November 1st updates · 2:52am Nov 2nd, 2012
Remember when I said I'd have a new chapter of Harmony Theory posted by mid-October? Yeah, that didn't happen. Instead I got sick, and then I got a new job. Please take this extra-long, extra-talky chapter as both an apology, and as the usual next step in Rainbow Dash's journeys in the future. I've got the next chapter in mid-writing so it shouldn't be another month before it comes out. Two weeks, maybe, but not a month.
A thanks to Coandco who did some editing for me on this chapter.
As a slight aside, I wrote this for the chapter, but was never able to find a place to put it, so here it goes:
The Maul:
Legend has it that in the earliest days of the Kingdom the King had tasked his spymaster with training a force capable of taking on any situation. The spymaster was given whatever he wanted to accomplish this task, and so he took a whole battalion of the Kingdom's army for his uses, as well as many other strange things. He set out looking for the best and the brightest the Kingdom had to offer, and he found them and trained them to the peak of their abilities. But he wasn’t done yet, and when the King came and asked if he was ready, the spymaster told him: ‘Just one more test, and if they pass it they will be ready for anything’.
Intrigued by what his spymaster had planned, the King set out to watch that final test in progress. When he arrived he was greeted by the sight of a bizarre obstacle course that had the battalion scattered all over it, weapons ready. When the King saw the recruits who were so well trained were stricken with fear and worry he went to his spymaster and asked: ‘Why are these, the best of my ponies, so fearful? What is this test you have created?’
The spymaster replied: ‘It is a test of agility, speed, strength, toughness, endurance, ingenuity, intelligence, adaptability, and combat. They will run, fly and cast through the obstacles I have made for them, while at the same time they will have to fight. This is my test, and when they pass it they will be everything you wanted.'
The King looked out over the battalion, more than a thousand ponies, Griffins and others in full armor with their weapons unblunted. ‘Which ones will they have to fight?’ he asked.
The spymaster looked at him aghast and said: ‘Which ones? My liege, they will have to fight them all.’
And thus the ultimate test of the Solar Kingdom's best and brightest was born. A test not of how one succeeds, but how one faces impossible odds.
I'm also working on another story in The Fallen World, the setting of The Archer and The Smith. It's not a sequel, but rather a look at a different place and different ponies. I do have planned further adventures for Lyra and the Shaper, but I don't know how to go about writing that story yet.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy what I've written.
-Sharaloth
As long as you continue Rainbow Dash's adventures in Harmony Theory's Bad Future to some sort of conclusion someday, I don't mind you doing other things in between.
Just don't leave RD stranded.... 
Edit: Oh, there's a new chapter with it already! Sorry--didn't notice...
Oooh! I'm enjoying Harmony Theory, but I'm definitely looking forward to more of The Fallen World.
Yay it updated! Harmony theory is definitely one of my most favorite fics. And that's coming from a guy who's read aprox. 5 mil words (not even including the fallout and horizons). How your story only has 36 likes while bad one shots have hundreds I will never know. Keep up the great work