The Crown of Night

by Daedalus Aegle

Chapter 2: Cambridle Academy of Magic (The Entrance Exam)

It had taken Star Swirl several months straight of travelling to get to Cambridle, one of the most prestigious schools of magic in all the lands of ponies. Edinspur lay five hundred miles behind him to the north.

Star Swirl had been robbed, had gone days without food, had accidents, had fallen sick, had been arrested for vagrancy, had to pause for a week to earn bits to continue to travel, had been robbed again, and had learned by trial and error how to sew his own cloaks. But after ten weeks on the road, he finally arrived at his destination: Cambridle Academy, one of the most prestigious schools of magic in all the lands of ponies.

He ambled slowly along the cobblestone roads into the ancient town, dazed and amazed. His legs were caked with dried mud, and his most recent cloak was falling to pieces. He was not looking at where he was going, and not a minute went by on the crowded streets before somepony bumped into him and gave him a funny look. His eyes were raised high to the lofty, commanding buildings of the Academy, massive stone halls in the Hay Gothic style, adorned with towers and spires and gargoyles, all intricately detailed.

Star Swirl had passed through cities on his way there, but never allowed himself to pause and take them in. This was a far cry from humble Edinspur.

Edinspur. The memory of his last night at home came unbidden to Star Swirl's mind. His mother, crying in the kitchen. His father, at his wit's end, having run out of things to say to a son that had no part of him. His little brother and sister on the top of the stairs, both earth ponies like everyone else in Edinspur but him, fearful that this time was going to be the time something broke. Which, in fact, it was. The earnest entreaties of his father to the value of a simple life had meant nothing to the unicorn who spent each night speaking with the stars. He knew there were greater things in life, and he meant to find them, and there had come a point where it was not bearable to wait any longer, however many harvests there were to come, however possible it was to court any of Edinspur's many lovely hard-working fillies and settle down and start a family, however easy it would be for a unicorn, any unicorn, to earn his keep in a country where unicorns were one in ten thousand. No. He had left, with nothing but a saddlebag and a small stack of bits, and the stars had shown him where to go.

Now they had led him to Cambridle. The stars had pointed him here, but he couldn't tell exactly why. He had some idea of his own, and he had asked along the way to find out what he was going to, and now he was looking for something in particular as he roamed around the centuries-old structures of the Academy... and there it was, in the center of an open courtyard, a garden, formed by the walls of various surrounding buildings.

Star Swirl stopped, and stared. There before him was a statue, massive in scale, of the spiritual founder of Cambridle, in whose name and to whose honor the Academy had been founded in the mists of prehistory: Princess Luna Noctis, Night-Mare Moon.

He studied the statue carefully, admiring it from every angle. It did not, he had to admit, actually look like her, at least not how she had looked when he met her that night five years ago. The statue was cold, distant, commanding. It was all sharp edges and straight lines. At first sight, Star Swirl thought she was wearing armor and a helmet, but on closer examination he concluded that this was her mane and coat, laid so as to give that impression. Still, it was her: the fire in her eyes, the grace inherent in her stance, so that even as a statue she seemed about to soar into the air.

Just as the stars had told him.

"Star Swirl..." His father had said. "What do you care about?"

"What?" Star Swirl had answered.

"You never look down," his father said. "You never see the things that are all around you because you're always looking far away. You never go to any gatherings or even talk to anyone in town. You don't seem to care about anything. What do you care about?"

Star Swirl tried not to think about the question.

His father followed his eyes up to the night sky. "I saw Dawn Blossom this morning, she came by with a loaf of bread. She asked about you."

Star Swirl could not immediately remember who Dawn Blossom was, but he didn't say so. She was, he supposed, one of a group of seven or eight fillies who were, he supposed, perfectly nice, and who had, he supposed, shown an interest in him. This, at any rate, is what his father was always saying. Star Swirl never noticed.

