The Windchimes of Winter
There is a special time in Spring in Canterlot, in the weeks following the Grand Galloping Gala, where the late afternoon sun becomes positively dazzling, spreading a thick orange light to every face and facet of the Canterhorn’s western slopes. It created an effect in the streets and in buildings facing that direction called a chiaroscuro, where the orange beams washed out all colors not in shadow. It had become such a popular local celestial event that the nobles of Canterlot had relocated their annual hob-knobbing to this time after the Gala – Pinkie’s additions were fun, but not quite the nobility’s style – and many little street festivities were celebrated by the Canterlot locals. Orange and black briefly became the city’s colors.
The Starswirl the Bearded Wing of the Royal Library was no exception. In fact, quite the opposite, as the library’s staff were so enamored of the lighting that they had formally protested Princess Twilight’s attempts to introduce light-sensitive windows to the library that would magically shade the room during the afternoon’s most glaring golden hour.
The Princess was never so upset by her staff showing initiative and backbone, mostly because it meant she had to relocate her favorite reading nook to the northern face of the building.
Standing in that harsh-yet-beautiful light were two ponies that, on the surface, couldn’t be any further apart if they tried. One was tall, gaunt, and wore a peaked hat ringed in tiny bells. The other was short, wide – he blamed his puffy shirts and his wife’s cooking – and bore a wide grey beard beneath a simple cap.
And yet, the first looked upon the second with sparkling awe in his eyes.
“I just don’t understand how Caballeron and Daring survived!” Starswirl almost whined. “How did they know the Storm King’s castle would have magic-proofed refrigerators just lying around? And even then, how was it durable enough to hold up against the legendary Spectrum of Lightning going critical? A blast of that magnitude should have destroyed them both, regardless of shelter!”
“Ah, well, you see…” Famed author Groom Q.Q. Martingale stuttered, and glanced over his shoulder towards his wife. A.K. Yearling was just thrusting a wadded-up bit of paper – no doubt carrying a message for Princess Twilight – into the bright green dragonflame candle sitting with her at the large central round-table from where she’d been working as Starswirl the Bearded entered the library.
When their eyes met, his wife of twenty years gave the old stallion a death glare and a gesture that he’d long since learned roughly translated as “Stall for time, since I forgot to wrap one of the kids’ Hearth’s Warming presents”.
It could mean other things, of course. Groom – or, Caballeron, as was his real name – had also seen that gesture from AK – or, Daring Do – mean everything from “distract the hideous temple guardian trying to eat us”, to “when I get out of this death trap, I’m going to enjoy writing about how badly I’m going to beat you up”, to even “you sexy hunk of a stallion, where have you been all my life and how soon can we elope to the Baahamas?”
That last one was the best translation, in his opinion. If only for being so rare in its use.
Either way, he knew stalling was probably the most likely meaning, and would not disappoint the Missus.
“You see, Signore Swirl,” Caballeron said, stroking his not-so-fake-these-days silver beard in authorial presentation, “Unbeknown to most, Doctor Caballeron had once pulled a heist in that very castle, and remembered its contents and layout most excellently.”
“Really?” Starswirl frowned. “Which book was that?”
“Sadly, unpublished,” Caballeron quickly replied. “My… editor was unimpressed with some of the subplots, and so had me scrap it to work on The Peryton Plight.”
That, and I never told Daring about that particular heist, even after I came clean about the others. Best not to open that old wound…
Starswirl’s eyes lit up, and he gave a few vigorous nods. “Ah, I see. Well, TPP is one of my favorites, so… I suppose that’s all fair. I assume the events of that manuscript were still canon then…?”
“But of course!”
“Though that still doesn’t explain how they survived!” the elder stallion said with a click of his tongue. “I can’t tell you how long I argued at the last convention with that simpering Quibble Pants about the plausibility of a refrigerator surviving a Thaumonuclear explosion! That artifact was rated at a destructive output of 1.21 Jigawatts! It should have torn their atoms apart!”
“Well, of course it should,” said Daring, now approaching the two stallions. “That thing was… well, it packed a wallop, that much I know.”
Caballeron felt a bead of sweat drip down his brow as his wife approached. He kept glancing between her and Starswirl, looking for any sign that the ancient, powerful, brilliant wizard had noticed the clump of loose hair sticking haphazardly out of Daring’s flowery hat. In front of such a mind as his, Caballeron had no doubt Starswirl would make the connection if he saw the black, grey, and white strands coming out of the famous author’s head.
Sure, not such a bad thing for Daring if one more fan realizes she’s real… but I’m still not clear of the statute of limitations!
“But…” Daring said in a teasing tone. “The Storm King had built his merch out of the cheapest materials he could find. The fridge had so much lead in it that it became a super-heavy Fair Day cage!”
Starswirl frowned. “Fair Day?”
“Famous Lightning Mage,” Caballeron answered quickly. “She developed a means of protecting oneself from electric spells, if I recall correctly.”
Daring flashed her eyes up at Cab.
“You did read my paper…” she whispered, a blush and a smile creeping onto her face. Caballeron felt his own cheeks warm at the sight.
Starswirl, however, simply hummed, and scratched at his beard.
“So many centuries of progress,” he mused. “So many to keep track of… Ah!”
He stamped his hoof, and smiled as though he’d just found the last piece of a puzzle.
“But the force!” he cried. “How could Caballeron and Daring survive the impact of landing in the desert after the Spectrum exploded?”
Daring swiveled her head back towards the grey stallion, her smile intact. And knowing.
“You’re familiar with Prenatal Magic surges?
At that, Starswirl rolled his eyes, and scoffed. “Of course, I know about Prenatal Magic. Pony fetuses develop magic in the womb, and can have flare-ups while in development. I am a father, after all.”
“Well, at the time, Daring didn’t know she and Cabbie… uh, Caballeron,” Daring corrected with another, different blush, “had a certain somepony on the way. So, when they went sailing through the air in that fridge, the little filly flared her nascent unicorn magic, and sucked most of the kinetic energy out of it before they crashed.”
Starswirl blinked.
“Wait… you mean…?”
Caballeron smiled, and nodded. “Si. Carmare Sandineighgo…”
“Gaah!” Starswirl cried out, and threw his head back, startling the two other ponies. “You planned on Carmare that far back!?”
“Technically, she wasn’t planned— ow!”
Caballeron winced, and clutched at his side, where a distinctly hoof-shaped imprint had left itself. From the thin line that was her smile, it didn’t look like Daring had even moved.
A flash of silver magic lit up from Starswirl’s horn, and a hefty stack of papers appeared in the air before him. With a snarl, and a scowl, he brought out a quill and began making furious notations on one page approximately halfway through the stack.
“How can anypony be expected to keep up with these fictional universes!?” He grumbled, and mumbled, and possibly cursed under his beard. “All these original characters, and these plot twists… maybe Quibble was right. We need a fan encyclopedia…”
And with another flash of his magic, Starswirl sent the whole thing away.
“At least the timeline is updated,” he sighed. Then, returning his attention to the somewhat confused authors before him, he added, “Thank you, for the clarifications. I apologize if I seem rather… intense, as of late. I’ve needed the distraction…”
“Perfectly understandable!” Daring cut in, a worried smile plastered over her face. She reached out one hoof to pat Starswirl’s shoulder, and let her smile settle into a slightly more genuine one. “Everycreature needs a distraction once in a while. Especially for… well.”
Starswirl took a long, deep breath. “Yes, well indeed.”
The old stallion seemed, to Caballeron, at least, to deflate a little at Daring’s touch, to sink a little into himself. His eyes, just a moment flashing with fire and fury as he’d scribbled away at his ‘distraction’, sagged just a bit. His curly grey mane and beard looked flatter than they had just moments before.
It is like watching a pony age right before your eyes…
Starswirl breathed again, and said, “Yes. You’re right. Distractions…”
And like that, the moment had passed. Starswirl straightened himself out, and slipped back into his role. The stately, wise wizard. The unflappable hero of legend.
Ah, but I saw you. Caballeron thought to himself, eyes not daring to look away from the older stallion. Eyes not daring at all to look at his own wife, and imagine her laying in a bed, waiting to… to…
“Please, do not hesitate to come speak with either of us, if you need something, my friend,” Caballeron said, one hoof over his heart. “We’re stuck in this library all day, doing research for the Princess, after all. We could use distractions, as well.”
Daring’s eyes narrowed, and her lips turned down into a tiny pout. “How can you need a distraction? We’re learning so much about ancient Equestria with this research!”
“Can I sell it, take over a small nation with it, or write a single paper about it without having to worry about the Princess putting me in a dungeon off in another country entirely?” Caballeron asked with a single raised eyebrow.
The Missus stewed and grumbled, but said no more. This drew a soft, though victorious chuckle from her husband.
