Chapter 3: The Cambridle Academy Library (Star Swirl vs. the Written Word)
Star Swirl looked up at the creaking hulk of Unity Hall. It had taken some time, and lots of particularly vigorous communication, but in the end Star Swirl had acquired the key and address of what had been officially entered into Cambridle's housing log as Harold Trotter's dorm room. Mister Trotter had still not appeared, and a number of increasingly desperate attempts by Cambridle's housing administration to locate him and persuade him to accept his spot rather than leave it for Star Swirl to claim had proven fruitless.
(When, months later, Cambridle finally received a letter from Trotter saying that he was very sorry but had been accepted into Trotsford instead, their mood only worsened still.)
Ignoring the looks he now seemed to attract everywhere he went, Star Swirl climbed the stairs to the tall, narrow door of the building, and stepped inside. Unity Hall, the mare who handed him the key had said, was one of the oldest student homes of the university, dating almost back to the founding of the school. Furthermore, she said, it had been rebuilt in the original design after every time a student burned it down, but thanks to Reneighsance advances in fire security magic, the last time that happened was hundreds of years ago. This was extra impressive, she had made sure to emphasize, considering that the building was entirely constructed in dry wood with excellent air circulation and frankly rather drafty doors and windows, and walls that were riddled with cracks that made it perfectly suited for conflagration.
Star Swirl didn't know what "conflagration" meant, but the description had reminded him of warm evenings in front of the fireplace in Edinspur, and he was content. He climbed five stories up an ancient, thick oak wood stair and headed down a corridor to find the correct door, and entered the apartment. "Hello? Anypony here?"
"One second!" A voice rang out from the next room. A brown earth pony colt, a few years older than Star Swirl, emerged shortly afterwards. "Hullo," he said with a thick Trottingham accent, a smile and an extended hoof. "I'm Turner. You must be the new roommate."
"Star Swirl," the unicorn said. "Not Harold Trotter, though I've apparently stolen his life. He's not coming and I'm taking his dorm." He paused. "You're not a unicorn," he said after a moment's hesitation.
"And you're not a zebra. I had so gotten my hopes up, too," Turner answered, chuckling at Star Swirl's befuddled expression. "There's more to Cambridle than the Academy of Magic, you know. I'm in the School of Material Sciences. Engineering, physics, medicine, and so on. I take it you're going to study magic, then?"
"I don't know about 'study'," Star Swirl said bitterly. "I've seen the teachers here, I think I know more magic than they do."
"Is that your special talent then?"
"Sort of. Princess Luna said I can pull down magic from the stars."
Turner raised an eyebrow. "Gosh. Mine is that I can always tell the time perfectly. Speaking of which, do you know what time it is? Teatime!" He rushed into the kitchen and a few minutes later they were sitting by the table with a pot of tea and some biscuits.
"So I'm really going to be living here?" Star Swirl asked as he looked around, disbelief apparent in his voice. Turner had given him the tour, which consisted of pointing a hoof at each door and declaring what lay behind it: a bedroom for each of them, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a broom closet. Star Swirl was amazed. The shared room alone was twice as large as his parents' house in Edinspur, and full of antique furniture fancier than the village magistrate's home.
"That's right," Turner said cheerfully. "It's drab, wretched, and cramped, but it keeps the rain off. That's student life for you."
"It's amazing," Star Swirl said quietly. "I used to live in a shack made of hay and dirt, with rocks stuck inbetween. I spent months sleeping outside while I walked here."
Turner raised an eyebrow "You... walked here? From Scoltland?"
"That's right. The stars showed me the way. I couldn't tell why at first, but now that I've got here I know," Star Swirl said with barely-suppressed excitement and absolute conviction. "I'm going to be the greatest wizard Cambridle has ever seen. Like Marelin, or Morgan le Neigh."
Turner nodded slowly while he looked over the unkempt teenager sitting before him. His mane was a tangled mess, a few leaves and twigs sticking out that the unicorn either had not noticed or could not be bothered to deal with. His hooves were filthy, with spatters of mud reaching up to his knees, and his cloak and bags were ripped, ragged, and caked in dirt.
