Unwelcome
It was the little details which could become lost.
International reactions? There would soon be debates in every hall of power and with Mazein's democracy, that meant just about every last minotaur's home. Ultimately, the oldest allies Equestria had would decide to stand by their friend, but in that special way which suggested said friend might have overlooked something and therefore someone of sense had better be keeping an eye open. Shortly thereafter, Protocera's current President officially advised a wait-and-see approach, which naturally led into the fourth impeachment attempt of her term. Eeyorus reviewed disaster relief policies again. The hundred city-state kraals of Pundamilia Makazi failed to reach any degree of true consensus, which was the most natural outcome for a conference of zebras. Most of those who resided within the Burning Lands paid the same amount of attention to pony events as ever: namely, nothing concerned the dragons unless it seemed to directly threaten them and since the majority had decided nothing could be a threat to a dragon, those very few who'd actually bothered with both acquiring foreign newspapers (often moons behind the publication date) and learning how to read curled up atop their hoards and went back to sleep. And Prance vowed to look down upon everything Equestrian forever, which meant little more than that Prance still existed.
Every nation had their own way of dealing with the news, at least for those who were capable of hearing it: those parts of the world which remained unexplored had a certain difficulty in starting newspaper subscriptions. But Yakyakistan eventually assembled an opinion, Saddle Arabia had a few thoughts on the matter, various Diamond Dog warrens scratched their heads in confusion (or to get rid of ticks) while the ruler of a known changeling hive briefly shuddered (and immediately denied it) at the thought of potentially being revealed with a touch... countries myriad and yet to be named all tried to find some way of dealing with the latest capability of a nation which, in the opinion of the majority, already had too many of them.
But much of that would be recorded within articles (if not always accurately), and it didn't truly reflect everything which was going on. Because the world was more than governments and the beliefs of the powerful, even if those in charge frequently did their best to forget about that. Ultimately, the world was comprised of people.
People are made out of stories.
Every life is its own tale. A freshly-printed cover turns to the first blank page with the breath of a newborn's cry, while a well-worn spine and yellowed pages are filed within the library of the shadowlands at the end of a very long day. Spot a sapient moving down the street, and you've just met a narrator. They all move through the heart of their own story, personally relating events as they interpret the characters around them (not always well), and the most egotistical never manage to realize that anyone else might have a story at all.
Some of those characters interact. Crossovers happen on every corner. Tropes intermesh, plotlines meet, things too strange for fiction remain within the rougher canon of reality, and when something truly unique occurs...
There was a new story being told in Canterlot, a tale no one had ever believed possible. The formal announcement of its existence rippled pages around the world, and some of those stories were changed.
Take down selected volumes from the shelves of the living. Turn the pages...
The first thing the mare does when she reaches her desk, even before loading the ink into the typewriter and making sure the push-pedals which assemble letters from a group of raised shapes are well-greased (something she always does, as it's not as if she can trust anypony else for it), is to read the waiting police blotter. It disappoints her, and she had been counting on that nightly tally of Canterlot activity for support.
She was so careful in the composition of the previous articles. The mare feels she understands the steam engine of fear: no matter what happens, you just keep loading in fuel. There's no reason to keep an eye on the pressure gauge, at least when it comes to the usual purpose. Every choice for her original words was designed to push the boiler to the maximum, because explosions can always be blamed on someone else and she then gets to write columns about fallout and debris.
But the report does not contain what she had been expecting, at least not for the capital. (It'll take time to receive matching public documents from the other settled zones.) Any suicides could so easily be blamed on the centaur, and on this most crucial of nights -- nothing.
Not that it does more than briefly slow her down. There are more nights to come, courtesy of the elder who should have become nothing more than a living gear turning the sky centuries ago -- along with the younger, whom she usually manages to imply is nothing more than Nightmare in a slightly-altered form, while wondering when everypony else will catch on.
The mare often suggests that anypony who can't see things as she presents them is brainwashed, nothing more than a sheep (she frequently insults sheep, usually by comparison) of no education or independent thought, being led towards a slaughter which will surely take place any day now, and the existence of a centaur seems to have made that day somewhat more immediate.
The mare has declared that ponies need to think for themselves, and believes the only way anypony can prove they're thinking for themselves is to mindlessly agree with everything she says.
No suicides. But she has events to relate for her readers, especially since she already knows how they'll want to see them. So she personally greases the pedal gears, checks the levers, loads the ink, and stomps out a few test sentences before formally starting because she's a professional.
She chooses her words carefully and in doing so, cuts through time. Entire minutes are discarded: there's no reason for anypony to know they existed. She will tell them a story: something they'll accept as reality because history is supposedly written by the winners, but the important part is that it's read about by those who weren't there. Every word is fuel for the boiler, designed to increase the pressure of fear because given enough time, there has to be an explosion. Bodies to be laid at the forehooves of the centaur, stacked up until nopony can perceive any kind of future which does not have them among the dead...
