99 - The End
Twilight was buried in books and never happier. After sending Spike off with a shopping list of exotic inks, she had eagerly began pouring through the contents of the library, hunting bits of lore and magic with a ravenous hunger that could not be quelled. Even if her body was still a little sore and off-feeling after being expired for a month, it was home, and she had few complaints.
Applejack looked on patiently as Twilight wrote furiously, "Ah reckon this means we can go home once Twilight's finished doing her bookworm impression?"
Rainbow shrugged softly, "I guess, sure. I wouldn't mind the chance to get in some real adventure. All we really did was beat up some little green guys. Besides, I didn't even meet that Fast Shadows mare everypony was talking about."
Spike laughed at the mental image, "Fast Shadow, and I bet she'd love to meet you. Hard to say where she is though. She travels a lot."
Soft Mane was doing her own research, slowly sifting through the books. She was a bit more methodical than Twilight, but it could have also been her more focused target. "Spike?"
"Yeah?" asked Spike with a raised brow.
"Can you help me search? I'm trying to find anything about Lashtada, if there is anything." she asked. "Please."
"Sure thing," replied Spike as he hopped to his feet and joined in the hunt through the stacks. The day passed pleasantly enough until lunchtime. They gently but forcefully extracted Twilight from her work to join them. Once she was far enough away from the books, she began to ramble joyously about what she had found.
"There are so many spells that do so many things!" she gushed. "I barely know where to begin. Spike, after lunch, I'll need you to fetch another spellbook. The one I have is getting full." She paused long enough to start devouring the vegetable and bean wrap that the others had procured for her. "So what have you all been doing?" she asked, mouth still partially full and spraying little bits of food.
Rainbow rolled her eyes, "Being bored, waiting for you? You're such an egghead, Twilight."
"That reminds me!" exclaimed Twilight, "I saw something."
Applejack raised a brow, "When? In a book?"
Twilight shook her head quickly, "No, before that. When I was, you know, gone. I can't... put my hoof on it, but there was something there. It wasn't just... nothing. Spike, take a letter!"
Spike looked up from his meaty lunch and huffed. He wiped his claws clean on a cloth before he pulled out a scroll and quill, "Ready."
Dear Princess Celestia,
It is with greatest pleasure that I recite this to you with my own breath. That sounded more morbid than I planned, but it's still true. The ponies of Everglow put me back in my body, but that's not what I'm writing about, even if it is great news. I saw something! There is something past the starry fields! I can't say what it is, because I don't remember it, but I saw something. Your friends are not gone, just... somewhere else. I thought you really should know that.
How are things in Equestria? Did Zecora's magic help in closing all the unbalances? We haven't heard from you, which I hope is a good sign that all is well and back to normal.
Missing you and Hoping to Return Soon,
Princess Twilight Sparkle
With a soft puff, the letter was sent on its way between worlds. Spike produced another letter, "There was a letter that came with you."
Twilight blinked, setting her lunch down, "Why haven't you already read it? What does it say?!"
Spike held it closer to Twilight, "We did read it. It's from Luna."
Twilight quickly scanned over it, and tilted her head, "Cadance became a priest? I think that's going to confuse somepony." She looked towards Soft Mane, "How is that possible, without knowing anything about your god?"
Soft Mane shrugged, "She got interested when she saw me channeling her power. I think they just, you know, click?" she snapped her fingers. "I'm not complaining. It's nice not being the only one out there. If she's a princess - which is like a queen in your world, right? - that means there may be a lot more Lashtada faithful soon."
Twilight nodded slowly as she set the scroll aside, "I wonder how the crystal ponies will take it." She stopped talking, wolfing down the rest of lunch and lifting a cloth to clean the mess around her snout. "Lunch is done!" she cried and hopped to her hooves, prancing back towards the library.
Applejack snickered softly as Twilight fled, "That girl. I'm glad she's having a good time. She deserves it after all that." She turned her head to regard Spike, "Do you know when we're headed back?"
Spike shrugged, almost done with his own food, "Don't look at me. I don't figure we're going anywhere until Twilight's week is up." He got up to his feet, "Soft, wanna come along? I'm getting Twilight's book."
Soft mane climbed to her own feet and nodded, and they walked off together.
"Dibs," proclaimed Rainbow as she snarfed down what was left on Spike's plate.
Applejack reared back, "That... was meat ya know."
Rainbow tilted her head a little, "Huh, thought it tasted funny... I thought Spike ate veggies, fruit, and gems like anypony else?"
