Part 5 - Cascading Disaster
Part 5 - Cascading Disaster
The Eleven Laws of Future Sight
#1: Prevent the end of the world at any cost.
#2: Don’t become blind to the present.
#3: The more distant the future, the less accurate the prediction.
#4: There is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ timeline.
#5: Time paradoxes can’t exist. Stop worrying.
#6: Messing with events surrounding a fixed point isn’t worth it… UNLESS the changes affect, cause, and/or prevent future fixed points.
#7: Whether it be a potential outcome or fixed point, never judge someone by who they’re GOING to be.
#8: Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
#9: Don’t meddle with alternate realities unless/until they intersect with ours.
#10: Revealing some things is fine, but revealing everything leads to disaster.
#11: Even soothsayers can make mistakes. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.- Author Unknown
Earlier-
ZRRRM-TSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
The hiss of vaporized ice accompanied the steam belching from the ice wall. There’d been some setup at first, but Twilight was now cutting out ice blocks and sliding them out like gigantic sticks of butter. She took great care while stacking them on a wide ledge below, her aura only ever gripping a tiny corner.
“The range I can sense mutacite is limited.” Twilight explained after cutting the first slab. “I need to be right up close while I’m cutting to ‘see’ what I’m doing, but I also need to slide each segment out before cutting another, so...”
Rarity clucked her tongue. “You’ll need to go back and forth between slabs. Ugh, how cumbersome."
“Why not teleport the slabs themselves?” Fluttershy asked.
Twilight’s ears drooped. “Because that would require me to envelop the entire segment in my magic... including the mutacite inside.”
Fluttershy meeped. “Oh… right.”
“Be careful even while sliding them,” Maud told Twilight. “Even simple vibrations can set them off.”
Twilight nodded and put out her flames. “I think it’s best if you all wait here. I’ll stay in range of the Elements, but there’s no sense in me teleporting everyone back and forth.”
Applejack conceded the point. “Alright, alright. Guess we're takin' a breather.”
Now un-fiery but still Rainbow Powered, Twilight trotted into the hole she'd made and got to work.
Rainbow looked to the others. “Anypony bring cards or something?”
Fifteen Minutes Later-
ZRRRM-TSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
Twilight’s process wasn’t exactly riveting. She’d feel an area out with terrakinesis, cut a slab accordingly, teleport out, and extract the slab with magic. She’d then blink back and go farther down the tunnel to repeat the process, over and over, and over. The others were interested at first, but if you saw her do it once, you saw her do it every time.
FLASH!
“That’s seven.” There was a distant rumble as the latest block came floating out in Twilight's aura. “I’m thinking one or two more before I’ll be far enough away that you'll all need to start coming with.”
Most of the group wasn’t paying attention. The ones that were waved acknowledgement, but soon went back to either chatting, resting, or focusing on other things.
Twilight took the hint. “Right. You doing okay over there, Rarity?”
Rarity, who was maintaining the forcefield they were all standing on, nodded and shooed her off.
Twilight smiled. "I know, I know, stop being a worrywart. I'll just, um... yeah."
FLASH!
ZRRRM-TSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
…
…
…
“Rarity,” Maud said a while later. “Could you do me a favor?”
Rarity opened one eye. “What is it, dear?”
Maud pointed to the slab Twilight had just placed on the lower ledge. “There's a large mutacite chunk in the corner there. I’d like to take a reading of it.”
Rarity squinted down at the block in question. The light of Rarity’s horn played off everyone’s faces, just bright enough to them them see through the steam. “I don’t follow.”
Maud directed Rarity’s gaze. The opaque mutacite blended in nicely, but it was visible enough if you knew where to look. “I’m asking if you can get it out and bring it up here for me.”
Rarity pursed her lips. “How, exactly?”
“Oooh, oooh!” Pinkie danced in place. “You should use a giant pizza cutter! Or maybe a samurai sword! Chop it right out of there! Haaaiiiii-YA!”
Applejack snorted. “And blow us all sky high?”
Maud stilled Pinkie’s dancing. “She has the right idea. So long as the mutacite remains undisturbed, a precise strike should suffice.”
Fluttershy took a step back. “That doesn’t seem like a good idea…”
“Agreed,” said Applejack. “We’ve been through enough hootenanny without a bunch of needless risks. I know you’re all about the science-y stuff, but—”
SNIP!
Meanwhile, Rarity had manifested a pair of giant magical sewing scissors, angled them around the slab’s edge, and cut the mutacite free like a frayed seam. She’d then caught the icy chunk by the edge and was floating it up to them.
“Darlings, please.” Rarity placed the explosive material at Maud’s hooves. “I do precise work for a living.”
Maud pulled out a scroll and stationary. “Thank you."
…
Rainbow started clapping. “Okay, THAT was awesome!”
Applejack’s eyelid twitched. “Y’all are gonna give me a heart attack.”
Meanwhile...
Twilight had just finished carving out another slab. This one had been trickier due to the mutacite placement, but that wasn't what was troubling her at the moment. Upon going to cut the slab ‘free’, her ray had encountered nothing but air. The light’s refraction through the ice prevented Twilight from seeing very far ahead, but after a few more tests and calculations, she was able to confirm she'd just tunneled into another canyon.
“Stroke of luck, I suppose...” Twilight's first thought was to notify the others. In most cases she certainly would, but when she realized she might be able to look around without worrying about traps for once, she found herself torn.
It didn't take much internal debate to decide. Soon after, Twilight took a deep breath, put up a forcefield, and pushed the slab forward into the unknown.
The first thing she noticed was the air. It was dry; so dry it almost made her sneeze. The new chasm was the length of several hoofball fields, but it was narrow, only a few ponylengths wide. The one she'd come from had countless visible caves and paths branching up and down, but this one had concealed ledges with wide overhangs and bulbous outcroppings. The aura of malice remained constant, however, as did the snaking ethereal light.
It was then Twilight realized the chasms were different depths. They'd been several hundred feet up in the previous chasm, but here it was only a moderate hop to the bottom. She was flanked by tall and slender protrusions running up to the ceiling like the flaps of a colossal zipper.
The thought made Twilight smile as she floated the ice slab to the ground—
krkkkkt
She froze. The ice block had landed on something… brittle? She moved it aside to see.
It was a heap of black crystal shards. Said shards were scattered throughout and around a bowl-shaped depression that was marred with deep, frosted-over cracks. The majority were gathered in the bowl’s icy epicenter, but amidst the mess, Twilight could make out two points where all the cracks converged...
