Chapter Twenty Three
The World's End
Containing a surprising amount of conversation,
and some information relating to broccoli.
September 13th, 1014
At the Meeting of Ways
Promises are promises.
The first blast of dark magic caught the Red Queen square in the face. It was disguised as pure force but carried a secondary matrix that enveloped and hardened around her head in an attempt to blind her.
The instant after the spell left my horn, I teleported one hundred and forty-four degrees to my left (centered on the Red Queen) and triggered the second matrix. A multiplied gravity field sprang into existence. It was a blobby X shape in cross section, which would cause far more damage than a simple increase in apparent weight.
Another one-forty-four displacement, and I threw an interlocking series of fast rotating shields that should have done to her what the grinder of a cider press does to an apple.
My next teleport brought me to the fourth point of the star pattern, and since there didn't seem to be much matter in the celestial realm we were in, I used hairs from my mane as hyperfast missiles, enclosed and stiffened in tiny cylindrical shields.
No mortal pony and very few monsters I knew of could have survived through my third attack, but the Queen was unaffected. Yet not unchanged. Though my lightning fast jumps and attacks gave me only a couple of seconds to observe her, she seemed—blurry.
Another teleport completed the star,[1] and I used two knife-like waves of super-heated air in an attempt to fillet her while simultaneously cooking her alive. I admit that the effort was a bit halfhearted. I knew by then that she was capable of resisting my attacks somehow, and was more interested in finding out how she was doing it.
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[1] The Star Attack Pattern is usually employed by a team of five unicorns, mainly to keep them from blasting each other when surrounding an enemy. Teleportation for confusion's sake was my own twist on the tactic.
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I continued winking from point to point, throwing ever more vicious spells, and noticed that the "blurriness" of the Red Queen increased in a way that matched the physically affecting portions of my spell. Interesting. Tirek's spell failed to affect her. A simple attempt to teleport her head two feet to the left didn't work. Combinations designed to fail in disastrous ways produced nothing more than a shimmer in the air.
After two more trips around the star, I stopped. The Queen hadn't moved or made any attempt to retaliate. I still kept a reflexive shield spell matrix on a hair-trigger. She came back into focus.
Pride or hubris or possibly a combination of both made me come to a halt facing the Red Queen from only a body-length away. I flared my wings and arched my neck, snorting in anger and frustration.
"You've changed since I last saw you, Twilight Sparkle," the Queen said calmly.
I had absolutely no idea how to respond to that. I'd just tried to murder the creator of the world in several ingenious and appalling ways, and she was speaking to me as if I had just dropped by for tea. Maybe it was a situation she wasn't entirely unused to.
She looked me over, and I knew she was using more than physical sight in her examination. Her gaze paused on the two necklaces around my throat.
"You wear an encapsulation of my daughter's magic," she said. Her voice was still low and even, but her eyes narrowed slightly. "Did you kill her?"
That surprised me for several reasons. For one, it meant that the Red Queen didn't know everything that had gone on in the world while she had been imprisoned. She might be invulnerable, but she wasn't omniscient. It was also a strong indicator of the complexity of my life that I couldn't answer the question with a simple yes or no.
"Celestia, Luna, and I destroyed the physical part of Luna that had been imprisoned in the Wheel of the World with you. This is what is left of her magical essence."
The Queen lifted the Talisman of Night off of my neck and floated it over to examine more closely. Her levitation field felt perfectly normal to me.
"My poor girl," she said softly, and set the necklace down between her forelegs. She also took the Gem of Remembrance from me. I had a moment of worry that I would forget the Undiscovered West, but my memories remained clear.
The Queen's only comment on the Gem, before she placed it next to the Talisman, was a soft, "Odd."
If I couldn't defeat her, my next best option was escape. "Well, if that's all, I should be going," I said, brusquely. "I imagine that your return will have a significant impact on the world and I should be with my friends and family to help them through it all. Sorry about the attacks, but that was because of a promise I made to Luna. I'm sure you understand."
She tore all of the borrowed magic out of me with tiny motions of her horn. The zebra waganga, the poisoned morass of the Eye of Rushwa, and Discord's chaos magic all sorted themselves out into glowing balls of energy that floated in front of her chest.
I don't remember collapsing, but the sudden clarity of my mind was like falling into an icy river.
"Did you kill Discord as well?" the Queen asked, unconcerned by my uncontrollable shuddering and convulsing.
Discord? Oh stars and moon, what had I done?
It took me several moments to be able to speak coherently, let alone regain my hooves. "He's not dead," I gasped out. "But he's in danger. Let me go get him."
She didn't answer. She turned and brought a construct into existence with a pulse of her horn. It was roughly spherical, about a pony length in diameter, a translucent blue color, and looked rather like a head of broccoli. I took a few shaky steps toward it to get a better look.
The Queen took hold of the thing with her magic and made some adjustments. The little outer spheres that looked like broccoli florets faded away, leaving a smooth sphere with little spots of color where they had been attached. Structures glowed to life within the sphere as she made another adjustment, but not before I had noticed a much larger spot of color, similar to the little ones in every aspect except size. Something tugged at the back of my brain.
But I was soon completely absorbed in observing the sphere as it underwent a series of changes. If Luna and I hadn't become so close, it would have taken me much longer to realize what I was looking at.
