Chapter 1
Star Swirl looked up from his notes, alone in his workshop. His apprentice Clover had gone to bed hours ago, so why did he hear parchment rustling? And where were those sparks coming from? Star Swirl turned to see a nexus of energy swirling and growing brighter, sparks and arcing blasts of energy flying forth, before there, in front of him stood himself.
The newly arrived Star Swirl coughed a bit, looking around, “Oh dear, that spell really does cause a mess, doesn’t it? Parchment’s gone everywhere.” The only visible difference Star Swirl could discern himself from this new Star Swirl was the new one apparently had not bothered to dab up splatters of ink from his robes and mane, and had not seen much sleep recently.
The astonished Star Swirl stared at his nonchalant doppelgänger agape, “And what spell might that have been?”
“Oh! Oh, yes, it’s that part.” The Star Swirl who shouldn’t have existed chuckled, his horn alighting. The glow of his magic reached into his beard and removed a scroll, “I am from your future, but this spell only allows me to visit my past once, and for only a few minutes.”
The Star Swirl of the Present gasped and seized the Scroll in his magic from… himself… and unfurled it to look at the writing there. At the lower left hoof corner of the parchment was an ink blot that reminded Star Swirl vaguely of his own cutie mark.
Future Star Swirl only sighed with mild annoyance, using his horn to pull the scroll back to him, furling it once more, “Ugh, I shouldn’t have pulled it out, that’s probably what caused this whole mess…”
Present Star Swirl stared, “Wait, what mess? The mess in these chambers?”
“Well, I suppose that too, but you are going to develop this spell back from what you just saw, and then test it out… and then you’ll be me.” And with that, the Future Star Swirl vanished in a blast of electric magical discharge, leaving a small char mark on the floor.
Star Swirl was agape once more. “How dare I order Me to develop a spell!” He called out to the empty workshop.
“Master, is everything alright down there?” Star Swirl turned to see his young apprentice Clover at the top of the stairs leading to their chambers, mane disheveled, “I felt magical distortions strong enough to wake me up, then you were arguing with somepony…”
“No no, Clover, go back to bed. I was testing a spell and then voicing my thoughts, is all.” Star Swirl said dismissively.
The younger unicorn looked unconvinced, but nodded and turned to return to the modest cot awaiting the mage in training.
Star Swirl turned back to his workshop, and sighed, starting to sort his Parchment, grumbling as he attempted to push the strange occurrence from his mind, “The gall, I mean, I have no intention of messing with the fragile fabric of time…” he muttered.
But the unfurled scroll kept appearing in his minds’ eye, covered in his own hornwriting, magical phrases and shorthoof he had developed and not even taught Clover yet popping out at him, but none of it made any sense. It was as though the spell didn’t do anything at all, but he had seen it work with his very own eyes.
His head drooped, causing the small bells on his hat to jingle, rousing him from the near slump of sleep that attempted to overtake him. He grunted, rising from his worktable. “Three jingles is enough for tonight…” he muttered, tossing his hat onto a vacant sconce with a flick of his horn, climbing up the stairs to the bedchambers, and laying down on his own meager, but at least broader cot.
Star Swirl awoke to fragments of incantation singing in his mind over and over. He recognized them as being from the Parchment he had stolen a peek from. “Augh, if I avoid it, it will surely drive me mad!”
He stalked down the stairs, past Clover, and to his work bench, pulling up a clean piece of parchment. His horn levitated over a quill, and he started to scribble, working on remembering everything he could from the parchment.
Hours passed. Star Swirl ignored his apprentice, except to call for fresh inkwells, fresh quills, and fresh parchment.
Clover followed Star Swirl’s orders quietly, knowing not to upset the elder unicorn in one of his spell-crafting frenzies.
This continued the next day, and the day after that, and Clover wondered if Star Swirl would ever finish this spell.
Then, late at night on the third day, well after the Unicorn Tribe had set the sun and risen the moon, Star Swirl laid out five variations on the spell. Each seemed as “true” as the others. None of them followed any conventional magical reason, nor had much base on what he had created in the past, but they were as close as he could remember to the original scroll. He stared at each. None had that ink blot he had noticed the scroll his future self bore.
