Little is remembered by historians of Star Swirl the Bearded's time in Cambridle. Primarily, this is because at this time the work of chroniclers was naturally dominated by the strife of the Great Griffon War. However, a few historical texts exist which mention the appearance of the young unicorn, stating that “Star Swirl's talent was clear from a young age, and the young stallion made a lasting impression on those around him,” though one of his principal tutors, Professor Check Mate, described him as “a troubled young colt.”

When Star Swirl's student Clover the Clever wrote her own definitive work on the life of the great wizard she was able to locate Check Mate's personal documents and found that the “troubled young colt” quote was the only safe part of a long section filled with considerably more colorful language. Clover included choice passages in the appendices of her work, and would occasionally find them useful in her own dealings with Princess Platinum.

What is known however is that Star Swirl's grades were rarely the highest awarded in his classes. Exactly why is unknown, as it was well-understood that even from a young age his insights into the operations of magic were astounding.

– – –

“...And as we are just about out of time, let me conclude,” Professor Ivory Tower, a white unicorn mare with a grey mane kept firmly disciplined at a precise length that never altered, gestured to the complex mathemagical equations written on the chalkboard. “These are the laws of Magical Relativity. Be sure to study them for next week. Understanding these equations is essential to properly constructing a temporal pocket, the most basic technique of chronomancy.” She turned from the chalkboard to face the fifteen unicorn students who made up the class. “Any questions?”

She was met with silence, except for some soft snores. Everypony turned to glance at the source of the disturbance, lying slumped over a bench at the back of the room. She sighed. “Does anypony other than Star Swirl have any questions?” They shook their heads.

Ivory Tower ended the lecture and returned to her office, muttering to herself. Later that day, at that week's faculty meeting, she would complain to the other senior staff that this was the third time in a row Star Swirl had slept through her class. The others would in turn respond that he slept through theirs as well, and that when he was awake he was dismissive of anything they had to teach him. Then they would marvel and rage that Star Swirl still handed in work that demonstrated a complete understanding of the subject in question, although with a staggering disregard for the proper way to structure a paper or how to properly write citations. This is how things had gone for the entire first year of his studies.

“Why is he even here?” Ivory Tower had often wondered. “Luna knows he's not learning anything from us. He doesn't even pretend to listen to anything we have to tell him.”

“If it were only his own education he was ruining I would not feel so indignant,*” said Professor Check Mate, a massive brown unicorn stallion, brown and bald, his voice a deep rumbling, “but he is disrupting the environment for everypony around him.”

“It can't be helped,” said Professor Incisive Commentary, the eldest of the entire faculty, a skinny beige bespectacled stallion with a long goatee, clad in an old-fashioned green robe and hat. “The young chap is lacking in forethought, but there's no malice in him.” The faculty nodded. They all knew this because they had searched hard for any reason to punish him, and had come up empty. The precedent for student mischief going unpunished, it seemed, was extremely comprehensive and involved each member of the faculty personally. “It behooves us to try to show him the better way.”

“I heard from my friend in Trotsford the other day,” one of them said. “It seems Harold Trotter committed sixteen expulsion-worthy offenses in his first year.”

“They rewrote the rulebook to add in exceptions for everything just for him, because he's so wonderful. Then they gave him and his roommate medals.”

“Sooner or later,” Check Mate said, “something is going to have to be done.”

– – –

Turner's alarm clock went off with the baying of the Library Hounds, as it did every morning, and the tan earth pony stallion leapt out of bed with ease and vigor which was sure to infuriate anypony who saw it. After making his bed and doing his early-morning stretches, he went out to the common room and set about making his breakfast.

It was just as he took the first sip of his morning tea that he noticed that the door to Star Swirl's room was open, and inside the unicorn was sitting at his desk.

Star Swirl turned at the sound, and looked out the window. “Oh,” he said. “So it is.”

Star Swirl's room had quickly turned into a huge mess. While this was traditional in all student societies across the universe, Star Swirl's mess was slightly different: he had very little in the way of dirty clothes and old food, and very much in the way of stacks of paper and parchment, vast quantities of ink-bottles, and strange homemade patchwork astronomical instruments, all of which formed an artificial landscape through which paths had formed that any traveller in the room had to adhere to, or else risk falling prey to wild beasts.

Turner also suspected the room had somehow grown larger since the unicorn moved in, and wondered if the extra space had come out of his own room or a neighbour's.

“It's hard to study the stars otherwise,” Star Swirl said. “I tried looking up from the bottom of a deep well. Doesn't work.” He yawned. “Doesn't matter, I'll get my sleep later.”

Turner took a step inside the room, and barely avoided knocking over a half-full ink bottle. “I'm curious, Star Swirl. How exactly do you get all this ink? Because I'm pretty sure you have no money.”

“I have my methods,” Star Swirl answered. “You know they've doubled the price over the past year? Something about 'supplied demand'. Blackguards. I might not have enough to finish this treatise, now.” A thought seemed to strike him, and he looked up at his roommate. “You still live here.”