...she stops. Her horn ignites, opens a drawer while the other ponies who work in that part of the building carefully ignore her actions: they have their own distortions to create and in any case, it's not a good idea to make her focus on what she's actually in the middle of doing. The mare makes enemies easily, frequently with pleasure and in the case of what she's doing right now, it would be the only part of her life where she didn't discriminate.
The bottle floats out. And the mare feels that its contents increase her creativity: the lubrication which makes the words flow that much more smoothly. Sometimes she drinks when she's done writing, in order to be more creative later. Or before she goes into a press conference where she's supposed to be introduced to a monster, and needs to find ways of making that small part of the world which thinks properly understand why that should not be.
Sometimes she drinks before she goes to sleep. Or drinks until she passes out, which is just as good.
There used to be a tiny part of her which wouldn't allow sleep. That which says she's writing words designed to encourage fear, to make ponies feel as if there's no way out other than attacking that which they're afraid of, or...
...nopony managed to commit suicide in Canterlot yesterday.
In spite of the centaur.
(The monster. It's a monster. Nopony can ever be allowed to see the word as meaning anything else.)
In spite of what she wrote.
Because those first articles were, on some level, meant to...
She used to have thoughts like that. But now she has a bottle.
The bottle is better.
Eight return to Ponyville deep under Moon. Seven of them are coming home.
It's that part of the night which exists within its own permanent awkwardness: so late that it's on the verge of becoming too early. And they are tired and worn down from their adventure, they need rest and they have been fully away from all sapient contact for some time, excluding the ones who were trying to kill them. They know nothing of what has transpired, and this is not quite the time to tell them.
The group separates almost immediately. They had spent days operating as a unit, albeit one which had an assigned temporary recruit and that made things awkward for a while. (The designer and baker... well, they're talking to the performer now, more or less: for the designer, each sentence still gives off the impression of having been assembled from knives, and it took the entire mission to dull that down to something more suitable for smearing butter.) But at the core, the group is composed of very different ponies, along with someone who isn't a pony at all and silently dreads the day when he might once again stop thinking as one. They are individuals, and now that they don't have to be Bearers for a little while, they can hear their lives calling.
So they go to their own homes. (Two limp somewhat along the way, while one trots because her left wing is still sprained.) They move through a town which is largely asleep, and those few residents who see them are merely glad that they've returned home. Nopony among those few greeters wants to disturb them, not yet -- and three of the ponies who see them are under the impression that the palace has provided a full briefing already, so there's nothing to say. Besides, a town some distance to the west of the Lunar Courtyard has yet to learn of what had happened there, those commuters who work for the capital's newspapers won't be returning home for hours, the first editions may beat them back and -- their heroines (plus one hero, and a guest who has yet to be truly forgiven) are tired.
The weather coordinator is the only one to notice anything unusual: she collects her tortoise from the petsitter (and, about ten minutes after the fact, briefly wonders whether she should have apologized for knocking on the bedroom window so loudly. Pushing it open from the outside doesn't strike her as having crossed a line), gets some altitude while he's riding in the insulated saddlebag, and quickly reaches her home. But she wants to put some maintenance in before going to bed, because the long-term existence of any vapor construct requires the presence of pegasi: too long without tapping into the magic of residents and visitors, and...
She didn't expect the mission to go on anywhere near that long, didn't get a housesitter, and so making sure her interior decorating isn't on the verge of becoming rather more exterior is important. So she looks around from the outside, seeing what has to be shored up first, and that lets her spot the snowstorm which engulfs the capital. And she knows that's unusual, but she doesn't treat it as important. There's probably a surprise festival or something. Maybe one of the stores bribed the capital's team and put together some kind of big event, or a noble is hosting something with a winter theme... it doesn't matter because if it was important, the palace would have told them already. (The fact that they've been out of contact doesn't really register, not when compared to the call of her bed -- not to mention the need to prevent that bed from relocating itself.) So she shrugs, adjusts a few clouds into greater density around her fountains, and makes a vow to check the headlines in the morning.
Of course, she has absolutely no intention of keeping that vow. It's too soon after the mission for any of the stories to be about her -- okay, fine: them. Plus her weather team doesn't know she's back yet, and the worst way to tell them would be by appearing before she'd finished sleeping through noon --
-- but as it turns out, the news comes to her.
In another part of town, the librarian and her little brother are heading towards their wounded home. The performer is trailing some distance behind, largely because the caravan had to be parked somewhere, the vast majority of the town can be drastically understated as being something other than fond of her, and there was a faint hope that somewhat less damage might be done if she left her residence sitting on an alicorn's property. There had been -- call it a 'natural reaction' -- when she'd once again crossed the border, and if the others hadn't quickly moved towards the sounds of justified anger...
