Trying to sneak her way out of the palace would be disastrous, Clover reasoned—though 'reason' was really the wrong word to use. Equestria hadn't had anything to do with reason for a very long time.
Which made the snide little voice in the back of her head pipe up: Too bad reason's all you've got, then, isn't it, Clover the Clever?
She shook it away, plodded down the big staircase toward the main entrance just like she always did whenever she'd been dismissed, her hoofsteps no faster, her breathing every bit as steady, nothing that might draw the attention of—
No. Don't think his name, don't think about what you're doing, don't give him any reason to cast his foul, bilious gaze in your direction. And while Clover didn't believe as some ponies did that His Capriciousness could read thoughts, well, her mentor Star Swirl the Bearded had always said, 'Misdirection is the center about which all magic spins.' Not that Clover had ever been any good at lying, but she'd definitely come to learn the vital difference between speaking a lie and simply keeping silent about the truth.
So she ignored the prickling sensation along her back, her cloak covering her precious cargo, put one hoof in front of the other, and did nothing that would make her stand out as—
"Clover!" a bubbling voice burst over her, her ears folding for the briefest of seconds before she recognized it, turned to see Chancellor Puddinghead waving to her from among the ponies gathered on the edge of the pit that now took up most of the palace courtyard. "Your shift's in a couple hours, right?"
Not wanting to risk the feelings she knew would flood her, but wanting even less to do something out-of-the-ordinary like passing by without stopping to chat, Clover nodded and walked over to the leader of Equestria's earth ponies, a little gray streaking the chancellor's cotton-candy mane but otherwise very much the same pony Clover had first met so many years ago. "Yes, I—" Clover started, but a call from inside the pit interrupted her:
"Clover! Good to see you!"
Unable to stop herself, Clover glanced down, the bottom of the pit a bubbling, seething, expanding mass of custard, a team of ponies sunk in the center of it up to their shanks, their heads down and sucking the stuff up as quickly as they could around Commander Hurricane, the chains that bound her wings and held her in place just visible above the creamy goo. "Got time for a quick snack?" Hurricane asked, her sideways grin as jaunty as always.
Anger tried to bubble up inside Clover, but she tamped it down. "I'm just getting off duty, Commander, but I'll be back later." Either to take my shift eating or to join you in chains, she thought.
"Good!" The commander's face darkened like one of her namesake storms. "'Cause we need to show that slimy, mud-sucking sleeze ball that he can keep catching me and putting me in here, but he can't stop me from—!"
A wet blorch, and the custard surged upward, a tide that washed over and engulfed Hurricane's head; with a cry, the ponies around the rim of the pit leaped in and went to work licking and swallowing till her face broke the surface again, the pegasus coughing, sputtering, gasping for breath.
Shaking, Chancellor Puddinghead turned to Clover. "It's only two more weeks, he said, if she behaves herself. And besides, it's not like he wants to, y'know, really kill us!" The chancellor's laugh had more than a little hysteria in it, but when it cut off, it sounded like she'd taken a knife to it. "Does he?" she whispered, her eyes wide and shimmering.
It took all the control Clover had practiced the past however many years—and she really didn't know, she realized, could barely remember how long ago Princess Platinum had stood on this very spot and proclaimed it the site of Canterlot, the city the unicorns would build in accordance with the agreement Clover had put together with Smart Cookie and Pansy: "A shining jewel," the princess had said that day, "and a symbol of this partnership we unicorns have forged with our neighbors, the earth ponies and the pegasi! Together, therefore, let us create our land, our dream, our Equestria!"
With everypony pitching in to help, the city had come together quickly—a year, maybe two—and Clover would never forget the night after the last stone was set in place, she and Cookie and Pansy at the party the princess had called the Grand Galloping Gala, the purple flare of her horn wielding the scissors, Commander Hurricane and Chancellor Puddinghead beside her as she cut the ceremonial ribbon across the city gates—
Though it was at a later Gala, she was sure, the eighth or ninth perhaps, that she'd felt that first drop of chocolate rain against her snout, had heard that first silky-slick chuckle. But...how long it had been since then?
"Clover?" a voice was saying, and she blinked at the chancellor, fear a sour note in her usual cookies-and-cream scent. "Are...are you OK?"
"Of course!" Not that she was, not even remotely. Forcing herself to keep calm and quiet and collected in case His Capriciousness was watching—and when wasn't he watching?—she murmured, "And you're very right, chancellor. Killing us would deprive him of the pleasure he feels when we buckle and fold. Which is why we mustn't buckle and fold, mustn't give up hope, must remain steadfast in the face of every obstacle." She was gritting her teeth so hard, she wasn't sure her words were even intelligible, something that brought that snide little voice back—Such an inspiring speech! A pity no pony could understand it!
But the chancellor was nodding, biting her quivering lip. "You're right," she said. "You're always right." A sudden leap, and the chancellor was hugging her, her front legs tight around Clover's neck. "And we'll all be with you tonight," she whispered fiercely, her breath damp and hissing. "Even if, you know, we're somewhere other than actually there."
Then just as quickly, Chancellor Puddinghead was leaping into the pit. "See you later, Clover!"
