Axioms

by NoPoemGuy

Chapter Four - Trapped

“Fluttershy, are you in there?”

Rarity impatiently knocked on the door to the cottage for a third time. It wasn't like Fluttershy to be late to anything; the pegasus was normally the first one to arrive at any planned meeting, after Rarity herself of course. Yet the two ponies had scheduled an appointment at the spa for eleven o'clock that morning, and a full hour later, Fluttershy was still nowhere to be found.

“FLUTTERSHY. ARE...YOU...THERE?!” she bellowed, slamming her hoof against the door at full force. To be fair, it wasn't like Rarity either to act like this, losing her cool over something silly like a missed spa session. But the events of the morning so far had unsettled her quite terribly.

She had had that dream again. She had seen Twilight, imbued with a limitless magical power, as she ruthlessly assaulted Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie, Celestia...yes, Celestia had been there this time, and even she hadn't been able to stop the rampaging unicorn.

Rarity had tried her best to put it out of her mind. A dream was just a dream; she had nightmares all the time, and none of them had ever caused her closest friends to turn evil. But a recurring nightmare...

“FLUTTERSHY!” She raised her hoof once again...and let it fall to the ground. She had to control herself. One of the animals had probably fallen sick, and Fluttershy had rushed it to the vet. Or maybe she was simply asleep, exhausted from yesterday's work at Zecora's hut, and Rarity was in the process of ruining her morning. She guiltily turned around, resolving to return to her boutique and come back later that afternoon to find out what had happened...

...And she saw the feather. A bright, flame-red feather, lying just to the side of the path to Fluttershy's cottage. It was the biggest feather she had ever seen, almost as long as her tail. It was much too large to be from a pegasus, certainly too large for any of Fluttershy's animals...she couldn't think of any creature big enough to drop it.

Somehow, just the sight of that feather gave Rarity the feeling that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

“Fluttershy!” she yelled in a panicked tone, scrambling back to the door and pulling feverishly on the handle...to find that it was unlocked. A wave a relief passed over her as she entered the cottage. “It's me, Rarity! I'm sorry to intrude, but I had to make sure that –“

….......

Rainbow Dash kicked yet another pebble into Fluttershy's fireplace. It was an odd habit of hers; whenever she was really angry or really frustrated, she got an insatiable urge to shoot things against other things. She'd pick almost anything as her target, so powerful was the impulse; the cottage's mice were lucky to have kept their distance on this particular occasion. Perhaps Fluttershy would have asked her to stop anyway. But then again, Fluttershy wasn't in a position to ask her anything at the moment.

Rarity let out a helpless groan, a sound she'd been emitting at regular intervals for some time. Nonetheless, the white unicorn was in a much calmer state than when she'd arrived below Dash's airborne house earlier that day, wailing incoherently about how something...something really bad...had happened to Fluttershy. Dash would have normally passed this off as a mean joke, but Rarity had very clearly not been joking. She had rushed to the cottage as fast as her wings would carry her, to find that Applejack and Pinkie were already there, gazing in horrified awe at...

...The thing in the center of the room. It looked a bit like the rubies Rarity used in her dressmaking, only much, much larger – it was a good two feet taller than Rainbow Dash, and a lot wider as well. Sunlight from the window reflected off the hundreds and hundreds of facets that made up the spherical, translucent, gem-like object, as though it had been cut by an extremely skilled jeweler. The light bounced off the red-colored surfaces and cast itself all over the walls, filling the room with an eerie pinkish glow, not unlike one of Vinyl's dance parties. The multidirectional glare of light made it difficult to focus on the prism directly, but not so much so that the ponies couldn't see what was inside it.

Fluttershy.

The pegasus stood in the very center of the prismatic prison, her yellow coat tinged orange by its crimson surface. All four of her legs were encircled by a set of strange disks, each one emitting a dull blue light. Her head was pointed down to the floor and her eyelids were scrunched shut, as though she was preparing for something to fly into the prism and hit her in the face at any moment.

