10 Wibbly-Wobbly
My Little Exalt
WIBBLY-WOBBLY
by: Lithl
special thanks:
Rhanite
LordofRansei
The news from Cloudsdale was troubling. The head of Ponyville's weather team had missed a mandatory meeting with her superior at the weather factory; not an unheard-of phenomenon according to the missive Celestia had received, and standard procedure was to send a messenger pegasus to suss out the situation. The troubling news was that neither the messenger nor Rainbow Dash had reported back to Cloudsdale... nor the pair of investigators sent after the messenger.
Coupled with multiple missing ponies reports from neighboring towns regarding ponies who did regular business in Ponyville, and it was painfully obvious that something was wrong. Twilight hadn't responded to any of the letters Celestia sent by dragonfire, either. Nothing had gone wrong with the dragonfire spell on Celestia's end, but considering the nature of the situation, Celestia was unwilling to try sending a letter by the Pony Express or Fet-Ex.
The Sun Princess' expression was grave. "Shining Armor, please send for Captain Storm Wi—"
Her command was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass and a ball of gray and yellow rolling across the throne room floor before coming to a stop next to Guard Captain Shining Armor at the base of the stairs leading to Celestia's throne. Somehow, the crash landing had ended in a perfect pose of supplication to the Princess of the Day.
"Whoops! My bad!"
The gray mare was wearing the saddlebags of a Pony Express employee, and Shining Armor had almost immediately trapped her in one of his signature force fields.
"Your highness!" A pair of pegasus guards flew in the broken window after the mailmare. "We give our humblest apologies, Your Majesty, for failing to apprehend the intruder. We attempted to detain her after she violated the restricted airspace around the castle, but her flight pattern was extremely erratic and difficult to match."
"Yes, I suspect it was," Celestia said with some amusement as she noticed the mare's severe case of strabismus. Celestia dismissed the two pegasus guards and turned to the trapped mailmare. "Hello, my little pony. I apologize; I feel like we've met before, yet I can't recall your name."
The mare didn't seem bothered by the force field surrounding her, and rose from her prone position to address her diarch. "No, we haven't met. Well, I've been in the crowd at a couple Summer Sun Celebrations, but we've never spoken. My name's Derpy! Derpy Hooves!"
"And just what do you think—?" Captain Armor began yelling at the poor mare, but was cut off by a stern look from Celestia. He began again in a less confrontational tone, "I mean... Why did you crash through the window to see the Princess instead of waiting for tomorrow's Day Court, or visiting Princess Luna at the Night Court in a few hours?"
Derpy looked between the Captain and the Princess with a bewildered expression on her face, the apparent severity of her confusion compounded by her wandering eye. Her eyes widened and she blushed as it finally dawned on her where she was.
"Captain Armor, I think you can release her, don't you? I doubt she's a danger to anypony."
The Captain dispelled his shield and muttered under his breath, "At least not intentionally."
"Now, then, Miss Hooves, I'm afraid I don't have time to chat with you. There is a situation developing in the town of Ponyville that I must deal with. Captain, would you please escort Miss Hooves out of the castle?"
Shining Armor began to direct the mailmare out of the throne room, but Derpy's eyes brightened and she exclaimed, "Ponyville? I live in Ponyville!"
Celestia and Shining both stared at Derpy for a short moment before Shining forcibly levitated her back to the base of the throne. "Tell us everything you know about the loss of communication with the town and the disappearing ponies," he ordered.
Derpy chuckled into one hoof before replying, "There are no disappearing ponies! You're silly, I like you!"
Shining's left eye began to twitch. "We have no less than seventeen missing ponies reports from neighboring towns, for ponies who do regular business in Ponyville. Cloudsdale is also missing a messenger and two investigators, there's no word from the head of the Ponyville weather team, and no response to the dragonfire messages the Princess has sent to her protégé. How can you claim there are no missing ponies?!"
Celestia bowed her head. "I was about to send for Captain Storm Wing of the Sky Archons before you arrived. If you have any information on the situation it would be much appreciated. No offense intended to my sister, but I feel like I'm night flying."