Clover turned away, refused to think about how tight and spinning her stomach was. Just because absolutely everything depended on her. And she had no idea what she was going to do.
No, that wasn't true. She knew all too well what she was going to do. She just had no reason to think it would work.
Trying her best to look like nopony at all, Clover trudged through the palace gates and into the streets, forced herself not to sigh when the sun reversed course with a screech and plunged back below the horizon. A sound like glass shattering, and the full moon shot into the sky like a stone from a sling, the drifting cotton candy clouds bursting to pink mist.
Whatever time it was, though, she knew Princess Platinum would be out in the city, spreading the word for all the groups to gather in their back rooms and basements; Clover could almost feel the warmth of their hope glowing through the chocolate milk rain spattering into her face. She shrugged the cloak closer around her shoulders and winced as the cobblestones below her hoofs suddenly went squishy, squeaking like rubber toys with each step she took.
Something popped like a balloon behind her, but Clover didn't look, didn't want to know. She couldn't afford to get distracted, not now, not with so much riding on—
She rounded the corner, the stones becoming solid again, and ducked into the third building on the left. Seeing the familiar hallway, she puffed a sigh of relief: last week, His Capriciousness had switched this whole block of the city for a different one from across town.
Hurrying down the hall, heart racing, Clover tapped twice against the last bare wooden door and pushed it open, hoping to see—
Pansy staring back, her eyes and wings as usual wide with surprise. Smart Cookie stood on the other side of the shabby table, the only piece of furniture in the tiny square room, the dun-colored earth pony's cheeks thinner than when Clover had first met her during the hard times. But Cookie's face lit up when Clover met her gaze, her smile making her look almost like her old self.
The three rushed into an embrace, Clover murmuring, "Thank the sun you're both still all right."
"Us?" Pansy's breath ruffled Clover's mane. "This nightmare's been worst of all for you!"
Cookie gave a little laugh, her voice rough. "Time to wake us all up from that nightmare, then. Everything set?"
"Yes." Again, not exactly true, but Clover stepped back, tried to keep herself from shaking, looked between her two oldest and dearest friends. "With all the meetings going on around the city right now, there's no way he'll be able to—"
A jagged flap fell open in the wall behind Pansy, Clover choking on her words, that long sallow face leering an all too familiar snaggle-toothed grin at her. "I'm spying on you!" Discord announced.
Wrapping her thoughts as thickly in fear and panic as she could—pretty easy to do, actually—she stammered, "Lord Discord! I didn't—! We weren't—! This isn't—!"
"Oh, now, really, Clover the Clever!" Discord slithered through the hole and into the room, a smell of burnt toast wafting up from him. "How many times must I tell you: there's no need to be so formal! We're all friends here!" The grayish-yellowish-brownish stretch of him filled the room like water in a sink of dirty dishes, his grin sharpening, his mismatched eyes narrowing. "All the very best of friends."
Smart Cookie's grin got just as sharp. "Could be that word don't mean what you think it means."
"Cookie, Cookie, Cookie!" Twisting like he didn't have a single bone in his body, Discord tapped Cookie's snout with his eagle claw. "Of course we're friends! You wouldn't have invited me here otherwise, would you?"
Clover couldn't stop her jaw from dropping. "Invited? How could you possibly think—??"
"How could you possibly forget??" Discord wheeled, his look of mock surprise always making Clover want to grind her teeth. "After all, it was the three of you who did so!" He snapped his lion paw, and the room crumpled like a sheet of paper, an ice-filled cavern taking its place.
A gasp beside her. "It's us!" Pansy said, and Clover blinked to see the scene exactly as she always remembered it: the princess, the commander, and the chancellor standing frozen, a younger version of herself singing an old ballad with her new friends, both looking just as they had that fateful night all those years ago.
"Why, it is you!" Discord spun in the air above the group. "And don't you all look so sweet, a tiny island of warmth and peace and friendship!" He somehow managed to sneer that last word. "A fragile little spark glowing and growing amidst all the lovely chaos and misery!" His wings swept the scene aside, Clover's drab rented apartment snapping into place again. "How could I ignore as open an invitation as that?"
Clover blinked at him. "But...we...you...I...I don't—"
A puff of licorice-scented breath from his nostrils into her face, and Discord turned a bored expression at Smart Cookie. "Perhaps you could explain things to your associate?"
Cookie shrugged. "Near as I can figure, you're the sorta fella who loves a challenge. Us ponies weren't anything like that when we was squabbling, but soon as we started getting along, we got real interesting to you, didn't we?" She grinned. "So you just had to come popping in and pay us a visit, see how we ticked and tocked and made other assorted noises."
"Oh, well done!" Discord pulled a bruised and half-eaten apple from thin air and held it out to Cookie. "Go to the head of the class, my dear!"
"That's OK." She wrinkled her nose at the thing. "Looks like somepony's already staked a claim on that one..."
"Then—" Clover shook, thoughts sparking like lightning bugs through her head. "We summoned you?"
Discord sniffed. "Let's say instead that you created a spot I felt inclined to turn my attention toward." He slipped sideways onto the floor, his body flowing all the way around the walls of the room till his tail came to rest just below his chin. "But that's enough about me. Let's talk about you girls and what you're up to."
