Star Swirl the Bearded’s Guide to the Arcane Arts

by Midnight Quill

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mystery, Tragedy, Starswirl the Bearded
Length: 10530

My name is Star Swirl the Bearded, archmage of the crown. And these are the stories of my life, my deeds and my experiences with magic in all of it´s forms. Thou may follow me, as I asks myself the one true question: What is magic?

What gives a pegasi the ability to fly? In what language does the soil speak, when it talks to an earthpony? And what power does a unicorn may posses, so it can create things out of nothing?
To this question I have devoted many, many days and nights of my long life and I only found it right at the end of said life to write down all my experiences and to share them with the world.
Or, to be more precise: With you, dear reader.

Follow me with my adventures to distant cultures, different kinds of magic and in the end; witness the birth of a nation of which I can only hope to last in peace forever.

Important note!
I changed the story's status to 'cancelled' due to the fact that I am going to fully revise it.

Published 2015-11-24 18:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2016-01-11 14:01:01 UTC

Chapter two: About Feathers and Friendship

Chapter two:

About Feathers and Friendship

May my journey have begone that day, it did at first not lead me far. To be more precisely: It lead me in my parent´s basement.
After all the happenings of the previous day I asked my father for permission to sift through his old textbooks. Although he only was a teacher for very basic magic, nothing according of my level, his teacher once had been Firmament Glimmer, one of the most educated unicorns throughout the whole land and at this time my next possible connection to the arcane art of magic.

I can not remember leaving the basement except for my need´s sake in the following week. And if my father would have had more than three books, I would for sure have stayed a while longer.

For me it was as well the time that I discovered the magic of the written word for myself. Was I in reading same as in writing (last one on demand of my father as well with my horn as with my muzzle) well-versed, yet had I never before read a book that became a key to an other world to me.
My textbooks were filled with instructions, orders and training tasks: Concentrate on the feather. Concentrate on the flow of energy from your horn, match it the size of the object. Concentrate on the position of the feather in the air. Concentrate on the location where you wand the feather to land.

The books of my father were complete opposites: Here, the author for the first time in my reading experience conjectured things, for the first time told about things and phenomenons he himself had no answer for. My father would have kept himself of ever telling me that he did not know everything.
Firmament Glimmer instead wrote of unimaginable tales, legends, observations and experiments.

He told of the dragons in the west which live in vulcans and the phoenixes who build their nests close to them; because the dragons would scare of natural enemies of the phoenixes while they themselves did not harm them nor their brood.
He told of his travels to the north, to the beautiful queen of the Umbrum and of the unique and powerful kind of magic he was able to observe with her.
He told of the tales of the marine pegasi which build their cities above oceans and supposedly were seeing a siren from time to time. “These must have too much salt water in their heads.”, did Master Glimmer, how I began to name him after a while, call that.
He told of his experiments with natural magic and how it let plants grow, of herbs which the Zebras mixed together and about the healing effect these potions possessed.

And he told of the legend of the alicorns.
It was the second time that I began to think about these beings.
“Those possess the strength of an earthpony, the horn and magic of a unicorn, the wings of a pegasus and the size of a full grown Horse.” he told.
“One family, of two of them, lives in the South. One family, of three of them, lives in the North. One family, of four of them, lives in the West. And one family, of five of them, lives in the East.”
At this time I did not want anything more than to get out of the basement of my father and travel to all cardinal points.

“Father.” I asked thereupon, “Why did you never tell me of anything that is written in these books?”

“Because that is unimportant stuff, stuff a unicorn should not bother with nor needs it to cope with his life.” he simply explained.
It hurt hearing those words out of my father´s muzzle. Did not he always motivate me to do ever greater things with my magic? To lift even bigger things, to create more and more complex objects? So I would find out what I was capable of?

Then it dawned on me.
What I was lifting were rocks in our garden. “You do not need a ungainly earthpony-rabble for that.” he always growled, “Only mental power.”
And what I was crafting were pieces of furniture or decoration. “Why ask a rough and brash pegasus to craft something out of metal, when you can create it out of thin air all by yourself.” my mother declared, her snoot so high in the air even White Leaf would be impressed.

At this moment I was simply disgusted by the realization of the way my parents had all the time spoken about the other kinds of our species. I decided that it was time for me to leave my parent´s house. I wanted to make more of my life and than the next teacher in a family of teachers, and I could no longer stand this denigration of others.

“Father.” I addressed the next day, “I find it the time to choose my own way. I want to leave this house and go on a journey. I am asking you for your blessing.”
(Yes, truly, a way of talking that might even be a bit too formal for our princess nowadays, but it were other times back then. With time, language has changed as well.)

It seems like my father thought long and hard about that while we were standing there, but finally he agreed to let me go. Maybe he thought, I would one day return. Surely he must have thought so.

“One more request, father. I want to ask you for a dowry.”

“You want money, to buy you food, drink and accommodation on your journey?"

“No. Those.” I said while levitating the three books of Firmament Glimmer between us.

“No money?” he asked. “And no keepsake of your family?" His voice shifted from surprise to deplore.

“These works are keepsake enough, father. And I have my savings from my work for master Leatherfoot, the hoovecobbler. I won´t need much.”

“Here, take this one at least.” he demand, while he took one of his coats out of his personal wardrobe.

Fascinated I examined the garment. It was unostentatious fashioned, but in shimmering graduations of blue, starting dark on top and getting more pale and bright to the bottom. As I held it reverent in my own magic I could feel that it was like most, if not all of my fathers clothes, woven from the finest wool.

“Wherever you go, everypony shall know that you are a unicorn of a posh house and family. And winter is coming. Take it, it shall be thine.”
I did my best to not show tears in front of my father and thanked him for the gift. Then I hugged both my parents for the last time and left the house.