“I completed my degree in physics,” Turner said. “but I'm going to try for a doctorate in material sciences. I always wanted to be a doctor.” He stared up at the ceiling wistfully for a second. “Also I want to stay close to Ginny.”

Turner grinned to see Star Swirl's shudder at the mention of her name. Ginny was possibly the only pony in Cambridle who scared the young unicorn. “Which reminds me,,” Turner continued, “there was a young mare here yesterday afternoon.”

“Yellow coat, blueish mane, flowers and shears cutie mark? She was looking for you. You were out. Something about going out to eat.”

Turner rolled his eyes. “Yes, Star Swirl, some ponies are actually interested in spending time, with you, doing enjoyable things. You should think about giving it a try sometime.”

“I did,” Star Swirl said. “Every time I agree to spend time with somepony they get in the way of my work for a week, and then I never hear from them again. The predictability gets a bit grating in the long run. I think I'll pass, thanks.”

Turner frowned, nodded, and headed back to his breakfast, wondering how to break the rejection the next time flowers-and-shears came knocking. The numbers of curious mares, and occasional young stallions, looking to get close to Star Swirl had dropped off steadily as the year had gone by, and everypony had gotten their chances to see him in class. Still, Turner could understand it, sort of. Star Swirl had an air of mystery about him, a certain amount of coltish charm and good looks, and of course had quickly passed into Cambridle legend as a genius wizard who had appeared as suddenly as a bolt of lightning. The fact that he was younger than every other student at Cambridle only seemed to distinguish him further. But then the lucky few who had managed to seize his attention found themselves dealing with his actual behavior...

None of them had stuck around for long afterwards. A few brave souls had tried studying with him in the dorm: they had left in tears, fallen behind in their studies, and left Cambridle entirely soon afterwards. And the queue moved one step forward and tried again... And Turner was the one who had to answer the door each time.

– – –

"Burnt feathers, I'm late..." Blue horn muttered to himself as he galloped down the street towards his first class of the day. He dodged and leapt the busy street, ignoring the angry cries behind him, and couldn't help but smile. Why is getting yelled at by commoners so fun? Just imagine what Uncle would do. His smile faded at the thought of his uncle. Well, he'd burn down all of Cambridle. But he'd do that anyway.

He kept running, exhilirating in the feeling of being just another unicorn in a town almost entirely made up of stickheads, when the empty space in front of him suddenly wasn't, and he toppled over and smashed into the cobblestones. He groaned, and clambered back onto his hooves, and looked back to see what had tripped him. There was still nothing there, but he heard the sound of another pony groaning in pain. Blue Horn grabbed a stick from the gutter with his magic and poked the thin air until he found the obstruction, which said "Hey! Knock it off!"

A billow of magic passed over it, revealing the fallen body of Star Swirl. "Oh," Blue Horn muttered. "It's you."

Star Swirl grunted in response, and stood up. "Pay attention to where you're going, will you?"

Blue Horn stared at him. "Were you just practicing an invisibility spell in the middle of a crowded street?"

"Of course,” Star Swirl answered, brushing dust off his robe. “How else would I know if it's working?"

Blue Horn gritted his teeth. "You know, Star Swirl, don't listen to any of the rumours about you. The truth is you're actually an idiot. Are you going to History of Spellcraft?"

"Five minutes ago," Blue Horn said, looking at the Old Hall clock tower in the distance. "Tartarus. I'm leaving."

He had been curious about the young talent, at first. When he first arrived in Cambridle, a strange city far from his home, a city filled with more unicorns than he had known existed, where he could wander the streets and not draw any attention at all. He remembered clearly the first time he heard two other students talking about the arrival of a young unicorn outcast from distant lands, a unicorn born of what had been unmixed earth pony stock for as long as anypony knew. So I didn't react all that well. I didn't hurt them seriously before they broke us apart. How was I supposed to know it wasn't me they were talking about? And in such crude and insulting terms... It was almost like listening to Uncle. He shook his head at the thought of the students casually talking about 'mud ponies' and 'half-breeds' as he entered the building and made for the Hind-Gazing Chamber, a name that earned it no small amount of snickering from the more juvenile students. They could have called it the 'Facing History Chamber', or a million other things, but no.

Blue Horn had approached the younger colt, curious to see his reflection from the opposite end of Ponydom, and had tried to speak to him. When they finally put out the fire, Cambridle learned that it now had a pair of overachieving young unicorns Tartarus-bent on one-upping one another in every way they could manage.

Blue Horn snuck into the class quietly, and managed to not rouse the ire of Professor Incisive Commentary. The skinny, soft-spoken senior wizard only continued speaking at length about the different categories of magic and how they were discovered and codified in ancient times. Blue Horn snuck down the rows and sat down beside a mare, who moved her things aside to make room for him.

