Primer
He can only deny himself the manifestation of a single subject.
In many ways, the working is a basic one, and so it does a single basic thing. The caster chooses something they do not wish to dream of, and the spell prevents that concept from reaching the nightscape. But -- he can choose one event. A single idea. One... memory.
He will have to speak of that, very soon, for it is part of the presentation. To, at least through speech, do something very close to reliving that night, when doing so becomes absolutely necessary. But he will not dream of it. He will not allow himself to truly return there and watch it all take place a second time. And if he were to become aware that it was but a dream, and nothing he could do would ever truly change anything...
The other nightly spell shields his dreams from intrusion. Admittedly, it has never been truly tested, and the one individual most likely to try and break through it would probably overwhelm that defense in a heartbeat. But the Princess of the Night knows nothing of his dreams, just as Luna remains unaware of hers. And yet he has wondered that if the first working should somehow fail, should he come to that moment again... if that would be enough to make the walls break from the inside.
He denies the subject from his nightscape, as he does every evening upon retiring to bed. But he has much on his mind, and he can block only one thing.
The dinner: he'd missed most of it. His most devoted had provided the excuse, and so nopony had asked too much of him when he'd finally come in during dessert. Even then, he hadn't had much time to offer, for she still needed him. The experiments were hasty, yes, and that concerned him. But there were only so many hours they could use before the meeting, too few, and yet -- they were seeing results. Her memory remained hazy, distorted, insisting on something which could not have happened, and as for the question -- well, there would be a time when he will ask that again. Perhaps when the dosage was just right, when she was as focused as she could be in her current state. She would look deep inside herself, and she would know.
She would find...
He knows what the true answer will be. What it has to be, for it is what has made everything possible. She will say yes: she must. And once that answer comes, the rest will follow.
So little time before it all comes together. Before they know whether control can be seized, or whether they must run. But in those dwindling hours, there remained time to collect information. So he had asked the Princess if he could spend a few more minutes with her. Continue their conversation, although hardly for the same duration. He knows that she did not speak of him to the Princess, and so that newest of alicorns suspects nothing of his part in the Great Work. But the Princess is some level of authority on magic and Magic alike, is always eager to speak of it, and perhaps the right question might bring him to her own ascension. To hear what had happened during a transformation triggered by the Elements, rather than reading what remained of Star Swirl's notes. It might give him insight into her condition. It could help, and do so before -- the other measure. The last hoofstep they could possibly take should Coordinator fail, and he has nowhere near as much confidence in the bureaucrat as that one has in himself.
But the Princess had turned him down.
Tired, she said. She was sorry, but -- she needed to rest up for the party. And she'd left.
Possible? Certainly. And he had no reason to believe the denial had come from any level of suspicion. But on her way out of the dining room (and she had been the first out), she had briefly glanced back at him, and her features had been... what had that expression been? Relief, that she would not be speaking with him again? Concern that he might have been about to follow? He is not sure. There was just something there, for the briefest of moments before she'd turned back.
He had not reacted, of course. At least no more so than he had when the unicorn had come out wearing one of her chaos pearls. And still... his eldest had briefly gazed at him, and the gaze from that one visible eye had been weighted with concern.
(Not the worst of options there. He knew what that gaze could do under other circumstances, and was the only pony in the world who understood the why.)
He'd spent a few seconds with his eldest, made that concerned look go away. Others were given to his most determined. But then it had been just him and Quiet -- and that had brought them to the bad news.
The earth pony had mailed a package.
Eastern Red Giant seeds: that was the claim, and Quiet had seen the bulge of apples within saddlebags during the children's game. It would be easy to check with the post office in the morning and confirm that the box had been airmailed to a Ponyville address. But even that could be a front, the written destination which told others to reroute things towards Canterlot. The apples were the excuse, the true intent was deeper within the parcel, and the Solar Princess might be informed within -- days? Hours? Even without a special express rate openly paid for, any agents placed into the postal system by the palace might speed things along...
Or perhaps it was merely seeds.
They had to be ready to run. Some of his scant time had been used in making preparations for that. He can only teleport himself, and... he cannot leave her. Not for long. That had been a problem from the start, especially during the very first days. Always going back until she had reached the point where she could take care of herself for a time, dropping in whenever he could after that, and now -- he cannot leave her. He will not.
Do they have enough time left for the meeting to even take place? Does he need the second measure before the first, as that might be their best chance to remove all chance of any Princess interference? Or would the forces of Solar and Lunar combined descend upon the castle while everypony was gathered there? Would everything be destroyed before he had the chance to explain himself, make them understand why the needful had been done?
And then back to her again. He always goes back, for she is all that is left.
He has much on his mind, and can deny only a single subject from appearing within his nightscape. The same subject, again and again. And so he slips into sleep, drops into the past and finds himself at a different day, reliving it once again with no knowledge that it is but a dream. He is there and then has become now.
The day (too-long night) of the Return: ask just about anypony and they will tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing at the moment they realized Sun was not being raised. Such things have a way of sticking in a pony's memory. For his part, he had just about missed the whole thing: there had been a birth in progress, one of those labors which stretch across multiple hours no matter what he or the mother could do (a colt, very healthy, exceptionally bright eyes) and so he'd spent the majority of the time used for the rediscovery of the Elements and salvation of a Princess in his delivery room. His first thought upon finally reaching a window again was that he'd completely lost track of time and the entire thing had taken them all the way past Sun-lowering. He'd ultimately caught up on current events just in time for them to become history, and remained more than a little embarrassed about it.
But there had been another day, a little over a year later. One during which the entire world did not know what was happening, for the signs hadn't had the time to fully spread and only a few would have recognized what they truly meant.
And on that day, he'd been in Canterlot.
"And thank you," the mare says. (He remembers the name of her filly: Frost Gate. Mothers tend to blend together, even the nobles who insisted on his services and paid for personal attendance at the birth.) "For my daughter." The smile follows that, and it is a weary one: the labor had not been easy, and the drugs which had kept most of the pain away were wearing off. "And for coming, and -- waiting."
She'd been two days late, and he hadn't been able to take even a short trip back because to leave would have been to cue the exact moment when the first contraction would begin. (Even for those trips when he could check in on her, it was something he had to be careful about: multiple short-range jumps, even to safe spaces with no recoil at the end, still required energy to enact, and it was possible to exhaust himself through too-frequent journeys.) "It's hardly under your control," he smiles, briefly glancing at her. "Under mine either, for that matter. And you did most of the work." His field gently moves the cleaning cloth around the newborn's horn, giving it that first polish so that the gleam of Sun coming through the window would reflect from Equestria's newest citizen. "I know it was a long labor, but ultimately, you brought her to Sun." He hadn't needed to use the chaos pearl, and the charged mass was doing nothing more than shifting unseen within his birthing garment.