The first weeks of my voyage were accompanied by many deprivations. I had to get used to no longer having access to my mother´s pantry, not any longer having a sea around to bath myself and neither was I woken up by a soft breeze anymore. Oh, the contrary was the case.
The flatlands outside our village were so stormy that at some times I thought about turning around.

But all the time, the weight of the three books close to my waist remembered me, what my destination was:
Santa Pegasi. The biggest pegasus-city throughout the entire Unicorn Kingdom.

In there, the clouds for the surrounding areas were produced and distributed. Each and every cloud would be pushed away with mighty gusts, what as a side effect caused the storms in the flatlands. For three days I believed that I would never again being able to hear anything than swishing in my ears, until I finally reached the destination of my hike:
A city in the skies, so huge that it´s shadow covered an area worthy of an earl or countess to rule. Buildings made of nothing but clouds so high that they seemed to scrap on the firmament. And more pegasi than I had ever seen before.

“Hold!” I heard a guard shout, and with a look in the sky I could easy spot him and his comrade while they flew down onto my position.
“Traveler, who are you?” they asked.

I introduced myself as a Star Swirl. No epithet, no noble family to which I could refer myself. Simply Star Swirl.
They wanted to know why I was there, and with my answer “To research magic”, they burst into laughter. And after a few more giggled questions and my assurance that I was not lost and my foolish attempt to explain them that I wanted to do researches on pegasus-magic, they both rolled on the grass, laughing.

The following comments from them, even if not quite nice, brought at least a very specific point up I until this point had totally forgotten about: How was I supposed to get into the city, and after arriving there, how could I avoid leaving the city made of clouds on a very vertical way?
I remembered from the books of Master Glimmer that there was something called "cloud-walking spells", but sadly, he never wrote one of them entirely down.

Yes, dear reader, that setback I had to face on my first journey: Weeks of traveling and poor meals to be laughed at from two guards, standing at the bottom of a city I was apparently not getting a single hoof into.
That was when I saw the balloon which held course to the city. It hold the emblem of Prince Bullion, the son of King Stronghold and Queen Admira.

“There is an existing embassy of the Unicorn Kingdom in you city, right?” I asked them, and for two of my coins (two of less than thirty, so a considerable amount of my wealth) they were willingly to fly me up to the embassy, where the floors were made of solid wood and finally an other unicorn could tell me a couldwalking-spell.
(“Like silk so soft, when I step a hoof on you get right now tough.” In view of this simplicity I could have punched my hoof in my face)
But now I finally had arrived (and set my clock for every day to re-cast the spell) , and my studies could begin.

“Magic? Pegasus-magic? Are you insane?”

“Young unicorn, I fear that thyself may have inhal´d too much smoke from thy fireplace considering this confusedness at thy young age.”

“Hahaha, if I had magic, I would lay lazy on the next could and move the water up to the cloudforge from there instead of doing it twice a week with bare wingpower.”

How, I asked myself, could it be that flying beings of easy two to five hundredweights but only with wings in the best case of the size of a condor could not a single time question themselves why they were at all capable of flying but only were telling me something about flight musculature.

I was wearing the coat of my father permanently that time while the pegasi around me did not seem to be bothered by the cold, windy air at all. My speculation, that that was as well an effect of their magic was granted as much belief as a drunk farmland pony when telling that a manticore drank all of it´s cider.

So how was I supposed to find out how pegasus-magic worked if not even the pegasi themselves did know it?
The key for it should be a friend from old times...

“I had no idea they now are letting potentially suicidal unicorns in the city.” I heard a voice from behind. “How did you manage it? Did you corrupt the guards with a slice of your mother´s apple pie?”

When I turned myself around, my heart was skipping several beats. It was Clouddancer.
I had not seen her since years. Although we both had spend much time together back then, after much too less moons her parents had decided to move to a bigger city. Obviously, they had been talking about Santa Pegasi.

It had been so many years ago that two worlds collided when my memories about that cheerful, white-coated filly with the bright green mane with wild stripes of a far darker pink fell like hit by a hammer in the view of this young mare that was grown in beauty as much as in her overall appearance.
She was furthermore standing in front of me in the full armor of a town´s guard. Yeah, my old friend went to the military, and estimated by the imposing of her armor, she had climbed in ranks.

Her armor was made from platings in different sizes, constructed of steel and bronze and covered her complete upper body up to her neck, her back and flanks and the front sides of her legs. It left her wings and her tummy free and looked over all very flexible. It was completely painted in a dark blue (that besides very well fittet the lighter color of her coat), then decorated with golden-striped epaulettes on her shoulders.

Since her shift was just over, we decided to sit down in a cafe. We drank hot chocolate and talked for hours about long past days. In the time I learned how to manipulate the orbits of sun an moon, took lessons from other unicorns and apart from that experienced nothing at all, I became a bit envy when she started to tell about how she joined the city guards of Santa Pegasi and climbed up to the rank of a non-commissioned officer and even got the commando over a small platoon of supersonic troops.

“Remember back then, when I saved you from that tree?” she asked, before she lifted up her armor and presented me her cutiemark. It showed a sharp triangle, breaking through a ring of clouds. No, not clouds, I corrected myself. Sound.

“Flying fast seems to be my special talent.” she said, then told me about how she broke the sound barrier for the first time with a flight from the city down to the lake. And while I was not a big sympathizer of the military, her achievement did impress me. She was not any older than me, and with sixteen already having discovered one´s special talent was outstanding.

Then it hit me like a flash: With whom if not her could I study pegasus-magic?
I came back to the reason of my visit in this city and with pleasure she declare her willingness to support me in my studies as much as her free time allowed her.
And she showed me the city´s library.

