• Published 14th Jul 2013
  • 13,229 Views, 796 Comments

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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Bonus Chapter: The Phantom in the Halls

The Education of Clover the Clever Bonus Chapter: The Phantom in the Halls.

Or, Star Swirl vs Cigarettes.

A Canterlot High Story.

“Hey, Diamond Tiara! Wait up!” Silver Spoon ran down the corridor to catch up with her friend.

The two of them had not gotten to speak before the first lesson of the day, and once the bell had rung to let them out, Diamond Tiara had gotten up and stormed off without warning.

“Oh, hey,” Diamond mumbled, and permitted her friend to catch up before setting off again towards the girls’ room.

“What's gotten into you today?” Silver Spoon asked.

“Ugh!” Diamond Tiara exclaimed. “That creepy old geezer is bugging me.”

“Old Man Star Swirl?” Silver Spoon asked. “What did he do?”

“When I got here this morning, I caught him standing at my locker and searching through my bag! Can you believe it? What a creep!”

Silver Spoon gasped. “No way! That's so gross!”

“I know, right? And he totally stole my cigs!”

Silver Spoon froze in the middle of nodding her support to her friend, and blinked. “You had cigarettes in your bag?”

“Well, yeah. Where else would I have them?”

“DT, you don't smoke.”

“Not yet, I don't,” Diamond Tiara shot back. “And I never will if I can't get hold of any cigs! Those were my cigs, I snuck them out of my dad's desk fair and square! And he just went and took them!” Diamond Tiara clenched her fists and glared at the wall, imagining her malefactor cowering before her. “He looked at me like I was the one doing something wrong and then he just walked away!” DT sniffled, her lips beginning to wobble. Fortunately they were now safely ensconced in the girls' room of Canterlot High, a room specially designed to contain massive levels of uncontrolled emotion. “I worked so hard to get those cigs. I'm never gonna get hooked at this rate. It's not fair! All the cool older kids are doing it and I can't!”

– – –

“Please make a note in the record, Clover,” Star Swirl the Bearded said, “that at 9.05 AM I made a little girl cry.”

“Little… cry,” Clover said as she wrote, her voice muffled by the slice of bread sticking out of her mouth, part of a balanced on-the-go-because-there-is-no-time breakfast. Her hands were filled with a very large black day planner, a smaller second black day planner, two pens, a water bottle, and a plush pony, green, wearing a brown hood and cloak. “Was that really necessary?”

“You never know. It might be important. What’s next on the agenda?”

Clover scanned the schedule. “You have an appointment in five minutes. It says, and I quote, 'the lonely dreams of Malhotep'. It will last until 11.29 and fifty-four seconds, apparently.”

“Excellent,” Star Swirl said. “The ritual will take place in the teacher's lounge. Make sure no-one disturbs me.”

– – –

“He said to make sure no-one disturbs him,” Clover said, blocking the path to the old man's table.

Principal Celestia raised an eyebrow. “I can see that he is just sitting right there, drinking tea and reading...” Celestia glanced over at the old man. “People Magazine, apparently. Meanwhile, in room 42, an English lesson is going un-taught. Miss...”

“Clover,” Clover said.

Celestia smiled. “Clover. I am not sure exactly what is going on inside Star Swirl's mind, but it is fairly clear that whatever else he may be, he is not busy. I really must insist that if he is going to remain a teacher at Canterlot High, he needs to actually teach.”

Clover glanced back at her 'boss' awkwardly. Clover liked playing by the rules. She liked having an authoritative set of procedures for making decisions and arriving at results. It was a strange irony of the universe, then, that for her time observing a teacher in the field, she had been handed to Star Swirl the Bearded, a man who seemed to delight in arriving at valid results in every way possible except following the rules.

Clover knew that she should side with the principal, because... well, because the principal was in charge of the school. That said, Clover didn't actually work for the school. For that matter, Clover remembered, she had never actually seen Star Swirl's proof of employment: that technically mandatory part of the proceedings having been lightly skipped over at the time due to avenging lunch break, and by the time Clover remembered everything had, seemingly, been approved and initiated.

