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RogerDodger
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Time Enough For Love
Clover was approaching Queen Platinum's throne for his usual Sunday morning report when a boom split the air and the Great Hall's seven-thousand-pound iron door sailed past his shoulder.
"I am Imperatrix Celestia Invicta, Slayer of the Dragon Legions, Tamer of Tartarus," a voice thundered from the doorway as every pony in the room froze statue-still. "And alla you prancers better clear on out, because you're raising the sun too rutting early, and I've decided I'm gonna take over and do it myself."
Chaos erupted as the tall, lithe white form tossed back her mussed mane and swaggered into the room. Nobles and servants screamed and galloped for the side doors and the new door-shaped hole in the back wall. Platinum remained frozen on her throne, eyes locked with the intruder, her face a mask of terror. The royal guards, to their credit, huddled into a semblance of a defensive line, backing slowly toward the throne in time with the war goddess' casual advance.
The smart thing to do would have been to join the stampede, Clover thought as he leapt up the steps toward his queen's side. But they didn't call him Clover The Clever because he was smart.
Platinum's eyes flicked toward him. "What is she doing here?" she whispered through clenched teeth. "I thought she was reclaiming the Great Southern Forest from the Diamond Kingdom."
"It is curious," Clover murmured back. He narrowed his eyes, taking in every detail of the alicorn's approach. Her steps were a trifle wide, and she was walking with a hypnotic sway that accentuated the enormous warhammer strapped to her back. A lopsided smile hung on her muzzle—not one of the predatory ones she gave her foes, but a self-satisfied half-smirk. Clover frowned. "For that matter, where's her sister?"
One of the guards stumbled as he retreated, falling to the floor and quickly scrambling back to his hooves within range of Celestia's weapon. She halted—ah, and there was that predatory smile. She slowly raised a forehoof, curling a pastern over the warhammer's handle, her body teetering toward the lifted hoof until she took a little half-step to compensate. "Finally," she said, slurring out the f a touch too long. "Mister Smashy was looking forward to a workout."
Ah, Clover thought, and before his self-preservation could stop him, he lit his horn in an amplification spell and took a step forward. His shoe came down with a crack that would have been impressive in any other circumstance, and he boomed in his deepest voice: "Hold!"
Every head in the room—including Celestia's—swiveled to Clover as he strode down the steps of the dais. The guards scurried past him to huddle around Platinum's throne. "Let us not raise arms against our fellow ponies," he continued, "not when this matter can be settled with a contest of champions."
Celestia blinked, tilted her head, then curled her muzzle into a broad grin. "Okay, I'll bite. Where is she?"
"…that would be me, Imperatrix."
There was silence for a moment as she digested this, then Celestia threw back her head in a room-shaking laugh. "Oh, sweet stars, that's a good one. Who are you? Frumpy-Clothes, the court jester?"
Clover stood a little straighter. This would be the tricky part: Getting her to see him as a credible opponent, but not as a threat. "They call me Clover the Clever," he said solemnly. "Melter of Windigos, Disciple of the Fires of Friendship, sharp of wit and stout of heart."
Celestia strode forward, closing the gap between them with two steps, and sized him up. Then she poked him in the chest. Clover staggered back, the air rushing from his lungs, and barely managed to keep his hooves. That, he hadn't had to sell—those long, thin legs had the strength of the bulkiest earth pony.
Celestia's smile fell away. "Sending a colt to do a mare's job, Platinum? Really?" She exhaled an exaggerated sigh, and the scent of alcohol curled his nose-hairs. "I'll loan you Mister Smashy. Maybe it'll still be fun if I just use one back knee."
"Who said I was here to fight you, Imperatrix?" Clover couldn't quite keep a smirk from spreading across his muzzle. "On behalf of my liege, for the right to rule the sun and moon, I challenge you to a drinking contest."
The alicorn's eyes lit up.
In a single fluid motion, she whipped a foreleg down on the handle of the warhammer, catapulting it into midair. A shimmering gold field enveloped it, sending it rocketing downward like a bolt of lightning. With a boom that made Clover flinch, the hammer landed between them, leaving a small crater in the hall's marble floor. Celestia lifted both forelegs, crossing them over the handle of the hammer, then set her muzzle atop her legs.
"You're on, Frumpy," she said.
Queen Platinum shot Clover a glare nearly as lethal as the war-goddess. Clover gave her a single, slow wink in return. "One table, every tankard in the castle, and an ocean of the Three Tribes' strongest alcohol," he said, and Platinum grudgingly raised a hoof, sending servants scurrying throughout the castle.
"Never had a unicorn challenge me to a drinking contest before," Celestia said as the proceedings were being arranged, throwing a hoof around Clover's withers. "This'll be way too quick. Usually it takes an Earther to be stupid enough to think they're in my league."
Clover wheezed, squirming one shoulder out of her vise-grip to open up his windpipe. "Ah, if you have never drunk with a unicorn, you have never had a real contest," he said. "Through diligent study of magic, I have mastered the art of bodily self-control, giving me far greater endurance than any earth pony could hope to achieve."
Celestia's head swiveled to his. There was a dangerous twinkle of excitement in her eyes. "Really?"
"Indeed," Clover said, "and I aim to prove it. By what margin do you think you could outdrink the average earth pony? Two hundred tankards? Five hundred?" He leaned in. "A thousand?"
"Pfah! Of course a thousand. I outdrank a dragon once, what's a pony to me?"
"Well, I'm twice the drinker that an average pony is," Clover said. "So if you take only a five hundred tankard head start, we'll have a real match."
Celestia's expression tried to contort three different ways at once.
"But never let it be said that the mighty Celestia would back down from a fair challenge," Clover said. "Am I right?"
The midnight-blue alicorn kicked a stray tankard out of the way, circled the warhammer-crater, and stepped over Celestia's loudly snoring form. The silence this time was tense rather than terrified. The whispers began when she approached Platinum's throne, head bowed low.
"I beseech thy pardon," Luna said in the Earth dialect used within the court to signal humility and contrition—and out of all the strangeness of the day, to hear such words from the mouth of an immortal was the strangest of all. "My sister hath overstepped her bounds. I approach on behalf of the Alicorn Tribe to reaffirm the Tribal Accords and honor thy place as custodian of the skies."
Platinum glanced sideways at Clover, then laughed uneasily. "Our forgiveness is matched only by Our gratitude for thy countless deeds on behalf of the Triumvirate, o Lighter of Stars," she said. "We would not see thee abase thyself to Us or Our ponies."
Luna left her head down for another long moment, but when she brought it back up, there was a smile across her muzzle. "I heard the guards' whispers about the contest on my way in," she said, fixing her eyes on Clover. "How many mugs did she drain?"
"Nine hundred and seventy-three," Clover said. "The first time I reversed the count, I was sure I had earned an introduction to Mister Smashy, but I distracted her by arguing at length with the servants over cleaning the tankards."
A blue glow encircled Celestia, the warhammer, and the massive door that eight ponies were lugging across the hall, lifting them all simultaneously. The door floated across the room as Luna continued speaking, and settled in against the wall near its empty frame.
"Clover the Clever, you have saved my sister from walking a foolhardy road cobbled in misery and weregild," she said. "As recompense, I offer words of wisdom which might save you from a similar fate." She inclined her head. "Wilt thou walk with me?"
Clover nodded, and the two of them trotted out of the room and through the keep, a rag-doll Celestia floating alongside.
"You are Star Swirl's student of magic for this era, yes?" Luna said casually.
"When he's around," Clover said. "I've never seen him for more than a few hours at a time, but he always seems to be there when I'm on the cusp of a major discovery."
Luna nodded. "Indeed. Such is his way."
"Why do you ask?"
Luna glanced around to make certain they were alone, then fixed him with a stare.
"My sister and I, too, were his students once—centuries and centuries ago, when we were but fillies, yet to come into our true power," she said quietly. "One day, I found him at his workbench, casting spells into a small golden amulet, a circle with a rotating triangle inset.
"'What are you making?' I asked him.
"'A very special present,' he said. 'Another student of mine, who's a little too clever for his own good, is going to fall madly, impossibly, dangerously in love.'
"'What does it do?' I asked, and he just winked at me.
"But I was quite the curious filly, and had learned that such a non-answer meant I was asking an incorrect question. 'How come you're making it?' I said.
"'Because without it,' Star Swirl said, 'the mare he loves will be alone and broken-hearted at the time she needs him most. And with it, the mare he loves will be alone and broken-hearted at the time she needs him most.'
"'That's stupid,' I said. 'What good is it, then?'
"Star Swirl smiled in that knowing way that meant the conversation was over, and said, 'Oh, it's quite stupid. But they don't call him clever because he is smart.'"
Four days later, Clover was discussing the merchant tax receipts with Platinum when a boom echoed through the Great Hall. The recently re-hung iron door bulged inward, tilted, and fell, and by the time it had hit the carpet, the stampede toward the side doors had already begun.
Oh no, not again, Clover thought as Celestia sauntered through the hall. This time, the pink aura of her well-brushed mane had a streak of green dyed in, and she was in full battle regalia, her breastplate and chausses gleaming with reflected light. Then his heart stopped when he saw her stride—the sway of her hips was deliberate and precise.
Guards shuffled forward into a reluctant half-circle around her. Celestia gave them a menacing smile, not breaking stride, and the circle widened. Platinum raised one hoof and flicked it sideways, and the circle gratefully scrambled to reform into two lines, escorting Celestia toward the throne.
She came to a stop at the head of the stairs, and a hush deeper than the bowels of Tartarus settled over the room.
"So," Celestia said, "I was supposed to come and apologize for trying to take the sun off your hooves, or something. And on my way here I realized two things." She shifted her hoof to the handle of her warhammer—as horns lit and a dozen swords immediately leveled themselves at her—but merely nudged it with the inside of her leg, causing the weapon to roll off her back and land with a heavy crash on the floor. "One, what you care about ain't an apology, it's making sure I don't do it again. And two, Frumpy there cheated me out of my win fair and square, and I ain't ever been beaten in a fair fight before."