It turned out that there had been and still were scholars in Santa Pegasi which had already taken up on my ideas long ago.
For several days I read about aviatic, aerodynamic and aviation, meteorology, the history of flying and anatomy of pegasi, until I reached my final conclusion: They all have not the slightest idea what they are talking about!

It must be said that I truly do not often speak bad of other academics, but this, what they had pulled out of their feathers was simply horse apples, not worth the parchment it was written on.
Weather manipulation was described as a combination of inherited talent and plain effort while flying itself was described as “A gift of nature, to separate pegasi from the simple, earthbound pony folk.” By Celestia´s shimmering tail, something as nonsense as that I had never heard before and barely in the subsequent years.

I decided that it was time to come back on Clouddancer´s offer. Or, to be exact: To again do something really stupid.

“I shall do WHAT?” she asked me, completely aghast from my request.

“Do a supersonic flight with me! I want to try to track your magic down while we fly. Please, Clouddancer. It could be a breakthrough in the research!”

As insane as I must have sounded that day, it was, maybe in combination with her own eager excitement, enough to persuade her.
We unfortunately could not find a foal-harness to tie me to her chest, but instead a friend/comrade of her and a rope.
So we were standing on the edge of a cloud and her friend was angrily telling us that she would not come down and clean up afterwards.

“Trust me: We are going to be fine.”, Clouddancer said to soothe her.

As her friend did not seem to be satisfied with that, she added: “You can trust me that I know what I say and do, okay? Did I ever lie to you?”

As her friend shook her hear, Clouddancer nodded triumphant. “Going to be back in just a minute.” she ensured, before she checked the ropes one last time, obviously not in the mood of loosing her “package” on the way down.

I was tied to her chest as planned, simply because her wings had to stay completely free so she could get the most out of them, and in the name of Luna, how would it have looked if I would have been tied to her lower back?
She looked me in my eyes, checking if I was ready as well, and the moment I gently let my horn glow she cached a breeze with her already spread wings and jumped.

NEVER, neither before nor sadly ever again in my entire life had I felt that kind of acceleration. Santa Pegasi was mere seven hundred cords above the ground and a pegasus has to accelerate really, really hard to get the needed speed in the given, short time of fall to break through the sound barrier.
My cheeks were probably glowing more than my horn from all this excitement while I tried to focused myself on her body mechanics.

I could sense her flight muscles, which contracted in an insane frequency, her breath, quick but steady as a metronome, providing her body with the needed oxygen. And I could feel, how...
There is no fitting word in our language to describe the feeling of floating magic. Even I tend to use the word “flow” because it is so simple and seems so fitting. But magic does not “flow”. Neither does it “stream”. Nor “flood”. We need to get away from the water-metaphors if we want to achieve something here.
Magic moves like the sun in the firmament. The sun as well does not “flow” in her orbit. She “slides” along her way. She... now I´ve got it, she “pushes” along. Magic equals a whirling fluid, that... Ah, damn it. So back to the water-metaphor again. Fine.

Her magic flowded through her body, like made available by an invisible force and subconscious guided by her (NOW I´ve got it! Magic is being guided! Or cunducted!) into her wings, until it had reached every fine limb of every of her feathers. It was surprisingly strong magic, and her coat was permeated with it as well. Her magic seemed to wrap around her like a cocoon.

“A cocoon? For what the hay something like a cocoon?” I was asking myself, a bare second before we broke trough the sound barrier.
Although I never had any affection for swimming, not to mention jumping into water from significant heights, since that day I have a very clear idea of how it feels when you hit the surface. While water may be thicker than air, this cancels out with increasing speed of impact. The sound barrier is only a hard wall of air, and air can be one unyielding teacher.

My bruises needed weeks to heal, but my theories had been right: Pegasi possess magic! And they could, if at least subconscious-passive, use it at their will and needs.

They own magic which will be guided into their wings (haha, never again these “flowing”-metaphors!) to give them flying power (aviation as much as speed) and as well magic that could close around their bodies to protect them from any kind of air pressure as well as from the cold.
Last one could be meticulous observed by me when we were walking around the following weeks, myself afraid of freezing my tail off while Clouddancer wore nothing more than her armor of flexible metal plates or nothing at all. I got myself a very annoying cold in that time although I wore my father´s coat. 700 cords above the ground means that it gets even colder than on the bottom and I really wished that I possessed some natural magic to protect myself from the cold without even thinking about it. I for sure later learned a spell for that, but that did not the slightest bit help me when I was laying in her living room, trembling although her fireplace was lit and being nursed back to health by her.

That at least gave me some enforced time to think about my observations and continue the initial question a bit further: What is magic and where does it come from?
I already asked myself that a while ago, while thinking about my own magic. Did one really “own” his magic or only the ability to guide and use it? Did it have a differed source?
Did an unicorn´s magic really come from within himself and was different from everypony else´s magic or did he just access a natural source? And if that was so, that would mean that one did not possess a strong or weak magic, but instead a strong or weak ability to use it? (Maybe a dissimilar strong connection to the origin/source of the magic?)
What ever the answer was, I was certain that the same applied to pegasi as well.

Weeks turned into months, time in that I could enjoy Clouddancer´s presence and hospitality very much. Ever since that day we landed down in the grass close to the lake below the floating city (well, crashing would be the better word, but we made it at least down as a whole), our old friendship had been reignited.
Sadly, I knew that I could not stay in Santa Pegasi forever and I regretted it very much, but I had a journey ahead of me, a mission to accomplish, and with that I thought that nothing, not even a rekindled friendship, had to stop me.