"Even so," the mare replies in her vague, hazy voice, "I'm glad you were here. After what my own mother went through --"
He almost doesn't notice the pause at first: Frost has priority. But the silence stretches out, the cloth moves, the last bits of cap residue are removed from the newborn's horn, and the pink glint of sunlight shifts over a pale blue cone of something not quite bone --
-- he blinks.
Pink?
He looks up, turns his gaze towards the window. The same direction the mother is facing, and so they both find blue banished from the world.
Sun might have been behind one of the pink clouds: it's currently impossible to find it in the darkening sky, which is slowly deepening into something approaching purple. Or it too could have been banished from reality, with the light being produced by something else entirely. Controlled.
And he knows.
"That's odd," the mother says, tones fogged by the last of the drugs. "Do you think the pegasi are doing something?"
Which was when he hears (barely hears, with his own thoughts roaring in his ears) the sounds of confusion beginning to arise from the ponies on the street outside.
He starts to turn towards her again. Stops. Goes back to the window. His field wavers, and the cloth dips, sways, nearly drops out.
He cannot focus. There are thoughts which should be coming. Directions to be followed, steps which can be taken, and he can think of none of them, not for more than the briefest fraction of a moment before the thoughts themselves break apart, shredded by the whirlwind rising inside him. Only two words remain, and that is because they form the bulk of the storm. They batter him from within, send jolts into spine and muscles, direct him to run.
"Take..." It is the first utterance to emerge. He doesn't know how long it took. In many ways, the time doesn't matter. Within moments, nothing may matter at all. "...take her." His field exerts, surrounds the newborn --
-- no. He can see the wavering of the borders, something very close to sparks threatening to spray from the edges. He will not trust Frost's safety to his fear, and so he gently carries her by the nape of her neck, teeth gripping in such a way as to only lift and never hurt. He wasn't even aware he knew how to do that, but... there are many things which can be aspects of a mark.
The filly is deposited next to her mother.
"Doctor?" the confused mare says. She doesn't understand. She doesn't know, and he wishes he possessed the blessing of that ignorance.
"You should be with her," he tells the mother. "For as long as you can."
And then he leaves the hospital room, hooves skidding across a hallway which is designed to let ponies move through it in a hurry -- no, it's not the floor, his legs are slipping, but he has to get away from mother and child, he has to get away from everypony because when it happens, when He comes...
There are ponies staring at him as he rushes by. They don't know. There are perhaps three ponies in the world who fully understand what is taking place, and he has no way of knowing what's happened to the other two. They might be fighting this, even now. But
it takes six, they need six and they're not two of those six any more, Pinkie, Fluttershy, He's going to go after them, He has to, it'll be one of the first things He does and then He'll
Does he go to them? Can he warn them? Has the palace already summoned them, the only hope brought to bear? Or would he doom them by going there first, because He may practice guilt by association. It might be funnier that way.
He can't be sure where they are. In Ponyville? Canterlot? In transit? Already dead?
He is running. But it is not because there is somewhere he can gallop to. There is nowhere he can hide from Him. He is running because he should not be near any other ponies when it finally happens.
Not even her.
It hurts him. To think of her, waiting for him to return, spending lonely days within her place before finally venturing down the passage. If she has days: if not guilt by association, then guilt by his own intent and Great Work, especially should He wring forth a location amidst the screams. He wants to spend the last moments with her, to begin the process of teleporting home, but if He comes and finds them together...
He wants to go home. He cannot. He can only run, try to think of a place he can go where no others will be there to suffer his pains. Try to think at all. But it is as if his brain is wrestling with itself, thoughts spinning away in every direction, and the only words which stay with him come from the truth he cannot deny.
It couldn't happen. It was never supposed to happen. It has happened.
The same two words pound within his soul, over and over.
He's free.
And soon, He will happen.
So he runs, and fragments of memory briefly fuse into something coherent. He thinks of her, why it all happened, and wonders what the world will be when she emerges. He thinks of everything he did, and the price about to be paid. A thousand tortures weave through his mind and are broken by a million silent screams. He runs --
-- and in the reality of memory, the sky had turned blue.
Hours. (It will be a long time before he can force himself to discover just how many had passed.) Hours, and then the sky is blue again -- but he does not take it as a sign of true safety, for he has read Star Swirl's notes and knows that there were times when that power was focused elsewhere and the world briefly exerted itself again. Instead, he waits for a full day (because it was rare for things to hold that long in a land known only as Eris) before he ventures out and discovers that the world is intact enough for newspapers to print, and it takes more than a few of them before he can start to piece together any portion of truth for what might have happened. In the end, his own provide the factual account. And after another year...
Freed. Recaptured. And then released, only to be bound by a new kind of chain. He does not learn about the last part until some time after it happens. And when he does, he realizes the truth: He does not remember. The Elements had not created lifeless stone: there was a core remaining, something he had worked so hard to first sense and then use. But whatever was left must not have been capable of true thought or memory, and the times he almost felt that there was some kind of emotional resonance coming from the statue during those times of pulling were simply his own imagination trying to force a false regret upon him.
He didn't remember. He didn't know anything had ever happened at all.
There were still problems connected to His freedom, of course: the chaos pearls would not charge themselves, and the source could not be approached. It had meant an ever-dwindling resource, even with Coordinator's increased efforts providing more money to be directed into a desperate search. But he might have had nearly all of them by then, certainly those which could be found in Equestria, and to push the hunt further beyond the borders... fresh risks, new costs, and an interesting set of account books.
But He didn't remember.
It was safe.
The waking self knows that. But in the nightscape, the blue does not return. The sky darkens, twists as the world distorts around him and the air begins to solidify into something like a cage while his blood surges and muscles threaten to turn inside-out. In dream, he simply runs.
And there is nowhere he can run to.
A pony's nose is not as sensitive as it could be -- but there's something about a dragon's breath which burns its way into just about every sapient's olfactory senses, and Twilight winced as the accompanying green flash pressed against closed eyelids.
She slowly forced herself into a sitting position, got her eyes open just in time to see Spike unfurling the scroll.
"Who?" It wasn't exactly polite, but she wasn't quite fully awake yet -- and shouldn't have been: a quick glance towards the balcony found Sun just barely beginning to lighten the sky.
Her little brother was already reading. "Trixie," he sighed.
"And?" Until the words got to stretch themselves out on a river of wake-up juice, some of her speeches were going to be a little short.
"She's a little outside Trottingham," Spike told her. "It could be a lot worse, Twilight: she's on the right coast, southeast of us. But it would take her at least two days to get here, probably longer. She's willing to come, and I think she's a little worried about why you'd want her to, but... at least two days, Twilight. And that's if she abandons the caravan."
