The Alicorn At the End of the World
The Well lies, so the legends say, in a great valley. On all sides around it, the mountains rise up like knife point sentinels, and they set their stony faces upon whosoever dares to step into the circle of worn stones that mark the boundaries of the Well’s shrine.
We had left the Empire’s last border station two weeks behind us before we stumbled upon it. The Last Pass, so the Imperials call it.
But it is not the last pass, not the last by far. You see, the Well is somewhere near the border of a land I only came into properly afterward, called Henosia by its stalwart inhabitants. They are a proud and fearsome people, though not once did I feel threatened outright in their company. More that I felt… small. I was not in a good way at the time, to be fair, but even at the height of my confidence and strength I believe the Henosian peasant would have me beat for force of will and strength of spirit. Tall, thick, all muscle and hard angles, all silence and meaningful glances. Their language is rough and to the point. Their works are pragmatic, yet beautiful. It is hard to describe them.
But we were not among the Henosians yet. We came to a pass, narrow and miserable but seemingly safe, and we trod an old path. It zagged up the pass, back and forth in endless trudgery, all the while slick from snow and ice. Our horses, mine another to replace that which I had lost, slipped a few times. Each time, my heart stopped and I felt the world slide and then it righted. I wondered if Twilight had used her magic, but I was never sure.
Catching me as she had. It… it isn’t possible. I know more than I did then, and I still arrive at that conclusion. Magic as we know and understand it, across the world, is strange and at times almost unknowable. It defies our expectations, but it does not always flaunt its own rules. There are things that we can grasp ahold of, if only to keep from drowning in an aetheric sea.
Preparation time. Energy. Fuel. Spells and enchantments need time to prepare, even if it is only a moment. Runes need time to be drawn. One needs space! And energy. Fuel. Fire must come from somewhere. The magic is the energy. But it is also not. A mage feeds her spell with her own body.
You still don’t seem to grasp it. I’m sorry that I’ve sidetracked us from the Last Pass but I must make this point or else you will not understand my thoughts, my actions, none of it.
I want you to imagine what it would be like to push something light, something that floats with the current. Easy, yes? Simple. The force of the world works with you to aid the movement of your charge. The nature of things bends in such a way that reinforces the correctness of what it is you have done.
Magic is like this… to a degree. We push with the stream, not against it. Oh, one can indeed brave the current, and in fact this can change the current itself with time and effort. But these things take time. They take framework and consistency.
You can’t just invent a branch of magic overnight by yourself.
Twilight Sparkle did.
And when I asked her how she could do that, how she could lift me so effortlessly, she seemed puzzled. As if it had taken almost nothing out of her. I am not that heavy, it is true, but I am certainly not skin and bones. It took nothing out of her! She had not only pushed against the current of existence but ignored it! She had done magic without it seeming to take more energy than dismounting from her horse.
Perhaps others had learned it and we were even more ignorant than we had anticipated. It was possible. They say the ancient traditions of the West had been preserved in Valon over the Sea, and in some southern hamlets in the desert. I for one have never believed that anything of the proper art of magic could be truly preserved in such a primitive locale as a desert hovel, but the world is a strange place. I should know that by now.
I know I have not managed to convey what I mean. All through this telling, I have again and again been reminded that no one will hear my words and truly comprehend what it was to travel alongside her. Even if I wrote it down and the words filled volume after volume, still the reader would close the tome, look up at a mundane if beautiful world and say, what a story! And that will be that.
They won’t understand the snow and the ice, or the road, or the cadance of my mare’s plodding, or the lightness of her magic’s grip, or the songs they sing in Imperial taverns—Goddess Aveneaux preserve me, I’ve not even mentioned the songs, have I?—sung as they are in a dozen tongues…
It’ll all be just words.
That’s all a story is, isn’t it? Words. To you, eighty days goes by in a blink of an eye, the turn of a page, my story just now. Yes, you and I have been here for some time. Time enough for my back to ache and my cold limbs to feel warm again. Stories pass the time but what do they hold? Can they hold? How do you measure it? How do you…
This is pointless, isn’t it? Back to the Pass.
So we zagged back and forth, up the great and final pass in the reckoning of the steppe dwellers. The first day, I thought we had crested the great hill when at last the path opened up into… well, of all things? Flowers. A sea of them. Imagine, if you will, that the world could change as fast as a snapping of the fingers. In the blink of an eye, and it is all different.