Nothing did fly at her. Yet still she stood there, frozen in place. Not moving a muscle. Not moving a hair.

Like she was nothing more than a statue.

Rainbow Dash had kicked the walls of the prism until her hooves were sore. She had thrown at it every throwable object in the whole cottage. She had even flown back several hundred feet from the building and rocketed toward it at top speed, only to be stopped at the last second by Applejack, who had scoldingly told her the last thing they needed was to have her in the hospital with a broken neck. And yet the gemstone stood firm, displaying not so much as a scratch for her efforts.

Now Dash found herself meandering about the room, alongside Applejack, Pinkie, and Rarity, as the true horror of the situation slowly descended upon her:

Fluttershy was trapped behind what appeared to be a powerful magical barrier, and they could not get her out.

“Where's Twilight?” asked Applejack, breaking a long bout of silence.

“Spike said she was out buying groceries,” Rarity replied. “I told him to send her over as soon as she got back.”

And then the oppressive silence returned. Dash dully shuffled around, occasionally kicking another mote of dust into the fireplace, trying not to look directly at anypony, especially Fluttershy...

“She'd better hurry up,” she remarked eventually. “The sooner she gets here and breaks Fluttershy out of that thing, the better.”

“Um, Dash,” said Applejack hesitantly, “this seems to me like a mighty powerful spell, I'm not sure if even Twilight can break it –“

“Yes she can,” Dash said flatly. She stared directly at the floorboards as she spoke. “When it comes to magic, Twilight can do anything.”

“Dash, do be reasonable,” interjected Rarity. “I quite agree that Twilight is a very smart unicorn, but this might be out of her league. I don't know who could have cast a spell like this, but it would have to be somepony really, really powerful –“

“Then let's find out who did it and make them get Fluttershy out!” Dash began to walk toward the door, her eyesight still fixed to the ground.

She found her path suddenly blocked by Applejack. “Listen to me. I know you're upset, we all are, but we can't just start running around like a herd of stampeding buffalo. We wouldn't know the first thing about finding the pony responsible for this. Maybe that pony doesn't even exist, for all we know this could've been some kind of accident.”

“Applejack's right,” Rarity chimed in. “Besides, even if we could find the perpetrator, we couldn't possibly force such a powerful unicorn to –“

“Fluttershy is in there!” bellowed Dash. Something snapped inside her; she unfolded her wings and took to the air, glaring down at the other ponies. She could feel her pulse pounding behind her face like a bass drum. “She's trapped in that thing, and she's not going to get out until we do something about it! What is your plan, exactly? Sit around here all day and whine?!”

Applejack and Rarity gazed back up at her, their mouths hanging half-open as though they desperately wanted to speak. But neither one did.

“Don't have a plan? Then we're going with mine, and my plan is to find whoever did this to Fluttershy and kick the living manure out of them. And if you two are too scared to come along, then I'll just have to do it myself.” She abruptly started toward the door, before remembering that there was still one other pony in the room. “Pinkie, are you in or out?”

The pink pony slowly turned around, and the wave of shock that passed through Dash was strong enough to freeze her wings in place and send her plummeting to the ground. It had crossed her mind as odd that the most energetic pony in Ponyville had spent the past half hour silently moping in a corner, facing the wall with her head bowed. But her puffy red eyes and cheeks glistening with fresh tears told the whole story.

“Pinkie!” cried an aghast Rarity, scrambling over to her friend. “Darling, what's wrong?”

Pinkie's voice came out as a sort of broken, high-pitched whimper that Dash had never heard from her before. “It's just...so sad, you know? I mean...she's all by herself in there, she's got nothing to do, no friends to talk to...maybe she doesn't even know we're here, maybe she thinks she's all alone, maybe she's cold or tired or scared...”

Dash suddenly felt rather sick to her stomach.

Rarity gently touched Pinkie's hoof with her own. “Everything's going to be alright, Pinkie. Maybe she doesn't have any friends with her in there, but she's got plenty out here. And we're going to find a way to get her out. I promise.”

