cks you designed to be ~exotic~ or whatever, and those rabid jerks at Disney can only grit their teeth now!
Preview for Dark Horse #8 · 2:14pm Dec 4th, 2015
User Fionn had the excellent suggestion of me making a teaser for #8.
Given how patient you've guys been with the behind the scenes rewrite it seemed like an excellent suggestion. 
(The following is partially recycled from take #1. Editors and pre-readers, please use ctrl + f and skip to 'tiny voice' for the new stuff.)
Without further ado, the first ~2000 words of the next chapter! 
I tried to scream at her to stop, but Nemo just thrashed and with a scream of rage nearly took my head off with a swipe of her wing.
Quite a few people think that birds are delicate, nature’s little glass sculptures of the air that crumbles if you as much as touch them too hard. There is some truth to this but only when compared to mammals, ie one of the sturdiest base animal templates on the planet. In comparison birds are brittle next to mammals, yes, but that’s like comparing ice-sculptures to brick-outhouses.
And that is of course not even counting that there are more to the group of avians than tiny balls of fluff that goes ‘tweet.’ Something the size of, say, emus can even kick you to death if they feel threatened.
Size matters, trite but true. Sometimes you can bridge that gap with skills or quick-thinking, but if I arm-wrestled with Carlos now I’d probably outright break the dude. And I’m not talking about going up against that crippled arm of his or while in my bat mode, either.
Horses are impressive beasts. One of the few creatures with strength, speed and endurance, while most others ‘focus’ on just one of those traits. Some weird twist of evolution adding brains and magic onto that? Mother Nature likes her dice weighted.
And preferably with poisonous spikes that makes your arm turn black and fall off.
Of course, Nemo wasn’t a bird, not even a pony sized one. She was a pegasus, a magical mammal that just happens to have bird-like wings. A magical mammal built like an Abrams tank even before you took things like body-building and her once-in-a-lifetime talent in kinectomancy into the mix.
Nemo’s wing gave off a whip-snap right by my face, trailing crackling lightning that only didn’t cook me because of my own natural insulation. I felt a cold little pit in my stomach, but some distant corner of my mind realized absently if I’d still been human I might as well have tried wrestling a person-sized bug-zapper.
Clearly, I had to do something, and there wasn’t any time for half-measures.
A few years ago I did something. Something supposedly impossible, even by magic.
She’d only been a shade of the true demon, but I’d nicknamed Lash as I called her. Named, and redeemed over years of stubborn struggle. She’d been terrifying. Dark. Troubling. A manipulator, which even a shade of her had truly deserved the title of The Web Weaver, a Fallen even other demons whispered about.
And she’d also been funny. In her own twisted way, caring. Sharp. Clever.
And… technically the father of my second child. The spirit of intellect that had nearly killed me since heads aren’t exactly made to pop open. Born of the sacrifice of love Lash had performed. taking a psychic bullet, meant for me, and the hole left in my spirit by her passing.
I’d named her Susan Murphy Lash Dresden, for the three strongest woman I’ve ever met. She is a beautiful young woman mentally, a spirit the color of her sire’s favored eyes ‘physically,’ and she is such a glorious impossibility that even Heaven itself had paused in surprise at her creation.
Know that many parents will say such things about their darling little sprogs, but in Susan’s case it was literally true. Uriel—yes, the archangel—had taken notice of my so called deed and gifted me a capital B Boon.
Soulfire. The power of creation, and all at the tiny, tiny price of burning bits of your soul away to empower one's magic. Use too much and only oblivion awaits, but it was scary potent stuff. Like nitro for my magic, it let me do things I’d never otherwise would have dreamed of as long as I dared risk the price.
(It—your soul I mean—apparently grows back. To be fair, hearing that surprised the, heh, hell out of me too.)
Still this if anything seemed like a good time to take that risk. “Dormius, dormius dorme!” I murmured my sleep spell, my wing draped over Nemo’s head for just a moment lighting with white-blue flames that made the membrane tingle.
I’d never used soulfire with that spell before, but it apparently did the trick. Nemo collapsed like a bad pyramid scheme, a silly smile on her muzzle before she even hit the ground despite the wetness of her cheeks. Only when that mace of hers clattered to the floor did that lightning aura of hers fade. Yeash. Scary, scary mare.
