Are You Ready for the Reap?
Twilight’s portal deposited her back in the same stretch of the Whitetail Woods she’d appeared in the first time, when Sparkle was with her. It was where the anchor for the pocket dimension had landed, making it the sole location in her timeline she could open a portal to.
Spinning in place, Twilight turned and trotted home. Her wings twitched, as if they were disappointed that she wasn’t using them. She may have flown a bit in her extended vacation in the afterlife, but the dreamlike properties of that world meant that any physical skill she’d learned was suspect. Even with a healing factor, she didn’t want to faceplant into the dirt.
Twilight marveled at the forest around her. Though she could not see the souls or the life force like her sister could, her ascension had given her something of a seventh sense, allowing her to perceive the life around her with just as much detail. If she had to compare it to one of the classical six - sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, and magic - she’d compare it to a hybridization of her sense of hearing and her sense of magic.
“Trippy” was an apt word to describe it.
Unlike her sister, who had to keep her magic contained in order to prevent killing everything within a certain radius of her, Twilight let her magic flow freely. Flowers bloomed, trees visibly grew, the grass greened, and the nearby animals were whipped into an off-season mating frenzy.
She came to a gap in the trees, and found herself overlooking Ponyville. In the distance, a major part of the Everfree was smoking and burning; yet, as the flames weren’t green, Twilight knew that it hadn’t been Spike who set that fire. But with the fire brigade pegasi already taking clouds out to deal with the blaze in the already damp forest, Twilight wasn’t too worried about it.
Instead, she fixed her gaze upon her distinctive tree home. With a clear line of sight, she lit her horn and transformed her body into light, rematerializing next to her home an instant later. Then, a moment after that, she frowned.
The great oak tree that served as her home was very much alive, but compared with the hundreds of trees she’d felt in the forest not even thirty seconds ago, it felt almost sickly. That was doubly strange, since she’d been pouring life-giving light magic into it since she arrived in Ponyville. While trotting inside, she poured more of her power into the tree; strangely, it seemed to resist her magic, rather than enthusiastically accept it like most living things did.
That warranted further investigation, and likely a chat with Sparkle, but not now. Instead, she needed to find Spike and her friends.
“Spike!” Twilight called out. “Spike?”
There was no answer.
Turning back around, the light goddess headed for the door. “Where could that drake be?” It occurred to her that despite feeling like years to her, less than an hour had passed since she had vanished. They were likely out looking for her.
Before she could open the door, it was slammed open from the other side. There, in all his miniscule glory, was Spike. In his claw, he was clutching the letter Sparkle had sent to determine which world was which; the paper was crumpled in his tight grip. He blinked and then stared at Twilight. “The buck?”
“Language, Spike,” Twilight replied light-heartedly.
“Mom?” the drake asked, but the moment the name had left his lips, he knew he was correct; even with extra eyes, there was no hiding the mare looking out through them. “Mom? What...”
“Spike... long time, no see.” She smiled before scooping him up into a hug. “I missed you!”
“Mom! Air!” the drake gasped. Blushing, Twilight loosened her grip.
“What happened to you?” he asked as soon as he caught his breath. “You’ve got extra eyes! And legs! And wings!”
Twilight's smile didn’t waver. “That’s a long story,” she said, “but if you send a quick letter to Princess Celestia, and then help me find the rest of my friends, I’ll explain it to you all!”
“Sure!”
Celestia arrived within minutes of getting the letter, having obviously teleported. Twilight balked momentarily at her mentor’s disheveled state. She knew that with the vines gone, Celestia would have been freed, and that she’d been free for only a short while now, but somehow that hadn’t corrected her subconscious idea that Celestia could be anything other than perfectly beautiful and elegant.
And yet, at the same time, Twilight’s new sense finally gave her a perspective on just how powerful Celestia actually was. The sun goddess radiated like the nuclear furnace she was, and just by standing near her, the rate at which Twilight was harvesting raw soul dust skyrocketed. She knew that the sun made soul dust, but she’d never expected that Celestia radiated it.
The princess had, upon arriving in the library, reacted similarly to Spike. “Twilight?”
“Hello, Princess,” Twilight replied somewhat hesitantly. It was a bit jarring realizing that she could almost look Celestia directly in the eye, after having been shorter than Celestia all her life.
“Twilight, I am so proud of you!” Celestia exclaimed. “You became an alicorn! But I don’t understand why you have the extra legs and eyes.”