"That's the Wheel of the Moon!" I said, surprised by the sudden shift in my assumptions that allowed me to recognize it. The construct was a five dimensional model of the universe!
The Red Queen didn't respond, but kept zooming in on the model until the cycles of the firmament faded away, leaving only the terrestrial sphere. "Show me Discord's location," she said.
I examined the globe. It wasn't anything like a map, and it took me a second or two to puzzle out the part that represented the Forgotten Lands. On the model, the spellwork surrounding the peninsula was actually visible as a network of spheres and cycles.
"There," I said, pointing with a wingtip to the eastern end of the peninsula. "About—"
I was going to describe the location to her, but when I pointed, the view zoomed in further. I kept adjusting the primary feather I was using as a pointer as the model enlarged, guiding it to the location of Twilight Town. The detail was amazing. Distance, time, and magic were perfectly represented down to the level of individual ponies.
I made some final corrections, and discovered that my fears had been justified. Discord was no longer in the town. I had been gone for less than an hour, and already Ao was leading a crowd of ponies into the forest toward the Yateveo tree. There was a dull mote at the center of the crowd that had to be Discord's disenchanted body.
"They're going to feed him to the tree!" I cried out. "We have to go rescue him!"
The Red Queen gave me a brief glance out of the corner of her eye, then reached out with one of her own feathers. She flicked the mote that represented Discord off of the sphere like I might brush a speck of dust off of a book.
Discord tumbled to the ground[2] at our hooves in a tangle of limbs.
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[2] There was no literal ground where we were, of course. Nothing that could even be called a floor, by the loosest of standards. But mundane stand-ins will have to suffice for extra-dimensional structures that have no descriptors in Equuish.
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I teleported the chains off of him and swept him up in a hug. "Oh, Discord! I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry! I know it wasn't your fault! I'm so stupid! All that dark magic had me doing stupid, stupid stuff! Please forgive me!"
I had my head buried against his chest so I couldn't see his face. Truthfully, I was afraid to look him in the eye after what I'd done to him.
He took a few deep gasps and then gave a weak chuckle. "You… you really had me fooled there, Sparky! Good… uhm... " He twitched a bit in my embrace. "Good prank. Yeah… had me fooled."
I sniffed, trying to keep from outright crying. "I've really messed up this time," I whispered, still not lifting my head.
So I felt it when he noticed the Red Queen. His body jerked like he'd touched an electro-thaumic transmission tower, and he shoved me roughly away.
By the time I looked around he was flat on the floor, prostrating himself. The Red Queen placed a hoof between his horn and antler and pressed down hard. Discord whimpered.
"Hey!" I cried out. "What are you—"
She glanced at me. That's all. Her horn didn't glow, but pain ripped through me as if her look had been twin burning spears. It only lasted an instant, but it left me screaming and writhing in agony beyond anything I'd ever experienced before.
So I missed the first part of their discussion.
"...even after I escaped, I opposed everything they tried to accomplish, I swear it! Believe me, Epona, I was true to my purpose! Always!" The Red Queen removed her hoof from his head and Discord looked up at her hopefully.
"Twilight Sparkle was concerned for you. She treated you like a friend. She should hate you, Discord. Explain that to me."
He glanced between me and Queen Epona several times, as if searching for a plausible answer.
"I'm not stupid," I interjected, shakily getting to my hooves and desperately hoping that I wouldn't get another disapproving glance from the Queen. "He tried everything he could to undermine the magic of friendship, then he suddenly became my friend? I wasn't fooled for a minute."
Epona cocked her head in an invitation to continue.
"Friendship is powerful," I said, constructing the excuse only heartbeats before it left my mouth. "He tried to break it from the outside, and it didn't work, so he infiltrated. Subversion from within has always been a good tactic for an inferior force. I pretended to be his friend the same way he pretended to be mine."
Discord gaped at me for a second and then gave a shake of his head. "Oh… yes! That's it! Ha, ha, Sparkle, you're certainly the clever one! I had no idea that you had seen through my plot." He turned to Epona and his lion paw and eagle claw entwined in a nervous dance. "You see? I've been loyal to you!" His grip suddenly tightened and he turned to face me, frowning. "Wait a minute, Twilight! Did you just call me 'inferior?'"
"A statement of fact shouldn't upset you, Discord. You're too used to making your own reality to acknowledge the baseline everypony else shares, I suppose." I was putting on the upper class condescension act so heavily that I think my Canterlot accent got a bit thicker. "I'm sorry this had to happen. I was enjoying the game."
While Discord sputtered, I turned to Epona and gave her the angled nod that overstuffed nobility use in place of a proper bow. "What now, Your Majesty?"
She hesitated. She actually hesitated before she peeled me like an onion.[3]
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[3] Not literally, but that's as close as I can come to conveying what her in-depth magical scrutiny was like.
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It wasn't painful, but it was extremely uncomfortable and humiliating. I was all too aware that if she could use her magic to read my mind as well as examine my body, I would be rendered helpless if not killed outright, but either the examination didn't include such details, or I got lucky for once.
I staggered when she released me. It left me feeling dizzy and violated. But at least I felt whole again.
Epona spoke directly to me, but it felt like she was giving a detached summary for her own sake. "Superior intelligence, excellent physique, and truly exceptional magical capacity, but still only an ascended alicorn. A shame. Your genetics are nearly perfect for a natural birth." She considered for a moment. "Perhaps with the addition of some superior pegasus genes… I will preserve you in case the project can be salvaged."
