Books freeze time.
With the fictional, reach a given chapter and the protagonist will always be in the same situation. They will have already suffered a given number of losses, there is still more which can be sacrificed or stolen, and the next danger lies before them. The same danger as the last time, and this will never change. The story can have twists, turns, unexpected reveals and final explanations which lay out where all of the little clues had been hidden — but once read, it will proceed down a single path forever. It takes a certain amount of love to repeatedly follow a trail for which one knows the ultimate destination, especially when the sights never vary. This is here, that is there. A procession of half-internal images which occur in a given order, with no changes allowed. It’s a quality which used to deeply offend the dying entity in the tower: at least with a verbal telling, there was the chance to spontaneously throw in a fresh lie. If only to see how the audience would respond, and the librarian’s reactions tended to be the most amusing. They never found that first degree of connection before he made his decision, and he would have been surprised to learn how much time she had spent in weeping.
But with books which retell history... in a way, that can be worse. The past is frozen: something else which used to irritate him to the core of the once-cohesive storm. Nothing any known entity can do will alter so much as a second of it. Even the time travel spell only allows about thirty seconds of witnessing what once was, a single trip for each user, and so it has almost no purpose at all.
(Almost. The sisters have used it. They were among the first to do so, and consider that half-minute to have been among the most essential of their lives. The chance which came after all hope of final contact had ended.)
The book which records history will show you what was. Never what could be or should have been. The reader’s cry of alarm will not echo backwards across the decades to give the doomed a single vital second of extra warning. One second might have changed so much, and... nothing in the frozen world can be altered. Ink forms a barrier more imperturbable than diamond.
Turn the page. Look at the first word, and the ibex is a minute away from dying.
Forever.
She will die on the mountain and in that, she will find the final link to her own species. Just about all of them have been born here, virtually every last one spends their entire lives on the slopes, and death creates the last connection to their homeland.
Ibex seldom think of themselves in terms of the other species, not even for the sake of comparison: for the most part, they are the ibex, and there is nothing else quite like them in the world. But there are two exceptions, and one comes from the earth ponies. Ibex tales go deeper than most, and so there are whispers of something called the contract. A pact made with the world itself: to emerge into life, to labor as caretakers of the land, and in the end, to return. There’s something about that which the ibex can respect, because they feel the same way about the mountains. They are here, upon the slopes. The stories suggest they always have been, at least to the extent which stories can capture. Go back far enough and the stories stop — but where words end, there still might have been ibex. Perhaps there was simply nothing worth talking about yet.
They seldom travel. They almost never leave, and those who do are regarded as the strangest of their kind: in some ways, barely ibex at all. Because the other comparison which the mountain dwellers will allow is with the buffalo and a society rife with traditions which exist on the installment plan. A buffalo doesn’t have a ceremony: they have a ritual leading into a rite that, if completed successfully, allows you to start thinking about whether to conduct the ceremony. And every bit of this endless stretching of time was deliberately forced, because buffalo are prone to act on impulse. There is no gap they cannot hurdle, as long as there’s a hasty conclusion on the other side of it. Their entire culture was created in a desperate attempt to force the species into collectively slowing down and in this, the effort has found some degree of success. (It also produces an endless series of those who leave it, because couples which truly love each other can’t always stand in one place for the sixty hours required for legal proof.) A buffalo considers no tradition to be real unless you can trace it back across twenty generations to the one who came up with it in the first place, and whoever’s drawing the line had better possess exceptionally steady control over their jaw.
Ibex can almost respect that. The core idea is there. It’s just that... for an ibex, that’s not going far enough. If the creator of a tradition lived recently enough to be identified, then those who’ve been dead for centuries are still young enough to be questioned. Ibex traditions begin at the point where history fades out.
They recognize (or feel they do) that there are likely two reasons for this. Their culture was either born in the Discordian Era, where all reliable tales twist into jumbles of syllables and screams — or it predates that time, having emerged from that part of history which exists almost solely as myth: the days before all of the true tales were broken. Rendered into nothing more than chaos.