The class went on for another five minutes when the door opened and Star Swirl burst in, silencing the professor for a moment. The ancient, bespectacled stallion only glanced briefly at the colt before continuing, but several of the students threw annoyed glances his way. Blue Horn caught Star Swirl's eyes for a second, and they both glared at each other before Star Swirl huffed, and found himself a seat alone on the opposite end of the room.

– – –

Star Swirl stared at the shimmering aurora. It was like the Northern Lights he had seen sometimes, on winter nights in Edinspur, but instead of hanging distant in the sky, it was held up just a few feet in front of his eyes. It hung and danced in the air before him, breathing with constantly shifting colors, not limited either to the colors pony eyes could see, but passed through shades Star Swirl could not describe, much less name.

“It is called the Weave,” Princess Luna said, as she bent and shifted a strand of the magical energy for Star Swirl to see. The landscape around them was dark and bare, and they could see the line of the horizon unbroken around them. “Arcane energies like this flow through the earth and the skies, and even here, in the Dreamlands.” She stretched it out with a thought, and brought it near. “Do you see how it is made up of countless tendrils, like hairs of mane?” Star Swirl looked closely, and nodded. From even a short distance it seemed as whole and unvaried as a cloud, but the closer he looked the more detail emerged: countless threads, impossibly thin, looking like they were just about to melt into one another but remaining unique. “With a gentle magical grip, these threads can be separated from the Weave,” she gently teased out a number of fine strands of magical energy, and began tying them together into an intricate pattern. “Then, these threads can be woven or tied together into useful shapes and structures.”

She presented her creation: a translucent magical egg, within which a dense smoke of power churned and roiled. Star Swirl could only stare at it with wide eyes.

For the next half hour, Star Swirl attempted to coax out a thread, with Luna watching and advising, until finally the colt grinned triumphantly at a single thread of magic that curled and uncurled lazily in his grip.

Fifteen minutes after that, Star Swirl was shifting the threads with ease. “I can probably come up with a more effective method for doing this,” he said under his breath.

“Be warned that I have chosen a spot where the Weave is pliable,” Princess Luna chided, but with a smile. “In the waking world it will not come as easily, or as bountifully.” She looked around at the empty landscape. “That is enough for now. How are your studies otherwise? Are you getting along with the other students?”

“They waste my time,” Star Swirl said bluntly. Luna looked saddened and surprised to hear this, but before she could say anything he continued. “It doesn't matter. I'm here for the work, not for drunken revelry. If the others don't like me, they can argue with my results.”

“I see...” Luna said slowly. “Is there anything else you want to talk about? Are you having any difficulties?”

“It runs out so quickly!” Star Swirl said nervously. “I try to make it last, but there's so much to write down. It's astonishing how wrong ponies are, about everything. I need to show them!”

“Perhaps you should confine yourself to a specialized field, to begin with,” Luna said, ignoring the horror Star Swirl's face displayed at the notion. “But I'll see what I can do. This is coming out of my personal funds, you realize. I trust you to be reasonable, Star Swirl.”

“Thank you, Luna!” Star Swirl bowed, breathless with gratitude, his hooves tapping with exhiliration.

Star Swirl quickly composed himself. “If you don't mind my asking, Luna, how are you? Have you learned anything more about the... thing?”

“It goes... slowly,” she said quietly. She gestured with a hoof, and the two of them began to walk across the desolate landscape towards a hill that had appeared in the distance. “The War leaves little room for concern for anything else.”

Star Swirl bit his lip, and looked up at her unhappily. “Am I taking up too much of your time with these lessons? Am I bothering you?”

“No, no,” Luna waved a hoof. “I am happy for these lessons. It has been too long since last I taught somepony the Arts. Since we are in the Dreamlands, I need not travel from Everhold, and while we work, I can also keep an eye on the state of the Dreamlands themselves. Even as we speak, part of my mind is roaming far and wide.” Her voice turned somber and cold as they walked up the path to the top of the hill. “The Dreamlands are vast, and I alone can walk them freely. I am entrusted to keep them safe from things that would prey on sleeping minds... but I cannot be everywhere. Sometimes I think I hear a faint weeping on the wind, a distant suffering dreamer that I cannot locate when I search for them.” She shook her head sadly. “The horrors of the war sweep across the night-time rest of everypony to the south. You are most fortunate to be so distant. I must dedicate my waking hours to the War, and I fear time is running out on everything else.”

– – –

Star Swirl's second year passed much as his first, except that as he became more familiar with academic standards he found new and innovative ways to disregard them.

"What do you mean 'that's not true'?" Professor Check Mate demanded. "It is the Law of Thaumic Dissipation! It is embedded in the fabric of the universe itself! Everypony who has ever tried to disprove it has failed.*"

*: The last time somepony tried was fifty years previously. Their competing theory, while interesting, only functioned if you assumed a zero-dimensional universe.

"Well, I went and looked," Star Swirl said, "and it didn't look anything like that."

"The Law of Thaumic Dissipation is an absolute mathematical fact! It is not something that you can 'go look at'!"

