Love was immortal. Love burned even when all else ceased, when the flame of breath left ones chest still did love burn. So then did an immortal lover love forever; the kind of love that could topple empires and threaten to coat the world in ice. This was Twilight's last chance to prove she still had love left to give.
She only hoped it was enough.
Written for the Quill's and Sofa's Princess speedwrite, where it took first place. The posted version has seen extensive editing with the help of Dreamer Deceiver's gracious heart and nimble hands. Cover art credit to the tremendously talented Splush23.
Chapters (1)
Man, I remember seeing this fan art and instantly wanting more from it. Can't wait to read this.
alright that was Good, kinder wish there was more.
MOOOOOOOON! I NEEDED MORREEEEEEE!
But seriously, this story grasped me in its iron grip. I wouldn't have been able to stop reading before I got to the end even if I wanted to. I loved how you portrayed a darker version of Cadance, of how she was corrupted through heartbreak and became one that breaks hearts in return. Good work, Moon! See you at Quills and Sofas!
I am really confused with the timeline here. If I read that correctly Cadance was still normal when Shining died, and Flurry was apparently already gone, but then later on she was corrupted but Flurry hadn't disappeared yet. The flashback scenes do a decent enough job of fleshing out what happened after the show ended, but I'm left confused as to what caused Cadance to become corrupted in the first place. She blames Twilight for it but nothing in the story seemed to indicate what Twilight did or did not do. Near as I can tell Cadance just one day went full nightmare.
Okay, I took a second pass as I was writing this review. I think, after carefully rereading the whole thing, you meant to imply that Twilight was absent in Cadance's life and that's what happened? That after Shining's death Twilight didn't pay enough attention to her? If that's the reason that seems rather... weak as a plot point. Like, from what we know of these characters there is no reason to expect them to get married only to become so absent from each other that Cadance goes full nightmare.
I could go on longer about why this makes no sense to me but I'll just leave it here. In the end it feels like you decided to write a story about Nightmare Cadance and didn't really put much thought into anything else. Not to mention how confusing it was that Twilight apparently had multiple lovers even while married to Cadance? Like, she apparently had relationships with Luna, Rarity, Pinkie, and Rainbow, all while married? If this is socially acceptable, why did Cadance have no other lovers? There's just so many unanswered questions in the story, with very few details that would allow the reader to answer them.
Wait! I need more! That can't be it! You've made me hungry to know what will happen next! How dare you make me feel things! Aaaaa this is so good!
Though the timeline is a little muddled (that could just be me, though), this was extremely intriguing. The whole mood of it all was so well done that It almost swallows you from the beginning.
I'd like to ask for a sequel or epilogue of some sort to help tie this up, but honestly . . . I think you could leave it as is without sacrificing any of its power.
Well done, friend. Well done.
To be short, this a beautiful piece. I'd liken it to having four or five jigsaw pieces with some truly great artwork on it, but still only leaves me guessing as to how great the full picture actually is. Still, I don't think it's hurt by not having the full picture, as it surely jogs the mind to fill in the blanks. Wonderful.
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this.
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Same thing here, while I liked this story, it really needed more chapters/lines to flesh out everything that’s on the story, we can presume that somehow a fragment of Sombra infected Candance, but from where it came from? Or the Nightmare returned and made Candance think that Twilight didn’t loved her anymore, and from what I understood Luna died? How? Again, while this was a quick good story, there are MANY things here that required more time to develop.
Wow.
I loved the writing and the world building.
But I can't figure out who did what that led to Cadance's transformation.
Any help is appreciated.
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hey! hope yall dont mind a uh, reply to these here comments, but i figured i could shed a little light on what i was thinking when i wrote this. the gist of the events is this: cadance and twilight get married at some point early after the show ends; theyre both still young with a lot of energy and twilight still has the elements for support, cadance has shining and flurry. flurry, as she grows older, basically leaves house to go on Adventures and is rarely there. thats fine while cadance has shining and sunburst etc for company.
eventually, however, shining armor, starlight, and the elements die. twilight is focused solely on an equestria thats more connected to its neighboring countries than ever. cadance is stuck running the empire with no daughter (flurry heart has just dipped completely, no doubt roaming all about the rest of the world) and no wife (i can imagine them still meeting every so often but once or twice a year in the life of an immortal is basically Nothing.)
this continues on for decades. for decades cadance sits in a giant empty castle filled with constant reminders of her dead loved one and even more reminders of a wife who can hardly make time to visit her on a good year. after a certain point, this frustration and grief and anger at always getting the shortest end of the stick causes cadance to snap. its no magical artifact or shard of anything, just a centuries worth of emotion all pouring out at once.
