Jakob is a quiet man trying to raise his daughter in peace. He is haunted by the loss of his wife many years ago. The choices of his life have led him to this point, leaving him in a state of constant contemplation.
He once shared an adventure into a new world filled with colorful equine-like creatures. His wife waded in among them, embracing their offers of friendship, leaving him bemused in her wake. Gladly he followed her through all the joys and pains, the peace and the conflicts.
Now, all that is left are the memories of a love that once filled him, and the daughter that was the result of that same love.
June is now coming of age to notice her father has a serious problem. He is lonely and she intends to do something about it, but how?
It begins with a single, magical candle and a touch of meddling from the Alicorn of Love.
Art by Corina Chirila.
Edited by Chapter 13 and TuxOKC.
All will hate me, (justly so) but I have to do it to em... FIRST!
Edit: Also, seems like a good start. Glad to see you writing!
10293223
Thank you!
And don't worry, I don't think all will hate you.
Most of them will, but not all. That's just silly.
10293223 Actually, I was first. Booom.
The zog they do, idiocy like that is why I loathe reporters. Where did that sanctimonious presumption ever come from anyway?
This is shaping up to be a wonderful story, I love characters like Jakob.
10293728
Amen to that. I don't need to know what the local celebrity had for lunch today nor do I need to know what the turd looked like. Let people have their privacy.
10293240
No, actually Han was first, when he shot Greedo! Blam!
So is the changing queens name Cassandra or Cassidy?
10294570
Cassidy is actually a shortened version of Cassandra. Both can be tied to the same character. I want readers to know her full name and the name she is actually referred to.
Well, I despise Alicorns. Always meddling where they are not needed, so many lives lost due to foolish naivete and shortnightedness.
Two thirds of my army dead becuase a foolish old mare wished to imprison the immortal necromancer instead of simply killing the infernal creature.
I lost many a good man that day, and knowing a necromancer's tinkering I couldn't bring them back.
Forced peace, forced responsibility, extended ignorance, forced love.
Ai
Despaise
Alicehrns
10294570
Having said that, changes have been made to avoid confusing readers!
When you roll a natural one on your first diplomacy check...
Still not as bad as the time the barbarian just walked right up to the door and knocked...
Tier 2 Passive Brainwashing Matrix, commonly called the "Mother's Touch".
She s playing the 'cool' aunt who let's you do anything you want. It's an easy tactic, introduce a youngling to novel things which adults indulge in, they naturally gain affection for you as you do.
Such a simple manipulation technique. Quite effective, regardless.
With the father, she appears to use the, "They are a gun, I am a stick, wouldn't you rather deal with a stick?"
Interesting. I like it. On another note do you I think you will ever finish Catherine the great? That looks like a good story and I like your writing style, but I don’t want to start another story that will never be finished.
10299748
CtG will probably need a rewrite. I want to finish some of my stories, but others I feel are not as good as I want them to be. It really depends on finishing this one and going from there. I do apologize for the unfinished works strewn about like mad experiments left to neglect.
Woof.
Now see, this happens in real life, but I'm going to reword it so ye of small brain, like myself, can understand the questions being asked :
"Do you trust me with all of your secrets and have absolute trust in me?"
"Would your dead wife be happy knowing you aren't actively trying to replace her with another woman?"
"I was a friend of your wife and I was also hurt by her passing, and since i couldn't visit, I was hurt more than you, her husband, therefore you should listen to me"
"Your dead wife would've sucked it up and consoled US if you died, why didn't you do the same?"
It's all reading between the lines, lil passive ticks and fancy words that give what a person truely thinks.
Their real statement often needs a bit of decoding to understand it.
I like this. A fresh take on the human in Equestria. I cannot wait for more!
This is a sequel, right?
10303944
No. Stand alone story.
Nice chapter! Keep up the good work!
I am really enjoying this story
An echo in a candle. Clever, very clever. I wonder if the size and therefore longevity of the candle is determined by the power of the spell, or is it the other way around. Certainly you could not make it too large, else the artifact would no longer be conveniently portable.
This story is engaging and gripping and I have subscribed to your newsletter.
Taking a child's opinion at face value is about as smart as allowing an overweight noble to lead an infantry March.
Nonetheless this progression is quite interesting.
Candle flame, never seen that before
Awesome story, keep up the fantastic work!
