Twilight and Spike lived their childhood in Canterlot Castle under the benevolent eye of Princess Celestia and violent protection of her resident, so called, monster. A monster she returns to to find peace with but also unexpected danger and threats.
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Very nice.
Subtle.
Fuck I love this story.
I need the next chapter, PLEASE!
I need to know what happens. This story has had me hooked from the first chapter. I'm anxious. I'm scared. I'm angry. Leaf Stream is a badass, I don't care what she thinks of herself, and I hope that she continues to be badass. Raegdan needs to live. Luna needs to live.
Please, please update soon!
I really liked this one, the amalgamated news articles, spoken exposition, and letters were a great way to go.
Just a question to the author out of curiosity: What kind of acid was Raegdan burned with? Just an interested wannnabe chemist.
Heartwarming. It'll be interesting to see Luna's and Raegdan's reactions whenever they've convalesced enough.
Have you written books before or something? Because this story is just to good in so many ways through nothing short of professionalism
7227159
The rather horrifying implication is that these are, in fact, corridors and hallways - as in "architecture meant for people to walk through," which is, I believe, exactly the possibility that Raegdan was so frightened of. Corridors and hallways don't just happen. They are made.
There's a distinct possibility that the Leviathans are nothing short of living fortresses... and that someone sent them there for a purpose.
7227376 The far more scary thing would be the 'Reaction' of the other 'living fortresses' take, or the blowback of such a victory held that will mar the future course of events. Though this might be a guess, but even Discord would likely take action against them if he hasn't thought of it in the past.
7227444
That's kind of implicit there. You don't send an edifice like that somewhere and then forget about it. If someone made those things? They probably have plans for them. Plans that just got messed with.
Idle ponderings which i have not seen on comments:
-Curious how Luna does not seem to control the moon.
-I do not recall, has there been concrete proof of Celestia controlling the sun in this story.
-How easy would it be to make someone think they can control the sun, or make her consider it as natural part of herself.
-What would happen if this kind of MAD would shatter.
Luna is too weak to control the moon. Way back when the chapters where Luna and Raegdan meet, Luna thinks of straining herself to move the Moon one last time before hanging herself. She also mentions that she is much less than she had been.
7227478 My theory, is those pathways are for maintenance. The tentacled things? Those may have been the workers… Or mayhaps the drones used for maintenance. Either way… If something made the Leviathans, then they clearly put a lot of effort into it. Something neatly able to sort out hydrogen and oxygen from water. Now, you have to consider… And here's the real horror…
There are four of those things seen so far. They seem to act without a purpose. They operate almost on autopilot. Meaning that something left them behind. Now, obviously, here's where the horror kicks in. If something left these fuckers behind, yet bothered to leave them with maintenance units... What will they think when they return, and see one of them destroyed?
They will either be; impressed at the skill of the measly creatures; or very, very, pissed off that one of their best weapons is out of commission.
You can run now.
7227673
Well, in all fairness, it's not like that's the hard part. I can literally do that in my kitchen with a battery, two pencils and six inches of copper wire.
Yes, I am being completely literal.
But yes, otherwise, nice summary. What gets to me, personally, is that those tentacle thingies were clearly meant to specifically keep Charybdis clean of the one kind of artificial obstruction it was likely to regularly encounter - wooden ships. I don't think they would be able to do much of anything against metal or carbon fiber and trees don't exactly float around the open ocean all that often. Natural driftwood is, on the whole, tiny.
So you've got this colossal biological edifice, filled with worker creatures, designed explicitly for an environment rich in artificially created floating wooden objects, and it has no conceivable purpose beyond being there and hurting stuff. It can't even reproduce - it's clearly singular.
That's not even a fortress. That's a weapon. An aimed one.
7227717 See this is all really interesting, but you're not really concentrating on the one thing that was actually more terrifying than the fact that it may be a weapon. Remember the part where Applejack's mind deleted the face that she saw? She glimpsed something so alien and terrifying that her brain noped it on out of her memory after seeing it for a fraction of a second. That's the part that worries me. There is only one group of beings capable of traumatizing a brain to that degree. The Great Old Ones. Lovecraft has dropped in and he brought some friends. Really big, nasty, mind-numbingly terrifying friends.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh C'thulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Could it be our hapless heroes have turned the corner? That their sacrifice will reap untold rewards? Or at least a cadet cadre? I certainly hope so.
7227717 It appears biological and I have yet to see anything indicating that it can't multiply in some way or form. There are a few ways that that can occur besides sexual reproduction. There's a chance that it creates clones of some sort that grow over time. It could use mitosis and be similar to a massive cell. I digress that I'm likely wrong and that something that massive in a magical world could just come into being. If they just did come into existence I'd like to believe that they came through a dimensional rift, like how shoggoths and other transdimensional horrors appear.
