Two thousand years ago, the three suns of the Centauri system were locked in a struggle for the control of their world, Domhan; in the end, one was killed, one redeemed, and one sealed away forever. Two thousand years later, in the aftermath of Rainbow Dash's disastrous birthday party, a strange celestial visitor has come with some shocking news for Twilight Sparkle - she is the reincarnated soul of the star Alpha Centauri...and she's coming back immediately to resume her duties as co-Queen.
Rainbow Dash, struggling with the resurrected phantom of one of her past lives inadvertently released by the visitor, is nonetheless determined to rescue her friend, no matter the cost to herself - but what chance does one pony have against the might of a star? Entangled in the plans of a dangerous third party, she chases Twilight into another world filled with kelpies and wolves and terrifying remnants of the War of Nightmares, in the belief that she needs to be rescued...and that she even wants to come home again at all.
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Approved by Twilight's Library!
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I've been told it starts off slow but gets much better as it progresses. Enjoy!
Okay I like this story.
3344867
Glad to hear it!
Now this is an interesting concept
Very interesting intro.
If Alpha is Twilight or Rainbow Dash surely Beta would have found them if she's checking yearly... And surely Celestia would connect the dots between a lost star reincarnation and the conspicuously powerful/fast unicorn/pegasus.
Seriously man, this is really good.
3349444
The elapsed time between Alpha's initial reincarnation and the conspicuously powerful unicorn/conspicuously fast pegasus was over a thousand years - and not every powerful unicorn or exceptionally fast pegasus is the reincarnation of a star. Without anything further to go off of, I think she can be forgiven for missing or dismissing the signs of a reincarnation
On the yearly checking, there's some ideas I have on the magical signature thing that impact this I may or may not work in later, so I may as well explain here: the closer a reincarnated star's soul gets to returning to the heavens, the more distinct her magical signature becomes due to increasing magical strength. At first, in her first reincarnations, her signature was too weak to be detected by Beta, or too distorted - the imagery I used was of a cluster of sparks on the planet, and Beta would be trying to find a particularly dim one hidden in all the rest. During Twilight and Dash's lifetimes, Beta has to rule alone on a planet that used to have three Queens, which constricts the time she has for interstellar jaunts and forces her to search the main cities of Equestria only - and Twilight has been in Ponyville since being attached to the Element of Magic and really coming into her power, which is much smaller than, say, Canterlot. Rainbow Dash was there for even longer; they've both been fairly off the grid when they'd be easiest to pick out.
Hope that adequately explains things
I'll try to work some of that explanation into the story at a later point, but I've got the next two chapters written and awaiting formatting right now, so it won't be immediately.
3349552
My self-esteem thanks you
I'm glad it's being enjoyed.
3349602
Makes sense I guess. It just seemed a bit odd that Celestia wouldn't think to check once if the super unicorn with the star themed buttmark was related to that thing the crazy neighboring star bugged her about every decade or so. I can buy it, though if Celestia doesn't think to check at this point in the story it would start to grate. Luna could mock on her for being so oblivious later; siblings never miss such opportunities.
So what's Luna...?
3353334
I'm sorry, but what are you referring to?
3353411
All the super beings appear to be stars and the planets their creations. Is Luna a star, too, or something else?
I guess Discord doesn't really fit either, but we all know he's just taking a break from bugging Picard in another dimension.
3353471
Something else, as all moons are, but all in good time
I upvote but don't favorite.
3353524
Yeah, I noticed that
Perplexing, but I'm the kind of guy who reserves both unless the story deserves both. Maybe I'm just stingy.
3353501
Luna's always more fun the more aloof and mysterious she appears.
hate when the little sister thing gets played up and the aloofness played down, though that's just a personal preference.
3353557my reasoning is that If I like the story or at least respect it but not enough to the point where I want to follow it I just thumb it up but if I like it enough I will follow the story with a favorite, but always thumb first.
and no not stingy but practical, unrealistic it can be.
3353587
Honestly, I prefer the aloofness myself. It fits much better with both show depictions and my own headcanon, in addition to being more fun to read and write.