Clover wondered if apologizing would help, but even if he had thought it would, his throat felt like he'd swallowed a block of ice.
"So I'm gonna make you a deal," Celestia continued, stepping forward and towering over the seated Platinum. "I'll swear three oaths, by hoof and wing and horn, by all the power of my tribe, that I won't ever take the sun from pony hooves. And in exchange—" she pointed at Clover—"I get him."
Platinum wordlessly opened and closed her mouth several times.
Feeling the situation rapidly slipping away, and feeling very un-clever for once, Clover swallowed and managed to squeak words out: "What're you going to do with me?"
Celestia locked eyes with him, her mouth curling into a predatory grin. Her horn lit.
Clover slid across the dais toward her, his body encased in a golden glow, his hooves flailing for purchase against the marble. Celestia whipped her hooves around to the back of his head, yanking him in, and clamped her muzzle to his.
"Mmmmmf!" Clover said, trying to inhale and finding only tongue. A burning sensation spread through his lungs as he struggled for air, and long seconds later, when Celestia released him, he fell to the floor gasping for breath.
"We accept," Platinum said far too quickly, then glanced down at Clover and added: "With one caveat. Clover the Clever's heart is not Ours to give. All that We may offer thee is the chance to win it."
A smile slowly inched up Platinum's muzzle, and Clover's heart froze.
"But never let it be said that the mighty Celestia would back down from a fair challenge," Platinum said. "Are We correct?"
"So," Celestia said, glancing around the bare stone fort high on Canter Peak, and through the open window into the raging snowstorm outside. "So."
"S-s-so," Clover chattered, huddling inside the thin burlap of his robe.
Celestia frowned. "Don't be a wimp. The cold's good for you. Keeps you on edge."
Clover swallowed and tried to still his jaw. "O-on e-edge i-isn't v-very r-romantic, a-and y-you c-can't o-outclever c-cold."
Celestia sighed, glancing around, then lit her horn. With a golden flash, a massive pile of logs vanished from the woodpile on one side of the room and appeared in the central hearth. Then her horn flashed again, just for a moment, and the woodpile burst into a raging bonfire. Sweat beaded on Clover's brow, and steam immediately started curling off his robe. He backed away from the combustion zone to where it was merely hot.
"Better?"
"Y-yes, thank you," Clover said, his shivers subsiding. "Not to be rude, Imperatrix, but why would you live in such a place?"
"Because when I haven't spent four days sleeping off my worst hangover in centuries, and I can keep the clouds properly bucked, this has the continent's most amazing view," Celestia said, and an unfamiliar sort of smile shaded onto her muzzle. It took Clover several seconds to place it as pride. "I can look out from ocean to ocean, like I'm queen of everything." The smile wavered. "You know. Actual queen of everything, instead of just the best."
An unfamiliar sort of flutter squeezed at Clover's heart. It took him several seconds to place it as sympathy.
"I think," he said slowly, "I'd like to see that view."
It was half an hour before she shouldered the front door back open, breathing heavily, a thin sheen of sweat accenting her curves. The room's chill had retreated from Windigo-spawning to merely nippy, and Clover had hung his robe up on an iron hook on the wall next to a quilt-covered slab of straw that was one of the room's few pieces of furniture. Celestia lit her horn. Clover's world shaded gold, and the room rapidly receded as he flew backward toward the balcony.
She whirled him around and dropped her field, and his breath caught.
It [i]was[i] beautiful. The mountain dropped away underhoof—a nearly vertical cliff—and beyond that was a still life worthy of the greatest masters of the brush. The verdant sprawl of the Everfree and the Great Southern Forests beyond, the rolling hills and orchards of the Earth Kingdoms reaching east until the glimmer on the distant horizon, the cloud cities and towers of the Pegasus Protectorates blanketing the west. The air was clear and crisp, the sky was the most brilliant blue he'd ever seen, and a single bird wheeled in lazy circles in the distance, its bright red wings like a second sun.
"It's beautiful," he whispered.
In between her short pants of breath, Celestia sharply exhaled a sound not unlike a laugh. "I know, right?"
He glanced sideways at her. "And, um, a little chilly." He bit his lip, but it was too late for second thoughts. "May I?"
She glanced back at him. "May you what?"
Rather than answering, he stood and walked to where she was sitting on the balcony, angelic wings half-spread. He nosed at one foreleg and squirmed underneath it, nestling himself underneath her barrel, back to chest. The sharp motions of her breathing pressed uncomfortably on his spine, and the clammy dampness of her sweat quickly soaked his pelt, but after the initial shock of unpleasant sensation receded, the warmth of her body began to set in. Celestia's breathing caught, then gradually slowed, and they sat together in a silence that was both awkward and not, muzzles leveled at the horizon.
After some time, she lifted a hoof, curling a leg over Clover's chest. Terror briefly flared in his veins, but her leg settled lightly around him, barely touching. Clover looked down and stared at it uncomprehendingly. By her reputation, that might have been the first time she'd ever done anything in less than full measure. Was she afraid? Of him?
Celestia cleared her throat. "Hey? Frumpy? I like you, you know."
Clover tensed. "Thank you, Imperatrix," he said carefully.
"Heh," she said. "I should probably start calling you Clover, huh."
"Pet names are not without precedent. I've been called worse."
The silence of the mountain descended. A freezing breeze stirred up, and Clover was torn between huddling further into Celestia's warmth and wriggling out of her grip to bolt away.
"You're scared of me," she said quietly. "Aren't you."
"Less so than I was this morning," he said truthfully. "But, yes."
"Why?"
Clover frantically sifted through half-lies to find one that wouldn't get him pitched over the side of the mountain. But before he could settle on one, she sighed. "I'm too intense, aren't I. Damn it—I have never understood that about ponies. How can you settle for a life of half-measures, rather than living every moment with every ounce of passion you possess? How can you settle for half-measures knowing you'll die someday? It's bad enough being immortal and bored!"
He lifted his leg and touched a hoof lightly to the leg circling his chest. "It's less that than the fact that you could snap me in half without meaning to."
He could feel her frown through the tightening of her neck muscles. "I'm being careful. I like you. I said."
"And I do appreciate that," Clover said. "But think of it our way. We're fragile little beasts, and greedy ones, trying to wring all out of life that we can. You've got the right principle, but its application is a matter of mathematics. A long life of half-measures offers more measures than a single blazing moment."
"Mmm," she grunted. He waited, but she said nothing more.
"I'm sorry," Clover finally said, not quite certain what he was apologizing for.
"Eh, never mind," Celestia said. "Wanna rut?"
Clover tensed again, then alarm bells rang in his head, and he hurriedly tried to cover for it with a laugh and a pat on her leg. "Would this involve the aforementioned snapping me in half?"
Celestia barked out a laugh, and he felt her body finally relax. "Only if you want me to."
"Let's assume that the answer to that one is a permanent no."
Adrenaline flooded Clover's veins as her weight shifted against his. Wait, had he just accepted? "I mean," he added hurriedly, "you see, this gets back to what I said about half-measures, we, ah, there's normally more courtship involved—" ah haybales now I'm rejecting the goddess who leveled the gryphon palace with a single blow— "which is to say that I merely wasn't expecting such an offer, Imperatrix…ah, not that it is without precedent, that is, I experimented with my share of fillies when I was a growing colt, and I am a virile young stallion and you're a vision of beauty—" ABORT ABORT ABORT—"and I, and I just—" he desperately lunged for the truth—"I'm a sharp-tongued hack of a mage and you're one of the anima given flesh. How is this even happening?"
"Because you beat me in a contest," Celestia said, as if explaining to a foal.
"No I didn't. Even accounting for my handicap you outdrank me 473 to 0."
"That's got nothing to do with it," Celestia said, annoyance shading into her tone. "Look, do you wanna rut or not?"
Clover closed his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the encircling warmth of Celestia's body—her hinds pressing in around his, the leg across his chest, the rise and fall of her breathing. Then he gave in, twisted his head to look up at her, and said the stupidest, cleverest thing he'd ever said in his stupid and clever life: "Yes."
She looked down—and he saw a flash of fear dissolve from her eyes, and he couldn't be sure if it was hers or a reflection of his own—and her familiar predatory smile began to spread across her muzzle. "Ever done it in midair?"
He blinked. "Have I ever—"
Then her leg clamped in around his chest, and the rest was lost in an incoherent wheeze. Her wings snapped out straight as she shot to her hooves and bounded forward. He flailed his hooves for purchase on the smooth stone of the balcony as she tensed and sprang. The earth dropped away.
She tucked her wings in and dove.
The echo of a shriek and the echo of a laugh collided and intertwined on the empty balcony.
"That," Clover said, between gasps of breath, "was something."
Celestia sprawled out underneath him with a satisfied smirk, both wings at full extension. She wriggled to scratch her back against the straw mattress, sending an unexpected tingle of pleasure through Clover's hindquarters. "Which part?"
"All—nnnnh—of it. Even, if I must be honest, the part where we almost fell to our doom."
She took a deep, languid breath, his body shifting as her chest rose and fell, and her muzzle curled into a relaxed smile. "I thought you'd like it." The smile receded as quickly as it had arrived, and she stared into his eyes with an expression he couldn't quite decipher. "See what I mean about living life with passion? Why settle for anything less than—" and her muzzle twisted through a short word she didn't speak, and fear struck her eyes like a lightning-bolt, there then gone—"than full intensity at every moment?"
Hunh, Clover thought, and felt the heartbeat in her chest quicken to match the pounding in his.
He wanted nothing more than to reach forward and press his muzzle to hers—but he couldn't reach her mouth without leaving her embrace, so he settled for leaving a tender kiss on her chest. "I think," he said, letting a knowing smirk creep onto his muzzle, "you're underestimating the benefits of taking things slowly."