They just don’t feel it matters.
Ibex, and the mountains, emerged on the other side. Intact. Certainly more so than any number of other species and locations were when the chaos storms ended, especially the equines who are still trying to get control of their own land. And if ibex ways brought them through all of that, saw them to the end of the worst that could ever be — then why do they need to change? Traditions, reliable actions, repeated patterns of thought: all of those things kept them stable.
The ibex do not change, or so they tell themselves. A species which views stability as survival is often all too ready to treat the new as death. But they also refuse to recognize that what they see as their history is constantly slipping across the slopes of time. Tolle Hörner was the greatest of them, the one which lived in the time unknown and created the rules which dictate just about every moment of their lives: how they farm, fight, and love. He fought in every battle and made every sacrifice for his people. He died a thousand times, because myths have a way of doing that. And on the very rare occasion when an ibex comes up with something new, the innovation is questioned. Viewed with deep suspicion. The same can be said for its creator, because ibex aren’t supposed to be doing that. The fresh arrival will be kicked a thousand times in the name of testing: on the worst days, this may also apply to the creator. And if it somehow catches on, finds a place to stand on the slopes while demonstrating it will never slip — then ibex culture absorbs it. And in a few centuries, the no-longer-new will be beyond questioning, because as it turns out, Tolle Hörner started that too.
It has been a mere one hundred and forty-eight years since the events of that day, and so this death has not been assigned to him. Perhaps it never will be. Only the greatest deeds are absorbed by those curling horns, and while the sacrifice was great and noble... it is hard for them to see as something an ibex would have done.
They honor her, for she saved the world. But she did so by acting as something other. They stay in the mountains, because to leave is to risk becoming like her.
They don’t understand.
She is a minute away from death, and she can feel the endless weight of their eyes. The armor does an exceptionally poor job of deflecting gazes: if anything, worn on her body (it had to be customized, and the helmet is unique), it pulls those intangible impacts in. She simply holds her place near one edge of this particular terrace: the part closest to the mountain, near a natural shallow trench in the stone, and allows her stability to absorb the blows.
Nothing her species can do will make her change position, even down to the smallest eyeblink. The Princess has come to the mountains, and Blitzschritt is standing guard.
None among her squad is particularly happy about this part of the trip. Yes, it says something for the alicorn to have been invited to stand upon this terrace. For starters, it means that the relationship between the nations is better than it’s ever been.
(It will never be so strong again.)
Just about no one who isn’t an ibex ever enters the terraces, because they are the key to ibex survival. An ibex can take root upon stone. The same cannot be said of their food. Farmable soil is a commodity at this altitude, and the ibex don’t descend to where it’s more plentiful because... well, she asked that once and got The Look. She’s been on the receiving end of The Look for just about anything in her life which ended in a question mark, and swears it’s worse when it comes from round pupils. (She’s still getting used to those.) But the only answer she got was that if Tolle Hörner hadn’t done it, then why should any of his descendants?
Descendants who won’t descend. (She was the only one who found that funny. No one on her mountain has ever let her forget that she said it out loud.) But she suspects that the real reason is that once you get closer to the base, you find the other sapient species. On the slopes, the advantages all go to the ibex. Descend, and it’s closer to — she’s also the only one who found this funny — level ground. She thinks they’re just avoiding competition, and it’s from fear of finding a way to lose.
The terraces are natural formations on the mountain: in this particular location, there are six of them at varying heights, each about the size of a hoofball field, close enough for ponies to jump between if they don’t mind a lot of stinging in all four knees upon landing. (She can just walk down the slopes. Her fellow Guards never get tired of seeing her defy gravity that way, and they will never see it again.). All have been emptied of additional quadruped presence for this visit. They have enough soil to support crops, and the ibex labor carefully to make sure the nutrients are never drained. Without the terraces, the ibex would face a choice: death or descent. And to just about all of them, those options represent nothing more than two different ways of spelling the same word.