Starswirl smiled along with them. It was a sad smile, neither of the couple wished to admit, but it was not so heavy as well. The older stallion was possibly even happy, for a moment or two.
“You remind me so much of Trixie and Celeste,” he said with a shake of his head. The bells along the rim of his hat jangled lightly, echoing in the library’s acoustic silence. “They always make fun of me for liking your books so much, you know?”
“Oh?” Daring asked.
“Indeed!” Starswirl said with a short, clipped laugh. “Both of them, in fact. They’ve kept up a little joke between themselves that you two are actually the characters from your books. Doctor Caballeron and Daring Do!”
Both Cab and Daring laughed… sort of. They mostly just shared a look with each other, and waited for their super-fan to finish his own laughing fit.
“Ah, si…” Caballeron’s face flushed red beneath his beard and hat, Daring doing likewise, sans the beard. “… I do suppose we resemble them most… thoroughly, at that.”
“Aren’t they inventive?” Starswirl asked with a smile. Then, pointing to Caballeron’s muzzle, he added, “Though, I must admit that, without the beard, I might have had similar thoughts as well.”
Starswirl paused, and hummed for a moment.
“Actually,” he said, slowly, cautiously, “do you happen to use product? As a sort of… connoisseur of beards, I’d love to know.”
Caballeron blanched, and rolled his eyes.
“No, never! At least not since those dos cacas Flim and Flam convinced me to try their product…” He grumbled, and patted his beard gently, like a mother soothing her crying child. “Took me a year before my fur grew back, let alone the beard…!”
“That was a good year,” Daring laughed at Caballeron’s past misery. “I hated that thing when you first grew it. Too ticklish. I kept sneezing…”
“Really?” Caballeron’s face fell, and a look of shocked betrayal filled his eyes… or those could have been tears, but being Macho, such was impossible for a stallion of his caliber. “I thought you said you liked my beard…”
Daring hummed, and adjusted her glasses – curse the world for getting blurry just as she was entering middle age! – with one wing. She smiled and looked up at her husband with a half-lidded stare.
“In my old age…” she said, reaching up to peck his lips with her own, “… I’ve learned to like ticklish…”
Yet, before Caballeron could fall into the two rosy-colored pools that stared back up at him with such emotion… it appeared that there was a ruckus in the library.
Or, outside the library.
Rather, something very large and heavy suddenly crashed through the library’s main doors, scattering a few guards and librarians as the gangly giant form of Princess Twilight Sparkle tumbled into the room. This was across the library and past several full shelves of books and other artifacts, so Caballeron, Daring, and Starswirl could only guess that it was the Princess of Friendship, but… well. Come on.
“Ack! I’m so sorry! Was just in a hurry!”
“Uh, no problem… Your Majesty?”
The two researchers and one wizard paused, and listened as the Princess carefully hopped up to her hooves and began profusely apologizing to her downed subjects. A few purple flashes of magical light could be seen across the ceiling, even in this deeply orange hour, signaling Twilight’s attempts, no doubt, to right everything and everypony that had been knocked over in her mad dash for the library.
After a few more moments, punctuated with the occasional “I’m sorry”, and “I know, it’s a library, I’ll be quieter, promise”, a red-faced Princess Twilight, ears downturned in obvious embarrassment, shuffled around the bend in the book aisle before she leapt into a trot to reach her quarry.
“Ah, good!” Twilight half-whispered as she reached them. “I was just thinking I should see how you were doing, Starswirl…”
Starswirl, eyes crinkling slightly with a smile, held up one hoof to forestall whatever excuses she had prepared.
“It is perfectly alright, Your Majesty,” he said with an unvoiced chuckle. “I saw Miss Yearling send the message. I suspected you’d have questions for me.”
Instantly, Twilight deflated. A feat, considering how much larger she was than every other pony around her. A little embarrassment fled her form, replaced by a chagrined smile that was still a sight better than the frown she’d been wearing from her rather rapid entry into the building.
“That would be correct,” she said, lightly. “Sorry, I just didn’t want it to be like a Princess thing, and more like a friend thing. You know? Less ordering you to answer questions and more…”
She paused, and took another long, slow breath.
After a moment, Twilight leaned back and took a more regal pose. She drew in a quick succession of calming breaths, one hoof going in and out from her chest as she’d been taught long ago, before the final tension seemed to melt from her shoulders.
“Sorry,” she said, now far more in control than she’d been a moment ago. “Ran all the way here.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Starswirl laughed. “I suppose I owe you a few answers then, if you’re going to put in that much effort just to talk to me.”
Twilight shot her former idol a shiny, toothy grin, before she turned to look down at her top researchers.
“I can relay anything important to the journal later,” she said. Then, giving Daring a wink, she added, “You two have been working non-stop for days now. Go on. Take a break.”
Daring, naturally, bit down on her tongue before she could manage to either scream or commit outright treason. Caballeron wasn’t sure which, but he knew his wife was about to do something along those lines, the way her eyes bulged and her jaw almost hit the floor.
“I, ah, believe that would be to the good,” he answered quickly, nodding along as he swept his wife into a half-hug, and tried to shovel them both from the royal presence. “We could use the time for other things. Private things. Right, darling?”
Daring snapped her head around at him, and shot the old stallion a glare that might have once brought Caballeron to his knees in fright.
But then, instantly, her eyes changed. The anger fell away, replaced by…
Sparkles?
“Private… things…?” she mouthed.
Her wing wrapped around his barrel, and within moments, Caballeron found himself hurtling away from Princess Twilight and Starswirl, towards the main doors of the library.
“Oh!” he laughed, startled. “I did not realize that would excite you so…!”
“Of course, it would! You’re a genius, honey!” Daring cheered as she dragged him along in her wake.
Her tone of voice sounded excited… but Caballeron began to wonder if it was the right sort of excited.
“Though this is true… in what way am I a genius this time?”
The couple came to a sliding halt at the edge of the library. Daring spun her husband around, and almost cracked his neck with all the force she put into dragging their faces together.
She peered into his eyes with exuberant glee.
“Private!” she said, excitedly. “There’s a guard station right around the corner where we can use the Palace Scrying System to listen in on their conversation!”
“… oh…”
She grinned, ear to ear, and laughed in a maniacal voice, “No one can hide a mystery from me, Cabbie! No one!”
“Of course not, dear…” Caballeron said, frowning.
Daring, perhaps not noticing, wrapped one forehoof around his, and began to pull Caballeron down the hall, towards the guard post.
“And then, once we know more about whatever Starswirl’s hiding,” she added with a chuckle, “let’s make out in the guard’s room!”
Watchfire, the Guards’ youngest dragon member, was standing watch over the Eastern Hall of the palace that day. It was his first rotation after training camp, and it was the first day of a long, glorious career that would see his name and his legacy carried into the halls of dragon legends. He would be famous, and beloved, all across Equestria and the Dragonlands one day, his name second only to those of Spike, Ember, and Smolder in the annals of their people.
And yet even when he was old and toothless, lying atop a horde of gold bits, gemstones, and mint-condition Elements of Harmony action figures – with kung-fu action grip – that would make Torch himself jealous, Watchfire the Bold would be forever haunted by the smile on that one nameless stallion’s face as he was dragged through the palace halls by his apparent marefriend.
For Watchfire had never, in all of his thousands of years of bravery and service, ever felt half as happy as that giddy idiot seemed to be that day. And he oft wondered if he ever would…
“How is Trixie doing?”
Starswirl blinked, at the question, his mind elsewhere. It was still with Yearling and Martingale as the couple had taken off at a run. Gusty only knew what they would be up to right now, but it didn’t take him long to reach a conclusion.
If he had Trixie right here with him, in good health, he knew what he’d do.
Probably hop over to the guard station up the East Hall. The one he’d helped install scrying spells into just last year. Sure, he’d also appreciate a good nuzzle and smooch from his wife, but even at his most amorous, Starswirl would have wanted to listen in to a conversation between an archmage and a Princess.
That wasn’t weird, right?
“Starswirl?”
Oh, he hadn’t answered the question.
“She’s doing rather well, actually,” he said, and turned to make his way towards the section of the Starswirl Wing that dealt with purely historical artifacts. Like his old step-stool. Or a novelty mug-holder Flash Magnus had given him for a birthday, but that the overzealous research staff had labeled an historic curiosity and refused to give back to him.
As they passed by something he assumed to be the fossilized remains of his uneaten lunch from the day he’d run off to confront the Pony of Shadows, Starswirl elaborated somewhat.
“Your students, Abacus Cinch and Luster Dawn, came by the hospital room after they determined it was Discord’s magic filling up her lungs. They shared their findings with Doctor Dinky, and came up with a rather remarkable set of spells to treat Trixie with.”
