Father of Chaos

Only Clover went with him up to the mountains.  In the Spring, the mountains still captured fierce weather storms the pegasi were only barely learning to control.  Starswirl had long learned to deal with the flurries of snow, the wet downpours, the fierce winds that molded the wild crags of the mountains.  He used his magic to shield him and Clover, and loved to look down into the valley of Equestria and see the fields being worked and buildings being built.  It was a signal of hope to him.

But ponies could have shifting hearts, he knew.  Starswirl himself had doubted the Princesses' prophecy many times growing up.  But he had learned to focus on the present and let prophecy be, and he had become a powerful magic user in a great new era of peace, one he hoped would not be ruined by any wrong ambitions among his beloved people.

Starswirl had decided many years ago he had a destiny to fulfill: to grant himself a power that would enable him to watch over these ponies, and to intervene should their hearts turn cold once more.  And if not himself, then at least Clover could take up his mantle, for the grave seemed closer to him than ever since Equestria was founded.

Starswirl climbed up the last set of magic-carved stairs and smiled.  Before him was a small building he shaped out of the living stone of the mountain, with a large bulb for his observation telescope and deck.  It was closed now, sealed against the weather and intruders, and no doors were apparent on the building.

Clover kept close behind him as he stepped down to the courtyard.  His already glowing aura flashed a spell outside their protective bulb, and the courtyard split into more stairs.  The two entered, and the rock slammed shut behind them.

The unicorns created a ball of light each, and Starswirl trotted down a hall and went into his study.  Here he lit crystals with his light, and they emitted a wonderful golden glow.  They revealed walls covered with star charts, maps, mathematical calculations, awards, and various instruments he himself had invented.  Starswirl breathed in the scent of paper and metal.

“What will you do, Master?” Clover wondered.

“I must meditate,” he replied, floating his hat to a coat rack.  He undid his cape as well and hung it beneath.  His body was bony and knobby with age, his blue-gray coat patched with white on his belly.  As usual, he kept his age-whitened mane and tail short for convenience.  His mark of adulthood, a star with mist swirling from its several tips, sat bright on his haunches. “The stars have yet more truths to reveal.”

Clover nodded.  She knew about his star-visions, and about how those visions were responsible for the enormous amount of spells he had invented, for all the thick and thin volumes that filled the tall bookshelves on one side of his study.  No unicorn before him had possessed such knowledge of magic-lore, and perhaps no unicorn after would.

However, despite all his knowledge and wisdom, his fear of the alicorns never returning made her fearful in return.

“Master, perhaps a warm cup of tea would be suitable before we delve into our work...?” she suggested, gesturing to the small table sitting under his own homemade banner of the alicorn sisters.  He waved a hoof in dismissal as he headed to an anteroom next to his large drawing desk, and Clover shrugged.

“Go ahead, and do no interrupt me,” he said, focused on the task at hoof.  He slammed the door shut, and Clover began to heat up water as she pondered on Starswirl's task.  All she knew about his “great work” was that he wanted it for all the ponies in Equestria.  It would touch all of them in some manner.  But how?

…...........

Three years passed at the observatory.  Only Clover left to get food storage, and would serve her master as he sat scribbling at his drawing desk.  He sat up some nights gazing at the moon and stars through his telescope, muttering to himself and making yet more notes.  He was still congenial to her, allowing her to explore his notes and books to improve upon her own magicks, and engaging in both light and deep discussions, but there was an edge of something about him that grew and made her nervous.  She could not say what it was.

She started sensing it after she noticed how much he consulted the stars in the visionary room, the anteroom by his desk.  Before the Confederate was born, she had only seen him go in that room three times in the ten years of her apprenticeship.  Now he went daily.  He would come out weak, sometimes rather confused––once he even mistook her for someone else.

Clover the Clever was smart enough to recognize a growing sickness, especially one that involved magic.  She finally voiced her concern to him over a cup of tea at the table one warm summer night.

Starswirl was silent, his pale eyes focused hard on his cup.

“I have induced the visions much more than ever,” he breathed, the tea steam swirling before him. “It drains me.  But I need all of their wisdom now, more than ever, for my task.”

“But...but it's hurting you, Master,” she said, placing her hoof on the table. “Please, take a break, work on something less potent.  You haven't left the observatory since the great feast.  You haven't been able to enjoy everything we worked to build down there in the valley.”

“You give me news, and it is enough,” he stated with a small smile. “It sounds wonderful, dear.  Tell you what: have a day off, and stop worrying about me.  Go down into Ponytown and get yourself a cup of grass brandy, and buy yourself a gift.”  He levitated several bits from his cape pocket and placed it under her hoof. “Say hello to your friends.  I'll be fine.”

“Your friends miss you, Starswirl,” she blurted.  Clover covered her mouth with a hoof, startled at her own forwardness; it was forbidden, as his apprentice, to so casually address him by name.  She had done it twice before, and each time she had been punished with extra chores.

As Clover grunted to cover her mistake, Starswirl simply drank some more tea and stepped wearily to his drawing desk, where his brown journal, his sacred volume that contained the most potent of his spells, lay open.  Clover eyed it, noting he had written notes on the very last page, and she shivered.

The last page.  She could only think of death for her master after he filled up that last page, for she felt he would have nothing else to write about magic.

“Yes, master,” she finally agreed.  She used her aura to lift her saddlebags from her desk, floated some items and the bits into the pouches, and strapped it around her barrel.  Her hooves clicked slowly as she left the study.

…...........

Starswirl stared at that last page for hours into the night.  He lost all concept of time, his thoughts lost on visions and hopes and the excitement of his grandest spell yet, one that would unite all the ponies and place himself in position to save them from their own corruption, should that happen.  He poured all his passion and love into that spell, and hoped his intentions would fill the words waiting to flow from the tip of his quill.

He looked at the space in the middle of the last page and took a deep, trembling breath.  Was this the right thing to do?  He had asked himself that more and more often as he approached the end of his journal.  He had even consulted the ethereal stars of magic, his gift from Celestia herself, but they had never answered his question.  Then when such pondering came to naught, unfailingly came their warning from the very start.

Beware of chaos.

Starswirl dipped the quill in the inkwell, summoned his aura, and then both spoke and penned the magnus opus of his entire life:

”From one to another, another to one. A mark of one's destiny singled out alone, fulfilled.”

Starswirl's vision exploded with white.  His horn blazed like a torch.  He cried out and stumbled back from his stool.  He felt himself crash into the table, and his head snapped back as a powerful ball of magic shot from his horn.  He heard things crashing, exploding, ripping, metals shrieking as they were rent in twain.  He blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to clear them as his spell finally blasted up the stairs to the observatory.

Starswirl recalled he had left the telescope dome open, and he galloped in what he thought was the right direction.  He stumbled against his fallen shelf and took a leap, his still sparkling aura trailing in an arch of white over him.  He thumped into the stairwell and thundered upwards, his eyes still blank with magic, and he gritted his teeth over his flowing beard.

The white finally faded from sight, and he slid to a halt beneath the observation deck.  He heaved breaths in and out as his aura faded away, and he stared at his large telescope.  Light projected from the instrument and into the sky, dark sparks of magic floating through the bright column.  He squinted through the open section of the dome, and saw that the whole night sky appeared frosted with the magic, and that small dark sparks were falling from it like some unnatural snowfall.

Sweat foamed the length of Starswirl's body, and an overwhelming exhaustion took him.  His knees folded beneath him, and he flopped onto his side.  His eyes rolled closed. If it was death soothing him to sleep, he prayed it would not take him now.  He had to see what his spell had done.