Day 12: Tersk
It was the first and the last day of summer. The sun was rising in the south. The little ones were bleeding. The Wood wept. And Twilight wept with it.
Spike could see her off in the distance, with her head buried into Princess Silver Dove’s shoulder. He was too far away to hear anything, but he could see her wings move as her barrel shook, and how tightly she grasped the foreign heiress. Her tail was nearly flat, her ears tight against her head.
Spike’s stomach clenched, and he belched, a burst of green fire emerging from his mouth, soon to solidify into a scroll. He took it, read it, and again stared at Twilight in the distance. Then he put it away, tucking the scroll into his little traveling bag, next to the newspaper from that morning. It was folded, but he could still read the headline.
“Pardon me,” said a soft voice behind him. Spike turned on the small boulder he was using as a seat and saw an old mare standing there. “I do not mean to pry, but if the news from Equestria is urgent, I can have them discreetly interrupted.”
Spike didn’t answer right away. The mare was somewhere in her late fifties, an earth pony with a skinny build and pale red shades in her coat and mane, her once rich colors starting to fade away. Her face was soft and expressive, and while she wore a heavy coat like many of the locals, it did not quite obscure her cutie mark: a shield, a heart, and a crown.
“No,” he said. “Nothing that can’t wait.” He extended a claw. “I’m Spike.”
“I am Long Haul.” She took his claw with her hoof, and shook gently. “Majordomo to her Imperial Majesty, Princess Silver Dove the Third.”
“What’s a majordomo?”
“The highest-ranked domestic servant. I manage her schedule, handle her day-to-day correspondence, and make sure her arrangements are as she wishes them to be.”
“Oh.” Spike looked back at the two Princesses in the distance. “I’m Twilight’s Number One Assistant.”
“Yes, I know.” Long Haul nodded again, more gently this time. “Princess Silver Dove is a gentle and kind young mare. There are far worse places for Princess Twilight to be in her time of grief.”
“Twilight’s tough. She’s fought monsters and saved the world,” Spike said, still looking her way. “She’ll be fine.”
“Yes, she will be. But I can see you hovering around her like a fretting mother bird with her egg, even if you know well enough to keep out of her sight when you do it.” That got Spike’s attention, and he turned his head up towards the old mare.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” she asked. “Princess Twilight was supposed to tour the Weeping Wood this afternoon, but I do not think she would wish to be interrupted for that. The grounds are at their finest. Everything is set up. It seems a shame to waste.”
A cold and dry wind picked up around them, rustling the forest. Water fell from every branch in a sudden torrent, striking hard against the earth. And then the wind was gone, and there was only the pitter-patter of the Wood’s tears on the ground. Spike watched Twilight, who had pulled out of Silver Dove’s shoulder and was talking with her quietly. Then he nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “Alright.” He hopped down from his rock.
All around them was the Wood. Spike couldn't tell where the palace ended or began, where was city and where was countryside. There were buildings, certainly, some large and some small, all immaculately shaped out of hoof-carved beams. There were roads paved with little broken stones, and there were groups of ponies going about their business. But the Wood ran through all of them, and its trees could be found growing between even the closest-packed buildings and along the largest paths. Every leaf dripped with condensation, and their trunks were scarred with runes.
Long Haul picked a small path to the left, which seemed little used and curved a long way away. Spike followed her, and the two walked in silence until they were out of sight of the Imperial Garden and the two Princesses. It did not take long. The Wood blocked sight, muffled sound, and distorted ponies’ and dragons’ senses of direction equally well. In barely a hundred steps, Spike was hopelessly lost amid the shifting trees and maze-like paths. And so he stopped looking back, and followed by Long Haul’s side.
“The ferns told me that you attempted to gain access to the airfield earlier. To make sure Twilight’s airship would be on time, I assume?” She took Spike’s small glance her way as agreement. “You don’t have to worry. The Emperor himself has ordered that every courtesy be provided to the visiting Princess. I believe your airship will be on time, but if for some reason it is not, another will be promptly redirected for your use.”
Spike looked up at her as they walked, and a small frown appeared on his face. “Thank you,” he said. “Do the ferns around here usually talk?”
“Oh yes,” she said, with a bit of lightness in her words, “ferns are terrible gossips. For instance, they also tell me you struck up a chat with the Artificers outside the base, and had one of their medallions. I’m curious. Are you a mechanic?”
“No.” Spike shook his head. “But they’re useful ponies to know.”
