Long ago, before the wonderful world called Equus, there was everything, and so there was nothing. The world was full of gods and goddesses. No one died, and so no one lived. There were no sun and moon, but a single, unmoving light in the sky that made the whole world shine like burning copper. That was how things had always been, and anything else was unthinkable. But for one Lady Goddess and her Five Daughters, it was not enough. The Lady had had a dream; the First Dream. She woke from her dream and saw the sad, unending state of the world around her, and gathered her daughters to help her change it. Together they built the First Clock. The other gods and goddesses were amazed, as for the first time, the passage of one moment to another could be measured. Thus, change was introduced to the world; the idea that something could be one way at one time and another at the next. The Lady and her daughters didn’t stop there. Working together, they split the great light in the sky into two, a greater and a lesser, and set them to move across the sky in time with the Clock. From that moment on, nothing was ever the same again. The Lady’s daughters led the people in planting trees around the clock, squeezing water from the sky to nourish them, and creating many wondrous things with their magic. For the first time, the people of the world were happy. But the nature of change is in endings as well as beginnings, and one cannot know joy without knowing sorrow. The Lady died, just as the world she named Equus was becoming more wonderful than ever before or since, and her daughters knew the time of gods and goddesses was over. They grieved for their mother, and counseled together on what they should do next. Some felt guilt for introducing the change that caused their mother to go away. Some were sure that their mother’s decision to introduce change was right. One still hoped her mother would change back. They all agreed that something must be done, before this most horrible change claimed any more of their friends. But what? The hopeful daughter, the meekest of all, finally spoke up. She said that life was like the two lights they had set in the sky. Before splitting the great light their mother had tried to move it on its own, but found it could not budge so long as it was alone. It had to be divided; two lights of opposite natures, forever in opposition, to chase each other endlessly and never meet, all the while measuring the passage of days. Just as the greater light must go away for a while, she said, our mother has left us. But we know nothing stays the same forever, and so we know that one day she must come back. Her sisters fell silent as they learned to feel hope for the first time. They swiftly agreed, then, that change in the world must never be allowed to cease. The Clock must be protected, lest the measurement fail and the world become stagnant once more. And so the Harmonious Clock was sealed away at the bottom of the world, until the day the Five Daughters meet their Mother once more. “The Harmonious Clock? You found it?” “So my children tell me, sir scholar,” the great Pegasus Lord Radiant Beam growled, scowling down at his two heirs seated beside him in the opulent parlor of his manor. The young stallion and mare didn’t appear troubled in the least; as far as Quiet Time had seen, scowling seemed to be their father’s neutral expression. “But that is why we have summoned you here from the North, to inquire in the mine and ascertain whether or not such an artifact is in my lands.” Quiet Time bit his lip and looked back down at the old storybook on the low table in front of him. In the schools he taught in in the North, the story of the Clock was regarded as an insubstantial myth to explain the movements of the sun and moon. There were many different versions of it; some had six daughters instead of five and some only had two, and for some reason in the far West it was told with two mothers. This particular copy was admittedly ancient and rich with detail and symbolism, but it didn’t make this claim any more credible. No true scholar of the North seriously believed the Clock actually existed. Still, Quiet thought, looking back at the grandfather clock on his hip, his Character Mark; there is something special about that story. “My daughter was very persistent about calling in a scholar. In fact, she recommended you specifically. She spoke at length of your authority on the subject,” the lord went on. Quiet looked quickly up at his new patron, then stole a glance at his daughter. Sky Light was smirking at him mischievously. “I was very impressed by your knowledge and abilities when we were students together. Perhaps you remember me?” Lord Beam raised an eyebrow over his daughter at her odd tone, and Quiet Time silently prayed to the goddesses that he wouldn’t blush. Sky Light’s younger brother, Ancillary, shook his head and shifted subtly to face away from his sister. Sky Light sat straighter on her couch. “Of course, I’ll be going with you to verify this for myself.” Lord Beam’s head whipped back around to face his daughter again. Quiet suspected