XI. The Lament of Lud
XI. The Lament of Lud
Twilight
They were soaked and bitter. The tunnels went farther than she had ever imagined, were darker and more fetid than she could have ever dreamed. They seem to go on and on forever, like some sort of maze at the foot of Tartarus, and deliriously, she wondered if at the end, at the bitter end, she might not find that door of adamantine and good rowan wood.
Instead, she mostly saw scattered and wretched ponies on islands of dirt. The tunnels were wide, and here and there, the ground was torn, and the wounds allowed the sun into the network of cavern-like sewers.
Main Sail stirred the water again, the paddle firmly gripped in his strong jaw. Twilight, from behind him, looked at the little lamp suspended at the front of their tiny boat, watching it bob in midair.
The sailing pony had explained it all already, of course, in great detail with a variety of stories of dubious basis in truth and ludicrous exaggeration. She found it mildly annoying but excusable. It whiled the time away, which was a blessing in the dark, and more importantly, what things seemed plausible in his tales were, in fact, useful.
Namely, the tunnels were ancient. Main Sail claimed that the modern city had been built over the old, but she doubted this. Not that it was impossible: they said that the great Crystal City was built atop the cavernous ruins of some other place, and she had seen the primeval unicorn settlement that the builders in Canterlot had uncovered. No, she was slow to believe him entirely because the city was not old.
She quite believed that the tunnels had been built in and around natural caverns. They had left normal sewers behind entirely, now. In fact, Main Sail had been quick to exit them. The real caverns below were the safe place, he had insisted, the only safe place.
Perhaps it was. At any rate, the caverns were full. She’d tried keeping count of the ponies, but the lighting was too bad in most of the great chambers. She’d counted at least fifty of them huddling on dry mounds and in damp piles of rubble, peeking up into the gray world above. Rebar hanging down from the heavens became the backbones of their lean-tos, and she’d even seen two sullen earth ponies timidly collecting scraps from the streets to build something on their small corner of dry cavern floor. They had looked at her for only a moment with their sunken eyes, following the movement of their tiny boat of salvage but not comprehending it or what it meant. If it meant anything, she supposed.
The boat they had gotten from a mare without ears in the metro station.
Fresh from pursuit, hunters hot on their heels, Main Sail had jumped down onto the tracks, and the three mares had followed him as best they could, Applejack and Twilight still struggling to keep Pinkie mobile. The Blues had come to the gate of the station but had refused to enter. They’d shot a firearm of some kind into the dim station, but after a few threats, they had retreated. Twilight had thanked the stars fervently, as she had not since foalhood.
In the following empty silence, Twilight’s eyes had tried to acclimate to her surroundings. The empty metro tunnel stretched on and on, curving to the left out of her view. There were occasional lights that flickered on and off overhead, and Twilight wondered if the Grays had found generators to keep running in all of the devestation. The ground beneath her was hard, but as they stood and began to slowly walk, she had found it coated in sticky patches of oil and filth.
The one-eyed, no-eared mare with a wicked smile had been waiting in the tunnel, sitting beside a huge hole that led into the sewers and beyond. She had called to Sail like an old friend, and Twilight had imagined, for a moment, that she was a witch out of some fairy tale. It didn’t take much to imagine.
And so they had wandered, or at least to Twilight, it had seemed like wandering. She had tried to keep up and cross-reference the map, but it proved useless. The caverns were not mentioned or shown at all. It was like she had left the world behind.
The little boat—and calling it a boat was a stretch—creaked loudly in the cramped tunnels.
The lantern swayed with the movement of their craft. Back and forth, back and forth, Twilight’s eyes followed it loyally until she pulled herself away and shut them. She was losing track of things.
The lantern, at least, provided her with a good view of her companions. With a sigh, Twilight examined them.
Pinkie’s wounds were bandaged as best as they could be in the dark. She slept in front of Main Sail, out of Twilight’s reach, her puffed-up, cotton candy-like mane become straight and matted in the damp air of the underground. Her body moved only in breathing, and Twilight watched mutely for a moment that dragged along. She wished that Pinkie were closer. The boat need to be balanced, of course, but she still felt like it would be better. What did ponies do in such a situation? An injured friend… She imagined herself stroking that mane or lying beside Pinkie—quiet things—and found it odd that she had not the inclination to do so. Not right away. Was that how to respond?
She was worried. Pinkie’s injury had not been as terrible as she had feared, but it was not as minor as she had hoped. Not a glancing blow, but not a crippling one. The bullet had gone right through, cleanly, taking with it tissue but not sinew or bone, and she was grateful.
The real danger was less in the physical. Pinkie would heal and probably fast if experience had taught Twilight anything. No, the real danger was in the immediate future. How would Pinkie flee if they were caught? How would they, with Pinkie in tow?
Twilight sighed.
Her gaze turned to Applejack, who lay in the back of the boat. Her hat obscured her face as well as a wall against the weak light. Part of Twilight wished that her friend would look up, let in just enough light for Twilight to see, but the lion’s share of her heart wouldn’t bear it.
Thinking was Twilight’s strong point. It was what she did best, above all—even above magic. Magic was, as Starswirl wrote in the long gone ages, a matter of the mind.
She turned her attention back to Pinkie.
All magical issues are born out of the imagination, Star Swirl argued, and she heard Celestia reading from De Ars Arcanum in the oratorium. Twilight almost felt the padded couch underneath her stomach and flanks as she had then.
“All magical problems are fundamentally rooted in deficiencies of the imagination, Twilight,” Celestia explains.
Her voice is like a song, like an aria in the early morning, and Twilight drinks it all in. The radiant sun like the ocean at hide tide pours in through the stained glass of the oratorium. They sit in on couches against the wall, Celestia on one and Twilight on the other. There are tables here and there, left over for students to use in a quiet place, but the hall is empty. There are no speeches to be given or talks to be held, not today. Today, and specifically this morning, are for Celestia and her most beloved student.
“What does that mean?” Twilight asks in the voice of a child.
“Well, why don’t we finish, Twilight, and then let us see if you can answer your own question,” Celestia says with a smile—it is not knowing, it is all-knowing. She clears her throat. “All magical problems are fundamentally rooted in deficiencies of the imagination. The emotional core of ponies is the heart of magic. Do not mistake me, for I am not speaking in parables. Where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are great works of arcane might, they will fail—if they are not rooted in the right mind, they are like a house without foundation.”
Twilight blinks. “That’s kinda hard…” But as her teacher opens her mouth to explain, Twilight quickly jumps into the mental fray. “But I think I know what he means!”
Celestia raises an eyebrow, and thought Twilight knows it not, she is faking her serious air. “Oh? You think you do? Well, my faithful student, I suppose now is the time to show me what you’ve gathered.”