"Aw, they're not missing; they're just in a bubble!"
"A... bubble. Like, a wibbly-wobbly thing make from soap and water?" Shining Armor resisted the urge to bludgeon himself with something heavy. Losing consciousness would not be conducive to solving the matter at hoof.
Derpy stared into space in the direction of the wall behind the Captain (and in the direction of the ceiling). She made a 'so-so' gesture with one hoof. "More like a wibbly-wobbly thing made from time, but yes." She returned her gaze to the two other ponies in the room (considering one was in front of her and the other was to her side, this was an impressive feat for a normal pony, but an easy trick for Derpy). "The librarian was doing some sort of timey-wimey spell, and now everypony near Ponyville is moving super slow, but most of them think nothing's wrong."
Celestia relaxed a number of muscles she didn't even realize were tensed. Still, there were unresolved problems. "That is indeed good news, Miss Hooves. If I may ask, how is it that you escaped the effects of Twilight's spell?"
"I was on a long-distance delivery to Trottingham when it happened," Derpy replied quickly.
"Wait," Shining mused, "If you weren't in Ponyville when it happened, then how is it that you know what's going on?"
Derpy winced at the question, but the Captain didn't seem to notice. Her eyes widened a bit as though she had struck upon an idea, and before anypony could blink, Derpy went from being on all fours to having one hoof in her mailbag. "The truth is... I read some of your mail, Princess..."
"Th-That's illegal!" Shining Armor cried.
Derpy bowed her head in apparent shame as she withdrew a scroll with a broken seal and hoofed it over to the Captain who read it aloud.
Dear Princess Celestia and Captain Shining Armor,
In a few days I'm going to be testing out a spell I discovered in the Star Swirl the Bearded Wing of the Canterlot Archives. If you don't hear from me, then I've probably gotten the spell backwards and slowed down time in Ponyville. This is a problem that needs to be solved from the inside of the 'time bubble', and anypony who gets too close will be trapped inside until I figure things out.
So just keep the Sky Archons back and make sure nopony tries to go to Ponyville until I send you a letter by dragonfire saying otherwise. Everything should be fixed soon!
Your loyal subject and your little sister,
Twilight Sparkle
"Huh," Shining said after he finished, "since when does Twily send letters to the two of us at once?"
"Since when does she address you as 'Captain'?"
"Or sign her letters 'your loyal subject'? I thought you said she always signed her letters 'your faithful student'?"
"She does." Celestia narrowed her eyes. "It's also troubling that she knew we'd consider making use of the Sky Archons." With a puff of green flames, Celestia summoned one of Twilight's previous Friendship Reports and began comparing the two letters; both appeared to have been written by Spike's claw, and the ink and parchment were both consistent with what was available in Ponyville. Twilight did not use any sort of crest on her wax seals, so there was no way to confirm whether the two letters had been sealed by the same pony.
Princess Celestia looked up from the two letters in her telekinetic grip. "Captain Shining Armor! For the moment we have no choice but to trust this most recent letter from Twilight. I want you to take a detachment of Royal Guardsmen and coordinate with the Sky Archons to blockade all roads into Ponyville so that nopony else is caught in whatever is happening there. Create a perimeter at least a mile out from the boundary of the town.
"If what this letter says is correct, even a failsafe spell won't be enough from the outside; Star Swirl's enchantments are potent, and with time manipulation like this, the spell itself would likely be slowed before dispelling the problem." Shining Armor gave a salute before turning and trotting towards the door.
As he crossed the threshold, he stopped and turned back to look at Celestia. "Forgive me for saying so, Your Majesty, but perhaps you should get Princess Luna to look at the letters again when she wakes up. You've never been one for subtle things such as counterfeiting." Celestia nodded, and Shining closed the door behind him.
Celestia sighed into the empty room, and then shivered from a cold breeze. What in the name of Faust happened to my window?
The fields outside of Ponyville were quiet, almost serene; if she had been any other mare, Octavia could have easily let herself enjoy the late spring day. Unfortunately, she was not any other mare. Octavia was a mare on a mission: find intelligence on The Dowager's beachhead in Equestria and report back to her superiors via Derpy's sorcery.
