• Member Since 24th Aug, 2015
  • offline last seen 1 hour ago

Mitch H


“What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.” ― William Lamb Melbourne

T

They called Gusty 'the Great' when she was safely dead, and gone from the world's stage. But I knew her when she was alive, and vibrant, and deadly, and the most beautiful mare I have ever seen in my long, badly mis-spent life. She fought for the right, and for justice, and against monsters, thieves, slavers, and the evil which walks in pony guise. She was, in a word, glorious.

I fear if she was alive today, she'd be right out there, outside my gates, besieging my walls, waiting for the opportunity to call me to account for my many crimes. Stars, I wish she was out there right now, screaming my name, calling for my head. I miss her so much.

Chapters (5)
Comments ( 25 )

I saw Sombra, so now you have to deal with me reading this.

Such a shame. I must admit I even dared to upvote this too.

I'm starting to realize that you definitely have a preferred genre, Mitch. That's cool, you do it so well.

There's a crystal pony tag, in case you want to use it. It seems like it would fit this story.

Otherwise, I'm pleased to see some long-form stories with Sombra as a focal character that's not written by me. Those are actually becoming considerably hard to find.

I like the journal-style storytelling, and as a result, you're probably going to have to deal with my comments more.

Were we to take from it that she was gassy and had intestinal issues?

:rainbowlaugh:

So, I have to ask, will this story show Gusty's reaction to Sombra's fall?

You belong here, with your ponies, with your crystal promises. You exist to hold together what was broken, and keep it shining despite the cracks.

Damn, Gusty would be so disappointed/ angry with him if she new what he'd become at the end.:fluttershysad:

Sirespire is fun to say!

My little sparrow was busy with her own problems at the moment, so she simply nodded her permission for our journey eastward. The Mouth of Tartarus lay in the heart of the Unicorn Ranges. I and my ponies marched into the east, to make bargain with the Lords of Tartarus for Grogar's fallen soul. As I turned to leave for Tartarus, my eyes passed over the infuriating masculine beauty of Radiant Stanchion, who had somehow attached himself to Gusty's command group as they worked to keep the freed prisoners and slave-guards from killing each other. Looking back, I wish I'd killed him right there, right then.

No homo or lots of homo?

Gosh, I wish there was more. You fiend.

9024893
Sorry, it was designed as a delivery system for this moment. :trollestia:

A well done, if very bitter, ending to an excellent story :fluttercry:, I can't help but wonder if Sombra would have turned out differently if Gusty had lived.

Dear God, that was one of the best written and thought-out Sombra's origin stories I've ever read. The amount of worldbuilding, every single piece polished... the language and the grammar... the mere idea why Sombra turned into something we know from the series... How is it possible that this gem has only 12 upvotes? It should have 120, 1200!
Damn. That was so. Really. Good.

This is how villians should be done! :pinkiehappy:

Brilliant work from start to finish, seamlessly incorporating lore from across seasons and media into a wondrous, tragic whole. Thank you for one heck of a read.

9085402

You're welcome. And thanks for reading.

I really liked the little bits of the Black Company you've weaved into it. I didn't see where it was going until the last half page and then it all clicked.

Really enjoyed this :)

So, little thing - I can't remember if Amore is dead in the Black Company verse or not, so I'm not sure if this story entirely fits in with it?

9137521

I don't think I set out to write this in continuity with the Black Company story. It's more a matter of, well, my headcanon tends to contain certain elements, and stories I write will at least touch on those sorts of ideas. For one thing, here's Grogar again - not as the imaginary necromancer that the Villains Wiki hallucinated into existence, and who exists in the Black Company's history like the fall of Man, his dead hoof weighing down on Tambelon long after his defeat and imprisonment by the original White Rose. In this story, Grogar is just an evil magician - a deathless one, and one who wages his war against equinity with horrible mind-control fear-based magics - but not a necromancer or lich or anything like that. He's deliberately based on the few lines we got from Twilight in that season 7 episode when she's reading a foal's history of heroism to a bunch of sick foals.

Basically, this was me returning to the subject of morally questionable mercenary ponies, a breed of character which can't really exist in modern, relatively well-adjusted Equestria. But in the deep, dysfunctional past, or far away and out from under the guiding wing of 'The White Pony'? Madness, blood and fury.

I do mean to someday do something with Faded Palimpsest, the Company, and Luna Redeemed, I've got some notes in that direction, and a few fragments sitting in gDocs or on my various desktop hard drives. But my dance card's pretty full at the moment.

9137521
I should note that The Ponies You Come Home To and The Mare You've Always Been are in continuity with In The Company of Night. I wanted to play around with Pinkie Pie's background after wrapping up that longer story, and Rock Valley and the mirror pool were both interesting subjects for some rather high-drama slice of life, I thought. I had intended to do a series of relatively short and small stories about the Pies and the Cakes; I got onto other business after a while.

This, I liked, the choice of betrayal, and the price it cost.

What he did, what he set in motion, and was cursed to ignobility.

The dark incarnate, a crystal warped and fragmented by those around.

A really underrated gem.

Okay. So I promise someone to comment this. And I promised to do it like two weeks ago… Or three… Or four… I don't remember exactly… So yeah Ghatorr. Here it is. Oh, and off course it's a comment for an author, and for someone who don't know if he wants to read this (you want, it's good, very good).

BUT! Even if it was so long ago, I still remember that fiction very well. If that isn't a good explanation why that fanfic is really good, I don't know what is. So let's comment it.

First when I start reading it I was like: Hey! It isn't the story of Little Sparrow, like the title is saying! It's a story of some guy from her army, and the journey army (or more like… group of people who we can consider as an army)!
I was only half correct. It is indeed a story of a guy in a group of mercenaries under command of a Little Sparrow, the most well build for fight and the braver soldier of all time. But it isn't a story of that group. That bunch of ponies is a background, even if they are partly a big chunk of a story, they don't take the first plan for themselves at any moment. And it is a story about a Little Sparrow, but not exactly of her, but of that how she change a life of one unicorn.

It's not a love story, but it is. It's not a story of great battles, but it is. it's not a story of specific characters, but it is. It's not a story of betrayals, but it is. It's not a story of saving the world, but it is. it's not a story about the land of Equestria and beyond, but it is. You will find everything of that, but you will also be going to forget about everything in a moment of another flashback, a memory of narrator. You will always be thinking about this exact moment. And because of that, the last chapter is going to hit you so hard. You will probably cry, or at least you are going to be sad. And it's good. You should be sad. You should feel it the way, that the narrator do. Because it is sad, how the things go. How it ends. And this is making this fiction a good fiction.

It was also a first English fanfic I read. After all, I am not an English speaker. So don't beat me up for my bad language, please.

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