I WILL FEED ON THIS CHAPTER

i.ibb.co/kycMkc8/Mematic-20220318-104511.jpg

Fun fact: literally everyone has read this chapter already and we all are in absolute shock and horror.

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But me

That was early!

Time to read!

But the real question we all be asking, did Prey survive?

Ah. Well. Hmm. I- hmm.

This chapter, I have Thoughts about it. On the one hand, Celestia is right. On the other, she gets her comeuppance for her arrogance instantly, and I'm here for that. I'm just sad she didn't get everything she was owed.

Now I have to see how this resolves to really sort out how I feel about this.

Hype Hype! The chapter is out early! Soo excited about this one!

O_O

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What is she right about? The idea that people deserve to die? That's an absurd idea. I have no need to condemn it for its moral repugnance, simply because it so wrong, anybody who advocates it should be embarrassed.

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That he was a construct/wasn't what he thought he was.

But other than that she was a horrible person. Hence why I'm sad she didn't get everything that was coming to her.

(Was trying to be ambiguous: kinda bad manners to spoil things soon after the chapter releases.)

Satisfied, she went on; "You aren't a real sheep, you never were. Your body isn't real either, you merely think it is. It deceives touch, the eyes, and scent. It even bleeds, although it isn't real flesh and blood. But you don't see what I see, because you believe you're real. You can feel pain, you can catch an illness or even die because of one, as if you were living, but... you aren't alive."

The hunger
My god
That’s what it is
An dark but not malicious entity gained sentience

By Celestia's logic the concept of medicine is wrong. Because it unaturally extends life pass what harmony intended. We have spent most of the story calling Luna the more repugnant of the two sisters. I believe that that is clearly incorrect.

If we replaced magic with technology. Celestia basically told a cognizant robot it was worthless and killed it, while it begged for its life.

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Harmony is a bitch, and Celestia might be too.

Will the next chapter be the last one then? Is this fic almost finished? I thought it would somehow go all the way through the events of the show.

Wait, this can't be it! Please! No! It's the only thing I truly enjoyed reading!

(Spoiler)
i.ibb.co/vH7gRbQ/png-20220318-181043-0000-3.png

Well, if Prey doesn't gain control of that deer body, and Crimson isn't able to sniff him out... he's going to 100% commit suicide.

I wonder if Luna will feel anything about this, or just pull a "Oh no! Anyway..."

Hopefully this story isn't about to end i will be heartbroken if it does

:0

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I was wrong. This was not a chapter to be feasted upon. No, it was poison. A corrosive substance, buried deep under waves of under ending platitudes and false pleasure. No, All before this was a lie, so in the end, it could be ripped away that we are feasting upon a rotting corpse, and nothing could ever stop it. Because now, we only knew hunger.

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Hahahahahaha.

This explains your profile picture.

Luna, you know your soldier, the one that you had just comited yourself and your followers to a massive political battle with the richest person in world, for basic justice?

Yeah I killed him. Don't be mad, he was an unharmonic evil, you just couldn't see it.

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Just like to point out yours was the 5000th comment 🎉

I have nothing to say. Not yet. We're almost there. Wait until we reach that end, then, we can talk.

You're asking a lot... This was....

I'm trying to hold back judgement.

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Also... the story name. The truth was there from the start, we just didn't know it.

With the obligatory ‘I never comment, but’ out of the way... I have to say that was absolutely amazing to read!

The last few chapters have kept me on edge the entire time and left me eagerly awaiting what happens next, but this, with what happens and what gets revealed... wow.

Genuinely left me stunned, with no idea what could happen next. Magnificent work.

Just want to point out I so called Selenia.The fact that Prey's mom was never explicitly named gave it away, expecially when Prey marked the Rushweed grave stones.

Did Celestia accidentally make Prey a nigh powerful eldritch horror?

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My god, we had the answer in front of us the entire time. We all thought it was just... an expression... but it turned out more real than any of us thought.

"Oh my. You've found friendship? That's wonderful, truly. But it does not change reality. The balance of Harmony must be protected.

Funny how she's like the jedi in that regard, twisting "balance" into meaning absolute harmony/light side of the force

So Chekhov's nuke just goes off. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a twist that masterfully plotted before. I got to the end of the chapter and just thought holy shit.

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I think the reason I've been able to connect with this story so well is because woven all throughout the text is a concept that I've always agreed with, but hadn't been able to put into words. Etched into the very bones of this fic is a hatred of the idea that all events in the universe are ordained by some supernatural order.