“‘Useful’ is a good word for the International Guild, yes.” She inspected the treetops for a moment, affecting a neutral air. Then, with a touch of brightness in her tone, she added: “My granddaughter is apprenticing with them now, and is about to complete her project to become a journeyman. Would you like to see, and meet her?”
“Yeah,” Spike said. Then he added, “Yeah, sure,” a little more life returning to his formerly dull tone, and some animation to his posture. “What’s her project?”
“Helping her master fine-tune his steam-powered crossbow.” Long Haul rolled her eyes. They came to a junction in the path, and she turned down it, her pace picking up to a steady walk. “I personally don’t see what was wrong with crossbows before, but she’s fallen in love with the metal. As have many of her friends. Foals these days think putting ‘steam powered’ in front of something makes it better.”
“It is kind of enchanting,” Spike said, eliciting a small but bright eyed smile from Long Haul. “Seeing things change that way.”
“She certainly thinks so.” A degree of warmth entered Long Haul’s voice. “Careful you don’t fall in love with the metal too. Those medallions consume ponies’ souls as well as any rune.”
Spike let out a noncommittal grunt and shrugged, then fell quiet as they passed a small group of noble ponies going the other way. Both he and Long Haul moved to the side to let them pass, and it wasn’t until they were out of hearing that he said: “I’m sorry I tried to get into the airfield. Please don’t get Twilight in trouble for that. It was all my idea.”
“If you were older, I’d have taken offense, yes. It was an unsubtle attempt.” Long Haul let out a very equine snort. “In your future travels, do remember that you have the power to press upon the locals. There are servants and there are servants, and that lets you keep greater distance between your master and scandal. But you’re young. And I was a young servant once too, and made the same mistakes. Your training is clearly incomplete, but you have the instinct for the job.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Oh? Then why didn’t you go to Princess Twilight when she was upset?” Long Haul turned a skeptical eye to the little dragon by her side. “I saw you hugging her earlier, so do not tell me she prefers the comforts of a foreign monarch to your own.”
Spike didn’t answer right away, and while he waited, they passed into a clearing. Barely a dozen yards from the trees, the soft soil had turned to permafrost, and the sun could be seen rising in the south. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and though he shivered without the benefit of a jacket, Spike kept his pace steady. “It’s a goodwill tour. She’s here to make friends with the other world leaders. And she likes Silver Dove. If she wants a hug from me, she can get it any time.”
“If you were a pony, you’d be a young stallion now. And not many young stallions would see things that way.” Long Haul led them out of the clearing, and warmth returned to the world. As they came to its edge, Spike took advantage of the light to inspect a cluster of trees more closely, the light illuminating the runes on their bark. On the oldest of trees, the runes had grown in and seemed to multiply of their own accord, spreading across the surface in elegant and twisted lines.
The younger trees were not so weathered, and had bleeding left to do. The runes there wept sap, and the wounds would not heal.
“We can never play politics. Not even in our thoughts. It’s their world, we only live in it,” Long Haul said, giving Spike his time to inspect the trees. “But we need to understand it. And it takes a particular kind of pony—or dragon, I suppose—to learn the rules of a game down to the smallest detail knowing they can never touch the pieces.”
Spike resumed the walk, and Long Haul kept pace. “Is it that obvious I was upset?”
“No. You kept it off your face.” She shook her head. “But your charge had a brush with death. I don’t have to see your face to know that you’re blaming yourself at the moment.”
“Twilight’s an alicorn.” Spike growled, his eyes narrowing at Long Haul. “If she’d stayed another day—”
“She could have what? Wrapped a foreign monarch in a little magical bubble to keep him safe from his own people? Thrown herself on top of the bomb?” Long Haul’s tone gave little mercy, and her gaze was stern. “Getting her out of there was precisely the correct move.”
Spike wrung his claws, and looked down at the dirt. “But the only reason she was in that situation was that she didn’t know what she was walking into. I’d done my research beforehand; I could have warned her.”
“A mistake, yes.” She shrugged. “But Twilight survived. And while the loss of Prince Chain Link is tragic, he was not your ward, and it is not your job to fight off Black Hoof bomb-throwers. You will do better next time, I am sure.”
“Mmph.” The two of them passed a pony kneeling by the side of the road, a unicorn with an elaborate ritual blade floating by her side, slowly scarring a tree trunk with it’s curved steel tip. “So what’s she walking into this time, then?”