The terraces are vital.
The terraces are the heart from which ibex existence flows.
The terraces are life.
The terraces are sacred.
And the Princess was invited to trot within them, at the side of the herd queen.
The Princess was extremely honored. Right up until she saw the tradition-mandated raiment.
Which was also the moment when the Guards began to collectively sweat.
Ibex tradition says that when leaders meet upon the terraces, ‘they do so with horns blunted’. The Princess only has one horn, and it’s still been treated in just about the same way: wrapped in soft fabrics and winding ribbons, only without the adjustments for a backwards curve. The herd queen has been adorned in similar fashion, because that’s part of the tradition. It’s just that for the ibex leader, the extensive metal wires and jewels which set off the look don’t serve as a barrier to magic. It might potentially take a few precious seconds before the Princess could dislodge enough of the covering to cast anything, and it brings the most vital entity in the world a little closer to the realm of helplessness.
Most of the remainder for that terrifying distance was crossed by the equally-traditional garb. ‘We stand under the weight of peace,’ after all, and in this case, that means the ceremonial trappings drape so far down the alicorn’s sides as to completely cover the wings. The straps which lock the heavy fabric in place by passing under her belly and barrel aren’t exactly helping.
There’s a double-edged hoofblade in play here. The ibex aren’t asking anything of her that they wouldn’t ask of anyone else in the world. But the fact that they would ask it of anyone else means they can’t see why it might be a bad idea to ask it of her. The Princess cannot enter the terraces unless she conforms to tradition, she felt that making a deeper connection with the ibex was worth the risk, it makes her somepony who’s willing to take a chance if doing so renders the world that much better and in this case, it also makes her into a very large earth pony who’s wearing some rather itchy decorations. The semi-tangible tail only stopped twitching with discomfort four minutes ago, but there’s only one ibex who knew to look for that tell in the first place.
The Princess is two-thirds of the way up the mountain, standing on the final piece of terrain which is remotely safe for pony occupancy: the rocks grow more unstable at higher altitude, and it’s only ibex presence which freezes them long enough to allow safe passage. While unable to fly, quickly weave pegasus techniques, cast a unicorn working at speed, or counterspell. That is how much she values this meeting, and so that is also the exact degree to which the Guards have been terrified for the three weeks which led up to it.
And the Guards include Blitzschritt. The living link between ponies and ibex.
( She has less than a minute to live.)
Her colleagues consider this to be an exceptionally grey day on the mountain: she heard a few of them grumbling during the air carriage ride. (Ibex tradition just barely allowed for the use of an air carriage, and the old ways mostly seem to be treating it as a rather solid cloud which happens to have reins attached.) She tried explaining how everything at this level can be described with one word: more. Sun feels brighter, because you’re that much closer to it. The air is crisper (and lungs which are about to stop working forever are delighting in the feel of proper air for the first time in years). When you’re cold — well, if you’re cold, you’re probably a pony. But there are highly-active storms in the area — some of the other grumbles concern how nopony was allowed to clear things out — and so what light remains is in fact on the grey side. Every so often, the soft discussion between herd queen and Princess (whose slow tour of the highest terrace is now bringing them close to Blitzchritt’s post) has to pause in order to let the echoes of nearby thunder fade.
The only ibex Guard has been doing what so many of her fellows occasionally engage in: keeping careful count of the seconds between any visible flash and the follow-up boom. The storm is around them (and a little too close), but not upon them.
It wouldn’t really matter if the rain hit. When viewing the concept from a cultural perspective, ibex don’t understand ‘rescheduling’ or ‘postponement’. You set a time on the calendar, and then you do whatever is necessary to make sure that event comes to pass. Thus is stability created. There are myths about ibex who managed to attend meetings after their death. It’s also generally accepted that the ibex afterlife is exactly like the living one, except the mountains are higher and you get a better quality of grass.