Twilight bites her lip. The habitual gesture has already become familiar, and she will retain it.
“I… well, magic isn’t just about horns?”
Celestia beams. “That’s a good way to say it, Twilight.”
“And, um…”
She struggles, and will not relent, because the eyes of Celestia are always on her. She feels them like the sun on her back, like she is in the throne room of God. The answer is within reach. Celestia is simply waiting for her, and she must not be kept waiting.
For her part, Celestia sips at her tea and enjoys the morning. Twilight has come far in the years under her tutelage and the oversight of the teachers of her school. Every goal set before her, she plows over. She does not simply learn; she devours, absorbs, masters. Celestia is both fascinated and delighted by this. She is so driven! So bright! So happy.
“Well, I guess he means you have to know the secrets?”
“Oh?” Celestia asks softly.
Twilight scrambles. She backpedals.
“I mean, no, wait…”
“Would you like some help?” Celestia asks.
“No! No I can do it! I promise.”
“Alright, alright.”
“Right… mind…” She grimaces.
Celestia waits a moment more, enjoying her tea and wondering about her student, before she speaks into the silence. “May I read a bit more?”
Twilight nods.
“Now,” Celestia begins, floating the book up before her, still watching Twilight. “By right mind, we mean, of course, a mind that has the proper reaction to the world around it, or rather, the proper inclination, in that it is both active and receptive. The ruling power within, when it is in its natural state, is so related to outer circumstances that it easily changes to accord with what can be done and what is given it to do. Magic relies on a tranquil mind. By a tranquil mind, I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered.”
“Concentration,” Twilight says when Celestia paused to flip the page. “Does he mean it requires concentration?”
Celestia sets the bookmark on the page and places it down. “Oh, I do think so. I think that is a large part of it! But not all.”
Twilight sighs. “Princess… I’m not sure what I’m supposed to find out…”
And Celestia notices the look of defeat and pauses. She does not simply recognize it, perhaps. Twilight wonders, later, if she does at last begin to see an inkling of something more than puzzlement there, something longer and darker.
“Oh, Twilight, I think you’ve misunderstood what I intended. This is not a day for tests,” she says, smiling as she does.
“What do you mean?”
“I met Star Swirl and worked with him for a time. He made, for my sister and me, many enchanted things. They were very beautiful, Twilight. Art, more than simple utility, was often his aim. At first, he seemed such a strange, almost cold pony, but more and more, I believe that he was simply taken with everything.”
“You knew Starswirl the Bearded?” Twilight asks, and she is in awe of Celestia the Eternal.
Celestia the Not-Quite Eternal chuckles. “I did. Our paths crossed, you could say. There was no Equestria then. I was a sojourner in the land, fighting monsters in the north and cheerfully exploring the world with… Luna.”
Her voice falters. A young Twilight does not notice. An older Twilight will think and wince at this recollection.
“Carefree and courageous,” she says quietly. “Anyhow. He wrote this while we were in the old Zebra kingdom of Ma’ain, and when we returned to the northlands of Unicornia, we found him near death. It was… hard. We had grown to love him. But he gave us his last work and asked us to give it to the sages we came across, that he might not be lost to time. I have since given it to every bright young mage I’ve come across.”
“So it’s very important?” Twilight guessed.
“Yes. And don’t fret, Twilight. I wanted you to wrestle a bit this morning with his prologue because you and I will be returning to this book often, I believe. He got to the heart of something quite important, Starswirl, and I think it will be a good lesson for you.”
Twilight stared ahead, enjoying the warm memories in the small boat.
“Twilight?” Applejack called softly.
Twilight almost jumped. “Yes?”
“You there? We’re gettin’ out.”
Twilight blinked and looked around.
Their destination was an underground shore crowded with ponies in faded clothes and torn barding. She thought she saw tattered blues and grays and even a few rust-colored cloaks, but when her eyes fell on any of the downcast-looking ponies, they seemed to shrink back into the mass of their own kind as if offended, as if her sight was like a touch that burned them. The low, claustrophobic tunnel had opened up into a high-ceiling cavern, perhaps two stories tall. She marveled at how it could exist at all.
It was lit with lamps that stood atop long poles. They jutted from the crowd, here and there, with no real rhyme or reason to their placement. Above maned heads, Twilight noted lean-tos and a pile of barrels with no labels. What was this place, before? Did anypony ever come down here? Was it abandoned?
Main Sail ran their boat aground on the gray sand, and the quiet ponies backed away. Twilight wanted to say something, ask where she was, but they would not stay to answer, and she knew this with queer certainty. No, they had no answers for her.
“Main Sail?” she asked, and her voice echoed in the great hall—for that it was, she realized. It was the antechamber of some great hall. She half-expected a lumbering earth pony thane to burst out from the crowd to see who was bothering his silent thralls.
“Ye have a need?”
“Where is this? How is this… here? Without…” she struggled. “Why haven’t I ever read about all of this?”
They stood beside the boat while Main Sail worked. The thralls parted before him like the clouds before the wind, and there was a spike of rebar there. He produced a rope and tied the boat down.
“Take what ye care about,” he said to them. Twilight noticed that he ignored her question.
So, with characteristic stubbornness, she pressed her suit. “Main Sail, why haven’t I—?”
“Because it ain’t got a thing to do with ye magic, I suppose,” he said softly, sourly, looking back at her. “Give a moment ‘fore the questions fly, will ye?”
She huffed but obeyed. The mares followed close behind him, Applejack and Twilight supporting Pinkie, who graced them both with a weak smile.
The crowd again parted, and Twilight found herself in a strange and otherworldly village.
It had the looks of a temporary settlement, and yet Twilight thought it old and established, by now, if only by the way that ponies congregated and seemed to have set down their own private homesteads. The path through the middle of the huddled thrall shelters was well worn, and she supposed that it was more port than cavern.
Twilight spoke again, softly, trying not to look too closely at the strangers. “Main Sail, can you tell us where we are? Or what we’re doing?”
“You told me that ye need passage, earlier. Is that right, young miss?”
Twilight scowled. “Well, yes, we do.”
“Then ye’ll be needin’ help.”
“I’m not sure any of these ponies are likely to offer help or be helpful in general even if they were willing.”
“You’d be right ‘bout that,” Main Sail replied. “But it ain’t them that ye need.”
“Then who? Please, just answer me.”
“Ye’ll be needin’ the Duke.”
“There isn’t a… Oh, nevermind,” Twilight said.
The cavern continued. She wondered at it, guessing it was over a hundred pony-lengths in any direction. Two hundred, legs spread out and everything.