“Something good, I think.” Long Haul’s tone turned positive, and she looked up at the shafts of sky visible through the leaves. “The world is changing quickly, yes, but we aren’t Aero-Lipizzia, and Orlovia isn’t about to tear itself apart. It’s a time of coming-together for us. Our great union.”
“What does that mean?” Spike asked, watching Long Haul’s face. “Exactly.”
“Cheeky.” Long Haul fixed him with a short, narrow stare, but her chastising expression relented as quickly as it had come. “How much do you know about our history?”
“Just the basics.” Spike thought back to Twilight’s enthusiastic diatribes, now half-remembered. “That you were cast out of the Three Tribes sometime before Equestria because you were suspected of practicing necromancy. That you’re one of only three cultures to practice magic that can be used equally well by earth ponies and unicorns. And that you’re the only pony culture to actually have no pegasi.”
Long Haul nodded. “A good starting point. And true enough. Rune magic is a form of necromancy, since runes drain the life force of their hosts to power their effects. In the tribal era, when our magic was known as blood magic, our ancestors did bleed forest creatures to work their spells.”
“And ponies?”
“It was illegal, but yes, on occasion.” Long Haul spoke matter-of-factly. “And so, we were cast out. Left to die in a tundra, so far north that the ground never thaws, and the sun never sets in summer and never rises in winter. A land where there are no clouds, and it never rains. It was only with magic that we survived at all, and that came at a terrible cost. Some had to die, that others might live. More than a thousand years, and we’ve never quite forgiven the three tribes for that.”
She gestured at the Wood as they walked, and all its shifting trees. “But then our first ruler, Midnight Sun, found a single tree clinging to existence in the frost. A pony, you see, has only seventy-odd years to take, while a tree may give up two hundred and still have hundreds more to spare. And he made a pact with the tree then, that he should take two hundred of its years, and with them power a spell to pull water out of the air and warmth out of the ground, that the tree would be nourished and its acorns should all become its children. And now the Weeping Wood covers the whole tundra.”
“That still feels like necromancy,” Spike said, a wary note in his voice. “Trees are better than ponies, but it’s not the cute and fluffy kind of magic.”
“We’re not an exceptionally cute or fluffy breed,” Long Haul said, her tone dry. “But will you accept my promise that we aren’t monsters?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” Spike nodded. He lapsed into silence after that, turning off to look at the woods. He could have been miles away from Twilight by now, for all he knew. The trees flowed and shifted around each other in a way that didn’t seem quite natural, and that played tricks on his eyes. He could see a small cabin in the distance, a few noble ponies outside it chatting, tall and thin creatures wrapped in animal fur and jewels. But then he blinked and they were gone, replaced by a twisting rocky trail, which was in turn lost to sight behind the weeping trees.
A shiver passed through him, and he turned back to Long Haul. “What does this have to do with coming together, then?”
“Orlovia is not like other countries, where a strong monarch has always ruled,” she said, returning to her natural patient tone. “The tundra is six thousand miles from end to end. A pony who lives on our eastern border will, for the whole of her life, never see the pony who lives on our western border. And so for most of our history, there was no ‘Orlovia.’ Just a place where orlovs happened to live. And we had our runes, and our stories, and our Weeping Wood, but we were not a nation like Equestria or the other great kingdoms.”
Spike nodded and listened intently as she went on. “Silver Dove’s great-grandfather changed that, Emperor Axial Tilt the First. He declared that our ‘blood magic’ would henceforth be known as rune magic, and that anypony who drew blood in their castings, from animal or pony, would without exception be put to death. And when the ponies at the northern pole rose up in revolution and demanded the right to keep sacrificing their fellow equines, the whole of the orlov nation rose against them.”
She smiled, and with a wistful touch, added: “Princess Silver Dove was raised on those stories. They’ve been romanticized up a bit over the years. An army so large it stretched from one horizon to the other. A thousand regiments of a thousand ponies, to smite the necromancers in their lair.”
“That sounds like a good thing,” Spike said cautiously. “All the ponies coming together to stand against dark magic, I mean.”
“It was a very good thing.” She nodded. “And our people came together again, during the Minotaur Invasion, and again during the great famines when I was a child. But always we’ve been against something. We lived in our villages and kept to ourselves, and only came together in opposition. We were against the Three Tribes. We were against the northern necromancers. We were against the minotaurs, and the changelings, and even against the tundra itself. Victims lashing out against our oppressors.”
“And now you have the railroad.”