"You're getting mighty far ahead of yourself, friend," Turner said slowly. "I suggest you calm down, drink your tea, and tell me the whole story from the beginning."
A half hour passed while Star Swirl spoke. As the discussion went on, Turner's expression grew increasingly contorted. "So, to sum up," the earth pony finally said, "you've never actually been inside a building larger than a, well, a small apartment by Trottingham standards,"
"Well, there was the one night I was in a gaol," Star Swirl said.
Turner nodded. "Right. Okay. Apart from that. And, you can barely read and write."
"Sure I can!" Star Swirl looked offended at the thought. "I learned myself. It took ages. I can do almost all the letters."
"Right. And, you come to the magic academy at Cambridle, one of the greatest and most demanding universities in ponydom, by yourself, without having ever been taught any magic before," Turner raised a hoof to cut off Star Swirl's objection. "Except for one night, that I don't think anypony's going to believe, you have no money, no plans, and..." Turner paused as he contemplated this last bit, "you've never seen a library? Is that right?"
"What's a library?" Star Swirl asked without irony.
"A library," Turner said patiently, "is a collection of books."
"Oh," Star Swirl said, unimpressed. "Is that all? The village had one of those. We didn't call it a library though."
"Oh no?"
"No. We called it a shelf."
Turner nodded. "Alright," he said, speaking slowly, "Here's what we're going to do. I am going to show you some things. But first, you need to take a bath, and I need to have some more tea."
– – –
"I don't see why you had to throw away my bag," Star Swirl grumbled as the two of them headed down the street towards the campus. He was freshly washed and naked, and felt very self-conscious on both points.
"It was practically crawling away on its own, I just helped put it out of its misery," Turner answered. "Anyway, I let you keep your cloak. I wanted to throw it in the fireplace as well. But you are going to wash it once we get back home."
"It's a raincloak, it's made to get dirty," Star Swirl muttered in response. "So where are we going anyway?"
"We are going to the library," Turner said. "If you're going to survive as a student here, you need to learn your way around the parchment."
Star Swirl scoffed. "Survive? I told you about the entrance exam, I'll be just fine!"
Turner rolled his eyes. The library building was right ahead of them.
"I don't see what's so special about a library. I know everything I need to know, this is just going to be a huge waste of... oh."
They had entered the Cambridle Academy Library.
"Oh," Star Swirl said weakly. "I see."
The central hall of the library spread out before them. To say that it was larger than Star Swirl imagined was not really strong enough: Star Swirl had been imagining the village magistrate's shelf, only perhaps twice as large.
Cambridle Academy Library was more like a mountain, one suitable for chaining a mythical titanic pony of such scale and girth that both mountain and pony could scrape the roof of the sky, if that mountain, and that pony, were hollowed out and filled with books.
"Exactly," Turner said as he led Star Swirl to the librarians' workplace in the center of the towering hall. A great round table, almost as tall as a stallion reared up on his hindlegs, from which a score of librarians would set out on expeditions to distant corners of the library, and to which they would return to rest between tasks at what almost looked like a forest campsite in the center.
A skinny unicorn mare sitting on a watchpony's post behind the table watched warily as the two of them approached. "Hullo," Turner said cheerfully. "This is my friend Star Swirl. He's a barbarian newly arrived from the wilderness, and needs to be civilized." He smiled.
She looked down at Star Swirl through weathered spectacles, scrutinizing him carefully. She solemnly placed a sheet of paper on the table. "Write your name," she said with the utmost severity, "on the dotted line."
Star Swirl did so, under the watchful eyes of the librarian, and handed it back.
She nodded her approval, and said, "Now you are one of us. You may check out ten books at a time. You may keep them for two months. After two months, you must return them or renew your loan. If you do not, the Library Hounds will come for you. The Library Hounds are responsible for retrieving late books. The Library Hounds are empowered to cross national boundaries in pursuit of their charge. The Library Hounds never sleep, and eat only the sorrow of delinquent borrowers. If you hear the baying of the Library Hounds, you may surrender yourself unharmed by speaking "nil pacus funcomidem" thrice, turning in a circle, and laying down on your back with your legs spread. Do you understand?"
