Epilogue
“Little imp.”
“Little whisper.”
“Little nuisance.”
“Come out and play,” Selene finished in a voice heavy with promise. She looked at the flower sisters as they walked. In the gloom of the Horsetooth caverns, her low-light vision made their coats appear to fluoresce in the darkness. She could only imagine what she looked like to them while under the effects of her darkvision spell.
One week after their eventful meeting with Celestia and Sand, Selene and her companions had come to an agreement. A whisper of the evil unleashed by Brilliant Sky’s haphazard combination of zebra alchemy and unicorn magic still lurked within the Horsetooth mines. Although its antics had at first been merely mischievous, it had quickly become the subject of ghost stories told by mothers to disobedient foals: don’t be out later than dark or the shadows will gobble you up! Tales made all the more sinister because they had proven true more than a dozen times over.
The bones of foals look so alike when they’re stripped of all their meat.
In an effort to find her own place in the world, Selene had resolved to deal with this threat. A first step, but an important one.
That had been over a month ago, however. The whisper haunted the mines even as they hunted it, speaking from the darkness just enough to mock, but never enough to be found.
That would end today.
“We know your secret, little one,” Selene said. “We know your weakness.”
A hundred mage-lights flared into being across their section of the mine, illuminating every passageway, every nook and cranny, every possible entrance, every possible escape. All except the one space before them.
“You...” the voice whispered from the shadows. “You have no power over me.”
“No?” Selene asked. She favored the faceless voice with a smile. “What if I were to just, say...” Her horn flared, driving back the small pool of darkness. A shriek sounded in response, high and ragged and filled with pain.
“Enough! Enough!” it cried.
“Could it ever be enough?” Chicory asked.
“It will, it will!” the voice said as Selene’s building light continued to eat away at its diminishing sanctuary. “There are secrets only I know, secrets I can share with you!”
“We trust our own shadows with the weight of our sorrows,” Indigo offered in agreement.
“Power!” the voice hissed. “Knowledge and power, the likes of which you’ve only tasted. A way to build a tunnel, a bridge, a connection. To tap into a wisdom beyond the ages, to draw upon one whose time should have come but for the foolishness of those without the strength to contain His majesty.”
“An offer of power?” Violet asked. “A devil’s bargain, to be sure, but such an intriguing one, this.”
Selene turned to her companions, meeting each of their gazes in turn. One by one, they nodded. She turned back to the shadow.
Her horn flashed, and the last of the darkness vanished.
***
[Countless thanks to my friends and reviewers, Heather, Cold in Gardez, Chris, and Mysecsha. Without their wit and wisdom, Lacuna would have been abandoned at best and nonexistent at worst. They have my undying gratitude for keeping me going through this.]
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That is it? It is over?
Well... that certainly was an interesting ride.
Good story!
It's been a long time coming, but I'm glad I decided to track this story way back when. Fuckin A.
Nice, though it seems to be set up for a sequel.
Story downloaded.
Thank you for your story. It was much appreciated.
Well, there went alcoholic Luna fic.
250628
I like to think she spent the entire three week journey home completely sloshed on cheap rum.
250638
Same.
That was lovely, even if it feels just a tad rushed with the closure. But definitely one of the most entertaining adventure fics I've read!
Also, love the AppleDash moments
Good story, although the ending was, to a degree, rather...nonexistent. Still a good read.
250848
Yeah....yeah. I agree, believe me. The epilogue wasn't what I would have wanted ideally, but then again, that goes for a lot of things. It was a convergence of three things:
1. I opened the story with a Prologue and it felt wrong to not have a distinct Epilogue
2. I hadn't touched on Selene in ages and needed to at least mention her again before the end, but didn't want to expand the overall story by several chapters just on a side-character
3. I like Neil Stephenson books too much.
In truth, I'd have rather ended the story with chapter 15 and Sand's ambiguous fate. I really would. But I couldn't work that into an epilogue without needing to explain their fates, I feel, which would be far less interesting, and I couldn't just forget about Selene entirely. No matter how much I want to.