Octavia shifted the cello case on her back into a more comfortable position, and then stepped sideways. To the average outside observer, she would have appeared to vanish into thin air; such an observer would then forget the grey mare had ever existed in the first place. In truth, Octavia stood exactly one step to the left of where she had been before. Nothing had changed, save for the fact that the universe now insisted that she was not standing wherever she was. Anypony who tried to look upon her would simply agree with the universe: nopony was standing where Octavia was standing.
Octavia continued her trek towards Ponyville, her eyes ever watchful. It was not long before she stumbled – almost literally – over a group of children gathered just outside the border of the small town. Human children. Assuming the children arrived at the same time as The Dowager, they had to have been living in Ponyville for almost a week. Despite this, each child had come outside to look with his or her own two wondering eyes at the fields, the trees, and the skies.
Why are there human children with The Dowager? Why are they still alive? Octavia stood near the group, unnoticed, as she tried to wrack her brain for any tidbits of information about The Dowager. According to intelligence from Black Ice Shadow, the other Deathlords considered her a failure as she secluded herself in her swamp, never attending meetings held in Stygia. Has she fallen so far from the Deathlords' cause that she's raising humans rather than killing them? The children looked practically emaciated, but that wasn't necessarily evidence one way or another; The Dowager was a ghost, after all, and she was millennia removed from the normal processes of life – such as eating.
Octavia attempted to listen in on the children's conversation, but after speaking nothing but Equestrian for over a decade Octavia's grasp of other languages was severely weakened.
"... Died... Told me... Thought I'd see..."
"What about... Out?"
"Mother... You know... Only... Of the Mire..."
"This place... Open... Be fr—" One child was silenced by another. The boy covered the speaker's mouth and looked around frantically, as though he was worried someone was watching. Of course, somepony is watching him, but there's no way a mortal could detect my presence. Most likely, the boy was simply worried about the possibility that what the other child had begun to say would be overheard.
These children are fearful of something, and it's unlikely that they'd be afraid of some ponies. Hay, they might be thrilled to see a pony; I know I had my share of little babes thinking I was fit for 'pony rides'. Octavia rolled the possibilities around in her head. If the children were afraid of being overheard, then logically they were either afraid of The Dowager, or some of The Dowager's servants. By the stars, I hope she doesn't have many Deathknights with her. Based on that, these children were held by The Dowager for some other reason than to nurture humans – not surprising, really.
Freeing these children from their master could either hurt The Dowager, anger The Dowager, or both. Either possibility could be beneficial in the fight against her. On the other hoof, Octavia had nowhere to send the children that was safe (the nearby Everfree Forest was no place for a child), out of The Dowager's reach (hiding anywhere near Ponyville would do no good, and might just incite The Dowager's wrath, depending on the reason she was holding the children), and would not reveal their existence to the rest of Equestria.
Horseapples. If Derpy were here, they could lead the children away from the town and call up the Calibration gate. The children could be sent back to Creation via Yu-Shan; the Bureau of Humanity might even be able to find a new home for them.
Inspiration struck. Octavia leaned in close to the eldest of the group, and began whispering in her ear, "We should head up the valley, towards that mountain. If anyone asks us where we're from, we can just point out that forest over there. After all, this place is near the forest, and the place we were in before was near a forest, too." Most anypony would believe that these 'strange bipedal creatures' had come from the Everfree... if anypony could translate what they were saying. Octavia had her doubts the children even realized they'd left Creation.
Octavia could see the girl's brow furrow as her voice became the girl's thoughts. The girl's resolve wavered when she looked back towards the town, so Octavia leaned in once again. "There's nothing to worry about. If we leave now, there's no way we can be caught. We'll be free."
