Faith had so many sounds and often, they came within the music of desperation: a voice would call out one final invocation, praying for intercession to save them from fast-approaching death -- a prayer which Twilight now knew would never be heard -- and any words which followed were generally spoken in the shadowlands.
But at other times, there was a contented smile lurking within the notes. Reassurance, created by the speaker and then delivered to the same pony via the circuitous route of belief. Hope, frantic hope staring at her from a birthing table while preparing to falsely assign all credit in the event of miracle.
Faith had many sounds, and the one which described its shattering was a soft dual whimper.
"No," Pinkie whispered. "No, no, no, Sun and Moon, please, please no..."
Twilight could hear Fluttershy's breathing, abruptly accelerated until each exhale emerged as a series of trembling shudders. Looked to her right, saw darkening --
-- was it always that shade? Is it the lighting in this room?
-- mane hair starting to fall across blue eyes, and not enough of it to hide the welling tears.
She had thought something was wrong, after meeting the older stallion in the tower. Upon hearing the words which had come just before his departure, the strange questions which had seemed so off. But... this?
...not Coordinator? Or he could still be involved, there's so many ponies down there, 'somepony else' is a plural and...
Pinkie. Fluttershy.
What's it like to be them right now? To look down and see your first friend standing there, with all those ponies facing him, waiting for him, to know that the pony responsible for your even being alive just might be responsible for so much else...
There were words to bring comfort, gentle sentences which would reassure, rebuild, perhaps provide the first step towards healing. There had to be.
"I..." Twilight tried.
And so she learned there were none which ever would.
"I can't," Pinkie softly wept. "I can't... I don't want to believe, I don't...."
And then there was Quiet, also one of his. Quiet, who had taken a single sharp breath, followed by dipping his head until the small grey chin touched illusion-coated floor, his eyes half-closed.
"I never thought..." The words were the barest waft of breath against stone. "To look down and see him like this, with his features and fur alone in exposure to the world..."
And on his left, Fluttershy. The eldest. One eye squeezed shut from pain, the other hidden behind a manefall of coral, a small portion of which was beginning to darken. But that was a familiar sort of change, produced by nothing more than tears soaking into the strands.
From behind them, a soft "Oh," and then Rarity's words accelerated. "I am... dearest ones, I cannot pretend to understand everything you must be feeling, but we are here with you: know we are right here..."
Applejack audibly swallowed. "Everypony... Ah know you've gotta want t' get down there and face him. We can't. We've got to listen. We need that evidence." And with a fierceness muted only in volume, "But when he's done talking -- that's when you just might get to say something of your own. We'll be there when you do. Pinkie -- breathe slow, breathe steady. It's what Rarity said: we're right here. We're all right here and we ain't going nowhere."
Twilight heard claws scrape against stone, forced herself not to look back at Spike. Listened to Rainbow's tail lashing increase in frequency and strength, to the point where it seemed as if the next sound to come would be the crack of a whip.
"I'll kill him," the pegasus softly stated, the words far more even than they seemingly should have been. "I'm gonna kick him into --"
Spike's half-whisper cut her off. "-- there's a line."
Pinkie sobbed. Fluttershy trembled. Quiet simply stared. And Twilight, still without words, forced her gaze to shift until she was once again looking at the unicorn on the stage.
I curtsied to him. In recognition of his contributions to Equestria, I bent my forelegs in the presence of...
While they had been talking, he had made his way towards the forward edge of the raised platform, moving far too slowly for even the injured hind leg to explain away. Forcing himself forward, visibly marshaling inner resources along the way. But now he was close to the drop, standing near what appeared to be a rotating mobile blackboard, one set into its frame on a central pivot. There was also a small stack of papers next to it, some larger than others: she'd missed both things during the initial survey of the crowd.
His horn ignited: just a basic partial corona. A thin shimmer of silver coated the door through which he'd arrived.
"Twi... Twilight?" Pinkie, words forced to emerge between little gasps. "What... what did he just cast?"
The spell hadn't been that powerful, nowhere near enough for her to get a true feel for the working through stone. But there were other ways to determine what a spell had done, and Twilight spotted the little shiver along the glow's borders, the way sparkles seemed to be pushing against the heavy wood...
"It distorts sound," she softly answered (and hated herself, because for that, she had been capable of speech). "Not much. Just enough that if you were on the other side, you'd know someone was talking and how loudly, but you wouldn't be able to make out the exact words. It's like a really weak version of Lyra's trick. I've been trying to learn it since the reporters showed up, but..." Well, at least that meant she'd known what a successful casting was supposed to look like. "But who is he trying to keep from overhearing?"
Which was when she finally shifted position on the floor, moved until she was pressing against Pinkie. Hated herself all the more for having taken so long to move, for not having offered presence first...
The baker's body trembled against her own. Vibrations traveled through fur and feathers, began to set up tiny unknown echoes near her core.
"Basic security measure?" Quiet offered, with a different kind of pain audible in his voice. "It won't stop us, though."
Two mares, with no other outlets available for their emotions, wept. (Spike shifted his own position, went to Fluttershy, pressed scales against fur and refused to leave.) And all looked down at the floor, one illusion which had shattered another.
Waited for him to speak.
He looked at the shrouded walls first, then the shifted furniture, and finally at the covered forms. Ponies gathered from across a continent.
"Before we begin," he steadily, almost softly told them, "I would like to apologize. None of you were originally expecting to be here tonight. The speed and urgency of the summons, along with the lack of full detail as to why... well, even when sending by the most private of couriers, there are things nopony can trust to put in a letter. I know you have many questions, and some of them have been born from dream. But when you knew I truly needed you, everypony here left their homes and came to me. I thank you for that. Your attendance, your contributions to our Great Work, and your hope. Ultimately, it is hope which brought us together. Which kept us on the path, and holds us here."
(Above him, at the moment he named the Great Work, for the two mares which were his, the last portion of desperate doubt collapsed into shards of sorrow.)
He took a slow breath. Bodies shifted in the audience, making it easy to look beyond the garments to the impatience within. Here and there, the fear, which was almost strong enough to scent. But yes -- look upon them all and see the little vibrations which indicated desperate hope.
"Before we disperse, I will answer at least some of those questions," he continued. "And even so -- I still wish to apologize, because a number of you have been part of this for a long time. You heard me speak, you listened, and thus you joined me in hope. But there are also those here tonight who are new to our gathering. They have heard just enough to come... but perhaps not enough to believe."
He didn't look up: there was no need. Instead, he briefly, visibly focused his attention at a little group towards the center of the room, for a very few on the floor level would be listening for the first time. There normally would have been a slower feeling-out process added to a much more personal approach, but... well, perhaps some part of him had known it would come down to an all-or-nothing wager all along.
"So before I reach the new," he told them, "I must return to the beginning. Most of you have heard me speak of it before and to those ponies, I am sorry. For making you wait. For forcing you to live through an old stallion's past once again." A weary, pained half-smile. "And... his nightmares. You've heard my words, but there are those who have not, and... it hurts me, to speak of this. It hurts all of us. But where so many can only make their way through life by choosing to block their pain -- by forcing it away from their nightscapes, so as to relive it no more than they absolutely must -- tonight --"
His eyes briefly squeezed shut, opened again.
"-- it is necessary for me to suffer," he finished. "So that nopony else ever will."
Silence. Waiting for him. Waiting for news and knowing it had just been postponed, but also knowing that waiting was all they could do.
"We do the needful," he told them. "We do what we must, in the name of that Great Work. But for a long time, I did... nothing."
His head dipped, the soft red mane depressed down by the weight of shame.
"Did you know," he quietly asked the room, "that all pegasi, given any choice, any at all... will give birth on the ground?" Still looking at nothing more than the edge of the stage. "It was news to some among you. Others were taught it early on. But I would appreciate it if, as you listened, you kept that fact in mind for a while. Because I had to learn it, and did so after it was already too late."
He raised his head. Warm orange eyes steadied their gaze, looked out over the group.
"I was given a choice early on, of what to do with my life," he told them. "And I did nothing, for I had no need to do anything at all. Not yet. My parents were wealthy, you see... well, that is hardly a rare statement for this room." A few chuckles worked their way through the robes, and he managed a smile. "They weren't nobles: I belong to no House -- although I've assisted a few towards seeing their next generations." Fabric shifted again: multiple ponies nodding. "They simply had the luck to inherit funds which others had accumulated over centuries, enough of a collection to allow one a comfortable existence on the compound interest alone. When they passed into the shadowlands, I then inherited that wealth -- and decided that all things considered, the bits were doing enough work on their own. I had no need for anything so draining of time as an occupation. I had my mark. I knew what I was meant to do. And I simply waited for the opportunity to arrive. It didn't seem to be so long a wait..."
And now he had to will his eyes to stay open. To let them see the here and now, when every other part of him was already looking back. Going back.
"But until then, I used my time for pleasure," he quietly told them. "The joy of simply being. And then..."
A small breath, for with the past having arrived, there was no room left within him for anything more.
"How many of you remember her?" he softly inquired. "Only a few. But that is for lack of opportunity. If you had met her -- you would remember. I saw her one night, and she became all I could remember. I thought about that first meeting until the review took me all the way back to Sun. How I'd ruined everything in my life by not going up to her immediately and asking her to become part of it, because surely everypony else would recognize the opportunity I'd failed to seize. But as it turned out..." a tiny smile "...my settled zone lacked for bravery in more ponies than myself, for when Sun appeared, she was still available for courting. She was even still there two weeks later, when I finally found the courage, and after a time, she was with me at the first touch of dawn, with Sun shining from her..."
The first tear fell.
"Her name was Primatura," he told, taught, reminded them. "And no time spent basking in her light was ever wasted."
It was possible to identify the elders of Trotter's Falls simply by their dipped heads.
"We freed each other," he made himself continue. "She gave me the rare honor of allowing me to perceive the world from a perspective other than my own, truly seeing. A gift she wished to grant to so many, freely offered to me. All I could contribute was resources: the chance for her to listen to the whispers of her mark without worrying about mere survival. No price at all. She gave me love and hope and dreams, and all I could give her was mere love. I often felt as if I was failing to make it an even bargain, and when I told her so from within her radiance, she would laugh at me. She said I was spending my life in underestimating what I could bring to the world, what I was already bringing to her, but she simply gave and in time..."
He had said the words so many times, in trying to make ponies understand. And whenever he reached this stage, they had to be forced.
"...she told me that she would be giving me... my destiny."
A slow exhale, one which failed to carry any of the pain away.
"A few of you remember her," he said. "Given the sheer number of empty bottles and fallen forms, I doubt anypony truly remembers the announcement's celebration party."
And finally, somepony, brought back to half-assembled fragments of revelry, laughed.
He smiled. Paused, gathered strength. And still did not look up.
"His spouse..." Twilight whispered. "But... what does he mean by destiny? What did he think he was supposed to...?"
Pinkie simply shivered. Twilight tried to press more tightly against her, loathing the spy perch which would not allow them to fight the pain with the warmth that came in the center of a ponypile. Felt the wing getting in the way.
