This story is a sequel to When The Snow Melts
The unthinkable has happened. Celestia, wounded and pursued by her enemies, falls from the sky behind enemy lines. Watching in horror, the Celestian army falls back in disarray as the forces of Nightmare Moon push ever onward. Enlisting with the promise of excitement and adventure, two young friends leave their country village to join in the fight against the Legion. Reality however, is a cruel teacher. Perhaps somewhere in the ashes of defeat, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow.
Chapters (58)
Wow…this is quite interesting.
~ Neon Lights
Well you have my attention, this looks like its going to be a great story. It's written well, and has a great hook. So I'll be looking forward to more.
Finally got around to reading this and once I started I just couldn't stop, found myself even reading it at work Which I never do. Hell of a place to run out of chapters on though!
Such ashame this is not more noticed, it really is a great story. Best of luck and I eagerly await more.
6991363 Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it. I've just posted another chapter in the last few minutes, and i'm trying to do one per day until it's all up.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I WANTED HIM TO JUST RUN UP AND BRAKE THE NECK OF THAT FUCKING, WANNABE RULER OF EQUESTRIA!!!!!
Over all good chapter, I'm about to Reed the next. And I dearly hope a random anvil falls on his head, or better yet, a piano. *evil laughter*
Ok next chapter, it better be coming. I'm looking forward to that piano falling. Don't fail me...
6994110 Oh, I think it's better than that. But, you know...spoilers!
Things are going well for them.... maybe too well....
I'm expecting everything to go horribly wrong soon enough though, don't think you've lulled me into thinking that they've had enough hardships!
Also are we going to get to see Thorn at all in this? One of the biggest questions I've had is just how Celestia eventually becomes sympathetic enough towards Thestral's to not completely run them off, and I'm sort of hoping he has something to do with it.
One last thing I've been thinking about is why this and actually many of your other story's have such low viewer counts even though they are quite good. I think it stems from the amount of OC's featured in them, and even though many of them are quite good it just puts off a lot of readers. And to be completely honest with you I am one of those people that is put off by OC driven story's, the only reason I decided to give this a shot was because of how much i liked "When The Snow Melts." Now I'm certainly glad I did! Now at some point I'm probably going to have go back and read your Fairlight series as my fear of your OC's is over. But I've digressed now, the suggestion I'm trying to make is that you should try at some point to write a story with more canon character interactions, I think it would help you attract more readers to your other story's.
7012310 I think Ice Fall was always going to be a challenge due to the sheer scope of it. Celestia and Nightmare Moon do feature heavily but, as you’ll have seen, are not the sole focus of the story. I’m certainly not averse to writing in main characters though, and in fact the Mane Six appear in the Fairlight series as well as Luna and Celestia. You could say that my particular interests have been more focussed around what was happening ‘in the background’ of the original series. For example, the Fairlight series was intended to be a complement to FiM. The premise being that there is usually something beneath the shiny veneer that the majority of people simply don’t see.
I suppose I am a little resistant to using main series characters as protagonists for various reasons, but basically I write because I enjoy the stories and I hope you, the reader, do too. It would be nice to get more views and thumbs up, and I do find it a little disheartening when I see one chapter of a clopfic receiving a massive number of thumbs up when you can probably guess what’s going to happen in the first five minutes! Rarity and Rainbow find a jar of mayonnaise and… You get the idea.
Some stories have that ‘certain something’ that I love, and that is 'originality', with an element of surprise and engagement with the characters that make you really feel for them. Some of my favourite authors can really pull that off and its something I strive for with my own scriblings. I fully accept that there will be a lot of people out there who want to read about main characters only, or stories centred predominantly around them - WTSM was certainly like that – and for them I have another Celestia centred story in the pipeline which I was writing as a semi-humorous take on what happened after Rush arrived back in Equestria. As to whether is gets panned or does well, we’ll have to wait and see, but as I’ve always said, so long as somebody reads it and enjoys it, then it was worth the effort.
As for Fairlight, it does have some grammatical issues here and there but has received some very good feedback. It centres around an OC called ‘Fairlight’ (No surprise there), but it is intended to complement the original FiM series as I said. Be warned though, it features some sexy scenes and violence, but this was my first foray into creative writing so I hope you’ll be forgiving of any surprises in there. I tried to make Fairlight as ‘real’ a character as possible - a protagonist who you could find believable and relate to, rather than the stereotypical hero type. This may turn some people off, but if nothing else, I wanted the reader to think - what if I had been him? What would I have felt and done?
Ultimately, it’s the reader’s choice whether to give a story a chance or not. Obviously I hope people do, but I still worry that if I write a story just about a main character it will lose some originality and flow, as I need to ‘feel’ for them, or else it could just end up falling flat and be just plain boring.