"And yet I did," Star Swirl declared confidently. "I followed the background flow of magical energy to a nexus in the Dreamlands and made some calculations, and when the numbers ran up against the Marelin Constant, the output was 0.00005% higher than the Law of Thaumic Dissipation predicted. I checked it three times. There was no other interference in the numbers that could have caused it. Clearly the Law needs to be scrapped from the books."

"Celestia preserve me, he's a mystic," Check Mate muttered with wide eyes. "You want to rewrite four hundred years of magical science because of a dream you had?"

"Tell me, then," Check Mate continued, "if the Law of Thaumic Dissipation is false, how do you explain that the magic that builds upon it is, in fact, functional?"

Check Mate groaned loudly. Outside, the bell tower began to ring. "Once again half our time has been wasted on mister Swirl's delusions," he said. "We will try again next week—yes, miss Ruby?"

The mare lowered her hoof, glancing nervously around her. "So, should I disregard the Law of Thaumic Dissipation until more research is in?"

– – –

Across the Borderlands, the war raged. The Firemane Duchy was occupied by Griffon forces, and the once-prosperous Talon Plains was a barren vista of broken walls and flooded, muddy plains. Both sides had suffered casualties in the tens of thousands; emergency recruitment put every able-bodied pony in the Borderlands in uniform, while to the north young ponies were enticed with promises of glory and valor. Food and water, tools and supplies, were sucked up from everywhere and funneled to the Whiteblood Barony for the Margrave's approval.

– – –

"Have you heard this?" Turner asked his roommate. Turner was looking out the open window, listening to the town crier at the crossroads below.

"What is it?" Star Swirl asked, and came up beside the earth pony. Turner gestured for him to listen.

"Ink shortage sweeps across Braytannia!" the town crier yelled. "Authorities speak out against hoarding by selfish ponies! Rumours spread of vast stores of ink hidden in secret underground vaults by unnamed unicorn!"

“What an absolute prat,” Turner mumbled. “Some ponies just don't pay attention to the world around them at all. Right?” He turned to Star Swirl, and caught the unicorn's too-innocent look. “...Star Swirl?”

“No!” Star Swirl protested. “Only sixty-five percent of it.” He wilted under Turner's stare. "I need to finish my article about Thaumic Imp Theory. It's important work! Luna said it was okay."

"Star Swirl, we've talked about listening to the voice in your head," Turner said patiently. "Is it true that you have a secret underground vault?"

"No. It's just in my room. Incidentally, be warned that my room seems to be expanding. I'm not sure why it's doing that. I'm looking into it."

– – –

Throughout Star Swirl's third year the peace between him and everypony around him, tense at the best of times, grew more strained.

"Does everypony understand Hawk King's Isochronal Derivation?" Blue Horn asked, and the unicorns around the table shuffled their papers.

"I'm not sure why we're studying a griffon in the first place," a pale gray mare with a slim horn and an ashen white mane said. "We're at war with them for a reason."

"A reason," Blue Horn said under his breath, emphasizing the 'A'. Nopony heard him, but the table quickly broke out into a bitter exchange about the merits of the war, the free exchange of academic work, and the inherent suspiciousness of feathers. Blue Horn let it continue for a few minutes before shouting "enough!" and pounding the table for silence. "Colloqium! We are here to study, not to argue about politics. Does anypony understand the Isochronal Derivation? Or are you all allergic to feathers?"

The students looked around sheepishly. One mare raised a hoof. "I didn't get it, to be honest."

"Me neither," said another, and a chorus of nods, uh huh-s and me too-s moved over the table.

Everypony turned to look at him. Star Swirl had not spoken the entire time they had been meeting, and was reclining in his non-reclining chair, tipping it back and resting his hindlegs on the table.

Blue Horn rolled his eyes. “Well, if it's so easy then why don't you explain it?”

“The Isochronal Derivation,” Star Swirl said, “is the technique for turning a basic temporal pocket into one capable of fluid chronomantic interaction in tangible space. Within such a pocket, time is made malleable. A skilled practitioner of chronomancy can speed up or slow down the passage of time within the pocket, while an exceptional one can make leaps in time to make the contents of the pocket a few days older or younger.” He gave a heavy sigh like a withered old stallion despairing at his juniors.

"Not at all," he said. "I'm just trying to remember why I'm here. It may be the most difficult question I've encountered in Cambridle."

"Exams are approaching. The Hour of Reckoning. The professors conspire to undo us, and we do the same to them. What's hard to understand?"

"There shouldn't be any problem with the exams," Star Swirl waved a hoof dismissively. "I've already given you all everything you need to know in one sentence."

"Ah yes, the infamous Cambridle Universal Answer Code," Blue Horn turned to a chalkboard on the wall, which was covered in indecipherable writing. "A sentence that contains everything taught at the Academy in one. The one you had to invent a new language in order to write. That's very helpful."

"Two new languages," Star Swirl clarified. "One to express the sentence and one to translate it into something a pony mind is able to learn how to understand. Point is, it's all there. I've tried to teach it to you, but you don't listen!"

