Princess Celestia has a nightmare of her faithful student dying in a horrible attack that destroys most of Ponyville.
What is worse, though - is her response within the nightmare.
This story is an indirect prequel to my other story: An Old Guardspony'sLast Duty.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/13398/An-Old-Guardspony%E2%80%99s-Last-Duty
I wrote it as a separate story because mixing too much [Dark] into [Normal] stories is frowned upon – and I wanted to describe a nightmare that is vividly bad enough to make Celestia want to do something about it.
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Many Thanks to my Moony Maiden - you know who you are! Your editing prowess has made this work at LEAST 20% cooler.
(As always - MLP:FiM belongs to Hasbro. They own the world - I only play in it.)
Picture used under Creative Commons License (http://www.flickr.com/photos/patrickgensel/7003567267/in/photostream/)
... the heck is Spike doing as a main character if he's dead?
Anyway keeping the nigh-godly princesses from charging on ahead because they don't know who's attacking Ponyvill seems contrived. And Celestia set a specific time for when they leave to save Ponyville seems contrived. And Twilight's magic not being enough to keep the creatures out of the library seems contrived. So all in all the entirety of the story seems contrived.
368676
I understand your criticism. The story is far from complete, however, and at least one of the points you question will be answered in the second paragraph of the next chapter.
Spike *was* one of the three characters who had more than a single line of dialog though - and his actions were kind of important.
Still, you are correct and I've been intending to modify the character list as they show up; so I will remove him when the next chapter is posted.
As to as why the nigh godly Princesses didn't charge right in? How often HAVE the Princesses shown up in full "deus ex machina" mode in the series?
They generally haven't - with the exception of "Lesson Zero". Which implies to me they are either less "godly" or have other limitations. Twilight's letters *did* state "monsters" as in plural and many casualties, so Celestia realized that she might need assistance.
As to why Twilight couldn't defend the library herself? Perhaps she was busy elsewhere...
368983
Well, yes, they generally haven't arrived to save the day; in fact, it's about as rare as Ponyville getting rampaged through by an unexpected horde of monsters and dance with a fire big enough to see from Canterlot. It seems like a strange discrepancy.
And indeed, Twilight was busy elsewhere. I'm fairly certain that her spells on the library stayed put, however.
I hate to do so, but I have to agree. This feels contrived. If you're going to kill a main character like Spike, you really should have better reasons for him dying than, "Well, Celestia wanted to keep a time table." Also, while I sort of agree that the princesses have never rushed in to aid, they've never received a bloody scroll taking about monsters.
368988
Well - as far as Twilight's spells are concerned. The building is relatively intact - unlike the rest of town. But I would also like to point out that Twilight has never really been able to stop Rainbow Dash from crashing through her windows and doors "onscreen", either...
The way I envisioned it, the library is a public space - so there are inherent limits on what kinds of spells Twilight WOULD put on the building as a whole. There's obviously no such thing as "Circle of Protection - Monsters", else there wouldn't be fear of them. She couldn't just seal the entire building shut because she wants ponies to be able to get in. After all, she was trying to see who else she could rescue, after all. So the protections on the building were mostly structural reinforcement.
As far as to why the Princesses didn't charge in - one doesn't stay *nigh immortal* by charging headlong into danger. My view of the Princesses is not that they are not Goddesses per se. Sure - they are powerful enough to move the heavens - but we have actually seen them do relatively little else "on-screen" that could not be explained simply by being nearly immortal and just having time to study and manipulate people and events.
Besides - one just doesn't clop a hoof and get an army in the middle of the night. It take SOME time to wake folks up and mobilize. Celestia got her guards together as fast as possible and then rolled out.
And that's the happened of writing multi chapter stories. You have to balance keeping secrets with not confusing the reader. I do like this story. And I love the spoilers you sent me! I think his will turn out great. Though, you might want to link. Just saying.
I hate to parrot what everyone else is saying, but some aspects of this feel a little forced. The princess taking her time, I can actually understand that. We know her to be prudent and calculating, that is how she got to be supreme ruler in the first place. My problem is with Spike dying. And not just cause it made me sad (which it did). But him saying "no don't, it's too late" to Celly's healing spell? It's almost as if he wants to die. Why isn't he in the lab with the rest? Its defenses held, apparently. Was it really necessary for him to act as a distraction?
