The Problem is the Solution is the Problem
Look at the ponies. See how they squabble. Neighbor against neighbor, sibling against sibling, all at each other's throats with those ridiculous flat teeth of theirs.
It's always satisfying to see a job well done.
But I am not a merciless ruler. I allow some to work the fields, to tend the injured. As I keep telling Sonata, every dead pony is one that can no longer hate, making us that much weaker. No matter how tasty they might be.
Darn it, that was my stomach. How can I be insubordinate?
I stir myself from basking in the negativity washing up from what even the ponies have started calling Newfinnedland. "I'm going to go get a whale," I tell the others. "Aria, you meat-hungry?" I don't bother asking Sonata; she can always eat.
"I'm fine." Aria's never had much of an appetite for solids. She gives a lazy, almost dismissive wave of her tail. "Take your time. I can keep things going here."
I allow her the minor insubordination. She was the one who'd doubted me more when I'd proposed working together. Now? Now she's willing to act the kelp farmer. It's too funny for me to get mad. "Excellent. Come on, Sonata."
"Woo! Whales!" She spirals around me as we fly back to the ocean. I share a bit of her exhilaration. Before, whales were untouchable; hunting the smaller ones meant dealing with the larger ones, and the larger ones are more formidable singers than any lone siren. But working together, we're the ones blasting them to chunks.
"Huh. That's weird." Sonata pauses over the beach.
I sigh. "What is it? Another shiny pebble?"
"No, a pony. A calm pony. I thought we'd gotten them all."
My gaze locks onto him and the ridiculous cloth he's draped himself in. I call out a warning chirp, pitched too high for any pony to hear.
Aria's there in moments. "You didn't even dive yet. What's the prob—" She spots him too, clamming up when she does. "Where'd he come from?"
"That's what I want to know," I say, snarling.
"We may want to be careful with this one." I suppose not all of Aria's rebellious streak has gone if she thinks I care about her opinion.
"Or just tear his throat out." Even Sonata? Aria's a bad influence on her. "He may be more trouble than he's worth."
I roll my eyes. "Please. He's just an old stallion. We can take him." We descend, poised for any magic he might throw at us.
"Is it just me, or does he smell really good?"
All right, Aria and I are poised for anything he might throw at us.
"I wasn't going to say anything, but yeah. That's some serious regret."
And so I'm reminded why I'm in charge of these... Dark depths, that does smell delicious. I swallow the drool before I say, "Stay focused, you two."
He looks up, finally noticing us. He doesn't dip his head nearly as much as he should. "Well met."
"Start circling and singing. I want this one." Like the chirp, the order's higher pitched than any pony could hear, much less one senile enough to greet predators.
Fresh dismay tinges the deep-seated shame wafting off of him as we carry out my plan. "I was hoping we could discuss this rationally."
I'd laugh if I weren't busy enslaving the pony's mind. Sonata isn't so disciplined, her notes rising and falling in a tittering glissando until I work a sharp warning into my own.
Aria is more disciplined, subtle shifts in her song carrying a message only sirens can decode. This isn't working.
The stallion's still speaking, but I'm too busy trying to crack him to dignify him with any attention. Much as I hate to admit it, Aria's right. There's so much angst, so much self-loathing knotted up in his wretched little soul. Yet even with backup, my notes can't reach it. It's like trying to pull the grit out of a pearl.
Get closer, I signal. Crescendo.
We draw in our circle and go all the faster for it, only a few pony-heights above him. Our voices make the ocean ripple, the sand dance, but I still can't make the old stallion so much as blink against his will.
He shakes his head and lights his horn.
I'm not afraid. Fear is for lesser beings. But I am concerned about something happening to Sonata or Aria. It was hard enough finding a few sirens willing to cooperate; I don't want to have to go looking for even more. My judgement is swift. End him.
We stop circling and all face him, still equally spaced around him. As one, we make the shift from song to screech, an ultrasonic blast that will burst his eyes, shatter his bones, and wreck any spell he might throw at us.
By the time we finish inhaling, he's already surrounded himself in a bubble of magic. It ripples under our onslaught, but doesn't break.
Even now, we can communicate. Why don't we just bite him?
I sometimes wish we couldn't. He can block it, I tell Sonata.