Since she wasn't 100% sure Star Swirl worked for the school either, but rather just was there, and did some of the things that teachers are supposed to do, she found herself in a hierarchical grey area in which she was simultaneously the absolute lowest form of life, and also apparently not actually bound by any rules of the school at all.

Both possibilities terrified her. In a sane universe, she thought, this sort of thing should not happen. And now the principal was staring her down, and she felt a deeply-ingrained urge to bend over backwards, but if she did literally bend over backwards she would see Star Swirl the Bearded giving her the Disappointed Look and shaking his head...

She made a mental note to recommend that in the future, cyanide capsules should be given out to students going on this assignment.

“It's fine, Clover,” Star Swirl said, and Clover almost melted from relief as she got out of the way. “Celestia, the class will do fine. I left them instructions.”

– – –

Classroom 42 was deathly silent. Every student sat at their desk, eyes buried in a four-page excerpt of Lady Chatterley's Lover (abridged), not daring to look up, or sideways, or indeed any further down, lest the Eyes catch them and snatch away their souls. At the front of the class, on the teacher's desk, stood a plush pony figurine: a unicorn, grey, bearded, with night-blue robes and a pointy hat covered in star sequins.

It was watching them intently. When the entire class looked away, it would speak to everyone, telling them what to do. When someone looked at it, it would look at only them, and tell them what to do. Those who did, left the room, and when they came back they would never speak of what they had seen, and for the rest of the week they would shiver and whine in fright whenever they saw a necktie.

– – –

“I'm not convinced this is good enough, Star Swirl,” Celestia said, her arms crossed, throwing the old man a kind, but regretful look. She sighed. “Clover, I would like to speak with Star Swirl in private please.”

Clover managed to make it to the door before Star Swirl had time to object, and was gone. Celestia smirked in victory, and sat down opposite Star Swirl. “You know I've been very understanding, and very patient with you, Star Swirl,” she began.

“And you have been amply rewarded,” Star Swirl cut her off, “with my wisdom and experience. Frankly, sometimes I suspect I'm the only reason this school is still standing.”

Celestia was struck dumb at the enormity of wrong in this statement. “Star Swirl, you do nothing here! Absolutely nothing!”

“If you do something right, people won't notice that you've done it at all.”

“Do you know one of the first things I did when I became principal here, all those years ago?” Celestia asked. “I went searching for your personnel file. Do you know what I found?”

“That it made for interesting reading?”

“I found that it was in a cardboard box that had been forgotten in an old corner of the basement that wasn't even on the building blueprint. It was so riddled with mold that we had to incinerate it for public health reasons. It was completely unreadable.” She turned a stern glance on him. “Among other things, this means we have no record of your birth, or of how long you've been working here, or how much you're supposed to be paid.”

“Don't concern yourself with that,” Star Swirl said. “I'm not here for the money.”

“It's my job to manage my teachers, Star Swirl. I spoke to Miss Till about you, and she vouched for you. That counts for a lot. Even then, I did double-check the accounts myself just to make sure nobody was doing anything funny with the books. They weren't.”

“You have a very honest school.”

“I agree. But that still leaves the small matter that I am employing a complete mystery man, one who has earned the trust or at least acceptance of everyone else on staff, but of whom absolutely nothing is known. Now you have a young TA running around doing odd jobs for you, as well. I am responsible for her too, you know.”

Star Swirl chuckled. “Don't worry about Clover. She can handle it.”

– – –

Five minutes into a lesson on the Battle of Gettysburg, Clover coughed loudly to attract Star Swirl's attention. “I'm sorry, Star Swirl, could I just borrow you for a minute?” She gestured to the classroom door.

Star Swirl rolled his eyes. “Excuse me, class.” They went out to the corridor and Clover closed the door behind them. “What's so important that you had to interrupt me while I was in the zone?”