Overall, while I'd throw this ending onto the "Meh" pile, it was still a pretty valuable learning experience. I consider it a small victory that I don't have people calling for my blood for wasting their time for 15.5 chapters.
Yet.
251021 People might think there will be a sequel, which explains the lack of bloodlust.
252598
See Drak? I told you people would expect a sequel if you ended it like this! Though this ending is an appropriate leaving-off point, so that's what really matters.
258753
-.-
I think my future projects are going to be much, much, much shorter.
Much.
264604
Technically Twilight can apply to both morning and night as it refers to light and position of the sun, whereas Dawn and Dusk refers a more specific situation.
Picked up this story pretty early and i really enjoyed the ride. That said compared to the pacing of the rest of the work, the end felt pretty rushed. Meeting Ember, being won over, big plan, and being betrayed all in one chapter was a bit much imo. Just seemed a bit out of place compared to the rest of the fic's pace. Looking forward to more work from you!
265572
Aye. Some things in the story worked. Many things didn't. The length of the story itself was one of the most problematic things for me, as I felt (quite often) that I was just dragging things out every chapter for the sake of just seeing my story expand, even if it was through bloat. The running joke was that I'd have the characters going through great masses of speech over tea or food, as had happened so often in my story, but not much would really progress otherwise. Regardless, the length of the fic led to borderline burnout, and the logical suggestion for such is to take a break... but I know myself.
Sand's name itself was sort of a joke about my own tendencies: someone did one of those silly "What would your cutie-mark be?" posts, and I said that mine would be a half-finished sand castle. I've got a dozen or more hobbies lying around that I've left abandoned midway through, always because I decided to take a little bit of time off from them that ended up being more than just that.
At the point that this story finished, it was either take a hiatus with a 99% risk of leaving it permanently incomplete, or rush a bit of an ending that was still...passable.
I wouldn't claim it's any great work of art--certainly not. But I learned a lot, and I hope I entertained a few people in the process.
But aye, in the future, things should be different. I look forward to writing something for ya'll that'll both be enjoyable and something I can look on with pride now that my largest writing commitment is behind me.
265572
True, but I believe it is most commonly used to refer to the brief period before night, so the usage holds to the norm.
265739
Sand's name would make more sense, really, if she had an hourglass for a cutie mark, given that the most common material
for the construction of such is sand. The fact that her "quest/journey" has the potential to change history for better or worse
would "Sand Shaper" a viable name in that case. As it stands, it's a fine name, but a different one could have been used.
267090
It always struck me as a strange fanon convention to name the character after their mark, hence why my characters ended up with the names they did.
Not that I like Sand's name, necessarily--it gets nasally to say and the small alliteration with her full name, especially with a speech attribution tag, drove me up the wall. Live and learn, I guess : )
I really liked this story, though in the same vein as 250732 I feel the ending was a little rushed.
You massively expanded the world of Equestria, giving us Leonine and Cervine characters, as well as connecting things to the great Beasts of lore. I don't know a lot about the Coyote of legend, but my experience reading Gunnerkrigg Court has given me some idea of his character. And as for Jormungandr, the World Serpent, I can't recall anywhere I've read about him, besides maybe The Book of the Dun Cow... It's straight out of Legend, though, so I can see you're well-read on your Mythologies. Seeing them show up here was kinda trippy, as it heavily implies the foundations of Equestrian culture sprung from the same roots as did our Earthly civilizations, at least for the fauna-based deities.
A very enjoyable read, overall. Thanks for all your hard work!
One last question: Why call it Lacuna? "Lacuna" is the one-word term for "lexical gap," i.e. a concept that has no condensed descriptor in a certain language. (For example, in Romanian there's no one word that means "shallow," and in English we have no neutral term for someone who is no longer a virgin.) It's not a word you would have chosen by accident, so what was the concept you had in mind that couldn't be described in the language and experience of our intrepid heroes?
268316
Aye. The ending was a bit rushed, I'll concede. I've explained in detail why above, so I'll leave it simply as: I agree. It'll just have to be something to learn from and handle better in the future.