Memories slowly shifted forward, emerging from the fog of half-sleep, and she softly groaned. That was in the first letter, wasn't it? Yes, it had been: 'the rest of my stay in Trottingham.' But Twilight had been doing a lot, thinking about so much, and that minor detail had slipped...
I have to be more careful. I can't make mistakes like that. This one may have been harmless, but if I miss something more important...
"What do you want to tell her?" Spike asked, and waited.
That thought came a little more quickly. "To come, as fast as she can." She took a deep breath, forced some more words into something resembling a proper sentence. "We can use a Royal Voucher to cover the money she'll be losing: I'll tell the Princess I hired her as a consultant after it's finally over. But..." She winced. "...I don't even know where we can meet her. We may not be in the castle by then, she'd need an excuse for showing up -- actually, just being a traveling performer is probably enough of an excuse -- but if we're back in the wild zone, then we'll have to coordinate with letter after letter just so we don't miss each other..."
"We've got vials left," he assured her, then put the recently-arrived missive down before reaching for a fresh scroll.
Twilight managed a nod, and wondered if they had enough. "Did anything else come in?" He shook his head. So we're still waiting on Cadance. I hope that arrives soon. I hope she answers... "Okay. Let me think about what to say, and we'll get the next one to Trixie. After that, I need breakfast. Wake-up juice. Lots of it. And then..."
He watched her for a few seconds, green eyes patient.
She sighed. "I've got to get out there. I have to search. And you'd better come with me, Spike, because if Cadance sends anything back --" and could the youngest
second youngest
alicorn manage the trick at all? "-- I'll need to see it immediately." The nod was an understanding one. "So we'll both have breakfast, and after that... I think we need to stop at the guest cottage."
The castle was... busy.
Sun was barely up, and the servants had beaten Sun to it. Ponies seemed to be swarming through the hallways. The floors were being cleaned. Every last piece of furniture was in the process of being dusted, and that was going to take a while. Buntings were being hung, and Twilight did her best not to pay too much attention to the colors. The party was hours away and yet had already found a way to arrive, as trays of food were kept (barely) level within field bubbles, Softtread was spotted reciting the pronunciation of a particularly tricky name, and everypony seemed to just about lose Twilight in the midst of a rather organized sort of chaos. It actually made it easy to raid the kitchen, at least once the panicked cook finished turning and recognized the exact pony who wasn't going to snatch an appetizer before its time, by order. (Calming the cook down after she'd cut herself off in mid-scream took a while.) And after that, they managed to make their way out, although that meant fighting against the tide to the point where Twilight briefly considered trying to use the upper portion of the hallways, right before realizing that entering a Rainbow state of mind would probably leave a series of empty food domes in her wake.
It wasn't so much sneaking out as discovering that she just wasn't that important right now, mostly because she was going to be Much More Important later. Nopony was very concerned about what a Princess was currently doing because they all had to prepare for said Princess -- along with guests, and food, and buntings and manners and titles and everything. It was a reminder for one of the smallest lessons taught by the mirror pool: that there could be a certain amount of stress associated with a party planner's mark, and she received another refresher when the cottage's front door flew open three hoofsteps before the siblings got there.
"Do you need me right now?" Pinkie quickly asked. "Is it anything important? Because I sort of have this twitching in my right shoulder and it says somepony else needs me. Lots of somepony elses. Really badly. Even really really badly. So if it's anything important, I'm here and I'll go with you, anything you need, Twilight, but if it isn't, then..."
The tentative plan had been to try and search for her using earth pony feel. Twilight still wasn't entirely sure how that was going to work, or if it even could. And should they somehow find her, Pinkie was one of the ponies she seemed to be a little more comfortable around, and vice-versa...
...but she can't feel. Applejack is going to be doing -- it... whatever 'it' turns out to be -- and Pinkie can't. I don't want to remind her of that the whole time.
Twilight briefly considered all the things she'd seen happening in the castle, the low-level miasma of stress filling the air. Then she remembered all the things she'd warned Quiet about.
"It's their party, Pinkie."
The baker quickly nodded.
"And their way of throwing it. Their style."
Again, even faster.
"So no streamers."
The slightly chubby face immediately took on an expression of mild insult.
"Twilight."
"...what?"
"It's my mark. I know when things are appropriate! I understand what they're trying to put together! They just need a little help for the last minute! And I know it's really the last hours, but when you're in them, every one is the last minute all by themselves. And together. It's actually kind of funny how that works. So if you don't need me --?"
Twilight, blushing with the embarrassment of somepony who'd just questioned a mark, thought about it.
"Go." But they still needed somepony she was a little more comfortable around, just in case. "But send out Fluttershy?"
"Okey-dokey-loki!" A pink blur went past Twilight on the right. "I'll get her!"
"Thank --"
And at the moment before that blur was out of earshot, "-- and I promise, it'll only be the tasteful streamers!"
And then it was the four of them, trotting towards the orchard. (Well, three trotting and one riding: Spike had been granted a place on Applejack's back, as she had the easiest time taking his weight over a long stretch.)
They moved under deep grey sky, and it was grey only because black was still being arranged. It was possible to watch the clouds thickening and, at least until they got some distance away from the castle, it was also possible to occasionally catch a glimpse of the pegasi who were arranging the color shift. It made travel difficult, as they now had to worry about being spotted from overhead: the local weather team was busy setting up the final elements of the coming storm, and it put most of their airborne focus on the sky -- but it didn't mean they might not glance down now and again.
Twilight wished she was better with illusions, anything which would help to conceal, but... she could mostly reproduce the image of something she'd seen and had an exceptionally clear memory of, and it tended to end up as something translucent. It took art to render illusions into something which could pass for reality. Rarity could manage animations, at least after she'd had a lot of quiet time to plan and been granted a confined space to work in, added to total concentration: it added something to some of the fashion shows. One pony could make a plush spider appear to have turned into the genuine horrifying article, and Twilight had never managed to ask Luna how she'd done it. (It had taken a few shaken nights before Twilight had even realized that illusion had been the category of magic in play.) To place the group under camouflage could not be managed, and rendering them truly invisible was effectively impossible. They simply stayed under the canopy of color-shifting dying leaves and checked the sky as often as they could.
The humidity had increased to the point where it felt as if they were breathing liquid more than air. The temperature had dipped, and there was a chill wind blasting that moisture into their fur. Spike, who didn't deal with the cold all that well, was starting to blow little gusts of flame over his hands, staying warm. The others just went through their own form of Weather Bureau arranged misery.
"When do you think it'll hit?" Twilight asked Fluttershy.
