up, Sunset stood up a little taller. “Well, maybe I’ll get a five leaf clover then.” “Pray that you never see such a book!” Secre suddenly snapped at her, making Sunset jump in fright and look over to see the little bird glaring at her.  Sunset didn’t feel much like talking to the bird for the rest of the walk and increased her pace to catch up with the rest of the children so Secre couldn’t start a conversation either. Eventually, the bird just flew on ahead and out of sight. When they finally got to the tower, the lack of funds in the church group had them ignoring all of the food stands and people hawking trinkets. Inside, the tower was just a single floor, with bookcases stacked to the ceiling that had to be at least five-hundred feet up, all of them filled with unclaimed grimoire of every shape and size. The only part of the wall that wasn’t made of bookshelves was the first seven feet, which was just normal stone. Those that were expected to get their books were brought to the center of the tower while their families and guests stayed at the edges of the circular room. “AWSOME!” Asta shouted as he ran in to look around. “All of these shelves filled with grimoires. I wonder which one is mine?” Sunset gripped her hands into fists. Just keep your mouth shut. Just keep quiet, she told herself while looking around at everyone who had come to claim their books. There were a lot more people than she had expected, but it was a meeting place for the region’s six villages. Most everyone was dressed in the same earthy clothes, although she did see a pair of well-dressed humans that had to be the local lord’s offspring and probably a friend. Either that, or the rightful heir and his bastard brother. “The day I become a full-fledged mage, it’s about time,” the blonde noble in light clothes said as he played with his hair. Beside him, the well-dressed boy in a vest sneered. “Look what the cat dragged in,” he said as he looked over at the orphans from Hage Village. “We shouldn’t have to give grimoires to anyone who just walks in off the street. Just looking at them makes me sick to my stomach.” I wonder what happens if I burn their books to ash before they die, Sunset asked herself. Sunset knew that grimoires were linked to the user and would fall apart without that connection, but he never did ask Father Orsi if he was afraid of setting his book on fire with his own magic. They were probably protected somehow. “You don’t think trash like that would be foolish enough to actually attempt the Magic Knight entrance exams in three months, do you?” the boy with the vest asked. Which meant...they had probably seen Asta or Yuno around town at one point. They were both very talkative about what they planned to do, even if Asta was the much more...vocal of the pair. Which was later confirmed when they started discussing Asta’s lack of magic and laughing about it amongst themselves. “Welcome to The Grimoire Tower, accepties!” an amplified voice called down from above before a platform descended onto another raised area above where everyone was standing to look down on the crowed. It was an older man, dressed in a gray robe and long point hat, with a gray beard that went halfway down to his chest. As he continued his speech that got a little...eccentric, Sunset found herself feeling a little odd. She had never been much of a fan of Starswirl the Bearded. From the things she had read in history books, the guy had about four other ponies who helped him do everything he was famous for, with an text that Sunset wasn’t supposed to have read mentioning a fifth. As terrible a...caretaker as she was, Celestia had at least ruled Equestria on her own and taken care of plenty of threats without any help. So, when a human of all things showed up wearing the same outfit as him, minus the bells, Sunset had to fight to hold in her cringe. Dear God, you let your humans pick up that idiot’s fashion sense? “-And now, to accept your grimoires,” not-Starswirl said as Sunset felt a change in the magic around her. She could sense...tendrils of magic flailing around, linking with the fifty or so people in the middle of the tower with books on the shelves before the first grimoire started to glow and flew off of the shelf and into the air. When some of the thousands of strands came to touch Sunset, they simply slid off of her and moved on. It felt like oil trying to mix with water. So, safe in the idea that she wasn’t going to get buried in books or have to explain two grimoires flying towards her, Sunset reached out with her magic and snatched the nearest one she could as dozens of the things were flying around the room and some people were getting theirs before others. “Finally, my very own grimoire.” “Check it out, mines bigger!” “Yeah, but mines thicker!” Oh my god, Sunset thought as a sudden revelation hit her as to why Secre had flown the coup before they got inside the tower. It’s a dick measuring contest. It’s a giant dick measuring contest. “This is my grimoire, seriously?” “Mine’s so small! Why? Why is mine so small?” “I can feel the power just waiting to be