Below, snow and ice. A gathering storm that had worried me but which had never broken out in precipitation. Above, green grass and masses of bright flowers in a rainbow of color. A clear blue day with a few indolent clouds lazing their way across the unperturbed sky.
I wish that, just for a moment, I might possess the ability to simply… throw open some forgotten door and step through with you to that moment, in that place. We might stand together upon the first step as I crossed from one world to another. From my world, your world… into…
Honestly? Might I part with my story teller’s voice, and be just myself for a moment? Just a woman far from home, with many miles left to travel and many aches and memories and a great mountain of strange unsettled feelings lodged in her gut? If so, then let me tell you that I don’t have even the foggiest how or why or where. I only know what I felt and saw. In the end that is all I or perhaps any of us really know.
I knew and saw sunshine and blue skies and flowers and heat and a gentle breeze. The Princess moved on ahead of me, parting the flowers before her, until she had passed them and moved onto the tall grass. All around her it swayed with an everflowing wind, and whistled as wind is wont in the reeds and grasses along creekbeds. Or so I’m told. It was, at least, how a girl of the City imagines such a sound.
I called to her to slow down, to explain what it was I saw, but she simply gestured for me to hurry up, to follow her as she led on.
And I did, goddess help me. I did. She was always ahead of me after that, for days and days. We walked and walked, up and down sloping hills but always trending up, always in brightest summer. It was as if we’d never left the midlands at all. In all directions, there was green, warmth but never any sign of animal life. We were too high for that, I reasoned, but in truth I knew that it had less to do with height and more to do with location.
I think that once we crossed the threshold into that place, once we reached the pass itself, she became more… more the sort of person she was, long ago, before ever she had even dreamt of our world’s possibility. Before she had seen all that she saw. She would chatter on and on. About how such and such flower was this or that. About books I’d never heard of. About magic. About people I’d never known.
She was… happy. I think that she was happy and excited in ways that she had never been before, when it had just been us, just two women at peace in the City’s vastness. I think that it hurt the moment I realized that only here was she truly relieved of her burdens.
With every step, she leapt forward into joy and I slipped into a deep melancholy.
Days went by. We crested the ridge and found the going easier than I had feared, out on the steppe. It was all easy slopes and gentle drifts down into the valley at the edge of the world. Not the literal edge. For the world has no edge, you know. It’s round. Probably harder to notice up here in the mountains. Is it? I’m not sure. The horizon bends.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that by the time we were in the valley proper, off the mountains and out of the foothills, we had wasted a lot of time. There was a week left to us to find the Well itself in this verdant valley. I remember thinking that surely, surely that was enough time. That in a week one could at least expect to find something as noticeable as a shrine.
But we wandered for days. Five days, in fact. Nothing. We found babbling brooks with water cold as death is in my dreams and vistas that seemed impossible, but for all of the cheer of such a vibrant land, I could not shake the feeling of being watched.
All around us, the mountains. I did mentioned them before, didn’t I? Like silent sentinels of a lost age, they watched and waited all around us in the deepest, green heart of that valley.
We found the well on day seventy-nine, amusingly. One day to spare. It sat surrounded by great worn stones that looked as if they’d grown right out of the ground on the first day of creation. And the Well?
Let me tell you about it. Once again, you will not understand it as I do, for you have not seen it. Even if you had, even if you and I together had sat into that infinity peering we could not talk at length about it. We would need some new language to do that.
It is not the thing that lives in your mind when you think of the world “well”. What lives there, secure in the recesses of your imagination in the part of yourself that plays games of language, is probably something like a little mound of stones and a crude hole burrowed into the earth. But this was nothing like that.
At first, it seemed like nothing but a small cistern. You notice the water first, and then the way the land all around seems almost pulled around it, down towards it, as if the water were heavy. But the more you look, the more it changes. What looked like thirty steps now seems to be thousands, and the distance grows. The water seems less water and more sky, and then you’re not even aware of it as a pool. Your eyes, your gaze, is absorbed.
That is roughly the point in time when one regains one’s senses and pulls away with confusion, as I did. The Princess had gone ahead, skipping down the gentle slope while I stared stupidly down into the small depression.
I stumbled after her. I barely remember what it was like, and not because the memory has faded. I barely understood at the time what I saw.