Her expression softened to match his. "Oh yeah?" she growled in mock-challenge.
"I dare you," he said, "not to move a muscle for thirty minutes." He quickly pressed his hoof to the tip of her muzzle as she opened her mouth to speak. "Not. One. Or is the mighty Celestia going to back down from a challenge?"
"Oh, you fragile, greedy little beast," Celestia said with a laugh as he withdrew his hoof. "Challenge accepted."
"Excellent," Clover said as he lifted himself from her body. He leaned back in, muzzle almost touching her, the warm exhalations from his nose leaving shallow divots in the short hair of her chest.
"Remember, no moving," he whispered, and then traced his muzzle down the concave curve of her belly.
Her body tensed. A thin whimper left her lips.
He lit his horn as he worked, plucking a feather from one of her wings.
It only took him thirteen minutes to break her.
It was after their first argument, when he had stormed back to the Everfree to sulk in his room, that Clover found the jewelry-box on his desk.
It contained just two things. One was a square scrap of parchment, with two words written in Star Swirl's unmistakeable spidery script: "Turn once."
The other was a circular golden necklace. A triangle was mounted inside the circle, along a vertical axis that allowed it to rotate left and right.
Clover closed his eyes. The paper in the violet glow of his field began to shiver, then spasmed and crumpled in on itself into a tight little ball. "Star Swirl," he whispered. "You son of a timberwolf."
He turned it, of course—there was no way he wouldn't. Once—
—and immediately sneezed, eyes watering. He blinked his eyes several times. Dust billowed through a morning sunbeam.
The jewelry box, and the crumpled note, were gone. The door to his quarters was now closed. Nothing else had changed.
Clover staggered over to the door—pushing the handle, fumbling with the lock, then finally pushing it open—and caught his breath in the corridor. Curious, he headed toward the throne room, only to nearly collide with Celestia as he rounded a corner.
Her eyes widened. Her mouth fell open.
Before he could say anything, she lunged at him, yanking him into a deep kiss. Then a sob wracked her throat. She took a step back, tears streaming down her face, and headbutted his muzzle hard. He heard a crack in his nose and felt liquid spurt into his nostrils, and a sharp sting lanced his ear where her horn had passed.
"Aah!" he shouted, staggering back and sitting down hard. "Wha tha faah?"
"You royal asshole," she shouted, the windows trembling, "you goat-spawn, you stone-eating addlepated…clever, stupid…frump, where have you been?!" She choked back another sob. "Nobody knew! I even told Luna to call in one of her favors and summon Star Swirl, and the only thing he'd tell me was to have Queen Platinum keep your room untouched, and that it wasn't your fault!"
Clover blinked tears out of his eyes, then fumbled for his robe and blew a giant bloody mass clear of his nose. "That son of a timberwolf. I think ah'm begidding to udderstahd." He blew his nose again, ignoring the shooting pain. "What day is it?"
"Uh," Celestia said, wiping her own nose with a leg, the fire draining from her wet eyes. "September 3?"
"Better question. How many years have I been gone?"
Celestia stared for a moment, then bared clenched teeth. "That son of a timberwolf."
Their make-up sex was extremely dusty and slightly bloody.
It was also intense enough to shake the palace foundations.
Colonel Pansy and Ambassador Cookie were quiet for a long time when he explained.
"I'm going to destroy it," Clover said. "No good will come of it."
Cookie coughed. "Are you sure ya should? The way it sounds, that don't solve your problems."
"Neither will keeping it. And I haven't seen either of you for a year."
Pansy fidgeted and looked down. "To be honest, Clover…we've missed you, but I don't think we're the ones that need a friend."
Cookie's ears flattened. "Yeah, she's been…uh…more'n a little terrifyin'. I guess you haven't heard about the Great Southern Wastes?"
Clover's eye twitched.
"…or maybe ya have. Point is, she's been a wreck without ya, and she's gonna live for stars know how long, an' if Star Swirl thought she needed ya now he wouldn't have given that to you in the first place."
"And I'm going to ruin things if I use it. I told you what he told Luna."
Pansy quietly cleared her throat. Clover looked over.
"Do you love her?" she asked.
Clover sighed and cradled his head in his hooves. "She's insane. She can't take no for an answer. I'm starting to lose count of my brushes with death. But…she tries, stars damn it, she tries for me like I don't think she's ever tried for a mortal before. A few weeks ago—uh, plus a year—I took her to my secret thinking-place at the waterfall near the palace, and we just sat and watched the water run over the rocks, and she was crying, Pansy, she cried and told me it was one of the most beautiful things anypony had ever shown her, and she's teaching me to juggle, and I finally finished a full mug of dragonfire ale without throwing up, and when I tried to stumble to the bathroom I ran headlong into the door frame and she laughed until she fell down, and yes, Pansy, I love her, I am madly, impossibly, dangerously in love, and it's going to kill me but I can't say no, and if I don't destroy this amulet now I'm never going to work up the nerve."
Pansy and Cookie exchanged a glance.
"Then you ought to try," Pansy said, curling her neck to Clover's.
Clover let out a long breath, and nodded.
"Sounds like 'now' just passed you by, hon," Cookie said, resting a hoof on his shoulder. "Go follow your heart. Ain't that the clever thing to do?"
In their second argument, Celestia threw him through the bookshelf he'd lugged up the mountainside to her icy home.
Clover stood up on three legs, teeth gritted in pain, tears streaming down his cheeks. Celestia snarled ferally, dropping to a half-crouch and facing him head-on. He had to light his horn twice to unlace the strap on his saddlebags, and as she stared at him in silent challenge, he floated the golden necklace to one waiting hoof.
"If you ever lay a hoof on me again," he hissed, "I am gone for good, Imperatrix. And I strongly suggest that you spend the next year thinking of an apology."
As Clover grasped the triangle in his magic, recognition dawned in her eyes—to be immediately replaced with fear. Celestia shot back upright. "Wait!" she cried as he twisted the triangle around its axis, and as she lunged—
—the fort on Canter Peak blurred and wavered and came back into focus, with six unicorns in physician's robes standing off to one side, a white alicorn slumped forlornly on her bed, and a midnight-blue alicorn impassively sitting alongside it.
Celestia's head shot upright, followed by the rest of her. Clover flinched and took a step back. Predictably, his broken leg exploded in pain, and he crumpled to the floor with a whimper.
The next few minutes were a blur of medical attention. Along with the broken leg, the physicians quickly diagnosed and set four cracked ribs, along with several layers of spells to dull the pain and reduce the swelling of the bruise developing along his entire left side. The entire time, Celestia paced along the far wall. Luna sat in stony silence.
Finally, the head physician stepped back and nodded to Celestia. She lunged forward like a pouncing cat, flattening herself at Clover's hooves. "Luna! Witness me," she said, and bowed her head. "I swear by the strength of my hoof, I swear by the speed of my wing, I swear by the magic of my horn, thrice I swear, thrice and done." Her head drooped and her voice wavered. "Clover the Clever, never will I raise hoof nor horn to harm thee. By all the power of my tribe, bound I am by word and spell and law, until the end of days. So mote it be."
"So mote it be," Luna said, eyes burning into Clover's, face an unreadable mask. Then she wheeled and stalked away.
The make-up sex this time was slow, and tender, and under a hanging blanket of suffocating tension.
They sprawled on opposite sides of the straw mattress afterward, Clover staring at the fire, Celestia staring at Clover.
She was the first to break the silence. "I've been thinking," she said, "about that amulet of yours."
Clover closed his eyes, drew in a slow breath, and let it out. "I'm sorry I did it," he said. "If you hadn't hurt me…but you won't, not any more. I'm destroying it in the morning."
Celestia was silent for some time.
"Actually," she said, "I've had a lot of time to think, and I was thinking, it might be the best thing that could happen to us."
Clover lifted his head and looked back at Celestia. Her expression was unusually somber. "I'm serious," she continued. "Remember what I said about living at full intensity? We live life at different speeds, Frumpy. I think I…" her voice faltered. "I love the idea of you, and I love our time together, and then your half-measures drive me crazy and after a few weeks I just want to murder you. But this way, every time I start to resent you—" she made a little gesture with her hoof—"flip! And a year later, I'm looking forward to you again."
"You wanted to murder me the first time I came back."
"Because I didn't know! But this way I'll expect it." Celestia reached forward and tentatively touched a hoof to his shoulder, giving him a hopeful smile. "What do you think?"
Clover chewed his lip for a few moments, then rolled over to face her, wincing as his weight shifted onto his tender side. "Celestia," he said, looking into her eyes. "Listen to me. I…I love the idea of you, too, and I don't really have a life beyond my job and my studies and my two best friends. But I would have to give up that life for you. Do you understand what you're asking?"
Her smile wavered, and she forced it back to her muzzle. "I know. But I can promise you me, and I can promise you only the best of me, for every moment we're together, for the years you have." She patted a hoof to her flank. "I can be your sun, and you can be my planet, giving me something to shine for."
Clover couldn't help but laugh. "That's poetic. Have you been taking lessons?"
She laughed back. "Nobody's been stupid enough to go to war with us since I scorched the Wastes. I spent a lot of time last year reading your books."
Clover closed his eyes and swallowed, knowing that there would be no going back from the choice he was about to make.
An odd vertigo settled in. He took a deep breath.
"Well," he said, wriggling forward into her embrace and laying his head on her leg, "you know I can't resist a well-read mare."
For the first few decades, he checked in with Pansy and Cookie before each flip. Cookie's two foals grew before his eyes, one becoming a chef in Queen Platinum's kitchens, the other following her father into diplomacy.
It was at General Pansy's funeral that he realized why she had never married.