Clover couldn't answer, Discord's words so completely unexpected, they took her breath away. Because if he was telling even a partial truth, then maybe...just maybe...
Dimly, she heard Cookie ask, "What, you saying you don't like surprises?"
His laugh sounded like wind through winter-bare branches. "On the contrary. But while I firmly believe that any ruler who doesn't have at least a dozen rebellions brewing against him isn't worth talking about, I suppose I find it a bit incongruous to imagine you little ponies rising up in any way against my enlightened despotism." He interlaced his various front claws and batted his eyes. "You're all just so gosh darn cute!"
A sigh that Clover recognized as Pansy's. "We might as well come clean, Cookie. Discord, we're planning a birthday party for you."
The silence that followed smelled of hot mustard, then Discord's whooping laugh smacked Clover as cold as a bucket of water on a frozen morning. "Oh, Pansy! And here I thought Cookie was the comedienne in your little trio!"
Blinking, forcing herself to focus on the here and now, Clover looked up into Discord's peculiar eyes, a glint there that she rarely saw in her day-to-day dealings with him. "I'll give your team five points for that answer, however, which moves you into first place!" He swiped his lion paw at the wall behind him, left five jagged slashes in the wood, then cocked his head, a barbed smile curling his snout, a talon touching Clover's chin. "Y'know, I've always had such hopes for you, Clover the Clever, and you've always been such a disappointment to me. I can only imagine Star Swirl shaking his head and turning away in disgust as he watches his greatest student flail about so ineffectively."
He straightened, snapped his lion paw, and vanished with a flash—except for his mouth, floating and still speaking above her. "Once I check in with the other groups I've noticed gathering around the city, I'll come back and let you know how you're faring in our little contest. But remember: it's not whether you win or lose. You can't win, after all!" A wet pop, and Discord's ragged grin disappeared.
In the unscented silence that followed, Clover inhaled for what felt like the first time in minutes. He didn't know! For all his unmistakable power, he didn't—!
"He knows!" Pansy squeaked, cowering on the floor, her front legs covering her face. "He knows, he knows, he knows!"
Cookie stroked a hoof over Pansy's back. "Whether he does or he don't, we got no choice. We hafta—"
"He doesn't!" Clover kept her voice down, and as much as she wanted to grab her friends and start dancing, they just didn't have the time. "In fact, what he said proves we can do this! We can stop him!"
Pansy's eyes wavered, peering out from beneath her hoofs. "You...you mean it, Clover?"
"Then—" Cookie took a step toward her. "Your research? You found what you was looking for?"
"Well, no," Clover had to admit. She fumbled to pull her cloak off. "In fact, I discovered that Discord's somehow enchanted all Star Swirl's books: anything I read, the letters disappear as soon as I pass my eyes over them. But I know that the magic we three summoned in the cave, it was like nothing Star Swirl ever taught me." She was shaking so badly, she couldn't hook her magic into the laces tying her cloak on. "Could you guys maybe help me with—?"
The other two sprang forward, caught the ties in their teeth, and Clover felt the knot go loose at her throat. "But Discord said it himself just a minute ago!" she went on, still amazed to have found confirmation from such an unlikely source. "When the three of us came together that night, we touched a force like none I've ever known, a magic that didn't depend on formulae and rituals and incantations like Star Swirl's. It was a magic of...I don't know: a magic of the heart."
Her thoughts moved almost faster than she could follow; letting her horn glow, she whisked her cloak off. "A magic you feel, not a magic you study! The magic of—" She looked at the two of them and felt the truth of the words as she said them. "The magic of friendship."
Pansy and Cookie were blinking at her, and she let her cloak fall, wrapped her power around the precious bundle she'd taken from the deepest archives of Canterlot Tower. "Our friendship never should've happened, you see? Strife and suspicion had soured the air between our three peoples for so long, the magic of just getting to know each other had been lost to the ages! But when we found it again, we took a step forward—all of ponydom took a step forward! We moved past any threat the windigoes could pose to us and became targets for a larger threat!"
She'd been unfolding the bundle this whole time, the glow of her horn dancing over the walls like the half-forgotten sparkle of sunlight off fresh water. "So we need to take another step forward, summon a greater good, create a power of truth and light and peace like we did before, but it's gotta be bigger this time!" Smoothing the cloth, she spread it flat over the little table. "We need them!"
An indrawn breath from her left. "Ummm, Clover?" Pansy asked. "Isn't that just the Equestrian flag Thimble Spinner put together?"
"Exactly!" Clover reared back and planted her front hoofs beneath the two black and white figures circling the central sun and moon. "Because we need these! Larger than the strongest earth pony, swifter than the fastest pegasus, mightier than the most powerful unicorn! They're the symbol of everything Equestria stands for, our three peoples coming together in harmony and becoming more than any one of us could ever be on our own!" She let her eyes rest on the simple, beautiful images. "We need to make these creatures real..."
The silence this time felt more than a little uncomfortable, and the "Ummm" this time came from her right. "Any idea how we go 'bout doing that?" Cookie asked.