We need to do something! Aria manages to scream even louder at the end of that. Even I have to hold back a wince.
I have a brilliant, completely original idea. Throw everything you can at him. This is our whale, girls.
I don't even need to hear Sonata's objection. I just know she's saying something about how little meat is on that ancient carcass. Still, the others comply, drawing on all the negative energy we've stored. Our heartstones shine like stars.
So do the rays of magic that strike them.
I try to shout in surprise, but I find myself choked off. I flail in the air, but everything from my neck up is motionless. More magic connects my heartstone to the others'. We get drawn closer and closer together. I can see the shock on their faces, Sonata's naked fear, Aria's accusing glare.
Don't tell me she thinks this is somehow my fault.
Just as we're about to collide, everything goes mad. The world twists around us, everything bleeding into a meaningless swirl of color. My body starts twisting as well.
My scream tells me that my voice has been freed, far too late.
Clover the Clever had learned many valuable lessons over the course of her apprenticeship. One of the most important, one that she was exercising today, was to listen to Star Swirl when he said to let him handle something. He had also learned much from her, and had made sure to explain exactly when to return to him.
"When I'm through, I'll send the signal," he'd said.
Naturally, she'd asked, "What's the signal?"
"In the unlikely event that I fail, a pallor of doom falling over all existence. Should I succeed, you'll know."
They were still working on the whole "clear communication" thing. Still, as Clover galloped across the beach, she had to admit that she had known when the signal went off. The all-too-familiar sense of time-space twisting in on itself and making her feel like a minotaur was trying to pull her horn out usually meant that Star Swirl had done something. She just hoped it was what he'd actually set out to do.
Once Clover cleared the last dune, there he stood, with nary a siren to be seen, just the lingering, light-twisting vestige of their departure. Star Swirl turned to her and gave her a nod.
Clover couldn't help but sigh. "Did you really send them to another dimension?"
"It worked, didn't it?"
She rolled her eyes and produced a scroll and a pencil from her cloak. "I don't suppose you could tell me what happened before that?"
He gave an eyeroll of his own. "I don't see why you insist on recording every little thing I do. Who's going to care?"
"I'd say the ponies of Nova Scoltia will, now that they're no longer in the sirens' thrall."
"Yes, but we can just tell them."
Clover sighed and pointedly tapped her scroll. "And what are we telling them?"
"Does it matter? They won't care about the hows and whys, just that their minds are their own again."
"But—"
Star Swirl sighed. "If you must tell them something, tell them that I challenged the sirens to a singing contest, lost, and banished them out of shame."
"What about the next time somepony encounters a group of sirens?" Clover paused and frowned. "A chorus? What's the proper collective noun?"
"There isn't one. Sirens normally hunt alone. That yellow one was unusually clever for her kind. Dangerous." Star Swirl shook his head. "Still, she won't trouble anypony again."
"About that." Clover pointed her pencil at the still-open rift in spacetime, her aura flickering towards it as though it were being sucked in. "Shouldn't that have closed by now?"
"Indeed. I was wondering when you'd notice that."
Clover swallowed. Her grip on the pencil was getting more tenuous that it should be. "Where exactly did you send them to?"
"Fairly nearby universe, almost no magic to speak of."
The pieces fell into place in Clover's mind. The banishment spell normally formed a bridge between worlds, short-lived as source and destination squeezed their ends shut. But magic did the squeezing. "You don't think—"
"The internal arcane pressure on the other side is too low to seal the rift? Indeed. Thought of that a moment after I cast the spell." Star Swirl snorted. "Foolish of me; I am growing too reliant on dimensional banishment. Help me gather up sand."
Clover didn't bother asking why. After all, she had learned. "How much do you need?"
"Rake it in; I'll tell you when."
Clover worked frantically, her telekinetic constructs getting harder and harder to form. With unequal pressure, this world was effectively bleeding magic into the other one.
Star Swirl acted efficiently, showing no apparent strain in body or spell as time went on. After what felt like a few eternities, he said, "That's enough."
"Oh," Clover panted. "Good." She tottered back from the rift, now a grape-sized hole in everything that her eyes refused to focus on, buzzing with a sound she felt more than heard, and that through a vibrating horn.
