"Marchelle en Memoria" and little of what I've been doing

I am not dead. Dead isn’t where I want to be. I want to be in a creative place with this story completed at somepoint. If you have doubts if I’ll ever complete this story, just remember this. I need to finish this story. For my own personal reasons, I need to complete this and see it through. Will it be the best work ever produced in the entirety of humanity? No, it won’t. I’ll admit to that now. But it’s a place where I want to start. I want to be able to claim I wrote a novel-length story. How many fanfictions do you see on this site that are incomplete? More than those that are completed. This one may not be perfect, but it’s mine, and once it’s completed, it’ll be my biggest achievement yet.
Now, I haven’t updated this story for a few reasons. This sums them up.

That was life. I’m the little piece of poo.
A more in-depth explanation is I tried a few smaller writing projects, I got a summer internship, there was a lot of paperwork I had to fill out for college, I moved into a new place, I tried writing a decent sized project I’m calling The Afterlife of Joyous Blossom, completion of which is to be determined (Who can tell me what that is a sequel of that I somewhat regret, but not really?), and life in general.
On to discussing this chapter. Honestly, I had the majority of this written six months ago. Never got around to editing it. It was originally going to be two, then one, then two again then three, now one. Somewhere in the middle, I was going to go a different route with the story, introducing a character called Mop Bucket. Yeah, I liked Bucket. He was an old guy/pony that used to be a janitor at the Crystal Empire palace. He had to be scrapped after I rewrote half this chapter. This chapter has been in a constant state of flux for a while so now I’m proud to say it’s out, published, and alive.
Let’s talk about the first/last part of the chapter, Daring Do and Phoebe’s part. To quote that Robot Chicken sketch, “What a twist!” Phoebe is a pony, and I suggested there’s more out there. I hope it’s not too much out of left field. Our main three characters came out of a portal, so who’s to say other ponies didn’t come before them. Phoebe is going to serve as a sort of guide with human magic, much to Daring Do’s dismay. Phoebe has a light amount of magical experience in the years before the story, so she can give a general idea of the strengths and limits of human magic. As for the invasion thing at the end, that needs a chapter on its own.
Now we have the other part of the chapter, Lyra and Diamond Tiara. Here’s the backstory, I wrote it not long after my mom’s death. Yep, my mom died. No need for a pity party for me please. I’m still soldiering on through life and am personally fine. The conversation that went down between these two reflect some of my own feelings about my mom, as referenced by the chapter name. She picked up on the show at the beginning of season 4, and by that time I was long out of the proverbial Brony closet. There are a few events in there tht parallel what happened in real life, replace Daring Do con with Bronycon for example. I trimmed a bit of fluff I thought was unimportant from the chapter, but I left my feelings about that… event in there.
I also liked how Lyra’s apology turned out. She’s not fully redeemed, but it show’s she’s not a bad pony, just makes frequent mistakes.
Anyways, sorry for the delay. Life happens. To make up for it, have the chapter that could have happened, but was scrapped as I wasn’t happy with it. Keep in mind, this is unedited, it has a few things in here I don’t like, and should not be taken as part of the story. It takes place right after Phoebe pushes Daring do into the portal.

Daring Do crashed down onto a tile floor. Stars flew through her vision as she tumbled across the ground. When she skidded to a halt, she found the world spinning around her. Nothing felt broken, and the only pain she could feel was a spot that would no doubt develop into a bruise. She had to admit, that human packed more of a punch than she looked capable of.
Phoebe ran up next to the pegasus and leaned down next to her. “Sorry, that was more brutal than I intended it to be.” She wrapped an arm around Daring Do’s torso, pulling up to lift the pegasus off the ground. The world stopped spinning in the pegasus’s eyes, and she gained a foothold on the floor. Phoebe let go of her, and Daring Do felt her legs supporting her weight. “I thought you needed a little nudge getting through.”
Daring Do glared at the human, brushing off some dust from her own shoulder. “You call that tackle of yours a little nudge? Why the heck did you think it was necessary to do that? I could’ve cracked my skull on the floor with that kind of move!”
Phoebe shrugged. “The portal was about to close.”