But the nature of their surroundings changed. The thralls gave way to slightly more alert ponies in gray barding who did meet her gaze, and Twilight found herself looking away first. They were proud-looking ponies, though coated in the filth of the sewers and metros and though most looked poorly-fed.
They all shared a common look. Long manes, male and female. Eyes like hawks. She tried not to find the poor attempts at mustaches on some of the stallions funny but failed rather miserably. There was just something absurd about them, strutting in the dimly lit cave, talking amongst themselves.
At the end, near the cavern wall, she saw a large tent. There were others on either side, but this one was the biggest and perhaps the cleanest. Twilight realized that they were all stolen or borrowed from the Army of the North. She’d seen their gear before.
In fact, in a lot of ways, the whole thing was an absurd museum mock-up of the Army of the North. Like laughter in the morning, it dragged old and painful memories out of bed in wrath. She grit her teeth and stayed in the present.
The camp was guarded. Two of the barded ponies—she couldn’t bring herself to call them soldiers—stepped forward from where they had slouched about a table of cards and barred the way.
Twilight knew those uniforms were familiar-looking. She had an inkling but pushed it down.
The one on the left spoke first. Twilight guessed that once he had been handsome and well-built, but now he seemed only old and thin. “Well, then. If it isn’t Sail. What are you doing here again, you little shit?” He said it with a grin the size of a freighter and a tone as bright as the sun, but Twilight was on her guard as much as she had been in the park. This was not a friendly pony.
“Oh, ye know,” Main Sail replied, also grinning like a shark. “Just wandering by. I have business with the Duke.”
“Duke doesn’t need your kind here, bootlicker,” the second soldier said. He did not smile. Twilight did not really feel that he was angry at all. If anything, he was bored. “You’re a Neutral at best, and a coltfucking Blue lapdog at worst. The Duke has no need of either of these things.”
“Like I was saying,” the first guard continued, his grin growing wider if such were possible. “What are you really up to? What could you even offer the Duke, and why shouldn’t we finally put an end to your little career, hm?”
Main Sail sighed. “Look, Stalwart, just because—”
“Hey, don’t you start talking,” the first guard growled. Twilight scowled, mentally preparing to push the two earth pony guards away and bolt.
“Just listen to me,” Main Sail replied, slowly. “Ye knows I wouldn’t be wanderin’ around here without good cause. I have some mares he might be wantin’ a talkin’ with.”
“Mares? These three?” Stalwart replied, raising an eyebrow. “What could they give the Duke? What…” He rolled his eyes. “Now, you know the Duke won’t be taking kindly to trying to sell him ponies fo—”
“Oh, Luna’s sake,” Main Sail groaned, losing the calm demeanor. “It’s important. Just let me through, you fat sod.”
“I’d let him through, Captain Stalwart,” said a new pony who walked in from the right of Twilight’s vision. His light willowbark coat and olive mane stuck out from the gray barding and cloak he wore.
The guard in question side-eyed him. “I don’t remember you being in charge of me, Axiom.”
“I don’t recall playing cards being a part of your guard duty nor complaining.” The newcomer smiled now, and it was unpleasant. “Nor, of course, do your wonderfully complex and fulfilling duties include petty revenge on the stallion who buggered you and skipped out to the next port of call, as it were.”
Stalwart sputtered.
“Yes, well.” He turned to the mares and smiled. “Hello. My name is Axiom. You would be Twilight Sparkle, of course.”
Twilight blinked. Ponies had known her name, but her likeness had not been as widespread. “That… that would be me,” she said. “Sorry, I’ve been used to ponies only recognizing me after I introduce myself.”
Axiom chuckled. “I have an approximate knowledge of many things, Miss Sparkle. You would be surprised what I know and think. And your companions… Ah, forgive me. I will guess. Applejack, yes? I would assume your injured friend is the infamous Pinkie Pie, the laugher.”
“Got that one right,” Applejack replied.
The two guards stood mute. Stalwart’s companion seemed to finally show interest, but Stalwart had eyes only for Axiom.
“Are you done with all your smarmy stupidity?” Stalwart asked.
“Only when you are done with your rather vulgar sort,” Axiom replied without bothering to look.
Stalwart growled wordlessly and left.
“Now,” Axiom continued, and now he seemed to relax. “I am terribly sorry. The… I know I’m stealing this from somewhere, but the hospitality of the house has been lacking of late. Or, rather, always. You know how it is. Stalwart can’t really helping being repressed, belligerent, and stupid, but I suppose the world takes all types.” He turned his eyes to Main Sail. “Ah. And you.”
“An’ me, say true.”
“Well… Hm. If you’ll follow me?” Axiom turned and strode off towards the little camp.
Axiom brought them to sit before the empty wooden chair that was in front of the tent. Begging their pardon, he disappeared into the large tent for a while before emerging with a scowl and shaking his head. The Duke was asleep; it would be ill to wake him.
They sat in front of the empty chair for what seemed forever.
Axiom talked intermittently, almost exclusively to Twilight. Out of the corner of her eye, Twilight watched her companions. Applejack seemed to tolerate their new companion if barely. Pinkie mostly just seemed to be puzzled.
“You know, I’ve been thinking, Twilight. About memories. I think about the past a lot, you see. I make observations that don’t do anypony good at all. Do you think everypony dwells as I do?”
She glanced over at him. “What?”
“Sorry. I do tend to ramble. I can’t help but notice, though, how you… ah, I want to say stare, but that’s not quite right.”
“At?”
“At everything,” Axiom said, evenly, as if explaining that the sun shone and that rain was wet.
She sighed. “I’m afraid I’m lost, Axiom. Do you know when this Duke will be ready to speak to us?”
He chuckled in response. “No, I don’t. The Duke is a capricious stallion of dubious faculties but superb courage if that’s even a thing. If nothing else, he is wonderful at hitting things until they die. Champion sleeper, coincidentally, and known for looking disfavorably upon being woken up and anypony who happens to be doing it.”
Twilight sighed, and Main Sail cut in. “Axiom, you don’t have to keep up the act.”
“Act?” He turned the smile on again. “Act?”
“The young miss has not a shred of context, and all ye’re doin’ is botherin’ her. Lay off.”
“How droll. Fine.” Axiom said, waving a hoof.
“Though you do seem a bit agitated,” Main Sail followed up, and Twilight watched his brow knit together. “Has something happened?”
“Something is always happening.”
Twilight sat quietly between them, glad to not be the subject of Axiom’s address. Instead, she looked around and realized that he was partially right. She was staring, not so much in curiosity or in awe. She seethed. It was a shock to realize it, to realize that her teeth were grinding together and her blood was running hot.
