Immortality and Other Trivial Powers
“In recent years, the traditional binomial terms for the other sapient species that we share the world with have fallen out of favour, for reasons both diplomatic, and those of common courtesy. It can be particularly hard to conduct negotiations with gryphon trade advisors, when your scientists still refer to him as Gryphis magnusirratusavem -- in the case of Alce -- or as Gryphis parvusirratusavem in the case of true gryphons. Gryphic grasp of scientific Equuish has never been greater, and this is to say nothing of the zebric peoples, whose language has always shared root commonality with our oldest tongues. It is contingent on us, therefore, to construct new language, a new nomenclature whereby aspersions are not cast upon any species by the long shadow of our past warfare.” -- Whinnaeus, Systema Naturae et Thaumae, AN 235, as translated by Bodkin in AN 500 on the occasion of Her Majesty’s five hundredth year in power.
After a while, Luna said, in a small and utterly pathetic voice: “So, you have been in my demesne?”
Twilight gulped and withdrew from the hug, seeing some cosmically unfathomable expression in Luna’s eyes. She couldn’t tell if there was any sorrow there, or regret. The skin on Twilight’s neck twitched, then shivered. Her ears folded back, flicked forward again.
“Yes,” Twilight said, then, after a long moment: “What I can’t understand is why you didn’t do something about it. If you’ve known about all that stuff, all the things you left on the moon, why didn’t you make amends?”
“Sister hid it--”
“I’ve met Whom, Luna. You must have thought about it on your return, even if your memories were broken or missing, you must have known that a Goddess does not simply do nothing for a thousand years of exile. Did you ever go back?”
Twilight still couldn’t find any of the righteous fire or indignation that her characterized her imaginings of this moment. She kept her tone level, insistent, calm and, in truth, that was all she could manage.
“My mind has not been my own, Twilight. It was not that my memories were missing, it was that they had been rewritten entirely,” Luna said, miserably. “I recalled a thousand years of confined rage, my mind trapped within miles of Lunar regolith as if it was a grain of dirt in frozen ice. Who would wish to ruminate for long on that?”
Luna remained lying down, wings unfolded on the grass like some dead swan. Some of the nottlygna had crept down from their perches on rooftops to sit with her, all keeping a respectful distance except for one, who rested her head on Luna’s ink-stain flanks. Finely-tufted ears flicked in the warmth.
“The truth of the matter began to return to me only when the Thiasus’ first spasms wrecked turmoil on the standing magical field that runs through the entire universe,” she continued. “It does so yet. I can only think that whatever function my sister used, via the Elements, was entirely non-standard, for typical memory altering spells affect memory destructively. The information is gone forever. This does not seem to have been the case with me.”
“Do you remember Whom, then? A Stupid Pink Pony Whom Nopony Will Ever Love?” Twilight stood, glancing in the direction of the hospital. “I brought her back with me, you know. I couldn’t just leave her there on the moon, to suffer.”
“I do remember her, Twilight,” Luna said, eyebrows furrowing a little. “But why you think that she can suffer, puzzles me.”
“I’ve seen her suffer!” Twilight snapped, finding the anger again, which caused the nottlygna to spring up defensively, giving off thunderous warning neighs and chittering squeaks. “She bleeds, she feels pain. You know she does, you made her!”
“Hush, lads,” Luna cooed at her nottlygna, then to Twilight: “You’ve made a forgivable error, I see. It is probably my fault, with my speaking of creating races. Whilst it is true that I made the thing of which you speak, she is not really alive, nor conscious in the same way that you or I are.”
“Oh, what a load of--”
“Twilight, let me assume that you know where little foals come from,” Luna said, interrupting her with a faux matronly tone to beat all matronly tones. “When I created my nottlygna, it was from mares who were already in foal, brave volunteers of long ago. I edited. Even that was at the very limit of my skill, more art than technique. It had its failures.” She paused for a moment, glancing at the nottlygna. “I do not possess the ability to make ponies out of clay.”
“Then explain Whom, because it very much seems like you do have that ability.”