She's trailing some distance behind -- but not too far back. Just in case.
The theory turns out to be partially correct: the caravan is intact, as none of the vegetables which were kicked into its sides managed to penetrate the wood. (However, there's a fresh lightning scorch near the hitch, and one of the wheel spokes is fractured.) And the librarian heads towards her own door, softly asking her sibling if he can stay awake long enough to send one scroll now that the effect which prevented all communication is starting to wear off, just something which tells the palace that the mission was successful and they're home. And he thinks he's up to it, but she feels he's hardly the best judge and so she's already second-guessing herself on that when she hears the caravan's door begin to open.
It delays everything for a few minutes. The performer cannot sleep in there: the purchased pegasus techniques which insulate the interior were already losing power when she arrived, it's a cold night and the caravan is leaking. She can come inside. There's a guest bed --
-- the performer has overstayed her welcome already, any amount of time when she's in this town is an overstay and she has to leave, there's blankets in the caravan and --
-- there's blankets on the guest bed, along with a warming pan. Also, there's a dragon. Add a dragon's presence to that of a warming pan and waiting times for heat are cut down significantly. Plus the librarian just saw that wheel spoke, the performer should replace that under Sun and certainly shouldn't risk practicing more advanced, hard-won, and deeply-loathed wheelwright skills on the road at night. She has to stay...
The performer was going to sleep! In the caravan! That's all! The road would have waited --
-- no. Because the librarian knows the performer a little better now, understands the pressure which comes from within and without. If the unicorn gets into the caravan, then the caravan will be rolling at the instant its owner decides nopony is left awake to hear it move. It's not just a matter of wanderlust, not after so much of the mission was spent traveling through a strange land, generally with the pursuit about sixty body lengths back. It's... because the performer knows how the town's residents feel about her. But that's not the librarian. And most of what they talked about during the mission was the mission, that one theory from the last letter still needs some face-to-face discussion, it's just one night and...
...stay. Please.
...
...all right. For one night. Plus a breakfast. That's it.
And that was all it was meant to be (although the librarian was going to try for a full extra day in the morning). But morning is when the news arrives. The request. And the performer's wanderlust is frustrated, but she's still on probation for everything which happened with the Amulet (when it easily could have been so much worse), she has to do what the palace asks and magically speaking, the problem is an interesting one. So she stays. Just to work on the problem.
In time, it will take her somewhere she never wanted to be.
Silver eyes watch the centaur sleep.
It's been a remarkably steady sleep. Given what she's seen of the sleeping habits for the cell's occupant, there's an argument to be made that it's unnaturally steady.
Unless, of course, you happen to work on the Lunar shift and have a better understanding than most for what your Princess is capable of.
Night after night, she's watched the centaur sleep, and it's told her what's natural. For starters, the girl sleeps on the floor: after that first waking, the bed was never used. All four legs fold until belly and barrel are completely down, the upper torso seems to lock into position, and both arms fold and tuck under the breasts. (The little pegasus has been to Mazein with her Princess, met ageládas before that. Breasts still weird her out.) The girl closes predatory eyes and shortly after, the nightmares begin.
Normally, the girl's upper torso jerks in her sleep. Arms desperately reach for a weapon. The tail lashes, then tucks against the far side of the body as if it's trying to hide. During the worst of it, legs straighten and she's halfway to standing before she fully wakes. She dreams often, more than the mare has seen ponies dream, and perhaps that's natural for a centaur.
The nightmares could also be argued as natural, at least for someone who's in a cell.
But this is the last night for that. And after the press conference ended, the girl (whom the pegasus knows is not a full adult, she feels she may be aware of more than almost anypony when it comes to the centaur and part of her aches when she passes some of what she's learned on to her own Princess) was incapable of speech. She was... the way she had been in the Courtyard, only more exhausted. The mare, who has the most experience with their visitor, had seen the change take place at the instant the centaur stepped out into the moonlight. She wonders if she was the only one who realized what was happening.
The surge of instincts. The struggle to hang on in the face of the unknown stretching out second by second.
One more way in which the girl is just like them.
The girl couldn't talk. She was too tired from having fought that constant inner war, and so she sank down onto the cold cell floor (although somewhat less so now, as the mare moved an insulating blanket there on the third night) and went to sleep. And she should have been twitching, misplaced ears rotating in all available directions as the dreamer listened to her own inner screams --
-- but the little pegasus knows more than most about what her Princess is capable of. The girl's rest has been steady: unnaturally so. The harsh night ending with a silent gift.
The mare is watching the girl sleep, and doing so from inside the cell. And in the corridor, Guards come and go, because nopony's quite sure what the assignments are now. The centaur never would have tried to escape, there's no more risk of having somepony come down and find her -- but they haven't received new orders, and so Guards come and go.