"Not really." Clover lowered herself to the floor. "But we didn't know what we were doing in the cave that night, either. And yet, together, we saved the world." She looked from Cookie to Pansy and back again. "Do you trust me?"
"Always," Pansy answered immediately.
With a chuckle, Cookie nodded. "Well, you gets points for honesty, anyway."
A warmth washed over Clover. "And do you love me?"
"Always," Pansy said again.
For a second, Cookie looked more serious than Clover had ever seen her; then she smiled, stepped forward, and poked her nose against Clover's. "A goof like you, you makes it easy."
The air itself vibrating, Clover wrapped her right foreleg around Cookie's left, reached out her own left to Pansy. "And do you believe in me?"
Pansy took her hoof, her face pure happiness. "Always," she said.
The simple power of the word made Clover feel too big for her skin, and when she felt Cookie press her flank against her, heard her say, "And forever"—
Power burst from her like nothing she'd ever imagined: as clean and clear as that night in the cave, that night she'd first known what friendship could mean, had first realized how she and these two other ponies were the same despite their differences, how they were each wonderfully unique despite their similarities, how together, they added up to much more than three, much more than three thousand, so much more, they were able to warm the hearts of every pony in the world.
But this, this right here and right now, flooding from Smart Cookie and Pansy into her and from her out into the hearts and minds of every pony gathered in Canterlot, every pony hovering in Cloudsdale, every pony huddled in Manehattan or on a farm somewhere across all of bruised and battered Equestria, this power, it swooped through the clouds of Discord's chaos like the rainbows Clover hadn't seen in so many long, horrible years. The power radiated out, gently touched every pony's wishes, dreams, and desires, and rebounded to her, came back to her to shape, to build upon, to form into—
A blast of wind, light exploding beyond her clenched eyelids, thunder shaking her from mane to fetlocks, Clover opened her mouth to cry out—
But stillness came over her instead, the air she sucked in scented like simple flowing water. Opening her eyes, she heard Pansy gasp, felt Smart Cookie's shiver where she still stood pressed against her. But all she could see, all she ever wanted to see for the rest of her life, on the other side of the rickety wooden table with Thimble's flag stretched over it, filling the dingy little room with light and electricity and an excitement that crackled like static over Clover's skin—
Three mares, long-limbed, tall, and perfect, their wings unfurled, their horns sparkling with colors Clover didn't know names for. The white one in the center, her cutie mark a sunburst, looked back at Clover with a slight smile, her pink mane flowing down to cover one eye. To Clover's left and directly across the table from Pansy stood a black and dark blue mare nearly as large as the first, her cutie mark a crescent moon, while on the sun mare's other side in front of Smart Cookie, a pink mare not much larger than Clover herself blinked, her mane and tail striped with yellow, red, and purple, her cutie mark a blue heart with gold filigree around it.
Questions rattled through Clover's brain like popcorn, but before she could ask any of them, the sun mare exchanged nods with the moon mare, turned and did the same with the heart mare, then looked back at Clover and said, "Thank you."
The confidence in her voice so warmed Clover and filled her with hope that she let her every question blow away. But—
"Who—?" Pansy began, her voice as quivery as always, but Clover heard amazement dominating any fear there.
"—are you?" Smart Cookie took half a step forward, something Clover wasn't sure she could do just yet.
"We are you," the sun mare said.
The moon mare gave a little shrug. "Well, your hopes and dreams made manifest, at any rate."
"So," the heart mare added, her smile moving sideways into a grin, "if you'd be so kind, perhaps you could tell us who we are."
"Celestia," Clover said, the name coming to her as naturally as a breath, and the white mare bowed her head.
"Luna." Pansy was looking at the black mare.
"Cadance," from Smart Cookie, and she gave a grin that matched the pink mare's.
Celestia's eyes twinkled. "And we're very pleased to make your acquaintance. But right now—"
"What's this??" The words thundered from outside, and the walls of the room exploded into a million sharp, spinning pieces; Clover spread her hoofs and called up a shield spell, but the three winged unicorns were faster, Celestia flashing fire from her horn to burn every shred of wood, Luna wafting shadow from her wings to extinguish each fire immediately after it had done its job, Cadance whooshing a blue swath of energy through the ashy air to catch Clover and her friends and set them safely onto the ground.
The ground? Glancing around, Clover saw the entire neighborhood—buildings, streets, lamp posts, everything—had vanished, the whole area for hundreds of yards in a circle around her nothing but bare dirt, the rest of Canterlot standing just outside the radius. "Where—?" she started, but a familiar voice interrupted her.
"Well, well, well!" A part of the sky shimmered and cracked, Discord oozing out to float above the hole in the city. "Forgive me for doubting you, Pansy! You are throwing me a birthday party!" His face curdled into a leer that made Clover want to start running. "And three such wonderfully sweet presents you've brought me!"
"Where—?" Clover stared at the crater around her, couldn't keep from thinking about the ponies who'd been in those now-vanished buildings, couldn't keep from wondering—
"Shhhh," came a soft voice ahead of her, and she blinked at Cadance, the pink winged unicorn's striped mane flowing in the damp, chocolate-scented breeze. "Don't let him unnerve you."