7227769
I'm putting that down as a throwaway line, not literal. Like, "nope, I definitely did not just see that." In that sense.
7227817
Considering that some of the others have been there for centuries, no two are alike and none have ever spawned, it's something we can kind of assume, though. They're each and every one unique, seemingly tailor-made for wherever they appeared. That suggests artifice and that reproduction just isn't even part of their construction plan.
7227840 That's why I added the possibility of them coming from the void like shoggoths.
7227852
I think this story is better than to go for a tired old cliché like that, personally, but I suppose it's an option.
7227717 Yeah, but it sorts those out through its own biological processes, and neatly sorts them out. The fact that it has this specific and well-made system indicates that whoever built this knew damn well what they were doing. And I just realized what it was for: an artificial atmosphere generator. Think about it.
And we didn't see the drones deal with anything else, but that's not to say they don't have a way of fixing it. Just because we didn't see the drones removing metal doesn't mean they can't. And I'd bet my britches that they had a place for storing stuff like that. Probably so other specialized drones would break the metal down into scraps and use them for something else. I shudder at the thought of what.
And let us make a compromise: it is a mobile fortress armed to the teeth. Think Emperor-Class Titans from Warhammer 40k, which are basically castles on legs, and covered in guns. No I am not joking. Look.
And yes, Warhammer 40K is that kind of series. The one where the weapons HAVE to be over-the-top. Just look at the Orks (no that was not a typo).
But I would like to assume that something like that would have some method of reproduction. After all, its makers wouldn't go to all that effort for one big-ass, living, mobile fortress and NOT have an easy way to make more. Note that we didn't see all of it. Maybe in some lower section, it had reproductive systems. Probably asexual. It would self-fertilize, likely after some psychic, magic, and/or chemical-based command, and then the Makers would grab the egg, and leave it somewhere else to grow. It's what I would do, after all.
7227817 7227840 Maybe when it reproduces, it scrambles its genetic code in some way? Or maybe when the egg is moved, it adapts to its location, and assumes a fitting form? Example: Charybdis lands in water, becomes water monster. Another egg lands in volcanic area, becomes lava monster. This way, the makers insure that every Leviathan has a unique arsenal, and there's no one way to defeat every Leviathan.
7227769 There are other creatures that can do that sort of stuff, and not just through being eldritch abominations. For example, the Silence of Doctor Who. They emit a psychic signal that creates low-key, laser-guided amnesia. If you look away from them, you forget they're there. Obviously, whatever that thing down there was may have just replicated the action. AJ sees it, then it sinks. AJ can't see it, and thus forgets it.
If the next monster they face turns out to be Scylla pissed of that they killed her room mate, I'm goanna lose my shit.
So. With the words you, or rather, sunny skies, wrote at the end of this...
I say we make you a newspaper journalist. Or president.
Something to get words and messages like that out to the public today.
Because one thing I've always hated about humans isn't just that you attack what you fear, and that you fear what you don't understand; it's that many nowadays simply refuse to try to understand. They would rather feel justified in their ignorance and lash out at anything they can get their filthy hands on. There are too many leviathans out there.
Someone needs to be our lunar commander, and prove to them that different isn't always bad.
7228157 Makes sense, but I still like my cliche of void monster. I don't think that should be what's cannon in the story I just like void monsters.
7227855 I understand. I just like the void dweller cliche. I don't want it to be cannon because it would be cliche. I just like the cliche.
I'm not sure if I've said this yet, but . . .
Crimmar you fantastic bastard!
Done. That was epic. Also love the snippets.
I haven't read through the new chapters, but I must point this out before I forget.Luna uses a "Heat beam" to destroy that tentacle-y monster. At first I thought it to be microwave, but then you wrote that it cauterises the wound. So laser?
Well, the only problem for that, is basically any beam/heat energy based weapons are really wrong in movies and sci-fi as they actually make stuff go pop. Basically they overheat the point of impact, instantly boiling whatever is there, and for a living creature that heat can spread out and flash-boil the water everywhere else, which end up being basically a nasty explosion. (Chernoby was blown up by steam for example, so it can be pretty powerful).
"Low" powered lasers can cut flesh, while cauterising wounds, but they are not really effective weapons (useful for healthcare though), as they won't kill instantly.
