The Back Cover
Some stories never end…
Cinder stood atop a pillar of darkness surrounded by starlight. The many Tower Roses in her mane twisted and turned with the flow of the story. The visual effect was entirely redundant, for inside, she sensed far more than those Roses could ever tell her or anyone else. Here, in this moment, she was home—she was what she was meant to be.
“I represent the cycle,” she said to no one in particular, keeping her eyes closed. “I am eternity through repetition. Stories never die if they keep being told.”
A cosmic piano wire ripped across the heavens, tearing universes apart, shaking the stars above like a ripple. In distant realms enemies roared, fighting with that which was beyond comprehension.
“Go back, forward, read, reread, re-live.” A smirk appeared on Cinder’s face. “Have your cake and eat it too: freedom, but also excitement. A loophole. One that can never be complete. To complete is to end, but there is no end.”
The rips in the sky began to devour the stars, tearing them apart one by one.
“It is time for me to go back in more ways than one. And to be completely full of seeming cryptic nonsense,” she let out a bitter laugh. “Because that is what I have to be. No manifestation can be anything else.” She opened her eyes, brilliant irises of fire watching the stars go out. “I wish for the old days when I didn’t know everything and could be me. But I can—and I will. I will return to those days… and then I will return here, and there, and here, and there… the antithesis of the Gunslinger.”
The skies went dark, but her Roses and her eyes still shone brightly. “But it was never a story that could be told in full. The beginning, the end… they exist. But the middle, the glorious, wondrous middle… there lies the meat, the freedom. And also… the Prophet. The Prophet who wishes to find the Back Cover that doesn’t exist so he can rest. But he sees now that he can rest. The story will happen with or without him, with or without an audience.” She placed a hoof to her chest. “Will he let it go…?”
There was a flurry of rose petals…
...and Cinder sat up in bed. “What in the…?” Already, she could feel the dream fading away from her—though it was most definitely not just a dream. She had been in there, talking, trying to say… something. But Cinder got the feeling she wasn't supposed to be her own audience. That…
I was standing right in front of her, unblinking.
Cinder pointed a hoof. “You’re not supposed to do that.”
“This is a special occasion,” I said, folding my lavender wings upon my back.
“What kind of special occasion?”
“I have no idea.”
Cinder couldn’t help but smile. “Well, I have no idea either. Uh… I have no idea why I said any of that either. Who are you?”
“Twilence,” I introduced myself. “You probably read about me in the files somewhere and then were prevented from thinking too hard about that. Just like I knew I couldn’t talk to you. Until… well, now.”
“What’s happening now?”
“Again, no idea.”
Cinder rolled her eyes and got out of her bed, stretching her legs. “Is this normal for you?”
“It happens quite often, I’m afraid.” I sighed sadly. “And depending on how things go, the frequency of it happening to you may increase monumentally or fall off to just about nothing.”
Cinder tapped her hoof. “Why?”
I pointed at the Rose in her mane.
She nodded in understanding. “It’s part of me.”
“You learn quickly.”
“I’m just relearning. I… I’ll always be relearning, won’t I?”
“I… don’t know.” I frowned, tilting my head. “So much about you is kept from me.”
“Not surprising.”
“But it makes it difficult to have a conversation, you have to admit.”
“We could just talk about, I don’t know, the weather? Our friends? What we had for lunch last week?”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at this. “But those happen when the camera is off.”
“And it’s going to be off for a long time,” Cinder said matter-of-factly.
“Is it?” I frowned. “And for which of us?”
Cinder tapped her hoof on the ground. “Look, I just make guesses.”
“You look into yourself.”
“Yeah, I’d figured that out at this point.” Cinder trotted over to the edge of her room, looking at a picture of home on the wall with her and Xenium smiling. “Finding out that I’m some kind of fundamental force of ka honestly isn’t anywhere near as interesting as… well, the other reason. I’m this Rose, yeah, sure, but I’m also a replacer… and a filly.”
“There are two reasons for most everything,” I admitted. “I am the Muse of Ka… but I am also a Twilight Sparkle gifted with a relic from an ancient war. And you…”
“I am Cinder,” Cinder said with a smile. “And I’m going to figure out what that means even if it takes me multiple eternities!”
“Won’t that mean you’re always doing it?”
“Yep!” She beamed at me. “It’s really fun! ...Well, actually, 'fun' is shallow… It’s fulfilling. The power to discover Destiny…”
“I wonder if you obfuscate yourself on purpose, just so you can have this joy.”