He took his own year off, then—telling Celestia he'd flip, but instead packing a bag of money and supplies and taking a clipper ship to the okapi lands near Sugar Cookie's post. Eight months later, he found himself back at Canter Peak, sobbing into Celestia's chest.
Celestia, for her part, was true to her word—eagerly and passionately greeting him on each of his returns. At least at first. But then there was the year she was a bundle of rage at a dispute with Queen Orichalcum over abbreviated daylight hours…and what was that, but a momentary inconvenience and another flip of the amulet? The next year, her kiss was as passionate as ever, and the moment melted away.
But then there was the year Clover flipped and she wasn't there. He walked up the mountain, knocked on the door of the fort, and a pegasus stallion answered.
Clover grabbed the triangle then and spun, watching the years scintillate by.
The year that the necklace slowed to a stop was the year of their third argument.
"You should have told me!" he shouted.
"You didn't let me!" she yelled back, a fire smoldering in her eyes that he hadn't seen for centuries.
"What was there going to be to say? 'Oh, sorry, Clover, but even though you unmoored yourself from time for me I found some other stud to buck'?"
"Clover," she growled, leaning in so that her bared teeth were inches from her eyes, "I promised you the best of me. I never promised you'd be the only one to get the best of me."
"Great comeback, Imperatrix," he snarled. "How many years did it take you to come up with that one?"
"Eighty-three of them, Frumpy, because you weren't here!" she shouted, and the mountain trembled.
Clover squeezed his eyes shut, feeling tears spill down his cheeks.
"You know what hurts the most," he said quietly, "is that you can't stand me for more than a few weeks at a time, but that pegasus? Oh, no, he gets a normal lifetime."
"That pegasus' name was Contrail," Celestia said coldly, "and for your information, he drove me crazy too, and he left for good three years later. But I learned so much patience from you—waiting for your return every year—that I thought I could make it work. And I fell in love with him, too…what was I supposed to do? Turn him away for a lover I can't even talk to 50 weeks of the year?" She whirled and stalked away. "Do you even know how much effort I went to in order to make things work out? I told him about you, Clover! He flipped out too—and then I begged and pleaded and reasoned and finally told him it was a dealbreaker if he wasn't okay with me spending time with you once in a while." Clover opened his eyes again, and Celestia was staring at him with wet eyes from across the room. "Fortunately he gave in. But I was willing to ruin my own life for you, and then the instant you see him you throw a snit and vanish for good before I even lay eyes on you."
Clover stared at Celestia. She looked back coolly, standing tall and proud. He laughed bitterly.
"Remember the good old days," he said, "when you would have thrown me through a bookcase over something ten times as trivial?"
"Four hundred years ago, I did. And you have no idea how much I want to break my oaths and do it again." Celestia turned her back to him, and said levelly, "I'd like some time to calm down. I think you'd better flip your necklace."
He did—
—and he landed in blackness.
A migraine danced on his skull, sending melodious fuzzy spots dancing through his vision. Clover took a step, stumbled, and fell against a soft circular wall, which lit up at his touch. As he realized the wall was a rug, gravity shifted, dumping him unceremoniously on the floor.
The darkness opened up one yellow, red-pupiled eye.
"Theeeeeeeeere's my little bearded meddler," a high, masculine voice sang, and a house-sized eagle claw descended at him.
Clover grabbed the triangle in his field and wrenched with all his strength. Pain burst in his head as the years slammed into him, and consciousness faded.
Awareness slowly returned amid the soft caress of fabric and the scent of jasmine tea. He was sprawled on his back, and there was a heavy weight on his hind legs. Clover groaned and sat up, only to stare into the eyes of a smiling white alicorn.
"Hey, Frumpy," Celestia said with that old predatory grin.
"Buh," he said, eyes fixed above her face. The old green war-paint stripe had been joined by a blue one—but paint didn't float in some invisible thaumic breeze, nor did paint colors stay completely still as her mane wafted to and fro, like some cosmic optical illusion.
He wasn't sure whether that or the tiara disturbed him more.
"Been quite a while," Celestia said, studying a gold-shod hoof. "It caused one heck of a commotion when you showed up at Canter Fort. I have to fight to keep it staffed, you know. There's an argument on the budget every year."
"What," Clover croaked.
Celestia's smile didn't waver, but it grew a lot tenser. "Oh, you know how it is. Some big villain of primal chaos takes over the world and wipes out the unicorn lineages at a single stroke, my sister and I fight him off, they crown us because somepony's got to raise the sun and moon, and after long enough you almost start to tolerate the taste of tea."
"What. What. What."
"So. Yeah. Busy few centuries. How about you?"
Clover curled up into a little ball, whimpering.
Celestia climbed out of her chausses, lifted the tiara from her brow, and climbed up onto the bed, curling around him and gently stroking his chest with a hoof. "Hey. It's alright. Everything's alright. I did it, Clover, I'm a Queen like I always dreamed. I've never been happier, and now I get to share it with you, too." She nuzzled at his cheek. "You can be one of my Prince Consorts. I promised you the best, didn't I?"
Clover fought off vertigo, his chest tightening, and forced himself to nod. "I…wait. 'One of'?"
Celestia's smile finally fell. "I'm a queen now, Clover," she murmured. "If I don't have a harem everypony starts to wonder."
Clover reached for his necklace.
Celestia's hoof shot out to stop him. "Clover," she murmured, voice as gentle as her grip was iron. "I'm sorry. I am. Really and truly sorry, and if I'd known three hundred years ago you weren't dead I would have done things very differently. But…can't you be happy for me, at least? Stay one day. Just one day. I'll show you around the castle. Tomorrow's the Summer Sun celebration. They made me a holiday, Clover. I raise the sun for the longest day of the year, and you can hear the cheers from the far side of the Everfree."
Clover looked away, so she wouldn't see the tears brimming in his eyes. "One day," he mumbled. "I can do that."
Their make-up sex was hesitant and cathartic. She held him, afterward, until his tears were spent.
As Clover was following Celestia around the castle afterward, taking in the bizarre extravagance and the strange clothing and the portraits of a thousand unfamiliar faces as Celestia talked animatedly about her life, he thought he caught a glimpse of motion in the shadows. He turned his head, and his stomach leapt inside his ribs.
It looked like Luna, but it was dark—too dark—and a murderous fury roiled in its eyes.
He glanced at Celestia, to see if she'd seen it too, but when he turned his head back to the shadows the figure was gone.
The sun didn't rise the next morning. Instead, screams and distant rumbles heralded the dawn.
Explosions rocked the castle as Clover galloped through the unfamiliar halls. "Throne room!" he screamed in the face of a stampeding noble, and managed to collar the stallion long enough to get pointed in the right direction. But when he reached it, the room was empty, and a gaping hole yawned in the back wall behind the shattered throne. The hole had passed neatly between two circular wall-mounts, each containing three large brightly-colored gemstones, and for a moment he couldn't help but think that if Celestia had bucked in this room's door she would have destroyed some lovely display pieces.
He was standing there, wondering what to do next, when the ceiling caved in with a terrific roar. Debris flew past him, one stone winging him on the side of the head, and when his vision cleared he saw a white winged form struggling to its hooves from a new crater in the center of the room.
Celestia! But no sooner had Clover shook off his haze and started galloping forward than she glanced up and flung herself toward the shattered throne. In less than an eye-blink, a dark meteor hurtled through the hole in the roof, and another boom shook him off his hooves. As his body tumbled to a stop, a jet-black pony-shaped demon stood from the central crater, a sharp and sickly night flowing from its body to pool menacingly into the shadows.
"No more boasts, sister?" it purred, its back to him as it crouched to face Celestia. "No more pleas? Will you stop fleeing at last, and face your doom?"
Clover struggled to stand in silence, heart hammering. Celestia, bleeding in several places, lurched to her hooves as well.
Then their eyes met.
Celestia's eyes widened.
In an instant, the demon had spun to face him, hissing. Clover choked off a gasp, scrambling backward on leaden legs as the thing-that-was-once-Luna flowed forward on tendrils of night. Cruel laughter rolled like thunder from a distant storm. "Isn't this precious," it said, and a dozen dark auras shimmered in midair, resolving into spearlike slivers of moonlight. "So Star Swirl thought to meddle even in this, did he? So sad for you, little time-slipping hero. Coming all this way just to feed the shadows with your blood."
Clover's hoof slipped on a loose stone. He crumpled to the floor, the demon looming over him.
"Did you truly think you could foil prophecy? Doomed to fail her in her time of need?" It laughed, and the spears' wicked points gleamed as they swiveled to face his heart. The darkness around him grew teeth and swirled aggressively inward, nipping at his legs and back, instantly numbing everything it touched.
Out of the corner of his eye, Clover saw Celestia's horn stutter to life. The gems in the wall displays began to glow with uncertain light—too little, too late, to help him.
"Goodbye, Clover the Clever," the demon whispered as its horn sparked to life.
So did his.
And the triangle flipped.
The throne room was a dark cavern around a small central ring of light. No mage-lights shone on the walls, and what looked like a heap of rubble had been stacked in front of the hole in the back wall. The scent of decay registered in the back of Clover's mind.
At first he thought the room was empty. But then he saw her: A pale form huddled in the center of the crater. What at first looked like a mound of pebbles was a sprawled wing, white turned grey with a layer of dust. Her once-sleek barrel was emaciated, rising and falling in barely perceptible waves.
He staggered to his hooves, shaking off the demon's numbness, and croaked, "Celestia?"
And she turned to him, eyes red and raw, face gaunt, eyes empty.
Realization hit.
Alone, Clover thought, and broken-hearted.
He stumbled forward, levitating his necklace from his chest, then sharply tugging it forward. The chain snapped, and he lowered it to the floor, propping the circle upright in a crack in the marble.
Celestia's eyes widened, and she lifted her head, sending dust eddying across the floor. "Clover?" she whispered through a raw throat.
His hoof came down on the fragile circle of gold. Sparks skittered out from the necklace as Star Swirl's spell discharged.
