CWoH Chapters 25 & 26

So I finally finished reading these two chapters. They go hand in hand together... Sort of an update, I guess? Just sharing some thoughts and comments here.

These two chapters are pretty good. They might be the best chapters I've read in this story, or at least the ones I've enjoyed rereading the most.

There's still a lot of issues with these chapters, but they're quite interesting. Although perhaps a bit intense... Do you guys think that this story's rating is OK? It's rated teen and there's the warning for violence and it's tagged dark... I've not been too descript with the details, or at least I don't think so... but still, there's a lot of ponies dying. Especially considering Twilight's spell...

So, want some backstory/explanation?

I may have said this before, but early on I wanted a scene where Twilight would get stabbed in the neck with a spear. This chapter was what ended up happening. All in all, I think this is better. I kind of wish I had handled it differently, though. I'm wishing I hadn't went over to the general's PoV; that I had stayed with Twilight instead, but I didn't.

Twilight's inner monologue also bothers me. She's suffering from blood loss and all of that is going on? Although I suppose it may not be unrealistic if you consider it as this story is an account of what happened (so as to say it was written after the event, and so Twilight has had time to think about it and remember it).

I don't remember if it's said in the story what happened to Lightning Strike and the other pegasus... but the thought crossed my mind of "What if it was Twilight's spell that killed them?"

Also, this story, this chapter, in particular, has some dark implications. Twilight's alicorn magic surge was her body's response to almost dying, and as a result of that, she's become more powerful following it. Taking this to the logical extreme, then, you could come up with the idea or suggestion that if you wanted to create an army of super powerful alicorns, all you would need to do is take an alicorn and repeatedly bring them to the brink of death. For some reason this makes me think specifically of Twilight and like this would be something in a grimdark fic where somepony takes over and does that to Twilight repeatedly for some greater cause or the greater good.

In addition, that makes me think of the Spartan 2s from Halo. If you don't know why or how this could be related, the TL;DR version of it is that all Spartan 2's (including the Master Chief) were kidnapped when they were children, then genetically augmented (through a very dangerous process which killed 30 out of the 75 chosen Spartan 2 candidates [I wonder if the idea was applied on a large scale what sort of fatality rate there would be for alicorns]) and indoctrinated to be super soldiers.

I'm sidetracked now. Oh well.

So, now it's canon that Twilight's responsible for about 4k ish deaths with a "single" spell (although it was multiple spells combined). So, now it's shown that alicorns (specifically Twilight) can take out armies on their own. There's a bit of a plot hole there, then. Why haven't Celestia or Luna done that? Really. Major plot hole there that makes no sense. I suppose it could be reasoned that neither of them want to do that, or perhaps view themselves above that. Or maybe there are other things at play. I mean, seriously, they're both still ponies. I don't think they'd just carelessly fling spells that would vaporize large chunks of entire armies, even if they're fighting against them. That seems inequine for them, even in this story. I think something like this is actually said, but I can't remember where. I want to say it's in one of Luna's scenes where she says or thinks something against that idea on moral grounds.

So, the future could be very interesting. Twilight's killed a lot of ponies, saved a lot of lives, almost been killed, and now knows she can kill... and kill quite easily.

I wonder what her upcoming encounter with her brother will be like...

I've sidetracked yet again.

Another thing to say is that what happened to Twilight was that she wasn't paying attention to her surroundings. The spell didn't penetrate her armor, it hit her under her wing where there was no armor (the hole for her wing). I'm kind of envisioning Spitfire quipping about Rarity "failing" and then Twilight shooting back that if anypony's to blame, it's her since she wanted it that way and such. (Although this may already be included in the story.)

Skydrake also commented a while back that Spitfire'll probably be out of a job when the war is over.

I miss Skydrake.

What are your thoughts on these chapters and what I've mentioned here? I'm sure there's more I could say, but I can't think of it and I've spent almost 40 around 40-50 minutes working on this post as is...