They also talk, because that's what Guards do.
The mare doesn't need an enchanted device to understand what they're saying.
There seem to be two camps developing. Those who went to the arrival site, and everypony else. (The first group represents a rather small minority.) And the discussions turn to the oath, something none of them had ever heard before, not a Guard's oath --
-- it was the proudest day of the mare's life, reciting that oath --
-- but so close, they talk about the reporters and the questions and the fact that nopony's been able to find Bulkhead for hours -- but mostly, they talk about the girl.
Quite a few Guards have spent time outside the cell. (It's a much lower percentage for the rest of the Lunar staff.) And for the ones who've watched her... they understand she's not a monster in anything more than that unnatural form. The ultimate definition of a monster is something incapable of caring: that doesn't describe the girl. She... arguably cares a little more than might be strictly healthy. But maybe that's just how centaurs are...
They talk about what happened. What has to happen next. And they're Lunars, they care about their Princess, any one of them would give their lives to protect her -- but part of being a Guard is having to be the pony who tells a Princess when she's wrong. And they know the girl isn't a monster, but...
...it can't work.
It can't.
That's the opinion of the majority. Those who were in the forest -- they talk about how the girl can fight, she fights like nothing anypony's ever seen, having that sword wielded for the thrones will give the Princesses protection (it's plural during that part of the recurring argument, as nopony's mentally assigned the girl a shift), Equestria might be that much safer with the girl among their ranks --
-- but there's always a counter. Safer, when every public hoofstep might set off a riot? Less threats, when there's no way to tell how the other nations are going to respond? And even those who were in the forest can't say she'll succeed in getting through the training, or that anything will work out. Just that there should be a chance.
Maybe she won't make it through training.
(Maybe there's Guards hoping for that.)
(The ones who still can't get past their fear.)
So what does she do if she fails?
And nopony has an answer.
The little pegasus stands in the cell, watching the girl sleep because it's easier than having to think.
Her shift ends. She trots down the street under the grey light of a mostly-blocked Sun, because flying through heavy snowfall should only be done in emergencies. Nopony heading out for the Solar shift really notices her. She's not unattractive, although it took most of her life before 'night colors' finally came into fashion -- but there's heavy snowfall, shivering ponies blinking flakes out of their eyelashes aren't exactly in the mood to flirt, and she's off-shift. One of the first things a Guard learns after taking up active duty is that most ponies just see the armor. (The partial exception is a few chosen pegasi on the Lunar staff, who occasionally take up armor that's a little bit different. The little mare is one of them, and so she's also learned that even then, ponies don't recognize what they're seeing.) Take it off, and she's completely anonymous. Just another Lunar mare heading home at the end of a cold night.
She sees two exceptionally foolish unicorns trying to read the morning paper as they trot along. One is weak enough that most of the wind gets through her field, and both have their coronas wink out at the moment they truly spot the headline.
Eventually, she gets home. It's easy to dry her fur, because she's one of the strongest on the palace staff. It's just a question of reaching the bathroom before using the technique: separated water has to land somewhere. And then she...
...she was watching the girl. All night. She was in the Courtyard, she went through everything which happened there, and she should be going to sleep. But little glints of grey light sneak through the gaps in shifted blackout curtains, glance off the mirror to land elsewhere in the small apartment, and...
...she was watching the girl.
Now she's looking in the mirror. Watching herself.
And she doesn't know why.
The merchant pulls his cart through one of the wider gaps between the trees, then pauses to scout out the next part of his route.
He doesn't come this way often, and this is true of everypony who's ever been down the faint forest path: 'often' just doesn't apply. But there are times when the main road has problems, especially with flooding. The rainfall in this part of the continent can be very heavy, and it drains the standing techniques faster than usual. Sometimes the thaums run out before a recharge arrives, and when that happens -- well, you can try to pull your goods through a mire of mud, or you can go off the main road. Dozens of ponies have kept this path open, and their passages are still rare enough that the next traveler needs to pay attention or lose even that degree of trail. (Blazes can be wiped out, he's not the kind of exceptionally rude earth pony who would just casually scar tree bark, and stacked-up rockpiles fall over.) So he's stopping every so often, just to make sure he's still going the right way.
Fortunately, the trail was originally scouted by those who were pulling carts, and so what's there is wide enough for him to bring his own through. It means taking the long way around, but it's still faster than going through the mud (not to mention better for his coat) and if they're all technically stepping through a location where the map says they're not supposed to be -- well, who's to know? Besides, if the palace didn't want ponies off the trail, then the palace should send pegasi around more often for recharges. (So there.) He's making progress, more than he would if he was dealing with the mire, and the cart's hard-purchased enchantments only help the cart. If he'd stayed on the road, he would have probably sunk in up to all four knees by now.