"Are you here to learn?" Blue Horn asked sharply. "Do you want to prepare for the exam or not? Because we are trying to prepare in a way us mere mortal ponies can comprehend. Is that too mundane for the great and powerful Star Swirl?"

"It's not my problem that you're all too busy arguing about the average IQ of griffons and pegasi to study properly," Star Swirl said, dropping his back legs to the floor. "I've learned everything this place has to teach me already. I've finished all the material for the seventh year! I don't know why they won't let me take those exams right now."

Groans filled the air and a dozen ponies rolled their eyes, facehoofed, or shook their heads in exasperation.

"Well, nopony's forcing you," Blue Horn said, not shifting his eyes away from Star Swirl for an instant. "The rest of us are going to prepare for the task we are actually going to be asked to do in our exams. If you want to do that, you're free to join us. If you'd rather chase fairies and will-o-the-wisps, feel free to leave."

– – –

“The test scores are dropping dangerously low this month,” Professor Ivory Tower said.

"Chaos and Cosmos, not you too," Check Mate said, his voice filled with disbelief.

The two of them sat alone high up in the administration building, preparing the instructions for the upcoming exams.

"Seriously, think about it," Ivory Tower said. "He's less than halfway through his study, and Cambridle is falling apart. The students can't work because he somehow gets all the ink from every new shipment that comes into town. He disrupts all his classes. He takes up all the faculty's time so we can't help the students who could actually be helped. He fills the minds of everypony around him with wild-eyed theories that somehow work for him but that break everypony else who tries to make heads or tails of them. Do you think Cambridle can stand another four years of this? But if we let him take them... I believe him when he says that he's already read through all the material. Have you spoken to the librarians about him? They say he's developed a way of reading only with the feel of his grip.” She let that sink in for a second. A practiced unicorn sorceror could hold a thousand books in their magical grip at once. “We could let him take the exams, give him straight Ds, send him off with a diploma that's just one giant asterisk."

"We do not reward students who disrupt the sacred task of enlightenment,*" Check Mate rumbled. "We may be altogether too forgiving of the unavoidable errors of judgement so common to youth, but some lines we simply do not cross!"

"What is more important," Ivory Tower said, "being sufficiently vindictive to one colt, or preserving the well-being of the entire university?"

The white mare got up from her seat. "I have to get going. Just think about it." She left Check Mate sitting there alone.

Unbelievable, he thought. Am I the only sane pony remaining in Cambridle? He gritted his teeth. This lunacy will destroy this university. If only there were some way I could halt this plummet... He looked down at the papers on the table before him.

– – –

“Your highness!” Professor Ivory Tower greeted the Princess of the Night as she alighted from the Lunar Chariot. The scholar bowed. “I am honored to welcome you to Cambridle.”

“Indeed,” Princess Luna answered. “We desired to overbear and witness the exams on this occasion. For too long have we had but a distant relationship to our school.”

“As you wish,” Ivory Tower said through a glued-on smile. “Though sending word of your plans a year in advance was perhaps a tad longer than necessary, but...”

“We wished to be certain that our arrival would not be,” Luna paused for just a split-second as she shot the professor a cold look that clearly stated that nothing had been forgotten, “an unpleasant surprise.”

“You yourself carry out practical exams, do you not? What is on the schedule for this evening?”

The others are going to owe me so much for agreeing to this. “Yes, your highness. I am doing the Chronomancy exams for third-years today.”

“Excellent,” Luna said, smiling. “We will observe them with you. Lead on.”

– – –

“Thank you for agreeing to this, Turner,” Star Swirl said. “None of the unicorn students would agree to assist me for my practical.”

“No problem,” Turner said happily, looking around the entrance chamber of the Old Hall. "Nice place, this. I've almost never been in the magic academy facilities. The material sciences building is all flat brick and experimental contraptions."

"It's the waiting that's worst," Star Swirl muttered, straightening out his ill-fitting student robes for the twentieth time as another pair of students were ushered out of the auditorium. A bored unicorn mare looked up from her book to watch them go. A few minutes passed before she looked up once again, seemingly nothing having changed, and said "You can go in now," to the two stallions.

"Finally," Star Swirl said and leapt up on his hooves. With Turner behind him, he strode into the great auditorium with his head held high, an easy smile on his lips and his eyes filled with confidence. His smile widened to a grin when he saw the Princess of the Night herself sitting alongside his teachers, smiling back at him.

Star Swirl descended the stairs to the stage at the bottom, turned to face the observers, and bowed.

"Mister Star Swirl," Professor Ivory Tower said, "taking his practical third-year Chronomancy exam. Presiding over this exam are myself, Professor Ivory Tower, and my colleagues, Professor Check Mate and Professor the Right Honorable Judge Learned Horn. In addition, this exam will be audited by her Royal Highness Princess Luna Noctis."