unleashed!” Then, as the noise settled down and Sunset stopped groaning, she started to hear everyone in the tower start whispering to each other. Which, didn’t really fit the idea of a big coming of age ceremony with ones family and friends. So when she looked up to see what was going on, she saw… Asta. Standing in the center of the tower with his hands raised. And nothing happening. “Uh...is my grimoire running late or something?” he asked as he continued to stand there, frozen. Oh...that’s bad, Sunset told herself as she realized what was going on. The grimoires reached out to link with someone’s mana. A resource Asta just didn’t have. She had expected him to get a book and it be empty. They could have let him accept the fact of life gradually when no spells appeared. Not be hit with...this. “Uh...try again next year?” not-Starswirl suggested pathetically as he sounded like he was trying to put a more comical spin on things. “WHAAAAAAAT?” Asta screeched. And that was when the chuckling and giggles started, which quickly developed into full blown laughter Followed by the usual comments. “Oh man, that’s so pathetic it’s funny!” Sunset grit her teeth and held her hand in a fist as she saw the two people who ran the church standing there off to the side, if she blew up on these people...they wouldn’t like it. And what are you getting so angry about? Sunset asked herself. A year ago, she would have been right there with the rest of the humans, laughing at the boy with them. Had being turned into a human changed her so much? Or was it something else? Sunset’s introspection was put on hold when there was a stirring in the air that caused everyone to look up. A grimoire that had been stored in the highest shelves of the tower came floating down towards the crowd. As it got closer to the floor, the green book exploded with a golden light that filled the entire building while it got closer, and closer and closer to the floor… To have Yuno step out and catch it when it floated down into his waiting hand not two feet away from where Asta had fallen to his knees. “INCREDIBLE!” not-Starswirl shouted as the light started to die down. “A FOUR LEAF CLOVER!” “And it’s his? that filthy little commoner?” the lead noble in the room spat. Maybe it was the high from getting picked out of the crowd as the chosen one or whatever, but Yuno tucked the book under his arm and stood up a little straighter before clearing his throat. “I will be the next to become the Wizard King!” As everyone in the crowd started to cheer and go on about the amazing declaration, including the father figure from the orphanage, Asta picked himself up off of the floor. His head still hung low, but his fists were clenched and shaking. “Yuno. You have have pulled ahead for the moment, but just wait,” he said before pointing his thumb at himself. “I’LL CATCH UP TO YOU!” And then, the laughter started again. As Yuno began to walk towards the door. Just like Sunset knew she would have in his position...a year ago. So, while everyone else was focused on the two of them, she made her way over to the exit and stood by the door and waited for Yuno to get close. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked through gritted teeth. “You wouldn’t understand,” Yuno told her roughly as he looked away. Sunset glared at the boy as she reached out to grab his arm. “No, I understand perfectly. Because the night I met the two of you, I was exactly where Asta is right now. You want to know what I was before I came here? I was someone who watched her mother give everything that I ever wanted to someone else despite working as hard as I could for it my entire life!” After a second, Yuno looked back at her, his eyes crinkled in pain. “And would you have wanted pity from that person who got everything? When you received nothing at all?” Sunset lost her grip when she couldn’t bring herself to answer. Secre watched as the crowd of people started to leave the building. Centuries of people watching skills from across all of the kingdom kicking in to tell her everything she needed to know about them at a glance. There was the happy family going home to celebrate their son’s coming of age.  The big fish that lived in the small pond that were really nothing special.  The young couple that looked ready to move in together now that they had their grimoires and could use their magic to its fullest potential.  The lone woman that was staring at her single spell, unsure of where to go in her life when her book didn’t come with any instructions on how to live it.  The creepy-looking guy in the hood that didn’t come with anyone young enough to receive a magical tome and probably shouldn’t be left alone with children or followed into a dark alley anywhere approaching night-time.  The tall child-prodigy that received a four leaf book, being followed by the natural genius that was probably going to give him a lecture.  