Aw that was so sweet. God this really is my favorite story.

Haha! It’s done, now to binge the last eight chapters I’ve been saving~

Beautiful! This was one amazing story! And I'm glad I read and re-read all of it! Thank you!

The feelings man, the feelings. It is so great to see this story come to a close like this. After all the pain and self loathing and suffering, thank you

Two questions though, if you don’t mind:
1. Will there be some side story/sequel to this or do want to move on? (Maybe about Zee and Sci-Twi)
2. I just want to know if I understood correctly:

Smiling, Octavia raised her right hand where two beautiful rings lay interlocked into one another, one was silver set with a sapphire, the other was gold set with topaz.

Did Octy marry and then divorced and then married to Adagio, or did she marry twice? Just would like to understand it cause I think I didn’t get it.

The end of an era & it was beautiful... The road was long & brutal with heartbreak, betrayal, & much worse, but they reach the happiness & love that they deserved. I-A-M, it was an honor to have read this from beginning to end, continue to make more masterpieces. Take care & thanks for the rollercoaster ride

9695446
Octavia is married to both, though technically only under Equestrian law.

Beautiful ending indeed :D Ah, but what happened to Gilda's sister and Sci-Twilight??

Are Celestia and Chrysalis hitched too?

This was beautiful. Thanks.

Did you really have to do the "And they lived happily ever after?"
All of the beautiful writing, the lovely romance, the 430,000 words of excellence, and now I can't take it seriously because it has a clichéd final line. Goddammit.

(Seriously though, this was one of the best fics I've read in a good while, and has successfully made me into a Sunset/Gilda shipper. And I don't think I'll ever be able to think of Gilda's last name as anything other than Grimfeather. You have taken over my mind. Congrats.)

Are ya gonna mention anything regarding further Zee and Sci Twi maybe in a spin-off short ?

9695572
I did, because to me, for these two, it isn’t a cliche. These two deserve to live happily ever after and it’s my story, so I declare with no room for interpretation that they do.

It’s not about cliche, it’s about how much those words actually mean to me.

9695528
9695591
I’ve been thinking about doing an ‘inbetween’ story following some of the stuff that happens in the timeskip, but I haven’t decided.
9695560
Yeah, they hitched, lol.

Very nice. Love the added detail with Octavia.

9695594
Fair. I agree it's perfectly appropriate, it just is far too overused for me.

That was friggin' beautiful man.

9695631
9695419
Thank you, both of you, I really appreciate everyone who read this far through this monster fic of mine.
9695442
Thanks so much for coming along for the ride, man, I really enjoyed our talks too.

9695470
I can promise I'll do my best, but outside of the Rules series I'm actually going to be writing an original story, one that I'm already about nine chapters deep into. I've been considering a way to put it up chapter by chapter the way I did with Featherfall so everyone who has enjoyed my style and content can keep reading my work as I put it out.

I’m not crying, it’s just something in my eye!

In all honesty I loved this rollercoaster of a ride and the ending wrapped things up in a nice how although I’m curious about that magical rap battle Adagio went through.

Who put a raincloud in my room? That's bad for the electronics...

Probably the perfect end to one of the best fics on this site.

"of small opals decorating them, Octavia’s"
"of small opals decorating it, Octavia’s"?

"towards the door and she stepped out"
"towards the door as she stepped out"?

"lifted her hands to her cover her mouth"
"lifted her hands to cover her mouth"?

"the crowd as clapping their hands"
"the crowd was clapping their hands"?

"side of the altar between holding a heavy book"
"side of the altar and holding a heavy book"?

"even bothering the fight the tears"
"even bothering to fight the tears"?

"my head of my ass"
"my head out of my ass"?

Very nice. :)
Thank you for writing!

(And did I correctly interpret that Octavia, Vinyl, and Adagio worked out that they could share after all?)
(Oh, though I see that that's already been asked and answered in the comments. :))

edit:
Oh, and just checking: you saw my comment on the previous chapter, right?

While I too would love to know what became of Zee, Twilight and some of the others, I am happy with the ending as it stands.

This has been an absolutely amazing ride from start to finish and is now going into my masterpiece collection. Bravo!

This was a beautiful story. Truly, I'm glad I followed this to the end. Awesome job.

… that being said, I found the ending bittersweet.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy for both Sunset and Gilda. Those two went through a lot in this story, and they definitely earned this happy ending. But I now have questions that I'm just aching to get answered, and they most of them revolve around characters who weren't mentioned in the epilogue, specifically Sci-Twi, Zee, Lightning Dust, and, of course, Rainbow Dash.