As the girl began to think Octavia's words, her mouth began to twitch; Octavia began to worry that something might actually be wrong with the poor child. When the twitching finally stopped, however, the girl's mouth curled into a small smile – possibly the first smile to grace her features since she was a baby. The girl turned towards Mt. Canterlot with a twinkle in her eye and she began speaking to the other children. Unlike the subdued conversation before, the girl's voice was animated and strong. Octavia didn't bother expending the effort to translate the speech, but as she walked away towards Ponyville proper, she heard the girl hesitate. Octavia paused and swiveled her ears back to listen; the girl breathed one final word, relishing the sound of it: "... Free."
Octavia permitted herself a smile of her own, which mirrored the new smile on the face of the eldest child.
Ponyville was not empty.
On the contrary, there were a fair number of ponies walking about the town. Or rather, there were a fair number of ponies shambling about the town. Octavia was unfamiliar with the population of Ponyville beyond it being the residence of the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. However, what limited information Derpy had to share indicated that the entire population of the town had been sent to Creation somehow. Ergo, the zombie ponies that now walked the streets were not residents. Judging by the state of a few of the corpses and the state of the graveyard as she entered the town, some of the zombies had been residents while alive, but other zombies looked brand new.
Octavia passed an earth pony stallion and mare walking together, both sporting identically snapped necks and several years' worth of decay plaguing their flesh. The stallion's cutie mark was still fully visible, depicting an apple tree in full bloom. The mare's flank was beginning to slough off her body, but some of her cutie mark remained: an apple lay near the right edge of her mark, but the rest was lost to time. Their injuries suggested they'd died together; now even with their soulless corpses reanimated by necromancy they didn't seem separable.
Octavia watched the zombies' movements for some time, and eventually noticed a pattern. Each individual seemed to shamble aimlessly, with neither rhyme nor reason. However, the entire horde as a single entity created a disciplined militaristic patrol pattern. The pegasi did not fly, but those zombies that still had eyes did keep note of the sky above. Octavia wondered about the lack of flight, but none of the possible explanations she could come up with were properly testable at the moment (and most of the possible tests were rather immoral, in the first place).
Still, the horde acting as one entity suggested a single, powerful necromancer. The Dowager was the obvious first choice, but why would she expend the effort when she was personally so much more powerful than almost everypony else in Equestria? She had no idea how The Dowager would compare in a fight against Celestia or Luna (or even Cadence), but there was certainly no mortal pony who could stand up to a Deathlord.
The second choice, then, was a servant of The Dowager: a nephwrack or Deathknight. If a nephwrack were animating these zombies, they would have tried to destroy all the plant life, and then likely tried to destroy each other. These zombies, on the other hoof, were acting as a guard for the town. That left a Deathknight as the most likely option.
This line of thinking proved true as Octavia turned around a corner to find the town square. In the center sat another human child, no more than twelve years old. Unlike the other children, though, this one didn't seem to care about the comparatively perfect world that surrounded her. She was also dressed in soulsteel armor, and the scabbard on the ground at her side held a blade taller than she was and as wide as her shoulders. It was difficult to tell whether this diminutive Deathknight was meditating, or actively controlling the zombies throughout Ponyville.
Octavia approached for a closer inspection, confident that she would remain undetected. In a flash, the child Deathknight was on her feet with her soulsteel blade drawn and pointed in Octavia's direction. The mare froze in place, uncertain. Surely, she can't see me?
"Who's there?" the girl cried out, swinging her sword back and forth. Her voice faltered; even if she was a Deathknight and a powerful necromancer, she was still a twelve-year-old girl. The girl took on her best defensive stance and cried, "Show yourself!"
No, I don't think I will, Octavia thought. You might be able to sense my presence, but you still don't know where I am, and I'm still not done with my observations. Octavia slipped away from the frightened little girl née frightening Deathknight to explore what else The Dowager might have in store for Equestria.
Octavia wound her way through the town, but couldn't find much else besides the zombies. Some of the food stores were low or missing, most likely eaten by the mortal children. As she began to cross to the opposite side of town, she noticed a gigantic oak tree; it seemed a house had been built into the trunk of the tree, and the leaves were beginning to turn brown and die. Wait... beginning to die? That tree should've died as soon as the house was dug into it! As she began to approach the tree, the presence of the zombies all but disappeared; this only spurred Octavia's curiosity further, as it indicated the tree held something that the Deathknight didn't want or wasn't permitted to see.