Instead, he's making his way through the trees. Following the path as the hitched cart steadily comes along behind him, wheels automatically adjusting to the shifting terrain. Sometimes this means a degree of compression, actively shrinking by a hoofwidth before they flare back to full size just in time to prevent a small drop from delivering a jolt to his goods.
He'd originally hesitated before paying so much for the workings which allow that to happen, and he hardly enjoys nosing over bits so a unicorn can keep the charge up (there are no unicorns in his family, and that's starting to seem like a horrible loss of potential freebies) -- but his items are fragile. It's easy enough to hit a pothole in the road, sudden changes are guaranteed on a trail, and since the castings were performed, he's no longer losing money on damaged goods. There's just times when you need to spend bits now in order to save them later.
Branches drip moisture onto his back: the largest and coldest drops occasionally require an effort to keep from jumping. He rotates his ears regularly, listening for potential trouble because even though the path is established, he's still off the main road. But he isn't losing that much time, he can make it up with a trot once he clears the problem area, there's profit ahead --
-- the hitch rams into his shoulders with all the force of an earth pony taking a strong step forward. It's more than enough to make him yelp, he spends a few seconds in both trying to drive the bruising pain back down and listening to discover if anything heard him --
-- the wheels have locked.
He pulls again. They won't move.
...all right. Maybe something got jammed in an axle: a pebble was dislodged from the earth and wound up stuck in exactly the wrong place. It's the only reason he can immediately conceive of for the problem, especially as the enchantments are supposed to help the wheels turn. Not much -- making the cart truly self-powered would cost a fortune, produce a giveaway glow, require more recharges than he ever wants to pay for and, too often, would leave him galloping away from his own goods in order to avoid being trampled -- but enough so that when he's tired, the cart can do a little of the work on its own.
So he unhitches himself, wincing at the fresh pain. Turns, takes a step towards the cart --
-- the forest blurs, all four knees go weak as his blood roars in his ears and there's a single moment when he realizes that sound is the only thing he can truly hear, something he's about to test with his own scream --
-- and then it's over.
He blinks a few times. Quickly listens again, and it doesn't take long to determine that nothing's approaching along the ground.
Could that have been what a neurocypher's attack feels like? He can't pick up on anything crashing through the forest and the trees are too closely spaced for one to silently travel -- at least, they're too narrow here. Maybe he's at the extreme edge of a big one's range, and the magic just washed across him for a second. But he thinks a little more, and remembers that it's the wrong part of the continent for neurocyphers: there's never been one sighted in this area. They're gallops upon gallops away.
Of course, it could be a new kind of monster.
...he has to move.
He checks the axles, doing so at the speed of desperation. But he can't find anything wrong. He pushes at the cart from behind to no avail, he gets back into the hitch and pulls with all of his returned strength --
-- the cart moves.
It happens all at once. The wheels shift, but they do so unevenly. The left side of the front axle lands before the right, and he hears the faint tinkle of broken glass.
This causes him to lose some additional time. Expressing his full opinion regarding the situation requires a number of sentences and, for ponies with less travel experience, at least three fully comprehensive translation guides.
It's eight days before his route brings him around to the pony who did the original enchantments, and that gives him the occasion for other Words. Most of them have to do with low-quality work, because the recharge he'd paid for prior to getting on the trail should have lasted for at least another week. For the spells to just spontaneously discharge all stored power -- well, now he knows what it feels like to have that wash over him, doesn't it? And he tried to get a recharge at the next town, that held for a while, but 'a while' is now a continually-decreasing variable and given the amount he paid for --
-- the unicorn eventually manages to get a word in edgewise, which nearly involves using her horn in the same fashion. And after thoroughly inspecting the cart, she... apologizes. She doesn't know what happened to her enchantments. But she can't argue that something did, and she's going to recast them from scratch. For free, because there aren't many ponies in the world who specialize in her work and the fact that most of the recipients travel so much means they have very little trouble in finding the others.
She puts him up in a hotel for the two days it takes her to recast everything, which effectively repairs both the cart and the client/caster relationship. He never has any problems with her workings again, and eventually winds up recommending her to a few other ponies because while work which never needs maintenance or repair is invaluable, somepony willing to both admit when they've made a mistake and make up for it can be truly precious.
But after he leaves, she continues trying to figure out what she did wrong. And she can't find an answer. It haunts her dreams for weeks, it makes her triple-check every spell she casts for two moons, and it never happens again.
It's the little details which become lost.
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Do they stop?
You know this is one of the only ships that show actually killed. I hadn't realized I missed it.
EDIT: This comment is slightly more popular than some of my stories...
Oh no. Things are going to be purple tomorrow, aren't they?
