Why am I not surprised that this will some how bite Celestia and Luna in the flank. It makes me wonder just what the heck was happening when they choose to interfere?
Discord's riddle. paradoxically, the universe has high disorder at first. Entropy means energy spreading out makes the universe more harmonious. Thus, by concentrating energy, the demon increases the life span of the universe.
7451703 The whole thing with the all-creator, and Celestia and Luna being something other than pony. Not to mention the fact that the Sun and Moon are just corpses. I feel as if I missed something somewhere, but this caught me unawares. What I really expected was Celestia getting into the herd, or maybe Lero finding out he has some sort of future telling ability, (that dream he had earlier.) But this? I just have no idea where this came from.
7451751 Okay, yes... that part wasn't hinted at or foreshadowed at all. It was supposed to be a surprise. Maybe I should have eased the reader into it.
This plot is interesting to say the least, and I wouldn't mind something like this being the truth for this universe, but yeah you're right in saying that being eased into it would have been better.
Whatever you decide to do, I have been enjoying this story. I'll be honest in saying that I mostly started reading this for Lero and Gang, but if this is where this story is headed, I'll bite.
Sweetie Belle explained 'break a leg' to Scootaloo in an episode once... though Lero may not have heard it in Equestria, they do have the expression so Twi probably knows it.
As to the rest of this chapter... it feels like a different story. We went from concerns about the herd, Lero's continual challenges with pony cultural norms (title drop!), the Wonderbolts, and Berry Punch's trauma induced nihilism to.... this. It was certainly interesting, but until it really connects back to the primary players here it's too soon to say much. Yes, Vala was responsible for Berry in a sense (though as Goat Licker pointed out with Honeydew in an old comment, she's still responsible for her choices), but that alone isn't enough to make this scene, in all it's considerable, complex glory, relevant yet. Then again, apparently Ponyville just DCed from the rest of reality... so there's that. I don't much care about the demiurge or any other cosmic horror stuff. 'It's about Creation, it must be meaningful!' Oddly enough... no, not necessarily, and certainly not to the story that's been told so far. As Celestia noted, reality is what you make of it, not who made it. The wisdom to accept what I cannot change and all that. We're certainly a far cry from Berry winking at Lero while drinking in the fountain. That said... Luna and Celestia's transformations were both vivid and fascinating to visualize. I don't think this came completely out of left field, either. In Xeno, it's noted by Celestia that the beings who abducted Lero knew not to meddle with Equestria:
I taught them not to come here, and my sister gave them the same lesson, only more... firmly. Luna does not care for those beings..
This implies they can handle them. Now, I don't care about the Fae personally, they were means to an end, a footnote in getting Lero to Equestria. But plenty of readers are familiar with their lore via whatever tabletop RPG or original mythology and really talk them up. That's great, but since we're in the Xenoverse, might as well respect the canon of the original story. As such... how could Celestia and Luna handle such godly beings? Well... here's how. Love or hate it, it's certainly an answer.
This chapter was a really cool read... looking forward to how the cliffhanger ties it more firmly into the events that were happening up to this point. Thanks for the update, see ya next time!
If you're willing to take us behind the scenes, how far back did you plan this arc? Obviously not when it was still a oneshot and ch.2 seemed like just more slice-of-life. The first point it seems to appear is in ch.3:
Well, he’s still Lero, Berry thought. She sighed, and rolled over on her back. She stretched a hoof and grabbed a bottle, biting out the cork and spitting it on the ground. She held the bottle straight up and took a long swig, thinking about Ponyville.
Something has to be done.
And I thought that was Berry being Berry and wacky hijinks were in the offing.
7451703 I get the basic concept you're going for, but there was a bit too much lumped all in at once. We didn't get any buildup, we kinda got a big info. dump of celestia and luna suddenly being extra-dimensional gods, the pony world being some sort of dimensional under-layer to a higher plane of existence, etc.
