The Lost Equestria

by RubySpinel

Chapter 5

The path to the castle was long, so long that I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. Princess Celestia said little the whole way, she just kept looking back at me. Maybe she was worried I would fall out of the carriage.

I could see the castle on a hillside long before we arrived. The air got colder as we climbed the winding path up the hills.

No one greeted us at the castle entrance. Princess Celestia stepped out of the carriage and I followed.

“It’s been unnecessary to keep the staff as full as it once was,” Princess Celestia explained. “Of course, with more visitors coming, I’ll personally see to filling out our ranks.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant, but there were more pressing matters. “Where is my ship?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to rest, maybe have something to eat? The chef here isn’t Blueberry, but he’s quite good.”

“No, I just want to see my ship.” I insisted.

“Yes, of course.” I followed her through the halls of the castle, which were richly decorated with wall hangings and abstract art. There were stained-glass windows, done in the old handmade style.

She paused by a non-descript door to use a keypad—it was so out of place that I couldn’t comprehend it for a minute. I had seen no indications that the creatures possessed any electronic or computer technology at all, and here this creature was using a keypad—with a hoof, no less.

“Are you alright?” She asked. The door was already unlocked, and she was holding it open, waiting.

I descended the narrow stairwell behind the door, following the Princess. It was the standard grey paneling of access tubes that were everywhere on ships. The stairwell was obviously not meant for a creature of Celestia’s height. She had her head low and stepped carefully down the stairs.

We came to another door with another keypad. She pressed the combination and the door slid open. She ducked through the doorway and I followed.

It was a spaceport. It looked almost like every other spaceport I’d ever been in, but completely empty. Except for a ship whose model I’d never seen before, and my own ship.

Aside from the earlier damage it looked unharmed. It even had some of the leaves and dirt still stuck to it. I ran to it, pressing my cheek to the hull. I was so happy I didn’t care how stupid I looked hugging a ship.

I pulled on my helmet and climbed into the cockpit. There was a message.

There was a message!

There was a rescue ship coming for me. It was an Alliance troop transport that would take me back to the Hartwell spaceport. It would arrive in 50 standard hours. Counting from when the message arrived, it was more like 20 standard hours. I was lucky it was so close to where I’d made my initial jump. I was also incredibly lucky that it was even interested in picking me up.

I sent a reply message. Now all I had to do was wait for them to come. I took my helmet off and sighed in relief.

“We don’t have a mechanic at the moment, so I’m afraid that there’s not much we can do for your ship.” Princess Celestia stood just below the height of the wing and could look almost directly into the cockpit. It was a little unsettling.

“There’s a ship coming for me.” I was uncomfortable telling her this, even though it was clear I wasn’t going to contaminate her.

“Oh, excellent. Is Mr. Johnson going to be on the ship?”

“No. I don’t know a Mr. Johnson.”

She tilted her head, considering. “I suppose it has been a long time.” She sounded very uncertain.

The humans that were here before probably abandoned the planet if they didn’t find any resources worth exploiting, if they even spent the time to do the surveys.

I climbed out of the cockpit, watching Celestia watch me.

“But the time doesn’t matter, right?”

“NOOO!”

I turned towards the scream and saw a creature like a dark, smaller Celestia standing at the door to the port.

It charged at me so fast I couldn’t get away. I backed up against the ship. It was in my face, with her long, sharp spike hovering between my eyes. It bared its teeth. I was going to be impaled.

“No! NO!” It screamed at me.

“Luna, don’t--”

“No!” It whipped its head towards Celestia so fast that the spike nicked my forehead. “It doesn’t belong here! They abandoned us! They left us here all alone! We should just kill this one before anypony else sees it.”

“Luna, I know you’re upset, but it’s all going to be alright now. The humans are coming back, and we have to be there for them.”

“We don’t need them! We’re so much better off than we ever were before. I will not go back to groveling at their feet like a stupid pet!” It turned back to me, brandishing the spike again. “Are you going to enslave us again, human? Are you going to make us worship the ground you walk on, only to leave us again when we become too much of a financial burden?”

“I don’t…” I swallowed and tried to sound as convincing as I could, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t want to enslave you.”

“Luna, please. We weren’t slaves, you know we weren’t. You know that the love you had for Ms. Patel was--”

“No! Don’t you ever bring up that name!” Luna lunged at Celestia with its spike, but Celestia countered with her own.

I looked for a way to escape or hide. I could get in my ship and close the canopy, but if the creatures could operate a keypad they could definitely pop the latch. I could make a run for the door, but Luna could definitely outrun me. The only plan I had was to slowly inch away and hope that Luna was too occupied to notice me.

“Open your eyes, Celestia! We’ve lived far too long in the shadow of the humans. It’s better if…” it sniffled and I could see tears forming in its eyes. “…If we just forget about them. If we kill this one and pretend like it was never here. They’re only going to disappoint us again.” It sniffled again and the tears started. “We waited so long, Celestia.” It dropped its head, shaking with tears. Celestia put her head against Luna’s.

“It’s alright. It’s alright. It won’t be like last time.”