"Right here when I'm needed most," he whispered, and kissed her nose.
"I am Imperatrix Celestia Invicta, Slayer of the Dragon Legions, Tamer of Tartarus," a voice thundered from the doorway as every pony in the room froze statue-still. "And alla you prancers better clear on out, because you're raising the sun too rutting early, and I've decided I'm gonna take over and do it myself."
Chaos erupted as the tall, lithe white form tossed back her mussed mane and swaggered into the room. Nobles and servants screamed and galloped for the side doors and the new door-shaped hole in the back wall. Platinum remained frozen on her throne, eyes locked with the intruder, her face a mask of terror. The royal guards, to their credit, huddled into a semblance of a defensive line, backing slowly toward the throne in time with the war goddess' casual advance.
The smart thing to do would have been to join the stampede, Clover thought as he leapt up the steps toward his queen's side. But they didn't call him Clover The Clever because he was smart.
Platinum's eyes flicked toward him. "What is she doing here?" she whispered through clenched teeth. "I thought she was reclaiming the Great Southern Forest from the Diamond Kingdom."
"It is curious," Clover murmured back. He narrowed his eyes, taking in every detail of the alicorn's approach. Her steps were a trifle wide, and she was walking with a hypnotic sway that accentuated the enormous warhammer strapped to her back. A lopsided smile hung on her muzzle—not one of the predatory ones she gave her foes, but a self-satisfied half-smirk. Clover frowned. "For that matter, where's her sister?"
One of the guards stumbled as he retreated, falling to the floor and quickly scrambling back to his hooves within range of Celestia's weapon. She halted—ah, and there was that predatory smile. She slowly raised a forehoof, curling a pastern over the warhammer's handle, her body teetering toward the lifted hoof until she took a little half-step to compensate. "Finally," she said, slurring out the f a touch too long. "Mister Smashy was looking forward to a workout."
Ah, Clover thought, and before his self-preservation could stop him, he lit his horn in an amplification spell and took a step forward. His shoe came down with a crack that would have been impressive in any other circumstance, and he boomed in his deepest voice: "Hold!"
Every head in the room—including Celestia's—swiveled to Clover as he strode down the steps of the dais. The guards scurried past him to huddle around Platinum's throne. "Let us not raise arms against our fellow ponies," he continued, "not when this matter can be settled with a contest of champions."
Celestia blinked, tilted her head, then curled her muzzle into a broad grin. "Okay, I'll bite. Where is she?"
"…that would be me, Imperatrix."
There was silence for a moment as she digested this, then Celestia threw back her head in a room-shaking laugh. "Oh, sweet stars, that's a good one. Who are you? Frumpy-Clothes, the court jester?"
Clover stood a little straighter. This would be the tricky part: Getting her to see him as a credible opponent, but not as a threat. "They call me Clover the Clever," he said solemnly. "Melter of Windigos, Disciple of the Fires of Friendship, sharp of wit and stout of heart."
Celestia strode forward, closing the gap between them with two steps, and sized him up. Then she poked him in the chest. Clover staggered back, the air rushing from his lungs, and barely managed to keep his hooves. That, he hadn't had to sell—those long, thin legs had the strength of the bulkiest earth pony.
Celestia's smile fell away. "Sending a colt to do a mare's job, Platinum? Really?" She exhaled an exaggerated sigh, and the scent of alcohol curled his nose-hairs. "I'll loan you Mister Smashy. Maybe it'll still be fun if I just use one back knee."
"Who said I was here to fight you, Imperatrix?" Clover couldn't quite keep a smirk from spreading across his muzzle. "On behalf of my liege, for the right to rule the sun and moon, I challenge you to a drinking contest."
The alicorn's eyes lit up.
In a single fluid motion, she whipped a foreleg down on the handle of the warhammer, catapulting it into midair. A shimmering gold field enveloped it, sending it rocketing downward like a bolt of lightning. With a boom that made Clover flinch, the hammer landed between them, leaving a small crater in the hall's marble floor. Celestia lifted both forelegs, crossing them over the handle of the hammer, then set her muzzle atop her legs.
"You're on, Frumpy," she said.
Queen Platinum shot Clover a glare nearly as lethal as the war-goddess. Clover gave her a single, slow wink in return. "One table, every tankard in the castle, and an ocean of the Three Tribes' strongest alcohol," he said, and Platinum grudgingly raised a hoof, sending servants scurrying throughout the castle.
"Never had a unicorn challenge me to a drinking contest before," Celestia said as the proceedings were being arranged, throwing a hoof around Clover's withers. "This'll be way too quick. Usually it takes an Earther to be stupid enough to think they're in my league."
Clover wheezed, squirming one shoulder out of her vise-grip to open up his windpipe. "Ah, if you have never drunk with a unicorn, you have never had a real contest," he said. "Through diligent study of magic, I have mastered the art of bodily self-control, giving me far greater endurance than any earth pony could hope to achieve."
Celestia's head swiveled to his. There was a dangerous twinkle of excitement in her eyes. "Really?"
"Indeed," Clover said, "and I aim to prove it. By what margin do you think you could outdrink the average earth pony? Two hundred tankards? Five hundred?" He leaned in. "A thousand?"
"Pfah! Of course a thousand. I outdrank a dragon once, what's a pony to me?"
"Well, I'm twice the drinker that an average pony is," Clover said. "So if you take only a five hundred tankard head start, we'll have a real match."
Celestia's expression tried to contort three different ways at once.
"But never let it be said that the mighty Celestia would back down from a fair challenge," Clover said. "Am I right?"
The midnight-blue alicorn kicked a stray tankard out of the way, circled the warhammer-crater, and stepped over Celestia's loudly snoring form. The silence this time was tense rather than terrified. The whispers began when she approached Platinum's throne, head bowed low.
"I beseech thy pardon," Luna said in the Earth dialect used within the court to signal humility and contrition—and out of all the strangeness of the day, to hear such words from the mouth of an immortal was the strangest of all. "My sister hath overstepped her bounds. I approach on behalf of the Alicorn Tribe to reaffirm the Tribal Accords and honor thy place as custodian of the skies."
Platinum glanced sideways at Clover, then laughed uneasily. "Our forgiveness is matched only by Our gratitude for thy countless deeds on behalf of the Triumvirate, o Lighter of Stars," she said. "We would not see thee abase thyself to Us or Our ponies."
Luna left her head down for another long moment, but when she brought it back up, there was a smile across her muzzle. "I heard the guards' whispers about the contest on my way in," she said, fixing her eyes on Clover. "How many mugs did she drain?"
"Nine hundred and seventy-three," Clover said. "The first time I reversed the count, I was sure I had earned an introduction to Mister Smashy, but I distracted her by arguing at length with the servants over cleaning the tankards."
A blue glow encircled Celestia, the warhammer, and the massive door that eight ponies were lugging across the hall, lifting them all simultaneously. The door floated across the room as Luna continued speaking, and settled in against the wall near its empty frame.
"Clover the Clever, you have saved my sister from walking a foolhardy road cobbled in misery and weregild," she said. "As recompense, I offer words of wisdom which might save you from a similar fate." She inclined her head. "Wilt thou walk with me?"
Clover nodded, and the two of them trotted out of the room and through the keep, a rag-doll Celestia floating alongside.
"You are Star Swirl's student of magic for this era, yes?" Luna said casually.
"When he's around," Clover said. "I've never seen him for more than a few hours at a time, but he always seems to be there when I'm on the cusp of a major discovery."
Luna nodded. "Indeed. Such is his way."
"Why do you ask?"
Luna glanced around to make certain they were alone, then fixed him with a stare.
"My sister and I, too, were his students once—centuries and centuries ago, when we were but fillies, yet to come into our true power," she said quietly. "One day, I found him at his workbench, casting spells into a small golden amulet, a circle with a rotating triangle inset.
"'What are you making?' I asked him.
"'A very special present,' he said. 'Another student of mine, who's a little too clever for his own good, is going to fall madly, impossibly, dangerously in love.'
"'What does it do?' I asked, and he just winked at me.
"But I was quite the curious filly, and had learned that such a non-answer meant I was asking an incorrect question. 'How come you're making it?' I said.
"'Because without it,' Star Swirl said, 'the mare he loves will be alone and broken-hearted at the time she needs him most. And with it, the mare he loves will be alone and broken-hearted at the time she needs him most.'
"'That's stupid,' I said. 'What good is it, then?'
"Star Swirl smiled in that knowing way that meant the conversation was over, and said, 'Oh, it's quite stupid. But they don't call him clever because he is smart.'"
Four days later, Clover was discussing the merchant tax receipts with Platinum when a boom echoed through the Great Hall. The recently re-hung iron door bulged inward, tilted, and fell, and by the time it had hit the carpet, the stampede toward the side doors had already begun.
Oh no, not again, Clover thought as Celestia sauntered through the hall. This time, the pink aura of her well-brushed mane had a streak of green dyed in, and she was in full battle regalia, her breastplate and chausses gleaming with reflected light. Then his heart stopped when he saw her stride—the sway of her hips was deliberate and precise.
Guards shuffled forward into a reluctant half-circle around her. Celestia gave them a menacing smile, not breaking stride, and the circle widened. Platinum raised one hoof and flicked it sideways, and the circle gratefully scrambled to reform into two lines, escorting Celestia toward the throne.
She came to a stop at the head of the stairs, and a hush deeper than the bowels of Tartarus settled over the room.
"So," Celestia said, "I was supposed to come and apologize for trying to take the sun off your hooves, or something. And on my way here I realized two things." She shifted her hoof to the handle of her warhammer—as horns lit and a dozen swords immediately leveled themselves at her—but merely nudged it with the inside of her leg, causing the weapon to roll off her back and land with a heavy crash on the floor. "One, what you care about ain't an apology, it's making sure I don't do it again. And two, Frumpy there cheated me out of my win fair and square, and I ain't ever been beaten in a fair fight before."