The pegasus blinked. "...the schedule said about an hour before the party starts, and then it goes all night, Twilight. It'll be stopped about an hour before Sun is raised."
Which brought up a question. "Can you feel that, though? Can you just look at the clouds and know when the storm will start?"
The visible eye slowly closed as the caretaker's trotting pace dropped . "...no. I can't."
"Oh. So that's not part of pegasus feel --"
"-- no," Fluttershy softly said. "That's... not it. I meant I can't. Other pegasi could. I just don't... my..." Her head dipped, and then the right eye opened again as her gaze sadly, slightly raised. "...we don't all have the same level of feel, Twilight. I'm just... not very good at it. At -- any of it. You remember the water transfer, and how hard I worked to get my speed up. How... little all that work did. And I'd tried before, but I still thought that this time, if it was with everypony else, that it might help and nopony would laugh..." A deep breath. "There are unicorns who can't lift much. And... there's me. There's always been me. My parents were saving for me to attend weather college before I was born, because they thought I'd be like them, and I... my mark brought me to the cottage. They didn't understand that. Sometimes I think they still don't..."
All four yellow legs stopped. The wings, pressed against her sides as they so often were, trembled. And the others stopped.
"Fluttershy?" I hurt her, I keep hurting her without meaning to, why do my words always --
"We can wait, sugarcube," Applejack quietly offered. "If you need a minute."
"...no," Fluttershy told them. "Because my parents... love me. They loved me enough to let me have that college fund to buy the cottage with, even if they didn't understand why I wanted to live on the ground. They don't understand me, but... they love me. They always have, enough to let me -- be me. There are pegasi who don't understand, who think I'm weird, who call me a freak, sing about how I can 'hardly fly'... but my parents love me. And I have friends who accept me. Pony friends. And Doctor Gentle, who never thought I was weird, who always tried to... bring me back when things got bad, if he was there. I'll never be what everypony else thinks is normal. But I'll always be me. I think... that's good enough."
Her head came up a little more.
"...and when I forget... you're here."
The sounds of animals around them: birds moving through the trees, squirrels preparing their own shelters for the storm. Perhaps they sensed the presence of mark and talent. And if so, they allowed the ponies their privacy.
"...I'm not the pony I used to be, before Twilight got off the air carriage" Fluttershy finished. "Not completely. I don't think any of us are. I like me a little more now." She looked at Spike. "I'm -- glad you were with her. To start everything."
"Um..." Spike really wasn't equipped for blushing: he technically could, but it was hard to get a glimpse of the skin under the scales. At most, there might be a rising wave of heat -- which, given the humidity in the air, was actually somewhat visible. "...I didn't exactly plan that..."
"...I'm glad anyway," Fluttershy smiled. "Let's go."
Applejack took a slow breath, nodded. "Still not sure what y'want me to do here, Twi. We've got some privacy --" an automatic glance up "-- if you want to explain in a little more detail."
"She was using magic at the orchard," Twilight eventually said: part of her really wanted to go back to what Fluttershy had been talking about, and even more wanted to take a moment for the accompanying nuzzle. "Earth pony magic. And it hasn't been that long. So her --" what was the proper vocabulary here? "-- feel? Signature?"
"Echo," Applejack told them. "Her echo should be there. And you want me to listen in, get a better idea of her song, and then listen around to see if it's anywhere else? Like if she used her magic while she was running away?" Twilight nodded. "I can try, Twilight. I already heard her the once at the ravine, even if I didn't know it was her. And it was..." She frowned, and the blonde tail twitched. "Weird. It was weird."
The trot resumed, and it took a few hoofsteps before anypony tried to ask: Spike finally took the lead. "Weird how?"
"It's hard to describe," Applejack replied. "I'm not used to describing it, and -- I was reeling, outside and in. The..." and it still took a moment to bring the next word out "...teleport did that. So I couldn't be sure of what I was hearing, once my hearing came back. It was loud. Louder than anything I've ever heard -- but now we know that's just her. And --" She abruptly stopped, words and pace: Spike almost grabbed for her mane to steady himself. "This is where she signaled you."
Twilight, some distance back and lacking a good view, paused at the sounds of absolute certainty. "You heard her echo?"
"Wasn't listening for that just yet," was the reply. "I saw your signature."
The former unicorn blinked. "You saw my --"
"-- y'leave a pretty distinctive groove."
"...oh."
"Always meant to ask how you got all the circles that close to a true one," Applejack shrugged. "Ain't like you were measuring things out. Okay. Give me a second here..."
The others trotted up just in time to see the green eyes close. The muscular torso shifted as several deep breaths were taken, but nothing else moved. There was a pony, the greying world, and a distinct ongoing lack of hat. To Twilight, it looked like nothing so much as a caster centering herself just before a major working.
"...yeah," Applejack said, mostly to herself, and frowned. "This is... maybe it wasn't just the teleport."
"I don't understand," Twilight immediately said. "What are you hearing?"
The farmer's eyes remained closed. "Remember what I said back at the lake, when we found the snitcher? It's still like that."
"...loud?" Fluttershy tried.
"A little. Not too bad. Like somepony speaking up when they don't have to, but not shouting. She's trying to hold back, control her volume, and -- maybe she could even get there," Applejack slowly said. "But that ain't it. When we were in the ravine, I thought it had been a lot of ponies asking at once, and all for the same thing. And like I said, I've never been near earthworks that big. So all the echoes blended into one big note. But now she's trying to be quieter. And... there's something off about her magic." A small nod, mostly to herself. "That's the only word I've got for it. Off. Like... there's something there which shouldn't be. Something that's part of the magic, something you can't get out..."
Twilight blinked. "It was like that when she cast as a unicorn," she quietly added. "It felt like something was wrong..."
"Maybe that's from the pain?" Spike proposed.
"That comes through in the resonance," Twilight answered, slowly shaking her head. "It's... not a good thing to feel, Spike. This was separate." Something -- other.
"...and Rainbow said the residue wasn't right," Fluttershy half-whispered. "So whatever's wrong, it's wrong for all three aspects."
"But that ain't the whole of it," Applejack told them. "Because at the ravine, I thought there had been a whole orchestra of ponies, with the notes blending together, and part of that was because she was shouting. I still can't figure out exactly what she said. But here, where she's being quieter, where she's trying..." Another deep, slow breath. "Give me a second here. I -- don't talk about this. Never had a reason to talk about it, and I never thought I'd be talking about it with --" more awkwardly "-- it's like Rainbow said. I have to find the words..."
Spike bent low, head dipping towards her mane. Twilight and Fluttershy approached a little more: one hoofstep each. But they all gave their friend the time she needed, and after a minute had passed, she nodded.