Anyway, that’s enough from me. Thanks for the feedback, it really is genuinely appreciated, and I hope you don your hazmat suit, have a look at Fairlight and let me know what you think. I would have liked to have given you a hint of what happens to Thorn in Ice Fall, but I’d end up giving too much away. If you're interested, he features in Fairlight, as indeed do his people to a large degree, so I’m hoping I got the continuity bang on!
Take Care, and thanks again,
Bluespectre
Even you must have enjoyed writing Ochre finally getting his just deserts! Great chapter and nice to see the populace still stand behind Celestia.
7018804 I'll confess, i did enjoy writing about Ochre. He was quite a colourful character, but one with no boundaries whatsoever.
I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter, but there's still more to come!
Finally we get more Thorn! The Climax seems to be fast approaching, and it's shaping up to be one heck of a doozy. Amazing stuff man, I only get a few chances to sit down and read so I binged from 41 to here in 1 day and it had me hooked the whole time.
Now then, a couple of things I'd like to mention since I last commented:
The scene change from Bracken and Chalk re-enlisting to them being in the frozen north was a little abrupt. I had to look back to make sure I didn't miss anything, not necessarily that bad of a thing as it was eventually explained, it was just a little jarring to me.
In this chapter I don't recall you saying how NMM found out about those egg bombs or how they worked, as such that whole last scene felt a little rushed and forced.
7083304 Thanks for the comments, and I'm really glad you're enjoying it. I know what you mean about the scene change though, and i'll admit I was a bit unsure myself about whether i should leave it there or shift the whole chapter further into the story. I've read in comments from other people in other stories that this style is not universally popular and I can understand that. I'd be reticent to change it now however, especially as everything is pretty much finished, but i'll certainly take that on board for the next story.
The last scene with Nutmeg was deliberately written that way, but I understand how it could be seen as coming a bit 'out of left field' so to speak. I wanted to try and feed into the story, overall, an undercurrent of the 'children of the night' acting behind the scenes as a sort of 'eyes and ears' of NMM. This is touched upon several times, but i didn't want to be overly explanatory about it. The next chapter does clarify the situation with Nutmeg and NMM more, but i don't want to ruin it for you by explaining too much here! The next chapter is the big one though, and one i tried to tie in with both events in Fairlight and the TV series. I hope it works, and I hope you like it too.
As always, i really appreciate the time you've taken to make comments and i promise, i do pay attention to what's said! I'll bash on with the editing and i'll get it posted either later today or sometime this weekend.
Kindest Regards,
Bluespectre
Wow, as happy of an ending as you could have done considering the circumstances.
You know I really shouldn't have doubted you, going into the final battle chapter I thought there was no way you could do it justice. How wrong I was... You captured how hectic it was and you certainly captured how brutal and grim it could be. It was a thing of beauty. I hope the mods won't catch wind of it though, I've seen stories get whacked with the mature label for much less.
At first I was kind of miffed you just killed off Bracken like that but as I thought about it at that point it was more of a kindness than anything after he was put through loss after loss.
Finally am I right to think that the bat ponies we see in the show are mixed breed? That's what I thought you were getting at.
7093332 I'm glad you liked the ending. After such a marathon story it's a worry that the ending meets the expectations of the reader. As an avid reader myself i know how important that it. One of the things i had to consider when writing these stories was to make sure they tied in with one another. In the Fairlight series, Celestia came across as cold and at times even slightly tyrannical. I hadn't set out with this intention, but as the story unfolded she took on her own personality as tends to happen when writing. I wanted to explore why she was like this; what had happened to her? And so, the story When the Snow Melts was written and then Ice Fall. Moonlight is referred to in Fairlight, as are several other scenes from both WTSM and Ice Fall, so if the whole are read, the reader will recognise characters and plots from the various 'arcs'.
At least, I hope so!
I've been working on a follow up already, but i'm going to take a break for a short while to give myself a chance to recharge the old inspiration cells. It was going great until weeks of editing wore me down! Still, it looks good so far. In the pipeline i'm thinking about re-writing the Fairlight series, writing a story about Thorn, and of course, Fairlight 5. Let's see where that takes us.
As for bat ponies...
I'll leave that to your imagination. For now.
Well, that's one hell of a first chapter. Fear, loneliness, excitement, despair, and rage all in one introduction. This ought to be the best story ever (and at least 20% cooler).
What is it with Nightmare Moon, and offering everypony "rewards"? Does she believe the only way to manipulate others is through her sexuality? Perhaps she's afraid that without at least some sexuality, she won't be able to keep anypony from abandoning her? I'll bet that's what this whole war is about: she's afraid of having to spend her life alone (though of course, she's probably rationalized it as her fighting the "bad guys", righting the supposed wrongs of the Celestians, but really, it's likely her emotional instability that prevented her from finding another way to resolve these wrongs).