Star Swirl lit his own horn, the aura barely drifting towards the rift at all. The mound of sand rose up and engulfed the hole, drowning out the buzz as he compacted it. He kept adding more and more sand until the two of them stood before an ox-sized heap floating above a shallow crater. Then his aura intensified, and the mass glowed with heat.
After some time, Clover backed away further. She kept her eyes on Star Swirl rather than the red-hot glob. He never even blinked.
The sense of the spell shifted, and heat wicked away from the mass supernaturally quickly. Star Swirl relaxed his horn. Clover looked back and saw a massive, cloudy crystal sinking to the ground as though caught in honey. A dark imperfection lay at its heart.
"So," she said with forced nonchalance. "I suppose that's that taken care of?"
Star Swirl gave her his dumbfounded, "I expect better of you" look. "Anything but."
"But—"
"Consider the dimensional strain on that crystal. How long do you think it will last?"
Clover thought about it as the adrenaline drained out of her. She ran her own magic over the enormous chunk of crude glass, thinking through calculations that had become much more familiar of late. "I'd give it about thirty moons."
Star Swirl nodded. "Indeed. We'll need to construct some manner of venting apparatus." He produced a tiny length of wood from his own cloak and set it on the ground. It unfolded several times, forming a full-sized door. He opened it, revealing the laboratory that lay miles away by more conventional means.
"Wouldn't the venting create a stable connection between the two universes?" Clover looked back and forth between the door and the crystal. "Also, uh, I don't think it'll fit."
"In order, yes and for now." Saws and stranger tools floated out of the door, wrapped in Star Swirl's magic. "We'll have to do some work here."
"Hey!" Both turned to see an earth stallion galloping at them. "What in the name of all things holy are you pinheads doing!?"
Star Swirl quirked an eyebrow at Clover. "I thought you were going to deal with the locals."
"I thought I had!"
"How, precisely?"
"Deep Thought's Blasé Bystander Barrier. Between that and the sirens' magic, nopony should've even been looking at the beach!"
"A Somepony Else's Problem field." The eyebrow had remained suspended for the entire conversation.
Clover nodded. "With their minds full of externally imposed disharmony? Of course."
If Star Swirl's facial muscles were feeling any fatigue, he betrayed no sign of it. "A magically created Somepony Else's Problem field."
"What other kinds are..." Clover trailed off, her eyes slowly gravitating to the glass boulder. "Oh. Right. The rift."
Star Swirl nodded, finally returning the eyebrow to rejoin its brother. "You will find, my student, that while magic can solve most problems, it isn't always the best solution."
A cleared throat drew their attention to the earth stallion, now a few steps away and practically bursting with fury. "I'm still waiting on that explanation," he said, the veins in his neck bulging with barely restrained fury.
"So you are. Clover, if you would?" Star Swirl turned back to the glass, apparently finished with the conversation.
"But—" Clover bit her lip and turned to the stallion. "I apologize for the inconvenience, Mister...?"
"Sea Salt. Mayor Sea Salt." It certainly explained the sizeable paunch, well-made waistcoat, and palpable self-importance. "And I demand to know what you two unicorns were up to on this beach, especially given how everypony in town's been behaving lately."
"Well, Mayor Salt, my master Star Swirl and I came here to address the cause of your problem."
Salt sneered. "Feh. Some unicorn experiment, no doubt. Poking those horns where they don't belong, and it's honest, hardworking ponies who have to pay for it."
Clover wondered how long it had been since the stallion had last left his office. Then she remembered just what Star Swirl was using a glass cutter on and felt herself blush. All she said was, "The cause was a monster attack, sir. Three creatures called sirens, with the power to—"
"I know what sirens are, filly!" Salt snapped, stomping a hoof. The sand muffled the impact. He pressed on, undeterred. "You expect me to believe that? Get two sirens in earshot of one another and they fight like cats in a sack. Everypony knows that!"
"But that's what happened!"
"Prove it."
"Well..." Clover's eyes darted about as her mind raced. "My master banished them to another dimension, so—"
"Pah! Isn't that always the way. 'Oh, I can't show you anything you can see or touch, because it's all magical, not that you filthy mud ponies would know, so just believe me because I can pick things up without tasting them.'"
