The Ninety-nine Nectars of Princess Luna; Or How Twilight Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Her Wings

by NoeCarrier

Ground Floor: Ancient Relics, Dirty Secrets and Blood Meals

“Ground Floor: Ancient Relics, Dirty Secrets and Blood Meals”

Princess Luna arrived at the palace thirty seconds after she left the theatre. Every eye followed her as she made her custardy way, her wake an expanding wedge of total silence. She ignored them as she swooped in, taking care to actually fly through the intervening space, and not take the direct route that would be somewhat more hazardous to those around her.

“Physician!” she bellowed, forcing open the door to the Adjutant's office so aggressively that it almost broke it to matchsticks. “Heel!”

Sound Rebound galloped over, his orbital of student doctors struggling to catch up. His hemp, oil-sealed overalls were covered in blood, and his tufted ears drooped as he saw the bizarre dichotomy of confectionary sauce and divine anger.

“I have fetched back this patient you so carelessly lost,” voice as heavy as the punishment rocks used on bound rapists, whilst setting Nar down on a nearby trolley. “She is worsley injured now than before. Do not make me fetch her again.”

The Princess didn't wait for his reply and instead dissolved into her gaseous, ethereal form, taking the quickest route to Infra Base, which lead her down through rocks, lies and corpses, not to mention several hundred thousand tons of volcanic glass, right into the heart of the Selenite Court. She became material again beside Base, who gasped, dropping the frilly, velvet-wrapped mouthpiece of the satinal pipe she was smoking.

“Infra Base,” Luna said, placing a hoof on the mare's withers. “The time has come to leave this city. Muster all those who can walk and load on them those who cannot, as well as anyone else as yet unafflicted. Leave none behind who deserve a rescue. Assemble in the Welcome Hall.”

“Yes, Mother, b-but how will we leave?” Base gasped, coughing, purple smoke trailing out of her nostrils. “Surely we will not trot out? Or fly? Half of us can barely do the first, let alone the second.”

“No. I have a better plan.”

*

The Royal Yacht Mytheme sat suspended in its cradle, buried deep below Mount Avalon. The elongated, teardrop shape of her polished silver hull glinted where the gas fired running lights of the dock caught it, but otherwise hid itself away in the sort of velvet shadows only chthonic climes could provide. Below her, the Spring of Avalon gushed out from between cracks and fissures in the rock, gathering in an immense pool before eventually finding its way out along pitch-black subterranean rivers.

Princess Luna did not care much for grand entrances, or stand on anything like the ceremony her sister preferred, especially when she was covered so thickly in custard. She alighted alone, on the edge of the pool, making only the slightest of sounds. She took off Harsag Zalazalag, placing it carefully beside her, the ancient and broody crown keening lowly as it met the rock. The mantle around her neck came next, then the chrome shoes, and at last Luna was naked, as much as it was possible for her to be. She dropped to her belly and got comfortable, wriggling against the rough cave floor. The sensation of gravel against her fur and skin was delightful, and she sighed deeply, allowing a content smile to play over her muzzle.

Though the centre of the pool was a frothing maelstrom, at the shore only gentle waves lapped against a steep edge. Luna examined the patterns of the waves for a moment, then dunked her head and neck in. It was ice cold, and crystal clear, and she felt her muscles and skin tighten up as her divine heart began to race. The alicorn body, as timeless and unchanging as it was, still took care to simulate such functions.

After a moment, the Princess pulled up out of the water, eyes closed, enjoying the feeling of the pure liquid, filtered through the mountain over thousands of years, trickling off her. Clean again, she thought, picking up a little ball of water from the surface with her magic. Home again. The ball floated over her withers and was released, shortly followed by another that doused her flanks. Last, she washed her hooves, taking care to magically dry them before reapplying her shoes. The custard refused to become stuck in her mane proper, and slid off almost gratefully when she dried those too.

“It is good to see that you keep the old ways, your Majesty,” a voice from behind her said.

“What know you of such things, Katabasis?” Luna asked, turning to look at the old nottlynga mare.

“Enough to know that those were rites of ablution, for a mare about to sully herself.”

