Some trust in chariots and some in horses.
Alicorn Twilight2,144 stories ·2,854 members
Sunset Shimmer6,752 stories ·4,927 members
Sunset Shimmer Shippings720 stories ·1,136 members
The Starswirl the Bearded Wing is burning, taking with it Equestria's most powerful spells and any hope of hiding Princess Twilight Sparkle's greatest secret.
If you like Spectral and are able, please donate to the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network.
Inspired in large part by Broken Symmetry by the talented Trick Question, largely unconsciously.
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Fascinating stuff... though I hate Guardian Angel. I understand that she's Twilight chief doer of disharmonious necessities, loyal opposition, primary speaker of truth to power, et al... but she's so fundamentally unlikable that I just want her to shut her dumb face. The fact that she's been consistently wrong through the whole chapter doesn't help. At least if she had the occasional valid point, she'd look capable if nothing else. Here, it doesn't even seem like she can do her job effectively using her methods of choice.
Also, Sunset calling the princess "my Twilight" has me wondering just what her history is with the human one. And just what her friends on the other side of the mirror will think of her vanishing unannounced like that.
Point of order, Twilight could teleport three others with her at a dead gallop while being purused by dragons back when she was a unicorn. She could definitely cover for Sunset here.
Mind you, I don't want you to think I didn't like this. I am thoroughly intrigued by whatever's going and eagerly looking forward to more. Angel just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and nitpicking helps. Again, eagerly anticipating the next chapter.
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Thanks for reading! Angel is certainly not particularly likeable, no. I wasn't expecting that strong of a hate reaction, but if you walked away concluding Angel is the hero of the story, I wouldn't be doing my job ^^ I'm not sure if Angel should be given less screen time / be made to be less overtly annoying, but she is fundamentally unlikeable, yes. (She would like you to think she's the victim here, and we will later see things from her perspective. But out-of-universe ... in the disputes between Twilight and Angel, I take Twilight's side, and I guess that shows. Except for the stuff about Equestrian imperialism, somepony should really stand up to the princess about that.)
You will be happy to know that Angel is absent from chapter 2
Sunset's histories with the Twilights will certainly be explored :)
...Oops? I'm drawing a blank for when this happened in canon, nine seasons is quite a liability.
Fair enough! Next chapter is Coming Soon(TM), this is the longest story I've started so still getting the hang of pacing myself. But glad I could intrigue with this alone, since we have another layer of mysterious catastrophe coming right after the cliffhanger
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"Dragon Quest," the one with the dragon migration that introduced Garble and company. It was all the way back in Season 2, so I can understand if it's not especially fresh in your mind.
Well, Guardian Angel is decidedly unpleasant. But, antagonistic characters aren't meant to be.
And I'll never say no to a little SunLight in my existence.
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Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy what's to come!
By royal decree there shall be more than a little
This is definitely intriguing and enjoyable. I'm a sucker for a good mystery. Tracking!
I like the various bits of backplot dropped in so far. Cadance holding an election and Flurry Heart very nearly beating her is amusing and rather plausible. I wish I had a bit more of a handle on how old Sunset Shimmer is now. Are we talking mid-twenties or mid-forties or more? Even in the former case that's a lot of time to think about a kiss.
I'm mildly surprised that there were time travel spells in the Starswirl Wing but literally nopony other than Twilight tried to use them in a thousand years? Unless neither Moondancer's chart nor Sunset's spell were exhaustive.
Oh, and I don't mind Angel as much as the other commenters do. I find that kind of grim snark rather entertaining.
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Thank you! I don't have concrete ages in mind, other than "somewhat older than S9E25 but younger than S9E26". For Sunset in particular, I would not be surprised if time dilation across the portal meant she is subjectively younger than expected given the ponies' aging. More importantly, it was a lot more than a kiss :trollestia)
It's a fine line between entertaining and annoying, I suppose. Thank you for reading and tracking!