The pink pony heaved an anguished sigh. “But how is she going to eat like that? How is she going to sleep? What if she can't breathe? What if...what if she's –“

“Stop it!” snapped Dash, her stomach lurching violently. She didn't want to hear the last word of that sentence. She didn't want to think it.

“Now, that's just crazy talk,” said Applejack, although her wavering voice sounded far less reassuring than her words. “Don't go about getting all depressed for no reason, especially when we don't know anything yet –“

She was interrupted by a pair of loud, startled gasps. Dash turned to see two new figures standing in the open doorway: a baby dragon, riding atop a purple unicorn.

All activity in the cottage instantly ceased.

“What happened?” asked Twilight, as Spike wordlessly slid off his mount and stared at the monumental crystal with a shocked expression.

“We don't know,” stated Applejack bluntly.

Twilight's eyes darted rapidly back and forth, scanning the many dazzling surfaces of the prism, before resting on the orange-tinted pegasus trapped inside. Dash suddenly found her breath caught in her throat. Rarity and Applejack had been right, this was probably too powerful a spell for even Twilight to handle. But there was still a chance that she could actually...

“How long...” started Twilight, “how long has she been like that?”

“A few hours, at least,” replied Rarity. “I found her this morning, and she hasn't moved a muscle ever since.”

Twilight slowly walked to the center of the cottage, all the other ponies hastily clearing her way, trying to allow her as much room as possible. For a long moment, she stared searchingly at Fluttershy, still frozen in place, her face scrunched up in anticipation of some impending blow that would never come. The unicorn then closed her eyes and bowed her head, clearly deep in thought.

After a period of intense silence that seemed to go on for hours, she opened her eyes, and her horn began to glow with a faint purple light –

Rainbow Dash's heart seemed to stop beating –

But nothing happened. The glow faded away, and Twilight was left standing in front of a perfectly intact red crystal, her mouth contorted into a perplexed frown.

“Well?!” pressed Dash, unable to take any more. “Can you get her out?”

“I'm...I'm not sure,” said Twilight hesitantly. “I sent a Scrying Spell at her, but nothing came back. It's like that object's absorbing my magic or something. I've never seen anything like that before...”

Dash kicked a pebble at the fireplace hard enough to scare a group of mice lingering on the outskirts of the room back into their hole.

“Rainbow Dash!” said Rarity reprovingly. “Do try to control yourself!”

Dash ignored her. That was it, their final chance to rescue Fluttershy, gone in a wisp of smoke. Twilight hadn't even been able to figure out what the mysterious crystal was, and as far as Dash was concerned, if Twilight couldn't do anything, then they were dead in the water.

“So now what do we do?” ventured Applejack, echoing Dash's sentiments quite well.

Twilight turned her back to the crystal and addressed the group with a certain fire in her eyes. Dash suddenly found her fear and anger pushed to the side as the unicorn captivated her attention. Twilight might have spent most of her time as a quiet bookworm, but whenever things got really serious, she had a way of instantly turning into a strong, commanding, even regal leader.

“First of all, we're not going to panic. Panicking isn't going to do anything but tire us out. Second, we're going to do everything we can to get Fluttershy out of there. That crystal is obviously a spell of some sort, which I understand pushes it under my area of expertise, but that doesn't mean that everypony can't help out. I'll need one of you to search this whole area for clues as to what happened, and another one to come back to the library and learn as much about this kind of spell as possible. And somepony should go around Ponyville and find out whether anypony saw something suspicious last night.”

Just hearing Twilight speak made Dash feel better than she had all morning. After nearly an hour of aimlessly pacing back in forth, wallowing in undirected rage and trying not to ask herself some really horrifying questions, it was nice to finally have some direction. Judging by the sea of energetically nodding heads throughout the room, her friends all felt much the same way.

“Third,” continued Twilight, “we need to get Princess Celestia over here as soon as possible. If anypony in Equestria knows what this spell is, it's her.”