7452254 I had it planned back when I was working on "Interlude: Berry Punch Visits Her Father". This chapter would have appeared much sooner, but I kept putting it off because I felt my original plan was too dark for this story. The Runner was actually going to get hooked and dragged to Tartarus, with the implication being that there are much deeper levels than the ones we've seen on the show.
I didn't want this story to be that dark (it's already too dark as it is), so I kept retooling it until I decided just to have Vala turned into a pony and set free to live a mortal life. Based on some of the comments, I wonder if I should have just made a spin-off about this little arc. At the very least, it's over.
Next chapter should wrap up the escaped archetype from Lero's collective unconscious sub-plot, and after that we'll get back to some slice-of-life, with the Wonderbolts, Celestia's attempts at revealing her feelings to Twilight and Lero, another pony attempting to court the herd, etc.etc.
7452642 I'm sorry to see you go, as your comments were quite insightful.
I dunno. I think this was more intense than expected, but we knew the Runner was a serious entity and that they were going after her. The metaphysics added into the equation might be a bit jarring... but on the other hand they don't really change the nature of the world given that, in this telling, it's always been that way. Well... unless the demiurge shows up and destroys everything... buuut that really would be off the rails, too big for most of our protagonists here... and therefore not worth worrying about unless the story really is going into crack fic territory, but I don't believe that.
Suuun..... that's too metaaaaaaa.... ...Quiet you, you're the backup plan anyway.
It'd be interesting to see how Twilight would react if she found out, or even just found out about Celestia and Luna. Oh hey, this meshes with their comment in the season 6 opener about Alicorns not being born in Equestria. Cadence is an ascended pegasus, Twilight a unicorn, and those two are.... whatever it is they are, exactly. Don't let naysayers get ya down... hey almost 1k upvotes.
7453081 Honestly. I'm of the mind set that sending The Runner In The Wood to Tartarus, or probably more actually, allowing Tartarus to take them would be kinder to the archon. At least in Tartarus she wouldn't be mortal. It might be an eternity of a torture we cannot image but it's still an eternity. To be mortal is to be finite. Her response to the change is proof enough. She was ready to be killed, in some sense of the word, but what Celestia did was far worse. Celestia might consider it a mercy, but it is not. It prolongs the end. Now Vala has lost all that made her who she was before, she must suffer that loss for what she knows will be a (comparatively) short amount of time while also dealing with all that comes with a mortal body (As Celestia herself put it "You will need to eat and sleep, and perform all the functions of a biological being for survival—if you chose survival."). As for "choosing" survival, well, in mortals the sense of self preservation is one of the strongest instincts we have. For someone to decide to kill themselves or let themselves die is an error in the brain, and I don't think Celestia would give Vala a defective body so she'd have to fight that very primal urge to survive if she saught a premature end to the suffering.
So, no, She Who Sees All, you have done something far more cruel than any of your others options. You should have listened to your sister.
The really sad part? Celestia doesn't see it this way, to her it really was mercy. I don't know if she has deluded herself or if she just can't grasp it mentally.
Celestia needs a good bitch slap from something stronger than her. She's a bully with cosmic power and no real check other than herself. I don't for one second think that if she didn't allow it on some level that Luna or Discord (even working together) could stop her from what she wanted to do. Thankfully she seems to have a very strong moral compass, at least when it comes to what most mortals would consider to be "moral". Though some people say that All It Takes Is One Bad Day... .
I get where the sisters are coming from though, this is their ball, their game and their rules. The rules are simple enough; don't mess with the ponies. The Runner In The woods thought she was helping the ponies with what she offered but she should have known better than to offer in the first place, But, well, we all known what's paved with good intentions.
On another factor not related to the actions taken those transformations were very well written, both the process and the end result. On that note but on another note I'm rather curious as to how many "locks" in total Luna has, is it the same as her sister at seven or is it less because she is 'younger'? And how many of them did she "release" this night. As for the elder sister, just what did each "lock" she "released" actually gave her. Out of "Four, five, and seven" which one gave her the Sight Beyond Sight and which made her the Unstoppable Object? And what did the last one do for her? Or was the Far Sight and the True Sight (the stripping away of the "shared hallucination" that is Magic) different things? So many questions, and questions are a good thing. But only if we get answers.