He paused, but only to give Twilight a shrug and a half-smile.
“Not a cure, as I understand it,” Starswirl sighed. “But, she’s back down to one Oxygen Crystal. Probably gave us… another week? Week and a half, if Luster’s calculations are correct.
“I’ve said it before,” he said as he turned down another bookcase corridor, “but she’s just about the cleverest little pony I’ve seen since, well… Clever, actually. Sunburst and Starlight should be proud.”
The two came across a small break in the shelving, a space helpfully labeled by a sign which read: ‘Authentic Starswirl the Bearded Sitting Room Furniture Recreation. DO NOT SIT.’
Which made Starswirl himself chuckle, since he’d never laid eyes on the furniture in his life. Not that it wasn’t nice, a pair of plush, high-backed chairs plus ottomans, all furnished in a constellation-theme of night-dark blues and crackling silver and gold stars. They had been set up in front of a fake fireplace, with a rather fancy fake tea set placed between them. It almost did look like a recreation of somepony’s sitting room, and a swanky one at that.
Whoever had actually owned it all before it had been reappropriated by a stuffy librarian, they certainly had style.
“They are proud, as am I,” Twilight said, eyes twinging a little as Starswirl kicked the sign over, and settled himself into one of the two chairs. “And that’s great news, about Trixie!”
Starswirl nodded, and squished down a little further into the chair he’d picked.
Plush. Plush doesn’t begin to describe this. I really wish I had owned it, once. Then maybe I could get Twilight to let me take it home…
He paused in his slow unwinding, having suddenly noticed the way Twilight… stared at the other seat. He wondered, for a moment, if Twilight was concerned about her relative size compared to it, which would have been silly since it was clearly sized for something roughly alicorn-shaped – Starswirl suspected everything of “his” in this place had a Celestia-sized equivalent nearby – but there was an almost nervousness to her expression.
Starswirl raised a single eyebrow, and asked, “Twilight?”
She snapped her face back towards him, lips pulled into a thin line.
“Oh, um…” She bit her lip, and flicked her gaze back down to the chair itself. “But… it’s historical…”
Starswirl’s eyes widened. It was good that his mustache covered so much of his lips, he realized. It was simple enough to pull his lips in, and use it and his beard to hide the twisted smile that creeped across his face at just that moment.
“Ah, Princess? Since all this is… apparently, my furniture, would it help if I gave you permission to sit in it?”
The Princess’ face went blank. For a moment. And then a truly Pinkie-like smile, full of the sort of joy most ponies could ever dream about experiencing lit up in her eyes.
Twilight smiled, and nearly leapt up on her hind hooves with excitement.
Nearly.
She was, after all, the Princess of Equestria. Imperium Regnum, Bearer of Magic, Friendmaker, etc, etc, and all the other titles besides. A certain amount of decorum was a must.
Twilight still let out a little squee, however, before she gingerly stepped into the midnight-hued chair, and began wriggling her way deep down into the cushions. Only a fellow book-lover like Starswirl could understand the little joyful hum she let out as Twilight nestled into a good reading-position.
After a customary few moments to acclimate to unrivaled, perhaps even magical comfort…
Starswirl ran through a quick mental mental checklist, at that thought. But, after a few moments, he was certain that the Mind-Controlling Sleep Chairs of Aramarethea had indeed been tossed into one of those magic-less dimensions long ago, and allowed himself to…
Starswirl made yet another mental checklist. This one included contacting Sunset Shimmer about a mind-controlling sofa before some poor human ended up getting sleeped to death.
“So, if Trixie’s doing a little better, why exactly are you here?” Twilight asked, finally cutting through Starswirl’s thoughts. Perhaps thinking better of her wording, the Princess grimaced slightly, and added, “By that, I mean why aren’t you with her now?”
“Mostly, it was her idea,” he answered promptly, and chuckled. “She said that I was acting ‘like a sad sack’, and suggested I needed some fresh air.”
Twilight winced. “She’s never been one for tact, has she?”
Starswirl laughed, and said, “Perhaps not. But brutal honesty has its place, I think. Especially when one is, indeed, being a sad sack.”
The Princess said nothing, instead nodding sagely as she lit up her horn. It was so subtle that even Starswirl almost missed it. The tea set before them vanished without a sound, replaced by Twilight’s own personal set. He could tell that, as most of it was of modern human design. Battery powered, in most cases.
Starswirl himself quite enjoyed human ingenuity. There was something primally intoxicating about a race that could use magic – well, technology – without having magic.
I do wish I hadn’t tossed so many artifacts willy-nilly into their world, in retrospect, he thought as Twilight began pouring them both steaming cups of tea.
Technicolor humans! Can’t help but feel responsible for that…
“Well, it sounded like you were having fun with Da… AK Yearling, and Martingale,” she said as she pulled out a tea bag decorated with a black and white zebra stripe pattern. “So… distraction successful?”
Twilight set down cups for her and Starswirl, each with one of the zebra-stripe bags sitting in them, before she poured the already piping hot water from her kettle.
Starswirl marveled as the water in his cup began to take on a brilliant, zebra-stripe pattern. The white and the black remained entirely separated, as distinct as black and white could be. Even the quick addition of milk, and the intrusion of a stirring spoon failed to disrupt the pattern.
He laughed, “Ah! Zecora’s Everfree Leaf! I didn’t know she’d finished a new batch.”
“She lets me buy some early,” Twilight explained, and took a quick sip herself. As her magic pulled out a small tin of tiny cookies to place on the table, she added, nonchalantly, “I guess she thinks she owes me for that Beholder situation…”
The two chuckled at the somewhat dire memory, and sat together in the appreciable silence. Starswirl sipped gently at his drink, and idly wondered how long it had been since he’d seen Zecora’s homeland. Centuries, at least. Sure, the tea she brewed in the Everfree would be just as rare there as here, but the combination of milky and bitter flavors reminded him somewhat of his journeys out that way, and a fleeting moment of nostalgia overtook him.
And then, he remembered who he wouldn’t be sharing that experience with, if he did go off to visit Farasi again.
It was almost poetic, he thought, that Twilight chose then to begin lowering the sun. Deep, purple hues slowly pushed aside glaring oranges, and a softer, calming blue slowly filled out the shadows, but only for a moment.
A clickity-clack sound from above preceded a vibratory hum, which itself preceded the sudden, violent flash of the cruel fluorescent bulb from the library’s ceiling. Starswirl closed his eyes against the harsh glare with a hiss. As did the Princess, amusingly enough.
“Oh, that does sort of kill the mood, doesn’t it?” she asked nopony in particular, eyes squinting into the white, unflattering light.
Starswirl hummed in agreement, and quickly glanced around. The tea set looked quite mechanical in this lighting, and the furniture not quite so lively. He could make out every tiny scratch in the wood and every stitch in the cloth as if the bulbs up above were trying to show every flaw and crack in effervescent gleam.
Well. There was no doing for that.
The illusion of comfort was necessary, today.
The ancient stallion sighed through his nose, and took one more look around. Seeing that he and Twilight were truly alone, he caught her eye with a short hoof-gesture. He then reached up to the brim of his hat with that hoof, and gave one of the bells hanging there the tiniest little tap.
Twilight almost reared up out of her seat as the tiny, golden bell no bigger than a filly’s eye let out a long, low, mournful doll. A distinctly sharp F note rolled over the Princess, eliciting a tingly, biting sensation all throughout her body. Starswirl, for his part, allowed the sound to wash over him, completely at ease.
He closed his eyes, slowly.
When he opened them again, he was sitting in another place. Gone was the library. The fluorescent lighting had been replaced by the dull, warm hues of a roaring fireplace. The light echoes of hoofsteps on linoleum tile and the dry flick of turning pages was now the crackle of a fireplace, the low rumble of a distant winter wind, and the groan of a timber house still settling.
The chairs, as well as Twilight’s tea set, remained exactly as they were. They were just now set before the fireplace of a rustic log cabin, upon a deep shag rug, in the middle of a snowstorm. The windows, what few there were, were entirely frosted over, but clearly also protecting the occupants from the dark night, as well as the cold.
Twilight gaped at her suddenly rustic surroundings. Her eyes were as wide as her jaw hung open. For a moment, even her ethereal mane paused, perhaps in utter shock.
“I… what!?” She shook her head, and rubbed at her eyes. When the vision of the cabin in winter failed to dissipate, she glared at her teacup suspiciously. “I swear Pinkie, if this was you…”
“No, no. It wasn’t Pinkie,” Starswirl said with a warm chuckle. “This is one of mine. An illusion, of sorts.”
He waved one hoof through a nearby wooden table, which hadn’t been there a moment before. As his hoof passed completely through it, he added, “This is little more than a… preserved memory. A place and time long gone now.”