"You don't have to be alone and unhappy all the time," his father continued. "Come on, son. The only unicorn in the whole town. That's an advantage. You'll never have trouble earning your keep, there isn't a filly in Edinspur who wouldn't give you a chance to court them, not a parent who wouldn't be thrilled to have Star Swirl in their-"

Star Swirl interrupted him. "I don't want to stay here all my life."

There he had said it out loud for the first time, the hitherto unstated theme of all his talks with his father.

His father sighed. "Edinspur is a fine place to live your life. All the rest of the world... is just places."

"You here for the exam?" a voice behind Star Swirl said, and he turned. The speaker was an elderly earth pony in a rough, patched-up vest with a pipe in his mouth.

"Sorry?"

"The entrance exam. For new students."

Star Swirl's eyes lit up. "Yes, that's why I'm here," he said, smiling. It wasn't a statement of ambition. It was a statement of destiny made apparent.

The earth pony nodded. "Well, they're gonna be startin' em soon, over at the Old Hall. If you want a spot you'd best be hurrying there now."

"I will," Star Swirl said, turning in the direction the old pony was pointing. "Thanks. I'll be back here later, I expect."

"That's nice," the pony said absent-mindedly, turning his attention to a patch of grass that was perhaps not quite so lush as it could be. "Just me and the Princess here otherwise, most of the time. Some company'll be nice." But Star Swirl had already galloped out of earshot.

The Old Hall stood at the center of the Academy grounds. At its core, it was a simple, square stone building of one large open room where lessons were held, but as the Academy grew over the centuries new rooms had been constructed along the outside. Elaborate ornamentation and detail had been added to the walls, statues, busts, and portraits of great ponies from the Academy's history stood in every corner and decorated every wall, even the roof of the Hall had been torn down and rebuilt using Reneighsance architectural techniques to raise it higher, with tall spires of black stone adorned with gold metalwork. Star Swirl found it easily by following the crowd of nervous unicorns.

Star Swirl looked around, fascinated by everything he saw. Scores of young unicorns paced nervously in the area surrounding the Hall, invariably dressed in expensive-looking robes and coats of the highest fashion. Everypony he passed turned to look at him, their eyes lingering on his own self-made muddy burlap cloak. He found himself in a large entrance chamber leading in to the Hall itself, in a long line that ended at a desk where a bored-looking unicorn mare accepted papers from each anxious applicant before they could go inside. The forms themselves were distributed by several more bored elderly unicorns, and tables stood in a row along the wall with ink and quills for the applicants to fill them out. One gave Star Swirl a strange look, then shrugged, and wordlessly passed over a copy.

Before long, Star Swirl came to the front of the line and dropped the form for the bored-looking clerk to see. She picked it up without glancing at him.

"Let me see... Home: Edinspur. Where's that?"

"Scoltland," Star Swirl said. She raised her quill in a pale green aura and added it to the paper.

"Long way from home then." She raised an eyebrow at the next entry. "Prior instruction or experience: I talk to the stars." She raised her head to look at Star Swirl for the first time. "You walked five hundred miles to make a bad joke?" she asked, distinctly unamused. "You've had your fun, now clear the line please. Next!"

"I'm not joking," Star Swirl said, taken aback.

"You're a madpony then, and you're not qualified. Also, your writing is appalling. Have you never used a quill before?" Her eyes ran up and down over him. "Well, by the looks of you they might not have heard of quills where you're from. Now please stop wasting my time, we have a lot of ponies to process." She threw the paper in the bin on the side of the desk. "Next!"

Star Swirl pursed his lips together, and levitated the paper back up onto the desk. "Like I said, I'm not joking." He turned back to briefly glance at the pony pushing from behind him in the line.

The clerk brought her own magic to life and began to levitate the form back to the bin. It froze. She raised an eyebrow in curiosity. Her pale green aura was being infused with Star Swirl's dark blue one.

She steadily concentrated greater and greater power into her levitation to wrest control of the form, but to no avail. Slowly, the paper moved back and lay down in the middle of her desk, right beneath her snout. "I'm not going to get rid of you easily, am I?" she asked.