“Sparkle,” Twilight replied. “She modified her soul; this is just an echo of those changes.”
“That mare,” Celestia replied, frowning. “Her folly has hurt you, my faithful student.”
The mildly vitriolic tone Celestia spoke with startled Twilight. “Princess, it’s fine. I’m used to it already. It’s a permanent reminder of our sisterhood. Besides, not to be rude, but Sparkle got the worse end of the deal.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say that her changes were worse than mine,” Twilight replied. “Well, she and Thorn.”
Celestia’s eyes went wide. “You don’t mean that she ascended as well, do you? No, of course she did. She is your alternate self. She had no choice in the matter.”
“And by ‘no choice,’ you mean?”
Celestia exhaled a little louder than normal, though it wasn’t quite a sigh. “Those of us who can ascend were born with the ability. We each bore a shard of divinity in our souls; they’re impossible to detect before that moment, but are completely obvious in retrospect. If you ascended, then every other version of you must also ascend.” Celestia paused momentarily. “Do you know your domain?”
“Life, Princess Celestia,” Twilight replied.
The disheveled, elder alicorn started pacing. “That... I had not expected that, to be honest. Given how you and your sister had both been the same mare once, and had been neither light nor dark, I had expected your domain to be magic - likely even harmony magic. But if you are Life, then am I right when I say your sister is Death?”
Twilight nodded.
“Then I pity the ponies of her world.”
The smile on Twilight’s face vanished faster than it had come. “Celestia,” she said, dropping the elder mare’s title, “my sister may be a self-professed monster, but she has a duty now. You know me; give me a task, and I give it my all. Sparkle is the same way. Death keeps the world running properly, and benefits all the living and the future born. We know that. Even if I wasn’t there to help her, I know that she has the best interests of all life in mind. There is nothing and nopony to pity, and by pitying them anyway, you are insulting my sister, and you are insulting me.”
Now it was Celestia’s turn to be startled at the very serious, and very displeased tone her former student was directing at her, of all ponies. “Forgive me, Twilight. Lady Death has long been thought of as the enemy of all life. Though I should know better, old habits are hard to break. I did not mean to insult you... or your sister,” she replied.
“Twilight, to change the subject, did you appear in the aether at all?”
She shook her head. “No. I appeared in the void, of all places. I found my way to Sparkle’s pocket dimension - which had turned into the afterlife - and then later found my way home.”
“The void! Oh, Twilight, are you alright?” Celestia exclaimed.
“I’m fine,” she replied. “As I said, I found my way to the afterlife. Sparkle manipulated its internal time so that we had time to figure out what was going on and get everything up and running.”
“That’s good to-” The door to the library burst open, revealing Spike and the rest of Twilight’s friends, plus Celestreea, the tree golem Twilight had created in her mentor’s image a couple years back.
“TWILIGHT!”
It was a hectic hour, getting them all caught up. They bombarded her with questions, and in the end, Twilight agreed to show them a little demonstration of her new power. Gathering up the raw materials radiating out of the sun goddess’s body, Twilight crafted a brand new soul. Because of the sheer amount of magic involved in making the soul outside of her own body, the soul shone with visible light, letting everypony and drake see it with their own eyes.
Then, Twilight pulled at the spell matrix holding Celestreea together and interwove it into the new soul’s mind. She smiled as she wrapped it all together. Giving it a little push, the new soul floated into the tree golem.
Celestreea’s eyes shot open. “Amazing. I feel so good... so strong... so alive.”
Twilight smiled. “You have a pony sized soul now, not just a spell and a tree’s spark of life. You are a true person now.”
The golem’s, no, ent’s eyes filled with sap tears as real, genuine emotion flowed through her being for the first time. “Thank you!”
“My pleasure!”
“Twilight,” the original Celestia spoke. “There is something important I need to tell you before I leave.”
“Yes, Princess?” Twilight replied.
“I don’t think you need to call me princess any more. As of today, you are my equal, Princess Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia said.
“What?” Her lips twitched. She bowed her head as a snicker escaped, followed by another. Within seconds, it had devolved into full-blown laughter. “Me? Hehehe... A princess? Hehehe, good one.” Then she noticed that Celestia wasn’t laughing, and her own laughter quickly died. “You aren’t joking.”
“I am not.”
“But I can’t be a princess! I have no idea how to run a country! I didn’t do anything to deserve that!” Twilight cried.