A bark of a laugh from Discord, his mismatched wings hovering him overhead. "Excellent advice, my dear! But I fear it's wasted on our little Clover." He settled to the ground, the dirt making a sound like air rushing out of a punctured balloon under him. "I believe 'unnerved' is her middle name."
Snorting, Pansy glared at Discord. "Shows what you know! Clover's middle name is 'the'!"
Discord choked, his nostrils flaring, then doubled over, hooting with laughter. "I swear, Pansy! You get funnier every time I see you!"
Pansy blinked, and Smart Cookie stepped around Cadance. "Keep it up, laughing boy," she said. "'Cause I reckon you're about to find the joke's on you."
A flapping on either side of them, and the two larger winged unicorns landed. "Yes," Celestia said. "Things might soon become a bit more serious than you care for, Discord."
"Oooooo..." Discord's eyes went wide. "I like you." He narrowed his gaze at Luna. "Your sister, not so much. She's a lean and hungry look about her that makes me nervous. And your earnest little niece?" He waved his lion paw. "Only if I was running low on cotton candy, I think."
Luna's smile showed more teeth, Clover thought, than a pony's mouth ought to have. "Isn't he cute? Perhaps when we're done with him, we can prop him up in a garden somewhere..."
"We'll see," Celestia answered.
"After all," Cadance chimed in, "it could be we resolve this disagreement amicably."
Clover found she was shaking her head. "Amicable isn't a word Lord Discord knows."
Shaking his head as well, Discord clicked his tongue. "What do I have to do, Clover the Clever, so you'll stop calling me 'Lord?'" He touched his eagle claws to his chest, a curly white wig appearing between his horns. "It makes me sound like some minor official in one of your unicorn courts." The wig burst into flame, Discord stepping sideways to leave it floating there on fire, his voice suddenly a growl: "And I'm not a minor anything! Let's get that straight right here and right now!"
"What you are," Celestia said, she and Luna moving to stand beside Cadance, "is a nuisance."
Luna nodded. "A major one, yes, we'll grant you that."
Cadance snickered. "But still just a nuisance."
The wig exploded, Discord staring at them open-mouthed, and for all that Clover wanted to cower down next to Pansy, she didn't want to miss a word the three mares were saying. It was so perfect, everything she'd been wanting to say to Discord since he'd first swooped in and disrupted all the hopes and dreams she and her friends had had for Equestria.
"Well!" Discord looked shocked, but Clover could smell his sardonic glee. "You know, I'm starting to get the feeling you ladies don't care for my company."
Celestia tapped a hoof in the mud. "You have two choices, Discord. Either you leave here on your own." Her eyes narrowed. "Or you don't."
"My sweet Celestia, my lovely Luna, and my cuddlesome Cadance." Discord grinned, and Clover felt her ears fold, saw surprise ripple over the others' flanks. "Oh, yes," he went on, his voice quieter than Clover had ever known it to be. "I've heard your names whispered on the winds of legend, have known since the very first tick of the cosmic cuckoo clock that we would all meet at this time in this place." He combed a claw through his scraggly beard. "Funny thing, though: neither the winds nor the cuckoo ever say exactly how I'll whip you like the sorry mules you are." He shrugged, a grin splitting his face like an axe splitting a log. "Guess we'll all find out together."
As one, Celestia and Luna leaped upward, their wings flashing, Clover catching her breath as energy both dark and light crackled from their horns to slam directly into Discord. Writhing and swirling like smoke, he only laughed, his voice vast and echoing back from Canterlot's towers: "Oh, my, yes! This will be fun!" Blood red fire spouted from him, a rotten vegetable stink making Clover wince, but two earth-shaking thuds forced her eyes to open, her heart freezing to see Celestia and Luna skidding face-first through the dirt almost all the way back to the sliced-up buildings.
They sprang into the air again instantly, refocused their fire, blasted him over and over, but Discord seemed to shrug off each attack, his claws hurling balls of sickly green vapor, water balloons, huge arcs of electricity, and custard pies with equal abandon and pretty good accuracy, Clover had to admit.
"Dang!" Smart Cookie shouted after several minutes of back-and-forth had sent the two larger winged unicorns crashing to the ground another four or five times. She nudged Cadance, still standing between them and the fight. "Reckon they could use your help there, ma'am?"
"My powers aren't quite as flashy as my aunts'," Cadance replied, but Clover could see the tendons standing out in her neck, her pinion feathers twitching her obvious desire to take flight and join the other two.
"But—" Pansy had actually gotten to her hoofs, was staring up at the fight from behind Cadance. "This isn't working! We need a different way!"
Cookie nodded. "A smarter way, at least." An explosion overhead made her ears flatten. "Them two is tough as anything I've ever seen, but this is only getting us nowhere!" She looked at Clover. "So what's the plan, Leader Girl?"
"I—" Clover grasped after the ideas flitting fast as fireflies through her. "It's just...the magic of friendship we kindled that night in the cave, we need to...to expand its reach, need to add more elements to it, need...need Celestia, Luna and Cadance with the power they draw from all ponies everywhere, need to bring that into harmony with the power we drew from each other that night." She looked from Cookie to Pansy, saw once more the love and trust and belief there even though she was sure they didn't understand what she was talking about; she didn't understand it herself, after all.