How long did it take them to recover from the dark magic?

Did Sci-Twi ever wake up from her coma? Did she ever make peace with her family?

Was Zee forgiven? Did she get a pardon for her involvement in this whole thing? Did she and Gilda ever reconcile?

Did Rainbow Dash ever reconcile with Sunset, Gilda and the rest of her friends? This is the one I had been anxious about for most of the story. I know that a lot of the stuff that happened to Rainbow was because of her own actions, but I can't help but feel bad for her and hope that things eventually worked out for her in the end. This is mostly because I'm a guy who loves stories that involve eventual reconciliation, forgiveness, and happy endings for everyone... well, maybe except the really bad villains.

… I really don't have any specific questions about Lightning Dust, other than is she and Rainbow still a couple?

Is it messed up that I'm more concerned about the well-beings of just about every other character but the main two that are the focus of this story?

In the previous comments, you've made mention of, maybe, doing a side-story that covers events during the six year time-skip. I do hope that you'll do one, so that these blanks can be filled in.

Again, amazing story, I-A-M.

An excellent end to an excellent story.

I had a lot of thoughts I wanted to write down about this story now that it's properly over, but honestly 9695819 covered the bulk of it pretty succinctly.

The TLDR of it is that the epilogue is definitely not what I was hoping it would be, as cute as it is. The lack of closure for any/all of these other characters - especially human Twilight - is a huge, gaping omission. We spent just as much time following Twilight's perspective (if not MORE, in the lead-ups to the final confrontation) than we did with Sunset and Gilda, watching her tragic descent into madness and darkness, ostracizing herself from her family and friends for crazy magic and an even crazier girlfriend......I dunno, call ME crazy, but I think she deserved more of an ending than a couple of sentences of "lol, she's in a coma, might be bedridden forever, tough luck." As much as it's been stated that this is ultimately Sunset and Gilda's story, as the main plot revved up the narrative didn't justify that statement. Twilight became a main character, a primary antagonist/rival/dark mirror to Sunset, and it strikes me as disingenuous to deny her - and us, the readers - the catharsis of her conclusion. Reading her break from her family was as engaging as it was gut-wrenching, and the hope of seeing that reconciliation in the end was a major factor in what kept me reading while at the same time sending a sense of dread shooting through my chest every time I saw a new update and wondered just how bad it might get first. I guess you could say that, again like 9695819 , I got far more invested in Twilight's story than I did Sunset's and Gilda's, because by that time they were falling into a bit of a repetitive cycle of mini-fights, tears, and emotional outbursts about how they'd literally die without each other. Twilight's B-plot kept things fresh when the A-story was stalling out a bit, and I thought she deserved a much better, or at least a more complete ending, than what she got. And as much as I appreciate the idea of exploring that in a side story, saying there might be a side story, someday, maybe, doesn't really alleviate that problem with the core story.

(That said, Twilight's story wasn't perfect either; casting her entire family and sixteen years of unconditional love aside in one scene and then forgiving/allying with her worst, most vile tormentor in another just because she learned she was gay for her was particularly eyebrow-raising. But that's a relatively minor complaint, in hindsight.)

I also have to admit that the whole "elements of harmony abandon their bearers and choose a bunch of new randos instead" thing is probably my #1 least favorite plot point of any anon-a-miss story, and I was really sad to see it happen here. I've always fundamentally disagreed with the idea that the A-A-M fight was so heinously awful as to break their connections to the elements, and while it did feel justified and fitting and narratively appropriate specifically for Loyalty to move from Rainbow to Gilda, considering the additional shit Rainbow in particular pulled from then on compared to Gilda's role in the story and Sunset's life.....it didn't feel justified for anyone else. And when your best alternatives for bearers are the backgroundians and a random OC......it just didn't work for me.

I loved this story a lot, don't get me wrong, but I dunno, it left big sense of lack and unease with me by the time it was done. And thinking about it, I think the thread running through the bulk of my unease is that, for all that it built up to the reveal that Sunset's new Sixth Element was Redemption.....I felt like there wasn't a lot of actual redeeming going on. Her original friends were consistently held at arm's length and were basically non-entities as far as the main plot was concerned. The corrupted Lightning Dust and Rainbow Dash and Twilight and Zee get forehead-flicked aside in the final conflict and given barely a paragraph each of resolution. Storm King/Grogar spat in redemption's face and then got iced. The word 'disingenuous' keeps coming to mind when I think about a lot of these criticisms I've been having, and I think that about sums it up here too; it feels disingenuous to say that redemption is Sunset's element and the underlying theme of the fic. Sunset's personal road was one of redemption, yes, and she brought Gilda a long way on that front too, but it never really seemed to spread out from there, and I think that hurt my overall enjoyment of the story and kept me from really feeling the 'happy' in this happy ending.