He sighed, pulling up another fresh piece of parchment and his quill with his horn, only to find his inkwell had run dry once again. Star Swirl brayed with annoyance, his horn flaring, “Clover! Ink!”
The apprentice staggered up from a half asleep position at the foot of the stairs and ran to the ink stores at the other end of Star Swirl’s chambers. Still weary and fatigued from a long day running errands, preparing quills, and other such menial tasks, Clover returned with a newly filled inkwell, free of cork. Clover had learned not to bring Star Swirl corked ink bottles, because the Sorcerer would cause corks to eject from their glass seatings with enough force to lodge itself on even the dullest unicorn horn if met with the right angle, which it almost always had seemed to.
And as Clover was overworked, and the bottle was uncorked, and the old floor slightly uneven, the apprentices’ hoof snagged, and the bottle jerked forward before Clover could compensate.
Star Swirl felt splatters of ink hit his mane and robe. He slowly stood from his worktable to look at the younger unicorn now laying prone on the ground with a half full bottle of ink levitating inches from where it had splattered the sorcerer.
He was about to tip the bottle over onto his apprentice’s hood with a nudge of magic, when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a familiar shape. He turned back to his papers and there, in amongst all the different contenders for most accurate scroll, was one with a splatter of ink that looked to him quite a lot like his cutie mark, and exactly like the ink blot he had seen on the parchment days ago.
“Clover!” He boomed, holding back a grin of triumph, “To your cot!”
Clover set down the ink slowly, before scrambling out of the prone position and up the stairs.
Star Swirl allowed himself a smug chuckle before levitating the marked parchment and walking to the middle of the chamber, idly turning back towards his work bench as he read over his hornwriting and deciphered his shorthoof, forming the spell in his mind. He sighed, going over it again, then once more, before curling the parchment into a scroll and tucking it into his long white beard.
Focusing, his horn began to glow white, and an unnatural wind began to blow in his workshop, energy building to a blinding flash of light.
Star Swirl found himself in a very messy version of his own workshop, looking at a quite shocked, unblotted version of himself a few days prior. He coughed a bit and looked around while his past self stared agape at him. “Oh dear, that spell really does cause a mess, doesn’t it? Parchment’s gone everywhere.”
Past Star Swirl managed to find his tongue, “And what spell might that have been?”
Suddenly remembering that he had been part of this exchange before, the dislocated Star Swirl chuckled. “Oh! Oh, yes, it’s that part.” He lit his horn and removed the scroll from his beard, “I am from your future, but this spell only allows me to visit my past once, and for only a few minutes.”
The Star Swirl of the Past gasped and seized the Scroll in his magic from… himself… and unfurled it to look at the writing there.
Star Swirl realized what just happened, and sighed, using his magic to retrieve the scroll and tuck it back away, “Ugh, I shouldn’t have pulled it out, that’s probably what caused this whole mess…”
Past Star Swirl stared, “Wait, what mess? The mess in these chambers?”
“Well, I suppose that too, but you are going to develop this spell back from what you just saw, and then test it out… and then you’ll be me.” Star Swirl felt a tingle rush over him as he spoke, and after he had finished, the world flashed again, and he was standing in his workshop again, but contemporary to himself.
“Ah… the spell worked. Too bad it only works once…” He paused, trailing off.
He had told himself it only works once because he had heard himself tell himself that it only works once.
He had reverse engineered the whole spell from seeing it written out in front of him.
“…WHERE DID THAT SPELL EVEN COME FROM?”
“Master…?” Clover peeked down the steps.
Star Swirl muttered something under his breath, before calling out to Clover, “Oh nothing… I just discovered a spell that makes you learn and use it. Intellectually interesting perhaps, but functionally useless.” He clipclopped up the stairs, yawning, not knowing that the spell’s existence would cause that very cycle to reoccur with each new magical prodigy that gained access to his library of spells and incantations….