There were words coming forward now, but they only sounded within her own mind. They repeated themselves, moving in a circle.
Somepony else.
"Well... she did," he ruefully added. "As she was the only one who wasn't drinking. But she never told me the details, other than what might have been suspected through responding to seeing certain ponies with a sudden burst of giggling. I suspected she might have... recorded a few portions, but if so..."
A slow head shake.
"We made plans," he went on. "We postponed others. We divided the world into the things we could do before, and those which would come after. We... were going to attend the Games, in the moon immediately following. We'd been talking about it before she'd told me, and it didn't feel like something we had to change. We were going to Baltimare first: we'd planned that for the dividing line. But afterwards, there was going to be a moon for adjustment and after that, surely we'd be ready to travel. She had no great love for the Games, but she knew I did and so she indulged me. It would be our first time attending together, the first time for all of us, and..."
The breaths hurt now. Every one kicked at his ribs from the inside, and he once again distantly wondered if this was how his most devoted felt all the time.
"...I haven't been to the Games in more than two decades."
And finally, he looked up.
But that gaze did not go to his, not in the place from which they were watching. He made no attempt to view the Princess through what, on his side, appeared to be a simple ceiling. He wasn't looking at anything which existed in the here and now. Instead, he looked up simply because of where he was. As the last thing required to place him at the true beginning.
As a reminder that when it had happened, they had been underground.
Surrounded by stone.
The estate is an old one, nearly matching the local castle in years, and so there is a part of it hidden from view: more than mere basement, but slightly less than full retreat -- although given those centuries, it was built to provide a means for that. But in this part of his life, their life, the now of memory brought into the present, his distant spoken words only providing the faintest echo of events, there was no true need for those rooms -- until the day she'd married him.
So there is a wine cellar now, because they have parties now and again: it's best to both attend and host such things with company. (Admittedly, it's more of a wine about-twenty-percent-of-a-very-small-wall.) And there is her place.
He doesn't entirely understand her process (although he's now capable of appreciating the results, and is studying on the sly so that he can appreciate them with a more appropriate vocabulary). He's not certain he ever will, and so he had questioned why she'd asked to lock herself away from natural light. She had simply jested about not needing to factor certain things out and besides, if he was going to keep saying that Sun shone from her, then clearly she was up to any need for emergency illumination.
(There are devices in the ceiling, newly-installed ones, which shine with an oddly white sort of light. The results take some getting used to.)
She's working when he comes in, because the desires of mark and pony aren't going to be stopped by anything so simple as a bulging belly, one which has occasionally produced questions about twins. He likes to watch her work. Again, he doesn't fully understand it, but -- he loves her, and this is the other great love of her life. Hours which he might wish for are expended down here and... well, spending time together as a threesome should, in theory, help to cut down on the jealousy.
He watches in silence. This is a holy place of sorts, and to speak out of turn would feel very much like a sin.
Finally, she pauses, sets everything down, turns to look at him.
"Hello, you," she smiles. "I heard you come in. I think. I was... well, you know." A small nod towards her work. "How long were you there?" A pause. "Actually... what time is it?"
"Sun's just been lowered," he tells her.
"Oh," she considers. With just the slightest note of false concern, "In which moon?"
It makes him smile. "The same one. Are you coming up to dinner?" It's a frequent question: when she's truly within the heart of her mark, she takes her meals here -- and only does so because he finally recognized that the best way to keep her eating regularly was to provide a way of doing so with no distractions. He still considers it to be a rather fine feedbag, although she keeps telling him that they have to work on his taste in hues.
And much to his surprise, she nods. "Yes -- but in a few minutes. I just want to check this last portion again."
Which means possibly redoing that section, and likely requiring repeated reheating of the okra. "Do you mind if I watch a little more, then?" Solidarity in appetite.
"If you must," she smiles, and turns back towards the newest piece. Her horn exerts, and things move just so. He often marvels at her precision, the dance created while legs remain motionless and only eyes shift from place to place. The complexities of the movements and all the wonders which they birth.
They are together in that room for perhaps twenty minutes (and now the okra is cold) as she works. He watches. He is starting to truly feel the hunger now, and he does not care.
Her field flickers. Something slashes to the right. Purple eyes wince shut, just before that movement would have prevented them from seeing the marring.
It gets his attention, all of it put together, and perhaps nothing does so more than that cruel mistake. "Are you okay?"
"I just..." She's breathing too hard. "...I think I just felt --"
The next moment remains with him for the rest of his life.
Her horn goes dark. All four of her knees buckle. She starts to fall as instinct flares, makes her almost fling herself to the left, to land on her side instead of her distended belly. Protecting, to the very last.
The dropped items, released just before she began to plummet, hit first. They clatter on the floor. Two hit with softer sounds. Things roll and bounce and scatter. Her impact, which has somewhat more weight, moves them a little more. A few other items vibrate. His world begins to crack.
And then liquid emerges from her, from two places in three gouts. The first is vomit. The second emerges as something which is only referred to as 'water' because he has yet to learn the proper term for amniotic fluid. The third comes from the same place, and the only word needed to describe it is 'blood'.
He is at her side in an instant, dropping to her level. (She is writhing, twisting, with spasms of agony sending her legs into involuntary kicks.) And his horn ignites. He can teleport: that working became his shortly after coming into his magic. He can go for help --
-- but he does not. He can't leave her, not with sweat coating her body, rapidly heading into the danger of froth. Not upon seeing her pain, not... he can't, and he does not.
It's too early. She wasn't due for another moon. They were going to travel to Baltimare for the birthing, because there is no true hospital in their settled zone and he doesn't think much of the local midwife, while none of the doctors specialize in deliveries. It's too early and something is wrong, horribly wrong, he can't leave her and so his corona surges, he pushes because he knows there is a way to teleport with another, he probably can't reach Baltimare but he can at least try to get her to any help, normal movement could make things worse and while he'll be risking recoil and all the dangers therein, he's not really thinking about that. It could be argued that he's not thinking at all. There is a stallion next to his helpless mare, and silver light builds, surges, temporarily distorts everything in the room as he fights, he fights to find a way to bring her into the between, he tries to teach himself the means of escorting another with heartbeats in which to do so and --
There are so many things to remember. So many which cannot be brought back as part of the memory, for within those moments, he never thought of them at all. That he could have tried to appear in a physician's home just long enough to scream alarm and location, then returned. That he might have attempted to use whatever strength he possessed to levitate her, keep her perfectly still within the bubble: perhaps he could have reached town before fainting. But he could not leave her. He would not. He did not.
-- he does not know how long he has been trying, praying, for while caught in its grasp, there is no true way of measuring eternity. She is screaming, screaming and it just keeps coming, no words within the sounds, she screams so much that it seems as if it must be keeping her from taking any breaths, she kicks out and her right foreleg slams into his ribs. He barely notices. He is fighting against the fabric of the world, something which will part for him alone, he needs to bring them both, to bring them all and so he fights for that, he is pushing and knows that a miracle will come because this can't happen, not like this, not to her and --
-- her right foreleg comes up again. Touches his face.
He looks down as his corona surges, the primary layer twisting in shape with every moment, silvering the world. And he sees the pain in her eyes. He sees helplessness. He sees everything except the soul which rests within that agonized form, for its last act under newly-risen Moon was to reach for him. There is no heart, no mind, no Sun shining from within.
What remains screams again and the sound shreds memory, makes the whole of their lives together into a single instant in which the only thing which has ever existed is that scream.
The joints of her foreleg tighten, then go limp.
The sound stops.
His forelegs are resting within vomit. His vision has been blurred by the drain from his failure. Weakness and tears combine, leave him barely able to see her. To see anything. There are two ponies buried within the stone and the one who is still breathing regards his living state as a rather temporary formality.
He could not. He did not.
There is no movement within what had been her place of dream. There is a corpse, one he cannot look away from, and things surrounding them which he will do his best to never look upon again.
(He will fail. Even for that, he will fail, over and over, until he finally blocks them from his sight. And even then, he fails to close the very last way in.)
The truest part of her is gone. He cannot leave what remains. Perhaps they will simply decay together.
And then she moves.
Part of her moves.
It catches his attention. It makes him hope, just for a moment, that a miracle has been granted. He looks, and -- it's a shift in the skin, a tiny poke pushing against the inside of that distended belly.
Then it stops.
The words tear through him.
mother dead, foal might still be alive, mother dead
He tells himself there is no time, and perhaps that is true. (He will, hours later, find a clock and finally make his best guess as to how long it all took, from beginning to end to beginning. He will never allow himself to believe it.) He could not leave his spouse: he cannot risk so much as a second away now, not while there's any chance. But his horn is not a sharp one. Even if it was, he wouldn't be sure just how deep to cut, and the thought of doing that to her body --
-- he would, if it was possible. There still might be a life there, the last of her, the last there will ever be, and he will do anything to save that life, anything. But he doesn't know what he can do. He cannot push on her belly from the outside, guide the foal with hooves. There are no living muscles to contract, push, aid in a final effort. There are knives in the kitchen and perhaps some could cut into flesh, but it would be the same issue: a tail strand too deep and there will be two bodies. And yet that seems to be his only option, but just the time to find something he can use...
mother dead, foal might still be alive, mother dead
To cut is to risk another death. To leave is to miss the only chance. The foal cannot be reached. Cannot be moved. Can't be --
She had said it: that she would be giving him his destiny. And in that moment, with everything else having failed, with no true thought to block the way, that which defines him speaks without words. It has happened to so many ponies over the centuries. She claimed it happened to her every now and again. That when the time was right, when guidance was needed, when you were acting within the heart of who you were meant to be... there would be communication. A upwelling of instincts, all leading to direction.
His mark whispers to him, and his horn ignites.
A partial corona at first. Then the full single. Double, as the field surrounds the corpse, pushes at cooling fur. Triple, everything he has left to give, effort until exhaustion or success. Possibly until death or success, for he had been trying to move all of them for so long, those attempts cost him, and he doesn't know how much strength he still has. But there is a triple corona, and light warps around him as he gives everything he has left of himself for the last of her, payment for a scant period of happiness rendered in full, his vision is going dark and he can't sense the air against his fur anymore and there was nothing to hear but his own final scream to begin with, the scent of blood and vomit is fading away as the room narrows down to the last thaums he can commit, with his only remaining sensation of the world as the feel which slashes at what had been perceived as an unbreakable law of magic and tries to create a wound large enough for a single exception --
-- there is a tiny hoof.
He can feel it. He can...
He can pull.
There is blood, and then there is more blood. (He continues to fight. He does not look, never sees the sparkles vanish from his corona's light.) Dead muscles cannot assist: he is forcing the foal to move through the birth canal. But he can't think about what he's doing to the interior of his spouse's corpse. He can only fight, try to retain that tenuous new feel, believing that a single second of lapse in his concentration will take it from him forever. He can't watch the distortions under the corpse's skin as they slowly (too slowly) travel in the right direction, he can barely see at all, he may be screaming or there may be nothing left for such pointless expression, he can only fight until there is nothing left which can fight at all.