"Okay," Applejack said, her eyes still closed. "Have you ever been to a concert? A big one, with a chorus, with lots of ponies playing and singing at the same time?" (Only Spike nodded, and Twilight stared at him in shock.) "And they're all trying to hit the same note, to make the song work. If they do it right, it'll sound like they made it -- but if you listen close, or you've got a talent like Lyra's and can pick it up naturally, you'll hear that every instrument hits that note a little differently. Woodwinds ain't strings. Brass stuff aren't voices. They all get there in their own way. Same note, but with a lot of little sounds inside it trying to make it that way."
"An illusion created in sound," Twilight quietly offered.
"Yeah," Applejack replied. "I can go with that. So right here, where she brought the rocks up and then dropped them again... I can hear her echoes. And since I don't have the teleport recovery to deal with, I'd know her voice now if I heard it again. But she's being quieter here, keeping it down, and... it's just her voice. That's what it should be: one voice asking a couple of questions. But when I listen... there's sounds inside it. She's talking, singing in truespeech, but at the same time... there's something lower than whispers, more quiet than a murmur. Almost impossible to hear -- but I'm listening deep. It's one note -- but there's a central singer, and it almost feels like there's a chorus. Like there's more than one voice..."
And Twilight, who had labored so hard to retain every last moment of her nightmare, thought about dream-shadows coating the bottom of her hooves. It took nearly everything she had to repress most of the shudder.
The farmer sighed. "It's a nice main voice, for whatever that's worth," she concluded. "She's a pretty good singer."
"Essence." And the word had come from Spike.
Applejack's eyes opened, and so she got to join the three-way stare, even as Twilight's end of the effort steadily descended into horror.
Softly, carefully, the little dragon forced himself to go on. "You were all talking about it, on the way to the thaumaturgy shop. About the Amulet. And how she might have gotten a lot of unicorn essence, and pegasus essence with earth pony essence added to that, and tried to -- put it inside herself. Trixie wrote about how the Amulet took on an aspect of its own, from all the resonance... would essence have a voice?"
They stood under grey sky, the weight of humidity and horror pressing down upon them.
"Spike," Twilight breathed, "if that's any part of --"
"-- shut up!"
It had been a hiss, low-pitched and all the more urgent for the near-silence of the utterance. It froze ears, stopped words.
"Applejack?"
The farmer's ears rotated.
"Somepony just got here," she whispered. "We're being followed."
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That magic... her magic was stolen, wasn't it? By those pearls. Stolen away from children, who'll never know it's touch... And for what?
More interestingly... what happened to past Discord? I'm pretty sure his memories are intact.
This was cool. Loving the exploration of earth pony magic and seeing Applejack work in front of her friends was really interesting. Dr. Gentle's dream was pretty informative and I liked the look back at Discord's return and how pony society views it culturally like a national shock. Makes sense.
Kinda confused about AJ sensing Twi's signature though, did she learn to shout instinctively like how she flew for the first time or it is more mundane the scorch-marks after a hasty teleport?
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She's looking at the groove Twilight paced into the dirt.
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The most mundane option available!
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Sure sounds like it. Relevant quote from ch. 4:
Along with the reminder that Discord temporarily stole their magic in his first appearance, it seems like the pearls were charged from his magic while he was imprisoned, used to syphon off the foals with the intent of donating it to one individual and now she's been tainted with chaos magic in the process...
Which I suppose is responsible for the cycling and why the Elements were banned under pretense of being more harm than good. Also, probably something that'd potentially be a good idea to remove.
As for Discord's memories, the start of ch. 3 makes it sound like he figured out what was going on by tracking down traces of his own magic. Whether that's because he noticed it floating around where he didn't put it or because he remembers it being stolen and was actively looking I don't know, but in either case he presumably knows what happened now and is understandably ticked off about it.
I don't know if that's all super obvious/already known/totally wrong (I haven't read all the comments for this story and it's been going on for a while), but spoiler tags just in case.
Edit:
A bit of speculation:
All three tribes have all three types of magic innately, but in varying proportion depending on tribe with one overwhelmingly dominant. Remove Fluttershy's pegasus magic and now earth is dominant, for instance. That'd explain the transtribal characteristics and where the apparent extra essence is coming from.
Lots of interesting titbits. As promised, it went back to the beginning and then to the end of the middle followed by the beginning of the end.
The chaos pearls are clearly the mechanism linked to both her and perculiar nature of Pinkie Pie's and Fluttershy's shifted magic and feel. If we assume that magic follows some law of conversation the question arises what was the source of their shifted magic? We know that there was one before Fluttershy. The very first. From what we know however it was not a success and the Exception was discovered in the intervening period.
That seems to imply that the chaos pearls can change magic but don't explain where the additional essences came from that appear to be boosting her. The other obvious idea is that it is Discord's magic but that doesn't seem to gel with Trixie's information about Starswirl which Gentle knows about and would be an obvious source of inspiration.
Which leads to the idea that the source of her magic may be the essence of the failures cycled chaotically by Discord's power stolen into the chaos pearls. The horrifying thought that then arrises is that what if some of the failures were allowed or even encouraged to occur. What taint is there to the essence and to what extent does Gentle even know what he has done?
Sometimes the worst monsters are the ones believe that they serve a higher cause; that everything and anything is justified in service of the cause.
The end is nigh!
Ah. So Gentle's been stealing magic from all of his foals. Interesting just how educated into Discord he is, though I guess Star Swirl' s notes account for some of it.
"Bunting were being hung"
"was"?
...Ack! The chapter ends there? :D
Well, seems like I'm not the only one to figure out why Twilight couldn't duplicate Dr. Gentle's Exception He used a Chaos Gem to cheat. Although, Twilight has enough exposure to Discord's magic, I'm a little surprised she didn't recognize it.
However, IMO they got it bass ackward He didn't steal from the foals. He stole from Discord & gave to the foals. Or, perhaps, both the gems & Discord tap into the same power source. It explains why Pinkie & Fluttershy both have unusual powers. It's their exposure to Chaos magic. It's like something is exposed to a radiation source & becomes radioactive. They have a tiny piece of Discord's power, Pinkie more than Fluttershy
Can't wait for the next installment, to learn if my WAG is right.
Plus, I've known for a long time What Fluttershy is going to remove is a Cutie Mark. I'd say "when?" is "as close to the top of the Pegasus cycle as possible" That much is obvious.
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Estee's already all but said that the very idea would be considered the height of blasphemy, & is nearly unthinkable, let alone something which is likely to even occur to any of the group. I think she may get creative with it, & remove Triptych's inability to control her shifting, or maybe just the pain of such.