Dreams have a way of continuing. Not lingering, per se, but continuing. They pop up, here and there, like thieves in the night or like disease or misfortune. They lie in wait in corners and in constellations of ponies. They brood in newspaper headlines and in pictures. Sometimes they couch themselves in the luxury of the spoken word and wrap themselves around every syllable out of a loved one’s mouth, and with every sentence, the dream lives again and forces itself upon the waking mind as if to rule it.
In the camp, Twilight was thinking about Manehattan.
Around her, Axiom and Main Sail continued what she understood now, like lightning, was an interview, a preliminary. Axiom probed.
“Yes, but ye be agitated, and it’s not quite ye’re normal even-keel.”
Axiom laughed—a fake sound. “As if I live ever in an even-keel, you bilgerat. Honestly, what could be the matter? As you can plainly see, the banner of the Gray is quite advanced, and the sun is lovely.”
As if he had been cued, Main Sail lowered his voice and leaned in. “That bad, say?”
“Worse,” Axiom said roughly, and like a snake sheds its skin, he shed his persona. To Twilight, it was an almost visible change. The smirking and the smiling and the half-lidded eyes were replaced by a hard, but perhaps earnest, stare. She thought, absurdly, that he seemed sad.
“Especially if ye drop the game. Aye, I’d feared as much. The Blues take the old hill fort again.”
“Let them,” Axiom said, sneering. “It’s not as if that thing matters. It’s trash on a muddy excuse for a park. Who cares?”
“It’s a good vantage point.”
“So is half the city, and no one is fighting over a lot of those towers. It’s beyond stupid. Blues take the hill, stay for a day, end up leaving or moving almost the whole garrison elsewhere, we charge up the stupid hill and take the thing, and then we have it for three days at the uttermost before we run screaming from the damn pegasi.”
“The Duke wants it back?”
“Hell, the Duke doesn’t even think anymore,” Axiom said and then sighed heavily. “Never bright, but never stupid. I can’t say that now. Well, I could say that, I guess, it would just be demonstrably false.”
Twilight could almost see him, this Duke. It made her want to pull her hair out. She imagined him strutting, sure in his prowess. Just like Tidewater, just like Sidestroke. Manehattan, Manehattan, Manehattan.
Beside her, Applejack stirred. Twilight felt a hoof on her shoulder and heard a soft, warm voice in her ear. “Twi, you’re worryin’ me. Are you alright? You’re grindin’ those teeth of yours somethin’ fierce.”
“Manehattan,” she said.
Applejack was quiet a moment as if thinking. “Damn, I kinda see it too, now. Army camp. Brings it all back… but you need to calm down. Do you want me to do the talkin’?”
Twilight shook her head. “No. If I don’t talk, it’ll be noticeable. If he’s really a noble…”
“Then he’ll notice on account of he’d have seen ya,” Applejack finished with a grunt. Axiom got up, and he and Main Sail huddled together, whispering. Applejack scooted forward and turned her back to them, cutting into Twilight’s line of sight. “Right. I don’t feel like I rightly trust these folks, Twi.”
Their voices didn’t carry, but Main Sail’s did. She heard him asking about the docks.
“I’m not sure I like them either,” Twilight said, taking a deep breath. The dream still swirled. She shoved the Beachead down deep into the depths of her heart. Let it simmer. She must not let it out.
“Not just on account of their actin’ like real soldiers and appropriatin’ all this stuff that don’t belong to them, Twilight. The looks they’re given us make me feel dirty. You see ‘em? Over there, watching?”
“No, and I’m trying to forget there are other ponies here.” It was true; she’d ignored most everypony not directly involved, so far.
“Well, I ain’t been. It’s bad, Twilight. What in hell’s name happened to all these ponies?”
“War,” Twilight said and coughed. “Sorry, the air is foul. War happened, Applejack.”
“Twilight?” Pinkie weighed in from the other side. Twilight realized that she had snuck up and completed their huddle.
“What’s on your mind, Pinkie?” Twilight responded. “Are you alright? Um… your bandages, those are okay?” She asked, feeling foolish.
“I’m a-okay, Twilight! Thank you, though.” Twilight saw Pinkie smiling in her peripheral vision. “I think Axiom is an alright pony, girls.”
“You’re kidding me,” Applejack said flatly.
“Nope! If I were joking, there would be a punchline, silly. Or well… a set up, you know. Joke stuff! But I really think he’s okay. Maybe a little… okay, a lot grumpy, but that doesn’t make a pony bad.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t make them trustworthy either,” Twilight pointed out.
Pinkie shrugged against her, and Twilight fidgeted at the odd feeling of being touched even if by accident.
“Nope. But it doesn’t mean that they aren’t trustworthy. He’s very unhappy, Twilight. I think you should be nice to him, and he might help us.”
Twilight blinked. “That’s…”
“Fair,” Applejack finished. “Twi, this fellow—and I ain’t sayin’ I like him or know him from Adam—but he might just be good for us and to us. We need a pony in our corner that ain’t just been let out of a cage. You know, a pony that’s got some stock.”
Twilight scowled. “Why’s it have to be me?”
“I’d say you’re the only one he’s gonna give the time of day to, sugarcube.”
Twilight reinforced the scowl with a quiet groan. She was not in the mood to make nice, especially not with strange ponies. She had business to attend to. Important business. Celestia business.
The two stallions returned. Axiom’s mask was not quite restructured, and Main Sail seemed disheartened. Twilight did not comment. Instead, she thought. She imagined, and she planned, thinking about Starswirl and the prologue read in the sunlight.
Eventually, after another age had passed, Twilight spoke softly to Axiom, who lazed in front of her.
“Axiom? You were right earlier, you know.”
Axiom lifted his head. “Hm?”
“About my staring. I was staring.”
“Ah,” he said as if this was a pointless statement. Twilight did not sigh or back off. No, her scouting had been useful. She began her attack in earnest.
“It reminds me of another time and place,” she explained. “All of this… well. It’s an army camp, really, in miniature, and perhaps with less order and less sunlight.”
“Another time and place?” Axiom said, and Twilight realized that the mask had been resumed. “Please, enlighten me.”
So, Twilight decided to be bold. “You know a lot about me. I think you can guess.”
She felt the eyes of her companions on her, but she was not worried. He would show what he knew.
Axiom lifted his head and smiled. “I do, at that. I know many things. Specifically, I know a lot about two ponies. You can maybe guess which two, but I do know what you are talking about. Manehattan, correct?”
“Yes.”
“That would explain the supremely angry look you had earlier,” he remarked and sat up. “You have my attention. I’m glad you decided to join us, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Thank you. Who is the other pony? And why me?”
“Why you? Have others…? Well, I take that back. The playthings of Gods are many. Celestia, your teacher, is the aim of all my thoughts in these last days.”
Twilight blinked, surprised. “The princess?”
“Of course.”