“You really must stay out of the libraries, or at least, learn your lessons better; those were rites for a mare who has sullied herself, or in this case, been sullied,” the Princess said, placing a hoof on the scratched and worn, yet proudly polished, breastplate of the boatmare's armour. “How are you?”

“Fine, your Majesty. I trust you will be wanting your yacht?”

“Indeed. I hope the Mytheme remains in good order.”

“That it does, your Majesty. That it does.”

The mare began to chuckle, which progressed to a ragged cough as she turned away, heading for the narrow staircase cut into the rock face leading up to the Mytheme's dock and cradle. Luna followed, slightly puzzled.

“Not quite the flyer I once was,” Katabasis muttered, apologetically unfolding her wings. They were tattered and, where the armour at the roots allowed, Luna could see scars and deep furrows, evidence of muscular damage.

The Princess kept her own wings folded out of respect and followed Katabasis up the staircase. The dock itself was composed of a pair of forty metre granite slabs, suspended from the high ceiling by big brass chains directly over the pool below. The middle of it was cut away to make space for the cradle, in which sat Mytheme. Ropes and mooring lines held the yacht firmly in place, but Luna could see that it bucked gently up and down, as if caught in an ethereal wind.

“I have not seen her for more than a thousand years,” she whispered.

“One thousand, one hundred and seven years, to be precise. Her last actual use was shortly after the Third Intercession, where--”

“She barely looks a day older,” Luna said, trotting reverently across the dock toward the cradle.

“Her last full refit was about twenty years ago,” Katabasis said, following closely. “Though she has had a great many since your absence, as you instructed.”

“You and your ancestors have done a magnificent job,” Luna said, unable to take her eyes off the ancient craft. “Is she fitted and loaded with stores?”

“Some, your Majesty.” Katabasis paused and furrowed her eyebrows. “Do you really mean to take her out?”

“Of course. I have need of her.”

“Why not one of those lighter-than-air dirigibles?”

“They don't have quite the same impression on the soul as Mytheme does. In any case, they have all been destroyed. Did you not hear the explosion? It was loud enough.”

“Y-Your Majesty... isn't...” The old mare suddenly paled, her armour clattering as she stumbled.

“Do not worry. I am yet free of the Nightmare,” Luna said, turning to her.

“I'm sorry...” she mumbled, tears rolling down her wizened cheeks. “We only just got you back...”

“I would never leave you again, my beautiful nottlynga,” the Princess cooed, placing her foreleg over Katabasis' withers. “Once was too much.”

“My Princess,” she whispered, “I did not mean to weep in front of you.”

“That is alright,” Luna said, smiling. “Would you please fetch me the activation rod?”

“O-Of course, your Majesty!”

The mare disappeared off into the cluster of covered buildings that acted as the yacht's workshop, and which were presumably where Katabasis lived. Luna sighed deeply, adjusted her crown, and began to plan her next move.

*

The interior of the Mytheme was, as the exterior promised, unchanged. The silver and copper furnishings gleamed brightly in the eerie glow of the gas lights, the reflections moving in time with Luna's silent hoofsteps over its luscious carpeting. Behind the mortal trappings, however, something far more ancient lurked. The Princess found herself drawn to it, seeking out the exposed ribbing of the underlying structure. To the untrained eye, it appeared to be nothing more than some sort of expensive lacquer, an accent to the near-gaudy opulence of its surroundings. Luna knew better. The moment she touched it--

The Great Worm Carnifex loomed in the sky over the Hill of Tithes, blotting out the glow from the numinous eclipse that was the herald of the Selenite Princess' host. Looping in the shimmering air like a sea serpent in the throes of some ineffable ecstasy, it seemed as though it was a distant kite, a plaything for foals on windy days.

Luna winced, and retracted the hoof she had placed on the bone. “The end of the Third Intercession...” she muttered. “What memory comes to plague me now?”

“Excuse me, your Majesty?” said a voice from behind her.

“It is nothing, Katabasis,” Luna said, turning to face the Nottlynga. “Merely the playful sprites of my old age.”

“Yes, your Majesty,” Katabasis said, unfolding her left wing to reveal an object, her grip resolutely steady despite the damage to the webbing. “I have the activation rod.”

“Why is it in a box?” Luna said, turning her head to study the solidly black container, which appeared to be made of jet, framed with nacre, and held shut with an intricate platinum catch.

