Luna: First Faint Whisper
Luna let out an irritated sigh and gave Lily Shell a curt nod in response to her introducing herself. “Of course there’s a real Lily Shell,” she sighed. “Of course Lashaal would copy a pony instead of inventing one.”
“‘ere now, wot’s this about some frumpy bint runnin’ ‘round th’ Provinces using my name?” Lily’s eyes narrowed. “Back ‘ome ya could get hit in the head till yer teeth all fall out for poachin’ a name that ain’t yours.”
“Who the hay are ya anyway?” Rainbow asked. “Ya talk like you’re from the dock ends of Trottingham but the entire ‘present arms’ thing and an escort don’t look like some scouser from that way.”
Lily eyed Rainbow. “‘ow the hay is some Cloudsdayle pegasus wise to Trottingham?”
“I get around,” Rainbow shrugged. “So who the hay are you?”
“Important.” Lily grinned widely at her. “You can tell cuz I have muscle following me around. I’m a real important pony, Milady Dash, or so everyone tells me.” She looked around. “So, this place, what is it?”
“You traveled for this distance over an arid plain without any idea of where you were going?” Luna frowned. “For that matter, how did you travel this distance? We were intercepted by chobbaths when we were flying in and they took a great deal of killing before they died. How did you travel this distance and to this place without being attacked?”
“The chobbaths are bouncers so ya don’t get into the club.” Lily walked in a complete circle, looking around her with interest. “Guess no one cared about ponies getting to this place. I mean, didn’t you come here without anything attacking ya?”
Luna thought back. “Come to think of it, we weren’t attacked. Nor was Rainbow, although being a noted flyer, she may simply be too fast on her own to be ambushed..”
“Hay yeah!” Rainbow grinned and struck a pose, flaring her wings out proudly. Lily Shell’s eyes went wide in utter shock, a reaction echoed immediately by her escort, and the reaction seemed to make Rainbow remember that her wings were not quite normal anymore, because she snapped them closed again, her cheeks burning red with embarrassment.
“Well buck me with sunfire…” Lily said. “Wot th’ bloody ‘ell did I just see?”
“Your Ladyship, I believe Lady Dash has…”
“Rhetorical question, ya nob.” Lily stepped closed to Rainbow. “Begging yer pardon Lady Dash but… would ya mind flarin’ ‘em up again?”
Rainbow swallowed and nodded, slowly opening her wings again to show off the patterns in the underwing scales and the sparkly sheen over fine scales overlaid by pony coat. Lily’s horn lit and faintly greenish magic covered the wing nearest her as she stepped closer and looked at the wing with a look of unabashed awe.
“Incredible,” she breathed. “Bloody amazing.”
“Could it be an effect of Loyalty, your Ladyship?”
“Naw, this ain’t Element work, put mah ‘ead on it.” She reached a hoof up and Rainbow pulled it out of her reach.
“OK, enough drooling over the wings, OK?” She folded her wings again unimpeded by the magic enfolding them, stepping away from Lly and closer to Luna. “Looking is creepy enough without touching.”
“Deepest apologies milady,” Lily said, bowing respectfully. “Lovely wings, can’t imagine ‘ow ya got ‘em. Woulda thought if th’ Master wanker ‘ad got hold of an Element, woulda heard somewot.”
Rainbow snorted. “As if that bucker could get his hands on me. Naw, totally different thing, maybe tell ya sometime. So who the hay are you?”
Lily narrowed her eyes at Rainbow. “I’m Lily Shell, I’m important, and I’m being guarded. All three of ‘em have to do with each other, Lady Dash.”
“Well, ‘scuse me for being a little twitchy about ponies who talk but don’t say a whole lot, and study me real close.” Rainbow narrowed her eyes back. “Just saw the running plot of another Lily Shell when she played stupid about a cage with a creepy monster bucker in it. So you getting all shifty makes me think you’re the one that needs loose teeth.”
“Lily, please understand that we have every reason to be deeply concerned about you,” Luna said, physically stepping in between Rainbow and Lily. “The last pony with your face pretended to help, and then disappeared when her advice was required. She unleashed the attack on Rainbow that led to the desperate measures that gave her those wings. And now you appear out of nowhere, claiming to be here with no knowledge of where here is, claiming to have met Fluttershy, and accompanied by well-armed ponies.” Luna looked hard at the unicorn. “And I know every pony of Equestria who has the name, or the wealth, or the clout to have an armed escort, and not a single one of them have visited the Provinces since the end of my exile. You are playing a game with us, Lily Shell, and the reason I have not harmed you is that you have given me no cause. That will change very quickly if you continue to deceive us.”
Lily looked at her evenly and then gave a little chuckle, which turned into a broad smile and a much heartier chuckle. “Equestria’s princess of the night, and its shield and guardian,” she said in a Trottingham accent more in line with Trotsford than the docks, vibrant with undisguised warmth. “I apologize, the deception is something of a habit rather than born of malice. I am Lily Shell; that is entirely true for there is no other pony by that name, save this pretender called Lashaal. But it is my favored guise and not my face or my true name.”
The unicorn bowed elegantly as she lit her horn, and from the tip cascaded a curtain of viridian fire that Luna knew instantly… from a thousand years ago. The fire swept down, turning a straight unicorn horn to an elegantly spiraling one, a white coat to ebony, and her mane to a teal rainbow that cascaded down her neck almost to her shoulders. The grooves and pits typical of changelings had been shaped into the pleasant and elaborate pattern that changeling royalty tended to prefer with the deceptively delicate-looking double pair of dragonfly wings vibrating against her barrel as the changeling raised her head to show her sapphire eyes streaked prettily with green.
“I am Duchess Kyra das Pupa, ambassador to the Griffon Provinces in the name of the Hive Throne and in the royal name of Chrysalis das Pupa, queen of all changelings.” She said with the very light vibrato undertone typical of her kind. “I again regret deceiving Your…”
She got no further as Luna stepped forward and swept the surprised mare into a close embrace. “All is forgiven!” she declared happily. “All this time that I have been returned, that I have seen no changelings in Equestria weighed on me. I feared for your people’s fate, sent to a place like the Eastern Wastes.”
Kyra returned the hug tentatively, and then with greater ease. “Celestia had ensured our safety long before, and I don’t believe she realized it,” she said as she parted from Luna and then bowed to her a second time. “When we arrived in the Wastes, we found a very friendly gorgon with her own intricate network of tunnels in the bedrock who happily gave us shelter while we laid the foundations of our capital.”
“A capital.” Luna shook her head, smiling. “Of course you’d build yourselves your own city. Modeled on Canterlot?”