Luna nodded. "I am here only to observe," she said, smiling. "I will not be involved in determining your grade in any fashion. Please do not be nervous at my presence."

"Your highness, Professors," Star Swirl said. "I am ready, and I will be assisted, as directed, by mister Turner." Turner waved a hoof, smiling happily.

"Here is your assignment," Check Mate said in his characteristic deep rumble, and levitated a sealed envelope down to Star Swirl, who took it in his own grip. He broke the seal and began to read. "Begin when you are ready."

Star Swirl glanced briefly over the instructions: "Construct a three-dimensional temporal pocket capable of fluid chronomantic interaction centered on your assistant to these specifications," followed by a series of esoteric arcane equations. "Simple enough," he said confidently, and lit up his horn.

Check Mate leaned forward, watching intently. His forelegs rested on the table in front of him, his hooves meeting in position to conceal his smug smile. Not paying attention, he thought to himself. Arrogant, reckless foal. Missed the transposed variables. Now watch your sphere fizzle out and fall apart.

Star Swirl willed his magic to life, and the air around Turner filled with a faint glow. The earth pony glanced around with interest, and poked it with a hoof. "Just stand still please and relax, Turner," Star Swirl said, and began to extract invisible tendrils from the Weave, ensuring that they had the precise energy flow and force written on the instructions.

It resisted at first, but Star Swirl concentrated for a second and it yielded to him. Piece by piece, the construct began to take form, a wind picking up inside the hall as the magic grew. Second by second, more power flowed into it, and both Star Swirl and Check Mate found their smiles fading as they both realized it was not working as they had expected.

It's not setting correctly, Star Swirl thought. Something's wrong. The pattern was folding improperly, as though the first principles were flawed. His eyes widened. If it continues accelerating... He began restraining the flow of magic, to try to undo the unfinished pattern, only for it to continue ahead against his wishes. Retrace my steps? No. Trying to walk backwards while working with time magic... equals an infinite loop of inverted universes. Not a good idea. The wind picked up strength, tossing Star Swirl's mane violently, and Turner glanced nervously from side to side. Redirect the Weave to construct a different pattern? It would be crude, and with so much power, volatile. I need to order and channel it in a harmless direction, but with Turner right at the center it will all pass through him.

Star Swirl thought desperately to come up with a solution while doing his best to fold the accelerating pattern in an orderly fashion. Soon, very soon, the pattern was going to sequence completely, and once that happened the structural imbalances would force themselves into an equillibrium. 'Force' being the important word.

What went wrong? Star Swirl asked himself. I followed the instructions to the letter. He glanced back at the assignment, his eyes racing across the equations.

Then, even as he was watching, the numbers twitched and rearranged themselves. It was only a small change: a few numbers shifted, buried deep within an equation, easy to miss. Now it was fine, and anypony examining the paper afterwards would find no problem. But as originally written, and as Star Swirl had performed it, the magical charge was weighted disproportionately to one side of the construct. That would normally cause the construct to dissolve ineffectually, Star Swirl thought. ...Unless you have maybe fifty times as strong magic to work with, and can simply force it through without really noticing, like I just did.

Star Swirl looked back up to Turner, who was now visibly sweating and looking like he wanted to bolt. The warped magic currents swirling all around him seemed to deter him, and at this point Star Swirl was not honestly sure staying put was a better idea.

Star Swirl gulped, feeling sweat forming on his own brow, as he sped up the pattern, turning one strand against another, weaving and unweaving it around the edges to slow the expansion. An idea came to mind. The results would not be ideal. But it was quite possibly the only outcome that didn't involve anyone dying. Star Swirl took hold of the Weave, and began to tie the fabric of the temporal pocket into the magic signature of his subject: weaving Turner's own magic field into the fabric of the timestream itself.

The pattern was continuing to accelerate, and was now approaching the speed of sound. Star Swirl knew he couldn't hold it back for much longer, and shifted all his energy to completing his work on Turner. The unicorn licked his lips, which felt dry as desert sand. "I really am most dreadfully sorry about this, Turner," he said, “I'll see if I can give you something in return.” Their eyes met, Turner's face a mask of fear. Star Swirl completed the final binding, and let the pattern race to its conclusion.

A burst of light and sound that completely overwhelmed everyone present was immediately followed by a shockwave that sent them rocketing into the walls. The unicorns were just barely able to raise magic shields overhead before the ceiling caved in, sending several tons of rock and timber crashing down on their heads. The walls buckled outward, and began to crumble, as the ground beneath them quaked.

When the movement had stopped, the hall had functionally ceased to exist. A colossal pile of rubble in a depression in the ground, and a giant cloud of dust was all that remained of the Old Hall.

A shard of ceiling tipped over in the center of the pile, and Star Swirl clambered up from beneath it. His robe was reduced to a shredded rag held together by lone strands of thread. Patches of his fur had burned off, showing scraped, bruised skin underneath, and a trickle of blood dripped from his ears. He limped up towards the professors, one slow step at a time. His eyes were red, and fixed on Professor Check Mate.