The larger mythological creatures were a result of loving what little Neil Gaiman I've read and attempting a bad representation of the magic his works convey. I didn't want to just draw on the same character set he used (in The Sandman), but I liked the idea of pulling other mythologies into the mix. It was only a tiny, tiny toe in the door, but when Twilight talked about Orion's belt and its very particular constellation form as viewed from Equestria, I took a great deal of liberty to expand on that and jam in some of our world's mythologies. As I wrote them, I wanted to explore the Deerish isles and go back to Marebasa (though Gardez would have me drown Rarity in the sewers there, so maybe not), a stop in Synod Port in circumstances that wasn't a result of an XK-class end-of-the-world scenario, but alas, there's only so much meandering around I can expect my readers to tolerate. Maybe in a future story.
And, yeah, I couldn't help but picture GKC's Coyote as I was writing, which was a bit of a problem as I really wanted to describe him in more general terms, but Siddell's version is just so much fun!
As far as 'Lacuna' itself, I pulled the definition back to describe a gap in the whole: parts of Luna's self ripped free by the eclipse, parts of her madness removed from *that* and woven into books, Sand and the others of Celestia's students leaving gaps in her life and filling them again as necessity saw fit, the missing part of Selene's self made whole by reclaiming Sand's book, the missing parts of Dawn's life--sister, friends, real family--and her ability to move past this life in the bigger scheme of things. Overall, a missing part of the self that we struggle to fill, a bit of meaning for our brief (or in a few cases, not brief at all) lives. A loose definition, at times, but in my mind, it works. Usually.
290680
Hooray! Someone finally got it! Always makes my day when someone gets one of my references.
292878
Hehe : )
Don't worry too much about the ending. You had a way of leaving just...enough unspoken throughout the story, and the ambiguity in the ending actually felt consistent with that instead of incomplete. It bugs me immensely, but in the right way
Not a whole lot of stories hit that note right.
If anything, it was the epilogue that felt wrong. I mean, Selene already cashed in her chips, and not a whole lot of explicit "after" would've really added substantively to that -- she's already better off than the rest of the cast right now. The epilogue feels feels out of place because it's fluff, and this wasn't really a story that did fluff.
Yes, I recognized the Fallout: Equestria stuff right away. Really liked the adaptation of other mythoses. Irish deer are awesome, and Irish musical magic is one of the more clever things I've seen.
This story deserves at least 100 comments.
COLORS!
This was most enjoyable. The open-ended epilogue, which showed Selene freed of NNM and even crushing the only physical presence of it on the planet... She has indeed become a hunter... a hunter of the darkness. She has a place.
Okay! What a long, strange trip it's been, both for your protagonists and for me, the reader! Thanks for writing this; it was an enjoyable read with a lot of memorable pictures. My biggest quibble here is that you've got about two to two-and-a-half stories going here that don't always knit together well, and the things that happen don't always seem to be in service to the greater arc, or in some cases, in service to anything at all. Sand's getting lost, and found, and then lost again, and then found again... I was hoping that by the end of things we'd find some reason for it, if that makes any sense, something that ties into the larger message of the story, but the links are tenuous. I almost think this would be better if it were parsed and organized into two different stories with a clear development of tension -- you've got an amazing gift for building a feeling of slow dread, but with this piece, I often found that I was just starting to get into it, to get hooked by your storytelling, before the tale took an unexpected 90 degree turn to the left or right, not in terms of a clever plot twist that makes me reevaluate everything that came before, but merely in an "okay, let's drop what we're doing and do something else" sense. When I started thinking about "Lacuna" as one of those old Republic serials where every week there'd be a new cliffhanger that would be immediately resolved at the beginning of the following week to make way for yet another cliffhanger, this piece came together better for me -- but still, the ending bits and the Surprise Antagonist would be so much better if their arcs had opened far earlier in the story, so that the bang-up ending felt like a real culmination of this entire epic, rather than the culmination of just a few parts.
Still, a very good read, and well worth the time spent. You've got a good sense of word-painting, especially in capturing the ambiance of the various cities that your protagonists travel through, and the ending was suitably inspiring. All in all, something to be proud of.