To walk down into the navel of the world was like dreaming, I suppose. Like dreaming, in that it made so little sense even as it made perfect sense. Around the Well, time seems to slow and stretch out. You swear, at moments, that you can almost feel the world turning as if on a potter’s wheel, or tilting swiftly as if it meant to throw you and all life at last into the abyss and start over.
She stood right at the edge of the water that would sometimes look like sky and sometimes like stars and sometimes like flowers blooming, and waited for me. I remember that clearly, above all the rest of the confusion of random sensory input. She waited for me patiently.
When I arrived, she turned and addressed me. Her voice was soft but it held the dignity and formality that I had come to associate with her “Royal Voice”. It wasn’t quite the voice of Command, but it was one that reminded of commands. It was serene, sincere, calm. It was, really, a final argument of her superiority. She’d never used it with me, even when hiring me.
Sophie, she said, you have come far and done much. Without you, I might not have come into this land at all, and I certainly would not have found this way back to my own land. Your service to me has been, as it would be said in your land, a blessing.
And I said, I was happy to. I just didn’t want you to leave just yet.
She nodded. She knew.
֎֎֎
The Traveller, Sophie, stopped.
She rubbed her eyes and murmured something I could not catch. I did not know what to say, or even that saying something would be helpful at all. With time has come the certainty that my silence was the appropriate response.
“I’m rambling,” she said after a moment. “Just… Am I not?”
“A bit,” I said, and I tried to smile. “But it seems as if you’re, ah, overcome. If you forgive me saying so, of course. It seems to be an emotional moment. It is perfectly natural.”
She smirked at me. Her face was red, not from the fire or her hands but in the puffy way that is a sign of distress in any language. “You are a damned fool,” she told me, “but not an unpleasant one. Give me a moment, and I’ll continue.”
We sat quietly then. She looked around, and then down at her hands. She looked into the fire for a time, and as she did all of this I watched her. Not too closely, mind you, for I wished not to make her uncomfortable. I wished to know how the story came out, but…
Well, I already knew, I suppose. In one sense. The story could only come out one way. Stories about journeys usually come out one way, if we tell them and find them worthy of repeating. Journeys that don’t succeed, especially in climes such as these, often do not leave many eyewitness accounts.
I wondered at her tale in the lull. I took it and felt the outlines of its form impressed upon my imagination. Having not seen Henosia or its hinterlands myself, I did not know if she portrayed them well, and in fact I wondered if any of it were true.
There were reasons not to believe. There always are. Some of those reasons were more cogent than others. Her story had holes, obviously. She had been vague on a number of points, scatterbrained and tangential on others. Harping on snow and the desolation of the plains… yes, it sounded much as I would expect a foreigner to sound, but it could also be the tale of an ignorant liar trying to impress. For what end? For any end.
I had an inkling how the story would end. Wasn’t it obvious? As I’ve said, it could end no other way.
She would leave, of course. Step into the water, and then nothing. A lonely journey back. This was the story I was prepared to hear. Convenient, because the evidence was gone. But my skepticism was halfhearted. I could not defeat it, but I did not wish to encourage it.
“Where was I?” she asked at length.
“The Well,” I said.
“The Well.”
“Yes. She’d turned and said something to you.”
Sophie nodded. “I am exhausted. I have been for a week or two, honestly. But I’ll be home soon enough. I suppose I should finish.”
“Only if you wish.”
“I do.”
֎֎֎
Sophie, she said. Sophie Bellamy, you have been a faithful servant and a wonderful guide. I will miss you.
And of course, I had to believe her, mad as it was. The final dregs of doubt were gone. She was going to step through the water and vanish. Seventy-nine days to the world’s northern edge. Might as well be the end of the world. And now… she would just, what, step into the water and then go? How would it work? Would she simply sink and then never come up? Would she float along the water as it grew like a river cutting its own path forever? I had no idea.
Sophie, say something, she asked.
Because, you see, I hadn’t said anything. I think I might have called to her once, but when she turned and used that silly Royal Voice I stopped saying anything. Except, that I asked if she had to go. And she said yes, she had to. And I asked, almost petulant, if she left, didn’t she have a reason?
Irritation flashed across her face then. It’s home. I have to go home.
And I said, without thinking, that I didn’t want to. You don’t have to go home. It wasn’t like there was anyone at home. It wasn’t as if there was school or friends waiting.
