CANCELLED - Even In Other Worlds · 9:29pm Oct 13th, 2019
This was confirmed to be cancelled last night post-finale in favor of The Archmage's Last Bow, which will be coming soon. However, I don't like to leave readers hanging with what I had planned from where things ended.
So, Nova's original story was supposed to span 5 total stories. I'll leave rough descriptions of each one I never got to, with a full list of plans for where Worlds was going to end, just so there is some closure on this end.
First, Worlds. For starters, the battle was going to be a long all-day battle, in which Nova would be pushed to grow angrier and angrier, before he would start lashing out with Dark Magic. The two groups that split off and went to find their Elements would find them with no issue, but would meet many problems when trying to rendezvous, before they were eventually captured and dragged off to City Hall. In the meantime, Twilight would abandon her group as she felt Nova in danger. Nova would be successfully drawing all of the changelings' attention, though with a couple of casualties (Frigoris would take a bad hit and be kept out of commission), leaving Nova to wander the streets alone. He would try to disrupt changeling organization by going directly for Killik (remember him?), but sharp Eye would get there first. Killik and Sharp Eye would fight, but in the end, Killik would defeat, and then kill, Sharp Eye in front of Nova. Nova would fly into a rage and lose control, before exploding. That was what Twilight would sense, and everyone with any kind of sensitivity to magic. Ray would manage to drag him back to the house they were holed up in for Nova to recover, only for Nova to stumble out the moment he regained consciousness.
Nova and Twilight would reunite and start to make their way to the rendezvous point, only for Killik, heavily wounded from being so close to the explosion, to get in their way once again. Nova would reveal to the changelings that Killik left Molossus to die, and that all that Killik has been doing is making a power grab. Killik would give in to the darkness, becoming a shadow creature that Nova would eventually defeat him, killing Killik once and for all. But then Envy would step in. There would be a 2v1 for a while, before Nova sent Twilight off to find her friends. Envy would taunt Nova, but then Nova would resolve that no one else would be hurt y Envy again, and in doing so, a pair of translucent wings would sprout from his back. He would clearly win the battle against Envy, but Envy would flee, taunting him that Twilight had been captured, and because he had taken the bait, his entire plan had fallen apart, and finally that everything she'd wanted to do on the human world, she'd accomplished, before showing Nova an eerily-glowing green gem (more on that in Story 5). the battle was lost, and most everyone who had been fighting would be captured by this point, including Luna.
Nova would fall into a depressive state that Discord would be the one to break him out of, as would the Consciousness of Magic by revealing the gift she had bestowed on Nova, and why (the accelerated magic growth, meant to push him toward ascension). Rejuvenated, Nova would lead one last assault on city hall, rescue the Elements, and then find himself in a confrontation with Envy, holding Twilight with knife to throat, in a repeat of the ending of Apprentice. Things would be said, but in the end, Nova would end up taking a knife to protect Twilight, and he would die of his wounds, which were too severe. Shortly after his dying breath, the Elements would trigger, and everyone would return home.
Worlds would end with Nova's funeral, which would be interrupted by Nova rocketing out of the sky, destroying his own casket, and sprouting a very real pair of alicorn wings, revealing that Celestia had kept him in the Realm of Ascension to heal from the primordial energies there, and that his final sacrifice had been enough. The story's first epilogue would have been several months later, with Twilight giving birth to her's and Nova's first daughter, Clover, and Celestia and Luna departing for Elysium, the afterlife of the alicorns (I actually had this idea six years ago, prior to S4 airing, much less the finale, but I wondered how well it would be received). Epilogue 2, had I decided not to end it there, would show that Nova was, in actuality, in a hospital bed, and that everything from the previous paragraph was nothing more than a coma dream, to lead into Story 3.