"No," Star Swirl answered.

"Age: fifteen," the clerk read. "Well that's easy then, you have to be seventeen to take the entrance exam."

"Well, I'm ready to study magic here now. No need to wait."

"This isn't some basic lesson for just any unicorn," the clerk said, scowling. "Our students have been practicing magic rigorously since they could speak their first words, and Cambridle challenges them to their limits."

"Isn't that the whole point of your entrance exam? To tell if somepony is good enough? So let me take it."

"It's a waste of time," the clerk said sharply. "Nopony without extensive tutoring is good enough to get in. It says here your parents aren't even unicorns."

Star Swirl was getting visibly agitated. "I didn't say my parents had taught me, did I? So what does it matter what they are?"

"I'm afraid there are no seats available this year. Try again in two years. Next!"

Star Swirl gritted his teeth. The clerk's log book came to life in his aura, and the pages began flipping rapidly back and forth. It stopped at one page. "Harold Trotter isn't showing up. I'll take his place."

"I'm afraid it's already taken," the clerk said.

Star Swirl closed his eyes and concentrated. After a few seconds, he opened them again. "No it isn't. I can see his empty chair inside the hall. I'm going there now."

"Hey!" The clerk cried as Star Swirl turned and walked past her, opening the door to the exam hall with his magic. "You're not entered in the log! You're not going to-" she glanced down at some movement in her peripheral vision and fell silent with a scowl. Her quill was immersed in a dark blue aura, and had crossed out 'Harold Trotter' and was writing 'Star Swirl' underneath. "Oh, to Tartarus with this. Next!"

The commotion had not escaped the notice of the ponies around him, and as Star Swirl crossed the Hall, he could feel eyes watching him from all sides. Monitors standing on the edge of the hall leaned in and whispered to each other as he walked past. He ignored them, and kept his eyes focused on the absent Trotter's desk.

The Hall mimicked an amphitheater, the stone floor set up in half-circle tiers with simple wooden writing desks at each seat, all facing down towards a raised stage at the far end. Above, Star Swirl noted with a smile, the ceiling was painted with an elaborate night sky, with a full moon at the center.

Star Swirl reached Harold Trotter's desk, and found one full glass inkwell with three feather quills beside it, and a stack of papers to write on. He scowled. A magic exam in writing? Really? He shook his head. Maybe the real magic tests come later. Whatever, I'll just do this for now. He sat down and waited as the final students filed into the hall and took their places. Shortly afterwards, a tower bell rang overhead, and the monitors walked down the line distributing the exam assignment.

Star Swirl received his copy and read the assignment: "Explain the procedure for transmuting Water into Luminiferous Aether." He read it again. He frowned. What the buck is luminiferous aether? He shook his head. Oh, whatever, it doesn't matter. He dipped his quill in the inkwell and began to write. Ten minutes and three hundred words later he was finished. He had almost filled one page of the stack of twenty he had been given to work with. He glanced around the room. All around him, dozens of other unicorns were hard at work, writing page after page of tiny, dense script in swift, practiced motions.

Immediately behind him, an inkwell fell to the floor and shattered loudly, its owner erupting in a choked curse that drew angry glares from the monitors. Star Swirl turned to watch as the inkwell's owner, a skinny red stallion with a brown mane, nervously gulped and asked a monitor for more ink.

"That would be a gross breach of tradition," the monitor, a bald old stallion, answered in a deep and stern voice. "Since the Great Ink Famine in the 111th year of the Discordian Age*, no student at Cambridle has had more than one inkwell to an exam. If you cannot hold on to yours, perhaps you are not cut out for the Academy."

*: The Discordian Calendar had only five years, four of which were year 111.

"But – but-" the red stallion squealed with horror in his eyes. "I-I can't finish without..." He fell silent in the face of the bald stallion's unsympathetic glare.

"He can have mine," Star Swirl said, getting up from his chair. "I'm finished anyway." He levitated his barely-touched inkwell to the red stallion's desk. Then he picked up his lone sheet of paper and walked back down the hall towards the receiving monitors, ignoring the burning eyes of the bald stallion that were trying to drill a hole through the back of his head.