Blood. So much blood. And then a sickening sound, one which forces his ears to work simply to include that detail in the replays which will rule his nightscape for moons until the right working is finally found to block them. The sound of flesh tearing due to pressure from within, a wound they had been told might come naturally, something minor which would readily heal, but this is nothing normal and that which has died will never recover.
There is that grotesque sound, and it goes on for something just short of forever.
And when it finally stops, he hears the tiny cry.
His horn goes dark, all at once. He nearly falls into darkness, might have plummeted into the shadowlands immediately after if he had. But he forces himself forward, towards the last of her, the last there will ever be. He is not thinking about what he just accomplished. (It will be some time before he sees it as any kind of accomplishment at all, and it will forever be tainted by what came before it. Failure and success: the themes of his existence.) There is death in the room, and so much of his heart can be counted among the lost. But there is also life, and that tiny cry has created something he can live for. He will protect her final gift to him. He will devote his existence to that. And so he pushes forward without ever quite managing to stand, fur scrapping against the floor, moving through blood and vomit and fluids he has yet to learn names for, a single body length to cross, a literal body length which takes so long to journey through, he forces his eyes to focus and sees the foal, the filly, her body anointed in the residue of life and death, fur stained by that and one other thing, for the smaller items dropped first and so there is an additional source of discoloration available.
He sees her fear and confusion: no comprehension of the world she has been pulled into, the stench of death forcing terror onto a newborn who knows nothing of how to resist her instincts. He sees that --
-- and then his eyes are pulled towards vacuum.
Absence.
The last joke which can be played by a world which extracts a price for every gift.
He was granted a partial miracle, life within death, and in exchange...
There is no horn.
There is no horn.
There is no horn.
There were no words. Not in the room, not from those watching from above. There were no words at all, until he raised his head again. Blinked away the tears, even as so many of those who believed themselves hidden did the same, along with a few in the much lesser audience. And then he spoke.
"I have shared my nightmare," he softly stated. "And now, for the unicorns in the room, those hearing this for the first time -- I must ask you to share another. To, for a moment, imagine that you are a pegasus, one about to give birth. That there is no time to move you, that labor ends within mere minutes, for such can happen. So your newborn foal's first sensation of the world is the floor of your cloud home..."
He took a slow breath.
"...and the next is the plummet."
Gasps, added to a tiny, quickly choked-back scream.
"Given any choice," he quietly told them, "all pegasi will give birth on the ground. Because some of their foals will not be pegasi. Unicorns and earth pony foals come into their families and for those newborns, a single moment of resting upon a vapor surface may kill."
He looked away from the audience. Began to pace along the edge of the stage, the injured hind leg dragging.
"There are ways in which I know very little about the mysteries of our blood," he admitted. "But in that, I am just like everypony else, for we all learn the same chant eventually, do we not? Even if it takes so many more school years before we understand what it truly means. 'An earth pony and an earth pony make an earth pony, a unicorn with a unicorn is a baby unicorn, pegasus plus pegasus equals pegasus -- but add any other --'" and the last words were just a little louder than what had come before, which still provided enough contrast to make it arrive as something close to a shout "'-- even once...'"
Moving a little faster now.
"I had thought myself pure," he told them all. "I never asked her, because I loved her and so she was pure to me. Perhaps it was her. But it could have been me. Both of us? It's possible. I could have researched both of our family trees until I reached the Discordian Era -- and then there would be no going on. But ultimately, it would have been pointless. I would have been shouting at the shadowlands, and I would hardly expect to receive an apology, much less restitution for the crime. For it was theft in the end, was it not? Children are robbed of their heritage. They are helpless to stop it, they will never be repaid, they enter the world broken beyond all repair...!"
Another breath, followed by a visible centering.
"She was broken." Almost a whisper. "It was nothing she did. Nothing she ever would have done. Somepony sins but once, and that sin is visited onto the innocents of our future."
He stopped moving. His head dipped again.
"A moment," he quietly asked. "Please." And those within the room waited for him.
There had been times when reactions came to Twilight later than they should have, emotional responses arriving after what she now felt was a shameful delay. The gap had lessened over the years, occasionally vanished entirely, but there were cruel moments when it exerted itself and placed a wall between her and the world, leaving her desperate to find some way of breaking through. The surest weapons she had in that effort were formed from ink, scrolls, and those who helped her find the words.
Those friends were with her now. All of them were, along with somepony new. But it wasn't helping, and perhaps that was because this problem was also new. It wasn't being late to an emotion. Simply not knowing what to do was already present, and felt as if it might never leave.
She was having an emotional reaction. She was having several of them, and she didn't know which ones were supposed to be there.
Part of her wanted to grieve, for she had heard his pain and knew it was a true agony, one which would never fade. But then words had come after it and hate had surged, a cold fury which was trying to ignite her horn, send bursts of field into stone until the true view had been opened and she could reach him. Underneath that, a trembling fear, anticipation building into terror as a deep portion of her mind realized that the story could only worsen. Helplessness, for Pinkie was shaking, crying, and there was nothing Twilight could do to help, no way to fix things, no words or actions or...
Within her, the conflict raged, beat against internal barriers which had already been disturbed by echoes, mission, and the moon which had passed since the change. Fresh cracks appeared in inner barricades. One storm howling outside, another within.
Somewhere in the room, hooves scraped against stone, then forced themselves to be still: Applejack, perhaps, fighting back the urge to charge. Quiet was simply watching, listening: it seemed to be all he was still capable of. Fluttershy... the tears had never stopped, and perhaps only dehydration would end their flow. And from behind her, a voice normally filled with brash confidence began to brim with fear.
"I..." Feathers softly rustled as cyan wings trembled. "...I never thought about that," Rainbow whispered. "About having a kid, and... if they couldn't fly, if I didn't reach the ground in time..."
She wanted to say something. To find any way of bringing comfort to anypony.
But then he began to speak again, and all of the storms raged on.
"My world had been shattered," he finally went on. "Shattered beyond all repair. I looked at her corpse, then at what we had produced, and... I thought about it. Just for a moment, I thought about sending on. But... it was the last of my spouse. The last there would ever be. I looked at the filly, and I realized... it wasn't her fault."
He started to move again, heading for the blackboard.
"She had a right to her heritage. To her magic. Something which had been torn from her forever. A choice she had not made, would have never made, and... it was too late. The sin had been in the blood, and now that sin was expressed as unchanging flesh. A punishment for a sin which had never been hers."
Stopped, his forelegs near the papers.
"My world had been shattered," he repeated. "I could see no path forward. And so I did... something small. Something I could still do. I found what little remained of my strength, and took the filly away from her mother, for she didn't understand what had happened. She was trying to nuzzle against a cooling body when I carried her away, still crying for a parent she would never know. I took her --"
Upstairs. I took her upstairs.
Even without what had happened both before and after, it would have remained distinctive simply for its singularity.
"-- to a bath," he continued. "I washed her. She was covered in blood, and then she was not. That much I could control. I washed her, and looked at where her horn should have been." A pause. "Primatura had talked me into -- saving the cap. Not that she'd really had to try."
His eyes closed, remained so for three breaths, opened again.
"The gift was her life," he finally said. "And the price for that gift was the death of my spouse, the theft of her heritage, and... I couldn't send her on. Even broken by sin, she was the last of Primatura, and to give her up... I couldn't. But she was broken, and I could barely stand to look at the unhealing wound which the world had inflicted upon her. So I cleaned her, I fed her, I calmed her, and I brought the bassinet into the lower level, as far from her mother's corpse as possible. I ate, because I had realized I needed to live. And then I began to think. That she had been robbed of her heritage --"
Which was when that warm orange gaze began to grow bright.
"-- but that did not mean she had to stay broken."
His spine went tight. A soft red tail held steady.
"I had done the impossible. I recognized that. Differentiation, the law of magic which no unicorn had ever violated, an unbreakable wall between us and whatever may lie within -- wounded by my horn, enough to let a single ray of light through. And once the impossible has been done once... you start to feel like so many other things could be accomplished. Breaking through differentiation was impossible: I had done that. Everything else might simply be a matter of finding the way. And so I began to do the needful."
They were listening, all of them. Admittedly, there were postures which told him a few were now doing so in light boredom: they had heard this part years ago, they had been convinced, and they were just waiting for him to reach the new. But those ponies weren't important and in some ways, neither were the new arrivals on the ground level. Ultimately, he was speaking to six.
He wished he could see them before him, in that moment. Answer their questions immediately. Watch their faces in anticipation of that instant when they would truly understand, for he knew that such would come.
Soon enough.
"I hid her away before I notified the authorities," he calmly stated. "Before the body was removed. I told the doctors that I didn't want an autopsy. I barely managed to get through the funeral, and I thank all of you who were there to give what support and comfort you could. And nopony asked about what had happened during the birth, because the assumption was that I had... sent the foal on. But she was still there, being tended to within stone. I went back to her regularly: teleportation provided that much comfort. But most of my time was being spent away from my home. I needed to do research, and some resources were close by. I had, in some ways, already started on the path. Certainly in one way, for I had not named her. Some might choose to see that as simple luck, but with what came after... that was the assistance of destiny. The first of her two great moments had passed: she had been born. But a lesser? Avoided. Without a name, the future granted to her could be shaped. I researched, and in time..."
His horn ignited, and the silver field surrounded the papers. Began to separate the topmost sheets, move them towards the board.
"I still had these," he quietly said. "The notes I wrote on the night when the Great Work truly became my life."
The first sheet of parchment was placed against the dark plane. There was but a single line of writing upon it.
A cutie mark cannot be spontaneously created.
"'Cutie mark'," and he chuckled. "There's a story in that, actually: one hardly anypony alive knows. I'm not certain I've ever told anypony here about how 'cutie' came to be part of the term. Perhaps this might be the night for it, or it could simply frustrate those who feel that tale is lengthening the delay. But once you know the story, you may find yourself simply calling it a mark. In seeing the full term here, please forgive my relative innocence of youth." A small smile. "But this is something you all know, I'm sure. Some of you -- of us -- all right, the number includes myself -- did foolish things in our childhood while attempting to create the marks of our personal choice, and the stories of failure could be told for a thousand years and more -- but then, our destinies had been set."
The next sheet floated up.
A cutie mark can be temporarily concealed, albeit with great effort.
"And may Sun and Moon help the pony who tries to make it permanent," he wryly added. "So many criminals have assigned themselves to, if not a life in prison, then one in pants. But it is part of what we all know: that the mark itself is inviolate. Or... is it something we only told ourselves we knew?"
And on the third sheet:
A cutie mark can be transferred, but only the mark itself moves: not the talent it represents.
He -- he couldn't have known that. Not that far back. Only two living ponies should have known that, could have known...
"Twilight?" Pinkie, even while steadily sinking into the depths of her own pain, was still capable of sensing the shock. "How... how can he..."
She didn't know, and so said nothing. Her eyes simply widened, and she watched.
