Mirror, Mirror

No. He hadn’t even heard me out, and that was his immediate answer.

“You don’t even know any combative spells, do you?” Starswirl asked.

“Well…no, but I can learn! All the more reason to go!” I argued. After all, what better teacher was there than firsthoof experience?

“It’s all the more reason for you to stay behind!” Starswirl thundered. “Oh, Miss Willow, you were kind enough to give me food and shelter, and now your daughter is dead because I let her come with me,” he said in a falsetto. “In fact, I think I’ll ask her the whereabouts myself. Or better yet, I can just use a tracking spell.”

I stomped my hoof. I’d always wanted to go on an adventure when I was a filly, but when I’d grown up I’d resigned myself to a boring life. Have a farm. Grow plants, sell them and earn my living that way. That’s what my cutie mark meant.

I would never be like Twisted Oak, who went and wrote a book even if it wasn’t his destiny to be an author. “It isn’t fair,” I growled. “I probably won’t ever get to see Canterlot. I won’t hunt demons, or anything else. Can’t you see I want to help you because it’s the only chance I’ll ever get?”

Starswirl looked away. “You don’t get it. This isn’t a fairy tale, it’s real and it’s deadly. The only reason I’m considered the best at what I do is because I’m the only one who survived long enough to be considered anything.”

I turned away, head hung low. So much for adventure. Who was I kidding? Somehow, despite being practically in the Everfree Whitetail managed to be the most boring place in the world. And it was just my luck to live here.

“Oh, so what? Maybe you’ll get it through your head that this isn’t fun,” Starswirl muttered. I looked up. Did that mean—

“Fine. Come with me if you want, but only to the entrance! Now go back to your house and meet me here tomorrow morning.”

I grinned and galloped all the way home.

The next morning, Mother greeted me with a knowing smirk—last night I came home later than expected and grinning ear to ear. Upon being questioned, I’d given her the first explanation I could think of: I’d run into somepony on the way back, but didn’t say who.

Naturally, Mother took this to mean I ran into my special somepony, and had been—vainly—trying to guess it since last night.

“It’s Funny Story, isn’t it?” Mother asked.

I gave her a sideways look and swallowed. “Absolutely not. He’s nuts.”

Mother took a bite of oats, chewed and swallowed. “I can’t see anyone else walking that far after nightfall. Well…”

I waited for her to go on.

“There’s Perfect Apple.”

I stared at her. “Rotten Apple’s kid? The colt always hanging around at the fruit stand?”

Mother nodded, her smirk growing. “You’ve talked to him a few times!”

My face grew hot. I only talked to him when I had to! Sure, he’d greeted me a few times and asked a few questions, but I was only being polite! “I’m gonna go see if Starswirl needs to be shown around Whitetail,” I mumbled, slipping off the chair and out the door.

“Don’t worry, I won’t disown you for courting an earth pony!” Mother shouted after me.

“MOTHER!” I screeched.

I was still blushing when I entered the barn. “Mother’s convinced I’m in love with Perfect Apple. He’s nothing but an earth pony and—”

Oh. Wow. Steel tables had materialized sometime in the night and were pressed against the walls and barrels. The cot had been shoved aside carelessly, and the lamp was now suspended from the rafters with a length of rope.

Flasks of colorful liquids rested on the tables, surrounded by strange-looking weaponry. Complicated charts were tacked to the walls, threatening to fall to the hay-strewn floor. In the midst of it all was Starswirl, levitating a crossbow in aqua-colored magic. He looked up at me. “First rule. Keep your love life out of this.”

“What is all this?” I asked, looking at…a map? It was covered in wavy lines, unlike any map I’d ever seen.

“That’s a topographic map of the northern territories. Secondly, you are going only to the entrance of the cavern. I will go inside, examine the pool, take a sample of the water, and then I will seal the entrance to ensure no one, pony or otherwise, can enter.”

My face fell. “Fine,” I muttered, examining a beaker of bubbling, clear liquid. Water, maybe? I moved to sniff it, and suddenly everything was tinted teal.

“Don’t touch that,” Starswirl said. My head jerked back and the teal disappeared. He’d used his magic. On my face. Ignoring my dismay, he rolled up the maps, stopped up the flasks and placed them all in his saddlebag.

“Is your bag enchanted?” I asked. There was no way it could hold all that unless it was bigger on the inside.

“Yes.” A flash of light, and the tables vanished. “Let’s go.”

“So what does demon hunting entail, exactly?” I asked, stopping at the crest of the hill.

“I find demons and I dispose of them.”