“To us, Canterlot has always been the shining city from which we’ve been ruled and watched over,” Kyra said. “To have our own Canterlot was like being back home: a comfortable city, teeming with life and love, and a castle high above us watching over our lands.”
“Your lands are they?” Luna managed to tamp down her smile as she quirked an eyebrow at Kyra.
“As far as we’re concerned, Celestia gave us the Wastes to live in,” Kyra grinned. “If she wishes to dispute the matter, consider this the ambassador of the Hive Throne extending a formal invitation to Princesses Celestia, Luna, Twilight, and Dawn Sparkle to a banquet and a diplomatic summit to adjudicate any matters of territorial adjustment, with an eye towards reviving the warm relationship between the royalty of our respective nations.”
Luna felt a pang of sadness at that. Once Equestrians, and now it’s ‘respective nations’. “I suspected as much, but it still hurts to hear it said aloud.”
“I am sorry, Princess,” Kyra said sincerely. “We adore you and your sister and have often entertained a fantasy where we would return to Equestria, the prodigal children come home after a long sojourn from our rightful home, but things can never go back to exactly the way they were. Equestria is different, you are returned, Celestia has children, the heptachy is how a monarchy, and we have a capital city and an immense expanse of arid land and sand dunes to rule. Our nation is one of fantastical creatures, a coalition tied together by a shared bond of exile, and while it would be pleasant to call the Dual Thrones the seats of our rulers, no changeling queen can ever again be subject to the decrees of another ruler, no matter how we love her.”
“Why do you have holes in your legs?” Both Luna and Kyra started a little as Rainbow reminded them of her presence in her own inimitable fashion.
Kyra chuckled and turned her attention to the curious pegasus. “You’d have to ask my niece Tettidora,” she said. “She’s like your friend Twilight Sparkle: egghead, loves her books a little too much, a bit socially awkward and isolated, and a brilliant magical technician. From what I understand, our chitinous hides require thinning and holes to remain both light and comfortably flexible.”
“Chitinous… like a bug?”
Kyra nodded. “Yes, in fact. We’ve been called ‘bug-ponies’ and ‘lovebugs’ in our past, usually with friendly jest rather than malice.”
“Huh.” Rainbow trotted closer and peered at her. “Dunno, you don’t look at that freaky.”
“I appreciate that, Lady Dash,” Kyra said. “Regrettably, you aren’t a normal pony at all. Manticores, buffalo, zebras, dragons, even a brief contact with a nightmare, all part of a day’s work for the Elements of Harmony. Your threshold for ‘alien’ is freakishly high; the same place for ordinary ponies, like those that were frightened of us a long while ago, is quite low. I’ll bet that you barely even broke stride when you ran across a chobbath.”
Rainbow snorted. “Yeah, tentacles, big mouth, one eye, pretty standard stuff if ya live next to the Everfree. Freaky is that zambet bucker.”
“Zambet?” Kyra looked at Luna.
“A fear predator of some kind,” Luna said. “Apparently some kind of Void beast, like a chobbath but very clever, sapient, and extremely dangerous. I’m certain that I only escaped its attempts to probe my memories for pain because Nacht left some manner of mark upon me that it couldn’t defeat.”
“And then me and Grim beat the pies outta it,” Rinabow Dash grinned.
“A dangerous predator, but seemingly unable to cope with being physically assaulted,” Luna said. “Granted, I doubt any creature of the Void reacts well to an Element of Harmony, much less to being unable to harm those that are thrashing it.”
“Mmm.” Kyra looked around. “So this is the place that ‘Master’ is using for his laboratories?”
“So Lashaal claims, and what I see makes me believe that in this case she was telling the truth.”
“Good.” Kyra turned to her guards. “Pair off, and the colonel will be with me. Probe, but do not approach anything magical.” She looked over her shoulder at Luna. “Did you find any latent magic I need to be aware of, Princess?”
“I did, and what exactly are you doing?”
“Taking advantage of the fact that Master suffered a grievous defeat when his hive-mind monster was driven off,” Kyra said as the soldiers paired off and started moving off in different directions, the colonel joining her but standing silently at parade rest while the conversation happened. “I didn’t expect that this was his base of operations; that it is worries me. What kind of latent magic did you find, and where?”
“First, why does it worry you?”
“I beg your pardon, Princess, but I will tell you that in a moment; I need to know about latent magic now.”
“A narrow slit in a wall,” Luna said, looking steadily at Kyra. “Layered with a transportation spell, redirection, and spells that use magic-fueled fire to backlash against any attempt to trifle with it. Preservation spells for… specimens. Spells in every direction meant to ground out and confine magic. And there is a room that ‘Master’ used to confine the zambet, layered with all manner of spells to conceal it and to conceal that there was any magic there, and then to naturally direct attention away from itself. The exact magical concealment used on my niece’s birth room in Canterlot.”
“Thank you, Princess.” Kyra bowed to her and looked to the colonel. “Run the message to the others and return.”
“Yes, Duchess.” He bowed deeply and trotted off in the direction that one of the groups had gone in. Kyra watched him for a moment before turning back to Luna. “If you’re willing, Your Highness, I would like to see this room you speak of. As we walk, I’ll explain my concern about this being Master’s base of operations.”
“I agree.” Luna spared the changeling royal a slight smile. “If I may, before you speak of that, I’d like to know more of your sister, Queen Chrysalis.”
“Chryssy is a real winner,” Kyra said fondly. “She has looks, and brains, a vision, and the common pony adores her because she adores them. She’s the oldest one, of course, but she’s also the best one of the four of us at projecting the image of what an ideal queen is: beautiful, wise, glorious, infallible, and yet still approachable. The only one of those she is all the time is approachable, but feeling like you can just knock on your monarch’s door and have a casual chat does amazing things for their popularity. It’s a very good time to be a changeling, Princess Luna, because we have a queen who envisions a world where the Dual Thrones and the Hive Throne are allies, where the Friendship Express has a stop in Scarabi, and where Equestria has a proper army again so that if someone like ‘Master’ ever makes a play like this in your kingdom, we can shut him down hard.”
“Equestria was never more secure when she was at peace, and yet strong enough that no power dared to rouse her from her placid dreams,” Luna agreed. “I hope your sister’s plans come to fruition, Duchess; we have been bereft of your people for far too long.”
“And our people have been bereft of our fellow ponies.” Her pleasant expression fell. “The reason that Master’s decision worries me is what we know as The Archive.”
“The… Archive.”