And she stepped towards me and at first I feared I had said something terribly wrong, but she swept me up into a hug. And then she began to tell me a story.
It was a story about a scholar named Twilight Sparkle. She had no friends, for she needed none. She lived for magic and for her studies. Then one day, she went on a mission to a small village, and there she met some of the most wonderful friends.
I knew this part, I told her, and I found that I was trying not to cry. Shame burned through me.
Yes, you know that part, she told me. But I haven’t told you the rest. We talked about magic mostly, didn’t we? And I nodded, and said yes, yes we had. But I wanted to know.
That young scholar became a Princess, and in her land princesses lived long lives. Her friends left her, and went where all go in the end. And she bore it, because she was strong and because love is strong. And then they were all gone, and she kept going.
But Celestia told her to take a break, and she was outvoted. Four to one, if you count her niece, she told me. She was furious. She was fine! She didn’t need a sabbatical to grieve or to reflect or anything. She needed and wanted work. To be useful. To never have to think very much.
And so, angry, she set out west. She walked and walked and walked.
And it became a kind of game. They had given her a year. How far could you get in a year with wings and magic and walking? She would find out. And she made a Wager, she said, that by year’s end she would waltz into the capitol laden with stories and sights and show them she was no wilting flower full of grief.
So it was that she walked to the end of her world, and it did end, unlike our own which rounds on itself. It ended in a sea of mountains and then, so she said, a white sandy beach and a beautiful ocean that goes on forever. At least, to most it would seem so, but she could see the truth. The Field of Arbol. The universe.
So she said.
And she just… kept going. Because they had been right, those princesses. They had known what she had also known but tried to forget, that even strong souls must rest eventually or else go mad. She was mad.
Twilight Sparkle, her wager in mind and something like madness in her feet, stepped out into the cosmos. To say she lost her way was to misunderstand. It wasn’t the path that mocked her but my world. She had only ever known planes that ended and could be left, but ours she named “closed” and so despair had overtaken her when she woke in the city and not at the edge of our world. There was no edge. Every part was the edge.
But she had rested. She had mourned. Twilight Sparkle wanted to go home now. She had her deadline after all, didn’t she? She wasn’t sure if time flowed the same.
I think, she said, her words so halting, still pronounced after all this time with an alien care, I think that perhaps all I needed was to make friends again. To know that I could. And you were there to be that friend, Sophie. And I love you for it.
That was when I asked her if she could bring me. If I might could make the voyage. I did not want to go home alone, yes, but it was more than that. I didn’t want her to leave me! I had purpose and a point and when she left, who would be my teacher? Who would I find passage for and book airships and find horses to carry? I would go back to school, if she did not take me along, and sit in classes and in my library room and always be haunted by the possibility that lay with her beyond the fabric of the world and I…
I don’t know. I keep trying to explain why I asked her to take me on as her student, not as a joke or on the way but in earnest. She made no promise then that I might ever return, and yet I threw myself at her! Was my life so awful? Was I so foolish?
She knew more than I. Even now, I think, she knows more. Whatever she saw, she did not answer but rather pulled me with her towards the water.
We stepped together into the Well and everything was changed. I saw her for the first time as she truly was. I do not know how best to tell you what she looked like, so I shall choose to be blunt.
Have you seen a painting of a unicorn? Those that roam in the wilds between our nations? Imagine it. Imagine it the color of my eyes, yes, like lavender and then imagine that it comes to your neck, it’s head just slightly below your own. Wings are on its back, powerful and beautiful. Everything about it, about her, is beautiful and I cannot describe it. By the Sun, by her very light I wish I could but I cannot! Words are useless, man. Utterly useless. They cannot capture her smile or the light of her eyes or the magic which rolled from her then like waves, like the storm surge upon the Shattered Coast.
And she gasped. I closed my eyes, expecting any moment to fall through the water, or for something to go wrong. I feared more than death itself for a moment to be left behind regardless, unfit somehow for the journey.
But instead, when at last I opened my eyes, we had not moved at all. The Princess was staring at me.
She was in shock. She tried to speak, but words would not come. I tried to ask, but she just shook her head. She told me to look down and so I did.
Perhaps in dreams you could understand what it felt to look down and see yourself utterly changed into a new creature.