She fidgeted slightly. “Well, Star Swirl, while your lecture on the Civil War is very enlightening—”

“It's good, isn't it? I've honed it for many years.”

“Yes, it really is. But you see, Star Swirl, the thing is, this is a math class.”

Star Swirl stared blankly at her. “Is that important?”

Clover winced. “Yes, Star Swirl, I kind of think of it is. Also, you probably shouldn't talk about the Civil War in the first person. You're traumatizing the students.”

“You think?” Star Swirl scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Perhaps I could try second person instead. 'You stab the confederate soldier in the stomach with your bayonet as you both sink into the mud, rain mingling with tears as you feel his intestines ripping under the blade. You're both going to die here'.”

“Wow, Star Swirl, I can already feel my stomach turning,” Clover groaned. “Look, the lesson plan says the next class is geometry and algebra. Do you think you can do that?”

“Pickett's division is charging up Cemetary Hill at five miles per hour, X soldiers are felled by rifle fire every minute... Yes, that should work.”

– – –

While Clover was away eating, Star Swirl was sitting on the floor in a second-storey corridor, his back against the wall, his face hidden beneath a broad-brimmed hat. From a distance, he looked like a pile of dirty laundry.

He felt someone kick his leg, and heard a young lady's voice demand: “Show me!”

Star Swirl glanced up to see the blue-skinned girl with the purple eyes and a magic wand on her skirt looking down at him. She held out an egg in her hand, proffering it to him. A few other kids stood nearby.

Star Swirl clambered up on his feet and brushed dust off his knees, then put out his hand. Trixie dropped the egg in it and stepped back, squealing with excitement.

“Hmmmm...” Star Swirl looked closely at the egg, and nodded. “This will do.”

He curled his fingers and cracked through the shell, breaking it into two halves, the yolk and white visible and pooling in his palm. Star Swirl held it up for them all to see.

Then, in a single motion, he closed his fingers over it and flicked his wrist, then opened his hand to reveal the egg whole and unmarred.

With his other hand he raised a finger to silence Trixie's girlish giggle and clapping. He curled his fingers again and cracked the egg a second time, splitting it to reveal a pale and scraggly chicken hatchling. It turned and curled up in his hand, wet and frail and alive.

“Presto,” Star Swirl said. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, I must go drop this one off at the animal shelter.”

“I'm going to figure out how you do that,” Trixie warned. “The great and powerful Trixie has never seen a trick she couldn't master.”

“You'll never figure this one out, I'm afraid,” Star Swirl said. “I cheat, you see. I use real magic.”

– – –

“The lineoleum cries out persistence. It has known many struggles, and seen the footsteps of many great figures.”

“If you say so, Star Swirl,” Clover replied.

As they walked down the corridor something changed for Star Swirl. The sounds of Clover speaking, informing him of his next appointment, faded away, replaced with a static hum and throb. The world grew sluggish and dim. Color leeched out of everything, leaving a world of grey and death and shadow.

Star Swirl...

By the time Star Swirl noticed, his own body was becoming slow to respond to his commands. He watched himself take three steps forward after he had made the thought to halt and turn around, and after those three steps he halted, and turned around…

The hallway behind him was a black void, an infinity. Red eyes watched him from the darkness, and from a mouth that was not a mouth there spoke without sound.

You cannot escape me Star Swirl. I will destroy you.

Star Swirl raised a hand, and with a single sweeping gesture he cast the magic out. The world returned to normal, and where there had been an eternity of suffering in the hallway there were instead three teenage girls.

They were dressed far more flashy than the typical high school student. They had just turned the corner behind Star Swirl and Clover, and from the looks on their faces they had just seen a ghost. At least two of them had just seen a ghost. The third, the one with enormous golden hair and spiked hairband, was furious. “You!” she cried, strutting forward teeth and fists clenched to yell in his face. “You... you son of a diamond dog bitch!

“Do you know these students, Star Swirl?” Clover asked.

“I have never seen them before in my life,” he replied.

