Chapter 1
You.
You fool.
You utter, utter fool. Was it not sufficient to see that look of disgust in her eyes? To hear the revulsion in her voice? No, you pushed her, you tried her patience with your simpering and pleading cries to love and be loved, and when your insipid pleading garnered you naught you turned to this? And now?
Now you are “here.” It doesn’t matter, what “here” means. Not anymore. No, no, “here” it is black, cloying darkness in your mind—a static, staid existence without any real consciousness. Fitting, you thought—if you could think with the weight of worlds crushing you. Yes, this is your fate, for your crimes.
Do you remember when you first came to her? Can you remember? A memory, a tiny seed of light in the oppressive shadows? Yes, you can, you can. You remember when you stepped into this world, into a world of dappled sunlight over emerald fields of grass swaying slightly in the breeze, the smell of wild flowers nigh overwhelming to a man born and bred in the city.
Yes, when you were a man, one sad lonely soul among the teeming billions in what had been your world, now here in the dream of the country, the perfect image of what your world should have been but never was but in Eden—how could you not be enthralled? Do you remember how long you lingered in those peaceful fields? Too long, perhaps. Long enough for her to find you.
She came down in a blinding light, and you cried out and covered your eyes, kneeling in unthinking supplication to what would become your goddess. You looked up, squinting into the light as she lightly touched down, regal. Her coat was the purest white, her mane an ethereal rainbow undulating in a breeze no one could feel. Upon her flank was a sun in gold—fitting, you thought, for one so radiant. A horn jutted from her brow and wings flared as she set down upon the field. She looked down on you with curiosity. And you—you fool, you utter, utter fool!— looked up at her with love.
She seemed so very interested as you spoke to her of who you were. You couldn’t restrain yourself, telling embellished tales of great bravado and impressive feats to woo this majestic mare. When you finally came to a pause, worn out from daring feats of the imagination, she invited you to her castle. How your heart leapt for joy! How she graciously allowed you to ride upon her back, flanked by a smaller, dark blue mare you had not even noticed next to this radiant beauty.
You flew through clear blue skies, dotted with clouds that seemed so much more real than those on your world. The sun was so bright, and it seemed so much closer. You basked in it’s warmth, in the all encompassing embrace of what you knew was your love’s true heart.
When you arrived at the castle, the inhabitants were small equines, countless ponies staring after you with awe and curiosity. They had such large eyes, and it seemed as if their whole souls were laid bare before you. As you dismounted, they seemed to recover from their shock and came forward to greet their princesses—Celestia and Luna, as you learned—and inquired after you. Yes, in those first days they were aquiver with eagerness to learn of you and your world. They doted upon you—a lavish castle apartment in the main tower, food and drink at your beck and call, and always the young Luna was there to hear of your tales of the real world and your extraordinary exploits.
And your princess—your sun—blessed you with her presence. She seemed to love nothing more than to while away the hours in idle conversation with you, speaking of nothing of any true importance. She told you of her dreams, of finding a worthy pony to join her. You worked slowly in those days, building your courage and testing the waters of your heart. One day, in the courtyard, you finally confessed your love. You spoke of undying commitment, of the depths of your devotion and your passion.
And she sat there, and she smiled that smile you loved so very much, and she said, softly, lovingly, “Prove it.”
She went on to speak of how you would, in time, come to die. She was, after all, immortal. Why should she love and subject herself to such torment? To the sadness of watching a lover die? You cried out then, and she silenced you with a touch to your lips that stil—even now, in the depths of your eternal, dreamless sleep—burns like fire. She spoke of ancient spells that would call upon the love in your heart, of the six Elements of Harmony which could turn even a merely mortal man into something immortal and perfect—like her.
She told you of how much knowledge was lost since those old days. “It would be a risk, my love,” she said, and your heart thrilled too much at her touching concern. After all, she required this of you to prove your love, and in return for some small risk and pain you would be as her. Then you could be together, to love and be loved, forever.