We can see it best in this chapter, as the clash between two stand-ins for the opposite ideologies: Prey and Celestia.

Prey has always viewed every tragedy that has befallen him as random happenstance. Something unfair. Not as comeuppance, or Karma, or Justice, but as something that could've been avoided by chance. Bad things happen because they happen. There is no greater purpose.

Celestia on the other hand has a fatalistic outlook. There are many like Celestia who tell themselves that the horrible stuff in their life was a trial of some sort. Because if tragedy is arbitrary, then when it transpires it isn't necessary, and could have just as easily not transpired, in fact it shouldn't have transpired, and that's unfair.

But this comfort narrative isn't just incorrect, it's actually worse than nihilism. Because it is defeatist. What kind of pathetic ideology advocates for evil to be immutable? You are not supposed to struggle to do better. You are supposed to lie down and accept everything horrible because doing good will always be counterbalanced by an equal and opposite reaction of bad.

A world where bad things happen for no reason is one where they can stop happening. A world where bad things happen for a reason is one where they will never stop happening.

This fic is really a true antithesis to the show, because it didn't just make me hate Celestia, I hate harmony itself.

Good lord this chapter.
This hurts. I knew something unfair was going to happen in the long run, it just felt like the kind of story that would end bitter(sweet). Unfair things happen and keep happening.

Even knowing that Prey can be despicable, you at least understand him. Celestia on the other hand? I've seen a lot of ponies written at their worst but seeing her stoop to such an unreasonable point of view against a thing trying to live (by any means, even the worst, but still), I'm somehow just as disgusted as all the times Prey has murdered and destroyed so many. I can't even call either one worse than the other using logic, they're both terrible people. Prey and Celestia are so disgustingly similar in that they don't care about the wider issues caused by their meddling. Her immediate dismissal of all the murder caused by her ponies fighting the resistance, and Prey's dismissal of all the changelings he murdered.

In spite of that I feel more for our protagonist than Celestia, because I've read his story. Celestia is just the opposite. She's someone who just saw what he is and skipped all the emotions and the struggles. Absolutely despicable and unfair.

Also in retrospect I think I know why I love Prey as a character, Prey reminds me of nier/drakengard characters. Absolutely screwed up but has a lot of compelling, emotional human narratives. The desire for vengeance after Gloom's death, the developed friendship between him and Crimson, to the point that he'd give up his revenge if it meant sparing his friend, the simple drive to survive by any and all means, and all the ways he has shown a personality beneath all that blood and darkness.

I'm going to need some to break this shit down, Barney style lol

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OK.

So we got Prey. Prey is a sentient golem, given life by Selenia the Great White Witch. He views himself as real, and everyone who sees him thinks he's real. Even Luna. He kinda is real to an extent, but as Celestia pointed out, he's more closer to what you'd read about in a Slavic myth about stillborn-babies than being an actual person.

Prey's rituals to make himself immortal, which probably still happened, also froze his soul using a Lich's Mirror. Celestia proved that Selenia was his mother, that he was a golem, and that by undoing the magic holding his aging at bay, he would die. In fact, she had hoped this epiphany would kill Prey. It did, he just removed the parts of his mind that wouldn't fit with this epiphany, thus avoiding that death. That still left his immortal lichhood, and how those years were "stolen".

(As a side, I was just thinking about The Picture of Dorian Grey and how it might relate to Prey. Guess that was right on the money, but I never really connected the dots.)

Citing the need for "Harmony," Celestia murdered Prey by doing just that; undoing the rituals that kept Prey young. Prey rapidly aged, or deteriorated, away. Before he died, he got confirmation that they were in Canterlot. This is important because of the worm.

Then we get to Rushweed. Prey and his brother lived with Selenia, as everything during and after Rushweed really happened (confirmed by Panem on the discord). This is important, because if it didn't happen, then this story would have sunk itself harder than Game of Thrones.

Then we get the deer. Prey's backup plan was to send his soul into the body of one of the deer's children.

Then we get the worm. It's a very hungry hungry caterpillar, and tonight, it's going to eat Canterlot. Or Celestia. You see, it might not be a physical thing. It could have been a mental fight that Celestia lost. Or won. We'll have to wait and see. Point is, Prey doesn't want to kill Crimson, and confirmed that they were in Canterlot, so it's possible that Prey killed the worm, not Celestia, using some sort of contingency.