“I know that I do not, because I spent a thousand years conducting experiments to determine it.” Luna stood to face her judge, apparently regaining some composure in her defence. “Seems is the important word, here. Whom was the last product of that long process, and she was a failure. After her, I gave up. She was the best imitator, yet not a single sapient thought ran through her brain. There was something missing. No mind arose, even when I copied the structure of a mind precisely. Some process, some interaction, was taking place below the scale to which I had ever probed. Outwardly, she appears to be a living, breathing pony, and requires the self-same care and attention. Inwardly, she is nothing but ticking clockwork and clever magic. No more conscious than a cactus.”
*
Second Physician Neighlen stared concernedly at the thaumic light traces trailing through the air above his latest patient and, for the nth time in the last fifteen minutes, wished Nurse Redheart hadn't left the hospital to attend to the wounded that were expected to start arriving from Canterlot and environs at any moment. She had always been better at interpreting the more unusual data obtained from haemo and neurothaumic scrying. Neighlen dispelled the enchantment, frowning away the electric after-images that played in his field of vision.
The anonymous pink mare that hung in the padded cradle before him had suffered a blunt thoracic trauma, purportedly from a flying accident, approximately twelve hours ago. She had, thereafter, been deprived of care, leading to tension pneumothorax with pronounced, acute atelectasis in one lung. She had presented to him with no breath sounds and a barely detectable heart beat. He had determined, from his first thaumic survey, the usual signs of hypercapnia and hypoxemia.
So far, so ordinary. Pegasus fliers were regular visitors to his surgery, especially for blunt force trauma to gross anatomical features such as the abdomen. Neighlen was ignoring the fact that his patient also had a horn, or at least appeared to. It was his considered opinion that the horn was an artificial addition, for some cosmetic purpose. He had seen his fair share of ponies dressed as Princesses. It was most likely that the mare was a common-or-garden pegasus and not, in fact, an alicorn.
He and his team were well used to dealing with smashed up fliers, therefore, and had done the best they could. With hypodermics and cannula they had drained the damaged lung of fluids, stimulating the patient's own response to re-inflate and begin breathing again. When cardiac arrest had occurred thereafter, they had applied emergency electrical impetus, then three times more when a proper rhythm failed to materialize in the chest traces. Some unseen damage to the heart from oxygen deprivation had happened, however, because myocardial infarction followed on the heels of those arrests.
There was only really so much that modern medical thaumoscience, as good as it was, could do. The patient had been extremely sick for quite some time, and nearly dead when she'd crossed the hospital's threshold. The stress of her injuries on her heart had been too great, the damage to the sensitive cardiac muscle too severe. After the ninth attempt to restart the heart, following two semi-blind thaumokinetic arterial stents, Neighlen himself had made the call, pronouncing death shortly after five in the afternoon. Had she been presented earlier on, she might have survived.
But now, it seemed as though she had. Neighlen had been undertaking a quick perimortem examination, as was his habit, and had discovered diminished but significant neurological activity. All the life systems of the body had failed many minutes prior, and he was sure that brain death had already occurred. Her heart was a ruined mess, beyond saving, lungs still and cooling down. Her core temperature had fallen below thirty degrees, and yet her brain was lit up like a Hearth's Warming fireplace. If he had to guess, his patient was merely deeply asleep, and untroubled by dreams.
*
“I'm finding all of this very hard to believe, Luna,” Twilight said, as they walked up Mytheme's boarding ramp. “Am I to understand that Whom is just a sort of mechanism, albeit a very complex one?”
“As are we all,” Luna said, nodding. “Substrate materials and complexity vary.”
“Then isn't arguing semantics in this way, to say that she isn't real, incapable of suffering, just a kind of bigotry?”
Mytheme looked as though bulls had run through it at high speed, and this wasn't very far from the truth. The painstakingly maintained lacquers were scuffed, scratched and cracked in places, and the fine, shag carpets were torn and covered in muddy hoofprints. Twilight followed Luna as she made her way down the lateral corridors and into the central lounge. All the nottlygna were gone now, and the only other inhabitants were an orange stallion, and--
“Spike!” Twilight gasped, mouth falling open. “What are you doing here?”
“When you first went missing, and I rightly feared the worst,” Luna said, flexing muscles in her neck. “I borrowed your dragon, to aid in my search. Who knew you better? Then, however, the exigencies of the situation required his placement in safe custody. I have guarded him since.”
