• Published 14th Jul 2013
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The Education of Clover the Clever - Daedalus Aegle



Some people think lectures and classes are for educating. Star Swirl the Bearded has no patience for those people.

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Chapter 1: The Famous Lecture

At Cambridle, it was that time of the year again, and Professor Quick Quill had drawn the short straw. The entire faculty dreaded this day, and took careful note months in advance for the race to book their vacations so that they could be as far away from the university as possible. Quick Quill cursed his own tardiness for not joining them. By the time he had remembered, everyone else was already gone and it was up to him to keep the university's doors open for the worst day of the year.

It was time for Honorary Professor Star Swirl's annual guest lecture.

The problem wasn't that Star Swirl was a bad scholar, because he wasn't.

The problem wasn't that Star Swirl was not good enough at magic for Cambridle. He was, as every student in the auditorium knew perfectly well, the greatest magical mind of the past several centuries.

The problem wasn't even that Star Swirl had been expelled from Cambridle in his own student days, after causing tens of thousands of bits of property damage and the disappearance of a fellow student who was never seen or heard from again, or that he had humiliated and incurred the enmity of half the senior faculty, or that his continued triumphant career was an embarrassment to the university, although all those things were true. Those things, Quick Quill thought, were actually a blessing in disguise. If not for those things, he shuddered to contemplate, they would have no choice but to make Star Swirl a permanent member of the faculty, and would have to deal with him all year long.

The problem, rather, was the students.

Dear Celestia, the poor, poor students. Every year, without fail, after Star Swirl's one and a half hours, they would spend the next week straight hiding in their dormitories, their blankets wrapped tightly around them, sobbing. Every year, a small number simply left in the night, and never came back. Several more—often the brightest ones, who were expecting good grades and a career in magical research when they graduated—would fall into deep doldrums and fail their exams as a result. It broke Quill's heart to think of it.

There was not much they could do about it. Star Swirl the Bearded was always asking for a teaching position, to share his undeniably impressive magical knowledge with the next generation of unicorns, and when you've won the respect of immortals and defeated a few titanic evils from beyond the outer limits of the imagination it gets very difficult to deny you anything. The letters of recommendation from both Princesses and the death threats from Griffon King Blaze were all very compelling. The best the faculty had been able to do was to agree to let him have one lecture every year, open to all. Needless to say, in the past fifteen years, no student had ever attended twice. And much as Quill would have liked to, they were expressly forbidden from warning anyone away from attending. It would be... impolitic.

Once, a student had asked Star Swirl to repeat something. They had to carry her out of the auditorium in tears.

Quick Quill walked up to the podium and stood facing the crowd. He gulped. The auditorium was packed to capacity, a thousand young unicorns eagerly waiting to hear the legendary wizard speak. If only they knew what they were in for, Quill thought.

"Good day, everypony," Quill nervously spoke into the magical microphone, "and welcome to this year's guest lecture by the renowned Professor Star Swirl the Bearded. The Professor requires no introduction," A proper introduction would take all day, and would be an urgent warning, Quill thought, "and I am honored to be the one to welcome him back to Cambridle. The subject of today's lecture will be the Amniomorphic Spell." Quill glanced at Star Swirl, who waited by the faculty entrance in the bottom right corner of the room, and pleaded with his eyes, please don't deviate from the plan we approved earlier. Star Swirl gave the briefest, slightest nod.

Quill turned back to the crowd. "I should say that due to a mix-up in the teaching plans," An extremely carefully planned and executed mix-up, Quill thought, "today's lecture is not part of the regular classes of this term, and the material will not be on the exams. Please consider it to be... an extra opportunity to further your studies above and beyond the plan." The faculty had learned that lesson well. A few times, Star Swirl had inadvertently been allowed to participate in the regularly scheduled lesson plan. The university had been flooded with letters from angry parents, saying that their foals had been completely unable to progress beyond that point in their studies, including a great many alumni threatening to cut off their donations.

"Hrrmph," Quill heard Star Swirl grunt in disappointment.

"So, without further ado, Professor Star Swirl the Bearded!" Quill bowed and backed away from the podium as Star Swirl stepped forward, the bells on his robe and hat jingling with each step. The auditorium was filled with the sound of a thousand hooves pounding on desks, and a thousand magical auras held a thousand quills ready to write.

Star Swirl levitated a stack of papers in front of him, ruffled through them briefly, knocked them on the podium to get them in order, and cleared his throat. Then he began his lecture.