I panicked. Or, I tried to, but even as I did we began to sink into the Well and the Princess caught me in her magic and in her arms, her forelegs, whatever you wish to say. And she said…
She said, you look just like me, my faithful student. Imagine that.
֎֎֎
I stared at her when she finished.
She stared back.
“You… you’re serious,” I whispered.
“Very.”
“And you… but…”
“Time works in mysterious ways, out there among the worlds. And there are many, by the way.” She grinned at me in an almost feral way. “Very many. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe.”
“You… you looked like her? I do not understand, friend.”
“Call me Sophie,” she said. “Sophie Bellamy, Third of my name and least of my House. They call me the Walker in the Woods, if I remember correctly. The Sage of—”
“—Aveneaux!” I finished. I was paralyzed. I wanted to rise and flee, but I could not. Her very presence, once charming or fascinating, was now almost intolerable. Because I believed her. I could see it in her eyes.
“Yes, praise be to her name,” Sophie said, and seemed even genuine about it. “I’ve collected a lot of names.”
“But… but the rebellion, you passed through no less than six months ago!”
“Time moves in mysterious ways,” she said. “It’s softer than you think, and I have sailed upon it more than I would have liked to. I studied under Princess Twilight for years, and I saw her sorrow pass and become happiness again, and I was content. I walked in Henosia and in the Wilds, I visited and studied. Their world is like ours. So many are like ours, like ghostly visions, one after the next. And in this iteration, I was the closest thing there was to her. The Faithful Student.” She snorted. “It is as good a name as any.”
“But… but how? Would you not have noticed before?” I looked around, but no one seemed to notice my distress. I cursed my countrymen. How could they not hear this? Simply mentioning the Witch out of the Wilds should have turned heads! She was a legend!
“If you’re trying to be discreet,” she said with a little smile that calmed me somehow, “don’t bother. I weaved a sound barrier thirty minutes ago that kept this all between us. Princess Cadance taught me how. I said there were iterations, yes? Well. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that there are variations. Variations, if I may indulge a whim, upon a theme. Like a song handed down the line of generations. I did not become a princess, nor will I ever be one. She rose to become an alicorn, as they say it in their tongue, best I can manage. Yet I did not. But I became something else. She took on a form similar to mine but also dissimilar, because the universe is not a boring place. Not copies, but divergent theme. I see you believe.”
“I’m honestly frightened. Are you truly she who does not sleep?”
She snorted. “That old story? If I may be vulgar, it is bullshit. I do sleep, for one. I rather enjoy it. I am no witch. I merely asked questions that the northern tribes could not answer and they made of me what they could. I am and have always been among all things a scholar.”
I swallowed, relaxing a bit. “And you… you mean to say you became a horse. Some sort of magical horse.”
She chuckled. And then she laughed, openly and honestly and perhaps a little frantically, as if the bottled up tension was melting away, like a joke at the end of a terrible story. “Yes,” she managed, rubbing her face with a palm and still grinning. “I was a unicorn, if you must know. Twilight was resolute that I have my own name that fit their own schema. And you see, I suggested ‘Starlight’ so as to remain close to the idea of Twilight and Sparkle, but a shadow of some sadness passed her face and I grasped for some frivolity to cheer her up. And so, of course, I said, ‘Princess, I could always just be passport.’”
“And…”
Sophie, Passport, pulled a worn book from one of the many pockets of her voluminous coat.
“And now I have a book with three dozen stamps, fourteen signatures, a wonderful but very small portrait of the Impossible City of Empyrea, and a lovely letter from an admirer scented with lavender that I kept as much for the smell and the nice handwriting as the sentiment. This is my namesake, sirrah, and by it I set both watch and warrant.”
She slid it over to me, and I gazed at it in wonder. I saw the stamp they give all foreigners at our border, yes. But I saw others… I saw that stamp repeated but different every time, just subtly so, but still noticeable. I saw some for the Midlands, for a few smaller kingdoms, and some that I did not recognize at all, with letters utterly unknown to me even today.
I slid it back to her.
“Where… where are you going then?” I asked.
She tucked the passport away, and some of her cheer died.
“I want to go back. Twilight… the Princess was right. I have to go home now. I realize that. I left things undone. And there is a wonderful and frighteningly powerful woman in my City who I owe a heartfelt apology to for abandoning her and her school. And… and I want to see the streets and the parks and maybe even the louts on the corner of Fifth and Nowhere again. See the grimey, grungey, perfect cogs of an infinite progress. I loved Canterlot, but…”
She shrugged.