“Twilight, walk with me,” Celestia ordered. Turning to Twilight’s friends and Spike, Celestia said, “Pardon us.”
As they left her stunned friends behind, Celestia told Twilight, “Twilight, I know you could deal with everything the position of Princess throws at you. I know you’ve read many, many political theory books, and I know you’ve spent many hours with me in court and while I was on duty. If you wanted, I’d hand you my crown and all the power that went with it, and I sleep easy knowing that Equestria would be in good hooves.”
Twilight shook her head. Without looking up at Celestia, Twilight spoke, “With all due respect, Princess, I don’t think that I can, or that I want to. Maybe this is Sparkle’s influence talking, but I want to see the world. I want to put my paladin training to use, fighting off the world’s darkness. Even my stay in Ponyville, I never intended it to be permanent. If I’m a princess, my duties to the government would interfere with that.”
“I knew you would say something like that, Twilight,” Celestia replied. “Gods and Goddesses have always held the highest positions in their respective homelands. Even the afterlife is referred to as the kingdom of the dead, with Death’s aspects as both their Lady and Lord. To not offer you the highest title in Equestria would amount to me declaring you lower than any of us. Even if the title is honorary, like Prince Blueblood’s, or minimal, like Princess Cadance’s, I would still like to bestow it upon you.”
Slowly, Twilight nodded. “If it was only a title, I think I would be fine with that. Yes.”
Celestia nodded once in return. “Of course. I’m sure Luna will be excited to hear of your acceptance. I’ll send a letter through Spike once all the details of your coronation are set. Now, let’s go tell your friends the good news.”
Across the temporal divide, the Lady of the Afterlife was receiving some very different information. Like her sister, she too had developed a seventh sense of sorts, but instead of seeing the life in ponies, she was seeing their death. Averaging once every few seconds, she could feel when ponies died. Those that died quickly barely registered, but those that had prolonged deaths stood out clearly to her. And, the more the soul in question understood that they were, in fact, dying, the clearer of a picture Sparkle had of their death.
Making sure that her disguise was intact, Sparkle followed the pull of one of the loudest calls. With no clear destination in mind, and only the pull of the dying soul to guide her, Sparkle teleported.
Her black smoke coalesced in a hospital. She’d be visiting hospitals a lot, Sparkle knew. After all, hospitals were the most haunted buildings in the world for a reason.
With little more than a thought, a notice-me-not charm enveloped her body. It was mild enough that ponies could see her and move out of her way, but nopony would actually care why she was there. Nopony would see her as anything more than a patient’s family member, instead of as a dark goddess following the call of a dying soul.
She pushed open the door to a private room. The stallion on the bed didn’t even register her arrival, though she suspected that that had more to do with the i.v. drip filling him with painkillers than any of her magic.
Her sorting spell gave him his number. Twenty one. He’d been a very virtuous individual.
She let said magic fade away. “Hello,” she whispered softly. “How are you doing?”
His eyes darted over to her. “I feel like shit. I’m dying.”
“Here,” she whispered. The black magic curled off her horn and sank into his body, causing him to relax instantly.
“The pain’s gone,” he remarked.
“But that’s all.”
“Ah.” He looked at her closely. “Who are you, exactly? You aren’t a nurse.”
“No,” Sparkle laughed. “I’d be a very bad nurse.”
“Ah, don’t be so hard on yourself. I think you’d be a really good one. I’m feeling better already,” the bedridden earth pony remarked.
“But it’s only a feeling. Still, it’s the least I could do. You did call out to me, after all,” she replied.
“No, I didn’t,” he replied.
“Bluejay,” she said, using the name she had learned from using the sorting spell on him, “your soul called out to me. I came.”
His head flopped back on the pillow. “Ah. You know, I didn’t expect you to look like a beautiful young mare, Death.”
“I assure you, it’s better than what I really look like,” Sparkle replied. “Are you ready, then? Your soul is already starting to come loose; if I take you now, you won’t have to feel your brain dying.”
“Yeah,” Bluejay replied. “I think I am.”
Sparkle nodded. With all the care one would hold a newborn foal, Sparkle cradled the stallion’s soul and lifted him out of his body. And with equal care, as his body took its last breath, she took the soul within herself, and through herself, to the afterlife.
The heart monitor spell blared, signaling that it was time for her to leave. And so, with no goal but the next loud call in mind, she teleported away.
