The Tree of Harmony, guardian of the Everfree and holder of the Elements of Harmony. The Crystal Heart, an artifact that provides a magnificent light in the skies to protect the north.
Seven pure lights to protect Equestria from all evil.
When the tree is destroyed and three suspicious ponies arrive in Ponyville, it is up to Twilight and her friends to uncover a secret, which is older than Equestria itself, to prevent the darkness from swallowing their world.
This story takes place after KH:3D and after season 4 in MLP.
Rated teen, just in case my language or the themes drift into darker realms here and there.
Thanks a bunch to pileoblock and zimmerwald1915 for proofreading and editing this project and supporting me.
Chapters (8)
Looks interesting, well written and I'll stalk it, I just I have one doubt...
Three PONIES? Are you sure it's a good idea?
If the three you are talking about are who I think, as in the "main team" of all the games so far (Sora, Donald, Goofy) then maybe you could play a little on it... I mean, even in-game, when they transformed by visiting another world, they never shared the same species. In Atlantica, Sora was the mer...man(?), Goofy a turtle and Donald a octopus. On the Lion King world, Sora a Lion, Donald a... bird and Goofy another turtle... Considered we are in Equestria, couldn't you play a little on it and make Sora a Pony, Donald a half-duck griffon and Goofy a Diamond Dog, for example? Goofy would fit the part very well, with his (apparent) dumbness similar the one we have seen on the pack that kidnapped Rarity.
Unless the "three" are other guys and then everything I said goes down the drain...
5496640
I know what you mean but I already thought this through. There have been arguments for and against it, but I thought three ponies is the most fitting solution. I tried to stay as close as possible to the source material. This is actually the only thing where I was uncertain, but now that I am getting further into the story, it just feels better with ponies.
And in my opinion Goofy is the most intelligent in this trio. xD
NightmareShredder
So this might be a stupid question but are the three heroes Sora, Donald, and Goofy or someone else?
Well, well, good job making Maleficent completely despicable. You watching, Nomura-san? Destroying the Tree of Harmony made me hate her even more than sabotaging the Cornerstone of Light in KHII. Actually, the whole scene reminded me of Morgoth and Ungoliant stabbing and sapping Laurelin and Telperion, though that's probably just the visual motifs at work.
Some corrections:
1. "iluminated" in line 1 should be "illuminated."
2. "Sweety's" in line 9 should be "Sweetie's."
3. As a common noun, "Alicorn" in line 18 should be "alicorn."
3. "Princess of friendship" in line 19 should be "Princess of Friendship." Titles are capitalized when used with a person's name (e.g., "Princess Twilight"), in direct address (e.g., "Your Highness, you must come with us."), and when the title refers unambiguously to a high officer of state (e.g., "You are now Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship"). Incidentally, mlpwiki botches that last example by failing to capitalize.
4. There should be a return between lines 21 and 22, consistent with your other formatting.
5. Line 23 should be indented, consistent with your other formatting.
6. "moon princess" in line 34 should be capitalized. See note 3, supra.
7. "her night's sky" in line 35 is correct, but awkward, as a reading aloud would reveal; "her night sky" would be better.
8. "she never felt before" in line 35 should be "she had never felt before."
9. In line 35 you use "it wandered" without making what it clear that "it" refers to the strange sensation Luna is feeling.
10. "jumped on her hooves" in line 39 should be "jumped to her hooves."
11. "royal equestrian voice" in line 46 should be "royal Equestrian voice," "Equestrian" being a demonym. But I'd advise you to avoid shortcuts like this unless you've already described the thing about which you're talking. Not everybody reading this will necessarily have seen Luna Eclipsed, perish the thought.
12. The capitalization of "Captain" in line 46 is an edge case and can go either way depending on how important the captaincy of the Royal Guard is and how many captains there are. Some fics break the Royal Guard into a number of commands, each with their own head. Yours does not seem to, however, in which case the capitalization can stay.