And you.
You fool.
You utter, utter fool.
You accepted without hesitation.
She fetched her sister and the three of you went to the tallest tower of the castle. There, amidst iconography of the six Elements the sisters held aloft the shining gems and invoked their great powers. Light blazed forth and struck you, and you could feel the power changing you, twisting you. Your bones shattered and twisted, reforming as they were never meant to be. A coat of fine vermillion hair sprouted all over your body, and a horn thrust forth from your skull, rising the wildly growing, black mane. Wings burst wetly from your back to wave weakly in your pain. You screamed, then. You screamed for a very long time.
It seemed, then, in a moment of weakness, of pain and agony, that you denied your love. Deep in your heart of hearts, you knew that you would have given up your dear, sweet Celestia if only the pain would just end. And in that moment, in that single sliver of despair and denial, it all went wrong. Your bones broke and healed in stunted contortions. Your back humped and muscle tore and knitted and fell apart under the magical strain. When the spell ended, what the princesses saw was not an alicorn, sleek in form and beautiful—there was nothing more than a twisted abomination, a mockery of everything they were.
Luna retched at the sight of your form, and held hooves over her ears to block out your pained moans. Celestia—your dear, sweet Celestia—had no emotion on her face as she looked down upon you. You held forth a misshapen hoof in supplication, begging for succor.
“Another failure,” she said calmly as she turned away. You think you might have screamed, though all that you could produce was a whimper.
The guards took you away to your room, to suffer silently amongst the opulence. Gone were the eager listeners, waiting to hear another tale of impossible heroisms. Gone were the noontime walks through the gardens of the castle with your personal sun. There was nothing but silence.
And you stewed in it—oh how you dredged through your mind in the dim light of curtained windows. Your love! Your love! How could you live without your sun? You flailed impotently in the dark, gibbering madly. You’re not sure when your mind broke. Maybe it was the pain, or the denial of your love. It was in the darkness of that room as you laid crippled and the years slowly edge past. You no longer remember something so unimportant. But it was there, there in the shadows that you knew what you had to do.
Your horn blazed in that darkness. It was as flawed as the rest of you, but it sufficed for your purpose. The windows to the tower had been barred long, long ago, but they turned red and ran like molten wax before your magic. You pulled yourself to the window, and fell from that tall, tall tower. You levitated fitfully, sudden starts and stops a hallmark of your slow descent outside the tower. There was but one goal in your mind.
You remember well Luna telling you of the foundation of the Elements. Under the castle, there beneath even the foundations was a tree. The Tree of Harmony, noble and proud. From this tree had the sisters been granted the Elements, and with them defeated the dreaded Discord. From this tree were the Elements formed and passed on their power.
From this tree, you knew, you could form a new Element.
You were laughing, then, as you hovered before it. Or were you crying? You remember heaving sobs wracking your damaged form—or were they great guffaws of insane laughter? Can you even remember?
Do you even want to?
Yes, yes, anything is better than the cloying dark. Even the memories of your greatest failure is preferable to that nonexistence.
You were before the great tree, and for a moment, your hoof was stayed. The tree radiated a kind power, noble in purpose, and it seemed, for a moment, that it could soothe even your ravaged and broken mind.
But then, “Another failure,” echoes in your frail mind. Your dear, sweet Celestia.
With an unarticulated cry your horn shone brightly and ripped wood from the trunk of the tree. The very air seemed to cry out at your crime, but you were beyond hearing, beyond caring. You held it aloft and your magic twisted it as much as you had been torn and remade. You poured all your love into it, all of your hate. You poured your heart into your abhorrent child, and it took the shape of your obsessions.
You admired your creation, looking deeply into the depth of that malformed mockery of a heart. The glistening surface caught your damned reflection. You don’t remember that look on your face. You don’t remember your mouth twisting into a rictus, into that death’s head grin. You don’t remember the crazed look in your eyes, your large pony eyes that had been big enough to see into the soul. You don’t remember seeing into that soul and seeing what thing you had become.
