“Lei lines,” Luna repeated.
“Quite,” Spite said as she wove her way sinuously around Kyra before prostrating herself in front of Nightmare. “Your Imperial Majesty, it is an honor.”
“I’d say good day to you, Einspithiana, but it emphatically is not,” Nightmare said. “And stop that, please. You know as well as I do that the title is polite compliment but has no specific weight.”
“If there’s another nightmare that all the rest defer to, I haven’t heard their name Empress,” Spite said as she raised her head. “There’s a reason for the ‘polite compliment’ as you put it.”
Nightmare sighed. “This is not the time or place. What do lei lines have to do with this?”
“If this world has lei lines--and Zambet referred to them explicitly, so they certainly exist--then they definitely flow between a few different points: Canterlot, the Tree, the Provinces, the Lands, the Barrens… and the repository of a certain artifact..”
“So they find a lei line, figure out where it’s flowing, then follow it until they reach a juncture,” Luna said. “And then they figure out how to undo the Abomination of Sombra.”
“The… what?”
“It’s what Luna and Celestia call whatever some ancient unicorn sorcerer named ‘Sombra’ did to disappear the entirety of a semi-autonomous pony nation in what’s now called the Glass Waste,” Nightmare said. “Charmingly dramatic, isn’t it?”
“Disappear like, killed them all?”
“No,” Luna said. “The entire nation disappeared. But the details aren’t really important at the moment. You seem quite certain that the Evils are going to use the lei lines to find it.”
“I stopped by Ponyville to speak with Celestia,” Spite said before looking at Nightmare. “The latest Canceros got obliterated, along with all the atermors that were anywhere near him.”
Nightmare smirked. “Three hundred forty-two years. A new record. So, what was it this time?”
“And how is my sister?”
“Someone got a jeikitsu family involved and they showed up with the Quarantine Flag.” Spite gave Luna a brief smile. “And Celestia is fine. Still a bit shocked that Princess Chidinida is her adoptive niece and that the changelings regard her fondly, but the manifest spirit of the Flag addressed any of her physical ailments when he removed Canceros.”
Nightmare smiled a little. “I’m glad Celestia came out all right. As to eliminating Canceros with an artifact of the Flag’s magnitude, points for novelty and for massive overkill. So what does the…” She paused, squinting in thought “...seventy-third incarnation getting wiped out have to do with lei lines?”
“Hold on a moment.” Kyra looked between them. “Canceros? Quarantine Flag?”
“I assume that the quarantine flag is some magical means of preventing the spread of the plague.” Luna looked at Nightmare. “Who’s Canceros?”
“Essentially, he is to atermors what I am to nightmares.” Nightmare smirked a little. “Or, rather, each one of him is. The name is more of a position than an individual because each one has an astonishingly short life for a Named.”
“Measured in the hundreds of years,” Spite added, “with the next shortest-lived being several thousand. Three hundred forty-two was the oldest Canceros anyone is aware of.”
“And he was obliterated by this Flag.” Kyra looked at Luna. “That seems an odd property of an artifact called a quarantine flag.”
“It’s called that because it’s what it originally was: a piece of ordinary cloth dyed yellow with a black spot in the middle, a symbolic warning that approaching anyplace with it displayed would be a lethal error,” Nightmare said. “The current owners--several families of creatures called jeikitsu--have a heroic narrative of how it became enchanted and how a manifest spirit called ‘the Physician’ was attached to it, but the truth is that only three beings in all of existence know how it and he came to be. What is known for certain is that the manifest spirit can indeed quarantine a settlement of any size, has a dramatic effect on disease generally, and has a specific grudge against atermors. Even the presence of the Flag dampens the ability of the atemors to cause harm, and when specific conditions are met to allow the Physician to manifest fully…”
“...your sister described him as being able to destroy a hundred atermors simply by wishing it to be so,” Spite said, “and he was capable of stripping all of Canceros’ protections away to allow Celestia to revenge herself on him on behalf of her subjects.”
Luna swallowed involuntarily at the implications of this, vividly remembering what her sister could be like when sufficiently provoked. “I’ve seen my sister angry,” she said simply. “Unless you have more questions, Duchess?”
“I do not.”
“Then please, Spite, pardon us for interrupting. You were explaining how the destruction of Canceros has something to do with this Sotto Voce’s plan to follow the lei lines to the Crystal Heart?”
“It was where he was and what he was doing,” Spite said. “Celestia and those with her found him and Zambet in the chamber with what she called ‘the Tree of Harmony’ and…”
“The Tree is connected to a lei line,” Nightmare said. “Might have even grown out of the flow of magic. Zambet created some kind of runic circle in a certain position, correct?”
“Yes,” Spite said. “She apparently needed to know where Ponyville was in relation to her to an extremely precise degree.”
“Which means that the lei line runs through Ponyville,” Luna said. “Or so I’m guessing.”
“If she was setting up a containment circle that let her safely interact with the line, the precise direction of flow would be critical.”
“So, yes.”
Nightmare nodded and looked at Spite. “So she completed it and then had Canceros do something with it?”