“Playing innocent now, are you?” Adagio said, her fists clenched as she glared. “Have you come here to gloat? To take pleasure in watching us powerless and humiliated? I should gut you like a fish!”

She pounced on him, long fingernails at the ready to claw his eyes out. He stumbled backwards, and Clover grabbed Adagio from behind and tried to pull her off. “Hey! Okay, that’s enough!”

“Oh, is that how it is now? Planning to warp some other young thing to do your bidding?” Adagio turned to glare at Clover, struggling to break free from her grip. “Don’t believe his lies! He’ll destroy you, he destroys everything!”

“You’re going to see the student counselor,” Clover said.

Adagio opened her mouth to hurl an insult, when Star Swirl raised a hand and said, “Wait.”

And they did wait. All four of them stood frozen to the spot while Star Swirl peered into Adagio’s eyes. He frowned. “I can see the traces of the magic that has touched you, but… I have no part in your destiny. It lies with someone else. Now go, and know that this was just a misunderstanding. You too, Clover.”

Shortly after they resumed wandering down the corridor, the three students grumbling amongst themselves as they wandered the other way.

– – –

The final bell had rung, and all the students made their way out of the school. Sunset Shimmer stretched her arms above her head and smiled, happy to be done with another day of human studies.

“You coming to Pinkie’s, right?” Rainbow asked. “I’m driving!”

Sunset nodded. “Yeah… You guys go on ahead, I’ll be just a minute.”

“Sure. I’ll bring the car round.”

While the students dispersed around her, quickly leaving the front of the building empty and quiet, Sunset stepped up to the base of the old statue. The square foundation was still empty, the statue having not been replaced after it was destroying during the Friendship Games, but the portal was still active. She placed her hand on the stone, and felt the magic flicker to life against her skin, but didn’t push through.

“You know,” she said loudly, “I’d been wondering when you were going to say hello.”

“I was waiting for the right moment,” Star Swirl the Bearded said from behind her. “Time is a very tricky business, even at the best of times. This is the closest I can get.”

Sunset Shimmer turned to look at him. “You’re Star Swirl the Bearded,” she said, her voice calm. “Arguably the greatest wizard the world has ever known. Twilight’s going to spit her oats when I tell her I met you… I studied your work when I was younger.”

“I caught your musical performance on the rooftop,” Star Swirl said. “It was very impressive. I especially liked the wings.”

Sunset chuckled. “Thanks, I guess.” She looked over the teacher, taking in his outfit. He wore a drab suit, but she could see the pattern of subtle stars in the fabric. “When I first came here, I gathered up all the dirt I could on everyone I could. I saw your name in the files. But I never saw you, until right now. I didn’t think you were here at all.”

“I was here. But there are limits to what I can do, or what I should do. Pardon me for being cryptic. It comes naturally to us archetypal old men, and old habits are hard to break.”

Sunset snorted with laughter. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, mister archetypal wizard. I’m Sunset Shimmer. I’m… not from around here. You probably know that already, if you’ve been here at this school the whole time. But something tells me you’re not here just to make small talk, so... Is there something I can do for you?”

“Maybe there’s something I can do for you,” Star Swirl said. He raised his hand, and a strange shadowy flicker appeared in it, like a dark blue candle flame. “I know a thing or two about fighting your inner demons, miss Shimmer. I know a thing or two about being a stranger…” As he spoke, the flame in his hand grew taller and stronger, throwing off jagged spikes and sparks as it reached upwards to the sky. Sunset could feel the heat of the flames radiating outwards. “You have a tremendous reservoir of inner strength. You burn with cosmic fire, waiting to be unleashed. I could teach you to control that power.” He closed his fist, and the flame was gone. He opened his hand to show his palm, unmarred. “If you’re willing, I would take you on as my apprentice.”

Sunset Shimmer gasped softly, her eyes widened. There was dead silence on the lawn in front of the school, no-one else around but the two of them. “…Wow. I wonder what Twilight would say if she heard about that. She’d probably explode with jealousy.”