weve all been there, right? where youve been dealing with some stuff and the stuff just keeps piling on and on and on and on until the tiniest thing finally pushes you over the edge and suddenly days or weeks or even months worth of stress explode out of you. take that feeling and multiply it by a hundred-fold — thats what i imagine heart breakers creation to be like.
ill uh, ill readily admit that i dont go out and really say any of that because i am admittedly bad at talking abt my core themes in a manner thats concrete. one of the biggest weaknesses of my prose is it (and myself) struggle with grasping solid concepts and this is kind of a prime example. good learning material, certainly, with some thoughts to carry into my future as a writer. hope this helped! and thanks for the comments, it means a lot 💛
ps i dont think this is the last story of mine to feature this twilight, ive got a speedwrite that kind of explores the bleak reality of being the immortal princess of friendship after (almost) everyone youve ever known has died
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Thank you very much for the background information. It added to my understanding of the story.
I very much look forward to seeing any additional stories you post with this Twilight.
A suggestion. The interaction with Sunburst might have provided a place to make some of the timeline clearer. Perhaps Sunburst lamenting not being able to help Cadance during the decades after Shiny's demise and Twilight's reply and internal monologue taking the blame on herself. Cadance was her wife. They could agree that it would have been almost easier if they could to blame Cadance's situation on evil magic, rather than on her feeling abandoned.
I just wanted to reiterate that you have a very evocative style and I have enjoyed many of your stories. The following three are in my Favorite's list, and I just went through your stories and added several to my Read It Later list.
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im really glad you liked it !! this kind of constructive feedback is really appreciated, believe me. especially happy to see some of my older work on that list! my styles changed a lot since i was younger and id love to revisit some of those older stories with a new approach
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Wait, so were Cadance and shining married? They must’ve been if Flurry happened.
Also Luna, Rarity and Pinkie were mentioned among “other lovers” (like Rainbow, I assume), so was there just a super-mega polygamy thing going on here?
I like the premise but I’m a bit confused haha
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personally i would have had it that shining armors death is what led to them becoming a couple the pain they felt bringing them together and making it even bigger tragedy when everything fell apart later
also the other relationship with elements feel tacked on doesn't resonate with me for the tragic relationship angle you were going for but that just me
other then that i enjoyed this story as a one-shot hope you do more in the same vein in the future
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yeah, shining and cadance were still married. twilight and cadance both are Very polygamous cus uh i think its cute and its an in-universe excuse to write a bunch of different ships without worrying too much abt an infidelity angle
"First Breath After Coma" plays while I read this
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YES god that album is WONDERFUL. massive inspiration for the tone of the story. saw them live, too; absolutely gorgeous
>Explosions in the Sky reference
OKAY. IM IN.
Damn that was cool, you don’t see this ship used too often and this was truly used at its best. Your writing was great nice work
Any chance of a sequel where Twilight brings her out of the darkness? TwiDance is one of my top five favorite ships and I would love to see this have more of a story to it.
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An excuse that I definitely approve of.
Ship away!
This was fantastically written, and had a great premise. Twilight and Cadance is a good ship, and open polyamory is perfectly valid for ponies. Your depictions of both time periods were very well done, showing both the passion of the past and the dread of the present. I was able to follow the timeline well enough, but I did get tripped up at one point. Usually it was alternating time periods, but the section break after Flurry told Twilight about Cadance becoming evil led to another section in the same time period, which confused me when I got to the section after that that was clearly in the present. I think the mechanism by which Cadance turned evil could have been explained better, and I'm not sure this was the best place to end the story. Still, this was overall very good.
Nicely written, but I feel this fanfic is incomplete, as if it's cut before the end.
That can't be it! There's gotta be more!
I see someone likes post-rock
This line here carries with it a lot of weight. The weight of the sun, the moon, the nation, possibly the world, but in there too is the weight that is the love between Cadence and Twilight. The weight felt the same way a boulder falls towards the bottom of the ocean. Though, in that very manner, the boulder still exists and can be fished out and resurfaced. The same can be said about love here. And while I'm not sure 100% on what's happening, I feel that's the intention, and beyond that, I can still feel that weight.
While that was the only line I'll be quoting, it is far away from the only one I loved. I'll admit my brain's rather small when it comes to prose like yours. That is, it took me a while to adjust to reading your style and really absorb it. That's not a fault for you, but a fault of mine entirely. That said, once I had acclimated, this story opened up to me, and it's nothing short of beautiful.
I've read the comments concerned about the timeline, and while I had questions about it that your response cleared up, I wouldn't have asked them in the first place. This story's not about anything concrete, in so far as the Crystal Empire collapsing, exactly where Flurry is, the specificities of Twilight's relationships, are concerned. It's about Twilight and Cadence's relationship.