Since the Scootaloo episode, I have a view of her as being apart from ponies and thus not liked as much as her sister because she has duties as ruler of the Night that pass beyond mortal ken - she can evidently walk through dreams freely, and the general rule for things seems to be that if it's not impossible, it happens repeatedly and often, so it stands to logic that other, possibly less benevolent, beings can dreamwalk as well; her being active in defending ponies from dream attacks would make sense. Then there's her guards, who came from who-knows-where, the cloak made of bats which seems to be unique and thus probably has a backstory behind it in itself, her absence during the Changeling attack for unknown reasons...
Basically, she has other things going on that even Celestia probably doesn't know about. Aloofness fits her best
3353637
Makes sense. Glad I could catch your attention for a favorite, then!
So it would appear that twilight's subconscious remembers a few things.
Best Discord writing I've seen in a long while. Love the story, too, and not just because Twilight and Rainbow are my favorite ponies.
This is criminally under viewed.
3358369
Thanks!
On the matter of views, I've changed the short description to something a bit more...exciting, I suppose? Maybe that'll help somewhat.
3358157
Yep! She got the...less deleterious, shall we say, end of the enforced memory montage
Wow just wow
. There is no other way to describe this story on top of that i can't think of any stories i've read that are similar to this so good work and keep the chapters coming.
3358620
So long as the ideas flow, so shall the chapters
Too bad there isn't a tragedy tag, otherwise I'd be rootin for ya to kill off Rainbow dash with her dense stupidity, and brash ego.
Nice chapter, can't go wrong with bending space to play games with stars
. Better not let pinkie know about that.
I like the idea that her friends are involved in a similar ascension of sorts. It kind of takes the bite off of the whole immortality problem to know their lives and deaths are all part of a larger process. Makes me wonder just what the nature of rainbow dashs involvement in the story will be, though.
3363165
I don't think Ponyville, or Equestria as a whole, could withstand the prank wave that would ensue if Pinkie managed to get Caelum's power
3364102
I have a chapter devoted to her coming up for today. Working title is "Antagonizing the Supreme Being". Make of that what you will
Have you SEEN some of the papers that get published in science journals these days?
The dust sentinel was kind of weird. A mortal shows up randomly and he makes her his agent? Doesn't she even get a say in that? It's like someone just runs up to you can crams some superpowers down your throat. Not cool man. (OK, it's pretty cool). I'm sure he has some strange motives.
Edit: nevermind, missed the line about her silence implying agreement. I think my mistake is funnier, though.
And the strange voices in anyone's head always turn out to secretly be some evil power manipulating you to get themselves restored to existence or whatever, so I'm calling it now that her "past self" is up to no good. Very strange that the sentinel could see it and not the queen, but perhaps that was as a result of the queen vaporizing her.
3365768
Well...Ghealach's a mare, technically
As for Cloud Ferry, yeah, she's up to no good, at least for Dash's purposes. "Stay safe and sane to keep self alive" and "confronting ancient powers as an equal when you're a small winged pony" are not compatible plans, and the second one is the one with the better chance of getting Twilight back. Though admittedly, she's the kind of mare who will go to extreme lengths to make sure her plan wins...
3366344
Cloud Ferry may be willing to go to terrible lengths to keep Rainbow Dash alive, but I suspect Rainbow Dash would go even further to save her friend.
Twilight did willing choose to go... Well that is going to be awkward when Dash and Twilight finally meet again.
I'm sort of questioning how Cloud Ferry thinks driving Rainbow Dash into seeming to attack the princess helps Cloud Ferry. All I can think of is that she's some sort of psychopath/criminal and wants to put Rainbow Dash in a situation where she needs to make some sort of deal with her in exchange for her expertise in something...
I really hope the whole hallucination thing isn't dragged on too long. It takes like 10 seconds to explain that she's seeing her past self after the crazy star cast a weird spell on her. She's got close friends and a lot of reasons for the princesses to at least let her explain; only unforgivable, grating stupidity on everyone's parts could result in this lasting particularly long.
Whelp I'm surprised Rainbow hasn't been killed yet, she better not end up shipped with Twilight. I'd rather see hre crushed under the weight of her dense idiocy.