Clover wondered if apologizing would help, but even if he had thought it would, his throat felt like he'd swallowed a block of ice.
"So I'm gonna make you a deal," Celestia continued, stepping forward and towering over the seated Platinum. "I'll swear three oaths, by hoof and wing and horn, by all the power of my tribe, that I won't ever take the sun from pony hooves. And in exchange—" she pointed at Clover—"I get him."
Platinum wordlessly opened and closed her mouth several times.
Feeling the situation rapidly slipping away, and feeling very un-clever for once, Clover swallowed and managed to squeak words out: "What're you going to do with me?"
Celestia locked eyes with him, her mouth curling into a predatory grin. Her horn lit.
Clover slid across the dais toward her, his body encased in a golden glow, his hooves flailing for purchase against the marble. Celestia whipped her hooves around to the back of his head, yanking him in, and clamped her muzzle to his.
"Mmmmmf!" Clover said, trying to inhale and finding only tongue. A burning sensation spread through his lungs as he struggled for air, and long seconds later, when Celestia released him, he fell to the floor gasping for breath.
"We accept," Platinum said far too quickly, then glanced down at Clover and added: "With one caveat. Clover the Clever's heart is not Ours to give. All that We may offer thee is the chance to win it."
A smile slowly inched up Platinum's muzzle, and Clover's heart froze.
"But never let it be said that the mighty Celestia would back down from a fair challenge," Platinum said. "Are We correct?"
"So," Celestia said, glancing around the bare stone fort high on Canter Peak, and through the open window into the raging snowstorm outside. "So."
"S-s-so," Clover chattered, huddling inside the thin burlap of his robe.
Celestia frowned. "Don't be a wimp. The cold's good for you. Keeps you on edge."
Clover swallowed and tried to still his jaw. "O-on e-edge i-isn't v-very r-romantic, a-and y-you c-can't o-outclever c-cold."
Celestia sighed, glancing around, then lit her horn. With a golden flash, a massive pile of logs vanished from the woodpile on one side of the room and appeared in the central hearth. Then her horn flashed again, just for a moment, and the woodpile burst into a raging bonfire. Sweat beaded on Clover's brow, and steam immediately started curling off his robe. He backed away from the combustion zone to where it was merely hot.
"Better?"
"Y-yes, thank you," Clover said, his shivers subsiding. "Not to be rude, Imperatrix, but why would you live in such a place?"
"Because when I haven't spent four days sleeping off my worst hangover in centuries, and I can keep the clouds properly bucked, this has the continent's most amazing view," Celestia said, and an unfamiliar sort of smile shaded onto her muzzle. It took Clover several seconds to place it as pride. "I can look out from ocean to ocean, like I'm queen of everything." The smile wavered. "You know. Actual queen of everything, instead of just the best."
An unfamiliar sort of flutter squeezed at Clover's heart. It took him several seconds to place it as sympathy.
"I think," he said slowly, "I'd like to see that view."
It was half an hour before she shouldered the front door back open, breathing heavily, a thin sheen of sweat accenting her curves. The room's chill had retreated from Windigo-spawning to merely nippy, and Clover had hung his robe up on an iron hook on the wall next to a quilt-covered slab of straw that was one of the room's few pieces of furniture. Celestia lit her horn. Clover's world shaded gold, and the room rapidly receded as he flew backward toward the balcony.
She whirled him around and dropped her field, and his breath caught.
It [i]was[i] beautiful. The mountain dropped away underhoof—a nearly vertical cliff—and beyond that was a still life worthy of the greatest masters of the brush. The verdant sprawl of the Everfree and the Great Southern Forests beyond, the rolling hills and orchards of the Earth Kingdoms reaching east until the glimmer on the distant horizon, the cloud cities and towers of the Pegasus Protectorates blanketing the west. The air was clear and crisp, the sky was the most brilliant blue he'd ever seen, and a single bird wheeled in lazy circles in the distance, its bright red wings like a second sun.
"It's beautiful," he whispered.
In between her short pants of breath, Celestia sharply exhaled a sound not unlike a laugh. "I know, right?"
He glanced sideways at her. "And, um, a little chilly." He bit his lip, but it was too late for second thoughts. "May I?"
She glanced back at him. "May you what?"
Rather than answering, he stood and walked to where she was sitting on the balcony, angelic wings half-spread. He nosed at one foreleg and squirmed underneath it, nestling himself underneath her barrel, back to chest. The sharp motions of her breathing pressed uncomfortably on his spine, and the clammy dampness of her sweat quickly soaked his pelt, but after the initial shock of unpleasant sensation receded, the warmth of her body began to set in. Celestia's breathing caught, then gradually slowed, and they sat together in a silence that was both awkward and not, muzzles leveled at the horizon.
After some time, she lifted a hoof, curling a leg over Clover's chest. Terror briefly flared in his veins, but her leg settled lightly around him, barely touching. Clover looked down and stared at it uncomprehendingly. By her reputation, that might have been the first time she'd ever done anything in less than full measure. Was she afraid? Of him?
Celestia cleared her throat. "Hey? Frumpy? I like you, you know."
Clover tensed. "Thank you, Imperatrix," he said carefully.
"Heh," she said. "I should probably start calling you Clover, huh."
"Pet names are not without precedent. I've been called worse."
The silence of the mountain descended. A freezing breeze stirred up, and Clover was torn between huddling further into Celestia's warmth and wriggling out of her grip to bolt away.
"You're scared of me," she said quietly. "Aren't you."
"Less so than I was this morning," he said truthfully. "But, yes."
"Why?"
Clover frantically sifted through half-lies to find one that wouldn't get him pitched over the side of the mountain. But before he could settle on one, she sighed. "I'm too intense, aren't I. Damn it—I have never understood that about ponies. How can you settle for a life of half-measures, rather than living every moment with every ounce of passion you possess? How can you settle for half-measures knowing you'll die someday? It's bad enough being immortal and bored!"
He lifted his leg and touched a hoof lightly to the leg circling his chest. "It's less that than the fact that you could snap me in half without meaning to."
He could feel her frown through the tightening of her neck muscles. "I'm being careful. I like you. I said."
"And I do appreciate that," Clover said. "But think of it our way. We're fragile little beasts, and greedy ones, trying to wring all out of life that we can. You've got the right principle, but its application is a matter of mathematics. A long life of half-measures offers more measures than a single blazing moment."
"Mmm," she grunted. He waited, but she said nothing more.
"I'm sorry," Clover finally said, not quite certain what he was apologizing for.
"Eh, never mind," Celestia said. "Wanna rut?"
Clover tensed again, then alarm bells rang in his head, and he hurriedly tried to cover for it with a laugh and a pat on her leg. "Would this involve the aforementioned snapping me in half?"
Celestia barked out a laugh, and he felt her body finally relax. "Only if you want me to."
"Let's assume that the answer to that one is a permanent no."
Adrenaline flooded Clover's veins as her weight shifted against his. Wait, had he just accepted? "I mean," he added hurriedly, "you see, this gets back to what I said about half-measures, we, ah, there's normally more courtship involved—" ah haybales now I'm rejecting the goddess who leveled the gryphon palace with a single blow— "which is to say that I merely wasn't expecting such an offer, Imperatrix…ah, not that it is without precedent, that is, I experimented with my share of fillies when I was a growing colt, and I am a virile young stallion and you're a vision of beauty—" ABORT ABORT ABORT—"and I, and I just—" he desperately lunged for the truth—"I'm a sharp-tongued hack of a mage and you're one of the anima given flesh. How is this even happening?"
"Because you beat me in a contest," Celestia said, as if explaining to a foal.
"No I didn't. Even accounting for my handicap you outdrank me 473 to 0."
"That's got nothing to do with it," Celestia said, annoyance shading into her tone. "Look, do you wanna rut or not?"
Clover closed his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the encircling warmth of Celestia's body—her hinds pressing in around his, the leg across his chest, the rise and fall of her breathing. Then he gave in, twisted his head to look up at her, and said the stupidest, cleverest thing he'd ever said in his stupid and clever life: "Yes."
She looked down—and he saw a flash of fear dissolve from her eyes, and he couldn't be sure if it was hers or a reflection of his own—and her familiar predatory smile began to spread across her muzzle. "Ever done it in midair?"
He blinked. "Have I ever—"
Then her leg clamped in around his chest, and the rest was lost in an incoherent wheeze. Her wings snapped out straight as she shot to her hooves and bounded forward. He flailed his hooves for purchase on the smooth stone of the balcony as she tensed and sprang. The earth dropped away.
She tucked her wings in and dove.
The echo of a shriek and the echo of a laugh collided and intertwined on the empty balcony.
"That," Clover said, between gasps of breath, "was something."
Celestia sprawled out underneath him with a satisfied smirk, both wings at full extension. She wriggled to scratch her back against the straw mattress, sending an unexpected tingle of pleasure through Clover's hindquarters. "Which part?"
"All—nnnnh—of it. Even, if I must be honest, the part where we almost fell to our doom."
She took a deep, languid breath, his body shifting as her chest rose and fell, and her muzzle curled into a relaxed smile. "I thought you'd like it." The smile receded as quickly as it had arrived, and she stared into his eyes with an expression he couldn't quite decipher. "See what I mean about living life with passion? Why settle for anything less than—" and her muzzle twisted through a short word she didn't speak, and fear struck her eyes like a lightning-bolt, there then gone—"than full intensity at every moment?"
Hunh, Clover thought, and felt the heartbeat in her chest quicken to match the pounding in his.
He wanted nothing more than to reach forward and press his muzzle to hers—but he couldn't reach her mouth without leaving her embrace, so he settled for leaving a tender kiss on her chest. "I think," he said, letting a knowing smirk creep onto his muzzle, "you're underestimating the benefits of taking things slowly."