“A magical construct the size of the palace at Canterlot,” Kyra said. “It has the appearance of classical Tribe-era temple architecture all rendered in obsidian. Mythology from the rocs and from some old tales that Maredusa remembers from her grandmother claims that has existed as long as the world of Equestria and that its builder was Order in his original form. Inside, it is a library. Lit from torches that have no fuel and never douse, without a speck of dust or sand, and there appears to be infinite space inside and endless shelves of books that are mostly within reach for an adult earth pony and well within reach for any unicorn or pegasus. The books have no titles but are filled with text in an ancient Equestrian dialect. My niece Tettidora and my sister Chiti are highly intellectual so they’re able to understand the writing, and they’ve said that the books are… well, everything.”
“What do you mean ‘everything’?”
“I mean literally everything, Princess.” Kyra looked grave. “Everything ever said, everything ever written down, everything ever known by any living creature ever. The construct appears to have been designed to transcribe all knowledge ever gained and place it within books. Moreover, experimentation has revealed that it always knows what you want to know and causes all books related to the desired knowledge to move directly in front of you within easy reach.”
Luna sagged back onto her plot. “Sola…”
“There’s more,” Kyra said. “Within the archive, you do not hunger, nor thirst, nor sicken, nor age, nor tire. It sustains you in perfect health, possibly forever. The only thing we believe it doesn’t sustain is the mind; madness will likely result if you remain there long enough with nothing but books.”
“So how does some broken-down thing in the Provinces have somethin’ to do with some big library somewhere else?” Rainbow eyed Kyra. “I mean, I ain’t seen a book anywhere in here and there’s dust everywhere.”
“We believe that the magic of the library, its apparent infinite space inside, means that it occasionally drifts in metaphysical space, attaching itself to other ancient structures. For example, a great hall with certain elements of Tribe-era architecture that the griffons borrowed from the early Equestrians.” Kyra gestured around herself for emphasis. “Which is why we wanted to know if you’d run across any latent magic, in case a suspicion that Tettidora communicated to me before we were cut off, is true.”
“That doorway, the one that’s too narrow for any normal living thing to enter, and is protected by backlash spells, could conceivably be a way to and from, modified by ‘Master’,” Luna said. “So your concern is that a powerful and hostile being that has strong inclinations towards experimentation and twisting flesh to his needs, has access to the largest repository of knowledge in the world.”
“More that due to the immensity of the Archive, he’d be impossible to track down and would have the luxury of effectively unlimited time to do whatever he wished,” Kyra said. “This ‘Master’ appears to be in no particular hurry, seizing cities at a languid pace as if it’s not his main priority or even important to him. He behaves like a being who has all the time in the world and intends to enjoy it fully. No place I know of would give him more of it than the Archive, thus my fear.”
“Well if this Archive place writes down anything anyone knows, ever, couldn’t he like, get one of the books and read about what we know the moment we know it or something?”
“I’m not certain that matters to him, Rainbow,” Luna said. “He has made no attempt to expel us from here, despite certainly knowing that his creation was chased off and that following something that distinctive wouldn’t be difficult.”
“Which adds to my concern that this place isn’t where he lairs.” As they came up on the still-open door, Kyra broke into a trot and stepped into the room. “Homey,” she commented. “And it looks perfectly comfortable for a mother to spend time with her child in. I take it that this ‘zambet’ can use reflections to its advantage?”
“Grymmilnia confirmed such.”
“Then I doubt it gains any special advantage from reflective surfaces.” Kyra looked over her shoulder with a light smirk. “My interactions with her, using a different guise entirely, makes me believe she’s Master’s mushroom: kept…”
“...in the dark and fed on horseapples.” Rainbow snorted. “Serves her right.”
“Yes.” Kyra nodded. “But also makes her perfect for spreading misinformation because she can tell lies without knowing that they’re lies.” She tapped several of the surfaces of the room with her horn. “And this was a… magical cage, you say?”
“So we were told,” Luna said. “You don’t feel anything either?”
“Not even the faint shells of runework.” Kyra frowned. “Lady Dash, you said, or at least implied, that you and Grymmilnia attacked it and drove it away?”
“Yup, kicked it’s plot up between its ears.”
“What was the form of its flight?”
“Uh, what?”
“The specific way that it ran away,” Kyra clarified. “Sprouted wings and ran, disappeared into thin air, what?”
“Well, it sorta popped like a balloon and went into the sand like it was made of black liquid or somethin’.” Rainbow made a motion with her hooves for emphasis. “Why?”
“If it can fit between grains of sand, why not minute gaps in the stonework?”
“It left before we even opened the door,” Luna said. “That’s why Lashaal fled instantly… she must have felt the lack of its presence in its supposed prison and decided to leave before she got caught in the crossfire. Leaving the question of what the entire purpose of all of that was. Why send it after me? Why tell Grymmilnia that its purpose was to attack Twilight? What could have been gained?”
“It compelled you to leave the structure, if only for a short time.” Kyra picked up the Luna and Celestia dolls from the crib, giving a small smile as she put them back and turned to face Luna. “Which means something changed between you leaving and you returning. Would you be willing to show me this narrow portal?”
Luna nodded, smiling back. “This is strongly reminding me of the old days,” she said. “When I was young and learning the military craft. An officer would always come through and conduct random inspections... “ She cast her mind back as Kyra followed her towards the narrow opening. “Sergeant Pommel, her name was, Violet Pommel. Extremely pleasant, extremely polite, projected command authority just by standing and smiling. She’d always direct us from place to place, asking about each item of interest as we went, and never revealed her thinking until after it was all over.”
Kyra blushed very slightly. “I apologize for my presumption, Princess.”
“No, I enjoy the reminder of an earlier, more innocent, and happier time Duchess.” Luna said with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “The narrowed opening is only a short distance this way.”
That the magic of the portal had dramatically altered was apparent to Luna long before it came into view; what she didn’t expect was to find the entirety of Kyra’s escort gathered there. As one, they bowed to her before planting their blades and stepping to either side of the corridor to reveal the portal beyond. What was immediately clear was that what had once been an opening deliberately narrowed enough that no pony could force themselves through had become an immense arched doorway leading into a room with very tidy shelves of books stacked as high and as far as the eye could see, illuminated by soft blue-white flames from dozens of torches. Kyra looked stunned at the sight.
“He expanded the opening,” she said. “That makes no sense. What purpose could there be to him making it easier for us to find him and follow him?”
“I don’t know but right now, I’m gettin’ sick of just asking questions we can’t answer.” Rainbow said. “Kyra, ya think the bucker’s in the doorway, right?”
“Well, through it, but yes.”
“Then c’mon and let’s play scouser. Ya up for it?”
“Oy, scousers ain’t thugs ya know,” Kyra retorted with a fangy grin. “Right respectable sorts, till ya buck with ‘em. Sorta like this ‘Master’ git. Gonna break ‘is face, swear on me mum.”