As for the true nature of Sun and Moon, well, it was out of left field for sure but I was able to roll with it, what with the sisters being Old Testament Angels and all. I don't think easing the reader into that reveal would work, there's no real way you can work that sort of thing in piecemeal.
Over all a good update, leaving me wanting a lot more. But it in the end I really just want something to smack Celestia. But the very worst thing is I know that deep down she really thinks she's doing what is best, and that sort of person is always the most dangerous. No one ever thinks of themselves as being evil after-all. And we just get back to what is being paved with those intentions.
I'm not sure I agree with you there. The Runner seems to justify her behavior in her own mind, but that's not the same as actual justification. What does she know about the suffering she's causing? She'll have a chance to find out now, rather than just get pulled into Hell Tartarus to be tormented by Celestia's irritable half brother for some incalculable period of time. You think mortal life is worse than that level of powerlessness? As to suicide... no, that's often a choice that is rationally made. Many cultures accept knowing when one's time has come, even if the body isn't yet at death's door. It's not always a choice made in despair or from some mental illness. Here we have a being that is above the level of a mortal; she knows what awaits and can make the decision about whether or not to try a mortal life. Frankly though... she's paying for crimes against those who were children to her... she got off easy.
“You have no right to speak of them,” Vala said, her booming voice full of brassy fury. “You murderers, you couldn’t stay away from our realm. Imagine how I feel, every day, every night, when I look up and see the corpses of my oldest brother and sister as you drag them across the sky.”
“Perhaps I need to make myself clear,” Luna said, as the silver feathers of her wings bristled and waved. “I don’t want to hear your defense. We aren’t going to get into an argument about morality. What you must understand is that Gaia is our property, and we dictate morality. We made ourselves known to your ilk when we first arrived, and we made it clear we didn’t want the beings on this planet to be harmed in any way. We set the rules quite strictly on proper behavior, which was, namely; leave them alone.”
Luna circled around the perimeter of the grove, not bothering to pretend she was watching the Runner. Luna could feel her pulsating power, as powerful and gross as an anaconda in a swamp. “Your elder brother and sister confronted us, and of course, you know how that turned out. The rest were dragged to Tartarus, through no power of our own. Imagine, not even our brother in his sad half-life approves of you lot.”
i like this line because it shows that Celestia and Luna while they are benevolent rulers they are not necessarily forces of good or paragons of virtue and have a really dark side and maybe are not as mature as they think
7454865 i agree with the twilight i would really like to see her reaction to learning everything about this and Celestia and Luna’s true nature and how ponies were created
Okay I just noticed luna is a seraphim? Not sure what celly is. And really Lero you brought ponies a story from ol Jean Paul sartre? And while one of his more tame ones no exit still is existential. Granted I only vaguely remember the details. I fear what you may do with the likes of lovecraft.
9415929 I don't think Lovecraft would frighten ponies at all. Unlike us humans here on Earth, where our gods are ephemeral and some might even argue absent, in this setting there are two (or perhaps three) very real divine beings they can walk up to and petition. Their gods do hear them and this chapter proved that they do protect them.
....Whu?
Why am I not surprised that this will some how bite Celestia and Luna in the flank. It makes me wonder just what the heck was happening when they choose to interfere?
Ah, a nice bit of Culture.
Seraphim and Cherubim?
Mimic town evolved from the Mimic Mall from Discworld.?
Even the local deities cant tell how Pinkie.
Wonder whats out for Bacon, and Everyone in Ponyville has gone to the theatre? Trixie is going to be so annoyed.
Lero is going to be So annoyed at Discord.
Wonder if Pinkie is going to have to be the Erasure to the Demiurge?
I'm so lost.