This time, she found herself on the edge of a bridge near San Fransiscolt. The mare she found herself appearing next to looked far healthier than the stallion before. The number six floated over her head in Sparkle’s vision. This mare was purgatory bound.
“I wouldn’t jump if I were you,” Sparkle said. The mare blinked and turned to look at her. “Hitting the water from this high is like hitting stone. You’ll break, but you might not die.”
The mare looked over the edge, and then took a half step back. “Why shouldn’t I? I’ve got nothing left to live for.”
“And what about tomorrow?” Sparkle asked. “My sister may have given you lemons, but tomorrow, you could be sipping sweet, sweet lemonade.”
“Whatever.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself. Whatever. Tomorrow could have been better. Tomorrow could have been worse. But whatever. You don’t care. I guess you should just jump.”
Sparkle’s magic shoved her off the bridge. The mare screamed, but Sparkle stayed focused as she enveloped the mare in telekinetic force. With a heave, she pulled the falling mare back up, seconds before she would have hit the water at a literal break-neck speed.
The dark goddess set the shaking mare down on the bridge. “Now, are you still going to jump? I won’t be there to catch you if you do.”
And with that, Sparkle stood up and walked away. She knew that she’d gotten through that mare’s thick skull. The dark goddess could feel her death call fading away, and her life stretching on into the future. How far it went, she didn’t know, but she knew that the mare wouldn’t be dying today. And maybe, just maybe, she’d bought that mare enough time to raise that number over her head before then.
The third death call Sparkle received that day that was strong enough to really catch her attention came hours later, just as she was finishing up some broccoli pizza. The type of soul felt different than the first two - it was a dragon’s, she realized - but the cause of death seemed to be disease, like Bluejay’s was. Still, just by looking at the death call, she knew that it was going to be hours before they fully died.
But, with nothing urgent that she had to do, Sparkle shrouded herself in a more powerful notice-me-not and teleported.
The first thing she noticed was the heat. It was massively intense, though the bits of draconic magic (and now biology) that she had inherited from Thorn made the triple digit temperatures a non-issue now.
The second thing she noticed was that she was in a massive caldera, standing at the edge of a pool of molten liquid. It didn’t look like lava, though; the color was off. She levitated a little blob of the liquid out of the pool and watched as it cooled into a bright, gold metal. On second thought, gold might have been exactly what it was, which meant that she was standing on the edge of the legendary Gold Lake. Hastily, she threw the little golden nugget back into the pool; such riches were not hers to take.
But, seeing as there were thousands of dragons here in the Caldera, finding the one thing she did intend to take might be a challenge. Still, he wasn’t due to die for a few more hours, so all she had to do was sit back and watch for a sickly dragon.
“Thorn, look at this,” she thought. Immediately, she could feel her son’s consciousness pressing into hers, looking through her eyes.
“Wow. That’s a lot of dragons.”
“This is Gold Lake. You know what that means.”
“Lady Evrfyr, the Flame!” Thorn exclaimed. The goddess of fire, Lady Evrfyr was to dragons as Celestia was to ordinary ponies. She also happened to be the richest being in the world; you had to be in order to be able to afford a bed made out of a pool of pure, molten gold the size of a small lake.
“If she surfaces, I’ll be sure to watch her for you,” Sparkle promised. “Now, I just have to find the sick dragon.”
“There,” Thorn replied instantly, calling her attention to a slim blue dragon at her ten o’clock. Sure enough, his soul was only loosely attached to his body, a sure sign that his body was slowly failing.
“Good eye,” Sparkle replied, genuinely impressed. “How did you spot him that quickly?”
“See how his head is drooping and his tail is curling upwards? I do that sometimes when I’m in pain. He’s probably really hurting, and just gritting his teeth and bearing it,” Thorn answered.
Unfortunately, given how many dragons were nearby, if she were to announce her presence in what amounted to a holy temple for the dragons, she’d get way too much unwanted attention. And using magic to ease his pain would definitely announce her presence.
“Hey, Thorn, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Sparkle asked
The dracolich refocused his attention to her eyes. “Yeah, none of these dragons have a number over seven.”
“There should be some higher numbers here. Remind me to check the calibration of the spell, and interview a few dragons as well,” Sparkle thought to her son. “Maybe this is just a bad bunch, but I don’t want to be sending dragons to a worse fate than they deserve.”
