Call me Gryph for short, if you like. In-case the avatar, the name, and the themes of my stories didn't make it apparent; big Gryphon fan here.
This story is a sequel to Hegira: Eternal Delta
One Family, Six Kingdoms, Two Worlds.
Out of the shadows, the enemy moves and strikes with fury borne of hatred, revealing all at last.
A future foretold, and the fate of Humans and Equestrians alike, hangs by a thread.
All things change in the end.
Book Three of the Hegira Trilogy - This story only takes MLP G4 Seasons 1 - 3 as cannon, and ignores 4 and onwards.
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Well, here it is. Yes, after all this time; It's real. I have several weeks' worth of unpublished chapters that I'll be trying to release on something like a M/W/F cadence, even as I continue to write and place the rest of the story into the reload pool. What that means for the reader is that hopefully you'll be getting a new chapter (occasionally maybe more than one) at least every M/W/F until the book is done, if nothing goes wrong.
If you skipped the Author's notes; Warning, this story is dark, and the language is a little more colorful than the last two at times.
Also the 'main theme' (or the piece of music I've listened to the most while writing these last couple days) is this.
Enjoy everyone!
You gave Fyrenn power armor. God help us all.
11022517
Not much of a spoiler to say I gave Neyla power armor too. Make of the implications of that what you will
*cough*massivedamage*cough*
Wow, Derpy flew faaar away from home.
11025205
She's good at her job!
Well, some of my questions are already answered.
Also, Wisps have spaceships. Neat : )
11025380
I confess to modelling their ships after some very obscure Star Trek content (I played a lot of New Worlds back in the day, obscure and poorly coded as it was, it was very atmospheric);
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mixed with a little bit of the design language of the Markers from Dead Space
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When you first see those blue and black and purple spiky structures in New Worlds, you think they're just archaeological sites. Eventually they're revealed to be ships that are hibernating, just waiting to be reactivated, and that imagery and the idea behind it really stuck with me.
It's no spoiler to anyone who has gotten to this point in the story to say that there's definitely a lot of sci-fi shenanigans underpinning the fantasy of my take on this world.
WOOOOO!!!
Go kick that intruders’ flank, Stan!
11025398
Well based on the description alone my mind pictured them kinda Dead Space'ish/Giger'ish anyways, so hey, I was close : )
And yeah, we've got some hints about aliens in Equestria, fancy multimentional changeling holography as an example.
Also, I'm kinda curious about matter transfer between the dimentions... How is it working in principle? We have expanding bubble in the earth, but on Equus side it looks like their expanding 'universe/disk-world edge' so to speak? Also it feels like Equestria is not in the center of their own bubble, but is offset to the edge. Is it expanding evenly in all directions? In your story it looks like there's only one 'gateway' to the Equestria for converts (at least I'm not sure that other were mentiond). So do people travel around the bubble from the eastern hemisphere to the western? Or if there're more of them, do people travelling through them arrive to the opposite 'edge' of the disk? Somewhere in the wilderness and far from pony civilization, if it's not centered. Also, if the bubble is the edge of the Equus universe, and all the consumed matter became part of it and grow it further... Then at some point transporting new people would became logistically almost impossible. And most of the converts would appear on the edge of the disk, far from civilisation and further away from each other. Well, maybe not trult impossibly far away, but it'd be thousands of km between what were prior neighboring communities. On the other side, the bigger the disk, the slower it's radius would increase.
Eh, these were kinda stupid ramblings, sorry for that. And sorry again, if it all were discussed prior to that in other comments.
11025428
Not stupid at all; Very good stuff! I'm happy to get into the nitty gritty weirdness of it! Really really good trains of thought, observations, and questions!
Some of it is touched on in the story, some is left unspoken or implied, lots yet to be explained lore-wise, but here's some mostly non-spoilery discussion:
So there's definitely a lot of plot-convenient hyperspace geometry going on, but I tried to create a consistent rule-set for it.
First thing to note; Equus/Equestria is not an oblate spheroid, because it is not a planet in the conventional sense. It is actually more akin to an absolutely gigantic contact lens shape, with everyone living on the outside of the domed part of the convex shape. It exists in space and in an orbital arrangement with other stellar bodies like a planet, but that space is part of a universe separate from Earth's.
Second point to note; The size of Equestria in terms of radius is much bigger than the size of the barrier in terms of radius. So there's already some geometric aberration. Walking ten meters along the Earth side of the barrier is equivalent to walking much further along the Equestrian side of the barrier perimeter.