Blitzschritt is hoping that’s wrong. She’s unusual in many ways. For starters, she went down. She recognizes a concept which very few of her kind have ever voiced, even in the silent safe one which stays inside her at all times. It’s called ‘boredom’. Life is more interesting when you go down, because it’s more varied. She’s hoping that journey will also give her access to a better quality of afterlife, or at least one with different kinds of terrain. She’d like to get an ocean, because she got to travel across it once. Sailing was interesting, at least once the vomiting stopped. Stability doesn’t seem to mean a lot when the whole world is moving. It reached the point where she tried to use her magic on the water itself, and... well, it turned out that rendering one patch of sea motionless has a way of redirecting the energies surrounding it.
She was forgiven, eventually. After the rest of her squad watched her dry off absolutely everything.
The Princess has almost reached her, and smiles gently during the last stage of the approach. The herd queen — won’t look at her. Blitzschritt serves as the link — but no ibex understands why that link was ever forged. She drinks in the air of her home because the other option is to bask in the world’s most awkward silence. None dare to call her deviant with the Princess about, and so they say nothing at all.
They recognize what she has achieved and after her death, they will honor her — in their way. But they don’t understand her. They will never comprehend the events of the next few seconds, for she has less than twenty now. The choice.
The choice which never was.
The Princess has just spotted the herd queen’s reaction. It strikes the alicorn as something which has to be dealt with, because her Guard has come home and it would be preferable if someone made that feel like a good thing. So she starts to talk, keeping her tones soft and subtle. About how without Blitzschritt to show her how the bridge could be built, it never would have come this far —
They’re good words, especially when considered as the last ones she will ever hear. But they’re interrupted by a flash, which is followed by the usual burst of thunder. Too closely: the storm is closing in —
— but there are times when lightning strikes ahead of the storm.
The next bolt hits the mountain. Strikes it some distance directly above their terrace, where the rocks are unstable and only ibex can tread in safety. That environment receives a single jolt of change.
And then the boulders are falling.
Tumbling down the mountain, coming directly towards Blitzschritt and herd queen and Princess. Accelerating with every second, speed adding to effective mass, and there are Guards all over the terrace trying to respond. But the unicorns cannot combine their strength, and no single pony among them can manage that much weight. Reaching out to grab the Princess and pull her back is easier, but there’s too many boulders and the entire terrace is the impact zone. Pressure carries from the pegasi are ineffective against such a broad back. Teleporting her to safety would require somepony who was capable of both escorting and bringing along her level of mass: it might have been possible if not for the literal weight of ceremony pressing a full bale against the white fur.
Blitzschritt is aware of every last tenth-bit of it. Part of her even recognizes that it was just bad luck at the worst possible time, because when somepony has lived for so long, most of the long odds catch up eventually. She knows it will take precious seconds for the Princess to free herself from traditions to the point where escape is possible, and those will be the last seconds in which the cycle of Sun and Moon will exist.
The world will not end immediately. Momentum will maintain in the orbiting bodies for a few hours, and then... one half of the planet will slowly begin to freeze. The remainder will gain heat, slowly accumulating to the point where the burning begins and never ends. And in time, all will die.
There are those who will describe it as making a choice. The ibex ultimately understand her decision: just not how anyone of their blood could have made it. Instinct should have taken over, and that voice would have dictated a different outcome. So it must have been a choice.
It could be said that no one could be a Guard if they couldn’t make that choice, and any who voice that opinion are wrong.
There are boulders tumbling down the mountain, and an ibex doe who spent the early part of her life on the slopes sees where the first impact will take place. Just about all of them are following that same initial channel: that natural minor shallow trench in the rock. Those are the ones which will bury the occupied terrace. They’ll potentially spread out in a cascade once they reach the bottom, but the main entrance is in a single place, just a few body lengths away.
It might be possible for others to deal with the outliers. Or it might not. It doesn’t matter, because only the Princess is important.
Blitzschritt moves. Not very far. Just enough to get in front of the channel, at the moment before gravity finishes the first part of its cruel work. The last gaze she ever feels upon her is that of the Princess, desperate and frantic and full of apologies which never find the chance to be voiced.