645026
Goodness! Of all the people to have read this story... That one of my favorites authors did is embarrassing in the extreme, but you are very kind, and I thank you for your critique. I don't intend what I say next to be a justification for the writing, an attempt to garner sympathy, or any sort of defense of Lacuna; it's just something to give some context for the loose structure and haphazard events: this was the first story that I've ever written, pretty much. Like, ever. Okay, there was one malformed piece of garbage that I wrote once, long ago, one which I never made much progress on, let alone finished, but I honestly don't count that other than as a technicality. This was a first fic of a firsttime author, and I leave it up as a milestone for how much I've improved over time.
And maybe, just a little bit, to feel proud for actually completing something.
Now if only I could complete something new... : P
There are a lot of problems with the story, but I'm glad that you felt the time was well spent. Regardless of its quality, I think that as long as my readers feel at least that much, then it won't have been a total wash.
Thanks for the read and the comment!
I really wanted to like this one. That's why I'm writing this note: Because I really wanted to like this story. But first, I am making a nice cup of tea.
To be fair, there's a lot *to* like. An excellent sense of place is not common. Your sense of character and mood is decent. Your command of language is better than most. You build anticipation well: I read five chapters even though I knew quite early on that I would probably run out of patience. I kept looking for reasons to keep reading, you see.
My early expectations turned out to be right. But this is a very promising first effort, and I can't just leave it at that. I have an utterly selfish desire to see you write again and do better next time. So here is a list of the things that drove me away from this story.
Problem: The schizophrenic pacing. It's kind of... juddery. Yes, I know that's not a real word. We'll spend a bunch of time visiting the Exposition Choir, then suddenly we're on the road, then suddenly nothing is happening again, then suddenly a thing happens. A problem will be set up at some length and then immediately resolved. It's like a film is playing and Pinkie is messing with the speed control. Skimming the comments above, you've already gotten a lot of grief about this one, so I will stop belaboring it... now!
Problem: The endless walk-and-talks. You've got a lot of exposition going on, but did it really need to be preloaded the way it was? Apart from being boring to read (especially since you so often explained things twice), it also robbed your more interesting ideas of their due (especially since you so often explained them twice). The need to write these endless expository scenes should tell you something:
Too much back story. You're spending a lot of time in expository scenes because there's a lot of stuff you need to explain in order for the action to begin. And why I write "a lot of stuff", please read "too much stuff". This one is hard to get right, but I wonder how many of the weird and wonderful new ideas Sand Shaper has by now explained to me are actually essential to the plot? Or at least to this plot? Often, too much back story happen because of too much story. Other of your readers have picked up on this as well: The narrative is muddled because it seems like there's three narratives fighting for supremacy. The long pieces of exposition are a symptom of this.
Sand is too unique. Yes, really. She's from a all-but-unknown people. She has a unique role within that society. She has a rare connection with Celestia. She is uniquely wise and uniquely capable. She is a terrible character. In the end, it's her fault I stopped reading. She did not need all that specialness and should not have had it.
After that one, the rest of these will seem more picayune. They are mostly points of bad style, of the writing drawing attention to itself in a way that makes the act of reading unpleasant.
The point of view is unsteady. It's not even that it's omniscient (though that's part of the problem), it's that it switches rapidly in the middle of a scene. If I'm supposed to take him seriously, don't tell me what the ambassador is thinking. Don't tell me what everyone is thinking about what everyone else is doing, either. Especially, don't introduce a character privy to all the secrets and then let me spend measurable amounts of time in her head while those secrets are still supposed to be secrets!
Finally: Simplify. This one is pretty hard to learn to do well. Inasmuch as pretty much anyone's writing could stand to be simplified, it's also almost redundant advice. So be it. I repeatedly noticed myself reading a sentence and then restructuring it to kick out unnecessary clauses and words to arrive at something I would have liked reading. I should not be noticing the writing that much. Short, declarative sentences are your friend.