Spike didn't say anything, but stood up and waddled over to Twilight, pulling her into close hug, head against her chest. She returned the gesture, and nuzzled his back with the tip of her nose. It was often easy to forget, Twilight thought, that Spike was still really just a foal. He sniffed back tears, withdrew from the hug and looked up at her.
“So happy you're safe, Twilight,” he managed, obviously feeling a little ashamed of his emotions. “It's not been good here without you.”
“I'm so sorry that I left you alone, Spike,” she said, and it was her turn to feel ashamed. “I didn't think I would be gone for so long, but I should have told you what I was doing. How have the others been? I've already run into Fluttershy.”
“You did?” Luna said, eyebrow raised. “I do not know where the other Elements have gone. We could not find them, and other matters stole my attentions. Rarity, of course, remains comatose.”
“Comatose?” Twilight whinnied. “What? Why?”
“Because a route march across a desert is unkind to mortals, and pitchblende even worse,” Luna said, frowning. “She was found half-mad, dragging some desert plant, poisoned by that ore and all you put her through to get it and make metal from it, loyally carrying on until she could no more.” She let that hang in the air for a moment, then said: “I wonder, what other harms have befallen your friends?”
“Fluttershy was fine!” Twilight felt a tear roll down her cheek, feared it might flash to steam from the heat there. “I'm sorry about what happened to Rarity, but that doesn't mean the others have been hurt too.
“They're okay, I think,” Spike said, softly. “We did find Applejack, she was just...” he trailed off, trying to think of the right word. “Depressed. Yeah, that's it. Rainbow Dash said she was going to live underground but, knowing her, she's out drinking.”
“Amongst other things, yes, sounds very likely,” Twilight said, smiling and laughing half-heartedly.
“Do you still plan to make my Nectars, Twilight Sparkle?” Luna said, turning her head to look lazily at her, the casualness of the statement singularly failing to disguise the intensity of the threat inherent.
“I don't see how I could, Luna,” Twilight said, after a moment. “If even half of what you've said is true, your drinks are the herald of the apocalypse. I would have done a lot for them, but not that.” She shook her head. “Anything, but that.”
“I am pleased,” Luna said, relaxing her posture, now fully facing Twilight and Spike. “But, the ancient compact cannot be denied, and the Thiasus will not be stopped now.”
“I thought you said that the Nectars were an essential part of the whole deal?”
“They are, and remain an impediment. I am sure that we have struck Celestia's plans a severe blow. Make no mistake of that.” Luna grinned; Twilight swore she saw pointed teeth for a moment. “Know this, too. We have only delayed an inevitable. Celestia will find a way to break down the last of the liminal boundaries, Nectars or no Nectars. She is utterly determined and wholly dedicated to this cause. One plan fails, another takes its place, and another, like the heads of hydra. She is not styled Queen of Plots for any other reason.”
“Then we fight her,” Twilight said, voice cracking as she realized the gravity of what she was saying. “We stop her, here and now. No more Thiasus. If those entities beyond our universe lose their agent--”
“Fight her?” Luna said, as if Twilight had just suggested she eat her own hooves. “Oh, filly, you have no idea what she is, do you?”
“You've said, she's like you--”
“We began as equals, yes,” Luna said, stepping forward. “But she has had ten centuries to expand upon her knowledge of reality, to cultivate her mind and powers. The sheer energy that she can draw out of the universe is staggering, the breadth of applications, even more so.”
“Then what were you doing on the moon? Folding origami swans? Crocheting pillows with pastoral scenes? Rutting yourself stupid with that clever thaumic toy I found?” Twilight unmantled her wings and gave them the slightest of flutters. “I've seen your metal forests, Luna. I've seen your swarms of glittering, self-killing insects. These are not the works of a conjurer of cheap tricks.”
“This conversation is getting a little above my pay grade,” Spike said, then wandered off toward one of the utterly ruined chaise lounges, upon which were piled silver trays, flensed of fruit leaving only stems and peels, empty amphorae and square bottles of what had once been very nice red wine. “Self-killing insects, metal forests, huh!” he mumbled, picking over the remains of a slab of columnar basalt he'd been eating.