Chapter three: About Hooves and Hay

Chapter three:

About Hooves and Hay

So, the magic of a unicorn is conducted through it´s horn. The magic of a pegasus is conducted into it´s wings and fur. So far, so logical. But where, I asked myself, was the target of an earthpony´s magic? It was to profound for me to even think that it was simply guided into it´s muscles.
So again I went on to wander through the kingdom, this time to it´s far borders.

There were no earthpony-cities, right? There were the cities of the pegasi, huge formations of clouds, floating over their lands and build with magnificent, old structures shaped like marble columns from older times.
There were the fortifications of the unicorns, always combining the palatially of the interior with thick walls of stone to protect their wealth.
And there were villages like the one where I grew up, under the regency of a certain king or queen but mostly independent and inhibited by a mixture of all three kinds, while the percentage amount still depended on where the village was. Everblue Lake, for example, was inhibited by 60% unicorns and around 30% earthponys who did the field work. The rest were either pegasi or travelers who did come and go so fast that you could not really count them.

But earthponys did not have big cities to compare, only farms or granges. Wide areas, easily miles over miles of acres and in the center of them the farm houses from the family that owned and cultivated all the land, right?
That was how I had imagined it. And, as often happens in my younger days, I had no idea.

New Peach Acres was not a city. It was the earthpony-equivalent of a metropolis.

While in comparison with my quiet village with three hundred inhabitants Santa Pegasi with over five thousand people overturned me, New Peach Acres with close to two thousand had not to fear any comparisons.
The whole city was not build in an urban, but more in an rustic country-style. And to inhibit two thousand ponies in single-family housing, the city had spread over an area of more square-miles than my eyes could count. And a few minutes outside of the city, the orchards began. All kinds of fruits covered a distance comparable to Canterlot-Cloudsdale with shimmering colors of red, orange, yellow, green and much more like a rainbow.

There were multiple schools (so much to the uneducated earthponys my father all the time told about..), bars and restaurants, a city hall, at station of the city guards (very nice stallions, who were even willingly to show me a bit around), a hospital, five doctors (we were happy to at least having one back in our village) and a public transportation system (which I, one eye always on my small budget, prudently was not going to use) and the best of all: hotels au pony.

There were, if I did notice it correctly, no other unicorns in the entire town, so I had no hard time finding board and lodging in exchange for my help with... basically everything hooves where not designed for. Like repairing sewer pipes, for example.
It was a simple time of work and reflection for me, and beside a small wage I worked close together with them and thereby quickly gained insights in the magic of our third kind.

As it turned out, their accursed magic was guided directly into their muscles.
Same like Clouddancer´s magic was guided from her subconscious into her wings, conducted from an invisible source into her anatomy, an earthpony´s magic went, where ever it came from, right into his muscles every time it was needed.
But that did by far not explain why earthponys had such a strong bound with nature, why they were so great with animals or why they did not shatter all bones in their hind legs when they were bucking against the peach trees like an elemental force.

There was one pony I remember the best.. Suncrest. Blue mane, orange coat, a few years older than me and of a size that he could easily match a full-grown alicorn. (And no, I don´t remember what I compared him to first, because I did not know any alicorns at that time.)
He was not only a champion in peach-bucking. He was the most gentle giant I had ever met. After working together on the fields for a while, I told him about the reason for my journey and he generously offered to house me and and to let me study him at his work. He himself got curious about his own magic, although he most times accepted that it simply was the way it was.

I soon found out that Suncrest was a stallion of many trades. If he was not busy with harvesting peaches (what was, after all, just possible during the season), he did, together with a small group of other ponys, care for a bunch of critters.
“With the building of this city,” he explained to me, “many animals lost their homes. I found it only right to give them a new one.”
I could not believe what I saw: He used his garden not only to house at minimum more than a hundred animals, he as well planted the food for them, explaining that he could simply not afford to buy the amount of food they ate.

And while I had my difficulties finding out what this special bond between animal and pony was, from the first day on living with him I did no longer question it´s existence. Suncrest spoke the language of the animals, and one may claim that I got senile in my... advanced age, but when ever Suncrest asked an animal to do or not do something, they understood him. And in return, when they talked to him, he could understand them as well.
This was a kind of magic that I, even until now, do not claim to fully understand. So I will follow Master Glimmer and write down several of my experiences where I could study it, maybe some smart earthpony reading this will fully understand it and in a book of him/herself will bring light to this phenomenon:

One day, one of Suncrest´s hedgehogs almost got into an accident with a buckboard. After nearly dying of a heart attack (Suncrest, nota bene, not the hedgehog), he told the critter that he had to be careful when leaving the garden. And the hedgehog nodded. And he was not only moving his head up and down, he was looking with a sense of guilt that much reminded me of myself when my father read me the riot act after that tree-incident. And from that day on, said hedgehog never again tried to cross any road alone.

At an other occasion, he had to repair a wheel of his cart and I was not around to lift it (we had many long evenings full of work to do and I therefore mostly was a bit longer asleep than the usual, used-to-it workpony). When I came down the stairway to the living room, I saw a bear, standing there and lifting the cart for him.
He really asked a bear from around the city if he could lend him a paw. And so we had a bear, nearly triple my size or double the size of Suncrest, standing there and lifting the vehicle up so Suncrest could reach the axis and fix it. And said bear did not even try to... well, have a second breakfast with some of the bunnies running around inside the home, if you understand. He was just standing at the spot, peaceful and tranquil.

And the third event I want to tell about happened just at the peak of winter. While another year had passed, this one felt even colder than the one up in Santa Pegasi. And while pegasi may be immune to the cold, earthponys like the cold as little as I do. And Suncrest´s neighbour did in his defense against the cold miscalculate the amount of logs in his fireplace. Sufficient enough to set his whole house on fire.