Star Swirl cast an uncertain look to Turner, who nudged him in the rib. "Yes! Yes, I do."
The librarian nodded, unblinking. There was a flash of light, a burst of smoke, and a small square of cardboard appeared on the table before them. Star Swirl reached forth and took it, taking a breath of the thick, strange aroma of the smoke as he did so.
"Now go!" said the librarian, in commanding tone. "Go forth and find knowledge!"
Star Swirl suddenly felt rather light-headed. Not knowing where to start, he picked a direction at random and ambled off, leaving Turner behind to try to talk the librarian into going out for dinner.
– – –
When Turner woke up the next morning he found himself with a splitting headache, a glittering boa adorning his shoulders, with his body painted blue and his mane dyed yellow, and with a sprig of celery behind his ear.
A note lay on the bed beside him. He picked it up and tried to focus on the words, barely making them out:
"You have shown yourself worthy of progressing to the Third Circle. Return to me when you are ready and I shall initiate you into the Mysteries of Naglantis.
I had fun last night. Hope to see you soon,
-Ginny."
Turner chuckled, and winced as a burst of pain shot through his head. He slowly got up, and looked around. The flat looked as though some manner of siege weapon, possibly a ballista, had been loaded up with party supplies and fired in the window. The exception was Star Swirl's room, which looked perfectly ordinary.
In fact, Turner realized as he looked at it, it looked completely untouched, exactly as it had been before Star Swirl had even arrived. "Star Swirl?" Turner mumbled, and received no answer.
After grabbing a hooffull of biscuits to fill his empty stomach, Turner raced back to the library.
Ginny looked up at his approach from her perch in the librarians' campsite, and gave him a knowing wink. "Greetings, Adept of the Third Circle. Very adept indeed..."
"Hullo," Turner said, blushing lightly as the memories of last night flooded back to him. He shook his head to clear out his thoughts. "Listen – my roommate never returned last night. The barbarian from the wilderness. Do you know where he-?" Ginny pointed a hoof to her right. Turner turned.
There, not twenty yards down from where Turner had left him, Star Swirl was sitting with a stack of over a hundred books on a reading desk.
"Apparently he started reading at the beginning of that shelf, and just kept going until he got to where he is now," Ginny said quietly. "They made him come over and have a bite to eat around midnight. Library regulations, it doesn't look good to have ponies starving to death in the library."
Turner nodded.
"They quite liked him," Ginny said idly. "It's been a long time since we had a real devourer."
"Looks like he's alright then," Turner said, relieved. He turned back to the librarian. "Do you think maybe you could keep an eye on him? I think he's a little..." Turner twirled a hoof by his ear in the universal sign of Loony.
Ginny nodded. "But you should get back to your own studies. I will be checking to see if you've kept up with your... Exercises, for your next supplication." She leaned forward over the table and whispered with a sultry voice, "Oral dexterity will be on the test. The test will be in three parts, and will account for a quarter of your final grade."
– – –
In the corner, Star Swirl was completely lost in a history book of the university. In particular, he was transfixed by an early chapter describing the founding of the school.
In those ancient times, Star Swirl read, the daylight hours were taken up entirely by physical labor, grim, exhausting, and unthinking. With only traditional tools, and little understanding of the magic of growth, the unforgiving soil demanded so much effort that every moment when it was possible to see what one was doing, was spent forcing only the bare necessities of sustenance from the earth. Therefore, the night-time, when ponies returned to their homes, was the time for study and reflection, and all the great advances in knowledge took place under the grace of the moon.
As a result, a circle of great sages, the Yeoponies of the Night-Time Hours, decided to honor and revere the moon as the symbol of learning and the intellectual spirit of ponykind. Seeking to establish a great center of knowledge and wisdom, they chose Cambridle as their location and officially founded their school in Princess Luna's honor, with a great ceremony on Night-Mare Night, dedicated to the Princess's name.