A car horn broke the silence as the car drove up around the corner of the school, and pulled up on the sidewalk not far from the two of them. A blue arm waved rapidly in the air through the driver’s side window. “Thanks for the offer, mister Star Swirl. I appreciate it. But…” Sunset smiled. “I already have the greatest teachers I could hope for.”

Star Swirl nodded, and watched wistfully as the car drove away, before he turned and headed back inside the school.

– – –

Star Swirl sat alone in the teacher's lounge, after dark. Everyone else had left the building for the day many hours earlier, leaving Star Swirl free of anyone to complain about him smoking a pipe. He took a deep puff, staring at nothing, and let out a billow of smoke. He took another puff, and blew out a soap bubble.

“Hrmm...” He put his pipe down on the table and picked up the pack of cigarettes he had confiscated that morning. He drew one out, scrutinizing it from every angle, then put it in his mouth. He snapped his fingers, and a tiny flame lit up from the tip of his index finger, which he used to light the cigarette.

He took a deep drag and exhaled a soap bubble filled with opaque white smoke. It floated up in front of his face, and he peered deep into it, frowning.

By the time it popped he was already running out of the lounge towards the stairs.

– – –

The thing that came out of the water had no name, because it was older than the idea of naming.

It was over thirty meters tall, and many times longer than it was tall. Its carapace, jagged and pockmarked, was home to all manner of marine life that could survive occasional trips onto dry land: crabs, grasses, clusters of clams, their mouths shut tight, krill burrowed into little fluid pockets within the massive creature's shell plates, all clung to it as it pulled itself from the deep onto the harbor and proceeded to claw and skitter down the broadest street towards Canterlot High School.

Ocean water poured from its many cracks and crevasses as it moved, staining the street, and in spite of its bulk, the massive shell left no other mark on the road: human eyes could not see it, nor human ears hear it as it went, and the water would evaporate in the summer heat before morning.

It made a hissing ululation as it drew near to the school, portions of its shell parting and billowing, as if excited, as if in heightened anticipation, opening to reveal strands of hairlike fibers for filtering nutrition from the currents. It came up in front of the school's facade, carefully stepping around the sculpture in front of the main entrance on its spiky crab-legs, and rose its front-part up to a towering height, its many limbs spreading to hold the entire building within its reach.

“That's quite enough of that,” said Star Swirl the Bearded from the school's rooftop.

The massive entity halted, its front-part reoriented itself in strange ways, shells twisting and turning to allow an aperture to the inside to reveal a gelatinous mass, in which nerve clusters and light-sensitive nodules that could not really be called eyes shifted near the surface to face the tiny human who stood before it with no sign of fear.

Star Swirl held up the pack of cigarettes. “These are yours, I believe.”

The creature picked Star Swirl up in a pincer moving close to the speed of sound, tossed him into its open maw, and ate him. Then it returned to its work, only to be interrupted by the sound of slow clapping.

“Good one,” Star Swirl said, standing exactly where he had been on the rooftop, “but not good enough. Like these things,” he gestured with the cigarettes again. “It's a clever enchantment, I'll give you that. Inconspicuous. Agile, jumps from object to mind to mind, nesting in something that, in high schools, is both ubiquitous and yet closely guarded. Very clever.” Star Swirl dropped the pack and ground it under his shoe. “But not clever enough. You're not going to be trying that again, and nobody in this school is going to be your brood-drone. What’s going to happen is this: you're going to turn around and crawl back where you came from, and never bother anyone on this earth ever again.”

The creature turned a hundred claws, pincers, stingers on Star Swirl, ranging in size from half a meter to ten meters across, and let out a taunting, defiant shriek in the language before life.

Star Swirl stood very still, as the slightest movement in any direction would result in contact with one of the hundred sharp points that surrounded him very closely on all sides.

He opened his mouth and yawned.