I think your response said everything I was going to with regards to questions about why Cadence turned. There's a common pitfall among the mlp crowd to compare its world to ours on a 1:1 basis. What drives ponies in Equestria does not drive humans on Earth. A friendship lost to us isn't the end of the world, but then, friendship isn't coveted nearly as much with us as it is for ponies. But even then, say someone had plenty of friends and then lost them all, would they not devour themselves and leave an opposite doppelganger in their place? Now apply this, but twentyfold at the least for any given pony, and hundredsfold for Cadence.
I will also contest the notion that this story's incomplete. It may not have followed through, as it were, on its conclusion, but it certainly is complete nonetheless. Heart Breaker could've killed Twilight then and there. It would've been easy, and there would've been no repercussions. But she didn't. She didn't because Twilight is now in the same position as Cadence was before she turned. She'd lost everything, her entire support system, everyone close to her that made her life wholly worth living. But despite that, her responsibility was, as said in that line, the sun, the moon, the nation, and the world. These were not rested upon her shoulders alone, but in the passing of her closest friends, it now is.
Heart Breaker recognized this, and that Twilight wouldn't have braved the blizzard, wouldn't have taken the time to leave her kingdom, and wouldn't have remained after being knocked out cold if she didn't truly want to repair and nurture their relations. That to me is why this story's complete and needs no follow up.
As to my opinion of it, as usual Dawn, you have skipped the park and knocked it clear out of the state. You've set up an entire world in a few thousand words that feels like it's dying, but still alive. You created a relationship between two vulnerable ponies, who let that side out to each other in their weakest moment when Shining died, and then let distance grow between them after. You made that relationship begin mending, and by that, the world you made begin mending as well. I truly loved this story, and hope that my comment is coherent enough to convey that! Magnificent work as always Dawn, I'm blown away!
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The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place
and
Take Care Take Care Take Care
Maybe Twilight should have tried giving her an Snickers isnead?
Edit:
Also found this.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2015/3/14/849446.png
Source.
Good story!
I enjoyed reading it.
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;3c
God, I want to respond to this but how do I even.
..... Everything you said, and everything you didn't say, came together in a vision that was perfectly embodied by your main charterers and as such you introduced us to a full world and let it crash down around us in the same breath. I want to see everyone about this world, everything that led here and everything that is to come, but what you give leaves it in the prefect moment of indescribable relief and unending tension.
This is nowhere near what I usually read, but god dang do I love and respect it.
The opening is the strongest bit here. The conversation between Twilight and Sunburst could have gone on a bit longer, but that last line is aces.
After that, it gets a bit muddled. Like others, I was a touch confused by the relationships angle with no explanation. And then it just kinda ends.
Solid concept, but really could've used a couple more passes.
The story feels incomplete. Sure, Twi gets to live, but what was Heart Breaker's reaction? What happened afterward?
Damn, I want more of this. Helps that Twilight and Cadance is a ship I enjoy. And I just like Cadance's portrayal in general.
I want to make sure I am understanding this correctly. That last part was the first interaction between Heart Breaker and Twilight Sparkle, yes?
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ye
10459350 Okay good, suspected so, but I was not entirely sure.
So it is not just loss what turned Cadance into what she is now; but also a broken promise than erased any chance of changing back she had.
I liked this story quite a bit. It is...bitter, I think is the best way to describe it. No 'sweet' part anywhere. There is no solution, not anymore. It is too late.
My only caviat is that Heart Breaker's personality seems to be a perfect copy of Nightmare Moon's. I like when they have a strong personality shift.
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Yes, many authors ship characters and make them couples without background, for its own sake. I find these superficial.
Wow, this is incredible. I remember loving the co test version, and you've fleshed it out so much more than I expected. I felt the weight of time pressing on both of them, and I absolutely love how well you built up the dread surrounding Heart Breaker's domain. I'm a sucker for Dark Cadance interpretations, and this one was one of the best I've seen.
i think theres horses in this
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i saw the notification that someone commented and i forgot who u were for a second ... why must u haunt me
A very good read, if at times confusing.
I’m always thrilled when there’s Twilight/Cadance shipping that doesn’t rely on something gross, like cheating, in order to happen. Really nice work on this one.
Wait, that's it? There are 3 things that I hate on this site.
1. Dark endings.
2. Incomplete stories
3. And cliffhangers.
As for 1 though, I don't hate it as much as I do for 2 and 3, especially 3.
I mean from the sounds of it, it's not like you tried very hard either. It's not like Cadance couldn't have visited Twilight too. It's not like she has to raise the sun and moon after all.
Not really a criticism since obviously she isn't meant to be whole rational. Great story.