Thaumic Debris
It had been a mistake to accompany Rarity back to her hotel suite for the evening. It had been a greater mistake to accompany her on the the 9AM express to Ponyville the following morning. But both of those mistakes paled in comparison to the single greatest mistake Twilight Sparkle had ever made in her life: entering Carousel Boutique that following morning at the insistence of her alabaster travelling companion.
She would eventually come to classify her escape from the fashionista’s clutches as ‘barely managing to escape with her life,’ a claim that any passers-by would deem to be exceedingly plausible judging from the haste with which Twilight had departed the premises. It was all hyperbole, of course, but Twilight had come dangerously close to having her coat dyed an alarmingly vibrant shade of magenta over the course of Rarity’s ‘makeover’.
It wasn’t until she had galloped her way clear across town and nearly collided with a unit of on-duty Royal Guard that Twilight’s focus shifted away from ‘flee from the crazy fashion-obsessed unicorn’ and back to the task at hand: locating and decompiling the spell used by Team Fifteen’s now-missing member. Thankfully for her, it wasn’t hard to locate the site where the reported alicorn-on-alicorn fight had gone down, owing to the charred wreckage, stone-faced Royal Guards, and the irritating prickly feeling at the base of her horn that only came from recent massive magical discharges.
All that was left was simply getting close enough to the site to use her newly-acquired spell knowledge to pull whatever information she could about the teleport spell, then try to decipher its destination. Unfortunately, the same guards that had made the site’s location so obvious had also set up a clear cordon to keep prying eyes, and horns, away from the scene.
The two pegasi guards she nearly collided with regarded her with critical eyes, wings outstretched to block her passage. Twilight stared back with what she hoped was an innocent expression, chastising herself for so recklessly charging into the situation without a plan.
“Good afternoon, Sirs,” she said, confidently striding forward. “My name is-”
“This area is off limits to civilians,” one of the guards interrupted. “On the orders of the princess.”
“Twilight Sparkle,” she finished, pushing a note of annoyance into her voice. “I am a student at her Majesty’s School for Gifted Unicorns.”
The two guards didn’t react.
“I am here on a research project,” Twilight bluffed, trying her best to sound indignant. “At the behest of the princess’ protégée, Sunset Shimmer.”
The guards still didn’t react.
“I… was told she had informed you I was coming. Were you not told?”
The guards shook their heads, almost imperceptibly.
“I see… Is there any chance you could let me through just for a moment?”
They stared at her, faces betraying no emotion.
“Look, we both know how Sunset gets when somepony gets something wrong. I get that you’re under orders from Princess Celestia, but who do you think Sunset is going to go to when she doesn’t get her data?”
“Why wouldn’t Miss Shimmer simply come herself, if the data is so vital?”
“This is the same Sunset we’re talking about, right? She wouldn’t go anywhere for anything if she could send a lackey to do it for her, even if the fate of Equestria itself hung in the balance.”
One of the guards nodded in agreement for a moment before his partner spotted him and smacked him in the back of the head.
“Which, to be honest, it could very well be,” she continued, letting the bluff weave itself. “We don’t really know, do we? Especially after the four foreign ponies arrived here yesterday evening snooping around the debris.”
As far as Twilight could surmise, there were two likely possibilities. Either the bulk of Team Fifteen had arrived somewhere in Ponyville yesterday and been captured, or they had arrived somewhere else, the guards were about to call her bluff, and she’d have to flee and regroup with them, wherever they were.
Of course, if they were free, getting past the guards became a matter of simple force rather than having to bluff her way past Canterlot’s Finest.
They didn’t react.
“Of course, given the potentially sensitive nature of this information,” Twilight smiled, continuing with the satisfaction that she had gotten that detail right, something an average pony wouldn’t be privy to, “I would appreciate a speedy escort back to the School once my investigations here are completed. Who knows if more spies are hanging around?”
“And how do we know that you’re not a spy?” the second guard challenged.
“If I’m lying, you’ll find out the moment we get back to Canterlot,” Twilight replied, putting a slightly nervous and pleading note into her voice. “Please. I’ll be up horseapple creek without a paddle if I don’t get this for Sunset quickly. Tartarus, you can watch me do it if you want. I just need to cast a simple spell and write down the results.”
They glared at her for a moment, before reluctantly stepping aside to allow her passage.
“Fine,” the second guard relented, escorting her to the debris and lowering his voice. “You’re right about that filly, though. Last time I got in her way I got glued to a wall. Don’t want that to happen to anypony else if I can avoid it.”