So, the answer to discord's riddle? Maxwell's demon?
7450432
You are correct.
Wait, someone turned ponyville to pigs?
7450631
No, these are the pigs on the Apples' farm that Luna spoke to in chapter 5.
IA IA CELESTIA FHTAGN! IA IA LUNA FHTAGN!
Wow!
Reminds me of Tenchi.
7450420
Yout aren't alone in that regard.
Discord's riddle.
paradoxically, the universe has high disorder at first. Entropy means energy spreading out makes the universe more harmonious. Thus, by concentrating energy, the demon increases the life span of the universe.
7450420
7451191
What's losing you? Ask, maybe I can clarify.
7451703
The whole thing with the all-creator, and Celestia and Luna being something other than pony. Not to mention the fact that the Sun and Moon are just corpses. I feel as if I missed something somewhere, but this caught me unawares. What I really expected was Celestia getting into the herd, or maybe Lero finding out he has some sort of future telling ability, (that dream he had earlier.) But this? I just have no idea where this came from.
7451751
Okay, yes... that part wasn't hinted at or foreshadowed at all. It was supposed to be a surprise. Maybe I should have eased the reader into it.
Minor thing, haven't even started Confrontation yet, but... you've got chapter 9 twice now.
7451806
Well, that's embarrassing. Thanks for the correction!
7451795
I'll be blunt here: You probably should've.
This plot is interesting to say the least, and I wouldn't mind something like this being the truth for this universe, but yeah you're right in saying that being eased into it would have been better.
Whatever you decide to do, I have been enjoying this story. I'll be honest in saying that I mostly started reading this for Lero and Gang, but if this is where this story is headed, I'll bite.
7451887
It's more of a detour than a change of direction.
7451913
Ah, that makes sense.
Sweetie Belle explained 'break a leg' to Scootaloo in an episode once... though Lero may not have heard it in Equestria, they do have the expression so Twi probably knows it.
As to the rest of this chapter... it feels like a different story. We went from concerns about the herd, Lero's continual challenges with pony cultural norms (title drop!), the Wonderbolts, and Berry Punch's trauma induced nihilism to.... this. It was certainly interesting, but until it really connects back to the primary players here it's too soon to say much. Yes, Vala was responsible for Berry in a sense (though as Goat Licker pointed out with Honeydew in an old comment, she's still responsible for her choices), but that alone isn't enough to make this scene, in all it's considerable, complex glory, relevant yet. Then again, apparently Ponyville just DCed from the rest of reality... so there's that. I don't much care about the demiurge or any other cosmic horror stuff. 'It's about Creation, it must be meaningful!' Oddly enough... no, not necessarily, and certainly not to the story that's been told so far. As Celestia noted, reality is what you make of it, not who made it. The wisdom to accept what I cannot change and all that. We're certainly a far cry from Berry winking at Lero while drinking in the fountain.
That said... Luna and Celestia's transformations were both vivid and fascinating to visualize. I don't think this came completely out of left field, either. In Xeno, it's noted by Celestia that the beings who abducted Lero knew not to meddle with Equestria:
This implies they can handle them. Now, I don't care about the Fae personally, they were means to an end, a footnote in getting Lero to Equestria. But plenty of readers are familiar with their lore via whatever tabletop RPG or original mythology and really talk them up. That's great, but since we're in the Xenoverse, might as well respect the canon of the original story. As such... how could Celestia and Luna handle such godly beings? Well... here's how. Love or hate it, it's certainly an answer.
This chapter was a really cool read... looking forward to how the cliffhanger ties it more firmly into the events that were happening up to this point. Thanks for the update, see ya next time!
Oh, P.S., Goat Licker...
...self deprecation or coincidence?
If you're willing to take us behind the scenes, how far back did you plan this arc? Obviously not when it was still a oneshot and ch.2 seemed like just more slice-of-life. The first point it seems to appear is in ch.3:
And I thought that was Berry being Berry and wacky hijinks were in the offing.