Her expression softened to match his. "Oh yeah?" she growled in mock-challenge.
"I dare you," he said, "not to move a muscle for thirty minutes." He quickly pressed his hoof to the tip of her muzzle as she opened her mouth to speak. "Not. One. Or is the mighty Celestia going to back down from a challenge?"
"Oh, you fragile, greedy little beast," Celestia said with a laugh as he withdrew his hoof. "Challenge accepted."
"Excellent," Clover said as he lifted himself from her body. He leaned back in, muzzle almost touching her, the warm exhalations from his nose leaving shallow divots in the short hair of her chest.
"Remember, no moving," he whispered, and then traced his muzzle down the concave curve of her belly.
Her body tensed. A thin whimper left her lips.
He lit his horn as he worked, plucking a feather from one of her wings.
It only took him thirteen minutes to break her.
It was after their first argument, when he had stormed back to the Everfree to sulk in his room, that Clover found the jewelry-box on his desk.
It contained just two things. One was a square scrap of parchment, with two words written in Star Swirl's unmistakeable spidery script: "Turn once."
The other was a circular golden necklace. A triangle was mounted inside the circle, along a vertical axis that allowed it to rotate left and right.
Clover closed his eyes. The paper in the violet glow of his field began to shiver, then spasmed and crumpled in on itself into a tight little ball. "Star Swirl," he whispered. "You son of a timberwolf."
He turned it, of course—there was no way he wouldn't. Once—
—and immediately sneezed, eyes watering. He blinked his eyes several times. Dust billowed through a morning sunbeam.
The jewelry box, and the crumpled note, were gone. The door to his quarters was now closed. Nothing else had changed.
Clover staggered over to the door—pushing the handle, fumbling with the lock, then finally pushing it open—and caught his breath in the corridor. Curious, he headed toward the throne room, only to nearly collide with Celestia as he rounded a corner.
Her eyes widened. Her mouth fell open.
Before he could say anything, she lunged at him, yanking him into a deep kiss. Then a sob wracked her throat. She took a step back, tears streaming down her face, and headbutted his muzzle hard. He heard a crack in his nose and felt liquid spurt into his nostrils, and a sharp sting lanced his ear where her horn had passed.
"Aah!" he shouted, staggering back and sitting down hard. "Wha tha faah?"
"You royal asshole," she shouted, the windows trembling, "you goat-spawn, you stone-eating addlepated…clever, stupid…frump, where have you been?!" She choked back another sob. "Nobody knew! I even told Luna to call in one of her favors and summon Star Swirl, and the only thing he'd tell me was to have Queen Platinum keep your room untouched, and that it wasn't your fault!"
Clover blinked tears out of his eyes, then fumbled for his robe and blew a giant bloody mass clear of his nose. "That son of a timberwolf. I think ah'm begidding to udderstahd." He blew his nose again, ignoring the shooting pain. "What day is it?"
"Uh," Celestia said, wiping her own nose with a leg, the fire draining from her wet eyes. "September 3?"
"Better question. How many years have I been gone?"
Celestia stared for a moment, then bared clenched teeth. "That son of a timberwolf."
Their make-up sex was extremely dusty and slightly bloody.
It was also intense enough to shake the palace foundations.
Colonel Pansy and Ambassador Cookie were quiet for a long time when he explained.
"I'm going to destroy it," Clover said. "No good will come of it."
Cookie coughed. "Are you sure ya should? The way it sounds, that don't solve your problems."
"Neither will keeping it. And I haven't seen either of you for a year."
Pansy fidgeted and looked down. "To be honest, Clover…we've missed you, but I don't think we're the ones that need a friend."
Cookie's ears flattened. "Yeah, she's been…uh…more'n a little terrifyin'. I guess you haven't heard about the Great Southern Wastes?"
Clover's eye twitched.
"…or maybe ya have. Point is, she's been a wreck without ya, and she's gonna live for stars know how long, an' if Star Swirl thought she needed ya now he wouldn't have given that to you in the first place."
"And I'm going to ruin things if I use it. I told you what he told Luna."
Pansy quietly cleared her throat. Clover looked over.
"Do you love her?" she asked.
Clover sighed and cradled his head in his hooves. "She's insane. She can't take no for an answer. I'm starting to lose count of my brushes with death. But…she tries, stars damn it, she tries for me like I don't think she's ever tried for a mortal before. A few weeks ago—uh, plus a year—I took her to my secret thinking-place at the waterfall near the palace, and we just sat and watched the water run over the rocks, and she was crying, Pansy, she cried and told me it was one of the most beautiful things anypony had ever shown her, and she's teaching me to juggle, and I finally finished a full mug of dragonfire ale without throwing up, and when I tried to stumble to the bathroom I ran headlong into the door frame and she laughed until she fell down, and yes, Pansy, I love her, I am madly, impossibly, dangerously in love, and it's going to kill me but I can't say no, and if I don't destroy this amulet now I'm never going to work up the nerve."
Pansy and Cookie exchanged a glance.
"Then you ought to try," Pansy said, curling her neck to Clover's.
Clover let out a long breath, and nodded.
"Sounds like 'now' just passed you by, hon," Cookie said, resting a hoof on his shoulder. "Go follow your heart. Ain't that the clever thing to do?"
In their second argument, Celestia threw him through the bookshelf he'd lugged up the mountainside to her icy home.
Clover stood up on three legs, teeth gritted in pain, tears streaming down his cheeks. Celestia snarled ferally, dropping to a half-crouch and facing him head-on. He had to light his horn twice to unlace the strap on his saddlebags, and as she stared at him in silent challenge, he floated the golden necklace to one waiting hoof.
"If you ever lay a hoof on me again," he hissed, "I am gone for good, Imperatrix. And I strongly suggest that you spend the next year thinking of an apology."
As Clover grasped the triangle in his magic, recognition dawned in her eyes—to be immediately replaced with fear. Celestia shot back upright. "Wait!" she cried as he twisted the triangle around its axis, and as she lunged—
—the fort on Canter Peak blurred and wavered and came back into focus, with six unicorns in physician's robes standing off to one side, a white alicorn slumped forlornly on her bed, and a midnight-blue alicorn impassively sitting alongside it.
Celestia's head shot upright, followed by the rest of her. Clover flinched and took a step back. Predictably, his broken leg exploded in pain, and he crumpled to the floor with a whimper.
The next few minutes were a blur of medical attention. Along with the broken leg, the physicians quickly diagnosed and set four cracked ribs, along with several layers of spells to dull the pain and reduce the swelling of the bruise developing along his entire left side. The entire time, Celestia paced along the far wall. Luna sat in stony silence.
Finally, the head physician stepped back and nodded to Celestia. She lunged forward like a pouncing cat, flattening herself at Clover's hooves. "Luna! Witness me," she said, and bowed her head. "I swear by the strength of my hoof, I swear by the speed of my wing, I swear by the magic of my horn, thrice I swear, thrice and done." Her head drooped and her voice wavered. "Clover the Clever, never will I raise hoof nor horn to harm thee. By all the power of my tribe, bound I am by word and spell and law, until the end of days. So mote it be."
"So mote it be," Luna said, eyes burning into Clover's, face an unreadable mask. Then she wheeled and stalked away.
The make-up sex this time was slow, and tender, and under a hanging blanket of suffocating tension.
They sprawled on opposite sides of the straw mattress afterward, Clover staring at the fire, Celestia staring at Clover.
She was the first to break the silence. "I've been thinking," she said, "about that amulet of yours."
Clover closed his eyes, drew in a slow breath, and let it out. "I'm sorry I did it," he said. "If you hadn't hurt me…but you won't, not any more. I'm destroying it in the morning."
Celestia was silent for some time.
"Actually," she said, "I've had a lot of time to think, and I was thinking, it might be the best thing that could happen to us."
Clover lifted his head and looked back at Celestia. Her expression was unusually somber. "I'm serious," she continued. "Remember what I said about living at full intensity? We live life at different speeds, Frumpy. I think I…" her voice faltered. "I love the idea of you, and I love our time together, and then your half-measures drive me crazy and after a few weeks I just want to murder you. But this way, every time I start to resent you—" she made a little gesture with her hoof—"flip! And a year later, I'm looking forward to you again."
"You wanted to murder me the first time I came back."
"Because I didn't know! But this way I'll expect it." Celestia reached forward and tentatively touched a hoof to his shoulder, giving him a hopeful smile. "What do you think?"
Clover chewed his lip for a few moments, then rolled over to face her, wincing as his weight shifted onto his tender side. "Celestia," he said, looking into her eyes. "Listen to me. I…I love the idea of you, too, and I don't really have a life beyond my job and my studies and my two best friends. But I would have to give up that life for you. Do you understand what you're asking?"
Her smile wavered, and she forced it back to her muzzle. "I know. But I can promise you me, and I can promise you only the best of me, for every moment we're together, for the years you have." She patted a hoof to her flank. "I can be your sun, and you can be my planet, giving me something to shine for."
Clover couldn't help but laugh. "That's poetic. Have you been taking lessons?"
She laughed back. "Nobody's been stupid enough to go to war with us since I scorched the Wastes. I spent a lot of time last year reading your books."
Clover closed his eyes and swallowed, knowing that there would be no going back from the choice he was about to make.
An odd vertigo settled in. He took a deep breath.
"Well," he said, wriggling forward into her embrace and laying his head on her leg, "you know I can't resist a well-read mare."
For the first few decades, he checked in with Pansy and Cookie before each flip. Cookie's two foals grew before his eyes, one becoming a chef in Queen Platinum's kitchens, the other following her father into diplomacy.
It was at General Pansy's funeral that he realized why she had never married.
He took his own year off, then—telling Celestia he'd flip, but instead packing a bag of money and supplies and taking a clipper ship to the okapi lands near Sugar Cookie's post. Eight months later, he found himself back at Canter Peak, sobbing into Celestia's chest.