10309235 I think it is just big enough for June to get what she needs out of it. Just speculation, here.
10309235
It is a finite thing. It will burn for four or five hours at the most before being used up. June can easily hold it in one hand.
I Like how the author incorporates manipulation techniques in this story.
I'm not sure if he's intentionally villianising them, but he's doing a good job at it.
Cheers mate.
Now, allow me to dig, what Cadence essentially did for this entire segment was poke Jacob in a tender spot to get her point, an otherwise weak point, across.
Put simply, she used the automatic insinuation that "My action WILL help your daughter" to weaponise and deconstruct Jacob's righteous indignation at the image of his wife being defamed in such an unholy manner.
That insinuation fails to conceive the very notion that perhaps, showing a child her dead mother temporarily wouldn't harm her mentally in any way.
Once more we can observe Cadence hiding behind the veil of care in order to ignore and subvert Jacob's desires.
In doing so and not consulting him, it also shows a blatant disrespect for him, which his wife was implied to have, and thus cements the power dynamic.
My point has been proven. Recklessness at its finest
Take heed my fellows,
Atrocities committed with the best intentions are still atrocities, and you will pay for them.
10314205
Yeah, I wonder if she'd react any better if it'd been Shining who died and they built a magical golem with a personality based on him for Flurry Heart behind her back.
10314292
OoOOoof!
My sides hurt, you shook me dude.
Ey bro, ever realise that somehow, no matter what the story is, if you just take treatment the human gets and just pretend the same was done to one of the main cast, how undeniably, morally wrong it is.
Also, you cannot comprehend my joy of finding someone who is capable of critical thinking and a normal strain of analysis.
10314299
Also it's funny how Cadance claims not to want to hurt Jakob and June's relationship when she's blatantly set things up that if he objects to how she's interfering in his parenting it makes him the bad guy to June.
10314347
10314299
Now comes the $20,000 question: Why is she doing this?
"I evoked his dead wife using something that some cultures/worlds would consider blatant necromancy without asking permission. And then involved his only daughter in the same, again, without permission."
With just a bit of tweaking that candle would be exactly the sort of thing Sombra would create, and Jakob's more than enough of a dour pessimist to know it. I wonder why he's upset?
I don't doubt their good intentions, but this goes far beyond the pale. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned scrapbooking and memories recreated in illusions?
10314356
Obsessive-compulsive behaviors brought on by falling into her aspect? It does tend to be a problem with alicorns...
10314356
Alicorns love chess. Kaga was exceptional. They likely expect the same from June but they also realize that as long as Jacob is around, he will not let them groom his daughter.
An asset is best when it is on one side of the board. To properly indoctrinate her into pony society they need to build a foundation of servitude from childhood. If not, she may develop an unbiased viewpoint and not mindlessly support any action they perform.
As such they seek to destroy the relationship to deify themselves in June's eyes and then raise her in a similar manner to how Celestia groomed Twilight Sparkle.
10314488
Oh, wait Wait, what if you made a flame construct that burned with actual, molten, Primordial level, metal melting fire, BUT! infused the flame with the aspect, personality and shape of the person most dear to the viewer.
If you so much as caress a cheek, your hand will melt off easier than a 1000 degree knife through butter, much less hug it.
Now THAT is an idea I can get behind.
Hell, the 'candle' is essentially an AI program running with a screen and limited battery, in the shape of a candle to emphasize how little time she has with it, and to further shoot the point that the Alicorns are the only individuals she can get it from.
Why not make a golem? Because that would mean an asset they could lose and I'm quite sure that they can't put in a subtle, non-conspicuous shutdown protocol in a magic AI sequence yet.
Magic isn't like code, it's blatantly inflexible and the best failsafe I've seen thus far is an implosion of the regulation matrix which had enough force to reduce half a town to ash.
Magic works with three things, Spell matrix, mana matrix, mana conversion.
The spell matrix ensures the spell cancels safely(discharge through ambient mana, pain not-withstanding) and deals with the 'will' component of the spell, the 'intent'.
Mana matrix deals with the input of mana, it's passageway along the circle and exit along the formed axes.
Mana conversion deals with circles whose purpose is to convert the mana inputted into the desired form.
These three functions are necessary for every spell, and are precisely why a magical AI wouldn't be able to have one.
Changing any single part of them requires an inane amount of tedious trial and error, lest the spell implode and kill you.
Oh, you say that too!