“I-I'm not sure, your Majesty, it was given to me like this--”

“Calm, Katabasis,” the Princess smiled, picking up the box with a delicate touch of her telekinesis. “I am sure whomsoever amongst your ancestors decided the rod required a carrier thought it very tasteful.” She unfastened the catch and examined the contents for a moment, before spiriting them away into the recesses of her regalia and closing the lid again. “But please, return it to its place; its job is now done.”

The nottlynga mare took the box under her wing, bowed her head, then left, making for the exit of the yacht without saying another word. As soon as she was gone, Luna took out the rod. It was barely the span of her unshod hoof, precisely hexagonal, and the color of freshly spilled arterial--

“...blood of your stallions! Take from them a thousand gallons of blood for every drop they have spilled of the blood of your foals! Make on them a thousand wounds for every insult they have made to your beloved nation!”

The Midnight Princess threw back her head and howled, and the mismatched lines of her host that had gathered on the Hill of Tithes bayed in return. Down on the cracked alkaline plains beyond the slope of the hill, Carnifex had alighted in a great heap and begun to disgorge wave after wave of unspeakable abominations from his fanged maw. Luna flapped her wings and rose above the crown of the hill. On the other side, thirty thousand of her nottlynga bellowed and writhed, begging for carnage. At their fore, a darker shade in the morass of grays and blues, the legions of the seventh, seeing their Princess make ready to attack, broke ranks and charged. Their lithe, wolfy shapes bounded and hopped over rocks, screeching and hollering. Luna smiled wildly, rolled in the air, and fell after them.

The thirty thousand nottlynga met with their foe some distance from the hill. The enemy outnumbered them nine to one, with untold reinforcements still lurking in the belly of Carnifex, but hadn't had the time to rally into a cohesive formation. Only the minotaurs, glistening and slick with the bile of the worm, presented a defense, kneeling and raising their forearms to cover their necks. It was not enough. The seventh, whirling hurricanes of wicked incisors and blind fury, collided with the first of them and set about their grim undertaking. Luna landed with force, throwing up a cloud of yellow dust that cleared in time for her to see members of the seventh tear away the muscles of their prey, champing jaws crushing arm bones with snapping sounds that rose easily above the noise of battle. From her left another minotaur appeared, flanked by nine-limbed mockeries of life cut out of glass and pulsing, stolen equine organs. Luna reached for Mythraegg, and the quarterstaff, a single shard of obsidian as long as her body, sprung from its nest on her pauldrons and flew through the air wrapped in a sheet of magic, hitting home between the black eyes of the minotaur and shattering his skull like a--

“--melon, and I've also got some rabbit, if that's more your thing?”

Katabasis was performing a balancing act of copper tureens, which were stacked on her head and back and brimmed with durians, mangoes and slices of melon. One, the largest, held a trio of sleepy-looking white rabbits curled up on top of each other.

“Five eat of fruit, the sixth sups blood, and the seventh...” Luna mumbled, blearily looking over the buffet the old nottlynga had brought out.

“Your Majesty?” Katabasis said, peering up at her with an expression of alarm. “Are you sure you're okay?”

“What will the seeds of the seventh eat?”

“I'm sorry your Majesty, I've never been very good at riddles.”

“You have brought fruit and blood, but what will the seventh eat?” Luna shouted, stumbling backwards, as though the food had turned to venomous caterpillars. “The seventh must not be denied!”

The volume of her voice reached a peak, and with a horrid clatter of metal, Katabasis dropped the precariously balanced tureens, throwing herself into a trembling kowtow. Mangoes rolled everywhere across the carpeting. The rabbits, roused from their sleep, squealed in alarm and ran in opposite directions, fearing for their lives far more than usual.

*

“I am truly sorry, Katabasis, I did not mean to shout at you,” Luna said, curled up on one of the extravagant chaise lounges in the yacht's lounge. “This vessel carries an ephemeral cargo for those who are its intended recipients.”

“My dam always used to say that burdens shared are halved, your Majesty,” Katabasis said from the opposite couch, an anemic rabbit passed out on her full belly.

