Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Reunions and Departures

The Sun was slowly sinking past the horizon, painting the hills beyond Ponyville orange and red and the city itself purple and blue. Ponies slowly stepped out the castle's front doors, heading back to their homes or any other place they may choose to go. Interviews had been given, official statements made, excessively inquisitive ponies sent off and in some cases forced away so they would leave those leaving and those staying in peace. It wasn't the first time Equestria had faced similar events, and ponies were a species without tendencies to obsess over the kind. After so many happenings in the recent years, the previous days' wasn't all that special, not for those who had no idea how close things had been. But then, they had been many times before too. Manehattan would remain a somewhat difficult issue to resolve, but there was time, and there were means.

Equestria would heal. Much as the crystal tree castle already was, by itself, surprisingly quickly. Twilight wondered if it would sprout a new branch, maybe a new room. Maybe that was how Harmony chose to communicate with her. Quietly, but still clearly there. Maybe that was okay.

Shining and Cadence would soon leave. The Empire had gone long enough without its rulers, longer than anticipated. Longer than anticipated in the event they would come back, the possibility they wouldn't had been accounted for on some level. Either way they had to go, and so they were among those watching on the castle's balcony, to say their goodbyes. There along them were Celestia, Twilight, their ride back past the Wall, and the stallion who'd helped solve the whole situation. Twilight still wondered exactly what he'd meant when talking to her, but he wouldn't say more on the matter. If not the past, the future then. "Where are you going next?"

"Back home," he said. "I think I'll take the slow way. I like walking. I miss Scarlet. Stella might have done something to her." He tilted his head. "I should have you come with me. If you can. It would be fun. Maybe she'll realise I'm not crazy. Or maybe she was right, she is a doctor after all. Not the whole way through, I like walking. I'll write to you when I'm close enough. It'll be fun."

Twilight smiled to herself. "I'm sure it will." She leaned into Celestia. The Moon rose in the sky, and they both watched quietly. Then Twilight turned her eyes to Canterlot, and the Behemoth.

Shining stepped forward, hugged Twilight, and bowed to Celestia. "Time to go." He stepped back, and as Cadence did as he had he turned to the other stallion. "Say. In all the commotion, I don't think I ever caught your name."

The stallion leaned off the railing, and looked at Shining. "Oh. I do suppose I never introduced myself, yes. I apologise for that." He fidgeted about for a moment, adjusting his ill-fitting clothes once again. "My name is Onyx Thread."

Comments

[Speckle]

Holy cow! That ending's perfect!

I'll see you in Book 2 "salutes"

[Saix]

The tensest mystery of all is solved: whether the story would be exactly 500,000 words long or if it'd be 500,001 just to mess with people's heads.

Unfortunately I'm laid out with a throat infection so I'm going to post a review next week probably when I can put something coherent together, but for now I'll say that I enjoyed it a lot and I'm looking forward to the next book, whenever that arrives.

[Saix]

I'm just glad his name isn't Otter to be honest, that'd be a really weird name for a pony.

As far as the whole story goes, I really like the fact that there's multimedia parts in it. I've always thought that it's a shame that more people don't use images, links, coloured text etc. in electronic writing when it's so much more easy to do that sort of thing than it is in print, so I always like seeing it used, even if it's only coloured text. The fact there's there's everything from specific text types used for certain characters to invisible text and reversed text to AI voice generation is great.

Keeping to the stories format, I also like the timeline leaping+short chapters. Looking at the comments for the early chapters clearly a lot of people don't, but I think that the story just wouldn't feel the same without it, and the chapters jumping around being an actual in story phenomenon due to the Behemoth's effects on a meta level makes it even better for me. It also helps raise the difficulty of the mystery aspect, simply because it's relatively hard to keep track of what's happening when to who. In most stories you can just cast your mind back and go through chapter to chapter to remember what happened when, but the format in this story makes that virtually impossible. Some people would argue that that's just cheap, but the story in general is so well handled that I'd argue against that even if I didn't enjoy it personally, which I do. I've only reread certain sections, but like Monument it's pretty clear that it's going to feel like a very different story the second time around and a lot of things will be clearer.

However, I don't think I'd have appreciated it as much if I'd been reading along as it came out for any length of time. After I'd caught up and was waiting for the chapters to come out day by day my memory of the story started getting hazy, and I don't think I'd have been able to figure out anything about what was happening if I was going for weeks or even months before something mentioned earlier became relevant instead of coming across it hours or days later instead. Also, the format being a hard sell makes it difficult to recommend it to anyone without a lot of disclaimers. If I was going to recommend that someone read The Behemoth came to Canterlot, I'd recommend that they read Monument first every time to ease them into it.

Something that I appreciate is that there's no cheap misdirection and that everything, or at least almost everything, can be figured out before the answer is given if you pay attention and/or are willing to go back and reread certain parts. I say almost everything because of [redacted]'s journal entries in Monument, after reading through it a third time I'm increasingly convinced that there's no way of figuring out exactly what's going on with the 'dialogue' there from the information in the story, although it's possible to hazard some guesses, so I'm not counting on getting answers to absolutely everything here. Even Otty's first name could be figured out from the chapter titles, I don't whether his last could have been somehow, but I assume so, I'll keep an eye out for it when I reread.

Similarly, everything ends up being relevant sooner or later, even if on first reading it's hard to see why exactly the story is taking a detour from the more immediately interesting stuff to focus on, say, Lemon Zest and Indigo Zapp talking about Lemon Zest doing something on her computer, or Stone Brick walking to Twilight's castle to deliver a scale.

The characters are well handled, the story does a good job of showing the different effects that the Behemoth has on different people's lives based on their prior circumstances and their own personalities and the OCs integrate into the cast well. Stella was a stand out character, I can't say I liked her but she was one of the most interesting characters in the story from beginning to end.

Anyway, between the unusual format, the characters, the meta stuff and the fact that it's delivered so far this story is hitting a lot of boxes for me. I'm looking forward to reading the next installment

[FanOfMostEverything]

This was quite the experience. I’m glad I finally caught up. There were some frustratingly vague, meandering stretches of narrative, but when viewed as a whole, it was a fascinating read.

There are some lingering plot threads, some that feel more abandoned than left to tantalize for Book 2. (The humans kind of fell off the map by the end, to say nothing of Pony Life.) Still, there’s plenty left to cover. Looking forward to the next installment, and my apologies for the delay.