Months after Rainbow and Pinkie's mission into Gryphoniya, they and Twilight planned an excursion to Griffonstone. However, not everything was meant to go according to plan.
Abducted by revolutionaries and forced into a life or death situation, Twilight and her friends—with only the assistance of absolute strangers—must find a way to escape and find their way back to the safety of their home.
Proofreading and editing generously provided by Gay For Gadot, Punished Bean, Short-tale, and RDT.
Betareading was also provided by Grey Vicar.
Cover art provided by the talented RayneTheSkunk.
Thank you all for your efforts!
Chapters (7)
So... do they make it back?
Kinda feels incomplete without that.
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Second half has yet to be posted, I'll do that now.
Nice try
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Thanks.
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Care to leave him some more constructive feedback than that?
Congrats on the feature, Mykola! Honored to have helped with this.
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"constructive feedback"
'overly political story'
This fandom really wants me kicked out.
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Thank you Gadot! I was fortunate to have your assistance with this.
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Nice try sounds like a very coy "yeah its ok". Not sure why people had a problem with it.
This seems interesting, though I’m currently in the middle of doing other stuff at the moment so I doubt I’ll be reading this anytime soon lol
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No worries! Thank you for checking it out!
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Np
Nice detail here!
Huh, never realized how much potential this had as a parallel with certain real-life places before…
I like the idea of Pinkie being the extra-perceptive one.
Promising start! Excited to see what’s next.
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Glad to see you are enjoying it so far!
Do like this sentence.
Between this and the Politburo, super cool stuff!
Classic! Could see this as an actual show line
Ah, poor Twilight! Things do seem to work very differently here than in Equestria.
Those mules can’t even catch a break away from equine-based Equestria!
Interesting, the species-based insults.
Seems like things work very differently here than in Equestria…
I love the mental image of Twilight being addressed this way.
I presume this is based on some language? It sounds natural language-ey.
Ha, lots of ways that could be interpreted…
It's neat to see Greta, and I like the way you show glimpses into griffon culture, complete with language and partial, untranslated idioms. It feels lived-in and cynical.
Helpless to Help, indeed.
Oh wow, that really is huge!
Hehe, “birdbrains”.
Will it? The rules of this part of the world certainly seem different so far…
And our trio is reunited! And finally starting get a sense of the scale of the problem.
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Interesting to watch you go through with thoughts of each chapter! To answer a few of your questions, the griffon language and culture I have here was inspired by my homeland of Russia, since the griffons we see in the show seem to resemble really the identity I know here.
Either way, glad you are enjoying the story!
Worldbuilding!
Rude!
Ah, I love both the analogy to real-life nationalist policies while also building in the use of linguistic production by a second language speaker. Very efficient, this sentence.
Of course! The average Equestrian would not have experience with this concept, having been ruled by the Goddess for an entire millennium at this point. Great Pinkie Pie-ism as well.
If this is based on a real-life phrases, you have chosen a beautiful one. If you made it up yourself, you are very good at thinking up cool historical phrases.
Applying the idea that ethnogenesis is arbitrary to question species being arbitrary as well, as far as it is treated as an ethnolinguistic and cultural identity by the characters of the show? Very cool!
Ah, the arrogance of the metropole! That the periphery may have preserved some of the old knowledge better due to preserving it differently would never have come across her mind.
This quote strikes me as autobiographical, because if it is true, I can see where your writing is coming from and I think the results of it are at the very least very good.
Sounds very familiar…
Ah, priorities. Good use of Pinkie Pie for contrast here.
The subtle use of a different title than the ponies normally use for Her, very nice.
Top notch historical reference, aces.
Hey, the first word I recognize!
For some reason, this especially underlined the poetry of the fact that the situation that Twilight finds herself so helpless against isn’t world-ending ancient evils, but a sliver of a taste of what so many humans have suffered through without their names being recorded anywhere.
Ah, the second word I recognize, sadly.
I just loved this. It really feels as if I am looking out into the world from Twilight’s eyes.
What a powerful way to end this chapter, bringing back that moment of innocence in the middle only to grind it into the dirt.
I feel like I’d need some time to gather my thoughts on this, but I have a feeling that the themes brought up here will make a return in future chapters, so I want to get through them before commenting on them further. For now, all I can say is that I think you have done an amazing job incorporating a more “realistic” geopolitical and historical setting that works well with the canon depiction of Equestria and the worldview of its inhabitants. This has been a joy to read so far.
Twilight resigned herself to the fate that some things could never be solved. And she, no matter how determined, had no power to change anything.
Putting up a wall at this point would be interesting. I don't mean a physical one. Twilight and pretty much the rest of the world, even Equestria. Why involve yourself if it is obvious every move you make is liable to cause more harm? Just a possibly interesting outcome.
Ah, derived from the English collective noun for crows?
They’re definitely no longer in Equestria. And I was going to say the assumption that the side that helps you can’t also do terrible things was pony naïveté, but truthfully it’s a very human bias as well.
A lot said in just these two sentences.
And there we have the title, appearing in meaning if not its exact wording. Both Equestria and Twilight herself, helpless to help. Since this story occurs mid-canon run, it's interesting to imagine Twilight and her friends continuing with their lives as depicted in the canon show, focusing on the lower stakes of a life in a prosperous and peaceful land, whose problems and villains are easily identifiable and tractable. Trying to keep out of their minds the fact that a border away, griffons are committing atrocities and suffering from them in turn, and there is nothing anycreature can do about it. Yet that is life for those of us who are lucky enough.
Great work, Mykola
This was absolutely phenomenal from start to finish. An easy, thrilling favorite.