"No, not converged..." Twilight looked up, and sure enough, there was a ledgeside path opposite her some thirty feet above. There weren’t any obvious places where the crystal might have fallen from, but based how the shards were scattered—
Twilight suddenly had a thought. “Princess Amore?!” She scanned the crystal shards for something recognizable: a crown, a heart symbol, maybe even a—
The emblem of the Geomancer’s Guild caught the ghostly light.
“O-Oh…” Twilight stepped back. Other grim features were revealed in short order: shattered limbs, crystallized entrails, pieces of two headless torsos. A quick look with Soul Sight revealed the spirits of the fallen E.G.E members had long departed, though whether they’d died from the fall or the crystallization...
Bile rose in Twilight’s throat. She wanted to look away, but something kept her staring at the half-shattered remains. It wasn’t until her eyes began to water that she hung her head and sighed.
“That's five out of six.” Twilight ran a hoof through her mane. “It's lucky my tunnel came out right—”
FWWWWWWWWWWW—RRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Twilight whirled, wings flared and horn glowing. “Another trap?!”
No, it didn't seem to be. Seconds passed, but the canyon remained still and bleak. Twilight noted the noise resembled Maud’s trap-cancelling frequency, but it was coming from the direction of the artifact. She strained her ears while standing tense and alert—
The crystal remains thrummed.
“Eh?” Twilight looked down. The shards vibrated more and more… until they started to splinter and dissolve before her eyes!
"Oh no you don't!" Half were reduced to glittering mana by the time she sprang into action, producing two dustboxes and wrangling up the drifting motes. "You're coming with me!"
Back in the first canyon…
FWWWWWWWWWWW—RRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Maud’s fuzzy ears twitched. She stopped writing and turned to Twilight's tunnel.
Rainbow heard the sound, too. “Maud, is that your gadget?”
Maud checked her broadcasting device to be sure. It was emitting the same nullifying frequency it’d been for hours, but nothing more. She even turned it off and on again while Rainbow alerted the others.
“How odd.” Rarity’s ears swivelled to the noise. “Do you recognize it, Maud?”
Again, Maud gave no answer. All she did was start to make for the tunnel—
CHK-CHKKKKK… VMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
CHK-CHKKKKK… VMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Twilight had gathered most of the motes in the dustboxes when the sound shifted to a dissonant whine. She had just enough time to be confused before the remaining uncaptured motes were pulled towards the noise, phasing through the ice and out of reach.
“Gah!” Twilight threw up a forcefield on impulse. Just then, more motes flew out of the walls, floor, and ceiling in such droves it was like a winter storm! She could barely see because of all the chaotic colors!
“The others!” Twilight readied a teleport spell...
“Whoa, nelly!” Applejack backpedaled from the ledge. Countless sparkling mana motes had just erupted from everywhere to be sucked towards the altered sound! It was more raw magic than any of them had ever seen!
“Pretty!” Pinkie danced in place. “I love a good light show—”
A wobble ran through her legs.
Pinkie stopped jumping. She questioned the sensation, but a second wobble happened, twice as strong. “Uh, girls?! I think my Pinkie Sense just came back… and it’s warning me of a doozy!”
Maud’s eyes widened. Now seeing the cascading mana in a new light, she snatched her broadcasting device and set it to ‘capture’. She wrote notes as fast as she could while the others braced themselves for... whatever Pinkie was sensing.
Pinkie focused on pinpointing the doozy. She was never sure of what doozies foreshadowed, but it was going to happen close by, that much was clear! Right around that chunk of mutacite they were all standing around, actually...
Back in the other canyon, Twilight was having a unique event of her own. She’d been about to teleport to the others when a vile, pulsating power suddenly blighted her senses. Corrupt and growing in strength, the abhorrent thing was centered around the artifact!
“UGH!” Twilight recoiled. “Is THAT the—”
The Element of Magic flared to challenge the evil. The other Elements had similar power surges, their holy power consecrating the surroundings like it had all other times before—
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
It happened too fast for Twilight to parse. There was a faraway hiss like a boiling kettle, a flash within the tunnel, then a screaming pink blur zoomed out of the hole and collided with her like a runaway train. Pinkie flew down the ravine carrying Twilight and the others, a hail of spiralling frostbolts hot on their heels—
KA-BOOM!
The deafening explosion made the girls' teeth rattle. Air pressure barreled down the carved passage and decimated the place Twilight had been milliseconds prior, cracks forming throughout the canyon until it all began to collapse. The blast’s deafening roar sent vibrations through the rock and hit other mutacite deposits—
BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! BOOM!
It was chaos. Explosions sounded, canyons shuddered, ice fell, frostbolts chased, and ponies screamed. Pinkie serpentined between falling ice and rupturing magic while torrents of mana whipped about. Corruption belched from the walls like quarray eels to clash with the Elements’ fury, the assaults coming in any and all directions. Instinct and the Pinkie Sense were their only guides as they flew onward, their light shining like beacons in a multicolored storm.
The sector-wide illusion effect went haywire. Fuzzy images of the girls' respective fears formed in the walls like a bad movie projector. Malfunctioning traps detonated in arcs of crackling napalm; some of the hazards magical, some mechanical, and some a mix of both. An example of the last of these came when an animated collection of metal javelins shot at them from behind—
WHOOSH!
“What are we doing?!” Rainbow summoned another windwall to block more javelins and debris. “We can’t let Pinkie do all the work!”
That set their heads straight. They regrouped and took formation, their respective talents quickly put to the test. Rarity used multiple magic scissors to slice up anything in their way. Applejack used her lasso to sling exploding stones like she had against the ooze golem. Fluttershy held the horrific images at bay with her mysterious power. Maud recalibrated her nullification frequency to thin out the malfunctioning traps. Rainbow created a tailwind to let them go faster, and Pinkie continued to press on. In short, they were all doing everything they could to not become pony paste... that is, save for Twilight, who was still out of it after being knocked silly.
Twilight’s eyes spun in their sockets. The Element of Magic was acting on its own without her, and its power attracting her affinity like a magnet. Soon the two powers had re-merged to send hot, addictive energy through Twilight... but without any control, it soon bled over into her link with Rainbow… then Rarity… then…
“Mmmhhh...” The first thing Twilight saw on coming to was her own flaming mane. She pushed it aside just in time to realize her friends were carrying her out of a narrow ravine and into a wide-mouthed pit...
Oh, and they were all on fire.