"Star Swirl? What have you—*" Professor Mate did not get any further before he felt himself enveloped in a magic field that bound him in place and lifted him off the ground. Star Swirl's horn was glowing.

In a matter of seconds, Star Swirl had constructed a flawless three-dimensional temporal pocket capable of fluid chronomantic interaction around the professor, and with a mental command, he activated it.

With the two other professors and Princess Luna watching, Check Mate reverted to a newborn foal, which began to cry.

The temporal pocket dissipated, leaving the crying infant lying on the broken stone floor. "There's my exam," Star Swirl said, with a chilling note of menace. He turned to face Princess Luna, who had watched the proceedings in shock, and attempted to bow. Partway through the motion, he toppled forward and lay unconscious with his face to the ground.

– – –

No more than three hours later, the official investigation into the event opened with the members of the faculty on the board of inquiry. They were assembled in a small brick building on a distant corner of the town, as the campus was buried in rubble and thick clouds of possibly toxic dust that would take weeks to clean up completely even with magic. The elder scholars sat awkwardly on plain wooden chairs around a plain wooden table entirely free of history or style.

"I brought the expulsion papers with me," a newly matured Check Mate said, and dropped the papers in question on the table. "No need to waste time."

"Expulsion is the least of his problems," Ivory Tower said. "The Old Hall was a priceless historical treasure. Nopony has been able to find a single trace of mister Turner. Star Swirl will be lucky if he does not spend the rest of his life in a dungeon!"

From a dark corner of the room a somber voice stated: “Is not the subject of an inquiry entitled to a defence?”

Tall and regal, Princess Luna stepped forward into the dim light of the room. “We recognize that we are not a member of this faculty,” she began, “but we feel that, since this academy was founded in our honor, our voice could be heard. Is this agreeable?”

Nopony in the faculty objected. Luna continued, “We believe it is best to give young Star Swirl the benefit of the doubt. We were observing the event very carefully, and we saw nothing in Star Swirl's technique that would have created this dire result. In fact we saw him recognize that something was amiss, and attempt to undo it.”

“Your highness, I must repeat myself,” Ivory Tower said. “He demolished a building, nearly killed three members of the faculty, magically assaulted a professor, placed you yourself in danger, and apparently vaporized a student. These are not things that can simply be dismissed and forgotten.”

“I ask not for dismissal, I ask only that blame is placed where it belongs,” Luna answered. “The eruption resulted from the structure of the magic, which Star Swirl constructed only precisely as he was instructed. Professor Mate has already confessed as such. The danger to our selves was not Star Swirl's doing. The loss of the building, while tragic, is not akin to the loss of life. And as for mister Turner...” Luna sighed. This was the hard part. “I can only assure you that I observed the entire incident most attentively, and on my honor I promise you that he did not die. Beyond that I cannot say for certain, but he did not die.”

The faculty sat in silence as the Princess pleaded with a gaze for their understanding.

"We will consider your words, your highness,” Professor Commentary said calmly. “Now, if there are no objections, bring in the student for questioning."

There are a very few occasions in the life of Star Swirl the Bearded when he was caught being anything other than confident and reassured. The first time that was recorded in official documentation was when he was questioned by the faculty of Cambridle.

The minutes from that questioning described him as a sealed tome attempting to contain a smoldering fire. He answered every question clearly but bluntly, unwilling to speak more than a few words at a time. Over half an hour he was cross-examined by every member of the faculty, on every detail of the incident. The entire time his eyes were fixed on the leg of a table directly ahead of him, refusing to meet the gaze of his interrogators.

Only once did he look up, and saw Luna sitting quietly in a corner, looking at him with sad, warm eyes. He held her gaze for two seconds, then dropped his face again. She recognized the look in his eyes. It was a look she had not seen on him since he was a little colt, spending his nights sitting alone on Llamrei's Seat, sad and uncertain, feeling closer to the stars countless miles away than to the ponies around him.

"I have only one more question," Ivory Tower finally said. "Star Swirl, where is mister Turner?"

Star Swirl paused, considering his words very carefully. "I am almost 100% certain that he is fine. Eventually."

– – –

Turner's world was pain. His head was pounding, and the noise around him was muffled and distant. He seemed to be lying flat on his back, but the way the entire world was spinning made it difficult to tell for certain. He opened his eyes, and immediately squeezed them shut again, blinded by sharp sunlight. What did I do last night? “Ginny?” he slurred. He raised a leg to block the light, and felt somepony take hold of it and pull him up to a standing position. He fell back on his haunches and groaned. “Wait, wait, just give me a minute...”

Slowly the sounds became more focused. “—still for a minute while I go get him something to drink, okay?”

“Alright, I'll stay with him. Can you hear me, doctor? Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

Turner was finally able to open his eyes properly, and saw a blurry figure sitting in front of him. Slowly the world came into focus, revealing a purple mare looking at him with concern. For some reason she was wearing a false beard, long robes and a pointy hat, all covered in star sigils and with tinkling bells hanging around the edges. They were sitting in front of a house fashioned from a great tree, and right outside the door...