Also, it's "Hooves", not "Hoofs"
7228921
That is pretty much true only for the smallest of objects and even then only on long exposure at the lowest intensities. They're not heat-based weaponry. In fact, a laser doesn't, properly speaking, have a temperature at all. What they do is transmit energy by way of photons to agitate the molecular structure of what they impact. This is heat in the conventional sense, yes but only very little of anything is ever actually heated up. Only the immediate point of contact ever receives any energy, which is what makes them so effective. Something that is directly beside a laser beam will not receive any energy at all. Only things that directly intersect.
Lasers do, in fact, cut. They don't cut in the conventional sense, which is kinetically breaking the molecular bonds of a material. They cut like a blowtorch cuts - by heating the material so much that it melts or outright vaporizes. They only do that in a very limited area, though, and heat simply cannot travel fast enough to ever actually set anything to boiling in a larger object. There are a number of chemistry formulas that govern the traversal of heat energy through various materials, but I don't think anyone really wants to see those. Suffice to say that it's slow. A laser beam is so highly energetic, what it impacts never has a chance to boil. It's simply gone.
The more high-powered the laser, the stronger and more intense this effect is. A truly high-powered laser is never in contact with a material for long enough to transfer a significant amount of heat. It just goes through there in one solid punch and ashes are, if anything, the only thing that's left. Proteins denature, carbonize and then turn to dust - or, possible, gaseous carbon. That, in itself, could transfer heat, but unless the laser is absurdly thick, there won't ever be enough of it to matter.
7229108 Holy crow, just how much time do you take just researching stuff? I am tempted to write some random things here, just to see you explain them.
Okay, so first, I only mentioned "Heat" based weapons in case Luna was using microwaves to boil through stuff, but yeah, I know laser itself is not hot.
However the people exploding is based on a guest teacher talking at our school once. I may have said some silly things, as I wanted to somewhat fill out parts I don't remember, or he didn't talk about specifically. But he did definetly talked about high powered lasers not cutting humans (they might cut metals though), but basically vaporising everything on the point of impact. That vaporised gas then needs to expand somewhere (read, everywhere) which can have an effect of doing explosion-like damage (it should also be hot).
7229130
I'm a chemist and do academic research work, so the honest answer to that is "a lot." This is just some random stuff I picked up in the course of that, though. If I had looked it up, I could tell you this along with the relative absorbtion rates as relating to wavelengths and materials, how all of this is contingent on light polarization and decoherence and maybe a little bit about masers, particle beams and probably the rough range at which human flesh begins to turn from a solid into a gas.
But that would be kind of overkill, it think.
It would also do that, but only on a relatively limited amount of liquid. Imagine a laser bisecting a person. Now take a slice of that person the thickness of the laser beam and turn it into superheated steam. That's basically what you'd get. Given that most lasers are really thin, this isn't as much as it sounds.
7229167 Huh. Then, two geniue questions:
What about that overheated gas/plasma transferring its heat to stuff around? I would guess it wouldn't affect a large area, but it at least should be noticeable.
And another (I seriously don't know the answer to this), could overheated water falling apart cause a hydrogen-oxigen explosion? I heard the second Chernoby explosion was caused by superheated water falling apart and blowing up, and it only took around three seconds from the first (steam pressure) one, so can that happen in that overheated state, or does it needs a short time to cool off?
7229187
To the former: That would definitely happen, but only to the degree that the substance is capable of transferring its heat energy normally on the interface. Steam would actually do this very well, because water is, for some strange reason, enormously more capable of storing and transferring heat than the vast majority of equivalent amounts of other materials. Only a small amount of that energy would be transferred, though. It takes, as mentioned, time, and most of it would probably dissipate into the surrounding atmosphere without ever getting much chance to do so.
As to the latter: yes, that happens. It's called the thermal decomposition of water and is a part of the class of reactions known as dissociation. That's when a molecule basically becomes so energized, it falls apart into its constituent atoms or molecules. After a certain temperature, this happens to essentially everything. Thermolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen is actually a well-known side effect that happens in most nuclear reactors. How they keep the elemental gases from reacting back to water I don't know, though. At a guess, the energy state of the system is already so high, it can't compose back to water again, so the entire thing is stuck until it receives some free space to release that stored energy.
7229222 Cool, thanks. I knew about the effect, only didn't know the english name, and if the superheated elements can blow back together in a short time. Also, could it result in the small explosion the teacher talked about? I do want to believe in that lasers are not "Pew-tiny-hole" weapons like in some sci-fis, and humans have enough water in them to not seem so far-fetched (let alone sea-creature-like tentacle monsters).
A "short" description of Charybdis
(please consider carefully on whether you want to read this dry, incomplete, exposition. Vagueness is often better than completely knowing, especially in fiction. No one else can imagine something so much to your taste as yourselves. What do you prefer? To know that Darth Vader used to be Anakin Skywalker before he somehow turned to the Dark Side, or watch the prequels and get a face full of Jar-Jar Binks?)
