"Well..." Fluttershy nervously glided over the skeletal remains with a somber expression. "...I can tell you this much." She looked at Rainbow and the others. "They're very much real."
"Hmmmmm..." Rainbow Dash sat back, rubbing her chin.
Ariel cocked her head. "What are they saying, Rainbow?"
"Fluttershy confirms that they're the real deal," Rainbow said.
Logan droned. "You honestly think this shit would have been faked?"
Kepler chided. "Brrotherr..."
"It looks as though they were all brought here," Flynn said. "Like a burial pile." He looked at the others. "In Stone Prefecture. At the lair of the dredge pirates. They did that after murdering the local villagers."
"No..." Seraphimus shook her head. She commented from where she stood by the entrance to the building. "...I believe this was exactly where they died."
"How do you figure?" Ariel asked.
Seraphimus pointed. "You found the debris covering them here, yes?"
Wildcard nodded.
"Look at the direction everything has fallen in." Seraphimus' talon outlined the scene from afar. "Away from the opening. Like a blast wave."
Logan's brow furrowed. "You think something from directly outside killed them all?"
"Isn't it rather obvious by the evidence gathered? Even their bodies are predominantly strewned inward from the direction of the entrance."
Wildcard gestured at Rainbow Dash: "She has a point."
Rainbow looked aside at Rarity. "Can you sense anything to suggest that something blasted its way inside?"
"If you're asking if I detect any burn marks, the answer is no," Rarity said. "This place is simply too old for me to tell sheer aging from actual thermal damage. However..." She pointed at the entrance. "...several strips of metal reinforcing is bent inward from the outside. That seems to support the idea of a deadly force invading the room."
"I can't help but notice that none of the ponies' bones are broken," Twilight Sparkle said. "I don't think these poor souls were rounded up and executed by an identifiable foe. This had to have been some sort of cataclysmic event that extinguished their lives."
"Like an explosion?" Pinkie Pie squeaked.
"Reckon we're all bettin' on the Sunderin', Pinkie," Applejack said.
"Ohhhhhhhhh..." Pinkie's brow furrowed. "...so a biggggggg explosion."
Applejack sighed. "Sure, why not."
"Those poor ponies," Fluttershy murmured. Her ghostly eyes glistened in the light from Rainbow's pendant. "It must have been a horrible, agonizing way to lose one's life." She sniffled slightly. "See the small ones...?"
"Children," Twilight said, nodding.
"Entire families must have come here, huddling in a desperate attempt to survive." Fluttershy squeaked. "They all perished together."
Around this time, Logan looked over at Seraphimus. "You're suddenly rather quiet," he whispered.
"I've said my part," the griffin quietly droned, eyes on Rainbow Dash. "For the moment."
"Uh huh..." Logan nodded. "...or maybe you've realized—like we all have—how we're not supposed to interrupt Rainbow Dash when she's 'listening' to her friends."
Seraphimus squinted at Logan. "I beg your pardon?"
He smirked to himself. "Almost as if you finally believe they're hovering all around her, unheard and unseen."
Seraphimus' beak clenched. She folded her arms in a huff, remaining silent.
"Still..." Twilight Sparkle went on, shaking her head. "These ponies are like nothing I've ever seen before."
"Do tell..." Rarity cooed.
"Just... the shape of their skeletons..." Twilight pointed. "Look at their skulls!"
Fluttershy floated in. "Their craniums aren't exactly that strange, Twilight," she commented. "Alicorns and Eucorns have narrow snouts. Also—there are the indigenous horses of Saddle Arabia."
"You're not wrong, but these skulls appear to be even narrower."
Fluttershy nodded. "You're not wrong..."
"And the curvature of their spine and their elongated tails..." Twilight clenched her teeth. "Almost feline, in a way..."
"How long are those wingspans?" Rarity asked.
Applejack fidgeted. "Ain't this gettin' a bit creepy? I mean... this is practically a grave here."
"It's a treasure trove, AJ!" Pinkie Pie remarked. "At least where Dashie's journey is concerned!"