Behind her, a low-pitched slurping filled her ears. Daring Do turned around to see the hole shrink and poof out of existence. The air rushed in to replace the void that the portal left, creating a crack that pierced through the room.
Daring Do went back to glaring at Phoebe. “You could’ve opened it again if it closed.”
“Yeah, I could open it tomorrow, when the portal fully charges again.” Phoebe walked towards where the hole used to be. “Human-pony magic isn’t as reliable as we want it to be. We can’t do everything we want it to do.”
The pegasus grunted as she turned away from the human. They ended up in what she assumed to be another library, though the place looked significantly different from the one they were just in. The room they were in was much bigger, being twice as high and wide as the one they were just in. The walls were made of tan stone, with the bottom half being painted a light blue color. Green lines bordered the tan and blue in complex ornate designs, with dashes of gold streaking through the green in certain places.
Unlike the previous library, there were no shelves lining the walls. Instead, large cubbyholes were carved into the stone. Thick tablets made of rock filled the cubbyholes, storing knowledge through carved-in text on their stone faces. A large archway cut through the wall, leading into a hallway that served as an extension of the library. The hallway also had cubbyholes filled with stone tablets, and continued into a large antechamber beyond that.
From the antechamber, a humanoid figure ran into the hallway, his feet tapping against the tile floor with every step. “Which one of you twats used the conduit?!” the human yelled out, waving a stick above his head. “This better be an emergency! You sucked all the power out of my experiment!”
Phoebe turned towards the human. “Sorry Bucket, but it couldn’t wait. I got a surprise for you that I know you’re going to love.”
The human waddled into the room, waving a crooked cane above his head. The human’s back was bent in a hunch. His hair was completely white, including the bushy beard that grew from his chin. He wore a tight, brown tunic with long sleeves that fell beyond his hands, completely different from the loose sheets the Greeks wore. “I would love it if you didn’t sap the magic willy-nilly, Golden Spark! It’s a pain it the butt to”- The human stopped in his tracks when his cloudy eyes caught sight of the pegasus. “Oh… oh…” he gasped for a moment before his pupils turned into saucers. “Oh bejangles! That’s a pegasus!”
“Yes,” Daring Do nodded, “I am a pegasus. I’ve been told that many times today.”
Phoebe flashed the other human a grin. “I told you you’d love the surprise!”
“Oh, do I!” The human waddled over to Daring Do, using his cane to help push him along. “Bugger my experiment, this takes the cake.” He grabbed her hoof with his free hand, which was a shriveled up bag of bones, and gave it a hard hand-to-hoof shake. “I’m called Mop Bucket, but it’s in your best interest to just call me Bucket.”
Daring Do nodded as Bucket’s bony fingers wrapped around her hoof. “Daring Do. Just call me Daring Do.”
Bucket let go of her hoof, smiling and showing off rows of crooked teeth. “It’s truly a pleasure, Daring Do. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a horse with wings. Heck, the horses here are some of the dumbest creatures I’ve ever met. You have no idea how much of a treat it is to actually talk to a pony that actually looks like she’s from Equestria.” Bucket paused for a moment to cough in his arm. “You are from Equestria, right?”
“Technically, I have my mail sent to an address there,” Daring Do said, “But I travel outside the country so much that I can’t really call it home.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Bucket mumbled, waving off her statement. “You’re a pony, the true kind, and that’s good enough for me. Oh, if only Chickadee was here, she’d be squealing all over the place like a pig. For Faust’s sake, I’m glad she’s not here.”
“Mop Bucket, Chickadee, those sound like pony names,” Daring Do said, her brow furrowing, “I take it you’re from Equestria.”
“You guessed right, Ms. Daring Do.” Bucket pointed his cane at Phoebe, who was leaning against the wall. “The damsel who brought you here isn’t whoever she says she is. Her real name’s Golden Spark, a real piece of work back in Equestria.”
“Don’t even go there, Mop,” Phoebe seethed, drawing out Bucket’s other name. “Technically, we’re not from Equestria. Our home is, or was, more up north.”
Bucket grunted. “Yeah, we got the Crystal Empire as our home. It’s prime real estate, or used to be. For all we know, it’s been burnt to the ground. Do you got any idea about what’s happened to it.”
Daring Do looked at the human with confusion. “I’ve never heard of the Crystal Empire.”