“You know,” Star Swirl said, “there are a lot of things here I've had to get used to. Back where I come from things are very different. People were different. Places were different. There were no cities like this, no schools like this one... Certainly there was nothing like you. But the biggest thing I had to adjust to was the food. Back where I lived, everyone in my home country was a herbivore. A vegetarian, as they call it here. Only wild animals and foreign barbarians ate meat. But then I came here, and here even the kindest, meekest little girl-child doesn't think twice about eating things that used to walk around. That startled me at first, but I got used to it eventually. Especially seafood.”

Star Swirl gently nudged some of the spikes aside, and lit his pipe. “You know, you’re not the first of your kind I’ve seen. I met your older brother too.” He took a few puffs. “He was delicious.”

Silence reigned for a moment. Then, slowly, the creature drew back the hundred claws, spikes, pincers, and assorted pointy things, pulled back from the building, turned around, and crawled back down to the sea.

“That was interesting,” a voice said, and Star Swirl turned to see a dark lady standing on the rooftop.

He bowed. “Your highness.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “I'm the vice-principal of a high school, Star Swirl. Not royalty.”

“You'd be surprised at how similar the two can be.”

Luna chuckled, and sat down on the roof, her legs hanging over the edge, and gestured for him to sit beside her. He did so, and the two of them sat there in silence.

“What are you doing here so late at night, anyway?” Star Swirl asked.

“Oh, you know,” Luna said, kicking her legs out over the edge of the wall. “Wandering the dark halls like a lost spirit, haunting the fools who dare enter here at night. OOOoooOOOooohhh...!” Here she waved her arms and waggled her fingers in the air for effect.

They both laughed, and after they’d run out of laughter they sat there looking at the stars, and the bright moon.

“Time is strange here,” Star Swirl eventually said. “I used to think that time was the same in every world, but here it's all mashed together, and people coexist who were many years apart where I came from. I think that's why there's a place for me here.” He turned and looked over Luna. “You used to be so much older than me, and now I'm a withered old man and you're...” He thought for a second. “Well, I'm actually not sure what you are.”

Luna's lip curled up in a wry smile. “Nobody knows what I am. That's my secret advantage.”

“Also, you don't even bat an eyelid when I talk about moving between worlds. That's unusual.”

“It’s part of a teacher’s job to listen to their students,” Luna said quietly. “When I was young I had a very good teacher. Now… I try to pay it forward.” She sat up and looked down at Star Swirl. “I was in prison once,” she said. “I was a runaway. I was in a gang, there were drugs… Eventually my sister found me. She’d been looking for years, but I didn’t want to be found. But she did, and she never let me go again.”

“I’m told family is very important,” Star Swirl said. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t have one.”

“Celestia said she got a letter telling her where I was,” Luna said. “She said it was dropped into her office. She said it was unsigned.”

“Did she indeed.”

“Everyone deserves a second chance.”

They sat silently in the night for a long time.

“I was a ghost once,” Star Swirl eventually said. “I drifted silently through the void between worlds for a very long time. There was no pain. I was prepared to drift forever, until I forgot I had ever been anything else… But there was a beacon here.” He turned his eyes to the heavens, looking out into the sky. “It called out to me, from across endless space… It told me that its maker had left it here for me to find.”

“I made a promise,” he said. “A long time ago, someplace very far away. A promise I couldn't keep. But maybe this time, I can.”

She reached out and took hold of his hand. She glanced at him, and as she looked he seemed to change in the blink of an eye. One moment he was the old man, then he was her age. Then he was a young adult, like one of her students. And then he was a little boy, sitting on the roof, looking up at the stars. And yet he didn’t change at all.

“It's a big world,” Luna said. “Who knows what you'll find here.”

Star Swirl nodded.

Far above them, a new star flared to life, and took its place in the sky.

Author's Note:

Wrap Party & Story Notes Here!

Want more Star Swirl the Bearded and Clover the Clever? Check out The Crown of Night if you haven't already. Otherwise be patient, because the sequel is being written.

Coming soon: The Seven Trials of Clover the Clever! Follow my blog for status updates.