Equestria was already starting with more surface area than Earth even to begin with.
Further worth noting; No one (Convert or Native) has yet fully been able to explain the functioning of Equestria's Moon and Sun. Everywhere outside Celestia and Luna's Kingdom, they function just the expected way a Sun and Moon would, with only a few minor physics inconsistencies that no one has been able to yet explain with the level of equipment available on that side of the Barrier.
Inside the Equestrian Nation proper, the Sun and Moon function wholly under Celestia and Luna's control, but that does not interfere with nor change the functioning of the Sun and Moon outside the bounds of their Kingdom.
Lots of hypothesis have been put down, and an explanation will be at least somewhat covered, but Astronomer/AstroPhys converts have compared notes with native Equestrians who study the question, and their best current hypothesis is that Equestria does not orbit a conventional fixed star, nor have a single orbiting natural satellite for its moon, but rather that the sun and moon are sophisticated artificial systems of some sort that only create the illusion of a central star, and a single natural orbiting satellite. What exact form that system takes has never been definitively understood.
With all that established...
The area in Equestria's universe that encompasses Equestria itself is passing through Earth's space-time, bound to the gravitational locus of the Earth itself. When it finishes passing through, it will have consumed the Earth, and will no longer be in contact with Earth's native universe. For every bit of matter of earth consumed, a much larger surface area than the corresponding surface area of Earth that vanished, is being added to Equestria, and it is added evenly across the convex discworld around its perimeter.
This is because Equestria has no thick mantle, nor core, just a roughly equivalent crust. So all the mass of Earth being consumed is being repurposed as livable surface area, with a thin crust under it, including Earth's mantle, and core, which is a whole lot of extra mass.
The mechanism for how this matter is being repurposed, rather than just outright consumed, is also something of a mystery, but I love Halo, and I love the Forerunners' mega-constructs, so draw what conclusions you will about what Equestria is, and how it works. All will be fairly well explained eventually. At least two characters in the story know the entire and complete truth, because either they were alive from the beginning, or their immediate line of predecessors were.
The part of the map of Equestria our characters are familiar with is fairly offset towards one edge of this process, as you noted, and likewise towards the edge of Equestria's structure itself.
People learned very, very quickly not to cross the barrier anywhere except for the part closest to the habited/known parts of Equestria. At first the consequences of mistakes were not intractably bad, but as Equestria has been getting so vastly much bigger for every bit of Earth that vanishes, the consequences are rapidly becoming 'could not reasonably make the journey back to civilization within a span of a year's of travel.'
Not 'we're doomed' bad, but just 'let's not try that' bad. Though there are factions who may later A: Hate the Equestrian political entities, but accept that they must Convert and cross, and B: Want some space to themselves to grow, prosper, and nurse a grudge.
The Barrier Retarder technology Earth developed in conjunct with Canterlot's best mages is having two important effects on the consumption process.
First it slows the process a bit in the present by deferring some of the momentum. That means that Earth gets a few more years of time in the 2110s of the Barrier moving slower, but in exchange at the very end when there's not much of Earth left, the deferred momentum must be paid back, and the Barrier will start to accelerate exponentially, consuming the last bits of the world much, much faster. This is considered a useful logistical trade-off.
Secondarily, the retarders are artificially keeping a tiny sliver of the Barrier's crossover point much closer to the filled in parts of the map by hugely slowing the new land creation effect on the Equestrian side, again through deferred momentum. This effect works only on a tiny sliver area no more than a few dozen meters across on the earth side. When the final end of Earth comes, there will be a huge snap-back along that pie-slice as the deferred momentum is paid back, and all the land that was held off comes into being suddenly to keep Equestria's shape even.
Until then, it provides a safe transport corridor for Converts that isn't impossibly long-distance.
Yes, some of that is very mind-bending probably absurd unreal geometry in multiple dimensions, but it serves the story, and I hope is at least somewhat consistent in its Applied Phelbotinum usage.
11025485
Oh, wow, that's a lot of text : )
Ah, I somewhat thought that you changed 'canon' parabolic universe to the flat Diskworld-like. Looks like yours is somewhere in the middle. Still don't make much sense outside of weird megastructure (or even virtual simulation) projects, but we'll see : )
Nice idea with the 'fixed' gateway, but yeah, looks like it would snap quite explosively sometimes in the future.