Luna, a mare I really didn’t care for dealing more with, blinked. “...What was that?” she asked in a tiny voice.
I didn’t get further than opening my mouth for snapping at her, when two steam pistons Carlos had carelessly left lying around in his kitchen turned my barrel into more of an envelope.
Or alternatively, a certain sky-blue wùnderkin of self alteration had just done the impossible again, and shrugged off a sleep spell that should have made a bull elephant on steroids do a Sleeping Beauty impression, before bucking me in my stomach so hard I hit the ceiling.
And not even the locale fitting Hollywood style hyperbole either. I smashed into the ceiling, saw stars that would have made Roger Rabbit ask me for lessons, and bounced back down again. Not sure about any Dresden shaped indents in the ceiling, but the air got driven out of my lungs, and I saw shards of concrete falling down with me.
Yeah… again, not liking to admit it, but without the pegasi thing? Think I’d have something far more troubling to worry about than my back and stomach feeling tender. ‘Pulverized’ or ‘splattered,’ yeah, but not just stinging in that: ‘that’s going to leave a bruise’ kind of way.
The worst bit? It felt good feeling pain properly again.
...You don’t mean that, Harry.
Don’t get me wrong, I hadn’t started eyeing the riding-crops or spurs at the pet-store I got most of my toiletries nowadays or anything like that, so perhaps ‘good’ was too strong a word. ‘Honest,’ perhaps? Like that warm fatigue in your muscles you get after a long day of work. It's not pleasant by itself, sure, but you know you’ve earned it, and that small discomfort now is going to help you sleep soundly later.
Guess it made sense in a way. Like the cold The Mantle draws its power from, you only realized how numb you’d really gone when your warm again.
Oh. OK, yeah, I guess can get that.
Gritting my teeth, I fought down the pain and forced myself to just spread my wings instead of outright flapping them. Hopefully giving me just a few moments to silently survey the scene.
Carlos was still holding that ‘doom rain’ spell going, but was staring up at me in a mix of awe and worry. Guess Agatha hadn’t given him much of a clue on what a beating it takes to make a pony stay down aside from a few falls while relearning how to walk.
Speaking of, it seemed Nemo’s little bomb-shell of a revelation had so rocked Luna to the core, she’d lost control of her not-quite-champion. Agatha still looked like the winged unicorn’s long-lost pegasus daughter,—black, black, fangs, the ethereal star mane tail combo, bit more black just for variety's sake, tall and lanky—but the crimson had returned to her dazed eyes, and there wasn’t even a glimmer left of Luna’s moon in the cutie mark. Leaving just Agatha’s own sprig of bittersweet nightshade.
A waking dream, perhaps? Like some freaky mix of sleepwalking and somepony else’s lucid dream? A certain prissy immortal yanking Agatha around like an overeager kid with one of those rigged claw-games at a fair? Would make sense with Luna’s ‘bow or I’ll go Freddy Krueger on your rump’ routine from earlier.
Might just even explain just what was up with the mood-ring eyes, and why Luna had seemed utterly unknowing about such a glaring tell. My guess from her ‘sworn to me’ comment was that Luna was used to obedient little robots. Chosen champions sworn to her—perhaps even in death like the einherjer, and their Wills literally made part of hers.
‘Beep, boop, We are Thin-Skinned Star-Nag. Resistance is futile, you will be given a PG rated make-over. Your cultural and magical distinctness will be totally ignored because we want the royal veterinarian back.’
Royal veterinarian?! Oh, I wish…
Except Agatha had gotten a clean slate on a level most gods would have scratched their heads at achieving. Hell’s Bells, I’d felt the tug of power that meant she had a new Name. That’s not even supposed to be possible.
So instead of a neat little extension of herself, a limb she could simply will to move, Luna—Mistress of the subtle, had needed to sit offstage with a megaphone. Shouting at a stubborn actor with totally different views of what is and isn’t ‘in character’ for her role, until Luna had simply decided to stomp over and do it herself.