“Twilight, it is a simple matter of energies,” Luna said, shaking her head. “She can draw upon more of it than either of us, orders of magnitude more. Enough to relight dead stars, move mountains, boil oceans. We would soon find out precisely how immortal we really are.”
“Not to mention the collateral damage,” Twilight conceded. “Though, she surely would brook no truck with a fight that resulted in destruction of the nation?”
“Equestrian survival, to her, means survival of the species, and of the biota that supports it. There are many ways that these things can be saved. I would not be surprised if she possessed a backup, somewhere. One would only need a few thousand individuals, appropriately stored, a few dozen specimens of grasses and flowers, of insects and the like. It would almost be trivial, given the time she has had.”
“We can't just let the Thiasus happen, Luna,” Twilight said. “If it results in the same scale of destruction, of another War in the Night, then millions will die, just to sate the appetites of these hateful beings.”
“Part of me wonders, would it be so bad?” Luna let her words hang in the air for a long moment, then said: “Certainly, many who live today would perish in the worst possible ways. But, come back in a century, and all's well. How long was it after the War in the Night that her Palace stood once more? Fifty years? The blink of an alicorn's eye.”
“It's unconscionable, Luna,” Twilight said, solemnly. “Everything that my friends and I believe in says that this is wrong. I understand if you cannot raise a hoof against your sister, nopony should be expected to--”
“Good,” Luna said, smiling with relief, her interruption granting Twilight the mercy of not having to finish the sentence. “Then, it seems you must make my Nectars after all, if you are set on stopping Celestia.”
“What? Why on Equestria would I do that, after all this?”
“I have searched for her, and found nothing. I fear that she will not now show herself until the Party is started, so we must start it. After all, what kind of host does not come out early to meet her guests?”
*
“What do you think they're talking about in there?” Infra Base said, nodding toward the diamond hull of Mytheme, which could just about be seen through the open front doors of Ponyville's town hall, now serving as a makeshift infirmary. “They've been at it for hours.”
“Not a clue,” said Zo Nar, who had only recently woken from a medically induced coma. “Likely something of great and cosmic importance. Whole world balancing on the edge of a knife, destinies broken and made, that sort of thing. Always is with alicorns.”
“I've much faith in Mother, I'm sure she'll see us through.”
“Right you are.”
*
The chimeric shape of Discord shot arrow-straight out of the jarred-open wormhole that bridged Tartarus and Equestria, moving at only a hair's breadth below the speed of sound. The great hound Cerberus presided over a ruin of angular black and purple debris, paws crashing and crunching through the flash glass floor that had once been several kilometres of perfectly good desert. He was growling angrily, like a chain of incontinent volcanoes, and each of his three mighty heads was busily engaged, sniffing and licking at particularly large remnant fragments of the destroyed gate.
“You!” Cerberus bellowed, rending the air with hateful venom, so loud that it would have fractured the skulls of any nearby ponies. “What have you done?”
Discord began to laugh, slowed his speed to a trot and danced through the air above Cerberus, who was shaking with rage. He turned a cartwheel and suddenly stopped, producing a large, red rubber ball.
“Is the big doggy upset?” he called down, waving the ball to and fro. “Does the doggy want to play ball?”
Cerberus answered him by throwing wide the jaws of his centre head, in what might have been interpreted as a soundless howl. Instead, a lance of wickedly coherent energy, visible only where it passed through the haze of fines and smoke, speared out to strike at Discord. The chimera had no time to react and took a direct hit. The lambent hues of dusk rapidly transitioned to oversaturated, brilliant white. Discord's flailing form became, for a moment, like a star.
Several thousand tons of fresh flash glass was created in that moment, as Discord bled and radiated heat. Then, the inferno was gone, reality witnessing only a fraction of the full force before it was bent away, spirited back into space/time from whence it came.
“I understand that you're angry,” Discord said, stifling his laughter, over the sounds of cooling glass, hissing and bubbling. “But, guardian, I think you should save your rage. Something wicked this way comes.”
Already, tentacles the size and colour of dead tree boughs and beaks like overturned ship hulls were beginning to emerge from the wormhole.