And so Sparkle waited. More dragons kept pouring into the caldera as time went on, all of which took up a position around the lake, using the caldera walls as stadium style seating. A sense of excitement built in the air; Sparkle could hear the dragons chatting eagerly.
The dragon that had unintentionally drawn her here slowly limped his way down to the edge of the lake. Tilting his head upwards, the dragon gathered a small, azure flame in his mouth, and then changed it. The flame flickered, and he ROARED.
The sound was bone-rattlingly loud. It was a single, sustained note bellowed at a volume that no lungs could ever produce; indeed, it wasn’t his lungs that were making the sound at all. It was a pyro-acoustic roar, made by dragons repeatedly detonating their fuel in their mouths at such a speed that the successive blast waves are perceived as a single, continuous tone.
And it was loud enough to force Sparkle to drop to the ground and clutch her ears in pain.
When the cacophony finally abated, Sparkle picked herself off the ground. She saw that the sick dragon was speaking to the gathered dragon crowd, but she couldn’t hear him due to the ringing in her ears. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because as her hearing came back, Sparkle realized that he was speaking in draconian, a language that she and, unfortunately, Thorn could not speak.
The molten lake rippled. From the center, a set of spires started rising out of it. A second later, Sparkle corrected herself when she realized that they weren’t actually spires, but the spines protruding from an absolutely massive dragon’s head.
The largest Thorn had ever gotten was about the size of a ten story building, so large that he could have eaten a half dozen ponies in a single bite, and could have swallowed without chewing. This dragon could have eaten Thorn’s head when he was that size with the same ease. In fact, she could likely eat all of him and have room for seconds, maybe even thirds.
Sparkle’s soul sight allowed her to gaze upon the dragoness’s soul, revealing to her the soul of the fire goddess. And if that wasn’t enough proof, there was the fact that the ambient temperature shot up as the great dragoness emerged.
The dragons around the caldera cheered Lady Evrfyr as she emerged, each one of them full of almost religious zeal. Even Thorn was smiling as he watched through Sparkle’s eyes. To him, Lady Evrfyr looked like the pinnacle of beauty.
The sickly dragon approached the great dragon and began speaking to her, but it was obvious that she wasn’t listening. Her eyes were sweeping back and forth over the area where Sparkle was standing, searching but not finding.
She opened her great maw and spoke with a voice so low, so powerful, that it was comparable to a talking earthquake. “Come out, come out, little pony. Mere spells cannot hide your flame of life from me.”
The heads of countless dragons immediately turned to where Sparkle was standing. Her horn stung with the sudden strain of the notice-me-not spell warding off so many actively searching eyes all at once.
“If you won’t come out and face me in my own sanctuary, die.”
And Sparkle did.
The only way she could describe it was that every single cell in her body ceased functioning simultaneously. Upon later reflection, Sparkle would realize that Evrfyr had extinguished her fire of life, i.e. her cellular respiration, simultaneously killing every cell in her body.
And as her body collapsed, her soul, invisible to everydragon there, stood in shock. It wasn’t like the last time she had been disembodied, where she only had a vague awareness of the world around her; no, this time she could see and hear perfectly.
She watched as Lady Evrfyr reached out a massive pair of claws and picked up her now visible body. Strangely, though the notice-me-not spell had failed in her confusion, Sparkle’s transformation had not. “What a pitiful little pony. You shouldn’t have entered my home.”
And with that, the titanic dragon devoured her corpse.
‘Two can play at that game,’ Sparkle thought. She drifted over to the dying dragon and pushed his soul out, sparring him a few minutes of pain. Then, she sank into his empty corpse. Sensations flooded into her mind, the most prominent of which was pain. ‘Ugh, internal bleeding. He should have been bedridden with agony. Buck, he should have been dead hours ago.’
The corpse’s eyes started bleeding and smoking. The sclera turned a toxic green, while the azure irises turned crimson. “The eyes are the window to the soul” wasn’t a metaphor as far as magic was concerned - the expression was very literal. And, being a mortal’s corpse, the dragon’s body was in no way suited to containing the power that was a deity’s soul. But it was adapting.
“You know, that wasn’t very nice, Evrfyr,” Sparkle said, pronouncing the other goddess’s name as “ever fire.” “I was just here to escort a dying soul to his just reward, sparing him the pain of mass organ failure and internal bleeding, and you go and eat my body. For shame.”