---

All of that being said, though.....this might be hard to believe, but I did still really enjoy this fic. It's one of those stories where it's compelling and engaging despite its flaws. The backstory you built around Gilda and her gang family was impressive and thorough, you really sold the central crack-ship even if it got overly weepy and codependent sometimes, and the lore surrounding the artifacts/magic leaking in from Equestria was a great expansion of what we've been seeing from the EQG movies. I really hope to see that side story someday exploring at the very least human Twilight's resolution, and while I still think it would have been better placed as part of this one, I think I will ultimately look on this story far more favorably if that closure does come someday.

Keep writing, good sir.
--CG

Fantastic finale for a fantastic story. Really couldn't have ended any better. So glad that i had the opportunity to follow this through the whole journey.

9695641
I'm actually gonna try to read the Rules series. I know one is already done, but I hope to try & catch up, but no promises. Phenomenal job, again on this masterpiece, I-A-M

I wonder if Sunset has someone or something to help her avoid DVT since she is wheelchair-bound, because I don't think it was ever mentioned.

9696855
She has a workout regimen, plus after the main story ends she gets physical therapy which the epilogue mentions.

9696913
Ah, I must've missed that then

9695819
I agree with most of what you said.I do wonder what happen tot he others and what they went thru?

thou with Sci Twi, I'm assuming that what affected and destroyed her the most was. When The Storm King revealed how he tricked and used her.
Everything she did and done, including breaking things off with her family.
Mind controlling two of her would be friends and nearly committing murder, all in the end for nothing but a big lie.

THAT THAT what broke her the Dark magic damage was a added effect.

On Sunny i can get her turning around to worship Twilight, she loved Twilight always wanted to hold eh and even support her, but due to her mother's iron fist, control and mental and emotional damage she did to her.
she was helpless and maybe tried to deny her feelings for Twilight, till it was taken out by Twilight who realized Sunny Was a big as victim as she was.

They did mention her mental state wasn't because of dark magic but the abuse her mother put her thru, she slightly mentally unstable.
She was LLLLOOOOSSSSSIIINNNNGGGG IIIIITTTT Till Twilight gave her a anchor to hold on to.

And so ends another brilliant story. May many more come to brighten this grim world.

And They Lived Happily, Forever After

Happy
Happy
Happy...

-ugly cries-
It was so beautiful, I loved it

9700785
Play the long game any harder and is have to fix your name to be I-A-M-thestormkingIRL

9702974
I can't list any off of the top of my head, but having had more time to think over this a bit, I think I've figured out most of what threw me off, and it boils down to pacing.

The first chapter, Sunset and Gilda know and are interacting regularly with eachother for ~1.5 weeks. Now, in some cases this is more than enough time for a close relationship to start, but here, we go from Sunset and Gilda meeting eachother behind the school marking the start of their association with Gilda saying she believes Sunset's innocence, then we Skip a whole week. All of a sudden they're best friends playing hookie in Gilda's usual playground haunt, where their relationship has apparently deepened enough where Gilda doesn't knee-jerk and turn on Sunset when she stops her ripping Score an entirely superfluous new orifice. Further, when she accidentally hits one of Sunset's sore spots she gets Very emotional when Sunset turns away, where before, given previous setup of her personality she appeared mostly ambivalent to even the idea of genuine friendships. After a week of mutual "Hanging Out", if she cared at all I would have expected her to maybe piss about for a bit, get angry at herself for being an idiot, then chase after Sunset and apologize in the most standoffish, tough-girl way she could manage while still trying to appear genuine when she caught up to her.

There's a Lot of character development that's needed to bridge the gap between the expected reaction and what actually happened. It's not impossible, but it requires a certain level of shared experience to develop that level of emotional attachment when you're used to being alone and are alright with it like Gilda was at the start. Sunset's reaction I can understand having that level attachment after such a short time. She'd recently been through an emotional upheaval no-thanks to the Anon-A-Miss Fiasco, wouldn't be the most emotionally stable, and Gilda would quickly become an anchor to her, but Gilda's showing a bit too strong an attachment without Something, not necessarily profound, but definitely unique and deeply personal having happened between them as a mutually shared experience during the week we don't get to see.