A pressure began to build in the back of Octavia's mind as she approached the tree. She could almost swear that she could hear far away voices. She drew close enough to read the sign above the front door on the tree – The Books and Branches Public Library – and she could no longer pretend that she was 'just hearing things'. Some of the voices were fainter than others, but they were most assuredly there.
"... never be destroyed... outside."
"... intelligent fool can... takes a touch of genius... opposite direction."
"Friendship is unnecessary... no survival value... value to survival."
"It is not... lack of love... lack of friendship... unhappy marriages."
"... impossible for God... sense in... law..."
"... decided to stick... Hate is too great..."
"... forgive your enemies... annoys them so much."
"False words... evil... infect the soul..."
"... richest man in the cemetery... something wonderful... matters to me."
"... friendship is precious... in the shade... in the sunshine..."
"The wheel is come full circle."
The pressure on Octavia's mind grew, as did the volume of the voices. The pressure was already affecting her ability to move forward. Rather than suffer the full effects of whatever was causing her ailment, she began to back away from the library. The pressure did not let up; despite increasing her distance from the library, the pressure began to mount further, as though some consciousness were behind the attack and it had latched onto her. The voices in her head became deafening, and the mental fatigue began spilling over into physical agony. The edges of her vision began to blur, until finally her will broke beneath the onslaught and she collapsed, unconscious.
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This chapter has thirteen different references in it (besides the title & title drop). Obviously, the eleven voices Octavia hears from the Well (can you figure out each one? prochallenge: can you do it without Google?), but there are two more which I've pulled from the MLP fandom. Let's see if you guys can pick them out!
Also: this chapter is taking place around the same time as the ponies discovering Twilight's manse. The exact relative date doesn't matter too much, but just to give some perspective on how fast things are moving.
This chapter hi-lights everything I love about sidereals.
You can't beat a good fate ninja for shenanigans.
They can call the calibration gate to equestria?
Oh well everyone back into heaven to leave via the gate.
I can see where this is going and I have to say I don't like it.
There about to be a lot of dead ponies in equestria. Simply put Celestia is going to try and help her subjects but she wont be able to because the entity Ditzy is working for is refuseing to give her the information she need thus resulting in many ponies getting furt needlessly.
Aside from that I'm very intrigued by this story and it makes me want to play a game of Exalted.
*ahem* SCREW CAPTAIN STORM WING!!!
There. Someone said it.
Now then, I'm actually glad to see the Sky Archons present and accounted for. Mostly because I'm pretty sure dropping the Dowager onto Equestria is the WORST thing anyone has ever done to it ever (I wish I had thought of it first
)
All I know is I would pay big money to see that throwdown. Especially if Celestia decides it crosses the Godzilla/Kukla/Discord threshold.
I just realized that Rainbow is a perfect candidate to exalt as a Scourge.
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If Octavia bucks somebody, will they turn into ducks?
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Yes, this is how Shepherd of the North Star got Pinkie to Creation in her flashback. Calibration Gate -> Yu-Shan is the only way the Sidereals know to get back from Equestria, and a route via Cecelyne is the only means they know to get to Equestria. Neither option is a two-way street.
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S.C.S.W #1,203,572
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> That's a cakewalk. The invisible fortress is meant to be challenging to dragonblooded - not solars.
Sure, the traps are beatable by a group of moderately competent Solars. But the traps laid by Kal Bax and his companions are not what makes the Invisible Fortress a dangerous place.
I am loving this fic. I don't have all that much knowledge of Exalted apart from the Keychain of Creation comic, but it would seem that's been enough to be getting along with so far.
Query: Shouldn't Applejack's Mom or Dad have an Orange cutie mark? Aunt and Uncle Orange and all that.
2433494
Theory: As big as the Apple clan is, it is probable that Aunt and Uncle Orange are not directly related to Applejack, or that Granny Smith had more than one foal in her life, one that married into the Orange family.