It took a few seconds before Quill realized he had begun his lecture. There was a sound, yes, but it did not seem to be coming from Star Swirl's mouth. In fact it didn't seem to be coming from anywhere. It also did not seem to be saying anything in any language known to Ponykind.

"Gur Nzavbzbecuvp Fcryy vf bayl gur zbfg zbqrea vapneangvba bs n fgenva bs zntvp gung unf rkvfgrq fvapr orsber gur Fnqqyr Nenovna Srqrengvba pbadhrerq gur Arne Rnfg," Star Swirl said.

Quill's heart sank in his chest as he resisted the urge to facehoof. He looked from Star Swirl to the assembled unicorns. Their quills, poised to write a mere few seconds ago, hung lifelessly in the air. Their eyes, previously filled with focus and excitement to see the great Star Swirl the Bearded teach, were now showing hints of uncertainty. Ponies blinked in confusion. Ponies glanced side to side, to see if their neighbours knew what was going on. Ponies looked to Quill with questioning eyes. Quill shook his head at them, raised a hoof to his lips to shush any who might be thinking of speaking.

"Gur Fcryy uvatrf ba guerr znva pbzcbaragf: gur ivfhny pbzcbarag, gur gnpgvyr pbzcbarag, naq gur pehpvb-fnffnechetvp pbzcbarag. Gurfr ner pbafgehpgrq nflzzrgevpnyyl jvguva na Beovqher Obk bs ab fznyyre qvzrafvbaf guna gubfr bs gur fhowrpg fdhnerq va sbhe qvzrafvbaf fdhnerq," Star Swirl continued, as he levitated a piece of chalk and beginning to write complex mathemagical formulas on the board behind him. The students, seeing a hope of a chance, immediately began copying the formulas. Most of them soon gave up as the chalk simply continued writing faster than a pony could speak. Soon the board was almost completely covered, forcing Star Swirl to grab a sponge and wipe a path for more writing, the chalk following closely behind the sponge as they moved over the board. Quill recognized the elaborate formulas for calculating magical power usage at irregular angles, and knew that any student who didn't fully comprehend the first set, the one that was now being wiped away, would be completely unable to follow the rest.

"Gur Nzavbzbecu, vs pbafgehpgrq cebcreyl, rkvfgf va fcnpr naq gvzr bire n qhengvba bs fcnpr naq gvzr, qrgrezvarq ol sbhe vagrenpgvat cevapvcyrf. Svefgyl, gur nve qrafvgl naq uhzvqvgl. Frpbaqyl, gur erfbanag onpxtebhaq zntvpny enqvngvba. Guveqyl, gur pheerag nzovrag Ubbsyre onfryvar inevnapr. Naq sbheguyl, ubea erfvfgnapr. Bapr gurfr ner cebcreyl nyvtarq, gur Nzavbzbecu pna or raretvmrq ol n fvzcyr Fjvey-Gebggre punetr."

It was around that point that the hallucinations started.

This is going to be like the Introduction to Basic Arcane Theory class all over again, Quill thought. Or worse. He looked over the crowd, saw their hopes fade as the best and brightest of Cambridle realized they stood no chance of ever understanding magic, watching their futures slip away. All the quills had fallen still now, every pony in the room was silently enduring their own private hell. All except one. Quill raised an eyebrow. A lone mare was writing ferociously, intently focused on the board.

– – –

Clover Cordelia had found her seat with all the rest of her friends, eagerly awaiting the start of what the seniors called "the Famous Lecture", although exactly what it was famous for was unclear. They had forced their way through the crowd to get seats at the center of the auditorium. Like everypony else present, they could barely contain their excitement. THE Star Swirl the Bearded, the greatest unicorn wizard of their lifetime, former royal advisor, savior of Ponykind several times over, right there to teach them, face to face. At length, the young, scrawny professor got up and awkwardly did his introduction bit, clearly so awed by Star Swirl's presence that he couldn't speak straight. Clover stomped her hoof with ferocious enthusiasm as the great unicorn had stepped up to the podium, in his characteristic starry-robed, bell-adorned outfit. Clover had held her breath, unable to contain her huge grin, her quill at the ready, as Star Swirl prepared his papers and cleared his breath, and then... unearthly sounds had come from nowhere and everywhere.

Clover's friends all looked at one another, puzzled. They all saw the young professor Quill cringe, and had no idea what was happening. But Clover wasn't paying attention to them. Clover was thinking, I know this effect from somewhere, I know I read about something like this in one of the advanced books, it's a sensory inversion spell that replaces sound with non-sound and vice versa, and repeating the effect on myself should cancel it out, if I can just remember the correct formula it goes something like—this! She cast the spell on her own ears, and instantly the unnatural noise disappeared, replaced by perfectly ordinary speech coming from the professor's lips.