Starswirl allowed a curious smile to curl his mustache.
“And, considering how I think this conversation will go, the harmonics of the spell will also work wonders to scramble any attempt to spy on us with magic…”
The crystal ball was showing static.
This was not good.
“Daring? Sweetheart? My love? The apple of my eye? Mi corazon? You seem… how you say? A touch peeved at the expensive, government scrying spell, and I am beginning to worry tha—”
The single guard on duty that day – an elderly stallion in the twilight years (ha!) of his service named Alarm Belle – proved his worth by valiantly gagging Caballeron with a sock and dragging him from the room before Daring Do became only the fourth pegasus in history to spontaneous combust from pure rage.
Twilight’s eyes shone and sparkled as she took in the sight.
Then, she snapped her attention back down towards Starswirl.
“Harmonic?” she whispered. Her voice almost trembled. “Is this Harmonic magic?”
Starswirl didn’t move. The tea in his magical grasp did not shift or clatter in the slightest. No more ringing came from his bells, and his hat remained as ever-drooping as it had been before.
But the easy smile he wore seemed… tight. Restrained.
Distant.
“Ah. So that’s where you’re at now,” he said, and raised the tea to his lips again. “Harmony.”
“And it’s so exciting!” the Princess squealed in response. “Such information! Such new, undiscovered magic! It’s brilliant!”
“That it is,” Starswirl agreed, airily. His eyes never left his tea.
Twilight carried on. “My mind practically exploded once I started thinking about it!”
“I bet it did…”
“It was like…” Twilight held her hooves out, like she was trying to physically show Starswirl something that she didn’t have the words to describe. She gasped at the very idea, and threw her wings out for additional emphasis. “You know!?”
“A little,” said Starswirl, barely noticing the Princess’ minor meltdown.
“That Trixie, of all ponies, was in on such a… I mean, just hearing her describe it was like a religious…”
Twilight held her breath, and seemed to constrict in on herself. With a great, emotional puff, she let it out, and started to deflate a little bit again.
Then, slowly, and with greater care, she said, “Harmony is… it’s something so intrinsic to the world. To Friendship. It’s like, when I read Trixie’s words, it all… clicked for me.”
She breathed out her nose in a soft snort.
“I ascended through the Magic of Harmony. Heck, that whole day was just one long musical number, if I remember it right.
“My unicorn body was… atomized, really,” she said with a slight twitch of existential dread touching her twitching eyelids. “And then it was rebuilt. An apotheosis I never thought I could understand or quantify… and it was Trixie of all ponies who described what I’ve been feeling ever since.
“The music remains. But the song changes…”
She stared, wide-eyed, into space, a look of near-bliss covering her face. “I was one song… and then another…”
Starswirl hummed. “Looks like she was right.”
Twilight blinked. She crossed her forelegs before her, defensively, and shot the old stallion another raised eyebrow.
“Right? She?”
Starswirl smirked, and said, “Trixie.”
“The journal thing!?” Twilight snarled, and angrily sipped at her tea. She didn’t even try to hide the clattering of her cup on the plate as she finished, and gave another snort. “That’s ridiculous! At this point, I can’t believe you’d still think I couldn’t take Trixie at her word about this stuff!”
“You’re a very… evidence-based pony,” Starswirl said, calmly.
“And Trixie has demonstrated her truthfulness through all this!” Twilight retorted with a jab of her hoof. “If you could just tell us what happened, we wouldn’t have to go through this whole dog-and-pony show…”
“I still don’t remember when that phrase became a thing,” Starswirl muttered to himself. Then, tilting his head to the side, he said, “But, in any case, I will not go against my wife’s wishes in this matter. She’s more or less the expert on how you think.”
Twilight scoffed. “I doubt that very much. Please, Starswirl… for all the years we’ve been friends, can you really think so little of me?”
“On the contrary,” Starswirl said with a shake of his head, “I think more highly of you than any pony yet living. But in this case…”
“I promise!” Twilight snapped, one hoof coming dangerously close to smashing her brand-new tea set to powder, and drew herself up with all the regality at her disposal. “I… promise. I will believe everything that Trixie says about what happened. I will listen, and I will hear her.
“You have my…”
“Trixie killed Sombra,” said Starswirl, without preamble or warning.
Twilight’s reply was instantaneous.
“I don’t believe you.”
The words came out of Twilight’s mouth so fast that she quite possibly didn’t hear herself say them. There was an actual audible delay between her words being spoken, and the way her ears twitched. Her eyes dilated, and her jaw dropped just a little bit.
There was a pause, a breath. Starswirl sipped his tea. The illusory wind outside howled. The fake fire crackled in its hearth. Twilight slapped her hooves over her mouth, and sank deep into the cushions of her surprisingly comfortable seat.
“What is wrong with me?” Twilight whispered, distantly. “I… I’m not that pony, am I?”
She lowered her hooves, and stared at them.
“I’m not a bad pony…”
Her eyes came up, glistening.
“Am I?”
Starswirl’s heart might actually have ached, hearing that. Physically, even. Slowly, he set down his tea cup, and sighed.
“No, you’re not that pony,” he said. Then, with deliberate care, he added, “But you both have… let’s call it baggage. With one another. You and Trixie are two sides of the same bit. You’re both highly competitive, obsessive, and brilliant ponies in your own ways.
“And yet…” Starswirl tilted his head to one side, eyes closed. “… you’re also both quite aware of your flaws. The ones you let others see, and the ones you only see in each other.”
Twilight said nothing, at first. She listened to Starswirl’s words, at least by the way her ears perked towards him, but she seemed content to just do that.
Then, with a soft, perhaps sorrowful smile, she said, “I suppose… we’ve always envied each other, in some way. I always did admire her passion. Her ability to get up on that stage and… be a star.”
She frowned.
“Trixie never… she never made too much of a fuss about our general upbringings…”
Starswirl shook his head again, and for the first time, Twilight’s eyes were drawn more towards the bells dangling from the brim of his hat.
“I don’t think Trixie thinks much of that,” he said. “Sure, the castle thing comes up once in a while. But your… privilege, let’s call it, has never come up. I honestly think she considers her time living on the road a source of personal strength.”
Twilight’s eyes began to roam again, falling across tiny cracks and stains and a million other tiny details perfectly rendered by the spell.
“Where are we, anyway? You said this was a memory?”
“A log cabin in the Unicorn Ranges,” Starswirl said, giving the room they were in his own wistful glance. “Or, well. It was called the Ambrosian Range back when I first captured this memory. Flash Magnus, Stygian, Rockhoof, his blood-brother Ash Mane…”
“Who?”
“Long story,” Starswirl said with another ghost of a smile, “let us just say that Discord tended to pop up in odd places over the centuries. Got along famously with Rockhoof back then. Always said he was playing things ‘low-key’. Whatever that meant...”
He laughed at a private memory, just then. An image of ‘Ash Mane’ cutting off Rockhoof’s beard and losing his shovel in a game of dice to those horse-giants flashed through his mind.
Good times. Good… insane times.
“Anyway,” he carried on again in a business-like tone, “they and I wintered up in those ranges once. A sort of ‘Colt’s night out’ that went very, very badly wrong. We were snowed in the whole season up there.”
A throaty chuckle escaped Starswirl’s lips.
“By the time we got back, Somnambula had a huge festival set up to welcome us home!” He laughed some more, before calming himself with another deep drink of his tea. “I’m told Winter Wrap-Up in Vanhoover still involves getting the oldest pony in town to dress up as ‘Cinder Claws’ and come down from the mountains with presents for the good little foals…”
He smiled again, more warm memories flooding back to the old stallion.
“I proposed to Trixie, in this cabin,” he said, suddenly.
For a moment, the wind and the flames could have been totally silent. A trick of memory, perhaps. That was all it was.
“Starswirl?”
He raised his eyes to the Princess again. There was concern, looking back at him through her own.
“I have a feeling I know what you’re about to ask, Princess,” Starswirl said in a stiff, formal tone. “I’m not sure I’ll like giving you that answer, however.”
Twilight licked her lips, and leaned forward.
“Starswirl… why does nopony know about Harmonic Magic?”
Starswirl sighed, and sagged his shoulders. It was precisely the question he’d known she’d ask. Not since this project began, but before. Back when he first saw her take the throne of Equestria, and fulfill all his hopes and dreams for the land he’d loved.
Due to his temporal manipulations, dimensional shenanigans, and a few other mystical tricks, he had centuries, relatively, to come up with a response.
And as usual, I waited too long.
“You should have been told,” he said after a long, uncomfortable silence. “But I left explicit instructions that Harmonic Magic should be forever purged from the collective memory of the world.”
“But why?” Twilight gasped. “It’s… it’s so useful! I only learned about it today, and I’ve already got a huge checklist of possible applications!”