So, is the bubble on the Equestrian side is an actual boundary to their universe? Or it's like some weird displacement bubble inside of the actual universe? Actually the answer to that one could be quite spoilery, so yeah...
Still, I'm slightly less confused, so thanks : ) really hope that yours, and other good and worthy AU stories would get more exposure and attention. It's sad to see such promising ones with just a handful of likes and comments.
11025533
As to the shape of the world making sense;
For a Kardashev Type 2 (high type 2) civilization, there's lots of things you can make that are better than a planet for living on.
Not too spoilery to say that its essentially a reverse bubble. It actually has some very funny lensing on the Equestrian side, in that it doesn't appear to distort their night sky, but it is present there. Really the Barrier is just the slice along which the two universes are colliding, with the Equestrian one eating the parts of ours it passes through.
It's like a multi-dimensional subduction zone fault.
I really appreciate the sentiment, thank you! That being said, I'm content to write whether one person enjoys it, or ten, or a hundred. I'm very glad you're enjoying it, and I hope the conclusion as RO progresses will be satisfying for you, and anyone else still reading, in every way (characters, plot arcs, revelations, etc).
Welp, somebody’s day is about to get ruined.
11026703
It's nuclear weapons; It will be more than one somebody, guaranteed!
Nukes? Just like that? And with Genesist/JSRF forces on the scene as a collateral?
We need somegriff to beat some sense into all of them : )
So, interesting, global enemy made themselves known on the Earth side first, despite having been based on ponies side initially. And they have spaceships, that is able to travel between universes directly without the barrier it seems. Why is Equestria still standing? Are their multicultural stand against was so successful, that Wisps are only now comfortable enough with their global distrust schemes to act?
11027001
This is what happens when a government lets horrible people into command positions because 'they're experienced officers.'
You're already on to one of three pretty specific reasons. 👍
Welp, Humanity is officially doomed.
I would be heading for the nearest Conversion Bureau. Try for Gryphonization, but I admittedly don’t have that much of a head for military matters, but I’d like to at least try.
11027779
Not all Gryphons are full-time warriors. We build things, cook things, make and appreciate all forms of art...
Humanity was always doomed, it was only a question of timing.
Antimatter is quite a volatile little thing... And yeah, here we're seeing the famous doomsday nuclear exchange, with retaliation upon retaliation. I just really hope it wouldn't escalate too far into the proper planet-killed state...
11027882
We shall see soon enough!
The next four chapters, 15 - 18, are some of my personal favorite things I've written so far. A whole lot of pay-offs to three books' worth of build-up for secrets, and relationships, and politics, and tensions.
And by the time we hit 20, I still don't think we'll have hit more than the 20 - 25% mark for the book as a whole. The main arc of the story hasn't even begun yet. I'm guessing we're headed north of 500k words for this one.
Everything through into the mid 20s is all just for openers.
Surprise first-person. That's gonna take some getting used to. :)
I sincerely hope the Genesists make it through. I hope Humanity survive and thrives on other worlds, in the light of other stars.
Also, this question kinda comes out of nowhere, but… what exactly happened that botched the Lupine Diamond Dog program?
Oooh, boss battle incoming : )
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Well, it wasn't the Lupines specifically, it was actually all Diamond Dogs. It was partially covered in ED, but the biggest problem was that the EarthGov was paid under the table to look the other way on the Pack Dynamic issues. Which are fine, if you go into the program understanding them, and joining a reputable Pack that will take care of you...
But if you have no idea what you're in for, and you fall in with the wrong Pack, you can end up essentially a slave-class 'citizen' in a Troll Pack. So people understandably hit the roof when those issues started coming to light, and seeing that EarthGov had done no work at all to screen packs, or to prepare new Converts.
11029015
"Why do I hear boss music?"
Ooooh, that was quite an epic fight. Also, a little hints and nudges lore-wise. Looking forward for more!
I hope Aston makes it long enough to get the Gryphonization potion into her. That’ll fix her right up.
Also, props to the Councilor guy who actually has a working brain in his skull. With him at the helm, there might be some self-governing Humans left after this whole situation gets cleared up.
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Oh... There is so much in the next few chapters. It's not even funny. The dike bursts and a whole mess comes roiling out.
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In reference to both items; We shall see...
I bet it’s the PER. War is still on the table.
11031488
War is always on the table from now on! Stability? Thing of the past, as far as Earth goes.
Cue the Immigrant Song for Stan. :)
Rainbow Dash does not show up minutes later, eager to find a new pony who can do a Sonic Rainboom and challenge them to a race. Guess she was busy that day.