Anyway, I'm liking the writing a lot. Your descriptions are pretty vivid and really speak to the imagination. The armada of royal guardsponies heading to Ponyville and Rarity's impromptu array of floating bladed weapons stand out in particular. I wouldn't mind seeing this go up on EQD once more chapters are out.
A few things though:
"Ponyville? I know them well. Sister, let us fly!"
I'm fairly sure Celestia knows that Luna knows ponies in Ponyville. They do live together, after all.
"actinic"
Fancy word is fancy. I had to stop and look it up, not sure if that is the effect you're going for here.
378888
Re: Spike's Death.
Well - my intention is that the barricade/defenses ONLY held because Spike used his dragonfire offensively - which he couldn't exactly due from inside the lab. All the beasties that WOULD have gotten in and made all the ponies "spam in a lab" got barbecued by Spike at the door. That's why the interior of the library got so torched and the barricade got trashed. The LIBRARY is fireproof. SPIKE is fireproof. The books and evil beasties inside the library? Decidedly less so. Problem is that while Spike is fireproof - he isn't indestructible.
As to why he didn't want the healing - he *knew* he was dying from his wounds. Spike has been characterized CONSISTENTLY as the "realist" of the cast of MLP. He's often the one with the right answer - it's just that Twilight doesn't listen to him often enough. It's one of the reasons why I love him so.
Also, notice that Celestia tried healing him anyways and it didn't make a difference?
As far as Luna's line: I mentally mapped the phrase as : "Ponyville? Yeah - I know them! Let's go - we can be there in a couple minutes!" then added a "luna uses slightly medieval sentence construction" filter.
And I make no apologies for actinic. I learned that word back in 6th grade; and I think of it whenever there is a painfully bright flash of light. (I read a lot of science fiction - where the phrase "actinic flare" is almost a trope...)
Besides, like my favorite pony, I LIKE fancy words... Any time I find a new word, it's a new toy! 
Gotta admit, I was ready to blow my top at the "All Just a Dream!" ending
and then Starlight Dancer happened
and now perfect setup for the next story, tied in with old guardponie's duty. Cant wait
405860
Exactly.
I knew going into it that "it was all just a dream" was a trite overused story concept. But one of the reasons they get overused is the same reason a hammer tends to get used a lot. Sometimes it IS the right tool for the job.
I had initially penciled this story in (roughly) as Chapter one of my yet unnamed sequel to Old Guardspony - but then I realized that it had (and had to have) a WAY darker tone than I intended for the rest of the sequel. So I broke it out as a separate story so i could tag it appropriately and then get back to work on the sequel.
Now you all know what poor Summer Oak's mission is going to be - trying to covertly guard Twilight Sparkle.
We can't imagine any problems with THAT simple a mission, now can we?
heh, heh, heh...
Just re-read the description. Actually taking the time to check that would have helped me put the story in the proper perspective.
Still, something's bothering me about this story, so I'll lay it out below. If its rude or unhelpful let me know and I'll delete it.
I assume that this narrative was to simulate the concerns brought up in "An Old Guardpony's Last Duty", namely that sometimes the purpose of the Royal guard is to protect the Princesses (and, by extension, Equestria) from themselves. Furthermore, characters discussing the implications of this simulation in-story sets up the framework of your next fic.
) would give the story symmetry, which I feel would make the "dream" much more justifiable to the reader. The second: give the reader some hints that you're pulling this as it plays out. As for how to pull that off, I'm kinda lost 
. To put it in metaphor, I think getting slapped upside the head a few times is preferable to a brick to the face. You've completely justified how the dream was ridiculous in-story, but this all goes completely over the readers' head while its playing out. Sorry I don't have any easy solution 
The best trope to illustrate this concept in-story (while keeping it a simulation) is through a dream, which allows the reader to sympathize with the character while also allowing the author to retcon everything (which, as stated before, serves as a catalyst for the discussion that takes place at the end). the problem with this is that coming out of the dream completely shatters the reader's suspension of disbelief (war and slaughter in Equestria, believable? Gotta love them Dark fics!). It's not the trope itself, but breaking suspension of disbelief that makes this trope trite (and its overused in its convenience in providing characterization without consequences).