She stood up, suddenly, and began to pace around the memory-cabin. Her eyes were no longer focusing on the fabulous illusion, but instead seemed – to Starswirl at least – to be back in her study, flashing left and right as she read over whatever notes on the subject she’d already made in her mind.
“If I knew the right notes and musical sequences for it, I could bypass Hindstein’s Limit of Transfigurations! Free, easy transformation magic to anypony who wanted it!”
Starswirl smirked, despite himself. “Well, Clover beat you to that by a few centuries…”
Twilight spun around. “Think of all the advancements in metallurgy! In our understanding of physics! Room temperature magic Superconductors! Mass-teleportation networks! Tribe-changing spells! Imagine how many diseases…”
She frowned, and stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth. Starswirl wondered, for a moment, if something had happened… but soon recognized the look of Twilight’s ‘panic-pondering’ or ‘calculating-worry’ face.
“I could cure cancer,” she whispered. “I could cure… everything! Near-sightedness, far-sightedness, halitosis…”
Starswirl sipped his tea, again. He set it down, and watched as Twilight’s contemplations worked themselves out behind her eyes. She was practically vibrating with academic zeal, to the point where it made the old wizard wonder if it was possible for the rug beneath Twilight to combust from the friction.
Then… she paused. Her eyes unfocused, and began to stare past the illusory walls around her into another realm.
“I could… cause cancer…” she whispered, and began to slowly sink back into her chair.
“Ah,” said Starswirl, his smile a sad, knowing one. He closed his eyes, and nodded.
“You see, then…”
“No.”
Starswirl blinked. He furrowed his brow, and asked, “No?”
“No,” Princess Twilight repeated with a shake of her head. “I know what you’re getting at, Starswirl. But… I can’t bring myself to believe that.”
“Believe what?” he snorted. “The plain fact that Harmonic Magic is too powerful, too versatile to allow into the hooves of anycreature who might abuse it?”
Twilight drew herself up again, and gazed down upon her friend. “Safeguards can be made. Courses and lessons on proper use of the magic can be created.
“But I cannot allow something so beneficial to ponykind be allowed to wallow in obscurity,” she said, raw passion seeping into her tone. “I have to believe that creatures are better than what you think of them. I just have to. It’s the responsibility I took on as Princess of Equestria.”
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with here,” Starswirl snarled – actually snarled – and took an angry slurp of tea, only to find his cup finally empty. With a scowl on his brow, he added, “All it would take is one more Grogar to bring your whole system crashing down around you. And Grogar was restrained in his use of Harmony.”
“The Father of Monsters?” Twilight asked, incredulous.
“He could have sung a song to send the continent to the sea floor, if he wanted,” Starswirl said with a dark growl in his throat. Almost as dark as the cabin itself, as the fire began to burn down low. “He was a conqueror, not a reckless destroyer. Of course, he wouldn’t have done it. But that doesn’t mean somecreature out there wouldn’t, just for kicks.”
Twilight huffed, “You’re a cynic.”
“And you are naïve,” Starswirl snapped back, hoof stabbing the air before him.
The crackling fire sagged, and began to crumble into itself. Ash and smoke kicked up with a sharp rush of wind, silencing and darkening the cabin instantly.
And then, it wasn’t.
The memory reset, it seemed. Everything was as it had been when Starswirl first cast the spell. The fire burned bright in the hearth. The wind lightly rattled the windows. Light and life filled the tiny wooden cabin.
Only, this time, Twilight and Starswirl were glaring at one another across a small tea set, instead of marveling at the wonders of magic together.
“How?” Twilight asked.
Starswirl tilted his head to one side, quizzically. “How did I bury it?”
“How did you become… this?”
His scowl vanished. The old stallion’s eyebrows shot up his forehead, and his jaw slackened. He blinked, once and then twice.
And then, as before, he slowly but surely began to deflate before Twilight’s eyes. He sank down into his seat, and let the years hang off of him like cobwebs made of iron, dragging him even lower than that.
He was sure the look of him shocked Twilight.
Good.
She needs to be shocked. To her senses, if nothing else.
“Trixie,” he whispered, in answer.
“Trixie?” asked Twilight, her glare softening as Starswirl’s lost its luster. “What do you mean, Trixie?”
“Rather,” Starswirl said with a great, heaving sigh, “it was the lack of Trixie. Her absence. An abeyance I thought permanent.”
He looked into the fireplace, unblinking.
“I never told you this, Princess… but I had a memory charm placed on me, after I sent away Trixie’s journal.”
Twilight flinched, and grimaced. “You… erased…?”
“No!” Starswirl said, briefly straightening his form again, before the shadows drew long across his face. “No. I just chose to lock away the memory of her. It hurt too much, by then. And I had Celestia, Luna, and Clover to look after. I couldn’t be tinkering with time spells or that Cutie Mark thing any longer.”
He took another deep breath.
“And… it helped. I stopped thinking about her every day. Stopped wondering if she would be proud of what I’d done with her lessons. And… maybe I also forgot the most important lessons she gave me, in the process of forgetting.”
Silence, again, hung over the two. Princess Twilight watched her friend stare into the fire. She said nothing to break his concentration on the memory of a fire that burned down one winter night a thousand years ago.
But though that memory was eternal, the night would not be.
And she still had her questions.
“What did you do?”
He said nothing, still.
With more force, Twilight pressed on.
“Starswirl. You said you would bring about the Equestria that Trixie came from, at all cost. What did you do?”
Starswirl closed his eyes, and sighed.
“I won.”
His magic was steady, as it lit up his horn and grasped hold of one of the other bells lining the brim of his hat. It came off easily. And he placed it in the frog of one hoof.
Then, he glanced up at a different bell.
“Harmonic Magic has… interesting rules and limitations, if you didn’t figure them out by now.” He gave a quick chin-tilt to the bell still attached to his hat. “Spells worked in musical notation are quirky, and useful in odd situations. But if you have the raw power for it, you can make them permanent… so long as you have an object to bind the spell to.
“Preferably…” He hummed, softly to himself. It was at a C flat, which caused the bell he was looking at to vibrate and hum in sympathy with him, to Twilight’s startled expression. “… something that can carry a tune. This one, for instance, is the bell I wove my aging spell into. It’s because of this that I will outlive my wife by… oh, centuries, at least.”
“Y-you can’t just… turn it off?” Twilight asked in a quiet, hushed voice. Whether academic in nature, Starswirl couldn’t say. And he couldn’t care less, to be honest.
This wasn’t a real lesson. Not that way.
“The spell echoes, you see?” he continued, eyes flitting to another bell. “That’s how Harmonic Magic remains so potent for so long. Its echoes never die, and so the spells cast are immensely difficult to undo or counter.
“Took you how many years to actually destroy Grogar’s Bewitching Bell?” he asked, briefly glancing back towards the Princess. “It took little Anarchy, possessed of all Discord’s chaotic might. And even now, I would bet good money on that scrap of metal still holding a fragment of its original song.”
He licked his lips, and began pouring another cup of… well, cold water, by this point. But it was appreciated by his dry mouth, nonetheless.
I knew I’d have to confess one day…
Starswirl noted that Twilight’s eyes hadn’t left the bell in his hoof.
“This one,” he said, pointing his eyes back up to the brim of his hat, “by the way, was used to create the first of my dimensional portals. If something ever happens to one of your Mirrors into the human world, I suppose you should know I can restore them with this.”
Twilight – eyes still on his hoof – asked, “Do they all have a harmonic spell?”
“Most, yes,” Starswirl answered easily. Then, pointing to another, he said, “This one, for instance, shields me from effects like Tirek’s magical draining powers.”
“But the last time he attacked us, didn’t he…?”
“I didn’t make the darn thing till after your coronation,” Starswirl said, brusquely cutting the Princess off. “It shouldn’t surprise you that even I am not perfect…”
He let out a frustrated snort.
“No… no I am not,” he said again, with finality.
Starswirl’s whole body tensed up. The shadows deepened across the cracks and lines in his face, and his eyes began to gleam with frosted fury long-suppressed.
“I spent… centuries, really, watching the ponies of this land waste every opportunity to unite as they had under Gusty,” he hissed, low and quiet. “I told them, time and time again, that they would be better off working together, in friendship. But did they listen?”
He didn’t wait for a response. Instead, he lifted the little bell in his hoof, and glared at it.
“Of course not!” he snarled, and spat. “King Copper never saw an earth pony he didn’t want to toss into the dungeons for daring to muddy his presence. And General Warhawk kept corralling the pigeon population over Canterlot whenever the unicorns planned an outdoor event!”
“Famous unicorn, famous pegasus…” Twilight half-whispered as she made her own mental checklists.