Dash felt rather taken aback. Why had nobody thought of that yet?

“Spike, take a letter. Dear Princess Celestia –“

“Way ahead of you, Twilight,” said Spike. The baby dragon had climbed on top of a blue table in the corner, on which sat an assortment of pencils and blank pieces of paper, and was furiously scribbling at a sheet in front of him. “Frankly, I'm surprised that wasn't the first thing on your list.” Setting the pencil down with a definitive thud, he stood up and read the completed letter aloud. “Dear Princess Celestia: Fluttershy is in trouble. She's trapped inside a magical crystal of some kind, and she can't move. None of us know how to get her out. Please come at once. Sincerely, Spike.”

“That sounds fine,” said Twilight approvingly. “Send it.”

Spike inhaled deeply, and the letter vanished in a blaze of green fire.

Twilight faced Dash and the rest of her friends once again. “Now, Celestia will probably come as quickly as she can, but it does take a few hours to get to Ponyville from Canterlot, even by chariot. In the meantime, let's get started. Applejack, Pinkie, you two start looking around for anything out of the ordinary, and Rainbow Dash, you come with me to the library and –“

A tremendous bang and brilliant white light blasted through the cottage. Momentarily blinded and deafened, Dash staggered backward in a panic, blinking furiously.

“Oh my,” said the soft yet regal voice of Princess Celestia.

“Princess!” cried Dash. Her ears were still ringing, but she could now see the majestic alicorn standing next to the crimson prism, gazing concernedly at the pegasus trapped within. Dash and the rest of the ponies gathered excitedly around the princess, all except for Twilight, who stood her ground with a rather befuddled expression on her face.

“Holy cow, that was fast!” commented Applejack.

“How did you...” started Twilight, before fading off into silence.

“Oh, thank Celestia you're here!” said Rarity. “Wait, I mean...um, well, you know...”

Celestia shot a brief smile at her subjects, but quickly shifted her attention back to Fluttershy, the corners of her mouth sinking into a frown as she stared.

Rainbow Dash's spirits sank with them, as she came to the realization that even Princess Celestia didn't know what she was looking at.

“She's apparently been like that all morning,” explained Twilight. “I'm sorry to have bothered you, I wish I could have broken the spell myself, but I don't think I've ever read about anything quite like this...”

“I'm not surprised,” said Celestia. “This appears to an exceptionally powerful brand of magic, certainly not the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a common spellbook. I must confess that I myself am not familiar with this particular spell.”

“But do you know how to get her out of there?” burst out Pinkie, her high-pitched voice laced with a glimmer of hopefulness.

“I'm afraid not,” said Celestia.

Dash's heart dropped into her stomach. It sank even further when she looked at Pinkie; the pink earth pony had allowed her head to slump to the floor, biting down on her lower lip, her eyes already brimming with a fresh set of tears. Part of Dash wanted to call out to her, to assure her that everything was going to turn out alright like Applejack and Rarity had done, but now that the princess herself had been bested by the magical barrier, those words were beginning to sound more and more like a lie.

“But who could have even cast a spell like that?” asked Twilight.

“I'm not sure,” replied Celestia. “The most I can tell you is that there is a great deal of magical energy behind that barrier. Quite a bit more than could have been produced by any ordinary unicorn. In fact, I can't imagine any unicorn in all of Equestria being able to do this. As far as I know, the only pony besides myself who wields this much power is Luna.”

“Luna did this?!” gasped Dash incredulously. Her mind became a blur as the implications of this set in; it would mean that Nightmare Moon had returned, and at this very moment was probably working to plunge Equestria into eternal night...

“Dash, don't be ridiculous,” chided Twilight. “That's not what she meant to imply at all.”

“Indeed it wasn't,” said Celestia with a small smile. “No, there are powerful unicorns from places outside of Equestria, and of them I know little. And the Everfree Forest is home to all manner of magical creatures; perhaps one of them is responsible. In any case, I'd rather not jump to any conclusions before gathering as much information about this spell as possible.”