The clerk from outside was now waiting to take the students' finished work. She smirked as Star Swirl approached. "I told you it was a waste of time."

"I want to hand in my work," Star Swirl said, ignoring her comment.

"We don't accept unfinished papers. Toss it in the bin and try again when you are prepared, if that ever happens."

"I am finished," Star Swirl said bluntly, mustering as much stubborn confidence and authority into his voice as he could. Given that he was a teenage colt with a cracked voice and a Haylands accent, however, this was not very much. The clerk simply continued smirking. "I completed the task completely."

"I'm sure you surely did," the clerk said, and took the paper from him. "You're quite certain you want me to file this for grading, then, rather than just throw it away and spare you the embarrassment?"

"File it," Star Swirl said.

The clerk shrugged. "it's your funeral. I suppose the professors need a good laugh same as everypony else."

Star Swirl didn't answer, but left the Old Hall without a backward glance, doing his best to ignore the clerk.

Once outside, Star Swirl wandered back towards the garden, and found it still empty except for the old red earth pony, who nodded when he saw Star Swirl cross the gate.

"You're back then," the earth pony said. "How'd it go?"

"It was easy," Star Swirl said.

"That's nice," the earth pony said. "What're you gonna do now?"

Star Swirl opened his mouth, and hesitated. "Dunno," he eventually said. "To be honest, I've no idea what I'm doing here, or why. I don't know where I can sleep either. I don't know anypony here."

The old stallion grunted thoughtfully. "Well, students get dormitories, so if you get accepted there's that. But that'll take them a few days to go through them exams, so you've time to kill before then. There's always an inn'll give you a room until then."

"I... don't actually have any bits," Star Swirl admitted. "I have barely enough to eat."

The stallion looked at him with shock. "How'd you get all the way here with no bits?"

"I walked," Star Swirl answered simply. "I slept on the roadside, under trees, up in trees, in barns... anywhere I could find, really. I always got in trouble when I tried it inside towns and cities, though... I have to find someplace out of the way, where nopony goes by..." He fell silent. The old stallion looked over to see the unicorn staring up at the statue of the Princess.

Star Swirl grinned. "Do you believe in destiny?"

"Destiny?" the earth pony said curiously. "Destiny is a mighty big thing. I don't much hold with big things. Anything bigger'n a pony, is too big."

Star Swirl frowned at this show of earth pony philosophy, so similar to what he'd always heard from his father. "What about her?" He raised a hoof to the imposing statue of Princess Luna.

"The Princess?" the stallion raised his eyes to look at her. "She's a pony, no bigger."

"I think she's a lot bigger," Star Swirl said, his lips curling in a smile. "Big enough, at least, to shelter another pony, wouldn't you say?"

The stallion's benevolent face froze, then morphed into a scowl. "Sonny..."

"I won't ruin anything," Star Swirl said. "Please! I just need someplace to sleep at night?"

"Grrm... Well, you won't dig up any of the grass, or, I don't know, eat the flowers or anything dumb like that, will ya?"

"Promise!"

"...Well, all right then," he said distrustfully. "But I'll be checkin', you hear."

"Thank you!" Star Swirl grinned, and looked up at the statue. "You can trust me. I'd sooner cut my own leg off than do anything to her."

– – –

Days went by in which Star Swirl managed to leave the garden, and the statue, in pristine condition sufficient to meet the gardener's strict standards. Star Swirl set up a simple tent, little more than a single sheet of rough fabric, in the shadow of the Princess each night, and took it down again each morning before setting out to wander and explore the town. Nopony else ever came to the garden, the gardener told him, although he did see a few young unicorns stop by the gate and glance furtively in at him. Rumor soon spread of the strange colt who had appeared out of nowhere, and Star Swirl heard stifled laughter wherever he went past. At first he would blush, then stalk away hurriedly, and felt an angry heat rising in him, until he learned to ignore it and wave it away.