Applejack shook her head, "Ah've seen him eating meat since he got bigger. S'ppose it makes sense, being a dragon and all. You alright?"
Rainbow shrugged softly, "I'm not turning inside out if that's what you mean. Relax. I'm not making a habit out of it, but I doubt anything Spike could stomach would kill me." Her voice full of pride.
Applejack snorted at that, "Sure. Ah'll serve you up a right big plate of emeralds for dinner."
Rainbow snorted and waved a wing at Applejack, "Don't be a silly pony. I'm going to work some of this off." She suddenly took off, flying straight up in outright defiance of gravity. She was soon a speck, moving quickly over the city.
Applejack was left by herself. She cleaned up the table they were using and began trotting back towards the library to join Twilight when a fast-moving figure slammed into her from the side and pinned her to a fence. "Oof! Rainbow! Not funny!"
The dark figure was not Rainbow Dash, as Applejack was quickly able to determine with a glance. It pressed something against her barrel, then vanished from sight entirely. The object proved to be a folded paper, and it drifted to the ground, fluttering in the breeze. Applejack snatched the paper up in her teeth and set it on a table, unfolding it to have a look as she glanced around nervously.
Dark Tidings, Interlopers,
Your interference with the natural flow of the world has not gone unnoticed. Still, we are a magnanimous people, and present to you a chance to do something good. Little ponies cry out for help, but have gone unheard for so long, they have forgotten how to even ask anymore. Enslaved and broken, they are barely a people anymore. You will find them in the east, where the hyena people are. Find them, and release them, if you can. You will restore an entire tribe of ponies, if you succeed.
Watching from the Shadows,
XOXO
Applejack snorted and shook her head again before she grabbed the letter and moved for the library all the faster. Twilight was where Applejack last saw her, seated among her books and writing furiously with a quill gripped in her magic. "Twi? Look at this." She set the letter down on the book Twilight was reading.
Twilight jerked to awareness when her view of the book was disrupted. She pointed at the letter with a hoof, "What's this?"
Applejack shrugged, "Dunno, just some letter from some creepy figure they just dropped off with me." She pointed at it, "Ah figure you should read it."
Twilight lifted up the letter in her magic and read it quickly before frowning, "I'm no expert in these things, but that sounds like a trap."
"Ya figure?" said Applejack with a little sarcasm evident, "But what if it's true? Ah mean, that sounds horrible, a whole tribe of ponies being enslaved an' all."
Twilight drew in a slow breath, released in a sigh, "Right. We can't just ignore it. It'd be like leaving the crystal ponies alone with Sombra. Even if it is a trap, we have to try to help."
Applejack shrugged, "Don't get me wrong. I don't like the idea of anypony being a slave to anypony else, but is it our fight? What if we just tell the authorities? This isn't our world after all."
Twilight frowned in thought a moment, then fetched a parchment and scribbled on it quickly with her magic, "Go to the castle with this and tell me what they say. Maybe you're right. Ponies around here seem to be more proactive about this kind of thing."
Applejack accepted the letter when it was finished and was off at a canter, moving quickly for the castle. She was not familiar with the city, but the castle was easy enough to spot and she wended her way through the streets towards it. With the sound of flapping wings, Rainbow Dash appeared overhead, following her, "Hey AJ! Where ya going?"
Applejack took a moment stuffing the letter away in her saddlebags before replying, "Delivering a letter. Somepony told us about some other ponies being held captive."
Rainbow pumped a hoof, "Yes, action! So what's on your letter?" She zipped in closer, flying beside Applejack instead of over. "Announcing we're going to kick flank and rescue everypony?"
Applejack shook her head, "Not exactly. We're gonna check with the local officials first an' see if they have a right proper grip on the situation. There's no reason to go jumping in ourselves if we don't have to."
Rainbow's expression fell into shock, "What? No! That's lame! We can handle it on our own! C'mon AJ, do you really want to watch Twilight sit there with her books forever? This is our big chance!"
Applejack was not as easily persuaded with promises of excitement, "Ahm gonna deliver this here letter, cause that's what ah promised. We can talk about what we do after that, after that."
Rainbow landed and walked alongside Applejack, "If we do it ourselves, the locals might pay us a heap of gold bits. Gold bits, like real gold! Not that fake gold. Think of what you could get for the farm with that," she tempted as they went.
It promised to be a long hike through the city.
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Go, Rainbow! Fulfill your destiny as a Chaotic character and kickstart the plot wagon!