*
“Was that it, Master Strati Form?” said Squally, the junior aide de camp.
“Very possibly, lad,” Strati Form said, still perched secretly on his captive rain cloud. “But this event's indicator was a big one. If I've seen a nastier dramatic moment indicator, I don't remember it. I wouldn't be surprised if there was yet more drama to come.”
The ADC sneezed, shivered, and adjusted the big woollen coat that was keeping him warm at altitude, within the bosom of a cloud. Strati Form, of course, worn no such luxuries, making do with only a fine scarf and sheer bloody mindedness. There was a thunderclap, like the timpani set of the Gods being played, followed seconds later by the flash of lightning.
“Any more ideas on why that's happening, Master?” the ADC said, ears folded back protectively.
“Oh, the jumbled up sound and lighting? Not a clue, lad.” Strati Form grinned. “Makes it more exciting, in my experience. It's probably to do with high concentrations of magic, or some-such other nonsense. That big silver thing down there seems to be Princess Luna's private war barge, complete with pop-up army, and did you happen to notice Princess Twilight's entry on an actual, honest-to-Celestia roc?”
“Hard to miss a bird that big, Master,” Squally said. “Speaking of birds...”
The fat little pigeon had been struggling up toward the cloud for the last few minutes, and now alighted gratefully on Squally's withers. As it had been trained to do, it unpicked the tiny sheet of notepaper from the holster on its leg and presented it to the ADC. It fluttered in the breeze, but Squally had no trouble reading it.
“Alert from Cloudsdale, Master,” Squally said, voice trembling with fear. “Full scale deployment of tactical and strategic level assets has been ordered, following activation of all DRAMA early warning stations.”
“What, all of them?” Strati Form said, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes, Master. Further, detection of nine Type-Four events has been confirmed.”
“Where?”
“It just says 'details to follow', no more, Master.”
“Well, grease me up and grab the stepladder,” Strati Form mumbled, disbelieving. “What did I tell you? I knew there was more coming.”
“Should I rally the troops, Master?”
“Yes, Squally,” he said, telescoping his ocular equipment back down. “I suppose you better had.”
*
The earthquakes began at chronological dusk, precisely to the second. Microtremors built and built, rippling out through the ground in all cardinal directions away from Ponyville. In the town itself all was eerily quiet, as the nottlygna stopped their busy activities and merriments and listened to sounds few could yet hear. It was not to last. As though Jormungandr was moving a heavy chest of drawers in the attic of the world, rumbling, ringing noise filled the air.
Those roofs that were tiled began to shed ceramic scales into the streets, where their dull thudding onto grass was lost in the grinding cacophony. Ponyoak support beams started exploding as stresses built up. The oldest and least maintained went first, as if a wolf pack dogged the outskirts of an ancient herd, taking down the easiest meals. Nottlygna galloped and cantered around, deftly exiting the buildings they'd temporarily occupied, flying and falling over one another to board Mytheme or take cover under its impregnable hull.
At the Punch Drunk distillery, disaster struck. One thousand gallons of pure cane alcohol, stored in glass and copper, waiting to be mixed with flavourings to produce the distasteful-yet-popular stock in trade of the vintner Berry Punch, was crushed by in-falling masonry. The first all-brick building to be constructed in the town was also the first to be demolished. The alcohol's vapours found oxygen, found a spark, and the distillery vanished beneath gushing lambent orange and blue flames. Secondaries ringed it with smaller explosions as the inferno picked up other stores of alcohol.
*
The Roarke Mountain range, more properly a complex of nine ancient shield volcanoes, slumbered peacefully. Apart from the occasional eruption of its younger members, which tended to throw lahars down the valleys toward Port Dauphine, little had disturbed its peace for nearly ten million years. Some minutes after dusk, the situation suddenly escalated.
Disproving its namesake, the Lesser Roarke exploded with a force approximately equal to twenty-five million tons of dynamite. The cap of the Lesser Roarke was thereby completely obliterated, converted to great billowing clouds of steam, vaporized rock, and a blossoming orb of slate grey dust and ash. The heat removed snow from the other peaks at ranges of tens of miles so, for a while, a shroud of boiling white was thrown over the complex. It caught the last rays of fading daylight, showing a wild complexity in its forms as it cooled, froze and briefly fell as snow again, well below the regular limit.