Good to see that Classified hasn't been forgotten about.
10108035
*nineteen chapters of people asking when the Bearers would become involved*
*brings them home*
*fourth comment can be read as complaint about their potentially becoming involved*
*writer's life has now been summarized*
Here is something worth reading, and re-reading, and then reading again. This is something worth thinking about.
One wonders, what if one had a talent, a Mark, that one could not live with? A fearmonger in a herding species, someone who always makes things worse, pessimism given shape and voice. What if your arguments worked just as well on you as on anyone else? What if the only way to escape the fear that stemmed from such a foundational part of your nature was to drown it?
Huh, not the Starlight business. Not unless that went very differently this time around...
You can fit volumes in the space of two words, that's not a gift that just anyone has.
Hmm, what could cause that? spell degradation takes longer, and is a gradual thing, like a hole worn through fabric. Catastrophic failure either happens when the spell is charged or when it is subject to unusual stress, which didn't happen here. Anti-magic deadens magic entirely, so there wouldn't be a detonation. Deliberate sabotage could produce such an effect, but the enchanter likely could have picked up traces of such in the spell wreckage.
Something disrupted the spell but didn't affect the energy, so that it was released all at once. Then, when the effect passed, it didn't leave behind anything that a master could detect over the course of an intensive examination. Troublesome, very troublesome.
10108040
That was not complaining and you know it. It was a prediction that drama will ensue when the Canterlot morning editions reach Ponyville.
And I missed something the first time through:
Tirek didn't blow up the library! I had been wondering about that.
Ok... what happened with the cart owner... either it's a pissed off Mama Neurocipher angry that her baby was killed or the merchant rolled and stepped on a piece of plastic belonging to Cera that was hidden under the mud. Maybe an hair-clip or even her immigration paper she lost.
10108040
I an actually glad the Bearers are back! Doubly so that Trixie is here with them! What a threat it will be! The explosions, the panic, the anger, ALL the feelings! will be glorious.
And Trixie interacting with Cerea? Yes please.
reminds me of flat-earthers...worst hypocrites EVER.
I ship it
Is EQG a thing in this universe?
10108041
Theory: What the stallion senses was not a neurocypher, but a moment of Cerea's homeworld. Ponies attribute her ability to drain magic to her being a centaur, and her sword a similar reason: it was made by centaurs, forged to unweave magic. But Cerea's sword is just an ordinary replica sword. It shouldn't have anti-magic capabilities. It's not even sharp! But if Cerea's earth itself is inherently anti-magic, then it starts to make sense. The sword is made from resources of Cerea's world, and if Cerea's world is anti-magic, so would a sword made from it be.
So when the Merchant was walking down the path, if there was a brief moment where the two worlds met again and the merchant's cart was, for but a brief moment, in a world where magic does not exist, all the magic in the cart would need to go somewhere, pushed out by this bubble of non-magic. Not to mention that for a creature born in a world of magic, born from magic, the experience would be extremely unpleasant.
10108061
That has... interesting implications for the future of this Equestria, what with how essential the cutie map was on several occasions.
10108078
No. There's no mirror.
Or rather, if there was, it might not operate the same way.
10108081
I believe that the anti-magic effect is specific to the aberrantly eldritch material that is plastic, a substance whose production is so unnatural that an earlier commentator compared it to necromancy.
10107982 Eeyorus is probably the only country in the known world who would view an incoming meteor with "You know, we expected something larger. Is there one behind it?"
10108081 Bingo. One would expect sending a fully loaded unicorn into such a world would end in a messy bang, also. And an alicorn... um... There's probably a reason why Celestia and Luna don't mention their brother Bob, who made such a trip a few hundred thousand years ago and accidentally killed all the dinosaurs in the process.
10108040 More! No, you're putting too much there! Stop! Why aren't you continuing!
You know, after reading this chapter down to the M6(+1) returning to Ponyville, I get the feeling Estee would fit perfectly into any major politician's Public Affairs section as Director or perhaps Advisor. There are days when I just can't stand our press, or the sheer difficulty of separating stupidity from bias without a whisky still and some proper mashing.
10108081
That would he cool, but the effect only extends to plastic and two random redshirts.
it took me quite awhile to realize that non-pony was Spike. i guess i've been reading too many Changeling-related stories lately...
I was teased with Emery Board and he has not appeared! My jimmies are rustled!
A very nice transition chapter. The bearers ate back and we get Trixie as a tag-along. I enjoy that it’s also a magically gifted and competent Trixie. Post GlimGlam Trixie is a lot of fun but I like her far better as competent. It’s a turn from canon I actually like.
Nightwatch (#BestOC) is always great to see more of and focus going towards. Her section does make me think though, do we know if thestrals are a thing in the ‘Verse or is it just a glamor on armor? I can’t remember anything official one way or the other. It appears more that they aren’t a thing, and that makes me sad.