The overly religious group, complete with nun. But...no village idiot. Where’s the village idiot? Secre asked herself as she looked around for Asta. It was half an hour later when he finally left the tower as all of the vendors were packing up to go home and reopen their food stands for dinner or take care of their families. The valley where the demon had fallen didn’t have much in the way of dining experiences. Asta ran out and looked around for a bit, then headed off of the beaten path, but in the general direction of home. Since being a bird meant it was rather easy for her to catch up with anything on the ground, Secre gave him another ten minutes to himself before taking off after the boy. She found him right as he got to the edge of the forest and landed on his head, which oddly enough, perfectly shaped for her to sit on. “Hey kid. Let me guess, no grimoire?” The boy managed to take a few more steps. “Did you know this would happen?” he asked dejectedly.  “Well...not really,” Secre told him uncomfortably in a half-lie. Because of her long life and dedication to Lumiere, Secre had spent several centuries in the valley, watching over her king and the people living around his resting place. Although there hadn’t really been anything exceptional about him over the years, it was hard not to notice Asta. And she couldn’t bring herself to crush the heart of a boy she had watched grow up. So, she pushed the burden off on someone else. “But if you want a real explanation, you should ask someone who knows how magic works,” Secre told him. “I saw her nagging Yuno on the way to town. You can probably save him from her if you hurry.” Sunset was in a foul mood when she got back to the orphanage after having slowly chased Yuno into his little brooding area in one of the crumbling ruins that dotted the landscape in this particular area. Ruins that nobody seemed to know anything about of course, the Clover Kingdom was about as bad with keeping records of its history as Equestria. But, Sunset wasn’t focused on the ruins around town. She wasn’t focused on anything, really. Even thought Yuno wasn’t jumping for joy over Asta not getting a grimoire or finding it funny like the majority of everyone in the entire region, completely ignoring the situation was only one step above laughing about it. Still, I probably shouldn’t have slapped him, Sunset told herself as she walked through the doorway and into the main room of the church, with the wooden pews lining the sides and the pulpit at the end where the Father usually gave his sermons. Even after coming to the human world and living at a church for so long, Sunset had never really gotten into their religion. She understood its importance from a logical perspective as a means of absolute moral control for society with a set of basic values written in stone. Two traveling preachers that stopped by the church on separate occasions had shown her those values could be interrupted in very different ways. With one of the men obviously twisting things to try and justify his own world view that went against some of the things Father Orisi tended to preach. Of course, the big reason that Sunset had never got into the whole deity thing was that ponies already had a force that controlled their lives, they called it destiny. They got told of their destiny sometime between the ages of six and twelve with a mark on their butt that let everypony know what they were all about at a glance. Humans just slapped a face on the thing before saying they couldn’t actually show you God’s face or agree on how many eyes it had. But, turning a nebulous concept that ponies just had to accept and work with into a creature that existed on a higher plane made it a lot easier to blame someone when things went bad instead of just learning to deal with it and move on. Which was why when Sunset needed something to direct her anger towards, the ragged cross that sat at the back of the big room with all the benches looked like a very tempting target. Kind of like a big X turned on its side. With human footsteps being so light, it was the sound of the squeaky door that alerted Sunset to someone coming into the room. She looked over and saw Lilly looking around before a bit of disappointment crossed her face. It was gone a second later, though. “Sunset. I was hoping Asta had come home.” “Do you think he’s going to do something stupid?” Sunset asked bluntly as she sat down. Lilly walked up and rested her arm on the back of the bench across from where Sunset was. “I don’t know,” she said after a long pause. “He’s always taken his lack of magic in stride-” “Because he always thought once he got a little book, everything would get better. But it didn’t! And now there’s no light at the end of the tunnel,” Sunset grumbled in a harsher tone than she meant to. Which made her blush and looked away from the other woman. “Sorry.” After a few seconds of silence, Sister Lilly softly asked a question. “Can something be done about it?” The question got Sunset to look back at the nun in confusion. “What can I do?” “I’m not blind, Sunset,” Sister Lilly told her gently. “I’ve seen you use nearly half a dozen different types of magic since you got here with an unheard level of mana control. The day you fixed the roof and helped in the garden, I