Celestia, for her part, was true to her word—eagerly and passionately greeting him on each of his returns. At least at first. But then there was the year she was a bundle of rage at a dispute with Queen Orichalcum over abbreviated daylight hours…and what was that, but a momentary inconvenience and another flip of the amulet? The next year, her kiss was as passionate as ever, and the moment melted away.
But then there was the year Clover flipped and she wasn't there. He walked up the mountain, knocked on the door of the fort, and a pegasus stallion answered.
Clover grabbed the triangle then and spun, watching the years scintillate by.
The year that the necklace slowed to a stop was the year of their third argument.
"You should have told me!" he shouted.
"You didn't let me!" she yelled back, a fire smoldering in her eyes that he hadn't seen for centuries.
"What was there going to be to say? 'Oh, sorry, Clover, but even though you unmoored yourself from time for me I found some other stud to buck'?"
"Clover," she growled, leaning in so that her bared teeth were inches from her eyes, "I promised you the best of me. I never promised you'd be the only one to get the best of me."
"Great comeback, Imperatrix," he snarled. "How many years did it take you to come up with that one?"
"Eighty-three of them, Frumpy, because you weren't here!" she shouted, and the mountain trembled.
Clover squeezed his eyes shut, feeling tears spill down his cheeks.
"You know what hurts the most," he said quietly, "is that you can't stand me for more than a few weeks at a time, but that pegasus? Oh, no, he gets a normal lifetime."
"That pegasus' name was Contrail," Celestia said coldly, "and for your information, he drove me crazy too, and he left for good three years later. But I learned so much patience from you—waiting for your return every year—that I thought I could make it work. And I fell in love with him, too…what was I supposed to do? Turn him away for a lover I can't even talk to 50 weeks of the year?" She whirled and stalked away. "Do you even know how much effort I went to in order to make things work out? I told him about you, Clover! He flipped out too—and then I begged and pleaded and reasoned and finally told him it was a dealbreaker if he wasn't okay with me spending time with you once in a while." Clover opened his eyes again, and Celestia was staring at him with wet eyes from across the room. "Fortunately he gave in. But I was willing to ruin my own life for you, and then the instant you see him you throw a snit and vanish for good before I even lay eyes on you."
Clover stared at Celestia. She looked back coolly, standing tall and proud. He laughed bitterly.
"Remember the good old days," he said, "when you would have thrown me through a bookcase over something ten times as trivial?"
"Four hundred years ago, I did. And you have no idea how much I want to break my oaths and do it again." Celestia turned her back to him, and said levelly, "I'd like some time to calm down. I think you'd better flip your necklace."
He did—
—and he landed in blackness.
A migraine danced on his skull, sending melodious fuzzy spots dancing through his vision. Clover took a step, stumbled, and fell against a soft circular wall, which lit up at his touch. As he realized the wall was a rug, gravity shifted, dumping him unceremoniously on the floor.
The darkness opened up one yellow, red-pupiled eye.
"Theeeeeeeeere's my little bearded meddler," a high, masculine voice sang, and a house-sized eagle claw descended at him.
Clover grabbed the triangle in his field and wrenched with all his strength. Pain burst in his head as the years slammed into him, and consciousness faded.
Awareness slowly returned amid the soft caress of fabric and the scent of jasmine tea. He was sprawled on his back, and there was a heavy weight on his hind legs. Clover groaned and sat up, only to stare into the eyes of a smiling white alicorn.
"Hey, Frumpy," Celestia said with that old predatory grin.
"Buh," he said, eyes fixed above her face. The old green war-paint stripe had been joined by a blue one—but paint didn't float in some invisible thaumic breeze, nor did paint colors stay completely still as her mane wafted to and fro, like some cosmic optical illusion.
He wasn't sure whether that or the tiara disturbed him more.
"Been quite a while," Celestia said, studying a gold-shod hoof. "It caused one heck of a commotion when you showed up at Canter Fort. I have to fight to keep it staffed, you know. There's an argument on the budget every year."
"What," Clover croaked.
Celestia's smile didn't waver, but it grew a lot tenser. "Oh, you know how it is. Some big villain of primal chaos takes over the world and wipes out the unicorn lineages at a single stroke, my sister and I fight him off, they crown us because somepony's got to raise the sun and moon, and after long enough you almost start to tolerate the taste of tea."
"What. What. What."
"So. Yeah. Busy few centuries. How about you?"
Clover curled up into a little ball, whimpering.
Celestia climbed out of her chausses, lifted the tiara from her brow, and climbed up onto the bed, curling around him and gently stroking his chest with a hoof. "Hey. It's alright. Everything's alright. I did it, Clover, I'm a Queen like I always dreamed. I've never been happier, and now I get to share it with you, too." She nuzzled at his cheek. "You can be one of my Prince Consorts. I promised you the best, didn't I?"
Clover fought off vertigo, his chest tightening, and forced himself to nod. "I…wait. 'One of'?"
Celestia's smile finally fell. "I'm a queen now, Clover," she murmured. "If I don't have a harem everypony starts to wonder."
Clover reached for his necklace.
Celestia's hoof shot out to stop him. "Clover," she murmured, voice as gentle as her grip was iron. "I'm sorry. I am. Really and truly sorry, and if I'd known three hundred years ago you weren't dead I would have done things very differently. But…can't you be happy for me, at least? Stay one day. Just one day. I'll show you around the castle. Tomorrow's the Summer Sun celebration. They made me a holiday, Clover. I raise the sun for the longest day of the year, and you can hear the cheers from the far side of the Everfree."
Clover looked away, so she wouldn't see the tears brimming in his eyes. "One day," he mumbled. "I can do that."
Their make-up sex was hesitant and cathartic. She held him, afterward, until his tears were spent.
As Clover was following Celestia around the castle afterward, taking in the bizarre extravagance and the strange clothing and the portraits of a thousand unfamiliar faces as Celestia talked animatedly about her life, he thought he caught a glimpse of motion in the shadows. He turned his head, and his stomach leapt inside his ribs.
It looked like Luna, but it was dark—too dark—and a murderous fury roiled in its eyes.
He glanced at Celestia, to see if she'd seen it too, but when he turned his head back to the shadows the figure was gone.
The sun didn't rise the next morning. Instead, screams and distant rumbles heralded the dawn.
Explosions rocked the castle as Clover galloped through the unfamiliar halls. "Throne room!" he screamed in the face of a stampeding noble, and managed to collar the stallion long enough to get pointed in the right direction. But when he reached it, the room was empty, and a gaping hole yawned in the back wall behind the shattered throne. The hole had passed neatly between two circular wall-mounts, each containing three large brightly-colored gemstones, and for a moment he couldn't help but think that if Celestia had bucked in this room's door she would have destroyed some lovely display pieces.
He was standing there, wondering what to do next, when the ceiling caved in with a terrific roar. Debris flew past him, one stone winging him on the side of the head, and when his vision cleared he saw a white winged form struggling to its hooves from a new crater in the center of the room.
Celestia! But no sooner had Clover shook off his haze and started galloping forward than she glanced up and flung herself toward the shattered throne. In less than an eye-blink, a dark meteor hurtled through the hole in the roof, and another boom shook him off his hooves. As his body tumbled to a stop, a jet-black pony-shaped demon stood from the central crater, a sharp and sickly night flowing from its body to pool menacingly into the shadows.
"No more boasts, sister?" it purred, its back to him as it crouched to face Celestia. "No more pleas? Will you stop fleeing at last, and face your doom?"
Clover struggled to stand in silence, heart hammering. Celestia, bleeding in several places, lurched to her hooves as well.
Then their eyes met.
Celestia's eyes widened.
In an instant, the demon had spun to face him, hissing. Clover choked off a gasp, scrambling backward on leaden legs as the thing-that-was-once-Luna flowed forward on tendrils of night. Cruel laughter rolled like thunder from a distant storm. "Isn't this precious," it said, and a dozen dark auras shimmered in midair, resolving into spearlike slivers of moonlight. "So Star Swirl thought to meddle even in this, did he? So sad for you, little time-slipping hero. Coming all this way just to feed the shadows with your blood."
Clover's hoof slipped on a loose stone. He crumpled to the floor, the demon looming over him.
"Did you truly think you could foil prophecy? Doomed to fail her in her time of need?" It laughed, and the spears' wicked points gleamed as they swiveled to face his heart. The darkness around him grew teeth and swirled aggressively inward, nipping at his legs and back, instantly numbing everything it touched.
Out of the corner of his eye, Clover saw Celestia's horn stutter to life. The gems in the wall displays began to glow with uncertain light—too little, too late, to help him.
"Goodbye, Clover the Clever," the demon whispered as its horn sparked to life.
So did his.
And the triangle flipped.
The throne room was a dark cavern around a small central ring of light. No mage-lights shone on the walls, and what looked like a heap of rubble had been stacked in front of the hole in the back wall. The scent of decay registered in the back of Clover's mind.
At first he thought the room was empty. But then he saw her: A pale form huddled in the center of the crater. What at first looked like a mound of pebbles was a sprawled wing, white turned grey with a layer of dust. Her once-sleek barrel was emaciated, rising and falling in barely perceptible waves.
He staggered to his hooves, shaking off the demon's numbness, and croaked, "Celestia?"
And she turned to him, eyes red and raw, face gaunt, eyes empty.
Realization hit.
Alone, Clover thought, and broken-hearted.
He stumbled forward, levitating his necklace from his chest, then sharply tugging it forward. The chain snapped, and he lowered it to the floor, propping the circle upright in a crack in the marble.
Celestia's eyes widened, and she lifted her head, sending dust eddying across the floor. "Clover?" she whispered through a raw throat.
His hoof came down on the fragile circle of gold. Sparks skittered out from the necklace as Star Swirl's spell discharged.
"Right here when I'm needed most," he whispered, and kissed her nose.