For the vast majority of Equestria’s recorded history, there were only two alicorns. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were divine, unique, and to even imagine a time before them was impossible.
After thousands of years, two more alicorns were born, and ponies started asking questions. Where do alicorns come from? Why are they so long-lived? What exactly does a pony need to do to ascend?
Neither of the ancient sisters were interested in answering those questions, if they even knew themselves, and that is where the leads died for so many intrepid students, scholars, and scientists. But nopony could stand between Twilight Sparkle and the truth.
Nopony, with one possible exception.
Edited by Chapter: 13.
Thanks to Cogwheelbrain for prereading.
Chapters (9)
It is strange that you have no reviews. It may be because your summary is so nebulous. I like the route Twilight is taking, seeking higher arcane knowledge and supported by Luna against Celestia's status-quo. I just hope the thriller aspect isn't going to lead into Twilight's knowledge delve turning into a Cthulu-esque scenario, or Celestia being ever right.
Very intrigued so far. Keep it up!
So Starswirl discovered cells, chromosomes, and DNA, interesting...
[aplauso]
So, I'm seeing that the prologue was completely pointless.
7671790 I meant it to be foreshadowing, but I guess it missed the mark for you. Thanks for the feedback.
7671790
I found it less confusing by reading the prologue again after finishing the last chapter.
This was a really gripping story, and I'm surprised it doesn't have more comments. I liked how you made Twilight and Celestia so antagonistic in this context, but without contradicting canon or demonizing either of them.
“Why don’t you meet me at the Archives, Spike. I might be a while,” she said over her shoulder.
7775194 Curses! Thanks.
Pinkie stepped back. “Oh. Well, what is it then?” Twilight blinked. She had completely lost the thread of conversation.
He ran back in front of her with a piece of blank parchment in hand. “You brought some parchment with you.” She stomped her hind hoof a bit. Right, that hoof had felt a little weird.
Or
He ran back in front of her with a piece of blank parchment in hand. “You brought some parchment with you.” She stomped her hind hoof a bit. Right, she thought that hoof had felt weird.
This story was fan-freaking-tastic!! I especially love how you took Twilights quirky personality traights from cannon and wove them into your story!!
Poor Celestia, suddenly she finds that she is also guilty of a great transgression against the ponys of her beloved nation. Unlike her sister though, her transgression was slow and subtle but still very impactful.
Bravo!
Well, I've found a new addition to my favourites list. I love the unique names for things. It made the discoveries feel more real. The twist for celestia was good too. My soul demands a sequal, but my mind says this is perfect the way it is.
Very captivating read. I must say I like your craft - there are no immersion breaks, the characters feel real, the prose runs smoothly. I wish I could write third person limited like you do.
If I may add critique, I'd like to say that I find the prologue ill-advised. It creates this sense of apocalyptic doom and visceral violence (red mist? holy shit man) that is nowhere else to be found in the story, and gives off the impression that one of the alicorns is gonna go apeshit, which does not happen in the end. I think leaving it out and starting the story from 'all is well', escalating from there, would be better. Some misdirection is fine, but this actually feels like an untruth.
Furthermore, a better introduction to the symptoms of moon madness would've been good, I think. The foreshadowing with grandpa Glint and Shining Armor is doing enough to realize one could've guessed, but it still comes at a bit of a surprise when Twilight diagnoses Celestia.
The science part and the cipher, as well as the spell weaving lore you've introduced here really impressed me. I believe a lot of research and careful thought went into this story, and it shows.
Okay this was... well for the most part it was AMAZING! Just, the tension, the build up, it really earned the 'Thriller' tag. The stuff with Starswirl's spell, the way it was all set up was great, and just, so much this could go with, so many ways this could work and just... yeah Twi's slowly questioning Celestia, the mystery of what is going on.... this story did SO much great and I was on the edge of my seat.
Right till the ending then it all kind of falls apart. This whole thing was leading to By the way Celestia is insane and needs to step down as leader of Equestria. Never mind how poorly foreshadowed it was, and just how 'whiskey tango foxtrot' to say that Tia is nuts and not a fit ruler, after everything she's done. Plus it's just so disrespectful to the character to simply write her off as nuts, that's it, just nuts neds to step away, screwed over Equestria in some ways because of it. It just, does not sit right at all. Either from the way it's presented, or what it means.
The whole idea was very poorly explained to know what is going on what any of it means, it's name dropped but that's it, and then suddenly it's, well, it's doing what it is.