“Yeah, stand in the middle and talk to Sotto Voce,” Spite said. “And here’s the most important part: he started off by proclaiming that whatever Sotto is after was ‘here’ and confirmed that Sotto could see it. So…”
“...the spell was projecting him in a way that let Sotto Voce see him at different points along the line, probably at junctures.” Nightmare took in a breath and sighed it out. “And that’s why the atermors were here, to cause trouble and then get inside that chamber so Sotto Voce would know where to look for the lei line juncture at the capital of the Crystal Empire.”
“The spell keeps the Empire concealed, even if you know exactly where it is,” Luna said. “So how is knowing where it is going to help him?”
“The Archive,” Kyra said. “If he can bring it to him, or know where it is reliably enough to point some minion at the entrance, he can probably get the Archive to explain the Abomination to him. I kind of doubt he has to worry about being ensnared.”
“What’s troubling me is that he knows about the Empire, and its artifacts,” Nightmare said. “He’d have to have lingered here for a very long time to get that kind of knowledge, and if I can’t linger in your company for more than a couple years, Selune, without harming you, even with gentler methods he’d have to be going through vessels at a staggering rate to remain anchored here. There’s no way that could be concealed.”
“Well, he at least has a vessel right now,” Spite said.
Nightmare looked at her. “How do you know that? Did you spy on him?”
“No, Celestia mentioned that just before Sotto Voce ended the conversation with Canceros, another voice came through the conduit, a voice like a very young filly,” Spite said. “She called Canceros by name, so she was somehow aware of him.”
“The child that’s not a child.” Nightmare shook her head. “That’s what Thalia meant by her letter to Chrysalis.I had suspected it, enough to warn Twilight, but without confronting Sotto Voce personally I couldn’t be sure.”
Luna gave her a horrified look. “He has a child as a vessel?”
“I can’t think of another explanation and yet, it should only be possible over a very, very short period of time. To call the feat ‘delicate’ is understating it by an order of magnitude; I could barely manage it, and I’ve been developing my skill at minimally invasive coexistence for tens of thousands of years.”
“He could have been using magic to fake it.”
“That is possible, although I can’t see the motivation.”
“Fair.” Kyra thought a moment. “So, quick hop to the Dragon Lands?”
“I’ve never visited personally, and the knowledge I gained from my time with Selune is over a thousand years old.” Nightmare looked at Spite who shook her head. “Then it would be very risky to do and I’m reluctant unless the…”
“The matter is urgent,” Luna said. “If Sotto Voce can go to the place instantly, we can’t be too far behind him. Besides, the approaches to the Dragon Lord’s rock remain entirely clear, unless the airship saw more construction than just the Archive.”
“They didn’t report it, which doesn’t preclude it being there.”
“Regardless…”
“Buck that noise.” Focusing on the conversation with Nacht, Spite, and Kyra, Luna hadn’t seen Rainbow enter until the pegasus was already inside and walking over to where Fluttershy lay, looking at her friend’s prone form with an entirely blank expression.
“Where…”
“Flight path went passed Gilda’s place,” Rainbow said. “Went to look. It’s…” She drifted off, continuing to stare at Fluttershy. “That freaky thing did this to her, didn’t it?”
“She did,” Kyra said. “How’d you know?”
“Grim said something about how Fluttershy would be a perfect meal or something,” Rainbow said. “Wasn’t hard to guess.” She turned and looked squarely at Luna. “Sounds like she’s hanging around where the dragons are. I’m gonna break my hoof off in her plot. Let’s get a move on.”
“I understand your zeal, Rainbow Dash, but fighting her…”
“Kicked her plot once, can kick it again.”
“You kicked her plot with help,” Kyra said. “And she was playing us at the time. She was pretending to be a creepy stalking predator out to eat Twilight, but she’s really…”
“...roughly on my level,” Nightmare said. “And she does worse things than the kazim that fed on you when she wins.”
“You mean if.”
“I mean when,” Nightmare said with emphasis. “You are not a stupid mare by any means, Rainbow, but you are a mare of the strong right hook and beating the pies out of a problem only works if the problem feels like letting you hit them.”
“And she can put her jaw back together like you, right?” Rainbow looked at Spite.
“Among other things,” Spite said. “And I doubt you can pulverize bone with a haymaker.”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Yeah, whatever. But she’s on your level, right Nighty?”
Nightmare smirked. “Roughly.”
“OK, so you kick her plot.”
“That is my intention,” Nightmare said. “Assuming she lets me. If she was my clear inferior, it would be no great difficulty to bring her to blows, but I cannot compel her to stand still and let me thrash her. And like myself, she has friends and one of those is also roughly on my level.”
“I thought you said you hadn’t seen him in…”
“That is true,” Nightmare said, “but even something as simple as forming a partnership with Zambet indicates that he is no ordinary nightmare anymore, if ever he was.”
“How so?”
“Zambet has mercenary motivations in most respects: she concerns herself with her payment before any other consideration when deciding who to work with,” Nightmare said. “He would have had to promise her adequate payment, and prove that he was capable of fulfilling that promise.”