You don’t remember. You don’t remember. You don’t remember.
You pulled yourself out of that pit to find an army arrayed against you. The unicorn guards stood in serried ranks, spears held magically aloft. Glints of golden light revealed a seemingly endless swarm of pegasi churning overhead. And there, at the forefront of this army, stood the Sun. Your dear, sweet Celestia.
You made your slow progress across that quiet field, your crippled wings fluttering weakly as you hovered before her. You bowed low in supplication once more, as you had so very, very long ago, when you were yet a man. You presented your heart to her, held up in two hooves as one would offer a sacrifice to some uncaring and hostile god. You spoke again of your undying love, of your unending devotion. Surely with the power of this new Element, of this Element of Love, she could make you perfect in form and heal your ailing mind. She took the heart from you, and stared into it’s depths.
When she crushed the heart beneath a hoof you stared and stared and screamed and screamed until your throat ran with blood. Your horn blazed. Ponies died, melting away into red mush.
Your dear, sweet Celestia, your most beloved, your heart of hearts. Your great enemy, your gaoler, the one who had ruined you—you who had done nothing but love her.
And you still love her, don’t you? Even now, even now, here, in the edge of death, in the utter nothingness, you still love her. You still burn with that passion from all those many years ago when you walked those green fields and she seemed like an angel descending from heaven. You love her and you hate her and you change from one to the other so frequently that it all blurs together.
You fool.
You utter fool.
You fought each other before the castle. The grand army assembled before you had melted away, and you stamped and moved on blood slicked grass, trampling and churning it into a morass of thick, stinking mud. The princess was fast and strong, perfect in form and style, but you were unstoppable. Love and hate had mixed themselves in your gut, and all that was left was a need, an obsession that would not be quenched until you had your lips locked to hers and a knife buried in her heart. And you looked into those magenta eyes, those huge eyes, and you saw into her soul.
You saw the fear.
And she swung hooves wildly, erratic and fearful, panting as she tried to cave in your skull with a hoof or turn you to so much purified ash with a blast from her horn. But you weathered it. You took the deadly blows to your malformed skull without crying out, and blasts that burned away your coat and set skin to blacken from heat did nothing but make you laugh. And finally, you overwhelmed her, and knocked her to the bloody earth.
You were saying something, but none know what. Your throat was damaged to the point of being incapable of speech. But ere you could strike with upraised hoof and dash her brains into the mud, ere you could tear out her throat with you teeth, the dark princess came up behind you and whispered in your ears.
Young Luna. She had listened to your tales long ago, when you were still a man. She had always been there for you, in your dreams when your loneliness grew too strong and you longed for your old life and old home. She was here for you now, and as she whispered sweet lullabies into your ear, your mad grin finally broke, and true tears ran down your ruined face. She lay you down in the earth and sang to you as you slept, and fell asleep forever.
They moved you, you know. To the tower. To your old room, that lavish apartment where you had known such happiness and sorrow. Luna would come in and find you forever sleeping there and whisper to you. She would tell you of her great deeds, of her heroics in protecting her ponies from great threats.
She told you that she knew why you had turned on her sister, why she too was beginning to chafe at the bit. How she was so tired of being unappreciated despite everything she had done, everything she continued to do. She whispered to you dark things, about spirits with power, and of plots and conspiracies. One night, she seemed crazed before your unresponsive form and said that this was the night, this was when she would become the one true princess of the kingdom, when she would heal you and set all to rights.
She looked to the door and back to you, then leaned down and kissed your lips. It felt cold, as if to dampen the fire of the last kiss you ever had. She gently reached out and pushed ragged hair from your scar filled face. She left you then, and you knew you’d never see her again.
As the door closed for the final time, all was silent. Slowly, imperceptibly, a soft keening could be heard. It took you a very long moment to realize where the noise was coming from. Only you knew what you were saying in your despair.