Comments ( 35 )

Better than the canon EQG verse. I'm down.

“I worked so hard to get those cigs. I'm never gonna get hooked at this rate. It's not fair! All the cool older kids are doing it and I can't!”

*Heavy sigh*

She made a mental note to recommend that in the future, cyanide capsules should be given out to students going on this assignment.

HAH!

“Pickett's division is charging up Cemetary Hill at five miles per hour, X soldiers are felled by rifle fire every minute... Yes, that should work.”

Oi...

Star Swirl glanced up to see the blue-skinned girl with the purple eyes and a magic wand on her skirt looking down at him. She held out an egg in her hand, proffering it to him. A few other kids stood nearby.

Trixie.

“You'll never figure this one out, I'm afraid,” Star Swirl said. “I cheat, you see. I use real magic.”

Ooh, now THIS is an interesting line.

They were dressed far more flashy than the typical high school student. They had just turned the corner behind Star Swirl and Clover, and from the looks on their faces they had just seen a ghost. At least two of them had just seen a ghost. The third, the one with enormous golden hair and spiked hairband, was furious. “You!” she cried, strutting forward teeth and fists clenched to yell in his face. “You... you son of a diamond dog bitch!

The Sirens.

“I was here. But there are limits to what I can do, or what I should do. Pardon me for being cryptic. It comes naturally to us archetypal old men, and old habits are hard to break.”

HAH!

Sunset Shimmer gasped softly, her eyes widened. There was dead silence on the lawn in front of the school, no-one else around but the two of them. “…Wow. I wonder what Twilight would say if she heard about that. She’d probably explode with jealousy.”

Probably.

Star Swirl gently nudged some of the spikes aside, and lit his pipe. “You know, you’re not the first of your kind I’ve seen. I met your older brother too.” He took a few puffs. “He was delicious.”

WELL. That's, wow, the implications.

Luna's lip curled up in a wry smile. “Nobody knows what I am. That's my secret advantage.”

Interesting...

Far above them, a new star flared to life, and took its place in the sky.

This fic, is truly unique. There is nothing on this site quite like it.

:moustache::moustache::moustache::moustache::moustache:
5/5 moustaches. Will read again.

Star Swirl lives.



What? You want more? You want me tell you that this a brilliant point to the capstone that brings together elements of Star Swirl's legacy and the boundless future to form a whole that raises yet more questions and shows us that the journey never really ends, and that every ending is a new beginning?

Well there you go, then. :derpytongue2:

Congratulations on completing half of your magnum opus, Daed. Thank you for a long, strange trip. Here's to the rest of it.

Now THAT was a crazy and unexpected chapter!

Now I am SUPER curious as to what this means. Is this a hint of things to come perhaps...?

Even knowing this would take place at Canterlot High, I didn't expect that. Not to mention how its almost kind of full circle for Star Swirl too, despite being so far from home. I wonder how long until (Princess) Twilight comes charging out of the portal and turns the school upside down to investigate this. Not sure I read certain parts right, in terms of how many alternate worlds are involved, but a surprisingly happy ending for Star Swirl (and probably better that he doesn't have a twin sister there, with how time is in the Canterlot High world). Does this count as his retirement? The last chapter was already great as a conclusion, but I'm always happy to read more about Star Swirl. I can't help but wonder how long Sunset would have put up with Star Swirl's... quirks (if his offer had been serious), but he's already found the native Clover too.

There are rather a lot of effusive and glowing comments above, both incisive and superficial, and I think i'll for once go for the latter.

I liked this one.

Very nice. A new beginning for him:twilightsmile:

8512879

Congratulations on completing half of your magnum opus, Daed. Thank you for a long, strange trip. Here's to the rest of it.

Thank you for coming along. It's comments like this that make it all worth it.