13. There should be a space before and after the ellipsis in line 49. There should also be spaces in between the points of the ellipsis if you're kludging one together from full stops instead of using a pre-rendered mark.
14. "request help of someone" in line 50 is correct, but awkward. "Request the aid of" or "request help from" would both be better. "Request the aid of" is more . . . Luna.
15. See note 13, supra with respect to the ellipsis in line 54.
16. "silouette" in line 56 should be "silhouette."
17. The paragraph beginning on line 56 contains too many "shes" and "hers." It becomes unclear after a while to whom the pronouns refer. [Almost] every time "she" or "her" refers to a different person, that person should already have been referred to by a name, title, or description. But avoid Lavender Unicorn Syndrome!
18. The paragraph beginning on line 61 has a dysfunctional relationship with the comma. Just with respect to punctuation, it should read: "'Now, now my dear Nightmare, you don't have to bow before me anymore. You are a queen, remember?' the fairy said in a soothing tone, caressing the Nightmare's green and blue mane. 'Soon, they will come here and everypony will bow to you.'" The "nightmare" that is outside the dialogue, and therefore not being used as a direct address, should not be capitalized.
19. If you want to continue on to a new paragraph, the colon at the end of line 63 should be a full stop. If you want to preserve the colon, the following sentences should be condensed into a single paragraph. If you're going to preserve the separate paragraphs, the paragraph beginning on line 64 should be indented, see note 5, supra.
20. "posibility" in line 69 should be "possibility," and "her" in the same line should be capitalized as the beginning of a new sentence. Actually, the whole dialogue in the paragraph beginning on line 69 is awkward. I'd rather the first sentence read: "'Even now you do not trust me?'" and I can't even begin to salvage the second without a great deal more thought.
21. See note 13, supra with respect to the ellipses in line 71.
22. The passive voice kills the moment of the tree shattering in line 74.
23. "a bit" in line 76 should be "a while" or "some time."
24. The comma after "one last time" in line 79 should be a full stop.
25. See note 13, supra with respect to the ellipsis in line 84.
26. "shoulder" in line 87 should be followed by a full stop.
27. There should be a return between lines 88 and 89, see note 4, supra.
28. "revealing" in line 90 ought to be "taking" or "pulling."
29. "smlie" in line 92 should be "smile."
Beyond that, a number of your apostrophes and inverted commas are curlicue, while others are straight. Either way is fine (the site prefers straight inverted commas), but consistency is a virtue here.
Pleaseworkforonce in the advertisement thread advised you to seek out an editor, and after reading this prologue I have to agree. I'd also like to offer my services; feel free to PM me for references and credentials.
5499218
Thanks for pointing all this out. I´ll get to it as soon as possible.
I have to do a little something before though. I´copy that into my notes and you will get a message regarding that matter within the next few days.
Good that you liked it storywise. Maleficent is one of my favourite Anthagonists from Disney. I just couldn´t soften her out like Disney did in their last movie. That just wasn´t right. As a Mistress of all Evil she deserves to do all the fun bad stuff
NightmareShredder
5499837
The background to this will be explained later. you don´t want me to take away all th fun, do you?
NightmareShredder
5499837
This is actually an interesting thought. I wont take this into the story but I´ll keep it in mind for a little series I´ve got in the back of my head.
A well-done Dive to the Heart. These are practically obligatory in certain types of Kingdom Hearts crossovers, and to be honest they can all start to look the same after a while. But you kept the tension from the Prologue up, and that makes this chapter memorable.
Was the fight with the Shadows on the Crystal Station inspired by Aqua's secret ending in Kingdom Hearts, Birth By Sleep? It featured Shadows, Neoshadows, and Dark Balls emerging from dark portals in the ground, rather than appearing in midair the way heartless usually do.