She faces the landslide. The singular helmet, cut for two backwards-curving horns, lifts just enough to allow her to stare down her own death.
And then she roots.
The unicorns can’t raise shields in time, and the boulders might penetrate such protection even after the construct had hardened. There is no pegasus wind which would be strong enough to help. The earth ponies among the Guard... they desperately try whatever they can, without her knowing, and none of it works: the rock is too solid to respond quickly, and there is nothing they can do about gravity in that which is already moving.
But she is an ibex, the first and last of her species to serve in the Guard, and they tested the strength of her magic as best they could when there was just about nothing to measure her against. Every moon found her squad learning a little more about what she could truly do, and even she might not have understood how much power she truly possessed. Especially when it came to giving the last of herself, in the final moment before her death.
The heart of ibex magic is stability. The manifestations of that power can vary by the individual — but in a culture so dedicated to remaining the same, very few explore the full extent of their capabilities. Creativity can be directed by traditions, or it can be stifled. And she was very creative indeed, in the final seconds of her life.
She takes her stance, at the bottom of the channel, in a position which would have her receive the first impact. She stood against the falling world. The first, largest boulder. The one which would roll over her, crush her in the instant before it went on to end the cycle forever.
It hits her. Bale-tons of mass slam into the armor, and the amount of kinetic energy which conducts to flesh is enough to kill her long before factoring in the weight. None truly saw her eyes in that last moment, and so there were none who could say if she died in that instant, or somehow hung on for a few more seconds. If the strength of her will had anchored magic to mountain on a level which persisted beyond death, or whether she simply refused to die for a few crucial heartbeats.
They could not see her eyes.
They only saw the first, largest boulder stop.
For she was an ibex, and she would not be moved.
The next boulder crashes into the first, and the combined mass still cannot shift the small body. Another comes in behind that one and because the angle of impact isn’t quite as true, winds up tumbling off to the right. It falls onto the next possible target: a lower terrace. Soil fountains at the point of impact, begins its own tumble down the mountain. Crops are crushed. The boulders are going left and right because they cannot go forward, they find other things to kill, and it means the food supply is being wiped out.
Seconds. Mere seconds from beginning to end, and it’s possible that she was dead for most of it. But the Guards and Princess hang onto their desperate hope for one more breath as the last, smallest boulder comes to a dead stop in the channel and the sounds of crushing demise go on below. Right up until the moment when the little body falls.
Five of the terraces have been destroyed. (If she had not made her stand, it would have been one.) It will take years of free offerings from the Princess to keep the mountain’s population alive, longer before farming can begin again. Earth ponies cannot help, because soil which is magically enhanced loses its charge after some time without their presence and in any case, the ibex will not allow them to step onto what is now defiled land.
But the Princess lives. The cycle goes on.
There are those who say Blitzschritt couldn’t have been a Guard if she hadn’t been capable of making that choice, and they are wrong.
She couldn’t have been a Guard if she saw it as a choice at all.
Oh.
... Why do I feel like all the other Guards will have to make a lesser version of that "choice" in the near future? Follow, obey, and their Princesses, or become part of the Opposition?
----
I wonder what Discord would have to say about Ibexes... And what the Princess and the Ibex Queen discussed...
I disagree. If she had not made her stand, it would have been all of them. Just less directly, with half the world freezing and the other half burning. Sadly not everyone might see it that way.
this chapter honestly made my eyes water up a bit, good job.
I’m not crying. It’s just raining indoors.
Not big on choose your own adventure books?
Wow. That is a complete disaster. No wonder the Ibex have cut ties. The Guard they sent 'destroyed' the most vital, sacred location of their lands, to protect the princess.
That's... that's a tragedy. Really. She saved them, but hurt them so much that they'll never accept anything like her. just, argh. That's cruel. The Ibex use this her simply as another excuse to never change their ways... never knowing she saved them from a situation their traditions created.