Story 3 was supposed to be a huge homage to the brilliant Superman story For The Man Who Has Everything... Nova would be living an idyllic life, as the Prince of Magic and also Prince of the Night, married to Twilight with three children, and happily ruling Equestria in a total utopia state. Envy would be imprisoned under Canterlot Castle with a shattered horn. Nova would take frequent visits to try and redeem her but it would never work. The story would begin with a charity battle between Nova and Twilight that would fade out before the battle ever even began. Ponies would contradict each other over who won, and when Nova started to notice the problem, the ponies would begin disappearing, driving the major conflict. Nova would begin investigating the disappearances, only for Discord to suddenly appear after an apparent 20-year absence. Discord would reveal to Nova that he was dreaming, showing him that the knife Envy stabbed him with was laced with oil from the petals of the Heart's Desire flower, which would trap their victim in an idyllic dream, the only way out of which was to confront his "dream-keeper" and let go of everything he ever loved. With this revealed, Envy would emerge, the apparent Dream-Keeper, and Nova would defeat her in an epic battle, showcasing his mastery over the realm of dreams. With Envy gone, and the door that would allow him to wake now there, the real Dream-Keeper would reveal herself to be Twilight, the Twilight that he had lived with for 20 years in his head, and had three children with. She would desperately try to convince him that he was sick and needed help, that this door wasn't real, that his children were, and Nova would falter for just one moment, before steeling himself and uttering that the dream could not be real.
His children would disappear before his eyes, causing him a severe amount of emotional trauma, and when he attempted to open the door again, he would find that it was gone. the only way out was now to die within the Dream Realm. He would fly up to the highest height he possibly could, somewhere he couldn't justify surviving in his head, and then plunge down. Outside, in the real world, he would actually die this time, leading to an entire chapter of everyone having emotional reactions, and notably Envy laughing madly in her cell in Alcoltraz. Twilight would say her last goodbye, but a spark from her horn, coupled with the Consciousness of Magic sensing that the world was not right, would revive him. He would be mentally unstable for several days, which would lead everyone to keep him contained so he didn't go and hurt anyone else, or himself. He would escape, however, and make his way to Alcoltraz, and confront Envy. Envy would start goading him, trying to get him to lose control. First, she would reveal that she was actually Sombra's apprentice. then she would reveal that the ruby pendant she always wears was another Soul Gem, and that Summer Blossom's soul was trapped inside so she could wear her body, and that she was actually Shimmer Silvermane all along (waht a tweest!). Finally, when he was at breaking point, she would confront him about the dream. "How did it feel to watch everything you ever loved vanish right before your eyes? It must have been like tearing off your own arm." Nova would snap completely, sinking into a rage and torturing her with Dark Magic to make her pay, before he would come to his senses and realize what he had done. He would now have the trailing aura of dark magic, and would start to look like Sombra. Terrified at the changes, he would flee, fighting through Twilight, Celestia, Luna, and everyone and eventually escaping.
Story 4 would center around Nova taking a trip to Zebrica to be cleansed of his magic from a shaman. First, he would be in the Crystal Empire, trying to find any information on the rise of Sombra that he could, so as to not lead him any further down the path of darkness, but Twilight would find him there. He would flee into the mountains, before the darkness within him would force itself out, taking a mirror form of him and calling itself Vanitas. Nova and Vanitas would battle to a standstill, before Twilight would arrive to save him. After the battle, Nova would turn on her, knowing that she would never stop chasing him, but knowing he was nothing more than a time bomb with the dark magic within constantly trying to force its way out. He curses her to sleep until he arrives at his destination, then returns to the Crystal Empire and leaves her with Cadance. He would learn that his father had used dark magic when attacking Tantalus, and had gone on the same pilgrimage Nova was now about to embark on, and would have a starting point. Nova would travel to Zebrica and meet a shaman named Urak-Pahtik, who would begin to help Nova forgive himself.
Twilight would awaken and after a delay to account for Seasons 5 and 6, she would journey to help him. Nova would be sour about it, but she would be there to help defeat Vanitas whenever Vanitas tried to take control. It would also be revealed that Lord Silverblood had forced a shard of Sombra's Soul into Nova back in the past, and that Sombra's Soul had now created a standoff within Nova, where no side could attempt to destroy the others, because any fight between two "factions" would result in the third cleaning up the rest. Things would culminate in a dream, in which Nova would watch Vanitas kill Twilight in front of him. Twilight would wake him, and he would start to open up to her in his desperation, sharing the details of his dream, and she would help him learn to forgive himself. Finally, once he was ready, Nova and Twilight would enter Nova's mind and do battle against Vanitas, defeating him, only for Sombra to try and kill them both, unless Nova were to submit. In this, he attempts to strangle Twilight in a callback to ASC Chapter 5, only for Nova to draw on every last bit of magic within him and destroy Sombra's soul completely, freeing Twilight and dispelling the darkness inside of him for good.