Interesting choice making Sora an earth pony. I usually see him made a pegasus, as his name implies. By this logic, Ventus, Roxas, Vanitas, and Xion would be pegasi too, Riku, his Replica, and Terra would be earth ponies, and Kairi, Aqua, and Naminé, by process of elimination, would be unicorns. Take that for what it's worth.
Corrections:
1. The paragraph beginning on line 4 should be indented, consistent with the rest of the formatting.
2. The second pair of inverted commas in line 8 is upside down and backwards. When they are used to close quotes rather than open them, inverted commas should look like little 9's rather than little 6's. This is one reason the site prefers straight inverted commas rather than curlicue inverted commas; all straight inverted commas, closing marks as well as openers, look the same.
3. See note 2, supra, with respect to the inverted commas in line 13.
4. "It's" in line 17 should be "its." The possessive form of "it" is formed without an apostrophe. Someone involved must know this, because the word is used correctly later in the same sentence. Speaking of apostrophes, this curlicue apostrophe is formatted differently from the earlier curlicue inverted commas. Consistency is a virtue.
5. "Or" in line 22 should not be capitalized. It is technically a continuation of the sentence begun in line 16. Again I know someone involved knows this because the mistake is avoided in lines 30 and 36.
6. See note 1, supra with respect to the paragraph beginning on line 26.
7. Try to vary your descriptions of the dark sludge that tries to capture Twilight. It doesn't have to come in "masses" [almost] every time. "Puddles" is a good word that you used. Others that you did not use include "globs," "clumps," and "wads."
8. The sentence beginning on line 28 is a run-on sentence. Try something like "Twilight screamed in terror as the puddle of black mud spread all over the floor. Like a stain of living ink, it crept around to corner her."
9. An inverted comma of the type mentioned in note 4, supra, appears in the "can't" on line 33. At this point I'm pretty sure this is an artifact of the chapter being copied and pasted multiple times to and from different platforms (for example, from a word processor to an Internet hosting service, and from there to FIMFiction). Another virtue of straight inverted commas is that they are formatted the same wherever you put them. I don't mean to seem like I'm shilling straight inverted commas, but if you want to use curlicue, you really have to police them. At this point I'm going to stop pointing out inverted comma formatting issues. Use Ctrl+F to find each such mark and format them all the same way.
10. The second sentence in the paragraph beginning on line 37 is a run-on sentence. Try something like "The impact was strong enough to shatter it into a million pieces. Twilight saw them sink into a dark pool of liquid fear, rage, despair and hatred."
11. "Air … ! Air … " in line 43 should be "Air! … Air … " Sentence-ending marks like full stops precede ellipses. Line 43 should also be indented consistent with your other formatting; see note 1, supra.
12. The second sentence of the paragraph beginning on line 45 is a run-on sentence, even if it is broken up by a semicolon (an aside: try to avoid overusing this mark). Try this. " […] the light's soothing warmth wiped away every last drop of darkness."
13. Specify what "there" means in line 46. In line 48 you make it clear than Twilight has landed on a new platform showing a new image. Make it clear that she has at least landed on something here. Or, if you don't want to call attention to Twilight's surroundings yet, only mention how she laid, twitching and coughing, instead of where she laid.
14. "Cadence" in line 49 is a special case. The Crystal Princess's name usually appears in the show credits spelled "Cadance," but "cadence" is an actual word. Use whichever you like, but be consistent about it … try to be more consistent than the show, anyway.
15. Lists like the one in line 55 may either have a comma preceding the "and," or not. Again, either is acceptable, but be consistent.
16. Long sentences are becoming a recurring problem. I think it's because you're trying to describe too much happening at once. Don't be afraid to stretch things out. The second sentence of the paragraph beginning on line 62, for example, could read "Her knees buckled and she collapsed. Some of the liquid darkness squirmed its way out of her mouth and sloshed onto the ground."