That all reads like a list of complaints. Because it pretty much is that. But I want to emphasize why I sent it: I am possessed of a purely selfish desire to get to enjoy your next work rather than be bummed by how close I am coming to enjoying it. Not that my selfish desires should signify to your life choices, of course -- but some would find the existence of those desires to be complimentary. Here's hoping you take them that way.
D'A
730031
Whew, thanks for the thought out response! It's always a little weird seeing people comment on Lacuna because it's a really embarrassing bit of writing for me. It's a first fic of a first-time author, and I think that if you compare the quality at the beginning to the quality by the end, you can see just how much of a difference those 120K words made, yet you can also see that there's a whole lot of room to grow.
I can't fault you for any of your points, and I only wish that I could add a big disclaimer to the prologue saying that I'm likely to agree with any points raised about the problems this story has.
I leave the story up because I don't really know what else to do with it. Taking it down seems like bad form, and editing it now to bring the entire thing into line with my current standards is both dishonest (as it'd require an entire rewrite, pretty much) and unfeasible. Some people seem to enjoy it, for some reason, but it exists now primarily as a badge—though whether one of shame for its quality or pride for actually completing a story, that's up for debate.
If you'd like to read my other story, For Those We Left Behind, I think you'll find that my writing got a teensy, tinsy bit better. It was partially fueled by my mounting frustration with Lacuna, and all of the early problems that I had to somehow work into a semi-coherent ending. FTWLB is easily my best piece of writing, and also the reason why I've written but not published anything else. Your call though—sadfics (if it really is one) aren't everyone's cup of tea.
And god knows, Lacuna had enough talking over tea for a dozen lifetimes.
731523
Leave it to me to engage in necromancy. Thanks for being gracious about my unearthing the distant past like that.
Allow me to be completely clear about one thing: You completed a novel-length work of fiction. That is a thing to be proud of. It is a necessary step towards completing a *good* novel-length piece of fiction. _Lacuna_ misses the mark. But not widely. We practice and we improve, and I anticipate your future work with pleasure.
I have in fact queued up FTWLB. I'm sure I will be pleased with it.
D'A
Finally got around to finishing this. I agree that it's a tad rough around the edges, but overall, I'd say it was extremely well done. If this is what you consider bad writing, I'd like to see your good writing. Also, I have to admit I'm just a smidge disappointed that no shipping took place.
I read it and i liked it.
The scenes where nice and lucid and the characters were fun to experience.
But it really put me off to read that much typos ... it takes you out of the story for a second to read to read the same words twice.
Also a rather unsatisfying ending ... epilogues should give a conclusion. This one read more like a last chapter with a wrong name.
I would have wished for a funeral and/or memorial scene to show who really died in the end. This would also have give closure to the characters.
All in all thank you very much for putting so much effort into this. I had some quality time with it.
this has to be hands and hooves down the best fim fiction if not the best pice of literary work i have EVER had the divine pleasure of reading.
and i read alot i mean ALOT of books
this ranks right up there with artimis fowl, harry potter the jrrr tolkien worksand the starlight crystal
you sir and or mam, are a gift unto the world.
Extremely well done. Ending rushed. Feels incomplete.
Why didn't you listen and make this TwiLuna? XD
And Dawnlestia?
I just finished reading this story and it was pretty good, as somebody already said it feels a bit rushed towards the end, some loose ends and little things left unexplained leave a bit of a sour aftertaste.
All in all I'm glad I read this, even though I've to complain for the lack of TwiLuna, all the elements were there to have some good things started out
730031
I agree with you on about all accounts (well, maybe I didn't notice anything bad about sentence structure...) - but I'd like to emphasize the schizophrenic pacing. Especially when after a long, grueling approach and build-up we cut to the finale of a short cut from the resolution. Ejaculation praecox. All that hard work (both for the reader and the writer) wasted.
And while it was schizophrenic over the first chapters, it went full-blown insane over the last ones. Events that took 7 chapters from the start get compressed into one chapter. And even then meaningless elements of narrative get extra exposure (the berries) while essential ones (appearance of the city?) are skipped over entirely. And then there's the very end. Or actually, isn't. It's missing.