I am of the same opinion as many others here that our traveler encountered some plastic. It’s humorous to consider some new villain starting a quest to horde all the lost pieces of power... that turn out to be a young lady’s hair accessories.
I’m glad I picked this up even without knowing anything about the crossover world. This has been a good month. Much more enjoyable for me than the last 5-pack or same story updates. 😜
This was probably the last Estee until the end of March
In the words of Rnac the Magnificent
"May you be reincarnated as an elephant, be pregnant for 22 months, and
Learn what it feels like to wait for someone to do something"
Just kidding
10108081
Eight chapters back an unnamed courier took a shortcut through a spot on the map marked 'Classified'. She experienced the same symptoms as the merchant.
As for the implications of the lack of Cutie Map, they've been sitting out in the open for a long time. The events of "Princess Twilight Sparkle" are incompatible with Triptych, so the chain of causality leading to the canon Map is broken. There's been nothing done since to establish a different path to it.
Oh! I almost forgot my favorite part!
I was neat to see Wordia Spinner have just a brief, positive moment. She’s a professional. There’s still that part of her that retains her virtue. We also see a mare who is actively going against her mark. Suppressing the rebellion of her mark against her actions with alcohol. Deep inside she knows using her talent to stoke fear and disharmony is a perversion of her mark.
Oh, I cannot wait to see how PurpleSmart and the Great and Powerful Triscuit react to our poor Cerea.
This fic reads like my college physics textbook.
This is both a compliment and a complaint, as I have only vague notions of what's going on.
The big question is what would happen should the extremely expatriated Frenchwoman ever visit...
Okay, there are much bigger questions than that, but I'm still interested to find out.
This. I like this. Should you ever go into original fiction, be sure to remember this.
Some people are tragedies. Ones that inflict themselves on everyone else.
Well that's ominous. Though the described Twilight/Trixie interaction is equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking.
Also, Golden Oaks lives! ... Which makes me wonder what else was different about the showdown with Tirek. The Continuum's Elements definitely have a history of behavior not in line with the fruit of the Tree of Harmony, and I don't see this Celestia proposing Operation: Four Eggs, One Basket.
And we come to the real big question, even more so than "What do you do with another centaur in a post-Tirek Equestria?" That's another glitch in the thaumic matrix. Something is causing them. And they'll need someone who doesn't rely on magic to investigate it, especially since the issue's almost definitely related to her.
10108081
There is an alternative. They did a medevac teleport when Cerea had passed out from an infection-induced fever, and she left some plastic barrettes behind. It could be a soft patch in the world... or he just ran over a petrochemical curiosity.
10108088
Couldn´t Luna use a silence spell, or simply raise her voice Canterlot style, as opposed to magically force their mouths to shut up? because is kinda abusive.
10108184
Oh right, I forgot about the courier. Huh... It's not the same place, or at least I don't think so. The mystery deepens.
10108337
I think if the barettes were that potent, Luna would have never been able to teleport Cerea while she was wearing them.
I have a hunch that the baddies that summoned Cerea in the first place are responsible. It's too much of a coincidence between these anti-magic disruptions that apparently hadn't been there before, Tirek's thaumivoric nature, and the kidnapping of a centaur carrying magic-nullifying items. I can't quite tell how it will all fit together, but that's the joy of reading Estee's fics.
As far as Wordia Spinner goes... I think there's an option to feel sorry for her, but her situation's largely self-inflicted. I forget what her mark is, but assuming a journalist's mark, imagine being given a talent to find and report the truth, and twisting it to find and report what you want people to think is the truth. Pretty sure the nature of the Continuum would punish such a blasphemy against one's own magic.
10108337
Ship. Ship! Ship!
How do we know Cerea was the target of the cults teleport? And how do we know they didn't succeed in getting that target? Does her franchise have any villains that would/could be dangerous here? That could be affecting the world, and a lethal rival would feed into her "I'm only second best" problems on a meta-level.
10108438
I'm not sure we ever got to see her actual mark. I believe she wears a fake mark of broken scales over her actual mark, as do all other Murdocks-affiliated journalists.
Were the dragons not attacked? Or did they not care that someone else might take the magic to move the sun? For that matter, did Tirek attack anywhere else?
Ah, so Golden Oaks survived in this world, and whatever they did to stop Tirek didn't involve a crystal castle coming out of the ground.
Also, where exactly did those hairpins end up again?
10107999
Depends on how hot it takes to reach a gaseous state...
10108349
Show of force. Also they were being rude in her home. She is old fashioned like that
10108318
Yeah its a writing style I enjoy, and recall dabbling in. Does it strike you as similar to any authors? I might sense some Salvatore if I try and think about it. Except I wrote in this style years and years before knowing of Salvatore. Speaking around some subject but not of it directly while giving more information than outright telling ever could. Bits and pieces strung together.