Rainbow grinned back. “C’mon, spill… you totally spent time on the dock end.”
“Ain’t just time, luv, got me this way o’ talkin’ all honest-like.” Kyra gave her a wink. “Tell ya all about it later, yeah? But time ta break some git faces.”
“I’d much prefer marching in after ‘Master’ properly rested and fed,” Luna said. “I’m certain you and your soldiers are ready, Duchess, but I and Rainbow have been active almost nonstop for going on a day now. I’m not particularly tired at the moment but I’ve been in far too many campaigns when the army that was fed and refreshed overcame steep odds, and others where the hungry and the weary broke before a greatly inferior foe. I’ve no doubt that a schemer who leaves such an inviting door is watching it closely and well-prepared for company.”
“I think it best to strike…”
“...while the iron is hot?” Luna shook her head. “Kyra, the zambet fled from us but is still very much in play and I suspect that its ego was wounded more than its body. ‘Master’ has numerous cities’ worth of the griffins he’s mutated, and it’s reasonable to assume that the chobbaths are not his only playthings.”
Kyra looked steadily at her for a few moments before she nodded once and turned to her escort. “Eight hour break,” she announced. “Set up in the antechamber and tell commissary to break out some cast iron.”
“Commissary?” Luna eyed her. “Just how big of an escort did you bring?”
“Initially only the standard two Honor Guard,” Kyra said, following her escort as they filed off to the right, traveling a corridor that Luna knew hadn’t been there before. “After the entire affair of the Guardian, Chryssy sent a full mixed unit north, ostensibly to staff the embassy but really to make offing me a lot more trouble than it’d be worth. Embassy got ridiculously well-supplied too, so even with the city seized and occupied, we’ve been left to our own devices; ‘Master’ seems willing to siege griffin cities but seems strangely reluctant to tangle with thirty changelings squatting in one of his conquests.”
“If yer from one of the cities ‘Master’ already grabbed, how’d ya meet Flutters?”
“The executive secretary to the ambassador of the Hive Throne, one Lily Shell, decided to pay a visit to one of the few free cities of the Provinces on behalf of the ambassador, who unfortunately couldn’t make it.” Kyra winked at Dash with a grin. “There, she learned that she had a twin sister and immediately left to inform the ambassador of this development, only to run into one of the most sweet-natured pegasi in the history of ever and learn that her dear friend Rainbow Dash, Princess Luna, and a mysterious dragon named ‘Spite’ had chased a hive-mind creature in this direction. So I gathered the troops and off we went.”
“So you knew we were here, and knew about Lily,” Luna said.
“Had to play it out until I was sure that I was talking to the actual ponies I was looking for,” Kyra shrugged. “Suffice it to say, I was satisfied that ‘Master’ had not in fact managed to create doppelgangers. Nuances of speech and mannerism can be faked with enough effort and access to the mind of the one you’re copying, but the emotion will always be mismatched and discordant.”
“I suppose that when you know that there’s at least one doppelganger in play, you have to assume others.”
“Certainly wiser than assuming the opposite.” They emerged into the entrance hall about the same time that the escort did, and Luna found herself pausing out of surprise at how thoroughly the changelings had transformed it just in the time since they’d come across them. Tenting had been set up all throughout, suspended using rope and hooks hammered into the walls. Tables and chairs were spread throughout, including a trio of long tables with benches to allow the changelings to take meals together as they preferred. Enchanted lights had been suspended from the high ceiling to cover the area in soft pleasant yellowish light. In the center of the entire thing was a mess area of astonishing size, tables and utensils and various cookery arranged around a central brick over. It was astonishing but also physically impossible, and Luna looked questioningly at Kyra.
“Living in a desert where there’s no forage at all, no water, nothing, forced us to develop considerable amounts of practical magic,” Kyra said. “Runecraft and magitech, primarily. The magical engineering that allows this is a crystalline construct that displaces large and immensely heavy things within itself while reducing them to nearly no weight. It’s heavy, so it can only be managed by a full unit, but with very low setup time and no need for everypony to carry standard gear, it offers a critical tactical advantage as well as a practical one.”
“An entire camp, assembled in minutes from a single central device,” Luna marveled. “Equestria has nothing like it!”
Kyra chuckled and led them passed the sentries, who smiled and waved as they passed them, then towards the mess area where about eight or nine changelings scuttled around preparing food. “Only for lack of need, Your Majesty,” she said. “Even with legitimate geniuses and polymaths among us, we’re still ponies like any other. Equestria has no need of magitech like ours because a pony could travel the entirety of Equestria for their entire lives with a full stomach and slaked thirst without a bit to their name or a single ration in their saddlebags.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention?”
“Or at least a dearly beloved aunt.” Kyra stopped in front of a large cast iron pot just as the changeling manning it dumped a bag of cut and trimmed celery in. “At any rate, there’s plenty of tentage and bedding, and ample food so make yourselves comfortable.”
Sleeping was by far Luna’s favorite part of the the night. Laying in a comfortable bed suitable for royalty, with the soft silver of her moon bathing her and a belly full of good food, casting herself out into the dreamscape to calm the dreams of ponies and battle their nightmares had become one of her greatest pleasures and the thing she missed the most in her long sojourn on the moon. She’d been surprised at how good a substitute a pad on the ground and a meal of rations with changelings had been for her normal nightly ritual, and she hadn’t realized how taxed her mind and body had been until she finally laid down to sleep. The dreamscape was, as always, lit softly and covered in stars with the phantoms of pony dreams drifting about in her vision, momentary glimpses of those dreams tied in with upsurges of emotion; it wouldn’t do to just wander around in an entirely mundane dream when somepony needed a soothing touch, after all. She’d quickly learned that the system had its shortcomings--the memory of stepping into the dream of one of her night guards and seeing herself still made her blush--but a momentary embarrassment was a small price to pay to help a particularly haunted pony through the issues that the nightmare represented.
But there was an additional benefit to the dreamscape that had served Luna well during the many ancient wars to protect Equestria and especially during her conflict with her sister: slipping into the dreams of others allowed her to know where in the actual world they were. That she had never brushed up against the dreams of the changelings was most of the reason she’d feared that they had died in exile. She felt, or at least hoped, that even if the creatures of the Void like ‘Master’ had no need for sleep, the griffons he’d captured and was experimenting on would sleep at some point.
It took her a few dreams to realize it but she noticed that the number of dreamers that made up the landscape seemed… diminished somehow. The constant soothing hum of fantastic figments of imagination being created and destroyed was so soft as to nearly not exist and as Luna projected her perceptions around her realm, she realized that the background feeling of millions of places to wander was dampened as well. In fact, it felt as if the sensation was being deadened like a limb falling asleep, like there was a presence beside herself interfering.