“And before Rockhoof’s time,” Starswirl pressed on with a mirthless laugh, “his own grandfather, Wooden Eye, would lead his viking raids all the way to Cloudsdale!”
Twilight blinked.
“How did they…?”
“King Copper’s unicorn mages would levitate their longships up to the sky,” Starswirl said. “Sometimes for a fee, but often just because it meant another black eye for Warhawk. And it was the same every generation…”
Starswirl rolled his eyes at the memory. Earth pony ships on fire off the shoulder of Mount Onion. Watching magic beams glitter in the dark near the Ten-Horse Gate. All those moments lost in time, like tears in rain, and yet they still boiled his blood to think about.
“Oh yes,” he groaned. “The three tribes could work together, but only to prank or oppress one of their own! I swear, it got so bad that…”
He clenched his jaw, and growled.
His glare grew darker, even as his bright silver magic took hold of the unnamed bell in his hoof.
“You want to know what I did, Twilight Sparkle?” he hissed as the bell rose into the air. “I finally understood what Trixie told me. The one lesson I truly remembered from her, that I hadn’t buried with my grief!
“Good things don’t happen to good ponies!” Starswirl gave a short, pitiless laugh. “Lie, cheat, steal… whatever it takes.”
Something shifted in Twilight’s expression. The curiosity, the worry, and the fear that had been in the crease of her brow, and the downward curve of her lips stiffened. It grew, slowly, into a grimace.
And then, a glare. Not a furious one, but a glare that spoke of the intensity of its wearer’s heart.
“Starswirl,” she said again. “What did you do?”
Starswirl roared, lightning flashing in his eyes, “I realized that the only time ponies ever worked together, it was against a common foe! Grogar had provided that, but even he wasn’t enough.
“So… I decided to make my own Monsters…”
He lifted the bell into the air, and pursed his lips.
Twilight tensed, expecting another note. Something deep and rumbling. Or a high, melodic note that would hang in the very rafters of the library.
Something.
Anything.
But it was nothing like before.
Starswirl let out a piercing, blood-freezing whistle as shrill and as wretched a sound as when last Twilight Sparkle had heard that cry.
The illusion collapsed. Wood beams and warm fire fell away. Biting white fluorescent light fell upon Twilight and Starswirl as the tea set rattled in place.
But the winter chill, beyond the memory-cabin’s windows, remained.
As did its masters.
Twilight had never been so close to them. She never realized how unspeakably tall, and wraith-like the Windigos truly were. Those malevolent spirits, of which she could see three of them, swept into the library, their shrill whinnies shaking the bookshelves, and rattling the light bulbs in their sockets. Black ice spread like spider webs across every surface in the room.
There was no way to hear the cries of anguish that went up all across the palace at that hell-raising sound, but Twilight knew they existed. All her little ponies past a certain age remembered their hoary whinnies.
The Windigos flowed like water, like sheets of ice and hail. They galloped through the room, wrapping their way around the Princess, shrieking as they rode. Their hungry maws snapped at her, vying for a bite of real, warm pony flesh.
Twilight Sparkle said nothing. She did not flinch at their appearance, nor their strikes. She kept her eyes focused on the more horrible sight, to her.
For Starswirl still stood amidst the blizzard and the wind, beard and mane whipping about him like a mad captain riding the prow of his ship through a storm. Ice streamed from his eyes where his tears had caught, mid-stream, and his teeth gnashed like an animal possessed.
Finally, Twilight stood. The nearest Windigo flailed, and fled from her as she almost grazed its form with an outstretched wing.
“Anathema!” one cried, its eyes blazing with hated fury.
But that fury did not aid them. As Twilight took a step forward, the remaining Windigos quailed, and fled from her, as a wisp of smoke from a full force gale wind. Their haunting cries echoed into the distance as they vanished, fading as swiftly as the ice upon the bookshelves and the floors.
Twilight did not seem to notice the bright purple flame exuding from her, at that moment. Or, if she did, she paid the Fire of Friendship no heed as she completed her short journey from one chair towards the other.
Starswirl’s bell fell from his grasp, only to be caught in a soft purple aura. The heat coming off the Princess melted the frost and ice on his coat, his cape, and his face and beard, leaving Starswirl a bitter, cold, damp mess.
As the Windigos disappeared, his breathing came on harder than before. If it were not for the soft, enveloping embrace of purple wings, he would have broken down onto the floor, and let his tears flow free there.
Once he’d calmed down, Starswirl seemingly sank back into himself. A light had gone out in his eyes, and he was little more than the old stallion Twilight had seen in Trixie’s hospital room.
He was a bit more talkative, Twilight found, but much the same. There was no love of life in him now.
“Of course, Clever knew,” he said, answering her questions later into the evening. He still sat in the same chair as before, but with Twilight sitting next to him on a divan she’d procured from elsewhere in the palace, and with the heavy artificial lighting replaced by a suite of candles similarly summoned by the Princess. “He… she helped me design the Windigos.”
Twilight nodded, slowly.
“So, Hearth’s Warming was… a lie?” she asked, her voice sounding far more level than she currently felt. “Equestria was founded on a lie?”
“It wasn’t a lie,” Starswirl sighed and crossed his hooves clumsily. “A creative truth, perhaps. But not a lie…”
“There was no real danger!” Twilight snapped back. “You and Clever engineered the whole thing!”
Starswirl shook his head, slowly. “Not at all. If Clever didn’t succeed in making friends with the ponies who’d go on to be in that insipid yearly play, then Equestria really would have been consumed in ice.”
Twilight squeezed her eyes shut, and held her breath a moment. When she could let it out without screaming, she said, “You… created the Windigos.”
“Created. Not the same as ‘controlled’, now is it?”
He coughed, deep in his throat. A tawny-colored wing handed him a bottle of water, which he took thankfully.
“Thank you, Miss Yearling.”
Daring nodded once, then silently retreated from the little alcove where Twilight had decided to hold her little interrogation-therapy session. No doubt, she’d stay close enough to keep notes on whatever transpired next. Twilight didn’t feel right keeping everything spoken here a secret, even if she would have to ban… something.
What that something was, she didn’t know yet.
There had been a lot of terrible somethings spoken thus far.
“You… could have destroyed everything,” Twilight said, finally. She shook her head slowly at the terrible, paradox-laden thoughts that came to her. “No safeguards? No backup plan?”
“If the ponies failed to become united,” said Starswirl, “then they would prove unworthy of the future Trixie came from. But, since she’d already come back from the future, I had a hunch it would all work out.
“Predestination is a fine thing, when it works in your favor,” he added with a faded smile.
“Still a lie,” said Twilight, glumly. “Even Trixie said you shouldn’t lie about important things.”
Starswirl frowned, and said, “For what it’s worth, Clover agreed with you. She spent the whole night of Hearth’s Warming trying to make friends with the others, but her insistent ways turned the others off her approaches. She told me that, when the ice encroached at last, she gave up trying to make friends and… just made friends.”
He smiled.
“I suppose that was the very first friendship lesson, now that I think about it. I just wish she’d delivered it as a letter, instead of an angry speech after the fact…”
“And all this because of Trixie?”
“For Trixie,” Starswirl corrected. “And Equestria, in general.”
“You created the Windigos…”
“And I sleep well at night, thank you,” Starswirl finished with a half-hearted huff. “And the bed I sleep in lies in the magical land of Equestria… paradise.”
“No one ever accused you of being humble, did they?”
“Not once.”
The Princess and the wizard sat in silence, for a moment.
Starswirl cleared his throat. “I must admit, you’re taking this very well.”
“I’m not,” said Twilight, one eye twitching ever so slightly. “I’ve just learned to… compartmentalize these things.”
Starswirl nodded, and sipped his water.
“How did you keep the secret?” Twilight eventually asked.
The old stallion shrugged.
“It was mostly Clever, honestly. After I got out of Limbo, I went back to the Castle of the Two Sisters and checked out Clover’s secret study.”
“I’ve been over every inch of that castle,” Twilight grumbled, and raised a curious eyebrow. “Where was it?”
“You needed Harmonic Magic to get there,” Starswirl explained. “Hit the right sequence of notes on the grand organ in the basement, and it will open a portal to their secret study. Quite a clever use of…”
He paused. Even in his borderline fugue state, Starswirl could still manage a frown at the look Twilight gave him.
“Fine. I’ll tell you how to get in later,” he chuckled weakly, and paused to allow the Princess to squee appropriately. “Should have guessed… anyway. Clover left a journal behind. I’ll also get you their notes, since you and Yearling will probably want to—”
“Yes!”
Starswirl tilted one ear in the direction of Daring’s victorious shout, and listened for several seconds as her husband scrambled to get the mad researcher back under control.
He continued.