You fool.
You utter, utter fool.
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Well, I liked it.
Good use of repetition and first person gradual revelation storytelling.
Jesus Christ How Horrifying.
On a more serious note; Good job. I can't think of any complaints about it at the moment, other than the "Complete" tag. Heh.
This is mentally disturbing...
I like it!
Wow. You managed to fulfill all five prompts. Very nice. And it all came together a beautiful, tragic, and above all, cohesive whole.
You genius.
You utter, utter genius.
Thank you for this.
Very well written. But it seems, to me at least, that Celestia is a bit ooc. She's seen as merciful and kind, but portrayed here is a character that is heartless, and overall, cold. I mean, who destroys someone in such a way like this, and someone who was madly in love with her, and barely bats an eye about it? Not Her.
4533089 Agreed. One of the reasons I chose AU as a tag.
Truly a well written short story, Bravo I say! Bravo!
You deserve to win that contest.
Man this is depressing. Very nicely written if I do say so myself. I imagine the possibility of a follow up/sequel is rather low but I would low to see how this turns out in modern day Equestria with Luna's return. i honestly don't see this celestia as being OOC either. This is at least 1000 years before the show and I would assume the society would be more archaic so I don't think its a stretch for a ruler to be cold, and harsh and then to evolve into what we know today. Its all conjecture at that point. In any case, Well done on the fic, and I wish you the best in the contest
And for some reason, almost everyone who commented received a downvote on their comment... Anyways, I liked it.
You took all the prompts and ran with them and I can't believe what you came up with. I don't think anything else in the contest is going to top this one.
God-fucking-damn, man. This was amazing. This is one of the best stories I've read in a long time, and I HATE tragedies!
I love it! But GOD DAMN CELESTIA WAS A TOTAL BITCH. When she said "another failure" I fucking lost it. I would say make another, but you wouldn't be able to top this. Mustache for you sir.
That was excellent. I think this is the first time I've seen 2nd person used well. Hopefully, given this contest, it won't be the last!
My only thought is I was under the impression 'you' were being turned into Discord in the middle. Once I realized I was mistaken, I just sort of used Sombra as a stand-in, but I guess the character was original? ...Oh, and you used all five prompts, didn't you?
I liked it! IT was horrible and made me weep inside but I think that was what you were going for so well done.
That was amazing.
A lot of telling, but man is it well done.
4609342
I have to second thinking for a while in there that the twist was going to be he was Discord, and it was dark because he had been turned to stone and was cursing himself.
Turns out I was wrong.
Still, it was a solid story, and probably is going to be the only good one that used all five prompts, which was quite the achievement; Horse Voice only went for four.
And best of all, it was short and still well-paced despite fitting so much into it.
Swing and a miss. I couldn't get any traction with the second-person PoV and the fact that the 'you' came across as a complete moron.
It's certainly not anything I could classify as either a romance or a tragedy. He's an idiot, Celestia's a bitch, and it didn't evoke sadness either.
Not that there is absolutely anything wrong with the writing, either technically or stylistically, and I totally appreciate what you were trying to do. So top marks for effort, but... too hollow for my tastes.
4686636 For once I'm with Scott, this entry in the contest didn't really do much for me.
I think my main issue was Celestia. I know the AU tag is there to explain her being so out of character compared to canon, but she still needs to make sense as a character of her own. And the Elements of Harmony as something that produces monsters out of men, and are being wielded by a pair of mares willing to knowingly sacrifice innocents to said hellish existence? That only makes sense if we're so far AU that words have different meanings.
Very good story. Have a like!
Congrats on making the final round! You definitely deserved it.
Wow, this is so very sad. But, it was also a very good story... Man the voting for this contest is going to be very hard.
Technically very good, but I find the princesses way OOC. There was no suspension of disbelief, so it left me pretty unaffected, except for the fact that you covered ALL the prompts. That was impressive!