Even then the reveal COULD have worked, if it had been handled better then just "You're insane" "Oh, guess I am I'm going to become useless now and go away because I clearly shouldn't be doing the job I have proven myself to do with AMAZING prowess, grace, wisdom and just overall being great at" and simply.. all of her history being reduced to "unfit to rule because insane." Have it be something new, and then tossing Shiny under the bus like that in the epilogue "Oh this character you like, he's now a paranoid mood swinging loon who can't enjoy being with his family anymore for no reason beyond, just because. And what the buck with the sending Twi the book if her obsession was keeping it hidden? knowing it could KILL HER!?
But worse is that, there are three main threads running through this, Twi's study of Starswirl's work. Scootaloo's issues, and the ending reveal. Yet.... only two of them have any connection or mesh together in any real way in the end. The later jut made the first thread harder and provided conflict, then ended up simply screwing over characters and turning them into shells of who they really are for no reason. Rather then making clear, given what this poorly explained disorder is, yet, why wasn't it made clear that Twi's research had fixed it? Make it be a SOLUTION to the issue, not just.. the issue existing just to create tension and then left hanging.
It just, there is SO MUCH GOOD and this was so intense, and just, I could not stop reading...... then the edning came and left me utterly baffled and hollow and just.... what? It had... it just came SO close and then, ended like that.
Plus, I really had no idea what wa going on with Luna, the whole scene in the dungeon I am lost on what was going on between them.. somehow.. suddenly Twilight thinks Luna is nuts and wants to rip her wings off and learning no makes her feel better about Celestia?
Yes the rest was so good, and the DNA stuff was great... though one other nagging issue is none of this explains Cadance, and makes the whole 'ascension' thing rather... lacking and mundane and... nothing important in any way, nothing special, robs cadance and Twilight of earning this, byt making it what it seems to be. Unless there is more to it then the story says.
I just,, still coming down off the tension high from the story so bit hyped, and yet..... yeah AMAZING build up, amazing set up, the tension was great, the ideas were mostly sound, but needed to include a bit more stuff, it's just the ending that comes out of nowhere and makes no sense, while being amazingly disrespectful to so many characters.
8199097 I spent a long time figuring out how to make the basic ideas in this story work, so I do have fairly solid answers to your questions if you don't mind some Word of God, some of which are present in the stories and a few which aren't. I appreciate the feedback either way.
I do think you're right about the ending being unsatisfying, although not for logical reasons so much as for tonal reasons.
8199186 Yeah that was the bigger issue, it just, all this set up and the ending just.. swerves into whole new territory. The logical stuff just comes up as you try to figure it out. (Except the Cadance thing, that the whole Time I was noting how, nothing about the spell Starswirl made accounted for Cadance's ascension.) And yes explanation would be fine and maybe help me understand things.
Really when Twilight talked about past patients before Scoots I was sure she meant fixing Celestia and Luna. The ending was, tonally off, but then the epilogue just, made it worse my having her and Shiny just.. end up like that.
8199309
Okay, I'll try to be as clear as possible here in case anyone else has similar questions. BIG SPOILERS ahead, if you couldn't tell from the giant black bars.
Without going too much into my writing process, suffice it to say that a fair amount of the story was rewritten and moved around at the last minute because the original draft was lacking in conflict and character motivation. The ending probably needed some more time in the oven, but I'd been working on the story for months and just wanted it published already.
The main idea of the story, which I was trying to save until the climax, is that alicorns are pretty much just mutated ponies. One of their chromosomes is messed up, which leads to excessive magical powers in some cases and full on alicornhood in others. This mutation can also cause serious neurological side effects, commonly called Moon Madness after Luna's mental breakdown and subsequent banishment.
Celestia, Luna, and Cadance were all born as alicorns, and therefore all share that same genetic quirk. It also runs in Twilight's family, which is why her grandfather has the disease, and that's also why Cadance gave birth to an alicorn baby--both she and Shining Armor share the alicorn gene. I'm not a biologist, but I guess that means the condition is recessive, since it skipped Twi's dad.
So anypony with that mutation has a predisposition to mental illness, and since alicorns are immortal, they're statistically guarranteed to show symptoms eventually. Luna suffered an episode which led to her turning into Nightmare Moon, and Celestia is dealing with one for pretty much all of Twilight's life, which reaches its peak during the events of the story.
Everything about Twilight's 'destiny' is the product of Celestia's mental illness and some lucky coincidence. If Twilight didn't happen to have the alicorn gene--something that Equestrian science didn't fully understand until Twilight found Star Swirl's journal--the spell from 'Magical Mystery Cure' would have killed her like it did Star Swirl. Celestia was convinced that Equestria needed a fourth alicorn, and so she sent Twilight the book, hoping she would figure out Star Swirl's spell and ascend. She also lied to her about Cadance's origins so that Twilight wouldn't question being the only 'unnatural' alicorn. This has since been contradicted by the season six premiere, but I started writing this during the hiatus between five and six, so that's one inconsistency that I couldn't patch.
