496 - Making It Mean Something
It was all a matter of emotion.
Starlight had never forgotten how she’d felt the day her friend Sunburst had gotten his cutie mark. Up until that point, her childhood had been an endless procession of fun-filled days, each one spent joyfully playing with the colt who was like a brother to her. But that had all ended when he’d saved her from a falling stack of books, telekinetically grabbing them all in a sudden display of power that would have put any adult unicorn to shame.
For the briefest instant she’d been happy for him, seeing his excitement at having found his special talent. But that happiness had evaporated once he’d run outside to show his parents the new symbol on his flank, leaving her behind. In hindsight, it had been a harbinger for what had been about to happen.
By the time night had fallen, Sunburst had been gone. His parents had always been driven – particularly his mother, Stellar Flare – and when they’d found out that their son’s special talent was magic, they hadn’t hesitated. Other foals would have been thrown a cute-ceañera, a grand party inviting everyone in town to come celebrate the important rite of passage that they’d gone through, typically within a few days of getting their cutie mark. Sunburst had been on a train to Canterlot, Equestria’s capital city and home of the only school of magic in the country, in just a few hours.
Finding out that her best friend was gone had wounded Starlight deeply. Finding out that he wasn’t coming back had been so much worse. She hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.
All because he’d gotten his cutie mark!
But as painful as that incident had been, it had given Starlight something she hadn’t possessed before then: determination.
After all of her tears had been cried out, Starlight had thrown herself into studying magic. If Sunburst wasn’t coming back, then she’d simply develop magical talent of her own and go join him in Canterlot! It was the only way that the two of them could be reunited, since her father had repeatedly told her that Canterlot was too far away for them to visit casually, and Sunburst’s parents always went to visit their son in the distant city over the holidays – all the better for them to make connections with the high-society ponies there, she’d found out later – rather than bringing him home. So, with no other way to see her friend again, Starlight had hunted down every book about magic she could get her hooves on (something easily done, thanks to her father’s love of history in general and old books in particular) and thrown herself into her studies with everything she had.
As it had turned out, “everything she had” was quite a lot.
It wasn’t that learning to cast spells had been particularly easy. Rather, it was that she’d simply refused to fail, knowing that to do so would mean losing her one chance of seeing Sunburst again. The storm of negativity that thought had raised in her had kept her going whenever she’d hit a wall, driving her to untangle every complicated description, master every horn exercise, and pour as much power as she could into each and every spell she studied.
That last part had been the easiest step of the entire process. The archaic explanations in her dad’s old books had required dedicated effort in order to translate, and the horn exercises had required long practice sessions in order to build muscle-memory, all of which she’d done with single-minded focus. But generating the power necessary to make her spells work like they were supposed to – something that, according to all of the books she read, was the most difficult part of the process, since that couldn’t really be improved or increased – hadn’t been a problem for her. All she’d had to do was remind herself of the cost of failure, remembering how heartbroken she’d been when Sunburst had left and imagining what it would be like to lose her only chance to see him again if she failed, and she’d somehow found it within herself to push harder, generating the energy needed to power even the most challenging of spells.
In fact, that had been how she’d gotten her own cutie mark. Mastering teleportation – the toughest out of all the spells she’d studied as a filly – had filled her with such joy, certain that she’d be able to see Sunburst again, that she’d barely been surprised when she’d glanced back and noticed the mark on her flanks. All that had been left to do was apply for Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, where Sunburst was studying, and everything would be like it was again!
Until she'd found out otherwise.
“Oh, sweetheart, Sunburst isn’t studying at the princess’s little school anymore,” had been Stellar Flare’s remark when Starlight had asked her to write to Sunburst ahead of her going to Canterlot to take the entrance exam. “He did so well in his classes that his teachers all agreed that there was nothing more for him to learn there. He’s, er…pursuing an independent study now, traveling around Equestria to work on his thesis.”
For the second time in her life, Starlight had been crushed. But this time her anguish had turned to rage in short order. Sunburst’s special talent – his cutie mark – had come between them again! And worse, her own cutie mark had appeared too late for her to catch up to him! It was like they’d been conspiring to keep them apart!