Makes one likely to re-read
An increasingly common error, from what I've seen online. It should be "led," since "lead" pronounced "led" is a metal. It isn't like read/read.
Though I do appreciate that this is more chapters than people were expecting. And the story continues to be good.
Hm, when are they going to tell Cerea that the local moon's always full? (Is that the case?)
"being led towards an slaughter which"
"being led towards a slaughter which"?
That ending sure isn't ominous at all. :)
Thanks for the chapter!
10108040
Well, I was fine waiting and then happy to see them. :)
So Rainbow Dash, Twilight and Trixie. However everyone hates Trixie because of alicorn amulet, and Trixie is hired by the crown.
So very nice to see the Spirit of Sir Terry Pratchett pass through, although far better than thinking of the spirit of booze passing through hacks.
If an area on a map is labled Classified, its been there not just long enough to be marked, but so long that even pasive security has long since decayed and been forgotton?
I was reading this like "noooooo, this can't be how it ends, though actually, that potentially would be a bit Estee what with the negative narrative space on how it resolves left to be a bit bittersweet, hope for the future, but no clear skies either... Which also raises the question if she woukd be happier here or back home, that seems like a difficult question to answer[1]..."
And I was fairly significantly relieved to see it's still tagged incomplete (I hope that's not an oversight...!)
This could have been the end, is what I'm saying. It felt like it had a certain sense of finality to it (or at least, I was reading it that way). I'm glad it appears not to be, but aside from the "noooooooo," factor, it would have not felt too.. Jarring, if it had been, is what I'm saying.
That's... sort of a compliment? I think?
[1]As my general impression of harem anime/manga (which is very limited, admittedly) seems to be the lack of resolution keeping the characters and relationships in status quo (or with an ever-expanding cast), so it seems very plausible that there will never be a canon resolution for her as this sort of thing by very nature thrives on unresolved shipping potential[2].
[2]Now, drifting a little of-kilter here, stop me if my outsider's perspective on all this is missing some point, but come to that, why is the solution never - outside, apparently, fanfiction - "all of them simultaneously," which would at least be A resolution (and a sort of fair one), and also is that not sort of literally what "harem" means and stems from? (I mean, I can SORT of glean some logic in polyamory, if only because I saw a post a few weeks ago about the true benefit for polyamory is that you're never wondering if you have enough players for your D&D group[3], so presumably the same principle applies in a wider field...?)
[3]Now, if someone would have pointed that out a few decades ago, I might had given the whole relationship thing more serious consideration...
10108349
10108041
I would guess it's something else from Cerea's world working like the plastic sword. Something glass but when it was shattered it somehow lost it's effect. Perhaps it became to small to have an affect or it has to retain it's shape to really still be an artifact from a world with so little magic it deadens it
10108683
Why doesn't it melt before it reaches that gaseous state? Does it depend on how fast it reaches the correct temperature?
That's kind of japaphobic of you, Trixie.
10109104
Many compounds don't have a liquid state at atmospheric pressure. Carbon dioxide is an example.
But that's not relevant to marble. It breaks down chemically. Celestia would be turning the floor tiles to quicklime.
10109168
Ah but keep adding heat and it too shall vaporize. I think this is what is being implied. Celestia becomes so hot even stone can be vaporized.
Nightwatch is best guard. More please!
Ah yes the plastic hairpins.
Oooh! The title, so good!
It relates to Cerea, Trixie, and possibly the cart guy, if he intruded on something else's space.
...
...
Ominous...
...
It took me two uses of "The Performer" before I realized it was Trixie. Cool ways of describing everyone!
...
I wonder how Murdocks recruits his reporters...
And, as pony in Bitter/Sweet shows, if they want to make a change, they probably could escape...
I wonder what Luna sees in their dreams...
That sounds ominous ... poor Trixie.
And the "bad things" are getting stronger (or, at least, more ponies are encountering them).
10109382
Thanks, I'd completely forgotten about those, and the cart scene really had me scratching my head.
10109382
That tells us that lunas team didn't find all of cerea's hairpins
What would happen if the plastic/anti-magic were to touch a pony's cutie mark? Would it remove it? It'd probably be temporary. But what if you were to somehow tattoo it into their skin? Or just force them to wear it all the time. If you really stop and think about it, this thing has all the horror of the snitcher multiplied a billion-fold.
10109382
I don't think so. Cerea lost the hairpins in the same general area as the neurocypher attack and yet the narrative specifically points out that the merchant is in the "wrong part of the continent for neurocyphers." It's possible the neurocypher itself was displaced, but there's no indication of that. At the very least I think it means if it is the hairpins, they've been moved.