Finally! Wishing Neyla success in her hunt at long last.
There it is... The Nightmare wants billions of new ponies to host billions of Wisps. They don't seem able to just possess people en masse, though. I'm guessing that they need to put people in those special cells like the ones back at the PER base, to make them into hosts against their will.
11031607
That's a fantastic mental image and now I will forever picture that musical accompaniment for that scene.
Regrettably Rainbow was several hundred miles north Trying to track down the Elements of Harmony along with most of the rest of the Mane 6
11031631
Fyrenn is slow to learn, but not completely stupid. He is also completely off course now and doing things that I never originally intended. I actually never intended to write any romance at all. Heck, Stan was never even going to be a good guy in the very beginning, and then neither was IJ once she was first introduced.
They have all done things that surprised me at this point.
On the other claw, the Nightmare and her plans were something I had envisioned from the very first seconds of my ideation, and I've been building to that reveal since day 1. You're pretty close on the infestation methodology; It is easier/faster and does not require added technological aid when in Equestria, because of more ambient magic, but it still requires a restrained host for at least a few seconds that can't physically fight back.
In Earth's magic-deprived environment it's so hard they need a technological aid, but on the flipside it is easier to get away with shenanigans and evildoing on Earth at a large scale.
Finally! Just took 'em two books and a change : )
11032559
I originally never intended them to end up together. Actually I intended them to conspicuously *not* end up together in spite of their compatibility. They had other ideas, and sort of got away from me over the years.
I apologize in advance because there's a bit of sappy romance in this story from this point on, and I'm not sure I'm particularly good at it...
This was beautiful and I love it. I hope we get dedicated chapters for both couples marriages.
11032885
Well thank you! As a bit of a suppressed/buried romantic I have no context for my skill, or lack thereof, at writing romantic interaction.
Hutch and Aston want a small, quiet sort of ceremony just shy of eloping. They'll probably get exactly what they want, and very shortly.
Fyrenn and Neyla probably want something small and family-only, with a bit more ceremony, but not a big crowd or circumstance. They may or may not be snookered into a much bigger and grander event by circumstances soon forthcoming.
Nice chapter. And the next one would be fabled chapter 20, to give us all the answers!
Dunno, if anything can surprise me more than the Barrier origin from the prior ones, but we'll see : )
11035923
20 is less about getting new answers beyond that, and more about filling in some details.
It's also just very, very dark.
That will have to wait until tomorrow though, my buffer of new material is small enough now that I'm moving to a M/W/F release schedule.
Having a horse is a plenty busy thing, and this week it was buying, stacking, and tarping his winter hay supply.
Really loved the happy family moments.
11037903
I am a sucker for happy family moments. I live off them as an author. I think I like them even more than the military/sci-fi stuff, and the action scenes.
They make for a good light to counterbalance the dark.
Oh wow. That was dark, indeed. But cathartic in its own way...
Sooo, interesting. Probably missed half the points and misinterpreted other half, but I gathered that there was some kind 'progenotor' multispecies space-faring civilization, with megastructures and stuff. Then came Wisps and broke everything(?), and the world somehow separated into two, with Equestria unwrapping itself from the origin world and leaving humans there, who somehow became allergic to the magic?
11038073
All I'll say is that you are very close on several points
This may or may not be the darkest moment in the book on the whole. There's some moments to come that, while dark in somewhat different ways, are similarly difficult to write (in most cases).
There's one in particular I haven't gotten to that's a bit of poetic symmetry with a book I moment that I'm quite looking forward to. I love watching good characters flirt with morally very dark trains of thought, but for reasons that the audience will usually be onboard with nonetheless.
11038125
Ah, good to know.
The hardest thing was seeing [Skye] POV tag after that disclaimer and I was like “Don't you dare!” and then all that other stuff happened. I mean it was dark, but not suddenly so, quite in the flow of the rest of the surrounding story, it'll surely be traumatic as all hell for all the parties.
But now — we know what's going on. And parties on both sides are in the know. Now we can push back! Or I dunno, make some flesh-puppets for Wisps to inhabit and love and tolerate them to the Moon : )
11038141
Oh gosh, did you think I was gonna kill Skye for real this time, and so early on? I must be doing my job half decent in terms of setting the suspense and tension up.