Turner's jaw fell open. Outside of the door was a sign that read, in large and colorful letters,

ANCIENT UNICORN HISTORY AWARENESS WEEK!

VISIT GOLDEN OAKS LIBRARY TODAY AND LEARN ABOUT THE LEGENDARY

STAR SWIRL THE BEARDED!

Underneath it was a large picture of Turner's roommate as an old stallion, looking off into the distance with the wisdom of the ages carved on his face, with the same beard and outfit as the purple mare sitting right in front of him.

Turner's memory came back to him one moment at a time, the exam, the magic, the long process of things going horribly wrong, and he felt a sinking feeling forming in the pit of his stomach as he slowly turned around and saw a small town that definitely wasn't Cambridle.

Suddenly, something slammed into his side, knocking him back on the ground, and he looked up into a pair of mismatched eyes just before a bottle of water was shoved in his muzzle, and a mare's voice said “Here, drink this!”

“You should take him to the hospital, just in case,” said the purple mare. “Are you going to be okay, Derpy?”

“I'll take care of him!” Derpy said, and began to float down the street, pulling Turner gently behind her. Not knowing what else to do, Turner let himself be led, staring at everything around him in shock. “Come on, Doctor, let's get you home and get you a nice cup of tea.”

Turner nodded, gulped, and muttered to himself, “Oh Celestia, I'm the Doctor.”

– – –

By the time Star Swirl emerged from the emergency backup building, the street outside was thronged with the assembled students of Cambridle waiting to see what would happen.

The faculty stepped out into the evening moonlight, Princess Luna being the last to emerge from the building, and after a brief huddle Professor Incisive Commentary stepped forward to handle the impromptu press conference duties.

“We, the members of the faculty of the Academy of Magic of Cambridle,” he began, “have just concluded our inquiry into the... incident that befell the Old Hall earlier today.” The crowd held its breath. Star Swirl stood stone-faced a short distance away, watching. Professor Commentary continued, his voice raised. “We have decided that mister Star Swirl is to be expelled from Cambridle, effective immediately. He will vacate the school grounds tonight.”

Star Swirl was expecting this humiliation, followed by the crowd dispersing once the announcement was over. He was not expecting the crowd to erupt in cheers and applause.

The noise was deafening. Ponies burst into spontaneous song and dance as fireworks burst overhead. Banners unfurled from high windows in nearby buildings that read “Farewell Star Swirl,” and “Don't come back”.

Star Swirl began to resolutely march through the crowd, his eyes fixed on the cobblestones in front of him, not meeting anypony's face. The crowd parted to let him pass as he went, until he found himself standing in front of a mare who blocked his path, and when he looked up at her she slapped him hard in the face with a hoof.

Star Swirl looked at her in shock, and was met with another hoof to the stomach. “Where in Tartarus is my coltfriend?!” Ginny demanded, and let loose a flurry of punches on the young unicorn before two mares took hold of her and pulled her off. Star Swirl clambered up on his hooves and, his jaw clenched firmly shut and his head low, galloped through the town as Ginny's curses and condemnations faded in the distance.

He was on the outskirts of town, aiming to run alone into the wilderness, when he heard Luna's voice behind him, saying his name.

He froze up, and stood still, not turning to face her. “I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to do any of it.”

“I didn't want anypony to hate me,” Star Swirl said, straining to keep his voice calm. “I just did the work as well as I could. I never meant to hurt anypony.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, in a heavy voice. “I did everything I could to persuade them to be merciful.”

Luna walked up beside him and gently placed a wing over his back. “Now we keep going forward,” she said. “Do you still want to help me, Star Swirl?”

She smiled, and conjured a wet cloth to wipe clean his face. “Colts, always needing help keeping yourselves presentable.” She chuckled as Star Swirl twisted and turned to escape the cloth uncomfortably rubbing his eyes. “There, that's better. Now then,” she began, “I need to return to Everhold. I want you to work your way there, in your own time. I'll be there when you arrive. Is that alright?”

Star Swirl bit his lip, and lowered his head. “I'm not sure anypony in a hundred miles will speak to me.”

Luna put a hoof under his chin and raised it up. “Really? Who's the one who was telling me that he has mastered every spell the school teaches in less than half the time, hm? If nopony else will put faith in you, Star Swirl, then have faith in yourself.”

Star Swirl looked down the road leading away from Cambridle, to the hills and hamlets of Braytannia, in the far-flung north-west of the pony nations, underneath the star-filled sky. They glittered and shimmered, and waited for him. He turned and looked into Luna's eyes. “Do you have faith me, Luna?”

He nodded, and smiled. “Alright then,” he said. “That's good enough for me.”

The Crown of Night

by Daedalus Aegle

Chapter 6: The Halls of Enlightenment (Star Swirl vs Cambridle, round 1)