It sounds like something they don't ever acknowledge, either. I mean... ooooof.
Is this a theme for this story? that being unwilling to see other perspectives creates cruelty and harm? it feels like it is. Hell, it's a REAL thing.
This story makes me feel things.
Tropes will tell you history is written by the winners. Reality will tell you history is written by a bunch of drunken egomaniacs who barely have a hint of the events that they portray in their books. The facts may be there, because even alcohol can only blur or bend lines instead of break them, but the consequences of those actions and the intents of the actors will in all probability bear little resemblance to what happened.
Historians will tell you this is an improvement. They sell more books that way.
(If Ibex are the Immobile Object, does that make Yaks the Irresistible Force? It certainly would give 'Yak SMASH!' some additional meaning.)
10406741
Sadly, the Ibex's probably don't care. They don't see that the rest of the world affects their mountains.
It's part of the tragedy.
Now THAT is a Guard legend. And quite the explanation of pony/ibex relations.
10406783
I'm sure that Discord would love those... for about half an hour, at which point he'd realise that they only have so many options.
Then he'd create his own one. Which never runs out of options, growing new pages when necessary.
Then he'd get bored of the idea and look for something else to do...
Loved that tiny peak Into the state of discord .
Ponified name is Full Stop?
oh, this reminds me of one of my favorites, "shifting melodies". in that story, there are different hives of changelings, in different colors, (technically, only their eyes and "back-plates" are visibly different) that feed on different emotions. one color, i think it's Red, feed on Loyalty, and some are SO loyal they WILL keep patrolling or guarding after death!
10406720
Im starting to think Cerea's going to be forced to choose between protecting the princess and taking the first chance of going home.
10406783
i used to like those, until i read one that was REALLY bad...i'll try to explain:
the set-up is the "you" were born on a space-ship half-way between planets, and when "you" reach age 20, "you" must choose which planet you will officially call "home" for bureaucratic purposes, and visit the world.
so your first choice is which planet "you" will call "home"...
it annoys me so much i don't want to go into full detail. suffice it to say, there is ONE and ONLY one ending where you ACTUALLY make it home...and it's an "it was all a dream" ending!
So, Ibex tradition nearly destroyed the ibex, as well as everyone else. The only reason everyone is alive is because of an ibex that the rest of them don't consider a TRUE ibex. Do you think someday there will be another "strange" ibex that will think this and decide to descend? I hope so.
So the Ibex shift kinetic energy? They have to be able to negate at least part of it, though they obviously can't affect it in its entirety...
Though given that their traditions survived Discord, then maybe their magic is more esoteric in nature.
Ah. I have an idea of what the sisters used their time travel spell to witness. Well, two ideas. Same basic concept, but two different targets.
As for Blitzschritt... Yeah, it's clear how the chapter title ties in here. There could be no more dramatic or condemning illustration of her choosing one mare over the legacy of her species. At least, that's how the other ibex saw it, because anything that isn't rooted to the mountains is too unstable to trust. Even if it's something orbiting the planet.
A great tragedy in every sense, and a fascinating cultural profile. Excellent work. Now the question is what Cerea will take away from it.
10406955
Magic, in general, seems to be at least partially conceptual. It doesn't break down into scientific categories or physical forces, it breaks down into idea. Ibex magic is about stability; this may be used to adjust kinetic forces, but what it's really about is keeping things steady, or still. I expect that particularly creative souls among them could apply such concepts to weather, or a fire, or politics.
I hate the ibex right now, just a little.
That was... beautiful, Estee. Genuinely moving and stirring and proud, explaining the difference in cultures without ever implying one was lesser, showing Blitzschritt with her quiet duty and strength and sacrifice...
If I had a hat I would take it off. This is literature.
10407025
I hadn't thought of that before, that is interesting. And over in the prime 'verse it fits with the ongoing theme that Equestria has trouble with new ideas and growing forwards and there's a bunch of people with entirely new magic.