17. "Shattered it" in line 65 should be "shattered." Stilted description is also a problem. Specificity is a virtue, but there is a point beyond which more words just don't add anything. Take the paragraph beginning on line 64. It could read "Before Twilight could stop it, the globule crawled to the image of the Crystal Heart and sank in. The crystal turned dark purple, then black and, with a deep dark pulse, shattered. Small, shadowy creatures leaped from the hole."
18. Be careful how you treat your verbs. Don't neglect them, and don't castrate them. Two verb-related pet peeves of mine appear in the paragraph beginning on line 66. "Seemed [adjective]," as in line 66, is a waste of good description when you can just turn the adjective into an action. And the alienating past progressive "were -ing" construction is out of place when describing actions meant to be appreciated viscerally. This isn't a verb-related problem, but it is a problem with this paragraph; you don't need to tell the audience that Shadows are cute. Your description should do that job. Taken as a whole, the paragraph could read "They stood on two legs, but shorter than Twilight, hunched and fidgety. They advanced on her, the antennae on their heads twitching with anticipation." Taking this approach would absolve your next paragraph of the need to try and create contrast. It could continue "Their empty yellow eyes fixed on the lavender pony and they flexed their sharp, clawed fingers. Twilight saw them for what they were; mindless beasts, hunting their prey."
19. Incidentally, "it's" in line 69 should be "its" if you're not going to overhaul the whole sentence. See note 4. supra.
20. "Enlightened" in line 72 should be "illuminated" or "luminous."
21. "Blasted him away with an energy blast" in line 75 is redundant. Maybe she could blast with "a beam of pink light," or simply with "magic."
22. Long sentences can kill tension. Try to tighten them up for fight scenes (I hate the term "action scene;" "action" means so much more). Any time you're describing consequences of actions, as on line 76, you can proceed to a new sentence.
23. There should be a return after line 78, consistent with your other formatting.
24. "crystal heart" in line 79 should be capitalized.
25. The ellipsis in line 98 should have a space before it.
26. See note 25, supra, with respect to the ellipsis in line 122.
27. See note 11, supra, with respect to the ellipses in line 142.
28. See note 25, supra, with respect to the ellipsis in line 148.
29. I'm in two minds about the letter. On the one hand, perhaps it should conform to the surrounding formatting, just with inverted commas around it. On the other, the different formatting serves to set it apart from the text around it. The latter is probably better.
In general, show don't tell. There are moments where you talk about something looking or seeming cute or strange or frightened when you could be saying why and how. What's worse is when you tell in general terms and then show the specifics. It shows that you know how to show and are just afraid to for some reason. Just skip to the specifics and we can figure out the rest.
Commendations:
1. Good job using pre-rendered ellipsis marks and placing spaces around them.
2. This chapter featured much more meticulous mistake-editing than the Prologue did. Many of the grammar and punctuation problems I spotted were inconsistencies with existing choices rather than outright abuses. The fact that I picked at the style problems more this time around is a sign of improvement.
5523032
Thanks for putting so much interest and effort into your reading and pointing stuff out to help me improve myself. I hope by the time I finish this, your lists won´t need to be like two pages long.
I really enjoyed writing this. Those are my favourite parts in the game and made good tutorials.
I did not play BBS for a while now, so I am not really sure what you are talking about. This is more like a little foreshadowing.
The topic of how I design my characters and the choices how I fit them into my story already came up a few times. This was actually one of my hardest choices. Maybe my mind is just weired, but I went with what felt right to me.
I dont see Riku as an earth pony either. His affinity to darkness and his fighting style somehow puts him into the unicorn category for me. He has a more magic-oriented and delicate style despite being more muscular then Sora.
Kairi is a Princess of Hearts (hint,hint!). So there you have my opinion what I would turn her into.
Unfortunately they won´t play such a great role in this story. Maybe in a spin-off or a sequel. First of all, I´ve got to finish this.
NightmareShredder
5523235 I'll have you know my post was four pages long! In all seriousness, though, I typed it directly into the comment box, and gave no thought to the length until you mentioned it. I can be more concise if that will be more helpful.