I'm not an experienced writer or editor, so what I've got below is just some fanciful conjecture, take what you will. There are two changes I could think of that would reduce the impact of invoking "All Just a Dream" without adding twenty pages to the story. The first: bookends. This fic starts with Celestia dreaming and ends with her not, and that's confusing. A one or two page scene of Celestia's day winding down (with perhaps a passing reference to Starlight Dancer
Well that about sums it up, hope it doesn't sound completely ridiculous
406575
I never reject honest criticism. You can't improve yourself if you don't know what you are doing wrong...
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You are right - and I accept full responsibility for it.
I did try to give the story subtle bookends regarding dreaming. The first line is: Princess Celestia dreamed... The last line was: That night, Princess Celestia dreamed again. It was one of the nice dreams. (which is also a callback to first real paragraph.) Both lines without indent and formatted similarly. I guess that was too subtle... Doh!
I also tried to make sure every chapter and major scene in the dream had some sort of visually based clue that things were slightly out of focus - smoke, morning haze, tears or the heat of her rage causing the world to waver, etc. I also made a few attempts to play with timing and pacing to give that slightly disjointed yo-yo feeling you sometimes get in dreams - but those are less obvious.
One of my problems as a writer is that I tend to be too verbose and descriptive. My editor - being more classically trained and actually having worked as a professional editor for several years - is a true believer in the "sometimes less is more" philosophy. (I'll freely admit that a large chunk of the 20% cooler she makes my writing is by hacking out unnecessary verbiage.
) My editor convinced me to pull some of the "its a dream" cues or tone them down because they were being too overt.
I guess I was actually trying to get a dawning sense of "something's not right" combined with "shock and horror" in the reader - which would then culminate with Celestia waking up, and having a reason to want to assign a bodyguard to Twilight via SD. Obviously - I wasn't quite successful.
Oh well. At some point, I may return and try to clean this up a bit more. But for now, I'm just going to chalk it up to a "learning experience" and leave my mistakes where I can see them.
I feel a little bad about the comments your getting for this so far (yeah, I know it's finished now, but shoosh). The writing itself is good enough. The style is clean, and there aren't annoying errors.
As for the content itself? Well... I can't say if the description or tags have been changed since you first posted this, so this may not apply, but whatever.
A quick once-over of the description left me going into this with a clear understanding that it was a dream. So, I had some obvious expectations that it would differ from canon, and presumably, the ending would reveal a bit more true-to-show dealings in a sort of 'react and wrap it all up scene'. Which is exactly what happened. That understanding made the first few chapters easy enough for me to follow and accept.
Now. This is a story about magical talking ponies. So am I going to complain that it's 'too dark'? Well sure, it seems an off-genre for said ponies, but hey. I've already suspended my disbelief this much. Will a little more really hurt? Enough people write dark fics for it not to be a big deal. The thing is, you've got Tragedy, Sad, and Dark tags. The for, I should not be surprised when said story contains tragedy, sadness, and darkness.
I normally avoid such stories, as I kind if despise them. However, combined with the assumption that the majority was in fact a dream, it was pretty easy to accept and move on.
The part about it being contrived? It's a dream. I never question /anything/ that takes place in dream sequences, because really, no one knows how dream logic works.
I can easily see how if I hadn't known it was a dream, and hasn't been expecting to encounter the Tragedy, Sad, and Dark tags, I'd probably have been much more startled, and picked it apart a bit more. As the description and tags stand now however, the story content is fine. There's really no need for you to fix or change anything further, and anyone who can read between the lines should have an easy enough time appreciating this story. :3
~Dash
I like that Celestia is interested in giving Twilight protection.
However I do not understand the whole think with the nobles, after all Twilight and her friends are element bearers of harmony and national heroes, they are the most important line of defence and should be celebrities, they are worth more then every single noble in Equestria put together ( even Fancy Pants ), so I see no problem with getting entire division to Ponyvile.
Holy shit...
This fic...
It's...so...awesome! *squee*
It was just a dream. Okay. Entertaining until that point.
Celestia's fears show she's more mortal than ponies realize. I never bought into the whole indestructible ruler bit. She is powerful, but not powerful enough that she cannot be hurt in other ways. I would love to see more of the conflict between ponies and the monsters of the Everfree. Historical epics are always my thing.