Discord is Chaos
Earth Ponies made a promise
Pegasi move
Ibex are stable
What else? Unicorns are creative?
I've read that the Spanish used to have an expression "May no new thing arise."
Seems like an Ibex idea.
Does this mean that someone will finally explain to Cerea that Celestia and Luna control the Sun and Moon? She's been long overdue for that.
10406963
I can't find an explicit straightforward reference at the moment, but I'm near-certain that Estee's told us they went back to see their mother.
This directly contradicts the Season 5 finale. Of course, that is over 130 years in the future. That spell doesn't exist yet.
+ For the Triptych Continuum anything after Magical Mystery Cure (S3 finale) is non canon.
10406790
I'd say it's a running theme for the 'Verse and its offshoots. Which makes sense; a good number of show episodes could be boiled down to that, as well.
10406922
It's better then the one where nothing in the book actually sent you to the true ending. You just had to discover it by flipping through the pages at random.
10407053
Unicorns are spark plugs.
Feed them magic and things go boom.
Flexing against a mountain and winning. Now that's impressive.
Damn, that was probably the most important ibex to have ever lived, and perhaps the second most important sapient( the first being the demigod pony she sacrificed herself for that keeps the world alive). It’s a shame she’s practically considered to be a deviant to her people. Excellent chapter!
10406963 Ah, but for the Ibex Sun & Moon aren't stable. They remember/tell of a time when they changed at random, and therefore the stability of celestial bodies is a "recent" thing, and not to be relied on. In their own way, the entire Ibex culture is still reeling from Discord's reign.
10407025 Well, Blitzschritt did try to make the ocean (or at least a little part of it) Stable, and it did have an effect ....
10407053
Not really? Or at least, not especially. I figure that Unicorns aren't especially creative as a race, or at least no more so than the other tribes. The big difference is that Unicorns are unique. Every Unicorn has that one Trick that only they can really do, and that means that every unicorn can approach problems in wildly different ways. They're craftsmen, basically, highly skilled within a certain specialty, but with no standardization. It's why they have so much trouble working magic together.
So, every time a Unicorn comes up against a new problem, there's a chance they might end up needing to make a whole new solution, simply because the old method can only be used by the one who came up with it. And, of course, there's every chance that the third unicorn to stumble across the problem will need to come up with their own solution as well.
Pegasi, on the other hands, are something closer to guilds. They have a shared suit of specialty skills that most people are at least proficient in, and can combine their efforts because (in theory) everyone is basically doing the same thing, even if including too many people makes cooperation break down. So most pegasi have a basic skillset to draw on when solving problems, and if that's not enough then they just get a team in order to multiply their force output.
Earth ponies, of course, take this tendency and multiply it up by eleven. An even more narrow skill set, which can be applied in massive numbers to cumulative effect, makes earth ponies the closest thing to an industrialized society in Equestria. There's not a lot of room for creative thought on a factory floor, and a lot of earth ponies seem to have settle for running the machinery that keeps equestria fed.
Of course, this doesn't take into effect the disruptive factor of your average cutie-mark. Suddenly, any unicorn, pegasi, or earth pony can pick up a new skill, a new interest, an a new perspective in one fell swoop. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Mark often leads to the creation of a new profession, instead of the other way around, which means that cutie-marks may very well be the biggest creative force in equestrian society.
"of doing that, And on the very"
"of doing that. And on the very"?
"one hundred and forty eight"
"one hundred and forty-eight"?
"She tried explaining how everything at this level can be deserved with one word"
"She tried explaining how everything at this level can be described with one word"?
"eventually, After the rest of"
"eventually. After the rest of"?
"It will take years of free offerings from the Princess to keep the mountain’s population alive, longer before farming can begin again."
Hm. I do wonder what happened in the gap between the end of the offerings and the start of farming.
Whew. I actually teared up a little around the end. Nicely done. :)
The Ibex appear to be most inflexible and worse still, broken
Interesting choice to start with the perspective of Discord, who seems to have made his own sacrifice and stepped between Tirek and a Princess. I do wonder what his role in this story may be.