“What about her? I mean, specifically?”
“How I absolutely, irrevocably, and without doubt, resent and deny the fairness of her immortality and existence,” he answered in a cheerful singsong. “It is simply not fair. It’s axiomatic. I would know.”
“Unfair?” Twilight was beyond bewildered. Her plan faded away into nothing. She had not foreseen this at all.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he answered. “Honestly. She lives forever. We do not. Where do we go after we die? Where does this god send us, Twilight?”
“When we die? Celestia doesn’t—”
“Ah, it was rhetorical. Consider it, Twilight. Think hard on it. How can it be fair that we are small, and she is great? Her existence is alien, Twilight. Nothing is nor ever can be nor ever will be constant, and yet there she is, still alive. It’s obscene. It’s indecent.”
“Now hold on,” Twilight said, rage hot. “Her existence is hardly unfair. She can’t help being the way she is.”
“Can’t she?”
“If you ate meat, I would tell you your way of existing was monstrous.”
He smiled and showed every last tooth. “Who is to say that I have not done so in this new and beautiful world?” When Twilight gaped in open and naked dismay, he laughed. “All things bright and beautiful, Twilight, the Sun made them all—to be eaten or eat, that is. I have, by the way, eaten meat, but it was not a sentient creature.”
“Moon preserve me,” Twilight mumbled.
“And yet you do not tell me I am monstrous,” he pointed out.
“Because I’m in shock,” she shot back, irritated.
Twilight wished she could see Applejack’s face. Or simply lean on Applejack. Feel Pinkie’s presence beside her. Anything. But her friends were not as close as she would wish them.
“Bah,” he dismissed her, but he still smiled. “But the axiomatic evil that is the god-queen has little to do with you and I. Do you know what they called me, Twilight, before I became a jester to an old warless and woundless veteran?”
“Crazy?” she guessed.
“Close! They sneered at me and called me Seer. I was quite taken with the name—I freely admit to a bit of vainglory, but when you live in a sewer to avoid being torn apart in the streets, you keep your spirits up as you can. It became clear to me, in the dark, what it all meant. She’s a necessary evil. Ah, but I’m going on again. The important thing is Manehattan.”
“It is?” Twilight asked. She was lost. The conversation was like rapids, and her boat was shattered.
“Yes. You had mentioned it before. Now, continue your confession.”
She scowled. “It was hardly a confession.”
He cackled. “It was that and more, Twilight. I’m sorry, I had never suspected it would be so fun to get a rise out of you. I say confession because you obviously attach some meaning to the affair, enough to be angry, and beyond that, if it were not forefront in your mind, it would not be the first thing you led off a conversation with, especially not one designed to woo me.”
“Woo you?” She said, stirring.
“Figuratively.”
Main Sail also stirred. “How long’s that old stallion going to sleep?”
“Forever, probably,” Axiom said quickly and then returned his attention to Twilight. “I only ask because I’m insatiably curious. I am insatiable in many things, actually. Also, as much as I have explained myself and my motives, in my study and ruminations on you—and yes, by the way, we have met before—I have decided that your story is perhaps the most interesting one left in this insipid and wasted world.”
“We’ve met?” Twilight asked, racking her brain. It was galling to be the slow one in the conversation. “I feel as if I would remember meeting you, Axiom. I can’t say I have ever met you or anypony quite like you.”
“Ah, the underhoofed insult is nice. I quite like it. But no, I was different then. I was working on a degree in Equine studies, in fact, at the Canterlot University. We had classes.”
Twilight blinked. “Oh… Stars, were you the small stallion in the back?”
“That is all you can muster? Is that my name forever? I won’t even begin to comment on the implications of ‘small’,” he said, grimacing. “But yes. By your look of confusion, I can see you’ve noted how I’ve changed. But, as I was saying, my study of you has mostly been secondhoof. It began a bit after the fall of Manehattan. It was then that I realized that we were all doomed, you see. We’re all going to die.”
“That’s a bit certain.”
“Epistemic distance is shit,” he proclaimed. “No, I’m certain of it. Unless the author of this increasingly cold world—which there isn’t one, I would caution—has in store a deus ex machina and a rather unsatisfying ending, we are all going to freeze.”
“So, because it would be unsatisfying, you think we’re going to die.”
“Don’t you?”
Twilight wanted to say that she did not. She would have loved to say that she had hope, that she clung to some warm hope and dream of Celestia riding the clouds over an embattled Canterlot, bringing with her the light of the sun.
Instead, she said, “The world isn’t a story. It’s a country full of living, breathing, real ponies like you and me, who deserve better than to freeze to death because aesthetically it would be bold and impressive.” She paused. “This whole… line of discussion is odd. Let’s go back to Manehattan if you’re so interested in it.”
“Which I am.”
“What do you know?” Twilight asked. “I guess instead of talking, I’m going to be lecturing.”
“I have it on reliable sources that you do that very, very well. I know nothing. Well, no, that is a lie. I know many things, but pretend that I am ignorant as a child.”
So she told him everything.
Twilight
The Beachhead is twelve miles wide and seven miles deep. At the shallowest point, it is still a mile of contested territory. The city stands but is taken. The outskirts burn or are ash to be carried by the wind and trod under horseshoes made from iron. The air is cold, which Twilight could stand if it were static, but it is not. It moves. It whistles. It screams and pushes at them when they leave the safety of the hollow shells of households or stand too long in the wind tunnels of streets.
They are not all gathered in one place. Luna wished for all six of the elements at her side, but Twilight had talked her down. Fluttershy is back behind their lines helping with wounded streaming in from the bridge, with Pinkie as her right hoof. Rarity is at the heel of the Moon’s shepherd, which leaves the fighters with Twilight in the Manehattan suburb of Canter’s Crossing.
They came over the sea because the sun was failing. It’s rather logical, honestly, when one’s homeland is freezing over in the long night. The sun will not shine long enough to thaw the mountainous eyeries of the Griffons; they shiver and they grow faint, and the prey moves or dies. The crops of their thralls and serfs do not grow, and the lesser beings that are confined to earth wither.
In short, they are dying.
Even now, they are dying. As an old stallion may yet raise himself out of bed right at the door of death, so they too sail across the sea and take a single startled city in hopes that they might at least die in company.
The city they took without too much of a fight. With twenty thousand armored griffons hurtling out of the sky, much of the potential resistance just failed to materialize. Celestia was gone. The skies were dark. It only made sense that the griffons fall from the skies and raze the place, being the end of the world and all.
But, so far, they have not razed it. The outskirts they burned after moving ponies in or sending them away. It has all been to keep the city isolated and keep any defenders from feeling comfortable. There is nowhere for them to sleep, nowhere to find food or the faces of the fearful that could give them courage.