Charybdis is, as hinted in the story, not something natural. Raegdan dropped a hint before, even without knowing, when he told the story of her creation. It is easy to imagine her as a weapon, or an underwater mobile fortress, or an eldritch abomination. It could very well be a small self-contained ecosystem of shorts. But that's not how I imagined her.
In my mind, Charybdis is nothing more than a small cog in a terraforming process.
I might make a sketch later, but for now imagine it; She is more plant than animal. A huge base, much larger than the whirlpool she creates, with downward jaw-like hooks that allow her to "dock" at the bottom. Fins that work more like wings grow in places around her. Hollow tube appendages that she uses for dual purposes; to eject the water she drinks, along with anything else, and to help drag her in her new roosting place. At the top, is a flower, or what looks like to be one. When the time comes for her to "drink" she folds the petals closed, making a cavity that she feels with air. Slowly, the petals open, allowing water to fall in. She keeps feeding the process with air she has stored until she has "bloomed" enough, and the whirlpool becomes self sustaining. The lights that Luna saw, or what AJ saw sparkling in the sun? Think of a highly efficient biological solar collector located on her petals. If she needs more light that what she can get in the water she can surface up to soak it up until her "batteries" are full.
Everything that falls through the whirlpool goes through the acidic net she has in her throat. It's similar to gastric acid, but thicker and more viscous, contained by a membrane. Larger objects get trapped more thoroughly into it, allowing the acid more time to cut them apart. The latter area drops them through "tunnels" which can crash or press anything going through it if needed, like a throat does when it swallows. Then they go through a "filter" area, at the end of which they fall down to the main stomach area.
The "squids" are drones, but at the same time more. They keep Charybdis clean from anything pesky, biological or not. Their most frightening quality however is that they are proto-charybdis themselves. Each one of them can grow into a full grown charybdis itself, given the proper requirements.
The room that we saw where she had the tanks also had two hatches on the wall. Those were meant as a connection system. Something else could plug in to Charybdis and drain her tanks contents. Yes, those corridors were made for beings to walk through and use. She stored much more than just pressurized gasses. She had areas where she could store metals (no reason to waste those) as well as the extra "proteins" she didn't use up.
As for the "face" that AJ saw. Hmm... well, there could be one. Or not. Applejack honestly thought for a second that she saw one and chose to believe it was just a visual hallucination. She was right. There was a face as much as :) is a smiling face. She caught sight of the register number (I hope that's the right term) of this particular cog.
I'm very glad to see you all enjoyed this chapter. Thank you all for your encouraging comments. I'm working on the next chapter, but work has been exhausting me a lot lately, and I haven't been able to put as much time as I want into it. Hopefully I'll have a large portion of it written during the weekend. Maybe even all of it, who knows.
Oh, and I forgot. About the other Leviathans. I'm not entirely sure if I'll get more into them. I extremely doubt so. But if you care for a tiny bit of background then know that of all of them it's the Minos Leviathan that's the more dangerous one. There is a reason that the Leviathan in the Badlands, a monster capable of turning all that area to a hellhole on its own, does not dare to approach mountains.
7229233
It does, in fact, cause that, but the explosions we're talking about here are tiny. We're talking micro-explosions, retina sized or so. All that heated gas needs to go somewhere, of course, but at the amount of material we're talking about here, it's just not going to be enough to rupture anything. Flesh is too elastic for that.
7229249 I am now smarter and sadder.
7229240 I actually wanted to ask what would happen if one of those tentacly monsters survive the explosion (maybe was in some place that miraculously kept it alive), but that explains it somewhat. Also, I remember taking note of Raegdan saying that (then I promply forgot about it) . Will it have an effect on future story, put it in as an interesting red herring, or you have no idea?
Also this feat could result in new friends! Flim-flam magical machinegun 3000! Cutie Mark Crusaders demolition team! Starlight Glimmer for psychological warfare! Trixie top infiltrator! Adorabugs... Wait those will come later. Yes, I am not entirely serious. Or am I?
7228552 I do as well. But, for the purposes of remaining grounded in 'reality', or at least that one, remember that there's plenty of mind-altering magic in the series. Visually-induced amnesia isn't that big of a stretch.
7230293 ... What does mind altering magic have to do with this?
7229240 Your vagueness only adds to the possibility that she's a living mobile fortress. I notice how you mentioned that the drones are proto-Leviathans, and they can grow 'under the right circumstances'. That may be an indication that my 'adapt to current biome' theory is correct. Or not. And that's the point of Lovecraftian horror. The vagueness. And you wrote it beautifully.