Later that week, word went out that the entrance exam results would be announced in the Old Hall that night. Star Swirl heard it while he was out getting a bag of plain oats, the cheapest item of food he could find in town. He had grown used to eating food so simple it couldn't really be called 'a meal' on the road, but noticed the strange looks he got everywhere he went.

On the set hour, Star Swirl joined the crowd of unicorn applicants filing into the Old Hall. Every step he took he noticed other ponies glancing at him, and whispering among themselves, and even saw a few hooves pointing him out to others. He ignored them, and kept his eyes turned forward.

On the stage at the bottom of the Hall a half dozen unicorns of middle- to very-advanced-age were seated on simple wooden chairs, beside a table with a jug and some cups. Star Swirl recognized the bald, bulky stallion from the exam among them. Each of them wore robes of office in old fashions very unlike anything worn by the younger students. The oldest of them was an ancient, skinny stallion with thick spectacles resting on his wrinkled muzzle and a thin and a thin patch of beard. Once everypony had filed in, he rose up, levitated a scroll of parchment from the table, and cleared his throat.

He cleared his throat again a few times, and mumbled something to himself, adjusting the volume of his thin, dusty voice with an amplifying spell, before beginning to speak properly.

"Good evening, everypony, my name is Professor Incisive Commentary," here he rattled of a long list of honors and degrees in acronym-form that took him two and a half minutes and occasionally included letters that were not in the Equis alphabet, "-and I am the senior professor of arcane and thaumaturgical studies, with a doctorate in conjuration, disconjuration and reconjuration, and magister fellow in horn anatomy studies. These," he extended a hoof to the other unicorns on the stage, "are my colleagues in the faculty of the Academy of Magic here at Cambridle, Professor Ivory Tower, Professor Check Mate, Professor the right honorable Judge Learned Horn, Professor Sesquipidalian Loquaciousness, and Professor Red Quill. Those of you who have been accepted into the Academy will get to meet your new teachers during the immatriculation reception on Night-Mare Night in one week. Now then," he unrolled the scroll and adjusted his glasses. "The exams have all been read, and I can happily say that a full twenty-eight point six percent passed, which is the highest rate in the past twelve years. I will now read the names of those who have been accepted to become new students here at Cambridle." and he began to read out a list of names. Each name was met with a joyous outburst of variable volume and restraint from the pony in question. Star Swirl waited confidently for his name to be read.

He waited some more, as his name failed to appear early on in the list.

He continued waiting, his confidence flagging, as the minutes ticket by.

He was quite shocked when the list came to an end, and the elderly scholar said "That is all. Congratulations to all of you who were accepted, to everypony else I remind you that you can try again next year. You are dismissed."

"Hold on," Star Swirl cried as the students rose and began to file out of the hall. "You didn't say my name."

The professor looked towards him, shocked at this outburst. "And you are...?"

"Star Swirl."

The professor looked through his list. He shook his head. "You are not on the list, so I presume you were not accepted. Better luck next time, my boy."

"Well, who decided that? My exam was perfect!"

A handful of the students had stopped moving now and turned to see the commotion. The professor looked flustered. "Decorum, dear boy, this is undignified."

Star Swirl gritted his teeth. "Cerberus take decorum," Star Swirl said. "I travelled five hundred miles to be here today and I mean to stay. If anyone wants to tell me I can't then let them say it to my face."

Now just about the entire crowd of students had halted and were hanging back, watching the exchange with morbid schadenfreude. The elderly professor was clearly not used to being talked back to by impudent teenagers and looked extremely unsure. Behind him, the other faculty members were whispering to each other. Papers were levitated around. The bald stallion – Check Mate, Star Swirl believed the speaker had called him – located a particular piece of paper and cleared his throat.

"I believe this is the exam," he pronounced the word with unmistakeable distaste, "in question. I had the misfortune to appraise it."

"Well what's wrong with it?" Star Swirl asked.