“Clover had her own apprentice. An earth pony mage by the name of Memento Melody. Kind filly, as I recall. A bit… exuberant, but I had plans to mellow her out somewhat before fully hoofing her over to Clover for training.”
“What happened?” asked Twilight, sipping at her own water.
“Stygian,” Starswirl sighed. “One of the consequences of losing my memories of Trixie was forgetting what she’d told me about friendship. And forgiving others. Or even listening to their side of… let’s just say that I had to take a very long vacation just at that moment.
“Clover and Memory continued using Harmonics, even after all my warnings.” He shook his head ruefully, and said, “Clover wrote that they created a deliberately imperfect spell by trapping a memory-stealing charm inside a stone, so that the memories it took would be destroyed, instead of trapped forever…”
Twilight facehoofed. “Oh, good grief!”
He nodded. “Yes, I did notice the similarities between Wallflower Blush’s escapade and Memento Melody’s. I suppose the tale of her and Clover’s falling out took on a mythic quality in the intervening centuries.”
“So, they used the Memory Stone to erase everycreatures’ memory of Harmonic Magic,” Twilight said, tapping her chin with a hoof as she considered this new information. “But that couldn’t be it. After over a thousand years, somecreature would have had to rediscover it!”
“Indeed,” Starswirl agreed with a nod. “That’s why Clover eventually found another student. An ancestor of Trixie’s, actually. Some chap by the name of Night Song. And she taught him enough Harmonic Magic to recognize and then neutralize it.
“As far as I can tell, somepony nearest to the Princesses has always kept up the tradition,” he said with another shrug. “A nameless line of ponies charged with keeping the secret, and weaponizing the power of Celestia’s trust and their own official offices to quash any resurgence of the knowledge. I believe Celestia eventually found out… but I suppose the continued secrecy would be a good sign that she agrees with us, in principle.”
“To maintain that sort of control,” Twilight groaned, “it would have to be somepony close… very close to Celestia. One of her aides, or secr…”
Her eyes widened. The Princess turned back towards Starswirl, and whispered, “Would… Do you think Spike would have kept this from me? If he knew?”
Starswirl said nothing. He was just staring down into the bottle of water at his hooves. Slowly, he let out a sigh.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If any royal advisor would have told their Princess the truth, it would be him…”
Then, his eyes winced.
“But now that you know… what will you do with that knowledge?”
Twilight leaned back into her seat, and tilted her head up in thought. She hummed, quietly to herself.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t believe in hiding something like this. Knowledge should be used to expand our understanding of the world. Who am I to stifle that?”
“The Princess of Equestria,” Starswirl said with finality.
Twilight said nothing to that.
He was right, after all.
“Your Majesty?” Starswirl asked. “If I may ask, Celeste mentioned that you… know a spell that can ascend a pony to alicornhood.”
Twilight bit her tongue, if only to prevent herself from immediately cursing her student’s glib tongue. She’d have to do something about that, later.
“I do,” she said, slowly. “Sunset’s ascension was due to a spell cast on her by Midnight Sparkle, back…”
“No explanation is necessary,” Starswirl said quickly, one hoof held up for silence. “In fact… I approve.”
“You... approve?”
“Yes.”
Twilight blinked.
“Are you…?”
Starswirl sighed again, and let his ears droop as though he’d been holding them up through sheer effort all this time. “As much as I… well. I don’t especially approve of handing out such power to anycreature under any circumstances. Nopony has that right. As much as…”
He paused. There was another moment of near-silence between the two as Starswirl took a deep breath, and steadied himself.
“I’m a bit of an expert in the abuse of power,” he whispered. “So… I understand. I really do.”
Then, leaning back, he added, “Please let Miss Yearling know I am available for… a few days, if she requires me to help in her research. But it is late…”
Nodding, Twilight stood. “Of course. It’s been… a day, hasn’t it? Should really let this one end and… I guess try to make a better one tomorrow.”
“Indeed,” the old wizard chuckled. “Indeed… though, a rather depressing thought occurs.”
Twilight frowned, not particularly wanting to deal with another such dark or dreary thought… but she knew her friend needed to say it, whatever it was.
She stood, patiently, in silence. And she waited.
After a few moments, she wished she hadn’t just tucked Starswirl into bed already.
“If I did all that I did,” he said, solemnly, a single tear running down his cheek, “all because I’d lost my Trixie… then what will you do with me once she’s gone?
“I fear you cannot trust me.”
It was early morning by the time Twilight reached her office. Luckily, in her long, quiet walk through the entire palace complex over the last few hours, she’d not forgotten her duty to the heavenly spheres, and having just sent the moon away, called in the sun’s light to awaken her little ponies and creatures everywhere.
But the sun was not so shining to her this morning. It was probably the sleep-deprivation, and having thought too long and too hard about… a billion different things, to be quite honest… but there was something off about today.
Besides the fact that Hearth’s Warming is ruined for me from now on…
“Hey! Twi!”
She stopped, mere feet from her office door, and turned around.
Spike was sprinting down the hall towards her, a heavy folder in one claw and what looked like a Princess-sized cup of black coffee in the other.
Okay… maybe today will be an improvement…
“I heard you were up all night talking to Starswirl,” he said, once Twilight had drained the top layer of caffeinated goodness from her drink. “Uh, some of the guards are asking why you blasted the sound of a Windigo through the palace. I’ve already got a press briefing planned for this afternoon, so you can address that.
“Uh… what did happen, by the way?”
“Spike?” Twilight asked, not having heard her advisor and little brother in the slightest. “Would you… keep something from me?”
The dragon blinked.
“What?”
Twilight sipped her coffee, then asked again. “Would you keep something a secret from me? If it was important? Or if you thought I shouldn’t know?”
“I… where’s this coming from?” Spike asked, a deep frown crossing his face. “You know I tell you everything, right?”
Twilight nodded, slowly.
“Sure, right. Of course,” she said, tone non-committal.
Then, she asked, “So, if I were to ask if Raven Inkwell, or Kibitz, or any of Celestia’s old advisors told you about something called Harmonic Magic…?”
“Harmonawhatta?” Spike asked, blinking rapidly. “Twilight, you need a nap. Or a vacation. Or… something! You’re getting weird on me again.”
A bark of laughter ripped itself out of Twilight’s mouth before she could stop it. Then, smiling chagrined, she continued to giggle.
Spike didn’t move, though he was starting to reach into his satchel for a quill and paper. Probably to send to one of the other Princesses to let them know a Lesson Zero was in progress, when Twilight stayed his claw with her hoof.
“I’m sorry, Spike,” she chuckled. “I… I wasn’t thinking. Starswirl and I talked about all sorts of things, and… and I’m sorry. I trust you when you say you don’t know anything about this.”
He smiled back, though still confused. “Yeah? You sure you’re okay…?”
“A nap is all I need right now,” she said with a shake of her head. “Just… move things around to buy me an hour or two? Maybe three? Some heavy stuff came up today.”
“Last night.”
“Right, last night.”
Spike nodded, and pulled a fresh schedule right out of his satchel with aplomb.
“Alright, so… let’s move that back there, and push the School announcement to Thursday, and… maybe move up the… yeah! That could work!”
He continued to roll on, shuffling meetings and speeches and reviews about like an administrative whirlwind, even as Twilight began making her way back to her rooms. And her bed. Her nice, warm, uncomplicated bed.
But, as Spike’s voice began to trail off into the distance, Twilight knew she wouldn’t be getting any sleep today. Because the older voice took that opportunity to slip back into her mind.
The voice she’d been pushing away all night, in the hopes that she wouldn’t have to deal with it at all.
“… what will you do with me once she’s gone?”
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cacas would be a more childish version of the word, not very fitting for a middle age stallion.
What did I do this time?
I find this curious because the other day I was thinking that chaos magic, the opposite of harmony, would be unreliably temporal. Being chaotic by nature, would it really choose to stay in a single form of spell? We saw how self-destructive is for Discord to restrict himself from being chaotic, I think the same would apply to his magic.
Justified? No. Understandable? That's the better word.
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True, but... can we really say Caballeron isn't a bit foalish?
Indeed. Chaos is directed entropy, in many ways. Change, but nothing permanent. Harmonic Magic, on the other hand can be incredibly long-lasting, so long as you keep the note going in some fashion, as Starswirl mentioned.
Thanks for sticking with us this long!
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Which is a concept I really like with the echo, because it implies that the more common a harmonic spell is, the more permanent it'll be.
Oh, I'll be here till the end
and whatever you come up with after.
loved the update! And it is STILL possible Spikes keeping the secret, he could have easily mastered his reactions for such a question
Starswirl saw two sides of the coin- that ponies could be benevolent- or worse monsters than Grogar himself.