Preserve? Sun and moon, I hoped she didn't mean it in the way that pickles are preserved.
"Project?" I asked. I tried to keep my voice level and confident, but there was a slight waver in it.
Epona had turned back to the model of the world… the universe, I suppose, and had expanded it to include the celestial spheres and the little spots again. She nodded at it. "Yes," she said. "The project."
Oh. Oh, horseapples.
She hadn't blasted me, and her reply had been conversational, so I cautiously asked another question to cover the fact that I was counting the connection spots that dotted the sphere everywhere and trying to analyze their pattern. "You're attempting to produce naturally born alicorns? What about yourself and your daughters?"
She chuckled. It was so unexpected that it took me a moment to recognize the sound. "I only look like an alicorn here," she replied in a distracted manner.
That off-hoof comment started the pieces dropping into place. The universe model had looked like a head of broccoli for sound mathematical reasons. From the largest scale to the smallest, the Fibonaggi Sequence guided the development of natural structures. Fractal shapes could be found everywhere in nature, from broccoli florets to… universes evidently. Of course the Red Queen looked like an alicorn in our universe. She appeared as she did for exactly the same reason I had looked like a mostly bald, tailless monkey in another.
I risked taking another step closer to the model. The little patches were where other worlds connected to our own. They were smaller than our universe and operated under different conditions in accordance to the underlying structure of the—megaverse? Multiverse? Science fiction had several terms for what had been, until then, a purely hypothetical situation. One of them had to be different.
Yes, I spotted it easily as soon as I knew it had to be there. It was one of the small spots, identical to the others in every way except one. The spot was very like an iris, and the magic of the diary kept that iris slightly open. I squinted and thought I could make out the tiny thread of energy that bridged the gap. Once I could see the magical structure all at a glance, I understood why the opening of the portals would be timed to the cycling of the heavenly bodies. It was all part of one intermeshed system.
I suppose I was obviously staring, and evidently the Queen noticed. She gave me a sharp look.
"This is… the whole universe, isn't it?" I asked, hoping that she hadn't noticed exactly what I had been studying and that I could distract her with an obvious, stupid question. She'd been imprisoned before Starswirl's time, and she didn't know we knew about other worlds. I was desperate to keep her in ignorance.
The following moment of silence was one of the most stressful things I've ever suffered, and her answer was more shocking than I could have imagined.
Epona finally spoke. "You are quite intelligent. Yes, this is your actual universe. How does it feel to know you could reach out with a hoof and kick stars from the sky or obliterate a continent?"
It wasn't a model.
I sat down hard and put my head between my forelegs, trying not to pass out. Which also gave me a way to hide behind my mane as I examined the big spot. Just like the portal interface that was kept open by Sunset's diary, the large iris was dilated and held open by a brilliant red column of magic.
"It's much more difficult to manipulate from inside, of course," the Red Queen continued after I didn't reply. "But that's something that your ponies have become very good at. Not quite good enough for my purposes... not yet." She zoomed in again, and the celestial spheres vanished. The outer surface of the world vanished, too, leaving the exposed Great Wheel and all the intricate cycles and epicycles that drove the magic of the world.
Epona sighed. "What a mess," she said.
From our perspective it was easy to pick out all the changes Celestia and Luna had made. I love them both dearly. I have the utmost respect for their abilities. They are, beyond doubt, two of the most powerful, clever, and skillful magicians in the world. But I had to agree with the Queen; it was all cobbled-together hackwork.
Epona looked over at me and I realized I had groaned out loud.
"Yes," she said. "Quite a mess. Obvious, even to you. I suppose it will be simpler to dismantle it all and start again."
"What? No!" The last time I'd shouted at her, I'd paid quite a price, but she only stood patiently, waiting.
She had given me a clue in regards to her motivation, and I thought I had a slight chance of convincing her not to crumple up our universe and throw it away like an ink-spotted first draft. There was no way I was going to let her learn about my niece, though.
"Look there," I said, pointing to a tangled cluster of mandalas. "That structure is drawing power from the fragmented cycle underneath. Removing it would collapse the primary ring, but not if we alter the output first. Repurpose the energy to reconstruct the original pattern and it'll practically repair itself."
"You seem very eager to meddle with the natural laws of your world," she observed dryly.
"As an alternative to being 'dismantled?'" I said. "You bet your cutie-mark I am!"
I'd just snarked the creator of my universe. I didn't even have the excuse of having any dark magic left in me. I held my breath until she decided to chuckle rather than strip me down to my component molecules.
"Cutie marks," she said, sneering. "What a horribly misguided idea."
"Wait. Cutie marks aren't natural?"
Epona spun the world and pointed to another tangle of rickety spells. "There's the matrix that produces them. Does that look like a naturally evolved process?"
Well, that explained CMDD[4] and associated illnesses like the Cutie Pox. Without thinking, I reached out and spun the globe to get a look at the other major alterations. I wasn't fundamentally opposed to magic-based social engineering, but it seemed like the majority of the alterations were some form of subtle mind-control, and that made me uneasy. "Ah," I said, catching sight of one fairly simple mandala. "That explains why we haven't had a conflict with the dragons for millennia. This must tie into the bloodstone crystals on the Dragon Lord's crown."