Just killing a character off without a good reason/build-up is a cheap shot. I took a gamble in book I 'killing' her in that fashion in hopes readers would keep with it, and eventually get to the big payoff that references my favorite scene from Star Trek V (a good scene in a hilariously fun-bad movie).
Forcing characters to face really awful pain is, if done right, a chance to set real, serious stakes without resorting to death alone as the ultimate benchmark, as well as giving a deeper peek inside characters' heads under pressure, giving them room to grow and overcome, and making familial ties more believable as they are forged from cooperating their way through harsh circumstances.
Killing a character is like taking a piece off the board in chess; It removes uncountably large numbers of permutations from the rest of the game. That's opportunities for character behaviour, interaction, and growth that are gone forever. When I kill characters who I like, I prefer to do it nearer to the end.
As for love and tolerance? We Gryphons are in to that. To a point. Love means you fight when you have to.
Yes, the issue will probably be discussed that the Wisps are trying to escape horrible pain and suffering by what they're doing, but that isn't going to phase Fyrenn. He's made up his mind, and he's already decided he's not at all above wiping out their entire race to assure the safety of everyone else, if there's no other choice when it comes down to it. Similar moral dilemma Starfleet faces when torpedoing a Borg cube. Might could have worked out something to save lives, but at what risk?
Don't you dare!²
But yeah, I became quite attached to the characters, and really hope for the “Happily ever after” for the clan whats-it-name. And afraid that they wouldn't all get there alive or even unscathed. That is a sign that you're doing your story business right, so please do go on : )
11038190
Well, one thing I can say for sure about myself; I like happy endings (overall, at any rate) and I do not like doing character deaths. So if/when they happen, there's not liable to be a particularly large number.
You can also take comfort in the fact that I don't like to re-hash a twist once it has been sprung. Given that she already 'died' once that makes Skye fairly 'safe.'
I danced around the idea of killing Aston early on, but it felt pointless, which is a good sign that it *is* pointless, and I don't do pointless deaths.
So do you have a favorite?
11038254
Oooh, that's hard. But aside from the main protagonist probably Skye and IJ. Skye is just a warlocking programmer, which is such an anime trope, and totally underused all around; IJ is weird, but fun, and have a lot of character and lore developement both prior and (as I feel) incoming : )
11038261
Skye was always meant to be important and always intended to be part of the weird little family, but IJ was intended originally to die a villain.
But it didn't feel right when the time came, and she surprised me with her choices, and ended up giving us all a better outcome for that surprise.
I love the interaction between them, because they both come from exceedingly emotionally caustic upbringings, and both have a very fun sarcastic humor streak, and IJ was Skye's 'replacement' for a while, which rankled Skye quite a bit initially.
I might have shipped them because of their chemistry, but IJ and Stan really ended up falling in head over fetlocks for each other, IJ wants an exclusive relationship because she has been forced to share everything emotionally with the Hive in the past and she wants something besides that for her future, and Skye is very strongly both asexual and aromantic for reasons that will eventually come to light.
Fyrenn had a desire, and a reason, to change his romantic orientation, but not everyone who is aromantic does, or should, or even can make that change. Skye is an example of someone who could change that in theory, but has adapted, and grown, and come to terms with her identity in a manner where she chooses to be aromantic for healthier reasons/thought processes than Fyrenn was previously clinging to.
Skye prefers to enjoy watching romance play out in those she loves and trusts in more brother/sister ways. She is probably the biggest shipper within the group, and hopefully seeing some of these other romances blossom will act as one of many cathartic aids to her pain.
On a different note;
It's funny, for Book I Fyrenn is definitely the protagonist out and out. That's a bit less of a strong thing in book II, and a little less strong still in III. It's really ended up being more of a story of this found family, with everyone's past, present, and future having major importance, and being emotionally charged for me as a writer.
I've really enjoyed that change, and I really found I've enjoyed writing them 1st person this go-round too. I hope that's been as enjoyable to read as it is to write.
11038280
Oh, it is quite enjoyable to read, don't you worry. Rotating perspectives are usually have high entry costs for reader involvement (subjectively), but in your case I've had previous books to get well accustomed to the characters, they're at least know each other and have single narrative origin. Stuff I personally have trouble with are stories when you have several unrelated PoVs from the beginning, and then they converge somewhere closer to the finale. It's still a valid tactic though.
And thanks for the characters' profiles, it's good to know them more solidly. I hadn't been really knowledgeable about all this romantic sides of the spectre, but you giving examples and reasoning for them helped me to understand it a little more, so thanks for that too.