“Thank you,” Twilight said, doing her best to keep from leaping in victory. “If you don’t mind my asking, I was a bit curious. What happened to the four that turned up here after they were captured? The dungeons?”
The guard nodded.
“Must have been a while since anyone’s gotten thrown in there. Not much major crime in Equestria.”
“You’d be surprised, but that’s pretty on the mark. The place was full of cobwebs, I heard. Took a few hours to clean out.”
Twilight stepped up to the wreckage, pulling and empty notebook from her saddlebag and igniting her horn.
“This shouldn’t take too long.”
She paused for a moment, delving into her memory to recall the details of the spells she needed. The combination was unfamiliar, but simple, a combination of a localised Thaumic Field analysis spell coupled into a pattern-recognition engine similar to that which she had worked on for her school project. After a moment of preparation and supplying a (to her) trivial amount of magical energy to bootstrap the spell, she initialised it.
An imperceptible fraction of a second passed before the spell returned, issuing the magical perceptive equivalent of a quiet beep as it filed away the gathered information into Twilight’s memories, tagging each spell section with the appropriate mental associations to make them easy to recall. Despite the efficient storage and tagging, Twilight gasped as the information settled, surprised at the sheer quantity and complexity of what had just been unceremoniously dumped into her brain.
“Are you okay?”
Twilight turned slowly to face the guard, trying to remain focused as spell fragments popped up without warning into her mind. “Yes, I’m fine. Just… quite a bit of information there.”
“You’re done already?”
“I told you it wouldn’t take long.”
“Anything of use?”
She paused, sifting through the mass of teleport spell data for the section that controlled targeting and navigation. It took a few seconds for her to isolate the parameters passed to the spell, the two letters ‘EF’ followed by a 9-digit base-16 sequence.
“Yes, actually,” she replied, pulling the Falls Catalogue from her saddlebags and flipping through, searching for the relevant entry among the tens of thousands of listed worlds. Near the back of the book, she stopped, an eyebrow quirked in curiosity as she read the information.
Address
Dx5394EA15-Falls-EF-0
Catalogue Name
Eternals Failure
First Entry
ECE+121:228(8:23)
Cartographer
Beardling (Starswirl-K5Ξ)
Features
For unknown reasons, EF has developed a cultural hostility towards Alicorn Aristocracy, going so far as to publically dehorn and execute any Alicorn discovered on-world. In the absence of the Princess' stabilising influence, EF is extremely politically chaotic, with power shifting hooves from one power-hungry tyrant to the next very frequently. Despite these otherwise cataclysmic features, EF manages to retain a degree of normality for the common ponies that reside there, hinting that the Falls influence on this world may be comparatively restricted. In other aspects, EF appears to mirror Celestis, as expected.
Advisories
Alicorn travellers are recommended to give EF a wide berth. Caution is recommended for all other travellers due to unpredictable on-world conflicts. AVOID IF POSSIBLE.
Detachment Risk
Minimal
“You said the four that were captured are in the dungeons?” she asked, putting the book away and igniting her horn, weaving a teleport spell.
“Yes… What are you doing?”
“I’m done here,” she answered, feeding the spell a destination and power enough to jump her there. “But I need to go talk to the prisoners to make sense of some of this data. Don’t worry, I can get there myself.”
“Wait!” the guard yelled, flaring his wings and diving at her. “STOP!”
The spell discharged a split-second before the blow would have landed.
------
They were mocking her, she could feel it. Not verbally, of course, sound was one of the few things that didn’t penetrate through the magically-reinforced unidirectional glass, but they were mocking her all the same. Their mere existence, let alone presence, was enough to convince her that somepony, somewhere, wanted to play a very, very sick joke on her.
It was supremely ironic that such taunting came in the form of her oldest compatriots, twisted into a cruel mimicry of the Solar Tyrant. The broken blue alicorn sitting opposite her in the containment cell, only cemented the paranoia that had taken root within Twilight Sparkle’s mind and was rapidly spreading.
Because the Lunar Tyrant was dead. She had been dead for four years, obliterated by Twilight’s own horn.
And yet here she was. Battered, bruised, and very much broken, but certainly alive.
It was utterly infuriating.
Her eyes narrowed as she tried to determine who would have the motive, let alone the capability to assemble such an elaborate plot. As far as she knew, at least, nopony that matched those criteria existed.