I think we're now best friends. Now, I know this is completely out of left field, but what, may I ask, if they were given anthropomorphic personifications, what would those personifications be? I can imagine Charybdis being the captain of the local swim team, for instance. Like, basically, what would they be like if they were in an anime?
Wait… abominations in anime… HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE! Gimme a minute… Just remembered a hilarious-ass anime you now need to watch!
Haiyore! Nyaruko-san is the anime about literally Lovecraftian abominations acting as little girls trying to (I shit you not) romance a human boy. It is the epitome of what-the-literal-fuck-is-this. And it has so. Many. References. There's a fucking blog about how many references there are. There's at least three Kamen Rider references per episode. At the least. And there's so much more, too. Here, first episode on Crunchryoll. Link.
7230426 Hmm, let's see. Let's keep Charybdis as swimming team captain, girl of course. The Minos Leviathan would be more of the silent, easy going, strong guy you don't wanna mess around with. Like how the Tank Top guy looks in One Punch Man. The Badlands Leviathan would be the sleazy creep. The Kraken... I guess that one would be like Shikamaru in Naruto. Lazy but surprisingly competent when he/she tries.
As for the anime... jesus christ, I thought I had already seen ridiculous concepts, but this one takes the cake along with the whole pastry shop. Those frogs reminded me of these multiplying frog men in Hellboy. I'll take a look because it would be the greatest of sins not to.
such a good story, good job Crimmar, I look forward to the next chapter, the fallout of all of this should be amazing
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You description of the leviathans, does actually remind me of three other fictional creatures. And they aren't implemented nearly as awesomely as you have implemented just ONE leviathan.
The first creature I am reminded of, and I mentioned it in an earlier comment, was The Great Old One. The source of Demons in Demon's Souls. My main reasons being that one: It partly terraforms the world. Covering it in a thick fog, that lures in victims and swallows the lands. Two: Behavior wise, they both rarely if ever move, but their mere existence is a constant threat to the world. Three: The first Leviathan seen and the Old one are both plant-like/wooden in nature. It's obviously not a perfect comparison, given the old one still needs to act via proxys/agents.
The second creatures are Kaiju from Pacific Rim. First, each one is unique in both design and abilities, tailor-made to deal with the threats that stop them. Making bigger and stronger kaiju to wipe out humanity. The earth was terraformed i.e, made more suitable for the alien masters of the kaiju, so there's the terraforming angle again. Obviously Kaiju are only meant to simply wipe out the threats to the invasion, rather than terraform the world, but there are some similarities.
WEAPONS from Final Fantasy VII are obviously similar to Pacific Rim's Kaiju, though each one is tailor-made to attack a certain biome. Ruby attacks Deserts, Ultima terrorizes the skies, Sapphire and Emerald are aquatic and Diamond seems to be a ground based one that can submerge itself in the sea, though it does have some long-range weapons, which makes it unique compared to the others.
I feel that while these are all cool, none of them quite captured the otherworldly, artificial nature, that your Leviathans have. The previous examples aren't created with that in mind. But it's fascinating to see so many examples that are close, but not quite there. I like how you described the leviathan. Once you mentioned purified oxygen, I immediately knew this would end with a bang or an explosion that outstrips any explosion the world had seen before. Luna and Radegan need to start mass producing this stuff in secure labs. Maybe get some off-shore island to do safe research on, like Admiral Yi did, during the Japanese/Korean war. Which is how he went and designed the famous turtle ships.
7231706 Yeah, he had to do that himself. If you wanna know how that went down check the first chapter of this set of stories HERE.
7231456 Now you're just making me blush Thank you, I try.
I'm just sat here listening to this song, I think it fits Raegdan so perfectly.
There are things, I have done.
There's a place, I have gone.
There's a beast, And I let it run.
Now it's runnin' my way.
I think any remaining spawn of Charybis would take the better part of a millennium to approach full size - a lot of energy and resources would be needed, and the survivors would have to live through being preyed upon by other occupants of the sea. Anyhow, I think the smart move for the Equestrian nation would be to deploy merponies and the equivalent to hunt down survivors of Charybdis, acquire samples, do clean up, ect. Having a gigantic corpse floating by a major city is probably going to be a major disaster in of itself. I imagine that clean water would suddenly become of great interest to shady characters.
7228517 You sound as if you are saying you aren't human.
7230480
Haiyore! Nyaruko-san is a great show and you should totally watch it.
Oh, and Hastur's a trap.
7228893 And so the world fell into a gibbous state of chaos and disharmony from hence no salvation is to be found. A crushing dismay and hopelessness is all that resides.