Backflipping through reality at ludicrous speeds. What does RB stand for, anyway? | Ko-Fi
The magical land of Equestria is no more. Sunset Shimmer, Twilight Sparkle, and Starlight Glimmer just want to know why.
And if that means Sunset has to go back to Equestria, an Equestria she doesn't even recognize... then so be it.
Takes place after Friendship Games, but before Legend of Everfree has a chance to happen.
Page generated in 0.119 seconds
Total duration
1,051 users online
2,155,724 hits today, 1,872,792 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
I almost said that this was Starlight's fault, and Season 5's finale ended very differently. Even if Friendship Games stayed the same.
Glad to be wrong it looks like. Not sure if that's good or not though.
Alot of theories about what happened... will there be a sequel?
This is a very interesting start, looking forward to where it goes.
Nice. I've been wanting to write an equestrian refugee story for a while (but set a couple hundred years later). Looking forward to seeing where you take this.
Oh this is good. I like this, the story drew me in instantly, I can't wait to see what hapoens next!
Gripping start. Intrested at where will this lead.
Amazing start definently looking forward to more!!!!
i hope Starlight and Twilight are okay
"I can't remember what happen in September "
Well. That got -really- dark there...
yea figured as much that Princes Twilight was dead, I really wonder what happened and how the survivors will deal with it.
oh no Twilight...........that's not going to go over well with the mane 5 now
Oh my, that reaction from Starlight is all it takes to paint a picture. We all know that place.
That realization is just top notch. Take care of your time, author.
I don’t usually go for this sort of story, but you’ve created a fascinating if terribly bleak tale here. Looking forward to more... and dreading it as well.
I really like what you've written so far. I can't wait to read more!
When will this story be back, it is such a great story and I wish to see where it goes :(
Starlight glimmer
Organic matter is decaying at a rapid rate. If I were the one going back and forth between worlds I would bring a living being, like a plant or a caged rat, and just leave it there to see the effects of two days spent in Equestria. But the others would probably take issue with the idea. Especially the Fluttershys.
I get the feeling that these repeated jaunts into Equestria will have a negative effect on Sunset's health in the not so distant future.
Their bodies were, but clearly whatever happened can look past such minor concerns.
Wonderful to see this continue in all its grim mystery. Looking forward to more. I can only imagine what the rest of the ponies are going through.
(Also, ominous act name, but arguably still an improvement. At least with rot, something's alive.)
Soooo the mirror is so broken Sunest came through as a “Hoo-man”?
IE: they had to force their way in by reopening the Portal. Obviously with some of the elements like the transformation not operational, buuuuuuut you have to work with what you have.
Interesting story. Will be keeping an eye on it
My guess is that the voice is Spike. Regarding as to what happened, I think the magic got drained away somehow
OK, so based on all of the clues so far:
The Malady (provisional name) is explicitly magic-based. Considering all of the things we have seen, it acts on the subject's connection to and capacity of raw magic.
Even if we dismiss the vaguely tribalist implication that Unicorns have more magic than Pegasi, etc, we can instead view it as 'Unicorn magic is more generalized and therefore more susceptible, followed by the other tribes.'
Everything in Equestria contains magic. Especially all life, and by extension, all organic matter. The Malady accelerates entropy as it drains magic. Normally, we would have vectors by which entropy is afflicted on matter (weathering, scavengers, fungi, and microbes promoting breakdown and decay) but in the absence of those operators we have material breakdown ex-nihilo.
The symptoms described in the living victims seem like hypothermia. Numbness in the extremities followed by loss of energy and motor function. The wood examples seemed like whatever ambient magic in the cells crystallize and then was ripped from them, leaving cell walls breached and structural integrity compromised. If that sort of thing had happened with the visiting native equestrians there would have been blood, screaming, and worse . . . a horrific combination of microscopic buckshot fired from within and radiation poisoning. Let's assume that a living thing has more of a grip on whatever magic is still inside of it than a dead thing. Living magic can still be energy, 'dead' magic can crystallize.