Bucket’s jaw dropped. His cane toppled to the floor. “What do you mean, ‘never heard of the Crystal Empire’? It’s the Gem of the North, literally! King Sombra’s been harassing us for who knows how long! Heck, for the ten years we’ve been gone, the Princesses should’ve cleaned up the place by now. How have you not heard of the Crystal Empire?!”
“Sorry, I never heard of…” Daring Do stammered as her ears picked up on a choice of words. “You said ‘Princesses,’ as in plural of a single princess. And you’ve been gone for ten years.”
Bucket nodded. “Yeah, the Celestial Diarchy of Equestria, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Who else would I be talking about?”
“And you’re sure you’ve been gone for ten years?” the pegasus asked.
“Uh, yes…” Bucket cocked an eyebrow, and Phoebe walked up closer. “Should that matter?”
“Yes, it matters a lot.” Daring Do let out a sigh. “Princess Luna has been gone for a millennium. She barely returned to her position last month. You may have lived ten years here, but Equestria’s gone through at least a thousand while you were gone.”
“Oh, a thousand you say.” Bucket’s eyes sunk to the floor. He bent down and picked up his staff. “If you haven’t heard of the Crystal Empire… A thousand years…” He gaze shot up, looking Daring Do in the eyes, “Then there is much to cover. Come.”
Bucket turned around and walked through the archway, into the library’s hallway. “You must already be familiar with the concept of multiple worlds by now. You’re living among humans now, there’s no denying different worlds don’t exist.”
Daring Do trotted alongside the human. Phoebe trailed close behind them. “Yeah, that’s a given.”
“Believe it or not, we’re not the first to discover this,” Bucket continued with a bemused smile on his face. “There were others before us, and they found a way to traverse these worlds. We don’t know who did it, or why, but we do know how.”
They turned right once the left the hallway, entering a much larger version of the library room they were just in. It spanned the width of the courtyard back in Vathy, and was almost as high as the Vathy palace hallways. Cubbyholes lined the walls, divided up by walkways that created multiple floors for easy access of high cubbyholes.
Bucket’s cane echoed through the grand library chamber with every tap against the floor. “The Crystal Empire, although forgotten in whatever age you come from, was a prosperous kingdom that lived in the snowy north. But it didn’t last forever. At some point in the past, a terrible pony named Sombra took over our land and enslaved us all.”
“So you escaped and came here?” Daring Do asked.
“It’s a little more complex than that. Initially, the bastard sealed off all exits from the city. We had no obvious way of escaping. However, a few ponies that were lucky enough to work in the palace found a way out, a room full of magical mirrors.” Bucket stopped in his tracks, taking a moment to cough into his arm before moving on. “These mirrors were magical portals, capable of transporting anypony to another world. We have no idea who or what made these mirrors, or where the heck they went. They didn’t take us to Equestria, but it was better than what we were living in.
“A group of about twenty ponies entered the first portal that opened for us. We were desperate to get out, even to the point that we didn’t care that our bodies changed into humans when we left.” He stopped again and faced Daring Do. They were standing outside another archway that led to another library subsection. “Yes, we were ponies once. Now we’re human because of those mirrors. That should answer the question of why we know about Equestria.”
Daring Do nodded. “Can you travel back then?”
Bucket shrugged. “We tried, but the mirror we went through closed, and we can’t get it back open.” He pointed his cane into the hallway they stood outside of. All the way to the back, in the room at the end, a silver disk took up the entire wall of the room. Daring Do could see a vague reflection on the surface of the disk. “That’s the mirror we came out of. For ten years, we’ve been trying to get it open again, but that bugger doesn’t even let us peak through.”
“So you’re stuck here?”
“Until we open the portal back up or we find another way back to Equestria.” Bucket looked at Daring Do, tapping the tiles with his cane. “For now, we’re stuck here, in Nineveh. Oh, by the way, welcome to Nineveh.” He stretched his arms out, gesturing to the library around them. “The king was kind enough to let us use the place when we dropped by. The palace library serves as our base of operations for band of misfits scattered around the globe.”