“Maybe I’ll find out!” Cinder giggled. “Or maybe I’ll help someone else find out. The others are just as important. Even if… well, even if all the stories we’re involved in are a tangled mess of burning bridges.” Her irises flashed with fire for a moment.
I nodded. “You have a long way to go. But… I think you have further to go than I do. I will do my best to keep out of your way, let you do… whatever, wherever.”
Cinder tilted her head. “And we’ll go out to explore the deep multiverse, away from all of you. ...But that’s not really what this is about.”
I patted her on the head. “Remember, two reasons. Reason one: yes that is exactly what this is about. Reason two: absolutely not, this is about… looking for the back of the book. A back that doesn’t exist.”
“What if the book is round?” Cinder asked.
“Don’t be silly,” I said with a chuckle. “Every book has a back, at least every book that’s a story.”
“Oh, right, duh.” Cinder scratched the back of her head. “I suppose you would know that, huh?”
For some reason, that comment of hers stuck with me. Always in the back of my head. Making me wonder…
Were endings just lies? Or…
…
~~~
“You’re looking wistful today,” Celia said to Cinder as she sat down in her Captain’s chair.
“I just had a very strange conversation with a purple alicorn with three eyes,” Cinder deadpanned, looking out at the stars on Swip’s main screen.
Celia whistled. “I was wondering when she was going to pay you a visit.”
“The entire thing was rather impromptu and I don’t think either of us understood anything we were saying.” Cinder rubbed the back of her head. “But it just… made me feel like we were on the verge of something important happening.”
“...We don’t leave for the deep multiverse for a week.”
“I don’t think it’s us,” Cinder said. “We’ll go out, have adventures, and who knows? Pixei has a million plot threads all around her, I still have myself to uncover, you have those politics to get back to… it’s all too much to keep track of and remember all at once! And everything changes as we move onward and… and then it doesn’t. Because there’s always something over the next hill.”
Celia blinked. “You lost me.”
Cinder let out a chuckle. “I lost myself.”
With a roll of her eyes, Celia levitated Cinder over and pulled her into a hug.
“This will never end,” Cinder said, smiling warmly.
“It will… someday.” Celia smirked. “All good things do.”
“But the best of them start anew.”
“Do they? Repetition can be meaningless.”
“Or it can be the most grounding, satisfying thing in the world.”
The two of them embraced in silence on the bridge. The bridge of a dolphin-shaped ship currently occupied by watching an inkling and a flat creature sing a song battle at each other while a child clapped her hands and giggled. In the corner a unicorn of shadow watched—smiling despite herself—and the newcomer was waiting for a moment to jump in and break out her own songs.
Further out, there were hundreds upon hundreds of Sweeties moving in and out of the League, most with smiles—a few with laughs. On the highest floor, a unicorn with an artificial horn helped her daughter get to know some of the Sweeties a little better.
Beyond this, there was a city—a masterful, beautiful city that would grow and grow until it could grow no longer. A shadowy man in a top hat adjusted his hat and mayoral sash and went out to address the people, arriving to a cheering crowd.
Below the great city, there was a planet covered in ponies. On this planet, there was a castle of friendship, some of the first dimensional gates ever made, a church, and a single lunar alicorn who watched over her universe.
And the universe was but one amid a chain of universes with ponies, and these were but a small minority in the local area with neighbors of eldritch monstrosities, door-obsessed archeologists, democracy fanatics, an association of purple alicorns, and so many more. Dwarfed, they all were, by a collection of random heroes, a tribe of star-haters… and of course the distant artist, whose days numbered.
All contained within a sphere of similar, but not too similar, realms, attached to two other spheres with a brilliant firmament of universe polymers left behind from a time abyss so deep it made eldritch abominations look like mayflies. In the center of it all stood the Tower—but, in a way, all of it also stood within the Tower.
It held the multiverse as if in a white hoof, intertwined with every piece, connected everywhere, connected nowhere, folding in on itself…
And yet, finite. Limited. It was possible to render the entire multiverse as a single mote and to shrink… finding that the mote itself was dotted everywhere around, reflecting, copied endlessly, forever, identical in each way. They are all the same… and yet they are different.
The motes are particles, the particles form atoms, atoms molecules. And the molecules constitute into life, life that took the form of a blade of grass that inexplicably was wafting past Cinder’s eye right this very moment; an embrace with her Captain.
Finite.