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Well, we shall see. As for Dr. Gentle, IMO I don't think he'd risk hurting the foals by draining their magic. I think he got the magic from their mothers. Still, with both Fluttershy & Pinkie having weak magic, maybe he did. I thought it was because they were defective & would have died & so were weakly connected to the magic field. I still say I'm a little surprised Twilight didn't recognize Chaos magic when she saw it & a LOT surprised the Dr's. wife isn't Triptych
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Just because it's taboo doesn't rule it out. She may remove the entire thing or choose a different cycle; She was an Earth pony originally born of unicorn parents.
And doesn't that raise questions? How on Earth did he shield her dreams on an apparently permanent basis? Do I even want to know? Or is it just a matter of one dreamer in a vast population and a reader jumping to unpleasant conclusions?
Faith can be a great and terrible thing for the believer, but reality cares nothing about how we believe it should be. The good doctor cannot accept that. It may break him, if it hasn't already. It's already broken somepony else.
Star Swirl's notes? I get the feeling that that wasn't just a snitcher...
Huh. It may not have been a matter of Discord not remembering, but him not knowing where the drain was coming from, or just putting his slow murderers lower on the priority list than the Element Bearers. He might have gone after Gentle after that chocolate milk of glass. Or maybe he just would've let his chaos consume his tormentors, whoever and wherever they were. Who can say with him? (Well, Discord himself, of course, and we may yet hear from him on the matter.)
Ah, irony.
Isn't that an interesting typography choice?
I suppose that only works when she's helping to plan the party, rather than merely attending it.
Spike's conclusion is a logical one. He just hasn't put together all the pieces yet. After all, why extract from so many in such an obvious way when there was a single font that nopony cared about?
Very appropriate to have a storm brewing overhead. As you said in that blog, something major is brewing. Eagerly looking forward to when it all comes down.
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Oh! That Ch.4 quote... He singles them out! Pinkie Pie & Fluttershy... Not lumping them in with Earth Pony and Pegasus...
How does that prove his memories returning though?
Yeesh, you'd think the fact that he'd had to put Earth Pony stuff inside her too would have clued him in to the possibility of what she's saying not being impossible. Then again, even Twilight had a hard time believing it.
How much of that essence would be from other ponies, and how much of it would be from Discord?
Thanks for the update.
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It doesn't. I meant that as evidence that their proper magic is simply gone rather than them being infused with chaos magic as seems to be the other popular option, especially with the references to him taking wings/horns in the season two opener in the same chapter. Though I suppose it could still be read the other way.
The first scene of ch. 3 (rather than ch. 4 where the quote was from) seems to be Discord discovering just what happened and following the trail of chaos magic left behind, which would mean he knows someone took it - whether he remembers it being taken or discovered it after the fact. I was just pointing out that it's ultimately irrelevant if he remembers or learned what happened just before the mission started, because he definitely knows exactly what's been going on in either case.
8112330 Why the Pegasus cycle? She was obviously an Earth Pony before the transformation. If they were going to revert her back to normal shouldn't they do her original race?
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ICR where, but at one point Fluttershy makes the point she doesn't recognize some common critter & so was likely a Pegasus, one of the ones that didn't get down to the ground much (if any). As for removing Cutie Marks being against their principles, I take the view that removing the new Cutie Mark will let her original one return. Like with Fluttershy in Bats, although S4 hasn't happened yet & may not ever
8112021 - I think that's more or less what happened. Every time he used a Chaos pearl, he exchanged something, melded things or fused magic together in weird ways. Not all of the children are 'altered', I actually doubt most of them are, but there are some that are pretty clearly different from the norm.
Pinkie Pie - Completely deaf to normal earth pony magic, though she clearly has abilities which seem more in line with either Unicorns or Discord himself. Her family history would probably have had her be a very powerful earth pony, but she's got none of it. Instead, she has all of her pinkie powers.
Flutter Shy - Next to no pegasi magic. Enough to fly, barely, but that's about it. Instead she can speak with animals and communicate with them in ways normally only certain types of Earth Pony can manage. Most animal managers do seem to come from earth pony stock, but I don't know if any of them can compare.
Ratchette - Pegasi who can fly, though we don't know if she has any actual loss of pegasi abilities, but she has a talent and feel that's almost unicorn. A device repair-pony, only because she can't create actual 'workings'.
Snowflake - Damaged wings, still able to fly and super strong. We know he's one of Gentle's but that's about all we know.
I did a little back reading and I think I've changed my mind about the foals' magic being stolen. The people arguing that they're being given a piece of Discord's power are right - sort of. I think their innate magic is being displaced by chaos magic.
The Exception works in a similar manner to the Amulet.
I think the doctor is using Gromway's Combiner to link himself to the foal. His mark allows him just enough interaction to get the spell off. Not enough to actually manipulate the foal's position, but enough to create a link, much like Rarity's allowed her to sense the original shiftstone in the river when Twilight was unable to sense it at all.
Then, he uses the foal's magic by proxy to move it within the womb... which he can do because the foal's field is *internal* to the womb instead of external - it's not violating differentiation at all at that point. Which is the "twist" in the field Twilight notices, but can't figure out when observing him - it's the foal's magic doing the work, not his. There's a discontinuity where the fields meld.
Which also explains the doctor's odd reaction when Twilight brings the topic up...
Then, he harvests the essence from the foal, which only works in some cases because:
The foal's essence gets deposited into the pearl. The pearl, being full to maximum already, then displaces the chaos magic back into the foal. The process weakens the foal, but because the essence is replaced, the foal lives.
So the net result is a foal who would've died survives, but with chaos magic they can't properly use instead of their proper magic, and a pearl filled with tribal magic (though, perhaps, not entirely devoid of chaos magic?). Stick a dozen or so on the modified snitcher, then use that to push all that magic into the pony wearing it. Except you have to be careful about when you do it, because the subject would normally fail to absorb it. Exceeept....
Mark manifestation. When the body is amenable to a surge of new magic. When that magic can be directed to grant specific abilities. So if you can get the subject in the frame of mind where they believe their destiny is to be an alicorn and feed them enough of the right magic to make that viable...
And similarly, all that passive chaos magic in ponies like Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie that they weren't able to use? Mark manifestation allows them to put it to *use* - granting them abnormally strong and rare special talents in lieu of their usual tribal magic that doesn't necessarily match their bodies.
Except...
So if your focus is on the *change* in the subject and there's some residual chaos magic in the modified snitcher involved you get...
Iunno. Does that make sense to anyone else?
I'm so excited for this fic to approach its conclusion, and this chapter just made my mouth water all the more. It's especially exciting to wait and see if my suspicions about the plot will be correct. With a story like this, guessing what the resolutions to the mysteries are is half of the fun - either you guess right and can give yourself a pat on the back, or you can marvel that the story managed to surprise you. Both are fun.