It stepped away from Celestia. “It better not be.” It turned towards me, lowering its head threateningly. “Will it?”

“No.” I said, but I honestly had no idea. Indentured races still existed, but you didn’t fill an entire planet with indentured creatures. You engineered them on-site in only the amount you needed. And you never, ever culled them from existing species. That was just wrong.

Luna left the port slowly, keeping an eye on me until passing through the door back into the castle.

“I’m so sorry about that.” Celestia apologized. “It’s just been such a long time, and she spent a long time looking for you after you left.”

“How long?”

She thought for a moment. “Oh, it’s probably been close to a thousand years.”

“A thousand years?!” The number was staggering. It had to be a mistake. She had to be using a different measurement.

“It wasn’t all at once, though. She’d leave for 50 or 60 years at a time.”

“A thousand Tiffer-Standard years?” I asked again. She had to be confused.

“A thousand Earth years. I don’t know of ‘Tiffer-Standard’.”

Likewise, I’d never heard of an Earth year, or knew how long it would be. It was still impossible. Nothing lived for a thousand years.

“You waited for a thousand years?”

“Of course. Mr. Johnson said that humans would return after the war, and that we should wait and maintain until you returned.”

“What war?”

“Surely you know?” She said it like I was playing dumb. When I shook my head, she elaborated. “With the Esses. They attacked Vox when they wouldn’t convert to their religion. The last I heard was that the humans had lost Vox and were mounting an invasion force to recapture it.”

I had never heard of this war, or the planet Vox. It was difficult to accept that she might be telling the truth and had really live a thousand years.

“But that’s all over with, right? You’ve won the war?”

“I don’t know what happened. I’ve never heard of this.”

She was shocked. “No, you have to know. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Because the war is over, and humans are coming back.”

“No, I told you that I’m not supposed to be here. My ship crashed by accident and I didn’t even know that humans had ever been on this planet. I’m sorry.”

“No. No. You must be confused. The war is over, so you came here to re-open us. You must’ve just forgotten.” She was sounding a little hysterical now and I considered just going along with her story before she took Luna’s advice.

“The war…it probably happened before I was born. And I was never really good with history.”

“Yes. That must be it. And, oh, I’ve forgotten how tired you must be. Let me show you to your room. We can talk all about the re-opening once you’ve had some time to rest.”

“Uh, right.” It was worth it to just play along with her. In twenty hours I would be gone.

She led me back up the stairs, looking back at me a few times despite the cramped space.

There was a curious creature covered in metal plates waiting in the hallway. It made a strangles screaming sound before taking off in the other direction.

“They will all get used to humans soon enough.” Celestia reassured me as she led me through the castle hallways.

We stopped in front of a door. “Please, make yourself at home. I’ll put someone outside your door if you need anything.”

“Thanks.”

She waited for me to go in, like she was worried I would bolt as soon as she turned away. I went in and shut the door behind me. I waited for the sound of her footsteps to go away.

The room was lavishly decorated, like a high-end hotel or spa. There wasn’t a bed or even a pillow bed like at Fluttershy’s, but there was a couch. I settled down on it, tucking a pillow under my head.

In twenty hours I would be rescued.

Comments

[Detective Chmilewsky]

I have been waiting for an update for this story for so long. Lookning great so far!

[Shader]

Ohh, now we're getting to the meat of the story!

[Balkanboy]

Celestia becoming going slightly insane? I like it.

[Zanzibar]

Spoilers below.

Hokeydokey. Time for some comments! Warnings about the coming Wall Of Text.

Now, this sounds like a very nice idea for a story all in all, but I have some concerns about the pacing. For pretty much all of these chapters it feels like you're trying to rush through events, it's like you're trying to go towards one big revelation after the other, but giving little to no time to make the reader familiar with the environment and the characters.
I try to rationalize this as being because of your chosen perspective. With the first person perspective we only get to see what your human sees and experiences, but even then it never carries as much impact as it could have done. I acknowledge that your main character is probably stressed right now, but even then he seems to be spectacularly good at not really looking at anything. Yeah, we as the reader already know what the mane six looks like, we know everything about their world. But it would have been nice to see how your character experiences the world as well. Describe what he sees from his point of view, show us his thoughts and feelings a bit more thoroughly. I know nothing about his world for the matter, I'm entirely unfamiliar with the universe you're basing the crossover on, so it'd be nice to see him making comparisons to "conventional" aliens. Are aliens where he come from generally humanish? If so, shouldn't he be reacting with more surprise at finding non-humanish aliens? Even if aliens around him usually are weird, it's human nature to compare the unknown with what is known before. Throw in some hints as to the world he comes from as well. A good crossover takes every opportunity to merge the worlds, but right now I know nothing of his. So far, you haven't even described how his ship looks like, yet the past few chapters it has had a pretty big part of the story.

I believe I can condense that wall of text into: You need more descriptions. But that's a bit crude. What you have is well written, but it seems singularly focused on ploughing ahead through events, giving no time at all to build the world around it.