“AHHHH!” Twilight scrambled to focus. “Sorrysorrysorry—”
“Leave it!” Rainbow shouted at her. "It's helping!”
Pinkie did a hairpin turn as globs of acid hissed by. She went north one moment, then east, then southwest, then did loop-de-loops while a falling ice bridge smashed through a wall. Her evasive maneuvers grew more frantic as time passed, but she never slowed or questioned her path. There was no way to discern a proper trajectory—the only landmark was the growing evil polluting their senses.
A growing evil that was growing cruel and insidious indeed. The Elements were influx of incredible might in response, but the girls were too busy fighting for their lives to notice. Chasms collapsed while new ones formed. Debris fell like deadly rain. They blasted falling objects and triggered traps alike, the onslaught never seeming to end.
They flew down a boggling descent of malfunctioning illusions. Dizzying vertigo threatened to overtake them more than once, to the point that even Rainbow couldn’t tell which way was up. It didn’t get much better when Pinkie pulled up out of nowhere and flew straight towards a wall, but before any of them could panic, they passed through a hidden entrance and emerged into a collapsing ravine. They continued through an avalanche of debris while entropic fields from Sector Three rained down on them, the ravine’s slender exit was just ahead.
A fresh explosion above heralded a localized cave-in, but before they were crushed, Pinkie punched a hole through the chaos and escaped the blast zone.
The pandemonium lulled after that. There were still intermittent blasts like distant fireworks, but isolated and weak. The manastorm began to recede as well, and even the alien frequency quieted before petering out.
Pinkie landed before a bulbous misty tunnel. She set everyone down, pulled a stash of candy bars from her mane, then started stuffing them in her mouth like a chipmunk. The faint crinkle of wrappers was the only sound while the others gathered their wits.
“Can somepony tell the Elements to cool their jets?!” Rainbow rolled out of the melting ice pool she'd created. “I totally felt them hijack Twi’s powers back there!”
It was true. While she and Twilight were the only ones fully transformed, the others were catching up, fast. Scintillating flames danced along Rarity’s horn. Fluttershy’s wings were dual infernos. Applejack’s legs glowed like white-hot pokers, and Pinkie’s coat had turned simmering white. The air around the group was positively sweltering.
“Ugh, my voice is going to be hoarse from all that screaming.” Rarity sat up and coughed. “And all this water, eugh! My beautiful rainbow coiffure!”
“I think it might be waterproof, sugarcube.” Applejack offered her a searing hoof. “C’mon. We've got bigger problems than a bad mane day.”
“Like drowning?” said Maud.
Applejack sucked on her teeth. She looked at one of her half-submerged, superheated legs, the sigils of her Rainbow Power penetrating the heat and steam. “Erm… Twi?”
“I’m trying!” She grunted and strained with all her might. “It’s... not… THERE!”
Her addictive inner warmth vanished from the others in a blink. They all shuddered with sudden cold, their fiery appearances becoming their normal Rainbow Power forms.
Twilight panted and rubbed her temples. “Hijack is right… Is everypony okay?”
“I’m BETTER than okay!” Pinkie jumped over and gave her a hug. “That was so much fun! Did you see me back there with my Pinkie Sense? I was on a roll!”
A tiny smile graced Maud’s lips. “I’d say you were on fire.”
She got splashed a few times for that one.
Twilight tilted her head. “Pinkie Sense? But I thought—” She remembered what'd happened with the dustboxes. “That sound! I saw it turning the black crystal into mana! That swarm of magic must have been the divination wards!”
Maud’s face was grim. “Likely far more than that.” She showed them her notes. “I calculated the frequency's range before the blast. It was enough to travel several miles in all directions.”
Fluttershy paled. “Several... miles?”
Rarity felt dizzy. “The entire mountain and then some... all the magic of those crystals empowering that nasty… whatever it is? Goodness, can you imagine how strong Cadance’s curse must—”
A deathly silence fell.
“No…” Twilight whispered.
“MOVE IT!” Rainbow flared her wings. “NOW!”
“Pinkie!” said Applejack.
Pinkie took point again. “This way!”
The artifact's power was such that they could all sense it now. They took off into the misty cave before them, countering the lethal frostbolts chasing them with blasts that gouged the cave walls and collapsed portions of the ceiling. The ice became shiny and slick from Twilight’s flames: Walls grew misshapen, huge stalactites dripped, and freezing fog parted to reveal pits and cracks in the floor—
Suddenly, the artifact... shuddered.
“What the…?” Rainbow stared. “What now?!”
Nopony knew. It was like a mountain of filth loomed within their senses, but it’d somehow just flickered like an old electric sign. It then happened again a few seconds later, but when it returned this time, the ‘mountain’ had… dwindled?
“I’m picking up some strange activity.” Maud turned up the speaker on her broadcaster. “I'm not sure what it means here, but a modern device broadcasting signals like this would indicate a critical system failure.”
Twilight did a double-take. She investigated with magic, and sure enough, some probing revealed the curse’s ancient magical threads were being severed like wheat before a scythe. The garbled mess pouring out of Maud’s speaker lined up perfectly with when a thread was being severed, ominous shudders always following—
The Elements flared again. A fiery burst shot through the girls, ardent light flooding the tunnel.
“Geeze!” Pinkie shouted through gouts of flame. “Talk about hot flashes!”
“They’re all— ergggh, failing in sync!” Twilight tore her affinity free again. “The transmitter, the curse, whatever’s powering it… it's all connected somehow!”
“That doesn’t explain why the Elements are throwing a hissy fit!” Rarity yelled over the noise.
"Unless it's their way of telling us to hurry,” Maud said.
Silence.
“Mind elaboratin’?” Applejack said.
Maud shrugged. “These failures are common in regions with creatures that feed on magic. I’ve never heard of something feeding on this kind of energy, but—”
WHOOOOOSH!
Cold, corrupt winds. Distant wails like the cries of the damned. The geomancy signals cut out right as the titanic energy stockpile vanished before the girls’ eyes. Just like that, the final echoes of Sombra’s magic—including the curse upon Cadance—were torn apart and sucked into a void.
…
…
…
But then...
"What is..." Twilight's voice died. It’d been insidious in its subtlety, but despite this mysterious void, she could sense a twisted abomination of an entity. It was like spiteful horror and endless hunger incarnate, and as one might expect of such a thing, it latched on to the mountain’s corruption and began to feed, growing bigger and stronger by the second.