^^^^
Confirmation from Panem:
"I'd advise read over that part again, but the tl;dr is that it was the bit that escaped the bars when he very nearly decided to go nuclear on Canterlot, and he purged it by looking into the pool in his cave. As he changed his mind, and it was otherwise out."

So the worm is physical.
^^^^^^^

Now we get to Harmony. It's.... a thing that exists. It interacted with Prey before, and didn't kill him, despite Celestia saying that's what it wanted. So if it doesn't want to kill him, but Celestia did, what will happen next?

My theory is that Harmony will give Prey a mortal, real body.

Prey gets a new body (Deer, Celestia, something new) without actually earning it (this happened before Prey has really been "redeemed" as a villain), and will probably be mortal now. Meaning all his talk about an immortal alicorn telling the mortal sheep to die will be... unresolvable.

However, that still leaves quite literally every single problem in the story still unsolved, showing why George RR Martin was wrong in thinking that the Night King should be defeated *before* Cersi Lannister: you get this awkward pacing problem where what should have been the climactic finale is now the ramp-up part of the story to what is comparatively a lackluster fight. Sure, thematically speaking, having the problems and folly of man being the final foe makes sense, but it falls apart when it comes to pacing.

If everything after Rushweed happened, that means we have to deal with unequal rights (despite what Celestia claims), a massive unequal distribution of wealth and power, Fire Strike's escalation and lack of protection which led to the burning of so many villages, the Fell plotline and how it ties everything together, a new commander for the ISND, Crimson growing as a character to move on from his family's loss (including Gloom), and most importantly, Prey's growth as a person.

Overall, we've seen him slowly, so slowly grow. This chapter crushes that growth like a termite underneath a steamroller. It sets it back a lot. Or, at least, it threatens to.

An early chapter release is a surprise, but definitely a welcome surprise. I only happened to notice cause I checked my tracking list while making a sandwich. Can’t wait to see what emotions I’m going to experience while reading.

Edit:so uhh hmm. That was unexpected. My emotions went from tentative relief, to anger at celestia for coming across as racist, then my emotions felt like they got stuck in a tornado.

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Can you tell I'm looking forward to the Cult of Lamb game?

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Oh my gosh.

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HAH

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As you can tell, I am not a fan of this chapter. But, as asked, I will withhold judgement until more is revealed. Simply put, this chapter only brought problems for the story in my opinion, and I really hope that I'm just fearing for the worst that won't come to pass.

I've been on this site for quite some time now (longer than my profile says, this is my second account), And I have to say, this is, singlehandedly, one of the greatest pieces of fiction I have ever read. Period.

Finally, canon confirmation that Prey is simply built different.

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My theory is that Harmony will give Prey a mortal, real body.

I'd imagine that all of us readers hope for such a thing, but its probably just wistful thinking

A murderer would always be a murderer. It could never be taken back.

"I am no such thing. What I do is just, every saddening bit of it. Any consequences that come are only as a result of you meddling with dark magic. Everypony is responsible for their own actions."

Celestia's reasoning is the same as those of Clan Myrrdon right down to the wording. Such a cowardly way of absolving oneself of responsibility.

Though i am wondering of the author intends to continue writing stories here or on other platform after this story is completed, as i would love to read whatever masterpiece may be produced next

LP, you ramped up the tention yet again with another cliff hanger. When will we get a breather or some relief?

Prey and a deer 2 electric boogaloo?

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confirmed by Panem on the discord

There a public discord server for this story?

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I don't think this chapter set back the growth per se, but this seems like it would stop the potential for further growth on/from Prey's part. Our opinions could be a debunked criticism come next chapter, but it's certainly fair. Prey, even after breaking and piecing himself back together, was still Prey. Down to the last hateful glare as he dwindled away.

There's still some links left behind, all the ponies/people Prey has touched. I feel like Crimson and Lemon Pink are going to be extremely important. I don't think Crimson can let this go, after all the trauma and struggle he went through in the ISND with Prey, his commanding officer's death, and Prey's now sudden disappearance. Lemon Pink, while not exactly Prey himself, was still given his knowledge and even memories (what with her crying at Rushweed). The other side characters have been afflicted with Prey's experiences in some way or another, too. Usually mentally, especially physically in Lily's case.

Even if Prey is quite literally a bundle of thread that doesn't stop him from managing to tie himself to a lot of people. Lots of loose threads even though all of his are gone.

Also a tangent, I vaguely recall describing Prey as a woolen-strung powder keg that harms anybody too close, I just didn't think it to be literal what with the dark magic explosion.