“These are surely not burdens, but false images, for those icons that I saw, and gross depredations of equinity whose atrocities I witnessed--”

“You put it on, don't you?” Katabasis said, stroking the rabbit with the tip of her hoof. “All those airs and graces.”

Luna gulped.

“Yes, you've earned the right to familiarity,” she muttered, after an awkward second. “Sorry, again.”

“The lads up at the Castle are going to be ever so disappointed,” Katabasis said, laughing. “The pool's up to about eight thousand bits, the last I checked.”

“The pool?”

“The betting pool! About whether or not you can speak like a normal pony, or if it's just something you put on because it's expected.”

“Oh, right,” Luna said, chewing her lip. “Is eight thousand bits a lot of money these days?”

“I take home two hundred bits in a month, your Majesty, after tax of course, and I'm paid a little more than a regular on account of having been farmed out due to battle damage,” she said, unfolding her wings slightly. “So yes, I'd say so.”

“I am a little... removed from economic realities,” Luna said, standing up and trotting out into the middle of the lounge. “Perhaps that is an unexpected thing, for one such as me.” She sighed and shook her head. “I require of you another service, Katabasis.” She took a deep breath and reached around behind herself with a tendril of magic, grasping for the immaterial threads of the artificial pocket of space time. “I imagine it has been a wicked while since you were involved in the creches, or foalrearing activities.”

“Y-yes, it has been, your Majesty, but I'm ready and fighting fit!” Katabasis said, snapping upright and tumbling off the chaise lounge, sending the rabbit scampering weakly away. “I could be covered again, if it is required.”

“It is not, but your enthusiasm is admirable,” Luna said, sending magic coursing through the threads holding the pocket together, unpicking the various arcane mechanisms that kept it from interacting very much with the real universe. “I've a charge here, an unusual one. He must be minded.”

“Oh, thank the stars,” Katabasis sighed, relaxing from her rigid alert posture with a clank of armour plate. “Another foal, at my time of life.” She glanced at Luna nervously. “N-not that I'm unwilling, but--”

“Stranger things have happened,” the Princess said. “Though we've plenty of young mares, first seasoners and experienced dams all. No reason to go dipping into the retired stock.” There was a flash of magical potential discharging, and the pocket universe collapsed. Luna shivered as she arranged the complex network of interlinking wormholes required to discharge its energies safely into the space around Equestria’s La Graze points.“This is Spike, Katabasis.”

The baby dragon had appeared straddling Luna's back, just fore of the wing roots, almost exactly where she had taken him from in the first place. He wore a stunned expression, as though someone had just hit him with a giant cricket bat. Trails of white vapour came off his two-tone scales and there was a sudden coldness to the room. Perched behind him was an orange stallion, who immediately slid off and landed on the thankfully well-padded lounge floor with a painful-sounding thud.

“Oh, two charges, then,” Luna said, telekinetically placing Spike beside the stallion. “My little waifs and strays club; the dragon is most beloved of Twilight Sparkle, and must be kept safe in mind, even if his body is tough.” She sniffed the paralyzed pony, squinting curiously at him. “This other one I pulled from a crowd to keep his body safe, though his mind is gone to rut with the fairies. Keep the first out of mischief and shade his eyes of sad things; keep the second watered and comfortable.”

“I was somewhere else,” Spike gurgled, eyes unfocused, mouth moving spastically between words and gulps of air. “All the black, and black in me, came out to find the three in he...”

“Goatsfeld effect,” Luna said, matter-of-factly. “It will wear off in a moment. Just try and stay calm.”

“Who is the fifth who trots beside you?” Spike babbled, staring at an empty space between Katabasis and the Princess. “I count, there are only us four, but when I glance up the white path, there is always another one there, gliding wrapt in black mantle, hooded, not mare or stallion know I it to be, but who is that on the other side of we?”

“He'll be like this for awhile,” Luna sighed. “Though it may sound like augerings, it is just his brain, confused and deprived of input. It has made its own up to compensate, sensed its own background noise, if you like.”

“Your Majesty, this is an infant!” Katabasis said. “How could you inflict such a thing on young one?”

The old boatmare bustled over to Spike, nuzzling his cheek and cooing softly, which stilled his mad wittering and general nervous arousal.