"Sir, I never—"
"You didn't need to." Sea Salt loomed over Clover. He proved far better at looming than stomping. "I know your kind well enough. The two of you—"
"Think back, Sea Salt. What do you remember of late?"
Both turned to Star Swirl, his interjection cutting the conversation dead. Salt frowned. "Why should I—"
Star Swirl spared him a glance. The madness he kept hidden most days, the raw power, peeked out. "Think."
"Distrusting everypony around me, all thirsting for the next election, when they might oust me from my rightful position. Setting work details to make sure they'd spend more time sniping at each other than conspiring against me. Revering the Lady and her hoofmaidens." Sea Salt blinked. "Wait, what?"
Star Swirl nodded as he continued sanding down a rough patch of the glass. "There is your proof, Mayor. You know it is true, for you lived it."
Sea Salt looked between the two of them. "I..." He sneered, but it lacked his former heat. "More like you just slipped it in my mind!"
"Think, Sea Salt," said Star Swirl. "You know the memories are real. You can feel their truth. Besides, do you really think you'd be so easily deceived by unicorn trickery?"
After a sizeable pause, Salt said, "What exactly are you two doing now?"
Clover jumped in. "Making sure the sirens never return, nor lash back at us from their prison." Not entirely accurate, but the last thing the stallion needed to hear was that they had been sticking their horns where they didn't belong.
"Will you be here long?"
Clover looked to Star Swirl. The silence stretched for an uncomfortable time before he even seemed to notice the others were waiting for an answer. "Shouldn't take more than a few days to get this small enough that it will fit through the door."
"Fine." Sea Salt turned and looked over his withers. "Three days. Then I'm calling in the militia, and don't think they'll be as friendly as I was!"
Clover watched him go. "I suppose that's all the thanks we'll get." She sighed. "You can get this finished in three days, right?"
Star Swirl smirked. "I can get it done in a few hours. Especially if you help. Come on."
"What are you going to do with it once it's in the lab proper?"
He shrugged. "I'm sure I'll think of something."
Clover stumbled back out of the mirror, unsure if she wanted to kiss the floor or her hooves more. "What. The hay. Just happened?"
"Rather dull place, wasn't it?" Star Swirl sounded disgustingly calm behind her.
She whirled around to face him. "Dull!? They were in the middle of a war!"
"I wouldn't call it that. Too disorganized. No strategy, no sides, just a bunch of people trying to kill each other. No, I'd say they'd suffered some manner of recent societal collapse."
A chill went down Clover's spine. "You don't think we had something to do with that, do you? Or the sirens?"
Star Swirl waved the notion off. "Nonsense. How could either be the case?"
"Well, at least we know that the mirror works and we never need to go back there again." Clover frowned. "Any chance the sirens might find it?"
"An exceedingly slim one." Star Swirl sighed and gave a familiar, distant look. "However, I can say with confidence that they are far from our primary concern."
From the journal of Clover the Clever:
When the winter never ended and the Exodus began, we had to leave so much behind. So much wealth, so much knowledge, so much of what we were. The earth ponies and pegasi fared no better. Oftentimes Pansy, Cookie, and I will spend the night deep in our cups, reminiscing about all the things we miss.
But I brought the Mirror. Ponies scowled at me. I let them. It was my burden. Literally; I hauled the blasted thing all the way from Cambridle to Canterlot, along with what few other books and baubles I could fit amid vital supplies. There are more powerful artifacts left in our frozen homeland, more dangerous ones. But those need to be wielded to realize their danger; they are safe in the hooves of the windigoes.
The Mirror of Worlds is not like them. It is most dangerous when neglected. I cannot say for certain if ice covering its surface might interfere with its venting cycle, but I dared not risk it. More likely some arctic beast or foul misfortune will break a vital part of it. Then it would only be a matter of time before the rift reopened and all magic in Equestria was sucked dry, sent to a world where their glut would be just as disastrous as our dearth.
No, I had to bring the Mirror, and I do not, can not regret having done so. I will ensure it is remembered as surely as Star Swirl himself, whether the old stallion wants to be or not. And knowing him, I may yet be able to say that to his face.
Honestly, I can't help but look forward to it.
Author's Note
A lot of inspiration for these takes on Clover and Star Swirl came from Daedalus Aegle's work. Do give it a read; he's basically the master of wizard horses.