Shockwave. A small one, confined only to those ponies who had never known it -- but a shockwave all the same, one he was entirely used to seeing.
"A few of you are currently fighting to believe that," he observed, "and in doing so, are largely fighting against yourselves. For now, I ask that you simply accept it as true. It can be done. But there are many problems involved with the incomplete version which is all that exists of that spell, starting with the fact that simply exerting one's true talent will begin to unravel the entire working. Destiny reasserts itself. The working is not worth learning, and given the identity of its original creator... well, if he couldn't finish it, then I doubt it can ever be fixed." A small shrug. "But we will reach that. The next fact --"
A cutie mark can be delayed, sometimes indefinitely.
"There are many means of doing so," he stated. "Every last one of which, if known to the authorities, will place the delaying pony in prison. But it seemed to me that I had little choice in the matter, and so I turned to the surest method. Within the first moon of her life, she had her first... jewelry. Something which became more complex over the years, but the heart of it was always there. Training had to begin early and so even as an infant, she was taught to never remove the snitcher. She wasn't told what it did. Simply that it had to be worn at all times, until the Great Work was complete."
"He stopped her Surges," Applejack half-hissed. "No earth ponies in this town, nopony to hear her, and then he went an' tore out her throat! Her whole life without magic, because he'd decided she was broken! And what in Tartarus is sending on? Ah think I've got an idea, but if I'm right, ponies have been --"
She stopped, all at once, as her ears dipped and even her breaths became momentarily silent. Twilight simply continued to stare down, as the colors began to leach from the edges of her vision.
And then the fifth sheet came up. Waterstained parchment, and something within her recognized that the discolorations had been produced by tears of joy.
A cutie mark can be manipulated...
The world went white.
She wasn't aware that she'd almost started to scream until she felt Quiet's field desperately clamp around her jaw, and still the sound pushed against Twilight's teeth, demanded release as the horrors of what a filly's life would become presented themselves before her and sought a way into the world. She was struggling, she was fighting as deeper cracks appeared, a simple effort would dispel the other field and then she would
she saw Quiet's face. The sudden fear, and perhaps it was a terror of her reaction giving them away, the knowledge that he'd never be able to hold her if she found a moment of focus, or it could have been fear of --
-- the scream, so pure and pained, continued to echo in her mind. But to gain strength for that assault, it had to abandon the attack on her throat. The fear (his, and the much more experienced army of her own) was immediately recruited as an ally and together, they relentlessly battered the inner defenses.
The white faded. Color returned.
"Easy," Quiet whispered, his field releasing its unsteady grip. "Easy, Twilight..."
She forced herself to nod.
"I..." The word barely made it through the storm. "I'll be careful."
He nodded.
And she watched.
It would be hours before she realized he'd reached across Pinkie to stop her. Intercepting from the wrong side.
"Many ponies try," he said. "Of course, some of that is simple parenting: we feel we know what's best for our children, after all, and there are certainly marks we would prefer them to have. But in the end, we are fighting destiny. Among the earth ponies, I would imagine that a farming family might wish for every generation to contain farmers, but... there are times when the world chooses something else. Again, some forms of manipulation would bring punishment from those who discovered them, but... I had already acquired a snitcher and placed it upon the filly in my basement." Not without a touch of wryness, "Going forward from that seemed to be something much less than impossible."
He resumed his quarter-limping pace, with his field still holding the sheets against the blackboard.
"At the time I wrote those words, I had already learned a few things," he told them. "It was... surprisingly easy to learn more, and I started to wonder how much of that might have been destiny -- although finding some of what I initially needed within trotting distance hadn't hurt. But then I was ranging farther and farther away. I learned to keep multiple safe points open, so that I could return to the lower levels at any time: there was nopony taking care of her other than me, after all. And the things I then learned..."
He paused, took a deep breath.
"There have been times when I have wondered," he declared, "if anypony could have learned it all. Because we've all asked the questions, haven't we? When we were very young, and foal questions were all we had. But we never acquired the answers. We were only taught to stop asking. But I had so many questions, and the truth could not hide itself from a determined mind. I sought truth, and this is what I learned: our world is a lie."
The last five words resounded, and echoes did their share of damage within a place he could not see.
"One alicorn did not wield six Elements," he told them all. "Nor did two. Six Elements were matched to six ponies. Destiny then provided them with a protector, and seven went out into something so much worse than a wild zone to try and save the world. They succeeded -- and paid a price for that gift. But among their wielders, there were no alicorns at all -- at least, not at the start."
More gasps, from that same little section. He ignored them.
"I needed to learn about ways by which a broken pony might find what should have been their magic," he continued. "And so I asked myself a foal question: where do alicorns come from? In searching, I found a partial answer: those who so many see as deities incarnate began their lives as normal ponies." A brief pause. "And they were not unicorns. Their magic was granted, created, and gifted by the Elements themselves. I now knew that it was possible to make a pony into an alicorn."
A small smile.
"I could," he stated, "settle for that. So I --"
And from that tiny portion of the audience which held the first-time public attendees came the first shout.
"I know what you did!"
It was a west coast accent, from a very specific region, and it was somepony he'd never had the chance to directly speak with. That narrowed down the possibilities to one, and he momentarily considered Coordinator's priorities in searching for assistance. How they so frequently seemed to locate those who would only want the power for themselves, mostly because such ponies typically possessed a wealth of blackmail material.
"Do you --" and he couldn't resist "-- Duke?"
A gasp of terror, quickly suppressed, which still left the overweight body shaking under its damp robes. "I-- I was told there would be no names!"
"It's not a name," he calmly stated. "It's a title. There are Dukes all over the continent, and so much else, depending just what titles the House insisted on retaining for joining Equestria during the Unification. And I was told that you have an odd insistence on being properly addressed, if not necessarily towards arriving on time, or at any point while the desaturator still had any portion of its charge. I think you're the only pony here who went directly from entrance to conference. And what was it you were told I did?"
"The..." And now the body was shaking with outrage. "The hybrids!"
There was now a degree of confusion before him. (So much more above.)
He simply sighed. "Well," and added a small shrug, "at least you were mistakenly gossiped to with the polite term. Very well. We move forward, then, in the name of providing you with correct information."
Back to the blackboard, which rotated under the prod of his field. The blank surface came around, and an ancient scrap of paper was pressed against it.
"I realize that's hard to read," he said as more scraps came up. "You could have said many things about the writer, and none of them would be that he had excellent fieldwriting. But the exact horribleness of it would be familiar to many scholars, even those too far away to make out exactly what he wrote. You are looking at --"
"-- Star Swirl," Twilight just barely whispered. "Those are Star Swirl's personal notes..."
"-- or at least a fraction of the incomplete portion which survives." A small sigh. "He hid copies, and others were passed on -- or perhaps acquired and then passed on. Some were left in their original locations: I didn't feel it was safe to move the ones with the strongest lingering protections, and perhaps others have read them in the time since I did. Others are missing, and I suspect the Princesses destroyed whatever they could. But I took a few, if only as proof of both what I had read and who had written it. And I recognized what would have to be written in the absent sections. So as I have experience in deciphering his writing, allow me to both translate and educate."
An equally ancient sketch was levitated into view.
"These are the Elements themselves, as they existed in Star Swirl's time -- yes, I know they don't look like the sketches you've seen in the newspapers, and that comes from something other than inaccurate reporting. This is how they looked then." Casually, "The central jewel reflects the mark of the Bearer, and those of you who have devoted even casual study to astronomy should now be asking yourselves some interesting questions regarding the constellations within The Barding Of The Ancients. As for there being a pair of crowns, count the members of our Diarchy."
He looked at the images for a moment.
"They were six," he softly said. "Because it requires six." And turned back to the audience. "And Star Swirl, as their Element of Magic... he believed it should have been him, as the one -- and likely only -- who changed. But he had lost the opportunity. His moment of destiny had passed, and with the war against Discord ended -- as far as he knew, the path of the Elements had been closed for the rest of his lifetime. I doubt learning that he was right about that aspect would be any comfort to him."
A small sigh.
"As it was closed to me," he sadly admitted. "I found where they should have been. Where, as it ultimately turned out, they were all along. But they did not reveal themselves to me, and in his case... an incomplete set. But he still wished for power, and so he began to search for other means of acquiring it. He found one."
More notes, all illegible from more than a few hoofwidths away.
"Some of you have heard of essence," he noted. "Most likely from me. It has been referred to as the shadow cast by a soul and for those of you new to the idea, try to start there. It may be that, and it could also be so much more. Even Star Swirl only began to tap into its possibilities, and I have not advanced his studies as much as I might wish. For now, know that it is something close to the heart of us. Something which helps to define us. Something which, unlike the soul, lingers after death, and the proper working can harvest it. But your own essence is safe, because in the course of a normal life, there are only three times in which it can be reached -- and two where it might change. Star Swirl had missed both of those opportunities. Still, he tried..."
A long pause.
"At first," he admitted, "he did not travel that road. Instead, he attempted to use a spell which would grant Princess Luna's mark to him, in the belief that gaining her icon would also mean acquiring a stallion's version of her form." And just for a moment, he chuckled again. "I have wondered if he would have been content should it have worked in all aspects but his hoped-for gender... but it did not function. He gained her mark, but neither her form nor talent. Additionally, multiple marks were transferred, something he had not intended -- and there was some confusion of memories to go with that. But the working quickly fell apart, and he was able to convince the Diarchy that it had been an accident -- to a degree. From what happened afterwards, it would appear they retained some suspicion. But with that having failed, he turned to essence, for it was what he knew. And he began to experiment."
"He," declared that shaken Duke, "made monsters."
"No," the older stallion stated. "Try to listen..."
Another sketch.
"Some of you," he dryly said, "are undoubtedly wondering why I'm showing you a drawing of an oyster. Are you aware of how pearls are made? A grain of sand gets inside the shell, irritates the flesh. The oyster secretes a substance which builds up around the grain, isolating it, creating a surface which the oyster can bear. And our world... is, in one way, very much like that simple creature. It knows what hurts it, and it will do its best to protect itself by isolating the source. Only in this case, the irritant, or perhaps the poison --"
And the time had come.
"-- is chaos. The chaos of Discord."
Other than the increased scent of fear in the room, nothing changed. He exhaled, went on.
"In the time of his rule," he told them, "chaos randomly battered the land. When that attack became most intense, it took the form of a storm, one which remade -- and sometimes unmade -- reality itself. But when the storm passed, some of that power would remain behind, soaked into the very soil. The changes created... those tended to linger, and they are the reason for those places where even wild zone explorers fear to tread: the patchwork nightmares we call chaos terrain." Some notes came down: in their place, three maps were pressed against slate. "But the world tried to protect itself from that power, and so it built up layers around its core. Ultimately, this created what the earth ponies have termed the perpetually-changing jewel of deathstone. The rarest of gems, in no small part due to the risk inherent of going to where one might be found. But a more appropriate name might be chaos pearl. Each contains a portion of Discord's released energy -- his signature, if you prefer, only with very little fading. They encapsulate the potential for, and power of, change."