The dreamscape was her realm, riding almost entirely on her will, and so the mere notion of interference in her mind instantly brought the direction of the interference to her attention and she willed herself towards it. It being a realm of dreams, that the interference represented itself as a fantastical notion was no great surprise; a very familiar black alicorn standing beside a golden padlock with its key around her neck stopped Luna in her metaphysical tracks.
“Nacht?”
“Selune,” Nightmare said warmly. “Good dreams tonight, I hope.”
Luna gaped at the apparition. There was no question that the figure in front of her was actually Nachtmiri Mein; she’d been working alongside the bodiless entity for far too long to not know the feel of her mind. “You’re… here! In my… how are you here?”
“How does anyone get here, Selune?” Nacht smiled. “I am sleeping, of course. Dreaming, in fact, although I’m sure it does not surprise you that I learned a few things from you about your realm.”
“I don’t mean here here, I mean here. On this world, in Equestria, where I can touch your dreams. After that tearful goodbye, after all the regrets you expressed, regrets that I thought you meant, you’ve just… back here? Taking another vessel?”
“Yes and no.” Nacht tapped her chin with a hoof. “Yes, I am back on this world. No, I did not take another vessel. For the first time in my memory, I was approached by someone with an offer of a bargain: return to this world, offer it what help I could, protect the mortal I had come to think of as a sister, and I could have a vessel that is uniquely mine, that is me. An empty shell for me to fill, a form belonging to no one but me, a husk without a soul to contend or bargain with, created specifically for a nightmare to inhabit as she wished. He delivered his part of the arrangement, every promise kept, and so I keep my promises in return.”
Luna found herself unable to respond for several moments, silently staring at the visage of the entity that had acted almost like a second older sister to her a thousand years before, and then bid her tearful goodbyes just since months ago. “How… how long?”
“Four months.”
“Four months?” Luna gaped at her again. “Four months and I’ve not seen you in my dreamscape even once? Four months and you never visited?”
“I think a black alicorn striding up the street would be noticed,” Nacht said dryly.
Luna narrowed her eyes. “Don’t even play that game. Don’t pretend that if you felt like it, you couldn’t have just shown up in my room and given me a hug without anyone knowing you were there. I’ve seen you operate, Nacht; you’re as subtle as starlight on a cloudy night when you feel like it.”
“Shame, to be perfectly blunt,” Nacht said. “After those tearful goodbyes, after my yearning words to Celestia, after saying I would leave you entirely, returning here was perilously close to breaking my word. I hoped I could just do my work, fulfill the bargain, and never show my face. I hoped to merely pull strings and subtly manipulate the situation to your advantage. But the situation was far too complex for that, and my best opportunity to gain advantage was to reveal myself to one Chrysalis das Pupa, the queen of the changeling race.”
“I met her sister in the Provinces just now.” Luna frowned at Nacht. “Why is there a lock floating beside you, and why do you have the key?”
“I have the key because I created the lock.” Nacht’s horn lit and the key floated off her neck and hovered before Luna. “I created the lock because I feel protective of you in the way that Celestia does, and the way that any older sister would feel protective of a younger. A great and terrible plague races through Equestria, occasioned by sadistic monsters called atermors, a magical disease that warps and twists the body, and then enslaves it to the will of the atermors. My past experience with this plague is that those so afflicted are conscious of all that they do and are prisoners within themselves. They are locked in a perpetual nightmare; I wish to spare you that.”
“A plague.” Luna blinked, ignoring the mention of a perpetual nightmare for the moment. “It’s only been a couple days. How far could a plague have spread in just two days?”
“The atermors inflect crops with their plague,” Nacht said. “And they have clearly been at work prior to you becoming aware of the Game and certainly before Einspithiana arrived to act in the name of Amarra Drae’thul. There has been enough time for common food crops--carrots, alfalfa, cereal grains, many fruits--to have been plagued and then distributed because the sickness exploded everywhere almost at the same time.”
Luna slumped back onto her flanks. “How… how is Tia holding up?”
“She is… not well.” Nacht slipped the key around Luna’s neck and then walked over to sit beside her, folding a soft black wing around her. “She will recover, fear not, but for the moment…”
“What happened to her?”
“She found the largest concentration of atermors and brought down the full fire of her wrath and grief upon them,” Nacht said. “She drew fully upon her sun and burned so hot that she scorched the town square of Ponyville. It was too much for her, and she is now temporarily comatose.”
Luna narrowed her eyes at the nightmare. “You didn’t even try to sound truthful about what led to her being comatose.”
“Because the entire truth will divert you from more urgent matters,” Nacht said evenly. “The three relevant truths are that she was rendered comatose as a last resort, the one who rendered her comatose is emphatically not her enemy, and she will recover quickly, perhaps even by the dawn. Who rendered her comatose and how will not add any important facts to those three truths.”
Luna huffed in exasperation. “Nacht, stop trying to be Tia and just tell me the truth.”
Nacht looked at her for a moment before she bowed her head in acquiescence. “Your adoptive niece Cadence rendered her comatose,” she said.
“Cadence?” Luna blinked. “But she’s only slightly over thirty. How did an alicorn that young whose special talent is love…” Her train of thought came to a sudden halt. Young alicorn with a special talent for love. Young pony with wings, horn, and notable physical strength with a special talent for love. “Cadence is a changeling.”
Nacht smiled. “And not just any changeling, but the second-born daughter of Queen Chrysalis das Pupa. Royalty, and a direct descendent of Amaryss. Thus when your sister lost herself to grief and rage, she was mere meters away from a changeling royal with thirty years of accumulated love, a changeling royal she had no reason to think was anyone other than her dear alicorn niece. Cadence--Chidinida to her family--needed only to shield herself long enough to get within touching distance.”
“She used induction,” Luna said. “Mind-numbing agony seeming to come from everywhere at once. That’s how she shocked her out of what she was doing, and that’s why Tia is comatose.”
“It was the only way.”
“I know.” Luna sighed and leaned against Nacht as the nightmare stepped forward and laid a soft black wing over her. “I could feel that Tia had drawn so heavily on her sun that it became calm and docile, when it’s usually so fierce that only Tia can move it without straining herself. But that it was needed doesn’t make it any less painful to hear.”
“Nothing can.” Nacht slipped the key around Luna’s neck. “I want to spare you the pain, Selune, but this should be up to you. I have become so accustomed to playing big sister and mysterious wise advisor that I tend to forget that I have a great many peers as well.”