that he and his host were equally startled by Sky Light’s declaration. Radiant Beam voiced no objection, however, and Sky Light met his ever-present scowl with a sweet smile. With a cough to clear his throat, Lord Beam turned back to Quiet Time. “Well, scholar? What say you?” Quiet took a moment to gather his thoughts, looking at the nobleman and his family sitting before him; Lord Beam in his glimmering golden breastplate, sitting more than a full head taller than his children; Ancillary, full-grown yet still smaller and more frail than his sister, with a Character Mark of a constellation on his dark coat and inquisitive eyes that made Quiet suspect this book about the Clock came from the boy’s own collection; and Sky Light, gold and white and draped in blue finery, lounging on her couch and fixing him with a lidded gaze. It’s not hard to tell why she wanted me to come, Quiet thought to himself. But what of this find? An underground forest at the bottom of a mine, and word of strange happenings in the skies above? Ancillary at least seems to think that points to the resting place of the Clock. And that, at least, is worth taking a look. “I’ll do it,” he said with a small smile and bright eyes. “It ain’t natural. They were right to seal it up.” Quiet Time felt like pounding his head on the counter, or pounding down another drink. One of those proved more appealing than the other, and he motioned to the unicorn behind the bar who was the source of his early headache. She paused on her way to the other end of the counter, smirked, and passed him an entire pitcher in a dark red glow. “Natural or not, it’s been ordered unsealed.” Sky Light was sitting next to him at the bar, and was almost as frustrated. “These decisions are your lord’s to make, not yours.” “All I’m saying is it was the right one. Y’all didn’t see the smoke in the sky like we did. Came right out of nowhere, at just the same time they broke through that wall and found those trees. It got to where it was casting shadows on the ground, and folks swear they heard growling coming from the thick of it before they got wise and sealed the hole back up. You watch; you open up that cave again and the smoke’ll be back, thicker than ever. We’ll all be choked out or eaten up or goddesses-know-what before you so much as hear ticking from any dratted clock. Not that anyone has the right to meddle with such things anyway, on principle.” “Bah, you don’t really care about that, Song,” came a voice from behind, triggering a chorus of chuckles from the sparse, dirty crowd in the tavern. Quiet looked over his shoulder to see a dark pegasus mare darkened further by soot, with her legs on a table, grinning at the barmaid. “The sun being drowned out by sky monsters is just more fun to complain about than taxes. Or am I not supposed to say that in front of nobility? Oops.” She turned her grin to Sky Light, who only lifted her lip a smidge and looked down her nose at the mare. “Heck, I’ll take you down to the breach if you’re really wanting to go. Open it up for you, too. Name’s Shady Patch. My brother and I’ll make sure you come outta there as clean and perfect as when you went in. Hey, Presto! Come— The heck d’you think you’re doing?” Quiet followed Shady Patch’s livid glare to another corner of the room, where a young unicorn just a shade lighter than his sister was looking up in surprise from some odd wooden baubles on a table, across from a hunched, suddenly very grumpy-looking brown Earth Pony stallion. Shady Patch swung her legs off the table and stood up. “You oughta know better than to play anything against old Sawdust! And you!” The stallion turned away and frowned deeper. “You oughta know better than to try anything like that with kin o’mine! You put those dirty dice away and pray you don’t have anything on you that’d more rightly be in my brother’s bag instead of yours!” “I told you to wait and try him when she’s not in the same room, Sawdust,” the barmaid said with a helpless smirk. “Shut up, Song,” said Shady Patch, walking briskly to her terrified brother. “You’re encouraging both of them. Maybe we oughtn’t to come here anymore. Waste enough of our money the honest way without losing it at dice. Come on, kid. We’re leaving.” Quiet exchanged a glance with Sky Light next to him. “Are you still going to take us through the mine?” she asked, leaning back to see past Quiet. “Yeah, yeah. Just give us an hour to gather up what we need, and we’ll meet you back here. And I expect to be well paid!” “Let ‘er rip, kid!” Quiet Time squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears tighter as Shady Patch’s silent brother, Star Presto, was knocked back on his rear by the purple blast that came from his horn. A rush of dust swept up through the rocky tunnel toward them, and Quiet felt a surge of adrenaline as a shower of loose pebbles rained down on his head for a moment. Quiet heard coughing from multiple throats, and then the angry voice of Sky Light through the haze. “If you—” Sky Light was suddenly cut off as a blast of warm air came from the same direction as the dust, flushing it all away