"Very well!" The words tolled out of Cadance as deep and clear as the note of a bell, her wings flaring up. "Aunts! Attend us here!" The air around her shivered, wavered like the horizon on a hot summer day, and when she tucked her wings back against her flanks, Clover's jaw dropped to see the deep blue of a perfect afternoon above her, something she hadn't seen in so long, she'd almost forgotten how beautiful it was.
"Where—?" Pansy gasped.
"—are we?" Cookie finished.
"We're safe," Cadance murmured, and Clover stared around at the serene green meadow rolling up to the crest of a hill on one side, rolling down to the trees of a shady and dappled forest on the other.
"For a few moments, perhaps." Celestia was panting, winging in to land with Luna beside her, soot and ash staining the formerly pristine white and black of their respective coats.
Luna shook her mane. "But we dare not stay. This is the last place we would wish Discord to discover!"
"True." Cadance looked back and forth between the other two, and Clover could easily hear her reluctance as she said, "But I have to agree with our mortal friends: these tactics are proving less than effective."
Luna snorted, but Celestia nodded and said, "We're certainly open to suggestions."
A prickly silence, then Clover felt a hoof touch her shoulder. "Well," Smart Cookie said softly, "Clover here was saying something about elements and harmony and the like..."
And suddenly, five pairs of eyes fixed on her, the expectation in them so heavy, Clover almost staggered backwards under the weight. "I—" she managed to squeeze out, thoughts flashing through her again, concepts she'd learned during her apprenticeship with Star Swirl the Bearded, other principles she'd discovered on her own after that night in the cave, after her mind had opened to so many new possibilities.
But she couldn't drive away the constant hiss of Discord's snicker, the sneer that always made her name an insult. If you're truly Clover the Clever, came a whisper in her head, why haven't you been able to drive him off? Why have you stood idly by, allowing him to slither into Equestria and destroy everything you've devoted your life to??
"I—" she said again, and she couldn't pretend, couldn't keep all her doubts from tumbling out: "I don't know what I'm doing! I'm flying completely blind here, and I don't even have wings!" She glanced up, met Celestia's deep purple gaze, had to look away. "I don't know how I formed the Fire of Friendship when Cookie and Pansy and I almost froze to death with everypony else in that cave, don't know how I summoned the three of you, don't have a single idea at all about what we can do next!"
"And yet," a familiar voice said behind her, "you keep doing that next thing, and you keep doing it well."
Spinning, she stared at the figure stepping from the forest, felt her mane stand on end at the jingle of the bells along the brim of his unmistakable hat. "Star Swirl!" Shouting and laughing, she galloped down the gentle slope to throw her front legs around his neck, his well-remembered scent—old books and peppermint—tickling her nose. "Oh, it's so wonderful to—!"
Reality hit her, and with a gasp, she dug her hoofs into the grass. "But you—! Before we even came to Equestria, you...you—!"
"Died?" He cocked his head, the little sideways crook of his beard telling Clover that this was undoubtedly and impossibly her old mentor. "I'm fairly certain that's the word you're looking for, Clover."
All Clover could do was shiver and stare.
Star Swirl sighed. "We haven't the time right now, I'm afraid, or I would love nothing more than to sit with you as we used to and explore the ramifications of the situation. But what you need to know, my best and most faithful student, is that you have surpassed your old teacher in every possible way."
"No!" she said automatically. "Nothing I've done or could ever do will match your—!"
"Clover?" The steel behind the word she recognized from their long debates so many years ago. "For the first proof of my position, I will point to the land of Equestria and how it is not an ice-bound ruin due to you finding and harnessing a form of magic entirely unknown to me. And for the second proof—" He gestured up the hill to where Cookie and Pansy stood with the three winged unicorns.
Staring at them hit Clover as powerfully as a bolt of lightning but with a warmth and gentleness she'd never known anywhere before. It connected her to all five so intensely, she could almost see herself through their eyes, could almost feel their chests rising and falling as they breathed, could intimately sense their love and belief in her. "With your friends standing beside you," Star Swirl was saying, "and you standing beside them, there is literally nothing you cannot do."
"How?" she managed to ask, unable to look away from them.
"Honestly?" He gave a little laugh. "I haven't a clue. It's almost as if you've become the focus through which all ponies everywhere concentrate their love and their fears, their hopes and their disappointments, their dreams and their nightmares. They know it was you who saved them before, and they're giving you all they've got to give, Clover the Clever, so that you might save them again."
With an effort, Clover wrenched her gaze back to Star Swirl, and his smile made her swallow against a sudden tightness in her throat. "I'm so proud of you," he whispered.
Nothing could've stopped her then from spring forward, throwing her front hoofs around his neck. "I miss you every day!"
"Shhhh..." A nuzzle at her ear. "We'll be together again, never fear. But for now—" He stepped back, Clover blinking till her tears cleared and she could see his smile again. "You have a power in you, you and your friends, a power I never even imagined. Use that power, and save our peoples once again."