wrote another Sister that lives in a small town I used to study at about you. She used to be a magic knight and still has connections to numerous squads. Including a captain, in fact. After reading about you, she told me about suspected experiments on children in the Diamond Kingdom involving trying to give someone more than one element. And there are other things, like stories of bandits that extract the mana from kids in ways that leave them magically crippled, barely able to produce mana at all.” Sunset snorted. But internally, she filed the explanation away for later should someone ask about her magic. Although, she would probably need a bit more information if she hoped to fake something like that when it came to an actual conversation. “So, you think I’m an escaped lab rat or something?” A hand touched Sunset’s shoulder and she looked back up to the nun. “No. I think you are a wonderful young lady, with an incredible talent and kind heart to match. But...do you know of anything that might help Asta because of your...experiences?” “...no.” It was almost sunset as Yuno stood with his back up against a wall, looking at his newest acquisition. The four leaf clover grimoire. A sign of good luck and a special destiny. With it, Yuno knew that his goal of becoming the Wizard King was actually a possibility, rather than just some empty words spoken by a child that his parents hadn’t even bothered keeping. So why do I feel so miserable about having it? Yuno asked himself as he stood in a decaying entrance to an old private garden that had been falling apart since before he had been born. Asta had his forests, but Yuno tended to find privacy in the ruins that had been left behind by the people who lived in the area when the Clover Kingdom was young. Or maybe from before it even existed. “So just what are you going to do about this, then?” Yuno reached up and touched the cheek that was still throbbing from where Sunset slapped him when he gave his answer to the question. Not everyone can be special, he told himself again. If wasn’t his fault that Asta had drawn the bad lot in life. He had secretly admired the boy a little bit. Because if their situation had been reversed, Yuno knew that he never would have found the strength to push himself forward while everyone around him did it with such ease. Life wasn’t fair. That had always been the case for the two of them. A lesson he had learned year after year of sleeping in one room with half a dozen other people, barely eating enough to stay fed, freezing in the Winter, sweltering in the Summer, having to wear clothes that barely fit. So when one of them got a break that the other didn’t, it all just fell apart? How did that make sense? Asta wasn’t even angry at him! So why did he feel this way when there was no reason to? The crunch of long dead leaves that no one bothered to clean up underfoot had Yuno turn away from the garden’s entrance to see two of the boys from the entrance ceremony walking towards him. One was the local lord’s son, while the other was the child of the mayor from the next town over, where the local lord stayed. While the boy with the long blonde hair was pretty much the bottom of the barrel when it came to nobility since his lands were out in the middle of the Forsaken Zone of the Clover Kingdom, it still made him stand head and shoulders above everyone else as far as anyone important was concerned. Despite how the boy’s family line had bred with commoners to the point where the only thing noble about him was the title itself. Yuno had such little contact with the other boy, he couldn’t even remember the guy’s name. I think it starts with an L, he told himself. The other town’s mayor’s son...Yuno had no idea what his name even began with. He was just a goon for L...something. Not wanting to put up with whatever they were going to try and sell him on at the moment, Yuno tried to end things diplomatically. “If you're lost, turn around and take a right, then start walking until you get to the next village. I’m pretty sure you can find your way home from there,” he said before glancing at the two walls that flanked him thanks to some sort of ancient eccentric designer that wanted the entrance to their private estate to look like it was down a dark alley. “You little bastard!” L-something yelled at Yuno. “You think just because you have a four leaf, that you’re better than me?” Yuno frowned at the young man. He really wasn’t in the mood for this. “No, I think I’m better than you because I’ve heard all the stories about how you like to use what little influence you have to make everyone else around you miserable to compensate for the fact that you’re stuck out here in the middle of nowhere like everyone else, but have enough to get by without working for it. So you automatically think you deserve better than what you have.” Like any generic spoiled brat. “HOW DARE YOU!” L-Something yelled while his goon started to back away from the raging noble. “I’m going to burn off every inch of your skin and leave you just alive enough to watch me turn that precious grimoire of yours