The draconequuses have always been feared and hated by the civilized creatures of the world. Naturally skilled at magic and with a penchant for mischief, they have long been a thorn in the sides of many and something to be detested.
Meet Cantrip, a young female draconequus and one of the last of her kind. For fourteen years she has lived in hiding and fear for when the ponies and griffons would come to take her too. Just another brutish creature to be wiped out.
But she won't go quietly, and what someponies might not know is that monsters aren't merely born.
They're made.
Note: This is technically an alternate universe, though it was intentionally written to mesh with the canon universe as seamlessly as possible. It shouldn't matter much.
Chapters (14)
This story is further proof OBAMA hates the elderly. The Dreqoniquisssses were obvious analgies to Social Healthcare Reform. The griffons were a metaphor for Wall St. plz rply if you disagree, I want to shout at you lots.
2978347
no you republinazi its proof ROMNEY wants to eat your babies. you should delete this comment, Telgin. I know the true meaning of this story.
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2978347
Americans, everypony! They're idiots, and I am ashamed to be considered one.
About the actual story itself, I enjoyed this chapter! You have a pretty good writing style, which is odd because I usually dislike First Person POV stories. I'll keep my eye on this, and keep it up!
2978347
I like waffles.
2978539
That rustles my jimmies.
My PATRIOTIC DEMOCRATIC JIMMIES. You are obviously a mutant commy traitor who wants to pollute our drinking water with FLUORIDE. COME ON, REPUBLINAZI.
WITH OUR POWERS COMBINED, WE ARE... CAPTAIN REPUBLICRAT!
2978539
Thanks for an on topic comment.
It's funny, I hadn't really considered first person to be a potential turn off, but now I could see that. This is actually the first time I've tried first person in a long time, so we'll see how it goes.
Anyway, glad you enjoyed it!
oooh this looks like it gonna be good.
*looks at comments*
........lol, wut?
Shit hit the fan.....again.
3613876
Don't ask
And here we go...
i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000054157095-4ql1so-original.jpg?d53bf9f
She's not completely lost to madness, it seems....
Nice lil revelation chapter. Keep up the good work!
4009326
Thanks! Believe it or not, this is intended to be the final chapter. I'm having some serious reservations about posting the epilogue that I'd intended to because I think it detracts from the ending as it is.
Possible spoilers below if by some freak chance you play Dwarf Fortress and read the community games section of their forum often!
If it seems odd to end it where it is, well... you're probably right. The truth is that as I mention in the story description, this is actually set in an alternate universe and tied directly to this role playing / game thread: Dusk Fields (or see the incomplete, as of this writing, FiMFiction transcription here).
The epilogue was intended to help bridge the two stories together a lot and explain a little on what happened next, but it feels to me like it totally derails the already shaky plot unless you knew about Dusk Fields and does way too much telling rather than showing. I've come to rather like this being stand alone and plausibly being set in the normal Equestria.
So as it stands, I'm currently reconsidering how to end it. I'm probably going to upload an epilogue of some kind, but just what it goes into I'm not sure yet. Hopefully it will be halfway decent, whatever it ends up being.
wow. really good fic... loved the entire thing. though i must note that i didn't realize that cantrip was a female until the point of which she said she was going to be a mother. you may want to consider that.
Edit: well apparently i didn't read the description...
4010970
Glad you liked it! Interesting that you pointed out that it wasn't obvious what her gender was until that point. While it was in the description, it does trouble me a bit to know that it was possible to make that mistake... A bit late to do anything about it now I suppose.
Oh well, I hope you enjoy the epilogue too when I get it up. I'll post something, since I feel the ending really needs at least a little more to it.
i believe there is enough potential for a sequel. you can send cantrip to equestria and have her meet discord. the discord from the show...
your choice of course
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It's certainly an interesting idea, but for the foreseeable future I don't think I'll have the time or energy to write anything else directly related to this story. There's still Duskfields like I linked in the epilogue and comments here if you're interested in the 'canonical' sequel to it. However, having said that, here's something to think on...
Spoilers for anyone who hasn't read the story!
In my mind, since this was technically an alternative universe, Antic was Discord. Through the various events of the story, the surviving siblings all turned out to become extremely powerful draconequuses with various levels of sanity and hatred for the ponies. That was largely because of spur of the moment decisions while writing Duskfields that I had to live up to, but I kind of managed to make it work out in the story.
Anyway, Antic was killed early on in the story, but had he survived and one of the others died in his place (particularly Revelry), he would likely have gone on to slowly lose his mind and become a trickster with a very strange relationship with the ponies. He obviously wanted to be friends with them early on, and that could become twisted into what we see in Discord. He was good with illusion magic, so using it to change his appearance to have chimeric body parts isn't out of the question. In Duskfields, Entropy (Cantrip) used illusion magic to make herself appear larger and more intimidating to the ponies in a similar vein.