A spark rustled in her chest, and nodding, she turned to her friends further up the hill, their scents flavoring the air. She drew a breath to fan the spark, held it, let it grow just behind her eyes, then with a whoosh, she blew it out, let the flame surge from her horn even larger than it had that night in the cave, six white-hot embers spinning in it like meteors. "It's the six of us!" she shouted, charging toward the others. "Pansy, your generosity and loyalty let me bring forth Luna! Cookie, it was your laughter and kindness that I was able to spread out into Cadance! And my...my..." Her thoughts faltered, doubts once more—
Cookie laughed, the sound steadying and feeding the fire. "Your stupid honesty, Clover!"
Pansy's eyes shone. "And your wonderful, incredible magic!"
She reached the group, the winged unicorns' horns glowing, and the fire from her own horn swirled out to surround them all, the embers crackling to a halt, one hovering over each of them. "What—?" she heard Cookie ask breathlessly.
"—are they?" Pansy finished, wonder in her voice.
Clover felt light enough to start floating. "What you said, Cookie. The Elements of Harmony."
"Oh, Clover, yes!" Celestia whispered. "Concentrate, everypony!"
Stretching her neck, Clover felt rather than saw the other three horns—white, black and pink—touch hers, two front hoofs, dun-colored and lemon-yellow, reaching up as well, and Clover's heart flooded with joy. Light blossomed, the ground slipping away beneath her, the air laughing and dancing to raise her and the others into the blue, blue sky. "The Elements of Harmony!" she cried out again, and the ember in front of her burst into a golden necklace, a ruby-red crystal at the front in the shape of her cutie mark.
Other flashes bathed her, the necklaces springing up before Cookie, Luna, Cadance, and Pansy, and when hers slipped around her neck, the excitement and strength she felt made Clover resolve to do whatever she could to spread that feeling to all ponies everywhere.
One last flash, a sunburst tiara settling onto Celestia's brow. "And now, my friends," the sun mare said. "I believe we have some harmony to spread."
Cheers from the others, and Clover looked back, saw Star Swirl with head bowed, a smile on his lips and tears in his eyes. Then the lush green landscape vanished in golden fire, the dingy gray skies and sour milk mud of the crater in the center of Canterlot popping back into place, Discord stretched out in the dirt below and peeking at the face-down cards in the solitaire game he was playing.
"Discord!" The force of Celestia's voice blew the cards away. "This ends now!"
Yawning, Discord sat up and blinked. "Gracious! What lovely accessories!" His eyes narrowed, his thin lips curling. "I certainly hope you brought one for me. After all, I don't have to remind you that it's my birthday, do I?"
"Fear not, tyrant!" Luna gave a snort, her voice every bit as forceful as her sister's. "They're all for you!"
Cadance held up her hoofs, her words quiet. "Please, Discord. Can't we come to some agreement that would have you leave us in peace?"
Slowly, Discord shook his head, but his eyes, Clover noticed with a shock, fastened themselves on hers. "Tell them why, Clover the Clever," he said. "As the only honest creature within the sound of my voice, tell them the truth."
Clover shivered, didn't want to know what he meant, didn't want her mind to make the connections it was suddenly making, didn't want to think the thoughts now flopping through her head like fish pulled from a lake. Even though she knew they were right...
His grin as sharp as a shattered window, Discord whispered, "Didn't your beloved Star Swirl just spell it out for you, dear Clover the Clever?"
Which stopped her completely. "How...how did you know—?"
"Impossible!" Cadance interrupted. "The Groves Beyond are—! You can't—! They're not—!"
Discord waved his lion paw. "Fear not, Cadance. Your little domain is quite safe. As our clever Clover pointed out to Chancellor Puddinghead earlier, I've no interest in dead ponies." When his gaze narrowed and fixed on Clover again, she felt like she'd picked up a load of fleas. "Although, I do have to say, I might be tempted to drag Star Swirl from his eternal rest just to get someone out here who might present me with a challenge."
Coldness washed over Clover. "You wouldn't dare."
He spread his arms. "Then stop me, Clover the Clever. You're the center about which all of ponydom careens, are you not? Was it not at your express command that these three lovely and talented thingamajigs sprang forth from the better natures of all ponykind?" A smell of overcooked cabbage rose from the curl of his grin. "And do you not also possess the power to manifest the less flower-bedecked aspects of yourself and your fellow little ponies?" He jabbed an eagle claw at his own chest. "How can you deny that I am every bit as much a part of your hearts and minds as yon sweet shimmering sylphs?? How can you say that you did not create me the same way you created them??"
Silence fell over the crater, Pansy and Cookie staring open-mouthed at her. But the closed eyes and turned heads of the three winged unicorns told Clover all she needed to know. "It's true," she told Discord, his smile growing even more jagged. "We did create you, all of us, every pony who's ever refused to accept a real apology, who's told a dishonest lie, who's pushed another away for no good reason. You are our responsibility, Discord, and we can't turn away from that."
"Exactly!" He waved his arms, confetti exploding from his claws and talons. "One big happy family: that's us!"
"Except—!" Clover shouted, the power building inside her, the glow of her necklace reflecting that of her friends'. "We won't be ruled by you anymore! Yes, you're a part of us, but in the name of Harmony, we won't let you be the only part! We won't even let you be the biggest part!"