So, I guess Nightmare Moon really is afraid of spending her life alone. That's why she didn't let Bracken leave. She could easily have sent him away, and ordered every creature in her camp to leave her undisturbed. But, that would mean being alone.
Um... this was kind of random. I can't help but wonder why this chapter was copied here (from When The Snow Melts). I guess I'll find out in the next chapter.
Edit: Hmm... this isn't anything like When The Snow Melts right now, but I swear it was. BlueSpectre, did you change it? If so, was it being a copy of When The Snow Melts an accident?
7287973 That's my fault i'm afraid. I've uploaded an edited chapter from WTSM into the wrong part. It's been corrected now, so Chapter Nine - Friends old and new, is the right one! Sorry about that. I really shouldn't edit things in the small hours of the morning.
You know, since Dray's family is in enemy territory, and since he's being sent there to die anyway, he really has nothing to loose from taking that jerk down once and for all. His own body guards would probably celebrate for generations to come.
If nothing else, Ochre doesn't really have the muscle to stop him from returning to the army. If the army looks up to him, they'd probably demand that he be allowed to stay. Ochre wouldn't be able to get at him without essentially starting a civil war. Even he wouldn't be stupid enough to start a civil war during a civil war.
Personally, I'm finding it hard to believe Celestia would have given him even the smallest amount of authority. I'm guessing his family has a lot of influence over Equestria, but... he really does deserve to be put unarmed on the front lines to die. Of course, if his own crappy logic is to be believed, he is the greatest thing since toilet paper, so he should have no problem eliminating "a few vermin". He seems to think that defeating Legion is easy, after all.
You know, all this talk about "King" Sambra and the Chrystal Empire has made me realize something: shouldn't his title be Emperor Sambra? Why "King" then? Was there some kind of backstory that never got revealed in the show? Or was this just a Hasbro fluke? I suppose the latter is more likely, considering that Hasbro was also responsible for the entirety of the Micheal Bay Transformer movies.
Mos Eisley the spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
"Mother?" Holy sh... I mean cow! That's one plot twist I certainly would never have foreseen.
No... Ochre's men killed his family?! Because he needed more reinforcements?! THAT STUPID LIMP HORSE COCK!!! At this point, if I were Dray, I'd just simply join Nightmare Moon, and try to convince my old Celestian soldiers to do the same. Conquering Ochre would probably be easy enough, given his arrogance, his lack of military knowledge, his sheer stupidity, and his complete inability to STFU long enough to listen to others. Especially if you could convince others to defect alongside you. Given the above qualities, plus his apparent love for killing the innocent, convincing others to turn on Ochre should be fairly easy.
RIP Honysuckle, Polo, and Dawn Dew. You never deserved any of this.
7296794 Canterlot Kingdom should be called a Principality instead.
The emoticon says it all.
Holy crap! So, Brindle wanted to kill them Gollum-style, by luring them into a place where they would be killed by creepy beings with paralyzing poison. That has to be the darkest thing I've read on this site to date. Even the assassination of Dray's family seems almost happy in comparison. It goes without saying that Brindle got exactly what he deserved (maybe someday, that pathetic horse cock Ochre can join him). I'll keep my fingers crossed for Chalk's sake. May the goddesses weep for all eternity should he die before having a chance to make up with Gretel.
Somehow, I doubt Ochre will live to see what life without daylight looks like. I suspect his arrogance is part of what lead to the this whole war in the first place. If he hadn't been so full of himself, maybe he could have pointed out more of Equestria's flaws to Celestia. Flaws which, I assume, were part of Luna's motivation for becoming Nightmare Moon in the first place. If so, Nightmare won't let Ochre live for too long.
Of course, even if the above theory is wrong, Ochre still seems as full of himself as ever. It's only a matter of time before he does something stupid and arrogant. Perhaps he will try to defy Nightmare, believing he has some birthright that makes him better than her. There's no way Nightmare would stand for something like that.
I'm glad Bracken and Chalk made it home. But, if Dray's family can be killed right after he gets home, perhaps the same could happen to Chalk and Bracken. I do hope that doesn't happen, but you have to admit... what happened to Dray seems like one big scary foreshadow. Perhaps Chalk will have to use a huge amount of magic to save his mother, or to save Bracken. Especially if Nightmare decides to pay the village (or should I say her dear, sweet Bracken) a visit.
I'm not sure why any creature in the MLP:FiM universe would care about both genders bathing together. After all, they see eachother naked pretty much 24/7. How would bathing be any different?
LOL. "Nicely put", indeed.
How ironic that Nightmare Moon both saved and screwed them at the same time. At lest she decided to spare both of them. I would have expected that the would only spare Bracken... at least until Bracken place himself (both literally and figuratively) between the thestrals and Chalk.