By Aqua's secret ending, I meant this. For some reason I can't find an English version yet despite Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD Remix being out for a month. But basically in Birth By Sleep final mix you can play a short segment as Aqua in the Realm of Darkness, a taste of the future she and Xehanort made for her, as it were. It is the only time in the game you the player encounter heartless outside of cutscenes, and get to fight them.
Of course you as the author have the right to designate the characters however you please. It's not like Hasbro, Disney, and Square Enix are going to come out with a canon crossover! Disney and Hasbro are competitors and Kingdom Hearts is a massive crossover already. I must confess though, that I don't see the connection between darkness-wielding and unicornhood; anybody with a strong heart can wield darkness, or light, or a keyblade, or any of the Organization's elements. … And magic is a distinct thing. You're right that Riku fights as though with a rapier (which is hilarious given how overbuilt and overdesigned keyblades are; Riku wielding KH:II's Ultimaweapon in the cinematic where Xemnas is defeated is particularly egregious), but I fail to see how that matters. Royal guards of all breeds use spears, and Rarity resorts to her hooves about as often as Applejack or Rainbow Dash. On the other hand, you're absolutely right about Kairi, and by extension Naminé. I had my doubts about sacrificing their alicornhood for brevity, and it came back to bite me just like I knew it would.
5523623 Eh, I don't miss flowmotion here. Twilight flies and teleports already, that's mobility and flashiness enough. Besides, Square being Square, flowmotion will probably never appear again outside Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance. They love building each game around a different secondary mechanic (the core mechanic in Kingdom Hearts being the command deck). And their plate is plenty full with keyblade transformations and attraction flow for Kingdom Hearts III. I may have to eat my words, though; according to people who saw the Burbank trailer, Kingdom Hearts III may also include drive.
NightmareShredder and I have spoken about his [her? the avatar shows a stallion, but that's not dispositive; I've used female avatars before] editorial situation. That's all I'll say on the matter. In the meantime, do give pileoblock some love.
5523764
Now I´m worried about chapter 2
I mean 4 pages? Holy b*** 
Ididn´t think my english was that bad 
Chapter 2 was a little harder than the others so far. I had to write it 3 times and I´m not sure if it is good enough. But trying a few things outside of my comfort zone is part of this too and I didn´t want to see it at a stop just because I tried a thing or two.
It will be a bit longer and I have to check it again if I it shows sings of the Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, but I think storywise I got it done the way I wanted it to go.
Well I will roll with the punches as they are coming. There is no need to overthink this.
Riku has a bigger magic affinity for me not because he uses darkness (or any other element), but more of the way how he uses it. He just seems to be perfectly fine to release magic without the help of a weapon.
I wont lie. that argument doen´t really count in the light of my own theory that pegasi and earth ponies are just as capable of magic as unicorns are, but they channel it in different ways.
Earth ponys have stronger physical abilities and channel their magic to care for the plants. Pegasi amplify their flight abilities by making their body lighter or sense and change air-currents to some degree. Unicorns do it in a more direct way than the others and that´s what Riku is doing for me.
As I said I have a weired mind that categorizes differently.
5523623
I just didn´t want it to look so much like a game. I already threw out the Idea of the Drive-Forms because it seemed so game-ish.
I got a little rusty though. I don´t know if it is because I write in english, or that I am out of my martial arts practice for so long, but so fare I couldn´t recreate the bite my fight scenes had when I was especially asked to write them for other people.
NightmareShredder
5850701
Well, Diablo´s role was pretty big actually. He was the one who made it possible for Maleficent to return after her defeat in KH1. You never see the fellow, but he is her eyes, and ears as well as her most loyal follower beside Pete.
Yeah it was a bumpy chapter. I ended up writing it multiple times and the editing was complicated as well. but it paid off
Nice to see another chapter, even if it's just an interlude of sorts.