Star Swirl was overjoyed to note that the immatriculation ceremony for new students took place on Night-Mare Night each year, in commemoration of that ancient anniversary, and that the new students wore robes similar to those worn by the original founders.
He was distinctly less overjoyed some hours later when he found some of the robes in question and saw that they were not actually similar to the originals at all. They were made of a different fabric, dyed using modern techniques that gave a completely different result, stitched using different threads and different knots...
Star Swirl frowned. Different cut, different decoration, different everything. The robes used by the new students were entirely in the modern fashion.
This, Star Swirl decided, would not do.
He slammed the book shut, and glanced over towards the great librarian fort in the center of the hall. He smiled. They had been helpful so far. It was time to find out how much the great library could do for him.
– – –
It was only a full week later, a week in which Turner never saw Star Swirl at home, before Turner returned to the library again. When he did, he found Ginny slumped over the table, unresponsive. When knocking on the table and gently nudging her gave no response, he carefully lifted her head and held her facing him. Her eyes were blood-shot behind her spectacles, and she slowly focused on the stallion as he softly whispered for her to wake up. "Something wrong?" he asked.
"Star Swirl..." she hissed. "He's going to be the death of us."
"...What?"
"Everything was fine the first few days..." another nearby librarian said, staring into empty space with dead eyes. "He was as excited as a young foal, just discovering the world of reading... Then he started talking about errors."
"I was a fool," Ginny said. "I told him about the red ink... I showed him where we keep it." She grabbed hold of Turner's neck and pulled him close. "I didn't know what I would unleash!"
Ginny slumped down on the table again, face down, and began loudly sobbing. Turner reached out and gently stroked down her mane, biting his lip uncertainly.
"Look," Ginny said between sobs, as she brought a book up from below the table and opened it for Turner to see. Turner raised an eyebrow. Each page was drenched in red ink, notes tightly-packed in every inch of margin, every open spot, and between every line. Half the original text had been unceremoniously crossed over, marked "wrong!" with the number of exclamation marks rating how spectacularly misinformed the original writer had been on the subject they had studied for decades, and every bit that wasn't crossed out had lengthy commentary explaining that, while not outright false, the underlying truth had been completely misunderstood and misinterpreted.
Turner flipped through the pages, finding more of the same. In the next chapter there was one single line that had not been crossed out with red ink. It read "rocks are often found below ground."
"Why didn't you stop him?" Turner asked. "Why didn't you send the Library Hounds after him?"
"We tried!" Ginny cried. "The Library Hounds have left us. They obey only him, now. They follow him as though he were the Packmaster foretold in the Prophecy of Hoofnote 89!"
"I'm going to go talk to him," Turner said.
Ginny gulped. "You mustn't. The Hounds will devour you."
"Not to worry, I'm good with animals," Turner said with forced cheer. "Where is he?"
Ginny raised a hoof and pointed to a large door on a distant wall, ornamented with ominous iconography. Turner's smiled went rigid.
"Ah," he said. "The Forbidden Knowledge section. Right. No problem. I'll just... I'll just go see how he's doing then. Back in a little bit!"
– – –
Turner paused to consider the abundance of skulls, the vaguely insectlike figures, the betentacled monstrosities whose shapes were only hinted at, the ponies whose eyes, ears, or mouths were bound or blacked out, and all the other imagery of things unknown and forbidden that decorated the entrance to the section officially designated Dewey 1000: Knowledge Ponies Are Not Meant To Know. The section was generally securely locked with numerous seals, both magical and otherwise. Even then, every once in a while a brash and ingenious student found their way in and, somewhat more rarely, out again with the power to speak of what they had seen inside. Now the door stood open and unguarded, a chill draft from within carrying the smell of forgotten and long-untouched things, of ancient dust and sickness. Turner shuddered as the gust passed over him, then stepped inside into a dark chamber.
The moment he stepped out of the light, under the shadow of the towering shelves, he heard a growling sound behind him, quickly joined by more on all sides. Turner just barely glimpsed a low shape shimmer as it swiftly passed through a blade of pale light from beyond the great door.