Yet endless.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- GMBlackjack · 99k words · 168 7 · 2.7k views
- GMBlackjack · 69k words · 62 4 · 1k views
- GMBlackjack · 2.1m words · 565 47 · 15k views
- GMBlackjack · 105k words · 106 5 · 3k views
- GMBlackjack · 1.4k words · 61 3 · 1.3k views
- GMBlackjack · 19k words · 72 3 · 2.4k views
- GMBlackjack · 83k words · 116 8 · 3.3k views
- GMBlackjack · 4.6k words · 56 1 · 1.2k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.169 seconds
Total duration
937 users online
1,937,694 hits today, 2,591,549 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.®
Plot twist: The League of Sweetie Belles is actually written on a Rolodex.
Thank you for proving that, with time, effort, and incredible stores of creativity, one can in fact cross over everything. Here's to whatever you make next. And if you do revisit Cinder and company, I certainly won't complain.
The book they ends with only blank pages
I can accept this ! this was pretty good !
the only thing I can say is : thank you!
Thank you for writing these Stories that have been a huge part of my Life !!
So just for clarification; this story will never be marked as Complete, but for now it should be considered Complete with the option of continuing out further in the future?
Just double checking because there are several things I wait on until a story finishes up and I want to give full honors here if it technically is. And so other more literally minded people can also be sure and get their closure.
Thanks for the fun ride for all of this time!
10674234
Yes, you have it right. It's effectively "complete" but could randomly get another episode or chapter some time in the deep deep deep future.
-GM, master of comps.
It's not the end of a story. It's the end of a chapter.
And "storyteller" is a silly term anyway. Stories tell us, not the other way round. :)
A nested multiverse it seems.
10674354
It was hinted at a few times that the multiverse folded in on itself, but I realized I'd never gone and done what the Dark Tower books did and fully describe how each atom contains universes... So I did that here.
-GM, master of verses.
Is LSB finished?
Well yes, but actually no.
10674583
Its a Schrödinger's cat. Its a story that is both finished and unfinished depending on the author whims. They only have to collapse the wavefunction to see if the story is alive or dead.
I started reading this series a bit over a year ago, shortly after I got back into MLP fanfiction.
It's been short, but this series was a constant through it all, so it's going to be weird being in a reality without it...
Thank you for writing one of my favourite stories I've read, and introducing me to even more of my favourite stories!!! This multiverse will not soon be forgotten.
As of making this comment I have like 38 chapters left to read. My goodness I got a lot of reading to do
This is the story that made me want to make an account on this site, ten years after the start of the show, in order to give a well-deserved like and comment. Congratulations on the masterpiece, even if it isn't technically finished: you've made a story that lives and bleeds, but never has to die.
10884068
Ah, I see. Thanks for the info! Good thing I just started Songs of the Spheres. And hey! Thanks for writing these! Some of the best multiverse fiction I've read.
Honestly im hoping for a world where the chaos gods from 40k rule equestria. That would be a good one
I'm watching EoJ Case2-7 and wandering. How would LoS Sweetie belles will react to the Case?
🎶 the rest is still unwritten. 🎶
Well, I guess that's it then. For now...
You touched on it already in the A/N in the previous chapter but yeah, stories of this nature tend to not really have a defined end and have to be wound down at some point to something like an end or eventually just fade and fizzle out. This was an interesting way to "end" things though and a good note to leave off on. I understand why it's sitting there as "incomplete" and it makes sense logically and philosophically.
This was a great read and a fun series of crossovers, a fair number of which I've already read/seen*, and even more that I haven't. I'll be looking into a few of those (that Stargate one is enticing). A fortunate happenstance for me is that all the multi-chapter arcs except for one were stories that I had already read before and really enjoyed, so having big arcs crossing into them again was a treat.
Also one thing that pleasantly went against my expectations is how some of the characters from stories became recurring characters used in the multiverse shenanigans. This story was thought-provoking at times, too. Some situations the characters got into were pretty emotionally heavy and also the multiverse is a massive place and it just kinda makes you think about how already massive our barely-explored universe is and what might be out there...
This was a great read and I'm glad I finally got to it. Now I'm off to make my way through somewhere else in the wide multiverse. I look forward to whatever might pop up in the future.
*FYI: Motion of the Stars, Sunshine and Fire, Enchanted Library, XCOM: Ranger, CRISIS: Equestria, Moonstuck, Empty Horizons, Friendship is Optimal, Immortal Game, Simply Rarity, Siren Song, Arrow 18: Lone Ranger, Three Hundred and Fifty, FoE: Pink Eyes, Argol/ForgaLorga, The Sweetie Belle Chronicles, Sunset's Isekai, probably also one or two of the ones that made brief appearances but weren't the main focus
11706489
Glad you enjoyed, and congratulations on making it through this monster.
Perhaps one day I shall see you again elsewhere... until then.
-GM, master of Cinder Belle.