"Rainbow...?" Applejack looked at their anchor. "...how do ya figure we should proceed, sugarcube?"
Rainbow Dash leaned back, rubbing her chin in thought. This time, the Herald were gazing at her with patient curiosity. At last, she muttered: "We gotta get a closer look." She glanced aside. "Flynn?"
"Right." The unicorn trotted forward. His horn glowed, adding to Rainbow's harmonic luminescence.
Slowly, a particularly large skeleton rose from the middle of the pile. In Flynn's delicate control, it "stood up" in mid air, stretching out to the extent of its joints.
"Guhhhhh..." Ariel shivered, clinging to Wildcard as she watched. "Goddess that's unnerving."
"I'm amazed that the bones are all clinging together still," Logan said.
"They're not," Seraphimus said coldly. "The fossil is so old that any remaining tendons or cartilage are long gone. Your unicorn friend is simply keeping it all together with remarkable precision."
"Wow..." Flynn sweated, concentrating. "...the compliments that I live for..."
"Easy, brrotherr..." Kepler stepped closer to the floating skeleton. He scratched his chairy chin and studied the specimen through his spectacles. "Hmmmm... extra ribs..."
"More than a pegasus?" Ariel remarked.
"Indeed." Kepler nodded. "Probably to house larger lungs... maybe a double-heart..."
"Double-heart?" Rainbow Dash blinked. "What the hay for?"
"Greater pulmonary strength... perhaps for added endurance." Kepler gestured to Flynn. "If you could, frriend, extend the wings to their full span."
"Finally!" Rarity remarked.
"Doing it..." Flynn sweated as he stretched the wing joints out.
To everypony's surprise, the wings almost touched the edges of the room.
"Holy crap..." Logan blinked. "...these suckers could glide."
"They could do farr morre than that!" Kepler said. "This confirrms my suspicion!" He pointed at where the wings connected to the body. "The upper spine must have been rreinforrced with five times the muscle strrength than moderrn pegasi! The extrra lung capacity and biggerr hearrt would have been absolutely rrequirred to maintain motorr functions."
"Soooooooooo..." Rainbow Dash leaned in.
"Ach..." Kepler adjusted his spectacles. "These pegasi could actually fly. They did not rrely on pony magic... not like the winged equines do today."
"Wow..." Twilight Sparkle exhaled.
"I guess these guys wouldn't have had that bad of a time navigating the Grand Choke," Rainbow Dash said. "Or other environments bereft of magic."
"Prrecisely," Kepler said with a nod.
"With wings that big..." Ariel winced. "...it must have been a painful existence."
"Not quite." Kepler shuffled closer. "Flynn, if you would bend the left wing inward?"
"Uhhhhh..." Flynn's mechanical eye rotated as he contemplated that.
"Just go about it geometrrically..."
Flynn shrugged. The group watched as he telekinetically folded the left wing. A glint of light caught a stubby bone sticking out from the rest of the limb, situated along the upper joint of the wing.
"Therre...!" Kepler pointed. "A vestigual digit!"
"Oh! Cool!" Ariel nodded. "Like extra hooves!"
"I suspect that—when grrounded—the Angels used these to move arround and rrest theirr bodies, all the while supporrting the weight of theirr folded limbs." He gestured at the room around them. "Judging frrom theirr civilized surrroundings, I imagine they did not have much need forr flying. They likely spent the bulk of theirr days 'trrotting' on all six limbs."
"Incredible..." Twilight grinned. "...if only we had a haunted sketchbook! I would love to record all this data!"
"No doubt these were beautiful creatures while they were still alive," Fluttershy said. "It's just... so sad..."
"Hey Keps..." Ariel trotted closer to the wyvern and unicorn. "What about their tails?"
"Ach... I couldn't help but starre at them."
"Let's stare a bit closer, huh?" Rainbow looked at Flynn. "Try stretching it out."
Flynn did so, licking his lips as he focused on the precise movement.