Twilight nodded. “That's exactly what I was thinking. As a matter of fact, we were just getting ready to look for clues before you arrived. But none of us have found anything yet.”

“Actually, that's not quite true,” said Rarity.

Six pairs of surprised eyes instantly latched onto the unicorn.

“There's a large red feather laying on the ground just outside the door,” explained Rarity. “I saw it when I first arrived here this morning.” She raised a hoof and gestured to the doorway.

Dash could clearly see it from where she was standing. She couldn't believe she hadn't seen it when she'd first entered the cottage; the red feather stuck out from the surrounding green grass like a storm cloud in a clear sky. Large hardly did the feather justice; it was huge, longer than two of Dash's own feathers placed end-to-end. It reminded her of the plumage that comprised Celestia's wings, but it was too big even for that, and obviously the wrong color, unless Celestia had recently taken a bath in a bucket of red paint...

“Ah...I see,” murmured Celestia.

All eyes now jumped to the princess. She was staring at the feather as well, and her expression had transitioned to one that was quite a bit...darker.

“I believe I know who dropped that feather.” she said. “And as you can clearly see, it was indeed not a unicorn.”

“Obviously,” said Spike. “So what, is it a griffon, or some kind of oversized phoenix, or –“

“No. It is an alicorn, like myself.”

“What?!” cried Dash, Pinkie, and Rarity simultaneously.

“Princess, there are...other alicorns?” queried Applejack.

“There are a few in Canterlot,” Twilight interjected. “My babysitter was an alicorn, actually. But she wasn't a super-powered spellcaster or anything, she wasn't even that much stronger than me. I thought Celestia and Luna were the only ones who were really, really powerful.”

Celestia shook her head gravely. “I'm afraid that is not the case. I have one particular alicorn in mind, the only creature I know of whose wings match that feather, and if she is indeed the one who cast this spell on Fluttershy, then we have some serious trouble on our hooves.”

“T-t-trouble?” stammered Pinkie, her eyes wide open.

For a brief moment, Celestia looked aside and closed her eyes, as though carefully pondering her next action. “I will tell all of you the entire truth,” she said eventually. “However, I would like you to keep it amongst yourselves; I see no purpose in sending all of Ponyville into a wild panic over my story. Will you promise me this?”

“Yes,” said Rainbow Dash and Spike. The rest simply nodded.

“Very well.” Celestia walked to the front of the room, where every pony in the room could clearly see her and she could see all of them, and began to speak.

“I saw this alicorn about seventy five years ago, for the first and last time. I do not know where she came from, or where she went afterward. She simply walked into Canterlot one evening, just after I had put the sun to sleep, and entered my personal quarters. I asked her what she wanted. She told me she wanted to take my life, and attacked me on the spot.”

Dash's jaw dropped as an assortment of gasps broke out across the room.

“She fought with an array of extraordinarily powerful spells, of a caliber that even I was not familiar with. Between myself and the royal guard, we were barely able to fend her off. But just barely. We attempted to subdue her, but she managed to escape back into the mountains, promising she would return one day. But she never did. To this day, I do not know who she was or what her true intentions were. All she told me was her name.”

“...Which is?” asked Dash in little more than a whisper.

“Aurora,” replied Celestia.

Power. It was the first word that entered Dash's head upon hearing the name, and it was backed by a sinister intonation that grew stronger and stronger as she spoke it in her mind again and again.

“But now, it appears that Aurora has indeed returned,” continued Celestia. “And that is very worrisome. For one, it means that the spell she has cast on Fluttershy is sure to be of the utmost potency. I do not know how to break it, and I doubt there is a pony in all of Equestria who does. But that in itself is less frightening than the fact that there is an extremely powerful and extremely evil alicorn on the loose, and she is clearly not above attacking the innocent. Who knows where she might strike next?”