7451703
I get the basic concept you're going for, but there was a bit too much lumped all in at once.
We didn't get any buildup, we kinda got a big info. dump of celestia and luna suddenly being extra-dimensional gods, the pony world being some sort of dimensional under-layer to a higher plane of existence, etc.
Welp, I see this finally went completely off the rails.
Time to bail!
7452254
I had it planned back when I was working on "Interlude: Berry Punch Visits Her Father". This chapter would have appeared much sooner, but I kept putting it off because I felt my original plan was too dark for this story. The Runner was actually going to get hooked and dragged to Tartarus, with the implication being that there are much deeper levels than the ones we've seen on the show.
I didn't want this story to be that dark (it's already too dark as it is), so I kept retooling it until I decided just to have Vala turned into a pony and set free to live a mortal life. Based on some of the comments, I wonder if I should have just made a spin-off about this little arc. At the very least, it's over.
Next chapter should wrap up the escaped archetype from Lero's collective unconscious sub-plot, and after that we'll get back to some slice-of-life, with the Wonderbolts, Celestia's attempts at revealing her feelings to Twilight and Lero, another pony attempting to court the herd, etc.etc.
7452642
I'm sorry to see you go, as your comments were quite insightful.
I wonder, do specific seals correspond to specific ability's?
7453081
I dunno. I think this was more intense than expected, but we knew the Runner was a serious entity and that they were going after her. The metaphysics added into the equation might be a bit jarring... but on the other hand they don't really change the nature of the world given that, in this telling, it's always been that way. Well... unless the demiurge shows up and destroys everything... buuut that really would be off the rails, too big for most of our protagonists here... and therefore not worth worrying about unless the story really is going into crack fic territory, but I don't believe that.
Suuun..... that's too metaaaaaaa....
...Quiet you, you're the backup plan anyway.
It'd be interesting to see how Twilight would react if she found out, or even just found out about Celestia and Luna. Oh hey, this meshes with their comment in the season 6 opener about Alicorns not being born in Equestria. Cadence is an ascended pegasus, Twilight a unicorn, and those two are.... whatever it is they are, exactly. Don't let naysayers get ya down... hey almost 1k upvotes.
7453081
Honestly. I'm of the mind set that sending The Runner In The Wood to Tartarus, or probably more actually, allowing Tartarus to take them would be kinder to the archon. At least in Tartarus she wouldn't be mortal.
It might be an eternity of a torture we cannot image but it's still an eternity. To be mortal is to be finite. Her response to the change is proof enough. She was ready to be killed, in some sense of the word, but what Celestia did was far worse. Celestia might consider it a mercy, but it is not. It prolongs the end. Now Vala has lost all that made her who she was before, she must suffer that loss for what she knows will be a (comparatively) short amount of time while also dealing with all that comes with a mortal body (As Celestia herself put it "You will need to eat and sleep, and perform all the functions of a biological being for survival—if you chose survival."). As for "choosing" survival, well, in mortals the sense of self preservation is one of the strongest instincts we have. For someone to decide to kill themselves or let themselves die is an error in the brain, and I don't think Celestia would give Vala a defective body so she'd have to fight that very primal urge to survive if she saught a premature end to the suffering.
So, no, She Who Sees All, you have done something far more cruel than any of your others options. You should have listened to your sister.
The really sad part? Celestia doesn't see it this way, to her it really was mercy. I don't know if she has deluded herself or if she just can't grasp it mentally.
Celestia needs a good bitch slap from something stronger than her. She's a bully with cosmic power and no real check other than herself. I don't for one second think that if she didn't allow it on some level that Luna or Discord (even working together) could stop her from what she wanted to do. Thankfully she seems to have a very strong moral compass, at least when it comes to what most mortals would consider to be "moral". Though some people say that All It Takes Is One Bad Day... .
I get where the sisters are coming from though, this is their ball, their game and their rules. The rules are simple enough; don't mess with the ponies. The Runner In The woods thought she was helping the ponies with what she offered but she should have known better than to offer in the first place, But, well, we all known what's paved with good intentions.