From that moment on, Starlight had declared war on cutie marks and everything that they represented. If special talents meant pain and loss and disappointment, then no one should have a special talent! If being gifted meant striving for something only for it to be snatched away at the last minute, then that gift was a curse! If the differences between ponies drove them apart, then those differences needed to be eliminated!
Equestria would be a better place if everypony in it was equal.
It had taken Starlight years to begin realizing her goal. So much time spent perfecting spells that could manipulate cutie marks (among less important alterations, such as swapping them), finding the perfect location to build her new village (one that had a rock perfect to serve as a cutie mark vault, identified thanks to a passing rock connoisseur), and working to make each pony who stumbled upon the place realize why it was better for them to give up their cutie mark (which usually required a few days of enforced reflection on the subject until they came around). But it had finally all started to pay off.
Until Lex Legis had ruined everything.
This was the third time in her life that Starlight had seen her dreams crushed, and it was by far the worst. The first time had been happenstance, and the second time had simply been bad luck. But this time…this time there was an architect to her pain. Lex Legis had not only masterminded a philosophy that was diametrically opposed to her own, he had – both directly and through his collection of misguided minions – systematically dismantled all of the progress she’d made. Once word got back to her village about what had happened, and she was sure those traitors she’d brought with her would tell them, Starlight had no doubt that everypony there would turn on her just as quickly as the four she'd brought to Vanhoover with her had.
Her heart broken. Her dreams shattered. Her life reduced to shambles.
And Lex Legis had smiled. He’d stomped all over everything she cared about, and then gone out of his way to show how much he enjoyed her pain.
Now, the only thing that Starlight could think about was making him pay for his cruelty. The consequences no longer mattered.
This was no longer a clash of ideologies.
This was about hurting the pony who had hurt her.
Starlight couldn’t remember how many times she’d pushed her limits over the series of battles she’d fought. She’d already felt depleted after she’d fought Aria and Garden Gate. The fights with the Night Mare’s Knights, those two mares with the thundercloud, and Lex Legis himself had only drained her further. It had gotten to the point where even she’d been surprised that she’d still been able keep going, especially with all of the wounds she’d taken. She should have been too weak to create so much as a light, let alone keep fighting.
But just like when she’d been a filly pouring over her father’s books, the turmoil in her heart brought a rush of power with it.
Starlight knew it wouldn’t last very long. Her horn already felt like someone was trying to tear it off of her head, her muscles felt like they were on fire, and her heart felt like it was about to beat its way right out of her chest. But it was enough to get one more spell off…a single attack so massive that it would overwhelm whatever defenses Lex could muster.
And just to make sure he didn’t try and dodge it…
Despite the rock terrain, and the state of her legs, Starlight was able to reposition herself so that Lex was directly between her and where Aria and Garden Gate had fallen, a fact that she knew he was aware of by the way his eyes suddenly widened. The sight sent a thrill of vicious satisfaction through Starlight, having known that would work on him. After all, it had for that Fruit Crunch brat. Like student, like teacher.
You can either take this head-on, or see what it’s like to lose someone YOU care about!
With a wordless scream of hate, Starlight threw everything she left had at Lex.
It was all a matter of emotion.
Lex had known for quite some time that the tulpa – the semi-autonomous part of his own consciousness, able to manifest materially via warping his shadow – that the Night Mare had afflicted him with was composed of his own fears and doubts. That was the reason that it taunted him by day and tormented him by night. Being composed of his own negative feelings, that was all it was able to do, since it had no other cognitive processes.
Or at least, that had been what he’d thought, until it had started aiding him during moments of extreme crisis. Even more shocking had been how it had provided assistance: by casting spells independently. The Night Mare’s letting it slip that he could conceivably control it had been only slightly less of a surprise.
But upon reflection, much of what he’d learned had made sense. If he’d been able to order his thoughts to the point of being able to maintain thaumaturgical structures, then it made sense that his tulpa would be able to do the same. After all, it was nothing more than a collection of thoughts itself. That didn’t explain where it received the energy to do so, but Lex had a theory about that as well: that it was siphoning off small amounts of excess energy whenever he’d recharged his spells, using them to covertly prepare a scattering of spells on its own, without his being aware of it.