I didn't catch the AU tag, so my perception is probably a bit skewed. That said, I don't think Celestia's character was developed well enough to merit the vast disjoint between what we know of her and how this story portrayed her, even considering the AU tag.
I did find the narrative to be quite engaging, though. Especially seeing how you incorporated all the prompts and the rather short length of this story.
This was quite interesting, even though it didn't manage to make me feel anything; I guess the way the second person narrative was used, by evoking the character/reader's memories through an external narrator from start to finish, caused me to disconnect from the character rather than bond to him.
While I don't think it technically fulfilled all the prompts — the fall in love prompt was supposed to be mutual and romantic, while I'm not sure the OC's attempt at carving a new element would count — it still clearly fulfilled three prompts (and the alicorn was even red and black, for extra points
) while toying with the concept of the other two; doing this in less than 3K words, and still having an enjoyable story, is nothing short of impressive.
(Interestingly, the way one of the prompts wasn't fulfilled actually made me enjoy this story quite a bit more than I would otherwise. I started reading it expecting this story to be my least favorite among the finalists, but the way the prompt was subverted landed it a couple places above.)
4741942 Think you're the first person to notice the color palette.
4743029
Well, I have a tendency to dislike stories tagged [Tragedy], [Romance], or [Dark] when together with a Teen or higher rating and Gore, so I started reading your story fully expecting to dislike it. Which means that, to be (at least a bit) fair in how I judged it, I paid extra attention to the elements of the story apart from the plot — characterization, the mental images it invoked, and so on — in order to have something more substantial to balance out my personal preferences.
(Though, of course, this story beat my expectations by being far more enjoyable than I expected, despite how its specific usage of the second person point of view threw me off
)
Hey, I wrote a review for this story. It can be found here.
Overall, I liked how you used the themes, the darker aspects, and his devotion to Celestia, but this story really needs some more polish to shine. Particularly, the editing issues affected the pacing, and really brought down the whole thing.
Other than the occasional editing problem, which I didn't find was all that frequent, this was phenomenal. Poetic. To the point.
Took me way too long to read this, and that's all I really have to say here. Hard to make a review out of a story like this. B+.
Strong voice. Somehow did six tags justice in 3k words. Well done. Have a ribbon:
i.imgur.com/6MrWqNZ.png
Wow. Okay... that was pretty amazing. And mad. And magnificent.
I spotted a few "its"/"it's" errors you might want to fix, though
> You basked in it’s warmth
> stared into it’s depths.
Hello, good sir, I did you a thing.
PresentPerfect's reading brought me here. I thought you did a terrific job with this story, prompts or no prompts.
Keep up the good work!
Greetings, Magello! Here begins the review you requested from WRITE.
First impression: that's an awful lot of tags. We'll see if the story lives up to them all, but the combination of human, romance, and second-person narration leaves me unsurprised at the vote ratio, though I suspect it deserves better. We'll see!
The obvious issue with a second-person narrator is keeping him relatable, since you're telling me what I think by design, which is a big no-no in standard writing. You're never going to connect with as many readers as you can with a different voice; even if you keep the responses generic and reasonable enough that it'd apply to most of them, you never get everyone, and to the rest, it can feel vague. Plus the flowery language is something not many readers can identify with. So it's often a case of "damned if you do and damned if you don't."
This needs a comma after the dependent clause.
There's no grammatical reason to have a comma there.
That's one word.
This phrasing is tripping me up. I don't get the "but in Eden." It doesn't parse well, and it feels odd coming so soon after another "but" which makes it feel like a double negative.
Okay, you're losing me with the "don't tell the reader what to think" thing. I'm now supposed to be relating experiences to Celestia, but I don't know what they are or how much embellishment I'm supposed to be adding. I'm also instantly in love with her, though I'm not given much as to why. I'm startled by her appearance, of course, but somehow not because she's a talking magic horse, just that she has an impressive appearance.