to ash!” Beside L-Something, Goon just got more nervous. “H-Hey, is that really a good idea?” L-Something glared at Goon. “Shut up! We were supposed to be the stars of the stars of the show today,” he spat. “But then this dirty little commoner has to show up and ruin it, getting all the fame and glory.” As the summation of the days events resounded in his ears, Yuno felt his anger build until something in his mind clicked into place. He wasn’t mad at the noble, at least, the spoiled brat wasn’t at the core of his anger. “Do you honestly think I’m happy about this right now?” he asked L-Something in a low voice. “Yes, I got a four leaf clover. But my brother, the boy you saw today, the kid who everyone laughed at, he got nothing. And it’s next to impossible to be happy when you get something that just can’t be shared with the people you care about. So go throw your little temper tantrum somewhere else, because I’m not in the mood to hear about how a brat who has everything he could ever need cry about how he didn’t get one little thing extra that he just wanted.” “SHUT UP YOU DIRTY URCHIN! I’LL MAKE YOU PAY FOR LOOKING DOWN ON ME!” the noble screamed as he opened his red book to have it surrounded by a blazing aura of magic. A dozen different discussions with Sunset Yuno had over the past year ran through the boys mind as flames shot out of the fire grimoire to speed along the ground towards him. Although Sunset never actually taught Yuno any spells, she did tend to ramble on about magic itself. And Yuno made sure to listen to every word she ever said on the subject. The spell coming at him, if it could even be called that, was just a mass of flaming mana heading in a single direction. It wasn’t condensed into a single point or forced into a construct, like Yuno had seen with Sister Lilly’s ‘Holy Fist of Love’ water magic that she inadvertently slapped Asta around with whenever the boy wouldn’t stop asking her to marry him. Meaning that the core of the spell could be easily broken apart. So, Yuno moved his hand in a circular motion as he sent out his mana and twisted it to form a tornado at the center of the flames that simply sucked in the spell and sent it skyward, where they dispersed high up enough the embers were out long before they got anywhere near the ground. As soon as the two bullies were in sight again, Yuno frowned while L-Something just stammered. “H-He did that without even using his grimoire?” the noble sked before looking over at Goon. “You...get him!” “Are you crazy?” While the two boys argued amongst themselves, Yuno found himself at a loss about what to do. Keeping himself in one piece was well and fine, but counterattacking the local noble would be a big problem when it got back to the authorities. It was a sad fact Yuno had learned over the course of his life: people with money or a Lord in front of their name could literally beat a girl to death in the middle of the street without any repercussions, while people like him would be arrested for simply defending themselves against attempted murderers. However, that point became moot a moment later with the walls around them rumbled and chains with spikes on the end shot out to wrap around both of the boys before dragging them back to hold them against the wall. “Now now, boys, we can’t have you go and destroying such a valuable grimoire,” a man in a hood said as he walked into the dark pseudo-alley where he had just pinned two children up against a wall while the third stood with his back up against what might as well have been a dead end. “Do you have any idea how much money something like that would be to a collector?” Yuno frowned at the man in the hood as he removed it to let a wave of long, dark hair fall down to his shoulders while three large masses of it came down his face, past his hawkish nose to reach his chin. Some of the chains he had summoned, or created from out of the wall were still free and floating around on the ends that had spikes as his blue book glowed with magic, floating in the air alongside him.  “You can’t be serious. Nobody can use a grimoire but the person it’s bound to. If you kill me, it will disappear,” he told the newcomer while looking at the chains warily. The guy looked to have a good amount of mana, and didn’t seem to be quite as foolish as the other two. His chains were physical objects, not just some outpouring of mana with an elemental attribute. Which meant Yuno would have to sever them with a windblade. Which...he wasn’t sure if he could do. As if fighting Earth with Wind wasn’t bad enough, magical metal was a very different thing than the logs he usually used such techniques on to chop firewood. Maybe I should have listened to Asta and tried to blow away a few boulders when we were growing up. “True. But when they find some commoner nobody that got a big head has killed the local lord and his best friend,” the stranger went on. “Nobody’s going to care where his book went as he is hauled off to stand trial and sent to jail.” ...crap, Yuno thought to himself as he opened his grimoire to let it float in front of him