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[4] Cutie Mark Disassociative Disorder.
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"Very good," Epona said. "Your assessment that is, not the idea itself. If my ponies had been at war with the dragons from time to time, they would have been pressured into advancing much further, and I might now have all the alicorns I need."
"And thousands, perhaps millions would have died needlessly," I countered. I was becoming more comfortable with her. It seemed she was willing to engage with me on the level of a senior scientist in consultation with a junior.
"The number of survivors of a period of war or peace five hundred years ago would be identical. The advancements would not be."
It was a flawed and foolish argument. She was viewing the situation entirely from her own ideological standpoint. I could have argued the assertion, but as illustrated by the fact that Discord still cowered behind the Queen, trying to remain as silent and motionless as he could, her apparent willingness to engage as near equals was only a thin veneer over a ruthless personality.
So, I nodded instead. "Good point. Well, in any case, I think I can help you restore the world to its original condition. The firmament looked to be in good condition, aside from that weird thing that looked like a crack in the Sphere of the Stars."
It took her a few heartbeats to react, and I desperately tried to look like I was lost in thought, staring at one of the cobbled-together magic clusters. I had been able to reach out and turn the world in my hooves, but I had no idea how to "zoom" out to the level I needed. Epona would have to do it for me, and if she suspected what I was going to attempt…
She did it. She expanded the view until the little dots where the other universes touched our own were visible. More importantly, the big dot where our universe touched hers appeared.
"Show me," she said.
"It's right here…" I replied, quickly reaching out with both hooves and grabbing the outer edge of the big iris disk. "...you monster!"
I caught a small fraction of the pain from her gaze before I wrenched at the disk, twisting it against the lay of the fibers that defined the opening at its center. She screamed in anger as the iris closed, cutting off the red trace of power.
I teleported to one side, narrowly escaping a blast of her magic. A force lance of my own caught her behind her right shoulder and staggered her. As I had suspected, her "blur" defense was based on the connection to her home universe. Either it was some sort of alien magic, or she had simply retreated far enough into the interface to be immune to my own.
All that was left was to defeat an ancient, unknowably powerful alicorn to prevent her from reopening the portal.
Discord immediately dove in and snatched up the sputtering sphere of chaos magic, stuffing it down his throat like it was some delicious candy.
"Do something!" I screamed at him, dodging another blast from Epona's horn.
He did. He turned and jumped into the universe, disappearing as he dwindled down to an invisible size.
I didn't waste any breath cursing him. I teleported again, setting myself up to recreate the Star Pattern Attack, but realized that there wasn't any place I could start from that wouldn't put me at risk for hitting the universe sooner or later. I had no idea if my magic would be harmful to it, but since I had manipulated it using only my hooves, it was a risk I couldn't take.
A gravity flux hit me and I was barely able to create a counter flow in time to avoid being crushed. The pressure half stunned me anyway, and I stumbled and went to my front knees.
There, just in front of me, was the Talisman of Night. Wisdom is one thing, survival another. I reached out with my magic and slapped it around my neck. A surge of magical strength flooded through me as I teleported again and got behind the Queen. I knew I had the edge on her, and my horn flared to life as she realized where I was and began to turn.
I couldn't spare her. I couldn't risk trying to disable rather than kill her, because the fate of my entire world was at stake.
But I had made a terrible mistake. The power of the Talisman was the magic essence of Epona's daughter, and when she looked at me, and knew her defense would come too late, I hesitated. What unimaginable monster could strike down her own mother?
I cringed and poured energy into the shield I had raised to ward off the Queen's counterattack. Her magic sizzled and burned away at my own, as the contest became one of pure strength. It was a contest I was losing. My shield matrix deformed and cracks spider-webbed out from where the lance of force hammered into it.
And then she stopped. Her horn's aura faded away and her gaze lifted from where I crouched, my shield crumbling away.
"Hello, Mother," Celestia said.
The Red Queen took a step backwards and Luna walked out of a swirl of shadow behind her. "I beg thee, resist us not," she said.
Cadance appeared in a twinkle of light and wore an expression of determination that bordered on fury.
I recognized their relative positions, and I stood and moved to cover the fourth point of the star.
Discord made his big entrance, complete with spotlight, cane, and top hat. I suppose he couldn't help himself, even in a deadly serious situation. Especially in a deadly serious situation. "Looks like checkmate, Queenie!"
She didn't go quietly, of course, but the end was quick.
Celestia manipulated the sphere until it showed all the small universes that covered the surface of ours, and then she went further, revealing the even smaller realms that budded from the small universes. I supposed the fractal sequence must have continued like that until each new universe was not much bigger than a proton, but the tertiary worlds were sufficient to our purposes.
I guided the paralyzed form of Epona into one of the tiny, non-magical worlds and twisted the iris portal closed.
"I hope she will be happy there," I said, and cringed at how stupid it sounded when the words left my mouth. There was a pause while I gathered up my courage to face Celestia. Luna stepped to my side, wrapped a wing around me, and gently touched her muzzle to my cheek. It helped.
I sighed and looked up. "Now what?"
= = =
=
Well, Epona is scary enough to make your hair stand on end. Loved the fight sequence and casual discussion of life, the universe and everything beforehand.