“But I’ve made a promise. A wager of my own, if you will. Eighty days there, and eighty days back. And I bet my teacher that I could get myself into the College of Mages with just theory alone, no application. I need to do my best.”
I leaned back. “After all of this, you want to go… home? That’s it?”
She nodded.
“That’s it, yeah.”
“That’s insane. It’s so… so mundane! So ordinary.”
“You know,” she began slowly, with a long sigh, “I found out, somewhere in the wilds trying to collect stories, that what we call adventure is a wonderful thing. But it is not the best thing. No, I know that now. Life’s the thing. The routine and the small talk. The coffee before noon and the newspaper between you and a smiling friend at lunch. Music and shade and quiet drawing rooms filled with smoke and hyacinths. Chess and cats. Adventure? In this world, it’s cheap. Living would be the highest sort of adventure.”
At last, she paused, and then pulled the passport out again.
“Sign it,” she said. “Anywhere you like.”
I stared down at it. “I… but, I don’t have a pen,” I managed to say, before finding that I did indeed have one, offered in her dark hands. I took it and scrawled my name on the fourth page. She looked it over with a grin, and wrote something beside it.
“Johannes Vernus. It’s as good a name as any,” she said, and shut her little book. “It’s as good a name as any. And finally, I’ll say this. No one will ever believe you. I think it’s why I felt safe enough to say anything. But you’ve listened, and you’ve listened well. Whatever you meant to do, you did me a kindness. So, in the manner of former teacher, I will offer you a gift.”
And so, my friend, she gave me this book. I do not know what it is or what it means, and yet the symbols inside captivate me. What mean the six arrayed stones on its cover, or the noble unicorn of gold? I asked, and she only smiled and said that she would find out herself what they meant, or so she hoped. Or, no, she said she would meet them, stranger still.
And that was all. I asked a question, she answered, I looked up, and…
Well. She was gone. And that was that.
And, perhaps like she feared for herself, I find that I cannot stop thinking of that well that lies perhaps beyond some final Pass. I see it in my dreams.
They are beautiful dreams.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Cynewulf · 8.7k words · 157 4 · 1.5k views
- Cynewulf · 8.7k words · 414 11 · 4.4k views
- Cynewulf · 30k words · 379 38 · 6.3k views
- Cynewulf · 5.1k words · 206 4 · 3.3k views
- Cynewulf · 53k words · 918 28 · 13k views
- Cynewulf · 5.2k words · 109 4 · 1.1k views
- Cynewulf · 42k words · 388 15 · 5.3k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.218 seconds
Total duration
995 users online
1,355,971 hits today, 1,996,409 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Is this a crossover?
7495596 Yes, technically. It was written as a crossover with 80 Days. I should put that in the description.
Horizon will be pleased. :D
Could I get some info on the art youve used?
7495740 Well, I hope so. I fear I didn't quite live up to his expectation.
Weird, perhaps, but also wild and wonderful!
For some reason, Twilight looks like a r63 version of Shiiro (I think that's his name) from Log Horizon in that cover art to me.
7495840 Same, honestly.
7495954 god, forever. I spent like a week on this and put my multichapters on hold. But it just had to happen. It wanted to, and so it did.
>No sad, tragedy, or romance tag
>color me impressed!
There's not much else I can say about this story that I didn't already say to you in gushing heaps on Skype, so instead I'll just that I love this story sooooo much
Weird, maybe, but definitely beautiful.
7496177 inorite?
Even tho I've only used the tragedy tag once. People always expect that a lot more.
Wow that was extraordinary. One of the many stories that deserves a lot of love.
Does anyone know the artist of the cover art?
Amazing story and intriguing world building. A beautiful story
Wonderful story you've got here. It has... There's something special about stories that rely on a teller instead of experiencing it from their perspective.
7496677
I took a closer look at the signature in the corner it says Stupidyou3 so here you go
Deviantart link to the picture
7496582 you've only used it once? That's a real
T R A G E D Y
Okay, so:
I would have given this a favorite and followed you based on style alone. It is fantastic.
The characters are so deeply interesting, and the POV sells the wholes story so well.
The more subtle references to Eighty days are brilliant.
In short, this is amazing. You poured your heart and soul into this, and it shows. Thank you very much for creating this.