Apart from the two ponies sitting in the cell.
Obviously, they were goading her, trying to elicit… something. Luna herself had somehow managed to cheat death and remain hidden for years, only to now resurface and rub her survival in Twilight’s face. Her compatriot, Pinkie Pie, once a loyal and capable friend, twisted beyond recognition into the very form they had all fought against.
Mockery was something that she would not tolerate.
They would need to die, of course. The peasantry always loved a good execution. She smiled, remembering the last one she had seen, long ago in her youth, the dehorning and beheading of some pegasus-turned-tyrant by the name of ‘Cadenza’. The entire population of the city had turned out to see it, cheering all the while as the young alicorn’s life ended.
Tomorrow would be no different. Ponies would flock from far and wide to watch as their great leader, the unicorn Princess Twilight Sparkle, brought them not one, but two of the hated tyrants to escort from the realm of the living.
She would need to clean Luna up, of course, regrow her horn and treat her wounds. It would do no good to present an already-dehorned alicorn to the crowd. Watching the dehorning was arguably one of the best parts of the event, if you discounted the often weeks-long celebrations that followed the execution. It was those exact celebrations that had allowed Twilight to seize her current position, what with the untimely assassination of the previous ruler whose name had been all but forgotten by history at this point.
Her fury forgotten, she turned from the cell and returned back to the castle proper, ideas swirling in her head for possible extra entertainment for the coming revelry. She would need to be particularly careful to avoid being dispatched herself, but that didn’t preclude the possibility of indulging herself during the celebrations.
Events like this were once in a lifetime.
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Supplemental Materials appears to have been made private. It doesn't show up in your story list and when I follow the link you made in the author's notes of the chapter Split Insertion, the story page doesn't have a new chapter.
I’ll be up horseapple creek without a paddleif I don’t get this for Sunset quickly
1. You forgot your spacing.
Welp, now we do indeed. Time is of the essence and I doubt even Theta would be happy to be in that kind of world. Que the clone army from the outside to deal with this
but that does beg the question though... How many worlds had gone and detached and how many ponies actually escaped from them to actually survive and work as Outsiders? Assuming the minimal number is one, there are still quite a few but as for the max amount... No one knows
but I can't assume that it would be more than ten... But once again who knows?
I also agree with Derpmind as there is no new chapter update for the Supplemental Files as of yet. This posting anyways.
5163701
5163782
When I say 'Updated', I mean that some of the sections that were redacted due to spoilers have been unredacted.
Uh oh. Ponies don't like your kind around here.
5137778 It's a fanfic. So she's less competent at decision-making than the US federal government.
5163934
That's strange - while I can access the side-story through the link Derpmind mentioned, it doesn't show up on your list of published stories.
Regardless, I'm kind of confused why it seems Twilight is just going along with the mission the Outsiders gave her, and potentially causing problems for herself down the line in doing so. I thought that the last chapter established that this was her home, so wouldn't she want to just stay? Or have I missed something?
My my my, another world that simply seems to beg for my wrathful touch.
Yes indeed. This entire race must be punished. Severely.
5163934
Because the story is 'unpublished' the only way to access it is through the link in that author's note. It doesn't show up in your list of stories and it doesn't show up in my bookshelf. Also:
You might wanna fix that.
5163934 Ooh... Explains those with chapter numbers like the one with 26... Now I feel silly.
5163961 It's unpublished but since he shared the link with us we can access it.
Oh, crap. We'd best rescue Woona, fast!
Oh, boy. This is not good.....
>Dx5394EA15-Falls-EF-0
Any relation to hex?
5164568
Yeah, I got that.
*ahem* Well I certainly finished this story rather quickly... pretty good so far, now I'm off to go spelunking in the bowels of Fimfic.
I am VERY interested in this anti-alicorn world. Very interested indeed. Sounds just like Medieval Europe, and we all know how fun that is. Oh man...
I really do wish more stories would do away with Alicorns as a thing. I find they tend to hobble so many good ideas and stories.
So is there anything that makes insiders special besides being undectable when on the inside. Do they have any special abilities or traits that make them different from outsiders?
Welp. Lunatic is in some deep shit. And that universe is also full of scumbags.
lonesentry.com/articles/maus/fig5_german_superheavy_tank_mouse_maus_model.jpg
Nom nom Maus is coming to eat you.
>hinting that the Falls influence on this world may be comparatively restricted
Not sure if you mean Falls or Falls'