The Hive Boundless Joy had been setting about the task of breakfast, when the earthquake swarm struck the general vicinity of the volcano complex. Buried within the warm confines of the Greater Roarke's extensive system of extinct lava tubes, they had more than sufficient time to contemplate their imminent demise before the largest of the Roarke complex members followed the lead of its smaller sibling. Queen Erogene, keen magister and even keener volcanologist, watched the knot of warped space/time emerge suddenly from a position ten miles below the surface, pass through the reservoirs of lava that kept her Hive so warm, then vanish into space somewhere high above her head.
She was still pondering the implications of this, and of the earthquakes which had begun to rattle the Hive's outer chitin, when Boundless Joy ceased existing in one orgiastic moment of convulsing ground and superheated rock.
*
Lava bombs began landing in the sea off Port Dauphine, heralding the start of a long night. The shaking, trembling ground picked at the Port's high walls and densely packed buildings, with insistent force. Already weakened by the successive concussive blasts rolling down from the Roarke complex, many began to fall apart. Drinkers and revellers exited the sticky bars and dives, heading for the toughened Civic buildings that they knew would give them shelter. Many still lived who remembered the last time a lahar had tried to wipe the port off the map, and they told excited stories to those who turned up in at the Courts. With the booze that the evening's cavorts had already poured down their throats, a carnival atmosphere soon developed. There was no hurry to their arrivals, for they knew that any lahar would take many hours to arrive.
In the newly created pit at the top of the Greater Roarke, the gasses dissolved into the emerging lava were relieved of the immense pressures they had been under deep below the ground. As it reached the surface, the speed at which it was expanding was colossal. More and more of it was dragged up, at ever faster rates, becoming hotter and hotter all the time. The resulting plume of high temperature gas lofted ash and other elements, melted into the lava for aeons, first five, then fifteen, then twenty miles into the sky.
The magma chambers that funded this outflow began to merge. Previously unconnected, the impetus of the earthquakes and distortions of space/time collapsed great layers of rock to form a super-chamber. Pressures within the tree root-like system of fissures and channels rose to catastrophic levels. Roarke II and IV blew their peaks, but it was not enough. One side of the Greater Roarke ballooned outwards, an old weakness giving way as the rock began to become elastic, half-melted. In the shade of the former mountain, an enterprising young pony had just found the emergency stash of finest oak-matured whiskey, and was distributing it to those in the Courthouse.
An hour and a half after dusk, the weakness exploded. From it gushed forth many thousands of tons of ultramafic lava, glowing brightly in the night as it emerged from the cavity at over sixteen hundred degrees celsius. The fountain was spotted by the first lahar crews, reporting drunkenly for duty atop the Courthouse, by which point it was half a mile in length, spewing its lethal load downslope.
The carnival atmosphere collapsed almost immediately, replaced by one with alarming ratios of carbons, silicates and magnesium oxides.
*
Beyond Dauphine, the ocean floor began to come apart. Vast reefs, many centuries old, crumbled as existing deeps widened, and wholly new ones opened like mouths, swallowing shoals, sand and the litter of the seabed. Fault lines around the edges of the Equestrian continental plate, five hundred miles beyond the coast, lit up the subterranean depths with numerous subsurface eruptions. Superheated lava and frigid water met suddenly, sending up bubbles of steam larger than most equine towns. Entire ecologies of fish and crustaceans went extinct. Flocks of sea-skimming birds were gassed in their droves by volcanic outgassing, fell into the angry waves and went uneaten by the usual aquatic undertakers.
Port Pronto fell in one convulsion of the wild sea. The low lying chain of islands was temporarily enlarged by twice its size as the tsunami approached. Made huge by the continuing vibrations through the continental plates and masses of the world, the wave reached nearly a mile in height as it passed over the Port and forever drowned it. The clippers and steamers that plied the route between foreign destinations and Equestria, which had stopped there to resupply, were smashed to matchsticks and scrap iron, caught up in events and consequences they had neither seen coming nor even been faintly aware of.
Onwards the earthquakes rolled, ever further east, toward gryphic lands.