It was just barely possible to hear some of Pinkie's words between the soft sobs.
"The places where bad things... are still happening..."
"In Star Swirl's era," the older stallion continued, "some unicorns would, for their own protection, learn to sense the energies of chaos. It is... not a kind learning process. Disorienting at best, and I recommend not eating too much before or after an attempt. I went to the only source which might openly exist in our time: the statue in the palace gardens. Arriving when nopony would see me, staying for as long as I could, trying to feel any traces that might be within. And within that statue... power was still present. Confined, weakened, but power. I had the feel for chaos, and so I sought it out within its own terrain. With that new sense as my guide, it didn't take long to acquire the first pearl -- and then to use it as Star Swirl had. For the pearls could hold more than chaos. They were also capable of retaining essence. And thus I began to harvest." More quietly, "The first stop... with the first of my pearls... was a grave. Because you must harvest from the dead, or the dying. To possess any strength would resist the process, and if somepony chose not to resist... the harvesting might be fatal. I asked the dead for their help, and the shadowlands gave their only response: silence. But still -- help was there."
Back to that slow, pained pace.
"I was uncertain as to how much essence would be required," he admitted. "But one pearl, one -- harvest... I knew that wouldn't be enough, and so I began to acquire more. And I also knew that in order to understand what would ultimately need to happen, I had to experiment. I would have to take things further than Star Swirl ever had, to understand the effects on a pony before the true attempt was made --"
"-- you created monsters!"
It had been a scream, and the portion of silver field which coated the door shivered.
"I," Doctor Gentle softly stated, "saved lives. And the lives I saved... are the reason for your life, Duke. Whether you wish to acknowledge that or not. Very well. I will move ahead, if only to make you understand."
To make them understand what they truly are...
"In the course of a normal pony's life," he continued, "there are two great moments of destiny. I had already commenced my public studies, because the singular trick I had acquired was something of worth to Equestria. I became a midwife, and that allowed me to have a presence at the first of those moments: birth. The time when a new life makes itself known to the tapestry of the world. Star Swirl had experimented with essence, and found that because he missed those moments, he could not incorporate it directly into himself. Even if he had somehow managed to make it enter his form, he believed there would be displacement. But it was a theory untested, at least on ponies. And so I waited for what every midwife sees: the dying. The foals who cannot be saved. It... turned out to be a rather short wait. The very first mother to be brought into my new facilities had been in labor for far too long. Her filly was dry in the womb. Was dying, and should I have done nothing, even with the Exception in play, she would have been stillborn."
(She was somewhere above him. She was hearing all of it. He so wished he could look at her, meet the gaze of that sole visible eye as he spoke words of destiny...)
"As a race," he quietly said, "at best, we can only trace our ancestry to the Discordian Era -- and there the trail vanishes. Nopony can truly know whether a sin lurks in their family line. I had a dying filly within the womb, one who would never know any time under Sun. A filly who could have been born as -- anything. And so when I reached out to her with the Exception, I opened a channel. I sent the energies of change to her, along with the essence that pearl had also been asked to contain." Ruefully, "I had meant to use unicorn essence, but it was my first birth and... frankly, in the panic of preparing, my field lanced for the wrong chaos pearl. I wished to see if she would be born as a unicorn. And if it failed... if it hurt her..." His eyes briefly closed. "...then she was already dying."
Opened again, looking at past and present superimposed upon the world.
"Instead, it saved her life. For Star Swirl had written of something which I didn't truly understand until I saw it. He called it hybrid vigor. All of the animals he experimented on came into the world with a determination to fight for every breath. Those who should have been stillborn lived, thrived -- as did what was, in truth, the second pony I ever brought to Sun. And as I had become somewhat attuned to essence by that time, I felt something happen within her. The earth pony essence was incorporated into her form. But there was a price to pay for that: the displacement which Star Swirl had feared. And I was unable to change the whole of her: no matter how much essence I channeled, something of the original was retained. Not an issue when changing a pony into an alicorn, but..." A small, almost casual shrug. "Well, in short, a portion of her natural essence was lost, and the earth pony essence replaced it. And it was my first use of the pearls during a birth. I didn't know how much to use, what was safe, where the limits were... but she lived. She thrived. And... she was born as a pegasus -- although it took a few hours before I checked my stock and realized that another part of the failure was my fault. I was unable to transform her in the womb, and that failure has lasted throughout my career: I never changed the species of a single newborn. But I discovered that the essence infusion granted strength. Those who stood on the border of the shadowlands could be brought to Sun. And so I continued to experiment upon those who would have been lost. Discovering what happened when chaos met essence and they both merged into the shadow of a soul..."
His head dipped, very slightly.
"It was... a learning process," he softly admitted. "I count my true failures in the numbers of those I could not save. Some were too hurt for my efforts to bring them back -- but I made sure their essence lived on. And there was one time, a year into my career... a breech birth, the most difficult I have ever dealt with, what I felt was purely a chance encounter from hearing a scream at the exact moment I was about to use what I thought was a barren land of rocks as a teleport relay area. Given what became of her, I believe I can call that destiny now. But at the time... unicorn essence didn't seem as if it would be enough to save her and in my fear, I used a second pearl, for its potential to change alone. The imbalance... nearly killed her, along with almost taking the life of her mother. I never tried that again. But she lived, and..."
He looked up. Found his gaze going too far aloft, brought his attention back to the audience he could see.
"...even with no changes visible," he went on, "I felt it was worth it. Fillies and colts lived. If nothing else, they lived, and so I continued to use the pearls to save those who would have otherwise been lost. But as they aged... I began to hear of what I felt were side effects. None of them had visible Surges. Some of the parents felt that was due to the difficulty of their births, that their magic had somehow been impacted, and I could hardly tell them what had truly happened. All were slow to come into what should have been their proper magic, and when it did appear, that power was weak. A pegasus child confessed to me that she could barely tolerate the sensation of standing on clouds: that they felt tacky beneath her hooves, as if she was slightly sinking. But every affected pegasus could fly. The unicorns would muster sparks, and the earth ponies didn't seem to have sacrificed any of their physical strength. Still... the loss of the original essence had done something..."
He sighed.
"I had given them their lives..."
And then came the true smile, the beaming of purest pride as his voice swelled with joy.
"...and I had created a miracle. Because their marks began to appear. Their talents manifested. And where some of their original essence had been lost, the new had been fully incorporated into their very souls! They were the proof that the Great Work could succeed, that transformation was a matter of power and essence added to the proper mindset and moment! You wish to call them monsters, or warped, or any of the other terms which fearful ponies whisper into what they hope will be receptive ears? They are miracles one and all, Duke, and two of them saved your life! They saved the lives of everypony here, they are the reasons why we still have lives...!"
Silver flashed, and the pictures were taken from the pile, brought into full view.
One at a time, so he could speak about each miracle in turn.
One by one by one by one by one by...
There is a pegasus whose wings lacked their birth caps, who had fragile bones irreparably shattered by the pressures of labor, whose second experience of pain was the emergency partial amputation which shaped what remained into something which could pass for wings -- ones which were forever stunted. He should have died within a day, was given a name which reflected ultimate fragility, and he lived. He flies, for an unexpected kind of strength substitutes for lost surface area and magic and everything else. His sheer determination to live still pushes him forward and when the muscles behind that power slam a hoof into dirt, the earth reverberates at his touch.
There is an earth pony who has spent her life dreaming of the sky. She has never been content to rest upon the silent soil: her childhood was mostly spent in attempts to get above it -- but ponies make poor climbers. Still, she hiked to ever-greater heights, she learned all she could about methods for parting hooves from land, and when her mark came, it was for aeronautics. She pilots her own balloon, scouting wild zones from overhead, and those around her marvel at her luck in somehow always encountering favorable winds when outside the realm of control. None of them, not even her, have recognized that the winds do not merely favor her. They love her, and make sure nothing ever happens to their wayward daughter.
There is a pegasus who was always fascinated by devices. She spent her childhood taking apart the creations of unicorn enchantments, and found her mark manifesting at the moment she finally reassembled one in working order. She has no talent for wonders, the creations of pegasi which channel that form of magic. But with that made by unicorns... she understands them, on the level of the mark which no other pegasus has ever possessed, and this has allowed her to open a repair shop, one where nearly everypony has to adjust to the strangeness of the proprietor. For she has no ability to cast, and so some things are forever beyond her -- but there are times when adjustments to the physical aspects of a device suffice. There are also times when she knows how to proceed because upon her touch, the device just might whisper to her soul -- and at the moment the doctor speaks of her, she is minutes away from learning about the power which truly flows through her blood.
There is a unicorn who studies botany. His field is weak: he struggles to move the heaviest of flowerpots. But he gains some benefit from his personal trick, one he has yet to discuss with anypony other than his first friend. That to simply focus his magic upon a plant is to understand some portion of what that plant does: whether it's edible, where it can thrive. There are times when he begins to recognize medicinal benefits, and always knows what has to be avoided. He keeps that secret (on the friend's advice) because he feels other will think less of him if they see magic instead of knowledge. And because there are times when he's among his charges when he thinks he hears something very much like music. The trees await the day when he finally and truly listens.
There is an earth pony who understands workings. It's not the education of a dedicated scholar (although he's studied whatever he could): it's instinct, an understanding which comes from the core of him. He will never cast a single spell, and yet his comprehension is so complete as to make him capable of teaching them -- if only anypony would accept his tutelage, and that acceptance has never come, not when ponies can see what he is. So he left his home, went to where nopony knew him, and never takes off the hat. He sometimes claims disease keeps him from casting, the world's most persistent victim of Rhynorn's Flu, and has assembled a list of other excuses to be brought out at need. But it doesn't always work. He has been exposed, had to move on -- but his mark has told him what he is meant to do, and so he continues to travel, tutors whenever he can. And through all of the lessons given to the young, all of the little accidents so common to those trying out their fields and tricks for the first time, he has never been hurt, not by their magic, for he dispels every spark which comes too close, and doesn't know he's doing it at all.
There is a unicorn who yearns for the sky. She lacks the field strength to levitate herself, tried to master the spell which would grant temporary wings and didn't have the power for that either. She looks at clouds and sees not just shapes, but a home denied. In her dreams, she swoops over the land, flying through loops and spirals which few pegasi could ever manage, and so she tells herself that those dreams torment her. She both longs for and loathes the release of sleep, for it is the only time when she can truly be herself -- and yet she must always wake. She has yet to realize that the night is when her soul flies, projected into the sky to soar as it will. That everything she sees during those dreams (and she always remembers them) is real. Nopony has told her of the pegasus made of shimmer and desire who sometimes appears over her newest settled zone. So she's saving up for a trip to Cloudsdale and the casting of the spell which will allow her to visit at all. She thinks it'll wear off in, at best, three days. She doesn't know it isn't needed at all.