So in short... it's not something I think I'll ever explore, but it's something to think about!
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like i said. your choice.
but i must say... if you immagined antic as discord... why'd he have to die first? do you have something against discord?
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Heh, nope, it was again all related to the fact that this was a prequel to Duskfields. In Duskfields I kicked around several concepts for the draconequus that the PCs would face and ended up on using a draconequus lich. That became Entropy and the discarded ideas became her siblings, and I arbitrarily decided one was dead because I thought that was more interesting.
Anyway, when it came time to write this I fleshed out the siblings a lot more, including the dead one. That was when I got the idea that Antic might have been Discord. The idea being that since it was an alternate universe where Discord and the other canon characters didn't exist (this was largely because Dwarf Fortress can't really emulate the cartoon canon), it begged the question of where those canon characters were. Discord didn't exist, but why not? Well, if Cantrip and her siblings became powerful draconequuses, it would make some sense that Discord might have been related to her otherwise. Antic was dead, and Discord didn't exist. It just simplified things.
Remember though that this isn't canon and isn't really canon even to the story. It was just a thing I kicked around as a joke idea.
And Discord is one of my favorite characters. He inspired the whole story indirectly after all.
.....Holy fucking asscrackers.
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I'll take that as a good thing since you faved the story.
4041627 I've shared this with as many people as possible so far. This is CRIMINALLY underappreciated.
4041646
Thanks! Not going to lie, that made my day. It made those last few chapters that took so much forced effort to work on totally worth it. A labor of love and all of that, but still...
4041672 I know what you mean. I'm gonna see if I can convince rainbowbob to feature this on his blog, get it seen by a few thousand more.
Wonderful story, excellent writing. The ending is very touching and fitting; a clan of multiple species living in harmony rising from the ashes of all that hatred? Delightful.
Celestia must be green with envy, given that her ponies are xenophobic to the point of being scared out of their wits by something as simple as a zebra.
And yes, this damn well does deserve more attention.
4056348
Thanks! I'm glad to hear someone else was satisfied with the ending. Again, hearing that makes it completely worth the effort.
What in the hell is this comment section?
Anyway, this looks like an interesting read. It'll be neat to read from the perspective of people who are trapped being perceived as monsters. On a "kill on sight" basis, no less.
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I hope you enjoy it, but I'll caution that this was written a very long time ago during an edgier phase of my writing, and it may be a bit difficult to really reconcile with the vanilla MLP setting. I think I noted it somewhere, but this is based off of and something of a prequel to a community fort in Dwarf Fortress of all things.
Still, the story largely stands for itself if you can work past that and the depressing tone. I wouldn't blame anyone for backing out of reading it for many reasons.
It's a shame the draconequus didn't/couldn't ally with the thestrals. Outcasts together strong.
I assume this story takes place at some point long before the events of FiM, possibly during Nightmare Moon's banishment.
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If I had to pick a time in the canon FiM setting, that's probably where I'd put it, yes. When I wrote it, I think the cartoon was only up to season 2 or 3, so there was quite little information to work with, even though as far as I remember we never learned anything else canonical about draconequuses from the cartoon. I think the comics had something, but I didn't read those issues.
Anyway, out of necessity I wrote this as an alternate canon, even though it mostly fits in the gaps of the FiM canon. I envisioned that Discord was something like the equivalent of an alicorn among the draconequuses, and that the ordinary ones were like Cantrip and her siblings here. Magical and chimeric creatures, but with power only roughly equal to a unicorns, and that unlike Discord they had the same body parts: a serpentine draconic body, bat-like wings, hooves, and maned tails.
I found the author's notes I had at the very end of the epilogue, which I don't suggest jumping to without massive spoilers due to an image, but to summarize it, this was written as a prequel to a different RP-like setting I hosted once. That again mostly fit into the FiM canon, but took some liberties and the fact that this story had to line up with it causes some odd story twists and beats that may not make the most sense at first.
After skimming the chapters ahead, I'm reminded that this was written during a similar time to the early parts of Longtalons and I can see the similarities in hindsight. I was still hammering the "make characters sad" button as a cheap way to get drama, though this is worse than Longtalons, so as I said, no hard feelings if you don't make it through it.
Whoops. Cantrip accidentally made herself into a Lich... and turned her kids into extra lives.
Ida can't catch a break in any reality, can she?
All hail Lich Queen Entropy!
Well, this ending certainly took a turn. Not in a bad way, just a surprising one. I enjoyed it!
I also take back what I said about her aligning with the bat ponies. Subterranean real estate is something the light-sensitive creatures would fiercely defend, and they'd see Entropy's undead kingdom as a threat and rival.
11801124
A wise assessment. Entropy was mostly content to sit in her newly carved out space to make a safe haven for herself and her subjects, but peace couldn't last in a world like this. She had twisted but good intentions by that point, and it could never end well if she came into conflict with outsiders.
And I'm glad you read the story, bumpy as it is.