Suncrest and I went down to the close river that evening to check if the ducks were all right and fed well. And on our way back, we could see the flames from far. Asking him to wait for me was pointless. He had a better stamina than me and the much more urgent desire to return as fast as possible. When I finally cached up, I saw him prop up this neighbour´s house with all his force to prevent it from falling onto the garden. Suncrest´s garden, where all the critter´s lived. The houses in the city were build completely out of wood and therefore the support beams tend to break quickly if set on fire. The house already had a significant slant.

I helped with my magic as well as I could, but in the end it was Suncrest´s deed that prevented much worse. At first, he did support the house with the force of a titan. So intense and concentrated on holding his position that I could feel the magic pouring out of the ground and into his body. And then he simply shouted “Wake up and get out!” towards his garden. And the animals followed the command. They did not simply get out of their holes because they recognized his voice. They came out like they know word by word what he told, and even like they could hear the panic in his voice.

Only after every critter was save he allowed the house to break off, falling on what was easily one fourth of his garden and covering the rest of it with sparks and glimming fragments, but it was after all winter and most of his garden was covered with a gentle layer of snow, so nothing else was set on fire.
And while the voluntary fire brigade of the city extinguished the ruins, Suncrest could only rest after he counted his animals twice and ensuring that not a single one of them was hurt.

And while he did so, I followed the returning magic out of his body and in the earth. And then I understood what made us capable of using this natural source of magic: It was our own, pure will.
Like it had been my will ten years ago to tear this tree out of the ground, like it had been my will not to let go this group of unicorns fall into the gorge, it had been Suncrest´s will not to yield until the last one of his animals were save.

And then, as to close this dramatic story with another act of kindness and generosity, the now homeless neighbor was temporarily taken in by Suncrest and its "roommates".
The rest of the winter we three lived together calm and peaceful and Suncrest and I helped the neighbour (he of course had a name, I just sadly forgot about it) to rebuild his house.

These days of warm and open hearts will forever stay in my mind and I often wished to continue my studies of earthpony magic, even if they would have been without any results and just an excuse to simply return to my friends and live with them trough another cold winter in front of a warm fireplace.

Chapter four: About Rhymes I will tell, and the unique way of a Zebra Spell

Chapter four:

About Rhymes I will tell, and the unique way of a Zebra Spell

Equis is a big planet and Equestria, even if the nation was split and named other back then, a damned big country on it.
Although the big cities were so densely populated, the wide flat areas of grass land between them are gigantic. In the last pony village at the end of my hike through an at least halfway populated country I had myself been advised to buy a cart and equip it with supplies. Many supplies. And even if it had taken most of my savings from my time in New Peach Acres it had been a good decision. Without these supplies, I without any doubt would have had to return.

That the countrys of the Zebras lay in the south can be told by every book of general knowledge. HOW FAR south is a well kept secret.

Dear reader, if you until this point never questioned the geographical position of the zebra-countries, let me tell you: they are ACCURSED DAMN far away. So far, that I for multiple times on my trip wished, that I had bought some horseshoes as well. By Discord, my father would have collapsed of shock if he had only thought about his well-raised, well-educated, well-behaved son wishing for some horseshoes like a common farm pony.

(Every here read disapproval against farm ponys is just an loose representation of my father and by no means my own opinion. In New Peach Acres, I repaired waste pipes and raked manure. And who ever beliefs, that magic can not transmit smells, may hereby be corrected: IT CAN!)

Well, even without horseshoes I after all made it to reach the zebra-lands in the south.
After five (!) weeks.
Never before in my entire life I had walked so much. If I would not have had the sun as point of orientation, I would have thought that I were just trotting around the whole continent.
As beautiful as our nation may be, grass and hills get boring quite fast and so I spend five weeks thinking about my journey.
I still had not understood, what magic was.
What it was capable of, how it flood (I surrender.) and how it could be controlled and guided, yes, I had learned that in the past. But the “whence” still was a mystery that I hoped the Zebras could finally solve for me. I read over and over again the chapter about Zebras from Master Glimmer but he only wrote that Zebras do not possess any form of own magic at all but were using plants and herbs instead to create magical potions. So the least magical gifted ponykind seemed to have the best understanding of magic itself and maybe even about it´s origin.
The first Zebras I spotted while taking a rest were in quite a distance but still ignited the euphoria inside me. I finally had arrived!

The two may have been too far away to shout out for them, but as I started following them, they anon noticed me and stopped their walk, waiting for me to catch up.
"Well hello, my friend. May you tell us: what do you intend?" Albeit I always counted myself to the more literate part of people, the meaning of this statement eluded my mind. On demand, they told me: "You do follow us for quite a while, it must have been more than a mile. May I ask, what is the task, that leads you so far this way? A Unicorn, here, that is not a thing of every day."
After a moment of switching my way of thinking, I got that they wanted from me. Nothing in Master Glimmer´s books had prepared me for this way of talking. I explained, that I was on a long journey, to get to know new cultures, beings and ways of magic and that I would be happy if they would willingly to teach me the ways of their tribe. (And I very much hoped that they would understand me although I did not speak in rhymes.)
They watched at each other irritated for a moment, before asking me, why I did walk for their village and did not stop at one of the previous ones.
Because yes, there had been other villages. At least two, one left and one right of my way down there, but simply too far away thanks to the eternal expanse of deserted of all magic steppe
for me to notice.
And that is why, dear reader, even if it is the last money you possess and your grandfather gave you as first pocket money when you were a foal: Buy a map before you go on a journey. I should have.
Well, cart and card aside, I at last arrived in their village. And there I was presented to Qondaala. Qondaala was the chief of this tribe and if I understood the Zebras who found me right, he should decide if I were a good or a bad omen and if I would be allowed to stay. With this deep interweaving of magic in their culture, I nearly would have fallen around his neck.
(My euphoria of course vanished a bit as soon as I remembered that Firmament Glimmer wrote that "bad omen" usually end up the the village´s fireplace. But only a bit.)