3370923
She's basically decided that Dash is absolutely insane, and the only option she has to force her to abandon her search for Twilight is to make doing that impossible - making sure the Princesses are alienated would be a big help, and since Dash is a Bearer, the only way to adequately alienate them and ruin Dash's credibility would be to make them realize Dash is insane, as well as dangerous, and thus in need of containment. They won't defend themselves lethally since Rainbow Dash is one-sixth of the country's most important defense system, but keeping her in a soft room away from others would reduce the danger she posed, as well as increase her - and by extension, Cloud Ferry's - life expectancy. She's not getting much out of Dash's adventuring anyways, so a boring long life is more valuable than a short one her host enjoys. Dash has realized by now that Ferry's a hallucination, too, so she won't be reacting excessively to hallucinations like this again - but she still will speak to them, as that's her only way of responding, which won't do wonders for her image in the eyes of ponies she meets
Also, it may take ten seconds to explain, but I'm a big proponent of "show, don't tell" when writing, unless telling makes sense in context. There'll probably be a good bit of telling next chapter, in any case, never fear
3371131
Oh, don't worry about shipping. If this was intended as shipping I'd have stuck a romance tag on and attracted another hundred readers!
3371225
what I mean is that even if Dash is thrown in a padded room its way too easy to talk her way out of said room. I could understand this being a futile attempt by Ferry, but any confinement would be short term; the Alicorns know she was there when Twilight vanished and she mentioned Beta (evidence that she is speaking the truth), so even if they were convinced she went nuts it seems like she would be interrogated, and she can adequately explain her actions at that point.
3371225 more like another 500+ Readers, it would be TwiDash the most popular ship
I hope the moon Guy gives up on rainbow dash and lets her dry up her magical reserves.
3381145
Now why would you want that?
Yeah, that doesn't scream "evil" at all
3381172 Well, I'm just hoping that Rainbow Gets the worst that is comming, she's being a bitch, an unmitigated bitch in search of Twilight. She's being a hound dog searching for blood, she scents the trail and now she won't stop searching or braying until she either is ended her self or finds the end of the trail.
I mean I like rainbow Dash don't get me wrong, it's just I don't like this one.
Was Luna so intent on chewing out Dash that she didn't care about the whole poison thing?
"By the way, you're going to die any second now. Stay here and think about what you've done while I go off and maybe eventually get around to finding you a cure to your time-sensitive problem, pony that I just explained the importance of." You think she'd at least provide the same stop-gap measure that Dash's brain-pal used, or some other temporary fix.
You did a good job getting Dash away from the Alicorns and friends (which I assume was the narrative point of the whole "crazy" thing), everything she did made sense from the perspective of a sick Rainbow Dash, though as I said above Luna prioritizing anger at Rainbow Dash over dealing with the poison was a little weird (so was her thinking that one mortal pissing off the Queen would endanger her planet or friends, but people have worried about sillier things and it's sort of her job to be paranoid for the planet I guess).
I do have a question, though. Was Dash surviving the Queen's wrath surprising, or had she really done nothing more than beat her up and kicked her out of the house? And I wonder how big of a deal it is that the Queen was lying... that's kind of super suspicious and probably terrifying for anyone who wants Twilight back...
3381264
I wouldn't say she's being a bitch. Her friend was kidnapped from the entire planet by a crazy goddess, and she's going to extraordinary lengths to rescue her friend (she certainly has no reason to think Twilight consented to any of this). She's dealt with nothing but divine beings that were mostly treating her as a "puny mortal" and got lied to her face by the only one who knows where Twilight is. Attacking the Queen was stupid, but being angry and aggressive isn't particularly surprising considering how her last few days had been going.
And the whole point of Hound Dog's is that they're very good at finding the scented object...
3381307 Rainbow Dash was late to the party, and is denser than a chocolate molasses. Honestly, Were I twilight I would nt wan't dash coming to rescue me, Especially since she would most likely get herself and anyone that goes with her killed in situations involving divine and celestial beings
. I bet she would start a war with the Griffon Empire just to Find Twilight, Even if she found Out before finding Twilight that the lavender filly was ok and being treated like royalty by the Griffon hegimoni. 
3381287
While Caelum was slightly...enraged by Dash's attack, she didn't lash out with enough force to eradicate her from existence - not when she was so close to ascending herself. Her attack was basically the equivalent of beating an intruder to within an inch of her life before kicking her out into a busy freeway. Without Ghealach (Unrelated to your comment, I find it interesting how people seem to keep assuming Ghealach is a guy. Did I slip a pronoun somewhere?) to restore her, the odds of Dash - still a novice at projections, and magic in general - recovering fast enough to pull her physical body's face out of the powder before it killed her would have been almost none. So, yeah, her living is a bit surprising for all involved, except perhaps Ghealach
As for the Queen lying, well - it's the supreme being of the universe lying directly to your face. For most sane ponies, and most sane humans, God lying to you is a sign you should mind your own business
It's safe to say Caelum wasn't expecting to be called on it, but Dash is a madmare on a mission here. Proper etiquette when dealing with physical gods gets thrown right out the window.