Characterization is also a big point in a story, and you're building up a decent basis for your human. He does come off a bit single minded however. Sure, he's stressed out and probably suffers from some kind of trauma and pain from the crash, but he still seems to act mostly like an inconsiderate rear end. Some more hints as to Why he acts this way would be nice. Is he some kind of space loner? That's been the only reasonable explanation I have found, considering he had never even been on a planet before. (Even if there is a policy regarding not interfering with 'uneducated races' that doesn't mean you have to be rude about it. And so far, that's been his modus operandi.)

Now, about the equestrians. So far, I haven't been terribly impressed with how you're portraying Celestia, Luna and Twilight. Starting with Twilight: She's a highly intelligent unicorn, and yet she asks your human "What's a ship?". Seriously, that's an unbelievably stupid question. It could probably be changed pretty easily though. Instead of making her seem like a foal who don't know what a ship is, she ought to just be surprised that he would call his metal contraption a "ship". Of course, after this I can't see how she'd stumble around the concept of a spaceship for very long. She already have the facts and needs to just connect the dots, and Twilight is very good at doing that. (Also. When she sees that Pinkie is injured Twilight... Pokes at her? Seriously?)
Celestia doesn't really feel believable either. The only thing I could think would rationalize her behaviour through this fic, is if she has been created with a built in reverence for humans. But even then, Luna seems to be rather contrary to that. Celestia has had more than 1000 confirmed years of taking care of an entire kingdom. Even if it is a good one, I can't imagine that she'd ever act so hurriedly as she's shown to do here, especially not if one of her subjects have been injured. (Unless she was actually fearful of humans, but that doesn't seem to be how you have portrayed her either.)
Also, is this just how the human interprets it, or are Luna and Celestia seriously pointing their horns at each other in a charging motion? Yeah, they showed Twilight and Nightmare Moon do that in the first episodes, but even there Nightmare Moon was incredulous at Twilights attempt and seemed to follow along just because she thought it was a joke. This really made your scenes attempt at being serious seem rather odd. A subtle build-up of magic in their horns and the humans bafflement at the tension and meaning of it could have built a better foundation for that scene.

Anyway, I have rambled on way more than I had intended. I could probably go on a bit on more "technical" parts as well, such as how language evolves on its own and how the equestrian version of common would likely be almost incomprehensible to your character as well, but no matter. Maybe some other time :).

Have fun with your story!

Does our pilot traveled in the past? Would explain a lot. Sort of anyway, i sense dimensional mess here. Occam's razor? HA!

[Meta Knight]

I like where this is going.

[Minitheif]

What is this a crossover with?

[RubySpinel]

19384

It's not a crossover, although a lot of the names and places are pulled from random sources so that I wouldn't dwell too long on finding a name and not writing.

19251

Thanks you for your detailed review.

I know that the story is rather rushed. There are several factors at play here, which doesn't necessarily excuse the fact, but it's hard to describe the why without long chapter notes. (I also feel that they'd get ignored anyway.)

First, aside from the first few chapters, it's been released a chapter at a time. I feel that if my story doesn't have things happening in it every chapter, then people might get bored. There's also that I might get bored with the story, which happens a lot. It's always "Okay, we just have to get through the romantic tension scenes, then we can go write the epic dragon warriors vs. wizards battle."

Second (related to the first), is that I never intended for this to be a long story. I'd love to go back when it's finished and re-write it into the genre-crushing epic I imagined it to be, but if I don't get this to happen first, then I'm just not going to go back.

Also, you're totally right about the descriptions, I need much, much more of them.

About the language: that was a total screw-up. I always intended that the ponies would speak Common and that the human would understand them without much of a problem. Somewhere around the middle of writing Chapter 3 I was like "Oh, snap. I totally forgot about how language changes over time!" Then, I figured I'd just go up in my Word file and work around it until it made sense, before realizing that Chapter 1 and 2 were already published and had been for a while.

The ret-con answer is this: Common is an unchanging language. If you've got hundreds or potentially thousands of worlds that need to communicate then you need a common language. Universal translators are not only the easy way out: they just just don't make any sense. Each space-faring species would have evolved language in its own way in a unique situation, which means that there would be plenty of concepts that could just not translate.

Also, if a species or group drops out of contact with the rest of the universe for a while (like with Equestria), then you don't have to re-learn an entire language to communicate. Language drifts anyway, so when you're away from your home group (like in real life, when you go to college or camp or something else long-term) your language shifts and melds with that of the new group and situation. Something like that couldn't be handled on a large scale, so the creation of a common, unchanging language would be necessary.

The Celestia and Luna things are planning to be addressed in-story, so hopefully it will make sense. If not, then please tell me.

I'll try to write a tied-in blog post about the particular world and things (and the sources of all of the random names), when the story is finished.

[RubySpinel]

Well, nuts. I had my tags wrong. That's why everyone thought it was a crossover.

[Loyal2Luna]

I have a BAAAADDDDD Feeling about this.

[DezzarTac]

great, another story that I burned through in an hour or less, btw, the pace is too fast, this story reminds me of Halo and gmod spacebuild, I hope you update fast, and last and least, give more details on the ship!