But some blessing must have been hovering above my dead (and thereby as well covering my odor, I hadn´t had a possibility to visit any stretch of water for weeks), because he decided that I would be allowed to stay as a guest.

Of course, the way he did find out if I was a bad omen or not was something special itself...
He blew some fine power right out of nothing on my coat and in my face. I had to sneeze, but nothing else happened. I should only find out the meaning of this powder a few months later.

"So, let´s sit beside these trees, and tell me please: What makes you wander this wide way? Did you Ponyfolk in the north run out of hay?"
It was hard for me to listen to only one of their sentences without giggling. Nothing in Master Glimmer´s books had prepared me or even mentioned on the edge that Zebras did talk in riddles and rhymes.
So, although I was not prepared, my conversation with Qpondaala was in no way impaired, and soon he shared his knowledge with me; about all the magic in the wild, dry grass sea.
I am sorry, this way of speaking must be contagious.

He told me about how his folk has always been using blooms, grasses, roots, juice of trees and all sorts of other things together to use natural magic existing in the plants.
Fascinated I listened, first under those shady trees and later at the crackling fire, how his ancestors once discovered this magic and how they passed this knowledge from generation to generation since then on. I noted everything, and while I may not be able to put all the recipes, combinations or even the herbs alone here in this book, I at least want to tell of the two I was able to try:

The first one is a potion, that gives one a much higher endurance and sharpens one´s senses. His tribe collects edible berries and grasses from the closer area, and in the language of the Zebras, the “closer area” as well as the “local surrounding” or even the “nearby river” may be miles away and what they call “to walk a bit” may exceed a trotted day's march. This is obviously caused by the enormous wide areas of nothing between the tribes and the disability to do agriculture on their soil.

And may I have been a guest, they asked me to help them with gathering the food, and as a well-behaved pony, I of course agreed. Just about to go, they asked me how fit I were and to have a measurement to compare, they asked how long I had needed to reach their tribe. When I answered that I took five weeks, they looked at each other, smiled and then suggested that I might want to have a sip of “jiraachuu”.

“Jiraachuu” tasted like strawberries and cocos, two things I for certain had never seen anywhere at their tribe before, so I did ask what they added in the drink.
(I highly recommend for the sensitive mare or young foal to skip the next line.)

The answer was something like: “Locusts, lychee and maca boiled over the fire and the extract of it squeezed into a flask of rum.”

Not only had I never before in my life drunk alcohol, I as well nearly ejected the fluid when realizing that it contained dead insects. For shady Sombra´s sake, I am vegetarian!
But I had already swallowed it, and so I just tried to forget as soon as possible what I had just drunk.

At least this potion gave me the ability to walk a whole day with only one short break and as well to carry two saddlebags filled to the top. My training from my journey down there was for sure not enough to grant me this endurance. This potion flooded my body like liquid fire and ignited unknown strength inside of me like the flames of a magic firework in the sky.

While we were on our trip, I did not want to, no, I actually COULD not stand still. Having the stamina to walk that long may be normal for Zebras who are used to it, but surely not for a random Unicorn.

I as well could experience the second effect of this potion: It had sharpened my senses by a multiple. I could see every haulm of grass and every fruit from miles ago. And in the evening, after we had our meal at the village´s fireplace.

We had our meal and then slowly everypony went to their sleeping places. I stayed at the fire until it became extinct, watched in the sky and enjoyed the view on countless of stars, each and everyone of them feeling as close as our own sun. It was a gorgeous impression, falling asleep on my blanket with this view just a hoof away.

The next morning, I had the muscle ache of my life. Qondaala explained to me that his potion was only there to give me the energy I required. My muscles still had to live with the all the strains.
I spend the rest of the day yammering on my blanke.... err, I mean, reflecting my studies about Zebra magic. One truly impressive potion, although not fully developed in my opinion.

The second potion I became instilled after I thought I had to get involved in a fight with a bear-gnat. Well, these capable of flying steppe insects are only a bit bigger than a common pony, but.. WHAT am I talking? They are bigger than a common pony! For sweet Siren´s sake, what was I thinking?

Ah, right: It wanted to eat my books.

I woke up one morning, awoken by a strange buzz and hum, to discover that this being was gleefully munching on the cover of one of the books from Master Glimmer, already the first pages drooling of saliva.

I reached out to all magic I could gather and burned him a full charge in his bristly fur.
Then, out of complete surprises, he took a quick swing with his morning star-same paw to pay me back.

The next thing I remembered was that Qondaala woke me up and pushed me a little vial into my mouth. Without further thinking, I swallowed the liquid and sunk back again to Luna´s sweet land of dreams.

While I layed in the dry grass of the savanna and felt the summer sun burning on my coat (We remember: It was winter in the north so summer down there), I could feel how the magic of the potion started working.

It was similar to my accident with the old oak at the lakeside, when after that my mother hold me in her magic. I felt completely safe, cared for and protected. At the same time, I could feel a continuous current of energy made his way from my center through my body, was led in my wounded limbs and to my bruised skin and started to work there.

Half a day later, I woke up again, without the slightest hint of any injuries and fit as a foal.
My books were gone.
The bear-gnat had not been satisfied with maltreat my body, no, she also had the works of the Firmament Glimmer destroyed. Not more than half, tattered, drolled-on book spines were left behind, and this loss pained me far more than all the injuries I have ever suffered.

"I am so sorry, but by hook or by crook, I could not defend your precious book." Qondaala, who was to my surprise sitting right next to me, told me.