“And the realm is at peace.” Long Haul nodded, her tone one of agreement. “So ponies from our west border can meet ponies from our east border, and have tea and a chat together if they should wish it. Once we were orlov, but now we’re Orlovia, and we get to decide what that means. We get to be for something, instead of just against our neighbors.”
Spike thought that over for a moment. “You sound really hopeful,” he said, his cautious tone gaining a bit of life. “Everywhere else I’ve gone on this trip, I’ve heard ponies say, ‘the world is changing,’ like it’s a bad thing.”
“Well they can go soak their heads.” Long Haul’s tone turned sassy, a bright smile appearing on her face. And despite himself, Spike smiled too. “Young ponies these days are so gifted. Like my granddaughter. When she first joined the International Guild, I admit I was worried. I thought they were shifty foreigners who’d turn her away from her people. But I should have had more faith in her. She’s a pony who can stand with two legs in the past and two in the future. She doesn’t have to turn away from the Wood to love her crafts.”
Ahead of them the path widened, and Spike could see their destination. The practice range was a large open area, bordered by little trees, with a massive stone slab set up as a backstop. Archery targets and bow-stands were set up along the firing end, along with a large workbench and an overhang. There was a young mare there, a bright teal unicorn, fiddling with some gadget or other.
“It does worry me sometimes,” Spike said slowly, watching the young mare ahead as they crossed the last few dozen steps. “It just seems like everything is so big and out of control.”
“Yes. But we’re servants, Spike. We do our jobs, and keep our heads down, and have faith in the ponies around us. And I think most ponies are worth putting your faith in.” They shared a smile, and Spike stood up a little straighter. “It’s a new era. And the new ponies just want to build something great for their people.”
After a moment, she added: “And they will. They won’t be anypony’s victims again.”
In the distance as the young unicorn raised her gadget to her shoulder. It was a complex metal construction that bore no resemblance to a crossbow, with a large steel canister underneath a wide barrel and a complex assemblage of pipes. Though she levitated it with her unicorn magic, it had a large shoulder stock, and she braced it against herself.
Abruptly, a thunderclap carried through the Wood, and steam shot from the end of the barrel. Spike didn’t even see the projectile. There was just a blur of motion, and when he turned his eyes, a metal spike nearly a foot long was jutting out of the backstop. It had gone right through the target, impacting with enough force to crack the stone.
“Woah!” Spike called. “That—”
The weapon fired again, and another spike shot out, smashing through the target and into the backstop. Then another, and another, each after the other. Each shot ripped huge gouts of cloth and hay out of the archery target and tore chunks of stone out of the wall. The report was deafening, and so Spike covered his ears, and waited for the weapon to stop.
But it didn’t. The young mare simply held down the trigger and let the steel do its work. Shot after shot embedded itself in the stone, spiderweb cracks radiating out from each one. Soon, the cracks met in a single long fracture, and the great stone that had stood for so many centuries was split from its base to the ground.
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Did you skip a chapter or something? It jumps from day 8 to day 12. (I read the chapter though, its a good one but the start doesn't make sense in relation to the prev chapter)
I'm intensely jealous of your ability to blend really detailed, heavy worldbuilding with such strong characterization and emotion.
Fantastic work. I can't wait to read more.
7466733
No. Twilight traveled for four days. Just like the Pegasus Express jumped from Day 4 to Day 7.
It takes awhile to get around the world! 81 days, if you're lucky.
7466762
You think you can make me lower my guard with comments, but I know how this works. In the end, only one of us can earn Horizon's love!
(By which I mean, thank you!
)
I'm very much enjoying the new countries and cultures you're introducing! The Orlovian rune magic is quite interesting, and the way they moved away from necromancy to a kind of symbiotic existence with the Wood is a great bit of fantasy. (Why no pegasi, though?)
A spelling nitpick:
That should be "report".
It's a mining tool! Not a weapon. Clearly.
Oh! That's really interesting! Magic powered by Life, but the Life of Trees and plants, not animals. ... I might use that myself...
Still in Griffon territory after 12 days... About 1/8 of the round trip... How many chapters will this be, I wonder? It'd be great, no matter what! ... It's just the timing of each chapter is so interesting...
Is the Black Hoof only in Griffon areas? Or international?
I guess a Pegasus Rune-mage might be possible? It's just never been done?
7466869
Errors fixed! And I'm glad you liked it. I was really happy with that little detail. Necromancer gardeners, ho!