“Ah, Death. I had long wondered when you would finally grace me with your presence. It peeves me that you claimed my secretary before I was finished with him. Alas, that is no longer my problem. It is you that holds my interest now.”
The dragon corpse’s bones crunched. Sparkle’s healing factor — having decided that the body she was inhabiting was hers, but incorrect — was trying to fix it. The flesh started writhing, and with every second, its intensity grew. Already, extra tissue was starting to slough off, making several of the nearby dragons look away in disgust.
“And why is that?” Sparkle asked, although her speech was slurred as her borrowed jaw reconfigured itself.
“Because the stories say that you are half dragon yourself. The ponies already have three goddesses, while the dragons have only me. If that’s true, then consider this an open invitation to my home and my country.”
She’d barely finished speaking before Thorn, at his largest size to date, had passed through a portal, appearing next to his almost-a-pony-again mother. “The stories are true,” he and his mother spoke as one. Idly, he scooped up some of the discarded dragonflesh that Sparkle was still shedding and popped it into his mouth in an act of casual cannibalism. He swallowed. “And I would advise against attacking my kinder half ever again. She may be opposed to casual slaughter, but I am not.”
The laugh that bellowed forth from the massive dragoness shook the very earth. “I like you. Do come back sometime. I look forward to getting to know the one that has the Sky Sisters in such a worked up state.” As she spoke, she dipped a single talon into the lake of molten gold that she was still mostly submerged in. As she drew it out again, a thick stalactite of solid gold formed on it, easily several times Sparkle’s normal height in length, though relatively speaking, it looked like a simple extension to her claw. She snapped it off and handed the giant hunk of gold to Thorn. “Leave. Go buy yourself something nice. We’ll talk later.”
Thorn bowed deeply, and mentally nudged Sparkle to do the same. “Thank you for this gift. We’ll be in contact.” Thorn reached out and grabbed his mother, prying her now equine form from the pile of loose flesh that had once been a dragon. Swiftly, he pulled them into the afterlife.
“That was rude of her,” Sparkle muttered.
“Rude? Mom, Lady Evrfyr gave us a part of her hoard. Do you know how unheard of that is? The only time she’s ever gifted anyone with a part of her hoard was when the Storm Emperor brought down her entire army single handedly, and she paid him out of respect. Only the Wind God has ever gotten what we just got.” He hugged the spire of gold. “Spike is going to be so jealous.”
“I was referring to her trying to kill me,” Sparkle retorted. “Yes, I know how much this gift means. It also means that we’re now obligated to come visit her. She wants us on her side. For what, I don’t know, but it can’t be good.” Rubbing her temple with her hoof, she continued, “Troublesome. I just wanted a quick, easy reap. I should have just let that guy come the normal way. Now we have to deal with this.”
Thorn shrugged. “I could deal with it by myself, if you want. I’m just as much of Death as you are, and she seemed more interested in me, anyways.”
Sparkle pondered for a second. “Sure, if you want. That would be really helpful, actually.”
“Great! And maybe she’d be willing to pay us for our services,” Thorn remarked. “She may be stingy with gifts, but she’s known for paying dragons to work for her. Just think about how much money we could make!”
That got Sparkle smiling. Her ascension had done nothing to temper her draconic greed; if anything, it had mildly exacerbated it. “That reminds me, Death, in all the stories, even the fictional ones, was famous for betting on the lives she reaped and challenging them to contests to survive. That sounds like a fun way to earn some bits...” Her eyes glanced at the golden rod in Thorn’s arms. “Not that we really need them right now.”
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I'm thinking the betting scenes could be really good! I wonder if she'll go easy on little dieing foals or not?
It seems there is an issue with the score system. It's based on Pony morality, yes? What a Dragon thinks is moral isn't the same as a Pony, or a Griffon, or a Minotaur, etc. Ie, if a Dragon thinks it's okay to burninate the countryside, then ya can't knock a Dragon for trying to live up to a Dragons moral code.
Also, society's moral code changes over time. What was acceptable 200 years ago in Europe isn't acceptable now, and what's acceptable now might not be 200 years in the future.
The scoring is gonna need multiple revisits and species modifiers!
I completely forgot about Celestreea!
I love how Evrfyr was sounding like a granny giving some pocket change to a kid.
'Go and buy something nice' she says to death herself.
6760003
Considering how old and rich she was, that was exactly what she was doing.