With being so close to the major revelations, I want to put my own guesses down so I can sort my thoughts and see if I got it right later:
I suspect that her cutie mark would originally have been something related to art. That's why the title of the story and chapters are art related. Also, when Dr. Gentle returns to his burnt down house and they show him the part that they found shielded by a shield they had never seen before, they talk about something beneath the shield. Several chapters later, she mentions returning to her rooms and her memories being out of reach, presumably because of that shield. Then later, she speaks of creating a memory and the difficulty of getting all the details right after fact. I think she was painting a scene she had just experienced, that she calls pictures memories. The pictures she made in the past are under the shield and partially visible to anyone standing at the entrance to her hiding place. She does it again after the incident at the falls, creating a memory and remembering a memory she had created shortly before her botched ascension, suspecting that might have interfered with the process. She always felt making a memory was easy and natural, which seems to point towards something mark related. She also notes how the physical twitches caused by her pain makes the process more difficult and causes her to make more errors, which would also fit the painting process.
I'm reasonably sure that Gentle lost his wife while he delivered her foal. That's why Coordinator mentions 'something she did' and that she shouldn't exist, and that's why the idea of a mother dying in childbirth upsets Gentle so much and I think that's why he started the great work. It's less about gaining power with the help of an alicorn, or even about transforming earth ponies for him; he thinks that alicorns can tap into the shadowlands and he wants to use that to reconnect with his dead wife. He's using his own daughter (her, the first birth before his eldest, Fluttershy, and the one 'responsible' for his wife's death) to establish that connection. That's why he flips his shit while talking to Twilight too, he thinks she's holding out on him, lying to him about being able to feel the dead. It ties into the side stories written in this verse too, about ponies needing a connection to their lost loved ones, like with the stars in the cutie mark registry story. I think it's also because of what's being told in other stories of what Celestia did to bring Star Swirl back from the dead - Gentle has researched Star Swirl and maybe read about that, which is where he got the idea that alicorns can reach into the shadowlands. It's about belief, about having something to hold on to.
When Trixie writes Twilight, she explains why Star Swirl didn't put the essence he harvested into himself. That taking new essence in would push some of the existing essence out - a displacement. I think Gentle found this out too when he researched Star Swirl and this is what happens when Gentle uses a chaos pearl during a birth. While attending a birth, Twilight describes Gentle's magic as forming a tunnel with energy rushing through at one point. I think Gentle uses the chaos pearls to deliberately create such an essence displacement in order to get ponies of one race with the magic of another. Trixie mentions that the notes she found suggest ways around the displacement but it needs proper timing, so I think he did this in order to fully transform his daughter into an alicorn, he used the foals to study how to work around the displacement and get more essence than usual into a foal, to get her to accept all the essence she needed for a full transformation. The foals were basically experiments he did in order to get closer to his goal.
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I think his wife was the first pony he harvested essence from, thinking that he could donate it to her foal to keep some part of her. It's worth noting that Star Swirl apparently started harvesting essence from the dead.
8113181
It seems plausible to me.
I forget, if teleportation relays are a thing... Getting a lot of teleporters together to extend the teleportation range...
Something like this, perhaps:
Teleport the group and then after each teleport, dropping the tired teleporters, and the rest teleport further until they either get to their destination, or at least are closer than before....
There are military teleporters that Trixie could use, if she informed Celestia about the issue. I think... Trixie knows where Twilight is, unlike everyone else outside the Mission...
8113181
That suggests that the pearl is actually necessary to the Differentiation Exception, which makes a lot more sense from a narrative perspective: firstly, It's always been implied that there was some deeper mystery surrounding the spell, and having its discovery linked to the Great Work seems like the kind of twist that it could have been building up to. Otherwise it's just a case of Dr Gentle being cleverer than Twilight, rather than him knowing things that are relevant to the plot. Secondly, it gives Gentle's actions slightly more of a moral grounding, both to the characters and the readers. If he's been harvesting essence purely for selfish reasons then he's irredeemable, but if using the pearls was necessary then he at least has enough of a defence to avoid immediate condemnation to hell.
*glances at most recent comments*
We have entered -- THE BLACKOUT ZONE.
8113784
Minor objection in that I wasn't going for "cleverer," so much as his mark granting him abilities that aren't available to others. An ability enabled by his specific mark and motivation from his particular situation rather than simply something anyone could do if they were smart enough and the particulars being hidden for nefarious means.
Good points, though - it would be much more narratively compelling if the pearls were a fixed requirement enabling the exception to work at all. I wasn't able to come up with anything that sounded like a reasonable explanation for what they'd be necessary *for*. It seems pretty certain that in addition to any use in the actual process the pearls are definitely being used to store essence from the foals, at least. The exact purpose of the chaos magic I'm fuzzier on. Just a power boost seems silly when two or more unicorns could join fields to do the same thing, for instance. Thinking a bit more, maybe just a tweak like... control over the foal's magic is a side effect of the harvesting process rather than something that can be done directly? That would make doing so a necessary step to save the foal. Then the chaos magic is used as a replacement to prevent them from dying as a result of the harvesting? That makes the whole thing a little more morally grey, I think.
Maybe that's all getting a bit too convoluted or making the pearls too secondary to the process. I definitely feel like all the pieces to figure it out are there, I'm just not sure if they're fitting together exactly right.
Any other ideas?
I'd forgotten that Discord had kicked things off. Looking forward to where this goes
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I don't think that's true, for two reasons. One, Gentle mentions when he discusses magic that he came into magic studies only after he had already finished school and started his current profession, after he already discovered the exception. Two, when Twilight researches his life in the library, she notices that there's a break in his life. Initially, he's unremarkable and she can't find anything in the public records related to work as a midwife. She notices that he didn't even finish a postgraduate education either, matching what he says. And then on the other side, there's the exception and him being acclaimed. She also finds out that he buried his spouse after two years of marriage. I think what happened is that his wife died giving birth to her and that in his grief he wanted to get his spouse back and began researching necromancy. I think he found Star Swirls notes, possibly in Quiet's library, and learned about essence harvesting and potentially about Star Swirls death and botched resurrection. I think he went into the chaos terrain to get the first chaos pearls to allow him to work with essence harvesting and that this ultimately lead him to discover the exception and everything that followed.
This would also fit your second quote.
Notice that he says "for his world had been broken" and only then does he mention doing something small which then becomes something great.