Luna touched the key and looked up at Nacht. “Do you believe there’s nothing I can do for them?”
“I would not dare to say anything is impossible for a determined mortal,” Nacht said with a nostalgic smile. “I have seen too many mortals do what should have been far beyond them to say that. But while the nightmares you fight against are products of imaginations, the ones the victims of the atermors know are the product of reality. I do not see a way to help, but to fight that reality.”
“Then fight it we shall,” Luna said, coming to her hooves. “When I awaken, I’ll leave Kyra to manage the affair of ‘Master’ and…”
“You must not,” Nacht said, standing as well. “Vorka, the one you call ‘Master’, is not a direct threat to a mortal of demi-diety power. But he can be far more dangerous than even the Zambet because he can strike from afar, or place himself far beyond the reach of his enemies by the time he strikes. He could have simply walked off into the Void with a giggle months after he completed an especially intricate plague for the atermors, and you would not know that his hand was in the suffering he inflicted until long after he was forever beyond your grasp.””
Luna looked hard at her before nodding. “You’re saying that if I don’t nip his menace in the bud immediately, he’ll have time to prepare mischief that won’t cause the damage to us for months.”
“I am saying many things,” Nacht said. “That is one of them, however. I am not fully aware of what Kyra is capable of; I have an intimate knowledge of your talents and abilities. I would prefer to agree with your opinion that it is best to delegate this task to Kyra and then return to Equestria or even meet up with me in Scarabi, but I cannot recommend that without knowing her better.”
“Isolating the efforts of these Evils in Equestria by resolving matters in the Provinces and the Wastes does seem like a good strategy,” Luna said. “But first, I need to see this living nightmare for myself.” She floated the key up to the lock and inserted it, braced herself, and then turned it. They key and lock dissolved into motes of golden light that flowed out of sight and the flood of minds and dreams that Luna had been looking for came into being… feeling entirely normal. She blinked and looked back at her nightmare companion. “Nacht, what are you playing at?”
Nacht looked back at her, her expression genuinely puzzled. “I am not ‘playing at’ anything,” she said. “When I manipulated this space to bar you from being tormented by the indelible nightmares, they were so significant that even I who has no great ability in your dreamscape could sense them clearly. It is as if they…”
“They what?”
Nacht stood there for several moments. “Selune, forgive the oddness and suddenness of this question, but can you recall having ever brushed up against the dreams of the changelings?”
“I’m certain I haven’t,” Luna replied, looking curiously at the black alicorn.
“Thestrals?”
“No.”
“Any particular difficulty with Ponyville?”
“Come to think of it, very slight difficulty.” Luna frowned. “Why are you asking?”
“Just one more,” Nacht said. “Can you touch the dreams of Einspithiana, or any of Vorka’s griffon captives?”
“No.”
“I believe I have a working theory then,” Nacht said. “Exquisitely high concentrations of magic. Scarabi houses a phenomenon where the palace literally floats above the city using some exotic property of the rock it is build atop of. The thestrals have always been around Scarabi and at last call, are based in the old Everfree castle, directly above the Tree of Harmony. Ponyville, of course, has the Elements, and Vorka has a strong tendency to wrap his shaping work in spells that obscure them from magical scrying and manipulation. I suspect the plague has the same effect, and that I can notice it because the Void energy that infuses it naturally resonates with me.”
Luna looked at her. “You came up with this just now?”
“Since I first came to know of you, Selune, I have wondered if there was any place or any person in the entire world that you could not reach within your dreamscape,” Nacht said. “Your sister’s sun falls upon anyone not obscured by shade or structure, but every saptient creature dreams. Yet you are not omniscient despite having the ability to slip into any mind and watch it while it is unguarded in dream. Thus, I have reasoned, there must be some circumstance that obscures a dreamer from you or places them beyond your dreamscape entirely. Until now, there has been no circumstance where I could say of a surety that you sought a dreamer and could not find them, despite the fact that I can hear them clearly.”
“Mmm.” Luna looked ahead of them at the starry and featureless landscape. “They are suffering?”
“I cannot be certain of that, but I wished to act as if they were,” Nacht said. “I can manipulate this plane to a small degree, Selune, but I can only be certain that I hear discordant sound and fury from those struck by the plague. Whether that sound and fury is distress, fear, or entirely ordinary is not something I have the knowledge to determine of a certainty.”
“Would you mind if I tried to listen through your ears?”
Nacht smiled. “I had hoped you would ask that. Naturally, I would not mind at all.”
“Why did you hope I’d ask?” Luna said as she turned to face her friend and leaned forward so that her horn would touch Nacht’s.
“Symmetry, Selune,” Nacht said as she leaned in as well and somehow gentle dragon eyes bored into Luna’s before the horns touched, and she could see her eyes looking back at her and the pulsating vibration of thousands of slumbering minds whispering their dreams and nightmare to her consciousness. Looking through Nacht’s eyes, she saw herself relax and smile as the very familiar sound filled her ears.
“It’s just the sound of my subjects’ normal dreams, Nacht,” she heard and saw herself say. “No terrors or nightmares that I can hear.”
“That is… a concern,” Nacht said, breaking the touch of their horns carefully and causing the consoling sound to disappear again. “Although not in the normal sense of it being worrying. I am concerned that the plague is not acting as it ought to act.”
“I see no reason to be concerned that my subjects aren’t being tortured,” Luna retorted a little more sharply than she’d intended.
“That they are well pleases me too Selune,” Nacht said. “But Vorka always has a reason, and I cannot help but wonder what he believes that he will gain by altering the atermors’ plague this way.”
“Why would they have him help in the first place?” Luna asked. “Wouldn’t they know that he likes to play games like this?”
“It is possible, but arrogance erases a lot of wisdom,” Nacht said. “Despite being badly chastised of late, the atermors have thousands of successes to fuel their image of themselves as living manifestations of plague, beyond mortal comprehension or grasp. Why they made the mistake is not nearly so important as the question of what Vorka’s changes do. Clearly it is not sadistic, yet I cannot believe that is the only thing he changed.”
“I shall persuade him to tell me,” Luna declared confidently.
Nacht laughed. “The question is not whether Vorka will tell you, but when he will stop. He loves to brag; there is a tale that he once created something so powerful that it all but destroyed him, and yet he found time to boast of his genius even while being torn asunder.” She looked upward at the starscape. “I regret that I must soon awaken, Selune. You may have just begun to rest, but I have been slumbering with a most exquisite dessert wine in my belly from a banquet Queen Chrysalis held.”
“In your honor?” Luna grinned.
“In the honor of Princesses Twilight and Dawn Sparkle,” Nacht said. “And their dear friends Rarity, Applejack, and Pinkamena.” She paused thoughtfully. “You have a very attractive niece, Selune.”
