From One to Another

by TacticalRainboom

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sad, Other
Length: 2047

All students of magic know the legacy of Starswirl the Bearded, personal student to Princess Celestia. He was a genius; a mage of formidable power and ingenuity. Few ponies know that his greatest legacy is that of his greatest, and last, failure.

All students of magic know his name: Starswirl the Bearded, great prodigy of spellcasting and personal student to Princess Celestia. The academic community owes his legacy an enormous debt, as do all students of higher-level magic.

Very few ponies know that Starswirl the Bearded was also history's greatest and most important failure.

The so-called Destiny Spell was the culmination of Starswirl's entire life's work. It was the greatest spell that he ever cast--and it was also the last spell that he ever cast.

Warning, comments contain major spoilers.

Published 2014-02-10 20:10:07 UTC
Last updated 2014-02-10 20:10:07 UTC

From One to Another

He proudly took his last breath, and his horn glowed for the last time.

“From one to another; another to one...”

An incantation that he had drafted and rewritten a hundred, a thousand, a million times. Dozens of layers of complexity compressed into a single perfect ritual: the most beautiful, masterful failure of a spell that there had ever been. It was the first spell of its kind--a fitting end to a long and illustrious career.

“... A mark of one’s destiny singled out, alone, fulfilled!”

The spell circle pulsed once, and then the magic in the old wizard’s soul burst free of its shell, shattering his body, his mind, and his life into a spray of glittering moments. He was dying, but he had all the time in the world to watch as, one by one, each of his moments came to an end.

~~~*~~~

A young star sits beneath the sun and the moon.
Daylight warms him, nighttime soothes him,
but his mind and his eyes are swallowed
by the words on a page.
“And what did you learn today, my faithful student?”
He looks up, and sees them. His smile glows
and his eyes shine.

~~~*~~~

Princess Celestia’s voice shocked Starswirl from his book-reading trance, and he snapped his eyes to attention. Both of his teachers stood before him, shading half of the library’s study in warm daylight and the other half in heathery dusk.

He answered the question in a huff. “They did so much, but they figured out so little! How can that be? There have been so many failures to isolate ‘destiny’ that you would think they would find something by sheer process of elimination, but--”

He thumped his hoof onto the book where it lay open on the stand. Both Celestia and Luna winced with sympathy for the book’s yellowed pages, but Starswirl pretended not to notice.

“Like right here--Archmage Meteorite, third century--he said that destiny is probably bigger than just something that guides names and cutie marks--that it probably has something to do with the flow of time, not time like just seconds and hours, I mean time, history itself, all the movements of the world! But nobody knows if that’s true, or what it means if it is!”

“Then it seems to me that you have begun to understand one of the most important lessons of all,” Luna said. Her stern voice belied the faint smile crossing her face. “Some journeys can never end, no matter how hard we strive to find the destination.”

“I know.” Starswirl drummed his hooves restlessly against the floor as he turned his eyes back to the book. “We have to keep studying and keep learning. Forever.”

And then his face split into a smile to rival Celestia’s mane in radiance. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

~~~*~~~

A beautiful mare has been waiting for him.
She approaches him, touches him,
and finally he turns.

Cold eyes melt
when they fall upon
her.

The heat of their bodies
staves off her doubt and her fear.

~~~*~~~

It had been a very good night of work, and Starswirl’s workspace was piled high with books and scrolls, to the point that a pile of discarded scrap paper had started to accumulate beneath the desk. New connections had arisen between texts that Starswirl had thought to be exhausted. He had written notes for three new channeling elements and procedures for his next practical session. He had even stumbled upon an entirely new text written by the great Comet Tail.

So of course it was inevitable that such a good night of work would be interrupted eventually.

“It’s late. Won’t you come to bed?”

The voice was soft, sweet, and absolutely infuriating. After only a few years of married life, Starswirl had already learned to dread that question. It was never the first one that she asked--usually it was the third. The fourth was always “Should I wait for you or not?”

On most nights, Starswirl would have been content to wait until the fourth question, to which the answer was “No, that’s all right.” Tonight, though, there was something in his Bluebelle’s voice that tempted Starswirl away from his work...

He didn’t turn, but he slid his book away. “What time is it, exactly?”

“Late enough.” There was the faintest trace of an edge to her words--not a plea, but not a demand either. “Come to bed?”

He felt the weight of her hoof as it came to a rest on his shoulder. He sighed as he felt the touch of her breath against his neck. The sensation was decidedly unwelcome, not despite but because it was so pleasant.

“Don’t you think you’ve earned a rest?”

He considered telling her no, that tonight’s work was too important to be interrupted, but the script had already been derailed, and there was no going back now. Not when the closeness of her body was consuming his mind, blocking out thoughts of anything but her smell, her soft fur...

He turned, and felt the heat of her eyes as they locked with his own.

~~~*~~~

In Starswirl’s mind
there are a million theories,
a thousand libraries,
a hundred lifetimes,
and a single attempt
to grasp the infinite.

~~~*~~~

Noise invaded Starswirl’s study with the force of a tidal wave. It started with the slam of the front door, then built with a muted rolling of hoofbeats approaching from the hallway... Starswirl grit his teeth just before the noise exploded to its climax.