3381342
Right, except in the Griffon analogy you gave she just saw Twilight carried off by scary Griffons claiming to be Twilight's parents after they blasted her with creepy mind magic, and has no reason to believe Twilight is being treated well.
And why wouldn't she try and muscle through all the divine powers? She fought Nightmare Moon, Chrysalis, and Discord. She tried fighting a dragon before. We know she has a big ego and a reckless nature. She's acted completely like you would expect her to.
3381391 Yes but she faught them off, all save the dragon in the company of others. I honestly hope her reckless nature gets her killed or at least broken before the end of this fic.
3381390
Dunno why I keep forgetting the spirit's gender. Probably just that it's pretty gender neutral other than being claimed female, and by first assuming it was male I just keep forgetting otherwise.
If I found that a god was lying to me about something like this I'd probably just assume they were in on it and try to work around them.
Her gluelikeness was a great line.
I agree that the chapter was a bit slow. I think it was because it was mostly about the characters stopping to talk reasonably about the situation before the shenanigans begin again. Only way to speed that up would be compressed talking, where you get the same info across to the readers with few sentences, but honestly I think the issue is that all the important action is going to be elsewhere so the chapter laying out the plans of uncooperative beings on Equestria is just an unavoidable bottleneck on interesting stuff.
My only complaint is that it wasn't clear that Discord was sabotaging negotiations. The silliness seems like something he just can't stop and a whoopee cushion is just a petty prank (though more annoying for a sticky person I guess). You can see that his gaffs were calculated or intentional once he admits it, but until then it seems to normal for him. I guess at least a few subtle hints he was not really trying to negotiate successfully would be nice.
Or did I misunderstand completely and he was lying to Rainbow Dash?
3406016
Part of it was just his usual gravitas shortfall, true, but even Discord knows enough to not pull pranks of any caliber on your opposite in international negotiations unless you really, really want negotiations to collapse, particularly when working against a history of antagonism. He was out to sabotage it from the beginning - hence the line, "And since pulling it off depended entirely on the cooperation of the scheme’s victim in a knowledgeable way, Discord estimated its chance of success to be about equal to a snowball’s chance in a habanero-pepper-soufflé."
Admittedly it could have been slightly clearer, but his direct answer later on compensates for that I hope.
And I'm glad it's not just me that thought it was slower - I'm not completely crazy yet
Subsequent chapters will likely pick up the pace again, though there will be further delay on the next one as I haven't had much writing opportunity recently.
Hmmm...so, do all ponies do the whole reincarnation thing? Dash apparently has past lives as well, so its either everyone can or she's some sort of special pony. Or I'm just over analyzing things. Wouldn't be the first time.
This is quite the interesting tale you're weaving. Its definitely unique, so far as I can tell, what with all the cool new world-building, and quite well written. Consider me intrigued and eager to read the rest of it - onward!
3428064
Thanks for the praise!
On the topic of the past lives, everypony goes through the cycle of reincarnations until they accrue enough magic to be reborn as a star, and every star is reborn as a near-magicless mortal once they die. In some cases, the cycle may take eons upon eons to be completed again, depending on how much magic the soul gets exposed to during its lives - Twilight and RD, for example, got pretty lucky with their shorter cycles, since Equestria is flooded with magic, while beings living on nearly magic-devoid worlds (such as, hypothetically, Earth - and that is a pure hypothetical, no humans in this Equestria, sorry!
) could take hundreds of thousands of years and thousands of reincarnations to return to the heavens, simply due to the lack of magic. And then thaumaturgical disturbances - ie, Changeling energy parasitism - can set the whole thing back a while.
On the tangential topic of Changelings, their hives ascend together due to being linked by a shared soul. Changeling Queens and their broods often only need a single incarnation to reach critical energy again, due to their incredible capacity for gathering in magic; granted, it is gathered through morally questionable means. Stars who become Changelings generally aren't good souls. This isn't foreshadowing, by the way, just something I thought of and was relevant to the previous paragraph