And thought better to force the decision with something that would either ensure that benevolence, or seal the danger away in eternal winter. I mean, you can even look at other 'verses for what path ponies could take- the unrivaled child-gods of the Conversions, Daybreakers and Nightmare Moons instead of goodly Princesses, or perhaps simply burnt out embers that used to be the planet that was home to those who opened one of their six mouths and sang the song that ended Equus.
That's how much power Harmonic Magic could harness. Something even Grogar respected and limited his use to less than utter genocide, despite being evil as it gets.
Is that supposed to be a reference to Back to the Future
Kind of like in Indiana Jones 4 when Indy hide inside the refrigerator from the nuclear blast I know it sounds far-fetched but I feel like that was kind of hilarious
Oh my God she is so fangasm right now lol 😆
Modern technology has there mixed results but they can be useful here once you guys get used to it
Gasp no you didn't 😰
Holy mackerel there was a lot of information and surprises just happen anyway so Starswirl was taking a break because Trixie asked him to do that and basically hanging out with daring do and Caballeron but they disguise themselves as their author name they chat a bit but Twilight showed up and asking for Star Swirl to talk with her so they went to a private area to make sure that nobody is not listening and they talk about this whole Harmonic Magic and how powerful it is and very dangerous apparently but what really got my attention is Star Swirl and Clover created the windigos and that just blew my frickin mind and also that was horrible what they did look I understand what they're trying to do if it didn't work then this land would be a wasteland but that was a huge Risk they did so with all that information Twilight needs to know how is she even going to do this especially with how Starswirl just basically hide every information why it gets more complicated than before I guess we'll find out next time
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"Ponies are so much worse than a simple Deepcrow. At least with them, Fluttershy could convince the brood to not end the world."
Grogar was a smart one. Blowing everything up is a bad move, since that's where he kept his stuff.
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And Indiana Jones.
And thank you for spoilering that.
You know with the long term effects and Reach of Harmonic Magic you do realize you have a perfect lead into Gen 5 for a reason for magic vanishing from equestria?
If you ever want to explore stories involving Gen 5 when it comes Out.
Oh, we’re going deep into the ethical dilemmas with this one. Though I can’t help but compare some other Star Swirl’s I’ve seen on the site with this one. Especially the one who took horrific fleshwarping and brought about a medical revolution.
As for the windigo gambit, foreknowledge leads to some very interesting quandries. Should the ends justify the means when you know the ending? I truly cannot say for certain.
Some very nice food for thought. I can only imagine how Twilight will handle this. (Also, brilliant work in weaving Norse mythology into Rockhoof’s history. And the mood whiplash between Star Swirl the fancolt and Star Swirl, Father of Monsters is amazing.
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I just don't like some of the implications so far, though I'll give it a chance once the movie's out.
I don't think the Anarchyverse will ever really embrace G5, but I can leave the door open for making G5 an AU of my timeline, if that makes sense.
10921603
Uhhh.... what?
I will make Norse Myth jokes and references and you cannot stop me!
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/748/446/633.gif
Also, thank you.
10921647
It's a long story. Literally; it's been going since 2013.
(I'd have linked it earlier, but I was on my phone at the time.)
10921663
Oooh? Neat! I’ll have to add it to my list.
I’m the immortal words of Alfred Pennyworth, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
Anarchy’s stories: Come with us on a fun-coming-of-age adventure, making friends, and just living life.
Meanwhile in Canterlot: past Regrets, State Secrets, Everything you thought you knew was wrong.
I still find it funny Indy fans are still going on about that scene. It's not like Indiana Jones movies have ever really been that grounded in reality, so much so I will confidently say that if you sit down to any of the Indiana Jones films expecting realistic action sequences...then you're really watching the wrong sort of films.
Personally, I always thought Temple of Doom was the more unrealistic Indy film anyway.
It's a miracle it didn't time travel to like, I dunno, 1955 or something then.
I still really like that ponification--it's just...*chef's kiss*
Yeah, fluorescents are like that--hate the things myself. They drain the life out of everything they light.
Yeah, I never quite forgave that episode for it--all things considered, it did not do it many favors in the end.
Well...you don't! But in your defense, Trixie's...Trixieness...does make it rather hard to want to sometimes, what with how she tends to interact with the world in such a way that she doesn't always do herself the best of favors on that front.
That sums up their dynamic so wonderfully. That is precisely how their interactions work, and there's never really been a time in the show where that wasn't the case. So it frustrates me sometimes when I see some fans fail to see this and instead wave it off as being inconsistent or out of character, because neither is really true and never really was.
This is just how Twilight and Trixie work around each other.
The Windigos...that's where he's going with this, isn't he?
Clearly, he had faith it would work then, that the outcome he wanted was indeed likely to come about if put in those circumstances, because that's quite a gamble to make regardless of his personal stance on the matter. Sure, the whole predestination deal may have influenced it...but I don't think quite nearly as far as Starswirl would like to claim it did.
It is one thing to be told a future will still come to pass. It is quite another to still believe it can happen once told.
Starswirl's end solution is, indeed, very ethically questionable. But he still had the best of intentions behind it.
And to his credit, he's perfectly aware of both of those facts. That's what keeps him from just becoming another Grogar.
It's easy to see how he and Trixie get along so well then.
That...wouldn't happen to be a Stargate Atlantis reference, would it? (I'd post a vid of the clip in question if I could actually find one.)
Oh!
A thought, then.
Could some such pony still be around, keeping up said tradition? That, after all, would be problematic, should they ever realize Trixie was secretly very fluent in the subject...
Oh ho ho ho--I almost want that to be true, if just because that'd make for one killer of a twist!
Of course he does! It'd be for the same exact reasons he went to such lengths to bury harmonic magic.
That...is a point. One that, admittedly, can't really be overlooked given circumstances, regardless of how unfortunate.
Personally, I don't really approve of what Starswirl did, due to the obvious ethical problems...but at the same time I get why he did it, and felt so obligated to give Equestria that...nudge, we'll say.
What's worse is that I do sort of feel like he...might've been right to feel the "nudge" was necessary. Because...consider what might have happened had he'd not done it.
Starswirl went too far.
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Anarchy: Hey! I can be grim and shady too!
Cozy: Do not drag me into this!
Cheese: We were already in a deleted scene, and you've got one coming up.
Anarchy: Fiiiine....
10922147
I do so love to know how my ponyisms and ponifications come off. Thank you!
Ding ding ding...
I loved that show, so if you could find a clip, that'd be fantastic.
No one ever questions Celestia's decisions, even if they're based on her odd eccentricities. Or even if they don't seem as farsighted as an immortal goddess should at times. Or even if the orders are written in Raven Inkwell's hornwriting... Perhaps, just perhaps... Celestia didn't get a chance to review every expulsion letter sent from her office with an official stamp...
As always... thanks for reading!
10922376
Ahem...
i.imgur.com/TjcDwso.jpg
Checkmate, Neighsayers.
Blade Runner reference exactly when I'm watching Blade Runner. Beautiful.
10922923
Unfortunately, I had spent about an hour searching for that specific scene to no avail before finally giving up.
Interestingly though, I did find clips of plenty of other scenes from the same episode(s) in question, some so close to the clip I wanted, it was almost frustrating.
10922935
It's those little coincidences I live for.
10923226
Shazzbut. Ah, well... we'll get it next time.
The way I see it, what Starswirl did was understandable. Given the fact that he already had spoilers, and *knew* there was a better future ahead, and how they got there.
Keep going and hope for the best -
Lots of ponies get hurt/killed. Keeps happening for however long. Maybe things get better
Release the Kraken windingos -
Lots of ponies get hurt/killed. Does end,
Magic talking Ponyland gets founded.
Gets along (more or less) with neighboring kingdoms.
Hell, he saw how good things could be when the Alcorn of Time went slumming through the future with him and Trixie.
Sitting down and using cold logic, he really did make the right call.
Granted, its a hell of a thing to live with, and I wouldn't want to have to carry that kind of burden. But it was the right call. Sometimes ya just gotta do something bad, to keep something worse from happening.
( Trixie stuff)
Trixie is still best pony.
No matter where, or when, she is, she is Great and Powerful. And crushes others expectations, worldviews, and established "factual history".
)
(I would bet good money, sometimes just for lols.
Who else can yell at an Alcorn, and get away with it, or make Twilight go crazy with so little effort?
Who else figured out how to tell if chaos magic is at play? (or what it tastes like)
Trixie and Glimglam should both have wings now. If only to drive Twilight up the wall forever!
This got serious.
i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/000/472/seriouscatcover.jpg
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Truth.
I'm happy so many people are into the "Starswirl Debate". Makes me feel like I did a Good.
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Do not fear. Silly shall return... followed by more serious. And then more silly. And then more serious.
In the end, the ends justify the means. And I can live with that.
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Question:
Can Twilight?