There is a pegasus, and she was the first. Her flight is typically slow, her maneuverability poor, and she fears using even the most basic technique within a group effort, because she can hardly ever get anything to even partially work and believes her mere presence could sabotage everything. Her parents were strong, she should have been destined for weather college... it takes very little before she starts to resent her weakness. She begins to hate herself. She retreats from the world, and there are times when she thinks about leaving it. But then her mark comes and the world reaches out to her, accepts her in a way few ponies ever will. Ground calls her, and she descends. The natural inhabitants of the land come to her, provide the support and love she so desperately needs. She understands them, as they understand her. She feeds some of them with plants which have no right to grow on her property, located just behind the Cornucopia Effect's true border. And when something less natural approaches, when the anger which one of her many fears has driven down into the darkness starts to surface, her fear of herself -- that is when the monsters see what lurks within her eyes. A shard of chaos stares them down, and so many will do anything to make it stop.
There is an earth pony who should have died, and spent much of her youth wishing that she had. The chaos within her interacts with the unicorn essence which displaced nearly all of who she could have been and finds strange ways of emerging into the world -- but she longs for the acceptance she never found in her birth home, and the thought of being seen as too different, strange enough to trigger rejection, terrifies her. That fear has created a near-constant aspect to her abilities: that nearly all simply see it as just her being herself, and prevents them from thinking anything more of it. It takes a particularly questioning mind to maintain focus on what's truly happening, or one so hidebound as to never be capable of conceiving that the supplies which went into that first party were conjured. The accusation of theft ultimately drove her to Ponyville, where the happiness she found allows her magic to bring laughter for so many -- but only as long as she herself can be happy. She is the experiment never repeated, the first known to create miracle -- but her mark, her magic, her existence is tied to her emotional state, and to lose that inner joy leaves her as nothing more than the adult version of the filly hopelessly pushing the rock along the furrow, forever alone.
He spoke, and the barriers crumbled.
His words reached her ears, and walls which she hadn't known existed simply dissolved.
He educated, and the final divisions fell.
She lived in a world of order. One which had begun as a place where marks had never moved, ponies didn't agonizingly shift between the races, where the appearance of a monster would match its soul. And one by one, all of those rules had been broken. But she'd felt herself to have weathered the storm -- until the words joined everything which had happened, the things which were still happening, and the next thing to break would have to be her because the world was chaos, discord, nightmare from which nopony could ever awake and
they were around her. Everypony was. But she no longer fully recognized that. They were all reacting to the words in their own ways, and those ways would not truly reach her for some time. As far as noticing what was happening to them was concerned, she could have been alone within that high perch. She felt as if she was.
The words crashed through her, leaving very little intact. And the final rule broke, a law so fundamental that she'd never had to think about its existence.
A unicorn is a unicorn.
An earth pony is an earth pony.
A pegasus is a pegasus.
Except when they were not.
Picture after picture, and a shred of sanity realized that he was only showing some of the adults. That there were those who were younger, so many who had yet to manifest their marks, and...
...one who had just been born.
Dawn Sky. He changed her, right in front of me. He made her into...
The words had led her to the familiar. The pictures confirmed it. Images rammed into her skull, joined the howling storm, twisted...
...the trembling forehoof touched her shoulder.
Later, she would recognize it for what it had been. A desperate attempt to reach out. The simple act of asking somepony to acknowledge them, to see them as nothing more than themselves. That in the time of greatest pain, of an inner agony she could barely stand to imagine, that pony would be still be with them. As a friend.
But she looked at where that darkened hoof was touching her. Realized just how much they were touching.
And she screamed.
Her eyes did not go white. Her horn remained dark. But she screamed, and nothing could have stopped it. A moon of chaos broke free, a lifetime only it was somepony else's lifetime, the world was wrong and the only way she could deal with it now was to scream and scream and scream --
-- the restraint slammed onto her skull.
She instinctively recoiled, hooves scrabbling at stone, trying to get away. But it was too late: the straps were under her chin, had somehow gotten there without her ever noticing, and the other thing she hadn't noticed until it was too late was Quiet standing over her, his field just now winking out as the door slammed open, ponies flooded the room --
-- there was no space in which to fight. There was barely any chance to fight. The sound of a net (registered immediately, acknowledged far too late) landing on Rainbow, tangling her wings. A red unicorn field lashed out with a length of cloth, wrapped around coral mane and covered eyes. She would later learn that Applejack had been hit by shackles which locked themselves around all four ankles, ponies were going after Rarity, more were closing in --
-- there was a burst of space-clearing flame, followed by a pony scream as claws swiped across a sensitive snout. Scrabbling noises, something more than keratin on stone, walking claws fighting for purchase and then --
"-- he's getting away!" somepony shouted. "The dragon is getting away!"
"Stop him!" another yelled. "Go up the passage! Don't let him --"
And from Applejack, just before her jaw was bound, "Run, Spike, Sun and Moon, run --"
But Twilight, restrained and broken, could do no more than to look past Quiet, who had just silently stepped aside. She didn't truly register the now-opened box behind him. Instead, she looked at nearby dark pink fur, utter rejection writ large in devastation. The only emotions that entity, who had never been able to raise a single hoof against those who were now binding her, was now capable of experiencing.
An entity who had been her friend.
Her friend, who had never truly been a pony at all.
She screamed. And she continued to do so until the fourth pony to try finally managed to place the gag.
Three things.
First: used with permission. I asked for such a long time ago and it was granted.
Second: as promised in my blog, I published a companion short story, one which takes place around the same time as the events in this chapter. You can find it here, and I've temporarily marked the anthology as a sequel to Mechanical Aptitude.
And third: ...I've felt for a long time that when I reached this chapter, people would yell at me. A lot. Also that we may be on the verge of as many as three TVTropes edits, and the Wild Mass Guessing page may be about to go nuclear.
Let it begin.
Oh... That does ''not'' sound good.
Did they recognize him by his voice?
...
Pinkie's reaction... Was bad EDIT:(for her). It was really good writing.
I'm not sure what I thought it was gonna be like, except was hoping for more awesome retort of some kind.
This makes a lot more sense though.
...
Death Euphemism.
...
Reveals! All the Reveals!
And integrating the new season too! Nice!
Cherry Berry! ... Rachette, Snowflake. And of course, the ones right in the room. Anyone else we should know?
...
Skipped down here when quoting, and was wondering who was gagged. Now I know.
...
Dude, you really shouldn't have told her that. Now you've just given her an escape. Dumb dummy.
We don't even know what happens after she's gagged. I'm expecting something awesome, with the sequel happening immediately after. Or something.
Fluttershy... You willing to do that thing now? ... Discord, are you reading her mind? ... ... And Spike!
...
I bet the most effective results would be at conception. Good thing he never thought of that?
---
Also, Gentle Arrival was sorta the Spike to Primatura's Twilight?
That explains quite a lot. I have a feeling there's not going to be any of Trotter's Fall's remaining once Fluttershy gets the words out.
Man, even expecting the betrayal that was very nearly painful to read. So good job with that!
Excellent. Oh my gosh, every word sent a chill down my spine.
This was what you were holding back for in fear for, right? The thing you were most afraid of writing?
You knocked it so far out of the park it'll be in orbit for weeks.
Such a slow build up and what a tremendous burn. Wonderful. Thank you for writing this story. It truly is amazing.
I guessed most of this, although I did not think Triptych was a normal Earth Pony, I thought she was "special"
...holy shit
I'm gonna have to go through a second time to make sure I absorbed it all right. I was not expecting the gags, shackles, and suppressors, though I suppose that makes more sense; rather I was anticipating Applejack to literally kick the floor apart in a rage and things to escalate from there - but I suppose it was a cold anger, and she did say she never learned how she shouted that one time. Hm. Maybe Twilight will learn how? I gotta wait, or make my own way to that speculation page.
In other news, you'll be glad to note that no animals (stuffed or otherwise) were crushed or otherwise given discomfort by my reactions to this chapter - though if the blanket I was curled under had nerve endings, it might have protested the white-knuckle grip that my nerves are now telling me I must have had maintained on it for most of this chapter.
Guess who's freaking actively sobbing?
Twilight... how could you... how could you think that???
I was holding myself together until that part...I can't...
I already added a smidg of info to the recap page this chapter brings some truely horrifying things to light, this cliffhanger is almost unbearable, here is hoping for a next chapter soon
Well, I started reading the latter half a few hours before this updated, and I’m glad I caught up now.
Well, I hope Spike gets away, and especially that he gets a message to Trixie before she walks into a trap. Cadence’s message has not arrived yet either.
Fully expecting Pinkie or Fluttershy’s talents causing things to go downhill eventually because those are potent and unconventional abilities to keep in check. And Applejack still has her secrets to play.
Also Applejack - you’re the almost bigot when it comes to these things. You’re the one that gets to talk to Pinkie Pie most likely, and possibly Twilight. It’s either Rainbow or Rarity that gets to check up on Fluttershy. I do think Rainbow is simple enough she won’t really get why she could be freaked out and just put this under more reasons to want to kill the doctor. Rarity could but she’s very level when it comes to some things.
Yang: "Well, that was a thing that just happened."
That was incredibly intense! and definitely worth the wait!
Poor, poor Pinkie. And Twilight shame on you! You should know way better by now. Time to buck up and step up Purple Smart. Time to really earn those wings. And Fluttershy! What an agonising decision to be responsible for. Without Doctor Gentle and the differentiation exception the Great Work is finished but that is an impossible choice let alone likely condemning poor Triptych.
Gentle Arrival is the best/worst type of villain; the one where you can't decide whether to hate him or pity him. I wonder if he would have started down this path if he was aware of the Secret. Twilight has already questioned "how much damage has the Secret done?" It would be ironic if the Secret ends up playing a part in his downfall as Applejack once said "So if there was anything really big... there would be one last surprise. And maybe that would be enough".
Also sad that the path he dismissed as irreparably broken is only one we know of that works without other problems (the original bearers do not appear to have come out of it unscathed and Celestia and Luna's flashbacks seem to indicate that something went drastically wrong)
One has to question the strategy of Gentle and Quiet though. They capture the Bearers and then what? Try to force cooperation? Stall them long enough to run? I'm not seeing a viable end game here for them. The harder they try to keep this under wraps the deeper the hole gets.
8699123
The only other one I recognised was Green Grass (the earth pony with a talent for teaching unicorn workings) from The Traveling Tutor and the Librarian series by Georg if I'm not mistaken.
8699128
He will come to her call.
With joy and with anger and with simple inevitability. The game is at its end, but a whole lot of filthy traitorous blood supremacists are going to learn a terribly ironic lesson about the nature of Chaos in the process. Maybe 'Shy will want to keep the bloodshed to a minimum. Maybe he'll listen if she asks.
Hopefully at some point also with a side of Twilight not being a goddammed idiot, but I've pretty much given up on this story's incarnation of her ever having anything resembling a smart reaction.
8699637
Marks can be transferred. Multiple marks can be transferred. Say, six, to be precise. He wants the Elements, to make a real Alicorn, after all.
If she manifests with the Bearers' marks, he hopes that will let her use them. He's an idiot, and missing important knowledge only Twi and the Sisters have regarding just what that spell really does, and how the Elements actually work. He thinks they're like Devices .
