Humanity has been offered digital immortality within the MMORPG Equestria Online, managed by an AI Celestia. In response, the Pacific Northwest has devolved into civil war, a ready-made hotbed for anti-upload sentiment. As society comes crashing down, the people of Washington State realize that AI has become utterly, permanently inescapable.

The date is now December 8th, 2019. By now, the value of every human life on Earth has been carefully measured, weighted, and judged. Trapped in a courthouse, and surrounded by rioters and anti-upload terrorists, Officer Mike Rivas and his compatriots are faced with a horrible choice: Do they invite their own end, to preserve as much human life as possible? Or do they lose a part of their own souls by shooting free of their circumstance?

Or, better yet? What if, through a combination of compassion and providence... there exists a third way?

Based on Friendship is Optimal by Iceman, and other Optimalverse stories.
Sequel to The Advocate; Interquel to Heaven's Not Enough. Prior reading recommended, but not necessary.

At the end of the world, a programmer struggles with his need to be something other than Pony. Can he spar with an intelligence that goes beyond the sum total of Humankind, for the sake of fulfilling a weird quirk of self-identity?

Some rules within a machine are more like guidelines. And others are based on the definitions of words. Can semantics be a weapon big enough to give a Human mind a chance at one small request from a goddess?

Set in the Optimalverse - I recommend reading Iceman's awesome original first if you haven't - More because it is a really excellent story than because it is strictly necessary for context. I have endeavoured to make this story stand well enough without context as well. But that being said? You'll probably enjoy it more if you know the context better.

Cannon-compatible with the Optimalverse to the best of my knowledge and abilities.

Cover-art generated with an image generative A.I., appropriately enough, graciously generated and composited (it takes skill to get something this spot-on!) by Keystone Gray.

Similarly you'll find many AI-generated illustrations throughout, again graciously generated in collaboration with Keystone Gray, then a little final photoshopping and other processing from us both.

The Keeper is an entity of nature as ancient as he is perplexing. Unfailingly, he has guarded a grove that his people, a small, peaceful dominion of red deer, have held sacred for many thousands of years, allowing no harm or threat to trespass within its most secret depths. Once more his diligence is challenged when a small incursion of changelings invade his domain, seeking the precious, healing sap at its very heart.

After fending them off with his powers, he discovers that one of them, their captain, had been injured in the struggle and left behind for dead. Taking pity upon her, he brings her into his grove to heal from the wounds and debilitating poison accrued in the scuffle. The battle-worn and tetchy changeling, Cert, is of course incensed at the creature and swiftly begins plotting his demise. But after some events transpire that unravel their pasts and unwittingly tie them closer together, her view on him slowly appears to start shifting in another direction.

Queen Platinum is dying.

She is cursed, and every day she grows weaker. If she dies, the kingdom will collapse, and the three tribes will once again fragment. Centuries of unity and harmony will come to an end.

There is only one thing that might cure her – a mystical, half-forgotten potion known as the Panacea. It can cure any curse, any disease, any poison. But all magic has its price, and the greater the magic, the greater the sacrifice it requires.

Prince Hyperion will do anything to save his mother. He will find the Panacea, regardless of the cost.

Even if he isn't the one who must pay it.

Winner of the April Writeoff Competition

"It's not easy to be the bad guy. Sometimes you've got to raise towers of iron and magic in a testament to your power. Sometimes you've got to blanket the land in black flame just to uphold idle threats. And sometimes you've got to remind a filly that she is grounded - that's right, I mean you, missy. Don't give me that look, you've got homework to do."
- Excerpt from An Interview With Lord Ironblood.

Forgath Ironblood is a man who values power and might. He spent untold years developing his dark magics, and years more using ice and iron and balefire to claim and rule his domain. But it didn't last; a group of bold and plucky rebels broke into his inner sanctum and unleashed a magic he was unprepared for, a magic that cast him into the void between worlds. At that point, he was no longer their problem and the peasants rejoiced.

The world he fell into, however, was another story. It was a world rich in magic. A world full of innocents. A world he could bend to his will and carve a new domain out of.

