Note: This story assumes you've read parts one and two. Links at the bottom of the description.
After years of seemingly endless battle, the end of the rebellion is finally upon Rainbow Dash and her rag-tag army of revolutionaries and malcontents. They prepare themselves, cleaning weapons and singing songs in high spirits - but nothing, no amount of careful thought or rationalization could have possibly prepared any of them for what lay ahead. Within the fortress-city of New Canterlot lie many of the answers they've been looking for... for better or for worse.
Fire, Harmony's End part 1:
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/45314/Fire-%28Harmony%27s-End-Part-1%29
Vengeance, Harmony's End part 2:
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/45457/Vengeance-%28Harmony%27s-End-Part-2%29
This is heartbreaking.
Great work, though. War changes us all.
This story made me cry.
but it thank you for a great story
1106641
Did you read the first two? It makes a lot more sense if you have :P
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Yeah, I know it's really straddling the line, but the first two in the series were rated teen, and I felt that the jump might make some people feel they couldn't read the last part. But the scene really is quite short, as well as being nowhere near as gory as some other material I've encountered, so I decided to open with a warning, and leave it up to the reader's discretion.
I'm glad you enjoyed it, though, and thanks for having the patience to read the whole series through! ^-^
1106897
Tears are the greatest praise an author can receive. Thank you :)
That was... intense, to say the least. I salute you!
This story made me cry. I absolutely love it. It should be more famous than cupcakes and rainbow factory combined.
you ... are... amazing. this is now officially my favorite fan fic ever
I can't help but think this is kind of incomplete... unless I missed it, I don't recall seeing what happened to Applejack and Fluttershy, for instance.
But dang, this is amazing. Except for some of the shipping elements, but still.
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Yeah, there were bits I never got around to addressing. I have regrets, and I could probably make some changes, but I didn't address those bits because they were outside the focus and I felt they might ding up the flow.
There's a follow-up I'm working on, though. A novel-sized one. It's called Steampony, and it'll probably make its way on here at some point. A few loose ends that I forgot about or intentionally ignored will be tied up there.
I'm thrilled that you enjoyed the trilogy so much, but... y u no like Rainbowfire?
*shrugs*
Well, I've been writing for a while, ponies being a fairly recent discovery, and my regulars tell me that if the story doesn't contain a romantic sub-plot, it wasn't written by me XD
Given the prerequisite for romance, it was only natural I include the best ship in the fandom :P
Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the Harmony's End trilogy. It takes some perseverance to read through the whole thing as fast as you did.
Some loose ends there, but still, that was quite a read. Not gonna lie, I got a bit misty-eyed.
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Grats on burning through Steampony and all of Harmony's End in a matter of hours XD
You're the second person to make it through Harmony's End this fast, but tacking Steampony onto the front and going from there is an achievement all your own :P
I'm really glad you enjoyed them so much :)
Yeah, I know there are a few untied subplots and such - I basically wrote the last half of The Cross in one sitting :/
This entire trilogy needs one big, nasty, hardcore edit run, particularly the first one. I'm working on a shiny new short pony story right now, so I won't do it immediately, but if I ever want to get on Equestria Daily, it's gonna need it XD
Thanks again for reading :D It's comments like yours that keep me posting my stuff.
To be honest, I felt like the third part was arguably the weakest of the set. The core stuff is solid, but everything seems to be dashing (har har) along too quickly. It's still crazy intense, of course, but it does feel a bit ungrounded (bad pegasus pun x2).
Steampony feels more tightly focused so far. Looking forward to seeing how that develops.
1789200
Huh, I'd always thought of The Cross as the strongest of the three. Fire was fairly well paced (in hindsight), but the writing quality was lacklustre, to say the least, and Vengeance was kinda just... the middle one. When I finished it, I felt like it lacked direction. I've always liked the way The Cross turned out, but now that I think about it, I can kinda see what you mean. The truth of the matter is, however, (in my eyes, at any rate) that if The Cross had gotten any longer, it would've become downright unwieldy. I mean, at 20k, it's technically a novella as it is - any longer and I would've needed chapter breaks, and that would've upset the little pattern I had going. It is paced too promptly, I agree with you, but it was either extend The Cross into a novella, write a Harmony's End Part 4, or rush it.
In the end, I rushed the storyline.
Then, while I was writing it, I introduced a bunch of subplots, then the main arc changed, and I forgot about them, then the arc changed again... yeah, I need to make some continuity repairs. Basically, I wanted to get the damn thing done XD
Now that I think about it, maybe I should just forget about trying to get Harmony's End on EQD in the near future. It needs a lot of work .-.
I'll just finish Best Intentions Betrayed and see what they think of that one, given the writing will be up to par (unlike that in Fire)
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I certainly know what it's like to just want to get something finished.
That was certainly quite the ride.
Here are my final thoughts to you Winged.
I will keep this as vague as I can without damaging the intent behind it, since I promised someone I wouldn't spoil the story for her. Hope you do not mind.
Overall, great story. Amazingly well written and flows very well over all three parts.
Favourite of those would probably be Fire. Storyline just felt stronger on that one. Not that I didn't get misty eyes in all of them
One I have more reservations about would be this one.
It kinda went batshit crazy (your words!) towards the middle. Not being my usual thing, it was quite hard to "keep myself together" during some parts.
The main plot also felt somewhat over-packed, with many new sub plots being thrown into the frail. Although most worked out in the end, I can't help but feel some things should have not been "brought back", and maybe there was a few to many "dashing" connections.
As a whole, Harmony's End was a brilliant read. An interesting, captivating, emotional, thought provoking, gut wrenching and tear inducing perspective on the darkest aspects of War.
I hope you can land it onto some social hubs so it receives some well deserved boost in attention.
To wrap this up, let me go ahead and give you a final thanks for writing this story.
It was definitely worth the read.
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Oh man, I know what you mean about the sideplots >.<
What happened in the middle of Vengeance is that my ideas about where I wanted to take the story changed easily three, maybe four or five times while I was working on the thing. I introduced plots, then they because invalid or I lost the ability to nicely tie them off. The Cross was left to deal with the fallout, and I tried to tie off everything I introduced in Vengeance, but I realized most of the way through it was going to be too long... yeah. Basically, everything that isn't the core plotline is a trainwreck XD Really, the entire thing needs an edit the likes of which I simply don't have the time for. I'll probably get around to it some time before the summer, because I'm reading all three of them at a local brony convention I help out with XD
Really glad you enjoyed the project, though! I've tried to get it featured a few places, but it's a little too mature for most of them, and the prereader I got from Equestria Daily rejected it based on 'believability issues'. The fun part is that all the 'issues' he cited were based on differences between the story and canon - technology level, that sort of thing, because he clearly didn't understand the basic idea of fanfiction - you know - taking the story and ALTERING IT. Bleh, still frustrated by that.
Yeah, I doubt this is going anywhere without a great deal of luck and/or editing, but again, I'm really glad you enjoyed it XD
'twas interesting.
I enjoyed it, It's been a few months since I read it but the premise of the story and the big important details have stuck with me even if I can't fully remember what happened.
Shipping caught me a bit off guard, but I have memorialised this fanfiction in my head alongside stories such as Harmony Theory and most of the stories written by BombShelter.
I had to search many pages of fanfictions to find this again since I couldn't precisely remember the name.