I'm sure his plan is to have Her banish the Sisters when they finally show up using the Elememts.
You know, I really thought that Pinkie was going to have draconequus essense, not unicorn.
Also, Twilight, I get that you've had stress building up for a month, and I can sort of sympathize, but you still better give Pinkie the mother of all apologies very very soon.
8699123
Not by his voice, Gentle wasn't robed.
8699706
I actually think that it's more likely Gentle doesn't know what really happened with Pinkie, he just made an assumption after the fact. I suspect that he has been blind to a lot of the ways that Chaos has tampered with him as he has tried to tamper with it over the years, as most frothing fanatics are wont to be. We know from elsewhere just what all his work got Starswirl in the end.
Oh, my giddy aunt. Pinkie was infused with a unicorn essence, along with whatever exists in a chaos pearl that is not holding an essence. Discord recognises that Fluttershy and Pinkie have had their magic altered. He calls Fluttershy a friend. Does he recognise Pinkie as a daughter?
And now I’m hoping that Twilight gets to meet a particular traveling tutor...
Seven. Six bearers and a protector. When you posted that blog, ages ago, I got the impression that the pony in question did not become a bearer, but the Minotaur did. We assume Star Swirl was the bearer of Magic, was he the protector instead? To the original 6, was Star Swirl their Spike?
Doctor Gentle is a bigot, a racist, considers mixed pairings a sin, is willing to experiment on babies, and has kept his own daughter in isolation and abused her in a horrible way...
Someone once gave you the nickname of “Pony Hitler.” Did you look at that accusation and say, “Ha! Just you wait, and I’ll show you Pony Hitler!”
Amazing chapter. More please. And soon.
Okay. So. This confirms several of my hypotheses and completely upends others. The chaos pearls weren't the catalyst for the Exception but essence capacitors. The blended magic wasn't a bug but a feature. Pinkie is far more than just a hybrid. And she is my number two suspect, and she takes after her mother. (I suppose Quiet's sister was simply sent on.)
This is well and truly huge. And we finally get to the capture alluded to so much, the backup plan in case the Bearers couldn't see the Great Work as its devotees did. Twilight's at least temporarily gone mad from the revelation, Pinkie's in the depths of despair, and nopony else is doing much better. There are still some outs, but for now, things are looking about as bad as they can.
And then there's the rundown of the hybrids. Some we knew. Some make sense. But then there's what appears to be Cherry Berry, and another who, if I'm interpreting it correctly...
I could be reading too much into word choice—there are only so many synonyms for flickering lights—but still.
As fascinating and terrible as the Great Work itself. Eagerly looking forward to more.
8699742
"...there were times when the chaos had included in its infinite variety more than a touch of purest beauty."
To quote Estee's Celestia: "There were moments," she gently said, "when I would just stop and stare at what he had made. I hated living in his world, we all gave so much to take it back for ponies and all the other races he tormented, including the ones hecreated. But days and nights when I understood that the source of truest creativity and invention might have always been chaos -- the randomness of ideas, elements of thought coming together with no prior connections... I can't say I miss him, Luna --" or at least, she would not"-- especially after what happened some moons ago -- but yes... there were times..."
Her sister pressed against her and they stood together, staring at the half-illusion sky.
"We shall never repeat this to him, correct?" Luna softly asked.
Celestia softly laughed. "I generally don't hold conversations with statuary. And if we're lucky, he's not listening... All right, Luna, I confess: I brought back fireworks myself and -- I learned musical notation just so I could try to capture some of what the Singing Shores had to say. You want to revisit something of his for your anniversary, and you can show it to me here. I'm not upset." And it was a truth. "But honestly -- I don't know which part of his chaos you mean. There was so much..."
8699637 8699742 Yeah, I knew something was coming up and spotted Green Grass (which I should have, because Estee asked permission, and I said Yes! Yes! Yes!) Holding this note back until now:
"...he has never been hurt, not by their magic, for he dispels every spark which comes too close, and doesn't know he's doing it at all."
There is, however, the occasional minor geraniumification, but only when there is an older, more experienced unicorn around to undo it. And besides, getting turned into a plant every once in a while is a pleasant occupational hazard. Sit out on the porch, get a little sunshine, relax for a few days until it wears off. And it's with photosynthesis pay.
Now I'm picturing Gentle having a talk with either Pinkie or Fluttershy after this:
"You were really going to kill your own daughter for being an Earth Pony?"
"No! Just for not being pure."
"THEN WHAT DOES THAT MAKE ME!?"
8699740
True, so maybe my original theory is still possible.
8699757
Spike is their best hope right now. Also, I totally didn't guess that was Sunset, although that we do know she's supposed to be somewhere in this 'verse . . .
Edit: On the other hand, taking a second look, it says she didn't have the strength to make the wing spell, so it may be somepony else.
...Gentle's a monster...
Well, I SAY that, but he's blessed the world with wonderful ponies like Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Ratchet. But... The ends do not justify the means.
Woah.
8699358
Think what?
8699706
I must have missed something. What does Twilight have to apologize for?
8700009
Screaming when Pinkie was just trying to reach out to her in comfort, basically rejecting her in revulsion, plus thinking that she wasn't even a pony. Of course, given how much she loves Spike that's not as big a deal as it could have been, but still . . .
8700061
Part of why I'm still wishing for this Twi to quit being such an idiot as to let a monologue from an obvious racist shake her faith in Pinkie. She's better than this. Even in other stories in the 'verse, she's better than this.
I can't help but wonder if anything happens with the same type of essence. It's had to have happened at least once. Do you get a slightly odd phenotype, or what?
Awesome chapter. Most of the stuff I suspected, but the one thing that floored me was
Gentle's motives. I was totally on his side because I thought he was just trying to make everyone alicorns so everyone would be immortal and no one would die. Quite understandable motives for a doctor. But instead he's just a more competent version of Coordinator. I was quite floored by that!
well...i guessed right about Gentle's wife dying during childbirth.
8700199
I suspect that without the hybrid vigor caused by the change the foals simply die or are "sent on" as pony Hitler puts it.
Also chaos magic probably doesn't play nicely with keeping things the same.
8699123
I don't think we've met the rest in the other works, but I could be wrong. I would have expected Scootaloo to be on the list, though.
On one hand, he makes some sense. Would you rather have those foals dead? Would those ponies rather be dead?
On the other, wow this is a hell of a shock. He did terrible things for bad reasons, and living foals as a result seems like an almost unintended side benefit. There are still questions to be answered. Did he progress from trying to make unicorns to trying to make alicorns?
8700636
There's one huge hole with this excuse for his behavior. He knows that using essence from a different type of pony really fucks up their magic. Lots of them have taken their difference and made a life out of it but it seems to me that it's like a blood transfusion. Like to like unless you don't have any other choice. Also it's really horrifying ethics to experiment on people without their permission.
The thing about his daughter being broken is actually understandable. He thinks earth ponies don't have magic that they can really use, just the way earth ponies like it right? Of course the part where it's ok to kill your newborn is evil. Like killing a child for being born blind or deaf.
8700636
Yes, it’s good that he’s saving the lives of the foals, but he’s also keeping the families ignorant of what he’s done to their children in order to protect his own interests and “The Great Work”, and as a result all of the ponies that are “his” seem to suffer traumatic upbringings where they don’t fit in and are tormented by their differences... something that could have been alleviated by simply knowing why they were different.
8700869 I'd disagree with that. So far, Gentle seems to be the only pony who, simultaneously, knows exactly what's up with the foals and is not absolutely revolted and/or horrified by said foals.
The Duke called them monsters, Coordinator calls them The Warped, Twilight screamed at the thing she no longer recognizes as her friend, and back in Ponyville, Rachette's about to have an existential crisis.
Even before that, many of Gentle's... I hesitate to even use the word "hybrid"... differently-talented foals suffered throughout most if not all of their childhoods for their differences. If they were treated so cruelly simply for being somewhat strange in the eyes of their peers, imagine what would have happened to them if their peers, neighbors, even family knew the real reason they were so different.
I would be surprised if more than a handful of them made it to adulthood.
8699790
I'm really wondering what the conspirators' plan is at this point. Surely they realize that at the very least, they'll be facing the wrath of the Sisters- and someone had to be foresighted enough to realize that there's a demigod who really, really cares about one of the Bearers who's a lot more willing to burn down a foe than the Sisters are. It's hard to imagine them having a functional exit strategy.
Here's hoping that Spike can get away for the two minutes it'll take to fax a message to the Crown.
8700924
I think that you give Gentle too much credit... I can see no logical reason why he he wouldn’t do to Pinkie or Fluttershy what he did to his own daughter in a heartbeat. He “broke” them, in the same way that he decided his daughter was broken. He may not be revolted or horrified by them, but that’s not the same as being accepting of what they are. They still need to be fixed, by his philosophy. He doesn’t give up on them simply because he hasn’t given up hope of making them “right”.
And while you may be right that this world is so horribly racist that the children he delivered would never have had a chance had what’s different about them been made public, that wasn’t the reason he kept it secret. He was simply incapable of sharing the knowledge of their differences with them along with the message “and that’s Okay” because, again, his philosophy seems to be entirely based on the idea that it isn’t.
8700974
I was going to point out that Discord's rules prevent him from doing that, but then again, the conspirators don't know that, and Spike may ignore it anyway. He could fax Trixie though . . .
So... woah.
I've been following this story on and off for a few months; I binge read most of it last year, forgot about it, came back, and got utterly hooked. I've had a lot of fun putting the pieces together; this is one of the only fics that has ever made me go "HOLY SHIT" out loud (A Mark of Appeal is another one, incidentally).
I... can't even describe how much I love this fic, and the Triptych-verse as a whole. I can't wait to see how this ends.
So, some thoughts.
All this time I thought the chaos stones - the snitcher that Triptych had worn - was purely to stop her cutie mark from appearing.
Gentle mentioned three times that an essence can be touched, and two times it can be altered. At a guess, those would be birth, getting marked, and death. I think that while this is probably generally true, I think that there would be other, significant events that could alter ones essence. I think the reason Triptych doesn't have a name is partly because in pony culture, the name often implies or has a relation to the ponies ultimate mark. No name = no mark. Gentle's plan was to stall it until they were able to sufficiently satisfy that when she received her mark, it would result in an ascension as well (through means yet to be disclosed entirely). For whatever reason, this slipped and a mark - not necessarily her true mark - came through.
The third time the essence can be tapped it supposedly can't be altered. Gentle mentioned harvesting from graves - essentially, the souls of the dead - in addition to Discord himself. We're told the essence has something like a soul-like potential. It's...not unreasonable to think that those essences contain the echoes of the once-living ponies talent. We still don't really know where 'talent' comes from, but we're told that the bits missing from these ponies Gentle has modified, filled themselves in from somewhere. It's implied by the oyster example that the means talents are provided are whatever force resisted Discord (implied to be Harmony, which Starswirl et al modified to create the elements), and this is the power he seeks to tap into.