And it certainly seems as if Cerea might be on the cusp of a paradigm shift that will rock her understanding of her role in this world and the trust that she’s been given. If the Princesses die, the world dies with them. Even being allowed in their presence has to seem like more than a dangerous monster should ever be afforded, let alone being entrusted to see to their safety.
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I wonder if Celestia is aware of Wordia's inner conflict between her Cutie Mark and herself.
Truly, Cerea doesn't deserve to be in a situation where something like this could happen. Blitz chose to be a Guard, to protect her princess, to protect her world. Cerea doesn't have a choice and has no reason beyond altruism to care about the world, it's sad that she could have to give up her life to protect it.
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The dangers of blindly following tradition have been explored before in the Triptychverse. Earth ponies being one of the utmost example.
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Discord has an answer in the penulitmate chapter of Triptych. The question is whether we can trust him.
Well, that was a one-in-a-million disaster wasn't it? Difficult, very difficult.
Indeed, calling it a "choice" implies that there was a decision made. The decision was made a long time ago, this was simply the oath coming due.
It's tempting to single out the Ibex as being "wrong", but for the significant fact that their methods work. Indeed, they work so well that Discord himself evidently chose to take his chaos elsewhere rather than try to deal with them, which is no small matter at all. These creatures are aware of the earth pony secret, because their recollections reach back from before it was a secret.
Existence is the final and ultimate arbitrator of success, the Ibex yet exist unchanged thus they may well be said to have succeeded.
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Most likely, she's perceptive like that.
Ah, and responses only trigger a notification when you put it in the same chapter, if you didn't know.
Well, that's a hell of a trolley problem.
Which is the problem with trolley problems. You don't have time to calculate the costs, or the consequences. You don't have perfect knowledge. You just have predicates, priorities, and promises.
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With the trolley problem I just switch the lever back and forth so that half of the thing follows one set of tracks and half follows the other. Hey-presto, the trolley is now jammed in place. Never understood the point of that question.
10407607
Discord's statement didn't make a whole lot of sense to me at the time.
But I've since added a seemingly unrelated piece of information — the suspiciously denied existence of seaponies — and a moderately coherent picture starts to emerge.
That picture raises all kinds of other questions though.
oh, this is not a recent event, it's something Ceara is reading from a history book.
Honestly it hurts a bit to much right now tell you how good this chapter was. The guard, the Solider, performing their final duty...
Badly paraphrased but “For there can be no greater gift. That if your life for another.”
Honestly I think it’s less often that the story is that well liked and that the journey is that good. It’s also why you gotta be careful with twists. Though, if done right, it can be really cool noticing all the hints and details leading up to it.
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Being a guard aside, it isn’t quite a trolly problem. Because saying it’s one vs five is misleading, since in this instance if it’s one, pretty soon the rest will be useless as they either die without sun or they get baked away from too much of it.
It’d be like you kill five people or you kill one person and also activate a time bomb that blows up the whole block, and the timer has 10 seconds on it.
Heroic sacrifice as a trope always does me in, and this one was wrought beautifully. I’d read an entire long form story detailing her descent from the mountains and her becoming a guard. Just the little bit we get here is enough to rocket her up quite highly into my favorites of the ‘Verse.
And toss another corpse on the Secret’s pile. AJ handled a similar situation. Even if the combined efforts of the EP guards couldn’t, nothing on Celestia would have stopped her voice. Did she not sing in self defense to keep the illusion that aliciorns aren’t privy in to the Secret alive? Was Blitz sacrificed on that alter to keep the conspiracy, alienating another race to keep up appearances? I don’t envy Estee’s task in trying to write a compelling, believable narrative around such an insidious, massive conspiracy.
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In fairness, a particularly cantankerous Ibex could claim there was a chance the Mountains would be in the Twilight; a band of habitable lands fenced in by the desert wastes of Fire and Ice on either side.