Thank you for the update. :)
I want to believe that this Epona IS Link's Epona from Legend of Zelda. This is why Epona is in all the 3d Zelda games and appears to be roughly the same all the time.
Was CMDD mentioned in this story earlier because when CMDD came up I knew what it stood for before reading the little note for it.
7166439
Epona was the goddess of horses in Rome, and I bet that's where Zelda lifted the name as well! Seemed like a good name to use.
CMDD hasn't been mentioned before. It was a label given by the fandom (I forget who exactly coined the acronym, if I ever knew it) to describe characters wigging out when they are forced to act against their special talent. That's probably where you've heard it before.
Oh God, you weren't kidding about the end of the world.
Well.
7166439 she turned into a horse in a world with little magic.
at first wild and furious against everything, she got "tamed" by a hylian named Link, who personified her ideal being: A warrior, fighting and winning against impossible odds and getting stronger every time.
7166520 So the same thing as Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome?
7166674
Pretty much!
Holy crap!
That was as epic as this triptych deserved. Had me on edge the entire time.
Oo this is interesting. Twilight got a look at the World Engine, and had a bad feeling about cutie marks. I would too.
Excellent chapter. Waiting on more
Well, let's see what the damage is.
Well, i has to admit.
iisaw, you do great job. You end the villain, and hope to known her motivation.(Why she need alicorns) And that happened in chapter after she escape. Almost how in MLP:FIM. Great job.
Now, no kidding. Great job. I see now that bite in butt in future.
I curious how, though. I think maybe Flurry Heart even save the day.(In the fourth or fifth story that series)
If my English suck, please correct me in comments.
Yes. Excellent. What a mess.
I somehow doubt that's the last of Queen Epona.
So, she WAS engineering ponies to become alicorns. I was in the ball park for that, the rest was miles away.
The question then becomes for what reason did TRQ 'need' Alicorns?
"It right here"
"It's"?
Well...
That was pretty frigging awesome.
(I may be pestering you in PMs about that cover soon, just so you know.)
"September 13th, 1014"
14 - 1 = 13
ILLUMINATI CONFIRME-*gunshot*
...anyway.
Sweet gee Wilkerson this was nuts.
7167568
Sure thing!
"Now what?"
Twilight, you just assisted in the permanent exile of the Creator of your local multiverse! You just out-thought God and were willing to fight her one-on-one! You actually did so so effectively that she had to play fast-and-lose with the rules of probability to avoid injury! After that, you do not ask "Now what?", you firstly thank whatever Supreme Powers there are that you and your universe are still alive and then you start having a panic attack about just how powerful you might be and whether you've got the mental integrity to handle it!
7167989
I think you're going to enjoy what comes next!
Did anyone get the number of the universe where the Red Queen came from? Because, congrats, that's the scale on which you get to deal with stuff now.
I suggest a very, very long discussion that also includes ponies who aren't immortal powerhouses, especially since you haven't really had your head screwed on right in, like, 3/4ths of the story.
7168209
Oh yeah!
7166549 HEY! Some of us happen to love broccoli!
I kind of wish Twilight had killed her, so that when the others showed up, she could say, "So, hey, Celestia, Luna. I just accidentally released and then killed a nigh invincible tyrant. Oops?"
7168232 Not sure if terrible error or part of the next part of something larger.
Good luck.
7167487
Fix'd, thanks!
7169165
Would lead to all sorts of awkward "your mom" jokes, I think.
7167314
I understood you perfectly! Thanks for the kind words.
This comment has been edited by The Universe Itself. To view the original, please contact [-REDACTED-] at holy-profanity_thatWasAwesome@nowwhat.whenUpdate.[-DATA REMOVED-]
can't not hear this
7169304
You're welcome.
Well, it was worth a shot.
Now we've got five entities staring at The Universe. Of the five, two of them are prone to feuding at the drop of a hat for various ideological and petty reasons. One of them is Discord. And one of the last two is Twilight, whose actions over the course of this fic place her below Discord with regards to good judgement, and who will probably manage to set off the first two in any case.
Cadance is going to have to be the adult in the
roomtime-space void.That moment when you realize the emphasis the red queen put on "needed" alicorns...
Also, Twilight, now you earned yourself a position as a true goddess. How did it feel to... touch the universe?
From the red queen's point of view: that awkward moment when your experiment overthrows you...
I loved how very "Greek mythology" this chapter was. Facing down the literal creator of your world and trying to make it out with your life and the lives of everyone else in the world intact.
This was the most hideous thing I have read yet, it offended me fundamentally. Keep it up.
7171758
Happy to be of service!
> ATTACK RED QUEEN
You can't attack the Red Queen. Not while you have a shred of common sense.
> DROP COMMON SENSE
It caroms off a stone and bounces into the universe somewhere. That's going to be trouble later. (232/275)
I've now had some time to think about it.
The Red Queen has been trying to promote natural-born Alicorns. I recently hypothesised this would be so that ponies would have their own 'guard ponies', so to speak - enabling the race to better resist threats. I doubt Epona has a specific threat in mind - she just wants the ponies to 'be better' - to that end, Alicorns. Since it's now known that Epona apparently holds dominion over countless worlds, including the human world and our own, and that she only appears to be an Alicorn in Equestria, she is probably naturally-uplifting other races, too.