Also, AJ has a nice distribution of stats especially if she's planning on dipping into casting classes. Shame she's lawful good; Sweet Apple Acres would probably benefit from a druid. Though I guess thats Fluttershy's job.
5684900 Applejack still intends to learn magic from Twilight, though it would most likely be arcane.
5684917
Well, she can get up to third level spells, which is a decent enough dip. Let me guess, she's going with arcanist? Though she'd make a scary Magus..
5684933 I haven't sealed the choice in stone, and won't until I actually give Applejack her level.
5684935
Well, tell her to save her exp! And the stat bonus. 4th level spells, whoo!
"I didn't even meat that Fast Shadows mare"
Should be meet
5684953 Fixed!
Information hidden inside information. Stenography. It would be intresting to know just how widespread it is, given that various distributors of collections of information utelise wrong facts and typographic errors to effectively watermark their work.
finally, someone rolled a success on common sense. Lets check the possible available facts before heading over there in a rush only to find the so called captured ponies are actually a banished cult of necromancers or something such.
If AJ is so good a farmer, would that make her a Paladin/Ranger, or Paladin/Cleric, for Talk To Plants?
5684981 I don't see paladin doing much for plants, alas.
reads chapter title.....THE END
reaction............pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/mlfw829_medium.jpg
reads chapter relises its not the end...........quickmeme.com/img/39/3913fbcb47328b815a37aa1dc8a8e0e270647a1c3701f85d061920dcb6c93703.jpg
5685041 Mission accomplished.
If you don't want to hyphenate "off-feeling," you can instead make it "feeling off."
The beginning of that sentence reads oddly. I'd change it to "Applejack looked on."
I may be misremembering, but I don't recall Fast Shadow having an "s" on the end of her name.
"Lunchtime" is a compound word.
This part confused me. Wasn't ghost-Twilight there when Applejack read the letter? I thought that she had an exchange where she admitted to be uncomfortable at the thought of Cadence worshipping a deity, and Soft Mane lightly chastised her for that. Now it sounds like Twilight is just finding that out for the first time.
I'd recommend using dashes here to denote where Soft Mane interjects a question in the middle of her thought. "If she's a princess - which is like a queen in your world, right? - that means there may be a lot more Lashtada faithful soon."
"Fast-moving" should be hyphenated (I had to get at least one in).
The italicized "Gold" should also be capitalized.
The end of the part in quotation marks should have a comma, not a period, since the sentence doesn't actually end until you get to "as they went."
"Shady-looking" should be hyphenated. Yes, I'm actually editing the author's note too.
5684981
You keep bringing up Paladins, and I really don't know why. All of AJ's levels are currently in Fighter, and her casting class will "most likely be arcane" and Intelligence-based, given her ability scores. These criteria narrow the possibilities down to Arcanist, Magus, Sorcerer (Wildblooded) with the Sage bloodline, Witch, or Wizard. Sorcerer of any sort doesn't really make sense for AJ, because of how bloodlines are fluffed and because Sonata's a Sorcerer already (speaking of Sonata, will she be making a reappearance?). Given her dialogue in Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3, I don't see AJ as bookish enough for arcanistry, magustry [sic.],[1] or wizardry, even though these would be the disciplines Twilight is most qualified to teach her. Magus seems especially inapt given AJ's many preexisting levels of Fighter and the fact that Magus and Arcanist, with their pool-point mechanics, really don't lend themselves well to multiclassing. Actually, AJ would probably make a decent Eldritch Knight, which means putting a premium on getting 3rd-level spells (which also happen to be the highest-level spells she can cast without Intelligence augmentation) as fast as possible. The classes that do that are Witch and Wizard, and Wizard's already out.
I guess that means I'm predicting that AJ's casting class will be Witch.[2] Now that I think about it, that means she could get a vampire bat familiar. That would be all kinds of delicious fun.
[1] The correct noun here would actually be "magic," but that's more a catch-all term in Pathfinder.
[2] This is just my prediction for this story, and does not represent my own headcanon.
5685124
"I may be misremembering, but I don't recall Fast Shadow having an 's' on the end of her name."
That's Rainbow Dash speaking there. She can be careless with her words.
"I'd recommend using dashes here to denote where Soft Mane interjects a question in the middle of her thought. 'If she's a princess - which is like a queen in your world, right? - that means there may be a lot more Lashtada faithful soon.'"