Mind you, I'm not sure Star Swirl and Clover would allow me to stop if I wanted to :derpytongue2:

*Raises a glass of cider* Cheers.

ululation

I learned a new word today.:rainbowderp:

That was a very good bonus chapter. Though I can't help but feel that it doesn't have that much Clover in it.:twilightsheepish: But Starswirl being Starswirl is always fun to read.

8514380
And it did have a lot of Star Swirl being Star Swirl.

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Now GET CRACKING ON THE SEQUEL!

JK.

DO whatever you want.

I feel as though I should make a poem though.

does eqg Clover have to deal with Eqg dark clover.

8515560 Discord had a mom? :applejackconfused:

Wonderful! Surprising, funny, and touching... what a nice surprise!

8520693
Fair point.

But this is the pony version of Rick and Morty. Except Morty's competent.

You can even make Equestria Girls compelling... why having you taken over the show yet?

I believe I must use dark powers to implant you as head of the studio.

Yes, clearly this is a good idea because nothing bad ever happens when calling upon dark forces from the void! :pinkiecrazy:

Cthulhu on the half-shell? Sounds tasty...
:rainbowwild:

It occurs to me that people/ponies are quite fortunate to remain blissfully unaware of just how sane Starswirl actually is. Starswirl sees the world as it actually is. He stares into the Abyss and the Abyss blinks first. If others knew the true reasons behind his seemingly madcap antics, I am pretty sure there would be Lovecraft levels of terror and despair.

Starswirl keeps an eye on the Things that Go Bump in the Night, but quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Clover apparently. She keeps him anchored, giving him something to care about and safeguarding his humanity/equinity...

It is hard to believe the saga is finally complete. Thank you for for a wonderful ride!
:twilightsmile:

This story is perfect.
Now I need one about what happened with the Unicorn King.

9183560
And what a lovely review it is! Thank you very much, I'm glad you enjoyed my story :pinkiehappy:

Well, that was an interesting conclusion to a fascinating and thoroughly amusing tale. I laughed, I raged, I gaped in confusion; this story hit almost every high note I can think of. I give it a 97%. Well done.

9227524
Thank you for reading and commenting, and I'm glad you enjoyed the trip :twilightsmile:

“Pickett's division is charging up Cemetary Hill at five miles per hour, X soldiers are felled by rifle fire every minute... Yes, that should work.”

oh, this made me think of a story, supposed to be true: someone tried to put a math problem like this into a 5th-grade math textbook:
"Rufus is pimping 3 girls. how many tricks will they have to perform to pay for his crack habit?"
sheesh.

One final typo:

The square foundation was still empty, the statue having not been replaced after it was destroying during the Friendship Games, but the portal was still active.

Well that was a ride and a half. I don’t remember why I originally picked up this story, but by Star Swirl’s beard I’m glad I did. I’m not sure whether I should be upset over not having read this before, or upset over not being able to read this the first time any more.

That being said, I just want to say thank you for writing this! It’s really hard to convey just how much I liked it; it basically hits everything I like to see, and then some. In any case, the story of Star Swirl and Clover’s (mis)adventures was an absolutely stellar read from start to finish, and I’m eagerly looking forwards to seeing more!

10603634
Thanks for reading! And good job on picking out a bunch of typos that had never been spotted before in all the years those chapters have been up.

If you want more Star Swirl please check out The Crown of Night, set a hundred years before The Education, following young Star Swirl's career and its cosmic implications. It's unfinished to this day unfortunately, but it's still underway. I'm also working on the sequel to The Education, The Seven Trials of Clover the Clever.

10603716

I actually caught up on The Crown of Night before starting this, so I'm sadly suffering from Star Swirl-and-Clover withdrawal :pinkiecrazy:

And to think that this is only Clover's first year at university. Can't wait to see what's in store!

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Alas! Well, here's hoping there's more of both of them to come.

I has now confused. A sequel to an incomplete prequel?

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And... In what order is it meant to be read...?

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Whichever you choose. But this one is the more popular of the two.

11215961 Dang, maybe i should start it back up then. lol

9494710
I know this comment is a couple years old, but what is the title of this story?

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