If you consider humans, what's next on the genetic life-tree for us? We have an idea of 'angels', humans with wings and holy (magic?) powers - often depicted with a halo. A human with wings and a halo. Hey, that sounds a lot like a horse with wings and a horn. Although we haven't had any natural born angels yet, we do have access to genetic engineering, and immortality is coming closer within our grasp. It's only a matter of time (decades/centuries) before we start tinkering with our own DNA to make our own 'improvements'. I mean, think about it for a few minutes - if you had the capacity to rewrite your own genetics, would you do it, and if so, what would you do? I mean more than the simple stuff of a little bit taller, a little bit more attractive, hair color, etc - I mean things like improved senses, improved reaction speeds, new abilities like water-breathing, flight, psychic powers - the whole gamut. If you can think of it, one day, humans will be able to do it. You'll go to a shop and come out with a different you, in the same way we buy clothes today.
That's the end goal of human engineering. To a great extent we've chosen it for ourselves, but a lot of that 'choice' has been influenced by media, our environment, histories, and societies. The gene pool you have to work with is decided by the contributions your parents, but, in the future, you'll be able to make decisions about your body as an individual. What person wouldn't want to try out being the opposite gender sometimes? Grow cat's ears? Or...become a pony. Y'know, if changing shape was was easy as entering some codes into a computer, or casting a spell. Ponies magic is analogous to humans technology, only, they have magic, and we don't - for now.
What Epona appears to have in mind was to rely on nature's...natural...way of evolving species over time for an express goal of uplifting, or advancing, the species. This implies she was not the creator of said species or worlds, since she could just engineer them how she wanted them to be from scratch, which further implies there's somebody over Epona's head, too. Epona appears to have created Discord as a force of chaos specifically to trouble and malign ponies to help them develop faster in to Alicorns. Discord himself risked total annihilation (or worse) to become friends with pony-dom. No wonder he's capricious at best. He could never rest easy or be true friends as long as the Sword of Damocles was over his head. Well, it's gone for now, and when/if it comes back, Epona won't buy any explanations. He's at last now able to prove his true worth.
Interestingly, Celestia was certainly aware of all this, so her decision to ask Fluttershy to redeem Discord would be a very interesting explanation.
So, what's next? Indeed. Celestia's been handing out bread crumbs this whole time. I don't think she'll be disappointed in her former student. I think Celestia was hoping for something like this to happen for a long time.
If Epona has been pushing ponies towards natural born ascension, the arrival of Flurry Heart is the realisation of her goal. It also means that we can expect to see more of them being born in the future. We don't know Cadence's full story yet (The Cadence Chronicle coming next, perhaps?) or how she became an Alicorn, but she probably wasn't born as one. Celestia and Luna don't have any children that we know of. The only natural born Alicorn we know of was also born from a (presumably) ascended Alicorn. One wonders if Twilight's children will also be Alicorns.
In the show, there's a couple of things that are required for a pony to ascend. We're told by Celestia that it was Twilight's 'great work of magic', but now knowing that Celestia and Luna themselves created cutie marks, this explanation now lays fallow - Celestia directly chose to ascend Twilight, although Twilight herself had to first qualify. I presume this is why Celestia told Twilight she had to be the one to rescue the crystal heart, for example. It may also be what Sunset Shimmer had learned when she demanded Celestia make her into an Alicorn.
Before the end of season 3, Twilight was always the leader of the group. This surprised me a little, because I actually picked Rainbow Dash as the natural leader of the group, but she lost out to Twilight because Dash is very much a 'my way or the highway' kind of leader aka military style. That's not the leadership of friendship.
Leadership and being an Alicorn go hand in hand. That's why they're the leaders of the country. That's why they're the guardians of Equestria.
So a pony really needs to show some kind of leadership to be ascended - and to be a leader, a pony needs to know her friends, and BE a friend. This is what Twilight and Sunset Shimmer both were lacking. Celestia lost Sunset (so it seems), but she was able to guide Twilight on the right path. Remember - Twilight DID NOT WANT TO GO to Ponyville, and she didn't want to make friends. It took Celestia's command for her to go, and she dragged her hooves until she saw the mission ahead of her.
So, it's about friends, and being a leader amongst those friends, and it's about the right leadership style - a more passive, a more supportive leadership style. "You can do it!" over "This is how you do it!"
That's the most important thing.
If it was anything else that we were told - great magical ability/understanding friendship - there would be more alicorns, period. In a thousand years, there had only been Cadence, and then Twilight. In the last YEAR we got Twilight, and Flurry Heart, with Sunset Shimmer and Radiant Hope both being foreshadowed to becoming Ascended themselves (although technically Radiant Hope WAS told over a thousand years ago). I'm 100% sure Starlight Glimmer is going to be an Alicorn in the show in a season or two, because she's already met all of Celestia's stated requirements except for understanding friendship - and right now, she's getting friendship lessons from THE PRINCESS OF FRIENDSHIP.
If Celestia thought Twilight finishing up Starswirl's spell in Magical Mystery Cure was great, how must she feel about Starlight both removing cutie marks, and improving on Starswirl's time travel spell?