Everypony's eyes shifted as the tail stretched and stretched and stretched and—
Logan whistled. "Damn, that's creepy."
"I would arrgue otherrwise, frriend," Kepler remarked. His scorpion stinger coiled and uncoiled. "I believe that they werre rratherr useful."
Wildcard gestured something.
Rainbow blinked. "Uhhhh... Jordan? I don't recognize that word."
"'Looks prehensile'," Ariel interpreted.
"So... these guys had yet another limb?" Rainbow stammered.
Flynn magically twisted and rotated the tail-in-question around. "Looks pretty natural to me," he said. "Provided the muscles and tendons all played along, this thing could have rotated and twisted in many directions."
"What's that?" Seraphimus stated.
Logan glanced over. "What's what?"
Seraphimus pointed at the very end of the tail. "That. The growth situated at the rear. It doesn't look like normal bone."
Kepler and Rainbow Dash simultaneously craned their necks.
Flynn attempted to stretch the tip of the tail out. Suddenly—and to everypony's surprise—the magical field of telekinesis brightened at the rearmost bone. For a few moments it appeared as theough the tail-tip itself was glowing. Upon further inspection, Rainbow and her friends understood why.
"It's... alicornia..." Fluttershy remarked.
Applejack did a double-take. "Beg yer pardon?"
"It's the same substance contained in unicorn horns," Twilight Sparkle clarified.
"Good heavens!" Rarity remarked.
"Wait a second..." Rainbow Dash grimaced. "...you mean to say that the ancient pegasi had unicorn horns in their tails?"
"Holy crud!" Pinkie Pie grasped her muzzle. "They mastered fart magic!"
Twilight Sparkle face-hoofed.
"That..." Kepler blinked. "...is something I did not expect."
"Seems as though the Angels were no less magical than modern day ponies after all," Twilight remarked. "In fact... they were clearly more magical."
"So... let's think about this for a minute..." Rainbow Dash leaned back, staring at the illuminated bone structure. "These dudes had wings... and they had the ability to harness magic. Soooooo..." She blinked at the others. "...what made them any different from alicorns?"
The ghostly mares exchanged curious faces.
"I would venture to guess that they weren't nearly as powerful," Twilight Sparkle said. "If nothing else, it would possibly explain why alicorns took on the form that they did when they met the first sapient races of this plane."
"Hmmmm..." Rainbow looked at Kepler. "Hey. Keps. Are there any advantages of having a unicorn horn in your forehead over having one on your butt?"
Flynn's good eye twitched. "You're asking him?"
"Therre's a rratherr simple hypothesis, rreally..." Kepler gestured. "With the naturre of all living and thinking things..." He gestured to his own forehead. "The forrwarrd chakrras arre farr betterr suited forr perrceiving and alterring the perrceivable worrld thrrough dirrect thought. Perrhaps—at one time—therre was an evolutionarry advantage forr the angels possessing alicorrnia at the tips of theirr prrehensile tails..."
"It's like they had extra-long limbs that reached telekinetically past their physical limits," Ariel said.
"Indeed." Kepler nodded. "But alicorrns like the Mountain Matrron? Theirr design is farr morre suited to theirr almost limitless harrmonic prrowess. All that alicorrns can manipulate and do is almost dirrectly in sync with theirr potential thought prrocesses. That—of courrse—isn't the only rreason forr theirr superriorr magical abilities, but—ach—this is as farr as it gets frrom a biology lecturre hall..."
Rainbow looked at Twilight. "Remember what I once learned, Twilight? That the reason the major races of ponies in Equestria exist is that—long ago—alicorns like Luna and Celestia helped split the genetic lineage of ponies into the three main sects?"
Twilight nodded. "How could I not?"
"Well... here we have it..." Rainbow gestured at the floating skeleton. "In the Angels—there're the blueprints for unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies. All in one ancient gift bag."