Celestia aimed her horn at Discord. "We can't unmake you, spirit, but we can certainly do our best to contain you!"
Discord clicked his tongue. "Don't talk nonsense, girls. Now, let's have our little 'Kumbaya' moment and get back to fighting, shall we? All together!" He touched his lion paw to his chest, stretched his eagle claw out, tipped his head back and began to sing: "Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday, dear me! Happy birthday to—!"
Clover unleashed her power, light flooding from the others at the same moment, crashing over Discord with a blast that made her mane stream out behind her. And when the light cleared, there stood Discord frozen in mid-song, as smooth and gray as if he'd been—
"Turned to stone?" she asked no one in particular.
Another rush of power, and Clover looked up, saw the spongy pink and brown clouds popping like soap bubbles, the sky clearing for the first time in longer than she wanted to think about. "Let's call it dawn, shall we?" Celestia asked, and tears blurred Clover's sight of the sun slowly starting over the horizon, the dank gray sky deepening to blue.
A cheer rose from the city, and unicorns began zapping into the dirt below them, their eyes wide and fixed on the three winged unicorns. "Clover!" somepony shouted, and she looked down to see Princess Platinum waving wildly. "It worked! Your plan! You...you summoned help!"
"Yes, your highness!" she called; she turned a quick glance to Celestia, and the big sun mare nodded, her horn glowing to lower them all to the ground.
Clover got hug after hug, first from Cookie and Pansy, then from just about everypony she'd ever met while pegasi swooped down, earth ponies sprinting into Discord's crater from the streets of the city around it. The crowds stayed silent, though, looking up at the winged unicorns with wonder in their eyes, and Clover could hardly believe it when, after she'd introduced Princess Platinum to the three newcomers, the princess levitated her own crown from her head and bowed. "Royal ponies," she said. "Wherever you've come from, please say you'll do us the honor of staying."
Celestia's smile in the full light of the morning sun was more dazzling than Clover had imagined it would be. "We don't want to be a bother," she said.
"Ha!" Armor still dripping custard, Commander Hurricane dropped into the spot beside Princess Platinum. "For taking out Discord, I'm gonna name you three admirals of the pegasi for life!"
"Yeah!" Chancellor Puddinghead pushed her way through the crowd to stand at the princess's other side. "And you're Big Cheeses of the earth ponies now, too!" She swept a front hoof over the desolate landscape. "You can put your castle right here, and then we can all come visit you all the time!"
"Or—" Luna's horn began to glow. "A lovely garden, I'm thinking, with a hedge maze and statuary." The glow reached out, wrapped around the stone figure of Discord, straightened it in the mud. "We already have the first, after all."
Slightly nervous laughter from the crowd, Celestia rolling her eyes. "Thank you, ponies of Equestria!" she said then, her voice so loud, Clover was sure the whole city—maybe the whole country—could hear her. "Then we'll stay!"
More cheers, but Celestia raising her hoof cut them off: "With the proviso that you allow us to make ourselves useful. I'll ask, therefore, your collective permission to take over the daily duty of seeing to the sun rise."
Luna's eyes lit up. "Oooo, yes! And I shall work my magic upon the night!"
"And I," Cadance said, again so much softer than the others, "I shall appear to each pony once you've all seen your allotted days and nights that I may guide you gently and lovingly into the Groves Beyond." She bent down to Clover and whispered, "As I've already been doing, if the truth be known..."
Clover blinked at her, Princess Platinum calling out, "Then this will be a day of festivities such as Equestria has never known! The defeat of Discord and the arrival of our new princesses: Celestia, Luna and Cadance!"
"You got that right!" Commander Hurricane bellowed.
"Party!" Chancellor Puddinghead waved her hoofs.
Unicorns popped in with musical instruments, ponies grabbing them up and starting a schottische Clover hadn't heard in years. But as much as the dance called to her, she couldn't take her eyes off Cadance's. "But—," she sputtered. "Didn't...didn't we just create you? So how could you—? How could Star Swirl—? And how could Discord say he'd known about you since the beginning of—"
"Time's a funny thing," Cadance said with a smile, the heart of her cutie mark seeming to shimmer. "It only takes a moment to change the whole world, after all, but the consequences of changes like you make, Clover the Clever, they ripple out in every direction as if a pebble had been dropped into a pond. Now, if you'll excuse me..." She spread her wings. "I believe we have a party breaking out around us!" She leaped into the blue above to join her aunts, swirling with Commander Hurricane and the other pegasi to the music, earth ponies and unicorns dancing and singing along.
A nudge at Clover's right flank, and she turned to see Smart Cookie grinning back at her. Another nudge, then, on her left, and she looked over to see Pansy swaying little dancing steps in the mud. "No more thinking," Pansy said, mock sternness in her voice.
Clover started to protest, but Cookie prodded her in the side again. "At least for the rest of the day!"
"Hmmmm..." Clover tapped her chin, pretended to be thinking it over, then threw her front legs around her friends' necks with a laugh. "All right! But just this once!"
Author's Note
For a look, then, at what this version of Cadance did to assist her aunt Celestia during her aunt Luna's thousand years of exile, feel free to visit Calling You. A sequel, in other words, I guess!