Seemed a plausible enough working theory as the idea flashed through my head, at least. And if it was right something as simple as getting Agatha into a circle before she needed to sleep the next time should stop her from being hijacked again.
And had to admit, Agatha looked rather adorable in a ‘lost kid’ sort a way with that maniacal gleam gone from her eyes. You just wanted to hug her, squeeze her, and feed her the biggest, juiciest beetles you can find until the poor dear starts feeling better.
...Although that last bit might have been Ding Bat trying to help again.
Nemo was quite clearly not feeling any such pity. Or anything aside from red-hot fury, for that matter. I’d barely been in the air for a second or so, but she was already scrambling towards Agatha again. So lost to reason she was stumbling over her own limbs, let alone noticing that the original owner was back in the driver's seat of the mare she was gunning for.
The most adorable little berserker ever wanted to play hardball because she wasn’t hugged enough as a foal? Fine, I’ll show her the how we throw a curve-ball on my side of the tracks.
WIth a sound not unlike shaking off my duster, my leathery wings caught the air, and I zoomed downwards. Both hooves aimed straight at the back of Nemo’s head. Hopefully even with such a thick skull, I’d be able to knock her out that way.
Well, if not, at least it would be far quicker and gentler than anything the Equestrians’ would do in the name of ‘curing’ her.
I'll be repeating it in the author's notes, but for the record I'm aware that the canonical name for Susan is/will be Bonnie.
I'm keeping it as an intentional choice to drive home the alternative universe thing. I mean, if turning into a mare won't rattle you enough to rethink a few things differently, nothing will, right?
Oh, and you might have noticed I've changed the formatting to be the way how the books do it. It's an idea I've been kicking around for a bit to make things more book accurate, and this preview seemed the perfect spot to try it out in.
Please tell me what you think about both it and the preview itself.
Ouch there, but very much a dresden thing in getting propelled.
Finally, a taste of future!
Nice.
By the way
of
offstage
3591840
Glad to hear it.
3592007
Yeah, it really was about time for one. Just a bit hard for me to remember that it's been a while for you guys, when I've been tapping away daily for months now.
Still, thanks for the corrections.
3592028 Its true, the only good thing so far, is that the place isn't on fire (yet) in this preview.
Grrr... must... save... editing for finalized rough... draft...
Gah I can't take it! I must offer constructive criticism!
I'll restrain myself to only general commentary on this bit. Grammar issues are so much easier to fix on Gdocs. Additionally keep in mind that I'm going to focus on the negatives that could be improved, the positives can be summarized as 'I really enjoy this story.'
Ok, disclaimer out of the way, I notice and am troubled by how padded this teaser is. Remember, as Jim Butcher has said, "Always write a story as lean as you possibly can, it is easier to pad out a story that is too lean than to trim a story that is too padded."
In this 2k word preview the following happens: 1. Nemo continues her attack on Luna from the end of last chapter, 2. Harry tries to put her to sleep, Nemo shakes it off (which is cool btw,) 3. Luna's control of Agatha is weakened (also cool as it indicates this plot will wrap up rather quickly and they can finally get out of Carlos's house,) and 4. Nemo continues her enraged attack while Harry goes to stop her again.
That's it. Four fast moving plot points that took 2000 words when 500 would have covered them far better (maybe 1k.)
You see, earlier in the story (about chapters 1-5,) you would often over-write things to a very good purpose. Much of your audience didn't know anything about Dresden's world and you needed to let them 'in on it.' But that isn't the case anymore. You have been very thorough. By now anyone who hasn't read the Dresden Files knows more than enough about it for the rest of your story.
We expected that when we got to this point, things would start going faster and faster, instead starting with chapter 6 they started going slower and slower.
Now I recognize you wrote in a plot device to try to justify this with Flutterbat 'making Harry continuously drift off on mental tangents,' (though I don't approve of any plot device that makes your viewpoint character more boring, especially when having an apple vampire form had so much potential to be interesting,) but even with that it doesn't fit. If you want Harry to be drifting into mental tangents constantly then fine, make sure we see that everyone else wasn't just on pause while she was navel gazing. With the amount of navel gazing done in this 2k words, by the time she snapped out of it the fight should have been over already. There is just no way she could do that much pointless contemplation of random stuff in the time it takes Nemo to kick her and charge Agatha/Luna.