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6192826
Celestia has been carefully breeding the Sparkle lineage for many generations. It results in powerful unicorns of various types and qualities appearing down the line, not just Twilight. If you recall, a random unicorn unrelated to the family tried casting the SFB in one of the earlier chapters, having mistaken it for the Strong Farce Bomb, which is far easier to cast and much more entertaining for almost everyone involved. It conjures sexually aggressive pink bison.
It didn't go very well for him, and he was lucky that he didn't kill himself in the attempt. All he managed to do was level a large civic building of no particular value. This is comparable to a 'fizzle' or failed detonation of an atomic weapon, just the explosion of a few dozen kilograms of high explosives.
Celestia isn't actually suggesting the gelding as a punishment, although I'm sure SA and others would see it that way. She is, as usual, being pragmatic. Now that her genealogical project has produced the individuals required, there is no longer a reason to keep the dangerous genes around, at least in a format where they may reproduce themselves.
There are another 98 Nectars, but Twilight only needs the one. The others are all just variations on the same basic theme of the first to be invented. Once you have the precursors for one, you have them for all of the Nectars, bar some different reagents, and a little alteration of the synthesis. It involves volcanoes.
6186600
I'm quite happy with how the zebra(s) have turned out. They're a paramilitary culture that has tolerated predation in close proximity to the predators for generations, over a thousand years at this point, and the idea of ruthless, immediate protective action against aggressors is deeply ingrained into their collective psyche. They were the first to invent locks and the first to invent explosives beyond gunpowder. They prefer to use stealth and the avoidance of any direct contact with the enemy as much as is possible, but are keenly aware of how easy it is for them to be backed into a corner when underground, and are prepared to retaliate with a measured dose of overwhelming force.
6221823
Really? You don't find any of it funny at all? That's a shame. I suppose it is just 185k of dick jokes and horse puns. Not exactly the highest brow humour around, by any stretch of the imagination.
6221834
Well, it has kinda gotten a bit dark, what with the enormous amount of collateral death. In just this chapter, you spend two paragraphs covering the genocide of a changeling hive, which adds nothing in particular to the story line, other than to say "even more death". Now, it could be some sort of Chekhov's gun, but I don't see the story going that way.
6222716
The volcano is important, so I suppose that could count as foreshadowing, yes. I didn't include the term 'ultramafic' for no reason, either. It's the hottest kind of lava you can get. It'll come in handy later on.
The eradication of Boundless Joy was a bit of a fait accompli. Hadn't really planned on it, I'd overlooked the fact that the volcano needed to erupt and that this was where they lived. I don't think it is entirely without a point. It adds to the growing insanity of the general situation. When Twilight or Luna find out, it will add to their sorrow at events.
Not that many ponies have actually died. Quite a few are about to, but remember that Canterlot was largely evacuated. I guess that between the fires, rioting, the huge fuel-air explosion and other assorted mishaps, there have been 2 - 3,000 casualties. A tragedy, a major incident, but this is end of the world stuff.
Getting dark? It's been pretty black from the start. The plot itself is bleak as hell. That's why the comedy is there in the first place, to balance out the fact that the protagonist is a recently-deified alcoholic depressive, who has just been told she will outlive all her friends and is also infertile, desperately seeking magic booze to dull the pain of reality, and inadvertently ending the world because of it.
6222784
I guess, then, why don't you add the dark tag? It'd stop some of the complaints, I think.
6223273
You should certainly take Luna's infodump with a big pinch of salt. Her memories have been rewritten extensively, and she's drawing conclusions based on them at an accelerated rate. The pre-history stuff is accurate, though. Those memories were never part of what was done to her mind.
It's not as black and white as she is suggesting, basically. Celestia isn't evil, and certainly shouldn't be considered the antagonist. There aren't really any bad guys here. Even Twilight, who should have known better, has really just made a series of poor decisions with frankly unforeseeable consequences. She isn't entirely convinced of Luna's story, and there is a general lack of information to corroborate. So, she will fall back on pragmatism.
Luna is certainly not an innocent, by any measure of the word. It was her who invented the Selenite Principality, after all. She made those autoeuthanizing insects, and Whom, whose creation was about as ethical as gassing a village full of children. Much earlier on, she created the seven families of the nottlygna, at least one of which was carnivorous and looked more like a wolf than a horse. None of this is particularly pure or righteous.