and glanced over at the struggling teens that had just been told they were about to be murdered. Should I run away? Wind magic was one of the fastest speed enhancing elements, also enabling its user to fly on just mana control alone. And since the man in front of him wasn’t a light user, there was no way he could keep pace with Yuno. Of course, that would mean leaving the boys to die. The boys who just tried to kill him. Or, maim, at least. Keep him talking, Yuno told himself as he tried to think of a solution. “You don’t really think some nobody bandit can take a four leaf grimoire, do you?” he asked before glancing down at his book’s open page. Towering Tornado, he wasn’t even sure what it did! The stranger chuckled. “You may have the four leaf, but you’re still just a baby when it comes to magic, and I’m the man they used to call Chain Magic Revchi before I was expelled from the magic knights. Which means I know when a child is trying to play for time!” he shouted before half a dozen chains shot up from the ground. With no command to his grimoire, there was no delay, no time to doge.  The chains wrapped around Yuno’s arms and pinned them to his chest before one of the chains behind Revchi shot forward to wrap around Yuno’s grimoire and pull it back towards the former magic knight. But with his hands still free, Yuno opened them up to send out a blast of wind. At least, he tried to. But, nothing happened. As he simply stood there staring at the failure of his magic, Revchi grinned back at him. “By the way, my chains also drain the mana from anyone they grab a hold of, preventing them from using magic. Sorry, but it looks like your luck has just run out,” he said before grabbing the green book and holding up. “Luck, four leaf clover, get it?” “Jokes aren’t funny when you have to explain them, moron,” Yuno deadpanned. Then, the criminal’s eyes lowered a bit to look at the blue stone hanging from Yuno’s necklace. “You know, I bet that I could get a good price for that little bobble of yours too.” Wait a minute, Yuno thought as the thief began to walk towards him. This was his chance to turn things around. If Revchi got close enough to steal Yuno’s necklace, then he would be in range for a counterattack. While Yuno’s arms were chained down, his legs were still free. A hard blow to the right area on Revchi’s body could very well cause him to pass out. Which would free everyone he had chained up. Hopefully. Closer. Just get a little bit closer, he prayed while getting ready to strike. “HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!” Yuno grit his teeth as he kept himself from groaning. In the past few hours since he had gotten his grimoire, he had been chewed out and slapped by his know-it-all not-sister, attacked by two bullies, then chained down by a former magic knight that just happened to have been in a middle of nowhere town to see him get a four leaf clover grimoire. Then, just when Yuno thought he had a way out of this whole mess, the completely wrong person came bounding over the garden wall to make Revchi stop moving a good foot outside of kicking range. It was then that Yuno had a revelation: His four leaf clover’s luck was obviously defective. “Hey Yuno!” Asta said as he tried to strike a cool pose and grinned at the taller boy. “A little bird told me you were in trouble!” And...shouldn’t she have gone to get Sunset then? Yuno wondered. “Why do I have to peal the potatoes?” Nash demanded as Sunset stood over him with a frown on her face and her arms crossed under her breasts as he sat in the basement of the church, doing cooking chores. “Because I heard you talking to the others, making fun of Asta,” she told him evenly. Nash glared back at her for a moment before speaking. “But he’s a joke!” the boy declared. “He’s loud, stupid and annoying! He keeps saying he’s going to be Wizard King when he doesn’t have a bit of magic and now, he doesn’t even have a grimoire! He’s never going to amount to anything!” “Probably,” Sunset told him. “But then again, neither are you. The only real difference between the two of you, Nash, is that Asta is actually trying to help people, trying to make their lives better. But I’ll take him any day of the week over a little shit like you that thinks because he’s stuck in this toilet of a little village that he has to try and tear everyone else down as well. No, wait...that’s the real difference between him and you, Nash. He makes the world a brighter place when he’s in it and you make the world a brighter place when you’re not.” Secre sat on the stone fence, feeling rather conflicted as events played out below. When Asta had arrived to try and rescue Yuno from the former magic knight, things hand gone about as well as could be expected. The knight laughed a little at the magicless boy, got attacked by Asta, and chained the boy up with his magic before pulling him up against the wall in a sitting position with chains wrapped around his waist. He didn’t even bother to restrain Asta’s arms, despite the boy’s freakishly muscular physique at just fifteen years of age. “This isn’t over,” Asta