Similarly, the potential to control the tulpa was no real surprise once he’d thought about it. Being able to reintegrate the wayward potion of his mind back into his greater consciousness had long been a goal of his; actively controlling it in the meantime was simply an intermediary step in that process. So the Night Mare’s hint had little practical value to it.
The real conundrum had been figuring out why his recalcitrant shadow had chosen to aid him when it had. The trigger for its startling changes of behavior had remained maddeningly unclear, largely due to a lack of sufficient data. After all, Lex had been in many battles since he’d been stricken with the thing. Why had it only helped in some and not others?
His initial hypothesis had been that it was some sort of vestigial self-preservation instinct; that its collection of fears included the fear of death, and that it was acting to preserve him – and itself – when it therefore perceived death to be imminent. But Lex had been forced to discard that idea. He’d come extremely close to dying during his battle with the green dragon he’d fought outside of Tall Tale, and his shadow had done nothing then.
His next idea had been that his tulpa’s actions had something to do with his level of cognitive awareness, since he’d been on the verge of losing consciousness – a state somewhat similar to sleep – when it had helped him against Xiriel. But that notion had even less to support it than the “fear of death” idea, since he’d been entirely alert when it had provided assistance against the ghoul army. Nor, for that matter, had he been close to passing out just now when he’d begun taunting Starlight Glimmer.
Other ideas had been various external factors, such as how much he’d slept the prior night, who was around him, the time of day, and other data points. All had shown no reliable points of correlation for when his shadow had provided support instead of antagonism. It had been a mystery with no answer.
Until now.
Now, with what had just happened with Starlight Glimmer, Lex had enough points of comparison that the answer had all but leaped out at him, so obvious that he felt vaguely embarrassed that he hadn’t thought of it before.
His shadow responded to his feeling an acute sense of fear. But it wasn’t the fear of death, like he’d originally hypothesized.
It was the fear of, for lack of a better term, letting the people who depended on him down.
That was, after all, his worst fear. Since he couldn’t – for reasons he still hadn’t figured out – perceive the unspoken cues that went into interpersonal communication the way everypony else could, his ability to engage in meaningful relationships was critically compromised. Until he figured out how to discern and decrypt the intuitive aspects of face-to-face discourse, his only method of justifying his existence was therefore in making a contribution to Equestria of such magnitude that it compensated for how off-putting, unsettling, or otherwise upsetting most ponies found him to be. That was why he’d initially created thaumaturgical magic – an enterprise still critically flawed due to how hard it was to recharge – and subsequently turned his focus toward governance after seeing how Equestria had stood still after a thousand years.
If he couldn’t change his homeland for the better, then there was no point to his being alive.
And the idea that he might fail in such a way that Equestria would be even worse than he’d found it – that his existence was not only pointless, but a detriment to his people – was utterly unbearable.
That was why his shadow had only acted to aid him at certain times. Being composed of his own fears, the gap between it and his greater consciousness was closest to being bridged when he occupied a similar mindset as it. Namely, whenever he perceived a severe, imminent threat to what he valued most, and likewise perceived himself as being unable to stop it.
That had been why his shadow hadn’t reacted when he’d fought that dragon. Although he’d had moments of intense worry about whether or not he’d be able to protect everyone, he’d never lost confidence that he’d be able to protect them. The same had been true when he’d fought Tlerekithres, maintaining his confidence that he could hold the kraken back while everypony else – his friends, Sonata said he’d called them – had handled the rest. Even his fight with Lirtkra’s gang had never caused him to worry that everyone else would pay the price if they killed him.
But Xiriel had been different. The devil had meticulously planned to destroy Equestria, a plan that to all appearances had been succeeding before Lex had blundered into it. Likewise, the ghoul plague would have accomplished much the same, having been a foundational part of the devil’s strategy. In both cases, his shadow had acted…because for a few moments, it had reintegrated at least a little with the rest of his mind, and in so doing had used what power it had hoarded for itself to stave off what he was afraid of the most: the consequences of what failure would mean for his home and his people.
The same way it was doing now against Starlight Glimmer, the pony who wanted to take what made everypony special away from them.