The epilogue is a bit of a mess, I admit. Shining Armor has a minor case of Moon Madness, and I tried to hint that Twilight is also suffering from some delusions. Celestia is recovering with the help of good old psychiatry. I probably should have included a line or two about Twilight not feeling confident enough to magically mess with the brain.
There are probably a number of other big plot holes that I either didn't notice or can't remember, but those are the main points that I built the story around. I hope all this improves your understanding and appreciation for the story rather than the opposite.
Cheers!
8199429 Yeah gives a better idea, and a lot that really could have been better done and explained, especially with Moon Madness.
The thing with Cadance, is we've had her canon backstory since before Season 4. It was in the first GM Barrow Chapter book and was confirmed by the show staff as the official, canon backstory. Plus it was told to Twilight by Cadance herself. That she was a pegasus orphan found in the wild and raised by a roving tribe of Earth Ponies, till one day the EP's camp was attack by a witch using a dark artifact to weakened them and make them all unable to wake up through stealing all the love and energy from them. Only Cadance was able to resist it because even before this, she was full of so much love. (It was written as a book for younger kids, the wording is a bit simplistic) confronted the witch, and the love in her heart overcame the dark energy of the witches artifact, purifying it, breaking the spell, and causing her to ascend, which is when Celestia found her on the Ethereal Plane. So yeah hence why trying to figure out why none of Starswirl's work
On the mutation angle.... ehhh I can see how it makes sense, and understand the reasoning, it is an interesting one but to me... it just kind of... removes a good deal of the meaning, the grandness, the specialness of ascension, of Alicorns, just, random mutation versus ponies who have ascended to become demi-gods through becoming living Icons of a virtue.
As to the ending, yeah... really needed those details, like Tia was recovering, which did not seem possible since, the way it was talked about with Twi's family, it made it seem like Alzheimer's, something that, you never get over and it just gets worse and worse and worse. Shining it made it seem like, just as bad. At the very least, having Twilight studying the work and through it finding a key to curing the issue would have tied it all together neatly and ended on a better note. After all, it seemed natural where this would go, it wasn't Twilight messing with a brain at all, the issue is a genetic defect and that is exactly what she is fixing. Also, so Tia's episode was only the last few years? But then why was she doing all this stuff for so long that kept the knowledge hidden Twi had found?
But like i said for all the issues with how it comes together at the end, you did one HELL of an awesome job at the journey to get there. Just, so gripping so thrilling, so amazing and tense and damn you did 'thriller' right. Like you said, then ending just needed a bit more work to match that, and a few details that... not going to say 'wrong' but that just, feel counter to a lot of how things feel to me about these aspects. That don't quite feel like they match what we've seen for me. And it's just how damn GOOD it was that made the.. issues all the worse because everything else had me so keyed up, so hyped so sucked in that.. they felt all the more jarring and being high on the Adrenalin from the trip just made the reactions to them more extreme. So.. it's things that only seem worse, because everything was so damn GOOD!
8199646 Heh. Well, thank you very much. I'll try harder to stick the landing next time.
I started to cry half way through XD.. great job on the story. Lol!
This was amazing..good job..I enjoyed reading it
A fascinating intellectual thriller, though the ending is something of a belly flop. You might want to add some of the stuff in your responses to Seraphem as an author's note; there's a lot of information there that's missing from the text and helps a great deal with understanding it.
Still, all told, a gripping read from start to finish. Thank you for it.
Startswirl gave himself magical cancer and now Twilight is anger at Celestia, and here I was hoping for world building on what magic is.
This is getting very interesting, like the little bit of foreshadowing of how Flurry Heart could exist. Really like the parts about how 'chromacords' crwate alicorns and them being twisted and how a pattern spell could be used to identify them. Really good mix of science and magic. I'm a geneticist so it really tickles my fancy
Wow that was pretty... wow, good and unexpected twist. I imagine they could re-engineer that spell to fix moon madness some how, unless it is tied directly to the parts that make an alicorn an alicorn. Would make sense for the madness to be a symptom of alicorns as a mutation of that one 'chromacord' could result in their magic being all mixed up and making them an alicorn. Essentially a genetic disorder, albeit with extreme benefits
Star Swirl's spell is genetic engineering. Cancer cells have genetic mutations that allow them to multiply wildly without controlled cell death.
Did Star Swirl give himself cancer because he didn't understand friendship?