Memories of the swamp cave flashed in Fluttershy’s mind. “I know that presence…”
“Hurry!” Colorful light glinted in Applejack’s eyes. “We gotta stop it!”
“Now we’re talking!” Rainbow drew deeper upon her Element. “It’s go time—”
But that was when they felt a ‘glimmer’ in their minds. The sensation was faint—miniscule, really—but it stuck out like a sore hoof. It was coming from up ahead.
A sour taste filled the girls’ mouths as they flew full speed through the tunnel. Twists and turns sped by in an icy blur as they answered the glimmer’s call, none of them looking at each other.
They found it against a wall where the high and low paths converged. The stolen Tear of Laughter reacted to their presence, its blessed light reflecting off the ice.
Rarity’s skin crawled. “Wh-What...”
Twilight was already doing a scan. She found scrambled portal magic… and a trail of grey coat hair.
“It seems you were right, Twilight.” Maud retrieved her lost earring and put it on. “Neighsay is indeed a greater threat than we realized.”
“YA THINK?!” Rainbow had adopted her best drill sergeant voice. “HUSTLE!”
The girls soared out the tunnel and emerged into the final canyon. It was drab and bleak here—streaks of filmy residue had accumulated from the attracted mana to stain everything dirty and dark. Sombra’s vision of conquest was gone—the crystal sculptures, the castle replica, all of it erased.
They followed the portal magic and hair to the Inner Sanctum. The dark entity gave no indication of their approach, continuing to feast and grow without end. It's rate of consumption had only increased despite how much it'd already devoured.
“Remember, the anti-changeling phrase is ‘cart before the horse’.” Twilight prepared a dimension lock while the others charged up. Distant rumbles sounded behind them amidst the sound of rising wind and vaporized ice. “NOW!”
FWA-BOOM!
CLICK!
The decrepit doors imploded. The shattering of ice and smashing of rock made enough noise to wake the dead, the entire cliff wall rippling to reveal it was stone—the first they’d seen in this area.
NOW the dark entity stopped feeding. A probing touch brushed the edge of the Elements’ influence, only to recoil like it’d been burnt. The strange void around the Sanctum foiled Twilight’s attempts to cast a locating spell before the entity had faded into the veil of nothing.
“Are you kiddin’?!” Applejack gawked at the thinning dust. “Where the hay did it go?”
Twilight gulped. She didn't want to admit it, but if they could only track the entity while it was feeding—
“LOOK!” said Pinkie.
The silhouette of a collapsed pony had become visible. His gear was covered in frost, his left side was frozen to the ground, and his wispy mane was blowing in the air. The girls rushed into the dust plume... only to discover it was the final E.G.E. member.
“How did he get down here?” Fluttershy watched Twilight disintegrate the body. “It seems impossible!”
“Neighsay got down here,” Maud said behind them.
“He MIGHT have got down here,” said Applejack. “No guarantees that's him.”
Twilight squinted through the darkness. “There's a stairwell up ahead. Stay sharp, every—Maud, why are you back there?”
The others realized Maud hadn’t passed the entryway of the Sanctum. She was studying the threshold with a strange look on her face… or the Maud equivalent of strange. Eventually, she stepped across and got on Pinkie’s back, and they all ventured inside.
The entirety of the interior was covered in grimy residue. The stale, heavy air felt dirty to breathe as a result, but still far better than places like the swamp. They passed a pair of ruined doors and descended the stairwell.
Twilight tried casting a myriad of spells as they went. It seemed this concealing void had a strange effect on her magic, but she wasn't sure of its rules. Localized spells and scans worked fine, but anything beyond a certain range just… failed.
A quick glance at Rarity confirmed she was having the same problem. Neither of them had any ideas.
Every little sound was enough to startle. They could still hear occasional rumbles from above, but they got fainter and more sparse as time passed. The light of the Elements cast long, crawling shadows that sent their imaginations running. At least one of them was always checking behind them, never sure of what they'd see.
The only break in the monotonous descent were landings with reflective doors. Rainbow elected to poke her head in while the others hung back.
“Empty.” Rainbow shut the door behind her. “Gotta say though, THIS place feels like a tomb.”
Maud tightened her grip around Pinkie. “It does feel like we’re walking on someone’s grave.”
Pinkie frowned. “We’re flying, silly! Why would—”
She covered her sister’s mouth. “It’s an expression.”
“I just wish the Elements would calm down,” Fluttershy said, shuddering. “I keep thinking something’s going to jump out at us.”
Applejack chewed on her lip. She kept thinking there were wisps of swirling fog in the shadows, but it was always just another trick. “Think maybe we could bait Neighsay or whoever with some magic?”
Rarity clucked her tongue. “About that...”
Twilight kept quiet. She could swear something was reacting to each bit of magic she cast, but it was always just on the edge of her perception. Not only that, but the range of her spells was shrinking alongside their descent. “Let’s keep going.”
The mood grew more anxious as time passed. Flickers in the corners of their eyes eroded their wills and kept them on edge. Once, they all got a feeling like something was about to fall on their head. They looked up… but the only noticeable thing was an overwhelming sense of being watched.
“Nothing again,” said Rainbow after the second landing. “I’m starting to think Sombra already cleared this place out.”
Maud pulled a candy bar out of Pinkie’s mane. “Or the original creator. Evil masterminds are notoriously protective of their secrets, after all. Maybe this one made it so their personal belongings were destroyed when they died. That’s what I’d do.”
Silence.
“If you were an evil mastermind?” said Applejack.
Maud shrugged with her mouth full. “If I could casht shpells.”
The only one who laughed was Pinkie.
“At least you wouldn’t leave something capable of a mess like this.” Rarity curled her lip at the grimy walls. “It’s getting worse the farther down we go!”
She was right. Everything was a disgusting mess now: the stairs, the railings, the walls, the landing, the door, all of it. It got to the point you couldn't even tell the color of the stone.
The filth reached its apex at the third landing. Rainbow was about to try the door, but Twilight stopped her on detecting scrambled portal magic. Everyone steadied themselves while clearing the gunk as quiet as they could.
Twilight gave the signal.
SMASH!
Lingering heat washed over them in a wave. Within was a colorless, magic-drained scene of destruction: Tables were broken, bookcases were smashed, workbenches were upended, and amenities had been tossed about. Anything loose had either been scattered, damaged, or both. The only thing that wasn't greyscale was the blackened, still-smoking spot on the outer wall.
“Neighsay!” Rainbow zipped inside. “We know you’re in here! You may as well give up!”