Luna looked sharply at her. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Nacht said. “Moreover, you agree with me.” She smiled a little and tapped the side of her head. “I have enough tidbits of you in my mind to know your type, after all.”
Luna swallowed and felt her cheeks glow--it being a dreamscape, she was sure that her cheeks were very literally glowing--at Nacht’s words. “That’s… it’s not…”
“Of course it is true, and you are both being silly about it.” Nacht snorted. “I have known so many mortals over so many thousands of years, and I do not yet understand this familial taboo. Sometimes it is enforced, sometimes it is not, sometimes rutting a sibling is a tradition generations old, and there is no consistency to it. She is an adult, Selune, and will live as long as you. I see no reason why not to consider it.”
“It’s not going to happen,” Luna told her as firmly as she could. “And I’m not even going to think about…”
Nacht cleared her throat loudly. “Thestral medic.”
Luna felt the glow spread down her neck. “I… I’m not even going to…”
“That little pegasus who looked like she’d just gotten her cutie mark the day before.”
“I…”
“A scholarly archmagi who preferred a practical student cut.”
Luna sputtered for several seconds before sighing. “Dammit, Nacht, it’s not going to happen. Ever!”
“I am aware.” Nacht gave her a sharply toothy grin. “I know you, Selune, and what you will and will not do. I know about that crippling sense of propriety you royal types cling to like a drowning pony to driftwood.”
“So why bring it up?”
“Because in case you had not noticed, I bear a strong resemblance to you,” Nacht said. “And I admit to having inherited your tastes in consort. I thought it would be best that if there ever came to be anything more between myself and a very attractive archmagi alicorn with an amazing mind, it would not come at the expense of a pony that is practically family to me.”
Luna gaped at her. “You’ve had a body of your own for how long?”
“Long enough to enjoy the sensations of physical attraction,” Nacht replied with a renewed grin. “But I have been borrowing sensations for longer than I can remember. Since I have come to have a form of my own, I have been something of a hedonist, and the one pleasure I most wish to explore is the one hardest to obtain. She is mature enough to make this decision, should she choose to make it, and yet young enough to have little experience.”
“Twenty six.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Twilight is twenty-six,” Luna said. “And a shut-in most of that.”
“She went face-to-face with what she thought was a mad moon demoness without soiling herself from terror,” Nacht said. “As far as I am concerned, she could be sixteen and be mature enough to make this decision without help. Childhood ended for your niece when she was made Celestia's consul in Ponyville; getting through the obstacles we threw her in her way, and then having the courage to actually look us in the eye without snapping like a rotten twig was simply reiterating the point.”
Luna sighed and shook her head. “And you don’t think it’s even slightly inappropriate for a literally ageless…” she looked back at Nacht making an expression of manifest innocence “...no, of course you don’t.”
Nacht chuckled. “Selune, I think you are making too many leaps of logic. I am ageless, as you say, and so time has no importance for me. Years pass as seconds,centuries as minutes, and entire millennia as a week. I may think Twilight to be the ideal opportunity, but I am absolutely spoiled for time in which to wait for an opening; I have no intention of pressing even slightly for I see no purpose to it.”
“So again, why even bring this up?”
“To give you time to become accustomed to an otherwise disturbing idea,” Nahct said. “You know me better than any mortal, for you have known me for longer than any mortal. You have wandered the landscape of my experience during the thousand year dream, and you have more cause than any other pony to worry about my interest in your niece.”
Luna found herself nodding to the point. “That’s true. You’ve always been considerate of me and kind towards me, but I still remember you seriously suggesting that the best way to undermine Tia was to break her heart by killing her little ponies.”
Nacht snorted. “All I remember clearly about that incident was a very thorough psychic beating. A deserved one, as a point of fact. You have my vow on this, Selune: I will not deliberately hurt Twilight in any way.”
“You’ll let her be the one initiating any… relationship?”
Nacht considered this and then nodded. “I also vow that I will wait for Twilight to initiate a relationship if that is her wish.”
“And won’t push or manipulate her to initiate it?”
“I will not act or speak in a way that has as its object to induce Twilight to initiate a relationship.”
Luna frowned at the other alicorn. “Nacht…”
“I cannot promise you that nothing I say or do will have the effect of edging her towards feeling something for me,” Nacht said. “I can only promise that I will not deliberately do anything with the purpose of manipulating or pushing her towards a relationship.”
Luna frowned again for several moments before bowing her head. “I suppose I can’t ask for anything more than you leaving it up to her and not deliberately manipulating her feelings. Thank you for that.”
“I do it as much for myself as you or Twilight or Celestia, Selune,” Nacht smiled. “I will never be able to have a relationship worth a damn with anyone unless it is fully voluntary. If nothing else, my entire existence to this moment has proved that.”
“What now then?”
“What happens now is that I wake up and you continue to do the duty you enjoy so much.” Nacht smiled even more broadly. “We will see one another soon, Selune, fear naught.”
“The geography of the Archive is very unusual, Your Highness,” Kyra told her as they walked along the side corridor in the direction of the portal. “For one thing, it appears to be infinitely large and yet you can get from one side to the other in the time it takes to traverse the Royal Library in Canterlot.”
“So you’ve tried measuring its interior.”
“When we first discovered it, we were under the impression that it was an ordinary library of some kind,” Kyra said. “We thought it’d be important to make sure we could map out where the stacks were so we could index it. Only when nothing was ever in the same place, and yet whatever you wanted was right in front of you, did we realize that it was infinitely malleable.”
“So how’s all this gonna help us find the ‘Master’ bucker?” Rainbow asked as she took position next to Kyra.
“One of the little secrets of this Archive I haven’t mentioned yet.” Kyra gave her a grin as they stepped in front of the gaping opening that crossed hundreds of miles in a single step, the Archive just as sedate as it had been when they’d first seen how Vorka had changed it from an impossibly narrow barrier to a wide open archway. “Every library has a librarian, and this one knows me personally.”
Both Luna and Rainbow stopped suddenly, staring at her. “There’s someone who lives in the Archive?”
“No,” Kyra said. “He’s not alive, but he seems too full of life to be a spirit or a mere magical construct. Tettidora’s best guess is that he’s someone who lived so long in the Archive without going mad that the Archive imprinted on him and when he either left or died or went mad, the imprint remained. Whatever his exact nature, he’s very kindly and eager to help.”
“So a bouncer?”
“I don’t think he’s there to protect the Archive,” Kyra said, pausing between one step and the next to wait for them to continue following her. “I think he’s just a helpful phenomenon that represents the Archive’s magical ability to reorder itself to help a seeker find what they want. Why the Archive uses him, not even Tettidora has tried to speculate on.”