Above all, Twilight is preoccupied with two things: the rain and the sun. Or, rather, the all-encompassing presence of the first and the sucking vacuum of the second. Her coat is damp but drying. It is hard not to at least be grateful for that even if it came at the cost of taking refuge in a burnt-out house a bit too like the ones in Ponyville. Without the sun peeking through the uniform gray sky, it was hard to dry off without magic.
The rain beats down upon the churned mud of the Manehattan plains. It beats a steady march upon the exposed floor above them. It pools outside the doorway that had lost its door. She thinks it the best of all possible weapons in that it required nothing to use and, even when missing, it added to the misery.
But inside, where Twilight could summon and maintain a small magical fire, there is relative peace. The miserable rain’s rhythm was more like a song, strange and lilting and too far away to be of any meaning or import.
They all huddle close together for warmth. Rainbow, Applejack, Twilight, the two aides. Everypony suffered in kind. It was the way of the Army of the North.
Time passes. The Army is marching. Luna is impatient, and Twilight is restless. Applejack is reserved. Rainbow Dash wants to break things. It is as it will be later on, for not much has changed. It will change, perhaps, but in the Now that is Twilight at the bridge into Manehattan, they are all playing their own self-assigned roles.
The fighting is fierce. Twilight will remember it well, remember calling down lightning from the burdened, pregnant clouds on the griffon gunners. She will recall, months hence, how the lithe pegasi tried to dodge and weave but were weighed down by water and were caught in strong, iron grips and torn from the sky they were born to like bugs crushed by cart wheels.
But she will mostly remember that the Army of the North threw themselves upon the embankments dug into the earth and raised upon the great drawbridge and how they were repulsed. How this happened many, many times. She will remember the rain stopping and the long day where the sun shone for fifteen hours and ponies and griffons alike could have wept for joy but killed each other in the light instead because it was useful.
But most of all, Twilight will remember when Luna ordered the Army of the North to cease their bombardments. She will remember the look in Luna’s eyes that she will never, ever name, but will say made her very still and took all of the sun’s warmth out of her. The day passed, the night passed, and Twilight sees the coming of the end when the King of Griffona arrives in the early light of blood-red dawn with his ironshod bodyguard. He is old, and he is weary, and for all the world, Twilight wonders at how he is not upset or angry. He seems resigned. Almost relieved. It is the look of a creature that has gone to great lengths to say something to someone.
The griffons revolt. Within the city, order has been kept and ponies unharmed, but the entropy in the air has worked its dark magic on the hearts of griffons. They hem and haw, they argue, they push each other, they hunger.
Twilight, above all, remembers the disbandment of the last army of Griffona. She remembers it because of three things. She remembers his son crying over the slain after the week of blood. She remembers the piling of bodies.
She remembers the evidence that griffons eat meat.
Twilight
Axiom accepted this until the end.
“And then? What did you find?”
Twilight shrugged as if trying to shake him off. “I can’t describe it.”
“Nonsense. You’re Twilight. I watched you leave teachers speechless. You can keep up with the princess. You can describe something simple like this.”
Twilight shook her head, adamant. “No, I can’t. It wasn’t something simple at all.”
“Fine,” Axiom groused. “I suppose I got something, at least.” After a moment, he sighed. “The Duke can be manipulated easily, brought around to your side like he chose it for himself. Especially if you can mention the Blues and make it seem like something that the Chief will hate.”
“Chief?” Applejack asked, and Twilight found the sound of her voice after so long to be strange.
“The leader of the Blues. He was the chief of police above us in Vanhoover before the fighting.” He chuckled. “You see, we were all quite different, not that long ago. I was a dropout, the Duke was a minor noble who owned a string of restaurants and collected art, and the Chief was keeping the ponies on the street safe. Now, I’m somewhere between court jester and advisor, the Duke is leading a guerrilla army, and the Chief is murdering anypony who shows their face long enough for him to kick it.”
“Pretty drastic change,” Twilight said.
“What happened?” Pinkie asked. “Why are they doing all of this? Didn’t you all get along before?”
“Perhaps. It’s hard to really talk about that when you have so many ponies to talk about. Aren’t we getting along, Ms. Pinkie Pie?” Axiom asked.
Twilight glanced over at Pinkie, breaking her connection to the chair, and saw her nod.
“And yet we are not really friends, though I bear you no ill will. In fact, outside of circumstance, we have no connection. So it was with Vanhoover or, really, any city. We get along because we are separate and because it is convenient to be so.”
“I guess,” Pinkie conceded with a look of contemplation.
“So you ‘Grays’ jump outta these caves, wallop some fools on the surface, get your flanks kicked yourselves, and then just hide again?” Applejack asked. “Can’t hold onto nothin’?”
“Not at all,” Axiom said, grinning sardonically. “It is rather idiotic, isn’t it? It seemed like a good idea, at first. Those damn Blues—you see, I can’t escape how I feel about them. I’m not entirely detached. But when it begins, you feel as if it is necessary because perhaps it is. Action is called for or else surrender to meaningless death. So you fight. And then a few months later, you wake up, and it feels like it is all for nothing. It helps that the city is ruined.”
“And all these ponies? Who are they?” Applejack pressed.
Twilight looked down at the ground, troubled, but glad, somehow, to have spoken. Even if she kept that last, promised end to herself. They could guess. She didn’t have to say it.
“Refugees. Some of them pledged the Gray when it was a matter of voting. Most just don’t want to die quite yet, and so they got off the streets any way that they could and kept burrowing deeper into the earth until they found our camp, here.”
“And where are all y’all? You talk as if there’s some sort of army, but all I’m seein’ is…” Applejack counted. “I’d reckon only about thirty of you at most.”
“There are other camps,” Axiom said, his eyes drifting to the Duke’s tent. “Do I hear him? I think I do. Listen to me quickly. Only one of you speak at a time; ask what you need, and do it quickly; and don’t lie to him. Treat him like an actual duke.”
Axiom left them, then, and stood before the opening of the Duke’s tent. Twilight and her companions stood at attention, waiting for him to appear.
And he did. Twilight’s first impression was that he was a reimagined Harvest. He was massive. His legs were like trees; his body was hard like stone. His eyes were clouded, not quite milky with blindness, but dangerously close. His gait was like a parody of a king’s.
He said nothing to Axiom, simply nodding and prancing to his old chair, which he sat down in heavily.
To Twilight, who knew better, the airs that he tried to affect in that chair fell flat. He was no duke, she thought, though she thought it without any fire and with little ice. He was a hoary head without a crown on a chair of borrowed wood in a cave filled with lost and lonely eyes. Oh, he was trying to appear elsewise, she could feel it. He certainly sat up straight and looked her in the eye; that was clear. She thought there might be recognition there, but the strange milkyness of those diseased things was hard to read.