As well as this, in Alternate Comic World Equestria, Trixie is an Alicorn. I covered this previously but essentially - we are seeing more alicorns appearing 'recently'. Epona's plan to ascend the pony race is working. Flurry Heart is just the first one to show this. But I expect many more - MANY more - to appear in the future. The future in this story, though, may take hundreds or thousands of years. When you are an immortal being playing the evolution game, and your ascended beings are themselves are immortal, you look for results in a time frame that rocks can relate to.
"What now?"
Harmony was Celestia's answer to Epona's chaos evolution. 100% of Alicorns stop being able to use the elements of harmony because Alicorn's aren't beings of harmony. They are beings of natural chaos. Twilight now has more in common with Discord than she does with any other unicorn. I doubt Celestia is aware of this, because I believe she explained to the best of her honest ability when she discussed it with Twilight, previously. I believe this is why Twilight is no longer the element of magic.
I don't think that Epona has been evolving Alicorns to fight against a great perceived enemy. Celestia and Luna would have known if there was a threat to the Universe, and would not have lain idle. I think she has been doing it for two reasons.
1 - Companionship. If you are immortal, having immortal friends is great.
2 - It's her game. She does it for fun. She likes to read new stories and meet new characters in the same way we like watching our favorite ponies on TV.
This is existential crisis territory! Many people depict immortality and lack of challenges as the ultimate in boredom, entropy, and hell. Imagine a Twilight Sparkle who had met all the ponies and read all of the books and solved all of the friendship problems (see iisaw's OTHER story). Many real, living human beings, need a goal or purpose or challenge in their life to keep moving forwards. If you have no goal, no 'reason to live', these people become depressed and apathetic. Jaded by a repetitive life, they turn inwards and shun contact with the outside world.
"What now" indeed. Twilight is an equal to Celestia and Luna now, and some of Celestia's deceptions have been exposed. It is time for Celestia to accept Twilight as an equal, and also time for Twilight to accept this, too.
why didn't Twilight want to tell Epona about Flurry Heart, an actual born alicorn? did she think Epona would start doing nasty experiments to her?
After the little nod to Season 6, I have to wonder how long Starlight was Twilight's student before the events of this series. Anyway, I loved seeing Twilight face off against the Red Queen, especially the way that she played along until she found the opening she needed. It makes a lot of sense that a God-like (capital "G") entity like Epona would come to assume that others are no threat to her, and therefore she would start to take dumb risks like letting Twilight manipulate the universe mechanism. I also liked her clinical, detached analysis of Twilight, it really highlighted the similarities and differences between the two. For some reason the whole situation reminds me of the one episode of Rick and Morty where Rick creates a miniverse and harnesses its inhabitants to power his car. I can't tell if it makes the situation any more or less horrifying in this case that Epona does not seem to have any purpose for creating the ponies besides simple entertainment.
Now we have to wait and see what happens when the beings in Epona's home universe realize that her connection has been cut off...
7166520 I've seen it as Cutie Mark Failure Syndrome. Most obviously in the "You're going to love mr!" Gala flameout.
7169165 TRQ by definition can't be a tyrant. She is the original, autochthonous sovereign demiurge of their reality. If anything her daughters are the tyrants by their rebellion against legitimate authority. Of course, TRQ is the evolutionary scientist equivalent of a Russian gospodar, who is, from the vantage of her experimental property, an existential threat, so they will cobble together a semblance of legitimacy, again.
7182408
Her being the original ruler of their reality in no way impedes her ability to be a tyrant.
7188643 Sorry, but one of my ongoing pet projects is to recover the original distinctions between despot, dictator and tyrant. They did not start out as synonyms, but a century of sloppy pejorative rhetoric broke down the distinctions. Frex: Lenin was a tyrant, Hitler was a dictator,and Kim Jong Un is a despot. No direct moral distinction between them really, but some significant gradients of legitimacy.
Tyrant, like fascist, is a term used to rhetorically delegitimize. It suggests that the opponent's authority is stolen, illegitimate. It only really has heft in a culture that respects some degree of rule of law.
The Red Queen was.a despot, not a tyrant.
7188819
None of that changes that the current English definition of tyrant is one that the Red Queen fully qualifies for. Languages change, as is natural, and those words are now synonyms instead of having distinct meanings.
When you succeed in actually changing the definitions of the words in the English language back to their originals, then you have an argument, but until then, no.
sp.yimg.com/xj/th?id=OIP.M30539816b54ad1cf1b818de4a62cd227o0&pid=15.1&P=0&w=256&h=155
The show already beat ya to it, ya sanctimonious Greek whore. That's right, Epona. A poorly-written Puff-equivalent insert has trounced your plans! I'm gonna RIDE you when I get my hands on ya.
Why is it in EVERY story you show up in, you're an A-class bitch? Seriously. You're like the worst Creator God EVER!! Even God God has His good moments! But YOU? Sheesh, it's like you're channeling Hillary every time!
At any rate, as I feared, this series went the whole way to ALL REALITY IS AT STAKE!!!
This is the kind of absurd levels of conflict that Marvel comics went to in the 90's before they realized it was getting so ridiculous even the majority of fans were table-flipping.
It's very bad form to let the stakes get this severely out of control. The scope has become so excruciatingly enormous that it's laughable. It's the sort of thing that makes me want to call God Man to save the day. Because, at this point, it's a viable plot resolution!
Worst.... God... Ever...
Hey, Epona. Lorien just told me to tell you he is totally gonna go First One all over your flank.