They were banished before Equestria, during the period when pony cultures were all separate, so the original orlovians didn't have any pegasai. And after they arrived, the tundra was a land where: "There are no clouds, and it never rains."
These days, the Weeping Wood provides their water, so they don't actually need pegasai to bring in clouds, which dramatically limits their need for weather control like the other pony tribes use.
7466883
"Steam Powered Crossbow" sounds way more elegant than "Fully automatic spike launcher."
7466901
They're not in griffon territory anymore! They haven't been for awhile. It's ponies all the way down now.
The Black Hoofs are ponies. They're Aero-Lipizzian (a pony nation).
Yup. No reason pegasai can't learn it.
7463827 In the show (Lesson Zero) we see the sun moving from left to right, facing north (from Ponyville to Canterlot). Therefore, Griffonstone is in the west, even if on our maps that direction would be labelled east.
The 'mild west' is in the *south* of Equestria, and I don't think anything else was specifically labelled east or west.
7466830
noooo, Horizon-sempai is going to notice meeee
(By which I mean I'm just glad that his challenge inspired such great works. I love this story.
)
I don't know if Celestia planned this, but this trip better cause Twilight to wake up. Right now Equestria still seems to be first among equals in economic and military might. But if everywhere else is embracing rapid technological advancement to drive their economy, Equestria is going to fall behind unless they adapter.
7466963 In the season 6 opener they explicitly refer to the Crystal Empire as in the north.
7467274 Yeah. That ruined my original theory that the top of the map was south.
Well, it was ruined way before that when they called the area the 'frozen north', but same diff.
And didn't the guild start in Equestria? I thought the implication was that it was spreading steam technolgoy from there, starting with the railroads.
7467274
7467278
The International Guild did start in Equestria, but at this point it doesn't really have a "home."
And as befits the round-the-world theme, every country Twilight visits is (more or less) west of the previous, saving a few trips south to go to Zebraria.
...What a cheerful opening paragraph. The news has arrived, then, I guess...
"as a seat, and saw an"
"seat and"?
"Haul,” she took his claw with her hoof, and shook gently."
"Haul." She took his claw with her hoof and"?
"used and that curved a"
"and curved"?
"in silence, until they"
"silence until"?
"said, then he added"
"then added"?
"dull tone, and some"
"tone and"?
"out a non-committal and shrugged"
First, "noncommittal"? Second, a noncommittal what?
"from me she can get"
"me, she"?
"Long Haul lead them out"
"led"?
"Spike’s growled, his eyes"
"Spike"?
"his claws, and looked"
"claws and"?
"situation is that she"
"situation was that"?
"research beforehand, I could have"
"beforehand; I"?
"with it’s curved"
"its"?
"never thaws, and the sun"
"thaws and"?
I continue to be delighted by the worldbuilding. :)
"the whole of his life"
"her life"?
"see the pony who lives "
"a pony"?
"nodded, and listened intently"
"nodded and"?
"After a moment, she added: “And they will. They won’t be anypony’s victims again.”"
Well, given the recent assassination of the heir of the neighboring militaristic empire by an orlov resistance group, you might just have an opportunity to put that to the test soon...
"the distance as the young unicorn"
"distance the"?
"archery target, and tore"
"target and"?
"his ears, and waited"
"ears and"?
"But, it didn’t"
"But it"?
"trigger, and let the"
"trigger and"?
7467535
Oh my god. How do you do this?
I'm glad you do (because it makes the story better!), and I'm grateful you put the time in, but, damn. Either I suck at grammer or you have super powers.
This made me crack up. I was in full grammar correction mode, saw this, and my brain spit out a scan error.
No. Everything will be fine. Everything is fine. We're all fine here.
7467278
7467313 The Guild did start in Equestria.
Looks like in Equestria the guild just keeps the trains running and that's it. But in other countries their members are experimenting with military hardware and other new technologies, even as those countries are hardened by civil warfare and engaged in widespread environmental destruction to accelerate their economic growth.
And add in entrepreneurial brain drain from Equestria to elsewhere.
Interestingly, it still seems like ponies are going to dominate the planet in the future, with their numbers and inherent magic, but it doesn't look like those ponies will be Equestrian.
7467600
"
"Oh my god. How do you do this?
Long experience and a great deal of persnicketiness, probably. :)
"I'm glad you do (because it makes the story better!), and I'm grateful you put the time in, but, damn. Either I suck at grammer or you have super powers."
[shrugs]
Eh, typos get through for everyone. I've seen worse.