6759903 AJ is still worshiping her tree goddess.
Welp, there goes Sombra's heir's body. That was rude.
Huh... You reap what you sow I guess. Or is it indeed in this case? Either way, chapter is hot off the screen now.
if that goddess of fire thinks she can get death on her side for a war between gods she's mistaken, death is by the laws of the universe neutral.
Also forgot to put it down, but Sparkle sparred the dying Dragon instead of sparing it.
6760391
Should it be "be" or not? I'm not that good in English to be sure 100%.
Anyway, glad your proof-reader issues are dealt with
6760449
Fixed.
6760391
Thought of that as soon as I saw the title.
Dammit, beat me to it.
Sparkle and Thorn have one of the most hilarious and morbid dynamic i've seen in quite some time, all my wuv, ALL of it!
Good chapter as always keep it up i love this story
Celestreea! with a PONY SOUL !!!
Darn, the Apple family sure are gong to convert EVERY farmers in Equus (nom Equestria alone... the entire farmers on the planet).
wanna-joke.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/funny-pictures-duck-waterfall-fuck.jpg
Did. Did I miss somthing?
6761774
Celestreea was created by Twilight back when Trixie came to town, back in the first story. It's just been a really long time since I mentioned her. I meant to have her included, but she just never made the cut, and I had to keep pushing back her return appearance.
The tumblr post was correct. Lmao.
Celestia is pretty presumptuous. They are not equals. Twilight creates souls, Celestia is just a fancy keeper of a candle.
It's a bit nit-picky, but I feel like this is a problem. There's a very good reason animals don't mate in the off-season. It's a bit out of character for Twilight to be so casually ok with condemning so many animals to what will likely be slow and painful deaths.
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That's only true if the scoring system is based off of what's "right" and "wrong". In a world where Heaven and Hell actually exist, where Good and Evil are absolutes, morality isn't subjective. It's an objective truth. Culture may change what actions are considered right, but the intent behind them will always be an absolute. What's Good will always be Good, and what's Evil will always be Evil.
If morality is subjective in terms of the afterlife, then anyone who perceives their own actions as Good would automatically end up in Heaven, and the only people in Hell would be the ones who freely and willingly admit their own sins.
That's why things are so often seen in shades of gray. Good and Evil have to be determined by both intent and action, since neither one on its own can completely describe a person.
For example, Sparkle is not evil. But at the same time, she's certainly not good, either. As Twilight pointed out to Celestia, Sparkle's motives are certainly good; she genuinely works to benefit the world around her and make it a better place. But her actions are often unquestionably evil. She's very much a gray character.
Thorn is undeniably evil. The fact that he so enjoys casual murder is definitely part of it, but even beyond his actions he cares for nothing and no one beyond what he considers valuable to him. His motives are entirely selfish and any semblance of generosity or kindness he shows is only because he considers his mother's opinions to be valuable, not because he considers the people he's helping or the lives he's sparing to have any inherent value of their own.
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Except for the part where she literally radiates Soul Legos. That's kind of important. Reincarnation is apparently a thing, but Twilight can't craft new souls without Celestia and her sun providing the building blocks for her to make them with.
Ah, the Discworld approach. What happens is what you think will happen. Also, it's possible to know you've lived a bad life full of vices where as some other guy might do questionable things but think he's doing it for the right reasons and thus believes he is good. Morals are subjective.
[edit] "It's alright! I've got my potato!"
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Something that I've discussed in the ask blog is that the sorting spell can only see your life from your own perspective. It makes two passes when analyzing a soul: an objective pass, where it judges you on your actions and your actions alone, and then a subjective pass, where it modifies your score based on your intent and reaction (regret, self-defense, confessing afterwards, etc., all reduce the impact of committing murder).
The tl;dr of it is non-murderer > justified or repentant murderer > unrepentant murderer.
Twilight and her lemons.
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oh no, not de remons!
Heh, I recognize that plot line.
All good questions. You know, Twilight, that really was an over-the-top number of body parts to gain in one single afternoon.
Soul dust?
Bam.
Oh my god, Twilight just made an ent.
Dang, Sparkle is a very direct counselor.
A gold lake? Neat.
They're probably going to have to revise that Sorting Spell a lot if they didn't take any moral systems other than pony morality into account for it.
You know, on the other hand, dragon morality kind of sucks. So much for the Rhodium body.
Woah, that's got to be a fairly significant gesture.
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