On another factor not related to the actions taken those transformations were very well written, both the process and the end result.
On that note but on another note I'm rather curious as to how many "locks" in total Luna has, is it the same as her sister at seven or is it less because she is 'younger'? And how many of them did she "release" this night. As for the elder sister, just what did each "lock" she "released" actually gave her. Out of "Four, five, and seven" which one gave her the Sight Beyond Sight and which made her the Unstoppable Object? And what did the last one do for her? Or was the Far Sight and the True Sight (the stripping away of the "shared hallucination" that is Magic) different things? So many questions, and questions are a good thing. But only if we get answers.
As for the true nature of Sun and Moon, well, it was out of left field for sure but I was able to roll with it, what with the sisters being Old Testament Angels and all. I don't think easing the reader into that reveal would work, there's no real way you can work that sort of thing in piecemeal.
Over all a good update, leaving me wanting a lot more. But it in the end I really just want something to smack Celestia. But the very worst thing is I know that deep down she really thinks she's doing what is best, and that sort of person is always the most dangerous. No one ever thinks of themselves as being evil after-all. And we just get back to what is being paved with those intentions.
7457272
I'm not sure I agree with you there. The Runner seems to justify her behavior in her own mind, but that's not the same as actual justification. What does she know about the suffering she's causing? She'll have a chance to find out now, rather than just get pulled into
HellTartarus to be tormented by Celestia's irritable half brother for some incalculable period of time. You think mortal life is worse than that level of powerlessness? As to suicide... no, that's often a choice that is rationally made. Many cultures accept knowing when one's time has come, even if the body isn't yet at death's door. It's not always a choice made in despair or from some mental illness. Here we have a being that is above the level of a mortal; she knows what awaits and can make the decision about whether or not to try a mortal life. Frankly though... she's paying for crimes against those who were children to her... she got off easy.Wow. That was frighteningly deep. A lot of those words went over my head, leaving me envious of your superior vocabulary and concepts.
world building and alicorn badassery. I liked this chapter.
[YouTube=FONN-0uoTHI]
Both the power levels of various eldritch beings and the mnemonic names of daemons remind me of the world of Creation from Exalted.
This chapter is fucking cool. Love this shit!
I really do regret letting this one go unread for so long. Very cool stuff all around. I'm a sucker for the affairs of outsiders.
That happens to me to stop reading this story for a long time now if I'm confused I'll have to read it again to understand this episode
Hey. The 2nd law is abso!ute Discord.
EDIT: nevermind, I had this fic confused with a different one.
I came for slice of life fluff.........
I am instead very confused. This has turned from a happy go lucky romcom to a very serious story. Not sure at all how I should feel about that.
Luna circled around the perimeter of the grove, not bothering to pretend she was watching the Runner. Luna could feel her pulsating power, as powerful and gross as an anaconda in a swamp. “Your elder brother and sister confronted us, and of course, you know how that turned out. The rest were dragged to Tartarus, through no power of our own. Imagine, not even our brother in his sad half-life approves of you lot.”
i like this line because it shows that Celestia and Luna while they are benevolent rulers they are not necessarily forces of good or paragons of virtue and have a really dark side and maybe are not as mature as they think
7454865
i agree with the twilight i would really like to see her reaction to learning everything about this and Celestia and Luna’s true nature and how ponies were created
Okay I just noticed luna is a seraphim? Not sure what celly is. And really Lero you brought ponies a story from ol Jean Paul sartre? And while one of his more tame ones no exit still is existential. Granted I only vaguely remember the details. I fear what you may do with the likes of lovecraft.
9415929
I don't think Lovecraft would frighten ponies at all. Unlike us humans here on Earth, where our gods are ephemeral and some might even argue absent, in this setting there are two (or perhaps three) very real divine beings they can walk up to and petition. Their gods do hear them and this chapter proved that they do protect them.