Yes, something about this reeks. Cadence might really be falling into her aspect, "love" covers a staggeringly wide swathe of territory.
Yanderes experience "love" too...
I've spoken to many a person in my life, those who hold political power and those who hold physical power and especially those in positions of peril.
A Chinese saying I picked up simplifies the entire process of comfort.
"At the end of the day, he with the biggest fist wins"
The rich man uses money to buy a strong fist. The strong fist has power with which to use.
At the end of the day, strife can be solved with physical conflict, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
I've seen many men be ridiculed for killing their enemies for minor offenses, I've also seen those same men who ridiculed others get ousted because they refused to simply end the problem at its root.
Killing someone because they pose a threat to do you, instead of seeking peace, does not make you a weaker man, it makes you a living one as blades would come to pass anyway.
Never forget, the most powerful political figures throughout history have been killed by mere boys, regardless of their 'hired' fists.
A fist, takes many forms, there is a mental fist, caked with emotion and ridicule, there is a social fist, Full of vibrant constructions and judgements, and there is simply, a fist, with which you drive into someone's head to end them.
Jacob's excels at the latter, while Cadence exceeds him, as feeble as her attempts are, at the former.
At the end of the day, he with the biggest fist wins the battle.
Ensure you never fight one where you cannot use your own.
10316581
Indeed they do, and it can come from various emotions and feelings.
I really hope I can pull this off when the answers start coming for you guys. I'm excited and there's still a lot more story to go.
Well wadda ya know, she did go full yandere.
10323015
No she didn't, she's just emotionally frustrated and weary at the stupid behaviors from the people she loves, desperately wants to help, but the people are simultaneously too stubborn to be helped, and deny that they have a problem in the first place - and that's what she's been feeling for the past eight years. It's a frustration I understand all too well.
10323049
There's frustration, and then there's going behind all three of your fellow princess's backs to cajole your trusting sister-in-law to create a possibly necromantic candle for the purpose of interrogating a man's dead wife about his romantic preferences.
10323053
That's still not yandere. She had an episode, but she doesn't want to actually hurt anyone - she's just desperate to fix the problem and slipped into "the ends justify the means."
Do not falter Hrindrgad! Crocodile tears can extinguish no flame else the fires of hell'd be naught but soot!
This child, has manipulated you and done the unspeakable! Simply because you do not fit her MAGIC.
She is obsessed with her aspect, obsessed with it working and obsessed with the idea of making a married man forget about his dead wife, and is willing to ignore and possibly damage the man's daughter as a consequence.
Need I speak more?
10323053
Would you look at that, you just cut right into the meat of the issue, didn't ya.
Well at least we can put together from that little rant that the other alicorns are likely to not be pleased with Cadance's actions either, especially since she twisted their intended gift, a literal memory book that would probably last a lot longer than the AI candle that she made for selfish reasons. So here's hoping the rest of the princesses throw another book at her when they get to Canterlot.
10323049 I get where you are coming from, but I think you're only looking at the surface level of the issue. The Candle only knows what has been recanted by those that know Kaga. As such, all the information it knows is already known by the person who compiled/retrieved their memories. The issue isn't that she is trying to help—rather, it's the way she went about helping... and how she went about doing it.
Which begs the question: What about this candle is different from a memory book? What Origin level magic was put into it? Upon what, and how, was it created? A tool can have many uses, even if it is not their intended one. Such things bring consequences—like how you will break a wrench when using it as a hammer.
What was the intended magic used for?
Think of it this way: Why would she, in essence, rise the dead? Why drag out these issues? Why give the man and his child a bastardized, mockery of his dead wife? If it was for 'romantic' reasons—since she herself is best at such things is why she chose this particular level of 'helping'—why give it to the child, and to him? Wouldn't it make it harder for him to move on when he is reminded of what he lose? Why not just use it herself and then 'snuff it out'...?
A calm sea can hide great rocks—it's what lies below that should garner fear...
it's amazing how many people don't understand this. Jakob is proving to be a very good father in my eyes, his first priority in all things is to keep his daughter safe, and to ensure that she can keep herself safe. In this way he demonstrates his love every day, through careful attention.
A child who knows she is loved is a lucky child indeed.
I knew it. Ponies cannot be trusted because sooner or later they choose each other over you, regardless of how much good you have done for them.
Fizzle has proven her worth. She deserves the respect of a warrior, and the trust of a Mole in enemy territory.
Give her none.