“Pardon me?” I aked.

On demand I found out that this suicidal Zebra had seen the bear-gnat attacking me, ran up to me and tryed to protect both myself (apparently successful) as well as my books (unfortunately less successful).
I called him mad, completely insane, that he put himself in such a danger, but he revealed to me:

"How could someone deserve a good friend if to defend him in such times the one does not intend? Standing together even in the worst of times is was makes a friendship last as long as our lifetimes."

I had and still hardy have words to express how grateful I was. He stayed more loyal to me than I could ever have expected.

Sadly, every journey must take an end at some times, and after enjoying more than a year with the zebras, I felt an inner urge to return to the Unicorn Kingdom stronger than ever before.

Something was waiting for me at my old home country, and so I said goodbye and followed my inner sense back to where it all began.

Prologue: About Magic itself

Star Swirl the Bearded’s Guide to the Arcane Arts
by Midnight Quill

Prologue:

About Magic itself

Magic is present in a vast amount of locations. It would be too much to use the word “everywhere”, but be sure that you may find magic in the utmost extraordinary places you can imagine. It lingers in every cave, every sea, every straw of grass and every living being.
Magic is the key to the mystery of life, and the understanding of magic, to which I have now devoted so many nights in the candlelight, the key to understanding our own existence.

What is magic?
I encountered the question for the first time in magic kindergarten, when they taught us the basics about our magic and why there were three differed kinds of ponys:

“Unicorns”, our teacher told us, “can directly use magic and manipulate and create things with their mind.”

(At this point, just imagine my enthusiasm as I realized that therefore I was meant as well.)

“Pegasi”, so she went on, “can rise and fly in the skies without much effort, walk on clouds and change the weather. And earthponys, earthponys”, she repeated, “are entirely one with nature. They feel it when it comes to an animal feeling good or bad and the same with a plant. They select the soils on which they grow our grain, and when an earthpony says that a soil is good, then I bet my last feather on it - (it should be said at this point that our teacher was a pegasus) - that the soil is as good as they say.”

“And what about alicorns?”, one of the fillys asked.

“Alicorns, my dear Sunflower, are legends. Same like dragons or sirens. Those are tales of old times, told by old ponies in the warm light of a fireplace.”

Oh, if only she had known.

But back to the initial, the one true question: What is magic?
What gives a pegasi the ability to fly? In what language does the soil speak, when it talks to an earthpony? And what power does a unicorn may posses, so it can create things out of nothing?
To this question I have devoted, how already told, many, many days and nights of my long life and I only found it right at the end of said life to write down all my experiences and to share them with the world.
So that this book may answers many questions for the reader, but at the same time motivates him to make a few new ones.

Star Swirl

Author's Note

Hi. My name is Midnight Quill and this shall be my first fanfiction to be published.
Since I am 1st: new to acutally publishing my work and 2nd: not a native english speaker/writer, I beg your forgiveness for some faults me and my lektor (the kind and gracious Sky Shade) may have overlooked.
I hope you will anyway enjoy this piece of my work and maybe leave a comment about it, that would really mean something for me in this early stage.
Sincerly
Midnight Quill

Chapter one: About Horns and Hurdles

Chapter one:

About Horns and Hurdles

My youngest of days were marked by finding out what my horn was capable of doing. And as a young colt simply is, I got myself as well as others in trouble and it took a long time until I got my magic under control.

The second most defining event for me, that happened in my early days (which was as incisive for me as it was for my parents), was surely when I was playing at the lakeside and a beautiful, young unicorn named White Leaf was present. I can afterwards hardly hide my attraction to the fair sex, particularly because it was, in combination with my juvenile improvidence, what brought me in that situation.

It may have been her shining, silver coat or her mane, colored yellow with stripes of a light green, because I can not imagine her personality being the trigger for what I am going to tell you now:
We were playing at the edge of the everblue sea, which surround our village where ever no acres were.
Except for White Leaf and I, three other ponys were present: two unicorn-colts named Sun´s Heat and Gray Cloak (a name, ten moons later no fashion-conscious pony would burden his child to wear) as well as a young pegasus-pony named Clouddancer.

While we were playing then, the marriage of Queen Admira and King Stronghold came up. It had happened a few days prior and proudly White Leaf announced, that she would only marry an unicorn as powerful as King Stronghold was.

In our exuberance completely shameless, every one of us colts tried to court the beautiful Leaf for her attention. And while Heat and Cloak were satisfied with picking up rocks with their magic and tossing them as far as possible, I had to overact.

So I stood there and told her; she shall pay attention, as I began to pull at the old oak which was standing at the lakeside. The tree was wider than the confectioner of our village, but I was so focused on impressing that filly that his size, if any, only incited me even more. I held it tight with all my magic, like my life would depend on it. Of, if only I had saved that strength for a moment thereafter.

Said tree was seemingly older than most of the Ponys in the village did know. Older and more rotten. It must have been the combination of strong wind, strong will and weak wood what indeed let me tear that tree out of it´s soil. Out of it and nearly upon myself. That this tree did as well underlay the force of gravitation was apparently unknown to me at this time and if it had not been for Clouddancer, which possessed all the sense and reaction I was missing, I would not be sitting here in the candlelight and writing down this book.

She flew to me faster than I ever before had seen somepony flying, wrapped me and flung us both three bodylenghts of a full grown stallion aside, just in time before the old tree could teach me my foolishness.

And after the almighty deity of justness, a scare should not be enough for me not to forget that happening. From Clouddancer catapulted aside, I landed hard on my left forehoof and broke it. At that time surely fortunate for me, because that way I could not gallop after the lovable Leaf, which was just leaving me lying there, snout high in the air, apparently completely convinced about my magical incapability.