Next we skip another four days where Gilda invites Sunset to her apartment to weather out the blizzard. That wouldn't be unexpected by itself if they'd developed a level of friendship of "Mutual hanging out for a week and a half", maybe even getting to a grudging "Best Friend" territory, but right away in the scene they're practically flirting with each other to such a degree where at least on Sunset's part I can't believe it's accidental, and Gilda is more flustered by it than in total denial, which is another step up from where I would expect them to be after four days even at the level where they were at in the previous scene.

Again, what happened to shift the dynamics of their relationship to that point? It's not impossible, but while the previous scene I would have expected something unique and personal to have happened, here I have to think something somewhat intimate transpired between them in the past four days. Given that before this scene Gilda didn't know that her and Sunset's home situations were more similar than she originally thought, coupled with bonding over old slasher films, if you took out some of the more intimate bits that don't make sense without knowing the character development behind them (that we don't get to see) the scene in the park would have made more sense after this one with only a bit of tweaking.

"OOokay! I believe we have enough corn to last us the winter and if my judgment is right some of them are sweet."

Crunch "aAah, Das good corn."

Holy cow, that was amazing. Bloody loved the story. Love the characters, love the plot, love the relationships, love the way characters were brutalized, love the growth, love evil, absolutely terrifying Twilight, and love the human world part of the setting. I do have a few nitpicks though.

The first is a few characters kind of got the shaft in terms of showing up. In particular, Helden was barely around, I almost think he was around for about as much as Cinch was. Of the mane five, Fluttershy kind of faded after sharing a smoke with Sunset as well. Vinyl and Penny felt like they got a lot less than the others as well.

The second was that Rainbow was too dumb. There’s making mistakes and then there’s whatever she did. Maybe, just maybe, the one person who knows way more than her about literally everything going on, that’s been dealing with this situation for way longer than her, and understands not only magic, but the people involved and manipulation, might just be right. But nope, some new friends she’s seen like twice, one of which genuinely tried to kill Gilda and Sunset, totally know better and are much more trustworthy.

The last one is that the Equestria in this story is just plain weird. There’s the whole template thing at the start (with a quick hop over to preserve the unicorn template not even being brought up). Later on, at no point do they consider hopping through the portal for a quick magic recharge or to make equipment or anything. And once Sunset learned they were facing a bloody demon, why didn’t they get more gear from Equestria? Gilda got the spear and and arm, but that level of threat seems to call for more gear. The big thing however, is how Equestria is compared to the human world. Sunset talks about Equestria as though it doesn’t have any of the problems of the human world, yet she grew up in a competitive, low class orphanage in Canterlot. In the capital city, there was a bad part of town where Sunset grew up distrustful and paranoid. Twilight’s dealings with the other nations and even the TV-Y depiction in the show don’t show anything resembling Equestria in general running on the rules/method/whatever of Harmony. Towards the end it felt preachy for me whenever Equestria was brought up, especially since that Equestria was never shown.

Still, overall loved the story and binged it in 3 days.

9703251
I’d recommend giving it another shot. The relationship does start off fast and keeps going fast early on, but it does settle down and in general, all the character development takes a much more natural pace. Plus, there’s some explanation down the line why it took off as fast as it did.

Holy shit.

Pardon my language, but that was the first thing that came to mind after finishing the story, reading through the reviews for this chapter, and plopping myself here in the review box. You weren't kidding when you said it was an epic, I'll give you that. And what an epic it was...

It was magnificent. I kind of ghost the fandom at times, but I've read my fair share of Anon-A-Miss stories, and this one, by far, is one of the most unique I've ever read. The way everything was presented, from the emotions of the characters to what they did and how their actions caused consequences was phenomenal. I would have binged this in one sitting if I hadn't originally started reading some time around... what was it? Early/Late afternoon?

The way you portrayed Sunset and Gilda and the struggles they went through was very eye-opening for me. They aren't perfect angels - on the contrary, both of them have done their fair share of "evil" - but despite that, they were very compelling protagonists, and they were fleshed out magnificently. Their relationship did happen a little fast, but that was addressed in-story, and with the sheer amount of fallout happening at the time their relationship started, it makes sense that things would go so fast.

The way magic was detailed here was something I really like! I'm not exactly a fantasy buff, but when it comes to magic systems and the intricacies of how it works in different worlds, I like seeing how all of that unfolds. I liked how the Elements of Harmony eventually swapped/chose new bearers, and I'm interested in how Sunset's element turned out to be Redemption. And it might have been meant as just some background padding, but I wonder how all of their fights with rogue magical users have been going by the time of the epilog. And I also wonder if the "secret magic school" every truly took off.