So, here in my opinion and off the top of my head, are a few random parts that add little to nothing and can be cut either entirely, or almost entirely and the story will be improved. In order:
1. That part at the beginning where Harry spends way too long contemplating the relative strengths of birds and horses could easily be done in one paragraph or omitted entirely.
2. That bit about Lash and soulfire is important, I only bring it up as an example of the good kind of navel gazing. That being said, it could stand to be trimmed down a bit.
3. Those few paragraphs where Harry contemplates pain and how it feels good to feel it properly again while Fluttershy comments? That doesn't seem to serve any purpose except to slow down the action. Fluttershy's comments show that Harry is somehow having this lengthy internal monologue in real time. If Fluttershy is going to make a comment after Harry takes that hit it should be more along the lines of, 'Harry! Get up, you can't let her hurt Agatha!' If it is essential to the story somehow that we know Dresden's opinion on pain (which is rather doubtful,) the place for it is after the action scene.
4. Seems a bit odd that Carlos is staring at Harry in awe and fear at the beating she just survived, when he should really be paying more attention to the mare who delivered that beating.
5. That bit about Luna losing control of Agatha is important, but again too much time is spent on it. Everything from the words 'A waking dream, perhaps?' to 'Ding Bat trying to help again.' adds nothing to what should be a quick moving action scene. Maybe half of it can be recycled for after the scene is over when we are focused on Agatha's recovery, but right now we don't care. All we needed to know is that Luna's control is weakening.
That's off the top of my head, first impressions. I hope this is helpful.
3592190
...You know, that's some very fair points.
Guess I'm rustier at action scenes then I thought I was. I'll grab the pruning shears and try to—ugh, make a somewhat quicker-moving version 3 of this.
3592275
For what it's worth, I know you can do it, that's why I'm pushing the issue. You have done it before. Chapters 1-5 of this story were very solid with the slow parts reasonably well integrated, and I don't recall Sufficiently Advanced having this problem at all (which is very impressive considering how much original world building that story had.)
It had its own problems sure, due to you being a less experienced writer, but the action was mostly well paced and exciting, with much of the important world building bits revealed in interesting dialogue rather than a character just thinking about it out of almost nowhere.
I saw one major issue with this preview...
It left me wanting to read the final version of this chapter that much more. That being said, don't feel like you have to rush to get the chapter out. I sure I can speak for all of your readers when I say that we would rather wait for a great chapter then for a meh chapter that was rushed. Looking forward to seeing more in the future.
Well, there was a bit of award grammer and run on scenes that ruin the flow a bit, but nothing that can't be hammered out with a little attention. I think you're on the right track
Others have already jumped on the pacing issues, so I won't repeat that. I will, however, point out that the new formatting is pretty much exactly how it ends up looking on my phone, so naturally I love it!
I almost feel sorry for Luna there. I think she recognized soulfire. She was probably praying that despite everything, even Dash's revelations, it was still all some really nasty trick via Discord's mind control. Then Harry totally crushed her last hopes by doing something Luna knew Discord couldn't possibly have faked up, right there in front of her.
I'm looking forward to the final version when it's ready.
3606530
Well they mention that Wizards use "Chaos" magic in chapter 7, which is really just external power to Dresdenverse Practitioners, and Soulfire is internal power, so his Soulfire charged magic might actually be the closest thing to the "Orbital Friendship Cannon", I doubt Luna recognises it as Soulfire, but more as Harmony magic which put the final nails in the coffin.
3754577
That makes a lot of sense. Being a regular user/channeller of Harmony magic might explain RD's resistance to a soulfire spell using a similar or even maybe identical power source.
And it would certainly freak out Luna, if the 'corrupted mockery' just apparently used Harmony magic simply from her own natural powers, without even needing to be granted the use of it via some tool/agency of the Tree of Harmony, like the Elements or that box. That's something that's so unprecedentedly impossible by known Equestrian canon that it might actually get Luna to actually consider the truth instead of desperately dismissing it as she has thus far.