17: Reminiscence
“What!?”
I looked up desperately at the black crow angrily ruffling its feathers. Blackbird had followed Gladas through most of her young adult life, almost constantly by her side. In the chaos of Gladas’s “accident”, everyone all but forgot about keeping track of him. By the time they thought to check up on Gladas’s remaining possessions, his cage was cracked open, and the bird never to be seen again.
Of course, the truth was he still remained by her side. He was getting fairly old by the time Gladas disappeared from griffon society, frankly it was a bit of a miracle he could still fly as well as he did then.
Gladas almost immediately delayed her Phylactery bonding to work out a ritual to bring Blackbird with her. The modification was fairly simple, and now Blackbird was directly connected to Gladas’s soul. As long as the griffon lived, so would he.
“You’re our best navigator,” I pleaded. “I don’t know who else would be able to find the town my friend’s in.”
“And how would I do?”
I grinned and pulled out a soggy brochure. “I got his place marked down right here. The cold doesn’t bother me anyways.”
“Yes, yes,” the bird rolled his eyes. “But fly-ing? Nooo. Ice crystals. Slow wing. Slow thrust. No flight speed. Keep me out.”
“Uh. Um.” I furiously wracked my brain. “I could ... carry you in my cloak?”
Blackbird squinted down at me dubiously. “Tied down, barely sight? Wonderful.”
I felt phantom sweat crawl over my back. “Please. If there’s anything you need, I’ll do it for you, no questions. He’s all I have left."
Blackbird stared at me for a long time. "I ... consider." He spread his wings and disappeared down the halls.
I followed his flight, then groaned, clutching my head. "Please. Don’t die. Just a little longer. Please..."
Blackbird gave Agatha the stinkeye. "Well, it happened, like you said. Why interest?”
Stuart-5’s tail waved menacingly besides Agatha’s paw, one that the griffon happily ignored. “Oh, if his friend turns out to be dead, Cycle will still be operational. Might~ be a bit unstable.”
“Would be better to hide friend,” Blackbird groaned.
Agatha tapped her chin. “Not necessarily. An unfortunate result of his haphazard phylactery installation is that his emotional balance is permanently altered. In a bad direction. All hiding would do is delay it.”
Blackbird cawed unhappily. “Will think,” he muttered.
“Teach him navigation himself, perhaps?” Agatha suggested. “Take the load off you, pass on some skills, and you don’t need to leave.”
Blackbird paused in his turn, then nodded.
“Oh,” Agatha added, raising a claw. “Recall when I mentioned the stability of our ... little operation is quite linked to Cycle’s?”
Blackbird took off, looped around, and landed on Agatha’s cheeks, his talons digging into her face. “She is right. You are not to be trusted.” He flipped off her face and flew away.
Blood dripped down Agatha's face as her grin faded into a grimace. Crawling out of her room to intercept Gladas's pet was necessary, but her body was in full out revolt.
Gladas's surgery could only do so much against a body that was falling apart.
Maybe... one more life? she asked the empty corridors. She slumped onto the wall, sliding down. Stuart had already vanished. "Brat," she muttered.
Look at you, genius. Queen of a single house, and now barely able to move. Dammit! I escaped from the royals grasp, but even now time threatens to claim me. Agatha gripped her brow in frustration. But ... Harmony. You're hiding something, you piece of compost. I will not take the easy way out and just install a Phylactery. As long as you fear me I refuse to lie down and die! I will give Honeycomb the best chance they've got with what time I have.
Agatha forced through pin and daggers to get to her feet, shuffling back to her quarters. Just you wait.
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5492467
... wait, what?
5493022
you sure it wasn't the updated stories tab? If this was featured, it really should have had 30+ upvotes and a whole horde of views before hand.
5493036 this story has been in the featured box at least twice for several hours each. that is how i found it
5493128
5493242
Whaaaat.
I have extreme difficulty in believing anything I've written is Box worthy. Hell, the fact that I have so many upvotes without a single down is already beyond my every expectation.
5493531 if you truly believe that than you sir do not read what you write because this story was in the box two times so it is obviously worthy.
5493680
Must not be a lot of updates recently, then.
5493708
wake up and smell the roses. YOU ARE A GOOD WRITER AND YOUR STORY IS IN THE BOX 
5493748
1) Have a stuffy nose, and half the time I don't like those flower's smell anyways. Reminds me of allerigies
2) I am a massive self depreciator, mostly due to the rather pathetic results of my previous attempts, of which a good portion of them were crackfics. In fact, if you think this thing is not bad, why don't you check this guy out? He's basically who inspired me to write this. Though I am technically a fanboy at this point, and likes everything he writes.
5493831
Mandatory Promotion
Well, that's nice to hear. Being able to see 0 negatives is nice, but an empty comment section is just as bad as fanfiction.net.
In any case, thanks, and hope you will enjoy whenever I get enough into the future to give Cycle an Armored Train/Tank on Treads.
this has been out for roughly over a month, has over 200 views, and 40 upvotes with no downvotes. whatever it is you are doing, you are doing it well dude.
5495822
Yeah, I know. I'm a slow writer, and I am sort of incapable of making really long ones. It also cut off nicely there, so I did. Each chapter is sort of an "Event" of sorts. One task per chapter. I can try making it longer, but due to my procrastination and the rather jumbled mess that is my notes, its going to take a while.
Heh heh, about that ... Notice the large amounts of self depreciation up there? I always feel incredibly awkward getting someone to edit for me. Also a bit of a crappy track record, regarding editors. Either no actual edits, or the editor disappears, or no responses. Also, barely any self esteem whatsoever. So I gave up pretty quickly on getting editors. I'm just hoping someone in the comments think its worthy of their time to yell at me to fix my word barf.