Dash glanced at Fluttershy, trapped in a crimson, gem-like cage that had been conjured by an alicorn with almost enough power to kill Celestia, and a chill ran down her spine.

“In the end, I just want to urge all of you to be careful. Try to stay near each other, don't go out at night if you can help it, and if you see any sign of Aurora, let me know right away. I promise that I will do everything in my power to sort this out as quickly as possible. And unfortunately, that's the only thing I can promise you for now...”

“Princess Celestia, I have a request,” said Twilight.

Celestia glanced down in surprise at the purple unicorn. She had remained completely silent during the princess's story, as she often did during the dissemination of important knowledge, and her expression portrayed both nervousness and grim determination. “Yes, Twilight?” asked the princess.

“I would like...” Twilight visibly swallowed. “I would like to request unrestricted access to the private section of the Canterlot archives.”

Rainbow Dash involuntarily drew a sharp breath. She was no expert on Canterlot's libraries, but she understood enough to know that Twilight had just asked for something huge. The private Canterlot archives were located in the personal quarters of Celestia herself, and were probably the most carefully guarded area in all of Equestria. Nobody was allowed inside. Nopony really knew what was in there; it could be ancient, crumbling books, or scrolls depicting incredibly powerful magic, or maybe just enormous piles of money...

Celestia stared in silence at the purple unicorn, her mouth slightly agape.

“I mean, I'd only use it if I really needed to,” said Twilight hastily. “But if I'm going to break this spell on Fluttershy, then I'm going to have to reverse engineer it first, and I'm not sure if there's enough information in my library to do that for such a powerful spell, so I'd like to have as many resources available to me as possible.”

The princess kept her gaze fixed on Twilight, her visage now etched with an air of sadness.

“I understand completely if there's material in there you don't want me to see,” continued Twilight. “So I'd be willing to have one of the royal guard go in to search the books for me. But if you don't want anypony to see that material, the guard and I could work under a system where neither of us can get the full amount of information; for example, I could only read the first half of book titles and he could read the second half, and I'd only look into books that contained a pre-specified set of keywords approved by you. Or you could just cast a Confounding Spell on me, and I wouldn't be able to read any books you wanted to keep secret.”

“Twilight...” muttered Celestia.

“And then there's the problem of transportation between this cottage and Canterlot. I could go back and forth on the train, but that would be really, really slow, so it would be nice to have a personal chariot for the next couple days, if you can spare one. Alternatively, you could teach me about that long-range teleportation you just used, and that would have the added benefit of me being able to –“

“TWILIGHT. I do not want you to attempt to break this spell.”

The unicorn's mouth froze in mid-sentence.

Celestia sighed heavily. “Please try to understand. Aurora's magic is...it's some of the most powerful magic I've ever seen. It would take someone with a lifetime of experience to even attempt to decipher its secrets. As smart as you are, I do not think that you are ready for this.”

Twilight seemed to be physically incapable of responding to this. She looked as though she'd just been told that she wasn't really a unicorn, and her parents had affixed a painted railroad spike to her forehead when she was a foal.

“But, Princess,” said Dash, “If Twilight isn't allowed to try to rescue Fluttershy, then who –“

“Rest assured that destroying this barrier is my highest priority,” interrupted Celestia. “And I have in mind a number of extraordinarily intelligent unicorns to whom I intend to relegate this task. Each one has proven their intellectual mettle on many occasions, and I am told that they specialize in solving difficult problems such as this. They are unicorn scientists.”

Dash couldn't help but notice Twilight's ears perk up considerably upon hearing this. Scientists? Twilight talked about such ponies as though they were some kind of demigods. Dash had often been the unwilling subject of the unicorn's lectures on how science could fix every problem that Equestria had ever faced, and how much better the world would be if everypony was a scientist, and how she owned a book about it that Dash really should read, a book that didn't require any magical knowledge to understand because it was just a textbook for earth ponies...