“Twilight Sparkle, then,” he said, and to her surprise, his voice was light and youthful, like a young stallion’s. He appeared older than he was, perhaps.
“That’s my name,” she replied evenly.
Yes, he really wasn’t that old. She guessed, now, that he was out of his early adulthood but not yet in the prime of life. Given a few years, as a noble, and he would have been running the circus honorum of local offices, small political appointments to build his character and prestige. If the northern earth ponies did that. She thought they did.
“And yet you do not ask how I recognized you on sight.”
Twilight sighed. “Honestly, I’m more surprised that so few seem to. I mean, yes, Celestia tried her best to keep us out of the papers…”
“Ah, but I happened to attend the Grand Galloping Gala, Miss Sparkle.”
It was strange. Twilight blinked then tilted her head. A smile slowly, slowly brightened her face, and at last she sat down and laughed.
Axiom gaped at her in genuine dismay. Through Twilight’s peals of laughter, she saw no trace of his mask. But Twilight didn’t care at all. The Gala! The Grand Galloping Gala! What a ridiculous name! What a ridiculous event! What tiny, ridiculous ponies!
It felt like another world altogether as if something had bitten off her own chunk of time from the main and the Gala was in a happier bit yet undevoured. It was too funny. She couldn’t even picture herself there, let alone him, let alone any of it.
The Duke straightened in his ludicrous chair, and somehow it just made everything funnier.
“What is the meaning of this?” the Duke asked and ground his teeth.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Twilight managed, controlling herself. “T-truly—ahem, sorry again—truly, I’m very sorry. I’m not laughing at you, good sir.”
He seemed to accept this, relaxing a bit. “Then at what?”
“Just… you mentioned the Gala. I was a lot younger then… We broke everything didn’t we?” She smiled. “We had no idea what we were doing back then, and it was so much fun. I’m sorry, but just thinking about it made me think about how ridiculous it all was.”
Then the Duke surprised her. He also smiled. “It was rather nice as a diversion.Though I always wondered where the princess escaped to.”
“Oh, Princess Celestia was with us, eating donuts.”
The Duke stared. “You’re jesting.” He had lost any semblance of formality.
“Not at all.”
“Well, call me a mule,” he said and leaned back. He chuckled to himself, looking away from them. “I have yet to even interview you, Miss Sparkle, and already, you have enlightened me as to an old mystery. My thanks.”
“You’re welcome. It’s a pretty wonderful secret.”
“Indeed it is,” he said slowly, and Twilight watched as he once again composed his mask of formality. Not quite as unfamiliar as before, but just as false. “Now. Miss Sparkle, as the highest ranked of the city’s gentleponies, I first bid you welcome to our fair city and what is left of her ponies. As you can see, the times are… difficult. But I trust that you have been well looked after, hm? In the company of our mutual acquaintance.”
“I guess you could say that,” Twilight answered evenly.
“Good, good. And, I do hate to do this, but your arrival is… interesting. Troubling, even. You will forgive me if I ask what your business is.”
Her eyes flicked briefly towards Axiom. Twilight raised her eyebrows as if to ask. He mouthed the words, “All of it,” and she set her shoulders. Right. All of it. Something in her rebelled against it, against baring her whole purpose, but why hold back? Why not tell it all? Lying or omitting her purposes would only make more questions.
How best to say it? The Duke was not an idiot. A fool, perhaps, and perhaps a bit too enamored of the trappings of fortuitous blood, but not so much that he couldn’t react like a normal pony. Think, Twilight. Think. Use the brain the song composed for you, and think. He’s gone to great lengths to set himself up as a “duke” and as some sort of old-world lord. How best to deal with that type of pony? I know nothing of him, personally. It’s all guesses.
But I do understand military types, and that’s what he obviously is trying to be. Clear, direct, bold. Look him in the eyes. Tell him all of it. Add a little flair, I guess. His whole… whatever-this-is is rather whimsical… right. Don’t stall.
She looked him in the eye.
“Good Duke,” she began with all the confidence she could muster, “my aim is nothing more and nothing less than the recovery of our Princess from whatever traps her over the western sea. To go all the way to the world’s end and bring her back to Canterlot again.”
There was a deep silence. Axiom’s lips formed a pursed little line, but he said nothing. The Grays who had been milling about—for she saw them now at the fringes of the audience—all had stopped in their tracks in gape-mouthed staring. The Duke was frozen in place.
And Twilight realized how bizarre it was. How stupid. How could they expect to go across a sea that nopony bothered to cross more than once or twice at most, to lands that nopony of Equestria had seen in untold generations, traversing lands that some claimed literally led to the edge of existence, with little clues—no, no, she corrected herself. No clues at all, no real clues at all—to find a teacher and a princess with a motherly smile or a beautiful smile and eyes like the oceans of the ultra-clear lightness of the Palmyretto Bay who may or may not want to come back.
And she wanted to laugh; she wanted to laugh so bitterly.
“She has to come back,” Twilight said, and her voice was not broken, and for this she was grateful. “She has to. If she doesn’t, if nothing changes, everypony will die. Everyone will die. We are tied to her and she to us.”
Axiom snorted, but Twilight realized that time was short. The Duke would speak soon.
“Duke, my friends and I… we have to find her. We can find her,” she said, her voice going beyond simple confidence now. It was hard and rough like sandpaper. “I have magic that will guide us, and we’ve faced down worse than the Blues and the Sea. I was… I was at Manehattan. I faced down manticores and griffins and dragons—stars! I raised one. I lulled an Ursa Minor to sleep, sir, and with help from my friends, normal, brave, honest ponies, I helped defeat Nightmare Moon herself. I need your help. I can steal a boat. I can point it in the right direction. I can fight off their… their… miserable little army,” she spat, and now she was angry. “With their damn walls, acting like real, honest… I don’t know. I don’t know. I just know that I’m angry, and they will be like… kindling. Or something, but I can do a lot of things. But I can’t do everything. I can fight them and trick them and rob them blind but not all three. Only you can help Celestia return.”
Twilight shut her mouth and trembled. The Duke made no movement.
“We need her,” Twilight said uselessly, and still, there was no response. At last, at long and bitter straights, she closed her eyes. “I need her.”
And the Duke moved, straightening in his borrowed throne. “That was quite a speech.”
Twilight stared down at the ground.
“I don’t suppose I can say somethin’,” Applejack said from behind her.
Twilight could not see his reaction, but his voice seemed neutral enough. “Of course. You are… ah, Applejack, I remember it. Forgive me. My eyes are and were poor.”