They passed by another branch of the library. Daring Do’s eyes widened when she saw what stood towards the back. A large statue of a man, no unlike the one of Homer, knelt down on the floor. His back bent forward to support a large orb that he held between his shoulder blades and outstretched arms. This orb, with a perfectly smooth surface, was made of solid gold. Daring Do could feel her mouth salivate at the way the moonlight gleamed off the precious metal. She bit her lip hard as a tingle went up her spine. Dear Faust, that can sell for a fortune, she thought to herself. A coughing fit from Bucket snapped her back to the conversation. “How rich”- she gave a quick cough of her own, “I mean, how spread out are you?”
Bucket shrugged. “Anywhere with some sort of civilization behind it, thanks to the portal system we made up. Humans are an incredibly varied species when it comes to culture. We have a pony in a place called Egypt, three in China, four here in Assyria, two in Greece, including Phoebe.” Bucket smiled at the lady behind them. “And the rest are wandering the world looking for sources of human magic.”
The walked on beyond the library branch with the golden orb. She could feel a metallic ring trying to pull her back towards the room, stretching her face to reel her into its metallic glory. She struggled to keep a poker face on, and continued walking forwards. “Sounds fun.”
“It’s not.” Bucket turned around and walked forward with a brisk pace. “We’ve seen a few examples of what human magic is capable of. It does powerful stuff with little effort, unlike pony magic, which you need a lot of energy to do the interesting things.”
Daing Do nodded. “And you need to mix the two magicks together to create something usable, like that portal.”
“Yes, but mixing magic gets mixed results. Portals are complex spells that even the most advanced unicorns have trouble making. But with human magic, it’s as easy as making cake. But human-pony magic sucks up a butt-load of juice, and it’s as unstable as a rampaging Golden Spark.”
“Unstable?” Daring Do jumped when Phoebe shouted from behind them. “Do you want to see unstable, Mop? I’ll go all unstable on your butt!”
Bucket flashed the lady a sly grin, wiggling his eyebrows. “I never said I didn’t like you unstable. Anyways,” he turned back to Daring Do. “Short of it is that human-pony magic is a pain in the butt to use, but it’s a powerful thing to use when it does work.”
“Opening portals, huh.” Daring Do tapped her chin in thought. “I dropped into this world in a portal similar to the one you use. It could be possible to find out how to reopen it and get us all back to Equestria.”
Bucket shook his head. “It’s not that easy. We proved it’s possible long ago. The trouble is fine tuning to open up to another world, then choosing the right world to go to. The spells we’ve developed to do so burn through too much of our power, and they flicker out in almost an instant. We don’t even know if those particular spells actually work.”
“Hold on you old fart,” Phoebe interrupted, stepping up between them. “Daring Do was sent here by a naturally occurring portal. I’d bet we could find a way to open it.”
Bucket rolled his eyes. “Fine, sure, figure out how to open a naturally occurring portal. It’s not like Chickadee tried that before in China and unleashed a dragon on the populace. Speaking of which, have you seen that darn girl walking around in Greece? She’s late getting back to me, and I’m worried she’s screwing around with portals again.”
“Nope, I haven’t seen her. We just got the giants walking around and that’s it.”
“Shame. Darn girl goes south and doesn’t bother to come back up. Such a trouble maker.” Bucket looked up to an opening in the ceiling, where moonlight poured from the outside. “Bugger, it’s late. Go sap the rest of our power and get back to Greece. Maybe I’ll have enough juice to boil some tea in the morning.” The old man nodded at the pegasus. “It’s a pleasure meeting you. I’m sorry I’m cutting this short, but it’s late and I’m about to crash.”
Daring Do watched the man waddle away to the end of the hall. She turned around and followed Phoebe back to the portal room. “I’ll admit, this was an interesting surprise.”
“Yeah, shame you had to meet Mop Bucket. The old coot’s getting more senile by the day.”
“So that’s how we’ll get home,” Daring Do said, nodding to the man as he left the library behind them. “Human-pony magic.”
“Hey, if you find a way to keep a portal to another world open for more than a few seconds, tell me and I’ll bring in the rest of the gang.”
From further down the library, Daring Do could hear sweet, precious metal calling for her in a metallic song. “Phoebe, do you know who I am?” the pegasus asked, looking up at the human. “I’m Daring Do, the greatest adventurer in Equestria. I have a fan club I need to get back to.”