I hope this does something to soothe your fears of this turning into yet another Tyrantlestia and her Poor Abused Sister Who'd Never Hurt a Fly story. Without giving the game away, it is an entirely more complicated situation they have going on.
Nooooooooooooo not Whom. The poor thing survived the catastrophic tornado that is Twilight only to go tits up in a hospital of all places.
6224631
Heh, 'the catastrophic tornado that is Twilight'. Made me laugh.
Don't worry too much. Whom's biology is unusual. I have plans for that fluffy pink lunatic.
Oh my. Oh my, my, my. This is an ever-growing variety of not good. That temporaspacial seismic disturbance isn't going to get better any time soon, and now Luna seems to think that the only way to save the world is to take it even further towards its end. And, of course, there's the matter of sweeping up what's left of the Bearers and trying to piece them back together, provided Twilight can find the time and the bodies. And, of course, the gates of Tartarus are wide open, which means the Thiasus may well have some uninvited guests.
Luna really is going to need to work on those memory issues. I'm not sure how, or even if she can, but there's clearly something Celestia wanted to hide from her. The question is what, and for that matter, why.
On the bright side, heart and lungs seem to be optional conveniences for Whom. Whether or not she's a p-zombie remains to be seen, but for the moment, I'm siding with Twilight.
I continue to not like what Luna is selling.
Dang, Whom just can't catch a break. Even apparently temporary death can't be particularly pleasant.
It's been so long, I honestly don't really remember what happened with Rarity and the desert.
It would be kind of funny if Shining accidentally saved everything by unintentionally launching Celestia to the moon with a bomb big enough to explode the planet.
Yikes, so much for a fair portion of Ponyville. Oooo, and Hive Boundless Joy, Port Dauphine, and Port Pronto, too. So much for all the dogs.
6223532 That does help a bit, yes. I do have to agree with some of the other readers, though, the Dark tag is long overdue unless there's going to be one astonishing resolution to this whole mess.
6225441
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, etcetera.
The Elements are around here somewhere. Fluttershy has been found, along with some rocs. Those birds seem far too clever for their own good, don't they? Dash was last seen in the company of too much alcohol in the depths of a crashed cloud city, which might likewise be a biddable mount. Could Rarity, with enough uranium in her bloodstream to violate several international antiproliferation treaties, also bring something new to the fight? And, where trots Applejack, sighted some days past ruminating on the nature of apples? What about the pink one too?
6248239
There's a certain stigma involved with that [Dark] tag though, isn't there? I mean, I can add it if you all think it actually important, but, while there are a lot of darker elements, it's not presented solely for its own merit. I feel that people who come looking for [Dark] would not find what they were after. It is not unremitting. It is intended as black comedy, gallows humour. A satyr play. Maybe I have just not done a good enough job of getting that across yet.
My editor and I had a long conversation about whether or not an event of that size would actually destroy the planet. As it turns out, there's not nearly enough bang there to physically destroy an average Earth-sized planet. Lots of damage, collapse of the larger ecosystem, a nuclear winter lasting up to ten years, a very serious event, all of these things, but no true Doomsday. Our own dear globe has taken worse hits and only lost 60% of biological life. Mammals only became ascendent because of one such event.
I don't think anyone really likes what Luna is selling, least of all Twilight, but better plans are in short supply. Taking control of the situation seems to be the best thing to do, before it runs out of all control.
I wouldn't worry too much about Ponyville. The place is built of timber-framed buildings and lots of thatch, the best you can get for earthquake-proofing before actual purpose built structures that sway and have energy-dampers and so on. Because of all the wood and loose joins, the buildings can sway and wobble, and aren't so rigid (like brick and mortar) that they break.
Port Dauphine is too pretty to die, don't you think? That Dutch charm, the laissez-faire attitude to life. All those innocent named characters. All those civic buildings designed to withstand nearby SFB explosions no smaller than ten megatons. Port Pronto is lost with all hands (hooves, paws??) though. It was in the way. I had no choice in the matter. Blame exigent circumstances.