7173176
Mortals interpreting the state of immortality thusly have tasted some awfully sour grapes.
Fear not, none of us want to listen to unimaginative whiners forever. They won't be invited.
7167989 That tends to be the sort of pretentious rigmarole which common sense dictates is beyond implausible.
It'd be like Pac Man biting its video game programmer.
A true Creator would know ALL THE RULES OF REALITY very damned well, because he/she/it would have written them. It's then quite simple to just... erase whatever doesn't work.
The point at which a story's characters literally beat God is the point where wish fulfillment has exceeded even my flagrant self-aggrandizement. It has ceased to be even potentially dramatic and tilted into self-parody. It is the point where a character could outright declare, "I AM STRONGER THAN GOD NOW!!" and the audience just starts laughing, because such absurdity is, in fact, one of the foundational principles of comedy.
No talking, time for action must see what is coming!
Huh, That IS surprising, but a long talk between Twilight and the Queen, or, a whole lot of other stuff? Also, well, that had to come up given the last chapter, now WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN!
Was it a Friday? It had to be a Friday. Also..... interesting location....
And I am sure that will really impress Queenie. No I'm serious. She'll love it.
It's an illusion, isn't it? r some form of sending? Still, damn that is impressive Twi.
Although it's predictable, if they get past the first two or three, they would be able to guess where you'd be.
And switch right to gather information mode.
Well given who you are facing, she'd take it as a sign of respect most likely.
Juuuust a bit.
Yeah, you could say that.
Always good. Though is that a case of, loving Luna and wanting to deal with whoever could kill her, or wanting to know to measure Twi's power?
Also this.
Well, that could mean any number of things.....
... and even she thinks so!?
Well fuck. Also, I'm pretty sure Discord will want that back.
About damn time.
A lot of REALLY fucked up shit.
Huh.... okay.. she testing the Celestia Mechanisms?
And that. So still, checking things out?
Huh... and she's.. just going to give it back to him..... interesting.. definitely more to her then I had assumed....
What the buck did you do Discord?
Yeah, sucks not having the right words to handle this kind of trans-dimensional stuff.
And he instantly tries to find a way to accept it, without, you know.. just.... AWWWWW he does care. Just, yes i LOVE your Discord.
That is an understatement.
Ohhhhhhhhhhh boy....... this is going so well....
This is more what I was expecting from her..... oh... shit.
EPONA! Well, that makes that earlier comment a lot more fun and... he was made as a 'test' for her daughters.....this makes a lot of sense, still.... oh crap.
............ Nice way to try and help but, well.. we know how good your bluff rolls are.
Yeah, good luck deceiving her.....
Wait, what? Okay.... this is interesting just random detail, or Celestia playing at even more?
Oh....... fuck........
Well, there IS Flurry Heart......
Ohhhhh.... fuuuuuucccckkkkkkkkkkk
So she is some, even higher order, just... being, using worlds as little projects with n regard to..... ho--ly... FUCK!
Umm, you already know other worlds exist.....
Hey Shim Shim... Twi needs a bit of help.....
Ohhh Twilight has a plan.... Shove her into the EQG world and turn her into an ordinary human?
Again.... holy.. fuck.... How the buck did Celestia and Luna ever get one over on her!? Well she does seem to not be one for guile or deception so, easy to fall for those.
Her link back to her native universe?
Well they were kind of under constraints at the time.
And to buy time till you have a chance to beat her.
Well, these odds, up agsint this foe..... yeah time to drop the Littlepip channeling, and start asking "What would Harry Dresden do?" Becuase if I could see ANYONE dealing with this and coming out ahead.. it's him.
that should be obvious given, well all the stuff about them. Idea of Celestia and Luna to try and help ponies find their place in life?
You and me both Twilight...
Wait, you NEED Alicorns? that was the whole reason behind what she was doing? To create them..... why?
Ouch, yeah taking the long view........ seriously what is she up to and how the buck is Twilight supposed to deal with her?
Yeah..... go easy Twilight..
Trying to trap her with that portal? Still only thing I can see.....
Wait, HERS, so that is........ Twi what are you planning? Sending her home and closing the gateway?
And HER link to her own plane, which if you are lucky, will cut off her power and..... ohhh that is one fucking HELL of a gamble, but, it.. just might work....
Okay Twilight, first priority should be get Discord his magic back.
Piece of cake.
Now would be a very VERY good time for a little divine assistance....
Now, staying to help, retreating or.... leaving to get reinforcements?
Saw that coming, still he could be going for backup.
Twi.. NO PATTERNS, Time to channel the fuck out of Pinkie Pie, and be RANDOM!
Well, desperate time and all, but still.....
And that is not just the Amulet talking this time.......
Oh... fuck...
Oh...... fuck..... YES!
OH! FUCK! YES!!!!!!!
Leaving one last place open........
OH FUCK YES!!!!!!!
Didn't kill her outright? Well, that, is kind of surprising.....Still locked in a tiny, very distant, unmagical world... she is NOT going to be happy.
Ohhh that is going to be one hell of a question......
Wow. It's a really marvelous feat of writing, the way you successfully portrayed Epona as a virtually invulnerable opponent and then proceeded to dismantle her in a realistic manner. No part of this chapter felt contrived to me at all. What a scene!
This is too brilliant to be legal
An evil creator? What are you, some kind of Manichaean???