“The lesser of two evils, I assure you. Though he is old beyond his years, and so wiser too than foals of our genetics, the foulness of the unfolding situation above would have changed him, hurt his growing mind. He will barely remember this, and with goodly counsel recover fully.”

Katabasis just sighed and nodded, then picked up the dragon by the scaly scruff of his neck, teeth somehow finding purchase on the scales.

“He will enjoy all sorts of gems, though dragons are panvores, and may consume anything suitably massy with equal nutritional value. They never evolved tastebuds as a result. They weigh food as the sole assessor of its quality. It's what made them a gigantic threat, once upon a time. You don't need to worry about him trying to eat you, though. This one has been raised amongst ponies, and so has our ethics.” Luna chuckled, which turned into a dirty laugh. “A dragon, with ethics. Stranger things, Katabasis!”

*

Mytheme had a control room, of sorts, but it was more a quiet space for the intended pilot to rest in than the usual busy, high-visibility environment of an airship. There were no instruments, and the smooth walls of the spherical chamber were entirely featureless, in equivalence to the contents of the place itself. Apart from a long and immaculately appointed slab of soft materials, no furniture lived here. It was oversized, compared to those used by the average pony for snoozing or as day beds, but that was because its intended occupant was far bigger.

Princess Luna settled herself on it with a refined elegance and sealed the hatch. Mytheme lacked internal controls primarily as a security measure. It had once been a symbol and sign of the Crown itself, but only that, the military power of the state. Though it lacked much in the way of weapons, the mass of the craft, its extreme durability and high cruising speed meant it was a formidable and highly dangerous device in as of itself.

The magical field was different here. The ancient ribbing of the Mytheme, in truth worked fragments of the bones of Carnifex, interacted with the usual flow of potential energy, disturbing and disrupting the vacuum. Had anyone been looking with the right sort of eyes, they would have seen that, instead of the tell-tale impression on the quantum foam that indicated the presence normal matter, the parts which were alien produced the inverse, a negative pull on reality itself. Luna felt it as a general disquiet, so subtle that it had escaped notice and remembrance before now.

Within the chamber, however, the disquiet was obvious and oppressive. It was here that the patterns of disturbed force met, where irresistible magic had bound them a thousand years past. Whatever remained of the soul of Carnifex, this was where it now resided. Luna tugged out the activation rod and held it in front of her. The other half of Mytheme's security system kicked in. Ninety-nine individual fields of enchantment, sparse and unpowered, dormant though ready to respond, suddenly had a locus through which to interconnect. Magical potential flowed out of the void and into the matrices in the rod and, immediately, the many enchantments recognized each other.

Each one was fairly straightforward in its operation. They were split into pairs, forty-nine of them, and challenging one with the other produced a value, expressed in low frequency pulses. The final, ninety-ninth enchantment was more complex, only responding to the correct set of imputed values originating in the others proper, sequenced firing. This order was dictated by the exact method they were interconnected, provided by the activation rod's matrices. Like spider silk hung taught and covered in dust, the enchantments ticked over, power flowing through them. Each in turn reported the value derived from its pair.

Finally, the ninety-ninth received all that it needed, and carried out the fullness of its programmed intent, causing the activation rod to vibrate in a very specific way. As it began to vibrate faster, in a pattern of different intensities programmed by the sum of the decoding enchantments, the molecular structure of the rod changed. The redness faded to emerald green, then deep blue, almost purple. Luna licked her lips, pursed them, then whistled.

The molecular changes had opened up tiny pathways between the arrays of matrices in the rod, through which air now vibrated. In the ceiling and walls, sympathetic resonances began to take place, eventually disturbing piezoelectric crystals that powered shielded channels of copper, carrying the signal to the places deep within the hull where powerful binding magic kept Carnifex's bones largely inert. They unfolded, the binds unshackling the beast's skeletal remains that were now the skeleton of a far prettier thing. Magical energy surged into them,

Mytheme dropped slowly from its cradle. The same copper channels had ignited the gunpowder-filled restraining bolts keeping her secure. For a moment, the yacht seemed hang in the air, limited charge having been built up in the lifting bones, though still enough to slow an otherwise rapid fall. Then it landed with an almighty splash in the middle of the Spring, throwing up a huge spray of water and feathery mist. Luna barely felt a wobble. The yacht was immensely durable, and would shrug off blows that might have uncapped mountains, thanks to the four inches of diamond tiles that lined the exterior hull. Below the diamond shell was a layer of silver alloys, punctured with thin strands of copper. It was the silver that gave Mytheme her colour, but the diamond that would really make her soar.