Sorry.
Cycle's number one goal is to protect his family. He had, as you might have noticed, just lost pretty much everything, and is a bit delirious, mentally and emotionally unstable, and somewhat unemphatic to everything else in general. Celestia sorta kinda almost kills him by accident, and it pretty much made it all worse, inducing the desire to be powerful enough no matter the cost to protect his family against anything.
Most of his "revenge" is indirect, and a good portion of it is to simply induce paranoia and make her think he's more cunning than he actually is.
I saw a clip if the Polar Express, on the scene where the train is stuck on ice, and needs to head for the tracks on the other side of the lake.
The operator "steers" be braking/reversing one side of the wheels (ignoring how that would probably break something). What other vehicle sometimes steers by braking one side or the other?
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Char_T-34.jpg
Yeeeeah.
Afterwards, I thought: "....what if I slap on 50mm of armor plating everywhere, replace the wheels with giant treads and call it a day?"
That became Rail-Free Train Prototype MK-1, upgraded with a modified engine that Cycle designed with his mark in mind (the recycling of energy, from heat, solar, chemical, or whatever, to kinetic). This is basically a train he yanked from a junkyard to test with. Not very fast nor maneuverable, due to its rather long length, but it was for concept testing anyways.
The Mk-2 its a shorter train (roughly the size of a Greyhound, maybe, I haven't written up dimensions yet), with an improved engine, and rather heavily armed, almost resembling a land battleship, and the design itself vaguely resembles our modern trains, except with flat plates everywhere instead of curved surfaces.
Current specs are
Tentative names for each of the vehicles built are (Haunted Steel (Wartrain), Scathis’s Scythe (WT), Iron Curtain (WT), Continental (APC, 1 carriage), Bloodless (APC/Medevac , Gladas), Stuart ELC (Stuart 5’s personal vehicle, smaller, solo, speedier 100 km/h)
I like guns.
An 8.8cm KwK L/56 magically accelerated cannon (heh, MAC) might come first, though.
Quite a lot of future stuff will include old, discarded ideas, and cameo's of abilities from other franchises. There's a bit of "rule of cool," though I do try to make it work logically within itself.
Sven (Even) in the Prologue transformed into a Weapon, Soul Eater style.
here's to hoping I don't screw it all up.
5495822
I also have a strange fascination with releasing dark stories during the holidays. It isn't explicitly mentioned, but Cycle technically lit the first "Hearth's Warming" tree over the graves of his family and neighbors.
5496430
The 50mm thing is basically for Mk1. It's pretty much an armored box, and though front is pretty sloped, its meant to go at an angle towards the target in order to bring its guns to bear, and balance out some of the recoil. Haven't gotten a good idea how thick the armor is going to be though. The howitzers are pretty low velocity, so its not too bad. I might make them wider and lower, though.
Also, this is being driven by a lich. Who eventually decides to dig out the frozen corpses of his town and stick them in a giant frozen tub to be reanimated later. Yes, the "mom" in the Prologue is actually his mom's corpse. He eventually works out cloning, and has them man the guns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M114_155_mm_howitzer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/240_mm_howitzer_M1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14-inch_M1920_railway_gun
Artillery of that size do exist.
Ammo-wise, the carriages are loaded with ammo underneath, and again, rule of cool, probably not going to be a major plot point for the brief time they get used. Same for fuel, though that is even less of an issue. He charges up these fuel rod thingies by capturing the energy of fire and explosives and converts it to kinetic energy.
I already have of a sketch of the thing, I might clean it up later and post it in a blog.
5497331
I have difficulty separating what I have written and what I have planned. I also tend to not care about spoilers, so sorry about that. And don't worry, I like talking. It makes me feel as if I exist.
And remember: this is Equestria. *snortsnortmagicsnort* There's going to be some sort of recoil dampener to reduce the chances of it falling over.
Also, you might enjoy this
Don't worry, you're doing a great job so far self-editing (If you haven't found yourself an editor and retconned, anyway. :P). The story definitely seems solid so far, my only qualm being the large number of chapters for the word count.
5506554
My chapters are, on average, between 1K and 3K. For pretty much everything; you can see that in some of my earlier failed projects. I managed to get 5K once. I do try to update two chapters at a time if I'm able to. Currently stuck for a while, as I try to figure out what one of my character's motivations are in order to introduce a character in the Prologue, and I really don't want him to die.
As for the short chapters in "Diaries..", my excuse is "You might ask 'what happens in the life of a very magically adept lich? Are there constant battles for your life? Do random heroes try to hunt you down? Are there young, stupid children who want too much power for their own good and go on a rampage?' To tell the truth... not really. The local population just ... kinda got used to us. We keep our head downs, help around, and occasionally go off to keep monsters away, which really wasn't any more different than any other town back then. In turn, they let us conduct mad science in the basement. Its quite peaceful, to be honest. After a few centuries though ... I got to be very good at killing things that disturb my peace." (I've been sitting on a form of this quote for quite a while, and not sure when I'll ever find a good spot to stick this in.)
This is primarily going to be slice of life, though right now I'm still focusing on introducing several main characters. There are still a few conflicts, as the earlier comments show, but I personally don't like the drama of large scale battles. These guys tend to lean towards quiet assassinations, if they have to.
The next pair of chapters should be a bit longer though, I hope. I'm going to be introducing Even Balance Fairday and Wally Falcowolf, and hopefully they add up to longer than 5K. Assuming I get out of this block sometime soon.
messed up the italics after still.