Of course, I can't help but wonder how Nightmare knew about Bracken's predicament in the first place. Does she have some kind of long-range stalker spell in place?
I do have to wonder... what in the name of Celestia's glorious arse made Strada think that giving Butters (what I assume to be) an orgasm in public? I don't care if you have magical abilities (literally or figuratively) or not, you don't just start rubbing somepony out of the blue, especially somepony you don't know, especially in front of a bunch of other ponies. I think the material he's reading might have given him a very... fictitious sense of what is right verses what is wrong.
Let me guess, Chalk's going to do something stupid, like pee in somepony's fruit juice. That would be interesting, wouldn't it? Although I'm sure Chalk isn't stupid enough to do something like that.
After reading this chapter, I guess there's only one thing I can say...
Near, far, wherever you are,
I believe that the heart does go on.
Once more, you open the door,
and you're here in my heart, and
my heart will go on and on.
PS: rest in peace, James Horner.
This entire chapter is very different from the Celestia we all know an love. Hearing her hate speech, and her lust for blood, I can't help but cringe inside. Although it's true that the land has suffered much, it's unfortunate that she plans on escalating the violence even more so. What's worse is that she's too emotionally wound up to know that she's essentially bringing more of the same suffering that she blames Nightmare and the Legion had already brought far too much of.
I can't say I 100% blame her, after what happened in the last book. At least Rend got what he deserved. Still, if Rush should have taught her anything, it should have been to not be so quick assume anything about anypony, especially her enemies.
Why do I get the feeling that Pinkie Pie is a reincarnation of Flight Captain Harrier?
7344758
Can't agree more with you! What a bloody (insert some insult here)!!
If I were Dray I'd posibly just go and wreak havoc to my enemies and especially to that (insert 2nd insult here)!!
R.I.P beloved ones.
I hope that Cove is still joining him.
Cheers
\m/
We get to the heart of Nightmare Moon. Eternal Night was always a means to an end. Her end was to be loved. She has been shunned by most of Equestria as has her night. She is not evil but desperate. hence why everything that has happened is the result of Celestia's incompentance.
who wants to bet that Tia never heard of their plight or that nothing was being done to help them. Tia, you are your own worst enemy.
you lost me here with Nightmare Moon beheading ponies.
R.I.P Pickles
Poor Bracken will be pretty down, when he gets to know what happend to his love.
I've had to cry some tears when Tempest lost his wife and his foal.
Thats something I hope nobody ever has to go through.
Cheers
\m/
Is Tempest not a thestral? What is he doing than with the Celestians? Or do I missunderstand something there?
and
I guess it should be Wind who says that.
7468578 Thanks for the heads up, i've corrected the errors. As for your question, Tempest is most certainly a thestral. Unfortunately, my editing slipped up here, but it's amended now. 'Tempest' should now read 'Cove'. Sorry!
7468578
Frankly, I'm surprised Nightmare Moon didn't attempt to make it look like a Celestian did the deed. Now Bracken's going to want to get his revenge against Nightmare and The Legion. Gretel is heading for the Celestians, with her ship loaded with explosive, and her heart full of vengence. What exactly does Nightmare think she will do? Unless Nightmare doesn't know she exists, it's clear that Nightmare wasn't thinking.
Let me guess, Chalk is going to do something stupid to Shallow Fry, something to really piss him off. Something like... oh, I don't know, pissing in his fruit juice.
Well said Gandalf the White. I remember he said that after he returned to kick some butt... just like Celestia! I'll bet this is an homage and a foreshadow in one! Talk about awesome-sauce!
Not quite the anvil Napalm was hoping for in chapters 11 and 12, but I'm sure Napalm wouldn't mind this ending.
Personally, I think Ochre went down a bit too easy. I mean, I know he's not exactly an elite warrior, but still, his death seem a bit too anti-climatic for my taste. At the very least, I would have expected a chase scene or something.
In any case, it's good that he went down. It would really have sucked if he weaseled his way out of death. If Celestia somehow remained unaware of Ochre's actions, perhaps Ochre would have chosen to join Celestia. Perhaps she would have spared him, thinking all he did was end a seemingly-unwinnable fight. That would have really sucked!
So, Thorn has re-entered the picture. I wonder what rule he will yet play.
This is also the first fic that portrays Luna and Nightmare conversing. I'm somewhat glad that Nightmare was the one who seemed hopelessly infatuated with Braken. I'm even more glad to see Luna not wanting to kill Celestia, even though that's obviously what Nightmare will do.
I loved the previous story, Celestias time on earth was interesting and fun read, but this one seems to jump all over the place without enough focus on one place or another. Ah well, still gotta read it all to see how it goes.