Luna reached out with her magic, feeling for the two huge tubs of mercury that not only acted as ballast, but also as heat reserves. They were directly connected to the diamond tiles through thermocouples, as well as magically via the copper. She empowered them, forcing energy out of the vacuum and into the mercury. It could withstand over four thousand degrees of heating, enough for her purpose. The temperature began to spike. By the time the reserves reached two thousand five hundred degrees centigrade, the outer diamonds had risen to nearly four hundred.

Great plumes of steam bubbled and raced away from the hull as it floated in the Spring, collecting inside the cave, forcing the hanging granite slabs upwards. Pressure built and built, and the diamond continued to grow hotter. At one thousand degrees, the flow of new water into the spring was insufficient to prevent the boil off from drastically reducing its total capacity. All the steam, without anywhere to escape except down the courses of the underground rivers, now pushed against Mytheme's massive bulk. The yacht began to move, quickly picking up speed and rising above the level of the water.

As the high vaults of the cave vanished in favour of narrow tunnels, so did the water. The superheated nature of the exterior of the Mytheme had created a bubble around her. She rode the pressure like a cork in the neck of an impossibly long bottle of champagne, accelerating to tremendous speeds. Occasionally, the Mytheme would strike and completely vaporize a chunk of the tunnel wall. This was rare, however, as the huge but even pressure of the steam kept Mytheme suspended neatly in the middle, even as the course of the river meandered through the underbelly of Mount Avalon.

Eventually, the Spring of Avalon fed out of four main exits, which went on to trickle down into the hoof hills and water tables of most of the nation. The northern exit, near the Abraxis gate, consisted of a mossy aperture in a short cliff of granite, surrounded by a thick smudge of deciduous trees and grasses. The flow, usually very feisty, had increased to a hydraulic spray then, moments before Mytheme was ejected, erupted like a horizontal geyser. The silver bullet shook the water as it broke the sound barrier, vanishing toward the sky.

Luna concentrated, adding her own power to the frame as that imparted by the steam cannon faded away. Mytheme's worm-bones would keep her aloft, but without extra impetus they would drift like a rudderless boat in time with the whims of magic. It was a huge temptation to open the throttle as far as her divine nature would allow, and keep racing toward the heavens. She closed her eyes, feeling the world drift away below her. Mount Avalon was distant bowl, gleaming with magic, when she reigned Mytheme into a wide curve back, only having to telekinetically shift the nose around before aerodynamics took over and turned her.

Assisted by gravity, Mytheme's fall was even quicker than her ascent. Luna devoted most of her available power to slowing it in time, though they came in wickedly steep, the sounds of straining inertia damping enchantments filling the air with a harsh whine. She oriented herself on the Palace, imagining the walls and courtyards. After a moment's pause as she circled, to allow for anyone who might be in the way to clear space, she set Mytheme's long, smooth hull down in the gravel. Luna threw back her head and took a sharp, starting breath, gulped, then started laughing. Exhilaration, how I have missed thee! What speed, what form, what style, what grace!

Luna hopped up and unsealed the cockpit, nearly galloping down the corridor which lead to the lounge deck. Katabasis had wrapped Spike up in blankets, and they were cowering on one of the big chaise lounges. The orange stallion had received the blanket treatment too, but he remained where Luna had left him, in the middle of the floor and completely immobile.

“Ye starry foals!” Katabasis exclaimed, looking as though she had dropped about thirty years in age. “That was incredible!”

“Prepare for guests,” Luna said, as she swept past toward the access ports through the outer hull, preemptively flinging the big, heavy things open. “I didn't tell you earlier; we're evacuating the city.”

“Yes, your Majesty!”