"—since before the Saddle Arabian Federation conquered the Near East, so I cannot honestly claim to have invented it by myself, but I was the first to update it to modern magical practice that does not require a thoroughbred understanding of Ancient Saddle Arabian sorcery, which could only be learned by making sacrifice to some rather unsavory entities that live beneath the desert dunes and hunger for pony blood. I hope that frivolous personal anecdote gave you all the time you need to follow along. Now then, the Spell hinges on three main components," Here he levitated the chalk and began to write, and Clover raced to get it all down.

"—simple Swirl-Trotter charge. You may think you recognize these formulas as Stephen Hawk King's Laws of Magical Calculus. But you are mistaken. The alterations reflect an interwoven perception spell which functions like this."

At that point his words turned into colors and flew away.

Clover froze up. This time Star Swirl had at least given a hint. Inverting sound was one thing; rearranging senses entirely was much more complicated. But it was here in the formulas somewhere. Clover quickly levitated Hawk King's A Brief History of Magic up out of her bag and flipped through it until she got to the relevant tables. She looked from one set of the Laws to another, picking out the differences and writing them down in the margins. When properly arranged, they formed a localized counterspell. Clover cast it, and the floating colors were once again replaced with words.

"—may possibly begin to understand the challenges of the Amniomorphic Spell. If not, you will not hear my earnest pleas to leave it alone, rendering this exercise fairly pointless in any case. Once the Amniomorph has been energized, it is mobile but requires a conscious mind to guide it, while simultaneously maintaining the magical bindings at a constant charge and configuration. Imagine doing a crossword puzzle while hanging upside down from a vine and dodging arrows."

The pony sitting to Clover's left had fallen off her chair and lay shivering on the floor, muttering, "The voices! The voices!" Clover shushed her.

Time passed as the lecture continued in this fashion, twice more altering the mode of delivery; first by making the words themselves temperature-dependent so that Clover had to magically alter her body temperature to understand them, and finally by surreptitiously moving the entire auditorium into Star Swirl's own imagination, from which Clover promptly escaped.

By the end, Clover was finding it difficult to counter all the spells at once while still following everything Star Swirl said and wrote on the board. But eventually his time began to run out.

– – –

Quill turned away from the audience to wipe the sweat from his brow with a levitating handkerchief. He had been watching the clock tick one minute at a time to keep his eyes away from the crowd, and now the time was almost up. Please let him finish on time, Quill thought. I don't think anyone has ever tried to cut him off before he's finished. Please don't let today be the first time. He allowed his eyes to pass over the assembled students, and instantly regretted it. A study in despair, numbering one thousand ponies strong, weeping, wailing, gnashing teeth. One pony appeared to be hyperventilating, his legs pulled up against his chest, rocking softly back and forth, empty eyes staring into space. Many had taken to covering or plugging up their ears to keep out the unearthly speech that, by the looks of it, was already driving some of them mad.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the sounds stopped. Quill looked back to the clock. One minute remained, the second hand having passed over the 12 exactly as Star Swirl closed his mouth. One last sound passed through the room, this time one that everyone could understand: "Any questions?"

Quill let out a sigh of relief. It was over, and unlike last time nopony seemed to be bleeding from the eyes. Now, there was only the polite applause, and then everypony could get up and—

The one student who had never stopped writing slowly raised a hoof. Quill's eyes widened in horror and his mouth fell open. In his mind's eye he could see himself leaping forward, shouting "No!", as if to catch an arrow, sacrificing himself to save another's life.

But it was already too late. Star Swirl had seen her. An eyebrow crawled up his brow. "Yes, the filly with parsley in her mane?"

Quill's heart skipped a beat. The moment of doom was at hand. Time seemed to freeze as Clover thought for a second how best to phrase her question.

"When you say that the Stirrup Formation of directed morphic dilation is best used in conjunction with a reverse galloping magic charge, is that because a common alternating magic charge would grow unstable and subject to erratic power surges as a result of the buildup of thaumic pressure from the dilation?"

The auditorium fell deathly silent. All eyes turned to Clover, then to Star Swirl, then back to Clover. Quill didn't dare wipe away the drop of sweat that was slowly teasing its way across his snout, however badly it tickled.

Star Swirl was looking at Clover, not speaking. The silent seconds seemed to stretch into infinity.

Star Swirl opened his mouth, took a breath. His mouth hung open for a few seconds. "Yes."

The deep ringing of a tower bell announced the end of the hour.