No response. Nothing moved aside from them. Everything was lifeless and cold.
Twilight scanned the fallen objects. “There’s no point, Dash. The corruption madness, remember?”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “It’s called smack talk, Twi—”
Fluttershy squeaked and pointed at something.
An ice-covered horseshoe. Not a sabaton or old-timey shin guard or a tyrant’s sabaton, but a hiking horseshoe from the modern era. The rest of the set lay a short distance away.
“Girls…” Pinkie held up the remnants of saddlebags. Their contents scattered about nearby, identifiable thanks to a thin sheen of mana residue. Coat hair was everywhere.
…
“Welp.” Rainbow dusted off her hooves. “Can’t say we didn’t try.”
Rarity looked like she was sucking on a lemon. “Is it wrong that I'm more annoyed than anything else?”
“Hold on.” Applejack inspected the discarded gear. “I know he wasn’t in great shape the last time we saw him, and whatever… THING we sensed in him pulled off a hay of a Tirek impression just now, but that don’t mean he’s bit the dust.”
Pinkie scratched her head. “No crazy protection, no gear, no hair, and no sign of where he went? That's got ‘monster food’ written allllllllll over it.”
Something about that seemed to click for Twilight. “‘The Hate-Filled Dragon devours all.’” She groaned and ran a hoof through her mane. “Every time I think I understand something about this prophecy, another wrench gets thrown into the works! I don’t know what to think anymore...”
Applejack furrowed her brow. “I don’t think anyone was expectin’ you to figure out that poem, Twi. There ain’t exactly a school for becomin’ a seer—”
“As if there wasn’t enough mystery already!” Twilight started pacing around. “Who or what did Neighsay come into contact with? How long were they here and why? What arrangement was made? Why weren't the traps being triggered? Are we dealing with an actual dragon, or was the name symbolic? Prophecies love hidden meanings like that!”
“Twilight,” said Rainbow.
“Not to mention all the things concerning Neighsay!” Twilight wrenched the frozen horseshoes off the ground. “Why was he here in the first place? Did he follow us, or was it coincidence? What orders did Chrysalis give him? Did she know what we were after? Why in the world would he throw the Tear of Laughter away? Why was he losing hair all of a sudden?!”
“Twilight!” Rarity said.
“I don’t know…” Twilight held her head in her hooves. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t KNOW! The best I can come up with is he’s a crazy shedding changeling lackey with a really hungry friend! We know absolutely nothing about this ‘dragon’, and I certainly doubt they’re going to tell us! Some heroes we are—we weren’t even the ones to remove Cadance’s curse—”
“TWILIGHT!” they all said.
…
“It's like we said before, Twilight,” Applejack said in a soft voice. “It’s not possible to make sense of everything one hundred percent of the time.”
“But—”
“Now’s not the time to beat yourself up.” Applejack gestured to the blackened wall. “It don't matter who or where this thing came from—it's a bonafide calamity. We gotta stop it, bar none.”
Fluttershy patted Twilight’s shoulder. “If this... d-dragon isn't going to tell us anything, then there's no sense trying to speculate. We should focus on the bigger picture instead.”
“Before it’s too late,” Rarity added.
A long, slow sigh escaped Twilight. “I’m not even sure what to do at this point. It’s obvious this dragon is hiding from us; how are we supposed to draw it out?”
Rainbow tilted her head at the stairwell. “There’s more of this place to check, for one. I say we leave this mess behind and head down some more.”
"Yeah!" said Pinkie. "If dragon-guy wanted any of this stuff, they wouldn’t have trashed it!"
Twilight’s ears drooped. “I'm more worried this 'trashing’ is the result of energy drain. That's why everything in here is black and white—”
An idea struck her like lightning.
“What’s that look about?” said Applejack.
Twilight checked to make sure her spellcasting range hadn’t already been reduced to nil. It hadn’t, fortunately. “You’ll see a second. Head back into the stairwell, everypony. ”
It was at this point Pinkie realized Maud had gotten off her back. She was rummaging through the debris nearby, and… stuffing a scroll into her coat?
“What’cha doing?” Pinkie said after making her way over.
Maud regarded her. “...Maud Sense.”
Pinkie pursed her lips. There was still a bit of parchment sticking out of Maud’s collar. “Good omen, or bad omen?”
“Not sure.” Maud clambered onto Pinkie’s back. “I just know this is important.”
Pinkie rolled her eyes. Leave it to the Maud Sense to be vague as ever.
They exited just as dozens of magical threads sprang from Twilight’s horn. Everything in the ruined lair became enveloped in her aura—the tables, the notes, the spilled spell components, all of it. All of it lifted up a few inches before vanishing with a faint pop, sucked into Twilight’s pocket dimension.
“If the magic is gone, then so are any hexes or curses.” Twilight shut the door behind her. “Greater threat or not, we’d be idiots to not look through Sombra’s—”
The sense of being watched returned. It was more intense this time... and HUNGRY.
“Alright, put ‘em up!” Rainbow rose higher into the air. “You think you can snack on us next?! In your dreams!”
Fluttershy hid behind her mane. “Please don’t be a real dragon…”
Regardless of what was causing it, they could tell it was coming from below. It was seething, straining like a rabid dog on a leash. It started to recede into the void again...
“C'mon!” Twilight took off down the slippery stairs. "Before it gets away!”
It was fortunate they were able to fly. Leaving the focal point of gathered magic did little to reduce the amount of residue—if anything, it got even thicker. It got so bad that Twilight and the others were forced to fly single file down the mucky, ruined stairs.
They pursued the retreating presence down to the Inner Sanctum’s final landing. Not bothering for stealth now, Twilight blasted down the door with a good chunk of the wall. The first thing they saw was that, like all the other floors, this level encircled the stairwell like all the others with slanted walls. The second thing they saw was the floor was completely bare save for a grimy statue of... the ouroboros again?
Twilight rushed into the room. The others followed right behind her, crossing the threshold where the door had been—
WHUM
The ouroboros turned black. A viscous, slimy material began forming on the outer wall in response, runes being written out like the hand of an unseen giant. The symbols had encapsulated the room in seconds.
“Ewwww...” Pinkie made a face. “It’s like invisible ink, but way grosser!”
Twilight, noting the distinct lack of Pinkie twitches and/or screaming, took a proper look at the markings. “I deciphered this language earlier! It's the same as that one door!”
“Didn't you say that message was rigged to explode?” Applejack deadpanned.