The Library Hounds were encircling him.
Turner froze up and stood completely still, holding his breath and racking his brain to try to remember the surrender phrase. Would it even work when I don't have an overdue book?, He thought to himself. One of the Hounds stepped out right in front of him: it was wolf-like in shape, but almost as large as a stallion, and made from shed pages of paper or parchment bound together by old and powerful magics, covered in writing. It snarled as it drew close to sniff him, and he saw fangs made of single strips of paper, razor-sharp. He shuddered at the thought of the paper-cut bites and claws.
The Hound sniffed him, seemed to make up its mind, and growled more loudly. It was just about to leap upon the earth pony when Star Swirl's voice yelled, "Down! Sit!" from further in.
The Hounds whimpered, and leapt away, disappearing into the shadows. Turner began to breathe again. "Star Swirl?" he asked as loudly as he could manage.
"Over here," Star Swirl's voice called out. Turner followed it deeper in the dark chamber and around a corner to see the young unicorn sitting alone at a writing desk, reading by the light of a lone wax candle, two Hounds sitting beside him. Their parchment skin was yellow and the script faded, showing great age. They growled deeply when Turner approached, but stopped when Star Swirl grunted disapprovingly at them.
"Star Swirl..." Turner mumbled, "what are you doing?"
"Reading the library," Star Swirl answered, not looking up. "Same as before."
"What, all of it?"
"Yes. At this rate it will only take another two weeks."
"Look, Star Swirl," Turner stepped up behind the unicorn, careful to avoid the hounds, "I talked to the librarians earlier. You're not allowed to edit the books in the library."
"Well, that goes against the entire ethos of the institution," Star Swirl said. "I'm only contributing to the furtherance of the body of scholarly knowledge. It's hardly my fault that the writers of all these books were buffoons and ignoramuses."
Turner paused to take in the changes to Star Swirl's vocabulary. "Yes, but... they're not your books!" he said. "They don't belong to you! If you want to contribute, you're supposed to write your own, not rewrite everypony else's!"
Star Swirl's head shot up and his quill paused. He stared into nothing with wide eyes. "Write my own?" His mouth widened to a manic grin. "Turner, that's brilliant!"
Turner sighed in relief, and looked down at what he had been working on. His heart sank in his chest as he looked over the books before them. "Star Swirl," he said with growing horror. "Did you read these books?"
"Yes. Why?"
"All of them?"
"Let me see here, the Ponykotic Manuscripts, The Princess in Yellow, Cultes des Mules..."
"And... did they not drive you insane?"
"Well, the Ponykotic Manuscripts came close, the author couldn't use an apostrophe to save his life, but with a few cups of this miraculous 'coffey' beverage I got through it."
Turner nodded slowly. "The thing is that normally anypony who reads these books loses their mind and dedicates their life to bringing about the end of the world."
"I can understand that," Star Swirl said. "Two chapters into The Princess in Yellow I felt like killing somepony as well. His sentence structure is just appalling." He shook his head in disgust. "Anyway, I made some suggestions in the margins. It makes it much more readable." He flipped the book open to a random page, revealing the formerly yellow, ancient page covered with scribbles in fresh red ink.
Turned bent over and looked at the notes in the margin: "Recites Alhoofred et al in inferior idiom, contributing nothing to the subject. Return to the shelf library and get the Necroponycon instead".
"Okay," Turner said with forceful cheer. "You know what? I think it's time we put down the evil tomes of secrets ponies were not meant to know, and headed back out to the main hall to sit down and have a chat about good library patron behavior. Could you do that for me, Star Swirl? I will buy you a fresh bottle of red ink if you're good."
"It would be difficult," Star Swirl answered, returning his attention to the book.
"Why is that?"
"Well, because of the big blob monstrosity with giant teeth sticking out of its eye sockets sitting over there in the corner," he pointed a hoof to the side without turning. "It sort of showed up a few chapters into the Cultes des Mules and was going to eat me as soon as I stopped reading. I was hoping to find a good way to get rid of it when you came along. I'm rather afraid it's woken up now."