The room’s rickety old doorknob rattled sharply, and a skull-piercing rush of voices flooded in through the open door. “Hey, Starswirl! Been a while! How’s the spellcrafting going? Geez, look at this place! Can’t even move without--”

The voice was at least eight decibels too loud and three shades too sharp for Starswirl to handle at that moment, so he cut his friend off with a raised hoof and a snapped order: “Do not touch anything. And get to the point. I’m busy.”

He turned his head far enough to glare at the three ponies who’d just barged into the room. Airshow, Redwood, and Quartz were standing just inside his doorway, their hooves perilously close to the discarded stacks of notes carpeting the cramped room’s floor.

Airshow--the oblivious fool--still wore a stupid-looking grin, like a child who had been let out to play. “Bluebelle told us you would be in here, and we all wanted to take you out for--”

At that, Starswirl’s jaw tightened even further.

“Belle let you in? Pah! I told her I would be busy until at least eight!”

There was a beat of silence, and Starswirl took the opportunity to turn away from the three and back to his desk.

“...She knew that, Starswirl. It’s almost midnight.”

It had already taken Starswirl an infuriatingly long time to find his place on the scroll that he had been reading, so when Airshow’s voice rang out again, it took a considerable force of will to reply verbally instead of by throwing the inkwell as hard as he could.

“Well, tell Belle that I’m still busy. And tell her to listen to what I tell her next time! And close the door behind you!”

~~~*~~~

Starswirl was a great stallion,
a noble stallion who devoted his life
to the noble cause of higher knowledge.

Starswirl was a great stallion, and
his legacy
was destined to endure the ages.

~~~*~~~

A very old stallion proudly took his last breath and ignited his horn for the last time.

He stood at the center of the most powerful spell circle ever created by ponykind, the culmination of all his years as a spell-weaver--in other words, the single product of his entire life ever since he recieved his cutie mark. The destiny spell that he had dreamed of inventing for so long was finally complete, and it was perfect in every single way: it was Starswirl’s ultimate, perfect failure.

Not a failed spell, no: Starswirl the Bearded, personal student of Celestia and Luna, had created the world’s greatest, and first, failure spell.

After weeks of double-checking, Starswirl was certain beyond a possible doubt: anyone using a spell like this one would immediately find themselves engulfed by the power of Destiny and subjected to its unknowable whims. The spell would capture a pony’s Destiny, and bring it to life using their own Magic, and then the combined power would infuse the Body, and plunge the entire Being into the fabric of the World.

It should have been exciting. It was exciting. Except...

Except that Starswirl had learned how to hold Destiny in his hooves, and so he knew that his own Destiny was dead. When he first saw it, it had been a glorious iridescent river, vibrant and full. But the deeper he sank into his studies, the more the river dwindled, and now it was barely a trickle. It seemed that despite all of Starswirl’s acclaim and accomplishments, his great and mysterious purpose now belonged to somepony else.

And what kind of place could the World give the scattered essence of a broken old student who no longer had a Destiny to be shaped by?

With a flicker of bitter pride, Starswirl wondered what name the scholars and historians would give this spell if they ever unearthed his notes. Would they be able to follow his decades-long search, or would they dismiss his entire life’s work as the scribblings of a lunatic? Starswirl’s peers would surely cringe at the asymmetrical, haphazard design covering the floor.

But then, Starswirl had no peers--only detractors, and worshippers. There were forms of beauty more powerful than mere shapes and angles, and Starswirl was beyond the need for geometric symmetry. To him, the lines crossing the floor formed a symbol of power that could not have been more perfect if it had been etched by Destiny itself. It was a crooked six-pointed star, encircled by five smaller stars.

The spell circle thrummed with anticipation beneath its creator’s hooves. It was time.

“From one to another; another to one...”

~~~*~~~

Do not search too hard for things you have lost,
for nothing is lost that was not once found,
and to find something already known to you is to find nothing.

Do not chase dreams with too much zeal,
for dreams are not beasts that can be be caught,
and even the grandest dream can break if held too tightly.

Do not stop walking when a path comes to its end,
for all endings are also beginnings,
and the dark woods are full of trails waiting to be blazed.

~~~*~~~

All births are violent events, but very few beings are privileged to be born in a literal explosion of magic.

The child had slept in his egg for untold ages, only to be awakened in an instant as something from the waking world gripped his heart. His first sensation as a living being was of magic flooding his body, some of it his own, the rest belonging to something that resonated with his being in a way no other magic ever could.

His scales tingled and shimmered as they were exposed to the air for the first time, but before they could even dry, he found himself wrenched upward. The world became a blur as his body, only seconds old, was seized and twisted and forced to grow and change, and all around him was the crash of chaos--

And then it ended, and he was nothing but an infant, his eyes quickly focusing upon the world around him for the first time.

All around him were living things that were not scaled, but rather furred in a wild spectrum of colors. He glimpsed a purple four-legged creature, hardly larger than himself, and a tiny blink of light as the symbol of a six-pointed star appeared on her haunch. He stared at the symbol for a long moment.

The last of the shards of moments winked into nothingness, and the little one forgot that he had ever been more than a newborn child. He curled up and fell asleep, as infants often do.