Twilight ignored that. “This has to be something… it HAS to! Everypony, search the room while I decipher this! It might be the clue we need!”
The others wanted to argue, but Twilight was already off. They reluctantly obeyed and flew around without much idea what to look for.
On checking the inside wall, however, they discovered the room wasn’t as bare as they’d thought.
“Oh, my…” Fluttershy hovered back. “What is this?”
It was a series of dirty levers. There were dozens of them, all neatly arranged and installed into the rock itself. None of them looked like they would budge.
Applejack curled her lip. “Dunno, but I wouldn’t touch them even if they weren’t gunked to high heaven.”
Maud squinted. She wasn't interested in the levers themselves, but the strange etchings beside them. She pointed this out to the others, and together, they cleaned the mess away to reveal... a color-coded map. There were five distinct areas by the looks of it, and each one sported markings identical to the message on the outer wall. A compass rose styled in gnarled finger bones was placed beside a collection of expanded places of importance.
“This is a layout of the caves.” Maud pointed near the top. “I recognize that shape as the canyon where I woke up.”
The others stared.
“You sure?” said Applejack.
Now Rainbow laughed. “You don’t trust Maud to remember what a cave looks like?”
“...Point.”
Fluttershy referenced the switches to their matching symbols. “It’s like a control panel… What do you think it does?”
Maud clicked her teeth. “We’d need to translate the language—”
FLASH!
The symbols shivered. Under the force of Twilight’s spell, the characters reform and slid around like slithering snakes. The others watched with bated breath as the language of the modern day formed piece by piece.
“Woohoo!” they heard Twilight say from around the bend. “Now... reveal your secrets!”
They others decided not to comment. Instead they studied the now-translated map, scanning the labels and matching them to the corresponding levers.
““‘Alpha Transmitter’, ‘Sector One Primary Resonator A.” Maud pointed to the listing. ‘Sector One Ancillary Resonator A, B, C, D... It'd seem this is the master control for the traps. If we can de-clog these levers—"
“Ahem.” Rarity’s horn was already flaring to life. “Move, please.”
Sapphire magic coiled around her like a snake. She muttered a string of words none of them understood, her voice thundering and echoing like Princess Luna’s. The arcane symbols on her armor glimmered alongside the sigils on her legs as the energies rose more and more. At last, she released the spell with a booming decree.
FWISSSSSSH!
The residue burned away like tissue paper. It spread in the blink of an eye to sweep through the entire concealed system, onward and upward throughout its entire inner workings. A moment later, it was sparkling clean.
Pinkie whistled. “Superiffic job, Rarity! You really have gotten stronger!”
Rarity wiped her brow. “That is... the strongest spell... I know.”
Rainbow elbowed her. "For now."
They started at the top levers and worked their way down. Each one made a KERCHUNK that echoed throughout the Sanctum, disabling some deadly system they'd fought to get through. There wasn’t any indication that the levers were doing what they said, but the girls had faith. Sectors One through Three were completely shut down in short order, and they were making their way through Sector Four when—
“Girls,” said Twilight.
They jumped. Twilight was right behind them, so quiet they hadn't heard her. There was a note to her voice they rarely heard, one that made them all stop and turn to her without a second’s pause.
Twilight motioned for them to follow. “You’re going to want to see this.”
The group didn’t argue. Leaving the levers for now, they followed to the start of the message and began to read.
========================================================================
Congratulations, invader. You have found me at last.
I will not give you my name, but know that I am the orchestrator of more than you can comprehend. I am the greatest of my Order; the most brilliant and cunning witch to have ever walked this miserable rock. Trudging through my frigid wasteland and navigating my facility proves nothing, for everything you have witnessed is but a glimpse of what is to come. Prototypes, failed experiments, unfinished projects… all glorified efforts to buy time. But I know they shall serve their purpose well, for my scrying into the future has shown it will be millennia before anyone reads this.
I may be long dead, but my legacy will be carried out by those sworn to act in my name. I first summoned them thinking they could grow strong by feeding off the wretched ponies native to this land, but those wretched beasts… those southern-fleeing COWARDS… they discovered their own version of Harmony. I was forced to forge a new pact with my legion to exact revenge; a pact that required me to spend my remaining years devising a way for them to draw on another source of power.
At last, I learned of a way. It was slower… much slower, but given time, not even the magics of Light and Harmony will stand a chance. I can only imagine what they are like in your time—they will have been feeding deep below for ages now, their dark energies spreading to infect feeble minds.
If by chance you are a descendant of those who banished me here, know your wretched race is solely at fault. Had your ancestors fled your lands like these cowardly lookalikes, that would have been the end of it. Now, not only will the creatures of Flutter Valley die, your snivelling cousins will die. Every vile thing bearing your likeness will die. Your friends will die, your family will die, your allies, enemies, every living thing, ALL OF IT WILL DIE, DIE DIE.
There was a time when I considered this course of action too extreme. I saw it akin to levelling a mountain over a few ants... but that was before time became my enemy. My spells and potions can no longer prolong my life, and my attempts at true immortality have yielded nothing but wretched volatile crystals. So be it—if I must die, then all will die with me. Everything will be buried under a frozen wasteland for all eternity, and this planet will become a lasting monument to my greatness.
When my legion’s power can be felt throughout the entire mountain, the End of All Things shall begin. I tell you this as a 'reward' for making it this far—surviving my gauntlet is no small feat, but you cannot stop what is fixed in time. Leave this place now, cherish what remaining years you have, and pray The End does not come in your lifetime. It may not happen this century, it may not even happen in several; but one day my dark legion shall go forth and enact my dark legacy, and there is nothing you or anyone else can do to stop it.
Yet I would be remiss if I denied you a chance to struggle in vain. Should you seek death early, here is what you should do: Go to the switches behind you, pull the bottom-most lever on the left-hand side, and walk through the archway that will appear beside this message.
The wise will allow gravity to do what it does best. As for the foolish... they will suffer the wrath of ice and strife.
========================================================================
Nopony spoke for a long time. Nopony moved, nopony gasped, hardly anypony even blinked. Agonizing seconds passed like minutes as everything they’d discussed earlier now came rushing back in a blur: Their speculations, the prophecy, the actions of their predecessors, and more.
“This is it,” Twilight said at last. “This is what Princess Amore found.”
Rainbow put a hoof behind her head. "It makes sense, but... are we really thinking she launched some crazy gambit over the course of... however long ago?"