growled as the shaper ends of Revichi’s magic cut at him on his legs. “I’m not done yet! Because I’m going to be the Wizard Ki-ugh!” Revchi snorted as his bonds constructed around the Asta’s stomach, stopping the child’s little mantra that was probably being said to reaffirm his courage. “Wizard King? Are you kidding me?” he asked as he walked towards the boy. What should I do? Secre asked herself as she looked down on the scene below. Getting help would take too long. Interfering was...suicidal. She might be able to do something like peck out one of the former knight's eyes, but then she’d be killed. And she couldn’t afford to die. She was the only one that knew of the threat against the entire world just waiting in the winds. But just staying and watching the boys get killed was pure agony. This is what happens when you get attached to people, the bird told herself. She had managed to hang onto her sanity for five hundred years by doing her duty. Then, one stupid little horse girl with a sun on her butt shows up and she throws it all away for a tiny hope that maybe, she could see the man she loved again. A poet some five hundred years ago had once said that love was the death of duty. Secre would have liked to peck his eyes out of the man wasn’t long dead. “Let me tell you something, boy,” Revchi said before he stepped on Asta’s shoulder. “My chains allow me to measure the mana a person has. And you, have zero. That’s why you never got a grimoire, and never will. You’re never gong to be anything, because you’re some kind of freak.” Secre winced as she watched the fight practically drain out of Asta at the undeniable revelation, the tension in his muscles relax as he went from fighting back against his binings to just..lying there against the wall. Revchi even walked right up to where he was in reach and began kicking him, then stepping on the boy’s shoulder as he laughed. “You? Become the Wizard King? That’s the best joke I’ve heard my entire life! I bet your genius friend over there has been getting a good laugh out of you since the day you met!” Then, Secre watched Asta surrender to absolute despair. He simply lowered his head, shutting himself off from the world as it became too much for him to bear. Revchi probably could have cut off an ear and Asta wouldn’t have even cared to respond. “HEY!” Yuno shouted, getting the assailent’s attention. “You shut your mouth you stinking failure of a magic knight! And Asta, it’s true. You will never be the Wizard King. Because that’s what I’ll be doing! AS LONG AS YOU JUST LAY DOWN THERE AND DIE LIKE A TOTAL LOSER! Now get up idiot! I thought you were supposed to be my rival!” Distracted by Yuno’s speech, Revchi didn’t notice Asta’s hand slowly moving up until it grabbed onto the man’s leg, just above where it met his ankle. “You...get off of me!” the boy he was practically standing on yelled before pushing the man backwards and looking to the other teen. “Thanks for the pep talk, Yuno.” Yuno groaned. “Asta, you could have tried breaking his leg or something when he was still in your grasp, you know.” “Hey!” Asta snapped back at him. “Don’t tell the future Wizard King how to fight! I’LL DESTROY THIS GUY IN A SECOND!” Not unless you can pull a miracle out of your butt, Secre thought to herself in annoyance as Asta struggled against the chains binding him. For brief shining second, they had a chance to turn everything around. And now, the boys were once again, going to die. It was at that time a miracle occurred. But it had nothing to do with God. The air around the alleyway stirred as the area became infused with an unholy mana. For a brief second, the sky darkened as all light seemed to be sucked away inside as the ground rumbled. Then, a book pushed itself out of the dirty ground to float in the air in front of Asta as it opened up to reveal a different kind of arcane script than the rest of the grimoires were written in. “What is going on?” Revchi demanded. “Where did that thing even come from?” Secre watched as a large, black sword with a blade that was as long as Asta was tall slowly rose from the book to fall over and cut through the chains holding Asta like they weren’t even there. Because as soon as the sword touched them, they were destroyed at the point of contact. An anti-magic sword, she told herself before looking back to Asta. It was probably just her imagination, but for a moment, the transformed wizard could almost swear that she saw the boy’s shadow morph into a twisted reflection of a human being, with wings sprouting out its back. Was it here the whole time, just sitting beneath the battlefield where Licht dropped it? Secre wondered. Had it just been waiting for someone that was comparable to come along? Or was it something else Asta had that called out to the dark grimoire? Unable to stop herself, the bird’s eyes moved down to the dirty grimoire. She couldn’t actually see the clover on its cover this time around, but her memory wiped away the grime that hid it as a saying just barely younger than she was played in her mind. One that she almost repeated just this