“And if she has the patience and the resources to casually infiltrate a very exclusive population without being noticed, her prices wouldn’t be cheap,” Luna said. “That, and I am personally aware of how complex effective runescription is.” She frowned. “I see the connection.”
“OK, so, I can’t kick her plot, and you can’t kick her plot.” Rainbow’s now-draconic eyes had begun to acquire a faint glow. “So who’s gonna kick her plot? Cuz hurting Flutters is an open invitation for a plot-kicking.”
“When it comes time to beat Zambet down, I’ll hold her so you can get the first shot,” Nightmare said. “Let’s see, how did that go… cross my heart and hope to fly…”
“...stick a cupcake,” Luna supplied.
“...stick a cupcake in my eye,” Nightmare said. “But when it comes time.”
“Which is as soon as we see her.”
Nightmare stared at Rainbow steadily for several moments, and the pegasus stared back, before Nightmare sighed. “Let me help you understand, Rainbow. Trying to go straight at Zambet and kick her plot is like trying to kick Twilight’s plot after giving her fair warning and enough time to cast any spell she wants.”
Rainbow’s eyes got a little wide. “She knows how to do the Gerbil Ball of Punishment?”
“The…?” Nightmare thought a moment before nodding at Rainbow with a very solemn expression.
“Well, geeze, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
“I did emphasize that her victory over you would be a matter of when, not if.”
“Oh yeah, ya did.” Rainbow paused for a beat. “So if we aren’t gonna go beat her, what the hay are we gonna do next?”
“Pay a visit to one of her friends, of course.” Nightmare looked at Luna. “I will be going, of course, along with Einspithiana so she can move between the points as needed. I think that if I don’t take Rainbow, she’ll follow on a wave of sonic rainbooms and make sure everyone between here and Tartarus know we’re coming.”
“You know it.” Rainbow grinned.
Luna give Nacht a nod and looked at Kyra. “Duchess, please see to the relief efforts here and keep an eye on Fluttershy.”
“I’d have suggested it if you had not.” Kyra bowed. “Luck, Princess Luna.”
I just finished binge reading this, despite having a number of other things to do. Things that should really have been done days ago. This wonderful story has gripped me and continues to do so, to the exclusion of all else.
I have noticed a few problems with extra or missing words, punctuation in places, but nothing serious.
Can't wait for the epic conclusion! Really looking forward to finding out exactly what is really going on. Also wondering how the Players in the realm above are seeing/reacting to the events in the world.
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Wow... someone actually commented. O_O I don't know what to say, except... thanks!
On the subject of the Players, I've been turning the subject over in my mind for months in between thinking about the main story and I'm coming to the conclusion that if I keep them in my second pass, they'll need significant changes because they honestly don't have a story role. They can't really pop in and interact with characters and given that I've essentially cast them as gods or god-like, anything they do in the story would be a literal deus ex machina. There's actually a lot of elements that I feel need to be reformed or removed because they just filled time without having an impact, but the gods playing chess with the world on which Equestria is found is on the top of the list to be fixed.
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First, you're very welcome! Always like to let good authors know they're appreciated, even if I wait until the latest/last chapter available to actually comment.
As for cutting out the Players, I personally think that would be a mistake, their interactions (even from outside the Game) was fun and provided some insight into where these external characters were all coming from. I can see holding off on showing their side of things again for the moment, as that might tip your hand as to how things are going to unfold before you're ready to show it to the reader, but a final little vignette showing how their side of things wraps up after the climax would be nice.
Of course, that's my opinion, and it's your story, so do what you feel you must with it, not gonna judge you for that. I just really like where the story is right now, you don't really need to change anything other than a few typos and doubled words and such. I could go over it and show you where those are, if you want.
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I really appreciate it because I've had a serious comment drought for most of the tale and I honestly think that it's less good than it could be because I'm the only one judging its merits.
And that's why I feel I need to fix them. Because one of the players being the buttmonkey of the other and mocked by the referee sort of takes all the air out of their role as gods playing a weird sort of chess, because games don't have much tension if the story starts with it being clear that one player is going to lose.
I would certainly appreciate that, but there's definitely more to fix. The story starting in 2012 means that my idea of where it's going and how it gets there has gradually changed as I've worked out the kinks in the process of writing. For example, the name of the changeling queen from 1000 years ago changed over time, as did the aftermath of the exile and the significance of the other "queens." Even much later chapters had things like representing the relationship between characters as implying things that are at odds with how I eventually decided the relationship would work. Outside forces inserted by the Players are tossed in with great fanfare and implication, and then essentially stuck on a bus and sent out of the story because they ultimately had no story purpose. And then some really big events worked at some point but no longer work because it makes no sense looking back. And now I've gotten to this point in the story and realize that if things really are the way the ultimate BBEG represents them, then the entire Game makes no sense as presently written and things need to be reworked.
It's just a side effect of doing this entire thing solo, without an editor, without anyone to help keep track of the canon, and over the course of nearly 8 years. It's why I've really wished for comments: I kind of need them.