It was with that thought in mind that Lex saw Starlight reposition herself, glancing behind him as she did, and he didn’t need to look back to know what she was looking at, feeling a fear of a different sort – along with an accompanying burst of rage – rush through him as his mental map of the battlefield told him that she had just deliberately put Aria and Garden Gate into her line of fire.
Then she attacked.
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Ka-me-ha-ma...
Who will lose?
Pick your pick
You have to choose.
I will admit
The waiting is killing
But the conclusion
Shall surely be... Thrilling?...
Next time on DBZ.
The other, other, other shoe drops.
this is not going to end well
496 chapters.........holy mother of god. That's a lot of chapters, more than I could ever bother to read. I have got to ask is this story ever going to end? This story seem interesting enough to read through.
10333759 I hope the conclusion of the fight lives up to your expectations, though there seems to be a general consensus as to what form Starlight's last big attack is going to take.
I suppose in that case, the real question is what will Lex do about it?
10333985 Well, most ponies do have four horseshoes, after all.
10334089 I'd say it'll end with a bang.
10334937 Well, Fimfiction's estimated reading time for this story is only three days...though I suspect that means seventy-two hours of straight reading.
This story will end someday; I don't have the ability or inclination to write it forever. But I have so many ideas that I want to use before it concludes! I'm just not ready to end things yet!
But I do hope you find the story interesting enough to read in the meantime.
10334962
Well, that's very understandable. Not to mention it's good you have that writer's spirit, that burning spark. Having the drive to write as much as you have done is not always easy to do for other authors.
Through with that said. I might have to read the other two story before I start reading this. Just to gathered a better understanding of the story's universe and what not.
Huh, things could have ended up a lot differently if entering the school to reunite with Sunburst was Starlight's goal had succeeded but that didn't end up being the case here. Now I'm worried about how the reunion with Sunburst would go with a Starlight who was willing to take lives to accomplish goals.
Granted, what causing Equestria's doom in different timelines is way up there on the scale of things by comparison, even if it was by accident but the methods she employed against Twilight and Spike in canon were largely meant to obstruct and delay rather than the heavy-handed(hoofed) ones she was forced to use against the ones opposing her in this story. Then again, she didn't show that much reluctance in throwing her magical weight around when things didn't go her way.
As for Lex and his tulpa...so if I got this right, this meant that the other times that the tulpa didn't help Lex is because Lex believed he could overcome the situations he faced, on his own. So in a way, he was holding the tulpa back from helping? If that is the case, then I am unsure how Lex can reliably use the tulpa if his fear is what triggers its aid. It will be handy as a last trump card at least if Lex's theory on how it keeps its own spells in reserve.
10335232 If Starlight had managed to reconnect with Sunburst, I suspect that both of their lives would have gone very differently, both in this story and the canon series. That said, this chapter tells us that by the time Starlight was ready/able to take the entrance exam for Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, Sunburst had already flunked out, a fact which is mother lied to Starlight (and likely everypony else) about.
As it stands now, Starlight has found a villain she can focus all of her rage and regret toward. While that happens in the canon series as well, Lex is far less sympathetic toward Starlight than Twilight ever was, and so makes it easy for Starlight to sink lower than she otherwise would have in trying to hurt him back. That is to say, Starlight has always been a mercurial creature, driven by and beholden to her emotions. So for Lex to not only dash her dreams (misguided though they may have been), but to make it personal in doing so, drives Starlight into a very dark place, which is where she's acting from now.
As for Lex and his tulpa, he's formed the hypothesis that it will act to help him if:
Of course, as you noted, that's not something that he can necessarily conjure up at will. It will essentially only kick in if there's some sort of large-scale disaster happening and Lex finds himself out of options for stopping it (and knows it). That doesn't really give him any control over it per se, but it is a step forward, since it acknowledges the reason why it will suddenly become helpful: when he's most in touch with (one of) his worst fear(s), that's when he comes closest to reuniting with that rogue portion of his mind. Given that the Night Mare said it was possible to control his tulpa, this is progress, at least of a sort.
But the more immediate question is if that will help him overcome Starlight.