Glancing at the stallion, I rolled my eyes. “But who pays you? How do you find demons?”

Starswirl looked me in the eye, yellow ones meeting magenta. “I don’t want to fill your head with all kinds of romanticized notions about the lifestyle I lead, so I’ll be honest. Most creatures I’m paid to track down aren’t demons and in some cases not even evil. I don’t know where sirens fall, but they are at least capable of causing a civil war and to my employer, that means they must die.

“So I’m being paid a large sum of money to find them and dispose of them, by any means necessary.”

“But you said they were worse than a hydra…” I said.

Starswirl started walking down the hill. “I tried to convince myself that they’re inherently evil. That they’re like Tirek, and I’m doing the world a favor by killing them. The truth is…”

“You don’t know,” I finished, trotting after him. Suddenly I saw him in a new light. Not the cool demon-slaying traveler, but a stallion trying to make his way in the world, and somehow this was where he’d ended up.

Starswirl nodded, and bells tinkled. “Clover. Don’t become a demon hunter. Follow your destiny, whatever it is and find happiness that way.”

Follow your destiny. Ha! Just do whatever the stupid clover on my hindquarters meant. “Mirror Pool is this way,” I said, gesturing to the tree line.

We walked in silence for a while before I couldn’t stand it. “Who’s Tirek?”

“A demon. An actual demon, not like the changelings some ponies think of. He stole the magic of ponies.”

“So…like the sirens?” I asked.

“No. They feed off magic. Tirek was worse. He and his brother Scorpan had the ability to drain a pony of magic, such that they couldn’t use it.”

I shuddered. “Why do you have so many maps?”

“Because I travel a lot.”

That was obvious. “Have you ever been to the pegasus cities?”

“Yes.”

“How? Is there a spell that lets you fly?”

“Yes.”

“Can you teach it to me?” I asked. “Please?”

“No. It’s extremely advanced.”

I could still learn it, it would just take me longer. I sighed. This was gonna be a long walk.

Where the vines are thickest…or thorns? Twisted Oak made a crater, but it might have become a lake…

“Are we close?” Starswirl asked.

I shrugged. “I think so. But I can’t remember where Mother said the pool was!”

“The cavern may be flooded now,” Starswirl said. “But that won’t stop sirens. We need to find it.”

Oh. Water would have drained through the hole. It still could have become a lake, though. But what if it didn’t? Craters were sort of concave, so the middle would be the lowest. I clenched my eyes shut. Imagine a bowl…

When it rained, water would collect in the crater but drain through a hole in the ‘side’, leaving some in the bottom. Which meant…

“Look for an opening by a small pond!” I cried, eyes flying open.

“Or sources of water,” Starswirl said, taking a deep breath. His horn lit up aqua, growing steadily in intensity. I turned my head away, squinting to clear the afterimages. We still could have looked for an opening by a pond.

A wave erupted from the tip of Starswirl’s horn, washing over the flora around us.

“A tracking spell?” I guessed, gazing at the faintly luminescent vines.

“A locater spell,” Starswirl corrected me. “But it doesn’t last long. Hurry!”

We galloped through the forest, the locater spell illuminating our way. But only the plants and some of the ground glowed…not the rocks. A rabbit bolted past us, brilliant blue. Only living things? No, the ground wasn’t alive.

I skidded through a patch of mud the color of the sky and threw my hooves out to catch myself. It wasn’t living things that were glowing. It was water! Inches to my left was a gaping maw of an opening, shimmering with fading light.

“Mirror pool,” Starswirl announced, his voice grim.

“What now?” I asked.

Opening his saddlebags, Starswirl lifted out a pointed hat decked with brass bells in his magic and placed it over his curly gray hair.

I stuffed a hoof in my mouth to stifle my laughter. There really were no words to describe how stupid he looked. “Now your hat matches your cloak!” I said when I was slightly more composed.

Starswirl took out two lumps of cotton. “Stuff these in your ears.”

I did so, and everything became eerily quiet. Was this how Father felt, every day? While Starswirl descended into the cavern, I slumped against a tree.

My ears itched. I tried to scratch them through the cotton.

If this was what ponies called an adventure, it was overrated. A trip to Rotten Apple’s fruit stand was more eventful than this. I remembered Mother and my conversation from this morning and buried my face in my hooves. I ran into somepony walking home… what sort of dumb excuse was that?

I hadn’t told her or Father the truth because I was afraid they wouldn’t let me investigate Mirror Pool. A pang of guilt hit me. They believed me because normally I would never lie.