7495840
I dont think you remember what Rule 34 is, bud. you're thinking of Rule 63. Rule 34 is the one which states there is porn of everything.
7497193
Oops, I gotcha. Yeah I think I mixed 'em up or somethin.
Once again you weave a beautiful world with your words.
Awesome work there.
I kinda expected the Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey stuff at the end and would probably have been disappointed if it wouldn't have been there.
7495605 I really hope that there's a sequel to this.
ermahgerd I have to read this like right now !
Oh wow, that was excellent.
I'd go so far as to say that this right here is a good example of just how meaningful fanfic can be.
And finished.
Words alone cannot give due justice to just how freaking fantastic this was.
I couldnt put it down! (metaphorically writing)
A masterpiece of writing..
Simply amasing. This is the kind of literature I mostly see in my literature books, or that of books similar to Sherlock Holmes. I admire this kind of writing, they tend to sound like music to my ears. A biography of ones adventure that seemed real. If I could give this story a like or two for each chapter I would.
I remember when I sat and read through the stories in my literature book during english class. Of how I miss my classmates who had been with me for most of my life. Best of Wishes to you my friend, I shall follow you and await more of your tales.
Oh my my my... you've done well with this one. Very well indeed.
OH MAH F*** I LOVED THIS THING.
7495840
I see it a little. But she's missing the villainy part of the Villain in Glasses.
Fucking incredible Cyn.
You seriously outdid yourself with this one.
I've just finished the story and I'm still digesting it. As a short story it had an interesting beginning but there were a few moments that confused me. The first was the shift in narrator and it could be a bit jarring at times as I had to realize who exactly was speaking. There were also a few moments when Sophie was narrating that confused me on her gender as she mentioned gentleman and other very masculine terms that confused me as to her actual gender for more than a bit and made me second guess that she was actually the same woman as walked in in the first part of the story.
The actual transition and story itself had me for moments with an interesting style of telling a journey in short vignettes that hit me as interesting. The ending however leaves me unsatisfied and I'm trying to figure out exactly why. I think my dissatisfaction arises from my interest in the listener to this tale and how his story doesn't seem resolved, nor what actually happens after this story ended. Then again, the very last bit with the listener feels like it accelerated before I could appreciate what happened. He starts referencing an actual name like it's supposed to mean something and there's some connection that I don't understand which feels like it's something important I should actually know but obviously cannot as this isn't a world I'm familiar with. I also expected him to act as a guide or go with her and have this create a circle. I think that's also partially why I'm not as satisfied with the ending. You just have her leave behind a book that I think is on the Elements of Harmony...but it's in a language you can't read so it loses any real meaning. That's like me giving you a book completely in an impossible to translate cipher.
So I come to the end of this and I'm not sure what to make of this story. I'm still thinking and not getting an answer that satisfies me. I hope this will help in your future writings. I thought this was interesting and stylistically I like it but I'm not going to be up voting it because I can't say I liked the actual story and work overall. I'm feeling ambivalent after traveling on this journey...
Wow, that was a short by amazing ride.
Thank you for writing it.
Time flows in strange ways.
In a world of all edges, time is a closed loop from which another world may step into and out of as if no time had passed at all, for in such a curved space all time is one eternal moment.
Heh, Sophie probably has more magical knowledge than her country's ruler now. Usurp her Sophie! You have the power!
media.giphy.com/media/uwtAzEambBKx2/giphy.gif
What a wonderful little story. It reminded me of a twiluna story I read a long time ago, Apotheosis.
7495754
Yeah, does anyone have a link to the artist who made the cover image?
7496880
7499371
I... I can't.
I can't even words.
Ugh... this... this! I want more of this. But this is the last chapter! No~
Beautiful language, great story. This is going into my favorites.
Great story, 80 Days is the game from inkle studios, is that correct? Is the world they are navigating from the Pathfinder Midgard setting by Koblod Press? Trying to look into more of the background setting of the story.
7500442 not sure of the games studio. The world is the one I cobbled together for my Pathfinder group to play in.
Welp. This is one of the best stories I've read in a long time
The total word count is screwing with me, because I'm pretty sure all those chapters would add up to 16,448 words, not 10,826, right?
7500739 I noticed. I have no idea why that happened.
7500964 I just realized that it isn't counting chapter 5's word count.
7500450 Cool, thanks for the info!