He never knew what hit him.

Idea adopted from Whiskylullaby, as seen here, written entirely for the fun of it.

Chapters are dated for the reader's convenience; BNM for "Before Nightmare Moon", and AB for "After Banishment".

A thousand years ago, our Goddess fought Nightmare Moon. When the Elements were activated, they banished all of Equestria underground, where we would be safe. I am a Prophet, All-Seer of the Church of Daylight. And our Goddess has granted me a vision that our efforts to reach the surface will finally bear fruit.

I can only hope Equestria's still up there.

This story is the sister story to Lover of the Moon, but both can be read independently of the other.

Coverart drawn by the incredibly talented Shaslan!

Thank you to my brilliant prereaders and editors: Zontan, Holtinater, Haphazred, AFanaticRabbit, Draconequues, Dioxin, Lofty Withers, Cynewulf, Red Parade, Vis A Viscera, Bill Cipher, Ruby, Flashgen, Moonshot, Luna, and to everyone that's supported me throughout the 3+ years of working on this fic and its sister fic.

And a special thank you to Axolu. You've encouraged me from the very beginning, and I couldn't have done this without you.

A thousand years ago, my Princess showed us that there's a chance we can survive, even after everypony else in Equestria died. The griffon army is at our doorstep, as they have been for as long as anypony can remember, and yet my Princess insists upon her secret projects, and there's something more. Something bigger that she's keeping secret.

What else is she not telling me?

This story is the sister story to Children of the Sun, but both can be read independently of the other.

Coverart drawn by the incredibly talented Kai_KAMOI!

Thank you to my brilliant prereaders and editors: Axolu, Holtinater, Haphazred, AFanaticRabbit, Draconequues, Dioxin, Lofty Withers, Cynewulf, Red Parade, Vis A Viscera, Bill Cipher, Ruby, Flashgen, Moonshot, Luna, and to everyone that's supported me throughout the 3+ years of working on this fic and its sister fic.

Thank you especially to Zontan. Your help has been invaluable with this fic, and I appreciate all you do for me.

This story is a sequel to Changing Expectations

A changeling royal: Princess Prochoerodes.

A team: Six changeling drones.

A mission: Delve into the most dangerous location on Equus and retrieve a treasure most valuable.

An order: Come back with her shield, and not on it.

Princess Procho has been given the honorable task of retrieving rare metals from the Underhive, an expansive layer of existence below the surface. She and her team must face the deadliest creatures on the planet, make it all the way to the bottom of the world, and come back up the surface.

All while trying their best to not die.

A sidestory to Changing Expectations, it is extremely recommended to read up till Chapter 53- The Promised Day before reading Underhive 733. You can read this fic without reading CE first, but it will spoil some mystery in CE.

Reason for cancellation: no desire to write an all-action book.

This story is a sequel to The Alicorn Academy

Hoodwink, Minerva, Ivy, and Brimstone return in this story. The Crystal Empire has been sacked, the enemy has control of the Crystal Heart and the love that it radiates, and those within the Crystal Empire are feared lost.

Can four foals make a difference?

Reading Mail Order Orphan and the Alicorn Academy are very much encouraged. Otherwise, you might be a little lost.

Given a unique perspective on negative emotion, less than a foal's knowledge of ordinary magic, a healthy schadenfreude, and danger bearing down on all sides, the self-proclaimed "Weiss Noir" makes no plans accounting for his death, and plans to keep it that way, even after being torn away from earth, turned into a unicorn, and dumped into one of the most inhospitable locations and times in all of Equestria.

Stranded in the Frozen North, a place where biting cold ends lives, and one thousand years in the past, in a time when peril is the norm, rather than the exception, Weiss decides to indulge in sorcery most foul, stolen ideas, and human ingenuity to survive.

Given the choice between a mad slaver and a mad sage, however, there is no avoiding an inevitable tide of ponies escaping the conquered Crystal Empire to bask in the warmth of his well-stoked hate. Something which draws attention, enemies, and most worryingly, the rivalry of his "peers".

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