"It's like the mother of Hail Mary's," Applejack said, nodding. "What's more likely: that she managed to win the prediction lottery? Or that she was flyin' by the seat of her—"
"Modern divination magic foretells the future by using fixed points and pseudo-fixed points as 'anchors'," said Maud. "Even though we can't see the fixed points themselves, the events surrounding them have enough consistency to formulate equations. This is how we determine a range of potential futures out of infinity."
The others stared at her.
"How on earth do you know so much about time?" Rarity asked.
Maud shrugged. "Temporal theory minor."
Fluttershy wet her dry lips. “W-We… do all realize what this ‘legion’ has to be, right? If what they eventually do is fixed, what are we…?”
It was Twilight who had the answer. "Fixed points are very short, specific events. It may be fixed that I take a bite of a sandwich, but what I do from there is not. I could chew my bite, spit it out, choke on it, hold it in my mouth, immediately take another bite, or something else."
Maud nodded. "From the way the message is worded, I believe the fixed point is that one day, this 'legion' will break free. What happens from there..."
Rainbow was starting to see. "Sounds like whoever wrote left this got cocky."
Applejack glanced back at the levers. “I suppose we could call in our ‘backup’, but… we’d spend a lot of time trackin’ Mac down, not to mention getting him up to speed.”
“Time that wouldn't be spent here,” Rarity added. "And we do have a certain... individual that shouldn't be left alone."
Pinkie was still staring at the message. “‘When my legion’s power can be felt throughout the entire mountain’... how soon do we think that is?”
Twilight went and located the lever the message had mentioned. "Don't know, don't care."
KERCHUNK
The last will and testament vanished. Everyone’s ears popped as the outline of an archway appeared; the rock grinding and moving to reveal a narrow platform of ice. Everything beyond was pure black.
Rarity shifted on her hooves. “I admire your enthusiasm, Twilight, but there's still the matter of our elusive friend."
Twilight made for the archway, speaking far louder than she needed to. “Cart before the horse, Rarity. It can’t feed on the mountain’s corruption if we remove it at the source.”
Rarity's heart skipped a beat. She was tempted to look at the others, but instead let a mask slip over her face. The others reacted similarly.
“C’mon.” Applejack made for the foreboding exit. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”
The others nodded. They left the ominous room behind and passed through the narrow arch.
...
Not long after, the shadows began to move...
A vast abyss stretched out before the girls. The only discernible aspects were the silhouette of the ceiling high, high above, and the circular, residue-coated exterior of the Inner Sanctum looming over them. The staggering openness clawed at their minds the longer they witnessed it, their imaginations feeding into the sense of dread and unease.
“Yikes and a half...” Pinkie dared look over the precipice. “And here I thought ‘edge of oblivion’ was just a phrase!”
Twilight flew out into the expanse without pause. “Remember that black sphere I fell into? Imagine something like this, but worse.”
The others mustered their courage and followed after. The cold and corruption was like a punch to the gut as they acclimated, Twilight adjusting her spells as best she could. It was then she found she could cast into the expanse as normal… but when she turned and trying casting in the direction of the Sanctum...
“Wait a minute.” Twilight looked back where they’d come. They were still very close to the narrow platform—only about thirty feet away. From here, the Inner Sanctum looked like a cylindrical structure tapering downward until ending in a jagged point. Curious, Twilight and the others flew farther out to get all of it in view—
“Whoa,” said Twilight.
It was a stalactite. The Inner Sanctum was a titanic, hollowed-out stalactite over a veritable wound in the earth. It was five to six times taller than it was around, and it was completely covered in residue to give the rock a grimy look. The base was relatively clean, however... which was how they were able to spot some kind of glowing mineral.
Maud squinted at it. “I don’t recognize that material. I'd like to get a sample of it so I can—"
She stopped on seeing everyone's look.
"Fine." Maud put away her chisel. “Though to note, your Elements were the ones that caused the explosion.”
“Yeah, well, let’s not tempt fate," said Applejack. “In other news, if witches could be guys, I’d say this one was compensatin' for something.”
Words failed Twilight. She could tell the stalactite had been attached through artificial means, but that was a feat in and of itself! To do something on such a scale—
A frigid, sludge-like aura made them all flinch. It was coming from the archway, where a black mist was seeping out and attempting to escape into the depths.
"GOTCHA!" Horn blazing, Twilight cast the spell she'd prepared. A magenta forcefield floor formed below them that stretched out for a hundreds of feet in all directions. The mist recoiled and tried to retreat back into the Sanctum, but the others were already making to intercept. It was thus forced to double back and try dispersing, but before it could, four glimmering walls and a ceiling closed around it.
“Yeah!” Rainbow thrust a hoof in the air. “Take that—”
Twilight gasped. The mist was expanding, filling her forcecage more and more! Its magical touch was so cold it burned, gnawing and unravelling the threads of her spell! There was a monstrous, pain-filled roar as it fought against her, and then without warning it didn’t just break through Twilight’s barrier… it devoured it.
Rainbow’s smile faltered. “Uhhh…”
“Not smart, Twi!” Applejack pushed the others back towards the open air.
Twilight was dumbfounded. “That's impossible! My magic is attuned to the Elements! How could it...”
The mist continued to swell and expand. They could sense a twisted sentience within, its putrid, fractured awareness filled with cruel intent. Then, colossal vile wings exploded from the mist without warning—lavender wings.
“I grew accustomed to eating poison long ago,” said a gruff, raucous voice. The new appendages had no feathers, growing grey with icy spines as their owner’s corruption seeped into them. “Though honestly, shouldn’t you be conserving your energy?”
Gigantic draconic eyes opened within the mist. The creature was big, so big that it's oversized jaws could’ve snapped them up in a single bite. It had hooves, pony ears, and a curved unicorn horn, but little else hinted at what it had once been. Sickening shadowfrost bled from its orifices, and it also formed its billowing mane. Icy spines decorated its scaly gray body—particularly on its powerful tail—said spines ending in a club.
Lead formed in Twilight’s gut. Her eyes fell on the pony-sized cutie marks adorning the creature’s flanks. “Neighsay…”
The steady beat of Neighsay’s colossal wings thudded in the silence. “We don't have time for this. I read the witch’s final testament; we both know where and what the true threat is.”
Bile rose in Twilight’s throat. Neighsay’s looming, putrid aura was bad enough, but his ravenous, abrasive psyche reminded her of what she'd encountered in the void. She could feel the Element of Magic screaming—
A candy bar hit Neighsay between the eyes with a thwap!