"What's wrong with it?" The professor spoke with horror. "It's a joke! A mockery of this academy's noble heritage! This is a place dedicated to the study of the higher arts and sciences, and you deliver us this - this foal's scrawl," he waved the offending paper. "Everypony else spent several hours and at least fifteen pages on the assignment.*"

*: Success rates are strongly correlated with increased time spent and the length of the work, with the highest rates gotten by students who poach excess paper from their fellows by stealth. In one notable instance, a paper shortage meant that the exam turned into a gladiatorial battle as only one in ten students could hoard enough paper to answer the assignment at all.

Star Swirl's eyes glazed over. He shook his head to clear his mind again. "Well that was dumb of them. I only needed the one page." A wave of laughter spread through the hall.

"You didn't touch the assignment at all. Nowhere on this page did you even name the Luminiferous Aether."

"Well I have no idea what the lumin... what that thing even is." The laughter redoubled in intensity.

"And you wonder why you weren't accepted?" The professor was turning red. "The Luminiferous Aether is the medium through which light travels. If you don't even know the most basic points of magical physics then-"

"Well why didn't you just say so then?" Star Swirl interjected. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. All transmutations are the same anyway, I just wrote the way they all work."

"That's preposterous," the professor sputtered. "There are dozens of different transmutations that work according to entirely different principles, each requiring specialized-"

"How do you transmute water into your special aether then?" Star Swirl demanded of him. He was walking forward towards the stage.

"Clearly you would not understand it. But it begins with an inscribed circle of essence softening aligned three-quarters around its own axis on a twelve-point spectrum of..." The professor was interrupted by a splashing sound. On the table to his left, the water jug had just begun spouting its contents like a fountain.

"Water..." Star Swirl said, his horn glowing. The water evaporated in a pulsing wave of colored light that spread out to fill the entire hall. The professor fell silent, and slowly turned his head, watching the glittering light that hung everywhere in the air around him. The students in the back of the hall ceased their giggling.

Star Swirl glared, his mouth locked in a frown that he hoped looked menacing but which mostly looked adorable, and said: "...becomes Luminiferous Aether. There, did I say it right?"

The professor did not answer. The hall was so quiet that the light itself became audible, a soft, distant tinkling of immaterial bells.

Star Swirl stopped at the foot of the stage. He turned and looked around the hall at the astonished faces watching him in awestruck silence.

"Well then," Star Swirl said. "If nopony objects, I will assume I have been accepted into the school."

Nopony said a word as he trotted out of the hall.

Comments

[Periphery]

That spell with the luminiferous aether sounds kinda like the unicorn version of the sonic rainboom. Maybe Star Swirl is secretly Rainbow Dash's distant ancestor.

So now I find myself wondering when he will encounter Luna again, since it's bound to happen eventually. If it's essentially her school, maybe she still teaches there sometimes, or at least visits occasionally, then everyone will freak out when they realize Star Swirl knows one of the princesses to some degree.

[Daedalus Aegle]

3114542
Star Swirl and Luna are the main characters, so the fact that she's not in this chapter at all is an oddity. We will see more Luna soon enough though. Possibly tomorrow, in fact.

[Daedalus Aegle]

3114542
3115649
...Or even tonight, apparently. Because for once the writing actually went more or less smoothly and I wrote 2000+ working words in two nights.
I know that's not a huge amount all things considered, but when my work usually takes weeks of polishing to get to that point, I am happy with the efficiency.

[SpaceCommie]

Congratulations. Your story has good enough grammar to be included in the Good Grammar Directory, a comprehensive directory of grammatically correct stories on FIMFiction.

[djthomp]

Now that's how to demonstrate how much of an adorable badass you are.

[darthshadow25]

Sesquipidalian Loquaciousness

Omg I almost died

[light snow]

Omg XD this whole chapter was amazing!

[Ytak]

Oh, Star Swirl, you performed magnificently. There is nothing quiet like carrying on like you are supposed to be there to be accepted.

[AyanamiRei]

LIKE A MOTHERBUCKING BOSS BABY!! >=)