“And now, I must be off,” said Celestia. She glanced over her shoulder through the open doorway, to the sun that had long since reached its peak and had begun its slow descent into afternoon. “The return of Aurora has posed a major predicament to all of Equestria, and there is much I must attend to in Canterlot. But I shall return as soon as I am able, and when I do, I will bring the scientists with me, and the quest to rescue Fluttershy will begin. Until then, goodbye.”

The alicorn trotted through the door, took several quick paces down the path, and vanished in a brilliant flash of white light.

Five ponies and one baby dragon remained still, staring at the spot where the princess had disappeared.

One pony stood far stiller than the rest, her eyes squeezed shut as she braced herself for a blow that would never arrive, encased in a crimson prism of magic that could not be broken.

Comments

[Dream Catcher]

Hey, you certainly haven't updated in a long while. I'm glad to see you're still alive - the story too. Anyway, great chapters: I can't wait to see the look on 'Tia's face when Twi' breaks the arcane prism.

[quick_study]

555996

I can't wait to see the look on Celestia's face when she learns Twilight broke into the Private Section of the Canterlot Archives.

[BonesTheHeretic]

Yessssssssss!
I particularly find it interesting to read about Dash's perspective on Twilight, and I love the way that you involve everypony in this story, rather than just Twilight.

[NoPoemGuy]

556953
Yep. You haven't read chapter 4 yet, though.

[ScootaLewis]

Looking interesting. My first thought was that Twi is gonna use the comet's power to try and free Shy.

[nemryn]

Hmm. On one hoof, this is a great story, and I'm always happy to see ponies utilizing the power of SCIENCE! On another hoof, though, I think it's pretty clear by now that Canon Twilight isn't actually much of a scientist; she's more of a science fangirl. She just doesn't have the right temperament for it; she's far too quick to dismiss things as impossible.

[NoPoemGuy]

573602
Yeah, I'd agree with that. I'm trying to do a slight re-characterization of Twilight to put her more in a true science-y mindset, which was the point of the first chapter. I guess that technically qualifies this as 'alternate universe', but it's so slight that I don't think that merits tagging it as such.

[source1]

On Hiatus?

[Mossflower]

awesome story
i do hope that the hiatus doesn't last that long though

seems to me that celestia is afraid that twilight might grow out of her control, and become a danger, if she gets to read that part of the spell archives. and if not thinking that directly, i recon that she would still have those kinds of thoughts in the back of her head.

also: i imagine that twilight must be quite crushed right now; since celestia's words along with the fifth axiom could quickly translate into something like: "im worthless" in the mind of twilight, which in itself can lead to quite a lot of other thoughts, notable amongst those would be "i need more power", and quick power usually spells trouble...

[Mossflower]

so...almost 14 weeks since you showed signs of being alive (unless you count the "last seen online" thingie)...i absolutely hate to ask this, but; how's the next chapter coming along?

[Lelouch Vi Britania]

im with moss on this, an ETA would be nice, or at least something other than a flatline on your activity monitor

[NoPoemGuy]

1451279
It's really just a motivation problem. And it's not like I'm depressed or anything like that - there's just other things I feel more like doing than writing. School is one of them (and a big one at that), but also just other hobbies. I'm the kind of guy who picks up an activity and gets so obsessed that I do nothing but that for a while, at the exclusion of other things...namely, this fic.

The story is by no means cancelled; I have essentially the entire thing planned out to a T, and indeed I have several thousand words of the next chapter already written. But I can't really give an ETA on when I'll start writing again. I can say that I'll probably have several chapters enqueued before I start publishing, to a keep a stream of content going for at least a while.

In any case, it's actually kind of flattering to see people still care about this even after this long an absence. That will definitely serve as motivation to get me writing again!

[Lelouch Vi Britania]

1452003
Ah, real life, and i do understand the whole obsession thing, cause I have the same problem. It's just I've seen so many great stories here die because the author lost interest, I was just hoping this wasn't one of them.

[Mossflower]

it was three weeks ago but regardless; good to hear you're still breathing and is still planning on finishing this.