morning. Faith, Hope, and Love, are hidden in each leaf of the clover. Within the fourth, Good Luck. And inside the fifth, dwells the Devil. “But that’s impossible!” Renchi shouted. “You don’t have any magic! SO HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY HAVE A GRIMOIRE!” “Because, it looks like not giving up,” Asta said as he lifted a sword that weighed as much as he did before legs toned from years of training launched him at the mage, whose defenses were sliced apart by a weapon wielding magic’s unnatural enemy. “IS MY MAGIC!” As Asta struck the mage with the blade that was so worn it broke bones as it knocked him into the far wall rather than cut the man in half, the rest of the chains vanished and Yuno stumbled forward while the other two boys just dropped to the ground. But, Secre knew it wasn’t over yet. She prepared to take flight and...go where? The emergence of a devil would most likely spell the end of the kingdom. She needed to get to the Wizard King so he could rally the Knights. Get the entire nation on alert! She needed to fly down and get Yuno out of there, or at least snatch up his necklace. The boy had no idea just how important it was. She needed to...stand there as Asta touched the sword to the open book and watch it get drawn back into the demonic grimoire without any side effects whatsoever?  Secre blinked. There was no darkness creeping up his skin, no red eyes, no world-ending catastrophe. Just an overly energetic boy going, “hey Yuno, check it out! I got a grimoire! It’s pretty dirty and kind of smells, but it’s mine!” What in the world is going on? Secre asked herself as the boy that should have been rampaging across the countryside at this point was jumping up and down while holding a five-hundred year old tome that at one time belonged to her master’s best friend. It was well past time Sunset should have been asleep as she sat on the church’s roof, after being pecked awake by Secre and told to come outside so they could talk. The bird had told her of what had occurred outside the old ruin, not that she needed to since Asta hadn’t shut up about it since he got home and the whole town was talking about the arrest of a former magic knight. But she had also gone into details that the boys didn’t know, like where the book came from and how five leaf clovers were made. With the full moon, Sunset could still see the head of the demon in the distance and frowned. “I thought that grimoires were supposed to disappear when their owners die.” “That book was touched by the denizens of the netherworld. It breaks the normal laws of magic.”  Secre replied. “But I didn’t just wake you up to talk about history, I want to know how something like this could even happen!” Sunset raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think I know?” “Because you’re a fucking unicorn!” the anti-bird tweeted loudly. “You’re supposed to be knowledgeable about these things and what to do!”  With Secre being so belligerent, Sunset laid back against the roof and looked up at the sky as she thought about everything she had been told for three whole seconds. “Destiny. And nothing.” “...what?” the bird asked as she cocked her head. “Listen. Somebody decided to leave Asta here fifteen years ago, the one place where he might run into that book. Then, the kid without magic that gets made fun of every day of his life exercises and builds his body up to the point where he can swing a two-hundred pound sword around, and after failing to get a magic book from the tower, he goes to the one place in the village where it was buried under five-hundred years of dirt to find it right when he needs to, and turns out to be immune to being taken over, or whatever?” Sunset surmised. “Yeah, even if he wasn’t my friend, I wouldn’t dare touch something that convoluted set of circumstances had spawned.” Maybe if there was somebody obviously pulling the strings behind it all, but since there wasn’t, Sunset was fine with letting it lay as is. “Congratulations, you lucked out. The big bad monster you’ve been worrying about for five-hundred years just ended getting partnered up with the one kid in the world he can’t turn into a meat puppet. Go...eat a worm, or something.” Secre didn’t give up. “He’s still dangerous!” With her anger rising and not enough sleep, Sunset felt her patience that had been honed by having to deal with brats all day for a year slipping. “Well it’s a good thing we’re going to be watching that book for another six months before we go to the capital to take the Magic Knight Exams!” she said before her eyes narrowed. “Or are you actually being stupid enough to suggest I do something about Asta?” “Of course not. I knew the boy long before you did, girl,” Secre told her before she landed and turned to look at the giant skull in the distance. “But, it looks like well have to go hunting for those stones after all. Something has been set into motion, and I have no intention of not having something in reserve for when we need it.” Sunset snorted and got ready to jump off the roof. “Whatever, paranoid old bird. I’m going back to bed.”