I can not tell if that day my broken heart or leg did hurt more.

I can only tell that Clouddancer supported me while walking home, until the soft magic of my mother twined around me, lifted me and laid me down on my bed.

And if Clouddancer would not have stayed that evening and forced my father down to calmness and reason with her bare presence, he might have banished me on the next celestial body the same evening.

So, however, she got a huge apple pie from my mother as thank-you and I was grounded for four weeks, of course only from the date my leg was healed and I could have walked around outside.

“What was it,” I questioned myself that whole time, “what enabled me to tear out this whole tree?”

I should find the answer not these weeks, but many, many years later, and the way towards it held ready for me events of great frights as well as great surprises...

Leaving out all the minor events of experimenting with my magic, I shall jump directly to one of the bigger ones, more specific to the first day I was co-responsible for raising the sun.
At this time, I already mentioned, alicorns were only part of lore and legends, and it was the duty of every unicorn which had reached the age of 16 to help raising and lowering the two celestial bodies which gave us stability and order (besides the minor ability to operate agriculture).

For all non-unicorns who are reading this work, I shall explicate these mechanics in short:
Our planet, Equis, is being orbited by two celestial bodies of nearly the same size: the sun and the moon, in which the moon is closer to us than the sun. And may these two bodies circle us very steadily, they did it only in the southern hemisphere. Far beyond our boarders, where the zebras live and the climate is to dry even for dragons, these two bodies circle our planet. And everything north of it would be a frozen wasteland if our people would not have left their roots and immigrated here and would the unicorns ever since then not stretch the orbits of these two that far that they touch our firmament for a couple of hours per day.

Well, that perhaps was phrased a bit to complex by me. Let me try it again:

Sun and moon are tied to our planet and their orbits around it by a significant, magical force. And if somepony wants sunlight in the north, they have to stretch and deform these orbits, like a band of rubber, on which at one point a sphere hangs. The band can not be stretched without limit, that´s why the ice in the north, at the tribes of the Umbrum, will never meld. Nor can anyone set the sphere loose of her band and position her anywhere in the firmament wherever one pleases. One can only stretch the band so far, and while the body walks off his band, the spell fades by time, like the sun lets the morning mist fade and so the body descends back to the south.

(Amusingly, this means in the south, at the zebras, the sun rises when it has set from our point of view and vice versa. And during the summer, when our days get longer because we extend the spell a bit so it lasts longer, the zebras experience this effect contrariwise. I wonder if ever someone told them why it is that way?)

Well then, orbital mechanics aside, it was my first day with the sun-ponies. While in the morning the only job of the moon-ponies was to ensure that the dimishing spell would release the moon back to it´s natural orbit, -

(We had stories... For example; spells that did not fade, because one of the unicorns had had a good day. Or suddenly fading spells, because some natural magic had to have an outbreak and once even a returning spells which let the moon rise again while the sun was already high in the skies for hours..)

well meanwhile it was the task of the sun-ponies to deform the orbit of the sun and ensure, she would make a soft course from the eastern to the western horizon. (We of course all were unicorns, but sun-unicorn however is one syllable too much to enunciate it fluently)

For that; one places themselves of course at a location where one has a good view towards east. In our case, that happened to be a cliff plateau right above a very deep valley full of very big, very sharp rocks. (They were called the dragonclaws by my mother, obviously because of their shape and their unfriendly, pointy ends)

The view was stupendous, but not as stunning as the fact that said plateau decided to break off right in the middle of our spell.
Luckily, as the youngest of us eight, I was standing at the far back of the plateau.

(The insuperable order of ranks was truly unduly exact back then)

And because of my position at the far back, I was still having ground under three of my hooves when the tip of the plateau broke loose and seven of my friends (Well, friends is a bit too much. Let´s say: village-mates) were taking a sudden excurse into the phenomenon of gravitation.

(By the fact that I already permit myself a little joke, the attentive reader can guess that this incident did not end with seven unicorns impaled by the rock formation with the nasty name)

But there I stood: a young colt, not that young anymore but not the slightest bit with the power and knowledge I dare to claim having now, at the far edge of a cliff and watching as my village-mates were falling.

With reflexes worthy to match those of Clouddancer, I wrapped them with my magic and stopped their fall. What would have been MUCH easier, if my magic would not still have been connected to the orbit of the sun.
The natural magic of Equis, on which I will come back later, was pulling the accursed star back to it´s old orbit, while my measly little horn was holding against it.

~~It was at this moment, as lives were depending on my mere magic, as I realized....~~
Shoot, who am I telling something? Back then, I had no idea why I was capable of doing so. I was laying on the ground, probably whining (yeah, most likely) and tried to hold seven ponies and a star in position.

It were again pegasi who prevented anything worse from happening. A whether patrol, searching for early morning storm clouds, came around and lifted the seven others back to the plateau. Lifting them up myself would have finally overused my magic. Celestia knows if we would not still be hanging there if this patrol would not have shown up.

The other seven unicorns then took the orbit of the sun back under their control and aligned it for the coming day.

Directly after that came the acknowledgements of those seven, and in further course, as appropriately, those of their families.
But be ensured, I had to endure more questions than a whole bunch of my apprentices in my later days could ever ask me. Most of them, if not all, were: “How did you do that?”
And that was the day, when I decided to find it out.

It was the incentive of my just done deed that motivated me to find out if there was not more in me than the son of a teacher and a house-mare.
And it was the awareness that there are more forms of magic than direct and indirect and more manifestations of it than unicorns, pegasi, earthponys and the shadow beings of the north.

And so my voyage began, which led me from south to north and back again, on which I met friends as well as foes and which end helped me as much as others and hopefully will carry on that way to find out what lies within us all.