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This was bugging me, so I patched the description of the chart to suggest an explanation for the gap (giving Angel a single valid point in the process *gasp*) and patched the end to make use of multi-user teleportation. Thanks for the pointers. Ordinarily I wouldn't poke at published stuff but I can sleep easier now :)
Intriguing first chapter to this mystery. Given, well, recent events, I'm not a huge fan of Guardian Angel being such a big fan of breaking the rules to get the job done, and honestly, Twilight doesn't come off great in that regard either. Twilight felt better once she and Sunset were bouncing off each other. I wonder if Guardian Angel is meant to be Cozy Glow, given how she's tagged, and the similarities in personality. With the mystery, all we know right now is that a bunch of ponies are time traveling. It'll be interesting to see where it goes from there.
EDIT: And donated to your link.
A warrant in an absolute monarchy is needed?
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Yes, Angel's action in this chapter are far from ethical, and Twilight's hooves are not entirely washed of the matter. This may come back to bite them. Thanks for donating :)
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Certainly a monarchy, but is it absolute?
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To be fair, yeah since the only elected official we've seen in the show is Mayor mare and nothing else I guess we cannot judge if its an absolute monarchy or not or what happened after Twilight got coronated. Great story btw so far.
I am intrigued.
Impressively good writing, especially for the context (fanfiction site). Always a rare gem to find.
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Thank you!
ah, when your mentor taught you to mask so well that you've fooled yourself
:(
oh damnit, don't leave sunset behind
i can't help but feel like this is sunset going "oh hey scitwi infodumps all the time. and by the law of multiversal similarity..."
Looks like the labyrinth becomes more convoluted.
Sunset going for the Twiangle? Very daring. Or I'm reading too much into things.
I feel like I need to understand Tarasell's sixth law for this one.
Okay, even they acknowledge that "time travel in real-time" is some sloppy terminology. But the readings going from wave patterns to nothing... That may not be equipment failure. That could be something extratemporally altering the fabric of reality such that time travel is, will be, and retroactively was impossible... though the ripples of that kind of cosmic redefinition would carry much larger consequences than just wiping the temporal slate clean.
Or it's just equipment failure.
Interesting to see Sunset hesitant to mention the Time Twirler. Has she ever brought it up with Twilight?
"Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy."
"You know what I mean."
"Just trying to lighten the mood."
"You took me to a graveyard."
"Yeah, where it's meant to be peaceful. So be at peace."
Oh crap.
Oh crap.
Oh, this will not end well. Not in the short term, and likely not the medium. Long-term may be manageable, but we'll have to see how it shakes out. Sunset may want to call in Twilight's Ponyville friends. It's been a while, but they should be able to help calm her down... assuming she can involve them without an interdimensional incident. At the very least, they should get Spike involved. I imagine he's a key factor in managing Twilight even in canon. (And if we're being honest, Earth monarchies dealt with rulers that had far more bothersome issues than autism... though Equestria's last ruler spent a millennium with no worse eccentricities than a sweet tooth and a puckish sense of humor. Again, this'll be trouble.)
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Twilight is the best at anything she does, and I do mean anything
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Dun dun dunnnnn!
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I was going for vaguely plausible technobabble that would result in a pun on the word spectrum, not a rigorous exposition about the mechanics of time travel.
Definitely had that trepidation coming about the wing comment but that dialogue there makes it all worth it
And oh crap indeed.
More importantly, here's a completely Angel-free chapter, save some name drops
Next chapter you won't be so lucky, sadly for SunsetThis was an interesting chapter. It's still unclear what this is leading to on the mystery side, but now we see why the fic's called Spectral. It's interesting to depict Twilight as on the autism spectrum but absolutely unwilling to admit it, or admit that she could do things to make her life easier.
I'm unclear, so enough time has passed that Twilight's friends are dead, but not enough for Moondancer, Starlight, and Sunset to pass? Or are the other Mane Six not dead?
Twilight mentioning Guardian Angel having served her time is definitely another hint that this is Cozy Glow.
