Nightmare Moon does have her priorities on straight when compared to Celestia. Deal with the intruders first then have your civil war.

Why would the cold affect twilight? Does it just have to deal with the fact that crystals are very heat conductive, meaning she loses all of her body heat through the crystals?
Nightmare moon has a pet Phoenix! This can in no way come back to hurt her!
So does the crystal heart have the power to stave off the rouge Knights? That is the question. Or are we going to have Doctor sombrero trying to take over? The possibilities are endless!

(Spoilers probably)
Another great chapter, I'm always glad to see more Nightmare Moon in the Nightmare Moon fic.

Crystal Twi has a weakness to ice? I'd think that is Nightmare made her as a back up body then she would make Twi as powerful as possible while still under her control. Though of course, it could be intentional. Nightmare could want an easy victory against Twi should she turn on her, so with Nightmare affinity for cyromancy it would be a piece of cake.

Civil war after? Wise words it seems. I have to wonder though, it is clear to both factions that those knights are a mutual enemy. The knights tried negotiations that would put them as allies with Celly and Luna: such an alliance would have given the Princesses the manpower to overthrow Nightmare and save the humans. Those ponies chose to decline because what the knights did was wrong. Essentially they put more of their little ponies in danger so they could keep the moral high ground. Both Nightmare and Celly wish the ponies safe. But alas, the two can't see past their differences for the common good. The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy and all that.

Oh dear Luna, even your words belittle what would happen if the Lord of Chaos was freed. He turned a country into a funhouse without looking out of breath, has brought Twily to the past, and can know of hundreds of years into the past while in stone. We all saw him amused and even annoyed, but we haven't seen him angry.

Love the fic and keep up the good work.

I've spent quite a bit of time looking for a story that fits the following criteria:

1. Nightmare Moon is the protagonist
2. Not short
3. Doesn't suck
4. Isn't abandoned

...And I think Ambition is one of only two or three stories that actually kinda-sorta meets all those criterion. I'm actually pretty excited about that; NMM's my favorite character, and unlike the princesses or other villains, she never seems to get a decent, long story where she's the main character. The fact that she's actually a parasite in this one instead of just Evil Luna is especially unique; I don't think I've ever seen anyone try to portray Monster Nightmare's POV this way before.

That being said, I am a little bit nervous about the direction the story's taking. Not the whole "suddenly invasion by Dark Souls" thing; that was a bit weird, and not the Greater Evil I would have chosen, but I can roll with it. Not even the transition from "Nightmare, bouncer by day, coup-planner by night" to "Queen Nightmare Warmonger;" in fact, major plot turns like that can keep a story fresh.

What makes me much more nervous is the way the story seems to have changed from a more character-oriented piece centered around anti-villain-protagonist Nightmare Moon - which is what sold me on the story in the first place - to... uh. I guess it's more of an ensemble-cast, plot-driven story focused on the entire good-guys team with NMM as just the straight-up villain now? You've done a reasonable job at keeping NMM sympathetic while also keeping her characteristically evil, but the thing about sympathetic villains is, it's almost impossible to do without using their POV. I kind of thought this was going to be a villain-redemption story, but now that seems less and less to be the case; you can't redeem a character if she gets no screen time.

Now, there's no inherent problem with an ensemble-cast plot-driven war-story, but it's not what was "advertised," so to speak; you kind of just... changed it midway. NMM's character arc wasn't grade-A top-notch, but it was there, and it was a lot of fun seeing her progress from completely self-centered to an actually kinda-sorta-almost decent inequine being, with the potential for even more change in the future. Now that character arc is almost feeling abandoned while most of our time is spent with Team Good. Celestia, Luna, and friends are all great characters, and you're portraying them well enough, but none of them have time to develop character arcs this late into the game (much less ALL of them), and so the reader has very little emotional investment in them. Or at least, I don't. As much as I love Celestia, for example, this isn't her story.

That means that without time to develop the characters in any depth, we're pretty much just seeing a bunch of planning and fight scenes, which might be fine in military fiction, but isn't the way things started out. I kind of have this feeling, based on the way you gave NMM one last bit of semi-random character development with her "I want to be remembered" thing, and then transitioned her away from the protagonist role and started focusing most of the screentime on Team Good and Team Rouge Knights, and now you've brought up the whole "we're all good guys here and we could finally have peace if only we had some super-powerful source of energy that we could lethally harvest without anyone shedding a tear" that maybe you didn't really know where to go with her character and went with the classic Redemption Equals Death trope that authors in this fandom love so much. (Seriously, if NMM isn't brutally murdered in a story or shown to be irredeemably evil, it's because she's too busy killing herself for the greater good. The number of long, decent, not-abandoned stories I've found where she has a happy ending currently rests at zero.) That's just a guess, though.

And, honestly, killing her off wouldn't even be the worst thing in the world... if it's properly set up, with a heavy focus on her as she's shown to be properly redeemed. She's definitely not at the place where I can see her willing dying for others (heck, I'm not sure I'M at that place yet), and I don't see how she's going to get there with a brief scene to herself every few chapters at most, often not even from her POV.

Anyway. I do really enjoy this story and look forward to when it updates, and that's not going to change even if it takes a direction that I don't really agree with. I've really enjoyed NMM's characterization so far, the two big climactic fights between NMM and Team Good have both honest-to-goodness had me on the edge of my seat, and we've even finally started to get some real backstory and lore for NMM, things that were seriously lacking for most of the story. So I'm still pretty hype.

I'm not a story-telling genius by any means, but I will repeat my earlier offer to help with this story if you need a prereader or editor or whatever. I've already got other things I'm working on, but I'm honestly so happy to see a NMM story that doesn't suck, I'll put in the time to help if you want it.

Anyway. I don't comment much, but I wanted to let you know that I'm following along and really appreciate the work you've put into this story so far. Keep it up. ~ Sable

7407618 Thanks for the honest review! You're right in that I've strayed from Nightmare Moon's POV, and it's because I tend to try and get everyone's POV crammed in somewhere so that they don't just feel like cardboard cutouts walking the set. That being said, I definitely plan to get back into Nightmare Moon's POV later on: I've probably drawn out this 'how are other characters reacting to events' arc as long as it needs to go on, so Nightmare Moon will be taking the spotlight once more.

7407974

Sorry if I came across as trying to strong-arm you or anything - this story is your baby, after all, and you can do whatever you want with it - but I am glad to hear that we're getting back to NMM's POV.

I thought at first that you were just giving us a sneak peek at Team Good, but then it just kept on going chapter after chapter with big fight scenes, new character arcs and everything, which is usually a lot more than what you need for a "meanwhile, amidst the enemy...." To be fair, I recently finished reading Black Angel, which had an absolutely god-tier first 1/3, and then kind of just... pissed all over its protag's (NMM's) characterization in the last 1/3 to the worst degree that I've ever seen in a story. So I apologize for being a bit paranoid; I should have put a bit more faith in you as the author.

...And I actually AM a bit impressed with how you handled the characterization of Team Good. It's a bit spotty, but in particular the gryphons, Gilda, Rainbow Dash, and Sunset Shimmer are all pretty decent. I do hope to see more of these characters, just... not hogging quite as much of the spotlight in the future. ~ Sable

7391590
Yeah, but the problem with civil war is the threat to your infrastructure. This is stupidity at its finest.