How long did it take to get a sample of water?

I stood and walked around, stretching my legs then sat back down, wishing I had another cloak. Maybe the sirens had gotten there first. I looked at the cave opening. Should I go in there? No. Starswirl fought a magic-sucking demon. He would be fine.

My ears itched again. I took out the cotton and scratched them. Oh, sweet relief! I looked around, listening. If I heard sirens, I would put the cotton back in.

A twig snapped, and I leapt to my feet, ready to flee. Nothing but a squirrel. My shoulders slumped. Sitting down, I looked up. Sunlight filtered through the canopy and a few birds flitted about.

That was it, Starswirl was taking too long.

I stood up again and trotted over to the opening. This is no time to be frightened, I reminded myself. Sucking in a lungful of air, I marched inside.

-

To be honest, I expected something exciting. Perhaps Starswirl, famed demon hunter in the clutches of an evil siren. I would take up his crossbow—despite having never handled a weapon in my life—and shoot the siren. Everybody would be freed from the demon’s mind control, and I would be a hero.

Instead, Starswirl was standing in front of the frozen pool, examining a sphere of water held in his magic. “This is fascinating!” he said without looking at me, sounding almost gleeful. “Clearly, it’s not water, but something nearly identical. I need to figure out what…”

Not water? I walked over to the pool. It was frozen solid except for a small hole near the edge. I put a hoof on it; it certainly felt like ice.

What would happen if…I started chanting the rhyme in a sing-song way. “And solemnly sweared not to be scared—” My mouth snapped shut.

I glared my fiercest at Starswirl. LET GO!

He released my jaw and let the not-water fall through the hole in the ice. “I suppose we should be going.”

“Oh really?” I muttered.

I followed the demon hunter up the makeshift staircase—

That jerk. Twice now he used levitation on me! Maybe I should just push him back down. Give him a taste of his own medicine! A smirk slid onto my face, and I mustered my magic…

Starswirl stumbled as though shoved by an invisible hoof. “What the—”

I kicked him aside and ran past him, into daylight. The winds were rushing about harder than ever, but I was too angry to care.

Starswirl’s eyes widened. “Clover, you idiot!”

My smirk fell. “Idiot, am I?” I asked, my own words barely audible. Twisted Oak nearly starved to death in that cavern. Maybe now somepony will actually starve to death! I hefted a boulder in my magic, anger giving me power.

Starswirl bolted past me. I threw the boulder, a wordless scream ripping from my throat. The boulder glanced off a shield.

Idiot. Jerk. He deserved to die! I focused my magic again, my breath coming in heaves. Perfect.

Underneath his stupid shield—a little longer…a little longer—Starswirl seemed preoccupied, searching through his saddlebags. Moron. And he was supposed to be a demon hunter too!

Don’t make me laugh.

The shield flickered. I grit my teeth, magic surging through me.

The shield shattered. Trees were torn from the ground, magenta and bark swirling around us like a tornado. And the funnel was collapsing. Starswirl ran towards me, and I smirked. It wouldn’t save him.

Then we were standing in the center of an aqua bubble, and trees were splintering around us and all I could think was what was happening?

Everything stopped.

My limbs felt like rubber; all I wanted to do was curl up by the fireplace at home. I collapsed to the ground, curling into myself like a foal.

Starswirl was saying something. I didn’t know what. I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was go home. I don’t know how long I just lied there.

Eventually, I rolled onto my stomach and dragged myself to my feet.

“You took out your cotton,” Starswirl said by way of answer to a question I never asked. “When we left the cavern, the sirens were already there and you fell prey to their song.” He cracked a half-smile. “I couldn’t hear it over the bells. You attacked me; tried to kill me. You uprooted a lot of trees—”

I looked around at the wasteland, barely recognizable as having once been a clearing. Massive logs and beams of wood dominated the area for at least twenty yards in each direction.

I did this. I remembered doing this. But how? I wasn’t that powerful; I couldn’t be.

“—but I shielded us,” Starswirl finished. All traces of a smile were gone from his expression.

“I caused all of this,” I said. All of this devastation. I was no better than the sirens.

“Yes. Even enraged, it takes a lot of raw power to cause damage on that level,” Starswirl commented.

I sniffled. “I’m going home,” I said. I took a step towards the wasteland. The one I made. A lump formed in my throat. What if it happened again?

I pushed away the thought. No. I felt something rest on my head and looked back at Starswirl. His hat?

“I can’t afford for you to fall under their spell again,” the demon hunter said.

I continued walking, the bells drowning out even my broken sobs.