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The rest of the Mane 6 are alive and will show up a few chapters from now.
Wow, there's a lot going on here, but I love the back and forth banter... You know, up until dun dun duuuuuun!
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*drops grand piano on audience*
Ha, gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
A possible oops? I don't think horses speak English.
Gosh, I love seeing how well you've woven our PM conversations into such thoughtful representation here. It's fantastic.
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Gaaaaay indeed <3
As for English... maybe? Does canon specify what language they speak? Ponish? Equestrian?
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I've always gone with Equestrian or Equuish.
Author's remarks (lacking the grandeur to justify AN space):
1. Preempting the torrent of comments -- yes, Angel's backstory has extreme ethical issues. It's supposed to bother you. It bothers me.
2. Yes, that's a reference to a beloved fan song.
3. My favourite part of this chapter is the fact that Scrabble is a Hasbro property.
Silly filly. You can't promote a rook to a queen.
I admit it, you nerd-sniped me here. I tabbed away from the story to double-check √i.
Okay, having context for Angel does help with tolerating her. Though the psychic surgical equivalent of taking a hacksaw to her headmeats... yikes. Twilight just couldn't accept a loss there. And it really says something about who Angel is and was that I can't completely trust her after that revelation.
As for Twilight, she's going to need to confront her own nature sooner or later. Though having an escape route at all times will make that anything but easy. We'll see what Sunset can do. Heck, even Angel may be needed for this one. It's ultimately for Twilight's own good.
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You can promote a pawn though
The lazy way to figure out things like √i is geometric intuition. Square roots (of unit complex numbers) are just halving the angle in the complex plane. (So sqrt(-1) = sqrt(-1 + 0i) is half the angle of 180 degrees = 90 degrees = i). So √i is at half of 90 = 45 degrees, so if you remember your special right triangles from high school, √i = cos(45 deg) + i sin(45 deg) = 1/sqrt(2) + i / sqrt(2). If you don't trust your laziness, you can rigourize this as a special case of De Moivre's.
Yikes is right
"I can't completely trust her after that revelation." Speaking out of universe, it's a double-edged sword to me. You can completely trust that she will always be loyal to Twilight. So if you trust Twilight, you can trust Angel. But if Twilight went completely Twilynanas, staged a coup, and lost the support of everyone else in Equestria including Sunset... rest assured Angel would be there for the dirty work.
i already don't trust her but lip smacking is ominous
yup
ah, so we finally get angel's backstory, and it's just as creepy as the rest of angel's decisions since that point! thanks twi!
but hey, more sunset and twi kisses so it can't be all bad
So the Angel was once a Devil. And it was through the power of a goddess and a phoenix that she was reborn.
So Twilight is autistic, and and Angel (and Cozy) is ASPD. With all her empathy coming from memories that Twilight had....
I did not see that Guardian Angel twist coming, I admit.
Loyalty enchantments are abhorrent. Even Cozy Glow would probably agree to this.
But Angel probably understands and accepts Twilight's reasons for using it, and how important it is for her to have done the enchantment. Nopony else can see the circumstances the way she does, because nopony else has the loyalty enchantment she has.
The start of this chapter confused me, and made me think I had forgotten something from the last chapter. Still not quite sure what's going on there, but from Twilight not bringing up seeing Moondancer and being quite relaxed, I assume that wasn't a scene of Twilight using the time out spell.
I figured that Guardian Angel was Cozy Glow, but the details of what happened are pretty horrifying. From the flashback itself, I assumed Twilight just gave her a few memories, but then came the statement that she received years of Twilight's memories.
I'm curious to see where this is all going regarding Twilight's characterization.
I knew there was a delicious, delicious reason that Guardian Angel was giving me Incredibles villain type of vibes. This was an extremely satisfying reveal, and admittedly you could draw in a lot more readers with the proper tag and adding it to the right groups. Everything else, from the action, the flashbacks, the emotions, the romance... absolute fucking chef's kiss there. Dummy thicc chapter with dummy thicc payoff.