I mostly just felt like making a post.

Also, for what it's worth, I felt this was one of the trickier stories for the mutual effort of trying to make it stand alone for those who have no interest in exploring the set and making it add into the rest for the ones who have. Ultimately, quite a bit wound up here. (I hope.) Whether it washed away some new arrivals in a flood of infodump... probably.

(For the record: I have no idea how that one got into the Feature box. I think that's the lowest-viewed one I've written to have that kind of entry time. Also, I now officially have Perryphobia.)

So for those trying to put any degree of puzzle together while under the hope that I actually both have some kind of final picture in mind and any idea of what I'm doing in assembling it, here's a few things to potentially take note of.

(Yes, that means all none of you.)

* The number of ponies who see Celestia as some level of deity is not a small one. When disaster strikes, that percentage goes up. You can be an atheist in a foxhole -- if you're a particularly strong-minded one.

* Differentiation strikes again: note the door gap left for the traveling sparks. (Quarantine can be a lot trickier in this setting.)

* A mark manifesting just before a typical school graduation would be considered extremely delayed. Which makes me wonder if the CMC will wind up going after the all-time record.

* As expected, San Dineighgo is an oceanside settled zone.

* Celestia can work very little in the way of healing magic. While this isn't the same 'verse as A Horse Called Sunbutt, I did want to explain how both versions handle infections: they literally burn them out -- on a very small scale.

* One of the themes which seems to run across all the Princesses is this: the more power you have, the more you may become aware of just how very little you can truly do. Power can't always be applied in ways which will work -- or sometimes at all.

* 'Aspects' comes up again.

* Celestia openly admits that she's linked to Sun.

* Spells to manipulate luck exist, but are so closely tied to that very rare mark as make working them without it almost impossible.

* At some point in the past, Celestia performed a singular working in the name of saving a friend, something which only began when that pony died. She doesn't know if it worked. (There are hints scattered about as to what it was, but some are probably small ones. For such things, I'm generally the worst judge.) She may consider it as a personal level of blasphemy, especially since she's apparently never cast that spell twice.

* Luna can't control her own nightscape. She is capable of preventing other ponies from dreaming at all, at least short-term.

* So which would you prefer: Luna's frequent magic-expressed bursts of emotion or Celestia's all-out ventings?

* Within the Original Six, the bearer of Laughter was a stallion. (Yes, we are narrowing down to the sisters' specific Elements.)

* Celestia and Luna have expended their own single chance at the time travel spell, and it was done mutually.

* One of the biggest ones: the nature of the offer which was made to Luna, that which led to the Nightmare possessing her. She pretty much says it directly.

* And what I felt was this story's bomb:

"the damage, you know they're not at the point where they'll work on their own yet"

As far as the puzzle goes, that piece may be a corner.

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At some point in the past, Celestia performed a singular working in the name of saving a friend, something which only began when that pony died. She doesn't know if it worked.

I suspect the friend was Star Swirl the Bearded, who we know or suspect from Triptych (iirc) was exiled or imprisoned and left to die while in the grip of evil soul-eating magic. The spell evidently wasn't going to simply bring him back to life, but maybe it was supposed to purify his soul of the evil magics he had taken on, and reincarnate him as an innocent foal again. But it could be beyond Celestia's power to know if this reincarnation has already taken place, or if it ever will, or if the spell did anything at all.
And maybe it has happened, and it's Twilight, but Celestia can never know for sure.

* And what I felt was this story's bomb:
"the damage, you know they're not at the point where they'll work on their own yet"
As far as the puzzle goes, that piece may be a corner.

Interesting. I assumed they meant that the sudden disappearance of the (reluctant) immortal demigoddess would cause global political upheaval, and that the unruly herd-mentality ponies of the Triptych universe would all become the Flower Trio times a million when they realize she's gone. But that seems kind of obvious, not really a bomb or corner piece, so maybe I'm missing something
Perhaps the "damage" is something specific, and far bigger. Perhaps some great calamity in the past, involving the original six Bearers, ended up so tearing at the bonds of the universe that without Celestia or Luna to keep the natural cycle going, the laws of physics would wobble and tear the universe apart.