...Though I suppose it isn't completely impossible that I have superpowers. :)
"This made me crack up. I was in full grammar correction mode, saw this, and my brain spit out a scan error."
Hah, sorry! :D
"No. Everything will be fine. Everything is fine. We're all fine here."
Oh, of course.
...And also, I just realized that the "steam-powered crossbow" might not be just an Orlovian device, if the Guild decides that it belongs to them. And that, if that's the case, they might generously offer examples (just demonstration models, obviously, pay no attention to the order numbers) to, oh, all sorts of people. Like that nice wealthy empire just over the border, for instance.
7467821
The International Guild has no national loyalties. It's a humble trade guild, that exists to advance its trade and train its members.
As Next Wave said, "all my creations are free for everyone to use."
7467837
Ah. Yes. So...
Probably soon time to advance its trade into pegasus harnesses for steam crossbows, pegasus carts optimized for becoming flying tachankas, non-pegasus carts optimized for becoming non-flying tachankas, systems to aid the targeting of steam crossbows at anything that might happen to be trying to fly nearby... all sorts of advancement possibilities for that invention!
"Journeypony", or since she is a mare, "Journeymare" would be more in keeping with MLP:FiM.
7467250 7466830
Oh, you two. There's enough of me to go around.
(And if there isn't, I'll just ask some of my perfectly normal pony hivemates to be me until there is.)
7472138
Mmm. There's something suspicious going on here...
vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/f/f5/Rainbow_Dash_narrow_eyes_S01E04.png/revision/latest?cb=20120819221104
Also, I've (finally) reviewed this on my blog as part of my 80 Days crossover roundup! Thank you for an entertaining read.
If there's a second round-up post, I plan to review it again to talk about subsequent chapters, so keep 'em coming.
7472527
Yep! The next four chapters have already been written, and I am continuing to crank them out as we go. Think you'll like how it ends.
Now to read your review!
7467600
I'm not going to say anything, dear.
7479772
You are. And he shoved it under her nose with a pile of other papers and asked her to sign them. :D
7479772
7479796
Oh, thanks! I was (incorrectly) interpreting that she did know, likely after having been shown that Spike was right about needing to leave.
Ah, I misread those earlier signs. Happily enough.
Speaking of, I love how you deflate the doom and gloom that's been building up over the past few chapters of Spike chatting with extras, only to end on a tremendous explosion of pessimism.
An automatic weapon. I'm not sure I trust the world you're building here. Too real, too progressive, too dangerous. Love the story, though.
The opening few paragraphs have the poetic vagueness of a dream sequence, such that I thought it was a dream for a little while. Not that it's altogether a bad thing, but it did confuse me for a bit, what with lines like "It was the first and last day of summer."
That is adorable. Spike's innocence is the perfect straight man to the mare's jovial glibness.
I think Walabio might have a point. I didn't notice it while I was reading, but journeyman sticks out a little bit in a pony story.
This got a long and worrisome "oh" out of me as I realized what that meant. What little I know of The Great War includes the development of the Gatling gun.
A demonic pact with a tree? A beneficial one, even? That's... kind of brilliant, actually. I might steal that concept.
I don't think <romanticized> needs the word <up> with it. It can just be <They've been romanticized a bit over the years.>.
This is some great metaphor for Russian history, as well as some good mirroring of the earlier talk(s) Spike had about both Orlovia and about the people around the world.
Either an incomplete sentence, or just an extraneous <as>.
Rarity's killing shed in the Everfree has historical precedent, I see.
The world-building in the chapter was thoughtful and engaging, but it really dropped you into it blind and only started to make much sense half way through. I had to do some going back and forth to try to figure out what was going on in the first few paragraphs.
How much do the nations here 1:1 relate to real nations at a point in Earth's history? Aero-Lizthingy is very Austria-Hungary, but I'm not sure if Orlovia is Finland, Russia, or something more fictional? Russia seems to fit best, with the talk about the big distance from west to east, but I hadn't realised we were moving that far west (or east, on the real globe) that fast.
Unironically one of the best uses of foreshadowing I've ever read. The uncertainty in Spike, the optimism in Long Haul, and finally the brutal moment of clarity with the crossbow. It reads like ballet. Killer stuff, pun absolutely intended.
11684775
Thank you! I really loved this chapter, it's one of my favorites.
Also, holy shit I am delighted you are reading the story. Your opinion means something to me. I hope you leave a few more comments along the way, if something catches your eye.