So, I propose that thaumodynamics is working like thermodynamics. Equestria, for some reason, has gone 'arctic' with regard to magic. It has all been drained, either away or to some concentrated point, al la Cozy Glow's scheme. Different mediums retained magic for longer than others, just as different mediums would retain heat. The traumatically rapid removal of magic causes active symptoms. Equestria in its current state is drawing the magic out of anything that sets foot there because the entire world at this point is 'cold' with regards to magic. It is not unfathomable that some sort of magic insulating material could be created. Perhaps dragon scales? Assuming our assailant this chapter is an angry Spike.
Earth, in this sense, is a 'cold' world but allowed for Sunset to 'cool down' slowly, and then once she was more or less fully drained of magic, no further meaningful difference existed between her and other humans. All magical 'incidents' in EG were just splashes of water into the winter that was Earth; they all quickly froze or evaporated, with a very slow drip of magic from the portal.
Earth life forms can enter Ruined Equestria without issue because they have no intrinsic magic to be traumatically stripped of. Equestria natives will need to spend an arbitrary amount of time on Earth before they slowly drip-dry of their own magic to the point that exposure to the Malady will not harm them.
So humans could visit 'safely,' any native earth life could likely survive without issue, which just leaves us with the final questions of what happened, who's managed to not die yet, where the fuck is all of the magic, and if the magic has been actively collected . . . where is it, and is it about to explode?
Cliffhanger!
https://youtu.be/cphNpqKpKc4
11338719
If not him an incredibly peeved Discord.
11338912
If it is Discord then only a holy blessing from Celestia’s fat ass can save her. (Yes i believe in those rumors that she Adores cake.)
Well, this went from quiet horror to louder really quickly. Looking forward to further developments.
(And I do wonder what Wallflower thinks of an alien horse skeleton getting buried in her garden.)
11340216
Who d'you think suggested they use the garden? Must've been someone pretty unmemorable.
i wonder how many not-so-magic talented races are still kicking on that world?
desperate things, carnivore or gem eaters have some time maybe sunset, and the girls can help anyone living if twilight improves that portal and location opening so it not always at the castle also I bet twilight could do that while hurtful to her a magic draining could help the pony side from being drained by their world it worked for sunset!
Sorry for not publishing this yesterday, folks; I completely forgot. Won't happen again... hopefully.
Well, that answers the cliffhanger from last chapter, and really it's the most likely being to be able and willing to make the trek to Ponyville to try and figure out what is happening. Still leaves the question of where is Spike, but if they're making a play for the Elements that seems like the most likely place they will find him, maybe on Twilight's orders or maybe because there was nothing else for him to do. Otherwise, I have to assume he either left in some other random direction weeks ago and is far beyond their reach, or his corpse is hidden in some out-of-the-way corner of the castle or town and they won't find it without a more thorough search than they can manage right now. Even if he left the town alive though, I'm not optimistic about his chances of survival for this long, not without a source of food that hasn't rotted or been drained (even gems are not immune apparently).
The confirmation that this disaster extends across the entire country, and probably the world, raises the question of what the long-term plan is here. Even if they can stop the draining, even if there is enough magic left to sustain native Equestrian life, even if Sci-Twi can replicate the spell to transform the Ponyville natives back into ponies (otherwise their species is effectively extinct, even if they can carry on their culture as humans), restoring their planet's ruined ecosystem is going to be the work of multiple generations. This is becoming a matter of terraforming now, not just replanting a few trees. If something has survived on the other side of their world and they can stop the event before everything remaining dies off, it will be a lot easier to keep their world as a whole habitable, but Equestria itself is a lost cause, at least in the short-to-medium term. The ponies are going to need to get situated on Earth for the long haul, while they painstakingly work on reintroducing plants and animals to their land.