Back outside, as they prepared to leave, Nova would share a revelation he'd had. He was at his weakest when he was alone, and he had come to the realization that everyone he cared about, his friends, all of them, they were the source of his power. He fought for them. In doing so, Nova Shine would finally, truly, ascend, freeing himself from the gift that was slowly killing him in his unicorn body. The story would end with his coronation, taking his rightful place beside Twilight, Celestia, Luna, and Cadance.
Story 5 would begin after Season 7 with Envy escaping Alcoltraz, something she could have done whenever. She would immediately start to leave little hints that she was heading for Dream Valley to retrieve something, which would prompt Nova and Twilight to follow her. They would find Star Swirl, excavating the land from the meters of ice it was buried under because of the Windigoes, but Star Swirl had his suspicions that something was keeping the ice there. They would journey into Midnight Castle and find an eerily-glowing blue gem, which Star Swirl would take with a very special apparatus, before revealing that it was one of the three Gems of Being, three gems that represent part of a lifeforce of a creature. Hold all three within the Crown of Life, and the wearer is basically a god (Infinity Gauntlet resemblance intentional). Nova would remember the green gem Envy found on the human world, as well as the red gem of the Alicorn Amulet, before realizing that Envy had at least one of them, and that it was apparent that she was trying to collect the gems for something.
They would return to Equestria with the Body Gem, the blue one they had found, only to find that Envy had invaded Canterlot with an army of shadow-creatures, and had enthralled Celestia and Luna, turning them into Daybreaker and Nightmare Moon. Envy would capture Twilight (once again) and force a trade. Twilight for the Body Gem. Nova would give in, reasoning that they were stronger together than him with the Body Gem alone. And also because he had a plan. A battle would ensue. Nova would enact his plan, revealing that the Gem of Body, which would absorb magic like inmanipulon, could only absorb so much magic before it would explode out of the gem. This was how Star Swirl had defeated Tirek before.
But Just as Nova is about to inflict the last attack, Sombra would return, brought back because he had also placed a shard of his soul within Envy, and Envy had gathered the three Gems specifically because Nova had dismantled Sombra's original plan. And now that his survival had been ensured, Envy would be cast aside, because she was no more than a tool in the end. With the three gems, Sombra would disappear to search for the Crown of Life, leaving Nova and Twilight to chase him. Envy would join them, hunting after revenge, and wanting to finally be rid of Sombra after being forced to be his apprentice due to the soul implantation. They would learn that Sombra held the crown in his castle, and a mad battle for control would ensue. At the end of the battle, Sombra would assemble the crown and put it on, becoming near-omnipotent. Yet even with his omnipotence, Nova would resist. His resistance would spread, with Twilight soon able to resist him, and then Envy, then Aegis, and so on. Finally, they would combine for one last attack that would vanquish Sombra and destroy the Crown and the three Gems.
Envy, finally free, would return to the Tree of Harmony to be cleansed of her curse, and would destroy her Soul Gem, revealing that her real body was kept in stasis, just in case it was needed. Now that Shimmer and Summer were separate beings again, free from Envy's control, Summer would begin rehabilitating in the present day, but Shimmer would want to return to a time where she could live away from the madness that she had been part of. Nova would send her back in time, with the two of them promising to meet again moments later. Moments later, Nova's mother would walk in, and she would reveal that she was Shimmer Novus, nee Silvermane. Nova had intended to send her further back to live a normal life, but something had interfered and placed her in the time she would be happiest.
In the final epilogue, it would echo the dreams of Story 3, with Nova being in a loving relationship with Twilight, having several children with her, Aegis being his Captain of the Guard, Celestia and Luna having retired and leaving them and their Royal Family in charge, and the story would end with Nova taking on the first Night Apprentice of his own.
So, as I said in my original post about the cancellation, a lot of this stuff will make reappearances in The Archmage's Last Bow I'll leave you to guess which ones. But for now, I can finally close the book on these stories, having given myself and you, the readers the closure, I could. I look forward to sharing my newest story with you, when it's ready to go. As I said before, the show is over, but we're still here, and I intend to stay here for quite a while longer.