His world being broken is, I think, his wife having died. He did a small thing by starting his research and discovering all that stuff about Star Swirl. And then he discovered the means to do something great which could give him a some part of the lost world back - I think that means him getting a connection to his dead wife, via alicorns, which he thinks can tap into the shadowlands since Celestia managed to call some part of Star Swirl back after he died. Maybe Gentle even hopes to be able to resurrect his wife in a similar way. He even mentions, after he creeps Twilight out asking if she can feel "them," that he shouldn't discuss matters of faith right now. Faith. Mentioned here like in all the stories of the verse where someone has died and those left are doing some objectively pretty stupid things to cling to the memory of their lost ones. If Gentle had only harvested essence from his dead spouse, I don't think he'd be that obsessed with matters of faith. I that's what I think it's all about, his absolute belief that if only he can get an alicorn to work with him, he can connect to the dead and get his wife back.
I don't know, of course, but the pieces just seem to fit well in my opinion.
8113868
Just made me think. Have any unicorns tried to succeed in differentiation while Combining??
8112753
It doesn't, but it does imply that he's figured it out. Remeber, this Discord is, from what we know in the 'verse, damn near omnipotent when he's on his game. I suspect this whole 'quest' is simply a game he's playing.
A deadly serious game, as is his style.
The Princesses would likely jail the offender permanently, but Discord has a more poetic sense of revenge.
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That's my thought process as well. Estee is a crafty one.
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I seem to recall that as later seasons are not canon to the 'verse, Discord's magic is the only thing we've seen that can mess with the racial magics. Even Twi's ascent was a matter of swapping Marks, not races.
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Good question. I don't seem to recall any clear cut instances of it, at least. I seem to recall three instances of fields working through solid objects in the collective stories: the Exception, Star Swirl casting through his hat and in Mark of Appeal Luna doing the same by "calling on [Starswirl]" in some sense and I don't think we know exactly what was going on in the latter cases. Oddly, Twilight mentions Starswirl being unable to get around the differentiation problem explicitly and there was a comment by Estee... somewhere that I remember saying that projecting through a barrier was a totally different game from shifting one object inside another anyway.
So it seems like multiple unicorns working together wouldn't have any more success given that the extraordinarily powerful don't seem to be able to do it. Maybe they could get through solid objects (perhaps only fabric-thick even then) and cast something in empty space, but even that seems to be some sort of highly special case. The big stumbling block seems to be getting your field to telekinetically find the surface of one object inside another rather than getting your magic through in the first place.
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Discord and Star Swirl - who I seem to recall everyone agreeing were different people when that was brought up last. Devices and the like store *magic* but I think that's legally distinct from *essence*, the only vessels for which we've seen are the pearls and the Amulet, as far as I remember. The latter was created with an essence harvesting process known to Star Swirl, and the doctor seems to know quite a bit about both him *and* Discord, so I'm not sure which of the two options is doing the leg work in the case of what's happening to the foals. But if it's something as simple as... link your magic with the pearl and now you can just break the rules and steal essence 'cause chaos magic why only harvest from the worst case foals? That sounds more akin to whatever Star Swirl did to create the Amulet than what Discord's been seen doing to me. Plus, it doesn't solve the narrative problem of the essence harvesting being required to perform the exception in the first place.
Basically, if chaos magic enables the Exception without having to harvest essence (or simply allows both), essence harvesting is too irredeemable an act. If chaos magic allows for the harvesting but not the Exception, how's the Exception work in the first place? One of them pretty much has to be a byproduct of the other and I think the cleanest answer I've got is the chaos magic is a necessary component to essence harvesting (though it alone isn't enough without a structured spell) and that the Exception is allowed by the harvesting process. Then the swap between the foal's essence and Discord's happens. Which, if true, implies two interesting things: Star Swirl was doing the same thing to Discord as Dr. Gentle and co. and Fluttershy was an extraordinarily lucky test case. I think the timeline for Star Swirl works out - he started going evil after the Sisters ascended, which would've been after Discord was defeated, right?
Tangentially, speaking of Twilight's ascension, unless I'm forgetting something I don't think we have any real hard details about what happened to her (beyond assumptions from canon). Some speculation, though: given all of the bearers swapped marks, the difference for Twilight seems to be from getting blasted by the Elements. Maybe the swaps acted like a mark manifestation and allowed her the chance to hold more essence, which she picks up from the Elements? I wonder why that didn't work for Star Swirl if so.
Also, what in the world happened to Cadance?
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I actually expect that 'getting blasted by the Elements' was the catalyst for this Twi's ascension, in the same way that it likely was for the Sisters, given what we know of their backstory. Your logic with the mark swaps makes sense if Discord was trying something similar when the older Bearers managed to take him down. No idea how Cadance got the way she is, but I'm burning with curiosity to find out!
Oh, scratch my last comment, i think i get it now. It's just...a question of scope, i guess. How many. By what means.
This right here is the reason i'm kind of glad we as a species can't do real sorcery.
Whenever one of the Mane 6 'listen' to Triptych's magic, they always mention how her field feels off, or Other. In the beginning of the story when they were summoned by Discord, Twilight realized the letter 'Luna' had sent her was off. She also keeps chastising herself for missing little things, like Trixie's current location at Trottingham. I can't imagine that Twi's gonna be happy when she realizes that she missed a chaos signature multiple times.
Also, I just realized why the fic is called 'Triptych.' A triptych is three separate panels hinged into one, just like our poor malicorn.
Best Night Ever Canterlot Wedding Pinkie, your mark may tell you "what's appropriate" but it's clear that you don't always listen.
As for Discord being upset about what Dr Gentle is doing with the pearls. Hey, they're being used to cause Chaos. Why would that upset him? Jealous, maybe?
Based on the show, Pinkie doesn't. Not really, at least. The Grand Galoping gala has already happened and Pinkie more or less insulted nobility and the upper class with her party. In your verse, perhaps-there's bits I haven't read and it's been a while since I touched this story-but thought I'd note it here.
Whoo! The ellipsis number fit the character!
Well that's ominous. I'm just going to read ahead, but I have a feeling she's probably merged with a bunch of ponies by this point/the previous experiments souls have been grafted onto her own in an attempt to craft an alicorn.
8483728
As for Discordbeing upset about what Dr Gentle is doing with the pearls. Hey, they're being used to cause Chaos. Why would that upset him? Jealous, maybe?
He's angry because they are using his powers to create Order
Keep being an awful empiricist; I'm sure mere selective acceptance of the world will help you understand it well enough.
Suddenly I think I know Quiet's special spell.
missing punctuation
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=lyrics+close+to+you+the+carpenters&&view=detail&mid=D8453084AD45EE14FB4CD8453084AD45EE14FB4C&&FORM=VRDGAR
As a rule, drummers provide the beat & don’t sing. There are a FEW bands where drummers sing -on the album. They can do this because they lay down the tracks at different times. Karen did it live in concerts. AFAIK, that’s unique