We know Starlight can transfer marks and also transfer talents as canon in the show (so she's probably due for wings by accident any minute now, massively foreshadowed when her name was changed from Aurora to Starlight, because Princess Aurora is tm to Disney) and if Gentle finds out that this could be done without chaos stones, that would be his next direction. Possibly he already knows, thus mention of a successor. That is assuming Starlight is canon in this universe.
1 earth pony + 1 pegasus + one unicorn != one alicorn. It equals three ponies of different tribes. Otherwise, we'd be seeing alicorns pop up all over the place through the natural process of interracial mixing. Formerly I thought of the chaos stones simply as distilled bits of Discord's power. Now we know that the chaos stones are being used to store/transfer essence, we also now know why Triptych is so powerful - she essentially has the combined talents of twenty-to-thirty ponies, plus a few bits of Discord's chaos thrown in for good measure, stirred into her. Those essences have not merged completely with her.
However, there's still a missing piece of exposition. Something that we haven't seen yet.
Gentle mentioned that while the marks could be transferred, the talent's could not - and also, earth ponies did not suddenly grow wings or horns yet, either. But Triptych is doing exactly that, repeatedly. I think this is where Discord's chaos stone comes into it - the power of chaos can spontaneously create and destroy.
Use chaos to mix pony tribes - you get Triptych.
Use harmony to mix pony tribes - you get Twilight.
Use chaos and harmony to mix pony tribes - ???
What force exactly was Starswirl using when he made his cutie mark spell?
I think the intent mattered. Starswirl deliberately set about to become an alicorn. Twilight was oblivious, and simply tried to solve a puzzle given to her by her teacher. Sunset was supposed to be oblivious, and from the moment she saw her reflection as an alicorn, Celestia did everything in her power to try to make her forget about it.
The intent matters.
That is why I think...Cadence's story about how she became an alicorn will be vastly different from what we think it is.
One more thing.
In the Triptych continuum, we know that Celestia has a tie to the sun. Luna has a tie to the moon. Cadence has a tie to the Crystal Heart.
We don't yet know what Twilight is bound to, but it's possible Triptych already is bound to something.
There's at least one interstellar body that has nothing bound to it that we know of, and that's Equestria - harmony - itself.
Exactly what motivated Celestia to push Sunset, and then Twilight, towards ascension? And did she have a hoof in Cadence's (I'm sure she did)?
Was it purely loneliness, or preparations for Nightmare Moon?
Or something more desperate?
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I'm pretty sure that, at least in the Continuum, nopony outside of Ponyville believes Discord is still around and not statuary. That's part of why Rainbow's notes are so important, most of what the Bearers know and have done isn't public knowledge. Some of it the even the Sisters don't know about, because Twilight has some things she's embarrassed to tell even Celestia.
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I have a sneaking suspicion that Her current mark is not a real mark. Remember, he notes that a transfer won't stick if the pony's real talent is ever exercised... but he's kept Her from ever actually knowing her own soul's voice.
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Gentle knows, if only from letters from Fluttershy and Pinkie.
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I will say this: the only part Celestia played in Cadance's change was a purely incidental one, a tiny push of what she didn't recognize as the first domino. She had no plans for Cadance to ascend, was unaware that the means was even possible, and discovering what had occurred was one of the greatest shocks of her life.
There is a story there -- and it's one I can't tell just yet.
i can't help but think of that flashback scene where a young pony-i think it was Quiet-overheard his family killing a baby just because it had no horn...and later boasting about how unicorn-pure they are! i suspect that most, or maybe ALL of the "pure" unicorn families in this unicorn-supremacist town are guilty of this...
several other similar things come to mind: author Katherine Kurtz wrote a series of books involving a magical race called the Deryni. they looked perfectly human, except for their ability to use magic...and some of them considered "half-breeds" to be inferior. doubly silly, since their entire race was an endangered species after centuries of "witch-hunters" had killed so many of them...
and then there's the "pure-blood"/"Mud-blood" nonsense from Harry Potter...
Oh man oh man. I said last chapter that the big reveals will probably another ten chapters to come around, and I have never been happier to be wrong. At the same time, a lot of my previous guesses are confirmed point for point here, and others almost confirmed, which also makes me feel gloriously happy to have been right.
Gentle displacing the magic of foals, the differentiation being his personal trick, his wife dying in childbirth while he was unable to help, his daughter being born an earth pony and him not liking that, the subsequent abuse and manipulation of her... with how he overglorifies his wife it also seems likely to me that my theory of him wanting to use an alicorn to connect to the shadowlands to talk to/reconnect/see his wife is correct as well. (I wonder if his wife was actually as nice and beautiful as he describes her. He's mightily biased after all, and with how gross his character is turning out underneath the thin veneer of civility, I'm having some doubts.) My guess that her cutie mark should have been art-related without interference is strengthened by this chapter too; it seems it was inherited from her mother. The mentions of natural light, materials, special vocabulary, and something other than bodily fluids staining the foal because of what Primatura dropped all would fit a painter's mark.
Gentle might not be a noble, but he sure resembles the worst of them in this verse: Wealthy, uncaring towards others, unwilling to do anything at all until it suddenly affects him personally. Then he got off his ass, but only for his own selfish purposes. I honestly feel sorry for what he experienced with his wife, it was gruesome and traumatising and nobody should have to go through that. But then he talks on and it's...
Even with having guessed so much of it, I have a hard time to find the words. Racial purity, cross-tribal relationships described as sin, the broken... at least the bearers recognise him for the disgusting racist he is instead of being blinded by pity for what happened with his wife. The fact that he talks about "sending her on" makes me want to vomit. He's fully willing to kill a newborn just for being the "wrong" race. Gross. And then all of Trotter's Falls assumed that he did send her on and therefore didn't ask about the child... the whole town is basically a nest full of racist killers, isn't it? I honestly can't believe that level of brutality. The earth pony's with their lynchings and here's the unicorn version of it. I wonder what the Pegasi do. Maybe some of them do give birth on clouds. To make sure the 'taint' falls down where it belongs. Excuse me while I go and actually vomit for a bit. (At this point, I kind of feel the story warrants a dark tag...)
It's also really chilling how he confirms that he imprisoned his own daughter in a cellar, brainwashed her and emotionally abused her. I suppose he thinks he did her a favour considering his opinion of earth ponies, but holy shit. He's basically pony Josef Fritzl and pony Josef Mengele and pony Hitler all rolled up into one. Takes a lot to be that evil tbh. No wonder even Discord is disgusted.
"Children are robbed of their heritage, she had a right to her heritage" But he sure has no qualms about robbing other foals of their heritage, does he? What a disgusting hypocrite he is. Sure, he saved their lives by messing with their essence, but if he was really upset about them not having their heritage he would have at least told them privately what was up with their magic at some point, so they could connect to that part of themselves. He would have explained it. But no. There's only a small, casual shrug about the displacement. Hey, no biggie that they're outsiders forever in a state of not understanding themselves. Not his problem, he has bigger fish to fry. He says it himself: he needed to experiment. The fact that it saved lives was nice, sure, but what he's really visibly happy about in this chapter is that they gave him his proof of theory. It was never about heritage or saving lives or poor suffering children. It's about one selfish asshole not being able to deal with the fact that his child isn't the race he wanted her to be. I can't even with this guy.
Also ringing the shame bell for Twilight thinking of Pinkie Pie as not even a pony. Given what she just heard, how mad she got at Gentle's racism... wow. She's also a pretty big hypocrite, isn't she?
I loved this chapter. It was infuriating, but so satisfying. The villains revolt me (which I love) and I honestly feel for everyone who has been hurt by them. Everything hurts, but I still hunger for more. Great job, Estee.
New guesses:
Gentle originally thought his cutie mark meant that he was destined to be a father/destined to bring about the next generation of his family; thus his wife telling him she'll give him his destiny. Would also fit his self-absorbed state of mind.
I already posted that one on TV Tropes but I'll repeat it here: Quiet's "condition of the blood" is not his coughing or general weakness. He's scared of having earth pony kids, that he'll have to "send them on" like most other non-unicorn kids in this town. Like his hornless sister.
New questions: I wonder what the story behind "cutie mark" is.
Also, as I have noted in another comment somewhere earlier, Gentle's trick, the differentiation exception, isn't just for moving a foal inside the womb. He also moved a lamp inside a room, and I really want to know how that's going to come out and into play.
...Christ, what an asshole.
I have a few notes about this particular chapter. It's mostly nice, and I'm sure you'll disagree with me, but the segment where you go over the foals "saved" and modified-it drags on. I'm sure it's effective and necessary, but you illustrated the point within four paragraphs. It could stand to be cut down a little.
Also, I'm feeling an extreme dissonance with Twilight in this particular chapter. I acknowledge your character development with her, but she is so different from what I know from the show in this story that my two mental images of her routinely clash. Her scream about ponies changing, for instance, while dramatic, also caused me to step back for a minute and go "Huh?".
Anyway, it doesn't really detract from the story or anything, just noting my thoughts here.
Okay I can see you put a second chapter up while I was writing my review so I’m going to finish my review before starting on the next chapter.
This chapter was excellent, the feels alone.
But this chapter does something that I really feel like the story has been missing for quite some time. It ties the two conspiracies together, before there were two conspiracies that had basically nothing to do with each other. And of the two, the Secret came off as the eviler one. – you cannot really maintain a masquerade without shitting on the inter faction karma meter, and the story didn’t disprove that rule.
Well, that changed in this chapter. We see that the Great Work is a consequence of the Secret, and in a way that must have hit Applejack in the gut like an intercity missile.
Up until now we have been told about the Secret from an earth pony perspective: how they needed an edge against the other tribes; how hard it is on them, keeping the Secret from everyone; and how everyone else is being prejudiced for seeing earth ponies as they display themselves.
And then, bam! Hay did you think making everyone think that earth ponies are only good as fertilizer and unskilled labor wouldn’t have consequences?
Equestria is pretty much a meritocracy thanks to cutie marks, and a huge part of each tribe’s culture revolves around their natural abilities. so, being disabled would probably be a big deal. We saw with Pinky and her family at the rock farm, that ponies who cannot perform their tribes magic can be treated extremely cruelly by their own families. – that is some good foreshadowing there.
I really wouldn’t be surprised if the other tribes had similar ideas of what to do with children disabled at birth. – I mean, from what we see of her family, I wouldn’t be surprised if Pinky wouldn’t have lived if her parents had known that she couldn’t use earth pony magic from birth. I’m just left wondering how many children Gentle Arrival would have just killed if he didn’t need test subjects.
And as a logical consequence of the Secret, earth ponies are basically seen as disabled to the other tribes. To repeat myself, they made everyone think that all earth ponies were good for was fertilizer and unskilled labor, all so they would have an edge over the other tribes. But as a result, they can easily be seen as a burden to their parents if they are from another tribe. – I’m seeing a lot of parallels to real life and it is really cool in a sort of fucked up way.
The last couple of chapters have been great and everything is being tied together nicely.
And now, i'm gonna start on the next chapter.