6044921 That, my friend, is something only the progress of the story might reveal.
oh things are getting intresing now i like it
I have been waiting vor the Story to continue in Equestria and not for a Long monologue!
6046312
I am sorry if you didn´t like it. This story is a crossover of an ongoing, awesome cartoon and a massive crossover itself, that takes at least 20 hours or more to finish.
We are at the 20 minute mark, measured in game-time so yeah... the action falls a bit short, but just jumping in would be a bit shallow.
Next chapter: Sora and co. meets the mane 6?
6050641
Not yet. As you can see, the chapters are comparativily short. The second chapter and fourth, and fifth chapter were once fused together. A huge pile, and pretty messy. To fix that, I had to cut it up into reasonable sections and reorganize them.
To make this short, there will be a few chapters to prepare for the main-action before Sora meets the main 6. what doesn´t mean that action will fall short. I´m a critic, and I want to make this story as bullet-proof as possible. I have to consider a lot of "Whys?" and "What ifs?"
You actually got their characters down quite well. I'm looking forward to more
6046312 The thing might be labelled a Kingdom Hearts crossover, but it's far from guaranteed that every reader will be familiar with both franchises (it's even conceivable that some users on this site might not be familiar with MLP!). As such, both sides need their character and concept establishment.
This IS already a good Kingdom Hearts crossover. Lea and RD can get along well... sorta? Anyway, I hope that everypony can understand Donald... or at least have a basic idea of what he's saying.
6205966
Well we´ve never seen him in an actual fight, did we? Plus: He never used his magic in any worse ways than fooling around or manipulate. You could almost call him a pacifist in my opinion.
He felt the need to dodge Tireks meek laser. Imagine getting hit in the back unprepared by a stronger one.
I´ll try to keep that in mind in the next chapters. Sometimes it is easy to forget if I read this again and again and know it better than my potential readers. I´ll try to keep it balanced.
6205966
Oh, and by the way, This was Nightmare Oblivion lasering our favourite Spirit of Chaos.
Four Words: Love It.
That was fantastic. I just kept reliving the opening KH scene.
OMG! IS STARSWIRL THE BEARDED ACTUALLY YenSid?
Darn. If you had Kairi with Sora, then you could've added a romance element to the story. Oh well.
MOOOOOOOORE!!!!
6214029 I guess putting in the Soundtrack helped a bit.
Good to know you liked it and that you are getting so into this.
I´m no good with romance. Sorry to crush everyones expectations, but there won´t be any Romance-tags in my stories.
some chapters are already written, but the editing takes some time. It´s not easy to coordinate 3 people with different occupations and from different time zones.
Still, I hope to have you enjoy this more in the future.
great story! usually in stories that take place after 3D sora's all mopey and self doubting. nice to see something different for once.
6396068 Good to hear you liked it. To be honest, I almost was about to make the same mistake (massive self-doubt is easy to relate to nowadays . . . ), but Sora is just not the type to be mopey. Quite the opposite actually, considering how 3D has ended.
Appreciate the effort you are putting into this! Dark it is, but it fit pretty well the situation!
Sorry, sorry, sorry! Be right back.
Edited properly. Sorry again. I'd offer an excuse, but there isn't any.
Shining Armor as a Heartless!? Damn you, Maleficent.
6462181 I´ll look into it as soon as possible.
6461952 Well, Equestria is such a bright world, it´s only natural to attract the darkest evils.
Wow! Someone actually retracted a dislike and quite possibly turned it into a like? Awesome!
I know it doesn´t look like much, but to me, it really means a lot if I can actually reach my readers and change the way they look at my story.
Thanks!
6462348 I wish you could see me, rubbing my hands together with maniacal laughter. There might be some moments to save a Damn you! for.
UH-OH, THE HEARTLESS ON PONYVILE HAS BEGUN!!!
I need more of this awesome!!!