Finally, the dragons may become a problem in the future, if Sunset and company can't stop the draining soon and Ember becomes desperate enough to consider following Twilight's example and evacuating to Earth to save her people. She is downplaying the situation in the dragon lands right now, but I expect it's only a matter of time before they start starving and things turn ugly. Dragons won't like running, but they'll have little choice, and if Ember shares how Ponyville escaped at least some of them may consider it (though some like Garble may think of it in terms of invading and conquering a new world). Of course this only is going to work for younger and smaller dragons, the big ones aren't going to fit inside the castle or the portal, but enough of them may be able and willing to escape through the portal to raise an ethical dilemma for Sunset- do they abandon an entire species to die a slow and painful death on a doomed world, or do they try to save the dragons but in the process potentially take on a lot more problems than they are prepared to deal with? If the portal won't transform the dragons into people (or dogs), then they have to figure out how to deal with dozens or even hundreds of adolescent dragons on Earth, which they definitely can't hide from the government for long and may not be able to keep fed and under control. After all, there are no magical gems on Earth for them to eat, and not nearly enough non-magical gems if they can even eat those, and getting enough meat or other food to keep them fed may be more than they can afford. The situations could really end badly.
If they’re still around that is.
11346177
It does look like sanest plan is to close the portal and have the Equestrian survivors just settle down. Assuming that doing so will prevent the magic drain from spreading to their world.
But if our heroes decide to try to save Equestria... The situation is still dire. But once the threat is stopped, restoring the ecology could just be...
I wouldn't be surprised if fixing Equestria's magic issue turned Sunset and others into alicorns.
Course, this could be also just be a grim no-win situation.
I look forward to reading future chapters so I can find out.
elements are a big MacGuffin but not the end-all solution so I kind of hope they are gone they were made once so maybe again later?
growing magic on earth could be risky but I wonder if they're enough for gems to grow since dragons need them? or do we worry about infection or hidden stuff like the sirens?
Really enjoying the story so far and I hope you continue on.
Where is Spike?
11346292
Fair point, magic offers a lot more opportunity for Deux Ex Machina here to reduce a centuries-long recovery process down to something much more manageable. But then the question is whether this is a story that will allow for that, at least not without a heavy cost or some other catch. Right now, I don't feel like this is the case- this isn't quite a grimdark story, I don't think this will have a downer ending, but I also don't feel it will have a complete "nice" ending either.
Wonder if this can become yet another backstory for how G5 came to be? Store all the remaining pony magic from the surviving Ponyville natives in the crystals, repopulate Equestria using non-magical plants and animals from Earth and magic-less pony refugees, and then wait out the magic draining for some generations before using the crystals to restore the pony magic to their descendants. But then after recolonizing Equestria and while waiting for it to be safe to return the magic, the ponies split up by tribe and went their separate ways. And all the technology they have originally came from their time on Earth that they brought back with them to help compensate for the lack of magic.
A bit of a stretch, and I doubt where the author is going with this, but it kinda fits.
11346292
Why do you assume that Discord survived? If this things works how they think it works then he would have been one of the first to die.
11346668
Best case is that he had a hint of what was coming and noped out of that universe just as quick as he could. But if this is a version of him that can't, and if his little home in the chaos zone or whatever isn't immune to this, then yeah he is almost certainly super dead.
Well. The hypothesis is confirmed, but whether they can actually do anything about it remains to be seen. It's not like the Elements aren't coated in dragonhide, after all. Still, higher magic levels to begin with may mean more time before they collapse. May. We'll see what happens soon enough.
11346668
I don't assume Discord survived. I can just imagine several ways in which he could.
The My Little Pony universe is filled with deux ex machinas. I don't get the feeling this story is going there. But I look forward to seeing where the author takes the story either way.
11348734
ok
You're repeating yourself.
ok
And if he doesn't go through the portal he'll die in, like, thirty minutes.
Don't the main 7 have their own geodes?
11350151
This actually takes place before Legend of Everfree, which is when they got the geodes.
Look, she arrived on this world at some point in the 2010s. The distinction between decades of the previous century is largely academic as far as Sunset's concerned.
Each of the girls talking to their respective counterparts may be in order, including one Dash beating some sense into the other. Especially given the risks involved in this next trip. Potentially leaving the girls stranded in a dying world is potentially very dangerous. Midnight may actually be a necessary escape clause, though what she may demand in return...
Well, we'll see what happens soon enough.
11350210
wait
If it takes place after Friendship games then....
Is it canon Sunset Shimmer?
Equestria citizians???
TWILIGHT!!!!!
Hello?
Human Rarity, ID card?