and leaving the tunnel clear once more. Quiet listened as the air wave howled through the rest of the mine behind them. “What was that?” Sky Light asked, all urgency gone from her voice. “Couldn’t say for certain,” Shady Patch answered, righting the lantern that had been knocked over. “You usually get a little gust when you break into a cave, but never anything like that. I think I remember one of the other guys saying something like this happened the first time they opened this up. Kinda strange that it happened again after only a week or two being sealed, for how big this cave’s supposed to be. We all still here? No one got blown away or eaten by escaping sky monsters? How about you, quiet guy?” “Here,” Quiet answered. “Woah.” Quiet Time, Sky Light, and Shady Patch all turned to see Star Presto framed in the dark hole he had made at the end of the tunnel. Quiet stepped up to join him. “Woah.” To Quiet Time’s eyes, he had stepped out of the mine and into an open valley at nighttime. He knew he hadn’t, though, because it had only been late afternoon when they entered an hour ago, and there was no way the sun had gone down already at this time of year. Above him was a field of stars, though there were no constellations he recognized. The backdrop they were set in seemed darker than a natural night sky. He couldn’t see a moon anywhere. What little light there was seemed to come from a layer of odd smoke that floated at about his eye level, and stretched off into the distance. The smoke appeared to give off its own gentle light, which allowed Quiet Time to see what sat below the smoke. As his eyes adjusted and he squinted to see more clearly, Quiet gasped. The valley floor was a tangled mess of… things. He supposed they must have been trees, but they were like no trees he had ever heard of. These ones grew almost on top of each other, at every angle imaginable. They twisted and curved and turned in odd directions. The canopies were draped across the branches in a wet sort of way, and he couldn’t tell what sort belonged to which tree. Some seemed to have hanging strings and ropes instead of proper leaves. The trees all grew so close together that Quiet had no idea what was underneath their canopies. The air in the valley was absolutely still and quite warm, but he thought he saw faint movement in the distant darkness. Quiet was startled from his reverence by the whisper of Sky Light next to him. “Incredible. Do you think it could really be the Sealed Forest?” “Who can say?” he whispered back. A noise from the tunnel behind him caught Quiet’s ear, and he looked back. He thought he could feel a cool breeze coming from the mine that he hadn’t felt before. He stepped away from his patron and his guides, and strained to make out the faint sounds. Quiet thought he could hear a noise like a pony exhaling heavily, and as he listened closer, he also heard echoes of what sounded like shouting. “Miss Patch?” Shady snorted. “Wasn’t quite expecting to be called ‘Miss’ at a time like this. You’re spoiling the moment, quiet guy. What’s up?” “Listen!” Shady Patch cocked an eyebrow, then an ear towards the tunnel. Both sounds had gotten more noticeable. The first now sounded like an entire crowd blowing to cool their soup, and the second was definitely loud voices. They sounded frightened. “Miss Patch?” Shady Patch shushed him, narrowing her eyes in concentration. “Wait here!” she said to the group after a moment, then she flapped her wings and flew back into the tunnel and left the three of them alone on the empty slope, under the strange stars. Quiet Time exchanged nervous glances with Sky Light and even Star Presto as the noise continued to increase in volume, faster and faster. The breathing had become a high roar, and the voices had become less frequent. Finally, they heard the voice of Shady Patch from a distance. “There it is! Presto! Get them away from the tunnel, fast!” They didn’t need telling twice, and the three of them took off running down the slope. From the tunnel came a great wordless shout of multiple voices at once, and the ground began to rumble. As the shaking and noise reached its peak, the mouth of the tunnel erupted in a gout of brown water. It began to cascade down the hill, and the three stunned explorers below quickly realized they had evacuated in the wrong direction. Quiet Time turned and ran downhill for all he was worth, the terror of tripping up in the low light at the forefront of his mind. Beside him, Sky Light took to the air and came above him, grabbing him around his middle and picking him up off the ground. “Wait!” Quiet protested. “Presto!” Out of the black sky swooped Shady Patch, scooping up her poor brother just as the pounding flood crashed into the rocky slope he had just occupied. “Star! Block it!” Shady Patch shouted, turning back up the hill. Star Presto’s horn lit up as his sister carried him over the entrance to the mine, and a large portion of the hill above it collapsed, closing the tunnel once again. Small jets of brown water still shot out from between the rocks, but they slowly relaxed in pressure and became