“That’s for hurting Maud!” Pinkie lobbed a second candy bar at him. “That’s for stealing, and this—” She threw one more. “Is for the worst game of tag, EVER!”
Granted, the candy bars didn’t so much ‘hit’ Neighsay as land on his muzzle, but the gesture was noted. He went cross-eyed before slurping up the treats with his long, forked tongue. “I'm afraid you're thinking of someone else. The bigoted, pompous, pig-headed coward you’ve been chasing isn’t calling the shots anymore. I am.”
Twilight grit her teeth. On tapping into her Soul Sight, she saw that Neighsay’s soul wasn’t destroyed like she’d first feared; it’d been transformed. The gaping holes were filled with grotesque ichor that was like hunger incarnate. Combined with his remaining soulstuff being metamorphosed to grow in size and power with the rest of him...
“Chancellor...” Twilight’s sight returned to normal. “You are very, very, VERY ill.”
Neighsay’s laugh was so loud it hurt their ears. “On the contrary, I’m FREE! Free of that blasted prison, free of that vile lovesucker, and free to do as I please! I owe you a debt, Princess Twilight—not only was your little ‘treatment’ successful, it allowed me to become something far, far more!”
Twilight’s lips parted. There was a lucid glint in those mad eyes—a measure of order he shouldn’t have had. “You really aren't Neighsay... You're the entity we sensed in him before!”
“Indeed.” Neighsay's wide smile showed off fangs longer than broadswords. “A long time ago, that little worm forced himself to believe a horrible lie he knew was wrong. It immediately started to fester inside him, the anguish and guilt and worse devouring him from the inside. Yet he persisted and doubled down with more lies and the sort over the years, hurting himself more and more and continuing to rot his mind. Eventually he was forced to bury his sins in the deepest, darkest corner of his strained psyche… and there, they turned into me. I suppose I've never had an actual name, but I don't need one when I can just take HIS."
Twilight didn’t know what to say at first. The Element of Magic was screaming to open fire, to wipe this unholy blight off the face of the earth. The thing that stayed her hoof was his comment about ‘the true threat’. “Trying to make a break for it straight away speaks volumes about your motives. You may have destroyed Sombra’s apparatus and dispelled the curse on Cadance, but I doubt that’s what you meant to do.”
Neighsay’s chuckle was like sandpaper. “What makes you think you know my motives? Or that my motives matter at all? That bit about your precious sister-in-law is true, but I'm not gunning for Armageddon any more than you. Perhaps I merely knew you wouldn't hear me out even if I tried, hmm? Did you think of that?"
Twilight went quiet again. She wrestled with her thoughts for a time, but she wasn't thinking about his actual plans. “...You can't honestly expect us to trust you."
"No, but I do expect you to be rational," Neighsay said without missing a beat. "Confronting each other now will only benefit the true enemy. Neither of us knows how strong they truly are—we very well might need each other."
Or they might wind up creating an even bigger monster. The only reason she wasn't dismissing him outright and attacking was because he hadn't tried to siphon more corruption. "...Fine. We’ll hear you out, but if you try to sneak off again, lie to us, or do ANYTHING funny, we’ll deal with you like the last energy vampire we faced. Got it?”
A puff of shadowfrost escaped Neighsay’s nostrils. “So much for the Princess of Friendship being friendly. Let me guess, you found your father’s telescope?”
The air grew noticeably warmer around Twilight. “Tread lightly, or a candy bar will be nothing to what I throw at you.”
“Ooooooh, scary.”
Twilight turned to Applejack, who’d been studying Neighsay with a long, hard look. “Is he telling the truth?”
Applejack pursed her lips. “He ain’t lied yet, but he’s nuttier than a bag of squirrels. I don’t know about this, Twi.”
Twilight wasn’t exactly confident either. “He’s not wrong about the greater threat. If we’re going to do this now, we’re going to need all the help we can get.” She went back to addressing Neighsay. “I'm not going to assume anything. Who is this ‘vile lovesucker’ you’re now free from? How much do they know?”
Neighsay rolled his eyes. “Queen Chrysalis, obviously. Assuming we prevent Armageddon, she’s the next greatest threat. She’s learned a great deal from my counterpart—far more than you realize—but he’d already gone rogue before following you here. Stumbling upon the second lair of Hydia was just more incentive to keep Queen Failed Experiment in the dark.”
There was a long, very pregnant pause.
“Who or what is a Hydia?” said Rarity.
“Second lair?” said Maud.
“Failed experiment?!” said Fluttershy.
Neighsay didn’t answer at first, as he was looking off to the side. “Conniving, doublespeaking... ‘Swear a geas to the Master’s legacy’? I should’ve made them suffer more…”
“Hey!” Rainbow waved her hooves. “Tall, dark, and crazy!”
Neighsay regarded the tiny heroes. “Come. I’ll explain on the way to Sector Five.”
In case you're wondering what Neighsay looks like, imagine something like this, only about 70 feet tall with dragon wings:
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I sense a betrayal in the coming chapters, I just know it in my bones!! That THING that Neighsay has transformed to is going to try and kill them once he takes them to Sector 5 I just know it!!
Bow bow bow....
Oh, okay. You're going old school. I can dig it.
10173349
The oldest of schools!
First off, I'm all kinds of super glad that you're alright :)
When I read the name 'Hydia', I nearly jumped out of my seat: dear God, it's been forever since I heard that name and I wanted to bean myself on the head for not making the connection earlier. I mean, crud, she invented the Smooze long before Discord adopted it. Hell, the girls fought it back in...what....chapter 1? This was pure genius right here, the revelation, that it was Hydia all along.
You're really quite awesome at this
10174090
Heh, there are lots of clues throughout the story it was her. I won't spoil them unless you want me to, but if you check Hydia's wiki page, you'll find a lot of hints. I've done my best in this story to incorporate her as part of G4's lore, and while I know some people don't like that sort of thing, I had a lot of fun making the connections.
10174111
I think you did an awesome job :)
Having fun is an important part of writing, so no worries
10173388
While it does indeed take forever i wouldn't change a thing i look forward to what you write everyday to the point of an unhealthy obsession but, to have that level of quality takes time and there is no substitute for that. Continue doing what you do best giving people like me and everyone else hope and something to look forward to.
If a story is strong enough, it takes all the time out of you it pleases.
This one has been working out...
10173137
Tense negotiations begin with Neighsay over when they're allowed to shout "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" at him.