Outside, a gaggle of nottlygna and other stunned onlookers gazed up at the Mytheme in wonderment. Little explosions and pings of shrapnel from rocks beneath the hull being overheated by contact with the still hot diamond tiles met Luna's hearing, and big wafts of steam and smoke gave her the impression that she was leaning out of a furnace. As soon as the nottlygna saw her a great cheer went up from everyone, and the batty things began to hop around and flap their wings with excitement.

“Greetings from Tartarus!” Luna shouted, and further cheering came in response, which had to die down before she could speak again. “Fetch ladders, ropes and climbing gear! Fetch satinal and wine!” Another cheer. “Fetch you some mares! A smaller cheer. “Fetch stallions!” A massive cheer, complete with wolf-whistles and laughter. “Fetch what you need, dearest ones, fetch up your wounded and your dead! They died gloriously, in the service of what is just and true! May we all have that honour!” More cheering. “We may be leaving and in retreat, but our tails are not between our legs! We have been hurt, yes, but not defeated! We have been bloodied, but we are not unbowed! Invictus! Get aboard, nottlygna! We shall return!”

Comments

[djthomp]

It's always good to wash yourself off after getting covered in custard by a giant phallic cannon. I don't even know where I'm going with this, moving on.

The Mytheme isn't a lighter-than-air airship? I wonder how it works. Also, count me curious about this Third Intercession.

The Great Worm Carnifex loomed in the sky over the Hill of Tithes, blotting out the glow from the numinous eclipse that was the herald of the Selenite Princess' host. Looping in the shimmering air like a sea serpent in the throes of some ineffable ecstasy, it seemed as though it was a distant kite, a plaything for foals on windy days.

Make that very curious.

Oh my. Curiosity partially satisfied.

Spike! And, er, orange stallion I don't remember! Flash?

Spike has seen things, dreadful things.

So it's powered by the bones and soul of am ancient giant Worm? Luna and Celestia are kind of metal. It suddenly makes me wonder who or what Cadance's train is made out of.

“Ye starry foals!” Katabasis exclaimed, looking as though she had dropped about thirty years in age. “That was incredible!”

And speaking of metal, that entire launch sequence.

“We may be leaving and in retreat, but our tails are not between our legs! We have been hurt, yes, but not defeated! We have been bloodied, but we are not unbowed! Invictus! Get aboard, nottlygna! We shall return!”

*fist-pump*

[NoeCarrier]

5258437

Luna is pretty metal overall. She has a legion of bat winged bioweapon terrors in her employ, has a long history of drinking too much, and owns a giant scary black-as-the-night obsidian quarterstaff. My kindly editor informed me of the implausibility of such a 'steam cannon' launch system. It seems that, regardless of how cool it is, physics does not favor the launch of a three hundred metre long diamond-shelled yacht powered by the bones and soul of an ancient pan-dimensional horror worm in such a manner. I invoked the rule of cool, and so, here we are.

No, the orange stallion is not Flash Sentry. He's the individual that Luna tested her crowd control measures on some chapters back, and ended up taking along for the ride. Perhaps she plans to study him?

Spike saw a whole lot of nothing, is what happened. The Goatsfeld effect is my terrible, punny way of referencing the Ganzfeld effect, a phenomena experienced when the human mind is deprived of meaningful sensory input for a long time. The deprivation induces intense hallucinations, vivid delusions, and other unusual experiences. The lines he has to say after he is released from the pocket dimension are taken from a T.S Eliot poem about a similar effect found sometimes in explorers, which I believe is called the Second Man effect - it's largely similar to the Ganzfeld effect, and is brought about by sensory deprivation occasioned by the flat fields of snow during endurance climbing.

The Intercessions are an important part of the backstory. There were three of them in total, and all were begun by Discord and involved entities from outside their universe in some capacity. Their happening influenced a lot of the stuff that happened between Luna and Celestia and, ultimately, the plot in its totality. You will see more later.

[Sunny]

Luna is channeling the soul of old Doug MacArthur I see

[Fox]

5262193

My kindly editor informed me of the implausibility of such a 'steam cannon' launch system. It seems that, regardless of how cool it is, physics does not favor the launch of a three hundred metre long diamond-shelled yacht powered by the bones and soul of an ancient pan-dimensional horror worm in such a manner.

Perhaps if you gave her sunglasses, physics would feel more inclined to let it.. slide?