clearer in color until they became mere trickles, combining into a stream following in the wake of the flood. The majority of the water reached the treeline below, and a wave of motion spread through the treetops, accompanied by many rather ominous noises. Sky Light set Quiet down on a jutting rock, and went off to another part of the hillside. Quiet watched her go, and realized what she was doing. Two other figures were lying farther down the hill. One was deep red, and was lying flat and still. The other was brown, and was hunched over the red one and moving anxiously. Sky Light alighted next to them, and knelt down as well. They were joined by Shady Patch and Star Presto, and Quiet Time realized he was all alone on his rock. He jumped down and carefully made his way through the mud to the others. When he got to them, he found progress had been made with the motionless red figure, who he realized was Song, the barmaid from the tavern. Sky Light and Shady Patch were already questioning Sawdust, the other figure who had been trying to revive Song. “It’s gone, Patch. It’s all gone by now.” “Are you sure?” Shady Patch demanded. “You didn’t see it!” “You saw what came after us. It was even worse up above. Only a minute after the smoke came back, and water started falling from the sky. It was as if there was a whole lake up on top of the mountain, and something broke and sent the whole thing through town. Everything’s been washed off the cliffs by now. Some of us made it into the mines, and pegasi flew off with whoever they could carry.” Song coughed, still lying flat on her back. “Told you. Told you all.” Sky Light stepped forward. “Whatever happened out there, we’re not going back the way we came. Not anytime soon. We need to get moving.” “Moving?” Shady Patch asked incredulously. “Where? Into the creepy trees?” “It’s as good as anywhere else. If we can’t find another way out, we can at least find food and shelter.” “In those trees? I think we’d end up being the food. Besides, we know we need to go up. We should head higher up the slope and start digging at the cave wall. Presto can find his way to another mine shaft.” “More than likely to be flooded as well,” said Sawdust. “We’ll have no luck digging out. We’ll have to wait until it all drains away, assuming there’s an end to the sky water at all. Or we find another exit far away, where the flood can’t reach. The smoke didn’t cover the whole world, so far as I could tell.” “Besides,” coughed Song, “can’t dig very far without food and good drink. We’ll need that anyway.” “It’s settled,” Sky Light declared. “We’ll press on into the forest as soon as Song can travel. I have a feeling we’ll find everything we need here.” Shady Patch stepped close in front of her, leaning into her face. “What’s that supposed to mean, huh? You two seemed more excited than surprised to find a bunch of trees at the bottom of a mine. If you know what this place is, I want to hear it!” Sawdust stepped forward as well. “If they knew what this place was, they also knew what would happen to us when they opened it up!” “How dare you?” Sky Light hissed, stepping back. “We knew no more than you did! Lord Beam merely took an interest in the report of a strange cave you found, and sent us to explore it!” “I’ll bet he did,” said Song, sitting up. “And now, even when you’ve wiped out an entire village just by peeking, you still intend to go searching for whatever it is you hope to find here. Shouldn’t be surprised at what our benevolent pegasus overlords consider important.” “Enough!” The entire group turned in surprise to Quiet Time, whose face held a very impatient expression. “Are we going to go or not? I’m already getting thirsty.” Quiet Time stood in awe and total reverence. The cavernous room of opaque glass resounded with the sound that had led him in a haze from the entrance to the strange ruin: Ticking. Before him, carved of crystal more brilliant than any star, was a clock. It was three times his height, shaped to resemble a six-sided tree. Among the branches at the top of each side was a representation of a different goddess from the story; two for each tribe, a greater and lesser, with the greater unicorn the chief of them all. Each goddess had a hoof raised atop its own uniquely-colored gemstone. The Greater Unicorn faced him now, above the Clock’s face. Instead of hands, icons of the sun and moon chased each other around the circle on opposite sides, at a snail’s pace. Lower on the trunk of the tree, instead of a window revealing a pendulum, there were murals that told the clock’s story. Quiet Time had never been so excited in his life as when he had learned the true story. There had been two mothers, and six daughters. The mothers had died when a great black forest overthrew the world, and time had stopped. The forest burned under an unmoving sun, and the chief daughter failed to fix the world. So she constructed the clock, and gave herself to power it and the heavens along with it. Quiet Time felt tears in his eyes. He felt a sudden urge to show his new friends. As he turned away, he didn’t notice the gems begin to glow.