– – –
"Alright," Turner said a week later. "What did we learn from that?"
"Do not disobey the librarians," Star Swirl said with a slightly muffled voice.
"Yes. And?"
"Do not use a dog whistle on the Library Hounds."
Turner nodded. "What else?"
"The Script Specters are not your friends."
Turner glared. Star Swirl sighed. "Really, really, do not disobey the librarians," the unicorn continued, "never leave your towel behind, necromancy is not a substitute for food and sleep, do not summon giant monsters into broom closets, obey the librarians, for real, and in the right hooves a screwdriver can be the most valuable thing in the universe."
"Great!" Turner clapped his hooves together. "See, that wasn't so hard."
"Yes, yes," Star Swirl mumbled. "Now will you please untie me?"
Turner glanced towards Ginny, who gave a silent gesture in response. "Soon," he said.
Star Swirl pursed his lips unhappily. He was strapped to a gurney with thick leather bands, his muzzle clamped almost immovably shut with a metal security mask, his horn blocked with a magic-suppressing metal sleeve, and the entire thing was hanging upside-down from a rope suspended over a large cauldron, in which the assembled librarians had concocted something green, bubbling, viscous, and faintly luminescent. "I promise," he said with as much humility and as little indignation as he could manage, "that I won't do any of it again, unless I am given explicit permission. Alright?"
Half an hour later, he was ushered out of the library with an impressive honor guard of librarians on either side, and an equally impressive list of conditions for his reentry.
He looked up. The sun had just set, and the first stars were peering down at him, and an involuntary blush began to creep over his face as he realized he now knew what the astronomical equivalent of a facehoof looked like.
He shook his head, and stalked down the street towards Unity Hall. Night-Mare Night was a few weeks away, and he had a costume to prepare.
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Librarians are awesome. I'd like to believe Twilight operates hers with similar late returns rules.
I suppose hard to keep to a schedual with characters who have a DESTINY. You know, as opposed to those who only have a destiny.
He...he's worse than Twilight.
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Worse... or better?
Gosh, this is so rich. It's like I've said before, but I must repeat myself, the characterization is stellar. And if there was one thing that perfectly sent this chapter off, it was:
"Nil pacus funcomidem". Any possible translation?
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I must admit that those words don't actually mean a blessed thing
this is awesome lol.
, because I know you weren't given a lot to work with so far as Star Swirl's personality but you still make it fit with what we know today. (I mean from like the show's facts)
.
First of all, I think you characterize him very well
And, although it wasn't so much in this chapter, I really like the way they talk and think. They use more archaic words and sentence structure which definitely helps give the story the 'past' feeling. Almost like you're reading the actual Knights of the Round Table or something similar.
And you can't forget that hilarious library stuff. I'd like to see what Twilight would say if she saw him doing that
Star swirl is awesome,must keep on reading XD
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It's been a while since I updated this, sadly, but it isn't cancelled or anything :P I've just been busy with Clover instead.
Thanks
Star Swirl, the original grammar Nazi.
4887214 Twilight would probably hero worship him harder since that seems like something she would have done. Hmmm. I wonder if librarians have some secret records of past patrons and when the canterlot ones saw Twilight did they think "not another star swirl!"
Note for posterity:
This is the chapter where I realized how great this is.
I just started reading this today, and I'm utterly hooked!
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Glad you like it, and thanks for the watch! :D
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I'd just like to quickly thank both of you, iisaw, for pointing me in this book's direction, and Daedalus, for writing this masterpiece.
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Thanks :D
After reading all the current available chapters of the education of clover the clever, I have to say, star swirl's purple is showing.
So what I am curious is...just how did Starswirl gain such an intimate knowledge of magic and how was he able to read and retain so much knowledge so easily?
Also...I feel like I am now starting to become bewitched by this story. I can feel it drawing me in, threatening to not let me go until I am finished reading all of it's wonderful chapters!! Not quite sure how I feel about this yet o.o