"It's... all starting to make sense..." Twilight shuddered. "The alicorns came from the Harmonic Plains and found the Angels nearly-dead on a derelict, Sundered plane. They manifested themselves in an approximate form, then gifted the Angels harmony, light, and sustenance." She pointed with a ghostly hoof. "Then—to assure genetic diversity and greater survivability—they promoted the tripartite mutation into earth, unicorns, and pegasi."
"Also horses and zebras and mules and donkeys and sirens and sarosians..." Pinkie Pie rolled. "But hey!" She grinned. "Who's counting?!"
"But here we have the original," Fluttershy remarked. "The very first pony." She smiled slightly. "Who would ever have thought that we'd see it for what it originally was?"
"I have seen this before," Rainbow Dash murmured.
Rarity looked over. "You have?"
Rainbow nodded somberly, her eyes reflecting the skeleton. "Ilrifa," she said.
Hurray for Ass Alicorns!
Damn, these pegasi must have been huge
I don't remember Ilrifa. What happened there?
AN
THRO
PO
LO
GY
!
Goddamnit, Pinkie.
Angels are Time Lords confirmed
Hmm...cool.
Welp, chalk up another thing I'd like to see drawn.
I wonder if there's a distant possibility of seeing an Angel in flesh and blood. Given a possible connection to display screens, a cable network, and possibly a data system behind it, it certainly seems possible. But it would require the group to reactivate power to the area. And there's still a lot of area...
A reference to 8 books or so ago.
.............I am so awe struck right now.
Oh wait. Ilrifa, that's the being that talks to rainbow at the edge of the world. So the entity is an Angel.
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More like a book ago
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Ilrifa was the ancient being Dash saw in her vision at the last seed, the one that tried to purge her mind of all her 'distractions' and send her flying over the edge alone.
It gave it's name as Ilrifa, which, far as was translated at the time, means Ugly Rip.
Anyway...
Ni liivrah hin moro
It seems as though the Sundering left these poor bastards on the edge of extinction.
I don't think it's as simple as a mutation, otherwise the Angels would still be around in some manner.
I'd imagine it was more like the survivors were purged of their more damaged extremities, were transformed into the progenitors of the three races of ponies.
Actually, I believe it was said long ago that portions of the full ring all held separate species, and the current biodiversity of the shard that is Equestria, is because there were some 'visitors' that ended up trapped after the sundering.
-Through the path long forgotten, into the darkness long begotten. Ofolrodi.
So, hypothetically speaking, if someone were to sequence with the angels, would the cap go on their head or their ass?
We got Magic Dance, but Pinkie blew it?
Maybe the tail and alicorna was to plug into the mana converters, like trolly Angels?
Sounds like the city was hit with a Nuke equivalent, at least death that way would be quick and mostly painless. That almost everything is intact says something else caused the death, but I am at a loss for what exactly did so.
As for their bodies, looks like the Angels that preceded things were far more capable in various ways then those that came after. They are also so different from the modern equines that I would actually hesitate to call them ponies, what to call them instead escapes me though. That there are now three main races suggests that either they split themselves into said races for some reason, or one/more the visiting Alicorns did the splitting, and neglected to inform the other Alicorns that they met the ones who made the structure. I am leaning towards the former, as the latter implies someone was lying at some point, and I can't really see any of the uncorrupted Alicorns doing that. Also brings to mind the question of why whomever did said racial splitting chose Rainbow's lineage as the one to carry the spark necessary to restart the ringworld? I doubt that it was luck of the draw, not for something as important as this.
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It was in Utaan, around when the latest as of this moment pictograph was posted. Rainbow went inside the structure and met Ilrifa the name of the thing she met, who was unable to provide much information. I suspect that this is because Ilrifa is the Artificial Intelligence (or an equivalent thereof) of Urohringr, and had her memory wiped for some reason or another. It would fit that such a thing as a ringworld would have an interface of sorts, so that the Angels could have the immense amount of information turned into a comprehensible format so they could make informed decisions.
This is really fascinating learning quite a bit just for this little examination. Someone with some artistic talent should draw one of them.