“That’s alright, Mr. Duke,” she replied. “I just wanted to say that Twilight’s right. We all need the Princess. It ain’t a matter of if we can live alone—I’m an earth pony same as you if you’ll hear me, and we like to think all we need’s the Good Earth and a strong plow.”
A chuckle. “Quoting the Books at me? They hold loser to old Rowan and Gaia in the North.”
“I figured they might. But you know what I’m talkin’ about. It ain’t about if we’re strong; it’s about… I don’t know. Maybe I’m goin’ out on a limb, but the world ain’t quite right, and we all know it.”
“Bit obvious,” she heard Axiom say quietly.
“But it’s not just Celestia bein’ gone. I think that if it were just that, the sun would be fine. I don’t rightly know how that all works, but I do know she wouldn’t be messin’ with it like this.” Twilight looked up at last, for it was as if Applejack had reached into the depths of her own thoughts and pulled out the one kernel of speculation she’d kept even from herself.
Applejack continued. “I’m startin’ to wonder if there ain’t somethin’ we don’t know yet about what’s going on here. Somthin’ is up way over there, and I want to see it. If there is something else, something behind all of this stuff, don’t you wanna know too? And if there ain’t… well. We’ll know. Somepony will know.”
She fell silent.
The Duke rose and stood.
He looked Twilight in the eyes and spoke evenly at first. “Normally, when a pony asked me for help… I would have to think about it. I would need to deliberate. You understand, Twilight, how things must work. Decorum is important for a noblepony such as myself,” he said, and his eyes scanned the crowd that had gathered around them.
Twilight saw them too. They looked like worn and ragged ghosts of soldiery, all gray with painted barding and weathered, filthy cloaks. She regretted being angry at them, now. They looked like so many wanderers, so many children. She thought, perhaps, they were starting to change, though. As if an idea had come to them all at once.
“Normally,” the Duke continued, “I would have let you wait, and decorum—as you know—would have been the byword of our entire negotiation. But… But,” he said, and then the mask died. He grinned, and Twilight saw that his teeth were chipped and stained. “But you know what, gents?” he roared, and Twilight flinched. Around her, she felt the Grays perk up to full attention. They knew this voice, knew this routine. She recognized something primal in it. “We’ve been here long enough, fighting over little things. I want to get up there and show those braggarts and roundheads what we’re made of. I’d like to see the sun, wouldn’t you?” He turned suddenly to Twilight and advanced. She shied away from him, but he got right in her face.
“You say it’s important.”
“Yes.”
“You know what I heard?”
“W-what?”
“I heard,” he said softly now, “that it was important to you. I was going to say yes. But that… tell me again.”
“W-what?” she repeated, eyes wide. He filled her vision with his huge, malformed, blurry body.
“Why do you really want to find her? What will you do?”
“I… we need her—”
“No. Your other answer.”
Twilight started. “I need… her?”
“Excellent!” he roared, and Twilight flinched, bewildered. “EXCELLENT. THAT’S WHAT QUESTS ARE MADE OUT OF, GENTS AND MARES! LOVE AND DANGER! Ah, yes, don’t you smell it? Don’t you taste it? I do.”
He played his crowd. Their fervor grew as quickly as Twilight’s confusion did. She had stepped into something, into some sort of ongoing pageant that she had no clue about. Across the way, Axiom looked at her with something she could only call sardonic amusement.
And Twilight sat in the midst of a crowd of pubescent would-be knights errant and desperate mares, and wondered what in hell’s baleful name the world had come to.
But she also thought about Celestia.
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Ah, so your characters also talk about how much they hate you.
Ah, so we finally get an explanation for the oft-mentioned incident at Manehattan. Very striking, the bit about them finally getting a fifteen-hour day for once, and just using it to fight more. I was a little fuzzy, though, upon reading it, on where Luna's forces were in relation to the city in Twilight's recollection. Were they marching into Manehattan from outside to drive the griffons out? Were they somehow already in Manehattan, and breaking their way out of the siege?
Nearly 80k words in, and they still don't have a boat yet. This is going to be a very long story, isn't it?
3929108 When they get their boat you're going to wish they hadn't, a little bit.
And they were marching towards. Griffons inside the city, pones outside
Oh god I am so far behind on this now.
I feel awful for not keeping up. Why do you not poke at me to come and read?? If you don't, I get distracted. Later, I will read. Now, I sleep.
rock on
Finally got caught up on this story, at long last.
As always, fair Cynewulf, your narrative reads like a fine wine. One of the better adventure stories I've read on this site, for sure. Puts me in the mind of Within and Without and suchlike.
You, Cy, are teasing me.
There is a thing going on here, a delectable and treacherous Thing which has a lovely and dangerous name and with which you are taunting me, you cruel and wonderful and wonderfully cruel person.
4064768 Oh, sir, I'm teasing you TWICE.
You should be reading closely :3
4084116
And boy, don't I know it!
Wait, this got added to Twiluna? What? Had I given up hope so soon?
Ugh. Never judge a book by its then-probable lack of OTP. I am ashamed.
Time to reread everything (and the six chapters I've yet to come across).
This is a multiple chapter story, so in order to know whether or not this is in the right folder I must ask thee: Is Twilight in love with Celestia (or vice versa) in this story?
If not, the tag you're looking for is dark (non-romantic).
4084176 I added it for the hints in the beginning and for something else. I am changing gears with act 2 a lot.
4084189 Yes. It is more obvious as time goes on and becomes explicit eventually.
4084219
Wait, so is this Twiluna or Twilestia?
4084398 I'm on my sickbed with a phone else I woe spoiler this but
Kinda both.
4084517 http://www.fimfiction.net/group/198097/twilunestiance
http://www.fimfiction.net/group/1290/twilunestia
some more groups for you then
This is fantastic. I just blazed through all eleven chapters and want more. Keep it up!
4084219 Thank you for your time
4084517
Ah i will add this story too my read once i know more about it list then.
I'm a big fan of twiluna not much of a fan of twilestia.
So i rather know the main pairing before i get invested in the story.
It dose look rather interesting tho.
liiiike
4089132
4090133
Thanks!
Adventure Time quote would've worked better if he then got Twilight's name slightly off, Dusk Shine or the like.
Flashback Sparkle compares Celestia's oratorium to a "throne room of God", but this metaphor doesn't feel like it belongs in your TNiP universe; if faith in the Royal Sisters has gone to hell, it seems there would be some religious sects popping up as ponies and other creatures search for something else to place their faith in.
The last few pages of this chapter were still characteristically grim, but quite rousing.
Is there any reason only Celestia is talked about as if she is immortal and such?
This story is fantastic so far! Loving ever paragraph.
Is this how you hope to hook me? "They die in the end, but there's still 400k words to this Odyssey"
Well then.
I'm hooked, though I don't approve