Luna frowned at the opening. “Duchess, don’t you think it’d be wiser to have your soldiers through first in case…”
“...in case he trapped the opening?” Kyra smirked and stepped across the threshold. “Don’t be absurd, he could have done no such thing. Magic on this side would be tangible, and the Archive suppresses rune magic so effectively it’s impossible to work there. But even if he had, I’d still go across.”
Rainbow grinned and trotted ahead of Luna and across the threshold after the changeling noble. “Ain’t gonna let any of ‘em take the hit for you?”
“That, and I’d survive it far better than they.” Kyra gave a curt nod and the soldiers that had been taking up the rear filed passed Luna and through the magical opening. “And on top of all of that, assigning another to endanger themselves for us has never been the way of the royal family.”
“Sounds like yer cut from the same cloth as the princesses,” Rainbow said as Luna stepped across the threshold, immediately feeling the air change from the arid warmth (and getting warmer from the rising sun, something that immensely cheered Luna when she’d reached out to do the work herself) of the crumbling structure in the Provinces, to a very pleasant coolness and the feeling of soft carpeting under her hooves.
Kyra beamed. “Why, thank you Lady Dash!” she said. “At any rate, it seems that our preparation was wise but ‘Master’ has no intention of bottlenecking us at his magical doorway.”
“Or he cannot.” Luna noticed everyone else turning their heads upwards at the same time she did as a familiarly odd voice came from above them, seeming from atop one of the nearest shelves. As if drawn by the motion of a couple dozen pairs of eyes turning towards her, an inky-black dragoness with a lithe form and feline grace wove her way down the shelf in a sinuous fashion and arrived on the floor with a clickity-clack of talons even through the soft carpeting.
Luna noted, with a touch of amusement, that Spite seemed slightly perturbed at the fact that by the time she got to the floor, every changeling soldier had somehow put themselves and their weapons between her and Kyra.
“I suppose I am not a very welcome sight then?” she asked with a slight nervous quaver in her voice.
“If it’s you, you’re quite welcome,” Luna said.
Spite relaxed marginally. “Tired of Lashaal’s playing, have you?”
“Among others.”
“Well, I know that I first met Celestia and you arrived after, whereupon I presented a letter to Your Majesties from my queen,” Spite said. “All of this after I learned that having your face broken by a bucking pony hurts. I am afraid that I do not have any other tidbits that would have been all that hard for a clever shapeshifter to observe.”
“True.” Luna nodded to Kyra, who gestured for her soldiers to stand down; Spite looked visibly relieved to have the sharp ends away from her, unusual-seeming for a dragon who could instantly repair any injury. “Where’ve you been for the last day and a half?”
“Oh, being trussed up by Moreau and used for mad experimentation,” the dragoness said with a small grin. “It was oddly pleasurable to watch a crazed but supremely gifted maker of things forge his griffin mutations. But I had quite a time in those few days, I can assure you.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.034 seconds
Total duration
898 users online
592,732 hits today, 2,139,894 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
This archive... is it based on the Dragonrealms by Richard Knaak? (Had to ask, will continue reading now.)
MOONLIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yus!!!
Anyway fangazm has passed, Looking forward to the next chapter as always, and I really hope that we get to see how that romance plays out towards the end of the story.
I'm intrigued by the changes in the plague... let's see what NMM finds out!
So glad to have you back! Also, I sail the Twilight/Nacht ship.
6671637 I don't know anything about Dragonrealms and haven't read anything by Richard Knaak. The Archive is based on a combination of the character by that name in "The Dresden Files" by Jim Butcher and a backstory I became aware of that included an immense library where one neither hungers nor thirsts nor tires nor sickens... but can go entirely mad.
6671700
You most certainly will. I have promises to keep, after all. But the full flowering of the romance is going to be very stretched out because there's a heck of a lot to get done in this story and it can't focus long on NightLight shipping (although I enjoy that ship, at least as much as TwiLuna).
6672069 Ah, interesting! Back in the day, like... 90s, Knaak wrote about a place called "The Library" which had those exact same effects, along with an archive with books that contained all the knowledge in the universe, and would only give you information on things you were researching and nothing more, hence why I thought it was a reference
6671739 Oh, this is going to be fun, based on the principle that without regular correspondence between the various "adventuring parties", none of them know what the others know. But the reader will know it all. ;)
6672083 Oh, interesting! I can honestly say that i was totally unaware of this when I came up with the characteristics of the Archive. And the backstory I borrowed it from focused far more on the OC (as is proper) than the strange library full of books. I just decided to essentially make the building The Archive (the Jim Butcher one, who instantly knows everything that is written down the moment it is) enhanced and turned into a mysterious ancient structure rumored to be created by a god.
6672077 Of course, with how ageless the characters are, it would most definitely take a long time for the romance to flower, however we already know that Luna just lost her chance with Twilight due to her stubborn nature. The only other that has strong feelings for Twi, that isn't her magically created nymphomaniacle twin, is Nightmare. as far as I know in a romantic perspective, if rainbow gets involved, she either gets to play second fiddle, or has to join in as under Nightmare's beta status in Twilight's harem
.
So, looking forward to how the story progresses over the years.
6672151 Oh, the chance isn't lost so much as it's refused from both directions. As to Rainbow... well, Wanderer hinted at a precedent and I'm upholding it.
I'm hoping to progress it to an epic conclusion then make the rest epic to match. I'm looking forward to writing the sequel because I get to LightSunLightNight for the win. I'll be cruel and not clarify what I mean.
6672615 THis is gonna be awesome.
6673105 That is certainly my hope. I also hope that eventually, I'll be able to get more critics to rake me over the coals so I have even more material to work with when I revise Game of Worlds to be more sensible, consistent, and flow better.
The only thing that breaks the flow of the story, is the shifting perspectives per chapter, each chapter switching to a different group, if instead you broke the story into three separate entities that followed a different group instead of having the entire story work over the split locations, then your pacing would be spot on. yes important fragments would be missing, but the over all gist of the story would ultimately be digestible to the less attentive crowd, while we die hard fans will gobble up any morsel you pass us with great anticipation and delight.
But that is more a fix that should be done when the story is done and complete.
I've long wondered how badly my current arrangement screws with people's ability to follow what's going on. But I'm not really clear on what you're suggesting that I do instead. Could you elaborate, here or in a PM?
6673303 if they did not tell you i think they mean split your story into different stories based on groups.
6967199 It's an idea and I'll never outright say "no way in hell" to a helpful suggestion, but I fear splitting it like that might make it even more fragmented than it already is.