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Or perhaps something made in the image of one. My bet is on some form of super AI. The heart of Urohringr if you would.
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Assicorns!
I was thinking that those strange unicorns from the beginning might have been some mutated descendents of the angels until I heard they used magic with their ass.
And with this anthropological aside, the history of life on the plane becomes clearer. Meanwhile, Seraphimus continues to become ensnared in the discoveries made.
Don't miss our next episode "Of Angels and Alicorns" or "We've Got Magic Out the Ass!"
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Mey Qolaas. Rahu kos se toor, vojune. Wuth vol saraan.
The Herald continually refers to the ancient species as "Angels", but I've a suspicions that "angel" might be a least fit of a word. Something's eluding my grasp to explain what, but there's some part of the explanations this chapter that's bothering me. I'm not sure what it is yet. I need to sleep on it.
Yummy.
So the “Angels” had a more complete organism, but yet they couldn’t survive? Why’s that?
Hm, now I get it. So the Alicorns made some sort of regression to the Angels, wich turned out to be the pegasi, unicorns and earth ponies in the actual present. Interesting, instead of evolutioning, they had quite the opposite. Blah blah blah
Also:
Yep. They turned from a “all in one” creature to simpler, specific ones, so then it could be a bigger number of species that could prevail. But come to think of it, that’s like, speciation mixed with a bit of regression.
...
Fuck it, it’s science. Everything’s science. And it’s 1:00 am here, goddammit. Brain, I want to sleep. Let me sleep. Will think of that later.
Nicely alien while still tying into equine life as we know it. Cool beans. Double hearts, so possibly related to Gallifreyans. Weird that an explosion killed them, but the bones are intact. Or that so many of the buildings still are. Must've been something else to it, I think.
Another question raised is that if alicorns took their present form to better integrate with the Angels, then what did alicorns originally look like?
Seraphimus Solo Quest Chapter Counter : 10 ( yes I'm going to keep doing this until she either acknowledges she's staying with the group, or follows through with her plan)
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Or butticorns!
This series has so many scenes that deserve fanart. This is one of them.
Uhm, perhaps I have forgotten something, but what exactly are Eucorns?
with this new information, i find myself suspicious. there are no broken bones. there appear to be no objects that were forced inside to cause the frame bending at such an angle. and why only the one building? granted, they've barely scratched the surface of this gi-huge-normous city. but i cant help but wonder. . .
methinks the ancient Alicorns weren't as innocent as their descendants recall them to be. it doesn't take a genius to know what nerve to pinch with magic to kill if you already have a similar body structure.
blast the area with a powerful sonic wave, deforming the metals, and dazing all ponies inside, then executing them with simple nerve pinches or brain scrambling, or even heart crushing. all with magic. all lethal. all leaving no evidence tens of thousands of years later. if not less, because of the possibility of the bones decaying to dust.
but i will finish this by saying that 1. i am most likely wrong. and 2. ive been wrong many times before.
we'll just have to see, now wont we?
I believe that it is possible for Ilrifa to be an AI, but I dont think it was the one that controlled all of the world machine. Sinch it takes the shape of a an Angel, I think it might be the AI that takes care of the Angels section of the world machine. That's why it's guiding rainbow. But it seems that even magical AI can suffer from degradation, as she seems to have forgotten her purpose.
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I have no idea. Maybe it's a typo.
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Search engines don't help either. My results for "Eucorn" and "Eucorns" included a variety of pictures of nuts, agriculture and body lotions.
Interest.
Not proto-pegasi, then. Proto-ponies. The Archaeopteryx of pastel horses.
Damnit, I knew it! Throughout this entire chapter I was trying to recall what poorly-lit square pony was called like, exactly.
8564356 Given how 'eu' is Ancient Greek for 'good', I'll assume they're particularly likable corn on the cob.
8564338 I might misremember this, but didn't Ilrifa refer to itself as 'we'? Also recall that the Ring has long since started drinking souls, most likely to sustain itself. I've theorized before that Ilrifa might be the sum of the souls trapped in the Ring, calling out for freedom - but perhaps it is just the avatar of its very first prisoners...