I'll only mark this once, as I bet it will be a persistent problem, but you've confused "its" with "it's." Possessive pronouns never have apostrophes. If you're indicating such possession, don't use one. "It's" expands to "it is" or "it has."
Hyphenate.
You just used "seem" in the last sentence, and it's a weak verb at that. There are times it's fine, but here, it does nothing to set the scene. What about their behavior makes them "seem" like this?
More of this "seeming," and it's hard to relate to Celestia's behavior here, since I have no basis to know why she'd have such personal interest.
I'm barely a page in, and now I'm supposedly doing this? It might be a tough sell in any case, but this is rapid pacing.
Typo.
Needs a comma between the clauses.
Some phrasing is off here. First, it appears you're using a direct object for the verb here, so you need "raise." But it sounds like the horn is raising his mane, which is... odd.
This feels repetitive, since you just had a parenthetical "then" two sentences ago.
A common mistake, since "lay" and "lie" have similar conjugations: lay/laid/laid, lie/lay/lain. You need "lay" for the past tense here, since you have no direct object.
There's a slip into present tense here, and since it's a transition point in the plot, I wondered if it was intentional, but after this, you go back to past tense.
Structurally, this feels repetitive with the very recent "there, there."
You don't need that first comma, as it's all one clause, and there's that same structural repetition again.
A comma is needed to separate the clauses again. this is a recurring thing.
If you're going to use a word that the reader is probably going to have to look up, save him the trouble and make the meaning inherent in the context. And for this one, I don't see what using the more familiar word loses.
Its/it's again.
Comma.
You're using the whole phrase as a descriptor, so hyphenate it.
All of these "and" phrasings are creating a forward momentum, I'll grant you, but it's getting to be a bit much.
Instead of just concluding this, show me what she does to appear this way. Let me conclude it from the evidence you present.
This is a really awkward phrasing.
laid
Hyphenate.
So. Like I said, it's going to be very hit or miss to connect with a reader using a second-person narrator. It's also very difficult to connect with a reader when the entire story is told through narration. That forces a distance between the reader and the events, since he doesn't get to see them himself. He only gets secondhand information about it. There's definitely a style that does this, and I can't say you've used it wrong, only that it didn't connect with me, but I can't say other readers will feel the same way.
What I will say is that I don't think you're really going to draw the reader into the character's mindset that he actually loves Celestia (unless they're pretty much there already). The whole process by which he falls in love with her is so vague, fast-paced, and unsupported that it never felt real to me. We get nothing about his life before coming to Equestria and very generic things about his time spent with Celestia that it's very hard to identify with him.
It's also going to be tough for some readers to make the immediate leap to "Celestia is a cruel and manipulative bitch." Why use Celestia here? Mainly because you want the reader to have a built-in familiarity with the character, and you want to reuse her position and circumstances in the universe. But you're not using her personality, so an OC would work just as fine. Or if you really want it to be Celestia, then why is she this way? Did something happen to change her? Is her canon personality a front, and this is how she really acts? Basically, how do we get to this Celestia from canon Celestia? It's not necessarily enough to slap an Alternate Universe tag on it just so you can make her into something she isn't. I have no concept of what this universe is, after all. I haven't seen any glimpses of it beyond the narrator's interaction with Celestia, so I have no reason to think it differs from canon Equestria.
It's definitely a very restricting set of constraints you've adopted for this story, and some of the baggage comes from that, so you've probably done pretty well with those. And, unfortunately, no matter how well you do with it, it's still going to be a very tough sell. The writing itself is well done.
Keep writing and have fun with it!
fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/349/4/b/reviewer_logo_longver03_01_by_burrakupansa-d5o60h2.png
Pascoite, WRITE's mineral
Interesting
Okay, you get a like purely for taking that many iffy premises and making a readable story out of them!
Would it be insane of me to ask if there was a sequel?
I gotta say:
THAT WAS SO AWESOME!!!
I couldn't help loving and hating and pitying the MC. You have an amazing gift.
"....out of whose womb bore the ice"