And speaking of magic, the conflict Sunset had about the portal, as well as the fundamental differences that the magical fields of the world have (i.e. one couldn't do jack shit until it was jumpstarted, and how the other one just lives with it) was pretty intriguing. I have to admit that at first I wondered why she didn't just go through the portal at first, but by now I understand her reasoning. And the fact that there seem to be defined forms of magic and all is interesting. Not gonna lie, I hardly consider runes most tomes when it comes to fantasy settings. My mind jumps to incantations and memorized stuff, lol.

Although, like some other reviews have pointed out, there are other characters who don't seem to have gotten closure. Personally, I'm not sure they need closure. It isn't as if they're going off scot-free, those that are coherent probably have more than enough guilt to last ten lifetimes. And they... kind of did their work. They're like the Rainbooms, in the sense that after the reconciliation/forgiveness was attained, they mostly faded into the background because they weren't needed from then on. And unlike the Rainbooms, their closure came right when the story ended, so there wasn't anything they could contribute to anything, They aren't just plot devices, but they don't have much to do after their arcs came to a close.

All in all, I really liked the story, and as far as I'm concerned, it ended spectacularly!

One hell of a ride, I was hoping this chapter would be for a quick 'venture into pony-land, but I can't bring myself to complain.
Thanks for all the fish!

9748176

Ah, okay, sorry I misunderstood.

9791813
🤔
That's definitely possible.

To the right of the altar was Adagio Dazzle, who was waiting for both her wife and Rarity to join her, while to the left of the altar was Aria Blaze, looking handsome in her fitted tuxedo, Applejack in her Sunday best, and Bar Hop in a pure white suit, his dark skin and darker tattoos standing out in contrast.
-Wait a minute...
To the right of the altar was Adagio Dazzle, who was waiting for both her wife and Rarity to join her, while to the left of the altar was Aria Blaze, looking handsome in her fitted tuxedo, Applejack in her Sunday best, and Bar Hop in a pure white suit, his dark skin and darker tattoos standing out in contrast.
-What....
To the right of the altar was Adagio Dazzle, who was waiting for both her Wife and Rarity to join her, while to the left of the altar was Aria Blaze, looking handsome in her fitted tuxedo, Applejack in her Sunday best, and Bar Hop in a pure white suit, his dark skin and darker tattoos standing out in contrast.
-THE FUCK!?!? EXPLAINATION REQUIRED. MIND FUCK HAS REACHED CRITICAL LEVELS! ASHBCIAUBDYIAYBDUIYAS-*cliche flatline noise*
(but seriously, this epilogue is brilliant (which is high praise in my opinion, because i just don't like epilogues....eh maybe it's just because of the epilogue trilogy of Star Wars), but this has to be a typo, because unless there is a weird polyamory between Octavia, Vinyl, and Adagio, i sincerely doubt wife could apply. (Unless you were talking about Vinyl waiting for Octavia, which solves my brain shorting out.))

9793478
There is in fact a polyamory between Vinyl, Adagio, and Octavia, you didn't read that wrong. Octavia, Vinyl, and Adagio, like Gilda and Sunset, were/are being married until Equestrian law which permits plural marriages.

9793483
Hmmm, i see. Welp, if this story ever gets something like Sweet Apple Anthology (I would highly suggest reading the trilogy it's part of, great read, and brings to light some topics people find uncomfortable (Same-sex cousins shamelessly falling for one another) and deals with organized crime (like Mafia levels of organized crime).
(If you have read it then that's ok too. Here's the link to the first story regardless: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/68002/tangled-roots)

9791770
Meaning, when Aria ripped into Cadence at the gym.

I have finally finished the story. I've been reading it for awhile now; gradual breaks in between. Oh, and I loved it. So much happened within these chapters, and I enjoyed it all.

I know I'm awfully late, but thank you for this adventurous soft romantic story.

<3

Hm, and what a honor! I'm your 400th like.

9839587
I’m always happy to hear that someone enjoyed my stories. Hopefully you enjoy my other content too. Featherfall is definitely my labor of love and it took me the better part of a year to write.

Ok very, very late on this but i must ask, what exactly happened to Zee, RD, Blitz, and Sci-Twi? Like are they rotting in an Equestrian dungeon? Did Twi get her plug pulled? Did Zee's spell run out of juice;Necromancy or not, spells need energy, and it eventually has to run out right? I know it's technically over, but i'm still kinda wondering what happened to them, i mean you did dedicate a lot of words to those four, i just figured you might have tied up any loose ends the story had left, my bad. Aand now i've gone off on a tangent, wonderful.