So we finally meet the ancients, and dang, they're creepy
8564209 a sonic blast that powerful would be more than lethal. These metals are of an unknown composition, but clearly incredibly strong.
I haven't heard that name in a long time.
Dang. More lore here than we've had since we learned the title of the next two books!
who?
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I think we all are.
Someone please draw this:
Good grief. I wonder if at some point, somebody will 'de-extinct' the Ancient Pegasi, or genetically re-engineer them. I mean, once Urohringr is reunited, the pressures that led to the alicorns splitting the genome in the first place will be removed. And I don't mean they should come back as a replacement for all the modern races of pony, but as another species to flourish in the new biome.
Now that I think about it, I wonder what the other creatures ancestors looked like. We've seen that subspecies can evolve, such as snow bloods. Manticores are related to wyverns, was their commonnsncestor sapient. What's did ursas come from. Im assuming that after a unknown time of darkness and around 10,000 years of alicorns there must of been some evolution.
six limbs? So ancient pegasi were bugs?
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That's the weirdest butt plug ever imagined
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The call went out for art. I'm working on it. Sketches complete, now scanned to computer. Still need to clean up the remains of the handwritten notes, and replace them with typed ones. But fear not, they will arrive soon. Background on my knowledge base that I used for design choices, etc will come when I post the images.
On another note, had a 'Fridge Logic' moment last night: Why didn't the statues of the ancient pegasi ON STRATOPOLIS tip Rainbow off as to the Ancients' general appearance?
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Oooh, I'm thrilled!
Oh wow! That's some cool mental imagery. Can somepony please draw this skeleton for us all?
Cat Pegasi??????? :D
Damn...
Tailhorns!
Friggin' A, Pinkie. XD
... They have tail horns?
Poor baldy... XD
Eyy.
I bet they loved to cuddle.
Six-legged horses! They really are insects!
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Ploticorns
Also... BOOK TEN CONFIRMED?
(Ever since Utaan, I've been expecting Ofolrodi's chapter count to be somewhere between 300 and wherever. But maybe we're already in the last fifth?)
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"Next two books" being Ofolrodi and Ilrifa? Or did IC let slip an E-word somewhere already?
The first pony, who'd've thunk
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Eucorns are a sub-race of unicorns in SS&E's vision of Equestria, and are present in all the rest of his other writings and alt accounts.
The most recent useful source is the hiatus'd daily story "Shellstrings" which highlights Fluer De Lis as a Eucorn backer of the S.M.I.L.E. agency with a breif discussion between characters. Other details may be gleaned through the other writings of SS&E as he tends to drop tidbits here and there in a Kudzuhaiku fashion.
Eucorns are pony-Alicorn descendants who are born by chance as genetic throwbacks to their Alicorn roots, expressing recessive Alicorn phenotypes, similar to how rarely a human may be born as a genetic throwback to a Neanderthal ancestor, with a similar "uncanny valley" visual effect on their fellow ponies.
Eucorns primarily are identified by their slender yet elongated legs, horn, tail, snout, entire skeleral structure, etc...
Other traits include longevity (or shortened life span), magical strength (or magical weakness), altered brain chemistry (or altered brain chemistry), low fertility (or eucorn only descendants), Harmonic sensitivity (or expanded magic sense), and a distinctly similar yet testably different set of primal-response instincts than those found found in common unicorns or ponies in general.
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Stratopolis depictions were done via tile mosaics and stained glass window mosaics, every mention of carvings mentioned in Stratopolis were portrayed with the same simplified representation mentioned in the dark-side crashed setinal: four legs, faceless pony head, large wings covering the body, and always lots of them blending together into a chain of artistic implied-motion.
We need some fanart of these ancient pegasi pronto. Artists, get to it please.
This actually makes a type of sense. Without being op alicorns, these ponies seem downright encumbered. It's actually believable that a split was necessary.