Commas can actually serve this function. En-dashes [ – ] and hyphens [ - ], however, cannot; the dashes in question ought to be em-dashes [ — ], and they ought not to be separated from the surrounding words by spaces.
5685130 You're not necessarily wrong, but unless the error is called out - either by another character, or the narration - then people will assume that the error is the author's, rather than Rainbow Dash's (especially since Spike hears her mispronounce the name and doesn't correct her).
Insofar as em dashes go (there are, rather ironically, no hyphens in the term "em dashes"), whether or not they have a space before and after them depends on the source you're relying on. While the Chicago Manual of Style agrees with you that they should not have spaces, the Associated Press Stylebook says that they should.
More on that over here.
(Rather embarrassingly, I'm having some trouble making the longer em dashes appear with this lousy laptop keyboard of mine; the best I can seem to manage is a double-hyphen.)
5685124 Fixed! Thanks for raking it over the coals.
Of cours not, there are still many branches you have yet to finish, also you wouldn't have given AJ that letter.
5685498 Subtle plot drop is subtle.
I think that should either be "some ponies" or "somepony"
"that means there may be..." is a continuation of "If she's a princess" so the "that" should not be capitalized.
5685602 Tweaks made, and yeah, that's just kind of her style. Thanks for your help in keeping our fic from becoming their illicit communication line.
So, with all the references to Lashie's people being short, are they supposed to be Shetlands, or something? It would funny if they all turn out to be really grouchy and somewhat mentally unstable. (Like real dwarf ponies)
5685505 In this genre, it's about as subtle as a truck full of explosives.
5685633 And yet, effective.
5685628
According to the Forgotten Gods of Everglow splat, the Lashtadan-worshippers lost during the founding of the Empire were called the "Short Legs", and were crafted in Lashtada's image. Since the goddess herself appears as a short, hairy, sort of pudgy pony, I'd say Shetlands is a good bet.
|
Hmm... the rescue of the Short Legs would be interesting. Especially when Twilight learns why the Short Legs were rendered near extinct due to gnollish enslavement. I do wonder what Twilight would think if she were to discover the truth about the Tribe of Bones after that...
5685615 I hope Book Horse has time to finish her week at the library before anything hits the fan, or there will be heck to pay.
What do you mean the end? You can't end it now that you are just one chapter away from 100!
Considering the Equestrians haul cut gemstones around in carts and use a two-pound gem to buy a single train ticket, it seems likely that gold would be similarly devalued there. With that degree of inflation, fruits and vegetables might actually be worth their weight in pure gold.
5685765 Quite possible! Except they never find gold in the ground, just gems, at least so far as shown.
5685943 Not specifically, but it would be consistent with the flavor of the show; gems and precious metals are almost worthless, but skilled labor is extremely valuable. The value of the gemstones, gold jewelry and exotic materials in Rarity's dresses seems mostly inconsequential compared to the value of the dresses themselves (not just gems, she uses a lot of gold too). The only reason Sapphire Shores' order was a problem was that all the gemstones had to match.
This really, really needs to happen.
Rainbow needs to get some humility soon or she's going to get herself killed, and I can't think of a better pony to get it from than Fast Shadow. They better do it outside of town though, or some spectators might get hurt.
So, we're about to meet what remains of Lashtada's lost tribe?
(You need to collect the bonus Ponyfinder items you've produced for the story and put it on the Ponyfinder forums).
5686441 You will get no lip from me if you cross post.
Ah, AJ and Rainbow Dash. Or, the law-chaos dichotomy as expressed through good. "We should see what the authorities can do about this." "Nah, we can kick their butts easy! Also, gold."
And Twilight apparently plans an taking as much of the library with her as possible. Because she wasn't versatile enough. Truly, hers is an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
As for the mysterious messengers... yeah, that's not at all threatening. Still, maybe the assassins are genuinely nice people. And maybe Dash will hit a pig in midair.
Also, typo spotted:
I can only assume Spike made that S a bit small in his rush to get down Twilight's excited dictation.
5686528 Or... it may be a secret message!
We've removed it to be safe.
5686528
On a few wizard characters, I have made flying pigs that bred true. One iteration, when I was abusing the Fleshwarping poison feat, they were hyper intelligent, telekinetic, regenerated and could breath fire. Cost a fortune and the bastards voted me out of office, but they did come through as the cavalry and saved our asses during the last showdown.
5686451
Does this mean that TETS is a prequel?
So... Rainbow Dash would be cool with eating gems, as long as it means she ... wins at eating or whatever?
8083102
As long as someone dared her?